- The outbreak initially identified in China, is continuing to grow.
- The disease is called COVID-19. It’s caused by an infection from the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which is one of the multiple coronaviruses that can be transmitted to humans.
- Other examples include SARS, MERS, and even the common cold.
- There have been over 1.9 million confirmed COVID-19 cases globally and over 118,000 associated deaths.
- The United States currently has the highest reported number of COVID-19 cases with more than 570,000. However, due to a lack of testing, the number of actual cases may be far higher.
- Over 23,000 people in the United States have died from the disease.
Governors of three western states announced they would work together as they contemplate easing restrictions on residents’ movement amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced they would coordinate their plans for reopening the economy and opening up public spaces.
There’s no timetable for when shelter-in-place orders would be lifted, but all three states have avoided the drastic spike in cases that have overwhelmed hospitals in New York, Michigan, and other states. This is although California and Washington were among the first states to see community spread of COVID-19.
“We are announcing that California, Oregon, and Washington have agreed to work together on a shared approach for reopening our economies — one that identifies clear indicators for communities to restart public life and business,” the governors said in a joint statement.
Additionally, the governors of six states on the east coast announced they would form a committee to discuss issues with reopening the economy.
The governors of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island said they would put together a panel that includes public health experts, economists, and their chiefs of staff to work together about when it would be safe to reopen businesses and ease stay-at-home orders.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is giving emergency use authorization to a company to allow for the sterilization of millions of N95 masks used by healthcare workers.
“Our nation’s healthcare workers are among the many heroes of this pandemic and we need to do everything we can to increase the availability of the critical medical devices they need, like N95 respirators,” said FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, in a statement.
Advanced Sterilization Products Inc., will now be allowed to use vaporized hydrogen peroxide gas plasma sterilization to decontaminate N95 face masks.
This is the second company to get emergency authorization to sterilize masks.
N95 masks are critical for healthcare workers treating people with COVID-19, but they’re in short supply. The new emergency use authorization could help protect healthcare workers that have been forced to ration or reuse masks.
Millions of Americans are out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic, and fast, accurate blood tests could play a critical role in getting people safely back to work or school.
However, public health officials caution that a broad range of “unregulated tests” are creating confusion that could significantly slow the path to recovery.
The Associated Press reports that governments worldwide are hoping the rapid tests — typically using a finger-prick of blood on a test strip — could soon “ease public restrictions by identifying people who have previously had the virus and have developed some immunity to it.”
These tests are different from the nasal swab tests used to detect whether someone actually has the virus in their body. Instead, they’re used to detect antibodies in the blood, which indicate whether someone has successfully beaten the infection.
Government researchers studying how the virus has spread through the U.S. population are using antibody tests to guide pandemic response efforts.
“This study will give us a clearer picture of the true magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States by telling us how many people in different communities have been infected without knowing it, because they had a very mild, undocumented illness, or did not access testing while they were sick,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a statement.
“These crucial data will help us measure the impact of our public health efforts now and guide our COVID-19 response moving forward,” he said.
There are now more than 565,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States. That accounts for almost one-third of the 1.8 million cases worldwide.
The United States has more than 22,000 reported deaths, surpassing Italy as the country with the most fatalities.
Besides, a new mass COVID-19 outbreak has been identified, this time in upstate New York, according to Rochester First News.
At a nursing home in the Hornell area, 46 individuals tested positive through mass testing of residents and employees.
New York City, facing mounting deaths from the pandemic and dwindling space in city morgues, has initiated mass burials, according to CBS News.
However, officials haven’t explained whether the increase in burials is due to pressure on mortuaries to dispose of bodies more quickly, according to The New York Times.
Research conducted at New York University showed that obesity may be a risk factor for hospitalization in people with COVID-19 under age 60.
The findings were published April 9 in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
With almost 40 percent of American adults younger than 60 at a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, obesity is a significant risk factor for COVID-19 hospitalizations, according to the study.
COVID-19 can overwhelm your immune system, making you dependent on a ventilator in a matter of hours, reports ABC News Philadelphia.
“Some of those patients that you’ve seen, within 3 to 4 hours, they decompensate completely where that chest X-ray is whited,” Hernan Alvarado, MBA, RRT, RPFT, the director of respiratory therapy at Temple University Health System in Pennsylvania, told the television station. “Now they’re on a breathing tube.”
“The classic signs — increase in fever, shortness of breath, cough, difficulty breathing — if you have any of those symptoms, get checked. It could save your life,” Alvarado warned.
Los Angeles has instituted a mandate the requires face masks or coverings be worn in all essential businesses, reports CBS Los Angeles.
The order specifies that people must cover their noses and mouths while still maintaining a 6-foot distance from others.
Additionally, businesses may refuse entry to anyone without a face covering.
Recent research from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) finds that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, can remain in the air for more than an hour.
The findings indicate that, at certain temperatures and humidity levels, this virus can “float” longer than some flu viruses.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said April 9 that the number of deaths from COVID-19 may top 60,000.
“As you can see, the number of deaths and the cases that we’re seeing are really validating what we said, that this is going to be a bad week,” he said on NBC’s Today Show. “There are some glimmers of hope,” he added since hospitalizations have gone down.
While that number is high, it’s still lower than the early estimates of fatalities that were between 100,000 to 240,000.
Fauci said the revised total is based on the idea that Americans still practice physical distancing to stop the spread of the virus.
“The mitigation and the physical separation that we have initiated have started to have a real effect now,” he said on NBC’s Today Show.
However, Fauci was clear that if physical distancing guidelines are relaxed there could be another surge in cases.
“I believe we are going to see the downturn in that and it looks more likely the 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000, but having said that we better be careful that we don’t say ‘OK, we’re doing so well we can pull back,'” he said. “We still have to put our foot on the accelerator when it comes to the mitigation and the physical separation, not pull back.”
Michigan has the third-highest number of COVID-19 cases in the nation with more than 20,000 cases.
In a report on April 9, healthcare workers spoke out about the crush of COVID-19 patients and the lack of personnel to treat them in Detroit.
According to CNN, workers at Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit reported that some patients had died in the hallway. The situation was so dire that nurses staged a sit-in demanding more help to treat critically ill patients.
Post a Comment