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Category: Science/mathematics

Covid-19’s ‘silent’ and deadly attack on the lungs

Covid-19’s ‘silent’ and deadly attack on the lungs

Dr Richard Levitan writes: We are just beginning to recognize that Covid pneumonia initially causes a form of oxygen deprivation we call “silent hypoxia” — “silent” because of its insidious, hard-to-detect nature. Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs in which the air sacs fill with fluid or pus. Normally, patients develop chest discomfort, pain with breathing and other breathing problems. But when Covid pneumonia first strikes, patients don’t feel short of breath, even as their oxygen levels fall. And…

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New data on antiviral remdesivir does not show benefit for coronavirus patients

New data on antiviral remdesivir does not show benefit for coronavirus patients

STAT reports: The antiviral medicine remdesivir from Gilead Sciences failed to speed the improvement of patients with Covid-19 or prevent them from dying, according to results from a long-awaited clinical trial conducted in China. Gilead, however, said the data suggest a “potential benefit.” A summary of the study results was inadvertently posted to the website of the World Health Organization and seen by STAT on Thursday, but then removed. “A draft document was provided by the authors to WHO and…

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Hidden outbreaks spread through U.S. cities far earlier than we knew, estimates say

Hidden outbreaks spread through U.S. cities far earlier than we knew, estimates say

The New York Times reports: By the time New York City confirmed its first case of the coronavirus on March 1, thousands of infections were already silently spreading through the city, a hidden explosion of a disease that many still viewed as a remote threat as the city awaited the first signs of spring. Hidden outbreaks were also spreading almost completely undetected in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle, long before testing showed that each city had a major problem,…

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Mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing many coronavirus patients

Mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing many coronavirus patients

The Washington Post reports: Craig Coopersmith was up early that morning as usual and typed his daily inquiry into his phone. “Good morning, Team Covid,” he wrote, asking for updates from the ICU team leaders working across 10 hospitals in the Emory University health system in Atlanta. One doctor replied that one of his patients had a strange blood problem. Despite being put on anticoagulants, the patient was still developing clots. A second said she’d seen something similar. And a…

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Vaccine expert ousted because he challenged Trump: ‘science — not politics … has to lead the way’

Vaccine expert ousted because he challenged Trump: ‘science — not politics … has to lead the way’

The New York Times reports: The doctor who led the federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine said on Wednesday that he was removed from his post after he pressed for a rigorous vetting of a coronavirus treatment embraced by President Trump. The doctor said that science, not “politics and cronyism,” must lead the way. Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development…

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More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug promoted by Trump, VA virus study shows

More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug promoted by Trump, VA virus study shows

The Associated Press reports: A malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported. The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it’s the largest look so far of hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19, which has killed more than 171,000 people…

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Coronavirus testing needs to triple before the U.S. can reopen, experts say

Coronavirus testing needs to triple before the U.S. can reopen, experts say

The New York Times reports: As some governors consider easing social distancing restrictions, new estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the next month. An average of 146,000 people per day have been tested for the coronavirus nationally so far this month, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which on Friday reported 3.6 million total tests…

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Early data on antiviral drug suggests Covid-19 patients are responding to treatment

Early data on antiviral drug suggests Covid-19 patients are responding to treatment

STAT reports: A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week, STAT has learned. Remdesivir was one of the first medicines identified as having the potential to impact SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in lab tests. The entire world has been waiting for results from Gilead’s clinical trials, and…

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Still too early to determine which potential Covid-19 treatments are effective

Still too early to determine which potential Covid-19 treatments are effective

The Washington Post reports: The journey of EIDD-2801, from laboratory to the mouth of a human, unfolded with head-snapping speed. On March 23, a division of Emory University in Atlanta licensed the experimental drug to a Miami company owned by a wealthy hedge-fund manager and his wife. Just three weeks later, a pill was given to a person for the first time in a test of its safety, in Britain. It marked the beginning of an accelerated testing regimen that…

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Influential Covid-19 model uses flawed methods and shouldn’t guide U.S. policies, critics say

Influential Covid-19 model uses flawed methods and shouldn’t guide U.S. policies, critics say

STAT reports: A widely followed model for projecting Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. is producing results that have been bouncing up and down like an unpredictable fever, and now epidemiologists are criticizing it as flawed and misleading for both the public and policy makers. In particular, they warn against relying on it as the basis for government decision-making, including on “re-opening America.” “It’s not a model that most of us in the infectious disease epidemiology field think is well suited”…

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Infectious disease reporter, Jon Cohen, talks about the research to develop a COVID-19 vaccine

Infectious disease reporter, Jon Cohen, talks about the research to develop a COVID-19 vaccine

  Jon Cohen is an award-winning journalist who has been reporting on infectious diseases for 40 years. He tells Hari Sreenivasan about the remarkable research being done now–even as many still seem determined to ignore the facts–and about his recent, revealing conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Experts know the new coronavirus isn’t a bioweapon. But some say it could have leaked from a lab

Experts know the new coronavirus isn’t a bioweapon. But some say it could have leaked from a lab

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports: Much remains uncertain about the new coronavirus. What treatments will prove effective against COVID-19? When will a vaccine for the disease be ready? What level of social distancing will be required to tame the outbreak, and how long will it need to last? Will outbreaks come in waves? Amid all these vital forward-looking questions remains a more retrospective but still important one: Where did SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, come from in the…

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Role models: Researchers show world leaders how to behave in a crisis

Role models: Researchers show world leaders how to behave in a crisis

In an editorial, Nature journal says: Although the coronavirus pandemic has become a threat to every country on Earth, world leaders are all at sea — showing few signs that they wish to cooperate genuinely to combat it. By contrast, tens of thousands of researchers from different disciplines and countries have joined research and public-health efforts to fight COVID-19. They are working across continents, lending their time, ideas, expertise, equipment and money to the emergency public-health effort. They are providing…

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Trump administration was warned in 2018 about safety risks at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses

Trump administration was warned in 2018 about safety risks at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses

Josh Rogin writes: Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet…

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Coronavirus could attack immune system like HIV by targeting protective T cells, scientists warn

Coronavirus could attack immune system like HIV by targeting protective T cells, scientists warn

South China Morning Post reports: The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 could kill the powerful immune cells that are supposed to kill the virus instead, scientists have warned. The surprise discovery, made by a team of researchers from Shanghai and New York, coincided with frontline doctors’ observation that Covid-19 could attack the human immune system and cause damages similar to that found in HIV patients. Lu Lu, from Fudan University in Shanghai, and Jang Shibo, from the New York Blood Centre,…

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The largest Arctic ozone hole ever measured is hovering over the North Pole

The largest Arctic ozone hole ever measured is hovering over the North Pole

Science News reports: A curious confluence of atmospheric events has produced the largest ozone hole ever measured over the Arctic. A powerful polar vortex has trapped especially frigid air in the atmosphere above the North Pole, allowing high-altitude clouds to form in the stratosphere, where the ozone layer also sits. Within those clouds, chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons already high in the atmosphere — gases used as refrigerants — react with ultraviolet rays from the sun to release chlorine and bromine atoms,…

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