Lifestyle and Economy Updates Archive

Lifestyle and Economy Archives

January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020

January 2021

1/28/2021

More than 48.3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed across the U.S., and more than 21.7 million people have received their first dose, according to CDC data.
A COVID-19 vaccine from Novavax proved nearly 90 percent effective in preliminary results from a key clinical trial in the U.K., but in a separate trial appeared far less effective against the new variant from South Africa.
Preliminary findings from an NIH study suggest pregnant women who experienced severe symptoms of COVID-19 had a higher risk of complications during and after pregnancy. Compared to COVID-19 patients without symptoms, the NIH study showed that those with severe symptoms were at higher risk for cesarean delivery, postpartum hemorrhage, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and preterm birth. The researchers also found transmission of COVID-19, from mother to child was rare, with 1 percent of newborns testing positive for the virus before being discharged from the hospital.
CDC's MMWR published a few new articles of interest:
New York has not mentioned prison inmates in its vaccine eligibility guidelines. At least 5,100 people living and working in New York’s prisons have tested positive for COVID-19 and 12 have died in recent weeks, outpacing the early days of the pandemic.
COVID-19 cost global tourism $1.3 trillion in 2020 according to the U.N.
The IMF has raised its forecast for global economic growth in 2021 and said the coronavirus-triggered downturn in 2020 would be nearly a full percentage point less severe than expected.
Overlake Medical Center & Clinics in Bellevue, Washington, is receiving backlash after sending an email to about 110 donors who gave more than $10,000 to the hospital system, telling them they could register for open appointments “by invite” only.
The Arkansas Department of Health has confirmed that a central Arkansas house cat was found to be infected with COVID-19.
German authorities have blocked the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on people over age 65. A statement by the Standing Vaccine Commission at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s main public health agency said there is “insufficient data currently available to ascertain how effective the vaccination is above 65 years.”
A second company has provided preliminary evidence that proactively infusing healthy people with monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 prevents them from developing noticeable symptoms of COVID-19 if they are exposed to the coronavirus. In a press release earlier this week, Regeneron revealed that when it gave a cocktail of two of those antibodies to 186 people living in a house with someone who had COVID-19, none developed symptomatic disease.
Eli Lilly is testing its COVID-19 antibody therapy in combination with another treatment by Vir Biotechnology Inc and its partner GlaxoSmithKline, to combat new variants of the coronavirus.
The French Cannes 2021 film festival will take place between July 6-17 instead of May 11-22 as initially planned.
The International Swimming Federation, known as FINA, postponed its artistic-swimming qualification event for the Tokyo Olympics because of COVID-19. The competition was supposed to be held at the Tokyo Aquatics Center in March but has been rescheduled for May.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here. This AVAC pipeline tracker is great, too.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.

1/25/2021

More than 41.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed across the U.S., and more than 18.5 million people have received their first dose, according to CDC data.
Moderna announced Monday that their COVID-19 vaccine protects against two variants of the virus detected in Britain and South Africa. However, test results indicated the vaccine is less effective at neutralizing the South African variant. As a result, Moderna will launch two new studies – including adding a third vaccine dose to boost effectiveness.
- The variant identified in Britain has been confirmed in 22 states, and the variant found in South Africa has not yet been confirmed in the U.S.
Pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. announced today that it will shut down its COVID-19 vaccine program. Early studies showed inferior immune responses when compared to other vaccines.
Pfizer announced that it has fully enrolled its COVID-19 vaccine trial in kids ages 12-15.
Johnson and Johnson said it expects to release data later this month from the Phase 3 trial of its single-dose coronavirus vaccine, which was shown to generate an immune response to COVID-19 in an early-stage study.
An MMWR report about the NFL shared that the League observed SARS-CoV-2 transmission after <15 minutes of cumulative interaction, leading to a revised definition of a high-risk contact that evaluated mask use and ventilation in addition to duration and proximity of interaction. Overall, intensive mitigation protocols effectively reduced close interactions. The authors added that post-exposure quarantine based on redefined high-risk criteria, combined with testing and environment-specific intensive protocols, can protect communities before and after case identification.
A case of a more contagious coronavirus variant first found in Brazil has been confirmed in Minnesota and is the first confirmed case of the variant in the U.S. The variant, known as B.1.1.28.1 or P.1, shares many mutations with one first identified in South Africa.
The NIH shared the results from a large clinical trial that saw full dose anti-coagulation (blood thinner) treatments given to moderately ill patients hospitalized for COVID-19 reduced the requirement of vital organ support—such as the need for ventilation.
Early results in Israel show a significant drop in infection after just one shot of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine, and better than expected results after both doses.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated COVID-19 has caused $3.7 trillion in lost earnings to workers. The ILO said women, younger workers, and people in hospitality and retail were hit the hardest. They also stated that 8.8 percent of working hours were lost relative to 2019, which is four times bigger than the impact of the 2008 financial crisis.
Google said it will make company buildings, parking lots, and open spaces available to serve as temporary vaccination clinics in partnership with health care providers and public health officials.
Oxfam released a report stating that COVID-19 has created a wealth increase of $550 million for the ten richest men.
Because so many schools nixed the standardized test requirement for applications, the volume of college applications submitted by January deadlines was 10 percent higher than last year, amounting to almost 5.6 million applications through Jan. 18. According to the Common App, the increase was driven largely by an increase in applications to the most selective universities, which rose 17 percent, and to the largest universities, which rose 16 percent.
The WHO is providing risk management advice to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japanese authorities about the Tokyo Olympics.
Budweiser, an Anheuser-Busch company, is foregoing Super Bowl commercials and is instead donating portions of its advertising budget this year to the Ad Council, a nonprofit marketing group at the helm of a $50 million ad blitz to fight vaccine hesitancy.
The University of Michigan said Saturday that it had suspended all sports activities for up to two weeks and told athletes, coaches, and team staff members to quarantine immediately after “several” cases of the U.K. variant of the coronavirus were found among people linked to the athletic department.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here. This AVAC pipeline tracker is great, too.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.

1/21/2021

More than 37.9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed across the U.S., and more than 15 million people have received their first dose, according to CDC data.
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response prepared and published their second report on progress for the WHO Executive Board.
A recent MMWR article looked at vaccination coverage among kindergarteners in the U.S. in the 2019-2020 school year. National coverage for that year was about 95 percent for diphtheria and tetanus toxoids, and acellular pertussis; measles, mumps, and rubella; and varicella vaccines. However, the article notes the disruption in vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, the authors recommend increased follow-up of undervaccinated students.
Another MMWR study examined contact tracing efforts from health departments for a month between June and July of 2020. The findings showed that, of case investigation and contact tracing metric data reported by 56 U.S. health departments, there was wide variation in capacity and ability to conduct timely and effective contact tracing. The authors suggest that increasing staffing capacity and improving community engagement could lead to more timely contact tracing interviews and identification of more contacts.
Eli Lilly released new data showing that a laboratory-made protein delivered by infusion may help prevent infections at nursing homes. A Phase 3 clinical trial found that nursing home residents who got the monoclonal antibody drug were 80 percent less likely to develop symptomatic COVID-19 compared to nursing home residents who got a placebo infusion.
The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine appears to work just as well against a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus first identified in the U.K. as it does against earlier forms of the pathogen, the companies reported in a study Wednesday.
United Airlines said it expected to have voluntary COVID-19 testing available at all of its hubs by February.
Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes said the 2021 Rio Carnival will be postponed due to Brazil’s second wave of coronavirus and a lagging vaccination campaign.
The UK’s largest music festival “Glastonbury” has been canceled for a second time.
While the French ski slopes have remained closed, resorts in Switzerland have decided to open. Although the French Government have urged people to stay away, many ignored the recommendations. The large crowds make social distancing difficult have heightened public health concerns, as highly contagious variants of the virus spread across Europe.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here. This AVAC pipeline tracker is great, too.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.

1/19/2021

More than 31 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed across the U.S., and nearly 11 million people have received their first dose, according to CDC data updated as of Jan. 15.
COVID-19 vaccine coverage is twice as high among white people than it is among Black and Hispanic people according to one recent analysis. At least 14 states publish vaccine administration data by race on local dashboards or reports, and at least 13 states report it by ethnicity.
New York State is having a difficult time vaccinating nursing home workers who are opting out. As of Monday, only about 37 percent of the more than 130,000 people working in “skilled nursing” facilities in the state have been vaccinated, according to the governor’s office.
A new commentary co-authored by NIH's Dr. Tony Fauci and other leading NIAID scientists in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine provides an overview of the seven COVID-19 vaccines furthest along in development in the U.S. For each vaccine candidate, the authors describe the platform used, the current stage of development, and the clinical trial results that have been reported or when results are expected.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association found over 211,000 new COVID-19 cases among kids last week – the highest number since the pandemic began, according to a newly released report.
Widespread use of face masks in a community can significantly help prevent large outbreaks of COVID-19, according to a study published Tuesday in The Lancet Digital Health. A 10 percent increase in self-reported mask-wearing could lead to a three-fold increase in the odds of maintaining sufficient control over virus transmission in a community, the study said.
Pfizer said shipments to Canada and the E.U. from its vaccine facility in Puurs, Belgium, will be temporarily reduced as it scales up to produce two billion COVID-19 vaccine doses in 2021. The company said there will be fluctuations in orders and shipping schedules from the facility in late January and early February.
Seventy-two tennis players who arrived ahead of the Australian Open, set to begin Feb. 8, have been confined to their hotel rooms and prohibited from practicing as part of strict quarantine rules implemented after passengers on their flights to the grand slam tournament tested positive for COVID-19. Two players and one non-player associated with the tournament tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday.
Emirates Airlines and Etihad Airways said they have partnered with the International Air Transport Association to trial IATA Travel Pass – a mobile app that serves as a “digital passport” to verify pre-travel COVID-19 testing or vaccination status. Emirates Airlines said it plans to roll out the first phase to passengers departing Dubai in April, and Etihad will first offer the travel pass on some flights out of Abu Dhabi in the first quarter of 2021.
A Scottish woman who lived through two world wars and the 1918 flu pandemic has received her first dose of coronavirus vaccine on her 108th birthday.
The 2021 New Orleans Jazz Fest has been postponed until October.
Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade has been canceled for the second year in a row.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here. This AVAC pipeline tracker is great, too.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.

1/14/2021

More than 30.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed across the U.S., and more than 11 million people have received their first dose, according to CDC data.
Early-stage trials of Johnson & Johnson's experimental coronavirus vaccine show it generated an immune response in nearly all volunteers, with minimal side-effects, after a single dose.
People who received two shots of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in its earliest, Phase 1 clinical trial are being offered a third shot, a so-called booster, as part of a continuing study to determine whether repeated vaccinations are needed, and whether they are safe and effective.
People who have recovered from COVID-19 may have immunity to the virus for around five months, according to preliminary findings in a new study led by Public Health England.
In an HHS-funded study, patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who were not receiving mechanical ventilation had a lower risk of death if they received a transfusion of plasma with higher coronavirus antibody levels than a transfusion of plasma with lower antibody levels.
Based on global surveillance data collected through late last month, the WHO says flu activity in the Northern Hemisphere is at “interseasonal levels,” meaning it’s as low as in an ordinary summer. In the U.S., the percentage of outpatient visits for influenza-like illness is at 1.6 percent, far below the 2.6 percent baseline used to define a seasonal epidemic. U.S. clinical labs have collected 925 positive samples since the end of September 2020, versus 63,975 at this point in the 2019–20 flu season.
Scientists at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine have discovered a new variant of the coronavirus that is similar to the mutation found in the U.K. but probably originated in the U.S., researchers announced Wednesday.
After declining over the summer, coronavirus infections among children, teens, and young adults rose steadily from September through mid-December, paralleling the virus’s trajectory among older adults in the U.S. population, the CDC reported on Wednesday.
Another study of children, adolescents, and young adults, published in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday by researchers at the University of Minnesota, found that the increase in the percentage of children hospitalized with COVID-19 was more than double that of adults over the same period. Child hospitalizations surged by 760 percent, while adult hospitalizations increased by 300 percent.
A coalition of leading technology companies, health organizations, and nonprofits — including Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Cerner, Epic Systems, and the Mayo Clinic — said on Thursday that they were developing technology standards to enable people to obtain and share their immunization records through health passport apps.
New claims for state unemployment benefits in the U.S. sharply increased last week. A total of 1.15 million workers filed initial claims for state unemployment benefits during the first full week of the new year.
Unlike the jobless rate, which has declined markedly from the peak in April, the rate of absenteeism has remained stubbornly high. More than 1.9 million people missed work in December because of illness, according to Labor Department data, almost matching the 2 million record set in April and underscoring the impact of a third wave of coronavirus infections. This is beginning to greatly affect U.S. supply chains.
The Vatican said on Thursday that Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had each received the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
Tennis player Andy Murray has tested positive for COVID-19, putting in doubt his participation in next month’s Australian Open.
The Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. said on Tuesday that they would offer contactless delivery and pickup of their cookies through Grubhub. It’s the first time that the Girl Scouts, who have sold cookies for more than a century, have collaborated with a national delivery service.
The English Premier League announced on Thursday that Aston Villa’s home game against Everton has been postponed due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak at the Midlands club. A total of six Premier League matches have been postponed due to the pandemic so far.
Flights were delayed when an air traffic control center near Jacksonville, Florida, closed for several hours for extensive cleaning after an employee tested positive for the coronavirus.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here. This AVAC pipeline tracker is great, too.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.

1/11/2021

More than 25.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed across the U.S., and nearly 9 million people have received their first dose, according to CDC data.
States are increasingly abandoning guidelines from the CDC and taking their own approaches to giving people coronavirus vaccines, new analysis finds.
Reports on new SARS-CoV-2 variants are available here.
Two independent analyses have found that a new SARS-CoV-2 variant overtaking the U.K. is indeed more transmissible than other forms of the virus. Both found it to be roughly 50 percent more transmissible than other variants.
Under a range of assumptions of presymptomatic transmission and transmission from individuals with infection who never develop symptoms, the model presented in this study estimated that more than half of transmission comes from asymptomatic individuals.
In a study investigating the long-term health effects of COVID-19, 76 percent (1265 of 1655) of the patients reported at least one symptom that persisted 6-months after being diagnosed, with fatigue or muscle weakness being the most frequently reported symptom (63 percent, 1038 of 1655). More than half of patients presented with residual chest imaging abnormalities.
A recent MMWR article found rates of COVID-19 among nursing home residents and staff members increased during June and July 2020, and again in November. Trends in reported COVID-19 cases among nursing home residents and staff members were similar to trends in incidence of COVID-19 in surrounding communities.
Pope Francis says he will soon receive a COVID-19 vaccination, perhaps as early as next week, and said receiving the vaccine is a duty for everyone.
Nurses in the Chicago Public Schools district have objected to officials’ plans to begin bringing students back to classrooms on Monday, saying they do not think it is safe to do so.
COVID-19 killed more law enforcement officers in the line of duty than anything else in 2020, according to a new report.
The NBA has postponed two games due to COVID-19 safety protocols: New Orleans Pelicans vs. Dallas Mavericks originally scheduled for Monday night and Tuesday’s matchup between the Boston Celtics and host Chicago Bulls.
Support for holding the Olympics in Japan this summer has plummeted, according to a new poll from Kyodo News Agency that found that roughly 80 percent of respondents felt the event should be canceled or rescheduled.
Two captive gorillas at the San Diego Zoo have tested positive for COVID-19 after falling ill, and a third gorilla appears also to be symptomatic.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said global carbon emissions, which have been reduced by the pandemic, are set to rebound in 2021 unless governments take swift policy action.
After an 18-hour flight from Dubai landed in Auckland, New Zealand, in September, local health authorities discovered evidence of an outbreak that most likely occurred during the trip. Using seat maps and genetic analysis, the new study determined that one passenger initiated a chain of infection that spread to four others en route.
An international trial of the use of convalescent blood plasma on COVID-19 patients with moderate and severe illness has halted enrolment of severely ill patients requiring intensive care after it found no benefit.
Delays were reported at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after an air traffic control center that serves the area reported a coronavirus infection and closed for cleaning on Sunday.
The University of California is planning to return to primarily in-person instruction statewide beginning fall 2021 as access to COVID-19 vaccines becomes more widely accessible.
Dodger Stadium will become a COVID-19 vaccination site by the end of the week and will no longer offer testing after today. Once the site is fully operational, up to 12,000 people can be vaccinated per day.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here. This AVAC pipeline tracker is great, too.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.

1/7/2021

More than 21 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed across the U.S., and 5.9 million people have received their first dose, according to CDC data.
Nearly 60 percent of all COVID-19 spread may come from people with no symptoms, according to a new MMWR report from the CDC.
The spread of the coronavirus accelerated sharply in counties where large universities held classes in person last fall, according to another MMWR study by the CDC.
The CDC released an MMWR report with data estimates that life-threatening allergic reactions could occur in about 11 out of every 1 million COVID-19 vaccine shots given. The CDC’s estimate is based on 21 cases of anaphylaxis following a 10-day period after the administration of 1.9 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The vast majority of these reactions – 71 percent –occurred within 15 minutes of the vaccination.
As of January 4, national forecasts predict that 12,900 to 24,900 new COVID-19 deaths will be reported during the week ending Jan. 30. These forecasts predict 405,000 to 438,000 total COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. by Jan. 30. In an interview with NPR, Dr. Fauci said the continued high toll would probably be a reflection of increased travel and gatherings over the holidays.
Blood plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients can help older adults avoid getting seriously sick with the coronavirus if the therapy is administered within days of the onset of the illness, a clinical trial in Argentina found.
New data suggest that nearly all COVID-19 survivors have the immune cells necessary to fight re-infection. The findings, published in the Jan. 6, 2021, online edition of Science, could mean that COVID-19 survivors have protective immunity against serious disease from the SARS-CoV-2 virus for months, perhaps years after infection.
The Grammy Awards, originally scheduled to take place on Jan. 31, have been postponed to March 14 due to the crisis-level COVID-19 situation in Los Angeles.
Saudi Arabia is urging Muslims to receive a coronavirus vaccine before performing Hajj or Umrah, religious pilgrimages to the country’s holy city of Mecca.
A pilot program will provide vaccines to some people imprisoned in federal prisons in Ottawa, Canada starting Friday. Six hundred inmates will each get two doses of vaccine in the first round, with prioritization of the sick and elderly.
So many dogs have been adopted during the pandemic that animal shelters in the DMV area are running out of pets.
Most nursing-home employees in North Carolina are refusing coronavirus vaccines, the state’s top public health official said Tuesday. And a third of health workers in the New York City public hospital system declined COVID-19 vaccines, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.
Native American tribes are prioritizing vaccinations for speakers of endangered languages.
Holy Cross beat Boston University 68-66 on Tuesday, during the first men’s college basketball game this season in which players wore masks on the court.
Jury trials in states across the U.S. – including California, Florida, Arkansas, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Idaho – have shut down as a result of the pandemic. The inability to conduct jury trials has wreaked havoc with the dockets of many courts.
Two-time World Cup winner Alex Morgan announced she and her family have tested positive for COVID-19.
North Carolina prison officials are considering offering rewards, such as increased guest visitation privileges, to inmates who accept a coronavirus vaccine that will soon become available to them.

1/4/2021

The number of inmates and guards known to have been infected with COVID-19 at American correctional institutions has now exceeded 500,000.
Moderna said it will produce at least 600 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine in 2021, up by 100 million from its previous forecast.
More than fifteen million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed across the U.S., and 4.5 million people have received their first dose, according to CDC data.
BioNTech and Pfizer warned they had no evidence their vaccine would continue to work if the booster shot was given later than tested in trials. They said the “safety and efficacy of the vaccine has not been evaluated on different dosing schedules.”
In an attempt to limit the threat of coronavirus among teams, the N.C.A.A. announced an agreement Monday to hold its signature men’s basketball tournament entirely in Indiana in March and early April.
The Transportation Security Administration screened more than 1.3 million travelers Sunday, marking yet another pandemic travel record.
Sandra Lindsay, director of critical care nursing at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, became the first person in the U.S. to complete a two-dose coronavirus vaccine course on Monday, 21 days after she was given her initial dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Dec. 14.
The Ad Council and the COVID Collaborative today announced a new resource designed to address healthcare professionals' questions about COVID-19 vaccination. The videos which feature an introduction from Dr. Anthony Fauci–include experts from a diverse coalition of leading healthcare organizations and medical institutions sharing information around COVID-19 vaccine development and safety with their fellow physicians and nurses.
Two more studies show contracting COVID-19 prevents against future infection for 6-8 months. The studies, one from Oxford University and the other by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, are the latest in a series of medical findings that have shown getting COVID-19 provides temporary immunity from reinfection, the Associated Press reported.
Sixty percent of nursing home staff in Ohio have refused to take a COVID-19 vaccine.
The University of California, San Diego has installed vending machines on campus where students and staff can pick up self-administered COVID-19 test kits. To use the kits, which are free, test takers use the swab outdoors and return the vile within 72 hours, for results in less than two days.
Some Chicago Public Schools teachers expected to report to the classroom ahead of preschool students’ anticipated return next week have stayed home over coronavirus concerns. The Chicago Teachers Union opposed the nation’s third-largest district’s plans to bring students back in phases.
The Greek Orthodox church has announced it will defy government lockdown orders aimed at curbing the spread of coronavirus and open places of worship to mark Epiphany on Wednesday.
Pope Francis on Sunday criticized people who have been traveling abroad for leisure during the pandemic, saying he was disappointed by their lack of consideration for others.

December 2020

12/21/2020

A mutant strain of the coronavirus, called B.1.1.7, prompted strict lockdown measures in England and halted travel between the U.K. and more than 40 countries following reports that the mutant virus is spreading between people more quickly. Scientists are not yet sure of the strain’s importance or whether it is more contagious. It has also been detected in South Africa and Australia.
- WHO officials said Monday that there is no evidence at this point to suggest that the new coronavirus variant discovered in the U.K. "is more likely to cause severe disease or mortality.”
The CDC said it is monitoring reports of severe allergic reactions to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. If you have ever had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient in a COVID-19 vaccine, CDC recommends that you should not get that specific vaccine. If you have had a severe allergic reaction to other vaccines or injectable therapies, you should ask your doctor if you should get a COVID-19 vaccine.
- The NIH said Monday it is planning a study to find out what’s behind the handful of severe allergic reactions that have been reported. Medical experts say that Pfizer’s vaccine is still safe for the general public, noting that allergic reactions are extremely rare and expected on a small scale with any type of vaccine.
More than 3 million elderly and infirm residents of nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities may face delays in getting coronavirus vaccines as the facilities confront the difficult task of obtaining consent, consumer advocates say.
More than a million travelers a day passed through American airport security checkpoints on each of the last three days, a spike in holiday travel that comes despite warnings from the CDC against travel.
Delta Air Lines said on Monday that it will require pre-departure COVID-19 tests from passengers leaving the U.K. who are flying to New York.
Virgin Atlantic will also require all travelers from London to the United States to present evidence of a negative COVID-19 test before departure under a new pre-departure screening beginning Dec. 24.
Health officials are administering the first doses of a coronavirus vaccine in Indigenous communities across the U.S., one of the populations most vulnerable in the pandemic. About 68,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses will initially be distributed among the population, the Indian Health Service said.
Stanford Medicine apologized on Friday for its COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan – a plan that came under fire for leaving out nearly all of its medical residents and fellows, many of whom regularly treat COVID-19 patients.
During a "Sesame Street" town hall with CNN on Saturday, NIH director Dr. Anthony Fauci assured kids Santa Claus would be able to visit them on Christmas, because he traveled to the North Pole to vaccinate Santa personally.
After moving their entire football operation to Arizona for what they initially hoped would be just a three-week stay, the San Francisco 49ers will finish the 2020 regular season in the desert. A team spokesman said the decision was made to remain in the Phoenix area through the end of the NFL season after Santa Clara County announced it would be extending its COVID-19 restrictions, including a ban on contact sports, through at least Jan. 8.
There were nearly 12,000 more deaths than expected among young adults between March and July, according to new research published last week in JAMA.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here. This AVAC pipeline tracker is great, too.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.

12/18/2020

A new MMWR release outlines the estimated resource costs for the successful implementation of CDC’s recommended COVID-19 mitigation strategies in Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12 in public schools.
Based on early data, COVID-19 is now likely the leading cause of death in the U.S., ahead of heart disease and cancer, according to a research letter in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
A Johns Hopkins University medical expert estimates that between 53,000 and 54,000 U.S. hospital workers could become infected with COVID-19 during the course of the pandemic. His team also projects the number of U.S. hospital worker deaths for the same time period to be approximately 1,600.
Nearly 50 Georgia kids may have been exposed to COVID-19 after posing for a photo op with Santa at an annual Christmas parade.
Like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, New York City Marathon, and other iconic events in 2020, New Year's Eve in Times Square will take place this year without the crowd.
Twitter said that starting next week, the company will “prioritize the removal of the most harmful misleading information” and begin to label Tweets that contain potentially misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines.
The start of the Australian Open will be delayed by three weeks due to the pandemic. The first Grand Slam tournament of the year, the Open usually takes place in the last two weeks of January. Now, it will start on Feb. 8, 2021.
The NFL plans to invite health care workers who have received the coronavirus vaccine to February’s Super Bowl as guests of the league.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here. This AVAC pipeline tracker is great, too.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.

Previous Updates

Peru’s Health Ministry said Saturday it has suspended a trial for China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine after a participant presented health problems.
The pharmaceutical companies Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline said Friday that their experimental COVID-19 vaccine did not appear to work well in older adults, a significant setback to their late-stage clinical trial that was previously expected to begin in the U.S. this month. The Sanofi vaccine is one of six selected for OWS. The companies negotiated a $2.1 billion agreement with the U.S. to provide 100 million doses.
Global health experts continue to point out the residual effects of COVID-19 on other existing health issues, like a dramatic uptick in measles cases and multiple polio outbreaks. Vaccine campaigns have been interrupted by access to health care and an acute emphasis on addressing COVID-19, which had led to an increase in other diseases.
As many as 300,000 COVID-19 cases in the U.S. can be traced back to a two-day conference in Boston attended by 175 biotech executives in February, according to a study published in the journal Science.
A recent study found that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an estimated 218,000 excess deaths in the U.S. between March and August 2020, and that 80 percent of those deaths had COVID-19 as the underlying cause.
Scientists in Europe who have examined the genomes of 2,200 critically ill COVID-19 patients has found that certain gene variants are linked to severe coronavirus infections. These findings suggest that genetic makeup very well may play a role in severe COVID-19 cases that lead to death.
STAT published a special report, "The coronavirus at 1: A year into the pandemic, what scientists know about how it spreads, infects, and sickens."
A new online calculator for estimating individual and community-level risk of dying from COVID-19 has been developed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The researchers who developed the calculator expect it to be useful to public health authorities for assessing mortality risks in different communities, and for prioritizing certain groups for vaccination as COVID-19 vaccines become available. The algorithm underlying the calculator uses information from existing large studies to estimate risk of COVID-19 mortality for individuals based on age, gender, sociodemographic factors and a variety of different health conditions. The risk estimates apply to individuals in the general population who are currently uninfected, and captures factors associated with both risk of future infection and complications after infection.
Uber's CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent letters to the governors of every U.S. state arguing that the company's drivers should get priority when it comes to vaccine distribution. Khosrowshahi isn't alone - Airlines for America wrote the CDC last week advocating for pilots, stewardesses, air traffic controllers, and customer service representatives to be among the first Americans to be vaccinated.
Johnson & Johnson is reducing the size of its U.S. COVID-19 vaccine trial from 60,000 volunteers to 40,000 volunteers. The J&J candidate is currently the only single-dose vaccine being tested in a major study. The change in study size is possible because of the prevelance of COVID-19 and the increased likelihood that participants will be exposed to it, meaning researchers will be able to reach conclusions based on a smaller trial.
Doctors still aren’t sure why “long-haulers” continue to suffer the consequences of the disease months later or whether the symptoms will stay with them for the rest of their lives. But public health experts say it’s increasingly clear that many thousands of patients face long-term effects from the virus.
A survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows about a quarter of U.S. adults are not sure if they want to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Roughly another quarter say they will not.
A new series of polling from the de Beaumont Foundation explores the partisan divide between how Republicans and Democrats respond to communication about COVID-19. One question showed that 62 percent of Democrats said the current situation with COVID is “extremely serious,” compared with only 33 percent of Republicans feeling the same way.
Airlines and freight say they will need regulatory flexibility in order to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine requiring ultra cold storage efficiently, including being able to move the vaccine through borders and customs with the appropriate safeguards to prevent tampering and theft. In considering the need for dry ice to help with cold storage, the Federal Aviation Administration has permitted United Airlines, which is conducting charter flights from Brussels to Chicago with Pfizer’s vaccine, to carry 15,000 pounds of dry ice on charter flights carrying the vaccine — five times more than the roughly 3,000 pounds normally permitted.
A recent MMWR article found that, among parents of school-aged children who participated in an Internet panel survey, racial and ethnic minority parents were more concerned about some aspects of school reopening, such as compliance with mitigation measures, safety, and their child contracting or bringing home COVID-19, than were non-Hispanic White parents.
A second MMWR study from this week's edition found that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the total number of emergency department visits related to child abuse and neglect decreased, but the percentage of such visits resulting in hospitalization increased.
Officials have warned that hackers are targeting K-12 schools in a new wave of cyberattacks that is disrupting distance learning even as coronavirus cases spike across the country. Some of the hackers behind ransomware have held school data hostage or threatened to leak confidential student data if a payment was not made. Over the past month, the attacks have taken more than a hundred schools in Baltimore offline. They have also hit dozens of schools in Texas and Alabama, as well as a handful of schools in Georgia and Ohio.
BIO announced that today we launched a new educational website, COVID Vaccine Facts. The goal of the website is to address frequent questions about COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine development, with a specific focus on educating both providers and the general public in the U.S.
An MMWR early release outlines how Head Start and Early Head Start programs successfully implemented CDC-recommended guidance and other ancillary measures for child care programs that remained open, allowing them to continue offering in-person learning. These approaches were documented to guide implementation of mitigation strategies in child care settings.
Another MMWR report has summarized guidance for public health strategies to mitigate community spread, including the “consistent and correct” use of face masks indoors.
The D.C. government has released a new set of COVID-19 data — the first to arrange clusters of cases by setting — that shows restaurants and bars are among the most common environments where the virus spreads.
Elementary school students who were learning remotely in the spring lost the equivalent of roughly three months’ progress in math and fell a month and a half behind in reading, according to a new analysis released by McKinsey & Company.
Colleges and universities across the country are announcing decisions to host more students for the Spring semester than in the Fall as they say they have learned strategies to minimize risk.
A new report from One Fair Wage found that more than 80 percent of service industry workers are seeing a decline in tips and over 40 percent say they're facing an increase in sexual harassment from customers. Of those, around 60 percent said they were reluctant about enforcing social distancing and mask use with customers from whom they would receive tips. The title of the report, "Take Off Your Mask So I Know How Much to Tip You," is a reference to one of several disturbing comments women workers say they've been hearing from patrons.
Pfizer announced that it expects to ship half of the COVID-19 vaccines it originally planned for this year because of slow-downs in the raw material supply chain. The company still expects to roll out more than a billion doses in 2021.
Facebook announced they will remove posts that contain claims about COVID-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts. Facebook added that it would also take down “false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips, or anything else that isn’t on the official vaccine ingredient list.”
Data from Moderna's vaccine trial suggests high levels of coronavirus antibodies will last for at least three months (the length of time people have been observed so far) after being vaccinated. How long immunity could persist will eventually determine whether people need to be vaccinated more than once, and how often.
IBM's cybersecurity division has identified a series of cyberattacks underway aimed at the companies and government organizations that will be distributing coronavirus vaccines around the world. So far, it is unclear whether the goal is to steal the technology for keeping the vaccines refrigerated in transit or to sabotage the movements.
Former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all said that they would publicly take a coronavirus vaccine, once it's available in the U.S., to encourage skeptical Americans to do the same.
A new Eurasia Group analysis shows that an equitable COVID-19 vaccine solution would generate at least $153 billion (USD) of economic benefits in 2020-21 for ten of the world's largest donor countries and $466 billion by 2025.
Forecasters expect a report Friday from the Labor Department will show that U.S. employers added fewer workers in November than the 638,000 created a month earlier.
Demand for travel nurses has increased by more than 40 percent in the last month, according to Aya Healthcare. There are approximately 25,000 nurses who work as travel nurses and sign temporary contracts for higher fees, moving from city to city.
An analysis of electronic health records has shown an 11-fold increase in hospitalization for patients with COVID-19 and end stage renal disease.
A couple from Hawaii were arrested and charged with reckless endangerment after they flew home from San Francisco, despite having received positive COVID-19 tests.
Jazz Standard, a popular New York City jazz club, has closed. It is the first major jazz club in the city to close permanently due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Out of 546 NBA players tested ahead of spring training, 48 tested positive for COVID-19. The league said anyone who has returned a positive test during this initial phase of testing in their team’s market is isolated until they are cleared under the rules established by the NBA and the Players Association in accordance with C.D.C. guidance.
This year's Rose Bowl will be played without fans due to COVID-19 concerns.
Iowa State University plans to allow as many as 15,000 fans to attend the last home football game of the season on Saturday, even as the state reports a positivity rate of 19 percent.
Eight members of the Pakistani national cricket team tested positive for COVID-19 after arriving in New Zealand.

November 2020

According to data from HHS, nearly 1 in 5 hospitals in the country now report having a critical shortage of staff. Based on their data, only 11 people who received two doses of the vaccine developed COVID-19 symptoms after being infected with the pandemic coronavirus, versus 185 symptomatic cases in a placebo group.
Moderna announced they will be submitting an application for EUA for their COVID-19 vaccine, which has an efficacy of 94.1 percent.
After facing questions about methodology and results of its late-stage study, AstraZeneca's chief executive said the company is likely to run an additional global trial to assess the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine using a lower dosage.
A model developed by CDC scientists predicts that the actual number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. reached nearly 53 million at the end of September and could be approaching 100 million now.
The Association of University Centers on Disability is providing answers to frequently asked questions about COVID-19 vaccine distribution considerations for the disability community. The FAQ includes information on the approval, manufacturing, allocation, and distribution of potential COVID-19 vaccines, The document also includes additional vaccine resources from the national network of University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities and links to federal, state, and local public health resources.
A paper published in the International Journal of Infectious diseases provides information for the first time on the toll of COVID-19 on health care workforces across 37 countries. The data, from the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa and Middle Eastern nations highlight gaps in access to personal protective equipment, training, and in protocols for donning and doffing protective gear, the authors say.
A new survey in London found that cancer researchers fear advances for patients could be delayed by almost a year and a half because of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some disabilities make it difficult or impossible to wear a face mask and some individuals with mobility/movement disorders have difficulty putting on, adjusting, and/or removing a face mask without assistance. An upcoming Georgia Tech webinar outlines CDC’s face mask guidelines and explores solutions to challenges some people with disabilities experience in attempting to follow the guidance. Participants will receive tips, resources, and guidance for wearing face masks to protect themselves from COVID-19.
In a recent survey by the National Education Association (NEA), the country’s largest teachers’ union, 28 percent of educators said the coronavirus had made them more likely to leave teaching or retire early.
Thousands of A.A. and similar meetings are now occurring virtually. Though online rehab rose as an emergency stopgap measure, people in the field say it is likely to become a permanent part of the way substance abuse is treated. Being able to find a meeting to log into 24/7 has welcome advantages for people who lack transportation, are ill, juggling parenting or work challenges that make an in-person meeting tough on a given day and may help keep them more seamlessly connected to a support network. Experts also say online meetings can be a good steppingstone for people just starting rehab.
A Pennsylvania state senator learned that he had tested positive for COVID-19 while meeting with President Trump on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
A Singaporean woman has given birth to a child with coronavirus antibodies months after contracting the virus herself.
The NFL fined the New Orleans Saints $500,000 and stripped them of a seventh-round draft pick for violations of the league’s COVID-19 protocols during a postgame locker room victory celebration without masks.
The Denver Broncos had no eligible quarterbacks on Sunday as all had either tested positive for COVID-19 or had been in close contact with a player who had tested positive.
Several groups, including the American Medical Association, are calling for coronavirus vaccines to be given to inmates and employees at prisons, jails, and detention centers, citing the unique risks to people in confinement — and the potential for outbreaks to spread from correctional centers, straining community hospitals.
According to the Labor Department, 778,000 people applied for state benefits last week, an increase of 30,000 from the previous week. The uptick in state claims during the last two weeks suggests an increase in layoffs as businesses confront the rising tide of new infections.
The number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities has surpassed 100,000 since the start of the pandemic, representing about 40 percent of all U.S. deaths.
Tal Zaks, chief medical officer of Moderna, told "Axios on HBO" that a COVID-19 vaccine could be available for children by the middle of next year.
Results from a recent survey showed that, if offered a vaccine free of charge, fewer than half of Black people and 66 percent of Latino people said they would probably or definitely take it.
The NFL has decided to postpone the Steelers-Ravens football game originally scheduled to take place on Thanksgiving, because at least seven Ravens players have tested positive for COVID-19.
Alabama Crimson Tide head football coach Nick Saban has tested positive for COVID-19.
A 27-year-old environmental activist and innovator in western India takes used protective gear and molds it into bricks for buildings. He already has made more than 40,000 bricks for projects including homes and factories, and is gearing up to produce 15,000 a day.
A youth soccer tournament featuring 500 teams is set to kick off in Phoenix, Arizona this weekend. The tournament has said that each team's coach or manager is responsible for ensuring players follow the guidelines, and recommended that players and staff remain socially distanced when not playing.
YouTube has suspended One America News for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.
Australian air carrier Qantas plans to require proof that international travelers have received a coronavirus vaccine, and it anticipates that other airlines will do the same.
Despite pleas from state health officials, the CDC, governors, and health care workers for people to stay home this Thanksgiving, more travelers were screened at airport security checkpoints on Sunday than on any day since the pandemic took hold in March.
AstraZeneca announced on Monday that early analysis of some of its late-stage clinical trials, conducted in the United Kingdom and Brazil, showed that its COVID-19 vaccine was 70.4 percent effective in preventing the coronavirus. The drug maker and the University of Oxford, with whom the company partnered developed the vaccine, said they would submit their data to regulators in Britain, Europe, and Brazil and seek emergency authorization.
PEDSnet, an organization representing seven of the nation's largest pediatric medical centers, reports that some groups of children are faring significantly worse than children in general during the pandemic. A recent analysis of 135,000+ medical records shows the novel coronavirus hits hardest among teens, children with diabetes or cancer, lower-income families, and Black, Latinx and Asian groups.
Results from a new MMWR study suggest that countywide mask mandates appear to have contributed to the mitigation of COVID-19 transmission in mandated counties in Kansas. Community-level mitigation strategies emphasizing use of masks, physical distancing, staying at home when ill, and enhanced hygiene practices can help reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
A group of vaccine experts led by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has published recommendations to ensure equitable distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available. The framework focuses on five principles the authors believe would strengthen the current immunization delivery system to ensure equitable access to everyone for whom vaccination is recommended. Read about them here.
A study on 11,000 non-critically ill hospital patients has led experts to call for mandatory blood glucose checks and treatment to reduce virus complications. The results of the study showed that abnormally high blood sugar may worsen outcomes and mortality rates for COVID-19 patients, including those without diabetes.
Researchers at U.C. San Diego Health connect blood clots to an increased risk of death from COVID-19. The study 20 percent of the COVID-19 patients were found to have blood clots in the veins, and among patients in the intensive care unit, that statistic increased to 31 percent.
A study published in The Lancet Microbe shows that COVID-19 is most contagious in the first 5 days after symptom onset, underscoring the importance of early case identification and quarantine.
Serious psychological distress was reported by 13.6 percent of U.S. adults in April 2020 versus 3.9 percent in 2018. How psychological distress has changed over the course of the pandemic, however, is unknown. Results from this study suggest that the pandemic’s longer-term disruptions are important drivers of distress.
The bodies of hundreds of people who died in New York City during the COVID-19 surge in the spring are still in storage in freezer trucks on the Brooklyn waterfront. Many of the bodies are of people whose families can’t be located or can’t afford a proper burial, according to the city’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner. About 650 bodies are being stored in the trucks at a disaster morgue that was set up in April on the 39th Street Pier in Sunset Park.
One in three parents say the benefits of gathering with family for the holidays are worth the risk of spreading or getting the virus, according to the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health at Michigan Medicine.
Some economists are starting to embrace the idea that a prospective COVID-19 vaccine could allow people to once again spend money on travel, restaurants and other services—and drive up prices in the U.S.
The NCAA Division I Council announced it was extending the recruiting dead period for all sports through April 15. There has been a dead period in place since the coronavirus pandemic hit in March, meaning there will have been no official campus visits or in-person evaluations in more than a year by the time it potentially ends in April.
China’s Sinopharm said nearly a million people have received shots of its experimental coronavirus vaccines under emergency use protocols, even as their safety and efficacy have yet to be confirmed in Phase 3 trials. Sinopharm has several COVID-19 vaccine candidates in late-stage trials.
Pfizer and BioNTech provided an update on the previously announced success of their COVID-19 vaccine, which they now say has 95 percent efficacy at the end of the trial. In people over 65 years of age, the efficacy remains high at 94 percent. The companies say they will be filing their application for EUA as early as tomorrow.
A study published in MMWR this week takes a look at the effectiveness of Duke University's testing and mitigation efforts on campus. Among 10,265 students who received testing 68,913 times, 84 had positive results. One half of infections were asymptomatic, and some had high viral loads. This supports the idea that identifying asymptomatic cases is critical for minimizing spread in a community like a college campus.
Another MMWR study this week highlights the need for assisted living facilities (ALFs) to increase safety measures and mitigation techniques. Among ALF residents with COVID-19 (in states with available data), 21 percent died, compared with 3 percent who died among the general population with COVID-19.
Russia has resumed the vaccination of new volunteers in its trial for the Sputnik V vaccine after a short pause.
Columbia University epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman said his team’s model estimated that 3.6 million people are infected and shedding enough virus to infect others. According to Shaman, that’s a 34 percent week-to-week increase that followed a 36 percent increase in the previous seven-day average.
Pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca has delivered four million vials of its coronavirus vaccine candidate to the UK government, with millions more frozen doses ready to be sent.
Johnson & Johnson's chief scientist said the drugmaker is recruiting over 1,000 people per day for the late-stage trial of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine and expects to have all the data needed to seek U.S. authorization by February or earlier. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) is participating in the trial and said work on vaccines is the single most important part of the ongoing COVID-19 response effort.
More than 900 staff members across the Midwest Mayo Clinic system have been diagnosed with COVID-19 over the last two weeks. Most of the infections are likely due to community spread outside of the center.
REMAP-CAP, a global trial network that has been testing different COVID-19 drugs in an adaptive fashion at 200 sites on 19 countries, announced that Actemra, the arthritis drug, had worked in their study. A data safety and monitoring board reviewed data from 303 patients and determined Actemra had a 99.75 percent chance of being better for the sickest Covid-19 patients than giving them no immune modulator at all.
On Monday, this update reported that Wreaths Across America at Arlington National Cemetery would be canceled due to safety concerns. However, that decision was reversed on Tuesday following a push from President Trump and is now slated to take place Dec. 19.
Today's big science feat was the announcement by Moderna that their COVID-19 vaccine has yielded preliminary results of 94.5 percent efficacy. Unlike the Pfizer vaccine, it does not have to be stored at –70°C, but can tolerate a much warmer –20°C, which is standard for most hospital and pharmacy freezers. That difference means Moderna’s vaccine should be easier to distribute and store, particularly in the rural U.S. and developing countries that lack ultracold freezers. Out of 95 symptomatic cases of COVID-19 in the trial, 90 of the cases occurred in the placebo group and 5 occurred in the vaccinated group.
Scientists continue to urge mask wearing to help minimize spread of COVID-19. This NYT graphic helps explain why they are an imperative line of defense.
More than 1 million U.S. children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to a report published Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. Infections among children represent 11.5 percent of overall U.S. cases.
The next National Academies webinar is titled: COVID-19 Vaccine Update: Development, Approval, Allocation, and Distribution in the U.S. The webinar will examine COVID-19 vaccine possibilities and what the potential development, approval, allocation and distribution processes could look like. A panel of leading public health experts will discuss next steps. The webinar is Nov. 18 at 5 PM, you can register here.
Johnson & Johnson launched a new large-scale late-stage trial on Monday to test a two-dose regimen of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine and evaluate potential incremental benefits for the duration of protection with a second dose.
A recent study found that young and previously healthy people with ongoing symptoms of COVID-19 are showing signs of damage to multiple organs four months after the initial infection. On Sunday, the NHS announced it would launch a network of more than 40 long Covid specialist clinics where doctors, nurses and therapists will assess patients’ physical and psychological symptoms.
At least 231 people in Texas prisons and jails have died from COVID-19, including 27 staff members, 14 people in jail and 190 people in prison, according to a new report from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin.
Despite painstaking efforts to keep election sites safe, some poll workers who came in contact with voters on Election Day have tested positive for the coronavirus, including more than two dozen in Missouri and others in New York, Iowa, Indiana, and Virginia.
U.S. stock futures jumped today following Moderna's announcement as it is becoming more likely that the U.S. might have two coronavirus vaccines available on a limited basis by the end of this calendar year. The S&P 500 closed at a record high. Investors also seem to be comforted by comments from two advisers to President-elect Joe Biden who said no nationwide lockdowns were being contemplated in response to the pandemic.
This weekend, at least four colleges announced they are moving classes online. Michigan ordered a three-week pause in in-person instruction. Fifteen football games were canceled or postponed, and University of Tennessee athletics staff have refused pay cuts.
The International Olympic Committee is “very confident” the Olympics can take place in Tokyo in summer with a reasonable number of spectators, thanks to the development of vaccines and rapid virus testing, its president said Monday.
The annual Wreaths Across America at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia has been canceled this year due to the pandemic.
Chicago’s Christkindlmarket and many other events have been canceled or moved online this year, including the city’s Christmas tree-lighting ceremony and the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival.
The NCAA will consolidate its men’s college basketball tournament to a single city in 2021 instead of holding the games at 13 sites across the U.S., in an effort to travel during the pandemic.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here. This AVAC pipeline tracker is great, too.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced on Tuesday that Medicare beneficiaries can receive coverage of monoclonal antibodies to treat COVID-19 with no cost-sharing during the public health emergency. The coverage of these antibody infusions applies to bamlanivimab, which received an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday. CMS anticipates that health care providers will receive first priority for this antibody product.
A new study published by the journal Nature found that 8 in 10 new infections in the early months of the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic resulted from exposure in restaurants, gyms, cafes, and other crowded indoor venues. A team of researchers from Stanford University and Northwestern University created a computer model that accurately predicted the spread of COVID-19 in 10 major cities this spring by analyzing three factors that drive infection risk: where people go in the course of a day, how long they linger and how many other people are visiting the same place at the same time.
The study utilized cellphone mobility data from 10 major U.S. cities from March to May.
The high cost of ultra-cold freezer units to store what will likely be the first approved COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer will put rural hospitals at a disadvantage. While the CDC has advised state health departments against purchasing ultra-cold freezers under the expectation that vaccines with less demanding storage requirements will be soon available, several large health care systems with larger budgets have purchased or leased these units. Many rural hospitals cannot afford these freezers, which means that health care workers and residents may have difficulty distributing and receiving the vaccine.
The Centers for Disease Control recommended community use of masks to prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Specifically, the CDC recommended non-valved multi-layer cloth masks, which are primarily intended to reduce the emission of virus-laden droplets and reduce potential inhalation of infected droplets.
A new publication from CDC’s MMWR found that COVID-19 mitigation measures (e.g., stay-at-home orders and public mask mandate) and fundamental public health interventions (e.g., case investigations and contact tracing with prompt isolation or quarantine) are primary approaches to preventing and controlling SARS-CoV-2 community transmission. The report stated that “The combination of state-mandated community mitigation efforts and routine public health interventions can reduce the occurrence of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.”
Several medical researchers commented on racial disproportionality in COVID-19 clinical trials, specifically SIMPLE-Severe and SIMPLE-Moderate trials of remdesivir. The researchers concluded that U.S. minority populations have been disproportionality affected by COVID-19 and that the proportion of minorities enrolled in the SIMPLE trials was similar to the national distribution of patients with COVID-19 in concurrent databases.
Operation Warp Speed, the federal program on COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics, announced in October that it set aside $375 million to purchase 300,000 doses of bamlanivimab, with an option to purchase another $650,000 doses through next summer. However, demand for the drug will likely outstrip this year’s supply. Through the end of this year, manufacturer Eli Lilly and Co expects to make 1 million doses for use around the globe. Operation Warp Speed officials walked through some solutions for rationing the drug Monday, which they said took into account how to distribute it most ethically. The administration said it had learned from its challenges with allocating the antiviral drug remdesivir, which was characterized by a confusing and opaque allocation system.
A new publication from CDC’s MMWR found evidence that suggests the potential health complications after COVID-19 illness might require ongoing clinical care. The study said that after discharge from an initial COVID-19 hospitalization, 9 percent of patients were readmitted to the same hospital within 2 months, and multiple readmissions occurred in 1.6 percent of patients. Risk factors for readmission included age ≥65 years, presence of certain chronic conditions, hospitalization within the 3 months preceding the first COVID-19 hospitalization, and discharge to a skilled nursing facility or with home health care.
A study determined that diabetes is associated with increased risk for in-hospital mortality in patients with COVID-19.
More than 540 students at the University of Connecticut are under quarantine as of Wednesday amid increased COVID-19 cases on and off campus.
The governors of seven northeastern states agreed on Thursday to suspend interstate youth hockey competitions for the rest of the year after outbreaks were linked to games.
On Wednesday, biotechnology company Moderna announced that it has completed case accrual for the first interim analysis of the Phase 3 COVE study of mRNA-1273, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Moderna has seen a significant increase in the rate of case identification across sites in the last week. As a result, the Company expects the first interim analysis will include substantially more than 53 cases, the targeted trigger point for the analysis. The data on these cases is being prepared for submission to the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) for analysis and recommendation. Moderna remains blinded to whether these participants received vaccine or placebo.
Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted positive data from Moderna, which is developing a second COVID-19 vaccine, following positive news earlier this week from Pfizer. He also said that the results from Pfizer, which demonstrated 90 percent efficacy in its most recent trial, was better than he had hoped.
A study added new symptoms to the generally recognized symptoms of COVID-19. According to the study, warnings can include weakness, poor blood sugar control, and gastrointestinal complaints. Researchers found COVID-19 in 57.5% of patients who went to the hospital because of weakness, falls, or altered mental status, in 55.5% of those who came in because their blood sugar was out of control, and in 51.4% of patients whose chief complaint was a gastrointestinal problem. Patients over the age of 65 tended to have more atypical complaints such as diarrhea, fatigue and weakness. Patients with dehydration, altered mental status, falls and high blood sugar were at higher risk for death in the study.
A new publication in CDC’s MMWR found that beginning in April 2020, the proportion of children’s mental health-related emergency department visits among all pediatric emergency department visits increased and remained elevated through October. Compared with 2019, the proportion of mental health–related visits for children aged 5–11 and 12–17 years increased approximately 24 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
Several college football games have been postponed due to positive COVID-19 tests and subsequent quarantine of players and staff. Several SEC matchups, including games between No. 24 Auburn and Mississippi State, No. 1 Alabama and LSU, Tennessee and No. 5 Texas A&M, and No. 12 Georgia and Missouri were originally scheduled for this Saturday but will now be rescheduled. Matchups in other conferences, including the ACC, Big Ten, and Mountain West have also been postponed.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association reported on state data about children and COVID-19.
Researchers in Ottawa, Canada tracking the spread of COVID-19 through wastewater say they have found alarmingly high levels of the virus in recent samples, contradicting plateauing case counts registered by the city’s testing system.
Check out this great graphic about the science of superspreading.
Covaxin, a COVID-19 vaccine backed by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), could launch as early as February - months earlier than previously expected.
Remdesivir, an anti-viral drug by Gilead Sciences, does not prevent deaths or shorten hospital stays for coronavirus patients, according to a WHO study published Thursday.
A new study shows that rich countries have already snapped up billions of doses of potential COVID-19 vaccines, potentially leaving poor countries without enough supply for years to come. By this metric, relatively wealthy nations will likely be able to vaccinate their entire populations, with billions of others relegated to the back of the line. People in low-income countries could be waiting until 2024.
University of Oxford scientists announced Thursday that they have developed a rapid antigen test for the coronavirus that they say can offer results in as little as five minutes.
This week's MMWR has a few new articles:
- Telework Before Illness Onset Among Symptomatic Adults Aged ≥18 Years With and Without COVID-19 in 11 Outpatient Health Care Facilities — United States, July 2020
  - This study found that adults who received positive test results for SARS-CoV-2 infection were more likely to report exclusively going to an office or school setting in the two weeks before illness onset, compared with those who tested negative, even among those working in a profession outside of the critical infrastructure. The findings suggest that employers should promote alternative work site options, such as teleworking, where possible, to reduce exposures to SARS-CoV-2. Where telework options are not feasible, worker safety measures should continue to be scaled up to reduce possible worksite exposures.
- A SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak Illustrating the Challenges in Limiting the Spread of the Virus — Hopi Tribe, May–June 2020
  - Among 60 immediate and extended family and community members of the Hopi Tribe, 29 (48 percent) had laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19; 14 percent were presymptomatic, and 24 percent of patients were asymptomatic. The majority of presymptomatic and asymptomatic cases occurred in children and young adults. The study results imply that, in communities with similar extended family interaction, it is important to promote wearing a mask, frequent hand washing, and physical distancing even among extended family.
- Update: Characteristics of Symptomatic Women of Reproductive Age with Laboratory-Confirmed SARS-CoV-2 Infection by Pregnancy Status — United States, January 22–October 3, 2020
  - The study found they were significantly more likely to require intensive care, to be connected to a specialized heart-lung bypass machine, and to require mechanical ventilation than nonpregnant women of the same age who had Covid-19 symptoms. Most importantly, the pregnant women faced a 70 percent increased risk of death, when compared to nonpregnant women who were symptomatic.
Researchers from the Ohio State University found that adherence to physical distancing practices measured using virtual behavioral simulations were associated with lower risk of subsequently contracting COVID-19, while self-report of these behaviors was not associated with infection risk.
According to an article from the Federation of American Scientists, approximately half of the profiles pushing the case for herd immunity are artificial accounts. These bot or bot-like accounts are generally characterized as engaging in abnormally high levels of retweets and low content diversity.
Exxon Mobil announced on Thursday it would lay off 1,900 people from its U.S. workforce, the latest cuts in the oil industry that has been bleeding jobs as the global coronavirus pandemic saps demand for its fuels.
The NFL’s Atlanta Falcons closed the team facility and spent Thursday working remotely after a member of the coaching staff tested positive for COVID-19. Their Sunday game against the Minnesota Vikings is still scheduled to happen.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.

October 2020

NIH scientists have discovered a rare and deadly inflammatory disease affecting men called the VEXAS syndrome. The results from a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine may lead to effective therapies for the disease, which has killed 40 percent of known patients. Those afflicted have an autoinflammatory condition, with symptoms including unexplained fevers, blood clots and inflammation of the cartilage, lung tissue and blood vessels.
Kroger announced yesterday that they will soon sell rapid COVID-19 antibody tests at all of their pharmacies. The FDA-authorized tests can detect if a person has coronavirus antibodies but not if a person is currently infected with COVID-19. Kroger said the tests cost $25 and typically provide results within 15 minutes. The tests will be done by a licensed health professional and involve a fingerstick blood sample.
Regeneron said this week that its antibody drug reduced coronavirus-related medical visits in a large trial of people who have not been hospitalized. The company said the antibody, which is derived from people who have recovered from the coronavirus, cut medical visits among coronavirus patients by 57 percent when compared with standard care in a trial of about 800 participants. The effect was larger in people with one or more risk factors for COVID-19, reducing medical visits for that group by 72 percent, the company said.
Five Yale law, medicine and public health professors, along with a national team of scientists, signed an open letter last week addressed to HHS Sec. Alex Azar calling for greater transparency in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials. The letter, which was written in collaboration with Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, urges Azar to release information to the public about ongoing COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial designs and data collection. Given the remarkable speed at which public and private sector scientists have been working on COVID-19 vaccines, the authors argued that more openness will improve public confidence in the safety and efficacy of the vaccines once they become available, while also protecting the long-term reputation of public health agencies in the U.S.
MMWR published multiple new articles this for this week's edition, some of which are summarized here:
- Trends in the Use of Telehealth During the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, January–March 2020
  - Suggests the 154 percent increase in telehealth visits during the last week of March 2020, compared with the same period in 2019 might have been related to pandemic-related telehealth policy changes and public health guidance.
- COVID-19 Outbreak at an Overnight Summer School Retreat ― Wisconsin, July–August 2020
  - Over the summer, a COVID-19 outbreak at an overnight high-school retreat likely began with a single student who had received a negative SARS-CoV-2 molecular test result <1 week before the retreat and led to 116 (76 percent) diagnosed COVID-19 cases among attendees.
- COVID-19 Outbreak Among a University’s Men’s and Women’s Soccer Teams — Chicago, Illinois, July–August 2020
  - Researchers looked at 17 COVID-19 cases among a university’s men’s and women’s soccer team and identified numerous social gatherings as possible transmission events. Minimal mask use and social distancing resulted in rapid spread among students who live, practice, and socialize together.
A study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases showed that individuals who are HIV-positive and are hospitalized with COVID-19 had an age-adjusted 47 percent higher risk of 28-day mortality compared with HIV-negative individuals. In addition, among people aged <60 years, HIV-positive status more than doubled the risk of mortality after adjusting for sex, ethnicity, age, baseline date, comorbidities, and disease severity at presentation.
CIDRAP's “Ensuring a Resilient US Prescription Drug Supply,” the sixth report in a multipart series titled, "COVID-19: The CIDRAP Viewpoint," identifies the pressing issues facing the U.S. drug supply chain. It also proposes several recommendations, which if implemented, will provide a new national entity focused on better understanding the complex reasons for drug shortages and will establish a systematic approach for analyzing, predicting, preventing and mitigating drug shortages.
Beginning in November, United Airlines will test passengers over the age of 2 for the coronavirus on select flights from Newark Liberty International Airport to Heathrow Airport in London, in a month-long trial intended to help convince government officials that testing could be a crucial part of reopening international travel.
State University of New York students must now test negative for COVID-19 in the 10 days before leaving campus for Thanksgiving break. Campuses must work with local health officials on how to quarantine or isolate students who test positive.
The Houston Texans closed their facility Wednesday after a player tested positive for COVID-19.
L.A. Dodgers player Justin Turner joined his teammates on the field to celebrate their World Series win shortly after learning he had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Pope Francis will return to holding his weekly general audiences virtually from the library of his Apostolic Palace, the Holy See announced on Thursday. The decision came after a participant in last week’s audience tested positive for the coronavirus.
MMWR published the following two studies: the first examined safe COVID-19 practices at polling locations and determined that enhanced attention to reducing congregation, correct mask use, and enabling safe voting options are critical to minimize risks for voters and poll workers. The second analyzed COVID-19 hospitalization data for U.S. health care personnel (HCP) and found that HCP can have severe COVID-19-associated illness, highlighting the need for continued infection prevention and control in health care settings.
The drug maker Eli Lilly said that its antibody treatment was ineffective on patients hospitalized with advanced Covid-19 and that a government-sponsored trial would not administer the drug to new participants.
AstraZeneca announced that their COVID-19 vaccine being developed with the University of Oxford produces a similar immune response in both older and younger adults, and adverse responses were lower among the elderly. The preliminary findings are particularly exciting as older individuals are more at-risk of dying from COVID-19.
The Rockefeller Foundation announced on Monday that it will allocate $1 billion over the next three years to address the pandemic and its aftermath.
A program of universal face shields for healthcare personnel (HCP) at a Texas hospital was tied to fewer COVID-19 infections and fewer hospital-associated infections (HAI). In the pre-intervention period, from April 17-Jul, 5, HCP infection rate increased from 0-12.9 percent, but it declined to 2.3 percent during the intervention period, July 6-July 26.
Israel will begin its first clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine next month.
A new study by economists at the University of Kansas has found that counties in the state where residents are obliged to wear masks in public have seen about half as many new coronavirus infections as counties that do not have a mask mandate in force.
As pharmaceutical companies conduct phase 3 vaccine trials, air cargo transporters are cautious about the logistics involved in the mass distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. A recent survey found that less than 30 percent of air cargo companies felt prepared for future vaccine distribution efforts.
Do you have questions about vaccines? Try this article.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to about 299,000 more deaths in the U.S. than would be expected in a typical year, two-thirds of them from covid-19 and the rest from other causes according to a CDC report.
Results from a recent survey show that more than 60 percent of U.S. K-12 public school students will be attending schools that offer in-person learning at least a few days a week by early November. By Election Day, 37.8 percent of students will be attending schools that only offer virtual learning, 35.7 percent of students will be attending schools offering traditional, in-person learning every day, and 26.5 percent will be attending schools that offer a hybrid schedule of two or three in-person days per week.
CDC's MMWR released a handful of new reports:
- COVID-19 in a Correctional Facility Employee Following Multiple Brief Exposures to Persons with COVID-19 — Vermont, July–August 2020
- Mitigating a COVID-19 Outbreak Among Major League Baseball Players — United States, 2020
- First 100 Persons with COVID-19 — Zambia, March 18–April 28, 2020
- Rapid Adaptation of HIV Treatment Programs in Response to COVID-19 — Namibia, 2020
- Risk for In-Hospital Complications Associated with COVID-19 and Influenza — Veterans Health Administration, United States, October 1, 2018–May 31, 2020
- Race, Ethnicity, and Age Trends in Persons Who Died from COVID-19 — United States, May–August 2020
Yesterday, health officials in Michigan issued a stay-in-place order for undergraduate students at the University of Michigan, who make up 60 percent of local cases. The public health directive does not apply to varsity student athletes, who are exempt and allowed to take part in practices and competitions.
Only two-thirds of Americans were working for the same employer in September as they were in February, with the rest either landing new jobs or unemployed, according to the Real-Time Population Survey.
An estimated 1 in 6 children – or 356 million globally – lived in extreme poverty before the pandemic. Now, however, that number is set to get even worse. UNICEF and the World Bank Group warn that any progress made in recent years is concerningly slow-paced, unequally distributed, and at risk due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following the release of the report, The World’s Women: Trends and Statistics, A U.N. official said this week that the COVID-19 pandemic is “interrupting efforts” to achieve gender equality and threatening to “reverse hard-won gains” over the past decades.
Citing concerns for “the health and safety” of athletes, coaches and staff during the coronavirus pandemic, USA Wrestling will not compete in the world championships in December in Belgrade, Serbia.
Berlin has canceled one of its most popular Christmas markets, which normally attracts almost a million visitors each year.
Do you have questions about vaccines? Try this article.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Only 58 percent of respondents in a recent poll said they would get vaccinated right away, down from 69 percent who said the same in August. Among Black respondents, only 43 percent said that they would get the vaccine, down from 65 percent in August.
Dr. Tony Fauci suggested two additional ways to combat COVID-19 as the weather cools. The first is to keep windows open to promote airflow in indoor spaces, and the second is to wear a mask in your home if you're unsure whether or not your guests have been social distancing.
The number of Hispanic Americans who died from the coronavirus increased from May to August, while all other racial groups saw a decline in fatalities according to the most recent MMWR article.
Scientists out of Penn State have found that certain mouthwashes, and a %1 baby shampoo solution used to rinse the sinuses, can potentially neutralize the coronavirus. The results indicate that some of these products might be useful for reducing the viral load, or amount of virus, in the mouth after infection and may ultimately help to reduce the spread of the virus.
Pfizer confirmed Friday it expects to seek emergency authorization of its experimental vaccine against COVID-19, if it is effective, in the third week of November.
The U.S. budget deficit tripled to a record $3.1 trillion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, thanks in large part to the coronavirus. As a share of economic output, the budget gap in fiscal year 2020 hit roughly 16.1 percent, the largest since World War II production in 1945, according to the Treasury Department.
Commerce Department data showed that retail sales, a measure of purchases at stores, restaurants and online, rose a seasonally adjusted 1.9 percent in September. The gain marked the fifth straight month of retail-sales growth.
Unfortunately, U.S. industrial production fell in September, snapping four months of growth, in another sign of a slowing recovery. According to the Federal Reserve, output remains 7.1 percent below where it was in February, before the pandemic hit.
Do you have questions about vaccines? Try this article.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
University of Oxford scientists announced Thursday that they have developed a rapid antigen test for the coronavirus that they say can offer results in as few as five minutes and eventually could be used to screen people at airports and other crowded venues.
The CDC's MMWR also published multiple new scientific articles:
- Demographic Characteristics, Experiences, and Beliefs Associated with Hand Hygiene Among Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, June 24–30, 2020
  - Based on results from an internet-based survey, approximately 85 percent of U.S. adults who responded to the survey reported frequent hand hygiene after contact with public surfaces. Males, young adults, respondents with lower concern about risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection, and respondents without personal COVID-19 experience reported less frequent hand hygiene.
- An Outbreak of COVID-19 Associated with a Recreational Hockey Game — Florida, June 2020
  - This article outlines how a recreational, indoor hockey game in Florida resulted in 13 of 21 participants testing positive for COVID-19.
- Transmission Dynamics by Age Group in COVID-19 Hotspot Counties — United States, April–September 2020
  - Authors examined how to understand whether increasing COVID-19 incidence in hotspot counties is predominantly occurring in specific age groups in an effort to identify opportunities to prevent or reduce transmission. The data showed that, in hotspot counties, positive cases increased earliest in younger people. These spikes were followed by several weeks of increasing percent positivity among older age groups.
- Factors Influencing Risk for COVID-19 Exposure Among Young Adults Aged 18–23 Years — Winnebago County, Wisconsin, March–July 2020
  - Researchers identified that a perceived low severity of disease outcome; perceived responsibility to others; peer pressure; and exposure to misinformation, conflicting messages, or opposing views regarding masks are all potential drivers of behaviors that might influence risk for COVID-19 exposure among young adults.
UC Santa Barbara researchers are studying how SARS-CoV-2 transmissibility changes as the weather cools. In addition to its ability to travel farther, the virus is particularly persistent in cooler temperatures, remaining "infectious from several minutes to longer than a day in various environments."
Pfizer has said it will test its coronavirus vaccine in children as young as 12 to see how safely it protects them against infection.
A new study in the Lancet suggests lockdowns initiated to curb the spread of the coronavirus in China and Europe at the beginning of the pandemic improved air quality, averting tens of thousands of deaths in regions where air pollution has a significant impact on mortality. From February to March, the study found an estimated 24,200 premature deaths associated with particulate matter were averted throughout China compared to 3,309 reported COVID-19 fatalities, and "improvements in air quality were widespread across China because of extended lockdown measures."
A study of more than 11,000 people sponsored by the WHO indicates that the drug remdesivir does not prevent deaths among patients. An NIH trial previously suggested that remdesivir modestly reduced the time to recovery in patients severely ill with COVID-19, but even that study did not show that the drug prevents deaths. The WHO Solidarity Therapeutics Trial also indicates that hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir, and interferon regimens appeared to have little or no effect on 28-day mortality or the in-hospital course of COVID-19 among hospitalized patients.
More than 2,000 scientists, researchers, and healthcare professionals have now signed the John Snow Memorandum, which denounces the idea of achieving herd immunity through more infections and fewer protections.
Economic studies are showing that, after the CARES Act stimulus package decreased helped fend off poverty in the U.S., the number of poor people has risen by between 6 and 8 million since May.
The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level since late August (898,000), with fresh layoffs adding to other signs the economic recovery is losing steam as the pandemic continues. Some of the recent declines in continuing claims represent individuals who have exhausted the maximum duration of payments available through regular state programs, and are now collecting money through a federal program that provides an extra 13 weeks of benefits. About 2.8 million people were receiving aid through this extended-benefits program in the week ended Sept. 26.
Stock markets in the U.S. and globally are shaky as COVID-19 cases are increasing in the U.S. and Europe (anticipation of the Nov. 3 election doesn't seem to be helping).
SUNY Oneonta president Barbara Jean Morris resigned weeks after the school experienced the most severe coronavirus outbreak of any public university in the state. Last month, more than 700 students there tested positive for the virus, leading the college to shut down in-person classes.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial has been paused. The pause, which is not a regulatory hold, is due to an "unexplained illness" in a study participant, and will remain in place until researchers have been able to prove the illness was not caused by the vaccine.
Drugmaker Pfizer has announced an additional modification to the protocol for its late-stage study of its COVID-19 vaccine, this time to include more young participants. The company said on Monday that it has received permission from the FDA to include adolescents aged 12 through 15 in its global COVID-19 vaccine study.
Eli Lilly's antibody treatment clinical trial has been paused due to a "potential safety concern." The Eli Lilly trial was designed to test the benefits of the therapy on hundreds of people hospitalized with COVID-19, compared with a placebo.
A recent study published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society suggests that wearing masks does NOT increase carbon dioxide levels in patients with chronic lung disease.
The Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium has increased access to coronavirus testing in the Philadelphia region, testing more than 10,000 people. The group’s mobile unit and pop-up testing sites also offer patients an opportunity to connect with African American health care providers. Read more here.
An elderly woman in the Netherlands has died after getting COVID-19 a second time, researchers reported on Monday. It’s the first time a death has been reported from reinfection with coronavirus. To date, researchers have confirmed only 23 cases of reinfection, but in all prior cases the patient recovered.
A 25-year-old man in Nevada is the first recorded case of reinfection in the U.S.
Data from Japan, Spain, and Italy indicate that an individual's age does not indicate how likely they are to be infected with coronavirus, despite age playing a significant role in how likely an individual is to survive if infected.
A new Viewpoint published in JAMA suggests COVID-19 will end up costing people in the U.S. around $16 trillion. The paper aggregates mortality, morbidity, mental health conditions, and direct economic losses to estimate the total cost of the pandemic in the US on the optimistic assumption that it will be substantially contained by the fall of 2021.
Also in JAMA, researchers say far more Americans have died as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic than have been counted and reported. The study found that from March through July, there were 225,530 "excess" deaths — a 20 percent increase over the average number of deaths expected for those months. About 67percent of those deaths are directly linked to COVID-19, but the remaining 33 percent could be a result of underreporting/misreporting or deaths that came as a result of disruptions to acute care during the pandemic.
Portuguese soccer phenomenon Cristiano Ronaldo has tested positive for COVID-19.
The Ruby Tuesday restaurant franchise filed for bankruptcy last week.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
A clinical trial to test the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of a combination treatment regimen for COVID-19 consisting of the antiviral remdesivir plus a highly concentrated solution of antibodies that neutralize SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has begun. The study is taking place in hospitalized adults with COVID-19 in the U.S., Mexico, and 16 other countries on five continents. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the NIH, is sponsoring and funding the Phase 3 trial, called Inpatient Treatment with Anti-Coronavirus Immunoglobulin, or ITAC.
Regeneron said on Wednesday that it had submitted an EUA application to the FDA for emergency approval of the experimental antibody cocktail that was used to help treat President Trump. The company said access to the treatment would be extremely limited at first, with only enough doses for 50,000 patients.
Eli Lilly and Company announced additional details on its SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody programs – including interim data on combination therapy in recently diagnosed patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 – and plans to make these therapies broadly available to patients. The company said a monoclonal antibody treatment is effective in reducing levels of the virus that causes COVID-19 in patients, and also appears to prevent patients from visiting the emergency room or hospital.
A recent study published in NEJM funded by NIH's NIAID found that remdesivir was superior to a placebo in shortening the time to recovery in adults who were hospitalized with COVID-19 and had evidence of lower respiratory tract infection.
In another study in the NEJM, among patients hospitalized with COVID-19, those who received hydroxychloroquine did not have a lower incidence of death at 28 days than those who received usual care.
In the largest study to date of COVID-19 among non-hospitalized pregnant women, researchers analyzed the clinical course and outcomes of 594 women who tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus during pregnancy. They found that the most common early symptoms for pregnant women were cough, sore throat, body aches, and fever. Half of the participants still had symptoms after 3 weeks and 25 percent had symptoms after 8 weeks.
Johns Hopkins University is getting a $1.44 million federal grant from NIAID to study potential COVID-19 testing gaps and disparities for transgender persons.
A coalition of 11 academic institutions and their community partners across California has received a $4.1 million grant from NIH for a statewide community-engaged approach to addressing COVID-19 among populations that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. UCLA will lead the coalition.
The European Commission has sealed a supply deal with Johnson & Johnson for the supply of its potential COVID-19 vaccine for up to 400 million people. This is the third advance purchase contract signed by the E.U. with makers of coronavirus vaccines after deals with AstraZeneca and Sanofi.
The E.U. also signed a deal with Gilead, the California-based pharmaceutical company, to ensure uninterrupted access to remdesivir, an antiviral drug being used to treat COVID-19. The deal would allow all members of the E.U., as well as the U.K., Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and several Balkan countries to buy up to 500,000 treatment courses in the next six months.
COVID-19 is threatening the survival of indigenous languages in native communities across the globe. In Brazil, the virus has so far killed at least 205 indigenous “ancients,” leaders who served as living records for people without written ones. By targeting the elderly, the virus is disproportionately striking down the last remaining speakers of ancient languages that were already threatened by globalization, development, and the growing hegemony of a few global languages.
Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were more likely male, younger, and, in both the U.S. and Spain, had fewer comorbidities and lower medication use than hospitalized influenza patients according to a recent study published by the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) community.
A new study by Simon Fraser University (SFU) researchers has found clear evidence that wearing a mask can have a significant impact on the spread of COVID-19. The researchers, from SFU's Department of Economics, have determined that mask mandates are associated with a 25 percent or larger weekly reduction in COVID-19 cases in Canada.
TestBoston — a project now being launched by Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Broad Institute — plans to offer monthly at-home COVID-19 testing to thousands across Greater Boston in the coming months, at no charge. Participants will test themselves monthly for six months, and can also have a test kit sent to their home whenever they have symptoms. The program is donor funded, costing about $100 per participant per month.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
A new article in Science Magazine's Letters section takes a closer look at airborne transmission of the coronavirus. The authors point out that aerosols containing infectious virus can also travel more than 2 meters and accumulate in poorly ventilated indoor air, leading to superspreading events. They suggest that public health officials should add clear guidance about the importance of moving activities outdoors, improving indoor air using ventilation and filtration, and improving protection for high-risk workers.
Another study suggests the length a person speaks is a more important factor in droplet spread than has been discussed in social distancing conversations thus far.
An MMWR article points to increasing evidence that children and adolescents can efficiently transmit SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Between July and August 2020, four state health departments and the CDC investigated a COVID-19 outbreak that occurred during a 3-week family gathering of five households in which an adolescent aged 13 years was the index and suspected primary patient; 11 subsequent cases occurred.
Based on data from all 50 states and D.C., the authors of a recent study found a gradual but steady decline in viral transmission rates during the eight weeks immediately preceding relaxation of physical distancing rules. Almost immediately after those rules were relaxed, most states reversed course. Eight weeks after restrictions were lifted or loosened, only nine of 51 still had low rates of transmission. The investigators previously reported that statewide physical distancing measures were associated with a reduction in the growth rate of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. and a short-term reduction in COVID-19 related deaths.
In an article published in Behavioral Science & Policy, New York University and Yale University researchers report that women have practiced preventive practices of physical distancing, mask wearing, and maintaining hygiene to a greater degree than men. Women were also more likely to listen to experts and exhibit alarm and anxiety in response to COVID-19.
A team of scientists at the University of Vermont, working in partnership with a group at the University of Washington, has developed a method of testing for the COVID-19 virus that doesn't make use of these chemicals but still delivers an accurate result, paving the way for inexpensive, widely available testing in both developing countries and industrialized nations like the U.S., where reagent supplies are again in short supply. The accuracy of the new test was evaluated by a team of researchers at the University of Washington led by Keith Jerome, director of the university's Molecular Virology Lab, using 215 COVID-19 samples that RT-PCR tests had shown were positive, with a range of viral loads, and 30 that were negative. It correctly identified 92 percent of the positive samples and 100 percent of the negatives.
British company Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinemas in the U.S., said it would temporarily close all 663 of its movie theaters in the U.S. and Britain. The move is expected to affect 40,000 employees in the U.S. and 5,000 in Britain.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
NASEM released their final consensus study report: Framework for Equitable Allocation of COVID-19 Vaccine. The report “recommends using existing systems across all levels of government to provide necessary resources to ensure equitable allocation, distribution, and administration of COVID-19 vaccine; launching a COVID-19 vaccine promotion campaign and risk communication and engagement program; and supporting equitable allocation globally.”
It was already well known that multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a rare but severe complication of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children and adolescents. However, since June, several case reports and series have been published reporting a similar multisystem inflammatory syndrome in adults (MIS-A). CDC's MMWR published an early release article about it today.
Researchers are calling for loss of smell to be recognized globally as a symptom of COVID-19. In recent studies, more individuals are experiencing loss of taste and smell as symptoms than they are cough and fever.
One of the public health side effects of COVID-19 has been evictions and homelessness. Princeton University is tracking eviction filings in 17 U.S. cities during the pandemic. As of Sept. 19, landlords in those cities have filed for more than 50,000 evictions since March 15. The tally includes about 11,900 in Houston, 10,900 in Phoenix, and 4,100 in Milwaukee.
New research suggests that the earlier plasma is collected after the donor's recovery from COVID-19, the better, as antibodies start to disappear after three months of symptom onset. This small study, which drew from 282 COVID-19 plasma donors in Quebec, Canada, followed 15 adults (11 males and 4 females) who were diagnosed with and subsequently recovered from COVID-19. While symptoms ranged from mild to severe, none of these donors were hospitalized for their COVID-19 infection. Participants each donated their plasma between four and nine times with the first donation occurring between 33 and 77 days after symptom onset and the last donation between 66 and 114 days.
In a clinical trial testing whether a daily regimen of hydroxychloroquine could protect those most likely to be exposed to COVID-19, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found there was no difference in infection rates among health care workers who took the drug versus those taking a placebo. While the researchers observed a lack of effect associated with hydroxychloroquine, infection levels were low among the participants, which the researchers believe points to the effectiveness of other prevention measures in the health system: social distancing, use of personal protective equipment, and proper hand hygiene.
About 10 percent of Americans, 22.3 million, reported they sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat within the past week, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent Household Pulse Survey fielded between Aug. 19 and 31. That is up from 18 million before March 13.
A new analysis of data from researchers at King's College London using information from the COVID Symptom Study app and patients admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in London, has shown that delirium - a state of acute confusion associated with a higher risk of serious illness and death - is a key symptom of COVID-19 in frail, older people. The findings, published in the journal Age and Ageing, highlight that doctors and caregivers should be aware of delirium as a possible early warning sign of COVID-19 in the elderly, even in the absence of more typical symptoms such as cough or fever.
According to a case study published in the Canadian Association Medical Journal, creating "work bubbles" during the COVID-19 pandemic can help reduce the risk of company-wide outbreaks while helping essential businesses continue to function. Bombardier Aviation, a large Canadian company that employs 22,000 people at 7 factories across 4 provinces/states in Canada and the U.S., adjusted to the pandemic by having most office staff work from home, ensuring that only employees who built or supported aircraft delivery were on site. Essential employees were organized into cohorts that interacted only with each other to minimize contact with other staff.
Following President Trump's announcement that he and the First Lady had tested positive for COVID-19, the S&P 500 fell as much as 1.7 percent in early trading before closing down 0.7 percent. The Dow fell 0.48 percent to close at 27,682.81.
Notre Dame University President John Jenkins has tested positive for COVID-19, according to the school's newspaper.
The NFL is postponing Sunday’s game between the Tennessee Titans and the Pittsburgh Steelers to later in the season because of further positive tests for the novel coronavirus among the Titans.
A recent survey of more than 1,200 college athletic trainers found that just 47 percent of coaches and staff members across sports were “fully compliant” with safety protocols related to the virus. The survey, conducted by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association, also found that roughly 7 percent of coaches and staff members did not follow the rules at all.
Yesterday, Amazon released comprehensive data on the spread of the coronavirus among its employees, disclosing for the first time that more than 19,000 workers, or 1.44 percent of the total, contracted the virus this year.
Importantly, Dr. Anthony Fauci was named the #Sammies2020 Federal Employee of the Year! Watch here.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.

September 2020

A recent poll conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, surveyed around 3,500 respondents nationwide in July and early August and found that nearly half of American households faced lost jobs or pay cuts during the pandemic (figure below). According to the survey results, the share of households that had a member fall ill with COVID-19 and that subsequently have lost work is up to 64 percent. Of those that have had a sick household member, 63 percent report facing serious financial problems during the coronavirus outbreak. Of households that include someone who has a disability, 63 percent reported facing serious financial hardship, and 37 percent report using up all or most of their savings.
Researchers are increasingly concerned about the long-lasting mental health impacts of the pandemic and virus-related lockdowns. This concern is particularly acute for those with substance use disorder or related behavioral health issues. A University of Houston researcher, Michael Zvolensky said, "The impact of COVID-19 on psychological symptoms and disorders, addiction and health behavior is substantial and ongoing and will negatively impact people's mental health and put them at greater risk for chronic illness and drug addiction."
Early results from Johnson & Johnson's Phase 1/2a COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial found that 99 percent of the participants age 18 to 55 in both dose groups had developed antibodies against the virus 29 days after getting vaccinated. The analysis found that most of the side effects, like fever, headache, fatigue, body aches and injection-site pain, were mild and resolved after a couple of days. Phase 3 trials, which will involve around 60,000 individuals, will examine the safety and effectiveness of a single dose against a placebo to prevent symptomatic COVID-19.
A new study has identified 2,085 excess deaths in England and Wales due to heart disease and stroke during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. On average, that is 17 deaths each day over four months that probably could have been prevented. The study's authors believe the excess deaths were caused by people not seeking emergency hospital treatment for a heart attack or other acute cardiovascular illness requiring urgent medical attention, either because they were afraid of contracting COVID-19 or were not referred for treatment.
Findings from a new literature review about the association between flu vaccines and the risk of severe COVID-19 illness suggest that measures aimed at raising influenza vaccination coverage in the coming months would be beneficial.
A recent study estimates that only around 9 percent of Americans had been infected with COVID-19 by July - a far cry from what would be needed to achieve herd immunity.
The airline industry is about to take another large hit as airlines prepare to cut a combined 35,000 jobs this week.
There are now 8 clinical trials in Phase 3 of testing. The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
Researchers tested 11 household fabrics that are commonly used for homemade masks and found that all are effective at curbing the small and large respiratory droplets that are released when we speak, cough, or sneeze.
U.S. adults increasingly experienced symptoms associated with acute stress and depression as COVID-19 cases and deaths skyrocketed between mid-March and mid-April 2020, according to a study of more than 6,500 people from three large, nationally representative cohorts.
In a recent poll by YouGov, an overwhelming majority of Americans say they would not trust any COVID-19 vaccine released before Election Day in November. Among all respondents, 59 percent said they would either “distrust somewhat” or “distrust completely” the safety and efficacy of such a vaccine — with 36 percent saying they would completely distrust it. 50 percent of Republicans polled agree with the majority that a pre-Election Day vaccine would not be trustworthy.
Six members of a team directing the firefighting efforts in the Pacific Northwest went into temporary quarantine after a member of a resupply crew tested positive for COVID-19.
New York City will soon let restaurants add a temporary charge of up to 10 percent for extra virus help as long as it is clearly noted on menus. This will not apply for takeout or delivery.
U.S. stocks slid into the red before market close today. This week saw tech share sell-offs galore and dwindling hope of a quick post-lockdown economic recovery.
Southwest Airlines has extended its ban on middle seats during flights through November 30.
A high school student in Massachusetts went to the first day of in-person classes this week despite testing positive days earlier. The student’s parents knew he had tested positive and still sent him to school.
Eliza W. Kinsey, PhD, associate research scientist in epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and colleagues estimate that more than 1.15 billion breakfasts and lunches for American students who receive free and reduced-price meals were not served in school as a result of school closures during the nine-week period between March 9 and May 1.
A bunch of new studies have highlighted an upward trend in the number of pregnancies ending in stillbirths. Researchers say that in some countries, pregnant women adequate antenatal care because of lockdown restrictions and disruptions to health care. As a result, they say, complications that can lead to stillbirths were probably missed. An additional study, published in CDC's MMWR, links COVID-19 to preterm delivery.
Roughly 1 in 10 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 needed to return to the hospital within a week of discharge from an emergency department visit, according to data from the first three months of the COVID-19 outbreak in the Philadelphia region between March and May 2020. Researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania also found that factors like lower pulse oximetry levels and fever were some of the most telling symptoms that resulted in return trips that resulted in admission.
Northeastern University will be refunding most of the fall semester tuition of 11 first-year students who were dismissed earlier this month for violating the school’s COVID-19 rules by gathering in a room without masks or social distancing.
Because of virus-related precautions, Baylor University has postponed its football season opener scheduled for tomorrow night against the University of Houston.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
As was reported in a MMWR article yesterday, among 121 COVID-19-associated deaths among individuals younger than 21 years, 10 percent were infants and 70 percent were aged 10–20 years. Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaskan Native individuals accounted for 78 percent of these deaths.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) launched the latest "Mask Up, America" campaign video featuring Paul Rudd. The video is aimed at younger Americans to inform them of the importance of wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect themselves and others.
Federal Reserve officials said today that they plan to keep interest rates near zero through at least 2023. Officials are also predicting that unemployment will fall to 7.6 percent by the end of this year and to 5.5 percent by the end of 2021.
Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has seen a 13,200 jump in excess deaths from Alzheimer’s and dementia. Doctors have reported increased falls, pulmonary infections, and frailty in patients who were previously stable for years. According to one doctor, some patients can no longer swallow food and others are so depressed they cannot get out of bed.
Drug company Eli Lilly says a single infusion of its experimental drug has markedly reduced blood levels of the coronavirus in newly infected patients and lowered the chances that they would need hospitalization. The drug is a monoclonal antibody, a manufactured copy of an antibody produced by a patient who recovered from COVID-19. Many scientists hope that monoclonal antibodies will prove to be powerful treatments for COVID-19, but they are difficult and expensive to manufacture, and progress has been slow.
Gauss, a computer vision startup, and Cellex, a biotech company that works on diagnostics, announced the first rapid COVID-19 test that can be fully performed by people at home without involving a laboratory. The test has not been issued an EUA by the FDA.
According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 6 in 10 adults are worried the FDA will rush to approve a vaccine due to political pressure.
The Big Ten Conference said it would try to play football as soon as the weekend of October 23. The league said players, coaches, trainers and others on the field would undergo daily testing for the virus, and that any player who tested positive would be barred from games for at least 21 days.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is also part of the Big Ten and saw a sharp uptick in cases last week, local health authorities ordered all Greek organizations with one or more cases among their live-in members to quarantine. Some states, like Kansas, Colorado, and Michigan, have tracked COVID-19 clusters back to Greek houses.
Yelp released data showing 60 percent of business closures due to COVID-19 lockdowns are now permanent.
Major League Baseball and its players’ union reached agreement Tuesday on the format for the expanded, 16-team postseason, which will see the final three rounds played in controlled, neutral-site bubbles in Southern California and Texas and the World Series at the Texas Rangers’ new stadium in Arlington.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the damage to the world’s major economies from pandemic lockdowns has been six times more severe than the 2009 global financial crisis and created an “unprecedented” blow to growth in the second quarter in almost every country except China. Growth in the U.S. shrank by 9 percent.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine trials have resumed in Britain after a recent clinical hold and safety review. Trials remain paused in the U.S. and other countries.
Pfizer and BioNTech said they are moving to enlarge the Phase 3 trial of their COVID-19 vaccine by 50 percent, which could allow the companies to collect more safety and efficacy data and to increase the diversity of the study’s participants. The companies said they want to increase the size of the study to 44,000 participants, which would have to be approved by the FDA.
Merck has begun testing one of its COVID-19 vaccine candidates in humans. Please check the links below for a variety of vaccine trackers.
Several K-12 school districts in the U.S. Northeast have delayed the start of in-person classes in recent days after high school students attended large parties, leading to concern about increased spread of the virus.
This year's Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will be confined to the Herald Square area and broadcast for viewers to watch. The balloons and floats will approach from 34th Street and Sixth Avenue, move along 34th Street in front of the Macy’s building, and then turn the corner onto Seventh Avenue and out of view.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Renwick Gallery are all scheduled to reopen on Friday.
Amazon announced it plans to hire 100,000 new workers in the U.S. and Canada for its warehouses and logistics network.
A recent survey of more than 400 employers in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia shows most are struggling with how to safely bring back workers in the midst of the pandemic, even as states continue to reopen.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines. The New York Times has a very helpful vaccine tracker as well, which you can view here.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
According to a contact tracing data from three Utah child care facilities, even children with mild or no symptoms can transmit COVID-19. Researchers analyzed contact tracing data from 184 people with links to three child care centers in Salt Lake County from this April to July, and found that at least two children passed on the virus while asymptomatic.
A study in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report analyzed 314 patients and found that those who tested positive for the virus were twice as likely to have eaten at a restaurant in the previous two weeks as those who tested negative. Several researchers said that the links between contracting the virus and eating out should be viewed with caution, because the study did not distinguish between patrons who dined at indoor or outdoor facilities, and didn’t rely on contact tracing.
Researchers at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health suggest the case tally in the U.S. does not "capture the total burden of the pandemic because testing has been primarily restricted to individuals with moderate to severe symptoms due to limited test availability." The report, published in the journal Nature Communications, says the U.S. may have experienced over 6.4 million cases of COVID-19 by April 18. At the time, there were 721,245 confirmed cases, the researchers said.
As many as one in 100 patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 develop a pneumothorax - a 'punctured lung' - according to a study led by Cambridge researchers.
Dr. John Whyte, chief medical officer at WebMD, interviewed dean and president of Morehouse School of Medicine, Dr Valerie Montgomery Rice. Discussion included racial health disparities, representation in clinical trials, and more.
In a research letter from Harvard found that among 3,222 young adults hospitalized with Covid-19, 88 died — about 2.7 percent. One in five required intensive care, and one in 10 needed a ventilator to assist with breathing. Among those who survived, 99 patients, or 3 percent, could not be sent home from the hospital and were transferred to facilities for ongoing care or rehabilitation. The study indicates that young people are certainly at risk, and should be taking social distancing measures seriously.
More than 40,000 COVID-19 infections have been reported among students, faculty and staff at colleges and universities across all 50 states. The actual tally is likely higher due to a lag from schools that update their data every few days.
Multiple students at Miami University of Ohio chose to host a party while knowing they had tested positive for COVID-19.
Not sure how to act "during these uncertain times?" Read the Washington Post's Covid-19 etiquette: A comprehensive guide.
A newly published study looking at cats in Wuhan, where the first known outbreak of COVID-19 began, shows more cats might be contracting the disease than first believed. Scientists analyzed blood samples taken from 102 cats between January and March 2020 in Wuhan, China. Fifteen of the cats had COVID-19 antibodies in their blood, and 11 of those cats had neutralizing antibodies that bind to the coronavirus and block infection.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
The AstraZeneca vaccine trial has been put on a clinical hold an individual enrolled in a Phase II/III trial had experienced a rare form of spinal cord inflammation. During the trial suspension, an independent board of experts will determine if the inflammation was a result of the vaccine or if it was a separate issue. The halt has two effects- it concerns those in the trial for the time being, and it shows why OWS has selected six vaccinates, so there is no pressure if one of the six doesn't work.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association, half a million children in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19. The groups said 70,630 new child cases were reported from August 20 through September 3, representing a 16 percent increase in child cases over two weeks, and bringing up the total to at least 513,415 cases.
For a variety of reasons, many testing sites across the country do not test any children. This hampers schools’ ability to quickly isolate and trace coronavirus cases among students. It could also create a new burden on working parents, with some schools and child care centers requiring symptomatic children to prove a negative COVID-19 test before rejoining class.
Findings from a recent publication indicate that more than a quarter of American adults are experiencing COVID-related symptoms of depression. Financial pressures as a result of the pandemic are thought to be the main factor for the rise. Experiencing more COVID-related stressors was a major predictor of depression symptoms.
Racial disparities among essential workers could be a key reason that Black Americans are more likely than whites to contract and die of COVID-19, according to researchers at the University of Utah. They found that Black individuals disproportionately worked in nine vital occupations that increase their exposure to COVID-19.
A new paper from San Diego State University is linking an estimated 250,000 infections from August 2 to September 2 (the equivalent of roughly one-fifth of newly reported cases in the U.S. in that time) back to the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota.
In an effort to bolster public trust in a vaccine amid President Trump's promise of a vaccine by election day, the chief executives of nine drug companies published a statement pledging not to seek regulatory approval before the safety and efficacy of their experimental coronavirus vaccines have been established in Phase 3 clinical trials.
Scientist David Montefiori has studied how the SARS-CoV-2 virus might mutate as it passed from person to person. Montefiori, a virologist who has spent much of his career studying how chance mutations in HIV help it to evade the immune system, says that SARS-CoV-2 is changing much more slowly than HIV. But one mutation in the gene that encodes the spike protein, which helps virus particles to penetrate cells, appears repeatedly in samples from people with COVID-19. The graphic below shows the conformations of the spike protein.
The results of a new study indicate that the COVID-19-causing virus sometimes attacks the brain, leading to neurological symptoms like headaches, confusion, or delirium.
A series of recent polls show how hesitant Americans are to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Polling over the summer shows that up to a third of Americans will refuse to be vaccinated for COVID-19, much of that an aversion to this particular treatment rather than vaccines in general. Two-thirds of U.S. voters said in another poll that they won't try to get a vaccine as soon as it becomes available (even if it is free), and one in four say they don't want to ever get it.
The results of a survey that examines how COVID-19 has affected households in some of the nation’s largest cities were published this morning and suggest that at least half of households studied in four major U.S. cities reported serious financial problems triggered by the pandemic, and more than half report serious problems caring for their children. The poll, released by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found that the effects described in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston are falling heaviest on households with annual incomes below $100,000 and in Black and Latino families.
LabCorp announced plans to launch a new at-home COVID-19 diagnostic that allows people to also get tested for the flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) from a single sample.
German genetic testing company Qiagen announced yesterday that it plans to launch a new antigen test that it says could eventually be deployed in airports and stadiums if it receives the appropriate authorizations. The company said it plans to launch two versions of the antigen test in the U.S. later this year: one version that’s meant to be processed in a clinical laboratory and another that’s portable and can be processed at point of care. The company has not yet applied for an EUA from the FDA, but said it plans to do so.
A dentist in Manhattan says that she has seen more tooth fractures in the past six weeks than in the past six years. She sees three factors at work: virus-induced stress that leads to clenching and grinding teeth; poor posture from working at home that can lead to teeth-grinding; and not getting enough rest, which can lead to tension and clenching the teeth.
The stock market bounced back from a three-day sell-off that cut 10 percent off the Nasdaq composite index and pummeled companies that had largely been resilient during the pandemic.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
Earlier this week, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released for public comment a discussion draft of a preliminary framework to assist policymakers in planning for equitable allocation of a vaccine against COVID-19. The discussion draft includes a summary of lessons learned from past allocation frameworks for mass vaccination campaigns, including for H1N1 influenza in 2009 and during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2013-2016, as well as from recent guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic for the allocation of scarce resources, such as medical resources and supplies.
Recent data shows that more than three-quarters of people interviewed in states with high infection rates, like California and Louisiana, refused to cooperate with contact tracing efforts to identify relatives or acquaintances who may have been exposed to COVID-19.
International clinical trials published on Wednesday confirmed hope that cheap, widely available steroid drugs can help seriously ill patients survive COVID-19. The new studies include an analysis that pooled data from seven randomized clinical trials evaluating three steroids in more than 1,700 patients. The study concluded that each of the three drugs reduced the risk of death. The WHO has updated their treatment guidance accordingly.
New CDC cellphone data indicates stay-at-home orders issued across the U.S. in the spring really did work at keeping people home.
Results from a recent New York Times survey of more than 1,500 schools showed that over two-thirds of the schools have reported at least one case of COVID-19. More than 100 of the institutions have reported at least 100 cases. Auburn, Illinois State, and South Carolina are among at least six universities with more than 1,000 known cases.
- Indiana University encouraged fraternity and sorority houses at the Bloomington campus to close after at least five Greek houses reported positivity rates of more than 50 percent.
- NIH's Dr. Tony Fauci is strongly discouraging schools from sending students home, where they could spread the virus within their home states when they return.
The pandemic has caused people to lose sleep over heightened stress and disrupted routines. Experts are referring to it as “Coronasomnia,” as and they say it could prove to have profound public-health ramifications, such as creating a new population of chronic insomniacs dealing with decreased productivity, amplified tempers, and increased risks of hypertension, depression, and other health problems.
An additional 881,000 people applied for state unemployment benefits last week.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, have created a dog-like robot called Dr. Spot that uses a tablet mounted for doctors to communicate with patients remotely over a video call. Developed by Boston Dynamics, the robot dogs are controlled by a handheld device. Researchers say the technology includes four infrared and light wavelength-measuring cameras to monitor body temperature, breathing rate, blood oxygen saturation, and pulse. The project researchers have successfully tested the technology on healthy patients from a distance of up to three meters, so they now plan to try it on patients with COVID-19 symptoms to see if it's possible to minimize in-person contact with patients.
Pfizer’s chief executive, Dr. Albert Bourla, said today that the company expects to know whether its vaccine is effective by the end of next month, and that it would apply immediately for approval if that turns out to be the case.
United Airlines announced yesterday that they will have to put 16,370 workers on involuntary, indefinite furlough at the start of October unless they receive additional federal aid.
Toshiro Muto, CEO of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, said he thinks the postponed games could proceed without a vaccine, but that there would just be a limited number of spectators.
Filming for the new movie "The Batman" has been put on hold after lead actor, Robert Pattinson, tested positive for COVID-19.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.

August 2020

According to a new study in CDC's MMWR, a large number of doctors, nurses, and other health care workers may be going undiagnosed after they become infected despite being at high risk for developing COVID-19. The report found that around 6 percent of the workers had antibody evidence of a previous coronavirus infection, and more than two-thirds of these individuals had not been previously diagnosed.
The directors of the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Centers (IDDRC) Network, a nationwide group funded by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, have said the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs). Read more here.
Data compiled by the American Academy of Pediatrics from the summer show that cases, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID-19 have increased at a faster rate in children and teenagers than among the general public.
Airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 remains one of the most critical questions to solve in terms of getting the COVID-19 pandemic under control. Watch the National Academies' webinar "Airborne Transmission of SARS-CoV-2," in which experts reviewed the available data along with some historical context.
Nearly half of the top 20 metropolitan areas where new cases per capita rose the most over the past two weeks are college towns.
The University of Missouri today reported an additional 109 cases of COVID-19, bringing the school’s total to 415. This seems like a lot, until you consider the University of Alabama's more than 1,200 infected students.
Zoom reported higher sales and profit in the three months from May through July than it did in all of 2019, as more people work from home and have begun online schooling/distance learning.
United, Delta, and American Airlines all announced they will be dropping domestic change fees in light of uncertainty caused by the pandemic.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has an extensive list of commercial and lab-developed tests.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
An early release from CDC's MMWR found that, during the 2020 summer camp season, four Maine overnight camps with 1,022 attendees from 41 states and international locations implemented a multilayered prevention and mitigation strategy that was successful in identifying and isolating three asymptomatic COVID-19 cases and preventing secondary transmission.
Per Lost on the Frontline, an ongoing investigation by the Guardian and Kaiser Health News to record and memorialize every U.S. health care worker who dies from COVID-19, over 1,000 frontline health care workers have reportedly died from the virus, with an overwhelming number of those being immigrants of people of color.
Starting September 1, the National Academies will invite public comments on a Discussion Draft of the Preliminary Framework for Equitable Allocation of COVID-19 Vaccine, part of a study commissioned by the NIH and CDC. The study will recommend priorities to inform allocation of a limited initial supply of COVID-19 vaccine, taking into account factors such as racial/ethnic inequities and groups at higher risk due to health status, occupation, or living conditions. More information can be found here.
Moderna and Pfizer, the companies leading the way for the first U.S. COVID-19 vaccine, said earlier this week they have enrolled more than half the people needed for the 30,000-person trials in the final phase of testing. Only about a fifth of those participants are from Black and Hispanic communities, however, which indicates the studies are lacking diversity (a critical piece in vaccine development for a disease that disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic individuals).
A new meta-analysis of published studies about the drug hydroxychloroquine shows that it does not lower mortality in COVID-19 patients, and using it combined with the antibiotic azithromycin is associated with a 27 percent increase in mortality.
Weekly unemployment claims in the U.S. exceeded one million again last week. Another 608,000 people filed for benefits under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which offers aid to independent contractors, self-employed workers and others not covered by regular state programs.
In a new study, a computer simulation model found that if 75 percent of the population gets vaccinated, the vaccine has to have an efficacy (ability to protect against infection) of at least 70 percent to prevent an epidemic and at least 80 percent to extinguish an ongoing epidemic. If only 60 percent of the population gets vaccinated, the thresholds are even higher, around 80 percent to prevent an epidemic and 100 percent to extinguish an ongoing epidemic.
The University of Alabama reported more than 500 cases of COVID-19 among students, faculty, and staff.
After a Spring without students in schools, some buildings are finding Legionella in water. Legionella forms in stagnant water (such as water in pipes in an empty school building) and the bacteria can be dispersed through the air and inhaled.
The C.E.O. of Delta Air Lines told staff that the carrier had put about 240 customers on a no-fly list for refusing to wear masks on its planes and in lounges or gate areas. Other airlines, including United, have also barred passengers for not following virus-safety rules.
The country's oldest department store, Lord & Taylor, has become the most recent victim of COVID-19's wrath on the retail industry. The company has filed for bankruptcy.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
There has been a 90 percent increase in the number of COVID-19 cases among children in the U.S. over the last four weeks, according to recent data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association. The information will be updated weekly and is publicly available.
A report published by the CDC suggests child-care centers may reopen safely in areas where the virus is low.
Researchers in Hong Kong have produced study results that indicate reinfection of COVID-19 may be possible in rare cases. The study is set to be published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
More than 730 American colleges and universities have announced at least one case on campus among students, faculty, or staff since the beginning of the pandemic.
The WHO released a document titled Advice on the use of masks for children in the community in the context of COVID-19. The document includes a Q&A about children and masks.
Research from the University of Notre Dame estimates that more than 100,000 people were already infected with COVID-19 by early March—when only 1,514 cases and 39 deaths had been officially reported and before a national emergency was declared. The study provides insight into how limited testing and gaps in surveillance during the initial phase of the epidemic resulted in so many cases going undetected.
Novavax is going ahead with the Phase II portion of a Phase I/II trial for its vaccine in the U.S and Australia but will be focusing on older patients this time. According to the company, about half of participants enrolled in the Phase II portion are between the ages of 60 to 84. Recently released data show that the candidate protected macaques from infection during a challenge trial.
A recent report from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy warned that a lack of data on how COVID-19 is affecting minority groups is limiting the U.S. response to the disease. More than half of COVID-19 cases reported to the federal government by states through the end of May did not include the patient’s race or ethnicity. Additionally, a study published last month found evidence that socioeconomic bias is ingrained into the primary federal surveillance program for flu-like illness, ILINet, which has been used to help track COVID-19, which often includes flu-like symptoms.
American Airlines will begin deploying a disinfecting surface coating that kills COVID-19 for up to seven days. SurfaceWise2, manufactured by Allied BioScience, creates an invisible layer that kills pathogens on high-touch surfaces within two hours.
According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, if mask use increases from 53 percent to 95 percent it could save almost 70,000 lives.
A Zoom outage earlier today highlighted how dependent many U.S. schools and companies have become on the videoconferencing platform.
The Ohio State University has suspended 228 students who either hosted or attended parties/large gatherings and said they must leave campus while their disciplinary cases are pending. Schools across the country are having to deal with disciplining students who disobey COVID-19 codes of conduct.
KFC has suspended its 64-year-old “Finger Lickin’ Good” ad campaign for markets outside the U.S. because of the coronavirus pandemic. The company said it would pause the use of “the most inappropriate slogan of 2020” in its advertising for now, given hygiene messaging and preventive measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.
11 NFL teams were told over the weekend that a total of 77 people, including players and staff members, had tested positive for COVID-19. It turned out, however, that the tests had yielded false positive results.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
CDC's MMWR published a new early release about workplace outbreaks. The study article shows that, between March 6–June 5, 2020, workplace outbreaks occurred in 15 Utah industry sectors; 58 percent of workplace outbreak-associated COVID-19 cases were in three sectors: Manufacturing, Wholesale Trade, and Construction. Despite representing nearly a quarter of Utah workers in all affected sectors, Hispanic and nonwhite workers accounted for nearly three quarters of workplace outbreak-associated COVID-19 cases. The authors suggest that there should be sector-specific COVID-19 guidance, and that mitigation strategies should be culturally and linguistically responsive to racial/ethnic minority workers disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
According to new studies, mild cases of COVID-19 can trigger robust memory T cell responses, even in the absence of detectable virus-specific antibody responses. Previously, it was not clear how SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses relate to antibody responses or to the clinical course of COVID-19 in humans. One scientist said, "The obvious next step is to determine whether robust memory T cell responses in the absence of detectable antibodies can protect against COVID-19 in the long-term."
The number of Americans who say they can’t afford enough food for themselves or their children is growing, according to Census data, and it is likely to get larger now that some government benefits have expired. As of late last month, about 12.1 percent of adults lived in households that didn’t have enough to eat at some point in the previous week, up from 9.8 percent in early May, Census figures show. And almost 20 percent of Americans with kids at home couldn’t afford to give their children enough food, up from almost 17 percent in early June.
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is launching a new interactive COVID Money Tracker tool. They also published a new analysis showing How Much COVID Relief Has Been Spent So Far and a guide to COVID Money Tracker, complete with FAQs.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the largest schools in the country to bring students to campus for in-person teaching, said today it will have to pivot to all-remote instruction for undergraduates after testing showed a pattern of rapid spread of COVID-19.
The Canadian Football League announced the cancelation of its 2020 season, saying it was in “the best long-term interests” of the league and marking the first time in more than a century that the Grey Cup won’t be awarded.
Last Thursday, 761,821 individuals passed through airport security checkpoints in the U.S. While that's only about a third of the previous year's travelers on that same day, it’s far above the 87,534 passengers who flew on April 14, when pandemic restrictions were new. Additionally, nearly 7 million Americans have taken road trips, according to AAA’s numbers. One company said RV rentals are nearly double what they were last year.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.

July 2020

About 4,000 federal employees are seeking disability compensation on grounds that they contracted COVID-19 at work, while survivors of 60 deceased employees are seeking death benefits for the same reason. The Department of Labor is far behind in processing claims, and the number of claims is expected to significantly increase over the next few weeks.
Gold reached a record high today, continuing its rise as nervous investors sought out a safe place to put their money. The price for spot gold, which has been climbing steadily since March, reached $1,944 per ounce.
Google’s employees will work from home until mid-2021.
Planet Fitness announced today that all guests will be required to wear masks at all times while inside its facilities, effective August 1.
Two coaches and 12 players on the Miami Marlins have tested positive for COVID-19, leading to the cancellation of multiple Major League Baseball games this week.
The WHO keeps a running list of COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which you can view here. STAT News also has a resource tracking COVID-19 drugs and vaccines.
Continue to look at the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis’s (OPA) expert-curated portfolio of COVID-19 publications and preprints. The portfolio includes peer-reviewed articles from PubMed and preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and arXiv. It is updated daily with the latest available data and enables users to explore and analyze the rapidly growing set of advances in COVID-19 research.
In a survey of museum directors by the American Alliance of Museums, 16 percent of respondents said there was a high risk that their museums could close for good in the next 16 months. Another 17 percent said they did not know if they would survive without further financial help from governments and private donors.
The Citi Open tennis tournament in Washington, D.C. has been canceled for 2020.
The jury seems still to be out about whether a person can become infected a second time with COVID-19. Although, a study by UCLA researchers shows that in people with mild cases of COVID-19, antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 drop sharply over the first three months after infection, decreasing by roughly half every 73 days. If sustained at that rate, the antibodies would disappear within about a year.
A new Northwestern Medicine study in mice found a widely used class of drugs to treat patients with hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetic kidney disease — many of whom are elderly — does not increase the risk of developing a severe and potentially fatal COVID-19 infection. There have been concerns by the medical community worldwide that the drugs -- ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB) -- might have caused an increase in ACE2, the main receptor for SARS-CoV-2, which could possibly increase the risk for this infection and its severity. The new findings, however, revealed a decrease, not an increase, in ACE2 in mice kidney membranes and no change in lung membranes. The study supports the safety of these drugs in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than six million people signed up for food stamps in the first three months of the pandemic. The program grew by 17 percent between February and May of this year.
Teachers unions sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over his administration’s emergency order pushing schools to fully reopen next month even as cases of COVID-19 continue to surge in the state. The American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s largest teachers union, and its local affiliate, the Florida Education Association, accused Gov. DeSantis of violating a Florida law requiring that schools be “safe” and “secure.” The unions, along with parent and teacher plaintiffs, asked a state court in Miami to block the governor’s reopening order and allow local school superintendents and health departments to have full control over reopening decisions.
A large new study from South Korea found that children between the ages of 10 and 19 can spread virus at least as well as adults do, suggesting that middle and high schools in particular may seed new clusters of infection. Children younger than 10 transmit to others much less often, which is consistent with what many other studies have reported.
On Saturday, 1,400 high school students were unhappy to find their ACT testing sites shut down upon arrival due to COVID-19. ACT Inc., the nonprofit organization that administers the test, noted that more than 88,000 students at some 1,100 sites successfully took the exam on Saturday. Test takers had been warned to check the ACT website for updates, but not all the cancellations made it onto the site.
According to a new study, an estimated 5.4 million Americans lost their health insurance between February and May due to COVID-19-related job losses. The study, to be released Tuesday by the nonpartisan consumer advocacy group Families U.S.A., found that the estimated increase in uninsured laid-off workers over the three-month period was nearly 40 percent higher than the highest previous increase, which occurred during the recession of 2008 and 2009.
An observational analysis of more than 1,200 confirmed and suspected COVID-19 patients across 69 countries between April 3rd and April 20th found heart abnormalities in more than half (55 percent) of subjects after they underwent echocardiograms, with 1 in 7 experiencing severe cardiac disease.
The IRS clarified that for-profit healthcare providers will have to pay taxes on the grants they received from the COVID-19 Provider Relief Fund. Some for-profit providers had hoped that the grants could be classified as a qualified disaster relief payment, but the IRS said the grants have to be included in gross income. Tax-exempt providers won't be taxed on the grants unless they reimburse the provider for lost revenue for an unrelated trade or business.
Eighteen attorneys general sued the Trump administration for its order that would require international students to take classes in person this fall despite the pandemic.
- Google, Facebook, Twitter, and more than a dozen other tech companies and associations, as well as more than 70 higher education associations and scores of universities, supported a lawsuit by Harvard and MIT seeking to block the rule.
Researchers are working on the next generation of COVID-19 tests that give answers in less than an hour, without onerous equipment or highly trained personnel. Some of the tests in development swap brain-tickling swabs for tubes in which you spit. Others would dunk patient samples into chemical mixtures that light up if they detect coronavirus genes. Another type of test identifies virus proteins in minutes and is cheap to produce.
Pregnant women infected with COVID-19 are more likely to be hospitalized, admitted to an intensive care unit, and put on a ventilator than are infected women who are not pregnant, according to a CDC analysis. The report includes information on 8,207 pregnant women between ages 15 to 44, who were compared to 83,205 women in the same age bracket who were not pregnant. More than 31 percent of the pregnant women were hospitalized, compared with about 6 percent of women who were not pregnant.
The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report recently published multiple new articles:
- Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 during and after a college spring break trip (March 14–19) led to 64 cases, including 60 among 183 vacation travelers, one among 13 household contacts, and three among 35 community contacts. Prompt epidemiologic investigation, with effective contact tracing and cooperation between a university and a public health department, contributed to outbreak control. This suggests that a coordinated response with contact tracing and testing of all contacts, including those who are asymptomatic, is important in controlling future COVID-19 outbreaks that might occur as schools and universities consider reopening.
- One article argues symptom-based screening in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) is inadequate to detect SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Repeated point prevalence surveys can identify asymptomatic cases during outbreaks. Repeated point prevalence surveys at 26 Detroit SNFs identified an attack rate of 44 percent; within 21 days of diagnosis, 37 percent of infected patients were hospitalized and 24 percent died. Among 12 facilities participating in a second survey and receiving on-site infection prevention and control (IPC) support, the percentage of newly identified cases decreased from 35 percent to 18 percent.
A new study conducted by the CDC and several hospitals found that over half of U.S. states have seen previously healthy young people become seriously ill from multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) related to coronavirus. Nearly 90 percent of the 186 patients in the report were hospitalized, and most of those needed intensive care, the researchers said. One in five of the patients, who were all under 21, became so sick that they required ventilators, and four children died.
An early release in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) found that testing among quarantined contacts of patients with COVID-19 in a correctional and detention facility identified a high proportion of asymptomatic and presymptomatic cases that were not identified through symptom screening alone. Approximately one fourth of cases were found through serial testing during quarantine. This implies early detection and isolation of persons with COVID-19, along with testing of close contacts, can slow the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in correctional and detention facilities. Serial testing, particularly for close contacts of patients, is important for complete identification of cases and prompt public health response in congregate settings.

June 2020

According to data from the New York Times, at least 54,000 residents and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died from COVID-19, accounting for 43 percent of virus-related deaths in the U.S.
Gilead Sciences will soon start trials of an inhalable version of remdesivir, the antiviral drug that has shown some preliminary promise as a treatment for COVID-19. Remdesivir is currently only available intravenously, so it has only been available for use in hospitals.
An early release in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report suggests that, in the 10 weeks following declaration of the COVID-19 national emergency, emergency room visits declined 23 percent for heart attack, 20 percent for stroke, and 10 percent for hyperglycemic crisis. The CDC encourages individuals experiencing chest pain, loss of motor function, altered mental status, or other life-threatening issues to seek immediate emergency care, regardless of the pandemic. Communication from public health and health care professionals should reinforce the importance of timely care for acute health conditions and assure the public that emergency departments are implementing infection prevention and control guidelines to ensure the safety of patients and health care personnel.
During May 5–12, 2020, a survey among adults in New York City and Los Angeles and broadly across the United States found widespread support of stay-at-home orders and nonessential business closures and high degree of adherence to COVID-19 mitigation guidelines. Most respondents reported that they would feel unsafe if restrictions were lifted at the time of the survey.
A recent Wall Street Journal article (free to read here) breaks down how, exactly, people catch COVID-19. One factor the article points out is that simple activities like speaking and breathing produce respiratory molecules that can disperse along air currents and potentially infect people nearby.
Earlier this week, researchers described findings from a study that suggest the steroid dexamethasone could be effective at reducing COVID-19 mortality. The drug is part of the RECOVERY clinical trials conducted in the United Kingdom, one of the largest clinical trials testing potential COVID-19 therapeutics. The preliminary results have not undergone peer review. The study tested a small daily dose of the drug in 2,104 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. When compared to a non-placebo-controlled control group who received the normal standard of care, dexamethasone was associated with a 34 percent decrease in mortality for patients on mechanical ventilation and 20 percent decrease for those receiving oxygen therapy.
The Labor Department reported that more than 1.5 million Americans filed new state unemployment claims last week. While this is the lowest number since the crisis began, it is still far above normal levels. Even though many businesses are starting to reopen, those that were crippled by the economic hardships of lockdown restrictions are starting to have to lay off employees.
The newest CDC forecasts suggest that the U.S. will likely see 124,000 to 140,000 COVID-19 deaths by the Fourth of July.
Between May 5th and 20th, a survey among adults in New York City and Los Angeles and broadly across the U.S. found widespread support of stay-at-home orders and nonessential business closures and high degree of adherence to COVID-19 mitigation guidelines. Most respondents reported that they would feel unsafe if restrictions were lifted at the time of the survey. The results of the study have been published in CDC's MMWR.
Delta Airlines plans to partner with the Mayo Clinic and Quest Diagnostics to launch a program to test all employees for COVID-19 and antibodies as part of its efforts to return to normal operations.
U.S. stocks fell sharply today after investors were reportedly concerned about the rising number of COVID-19 cases across the country. It was the worst day for the U.S. market since March. The Dow closed 1,862 points, or 6.9 percent, lower, and the S&P 500 ended down by 5.9 percent.
Moderna confirmed it expects to begin a phase three study of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in July. The final phase of the placebo-controlled study will include 30,000 subjects in the U.S.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said today it has begun human testing of its experimental antibody cocktail as a treatment for COVID-19. The trial has an “adaptive” design and could quickly move from dozens of patients to eventually include thousands, Chief Scientific Officer George Yancopoulos told Reuters.
According to a study published by a team of researchers in Texas and California, wearing a mask is the most effective way to stop person-to person spread of airborne spread of COVID-19.The researchers, led by Renyi Zhang from the department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University, compared COVID-19 infection rate trends in Italy and New York both before and after face masks were made mandatory. Both locations started to see infection rates flatten only after mandatory face masks measures were put in place.
Officials at the Federal Reserve indicated that they expect the unemployment rate to end 2020 at 9.3 percent and remain elevated for years.
The Treasury Department said today that the U.S. budget deficit grew to a record $1.88 trillion for the first eight months of this fiscal year, as Congress passed economic relief packages and the government delayed tax payments.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicated in a new report that the world economy is facing the most severe recession in a century and could have an exceptionally difficult time recovering due to a potential second wave of COVID-19.
Los Angeles County issued guidelines for film and television to begin production as early as Friday, but it’s more likely that production will not resume until July at the earliest. Studios and production companies are still waiting for unions to determine job protocols, even though the industry issued its own white paper last week that established general guidelines for resuming production.
A scientist for the WHO said today that asymptomatic transmission was not a significant factor in the spread of the virus, which has created some confusion among experts seeking more information from the WHO. She cited a WHO report published June 5, which said that based on evidence from contact tracing, “asymptomatically infected individuals are much less likely to transmit the virus than those who develop symptoms.”
Thirty-nine of the 40 largest known virus clusters in the U.S. are in food processing or correctional facilities.
Stocks on Wall Street have made a full recovery for the year. The S&P 500 rose more than 1 percent today, adding to a multi-week rebound based on hope for a quick economic recovery, significant intervention by the Federal Reserve, and a disregard for the serious risks that businesses and consumers still face.
The Department of Labor reported that another 1.9 million workers filed for unemployment aid last week.
U.S. exports and imports both posted their largest monthly decreases on record amid coronavirus-related shutdowns around the world. The Commerce Department said today that imports fell 13.7 percent in April from March, and exports dropped 20.5 percent, the largest declines since record-keeping began in 1992. The trade deficit expanded 16.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted $49.41 billion.
The authors of a paper published last month that reported concerning findings about the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients have retracted their report after the data that it was based on was called into question. The paper originally led to the suspension of some clinical trials of the medications, including by the WHO, though some of those have since resumed. More on this can be found in an article linked below, "The pandemic's first major research scandal erupts."
A recent study indicates the actual mortality rate of adults with critical illness from COVID-19 is less than what was previously reported. Compared to earlier reports of a 50 percent mortality rate, the study finds that the mortality rate of critically ill patients who required mechanical ventilation was only 35.7 percent.
According to a senior administration official, the White House won’t issue updated economic projections this summer because of uncertainty caused by the pandemic. The official said COVID-19 has resulted in fluctuating economic data, and that White House projections wouldn’t provide a meaningful snapshot of the economy.
The Commerce Department reported the U.S. GDP fell at a 5.0% annual rate in the first quarter, adjusted for seasonality and inflation.
Initial claims for unemployment benefits declined to a seasonally adjusted 2.1 million last week from 2.4 million the prior week.
The American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, and dozens of other higher education groups sent a letter to lawmakers on Thursday expressing “fears of huge transactional costs associated with defending against COVID-19 spread lawsuits” without more legal protections. The action comes as institutions that have lost millions in revenue from closures are facing huge financial pressures to reopen and are trying to figure out how to do so while protecting the health of students and staff.
U.S. stocks surged today on optimism that economic activity is gathering steam and authorities may offer more stimulus to bolster the recovery. The S&P 500 closed out above 3000 for the first time in nearly three months.
A recent poll of nearly 2,000 voters from May showed that, across political parties, people largely believe COVID-19 testing should be required for employees and students returning to their places of work and study. Democrats who participated in the poll were about 20 percent more likely than their republican counterparts to say they backed mandatory testing.
A scientific brief has been published by WHO investigating any association between smoking and an increased risk for COVID-19. At the time of this review, the available evidence suggests that in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, smoking is associated with increased severity of disease and death.
The stock market got a bit of a boost today, with the S&P 500 gaining 1.2 percent and crude oil prices on the rise.
- Likely due to the lifting of travel restrictions, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines both gained more than 10 percent.

May 2020

The WHO announced it would temporarily suspend the use of hydroxychloroquine following a recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet which raised safety concerns regarding the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.
A new study found that there are four main risk factors that make COVID-19 victims more likely to have severe or life-threatening symptoms: age, sex, weight, and underlying illness. The study took into account data from more than 20,000 patients across 208 hospitals.
Novavax said yesterday it has started the Phase 1 clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate and has enrolled the trial’s first participants, with preliminary results slated for July.
Epidemiologists across the country are confused by the CDC's decision to combine results of tests that detect active COVID-19 infection with those that detect recovery. Two reasons for the confusion are that serological testing can be unreliable, and patients who have had both diagnostic and serology tests would be counted twice.
A new study, in which 15,000 patients were treated with hydroxychloroquine and 81,000 patients were not, shows that the drug may have done more harm than good to those who received it. People who received the drugs were more likely to have abnormal heart rhythms.
A study conducted by researchers at several laboratories in China appears to be safe and may offer protection against the virus. The trial included 108 participants and found that subjects who got the vaccine mounted a moderate immune response to the virus, which peaked 28 days after the inoculation.
An additional 2.4 million individuals filed for unemployment last week, bringing the nine-week total to 38.6 million.
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida said today that the COVID-19 pandemic poses the most serious threat “in our lifetimes” to the Federal Reserve’s goals of maintaining strong employment and stable prices.
Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are anticipating a busy hurricane season for the Atlantic. As has happened in India and Bangladesh, COVID-19 is expected to be a barrier in recovery efforts. For example, FEMA can currently only deploy 38 percent of staff. There are other concerns about the virus spreading in shelters and how to deal with evacuations.
Ford Motors sent workers home at Chicago and Dearborn plants today after employees tested positive for COVID-19. The two employees who tested positive had passed a temperature check the day before.
National Nurses United recently conducted a survey in which they found that many nurses remain fearful of becoming ill because they do not have the equipment they need to remain safe. The survey, conducted between April 15th and May 10th, includes responses from both union members and nonunion nurses in all 50 states. The findings showed that a staggering 87 percent of respondents reported having to reuse PPE, including respirators, a practice that the nurses said would not have been allowed before the pandemic.
Health experts are warning that stagnant plumbing systems in emptied office buildings could pose a threat when employees return. Bacteria — including the type that causes the respiratory condition Legionnaires’ disease — can build up if not properly addressed.
The Federal Reserve said industrial production, a measure of factory, mining, and utility output, decreased a seasonally adjusted 11.2 percent in April from the prior month.
According to recent government data, retail sales dropped by 16.4 percent in April after dropping over 8 percent in March. This is the biggest two-month plunge on record.
- J.C. Penney filed for bankruptcy today, the largest retailer to do so thus far.
Retail workers across the country are facing violence while trying to enforce public health guidelines in their stores. A woman in Pennsylvania was punched in the face by a man refusing to wear a mask, a security guard in Michigan was shot and killed after insisting a customer put on a mask, and an employee in California wound up with a broken arm after helping to remove two customers who would not wear masks.
Recent data show that women have so far been more vulnerable to job losses, because sectors with more women, such as education, leisure, and hospitality, have been hardest hit by social-distancing measures.
Air Canada will be reducing its workforce by 50-60 percent after having to reduce flight schedules by 95 percent.
The Department of Labor reported that nearly 3.2 million more Americans were added to state jobless rolls last week. Economists now expect the monthly jobs report tomorrow to put the official April unemployment rate at 15 percent or higher — a Depression-era level.
Frontier Airlines announced today that they plan to take passengers’ temperatures before boarding commercial flights. Beginning June 1^st, anyone with a temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher will be denied boarding.
Starting Monday, Amtrak will require passengers to wear face coverings in stations and on trains and buses. The coverings can be removed only when passengers are eating in designated areas, in private rooms, or when seated alone or with a companion in their own pair of seats.
Several major sports league announced plans to resume play. The National Football League directed teams to develop plans to reopen training facilities on May 15^th.
Food and consumer products trade groups sent a letter to Vice President Pence asking for more guidance on the steps they should take as they prepare to reopen. The groups wrote that the lack of “central coordination” from different agencies make it “extremely” difficult for companies to develop detailed response plans.
So far in the second round of PPP loans, about 2.2 million applicants have been approved, with an average loan size of $79,000. In the first round of funding, large, publicly traded companies received a large amount of the funding meant for small businesses. According to a recent report, publicly traded companies have since given back more than $375 billion of those federal stimulus loans.
Air Canada announced a new program, Air Canada CleanCare+, which consists of mandatory preflight infrared temperature checks, blocking the sale of adjacent seats, capping the total number of passengers allowed on each flight, requiring employees and passengers to wear face coverings, and removing pillows and blankets from the planes. The airline company will also begin using hospital grade disinfectant in their sprayers and will give kits with hand sanitizer to passengers.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis reported that, for the first month ever, renewable energy sources such as solar, hydro, and wind, supplied more power to the electric grid than coal-fired plants.
Carnival Corporation said today that it plans on allowing eight of its ships to start cruising again before the end of the summer. Carnival has canceled service on many of its lines through September, but will look to offer cruises from three total ports in Texas and Florida as early as August 1^st.
The United States Department of Labor announced that an additional 3.8 million new unemployment insurance claims were filed last week. In total, Americans have filed more than 30 million new unemployment claims over the past 6 weeks.
Yesterday, Gilead Sciences, the manufacturer of remdesivir, released some results from a Phase III clinical trial comparing 5-day and 10-day treatment courses of the drug. The results did not provide any information whether the drug improved patient outcomes compared to a control group. Gilead also noted that the results “complement” forthcoming results from a placebo-controlled trial conducted by NIAID (mentioned in yesterday’s update).
- The interim results from the NIAID study—a randomized control trial involving more than 1,000 patients—find that patients treated with remdesivir had a shorter time to recovery than those who received a placebo (median of 11 days compared to 15 days; 28 percent improvement). Dr. Tony Fauci described the reduction in time to recovery as “highly significant.”
Trade groups including the Coalition for a 21^st Century Postal Service and the National Retail Federation wrote to a letter to lawmakers today urging them to provide relief funds to the United States Postal Services.
Meat processing workers, many of them low-income immigrants and minorities, are being recalled to plants where thousands have been sickened.
On Friday, labor organizers from Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, Walmart, Target, Shipt (owned by Target), and FedEx say they will walk off the job to strike for better pay, expansion of paid sick leave, access to personal protective equipment, and enforcement of social distancing in the workplace.

April 2020

As online shopping has increased, demand for Amazon delivery folks has skyrocketed. Amazon hired 175,000 more workers over the last two months to keep up with orders.
Food delivery apps like Grubhub, DoorDash, and UberEats have said they would suspend some or all of the commissions they take on orders to help restaurants continue to offer takeout. Restaurants have said other fees still apply.
Apple is pushing back the production ramp-up of its flagship iPhones coming later this year by about a month. Apple’s annual product refresh fuels the majority of iPhone sales for an entire year, making new phones the linchpin of a business segment that accounts for more than half of the company’s total revenue.
The IRS is ready to release the second big wave of stimulus payments and will send money over the next few days to people who recently provided their direct-deposit information. These payments will likely go to two groups: One set is tax filers who successfully used the IRS website’s “Get My Payment” tool to add bank information by midday on April 22^nd, according to the IRS. The other set is people who don’t file tax returns but who receive Social Security or Social Security disability benefits, according to the Treasury Department.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is using a robot dog to help clinicians screen patients. The robot, developed by Boston Dynamics, allows physicians to communicate with and deliver supplies to patients without potential exposure to COVID-19; the robot also limits the use of PPE.
According to doctors, older adults with COVID-19 have several “atypical” symptoms, complicating efforts to ensure they get timely and appropriate treatment. COVID-19 is typically signaled by three symptoms: a fever, a bad cough, and shortness of breath. But older adults — the age group most at risk of severe complications or death from the illness ― may show none of these characteristics. Instead, seniors may seem “off” — not acting like themselves ― early on after being infected. They may sleep more than usual or stop eating. They may seem unusually apathetic or confused, losing orientation to their surroundings. They may become dizzy and fall. Sometimes, seniors stop speaking or simply collapse.
Earlier today, the U.S. Department of Labor released new information indicating that more than 4.4 million individuals filed initial claims for unemployment. While this number is a decrease from the previous week, it brings the national total to approximately 26 million new claims.
Individuals are postponing medical care and procedures, with emergency departments across the country reporting significant decreases in normal patient load. Some clinicians expressed concern that patients may be dying of these conditions at home rather than risking exposure to COVID-19 at the hospital.
A report by NPR found racial disparities in New York nursing home deaths. Among the 78 homes the report looked at, seven of the 11 nursing homes with the highest number of COVID-19 related deaths reported 46 percent or greater of “non-white” residents.
A data breach in the Small Business Association‘s (SBA) online application portal may have compromised personal information for nearly 8,000 businesses seeking emergency loans last month, the agency said today. SBA said it discovered on March 25^th that the application system for Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) may have disclosed personal information to other applicants of the program — including Social Security numbers, income amounts, names, addresses and contact information.