Tag: pandemic

CDC to passengers and workers: Wear a mask when you are on a plane, train, bus or other public transit

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday strongly recommended in newly issued guidelines that all passengers and workers on planes, trains, buses and other public transportation wear masks to control the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The guidance was issued following pressure from the airline industry and amid surging cases of the coronavirus and strong evidence on the effectiveness of masks in curbing transmission, according to CDC officials.

The recommendations fall short of what transportation industry leaders and unions had sought, and come long after evidence in favor of mask-wearing was well established. Continue reading.

Whatever happened to Deborah Birx?

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Deborah Birx is nowhere to be found at the White House these days.

Though she retains the title of coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, Birx has not attended any of President Trump‘s press briefings on the pandemic since he started them anew in late July, nor was she at a recent event to tout the administration’s advances in testing.

Instead, Birx has been on the road, visiting 36 states and 27 different colleges and universities since the end of June to meet with state, local and university leaders to advise on best practices for containing the coronavirus and to gather information on what’s been working in each place. Continue reading.

WHO study finds remdesivir didn’t help COVID-19 patients

GENEVA — A large study led by the World Health Organization suggests that the antiviral drug remdesivir did not help hospitalized COVID-19 patients, in contrast to an earlier study that made the medicine a standard of care in the United States and many other countries.

The results announced Friday do not negate the previous ones, and the WHO study was not as rigorous as the earlier one led by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. But they add to concerns about how much value the pricey drug gives because none of the studies have found it can improve survival.

The drug has not been approved for COVID-19 in the U.S., but it was authorized for emergency use after the previous study found it shortened recovery time by five days on average. It’s approved for use against COVID-19 in the United Kingdom and Europe, and is among the treatments U.S. President Donald Trump received when he was infected earlier this month. Continue reading.

Early Voting: A 2020 Success Story

States have made it easier to vote and are getting needed poll workers within innovative programs amid the coronavirus pandemic.

WITH THE COVID-19 pandemic making the very act of mingling with others a serious health risk, 2020 was shaping up as an election year with low turnout and voter engagement.

Instead, Americans are turning out in droves to cast early ballots – weeks before Election Day and in numbers that have experts predicting record-breaking turnout. As of Oct. 15, more than 18 million people had already voted, a number that represents 12.9% of the entire 2016 turnout with 19 days to go before Election Day. Individual states are reporting exponentially higher numbers of people asking for, and returning, absentee ballots.

That number is significantly higher than in this stage of the election in 2016: By the week ending Oct. 16, 2016, just 1.4 million Americans had voted early, according to tallies by the nonpartisan U.S. Elections Project. Continue reading.

Inside the Fall of the CDC

How the world’s greatest public health organization was brought to its knees by a virus, the president and the capitulation of its own leaders, causing damage that could last much longer than the coronavirus.

At 7:47 a.m. on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, Dr. Jay Butler pounded out a grim email to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Butler, then the head of the agency’s coronavirus response, and his team had been trying to craft guidance to help Americans return safely to worship amid worries that two of its greatest comforts — the chanting of prayers and singing of hymns — could launch a deadly virus into the air with each breath.

The week before, the CDC had published its investigation of an outbreak at an Arkansas church that had resulted in four deaths. The agency’s scientific journal recently had detailed a superspreader event in which 52 of the 61 singers at a 2½-hour choir practice developed COVID-19. Two died. Continue reading.

Harris pauses campaign travel after aide tests positive for coronavirus

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Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) will pause her travel through Sunday after her communications director tested positive for the coronavirus, the Biden campaign announced Thursday.

The state of play: The campaign said that the vice presidential nominee, who tested negative for the virus on Wednesday, was “not in close contact” with the aide, Liz Allen, under CDC guidelines. She will still pause her travel “out of an abundance of caution and in line with [the] campaign’s commitment to the highest levels of precaution,” the campaign said.

  • An administrative member of the aviation company that charters Joe Biden’s plane has also tested positive for COVID-19, though he was “not in close contact as defined by the CDC, with this individual at any time,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said Thursday afternoon. The individual traveled with the former VP on Monday and Tuesday to Ohio and Florida, respectively. Continue reading.

Minnesota reports 29 COVID-19 deaths, new antigen test data

Minnesota’s one-day toll hits 29 after rising number of late-summer infections. 

Concerns over rising COVID-19 infection rates across Minnesota gave way Wednesday to a grim statistic: a spike in deaths.

State health officials reported 29 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday — the highest one-day total since June.

“This reflects the increase in disease we have been seeing in the community for many weeks, with deaths as a lagging indicator,” said Kris Ehresmann, state infectious disease director at the Minnesota Department of Health. “We should not be surprised if we continue to see the number of deaths from COVID moving forward higher than we have seen in the last months.” Continue reading.

Yet another Republican tested positive for COVID-19 — right before plans to meet with Pence

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Yet another Republican has tested positive for COVID-19. Rep. Bill Huizenga of Michigan, Wednesday afternoon on Twitter, posted that earlier in the day, he “was expected to appear with” Vice President Mike Pence but added: “While taking part in offsite testing protocols, I took a rapid test that came back positive for COVID-19.”

The GOP congressman noted, “I am awaiting the results of a PCR test, and I am self-isolating until I have confirmed results.”

The 51-year-old Huizenga, who served in the Michigan House of Representatives from 2003-2009, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 and is now a member of the House Financial Services Committee. Continue reading.

Viral graph shows the stark divide between red and blue states on COVID-19

Can you get coronavirus twice? Here’s what we know now

Several people I know have already had coronavirus. Even though some of them got pretty sick, after they recovered, they have felt like they won the golden ticket. They got hit with a worst case scenario, survived, and now they can move through the world with virus-proof invincibility. Right? Maybe. Unfortunately, it appears that you can actually get coronavirus twice. Before you freak out, here’s what you need to know.

A case study published on Monday in The Lancet, a medical journal, confirmed that a 25-year-old Nevada man contracted — and was sick with — COVID-19 twice. The man, who remains anonymous to protect his medical privacy, was sick in April and tested positive for coronavirus then, NPR reported. He tested negative in May, but then he started showing symptoms later that month and tested positive again.

But how could this happen? Theoretically, once your immune system deals with a virus, it should make antibodies that help it combat the virus more effectively if you are exposed again, so most of us have just assumed that you can’t catch COVID-19 twice. But some scientists have been warning us that our lack of familiarity with the novel coronavirus, scientifically speaking, means that we can’t accurately predict how the human immune system will respond to it. Continue reading.