Covid-19 News

14 August

‘AeroNabs’ Promise Powerful, Inhalable Protection Against COVID-19

12 August

* Doctors baffled at fewer babies being born prematurely during COVID restrictions

5 August

* Turkey built a hospital in a record 45 days specifically for pandemic patients.
— “The hospital, known as the Professor Fariha Oz Emergency Hospital, covers a huge 75,000 square metre area on the Asian side of the city, with 1,008 beds – of which 432 are intensive care (ICU) beds. All of them can be turned into ICU beds if necessary.”

29 July

* News stories saying you will lose antibodies to Covid-19 after three months are not true, per Dr. Jacob Glanville, Ph.D. in this video, near the end (the Q&A section of the video). He says you are probably protected for one to two years.

* BBC: Coronavirus bubbles: How do they work and who is in yours?

* CNN: We’re only just beginning to learn how Covid-19 affects the brain

22 July 2020

* Doctor reinfected with COVID-19 — three months after recovering – F#$%^()!! This report means that some persons who recover from Covid might be reinfected. But we don’t know what percentage, whether this is rare or common or in-between.

* And some minor good news: SARS-CoV-2 unable to infect or replicate in mosquitoes

18 July 2020

* Older news: African-Americans and Latinos more likely to be infected with, be hospitalized due to, and die from Covid-19 than Whites and Asians.

15 July 2020

* CBS News: Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine ready to advance to final phase of testing

10 July 2020

* Cell-like decoys could mop up viruses in humans – including the one that causes COVID-19

* Govt ‘reviewing’ remdesivir use for Covid after hospitals report liver damage in patients – “We have received multiple reports both from government hospitals and private hospitals that patients who have been given this drug are showing a sudden rise in levels of alkaline phosphatase, SGOT and SGPT that can lead to liver injury,” said a senior official in the health ministry in India.

9 July 2020 — Topic: Long Haulers

* Stat News: My Covid-19 symptoms have lasted more than 100 days, and I’m not alone. Will they ever end? – Opinion
* Dr. Mobeen Syed on Long Haulers – Video
* the guardian: The coronavirus ‘long-haulers’ show how little we still know – Article
* the Atlantic: COVID-19 Can Last for Several Months – Article
* An Analysis of the Prolonged COVID-19 Symptoms Survey by Patient-Led Research Team – Google Doc
* JAMA: Persistent Symptoms in Patients After Acute COVID-19 – July 9th Study. An average of 60 days after Covid-19 onset, only 12.6% of patients were symptom-free. Maybe long haulers are not the exception, but the rule?

7 July 2020

* Least useful scientific conclusion ever: The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neandertals (How does this help me?)

2 July 2020

* Coronavirus causes a different — and more vicious — kind of pneumonia. Here’s what it does.

1 July 2020

* President of Dominican Republic’s Largest Private Health Group Discusses the Success of Ivermectin as a Treatment for Early Stage COVID-19 – Ivermectin is not for pregnant or lactating women, nor for anyone with meningitis (or other persons with impaired or inadequate blood-brain barrier).

30 June 2020

* Scientists say they’ve identified 2 strains of COVID-19

29 June 2020

* Voices in Bioethics: The United States Should Consider Compulsory SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination (opinion piece by Margaret Bove) — this topic needs extensive discussion in the public forum.

25 June 2020

* FDA warns hydroxychloroquine may weaken effectiveness of coronavirus drug remdesivir

24 June 2020

* A JAMA article proposes a lottery system for which patients get Covid-19 medications that are in short supply, like Remdesivir. — More in Running Commentary

22 June 2020

* Drug recently shown to reduce coronavirus death risk could run out, experts warn – “This week’s report that dexamethasone, a commonly used corticosteroid, reduces death rates of COVID-19 by up to one-third was greeted with enthusiasm around the globe.”

~ Dr. Roger Seheult discusses the surprisingly negative reactions to the results of the Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT) that showed dexamethasone reduced deaths [starts 30 seconds into the video]; and here’s a print discussion of the same topic.

~ The Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Working Group states that while “Dexamethasone improves survival in COVID-19. Our experts recommend methylprednisolone as superior. Read why here.” covid19criticalcare.com (I don’t know who is right. I’m just pointing out the difference of opinion.)

* New images available of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Montana. “These images are available to the public for free … please credit NIAID-RML unless otherwise noted in the Flickr image description.”

21 June 2020

* More young people across the South are testing positive for coronavirus, officials warn

20 June 2020

* Coronavirus plasma study shows ‘robust evidence’ of transfusion treatment improving survivability, authors say – convalescent plasma treatment seems to be working.

17 June 2020

* Dexamethasone reduced deaths by one third in patients who required ventilation, by one fifth in patients who needed oxygen only, and no significant effect in other patients.

16 June 2020

* Netflix ‘Pandemic’ Star Just Showed His COVID-19 Antibody Drug Works In Hamsters. How Quickly Could It Treat Humans?

* ‘Remarkably cheap’ steroid called dexamethasone can improve COVID-19 survival, researchers say

13 June 2020

* JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Spike in Poison Control Calls Related to Disinfectant Exposures

11 June 2020

* A preliminary observation: Male pattern hair loss among hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Spain – A potential clue to the role of androgens in COVID-19 severity (PDF file). In a group of men hospitalized for Covid-19, a higher percentage had androgenetic alopecia (hair loss related to the androgen hormone) than in the general population.

* Smokers ‘four times less likely’ to contract Covid-19, prompting nicotine patch trials on patients – Researchers in France will test nicotine patches on health workers and patients but reiterated smoking could also cause more severe illness

~ Note: molecular docking of nicotine (using SwissDock) shows that nicotine binds well to the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (6LU7) and to the Spike protein (6LXT).

9 June 2020

* 23andMe finds evidence that blood type plays a role in COVID-19 — persons with type O blood were less likely to contract Covid-19 and less likely to be hospitalized for Covid-19. Study is ongoing, but due to the large number of participants, the results are already statistically significant.

8 June 2020

* Open Science Data Portal – The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) has developed an online open science data portal for its COVID-19 drug repurposing campaign – named OpenData – with the goal of making data across a range of SARS-CoV-2 related assays available in real-time. Now available.

6 June 2020

* IMPORTANT Use of NSAIDS in Covid-19 patients increased risk of the primary composite outcome: “death, intensive care unit admission, mechanical ventilation use, and/or sepsis” by 56% (OR 1.56) and more than doubled the risk of “cardiovascular or renal complications” (OR 2.64). Tylenol (paracetamol) did not have the same risk. Study details here.

4 June 2020

* News Report: Use of high-flow oxygen in Western Cape “game changing Covid-19 alternative to ventilator” Six of six patient on ventilators died. Six of seven patients given high-flow oxygen recovered without use of ventilator.

* Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group now has a treatment protocol, that includes prophylaxis with OTC supplements here: MATH+ Treatment Protocol (PDF file)

* Retraction: Cardiovascular Disease, Drug Therapy, and Mortality in Covid-19 — and the original article is here.

3 June 2020

* BBC News: Coronavirus: Ibuprofen tested as a treatment

* Science Mag:A mysterious company’s coronavirus papers in top medical journals may be unraveling

2 June 2020

* Russians claim to have an effective treatment for the coronavirus, which hospitals will start using this month – The data from molecular docking studies shows favipiravir to be a moderate to mild inhibitors of a few viral targets in SARS-CoV-2. I don’t know of any studies that would justify using this drug nationwide anywhere.

1 June 2020

* COVID-19 no longer infectious after 11 days, new study claims – shedding virus does not necessarily mean you are infectious. This was too small a study, though, to draw conclusions for millions of cases.

27 May 2020

* MedMastery Group Subscription “is now available to every institution that is, or will be, taking care of patients with COVID-19. Every department can apply for a group subscription, free-of-charge, which will give you and up to 20 of your colleagues access to all of our courses.” Good stuff.

* The CDC reports that for “the 62,344 cases of COVID-19 among healthcare personnel, death status was only available for 35,460 (56.9%).” A total 291 healthcare personnel are known to have died from Covid-19, which is 0.8% of the 35,460 cases of Covid in healthcare workers where death status is known.

25 May 2020

* The Lancet: CanSino’s Phase I Vaccine is reported to be successful in this published study.

* CNN: Easing of the Lockdown continues in many places around the nation and the world

21 May 2020

* Washington Post: Young adults are also affected by Kawasaki-like disease linked to coronavirus, doctors say

20 May 2020

* Foxnews: CDC now says coronavirus ‘does not spread easily’ via contaminated surfaces — CDC on How Covid-19 Spreads

* High COVID-19 Attack Rate Among Attendees at Events at a Church — Arkansas, March 2020

19 May 2020

* CNN: Right ventricle enlargement a major predictor for mortality among COVID patients, new study finds

*CNN: CDC warns doctors about childhood illness linked to Covid-19

* CNN: Delirium and agitation may follow Covid-19 infection, study says