Thursday CoronaBuzz, March 24, 2022: 36 pointers to updates, health information, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz
NEW RESOURCES – MEDICAL/HEALTH
medRxiv: The World Health Organization’s Disease Outbreak News: a retrospective database. “The World Health Organization (WHO) notifies the global community about disease outbreaks through the Disease Outbreak News (DON). These online reports tell important stories about both outbreaks themselves and the high-level decision making that governs information sharing during public health emergencies. However, they have been used only minimally in global health scholarship to date. Here, we collate all 2,789 of these reports from their first use through the start of the Covid-19 pandemic (January 1996 to December 2019), and develop an annotated database of the subjective and often inconsistent information they contain.”
HEALTH CARE / HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS
The Oregonian: Doctors finding hurdles to using pills to treat COVID-19. “The goal is to get patients started on either Pfizer’s Paxlovid tablets or Merck’s molnupiravir capsules within five days of symptoms appearing. That can prevent people with big health risks from growing sicker and filling up hospitals if another surge develops. But the tight deadline has highlighted several challenges. Some patients are delaying testing, thinking they just had a cold. Others have been unwilling or unable to try the new drugs.”
EVENTS / CANCELLATIONS
Hollywood Reporter: Was the BAFTA Weekend Behind a Spike in Industry COVID Cases?. “As Oscar week kicks off, alongside the seemingly now two-horse best-picture race between The Power of the Dog and CODA, one of the biggest talking points is how an apparent COVID-19 outbreak during the BAFTA weekend may impact proceedings.”
BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS
CNN: Moderna says its Covid-19 vaccine performs as well in children as it does in adults. “Moderna announced interim results of its Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than 6 on Wednesday. The company said two 25-microgram doses of its Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months through 5 years old provided a similar immune response to two 100-microgram doses for adults ages 18 to 25, indicating that the benefit conferred to young adults is also conferred to young children.”
WORK
Miami Herald: Workers feel employers don’t care about them and it’s worse since COVID, survey says. “Less than one in four workers in the U.S. feel that their employers care about their well-being, the lowest percentage in nearly a decade, according to a new Gallup survey. That number was significantly higher at the start of the pandemic, when about 49% of people said their employers responded to the spread of COVID-19 ‘with a plan, communication, and what many employees believed was genuine concern for them, their work, and their lives.’”
WORLD GOVERNMENT / NON-US GOVERNMENT
Associated Press: WHO: COVID-19 cases rise for 2nd straight week, deaths fall. “The World Health Organization says the number of new coronavirus cases globally increased by 7% in the last week, driven by rising infections in the Western Pacific.”
The Guardian: Private emails reveal Gove’s role in Tory-linked firm’s PPE deals. “Michael Gove was secretly involved in the process through which a PPE company linked to the Tory peer Michelle Mone secured huge government contracts, according to newly released documents that show private emails being used for government business.”
Independent: Singapore To Reopen To Most At End Of March. “One minute before the end of March, Singapore will relax many of its travel restrictions for travellers who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. The city state has previously had some of the toughest coronavirus rules, but now hopes to boost its much-depleted tourism industry.”
CNN: One in five South Koreans have had Covid, as latest wave sees deaths surge. “Authorities reported 395,598 new cases on Thursday, pushing the total caseload to 10.8 million, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. That makes up about 20% of the national population — meaning roughly one out of every five South Koreans have now been infected at some stage of the pandemic.”
BBC: New Zealand scraps outdoor masking, some Covid vaccine mandates. “New Zealand is set to significantly relax its Covid-19 restrictions with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern calling it a ‘new beginning for the country’. Key changes include scrapping masking outdoors and easing vaccine mandates for employment in some sectors.”
New York Times: England’s health service starts offering a second booster to vulnerable adults.. “The National Health Service in England began offering a second Covid-19 vaccine booster on Monday to around five million people who are considered especially vulnerable to the disease.”
UNITED STATES / UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Axios: Census Bureau: COVID drove largest spike in U.S. deaths in a century. “COVID-19 drove the largest death spike in a century, with 535,000 more deaths in 2020 than in 2019, according to newly released U.S. Census Bureau data.”
Poynter: BA.2 is now the dominant COVID-19 strain in parts of the US. “Genomic sequencing company Helix estimates that in some parts of the U.S., BA.2 accounts for up to 70% of new COVID-19 cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest data shows about one out of three new cases nationwide are BA.2.”
Route Fifty: There’s No Final Number Yet for Pandemic Fraud, Oversight Leaders Tell Congress. “Total fraud levels in pandemic relief programs are upwards of $100 billion, but getting a clear estimate is made difficult by data gaps and ongoing fraud recovery efforts, officials said at a Senate hearing.”
NBC News: BA.2 version of omicron is rising in the U.S., but experts remain optimistic. “will the rise of BA.2 in the U.S. — widely anticipated after the omicron subvariant caused infection spikes in Europe over the past few weeks — have any measurable impact on the U.S. overall, particularly as Americans are just now getting back to normal routines? Infectious disease experts remain steadfast in their prediction that the subvariant is unlikely to cause widespread severe illness or crush hospital resources as earlier variants have, even as BA.2 is estimated to be 30 percent more transmissible.”
The Guardian: CDC coding error led to overcount of 72,000 Covid deaths. “Last week, after reporting from the Guardian on mortality rates among children, the CDC corrected a ‘coding logic error’ that had inadvertently added more than 72,000 Covid deaths of all ages to the data tracker, one of the most publicly accessible sources for Covid data. The agency briefly noted the change in a footnote, although the note did not explain how the error occurred or how long it was in effect.”
NPR: White House press secretary Jen Psaki tests positive (again) for COVID-19. “White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Tuesday that she had tested positive for COVID-19. In a statement posted to Twitter, Psaki said she had two ‘socially-distanced meetings’ with Biden on Monday and said he is not considered a close contact by CDC guidance.”
STATES / STATE GOVERNMENT
Route Fifty: The ‘Massive’ Task Awaiting State Medicaid Agencies. “The end of a public health emergency would mean states losing hundreds of billions in funding for the health care program, and verifying whether millions of enrollees are still eligible.”
New York Times: What’s Next for the Pandemic in California?. “When my friend texted me last week to say that she had a fever, I nearly discounted the possibility that she might have contracted Covid-19. The case numbers are so low in California right now, I thought. But, it turns out, she did have Covid. And, as I found out the next day, so did I.”
New York Times: Why a California Congressman Has Proposed a Four-Day Workweek. “The coronavirus pandemic has changed many things about work, with millions of people doing their jobs from home, others quitting altogether, and some — as they finally return to the office after two long years — expecting a greater degree of flexibility. But one California congressman, Mark Takano, wants to see an even more major change: a four-day workweek enshrined into legislation.”
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
New York Times: N.Y.C.’s New Subway Chief Comes From Boston and Doesn’t Own a Car. “As New York City’s subway system, the nation’s largest, lurches out of the throes of a pandemic that has drained it of millions of riders and the fares they pay, it will have a new permanent leader for the first time in more than two years.”
INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS
BuzzFeed News: Even Carole Baskin’s Tigers Had COVID. Here’s How It’s Affecting Animals In Zoos And Sanctuaries Across The US.. “…it’s not that surprising that [Carole] Baskin’s tiger tested positive for COVID; it’s been a common problem in zoos and sanctuaries throughout the pandemic. This is unsettling news for animal welfare, but there could be even more distressing implications for public health. When there is an animal outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the virus can mutate and even spread back to humans. Worst-case scenario, a new variant will form that is extra contagious or causes more severe illness. Such concerns have given rise to the development of special veterinary vaccines specifically to prevent COVID in animals.”
INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS – CELEBRITIES/FAMOUS
CNN: Hillary Clinton tests positive for Covid-19. “Hillary Clinton announced Tuesday that she has tested positive for Covid-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms.”
K-12 EDUCATION
The City: COVID Case Counts More Than Doubled in Public Schools Since Last Month, DOE Data Shows. “Reported COVID cases in New York City public schools rose rapidly in the last seven days, registering their biggest weekly gain since the peak of the Omicron wave in January. The rise in school cases exceeded a general uptick in positive tests seen in some parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn in the past week. The city Department of Education reported 1,422 infections in the seven-day period ending March 22, more than twice as many cases as reported in the seven-day period a month ago – while also marking the fourth consecutive weekly gain, DOE statistics show.”
NPR: Millions of children will miss healthy school meals when pandemic relief expires. “When schools pivoted to virtual learning early in the pandemic, the National School Lunch Program was thrown into chaos. Millions of children rely on school meals to keep hunger at bay, so school nutrition directors scrambled to adopt new, creative ways to distribute food to families. Some of these changes were improvements on the status quo, they say. And as part of pandemic relief legislation, the federal Food and Nutrition services agency waived the requirement that schools serve meals in a group setting, increased school-year reimbursement rates to summer levels for school food programs and granted more flexibility in how food is prepared and packaged.”
HEALTH
New York Times: Alcohol-Related Deaths Spiked During the Pandemic, a Study Shows. “Numerous reports have suggested that Americans drank more to cope with the stress of the pandemic. Binge drinking increased, as did emergency room visits for alcohol withdrawal. But the new report found that the number of alcohol-related deaths, including from liver disease and accidents, soared, rising to 99,017 in 2020, up from 78,927 the previous year — an increase of 25 percent in the number of deaths in one year.”
CIDRAP: Simple home oxygen monitors signal when to seek COVID care. “COVID-19 patients can safely use inexpensive pulse oximeters at home to watch for a drop in blood oxygen that signals they need to seek advanced care, according to a systematic review published yesterday in The Lancet Digital Health.”
Emory University: COVID-19: Understanding long COVID. “For some individuals, the road to recovery from COVID-19 is long. While most people recover from mild COVID-19 symptoms over the course of one to two weeks, ‘long-haul’ patients can suffer from lingering symptoms for months on end. This syndrome, called post-acute COVID-19 or ‘long COVID,’ can have devastating effects on the daily lives of millions of patients. To discuss what we know about long COVID, Jodie Guest, PhD, professor and vice chair of the department of epidemiology at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, teamed up with Alex Truong, MD, co-director of the post-COVID clinic at Emory’s Executive Park.”
TECHNOLOGY / INTERNET
ScienceDaily: Social media data could help predict the next COVID surge. “New research suggests that a novel, short-term forecasting method, using machine learning and vast, anonymized datasets from social media accounts, significantly outperforms conventional models for projecting COVID trends at the county level.”
NiemanLab: The Equal Info Text Line is bridging information gaps in Philadelphia through action items via SMS. “Just 84% of Philadelphia households are connected to the internet at all, a lower rate than that of other large U.S. cities. And adults over the age of 65 are less likely to have access, one survey found. So it isn’t surprising that so many of the subscribers to the Equal Info Text Line are senior citizens. The Equal Info Text Line was borne out of the need for information and resources at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and grew as information needs around the 2020 presidential election became more apparent.”
RESEARCH
Ars Technica: Swab, test, repeat: A 2nd rapid COVID test more than doubled result accuracy. “To quickly confirm an asymptomatic case of COVID-19, a second rapid test within an hour of a positive result can boost the accuracy of the result from 38 percent to 92 percent, according to a new study in JAMA Network Open.”
Tech Xplore: Researchers find that detail matters for understanding COVID-19 impacts on electricity use. “In the spring of 2020, most offices and schools shuttered, causing people to move work and school to their homes. This created an unprecedented source of uncertainty for the electrical grid. How would COVID-19 affect electricity demand? How could utilities forecast these kinds of changes to make sure the lights stayed on? Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) analyzed a series of unique datasets to find out in a new research article.”
Undark: The Subtle Psychology of ‘Nudging’ During a Pandemic. “For years, the U.S. and U.K. governments embraced the concept of nudges to change social behavior. Then came Covid-19.”
Washington Post: Covid infection associated with a greater likelihood of Type 2 diabetes, according to review of patient records. “The finding is true even for people who had less severe or asymptomatic forms of coronavirus infection, though the chances of developing new-onset diabetes were greater as the severity of covid symptoms increased, according to researchers who reviewed the records of more than 181,000 Department of Veterans Affairs patients diagnosed with coronavirus infections between March 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021.”
STAT News: New Covid trial results may point toward better ways to study medicines. “Last week, a clinical trial called TOGETHER produced two potentially important conclusions: A little-discussed experimental drug called peginterferon lambda cut in half the number of Covid-19 patients who ended up going to the emergency room or hospital. And the much-discussed antiparasitic drug ivermectin failed to prevent hospitalization for Covid patients at all. TOGETHER, like the RECOVERY study conducted in the United Kingdom and REMAP-CAP, conducted basically everywhere but the United States, was a platform study, a streamlined clinical trial that evaluated multiple medicines at once and that use a common placebo group. It’s from these platform studies that doctors have learned perhaps the most about Covid-19.”
PsyPost: Dark personality traits associated with maladaptive responses to the COVID-19 pandemic . “In mid-2021, Brazil was an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic and scholars have claimed that managing the pandemic largely became the responsibility of the citizens, rather than the government. Thus, insight into personality traits that might predict responses to the pandemic could be useful. Research published in Personality and Individual Differences found that ‘dark’ personality traits (psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, sadism, spitefulness) are generally associated with less worry about the pandemic and maladaptive responses to measures against COVID-19.”
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March 25, 2022 at 02:29AM
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