Tulane Outbreak Daily | April 9, 2020

• More men also are infected than women, and they are hospitalized more frequently, new data show. A similar pattern was seen in China.
• In Korea, more women are infected than men [Related Study]
• New Zealand data similar to Korea, more women than men infected (55% vs 45%) [Related Study]

Fauci Says U.S. Coronavirus Deaths May Be ‘More Like 60,000’; Antibody Tests On Way – NPR

The U.S. is enduring a “very bad week” during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci says. But he also says that the American public’s embrace of physical separation and other restrictions is sharply reducing projections of the death toll from the respiratory virus.

Ecuador Gives Glimpse Into Pandemic’s Impact on Latin America – New York Times
In Guayaquil, Ecuador’s biggest city, a surge in deaths has overwhelmed health care and burial services. Scenes of bodies on sidewalks and desperate families serve as a warning for the region.

Beware of the second wave of COVID-19 – The Lancet

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which began in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, has spread to 203 countries as of March 30, 2020, and has been officially declared a global pandemic.With unprecedented public health interventions, local transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) appears now to have been contained in China. Multiple countries are now experiencing the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic; thus, gaining an understanding of how these interventions prevented the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in China is urgent.

How does COVID-19 invade our bodies so easily? – University of Toronto

To understand how COVID-19 enters the body and does its damage, a team of top researchers from universities, hospitals and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) at the Centre for Research and Application in Fluidic Technologies, or CRAFT (a collaborative centre between the University of Toronto and the NRC), are adapting an approach developed by U of T’s Milica Radisic, Axel Guenther and Edmond Young to create miniscule models of the nose, mouth, eyes and lungs.

Smokers have more ACE2 receptors making it easier for SARS-CoV-2 to infect – MedicalNews.net

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) early this year. Its symptoms range from none through mild to critically severe, leading to death in a few. Most severe cases have been reported in people over the age of 55 years with underlying medical illnesses such as COPD. The current study was motivated by the desire to identify increased levels of ACE2 in the bronchial epithelium of the lungs. [Related Study]

COVID-19 pandemic unlikely to ebb as weather warms – CIDRAP

Even if warmth were unfavorable for COVID-19, “given the lack of host immunity globally, this reduction in transmission efficiency may not lead to a significant reduction in disease spread without the concomitant adoption of major public health interventions,” they wrote. “Given that countries currently in ‘summer’ climates, such as Australia and Iran, are experiencing rapid virus spread, a decrease in cases with increases in humidity and temperature elsewhere should not be assumed.” [Related Paper]

Most New York Coronavirus Cases Came From Europe, Genomes Show – NYT

New research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that travelers brought in the virus mainly from Europe, not Asia.