Tulane Outbreak Daily | May 15, 2020

Featured Headlines

CDC Issues Tools To Guide Reopening Of Schools, Businesses, Transit – NPR

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a set of documents on Thursday designed to provide guidance on how child care centers, schools, restaurants and bars, and other establishments could begin the process of reopening in the face of the coronavirus. The direction comes after calls from lawmakers and state officials mounted for the CDC to weigh in on how regions should reopen their economies. CDC Documents: Workplace, Child Care Centers, Schools, Restaurants and Bars, Youth Camps, Mass Transit

This is what we know so far about how covid-19 affects the rest of the body – MIT Tech Review

Covid-19 is primarily a respiratory infection that attacks the lungs, making it harder for patients to breathe and get enough oxygen to the rest of the body. Pneumonia and other respiratory conditions can quickly set in, eventually leading to death if the body cannot fight off the infection. But after over four months of cases, doctors are getting a more detailed look at some of the unexpected ways the virus hits the human body beyond the nasal cavity, throat, and lungs. Here are a few new things we’ve learned in recent weeks:

COVID-19: First bowel imaging study implicates blood clots – Medical News Today

People with COVID-19 often experience gastrointestinal symptoms. An analysis of abdominal scans suggests that blood clots in small arteries may starve bowel tissue of oxygen in the most severely ill patients. [Related study]

Coronavirus May Pose a New Risk to Younger Patients: Strokes – New York Times

Doctors have reported a flurry of cases in Covid-19 patients — including a healthy 27-year-old emergency medical technician in Queens. After a month in the hospital, he is learning to walk again. [Pre-Print Paper]

Places without social distancing have 35 times more potential coronavirus spread, study finds – Washington Post

For social distancing policies that lasted at least 16 to 20 days, the daily rate of infection dropped by more than 9 percentage points, according to the study. Policies lasting 15 days and less also saw declines in the daily infection rate, researchers found. Such social distancing measures, mandated by 95 percent of the country, include shelter-in-place orders, school closures, bans on large events and the closure of gyms, bars and restaurants.[Related Study]

Images Advance Understanding of SARS-CoV-2 Gut Infection Activity – LabMate

Some of the largest and highest resolution images recorded of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic, have been published online by scientists at the University of Dundee and the EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI).

Countries Begin Large-Scale Screening for SARS-CoV-2 in Sewage – The Scientist

cientists in Spain are expecting to begin regularly analyzing sewage for traces of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, The Scientist has learned. Pending budget approval from AXA or national funds in Spain, researchers will carry out the work for at least a whole year, having signed a special agreement with authorities in the Valencian Community, a region on Spain’s eastern coast that is home to nearly 5 million people.

How Sewer Science Could Ease Testing Pressure and Track COVID-19 – NYT

The science of sewage surveillance could be deployed in countries across the world to help monitor the spread of national epidemics of COVID-19 while reducing the need for mass testing, scientists say.

New from the FLARE Team:

• Cats and bats and pangolins: the origin of SARS-CoV-2
• Mechanical Ventilation in the Era of COVID-19: An Ongoing Debate
• Can a CT Tell You How to Ventilate in COVID-19?

Loud talking could leave coronavirus in the air for up to 14 minutes – MIT Tech Review

Thousands of droplets from the mouths of people who are talking loudly can stay in the air for between eight and 14 minutes before disappearing, according to a new study. The research, conducted by a team with the US National Institutes of Health and published in PNAS Wednesday, could have significant impact on our understanding of covid-19 transmission.

The Disproportionate Impact of Covid-19 on Black Health Care Workers in the U.S. – Harvard Business Review

Grieving families, social distancing, economic disruption: In many respects, coronavirus has changed the world. But it also has exposed the startlingly consistent toll that catastrophe exacts from black communities. The old adage that “when white America catches a cold, black America gets pneumonia” has become a chilling reality. [Related data]

Disease modelers are wary of reopening the country. Here’s how they arrive at their verdict. – Washington Post

As governors across the country reopen their states’ economies, policymakers are relying on disease models for help in predicting where new coronavirus cases may surge as stay-at-home orders expire.

Covid-19 update: 2 US pork processors change course – Pig Progress

In the United States in recent weeks, temporary packing plant closures due to Covid-19 outbreaks among workers have caused widespread processing backlogs. Experts put the number of hogs ready for slaughter (but not able to be processed) at the end of April at 1 million. Many hogs had to be euthanised. In the state of Minnesota, reported AgWeek, a large site was created to receive thousands of dead hogs each day for composting.