Tulane Outbreak Daily | April 10, 2020

Featured Headlines

NAS letter suggests ‘normal breathing’ can expel coronavirus – Science

On 31 March, University of California, San Diego, atmospheric chemist Kimberly Prather set off an online debate by saying people should stop surfing during the coronavirus outbreak. Her reasoning: Viruses can travel long distances if carried by wind. “I ignited a bomb,” Prather says, as commenters pushed back, pointing to official assurances that the novel coronavirus is transmitted only short distances in respiratory droplets from a sneeze or cough. [Related document/National Academies] [Related NEJM Study] [Related Pre-Pub study] [Related Pre-Pub Study]

False-negative COVID-19 test results may lead to false sense of security – Science Daily

A new article calls attention to the risk posed by overreliance on COVID-19 testing to make clinical and public health decisions. The sensitivity of reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing and overall test performance characteristics have not been reported clearly or consistently in medical literature, the article says.

One Way to Potentially Track Covid-19? Sewage Surveillance – Wired

NASA SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG, A graduate student at Stanford, does not have much experience as a sewage courier—normally, they’re busy studying genetics. But as with many of us, the pandemic is upending routines. Since early March, Sinnott-Armstrong has been making the rounds of the Bay Area’s wastewater treatment plants, collecting samples that may offer clues to Covid-19’s spread around the region.

‘People just didn’t care’: How the Ruby Princess cruise ship became a deathtrap – Washington Post

A health questionnaire had to be completed for every passenger before they could board. As crew members sifted through piles of paper, they had to break the news to some international passengers that they would not get to see New Zealand’s fjords or mountains.

Who gets hospitalized for Covid-19? Report shows differences by race and sex – Stat News

An analysis published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention includes hospitalization data from a surveillance network tracking Covid-19 in 14 states — covering roughly 10% of the U.S. population — including statistics by race and sex. Reports from a small number of cities and states have suggested that the new disease is affecting Black Americans especially hard, prompting doctors, lawyers, public health officials, and lawmakers to call for a national breakdown of cases by race and ethnicity so that medical care can be matched to the greatest need. [Related CDC Report]

Iceland’s ‘Test Everyone’ Goal Has Skeptics, but It May Be Working – NYT

Critics say the Nordic island country should also have closed all of its schools and stopped tourism. But the government says it believes that new cases have peaked.

Why it’s too early to start giving out “immunity passports – MIT Technology Review

Coronavirus antibody testing needs to get a lot better, and so does our understanding of immunity, before people can start circulating freely.

How do SARS and MERS compare with COVID-19? – Medical News Today

While the world is firmly in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, we take a look back at SARS and MERS and their underlying pathogens, which are also coronaviruses.

What Makes This Coronavirus So Unique? A Look at the Virology of SARS-CoV-2 – Mass General Research Institute

Seven forms of coronavirus are known to affect humans. Four of them cause diseases similar to the common cold (229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1) and the other three originated in animals and cause more severe diseases (SARS, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2).

Institute of Human Virology and Italian Scientists Identify Unique Mutations in SARS-CoV-2 Found in Europe and North America – Business Wire

The Institute of Human Virology (IHV) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and scientists from Trieste, Italy announced today the characterization of a novel mutation in the RNA polymerase of certain viral strains of SARS-CoV-2 carried by patients located in Europe and North America. In addition, different patterns of mutations were identified in viral strains corresponding to different geographical areas. The data were obtained by analyzing more than 200 widespread full-length genomic sequences from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) databases from December 2019 to March 2020. [Related Study]