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Even Mild Covid-19 Infections Can Make People Sick for Months – Bloomberg

Two-thirds of patients who had a mild-to-moderate case of Covid-19 reported symptoms 60 days after falling ill, when more than a third still felt sick or in a worse condition than when their coronavirus infection began. Prolonged symptoms were more likely among patients aged 40 to 60 years and those who required hospitalization, according to staff at Tours University Hospital, who followed 150 non-critical patients from March to June.

Covid-19 neurological symptoms emerge in most hospitalized patients, study says – CNN

The study “highlights the high frequency and range of neurologic manifestations, which occurred in more than four fifths of Covid‐19 patients hospitalized in our hospital network system,” the researchers wrote in the study, published in the journal Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology on Monday. [Related Study]

The CDC has finally acknowledged that the coronavirus can be airborne – MIT Technology Review

The evidence that the virus can be spread by tiny particles lingering in the air has been mounting for months. The news: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its guidelines to acknowledge that the coronavirus can be spread by tiny particles that linger in the air. The agency said it made the decision because of the mounting evidence that people with covid-19 can infect people even if they are more than six feet away, or shortly after the infected person left the area. These cases all occurred in poorly ventilated and enclosed spaces, and often involved activities that cause heavier breathing, like singing or exercise. However, “the CDC continues to believe, based on current science, that people are more likely to become infected the longer and closer they are to a person with COVID-19,” it said in a statement. The long-coming update could help to finally clarify the situation after the CDC published guidance acknowledging airborne transmission and then suddenly retracted it last month.

Hospitals That Don’t Report COVID-19 Data Daily Will Get Warning Letter – NPR

The enforcement timeline starts Wednesday, said Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a call with reporters Tuesday. CMS issued a rule in early September requiring hospitals to report full, daily COVID-19 data to the federal government, including such information as the number of patients and ventilators they have. On Wednesday, CMS is sending letters to hospitals across America alerting many that they have not been in compliance.

This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic – The Atlantic

Why, for instance, was there such an enormous death toll in northern Italy, but not the rest of the country? Just three contiguous regions in northern Italy have 25,000 of the country’s nearly 36,000 total deaths; just one region, Lombardy, has about 17,000 deaths. Almost all of these were concentrated in the first few months of the outbreak. What happened in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in April, when so many died so quickly that bodies were abandoned in the sidewalks and streets?* Why, in the spring of 2020, did so few cities account for a substantial portion of global deaths, while many others with similar density, weather, age distribution, and travel patterns were spared? What can we really learn from Sweden, hailed as a great success by some because of its low case counts and deaths as the rest of Europe experiences a second wave, and as a big failure by others because it did not lock down and suffered excessive death rates earlier in the pandemic? Why did widespread predictions of catastrophe in Japan not bear out? The baffling examples go on.