Tulane Outbreak

Tulane Outbreak Daily – August 6, 2020

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Featured Headlines
The governor of Japan’s Aichi Prefecture has announced a regional “state of emergency” seeking to curb the coronavirus
On a bright October day last fall, Ebony Brown-Olaseinde and her husband, Segun Olaseinde, found out that their longtime dream had finally been realized: They were going to be parents. After three years spent trying to conceive, they had succeeded through in vitro fertilization — and they soon learned that their twins, a boy and a girl, were due in June 2020.
Donald Ainslie Henderson, known as D.A. to his colleagues, was the Babe Ruth of public health. As a young epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he cut his teeth during the 1957 H2N2 flu pandemic, which originated in Guizhou, China, and killed more than a million people before it could be curbed by a vaccine. In the nineteen-sixties and seventies, he led the effort to eradicate smallpox, finding clusters of people infected with the disease around the globe, tracing and isolating others who’d caught it, and providing vaccines to some of the world’s poorest children. It’s thanks to D.A. that we can now speak about smallpox in the past tense.
A randomized, controlled clinical trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of a treatment regimen consisting of the antiviral remdesivir plus the immunomodulator interferon beta-1a in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has begun. The study, called the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial 3 (ACTT 3), is anticipated to enroll more than 1,000 hospitalized adults with COVID-19 at as many as 100 sites in the United States and abroad. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is sponsoring the trial.
Widespread use of face masks could help economies reopen safely from coronavirus lockdowns when combined with continued social distancing and other prevention measures, according to a new study.
The role of children in driving transmission isn’t clear, and what we know about past respiratory infections isn’t a lot of help. But, as Bloomberg senior editor Jason Gale finds out, some clearer trends are emerging.
In the latest global COVID-19 developments, the fatality count passed the 700,000 mark as the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the deployment of a surge team to South Africa, the continent’s hardest-hit country, and Australian health officials took more steps to limit spread from its hot spot in Victoria state.
Task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said there are encouraging signs across the South, a region hit hard by a surging pandemic in recent weeks, but she outlined new areas of concern in a private phone call with state and local officials Wednesday, according to a recording of the call obtained by the journalism non-profit Center for Public Integrity.

Clinical Considerations

CDC Launches Neuro-COVID Unit to Determine Causality and Frequency of Neuro-COVID – Neurology Today

Neurologist James J. Sejvar, MD, discusses what’s known to date about COVID-19 and the launch of the CDC’s new neuro-COVID-19 unit. AAN member James J. Sejvar, MD, a neurologist and epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has been working on COVID-19 since early January when the first reports of illness were announced in China. Actively monitoring and tracking reports of neurologic illness related to COVID-19, the CDC has recently launched a neuro-COVID unit and placed him in charge. Neurology Today spoke to him in early July to learn about the activities currently underway at his unit and to get an update on what the CDC has learned since the pandemic began.

Many COVID-19 patients lost their sense of smell. Will they get it back? – National Geographic

While scientists work to unravel the basic biology of the nose, some patients are finding positive effects from smell training.

Young Children Found to Have Greater Potential to Spread COVID-19 – Clinical Advisor

As the start of the school year approaches, researchers sough to analyze the transmission potential of SARS-CoV-2 among children to better understand risks associated with re-opening schools. Results of this analysis found that children aged <5 years were found to have significantly greater levels of viral nucleic acid (RNA) in their nasopharyngeal swab results compared with older children and adults, suggesting that young children have an increased potential to spread COVID-19 in daycare and school settings, according to a research letter published in JAMA Pediatrics. [Related JAMA Study]

COVID-19 Patients May Develop Skin Rashes And Discoloration, Studies Find – CBS Baltimore

As COVID-19 started to spread across the United States earlier this year, dermatology offices began to see suspicious signs on some patients’ skin: Red or purple toes, itchy hives, mottled bumps on fingers, a lacy red rash that spread across legs and arms. [Related JAMA Study]

Welcome Back to Germany. Now Take Your Free Virus Test. – New York Times

The country’s capacity to make testing efficient, affordable and available has distinguished it. Now, to head off a potential second wave, it’s testing anyone returning from a “hot zone” on entry.

Official Reporting for August 6, 2020

World Health Organization

SITREP #198

Confirmed Cases: 18,354,342

Deaths: 696,147

ECDC

Confirmed Cases: 18,793,522

Deaths: 707,715

Johns Hopkins

Confirmed Cases: 18,897,857

Deaths: 710,136

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Total cases: 4,802,491
Total deaths: 157,631

Surveillance Headlines

UNITED STATES

Illinois: COVID-19 situation in Southern Illinois ‘worse than in Chicago’ – Southern IL News

Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Lakefront Restaurants Can Reopen – NBC News

Ohio: 26 new COVID-19 coronavirus cases reported in Cleveland, all involving patients in their 20s or younger – Cleveland.com

Colorado: Places Of Worship Have Become A Worrying Source Of Coronavirus Outbreaks – Colorado Public Radio

New York: NYC Imposes Traveler Checkpoints to Enforce Covid Quarantine – Bloomberg

Oregon: Coronavirus in Oregon: State reports 299 new cases and five deaths – OregonLive

Alaska: Reports 59 new COVID-19 cases; Alaska now has nearly 3,000 active cases – Anchorage News

Mississippi: Over 100 students quarantined in Mississippi school district after several individuals tested positive for Covid-19 – CNN

Georgia: Georgia passes 200,000 coronavirus cases – Atlanta Journal Constitution

EUROPE

France: Records two-month high in cases – BBC

ASIA

Philippines: Passes Indonesia as Worst Southeast Asia Outbreak – Bloomberg

AUSTRALIA

Science and Tech

Your Old Radiator Is a Pandemic-Fighting Weapon – Bloomberg

Turn-of-the-century faith in ventilation to combat disease pushed engineers to design steam heating systems that still overheat apartments today.

Study reveals changes in transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 due to D614G spike mutation – Medical News.net

A recent research endeavor from the UK indicates that spike 614G variant of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) increases in frequency relative to 614D variant in a selective advantage manner – but without higher coronavirus disease (COVID-19) mortality rates. [Related Preprint]

Vaccine

Covid-19 Vaccine Makers Signal Prices – Wall Street Journal

Deals between governments and drugmakers J&J and Moderna peg charges at $10 to $37 a dose

Published Research

Cutaneous Manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 Infection – Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology

Broad neutralization of SARS-related viruses by human monoclonal antibodies – Science

Central nervous system complications associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection: integrative concepts of pathophysiology and case reports – Journal of Neuroinflammation

Pre-Pub (not yet peer reviewed, should not be regarded as conclusive)

Coping in Quarantine

How the 1918 Pandemic Got Meme-ified in Jokes, Songs and Poems – Smithsonian

In newspapers across the country, the public dealt with the heartache of the moment by turning to humor. An example of pandemic poetry below…

“The street crowd surged—but where to go?
The bar? The concert? Movies? No!
Old Influenza’s locked the door to Pleasure Land.
Oh what a bore!”