Day: October 5, 2020

The list of treatments President Donald Trump has received for his coronavirus infection range from experimental to over the counter. Here are the four most notable.  Antibody therapy Trump received an infusion of antibodies on Friday, the White House said. These germ-blocking proteins aim to prevent the coronavirus from entering cells and causing infection. Our immune systems normally make antibodies on their own, but it can take weeks for them to appear in response to a new infection such as the coronavirus. Injecting lab-grown antibodies offers a shortcut. Drugmaker Regeneron produced the dual-antibody cocktail Trump received. The therapy is experimental and has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Trump received it through the company’s “compassionate use” program, which Regeneron said is “intended for patients with serious or life-threatening conditions who do not have any viable or available treatment options.”  The product is one of two antibody therapies undergoing late-stage clinical trials. Both Regeneron and the other product’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly, recently announced encouraging results in press releases, but their data have not been reviewed by other experts.  “It’s, I think, a promising therapy. It’s not proven,” said Rajesh Gandhi, an infectious diseases physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Gandhi helped write COVID-19 treatment guidelines for the National Institutes of Health and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Remdesivir While antibody therapy is being tested for patients with mild disease, Trump received an antiviral drug on Saturday that is normally given to patients in worsening condition and which was originally developed to treat another viral disease, Ebola.  Trump’s oxygen levels dropped below a critical threshold sometime Saturday.  “That’s where the antiviral remdesivir has its greatest role,” Gandhi said.  Manufactured by drugmaker Gilead, remdesivir is the first new anti-coronavirus drug to receive emergency use authorization from the FDA.  The drug works by interfering with the machinery the virus uses to make copies of its genetic instructions.  It is not a panacea, however. It has not been shown to lower death rates, for example. It shortened hospital stays in one study. Another study found patients receiving remdesivir fared better than those getting a placebo, but not by much. Supplies of the drug have improved since the spring, Gandhi said, and the company is ramping up production.  Dexamethasone The fact that Trump was given dexamethasone suggests that at least at some point his condition was serious.  “In mild disease, we don’t give dexamethasone because it doesn’t help people who aren’t on oxygen and it may actually be harmful,” Gandhi said.  The cheap, widely available steroid does not work on the virus itself, but instead treats the side effects caused by the body’s response to the virus.  “That inflammatory response is trying to battle off the virus,” Gandhi said. “but sometimes it can itself lead to low lung function.”  The drug saved lives in a study. It lowered the death rate by about a third in patients on ventilators and by 18% in patients on supplemental oxygen. It didn’t help people who were less sick, however.  Famotidine Trump also took the over-the-counter antacid famotidine, which goes by the brand name Pepcid, but the reason is not clear.  It’s not uncommon for a patient being hospitalized to receive an antacid, Gandhi said.  “It’s a stressful time, and people are having heartburn or other symptoms,” he noted. On the other hand, “a few months ago, people had wondered about whether famotidine might have a role for treating COVID-19,” Gandhi added. “But the evidence for that is still lacking.” Trump in the past has supported unproven treatments, including the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. A U.S. National Institutes of Health study ended early because it found no benefit from taking the drug.  Famotidine is “not a harmful drug. I could walk out and get it from my pharmacy,” Gandhi said. “But we just don’t know if it works.”  
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U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday updated its guidance saying COVID-19 can sometimes be spread by airborne transmission.It said some infections can be spread by exposure to the virus in small droplets and particles, or aerosols, that can linger in the air for minutes to hours. Monday’s update acknowledges published reports that showed limited, uncommon circumstances where people with COVID-19 infected others who were more than 6 feet away or shortly after the COVID-19-positive person left an area, the agency said.In these instances, the CDC said transmission occurred in poorly ventilated and enclosed spaces that often involved activities that caused heavier breathing, like singing or exercise.Last month, the CDC published — and then took down — its guidance warning of possible airborne transmission of the novel coronavirus. 
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The World Health Organization says roughly one in 10 people around the world may have been infected with the coronavirus.  The head of the health emergencies program at the World Health Organization, Michael Ryan, said Monday that the agency’s “best estimates” indicate 10 percent of the world’s population could have contracted the virus.  That estimate, which would amount to more than 760 million people, is more than 20 times the number of confirmed cases in the world and would still leave more than 90 percent of the population susceptible to the virus. Speaking to a special session of the WHO’s 34-member executive board in Geneva, Ryan said the figures vary between countries but the estimate means “the vast majority of the world remains at risk,” adding that “we are now heading into a difficult period.” The number of confirmed worldwide cases tallied by the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center surpassed 35 million Monday, a week after surpassing 1 million coronavirus deaths. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside the BBC headquarters, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in London, October 4, 2020.Several European nations hit their own pandemic milestones with Germany reporting Monday its total confirmed cases exceed 300,000, Britain recording 500,000 cases, and Spain becoming the first European country to surpass 800,000 total coronavirus cases. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought on Monday to play down a failure in his country’s testing data system that did not initially show 16,000 coronavirus test results. “To be frank, I think that the slightly lower numbers that we’d seen didn’t really reflect where we thought that the disease was likely to go,” Johnson said. Also Monday, Britain’s Cineworld, the second-largest movie theater chain in the world, announced it would temporarily close its British and U.S. theaters. Coronavirus lockdown orders and restrictions on group gatherings have badly hurt the movie industry. Cineworld said the move would affect 45,000 jobs.  To address broader job losses in the country’s economy, the British government on Monday launched a new $300 million program aimed at helping people get back to work.  In the United States, about two-thirds of U.S. states reported an increase in new coronavirus cases in the past week, mostly in the West and Midwest, according to data tracked by the Washington Post. The United States has recorded more than 7.4 million cases of coronavirus and nearly 210,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.  A man walks with his family, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020, in the Borough Park neighborhood of New York. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he’s ordering schools in certain New York City neighborhoods closed within a day to slow a flare-up of the coronavirus.New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered schools in several coronavirus “hot spots” around the state to close beginning on Tuesday, including parts of the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. U.S. President Donald Trump remained hospitalized Monday after testing positive for COVID-19 last week.  In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday that restrictions in the city of Auckland would be lifted Wednesday.  The measures were put in place to stamp out an outbreak in the country’s largest city in August, which threatened to reverse New Zealand’s progress toward eliminating the coronavirus.  In France, starting Tuesday, Paris bars will close for two weeks and restaurants will begin using new sanitary protocols, according to the prime minister’s office.   France on Sunday reported 12,565 new cases of coronavirus, while 893 COVID-19 patients had been admitted into intensive care over the past week.   Iceland’s government announced new coronavirus restrictions Monday following a spike in cases. The government ordered bars, gyms and entertainment venues to close and sharply reduced the number of people allowed to gather in public. In Russia, Moscow’s Ministry of Education announced that city schools would switch to a distance learning format as cases have climbed to more than 10,000 per day in Russia. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced Monday she is self-isolating after attending a meeting last week with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. Von der Leyen said she tested negative on Thursday and would be tested again Monday.  
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More than six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, a handful of U.S. states are starting to roll out apps that promise to tell people if they’ve been exposed to someone with the virus — without revealing personal information.  Now with the White House struggling with a COVID-19 outbreak, the goal to figure out a way to quickly notify people has gained more urgency.  The arrival of these apps in the U.S. comes as communities are opening in fits and starts. The hope is that by using technology to notify people they’ve been exposed to the virus, the apps will enhance the ability of local health officials to stem the spread of COVID-19.It’s an idea being tested — in real time.  But will the apps make a difference?“We don’t know yet,” said Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. “That’s part of what’s both interesting and frustrating about where we are. This is an unproven technology. It’s being rolled out in the midst of a public health emergency. There’s a lot of learning as we go as a result.”Notifying people, anonymouslyWhile state apps vary, the primary approach being used in the U.S. is based on technology from Apple and Google:A person downloads an app created by their state health department. Using the person’s mobile phone technology, the app begins collecting anonymized information about other phones it comes near — which phones, how close and for how long. That information of the “digital handshake” is stored on the person’s phone.If a person tests positive for COVID-19, health officials give that person a code to put into the app. An alert then goes out to others who have the app who have been near that person in the prior two weeks.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 11 MB480p | 16 MB540p | 20 MB720p | 39 MB1080p | 90 MBOriginal | 285 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioTwo approachesCovid apps for mobile phones first appeared in Asia, in China and South Korea. There, officials used a phone’s location information to track people.It’s an approach being used in other parts of the world. In Israel, the government is scouring people’s mobile phone records to locate those who’ve been near someone who has tested positive in order to possibly quarantine those people. In Turkey, a person’s mobile phone software tracks their movements and who they’ve been near.But approaches that use a phone’s location information raise privacy questions, said Megan DeBlois, a systems security graduate student who helped to create the COVID-19 App Tracker, a website that keeps track of Covid apps around the world. “There are too many apps that request far too much,” she said.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 16 MB720p | 32 MB1080p | 68 MBOriginal | 203 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioAnonymous usersU.S. states are creating their own apps, based on the approach offered by Apple and Google, which made it a condition of using their technology that the COVID-19 apps couldn’t use mobile phone location data.That privacy requirement helps build people’s trust in the apps, said Sarah Kreps, a government professor at Cornell University who is studying COVID-19, technology and public sentiment. Knowing someone who has been infected by the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 also makes people more willing to try a COVID-19 app, she said.“In order for these apps to be effective, you need to have enough of a critical mass of people who are willing to download and use the app,” she said. “And short of mandating that, as was done in China, then you need a kind of public trust.”So far in Virginia and other states with COVID-19 apps, people recently interviewed appeared open to using the apps.“I’m trying to be personally conscious, responsible, for what I should be doing,” said Mike, who was recently on a bike path in Northern Virginia. “This was billed as something you can trust, and I accept it.”“I read up on it and honestly I feel pretty good about it,” said Hayes, a graduate student at University of Arizona who planned to download the CovidWatch app. “They’ve done a lot of stuff to avoid privacy issues. I think it sounds pretty legit.”Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 15 MB720p | 30 MB1080p | 57 MBOriginal | 297 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioLimits of privacyBut anonymous COVID-19 apps come with a trade-off: They limit the app’s usefulness to public health officials. If a person’s identity and location aren’t known, the app gives scarce information about an ongoing outbreak.   Joyce Schroeder heads the molecular and cellular biology department at the University of Arizona and has been the lead in developing CovidWatch, an Arizona-based app that doesn’t collect individuals’ private information.That’s “a good thing,” she said. “We want to have our privacy. But it’s also a frustrating thing when you’re trying to collect data on something and find out if it’s working. There’s very little data that we can collect on the app.”Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 11 MB480p | 16 MB540p | 19 MB720p | 39 MB1080p | 74 MBOriginal | 259 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioStates working togetherOutside the U.S., countries’ health departments have been issuing nationwide apps. In the U.S., the federal government isn’t doing its own app so states have contracted with app developers to create their own.So far, nine states have issued COVID-19 notification apps based on the Apple-Google technology with more states working on their own, according to a review by 9to5Mac. In its latest software update, Apple installed something called Exposure Notification on mobile devices so that states can more easily start notifying people if they’ve been exposed. Users can turn it on or off. Google is expected to issue the same Android update soon.Working with Microsoft, the Association of Public Health Laboratories recently launched a “national key server,” which will make it possible to use an app from one state while visiting other states.While it’s too early to say, these efforts to use technology may make a difference in the fight against Covid, said Johns Hopkins’ Kahn.“It’s an opportunity,” he said, “to help steer the positive use of a technology during what are obviously very challenging times.”Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 8 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 16 MB720p | 36 MB1080p | 65 MBOriginal | 76 MB Embed” />Copy Download Audio
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More than six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, a handful of U.S. states are starting to roll out apps that promise to tell people if they’ve been exposed to someone with the virus — without revealing personal information.  Now with the White House struggling with a COVID-19 outbreak, the goal to figure out a way to quickly notify people has gained more urgency.  The arrival of these apps in the U.S. comes as communities are opening in fits and starts. The hope is that by using technology to notify people they’ve been exposed to the virus, the apps will enhance the ability of local health officials to stem the spread of COVID-19.It’s an idea being tested — in real time.  But will the apps make a difference?“We don’t know yet,” said Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. “That’s part of what’s both interesting and frustrating about where we are. This is an unproven technology. It’s being rolled out in the midst of a public health emergency. There’s a lot of learning as we go as a result.”Notifying people, anonymouslyWhile state apps vary, the primary approach being used in the U.S. is based on technology from Apple and Google:A person downloads an app created by their state health department. Using the person’s mobile phone technology, the app begins collecting anonymized information about other phones it comes near — which phones, how close and for how long. That information of the “digital handshake” is stored on the person’s phone.If a person tests positive for COVID-19, health officials give that person a code to put into the app. An alert then goes out to others who have the app who have been near that person in the prior two weeks.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 11 MB480p | 16 MB540p | 20 MB720p | 39 MB1080p | 90 MBOriginal | 285 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioTwo approachesCovid apps for mobile phones first appeared in Asia, in China and South Korea. There, officials used a phone’s location information to track people.It’s an approach being used in other parts of the world. In Israel, the government is scouring people’s mobile phone records to locate those who’ve been near someone who has tested positive in order to possibly quarantine those people. In Turkey, a person’s mobile phone software tracks their movements and who they’ve been near.But approaches that use a phone’s location information raise privacy questions, said Megan DeBlois, a systems security graduate student who helped to create the COVID-19 App Tracker, a website that keeps track of Covid apps around the world. “There are too many apps that request far too much,” she said.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 16 MB720p | 32 MB1080p | 68 MBOriginal | 203 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioAnonymous usersU.S. states are creating their own apps, based on the approach offered by Apple and Google, which made it a condition of using their technology that the COVID-19 apps couldn’t use mobile phone location data.That privacy requirement helps build people’s trust in the apps, said Sarah Kreps, a government professor at Cornell University who is studying COVID-19, technology and public sentiment. Knowing someone who has been infected by the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 also makes people more willing to try a COVID-19 app, she said.“In order for these apps to be effective, you need to have enough of a critical mass of people who are willing to download and use the app,” she said. “And short of mandating that, as was done in China, then you need a kind of public trust.”So far in Virginia and other states with COVID-19 apps, people recently interviewed appeared open to using the apps.“I’m trying to be personally conscious, responsible, for what I should be doing,” said Mike, who was recently on a bike path in Northern Virginia. “This was billed as something you can trust, and I accept it.”“I read up on it and honestly I feel pretty good about it,” said Hayes, a graduate student at University of Arizona who planned to download the CovidWatch app. “They’ve done a lot of stuff to avoid privacy issues. I think it sounds pretty legit.”Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 15 MB720p | 30 MB1080p | 57 MBOriginal | 297 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioLimits of privacyBut anonymous COVID-19 apps come with a trade-off: They limit the app’s usefulness to public health officials. If a person’s identity and location aren’t known, the app gives scarce information about an ongoing outbreak.   Joyce Schroeder heads the molecular and cellular biology department at the University of Arizona and has been the lead in developing CovidWatch, an Arizona-based app that doesn’t collect individuals’ private information.That’s “a good thing,” she said. “We want to have our privacy. But it’s also a frustrating thing when you’re trying to collect data on something and find out if it’s working. There’s very little data that we can collect on the app.”States working togetherOutside the U.S., countries’ health departments have been issuing nationwide apps. In the U.S., the federal government isn’t doing its own app so states have contracted with app developers to create their own.So far, nine states have issued COVID-19 notification apps based on the Apple-Google technology with more states working on their own, according to a review by 9to5Mac. In its latest software update, Apple installed something called Exposure Notification on mobile devices so that states can more easily start notifying people if they’ve been exposed. Users can turn it on or off. Google is expected to issue the same Android update soon.Working with Microsoft, the Association of Public Health Laboratories recently launched a “national key server,” which will make it possible to use an app from one state while visiting other states.While it’s too early to say, these efforts to use technology may make a difference in the fight against Covid, said Johns Hopkins’ Kahn.“It’s an opportunity,” he said, “to help steer the positive use of a technology during what are obviously very challenging times.”Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 8 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 16 MB720p | 36 MB1080p | 65 MBOriginal | 76 MB Embed” />Copy Download Audio
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With tens of thousands of new coronavirus cases daily in the U.S., states are launching digital apps that alert people if they have been exposed to someone who tested positive for the virus. Virginia recently rolled out a COVID exposure app that became instantly popular with residents. Health officials are trying to determine whether such apps will work to help slow virus transmission. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.Producers: Julie Taboh, Adam Greenbaum. Videographers: Adam Greenbaum, VPM, Skype, VDH.
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The 2020 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to scientists Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice of the United States and Michael Houghton of Britain for their “seminal discoveries” into the identification of Hepatitis C virus. The three scientists “have made a decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world,” the Nobel committee said in a statement.The advances have helped lead to new ways treating and curing Hepatitis C.“The discovery of Hepatitis C virus revealed the cause of the remaining cases of chronic hepatitis” after the discoveries of Hepatitis A and B viruses, “and made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives,” the statement said.Born in 1935 in New York, Harvey Alter graduated with a medical degree at the University of Rochester Medical School. Alter worked for a long time as a senior investigator at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.Michael Houghton was born in Britain in the 1950s.  He received his doctorate degree in virology at King’s College London. Houghton is currently a Canada Excellence Research Chair in Virology at the University of Alberta, among other titles and accolades.Born in 1952 in Sacramento, California, Charles Rice received his doctorate degree in 1981 from the California Institute of Technology. He has also worked at Washington University School of Medicine as a researcher and professor. He joined the Rockefeller University in New York and from 2001 to 2018 he was the scientific and executive director of the Center for the Study of Hepatitis C.  Rice is still active there.This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine is the 111th prize in the category that has been awarded since 1901.The laureates will each receive an equal share of the $1.1 million cash award.The Nobel Prizes for physics, chemistry, literature, and peace also will be announced this week. The prize for economic science will be announced next Monday.
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