Coronavirus

there may never be an effective vaccine.

Officials in Okinawa on Monday said at least 94 U.S. service members at bases on the Japanese island have tested positive for the new coronavirus, raising long-standing tension between the local population and the American military. The surge represents the biggest number of cases the U.S. military has reported in Asia since the COVID-19 pandemic started, and local officials are skeptical that U.S. virus containment policies are sufficient.

More than half of the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan are based in Okinawa. Three U.S. bases in Okinawa have confirmed infections: U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Camp Hansen and Camp Kinser, stretching along a 25-mile swath on the island's southern half.

Local reports say Fourth of July parties held both on and off the bases — attended by hundreds if not thousands of personnel and employees - are at the root of the new outbreak.

Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki expressed anger over the weekend, saying he was "shocked" by the size of the outbreak and had "concern that a second wave has hit."

He also cast doubt on whether the U.S. was doing enough to stop the spread of the deadly disease on the island.

"I can't help but feel serious doubts about U.S. measures against infections," he told reporters.

Both The Washington Post and NBC News said they received statements from the White House trying to discredit Fauci, who has given bleak interviews and issued dire warnings in recent days as the number of infections climb to record-breaking levels. The doctor’s assessments have stood in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s push to reopen the country while claiming states with troubling levels of infections are “going to be fine.”

“Several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,” the unnamed official said in a statement to the outlets. The aide included a list of nearly a dozen comments Fauci made early during the pandemic, before scientists developed an understanding of the novel virus.

Fauci is “never in the Oval [Office] anymore,” the Post reported, noting the last time he briefed Trump was the first week of June.

The move to undercut one of the nation’s touchstones for scientific wisdom amid the pandemic is significant. The New York Times noted the list of Fauci’s comments included incomplete quotes and was “laid out in the style of a campaign’s opposition research document.”

Fauci has taken a more aggressive tone in recent weeks amid skyrocketing infection rates in states. On Thursday he said the country was not doing well in its fight against the virus, blaming a divisive culture that has politicized efforts to stymie infections including the use of masks in public.

New York City recorded no new coronavirus deaths in a 24-hour period for the first time in nearly four months on Saturday, according to preliminary data released by health officials.

The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reported the news on Sunday, and many officials were quick to note it was the first day since March 13 that no one had died in the city due to the pandemic. The agency also said there were no confirmed deaths the day prior, but noted two fatalities were probable cases. The data is preliminary and could be adjusted at a later date.

Local lawmakers said that while the pandemic was far from over, the milestone was “extraordinary.”

“NYC has lost 23,283 souls to this pandemic. But for the first time since March, we lost none today,” New York City council member Mark Levine wrote on Twitter. “Thank you to the healthcare workers, essential workers and everyone who made this possible.”

Covid-19 may also be much worse the second time around. During his first infection, my patient experienced a mild cough and sore throat. His second infection, in contrast, was marked by a high fever, shortness of breath, and hypoxia, resulting in multiple trips to the hospital.

Recent reports and conversations with physician colleagues suggest my patient is not alone. Two patients in New Jersey, for instance, appear to have contracted Covid-19 a second time almost two months after fully recovering from their first infection. Daniel Griffin, a physician and researcher at Columbia in New York, recently described a case of presumed reinfection on the This Week in Virology podcast.

It is possible, but unlikely, that my patient had a single infection that lasted three months. Some Covid-19 patients (now dubbed “long haulers”) do appear to suffer persistent infections and symptoms.

My patient, however, cleared his infection — he had two negative PCR tests after his first infection — and felt healthy for nearly six weeks.

The emerging long-term complications of Covid-19, explained
I believe it is far more likely that my patient fully recovered from his first infection, then caught Covid-19 a second time after being exposed to a young adult family member with the virus. He was unable to get an antibody test after his first infection, so we do not know whether his immune system mounted an effective antibody response or not.

The experts say we need 70-80% of the population to get COVID-19 to achieve herd immunity. Let’s assume they’re wrong (it’s certainly possible, they have been before.) Let’s assume they’re being way overly cautious and we actually only need 40% infection for herd immunity.

In Mississippi, our population is 3 million. We’ve had 36,680 cases so far.

We’d need 1.2 MILLION infections to achieve that hypothetical 40% threshold. (Remember, experts say it’s double that.)

Over the last two weeks, our hospital system has started to become stressed to the point of pain. We are seeing the early signs and effects of it becoming overwhelmed. We had to suspend elective surgeries again.

On our worst day of new cases, we had just over 1,000. It has typically been between 700-900 during this most aggressive time.

To get to 40% infections, we’d need 3,187 new cases every day for a full year from today.

We would need to TRIPLE our worst day—every day—for a year.

I’m not one of these guys that immediately dismisses any idea that challenges the expert status quo talking points. I’m pretty skeptical by nature. That’s healthy. But herd immunity is not anything like a realistic solution in the short or mid-term. I wish it was.

Unless you’re willing to go without hospitals after a car wreck or heart attack, we need a different approach. Right now, despite mixed messages at the beginning, it seems like masks are the best bet. They’re a hell of a lot better than widespread shut downs. Please wear one!

Open eyes, hollow cheeks, a face torn by dread - Edvard Munch’s painting, "The Scream,” is an icon of horror.

Some experts believe its central figure is meant to be in the grips of an illness. The first version of the painting dates back to 1893, when the Russian flu had just spread around the world. The pandemic began in Central Asia in May of 1889. It spread to China, Russia and Europe via trade routes. The epidemic reached New York in December, arrived in Montreal in January of 1890, then made its way to South America, Australia, Borneo. Its symptoms included severe fever, headache, aching limbs and fatigue. An estimated 1 million people died worldwide.

The epidemic is widely believed to have been caused by a flu virus, but researchers working with Marc Van Ranst of the University of Leuven in Belgium have a different theory. They believe the pandemic was caused by a pathogen with the abbreviated name of HCoV-OC43. HCoV-OC43 is a coronavirus.

Genetic studies suggest that the pathogen jumped from cattle to people before – much like today’s SARS-CoV-2 – setting off a health crisis. Interestingly, HCoV-OC43 is still around today, as one of seven coronaviruses that can infect humans. But the killer has been tamed: These days, the virus causes only a mild cold.
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The crisis’ outcome will depend not just on whether drugs or vaccines can be developed, but also on how SARS-CoV-2 will change biologically in the coming months and years.
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François Balloux, a microbiologist at University College in London, is also researching the properties and genetics of the new coronavirus. "It will take a few years, at worst a decade,” he says, "then the virus will probably seem as severe to us as the seasonal flu.” He argues that all that can be said with certainty is that "the virus will be with us. We won't get rid of SARS-CoV-2 anymore."

The novel coronavirus has only been around for a short time, yet it is already one of the best analyzed pathogens of all time. Researchers have decoded over 50,000 genomic sequences and uploaded them to a global databank called GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data). With the help of this gene sequence, experts are investigating which points on the pathogen could be vulnerable to drugs or vaccines. They are also examining how SARS-CoV-2 is changing and how the virus spreads.
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On average, the experts record two mutations per month on each branch of the virus family tree. Most of them are so-called silent mutations that have no effect on the properties of the virus. Some, however, stand out. And that’s where things get interesting for the researchers.
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Balloux and his team at University College London have classified the mutations that have been discovered thus far. They identified around 200 mutations in the virus’ gene pool that occurred several times independently of one another - an indication that they might offer an evolutionary advantage. They include instructions for making four important viral proteins – including one that is part of the spikes.

But Balloux says that it is still unclear how and if these mutations affect the behavior of the virus. Many of the mini imperfections, he says, are likely due to attacks from the human immune system as it tries to stop the virus from multiplying.

Using the mutation rate, the experts have at least been able to determine that the pandemic probably started between October 6 and December 11, 2019. This refutes speculation that the pandemic started last summer and was kept secret by the Chinese government.

More than anything, though, a better understanding of how the pathogen changes can be helpful in developing drugs to treat the disease it causes. "We need medications and vaccines that can’t easily be circumvented by the virus,” says Balloux. "We should therefore concentrate our efforts on the parts of the virus genome that show the least number of mutations.”

Ultimately, the only way to speculate about the future of SARS-CoV-2 at this point is to look at the behavior of other viruses. Drosten’s working group, for instance, published a paper two years ago on the first SARS virus, which claimed almost 800 victims globally between 2002 and 2003, according to the WHO.

It could potentially have been a lot worse. Researchers discovered that the first SARS coronavirus lost a small part of its genome during the epidemic, which served to weaken it. When Drosten’s team experimentally re-inserted the lost components into the genome, the virus was better able to reproduce.

"Virulence can also be lost during the process of adapting to humans,” says Drosten. What’s fascinating is that SARS-CoV-2 has also occasionally lost a piece of the same section of its genome – at least, in a subpopulation. In virus sequences isolated by researchers in Singapore, 382 genome building blocks were missing.

Is that why the COVID-19 outbreak in the country was relatively mild? It is no longer possible to answer that question with any degree of certainty. The apparently less-harmful version of SARS-CoV-2 has since disappeared again.

The Trump administration is instructing hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in reporting their COVID-19 data to the government each day, effective Wednesday.

"As of July 15, 2020, hospitals should no longer report the Covid-19 information in this document to the National Healthcare Safety Network site," the Department of Health and Human Services said in a document providing guidelines for hospitals on how to submit coronavirus data.

The National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) site is managed by the CDC. Jennifer Kates, senior vice president and director of Global Health & HIV Policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, told CBS News that the CDC "has historically been the repository for public health data and analysis," and has also played this role for the collection of COVID-19 hospital data.

"CDC plays a critical role as the nation's public health agency in analyzing the data and making it available," Kates said. "A key question is how with the CDC be involved going forward?"

The administration says that it's changing the way data is reported because it's trying to streamline the process, stating that there are "many separate" government entities asking for duplicate information. According to guidance issued by the White House Coronavirus Task Force, the federal government will use the data to calculate how resources, treatment and supplies are allocated. The daily data reporting it demands from hospitals will be "the only mechanism" used to make the government's calculations. In the past it has made "one-time requests for data" for use in determining how treatments like Remdesivir should be distributed.

HHS and CDC use the data differently — while HHS has been using it to evaluate supply needs, Kates pointed out, CDC utilizes it "to analyze trends across the country and by state.

German researchers have called for 4,000 volunteers to attend a pop music concert and help them assess the risks of coronavirus transmission. All participants would need to test negative for the virus before taking part.

As Germany mulls return of sports fans to the stands, a team of medical researchers is organizing an experiment that would see thousands of volunteers attend a pop music concert.

On their website, the team warned of the dangers brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.

"Difficult decisions must be made to avert these dangers," the scientists from the Halle teaching hospital wrote.

At the same time, they warned that the ongoing ban on large crowds poses "an existential threat for many athletes and artists, who depend on their audience for income."

Tracked every five seconds

The scientists hope to recruit 4,000 participants who would gather in the Leipzig arena on August 22. The volunteers, aged 18 to 50, would have to have previously been tested for the coronavirus and only those who test negative would be allowed to take part. The entertainment would be provided by pop singer Tim Bendzko to bring "the behavior of the audience as close as possible to reality," the organizers said.

The researchers would provide FFP2 filter masks to reduce infection risks. They would also be giving out a fluorescent disinfectant which — in addition to providing another layer of protection — would let the scientists track surfaces most often touched by audience members. Most importantly, the volunteers would be given a device which would track their movements and their distance to the other attendees.

"The biggest challenge, I think, would be the evaluation of data," project leader Stefan Moritz was quoted as saying by the German DPA news agency.

"Because we would need to measure contacts to all other participants within a 30-meter radius every five seconds throughout an entire day," he added.

Apart but together

The organizers plan to run the audience through three possible scenarios, starting with the one where nobody is distancing, then moving on to one with stricter hygiene measures and slower entry to the participants, and finishing with the volunteers sitting in the stands at a recommended social distance of 1.5 meters (6 feet). The final scenario would require only 2,000 volunteers to take part at the Leipzig venue, which has a capacity of some 12,000.

Researchers hope the experiment will help them come up with a mathematical model that could be used to avert outbreaks stemming from large venues.

The project should help "identify possible frameworks under which artists and athletes could once again play and perform after September 30," the researchers said on their website.

After almost five days of fraught discussions, European leaders have agreed to create a €750 billion ($858 billion) recovery fund to rebuild EU economies ravaged by the coronavirus crisis.

The European Commission will borrow the money on financial markets and distribute just under half of it — €390 billion euros ($446 billion) — as grants to the hardest hit EU states, with the rest provided as loans. Leaders also agreed a new EU budget of nearly €1.1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) for 2021-2027, creating combined spending power of about €1.8 trillion ($2 trillion).
"It is an ambitious and comprehensive package combining the classical [budget] with an extraordinary recovery effort destined to tackle the effects of an unprecedented crisis in the best interest of the EU," the EU leaders said in a joint declaration.