Tag Archives: pandemic

Reuters reports: Commercial buildings shuttered for weeks to stem the spread of the coronavirus could fuel another grisly lung infection: Legionnaires’ disease. Public health experts are urging landlords across the globe to carefully re-open buildings to prevent outbreaks of the severe, sometimes lethal, form of pneumonia. The sudden and sweeping closures of schools, factories, businesses and government offices have created …

The Week reports: The United States crossed a grim threshold on Friday, when it officially recorded its 50,000th death attributed to the novel coronavirus. The U.S. now accounts for almost a third of the confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, and more than a quarter of the deaths, according to numbers kept by Johns Hopkins. Many experts believe the toll of the …

NBC San Francisco reports: An autopsy report has revealed the first COVID-19-related death in the United States happened much earlier than previously thought. Officials in Santa Clara County, California, initially reported its first coronavirus death March 9, but an autopsy revealed there was one in the county on Feb. 6. Not only is it the first death in the county, …

The Washington Post reports: Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season. “There’s a possibility that the assault of the …

The South China Morning Post reports: A new study by one of China’s top scientists has found the ability of the new coronavirus to mutate has been vastly underestimated and different strains may account for different impacts of the disease in various parts of the world. Professor Li Lanjuan and her colleagues from Zhejiang University found within a small pool …

The Hill reports: President Trump in an early morning tweet on Tuesday said he watched the opening of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and saw “hatred and contempt.” Trump has frequently mocked the co-hosts of the MSNBC show, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. Last week, Scarborough, a former member of the GOP, said that “you can’t be conservative and support Donald Trump.” …

Reuters reports: A black market has developed in Russia for an antiviral HIV drug explored as a possible treatment for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, according to sellers, HIV activists and the head of the drug’s main Russian producer. More than 20 trials around the world are testing Kaletra as a COVID-19 treatment or post-exposure prophylaxis. …

ABC News reports: The first large-scale community test of 3,300 people in Santa Clara County found that 2.5 to 4.2% of those tested were positive for antibodies — a number suggesting a far higher past infection rate than the official count. Based on the initial data, researchers estimate that the range of people who may have had the virus to …

The Jerusalem Post reports: The novel COVID-19, despite previous suspicions, is capable of surviving prolonged exposure to high temperatures, according to a study by the University of Aix-Marseille in France, led by Professor Remi Charrel and Boris Pastorino. In the experiment, scientists found that typically hot temperatures of 60° Celsius (140° Fahrenheit) used to disinfect research labs are ineffective against …

ABC News reports: As factions inside President Donald Trump’s orbit have been floating theories about the novel coronavirus originating in a Chinese bio-research lab, U.S. scientists are hardening their belief that the virus emerged naturally, citing expanded research as proof. Dr. Robert Garry, a professor at the Tulane School of Medicine, authored one of the first major studies that refutes …

NBC News reports: The Department of Defense announced Saturday that it would extend travel restrictions for all military personnel through June 30th due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. The travel restrictions were initially in place through May 11th. The new date will go into effect on Monday, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Matthew P. Donovan told reporters …

The Hill reports: HBO’s Bill Maher ripped the news media on Friday night and urged journalists to stop offering up what he described as “panic porn” when reporting on the coronavirus outbreak, cautioning the practice could help get President Trump “New rule, now that we’re starting to see some hope in all this: Don’t hope-shame me,” the liberal “Real Time” …

The New York Times reports: The first warning of the devastation that the coronavirus could wreak inside American nursing homes came in late February, when residents of a facility in suburban Seattle perished, one by one, as families waited helplessly outside. In the ensuing six weeks, large and shockingly lethal outbreaks have continued to ravage nursing homes across the nation, …

Reuters reports: Sweeping testing of the entire crew of the coronavirus-stricken U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt may have revealed a clue about the pandemic: The majority of the positive cases so far are among sailors who are asymptomatic, officials say. The possibility that the coronavirus spreads in a mostly stealthy mode among a population of largely young, healthy people showing …

Quartz reports: Wuhan, the central Chinese city at the epicenter of the country’s coronavirus outbreak, just revised its death toll up by 1,290 to 3,869—an increase of 50% from its previous count. Chinese authorities explained the revision by noting that some hospitals were overwhelmed early in the outbreak, leading to cases being incorrectly reported, delayed, or omitted. Chinese state broadcaster …

Axios reports: President Trump told governors on a conference call today that he wants to begin to reopen the U.S. economy on May 1. He called on governors with low coronavirus numbers to begin to reopen their economies on May 1, with the caveat that states should go at their own pace. “You states with beautifully low numbers, let’s get …

The Associated Press reports: Africa could see 300,000 deaths from the coronavirus this year even under the best-case scenario, according to a new report released Friday that cites modeling from Imperial College London. Under the worst-case scenario with no interventions against the virus, Africa could see 3.3 million deaths and 1.2 billion infections, the report by the U.N. Economic Commission …

The Washington Examiner reports: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine was one of the first governors to start closing down his state when the coronavirus hit, but now he’s offering one of the first economic reopenings in the nation. DeWine, a Republican, announced Thursday that Ohio will begin to reopen some of its businesses on May 1. The governor has a stay-at-home …

Gallup Polling reports: As President Donald Trump works to contain the damage from the novel coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., the rally in support he enjoyed as the nation entered a virtual lockdown has faded. His job approval rating, now 43%, has slipped six percentage points since mid-March when he earned 49% approval, which tied his personal best. The six-point …

NBC New York reports: Imagine MetLife Stadium jam-packed, every seat filled. Picture two more of those. Now tack on a full Madison Square Garden. Imagine if all of those people were infected with coronavirus. New York and New Jersey alone would still have more cases — and it wouldn’t be close. Now picture a full Barclays Center. It would barely …