Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Special Report: As world approaches 10 million coronavirus cases, doctors see hope in new treatments

By Nick Brown, Deena Beasley, Gabriela Mello and Alexander Cornwell

(Reuters) – Dr. Gopi Patel recalls how powerless she felt when New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital overflowed with COVID-19 patients in March.

Guidance on how to treat the disease was scant, and medical studies were being performed so hastily they couldn’t always be trusted.

“You felt very helpless,” said Patel, an infectious disease doctor at the hospital. “I’m standing in front of a patient, watching them struggle to breathe. What can I give them?”

While there is still no simple answer to that question, a lot has changed in the six months since an entirely new coronavirus began sweeping the globe.

Doctors say they’ve learned enough about the highly contagious virus to solve some key problems for many patients. The changes could be translating into more saved lives, although there is little conclusive data.

Nearly 30 doctors around the world, from New Orleans to London to Dubai, told Reuters they feel more prepared should cases surge again in the fall.

“​We are well-positioned for a second wave,” Patel said. “We know so much more.”

Doctors like Patel now have:

*A clearer grasp of the disease’s side effects, like blood clotting and kidney failure

*A better understanding of how to help patients struggling to breathe

*More information on which drugs work for which kinds of patients.

They also have acquired new tools to aid in the battle, including:

*Widespread testing

*Promising new treatments like convalescent plasma, antiviral drugs and steroids

*An evolving spate of medical research and anecdotal evidence, which doctors share across institutions, and sometimes across oceans.

Despite a steady rise in COVID-19 cases, driven to some extent by wider testing, the daily death toll from the disease is falling in some countries, including the United States. Doctors say they are more confident in caring for patients than they were in the chaotic first weeks of the pandemic, when they operated on nothing but blind instinct.

In June, an average of 4,599 people a day died from COVID-19 worldwide, down from 6,375 a day in April, according to Reuters data.

New York’s Northwell Health reported a fatality rate of 21% for COVID-19 patients admitted to its hospitals in March. That rate is now closer to 10%, due to a combination of earlier treatment and improved patient management, Dr. Thomas McGinn, director of Northwell’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, told Reuters.

“I think everybody is seeing that,” he said. “I think people are coming in sooner, there is better use of blood thinners, and a lot of small things are adding up.”

Even nuts-and-bolts issues, like how to re-organize hospital space to handle a surge of COVID-19 patients and secure personal protective equipment (PPE) for medical workers, are not the time-consuming, mad scrambles they were before.

“The hysteria of who’d take care of (hospital staff) is not there anymore,” said Dr. Andra Blomkalns, head of emergency medicine at Stanford Health Care, a California hospital affiliated with Stanford University. “We have an entire team whose only job is getting PPE.”

To be sure, the world is far from safe from a virus that continues to rage. It is expected to reach two grim milestones in the next several days: 10 million confirmed global infections and 500,000 deaths. As of Thursday evening, more than 9.5 million people had tested positive for the coronavirus, and more than 483,000 had died, according to Reuters data. The United States remains the epicenter of the pandemic, and cases are rising at an alarming pace in states like Arizona, Florida and Texas.

There is still no surefire treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new virus, which often starts as a respiratory illness but can spread to attack organs including the heart, liver, kidneys or central nervous system. Scientists are at least months away from a working vaccine.

And while medical knowledge has improved, doctors continue to emphasize that the best way for people to survive is to avoid infection in the first place through good hygiene, face coverings and limited group interaction.

Dr. Ramanathan Venkiteswaran, medical director of Aster Hospitals in the United Arab Emirates, said COVID-19 will likely result in permanent changes in medicine and for the general public on “basic things like social distancing, wearing of masks and hand washing.”

LEARNING ON THE FLY

In the medical field, change can be slow, with years-long studies often needed before recommendations are altered. But protocols for COVID-19 have evolved at lightning speed.

In Brazil, São Paulo-based Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, one of the country’s leading private hospital networks, has updated its internal guidelines for treating coronavirus patients some 50 times since the outbreak began earlier this year, according to Dr. Moacyr Silva Junior, an infectious disease specialist at the center. Those guidelines govern questions such as which patients are eligible for which drugs, how to handle patients with breathing problems, and the use of PPE like masks, gowns and gloves.

“In only three months, a resounding amount of scientific work on COVID-19 has been published,” he said.

At Stanford Health Care, treatment guidelines changed almost daily in the early weeks of the pandemic, Blomkalns said. She described a patchwork approach that began by following guidelines established by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, then modifying them to reflect a shortage of resources, and finally adding new measures not addressed by the CDC, such as how to handle pregnant healthcare workers.

The new coronavirus has been particularly vexing for doctors because of the many and often unpredictable ways it can manifest. Most people infected experience only mild flu-like symptoms, but some can develop severe pneumonia, stroke and neurological disease. Doctors say the biggest advance so far has been understanding how the disease can put patients at much higher risk for blood clots. Most recently, doctors have discovered that blood type might influence how the body reacts to the virus.

“We developed specific protocols, such as when to start blood thinners, that are different from what would be done for typical ICU patients,” said Dr. Jeremy Falk, pulmonary critical care specialist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Around 15% of COVID-19 patients are at risk of becoming sick enough to require hospitalization. Scientists have estimated that the fatality rate could be as high as 5%, but most put the number well below 1%. People with the highest risk of severe disease include older adults and those with underlying health conditions like heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

While rates of COVID-19 infection have recently been rising in many parts of the United States, the total number of U.S. patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has been steadily falling since a peak in late April, according to the CDC.

Many hospitals report success with guidelines for “proning” patients – positioning them on their stomachs to relieve pressure on the lungs, and hopefully stave off the need for mechanical ventilation, which many doctors said has done more harm than good.

“At first, we had no idea how to treat severely ill patients when we (ventilate),” said Dr. Satoru Hashimoto, who directs the intensive care division at Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in Japan. “We treated them in the fashion we treated influenza,” only to see those patients suffer serious kidney, digestive and other problems, he said.

Hospitals say increased coronavirus testing – and faster turnaround times to get results – are also making a difference.

“What has really helped us triage patients is the availability of rapid testing that came on about six weeks ago,” said Falk of Cedars-Sinai. “Initially, we had to wait two, three or even four days to get a test back. That really clogged up the COVID areas of the hospital.”

Faster, wider testing also helps conserve PPE by identifying the negative patients around whom doctors don’t have to wear as much gear, said Dr. Saj Patel, who treats non-critical patients at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. “You can imagine how much PPE we burned through” waiting for test results, he said.

Hospitals around the world acted early to restructure operations, including floor layouts, to isolate coronavirus patients and reduce exposure to others. It wasn’t always smooth, but doctors say they’re figuring out how to do it more efficiently.

“Our hospital infrastructure, and the way that we … manage people coming through the door is a lot slicker than it was earlier in the epidemic,” said Dr. Tom Wingfield, a clinical lecturer at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool, England.

USING WHAT’S AT HAND

But even if hydroxychloroquine looks unlikely as an effective COVID-19 treatment, hospitals continue to try new medications – both by repurposing older drugs and exploring novel therapies. Patients are being enrolled in hundreds of coronavirus clinical trials launched in the past three months.

Many hospitals said they are seeing success with the use of plasma donated by survivors of COVID-19 to treat newly infected patients.

People who survive an infectious disease like COVID-19 are generally left with blood containing antibodies, which are proteins made by the body’s immune system to fight off a virus. The blood component that carries the antibodies, known as convalescent plasma, can be collected and given to new patients.

Early results from a study at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital found that patients with severe COVID-19 who were given convalescent plasma were more likely to stabilize or need less oxygen support than other similar hospital patients. But results from other studies have been mixed, and doctors still await findings from a rigorously-designed trial. And availability of plasma varies between regions.

At Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, “anecdotally everyone can provide stories” of the benefits of plasma, said Dr. John Deledda, the hospital’s chief medical officer.

But in rural New Mexico, hospitals that care for largely underserved populations struggle to find it. “There’s a limited number of blood centers” that can provide plasma, said Valory Wangler, chief medical officer at Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services, in Gallup, New Mexico. Until trial data is more conclusive, plasma is “not something we’re pursuing actively,” she said.

Dr Abdullatif al-Khal, head of infectious diseases at Qatar’s Hamad Medical Corporation and a co-chair of the country’s pandemic preparedness team, said he saw patients improve after he started using donated plasma early in the course of COVID-19 before the patients deteriorated.

Qatar is also assessing a steroid known as dexamethasone to treat COVID-19. But Khal says he wants to wait for publication of clinical data behind a recent UK study suggesting that the steroid reduced death rates by around a third among the most severely ill COVID-19 patients.

In patients with severe COVID-19, the immune system can overreact, triggering a potentially harmful cascade. Steroids are an older class of drugs that suppress that inflammatory response. But they can also make it easier for other viral or bacterial infections to take hold – making doctors leery of their use in a hospital setting or in patients with early-stage COVID-19.

Some countries, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, reported using HIV drugs lopinavir and ritonavir with some success. Clinical trials, though, have suggested little benefit, and they aren’t widely used in the United States.

MIDNIGHT DELIVERY

Many of the doctors who spoke with Reuters were bullish on the use of remdesivir, the only drug so far shown to be effective against the coronavirus in a rigorous clinical trial. The antiviral developed by California-based Gilead Sciences Inc <GILD.O> was shown to reduce the length of hospital stays for COVID-19 patients by about a third, but hasn’t been proven to boost survival.

Remdesivir is designed to disable the mechanism by which certain viruses, including the new coronavirus, make copies of themselves and potentially overwhelm their host’s immune system.

It is available under emergency approvals in several countries, including the United States. But Gilead’s donated supplies are limited, and distribution and availability are uneven.

Dr. Andrew Staricco, chief medical officer at McLaren Health Care, which operates 11 hospitals across Michigan, recalls the urgency to obtain remdesivir early on. He got an email from Michigan’s health department on May 9, a week after the U.S. Food & Drug Administration authorized the drug for use in treating COVID-19. The health department said it had received a small batch from the federal government, and planned to dole it out to local hospitals based on need. Staricco wrote back, saying he had 15 to 18 critically ill patients, but was given enough to treat just four.

The drug was so precious, he said, that state police troopers were responsible for transporting it to the hospital – which they did, dropping it off around 1 a.m. the next morning.

Health officials originally directed remdesivir for use on the most critically ill patients. But doctors later found they got the best results administering it earlier.

“We started finding that, actually, the sooner you get treated with it, the better,” Staricco said. “We’ve revisited our criteria for giving it to patients three different times.”

Data on the drug, he said, is still scarce. But his anecdotal observations on the benefits of early treatment were echoed by several U.S. doctors.

‘COPY-CATTING’

Gilead on Monday said it aims to manufacture another 2 million courses of remdesivir this year, but did not comment on how it plans to distribute, or sell, those supplies for use by hospitals. The company has licensed the antiviral to several generic drugmakers, who will be allowed to sell the medication in over 100 low-income nations.

Although much about the coronavirus remains unknown, a key reason hospitals say they now are more prepared owes to teamwork.

Many doctors described a kind of unofficial network of information sharing.

In hard-hit Italy, Dr. Lorenzo Dagna of the IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, organized conference calls with institutions in the United States and elsewhere to share experiences and anecdotes treating COVID-19 patients.

McLaren’s Staricco said the Michigan hospital chain adopted its policy on use of blood thinners by looking at peers at Detroit Medical Center and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

As more institutions put their guidelines online, he said, there was “lots of copy-catting going on.”

(Reporting by Nick Brown in New York, Deena Beasley in Los Angeles, Gabriela Mello in São Paulo and Alexander Cornwell in Dubai.; Additional reporting By Alistair Smout in London, Matthias Blamont in Paris, Emilio Parodi in Milan, Lisa Barrington in Dubai, Rocky Swift in Tokyo and Sangmi Cha in Seoul.; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Marla Dickerson)

 

Coronavirus may have infected 10 times more Americans than reported, CDC says

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Government experts believe more than 20 million Americans could have contracted the coronavirus, 10 times more than official counts, indicating many people without symptoms have or have had the disease, senior administration officials said.

The estimate, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is based on serology testing used to determine the presence of antibodies that show whether an individual has had the disease, the officials said.

The officials, speaking to a small group of reporters on Wednesday night, said the estimate was based on the number of known cases, between 2.3 million and 2.4 million, multiplied by the average rate of antibodies seen from the serology tests, about an average of 10 to 1.

“If you multiply the cases by that ratio, that’s where you get that 20 million figure,” said one official.

If true, the estimate would suggest the percentage of U.S. deaths from the disease is lower than thought. More than 120,000 Americans have died from the disease since the pandemic erupted earlier this year.

The estimate comes as government officials note that many new cases are showing up in young people who do not exhibit symptoms and may not know they have it.

Officials said young people with no symptoms, but who are in regular contact with vulnerable populations, should proactively get tested to make sure they do not spread it.

“We have heard from Florida and Texas that roughly half of the new cases that are reporting are people under the age of 35, and many of them are asymptomatic,” one official said.

The CDC has sent 40 response teams to help deal with the outbreaks, they said.

More than 36,000 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded nationwide on Wednesday, just shy of the record 36,426 on April 24, concentrated on states that were spared the brunt of the initial outbreak or moved early to lift restrictions aimed at curbing the virus’ spread.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Explainer: What is a second wave of a pandemic, and has it arrived in the U.S.?

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Infectious disease experts, economists and politicians have raised concerns about a second wave of coronavirus infections in the United States that could worsen in the coming months.

But some, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, said it is too soon to discuss a second wave when the United States has never emerged from a first wave in which more than 120,000 people have died and more than 2.3 million Americans have had confirmed infections with the novel coronavirus.

Here is an explanation of what is meant by a second wave.

WHY DESCRIBE DISEASE OUTBREAKS AS WAVES?

In infectious disease parlance, waves of infection describe the curve of an outbreak, reflecting a rise and fall in the number of cases. With viral infections such as influenza or the common cold, cases typically crest in the cold winter months and recede as warmer weather reappears.

Fears about a second wave of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, stem in part from the trajectory of the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic that infected 500 million people worldwide and killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people. The virus first appeared in the spring of 1918 but appears to have mutated when it surged again in the fall, making for a deadlier second wave.

“It came back roaring and was much worse,” epidemiologist Dr. William Hanage of Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health said.

Epidemiologists said there is no formal definition of a second wave, but they know it when they see it.

“It’s often quite clear. You’ll see a rise involving a second group of people after infections in a first group have diminished,” epidemiologist Dr. Jessica Justman of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health said.

U.S. COVID-19 cases spiked in March and April and then edged downward in response to social-distancing policies aimed at slowing the transmission of the virus from person to person. But unlike several countries in Europe and Asia, the United States never experienced a dramatic drop in cases marking the clear end of a first wave. There is now a plateau of about 20,000 U.S. cases daily.

“You can’t talk about a second wave in the summer because we’re still in the first wave. We want to get that first wave down. Then we’ll see if we can keep it there,” Fauci told the Washington Post last week.

The easing in recent weeks of social-distancing mandates in numerous U.S. states as businesses have reopened has caused an acceleration in infections.

IS TALK OF WAVES JUST SEMANTICS?

To many epidemiologists, it is a matter of semantics.

“Do you want to call it an extension of the first wave or a second wave superimposed on the first? You could argue it either way,” Justman said.

Dr. Eric Toner, a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said he does not find “waves” to be an especially useful term in describing a pandemic.

“When you’re underwater, it’s hard to tell how many waves are passing over your head,” Toner said.

Toner said current increases in U.S. cases have less to do with the virus and more to do with people’s behavior.

“The virus isn’t going away and coming back. The virus is still here. It’s up in some places and down in others,” Toner said.

WHAT IS THE FORECAST FOR THE COMING MONTHS?

Vice President Mike Pence last week wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal trying to ease concerns over a second wave of U.S. cases. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday that a “second wave” is not coming.

Dr. Theo Vos of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation called those assurances “wishful thinking.”

Based on global models, his group has predicted that the coronavirus will surge in the fall as colder temperatures arrive in the United States.

“It’s likely to start picking up in October,” Vos said, with increased cases hitting in November, December and January.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Peter Henderson and Will Dunham)

Black Americans hospitalized for COVID-19 at four times the rate of whites, Medicare data shows

(Reuters) – Black Americans enrolled in Medicare were around four times as likely as their white counterparts to be hospitalized for COVID-19, U.S. government data released on Monday showed, highlighting significant racial disparities in health outcomes during the pandemic.

“The disparities in the data reflect longstanding challenges facing minority communities and low income older adults,” said Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which released the data.

The data showed that more than 325,000 Medicare beneficiaries were diagnosed with COVID-19 between Jan. 1 and May 16. Of those, more than 110,000 were hospitalized.

Black Americans had a hospitalization rate 465 per 100,000 Black Medicare beneficiaries. For other groups measured by CMS, the rates of per capita hospitalizations were 258 for Hispanics, 187 for Asians and 123 for whites.

Hospitalization rates were high for people who qualified for both the senior-focused Medicare program and the low-income-focused Medicaid program, at 473 per 100,000.

“Low socioeconomic status all wrapped up with racial disparities represents a powerful predictor of complications with COVID-19,” Verma said during a briefing about the data.

Medicare beneficiaries with end-stage kidney disease were hospitalized for COVID-19 at a rate of 1,341 per 100,000.

Medicare is a federal health insurance program designed primarily for seniors, as well as some people with disabilities and end-stage kidney disease.

Verma said that CMS’ ongoing push to reimburse providers based on health outcomes rather than paying them fixed fees for their services could help address racial disparities.

“When implemented effectively, (value-based reimbursement) encourages clinicians to care for the whole person and address the social risk factors that are so critical for our beneficiaries’ quality of life,” Verma said.

The data is based on claims filed for reimbursement from Medicare and therefore operates at a delay of several weeks.

(Reporting by Trisha Roy and Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Cynthia Osterman)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Traffic jams signal return to normal in New York

New York City residents, gradually emerging from more than 100 days of coronavirus lockdown, celebrated an easing of social-distancing restrictions by shopping at reopened stores, dining at outdoor cafes and getting their first haircuts in months.

The usual traffic jams clogged city streets, and the sound of honking cars brought a welcome sense of a return to the ordinary.

But even as New Yorkers returned to some semblance of normalcy, spikes in coronavirus infection rates elsewhere around the country worried public health experts.

Chief among the latest hotspots was Florida, one of the last states to impose stay-at-home restrictions.

Pig trial shows promise

A trial of AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine in pigs has found that two doses of the Oxford University-developed shot produced a greater antibody response than a single dose, scientists said on Tuesday.

Research released by Britain’s Pirbright Institute found that giving an initial prime dose followed by a booster dose of the shot elicited a greater immune response than a single dose – suggesting a two-dose approach may be more effective in getting protection against the disease.

Pigs are a useful research model for this type of vaccine and other trials have been able to predict vaccine outcomes in humans, particularly in studies of flu.

Meanwhile, French drugmaker Sanofi said it expects to get approval for the potential COVID-19 vaccine it is developing with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline by the first half of next year, faster than previously anticipated.

Local lockdown in Germany

The premier of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia said he was putting the Guetersloh area back into lockdown until June 30 after a coronavirus outbreak at a meatpacking plant there.

Guetersloh is the first area in Germany to go back into lockdown after the authorities began gradually lifting restrictive measures at the end of April.

More than 1,500 workers at a meat processing plant in Guetersloh had tested positive for the coronavirus, plus some of their family members and 24 people who had no connection to the plant.

The coronavirus reproduction rate in Germany is estimated at 2.76, probably mainly due to local outbreaks.

UK death toll tops 54,000

The United Kingdom’s suspected COVID-19 death toll has hit 54,089, according to a Reuters tally of official data sources that underline the country’s status as one of the worst-hit in the world.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due on Tuesday to announce cinemas, museums and galleries in England can reopen next month to try to revitalize the economy.

But the large death toll means criticism over his handling of the pandemic – that Britain was too slow to impose a lockdown or protect the elderly in care homes – is likely to persist.

International haj pilgrims barred

Saudi Arabia said it would bar arrivals from abroad for the haj this year due to the novel coronavirus, making this the first year in modern times that Muslims from around the world have not been allowed to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, which all Muslims aim to perform at least once in their lives.

Some 2.5 million pilgrims typically visit the holiest sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina for the week-long haj. Official data shows Saudi Arabia earns around $12 billion a year from the haj and the lesser, year-round pilgrimage known as umrah. International arrivals for umrah pilgrimages have also been suspended until further notice.

 

(Compiled by Linda Noakes; editing by Barbara Lewis)

Explainer: Why COVID-19 can run rife in meatpacking plants

(Reuters) – Meat-processing plants around the world are proving coronavirus infection hotspots, with an outbreak at a factory in Germany leading to Guetersloh becoming on Tuesday the first area in the country to be ordered back into lockdown.

More than 1,500 workers at the Guetersloh plant tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19, while outbreaks have also hit meat and poultry plants in Britain in recent days.

In many rural parts of the United States, meatpacking plants have been the main source of infection. On April 28, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep such factories open, warning of a potential threat to the U.S. food supply.

The meat industry is particularly susceptible to coronavirus infections because of the nature of the work: intense physical labor conducted indoors at close proximity to other workers.

“Their work environments – processing lines and other areas in busy plants where they have close contact with coworkers and supervisors – may contribute substantially to their potential exposures,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says of meatpacking workers.

The CDC maintains a list of recommendations for factories, including steps to keep workers apart such as staggered arrival times and breaks, supplying workers with masks and hand sanitizer and making sure tools are disinfected.

It says factories should take workers’ temperatures on arrival and send those with fevers home.

Conditions on the factory floor itself are also not the only issue. Meatpacking workers often share transportation and housing once their shifts are over.

In Germany, for example, many are migrants from poorer EU countries such as Bulgaria and Romania, often housed in large dormitories where the virus can spread.

“Some of these factories have on-site or nearby accommodation where there are several people in each dormitory, they may be transported on a bus to the site of work, and they will be indoors together all day,” said Michael Head, an expert in global health at England’s University of Southampton.

In the United States, by the end of May, the UFCW labor union estimated that at least 44 meatpacking workers had died of COVID-19, and that at least 30 meatpacking plants had to be temporarily shut down, impacting more than 45,000 workers and contributing to a 40% reduction in pork slaughtering capacity.

(Reporting by Peter Graff; Additional reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Pravin Char)

Trump backs more aid for Americans amid coronavirus: Scripps

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he supported the idea of giving Americans a second round of financial aid amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Asked if he backed another payment for Americans, Trump told Scripps Networks in an interview that he backed sending out a second check. “We will be doing another stimulus package” with Congress, he added, saying the bipartisan measure would come “over the next couple of weeks probably.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey)

After 100 days, New Yorkers can get haircuts, dine outdoors while virus cases soar in 12 other states

By Maria Caspani

NEW YORK (Reuters) – After more than 100 days of lockdown, New York City residents on Monday celebrated their progress in curbing the coronavirus pandemic by getting their first haircuts in months, shopping at long-closed stores, and dining at outdoor cafes.

Once the epicenter of the global outbreak, New York City was the last region in the state to move into Phase 2 of reopening with restaurants and bars offering outdoor service and many shops reopening. Barber shops and hair salons welcomed customers for the first time since mid-March.

Playgrounds were also due to reopen on Monday in the most populous U.S. city. The pandemic has killed nearly 120,000 Americans.

At the same time, a dozen states in the South and Southwest reported record increases in new coronavirus cases – and often record increases in hospitalizations as well, a metric not affected by more testing.

The number of new cases rose by a record last week in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, together home to about a third of the U.S. population. Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming also experienced record spikes in cases.

On Saturday more than 6,000 people, mostly without masks, crowded together inside a Tulsa, Oklahoma, arena for a campaign rally by President Donald Trump.

Trump defended his response to COVID-19, saying more testing had led to identifying more cases, seemingly to his chagrin.

“When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to … find more cases,” he said. “So, I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.'” A White House official said he was “obviously kidding” with that remark.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York; Additional reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Howard Goller)

No second wave of coronavirus: U.S. White House adviser Kudlow

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday there is no second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, even though there are some flare-ups in states such as Florida, and it is unlikely there will be widespread shutdowns across the country.

“There are some hotspots. We’re on it,” Kudlow said in an interview with CNBC. “We know how to deal with this stuff now. It’s come a long way since last winter and there is no second wave coming.”

Cities and states across the country this spring issued restrictive work-from-home and social distancing orders to try to slow the spread of the respiratory infection, keeping shoppers out of stores and driving up lay-offs. Then, as cases and deaths steadied or dropped in some places, some states that eased restrictions began to see a rise in infections, including Arizona and Florida that saw record numbers of new cases, generating fears about another chill to economic activity.

While the U.S. Congress has already passed three massive spending bills to support the economy and fight the novel coronavirus, it is working on another deal with the White House, which Kudlow said could be reached later this summer. The size of the new package, commonly called “Phase Four,” has not been determined and it may include state and local aid, Kudlow said. In general, he said, he would like any relief bill to move toward longer-term economic incentives.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Susan Heavey; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now 06-22-20

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

South Korea’s second wave

Health authorities in South Korea said for the first time the country is in the midst of a “second wave” of novel coronavirus infections focused around its densely populated capital.

The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) had previously said South Korea’s first wave had never really ended.

But on Monday, KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong said it had become clear that a holiday weekend in early May marked the beginning of a new wave of infections focused in the greater Seoul area, which had previously seen few cases.

Training an “army”

Europeans are enjoying the gradual easing of coronavirus lockdown measures, but in hospitals they are already preparing for the next wave of infections.

Some intensive care specialists are trying to hire more permanent staff. Others want to create a reservist “army” of medical professionals ready to be deployed wherever needed to work in wards with seriously ill patients.

European countries have been giving medics crash courses in how to deal with COVID-19 patients, and are now looking at ways to retrain staff to avoid shortages of key workers if there is a second wave of the novel coronavirus.

Antibody levels fall quickly

Levels of an antibody found in recovered COVID-19 patients fell sharply 2-3 months after infection for both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients, according to a Chinese study, raising questions about the length of any immunity against the novel coronavirus.

The study highlights the risks of using COVID-19 “immunity passports” and supports the prolonged use of public health interventions such as social distancing and isolating high-risk groups, researchers said.

Health authorities in some countries such as Germany are debating the ethics and practicalities of allowing people who test positive for antibodies to move more freely than others who do not.

Israeli company has high hopes for mask fabric

An Israeli company expects a fabric it has developed will be able to neutralise close to 99% of the coronavirus, even after being washed multiple times, following a successful lab test.

Sonovia’s reusable anti-viral masks are coated in zinc oxide nano-particles that destroy bacteria, fungi and viruses, which it says can help stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Tests in the Microspectrum (Weipu Jishu) lab in Shanghai had demonstrated that the washable fabric used in its masks neutralised more than 90% of the coronavirus to which it was exposed, Sonovia said on Monday.

Liat Goldhammer, Sonovia’s chief technology officer, said that in the coming weeks the fabric, which can also be used in textiles for hospitals, protective equipment and clothing, will be able to neutralise almost 99% of the coronavirus.

Dog days for Chinese fair?

China’s annual dog-meat festival has opened in defiance of a government campaign to reduce risks to health highlighted by the novel coronavirus outbreak, but activists are hopeful its days are numbered.

The coronavirus, which is widely believed to have originated in horseshoe bats before crossing into humans in a market in the city of Wuhan, has forced China to reassess its relationship with animals, and it has vowed to ban the wildlife trade.

In April, Shenzhen became the first city in China to ban the consumption of dogs, with others expected to follow.

The agriculture ministry also decided to classify dogs as pets rather than livestock.

(Compiled by Linda Noakes, Editing by Timothy Heritage)