Senate Hearing
Today, top coronavirus experts spoke to the senate via webcam. Dr. Fauci and the Director of the CDC, Dr. Redfield, echoed a unified sentiment of concern over premature reopening and warned that premature reopening will result in countless deaths, waves of secondary outbreaks and a further setback to economic recovery.
Important takeaways from the hearing:
- Dr. Redfield announced that a national surveillance system is being developed and it will be deployed most heavily in nursing homes.
- Dr. Fauci warned against the assumption that children are completely immune to the effects of the virus.
- Dr. Fauci warned that while our confirmed death-toll is 80,000, the real number is “most certainly” much higher.
- Dr. Redfield of the CDC admitted that they have lost control over contact-tracing in the US.
- Dr. Fauci warned that the US does not have total control over the outbreak, and that the country runs the risk of a fall resurgence, especially if states open prematurely.
- Dr. Fauci commented on reopening schools and said that they should reopen in a regional manner. The Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) commented that colleges may have to implement surveillance programs such as rotational testing days for students.
- HHS says that the US will be able to produce and distribute 40-50 million tests per month by September.
Other Domestic Updates
- 93 children in New York State are now suspected to have the pediatric inflammatory syndrome linked to Covid-19. 52 cases have been reported in NYC. CT reported 6 cases and they are looking into many more. Doctors say that most children are not reporting symptoms of the syndrome until 4-6 weeks after exposure to the virus.
- Florida is being watched very closely as case #s are increasing compared to the average daily increase reported over the last few weeks.
- LabCorp’s at-home diagnostic test will now be made available to the public. Anyone with symptoms or possible exposure can order the test at the cost of $119 per test, depending on insurance. The test includes a nasal swab and a fedex overnight shipping envelope. You can order the test here via LabCorps ”pixel” website. Currently due to state restrictions, the test is not available in MD, NJ, NY & RI.
- New York City will add an additional 10 public testing sites by May 25; 3 in Staten Island, 1 in Queens, 1 in Manhattan, 3 in Brooklyn and 2 in the Bronx.
- In New York City, Broadway will remain closed through at least Sep. 6th.
- California is increasing its emergency funding by a total of $27.4 million, mostly to bolster contact-tracing efforts. California has seen a rise in case #s and deaths, most centered around counties in Southern California.
- California’s contact-tracing platform will be launched by Accenture and Salesforce & Amazon will run their call center. The same system is up and running in Massachusetts.
- Congress plans on signing a bipartisan bill that will create a National Public Health Corps. This would employ and train thousands of people to help with testing, contact tracing and eventually, vaccination deployment.
Global Updates
- Officials in Wuhan have said that they will now retest all 11 million citizens after 6 new locally transmitted cases were identified. Interestingly, officials say that the new outbreak has been linked to a man who fell ill in March, recovered and then recently fell ill again.
- Also in China, officials have raised the threat level to “high-risk” in the city of Shulan which borders Russia; at least 15 people in Shulan have been confirmed to have the virus.
- As Germany’s Rt has fluctuated from .7 to 1.13 and then back down below 1.0, scientists are reminding the public that fluctuation of the Rt value is normal, and that it’s only worrying if the Rt value remains stagnant at a high level. One or two days at a higher Rt should not be cause for action. Yesterday, Germany reported 933 new infections in 24 hours.
- Iceland will test all incoming passengers arriving into Keflavik airport, passengers will have to notify airport personnel of their accommodations and will receive their test results the same day.
- Russia has reported more than 10,000 cases for the 10th day in a row. Russia has now surpassed Spain in confirmed infections and only falls behind the US in greatest # of infections.
- Spain’s government has ordered a 14-day quarantine for all passengers arriving into Spain from abroad, all travelers must isolate themselves for 14 days in their designated accommodation.
- PM Modi announced a new stimulus package for India totaling at around $266 billion in aid. Around 18,000 prisoners in the western state of Maharashtra will be temporarily released in order to curb the spread in prison populations.
- France will remain under an emergency order until July 10th; this just means that French officials have the right to implement restriction orders until said date. To curb crowding, Paris has now banned the use of alcohol along the banks of the Seine and along the Canal Saint-Martin in central Paris. Parks and public gardens will also remain closed in Paris.
- Canada announced that it will be partnering with China’s CanSino Biologics Inc, one of the vaccine candidates who is already progressed to clinical trials. A new set of human trials with CanSino will begin in Canada.
- Government officials in South Korea are warning against the stigmatization of the LGBT community as the night clubs seen as the center of the new outbreak in Seoul are popular LGBT establishments. They fear that people who attended the nightclubs on the nights in question will not come forward to be tested over fear of stigmatization and/or public outing. So far, around 100 new cases have been linked back to the nightclub cluster.
- Singapore is struggling to control their cluster among migrant workers in cramped dormitories. Since early April, 21,410 dormitory residents have tested positive for the virus and daily case #s still hover between 500-900 within the community.
- The WHO announced that they are seeing positive results in 4 or 5 possible treatments for the virus but they did not comment on which treatments they were referring to.
- President Bolsonaro of Brazil ordered that gyms and salons be classified as essential services, even as cases rise dramatically in Brazil and their Rt remains the highest in the world (around 2.8).
- Egypt has received $2.77 billion in emergency pandemic aid from the International Monetary Fund.
- UNICEF is calling for $1.6 billion in support of children affected by the pandemic in countries with existing humanitarian crises.
- Some regions in Italy will allow bars, restaurants and salons to reopen on May 18, an earlier date than expected. Inter-regional travel will remain banned until June 1.
- Authorities in Lebanon have ordered a 4-day period of “total lockdown” which will begin Wednesday at 7 pm and end at 5 am on Monday. This comes after an increase in infections following an easing of restrictions.
This list has been curated by @jamieplancher