Category Archives: Corona Virus

Written by Amitabh Sinha, Edited by Explained Desk | Pune | Updated: May 9, 2020 2:22:04 pm Fridays Coronavirus count of new cases was a little less than the previous day, and it is now the first time in two weeks that the daily count has declined for two consecutive days.

Odisha saw its highest single-day surge of Coronavirus cases so far, reporting as many as 78 new cases on Friday to take its tally to 287. The state had been reporting low numbers of Coronavirus infections till now, but in the last two days 107 cases have been discovered, mainly amongst the migrant workers returning from other states, triggering an alarm in Bhubaneswar.

More than 80 per cent of the states cases, 240 of the 287, are concentrated in the five districts of Ganjam, Khurda, Jajpur, Bhadrak and Baleshwar. These are the areas that have received maximum number of returning migrant workers. About 8000 workers have returned to Ganjam in the last few days, and suddenly, the districts Coronavirus count has shot up. 79 of the 83 cases in Ganjam, now the worst affected district in Odisha, were discovered in the last three days.

In the country as a whole, 3340 new cases were discovered on Friday, taking the total count of confirmed Coronavirus infections to 59,564. Fridays count of new cases was a little less than the previous day, and it is now the first time in two weeks that the daily count has declined for two consecutive days, even though by a small amount. On Thursday, India had added 3355 new cases, which was 175 less than the previous day, and Fridays count was 15 less than Thursday. Coronavirus LIVE Updates

Kerala discovered its first case in three days, just one patient in Ernakulam. The state now has 503 confirmed cases, 484 of whom have already recovered.

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Tamil Nadu continued to add new cases in large numbers. On Friday, the state discovered 600 new cases to take its tally to 6009. The number of cases has tripled in the last ten days, from 2058 on April 28 to 6009 now, thanks to the discovery of the Koyambedu market cluster in Chennai, and the states aggressive testing in the last few days. Tamil Nadu overtook Maharashtra on Thursday to emerge as the state that has conducted the most number of tests in the country. On Friday, it consolidated its lead further, carrying out 13,980 tests to Maharashtras 10,245. Tamil Nadu has now done 2.16 lakh tests, while Maharashtra, which has three times greater caseload, has done 2.12 lakh.

At least 95 deaths were reported from the country on Friday, 39 of them from Maharashtra and 24 from Gujarat. The death toll in the country has now crossed 1950. Some doubts have been raised about the number of deaths being reported by Delhi, after a few hospitals in the Capital reported many more deaths than officially acknowledged so far. According to data put out by Delhi government, there have been 68 deaths in the Capital so far. But the total of the numbers reported from five of the biggest COVID hospitals in Delhi add up to at least 116. Delhi government bulletins have reported only 33 deaths from these hospitals. Delhi government officials maintained that a death audit committee set up by it was investigating every death, and was reporting the data accurately and transparently.

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Coronavirus numbers explained: Why Odisha is seeing a spike in new cases - The Indian Express

The text messages to the Chinese activist streamed in from ordinary Wuhan residents, making the same extraordinary request: Help me sue the Chinese government. One said his mother had died from the coronavirus after being turned away from multiple hospitals. Another said her father-in-law had died in quarantine.

But after weeks of back-and-forth planning, the seven residents who had reached out to Yang Zhanqing, the activist, suddenly changed their minds in late April, or stopped responding. At least two of them had been threatened by the police, Mr. Yang said.

The Chinese authorities are clamping down as grieving relatives, along with activists, press the ruling Communist Party for an accounting of what went wrong in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus killed thousands before spreading to the rest of China and the world.

Lawyers have been warned not to file suit against the government. The police have interrogated bereaved family members who connected with others like them online. Volunteers who tried to thwart the states censorship apparatus by preserving reports about the outbreak have disappeared.

They are worried that if people defend their rights, the international community will know what the real situation is like in Wuhan and the true experiences of the families there, said Mr. Yang, who is living in New York, where he fled after he was briefly detained for his work in China.

The crackdown underscores the partys fear that any attempt to dwell on what happened in Wuhan, or to hold officials responsible, will undermine the states narrative that only Chinas authoritarian system saved the country from a devastating health crisis.

To inspire patriotic fervor, state propaganda has portrayed the dead not as victims, but as martyrs. Censors have deleted Chinese news reports that exposed officials early efforts to hide the severity of the outbreak.

The party has long been wary of public grief and the dangers it could pose to its rule.

In 2008, after an earthquake in Sichuan Province killed at least 69,000 people, Chinese officials offered hush money to parents whose children died. Following a deadly train crash in the city of Wenzhou in 2011, officials prevented relatives from visiting the site. Each June, the authorities in Beijing silence family members of protesters who were killed in the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.

Now, some say the government is imposing the same kind of collective amnesia around the outbreak.

Three volunteers involved in Terminus2049, an online project that archived censored news articles about the outbreak, went missing in Beijing last month and are presumed to have been detained.

I had previously told him: You guys probably face some risk doing this project. But I didnt know how much, said Chen Kun, whose brother, Chen Mei, is one of the volunteers who disappeared.

I had said that maybe he would be summoned by the police for a talk, and they would ask him to take down the site, he said. I didnt think it would be this serious.

Mr. Chen said he had no information about his brothers disappearance. But he had spoken to the relatives of one of the other missing volunteers, Cai Wei, who said that Mr. Cai and his girlfriend had been detained and accused of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, a vague charge that the government often uses against dissidents.

Reached by telephone on Tuesday, an employee at a police station in the Beijing district where Chen Mei lives said he was unclear about the case. The groups site on GitHub, a platform popular with coders, is now blocked in China.

Volunteers for similar online projects have also been questioned by the authorities in recent days. In blog posts and private messages, members of such communities have warned each other to scrub their computers. The organizers of another GitHub project, 2019ncovmemory, which also republished censored material about the outbreak, have set their archive to private.

To the authorities, it seems no public criticism can be left unchecked. The police in Hubei, the province that includes Wuhan and was hardest hit by the outbreak, arrested a woman last month for organizing a protest against high vegetable prices. An official at a Wuhan hospital was removed from his post after he criticized the use of traditional Chinese medicine to treat coronavirus patients, which the authorities had promoted.

The crackdown has been most galling to people mourning family members. They say they are being harassed and subjected to close monitoring as they try to reckon with their losses.

The coronavirus killed nearly 4,000 people in Wuhan, according to Chinas official figures. Some residents believe the true toll is much higher. The government fired two high-ranking local officials, but that is not enough for many grieving relatives, who say they want fair compensation for their losses and harsher punishment for officials.

Zhang Hai is certain that his father, who died in February, was infected with the coronavirus at a Wuhan hospital. He says he still supports the party but thinks local officials should be held responsible for initially hiding the fact that the virus could spread among humans. Had he known the risk, he said, he would not have sent his father to the hospital for treatment.

Mr. Zhang said several Chinese reporters who had interviewed him about his demands later told him that their editors had pulled the articles before publication. He posted calls online to set up a monument in honor of the victims of the epidemic in Wuhan, but censors quickly scrubbed the messages. Officials have pressed him to bury his fathers ashes, but he has so far refused; he says they have insisted on assigning him minders, who he believes would be there to ensure that he caused no trouble.

They spend so much time trying to control us, Mr. Zhang said. Why cant they use this energy to address our concerns instead?

In March, the police visited a Wuhan resident who had started a chat group of more than 100 people who lost relatives to the virus, according to two members of the group, one of whom shared a video of the encounter. The group was ordered to disband.

Mr. Yang, the activist in New York, said at least two of the seven Wuhan residents who had contacted him about taking legal measures against the government dropped the idea after being threatened by the police.

Even if the other plaintiffs were willing to move forward, they might have trouble finding lawyers. After Mr. Yang and a group of human rights lawyers in China issued an open call in March for people who wanted to sue the government, several lawyers around the country received verbal warnings from judicial officials, Mr. Yang said.

The officials told them not to write open letters or create disturbances by filing claims for compensation, according to Chen Jiangang, a member of the group. Mr. Chen, who fled to the United States last year, said he had heard from several lawyers who were warned.

If anyone dares to make a request and the government fails to meet it, they immediately are seen as a threat to national security, Mr. Chen said. It doesnt matter whether youre a lawyer or a victim, its like youre imprisoned.

Some aggrieved residents have pressed ahead despite the government clampdown. Last month, Tan Jun, a civil servant in Yichang, a city in Hubei Province, became the first person to publicly attempt to sue the authorities over their response to the outbreak.

Mr. Tan, who works in the citys parks department, accused the provincial government of concealing and covering up the true nature of the virus, leading people to ignore the viruss danger, relax their vigilance and neglect their self-protection, according to a copy of the complaint shared online. He pointed to officials decision to host a banquet for 40,000 families in Wuhan in early January, even as the virus was spreading.

He urged the government to issue an apology on the front page of the Hubei Daily, a local newspaper.

In a brief phone call, Mr. Tan confirmed that he had submitted a complaint to the Intermediate Peoples Court in Wuhan, but he declined to be interviewed because he is a civil servant.

With Chinas judiciary tightly controlled by the central government, it was unclear whether Mr. Tan would get his day in court. Articles about Mr. Tan have been censored on Chinese social media. Calls to the court in Wuhan on Thursday rang unanswered.

Liu Yi contributed research.

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Coronavirus Survivors Want Answers, and China Is Silencing Them - The New York Times

The World Health Organization lists the most common symptoms of Covid-19 as fever, tiredness and a dry cough. Others include a runny nose, sore throat, nasal congestion, pain, diarrhoea and the loss of sense of taste and/or smell. But there are also other more unusual symptoms that patients have presented.

Patients in several countries have reported rashes on their toes, resembling chilblains, in many cases unaccompanied by any of the usual symptoms of the virus. The condition has been dubbed Covid toe. The rashes can take the form of red or purple lesions and, despite the name, can be found on the side or sole of the foot, or even on hands and fingers. The European Journal of Pediatric Dermatology reported an epidemic of cases among children and adolescents in Italy. It said that unlike other rashes associated with coronavirus, it had not been previously observed.

Conjunctivitis has been a rare symptom in cases of Covid-19, with viral particles being found in tears. In the UK, the Royal College of Ophthalmologists and College of Optometrists says: It is recognised that any upper respiratory tract infection may result in viral conjunctivitis as a secondary complication, and this is also the case with Covid-19. However, it is unlikely that a person would present with viral conjunctivitis secondary to Covid-19 without other symptoms of fever or a continuous cough as conjunctivitis seems to be a late feature where is has occurred.

A peer-reviewed Spanish study, published in the British Journal of Dermatology last week, found that 6% of the 375 coronavirus cases examined involved necrosis, the death of body tissue due to a lack of blood supply, or livedo, discolouration of the skin. The skin can become mottled and have purple or red patchy areas, which may appear in a lace-like pattern. In the study, it was generally found in older patients with more severe cases of Covid-19. However, this was not consistent across the board and necrosis was also found in some people with coronavirus who did not require hospitalisation.

A study of 214 patients in China, published in Jama Neurology last month, found that just over a third (36.4%) had experienced neurological symptoms such as dizziness or headaches, increasing to 45.5% in those with severe coronavirus infections. Commenting on the research, Prof Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading, said: It happens, but is generally not what coronaviruses do. At the moment neurological complications might best be considered a consequence of Covid-19 disease severity rather than a distinct new concern.

Some patients have complained about a tingling, fizzing or even burning sensation. Dr Waleed Javaid, the director of infection prevention and control at Mount Sinai hospital in New York, told Today.com it was likely the patients immune response to Covid-19 rather than the virus itself was causing such sensations. He said: Theres a widespread immune response that is happening. Our immune cells get activated so a lot of chemicals get released throughout our body and that can present or feel like theres some fizzing. When our immune response is acting up, people can feel different sensations I have heard of similar experiences in the past with other illnesses.

This article was amended on 8 May 2020 to correct a reference to livedo that should have said necrosis.

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Rashes, headaches, tingling: the less common coronavirus symptoms that patients have - The Guardian

LAS CRUCES, N.M. On March 13, the same day that a reluctant President Trump admitted that the coronavirus pandemic was a national emergency, a storied New Mexico hospital established the nations first drive-through testing for the virus.

The next day, hundreds of cars lined the streets of Albuquerque, the states largest city. A second hospital jumped in with more testing. Within days, drive-through testing still not widely available in much of the nation, even today expanded here to Las Cruces, to the southern edge of the state.

One of the nations poorest states, with a small population flung across 122,000 square miles, New Mexico quickly accomplished what for the United States as a whole seems elusive: widespread testing for the deadliest pandemic in a century.

For all its haunting, natural beauty, New Mexico is a land of grit. Led by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the state swiftly shuttered much of its economy, not waiting on the federal government. It also tapped two secret weapons: sophisticated medical knowledge, a legacy from its role as a hub of aerospace research, and the scientific power of the nuclear weapons laboratories that occupy the states high desert plateaus.

On its face, New Mexicos success might seem hard to believe. For years, young people fled the state in search of better economic opportunities elsewhere. The opiate crisis hit hard and early. Despite a rich history and an equally rich culture, New Mexico just couldnt keep pace with its wealthier neighbors, Texas, Colorado and Arizona.

Two recent developments made a difference, though. Though the oil and gas boom has gone bust, while it lasted it helped fill the states coffers, providing something of a fiscal cushion. The second is Governor Lujan Grisham. Before serving as governor (and before that, a U.S. representative), she had been the states health secretary.

As the states top health official, she dealt with the sort of problems that make the coronavirus so calamitous: underserved rural populations, urban pueblos and rural reservations dependent on government help, rampant poverty and poor public health. During her stint, she focused on suicide prevention, building new laboratories and facilities and tackling infectious diseases.

When Covid-19 attacked, Ms. Lujan Grisham sprang into action. She declared a statewide health emergency on March 11, when just four people in her state had tested positive and two days before the president.

In the background, the state was already moving. One of the states most valuable assets is Lovelace Health Systems, one of the states three biggest hospital networks. Modeled on the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Lovelace became famous for administering the physicals that narrowed the field of the original Mercury astronauts. Veteran physicians had already endured the 1993 outbreak of Hantavirus, a deadly, aerosolized respiratory virus spread by deer mice. Lovelace drilled extensively for the Ebola outbreak in 2014.

By February, executives at Lovelace and the states two other largest systems Presbyterian Healthcare Services and the University of New Mexico were trading notes. Troy Greer, the chief executive of Lovelace, recalled asking, How could we work together to give the state its best shot?

By early March, as Mr. Trump downplayed the crisis, Lovelaces top doctor and engineer sketched out exactly how they would provide drive-through testing on a pair of napkins. On March 11, Ms. Lujan Grishams administration said it would provide the test kits, from a stash of supplies in a state lab, if the hospitals provided the labor. Two days later, Lovelace opened for business in one of its parking lots, testing 200 people on the first day and then 800 the next day. The next day, Presbyterian took the baton. Soon the testing spread across the state.

Meanwhile, the governor was doing battle with the president. During a March 16 teleconference between the president and governors and Mr. Trump, he told them to get their own ventilators. Try getting it yourselves, he said. An angry Governor Lujan Grisham shot back, If one state doesnt get the resources and materials they need, the entire nation continues to be at risk.

She also warned that entire Native American tribes were at risk of being wiped out; New Mexico is home to an array of Pueblo, Apache and Navajo people.

Shortly after, she ordered businesses shuttered, and encouraged people to stay home. Public schools were required to adopt distance learning. She resisted pressure from churches to reopen, and ordered every New Mexican to wear a mask in public. Though they havent been universally popular, her actions have paid dividends.

The state is also harnessing the scientific power of two national nuclear laboratories to process still more coronavirus tests. Normally dealing in physics to secretively maintain the nations nuclear weapons arsenal, Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories will not just test, but model and even help search for a vaccine for the virus.

With a little more than 3,200 cases, New Mexicos infection rate is on par with similarly sized states like Nebraska and Kansas. But with over 65,000 tests so far outstripping richer Texas on a per capita basis the death rate has remained lower than neighboring Colorado or nearby Nevada. A total of 112 people have died in New Mexico, according to state data.

She made our case, Tim Harman, a gallery owner in Santa Fe, said of the governor. She also gave us lots of information quickly, on websites and in email. New Mexico is a lot like a small boat. Were just not that big. And so, we could turn the boat quickly. We feel really good.

During a car trip across the eastern half of the state, the radio crackled with state public service announcements urging people to stay home a message echoed in a follow-up announcement by Baptist preachers in the mountain town of Ruidoso, saying they would conduct drive-in services. But we want everyone to stay in their car, their commercial urged.

At a briefing last week in Santa Fe, Ms. Lujan Grisham did something that still has eluded Mr. Trump: She showed compassion. Even as her administration announced that the state would have enough hospital beds, and was considering steps to open up the economy, she began by mourning the dead.

I do want people to know that we mourn with you, she said. Its incredibly hurtful to know we lose anyone in this state to this unfair, invisible, deadly threat.

Then, as other states told businesses to open with little data, she refused to lift the stay-at-home order. Her stellar performance during the crisis has raised her as a possible vice presidential running mate alongside Joe Biden.

New Mexico isnt out of the proverbial woods yet; infections rage on the Navajo reservation in the western part of the state, stretching into Arizona, with infection rates akin to New York. Already, Navajo officials have recorded nearly 1,200 infections and the entire Navajo police force is being tested.

And, even with a massive death toll averted, she and the states 2.2 million people face economic devastation. This is the governors next challenge.

She has ordered the horseracing industry shut down; it normally generates hundreds of millions of tourist and gambling dollars annually. Sunland Park has been feeding stable workers daily with zero customers, according to Julie Farr, the tracks in-house racing analyst. Were fierce competitors on the track, she said. But when something goes wrong we take care of each other.

Casinos from the Texas border to Colorado are closed. So are liquor stores and gun shops. In the north, Santa Fes 99th annual Indian Market has been postponed for a year. In the southeast, the oil and gas patch lies crushed by record low prices.

Meanwhile the state has one of the lowest median incomes in America. And rural hospitals here are going broke after being ordered to cancel procedures to make way for coronavirus cases.

Making things worse, New Mexico is also politically divided. The eastern part of the state and the southwest are deep-red Republican, although the state government is run by Democrats, who also occupy every seat in Congress and the Senate. The local government in the town of Grants effectively rebelled by defying the governors orders, daring her to send in the state police, though it later seemed to back off.

Afterward, in repairing a shattered economy, it is likely that New Mexicos leaders will need to at least consider tapping one more secret weapon, the states $23 billion sovereign wealth fund, accumulated over the years from oil and gas royalties. Only a few states and about 80 foreign nations, such as Kuwait and Russia, have such funds. So, as the age of fossil fuel draws to a close, the fund may provide a way out of the economic damage of the crisis and into the future.

Up in Santa Fe, Mr. Harman has taken to building a digital experience of his gallery, Gallery Campeaux. A creative director, photographer and filmmaker by profession, he hopes to make up for the lack of physical presence by visitors, perhaps for years to come. I want to make it as real as possible, he said. In a larger sense, I think, or at least hope, that this whole thing will usher in the future. I do know I want the world to be a better world after this.

Maybe. New Mexico is always full of grit, secrets and, yes, even secret weapons.

Richard Parker is the author of Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America.

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How New Mexico Flattened the Coronavirus Curve - The New York Times

Public service messages are projected on bus stop screens in Chicago, Ill. A modified stay-at-home order remains in effect statewide through May 30. Charles Rex Arbogast/AP hide caption

Public service messages are projected on bus stop screens in Chicago, Ill. A modified stay-at-home order remains in effect statewide through May 30.

Updated May 1 at 10:35 p.m. ET

Part of a series on coronavirus-related restrictions across the United States.

Jump to a state: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, other states

The first version of this page was originally published on March 12. This is a developing story. We will continue to update as new information becomes available.

NPR's Brakkton Booker, Merrit Kennedy, Vanessa Romo, Colin Dwyer, Laurel Wamsley, Aubri Juhasz and Bobby Allyn contributed to this report.

This is part of a series about coronavirus-related restrictions across the United States.

Northeast: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont

Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin

South: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia

West: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming

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Midwest: Coronavirus-Related Restrictions And Reopenings - NPR

A broad coalition of US health systems has mobilized to ramp up coronavirus testing in a national effort on a scale not seen since the second world war. But declarations of false victory by the Trump administration and a vacuum of federal leadership have undermined the endeavor, leading experts to warn that reopening the US could result in a disaster.

Interviews with agents on the frontlines of the coronavirus battle lab directors, chemists, manufacturers, epidemiologists, academics and technologists reveal as diverse an application of the legendary American ingenuity as the century has seen.

Test kit manufacturers are running production lines around the clock to triple their output, and triple it again. A private healthcare institute in California has constructed a mega-lab to process thousands of tests daily and deliver the results by text message alert. In smaller labs across the country, microbiologists improvise each day to fill unpredictable supply chain gaps that might leave them without swabs one day, and without crucial chemicals the next.

Its incredible what weve done together over a short period of time, Donald Trump said at a White House briefing this week, praising his administrations response to the pandemic.

But analysts say that without centralized governance and coordination, the national effort remains a competing coalition of state and local outfits hampered by duplicated work, competition for supplies, siloed pursuits of non-transferable solutions and red tape that leaves some labs with testing backlogs and others with excess capacity.

All of which leaves the US without a unified, coherent strategy for testing and contact tracing to contain a virus that does not respect state borders and has already killed more than 60,000 Americans.

Without it, the imminent experiment of reopening the country could be catastrophic, warned Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina in a conference call with reporters this week.

My concern is that well end up right where we have been, with major cities having healthcare systems that get overrun quickly because of major outbreaks, Mina said.

Im afraid well just end up repeating the past

Meanwhile, as states begin to relax social distancing measures, the Trump administration is spreading dangerous misinformation, denying persistent supply shortages, underestimating the number of Covid-19 cases and exaggerating the margin of safety conferred by the current volume of testing and contact-tracing, experts say.

Weve done more than 200,000 tests in a single day, Mike Pence said at a taskforce briefing this week, in which Trump touted testing as one of the great assets that we have in reopening the US.

But at current testing levels, with only rudimentary plans for contact tracing for new cases, the US will be flying virtually blind as it reopens, said Glen Weyl, a technologist who co-authored a report issued by Harvards Safra Center for Ethics that calls for 5m tests a day by early June.

No, definitely not, you cant open up with that number, Weyl said of Pences announcement. Its not even remotely in the right ballpark. Its off by a factor of 10.

Testing is one of the biggest challenges the coronavirus crisis poses. And as Asian countries that have succeeded in temporarily containing the virus have shown, testing strategy is entwined with the need for contact tracing and isolating confirmed and suspected Covid-19 patients.

There are multiple categories of tests with multiple different modes for sampling, storage and transport. A test might detect the virus itself, detect traces of the virus or detect the bodys reaction to having had the virus. The experience of being tested could be different in each case. One patient might have his or her sinuses probed by a swab at a drive-thru, while another might spit in a tube at home and another give a blood sample at a clinic.

Each test has a different degree of reliability, with different amounts of time and labor required to complete the boomerang curve of sample collection to testing to result report.

We have too many [brands of] tests, and now there are a lot of people who are committed to their tests and they run their tests on their platforms, said Paul Reider, a renowned research chemist in the pharmaceuticals industry who teaches at Princeton University.

We have too many [brands of] tests, and now there are a lot of people who are committed to their tests

If we had an effective administration this is where the federal government comes in they could essentially turn around and say, What we would like to do is, we want one test, maybe two, that are fast, that are accurate, that are scalable and transferable, .

You want a gold-standard test.

In the US, regulatory and administrative hurdles are everywhere, with clinics unable to send samples to private labs that might be out of their usual networks, a lack of protocols for reporting testing data, slow regulatory approval for the use of alternative testing materials, insufficient federal funding to support lab efforts and no central leadership steering the countrys massive laboratory apparatus.

We dont have a system thats ever been built for surveillance, for wide-scale population surveillance or wide-scale testing for people who arent presenting to the hospital or the clinic, said Mina. The demand is just so much larger than our system was built for.

The Trump administrations response to this complicated thicket has been to declare the federal government a supplier of last resort and wish the states luck. Its pretty simple, Trump has said. They have tremendous capacity. We hope to be able to help out.

In an attempt to meet the demand they have encountered, lab scientists have improvised constantly, substituting materials where possible or stacking testing platforms from different manufacturers Roche, Qiagen, Abbott, Hologic, DiaSorin so that if one goes down another can take its place.

The result is that labs have delivered an unprecedented number of tests in record time but with a fraction of the potential efficiency that could be achieved through better coordination, said Reider.

If Jared Kushner wanted to do something decent, and Vice-President Pence, they could try to standardize and distribute nationally a global test, said Reider. At least make it available and let people choose if they want to use it.

The Harvard report called for the establishment of a Pandemic Testing Board akin to the War Production Board that the United States created in World War II. The director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota calls for a new Marshall plan to stand up testing in the US.

But no efforts to create such a central authority are apparent, said Michael Osterholm, CIDRAP director, who described a shortage of reagents, or chemicals used in testing, on his Osterholm Update podcast this week.

We have had a number of our testing laboratories unable to get the needed reagents they couldve and shouldve had to increase testing, Osterholm said. We really need a Marshall plan where the federal government and the private sector get together and decide what are the challenges, what can we do to quickly boost these reagents, what can we do to actually increase the reagent pool?

Demand signal or no, some big private sector players have already moved aggressively. Early on in the crisis, Color, a private healthcare institute that does genomic testing in California, resolved to stand up a mega-lab that is now on the verge of processing 10,000 tests a day, with a goal of expanding that capacity by an order of magnitude, said Othman Laraki, CEO.

The company has since partnered with the city of San Francisco to provide Covid-19 testing for all private-sector and nonprofit essential employees, as well as any resident with symptoms who cannot find testing elsewhere. Next-day results are delivered via email and text-message alerts.

Our thinking was that you needed to have a few massively scaled labs as opposed to having a big sprinkling of small-scale labs, Laraki said. We believe thats the way to build the type of capacity thats needed really to bring the country back to work.

In Minnesota, academics at the state university partnered with scientists at the Mayo clinic, one of the countrys premier labs, to deliver on a challenge by governor Tim Walz to stop coronavirus in the state with comprehensive testing and contact tracing.

We really need a Marshall plan where the federal government and the private sector get together

We just made the decision that were probably going to be on our own and that we need to be ready to care for our patients, said Tim Schacker, vice-dean for research at the University of Minnesota and an architect of the project.

As a first step, the scientists invented a molecular test that was mostly independent of the supply chain problems, Schacker said.

Robin Patel, the president of the American Society for Microbiology, said supply chain issues continue to represent a daily challenge for laboratories, from swabs to chemicals to materials used to extract viral RNA and amplify DNA.

The situation has changed, yes, but its a different situation every day, so using the word improved is I dont think appropriate, she said.

This isnt just an American situation. People throughout the world are dealing with the same issues. The supply chain were talking about is not just an American supply chain, its a worldwide supply chain.

To celebrate Americas reopening, Trump appears to be preparing to hit the road, with plans to visit warehouses and factory sites to advertise the economic comeback he has promised. We built the greatest economy the world has ever seen, Trump said this week. And were going to do it again. And its not going to be that long. OK?

Polling indicates that a majority of Americans does not share Trumps optimism. About two in three Americans think restrictions on restaurants, stores and other businesses are appropriate, and 16% on top of that wanted tighter restrictions, a poll this week from the Washington Post and the University of Maryland found.

Top epidemiologists believe its possible that the US could get some kind of reprieve from the virus in the warmer months ahead. If that happens, the summer could feature the scenes Trump has dreamed about, of packed churches, humming factories, crowded beaches and sold-out flights.

But Trumps dream that the virus will simply disappear is just that a dream, epidemiologists say.

I hope that over the course of the next few weeks to two months, were going to actually see a substantial reduction in transmission, Osterholm said. And if it does, it shouldnt be interpreted that we won, or that somehow were in control.

I hope that the case numbers continue to decrease over time, but Im also very, very aware that theyre coming back, and we just have to remember that.

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No leadership and no plan: is Trump about to fail the US on coronavirus testing? - The Guardian

The World Health Organization extended its declaration of a global health emergency on Friday amid increasing criticism from the Trump Administration about its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The move comes exactly three months after the organizations original decision to announce a public health emergency of international concern on Jan. 30. At the time, only 98 of the nearly 10,000 confirmed cases had occurred outside Chinas borders.

But the pandemic continues to grow. More than 3.2 million people around the world are known to have been infected, and nearly a quarter million have died, according to official counts. There is evidence on six continents of sustained transmission of the virus.

All of this has led experts in the W.H.O.s emergency committee to reconvene to assess the course of the outbreak, and to advise on updated recommendations, said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organizations director-general.

The pandemic remains a public health emergency of international concern, Dr. Tedros said, adding that the crisis has illustrated that even the most sophisticated health systems are struggling to cope with a pandemic.

A rapid rise in new cases in Africa and South America, where many countries have weak health care systems, was alarming, he said. The acceleration is occurring even as the spread of the virus has appeared to slow in many countries in Asia and Europe.

Although people are slowly starting to return to work in China after weeks of lockdowns, businesses, schools and cultural institutions are still shuttered in most parts of the world. The virus has badly damaged the global economy.

Across the United States, governors are struggling to square constituents demands for an end to stay-at-home orders with the consequences of loosening social distancing rules.

Scientific and public health experts have warned that reopening restaurants, movie theaters and malls may lead to a deadly second wave of infection.

Several Republican senators, especially those locked in difficult races, have started shifting the blame for the spread of the virus onto China. Party officials hope that deflecting anger over the human casualties and economic pain in the United States will help salvage a difficult election.

President Trump has embraced the strategy, calling out Chinas misinformation and the W.H.O.s China-centric response in the early days of the pandemic.

He has accused the W.H.O., without evidence, of helping China to obscure the extent of its epidemic in the early days, as well as being slow to release guidelines for precautions against infections.

In fact, the W.H.O. began raising alarms in early January, as soon as it was informed by China of a new, mysterious illness in the city of Wuhan. On Friday, Dr. Tedros insisted that the W.H.O. did not waste any time in traveling to Beijing to discuss with the leadership and to find, to see for ourselves, the situation in China.

In mid-April, Mr. Trump announced he would halt funding to the W.H.O. The United States is by far the organizations largest benefactor.

Dr. Tedros announced Friday that the European Investment Bank would provide grants and financial support to help strengthen global supply chains, and facilitate the distribution of diagnostics, personal protective equipment and other medical supplies.

We look forward to seeing how that type of innovative financing could deliver real results for global health when W.H.O. is advocating health for all, Dr. Tedros said. W.H.O. is deeply grateful to the European Investment Bank for its support and collaboration.

Yet the W.H.O. has still managed the coronavirus crisis as well as it could, and better than the Trump administration has, many experts say.

The W.H.O. helped arrange testing supplies and personal protective equipment for countries in need and held daily news meetings to warn the world that the virus was spreading and that countries should do everything they could to stop it.

At nearly every briefing, Dr. Tedros repeated: We have a window of opportunity to stop this virus. But that window is rapidly closing.

On Friday, Didier Houssin, chair of the W.H.O. emergency committee, said that committee members had made more than 20 recommendations, hoping to reduce disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The guidance focuses on mitigating interruptions to the distribution of food and medicines caused by lockdowns, a safe return to work, and resumption of normal air travel. The committee said researchers would continue to look for the animal thought to be the original source of the coronavirus, and to develop potential vaccines and therapies.

We encourage countries to follow W.H.O.s advice, which we are constantly reviewing and updating as we learn more about the virus, and as we learn more from countries about best practices for responding to it, Dr. Tedros said.

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The Coronavirus Still Is a Global Health Emergency, W.H.O. Warns - The New York Times

The Department of Homeland Security study on the effects of heat and sunlight on the coronavirus is undergoing the process for peer review and publication in scientific journals, according to the department.

There is no written report as yet, although the results are being submitted for peer review and publication in scientific journals, a DHS spokesperson told CNN.

DHS' Science and Technology Directorate has been studying theimpacts of environmental conditions on the coronavirus,particularlytheimpacts of temperature, humidity, and sunlight on the virus.

The study came under increased scrutiny after President Trumpsuggested last week during a press briefing that the virus could be treated with sunlight, as well aswhether disinfectants could be used to treat the virus in humans.

During last week's briefing, William Bryan, acting DHS Science and Technology under secretary, discussed the experiments in which, he said, disinfectants like bleach and isopropyl alcohol quickly killed the virus.Trump then mused about whether disinfectantscould be used to treat the virus in humans.

When asked why the department released the results before the final study, a spokesperson said, "We felt it important to share information on the emerging trends that are being identified in our tests," saying that the results are still undergoing a "rigorous scientific review."

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Coronavirus pandemic in the US: Live updates - CNN

The Coronavirus Genome

The coronavirus is an oily membrane packed with genetic instructions to make millions of copies of itself. The instructions are encoded in 30,000 letters of RNA a, c, g and u which the infected cell reads and translates into many kinds of virus proteins.

RNA instructions to make the ORF1a protein

Start of coronavirus genome

Start of coronavirus genome

Start of the

coronavirus

genome

Start of the

coronavirus

genome

In December, a cluster of mysterious pneumonia cases appeared around a seafood market in Wuhan, China. In early January, researchers sequenced the first genome of a new coronavirus, which they isolated from a man who worked at the market. That first genome became the baseline for scientists to track the SARS-CoV-2 virus as it spreads around the world.

Genome Wuhan-Hu-1, collected on Dec. 26 from an early patient in Wuhan

Genome Wuhan-Hu-1, collected on Dec. 26 from an early patient in Wuhan

Genome Wuhan-Hu-1, collected on Dec. 26 from an early patient in Wuhan

Genome Wuhan-Hu-1, collected on Dec. 26 from an early patient in Wuhan

A cell infected by a coronavirus releases millions of new viruses, all carrying copies of the original genome. As the cell copies that genome, it sometimes makes mistakes, usually just a single wrong letter. These typos are called mutations. As coronaviruses spread from person to person, they randomly accumulate more mutations.

The genome below came from another early patient in Wuhan and was identical to the first case, except for one mutation. The 186th letter of RNA was u instead of c.

Genome WH-09, collected on Jan. 8 from another patient in Wuhan

186th RNA letter changed

Genome WH-09, collected on Jan. 8 from another patient in Wuhan

186th RNA letter changed

Genome WH-09, collected on Jan. 8 from another patient in Wuhan

186th

RNA letter

changed:

Genome WH-09, collected on Jan. 8 from another patient in Wuhan

186th RNA letter

changed:

When researchers compared several genomes from the Wuhan cluster of cases they found only a few new mutations, suggesting that the different genomes descended from a recent common ancestor. Viruses accumulate new mutations at a roughly regular rate, so the scientists were able to estimate that the origin of the outbreak was in China sometime around November 2019.

Outside of Wuhan, that same mutation in the 186th letter of RNA has been found in only one other sample, which was collected seven weeks later and 600 miles south in Guangzhou, China. The Guangzhou sample might be a direct descendent of the first Wuhan sample. Or they might be viral cousins, sharing a common ancestor.

During those seven weeks, the Guangzhou lineage jumped from person to person and went through several generations of new viruses. And along the way, it developed two new mutations: Two more letters of RNA changed to u.

Genome GZMU0030, collected on Feb. 27 in Guangzhou

Another RNA letter mutated

This mutation also changed an amino acid

Genome GZMU0030, collected on Feb. 27 in Guangzhou

Another RNA letter mutated

This mutation also changed an amino acid

Genome GZMU0030, collected on Feb. 27 in Guangzhou

Another RNA letter mutated. This mutation also changed an amino acid.

Genome GZMU0030, collected on Feb. 27 in Guangzhou

Another RNA letter mutated. This mutation also changed an amino acid.

Mutations will often change a gene without changing the protein it encodes.

Proteins are long chains of amino acids folded into different shapes. Each amino acid is encoded by three genetic letters, but in many cases a mutation to the third letter of a trio will still encode the same amino acid. These so-called silent mutations dont change the resulting protein.

Non-silent mutations do change a proteins sequence, and the Guangzhou sample of the coronavirus acquired two non-silent mutations.

Amino acid change in the ORF1a protein

Amino acid change in the E protein

Amino acid change in ORF1a

Amino acid change in E

Amino acid change in the E protein

Amino acid change in the ORF1a protein

Amino acid change in the E protein

Amino acid change in the ORF1a protein

But proteins can be made of hundreds or thousands of amino acids. Changing a single amino acid often has no noticeable effect on their shape or how they work.

As the months have passed, parts of the coronavirus genome have gained many mutations. Others have gained few, or none at all. This striking variation may hold important clues to coronavirus biology.

The parts of the genome that have accumulated many mutations are more flexible. They can tolerate changes to their genetic sequence without causing harm to the virus. The parts with few mutations are more brittle. Mutations in those parts may destroy the coronavirus by causing catastrophic changes to its proteins. Those essential regions may be especially good targets for attacking the virus with antiviral drugs.

Total number of amino acid substitutions found in 4,400 coronavirus genomes from Dec. to April

Longer lines may show places where the genome is more tolerant of mutations.

Gaps may show critical spots in the genome that cannot tolerate mutations.

Total number of amino acid changes in 4,400 coronavirus genomes from Dec. to April

Longer lines may show places where the genome is more tolerant of mutations.

Gaps may show critical spots in the genome that cannot tolerate mutations.

Total number of amino acid changes in 4,400 coronavirus genomes from Dec. to April

Longer lines may show places where the genome is more tolerant of mutations.

Gaps may show critical spots in the genome that cannot tolerate mutations.

Total number of amino acid changes in 4,400 coronavirus genomes from Dec. to April

Longer lines may show places where the genome is more tolerant of mutations.

Gaps may show critical spots in the genome that cannot tolerate mutations.

As mutations accumulate in coronavirus genomes, they allow scientists to track the spread of Covid-19 around the world.

On January 15, a man flew home to the Seattle area after visiting family in Wuhan. After a few days of mild symptoms he tested positive for Covid-19. He became the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the United States.

An X-ray of the patients lungs showed evidence of pneumonia.NEJM

The genome of his virus contained three single-letter mutations also found in viruses in China. They allowed scientists to trace the mans infection to its source.

Genome WA1, collected on Jan. 19 from a man in the Seattle area who visited Wuhan

Genome WA1, collected on Jan. 19 from a man in the Seattle area who visited Wuhan

Genome WA1, collected on Jan. 19 from a man in the Seattle area who visited Wuhan

Genome WA1, collected on Jan. 19 from a man in the Seattle area who visited Wuhan

Identical genomes collected on Jan. 21 in Fujian and Guangdong provinces

Identical genomes collected on Jan. 21 in Fujian and Guangdong provinces

Identical genomes collected on Jan. 21 in Fujian and Guangdong provinces

Identical genomes collected on Jan. 21 in Fujian and Guangdong provinces

Five weeks later, a high school student in Snohomish County, Wash., developed flu-like symptoms. A nose swab revealed he had Covid-19. Scientists sequenced the genome of his coronavirus sample and found it shared the same distinctive mutations found in the first case in Washington, but also bore three additional mutations.

Genome WA2, collected on Feb. 24 from a high-school student in the Seattle area

Genome WA2, collected on Feb. 24 from a high-school student in the Seattle area

Genome WA2, collected on Feb. 24 from a high-school student in the Seattle area

Genome WA2, collected on Feb. 24 from a high-school student in the Seattle area

That combination of old and new mutations suggested that the student did not acquire the coronavirus from someone who had recently arrived from another country. Instead, the coronavirus was probably circulating undetected in the Seattle area for about five weeks, since mid-January.

Since then, viruses with a genetic link to the Washington cluster have now appeared in at least 14 states and several countries around the world, as well as nine cases on the Grand Princess cruise ship.

Genome collected on March 5 from two passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship

Genome collected on March 5 from two passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship

Genome collected on March 5 from two passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship

Genome collected on March 5 from two passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship

A different version of the coronavirus was also secretly circulating in California. On Feb. 26, the C.D.C. announced that a patient in Solano County with no known ties to any previous case or overseas travel had tested positive.

A sample taken the next day revealed that the virus did not have the distinctive mutations found in Washington State. Instead, it only had a single mutation distinguishing it from the original Wuhan genome. That indicates that it got to California through a separate introduction from China.

Genome UC4, collected on Feb. 27 from a patient in Solano County, Calif.

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How Coronavirus Mutates and Spreads - The New York Times

The tension between private liberty and public health in the United States is hardly new. Americans have demanded the latter in times of plague and prioritized the former in times of well-being since at least the Colonial Era. Politicians and business leaders have alternately manipulated and deferred to that tension for about as long.

In 1701, members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony fought a yearlong political battle to enact the nations first quarantine laws against opponents who said such measures were too severe. In 1918, during the flu pandemic, the mayor of Pittsburgh brought a ban on public gatherings to a swift and premature conclusion over concerns about a coming election.

In 2020, the same tension is back with a vengeance. The nation is under siege from the worst pandemic in a century, and the United States is on track to suffer more deaths than any other industrialized country from SARS-CoV-2, the medical name for the novel coronavirus.

Attorney General William Barr last Monday ordered Justice Department lawyers to be on the lookout for state and local directives that could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens. He was talking about state and local orders closing businesses and requiring people to shelter in place to help combat the spread of the virus. The Constitution is not suspended in times of crisis, Mr. Barr said in an April 27 memo.

Yet the same Mr. Barr, early in the outbreak, was seemingly so concerned about its impact that he proposed letting the government pause court proceedings and detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies effectively suspending the core constitutional right of habeas corpus.

Temporary limitations on some liberties dont seem to concern most Americans at this moment. Polls show that 70 percent to 90 percent of the public support measures to slow the spread of the virus, even if those measures require temporarily yielding certain freedoms and allowing the economy to suffer in the short run.

Indeed, it is wealthy and powerful conservatives and their allies, including President Trump and Fox News, who are driving the relatively small protests demanding a liberation of the states from oppressive lockdowns as opposed to any overwhelming public sentiment to that effect.

Whats more, every country that has managed to get its Covid-19 outbreak under control has done so with measures far more aggressive than anything tried in the United States so far.

In China, South Korea and Singapore, the authorities quickly established comprehensive testing, along with rigorous contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. In the United States, such efforts are still under construction and are proceeding at a snails pace; three-plus months into the crisis, just a tiny fraction of the needed tests, contact tracers and quarantine facilities are operational anywhere.

Civil liberties may feel to some like a second-order problem when thousands of Americans are dying of a disease with no known treatment or vaccine. Yet while unprecedented emergencies may demand unprecedented responses, those responses can easily tip into misuse and abuse, or can become part of our daily lives even after the immediate threat has passed. For examples, Americans need look no further than the excesses of the post-Sept. 11 Patriot Act.

As the nation starts looking ahead to the next phase of its battle against the coronavirus, we need to have a more honest conversation about the extent to which governments may impose restrictions on their citizens that would not and should not be tolerated under normal conditions.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND RELIGION

Consider the rights to free speech, association and religious exercise under the First Amendment: These freedoms are central to our self-definition, and yet they have all been infringed on to varying degrees across the country, as states ban gatherings where the virus can spread quickly and easily. In Maryland and Iowa, for example, all types of large events and gatherings, including church services, have been prohibited. (Many other states have exempted religious services from their bans, which raises the separate question of whether the government is impermissibly favoring religion.)

Bans like these are legal, as long as they are neutral and applicable to everyone. A state may not shut down only certain types of events, or prohibit speakers expressing only certain viewpoints. Under Supreme Court precedent, any infringement on speech or religion must be incidental to the central goal of the restriction, which in this case is clear: stopping the spread of the coronavirus.

But even if all these bans are legal on their face, what happens as the 2020 election approaches? Speech and association rights are at their peak in the political context, and Americans will be especially wary of any incursions on those rights in the months or weeks before Election Day. What if a state lifts some restrictions on large gatherings, then reimposes them in the days before an election? That may be necessary if there is another wave of the virus, and yet in a highly polarized political environment, citizens might well distrust official motivations behind a crackdown, and that could generate public unrest.

This is why its so important for the authorities to build that trust now, and to rely openly on scientific consensus when imposing and lifting bans on gatherings and other events.

SURVEILLANCE AND CELLPHONES

Another area of concern is the governments ability to know where we are and whom were with. In normal times, the authorities generally have to obtain a warrant to search your personal property, like a cellphone, or to retrieve its data to find your location.

But giving the government access to all that data carries huge risks. There were already far too many examples of law-enforcement officials abusing their access to cellphone data in the pre-Covid era, taking advantage of revolutions in technology to track people in ways that no one would imaginably consent to. Even if people give their consent to be tracked during the pandemic, governments have a very poor track record of relinquishing new powers once they have them.

The question then becomes: Can cellphone data be used in a way that helps stem the spread of the coronavirus while also being kept out of the hands of the government to avoid abuse, now or down the road?

Apple and Google are in the process of producing an app that would use secret codes to track people through their phones, while leaving the location data on those phones. People who test positive would be given the choice of putting their phone on a list. Other peoples phones could automatically check that list, and if any were within range of the infected person, those people would be notified that they could be at risk.

Fine, in theory. But for a system like this to work, the public needs to buy into it. Enough people have to use these apps to make them effective at least 60 percent of cellphone users, by some estimates and no city or country is anywhere close to that level of adoption. In Norway, only 30 percent of people have downloaded this type of location app.

Another hurdle is that the big technology companies have a poor record of protecting their users private information.

In the end, contact tracing a central feature of any comprehensive public-health response will need to be a cooperative endeavor, involving not only downloadable apps but perhaps hundreds of thousands of human beings, all doing the hard work of direct outreach to find those people at the highest risk of infection.

LIBERATING AMERICA

It would be one thing if the calls to reopen America from President Trump and his allies were part of a coordinated pandemic response strategy by a federal government that had taken strong and science-based measures from the start. But the White House failed to do that at virtually every turn, which makes the current protests ring hollow.

Its possible that at least some of the current lockdowns could have been avoided had the Trump administration led the way back in January when we still had time to take advantage of the information coming out of China and prepare the United States for what lay ahead. In that sense, these devastating shutdowns represent a catastrophic failure of timely government action. Even today, top officials are refusing to take the most basic safety measures. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence toured the Mayo Clinic but refused to follow the clinics requirement to wear a mask. What message does he think that sends to the American people? (On Thursday Mr. Pence visited a plant producing ventilators in his home state, Indiana, and wore a mask.)

In a large self-governing society, civil liberties exist as part of a delicate balance. That balance is being sorely tested right now, and there is often no good solution that does not infringe on at least some liberty. At the same time, the coronavirus provides Americans with an opportunity to reimagine the scope and nature of our civil liberties and our social contract. Yes, Americans are entitled to freedom from government intrusion. But they also have an obligation not to unnecessarily expose their fellow citizens to a deadly pathogen. Protecting Americans from the pandemic while also preserving our economy and our civil liberties is not easy. But its essential.

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We the People, in Order to Defeat the Coronavirus - The New York Times