A Vulnerable Population Braces for the Pandemic This week, the novel coronavirus pandemic, which has affected nearly 200 countries, will begin to ravage one of the biggest, most vulnerable nations in the world. India, home to more than 1.3 billion people, is bracing for a surge in COVID-19 cases. The country already has the largest [...]
A large one-day sampling of patients in intensive care units (ICUs) worldwide has found a high prevalence of suspected or proven infections, with a substantial risk of in-hospital mortality for infected patients. The results of the multinational point-prevalence study, published yesterday in JAMA, found that, over a 24-hour period, 54% of ICU patients in 88 countries had a [...]
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) today warned in its latest COVID-19 risk assessment that cases are rapidly increasing in all of Europe, following rises that look similar to those of China's Hubei province and Italy and that the risk of overwhelmed health systems is high. The report comes as cases in [...]
With nations around the world confronting the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) reminded people today that another respiratory illness—tuberculosis (TB)—remains the world's leading infectious disease killer and urged more action to prevent the disease. In a statement marking World TB Day, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the need to [...]
Italy's high rate of death from COVID-19 (7.2%, vs. 2.3% in China) may be explained by the country's relatively high proportion of older people, a different definition of coronavirus-related deaths, and approach to testing strategies, according to a commentary yesterday in JAMA. In a letter today in The Lancet, a separate group of Italian doctors implored countries to learn from their [...]
Today New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the COVID-19 pandemic case count is doubling every 3 days in his state, as the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the United States could become the next epicenter of the novel coronavirus, given that the country accounted for 40% of new cases recorded globally over the past 24 hours. [...]
President Trump today announced he has activated the National Guard for three hard-hit states, and Ohio and Louisiana today became the latest states to issue mandatory shelter-in-place orders, as the number of COVID-19 infections in the United States soared past 33,000. Meanwhile, an increasing number of infections and exposures have been reported in lawmakers on [...]
The global number of COVID-19 cases topped 300,000 today, with numbers soaring in western Europe and pandemic activity heating up in North America and other parts of the world In the United States today, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the first point-of-care rapid test for [...]
Surge in confirmed cases takes city total to 256 and serves as stark reminder that imported and community infections could overwhelm Hong Kong Most new patients have returned from overseas amid bleak warnings from health experts fearing tsunami of fresh infections in days ahead Read more...
When a new virus blasts out of the animals that harbored it and into people, experts can usually say, thank goodness it’s not like measles. That virus is more contagious than any others known to science: Each case of measles causes an astronomical 12 to 18 new cases, compared to about six for polio, smallpox, and rubella. Each case [...]
