Too Many Countries In 'Exponential' Virus Surge: WHOhttps://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-countries-exponential-virus-surge.htmlThe northern hemisphere is facing a crucial moment in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization said Friday, with too many countries witnessing an exponential increase in coronavirus cases.
"The next few months are going to be very tough and some countries are on a dangerous track," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference.
"Too many countries are seeing an exponential increase in COVID-19 cases and that is now leading to hospitals and intensive care units running close to or above capacity—and we're still only in October.
... Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, said the situation was "very worrying" in Europe, which clocked up more than half the new cases registered in the world over the last 24 hours.
"We're not only seeing increases in case numbers in many cities across Europe; the capacity for ICU (intensive care units) is going to be reached in the coming weeks," she said.
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The U.S. reported more than 71,600 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, a daily count nearing record highs set in late July as outbreaks continue to take hold in the Midwest, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Six U.S. states hit record highs of daily new deaths on a seven-day average Thursday, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.
Kansas reported a record seven-day average of 15 deaths, a 24% rise from last week. The record seven-day average of new deaths in Wisconsin was 21, up 16% and Oklahoma reported 11 new deaths, a 34% increase from the prior seven-day average.
New deaths in Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming hit a seven-day average of 7, 6, and 1, respectively.
Thirteen states — including Ohio, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Kentucky — also set records for seven-day average hospitalizations.
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Down Syndrome Tied to 10 Times the Risk of COVID-19 Deathhttps://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/10/down-syndrome-tied-10-times-risk-covid-19-death------------------------------------
Study Finds Between 130,000 and 210,000 US Deaths Could Have Been Avoidedhttps://ncdp.columbia.edu/custom-content/uploads/2020/10/Avoidable-COVID-19-Deaths-US-NCDP.pdfThe Trump administration’s botched response to the pandemic has led to between 130,000 and 210,000 preventable deaths, according to a new report from a team of disaster preparedness and public health experts.
“The United States has turned a global crisis into a devastating tragedy,” read a report released Thursday by researchers at Columbia University. “We estimate that at least 130,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 210,000 could have been avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination and leadership.
The team calculated avoidable deaths by estimating how many people would have died in other nations, like Japan and South Korea, if they had the same population as the US, and comparing those figures to the US death rate.
“Many of the underlying factors amplifying the pandemic’s deadly impact have existed long before the novel coronavirus first arrived in Washington state on January 20th – a fractured healthcare system, inequitable access to care, and immense health, social and racial disparities among America’s most vulnerable groups,” the researchers noted. “Compounding this is an Administration that has publicly denigrated its own public health officials – and science more generally -- thereby hamstringing efforts by its vaunted public health service to curb the pandemic’s spread.”
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Covid-19 Blood Plasma Therapy Has Limited Effect, Study Findshttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/covid-19-blood-plasma-therapy-has-limited-effect-study-findsA study, which is published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Friday, suggests “convalescent plasma” has only limited effectiveness and fails to reduce deaths or stop the progression to severe disease:
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3939The research involved 464 adults with moderate Covid-19 who were admitted to hospitals in India between April and July. Approximately half received two transfusions of convalescent plasma, 24 hours apart, alongside standard care, while the control group received standard care only.
One month later, 19% of those who received the plasma had progressed to severe disease or had died of any cause, compared with 18% in the control group. Plasma therapy did, however, seem to reduce symptoms, such as shortness of breath and fatigue, after seven days.
The Indian researchers agreed that further studies using high antibody levels may find it to be more effective. An interim analysis of 136 Covid-19 patients in a trial at Houston Methodist hospital in Texas suggested a significant reduction in deaths among patients who received plasma with high levels of antibodies early in the course of their disease.
Followup data from all 351 patients in the Texas study has been published as a preprint and supports this conclusion, although plasma transfusion later in the course of the disease had no significant effect on death rates regardless of antibody levels.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.02.20206029v1.full.pdf---------------------------------------
Sinclair's Eric Bolling: [to Trump]..
. "With COVID, is there anything that you think you could have done differently, if you had a mulligan or a do-over on one aspect of the way you handled it, what would it be?"Trump: "Not much."https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1318914453392531457---------------------------------------------
Half a Million Americans Could Die of Covid by End of February, Study Forecastshttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/coronavirus-half-a-million-deaths-study-forecasts... More than 511,000 lives could be lost by 28 February next year, modeling led by scientists from the University of Washington found. This means that with cases surging in many states, particularly the upper midwest, what appears to be a third major peak of coronavirus infections in the US could lead to nearly 300,000 people dying in just the next four months.
Modeling COVID-19 scenarios for the United States,
Nature Medicine, (2020)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1132-9------------------------------------------------
Dr Anthony Fauci said the White House coronavirus task force’s meetings have become less frequent, even as infections rise in dozens of US states.Amid a COVID case surge all over the U.S., Dr. Fauci says Trump hasn’t been to a WH COVID task force meeting in several months.
https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1319695629807947776--------------------------------------------