COVID19 top stories for Tuesday, June 16, 2020
New CDC guidance on infection control; steroid shows promise as a treatment
A healthcare worker and 15 of her friends have all tested positive for COVID-19 after a night out in Jacksonville, Florida. Eight days after she started having COVID-19 symptoms, she told a local TV station, “I think we were careless and we went out into a public place when we should not have. And we were not wearing masks.”
A widely used steroid drug, dexamethasone, may reduce deaths from COVID-19: British researchers published data that suggests dexamethasone may cut COVID-19 deaths among hospitalized patients by one-third. However, the data has not been peer reviewed. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb says that the study appears to be “well done” and calls the findings “important.” Author and influencer Dr. Atul Gawande criticized the researchers and sponsors for “science by press release.”
New York emergency physician Craig Spencer, who has been on the front lines of Ebola and now COVID-19, says he’s dismayed by the public response to the latest COVID-19 data. He says he believes the USA has not yet seen the “worst” of COVID-19. Read the responses on Twitter for a glimpse of alternate realities.
The CDC published new guidance on how COVID-19 spreads - mostly between humans, maybe between animals and humans or vice versa, and possibly from objects to humans. The key message:
“The virus that causes COVID-19 is spreading very easily and sustainably between people. Information from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic suggests that this virus is spreading more efficiently than influenza, but not as efficiently as measles, which is highly contagious. In general, the more closely a person interacts with others and the longer that interaction, the higher the risk of COVID-19 spread.”
The CDC has also added some additional resources to its general guidance page to help people decide whether and when to go out and what to do to stay safe when running errands, traveling or venturing out for other reasons.
Chinese scientists appear to be pointing to travelers from Europe as the source of new clusters of COVID-19 that prompted new mitigation measures including mass testing and renewed lockdown orders.
In Paris, a demonstration in support of healthcare workers took a violent turn when activists overturned a vehicle and threw objects at police.
The CDC has added county-level COVID-19 data to its coronavirus tracker page, using data from the non-profit USAFacts.org site, which has its own, extensive COVID-19 trackers.