Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
In The Era Of Coronavirus, Scientists Are The New Rock Stars
If it weren’t the age of social distancing, people would stop them on the street to take selfies. Instead, they get adoring messages on social media. Others appear on television daily. The new celebrities emerging across Europe as the coronavirus burns a deadly path through the continent are not actors or singers or politicians. Instead, they are epidemiologists and virologists who have become household names after spending most of their lives in virtual anonymity. (Stevis-Gridneff, 4/5)
On the evening of March 4, James Cai, a 32-year-old physician assistant, was languishing on a cot, isolated in a small, windowless room on the emergency-room floor of Hackensack University Medical Center, when the television news caught his attention. Before that moment, Cai had been in a strange medical limbo, starting midday on March 2, when he left a medical conference in Times Square because he had a bad cough. Instead of heading to his home in Lower Manhattan, he texted his wife that he was going to spend the night at his mom’s place in New Jersey. His mother was out of town, and if he had the flu, he could spare his wife and their daughter, a cheerful 21-month-old who clung to him when he was home, the risk of catching whatever it was. That was Cai: cautious, a worrier, overprotective, the kind of medical professional who liked to rule out the worst-case scenarios first. (Dominus, 4/5)
Kaiser Health News: Mysterious Heart Damage, Not Just Lung Troubles, Befalling COVID-19 Patients
While the focus of the COVID-19 pandemic has been on respiratory problems and securing enough ventilators, doctors on the front lines are grappling with a new medical mystery. In addition to lung damage, many COVID-19 patients are also developing heart problems — and dying of cardiac arrest. As more data comes in from China and Italy, as well as Washington state and New York, more cardiac experts are coming to believe the COVID-19 virus can infect the heart muscle. (Hawryluk, 4/6)
A California man who was diagnosed with the coronavirus and recovered has donated his plasma to help others fighting the potentially deadly virus. On March 6, Jason Garcia noticed he had a mild cough and some congestion. The 36-year-old aerospace engineer from Escondido, California, didn't think that much of it. But later while on a work trip, he noticed a headache had begun accompanying his cough. (Silverman, 4/6)
