Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Searching For Answers: Scientists Struggle To Get Beyond Ambiguous Reasons Behind Who Dies, Who Doesn't
The novel coronavirus can be a killer — or no big deal. It can put a person in the intensive care unit on a ventilator, isolated from family, facing a lonely death — or it can come and go without leaving a mark, a ghost pathogen, more rumor than reality. Six months into a pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 people globally, scientists are still trying to understand the wildly variable nature of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. (Achenbach, Brulliard and Cha, 6/17)
Scientists have developed microscopic sponges - a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair - they hope might be used inside the body to attract and neutralize the coronavirus. The "nanosponges" are coated with membranes from lung cells or from immune cells known as macrophages, study co-leader Liangfang Zhang of the University of California, San Diego told Reuters. These cell membranes have the same receptor proteins on their surfaces that the virus uses to break into cells in the body. In test tube experiments, the nanosponges successfully acted as decoys to attract and inactivate the virus, Zhang's team reported on Wednesday in the journal Nano Letters. (Lapid, 6/17)
A genetic analysis of COVID-19 patients suggests that blood type might influence whether someone develops severe disease. Scientists who compared the genes of thousands of patients in Europe found that those who had Type A blood were more likely to have severe disease while those with Type O were less likely. Wednesday’s report in the New England Journal of Medicine does not prove a blood type connection, but it does confirm a previous report from China of such a link. (Marchione, 6/18)
Researchers in California have identified what they are calling a super-strength antibody that blocks the coronavirus' most infectious elements. The discovery comes amid an international race to find a vaccine, which internal medicine specialist Dr. Neeta Ogden warns "may not be perfect" in terms of immunity from the disease. (Elkind, 6/17)
Like many pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kaleah Metz worries about becoming infected with the virus and potentially putting her pregnancy at risk. "I am being exposed to COVID every week at this point, when I visit my doctor in the hospital," said Metz, a recently married health auditor in her third trimester and expecting her first child. (Adigun, 6/18)
In January, when it became clear that a new coronavirus was transmitting with ease among people in central China, one of the top questions scientists who study disease dynamics wanted answered was this: What role are children playing in the spread of the new disease, now known as Covid-19? Five months later, they and the rest of us would still like to know. (Branswell, 6/18)
A study published yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases found that more than a quarter of the residents of a Chicago nursing home were infected with COVID-19, 37% of them never had symptoms, 37% were hospitalized, and 28% died. University of Illinois at Chicago researchers and public health officials investigating the facility's outbreak found that 33 of 126 residents tested had confirmed COVID-19, and another 2 who developed symptoms over 30 days of follow-up later tested positive. (Van Beusekom, 6/17)
