WJCL-22 -
September 9, 2020
COVID-19 News from Around the Web
GPB -
September 9, 2020
CNN -
September 9, 2020
AP -
September 9, 2020
Late-stage studies of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate are on temporary hold while the company investigates whether a recipient’s “potentially unexplained” illness is a side effect of the shot. In a statement issued Tuesday evening, the company said its “standard review process triggered a pause to vaccination to allow review of safety data.” AstraZeneca didn’t reveal any information about the possible side effect except to call it “a potentially unexplained illness.” … An AstraZeneca spokesperson confirmed the pause in vaccinations covers studies in the U.S. and other countries.
NPR -
September 9, 2020
Nine drug companies pledged Tuesday that they will not submit vaccine candidates for FDA review until their safety and efficacy is shown in large clinical trials. The move is intended to bolster public confidence amid the rush to make a COVID-19 vaccine widely available, and counter fears of political pressure to have a vaccine before the November presidential election. The CEOs of AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer are among those who signed the pledge to follow "high ethical standards and sound scientific principles." … The other biopharmaceutical companies are Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novavax, BioNTech and Sanofi.
Reuters -
September 9, 2020
Iowa currently has one of the highest rates of infection in the nation, with 15% of tests last week coming back positive. Nearby South Dakota has a positive test rate of 19% and North Dakota is at 18%, according to a Reuters analysis. The surge in Iowa and South Dakota is being linked to colleges reopening in Iowa and an annual motorcycle rally last month in Sturgis, South Dakota. Kansas, Idaho and Missouri are also among the top 10 states for positive test rates.
NBC News -
September 9, 2020
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally held in South Dakota last month may have caused 250,000 new coronavirus cases, according to an economic study focused on the public health costs of “superspreading” events. The 10-day rally attracted more than 400,000 people. Prolonged interactions between individuals at high frequencies, along with "minimal mask-wearing and social distancing by attendees," raised concerns that Sturgis would lead to increased transmission of coronavirus, according to a new study from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics.
CNN -
September 9, 2020
The US should be performing as many as 200 million Covid-19 tests every month well into next year to have any chance of controlling the pandemic, experts say in a new report. That number is far beyond the country's current capacity, according to the report released Wednesday by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy. "The U.S. will likely need very large numbers of all types of Covid-19 tests well into 2021 to contain outbreaks while returning toward normal activity, with a particular need for more screening tests that have very fast turnaround times," the report reads.
CNN -
September 9, 2020
Tuesday was the first day of school for more than 1.8 million students, with most of the nation's biggest districts offering online only learning. For those that opened their doors to students, the watch for coronavirus spread begins. Several schools already have temporarily shut down again after Covid-19 outbreaks this school year. Others, including some universities, have managed to keep their cases low after testing every student returning to school.
HealthDay -
September 9, 2020
A new study shows that the risk for kids infected with SARS-CoV-2 is about equal to that seen with influenza. The researchers found that kids with COVID-19 or the seasonal flu have similar rates of hospitalization, admission to intensive care units (ICUs) and ventilator use. But the average age of children hospitalized differed: The average child hospitalized with COVID-19 was about 10 years of age, while kids hospitalized with flu average just over 4 years of age. Symptoms shown at admission to the hospital also seemed to differ: More children with COVID-19 had fever, cough, diarrhea, vomiting, headache, body aches and/or chest pain at the time of diagnosis, compared to pediatric flu patients, the researchers said.
CNN -
September 9, 2020
The [AAP and Children's Hospital Association] said 70,630 new child cases were reported from August 20 through September 3. This is a 16% increase in child cases over two weeks, bringing up the total to at least 513,415 cases, the groups said in their weekly report on pediatric coronavirus cases. … Children represent nearly 10% of all reported cases in the US, according to the report. The child cases are likely underreported because the tally relies on state data that is inconsistently collected.
AP -
September 9, 2020
In the early days of the pandemic, doctors noticed something about the people severely ill from COVID-19: Many were obese. The link became more apparent as coronavirus swept across the globe and data mounted, and researchers are still trying to figure out why. Excess weight increases the chances of developing a number of health problems, including heart disease and diabetes. And those are among the conditions that can make COVID-19 patients more likely to get very sick. But there’s some evidence that obesity itself can increase the likelihood of serious complications from a coronavirus infection.
NPR -
September 9, 2020
Hotline calls to the National Eating Disorders Association are up 70-80% in recent months. For many, eating is a form of control — a coping mechanism tied to stress. Food scarcity and stockpiling behavior can trigger anxieties about eating, or overeating among some. … A survey in International Journal of Eating Disorders in July found 62% of people in the U.S. with anorexia experienced a worsening of symptoms as the pandemic hit.
CNN -
September 9, 2020
When people obeyed stay-at-home orders this past spring, it reduced the spread of Covid-19, according to new research published Tuesday. "These findings suggest that stay-at-home social distancing mandates, when they were followed by measurable mobility changes, were associated with reduction in Covid-19 cases," the researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison wrote in the study published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
NPR -
September 9, 2020
In America's four largest cities, at least half of people say they have experienced the loss of a job or a reduction in wages or work hours in their household since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. That's the finding of a new poll published Wednesday by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Many of these problems are concentrated among Black and Latino households in the four cities, according to the poll, which gathered responses from July 1 through Aug 3.
CBS News -
September 9, 2020
The IRS plans to notify 9 million Americans who may be eligible for a government stimulus check but who have yet to claim the relief payment. That mostly pertains to people who typically don't file a federal income tax return, the agency said Tuesday. They will have until October 15 to register for IRS.gov's non-filer tool to receive their payments by year-end.