COVID-19 News from Around the Web

A flood of new research suggests that far more people have had the coronavirus without any symptoms, fueling hope that it will turn out to be much less lethal than originally feared. While that’s clearly good news, it also means it’s impossible to know who around you may be contagious. That complicates decisions about returning to work, school and normal life. In the last week, reports of silent infections have come from a homeless shelter in Boston, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, pregnant women at a New York hospital, several European countries and California. The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 25% of infected people might not have symptoms. The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Hyten, thinks it may be as high as 60% to 70% among military personnel.

As some governors consider easing social distancing restrictions, new estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the next month. An average of 146,000 people per day have been tested for the coronavirus nationally so far this month, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which on Friday reported 3.6 million total tests across the country. To reopen the United States by mid-May, the number of daily tests performed between now and then should be 500,000 to 700,000, according to the Harvard estimates.

Researchers say they've developed a low-cost swab test that can diagnose COVID-19 infections in about 45 minutes. The CRISPR-based test -- which uses gene-targeting technology and requires no specialized equipment -- could help relieve testing backlogs in the United States as COVID-19 continues to spread, the scientists said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved the test, but clinical assessments are being conducted in an effort to fast-track approval. The test is described in a paper published April 16 in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

President Donald Trump laid out new guidelines on Thursday for U.S. states to emerge from a coronavirus shutdown in a staggered, three-stage approach meant to revive the U.S. economy even as the country continues to fight the pandemic. The recommendations call on states to show a “downward trajectory” of COVID-19 cases or positive tests for the disease over 14 days before proceeding with the plan, which gradually loosens restrictions on businesses that have been shuttered to blunt the spread of the virus.

A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week, STAT has learned. Remdesivir was one of the first medicines identified as having the potential to impact SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in lab tests. The entire world has been waiting for results from Gilead’s clinical trials, and positive results would likely lead to fast approvals by the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies. If safe and effective, it could become the first approved treatment against the disease.

Protection measures against the coronavirus continued to tear through the employment ranks, with 5.245 million more Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The new filings bring the crisis total to just over 22 million, nearly wiping out all the job gains since the Great Recession.

Regions that can be the first to open up closed parts of the economy should have "limited transmission, ample public health and health system capacity," according to the plan. draft plan to reopen the economy being circulated by the Trump administration would advise areas with low numbers of coronavirus infections to begin pulling back on social distancing measures after May 1, with harder-hit areas possibly having to wait an additional month or more. Regions that can be the first to renew economic activity should have "limited transmission, ample public health and health system capacity," and they should be prepared to monitor the situation closely for a resurgence of infections, according to the 10-page document circulated to a new task force and shared with NBC News. The plan stopped short of giving specific metrics for how communities would know whether or when they fall into that category.

Health, business and political leaders warn against a rush to lift restrictions. New Yorkers will have to wear face coverings in public, and California will extend aid to undocumented workers. As President Trump pushes to reopen the economy, most of the country is not conducting nearly enough testing to track the path and penetration of the coronavirus in a way that would allow Americans to safely return to work, public health officials and political leaders say. Although capacity has improved in recent weeks, supply shortages remain crippling, and many regions are still restricting tests to people who meet specific criteria. Antibody tests, which reveal whether someone has ever been infected with the coronavirus, are just starting to be rolled out, and most have not been vetted by the Food and Drug Administration.

"Now is a time for unity," the United Nations chief said, "not a time to cut the resources of the World Health Organization." President Donald Trump's move to halt funding to the World Health Organization has been met with severe criticism at home and abroad, with the United Nations secretary-general saying "now is not the time" for such a drastic move while the coronavirus pandemic is gripping the globe. Trump made the announcement Tuesday pending a review of the WHO's response to the initial coronavirus outbreak in China. He claims the agency has been too close to Beijing and covered up for its mistakes. Congressional Democrats are disputing the president's authority to do this. Republican lawmakers are planning their own investigation, examining the early response by the WHO and the Chinese government.

Nearly 9,300 U.S. health care workers contracted COVID-19, and 27 have died. A majority of those who tested positive (55%) think they were exposed while at work. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released preliminary data on infections among frontline health workers. Nearly three-quarters are women and more than a third had some underlying health condition. The median age is 42. About 8% of those who tested positive didn't have symptoms. And the majority (90%) didn't have to be hospitalized. But as many as 5% did require intensive care. A third of the health care workers who died were over 65 years old.

"It was like he was sedated," Nicole Hutcherson said of her father, who died of COVID-19 one week later. There is growing evidence to suggest that COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, can affect not only the lungs, but the brain, too. A recent study of 214 patients in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic started, found more than a third had neurologic manifestations of the disease, including loss of consciousness and stroke. Physicians in the U.S. have noted the same. "We're seeing a significant increase in the number of patients with large strokes," Dr. Johanna Fifi, associate director of the cerebrovascular center at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, said. Many are patients in their 30s and 40s. Over a recent two-week period, Fifi told NBC News she had five COVID-19 patients under age 49, all with strokes resulting from a blockage in one of the major blood vessels leading to the brain. How the virus might lead to a stroke or other neurological impairment remains unclear. Fifi said it's possible that inflammation in the body could damage blood vessels in the brain, or that the viral infection leads to increased clotting.

President Donald Trump formally announced Tuesday that the United States will freeze funding to the World Health Organization, pending a formal investigation into the global health agency and its coronavirus response. In prepared remarks, Trump accused the organization of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” suggesting that the group overly relied on unverified reports from China, which Trump argued caused a “twenty-fold increase in cases worldwide.” He did not cite a source for that figure.

New York City has drastically increased its estimate of the number of people killed by COVID-19 to include probable victims who were not tested. The new number is 10,367. For weeks, firefighters and paramedics have been recording a massive spike in deaths at home around New York City. The deceased were presumed to be victims of the coronavirus but were never tested. Now city officials have recalculated the toll that the virus has taken and reached a staggering number — adding nearly 4,000 to the total.

Between 10% and 20% of U.S. coronavirus cases are health care workers, though they tended to be hospitalized at lower rates than other patients, officials reported Tuesday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first national data on how the pandemic is hitting doctors, nurses and other health care professionals. The data is important new information but not necessarily surprising, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, who is running the federal agency’s response to the outbreak. Medical staff have also been hit hard in other countries, including Italy and Spain. As of the middle of last week, the CDC had reports of more than 315,000 cases in the U.S. The new report focused on about 49,000 for which researchers had data on whether or not they worked in health care. About 9,300, or 19%, of them were medical professionals. That included 27 who died.

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he is close to completing a plan to end the coronavirus shutdown and reopen the battered U.S. economy with some parts of the country likely to be ready to go before May 1. Standing in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said he would “authorize” governors - despite doubts from some experts that the presidency has such powers - to implement plans in their states at the appropriate time. He said he would speak to all 50 governors about the plan, probably on Thursday by video conference. Trump’s coronavirus task force has recommended people across the country follow strict social distancing guidelines through the end of April. Opening some states before that would go against the guidelines in their current form.

The global economy will this year likely suffer the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday, as governments worldwide grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic. The Washington-based organization now expects the global economy to contract by 3% in 2020. By contrast, in January it had forecast a global GDP (gross domestic product) expansion of 3.3% for this year.