Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Stop Using Hand Sanitizers With Methanol, FDA Says
Houston Chronicle: Alcohol-Based Sanitizers With Methanol Can Lead To Blindness Or Death, Among Other Things, FDA Says
Methanol exposure, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, can lead to nausea, vomiting, headache, blurred vision, permanent blindness, seizures, coma, permanent damage to the nervous system or death. It's even worse when ingested, especially for young children and adolescents and adults who drink it as an alcohol (ethanol) substitute. (Gowdy, 7/28)
The Atlantic: Hygiene Theater Is a Huge Waste of Time
As a covid-19 summer surge sweeps the country, deep cleans are all the rage. National restaurants such as Applebee’s are deputizing sanitation czars to oversee the constant scrubbing of window ledges, menus, and high chairs. The gym chain Planet Fitness is boasting in ads that “there’s no surface we won’t sanitize, no machine we won’t scrub.” New York City is shutting down its subway system every night, for the first time in its 116-year history, to blast the seats, walls, and poles with a variety of antiseptic weaponry, including electrostatic disinfectant sprays. And in Wauchula, Florida, the local government gave one resident permission to spray the town with hydrogen peroxide as he saw fit. “I think every city in the damn United States needs to be doing it," he said. (Thompson, 7/27)
The Hill: Almost Half In New Poll Say They Have Formed Social 'Bubbles' Amid Pandemic
Nearly half of Americans said they have formed social “bubbles” of people they feel safe interacting with during the coronavirus pandemic, according to new polling from Axios. Forty-seven percent of respondents said they had established such an informal group of people they trust to take precautions to avoid spreading the virus, compared to 53 percent who have not, the Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index found. Women — at 51 percent — were more likely to say they had formed a bubble. Comparatively, 42 percent of men said they have. (Budryk, 7/28)
AP: Early In Pandemic, Frantic Doctors Traded Tips Across Oceans
Amid the chaos of the pandemic’s early days, doctors who faced the first coronavirus onslaught reached across oceans and language barriers in an unprecedented effort to advise colleagues trying to save lives in the dark. With no playbook to follow and no time to wait for research, YouTube videos describing autopsy findings and X-rays swapped on Twitter and WhatsApp spontaneously filled the gap. When Stephen Donelson arrived at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in mid-March, Dr. Kristina Goff was among those who turned to what she called “the stories out of other places that were hit before.” (Neergaard and Winfield, 7/29)
Boston Globe: Can You Get COVID-19 Twice? A Veteran At The Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Who Had Seemingly Recovered From Virus Tests Positive
State officials have temporarily cut off visitation at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home after a resident who seemed to have recovered from the novel coronavirus tested positive again, signaling a possible reemergence of COVID-19 at a facility that had endured one of the nation’s most notorious outbreaks. The resident began showing symptoms Monday and was transferred to a local hospital, where he tested positive, a state official said Tuesday. (Freyer and Stout, 7/28)
CIDRAP: Survey: More US Workers Out Sick Amid Pandemic Than Any Other Time On Record
More than 2 million American workers called in sick in a single week in mid-April, causing the highest absence rate on record and leading to suspicions that COVID-19 cases were substantially undercounted, according to a research letter published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Hunter College who analyzed the US Census Bureau's monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) found that 2,017,105 workers called in sick, more than double the number from the same time the year before. Absenteeism due to illness began rising in March, when the US epidemic began, and surged to 1.5% in April, nearly triple the percentage during that period in 2019. (7/28)
Kaiser Health News: Analysis: When Is A Coronavirus Test Not A Coronavirus Test?
Desperate to continue the tradition of a family beach week, I hatched a plan that would allow some mask- and sanitizer-enhanced semblance of normality. We hadn’t seen my two 20-something children in months. They’d spent the lockdown in Brooklyn; one of them most likely had the disease in late March, before testing was widely available. My mother had died of COVID-19 in May. So a few weeks ago, I rented a cute house on the Delaware shore. It had a screened-in front porch and a little cottage out back, in case someone needed to quarantine. (Rosenthal, 7/29)
Also —
People: Herman Cain Still Hospitalized With COVID-19
Herman Cain is still hospitalized with the novel coronavirus disease, more than three weeks after his initial diagnosis. The 74-year-old former Republican presidential hopeful remains in an Atlanta-area hospital after he was initially diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier this month, according to his team. Cain’s staff shared in a series of tweets on Monday that he was undergoing oxygen treatment for his lungs but his organs and other systems were "strong." (7/28)
Kaiser Health News: Lost On The Frontline
America’s health care workers are dying. In some states, medical personnel account for as many as 20% of known coronavirus cases. They tend to patients in hospitals, treating them, serving them food and cleaning their rooms. Others at risk work in nursing homes or are employed as home health aides.“Lost on the Frontline,” a collaboration between KHN and The Guardian, has identified 878 such workers who likely died of COVID-19 after helping patients during the pandemic. We have published profiles for 164 workers whose deaths have been confirmed by our reporters. (7/29)
