Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
'Tremendous Resource': More Than 7,000 Scientists Respond To Researcher's Tweet To Join Database
ABC News: 'Calling All Scientists': Experts Volunteer For Virus Fight
Michael Wells was looking for a chance to use his scientific training to help fight the coronavirus when — on the same day the pandemic forced his lab to temporarily close — he decided to create his own opportunity. “CALLING ALL SCIENTISTS," he tweeted on March 18. "Help me in creating a national database of researchers willing and able to aid in local COVID-19 efforts. This info will be a resource for institutions/(government) agencies upon their request.” (Schor, 3/30)
Stat: What Explains Covid-19's Lethality For The Elderly?
Researchers on Monday announced the most comprehensive estimates to date of elderly people’s elevated risk of serious illness and death from the new coronavirus: Covid-19 kills an estimated 13.4% of patients 80 and older, compared to 1.25% of those in their 50s and 0.3% of those in their 40s. The sharpest divide came at age 70. Although 4% of patients in their 60s died, more than twice that, or 8.6%, of those in their 70s did, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London and his colleagues estimated in their paper, published in Lancet Infectious Diseases. (Begley, 3/30)
ABC News: Senators, Activists Urge FDA To Revise Blood Donation Policy For Gay, Bisexual Men Amid Coronavirus Pandemic
Democratic senators and gay rights advocates are calling on the federal government to loosen restrictions on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, citing the recent blood shortages caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic as a catalyst for change. The Food and Drug Administration's current recommendations restrict men who have sex with men, commonly referred to as MSM, from donating blood within 12 months of their last sexual encounter. The policy harkens back to the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s, which disproportionately impacted MSM. (Schnell, 3/31)
The New York Times: They Survived The Spanish Flu, The Depression And The Holocaust
For most of us, it is almost impossible to comprehend the ferocity and regularity with which life was upended during the first half of the 20th century. Plague and conflict emerged on an epic scale, again and again. Loss and restriction were routine; disaster was its own season. At 101, Naomi Replansky, a poet and labor activist, has endured all of it. Born in her family’s apartment on East 179th Street in the Bronx in May 1918, her arrival in the world coincided with the outset of the Spanish flu. (Bellafante, 3/28)
The Associated Press: Hay Fever Or Virus? For Allergy Sufferers, A Season Of Worry
The spring breezes of 2020 are carrying more than just tree pollen. There’s a whiff of paranoia in the air. For millions of seasonal allergy sufferers, the annual onset of watery eyes and scratchy throats is bumping up against the global spread of a new virus that produces its own constellation of respiratory symptoms. Forecasters are predicting a brutal spring allergy season for swaths of the U.S. at the same time that COVID-19 cases are rising dramatically. (Rubinkam, 3/30)
CIDRAP: Scientists Search For Ways To Impede, Treat COVID-19
Nursing homes must identify and bar staff and visitors who may be infected with COVID-19, monitor patients for infection, and take stringent infection-control measures to prevent outbreaks such as the deadly one in King County, Washington, experts said in an epidemiologic study published Mar 27 in The New England Journal of Medicine. Meanwhile, preliminary research from China involving five patients suggests that transfusion with the plasma of recovered coronavirus patients that contains neutralizing antibody could benefit patients critically ill with the pandemic coronavirus and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). (Van Beusekom, 3/30)
WBUR: For Cancer Patients, Coronavirus Pandemic Presents New Risks To Treatment
Some doctors are warning that if cancer patients contract COVID-19, the virus could be more dangerous than the cancer itself. There are about 650,000 cancer patients in the U.S. who are set to have chemotherapy this year. The treatment that gives many the best hope of recovery also puts them in the most compromised position during a viral outbreak, particularly one as contagious as the coronavirus. (Young and Raphelson, 3/30)
