Washington state reports first coronavirus death in US

Officials in Washington state say a person has died of coronavirus, the first such death in the United States.
Health officials in California, Oregon and Washington state worried about the novel coronavirus spreading through West Coast communities after confirming three patients were infected by unknown means.

The patients — an older Northern California woman with chronic health conditions, a high school student in Everett, Washington and an employee at a Portland, Oregon-area school — hadn’t recently traveled overseas or had any known close contact with a traveler or an infected person, authorities said.
Earlier U.S. cases include three people who were evacuated from the central China city of Wuhan, epicenter of the outbreak; 14 people who returned from China, or their spouses; and 42 American passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, who were flown to U.S. military bases in California and Texas for quarantining.
Convinced that the number of cases will grow but determined to keep them from exploding, health agencies were ramping up efforts to identify patients.
The California Department of Public Health said Friday that the state will receive enough kits from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to test up to 1,200 people a day for the COVID-19 virus — a day after Gov. Gavin Newsom complained to federal health officials that the state had already exhausted its initial 200 test kits.

Santa Clara County in the San Francisco Bay Area reported two cases where the source of infection wasn’t known. The older woman was hospitalized for a respiratory illness, and rapid local testing confirmed in one day that she had the virus, health officials said.
“This case represents some degree of community spread, some degree of circulation,” said Dr. Sara Cody, health officer for Santa Clara County and director of the County of Santa Clara Public Health Department.
“But we don’t know to what extent,” Cody said. “It could be a little, it could be a lot.”
“We need to begin taking important additional measures to at least slow it down as much as possible,” she said.
Cody said the newly confirmed case in Santa Clara County is not linked to two previous cases in that county, nor to others in the state.
The Santa Clara County resident was treated at a local hospital and is not known to have traveled to Solano County, where another woman was identified Wednesday as having contracted the virus from an unknown source.
Dozens of people had close contact with the Solano County woman. They were urged to quarantine themselves at home, while a few who showed symptoms of illness were in isolation, officials said.
At UC Davis Medical Center, at least 124 registered nurses and other health care workers were sent home for “self-quarantine” after the Solano County woman with the virus was admitted, National Nurses United, a nationwide union representing RNs, said Friday.
The case “highlights the vulnerability of the nation’s hospitals to this virus,” the union said.
Earlier Friday, Oregon confirmed its first coronavirus case, a person who works at an elementary school in the Portland area, which will be temporarily closed.
The Lake Oswego School District sent a robocall to parents saying that Forest Hills Elementary will be closed until Wednesday so it can be deep-cleaned by maintenance workers.
Washington state health officials announced two new coronavirus cases Friday night, including a high school student who attends Jackson High School in Everett, said Dr. Chris Spitters of the Snohomish County Health District.
The other case in Washington was a woman in in King County in her 50s who had recently traveled to South Korea, authorities said.
Both patients weren’t seriously ill.
The number of coronavirus cases in the United States is considered small. Worldwide, the number of people sickened by the virus hovered Friday around 83,000, and there were more than 2,800 deaths, most of them in China.
But health officials aren’t taking any chances. Some communities, including San Francisco, already have declared local emergencies in case they need to obtain government funding.
The new coronavirus cases of unknown origin mark an escalation of the worldwide outbreak in the U.S. because it means the virus could spread beyond the reach of preventative measures including quarantines, though state health officials said that was inevitable and that the risk of widespread transmission remains low.
California public health officials said Friday that more than 9,380 people are self-monitoring after arriving on commercial flights from China through Los Angeles and San Francisco. That’s up from the 8,400 that Newsom cited Thursday, though officials said the number increases daily as more flights arrive.
Officials are not too worried, for now, about casual contact, because federal officials think the coronavirus is spread only through “close contact, being within six feet of somebody for what they’re calling a prolonged period of time,” said Dr. James Watt, interim state epidemiologist at the California Department of Public Health.
The virus can cause fever, coughing, wheezing and pneumonia. Health officials think it spreads mainly from droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes, similar to how the flu spreads.
https://www.wlwt.com/article/person-in-washington-state-first-in-us-to-die-from-coronavirus/31168890

South Korea reports a record jump in coronavirus cases

South Korea has reported 813 new coronavirus cases, bringing the country’s total infections to 3,150, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday.

That’s a record daily increase in infections since South Korea confirmed its first patient, on January 20. South Korea is calling this a critical moment for containing the spread.

Large swathes of Seoul and other cities appear to be largely deserted.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3547240-south-korea-reports-record-jump-in-coronavirus-cases

4 new coronavirus cases in Pacific Northwest suggest community spread

The new coronavirus may to be spreading in parts of the Pacific Northwest, with California, Oregon, and Washington State reporting Friday that they have diagnosed cases with no travel history or known contact with another case.
Health officials in Santa Clara County reported a case of so-called community spread late Friday afternoon — the second in the northern part of the state in the past few days.
Later on Friday health officials in Oregon reported diagnosing a case of Covid-19 — the disease the virus causes — in a person from Washington County who had neither a history of travel to a country where the virus was circulating nor close contact with a confirmed case.

And a teenager from Snohomish County, north of Seattle, was diagnosed with the disease, Washington State health authorities announced late Friday. This individual had not traveled outside the country nor had contact with a known Covid-19 case, they said.
These cases raise the specter that the virus may be spreading stealthily  in the Pacific Northwest region of the country.
The discovery that the virus may be spreading in the country should not come as a surprise, said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy.

“It just tells us where there is testing, there are cases. … There is no such thing as a barrier containment to keep these out.”

Michael Osterholm. University of Minnesota

“It just tells us where there is testing, there are cases. And that’s what we have to understand,” Osterholm said. “There is no such thing as a barrier containment to keep these out. It’s going to happen. And what we have to do now is get on with how we’re going to deal with them.”
Health officials in Oregon said the infected individual there had spent time in a school in the Lake Oswego school district and may have exposed students and staff there. An investigation is underway and employees and families of children are being contacted, a press release from the state said.
The findings come as more and more states are starting to test for the virus. Many state and local laboratories have been unable to test for the virus until recent days, because of a problem with a test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The discovery that the virus may be spreading in the country should not come as a surprise, said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy.
“It just tells us where there is testing, there are cases. And that’s what we have to understand,” Osterholm said. “There is no such thing as a barrier containment to keep these out. It’s going to happen. And what we have to do now is get on with how we’re going to deal with them.”
As of Friday, the World Health Organization reported that there were more than 82,000 cases worldwide, from 46 countries. While most of the cases are still from China, cases elsewhere are on the rise.
The new California patient is a 65-year-old with chronic conditions who had not recently traveled outside the country and who had had no known contact with a confirmed case, health officials in Santa Clara County said.
“This new case indicates that there is evidence of community transmission but the extent is still not clear,” Dr. Sara Cody, health officer for Santa Clara County said. “I understand this may be concerning to hear, but this is what we have been preparing for. Now we need to start taking additional actions to slow down the spread of the disease.”

Cody said individuals need to start practicing good hand hygiene and learn to stop touching their faces — people can infect themselves if they pick up viruses off a contaminated surface, then put a finger in their mouth or rub their eyes or nose.
Families should start working on emergency planning, and schools should make plans for dealing with high levels of absenteeism, she said, adding businesses should be thinking about allowing employees to telecommute, if needed.
Santa Clara is about 90 miles from Solano County, where earlier this week the first known case of a person who was infected in the community lives. The first case, a woman, is reportedly seriously ill and on a ventilator.
Cody said an infectious diseases physician contacted the health department Wednesday about a patient she was treating. The doctor was concerned the individual might have Covid-19 and wanted to submit a sample to be tested. That was done Thursday and an investigation into the individual’s possible source of infection began Thursday evening.

The United States has reported more than 60 cases at this point. The bulk of the cases, 47, are people who were evacuated from China or from the Diamond Princess Cruise ship. There have been 15 previous cases in people who contracted the virus overseas, and three cases where people were infected in the United States. Two of those were spouses of travelers infected abroad.
Problems with a coronavirus test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have meant that little testing for the new virus has been done in the U.S.
Worried infectious diseases experts have warned that the lack of apparent cases in the country cannot be taken as a sign the virus isn’t spreading, undetected in some places. And CDC officials have been trying to prepare the public for the likelihood that there will be some transmission of the virus in the United States.

Four new coronavirus cases in Pacific Northwest suggest community spread of the disease

Health Care Stocks Aren’t Alone in Getting a Coronavirus Boost

As the coronavirus spread in China and then to more countries around the globe, dairy executive Geoff Babidge noticed a curious development: sales of his company’s infant formula were unexpectedly strong.
A2 Milk Co., the New Zealand-based company that Mr. Babidge leads, responded to the demand by ramping up production and using ships and planes to send more product to China, where he says customs officials give it a priority status similar to medical supplies.
The virus has infected more than 80,000 people globally and killed about 3,000, disrupting global supply lines and knocking stock markets off course. Aside from health-care firms researching possible treatments to the virus, a handful of other companies in sectors ranging from dairy to videoconferencing to online gaming could also benefit financially from the epidemic.
A2’s Australia-listed shares surged 5% on Thursday when the strong demand was disclosed and over the entire week, the stock fell just 1.3% as global markets had their worst run since 2008. Mr. Babidge said customers were buying the infant formula both in stores and online, an attractive option for parents worried about contracting the virus in crowds or while standing in long lines.
“We are here to really do whatever we can to support Chinese consumers,” Mr. Babidge said in an interview. “Our sales are reflecting the fact that we are responding to customer needs, and we’ll continue to do that.”
Elsewhere, shares in San Jose, Calif.-based Zoom Video Communications Inc., which offers videoconferencing services, rose 3.2% this week. The company is providing free services to mental health charities and medical institutions, Chinese universities are using a Zoom platform to keep classes going and doctors from more than 1,000 public hospitals in China are using its video meetings to remotely diagnose patients, Chief Executive Eric Yuan wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
The company also scrapped its 40-minute time limit on meetings with more than two participants for users in China who aren’t paying a fee, Mr. Yuan said in the post. Zoom declined to comment beyond Mr. Yuan’s post.
Shares in Peloton Interactive Inc., which makes fitness bikes and also streams fitness classes online, rose nearly 5% for the week after an analyst suggested the epidemic could increase sales from fitness buffs who might be concerned about contracting the virus at the gym. Peloton declined to comment on the stock move.
Earlier in February, some online gaming and entertainment stocks in China jumped as investors bet that extended holidays would boost their earnings. Tencent Holdings Ltd. even hit a 20-month high at one point, given that Chinese consumers were using various news and social-networking platforms — including Tencent’s popular WeChat messaging app — to keep abreast of virus-related developments.
Tencent’s shares have given up some of those gains recently, however, and some Chinese tech companies have warned that the virus could have a negative impact on their businesses. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has said its ability to deliver packages has been hampered by the many workers who are stranded at home while factories remain closed. And search giant Baidu Inc. warned on Friday that its first-quarter revenue could plunge 5% to 13% as the outbreak hurts many sectors that fuel its core advertising business.
Dermot Ryan, a portfolio manager at AMP Capital in Australia, said he could see the appeal of infrastructure stocks that tend to hold up better during downturns. He said his firm is also looking to add stocks that could help with the governmental pandemic preparations, like retirement-home operators.
Mr. Ryan also said companies that diversified their manufacturing and procurement operations out of China due to the trade war with the U.S. could benefit from the coronavirus epidemic.
Back at a2 Milk, Mr. Babidge said it isn’t clear whether the revenue boost during January and February will continue in the coming months. He also didn’t know if a2 Milk has attracted new Chinese consumers, or if it was repeat customers stockpiling product that they would normally have bought in March and April, a scenario which could mean falling sales in the next couple of months.
“This is not about us profiteering from what is a calamity in China,” said Mr. Babidge, adding that his company has donated cash and product in response to the coronavirus. “It’s about us being able to respond to consumer demand, be it people who know our product or people who can’t access other brands.”
https://www.marketscreener.com/THE-A2-MILK-COMPANY-LIMIT-11384022/news/Health-Care-Stocks-Aren-t-Alone-in-Getting-a-Coronavirus-Boost-30089165/

Medical Device Company Pulmonx Files for IPO

Pulmonx Corp., a medical device company that provides the Zephyr valve system for severe emphysema, disclosed plans for an initial public offering.
Pulmonx previously filed confidentially for an IPO. The Redwood City, Calif., company is seeking a Nasdaq Global Market listing under the symbol LUNG.
Boston Scientific Corp. owns 30% of Pulmonx. Last May, Pulmonx closed $65 million of equity financing led by Ally Bridge Group.
Pulmonx had 2019 revenue of $32.6 million, compared with $20 million in 2018.
https://www.marketscreener.com/BOSTON-SCIENTIFIC-CORPORA-11935/news/Boston-Scientific-Medical-Device-Company-Pulmonx-Files-for-IPO-30085387/

AbbVie Venclexta Combo Leukemia Study Didn’t Meet Primary Endpoint

AbbVie Inc. said a clinical trial of its Venclexta (venetoclax) drug in combination with low-dose cytarabine didn’t meet its primary endpoint of statistically significant improvement of overall survival for patients with acute myeloid leukemia.
Venclexta is being developed by AbbVie and Roche Holding AG.
AbbVie said results from the VIALE-C trial “are indicative of clinical activity” for the combination. The company said the VIALE-A trial evaluating the drug in combination with azacytidine is ongoing.

https://www.marketscreener.com/ABBVIE-INC-12136589/news/AbbVie-Venclexta-Combination-Study-Didn-t-Meet-Primary-Endpoint-30085795/

US schools start planning for possible spread of coronavirus

Schools across the United States are canceling trips abroad, preparing online lessons and even rethinking “perfect attendance” awards as they brace for the possibility that the new coronavirus could begin spreading in their communities.

Districts have been rushing to update emergency plans this week after federal officials warned that the virus, which started in China, is almost certain to begin spreading in the U.S. Many are preparing for possible school closures that could stretch weeks or longer, even as they work to tamp down panic among students, parents and teachers.
President Donald Trump has worked to minimize fears about the virus, but on Wednesday he and federal health officials recommended that schools start planning for arrival of the COVID-19 virus “just in case.”
“It’s the perfect time for businesses, health care systems, universities and schools to look at their pandemic preparedness plans, dust them off, and make sure that they’re ready,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a Wednesday news conference.
School letters sent home from Florida to California this week sought to assure parents that, in most communities, the risk of exposure to the virus is still very low. Most suggested the same precautions used to combat the flu: Wash hands frequently, cover sneezes and coughs, and stay home if fever or other symptoms arise.
At schools, cleaning crews have been told to pay extra attention to door knobs, keyboards and other surfaces that students touch through the day. Some districts have invested in handheld disinfectant sprayers that are used in hospitals, Others are adding traditional hand sanitizers in schools and buses.
But even as they work on prevention, schools are also starting to prepare for the worst. Many are making plans to teach students online in case the virus spreads so widely that schools are forced to close. Officials are considering how they would handle large numbers of absences among students or teachers, and how to make up days that could be missed because of the virus.
At least one school temporarily closed Thursday over fears tied to the virus. Bothell High School, near Seattle, canceled classes after a staffer’s family member was placed in quarantine for showing symptoms of possibly contracting the virus. Officials said the school was being cleaned and disinfected “out of an abundance of caution.”
In Miami, public school leaders said they’re readying 200,000 laptops and tablets for students in case buildings close and force classes online. They’re also directing new international students to register at two reception centers instead of at school buildings, where students have typically registered.
“If there is one place where a contagion can actually spread, it could be the schoolhouse,” Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, said at a Wednesday news conference. “We are ready. We have protocols in place.”
The district is also among many halting or scaling back foreign travel over concerns about the virus. Miami officials opted to cancel upcoming field trips to Italy and Scotland, while Virginia’s Fairfax County announced it’s suspending all trips to countries where the virus has spread.
In Colorado, where state law requires schools to provide 160 days of instruction per year, education officials are promising flexibility. A Wednesday letter from the state’s education department says it will support schools that “experience a prolonged closure.”
Many districts say they’re awaiting instruction from their state health departments and the CDC. Dallas’ public school district said it’s “reviewing and modifying crisis response plans should an outbreak occur.” Public schools in San Francisco say they’re preparing for exposure of the virus in the district but have “no such cases at this time.”
Districts already have plans to deal with natural disasters, flu outbreaks and other emergencies, and many have planned for widespread infections before, most notably during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. But most have never faced the prospect of closing for weeks at a time, as has happened in China and other countries working to prevent the virus from spreading.
On Thursday, the virus prompted Japan’s prime minister to ask all of the nation’s schools to close for a month as officials work to control the spread of the new virus in the country.
Some U.S. districts say they already have online learning systems that could be used to provide classes online, but not all schools have that technology. Some have started preparing lessons that could be emailed to students instead or sent home in packets.
If schools are forced to close for long stretches, it could have a heavy impact on students who rely on school meals and for parents who use their schools’ child care programs, said Francisco Negrón, chief legal officer for the National School Boards Association. The group is urging school leaders to discuss those issues with local authorities and develop contingency plans.
The group is also asking districts to reconsider attendance awards that are sometimes given to students who don’t miss a day of class for an entire year or semester. Some schools have previously abandoned the practice amid fears that it encourages students to come to school sick, but some still award gift cards, cash or raffle prizes to students with perfect attendance.
“School districts may want to revisit what it means to have perfect attendance,” Negrón said. “We certainly wouldn’t want sick kids to come to school just because their parents are shooting for that perfect attendance award.”
In many districts, nurses are being asked to serve as the front line in combating the virus. Officials at Denver Public Schools said nurses have been trained on guidelines for managing an outbreak and will be respond to any cases and report to health authorities.
A national association of school superintendents said it’s pressing the CDC for more detailed guidance for schools as they confront the virus. In the meantime, the American Association of School Administrators issued a letter on Thursday telling schools to use “common sense strategies” focusing on prevention.
The letter urged districts to focus on personal hygiene, to develop procedures for reporting cases and to consider canceling trips to any areas in the U.S. or abroad where there have been outbreaks.
“The classroom is a wonderful breeding ground for viruses,” said Dan Domenech, executive director of the group. “That’s why we need to plan what we’re going to do when we begin to see incidents of the coronavirus in our schools and in our communities.”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-02-schools-coronavirus.html