A tech company is monitoring smartphone data and grading American counties on a “Social Distancing Scoreboard” as authorities across the United States urge residents to socially isolate and slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Unacast, which describes itself as “an award-winning location data
and analytics firm,” said in a post on its website that the data is
collected from “tens of millions” of mobile phones. It released the scoreboard last week.
The interactive, color-coded chart is broken down by state and by
county. It’s updated daily with a comparison of how much distance people
in each location are traveling now and how much they did before the
COVID-19 outbreak.
Unacast founder and CEO Thomas Walle said the company chose this metric over several different statistics after some testing.
“The metric correlates well with the number of confirmed cases: the
more cases are confirmed, the greater the decrease in the average
distance traveled on the county level,” he wrote.
Galveston County in Texas scored a B rating for its residents’ “30 to 40 percent decrease in average distance traveled.”
Meanwhile, South Carolina’s Chester County, south of Charleston, scored an F for a less than 10 percent decrease.
Galveston has seen 70 confirmed cases, while Chester has just two, according to the scoreboard.
The boroughs making up New York City, which have seen a combined
number of more than 37,000 cases, received A grades for a decrease in
travel over 40 percent.
Unacast says its COVID-19 monitoring tools do not identify
individuals, devices or households. It is offering the data “pro bono”
to benefit public health experts, lawmakers, businesses and others.
The Sacramento Bee reviewed
scoreboard data for California and reported that people in low-income,
rural counties there were dramatically less likely to cut down on their
travel than people in wealthy urban areas.
But the effects of the virus have spanned the country, with the White
House and individual states issuing guidelines and orders aimed at
stopping the spread. Many of them ask Americans to self-isolate, avoid
unnecessary travel and keep their hands and frequently used surfaces
clean.
“If you feel sick, stay home,” the latest Trump administration guidelines urge.
There were at least 184,183 confirmed cases across the US as of
Tuesday evening. At least 3,721 have died from the virus in the country.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/this-company-tells-you-how-well-your-county-is-doing-with-staying-home/
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Coronavirus poses greatest risk for diabetes, lung and heart disease patients
People with chronic conditions like diabetes and lung and heart disease are at greater risk of being hospitalized due to the coronavirus – but more than one in five patients who end up in intensive care had no such health problems, according to a report.
Higher percentages of patients with such underlying conditions have been admitted to hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Preliminary data from 7,162 patients show that 37.6 percent had one or more underlying medical conditions, according to the CDC report.
Difficulty breathing is a symptom that sends many people to the hospital, but the new data show how the underlying conditions increase the chances of serious complications.
Researchers found that 78 percent of people in intensive care had at least one underlying health problem, including diabetes (seen in 32 percent of patients), cardiovascular disease (29 percent) and chronic lung disease (21 percent), according to a Reuters report on the CDC’s findings.
Twelve percent had long-term kidney disease and 9 percent had a compromised immune system.
Among hospitalized patients who were not sick enough to require intensive care, 71 percent had at least one underlying condition, the CDC found.
Meanwhile, among people with the novel coronavirus who did not need to be hospitalized, only 27 percent had one or more long-term medical issues.
But notably, not having chronic conditions is no guarantee against serious illness as 22 percent of COVID-19 patients who landed in intensive care had no underlying health problems.
“It is not yet known whether the severity or level of control of underlying health conditions affects the risk for severe disease associated with COVID-19,” according to the report.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-poses-greatest-risk-for-diabetes-lung-and-heart-disease-patients/
Higher percentages of patients with such underlying conditions have been admitted to hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Preliminary data from 7,162 patients show that 37.6 percent had one or more underlying medical conditions, according to the CDC report.
Difficulty breathing is a symptom that sends many people to the hospital, but the new data show how the underlying conditions increase the chances of serious complications.
Researchers found that 78 percent of people in intensive care had at least one underlying health problem, including diabetes (seen in 32 percent of patients), cardiovascular disease (29 percent) and chronic lung disease (21 percent), according to a Reuters report on the CDC’s findings.
Twelve percent had long-term kidney disease and 9 percent had a compromised immune system.
Among hospitalized patients who were not sick enough to require intensive care, 71 percent had at least one underlying condition, the CDC found.
Meanwhile, among people with the novel coronavirus who did not need to be hospitalized, only 27 percent had one or more long-term medical issues.
But notably, not having chronic conditions is no guarantee against serious illness as 22 percent of COVID-19 patients who landed in intensive care had no underlying health problems.
“It is not yet known whether the severity or level of control of underlying health conditions affects the risk for severe disease associated with COVID-19,” according to the report.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-poses-greatest-risk-for-diabetes-lung-and-heart-disease-patients/
Coronavirus patients are most contagious during earliest signs of symptoms
Coronavirus patients are most contagious during their first week showing symptoms, new research suggests.
The early, albeit “limited” study of nine patients in Germany found very high levels of the virus in the throat of those patients at their earliest onsets of sickness, according to the scientist behind the research published in Nature journal.
That means those who fall ill could still be going about their daily lives when they’re most contagious.
The findings could offer a glimpse into the rapid spread of the disease and provide guidance for overwhelmed hospitals that are short on beds, the scientists said.
Many patients showing milder symptoms could safely be discharged to self-isolate at home 10 days after they first showed signs of the illness, according to the research.
“In a situation characterized by limited capacity of hospital beds in infectious diseases wards, there is pressure for early discharge following treatment,” reads the study, lead by Christian Drosten and Clemens Wendtner.
“Both criteria predict that there is little residual risk of infectivity, based on cell culture,” it went on.
The viral “shedding” of the disease dropped off significantly after five days of symptoms in seven of the nine patients; the other two developed early signs of pneumonia and had high levels of the virus 10 or 11 days after falling ill, the scientists found.
Comparing the peak contagious points for coronavirus and SARS patients, those infected with coronavirus gave off 1,000 times more virus than those infected with SARS, scientists found. And the SARS peak came later on, around day seven to ten days after patients first became sick.
But the study was limited in that no severe cases were observed, the scientists said. The nine patients were mild, all young- to middle-aged without significant underlying diseases.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-patients-are-most-contagious-early-on/
The early, albeit “limited” study of nine patients in Germany found very high levels of the virus in the throat of those patients at their earliest onsets of sickness, according to the scientist behind the research published in Nature journal.
That means those who fall ill could still be going about their daily lives when they’re most contagious.
The findings could offer a glimpse into the rapid spread of the disease and provide guidance for overwhelmed hospitals that are short on beds, the scientists said.
Many patients showing milder symptoms could safely be discharged to self-isolate at home 10 days after they first showed signs of the illness, according to the research.
“In a situation characterized by limited capacity of hospital beds in infectious diseases wards, there is pressure for early discharge following treatment,” reads the study, lead by Christian Drosten and Clemens Wendtner.
“Both criteria predict that there is little residual risk of infectivity, based on cell culture,” it went on.
The viral “shedding” of the disease dropped off significantly after five days of symptoms in seven of the nine patients; the other two developed early signs of pneumonia and had high levels of the virus 10 or 11 days after falling ill, the scientists found.
Comparing the peak contagious points for coronavirus and SARS patients, those infected with coronavirus gave off 1,000 times more virus than those infected with SARS, scientists found. And the SARS peak came later on, around day seven to ten days after patients first became sick.
But the study was limited in that no severe cases were observed, the scientists said. The nine patients were mild, all young- to middle-aged without significant underlying diseases.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-patients-are-most-contagious-early-on/
Cantel Announces Initiatives to Help Fight COVID-19
Cantel Medical Corporation
(NYSE: CMD) announced today specific areas of focus and associated
actions to combat the COVID-19 virus. In these unprecedented times, the
company is concentrating on enhanced production, product innovation and
value-add COVID-19 education in support of first-responders and other
healthcare professionals.
“We are doing everything we can to contribute to the global effort focused on addressing the COVID-19 pandemic,” said George Fotiades, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cantel. “Supporting those on the front lines, in addition to our global employee base, is job one, and we are working closely with distribution partners to ensure that our masks, PPE and other infection prevention solutions are going to those who are most in need. Infection prevention is the core of our company’s mission, and we are doing everything possible to deliver key products and services to serve and protect healthcare professionals.”
Cantel is working across divisions to bring critical products it manufactures and sells to various end markets to best serve healthcare providers on the front lines.
Cantel has focused on accelerating surgical earloop mask production by its HuFriedyGroup dental division, increasing manufacturing to 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the organization’s two New York manufacturing sites and expanding manufacturing lines to increase production volume by over 50%. The enhanced hours and expanded production capacity have enabled the production of over 4.4 million masks per week to serve healthcare professionals. Recently, the organization has increased its manufacturing output on protective face shields by 50% and anticipates an increase of output by 100% in two weeks. These products are being deployed to medical and dental customers.
In addition to masks, HuFriedyGroup is focused on increasing sourcing through sub-suppliers to increase product availability on key products lines such as hand sanitizer, hand sanitizing wipes, protective eye wear, and surface disinfectants. These products span a variety of HuFriedyGroup brands including Crosstex, Hu-Friedy, and Palmero.
Cantel is also focused on innovating products that play a major role on the front lines of combatting COVID-19. On the dental side, AdvantaClear™ surface disinfectant is designed to clean and disinfect surfaces while effectively killing a broad spectrum of disease-causing microorganisms in one minute. Importantly, AdvantaClear surface disinfectant has been added to the EPA List N: Disinfectants for Use Against SARS-CoV-2, and is classified as being effective against SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19.
Cantel’s ACTRIL™ Cold Sterilant surface disinfectant, traditionally sold into the life sciences segment, is another example of unique product innovation. ACTRIL Cold Sterilant is a powerful disinfectant containing a proprietary mixture of 0.08% peracetic acid and 1.0% hydrogen peroxide. It is effective against a broad spectrum of organisms, including bacterial spores, fungal spores, bacteria, mycobacteria, yeast, molds, and viruses. Cantel is actively working with its medical division to offer this powerful disinfectant to hospital customers to help in the fight against infections.
Cantel has made significant investments in the area of COVID-19 education. The COVID-19 Resource Center as well as a series of infection prevention webinars and podcasts, developed by the dental division, have been visited and attended by close to 20,000 people. The GreenLight Dental Compliance Center™, a first-of-its-kind solution, provides a single, convenient online portal that contains everything a dental practice needs to develop and maintain a compliant infection prevention program. Cantel remains focused on providing its customers a “Complete Circle of Protection” that includes workflow management solutions, instrument reprocessing, infection prevention, and compliance. The initial deployment of these programs is to the dental community through the HuFriedyGroup business. In the weeks and months ahead, Cantel will look to expand these key educational resources to the Medivators business serving its medical customers.
https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/cantel-announces-initiatives-to-help-fight-covid-19/
“We are doing everything we can to contribute to the global effort focused on addressing the COVID-19 pandemic,” said George Fotiades, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cantel. “Supporting those on the front lines, in addition to our global employee base, is job one, and we are working closely with distribution partners to ensure that our masks, PPE and other infection prevention solutions are going to those who are most in need. Infection prevention is the core of our company’s mission, and we are doing everything possible to deliver key products and services to serve and protect healthcare professionals.”
Cantel is working across divisions to bring critical products it manufactures and sells to various end markets to best serve healthcare providers on the front lines.
Cantel has focused on accelerating surgical earloop mask production by its HuFriedyGroup dental division, increasing manufacturing to 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the organization’s two New York manufacturing sites and expanding manufacturing lines to increase production volume by over 50%. The enhanced hours and expanded production capacity have enabled the production of over 4.4 million masks per week to serve healthcare professionals. Recently, the organization has increased its manufacturing output on protective face shields by 50% and anticipates an increase of output by 100% in two weeks. These products are being deployed to medical and dental customers.
In addition to masks, HuFriedyGroup is focused on increasing sourcing through sub-suppliers to increase product availability on key products lines such as hand sanitizer, hand sanitizing wipes, protective eye wear, and surface disinfectants. These products span a variety of HuFriedyGroup brands including Crosstex, Hu-Friedy, and Palmero.
Cantel is also focused on innovating products that play a major role on the front lines of combatting COVID-19. On the dental side, AdvantaClear™ surface disinfectant is designed to clean and disinfect surfaces while effectively killing a broad spectrum of disease-causing microorganisms in one minute. Importantly, AdvantaClear surface disinfectant has been added to the EPA List N: Disinfectants for Use Against SARS-CoV-2, and is classified as being effective against SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19.
Cantel’s ACTRIL™ Cold Sterilant surface disinfectant, traditionally sold into the life sciences segment, is another example of unique product innovation. ACTRIL Cold Sterilant is a powerful disinfectant containing a proprietary mixture of 0.08% peracetic acid and 1.0% hydrogen peroxide. It is effective against a broad spectrum of organisms, including bacterial spores, fungal spores, bacteria, mycobacteria, yeast, molds, and viruses. Cantel is actively working with its medical division to offer this powerful disinfectant to hospital customers to help in the fight against infections.
Cantel has made significant investments in the area of COVID-19 education. The COVID-19 Resource Center as well as a series of infection prevention webinars and podcasts, developed by the dental division, have been visited and attended by close to 20,000 people. The GreenLight Dental Compliance Center™, a first-of-its-kind solution, provides a single, convenient online portal that contains everything a dental practice needs to develop and maintain a compliant infection prevention program. Cantel remains focused on providing its customers a “Complete Circle of Protection” that includes workflow management solutions, instrument reprocessing, infection prevention, and compliance. The initial deployment of these programs is to the dental community through the HuFriedyGroup business. In the weeks and months ahead, Cantel will look to expand these key educational resources to the Medivators business serving its medical customers.
https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/cantel-announces-initiatives-to-help-fight-covid-19/
Could a 100-Year-Old Tuberculosis Vaccine Help Prevent COVID-19?
As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the world, researchers and
public health experts are casting about for older vaccines and antiviral
drugs that might be used to treat the disease caused by the novel
coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The prime examples are malaria drugs chloroquine
and hydroxychloroquine, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) approved for use under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) this weekend, despite criticism of the lack of evidence they work.
Researchers in Australia are turning to another older treatment, a vaccine once used to prevent tuberculosis (TB) called the bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), which has been used for about 100 years. Researchers have been taking a hard look at BCG for some time for other uses, including as an immunotherapy for early-stage bladder cancer.
And earlier this year, researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted research with the BCG to see if it could be used to improve TB immunity. And now, in light of the way the BCG vaccine primes the immune system, it is being evaluated for COVID-19, which has at least a couple similarities to TB—they’re both lung infections caused by microorganisms.
Nigel Curtis, head of infectious diseases research at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, is running a study into BCG and COVID-19, which the World Health Organization (WHO) is encouraging other researchers to collaborate with.
“It can boost the immune system so that it defends better against a whole range of different infections, a whole range of different viruses and bacteria in a lot more generalized way,” said Curtis, who is also a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne and head of the infectious diseases unit at the city’s Royal Children’s Hospital.
In Curtis’s study, which will run six months, 4,000 healthcare workers will be vaccinated with BCG with the seasonal influenza vaccine or the influenza vaccine alone. A placebo vaccine isn’t being used because the BCG shot usually causes a localized skin reaction that leaves a scar.
Similar studies are ongoing in The Netherlands and Curtis indicated he is in talks with possible trial sites in Boston and in other Australian cities.
BCG is used to immunize about 130 million newborns around the globe each year. Research in babies in Africa demonstrated that BCG offers protections against TB and other pediatric infections.
“We need to think of every possible way that we can protect healthcare workers,” Curtis said. “And there’s going to be a particular need to reduce the amount of time that our healthcare workers are absent.”
He also added, “We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think that this might work. We cannot guarantee that this will work. And of course, the only way to find out is with our trial.”
The BCG vaccine contains a live, weakened strain of Mycobacterium bovis, which is very similar to the microbe that causes tuberculosis.
Results from the trial, which will begin dosing on April 6, aren’t likely until September. Meanwhile, researchers worldwide are testing other drugs to respond to the pandemic, with over 100 ongoing clinical trials.
“I am hopeful that within three months we will have a good idea which drugs are good and which drugs are bad,” Australian National University geneticist Gaetan Burgio told the Asia Times. “The field is moving very quickly.”
https://www.biospace.com/article/-can-an-old-tuberculosis-vaccine-work-against-covid-19-/
Researchers in Australia are turning to another older treatment, a vaccine once used to prevent tuberculosis (TB) called the bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), which has been used for about 100 years. Researchers have been taking a hard look at BCG for some time for other uses, including as an immunotherapy for early-stage bladder cancer.
And earlier this year, researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted research with the BCG to see if it could be used to improve TB immunity. And now, in light of the way the BCG vaccine primes the immune system, it is being evaluated for COVID-19, which has at least a couple similarities to TB—they’re both lung infections caused by microorganisms.
Nigel Curtis, head of infectious diseases research at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, is running a study into BCG and COVID-19, which the World Health Organization (WHO) is encouraging other researchers to collaborate with.
“It can boost the immune system so that it defends better against a whole range of different infections, a whole range of different viruses and bacteria in a lot more generalized way,” said Curtis, who is also a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne and head of the infectious diseases unit at the city’s Royal Children’s Hospital.
In Curtis’s study, which will run six months, 4,000 healthcare workers will be vaccinated with BCG with the seasonal influenza vaccine or the influenza vaccine alone. A placebo vaccine isn’t being used because the BCG shot usually causes a localized skin reaction that leaves a scar.
Similar studies are ongoing in The Netherlands and Curtis indicated he is in talks with possible trial sites in Boston and in other Australian cities.
BCG is used to immunize about 130 million newborns around the globe each year. Research in babies in Africa demonstrated that BCG offers protections against TB and other pediatric infections.
“We need to think of every possible way that we can protect healthcare workers,” Curtis said. “And there’s going to be a particular need to reduce the amount of time that our healthcare workers are absent.”
He also added, “We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think that this might work. We cannot guarantee that this will work. And of course, the only way to find out is with our trial.”
The BCG vaccine contains a live, weakened strain of Mycobacterium bovis, which is very similar to the microbe that causes tuberculosis.
Results from the trial, which will begin dosing on April 6, aren’t likely until September. Meanwhile, researchers worldwide are testing other drugs to respond to the pandemic, with over 100 ongoing clinical trials.
“I am hopeful that within three months we will have a good idea which drugs are good and which drugs are bad,” Australian National University geneticist Gaetan Burgio told the Asia Times. “The field is moving very quickly.”
https://www.biospace.com/article/-can-an-old-tuberculosis-vaccine-work-against-covid-19-/
Developing antibodies to ‘neutralize’ novel coronavirus before it invades cells
University of Toronto researcher Sachdev Sidhu and his collaborators
are engineering antibody molecules that can neutralize the novel
coronavirus in the body before it invades cells.
The investigator at the Donnelly Centre for Molecular and Biomolecular Research is part of a team that recently received federal funding support through a second round of emergency COVID-19 funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.
Sidhu already leads a different team that received support in the first round of federal funding. The goal of that project is to design antiviral medicines that block viral replication.
“With our two funded projects, we are working to develop molecules that can target the virus both inside human cells and on the outside to prevent it from getting in,” says Sidhu, who is a professor of molecular genetics in the Faculty of Medicine.
The latest funded project, headed by U of T Professor James Rini of the departments of molecular genetics and biochemistry, aims to produce antibodies that can effectively neutralize the virus before it causes damage. Such antibodies are naturally produced by the body in response to infection, but researchers hope to reduce the duration and severity of the disease by boosting the immune system with injected antibodies. To take one existing example: Neutralizing antibodies are used to treat rabies, which is also caused by a virus.
Rini has previously helped to determine how antibodies bind to and inactivate the SARS virus, the coronavirus that caused the outbreak in Asia more than 15 years ago. Also on the team is Alan Cochrane, a professor in the department of molecular genetics and an HIV virologist with expertise in viral RNA processing.
The antibodies will be engineered to block the so-called S-protein that forms spikes on the virus’s surface. The spikes lock on to a protein called ACE2 on the surface of human cells to gain entry. Coating viral particles with synthetic antibodies should prevent the spikes from binding to ACE2.
Sidhu and Rini will also engineer antibodies that bind ACE2 to make it inaccessible to the virus. This type of engineered immunity surpasses the capacity of the body’s natural immune system since antibodies that react against self-proteins have been filtered out. If successful, the approach may obviate worries about viral mutations that can render drugs ineffective to new emerging viral strains because the host protein ACE2 does not change over time.
Sidhu’s team has advanced a technology called phage display to rapidly create and select human antibodies with desired biological properties, including blocking the virus’s spike protein. Over the last decade, his team has created hundreds of antibodies with therapeutic potential—some of which are in clinical development through spin-off companies and large pharmaceutical firms.
The group has demonstrated success with both approaches for inhibiting viral entry, having developed neutralizing antibodies that target the Ebola virus as well as antibodies that target the human host receptor of hantavirus or hepatitis C. Moreover, other research has shown that antibodies targeting SARS, a related virus whose genetic material is over 80 percent identical to the one causing COVID-19, can clear infection in cells and mice.
Using phage display, in which tiny bacterial viruses called phages are instructed to create vast libraries of diverse antibodies, the team will select the antibodies that can kill the virus in human cells before testing them on mice and, eventually, patients. Experiments on mice could start within three to six months, Sidhu says.
In addition to creating antibodies tailored to the new virus from scratch, the researchers will also modify existing SARS-blocking antibodies so that they attack COVID-19 and provide an additional route to the development of a therapeutic.
Given the global spread of the virus, it’s possible that it will become endemic and circulate in the population like seasonal flu. And, like the flu, it could mutate into new strains that will evade acquired immunity and the vaccines that are being developed. By generating a panel of different antibodies, the researchers aim to stay one step ahead of the virus.
“Our advances in antibody engineering technologies and access to the complete genomes of the COVID-19 virus and its relatives provides us with an opportunity to create tailored therapeutic antibodies at a scale and speed that was not possible even a few years ago,” says Sidhu.
“Ultimately, we aim to optimize methods to the point where the evolution of new drugs will keep pace with the evolution of the virus itself, providing new and effective drugs in response to new outbreaks.”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-antibodies-neutralize-coronavirus-invades-cells.html
The investigator at the Donnelly Centre for Molecular and Biomolecular Research is part of a team that recently received federal funding support through a second round of emergency COVID-19 funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.
Sidhu already leads a different team that received support in the first round of federal funding. The goal of that project is to design antiviral medicines that block viral replication.
“With our two funded projects, we are working to develop molecules that can target the virus both inside human cells and on the outside to prevent it from getting in,” says Sidhu, who is a professor of molecular genetics in the Faculty of Medicine.
The latest funded project, headed by U of T Professor James Rini of the departments of molecular genetics and biochemistry, aims to produce antibodies that can effectively neutralize the virus before it causes damage. Such antibodies are naturally produced by the body in response to infection, but researchers hope to reduce the duration and severity of the disease by boosting the immune system with injected antibodies. To take one existing example: Neutralizing antibodies are used to treat rabies, which is also caused by a virus.
Rini has previously helped to determine how antibodies bind to and inactivate the SARS virus, the coronavirus that caused the outbreak in Asia more than 15 years ago. Also on the team is Alan Cochrane, a professor in the department of molecular genetics and an HIV virologist with expertise in viral RNA processing.
The antibodies will be engineered to block the so-called S-protein that forms spikes on the virus’s surface. The spikes lock on to a protein called ACE2 on the surface of human cells to gain entry. Coating viral particles with synthetic antibodies should prevent the spikes from binding to ACE2.
Sidhu and Rini will also engineer antibodies that bind ACE2 to make it inaccessible to the virus. This type of engineered immunity surpasses the capacity of the body’s natural immune system since antibodies that react against self-proteins have been filtered out. If successful, the approach may obviate worries about viral mutations that can render drugs ineffective to new emerging viral strains because the host protein ACE2 does not change over time.
Sidhu’s team has advanced a technology called phage display to rapidly create and select human antibodies with desired biological properties, including blocking the virus’s spike protein. Over the last decade, his team has created hundreds of antibodies with therapeutic potential—some of which are in clinical development through spin-off companies and large pharmaceutical firms.
The group has demonstrated success with both approaches for inhibiting viral entry, having developed neutralizing antibodies that target the Ebola virus as well as antibodies that target the human host receptor of hantavirus or hepatitis C. Moreover, other research has shown that antibodies targeting SARS, a related virus whose genetic material is over 80 percent identical to the one causing COVID-19, can clear infection in cells and mice.
Using phage display, in which tiny bacterial viruses called phages are instructed to create vast libraries of diverse antibodies, the team will select the antibodies that can kill the virus in human cells before testing them on mice and, eventually, patients. Experiments on mice could start within three to six months, Sidhu says.
In addition to creating antibodies tailored to the new virus from scratch, the researchers will also modify existing SARS-blocking antibodies so that they attack COVID-19 and provide an additional route to the development of a therapeutic.
Given the global spread of the virus, it’s possible that it will become endemic and circulate in the population like seasonal flu. And, like the flu, it could mutate into new strains that will evade acquired immunity and the vaccines that are being developed. By generating a panel of different antibodies, the researchers aim to stay one step ahead of the virus.
“Our advances in antibody engineering technologies and access to the complete genomes of the COVID-19 virus and its relatives provides us with an opportunity to create tailored therapeutic antibodies at a scale and speed that was not possible even a few years ago,” says Sidhu.
“Ultimately, we aim to optimize methods to the point where the evolution of new drugs will keep pace with the evolution of the virus itself, providing new and effective drugs in response to new outbreaks.”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-antibodies-neutralize-coronavirus-invades-cells.html
Should you bring mom home from assisted living during the pandemic?
Dr. Alison Webb took her 81-year-old father out of assisted living, to live.
Coleen Hubbard took her 85-year-old mother out of independent living, to die.
With the coronavirus moving through facilities that house older adults, families across the country are wondering “Should I bring Mom or Dad home?”
It’s a reasonable question. Most retirement complexes and long-term care facilities are excluding visitors. Older adults are asked to stay in their rooms and are alone for most of the day. Family members might call, but that doesn’t fill the time. Their friends in the facility are also sequestered.
In a matter of weeks, conditions have deteriorated in many of these centers.
At assisted living sites, staff shortages are developing as aides become sick or stay home with children whose schools have closed.
Nursing homes, where seniors go for rehabilitation after a hospital stay or live long term if they’re seriously ill and frail, are being hard hit by the coronavirus. They’re potential petri dishes for infection.
Still, older adults in these settings are being fed and offered other types of assistance. My neighbor’s 80-something parents are at a continuing care community outside Denver. It has started a concierge service for residents who need to order groceries and fill prescriptions. At rehab centers, physical, occupational and speech therapists offer valuable services.
But would be Mom or Dad fare better, even with all due social distancing, in the family home?
Of course, care there would fall squarely on the family’s shoulders, as would the responsibility for buying groceries, cooking, administering medication, doing the laundry and ensuring the environment is free from potential contamination.
Home health care services could lend a hand. But they may not be easy to get because of growing demand, shortages of personal protective equipment and staffing issues.
Another concern in bringing someone home: Some facilities are telling residents that if they leave, even temporarily, they can’t return. That happened to a family in western New York, according to Roxanne Sorensen, a geriatric care manager with Elder Care Solutions of WNY.
When this family took their elderly parents out of an assisted living facility for a brief “stay-with-us” respite, they were told the parents had been discharged and had to be placed on a waiting list before they could return.
Sorensen has a client in her early 70s who’s in rehabilitation at a nursing home after emergency surgery for a life-threatening infection. The facility is on lockdown and her client is feeling trapped and desperate. She wants to go home, but she’s still weak and needs a lot more therapy.
“I’ve told her, stay here, get stronger and when you go home you won’t end up in the hospital or with disabilities that could put you back in a nursing home for the rest of your life,” Sorensen said.
Those in nursing care who have cognitive impairments may become disoriented or agitated if a family moves them from an environment that feels familiar, said Dr. Thomas Cornwell, executive chairman of the Home Centered Care Institute. Some have behavioral issues that can’t be managed at home.
Families with children need to think carefully about bringing an older parent home, especially if he or she has underlying chronic illnesses such as heart, lung or kidney disease, Cornwell said. “Kids, generally, even in the past few weeks, have been exposed to hundreds of others (at school),” he said. “They tend to be vectors of infection.”
Ultimately, every family must weigh and balance the risks. Can they give an older parent enough attention? Do they have the emotional and physical stamina to take this on? What does the parent want? Will the pangs of displacement and disrupted routines be offset by the pleasures of being around adult children and grandchildren?
Dr. Alison Webb, a retired physician, is a single mom raising a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old. Her father, Bob Webb, 81, has mild dementia and had been hospitalized for depression before she asked him to leave assisted living and move into her Seattle home.
“Initially he resisted. He feared change, and he was concerned that his stuff was going to be left behind and he wouldn’t get it back, ever,” Webb said. Even today, Bob talks about going back home to his apartment.
Webb said a geriatrician on a Facebook group for female physicians convinced her it was safer for her father to leave his assisted living center. “‘You’ll do a lot better here with the grandkids. You can play games. There’s a big yard. You can do some gardening,'” Webb said she told her dad.
There’s another benefit. Because she’s a physician, Webb said, she hopes “I’ll notice if he’s not doing well and take care of it right away.”
Coleen Hubbard’s mother, Delores, whom she described as “really resilient and really stubborn,” had loved living in a one-bedroom apartment in a Denver senior housing complex for the past decade. In October, Delores was diagnosed with endometrial cancer and decided not to have medical treatment.
“Mom had a lot of surgeries and hospitalizations in her life,” Hubbard said. “She was done dealing with the medical community.”
Every time Hubbard suggested her mother move in with her, Delores refused: She wanted to die in her own apartment. But then, a few weeks ago, serious pain set in and Delores asked the Denver Hospice to begin giving her morphine.
“That’s when I realized that we may be close to the end,” Hubbard said. “And I felt an incredible urgent panic that I had to get her out of there. Things were already starting to close (because of the coronavirus). I could not fathom that she might be cut off from me.”
Hubbard prepared a room at home and found a small, tinny metal bell that Delores could ring if she needed help. “We made a lot of jokes about Peter Pan and Tinker Bell,” Hubbard remembered. “When she rang the bell, I’d come in and say, ‘Yes, m’lady, what’s happening?'”
Five days after arriving, Delores passed away. “Grieving right now happens in a space of solitude and silence,” Hubbard wrote in a Facebook post. “Sure, there are texts and phone calls, emails and snail mail, but no embraces, no questionable casseroles delivered by neighbors, no gathering of family and friends to share stories and memories.”
Amid the grief is relief that Delores had what she wanted: a death without medical interventions. “I’m pinching myself that we made that happen,” Hubbard said. “And I’m so glad we brought her home.”
Patricia Scott’s story is unfinished. The 101-year-old was living in a retirement community in Castro Valley, Calif., before her son, Bart Scott, brought her to his house in Santa Rosa, moving her into a spacious in-law apartment.
Asked how she felt about the change, Patricia Scott said, “I’ve never been particularly thrilled with the idea of homogenized residency with a bunch of old farts, of whom I am one.”
Yet, she longs for her two-bedroom apartment: “It’s just that everything is there. I know where crap is. I miss my regular life.”
Bart Scott has four siblings, and they agreed that it was untenable to leave his mother alone during the coronavirus scare. “She is the matriarch of this family,” he said. “There are a lot of people who put a lot of store in her well-being.”
As for potential health threats, Patricia Scott is characteristically sardonic. “I was born in 1918, in the middle of the influenza epidemic,” she said, “and I think there’s a delicious irony that I could very well exit in this one.”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-mom-home-pandemic.html
Coleen Hubbard took her 85-year-old mother out of independent living, to die.
With the coronavirus moving through facilities that house older adults, families across the country are wondering “Should I bring Mom or Dad home?”
It’s a reasonable question. Most retirement complexes and long-term care facilities are excluding visitors. Older adults are asked to stay in their rooms and are alone for most of the day. Family members might call, but that doesn’t fill the time. Their friends in the facility are also sequestered.
In a matter of weeks, conditions have deteriorated in many of these centers.
At assisted living sites, staff shortages are developing as aides become sick or stay home with children whose schools have closed.
Nursing homes, where seniors go for rehabilitation after a hospital stay or live long term if they’re seriously ill and frail, are being hard hit by the coronavirus. They’re potential petri dishes for infection.
Still, older adults in these settings are being fed and offered other types of assistance. My neighbor’s 80-something parents are at a continuing care community outside Denver. It has started a concierge service for residents who need to order groceries and fill prescriptions. At rehab centers, physical, occupational and speech therapists offer valuable services.
But would be Mom or Dad fare better, even with all due social distancing, in the family home?
Of course, care there would fall squarely on the family’s shoulders, as would the responsibility for buying groceries, cooking, administering medication, doing the laundry and ensuring the environment is free from potential contamination.
Home health care services could lend a hand. But they may not be easy to get because of growing demand, shortages of personal protective equipment and staffing issues.
Another concern in bringing someone home: Some facilities are telling residents that if they leave, even temporarily, they can’t return. That happened to a family in western New York, according to Roxanne Sorensen, a geriatric care manager with Elder Care Solutions of WNY.
When this family took their elderly parents out of an assisted living facility for a brief “stay-with-us” respite, they were told the parents had been discharged and had to be placed on a waiting list before they could return.
Sorensen has a client in her early 70s who’s in rehabilitation at a nursing home after emergency surgery for a life-threatening infection. The facility is on lockdown and her client is feeling trapped and desperate. She wants to go home, but she’s still weak and needs a lot more therapy.
“I’ve told her, stay here, get stronger and when you go home you won’t end up in the hospital or with disabilities that could put you back in a nursing home for the rest of your life,” Sorensen said.
Those in nursing care who have cognitive impairments may become disoriented or agitated if a family moves them from an environment that feels familiar, said Dr. Thomas Cornwell, executive chairman of the Home Centered Care Institute. Some have behavioral issues that can’t be managed at home.
Families with children need to think carefully about bringing an older parent home, especially if he or she has underlying chronic illnesses such as heart, lung or kidney disease, Cornwell said. “Kids, generally, even in the past few weeks, have been exposed to hundreds of others (at school),” he said. “They tend to be vectors of infection.”
Ultimately, every family must weigh and balance the risks. Can they give an older parent enough attention? Do they have the emotional and physical stamina to take this on? What does the parent want? Will the pangs of displacement and disrupted routines be offset by the pleasures of being around adult children and grandchildren?
Dr. Alison Webb, a retired physician, is a single mom raising a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old. Her father, Bob Webb, 81, has mild dementia and had been hospitalized for depression before she asked him to leave assisted living and move into her Seattle home.
“Initially he resisted. He feared change, and he was concerned that his stuff was going to be left behind and he wouldn’t get it back, ever,” Webb said. Even today, Bob talks about going back home to his apartment.
Webb said a geriatrician on a Facebook group for female physicians convinced her it was safer for her father to leave his assisted living center. “‘You’ll do a lot better here with the grandkids. You can play games. There’s a big yard. You can do some gardening,'” Webb said she told her dad.
There’s another benefit. Because she’s a physician, Webb said, she hopes “I’ll notice if he’s not doing well and take care of it right away.”
Coleen Hubbard’s mother, Delores, whom she described as “really resilient and really stubborn,” had loved living in a one-bedroom apartment in a Denver senior housing complex for the past decade. In October, Delores was diagnosed with endometrial cancer and decided not to have medical treatment.
“Mom had a lot of surgeries and hospitalizations in her life,” Hubbard said. “She was done dealing with the medical community.”
Every time Hubbard suggested her mother move in with her, Delores refused: She wanted to die in her own apartment. But then, a few weeks ago, serious pain set in and Delores asked the Denver Hospice to begin giving her morphine.
“That’s when I realized that we may be close to the end,” Hubbard said. “And I felt an incredible urgent panic that I had to get her out of there. Things were already starting to close (because of the coronavirus). I could not fathom that she might be cut off from me.”
Hubbard prepared a room at home and found a small, tinny metal bell that Delores could ring if she needed help. “We made a lot of jokes about Peter Pan and Tinker Bell,” Hubbard remembered. “When she rang the bell, I’d come in and say, ‘Yes, m’lady, what’s happening?'”
Five days after arriving, Delores passed away. “Grieving right now happens in a space of solitude and silence,” Hubbard wrote in a Facebook post. “Sure, there are texts and phone calls, emails and snail mail, but no embraces, no questionable casseroles delivered by neighbors, no gathering of family and friends to share stories and memories.”
Amid the grief is relief that Delores had what she wanted: a death without medical interventions. “I’m pinching myself that we made that happen,” Hubbard said. “And I’m so glad we brought her home.”
Patricia Scott’s story is unfinished. The 101-year-old was living in a retirement community in Castro Valley, Calif., before her son, Bart Scott, brought her to his house in Santa Rosa, moving her into a spacious in-law apartment.
Asked how she felt about the change, Patricia Scott said, “I’ve never been particularly thrilled with the idea of homogenized residency with a bunch of old farts, of whom I am one.”
Yet, she longs for her two-bedroom apartment: “It’s just that everything is there. I know where crap is. I miss my regular life.”
Bart Scott has four siblings, and they agreed that it was untenable to leave his mother alone during the coronavirus scare. “She is the matriarch of this family,” he said. “There are a lot of people who put a lot of store in her well-being.”
As for potential health threats, Patricia Scott is characteristically sardonic. “I was born in 1918, in the middle of the influenza epidemic,” she said, “and I think there’s a delicious irony that I could very well exit in this one.”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-mom-home-pandemic.html
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