Month: April 2020

The World Health Organization warns a severe global shortage of nurses is putting the lives of millions of people at risk and is particularly worrisome at a time when the world is doing battle with the COVID-19 pandemic.   To mark World Health Day, the first ever State of the World’s Nursing Report, produced jointly by WHO and the International Council of Nurses, is being launched. Data from 191 countries show the critical work performed by nurses is frequently undervalued.  Instead of celebrating their skills and compassion, the survey finds nurses too often are abused, subject to discrimination, and work long hours under stressful conditions for low pay.Nurses account for more than half of all the world’s health workers and are the backbone of any health system.  The report reveals there are just under 28 million nurses worldwide, which leaves a global shortfall of nearly six million nurses.The greatest gaps are found in countries in Africa, South East Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean region and some parts of Latin America.  CEO of the International Council of Nurses and Co-Chair of the report, Howard Catton, says nursing shortages put many lives at risk, especially in light of COVID-19.“We know that the evidence shows that infection rates, medication errors, identifying a deteriorating patient, mortality rates are all higher where there are too few nurses,” said Catton. “Nursing numbers is a patient safety issue.  But it also matters because shortages exhaust our current nursing workforce.  High levels of stress, burnout, high turnover rates as well.”  Provident Hospital …

Tuesday is World Health Day, which is being commemorated as the world faces one of the biggest international health threats of the past century. The head of the World Health Organization, director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told a virtual news conference Monday in Geneva that the organization is paying tribute to the contribution of health care workers who have been at the forefront of treating patients with the coronavirus. He said Worth Health Day, which is celebrated each year on the World Health Organization’s founding day, is usually one of the group’s biggest days of the year, but this year the day is being overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic. The 2020 Worth Health Day was “supposed to be the main event in our assembly in May. Unfortunately, we are in this situation,” Tedros said. He said the organization would still release a planned report on Tuesday focusing on the state of nursing around the world, saying the document “highlights gaps and makes recommendations for all countries.” “One of the lessons I hope the world learns from COVID-19 is that we must invest in health workers – not only to protect lives, but also to protect livelihoods,” Tedros said. The WHO director said that while the focus of the report is on nurses, “we will celebrate all health workers – midwives, pharmacists, doctors, you name it,” on World Health Day.” “The world is now seeing … the central role that health workers play,” he said. In previous years, groups around the world have held health and fitness events to commemorate …

People around the world, trapped in their homes amid a health crisis, have something to look forward to this week when the full moon appears as a supermoon for the second of three times this year and in its most spectacular form.  A phenomenon known as the Super Pink Moon will make an appearance over a couple of nights this week. It will be the biggest and brightest on Tuesday, but its appearance on Monday and Wednesday will also be worth viewing. Housebound people are more likely than usual to want to step out into their yards or poke their heads out of their windows to watch this so-called supermoon and develop a new appreciation for the natural world or renew an old one. A full moon appears approximately once a month. When the moon gets closest to the Earth in its orbit, it appears bigger and brighter than usual and is called a supermoon. A supermoon can look up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than a regular monthly full moon.  Most years have 12 full moons, but this year will have 13, three of them supermoons. The April supermoon follows the one of March 9 and precedes the one coming on May 7. In the United States, the April supermoon is also known as the Pink Supermoon, a name given it by Native Americans because it comes out around the time the moss pink wildflower is in bloom. April’s full moon promises to be the most spectacular full moon of this year because it will be closest to the Earth while in its “full” phase. The distance between the two on April 7 will be 356,906 kilometers.   The timing for the April supermoon varies in different parts of the world. On the U.S. West Coast, this year’s Super Pink Moon appears about 7:30 p.m. on April 7, and in Sydney, Australia, at 12:30 p.m. on April 8. But the best time to watch it anywhere is after sunset, when the sky darkens and the moon rises over the eastern horizon.  Experts say there is no need to look for its peak at 100% illumination because the moon is then so white and bright that you cannot look at it for more than a few seconds. Those who do not have an east-facing view can wait for …

The debate over the usefulness of an antimalarial drug to treat U.S. coronavirus victims is pitting President Donald Trump against the country’s top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. With the U.S. coronavirus death toll increasing by hundreds a day, Trump at daily news briefings regularly touts the use of hydroxychloroquine, calling it a potential “game-changer” to save lives.  President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, April 5, 2020, in Washington.”What do you have to lose? Take it,” the president said in a White House briefing over the weekend. “I really think they should take it. But it’s their choice. And it’s their doctor’s choice or the doctors in the hospital. But hydroxychloroquine — try it if you’d like.” Fauci, often standing a step or two away from the U.S. leader in the White House briefing room, says data showing possible hints of success from use of the drug in treating coronavirus patients is “at best suggestive” and not based on scientific studies. He is the longtime director of the country’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Trump on Sunday seemed weary of Fauci publicly stating yet again that scientific evidence of the drug’s success inm treating coronavirus patients is lacking. When a reporter asked Fauci about medical evidence supporting use of the drug, Trump cut him off from answering, telling the reporter,“ Do you know how many times he’s answered that question? Maybe 15.” A contentious debate over the use of the drug erupted at a coronavirus task …

The debate over using an anti-malaria drug that has not yet officially been approved for fighting COVID-19 has erupted. Trump administration adviser Peter Navarro on Monday emphatically promoted using the drug even though scientists say more testing is needed before it’s clear it’s safe and effective against the virus. Navarro is a trade adviser who is on the White House coronavirus task force. He acknowledged on CNN that he had a heated debate over the drug with top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci during a weekend meeting in the Situation Room. Fauci says the current studies provide only anecdotal findings that the drug works. Navarro says he responded: “I would have two words for you ‘second opinion.” The drug hydroxychloroquine is officially approved for treating malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, but not COVID-19. Small, preliminary studies have suggested it might help prevent coronavirus from entering cells and possibly help patients clear the virus sooner. Doctors can already prescribe the malaria drug to patients with COVID-19, a practice known as off-label prescribing. But Fauci says more testing is needed before it’s clear that the drug works against the coronavirus. Navarro told “Fox & Friends” that doctors in New York hospitals are already giving out the drug to COVID-19 patients and that health care workers are taking it in hopes it will protect them from being infected. He says the confrontation in the Situation Room was over whether the administration should take 29 million doses of the drug in FEMA warehouses …

 The new coronavirus made Dr. Jag Singh a patient at his own hospital.His alarm grew as he saw an X-ray of his pneumonia-choked lungs and colleagues asked his wishes about life support while wheeling him into Massachusetts General’s intensive care unit.An X-ray room is seen at a Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet). In some hospitals, chest X-ray has taken center stage as a frontline diagnostic test for COVID-19 patients.When they offered him a chance to help test remdesivir, an experimental drug that’s shown promise against some other coronaviruses, “it did not even cross my mind once to say ‘no,’” said Singh, a heart specialist.Coronavirus patients around the world have been rushing to join remdesivir studies that opened in hospitals in the last few weeks.Interest has been so great that the U.S. National Institutes of Health is expanding its study, which has nearly reached its initial goal of 440 patients. The drug’s maker, California-based Gilead Sciences, is quickly ramping up its own studies, too.“I would enroll my family in a heartbeat” if the need arose, said Dr. Libby Hohmann, who placed Singh and nearly 30 others in the NIH one at Mass General. To have no approved medicines for COVID-19 now is “kind of terrifying,” she said.For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, which can include fever and cough but sometimes pneumonia requiring hospitalization. The risk of death is greater for older adults and people with other health problems.Remdesivir is given through an IV. It’s …

Americans in overwhelming numbers are actively avoiding others as much as possible and taking additional steps to protect themselves from the coronavirus, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that shows how concerns about infection have grown sharply in the past six weeks.   The survey finds Americans are increasingly isolating, washing their hands and avoiding touching their face. Large portions of the country are confronting lay-offs and pay cuts and are adjusting to kids forced home from school and day care amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has upended American life and the nation’s economy.   Half of Americans now say they are extremely or very worried that they or a family member will be infected by the virus. That compares with 31% who said the same in mid-March and 22% who said so in February. Another 34% are somewhat worried, while just 16% say they are not worried.   The spike in concern comes as the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, has grown to about 1.3 million worldwide and about 340,000 in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University. Containment efforts have canceled in-person classes for most of the country’s students, thrown more than 10 million people out of work and put 90% of the population under stay-at-home orders.   Confronted by the seriousness of the pandemic, Americans are more likely than they were in mid-March to report taking protective steps. Today, 94% of Americans say …

In the middle of the deadly, worldwide coronavirus pandemic, Michael Wells, a 34-year old neuroscientist, wanted to be useful …

The world crossed the one-million mark of confirmed COVID-19 cases this past week. With untold millions more possible in the months to come, scientists are committed to making a vaccine.There’s a lot about COVID-19 that scientists still don’t know. They don’t know entirely how it is spread. And without proven treatments or vaccines, good hygiene and staying away from other people are the only known methods of prevention.Dr. Peter Hotez at Baylor College of Medicine started working on a coronavirus vaccine in 2003, during the outbreak of SARS, but after that, research funds dried up.Hotez expects more coronaviruses to develop and spread. Some may be more benign that COVID-19, some far deadlier.”Pandemics for coronaviruses have become a new normal. That we saw with SARS in 2003. We saw it in MERS s in 2012, and now this one. So we can expect a new major coronavirus every decade.”A pharmacist gives Jennifer Haller, left, the first shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine for COVID-19 at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, Washington, March 16, 2020.Which is all the more reason to develop a vaccine, even after the COVID-19 infections taper off and life gets back to normal.  “We’re developing a vaccine for global health purposes. We’re very concerned what happens when this virus moves into the crowded urban areas slums of Mumbai and Kolkata, and then Delhi, how do you practice social distancing, you basically can’t so that’s why a vaccine is …

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.” That’s how the 34-year-old neuroscientist at the Broad Institute and Harvard University launched a national effort to marshal scientists to volunteer in the fight against the virus. Less than 10 days later, more than 7,000 scientists had joined Wells’ database. Organizations and governmental departments in a dozen states, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have tapped into the information. Wells is also working with EndCoronavirus.org, a project of the research-focused New England Complex Systems Institute, to help maximize the usefulness of the volunteer scientist cavalry he has assembled. As health care workers risk their own lives to treat patients and some scientists work toward a vaccine, Wells’ database offers a way forward for other science professionals who want to be of use. Scientists are asked to match their specific training with potential needs in the battle against the disease, including experience with RNA viruses such as the coronavirus. Wells, an Ohio native, has lived for nearly a decade in the research hotbed of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He created the database, he explained, in part to help ensure that in places without access to …

“Meetings are huge for me,” says Mike S., a 52-year-old web content specialist who has been sober since 2012.When his community began practicing social distancing, some of his usual meetings began offering the option of attending online. Mike went in person as long as he could, but things already felt different.With some regulars attending online through a video conferencing service called Zoom, the number of people physically attending “dropped on average by about half,” he said, “which was disconcerting and felt ominous.”Connection with one another is a key part of the way many people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction stay clean and sober, which makes the stay-at-home orders affecting many urban centers particularly challenging.Larry C., a real estate agent, relapsed last year after more than a dozen years sober. He is participating in an outpatient treatment program that, due to social distancing restrictions, occurs entirely online through Zoom.“I initially did worry about 12-step meetings and [treatment] meetings via Zoom, but the video platform has turned out to be great,” he says. Like many of his peers in recovery, he supplements his online meetings with phone calls to other people in recovery, study of recovery literature, and by trying to maintain healthy eating, sleeping and exercise habits.Pedestrians pass Brooklyn Hospital Center on April 4, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York.Zoom, a cloud-based video conferencing service whose popularity has shot up 67 percent since the beginning of the year, has kept many meetings in the Washington, D.C., area …

With the coronavirus pandemic nowhere near its end, for many patients the risk of infection has made seeking treatment in hospitals potentially dangerous. This has led to telemedicine becoming more and more routine. Andrei Dziarkach has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. …

Social distancing and isolation can be hard, as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently pointed out during a daily briefing on the status of COVID-19 in his state. “Don’t underestimate the personal trauma, and don’t underestimate the pain of isolation. It is real,” Cuomo said. “This is not the human condition — not to be comforted, not to be close, to be afraid and you can’t hug someone. … This is all unnatural and disorienting.”  Experts already know that years of loneliness or feelings of isolation can lead to anxiety, depression and dementia in adults. A weakened immune system response, higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease and a shorter life span can also result. A Pittsburgh Public Works employee removes a basketball rim from a city court in an effort to encourage social distancing, March 30, 2020.Children who have fewer friends or are bullied or isolated at school tend to have higher rates of anxiety, depression and some developmental delays. But when it comes to a global pandemic like COVID-19, there is no documentation to which medical experts can refer.  “The studies that we have are more about forced isolation and no support,” said Elena Mikalsen, chief of the Psychology Section at Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. “The situation we’re in now, there’s a lot of social support … and social support is one of the big predictors of good health and mental health outcomes.” She adds that it is helpful that the entire world is basically in the same situation, a commonality that is leading to the rapid development of coping strategies from multiple sources, including friends, schools and businesses.  Playground equipment is wrapped in crime scene tape to prevent its use as part of …

Sidewalk vendors wearing face masks and gloves sold pork, tomatoes, carrots and other vegetables to shoppers Friday in the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic began, as workers prepared for a national memorial this weekend for health workers and others who died in the outbreak.  Authorities are easing controls that kept Wuhan’s 11 million people at home for two months, but many shops are still closed. Shoppers and sellers in the Minyi neighborhood on the city’s southwest side had to do their business over high yellow barriers, as access to the community is still controlled.  “I don’t feel safe going to a supermarket,” said Zhan Zhongwu, who wore two layers of masks and was buying pork for his wife and grandchild. “There are too many people,” he said. “Many infections happened in the supermarket.” Residents have been relying on online groceries and government-organized food deliveries after most access to the city was suspended Jan. 23 and restaurants, shops and other businesses shut down. Wuhan and the rest of China are preparing for a nationwide three minutes of silence on Saturday in honor of the 3,322 people who officially died of the virus, including doctors, nurses and other health workers who have been declared martyrs.They include Li Wenliang, an eye doctor in Wuhan who was reprimanded in December for warning about the virus and later died of the disease. He became a symbol of public anger at the ruling Communist Party for suppressing information about the coronavirus, possibly worsening its spread, …