Month: September 2020

Wearing a face mask during the COVID-19 pandemic could be a more important part of the arsenal against the virus than previously thought.An article in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests that universal face mask wearing “might help reduce the severity of disease and ensure that a greater proportion of new infections are asymptomatic.”If that premise is correct, the article suggested, face mask wearing could become a form of inoculation “that would generate immunity and thereby slow the spread of the virus” during the global wait for the development of a vaccine.The journal cited two recent outbreaks of COVID-19 in U.S. food-processing plants where workers were required to wear masks every day.“The proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms,” the medical journal said.The article also said “case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.”Dr. Monica Gandhi, one of the authors of the article, who is an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco, told the British newspaper The Telegraph, “It is true that the proportion of asymptomatic infection being increased by masking might increase the proportion of the population who achieve at least short-term immunity to the virus while we await a vaccine.”She cautioned, however, that more studies about the efficacy of mask wearing are needed.         …

Coronavirus infections in the Dakotas are growing faster than anywhere else in the nation, fueling impassioned debates over masks and personal freedom after months in which the two states avoided the worst of the pandemic.The argument over masks raged this week in Brookings, South Dakota, as the city council considered requiring face coverings in businesses. The city was forced to move its meeting to a local arena to accommodate intense interest, with many citizens speaking against it, before the mask requirement ultimately passed.Amid the brute force of the pandemic, health experts warn that the infections must be contained before care systems are overwhelmed. North Dakota and South Dakota lead the country in new cases per capita over the last two weeks, ranking first and second respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers.South Dakota has also posted some of the country’s highest positivity rates for COVID-19 tests in the last week — more than 17% — an indication that there are more infections than tests are catching.Infections have been spurred by schools and universities reopening and mass gatherings like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which drew hundreds of thousands of people from across the country.”It is not a surprise that South Dakota has one of the highest [COVID-19] reproduction rates in the country,” Brookings City Council member Nick Wendell said as he commented on the many people who forgo masks in public.The Republican governors of both states have eschewed mask requirements.FILE – Residents cheer Smithfield meat plant workers as they begin their …

The World Health Organization is raising the prospect that the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Equateur province could spread across borders.The latest figures put the number of cases in the province at 113, including 48 deaths. The disease has spread into 12 of the province’s 17 health zones.Bomongo, the latest area affected by Ebola, is located between the Ubangi and Congo rivers.  It is the second health zone to be affected that borders the Republic of the Congo.Equateur province, DRCThe World Health Organization warned that this increases chances that the outbreak could spread into another country.  WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told VOA the risk was heightened because Mbandaka, the capital of Equateur province, also is affected by the outbreak.“The population is also very highly mobile,” Chaib said. “Mbandaka, for example, is a strategic hub on the Congo River, and there is the fear and stigma surrounding the disease. … As it is a trading hub, WHO is helping also to screen travelers.”Chaib said the risk of the disease spreading from Mbandaka to DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, along the busy river route was of concern.“This makes cross-border collaboration between the DRC and Congo more important than ever and will require coordination on disease surveillance and efforts to screen travelers,” she said.Travelers screenedTo prevent the outbreak from spreading further, the WHO said it had screened nearly 1 million travelers for Ebola at 46 strategic points of control. It said those efforts had identified 72 suspected cases of Ebola, …

Cameroon says it urgently needs more than 2,000 pints of blood to save the lives of about 300 people, including hemodialysis patients, in the central African state’s troubled English-speaking town of Bamenda.Health workers say the fear of COVID-19, coupled with increasing attacks by separatist fighters, has scared away most blood donors. People wounded in the separatist crisis and dialysis patients are being rushed to hospitals in French-speaking towns.      Ngum Sirri, 55, was being rushed to the General Hospital in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, in the hospital’s ambulance. The hemodialysis patient was brought in from the English-speaking town of Bamenda by her family members. She says she is in search of blood to save her life.      “When you give blood you save lives, so we are pleading with the population to help us donate blood in the general hospital. There are vulnerable people in the hospital who need blood, like those with dialysis, those with sickle cells. We have blood shortage in the hospital,” she said.      Sirri is one of the 30 patients from the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda who have received emergency assistance at the General Hospital within the past six days.      Fidelis Ako, head of the blood transfusion unit of the Regional Hospital in Bamenda, confirmed that patients are leaving for French-speaking towns. He said blood banks are becoming empty in English-speaking towns. He said the separatist conflict led many blood donors to escape to safer localities and blood scarcity has …

The number of daily U.S. deaths from the coronavirus is declining again after peaking in early August, but scientists warn that a new bout with the disease this fall could claim more lives.The arrival of cooler weather and the likelihood of more indoor gatherings will add to the importance of everyday safety precautions, experts say.”We have to change the way we live until we have a vaccine,” said Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. In other words: Wear a mask. Stay home. Wash your hands.The U.S. has seen two distinct peaks in daily deaths. The nation’s summertime surge crested at about half the size of the first deadly wave in April.Deaths first peaked on April 24 at an average of 2,240 each day as the disease romped through the dense cities of the Northeast. Then, over the summer, outbreaks in Texas, California and Florida drove daily deaths to a second peak of 1,138 on Aug. 1.Los Angeles Unified School District students stand in a hallway socially distance during a lunch break at Boys & Girls Club of Hollywood in Los Angeles, Aug. 26, 2020.Some states — Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Nevada and California — suffered more deaths during the summer wave than during their first milder run-in with the virus in the spring. Others — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Colorado — definitely saw two spikes in infections but suffered fewer deaths the second time around.Now about 700 Americans are dying of the virus …

Cases of COVID-19 are “increasingly rapidly among young adults in the U.S.,” according to a research letter from Harvard, published at the online site of the JAMA medical journal.The study included 3,222 young adults between the ages of 18 and 34.The investigation found that the young adults “experienced substantial rates of adverse outcomes: 21% required intensive care, 10% required mechanical ventilation, and 2.7% died.”Patients with morbid obesity, hypertension, and diabetes were at “greater risks of adverse events.” The young adults with more than one of the conditions, the researchers found, “faced risks comparable with those observed in middle-aged adults without them.” Black and Hispanic patients made up more than half of the patients who required hospitalization.A separate Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report says an investigation of symptomatic outpatients from 11 U.S. health facilities found that people who tested positive for COVID-19 were twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant than those who tested negative.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced this week his government will launch an ambitious program to test at least half a million people daily for COVID-19, with the results back within minutes.  Johnson said he hoped the “moonshot” program — a reference to the 1960s-era American manned lunar landing program — will be in place before the end of the year, and would return Britain to some sort of normality and grant more freedom to those who test negative for the coronavirus.Johnson coupled the announcement of the mass testing initiative with a …

This September 11 is different. Every year, Americans have remembered the largest terrorist attack on American soil by coming together – to read names, to pray, to hold hands.  But this year, one of the most trusted remedies for grief – togetherness – is not available because of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. In New York City, even the twin columns of light that traditionally shine into the Manhattan sky on the anniversary will not appear this year. A spokesman for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum told the New York Times that the decision was made in order to avoid the health risks of a crew of nearly 40 people working closely together to install the lights. One could argue that the pandemic, like 9/11, has changed everything. FILE – Spectators look across the Hudson River from Jersey City, N.J., at the Sept. 11 tribute lights in New York City on the 18th anniversary of the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center, Sept. 11, 2019.Seven months into social distancing and stay-at-home orders, long after many Americans expected things to have returned to normal, the stress of the pandemic has taken its toll. A study published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the prevalence of depression in April was three times higher nationwide than it had been before the start of social distancing. The researchers conducting the survey, including lead author Catherine Ettman, noted that by mid-April, 42 U.S. states, accounting for …