On 2020-06-12 20:05:26, user Bob wrote:

public interest has followed ecological studies

I think they meant epidemiological

On 2020-06-13 08:10:15, user KAMAL KUMAR MALUKANI wrote:

Hi,<br /> There is an issue in figure S3. All text are inverted, Please update.<br /> Thanks

On 2020-06-13 21:16:27, user John Liang wrote:

I think the theory of urns estimate is highly inaccurate for a lot of reasons, it is highly unscientific and a lot of guess work. I will list a few points here

1. Cremation service requirement in Wuhan is always around 28-2900 every six months this is before the addition of CVOID related death and can be found .

2. You did your guest work about urns number base on urns order by '1' cremation service company and there were no observation at other 7 cremation service companies. There is no confirmation of the other 7 actually order that many urns, how frequent the urns were ordered during the period? Was the urns ordered was a preparation for the future 6 months or 3 months?

3. Each cremation service companies have different service capability it is unscientific to assume all 8 would be order the same number of urns.

4.The time take for a complete cremation service is around 3-4 hours not 2 hours.

On 2020-06-14 15:12:53, user Francesco Zagami wrote:

In mar 22, 2020, I posted on Researchgate a correlation between ABO blood group and SARS-CoV#1/2 susceptibility, see you https://www.researchgate.ne...

On 2020-04-03 14:51:49, user Jack Debrueil wrote:

What is the biological plausibility of this association. The ABO-type is related to red blood cells. IT is important to know associaitons with leukocytes and HLA-types. Before concluding anything these reulst must be stratified by HLA-types.

On 2020-03-23 16:59:18, user Rintaro N. wrote:

?“The distribution of ABO blood groups in blood donors... (ref.7)” might not be a good control. It can be different from “true” distribution.?

?cf.?<br /> ?Blood Type and Blood Donation Behaviors: An Empirical Test of Pure Altruism Theory<br /> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3171957

On 2020-04-02 20:21:31, user drumfucius wrote:

I am an O positive nonsecretor. Wondering if there is any info regarding susceptibility in regards to secreter status.

On 2020-03-19 18:32:34, user Travis Pendell wrote:

Im far from a dr, but this doesnt mean that those with type o are less likely to get/carry it, but rather tgey are less likely to need blood tranfusions? This is based on how much blood was used? Type o just doesnt get it as bad... as often?... based on this right?

On 2020-03-22 14:14:29, user Rachelle Omenson wrote:

I'm interested to know how this mirrors the actual population in China at the time of testing? If the percentages of blood types getting the virus or not mirrors the abundance in the population this is bad data.

On 2020-04-07 09:11:10, user Pavel Valerjevich Voronov wrote:

Could anybody send me a link to a study that confirms widely supported claim that elderly people or ones with pre-existing health conditions more at risk? How come that it was widely accepted (is it also accepted by WHO?) without any links even to pre prints (maybe I missing this)? When in Iran 100 year old recover and those w/o pre-conditions in USA suddenly die? This study look like saying otherwise (at least it was so in v1). Please give me a link.

On 2020-04-07 17:56:44, user Pavel Valerjevich Voronov wrote:

https://academic.oup.com/gl... - this article from 2008 year confirms assumptions in regard to blood type, but with SARS-Cov. Please evaluate it too.

On 2020-04-11 02:02:32, user SFHarry wrote:

It is important to note that the words "higher" and "lower" risk were used. If you look at the numbers it doesn't show the risk being that much higher (or lower). People should not be making decisions regarding how much risk they should allow themselves when interacting with the public without understanding these facts..

On 2020-06-14 18:28:21, user Dana Mulvany wrote:

The featured snorkel mask looks like it could also be used to provide a view of the wearer’s mouth for speechreading purposes. That can be extremely important for the high numbers of professionals and patients with significant hearing loss, who can be enormously incapacitated by not being able to understand most people due to not being able to lipread them.

Could attention be paid to how to minimize fogging?

On 2020-06-15 10:19:40, user Rosemary TATE wrote:

An interesting article, but so many different models and variables for only 50 observations. <br /> Looks suspiciously like overfitting, but I would be glad to be convinced otherwise.

On 2020-06-15 15:45:17, user Schwebe Pan wrote:

Some previous studies have suggested that smoking might reduce the risk of infection with Covid-19, but I am unaware of studies claiming that smoking might reduce the severity of the disease. On the contrary, the current state of the art is that smoking is a risk factor for more severe outcomes. Why, then, is this study trying to check a claim for which there is no evidence but not the actual question of interest?

On 2020-06-16 05:17:57, user Sukhyun Ryu wrote:

This manuscript was published, please follow the link below<br /> https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/a...

On 2020-06-20 22:42:57, user many wrote:

Within the boundary of assumptions, the paper is mathematically accurate. I have a list of technical questions, which if addressed could make the paper noteworthy. See here: https://publons.com/publon/...

On 2020-05-19 22:56:46, user Jared Roach wrote:

In response to some of the tweets: <br /> This report out of Snohomish County, WA suggests a case in December 2019. https://www.seattletimes.co...

On 2020-05-20 00:57:13, user David Philpott wrote:

For the discussion: If you wish to make a comparison with influenza, please give a citation for this "a (0.1%, 0.2% in a bad year)". I have not found a reference for fatality risk for influenza using serologies that is in the 0.1-0.2% range. Typically, those numbers are for doicmented symptomatic cases which is not what is being addressed in this manuscript. Rather, the available evidence is much lower for influenza, perhaps in the range of 0.01%. See here for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...

On 2020-05-20 17:21:18, user Christopher Leffler wrote:

Update: now 14 people have died on Diamond Princess. Updated mortality from Diamond Princess as well as coronavirus mortality for New York MTA (transit) workers are in this paper:<br /> https://www.medrxiv.org/con...

On 2020-05-20 18:56:53, user Sander Greenland wrote:

Here are two papers that deal with the general causality theory of collider bias and related phenomena:<br /> Greenland S, Pearl J, Robins JM. Causal diagrams for epidemiologic research. Epidemiology 1999;10:37–48.<br /> Greenland S. Quantifying biases in causal models: classical confounding versus collider-stratification bias. Epidemiology 2003;14: 300-306. <br /> See also Ch. 12 of Rothman Greenland Lash, Modern Epidemiology 3rd ed. 2008.

On 2020-05-21 13:02:18, user Fred Douthwaite wrote:

A vaccine will not protect us from each successive mutated or novel virus. Correcting the underlying zinc deficiency that is the common denominator in the Covid-19 comorbidities is the answer.

The federal government should be stockpiling supplemental zinc for distribution to vulnerable groups.

Zinc deficiency is estimated to contribute to over 800,000 deaths per year - primarily in third world countries. This time, zinc deficiency has impacted the whole world. Correcting this problem is long overdue.

On 2020-05-21 19:46:25, user TS Francis wrote:

There are a lot of problems with this study making me embarrassed to have graduated from Columbia. The report repeats the obvious, that forced social distancing reduces the infection rate, and the report does this with impressive mathematical models but in total the research is misleading in a number of areas.<br /> The report states "a substantial number of cases and deaths could have been averted". This may be true in the measurement period, likely the cases and deaths occur after the measured period. In other words, you prove what we all know that the "control measures" slow down the virus but don't stop it. Even the data shows "control measures" don't stop the cases and deaths.<br /> Assumptions - You are only looking at a snapshot in time. Of course, social distancing slows the virus. Absent a magic cure or herd immunity, the virus will pick back up again after "control measures" are removed. There is an implied assumption that a person saved by "control measures" won't die from the virus soon after your measurement period.<br /> You are assuming Death is a good measure for public policy. Everyone will die, it is a given. Loss of life is what should be measured and this can be estimated based on Covid morbidity by age and life expectancy tables. At the same time you should estimate how much life was taken by your "control measures". Using data from Sweden and my state, I have done this and the loss of years of life from "control measures" far exceeds the loss of years of life saved. <br /> Obviously the objective of the research is to promote a certain public policy to save lives. But it does the analysis without looking at the costs which can be weighed using years of life. Overall, very impressive modeling but not useful except for promoting a biased agenda.

On 2020-05-22 18:43:01, user Madhurjya P Bora wrote:

This paper has lifted many portions of texts in several places from the paper https://hal.archives-ouvert... by Eber Dantas, Michel Tosin, Americo Cunha Jr, especially in the Trust-Region-Reflective section.

On 2020-11-18 22:09:57, user Owen Parry wrote:

10 days in hospital without the intervention.

Is this a fair trial?

On 2020-04-04 01:25:42, user GLB wrote:

The data from Wuhan are used to characterize the influence of social distancing. From the paper "To be specific, the generalizable information from Wuhan was the impact that social distancing had on maximum death rate and time to reach the inflection point.". Many sources have raised doubts about the veracity of the Wuhan data. Does this render the characterization of the efficacy of social distancing methods in the model suspect? Can the model be tested by using a different location (say, Italy) as the training data set to see how the analysis changes?

On 2020-04-02 04:55:23, user Sola Grantham wrote:

I would like to see an explanation of why states with lower current rates of growth are projected to have later peaks. This makes sense to me only in the case of herd immunity being the cause of the peak. Then the area under the graph would remain the same. Thus, to reach the critical percentage of population with immunity, a slower rate of infection would lead to a later peak. But if the cause of the peak is the assumed perfect adherence to social distancing, then wouldn't the date of the peak be more related to the date of practical enactment of the social distancing measures?

On 2020-04-02 16:55:14, user VWFeature wrote:

What happens if instead of "assuming full social distancing through May 2020" we see what's actually happening? (Deaths go way up.)<br /> What's the assumption of death rates when hospitals and ICUs exceed capacity?

When no beds are available, a reasonable assumption would be that 80% of people needing hospital, and 100% of those needing ICU would die.

This study keeps getting cited as "best possible outcome." It's intellectually dishonest to present a "best possible" without a "most likely" and "worst case" projection.

This study is already inducing a false sense of security. This is the BEST POSSIBLE outcome. The most likely is far worse.

On 2020-04-02 22:52:25, user Qi Ying wrote:

The error function used in the study can be derived from the assumption that the daily death follows a normal distribution. Our experience in China shows that it is not the case. The tail in the daily death rate distribution is much longer. The predicted deaths are likely underestimated. Also, the error function fitting leads to significant under-predictions when the inflection point in the death rate has not arrived, which is likely the case for many US states. Thus, I believe these estimations presented in the paper as well as on their website are going to be significantly biased low. The actual situation could be much much worse.

On 2020-04-19 00:43:04, user JK wrote:

Model is surely under estimating cumulative deaths by Aug 4th - trajectory suggests 80k - 90k...believe this was one of the earlier IHME projections

On 2020-04-04 18:33:11, user Jhansi Dan wrote:

Do anyone have data from last saturday/sunday for Virginia state. I remember seeing the peak date as April 28th and it shows May 20 now. I deduce flattening of curve. Please share the graphs. I wish they have archives for past data to compare.<br /> Thank You

On 2020-04-08 15:59:31, user Vee_Kay wrote:

Why have they dropped individual state numbers in the IHME projections? Instead they go to other countries that is of little interest to US....

On 2020-04-04 14:57:41, user Alexandros Heraclides wrote:

Maybe better to refer to "differing Relative Risks for dying", rather than "differing mortality impacts"? The latter points to absolute risk difference, while you are referring to relative risks. Great paper though!

On 2020-04-06 16:47:11, user smallbusinessrocks wrote:

A MORE REASONABLE DEATH RATE FOR THE C-19 FLU 4/6/2020

Food for thought.

As a young actuaries, many years ago a group of us tried to identify causes of death from older people dying with several SUD (serious underlying disease). We gave up, cannot clearly identify cause. Most doctors certifying cause of death do not know what caused it, if from SUD. Most people age 65 and over have two or more SUD. Seven thousand people with SUD die each day in the United States.

People have touted various rate of death from the C-19 flu in America, starting with 4.5% and reducing quickly to current 1.29%. There will be many more deaths from the current infected.

These death rates are grossly overstated – every pandemic, it is the same thing – death rates are wildly overstated at the beginning. A calculation, using a better basis, is 0.73% -<br /> more than the ordinary flu, but not 1.3% or 4.5%

Truer denominator: in all but Iceland and Pacific Princess, we need to multiply the total cases by four. Why? Because we are only testing a segment of symptomatic cases (coughing, etc), but the asymptomatic cases are 80% of the total. Except for Iceland - they tested a large group drawn from the general population, not just the ones showing<br /> symptoms, found 75% asymptomatic (multiply denominator by factor of four). The<br /> Pacific Princess tested all 2500 on boat – the Pacific Princess 1% death rate<br /> is highly affected by median age of cruise passengers, in general, of 60 to 69<br /> years. Diamond Princess has asymptomatic 83% - multiply by five

Truer numerator, is much less than the reported deaths, we would estimate about 0.2 of the 81% of deaths who have "SUD" - serious underlying disease; and 1.0 for all others. We estimate a weighted multiplier as (.2 deaths x 1.0 + .8 deaths x 0.2 = .36 of deaths<br /> reported). Why? Because many die from pneumonia in the USA each year, typically as the final stage of some other SUD (per NCHS). Doctors cannot prove a death from someone having the C-19 flu is CAUSED BY the C-19 flu, rather than the person with C-19 flu died WITH the C-19 flu. Needs research, but impossible to split causes. Reported deaths of<br /> person WITH C-19 flu now are 100% ascribed to C-19 flu currently.

In USA, a truer estimate of the<br /> actual death rate is therefore, at April 5, 0.73%:

Numerator: 8173 deaths x .36 = 2942<br /> deaths FROM C-19 flu – multiply this times 3 for future deaths from this<br /> cohort equals 8826 - divided by - Denominator:<br /> 301147 cases x 4 = 1204558 to include asymptomatic – yep, the current number of<br /> cases is four times the reported numbers. This is very good news, because it<br /> reduces the mortality rate.

Twelve months from now, we can look<br /> at the total deaths in the USA, and compare that with the 2.8 million deaths<br /> for 2018. 2.6 million of 2018 deaths were from about seven serious<br /> underlying diseases, many people having three or more suds.

Equals 0.73% truer death rate...more<br /> than 0.12% from ordinary flu, but well below 1.29%

The C-19 flu is just a flu. <br /> The C-19 flu is just a flu <br /> The C-19 flu is just a flu

Pete A

On 2020-04-07 14:19:14, user Sudin Bhattacharya wrote:

When will the data be available in GEO?

On 2020-04-07 23:34:47, user Snap wrote:

We are also publishing similar results for China, Italy and USA<br /> https://www.medrxiv.org/con...

On 2020-04-08 17:16:11, user buongustaio1964 wrote:

This study appears to fail control for scores of additional obvious, potential confounds. These include but are not limited to population density, dwelling density, household sizes, educational level, employment profiles...I could go on. The conclusion could reasonably be a call for more research. But that the "study results underscore the importance of continuing to enforce existing air pollution regulations to protect human health both during and after the COVID-19 crisis" is neither convincing nor warranted.

On 2020-04-08 13:20:06, user Devi Dayal wrote:

Through this publication, we just added some more data to the recently published articles on a protective role of BCG vaccination against COVID-19, reassuring for countries with limited resources to fight the pandemic on their own.

On 2020-04-11 08:17:28, user Xavier de Roquemaurel wrote:

Great work. Thanks.<br /> Can i suggest to please run a similar study concept, yet this time identifying countries according to the different BCG strains:<br /> BCG Japan (Tokyo)<br /> BCG Brazil / Moreau<br /> BCG Denmark<br /> ...<br /> This is also an hypothesis to test.<br /> Thanks<br /> Xavier

On 2020-04-09 03:16:28, user Knut M. Wittkowski wrote:

You state that "the central government of the People's Republic of China imposed a lockdown and social distancing measures in this city and surrounding areas starting on January 23 2020", without reference. On that date, travel restrictions were imposed, preventing citizens of Wuhan to leave by train (starting in the morning) or car (starting in the afternoon). Do you have primary references indicating when which social distancing measures were imposed?

On 2020-04-09 06:55:47, user Cy Husain wrote:

Helpful study on "best available" (read: not very good) evidence for #hydroxychloroquine. In short, this study:<br /> - Is too small<br /> - Has no control group<br /> - Only looks at a very specific patient pool<br /> - Does not consider side-effects<br /> - It's NOT a double blind study, so allows for researcher bias!

On 2020-04-02 00:26:45, user Rick wrote:

This must have been translated from Chinese, because some sentences make no sense, and probably have placed the wrong words in places of importance, ie. Besides, a larger proportion of patients with improved pneumonia in the <br /> HCQ treatment group (80.6%, 25 of 32) compared with the control group <br /> (54.8%, 17 of 32). Notably, all 4 patients progressed to severe illness <br /> that occurred in the control group." Flip the words, improved and pneumonia, and the whole meaning changes. Did patients "improved with pneumonia", or what?

Also, what the hell does absorption of pneumonia mean? Did they get better or worse? It's very hard to tell from this translation.

On 2020-04-07 18:16:27, user xahdum16x wrote:

This study at this time is useless to me. What is the comorbid breakdown of the patients, they only say sex and age are homogenous. What is the CI of the results, I don't care about a low pvalue. What were the "moderate adverse reactions" and how did they judge pneumonia improvement on imaging, what category since all these patients were mild to moderate where there baseline imaging similar or not. Lastly, since it does not say blinded, maybe the physicians were more apt to hold off on aggressive therapy in the "treatment" arm as opposed to the "placebo arm" due to flase security or hoping that it would help create significant results. There is a reason we blind studies to prevent bias.

On 2020-04-09 10:11:57, user Andrea Zille wrote:

Thank you for your excellent work. I have a suggestion to improve the protocol. In my opinion the 4 day "rest" of the PPE especially the masks should be implemented after the disinfection step. Leave used mask for 4 days could improve the proliferation of bacteria. Especially for the low temperature (80ºC) treatment, this could lead to a substancial bacterial load that a this temperature could improve the selection of more resistant and nasty bacteria. Fort this, I will also suggest to not use low temperature alone but eventually as a further step after UV treatment that affecting directly the DNA/RNA is much more effective in degrading virus and bacteria.

Andrea Zille, PhD<br /> 2C2T - Centre for Textile Science and Technology, University of Minho<br /> Campus de Azurém<br /> 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal<br /> Tel: +351-253510285 <br /> Fax: +351-253510293<br /> e-mail: azille@2c2t.uminho.pt

On 2020-04-14 01:27:03, user Sinai Immunol Review Project wrote:

Title: Association of BCG vaccination policy with prevalence and mortality of<br /> COVID-19

Immunology Keywords<br /> Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) Immunization, COVID-19 prevalence, COVID-19 deaths

Main findings<br /> Previously reported immunization programs using BCG vaccines have demonstrated heterologous protection against other unrelated pathogens that associated with lower mortality and morbidity risks [1]. Therefore this study investigated the possible correlation between COVID-19 death cases or prevalence with BCG vaccination. The authors used publicly available COVID-19 data from 136 countries as well as vaccination demographics from the BCG World Atlas to perform a linear regression modeling.

After correcting for life expectancy and the onset of the spread of the virus (n=40), the analyses revealed a positive effect of current BCG vaccination programs and controlling the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

The amount of variance explained by BCG vaccination was 20% for number of cases and significant for both groups of countries, the ones that used to have a BCG immunization program in the past (b = 0.6122, p = .0024) and the ones that never have it (b = 0.6511, p = .0326).

Only the group of countries that never vaccinated against BCG showed significance in deaths/cases ratio but explains only 3.39% of the observed variance.

The authors concluded that BCG immunization may provide protection against COVID-19 probably due to the infection spread reduction. BCG immunization doesn’t have a significant impact in the mortality induced by COVID-19.

Limitations:<br /> As acknowledged by the authors of this study, there are large number of unexplained potential confounding variables such as BCG immunization coverage, and onset of virus spread in different countries. <br /> The authors cite that BCG immunization coverage could be variable among countries, but they didn’t explore it. Further, vaccination coverage changes at different rates over time across countries for different reasons [2]. Additionally, the authors did not consider the variable immunization coverage within countries, where unequal access to healthcare is frequently observed [3, 4]. <br /> The authors do not adequately control for time of spread in infection for each country [5].

The authors discuss the importance of validating experimentally the results observed and claim that BCG vaccination could provide non-specific protection against COVID-19. A stronger discussion of the use of BCG vaccine would have included known considerations on efficacy considering route of administration (intravenous, intradermal), vaccine strains which are known to differ in the number of viable bacteria and duration of protection.

Relevance: <br /> This study presented preliminary data on possible non-specific protection by BCG immunization on COVID-19 infection.

References

1. Aaby, P., T.R. Kollmann, and C.S. Benn, Nonspecific effects of neonatal and infant vaccination: public-health, immunological and conceptual challenges. Nat Immunol, 2014. 15(10): p. 895-9.
2. Nuffieldtrust. Vaccination coverage for children and mothers. 2020 [cited 2020; Available from: https://www.nuffieldtrust.o....
3. WHO. 10 facts on health inequities and their causes. 2017; Available from: https://www.who.int/feature....
4. Balance. Health Care Inequality in America. 2020; Available from: https://www.thebalance.com/....
5. Statista. Rate of coronavirus (COVID-19) tests performed in select countries worldwide as of April 8, 2020 (per thousand population)*. 2020; Available from: https://www.statista.com/st....

Review by Alessandra Soares Schanoski as part of a project by students, postdocs and faculty at the Immunology Institute of the Icahn school of medicine, Mount Sinai.

On 2020-04-11 12:51:33, user ybysk wrote:

In my understanding, what the authors (and many readers) want to know is whether or not BCG vaccine effectively protects individuals from infection (i.e., the effect on infection-per-exposure) and also death (i.e., the effect on death-per-infection). I have not understood how the authors justify to use the number of total cases and deaths per one million population as measures of the effectiveness of BCG. Are they supposed to be equivalent to infection-per-exposure and death-per-infection?

On 2020-04-15 14:08:11, user Barry I. Levine wrote:

Waiting to see adequate data re ARBs. Losartan shows lung protective effects in many animal studies vs. ARDS, and in at least 2 human retrospective studies vs. ARDS or COPD, and may be a useful adjunctive treatment for COVID-19

On 2020-04-13 11:38:17, user Sanjiv Vij wrote:

Thank you. My concern is that 205 patients is too small a number and 7 days is too early to be reliable. Will it be possible to get more data from the registry, and, have data that spans admission to death or discharge for as many patients as possible? With regards to how many were on ACE / ARB / Immuno-modulating drugs / Neither[none]. That will help in risk stratification in a more reliable way. Regards Sanjiv

On 2020-03-15 09:12:21, user fuyutao wrote:

Wow, this paper may be a historical one when the findings are verified. I would encourage the authors to refine grammar and stick with accepted virology terms. For example "<br /> HKU-1 and OC43 (the source of FCS sequence-PRRA) caused influenza" is an easy target. But, the content of the paper does fill in several important pieces of the SARS-CoV-2 puzzle. It took so long for this boot to drop, I am surprised social media hasn't jumped on this yet :)

On 2020-03-18 08:25:22, user Alberto wrote:

Althought It could survive for some period of time, its title (concentration) maybe is constantaly descending as a negative exponential function. That means that in a shorter period of time the efective probability of transmisión is lower. I have studied bacteriophages, but I suppose that dynamics of inhabilitation shows the same dinamics.

On 2020-03-21 19:57:31, user KnowItAll wrote:

I am struggling to understand the labeling of the individual sequences in the tree. For France there are sequences such as hCoV-19/France/IDF0372/2020 and hCoV-19/France/IDF0372-isl/2020. IDF refers to Isle De France and I assume 0372 refers to a patient or sample number, so what does the -isl refer to, are these two sequences from the same sample? Same with hCoV-19/France/IDF0386-islP1/2020 and hCoV-19/France/IDF0386-islP3/2020

On 2020-03-22 16:23:48, user Sinai Immunol Review Project wrote:

Main findings: Colonic enterocytes primarily express ACE2. Cellular pathways associated with ACE2 expression include innate immune signaling, HLA up regulation, energy metabolism and apoptotic signaling.

Analysis: This is a study of colonic biopsies taken from 17 children with and without IBD and analyzed using scRNAseq to look at ACE2 expression and identify gene families correlated with ACE2 expression. The authors find ACE2 expression to be primarily in colonocytes. It is not clear why both healthy and IBD patients were combined for the analysis. Biopsies were all of children so extrapolation to adults is limited. The majority of genes found to be negatively correlated with ACE2 expression include immunoglobulin genes (IGs). IG expression will almost certainly be low in colonocytes irrespective of ACE2 expression.

Importance: This study performs a retrospective analysis of ACE2 expression using an RNAseq dataset from intestinal biopsies of children with and without IBD. The implications for the CoV-19 epidemic are modest, but do provide support that ACE2 expression is specific to colonocytes in the intestines. The ontological pathway analysis provides some limited insights into gene expression associated with ACE2.

On 2020-03-24 23:29:04, user A Z wrote:

Nice paper! My team is going to test your constructs soon.<br /> Just one thing:<br /> Line 188/189: "amino acid 1-14, MFIF….TSGS". This amino acids do not match with your sequences on beiresources.org nor with MN908947.3. It seems that it is coming from an older SARS coronavirus (e.g. AY291315), this should be corrected.

On 2020-03-29 04:08:16, user DrKOS wrote:

There’s a typo on line 140. It should say “live virus” not “life virus”

On 2020-03-25 11:59:06, user Ned wrote:

Can you share the sequence of the modified spike protein? The stabilized soluble protein with the his tag. I could not find it. Thanks

On 2020-03-25 18:42:15, user Sinai Immunol Review Project wrote:

This study describes the occurrence of a cytokine release syndrome-like (CRSL) toxicity in ICU patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. The median time from first symptom to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) was 10 days. All patients had decreased CD3, CD4 and CD8 cells, and a significant increase of serum IL-6. Furthermore, 91% had decreased NK cells. The changes in IL-6 levels preceded those in CD4 and CD8 cell counts. All of these parameters correlated with the area of pulmonary inflammation in CT scan images. Mechanical ventilation increased the numbers of CD4 and CD8 cells, while decreasing the levels of IL-6, and improving the immunological parameters.

The number of patients included in this retrospective single center study is small (n=11), and the follow-up period very short (25 days). Eight of the eleven patients were described as having CRSL, and were treated by intubation (7) or ECMO (2). Nine patients were still in the intensive care unit at the time of publication of this article, so their disease outcome is unknown.

The authors define a cytokine release syndrome-like toxicity in patients with COVID-19 with clinical radiological and immunological criteria: 1) decrease of circulating CD4, CD8 and NK cells; 2) substantial increase of IL-6 in peripheral blood; 3) continuous fever; 4) organ and tissue damage. This event seems to occur very often in critically ill patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. Interestingly, the increase of IL-6 in the peripheral blood preceded other laboratory alterations, thus, IL-6 might be an early biomarker for the severity of COVID-19 pneumonia. The manuscript will require considerable editing for organization and clarity.

This review was undertaken as part of a project by students, postdocs and faculty at the Immunology Institute of the Icahn school of medicine, Mount Sinai

On 2020-03-25 20:57:32, user Sinai Immunol Review Project wrote:

Summary of Findings: <br /> - Study used online datasets (scRNAseq GSE131685, scRNAseq GSE107585, Human Protein Atlas, GTEx portal, CCLE) to analyze ACE2 expression in different human organs. <br /> - Study re-analyzed three clinical datasets (n=6, n=99, and n=41) to show 3~10% of 2019-nCoV patients present with abnormal renal function. <br /> - Results indicate ACE2 highly expressed in renal tubular cells, Leydig cells and seminiferous ductal cells of testis.

Limitations: <br /> - Very preliminary transcript/protein dataset analysis in healthy cohorts; does not necessarily translate to actual viral tropism and permissiveness. <br /> - Clinically, would be important to determine with larger longitudinal dataset if SARS-CoV-2 infection changes sperm quality or testicular inflammation. <br /> - Similarly, would be important to determine if simultaneous HBV or syphilis infection and orchitis impacts SARS-CoV-2 severity. <br /> - Examination and follow-up of renal function and viral orchitis/sperm quality of CoVID-19 patients not done in this preliminary study.

Importance/Relevance: <br /> - Kidney ACE2 result supports other concurrent sequencing studies (https://doi.org/10.1101/202... ) and clinical reports of abnormal renal function or even kidney damage in patients infected with 2019-nCoV (https://doi.org/10.1101/202... ). <br /> - High ACE2 expression in testis suggests potential tropism of the virus to testicular tissues and indicates potential risks for male fertility. Viral orchitis reported for SARS-CoV previously [1], but no clear evidence so far of infertility in SARS, MERS or CoVID-19 patients.

References:

1. Xu, J., et al., Orchitis: a complication of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).Biol Reprod, (2006) 74(2):p 410-6. Doi: 10.1095/biolreprod.105.044776

Review by Samarth Hegde as part of a project by students, postdocs and faculty at the <br /> Immunology Institute of the Icahn school of medicine, Mount Sinai.

On 2020-03-26 19:48:29, user Dan Grey wrote:

There were references for the choices of values for "proportion of population at risk of severe disease".

On 2020-03-29 19:06:26, user MingXia Gao wrote:

Fever also can cause damage to the sperm, leading to a high LH. Most of your objects had a fever, so I don't think the increase of LH is because of COV-19. You should test the tissue or seminal fluid to make sure whether there are COV-19 exist in male reproductive organs.

On 2020-03-30 17:42:47, user Preci Genome wrote:

Digital PCR appears to be a very powerful tool to diagnose the infection of COVID-19.

On 2020-03-30 18:55:11, user Preci Genome wrote:

Another related papers was also published recently. SARS-CoV-2 detection using digital PCR for COVID-19 diagnosis, treatment monitoring and criteria for discharge<br /> https://www.medrxiv.org/con...

On 2020-03-31 18:01:15, user bixiou wrote:

There is a syntax mistake in the abstract I guess: "Notably, all 4 patients progressed to severe illness that occurred in the control group." should be "Notably, all 4 patients who progressed to severe illness ~~that~~ ~~occurred~~were in the control group."

On 2020-03-31 18:43:53, user Thierry Grenet wrote:

This animation helps to better visualise how countries follow their "space phase" epidemic trajectory : https://epidemictracking.wo...<br /> T. Grenet

On 2020-04-01 08:31:20, user Bob O'Hara wrote:

The paper refers to Supplementary Material which gives details about the model fitting. Could this be uploaded too, please?

On 2020-04-01 13:02:24, user Carlos Affonso wrote:

Congratulation for the amazing article ! <br /> Are the data image available ?

On 2020-04-01 16:52:15, user Johannes Opsahl Ferstad wrote:

Link to tool: https://surf.stanford.edu/c...

On 2020-04-01 17:13:32, user Hikmat Ghosson wrote:

I do not understand why Lebanon is considered as a country with high rate of COVID19-related deaths. Actual data (01/04/2020) do not demonstrate this assumption:

14 deaths (2 deaths in 1 M of population), vs. 43 recoveries (0.33 of deaths-to-recoveries ratio).

Meanwhile for Italy:<br /> 13155 deaths (218 deaths in 1 M of population), vs. 16847 recoveries (0.78 of deaths-to-recoveries ratio).

For The Netherlands:<br /> 1173 deaths (68 deaths in 1 M of population), vs. 250 recoveries (4.69 of deaths-to-recoveries ratio).

For Belgium:<br /> 828 deaths (71 deaths in 1 M of population), vs. 2132 recoveries (0.39 of deaths-to-recoveries ratio).

For The U.S.:<br /> 4394 deaths (13 deaths in 1 M of population), vs. 8698 recoveries (0.50 of deaths-to-recoveries ratio).

Otherwise, how other determinant factors potentially influencing infection and death rates (e.g. age medians, healthcare systems, population concentrations, social traditions, screening test numbers, crisis management policies) can be assessed and then excluded from the correlation models?

Thanks in advance.

(data source: https://www.worldometers.in..., 01/04/2020 - 4:45 PM GMT update)

On 2020-04-03 00:55:22, user ???? wrote:

What I felt strange was, in Japan, though the number of the infected persons have been increasing, the fatality rate is apparently low in comparison with the corresponding numbers in the U.S. and in the Europe (except Portugal, in which the BCG vaccination is mandatory, while the fatality rate in Spain, where the vaccination is NOT mandatory, has become around 60 times more than in Portugal).

I think the number of the infected persons in Japan must be much higher than the one reported so far (i.e., there must be a lot of actually infected people not diagnosed with the new coronavirus); however, it cannot explain the low fatality rate in Japan.

In addition, it's notable that those who passed away due to the virus in Japan (except the foreigners, who account for as much as around 30% of the infected persons in Japan) are almost limited to elderly persons, while the BCG vaccination became mandatory in 1940s and 70-year-old or older Japanese tend not to have taken the vaccination.

On 2020-04-16 17:25:11, user forevertheuni wrote:

This is tricky:

Can you do a graph with "tests per capita" as a variable in this? I think that it would abate some differences.

I think that on how robust the testing has been plays a bigger role in this, because it reduces the % per million inhabitants. Which is usually a correlative on how resources are put into healthcare in general, and where vaccines are probably well implemented.

Then you have another big and totally opposite confounder, if you don't to tests...you don't have reported cases, and you will go down the graph (and that in some cases correlates with low income places, that will have the BCG because tuberculosis is very prevalent).

Well, I still appreciated the article, but there are many variables to be explored.

On 2020-04-07 13:31:01, user Jaco Brand wrote:

I see clinical trials being initiated based on a paper that have not been peer-reviewed or published. The trend with income can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways, like lifestyle choices and diet. This is exactly why Fig. 3 show a different death rate between low and medium-high income countries, despite both groups having a universal BCG vaccination policy. This is a highly unscientific speculative statistical correlation study. I have highlighted further comments to the paper as a download

On 2020-04-02 10:15:46, user Francois Alexandre wrote:

This study is interesting, but the reasoning is incomplete. Indeed, it takes about 1 month to die from the time when people get infect (about 10 days of incubation + 20 days between symptoms onset and decease). Therefore, the real number of patients infected is between 670 000 and 3.3 millions 1 month before the time where the decease number was collected, i.e. near the end of February. For an estimation of the number of cases at the end of March, we should wait for the number of deceased patients at the end of April.

On 2020-04-07 16:32:46, user Roberta Caruso wrote:

Using the Diamond Princess (DP) as a case study, the authors estimate an IFR 'slightly less than 1%, although statistically affected by a rather large uncertainty due to the small number of deceased'. It should be noted that when analyzing data on such a reduced 'statistical' sample, it is not appropriate to refer to statistical uncertainties - the sample is too small to actually compute statistical errors that have any sense for the analysis. One should instead focus on the analysis of the systematic errors that affect the estimation of IFR in order to obtain the actual relevance of the estimation obtained by simply dividing the number of died passengers for the total number of infected people on board. In other words, since these errors cannot be computed for IFR on the DP, this number should not be used as a benchmark for further analyses. <br /> The final estimation of the total number of infected cases is so vague (line 332-333 and line 355-356: between 660 000 and 3 300 000 - a difference of 500%!) that there is no practical use for it. The lower boundary of the estimation is questionable in itself, given the criticalities of the estimations performed using the DP case study, thus implying a possibly larger error bar on the estimation of the total infected. <br /> Such a large uncertainty poses serious questions on the scientific soundness of the study.

On 2020-04-03 02:08:32, user Shawn wrote:

There seems to be no discussion in this paper of the fact that the exponential spread could be accounted for by close in-person contact. One could reason that a virus can spread quickly in a susceptible population regardless of weather if there is a short distance between an infected and susceptible individual. A viral particle won't need to spend much time in the environment in this particular scenario and likely can avoid any negative impacts due to ambient temperature/humidity.

The authors should have refrained from making such a definitive conclusion about SARS-CoV-2 in any respect.

On 2020-04-23 14:43:46, user Jason Bayer wrote:

My question is this, in his interview he concluded that mortality rates in relation to this data (suggesting significantly more coronavirus cases then that being documented) is significantly lower, being in relation to this new higher estimate of cases....but how is he accounting for untested, undocumented coronavirus deaths? I do not see how one can claim anything on mortality in relation to undocumented cases but only count survivor data....am I missing something?

On 2020-04-17 18:22:03, user Anon wrote:

The authors state: "We used Facebook to quickly reach a large number of county residents and because it allows for granular targeting by zip code and sociodemographic characteristics." This gives an inaccurate impression of how participants were recruited. I participated in the study, but don't have a facebook account. In truth, anyone with a link could have registered to participated in the study. So the author's claims here are dubious on the evenness of recruitment.

In this survey we were only allowed to have one adult get test. Naturally, we selected the person with the most relevant symptoms (me). So there's an element of self selection going on here as well.

On 2020-04-18 02:04:32, user Ngallendou Dièye wrote:

This study applies to a single county. Such studies must be conducted in representative communities across a nation or nations, before it can be said to have general relevance.

On 2020-04-18 04:24:55, user Vasyl Zhabotynsky wrote:

The conclusion seems to heavily rely on the fact that specificity is really 99.5%<br /> If specificity is 98.5% (which is still in the confidence interval for the estimate of specificity), one would expect to get 50 positive tests from 3330 tests (as stated in second paragraph of page 7) in a completely disease free population.

On 2020-04-18 10:07:24, user Dean Karlen wrote:

Ignore this pre-print. They have insufficient evidence due to a weak measurement of the false positive rate. Consider that they saw 50/3330 in the test, and use the manufacturer false positive measurement of 2/371. I estimate the p-value (probability for seeing something as anomalous or more anomalous under the null hypothesis) to be about 0.08. There is weak evidence that even one of the 50 had COVID-19. And they are using that data to make an extraordinary claim?

It appears that none of the 26 comments below pick up on this point...

If you need help thinking about this problem, under the null hypothesis, ask yourself

Is it anomalous to see 50 or more positive tests in a sample of 3330 (all negative) when there was also an independent measurement of 2 positive tests in a sample of 371 (all negative)? Easiest to estimate by taking the first datum as a measure of false positive rate (50/3330) and the expected number of positives in the sample of 371 is therefore 5.6. Seeing 2 or fewer is not unlikely: p=0.08.

In fact the experiment was flawed in its design. With a poor false positive measurement they would have no chance to measure the expected small fraction of individuals with COVID antibodies. Why did they even embark on the study, when it was doomed to fail?

I hope this pre-print can be retracted somehow, and the community informed to not take this result seriously!

On 2020-04-18 20:30:49, user John Stevens wrote:

Many posts here have missed critical point - samples maybe biased (off by 50-75%) but if these data are even partially correct means COVID-19 can be managed down to zero. Many comments here about NYC infection rate are not correct.

NYC data has a near zero new case rate today (0.7%/day) if true that actual infected rate is 50X over reported we are at 70% of population (about 6 million) infected in NYC - explains actual drops in mortality rate and new cases to near zero in NYC and must be herd immunity

Many posts here are just not accurate and not aware of real data. have summarized www.rubee.io/nyc - see NYC posted data today look at graphs at bottom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

John K. Stevens Ph.D.

On 2020-04-19 05:25:09, user Kaliahk wrote:

Meanwhile in Alaska, 97% of all persons tested (those who are symptomatic or have had contact with a Covid patient) test negative. One would think if there are 80 times as many people who have it and don't know, that they would be catching a bunch of asymptomatic people in those tests.<br /> This study adjusts from a true rate of 1.5 % up to 2.8% or 4.2%? what adjustment do you make for finding your voluntary participants through Facebook ads? <br /> This study will not survive peer review, but it is not meant to. It is meant to be a talking point.

On 2020-04-19 06:51:19, user DFreddy wrote:

reference 2 -> link not correct

Report 12 - The global impact of COVID-19 and strategies for mitigation and suppression [Internet]. Imperial College London. [accessed 2020 Apr 7];Available from: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/m... epidemiology/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-12-global-impact-covid-19/

On 2020-04-19 19:15:06, user Michael A. Kohn, MD, MPP wrote:

From the 3439 people who showed up for testing, they were able to obtain 3330 valid specimens on which to perform the Premier Biotech serology test. Of these, 50 were positive. That’s 50/3330 = 1.5% . They tried to adjust for the fact that the people who actually showed up were not representative of the county population’s sex, race, and zip code distribution. But the main potential source of error is the accuracy of the test. At a low sero-prevalence like this, a small proportion of false positives can result in a large overestimate. They ran the Premier Biotech test on 30 serum specimens drawn prior to the pandemic and it was negative on all 30. If the error rate on truly uninfected individuals is 0.5%, and the test properly identifies 91.8% of previously infected individuals, then the true sero-prevalence is 1.1%. As the authors say, “Additional validation of the assays used could improve our estimates and those of ongoing serosurveys.” Having reviewed the test accuracy studies of this and other lateral flow immunoassays (http://covid-19-assay.net/ ), I believe we will end up with a true sero-prevalence of about 1% in Santa Clara County. But the authors made a reasonable estimate and did a great job of collecting this data and reporting their results and assumptions.

On 2020-04-19 20:45:06, user John Smith wrote:

people who thought they have been exposed to covid-19 would want to get a free test. Others who thought they don't have the virus and have been in lockdown for a month would not go out of the house for the free test. This means you're selecting only the people who have been exposed and invalidates the study.

On 2020-05-20 17:22:05, user Omari wrote:

Anybody know the false positive rate of the test used?

On 2020-04-23 15:59:44, user gmshedd wrote:

If we take the observed fatalities (by residence) in the Bronx (2258 as of 4-22) and Queens (3432), and apply the suggested infection fatality rates of 0.12% to 0.20%, we can infer that between 80% and 133% of Bronx residents have already been infected, and that between 76% and 127% of Queens residents have also been infected. Therefore, Bronx and Queens residents have achieved herd immunity, so they can re-open everything immediately. This is such great news! Oh, but you say, these populations aren't similar. OK, so I'll use Nassau County (Long Island)--median income $111k vs $116k in Santa Clara County. 1431 Nassau County residents have died, from which we would infer that between 53% and 88% of the 1,356,924 county residents have been infected. My point is that the suggested infection fatality rates don't pass the eye test, and, since they are derived from the infection rates that are at the center of the controversy, it would seem that the publication's Santa Clara County infection rates are higher than seems reasonable for the NYC area--unless California COVID-19 has a significantly lower infection fatality rate than New York COVID-19.

On 2020-04-24 05:58:27, user JM V wrote:

With 80 (1.7%) people dead in Castiglione d'Adda (Caveats: Old/Smoking/Unlucky/Collapse of Health care system/Some would have died anyway) this was already extremely unlikely. Now, with NYC 0.22% excess deaths and 21.2% of shoppers having antibodies, an IFR of 0.8% - 1.2% appears plausible.

On 2020-04-25 07:19:42, user John Smith wrote:

1. A local website (SFGate, I think) mentioned a person who emailed many friends about the free test and this selected wealthier people who might have more exposure to international travel. This would boost the percentage with antibodies above a population sample that had more poor people in the sample. It did mention the team tried to correct for this email by recruiting from other areas of the county. 2. Santa Clara county has more international travel than most other areas of the USA that have fewer immigrants, so people who are saying other areas of the USA might have the same higher level of recovered patients would be wrong.

On 2020-04-25 21:08:15, user outdoorgirl0814 wrote:

My primary question on this study is why the IgM and IgG specific results were not presented, but rather pooled together. This seems like important information. From what I can tell, the test identifies them separately.

On 2020-05-01 18:30:42, user Dean Karlen wrote:

The findings reported in the first version suffered from serious mistakes in statistical treatment. Now two weeks later, the authors have slightly adjusted their stated confidence intervals reported in the abstract and elsewhere in the paper. Ignore the abstract and skip to the final page.

There, the authors finally admit that their 95% CL intervals would contain 0% if the analysis is done correctly:

There is one important caveat to this formula: it only holds as long as (one minus) the specificity of the test is higher than the sample prevalence. If it is lower, all the observed positives in the sample could be due to false-positive test results, and we cannot exclude zero prevalence as a possibility.

So in order to report intervals that exclude 0%, they have to assume that the prevalence is high enough to use an approximate approach that will yield intervals that exclude 0% prevalence. This is nonsense. The abstract should clearly state that the study cannot exclude 0% prevalence at 95% CL.

On 2020-05-03 01:41:44, user Danny C. wrote:

Can we get the rigor of statistical analysis for the rt-PCR tests being used currently please? So many experts here weighing in.. But what about the current tests providing the current numbers? Thanks!

On 2020-05-06 14:10:54, user David wrote:

Whitman et al. evaluated Premier Biotech Biotest test used in this study using 108 pre-COVID blood samples (collected July 2018). They found 3 false positive, giving a specificity of 97.22% (92.10-99.42% 95% C.I.). I note that the authors updated their paper with tests run on many more pre-COVID samples, so this might just be bad luck.

Whitman, J.D., Hiatt, J., Mowery, C.T., Shy, B.R., Yu, R., Yamamoto, T.N., Rathore, U., Goldgof, G.M., Whitty, C., Woo, J.M. and Gallman, A.E., 2020. Test performance evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 serological assays. medRxiv.

On 2020-07-21 07:18:00, user Pierre-Alexandre Château wrote:

Tsai Ing-wen is Taiwan's president, not prime minister.

On 2020-06-24 14:24:54, user Michael Brach wrote:

This paper has undergone peer review and is published in Nutrients:<br /> https://www.researchgate.ne...

On 2020-06-28 20:38:28, user itellu3times wrote:

OK I'll say it, I find this entirely opaque, I cannot tell what you are even proposing, much less whether you found it or proved it.

On 2020-06-29 02:58:37, user David F. Priest wrote:

Study has not been peer reviewed and was funded by Suez which has a joint venture in China with the state-controlled China Everbright International Limited.

On 2020-06-30 16:44:31, user Kamran Kadkhoda wrote:

Mathematically-speaking there is no such thing as 100% specificity!<br /> Also why authors like Abbott itself did not include a large number of sera from known cases of common CoVs?

On 2025-02-28 22:17:07, user Brian wrote:

I’m a nobody, however I’m able to use the resources which are at my disposal to better understand this study. I have constructed the following logical explanation. I thoroughly invite anyone to dismantle this explanation. It is to the best of my knowledge and understanding that I’ve created this.

It found that CD4 T cells are reduced, and TNFa producing CD8 T cells are increased. It found that cDC2 cells were reduced while non classical monocytes were elevated. To also include that elevated cytokines and IgG subclass shifts did not occur. In a healthy immune system, elevated cytokines and IgG subclass shifts indicate a healthy immune response. Furthermore, a reduction of cDC2 cells means that without sufficient numbers of cDC2 cells, the body struggles to activate T cells effectively, which is key for a strong immune response. Next, elevated non classical monocytes means that the body is in a state of immune activation, but instead or responding efficiently to the threat (due to a lack of other immune cells like cDC2 cells), the system is stuck in a more passive or inflammatory state. And let’s not forget AIDS is characterized by a reduction of CD4 T cells and elevated TNFa-producing CD8 T cells. I rest my case.

On 2020-07-08 14:37:20, user rede2fly wrote:

Association does not indicate causation. The study has no control for the Covid-Quarrantine-Frustration factor. The author began the project with the intent to show causation and failed. The research was funded by anti-firearm organizations with the same goal.

Why is no one talking about WHO is doing the shooting and WHO is getting shot?

On 2020-07-09 08:15:09, user Yerlan wrote:

This work has been published in the Electronic Journal of General Medicine, DOI: https://doi.org/10.29333/ejgm/8346

On 2020-05-11 10:20:02, user Paul Revere wrote:

How many people died in the US in April 2019 VS April 2020?

On 2020-03-25 00:18:42, user Sinai Immunol Review Project wrote:

Summary of Findings: <br /> - Retrospective study of 59 patients assayed key function indicators of the kidney–including urine protein, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), plasma creatinine (Cre), and renal CT scan data. <br /> - Found that 34% of patients developed massive albuminuria on the first day of admission, and 63% developed proteinuria during their stay in hospital; and 19% of patients had high plasma creatinine, especially the terminal cases. <br /> -CT analyses of 27 patients showed all patients to have abnormal kidney damage; indicate that inflammation and edema of the renal parenchyma very common.

Limitations: <br /> -No analysis of immunity-dependent damage and cytokines in blood/plasma/urine. Will be worth correlating disease progression with cytokine production, immune activity and kidney function. <br /> -Extrapolating to earlier SARS-CoV studies provides the only rationale for viral-damage in kidney and resultant pathologic immune response (understandable for this clinical study).

Importance/Relevance: <br /> -Multiple lines of evidence along this study’s finding point to the idea that renal impairment/injury is a key risk factor in 2019-nCoV patients similar to what has been reported for SARS-CoV [1]; this may be one of the major causes of virally-induced damage and contribute to multi-organ failure. <br /> -ACE2 expression in kidney proximal tubule epithelia and bladder epithelia (https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.08.939892) support these clinical findings. <br /> -Study argues for closely monitoring kidney function, and applying potential interventions including continuous renal replacement therapies (CRRT) for protecting kidney functions as early as possible, particularly for those with rising plasma creatinine.

References:

1. Chu, K. H. et al. Kidney Int. (2005) 67, 698-705, <br /> doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1...

Review by Samarth Hegde as part of a project by students, postdocs and faculty at the <br /> Immunology Institute of the Icahn school of medicine, Mount Sinai.

On 2020-02-13 16:35:13, user dontlistentothepundits wrote:

To the study authors <br /> What medications did the patients receive during their hospitalization ? Were any of them taking Avelox or other Fluoroquinolones or antibiotics that have side effects that include the kidneys ?

On 2020-04-20 17:09:11, user Michele Faucci Giannelli wrote:

Could you add the fraction of asymptomatic in Table 2. I.e. provide it broken down by age? This can really help in modelling the infection beyond Vo'. Thanks!

On 2020-04-20 17:25:20, user Dylan Skola wrote:

Can anyone see where they're presented the MAF of the mutations? How many were fixed in the isolate and how many represented intra-host quasispecies at low abundance?

On 2020-04-21 09:37:53, user Walter Langel wrote:

The article describes the calculation of the time-dependent reproduction number Rt for the present Coronavirus pandemic. These calculations recently resulted in values below 1 and had an enormous impact on political decisions in Germany. <br /> As a physical chemist I have major concerns on the validity of these results:<br /> (1) The calculations are based on a kinetic model with originally eight compartment, which has later been refined by them to as much as 14 compartments. This affords a huge number of parameters, which are known with limited precision. The authors try to circumvent this problem by using various combinations of values for these parameters. <br /> Unfortunately the most important fit parameter R1, which describes the feedback from infected individuals to non-infected, was not quoted. I have fitted the total confirmed infection data for Germany, China and Italy in https://www.medrxiv.org/con... by a simple logistic function with very few parameters. For Germany the effect of the lock down is clearly manifested around March 21st: The fits of the data before and after lock down predict final values of 340 000 and 180 000 infected individuals, respectively (see supplement to my paper). In the paper by Meyer-Hermann et al. the lock down should be seen as a sudden decrease in R1, if not buried in statistic scatter. The missing values of R1 are thus crucial for the validation of their compartment models.<br /> (2) The values of Rt , which are the fundamental result of their calculation, are superimposed by an oscillation with significant amplitude beyond noise (Figure 2(B)). I suspect that this is an artifact of their approach to evaluate the reproduction factor in time windows of seven days. This should be checked by repeating the calculation with variable time windows. As small differences in the asymptotic value of Rt (say 1.2 or 0.8) already have a huge influence on political decisions in Germany, it is urgently important to verify, if the final value is independent of such artifacts.

On 2020-04-21 16:21:44, user Kroger Martin wrote:

Related: Covid-19 Predictions Using a Gauss Model

https://www.preprints.org/m...

On 2020-04-22 10:39:55, user Niall Toibin wrote:

***First Point***

Obviously the state of the patient and their progression may have influenced the decision to prescribe HC. To quote the paper

QUOTE<br /> baseline characteristics corresponding to clinical severity varied across the three groups of patients and could have influenced the non-randomized utilization of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin<br /> UNQUOTE

This is the context in which the following has to be taken

QUOTE<br /> A total of 368 patients were evaluated. Rates of death in the HC, HC+AZ, and no HC groups were 27.8%, 22.1%, 11.4%, respectively.<br /> UNQUOTE

No media outlet should report the second quote without the first.

***Second Point***

The authors attempt to account for this obvious bias - the patient's state influencing the decision to use HC.

They compute propensity scores (for different clinical outcomes) for HC use and HC+AZ use based on all baseline characteristics.<br /> i.e. they attempt to look at people who are equally sick in each cohort and see if HC made a difference.

There is a problem with their attempt to account for these baseline characteristics (Age, BMI, pulse, breaths per minute, heart rate, blood pressure, blood count etc.)

Clearly we need to know patient's baseline characteristics at the start of treatment.<br /> (We don't know the dates on which the decisions were made to start HC treatments. We only know the dates of admission.)

If we don't know their medical states on the date of that decision we can't discount that HC was more likely to be tried on the desperate cases. This is the main issue the authors identify and are trying to overcome. Without which the study is meaningless.

But (page 21)<br /> QUOTE<br /> Patient demographic and clinical characteristics, including those associated with the Covid-19 disease severity, were evaluated ***at date of admission,***<br /> UNQUOTE

How the patients illnesses had progressed and what state they were in when it was decided to start them on HC neither we nor the authors have any idea.

On 2020-04-25 21:34:02, user Christopher Rentsch wrote:

We believe that Magagnoli et al failed to correctly identify intubation occurring in hospitalized patients testing positive for COVID-19. They used CPT codes 31500, 94002, 94003, and E0463 and ICD-10 procedure codes indicative of assistance with respiratory ventilation, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). We identified 5,906 COVID-19 patients treated in the Veterans Health Administration between March 1 and April 21, 2020. In addition to the above CPT codes, we identified intubation according to ICD-10 procedure codes for insertion of endotracheal airway, and respiratory ventilation, which were usually concordant. We cross-validated with medications typically used during intubation, such as neuromuscular blocking agents (e.g., succinylcholine, rocuronium) and short acting sedatives (e.g., propofol, midazolam). We also found these intubation codes most frequently in the context of intensive care. We did not find similar evidence of face validity for ventilation assistance codes. No instances of ECMO were found as this procedure is unlikely to be used in the Veterans Health Administration.

We classified 307/5,906 = 5.2% patients as intubated. Using the Magagnoli algorithm, only 96/5,906 = 1.6% patients were said to be intubated. Of these, 37 were classified based on ventilation assistance codes, not indicative of intubation.

List of ICD-10 Procedure codes used to identify intubation

Codes in both Magagnoli and Tate lists<br /> - Respiratory Ventilation (5A1935Z 5A1945Z 5A1955Z)

Codes in Magagnoli list, but not Tate list<br /> - Assistance With Respiratory Ventilation (5A09357 5A09358 5A09359 5A0935B 5A0935Z 5A09457 5A09458 5A09459 5A0945B 5A0945Z 5A09557 5A09558 5A09559 5A0955B 5A0955Z)<br /> - Extracorporeal Oxygenation, Membrane (5A1522F 5A1522G 5A1522H)

Codes in Tate list, but not Magagnoli list<br /> - Insertion of Endotracheal Airway Into Trachea (0BH13EZ 0BH17EZ 0BH18EZ)

Janet P. Tate (Janet.Tate2@va.gov)<br /> Christopher T. Rentsch (@DarthCTR)<br /> Joseph T. King Jr.<br /> Amy C. Justice

VA Connecticut Healthcare System<br /> West Haven, CT

On 2020-05-27 03:20:48, user G M wrote:

Will be picked up during review no doubt but describing qPCR as an 'antigen' test is false, and personally distracting.

On 2020-04-24 15:20:42, user Lawrence Mayer wrote:

Again I suggest readers that want to see discussion of these papers and others in Clinical Epidemiology and Science consider joining or group if they have healthcare or Science credentials.

Clinical Epidemiological Discussion of COVID19 Pandemic Group<br /> https/facebook.com/groups/covidnerds

On 2020-04-24 20:11:40, user Diego B. wrote:

This article has been posted on JAMA Network: https://jamanetwork.com/jou...

On 2020-04-24 20:18:46, user Diego B. wrote:

This article has been published on JAMA Network: <br /> https://jamanetwork.com/jou...

On 2020-04-25 04:04:36, user Deevish N D wrote:

The radiometer used in this study - UV513 AB detects a peak wavelength of 365 nm as per its manual. But the actual germicidal wavelength is around 254 nm. I believe the dose needed for UV disinfection has been under-reported in this article. Authors please correct me if am wrong.

On 2020-04-25 18:43:20, user Retelska wrote:

Excuse, me, I don't know if I understand correctly. Do the 2 Elisa essays yield 5% false positives? Were these tests used to establish that 5% of general population has now been infected? You expect 5% false positives, right? How do you correct for this effect? Only the 3rd test with 0% false positives seems specific enough.

On 2020-04-26 13:05:40, user Bin_Pei wrote:

Thanks for kind reminder of the reviewers, there is an unintentional editing error that we accidentally mixed the name of two cities in affliation in the original manuscript. We have submitted a revision already, there might be few days delay and we will be more careful in the future work.

On 2020-04-26 15:20:46, user Robert Clark wrote:

I was interested to read of your report on over 4,000 COVID-19 cases in New York. Collecting health histories for a large data set of patients of COVID-19 may provide a rapid means of determining which medicines could be effective in combating it:

Big data to fight COVID-19 and other diseases.<br /> https://medium.com/@rgregor...

The idea is to find if certain medications are *missing* from the patients prior health histories, suggesting those medications may be protective against the disease.

Robert Clark

On 2020-04-27 11:07:45, user Pilar Domingo Calap wrote:

We have detected a small factual error in the text. The sentence containing the error is the following:

"The first confirmed case in the Iberian Peninsula was communicated on February 24, 2020 in Burriana, a small town nearby the city of Valencia, followed by another case the following day in Valencia."

This sentence should be instead be:

"The first three confirmed cases in the Iberian Peninsula were communicated on February 25, 2020 in Madrid, Barcelona, and Villareal, a small town nearby the city of Valencia."

Pilar Domingo-Calap (co-author of the preprint)

On 2020-04-28 16:33:17, user Katri Jalava wrote:

Interesting paper, and fascinating model. I was a bit curious of your contact percentages. How do you come up with the numbers? E.g. for CS adult-adult would be reduced only by 20 % by closing the public events. I could argue that it is at least 60 %, especially if you have a look on SF1 in 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005697. Also, if you have both CS and HO in place, you get 80 % + 20 % =100 % reduction for child-child contact(?).

Getting any data on impact of the closure measures from publications is hard. I think they have tried this in the UK from the case load data. Do you think you could do a telephone survey among Germans? Or if an app company would make a data collection tool where everyone could register their daily contacts during the outbreak, that would be cool. Good luck and thank you.

On 2020-04-29 10:51:47, user Dan wrote:

Hi! Is there any information on how much each of those underlying health conditions increases risk of severe COVID-19 disease? Thanks

On 2020-04-29 21:17:20, user Rick56 wrote:

The authors are addressing an important question. But I believe they have underestimated the length of time between exposure and testing positive.

This matters because if you look at the raw data currently available for Wisconsin at the Johns Hospkins github, you see what appears to be a flattening of the number of new cases starting April 6 -- followed by a substantial spike starting April 22.

Given this, it is especially important how one models the time between exposure (election; April 7) and testing positive. Because if that time could be 15-19 days, then there is a very plausible spike resulting from election exposures.

The time from exposure to positive test = <br /> exposure to symptoms (incubation period) plus <br /> symptoms to testing (let's call it "testing delay").

But the testing delay is also influenced by how readily testing is available.

So, two problems:

1. The incubation period they report using is a gamma (chi square is a type of gamma) for the incubation period, with a mean 5.2 and SD 2.3 days. The reference is Li et al, 2020. "Early transmission...". NEJM.

But the Li paper notes that the 95%ile for this distribution is 12.5 days.

When I use R to generate gamma distributions with a mean of 5.2 and 95%ile at 12.5, the SD is substantially greater than 2.3. Also -- that gamma gives about 18% of the incubation periods <2 days.

Based on this, it seems likely that the author's distribution has a much thinner right tail than is consistent with the Li data. And perhaps 18% of their distribution could be < 2 days. So we need the specifics of the distribution the authors created.

1. They used the testing delay from Beijing (Leung et al 2020. "First wave ...". Lancet. Which they model as gamma with mean 4.3 (SD 3.2) days from symptoms to testing.

So, was the testing delay in Wisconsin as short as that in Beijing? Did the average person in Wisconsin get tested 4.3 days after symptoms start? Seems unlikely. Since the US has had such a terrible problem getting people tested, we need evidence that their testing delay is reasonable for Wisconsin.

Unless the authors can address these points, I think it very inadvisable to claim that the spike in positive cases starting April 22 is completely unrelated to the April 7 election.

[you'll have to look up the Wisconsin data on your own. I attempted to attach a plot multiple times without success].

~~~~~ here are the methods details from the authors' supplementary

"We assume the incubation period distribution is gamma with mean and SD of 5.2 and 2.3 days [3]. We assume that the distribution of the time between symptom onset and confirmation is gamma with mean and standard deviation (SD) of 4.3 and 3.2 days, based on 186 cases reported in Jan-Feb 2020 in Beijing [4]."

from their References<br /> 3. Li Q, Guan X, Wu P et al. Early transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China, of novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia. N Engl J Med 2020;382:1199-1207.<br /> 4. Leung K, Wu JT, Leung GM. First-wave COVID-19 transmissibility and severity in China outside Hubei after control measures, and second-wave scenario planning: a modelling impact assessment. Lancet 2020;395:published online April 8.

On 2020-04-30 08:59:22, user Skerdi wrote:

It would be great if you could compute the RAASi/nonRAASi difference adjusted for the relevant comorbidities you cite (age, gender, ICU entry on day of admission, serum ferritin, insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and cardiac arrhythmia history).

This would help give a sense of whether RAASi are likely to work only if taken chronically before encountering Covid-19 (in which case their effect adjusted on clinical baseline would shrink or disappear) or if they could also work when started after disease onset (if adjustment for clinical baseline does not erase their effect).

On 2020-04-30 13:35:27, user John Lambiase wrote:

This has greater implications than just covud 19. It could effect most "enveloped" respiratory pathogens. The antimicrobial processes signalled by vitamin D are absolutely fascinating. They trigger multiple facets of immunity.

On 2020-04-30 15:02:24, user Subhradip AIIMS New Delhi wrote:

Why gene expression RPKM for ACE2 is very low in lungs? Source : TiGER, Protein Atlas

On 2020-04-30 20:54:07, user Frank Conijn wrote:

I don't have any objections against retrospective cohort studies, because they are sometimes all one can do, and they can give valuable insight. But the compared groups must have equal baseline disease severity. And am I overlooking something, or is that information missing?

Furthermore, the Brief Summary on page 2 says (emphasis by me): "The use of antiviral drugs (chloroquine, oseltamivir, arbidol, and lopinavir/ritonavir) did not shorten viral RNA clearance, especially in non-serious cases." But the text and figures show that that still concerned patients with pneumonia or worse. I don't find that non-serious cases. Those are moderate cases on a scale from light - mild - moderate - severe - critical.

On 2020-05-01 05:08:22, user Adapt Research wrote:

Hi, far too early to be speculating on this. The high GHSI countries are also the high GDP ones and the high air traffic ones. The number of tests is mostly correlated with the number of cases, not the GHSI. It may yet be the case that high GHSI countries end up with less deaths per capita than low GHSI ones. We are nowhere near the end yet, and don't know what will happen in Africa where the largest concentration of low GHSI countries is. The correlations are interesting, but we're not able to draw conclusions yet.

On 2020-05-01 12:10:55, user Roman wrote:

Infection fatality rate is calculated from official number od deaths. If we calculate from oposition estimates, there was 2470 deaths as of 24. April. <br /> That would mean fatality rate 0,4%.

https://www.ncr-iran.org/en...

On 2020-05-02 06:26:29, user Jasmin Zessner wrote:

How come the authors only looked into countries most affected by SARS -COV-2 while ignoring the ones where lockdown was effective (Austria, Germany) and extrapolate that “lockdown is not effective in western Europe”

On 2020-05-03 09:08:28, user Daniel Corcos wrote:

These calculations rely on wrong estimates.<br /> 1) The delay between infection (does it include incubation time?) and death is based on a preprint from data on the Diamond Princess epidemic. There were 7 deaths at that time but the current number is 14 (1). The case fatality rate in South Korea was 1.6%, but now it is 2.32% (2). Delayed deaths should be taken into account.<br /> 2) A zero generation time is unrealistic, as the virus must multiply before spreading, and estimates of the generation time have been calculated to be between 4 and 5 days (3,4) .<br /> Changing these parameters should alter the conclusions.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...<br /> 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...<br /> 3) https://www.sciencedirect.c...<br /> 4) https://www.medrxiv.org/con...

On 2020-05-04 06:30:08, user japhetk wrote:

This study has serious flaws and I will reject if I were a reviewer.

First, this study doesn't have a control data such as the blood sample of a few years ago. Although, the kit maker advocates the specificity of 100%, various test kits including the innovita's one which championed 100% specificity were already shown to show the inferior data compared with the maker's advocates.

Second, as pointed out,

Tests were done for randomly selected preserved serum from patients who visited outpatient clinics of the hospital and received blood testing for any reason. Patients who visited the emergency department or the designated fever consultation service were excluded to avoid the overestimation of SARS-Cov-2 infection.

SARS-COVID-19 is already known to cause atypical symptoms even in the "asymptomatic" (in terms of typical symptoms of infection) such as stroke, and various other thrombotic symptoms. So, this exclusion criteria is not enough apparently to avoid biased sampling and overestimation.

In Japan, this apparently seriously flawed study without review is reported widely and people even some doctors now say the real fatality rate of SARS-COVID-19 is 0.05%! based on this study (they seemed to have forgotten Japanese patients in the diamond princess ship showed the higher mortality rate compared with age-matched patients of westerners in the same ship). This is a nightmare for the public health of Japan.

On 2020-05-05 14:23:59, user John Huppenthal wrote:

From January 1, 2020 to April 11th, the study period, over 40,000 fewer people died in 2020 than in the same period in 2019.

That's an amazing number.

You would expect an additional 13,000 people would die in 2020 just from the increase and aging of the population.

Adjusted for that effect, 53,000 more people died in 2019 than in 2020.

By the logic of the study, Covid-19 had 53,000 excess deaths in 2019.

A lot more than the 15,000 it had in 2020.

Every year, they do a vaccine effectiveness study. The results of that study need to be coughed up a whole lot sooner this year to unravel the true numbers.

This study did not produce the true numbers, not even close.

On 2020-05-05 20:54:15, user japhetk wrote:

This study has serious flaws and I will reject if I were a reviewer.

First,<br /> this study doesn't have a control data such as the blood sample of a <br /> few years ago. Although, the kit maker advocates the specificity of <br /> 100%, various test kits including the innovita's one which championed <br /> 100% specificity were already shown to show the inferior data compared <br /> with the maker's advocates.

Second, as pointed out,

Tests<br /> were done for randomly selected preserved serum from patients who <br /> visited outpatient clinics of the hospital and received blood testing <br /> for any reason. Patients who visited the emergency department or the <br /> designated fever consultation service were excluded to avoid the <br /> overestimation of SARS-Cov-2 infection.

SARS-COVID-19 is already <br /> known to cause atypical symptoms even in the "asymptomatic" (in terms of<br /> typical symptoms of infection) such as stroke, and various other <br /> thrombotic symptoms. So, this exclusion criteria is not enough <br /> apparently to avoid biased sampling and overestimation.

In Japan, this apparently seriously flawed study without review is reported widely<br /> and people even some doctors now say the real fatality rate of <br /> SARS-COVID-19 is 0.05%! based on this study (they seemed to have <br /> forgotten Japanese patients in the diamond princess ship showed the <br /> higher mortality rate compared with age-matched patients of westerners <br /> in the same ship). This is a nightmare for the public health of Japan.

On 2020-05-05 20:58:20, user japhetk wrote:

A brief comment. <br /> This study's conclusion that the proportion of asymptomatic patients among the infected is 99.99% is not consistent with the fact that 9 Japanese out of 300 infected Japanese passengers among 1341 total passengers in the diamond princess ship (where all passengers went through PCR testing) have died (half the infected (which was confirmed by PCR) showed the symptoms by the way). And their fatality rate was higher than the age-matched westerners. Although, they were mostly old, so are the 30 percent of Japanese.

On 2020-05-05 21:56:48, user Un Kwon-Casado wrote:

Hi Anne- Great and exciting work! Do you know if its primarily shedded viral particles versus infected cells in the saliva samples?

On 2020-05-08 04:56:24, user Dan T.A. Eisenberg wrote:

This paper is very important. My lab is planning to implement an assay inspired by it. Can you elaborate on how long healthcare worker samples were stored at +4 for before testing?

On 2020-05-07 02:38:21, user Variant wrote:

In most cases, peak deaths and infections preceded the point at which any SAHO orders could have had impact. In fact, virus "curves" are nearly identical between states where there have been significant movement restrictions and those that haven't.

On 2020-05-07 20:33:43, user Walter Langel wrote:

The fit and extrapolation of the total infection number by a logistic function has been continued till first week of May and extended to several countries. Now the excel file containing all data and fits is available at researchgate:<br /> https://www.researchgate.ne...

On 2020-05-08 18:55:00, user hans wrote:

Please consider to cite:

Bartels, Christian (2020): Predicting the impact of a new infectious disease based on the basic reproduction number is challenging. figshare. Presentation. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9....

On 2020-05-10 14:19:22, user Minta Péter wrote:

Hi, something has happened to the pdf, can't download and doesn't show the size.

On 2020-05-11 09:18:27, user David Sbabo wrote:

Russia and Ukraine in the HCQ group?

Their third death occured in March in both countries. HCQ was autorised in mid April in both countries Unless they can go back in time, HCQ cannot have any influence here.

So the main result of this study is null and void.

On 2020-05-11 20:53:16, user Erik Hansson wrote:

Thank you for your work, it is valuable to consider that that people have different social activity levels, but I am concerned that your approach miss two important aspects which will underestimate the herd immunity threshold/make it less valid as an indicator of the risk of new severe epidemic flares:

1. Social distancing recommendations from Swedish authorities likely have different effects on levels of social activity between social strata. R is probably more flexible downwards in more affluent social classes leading to different seroprevalence in different strata when the global disease-induced herd immunity threshold is reached.
2. Post-social distancing (i.e. after achieving disease-induced herd immunity threshold) social interaction will happen primarily within social strata (i.e. within seroprevalence strata).

Lower social classes may be less able to achieve a low level of social activity due to household crowding, dependence on public transportation and inability to work from home due to having manual work. This may lead to higher disease transmission in lower than higher social classes. Add to this the situation in elderly care in which the absence of PPE has probably led to quite intense transmission both from and to workers, who are strongly concentrated to lower social classes in Stockholm.

Outcome data is scarce but there seems to be empirical evidence of such a social gradient in covid-19 transmission both in hospitalized cases and very limited seroprevalence studies (contact Björn Olsen in Uppsala for more details or read media reports from last week - their study found 0% seroprevalence at Östermalm (~Knigthsbridge) in the end of April, n=?). Information from other major cities tell a similar story of a social gradient.

Under "normal" circumstances persons from lower social classes may not necessarily have higher levels of social activity than persons from the more affluent classes. I am concerned it may rather be the opposite as people from higher social classes may more likely engage in several activities less accessible to persons from lower classes, activities that do not happen in a semi-quarantine setting, such as culture and sports events, parties, eating out, bars, office work and meetings, conferences, university education, etc, but that are expected to be possible to do in a society having reached herd immunity.

Furthermore, due to prevailing segregation by class and ethnicity such post-social-distancing activities will likely primarily be done together with other persons likewise having been able to limit their activities during the first phase of the epidemic. There are thus conditions that allow rapid disease transmission within more affluent social strata if these go back to business as usual. It may even be argued that estimating a herd immunity threshold as an average percentage within a strongly segregated city is not especially meaningful. If there are large enough pools of connected susceptible individuals there is still a possibility of epidemics that overwhelm the healthcare system.

Another concern, which is partly related to the present manuscript is the use of quite uncertain and potentially inflated modeled estimates to make predictions of when Stockholm will reach the disease-induced herd immunity threshold, in June 2020, less than 3 weeks from now. This model estimated 26% had been infected by May 1. A critique of this model estimated 5-10% (https://twitter.com/AdamJKu... "https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1254084771535376391)"), and the only (to my knowledge) somewhat representative seroprevalence study found 7.5% (Björn Olsen) at that time. Two separate methods that concur so well seems more credible than one modeled estimate.

The combination of estimating an artificially low herd immunity threshold and using potentially exaggerated cumulative infected proportion risk declaring “all-clear” in Stockholm much prematurely.

Erik Hansson, <br /> MD, MSc Epidemiology

On 2020-05-15 18:30:49, user Bruce wrote:

How do those results compare to chloroquine?

On 2020-05-24 21:33:11, user Tim Tarr wrote:

DOXY was suggested as replacement for azithromycin for those with heart issues. Seems azithromycin may compound HCQ risk to the heart. Now put Zinc in the mixture.<br /> DOXY+HCQ+Zinc sulfate <br /> The lab work should be run for vitamins D&C deficiency and Zinc. Lab work on kidney & liver status is pretty standard for admission.Also if heart function not known that should be checked, also usually a basic admission process.

On 2020-04-06 12:58:13, user Maria wrote:

A very accurate study, which explains the high rate of spread of Sars-CoV2. I would repeat it in dark and cold rooms, keeping air samples also in the dark, since UV light and heat damage the virus. This could reveal why only nude RNA is found.

On 2020-04-11 18:07:45, user Aaron Gasaway wrote:

Scientists and medical researchers: please look into whether it's dust that is sometimes allowing the virus to become "aerosolized." I've read a little about dust particles carrying influenza, so it seems plausible. Also, the recent Chinese study showed higher concentrations on the floor (where dust would fall). Dust as the vehicle would also explain it being found in AC vents. Central Air units suck up a huge amount of dust and some of it makes it through the filters and back out into the air.

Of course none of this means the moisture in exhalations or coughs couldn't also be the vehicle. On the whole it would seem not to be spreading enough for normal exhalations to be the primary vehicle, although it seems from the Washington choir episode that with enough force behind the exhalations, it could be.

I am sorry if this question about dust seems amateurish or crackpot. I just don't know if anyone qualified is looking into this possibility, so thought I should post it here.

On 2020-06-26 22:10:08, user kpfleger wrote:

On what date did the VDD protocol (table 1) commence? Is it possible to analyze COVID-19 outcomes (fatality, ventilator need, ITU admission, etc.) by baseline 25OHD on admission for before vs. after the VDD protocol started, as they did in the Singapore study: https://www.medrxiv.org/con... (which perhaps you should also cite BTW)? Or was 25OHD status not assessed for COVID-19 patients before the VDD protocol began?

On 2020-06-30 14:23:56, user John H Abeles wrote:

Estimates ( Stanford U ) for herd immunity are at around 40% or less ( Ionnaidis; Levitt)

On 2020-07-03 18:28:19, user Mark Pollington wrote:

Heterogeneous is clearly an important factor in determining herd immunity. However, in the developed counties discussed in this paper surely this will have been masked by the introduction of various non-pharmaceutical interventions.<br /> I was therefore fascinated to see how this problem could be tackled.

However, the equations outlining susceptibility do not appear to have been followed up to fit the parameters to data. Indeed, the discussion simply alludes to the authors fitting CVs which are an order of magnitude less than the susceptibility values used in the main paper!

Given the lack of evidence, then, why are arbitrarily susceptibility factors as high as 4 used? Why publish graphs which are so far removed from reasonable expectations? Unless politically motivated?

Clearly further research needs to be done to establish reasonable susceptibility factors, but I can't see any effective proposals in the paper. Computationaly intensive data fitting exercises with the inherent uncertainties in the data are certainly not the way to go!

On 2020-07-05 11:49:14, user OxImmuno Literature Initiative wrote:

https://www.immunology.ox.a...

On 2020-07-06 22:03:04, user Charles White wrote:

Full data and release for peer review? RNA detection only or did you culture in human epithelial cells?

On 2020-04-14 17:31:09, user Troy D wrote:

Why arent they using Zinc?

On 2020-07-11 23:36:55, user Monil Majmundar wrote:

Study showed corticosteroid was associated with lower risk of Icu transfer, intubation, mortality and higher probability of discharge.<br /> Corticosteroid was associated with 85% lower risk of primary outcome that is composite of icu transfer, intubation and death. 84% lower risk of icu transfer, 69% lower risk of intubation and 47% lower risk of mortality. 3.65 times higher probability of discharge.

On 2020-07-12 18:45:47, user Mario Moisés Alvarez wrote:

Please let us know if this contribution has been useful.<br /> Very, very best from Mx!

On 2020-07-13 18:19:24, user Dana C. wrote:

This study simply takes the estimated number of firearms in America and the annual firearm death rate then assigns a ratio. They apply this ratio to new firearm purchases with little or no adjustment for rioting, calls to defund police departments etc. The source of much of the data used is from The Gun Violence Archive which does not allow open access to it's data, it's criteria in forming and gathering it's data and is an openly anti gun organization.The results of this study have not been peer reviewed or subjected to any critical scrutiny. The results of this study are misleading at best and political biased and fraudulent at worst. It's no secret that a study can be manipulated to produce the desired end result which is clearly the result here. I have one question for those who prop up their ideologies with pseudo science, why are the 400,000 homicides (this is the most conservative estimate) that are prevented by legal/lawful gun owners annually never included in studies such as this?

On 2019-07-11 21:22:22, user Guyguy wrote:

EVOLUTION OF THE EBOLA EPIDEMIC IN THE PROVINCES OF NORTH KIVU AND ITURI

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

The epidemiological situation of the Ebola Virus Disease dated July 9, 2019:

131 Contaminated health workers<br /> 3 health workers, including 2 vaccinated, are among the new confirmed cases (1 in Beni, 1 in Kalunguta and 1 in Katwa). The unvaccinated Kalunguta health worker died in a community health center.<br /> The cumulative number of confirmed / probable cases among health workers is 131 (5% of all confirmed / probable cases), including 41 deaths.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, the cumulative number of cases is 2,437, of which 2,343 are confirmed and 94 are probable. In total, there were 1,646 deaths (1,552 confirmed and 94 probable) and 683 people healed.<br /> 358 suspected cases under investigation;<br /> 9 new confirmed cases, including 6 in Beni, 1 in Mambasa, 1 in Kalunguta and 1 in Katwa;<br /> 5 new confirmed case deaths:<br /> 5 community deaths, 2 in Beni, 1 in Oicha, 1 in Mambasa and 1 in Kalunguta;

Data on deaths of confirmed cases managed by Ebola Treatment Centers are not available this Wednesday.

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SURVEILLANCE

New health area affected: Mambasa (Ituri). The first case is an 8-year-old boy residing in Mambasa who had been to Beni with his mother. His mother, confirmed Ebola, died in Beni on June 19, 2019 but she was not buried in a dignified and secure manner. After developing the disease, the boy returned to Mambasa with his uncle. He died at the Mambasa Reference General Hospital.<br /> 156,851Vaccinated persons<br /> The only vaccine to be used in this outbreak is the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, manufactured by the pharmaceutical group Merck, following approval by the Ethics Committee in its decision of 19 May 2018.<br /> 73,466,784 Controlled people<br /> 80 entry points (PoE) and operational health checkpoints (PoC).<br /> Source: Ministry of Health press team on the state of the response to the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo

On 2019-07-17 03:34:18, user Guyguy wrote:

EBOLA DRC - Evolution of the response to the Ebola outbreak in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri on Sunday, July 14, 2019<br /> The epidemiological situation of the Ebola Virus Disease dated July 13, 2019:<br /> Since the beginning of the epidemic, the cumulative number of cases is 2,489, of which 2,395 confirmed and 94 probable. In total, there were 1,665 deaths (1,571 confirmed and 94 probable) and 698 people healed.<br /> 335 suspected cases under investigation;<br /> 12 new confirmed cases, including 6 in Mabalako, 4 in Beni, 1 in Katwa and 1 in Butembo;<br /> 10 new deaths of confirmed cases:<br /> 3 community deaths, including 1 in Mabalako, 1 in Beni and 1 in Katwa;<br /> 7 deaths at Ebola Treatment Center, including 4 in Beni, 2 in Mabalako and 1 in Butembo;<br /> 4 people recovered from Ebola Treatment Center, including 3 in Butembo and 1 in Beni.

Confirmed Ebola Patient from Butembo Supported at Goma Ebola Treatment Center

This Sunday, July 14, 2019, a pastor from South Kivu arrived in Goma after a short stay in Butembo. The 46-year-old pastor traveled from Bukavu to Butembo via Goma on Thursday, July 4 for an evangelistic mission. During his stay in Butembo, the pastor preached in seven churches where he regularly laid hands on Christians, including the sick. His first symptoms appeared on 9 July when he was still in Butembo. He was treated at home by a nurse until he left by bus for Goma on Friday, 12 July.

On the route between Butembo and Goma, the bus passed through 3 health checkpoints, namely Kanyabayonga, Kiwanja and OPRP. During the checks, he did not seem to show signs of the disease. In addition, at each checkpoint, he has written different names and surnames on the lists of travelers, probably indicating his desire to hide his identity and state of health.

As soon as he arrived in Goma on Sunday morning, he went to a health center because he did not feel well and started having a fever. No other patients were in the health center, reducing the risk of nosocomial infections of others. Nurses and doctors at the health center who recognized the symptoms of Ebola immediately alerted the response teams in Goma who transferred him to the Ebola Treatment Center (ETC). Around 15:00, the result of the lab test confirmed that he was Ebola positive. If his state of health permits, the patient will be transferred by ambulance to the ETC of Butembo to continue his care as of Monday, as provided by the procedure of the contingency plan.

It is important for people to stay calm. Due to the speed with which the patient has been identified and isolated, as well as the identification of all bus passengers from Butembo, the risk of spreading to the rest of the city of Goma remains low. Caution is still required. In order to avoid the contamination of additional people in Goma, it is urgent to break the chain of transmission by carrying out the following actions:<br /> Decontaminate the health center in which the patient has passed;<br /> Identify and vaccinate all contacts of the patient without exception;<br /> Track and limit contact movement for 21 days.<br /> Since November 2018, the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) have put in place an Ebola response planning and preparation system in the city of Goma due to the large influx of travelers from affected by the epidemic. The rapid detection of the patient by medical teams at the Goma health center proves the effectiveness of the city's preparedness activities to cope with the importation of potential Ebola patients. As part of this preparation, more than 3,000 health workers in Goma have been vaccinated and trained in the detection and management of Ebola patients.

In addition, the transport company has shown great professionalism in having a passenger register and making this register available to response teams to identify all passengers on the bus. The bus driver and the 18 other passengers have been identified and their vaccination will begin on Monday, July 15, 2019.

The collaboration of the entire population is necessary to prevent the spread of the epidemic in Goma. Beyond the medical arsenal, the Ministry of Health recalls that the response against Ebola is above all community.

As a reminder, the recommendations of the Ministry of Health are as follows:<br /> Follow basic hygiene practices, including regular hand washing with soap and water or ashes;<br /> If an acquaintance from an epidemic area comes to visit you and is ill, do not touch her and call the North Kivu civil protection hotline directly;<br /> If you are identified as an Ebola patient contact, agree to be vaccinated and followed for 21 days;<br /> If a person dies because of Ebola, follow the rules for safe and dignified burials. It is simply a funeral method that respects funerary customs and traditions while protecting the family and community from Ebola contamination.<br /> For all health professionals, observe the hygiene measures in the health centers and declare any patient with symptoms of Ebola (fever, diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue, anorexia, bleeding).<br /> If all citizens respect the sanitary measures advocated by the Ministry of Health, it is possible to ensure that this case of Ebola detected in Goma is a sporadic case that does not cause a new outbreak.<br /> Source: Ministry of Health press team on the state of the response to the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo

On 2019-07-14 20:05:47, user Edward Tufte wrote:

Please please integrate excellent image with the text, so that adjacent text describes the image.<br /> Segregating text and image is for antique publishers only. Also your preprint will have more readers than any journal article, so do your best by those readers. If it is ever published, you can<br /> re-segregate text and image for the commercial publisher.

On errors in medical measurement, this good study: “Covariates are often measured with error, introducing bias and imprecision. Practices regarding covariate measurement error were assessed via a systematic review of general medicine and epidemiology literature. In original research published in 2016 in 12 high-impact journals,<br /> only 247 (44%) of the 565 original research publications reported measurement errors, <br /> only 18 publications (7% of 247) used methods to investigate or correct for measurement error.”

Excellent article by Timo B. Brakenhoff, Marian Mitroiu, Ruth H. Keogh, Karel G.M. Moons, Rolf Groenwold, Maarten van Smeden, “Measurement error is often neglected in medical literature,” Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, March 2018, 89-97, edited.

On 2019-09-30 05:56:18, user Guyguy wrote:

EVOLUTION OF THE EPIDEMIC IN THE PROVINCES OF NORTH KIVU AND ITURI AS AT SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

The epidemiological situation of the Ebola Virus Disease dated September 27, 2019

Saturday, September 28, 2019

• Since the beginning of the epidemic, the cumulative number of cases is 3,186, of which 3,072 are confirmed and 114 are probable. In total, there were 2,128 deaths (2014 confirmed and 114 probable) and 989 people healed. <br /> • 446 suspected cases under investigation; <br /> • 3 new confirmed cases, including: <br /> • No cases in North Kivu; <br /> • 3 in Ituri, including 2 in Mandima and 1 Komanda; <br /> • No new confirmed deaths have been recorded; <br /> • No health worker is among the new confirmed cases. The cumulative number of confirmed / probable cases among health workers is 160 (5% of all confirmed / probable cases), including 41 deaths. • Vaccination rings were opened Friday, September 27, 2019 around confirmed cases of September 26 in the Mambasa Health Area located in the health zone of Mambasa in Ituri; <br /> • The satellite ring vaccination around the confirmed case of 20.09.2019 that started the disease in Beni continues in the health areas of Lisasa and Kalunguta in Kalunguta in the province of North Kivu; <br /> • Since the beginning of vaccination on August 8, 2018, 229,484 people have been vaccinated; <br /> • The only vaccine to be used in this outbreak is the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, manufactured by the pharmaceutical group Merck, following approval by the Ethics Committee in its decision of 20 May 2018. • Since the beginning of the epidemic, the total number of travelers checked (temperature measurement) at the sanitary control points is 99,958,288; <br /> • To date, a total of 111 entry points (PoE) and sanitary control points (PoCs) have been set up in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri to protect the country's major cities and prevent the spread of the epidemic in neighboring countries.

As a reminder, the recommendations of the MULTISECTORAL COMMITTEE OF THE RESPONSE TO EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE are as follows:

1. Follow basic hygiene practices, including regular hand washing with soap and water or ashes;
2. If an acquaintance from an epidemic area comes to visit you and is ill, do not touch her and call the North Kivu Civil Protection toll-free number;
3. If you are identified as a contact of an Ebola patient, agree to be vaccinated and followed for 21 days;
4. If a person dies because of Ebola, follow the instructions for safe and dignified burials. It is simply a funeral method that respects funerary customs and traditions while protecting the family and community from Ebola contamination.
5. For all health professionals, observe the hygiene measures in the health centers and declare any person with symptoms of # Ebola (fever, diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue, anorexia, bleeding). <br /> If all citizens respect these health measures recommended by the Secretariat, it is possible to quickly end this 10th epidemic.

On 2019-10-04 08:05:29, user Guyguy wrote:

EVOLUTION OF THE EPIDEMIC IN THE PROVINCES OF NORTH KIVU AND ITURI AS AT 02 OCTOBER 2019 <br /> Thursday, October 03, 2019 <br /> Since the beginning of the epidemic, the cumulative number of cases is 3,198, of which 3,084 are confirmed and 114 are probable. In total, there were 2,137 deaths (2023 confirmed and 114 probable) and 995 people healed. <br /> 427 suspected cases under investigation; <br /> 1 new case confirmed in Ituri in Mandima; <br /> 1 new confirmed case;1 person cured out of the CTE in North Kivu in The cumulative number of confirmed / probable cases among health workers is 161 (5% of all confirmed / probable cases), including 41 deaths. <br /> 17th day without response activities in the Lwemba Health Area in Mandima, Ituri.<br /> LEXICON <br /> • A community death is any death that occurs outside a Ebola Treatment Center. <br /> • A probable case is a death for which it was not possible to obtain biological samples for confirmation in the laboratory but where the investigations revealed an epidemiological link with a confirmed or probable case.<br /> NEWS<br /> Prime Minister ready to implement the commitments of the Head of State through the ST / CMRE <br /> - Prime Minister, Sylvester Ilunga Ilukamba, considers that the commitments of the Head of State, President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, recalled from the top of the UN platform, are relayed in the field by the effectiveness of leadership and the Coordination of the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo through the Technical Secretariat of the Multisectoral Ebola <br /> - He said it during a meeting he chaired this Thursday, October 03, 2019 with the ST / CMRE delegation led by his Technical Secretary Prof. Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum who was accompanied by Dr. Kebela and Prof. Michel Kaswa; <br /> - From this meeting, we note that as early as next week, the Prime Minister will bring together the ministers of Health, Budget and Finance to support the interventions of the response; <br /> - To this end, he stressed that the multisectoral vision of the response is, at the same time, to end the Ebola Virus Disease and to respond to the security and socio-economic needs of the populations affected by this epidemic ; <br /> - He promised that his government will support the approach of the Technical Secretariat of the CMRE to work for the Strengthening of the whole health system of the DRC; <br /> - Since July 20, 2019, the Head of State, the President of the Republic Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, is coordinating the response to the epidemic to the Ebola virus disease and has decided to entrust the responsibility of the Technical Secretariat of the Multisectoral Committee to a team of experts under the direction of Professor Jean-Jasques Muyembe Tamfum; <br /> - The mission of the technical secretariat is to put in place all innovative measures that are urgent and indispensable for the rapid control of the epidemic.<br /> VACCINATION<br /> - Preparation of the Vitamin A Polio Immunization Campaign and Mebendazole Deworming in the 17 health zones of the Butembo Antenna, an area affected by Ebola Virus Disease; <br /> - 17 days already without opening rings around 5 confirmed cases in the Lwemba health area in Mandima in Ituri due to interethnic conflicts and insecurities. <br /> - An expanded vaccination ring was opened around the confirmed case of September 30, 2019 in Biakatp health area in Mandima in Ituri after dialogues and sensitizations carried out by the communication and psycho-social subcommittees; <br /> - Since vaccination began on 8 August 2018, 232,160 people have been vaccinated; <br /> The only vaccine to be used in this outbreak is the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, manufactured by the pharmaceutical group Merck, following approval by the Ethics Committee in its decision of 20 May 2018.<br /> MONITORING AT ENTRY POINTS- A FONER Komanda checkpoint provider (PoC) was abducted on Wednesday 02 October 2019 by unidentified men who released him 75 km from the PoC. This provider of surveillance at the Control Points has already resumed its daily services; <br /> - Since the beginning of the epidemic, the cumulative number of travelers checked (temperature measurement ) at the sanitary control points is 101,714,685 ; <br /> - To date, a total of 111 entry points (PoE) and sanitary control points (PoCs) have been set up in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri to protect the country's major cities and prevent the spread of the epidemic in neighboring countries.<br /> As a reminder, the recommendations of the MULTISECTORAL COMMITTEE OF THE RESPONSE TO EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE are as follows: <br /> 1. Follow basic hygiene practices, including regular hand washing with soap and water or ashes; <br /> 2. If an acquaintance from an epidemic area comes to visit you and is ill, do not touch her and call the North Kivu Civil Protection toll-free number; <br /> 3. If you are identified as a contact of an Ebola patient, agree to be vaccinated and followed for 21 days; <br /> 4. If a person dies because of Ebola, follow the instructions for safe and dignified burials. It is simply a funeral method that respects funerary customs and traditions while protecting the family and community from Ebola contamination. <br /> 5. For all health professionals, observe the hygiene measures in the health centers and declare any person with symptoms of Ebola (fever, diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue, anorexia, bleeding). <br /> If all citizens respect these health measures recommended by the Secretariat, it is possible to quickly end this 10th epidemic.

On 2019-10-16 12:44:35, user GuyguyKabundi Tshima wrote:

EVOLUTION OF THE EPIDEMIC IN THE PROVINCES OF NORTH KIVU AND ITURI AS AT OCTOBER 11, 2019<br /> Saturday, October 12, 2019<br /> Since the beginning of the epidemic, the cumulative number of cases is 3,212, of which 3,098 are confirmed and 114 are probable. In total, there were 2,148 deaths (2034 confirmed and 114 probable) and 1031 people cured.<br /> 466 suspected cases under investigation;<br /> 2 new confirmed cases at CTE in Ituri in Mandima;<br /> 2 new confirmed deaths, including:<br /> 2 community deaths in Ituri in Mandima;<br /> No confirmed deaths in CTE;<br /> 3 people healed from the CTE, including 2 in Ituri in Komanda and 1 in North Kivu in Katwa;<br /> No health workers are among the newly confirmed cases. The cumulative number of confirmed / probable cases among health workers is 161 (5% of all confirmed / probable cases), including 41 deaths.

NEWS

Organization of a press conference on the evolution of Ebola Virus Disease in Kinshasa<br /> - The Technical Secretary of the Multisectoral Committee for Ebola Virus Epidemic Response (CMRE), Prof. Jean Jacques Muyembe Tamfum chaired this Saturday, October 12, 2019 in Kinshasa a press conference during which he gave an update on the 10th epidemic Ebola Virus Disease in the DRC since its declaration on August 1 , 2018 to date;<br /> - To this end, he showed the strategies used in the response of this epidemic and spoke of the recourse to technological innovations, while recalling that the Head of State, President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, placed him at head of the technical secretariat of CMRE, with two main missions. This includes ending the epidemic as soon as possible and capitalizing on the achievements of this epidemic to strengthen the DRC's health system, starting with the three provinces affected by this epidemic;<br /> - Speaking of the evolution of the response, he reported some tangible progress, notably from July 2019, where 90 confirmed cases per week were recorded, or 15 per day, while currently there are fewer than 20 case by week, ie 1 to 3 cases per day, or even zero cases confirmed as the 05 October 2019 last. " In this period, three provinces were active (North and South Kivu, as well as Ituri), while today only the province of Ituri is affected . Today, only 9 zones are affected of the 22 recorded in July 2019, "said the technical secretary of the CMRE;<br /> - He said that for now the epidemic is concentrated in the North from where it came before revealing itself in Mangina and Mabalako in North Kivu. Hence all efforts are concentrated to put an end to this epidemic as quickly as possible;<br /> - Regarding strategies to end this epidemic, the Pof. Muyembe spoke about the change of approach that is now multisectoral and that at present, the outline of the epidemic is placed under the leadership of the presidency of the Democratic Republic of Congo with as coordinator the Prime Minister. This committee has a technical secretariat which directs the general coordination managed by Prof. Steve Ahuka and the provincial sub-coordinators of the response;<br /> - The second strategy was to maintain the motivation of the teams on the spot. This has been regularized with the support of the World Bank. An operating budget is now given to the coordination in Goma as well as all the co-ordination;<br /> - The other strategy is to give more importance to national leadership. A partnership has been built with WHO, UNICEF and MSF that support coordination in Goma. Nationals are at the forefront and partners support. This has changed a lot on the field, says Professor Muyembe;<br /> - Finally, notes the Technical Secretary, innovations have been made with this epidemic with the use of experimental vaccines, first RVSV zebov from Merck with belt vaccination which has shown its effectiveness;<br /> - " It is time to use a new vaccine, following the recommendations of the SAGE expert group that advises WHO on immunization. On May 15, 2019, this group recommended using an adjusted dose of the RVSV vaccine to prevent a possible shortage due to the fact that the epidemic lasts a long time, "Prof. Muyembe;<br /> - He added: " His second recommendation was to use a second preventive vaccine. After proposals, it is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that presents the most data on the scientific level . He announced that the teams are prepared to give correct communication and to vaccinate the population;<br /> - He recalled that this second vaccine is used in West Africa since 2013, will also be used in Rwanda and Goma to protect the Congolese compatriots of Goma, where more than 64,000 of them cross the border daily. to go to Gisenyi and vice versa;<br /> - The first batch of the J & J vaccine, 500 000 doses can arrive in the DRC from 18 October 2019 and vaccination can begin in early November 2019 in two communes of Goma to extend later in other provinces;<br /> - The clinical trials carried out by the DRC will serve the world, since now two molecules tested are now available to break the chain of transmission during the next appearances of the Ebola virus.<br /> - " From this year, Ebola became a curable disease because we found medicines to cure the sick. It can also be avoided by immunization, especially if in both cases, one arrives in time, "concluded the technical secretary of the Multisectoral Committee for the Response to the Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic Muyembe Tamfum.

VACCINATION

• A new vaccination ring was opened around two confirmed cases from 10 October 2019 in the Biakato Health Area in Mangina / AS Biakato mine with low participation due to a strong community reluctance;
• Vaccination of newly recruited front-line staff continues at Kyondo Reference Hospital and Kayna Health Zone in Bulinda, North Kivu;
• Continuation of Local Polio Vaccination Days integrated with Vitamin A supplementation and Mebendazole deworming in 17 health zones at the Butembo antenna in North Kivu;
• Since the beginning of vaccination on August 8, 2018, 237,165 people have been vaccinated;
• The only vaccine to be used in this outbreak is the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, manufactured by the pharmaceutical group Merck, following approval by the Ethics Committee in its decision of 20 May 2018.

MONITORING AT ENTRY POINTS

• Since the beginning of the epidemic, the total number of travelers checked (temperature measurement ) at the sanitary control points is 105,171,551 ;
• To date, a total of 111 entry points (PoE) and sanitary control points (PoCs) have been set up in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri to protect the country's major cities and prevent the spread of the epidemic in neighboring countries.

As a reminder, the recommendations of the MULTISECTORAL COMMITTEE OF THE RESPONSE TO EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE are as follows:

1. Follow basic hygiene practices, including regular hand washing with soap and water or ashes;
2. If an acquaintance from an epidemic area comes to visit you and is ill, do not touch her and call the North Kivu Civil Protection toll-free number;
3. If you are identified as a contact of an Ebola patient, agree to be vaccinated and followed for 21 days;
4. If a person dies because of Ebola, follow the instructions for safe and dignified burials. It is simply a funeral method that respects funerary customs and traditions while protecting the family and community from Ebola contamination.
5. For all health professionals, observe the hygiene measures in the health centers and declare any person with symptoms of # Ebola (fever, diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue, anorexia, bleeding).<br /> If all citizens respect these health measures recommended by the Secretariat, it is possible to quickly end this 10th epidemic.

On 2019-10-18 23:18:45, user GuyguyKabundi Tshima wrote:

EVOLUTION OF THE EPIDEMIC IN THE PROVINCES OF NORTH KIVU AND ITURI AS AT OCTOBER 16, 2019<br /> Thursday, October 17, 2019<br /> Since the beginning of the epidemic, the cumulative number of cases is 3,228, of which 3,144 are confirmed and 114 are probable. In total, there were 2,158 deaths (2044 confirmed and 114 probable) and 1038 people healed.<br /> 443 suspected cases under investigation;<br /> 1 new confirmed case in North Kivu, including:<br /> 1 case in North Kivu in Mabalako;<br /> No cases in Ituri;<br /> 4 new confirmed deaths in North Kivu, including:<br /> 1 community death in North Kivu in Mabalako;<br /> 3 deaths confirmed at CTE in North Kivu in Mabalako;<br /> No healed person left CTE;<br /> No health workers are among the newly confirmed cases. The cumulative number of confirmed / probable cases among health workers is 161 (5% of all confirmed / probable cases), including 41 deaths.

LEXICON<br /> • A community death is any death that occurs outside a #Ebola Treatment Center.<br /> • A probable case is a death for which it was not possible to obtain biological samples for confirmation in the laboratory but where the investigations revealed an epidemiological link with a confirmed or probable case.

NEWS<br /> NOTHING TO REPORT

VACCINATION<br /> - A satellite ring was opened in Mambasa prison around the confirmed case of 12 October 2019 in Nyakunde;<br /> - Continuation of expanded ring vaccination in Mataba in the health zone of Kalunguta around the 2 confirmed cases of 12 October 2019;<br /> - Continuation of the vaccination of newly recruited front-line staff (PPL) in the Kyondo (HGR Kyondo) and Kayna Health Zones (Bulinda Health Area), Musienene (Kimbulu Reference Health Center) and Butembo (Vulindi Health Area);<br /> - Preparation of the vaccination of biker taximen in the sub-coordinations of Butembo, Beni, Mangina in Mabalako in North Kivu and Mambasa in Ituri.<br /> - Since the beginning of vaccination on August 8, 2018, 239,139 people have been vaccinated;<br /> - The only vaccine to be used in this outbreak is the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, manufactured by the pharmaceutical group Merck, following approval by the Ethics Committee in its decision of 20 May 2018.

MONITORING AT ENTRY POINTS<br /> - Nasty destruction of huts and launching leaflets against providers at PoC Kolikoko;<br /> - Since the beginning of the epidemic, the total number of checked travelers (temperature rise) at the sanitary control points is 106,999,606 ;<br /> - To date, a total of 111 entry points (PoE) and sanitary control points (PoCs) have been set up in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri to protect the country's major cities and prevent the spread of the epidemic in neighboring countries.

As a reminder, the recommendations of the MULTISECTORAL COMMITTEE OF THE RESPONSE TO EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE are as follows:

1. Follow basic hygiene practices, including regular hand washing with soap and water or ashes;
2. If an acquaintance from an epidemic area comes to visit you and is ill, do not touch her and call the North Kivu Civil Protection toll-free number;
3. If you are identified as a contact of an Ebola patient, agree to be vaccinated and followed for 21 days;
4. If a person dies because of Ebola, follow the instructions for safe and dignified burials. It is simply a funeral method that respects funerary customs and traditions while protecting the family and community from Ebola contamination.
5. For all health professionals, observe the hygiene measures in the health centers and declare any person with symptoms of # Ebola (fever, diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue, anorexia, bleeding).<br /> If all citizens respect these health measures recommended by the Secretariat, it is possible to quickly end this 10th epidemic.

On 2019-11-16 01:59:42, user Guyguy wrote:

EVOLUTION OF THE EPIDEMIC IN THE PROVINCES OF NORTH KIVU AND ITURI AS AT 14 NOVEMBER 2019

Friday, November 15, 2019

• Since the beginning of the epidemic, the cumulative number of cases is 3,292, of which 3,174 are confirmed and 118 are probable. In total, there were 2,195 deaths (2077 confirmed and 118 probable) and 1070 people healed.<br /> • 508 suspected cases under investigation;<br /> • No new confirmed cases;<br /> • 2 new deaths of confirmed cases in North Kivu, including 1 in Beni and 1 in Mabalako;<br /> • 3 healed people released from CTE in North Kivu in Mabalako;<br /> • No health worker is among the new confirmed cases. The cumulative number of confirmed / probable cases among health workers is 163 (5% of all confirmed / probable cases), including 41 deaths;

NEWS

Continuation of vaccination with the 2nd Ebola vaccine in two health zones of Karisimbi in Goma

• Vaccination continues in the health zones of Majengo and Kahembe in Karisimbi (Goma);<br /> • A total of 40 people were vaccinated, including 34 adults and 6 children under 18;<br /> • This vaccination began on Thursday, November 14, 2019 with the Ad26.ZEBOV / MVA-BN-Filo vaccine, produced by Janssen Pharmaceuticals for Johnson & Johnson. This second vaccine was approved on 22 October 2019 by the Ethics Committee of the School of Public Health of the University of Kinshasa and 23 October 2019 by the National Ethics Committee.

VACCINATION

• 40 people were vaccinated with the 2nd Ad26.ZEBOV / MVA-BN-Filo vaccine (Johnson & Johnson) in the two Health Zones of Karisimbi in Goma;<br /> • Since the start of vaccination on August 8, 2018 with the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, 252,249 people have been vaccinated;<br /> • Approved October 22, 2019 by the Ethics Committee of the School of Public Health of the University of Kinshasa and October 23, 2019 by the National Ethics Committee, the second vaccine, called Ad26.ZEBOV / MVA-BN -Filo, is produced by Janssen Pharmaceuticals for Johnson & Johnson.<br /> • This new vaccine comes in addition to the first, the rVSV-ZEBOV, the vaccine used until then (since August 08, 2018) in this epidemic. Manufactured by the pharmaceutical group Merck, after approval of the Ethics Committee on May 20, 2018, it has recently been approved.

MONITORING AT ENTRY POINTS

• A 38-year-old woman from Beni for Nzanga in Mutwanga, North Kivu, high-risk contact was intercepted at PK5 checkpoint (PoC) in Beni. She is in contact with a source case notified to Beni on 03 November 2019;<br /> • Since the beginning of the epidemic, the total number of checked travelers (temperature increase) at the sanitary control points up to 13 November is 116,622,388 ;<br /> • To date, a total of 112 entry points (PoE) and sanitary control points (PoCs) have been set up in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri to protect the country's major cities and prevent the spread of the epidemic in neighboring countries.

As a reminder, the recommendations of the MULTISECTORAL COMMITTEE OF THE RESPONSE TO EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE are as follows:

1. Follow basic hygiene practices, including regular hand washing with soap and water or ashes;
2. If an acquaintance from an epidemic area comes to visit you and is ill, do not touch her and call the North Kivu Civil Protection toll-free number;
3. If you are identified as a contact of an Ebola patient, agree to be vaccinated and followed for 21 days;
4. If a person dies because of Ebola, follow the instructions for safe and dignified burials. It is simply a funeral method that respects funerary customs and traditions while protecting the family and community from Ebola contamination.
5. For all health professionals, observe the hygiene measures in the health centers and declare any person with symptoms of # Ebola (fever, diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue, anorexia, bleeding).<br /> If all citizens respect these health measures recommended by the Secretariat, it is possible to quickly end this 10th epidemic.