Coronavirus pandemic in the US

Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John King announced the creation of a task force to communicate and educate critical information and important coronavirus measures in Spanish.  

King said he wants the workers at the town’s poultry plants to practice the same precautions at home as they are required to at work.

“I've toured local poultry plants firsthand to see the safety measures that have been put in place to protect workers while maintaining the supply. Now the next step is to ensure workers continue maintaining these same practices while at home in their communities," King said.

A team at Johns Hopkins school of public health is starting a trial to see if so-called convalescent plasma, or plasma from Covid-19 survivors, can help prevent infections in frontline health care workers.

A second team at the school will test plasma in people who are not sick enough to be hospitalized to see if the plasma might help keep them out of the hospital.

The idea of using blood plasma from people who have recovered from an infectious disease isn’t new, Dr. Arturo Casadevall, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at the school, said during a briefing. Blood plasma contains antibodies that people have developed over time to fight off an infection, and they can be used to kickstart someone else’s response.

But it’s rare for anyone to conduct a controlled clinical trial to prove it actually helps people recover, or acts to prevent disease. An informal network of researchers is working to coordinate donations from coronavirus survivors across the US and study what happens to people who receive it.

Several teams have been testing donated plasma in extremely ill patients. The two Johns Hopkins trials will seek to show whether it helps at earlier stages. The teams will recruit 150 people for the trial to see if plasma protects frontline workers, and 1,000 patients for the trial aimed at showing whether plasma helps prevent serious illness from developing.

“You are really looking for that proportion of individuals who get sick and then progress,” Casadevall said. That is a minority of patients, so at least 1,000 will be needed to randomize them and treat half with convalescent plasma and half with blood plasma not taken from Covid-19 survivors, he said.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said mail-in ballots for everyone in the state will be “essential” for November’s general election.

Pritzker suggested such a law would be a priority for the state legislature later this year

He added that in-person voting will take place with input from the Illinois Department of Health.

People choosing to stay on unemployment instead of returning to work “is a real issue,” Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo said Thursday.

Raimondo stressed that she is grateful to Congress for expanding unemployment benefits and called it “the right thing to do,” but also said the program has had unintended consequences.

Rhode Island begins its phase one reopening this weekend.

One of New York’s largest hospital systems stopped recommending doctors use hydroxychloroquine, a medication for malaria, as a standard of care for patients admitted with Covid-19 in April, one of its top doctors told CNN.

Dr. Thomas McGinn, deputy physician-in-chief and senior vice president for Northwell Health, said the hospital system began recommending hydroxychloroquine as a standard of care toward the end of March for patients who had low levels of blood oxygen saturation and didn’t have heart or liver problems.

McGinn said his colleagues have experience prescribing hydroxychloroquine with other conditions and that, of at least 500 Covid-19 patients who were administered hydroxychloroquine in the Northwell Health System, his colleagues “saw no side effects.” Patients were closely monitored for possible side effects impacting the heart with electrocardiograms.

But after a study of the drug involving hundreds of patients at US Veterans Health Administration health centers showed that patients were no less likely to need mechanical ventilation and had higher death rates compared to those who did not take the drug, McGinn said his team of doctors and administrators decided to stop recommending the drug as a standard of care.

“When the VA trial came out and showed no benefit, we felt that undermined doing this at all. We quickly pivoted on that and decided to pull that recommendation,” McGinn said. “We prefer not to give a drug if there’s no benefit."

Northwell Health is New York State’s largest health care provider and private employer, operating 23 hospitals and nearly 800 outpatient facilities across the state, according to their website.

It is now easier to get critical supplies for coronavirus testing than it was last month, the Association of Public Health Laboratories said Thursday.

“The reality is that the supply chain does remain constrained, but is getting better every week,” APHL’s chief operating officer Scott Becker said during a media briefing Thursday.

This week, the federal government began regular shipments of swabs and viral transport media, which is the critical component necessary for collecting virus samples for testing, Becker said. Shortages of these supplies had been a “big challenge across the country.”

“There's also some high throughput tests that are being shipped out later this week by a company called Hologic and that tool will be very helpful to clinical and public health labs across the country, in terms of expanding the testing,” he added.

In a media briefing two weeks ago, APHL said public health labs were still reporting critical shortfalls in testing material, including swabs and the chemical reagents needed to perform Covid-19 tests.

There are 97 public health laboratories in all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the US Virgin Islands, and hundreds of private labs across the country.

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Movie theaters in Montana will be allowed to reopen on May 15, according to new guidance announced Thursday. 

Theaters will only be able to operate at 50% capacity with 6 feet of separation between families. They are also being told to “increase cleaning and sanitizing of frequently touched surfaces." Cleaning must be done at least once every two hours.

Museums will be also allowed to reopen on May 15 under the same restrictions, along with fitness centers and pools. Workers in gyms must wear a mask. Customers are encouraged to do the same, but it will not be mandatory.

There are 22 new deaths and 262 new cases in Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves announced today.

"It's clear the number of deaths continue to rise in our state," he said

The state has at total of 8,686 cases and 396 deaths from Covid-19. At least 1,037 of those cases and 169 of the deaths are attributed to the state's long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes.  

Reeves amended the safer-at-home order on Monday to allow outdoor gatherings for up to 20 people. Restaurants can offer indoor dining as long as they abide by the strict guidelines presented in the amended order. The safer-at-home order expires May 11.