June 10 coronavirus news

America’s nurses were ill-prepared for the coronavirus pandemic and work needs to start now to get them ready for the next emergency, a new report concluded.

Many nurses lacked the right training to deal with the onslaught of patients and were not given the support they needed to do their jobs well, the team at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security found.

The report cites a survey by the American Nurses Association found that only 11% of nurses felt that they were well prepared to care for a patient with Covid-19. It found that 87% of nurses feared going to work and 36% of nurses had cared for an infectious patient without sufficient protective equipment.

“Developing a national nursing workforce response for pandemic and public health emergencies will improve quality of care, help contain the emergency, and protect the health of nurses and other providers, patients, families, and community members.”

Recommendations include providing immediate coronavirus testing for all health care workers, including nurses, the team, led by Center director Dr. Tom Inglesby, said.

The team also suggested that the US Department of Health and Human Services develop a plan for ways that nurses can train to take on crucial pandemic roles, such as in dispensing medical supplies.

Nursing education also needs to change, adding training for nurses on pandemic preparedness as a specific requirement, the team recommended. And the government should fund training for the current nursing workforce to prepare them for emergencies such as pandemics.

Peru and Colombia showed a continued spread of Covid-19 Wednesday after their respective health ministries reported their daily tolls.

Peru, one of the recent hotspots in Latin America, saw 5,087 new confirmed cases Wednesday, bringing the country's total to at least 208,823.  

The Peruvian Health Ministry also reported 165 new Covid-19 deaths, bringing the death toll to at least 5,903.

Meanwhile, Colombia reported 1,604 new cases Wednesday, bringing the country's total to at least 43,682. Colombia also recorded 61 new deaths from the virus, bringing its death toll to at least 1,433.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has extended his "safe return" order another two weeks, while loosening some restrictions on businesses.

A 10 p.m. cut off time for restaurants and bars that serve alcohol has been lifted under the new order; and gyms and fitness center may increase the number of customers to 50% capacity, Reeves said.

The new order allows outdoor and indoor arenas to open under social distancing restrictions, such as limiting seating capacity to 25%, and following guidelines for business operations are in effect under Executive Order No. 1492, according to the governor’s website. 

The amended safe return order will remain in place until 8 a.m. on June 29.

The Iowa State Fair has been postponed, according to the event's Twitter account, for the first time since World War II. 

“We are heartbroken we can’t be together this August. We tirelessly analyzed all the unique traditions at the Iowa State Fair and believe it will be safer given the current COVID-19 situation,” according to a message posted on the fair's website.

The next Iowa State Fair will be August 12-22, 2021.

Only five fairs have been canceled in the past: 1898 because of the World’s Fair in Omaha, the Spanish-American War and World War II from 1942-1945, according to the fair's website. 

Grocery stores, banks, dentists, universities and big box stores like Walmart should reopen earlier and face fewer restrictions as communities open up after pandemic lockdowns, researchers said Wednesday.

Cafes, gyms, sporting goods stores, bookstores, tobacco and liquor stores should be kept closed until later, they said in a new report.

The researchers taking part in a MIT-led initiative did a cost benefit analysis of 26 different location types to determine what the tradeoff would be between someone’s relative risk of getting infected during a visit and the importance of that establishment in that person’s life and to the economy. 

They used anonymous geolocation data from 47 million mobile phones to track where people went in the US during February and March. They determined how risky a location could be based in part on how much social contact someone would have in that location, how many hours they’d spend there, how crowded it would be, how many visits they’d make, and how many unique visitors they may encounter.

They also factored in visits by people 65 years and older and the distance traveled to the location. They measured economic benefits using US Census statistics and nationally representative consumer survey data.

They found some surprises.

“Conversely, we find liquor and tobacco stores to be relatively poor trade-offs (due to mediocre economic importance and small busy stores), yet the number of visits to this category has declined by less than 5%.”

Some categories were easy — grocery stores have an obvious benefit and museums and movie theaters were of relatively low importance.

“Hardware stores are the location which has seen the largest increase in visits, as individuals scrounge for personal protective equipment and other home supplies,” the researchers noted.

Since many states have had to make reopening and closing decisions in the dark, the researchers hope their work will help policymakers figure out how to reopen the economy safely this time and if there are spikes in cases in particular regions.

Disneyland is proposing reopening its Southern California resort on July 17, according to a post on the park's official website.

The three main elements of their Anaheim, California, campus will begin with the reopening of the shopping district in Downtown Disney on July 9, theme parks Disneyland and California Adventure on July 17, and hotels Paradise Pier and Grand Californian on July 23.

As theme park capacity will be limited, Disneyland will implement a new reservation system along with new health and safety protocols.

The proposal is subject to the approval of the Orange County Health Department.

Some context: Disney CEO Bob Chapek previously told CNN that there will be “layers upon layers upon layers of defenses against the virus.”

This will include temperature checks for employees, or as Disney calls them, cast members.

Florida’s Disney World is set to reopen on July 11.

In the past five days alone, Brazil confirmed more than 100,000 new cases of the novel coronavirus.

The health ministry reported another 32,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the country's total to at least 772,416.

The country is also nearing 40,000 deaths from the virus, after recording 1,274 new Covid-19 deaths Wednesday. 

The coronavirus death toll in Brazil stands at 39,680.

Brazil is Latin America's hardest-hit country by the virus, holding the second-highest number of cases globally behind the US.

The US federal government said Wednesday it’s investing to help a company develop an at-home saliva test to look for antibodies to coronavirus.

It’s given OraSure $629,000 to develop the test, which would be specially designed for rapid-scale analysis. Antibody tests look for evidence of past infection with coronavirus and can give public health officials an idea of the extent of the pandemic. It’s not clear whether past infection protects people from future infections with the virus.

“Currently there are no SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests based on oral fluids available for high-throughput ELISA screening,” the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement.

It's the second test that OraSure is developing for BARDA’s coronavirus efforts. It also made an at-home saliva test to diagnose active coronavirus infections.

Hispanics are disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus pandemic due to their jobs as essential workers and multi-generational living conditions, according to a panel of health experts at Duke University.

“We're talking about people who have, during this pandemic, have been essential in working in meatpacking plants and manufacturing. They have been involved in cleaning, maintenance construction jobs,” Dr. Viviana Martinez-Bianchi, a primary care doctor and associate professor in family medicine and community health at Duke, said during the discussion Wednesday afternoon.

Rosa Gonzalez-Guarda, an associate professor at the Duke University School of Nursing, agreed that the primary way the Hispanic population is contracting coronavirus at disproportionate rates is by “simply going to work.”

Another problem: multi-generational homes. “In this country in particular, the similarities of people living together of different ages, with some of the members of their family being essential workers, going to work and then bringing, getting sick at work and then bringing it home,” Martinez-Bianchi said.

Gonzalez-Guarda said people need better on-the-job protections.

“This means not only providing mask and social distancing measures in the workplace, but also putting pressure on business owners to provide paid sick leave to workers so that people don't have to make the decision between going to work while they're sick and potentially infecting others, or paying rent or providing food at home,” she said.

Another problem is access to testing, the panelists said. Barriers to testing include financial issues and access to insurance.

“We need more investment of resources and attention from leaders and government and health care institution and business owners,” Gonzalez-Guarda said.