September 2 coronavirus news

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said he was “surprised” by the media uproar on treatment guidelines for convalescent plasma for Covid-19, in a tweet Tuesday evening.

 “Surprised by media uproar on Treatment Guidelines on convalescent plasma for #COVID19,” the tweet said.

Collins went on to say that the guidelines mirror an emergency use authorization; that the EUA says “CP should not be considered new standard of care,” and provided a link to the EUA.

“No news here,” Collins concluded his tweet.

Some background: An NIH panel said yesterday there's no evidence backing the use of convalescent plasma to treat coronavirus patients and that doctors should not treat it as a standard of care until more study has been done.

"There are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of convalescent plasma for the treatment of COVID-19," the panel of more than three dozen experts said in a statement posted on the NIH website Tuesday.

The statement, which was posted quietly, contradicts the Trump Administration's characterization of the treatment as "historic" and a "major advance" and directly refers to last week's emergency use authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration.

College students infected with the novel coronavirus should stay on campus and isolate there as opposed to returning home, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

A return to campus for the new academic year has colleges and universities struggling to both contain outbreaks of Covid-19 and enforce policies meant to prevent its spread.

“Keep them at the university in a place that’s sequestered enough from the other students, but don’t have them go home, because they could be spreading it in their home state,” Fauci said during a prerecorded interview on NBC’s Today Show on Wednesday.

Asked if campuses should be shut down when there are infected students to send kids home, Fauci replied: “It’s the worst thing you could do.”

Holiday weekends have led to surges in Covid-19 cases but practicing mitigation measures can help prevent these surges, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 

“When you have a holiday like Labor Day – we have seen after the 4th of July, we saw after Memorial Day – a surge in cases,” Fauci said during a prerecorded interview on NBC’s Today Show on Wednesday.

“Wear a mask, keep social distancing, avoid crowds. You can avoid those kinds of surges,” he said.

“You don’t want to be someone who’s propagating the outbreak. You want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem,” Fauci said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, believes there will be a vaccine for Covid-19 by the end of the year, but said he wouldn’t be comfortable with one unless it was shown in clinical trials to be safe and effective.

Fauci said he has been through a number of vaccine trials in which EUA’s have ultimately been issued, “but they’ve been done when there was enough data that you would really feel comfortable it was safe and effective for the American public.”

Here's some background: In an interview Tuesday with Kaiser Health News, Fauci said a Covid-19 vaccine could be available earlier than expected if ongoing clinical trials produce overwhelmingly positive results.

Pope Francis has held his first public audience since the start of Covid-19 restrictions, using the event to address the people of Lebanon following the devastating blast in Beirut.

Francis has been holding his regular Wednesday audience online since March.  

"After the repeated tragedies that the people of Lebanon know, we become aware of the extreme danger that threatens the very existence of the country. Lebanon cannot be abandoned to itself," the Pope said.

Pope Francis also called for solidarity in battling Covid-19.

"The current pandemic has highlighted our interdependence: we are all linked to each other, for better or for worse. Therefore, to come out of this crisis better than before, we have to do so together, all of us, in solidarity," he said.

Members of the audience wore masks, as did some of the priests in attendance. 

India's health ministry recorded another 78,903 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, bringing the country's total number of cases to 3,770,069.

The ministry also reported 1,045 new deaths from the virus, bringing India's death toll to 66,333.

On Wednesday, India also recorded 801,282 active Covid-19 cases as of Wednesday -- the highest number of active cases reported on a single day.

Meanwhile, the Indian government said in a tweet Wednesday that the country's recovery rate has seen "steady improvement" since lockdown measures were implemented in March and are now at 76.98%.

The country entered its new phase of reopening on Tuesday, which includes the resumption of the country's metro rail services in a "phased manner" from September 7. The reopening allows for gatherings of up to 100 people at sports, entertainment, cultural, religious, and political events outside of hot-spot areas from September 21, with mandatory face-mask wearing and social distancing measures.

All the best dogs find their way home eventually. Sometimes, like Pipsqueak the wiener dog, they've got to embark on a journey of more than 10,000 miles to get there.

Little Pip was stranded in South Carolina at the height of the pandemic after her owners were forced to abandon their round-the-world sailing trip and fly home to Australia.

With borders closing quickly, Zoe and Guy Eilbeck, and their sons Cam and Max, had less than 48 hours to pack up everything from their 40-foot yacht after docking in Hilton Head Island.

Australia's tough pet import rules meant their loyal dachshund Pip couldn't come with them.

That's OK, they thought. They'd be able to return in no time at all for a tail-wagging reunion before heading back out on the ocean.

So Zoe made a few last-minute phone calls to arrange for Pip to be looked after by a friend, and the family said goodbye for what they hoped would be just six short weeks.

But that's not quite how it worked out.

Read the full story here.

China will resume international commercial flights to and from Beijing on Thursday, with flights to and from Cambodia, Greece, Denmark, Thailand, Pakistan, Australia, Canada, and Sweden to be resumed in the first stage.

The resumption of international flights will take place in batches, Xu Hejian, Director of Beijing Information Office said in a press conference on Wednesday.

Eligible passengers include residents of the countries listed, as well as Chinese residents abroad. They must submit a negative test sample and pass a temperature check before being allowed to board flights to Beijing, Xu said. 

On their arrival in Beijing, all passengers have to take a nucleic acid test before undergoing a 14-day quarantine at designated locations, Xu added.

China, where the virus was first detected in December last year, has had almost 90,000 recorded cases of coronavirus, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. Despite being the original epicenter of the virus, the country has had just over 4,720 deaths, according to JHU.

Months into the pandemic that has infected more than 6 million Americans, the public and experts alike are learning the impacts of Covid-19 can drag on longer than expected.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that most Americans who have tested positive for coronavirus can return to work or school 10 days after the onset of symptoms, unless the illness requires hospitalization. But new research suggest that the virus and its symptoms are often nowhere near finished by that benchmark.

According to research published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, patients may need to wait over a month before being retested to know whether they have cleared the virus.

The study also suggests that about one in five negative tests are false negatives, meaning many are still spreading the virus after testing negative without knowing it.

Even once patients do test negative, many report that their symptoms -- from aches to loss of smell to brain fog and affected mood -- can last months longer.

Read the full story:

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