September 8 coronavirus news

Colorado will launch a partnership with Apple and Google to allow for Covid-19 exposure notifications on cellphones for contact tracing in an effort to slow the spread of the virus, Gov. Jared Polis announced Tuesday.

"We want to use every tool in the toolbox to contain the virus and limit community spread," Polis said during a news briefing.

The technology, called EN Express Opportunity, will roll out at the end of September. It will be available for iOS users who opt-in to use the service, and for Android users as an app.  

Using Bluetooth technology, the service or app will exchange anonymous tokens between phones of people who've been within a certain distance of each other, according to Sarah Tuneberg, director of the Colorado Coronavirus Innovation Response Team.

If a person using the service or app has been near someone who tests positive for coronavirus, the person will receive a push notification about exposure to the virus. People who are using the service and test positive for the virus need to report it. 

Both Polis and Tuneberg both emphasized no personal information is obtained from users.  

"Data security and privacy are of the utmost importance to us. This is a completely anonymized service that contains no personal health information," Tuneberg said.

The University of Iowa Athletics Department has announced it is resuming voluntary and mandatory student-athlete workouts.

Eight days ago, the university had halted all sports programs after reporting 93 positive Covid-19 tests within the athletics community. In the most recent testing period of Aug. 31-Sept. 6, Iowa reports 21 positive tests and 276 that were negative.

As a member of the Big 10 football conference, Iowa’s fall football season was postponed last month by the conference’s Council of Presidents and Chancellors, which cited health and safety concerns related to coronavirus.

The University of Tennessee is having a “significant issue” with a small portion of its study body, particularly fraternities, in combating the spread of Covid-19 on campus, University Chancellor Donde Plowman said Tuesday in her coronavirus livestream. 

Plowman detailed the disturbing reports of irresponsible behaviors that had been reported stemming from the fraternities. 

What the numbers look like: The school reported 600 active Covid-19 cases, 592 of which are among students, eight are among employees, and a total of 2,112 people— 1,939 of whom are students — are now in quarantine or in isolation. 

“Our case counts are going up way too fast and we will need more drastic measures to stop the upward trajectory,” Plowman said, adding that the school will need more isolation spaces over time, and is in the process of creating more of that space. 

Plowman said that the school was considering a range of options for enforcement, and that “everything is on the table at this point.” She promised additional announcements on specifics in the days ahead. 

Covid-19 has interfered with care and prevention efforts for other diseases around the world, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, it’s been disruptive across the board, not only in the United States but globally,” Fauci said during the Research! America 2020 Summit.

People are missing screening for things “that you need to pay attention to,” such as breast cancer and prostate cancer. And they’re missing follow-up appointments for other conditions. 

“You can wind up getting into a situation where diseases that have nothing to do with Covid, diseases of different types, infection, cancer, autoimmune, inflammatory, they might get neglected and routine checkups that you would need tend to get neglected,” he said.

Fauci said that it is known in the HIV community that disruption of services and availability of drugs can really be a problem.

More than 513,000 US children have been diagnosed with Covid-19, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

The groups found that 70,630 new child cases were reported from Aug. 20 through Sept. 3. This is a 16% increase in child cases over two weeks, bringing up the total to at least 513,415 cases, the groups said in their weekly report on pediatric coronavirus cases.

“A disproportionate number of cases are reported in Black and Hispanic children and in places where there is high poverty. We must work harder to address societal inequities that contribute to these disparities.” 

Children represent nearly 10% of all reported cases in the US, according to the report. The child cases are likely underreported because the tally relies on state data that is inconsistently collected.

“This rapid rise in positive cases occurred over the summer, and as the weather cools, we know people will spend more time indoors,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, the vice chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases. 

“Now we are heading into flu season. We must take this seriously and implement the public health measures we know can help. That includes wearing masks, avoiding large crowds, and maintaining social distance. In addition, it will be really important for everyone to get an influenza vaccine this year. These measures will help protect everyone, including children.” 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday he is cautiously optimistic that a vaccine will be proven safe and effective by the end of the year. But he said that’s unlikely to happen by Election Day. 

President Trump has said he thinks a Covid-19 vaccine could be ready by Election Day, Nov. 3, but Fauci said this is unlikely.

“It's unlikely that we'll have a definitive answer at that time,” he added. “More likely by the end of the year.”

There are currently three vaccine candidates in large-scale, Phase Three clinical trials in the US.

“You have a lot of candidates in play, which really is the reason why we're optimistic that we will be successful with one or more, and that will likely start taking place by the end of the calendar year 2020,” said Fauci.

People can hope for a mild flu season like that just experienced in the southern hemisphere, but they need to get vaccinated, too, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday.

“One of the things we can say is that we should continue to encourage people to get vaccinated with the influenza vaccine,” Fauci said during an event sponsored by Research! America. 

Australia had “one of the lowest rates of influenza infection in memory,” Fauci said. “If we can do that, I think that would be very favorable,” he added.

“If what happened in the southern hemisphere happens here, that would be a very good and favorable thing,” Fauci added. 

Mask use, social distancing and hand washing have not only helped prevent the spread of coronavirus, but they likely helped stop the spread of flu, too, he said.

If the US does have what Fauci calls a “full-blown” flu season without getting control over the coronavirus, doctors, hospitals and others will struggle to tell the two infections apart. Plus, the sheer number of sick people could overwhelm the healthcare system.

“That’s the reason why, when you have two coexisting infections during the winter months, it becomes problematic,” he said. 

To increase the supply of remdesivir for the treatment of Covid-19 in the United States, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas, and the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen are calling for President Trump to let generic drug makers produce the drug. 

Gilead, the California company that makes remdesivir, has exclusive rights to sell the drug in the US.

The situation is different in other countries. 

“There are manufactures in India and Pakistan and the United Kingdom that have been safely producing generic remdesivir in over 100 countries. Unfortunately, we’re not one of them,” Doggett said during a virtual news conference hosted by the advocacy groups PrEP4All Collaboration, Public Citizen and Social Security Works.

About the supply in the US: About 38 hospitals in 12 states have reported shortages of remdesivir since July, according to a report by Public Citizen.

Doctors on the call expressed concern over shortages of remdesivir in the US.

“We do not have enough remdesivir nationally,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a CNN medical analyst. “There simply is not enough of it to go around. 

Dr. Thomas Patterson, chief of infectious diseases at UT Health San Antonio, said his hospital faced shortages of remdesivir during a surge of Covid-19 in August.

“We received enough remdesivir to treat less than a third of the admitted patients — so a really woefully inadequate supply,” Patterson said.

US hospitals do not directly purchase remdesivir the way they do other drugs. Because there isn’t enough to go around, the US Department of Health and Human Services regularly ships remdesivir to states, which then deliver the drugs to hospitals.

Colleges and universities should try their best to isolate students infected with Covid-19 on campus rather than sending them home, so that they don’t infect other students or take the virus home with them, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday.

With students coming from all over the country, colleges and universities can be especially important in spreading the virus, Fauci said during an event sponsored by Research! America.

Colleges and universities are handling Covid-19 in different ways, he said, with some going completely online. Several he has spoken with are testing everybody once, the first time they come onto the campus, so that they start off with a baseline. Then they are doing surveillance testing at various intervals.

“The ones who are doing that and who have the capability of handling students who ultimately get infected seem to be successfully being able to open,” he said. Colleges that cannot sequester students tend to be doing much more virtual or online teaching.

K-12 schools are much more of a local issue, Fauci said. The prudent approach, he said, is to decide how to reopen depending on whether the community is in a green, yellow or red zone.

Green zone schools are able to open for in-person teaching with “relative impunity” as long as they are able to identify and make accommodations for infected students. Yellow zone schools have to be able to adjust and adapt, doing things like modifying the schedule. In red zone schools “you really better be very careful before you bring the children back because you don’t want to create a situation where you have a hyper-spreading event, as you might have in the school,” he said.