United States – The US daily count of COVID-19 cases has surged beyond one hundred thousand in the last two weeks, prompting at least a few states to take their safety measures and recommendations into a more restrictive pattern. During that time, probably the most comprehensive (to date) study firmly established that remdesivir was shortening hospital stay time for COVID-19 patients. Furthermore, scientists had devised a new rapid test based on saliva, which was reported to be at par with the existing PCR tests in diagnostic accuracy.
More than 100k US Cases Daily
New daily COVID-19-positive cases have been more than 100,000 in the United States twice this week, which is not the situation last. With the current dismal reaction of the US administration to the pandemic, health authorities anticipated daily infection totals to soar over the 100,000 mark – not so soon. The increase is nationwide, with twenty states breaking their records in the first five days of November alone, but the Middle West is suffering the most in this weather emergency. The ICU admissions resemble those witnessed in the first pandemic wave in July. Some states are taking the issue even more seriously — for instance, the Governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, and the Governor of Maine, Janet Mills, both issued executive orders today that mandate masks to be worn in public irrespective of the social distancing rules, which is a very strict rule compared to their previously issued measures, which simply required people to wear a mask if they were within 6 feet from another person, as reported by Faegre Drinker.
Increased Testing for Congress
The US Air Force is willing to supply approximately 2,000 COVID-19 tests weekly to the entire Congress for a period of six weeks, and these swab tests return the results within 12 hours. To follow up on this was the Mayor of D.C., Muriel Bowser, who insisted that DC visitors must be tested 72 hours before they come into the city. Hence, this is a development of screening resources that currently exist over the hill.
Remdesivir Effectiveness
A comprehensive report based on the most thorough to-date study of remdesivir use is now available for viewing. This study adhered to the “gold standard” of clinical research. The study was controlled, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, and large enough for statistically robust conclusions. The analysis focused on the time to recovery as the “end point” or primary outcome. In short, recovery was considered as either discharge from the hospital or hospitalization for infection-control measures only in this study.
In this study, more than one thousand patients who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 participated, and the patients’ ages varied between 18 years to 65 years old. In the same manner, the participating volunteers mirrored the global diversity of the patient population. The clinical sites were in Denmark, the United Kingdom, Greece, Germany, Korea, Mexico, Spain, Japan, Singapore, and the United States. For patients that were in the group administered on remdesivir, the median recovery time was ten days. Contrariwise, the half-life of the placebo was approximately 15 days. Another significant finding was a mortality rate that was 11.4% among remdesivir patients and 15.2% among placebo patients by day 29. The authors find that remdesivir, given as a treatment, can decrease the time being spent in the hospital for recovering hospitalized adult patients compared to placebo.
Using Physics to Detect COVID-19 Infections
Researcher from MIT has created a quick saliva-based test for COVID-19 virus infections. This technology does not involve the use of the life science techniques that those current testing methods still rely on but instead employs physics to measure the power of magnetic beads covered with virus proteins and the molecules already present in the sample of saliva. According to researchers, the proposed test is believed to have sensitivity comparable to currently used PCR diagnostics. However, further studies should confirm the efficiency of this diagnostic test method, as reported by Faegre Drinker.