October 1, 2020
Exploring U.S. Shifts in Anti-Asian Sentiment with the Emergence of COVID-19.
A racial sentiment analysis using >3.3 million race-related tweets from Twitter users in the US showed the proportion of negative tweets referencing Asians since the emergence of COVID-19 has increased by 68% (from 10% in November 2019 to 16% in March 2020). Common themes that emerged during the content analysis of a random subsample of…
Widening the Gap Greater Racial and Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19 Burden after Accounting for Missing Race/ethnicity Data
[Preprint, not peer-reviewed] Among 19,637 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection reported in Fulton County, Georgia from February 29th to August 19th 2020, 36% were missing race/ethnicity information in the case report. Compared to complete case analyses, imputation and bias-adjustment for race/ethnicity yielded higher estimates of infection rates (1.5 to 1.8-fold increase). The magnitude of the absolute…
CDC Deployments to State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Health Departments for COVID-19 Emergency Public Health Response — United States, January 21–July 25, 2020
The US CDC deployed 208 teams to assist 55 state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments with COVID-19 emergency public health response activities between January 21–July 25, 2020. Teams assisted with investigations of transmission in high-risk congregate settings, including long-term care facilities (53 deployments; 26%), food processing facilities (24; 12%), correctional facilities (12; 6%), and…
Reductions in 2020 US Life Expectancy Due to COVID-19 and the Disproportionate Impact on the Black and Latino Populations
[Preprint, not peer-reviewed] Black and Latino people in the US are estimated to have a reduction in life expectancy at birth due to COVID-19 of 2.7 and 3.7 years, respectively, both of which are larger than the 0.84-year reduction for white people. These projections imply a 50% increase (from 3.6 to 5.5 years) in the…
Mental Health of Undocumented College Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic
[Preprint, not peer-reviewed] An online survey in Delaware found significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression among undocumented college students (n=109) compared to the expected proportion based on a large national survey of mental health among college students in US during the COVID-19 pandemic (47% vs. 31% for anxiety; 63% vs 41% for depression, respectively)….
Expert Forecasts of COVID-19 Vaccine Development Timelines
Among 28 vaccine experts (20 Canada, 6 US) with 25 median years of experience working with vaccines (range 8–42), 53% said the pace of COVID-19 research is increasing the potential for errors. The median probability forecast that a vaccine would receive a black box warning label for a widely deployed vaccine was 30% and that…
Recent Endemic Coronavirus Infection Is Associated with Less Severe COVID-19
Pre-existing immune responses against endemic human coronaviruses (eCoVs), which are etiologic agents for the “common cold” that share extensive sequence homology with SARS-CoV-2, may mitigate disease manifestations from SARS-CoV-2 infection. A study among 252 patients with a COVID-19 related hospitalization reported lower risk of ICU admission (OR=0.1) and death (HR=0.3) among patients with eCoV antibodies…
Expression of SARS-CoV-2 Entry Receptors in the Respiratory Tract of Healthy Individuals, Smokers and Asthmatics
Using publicly available microarray datasets, Matusiak and Schürch reported different protein expression of SARS-CoV-2 entry receptors and cofactors ACE2, TMPRSS2, BSG (CD147) and FURIN among various airway tissue types between smokers vs. non-smokers, and between people with asthma vs. healthy controls. These findings warrant further studies to use larger numbers of samples from multiple donor cohorts and more antibodies…
The Obesity Paradox: Analysis from the SMAtteo Covid-19 REgistry (SMACORE) Cohort
Obesity (BMI ≥30 kg/m2) was associated with a higher risk of ICU admission (adjusted OR=1.96, 95%CI 1.03-3.75) among a cohort of 331 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at the beginning of the epidemic in Italy. There were no significant differences in mortality, mortality in ICU and length of hospital stay between obese patients and non-obese patients….
Real-Time Screening of Specimen Pools for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Infection at Sanya Airport, Hainan Island, China
A 10:1 pooled test strategy for nasopharyngeal swabs was used to screen airline passengers arriving in China. Among 944 specimens collected and tested for RNA using the Xpert Xpress assay, the pooled approach identified 2 positive individuals who were immediately quarantined, which resulted in no local contacts in China. The pooled approach saved 827 (87.6%)…
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