Article Summary
August 5, 2020
Big Data, Natural Language Processing, and Deep Learning to Detect and Characterize Illicit COVID-19 Product Sales: An Infoveillance Study on Twitter and Instagram
Mackey et al. identified 1,271 tweets and 596 Instagram posts marketing fake COVID-19 health products, including unapproved, illegal, and counterfeit testing kits and treatments. Between February and May of 2020, they observed three distinct waves of advertisements for “immunity-boosting” treatments, suspect testing kits, and pharmaceutical products that are not approved for COVID-19 treatment. Each wave…
Serious Adverse Health Events, Including Death, Associated with Ingesting Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizers Containing Methanol — Arizona and New Mexico, May–June 2020
Fifteen cases of methanol poisoning associated with ingestion of alcohol-based hand sanitizers were reported in Arizona and New Mexico between May 1 and June 30, 2020. All 15 people were hospitalized, 6 developed seizures, and 9 received hemodialysis or continuous renal replacement therapy. Four of these patients had died as of July 8. An additional three were discharged from the hospital with visual impairment. An ongoing FDA investigation identified…
Estimating the Reproductive Number R 0 of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States and Eight European Countries and Implications for Vaccination
[pre-print, not peer reviewed] Ke et al. estimate that the herd immunity threshold needed to prevent sustained transmission of COVID-19 ranges between 73% and 84%. Based on these estimates and evidence that immunity may not be long-lasting, they suggest the need for repeated waves of vaccination. If mass vaccination achieves 85% immunity that lasts approximately one year, vaccination campaigns will need to occur multiple times a year. Annual vaccination or vaccination every two would be sufficient to…
Experiences of Home Health Care Workers in New York City During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic
In a qualitative study of home healthcare workers caring for older adults and chronically ill patients in New York City during March and April 2020 (n=33), participants reported that they felt invisible, despite being on the frontlines of the medical response. They also reported a heightened risk for virus transmission; inconsistent information, supplies, and training from their home care agencies; and having…
The Mental Health and Experiences of Discrimination of LGBTQ+ People during the COVID-19 Pandemic Initial Findings from the Queerantine Study
[pre-print, not peer reviewed] Kneale et al. report high levels of stress and depressive symptoms among a sample of 310 LGBTQ+ people during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among younger, transgender, and gender-diverse participants. 16.7% of respondents reported some form of harassment due to their LGBTQ+ identity since the start of the pandemic. Stress levels were significantly higher among the those who…
Outcomes and Implications of Diarrhea in Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infection
Shang et al. investigated the clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients with COVID-19 and diarrhea (157/576 consecutive patients presenting to a hospital) and the correlation between diarrhea and fecal presence of coronavirus. Patients with diarrhea and respiratory symptoms (n=119) had higher levels of the inflammatory markers procalcitonin and ferritin, longer hospital stays, and higher odds of mortality than those with diarrhea alone….
The Incubation Period of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2A Systematic Review
[pre-print, not peer reviewed] A systematic review of 64 articles aggregating the experiences of 854 patients suggests an estimated median incubation period (time from exposure to symptom onset) of 4.9 days (95% CI 4.6-5.2). However, including 81 asymptomatic and presymptomatic patients, along with 31 outlier cases with incubation periods exceeding 14 days, Li et al. estimate that people in the 97.5 percentile would…
Reprocessing Filtering Facepiece Respirators in Primary Care Using Medical Autoclave: Prospective, Bench-to-Bedside, Single-Centre Study
Thirty-three respirators were decontaminated with a medical autoclave up to three times and tested for loss of structural integrity and ability to filter small particles. FFP-2 respirators performed well: all the samples retained their shape and at least 90% of their filtering capacity after one, two, and three decontaminations, suggesting that they might be successfully…
Characteristics of 24516 Patients Diagnosed with COVID-19 Illness in a National Clinical Research Network Results from PCORnet
[pre-print, not peer reviewed] An analysis of data from 36 large healthcare systems in 29 U.S. states found a total of 24,516 patients across healthcare settings were diagnosedwith COVID-19 between January 1, 2020, and May 18, 2020. In the same time period, 79,639 were diagnosed with viral pneumonia and 163,984 were diagnosed with influenza. Comorbidities were common among COVID-19 patients,…
SARS-CoV-2 Virus Culture and Subgenomic RNA for Respiratory Specimens from Patients with Mild Coronavirus Disease
SARS-CoV-2 viral culture data from patients with predominantly mild COVID-19 (n=35) suggests that patients with mild to moderate illness might be less contagious 8 days after symptom onset. Perera et al. found that 16/68 specimens were positive by viral culture, and that all of the positive specimens came from the first 8 days following symptom onset, although participants continued to have detectable viral RNA by PCR for up to 67 days. They conclude that…
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