Article Summary
March 30, 2020
Spotlight on Jails: COVID-19 Mitigation Policies Needed Now
Jails in US pose unique challenge to COVID-19 prevention, detection, and mitigation that deserve immediate attention. Most common measures of prevention for the general public, are not feasible in the US jails because of overcrowding, institutional restrictions and lack of funding. Jails contain a high proportion of people with underlying health conditions, increasing risk of…
Evaluating the effectiveness of social distancing interventions against.
Matrajt and Leung used a mathematical model to investigate the effectiveness of social distancing interventions lasting six weeks in a middle-sized city in the US. Their results suggest that social distancing interventions can avert cases by 20% and hospitalizations and deaths by 90% as long as the intervention is kept in place, but noted that…
Forecasting COVID-19 impact on hospital bed-days, ICU-days, ventilator days and deaths by US state in the next 4 months.
Murray et al used data on confirmed COVID-19 deaths from WHO websites and local and national governments to develop a statistical model forecasting deaths and hospital utilization against capacity by state in the US over the next 4 months. The model predicts excess demand for up to 64,175 total beds, 17,309 ICU beds, and 19,481…
A COVID-19 Infection Risk Model for Frontline Health Care Workers
Dy and Rabajante formulated an infection risk model for frontline health care workers in health care facilities that handled COVID -19 patients. From their model, the following were cardinal to safety of the healthcare workers: maximum of three encounters per hour in a 12-hour work shift duration, reduction of each interaction with patients to less…
Hydrogen Peroxide Vapor sterilization of N95 respirators for reuse.
Kenney et al evaluated the virucidal activity of hydrogen peroxide (HP) vapor to sterilize N95 respirators for reuse. A single HP vapor cycle resulted in complete eradication of phage from masks (limit of detection 10 PFU, lower than the infectious dose of the majority of respiratory viral pathogens). After 5 cycles, the respirators appeared similar…
Clinical characteristics and intrauterine vertical transmission potential of COVID-19 infection in nine pregnant women: a retrospective review of medical records.
Chen et al. reviewed clinical records, laboratory results, and chest CT scans retrospectively for nine laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 pregnant women. Evidence of intrauterine vertical transmission was assessed by testing for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in amniotic fluid, cord blood, and neonatal throat swab samples. Their findings further confirm earlier reports of no evidence of intrauterine infection…
Role of Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine in the Treatment of COVID-19 Infection- A Systematic Literature Review.
Kapoor and Kapoor conducted a systematic review of 19 publications on the role of chloroquine and/or hydroxychloroquine in limiting the infection with SARS-CoV-2. They conclude that there is theoretical, experimental, preclinical and clinical evidence to support effectiveness of chloroquine in patients affected with COVID-19. They further report adequate evidence of drug safety from the long-time…
Children are unlikely to have been the primary source of household SARS-CoV-2 infections
Zhu et al investigated concerns that children could be an important source of SARS-CoV-2 in household transmission clusters. The observational study analyzed literature published on the clinical features of SARS-CoV-2 in children and household transmission clusters of SARS-CoV-2 in China, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Iran. Only 9.7% of clusters were identified as having a…
March 27, 2020
SARS-CoV-2 infection in 86 healthcare workers in two Dutch hospitals in March 2020: a cross-sectional study with short-term follow-up.
The authors describe the clinical presentation and early outcomes of COVID-19 in 86 of the 1,353 Dutch HCWs who tested positive in this cross-sectional study and suggest adjusting the currently used case-definition for suspected COVID-19 in HCWs by considering fever as one of the possible symptoms and not as a required symptom. This could improve…
Absence of contamination of personal protective equipment (PPE) by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
To evaluate the safety of extended PPE use by HCWs treating COVID-19 patients, Ong et al perform a one-day sampling study on used PPE to ascertain the per contact episode risk of PPE contamination. All 90 samples from 30 HCWs were negative. This provides assurance that extended use of N95 and goggles with strict adherence…
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