The speed and scale of the global COVID-19 health pandemic and its impact on employment has been unprecedented. Governments around the world are taking action to mitigate the negative impact of the health crisis on firms and people and to maintain a foundation for rapid economic recovery once the health crisis is resolved.
Emerging markets and developing countries, some of which were prone to financial market volatility before the coronavirus pandemic, are especially exposed. This page outlines policy guidance for ways to mitigate risks to financial markets and maintain liquidity to support economic recovery once the health crisis is resolved.
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IDAHO FALLS At least 30 people who attended a religious revival in Idaho Falls have been diagnosed with or are suspected to have COVID-19.
The Idaho Falls Potters House Christian Center on Lomax Street held a multi-day revival near the end of May. In the days following the event, people who attended began showing novel coronavirus symptoms. They were tested, and the positive cases were reported to Eastern Idaho Public Health and the Southeastern Idaho Public Health District.
Eastern Idaho Public Health spokeswoman Mimi Taylor said health officials are speaking with at least 41 people from 12 households who attended the revival. Within that health district, 11 people were determined to have COVID-19. At least 6 other cases are considered probable.
An additional 13 people from Bannock and Bingham Counties who attended the event tested positive for the virus, Southeastern Idaho Public Health Community Health Director Tracy McCulloch told EastIdahoNews.com.
A case is determined to be probable if a person has not been tested, or testing is pending, and they have all the symptoms of COVID-19, have come into direct contact with an infected individual, and developed symptoms within the expected timeframe.
Those who got the virus said nobody wore masks, and it remains unclear if any social distancing measures were followed, McCulloch said.
They (those at the revival) said there was a female there that was coughing a lot, McCulloch said.
Taylor said health officials are still monitoring those who attended the event, and numbers could change. She also emphasized that large gatherings outside the home can lead to more cases, and social distancing is still encouraged.
It can happen to anyone, Taylor said.
Eastern Idaho has seen a spike in cases since last Wednesday when there were 109 cases. As of Tuesday afternoon, eastern Idaho has had 167 confirmed or probable cases, according to the EIPh and SIPH. Of that number, 65 individuals are sick and being monitored, and 102 individuals are presumed to have recovered. One person has died in eastern Idaho.
RELATED: Pocatello man who died from COVID-19 complications remembered as family man whod help anybody
Religious gatherings were permitted to resume May 1 as part of Gov. Brad Littles plan to reopen the state after issuing a statewide stay-home order in March. The plan advised houses of worship to practice physical distancing and sanitation measures.
Statewide, about 78% of the 2,933 documented cases in Idaho have recovered, according to IDHW data.
EIPH recommends people follow COVID-19 risk reduction strategies:
Since restrictions on gatherings have loosened, EIPH says most COVID-19 cases are linked to gatherings where people attended while ill and social distancing was not followed.
We understand that social connections are vitally important to people, but we also want people to take precautions when interacting with others to minimize the opportunities for COVID-19 to be spread, EIPH Director Geri Rackow said in a news release.
During the state shutdown, most discovered cases stayed within households, Rackow told EastIdahoNews.com.
We expected we would start to see more cases as things open up, Rackow said.
Health officials say to contact them if someones been exposed to COVID-19 or exposure has occurred at your business, organization, event, etc. EIPH can be reached at its COVID-19 hotline at (208) 522-0310. SIPHs hotline is reached at (208) 234-5875.
There wont be many among the 7.7 billion people on Earth who havent been affected in some way by COVID-19.
From sickness and the death of loved ones to work shortages and school closures, the pandemics ramifications have touched every part of society and thrown inequalities into sharp relief.
As lockdowns are starting to ease, governments and organizations across the globe are turning their attention to the recovery process and the opportunity it provides to rebuild in a different way. One that makes the world better for everyone and addresses the other great crisis of our time: climate change.
Predicted effects of coronavirus on the world.
Image: WEF
With the economic fallout from COVID-19 dominating risk perceptions, this is a rare window of opportunity to shape a more sustainable, resilient world. And starting today [3 June], the World Economic Forum is working with HRH The Prince of Wales on an initiative coined Great Reset, to guide decision-makers on the rocky path ahead.
Leading up to the Forums Annual Meeting 2021, which will be devoted to the Great Reset, a series of virtual Great Reset Dialogues will take place every other Wednesday bringing together global stakeholders from all sectors to discuss the way forward.
Here, three key experts from the Forums podcast series, World Vs Virus, envision a world beyond coronavirus.
Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director of Greenpeace International.
Image: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
COVID-19 gives us the chance to step back and rethink the world we would like to live in, says Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director of Greenpeace International.
We set up a new world order after World War II. Were now in a different world than we were then. We need to ask, what can we be doing differently? The World Economic Forum has a big responsibility in that as well to be pushing the reset button and looking at how to create well-being for people and for the Earth.
Morgan is positive about the potential for a more joined-up approach to rebuilding greener economies, such as the European Green Deal, with collaboration between governments, companies and the youth movement.
Companies have learned from the past and should take the opportunity to create a more circular zero-carbon economy for profit and for people.
Government funds need to be invested in people for long-term jobs. We have an opportunity to shift coal miners who have been working in those types of jobs into other ones over time. It cant be an either/or. We need to be thinking about these things together.
What the world has learned from responding to the pandemic, with unity and speed, can be applied to tackling the climate crisis, too, Morgan argues.
When we listen to the science and we understand whats at stake, and we have clarity on what we need to do, we can address these crises. We know what the problem is. We know the people who are being impacted by it. We know what the solutions are.
I think the key is to put the health of people and the planet first. Thats whats happening on COVID-19, but it has not yet happened on climate change in many cases, because the fossil fuel interests and the large industrial farming interests want to keep things the way they are. And what were learning from this pandemic is it is possible to switch it.
The first global pandemic in more than 100 years, COVID-19 has spread throughout the world at an unprecedented speed. At the time of writing, 4.5 million cases have been confirmed and more than 300,000 people have died due to the virus.
As countries seek to recover, some of the more long-term economic, business, environmental, societal and technological challenges and opportunities are just beginning to become visible.
To help all stakeholders communities, governments, businesses and individuals understand the emerging risks and follow-on effects generated by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Marsh and McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group, has launched its COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications - a companion for decision-makers, building on the Forums annual Global Risks Report.
The report reveals that the economic impact of COVID-19 is dominating companies risks perceptions.
Companies are invited to join the Forums work to help manage the identified emerging risks of COVID-19 across industries to shape a better future. Read the full COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications report here, and our impact story with further information.
Gita Gopinath, Chief Economist at IMF.
Image: REUTERS/Rodrigo Garrido
The nature of the COVID-19 crisis and the speed and scale of job losses makes it glaringly different from the 2008 financial crisis, so the solutions will need to be distinct, argues Gita Gopinath, the International Monetary Funds (IMF) chief economist.
In the short-term, government spending on health will be the top priority to mitigate not only the health problem, but also to ensure a sound recovery once we come out of this health crisis.
More spending will mean more debt, so for countries already experiencing debt distress, concessional financing and debt service relief have been approved by the IMF, Gopinath says, and more will be needed in the coming years.
While for other countries, liquidity facilities will be needed to avoid a debt crisis.
In the longer term, ongoing low interest rates will help advanced economies especially to rollover their debts at very low rates.
Once we start to see a recovery in growth, that should help bring down the debt levels. For other countries, especially the poorer nations, I think that debt restructurings, debt relief, will have to continue to be done.
Theres no one-size-fits-all approach, but countries will need to raise revenue, which may mean a form of solidarity tax.
Countries will have to find ways of raising revenues and progressive taxation could be one form of it. Solidarity tax may be needed in some countries. It varies across countries, but this will be an issue countries will have to deal with because it will be one of the big legacies of this crisis.
The public sector will have a bigger role to play in future, she says, as traditionally happens in such crises.
I believe its very important for countries to recognize there are essential services that need to be provided in terms of healthcare, education, good governance and a social safety that cannot be compromised on.
The crisis has also made the need for global cooperation abundantly clear says Gopinath.
This is a virus that doesnt respect borders: it crosses borders. And as long as it is in full strength in any part of the world, its affecting everybody else. So it requires global cooperation to deal with it.
Like Morgan, Gopinath believes the COVID-19 crisis is a wake-up call that we need to shift to a greener economy, when countries are in a position to begin public spending.
But how do we get to a more planet-friendly way of doing economic activity? Whats needed is to ramp up production of alternative forms of energy. And second, to have infrastructure thats much more climate-friendly. In both these measures, the public sector can play a very big role.
Once you have those in place alternatives to energy and greener, physical infrastructure then you can obviously put on top of that carbon pricing, too, so companies and firms internalize the impact of their activities on the climate.
Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) .
Image: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
I can see how we could use this opportunity to design a better world, says Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), but we need both national and multilateral institutions to make it work.
Solidarity and sharing and deciding on how you protect people both within nations and globally is absolutely critical at the moment.
A survey by the ITUC found only one in five (21%) of its 86 member countries provides sick leave for all or some workers, so the reset requires social dialogue to ensure workers are protected.
We must ensure this design is inclusive of universal social protection. The world could fund it right now and yet 70% of the worlds population has no social protection. It must be respectful of public services rather than simply trying to profit from them.
So public support for people and, of course, of the social dialogue that makes it possible for us to get the balance right, are crucial. If youve got workers, employers and civil society at the table with governments at all levels, then you can design the kind of future that takes into account the right priorities for people, for the planet and, of course, for stable economies.
While short-term measures such as income support are vital now, post-reconstruction policy frameworks are needed in the medium- to long-term, says Burrow. And these have to deal with both people and the planet.
We need to design policies to align with investment in people and the environment. But above all, the longer-term perspective is about rebalancing economies.
What we dont want is an unbalanced economy where you cant get essentials like healthcare products and food because theyre produced in one group of countries and not in a balanced fashion around the world. We have to look at how to build a better economy alongside the convergent crisis of the environment which is not going to go away.
In short, we need to shift our economic focus away from profit, says Burrow.
We want an end to the profit-at-all-costs mentality, because if we dont build an economic future within a sustainable framework in which we are respectful of our planetary boundaries, and the need to change our energy and technology systems, then we will not have a living planet for human beings.
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World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
In a video update released by Dare County late Tuesday afternoon, June 2, Sheila Davies, the director of Dare County Department of Health and Human Services, announced an additional COVID-19 case, bringing Dares total to 23.
Davies stated the individual is a non-resident who contracted COVID-19 through direct contact with a family member. She also stated the individual is asymptomatic and is isolating in their home county.
In this particular case the individual returned to their home county prior to us receiving the test results, said Davies. Upon receiving the positive result, we notified the individuals home county health department and worked closely with that health department and the individual who tested positive to ensure all direct contacts in Dare County were identified and notified.
Davies also noted that the countys online COVID-19 dashboard has been revamped and breaks down residents and non-residents as well as overall demographics including gender and age.
Of the 23 cases reported, 18 are residents and five are non-residents. Of the 18 residents, 15 have recovered or have been asymptomatically cleared, one has died and two cases are active and have been for over three weeks. One is hospitalized and the other is at home. According to Davies, those two cases are not connected. She also said one individual is over 65 and considered high risk, while the other is middle aged with no underlying medical conditions. She said both have been retested and both are still COVID-19 positive.
Davies also reviewed the four key metrics being tracked, which are the weekly number of tests, laboratory confirmed cases, positive tests as a percent of total tests and COVID-like illness surveillance. She stated that through May 31, 1,021 test results have been reported to Dare, including 301 this past week.
There were 179 tests performed at last weeks drive through testing event. Of the results reported to the county, 177 were negative and two were deemed invalid due to insufficient specimens.
Davies urged people to help us spread facts, not fear. Sites listed for additional information are: darenc.com/covid19, cdc.gov/coronavirus and ncdhhs.gov/coronavirus.
VIEW THE VIDEO UPDATE HERE:
READ ABOUT MORE NEWS AND EVENTS HERE.
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Oregon Health Authority reported three new deaths from the coronavirus on Tuesday, including a 36-year-old Multnomah County woman.
PORTLAND, Ore. Health officials on Tuesday announced that three more people have died of COVID-19 in Oregon.
One of the people who died was a 36-year-old woman from Multnomah County. She is the first person younger than 40 to have died from COVID-19 in Oregon, according to Oregon Health Authority.
The state's death toll is now 157 people.
The 36-year-old Multnomah County woman tested positive May 31 and died the same day at Adventist Hospital. She had underlying medical conditions.
The other two people who died were a 66-year-old woman from Multnomah County and an 81-year-old woman from Washington County. The Multnomah County woman tested positive April 1 and died May 22 at her home. The Washington County woman tested positive April 6 and died May 26 at her home.
Both had underlying medical conditions.
OHA also reported that 13 people connected to Bob's Red Mill in Clackamas County have tested positive for COVID-19. An investigation into the outbreak began May 27. State and county public health officials say risk to the general public from this outbreak is low.
The state reported 33 new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases Tuesday. The new cases were found in the following counties:
Oregon has a total of 4,335 cases (including presumptive cases) as of Tuesday morning. The amount of known active infections in Oregon is unclear.
While presumptive cases have not yet tested positive, they have shown COVID-19 symptoms and had close contact with a confirmed case.
In its weekly report on the pandemic, the Oregon Health Authority said 1.7% of people tested the week of May 18-24 tested positive for the coronavirus, the lowest percentage during the pandemic.
State data shows 134,094 people have been tested for COVID-19 in Oregon and 129,874 tests (96.8%) have come back negative.
For more case and county level data, visit the OHA website, which is updated daily.
Editors note: The Salt Lake Tribune is providing free access to critical stories about the coronavirus. Sign up for our Top Stories newsletter, sent to your inbox every weekday morning. To support journalism like this, please donate or become a subscriber.
When they entered Alta View Hospital with coronavirus symptoms, Carol and John Moody received much the same treatment.
Hospital staffers pumped extra oxygen into them. The Moodys were placed on their stomachs to boost their oxygen intake. The husband and wife also received plasma from donors who previously had COVID-19.
Those measures worked for John.
Carol died May 21 at LDS Hospital, where she had been taken after her condition worsened. She was 71.
The virus took away the most important person in my life, 76-year-old John, who is home and still recovering, said in a brief telephone interview Thursday.
Raised in Salt Lake Citys Sugar House neighborhood, Carol was living and working in Palm Springs, Calif., when she met Johns mother in church. Her future mother-in-law asked if she wanted to write John, who was then in Scotland on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The two corresponded for a year. Three days after returning from his mission, John asked Carol to marry him. They were together for five decades.
The couple moved to Utah after the birth of their first son. Carol worked in child care and later joined the Mama Dragons, a womens group that supports LGBTQ Latter-day Saints.
The coronavirus sickened four other people as well in the Moody family. In interviews, the family members described how doctors tried to save Carol and John.
Their medical methods point out a truth that has frustrated health care workers around the world: What works for one patient doesnt necessarily work for another.
The virus has been deadlier for men in the United States than for women and for patients with underlying health conditions. John has had heart problems, including triple-bypass surgery 15 years ago, daughter-in-law Hilary Moody said. Carol had Type 2 diabetes.
This took her out too quickly and shocked us all, said son-in-law Glen Hoen. I wake up in disbelief that shes gone.
Carol and John Moody lived in the basement of a Sandy home belonging to son Roger and his wife, Hilary. John said he and Carol were careful to social distance.
Yet Carol began showing symptoms May 5. The family doesnt know how she got infected.
The health department doesnt come back to you and say, Hey, you got it from so and so, said another son, Robert.
On May 7, Hilary drove her mother-in-law to the testing site in the parking lot of Sandys Alta View Hospital. The coronavirus attacks the respiratory system, so staffers checked the oxygen level in Carols blood.
Her daughter-in-law said her oxygen level tested at 82% or 83% a dangerously low rate. Carol was admitted to Alta View that day.
She never went home again.
The family wasnt allowed to visit Carol in person but kept in contact with her and the personnel treating her. Hilary said hospital workers tried to help her mother-in-laws breathing by giving her a few liters of oxygen.
Then it went up to 4 or 5 liters, Hilary said.
Doctors and nurses worked to improve Carols breathing by placing her on her stomach for up to 10 hours at a time. Called proning, this flip has become a popular way to treat acute COVID-19 patients. Being on ones stomach allows more oxygen to enter the lungs. On ones back, body weight can squeeze the lungs.
Hilary said the proning might have slowed her mother-in-laws decline, but her breathing troubles persisted. On May 12, an ambulance transferred her to LDS Hospital in Salt Lake Citys Avenues neighborhood. That hospital has created a special ward for coronavirus patients, and staffers also are working with some experimental treatments to combat the virus.
At LDS, Carol received a transfusion of blood plasma from a patient who had recovered from the virus, her family said. The procedure is designed to deliver antibodies that may exist in the donors plasma.
Physicians also gave Carol tocilizumab. Marketed as Actemra, this immunosuppressive drug is used primarily to treat rheumatoid arthritis. In clinical trials underway across the country, its being tried on coronavirus patients whose immune systems may be overreacting to the virus and further inflaming the lungs.
But Carol continued her decline. On May 14, LDS Hospital arranged for her to speak to her family on a FaceTime call.
We thought we were saying goodbye, Hilary said.
Carol was on a ventilator and unable to communicate much, her relatives said. She wrote on a board, urging them to tell other family members, I love them so much.
By then, husband John had tested positive for COVID-19, too. He was admitted May 18 to Alta View.
It was rough, son Robert said. We didnt know it was anything serious at first with my mom. So it was scary because you see your dad being checked in. You go through the worst-case scenario in your head.
When Johns temperature shot up to 103 degrees, medical personnel placed ice packs under his armpits to cool him. He, too, was placed on his stomach and received a plasma transfusion.
Thats when he started turning the corner a little bit," Hilary said, and started getting a little better.
Hilary and Roger contracted COVID-19 as well. The couple isolated in different bedrooms of their home, suffering the symptoms while also trying to stay up to date on what was happening to Rogers parents. Their 16-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter had to bring them food and medicine and clean and manage the household while also doing their schoolwork. The kids have not gotten sick.
I have my nephew and niece watching whats happening to [their grandparents], Robert said, and then worrying if their own parents would go into the hospital.
Robert and his husband, Glen Hoen, also caught the virus. The two isolated themselves in their Taylorsville condominium.
Its nasty, John said of COVID-19. When they say wash your hands, do this, do that, you better be doing it.
One of those numbers is Carol
By May 21, the family says, Carol had been diagnosed with acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS. Fluid collects in the lungs air sacs, depriving organs of oxygen. Its a common COVID-19 complication.
It became clear Carol would die.
LDS Hospital arranged for conference calls so the family could give a final farewell to Carol, who was unconscious.
John spoke via telephone from his Sandy hospital room to his wife of 49 years in a Salt Lake City hospital.
When I hear that so many people have been tested, that so many people have been positive, one of those numbers is Carol, he lamented Thursday. One of those numbers is my wife.
Before his retirement, he worked as a respiratory therapist and has been doing exercises to recover his lung capacity. He says he is still fatigued, as are his two sons and their spouses who fell ill. All five say they are recovering.
The heartbreaking ordeal has changed Hilary. She fears being around other people, especially large groups.
Just dont take any relationship for granted, she advised, because you dont know.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, reports of new and unusual symptoms are on the rise. The latest side effects of a novel coronavirus infection range from nerve damage to COVID toe. In rare cases, COVID-19 seems to cause severe inflammation in children.
Scientists are racing to better understand what causes the condition, called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, Jennifer Couzin-Frankel reports for Science magazine. The children present fevers, stomach pain, rashes and heart problemsor, as 14-year-old Jack McMorrow told the New York Times Pam Belluck, a pain almost like someone injected you with straight-up fire.
A lot remains to be discovered about MIS-C. It seems rare among those exposed to the virus behind COVID-19 and has affected both children and young adults, per the Washington Posts Ariana Eunjung Cha and Chelsea Janes. MIS-C has also been compared to Kawasaki disease, another pediatric inflammatory syndrome.
What is Kawasaki disease?
Like with MIS-C, children with Kawasaki disease (KD) have symptoms like rash and fever. Kids with KD can also show signs like swollen hands and feet, peeling skin, red eyes, strawberry tongue, and swollen lymph glands in the neck. KD is a relatively uncommon condition, affecting about 15 to 20 out of 100,000 kids under 5 years old according to the Kawasaki Disease Research Center at the University of California, San Diego, though it can also appear in older kids and teens.
The similarities in symptoms raise some concern that [MIS-C] is somehow linked to KD, although that exact linkage still has to be figured out, Adriana Tremoulet, UCSD pediatrician and KD specialist, tells the KD Foundation in a video about the pandemic.
The disease was first described in 1967 by Japanese pediatrician Tomisaku Kawasaki. The cause of KD is not yet known, but the current hypothesis is that kids have a genetic predisposition for the disease. When they encounter something in the environment, called a trigger, the disease appears, per a video by the KD Foundation. Researchers arent sure yet what might trigger classic KD, but they have a good idea of what happens in the body when KD takes hold.
As explained in the same video, the coronary arteries, which carry oxygen to the heart, become inflamed when immune cells leave the bloodstream and enter the wall of the blood vessel. When immune cells gather in the wall, they recruit chemicals that cause the arteries to expand.
If the disease is treated quickly, an artery that expands will usually return to normal, but in severe cases the artery could expand further into an aneurysm. An aneurysm prevents blood from flowing normally and can lead a clot and a heart attack. Luckily, an effective treatment for KD exists, and kids with a history of KD just need to follow up with a cardiologist every few years.
Research into KD is ongoing, and previous work at the UCSD lab investigated whether coronavirusesbut not the one that causes COVID-19, since it hadnt emerged at that timecould trigger KD, and found they could not.
How is MIS-C different from KD?
While MIS-C is triggered by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, Kawasaki disease has been recognized for decades longer than the current pandemic and therefore probably has a different trigger. And so far, doctors treating COVID-19 have seen two kinds of Kawasaki-like disease, as Amy McKeever reports for National Geographic. One is viral sepsis, which causes depressed heart function and low blood pressure, and another more closely resembles Kawasaki-like symptoms.
While young children tend to have cases that most closely resemble KD, and it can appear weeks after initial exposure to SARS-CoV-2. But older teens and young adults can have an overwhelming response to the virus that involves the heart and other organs, as pediatric infectious diseases doctor Jennifer Lighter tells the Washington Post. For McMorrow, the 14-year-old, symptoms of a 102-degree fever, rash, and sore throat appeared about a month after he cleaned out his locker at school, per the New York Times. He was hospitalized for heart failure.
He could have definitely died, said McMorrows primary care doctor Gheorghe Ganea to the Times. When theres cardiovascular failure, other things can follow. Other organs can fail one after another, and survival becomes very difficult.
Northwell health pediatric critical care doctor James Schneider emphasized to the Washington Post that the inflammatory syndrome requires hospital care and medications for blood pressure, steroids, and sometimes a ventilator. KD is treated with a high dose of gamma globulin, a protein found in human blood, given through an IV.
Who is at risk of the inflammatory syndrome?
Cases of MIS-C are very rare and are mostly popping up in COVID-19 hotspots like New York City, which as of May 21 had reported 147 cases, per the Washington Post.
Theres clearly some underlying genetic component that puts some children at risk, says the director of Columbia Universitys Precision Medicine Initiative, Tom Maniatis, to Science magazine. To find out what that genetic component might be, the New York Genome Center, of which Maniatis is CEO, is sequencing the genomes of the affected children, their parents and the virus which with theyre infected.
Not all of those affected by MIS-C have active COVID-19 infections, which are found with the nose swab test. A recent study published in the Lancet found that eight out of ten children with MIS-C in Italy had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, but new guidelines from the CDC show that antibody test results are far from cut-and-dry. (And immunity to the coronavirus is even more complicated.)
While Kawasaki disease commonly affects children of Asian ancestry, the inflammatory syndrome linked to COVID-19 hasnt been reported in Asian countries, Science reports. Data from cases of the inflammatory syndrome in London showed that of the 37 cases reported there as of May 7, a fair number of those children are actually of African and Afro-Caribbean descent, Tremoulet says in the KD Foundation video. That definitely needs to be further studied, and we need to understand why that group is having a much higher attack rate than we would expect given the number of African and Afro-Caribbean children in the London area.
And as the Washington Post points out, while turning 18 years old is the milestone between childhood and adulthood, the distinction is more legal than biological.
People in their 20s are at their physiological peak in terms of their lung capacity, reproductive system and strength, Cha and Janes write in the Post. So in this way, young adults may be more similar to children than to people in their 30s some of whom may be starting to experience the slow, gradual declines of aging.
Time and scientific research will tell whats happening in those affected by the inflammatory syndrome. As Science reports, a project called DIAMONDS is working with children in Europe affected by MIS-C as well as those with COVID-19 to screen their blood for viruses and other pathogens (including SARS-CoV-2) and also study their immune systems. A global research project in adults aims to better understand whether the condition is really unique to children.
To treat those affected by MIS-C, we need to identify early and we need to intervene early, says Toronto rheumatologist and immunologist Rae Yeung to Science. The kids were seeing so far, they respond to the treatments were giving.
Fear of contracting the new coronavirus is causing people across Hawaii to delay medical procedures, skip doctor visits and avoid hospitals.
Mia Taylor, director of community and post-acute care services for the Queens Health Systems, said a concerning number of patients are canceling or postponing preventative care procedures, such as physical exams, mammograms and colonoscopies.
People are also taking serious risks by neglecting important features of chronic disease management like eye exams, echocardiography and diabetic foot exams.
Were super worried about this because we just feel like it could be the next pandemic or tsunami, if you will, of people who have put aside some of these very important evaluations, Taylor said. As a result we feel like we may see this big uptick in complications associated with chronic disease.
Emergency room visits are down by about half across the state, in part because people are putting off treatment for medical emergencies due to fears of contracting COVID-19.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
Many facilities halted non-emergency procedures when the virus invaded Hawaii in March. This month, with fewer new COVID-19 cases confirmed daily, many hospitals across the state are starting to bring them back.
But health care workers say some patients are continuing to defer medical care.
Hospital executives say the revenue usually generated by these non-emergency services has dipped significantly. And with some patients still too leery of the virus to visit a medical facility, its unclear when this revenue shortfall will recover.
Were doing a big radio, TV, and newspaper ad campaign announcing that we are open for business, Taylor said. This hospital is cleaner now than its ever been just with all the new CDC guidance, and we are doing everything we can to keep patients and staff safe.
Health care providers are concerned that patients may be taking serious, potentially life-threatening risks by delaying treatment and preventative care.
In one case, Taylor said a patient who refused to seek medical care outside his home called his physician because he wasnt feeling well and thought he might have a urinary tract infection. The physician prescribed antibiotics.
Later on, a worried family member called the physician to say that the patient still seemed very ill but could not be convinced to go to the emergency room.
A nurse was sent to the patients home and ended up having to call 911. The patient had a potentially life-threatening infection.
The primary care doctor felt very strongly that had we not intervened when we did the patient would have died, Taylor said.
Emergency room visits are also down statewide, with Maui Memorial Medical Center reporting a 50% drop in ER visits in April and so far in May when compared to the same period last year.
The Maui hospital was the site of the states largest COVID-19 cluster outbreak, which state health regulators say is now considered closed. All told, 38 health care workers and 14 patients were infected in the cluster.
The outbreak raised public safety concerns after staff interviewed by Civil Beat said the hospital was slow to require health care workers to wear personal protective equipment and also told some staff not to wear it.
An investigation by state health officials concluded that the outbreak appears to have been started by a hospital staff member who was allowed to work while feeling sick.
Maui Memorial, where a coronavirus cluster outbreak prompted public safety concerns, reported a 50% drop in ER visits in April and so far in May.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
Health officials say plummeting ER traffic across Hawaii is partly owed to the fact there have been fewer accidents and injuries while many people have been sequestered at home. But they acknowledge that other patients are ignoring even severe mental health and medical symptoms because they are frightened to enter a hospital or doctors office.
ER traffic is also down by about half at Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital and Samuel Mahelona Memorial Hospital, where Dr. Travis Parker, the emergency room medical director, said some people are staying away from the ER out of a sense of duty.
I see a lot of people who come in with emergency-worthy symptoms and they apologize, Oh Im sorry Im here taking up your time, because they perceive that we are so busy dealing with COVID, Parker said. They think theyre doing their part by not coming in.
Dr. Laura DeVilbiss, medical director at Kokua Kalihi Valley, said one of her patients didnt want to come into the clinic so she met her virtually with telemedicine for a follow-up appointment. The patient was doing fine at the time, DeVilbiss said.
But later in the day the patient developed symptoms consistent with a heart attack.
When she knew she was having a heart attack, she went right to the ER, DeVilbiss said. I think people are going when they really, really need to, at least thats what were hoping.
People who rely on public transportation have also been resistant to coming into the clinic, she said, because they didnt want to get on a bus especially in March and April when the risk of exposure to the virus was higher than it is now.
Dr. Annie Nguyen, a psychiatrist in Kailua, said she has seen an uptick in patients who are adamantly refusing to seek urgent medical care.
When she cant convince them to go to the hospital, she tries to persuade them to visit their primary care provider. When all else fails, she urges them to at least see a doctor through telemedicine.
I try to stay in my scope because I cant tell if someone has a broken foot, Nguyen said. But its obvious if someone cant breathe or theyve got a bone sticking out or theyre bleeding profusely that they need to get to the ER right away and getting people to go during the pandemic is sometimes a struggle.
By contrast, doctors say hospital admissions for psychiatric problems are up at some Hawaii facilities as the economy unravels and many feel isolated by public health restrictions.
Yet at the same time, some people in the throes of a mental health crisis, including those who are suicidal or who have overdosed, are showing a reluctance to seek emergency care due to COVID-19 fears.
Dr. Tanya Gamby, a psychologist on Kauai, said three of her patients who are suicidal have refused to go to the emergency room since mid-March.
One of those patients, she said, was in urgent need of emergency medical attention. Gamby said she ended up having to call the police, who showed up and insisted that this person go to the ER.
It was definitely scary as a mental health professional knowing our procedures were not really working because nobody wanted to go to the hospital and I wasnt really wanting to send anyone there either, Gamby said. It felt like I had a double crisis on my hands.
The other two patients who refused to go to the ER were not in active crisis, Gamby said. Out of concern, she said she provided them with extra therapy and more frequent check-ins.
Dr. Adrianna Flavin, a psychologist on Maui, said some of her suicidal patients have similarly expressed an unwillingness to go to the ER until the risk of contracting COVID-19 subsides.
There was at least one person over the last two months where Ive said to them, If you are suicidal and you do develop a plan, I want to strongly encourage you to go to the hospital. It will be really important, and they said, Oh, absolutely not, Flavin said.
They wont do it and they were telling me that upfront. And it was only because of the virus that they wouldnt go.
In many cases, theres no suitable stand-in for in-person medical treatment.
But telemedicine can sometimes be a useful substitute for patients who need to see a doctor and are unwilling or unable to leave their homes.
However, not everyone has access to the technology that telemedicine requires: a computer, tablet or smartphone and a steady internet connection. Others might have this technology but dont know how to use it.
Mia Taylor, director of community and post-acute care services for the Queens Health Systems, worries that if patients are skipping preventive procedures, they may see a big uptick in complications associated with chronic disease.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
Some providers have been visiting patients in their homes during the pandemic to teach them how to use telemedicine. Others have resorted to talking with patients over the telephone.
In some households, tech-savvy children who are home from school are providing their parents and grandparents with readily available tech support.
At Queens Health Systems, a new team is working to figure out how to augment telemedicine with self-monitoring tools like blood pressure cuffs, scales, thermometers and pulse oximeters. For people with chronic conditions, consistent monitoring of these vital signs can be critical.
The medical group recently partnered with the American Heart Association to distribute 80 bluetooth-enabled blood pressure cuffs to chronic disease patients so they can monitor key vital signs and discuss them with a doctor without leaving their home.
Its not ideal obviously for people with chronic conditions, Taylor said. Many of them were used to seeing their doctor every one to two months. But its definitely, I think, a viable surrogate until we can really get patients comfortable coming back in to their providers.
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Army medical experts involved in testing COVID-19 vaccine candidates developed by outside laboratories are also working to develop their own vaccine, one that can give them the building blocks to combat future strains of the virus if mutations arise.
The first few vaccines being queued up for what the White House recently dubbed Operation Warp Speed includes those by the companies Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, Army researchers involved in the project said during a telephone call with reporters Tuesday.
Modernas candidate, for instance, is very, very likely to be the first major vaccine to be tested in large scale, said Nelson Michael, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
But Army researchers are developing another vaccine, added Kayvon Modjarrad, the institutes director of emerging infectious diseases. Their vaccine is being designed with a long-term approach to combating new strains of the novel coronavirus.
Theres no evidence currently that there are new strains, Modjarrad cautioned. But the vaccine his team is developing would help researchers more quickly fight any mutated strains should they arise.
We have been vaccinating hundreds and hundreds of mice with different versions of our vaccine and we will be making the decision as to which one is the best one to take forward for manufacturing next week," Modjarrad said. "And then, ultimately, to a first-in-human clinical trial in the late summer.
Human data obtained from those trials will inform the advancement of the other vaccines being pursued by Operation Warp Speed, Modjarrad added.
Even though it will not be one of those first four vaccines that initially go into large scale testing, we believe that ... with coronavirus in general and not just this particular one, we may be onto something very good," Michael said.
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In mid-May, President Donald Trump announced that Operation Warp Speed would harness private sector partners and government agencies to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine by January 2021.
Modjarrad said the timeline handed down to deliver the vaccine is unprecedented but is very much possible." Historically, the time from when a new virus has been discovered to when a vaccine becomes available hasnt changed all that much over the past 150 years, he noted.
But what has changed is when there is a concerted and intentional effort to develop a vaccine when that vaccine program begins to when we get the vaccine that timeline has compressed considerably," Modjarrad added. "From decades to years, and now, potentially to months.
A vaccine for the new strain of the Zika virus that was recently circulating in the Western Hempishere, for instance, reached clinical trials in about eight months, said Modjarrad.
Other viruses, like HIV, have proven more difficult, depite the large amounts of funding and time since the virus was first identified in the 1980s.
But most viruses are not like HIV. They do not mutate like HIV, said Modjarrad. What youre seeing now, with us being able to compress the timeline, is us overcoming prior issues weve had with other vaccine development with funding and coordination.
Modjarrad said that the scientific community is learning about COVID-19 faster than just about any other virus that came before it, a fact he credited to the streamlined effort to find a vaccine.
How much of the vaccine will be produced and who it will be available to is unclear, but meeting the timeline for the end of the year should be possible, according to Col. Wendy Sammons-Jackson, director of the Military Infectious Disease Research Program.
It is reasonable to expect that there will be some form of a vaccine that could be available at some level, to a certain population by the end of the year," said Sammons-Jackson. As long as were able to continue to progress and learn and understand and adapt, I think we have all the resources available pointed in the same direction that could make that possible.
SALT LAKE CITY The Utah State Legislature's commission created to re-open the economy is recommending the state move to a "green" risk level for COVID-19 as early as this weekend, FOX 13 is told.
The Public Health and Economic Emergency Commission voted on Tuesday to move to the lowest risk level, which eliminates a lot of the health guidelines in place by the state's COVID-19 task force and the Utah Department of Health. But Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, who sits on the commission, said there would be modifications -- including continuing strongly encouraging social distancing, the wearing of face masks and sanitization practices in businesses.
"Still the six-foot distancing in checkout lines, all the things were doing now but to have it be broader and opened for more businesses to allow our economy to go forward," Sen. Adams told FOX 13 in an interview.
Right now, Utah is in a "yellow" or low risk for novel coronavirus. Only Salt Lake City, Bluff and Mexican Hat are at an "orange" -- or moderate risk level -- because of a high number of cases. Sen. Adams conceded some parts of the state may not move to green or "new normal" right away.
"Theres probably parts of the state that arent ready. Summit, Wasatch County, maybe Salt Lake City, maybe West Valley, Magna. Maybe other areas of the state," Sen. Adams told FOX 13 in an interview. "These are data driven decisions and were seeing data that indicate that were showing the spread is not as prevalent as we see along the Wasatch Front. And we see hospital rates, hospital capacity we could absorb any type of spike that were looking at right now."
Utah has seen a strong uptick in COVID-19 cases in recent days. But the commission is focusing on impact to Utah's hospital system. Sen. Adams said it has not been overwhelmed, justifying the recommendation to move to the lowest risk level.
"The commissions actually looking at going to green because the numbers are good," Sen. Adams said.
The commission includes Major General Jefferson Burton, the acting director of Utah's Department of Health; Dr. Michael Good, the CEO of University of Utah Health; Brian Dunn of Steward Healthcare; as well as Derek Miller of the Salt Lake Chamber (who also chairs the governor's COVID-19 Economic Recovery Task Force); Brandy Grace of the Utah Association of Counties and Steve Starks of the Larry H. Miller Corporation. Legislative representatives include Sen. Adams; Senate Majority Whip Dan Hemmert, R-Orem; and House Majority Whip Mike Schultz.
"We are aware of the commissions recommendation to move areas to 'green' where the data support such a move. We review data on a weekly basis, and to this point have not recommended any areas move to 'green,'" the Utah Department of Health said in a statement to FOX 13.
The commission's recommendation will go to Governor Gary Herbert on Wednesday.
"We will review the recommendations from the Public Safety and Economic Emergency Commission and take them under careful consideration as we work to identify the best path forward to keep Utahns safe and informed," the governor's office told FOX 13.
