Apple has responded to a Senate letter asking questions about its COVID-19 screening tools. The company sought to allay concerns around an app and website that it launched in late March, built in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the White House. It promises that the tools include strong privacy and security protections and that Apple will never sell the data it collects.
The letter answers several questions posed by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Cory Booker (D-NJ). Among other things, it reveals the terms of Apples agreement with the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). These include prohibitions on sharing any identifying user data with the CDC.
Apple senior government affairs director Timothy Powderly also tells the Senate that its tools arent covered by the health privacy law HIPAA. HIPAA governs when a company can disclose data to a third party, and Apple says there arent any third parties involved in collecting the information, since data are entered into the website and app directly by users.
The screening tool doesnt ask for a users name, but it requests information about their age, travel history, possible exposure to infected people, and other details that could determine whether they should be tested for the novel coronavirus. Apple says it collects only the information necessary to run the app, including analytics like crash reports, and if it decides to store and share more data in the future, it would get user consent.
These tools are separate from and far less complex than the COVID-19 contact tracing system that Apple is developing alongside Google. That tool is set to launch in mid-May and raises its own set of privacy questions although theyre ones that both companies have put a lot of work into addressing.
In a statement to The Verge, Menendez said that he appreciated the replies. Apples response reflects a commitment to data privacy and the importance of taking proactive steps to protect it. I expect them to live up to this commitment and I will be there to hold them accountable if they fail, he said. I would hope that the Department of Health and Human Services and the Trump Administration as a whole follow similar steps to be more transparent and, for example, publish the full agreements they have signed with tech companies such as Apple.
"I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives," Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" when asked if social distancing and stay-at-home measures could have prevented deaths had they been put in place in February, instead of mid-March.
"Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated," added Fauci, who is a key member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force. "But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then."
Asked why the President didn't recommend social distancing guidelines until mid-March -- about three weeks after the nation's top health experts recommended they be put in place -- Fauci said, "You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it's not. But we -- it is what it is. We are where we are right now."
According to the Times report, Dr. Robert Kadlec, the top disaster response official at the Department of Health and Human Services, convened the White House coronavirus task force on February 21. During his meeting, the group conducted a mock-up exercise of the pandemic that predicted 110 million infections, 7.7 million hospitalizations and 586,000 deaths.
The group "concluded they would soon need to move toward aggressive social distancing, even at the risk of severe disruption to the nation's economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans," but it took more than three weeks for Trump to enact such guidelines on March 16.
Fauci told Tapper that "there is always a possibility, as we get into next fall and the beginning of early winter that we could see a rebound," in the virus, but the lessons learned from the first iteration of it should help the US better respond to a potential new wave.
"Hopefully, hopefully, what we have gone through now and the capability that we have for much, much better testing capability, much, much better surveillance capability, and the ability to respond with countermeasures, with drugs that work, that it will be an entirely different ball game," he said.
'Not going to be a light switch'
Fauci said Sunday that the process of returning to normal "is not going to be a light switch that we say, 'OK, it is now June, July' ... click -- the light switch goes back on."
He added: "It's going to be depending where you are in the country, the nature of the outbreak that you have already experienced and the threat of an outbreak that you may not have experienced. So it's going to have to look at the situation in different parts of the country."
Asked by Tapper when he thought that process could start, Fauci said he thinks "it could probably start at least in some ways maybe next month," but noted that it's "difficult" to make those types of predictions and officials are trying to open the country "appropriately."
Trump said Saturday night that he hopes to make a decision "fairly soon" on when to reopen the country amid the coronavirus pandemic, telling Fox News' Jeanine Pirro, "We have to bring our country back. So, I'll be making a decision reasonably soon, we're setting up a council now of some of the most distinguished leaders in virtually every field -- including politics, and business and medical -- and we'll be making that decision fairly soon."
An ominous warning
The director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said Sunday that if the social distancing measures and closures were relaxed on May 1, the country would see a rebound of coronavirus cases.
"We don't think the capability in the states exists yet to deal with that volume of cases and so by July or August we could be back in the same situation we are in now" if there was premature opening of the country, Dr. Christopher Murray said on CBS, adding that West Coast states that are further along in the pandemic will still need "weeks of closures" beyond the peak for the opportunity to conduct proper testing and contact tracing.
Relaxing closures and social distancing measures on a rolling basis, he said, poses a new set of questions that have not been addressed.
"Of course there's a big issue of states are on different timings of their epidemics, which we know is the case. How are they going to control importation from other states into their state?" Murray said.
The inconsistent state mitigation policies have also been a problem for the modeling of the pandemic, according to Murray, who said that "incomplete implementation of social distancing closures in many states (is) adding a degree of uncertainty."
The World Health Organization special envoy, Dr. David Nabarro, went a step further in an interview with NBC on Sunday, issuing an ominous warning about coronavirus, which has already infected more than 1,827,000 people worldwide.
"We're not so sure that it will come in waves in the way that influenza does," he said. "We think it's going to be a virus that stalks the human race for quite a long time to come until we can all have a vaccine that will protect us and that there will be small outbreaks that will emerge sporadically and they will break through our defenses."
Nabarro said it will be "key" for countries to "pick up cases as soon as they appear, isolate them and stop outbreaks from developing."
This story has been updated with additional developments Sunday.
CNN's Kevin Bohn, Maeve Reston, Maegan Vazquez, Jason Hoffman, Kristen Holmes, Jeremy Diamond and Wes Bruer contributed to this report.
COVID-19 research is advancing at an unprecedented speed, but one strategy doctors are leaning on to treat COVID-19 patients looks more antiquated than innovative. In hospitals around the United States, caregivers are resorting to using century-old convalescent plasma therapy siphoning blood from survivors and reinfusing it into the sick.
Thats because the hundreds of research papers published in the past few months and the record-setting leaps in vaccine development havent been fast enough to keep up with the blistering speed of the ongoing pandemic. People are sick and dying now, which is why doctors are falling back on plasma therapy as one stopgap measure that they hope can help in the lag time before other treatments come online.
I think of it as a bridge, until we can develop a vaccine or pharmaceutical that can be shown to be safe, and effective, and can be produced in mass quantities, says Elliott Bennett-Guerrero, who is studying the use of this convalescent plasma in COVID-19 patients at Stony Brook Medicine.
After someone is infected with a virus like the novel coronavirus and recovers, their blood is rich with antibodies that their immune system produced to help them fight the virus off. Doctors hope that giving the antibody-infused blood plasma to a newly sick person, who may not have antibodies yet, could help them get better more quickly.
With plasma were leveraging the bodys amazing ability to develop antibodies and immunity to pathogens, Bennett-Guerrero says. We transfer those protective factors to people who are sick and havent been able to mount an immune response.
Its been used as a treatment since at least the 1890s when blood from survivors was given to diphtheria patients. Studies during the 1918 flu pandemic showed that it was an effective treatment. It was used to managed dozens of illnesses in the century since, including measles and chickenpox.
Now, doctors hope it can help people with COVID-19. Preliminary data on a handful of patients in China showed that they got better after receiving a plasma infusion from survivors, but theres still not enough data to say for sure that it works. Researchers in the US are running controlled studies to see if patients who receive the plasma improve faster than patients who dont.
Its an old technique, says Scott Koepsell, medical director in the division of transfusion and transplantation support services at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who has collected plasma from Ebola survivors. He says that while plasma transfusions have been used for over a century, its still a treatment of last resort. Its a really well-meaning approach, but it has a lot of variability and limitations.
For example, every person who survives an infection will have a slightly different mix of immune substances in their plasma. Each sick person treated with plasma, then, is getting a slightly different treatment. That can make it really difficult for researchers to tell whether plasma therapy is generally effective (or ineffective) or whether it depends on if a patient gets a really good (or bad) batch of plasma. Medical researchers are trying to address this issue by only allowing survivors with high levels of antibodies to donate plasma, but the plasma will still vary from donor to donor.
In addition to the general uncertainty over how well these transfusions will work, there are also risks to any blood plasma transfusion: serious side effects can include lung injuries and allergic reactions.
Koepsell treated Ebola patients in the US with convalescent plasma during the outbreaks in 2014 and 2015. With Ebola, unlike COVID-19, there were additional benefits: plasma can also help prevent dangerous bleeding caused by that virus. Ebola was more likely to be dangerous for each person who got it, he says, making the risks easier to justify in the absence of clear evidence that plasma transfusions are effective.
In any outbreak, convalescent plasma has one major upside: its available as soon as someone survives a new illness. The good thing is its readily available shortly after something happens, Koepsell says.
Ideally, other, more standardized drugs specific to this disease would be available quickly, too. Those other drugs still take too long to get to patients in part because there hasnt been enough investment made to develop them. After the outbreaks SARS and MERS, which are also coronaviruses, scientists started work on possible treatments and vaccines. But with more distance from those outbreaks, the money dried up. Researchers doing that work arent as close to answers as they might have been if thered been a more sustained investment.
Its possible to shrink the window between when a new disease appears and when treatments are available, Koepsell says, so that doctors arent left reaching for plasma. Investment in disease preparedness and steady work on antiviral drugs for pathogens like coronaviruses would give them more resources for the next outbreak.
Hopefully well have governments and institutions recognize that pandemics can come with more frequency, he says. Id like to get away from collecting blood and transfusing it every time a new disease arrives.
Welcome back to AM Intel, a Monday morning round-up of mini news bites to kick off the week.
Evolving Pandemic Regulations
On April 8, Gov. Charlie Baker supplemented previously announced grocery store regulations for Massachusetts with additional requirements, including that grocery stores must limit occupancy including both staff and customers to 40% of their maximum permitted occupancy. (This doesnt apply to stores that already have an occupancy of 25 or fewer people.) Stores are also encouraged to designate one-way aisles where possible.
Within the state, some cities and towns are tightening up their own pandemic-related restrictions. Salem, for example, is now mandating that everyone wears a face covering within essential businesses (such as grocery stores) and communal areas of residential spaces. Ice cream trucks are also banned for now.
Brookline is also requiring customers to cover their faces while inside businesses, and staff must wear protective face, hand, and eye protection as well as install temporary Plexiglas-type barriers at customer service counter areas. Employees temperatures must be taken and recorded at the start of each shift. Restaurants offering takeout are encouraged to transition to non-contact methods with online or phone payment and curbside pickup.
In Lynn, there is now a citywide curfew between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. only those who are providing or receiving essential services can be out of their homes between those hours.
Openings and Closings
While the local restaurant scene hangs in limbo trying to get by on takeout and delivery and waiting for relief, trying to hold on until regular service is allowed again, some normal restaurant news continues: Some restaurants are opening; some restaurants are closing.
Openings, of course, dont include dine-in service at this time, as mandated by the state until at least May 4 but thats not stopping a couple takeout-friendly places from making their grand debut. Small local coffee chain Coffee Break Cafe opened a new location in South Quincy (102 Franklin St.) in late March, and fried chicken chain Popeyes is now open in West Roxbury (1630 VFW Parkway). The location has a drive-through window.
Prudential Center mainstay Top of the Hub which announced an April closing back in January had its final weeks cut short by the pandemic and is now permanently closed, ending a 55-year run 52 stories above Boston. Over on Stuart Street, Flemings Steakhouse has also closed permanently after operating for two decades. And in Somerville, the Assembly Row location of pizza chain Midici is closed as well.
In Other News...
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Lets start with the facts, which are incontrovertible.
On Tuesday, March 17, at the stroke of midnight, San Franciscans were made to shelter-in-place, not at the declaration of Mayor London Breed, or any elected official, but due to a regional order banged out over the prior weekend and released by seven health directors across six Bay Area counties.
You can see it here. You can see the places where the order states BLANK so each of the six counties can insert San Francisco or Solano or Alameda or whatever into its version of the text.
The order concludes with a line marked NAME, Health Officer of the County of BLANK.
This order was superseded on March 31 by an extension. You can see it here. You will note that San Francisco has simply copied-and-pasted the text from Santa Clara, which explains why it lists the COVID-19 case totals for that county. (San Francisco only met and passed the 848 cases listed in this March 31 dictum on April 12 or thereabouts after the outbreak at the MSC-South homeless shelter. More about that momentarily.).
Late at night on March 15, state officials confirmed to me that we would be getting a regional shelter-in-place order coming out the next day, and the announcement would be made by the counties health directors on Monday afternoon.
And that did happen. You can see it here. But, before the seven doctors spoke at a press conference helmed by Santa Clara health officer Dr. Sara Cody, San Francisco Mayor London Breed scheduled her own, earlier press conference.
Officials in multiple Bay Area counties told me they were taken aback by this deviation from an agreed-upon plan.
We were told no one would announce anything until the county health officers held their presser. Letting the white coats make the announcement on the order was viewed as the scientists know best optic, said one county official from over the bridge. This was all worked out by the county health officers and then told to the electeds.
Here are the facts, again incontrovertibly: An early March study in Santa Clara led by the Centers for Disease Control found a ghastly 11 percent of sickly people it surveyed tested positive for COVID-19 leading county health director Dr. Cody to convene her medical colleagues and issue that regional order only days later. And if you dont believe me, believe the San Francisco Chronicles brilliant Erin Allday.
But, by holding her press conference first, Breed grabbed the spotlight and the nations attention. A regional order issued by regional health directors for health reasons has instead been portrayed inaccurately as a unilateral San Francisco crusade, led by an intrepid San Francisco elected official.
Other counties elected and appointed officials have grumbled quietly about this, and journalists, to my knowledge, have not yet put all these facts in one place.
Perhaps thats because the mayor deserves no small degree of leeway in the midst of a crisis. And San Franciscans should be, to some extent, grateful for Mayor London Breed.
We should be grateful that our mayor took the COVID-19 threat seriously, listened to her health experts, and supported their dictums. This is not faint praise; this is more than many local, state and notably federal officials could be bothered to do. The comparison of Breed tweeting out warnings of a pending shelter-in-place while New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made theater recommendations is telling, regardless of who issued the shelter-in-place orders.
Breed declaring a state of emergency on Feb. 25 was a move that has aged well. San Francisco, and the Bay Area writ large, have not been ravaged by COVID-19 as other areas have, and thats because of relatively early, aggressive actions (at least among the housed population).
So, we should praise Mayor Breed for what she did and what shes done. But not for what she didnt do and hasnt done and will not do.
We must not allow a false narrative to become cemented and then serve as a foundation. We must not allow this false narrative to obscure and buttress criticisms against how this city is conducting its business.
And that is happening. To wit, in the latest blithe report from a national publication that San Francisco is single-handedly leading the charge against COVID-19,TheAtlantic this weekend published a jarring article titled The City That Has Flattened the Coronavirus Curve: Mayor London Breeds early and aggressive moves to contain the outbreak have made San Francisco a national model in fighting the pandemic.
Separate and apart from premature medical diagnoses in a city in which, for weeks, first-responders purportedly had to drive out to Hayward to be tested embarrassing San Francisco government officials this article does not make any mention of the five other counties under the identical regional order.
It does not, in fact, make any mention of that regional health order, issued by seven health directors in six counties. It does not make any reference to Dr. Cody or the CDC-led study in her county that led to a cadre of health directors convening and issuing this order. Rather,The Atlanticstates that Breed issued the order, which is factually incorrect and, given the omission of the five other counties and their health directors, is also highly misleading.
The articledoes note that Breed curtailed large gatherings, such as Warriors games, without mentioning that days earlier, Santa Clara County curtailed large gatherings such as Sharks games. The article fails, however, to mention that San Francisco officials implored the Warriors to cancel games for days and were rebuffed; San Francisco banned large gatherings in city-owned venues and left private entities to their own devices.
The citys non-mandatory aggressive recommendations to curtail the virus included canceling non-essential events including large gatherings such as concerts, sporting events, conventions, or large community events but the Dubs a team with a 15-50 record were still allowed to fill Chase Center for two more games.
The Atlantic reports that Breed was inspired to shut this city down when she saw horrific photos and videos emanating from Wuhan from late 2019 and early 2020 even though, again, the health officers shut this city down. But the article does not report that she wrote a letter to would-be attendees of the massive February RSAC Conference in San Francisco downplaying their COVID-19 fears.
Risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 in San Francisco is low as the virus is not circulating in our community, she wrote on Feb. 20. San Francisco is open for business as leaders in business and government, we must set an example to prevent fear, rumors, and misinformation from guiding our actions.
That conference was not canceled, despite Verizon and IBM seeing fit to pull out. At least two attendees did, indeed, subsequently test positive for COVID-19.
On Mission Street. Photo by Lola M. Chavez.
All of which led up to Breeds April 10 announcement that 68 homeless residents and two staffers at MSC-South had tested positive for COVID-19, numbers that have since been updated to 71 residents and five staffers.
And we are all still waiting to hear how awful the outbreak will become at Laguna Honda Hospital city officials I have spoken with are bracing for a dire outcome. Dozens of cases are reported in San Franciscos single-room occupancy hotels, too.
So, the citys manic, incoherent and insufficient COVID-19 plans for its homeless and underserved populations isnt a mere footnote in the grander story, as The Atlantic portrayed it. It may end up being the story. Its a major weak spot that could undermine all the citys best-laid plans, and swamp much or all of the good work San Francisco did.
Even if you dont care much about the plight of impoverished and/or homeless people and, clearly, many in this city do not they will still wander about breathing your air, get sick and go to your hospital and need to use your ventilator. Even the most selfish person should realize this is everyones problem.
A massive outbreak in a crowded homeless shelter manned by under-equipped staffers was this citys Chernobyl the predicted and predictable outcome of a concatenation of missteps and dubious decisions.
For weeks, a growing chorus from the Board of Supervisors, faith leaders, and homeless advocates has called for housing the citys vulnerable homeless population not in crowded, congregate shelters or on the streets but in the citys vast recesses of vacant hotel rooms.
But Breed has resisted this call. First, it was explained that the asymptomatic homeless were not one of the priority groups as prioritized by the Department of Public Health. Then this was portrayed as a staffing/capacity issue. And, finally, it was portrayed as a cost issue; obtaining thousands of hotel rooms and shuttling the homeless into them was not deemed to be fiscally prudent for a city facing a potential shortfall exceeding $1 billion.
Along with all that, Breed claimed that people who have drug challenges and mental health issues are not going to take a room and stay there.
Fair enough. But the relatively functional homeless people who dont fit those criteria perhaps half, by the reported estimate of this citys homeless department officials would take a room and stay there. Families would take a room and stay there. The staffing at such a hotel wouldnt need to be so different than what youll find in supportive housing and San Francisco houses tens of thousands of people in supportive housing every day.
And the costs, while astronomical, likely pale in comparison to paying on the back end in hospitals after leaving people in shelters or fending for themselves on the streets during a pandemic. To say nothing of the moral or humanitarian costs of doing that.
But thats what weve done thus far. The status quo was to keep homeless people crammed into crowded shelters without much in the way of physical distancing. The status quo was to have city policy be to inform homeless providers to keep hotel rooms empty rather than move in vulnerable families who are sleeping in cars or domestic violence shelters in the midst of a plague. The status quo was to curtail new entries into the shelters in a belated attempt to enable distancing, resulting in ever denser shantytowns on the sidewalks. The status quo was to attempt to solve the contagion problem of crowded, congregate shelters by opening up even bigger congregate shelters.
After announcing the outbreak at MSC South on Friday, Breed told the press that the fact is, we were on top of it.
Considering the weeks of high-decibel begging to take action to avoid just such an outcome, this was a truly mind-boggling thing to say. It was akin to boasting, We caught the baby on the first bounce.
She also noted that the city could act fast because hundreds of hotel rooms were at the ready in the event of an outbreak. But not, it would seem, beforehand.
While Breed initially announced that MSC South would become a medical center, that plan, like so many others addressing the plight of the citys neediest, was quickly scrapped. Instead, the shelter-dwellers were moved, en masse, to hotels.
MSC South is now empty. A line of tents ring its perimeter.
Articles like the one in The Atlanticplay into San Franciscos natural sense of exceptionalism. And, in this case, that isnt just uncalled for and factually indefensible. Its also dangerous.
It allows us to ignore the written evidence and see things as wed simply wish they were. San Francisco is doing better because we are better. It allows us to ignore the dearth of testing and insufficient contact tracing and false starts and reversals on housing the homeless and the melodrama on acquiring hotel rooms and the indignant responses to calls for transparency.
It allows us to shrug our shoulders and write off the shelter outbreak as inevitable when it didnt have to be.
We can do better. We must do better. Lives are at stake. We arent out of this yet.
That, too, is an incontrovertible fact.
***
A sailor assigned to the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt died after being admitted to an intensive care unit in Guam last week for coronavirus complications the first such death of a sailor from the vessel.
The individuals name is being withheld until 24 hours after next-of-kin notification. The sailor was admitted to the ICU at U.S. Naval Hospital Guam on Thursday and died Monday, according to the Navy.
The sailor tested for COVID-19 on March 30 and was removed from the ship and placed in isolation with four other service members.
The deceased sailor was found unresponsive at 8:30 a.m. during one of the two medical checks conducted daily for those in isolation.
While Naval Base Guam emergency responders were notified, CPR was administered by fellow sailors and onsite medical team in the house, a statement from the Navy chief of information office reads. The sailor was transferred to U.S. Naval Hospital Guam where the sailor was moved to the intensive care unit.
The Roosevelt has been in Guam since March 27. The vessels commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, was relieved following the leak of a four-page letter he penned imploring the Navy to remove the majority of the Roosevelts crew and provide individualized isolation for them ashore in Guam to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Though a small portion of the crew had been removed from the ship and placed into group quarantine sites, only one of the locations complied with Navy guidance, according to the letter. Crozier asked to remove all but about 10 percent of the crew, who would remain to operate the reactor plant and perform sanitization.
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We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset: our Sailors, Crozier wrote in the letter.
As of Sunday, 92 percent of Roosevelts 4,800 crew members have been tested for COVID-19. There have been 585 positive results. More than 3,900 sailors have since been moved ashore and entered 14-day isolations in hotels and other rooms across Guam, according to the Navy.
We mourn the loss of the Sailor from USS Theodore Roosevelt who died today, and we stand alongside their family, loved ones, and shipmates as they grieve, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said.
This is a great loss for the ship and for our Navy. My deepest sympathy goes out the family, and we pledge our full support to the ship and crew as they continue their fight against the coronavirus. While our ships, submarines and aircraft are made of steel, Sailors are the real strength of our Navy.
The sailor who died Monday is the second U.S. service member to succumb to COVID-19.
The first was Army Capt. Douglas Linn Hickok, a 57-year-old physician assistant in the New Jersey National Guard who was hospitalized March 21 after testing positive for COVID-19.
A week later, he succumbed to the respiratory disease at a Pennsylvania hospital. Hickok, however, was not on active duty orders at the time of his death and had not yet been mobilized during the pandemic.
This is a developing story. Stay with Navy Times for updates.
She was diagnosed with COVID-19 after a trip to New York. Then the cruelty started. Hawaii News Now
FORT WORTH, Texas A Lockheed Martin employee has died nearly two weeks after telling supervisors he'd been exposed to COVID-19.
A spokesperson for Lockheed Martin confirmed that Claude Daniels was a longtime employee, but could not provide details on how he died.
"Our Lockheed Martin team is saddened to learn of his passing," Ken Ross said. "Currently, we do not have any confirmation or details from his family or medical authorities regarding his cause of death."
Ross says Daniels was last at work on March 31 during the third shift. At that time, he told his supervisor he had been in close contact with a person outside the company who had tested positive for COVID-19.
Daniels was sent home to self-quarantine, according to the company.
On April 5, Daniels contacted Lockheed Martin and said he had COVID-19 symptoms.
Ross said the company then followed its protocol to assess potential exposure and directed anyone with likely exposure to Daniels to self-quarantine. His work area was sanitized as well.
Lockheed Martin employs approximately 18,500, making it the largest employer in Tarrant County. Ross says the company has been aggressive in implementing procedures to keep workers safe during the pandemic.
"We have implemented a flexible teleworking policy for employees who can continue the essential work required to meet our commitments to the U.S. government and our key allies around the globe from home," Ross said.
According to an employee Facebook page, Daniels worked for Lockheed Martin for years as a material handler. His wife had been with the company for over 30 years.
A GoFundMe page was set up Monday to help support Daniels' family with funeral expenses.
TOLEDO, Ohio What do most of us do when we have a fever or a headache? Grab an aspirin.
But if you have COVID-19, some have asked if over-the-counter medications could actually be dangerous for your health.
We looked into this claim several weeks ago, but many are still wondering if medications like these actually exacerbate the virus.
Part of the message Bonnie sent WTOL 11 reads, "Only high temperatures kill a virus, so let your fever run high. Tylenol, Advil. Motrin, Ibuprofen, etc, will bring your fever down allowing the virus to live longer."
So, are you safe to take any over-the-counter drugs if you suspect you have the coronavirus?
WTOL
"We recommend medications like acetaminophen to reduce the fever," said Dr. Brian Kaminski, ProMedica's vice president of quality and patient safety. "It's not going to make the virus go away faster. It's not going to make the virus any worse or any better. The virus is going to run its pre-determined course."
So, that's VERIFIED: you're in the clear to take acetaminophen to reduce a fever.
WTOL
RELATED: VERIFY: Can mosquitoes spread COVID-19? Can I get the virus twice?
RELATED: VERIFY: Can my pet catch COVID-19?
"We're not recommending nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicines," Kaminski said. "So things like Naproxen and Aleve and Motrin. We're not sure yet but there is some evidence that those could potentially make certain aspects of this disease worse. It isn't clear yet. It isn't 100%."
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it's "not aware of scientific evidence connecting the use of NSAIDs, like ibuprofen, with worsening COVID-19 symptoms." However, the agency says it's investigating further.
So we can VERIFY that yes, there are some medications you may consider avoiding if you're diagnosed with the virus, at least until more information is known.
"There's absolutely no evidence as it relates to allowing your fever to run high because that just feels awful," Kaminski said. "Although the virus may be heat-sensitive, those aren't the type of temperatures that would generally be achieved to kill the virus."
That claim is FALSE.
Even the World Health Organization says your body heat simply isn't enough to kill the virus on its own.
Have a claim or question you want our VERIFY team to look into? Get in touch with Tyler Paley, tpaley@wtol.com
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WTOL 11s coverage of the coronavirus is rooted in Facts, not Fear. Visit /coronavirus-covid-19 for comprehensive coverage, find out what you need to know about northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan specifically, learn more about the symptoms and keep tabs on the cases around the world here. Have a question? Text it to us at 419-248-1100.
PUEBLO, Colo. (KKTV) - On Monday, Pueblo County announced its first outbreak of positive COVID-19 cases at a long-term care facility.
The Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment (PDPHE) is reporting four employees and six residents tested positive at Brookdale El Camino. The facility is off Northern Avenue and Surfwood Lane on the southwest side of the city.
We are very concerned about the residents and staff and wish for a full and quick recovery, stated Randy Evetts, public health director at PDPHE. Protecting the health of our community is our top priority, and we are continuing to do contact investigations per established public health process and guidelines to reduce the spread of this virus at Brookdale El Camino and in community.
In late March one employee tested positive with COVID-19. Brookdale El Camino immediately notified family members and staff members. A week later, a resident tested positive but was not linked to the original employee positive with COVID-19. The following week several other employees and residents tested positive for COVID-19.
We remain vigilant in adhering to our safety protocols and monitoring the individual health of every resident, said Heather Hunter, Brookdale Senior Living spokesperson. We are following the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and are in close communication with the Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment. During this challenging time, I thank our dedicated team members, who continue to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those we serve, and I also thank our residents and their families for their ongoing trust and support.
Since March 13, 2020 Brookdale El Camino has not allowed visitors. This policy will continue indefinitely during the pandemic. The health departments adds Brookdale El Camino professionally cleaned and disinfected their facility over the weekend.
Now, more than ever, we remind people to focus on the steps they can take to help prevent the spread of disease, as the virus is widespread in Pueblo stated Evetts. The best thing you can do is practice good hygiene, and stay home, especially if you are sick.
