HONOLULU (KHON) The Department of Health confirmed today that there are 10 new cases of coronavirus in the state; 8 on Oahu and 2 on Maui. The DOH stated there is no evidence of community spread.
According to the States COVID-19 Joint Information Center, all 10 cases are adults.
One of the Oahu cases is State Senator Clarence Nishihara, who announced earlier today that he had tested positive.
Another case is a civilian employee at Tripler Army Medical Center, making this case the first confirmed COVID-19 case within the Army community in Hawaii. Military medical personnel were informed of the positive test results on March 18.
According to Tripler, the employee had recently traveled to New York and started to develop symptoms after returning to Oahu, and took the precaution of self-isolating at home. The individual then pursued testing through an urgent care facility after personal notification that a close contact during travel had tested positive for COVID-19. The employee is currently in self-isolation and will be monitored by medical personnel from the medical center.
This is a developing story. We will update it as more details emerge.
This blog is the first in a series providing regional analysis on the effects of the coronavirus.
By Alejandro Werner
, , Espaol, Franais, , Portugus,
COVID-19 is spreading very quickly. This is no longer a regional issueit is a challenge calling for a global response. Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have been hit later than other regions from the pandemic and therefore have a chance to flatten the curve of contagion.
Efforts on multiple fronts to achieve this goal are underway. In addition to strengthening health policy responses, many countries in the region are taking measures of containment, including border closures, school closings, and other social distancing measures.
For the region, a 2020 with negative growth is not an unlikely scenario.
These measures, together with the world economic slowdown and disruption in supply chains, the decline in commodity prices, the contraction in tourism, and the sharp tightening of global financial conditions are bringing activity to a halt in many Latin American countriesseverely damaging economic prospects. For the region, the recovery we were expecting a few months ago will not happen and a 2020 with negative growth is not an unlikely scenario.
Deep impact
The resulting increase in borrowing costs will expose financial vulnerabilities that have accumulated over years of low interest rates. While the sharp fall in the oil price is expected to benefit the oil importing countries in the region, it will dampen investment and economic activity in countries that are heavily dependent on oil exports.
In the event of a local outbreak, service sector activity will likely be hit the hardest as a result of containment efforts and social distancing, with sectors such as tourism and hospitality, and transportation particularly affected.
Moreover, countries with weak public health infrastructures and limited fiscal space to ramp up public health services and support affected sectors and households would come under significant pressure.
The economic impact of the pandemic is likely to vary due to regional and country-specific characteristics.
South America will face lower export revenues, both from the drop in commodity prices and reduction in export volumes, especially to China, Europe and the United States which are important trade partners. The sharp decline in oil prices will hit the oil exporters especially. The tightening of financial conditions will affect negatively the large and financially integrated economies and those with underlying vulnerabilities. Containment measures in several countries will reduce economic activity in service and manufacturing sectors for at least the next quarter, with a rebound once the epidemic is contained.
In Central America and Mexico, a slowdown in the United States will lead to a reduction in trade, foreign direct investment, tourism flows, and remittances. Key agricultural exports (coffee, sugar, banana) as well as trade flows through the Panama Canal could also be adversely affected by lower global demand. Local outbreaks will strain economic activity in the next quarter and aggravate already uncertain business conditions (especially in Mexico).
In the Caribbean, lower tourism demand due to travel restrictions and the fear factoreven after the outbreak recedeswill weigh heavily on economic activity. Commodity exporters will also be strongly impacted and a reduction in remittances is likely to add to the economic strain.
Policy priorities
The top priority is ensuring that front-line health-related spending is available to protect peoples wellbeing, take care of the sick, and slow the spread of the virus. In countries where there are limitations in health care systems, the international community must step in to help them avert a humanitarian crisis.
In addition, targeted fiscal, monetary, and financial market measures will be key to mitigate the economic impact of the virus. Governments should use cash transfers, wage subsidies and tax relief to help affected households and businesses to confront this temporary and sudden stop in production.
Central banks should increase monitoring, develop contingency plans, and be ready to provide ample liquidity to financial institutions, particularly those lending to small and medium sized enterprises, which may be less prepared to withstand prolonged disruptions. Temporary regulatory forbearance may also be appropriate in some cases.
Where policy space exists, broader monetary and fiscal stimulus can lift confidence and aggregate demand but would most likely be more effective when business operations begin to normalize. Given the extensive cross-border economic linkages, the argument for a coordinated, global response to the epidemic is clear.
Countries are starting to take policy initiatives in this direction. For example, additional funds are being secured for health spending in many countries including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. Moreover, Brazil announced an emergency economic package on March 17 that is targeted for supporting the socially vulnerable, maintenance of employment, and combatting the pandemic.
For our part, the IMF stands ready to help mitigate the economic fallout from the coronavirus and we have several facilities and instruments at our disposal.
In closing, I would like to iterate the importance of decisive actions by all of us to limit the economic fallout from the coronavirus and avert a humanitarian crisis. The Fund stands ready to assist and work with member countries in these difficult times.
The IMF and Covid-19
Cadet spoke to CNN through labored breaths and coughing from her hospital bed Friday, hours after she found out she'd tested positive for Covid-19, the illness caused by coronavirus. She says she has asthma, but it's normally well-controlled. She never expected to be one of many who are hospitalized by the virus.
"I did not think it was going to get me this bad," Cadet said. "My asthma is really under control otherwise."
Cadet had been working "light duty" for the past several weeks, taking care of maintenance around the Fire Department of New York station where she works. She had no patient contact and stayed in the station. As officials began to warn the public to maintain "social distancing," Cadet said her only contact with the outside world was through her work as an "essential worker."
She stayed at the station but said her co-workers responded to multiple calls where they came in contact with people who were showing symptoms of the coronavirus. Some of the people they treated later tested positive for the virus, her coworkers told her.
"I wasn't even having patient contact, just exposed to my co-workers," Cadet said.
When asked about Cadet's case, FDNY spokesman Jim Long said, "Covid-19 is at the level of community exposure and has been for many days."
He added that 15 members of the fire department had tested positive for coronavirus, and that there were no reports of breaches in personal protective equipment on coronavirus-related calls.
Cadet says there are not enough masks or protective gear and that exposure is inevitable.
"Cross-contamination is eventually going to happen. Everybody's calling 911, everybody's got symptoms," Cadet said. "We are the first line of defense. We're going to go somewhere and we're going to treat this patient, we're going to do the best to decontaminate our ambulance and then go onto the next assignment. Everybody's going to come in contact."
FDNY has an entire unit tasked with monitoring the level of protective equipment like masks, Long said.
"We're good as we speak right now, but every day that adjusts and changes," Long said.
This week the guidelines for FDNY's workers changed. They are now expected to continue working after exposure to patients who have tested positive for Covid-19, as long as they aren't showing symptoms of the virus, said Oren Barzilay, the president of the union that represents EMTs, paramedics and fire inspectors in the FDNY.
The guidelines say that because there is now "sustained community transmission" of the virus in New York City, quarantining people who travel or come in contact with Covid-19 positive cases "is no longer scientifically valid."
"It's like putting fuel on fire. It makes no sense to us that they're asking us to continue spreading this virus," Barzilay said.
Long said that FDNY workers could continue to work as long as they don't have symptoms. He said that firefighters, EMS and other workers at FDNY will be "tracked" daily after encountering someone who tested positive for coronavirus.
"They'll be responsible for taking a look and checking in on their health -- taking their temperature, do they have a cough, is it a new cough, sore throat?" Long said. "They'll report back to us on a daily basis."
Long said if FDNY workers show symptoms, they would be placed under a seven-day quarantine and could return to work if they remained fever free for three days. The workers would be paid and the time off would not count against their leave. This is a change from the department's previous 14-day quarantine policy, before city guidelines were changed regarding health care workers quarantining if exposed to a positive coronavirus case.
He said that as of Friday, 127 members of the fire department had been quarantined after coming in contact with people who tested positive for coronavirus. That was before the new guidelines came out this week. Those already under quarantine will remain there for two weeks and can return to work if they don't have symptoms, Long said.
Information and guidelines are constantly changing, Long said, and FDNY is working to do what's best for their workers.
"This is a completely different event than we're accustomed to. It's not a fire, it's not a building collapse. The road we're traveling is unknown and we're learning, at times, as we go," Long said. "We're trying to identify what's good for our membership, what's good for their families and ultimately the people that we serve."
"If you are a health care worker who has had a known high-risk exposure to a patient(s) with confirmed Covid-19, you should take extra care to monitor your health but can keep working," according to New York City's health department guidelines. "There is no requirement for 14 day quarantine of healthcare workers with high-risk exposures in the setting of sustained community transmission as we have in New York City."
But EMS workers present a unique problem over other health care workers who are based in hospitals and clinics, they often are coming into people's homes, Barzilay said, adding that they often respond to calls from the elderly or immunocompromised.
"We are now putting other people's lives at risk," Barzilay said. "Now they've exposed this elderly person to the coronavirus."
Cadet said she believes she'll spend the next two days in the hospital, hooked up to oxygen. She can't go home now, she said, because she fears exposing elderly family members to the virus.
TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) -- The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has confirmed two deaths of coronavirus, one in Johnson and the other previous case in Wyandotte county.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has confirmed that as of Saturday afternoon, the state has 57 cases of coronavirus, including two deaths.
Johnson County still has the most cases, with 25; Wyandotte County has 13 cases, Leavenworth County has 4 cases, Douglas county has 3 cases, Morris and Butler County each have two cases, and Cherokee, Franklin, Jackson, Linn, Mitchell, Reno, Riley and Sedgwick Counties each have one case.
In the summer of 2014, as I was preparing to fly to West Africa as an emergency responder to the largest Ebola outbreak in history, I sat in my room consumed with fear. I felt like a kid again, standing on the high dive for the very first time, about to plunge into the pool far below.
And while that fear dissipated somewhat over the coming weeks as I worked with Liberian and international colleagues to launch a new Ebola treatment center in Bong County, Liberia, it never went away entirely. My experiences in Liberia taught me that courage is not the absence of fear it is doing what you know you must even when you are terrified.
Hundreds of thousands of health workers across the United States and the world are learning that same lesson, or will quite soon.
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Courage alone wont be enough. You will also need to take care of yourselves and each other to make it through the Covid-19 pandemic. First and foremost, get enough rest. Second, remember to eat. Exhaustion and hunger magnify stress.
Taking care of yourself also means that you must first protect your own health when you are tending to your patients. This means taking those extra few minutes, no matter the urgency of the situation, to be certain that you put on your protective equipment correctly, and that your team members have done the same. Be even more careful when you remove the equipment so you dont contaminate yourself or others in the process.
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You are a precious and limited resource, and you must act the part.
An unexpected lesson I learned from fighting Ebola was that as stressful as it was working in a treatment center in Liberia, coming home was far worse. In Liberia I had the camaraderie of my fellow health workers, all of us working together to defeat the virus. At work, you will be a hero. Perhaps Time magazine will someday recognize you, like it did the Ebola fighters, as its Person of the Year.
But when you come home, you will be a vector, a pariah. Your friends and family may shun you. You may even begin internalizing this sentiment, thinking of yourself as dirty or unclean, feeling guilty about exposing your loved ones to the possibility of being infected with the novel coronavirus. Never mind the data about asymptomatic transmission being rare the amygdala doesnt understand statistics.
If youve never had to provide health care in a resource-limited setting, you may find yourself learning what it means to ration care. You may be surprised to learn that rationing is rarely very rational. Your hospital or department of health or professional society may have developed guidelines, yet you will find them difficult to apply to the unique circumstances of the patient in front of you. It will always be harder to take someone off a ventilator than put someone on one, regardless of who needs it most.
And your decisions may be affected by your own implicit biases about who deserves care the most, rather than who needs it the most. This doesnt mean you are a bad person or unprofessional: I have seen superb health workers in resources-constrained settings across the planet do the same including myself. The only way you will be able to protect your patients from your own biases will be to recognize them in the moment.
If you are not a health worker, but happen to know one, you also have an important role to play by supporting them through this pandemic. A few years back, I gave a talk to a group of naval officers about my experiences fighting Ebola in West Africa. Afterwards, one of the participants came up to me and said, Thank you for your service. As a civilian, no one had ever said that to me before, and I was surprised by how deeply they affected me. If youre unsure how best to support the health workers in your life, a simple thank you may go a long way.
Finally, we must all keep in mind that this too shall pass, though perhaps not as quickly as we might want it to. While I was working in Liberia, a truck pulled up one day with gravel to cover the floor of our treatment center. Underneath the front windshield someone placed a banner meant to read No Condition is Permanent.
As bad as it was, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa would have been far worse without the efforts of all the health workers on the ground. After two long years, it finally came to an end.
Covid-19 will, too.
Adam Levine, M.D., is an emergency physician, associate professor of emergency medicine, and director the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies and the Division of Global Emergency Medicine at Brown University in Providence, R.I.
When exposed to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 twice in a row, two monkeys did not contract an infection a second time, according to a preliminary study. This could be good news for humans, who historically show an immune response to the virus that's similar to their primate cousins but experts say it's too soon to say for sure.
China, Japan and South Korea have reported cases of people testing positive for the coronavirus, recovering, being released from care and then later testing positive a second time. Evidence suggests that the virus can persist in the body for several weeks after recovery, so it may be that these patients still tested positive but were not reinfected, Live Science previously reported. However, we still know very little about how the human immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2, and whether those who have been infected develop lasting immunity.
The new research in monkeys, though preliminary, may help start to answer these questions.
Related: 11 deadly diseases that hopped across speciesMore: Coronavirus in the US: Map & cases
The small study, posted March 14 to the preprint database medRxiv, has not been peer reviewed. Additionally, the small study included only four rhesus macaques, two of which were exposed to the virus twice. That said, all four monkeys appeared susceptible to COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, developed symptoms that were similar to humans and generated specific antibodies in response to the virus.
"According to our current study, the antibodies produced by the infected monkeys can protect the monkey from the reexposure to the virus," senior author Dr. Chuan Qin, director of the Institute of Laboratory Animal Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, told Live Science in an email.
Related: Can people spread the coronavirus after they recover?
Although interesting, these early results should be taken "with a grain of salt," Dr. Courtney Gidengil, a senior physician policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and an associate physician in pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Boston Children's Hospital, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. Given the limited data from both people and monkeys, it's unclear whether patients who seemingly "relapsed" hadn't actually recovered from their initial illness, or else generated too few antibodies to ward off the disease when exposed a second time, she added.
"While the findings seem reassuring in terms of the monkeys doing fine, I dont think we can generalize from it with certainty for humans, given the small sample size," Gidengil said.
Having heard the anecdotal reports of so-called reinfection in humans, Chuan's team aimed to see if rhesus macaques could become infected with COVID-19 twice in a row.
The team introduced SARS-CoV-2 into the throats of four adult macaques and closely monitored the animals' symptoms and vital signs. The team collected swab samples from the animals' noses, throats and anuses to track the changing concentration of the virus throughout the body. The team also euthanized and took tissue samples from one monkey seven days after infection to analyze the viral load in various organs.
The team also took X-rays of the monkeys' chests to look for tissue damage and signs of pneumonia. The team also identified antibodies present in the monkeys' blood.
Related: How deadly is the new coronavirus?
The "virus infection and pathology in monkey model are very similar to those of patients, but monkey models did not show severe symptoms of patients [or] death," Chuan said. The macaques showed decreased appetite, increased breathing rate and developed mild to moderate pneumonia about a week following infection. Viral concentrations in the nose and throat peaked around three days post-infection and then declined; the anal concentrations also peaked around three days after infection and fell to undetectable levels by day 14.
Blood samples revealed the monkeys developed antibodies built to target SARS-CoV-2 shortly after infection, with significant concentrations appearing in the blood by the 14th day and remaining elevated when checked 21 and 28 days after infection. At this point, the monkeys tested negative for the virus, their symptoms had subsided, their vital signs stabilized and their chest X-rays appeared normal, so the team considered them to be fully recovered.
At this point, they attempted to infect two of the monkeys a second time. But the infection did not take.
Swab samples collected from the monkeys did not contain detectable concentrations of the virus following reexposure and remained clear for 14 days. The team sampled tissues from one of the two monkeys five days after reexposure and noted neither tissue damage from the virus nor increased viral loads.
"No viral load was detected in these main tissues on [day five] after the monkey was exposed to the same dose of virus again," Chuan said. "So, we think the coronavirus did not survive for a long time in the body."
The results suggest that exposure to SARS-CoV-2 can protect rhesus macaques from subsequent infection and indicates that the monkeys could be useful in vaccine and treatment development. "Because of the similar immune response of [nonhuman primates] and human beings, [nonhuman primate] models are better to evaluate vaccines than other animals," Chuan said.
But can the small study tell us anything about human immunity to the virus?
"The big limitation of this study is that it's really a short-term rechallenge study," meaning the monkeys were "rechallenged" with the virus soon after recovering from the first infection, said Dr. Dean Winslow, a professor of hospital medicine at Stanford University Medical Center who specializes in infectious diseases.
Winslow said that, while it represents a solid first step toward understanding the immune response to this virus, the study should be replicated in a larger group of primates and the second exposure should take place further out from the first. Only then can we see whether and how immunity persists over longer periods of time, and how that relates to the clinical data we gather from human patients, Winslow told Live Science.
Additionally, future studies could probe how the generation of specific antibodies correlates with immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Different antibodies latch onto different parts of a virus's outer coat. So different antibody types may grant more or less immunity against a given virus. It would be valuable to take samples from an infected animal daily, tally the number and diversity of antibodies over time and determine which viral structures those antibodies target, Winslow said. These data could help reveal how and whether different antibodies create long-lasting immunity.
That said, you wouldn't expect to see those results from a short study of only four monkeys, Winslow added.
"This was a very nice, initial pilot study," he said. "But the limitations are what they are."
Originally published on Live Science.
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Empty, mocked-up shells of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, may help explain how well the virus stands up to heat, humidity and other environmental changes.
The research, just launched by physicists at The University of Utah, is designed to help public health officials understand how the new coronavirus will react as the seasons change. One major question about the virus, which causes a disease called COVID-19, is whether summer will do anything to slow the spread.
Related: How does the new coronavirus compare with the flu?
"Coronavirus spreads similarly to the influenza virus as small mucus droplets suspended in the air Viruses lose infectivity because the particles lose structural integrity," University of Utah physicist Saveez Saffarian said in a statement. "The physics of how the droplets evolve in different temperature and humidity conditions affect how infectious it is."
Along with physicist Michael Vershinin, Saffarian has just received a nearly $200,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study how the virus's protective outer shell responds to changes in heat and humidity. Viruses are not able to "do anything" on their own, as they are simply shells with genetic instructions tucked inside; when a virus invades a host's cells, it uses that cell's machinery to replicate itself, over and over again.
Related: 13 Coronavirus myths busted by science
The research involves working with dummy versions of the virus's protective outer shell. Using the sequenced genome of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers are building synthetic versions of these shells, with no viral genomes inside. This makes the shells uninfectious and safe to work with.
"We're making a faithful replica of the virus packaging that holds everything together," Vershinin said in the statement. "The idea is to figure out what makes this virus fall apart, what makes it tick, what makes it die."
To manipulate the nano-sized dummy particles, Vershinin's lab uses a tool called optical tweezers essentially, focused beams of light. The light's energy can be directed to move and probe individual molecules. Saffarian studies RNA viruses on a broader scale and is an expert in lab techniques that can track individual viral particles.
The researchers said they hope to find out how well the virus will transmit in different conditions, from outdoors in summer heat to indoors in air-conditioned offices. This could influence how long social distancing and lockdown policies will need to be in place.
"This is not a vaccine," Vershinin said. "It won't solve the crisis, but it will hopefully inform policy decisions going forward."
Originally published on Live Science.
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India reported its third death from COVID-19 on Tuesday.
Despite being the worlds second most populous country, with more than 1.3 billion people, the nation has reported three deaths and around 150 cases, giving rise to questions about why the virus has not spread as rapidly as elsewhere.
For some, the answer is the fast action that Indias government took as the virus spread from China to many parts of the world. And if the relatively low number of cases continues, it could make the nation a blueprint for others seeking to limit the impact.
Taking rapid actions to limit travel by suspending visas and quarantining all incoming travellers has helped. All international passengers entering India undergo Universal Health Screening. According to health officials, more than 1 million passengers have been screened at airports, limiting the entry of coronavirus.
The response also mirrors Indias reaction to previous disease outbreaks, including Ebola in 2014 and Nipah in 2018, when people were quickly put into quarantine or under surveillance. Indian citizens have been advised to avoid all non-essential travel abroad, and citizens have been evacuated from Iran, Italy, China and Japan.
A new strain of Coronavirus, COVID 19, is spreading around the world, causing deaths and major disruption to the global economy.
Responding to this crisis requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community, which is at the centre of the World Economic Forums mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.
The Forum has created the COVID Action Platform, a global platform to convene the business community for collective action, protect peoples livelihoods and facilitate business continuity, and mobilize support for the COVID-19 response. The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.
As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.
Apart from ensuring the safe return of hundreds of Indians from China, Iran and other countries, the Indian government has taken decisive measures to contain community spread, said Sriram Gutta, Head of Community Development, India and South Asia at the World Economic Forum.
While these measures will have short-term economic impact, they will ensure the safety and welfare of Indians.
A novel coronavirus landing page on the Ministry of Healths website gives the numbers of phone helplines, as well as detailed advice and guidelines. Actions like these have been lauded by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is leading the global charge against the virus.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis government was quick to recommend residents avoid or postpone mass gatherings until the the virus is contained. The Ministry of External Affairs postponed the Indian cricket league and state authorities are shutting schools, gyms and swimming pools in the worst-hit regions.
Such responses are good and impressive, according to the WHO.
India is doing quite well, said the WHO Representative, Henk Bekedam.
Even so, the nation still faces many of the same challenges as other countries, including limiting unauthorized gatherings and debunking fake health messages circulating on social media. The global economic impact will be hard to avoid, with the United Nations trade and development agency predicting the slowdown in the global economy caused by the coronavirus outbreak is likely to cost at least $1 trillion.
The Public Health department of Maharashtra on Wednesday said that consuming more garlic, curry leaves or cows urine would neither treat nor prevent coronavirus infection. Instead, they urged people to practise good hygiene, contain coughs and sneezes and eat nutritious food.
The Director-General of the Indian Council of Medical Research Balram Bhargava said on Tuesday that community transmission of COVID-19 has not yet occurred in India, meaning people who contracted the virus did so from a known source.
Even so, officials are preparing for it to happen, with private laboratories authorized to test for the virus, freeing up more capacity for diagnosis and detection. Restaurants are also shutting, with the National Restaurants Association advising members to close at least until 31 March.
If the statistics continue to show a relatively low infection rate, then India will have helped lead the way in containing coronavirus.
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The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
YouTube has switched to standard definition streaming by default in Europe.
We asked the company if it planned to do this yesterday, and today a spokeswoman confirmed the step. The move was reported earlier by Reuters.
Its a temporary measure in response to calls by the European Commission for streaming platforms to help ease demand on Internet infrastructure during the coronavirus crisis.
Users can still manually adjust video quality but defaults remain a powerful tool to influence overall outcomes.
A YouTube spokesperson confirmed the switch, sending us this statement:
People are coming to YouTube to find authoritative news, learning content and make connections during these uncertain times. While we have seen only a few usage peaks, we have measures in place to automatically adjust our system to use less network capacity. We are in ongoing conversations with the regulators (including Ofcom), governments and network operators all over Europe, and are making a commitment to temporarily default all traffic in the UK and the EU to Standard Definition. We will continue our work to minimize stress on the system, while also delivering a good user experience.
Yesterday Netflix announced it would default to SD streaming in the region for 30 days for the same reason.
In recent days, the EUs internet market commissioner, Thierry Breton, has held discussions with platform executives to urge them to help reduce the load on Internet infrastructure as scores of Europeans are encouraged or required to stay at home as part of quarantine measures.
The Commission is concerned about the impact on online education and remote work if theres a major spike in demand for digital entertainment services and is pushing for collective action from platforms and users to manage increased load on Internet infrastructure.
Breton met with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki to press the case for lowering the quality of video streams during the coronavirus crisis.
Today he welcomed YouTubes move. Millions of Europeans are adapting to social distancing measures thanks to digital platforms, helping them to telework, e-learn and entertain themselves. I warmly welcome the initiative that Google has taken to preserve the smooth functioning of the Internet during the COVID19 crisis by having YouTube switch all EU traffic to Standard Definition by default. I appreciate the strong responsibility that Mr Pichai and Mrs Wojcicki have demonstrated. We will closely follow the evolution of the situation together, said Breton in a statement.
Googles spokeswoman told us it hasnt seen much change in regional traffic peaks so far but said there have been changes in usage patterns from more people being at home with usage expanding across additional hours and some lower usage peaks. (The company routinely makes traffic data available in the Google Traffic and Disruptions Transparency Report.)
YouTube, along with other major social platforms, has faced scrutiny over the risks of their tools being used to spread coronavirus-related misinformation.
Although, in the case of Google, the company appears to have taken a proactive stance in suppressing bogus content and surfacing authoritative sources of health information. YouTubes spokeswoman noted the homepage directs users to the World Health Organization for info on COVID-19 or other locally relevant authoritative organizations, for instance.
She also noted the company is donating ad inventory to governments and NGOs to use for education and information pointing to a blog post earlier this month in which Pichai discussed some of the measures its taking to shield users from misinformation that could be harmful to public health.
YouTube will be rolling out a campaign rolling across Europe that encourages people to follow health authorities guidance and stay home, she added.
Googles response to the COVID-19 pandemic looks to be a far swifter and more aggressive to the threat posed to public health than its approach to other types of content that can also be harmful to peoples health such as anti-vaccination content, which YouTube only moved to demonetize last year.
A pharmacist gives Jennifer Haller, left, the first shot in the first-stage study of a potential coronavirus vaccine on March 16, 2020, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. Ted S. Warren/AP hide caption
A pharmacist gives Jennifer Haller, left, the first shot in the first-stage study of a potential coronavirus vaccine on March 16, 2020, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.
When Jennifer Haller heard that researchers were looking for volunteers to be injected with an experimental coronavirus vaccine, the Seattle mother of two rolled up her sleeve.
Well, not literally. Haller, 43, the first person to receive the vaccine, was wearing a tank top when a pharmacist, sheathed in gloves, a mask and protective eye gear, injected her with an experimental vaccine named mRNA-1273. It made her arm a bit sore, "but besides that, no, no side effects," she says.
With the outbreak rapidly spreading across the nation, Haller says she was excited to enroll in the Phase 1 trial, which started Monday.
"I wanted to do something because there's so many millions of Americans that don't have the same privileges that I've been given," says Haller, who now works from home for a small tech company. "They're losing their jobs. They are concerned about paying bills, feeding their family."
Vaccines typically take years to develop and bring to market. They go through extensive animal trials to ensure they are not only effective, but safe. But as the coronavirus death toll rapidly climbed reaching 11,147 on Friday researchers felt they couldn't wait.
The injection Haller received was developed by the National Institutes of Health and the Massachusetts-based biotechnology firm Moderna Inc. It does not use any form of a live or weakened virus, so Haller can't contract the coronavirus from the vaccine.
That doesn't mean there aren't risks. She had to sign a 45-page waiver just to enroll in the trial.
Despite the uncertainty, Haller says she was moved to volunteer out of a feeling of helplessness. She felt uniquely positioned to contribute, given that her children are older, she has friends and family nearby and a job that allows her maximum flexibility of when and how she works.
"This was just something that I could do and that I wanted to do."
A sprint to Phase 1 trials
The vaccine given to Haller was developed in record time, according to Dr. Tal Zaks, the chief medical officer for Moderna. "We've been able to do that based on the fact that our technology starts with the digital information. So we did not need to have the physical virus, just the information."
Instead of using parts of a killed virus to provoke an immune system, Moderna, working with the NIH, created a synthetic RNA molecule once the virus behind the outbreak in Wuhan, China was identified.
In early January, just days after the virus was identified, researchers had designed synthetic virus particles that they hope will convince the body to produce antibodies against the coronavirus. On March 16, Haller and three other study participants were the first to be vaccinated. Zaks says 45 patients in all will participate in the trial, each at three different dose levels.
Moderna is one of at least 20 drug manufacturers around the world working on potential coronavirus vaccines and treatments. President Trump has reportedly told pharmaceutical executives that he wants to see a vaccine developed in the United States to ensure it controls supplies.
"This should work"
The subjects in the NIH-Moderna trial will receive a two-dose vaccination schedule, 28 days apart. Haller keeps a log of her temperature and any symptoms she might be experiencing. So far, she says, there have been none.
All of the participants will be monitored for a total of 14 months. Regular blood tests will show whether the vaccine is activating their immune systems. Participants in the study will receive $100 for each lab visit for a total of $1100.
Zaks says he is confident in the trial. "This should work," he says, adding, "we've already begun the scale-up activity in our manufacturing site to be able to scale up and produce the vaccine."
Still, even if this first human trial is successful, public health officials don't expect a vaccine to be ready for widespread use for at least 18 months.
