Category: Corona Virus

An Oregon mink trapped in the wild tested positive for the coronavirus this month, the Oregon Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday.

The mink was captured Dec. 13 near an Oregon mink farm that is under quarantine after a November COVID-19 outbreak there. State and federal wildlife officials believe the trapped mink had recently escaped from the farm.

There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is circulating or has been established in the wild, ODA state veterinarian Dr. Ryan Scholz said in a statement. Several [trapped] animals from different species were sampled, and all others were negative. Still, we are taking this situation very seriously and continuing to survey and trap near the farm.

Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, does not find the states response reassuring.

Its beyond outrageous that an infected mink can escape even from a quarantined fur farm, putting an untold range of wild animals at risk of contracting the virus, she said. As much as I hope this case of COVID-19 is just limited to the one mink they tested in the wild, we know this virus is highly contagious and that one case quickly grows to many.

Infected mink are an under-the-radar but growing problem in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 300,000 Americans this year. In November, Denmark announced it would kill all 17 million of the mink raised there after it was discovered that 12 people had been infected with a mutated strain of COVID-19 that had spread from mink to humans.

In a guest opinion column in The Oregonian/OregonLive earlier this month, Burd warned that infected mink at the quarantined Oregon farm could not only spread the virus among wild mink but give rise to a mutant viral strain that threatens to compromise our newly minted vaccines.

She said this week that Oregon regulators need to quit pretending they have everything under control when nothing could be further from the truth.

In November, 10 samples from mink at the quarantined Oregon farm tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 in humans. The mink are believed to have contracted the virus from humans. Some workers at the farm also tested positive for the coronavirus. State officials have not revealed where the farm is located.

Oregon has 11 permitted mink farms with a total of nearly 500,000 animals. Eight of Oregons mink farms are in Marion Country, two are in Clatsop County and one is in Linn County, reports the Salem-based agricultural newspaper Capital Press.

ODA reported this week that the mink at the quarantined Oregon farm are now clear of the virus. State officials said the animals will undergo another round of testing before the farms restrictions are lifted.

Open trapping season for mink began Nov. 15 in Oregon.

-- Douglas Perry

dperry@oregonian.com

@douglasmperry

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Oregon mink trapped in wild tests positive for coronavirus, raising fears of mutant viral strain - OregonLive

A new and potentially more contagious variant of the coronavirus has been detected in Britain and elsewhere. With the Trump administration continuing to do little to address the pandemic, state and local leaders have, again, been left to deal with this problem on their own.

To that end, on Monday Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York persuaded major airlines to require people traveling from Britain to New York to first clear a coronavirus test. Mr. Cuomos willingness to act quickly and decisively here is commendable refreshing in a year rife with failures to do exactly that and the move seems reasonable in the face of federal inaction and many unknowns.

But its important to understand just how profound those unknowns are, and why they exist in the first place. Neither scientists nor policymakers have any idea how widespread the variant in question is. Did it originate in Britain or migrate there from somewhere else? How many other countries is it in? It could already be in the United States in New York for all anyone knows.

Thats because only a tiny sliver of the planets 70 million-plus coronavirus cases have been genetically sequenced. Thats a missed opportunity. The newly discovered variant was only detected in Britain because scientists there are doing the most sequencing in the world, by far. Since Dec. 1, Britain has sequenced more than 3,700 coronavirus cases, compared with fewer than 40 cases in the United States, according to Trevor Bedford, who leads a viral sequencing effort at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Routine genetic sequencing of virus samples, what scientists call genomic surveillance, can provide crucial information about how a virus is evolving: if mutations are common, if new variants are emerging, how the virus is spreading from one place to another and whether cases in a given cluster are linked to one another. The latter is especially useful to know in health care settings, where its not always clear if new cases have come in from the outside, or if staff members and patients are infecting one another.

Genomic surveillance is also one of the few ways officials can determine whether, where and how to put travel restrictions in place. Without this data, even the fastest-acting, best-intentioned leaders like Mr. Cuomo, in this case are flying blind. They have no way to know which countries such measures should focus on, or whether such an effort would be worth the political blowback. For instance, it may not be worth it if the variant in question is already circulating widely in the United States, or if only a tiny amount of spread is being driven by overseas cases.

Dr. Bedford and others like him have done heroic work gathering the sequencing data that exists in the United States. But so far that data is far more paltry than it needs to be. Its like a giant canvas where one corner has been painted in extraordinary detail but the rest is blank. No matter how vivid that one corner might be, it cant illuminate the whole picture.

The current situation is reminiscent of the pandemics early days, when the virus was first detected in Wuhan, and U.S. officials enacted a travel ban against visitors from China without realizing that the virus was already spreading through Europe and would soon make its way to the United States from there.

There are other limitations to Mr. Cuomos plan. For example, there are countless ways to get from Britain to New York, including by routing through other states and cities in the United States. Any passenger could easily sidestep the new stricture by first flying to, say, Chicagos OHare International Airport. It would help if federal leaders put similar measures in place across the country to avoid such loopholes.

But to truly solve this problem, federal officials need to increase the nations disease surveillance efforts, and in particular its genomic surveillance. Until they do that, Americans everywhere will be stuck in the same place weve been for the better part of this year: making often brutal sacrifices to try to slow the spread of the virus ourselves.

Its unfair that individuals and small businesses have borne so much of that pain. But right now, its the only way to squelch this mutant and any other that has yet to be detected.

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Opinion | The U.K.'s New Coronavirus Strain and How to Stop It - The New York Times

NEW JERSEY Morganville resident Gloria Scarpati remembers her mother, Margaret M. Stella, one of more than 16,000 individuals in New Jersey lost this year to the virus.

Margaret had multiple sclerosis and was wheelchair-bound living in an assisted living facility, Scarpati recalled to Patch. Life had not always been kind to the New Jersey woman: Stella was badly injured in a fire several years ago and suffered life-threatening burns as a result.

"Despite all her hardships, at the age of 65, she finally started to enjoy life," Scarpati said. "She participated in every activity offered in her facility, made a lot of friends and was thrilled that she could see her grandkids so often."

Unfortunately, upon moving into the Morganville facility, Stella fell ill with COVID-19 shortly after the lockdown began.

Stella was just one of the more than 300,000 Americans who have lost their lives to the coronavirus. It's an impossible number, but those who died were more than a statistic. We lost mothers, brothers, children and friends.

We all lost some of our heroes.

In light of the devastating milestone, Patch is working to help you share the triumphs, trials, and accomplishments of those you lost. We want to help you share their stories.

We also hope this allows their neighbors to know them better. Below is a virtual memorial created by Patch and compiled through tributes submitted directly from loved ones. You can read them all, or search by town and state.

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300,000 Dead: The Stories Of Those We Lost To Coronavirus - Patch.com

For the past seven months, weve spoken with everyday Texans about the trials of navigating the pandemic.

In this special edition of our podcast, we checked back in with some of our guests to hear how theyre faring with COVID-19 cases again on the rise and the economy still suffering as a result.

Start your day with a quick take on the latest Texas politics and policy news. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Amazon Echo or RSS.

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Texans reflect on the coronavirus pandemic and their 2020 - The Texas Tribune

COVID-19 Q&A: Can I test positive again for the new coronavirus?  Lansing State Journal

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COVID-19 Q&A: Can I test positive again for the new coronavirus? - Lansing State Journal

Cars are lined up at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles for coronavirus testing. Nearly 2 million people are getting tested a day in the U.S. A new analysis shows millions more are needed to protect the most vulnerable. Mario Tama/Getty Images hide caption

Cars are lined up at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles for coronavirus testing. Nearly 2 million people are getting tested a day in the U.S. A new analysis shows millions more are needed to protect the most vulnerable.

The nation is at a pivotal moment in the fight against the pandemic. Vaccines are finally starting to roll out, but the virus is spreading faster than ever and killing thousands of Americans daily. And it will be months before enough people get inoculated to stop it.

That means it's critical to continue the measures that can limit the toll: mask-wearing, hunkering down, hand-washing, testing and contact tracing.

"Vaccines will not obviate the need for testing any time soon," says Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown School of Public Health. "It doesn't mean we can let our guard down. The virus will not be gone."

So where do things stand with testing in the U.S.?

A new analysis that researchers at Brown and Harvard universities conducted for NPR finds that the country may finally be close to doing enough testing to identify most people reporting symptoms and at least two of their close contacts.

The amount needed for that is 2 million a day by Jan. 1. The U.S. is currently conducting nearly 1.9 million tests daily.

Testing simply those who are sick and two of their contacts is a bare minimum to respond to current outbreaks, Jha explains.

The analysis finds that the U.S. should be doing about three times more than that or nearly 6 million daily tests to stop outbreaks from growing and protect the most vulnerable. This approach would proactively screen key groups of asymptomatic people, including college students and school teachers, for example.

"There's no doubt that we've made progress," says Jha. "But testing in this country is still really inadequate."

Even that progress is spotty around the country. Only 12 states plus Washington, D.C., are conducting enough testing to reach the bulk of symptomatic people, according to the analysis. Those states are: Alaska, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Vermont.

Another nine are very close, and the remaining 29 states fall short.

"A lot of states have invested a lot of resources into trying to do more testing, and we're seeing payoffs and we're seeing some states are able to do that basic level of testing," Jha says. "That is progress."

But even 2 million tests a day is really far from what's needed to actually slow raging outbreaks and prevent them from springing back up again, Jha explains.

The minimum targets for testing symptomatic people are based on modeling growth of current outbreaks. It assumes a modest two contacts per infection get tested, because of the difficulties many states report conducting contact tracing. Since as many as 1 out of 2 infections are spread by people without symptoms, more ambitious testing efforts are needed for communities to screen high-risk, asymptomatic people.

"Just focusing on testing people who have symptoms or their close contacts is really not enough. That has been the Achilles' heel of our entire disease outbreak control," Jha says. "We've never really had a strategy for identifying people with asymptomatic infection."

To capture those cases, Jha and his collaborators propose that communities should be testing, at a minimum: 20% of students and teachers in K-12 schools weekly; college and university students, prisoners and guards, health care workers and first responders weekly; and nursing home residents and staff twice weekly.

"What we need is a jump-start of our testing if we want to actually move to an offensive strategy around active screening of our asymptomatic individuals," says Dr. Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who helped conduct the testing analysis.

"It would mean that students can return to school safely. Nursing home residents and family members know that their loved ones in nursing homes and the people who work [there] can do so safely," he says.

In spite of the optimistic vaccine news, Tsai says this type of coordinated and proactive coronavirus screening is still critical to stopping the pandemic in the U.S. It will "buy time for the vaccine to be rolled out," he says.

"Testing is just as important as before vaccines," Tsai says. "The vaccine isn't an either/or strategy. Vaccines are part of the toolkit along with continued testing and masking and social distancing. In fact, it's even more important now that all of these strategies are working together to suppress the virus."

The researchers hope the incoming Biden administration will provide the federal leadership needed for a more coordinated national response to provide more testing. The proposed 6 million tests a day would probably require $10 billion to $20 billion for at least three months, the group estimates.

"It will take a real effort from the federal government, but it's not going to break the bank," Jha says.

Some other researchers say the estimate that about 2 million tests are needed as a bare minimum today may be an underestimate.

Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Health Security, notes that the percentage of people testing positive has been increasing, suggesting that far too few people are being tested, to capture the actual infections in the community.

"We probably need to at least double the amount of testing we're doing," Nuzzo says.

Unfortunately, the increase in testing appears to have stagnated, Nuzzo notes.

"The rate at which we have increased testing in the last month is much slower compared to the previous month and yet we have more infections now than we've ever had," Nuzzo says.

Jha, Tsai and others hope the increasing availability of antigen tests could quickly increase the nation's testing capabilities and hope the targets in the new analysis will spur policymakers to make that happen.

Nuzzo hopes so too.

"Testing is slowing in the United States. We're hearing reports of shortages once again and test turnaround time increasing. All of the warning signs are there that now is the time to take this problem seriously and fix this problem for good," Nuzzo says.

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US Needs More Coronavirus Tests To Stop The Winter Surge : Shots - Health News - NPR

Mink, like people, often die from infection with the virus, and nobody knows why. This is a key thing, Dr. Perlman said. Why do people get sick? Why do we react so differently to these viruses. He said he had thought about studying mink, but the challenges, involving their genetic diversity and the lack of an established set of biochemical tools for studying infections in them, made the prospect difficult.

Dec. 23, 2020, 8:46 p.m. ET

Some parts of the mink puzzle fit easily together. They live in crowded conditions in rows of cages on mink farms, like people in cities, and are in constant contact with the humans who care for them. No surprise then, that they not only caught the virus from people, they passed it back to us.

And the infection of mink and the potential danger they pose is a reminder that it isnt only wild animals that are the cause of spillover events. The livestock humans housed in close quarters have always given diseases to humans, and acquired diseases from them. But it required big human settlements for epidemics and pandemics to appear.

In a 2007 paper in the journal Nature, several infectious disease experts including Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies wrote about the origins of diseases that spread only in relatively dense human populations. Measles, rubella and pertussis, they wrote, are examples of crowd diseases that need populations of several hundred thousand for a sustained spread. Human groups of that size did not appear until the advent of agriculture, around 11,000 years ago.

The authors listed eight diseases of temperate regions that jumped to humans from domestic animals: diphtheria, influenza A, measles, mumps, pertussis, rotavirus, smallpox, tuberculosis. In the tropics, more diseases came from wild animals, for a variety of reasons, the authors wrote.

Diseases move from wild animals to farmed animals and then to people. Influenza viruses jump from wild waterfowl to domestic birds and sometimes to pigs and then to people who are in close contact with the farmed creatures. As occurred with the mink, the viruses continue to mutate in other animals.

There may have even been an earlier coronavirus epidemic that came from cattle. Some scientists have speculated that one of the coronaviruses that now causes the common cold, OC43, may have been responsible for the flu epidemic of 1889, which killed a million people.

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How Mink, Like Humans, Were Slammed by the Coronavirus - The New York Times

A sign instructing people to wash their handsfeaturing a portrait of chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, the face of Swedens response to the pandemichangs at an entrance to a restaurant in Stockholm on May 10. JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images

One month after declaring the coronavirus a socially dangerous disease in February, the Swedish Public Health Agency essentially threw up its hands and chose to seek herd immunity rather than take serious steps to mitigate the viruss spread, confidential internal documents show. That fatefuland fatalisticearly decision shaped Swedens entire response to the pandemic, from a refusal to mandate masks to a haphazard testing regime.

Swedens botched coronavirus response is no longer news: Even the countrys king, Carl XVI Gustaf, admitted in his annual Christmas address that the Swedish government had failed. But private emails seen by Foreign Policy, some of which have been previously reported in the Swedish press, reveal that Swedens health authorities were resigned to mass infectionsso called herd immunityall along, and no matter the costs. Throughout the pandemic, Swedens health authorities have said one thing publicly and something different in private about nearly every aspect of their management of the crisis. There were repeated public denials from the government that it deliberately sought to achieve herd immunity, even though that was the strategy pursued behind closed doors. There were misleading statements on the availability of testing. There was even continued public denial (despite private acknowledgement) of how the virus spreads, part of a pattern of apparent official obfuscation thats lasted the whole pandemic.

And the result has been deadly. While countries such as the United States, Brazil, and India have made headlines for recording the highest number of coronavirus-related fatalities, Swedens death rate of over 80 per 100,000 people is among Europes highest and is around 10 times as great as those of Norway and Finland, and over four times Denmarks. COVID-19 hospitalizations are now rising faster there than in most European countries, and Sweden is caring for more patients in hospital now than it did at the height of its first wave. By Dec. 21, Sweden had surpassed the United States and all major European countries in its daily confirmed cases per million. Things have gotten so out of control in Sweden that neighboring Norway, for the first time since World War II, put troops on the border to prevent Swedes from crossing over.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developments Nov. 19 report concluded that Sweden fared worst among 35 European countries in multiple coronavirus management metrics including lowering the spread of infection, reducing peoples mobility, and discharging patients from intensive care units.

Swedens true handling of the pandemic matters, and not just because of how it has impacted its population of just over 10 million. Around much of Europe, and especially in the United States, Swedens hands-off approach to a deadly pandemic was, for some, a model to emulate. U.S. President Donald Trumps coronavirus advisor Scott Atlas, for example, publicly hailed Swedens approach as a model, even as its catastrophic performanceespecially when compared to its neighborsbecomes ever clearer.

A medical staffer at Sophiahemmet private hospital talks on a phone inside a tent for testing and receiving potential COVID-19 patients in Stockholm on April 7. JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images

When the Swedish government categorized COVID-19 as a socially dangerous disease on Feb. 2, Peet Tull was sitting on a lonely farm on the Swedish island of Gotland, watching developments with concern. Tull was one of the people who built up the countrys infection control unit: He had been Public Health Agency Director Johan Carlsons boss and also given assignments to Anders Tegnell, the agencys chief epidemiologist, whom he knows well. Another thing Tull knows well is the Infection Control Act, because he participated in drafting itand he wondered why Sweden hadnt implemented a contact-tracing system or put travelers from international COVID-19 hot spots in quarantine.

As he observed global coronavirus cases surge, Tull wrote an email to Tegnell on March 15, proposing three possible options to deal with the pandemic. Option one, he said, would be to stop all movement and contacts for a four-week period. Another option, one recommended by the World Health Organization, would be to conduct intensive testing, tracking, and quarantine of infected patients. Or, he said, Sweden could pursue a third option: Let the spread of infection take place, slowly or quickly, to achieve a hypothetical herd immunity.

Tull warned: One thing is known that with option three Sweden will probably have thousands of deaths, and concluded that option three appears to me as a defeatist and headless strategy, which I would never have accepted in my previous role.

Tegnell, the state epidemiologist, answered him the same day: Well, we have walked through this and after everything landed on [option] three. We probably have a fairly extensive silent spread, which would mean that the first two would probably not work.

Tull outlined actions to take including issuing general advice and regulations for testing and contact-tracing. Tegnell demurred, arguing that such a strategy hadnt worked in Italy. Tull countered that it worked in China and South Koreaso why not in Sweden?

Right from the start of the pandemic, according to recently declassified internal emails seen by Foreign Policy, Tegnell seemed resigned to pursuing herd immunity for Swedes, seeing little chance of stopping COVID-19 through the means successfully employed in other countries such as South Korea or Vietnam.

Whether or not Sweden publicly admitted its strategy was to pursue herd immunity, other countries began to cite its approach as such. In July, according to a report in Politico, White House advisors promoting herd immunity referenced a June study by Swedens pandemic modeler, Tom Britton, which said that herd immunity could occur after just 43 percent of a population became infectedan estimate far lower than what most other epidemiologists have put forward. Britton told Foreign Policy that his calculations that Sweden would reach herd immunity turned out to be incorrect. Britton now says that U.S. government officials misinterpreted his study and that using his June research to promote herd immunity was wrong, addingthat too many people will die in order to reach herd immunity.

The Swedish and international public, though, were repeatedly told that herd immunity was not Stockholms objective.

On March 15, the day Tegnell wrote Tull they had landed on option three, Tegnell said the Public Health Agencys main tactic was not herd immunity, adding that its goal and herd immunity were not contradictory. But in public, Tegnell frequently argued that herd immunity was definitely not a goal. As recently as Nov. 18, Minister of Health and Social Affairs Lena Hallengren said that the idea that Sweden had pursued a herd immunity strategy was a rumor.

The day before his correspondence with Tull, Tegnell forwarded an email to his Finnish counterpart, Mika Salminen, which contained a recommendation from a doctor to allow people to become infected with COVID-19. One point would be to keep schools open to reach herd immunity more quickly, Tegnell wrote.

Salminen said his agency had ultimately rejected such an approach, realizing children would still spread the virus, whereas closing schools could limit the diseases impact on the elderly by about 10 percent. Tegnell, who still thought that quickly achieving herd immunity was the best strategy, responded: 10 percent might be worth it?

The next day, Tegnell forwarded a study on Italys experience with COVID-19 to Jan Albert, a professor of microbiology, who was part of a coronavirus expert group assembled a few weeks earlier by the Karolinska Institute, a university and the center of Swedens medical research community. Tegnell pointed to what seemed to be a flattening of new cases there.

Albert replied: Exactly. But most people think its just the lockdown. How much [is because of] lockdown and how much [is because of] herd immunity is really the key issue. Tegnell answered: If anyone had time, you should look at the various lockdowns that have been made and what the development looks like afterwards. I believe more in herd immunity.

Tegnell remained convinced that a rapid spread of the virus would shield Sweden, a belief that seemed to lead the countrys whole response to the crisis. A month after corresponding with Tull, Tegnell said Stockholm could achieve herd immunity in May. Three weeks later, he said: In the autumn there will be a second wave. Sweden will have a high level of immunity and the number of cases will probably be quite low, a claim he repeated into mid-October.

Carlson, Tegnells boss, echoed on Aug. 30 what Tegnell wrote Tull: It is not about us sacrificing a lot of people to achieve immunity. This model was the only one that was feasible. Our assessment has proven to be correct. The strategy must last over time. We are one of the few countries with a limited spread of infection, unlike several countries in Europe where the infection returns sharply.

It didnt work out that way. Sweden is facing an increase in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. On Nov. 5, the country reached the grim statistic of 6,000 deaths. In the six weeks since, nearly 2,000 more have died. In the week ending Dec. 18, Sweden registered 479 new deaths, more than Norway has during the entire pandemic.

Maskless passengers wait on a crowded train platform in Stockholm on Dec. 4. Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images

The fatalistic approach taken by Swedens health authorities beginning in March shaped nearly every aspect of the countrys response to the pandemic for the rest of the year: If the coronavirus cant be successfully contained, as Tegnell and others argued in private, then why implement measures such as mask mandates, limits on retirement home visits, or restricting peoples movements?

From the very beginning, Sweden sought a different approacheven if it said publicly that it was following the same strategy as other countries. On March 4, before Swedens first official death from COVID-19, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control convened a meeting for European Union countries and WHO. Sweden did not participate.

A day after Tegnell corresponded with Tull, he discussed the EUs not-yet-released border recommendations, including health checks, with Andreas Johansson and others at the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. This table contains a long list of details where we have a completely different strategy in Sweden, he wrote. Tegnell opposed border health screenings and did not support EU measures to limit case importation or exportation, arguing that since domestic spread had already begun in most countries, border limits would be relatively meaningless.

The very next day, March 17, Tegnell said on television that he did not think there was any difference between what other countries were doing and what Sweden was attempting. I do not think these strategies are different, we are talking about exactly the same thing in both strategies, he said.

That was the same day that countries such as the United Kingdom, which had flirted with a strategy of herd immunity, switched to a strategy of suppression after the release of a study by Imperial College that concluded that such an approach was the only viable strategy at the current time to prevent 250,000 British deaths. But the Swedish Public Health Agency and advisory health experts discounted the studys findings and kept seeking herd immunity, emails show.

Sweden relied on advice to wash hands; other voluntary measures, such as that people stay home when sick, limit unnecessary travel, and work from home if possible, were advised only after there was already community spread in the country. The government limited public gatherings to 50 peoplebut not until March 27. And then, as the country began to see a rise of cases in October, the government increased the event limit to 300 people on Oct. 22, which the government then decreased to eight effective on Nov. 24 as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continued to rise.

Throughout the pandemic, Stockholm issued no general national mask recommendations, not even for general elder care, unless there was evidence patients had the coronavirus. The governments official health guidance still casts doubt on the efficacy of wearing masks, even as authorities in most other countries have come to appreciate the role that masks play in limiting the spread of an airborne virus. But then Swedish health authorities remain unconvinced the virus even is airborne, officially telling citizens COVID-19 does not count as an airborne infection. On Dec. 18, the government announced that the Public Health Agency would draw up recommendations for wearing masks during crowded commuting hours on public transit, but those will only come into force after Jan. 7. The updated official advice includes the line, We do not currently recommend a broad use of masks in society, and continues to cast doubt on the scientific evidence for masks, even saying that masks may provide a false sense of security.

Unlike in neighboring countries, bars, restaurants, and gyms remained open. Compulsory in-person schooling continued through middle school; high school and post-secondary education moved online on March 17. Not until March 24, two weeks after the risk level was raised to the highest level, was the general public encouraged to socially distance if possible. Nursing homes stayed open to visitors until April 1.

While neighbors began to introduce curbs on public life and speed up testing, Sweden did neither. Denmark, which entered a short lockdown on March 17, began easing it when it announced the beginning of widespread testing on March 30. Internal emails show it wasnt until Denmark implemented its testing plan that the Swedish government and the Public Health Agency even began discussing one.

Whether authorities were talking about herd immunity, access to hospital care, how the virus spreads, or how testing was determined, Sweden told one story in public and a different one in private.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven declined to be interviewed, but a spokesperson said: Herd immunity is not a strategy, but a potential consequence of how the spread of the virus develops. Herd immunity has never been a part of the Swedish Governments strategy. Lofven, through a spokesperson, previously said that Swedens strategy is not much different from other countries, yet Sweden is the only democratic country in the world that does not mandate even limited use of masks.

A full government reckoning of the handling of the pandemic wont be made public until 2022, but an interim report on the spread of the virus in nursing homes was released on Dec. 15. It noted that government measures were late and inadequate, and called the spread of the virus in society the single most important factor behind the major outbreaks and the high number of deaths in residential care.

Carlson, Tegnell, and Hallengren did not respond to requests for comment. Ebba Busch, the leader of the opposition Christian Democrats party, said in June that the government actively and openly chose a strategy that would mean a higher degree of contagion in society, calling the quest for herd immunity naive.

A nurse checks the blood on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine as she takes care of a COVID-19 patient in the Karolinska University Hospital in Solna, near Stockholm, on April 19. JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images

The results of that quest for elusive herd immunity are sadly well known. By the end of May, when some neighbors reopened without seeing big spikes, Swedes were restricted from traveling to many countries.

Contrary to the expectations of Tegnell and others, the quest for herd immunity neither materialized nor shielded Sweden from the ravages of a second wave in the autumn. The Public Health Agencys reports from June showed the level of people with coronavirus nationwide to be 7.1 percent, far from the 60-75 percent experts say is needed.

Finally, on Nov. 24, Tegnell said that Sweden may be in the peak of a second wave, despite having argued the opposite along with Carlson for months.

One man at least, Tull, had seen what was coming and tried to warn experts not to make matters worse. In his final email to Tegnell on March 15, Tull, who had worked to eradicate smallpox in Bangladesh, implored health authorities not to throw up their hands and to give science and precautionary measures a chance.

You cannot just watch when you fear that a large number of people may die, he wrote. Every effort must be made to prevent this from happening. It is not enough to believe that it is not possible.

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The Inside Story of How Sweden Botched Its Coronavirus Response - Foreign Policy

TAMPA After today, diagnostic tests for the coronavirus will be unavailable at Hillsborough Countys public sites until Monday.

All sites will be closed Dec. 24-27 and again Jan. 1-3 because of the holidays.

The countys COVID-19 testing and information line, (888) 513-6321, will remain open 24 hours a day during the holidays for general questions. However, it will be unavailable for appointment scheduling on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Years Day. For information, see the countys Web site at HCFLGov.net/COVIDTesting.

The test sites at the Vance Vogel Sports Complex, 13012 Bullfrog Creek, Riverview, and the William Owen Pass Sports Complex, 1300 Sydney Dover Road, Dover, will be open Monday Dec. 28 and Wednesday, Dec. 30. The normal schedule of operating Monday, Wednesday and Friday resumes Jan. 4. Appointments are required.

The Lee Davis Community Resource Center, 3402 N. 22nd St., Tampa, will be open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 28-30 and 8 a.m. to noon Dec. 31. Its normal schedule of operating Monday through Thursday resumes Jan. 4. No appointments are needed and testing is done on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Testing at Raymond James Stadium, 4201 N. Dale Mabry Highway, Tampa, resumes 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 28-30 and 8 a.m. to noon Dec. 31. It will be open again at 8 a.m. Monday, Jan. 4 and resume its usual Tuesday-through-Saturday schedule the next day.

Testing at the stadium also is done on a first-come, first-serve basis with no advance scheduling of appointments.

As of last week, the countys public locations and its mobile unit had conducted more than 171,000 tests for the coronavirus, or 23 percent of the 746,300 tests that had been administered in Hillsborough County.

HOW CORONAVIRUS IS SPREADING IN FLORIDA: Find the latest numbers for your county, city or zip code.

VACCINES Q & A: Have coronavirus vaccine questions? We have answers, Florida.

FACE MASKS: Read the latest on guidelines, tips for comfort and long-term wear

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In Hillsborough, heres when you can get the coronavirus test over the holidays - Tampa Bay Times

The analysis, of 10,789 paired test results from 1,333 white patients and 276 Black patients hospitalized at the University of Michigan earlier this year, found that pulse oximetry overestimated oxygen levels 3.6 percent of the time in white patients, but got it wrong nearly 12 percent of the time, or more than three times more often, in Black patients.

In these patients, the pulse oximeter measures erroneously indicated the oxygen saturation level was between 92 and 96 percent, when it was actually as low as 88 percent (the results were adjusted for age, sex and cardiovascular disease).

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Oxygen levels below 95 percent are considered abnormal, so a small difference in pulse oximetry value in this range of 92 to 96 percent could be the difference in deciding whether the patient is really sick or not really sick, or needs different treatment or not, Dr. Sjoding said.

Another analysis in the study examined a multi-hospital database to compare 37,308 similar paired test results from intensive care patients who had been hospitalized at 178 medical centers in 2014 and 2015. That analysis, which was not adjusted, found similar discrepancies.

Dr. Sjoding said he and his colleagues embarked on the study after hospitals in Ann Arbor, Mich., which typically care for a predominantly white patient population, received a large influx of critically ill Covid patients from Detroit many of whom were African-American. We started seeing some discrepancies with arterial blood gas, and we didnt know what to make of it, he said.

He recalled reading an article published in The Boston Review in August about racial disparities in the accuracy of pulse oximeter readings. The writer of that article, Amy Moran-Thomas, an anthropologist at M.I.T., became interested in the device after buying one when her husband was sick with Covid. She dug up scientific papers published as far back as 2005 and 2007 that reported inaccuracies in pulse oximeter readings in dark-skinned individuals at low oxygen saturation levels.

Dr. Sjoding and his colleagues decided to do a study using data that had already been collected during routine inpatient care at the hospital. What we were seeing anecdotally was exactly what we ended up showing in the final paper, that on the monitor in the patients room, the pulse oximeter would be reading normal, but when we got an arterial blood gas, the saturation on the gas was low, he said.

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Pulse Oximeters and Coronavirus: Devices Have Higher Error Rate in Black Patients - The New York Times