Harrison County Judge Chad Sims reported six new positive cases in his county, bumping that total up to 240. He said the county has recorded 71 recoveries. 

 

Potentially overlooked due to the total volume of cases in the United States and the growing incidence in Brazil, Chile, and Peru, Mexico’s COVID-19 epidemic is also exhibiting a concerning acceleration. Mexico is currently #5 in the Americas in terms of daily incidence and #8 globally. Mexico has reported a total of 74,560 cases, including 3,455 new cases, its highest daily total to date. (FROM HOPKINS)

 

‘It’s Not The Virus’: Mexico’s Broken Hospitals Become Killers, Too—FROM THE NYT

 

 

SARS-CoV-2 MONITORING IN SEWAGE Researchers from Yale University (Connecticut, US) published (preprint) findings from a study that evaluated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in a local sewage system. The study aimed to determine the potential for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 presence and concentration in sewage systems to provide insight into the level of local community transmission. Utilizing daily samples taken from a local sewage processing facility (March 19-May 1), the researchers performed quantitative viral RNA testing (qRT-PCR) for SARS-CoV-2 and compared the concentration to local COVID-19 reporting. They found a strong correlation between the amount of SARS-CoV-2 present in the sewage and the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations several days later. The trend in hospitalizations lagged 3 days behind the peak viral concentration, and the reported cases lagged the viral concentration by 7 days. Because viral shedding often occurs before SARS-CoV-2 infections can be diagnosed, this study illustrates that conducting surveillance on the concentration of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater systems could potentially provide several days advance warning of increased COVID-19 incidence in the community.(COVID is found in sewage and increased disease is heralded by increase sewage levels of COVID 3 days earlier)

 

ANTIBODY PRODUCTION IN COVID-19 SURVIVORS Researchers at The Rockefeller University published (preprint) data from a study of 149 COVID-19 patients to evaluate the presence of antibodies in blood serum after their recovery. Their analysis identified a broad scope of immune response among the participants, including the production of various types of antibodies. The researchers found that the majority of the COVID-19 patients did not produce the appropriate type or quantity of antibodies necessary to result in the “neutralizing activity” necessary to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection, including 33% whose neutralizing activity was below the minimum detectable level. They did identify “remarkably high” neutralizing activity in 2 of the participants. The researchers were further able to identify and clone key neutralizing antibodies from these “‘elite’ responders,” and they are working to translate them into a potential COVID-19 treatment. (THIS IS NOT GOOD: THIS STUDY INDICATES THAT MOST OF THE ANTIBODIES TO COVID IN THIS STUDY WERE INEFFECTIVE IN COMBATING OR PREVENTING COVID)

EXCERPTS: 

“It’s like we have attention-deficit disorder right now. Everything we’re doing is just a knee-jerk response to the short-term,” said Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “People keep asking me, ‘What’s the one thing we have to do?’ The one thing we have to do is to understand that there is not one thing. We need a comprehensive battle strategy, meticulously implemented.”

 

People also keep talking of returning to normal, said Natalie Dean, a disease biostatistician at the University of Florida. But a future with an enduring coronavirus means that normal no longer exists. “As we find different ways to adapt and discover what works, that’s how we’re going to start reclaiming parts of our society and life,” she said.

 

America’s yearning for a quick fix has turned in recent days toward a vaccine, now being portrayed as a solution that will quash the virus once and for all.

 

But the world has achieved that only once, with smallpox — a measure of just how difficult it is for vaccines to wipe out diseases. And it took nearly two centuries after the discovery of a vaccine — and an unprecedented international effort — to vanquish smallpox, which stole hundreds of millions of lives.

Eventually, many experts believe this coronavirus could become relatively benign, causing milder infections as our immune systems develop a memory of responses to it through previous infection or vaccination. But that process could take years, said Andrew Noymer, a University of California at Irvine epidemiologist.

Barney Graham, deputy director of the federal government’s Vaccine Research Center, said emerging plans for vaccination are already stretching as far out as a decade.

 

MAYBE WE NEED A COLLINS PUN: A hole has been found in the nudist – camp wall.