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Can you Catch Coronavirus Twice?

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As the global number of COVID-19 cases soars, there are a few thousand reasons to be hopeful: As of Monday, March 23, over 100,000 people across the globe have recovered from the novel coronavirus. We know some people can successfully clear the infection, while others have a harder time.

But if you beat the virus, what happens when you encounter it a second time? Are people immune if they catch and recover from Covid-19? According to Mark Slifka, a microbiologist at Oregon Health and Science University, the answer is yes, at least partially.

Read more: Inverse.com

FDA Takes Action to Increase U.S. Supply of Personal Protective Equipment for Covid-19

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Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took action to increase U.S. supplies to support the U.S. response to COVID-19 by providing instructions to manufacturers importing personal protective equipment and other devices.

One of FDA’s priorities in combating the COVID-19 pandemic is facilitating access to critical personal protective equipment (PPE) and devices. The FDA is engaging with importers and others involved in the import trade community during this pandemic to facilitate the entry of needed products, including PPE, into the U.S. These instructions to importers clarify the types of PPE that can be imported without engaging with FDA. They also include information about the type of information importers can submit to facilitate their entries. The FDA has adjusted its import screening to further expedite imports of legitimate products and are continually monitoring our import systems to prevent and mitigate any potential issues.

The FDA established a special email inbox, COVID19FDAIMPORTINQUIRIES@fda.hhs.gov, for industry representatives to quickly communicate with the agency and address questions or concerns.

The agency is providing maximum flexibility to those seeking to bring PPE into the U.S. and are ready and available to engage with importers to minimize disruptions during the importing process.

Many companies are stepping up across America to help with manufacturing critical and life-saving medical supplies to strengthen the U.S. response. To support their efforts, we are setting up additional avenues of communication to FDA so they can contact us with any questions or concerns around the clock.

The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of the nation’s food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.

Source: FDA

Covid-19 Workers Receive Training to Protect Their Own Health

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The National Institutes of Health will launch a website with important educational resources for coronavirus workers dealing with the spread of COVID-19. 

The initiative got underway after Congress passed a supplemental appropriation of $10 million on March 6 for worker-based training to prevent and reduce exposure of hospital employees, emergency first responders, and other workers who are at risk of exposure to coronavirus through their work duties. The law provided a total of $8.3 billion in emergency funding for certain federal agencies to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.

The worker-based training initiative is being led by NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which has a long-established Worker Training Program (WTP). The program awards grants for training and development of educational resources for employees in high risk occupations who serve the public during emergencies and who need skills to protect their own health as they are potentially exposed to dangerous pathogens, contaminated materials, or infected people. As a part of this effort the WTP also acts as a clearinghouse among grant recipients to broadly share the training and educational resources developed with the grant money.

Joseph “Chip” Hughes, who has led the NIEHS WTP for 31 years, said, “These men and women are so dedicated and as they work so hard to serve and protect the public during this COVID-19 pandemic, I want to make sure they know how to protect their own health too. We don’t need them getting sick, or taking the virus back to their families or their communities.”

With this new supplemental funding from Congress, the NIEHS WTP is creating a COVID-19 virtual safety training initiative for frontline responders including emergency medical personnel, firefighters, law enforcement officers, environmental cleanup workers, high-risk custodial service workers, food processing and delivery workers, water and sewage treatment workers, sanitation workers, and health care facility employees.

The initial focus is to build a virtual safety training delivery platform in partnership with private sector e-learning companies with the capability to deliver synchronized just-in-time web-based training across the country in targeted high-risk industrial sectors. Additionally, a cadre of COVID-19 safety trainers and virtual safety advisors is being created to leverage the delivery of advanced training technology to frontline responders.

After learning of the special appropriation, NIEHS moved quickly to convene a national workshop in partnership with Emory Health Sciences Center on March 17. The workshop titled, “Protecting Infectious Disease Responders During the COVID-19 Outbreak,” used virtual meeting technology to bring together hundreds of the country’s infectious disease experts, nurses and health care providers, emergency response organizations and academic training centers to map out a web-based, technology-assisted training strategy to respond to the escalating need to ensure protections for COVID-19 responders, particularly in health care and emergency response services.

During a recent Congressional hearing on COVID-19 response, NIH Director Francis Collins, M.D., testified that “NIEHS has played a very critical role in training people who can deal with outbreaks.”  He noted the NIEHS WTP previously helped with the Ebola response.

NIEHS WTP grant recipients provided occupational safety training to workers during the anthrax attacks in 2001, the H5N1 outbreak in 2007, and the H1N1 avian influenza outbreak in 2009; mold remediation training following Hurricanes Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012; and Ebola virus disease preparedness training 2013-2015.

This COVID-19 virtual safety training program will be administered by NIEHS and was developed in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Source: NIH, March 24, 2020

Loss of Sense of Smell or Taste May be Covid-19 Symptom

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A loss of a sense of smell or taste may be a symptom of COVID-19, medical groups representing ear, nose and throat specialists have warned.

Citing a growing number of cases around the globe, the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery and ENT UK each issued warnings about patients who tested positive for the new coronavirus with the only symptom being a lost or altered sense of smell or taste. 

“Anecdotal evidence is rapidly accumulating from sites around the world that anosmia and dysgeusia are significant symptoms associated with the COVID-19 pandemic,” the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery wrote in a statement.

Read more: USA Today

Digest Symptoms and Covid-19

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Digestive symptoms are common in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), occurring as the chief complaint in nearly half of patients presenting to hospital, according to a new descriptive, cross-sectional multicentre study from China published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.

Most patients with COVID-19 present with typical respiratory symptoms and signs. However, early experience with the outbreak in Wuhan, China, revealed that many patients experienced digestive symptoms as their chief complaint.

Read more: NTK Institute

Does Publication Bias Make Antidepressants Seem More Effective at Treating Anxiety Than They Really Are?

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By Craig Williams, Professor of Pharmacy at Oregon State University

In scientific literature, studies with “good” results are more likely to be published than studies with results that are unclear or negative. A study with a new, exciting finding (a positive result) is likely to see the light of day, even if the finding is not in line with the authors hypothesis. But a study that doesn’t have a new finding (a negative result), or has an unclear finding is far less likely to be published. [Read more…]