The COVID Textbook
| 31 October | Important study (because prospective). After enrollment, 101 index patients and 191 household members were trained remotely by study staff members to complete symptom diaries and obtain self-collected specimens, nasal swabs...
Purgatorio | 31 de octubre | Si lees español, lee Los médicos en las UCI: “Aún no es el infierno, pero sí el purgatorio”. El País 2020, published 31 October | Una cuarta parte...
| Treatment | 31 October 2020 | Let’s face reality: at the beginning of the second pandemic wave, we have some steroids which have been shown to reduce mortality in patients with severe COVID-19;...
SARS-CoV-2 viral loads, especially plasma viremia, are associated with increased risk of mortality. This is the result of a study by Jonathan Li, Jesse Fajnzylber and colleagues who report SARS-CoV-2 respiratory tract, plasma, and...
France lockdown | 28 October | The dramatic second COVID-19 wave in France has lead Emmanuel Macron to announce a new lockdown in the country. The November lockdown which is due to last at...
The country-specific crude case fatality rates (CFR), the percentage of COVID-19-associated deaths among confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections, have been the subject of much speculation. There are still striking differences between countries. According to worldometer.com accessed...
Herd immunity has recently been discussed as a desirable result of wide-scale vaccination programs. (High levels of vaccination-induced immunity in the population benefits those who can’t receive or sufficiently respond to a vaccine, such...
Tocilizumab was not effective for preventing intubation or death in moderately ill hospitalized patients with Covid-19. This is the result of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving SARS-CoV-2 patients with hyperinflammatory states and at...
Could saliva be the future of mass screening? In his comment on the paper by Isao Yokota et al. we presented on September 29, Lorenzo Azzi highlights the potential merits of saliva: it can...
Only a small proportion of patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection have respiratory compromise, a respiratory distress syndrome, and multiorgan failure. Who is to blame, the virus or the host? To help answer this question, Andre...
St. Patrick’s Day, March 14. Bar X. Ho Chi Minh City. The bar had 2 indoor areas for clients, a 300-m2 area downstairs and an 50-m2 area upstairs, with no mechanical ventilation. During open...
Don’t separate SARS-CoV-2 positive mothers from their newborns and let them breastfeed their kids. This recommendation, already published by Italian pediatricians in June, has now been confirmed by a study of 101 neonates. Two...
Article of the day – and bad news for music clubs: asymptomatically infected persons can transmit the virus as soon as 2 days after infection. Substantial exposure can even occur within a few hours....
Daniel Leisman and colleagues question the role of a cytokine storm in COVID-19-induced organ dysfunction after a systematic review and meta-analysis of 25 COVID-19 studies (n=1245 patients) and four trials each in sepsis (n=5320),...
Will remdesivir soon join the hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir graveyard? Interim results from the Solidarity Therapeutics Trial, coordinated by the World Health Organization, indicate that remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir and interferon regimens appear to have little...
The 5th COVID Reference Edition will be published this month. These are 12 papers we will include in the Transmission chapter. Find more about ‘spit happens’, aerosolized fomites, leisure transmission venues and choir super-spreading....
A Science paper by 200 researchers. The authors from six countries uncovered molecular processes used by coronaviruses MERS, SARS-CoV1 and SARS-CoV2 to manipulate host cells. They found 73 human proteins with which components of...
As we disclosed yesterday, the French President Emmanuel Macron has announced this evening a 9 p.m. – 6 a.m. curfew of at least four weeks (see the comment on the paper by Andronico et...
Could curfews be a less costly alternative, both economically and socially, to complete lockdowns? In French Guiana, an overseas départment, a combination of curfews and targeted lockdowns in June and July 2020 was sufficient...
Later this month, we will publish the 5th COVID Reference Edition. Find 10 papers we will include in the Epidemiology chapter. The topics: “variolation”; introduction of SARS-CoV-2 in Europe, North America and Brazil; seroprevalence...
A major virulence factor of SARS-CoV is the non-structural protein 1 (Nsp1) which suppresses host gene expression by ribosome association (see our July 18 CR Top 10: Thoms M, Buschauer R, Ameismeier M, et...
The dynamic of the current SARS epidemics in the Greater Paris and Madrid are reason for concern. In this article, Moritz Kraemer, Benjamin Rader and colleagues predict that crowded cities worldwide could experience more...
The four endemic coronaviruses (eCoV: HCoV-OC43, -HKU1, -NL63, and -229E), the most common etiologic agents for the seasonal “common cold”, share sequence homology with SARS-CoV-2. Here, Joseph Mizgerd, Manish Sagar and colleagues show that...