SATURDAY, Oct. 3, 2020 (HealthDay News) — President Donald Trump was being treated for coronavirus infection at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Saturday, after announcing that he had tested positive for COVID-19 early Friday morning. Trump is struggling with a fever, a cough and nasal congestion, among other symptoms, two officials familiar with his condition told the Washington Post. “President Trump remains in good spirits, has mild symptoms, and has been working throughout the day,” press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday. “Out of an abundance of caution, and at the recommendation of his physician and medical experts, the President will be working from the presidential offices at Walter Reed for the next few days.” On Friday, an experimental antibody cocktail made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. was given to Trump, the Associated Press reported. The company agreed to supply a single dose, given via IV, for Trump at the request of his physician, Dr. Sean Conley, under “compassionate use” provisions, the AP reported. Conley said late Friday that Trump had also been given the antiviral drug remdesivir at the hospital, the AP reported. The Gilead Sciences drug has been shown to help some COVID-19 patients recover more quickly. Trump was also taking zinc, vitamin D, an antacid called famotidine, melatonin and aspirin, Conley said. On Friday, Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen,…  read on >

Ordinary conversation releases airborne droplets that can spread widely through indoor spaces, a finding with big implications for transmission of the new coronavirus, researchers say. Their experiments showed that everyday talk can expel droplets farther than the typical “social distancing” limit of 6 feet. “People should recognize that they have an effect around them,” said Howard Stone, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University in New Jersey. “It’s not just around your head, it is at the scale of meters.” One meter equals just over 3 feet. How COVID-19 spreads is not fully understood, but it’s believed that people without symptoms could infect others through tiny droplets created when they speak, sing or laugh. “Lots of people have written about coughs and sneezes and the kinds of things you worry about with the flu,” Stone said in a university news release. “But those features are associated with visible symptoms, and with this disease we are seeing a lot of spread by people without symptoms.” Stone and his colleagues conducted tests to determine how far and fast exhaled droplets from normal speaking could spread in an interior space without good ventilation. In such settings, normal conversation can spread droplets at least as far as, and even beyond, social distancing guidelines recommended by U.S. officials (6.5 feet) and the World Health Organization (3.2 feet),…  read on >

FRIDAY, Oct. 2, 2020 (HealthDay News) — President Donald Trump announced early Friday morning that he and his wife, Melania Trump, have tested positive for the coronavirus. In a tweet sent out at 1 a.m., Trump said they will both quarantine in the White House for an unspecified period of time, The New York Times reported. The diagnosis forces him to temporarily withdraw from the campaign trail just 32 days before the election on Nov. 3. The White House did not say whether the 74-year-old or his wife were experiencing symptoms. The president’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, said Trump could carry out his duties “without disruption” from the Executive Mansion, the Times reported. On Friday, Vice President Mike Pence and wife Karen, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, all announced that they had tested negative for the new coronavirus. While Trump’s age and weight automatically put him in a high-risk category, Conley pronounced Trump to be “in very good health” last year after his last full medical checkup. And, unlike many of those who have succumbed to the virus, Trump will have the best medical care available, the Times said. On Thursday, reports swirled that Trump’s close advisor, Hope Hicks, had tested positive for COVID-19, the Times said. She had traveled with him several times recently. There was no immediate word on how far…  read on >

A life support technique called ECMO has saved the lives of many critically ill COVID-19 patients, a new study shows. The ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine takes over the function of the lungs and heart. Blood is pumped from the body into equipment that adds oxygen to the blood before it’s returned to the body. This technique has saved lives in previous epidemics of lung-damaging viruses, but small studies published early in the coronavirus pandemic questioned its effectiveness. This international study included 1,035 COVID-19 patients at high risk of death because ventilators and other types of care couldn’t support their lungs. After being placed on ECMO, the death rate among these patients was less than 40%, according to the study authors. “These results from hospitals experienced in providing ECMO are similar to past reports of ECMO-supported patients, with other forms of acute respiratory distress syndrome or viral pneumonia,” said co-author Dr. Ryan Barbaro, of the University of Michigan. “The results support recommendations to consider ECMO in COVID-19 if the ventilator is failing. We hope these findings help hospitals make decisions about this resource-intensive option,” Barbaro said in a university news release. Most centers in this study did not need to use ECMO for COVID-19 very often, said study co-author Graeme MacLaren, of the National University Health System in Singapore. “By bringing data from over 200…  read on >

Falling leaves, pumpkins and apples are signs of fall. And so is asthma. Asthma attacks tend to increase in early autumn. During the coronavirus pandemic, it’s especially important for people with the disease to know how to prevent flare-ups, a lung expert says. “There are two different types of asthma flare-ups,” said Dr. Pushan Jani, an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “First, you have those who suffer asthma year-round, and then there are some people who have seasonal asthma, which is triggered by different allergens and pollen in the air,” he said in a UTHealth news release. “This time of the year increases the attacks for seasonal asthma and can make those who suffer from persistent asthma control worse.” Every fall, Jani said he sees a significant increase in asthma-related hospitalizations as various types of pollen, such as ragweed, and mold fill the air. The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, the start of the flu season and high pollen levels mean that people with asthma need to protect themselves so they don’t end up in the hospital. Stock up on any medications or inhalers needed to control flare-ups, Jani advised. Get an allergy test. “If you are unaware of what triggers these attacks, get tested. This will help pinpoint what you should…  read on >

Revealing some good news for minorities, a new study found similar survival rates for Hispanic, Black and white COVID-19 patients at a New York City hospital system. “It is well-documented that communities of color have shouldered the heaviest burden of COVID-19 in the United States, and there have been many explanations offered for why that is the case,” said Dr. Andrew Racine. He is system senior vice president and chief medical officer at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. “We discovered, somewhat surprisingly, that Black and Hispanic patients, when hospitalized, had similar or slightly better survival outcomes compared to white patients,” Racine said in a Montefiore news release. The study included more than 5,900 COVID-19 patients admitted to the medical center. As has been seen nationwide, black and Hispanic people were more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than white people, the findings showed. And Black and Hispanic people who were hospitalized were more likely to have two or more pre-existing conditions (38% and 43%, respectively) than white people (34%). However, survival rates among Black and Hispanic patients were at least as good as those for white patients after the researchers controlled for age, sex, income levels and pre-existing conditions, according to the study. The results were published online Sept. 25 in JAMA Network Open. Similar findings have been reported from other major health systems…  read on >

In rural America, drinking has become particularly deadly for many, a new government report shows. Deaths related to alcohol use in those regions rose 43% between 2006 and 2018, health officials reported. Over that time, the rate of deaths went from 11 per 100,000 people to 15 per 100,000. Also, the rate of deaths among women more than doubled, according to researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I really want to highlight this health disparity, the fact that there is an increase in rural areas in recent years,” said lead researcher Merianne Spencer, from the division of analysis and epidemiology at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). “Hopefully, we can take it to the next step, and other researchers can delve into this question, because we are seeing this at the national level,” Spencer added. For the report, the researchers included deaths from alcohol-related medical conditions, such as cirrhosis of the liver, but not causes indirectly related to alcohol use, such as motor vehicle crashes or suicides, Spencer explained. “These increases in alcohol-related deaths may well be connected to the fairly recently described phenomenon of lowered life expectancy in the United States over the past few years, primarily in white individuals with lower educational achievement,” said Dr. J.C. Garbutt, an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of North…  read on >

Coronavirus infections are surging in the American heartland, with Wisconsin bearing the brunt of COVID-19’s relentless spread. Many Midwestern states are seeing some of the nation’s highest per capita rates of infection, and while federal health officials have again urged some governors in the region to require masks statewide, some Republican governors have resisted, the Associated Press reported. Wisconsin appeared to be in the worst shape: A record number of people with COVID-19 were hospitalized in that state as of Wednesday. Of 737 patients, 205 were in intensive care, with spikes in cases in northern parts of the state driving up the numbers, the AP reported. Wisconsin health officials reported 2,319 new infections, bringing the total number to 122,274. The state also reported its highest single-day number of deaths — 27 — pushing the overall death toll to 1,327. “Over the course of the past two to three weeks we have noticed a marked rise in COVID patients coming into our hospitals in Green Bay,” said Dr. Paul Casey, medical director of the emergency department at Bellin Hospital in Wisconsin, told CNN. “And this comes in the wake of what we thought we were doing well.” “For the first time in 17 years that I’ve been here, we’ve had to put patients in hallway beds,” Casey told CNN. “I never envisioned having to do that…  read on >

Pets helped many people cope with the mental stress of being locked down during the coronavirus pandemic, a new study finds. It included 6,000 people in Britain who were under lockdown between March 23 and June 1. About 90% had at least one pet. Of those, more than 90% said their pet helped them cope emotionally with the lockdown and 96% said their pet helped keep them fit and active. “Findings from this study also demonstrated potential links between people’s mental health and the emotional bonds they form with their pets: measures of the strength of the human-animal bond were higher among people who reported lower scores for mental health-related outcomes at baseline,” said lead author Elena Ratschen, a senior lecturer in health services research at the University of York in England. The most common pets were cats and dogs, followed by small mammals and fish. But the strength of the human-pet bond didn’t differ significantly among types of pets — people felt as close to their pups as to their guinea pigs, according to the study published Sept. 25 in the journal PLOS ONE. The study also found that 68% of pet owners said they worried about their animals during lockdown. Reasons included restrictions on access to veterinary care and exercise, as well as concern about who would look after their pet if they…  read on >