Social distancing guidelines crafted by the federal government to stem the spread of coronavirus expire on Thursday, but President Donald Trump said Wednesday he has no intention of extending the measures. “They’ll be fading out, because now the governors are doing it,” Trump explained during a media briefing. More than half of the United States, at least 28 states, will be partially reopened by the end of the week when their stay-at-home orders end, CNN reported. That is likely welcome news to the millions of businesses that have had to shut down or curtail operations during six weeks of stay-at-home orders, with 3.8 million Americans added to the nation’s jobless rolls on Thursday. That brings the six-week total to more than 30 million newly unemployed, The New York Times reported. As the U.S. coronavirus case count climbed past 1 million and the death toll neared 61,000, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that forces beleaguered meat processing plants to stay open so the country’s food supply isn’t threatened. The order used the Defense Production Act to classify meat processing as critical infrastructure, to try to keep chicken, pork and other meat flowing to supermarket coolers, the Associated Press reported. More than 20 meatpacking plants have been shuttered under pressure from local authorities and their own workers because of the virus. Others have slowed production…  read on >

As national guidelines on social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic expired Thursday, the White House announced an initiative to produce a COVID-19 vaccine that could be available nationwide by January. President Donald Trump said it is not too optimistic to try to produce roughly 300 million doses of vaccine in eight months, enough for all Americans, the Washington Post reported. “No, I’m not overpromising. I don’t know who said it, but whatever the maximum is, whatever you can humanly do, we’re going to have. And we hope we’re going to come up with a good vaccine,” the president said during a coronavirus task force briefing Thursday. Even the shorter timeline still means there would be no full protection from the coronavirus until after most Americans are likely to have returned to work or school. Dubbed “Operation Warp Speed,” the goal is to produce hundreds of millions of doses by January, Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said Thursday. “We want to go quickly, but we want to make sure it’s safe and it’s effective,” he said on the “Today” show. “I think that is doable if things fall in the right place.” That’s likely welcome news to the millions of businesses that have had to shut down or curtail operations during six weeks of stay-at-home orders, with 3.8 million Americans added to the…  read on >

Women under age 65 with coronary artery disease are more likely to die if they live in rural areas of the United States, and premature deaths among them have surged, a new study finds. Researchers analyzed nationwide data on premature deaths from coronary artery disease between 1999 and 2017. While premature deaths decreased overall, they remained consistently higher in rural areas — regardless of sex, race or age group. Roughly 20% of Americans live in rural areas. Deaths have not risen among men overall, but the rate in those 55 to 64 stopped improving in small to medium towns in 2011, and in rural areas in 2008, the study found. In rural areas, death rates due to coronary artery disease rose 11.2% for 55- to 64-year-old women between 2010 and 2017. They also rose 11.4% among 45- to 54-year-old women between 1999 and 2017. The study was published April 22 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. “Women living in rural areas of the United States have for the first time suffered an increase in premature deaths from coronary artery disease. This is in stark contrast to their urban counterparts, who have experienced a virtually uninterrupted reduction in premature coronary artery disease deaths,” said senior author Dr. Federico Moccetti. Moccetti, a former research fellow at Oregon Health and Sciences University in Portland, is now…  read on >

(HealthDay News) — Lawmakers were poised to pass a $484 billion deal on Thursday that would replenish a small business loan program that has run out of funding and direct more money to hospitals and COVID-19 testing. The Senate has already passed the measure, and the House is now expected to do the same, the Washington Post reported. The legislation would add $310 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program, the Post reported. It would also boost a separate small business emergency grant and loan program by $60 billion, and direct $75 billion to hospitals and $25 billion to a new coronavirus testing program. Passage of the stimulus package might take some of the sting out of the latest unemployment numbers, with 4.4 million more Americans being added to jobless roles on Thursday. So far, more than 26 million Americans are out of work due to the coronavirus crisis. Despite the pain that battling the new coronavirus has exacted upon the economy of the United States, a new Associated Press poll finds Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of stay-at-home orders and other efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The survey, released Wednesday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, also finds a majority of Americans say it won’t be safe to lift those measures anytime soon. Sixty-one percent of Americans said stay-at-home…  read on >

Dozens of drugs are being investigated for their value in treating COVID-19, as desperation drives doctors and researchers to look for something that could battle the virus and save lives. “There are really no FDA-approved medications for the treatment of COVID-19, unfortunately,” said Ashley Barlow, a pharmacy resident with the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. “We’re doing the best we can to try and ramp up studies, but since we’re doing it in such a quick period of time there are a lot of flaws we have to take into consideration.” The COVID-19 drugs being tried and tested fall into two general categories, explained Dr. Rajesh Gandhi, director of HIV clinical services and education at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston: Antivirals aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus inside the bodies of infected people. Immune system medications that limit the damage the body does to itself while fighting off the coronavirus. “There are drugs we believe can help pull people through the natural evolution of this infection and can really make a difference,” Gandhi said. “Right now, the jury is still out on some of these things that have been proposed. That’s why we need to have clinical trials that will provide an answer.” Remdesivir Many of the drugs proposed to treat COVID-19 are already approved for other conditions, and can be…  read on >

(HealthDay News) — The U.S. House passed a $484 billion deal on Thursday that would replenish a small business loan program that has run out of funding. The bill also directs more money to hospitals and COVID-19 testing. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday, the Washington Post reported. As of Friday, U.S. coronavirus cases passed 867,000, including almost 45,000 deaths. The legislation passed Thursday would add $310 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program, the Post reported. It would also boost a separate small business emergency grant and loan program by $60 billion, and direct $75 billion to hospitals and $25 billion to a new coronavirus testing program. Passage of the stimulus package might take some of the sting out of the latest unemployment numbers, with 4.4 million more Americans added to jobless rolls on Thursday. So far, more than 26 million Americans are out of work due to the coronavirus crisis. Despite the pain that battling the new coronavirus has exacted on the economy of the United States, a new Associated Press poll finds Americans remain overwhelmingly in favor of stay-at-home orders and other efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The survey, released Wednesday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, also finds a majority of Americans say it won’t be safe to lift…  read on >

With states across America beginning to relax stay-at-home orders, White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx reiterated on Sunday that some form of social distancing will still be necessary through the summer. In an interview on Meet the Press, she stressed that “social distancing will be with us through the summer to really ensure that we protect one another as we move through these [reopening] phases.” A heat wave that blanketed southern California this weekend highlighted the challenges that governors and mayors will face in trying to sustain social distancing efforts in warm weather. Despite pleas from public officials to stay home, tens of thousands of people flocked to beaches that were open in Orange County on Saturday, The New York Times reported. On Monday, the number of U.S. coronavirus cases surged past 965,000 and the death toll neared 55,000, the Associated Press reported. States vary in respect to stay-at-home orders. Governors in hard-hit New York and Michigan are keeping such orders in place until at least mid-May, while their counterparts in Georgia, Oklahoma and Alaska have already allowed certain businesses to reopen, the Associated Press reported. Georgia is moving the fastest to ease social distancing restrictions, while governors in Tennessee, Idaho and Missouri are preparing to launch their reopening plans soon, the Washington Post reported. Several states to reopen Another round of…  read on >

Domenico Piccininni is one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have had a COVID-19 infection and recovered after a bit of misery, but with no lasting complications. What sets him apart from many other survivors is that Piccininni is trying to help people who now have more severe COVID-19 infections. On Thursday, the Atlanta-area resident donated his plasma. Plasma is a component of blood that contains antibodies, which are made by the immune system in response to a specific infection. Because the 50-year-old Piccininni recovered from a COVID-19 infection, his body now produces antibodies that are primed to fight the new coronavirus. The hope is that giving his plasma and antibodies (called “convalescent plasma”) will help kick-start the fight against the virus for people who are currently very sick with COVID-19 infections. Piccininni is a reluctant hero, though. At first, he thought he wouldn’t want anyone to even know that he had been sick with COVID-19. He worried there might be a potential stigma. “I felt like [having had the infection] might be like a scarlet letter, but the doctor said I should think of it more like a badge of honor, because I could help people,” Piccininni said. He also admitted to being a bit uneasy about the procedure because he didn’t quite know what to expect. “My wife volunteered me,” he…  read on >

While health experts continued to call for a national strategy to test more Americans for coronavirus, President Donald Trump on Monday announced a “blueprint” for boosting testing capacity as some states began reopening their economies. But the national guidance says states must develop their own testing plans and rapid-response programs while the White House provides “strategic direction and technical assistance,” and helps “align laboratory testing supplies and capacity with existing and anticipated laboratory needs,” the Washington Post reported. Trump was joined at the media briefing by some major retailers who said they had ramped up both testing and the production of medical supplies. They predicted they would doubling both their rate of testing and the number of sites that would be available to the public in the next month. Admiral Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health, told CBS News that the Trump administration is prepared to send all 50 states enough tests to screen 2 % of their population per month for the virus, roughly 6.6 million people. By Sunday, the United States had conducted about 5.5 million tests, according to the Covid Tracking Project, which compiles those figures from individual states. But that number is only equivalent to about 1.7 % of the U.S. population, the Post reported. In contrast, Germany increased testing earlier than the United States did and had tested 2.5…  read on >