Covid-19 News

Perhaps of interest -

New COVID-19 HOPE Clinical Trial Recommendations Introduced Today May

Reduce or Eliminate Mechanical Ventilation for Coronavirus Patients

(a combination of FDA-approved drugs (nebulized Heparin-N-acetylcysteine

in COVID-19 Patients by Evaluation of pulmonary function (HOPE))

(An inexpensive, readily available treatment)

https://www.biospace.com/artic…for-coronavirus-patients/

New information on this treatment --

The treatment that could ease the ventilator crisis? US doctor claims a combination of blood thinners and asthma drugs could save coronavirus patients from needing intubation

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8167849

"The Letter"

Today, we are facing a threat to our health unlike any we have faced before. We are at war with a virus. It is a war we can win. But we need every one of you to help, now. Here are some things you need to know, and do:

• Thankfully, about 99 out of 100 people who get COVID-19 will recover, although it may take many weeks.
• This is a dangerous virus, and everyone in our country is affected by it. Many will become ill, some only mildly, but often with a painful, exhausting infection in our lungs and viral pneumonia. Some of us, and some of our loved ones, will die. Sadly, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
• Health care workers and first responders are our most precious resource. Check by phone or online before you go in for care if you’re sick — many health centers and hospitals have separate, safer entrances. If you do go for care, cover your mouth when traveling to and within health facilities. Health care workers must come first – including for treatment and a vaccine, and, if there are shortages, for face masks. That way, health staff will be there for us when we need them.
• There are some things all of us must do now. And, whatever happens, we must continue to do these things. These include:

1. Wash your hands often. Before you eat or drink or touch your face if your hands may be contaminated. After you touch anything that may be contaminated.

2. Cover your cough and sneeze with a tissue that you throw out, or with the crook of your elbow. Then wash your hands.

3. Don’t go out if you’re sick. If you have cough or fever and need to get health care, wear a surgical mask, bandana, scarf or other piece of clothing over your mouth.

4. For the foreseeable future, stop shaking hands.

• If you’re over 60 or have a health condition such as heart disease, lung disease or diabetes, stay home. There’s a virus out there, and you’re at a much higher risk of dying from it. And that’s not just a terrible tragedy for you and your family – it will take up health care resources that may be scarce.
• Your personal health is your choice, but the health of others is not. You may feel healthy, but if you get infected you can pass the virus to others who are more vulnerable. You owe it to them not to get infected so you won’t infect them. And you owe it to all of us to do your part in stopping the spread of this virus.
• Physical distancing is important. Crowds amplify the spread of the virus. For the time being, stay six feet away from just about everyone.
• Take care of your emotional wellness. Be physically active. Enjoy nature. Connect with friends, family and others – by phone, video or other safe ways. Remember that, bad as this is, it will pass, and we will be stronger.
• The virus spreads from people who are infected and from contaminated surfaces. That’s why it’s so important that people who are infected are physically isolated, why we must improve how we clean our hands, and why we must sanitize frequently touched surfaces such as doorknobs.
• We hope and wish there will be an effective treatment and a vaccine against this virus. As of today, there is no scientific evidence that any medicine works, and a vaccine is likely to be many months or even years away.
• We are all in this together. That means supporting your local health department and checking cdc.gov for the latest information and recommendations. And supporting protection against microbes around the globe, because, bad as this pandemic is, there will be others in our lifetimes. Future pandemics are inevitable. What’s not inevitable is that we will be underprepared.

Has anyone mentioned melatonin. It is a very safe drug to take and readily available in the USA.

Melatonin as a potential adjuvant treatment

HCQ clinical trial result.. latest from China on medrxiv.

n=31 n=31

Randomized parallel-group trial, 31 patients received an additional 5-day HCQ (400 mg/d) treatment, 31 no HCQ.

Time to clinical recovery (TTCR), clinical characteristics, Xray ..results were assessed at baseline and 5 days after treatment

Key findings:

62 COVID-19 patients, 46.8% male /53.2% female ,mean age 44.7 years

No difference in the age /gender btw control /HCQ groups

TTCR, the body temperature recovery time, cough remission time were significantly shortened in the HCQ treatment group

More patients with improved pneumonia in the HCQ treatment group (80.6%, 25 of 32) versus the control group (54.8%, 17 of 32).

Notably, all the 4 patients that progressed to severe illness only occurred in the control group (no HCQ)

However, there were 2 patients with mild adverse reactions in the HCQ treatment group.

Conclusion with COVID-19, the use of HCQ could significantly shorten TTCR and promote the recovery from pneumonia.

https://www.medrxiv.org/conten…101/2020.03.22.20040758v1 Trial Feb4-Feb27 Renmin Hospital , Wuhan University.

Airborne transmission is different from droplet transmission as it refers to the presence of microbes within droplet nuclei, which are generally considered to be particles <5μm in diameter, can remain in the air for long periods of time and be transmitted to others over distances greater than 1 m. https://www.who.int/news-room/…recaution-recommendations

Choir practice turns fatal

Nearly three weeks later, 45 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symptoms, at least three have been hospitalized, and two are dead. https://tribune.net.ph/index.p…oir-practice-turns-fatal/

The suggest from some is if you have to sing with others, everyone should wear masks.

Quote from Curbina

I hope this trend of doubling of fatal cases every 6 days as seen in the following projection with data from the Worldometers database:

Date / Total Dead

09. March 4,025

17. March 7,979

23. March 16,513

29. March 32,145

does not continue.

Display More

Okay, this is for the whole world. From here:

https://www.worldometers.info/…s/coronavirus-death-toll/

The last number has been revised up to 34,065.

Fatalities lag Daily New Cases by 2 or 3 weeks. New cases were doubling every 5 or 6 days recently, so fatalities will follow after a few weeks. When X number of people get sick on a given day, within 2 or 3 weeks, 2% of them die. The 2% mortality rate has not changed much for world. It is a little lower in some countries. In S. Korea it is about 1.6%. The mortality rate will rise dramatically if hospitals are swamped.

Yesterday, the Daily New Cases for the whole world fell a little.

Daily New Cases for the world are shown here:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/

Some places are increasing much faster than others, so one number for the whole world is inaccurate. But it seems to average out to make the short term trends over 2 to 5 days fairly predictable.

Quote from Curbina

world average

not sure what will happen to those averages should India cannot contain it. I expect cases to drastically increase due to that in about 3 weeks. (today's multiplier on new cases is 6)

Social distancing seems to be working.

The daily total new cases for the U.S., France and some other countries are up a little. For the U.S. the last three days have seen increases of 1.04, 1.02, 1.02. To put it another way: There were 20,000 new cases today. If the rate remains 1.02, this will double to 40,000 new cases per day by May 4. That's 35 days from now. That sounds bad, but up until this week, cases were doubling every three days.

Of course, the rate might go up again. It might go down. We might have fewer cases. But even if it stays stuck at 1.02, 35 days may be long enough to prepare for 40,000 cases a day, with enough masks, suits, even ventilators. Perhaps we can avoid a catastrophe with this rate of increase. If the number of cases had continued to double every 3 days, a catastrophe would have been unavoidable.

On this subject, Gov. Cuomo today said that a week ago, in New York state, cases were doubling every 2 days. He said now they are doubling every 6 days.

The crisis it not over by any means, but if things continue as they are, in the U.S., thousands or hundreds of thousands will die, but not millions. Unfortunately, in many poor nations, the toll will probably be far higher. Perhaps if the EU, the U.S., Japan and China get this under control, we can work together to send supplies, equipment and doctors to the poor nations.

Quote

Has anyone mentioned melatonin. It is a very safe drug to take and readily available in the USA.

Melatonin as a potential adjuvant treatment

ZenoOfElea

Interesting, unusual, well written paper, thank you.

Quote from Alan Smith

Here's another suggestion for prophylaxis, from a well-informed source.

1. Zinc plus ionophores can block replication of corona viruses (at least in vitro)

te Velthuis AJW, van den Worm SHE, Sims AC, Baric RS, Snijder EJ, van Hemert MJ. Zn2+ Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity In Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture. Plos Pathogens 2010; https://doi.org/10.1371/journa…1371/journal.ppat.1001176

2. Chloroquine is a ionophore, so its positive effects might in really be attributed to the weaponisation of zinc present in the patients, in this case administering zinc supplements could increase its effectiveness (and lack thereof might instead explain when it does not work)

Xue J, Moyer A, Peng B, Wu J, Hannafon BN, Ding WQ. Chloroquine Is a Zinc Ionophore. PLoS One. 2014; 9(10): e109180. doi: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p…1371/journal.pone.0109180

3. The effect of chloroquine reported by Prof. Raoult and other is consistent with the effects of zinc, i.e. a shorter infection period, even though there is no mention of zinc in his papers (I already sent a similar message to Prof Raoult): “A rapid fall of nasopharyngeal viral load tested by qPCR was noted, with 83% negative at Day7, and 93% at Day8. Virus cultures from patient respiratory samples were negative in 97.5% patients at Day5. This allowed patients to rapidly de discharge from highly contagious wards with a mean length of stay of five days.”

https://www.mediterranee-infec…2020/03/COVID-IHU-2-1.pdf

4. chloroquine has side effects, while other ionophores like quercetin and epigallocatechin-gallate don’t

Dabbagh-Bazarbachi H, Clergeaud G, Quesada IM, Ortiz M, O'Sullivan CK, Fernández-Larrea JB. Zinc ionophore activity of quercetin Zinc ionophore activity of quercetin and epigallocatechin-gallate: from Hepa 1-6 cells to a liposome model. J Agric Food Chem. 2014;62(32):8085-93. doi: 10.1021/jf5014633. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25050823

5. Therefore this suggests a preventive treatment of 500mg quercetine and 25mg zinc (and more, up to 400mg, in case of infection) to the general population might reduce the symptoms and duration, thus flattening the curve, while having a low cost and no known side effects

Display More

Interestingly enough, the membrane protein ACE2, known as the main entry point of SARS-COV-2, is a Zn metalloprotein that acts as a ionophore of Zn itself, with quercetin and luteolin shown to bind to the exact same location on ACE2 as the spike protein of SARS-COV-2, with a better binding affinity than e.g. chloroquine. These flavonoids have also a much better safety profile than chloroquine, with a potentially harmful dose as much as 3-4 orders of magnitude higher than the assumed effective dose. I personally take a supplement of quercetin and luteolin since the beginning of February.

Chloroquine prophylaxis against malaria prevents coronavirus deaths- assuming quinine analogues have widespread use in high death rate areas from malaria. Compare Indonesia, Yemen and obviously Africa - what are the chances this is just coincidence? from wikipedia:

COVID-19 by country and territory (as of 31 March 2020): 100,000+ confirmed cases

Total confirmed deaths per capita of COVID-19 by country and territory (as of 31 March 2020): 100+ deaths per million
10–100 deaths per million
1–10 deaths per million
0.1–1 deaths per million
0.01–0.1 deaths per million
>0–0.01 deaths per million
No deaths or no data

This article documents countries and territories affected by and their responses to the coronavirus responsible for the ongoing 2019–20 pandemic first detected in Wuhan, Hubei, China.

Deaths due to malaria per million persons in 2012 0–0
1–2
3–54
55–325
326–679
680–949
950–1,358

Past and current malaria prevalence in 2009

The WHO estimates that in 2018 there were 228 million new cases of malaria resulting in 405,000 deaths.^[3] The majority of cases (65%) occur in children under 15 years old.^[118] About 125 million pregnant women are at risk of infection each year; in Sub-Saharan Africa, maternal malaria is associated with up to 200,000 estimated infant deaths yearly.^[17] There are about 10,000 malaria cases per year in Western Europe, and 1300–1500 in the United States.^[13] The United States eradicated malaria in 1951.^[119] About 900 people died from the disease in Europe between 1993 and 2003.^[62] Both the global incidence of disease and resulting mortality have declined in recent years. According to the WHO and UNICEF, deaths attributable to malaria in 2015 were reduced by 60%^[70] from a 2000 estimate of 985,000, largely due to the widespread use of insecticide-treated nets and artemisinin-based combination therapies.^[67] In 2012, there were 207 million cases of malaria. That year, the disease is estimated to have killed between 473,000 and 789,000 people, many of whom were children in Africa.^[2] Efforts at decreasing the disease in Africa since the turn of millennium have been partially effective, with rates of the disease dropping by an estimated forty percent on the continent.^[120]

Malaria is presently endemic in a broad band around the equator, in areas of the Americas, many parts of Asia, and much of Africa; in Sub-Saharan Africa, 85–90% of malaria fatalities occur.^[121] An estimate for 2009 reported that countries with the highest death rate per 100,000 of population were Ivory Coast (86.15), Angola (56.93) and Burkina Faso (50.66).^[122] A 2010 estimate indicated the deadliest countries per population were Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Mali.^[118] The Malaria Atlas Project aims to map global levels of malaria, providing a way to determine the global spatial limits of the disease and to assess disease burden.^[123][124] This effort led to the publication of a map of P. falciparum endemicity in 2010 and an update in 2019.^{[125][126][127]} As of 2010, about 100 countries have endemic malaria.^[128][129] Every year, 125 million international travellers visit these countries, and more than 30,000 contract the disease.^[62]

The geographic distribution of malaria within large regions is complex, and malaria-afflicted and malaria-free areas are often found close to each other.^[130] Malaria is prevalent in tropical and subtropical regions because of rainfall, consistent high temperatures and high humidity, along with stagnant waters where mosquito larvae readily mature, providing them with the environment they need for continuous breeding.^[131] In drier areas, outbreaks of malaria have been predicted with reasonable accuracy by mapping rainfall.^[132] Malaria is more common in rural areas than in cities. For example, several cities in the Greater Mekong Subregion of Southeast Asia are essentially malaria-free, but the disease is prevalent in many rural regions, including along international borders and forest fringes.^[133] In contrast, malaria in Africa is present in both rural and urban areas, though the risk is lower in the larger cities.^[134

Quote from Dr Richard

Chloroquine prophylaxis against malaria prevents coronavirus deaths-

I hope there is CQ prophylaxis and that it is universal..

Most of these are poor countries where the public health system is marginal

eg Nigeria

Although only 2.5 % of the population are over 65..

(the life expectancy is about 55 yr)

There are only 500 ventilators for 2.5 % of 200 million people.= 5 million.

Lockdown is in action now.

https://www.france24.com/en/20…teps-up-coronavirus-fight

Be good to show this correlation to Neil Ferguson Team Google if you can dump it worldwide on the internet like the rest of chloroquine data since Elon Musk's Twitter feed. Or maybe I'll just e-mail it to him.

robert bryant Most have been using chloroquine - stocks of CQ have run out now due to high demand in Lagos, Nigeria and elsewhere but there is a large supply on the black market since WHO tried to prevent its use as Plasmodium malaria parasite resistance increased. Large stocks supplied by Bill Gates vanished into networks of small medicine suppliers. Other analogues like .mefloquine are used elsewhere - free distribution in Indonesia. All these antimalarial drugs should be tested in vitro for activity against coronavirus. The poor public health system and widespread malnutrition (weakening immune systems far more than age) has had the WHO scratching its head as to why there has been no major outbreak yet in Africa etc even though borders have been open, high levels of trade with China and Italy, many Chinese working in gold mines etc.,no possibility of social distancing using shared waterholes and no hand sanitizer! Should have been worse than the 1918 H1N1 pandemic which killed 2 million in Africa, 50 million worldwide. Let's hope this is not yet to come. The Nigerian government has been desperate to find corona virus patients after one Italian immigrant had contact with 179 Africans but only transmitted the infection to one of them. Both recovered but the government then told the WHO that the other 178 went into hiding and couldn't be found! Once in hospital maybe they would be deprived of their own medicines ie chloroquine leading to the few recorded fatalities??

It's just the we know best attitude of the government and NHS here that's really pissing me off. Over-reliance on Neil Furguson's modelling which is correct and will limit the pandemic eventually but there seems to be a suppression of anti-virus treatments here. Even my kid brother GP has secured a small supply of HCQ for himself working on the front line by his own initiative (before I told him about it). He is over sixty And semi-retired. And the mass blocking of orders for CQ by pharmacies and export ban since 2 Feb. Shocking! Outrageous! So Prince Charles, Boris, Witty and other health ministers are also using their own supplies but the masses (including the doctors & nurses who are dying) are being denied treatment? This reeks of Eton mess mentality (trying very hard not to be political here). Feel free to pump this all out on the net TG.