-
- Up one level
- Background
- CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report articles
- Origins
- Portals
- Reopening safely
- Tracking
- *Newest posts
- 2020 Time Capsule #2: The Exceptional Dr. Fauci
As of today, March 13, 2020—three-plus years into the current administration, three months into public awareness of the coronavirus spread, seven-plus months until before the next election—Anthony Fauci is playing a role in which no previous Trump-era figure has survived.
- An Epicenter of the Pandemic Will Be Jails and Prisons, if Inaction Continues
Amanda Klonsky, NY Times, March 16, 2020
The conditions inside, which are inhumane, are now a threat to any American with a jail in their county — that’s everyone.
- CDC Plan, prepare, and respond to Coronavirus Disease 2019
Resources for home
- Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now
Tomas Pueyo, Medium.com, Mar 10/13, 2020
Politicians, Community Leaders and Business Leaders: What Should You Do and When
This article uses modeling to relate the number of reported cases and deaths to the size of the underlying epidemic. It reminds me of an article (Am J Epidemiol) in the early years of the HIV epidemic, where there was a similar disjunction between observed and underlying infections, though the lag was in years, rather than days.
- Coronavirus Outbreak: Biology, Epidemiology and Public Health Response (90 min)
UNC Gillings Department of Epidemiology and North Carolina Partnership for Excellence in Applied Epidemiology Seminar, Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Welcome and introductions by Andrew Olshan and Lorraine Alexander. Presenters:
Dr. Ralph Baric, Distinguished Professor
Dr. Kim Powers, Associate Professor
Dr. Aaron Fleischauer, Chief Science Officer at N.C. Division of Public Health
Dr. David Weber, Professor
(password march3sph [if requested])
- Epidemiology and Other Public Health Rock Stars
Facebook group - open to public health professionals
- Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand
Neil M. Ferguson, Daniel Laydon, Gemma Nedjati-Gilani, et al. Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, 16 March 2020, DOI: https://doi.org/10.25561/77482
Summary:
The global impact of COVID-19 ... is the most serious seen in a respiratory virus since the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic. Here we present the results of epidemiological modelling which has informed policymaking in the UK and other countries in recent weeks. In the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine, we assess the potential role of a number of public health measures – so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – aimed at reducing contact rates in the population and thereby reducing transmission of the virus. In the results presented here, we apply a previously published microsimulation model to two countries: the UK (Great Britain specifically) and the US. We conclude that the effectiveness of any one intervention in isolation is likely to be limited, requiring multiple interventions to be combined to have a substantial impact on transmission. Two fundamental strategies are possible: (a) mitigation, which focuses on slowing but not necessarily stopping epidemic spread – reducing peak healthcare demand while protecting those most at risk of severe disease from infection, and (b) suppression, which aims to reverse epidemic growth, reducing case numbers to low levels and maintaining that situation indefinitely. Each policy has major challenges. We find that that optimal mitigation policies (combining home isolation of suspect cases, home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the elderly and others at most risk of severe disease) might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and deaths byhalf. However, the resulting mitigated epidemic would still likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over. For countries able to achieve it, this leaves suppression as the preferred policy option. We show that in the UK and US context, suppression will minimally require a combination of social distancing of the entire population, home isolation of cases and household quarantine of their family members. This may need to be supplemented by school and university closures, though it should be recognised that such closures may have negative impacts on health systems due to increased absenteeism. The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package – or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission – will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) – given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed. We show that intermittent social distancing – triggered by trends in disease surveillance – may allow interventions to be relaxed temporarily in relative short time windows, but measures will need to be reintroduced if or when case numbers rebound. Last, while experience in China and now South Korea show that suppression is possible in the short term, it remains to be seen whether it is possible long-term, and whether the social and economic costs of the interventions adopted thus far can be reduced.
- Looking To The Genome To Track And Treat The New Coronavirus (18 min)
NPR, Science Friday, March 6, 2020, with host Ira Flatow
As of Thursday, March 5, Washington state has reported over 30 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. To better understand the pathogen and the disease, scientists have sequenced the genome of the virus from two of the patients. Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at Scripps Research who uses genomics to track the spread of diseases, discusses how the genetic information from these patients can help determine the spread of the virus globally. Plus, Ralph Baric, a coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, talks about developing vaccine and drug candidates for COVID-19 and how the genomic sequences from this outbreak can be used to help create treatments.
- Ralph Baric
UNC researcher studying coronaviruses for several decades