Respiratory Infections News

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories has confirmed a case of COVID-19 in a tiger at a zoo in New York, according to a statement on their website. The case represents the first instance of a tiger being infected with COVID-19.

President Donald J. Trump criticized the WHO’s COVID-19 response at a press briefing on Tuesday, suggesting the organization “missed the call” and should have acted “months earlier” to prevent the spread of the virus. During the same briefing, Trump also implied that the United States may cut off its funding to the WHO — a move that could have deeper implications for the global pandemic response.

Compared with other countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States generally has a higher incarceration rate, with more than 10 million people booked into jails each year. This specific setting poses “a unique set of challenges” when it comes to COVID-19 prevention that require action and attention, according to an editorial published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

As the enormity of the COVID-19 pandemic sinks in and as we feel its impact across the globe, join us as we discuss mitigation, solutions and new discoveries and approaches to help you better prepare to serve your patients across all specialties. In this episode, we focus on immunocompromised patients.

The American Thoracic Society has released new guidance on how to approach treatment of COVID-19 during the global pandemic.

Researchers from Nebraska Medicine have developed a procedure for decontaminating N95 respirators using ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, according to a publication on the process released by the institution.

A neonate born to a mother infected with SARS-CoV-2 at a hospital in Wuhan, China, had elevated levels of immunoglobuin M, or IgM, and immunoglobulin G, or IgG, antibodies and abnormal cytokine test results 2 hours after birth, suggesting that the newborn was infected in utero, researchers reported in JAMA.

Universal masking policies have been a common topic of debate during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now affected citizens in most countries and territories throughout the world. Some hospitals have begun implementing their own policies regarding masks. Officials are also calling on policymakers to act while experts weigh the benefits of having the general public wear masks during essential outings.

Among patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome, those with COVID-19, as compared with influenza A H1N1-related pneumonia, had different clinical manifestations of the disease and also appeared to have less severity of disease and lower adjusted mortality, researchers reported in Chest.

Asymptomatic infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, occurred most often among adults aged 30 to 49 years, according to results from a single-center study in Shenzhen, China, that was published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.