aeneas
1628
Lancet article on the response in NZ. For those of you who may be interested.
Quaro
1629
This Week in Virology talks about many interesting of things, but one them is Donald Trump’s potentially immunity. While it’s hard to say for sure, it’s likely that his immunity wears off in 20 days. He was able to get the artificial antibodies before his body has started making any of his own – which is super good news for making you get a lot less sick – but it also means you are unlikely to have future natural immunity. Direct Link to 12 minutes, but the whole episode is good.
They said the half life of the monoclonals is 20-27 days. It’s unclear if you need the full titer of the initial treatment to still be able to neutralize a typical infection.
A linear prognostic score based on the ratio of interleukin-6 to interleukin-10 predicts outcomes in COVID-19
Open AccessPublished:October 08, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2020.103026
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(20)30402-3/fulltext
Note that this is not some crazy whacko idea some random doctor had, IL6 / IL10 ratio has been used to gauge influenza severity (and other diseases) for quite a while.
Does anyone here know any more about this CRISPR-based COVID test developed in India? Uses regular PCR rather than qPCR, which would greatly expand available lab capacity, if nothing else.
New Delhi: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Thursday issued an advisory on the CRISPR SARS CoV-2 test that has been approved by the Drugs Controller General of India for COVID-19 detection.
the new test had 96% sensitivity and 98% specificity.
jsnell
1633
Slovakia plans to test everyone over 10 years old over this and next weekend to avoid a lockdown. Basically try to reset the clock by breaking all the transmission chains at once. Anyone who doesn’t get tested must self-isolate for 10 days, with huge fines for anyone caught in public without their negative test certificate.
(I’d take the voluntary self-isolation.)
This is a good policy approach in my opinion. Hawaii, Alaska should do it (but won’t), given the easier geography to work with. Other US states don’t have the political courage to do so, given how much more onerous border enforcement would be.
Huh, I wonder if it’s really any different from SHERLOCK? It’s kinda weird how similar-ish these tests are, up to and including the naming.
https://sherlock.bio/sherlock-biosciences-receives-fda-emergency-use-authorization-for-crispr-sars-cov-2-rapid-diagnostic/
A senior virologist said the idea of a test that could detect Covid-19 in minutes was initially floated by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard which has named its version SHERLOCK after the famous detective created by writer Arthur Conan Doyle. Just as detective Feluda’s sharp mind solved cases quickly, so too, the Feluda test is expected to provide a test result in a short time. “The test looks promising. We need to see how it will be on the field,” the virologist said.
People who developed SHERLOCK are in labs related to mine and have been talking about the assay since early march. It’s been under emergency authorization since July 9th.
I don’t know the two techs well enough to know how they are different, if at all.
Alstein
1636
not enough testing capacity in the US for this.
ALso the false negatives and lack of police willpower to enforce would mess this up.
Named after the first American to die of COVID, Crispr Attucks.
Meanwhile, since the entire country is turbo fucked, NY has done away with the “quarantine if coming from these states” list, and instead is starting a policy where everybody coming in from out of state quarantines for 3 days, at which time you’re expected to get a Covid test and prove you test negative. You can also just quarantine for 14 days of you don’t want to or can’t get tested.
Seems crazy, but I guess NY has sufficient excess testing capacity?
Alstein
1639
I think it’s more NY wanting to keep outsides out at this point. I’m surprised there haven’t been tit for tat retaliations. Such laws are hard to enforce, and I suspect they might not even be constitutional.
I think this is untrue.
Alaska ran 1000 tests per 100k residents per day in the last week, or 7k per 100k cumulatively over the week. If pooled testing was used, with 10 samples per pool as has been standard in China since April (and could be expanded to 20 samples per pool, apparently, in surge testing conditions), you would get weekly throughput up to 70% of the population in a week, or 100% in around 10 days.
- Institute a 7-14 day quarantine/lockdown
- Begin pooled testing on any household leaving quarantine after the minimum number of days. If there is a positive in a pool, they continue quarantine until testing negative (after other pools have been tested) or 14 days later
- Done
Of course, it requires real police powers to enforce quarantine - which every state has and some used in 1918. I believe the reason this isn’t done now is politics, where even liberal states have trouble with genuine quarantine/lock down.
https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html
States have police power functions to protect the health, safety, and welfare of persons within their borders. To control the spread of disease within their borders, states have laws to enforce the use of isolation and quarantine.
These laws can vary from state to state and can be specific or broad. In some states, local health authorities implement state law. In most states, breaking a quarantine order is a criminal misdemeanor.
…
Large-scale isolation and quarantine was last enforced during the influenza (“Spanish Flu”) pandemic in 1918–1919. In recent history, only a few public health events have prompted federal isolation or quarantine orders.
Alstein
1642
I do think there are limits to that power. This might overstep those bounds- on the grounds of interstate commerce, or maybe even be considered an internal tariff- which is specifically barred under the consitution- and if I was to challenge this law, I’d challenge it on that ground, especially if I can argue that NY doesn’t have such a low rate of cases compared to other areas to justify such measures.
It would then come down to what is considered reasonable I assume. I wouldn’t be making the argument that there is no power to do this, but that the right is limited by reasonability and that it is punitive.
Pooling only works if the rest of the system is functioning. It breaks down when you hit the kind of positivity rates we’re beginning to see in the US. You end up with so many pools with a positive that you’re either isolating almost everyone tested or individually rerunning every sample anyway.
For example, if you’re pooling 20 specimens, and the positivity rate is 5%*, odds of you having a positive in any particular batch are pretty darn high.
*apparently not an unreasonable assumption given dashboards I’ve just looked at
Fair points on the issues with pooling above certain levels of contagion in a community.
But, there are other options. Europe is going full-on for antigen testing as a way to mass test populations. Even if the entire world/developed world can’t test all at once in a given week, it is plausible to establish a mass testing campaign geographic zone by zone. Everyone starts as a red zone, as you go through your testing and quarantine regime you become a green zone, and stay closed to any other red zones. It works.
SD Biosensor, a South Korean company that supplied 13 million tests to Slovakia, is producing 170 million tests a month. The company has said that at least two other companies are producing similar volumes and that there is enough global manufacturing capability for other European countries to test their entire population at once.
Slovakia, with 5.5 million people, offers insights into where population testing helps, and its limits.
The country began by mass testing all adult residents of four badly hit districts in the north on Oct. 24 and 25. Those between 10 and 65 who didn’t get tested—or who tested positive—risked a €1,600 ($1,900) fine if they were caught outside their homes without a blue certificate attesting to their negative result.
Police and soldiers conducted random door-to-door inspections making sure residents who tested positive were at home. Most people complied, said Mr. Nad, the defense minister.
In countries that aren’t 40% asshole (I have a sneaking suspicion it’s higher by weight /s).
MikeJ
1646
So the positivity rate in Ontario right now is about 3%. However, that’s the rate when you are only testing people who feel sick and/or think they might be infected. The current number of active cases is a lot less than 3%, and I think that would be the number that matters if you set about testing everyone with pooled testing.
Good point.
Unfortunately, better point…
