Month: March 2020

As increasing numbers of European hospitals buckle under the strain of tens of thousands of coronavirus patients, the crisis has exposed a surprising paradox: Some of the world’s best health systems are remarkably ill-equipped to handle a pandemic.  
Outbreak experts say Europe’s hospital-centric systems, lack of epidemic experience and early complacency are partly to blame for the pandemic’s catastrophic tear across the continent.
 
“If you have cancer, you want to be in a European hospital,” said Brice de le Vingne, who heads COVID-19 operations for Doctors Without Borders in Belgium. “But Europe hasn’t had a major outbreak in more than 100 years, and now they don’t know what to do.”  
Last week, the World Health Organization scolded countries for “squandering” their chance to stop the virus from gaining a foothold, saying that countries should have reacted more aggressively two months ago, including implementing wider testing and stronger surveillance measures.
De le Vingne and others say Europe’s approach to combating the new coronavirus was initially too lax and severely lacking in epidemiological basics like contact tracing, an arduous process where health officials physically track down people who have come into contact with those infected to monitor how and where the virus is spreading.  
During outbreaks of Ebola, including Congo’s most recent one, officials released daily figures for how many contacts were followed, even in remote villages paralyzed by armed attacks.
After the new coronavirus emerged late last year, China dispatched a team of about 9,000 health workers to chase thousands of potential contacts in Wuhan every day.  
But in Italy, officials in some cases have left it up to ill patients to inform their potential contacts that they had tested positive and resorted to mere daily phone calls to check in on them. Spain and Britain have both declined to say how many health workers were working on contact tracing or how many contacts were identified at any stage in the outbreak. 
“We are really good at contact tracing in the U.K., but the problem is we didn’t do enough of it,” said Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious diseases physician at the University of Exeter in southwestern England.  
As cases began picking up speed in the U.K. in early March, Pankhania and others desperately pleaded for call centers to be transformed into contact tracing hubs. That never happened, in what Pankhania calls “a lost opportunity.”  
Pankhania added that while Britain has significant expertise in treating critical care patients with respiratory problems, like severe pneumonia, there are simply too few hospital beds to cope with the exponential surge of patients during a pandemic.
“We are already running at full capacity, and then on top of that we have the arrival of the coronavirus at a time when we’re fully stressed and there isn’t any give in the system,” he said, noting years of reductions in bed capacity within Britain’s National Health Service.  
Elsewhere, the fact that health care workers and hospital systems have little experience with rationing care because European hospitals are generally so well resourced is now proving problematic.  
“Part of the issue is that Italian doctors are getting very distressed to make decisions about which patients can get the ICU bed because normally they can just push them through,” said Robert Dingwall, of Nottingham Trent University, who has studied health systems across Europe. “Not having the triage experience to do that in a pandemic situation is very overwhelming.”
In a departure from their normal role as donors who fund outbreak responses in poorer countries, countries including Italy, France and Spain are all now on the receiving end of emergency aid.  
But Dr. Chiara Lepora, who heads Doctors Without Borders’ efforts in the hot spot of Lodi in northern Italy, said the pandemic had revealed some critical problems in developed countries.
“Outbreaks cannot be fought in hospitals,” she said. “Hospitals can only deal with the consequences.”
Doctors in Bergamo, the epicenter of Italy’s outbreak, described the new coronavirus as “the Ebola of the rich” in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, warning that health systems in the West are at risk of being as overrun by COVID-19 as West African hospitals were in the devastating 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak.  
“Western health systems have been built around the concept of patient-centered care, but an epidemic requires a change of perspective toward community-centered care,” they wrote.  
That model of community care is more typically seen in countries in Africa or parts of Asia, where hospitals are reserved for only the very sickest patients and far more patients are isolated or treated in stripped-down facilities — similar to the field hospitals now being hastily constructed across Europe.  
Even Europe’s typically strong networks of family physicians are insufficient to treat the deluge of patients that might be more easily addressed by armies of health workers — people with far less training than doctors but who focus on epidemic control measures. Developing countries are more likely to have such workforces, since they are more accustomed to massive health interventions like vaccination campaigns.  
Some outbreak experts said European countries badly miscalculated their ability to stop the new coronavirus.  
“But I think the fact that this is a new disease and the speed at which it moved surprised everyone,” said Dr. Stacey Mearns of the International Rescue Committee.  
Mearns said the current scenes of desperation across Europe — doctors and nurses begging for protective gear, temporary morgues in ice rinks to house the dead — were unimaginable just weeks ago. In Spain, 14% of its coronavirus cases are infected medical workers, straining resources at a critical time.
“We saw hospitals and communities get overwhelmed like this during Ebola in West Africa,” she said. “To see it in resource-wealthy nations is very striking.”
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President Donald Trump is poised to roll back ambitious Obama-era vehicle mileage standards and raise the ceiling on damaging fossil fuel emissions for years to come, gutting one of the United States’ biggest efforts against climate change.
The Trump administration is expected to release a final rule Tuesday on mileage standards through 2026. The change — making good on the rollback after two years of Trump threatening and fighting states and a faction of automakers that opposed the move — waters down a tough Obama mileage standard that would have encouraged automakers to ramp up production of electric vehicles and more fuel-efficient gas and diesel vehicles.  
“When finalized, the rule will benefit our economy, will improve the U.S. fleet’s fuel economy, will make vehicles more affordable, and will save lives by increasing the safety of new vehicles,” Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Corry Schiermeyer said Monday, ahead of the expected release.
Opponents contend the change — gutting his predecessor’s legacy effort against climate-changing fossil fuel emissions — appears driven by Trump’s push to undo regulatory initiatives of former President Barack Obama and say even the administration has had difficulty pointing to the kind of specific, demonstrable benefits to drivers, public health and safety or the economy that normally accompany standards changes.
The Trump administration says the looser mileage standards will allow consumers to keep buying the less fuel-efficient SUVs that U.S. drivers have favored for years. Opponents say it will kill several hundred more Americans a year through dirtier air, compared to the Obama standards.
Even “given the catastrophe they’re in with the coronavirus, they’re pursuing a policy that’s going to hurt public health and kill people,” said Chet France, a former 39-year veteran of the EPA, where he served as a senior official over emissions and mileage standards.
“This is first time that an administration has pursued a policy that will net negative benefit for society and reduce fuel savings,” France said.
Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the senior Democrat on the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, called it “the height of irresponsibility for this administration to finalize a rollback that will lead to dirtier air while our country is working around the clock to respond to a respiratory pandemic whose effects may be exacerbated by air pollution.  
“We should be enacting forward-looking environmental policy, not tying our country’s future to the dirty vehicles of the past,” Carper said.
In Phoenix, meanwhile, resident Columba Sainz expressed disappointment at the prospect of losing the Obama-era rule, which she had hoped would allow her preschool age children to break away from TV indoors and play outside more. Sainz reluctantly limited her daughter to a half-hour at the park daily, after the girl developed asthma, at age 3, at their home a few minutes from a freeway.
“I cried so many times,” Sainz said. “How do you tell your daughter she can’t be outside because of air pollution?”
Trump’s Cabinet heads have continued a push to roll back public health and environment regulations despite the coronavirus outbreak riveting the world’s attention. The administration — like others before it — is facing procedural rules that will make changes adopted before the last six months of Trump’s current term tougher to throw out, even if the White House changes occupants.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has been the main agency drawing up the new rules, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The standards have split the auto industry with Ford, BMW, Honda and Volkswagen siding with California and agreeing to higher standards. Most other automakers contend the Obama-era standards were enacted hastily and will be impossible to meet because consumers have shifted dramatically away from efficient cars to SUVs and trucks.
California and about a dozen other states say they will continue resisting the Trump mileage standards in court.
Last year, 72% of the new vehicles purchased by U.S. consumers were trucks or SUVS. It was 51% when the current standards went into effect in 2012.
The Obama administration mandated 5% annual increases in fuel economy. Leaked versions of the Trump administration’s latest proposal show a 1.5% annual increase, backing off from its initial proposal simply to stop mandating increases in fuel efficiency after 2020.
The transportation sector is the nation’s largest source of climate-changing emissions.
John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing automakers, said the industry still wants middle ground between the two standards, and it supports year-over-year mileage increases. But he says the Obama-era standards are outdated due to the drastic shift to trucks and SUVs.
The Trump administration standards are likely to cause havoc in the auto industry because, with legal challenges expected, automakers won’t know which standards they will have to obey.
“It will be extraordinarily disruptive,” said Richard J. Pierce Jr., a law professor at the George Washington University who specializes in government regulations.  
States and environmental groups will challenge the Trump rules, and a U.S. District Court likely will issue a temporary order shelving them until it decides whether they are legal. The temporary order likely will be challenged with the Supreme Court, which in recent cases has voted 5-4 that a District judge can’t issue such a nationwide order, Pierce said. But the nation’s highest court could also keep the order in effect if it determines the groups challenging the Trump standards are likely to win.
“We’re talking quite a long time, one to three years anyway, before we can expect to get a final decision on the merits,” Pierce said. 
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German scientists say they have identified a strain of bacteria that is feeding on polyurethanes, a plastic resistant to biodegradation. A team of researchers at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, has found that a strain of soil bacterium, identified as Pseudomonas putida, can produce enzymes to digest polyurethanes thus making it biodegradable.  The German team says the bacterium found in the soil surrounding a heap of plastic waste was feeding on polyurethane diol, which is used in plastic as a component that protects products from corrosion. Hermann Heipieper, one of the researchers and author of the study published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, said “this finding represents an important step in being able to reuse hard-to-recycle (polyurethane) products.”A worker sorts through recycling bins at a center that offers residents money in exchange of their recyclable garbage in an attempt to keep the streets clean in Cairo, Egypt, March 11, 2017.The study offers hope of ridding the planet of the growing quantities of discarded plastic products that threaten human and animal life. But some scientists are skeptical.  In earlier experiments, biodegradation of some plastic components was achieved with fungi. Yale University students in 2011 discovered a fungus that can digest and break down polyurethane plastic even in a place without air – like the bottom of a landfill. Since then scientists around the world have identified other fungal species that can breakdown polyurethane. In 2017, a team of scientists identified another fungus that can feed on plastic by breaking down chemicals that hold it together.  These studies also raised concerns about the ability of micro-organisms to invade and corrupt a dead and therefore sterile substance like plastic. Research on coral reefs has shown that floating plastics carry disease-causing microbes that infect the coral.  The Leipzig study says bacteria are much easier to control and produce for industrial use. Its authors say the next step is to identify the gene code of the enzymes produced by the bacteria to digest polyurethane. Some scientists are arguing against introducing man-made enzymes or potentially dangerous micro-organisms into the natural environment.  Two years ago, scientist Douglas Rader wrote in an op-ed for the Environmental Defense Fund that “There is so much more we need to understand about the complex relationships between plastics and marine ecosystems before we can take drastic action such as spraying the ocean with so-called plastic-eating bacteria.”Workers load collected plastic bottles on to a truck at a junk shop in Manila, March 10, 2015. The Philippines placed third among the list of countries with the most ocean plastic pollution per year.Despite new findings, science is nowhere near solving the growing plastic pollution problem. Humankind has manufactured and discarded so much plastic over the years that the world is getting short of places to dump the enormous quantities accumulated every day. Refusal by many developing countries to accept plastic waste from rich nations has exacerbated the problem.  Some countries are cutting down on the use of plastic bags, drinking straws, plastic bottles and utensils. Scientists keep coming up with new biodegradable products to replace plastic, such as wrapping materials made from algae, straws made of paper and disposable utensils made of bamboo, but the movement could be described as “too little too late.” Recycling the plastics to make building materials, fabrics, and other new plastic products cannot even make a dent in the growing amounts of plastic waste.   Plastic remains the most practical packaging material and is indispensable in medical, pharmaceutical, sanitary and many other industries. Some new biodegradable, but equally useful material, has yet to be developed. Meanwhile scientists estimate that about 8 million pieces of plastic enter the oceans every day. For some of them it will take hundreds of years to properly degrade if they are not first swallowed by fish and other marine creatures that will die from it. 
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A group of cancer patients in Kyrgyzstan is working to meet the demand for protective surgical masks while earning funds to help pay for their treatments.The group is organized by an association known as “Together for Life,” established in July 2019. Originally, the group made handbags and purses as a kind of therapy, as well as financial aid for women overcoming cancer.But once the demand for masks increased, the president of the group, Aigul Kydyrmysheva, told The Associated Press that they received permission from the Ministry of Health to switch to making the protective gear.Kydyrmysheva said they market their products through social media and that while bigger factories can produce masks faster, many customers have turned to them, understanding that their profits go to a good cause.  The group works nearly round-the-clock, making as many as 1,000 masks a day, which earns them about $2,500 a month. In turn, they have been able to allocate about $770 a month to offset cancer treatment drugs. 
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Elmo, Rooster and Cookie Monster are doing their part to help keep kids safe as the coronavirus pandemic grinds on.
The beloved Sesame Street Muppets are featured in some of four new animated public service spots reminding young fans to take care while doing such things as washing hands and sneezing.  
One of Elmo’s signature songs, the toothbrush classic “Brushy Brush,” has been updated to  “Washy Wash.”Rooster pops up in another of the 30-second spots  to remind kids to “wash hands now” before eating, playing sports or using the bathroom.
The new content on SesameStreet.org/caring builds on last week’s launch of Sesame Workshop’s Caring for Each Other initiative to help families stay physically and mentally healthy during the health crisis. The overall project ranges from messages of comfort to learning activities in reading, math and science.  
The new spots will be distributed globally in 19 languages through partners that include HBO, PBS Kids, YouTube and the Ad Council.
“As families around the world adjust to their new realities, parents and caregivers are looking for help in creating new routines, staying healthy and fostering learning at home while little ones are out of school,” Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president of curriculum and content at Sesame Workshop, said in a statement.
The workshop will continue to roll out new resources for parents and caregivers on creating new routines, fostering playful learning at home and managing anxiety. Families can also watch Sesame Street episodes on HBO, PBS stations and the PBS KIDS 24/7 live stream. Free on-demand episodes of “Sesame Street” are offered on PBS KIDS digital platforms, along with more than 110 free “Sesame Street” e-books on all major e-book platforms.
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Museums across the U.S. have closed to the public, to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.But that hasn’t stopped the guardians of some of the greatest art collections in the country from sharing their national treasures with people around the world. Washington’s revered Smithsonian museums are among the institutions that are temporarily closed to the public. But all 19 museums, and the National Zoo, are inviting the public to visit them online, for a compelling collection of digital offerings. Lin-Manuel Miranda/Mark Seliger/2016 (printed 2018), Archival pigment print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution“A great place to start is to go to our Anna Wintour, New York City, 2015/Annie Leibovitz/2015 (printed 2019), Archival pigment print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian InstitutionThe museum plans to launch more digital storytime sessions, art-making workshops, and more, in the coming weeks. “I think when we talk about social distancing, I’d like to think of social connecting — just because we can’t be in proximity to each other doesn’t mean that we can’t be actually communicating with each other.”
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A Democratic Party leader in western Missouri died Sunday after contracting COVID-19 as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the state exceeded 900 and the death toll reached 12.
The death of William “Al” Grimes, the Henry County Democratic Party chairman, was announced in a tweet from state Chairwoman Jean Peters Baker. It came after the Henry County Health Center in Clinton, about 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) southeast of Kansas City, announced that a man in his 70s had died.
“We will miss you, Al,” Peters wrote. “The stars will not shine as brightly.”
Peters said that Grimes, a Navy veteran, had been active in campaigns throughout eastern and central Missouri. He also ran for the Missouri House in 2014 and 2016.
Grimes was first hospitalized in Clinton before being transferred on March 8 to a Kansas hospital, The Kansas City Star reported.  His positive test for coronavirus was reported March 13, but he was among the state’s first confirmed cases.
His death was among two new deaths reported Sunday by the state Department of Health and Senior Services. There were no details about the other new death.
The number of coronavirus cases confirmed in Missouri rose by 65 from Saturday to 903, according to the department, but the increase of 8% was considerably lower than the 25% increase Saturday and the average daily increase of 45% over the past week.
For most people, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
Meanwhile, a third St. Louis-area police officer tested positive for the coronavirus and was in isolation.
The St. Louis County Police Department said Saturday that one of its officers had contracted the virus, but the agency does not believe it happened while the officer was on duty. The department provided no other details.
The St. Louis County police said affected work areas and vehicles have been thoroughly cleaned and they don’t know of any other cases associated with the officers.
Two officers in the St. Louis city police force’s traffic division also have tested positive for the virus.
Also, Jim Edmonds, a broadcaster for baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals said he underwent tests at an area hospital for coronavirus after going to the emergency room. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the 49-year-old former outfielder said he has pneumonia and was awaiting the results of other tests. 
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More deadly than influenza, COVID-19 is a coronavirus – part of a large family of viruses that include the common cold as well as more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Coronaviruses look like a ball surrounded by a crown.Here’s an animated look at how the coronavirus gets into lung cells — and how it might be stopped.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday he had tested positive for coronavirus and was in self-isolation at his Downing Street office.
 
Here is reaction to the news.
   Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of UK’s Opposition Labor Party 
 
“I wish the Prime Minister a speedy recovery and hope his family are safe and healthy. Coronavirus can and does affect anyone. Everyone be safe. Our own health depends on everybody else.”   
 Indain Prime Minister Narendra Modi 
 
“You’re a fighter and you will overcome this challenge as well. Prayers for your good health and best wishes in ensuring a healthy UK.”
 Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster 
 
“Best wishes to the Prime Minister and Carrie (Symonds, Johnson’s fiancee). No one is immune. Let’s all follow the guidelines.”
 Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon 
 
“I send my very best wishes to Boris Johnson and his family. I don’t underestimate for anybody how difficult it is to be positive for this virus so I certainly send my best wishes to him for a very speedy recovery.”
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COVID-19 has forced people all over the world to stay at home on strict quarantine, but some folks manage to find a way to stay positive. While Italians sing from their balconies, and the French applaud their doctors, neighbors in Bethesda, Maryland, are dancing and singing together — while keeping their distance.  Ann Johnson, a retired artist, and Michael Fetchko, a biologist, are doing their best to lift spirits at their apartment complex. They organize daily “drive the virus away“ performances to distract people from everyday worries, if only for a little while.  “We are trying to raise people’s spirits, that’s what we’re doing,” says Johnson. “It started with my neighbor in the other building. She called me and she said, ‘Come out to the balcony. We’ll wave because we hadn’t seen each other for a while.’ We did that a few times and we thought maybe other people would like to do it, so we passed the word.”   An apartment resident cheers her neighbors on as they sing and dance to lift the community’s spirits while in isolation, Bethesda, Maryland.Johnson is joined by Fetchko, her neighbor.“Part of it is just to make sure that everyone has some outlet each day where they get to see their neighbors,” he says. “You feel very isolated when you are inside. You are doing the right thing, but you want to remind yourself that you are not alone in this. So it’s just a matter of getting people to know that everyone is in this together.” Otherwise, the neighborly singers spend the rest of their day like most Americans — staying at home following the guidelines of local and state authorities.  “My husband and I are trying to keep a schedule,” Fetchko says. “We have a dog, so she keeps us up and out when she needs to go. So that helps.”Johnson says she looks forward to her daily musical time-out from self-isolation. “It’s so nice to be with my buddies, too, even if it’s at a distance,” she says. “It lifts me for the whole rest of the day.” The song-and-dance enthusiasts intend to continue their performances, doing their best to help cheer up their friends and neighbors. Because, in a time like this, they believe even 15 minutes of dancing can make a difference.  
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As the coronavirus continues to disrupt people’s lives in ways both big and small, many are seeking greater spiritual nourishment. Religious institutions across the country are heeding that call by connecting with their congregations in a number of creative ways. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Some political leaders are hailing a potential breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19: simple pin-prick blood tests or nasal swabs that can determine within minutes if someone has, or previously had, the virus.
The tests could reveal the true extent of the outbreak and help separate the healthy from the sick. But some scientists have challenged their accuracy.
Hopes are hanging on two types of quick tests: antigen tests that use a nose or throat swab to look for the virus, and antibody tests that look in the blood for evidence someone had the virus and recovered. The tests are in short supply, and some of them are unreliable.
“The market has gone completely mad,” Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa said Thursday, lamenting the l ack of face masks, personal protection equipment and rapid tests, “because everybody wants these products, and they want the good ones.”
The Spanish government on Thursday sent 9,000 rapid antigen tests that were deemed unreliable back to a manufacturer that, according to the Chinese government, had no license to sell them.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week called the rapid tests a “game changer” and said his government had ordered 3.5 million of them.
The U.K. hopes the tests will allow people who have had COVID-19 and recovered to go back to work, safe in the knowledge that they are immune, at least for now. That could ease the country’s economic lockdown and bring back health care workers who are being quarantined out of fears they may have the virus.
Many scientists have been cautious, saying it’s unclear if the rapid tests provide accurate results.
In the past few months, much of the testing has involved doctors sticking something akin to a long cotton swab deep into a patient’s nose or throat to retrieve cells that contain live virus. Lab scientists pull genetic material from the virus and make billions of copies to get enough for computers to detect the bug. Results sometimes take several days.
Rapid antigen tests have shorter swabs that patients can use themselves to gather specimens. They are akin to rapid flu tests, which can produce results in less than 15 minutes. They focus on antigens — parts of the surface of viruses that trigger an infected person’s body to start producing antibodies.
Health authorities in China, the United States and other countries have offered few details on the rates of false positive and false negative results on any coronavirus tests. Experts worry that the rapid tests may be significantly less reliable than the more time-consuming method.
Lower accuracy has been a concern with rapid flu tests. Spanish scientists said the rapid tests for coronavirus they reviewed were less than 30% accurate. The more established lab tests were about 84% accurate.
Those results “would prevent its routine introduction,” according to a report by the Spanish Society of Infectious Disease and Clinical Microbiology that triggered the alarms in Spain and spurred the government’s rejection of the 9,000 antigen tests.
Similar questions swirl around new antibody tests involving blood samples. Some versions have been described as finger-prick tests that can provide important information in minutes.
Antibody tests are most valuable as a way of seeing who has been infected in the recent past, who became immune to the disease and — if done on a wide scale — how widely an infection has spread in a community.
The antibody tests also will allow scientists to get a better understanding of how deadly coronavirus is to all people, because they will provide a better understanding of how many people were ever infected, ranging from those who never showed symptoms to those who became fatally ill. The results will also guide vaccine development.
But so much is unknown, including how long antibodies — and immunity — lasts, and who the blood tests should be used on.
“We don’t have all the answers,” said Dr. Robin Patel, president of the American Society for Microbiology.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. Most people recover.
More than 15 companies have notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that they have developed antibody tests, the agency said. The companies are permitted to begin distributing the tests to hospitals and doctors’ offices, provided they carry certain disclaimer statements, including: “This test has not been reviewed by the FDA.”
In Spain, the government sought the rapid tests for use first in hospitals and nursing homes, where efforts to halt the spread of the virus have been hampered by widespread infections among health workers.
Hopes about the transformative power of the tests have been raised, then partially dashed, in the U.K. Sharon Peacock, director of the national infection service at Public Health England, told lawmakers this week that the tests would be available in the “near future” for purchase through Amazon for use at home or to have completed in a pharmacy.
“We need to evaluate them in the laboratory to be clear, because these are brand-new products,” she said, explaining that the evaluation should be completed this week. She said “further millions” were being ordered on top of the 3.5 million the government had already bought.
But England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, urged caution.
“I do not think, and I want to make this clear, that this is something you will suddenly be ordering on the internet next week,” Whitty told a news conference Wednesday. “The one thing worse than no test is a bad test.
“If they are incredibly accurate, we will work out the quickest way to release them. If they are not accurate, we will not release any of them,” he said.
The prime minister’s spokesman was unable to say Thursday how much the U.K. had paid for the tests, which come from several suppliers, or whether the money would be refunded if they turned out to be unreliable.
The chief scientist at the World Health Organization said wider testing would allow health officials to pinpoint infections in people who appear healthy but may be carrying the virus.
“We know that if you really go out and test everyone in the community, you’re going to find people walking around with this virus in their nose who do not feel at all ill,” Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said in an interview.
WHO believes most transmissions of the virus occur through people who already show symptoms, but “the question is still open” about how asymptomatic people may spread infection, Swaminathan
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Three members of the U.S. Congress have tested positive for the new coronavirus, and more than two dozen others have said they are self-quarantining in hopes of limiting the spread of the pandemic.
 
House of Representatives leaders aim on Friday to pass the $2.2 trillion relief bill passed by the Senate on a voice vote late on Wednesday, which would spare most of the chamber’s 430 current members from having to travel back to Washington.
 
Here is a look at some of the lawmakers affected:
 Who Has the Virus?
 Senator Rand Paul
 
The Kentucky Republican said on March 22 that he had tested positive and was in quarantine. He said he was asymptomatic and feeling fine and was tested out of an abundance of caution. He had been in the Senate and using the gym there in the days before he received his positive result.
 Representative Mario Diaz-Balart
 
The Florida Republican said on March 18 that he tested positive after developing symptoms on March 14. That was less than 24 hours after he and more than 400 other members of the House of Representatives crowded into the chamber to pass a sweeping coronavirus aid package.
  Representative Ben McAdams
 
The Utah Democrat said on March 18 that he had the virus, also having developed symptoms on March 14. In a statement on Tuesday, the 45-year-old said he was hospitalized and doctors were monitoring his occasional need for oxygen.
  WHO is Self-Quarantined?
 
Republican Senators Mitt Romney and Mike Lee said on Sunday they would self-quarantine after having spent time with Paul.
 
Romney said on Tuesday that he had tested negative for the virus but would stay in quarantine. His wife, Ann, has multiple sclerosis.
 
At least four other senators previously self-quarantined. They are Republicans Cory Gardner, Lindsey Graham, Rick Scott and Ted Cruz. All have since returned to public life.
 
On Wednesday, Republican Senator John Thune returned to his home in South Dakota on a chartered airplane after waking up feeling ill. Thune’s office said doctors encouraged him to continue “self-monitoring” but that self-quarantine was not necessary.
 
Democratic Senator and former presidential contender Amy Klobuchar said on Monday her husband, 52-year-old John Bessler, had the virus and was in the hospital, but she was not at risk because she had not seen him for two weeks. That is longer than the quarantine period.
 
More than two dozen House members have self-quarantined, some after exposure to Diaz-Balart or McAdams, and others after contacts with their constituents or staffers who later tested positive. Not all are still in isolation.
 
Three prominent Democratic House members on Wednesday said they were self-quarantining after experiencing symptoms: Seth Moulton and Ayanna Pressley and Katie Porter.
 
Pressley and Porter said they were awaiting test results, while Moulton said he did not take a test because he did not qualify for one.
 
Other members who have self-quarantined include: Republicans Steve Scalise, Mark Meadows, Tom Cole, Doug Collins, Drew Ferguson, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Ann Wagner, along with Democrats Don Beyer, Anthony Brindisi, Julia Brownley, Jason Crow, Joe Cunningham, Sharice Davids, Kendra Horn, Andy Kim, Gwen Moore, Stephanie Murphy, Ben Ray Lujan, David Price, Kathleen Rice, David Schweikert and John Yarmuth.
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Rubber glove makers in Malaysia, the world’s top supplier of medical gloves, are warning of a global shortage owing to the government’s partial lockdown of the country, just as coronavirus-driven demand is soaring worldwide.Malaysia meets more than half of global demand for the gloves.The country, however, has the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia, at 1,796.  It issued a “movement control order” March 18 and extended it Wednesday through April 14 in hopes of slowing its infection rate. International and domestic travel is restricted, and nonessential businesses have been ordered closed.The Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association said March 25 that with the lockdown’s orders that factories operate with no more than half their usual workforce, even with extra overtime, “there could be a chronic shortage of medical gloves in the battle to contain and suppress the COVID-19 coronavirus worldwide.”Association president Denis Low said the factory owners were lobbying the International Trade and Industry Ministry to let them return to full capacity and would meet with ministry officials March 26.”We have to operate fully simply because we need to take care of Malaysia, firstly, and we need to take care of the world. We are the largest producer and we feel it is … our duty to save humanity, and we are going to do that,” he told VOA.Low said the association’s roughly 200 factories churned out 187 billion gloves last year and were expecting the coronavirus outbreak to swell demand by 20% or more. While some factories were compensating for the staffing cuts by speeding up the production process, he estimated that typical daily production numbers were still down 20% to 30%.He disputed a claim that some factories were breaking the government’s order to cut staff by 50%.Andy Hall, a labor rights activist with extensive experience in Malaysia, told VOA that he had spoken with workers at some of the country’s glove factories March 25 who said that most of their colleagues were back on the job already.”I wouldn’t know about that,” Low said of the claim.”We have to abide by the government instructions. If they say it’s 50% less [staff], then we will have 50% less staff working. In fact, I believe a lot of our members are practicing that now for the moment,” he said.Soldiers in face masks maintain a checkpoint in Putrajaya, Malaysia, March 22, 2020. Malaysian government issued a movement order to the public starting from March 18 until March 31 to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.Matthew Griffith, an epidemiologist for the World Health Organization’s regional office in Manila, said a rubber glove shortage would add to the challenges health care workers face in sourcing supplies to fight the coronavirus.”It’s just one more difficulty for all of us. We’ve had difficulties getting masks, we’ve had difficulties getting reagents and extraction kits for laboratory testing, and so now we’re going to have more difficulty getting gloves,” he said.”We do need these things. We do need to protect our health care workers. So you can imagine if health care workers run out of gloves and run out of masks and goggles, pretty soon they get sick. And then if they’re sick, they’re out of the hospitals, they’re out of the health care facilities, and we have a pretty dire situation on our hands.”The U.S., at least, is boosting its own rubber glove supplies by lifting an import ban on one of Malaysia’s main producers, WRP Asia Pacific.The U.S. government banned the company’s imports in October over concerns that its factory was using forced labor. It said Tuesday it had lifted the so-called withhold release order the day before “based on recent information … showing the company is no longer producing the rubber gloves under forced labor conditions.”WRP exported $80 million worth of rubber gloves to the U.S. in 2018 and was the first Southeast Asian company to be hit with a withhold release order by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.Reports of human trafficking and labor abuse among Malaysia’s many migrant workers, who make up the bulk of the local rubber glove industry’s workforce, have been rife for years.Hall said conditions have gradually improved but added that debt bondage linked to exorbitant recruitment fees reaching thousands of dollars remains common at WRP and elsewhere. He disputed the U.S. claim that the company is free of forced labor because many of its employees still owe large sums to the recruitment agencies that landed them the jobs.He said he nonetheless supported the U.S. decision to lift the ban because WRP had promised to use future sales to reimburse its workers for past recruitment fees. However, he said the timing of the decision was “surely a political and practical decision” to help shore up U.S. rubber glove supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak and expressed worry that Malaysia’s many buyers in the West and elsewhere may start to ease the labor rights controls in their supply chains to meet growing demands.”In a crisis, migrants are often left behind, and people cite the emergency first, protection and social compliance later,” he said.Neither Malaysia’s International Trade and Industry Ministry nor U.S. Customs and Border Protection replied to requests for comment. 
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Neil Diamond posts a fireside rendition of “Sweet Caroline” with its familiar lyrics tweaked to say, “Hands … washing hands.” A news anchor asks when social distancing will end because “my husband keeps trying to get into the house.” And a sign outside a neighborhood church reads: “Had not planned on giving up quite this much for Lent.”
Are we allowed to chuckle yet? We’d better, psychologists and humorists say. Laughter can be the best medicine, they argue, so long as it’s within the bounds of good taste. And in a crisis, it can be a powerful coping mechanism.
“It’s more than just medicine. It’s survival,” said Erica Rhodes, a Los Angeles comedian.
“Even during the Holocaust, people told jokes,” Rhodes said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “Laughter is a symbol of hope, and it becomes one of our greatest needs of life, right up there with toilet paper. It’s a physical need people have. You can’t underestimate how it heals people and gives them hope.”
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
Those are scary words and scary prospects. But history has shown that its heaviest moments are often leavened by using humor and laughter as conscious choices — ways to cope when other things aren’t working as expected.  
“There’s so much fear and horror out there. All the hand washing in the world isn’t going to clear up your head,” said Loretta LaRoche, a suburban Boston stress management consultant who’s using humor to help people defuse the anxiety the pandemic has wrought.
“Some people will say this is not a time for laughter. The bottom line is, there is always a time for laughter,” LaRoche said. “We have 60,000 thoughts a day and many of them are very disturbing. Laughter helps the brain relax.”
That explains why social media feeds are peppered with coronavirus-themed memes, cartoons and amusing personal anecdotes.
Here’s Diamond posting a video of himself singing “Sweet Caroline” with the lyrics altered to say: “Hands … washing hands … don’t touch me … I won’t touch you.”
There’s Fox News anchor Julie Banderas tweeting: “How long is this social distancing supposed to last? My husband keeps trying to get into the house.”
And over here, see novelist Curtis Sittenfeld, sharing a photo of herself eating lunch in her wedding dress after her kids asked her to wear it “and I couldn’t think of a reason not to.”
For centuries, laughter in tough times has been cathartic, said Wayne Maxwell, a Canadian psychologist who has done extensive research on “gallows humor.” The term originated in medieval Britain, where hangings took place in parks near pubs and patrons told jokes at the victims’ expense.
“Even in some of the writings of ancient Egypt, there are descriptions of military personnel returning from the front lines and using humor to cope,” said Maxwell, of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
But, he warns, there exists a kind of comedy continuum: While humor can helpfully lighten things up, too much laughter and flippancy can signal a person is trying to escape from reality.
There are also questions of taste. No one wants to poke fun at medical misery or death. Quarantining and social distancing, though, are fair game, and self-deprecating humor is almost always safe — though LaRoche cautions that humor, like beauty, is always in the eye of the beholder.
“It all depends on how your brain functions,” she said. “Give yourself permission to find humor. It’s almost like a spiritual practice, finding ways to laugh at yourself.”
For those millions of parents struggling to work from home and teach their housebound children, she’s preaching to the choir. Witness this widely shared meme: a photo of an elderly, white-haired woman with the caption: “Here’s Sue. 31 years old, home schooling her kids for the last 5 days. Great job Sue. Keep it up.”
Michael Knight, a 29-year-old musician and a caseworker for people with mental disabilities, has been breaking the tension by posting memes like: “They said a mask and gloves were enough to go to the grocery store. They lied. Everyone else had clothes on.”
“It helps me decompress,” said Knight, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. “It kind of offsets the paralyzing effects of the bogeyman that is the pandemic.”
Rhodes, who’s out more than $30,000 after three festivals and her first taped special were canceled, is trying to see the humor in her own predicament.
She recently posted iPhone video of herself pretending to work a nonexistent crowd  on an outdoor stage she happened upon during a walk. “How’s everyone not doing?” she cracks.
“The best material comes from a place that’s very truthful and somewhat dark,” Rhodes said.
Her prediction: When life eventually edges back to normal, “Saturday Night Live” and the latest Netflix standup specials will be powered by quarantine humor.
“Just a month ago, who would have appreciated being given a roll of toilet paper?” she said. “I mean, the whole world is upside down.”
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With the global COVID-19 death toll surging past 20,000 people this week, accelerated efforts to develop coronavirus treatments are primarily focused on adapting existing drugs intended to fight other diseases. “The shortest path to a treatment, we think, is to repurpose something that already exists based on our knowledge of the mechanisms of action,” said Dr. Hana Akselrod, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.   This new strain of coronavirus causes the disease, COVID-19, a respiratory illness that can be fatal for an estimated 2% of the population, especially older people and those with underlying medical conditions, such as diabetes and high blood pressure. COVID-19 virus is related to other deadly viruses that have caused relatively recent widespread outbreaks: SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
Researchers work with coronavirus samples as a trial begins to see whether malaria treatment hydroxychloroquine can prevent or reduce the severity of the coronavirus, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, March 19, 2020.Neutralize virus  Older malaria drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, are being studied in a number of countries to possibly prevent coronavirus infection or kill off the virus in early stages of infection. This is a drug combination that President Donald Trump called a “game changer” – but scientists caution more study is needed to verify results.   How does chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine work? “The going theory is that this drug interferes with the virus’s ability to enter the host cell, and makes the cell less hospitable to the virus. And if the virus is not infecting the cell, it would not be as effective at reproducing and creating more copies of itself, and so on and so forth,” said Dr. Akselrod. This malaria drug cocktail has been tried in small group studies in France and China with mixed results. Larger studies are now underway.    Even if chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine prove effective against coronavirus, there are serious possible side effects to consider, including possible heart arrhythmias or irregular beats of the heart, and it can be toxic if taken at too high a dosage. “We also know that there are already cases where people thought they could keep safe from COVID-19 by taking this drug and tragically end up poisoning themselves,” said Akselrod. Another drug called remdesivir that proved ineffective to treat patients infected with the deadly Ebola virus, has shown promise in treating COVID-19 patients. Like the malaria drug, remdesivir also inhibits the coronavirus from entering the host cell and reproducing. Large scale trials are underway for this drug as well. A laboratory technician prepares COVID-19 patient samples for semi-automatic testing at Northwell Health Labs, March 11, 2020, in Lake Success, N.Y.Alleviating symptoms The COVID-19 virus attaches to the lungs, causing in many cases severe inflammation, congestion, breathing problems, pneumonia and respiratory failure.   A rheumatoid arthritis medication called Kevzara is among the drugs being tested to treat COVID-19 symptoms. This drug targets a part of the body’s own immune system. How does Kevzara work? “It interferes with an important part of the inflammatory cascade, which is part of the body’s defense mechanism in response to an overwhelming infection. The theory with these drugs is that by blocking the cascade, and this is after infection has already occurred and already developed, perhaps the severity of the effect of the virus and the severity of the symptom can be reduced by blocking this part of the immune response,” said Akselrod. While Kevzara and other anti-inflammatory drugs could help relieve congestion and respiratory problems caused by the coronavirus, there are concerns they could also interfere with the immune system’s ability to fight the infection.  The malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine also have anti-inflammatory properties that could help relieve coronavirus-related congestion. View of a lab in the vaccine innovation department at Pasteur Institute in Paris, Feb. 6, 2020.Boosting immunity  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week approved convalescent plasma therapies to treat seriously ill coronavirus patients. This involves extracting antibodies from the blood plasma of coronavirus patients that have fully recovered, or convalesced, and injecting them into ill patients. “What we’re doing is this low tech, old style solution of taking it from (recovered) people, just like people did before antibiotics were invented,” said Dr. Shmuel Shoham, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who is part of the team that has tested convalescent plasma on different types of influenza.  Using convalescent plasma on seriously ill patients may be worth trying, Dr. Shoham says, but past tests during later stages of infection have not proven effective. Instead, he says, it “makes more sense scientifically” to use this process for prevention and for early treatment. A recent coronavirus treatment failure was a drug treatment for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that proved ineffective in a recent trial. Nearly 70 existing drugs have been identified that could prevent or treat COVID-19, according to the biological science web site bioRxiv. Infectious disease experts are reluctant to speculate on how long it will take for coronavirus treatments to complete the testing and approval process, and for pharmaceutical companies to scale up production to meet the worldwide need, but they say at the very least it will take months.
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The State Department has advised against all international travel because of the coronavirus, but that didn’t stop Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from flying to Afghanistan this week.
Gyms across the nation’s capital are shuttered, but Sen. Rand Paul, an eye doctor, still managed a workout at the Senate on Sunday morning as he awaited the results of a coronavirus test. It came back positive.
The guidance against shaking hands? That hasn’t always applied to President Donald Trump, whose penchant for pressing the flesh continued even after public health officials in his administration were warning that such bodily contact could facilitate the spread of the contagious virus. Practice social distancing? Daily White House briefings involve Trump and other senior officials crowded around a podium.
Even as the country has largely hunkered down, heeding the guidance of health experts and the directives of state leaders, some powerful people in Washington have defied preventative measures aimed at curbing the spread. Their business-as-usual actions are at odds with the restrictions everyday Americans find themselves under — and with the government’s own messaging.  
Some human behavior experts say the “do as I say, not as I do”‘ ethos seemingly on display is common among powerful officials, who may be inclined to think rules for the general public don’t apply to them in the same way or who can easily disassociate their own actions from what they say is best for others.
“When we have high power, we think of ourselves as exceptional as if the rules don’t apply to us,” said Maurice Schweitzer, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who has researched behavior and decision-making. “We’re much more prone to do what we want because we don’t feel constrained in the way that less powerful people do.”
In Pompeo’s case, the State Department says the unannounced trip — coming amid a near-global travel shutdown — was necessary and urgent because of political turmoil in Afghanistan that U.S. officials fear could threaten a recent U.S.-Taliban peace deal that calls for American troop withdrawals. Pompeo left Kabul on Monday without being able to secure a power-sharing deal.
People traveling with Pompeo had their temperatures taken and were given small plastic bags containing a face mask, hand sanitizer, bleach wipes and mini-disposable thermometers. A State Department medical official told reporters that Pompeo and his staff would not be quarantining themselves because Afghanistan is not considered a high-risk country for the virus and because Pompeo’s movements on the trip were controlled.
But some of the behavior by other officials has drawn rebukes.  
Asked in a Science Magazine interview about Trump shaking hands, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he tells White House staff that “we should not be doing that. Not only that — we should be physically separating a bit more on those press conferences.”
Several senators, meanwhile, scolded Paul for refusing to self-quarantine after he’d been tested, with the doctor overseeing the government’s coronavirus response suggesting the Kentucky Republican’s actions fell short of model “personal responsibility.” More than two dozen senators are in their 70s and 80s, putting them at high risk if exposed.
Still, despite risk to senators and the fact that gyms across the country have been closed as a precaution, Paul and other senators were able to continue going to the Senate gym, using a keypad for access.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said in an interview with Newsy that Paul’s actions were “irresponsible” and that senators in general have been acting as if they were somehow immune to getting sick. He cited what he said was a “photo opp” for senators held over the weekend.
“I think that senators must think that they’re invincible,” Brown said.  
Paul, a proud civil libertarian, said he had thought it “highly unlikely” he was sick before getting the test results and had no symptoms of the illness. He said he did not have contact with anyone who tested positive for the virus or was sick. He was at the Senate gym Sunday morning, though Paul’s staff says he left the Capitol as soon as he received the results.  
Asked about Paul, Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, said people can spread the virus while being asymptomatic, so social distancing is imperative. She noted that she herself stayed home over the weekend when she felt ill. She took a coronavirus test that came back negative.
“These are the kinds of things that we have to do for one another. This is the personal responsibility that I’m talking about that we all have to practice,” Birx said.
Trump raised eyebrows among public health specialists when he methodically shook the hands of retail and health industry specialists at a Rose Garden news conference two weeks ago. He acknowledged Monday that shaking hands has been a hard habit for him to break, having become accustomed as president to doing so with “literally thousands of people a week.”  
Even now, he stands close to other officials at daily White House briefings, including Vice President Mike Pence. By contrast, Defense Secretary Mark Esper began separating from his deputy this month as a precaution.
Itzhak Yanovitzky, a Rutgers University communications professor, said senior officials or people in positions of power frequently separate their public behavior from their private, especially if they think they have greater control over their circumstances compared to strangers. Doctors, for instance, may not always follow their own recommendations to their patients if they think they have better control over their illnesses.
In times of crisis, most people look to health experts as the ultimate authority, Yanovitzky said in an email. But for the segment of the population already disinclined to take the risk seriously, inconsistencies between what people say and do risk undermining the recommendations and mandates of the public health community, he said.
“The problem,” said Schweitzer, the Wharton professor, “is that the mixed messages sow confusion, and it seems disorganized, undisciplined, chaotic.”
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Hand sanitizer is one of the products Americans have been stockpiling during the coronavirus outbreak and that’s left many store shelves empty of the product.  That shortage is prompting companies like a small distillery in Falls Church, Virginia, to find creative ways to help.Instead of producing whiskey, gin or vodka, Falls Church Distillers is busy making high-alcohol-content hand sanitizers. “We’ve pivoted into making sanitization,” says Michael Paluzzi, founder of Falls Church Distillers. “It’s the same type of process we’re using the same whiskeys, our base spirits, that we would use to make a lot of our other products.” Falls Church Distillers outside of Washington, D.C., is producing high-alcohol-content hand sanitizer to help keep up with high demand.But production depends on access to raw materials.  “We’re producing about 300 gallons of sanitizer right now,” Paluzzi says. “We could easily do that every day if we could get the supplies. We can only get supplies every couple of [days, every] three days, because there’s not many truckers on the road.” Distillery workers say they’re happy to shift their business model because it helps the local community while also keeping them employed.  “I went on Amazon just to look at what was available on Amazon and it looks like people are ripping everyone off,” says employee Kallie Stavros. “So it’s nice to just kind of help the local community and still have a job. Actually, I feel really lucky right now.” Locals appreciate the effort. “Well I know he’d probably like to be making something other than sanitizer here,” says customer Matthew Quinn, “but now this is a great idea that, you know, to fill a void in the marketplace and to have small businesses set up and work together to get this done.” Falls Church Distillers founder Michael Paluzzi (left) with employee Kallie Stavros, making hand sanitizer rather than their usual alcoholic drink products.Paluzzi says it is essential to boost people’s morale and not take advantage of their fears by gouging prices.”The price right now is important to us,” he says. “That was a very, very important thing to us — to not gouge. You’re seeing people buy up toilet paper or hand sanitizer, and then trying to charge exorbitant prices for that. That is part of what we were battling here, plus the need, and plus the reasonableness of fulfilling that need.” How long the company’s new direction might last is up in the air.“This will keep us busy for a while I am sure,” says Stavros. “As long as there is a need for the hand sanitizer, more than likely for the next few months — the ways it is looking like — we will be here.” Falls Church Distillers is currently selling its sanitizers for $29 a gallon which, according to Paluzzi, is nearly half of the market price. The company also promises to set aside 5,000 ounces in 5-ounce bottles to give away for free. “I think all of us are trying to do what we can,” says customer Quinn. “I think seeing small businesses step up and provide this type of service is fantastic.”
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South Korea, which has been among the best in the world at coronavirus testing, has agreed to provide the United States with badly needed test kits.Seoul says U.S. President Donald Trump asked South Korea for the coronavirus help on Tuesday. As VOA’s Bill Gallo reports, Trump’s request comes at a tense moment in U.S.-South Korea relations.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
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