U.S. regulators have approved a new type of coronavirus test that administration officials have promoted as a key to opening up the country. The FDA on Saturday announced emergency authorization for antigen tests developed by Quidel Corp. of San Diego.

The test can rapidly detect fragments of virus proteins in samples collected from swabs swiped inside the nasal cavity, the FDA said in a statement. 

The antigen test is the third type of test to be authorized by the FDA. 

Currently, the only way to diagnose active COVID-19 is to test a patient's nasal swab for the genetic material of the virus. While considered highly accurate, the tests can take hours and require expensive, specialized equipment mainly found at commercial labs, hospitals or universities. 

A second type looks in the blood for antibodies, the proteins produced by the body days or weeks after fighting an infection. Such tests are helpful for researchers to understand how far a disease has spread within a community, but they aren't useful for diagnosing active infections. 

Antigen tests can diagnose active infections by detecting the earliest toxic traces of the virus rather than genetic code of the virus itself. 

The FDA said it expects to authorize more antigen tests in the future. 

Quidel said Saturday the test can provide an accurate, automated result in 15 minutes. The FDA's emergency authorization "allows us to arm our health care workers and first responders with a frontline solution for COVID-19 diagnosis, accelerating the time to diagnosis and potential treatment," Douglas Bryant, CEO of Quidel, said in a statement. The company said it specializes in testing for diseases and conditions including the flu and Lyme disease. 

The U.S. has tried to ramp up testing using the genetic method, but the country's daily testing tally has been stuck in the 200,000 to 250,000-per-day range for several weeks, falling far short of the millions of daily tests that most experts say are needed to reopen schools, businesses, churches and other institutions of daily life. 

That's led White House adviser Dr. Deborah Birx and other federal officials to call for a "breakthrough" in the antigen tests. 

"There will never be the ability on a nucleic acid test to do 300 million tests a day or to test everybody before they go to work or to school, but there might be with the antigen test," Birx told reporters last month. 

‘Finally, a virus got me.’ Scientist who fought Ebola and HIV reflects on facing death from COVID-19 | Science | AAAS

A very powerful piece from - a deep & honest reflection of the emotional & physical fight with #COVID19 by a man who discovered the Ebola virus -sharing his struggle for survival while dealing with silent hypoxia, cytokines storm & atrial fibrillation.

Virologist Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, fell ill with COVID-19 in mid-March. He spent a week in a hospital and has been recovering at his home in London since. Climbing a flight of stairs still leaves him breathless.

Piot, who grew up in Belgium, was one of the discoverers of the Ebola virus in 1976 and spent his career fighting infectious diseases. He headed the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS between 1995 and 2008 and is currently a coronavirus adviser to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. But his personal confrontation with the new coronavirus was a life-changing experience, Piot says.

This interview took place on 2 May. Piot’s answers have been edited and translated from Dutch: 

“ON 19 MARCH, I SUDDENLY HAD A HIGH FEVER and a stabbing headache. My skull and hair felt very painful, which was bizarre. I didn’t have a cough at the time, but still, my first reflex was: I have it. I kept working—I’m a workaholic—but from home. We put a lot of effort into teleworking at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine last year, so that we didn’t have to travel as much. That investment, made in the context of the fight against global warming, is now very useful, of course.

I tested positive for COVID-19, as I suspected. I put myself in isolation in the guest room at home. But the fever didn’t go away. I had never been seriously ill and have not taken a day of sick leave the past 10 years. I live a pretty healthy life and walk regularly. The only risk factor for corona is my age—I’m 71. I’m an optimist, so I thought it would pass. But on 1 April, a doctor friend advised me to get a thorough examination because the fever and especially the exhaustion were getting worse and worse.

It turned out I had severe oxygen deficiency, although I still wasn’t short of breath. Lung images showed I had severe pneumonia, typical of COVID-19, as well as bacterial pneumonia. I constantly felt exhausted, while normally I’m always buzzing with energy. It wasn’t just fatigue, but complete exhaustion; I’ll never forget that feeling. I had to be hospitalized, although I tested negative for the virus in the meantime. This is also typical for COVID-19: The virus disappears, but its consequences linger for weeks.

I was concerned I would be put on a ventilator immediately because I had seen publications showing it increases your chance of dying. I was pretty scared, but fortunately, they just gave me an oxygen mask first and that turned out to work. So, I ended up in an isolation room in the antechamber of the intensive care department. You’re tired, so you’re resigned to your fate. You completely surrender to the nursing staff. You live in a routine from syringe to infusion and you hope you make it. I am usually quite proactive in the way I operate, but here I was 100% patient.

I shared a room with a homeless person, a Colombian cleaner, and a man from Bangladesh—all three diabetics, incidentally, which is consistent with the known picture of the disease. The days and nights were lonely because no one had the energy to talk. I could only whisper for weeks; even now, my voice loses power in the evening. But I always had that question going around in my head: How will I be when I get out of this?

After fighting viruses all over the world for more than 40 years, I have become an expert in infections. I’m glad I had corona and not Ebola, although I read a scientific study yesterday that concluded you have a 30% chance of dying if you end up in a British hospital with COVID-19. That’s about the same overall mortality rate as for Ebola in 2014 in West Africa. That makes you lose your scientific level-headedness at times, and you surrender to emotional reflections. They got me, I sometimes thought. I have devoted my life to fighting viruses and finally, they get their revenge. For a week I balanced between heaven and Earth, on the edge of what could have been the end.

I was released from the hospital after a long week. I traveled home by public transport. I wanted to see the city, with its empty streets, its closed pubs, and its surprisingly fresh air. There was nobody on the street—a strange experience. I couldn’t walk properly because my muscles were weakened from lying down and from the lack of movement, which is not a good thing when you’re treating a lung condition. At home, I cried for a long time. I also slept badly for a while. The risk that something could still go seriously wrong keeps going through your head. You’ve locked up again, but you’ve got to put things like that into perspective. I now admire Nelson Mandela even more than I used to. He was locked in prison for 27 years but came out as a great reconciler.

I have always had great respect for viruses, and that has not diminished. I have devoted much of my life to the fight against the AIDS virus. It’s such a clever thing; it evades everything we do to block it. Now that I have felt the compelling presence of a virus in my body myself, I look at viruses differently. I realize this one will change my life, despite the confrontational experiences I’ve had with viruses before. I feel more vulnerable.

One week after I was discharged, I became increasingly short of breath. I had to go to the hospital again, but fortunately, I could be treated on an outpatient basis. I turned out to have an organizing pneumonia-induced lung disease, caused by a so-called cytokine storm. It’s a result of your immune defense going into overdrive. Many people do not die from the tissue damage caused by the virus, but from the exaggerated response of their immune system, which doesn’t know what to do with the virus. I’m still under treatment for that, with high doses of corticosteroids that slow down the immune system. If I had had that storm along with the symptoms of the viral outbreak in my body, I wouldn’t have survived. I had atrial fibrillation, with my heart rate going up to 170 beats per minute; that also needs to be controlled with therapy, particularly to prevent blood clotting events, including stroke. This is an underestimated ability of the virus: It can probably affect all the organs in our body.

Many people think COVID-19 kills 1% of patients, and the rest get away with some flulike symptoms. But the story gets more complicated. Many people will be left with chronic kidney and heart problems. Even their neural system is disrupted. There will be hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, possibly more, who will need treatments such as renal dialysis for the rest of their lives. The more we learn about the coronavirus, the more questions arise. We are learning while we are sailing. That’s why I get so annoyed by the many commentators on the sidelines who, without much insight, criticize the scientists and policymakers trying hard to get the epidemic under control. That’s very unfair.

Today, after 7 weeks,  I feel more or less in shape for the first time. I ate white asparagus, which I order from a Turkish greengrocer around the corner from my home; I’m from Keerbergen, Belgium, an asparagus-growing community. My lung images finally look better again. I opened up a good bottle of wine to celebrate, the first in a long time. I want to get back to work, although my activity will be limited for a while. The first thing I picked up again is my work as a COVID-19 R&D special adviser to von der Leyen.

The Commission is strongly committed to supporting the development of a vaccine. Let’s be clear: Without a coronavirus vaccine, we will never be able to live normally again. The only real exit strategy from this crisis is a vaccine that can be rolled out worldwide. That means producing billions of doses of it, which, in itself, is a huge challenge in terms of manufacturing logistics. And despite the efforts, it is still not even certain that developing a COVID-19 vaccine is possible.

Today there’s also the paradox that some people who owe their lives to vaccines no longer want their children to be vaccinated. That could become a problem if we want to roll out a vaccine against the coronavirus, because if too many people refuse to join, we will never get the pandemic under control.

I hope this crisis will ease political tensions in a number of areas. It may be an illusion, but we have seen in the past that polio vaccination campaigns have led to truces. Likewise, I hope that the World Health Organization [WHO], which is doing a great job in the fight against COVID-19, can be reformed to make it less bureaucratic and less dependent on advisory committees in which individual countries primarily defend their own interests. WHO too often becomes a political playground.

Anyway, I remain a born optimist. And now that I have faced death, my tolerance levels for nonsense and bullshit have gone down even more than before. So, I continue calmly and enthusiastically, although more selectively than before my illness.”

Should You Consider Taking Meds for Depression During COVID-19?

Mental health prescriptions have increased exponentially since the COVID-19 outbreak. Traumatic events cause a similar chemical reaction in the brain as experienced by those with chronic hormonal imbalances. Treating depression and anxiety early can result in a quicker recovery and potentially reduce the risk of experiencing a similar episode in the future.

Read in Healthline: https://apple.news/AAIWNK15dSJC_Z40lxCjc7w

Nurses head to the White House to protest lack of protective equipment

Nurses rallied in front of the White House on Thursday morning to protest the lack of personal protective equipment available to them in the battle against the novel coronavirus. 

The demonstrators gathered in Lafayette Square in front of the White House and placed 88 pairs of empty shoes on the ground. Those shoes represented the life of each nurse they say has been lost due inadequate personal protective equipment while fighting the coronavirus. 

The demonstrators then read the names of the 88 fallen nurses.

Pandemic and race

New data shows black people in the UK are four times more likely to die from Covid-19 than white people, and other ethnic groups are also at an increased risk. Things are even worse for black women, who are 4.3 times more likely to die than white women, with a similar split among men. The report also found people of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian and mixed ethnicities had a "statistically significant raised risk of death." This mirrors findings in the US, where African Americans have died from Covid-19 at a disproportionately high rate. For instance, in Chicago, 72% of people who died were black, officials said in April, despite African Americans only making up 30% of the city's population. A similar disparity was found in Louisiana. (Source: CNN)

The world is entering a very risky period with the coronavirus — and many health experts and ordinary people are nervous.

“The trial and error phase”

The world is entering a very risky period with the coronavirus — and many health experts and ordinary people are nervous.

The reopening has begun. 44 States ease social distancing restrictions as cases climb.

Yet there are still huge unanswered questions about the virus. How many people have it, and, by extension, how deadly is it? How often do children spread it? Are people who’ve had it immune from getting it again?

In the United States, there are also unmet benchmarks — which epidemiologists say should be met before reopening. The U.S. is testing fewer people per capita than other countries, and the outbreak is still growing in many states that are starting to reopen.

So how bad will reopening turn out to be?

The most likely scenario, many experts believe, is that the U.S. will spark new outbreaks by ending lockdowns without a more solid plan. That, in turn, could have tragic consequences, with thousands of avoidable deaths.

President Trump has chosen to open up nonetheless. As The Times’s Max Fisher notes, Trump is “among the few leaders to push for reopening as cases continue rising in many parts of the country.” His administration has rejected reopening guidelines from government scientists, calling them too strict.

Max has a useful — if chilling — way of thinking about the new phase: It’s the “trial-and-error” phase, in which different countries take different approaches and the world witnesses the results.

Lithuania, betting that outdoor activity is safer, is blocking off streets for outdoor restaurant service. California is encouraging curbside pickup instead. Denmark is opening schools to younger children (who may be less contagious), while Germany is opening for older children (who may do better following instructions).

“Few want to acknowledge it, but these first phases of reopening are big experiments meant to test the unknowns,” Max told me. “It’s a dangerous game, and it’s worth being cleareyed about the risks we’re all taking on.”

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