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Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
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24 Oct, 3 tweets, 2 min read
Back in April, @c_drosten told me that investigations into #covid19 origin should also look at farmed raccoon dogs in China as possible intermediate hosts. Now, German scientists have made the first step, showing the animals can get and transmit #SARSCoV2. wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26…
@c_drosten "Our results indicate that affected farms might be reservoirs for #SARSCoV2. Thus, efficient and continuous surveillance should target susceptible animals, including raccoon dogs, especially in China, which is a key player in global fur production."
@c_drosten "We also need to initiate large-scale epidemiologic field studies with historic samples that might elucidate the role of farmed animals in the current pandemic."

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More from @kakape

Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
12 Oct
"Around the world, we’re now seeing an increase in the number of reported cases of #COVID19, especially in Europe and the Americas”, says @drtedros at @WHO presser. "Each of the last four days has been the highest number of cases reported so far."
@DrTedros @WHO "There has been some discussion recently about the concept of reaching so called herd immunity”, says @drtedros and gives the reasons why that is a bad idea:
1. immunity unclear
2. vast majority of people still susceptible
3. long term health impacts still unclear
@DrTedros @WHO “Allowing a dangerous virus that we don't fully understand to run free is simply unethical”, says @drtedros. "It's not an option."
Read 15 tweets
Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
4 Oct
So Trump is now also receiving dexamethasone. @WHO guidelines very clear that it is to be used only “in patients with severe and critical #COVID19”. Guidelines incl. “conditional recommendation not to use corticosteroid therapy in patients with non-severe #COVID19”.
Idea is not to reduce the immune system’s ability to fight the virus. But in later stages of severe disease, it’s the immune system itself that is creating most of the damage so sensible to dampen it down. Wondering if idea is that infused antibodies change that equation?
Any thoughts? @BhadeliaMD @MartinLandray
Read 8 tweets
Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
2 Oct
"We mourn the loss of so many”, says @DrTedros at #covid19 @WHO presser. "The world is still grappling with the #COVID19 pandemic. Every week we’re adding approximately two million cases."
@DrTedros @WHO "It's never too late to turn the tide”, says @drtedros.
"In Europe, countries have done it. In Asia, countries have done it. In the Pacific, countries have done it. In the Middle East, countries have done it. In Africa, many countries have done it. In the Americas..."
@DrTedros @WHO "This is a critical moment in the #COVID19 outbreak response”, says @drtedros.
"We urge every single leader to strengthen their response, put targeted measures in place that we know can suppress the spread, ensure that health systems and workers are protected, and saves lives."
Read 9 tweets
Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
29 Sep
One million people dead from #covid19.
Imagine losing a mother, a father, a sister, a brother. Multiply that loss, that pain by a thousand then multiply that again by a thousand. That’s what we are looking at.
What a sad day.
And as I have written before we are on track for 1,500,000 deaths by the end of the year.
Last week more than 2 million cases and more than 36,000 deaths were reported to @WHO, similar to the week before. #covid19 is continuing to cause disease and death at a staggering rate. Image
@WHO "The Eastern Mediterranean Region showed the greatest increase (9%) in cases in the past week, while the European Region reported a substantial rise in deaths, with a 9% increase compared to the previous week.” Image
Read 4 tweets
Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
28 Sep
“Last week we reached an important milestone in which, @WHO issued the first Emergency Use Listing for a quality antigen based rapid diagnostic test, and we expect other rapid tests to follow. ”, says @DrTedros at #covid19 presser.
@WHO @DrTedros Good news: 120 million of these tests will be made available to low- and middle-income countries, to "enable the expansion of testing, particularly in hard to reach areas that do not have lab facilities or enough trained health workers to carry out PCR tests”, says @DrTedros.
@WHO @DrTedros These tests are cheaper ("priced at a maximum of 5 US dollars per unit”) and faster (15-30 minutes) than PCR, says @DrTedros. "The quicker #COVID19 can be diagnosed, the quicker action can be taken to treat and isolate those with a virus and trace their contacts."
Read 10 tweets
Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
27 Sep
"Going forwards, improved communication of uncertainty is essential as models are used to predict the effects of different exit strategies."
Yup!

Quote is from this paper on modelling #covid19 exit strategies, which is well worth reading in full:
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.109…
It makes a lot of good points about what data is needed to improve models that can guide exit strategies and has a good short discussion on herd immunity and incl. three challenges for even determining the herd immunity threshold:
1. “most of the quantities for calculating the threshold are not known precisely”, for instance how common immunity is or how long it lasts
2. even the value for R0 needs to be refined
3. Disease clustering lowers threshold but to know how much, more info on transmission needed
Read 4 tweets

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