Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of April 6, 2020

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of April 6, 2020 – April 10, 2020.

The Los Angeles Times (4/3, Megerian, Lin, Money, Brown) reported the CDC “is now advising Americans to voluntarily wear a basic cloth or fabric face mask when they go out to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus.” The Times added, “After insisting for weeks that healthy people did not need to wear masks in most circumstances, federal health officials decided to change their guidance in response to a growing body of evidence that people who do not appear to be sick are playing an outsized role in the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The Hill (4/3, Hellmann) reported that the change in guidance followed new evidence that many people infected with coronavirus are asymptomatic but can still transmit the virus to others.

The AP (4/6, Tanner) says the CDC released a report on Monday indicating that while coronavirus infection “usually isn’t severe in kids, some do get sick enough to require hospital treatment.” The CDC report “shows that fever, cough and shortness of breath were the most common symptoms in kids, but they occurred less often than in adults,” which is similar to “reports from China about how the new coronavirus affects children.”

NPR (4/6, Harris) reports the CDC “looked at about 149,000 infections for which age was known that were reported in the U.S. through April 2,” and found that “of those, 2,572 were among people under the age of 18. That’s less than 2% of total cases, even though that age group makes up 22% of the U.S. population.” The report’s authors conclude, “Because persons with asymptomatic and mild disease, including children, are likely playing a role in transmission and spread of COVID-19 in the community, social distancing and everyday preventive behaviors are recommended for persons of all ages to slow the spread of the virus, protect the health care system from being overloaded, and protect older adults and persons of any age with serious underlying medical conditions.”

In an op-ed for the New York Times (4/7), Aletha Maybank, M.D., M.P.H., chief health equity officer at the American Medical Association, writes, “Fewer than a dozen states have published data on the race and ethnic patterns of the pandemic, but the picture is becoming clear: Black people are disproportionately suffering.” Dr. Maybank adds, “We health professionals fear that [COVID-19] will further widen existing health gaps. That’s why my organization, the American Medical Association, is calling on laboratories, health institutions, state and local health departments and the Department of Health and Human Services to standardize, collect and publish race and ethnicity data so that we can begin to prioritize equity and effectively manage this pandemic.” Dr. Maybank concludes that any effective plan to combat the pandemic “must be shaped by an understanding of its spread and impact among communities of color and others marginalized in society,” and if structural inequities are ignored, “we will ultimately increase the burden of disease not just for those most marginalized but for everyone.”

The Hill (4/8, Weixel) reports that “the federal government’s emergency stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) is depleted, and states will not be receiving any more shipments, administration staff told a House panel.” The House Oversight and Reform Committee was told by staff from the Department of Health and Human Services “that the...administration has made its final shipments of personal protective equipment to states from the Strategic National Stockpile.” According to the HHS “staff, 90% of the stockpile’s inventory of N95 respirators, surgical and face masks, face shields, gowns and gloves have already been distributed to every state.”

USA Today (4/9, Keemahill, Mansfield, Pulver, Wu, Zhang) reports NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci “said Thursday the death toll from the coronavirus could be closer to 60,000 Americans, assuming full social distancing, rather than the previously projected 100,000 to 240,000 deaths.” Dr. Fauci said, “The real data are telling us that it is highly likely that we’re having a definite positive effect by this mitigation things that we’re doing – this physical separation – so I believe we are gonna see a downturn in that. And it looks more like the 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000.”

NPR (4/9, Chappell) reports Dr. Fauci also said, “The number of deaths and the cases that we’re seeing right now are really validating what we said, that this is going to be a very bad week, on the one hand. On the other hand, as you can see there are some glimmers of hope, particularly when you look at the situation in New York – where the number of hospitalizations, requirements for intensive care and intubation over the last few days have actually stabilized and [are] starting to come down.”

AMA Morning Rounds news coverage is developed in affiliation with Bulletin Healthcare LLC. Subscribe to Morning Rounds Daily.