Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of June 15, 2020

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of June 15, 2020 – June 19, 2020.

The New York Times (6/12, Goodnough) reported that on Friday, the CDC “released a new guidance document, ‘Considerations for Events and Gatherings,’ that defines as ‘highest risk’ large gatherings where it is difficult for people to stay at least six feet apart, and where attendees travel from outside the local area.” In addition, “the agency released recommendations and factors to consider when resuming daily activities like going to the bank, holding cookouts and going to the gym.”

The Washington Post (6/15, Sun) reports that “people with underlying medical conditions such as heart disease and diabetes were hospitalized six times as often as otherwise healthy individuals infected with the novel coronavirus during the first four months of the pandemic, and they died 12 times as often, according to a federal health report.”

The AP (6/15, Tanner) reports, “Among patients with a chronic illness, about 20% died compared with almost 2% of those who were otherwise healthy.” Patients with COVID-19 “with a chronic condition were also six times more likely to be hospitalized – 46% versus almost 8%.”

The Hill (6/15, Hellmann) reports, “The most common underlying health conditions for COVID-19 patients are cardiovascular disease, lung disease and diabetes, the CDC said.”

The Washington Post (6/16, Achenbach) reports researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found “children and teenagers are only half as likely to get infected with the coronavirus as adults age 20 and older, and they usually don’t develop clinical symptoms” of COVID-19. In the study, researchers found that “among people between the ages of 10 and 19 infected with the virus – SARS-CoV-2 – only 21% show symptoms, compared to 69% among people older than 70, according to the authors.” The findings were published in Nature Medicine.

CNN (6/17, Fox) reports that European scientists “say they have found two genetic variations that may show who is more likely to get very sick and die from coronavirus, and they say they have also found a link to blood type.” The researchers’ “findings, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, point to a possible explanation for why some people get so seriously ill with the virus, while most barely show any symptoms at all.”

The Washington Post (6/18, Johnson) reports a study involving 20,000 people hospitalized with COVID-19 suggests that receiving “transfusions of blood plasma from people who recovered” from the disease is a safe treatment. The study’s results suggest that giving the treatment, known as convalescent plasma, to people hospitalized with COVID-19 may be beneficial. The study was published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

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