Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of May 4, 2020

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of May 4, 2020 – May 8, 2020.

Bloomberg (5/1, Lauerman) reported new research indicates that “the coronavirus pandemic is likely to last as long as two years and won’t be controlled until about two-thirds of the world’s population is immune.” The report is from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Newsweek (5/1, Gander) reported that “officials need to prepare the public for the prospect of a period of coronavirus resurgences over the next two years, infectious disease experts...said.” The researchers “also urged leaders to prepare for the ‘worst-case scenario’ such as there being no vaccine; draw up plans to ensure health care workers are protected during spikes of disease; and map how to reinstate measures to prevent COVID-19 from spreading.”

The New York Times (5/4, Kaplan) reports the FDA “announced on Monday that companies selling coronavirus antibody tests must submit data proving accuracy within the next 10 days or face removal from the market.” While the tests aim to determine whether a person has been previously infected by the coronavirus, there has been widespread variation in results, and “since mid-March, the agency has permitted dozens of manufacturers to sell the tests without providing evidence that they are accurate.”

The AP (5/4, Perrone) reports the agency “said it took the action because some sellers have made false claims about the tests and their accuracy.”

Politico (5/4, Lim) reports that last week, the AMA “called on HHS to restrict use of antibody tests to health providers trained to interpret their results and in epidemiological studies due to ‘growing concern’ about the performance of several tests on the market.” Politico adds, “Until more is known about whether survivors of coronavirus infection emerge with any degree of immunity, people should not use the antibody tests to guide their decisions on physical distancing, the physician group cautioned.”

The New York Times (5/5, Mandavilli) reports, “Two new studies offer compelling evidence that children can transmit the” coronavirus. In one study published in Science last week, researchers “found that children were about a third as susceptible to coronavirus infection as adults,” but that when schools were open, “children had about three times as many contacts as adults, and three times as many opportunities to become infected, essentially evening out their risk.” In a second study, awaiting peer review but posted on the lab’s website, German researchers “tested children and adults and found that children who test positive harbor just as much virus as adults do – sometimes more – and so, presumably, are just as infectious.”

NBC News (5/6, Edwards) reports “researchers at Mount Sinai Health System analyzed the health records of 2,773” patients with COVID-19 and found that “blood thinners may help keep...patients on ventilators alive longer.” The findings were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

STAT (5/6, Cooney) reports clinicians began giving blood thinners to the patients in order to prevent blood clots and strokes, and now it appears the drugs reduce deaths in these patients.

Reuters (5/7, Kelland) reports that “Chinese researchers who tested sperm of men infected with COVID-19 found that a minority of them had the new coronavirus in their semen, opening up a small chance the disease could be transmitted sexually, scientists said on Thursday.” In the study, 16% of men hospitalized with the disease “tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in their semen.” The study findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

The Wall Street Journal (5/7, Rana, Subscription Publication) reports the chief medical officer for the CDC’s COVID-19 response, John Brooks, said the results were intriguing, but noted that no infections in the U.S. have been found to have spread via sexual contact.

Medscape (5/7, McCall, Subscription Publication) reports that “several experts caution that the researchers only tested for viral components and that the findings do not demonstrate infectivity.”

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