Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Nov. 16, 2020

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Nov. 16, 2020 – Nov. 20, 2020.

CNN (11/14, Erdman, Howard) reported researchers surveyed COVID-19 survivors two months after they were treated and released from hospitals in Michigan and found that a third “reported ongoing health issues, such as cough, new or worsening conditions and persistent loss of taste or smell.” The researchers surveyed 488 people and published their findings in Annals of Internal Medicine.

CNN (11/16, Chavez, Howard) reports, “Black, Hispanic and Native American people infected with [COVID-19] are about four times more likely to be hospitalized than others, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)” indicate. CNN adds, “The rate for Hispanic or Latino was approximately 4.2 times the rate of non-Hispanic White persons, according to the CDC data,” and “American Indian or Alaska Native and non-Hispanic Black people...were hospitalized about 4.1 and 3.9 times the rate of non-Hispanic White persons, the CDC said.”

The New York Times (11/17, A1, Thomas) reports, “The promising news that not just one but two coronavirus vaccines were more than 90% effective in early results has buoyed hopes that an end to the pandemic is in sight.” However, “even if the vaccines are authorized soon by federal regulators --” Pfizer and Moderna “have said they expect to apply soon – only a sliver of the American public will be able to get one by the end of the year.” The companies “have estimated they will have 45 million doses, or enough to vaccinate 22.5 million Americans, by January.”

The Washington Post (11/17, A1, Johnson) reports that “the next phase of this race will depend on the herculean task of producing these tiny vials of vaccine at a vast scale nearly overnight and distributing millions of doses without wasting any.”  The Post adds, “Getting a vaccine into people’s arms is a meticulously choreographed high-wire act that must not falter at any juncture, and distribution looms as among the most daunting challenges,” but “basic questions remain to be resolved.”

The Washington Post (11/18, Achenbach) reports, “More than 3 million people in the United States have active coronavirus infections and are potentially contagious, according to a new estimate from” Columbia University epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman and his team. Shaman “said his team’s model estimated that 3.6 million people are infected and shedding enough virus to infect others.”

The Hill (11/18, Deese) reports that “separate modelers from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimated a similar number Tuesday, showing approximately 3.2 million people are infected.”

Modern Healthcare (11/19, Castellucci, Subscription Publication) reports researchers found “patients with coronavirus – particularly those over 65 – may present to health care settings with only symptoms of delirium rather than well-known signs of the virus like fever and shortness of breath.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

STAT (11/19, Cooney) reports that in the study, “more than one-fourth of older patients...arrived at hospital emergency rooms with delirium, and 37% of these patients had no typical COVID-19 signs, such as fever or shortness or breath.”

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