PG&E is donating nearly 1 million protective masks from the supply it keeps on hand for crews responding to fires and construction zones, to distribute to California hospitals and first responders, company officials said Friday.
The 480,000 N95 masks and 470,000 surgical masks will go to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, for hospitals and those on the front lines facing a critical shortage of protective equipment.
The company maintains a supply of masks for utility crews working in construction zones or responding to wildfires, Andy Vesey, PG&E CEO and president said.
European nations tightened restrictions designed to check the spread of the coronavirus, with Germany banning gatherings of more than two people, Spain moving to extend a state of emergency and Italy ordering a halt to domestic travel.
While Germany stopped short of confining people to their homes, it will prevent citizens meeting in groups for at least two weeks, with only families and people sharing a home exempt, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday. Restaurants will be closed except for takeout and delivery services.
“No one wants to stand before the people and discuss such rules,” Merkel said at a news conference in Berlin after a video conference with regional leaders.
At least five downtown Denver hotels have closed temporarily to stem the coronavirus spread, and the statewide industry is bracing for a hit that could lead to as many as 72,000 job losses in a sector that produces a $13.4 billion annual gross domestic product statewide.
While only a handful of mountain resorts had shut down by early this week, that number has ballooned in recent days as hotels across the metro region are reporting vacancy levels below 10% during a month many had predicted would be record-setting, Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association President/CEO Amie Mayhew said. Among those that have announced they will shutter until May 11 or 12 are the Grand Hyatt Denver, the Oxford Hotel, the Crawford Hotel and The Maven Hotel at Dairy Block.
All of those except for the Grand Hyatt are operated by Sage Hospitality Group of Denver, whose CEO, Walter Isenberg, issued a letter Thursday saying he’d made “the very difficult decision to temporarily suspend business operations at a portion of our hotels and restaurants in order to protect the health and safety of our guests, our associates and our communities.”
Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have created a new, rubber-like material with a unique set of properties, which could act as a replacement for human tissue in medical procedures.
A new device enables researchers to observe hundreds of neurons in the brain in real-time. The system is based on modified silicon chips from cameras, but rather than taking a picture, it takes a movie of the neural electrical activity.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an American oncologist and bioethicist who is senior fellow at the Center for American Progress as well as Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, said on MSNBC on Friday, March 20, that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told him it would probably take 8–10 weeks to get ventilator production started at his factories (he’s working on this at Tesla and SpaceX).
I reached out to Musk for clarification on that topic and he replied that, “We have 250k N95 masks. Aiming to start distributing those to hospitals tomorrow night. Should have over 1000 ventilators by next week.” With medical supplies such as these being one of the biggest bottlenecks and challenges at the moment in the COVID-19 response in the United States (as well as elsewhere) — something that is already having a very real effect on medical professionals and patient care — the support will surely be received with much gratitude. That said, while there has been much attention put on the expected future need for ventilators, very few places reportedly have a shortage of them right now. In much greater need at the moment are simpler supplies like N95 masks, which must be why Tesla/SpaceX is providing 250,000 of them.
Dr. Emanuel also said in the segment of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” he was on that we probably need 8–12 weeks (2–3 months) of social distancing in the US in order to deal with COVID-19 as a society. However, he also expects that the virus will come back and we’ll basically have a roller coaster of “social restrictions, easing up, social restrictions, easing up … to try to smooth out the demand on the health care system.”
“Infusions of antibody-laden blood have been used with reported success in prior outbreaks, including the SARS epidemic and the 1918 flu pandemic.”
John Hopkins University
With a vaccine for COVID-19 still a long way from being realized, Johns Hopkins immunologist Arturo Casadevall is working to revive a century-old blood-derived treatment for use in the United States in hopes of slowing the spread of the disease.
With the right pieces in place, the treatment could be set up at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore within a matter of weeks, Casadevall says.
The technique uses antibodies from the blood plasma or serum of people who have recovered from COVID-19 infection to boost the immunity of newly infected patients and those at risk of contracting the disease. These antibodies contained in the blood’s serum have the ability to bind to and neutralize SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Casadevall—a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of molecular microbiology and immunology and infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and School of Medicine—published a paper on the proposal today in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Ninja Nerds. What is Corona virus? What is COVID-19? Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by SARS-COV2 is a new strain that was discovered in 2019 and has not been previously identified in humans. Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people. Detailed investigations found that SARS-CoV was transmitted from civet cats to humans and MERS-CoV from camels to humans. Several known coronaviruses are circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans. It is believed that COVID-19 was transmitted from pangolin to humans (current theory). Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death (WHO, 2020). Ninja Nerd Lectures has compiled the most up to date and recent data on COVID-19 as of March 15, 2020. Please follow along with this lecture to understand the origin and zoonosis of COVID-19, the routes of transmission, epidemiology (current as of 3/15/2020), pathophysiology, and diagnostic tests used to identify COVID-19. As new information and research is published we will continue to provide updates on COVID-19 and ensure all of our viewers are kept up to date on the most recent data.
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REFERENCES: World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
