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A saliva-based laboratory diagnostic test developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health to determine whether someone is infected with the novel coronavirus has been granted an emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The method, called SalivaDirect, is being further validated as a test for asymptomatic individuals through a program that tests players and staff from the National Basketball Association (NBA). SalivaDirect is simpler, less expensive, and less invasive than the traditional method for such testing, known as nasopharyngeal (NP) swabbing. Results so far have found that SalivaDirect is highly sensitive and yields similar outcomes as NP swabbing.
With the FDA’s emergency use authorization, the testing method is immediately available to other diagnostic laboratories that want to start using the new test, which can be scaled up quickly for use across the nation — and, perhaps, beyond — in the coming weeks, the researchers said.
High school sports in Florida have officially been approved to resume this fall. The Florida High School Athletic Association voted on Friday to allow member schools to start their seasons on August 24, despite the daily number of new coronavirus cases in the state continuously remaining in the thousands.
Nearly 800 schools are a part of the association. The fall season consists of bowling, cross country, football, golf, swimming and diving, and girls volleyball. As part of the approval for the season, coaches will have to make a "COVID waiver form" available to the schools.
DeSantis said he expects school districts to take each outbreak on a "case by case basis" and endorsed a more "surgical approach" that doesn't lead to automatic school closures.
"I've been able to talk to a number of superintendents who have already started this week and I think they're approaching it very smartly," DeSantis said after a roundtable discussion on mental health issues at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. "Somebody is on a school bus and they're ill then you send them home, and if parents have a child that's ill then you keep them home."
A child returning to school this fall might go through the following morning routine: their parent checks them for COVID-19 symptoms, they take a socially distanced bus ride, and a faculty member, like a school nurse, conducts a final screening at the school entrance before letting them through the door.
As students return to class, many school districts have introduced routine symptom screenings into their reopening plans. But their effectiveness and feasibility in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools remain unclear.
Adam Karcz, director of infection prevention at Indiana University's Riley Hospital for Children, said screenings are limited for a variety of reasons, including that the novel coronavirus shares many symptoms with common illnesses like the flu and not everyone with COVID-19 will have symptoms.
"COVID-19 is unique with the challenge," Karcz said, "that you can spread that without being or showing signs that you're actually sick."
FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) – On the same day Florida reported an additional 204 deaths from the coronavirus, a group opposed to COVID-19 restrictions held a protest in Fort Lauderdale.
The group, Reopen South Florida, gathered on Las Olas Boulevard near the beach. Hardly anyone wore a mask or practiced social distancing.
The protesters are upset at mandates which require them to wear masks, social distance, and have their temperatures taken.
“So we stand here bare faced, mask free and proudly with excellent immune systems to say that we are done, we are over the psychological torture that has been inflicted on us and we’re ready to get on with our lives,” said Chris Nelson, Reopen South Florida co-founder.
Ok it's time to look at the weekly Covid-19 numbers for Sarasota & Manatee Counties.
*(By the way I use the data in the PDF file provided by the Florida Department of Health for my calculations - which puts more emphasis on negative tests, skewing the results in that direction. A person who tests positive is counted only once, but negative tests can be counted repeatedly if the same person got more than one test. They're also combining antigen tests with the regular nasal swab tests - antigen tests can have a higher rate of false negatives. I just wanted to throw this information out there - however I do use the same method in all the numbers that I report here - so they are consistent in that regard).
The weekly charts show that the Covid-19 downtrend for new cases is still in place - however the downward momentum appears to be waning. We saw about a 10% decline in new cases for the current week. This is a smaller percentage decline compared to previous weeks. Testing continued to decline for the current week - thus the test positivity rate for Sarasota County was about the same as the previous week, whereas Manatee County had their test positivity rate decline by a small amount (about 0.5%.) So over the past two weeks the downward momentum of the test positivity rates has more or less stalled out at current levels. Emergency room visits for Covid-19 saw a slight decline in Sarasota County for the week - and a bigger decline in Manatee County.
For the week of August 9th through August 15th:
Sarasota County
total positive cases = 490 (70 cases per day on average)
total tests = 8706 (1244 tests per day on average)
test positivity rate = 5.6%
weekly count of ED & FSED (emergency room visits with Covid-19 symptoms) fell slightly from 51 on week beginning August 2nd to 48 on the week beginning August 9th
Manatee County
total positive cases = 477 (68 cases per day on average)
total tests = 8699 (1243 tests per day on average)
test positivity rate = 5.48%
weekly count of ED & FSED (emergency room visits for Covid-19 symptoms) fell from 125 on the week beginning August 2nd to 75 on the week beginning August 9th.
(July 19th - July 25th) total positive cases = 873 (124.7 cases per day on average)
(July 19th - 25th) total tests = 11, 217 (1602.4 tests per day on average)
(July 19th - 25th) test positivity rate = 7.78%
(July 12th -18th) total positive cases = 1123 (160.4 cases per day on average)
(July 12th - 18th) total tests = 15,758 (2251 tests per day on average)
(July 12th - 18th) test positivity rate = 7.12%
Manatee County
(July 19th - July 25th) total positive cases = 1264 (180.57 cases per day on average)
(July 19th - July 25th) total tests = 12,515 (1787.85 tests per day on average)
(July 19th - July 25th) test positivity rate = 9.9%
(July 12th - 18th) total positive cases = 1448 (206.85 cases per day on average)
(July 12th - 18th) total tests = 14,386 (2055.14 tests per day on average)
(July 12th - 18th) test positivity rate = 10%
Last edited by wondermint2; 08-16-2020 at 01:52 PM..
From the above link scroll down on their web page and you will see a graph for Florida which shows "Implied Infections" with a blue line - and "De-noised Adjusted Positive" with a grey line. You can see that the blue line representing implied infections bottomed out on August 8th with 5304 infections - and since then the blue line has started to slope upward again and shows 5437 implied infections on August 15th.
Meanwhile the grey line representing de-noised adjusted positives is still sloping downward. As you can see from the graph (going all the way back to March) - everytime the blue line (implied infections) crosses the grey line (de-noised adjusted positives) that has indicated a significant trend in the direction of the crossing. So currently the blue line is still below the grey line (but IMO it's a bit concerning that recently the blue line has turned up again). Judging by the past signals - if the blue line were to cross above the grey line again that would be a signal that could verify a new uptrend of significance.
Also the "R" value (which indicates the rate of Covid-19 spread) has inched up slightly in Florida to .99 recently from a low of .96 in late July. If the R value goes above 1.0 that would tend to be a bad sign that Covid-19 is starting to spread faster again.
Last edited by wondermint2; 08-16-2020 at 02:32 PM..
The multi-billion-dollar effort to get a coronavirus vaccine on the market could see delays because researchers haven't recruited sufficient numbers of minorities to join the clinical trials.
Of the 350,000 people who've registered online for a coronavirus clinical trial, 10% are Black or Latino, according to Dr. Jim Kublin, executive director of operations for the Covid-19 Prevention Network.
That's not nearly enough, as study subjects in trials are supposed to reflect the population that's affected. Research shows that more than half of US coronavirus cases have been among Black and Latino people.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, gave the Moderna trial, the first in Phase 3 in the United States, a "C" grade for recruiting minorities.
If not enough Black people and other minorities enroll, the panel of experts who monitor the trials could force a delay until they get the numbers they need.
"That's something that's been actively discussed," said Dr. Nelson Michael, coordinator of community engagement activities for Operation Warp Speed. "There's a lot of concern."
Michael said several factors have led to "a perfect storm of not goodness" for recruiting Black study subjects: historical abuse of Black people in medical experiments like Tuskegee; present racial injustices and health care disparities; and recent social unrest and the financial strain placed on the Black community by the faltering economy.
The reduced testing (see link below) is something that we've been experiencing the past few weeks in Sarasota & Manatee Counties also. Thus as the number of new cases declined the test positivity rates didn't show much change (over the past 2 weeks).
Testing for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has dropped nationwide the past two weeks even as the evidence builds disease spread is picking up in many states.
Nowhere is the danger of the testing slowdown more evident than the South. In Mississippi, more than one in five tested for the virus in the past week were positive, the highest rate in the nation as of Friday. The average number of daily tests in Texas and Florida dropped, but the ratio of positive tests in each state is more than double what the World Health Organization recommends.
Official case counts have dropped nationally but reporting problems and generally reduced testing in some states makes it hard to place any confidence that infection rates are improving. And in some states with more reliable data, testing slowdowns coincide with increasing or stable positive rates.
High school sports in Florida have officially been approved to resume this fall. The Florida High School Athletic Association voted on Friday to allow member schools to start their seasons on August 24, despite the daily number of new coronavirus cases in the state continuously remaining in the thousands.
Nearly 800 schools are a part of the association. The fall season consists of bowling, cross country, football, golf, swimming and diving, and girls volleyball. As part of the approval for the season, coaches will have to make a "COVID waiver form" available to the schools.
Florida's high school athletics board overwhelmingly decided to disregard the advice of its medical professionals and start the football season.
Not a single county in Florida meets the state's medical advisory committee's criteria for restarting high school sports (having a decline in cases and a test positivity rate under 5% for two weeks)
Districts will be required to get their teams out on the field between September 4 and 18 if they want to compete for a spot in the playoffs but can play extended regular seasons if they choose to start later, according to the report. Doctors recommended they wait until at least September 28 to launch any of the fall sports, including swimming, girls volleyball, and cross country.
"Until this virus is given the respect it deserves to quiet down, introducing sports adds fuel to the fire," said medical advisory committee head Dr. Jennifer Maynard said at the athletic board's meeting on Friday, according to the Associated Press.
I'm a bit leery about the headlines today "touting" that Florida reported the lowest daily new case numbers in the past two months (see link below). First of all testing declined again dramatically and was the lowest in weeks. Also there is a big historical downward bias for cases reported on Mondays (as labs process less on Sundays). Monday historically has the least amount of new cases of any day of the week.
According to the PDF file from the FDH (the one I always use for my calculations) - for today Sarasota County had 46 new cases - however the test positive ratio for the day was 6.8% (higher than last weeks average). Manatee County had 59 new cases with a test positive rate for the day of 6.9% (higher than last weeks average).
On the FDH web site they had a big chart on their front page "boasting" about the decline in cases. They have since taken that down.
Also hospitalizations for Covid-19 in Sarasota County stand at 87 today - which is just a very small drop from the 90 hospitalizations that were reported on August 6th. Manatee County has seen a bigger drop in hospitalizations - however the state run web site with hospitalization data only includes patients with a primary diagnosis of Covid-19. It doesn't include data for patients that were admitted for other reasons and then subsequently tested positive for Covid-19 (while in the hospital). So once again the data provided from the state tends to "undercount". You can see the state hospital data from this link:
Manatee County had 68 new positive cases of the coronavirus as 2,678 new cases were reported statewide — the lowest daily count of new cases in Florida since June.
HOSPITALS AT OR NEAR CAPACITY
Manatee Memorial Hospital was back at capacity on Monday morning. Additionally, the hospital had 14 patients who were in the emergency room waiting for a bed to become available so they could be admitted.
The remainder of the county’s general hospitals, Blake Medical Center and Lakewood Ranch Medical, had a total 16 staffed beds available, including 10 ICU beds.
There were 66 patients total among the three general hospitals who were positive for the coronavirus, of Monday morning. An additional 23 patients were presumptive positive.
Last edited by wondermint2; 08-17-2020 at 02:46 PM..
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