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How Covid-19 is changing our world
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Welcome back to the Coronavirus Tech Report. A few times a week we'll give you the latest updates on what’s known about the disease, the efforts to fight it, its impacts on the world, and what you can do to protect yourself and your loved ones. Get your friends to sign up for future editions.
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As of 1:30 p.m. EDT on Friday, April 24 there are 2,761,121 confirmed cases of coronavirus globally, with 880,112 cases in the US. There have been 193,671 deaths, of which 50,114 were in the US. A total of 4,692,797 people in the US have been tested for coronavirus. After the US, Spain, Italy and France remain the main hotspots for the disease.
These numbers come from Johns Hopkins University, based on a variety of official sources. (And here’s why you should treat all such data with caution.)
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Coronavirus testing in the US is nowhere near where it should be. A recent road map suggested we need to test upwards of 20 million people every day in order to safely reopen the economy (we’re currently running around 150,000 a day). To scale up, we need to move beyond conventional methods—and that might require an entirely different type of test.
The gold standard for covid-19 testing is the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. In a PCR test, genetic material collected in a nasal swab is copied millions or billions of times over so that markers for covid-19 infection can be identified (the virus’s RNA is too tiny to identify on its own, but making more copies makes it easier to find). PCR testing isn’t perfect, but it’s seen as the most accurate form of testing available for viruses. Unfortunately, it takes time, energy, and trained personnel to run these tests. That makes PCR testing too hard to scale up to the numbers we really need.
“There will never be the ability on a [PCR] test to do 300 million tests a day or to test everybody before they go to work or to school,” Deborah Birx, head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said on April 17. “But there might be with the antigen test.”
What’s an antigen test? While PCR tests look for evidence of viral genetic material, and antibody testing detects human antibodies against the virus, antigen tests look for fragments of viral surface proteins as a marker for infection. (An antigen is the part of a pathogen that elicits an immune response.) These proteins, usually from the coronavirus’s surface spikes, are big enough to study on their own, without spending time and energy making new copies.
Identifying their presence could mean a diagnosis of infection in just a matter of minutes, without expensive equipment, training, or power. In theory, a reliable antigen test could be pretty easy to scale up and could then be used in the home or at point-of-care locations. It could be the test we need to get America back on its feet again—but not everyone is convinced. Read the whole story.
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Also on MIT Technology Review
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The latest science and tech
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- Germany and Apple are running into problems around user privacy for smartphone coronavirus contact tracing. (Reuters)
- How Silicon Valley is recruiting “immune” volunteers to help carry out essential tasks. (Financial Times)
- 5 major coronavirus models describe what the next month in the US will look like, with little consensus. (New York Times)
- Inexpensive ultrasound is proving to be a surprisingly useful tool in diagnosing covid-19. (IEEE Spectrum)
- Three ways to speed up drug discovery and production during the coronavirus pandemic. (Scientific American)
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Hype check: remdesivir
Remdesivir has been one of the most closely-studied drug candidates since the virus was first discovered. Results from a new study of the drug’s effect on covid-19 patients were leaked on Thursday, and they don’t exactly paint an encouraging picture of its ability to help fight coronavirus infection. Here’s what you need to know.
- What is remdesivir: An antiviral drug developed by Gilead Sciences. It’s delivered as an injection. Before covid-19, Gilead pushed remdesivir as a potential treatment for Ebola. Those trials established that it was safe to use, but its efficacy against Ebola was significantly lower than alternative treatments.
- How does it work: Antonio Regalado, our senior editor for biomedicine, explained in a February story that remdesivir “forms a misshapen version of a nucleotide that the virus needs to build new copies of itself, thus preventing it from multiplying. The same type of strategy led to Gilead’s blockbuster hepatitis C drug.”
- Why could it work against covid-19: Remdesivir is supposed to be pretty good at combating viruses that possess RNA as their genetic material, like SARS-CoV-2. Previous studies on mice and monkeys show the drug worked well in treating infections caused by MERS (another coronavirus). In the first confirmed case of coronavirus in the US, remdesivir was provided as a treatment to the patient, who later recovered.
- The new study: The Financial Times first reported that a summary of results from a long-awaited clinical trial in China had been posted to WHO’s website. WHO later took down the summary, telling STAT the summary went up by mistake. The study is a randomized controlled trial, which is a gold standard in medical research—and part of the reason so many experts are paying attention to it. The summary says that remdesivir was “not associated with a difference in time to clinical improvement” compared to a normal standard of care. After one month, 13.9% patients taking remedesvir (158 total) had died compared to 12.8% of patients in the control group (79 total). Those numbers seem to indicate that remdesivir would provide little to no benefit to covid-19 patients.
- Some major caveats: The study was terminated early because not enough patients were enrolled—far shy of the 453 participants originally sought. The summary posted is part of a draft manuscript that WHO says is still undergoing peer-review for publication in a journal. A spokesperson from Gilead told STAT “trends in the data suggest a potential benefit for remdesivir, particularly among patients treated early in disease.” Remdesivir is being tested in many other clinical trials, some run by Gilead and others spearheaded by other groups.
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- An oral history of March 11, the day the pandemic completely altered life in America. (Wired)
- There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to lifting lockdowns. (AP)
- Social distancing is impossible in refugee camps so health officials are scrambling for ways to protect people. (Nature)
- Despite the emergence of covid-19, cruise ships continued to sail on. Thousands of people paid the price. (Miami Herald)
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Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water for at least 20 seconds each time. Avoid touching your face. Cover your nose and mouth if you cough or sneeze, and try to distance yourself from others. If you do leave the house, wear a mask (even a makeshift one from cloth). Keep at least six feet away from others.
If you feel unwell, stay at home. If you have fever, cough and difficulty breathing, do NOT go to the hospital: call your local medical authorities first. Remember that older people and those with pre-existing health problems are at higher risk.
Authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the UK National Health Service, and the World Health Organization provide more in-depth, reliable advice you should follow to protect yourself and your family.
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