About 1M who died from COVID-19 lighting treatment

About 1 million people who lost their lives in COVID-19 left us gifts. Through their desperate efforts to save their lives, scientists now better understand how to treat and prevent illness, and millions of people may survive.

71-year-old Min Wang and his wife took a break on a cruise from Australia after decades of running a family-friendly Chinese restaurant in infected Papillion, Nebraska. During the 74 days he was hospitalized before he died in June, doctors desperately tried various approaches, including finally enrolling him in a promising antiviral study.

“It was just touch-and-go. They said yes was everything they wanted to try,” said King’s daughter Anne Peterson. “We give him anything to get him back, but if what we and his experience help future patients, that is our hope.”

The patient is already benefiting. The recent surge in coronavirus infections in the United States and other countries is expected to result in more deaths this fall, but there are signs that mortality is declining, and people infected with the virus are pandemic. It’s much better than in the early months.

“Some of the reasons we’re doing well are due to progress,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told The Associated Press. Some drugs have proven useful, he said, and doctors know more about how to treat the most ill patients in the hospital.

Collins said he was in the “stormy adolescence” stage of learning which treatments would work beyond infancy.

Terrible toll

Approximately 1 million deaths from the coronavirus in nine months far exceed 690,000 from AIDS or 400,000 from malaria in 2019 as a whole. It tends to be slightly below 1.5 million people due to tuberculosis.

Wealth and power do not protect rich nations from the terrifying power of the virus. The United States is “the most devastating country in the world”, with more than 7 million coronavirus infections and more than 200,000 deaths. This reflects “the lack of success in containing this outbreak,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told an audience at Harvard Medical School earlier this month that the country’s top infectious disease experts.

Over 40% of adults in the United States are at risk of serious viral illness due to high blood pressure and other conditions. Fauci emphasized that not only are older people dying in elderly housing with care.

Dr. Jesse Goodman, a former US Food and Drug Administration chief scientist at Georgetown University, agreed.

“No one should make a mistake about this,” he said, and they were at risk just because they hadn’t witnessed what the virus could do, or because they didn’t personally know the dead. He said he thought he wasn’t exposed.

Optimistic sign

Although the number of cases is increasing, the mortality rate seems to be declining, said Dr. Cyrus Shapper, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the nonprofit Resolve to Save Lifes.

The true case fatality rate of the virus, the case fatality rate of infection, is not yet known, as scientists do not know how many people have been infected with the virus without showing symptoms. Case fatality rate is often reported. The percentage of people who tested positive and then died. Comparing these by country is problematic due to differences in testing and vulnerable populations. Tracking these domestically also carries the risk, but may suggest some trends.

“The cumulative case fatality rate in April in the United States was about 5%, and now it’s about 3%,” Sherper said.

In the UK, researchers report that mortality has dropped significantly since its peak in April. The rate in August was about 1.5%, but six weeks ago it was over 6%.

Changes in demographics are one reason. In recent cases, an increasing number of young people are less likely to die of an infectious disease than older people.

Increasing inspections also play a role. As more people have mild or no symptoms, the number of known infections increases and the rate of fatalities decreases, Sharper said.

Better treatment

According to many doctors, it is clear that treatment is affecting survival. People who died of COVID-19, especially those who participated in the study, have helped clarify what the drug does and what it does not help.

Steroids similar to dexamethasone are known to improve survival when used in hospitalized patients who require additional oxygen, but may be harmful to less ill patients.

The antiviral drug remdesivir can speed the recovery of critically ill patients and reduce the average length of hospital stay by four days. Two anti-inflammatory drugs, one used in combination with remdesivir — a drug that the King supported the study — have also been reported to be effective, although the results of those studies have not yet been published. I will.

The jury has yet to come up with convalescent plasma, including treating others with antibody-rich blood from survivors. Large, high-quality studies have not been sufficiently tested to see if this works.

The value of rigorous scientific research to test treatment has become apparent, Goodman said.

“We will certainly see what happens,” he said, when treatments are widely adopted without them, as was the case with hydroxychloroquine. “It has exposed many people to potentially toxic drugs,” and delayed the search for effective ones.

Dr. Gary Gibbons, director of the National Institute of Cardiopulmonary Blood, said, “With the exception of drugs, mortality actually improves over time as doctors become more proficient in treating these highly ill patients. “.

In hospitals, doctors know more about how to avoid respiratory use, such as maintaining the patient’s belly.

“We learned how to place patients, use oxygen, and manage fluids, and the hospital increased surge capacity and supply,” Dr. Judith Currier, a doctor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told a recent webinar. It was. Sponsored by the American Public Health Association and the National Academy of Medicine.

future

The best way to avoid death from the coronavirus is to avoid it, and experience has shown simple measures advocated by public health authorities.

“Prevention is the most important step now that we are waiting for the vaccine and improving treatment,” Goodman said.

Wearing a face mask, washing your hands, and disinfecting the surface at least 6 feet away “clearly improves” the spread control effect, Forch said.

As more people adopt common-sense measures like closures, they should “improve their ability to manage them” to prevent more deaths, Sharper said. “Even if that happens, it should take longer to reach the next million,” he said.