Editor's Note In this study from Seoul, South Korea, both surgical and cotton masks were ineffective in preventing the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2, from coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the environment and external mask surface. For the study, four patients with COVID-19 were admitted to negative pressure isolation rooms and…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission, in its April 8 online newsletter, announced the creation of a web portal with resources to assist healthcare workers create capacity for surge patients with COVID-19. Included are: Use of Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASC) as Alternative Care Sites for Hospitals Emergency Management Healthcare Environment Checklist…

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Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on April 7 issued an update on actions the agency has taken in its ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The actions include: a guidance for remote ophthalmic assessment and monitoring devices to facilitate patient care while reducing patient and healthcare provider…

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Editor's Note In this case series of COVID-19 patients admitted to ICUs in the Lombardy region of Italy, the majority were older men, a large proportion required mechanical ventilation and high levels of PEEP, and ICU mortality was 26%. Of the 1,591 patients included in this study: the median age…

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Editor's Note Exscientia (Oxford, UK) has announced a joint initiative with Diamond Light Source (Oxforshire, UK) and Calibr (La Jolla, California), a division of  Scripps Research, to use its artificial intelligence (AI) drug discovery platform to identify compounds that could become viable drugs for treatment of COVID-19, the April 2…

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Editor's Note In this study, researchers from Stanford University create an algorithm to protect OR teams who perform urgent and emergency surgical procedures from the coronavirus and rationally conserve the personal protective equipment (PPE) they wear. Incuded in the decision tree algorithm: Patients were triaged by severity of illness into…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) announced April 3 that it is modifying existing surveillance systems to track COVID-19 and will be posting weekly reports each Friday. The report, “COVIDView,” summarizes and interprets key indicators, including information related to COVID-19 outpatient visits, emergency department visits, hospitalizations,…

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Editor's Note Human-to-human transmission of novel coronavirus (2019-nCOV)-infected pneumonia (NCIP) has been occurring among close contacts since the middle of December 2019, with the initial cases in Wuhan, China, and the epidemic has been gradually growing in recent weeks, this study finds. Researchers analyzed the first 425 patients with confirmed…

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Editor's Note During the first 3 weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak in the Seattle area, the most common reasons for ICU admission were hypoxemic respiratory failure leading to mechanical ventilation and/or hypotension requiring vasopressor treatment, and mortality was high in these critically ill patients, this study finds. In this analysis…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on March 31 issued a statement saying it supports letting healthcare staff bring their own standard face masks or respirators from home when their facilities cannot provide access to protective equipment that is equivalent to their exposure risk, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In taking this…

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