WP Perspectives - Feb. 28, 2022

As homes across the country have received the free at-home COVID-19 antigen tests, a new warning is being issued about a potential hazard. According to Poison Control, the extraction vial in many of the kits includes a chemical that acts as a preservative agent and could be harmful if ingested. Sodium azide is a colorless, tasteless, and odorless powder that has been used as a propellant in airbags and pest control agents, just to name a few. Poison Control officials say when swallowed the chemical can cause low blood pressure, cause dizziness, headache, and heart palpitations. In more severe cases, people can experience seizures, loss of consciousness and death may occur. Poison Control officials say the amount of sodium azide in most rapid antigen kits is much lower than the amount expected to cause poisoning if swallowed by an adult. However, people should be careful to follow the instructions exactly when swabbing.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has posted a recall for a COVID-19 Ag Home Test because there are reports of the test kits illegally imported into the country. The FDA says the tests, which are the Standard Q COVID-19 Ag Home Test kit, come from SD Biosensor, Inc. These tests were distributed into the U.S., but were not cleared, authorized, or approved by the FDA. Below is a picture of the test kit that was illegally brought into the country. The FDA recommends any consumer with the Standard Q COVID-19 Ag Home Test is asked to throw it away and avoid any use of the test. Those who have used this test are asked to retest with an FDA authorized or cleared test. Please note that the FDA notes most people will probably not encounter these test kits. While there is no known distribution of these tests directly to consumers, SD Biosensor, Inc. is issuing this voluntary recall out of an abundance of caution. For details: https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/sd-biosensor-issues-notification-voluntary-recall-standard-q-covid-19-ag-home-test#recall-announcement

The CDC eased mask recommendations for the vast majority of the country Friday. Rather than use case data alone as the basis for its masking recommendations, officials will also weigh metrics such as hospital capacity and coronavirus admissions. Under the new approach, many parts of the country previously categorized as having high or substantial virus levels have been reclassified as having low to medium levels of covid-19 disease. The CDC recommends mask wearing indoors in public settings like schools only in communities with high levels of disease. VDH is also revisiting its messaging and will announce when updates are available.
Even though the Omicron-driven surge may appear to be waning, the challenge for America's health professionals is far from over, according to Dr. Leana Wen, professor of health policy and management at George Washington University and medical columnist and analyst for the Washington Post and CNN. The public health communication battle of COVID-19 rages on, she said. Dr. Wen discussed the state of the pandemic and how physicians can rise to meet the continuing communication challenges during a recent episode of "AMA COVID-19 Update".

Immunization is for more than just COVID-19.

This chart is from the CDC website and offers reminders about when childhood immunizations should be given. Data has shown that these important immunizations may have been overlooked during the pandemic. Click on the image to go to the page, or follow this link to learn more about childhood immunizations. There is also a table that details vaccine-preventable diseases and the vaccines that prevent them, including symptoms and how the diseases are spread.

Comorbidity

A term that has unfortunately become familiar to many during this pandemic, "comorbidity' is the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient. People with comorbidities are more vulnerable to serious illness with COVID-19.

Pantropic

The medical definition of pantropic: affecting various tissues without showing special affinity for one of them. The virus that causes COVID-19 is pantropic. It can also infect an incredible array of animals as well as humans.

The Hard Lessons We Learned — and Didn’t — From Two Years in Pandemic School. This may not even be the Big One. We must prepare for doomsday, act faster and respect evolution.

As we enter the pandemic's third calendar year, it's worth reflecting on what we've learned — and what we're still getting wrong. Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post's longtime science reporter, offers a list of lessons as we look ahead to the work we've got left before we truly emerge from this. Read the article.

Epidemiology is the science at center of public health.

“It’s becoming clearer to everyone that this is really not just a biological science problem, but in fact largely a problem of social science. -- Madhav Marathe is a professor of computer science in UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and a distinguished professor at UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute.

(Excerpted from UVA Today. Be sure to follow the link at the end of this piece to learn more about how this team of experts managed to serendipitously be uniquely positioned to create pandemic modeling and forecasting before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in full force.)

Bold Predictions for a Brave New World

Outside the U.S. National Science Foundation headquarters in Alexandria, an unexpected light snow was falling in early December 2019, adding to a feeling of excitement for Madhav Marathe and his team of researchers from the University of Virginia and across the world.

Inside, in a conference room, Marathe queued up the first slide in a PowerPoint presentation the team was giving to a group of more than a dozen NSF directors and review committee members from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering.

A pandemic will occur: The question is not IF, but when.

The slide’s bold statement was prescient.

Marathe, a professor of computer science in UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and distinguished professor at UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute, and the team of multi-disciplinary scientists representing 14 U.S. institutions and 20 international organizations were focused on developing new computational tools to help policymakers, health care providers and everyday citizens handle epidemics – keeping diseases from reaching pandemic proportions.

The presentation of their project on this snowy day was the final phase of a very long journey to win a coveted NSF Expeditions in Computing grant – a highly competitive, five-year, $10 million award aimed at propelling science in the quest to answer big societal questions. . . .

[From the grant proposal: This Expeditions project will enable novel implementations of global infectious disease computational epidemiology by advancing computational foundations, engineering principles, theoretical understanding, and novel technologies.]

https://news.virginia.edu/content/bold-predictions-brave-new-world

WP Perspectives – Feb. 28, 2022

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