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The 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan are officially postponed until 2021.
President Trump said Tuesday that he wants to end the restrictions by Easter — April 12 — and continued to play down the dangers of the pandemic, even as experts warned of a worsening crisis. Trump said on Fox News that he would love to see "packed churches all over our country" on Easter Sunday. Before the president called for a re-opening of the economy, six of his top seven revenue-producing clubs were shut down.
Health experts warn ending the shutdown too soon would be disastrous, because the country has barely given restrictions time to work, and because U.S. leaders have not used strategies other countries have deployed to avoid hundreds of thousands of deaths.
A World Health Organization official said that the U.S. has the potential to become the new epicenter of the global crisis. "We are now seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the U.S.," WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said. (Scroll down for a closer look at the rising cases and death toll in the U.S.)
Congress and the White House say they are on the verge of a deal on a $2 trillion stimulus package, after White House officials agreed to allow an independent oversight board to scrutinize how businesses will use taxpayer funds. The Senate is aiming for a vote Tuesday evening.
A team of British ear, nose and throat doctors have found that a lost sense of smell could be a strange symptom of covid-19. It's being observed in patients who aren't showing any other symptoms. The WHO said it has not yet confirmed the loss of smell or taste as a symptom but has not ruled it out.
Some studies have shown a link between weather and the regions where this virus has thrived. While none of these studies has been peer-reviewed, they all point to the same general possibility: The pandemic could ease in parts of North America and Europe during the summer months, then could come roaring back in the fall.
Economists and former government officials say nationalist sentiments are hurting the world's ability to fight not only the pandemic, but the economic fallout. A coordinated response is necessary to avert what could be the worst global recession in nearly a century, economists say.
Democrats and Republicans are asking for emergency funding to expand vote-by-mail operations for the 2020 election. More than three dozen state and local election officials, many of them Republicans, signed a letter to congressional leaders seeking federal election assistance. Republicans in Congress say they are inclined to oppose that effort.
The pandemic could drive up insurance premiums by double digits for tens of millions of Americans, a California projection shows. (That report comes from The Health 202 newsletter)
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Tracking the U.S. cases and deaths
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Your questions, answered
"Why is the FDA reluctant to approve hydroxychloroquine for covid-19 patients? It is an existing drug with a well-known safety record and other countries have used it during this outbreak." —Cathy Gideon, California
Choloroquine, also known as choloroquoine phosphate, has been approved to treat various inflammatory ailments, including malaria. A few studies with small groups of patients indicate that it could be effective at treating covid-19.
President Trump last week advertised choloroquine as a "game changer" and said the drugs would be "put to use immediately." But right after he said that, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn clarified that the drug would be available "in the setting of a clinical trial — a large, pragmatic clinical trial — to actually gather that information and answer the question that needs to be answered and — asked and answered."
There's no question that a covid-19 treatment is desperately needed, so it's reasonable for people to wonder why the FDA seems reluctant to allow it to be prescribed on a widespread basis. But there are at least three big reasons why the FDA wants controlled testing:
- It hasn't been tested well enough to know if the benefits outweigh the risks and side effects. Though proper use of the drug has been approved for other uses, it's not a cure for coronavirus. It could have the potential to help the body fight the virus, but it's not a silver bullet. Doctors don't actually know how it will affect people who have covid-19, whose bodies are already being ravaged by the illness.
"We're trying to strike a balance between making something with a potential of an effect to the American people available, at the same time that we do it under the auspices of a protocol that would give us information to determine if it's truly safe and truly effective," Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last week.
- Before Trump started talking about choloroquine, health experts were looking into it as part of the solution. But now the drug is flying off the shelves in pharmacies and it's so scarce that pharmacists are saying they don't have enough in stock for people who actually need it for things like arthritis and lupus.
- Choloroquine is poisonous if taken improperly, so there's an understandable hesitation on the part of health officials to tout a drug that hasn't been tested for covid-19, knowing that people will seek it out and could harm themselves.
A man in Arizona died and his wife is in critical care after they treated themselves with the choloroquine they use to clean their fish tank. It had the same active ingredient as the malaria drug. The woman told NBC News that she heard Trump talk about the drug and that they "were afraid of getting sick." Hospitals in Nigeria are also treating a flood of people who are suffering from choloroquine poisoning.
"Given the uncertainty around COVID-19, we understand that people are trying to find new ways to prevent or treat this virus, but self-medicating is not the way to do so," said Daniel Brooks, the medical director of Banner Poison and Drug Information Center, based in Arizona. "We are strongly urging the medical community to not prescribe this medication to any non-hospitalized patients."
The CDC has more information about possible treatments for covid-19. |
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Live updates
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Today's top reads
Find more stories, analysis and op-eds about the outbreak on our coronavirus page, including:
- An investigation into a Washington nursing home that failed to flag illnesses until it was too late
- What it's like in Antarctica right now, "the safest place in the world"
- Scientists are stumbling over the differing ways states report their cases
- The accomplishments of celebrated playwright Terrence McNally, who died of coronavirus complications
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'Coronavirus Rhapsody'
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