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Here are the coronavirus stories Medscape editors around the world think you need to know today.
# 3 Cause of death
More than 170,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States since the start of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, making it the third leading cause of death in the country, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thomas Frieden, MD, told CNN.
“COVID is now the third leading cause of death in the United States – ahead of accidents, injuries, lung disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and many other causes,” Frieden said.
In 2017, the most recent year for which public data is available, nearly 170,000 Americans died from accidents and unintentional injuries, 160,000 died from chronic lower respiratory diseases, 146,000 died from stroke cerebral and cerebrovascular disease, 121,000 died of Alzheimer’s disease, 83,000 died of diabetes and 55,000 died of the flu and pneumonia. The two leading causes of death were heart disease, with nearly 650,000 deaths, and cancer, which killed nearly 600,000.
Mutation spreads
A particular strain of SARS-CoV-2 has reached Southeast Asia. Scientists have found the strain, called D614G, in the Philippines in recent outbreaks in China and in a Malaysian cluster of 45 cases from a person who had traveled to India and failed to follow quarantine rules at his return.
The D614G variant has become the most common in the world, according to a research report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in June. So far, the WHO has said there is no evidence that the mutation made the virus more infectious or that it led to more serious illness. Scientists are studying these questions, but the answers are not yet clear.
Evidence of thyroid effects
Thyrotoxicosis rates are significantly higher in patients with severe COVID-19 than in critically ill patients who do not have COVID-19, suggesting an atypical form of thyroiditis linked to the novel coronavirus infection, according to new research.
The study did not find that thyroid disorders increased the risk of developing COVID-19.
“This study joins at least six others who have reported a clinical presentation resembling subacute thyroiditis in critically ill patients with COVID-19,” said an expert who was not involved in the research.
HCQ and COVID-19: Newspaper gets stung and quickly retracts
Two scientists submitted an article titled “SARS-CoV-2 Was Unexpectedly Deadlier Than Push Scooters: Could Hydroxychloroquine Be the Only Solution?” to the Asian Journal of Medicine and Health, which they and others suspect to be a predatory publication, as a prick to see if the newspaper would take their money and publish the article, which they wrote as a joke.
Their goal: to highlight a disturbing article that the journal had previously published titled “Azithromycin and Hydroxychloroquine Accelerate Recovery of Ambulatory Patients with Mild / Moderate COVID-19”, whose authors included several supporters of the hydroxychloroquine, including a member of the French parliament.
It worked, Retraction watch reports. “The aim was indeed to focus attention on predatory journals and also on scientists using these methods to make the general public believe that their studies are serious because they are published,” explains one of the authors.
Las Vegas “plays with lives”
Las Vegas casinos, which reopened on June 4, are likely a hotbed for the spread of COVID-19, ProPublica reports. An analysis of cell phone location data conducted for the news organization showed how visitors to Las Vegas in a single 4-day period in mid-July traveled across the country in all states of the United States. 48 lower, with the exception of Maine.
Contact tracing is difficult enough, but it is virtually impossible when tourists return home from across the country if the local health agencies that trace the contacts do not communicate with each other. If a cluster outbreak or widespread event were to occur among visitors to a casino, contact tracing is unlikely to catch it, an expert has said.
Casinos also combine several factors that make them high-risk places for the spread of COVID-19: they are indoors, are often crowded, and are often crowded with risk-inclined people.
In memory
As frontline health workers care for patients with COVID-19, they engage in difficult and exhausting work and also put themselves at risk of infection. Thousands of people around the world have died.
Medscape has published a commemorative list to commemorate them. We will continue to update this list if unfortunately necessary. Please help us ensure this list is complete by submitting names with age, profession or specialty and location through this form.
If you have any other pandemic experiences, stories or concerns you would like to share, please join the conversation here.
Ellie Kincaid is the associate editor of Medscape. She previously wrote on healthcare for Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Nature Medicine. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @ellie_kincaid.
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