Data Snapshot
UW Medicine Hospitals:
King County: The county reported 42 new positive cases and 2 new deaths on June 3.
Washington: The state reported 22,792 cases and 1,138 deaths as of June 3. A total of 383,587 people have been tested and 5.9% of those tests have been positive.
United States: The CDC reports 1,842,101 cases and 107,729 deaths as of June 4.
Global: WHO reports 6,416,828 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 382,867 deaths as of June 4.
*Numbers update frequently, please follow links for most up-to-date numbers.
Need to Know
UW School of Medicine Department of Global Health: New Daily Newsletter Provides COVID-19 Literature Situation Report
“The UW MetaCenter for Pandemic Preparedness and Global Health Security has released a new daily newsletter that provides a succinct summary of the latest scientific literature related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Each day, there is a firehose of new scientific information emerging about COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2. This initiative is an attempt to focus that hose to highlight new findings that are most relevant to the public health response. To that end, a team of University of Washington graduate students and faculty from the Schools of Public Health and Medicine, led by Brandon Guthrie, PhD, and Jennifer Ross, MD, MPH, will be providing a report that includes brief summaries of 10-15 articles that they judge to have the highest public health relevance, along with additional links to pertinent commentaries and other resources. Each citation will include a link to the original article.”
The Associated Press: Six counties have applied to move to Phase 3 of reopening
“Under new guidance issued last week, since Monday, counties can apply to move to the next phase or to add new business activity, with the applications assessed on several targets, including whether the counties have had fewer than 25 new cases per 100,000 residents over a two-week period. A county that is still not eligible to advance beyond the first phase can apply for a “modified” Phase 1. King County — the state’s most populous county and home to Seattle — announced Wednesday it has submitted an application that would allow for all outdoor recreation permitted in Phase 2, expand opening indoor fitness studios for one-on-one activities, allow restaurants to begin opening indoor seating at 25% of normal capacity and allow hair stylists and other personal services at 25% capacity.”
UW Medicine in the News
Geek Wire: Health experts seek to balance community concerns and coronavirus concerns
Featuring: Youyang Gu, UW Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation; Trevor Bedford, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and affiliate assistant professor, Genome Sciences
“Public health officials for Seattle and King County today acknowledged the seriousness of the crisis sparked by last week’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other confrontations across the country — and said the continuing coronavirus pandemic is making the situation more difficult. ‘We understand the difficult choices that people were faced with this past weekend,’ Public Health – Seattle & King County said today in a blog posting. ‘Many in our community grappled with attending protests to stand up against these injustices while also wanting to keep our community safe from further spread of COVID-19.”’
The New England Journal of Medicine: Swabs Collected by Patients or Health Care Workers for SARS-CoV-2 Testing
Featuring: Gerard A. Cangelosi, PhD, Global Health, UW School of Medicine
“Our study shows the clinical usefulness of tongue, nasal, or mid-turbinate samples collected by patients as compared with nasopharyngeal samples collected by health care workers for the diagnosis of Covid-19. Adoption of techniques for sampling by patients can reduce PPE use and provide a more comfortable patient experience. Our analysis was cross-sectional, performed in a single geographic region, and limited to single comparisons with the results of nasopharyngeal sampling, which is not a perfect standard test. Despite these limitations, we think that patient collection of samples for SARS-CoV-2 testing from sites other than the nasopharynx is a useful approach during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
The Qatar Tribune: The Multifaceted Road To Recovery For COVID-19 Patients
Featuring: Catherine Hough, MD, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine
“AT the time of writing, more than one million people across the world have recovered from COVID-19. Other statistics suggest that approximately 85 percent of patients with mild symptoms recover within two weeks and without the need for hospitalization. That said, no two journeys back to full health are the same, particularly when it comes to those who unfortunately require intensive treatment for this novel coronavirus. Clinical reports coming out of China and Italy suggest that 50 percent of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 require no further action upon recovery. Of the rest, 45 percent will receive low-level medical or social intervention, with a further 5 percent requiring more focused rehabilitation. Generally, the longer an individual experiences the symptoms of COVID-19, the longer it will take to recover.”
Spokane Public Radio: Coronavirus Alters Summer Clinical Experiences For UW’s Spokane Medical Students
Featuring: John McCarthy, assistant dean for Rural Programs, UW School of Medicine; Geoff Jones, assistant clinical dean for Eastern and Central Washington, UW School of Medicine.
“During the summers after their first years, UW medical students have several options. Go overseas and work on global health projects. Create and carry out their own research projects. Or go to a small town somewhere in the West and spend a month working in a clinical setting. That’s where students get their first real opportunities to do ‘hands-on’ exams with patients. But COVID-19 has complicated things. The medical school plans to minimize the physical contact students have with patients. ‘Not being able to listen to the heart or look at the sore throat, those are real limitations that affect the choices of medicine’s diagnosis, therapies that are going to be employed,’ said Dr. John McCarthy, the UW School of Medicine’s assistant dean for rural programs. He says students will learn to put more emphasis on interviewing patients and discovering their medical histories. ‘We’re going to train them in terms of how to do digital or telephonic visits, video visits, so that they can have exposure to what I think is going to be a stable force in medicine going forward,’ McCarthy said.”
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