July 15, 2020 - a podcast by COVID19LST

On today's episode we discuss:

— Climate:  A group of interdisciplinary health professionals analyzed data on the spread of COVID-19 in 239 affected meat and poultry processing facilities and found that COVID-19 was confirmed in 16,233 workers with 86 related deaths. In the states reporting each figure, 9.1% of all workers had confirmed COVID-19 and 87% of cases occurred among racial and ethnic minority workers highlighting the need for focused preventive measures for these groups to decrease health disparities and occupational risks related to COVID-19.

— Understanding the Pathology:  A group of researchers utilized rapid antibody discovery to isolate 389 recombinant SARS-CoV-2-reactive human monoclonal antibodies isolated from 4 SARS-CoV-2-infected patients and 1 healthy donor. They tested antibody binding and neutralizing potency against SARS-CoV-2 and found that those recognizing the viral S glycoprotein effectively neutralized the virus. These findings suggest a target site for vaccine and antibody treatment development and identify monoclonal antibody isolates as potential biologics to prevent or treat SARS-CoV-2 infection.

— Management:  A review of several randomized control trials investigating the efficacy of Remdesivir treatment for SARS-CoV-2 infection found that in comparison to a placebo, Remdesivir showed reduced mortality and improved recovery time for hospitalized patients requiring low-flow oxygen but was ineffective for patients requiring high-flow or invasive mechanical ventilation. The authors suggest these results may indicate that Remdesivir could be a key pharmacological therapy for moderately-ill hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

— R&D Diagnosis and Treatment:  Tulane University researchers present their CRISPR-based assay to diagnose SARS-CoV-2 infection, proposing that its benefits over traditional RT-PCR include an improved sample-to-answer time of roughly 50 minutes and that it does not require specialized laboratory reagents. They report the limit of detection of their CRISPR-based assays was 2 copies of the target RNA sequence--comparable to that of the gold-standard qPCR of 5 copies per test.

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