4:41 PM 7/12/2020 - Russia has developed world's first Covid-19 vaccine, British, German, Chinese, and other Studies state that the Immunity falls sharply within the first two to several months and the reinfections are seen.
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Russia has developed world's first Covid-19 vaccine, British, German, Chinese, and other Studies state that the Immunity falls sharply within the first two to several months and the reinfections are seen. - 4:41 PM 7/12/2020
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| Google Alert - coronavirus vaccine: Study lowers hopes for coronavirus vaccine | ||
Study lowers hopes for coronavirus vaccine. A study by scientists in Munich (southern Germany) suggests that antibodies to the new coronavirus only ... |
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| Russia has developed world's first Covid-19 vaccine, working on special one for kids | |||||||
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| Google Alert - coronavirus immunity: Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests | |||||||
Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests. Exclusive: King's College London team found steep drops in patients' antibody ... | |||||||
| Study lowers hopes for coronavirus vaccine | |||||||
© DR Study lowers hopes for coronavirus vaccine A study by scientists in Munich (southern Germany) suggests that antibodies to the new coronavirus only stay in the body for a few months, lowering hopes for an effective vaccine or long-term immunity.
Tests on patients treated at the Schwabing clinic in Munich have shown a significant drop in the number of so-called neutralizing antibodies in the body, said a consultant to the hospitals infectious disease department, Clemens Wendtner.
In four of our nine patients, we found a drop in neutralizing antibodies in a special test that can only be done in a high-security laboratory, he added. The impact on long-term immunity and vaccination strategies remains speculative, but this needs to be monitored, he continued.
The results suggest that recovered patients may be infected with Covid-19 again, although other tests have yet to confirm.
The bodys immune response is made up of B cells, which secrete antibodies, and T cells, which are able to recognize and kill previously detected antigens. Both are necessary for long-term immunity.
Dr. Wendtners findings are consistent with other studies around the world.
Chinese researchers had reported in the journal Nature that the presence of antibodies to the coronavirus in the blood decreased sharply after two months. This is especially the case for asymptomatic patients, who have produced fewer antibodies and a weaker immune response.
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| 3:40 PM 7/12/2020 - White supremacist violence in the U.S. is on the rise, with a sharp increase in deadly incidents over the last five years. | |||||||
White supremacist violence in the U.S. is on the rise, with a sharp increase in deadly incidents over the last five years. (From @NewsHour) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/should-the-u-s-designate-racial-violence-as-terrorism/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_campaign=newshour&utm_content=1594562423
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| 3:12 PM 7/12/2020 - Wuhan scientists 'defecting to West' as FBI gathers evidence coronavirus pandemic WAS caused by an accidental leak | |||||||
 Wuhan scientists 'defecting to West' as FBI gathers evidence coronavirus pandemic WAS caused by an accidental leak ______________________________________________________________________ 3:12 PM 7/12/2020 Michael Novakhov - SharedNewsLinks | InBrief | - -
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| Hiding COVID-19s origins - Opinion - Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise | |||||||
China is determined to block investigations of where COVID-19 came from. But worse, influential American scientists are going along with censoring any inquiry. Theyre declaring their solidarity with the scientists and health professionals of China.
Thats a deadly problem. Conquering this virus and devising a vaccine will require unbiased research, no matter where it leads. The best weapon to fight this virus is the truth. The biggest mistake is to limit scientific inquiry and pander to China. We need scientists to be scientists, not political censors.
When Australia called for a formal inquiry into the pandemics origins, China explicitly threatened to boycott Australian imports, slapping 80% tariffs on barley and restrictions on beef. Countries got the message. The World Health Assembly, the legislative arm of WHO, settled for a watered-down resolution to investigate the global response to COVID-19, not its origins.
What we dont know about COVID-19 far exceeds what little is known. But research has already forced China to abandon its original tale that the virus leaped from wild animals to a human at the Huanan Seafood market in December. Some of these new findings will be essential for developing a vaccine and troubleshooting future viral disasters.
Findings by Cambridge University geneticist Peter Forster indicate three different strains of COVID-19 were circulating in China in the summer of 2019, each later predominating in a different part of the world.
Researchers from the University of British Columbia and the Broad Institute, a Harvard and MIT affiliate, indicate the virus was already capable of spreading to humans when it reached Wuhan.
Harvard scientists using aerial photographs of crammed hospital parking lots in Wuhan beginning in August 2019 speculate the virus hit that city months before China admits. China calls that suggestion ridiculous.
European scientists indicate the disease invaded France, and possibly Italy, by December, though at the time it was thought to be flu.
Most controversially, a new study in Cambridge Universitys QRB Discovery by three vaccine researchers points to a segment in the viruss genetic code they say may have been engineered in a lab. They argue that the addition is what makes the virus contagious to humans, in addition to wild animals like bats.
These leads need to be investigated further, but instead, they are being denounced as conspiracy theories. Not just by the Chinese Communist Party, but also by many scientists from prestigious American universities.
On Jan. 31, the World Health Organization praised China for transparency, a lie because they knew China was withholding information.
Then, on Feb. 19, scientists from the University of Chicago, Emory University and other institutions signed a letter in Lancet supporting the WHO director generals call for unity with China and condemning any research suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.
They overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife. How could they know so soon?
The EcoHealth Alliance blasted the hypothesis of a lab-engineered genetic component as the latest chapter in a tale of blame, misinformation, and finger pointing and warned it could become a platform for posturing against China ... trade sanctions, and even reparations.
ABC News medical correspondents claimed that virologists around the globe have fiercely debunked the theory. Many attacked it, for sure, but hardly disproved it.
Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, and scientists writing a critique in the journal Nature Medicine argue that if the new coronavirus had been manufactured in a lab, scientists most likely would have used the backbones of coronaviruses already known to cause serious diseases in humans rather than inventing something new. Most likely? Thats a guess, not proof.
Watch this quick video to find out more
On the other hand, infectivity can be the result of naturally occurring mutations. Scripps Research virologists reported June 12 that the COVID-19 virus currently circulating in the U.S. has mutated to be more contagious.
What we know is the virus was spreading months before China disclosed it and did not originate in Wuhan, contrary to Chinas original claim. Now we need to search for the uncensored truth.
Betsy McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York. Contact her at betsy@betsymccaughey.com.
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| Getting Covid-19 twice: Why I think my patient was reinfected | |||||||
Wait. I can catch Covid twice? my 50-year-old patient asked in disbelief. It was the beginning of July, and he had just tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, for a second time three months after a previous infection.
While theres still much we dont understand about immunity to this new illness, a small but growing number of cases like his suggest the answer is yes.
Covid-19 may also be much worse the second time around. During his first infection, my patient experienced a mild cough and sore throat. His second infection, in contrast, was marked by a high fever, shortness of breath, and hypoxia, resulting in multiple trips to the hospital.
Recent reports and conversations with physician colleagues suggest my patient is not alone. Two patients in New Jersey, for instance, appear to have contracted Covid-19 a second time almost two months after fully recovering from their first infection.
It is possible, but unlikely, that my patient had a single infection that lasted three months. Some Covid-19 patients (now dubbed long haulers) do appear to suffer persistent infections and symptoms.
My patient, however, cleared his infection he had two negative PCR tests after his first infection and felt healthy for nearly six weeks.
I believe it is far more likely that my patient fully recovered from his first infection, then caught Covid-19 a second time after being exposed to a young adult family member with the virus. He was unable to get an antibody test after his first infection, so we do not know whether his immune system mounted an effective antibody response or not.
Regardless, the limited research so far on recovered Covid-19 patients shows that not all patients develop antibodies after infection. Some patients, and particularly those who never develop symptoms, mount an antibody response immediately after infection only to have it wane quickly afterward an issue of increasing scientific concern.
Whats more, repeat infections in a short time period are a feature of many viruses, including other coronaviruses. So if some Covid-19 patients are getting reinfected after a second exposure, it would not be particularly unusual.
In general, the unknowns of immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 currently outweigh the knowns. We do not know how much immunity to expect once someone is infected with the virus, we do not know how long that immunity may last, and we do not know how many antibodies are needed to mount an effective response. And although there is some hope regarding cellular immunity (including T-cell responses) in the absence of a durable antibody response, the early evidence of reinfections puts the effectiveness of these immune responses in question as well.
Also troubling is that my patients case, and others like his, may dim the hope for natural herd immunity. Herd immunity depends on the theory that our immune systems, once exposed to a pathogen, will collectively protect us as a community from reinfection and further spread.
There are several pathways out of this pandemic, including safe, effective, and available therapeutics and vaccines, as well as herd immunity (or some combination thereof).
Experts generally consider natural herd immunity a worst-case scenario back-up plan. It requires mass infection (and, in the case of Covid-19, massive loss of life because of the diseases fatality rate) before protection takes hold. Herd immunity was promoted by experts in Sweden and (early on in the pandemic) in the UK, with devastating results.
Still, the dream of herd immunity, and the protection of a Covid-19 infection, or a positive antibody test, promise to provide, have taken hold among the public. As the collective reasoning has gone, the silver lining of surviving a Covid-19 infection (without debilitating side effects) is twofold: Survivors will not get infected again, nor will they pose a threat of passing the virus to their communities, workplaces, and loved ones.
While recent studies and reports have already questioned our ability to achieve herd immunity, our national discourse retains an implicit hope that herd immunity is possible. In recent weeks, leading medical experts have implied that the current surge in cases might lead to herd immunity by early 2021, and a July 6 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal was similarly optimistic.
This wishful thinking is harmful. It risks incentivizing bad behavior. The rare but concerning Covid parties, where people are gathering to deliberately get infected with the virus, and large gatherings without masks, are considered by some to be the fastest way out of the pandemic, personally and as a community. Rather than trying to wish ourselves out of scientific realities, we must acknowledge the mounting evidence that challenges these ideas.
In my opinion, my patients experience serves as a warning sign on several fronts.
First, the trajectory of a moderate initial infection followed by a severe reinfection suggests that this novel coronavirus might share some tendencies of other viruses such as dengue fever, where you can suffer more severe illness each time you contract the disease.
Second, despite scientific hopes for either antibody-mediated or cellular immunity, the severity of my patients second bout with Covid-19 suggests that such responses may not be as robust as we hope.
Third, many people may let their guard down after being infected, because they believe they are either immune or incapable of contributing to community spread. As my patients case demonstrates, these assumptions risk both their own health and the health of those near them.
Last, if reinfection is possible on such a short timeline, there are implications for the efficacy and durability of vaccines developed to fight the disease.
I am aware that my patient represents a sample size of one, but taken together with other emerging examples, outlier stories like his are a warning sign of a potential pattern. If my patient is not, in fact, an exception, but instead proves the rule, then many people could catch Covid-19 more than once, and with unpredictable severity.
With no certainty of personal immunity nor relief through herd immunity, the hard work of beating this pandemic together continues. Our efforts must go beyond simply waiting for effective treatments and vaccines. They must include continued prevention through the use of medically proven face masks, face shields, hand washing, and physical distancing, as well as wide-scale testing, tracing, and isolation of new cases.
This is a novel disease: Learning curves are steep, and we must pay attention to the inconvenient truths as they arise. Natural herd immunity is almost certainly beyond our grasp. We cannot place our hopes on it.
D. Clay Ackerly, MD, MSc is an internal medicine and primary care physician practicing in Washington, DC.
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| Join or Die: How COVID-19 Forces More Healthcare Consolidation | |||||||
Hospital systems and primary care physician practices were consolidating before the onslaught of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The internationally known and respected healthcare expert Brent James, MD, talks to Infection Control Today® about how COVID-19 now makes it a question of survival. James, a clinical professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, was at one time the chief quality officer and executive director of the Institute for Health Care Delivery Research at Intermountain Healthcare. He knows about both the provider and the health plan side, in other words. And the provider side is bleeding revenue mostly because of missed routine care and postponed elective surgeries. COVID has consumed the resources of the health system in the vast majority of communities.
Infection Control Today®: COVID-19 has forced people to put off routine care and elective surgeries. Where do you think thats going to lead?
Brent James, MD: Well, a couple of ideas. First, I serve on a number of national health policy groups. And weve actually been calling in real experts to discuss exactly these topics, whats happening out there on a broad scale. In that framework, the next thing to be said, it differs from community to community. So, among those likely to be listening to this video, one experience may not reflect all experiences across the entire board. On the other hand, theres some markers that will help people see. Heres the first big one. Turns out that primary care and standalone specialty care has taken a real hit with COVID. Visit rates have dropped dramatically. Its not just the physician practices, small hospitals have taken a real hit too. So, heres my first prediction. Youve all seen in your communities the rate of consolidation. Smaller practices, independent practices join in larger systems. That has been happening. Its accelerating. The reason is, is that those practices and those hospitals have no choice. A number of them face going out of business, even with the loans the governments giving today. Its going to be a shift. On the other hand this is really not a new thing. Its an acceleration of an old thing. Some of the communities of your readers are going to be so far down this it will make very little difference. For others, it could really pick up the pace.
ICT®: Will there be layoffs with for healthcare workers because of that?
James: Potentially, I think when you consolidate services, especially at the administrative level, that can always happen. Also, to a lesser degree, at the specialty levels. Now, therell be some compensating factors. Youre right in thinking in those directions, that kind of large systemness. At one level, it protects people. But at another level, it only protects people who are part of the system. You see what I mean? Its going to concentrate.
ICT®: Has anybody come up with any ideas about what to do about this?
James: I dont know if its something that we do anything about. Its something thats just going to happen. But you can tell in your own community, how fast. Now theres a second element behind that. There has been a very remarkable slowdown in elective services. Many hospitals, of course, have taken a real hit by losing those services. Frankly, in a few communities, COVID has consumed the resources of the health system in the vast majority of communities. Its partly based on fear among patients. People who should have been coming in arent well. As you would expect, as it normalizes a bit, as people get more experienced, the fears go away, and those rates are starting to come back up. Now, the other problem, of course, is that COVID and the shutdown have been associated with a major economic downturn. Here would be my advice to your readers. It will be about like 2008. Weve been through major economic downturns before him. You lived through them. Ive lived through them. We know what happens in the long haul. It will be mostly like that. We know how to make our way through them. Again, it differs from community to community. But I think that if you think of it that way, think of it as a major economic downturn. Was it a bit anomalous? Sure. The reason is, is it just cut off cold. But now most places are opening back up. There's still a bit of fear of people being afraid to come back and put themselves at what they see as at risk in a healthcare delivery environment. I think that will normalize pretty quickly. In fact, thats one of our problems right now is maybe its normalizing too quickly, especially among younger patients. Theyre not obeying the social distancing rules, the masking rules that would really help us out moving forward. But we know how to manage that. I think thats a second thing right there. I treat it as a major economic downturn. Weve lived through those before and we kind of know how they behave in our communities.
ICT®: Are you hearing from your business associates in private industry that they might hire infection preventionists or at least depend on IP expertise?
James: Thats the third area. I really wanted to talk about. I think that most infection control specialists, they have training that others do not have. Now Im a biostatistician. As part of that Im trained in epidemiology. Its just a background. Lets just say Ive been pulling out of my closet and spinning up to full speed basic infection control principles at a population level. It means a certain amount of Bayesian analysis. Frankly, I need to resurrect sensitivity and specificity. The idea of a positive predictive value. I need to be able to share those with people. I see that happening at several levels. The first, of course, is just how do you control the spread of this diseasethis specific diseasein the general population. I realized that many of us dont have our hands strictly on those controls, but holy cow, I get hit on that every day. I bet that your readers do, too, on a regular basis, because they have that specialized expertise. The second thing, Ive been amazed at how many care delivery groupsthose physicians and nursesthey want guidelines. And theyre a little confused about where to find the right guidelines, you see. Theres a third area: Where is it going next? Looking forward, well, it means that Ive had to spin myself up. I keep fairly careful track of that literature. I find trusted sources. Oh, theres so much information all over the board, on the Internet, from various news agencies, and so much of it is just, frankly, wrong, just bad. And what people are really looking for is a trusted voice. Even if youre not in direct control of the response to that system, people need your voice. But it means that a certain amount of preparation along the way so that youre able to speak authoritatively and help people see a path through the thicket. Now, this isnt going to be the last one. COVIDs just the current one. Its a wonderful opportunity. There are so many other common infectious diseases that take a major toll every year. Maybe this is an opportunity to expand the good that we can do in a community at this time, given that people are finally listening a bit. I hear a lot of people saying that we really need to expand public health. What do they mean? Seems to me that wed have a large voice in defining not just their future, but our future, as those conversations take place in our communities.
ICT®: Do you have an idea of what direction youd like to see public health going?
James: I think that we knew in the past, how to handle a major epidemic. Its very clear that because the time between was so long we dropped the ball. Theres no question. Here in Utah, I have a former Secretary of HHS, we spend a little time together from time to timeMike Leavitt. He was there during SARS-1. And hearing Secretary Leavitt talk about what we learned with SARS-1. And then how frankly, the Bush administration was on top of it, the Obama administration actually lowballed that, they took money out of it to support the ACA insurance expansion program. I thought that was a major policy mistake at the time. Turns out it was. The Trump administration, of course, did not follow through and pull it back. And then we find ourselves a day late and $1 short when the real crisis hit. So, heres an opportunity to lay some foundation for the next one. We know how, but it takes leadership. And its not just at a national level. Its done at your local level. Whos the voice thats going to help people understand that moving forward in your community.
ICT®: What about the insurers? How are they doing these days?
James: Theyre standing on the sidelines a little bit. They have pluses and minuses. Their payments for COVID patients are up but frankly, for insurance, general use of services are down so much that most of them are doing quite well financially. Its a a bit of a mixed bag for them, but for most of them, this has been a little bit of a financial windfall. I dont see them. Maybe this is just my bias as a physician. Ive never seen insurance companies really leading in this site. Its not their natural sweet spot typically. Its not how they typically think about their role.
ICT®: How do they typically think about their role?
James: They think about it as supplying funding for healthcare and making sure that only necessary services are provided. They do a series of important functions. One is transaction processing, claims processing. Surprisingly difficult. They do actuarial risk analysis to figure out how to price. They do network formation. Theres a series of things that they do. The thing they dont do is deliver care.
ICT®: Has any country in the world handled this right?
James: Theres a clear winner to my mind in the world. And not just mine, a number of our colleagues who watch these things, too. Taiwan. Taiwans done it right. They are a wonderful example of doing it right. South Korea was doing well. They got surprised. Singapore was doing surprisingly well. They left a hole in their defenses and their immigrant worker population in large dormitories and high rate of spread. Outside of that theyre a pretty program. There are countries like New Zealand that have done very, very well. We have to remember, theyre an island in the ocean, and they can close their borders. So, theyre kind of a special case. But Taiwan, a short distance from China. Massive amount of travel. Early-on exposure. They learned from SARS-1. They were ready. They were ready with testing and were ready with contact tracing. Theyve had less than 200 deaths in a population of around 24 million. Its dramatically different from the experience of the rest of the world. So thats the one to study. Right there. They had some special factors in their culture, wearing a mask was already really common. As it turns out, COVID-19 is mostly spread through respiratory droplets. Its an upper respiratory infection. Mostly through respiratory droplets as a main route. And, so, masks are effective. Of course, most masksthe way people mostly wear themits not effective in protecting yourself. Its just effective in protecting others. That was part of their society. People before this happened routinely wore masks. It was an easy step. Their contact tracing. Lets just say they may not have quite the sensitivity to human rights that we have. They did a great job of identifying and isolating potential infectors. Theyre the one to study.
ICT®: Lets circle back to what you said about hospital systems. As were going through a situation where when we need more healthcare workers, they seem to be getting laid off.
James: So, people will get laid off, first of all, to answer your question, but we need to be more precise than that. Its what kind of healthcare workers will get laid off. You said hospitals and hospital services. I think theyre going to mostly come back. So, people associated with hospital services, it will take a while for it to swing back. Currently, most hospitals are reopening their doors, they have a backlog. We call it elective, but its really hard to draw a hard, black line between essential and non-essential surgical services. Maybe we can delay, but that doesnt mean theyre not essential. So, they have a bit of a backlog and theyve been working it off. So those services are coming back nicely. We need to wait until the population at needalso sometimes the population at risk, particularly the elderlyfeel confident coming back into a healthcare setting. So, part of the problem is just fear in the patient population. But I predict over time thats probably going to ameliorate. It typically does. And as that happens, well actually be working off a bit of a backlog for a while, but itll come back up over time. Again, remember though, anytime weve had a major economic downturn, theres a drop in demand for healthcare services: 2008 was a pretty strong one. That one is a good experience. Thats close enough in our recent history that most of us remember it. We know what it was like. Weve seen it. Well, here it comes again. And its probably a pretty good model. The anomaly is of course, with COVID, it shut us down cold. That was a little bit different, but I think thats a temporary phenomenon thats now starting to sweep back up. But the economic downturn; thats going to be with us for a while.
ICT®: What did former Secretary Leavitt had to say about all this?
James: He basically said what I just said and he published it, by the way. It was testimony to Senator Lamar Alexanders Committee on Health, Education Labor and Pensions. You get him and his staff. It wasnt just Governor Leavitt. They have strong opinions about it. But it had to do with careful central coordination and planning. By this point, we know that the initial modeling was off. So, it was a wiser approach to how we modeled. It was having the necessary supplies. It was a clear consistent message down to the states and to the people of the United States about whats high risk, whats not high risk. You dont want to trust those kinds of things to the news media. The news media is not a reliable source of information. And then, of course, the supplies, a properly coordinated response. But of course, Mike Leavitt would have started this probably in November, December of last year. Thats when we were first getting a signal.
ICT®: What surprised you most about this whole thing? Is there something that sticks out in your mind?
James: Things that I, and not just me, but any trained epidemiologist should see as obvious. You know, as a statistician, we call them proportional hazards models. That means theres not just one risk. Theres a human tendency, probably evolutionarily built into us, that we focus on the one big threatthat saber-toothed tiger thats about to eat us, right? Well, COVID is kind of a slow tiger that eats us a little bit at a time. But the fact is, is even as you focus on that threat, you shouldnt lose track of the other threats. And thats my biggest disappointment. People that should have known better focused just on this one threat. I thought our national leadership should have been a little bit broader in their application. There are real health risks associated with this that arent directly from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. I wish that we had been broader in our understanding.
ICT®: Could you give us some examples?
James: Heres one thats topical for me because I get involved in health policy level nationally. We were talking an awful lot about the social determinants of health. Social networks, access to care, access to safe housing, food, water, a whole series of things like that. We knew that they were associated with major significant health risks. Associated with mortality rates. We were trying to call attention to it. Well, it turns out that damage to social determinants of health is associated with a major economic downturn. So, SARS-2 hits the streets, we shut down our economy. People lose jobs. We try to backfill with government programs, but a little bit unsuccessfully. We havent seen the end of it yet. But we werent considering the health consequences of the economic downturn. Its not about the money, at least not directly. Its about the lives. And youre balancing these two and how do you balance the back and forth? Its that kind of a conversation. Now to really have that conversation takes some real training and expertise. But then how do we tap the kind of training expertise as well? How do we make that available to people so that it reduces the fear levels? It gives people a clear path forward to a greater degree. They know whats safe, they know whats dangerous. They dont see just the one risk, they see the other risks too, so they can kind of balance them out. And that means we respond more intelligently. We respond more wisely, than we have.
ICT®: And the social determinants of health have come into play in this epidemic, too.
James: Oh, heavens, yes. And were seeing it especially in underserved populations. They have higher risk factors to begin with in terms of comorbid diseases, obesity, other risk factors directly associated with social determinants of health. They have poor access to the health system. So, we see disproportionate mortality rates in African American communities, for example. If you look at the way that those diseases play out, that was completely predictable.
ICT®: Is there anything youd like to add, Doctor James?
James: Ill give you one thing. OK. This comes from some of the national groups in which I participate. Im really hopingboth fingers crossed, and it would take a minor miraclebut what Im hearing is to really have an effective vaccine could take two, three or four years. The earliest we would probably have it is at the end of 2021. Now, its not just developing a vaccine that actually works and testing it and showing that it works. The complications associated with it. Its getting it available at scale. Its getting a good distribution network, picking the populations that are higher or highest risk. Therell be all sorts of hype around this coming up. The best expertise that Ive been able to find suggests that probably its two to three years out. Now we could get lucky. Lets hope for it right? What will happen short term is far better treatment. We already have readily available steroids that weve used forever that seem to stop cytokine storm and get better outcomes for people with the most serious disease. What Im hearing is, around November or December, monoclonal antibodies will be available at scale that could be a game-changer in terms of treatment of the disease. Now, the reason I mentioned this, I believe that your constituency, infectious disease doctors know about this stuff, they know how to track it. Again, its supplying that expert voice by tracking those things so that people have a realistic expectation about what comes next and how they need to behave. This is within our reach, but it does take some specialized training, a little bit of wisdom along the way. Where do we turn for wisdom? Where do we turn for knowledge? Some groups it seems to me are heading shoulders above the rest. So, guys, get out there and get to work.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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| More than half of people infected with Covid-19 dont know source, CDC | |||||||
A new survey from the Centers for Disease Control found that 54% of people who tested positive for Covid-19 couldnt pinpoint how they contracted the virus. The remaining 46% of respondents could recall having close contact with a person commonly a family member or coworker who was also diagnosed with Covid-19.
These findings are very concerning, and suggest that people are likely contracting Covid-19 from people in their community who are asymptomatic, Dr. Joshua Barocas, infectious disease physician and assistant professor at Boston University School of Medicine, said in an Infectious Disease Society of America briefing Wednesday.
Weve seen that asymptomatic a disease is incredibly common, not just in what we would classify as low-risk populations, but also in high-risk populations, such as people who live in shared settings or those with underlying health conditions, Barocas said.
And if there is a high level of asymptomatic spread in a community it also makes contact-tracing incredibly difficult, Barocas said, which is an important tool in fighting the pandemic.
So what does that mean for you?
Act as though those around you are infectedKeep receipts of where you go and who youre with
Keep track of anyone who you did have sustained contact with, such as someone who visited your home or a person who was with you in a car. (Quick interactions, like saying hi on the sidewalk, are not relevant.) Also keep reminders, like receipts, of anywhere youve shopped, eaten out or spent time.
Thats to help with contact tracing, which is the process of identifying people who have been exposed to someone who is infectious, Dr. Emily Gurley, an infectious disease epidemiologist and associate scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health previously told CNBC Make It. Youre trying to let them know so that they can change their behavior and not unknowingly or inadvertently infect anybody else, she says.
A trained contact tracer will ask an infected person questions about where they went, and who they interacted with, and relying simply on memory leaves more room for error. The contact tracer will then contact those people and inform them that they may have been exposed to the virus.
But contact tracing in the U.S. is not going well, White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNBCs Meg Tirrell in an interview June 26. There are about 27,000 or 28,000 contact tracers working in the U.S. currently, but an estimated 100,000 are necessary, Redfield testified last week.
Even when people can identify a contact, that person may not answer the call from a contact tracer, Dr. Ricardo Franco, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in the briefing. And in some cases, your contact is going to be your anonymous door handle or gas pump handle, he said.
Contact tracing apps that have been successful in other countries could mitigate some of the challenges that the U.S. faces, he added.
In the absence of effective contact-tracing measures, the best thing you can do is limit the amount of exposure you have to others. Part of a contact tracers job is to help you remember who youve spent time with and where youve been, Gurley said. Of course, the fewer people youre exposed to and places you visit, the easier it is to do that.
Get tested
The survey authors say that this finding highlights the need for increased screening, case investigation, contact tracing, and isolation of infected persons during periods of community transmission.
In discussing contact-tracing flaws, Fauci said its time to rethink the idea of many more tests getting into the community and even pooling tests. Pooling tests is a strategy that involves testing samples from multiple people in a single batch.
The difficult thing is were always behind the virus, because it can take up to 14 days for an infected person to display symptoms, Dr. Ricardo Franco, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in the briefing Wednesday. However, more widespread testing and active surveillance (such as temperature checks and group testing) of the virus would give more insight into how many people are infected, including those who are asymptomatic.
If you have symptoms of Covid-19 (a fever, cough or shortness of breath), or if you dont have symptoms but youve been in close contact with someone who was infected with the virus, the Centers for Disease Control suggests you should get tested for the Covid-19 virus.
Antibody tests, which look for levels of Covid-19 antibodies in your blood, can also be very useful because they can help illustrate how many people in a specific community were infected, Dr. Saad Omer, director of Yale Institute for Global Health and professor of medicine in infectious diseases at Yale School of Medicine, previously told CNBC Make It.
However, given the dynamic nature of the Covid-19 virus, and the unreliability of antibody test results, its important to remember that a test only provides a snapshot of your status at one point in time. Theres no harm in getting tested, as long as you interpret [the results] very sufficiently, and you dont relax the other restrictions, Omer said.
The CDC survey took place between April 15 and May 24, and respondents included 350 randomly selected Covid-19 patients whose median age was 52.
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| 'A multisystem disease': How coronavirus affects the entire body | KSL.com | |||||||
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| Extrapulmonary manifestations of COVID-19 | Nature Medicine | |||||||
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| Researchers decode symptoms of COVID-19 outside lungs, call it a 'multisystem disease' | |||||||
Researchers decode symptoms of COVID-19 outside lungs, call it a 'multisystem disease' | Photo Credit: iStock Images
Boston: Scientists, including those of Indian-origin, have provided the first extensive review of COVID-19's effects outside the lungs, and have recommended that physicians treat it as a multisystem disease with manifestations including blood clots, kidney failure, and neurological symptoms like delirium.
"I was on the front lines right from the beginning. I observed that patients were clotting a lot, they had high blood sugars even if they did not have diabetes, and many were experiencing injury to their hearts and kidneys," said Aakriti Gupta, a co-author of the study from Columbia University in the US. According to the review of studies, published in the journal Nature Medicine, a substantial proportion of COVID-19 patients suffer kidney, heart, and brain damage. The researchers recommended that doctors treat these conditions along with the respiratory disease. "Physicians need to think of COVID-19 as a multisystem disease," Gupta said. One of the non-respiratory complications most reported by studies is blood clotting, according to the researchers. They said these clotting complications may stem from the virus' attack on cells that line the blood vessels. The scientists explained that when the virus attacks blood vessel cells, inflammation increases, and blood begins to form clots, big and small. These blood clots, according to the study, can travel all over the body and wreak havoc on organs, perpetuating a vicious cycle of inflammation. "Scientists all over the world are working at an unprecedented rate towards understanding how this virus specifically hijacks the normally protective biological mechanisms. We hope that this would help in the development of more effective treatments for COVID-19 in the near future," said Kartik Sehgal, another co-author of the study from Harvard Medical School in the US. According to the researchers, the formation of clots can lead to heart attacks. However, they said the exact mechanism of heart damage in COVID-19 patients is currently unclear since the virus has not been frequently isolated from the heart tissue in autopsy cases. The researchers believe the heart muscle may be damaged by systemic inflammation, and the accompanying release of immune system's signalling molecules, cytokines. They said a flood of the cytokines which normally clear up infected cells can spiral out of control in severe COVID-19 cases. Another surprising finding, according to the scientists, is the high proportion of COVID-19 patients in the ICU with acute kidney damage. They said the ACE2 receptor molecule which is used by the virus to gain entry into human cells is found in high concentrations in the kidney, and could likely be responsible for the renal damage. In New York City in the US, the scientists said, renal failure was reported in up to 50 per cent of patients in the ICU. "About five to 10 per cent of patients needed dialysis. That's a very high number," Gupta said. Describing the neurological symptoms of COVID-19, the researchers said these include headache, dizziness, fatigue, and loss of smell, which may occur in about a third of patients. They said strokes caused by blood clots was observed in up to six per cent of severe cases, and delirium in eight to nine per cent of COVID-19 patients. "COVID-19 patients can be intubated for two to three weeks: a quarter require ventilators for 30 or more days," Gupta said. "This virus is unusual and it's hard not to take a step back and not be impressed by how many manifestations it has on the human body," said Mahesh Madhavan, another co-author of the study from Columbia University. | |||||||
| covid-19 as multisystem disease - Google Search | |||||||
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| Wuhan scientists 'defecting to West' as FBI gathers evidence coronavirus pandemic WAS caused by an accidental leak | |||||||
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| zoonotic origins of covid-19 - Google Search | |||||||
SARS-CoV-2 is a strain of severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV). It is believed to have zoonotic origins and has close genetic similarity to bat coronaviruses, suggesting it emerged from a bat-borne virus.
There is no evidence yet to link an intermediate animal reservoir, such as a pangolin, to its introduction to humans. The virus shows little genetic diversity, indicating that the spillover event introducing SARS-CoV-2 to humans is likely to have occurred in late 2019. | |||||||
| WHO in China - Google Search | |||||||
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| WHO team commands China to search origin of coronavirus | |||||||
(MENAFN) The global health body chief said on Friday, two World Health Organization (WHO) specialists are demanding China to cooperate with scientists there to study the spread of COVID-19 pandemic from animals to humans.
Addressing a webinar, the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the global health specialists will also make a scientific plan with their Chinese counterparts to find the zoonotic source of the coronavirus. He said, "As we continue to tackle the pandemic, we are also looking into the origins of the virus". Adhanom said the scientists want to learn about the development made in understanding the animal reservoir for coronavirus and how the virus jumped between animals and humans.
MENAFN1207202000450000ID1100469398
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| At least 61 US Marines infected with COVID-19 at bases in Japans Okinawa | |||||||
TOKYO (AP) - The governor of Japans Okinawa island demanded a top U.S. military commander take tougher prevention measures and more transparency hours after officials were told that more than 60 Marines at two bases have been infected with the coronavirus over the past few days.
Okinawan officials on Sunday reported a total of 61 cases 38 of them at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which is at the center of a relocation dispute, and another 23 at Camp Hansen since July 7. They said that U.S. military officials told them the two bases have since been put in lockdown.
The disclosure of the exact figures came only after Okinawa's repeated requests to the U.S. military.
Gov. Denny Tamaki, in telephone talks late Saturday with Lt. Gen. H. Stacy Clardy, commander of III Marine Expeditionary Force, demanded the U.S military increase disease prevention measures to maximum levels, stop sending personnel from the mainland U.S. to Okinawa and seal the bases, as well as provide more transparency.
"Okinawans are shocked by what we were told (by the U.S. military)," Tamaki told a news conference Saturday. "It is extremely regrettable that the infections are rapidly spreading among U.S. personnel when we Okinawans are doing our utmost to contain the infections."
"We now have strong doubts that the U.S. military has taken adequate disease prevention measures," he added.
Tamaki said he wants more talks with the U.S. military. Okinawan officials also asked the Japanese government to pressure the U.S. side to provide details including the number of cases, seal off Futenma and Camp Hansen, and step up preventive measures.
Adding to their concern is quarantining of an unidentified number of American service members arriving from the mainland U.S. for ongoing staff rotations at an off-base hotel due to shortage of space on base, officials said.
The Marines said in a statement Friday that the troops were taking additional protective measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus and were restricting off-base activities. The statement said measures are "to protect our forces, our families, and the local community," without providing details on the infections.
The Marine Corps Installations Pacific said on its Facebook page on Saturday that "this week, the Marine Corps experienced two localized clusters of individuals who tested positive for the virus." It said those who tested positive were in isolation.
Okinawa is home to more than half of about 50,000 American troops based in Japan under a bilateral security pact, and the residents are sensitive to U.S. base-related problems. Many Okinawans have long complained about pollution, noise and crime.
Okinawans also oppose a planned relocation of Futenma Air Base from the current site in a densely populated area in the south to a less populated area on the east coast.
Okinawa has had about 150 cases of the coronavirus. In all, Japan has had about 21,000 cases and 1,000 deaths, with Tokyo reporting more than 200 new cases for a third straight day Saturday.
Copyright 2020 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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| 7:54 AM 7/12/2020 - The Covid-19 Pandemic Cyberattacks: Is there a significant increase, and are these attacks a part of the Bio-Info-Warfare package? | Hospitals see rise in patient data hacking attacks during COVID-19 | |||||||
 The Covid-19 Pandemic Cyberattacks: Is there a significant increase, and are these attacks a part of the Bio-Info-Warfare package? - GS 7:54 AM 7/12/2020
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| Hospitals see rise in patient data hacking attacks during COVID-19 | |||||||
BOSTON On the day before the July 4 holiday weekend, Mount Auburn Hospital's information technology team identified some unusual activity. Alarmed, they quickly took steps to disconnect the Cambridge hospital's computer system from the internet. They switched to backup manual procedures instead of automatic ones.
No patient data was compromised, and the Harvard-affiliated hospital continued its normal operations, according to hospital officials.
Such attempted attacks are a daily if not hourly occurrence at America's hospitals. And they dont always end as well as Mount Auburns did.
More than 80% of medical practices have been the victims of cyberattacks, according to a national survey. Over half reported patient safety concerns from the hacks, and 20% said that their business had been interrupted for more than five hours.
That can be the difference between life and death, said Wendi Whitmore, a cybersecurity expert and vice president of IBM X-Force, a commercial security research team.
And the situation has only gotten worse during the months-long coronavirus pandemic, as more employees switched to working from home, and medical facilities were cash-strapped and stretched thin because of COVID-19.
Between March and April, IBM saw a 6,000% increase in spam attacks on information technology systems, leveraging COVID-19, many of them at health care facilities, Whitmore said, describing the situation as a continuous cat and mouse game between criminals and institutions.
Whitmore said theres been a huge increase in security incidents in recent months, climbing about 75% in North America and 125% in Europe and the Middle East.
Seattle Childrens, for instance, saw a doubling of attempted hacking attacks in March, specifically phishing emails, hunting for someone on the staff who would click on a malicious link and allow malware into the health system'snetwork, said Gary Gooden, chief information security officer at the Washington-based health system.
The reason: Hackers can make a lot of money. Globally, cybercrime adds up to billions of dollars a year, Gooden said.
Stealing a credit card number might be useful for only a day or two, until the person realizes it and cancels their card. But an electronic medical record is far more valuable.
The FBI reported in 2014 that a stolen credit card or even social security number was worth just $1 on the black market, while an electronic health record would fetch about $50 $1,000 if it belonged to a celebrity or public figure.
Electronic health records, according to the FBI report, can be used to file fraudulent insurance claims, obtain prescription medication, and advance identity theft. Health record theft also is more difficult to detect, taking almost twice as long to recognize as normal identity theft, the report found.
Stealing a newborn or toddlers electronic health record is even more prized, Gooden said, because thieves are rarely caught. You have a free run for 18 years to utilize these personas. They also try to steal the identities of children who die at the hospital, hoping they wont get caught, he said.
Phishing attacks a favorite tactic
Cyber criminals are particularly fond of phishing attacks that entice people to click on email links that provide the thief access to their computer networks. Corporate email protectionscan identify and remove nearly all potentially malicious emails before a user within the health care system ever sees them, Gooden said. But for the final few, the vigilance of employees remains crucial.
The lures for getting people to open these spam emails have evolved over the course of the pandemic, said Ryan Witt, managing director at Proofpoint, a technology security company based in Sunnyvale, California.
In February, he said, most of the phishing attempts provided basic information about the coronavirus, often by impersonating health authorities. At the height of the early pandemic in March, the emails offered access to face masks or other personal protective gear. We found a source of equipment for you! was a typical offer.
Then in April, these tempting emails offered advice on how to get stimulus funding checks. Lately, theyve shifted yet again, he said, and now the focus is on getting first in line for a vaccine though one doesnt yet exist.
Typically, theres a seasonality to cyber-attacks, with more coming during traditional vacation times, when criminals assume defenses are lowered and staff is reduced, said Colin Zick, a partner and co-chair of the privacy and data security practice at Foley Hoag, a Boston-based law firm.
He expects phishing attacks to go up in September, if people return to their offices after working from home.
Another change in workflow, Zick said. Its the perfect opportunity for someone to send a phishing email, that says Im still out, but I want you to do this.
Cybersafety requires eternal vigilance
To protect against these ever-changing approaches, Gooden said, hospitals and medical facilities have to constantly pivot and stay ahead of the curve in terms of technology and practices.
Whitmore agrees. She advises institutions to require multi-factor authentication using a cellphone to corroborate a person's identity warn staff about spam, back up their most critical information offline, and encrypt patient information.
Its about installing a series of tripwires that allow organizations to detect when there are attacks against their environment, she said. That buys us time.
But every medical institution is vulnerable.
You have to be eternally vigilant, Zick said. As long as weve got an open internet that is highly unregulated, thats the downside.
Theres not much an individual can do to protect their own medical information, Zick and others said, except trust their health care providers to do it for them.
Zick requests his medical file periodically to ensure he has access to his own records if they were ever lost for good. And he said if he saw a provider acting carelessly with his data such as not using two-factor authentication he would offer them some free advice.
Hacker ransom demands skyrocking
On June 3, information technology staff at the University of California San Francisco realized that their networks security had been breached two days earlier. They quarantined several IT systems within the School of Medicine as a safety measure, and isolated the activity from the UCSF network, according to a statement from the university.
Patient care remained unaffected, the school said, but the attackers launched malware that encrypted a few servers within the School of Medicine, "making them temporarily inaccessible.
The university paid less than half the demanded ransom about $1.14 million in exchange for the stolen data. The FBI is investigating.
Just a few years ago, criminals were asking for $1,200, Whitmore said, but "now we're seeing ransomware demands ranging from $10,000 to $25 million." Attackers do release ransomed data when paid, because otherwise organizations would stop paying, but once the criminals access a computer system they may leave behind the means to do it again.
Large institutions are getting more sophisticated at protecting themselves, Whitmore and others said. But they may still be vulnerable when one of their suppliers or, say, a small specialty medical clinic, is hacked. If the computer systems are linked, the criminals can try to access the bigger facility through the smaller one.
Your security is only as good as your collective security, said Dr. Titus Schleyer, a professor of biomedical informatics at the Indiana University School of Medicine and a research scientist at the Regenstrief Institute, a research organization in Indianapolis. If you have a weak partner all your security doesnt help you.
Zick said the sweet spot is mid-sized medical practices that have tens of thousands of health records, but arent big enough to hire dedicated IT staff to protect the data.
Cash and information are cybertargets
Cybercriminals range from those have no idea what theyre doing, to sophisticated rings of computer scientists, often from the former Eastern Bloc countries, Schleyer said.
Most attacks are aimed at getting money. But some, backed by countries like Russia and China, as well as many others, are looking for information perhaps the results of a clinical trial for a new COVID-19 therapy, or candidate vaccine.
You do have government actors in the hacking space, no question about it, Schleyer said, adding that he did not know of any specific attempts to get COVID-related information.
Zick said he expects China and Russia will be looking for information, ideally without the victims knowing theyve been spied on. More ransomware originates tends to originate from North Korea and Eastern Europe, he said, where hackers dont care about the information, only the money it can yield.
Going forward, what cyber security experts worry about the most is quantum computing, Schleyer said. Quantum computers, which operate differently than classic ones, will be able to decode current protective systems.
We need to be ready for that moment, Schleyer said. Thatll upset IT around the world when that happens.
Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.
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| Cyber attacks stayed at same level during pandemic, says infosec pro | |||||||
Chester Wisniewski, a principal research scientist at security outfit Sophos, told iTWire during an interview: "I see no evidence of that [and ] I have no idea what they're talking about. The number of attacks related to the pandemic, of course, have increased dramatically, but the total number of attacks hasn't changed.
"We saw attacks change from fake shipping notices into 'you've got COVID, click here'. But we didn't see an increase in the number of attacks at all, not an increase in the number of spam attacks, not an increase in the number of ransomware attacks."
Wisniewski said he had not seen a dramatic change in any of the numbers in Sophos' data from the beginning of the year. "So if we look at January, February, we don't see a big change from January, February versus March and April," he added.
In his day-to-day role, Wisniewski, whose interest in security and privacy was piqued while learning to hack from bulletin board text files in the 1980s, analyses the attack data gathered by SophosLabs in a bid to improve understanding of evolving threats.
He has helped organisations design enterprise-scale defence strategies, has served as the primary technical lead on architecting Sophos' first email security appliance, and also consulted on security planning with some big global brands.
A great deal of the interview with Wisniewski focused on how things would look post-COVID, and he agreed that there would be some changes as compared to the period before the lockdown.
For one, he said employers would be keen to look at any savings that could be made by continuing with some COVID-era practices, without jeopardising the welfare of employees.
He pointed to his own organisation as an example. "Look at the real estate that Sophos has here in Vancouver for 300 staff. And that square footage in that building costs us a fortune in the CBD. If we could cut the amount of square footage in half, the savings would be monumental to the company just for the space, let alone the coffee and the other perks."
Wisniewski said adapting to a return to office would mean different things, depending on the industry. Sectors like shipping, logistics and manufacturing tended to have a somewhat immature security model compared to sectors like finance, technology and government. And the bigger the organisation and the bigger the IT staff,. the less the issues that would be encountered.
But the fact that organisations, in general, had been moving towards a zero trust networking model would ensure that there was no calamity when people went back to work. Wisniewski pointed to the fact that today more than 90% of sites were using encryption, a far cry from the situation a decade ago.
"You know, when [Edward] Snowden leaked all the NSA stuff, less than 20% of all the websites in the world were encrypted. Everything was leaking everywhere. We were worried about Wi-Fi security, we were worried about VPNs, we were worried about this, we were worried about that. Now it's over 90% of all websites in the developed world that are encrypted and the 10% that aren't are literally like an eight-year-old soccer blog for your kids League Soccer that's not maintained anymore.
"So the safety of using TLS encryption means that I don't really care if your home Wi-Fi isn't perfect. Or if you're working from the local cafe, it doesn't matter anymore. We're generally using the same safety no matter where we are. What's important is that visibility and monitoring where I started out with is present no matter where I'm at.
"I need to know that your computer is safe, that it's, you know, patched or it's up-to-date, that your security software is not turned off. I need to know those things are in place, no matter where you are, whether you're at the cafe, whether you're at home, whether you're at the office. And if we accomplish that, then it's up to the business to decide if they're for it. I don't really think there's that much security risk."
He anticipated that some machines, taken home by workers to use during the lockdown, would need a rash of patches. But again, these were not the majority. There were some organisations where machines needed to be on the internal LAN to receive their weekly or monthly dose of patches.
"We've had some of this internally where we use Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager to manage some of our machines. Then other machines, we were managing patches externally through just controlling which Windows Updates got automatically downloaded from Microsoft.
"All the machines that were pointed at Microsoft, no matter where they're in the world, they've been getting their updates according to policy. And we've been able to keep an eye on that.
"But a few of the legacy machines, the four- and five-year-old machines that we were just getting ready to replace, some of those were pointed at internal update points. So they are only getting updates when they VPN in; the problem is the user may only VPN in for a half an hour a day and never get that two gigabyte Windows Update downloaded. And that that update may not have happened."
Wisniewski said he had suggested the equivalent of quarantine for unpatched machines. "I've been recommending that organisations look at creating, either bringing those machines in onto the guest Wi-Fi, or creating a quarantine Wi-Fi, until IT is able to give a quick check of those machines to be sure they're fit for duty."
He said he did not anticipate a rash of malware infections when people returned to work. "I would hope not to see too much on the malware infection side. From what I'm seeing, nothing has gotten particularly worse. I think the biggest thing is going to be regulatory and data being spread around places it doesn't belong.
"You know, I think there's going to be a lot of company documents shared in places they don't belong. Policies breached, that kind of stuff. I think it's prudent to make sure those patches are in place. And you know, antivirus stuff.
"But to be honest, I don't expect that to be a big problem. I don't think we're going to see big outbreaks when people come back. One of the things we'll see is some that shadow IT will continue to be used even though it may be prohibited by policy."
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| Cyberattacks and Covid-19: who is behind them, and are they the clue to understanding the nature of Pandemic as the Weapon? - Google Search | |||||||
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| Cyberattacks and Covid-19: who is behind them, and are they the clue to understanding the nature of Pandemic as the Weapon? - Google Search | |||||||
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Apr 8, 2020 - It includes a non-exhaustive list of indicators of compromise (IOCs) ... APT groups are using the COVID-19 pandemic as part of their cyber ... Specifically, it is likely that they will use new government aid packages responding to COVID-19 ... GitHub list of IOCs used COVID-19-related cyberattack campaigns ...
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COVID-19 Cyber Attacks - As a web security company, over the past weeks, we have been ... list of the cyber attacks and threats related to the global pandemic. ... online, this page serves the purpose of making it easier to spread awareness. ... about half of the respondents said they aren't offering security education that ...
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| Google Alert - Coronavirus and cyber attacks: A game of 'cat and mouse': Hacking attacks on hospitals for patient data increase during ... | |||||||
Between March and April, IBM saw a 6,000% increase in spam attacks on information technology systems, leveraging COVID-19, many of them at ... |
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