LIVE SCIENCE – May 1, 2020 | Scientists are training dogs to identify COVID-19 by following their noses.

A new program at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine (Penn Vet) is putting noses to the grindstone for disease detection. Researchers are working with dogs to see if the canines’ superior sniffers can help with early detection of COVID-19 in humans.

Dogs that can pinpoint the scent of COVID-19 could identify infection in people who are asymptomatic, and could play a valuable role in disease response as people return to work and social-distancing restrictions are relaxed, Penn Vet representatives said in a statement.

Reports of dogs sniffing out cancer have been documented since the 1980s, Live Science previously reported. Many cells produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that have distinctive odors and are present “in human blood, saliva, urine or breath,” Cynthia Otto, a doctor of veterinary medicine and a director of Penn Vet’s Working Dog Center, said in the statement.

Studies have shown that the smell of VOCs released by cancerous cells is unique enough that dogs’ sensitive noses — which have up to 300 million scent detectors, compared with around 6 million in people — can spot the presence of cancer cells amid healthy ones; in fact, most dogs can be trained in about six months to identify the smell of a specific cancer. That same ability could enable dogs to identify disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

LIVE SCIENCE – May 5, 2020 | By June, there could be nearly twice as many coronavirus deaths in the U.S. and eight times as many cases reported as there are today, according to projections from an internal Trump administration document that was obtained by The New York Times.

Currently, the country’s daily death toll stands around 1,750; but by June 1, it could reach 3,000 daily deaths, according to the projections that are based on models put together by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The models also predict that by June 1, the U.S. will log about 200,000 new COVID-19 cases every day, compared with about 25,000 new COVID-19 cases each day currently.

Despite the grim trajectory laid out by these private projections, which are labeled “For Official Use Only,” President Donald Trump has been pushing for states to re-open and kickstart their economies. Indeed, despite a growing number of coronavirus cases in states including Texas, Iowa, Tennessee and Minnesota, governors are easing restrictions.

On Monday (May 5), the White House issued a statement saying, “this is not a White House document, nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting.” Similarly, despite the document bearing the logo of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the agency denied responsibility for the report, The Washington Post reported.

LIVE SCIENCE – May 5, 2020 | The novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 seems to hit some people harder than others, with some people experiencing only mild symptoms and others being hospitalized and requiring ventilation. Though scientists at first thought age was the dominant factor, with young people avoiding the worst outcomes, new research has revealed a suite of features impacting disease severity. These influences could explain why some perfectly healthy 20-year-old with the disease is in dire straits, while an older 70-year-old dodges the need for critical interventions.

These risk factors include:
● Age
● Diabetes (type 1 and type 2)
● Heart disease and hypertension
● Smoking
● Obesity
● Blood type
● Genetic factors

Age
About 8 out of 10 deaths associated with COVID-19 in the U.S. have occurred in adults ages 65 and older, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The risk of dying from the infection, and the likelihood of requiring hospitalization or intensive medical care, increases significantly with age. For instance, adults ages 65-84 make up an estimated 4-11% of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S, while adults ages 85 and above make up 10-27%.

The trend may be due, in part, to the fact that many elderly people have chronic medical conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, that can exacerbate the symptoms of COVID-19, according to the CDC. The ability of the immune system to fight off pathogens also declines with age, leaving elderly people vulnerable to severe viral infections, Stat News reported.

Diabetes (type 1 and type 2)
Heart disease and hypertension
Smoking
Obesity
Blood type
Genetic factors

LIVE SCIENCE – May 7, 2020 | After the new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 enters the human body, it seems to reach sites well beyond the lungs — it’s been found in the kidneys, heart, liver and gastrointestinal tract. And now, researchers have detected the virus in semen, according to a small study.

However, the findings, published Thursday (May 7) in the journal JAMA Network Open, don’t necessarily mean that the virus can be sexually transmitted through contact with semen.

The study involved 38 men in Shangqiu, China, who had tested positive for COVID-19 and were experiencing symptoms of the disease or had recently recovered. Participants provided semen samples, which doctors analyzed for the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The researchers detected SARS-CoV-2 in sperm from six participants, or 16% overall. Of these, four patients were currently experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, and two patients had recently recovered.