Virus World

(HealthDay)—Influenza vaccination may have a protective effect for COVID-19-positive patients, according to a brief report recently published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. Ming-Jim Yang, M.D., from the University of Florida in Gainesville, and colleagues conducted a retrospective review involving 2,005 patients older than 18 years of age who tested positive for COVID-19. Influenza vaccination status and comorbidities were examined. Severity of disease as reflected by hospitalization and intensive care unit (ICU) admission was examined as the primary outcome. The association between influenza vaccination status and hospitalization was examined. The researchers found that compared with those who were vaccinated, COVID-19-positive patients who had not received the influenza vaccine within the last year had 2.44- and 3.29-fold increased odds of hospitalization and ICU admission, respectively. The results were adjusted for age, race, gender, hypertension, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, obesity, coronary artery disease, and congestive heart failure. "One of the biggest problems we have with any preventive measure is getting people to do it," a coauthor said in a statement. "So, maybe this would be a pretty good push for people to go out and get their flu shot."

Study published in JABFM:

https://www.jabfm.org/sites/default/files/COVID_20-0528.pdf

With daily cases, hospitalizations, and deaths still on the rise, the coronavirus pandemic is not slowing down in the US. More Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid-19 than at any prior point in the pandemic, a grim milestone that indicates the coronavirus pandemic is not slowing down in the US. On July 22, 59,628 people across the United States were in the hospital after testing positive for the novel coronavirus, according to data collected by the Covid Tracking Project; that total surpassed the previous daily high of 59,539 on April 15, when the New York City area was the epicenter of the US outbreak. Covid-19 has migrated across the country to many more regions in the three months between those peaks. Hospitalizations were overwhelmingly concentrated in the Northeast in the spring, but now more than half of hospitalized Covid-19 patients (35,624) are in the South. The West has also seen the number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients double since April, while the Northeast now accounts for fewer than 5,000 of the nearly 60,000 current hospitalizations.

The current total is likely an undercount. Two states, Kansas and Hawaii, do not report current hospitalization data, and some states may temporarily not be reporting full hospitalization numbers because of a recent change in the reporting system ordered by the Trump administration. “The hospitalization number is the best indicator of where we are,” Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told Vox. “We’re going to go to new heights in the pandemic that we haven’t seen before. Not that what we saw before wasn’t horrifying enough.” The growth has been driven by accelerating spread in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, and Texas in particular. On April 15, when New York City hospitals were nearly being overrun with Covid-19 patients, Texas had about 1,500 patients hospitalized with the disease. Today, more than 10,000 Texans are hospitalized with Covid-19. Some areas are reaching a woeful tipping point of hospitals stretched to maximum capacity, scrambling to find beds in other facilities for Covid-19 patients. Miami-Dade County reported this week that the number of patients in need of ICU care had exceeded the number of available ICU beds. More than 50 hospitals across the state say they have no ICU beds available....