A virologist helped crack an impossible problem: how to insure against the economic fallout from devastating viral outbreaks. The plan was ingenious. Yet we're still in this mess.
A person in China scans a QR code with a smartphone to register their real name before getting off a bus in Wuhan, China. Zhang Chang/China News Service via Getty Images
The US is rolling out digital contact tracing. How has it been working in other countries?
vox.com - by Shirin Ghaffary - April 18, 2020
If and when lockdown restrictions are lifted in the US, would you agree to let the government anonymously track your interactions with people within a 6-foot radius to control the spread of Covid-19?
That’s an increasingly urgent question as President Trump and state governors debate how and when to safely reopen the US economy — and as technology is being touted as a solution that would help people reenter public life.
And tech giants are stepping up. Last week, Apple and Google announced a plan to turn phones into opt-in Covid-19 tracking machines that would, if all goes as planned, make it easier for health officials to identify and alert people if they’ve been exposed to the virus.
Battelle Memorial Institute's CCDS Critical Care Decontamination System uses a hydrogen peroxide vapor to decontaminate N95 respirators. The organization says that the process takes about 2½ and that masks can be cleaned and reused up to 20 times.Battelle Memorial Institute
nbcnews.com - by Didi Martinez, Brenda Breslauer and Stephanie Gosk - April 14, 2020
Late Monday, the Pentagon announced a $415 million contract to commission 60 decontamination systems that will allow millions of highly protective N95 face masks to be reused.
The system, which can process up to 80,000 masks per day, has been called a potential "game changer" for the front-line health care workers and first responders who rely on the masks, according to hospital officials concerned about a shortage of protective equipment to shield their staff from COVID-19.
But the story of how this system came to be is a testament to what can happen when a doctor and an engineer — who happen to be husband and wife — ask, "What if?"
In just ten minutes, Gauthier used extra tubing to multiply the number of patients that could be ventilated.
themindunleashed.com - by Elias Marat - March 23, 2020
As health care facilities across the globe continue to grapple with a general shortage of supplies to help them with the devastating coronavirus pandemic, one doctor in Canada has managed to use a bit of creativity, ingenuity, and an idea inspired by YouTube to help future patients.
Dr. Alain Gaithier, an anesthetist at the Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital in Ontario, was worried about the possibility that his rural hospital’s one ventilator would hardly be able to carry the load that the CoViD-19 outbreak could entail.
So Gauthier, who has a Ph. D. in respiratory mechanics, borrowed an idea conceived by American doctors Greg Neyman and Charlene Babcock in 2006 to double the capacity of a single ventilator.
Screenshot from a YouTube video on how to make a medical face mask. (Photo: Screen capture from YouTube)
courierpress.com - by Thomas B. Langhorne - March 18, 2020
Citing shortages, Deaconess Health System, including Henderson's Methodist Health, has asked the public to sew face masks for staff fighting coronavirus.
"This does follow CDC protocols that you can find on their website that if all other supplies are not available, that handmade masks that meet certain criteria are acceptable," Deaconess spokeswoman Becca Scott said.
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