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A Simple Way to Save Lives as Covid-19 Hits Poorer Nations.

By Kristie J. Fields 1 week ago

As the coronavirus pandemic hits more impoverished countries with fragile health care systems, global health authorities are scrambling for supplies of a simple treatment that saves lives: oxygen.

Many patients severely ill with Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, require help with breathing at some point. But now the epidemic is spreading rapidly in South Asia, Latin America and parts of Africa, regions of the world where many hospitals are poorly equipped and lack the ventilators, tanks and other equipment necessary to save patients whose lungs are failing.

The World Health Organization is hoping to raise $250 million to increase oxygen delivery to those regions. The World Bank and the African Union are contributing to the effort, and some medical charities are seeking donations for the cause.

The W.H.O. estimated on Wednesday that with about one million new coronavirus cases worldwide per week, the world will need 620,000 cubic

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Copper Won’t Save You From Coronavirus

By Kristie J. Fields 2 weeks ago

“If 40 percent of your proteins don’t work, you don’t work,” Dr. Johnson said. Copper may even be capable of jamming up proteins that typically run metal-free by simply glomming onto their surfaces.

Even our own immune systems appear to exploit copper’s protective perks. Some evidence suggests that immune cells like macrophages — which gobble up and destroy bacteria, viruses and other microbes — may be capable of engulfing and sequestering germs in an acidic “ball of death” chamber that’s then spiked with lethal doses of copper, Dr. Johnson said. “Our bodies have been using this for warfare” long before copper masks hit the market, he added.

But it remains to be seen which of these scenarios will play out with the coronavirus, and to what extent. Dr. Johnson is one of several scientists currently on the case, tinkering with copper to suss out exactly how it exerts its apparently

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They Evoke Darth Vader, but These Masks May Save Your Doctor’s Life

By Kristie J. Fields 1 month ago

Even among the surreal sights of an intensive care unit crowded with Covid-19 patients, Dr. Elaine Fajardo’s mask stands out.

Jet-black silicone with magenta-capped filters protruding from both sides, it is more commonly the protection of choice at construction sites and industrial plants. But for Dr. Fajardo, it has been a precious and potentially lifesaving medical resource.

“I think these really saved us from a crisis,” said Dr. Fajardo, a pulmonary and critical care physician at the Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut.

In the past, Dr. Fajardo, like most health care workers, relied on disposable N95 masks, which are in critically short supply globally because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now she is the beneficiary of a prescient decision: As the virus raged in China, Yale hospital administrators bought about 1,200 of the reusable silicone masks, known as elastomeric respirators, and gave them to doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists starting

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‘Will You Help Save My Brother?’: The Scramble to Find Covid-19 Plasma Donors

By Kristie J. Fields 2 months ago

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — The doctor was dying.

Without a way to improve his breathing, Dr. Vladimir Laroche was not likely to survive Covid-19. An internist who spent almost four decades caring for the sick, Dr. Laroche contracted the disease last month while treating patients at a health center and drive-up testing site for the novel coronavirus.

In a week’s time, he quickly spiraled. He went from noticing a stubborn sore throat to experiencing flulike symptoms that forced him to leave work early to fighting the virus in the intensive care unit of a Florida hospital.

Dr. Laroche’s body was overwhelmed by the blunt force of a virus that public health experts are still struggling to understand. One of his doctors, Dr. Leslie Diaz, an infectious disease specialist and a colleague, had an idea she believed would give Dr. Laroche a fighting chance: an infusion of blood plasma donated by someone

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