WHO Reviews 'Available' Evidence On Coronavirus Transmission Through Air : NPR - 0 views
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The World Health Organization says the virus that causes COVID-19 doesn't seem to linger in the air or be capable of spreading through the air over distances more than about three feet.
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"I think the WHO is being irresponsible in giving out that information. This misinformation is dangerous," says Dr. Donald Milton, an infectious disease aerobiologist at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
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What's more, one study of hospital rooms of patients with COVID-19 found that "swabs taken from the air exhaust outlets tested positive, suggesting that small virus-laden droplets may be displaced by airflows and deposited on equipment such as vents." Another study in Wuhan hospitals f
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When epidemiologists are working in the field, trying to understand an outbreak of an unknown pathogen, it's not possible for them to know exactly what's going on as a pathogen is spread from person to person, Milton says. "Epidemiologists cannot tell the difference between droplet transmission and short-range aerosol transmission."
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For the average person not working in a hospital, Milton says the recommendation to stay 6 feet away from others sounds reasonable.
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People shouldn't cram into cars with the windows rolled up, he says, and officials need to keep crowding down in mass transit vehicles like trains and buses.
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With coronavirus cases continuing to climb and hospitals facing the prospect of having to decide how to allocate limited staff and resources, the Department of Health and Human Services is reminding states and health care providers that civil rights laws still apply in a pandemic.
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States are preparing for a situation when there's not enough care to go around by issuing "crisis of care" standards.
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But disability groups are worried that those standards will allow rationing decisions that exclude the elderly or people with disabilities.
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On Saturday, the HHS Office for Civil Rights put out guidance saying states, hospitals and doctors cannot put people with disabilities or older people at the back of the line for care.
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Severino said his office has opened or is about to open investigations of complaints in multiple states. He did not say which states could be the focus of investigation, but in the last several days, disability groups in four states — Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee and Washington — have filed complaints.
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In Kansas and Tennessee, disability groups and people with disabilities say state guidelines would allow doctors to deny care to some people with traumatic brain injuries or people who use home ventilators to help them breathe.
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The ventilator issue is coming up in New York, which may soon be the first place where there are not enough ventilators to meet the demand of patients. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state will need double its current amount in about three weeks.
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Severino said Saturday that his office was concerned about complaints of possible ventilator reallocation, an issue that had been raised in New York and Kansas.
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The PREP Act provides immunity to tort liability claims for manufacturers or drug companies that are asked to scale up quick responses to a disaster such as a nuclear attack or a pandemic.
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Severino said his office would investigate civil rights violations and it would be up to another office at HHS, the general counsel's office, to make waivers under the PREP Act.
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Some disability advocates have worried whether that exception could be used to trump civil rights laws that protect people with disabilities from treatment decisions.
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The Reverend Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, died Friday, according to a statement by the Joseph & Evelyn Lowery Institute for Justice and Human Rights.
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Known affectionately as the "Dean" of the Civil Rights Movement, Lowery was a part of pivotal moments in the nation's history
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At an appearance on the national mall in 2013, at the age of 91, he led the crowd in the chant "Fired Up? Ready to go?" The event marked 50 years since the 1963 March on Washington, which Lowery attended as a contemporary of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. At that 50th anniversary appearance, he warned that hard-fought gains were under attack.
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Joseph Echols Lowery was born in Huntsville, Alabama in 1921. He was the son of a teacher and a shopkeeper. The young Lowery experienced firsthand the brutalities of the Jim Crow South and would spend his life fighting for racial justice.
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One of the first protests he organized was as a young Methodist minister in Mobile, Alabama in the early 1950s. It was aimed at desegregating city buses.
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From there, Lowery helped coordinate the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the non-violent movement that desegregated the city's public transportation and led to the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
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Four decades later, at a gathering of civil rights foot soldiers in Montgomery, Lowery reflected on that accomplishment, noting that the number of black elected officials in the country had gone from less than 300 in 1965 to nearly 10,000 by 2005.