Coronavirus latest: China death toll jumps dramatically

Coronavirus latest: China death toll jumps dramatically



Government workers stand outside a blue tent used to coordinate transportation of travelers from Wuhan to designated quarantine sites in Beijing, China (Sam McNeil/AP/Shutterstock)

Wuhan death toll jumps by 50%

The city of Wuhan in China has added another 1,300 fatalities to its official count. The revision puts the number of deaths in the 11-million-person city at 3,869. China’s overall death toll is more than 4,600. Chinese officials said the reasons for the revision included the addition of deaths of people at home and at medical institutions that weren’t reporting data to its epidemic network. (Nature | Continuously updated)

Most people infected on aircraft carrier have no symptoms
The US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt has become another natural experiment for the transmission of COVID-19. The Navy has tested almost the entire crew after one member died from the disease. Many who tested positive had no symptoms, just like on the cruise ship Diamond Princess. On the cruise, which was packed with older people, the asymptomatic proportion was 18%. On the aircraft carrier — unsurprisingly home to mostly young, healthy people — it was 60%. “We’re learning that stealth in the form of asymptomatic transmission is this adversary’s secret power,” said Rear Admiral Bruce Gillingham, surgeon general of the Navy. (Reuters | 3 min read)

Wisps of hope for remdesivir
The researcher overseeing a closely watched clinical trial in Chicago has indicated that the antiviral medicine remdesivir might be showing positive signs against COVID-19. More than 100 people, most with severe disease, were treated with daily infusions of remdesivir (there was no control group). “Overall our patients have done very well,” infectious-disease specialist Kathleen Mullane told colleagues in an internal video call. Study leaders urge extreme caution about these preliminary and as-yet-unpublished results. (STAT | 5 min read)

Watching the wave engulf New York
Emergency-room physician Helen Ouyang describes how she went from hearing how the coronavirus outbreak overwhelmed hospitals in Lombardy, Italy, to seeing it happen first-hand in her hospital in New York. “It has been less than six weeks, but I’ve never felt less useful as a doctor,” writes Ouyang. “The one thing I can do — what I think will matter most, in the end — is just to be a person.” (The New York Times | 43 min read)

Not a great time to be a parent-scientist
Alessandra Minello, a social demographer who studies how families manage household and paid work, explores how the pandemic will affect researchers who are working from home and caring for children. She highlights the role of women, who tend to spend significantly more time on household work than do men, even in the most gender-egalitarian countries. (Nature | 5 min read)

The last coronavirus-free continent
Researchers in Antarctica, who are used to isolation, have taken things up a notch to maintain the continent’s status as the last place on Earth without COVID-19. On King George Island, social events between the various national bases have been cancelled. And scientists wait anxiously to see what impact the global pandemic will have on their continuing research. (Reuters | 4 min read).

Read Nature’s continuously updated selection of the must-read papers and preprints on COVID-19.