A race to determine what drives COVID-19 severity M Koutsakos et al, Nature News, June 29, 2020

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 Spotlight on COVID-19

A race to determine what drives COVID-19 severity
M Koutsakos et al, Nature News, June 29, 2020

Efforts are ongoing to find which human or viral factors underpin whether a person with COVID-19 will develop severe symptoms. Clinical evidence linked to two viral lineages now provides key insights into this enigma.

National Academies Offers Guidance to Decision-Makers on Evaluating COVID-19 Data
J Stephenson, JAMA Health Forum, June 25, 2020

An expert consultation says that decision-makers leading the response to COVID-19 should consider specific criteria when evaluating numbers of confirmed cases, hospitalizations, excess deaths, and other data to make COVID-19–related policy decisions, such as restricting or allowing public gatherings or mandating the wearing of face masks in public places.

Toward More Precision in Implementation Science in the Age of COVID-19
M Clyne et al, CDC Blog, June 26, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has shed a new light on the importance of implementation science both in delivering the right interventions for the control of the pandemic (direct impact) as well as adapting to the disruption in health services as a result of the pandemic.

Using influenza surveillance networks to estimate state-specific prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States
JD Silverman et al, Sci Trans Med, June 2020

We show how influenza-like illness (ILI) outpatient surveillance data can be used to estimate the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2. The results suggest a conceptual model for the COVID-19 epidemic in the US characterized by rapid spread across the US with over 80% infected patients remaining undetected.