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Findings from Wuhan in Germany confirmed in several patients – many deaths coud have been prevented?
In Covid-19 disease, it seems that two types of defence cells in the blood can be used to predict whether a patient will develop a severe course or only mild symptoms. This is the result of a study on 40 Covid-19 patients in Wuhan, China.
The findings have been confirmed in Germany in several patients, says co-author Ulf Dittmer, Director of the Institute of Virology at Essen University Hospital and Vice President of the Society of Virology. Several media had previously reported about the study published in the journal “EBioMedicine”.
One of the two immune cell types is a so-called killer T-cell with a specific surface marker (CD8). They kill virus-infected body cells and thus interrupt the proliferation of the coronavirus. “If patients have only a few of these cells, they have a high risk of developing severe symptoms such as pneumonia or coagulation disorders,” explains Dittmer.
The other cell type is known as neutrophils. “They are actually there to fend off bacteria. But they can also suppress the function of T-cells.” According to this, only a few killer T-cells were found in blood samples with many neutrophils.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Latin America is becoming the coronavirus hotspot. According to a census by Reuters news agency on Thursday, more than 70,000 people in the region have succumbed to the virus.
The most affected country is Brazil: according to official figures, 40,000 people have died, the third highest number of deaths worldwide after the United States and the United Kingdom.
In Mexico, according to the Ministry of Health, 15,357 people have died as a result of the respiratory disease so far. It is assumed that the number of unreported cases is significantly higher. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has also spread rapidly in Peru, Chile and Colombia.
200,000 deaths possible in the USA by September
In the United States, the number of people who have died as a result of Covid-19 could reach 200,000 by September.
“Even if we don’t have increasing cases, even if we keep the curve flat, it is realistic to expect 200,000 deaths sometime in September,” Ashish Jha, the head of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told CNN in an interview on Thursday. “And that is only until September. The pandemic will not be over in September.”
Jha said that this was due to the fact that the United States is the only major country that has relaxed restrictions to contain the virus without first bringing case growth to a controlled level. According to recent data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of Wednesday, the United States had a total of 112,754 coronavirus-related deaths.
Meanwhile, US Vice President Mike Pence said there was no sign yet of an increase in coronavirus cases after two weeks of nationwide protests. “What I can tell you is that now, almost two weeks after the first protests, we are not seeing an increase in new cases,” Pence said in an interview with Fox Business Network. Many people had been wearing masks, and in some cases had followed the rules of distance.
Anthony Fauci, the senior expert on infectious diseases in the White House Coronavirus Task Force, had expressed concern about the protests during the pandemic. He said the mass protests provided “perfect conditions” for the virus to spread.
- Hector Pascua
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