BCHS's Jessie Burke and Sara Baumann (BCHS '19) created this virtual community art project as an opportunity for our Pitt students, faculty, and staff members to nurture a sense of community by creating, connecting, and sharing experiences navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis that is significantly affecting our lives. While the past several weeks have been incredibly challenging, through flexibility, ...
HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS – EPI’s Donald Burke said the lack of testing among low-risk groups means there’s very little data about what percentage of the public is infected but without symptoms. Without reliable data on infections, it will be difficult to make informed decisions about when and how to scale back social distancing, and, later, when to ramp it up again for a second wave in the fall/winter. Increased testing needs to be in place by su...
ASSOCIATED PRESS - A dozen patients had serious problems but it’s not clear whether they were from the drug or their disease. UPMC critical care chief and HPM faculty member Derek Angus (BCHS '92) said the recovery rate is good but “there is no way of knowing from this series if the antiviral drug was helpful.”
WTAE – “The solution is to find an optimal tradeoff between doing something now, such as prescribing a drug off-label, or waiting until traditional clinical trials are complete,” said Derek Angus (BCHS '92), chair of Pitt Med's Department of Critical Care Medicine. “By building this one-stop solution at the point-of-care, we are rolling out an approach that can assure that every patient admitted with COVID-19 can be enrolled in the program.”
Zack Zambrano (HPM ’20), Megan Preti (HPM ’20), and Jordan McBride (HPM ’21) placed 2 nd at the 5 th Annual Robbins Case Competition in Healthcare Management at Baylor University
Congratulations to Gabrielle Kyle-Lion (IDM '21) and Claire McCreavy (IDM '21), two MPH students in the infectious disease management, intervention, and community practice track who selected as 2020-21 Pittsburgh Schweitzer Fellows. Working with the Catholic Charities of Pittsburgh, their project will address the lack of preventative breast cancer screenings for immigrant women. Our four graduating fellows will be recognized at the 2020 Pittsbu...
WTAE - On Tuesday, local group 1Hood hosted a virtual town hall called “What Black Pittsburgh Needs to Know About COVID-19.” Panelist Tiffany Gary-Webb, an epidemiologist at Pitt Public Health, said it’s important to have data broken down by race and zip code. “If we know that certain communities are being hit harder, we can get resources specifically to those areas.”
WTAE – “We don’t really know what’s the proportion of people who get the disease that don’t have any symptoms at all, what’s the proportion of people who have mild symptoms, and what’s the proportion of people who have severe symptoms requiring hospitalization,” said Mark Roberts, chair of health policy and management at Pitt Public Health.
Congratulations to Dr. John Shaffer (HUGEN '08), assistant professor of human genetics and oral biology, on being selected for the 2020 James L. Craig Award for Teaching Excellence. Craig awardees are nominated annually by students and selected by a committee of students and past awardees.
WHYY PHILADELPHIA – Referencing the model used in recent White House briefings, Mark Roberts, HPM chair and director of the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory, said, “It’s a surprisingly accurate model. Their predictions of what today would look like three weeks ago are very good.” The model puts the U.S. about nine days away from the peak of COVID spread.
PUBLIC SOURCE - How might we come out of extreme social distancing? Mark Roberts, director of the Public Health Dynamics Lab, thinks the most interesting option might be relaxing social distancing behaviors based on the ability to know whether the person is immune to the disease or not. We could test and say you are immune and can go back to work. That would be the most accurate way of doing it.
ALLEGHENY FRONT - There’s plenty of biological evidence, said Sally Wenzel, EOH chair. Pollution can damage cells that line breathing passageways, which form the lung’s natural defense from foreign agents. “When they’re damaged, they don’t function nearly as well as a barrier. And so things like viruses can get through that barrier and into the body, into the deeper spaces of the body.”
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE – EOH Chair Sally Wenzel says, “The easiest way to make sure that you aren’t bringing the virus in with your packages is to treat the package as though a COVID-19 positive person last handled it: Wipe off all items before putting them away, throw out your packaging and wash your hands.” Another tip: Plastic gloves might be hard to come by these days, but sandwich bags can protect in a pinch.
90.5 WESA - “If nobody ever went out and nobody ever touched anybody else, this disease could not pass at all,” said HPM's Mark Roberts, director of the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory. He thinks the current restrictions on daily life need to continue for the time being. “If people went about their lives as normal, there would be tens of thousands of cases requiring hospitalization in western Pennsylvania alone.”
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER/SPOTLIGHT PA - At Prevention Point Pittsburgh, staff have been trying to raise awareness of COVID-19 for weeks. “If someone shows symptoms, they’re given gloves, a face mask, and extra harm reduction supplies so they can self-quarantine,” said executive director Aaron Arnold (BCHS '13). If the person wants medical help, the staff can arrange that, too. Since early March, they've been including a tip sheet in supply bags tha...
MEDSCAPE - In an editorial issued just days after these new guidelines, Pitt Med's Derek C. Angus (BCHS '92), who is also an HPM distinguished professor and associate editor with JAMA, and Lamontagne of Canada say these "represent an excellent first step toward optimal, evidence-informed care for patients with COVID-19.”
KDKA – When will we see a COVID-19 peak? Health Secretary Rachel Levine said they’re working with Pitt’s FRED researchers to update information. Modeling infectious diseases is complex, and there are several impacting factors like how the disease is spread, the effects of social distancing, and the percent of people hospitalized. Because hospitalization rates are lower here than in China, this new data changes how the models are interpreted.
BLOOMBERG QUINT - Sally Wenzel, EOH professor and director of Pitt Medical Center's Asthma Institute, says that “The only way to answer the question” as to whether sugarcane burning is the direct cause of the respiratory issues that residents experience “is with a better level of granularity—to do a person-based study, as opposed to a population-based study” such as the ones published so far.
PUBLICSOURCE - Gov. Wolf said the state is ramping up efforts to expand capacity in the state’s healthcare system in anticipation of a spike in COVID-19 cases. He added that the state has enough capacity to handle all of its COVID-19 cases if the state’s efforts to socially isolate individuals are successful. All of the models they have looked at, including one from Pitt Public Health' FRED program, depend on effective social distancing.
PITTSBURGH BUSINESS TIMES - Health Secretary Rachel Levine specifically singled out Pitt's Framework for Epidemiological Dynamics (FRED) for help with complex population-health modeling. The program was developed to model outbreaks of communicable diseases like influenza, dengue fever, and measles, and help local and state decision makers know what interventions to take. Pennsylvania's Department of Health doesn't do that type of modeling.