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Large study finds SARS-CoV-2 viral load is lowest in children
https://www.news-med...n-children.aspx
China reported more than 100 new COVID-19 cases for a seventh day on Tuesday (Jan 19) in the worst domestic outbreak since March last year, with one northeastern province seeing a record daily increase
https://www.channeln...-hebei-13991228
China may vaccinate children and teenager against coronavirus as early as March: industry insider
http://www.ecns.cn/n...te1836352.shtml
长春市卫生健康委副主任姜洪波表示，该市本轮疫情传染来源明确，传播链条清楚，接到报告后2小时即对患家所在小区进行了封闭管控，并适当扩大管控区域范围，划大包围圈，将阳性人员曾到过的场所全部人员纳入风险人员管理，并实施封闭隔离、核酸检测。“新增病例均为在管密切接触者、密接的密接，说明疫情在可控范围内。”
姜洪波表示，为进一步加大疫情排查力度，1月18日长春市绿园、二道、宽城等部分城区组织市民开展核酸检测，目前全市共设置3011个采样点位，出动14800名医护人员，截至19日16时全市累计采样123万人，预计1月23日22时完成第一批采样任务。
Jiang Hongbo, deputy director of the Changchun Municipal Health Commission, said that the source of the epidemic in the city is clear, and the chain of transmission is clear. Two hours after receiving the report, the community where the patient’s family is located was closed and controlled, and the scope of the control area was appropriately expanded. Encircle the circle, include all the people in the places where the positive person has been to risk personnel management, and implement closed isolation and nucleic acid testing. "The new cases are all close contacts and close contacts under management, indicating that the epidemic is within control."
Jiang Hongbo said that in order to further strengthen the investigation of the epidemic, on January 18th, some urban areas of Changchun City, such as Lvyuan, Erdao, and Kuancheng, organized citizens to carry out nucleic acid testing. Currently, the city has set up a total of 3,011 sampling points and dispatched 14,800 medical staff. As of 16:00 on the 19th, a total of 1.23 million people were sampled in the city. The first batch of sampling tasks is expected to be completed at 22:00 on January 23.
http://www.chinanews...9/9391463.shtml
Accountable.US reports that private jet companies, as a group, made out pretty well when it came to handing out emergency pandemic funds. Private jet companies received over $643 million in federal aid, spread across three emergency programs. The majority, over half a billion dollars, came in grants from the Payroll Support Program.
"[A]t least 49 private jet companies have been given access to all three programs, taking up to $87.38 million in federal COVID stimulus funds between them," notes the report.
https://www.dailykos...c-bailout-funds
A worrisome coronavirus variant is being found in more and more outbreaks in California — including a large outbreak in San Jose in which an air-powered Christmas tree costume led to 90 infections, according to news reports.
Scientists don't know yet whether the variant, called L452R, is more transmissible than other strains of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. But its presence in multiple unrelated outbreaks has health officials on guard.
"The fact that this variant was identified in several large outbreaks in our county is a red flag and must be investigated further," Santa Clara County health officer Sara Cody said in a statement.
The L452R variant is different from the B.1.1.7 variant first found in the United Kingdom and subsequently discovered in Colorado and nine other U.S. states. Researchers calculate that the B.1.1.7 variant is between 50% and 74% more transmissible than the standard coronavirus strain. That new strain may dominate U.S. coronavirus cases by March, given its propensity to spread. Fortunately, vaccines will likely work against the B.1.1.7 variant, but it could put severe pressure on the health care system and cause deaths to rise before most of the general population can be vaccinated.
https://www.livescie...us-variant.html
An important thing to know about sterilizing any domestic space is that you can do damage by using cleaners that are too harsh. This goes double for the President’s home, which is full of historic artifacts.
“The White House is a very different house than my house or your house. So when you’re thinking about how to clean a hospital environment versus a home versus a historical building—and the White House you can think of almost like a museum in many ways—you need to use very different methods,” says Andrea Armani, the Ray Irani Chair in Engineering and Materials Science and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the USC. “In a hospital, you can use bleach on almost every surface. It’s designed to be sterilized. There aren’t very nice pieces of art hanging on the wall. Whereas you move into a home environment, I have wood floods—I don’t plan on cleaning my wood floors with bleach. Most people have hanging draperies. You can’t just splash those with bleach or everything is white.” In the White House, one wrong move, and you could be destroying a piece of American history.
Cleaning and replacing the soft stuff
The first step Armani suggests is to begin with all the soft-touch items.
“Step one is look around the White House, and everything that’s a linen, strip that off and clean it. You can do the same thing with the carpets. You can take those, roll ’em up, and clean those,” says Armani. This goes for drapes and couch covers, too.
As it turns out, Biden took more precautions than most presidents, and budgeted more than $100,000 to outright replace the carpeting through much of the White House. But how do you launder a fine rug or drapery to ensure it’s sterile? In a word, heat.
“Going with something like a thermal tool would be best, because you aren’t going to damage the fabric,” says Armani. “That’s basically how they clean linens in hospitals. They take the sheets, put them in a high temperature oven, and clean them with steam.”
Sterilizing hard surfaces . . . and nooks and crannies
*snip*
To clean White House surfaces, at first Streifel suggested the cleaning staff might use vaporized hydrogen peroxide, fogging the room with disinfectant to top every surface with COVID-killing chemical. Technically, that would work pretty well—as it does in hospitals—but it would be devastatingly harsh on antiques.
“[With something like] the Lincoln Desk, you can’t just clean that with hydrogen peroxide,” says Armani, in reference to Abraham Lincoln’s desk, still found in his room on the second floor of the White House. “The hardest to clean surfaces are wood surfaces. You can’t take a desk and put that in a washing machine.”
In this case, both Streifel and Armani agree the most delicate solution would be UVC-light, and perhaps using wands to manually shine light onto the furniture.
“It’s going to be a very slow process…and you have to worry about the person cleaning that surface,” says Armani, alluding to the burns that UVC can inflict on human skin, while also urging a cleaning staff to make sure they get into the nooks and crannies of hard furniture. “It’s very manually intensive, but if you have a delicate surface, it’s your only option.”
etc & etc
https://www.fastcomp...commend-instead
