COVID FBI

Our team, known as COVID FBI (From Big Island), did our "of the Day" presentation after our morning guest lecturer in Dr. Ric's class. This accounts for 15% of our grade. Considering we only had a week to pull this together I think we did a great job!

The stars show what communities team members are from

A lot of the COVID news is a depressing, Michael wanted something positive, so we chose this.

We also showed this video about convalescent plasma use here in the state.












Today is Friday! Dr. Ric always starts the Friday pre-lecture sessions with a little guitar music; he invites others to play along with him. New students have been added to our cohort; they are from Pacific Islander communities that have been hard hit by the virus. During the initial outreach in May, none applied so we were asked in our first week of class if we knew Pacific Islanders that might be interested; they said they would waive the requirement for a bachelors degree.

There was so much to cover we did not make it to the regenerative medicine information.

For the morning portion of class, Dr. Cherie Chu was our guest lecturer. She is a pharmacologist and assistant professor at UH Hilo. We learned about the pros & cons of existing drugs that are being tried, adjunctive therapies, and also discussed the work on producing a vaccine.
 




Dr. Chu started with hydroxycholoroquine (used in the US) and chloroquine (used in the rest of the world) since it has been in the news so much. She provided links to the initial studies and discussed them and their shortcomings, as well as the problems with using hydroxychloroquine & chloroquine.




These two compounds have been in use for a while for certain diseases because they are immunomodulators. They were looked at as possible treatments because they were known to block viral entry in to host cells. They are also known to have cardiac arrhythmia as a notable side effect.

These initial studies did not account for use of other medications by the participants; specifically glucocorticoids.

Some studies used azithromycin in conjunction with the chloroquines; potentially enhancing the cardiac arrhythmia.

The use of these coumpounds was touted even though there were concerns about the safety of their use.

In April studies were stopped due to the unecessary deaths of study participants from the drugs.

Use of the drugs were retracted in various medical journals.

In June the FDA revoked the Emergency Use Authorization for these drugs for COVID-19.

These are other possible therapies that are being examined. Dr. Chu went through each of them, providing information on how they worked, pros, and cons of each therapy.


Lopinavir & Ritonavir also cause cardiac arrhythmia as well as liver toxicity and pancreatitis. There is currently no data to support its use.



Remdesivir was original develped for use against the Ebola virus, which is also in the SARS virus family. It has shown promise in animal trials and is currently in clinical trials. It is not currently FDA approved but can be obtained for compassionate use. It is available from the department of health for use in the hospital with patients meeting specific criteria.






Adjunctive therapies are used along with the main treatment option. They are used to improve symptoms of the primary disease. Like the existing drugs being used to treat COVID-19, the drugs used for adjunctive therapies are also not guaranteed to work in this use.




Convalescent plasma is hoped to help as seen anecdotally with SARS & MERS. Clinical trials are currently underway.



Certain drugs commonly taken for various conditions may increase risk of getting COVID-19. Consult with your doctor before making any changes in taking your medication.



There are over 600 treatments or drug trials currently under study or development.




After lunch Dr. Ric started off the session with the  "of the Day" 

On June 25th.

Today.

June 25th.

Today.

June 24th.

Yesterday.

Yesterday.

This is one of the symptoms of COVID-19.

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

Tele Tubbies in PPE!

Dr. McMillan finished her presentation with "COVID-19 Testing & Prevention".





















































Dr. Ric has reminded us several times that this contact tracing training Is like building the plane while it is flying. Since COVID-19 is a novel corona virus there is a lot that is not known about it and some of the lecturers have said that the information we were being given was updated from what they had given the first cohort.


Dr. has decided to keep the teams the same as before rather than reorganizing them in to no more than 5 for a future exercise for class.


There is a 2nd team project; the last one is due at the end of the course. For our final project we need to submit a poster to the 2020 Hawaii Health Virtual Workforce Summit in September.








Later in the afternoon I went to see Dad with Maunalani's Aloha From 10 Feet Away drive through visitation. No photos are allowed but I did take one of the rails for the solar panels; things are moving along with their reroofing and sola installation project.


The disturbance in the Central Pacific now has a 90% chance of becoming a tropical depression in the next 5 days.


There is much in the news today. The military exemption from the 14-day quarantine has been reveresed. There has been one inmate and 3 staff members at the jail that have tested positive. Public schools on O'ahu wil be online for the 1st 4 weeks due to the surge.




There were 201 new COVID-19 cases today; another new record high. Unfortunately there were 2 more deaths reported today. Hospitalizations have also increase; in fact in class today and on the evening news it was reported that all intensive care beds at Kaiser Hospital are now in use. Two other hospitals have reported the same.









Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Jerry! A me ka Hauʻoli lā Hoʻomanao ʻumi kumamākolu e Bruce & Diane!