Learn more about Studies including Moms and Neonates, Resilience and Recovery, Economics, Risk Communication, Transmission Modeling
Calling pregnant women and breastfeeding moms
If you’ve tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and are pregnant or breastfeeding, particularly those living in NY City, you have a unique opportunity to contribute to a year-long study examining whether antibodies in breastmilk can protect babies and perhaps adults from the novel corona virus. Contact immunologist Rebecca Powell here for more information. Also see the recent study including Dr. Powell on antibodies in breast milk following recovery from COVID-19 (Fox et al., 2020).
What do we know about transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in breastmilk?
As illustrated below, available evidence suggests the virus is NOT transmitted to babies from breastmilk of positive mothers, BUT antibodies to the virus ARE TRANSMITTED!
A systematic review ( Liguoro et al., 2020) provides additional information from mothers around the globe and their children (7,480 children 18 years old or younger).
The most common symptoms for pediatric cases were fever, cough, and sore throat. Most newborns were asymptomatic or had mild or moderate illness.
The review does NOT mention rash, a symptom that has been recently hypothesized as potentially associated with the pandemic.
The conclusion of the review: COVID-19 affects children less severely than adults.
The review included 62 studies and three previously published reviews.
Consider the figure below from one of the studies cited in the systematic review (Han et al., 2020) conducted in Korea.
Why is this figure relevant?
It illustrates a problem with biological data from clinical samples: limits of the methods to detect and quantify levels of the virus over time. Symbols plotted below the dashed lines represent samples that would be reported as negative, but a negative sample is NOT necessarily free of viruses. Samples containing 1,000 virus particle per mL of sample could be classified as negative because the method is too unreliable to quantify counts precisely at lower levels.
What is clear is that even for neonates who are expected to be highly susceptible to many pathogens, viral load for this study declines steadily over time until non-detectable (e.g., below that dashed line for the threshold of reliable method performance). One exception might be stool, however documentation was not provided that this study identified viable infectious virus or just snips of RNA from degraded and non-infectious virus particles excreted in feces.
Episode 5 of SRA COVID Conversations on Risk
SRA President Seth Guikema interviewed Professor Emmanuel de-Graft Johnson Owusu-Ansah of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Ghana and Professor Tyler Davis of Texas Tech in this hour-long webinar episode.
A relevant quote (All models are wrong; some models are useful!) points to the problems of modeling with limited data. Our assumptions that bridge current gaps in the data for assessing risk may be proven wrong as more evidence accumulates.
Next, we consider how risk communications influence perceptions and behavior amidst the challenges of the pandemic.
Click below to watch the video recording of the webinar.
Insights into Opening the Economy
Professor Guikema next interviewed two esteemed economists, Past SRA President Robin Cantor and her colleague Dubravka Tosic. Listen to their 48-minute perspectives at this link.
Episode 7 of SRA COVID Conversations on Risk: Resilience
For this episode, Brett Burke of the SRA Secretariat interviewed SRA Fellow and recipient of the SRA Chauncey Starr, Outstanding Practitioner, and Distinguished Educator Awards, Dr. Igor Linkov of the US Army Corps of Engineers, currently on detail to FEMA, and Professor Tom Logan of University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Want to learn more about community resilience and systems thinking in this and previous pandemics including Black Death in Venice and Ebola in Africa?
Interested in understanding how Kubler-Ross grief cycle and New Zealand’s “well being budget” influence resilience and recovery planning and opportunities to build 21st century community cohesion rather than try (in vain) to restore 20th century capacities and infrastructure post pandemic?
Know why density IS NOT the problem for high fatality rates (comparing NY City, Hong Kong, and SIngapore)?
Click on the video below for an hour packed with new insights.
Joint Proposals on Pandemic for SRA Meeting Dec 13-17 (virtual and in-person, Austin, TX)
I am pleased that a pair of joint symposia were proposed this week on the pandemic and dose-response, jointly sponsored by the SRA Dose-Response Specialty Group and the Microbial Risk Analysis Specialty Group. The first is a technical symposium considering the available date including a call for meta-data to researchers who published data on viral load from cohort studies through the Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA) Wiki. The second session is a round table panel symposium to expand discussion to include evidence for transmission from asymptomatic and symptomatic carriers early and late in the disease cycle. The invited panelists and co-chairs will prepare a perspectives article for submission to the SRA journal Risk Analysis based on presentations from the technical symposium and dialogue from the round table panel symposium.
Short descriptions of the proposed sessions, with authors, affiliations, titles, and abstracts, are provided at the links below.
Data and Models for Dose-Response Relationships for SARS-CoV-2
Dialogue on Data and Models for Dose-Response Relationships for SARS-CoV-2
SRA members and non-members will be able to participate in these sessions, with virtual participation options if travel to Austin is inadvisable.