November 16 coronavirus news

There are now more than 70,000 people hospitalized in the United States with Covid-19, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

On Monday, 73,014 people were hospitalized with Covid-19, according to CTP. This is the highest number of Covid-19 hospitalizations the nation has ever experienced, and is at least 10,000 more hospitalizations higher than its spring and summer peaks.

The US currently averages more than 3,500 new hospitalizations per day, CTP data shows.

According to CTP data, these are the highest hospitalization numbers:

The United States needs to do more to track people with post-Covid syndrome, those with persistent and long-term symptoms, to better understand the disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Monday.

Fauci said the National Institutes of Health is following people who have recovered from Covid-19 to try and determine what percentage of them have a persistence of symptoms after they’ve cleared the virus.

For those who experience lingering symptoms, doctors know that it doesn’t seem to matter how severe their illness was, Fauci said during an event hosted by the American Medical Informatics Association.

People who have recovered from coronavirus have reported fatigue, shortness of breath and brain fog, among other symptoms, that last for weeks and even months after they’ve recovered. 

It’s important to follow up to get a better understanding of the illness, Fauci said, but it won't be easy. 

“I think the only way we're going to do that is through registries so that we’re able do that. It makes it easy with electronic records but not everybody has an electronic health record. That's really the problem that we have in this country,” he said. 

Fauci said it’s important to understand post-Covid syndrome to better understand the disease.

California officials are considering a curfew as the state grapples with the rapid spread of coronavirus.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said a curfew is just one of the ideas being researched and officials are figuring out what it might look like in California. It’s unclear what they have in mind, but a curfew could be implemented statewide, or may just accompany one or more of the state’s four restriction tiers which are determined county by county. 

Los Angeles County officials are specifically considering a curfew, “so businesses do not have to close again, but would instead have limited hours for essential activities,” according to County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. Data presented by the county’s health director shows young people are accounting for more and more of the cases, while the elderly are suffering the most serious effects.

California would not be the first state to employ a curfew:

Newsom’s team is evaluating studies from France, Germany and Saudi Arabia. The team is examining the efficacy of a curfew while assessing how they are working in other areas.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has a message for the next generation of health professionals: pandemics happen, and it’s important to be prepared. 

During an event hosted by the American Medical Informatics Association, Fauci was asked what young professionals should be taught about responding to public health threats.

“First of all, pandemics occur,” said Fauci, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director. “They're not somebody’s fantasy.”

Fauci cited several examples of pandemics throughout history.

“If you don't prepare, and then start chasing after a pandemic, that is generally not a good formula for success,” he added.

Science will ultimately help humanity end the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday.

“When you have a pandemic outbreak like this, science is ultimately going to get us out of it,” Fauci said at an event hosted by the American Medical Informatics Association.

Developments like coronavirus vaccines are being driven by science, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pointed out.

“What's going to get us out of this dilemma – not a dilemma, this terrible situation that we're in – is going to be the vaccine,” he added. 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been “all in” on the development of therapeutics for coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday.

“All of these interventions that people see on the outside started off in somebody's lab, with a creative idea,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said.

He cited monoclonal antibodies, which, “we showed to be quite successful in the treatment of Ebola.”

“We're going to be doing the same thing here with Covid, namely taking monoclonal antibodies and passively transferring them for the purpose of preventing someone from getting advanced disease,” Fauci said at an event hosted by the American Medical Informatics Association.

Fauci noted that the NIH-run trial of the antiviral drug remdesivir proved to be successful. He added that they are also working to develop state of the art testing.

One big goal is a better coronavirus test for everyone.

“Ultimately, what we really want is a home kit diagnostic, so you could wake up in the morning and say, ‘should I be going to work, should I be going to dinner with my elderly mother or father or should I be in the presence of people who have underlying diseases?’” Fauci added. 

Coronavirus can infiltrate the diaphragm, perhaps interfering with a patient’s ability to breathe, researchers reported Monday.

Researchers with Amsterdam University Medical Centers examined the diaphragm muscle from autopsies of 26 patients who had died from Covid-19 and eight patients who did not have coronavirus in the Netherlands in April and May of this year. The diaphragm sits at the base of the chest and plays an important role in breathing.

The team found evidence of coronavirus in the diaphragm of four of the patients who died from Covid-19, the team reported in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

The diaphragm muscle has cells rich in a cellular doorway called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2), which they say provides “an entry point for SARS-CoV-2 to infect diaphragm myofibers.” 

The team also found increased evidence of fibrosis, a response to injury or damage, in the diaphragm. In fact, they found the level of fibrosis was more than two times higher in the diaphragms of coronavirus patients than non-coronavirus patients.

The team suggests that severely weakened or damaged diaphragm muscles linked with coronavirus infection may lead to persistent difficulty breathing and fatigue. They also say this could make it more difficult for these patients to be weaned off of ventilators.

About 92% of the patients studied needed help breathing with mechanical ventilation. The length of mechanical ventilation and intensive care unit stay was comparable between the coronavirus and non-coronavirus patients.

The researchers say it’s still unclear whether damaged or weak diaphragm muscle is a direct effect of coronavirus infection.

The winter surge of coronavirus cases could push some hospitals “to the breaking point,” Dr. Dara Kass, an emergency physician at Columbia University Medical Center, said Monday.

Kass said that some areas being hit hardest by the current surge in coronavirus cases are also the least equipped to handle them.

“When you look at Utah, or Montana or the Dakotas, they just have such a fewer number of ICU beds and specialists, that when they get at capacity, it's going to be a breaking point for them in a way it wasn't for us in the coastal cities and states,” she said at an online event hosted by Stat.

Kass noted that there are a limited number of people who can help respond to the surge.

Coronavirus patients often need more time and resources in the hospital than other patients, Kass added.

“They’re in the hospital for weeks on end, even if they survive,” she said. “That hospital bed is taken up for a very long period of time.”

Adding to the hospital capacity issue, Kass said that every non-coronavirus patient “gets prioritized against the sickest Covid patient.”

“It's nearly impossible for us to prioritize all of those critical illnesses while managing the coronavirus, when we're constantly having to do infection control and mitigation from this virus to those patients,” she said.

The Florida Department of Health reported more than 4,600 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, one day after reporting more than 10,000 new cases.

The 4,663 new cases bring the state's total to at least 889,864.  

The state is also reporting 41 new deaths, bringing the total to approximately 17,559 among Florida residents. 

The positivity rate for the past week is at 8.38% while today's rate is 7.92%, according to the state's dashboard.

Note: These numbers were released by the Florida Department of Health and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.