We report a time course of SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations in primary sewage sludge during the Spring COVID-19 outbreak in a northeastern U.S. metropolitan area. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in all environmental samples and, when adjusted for the time lag, the virus RNA concentrations were highly correlated with the COVID-19 epidemiological curve (R2=0.99) and local hospital admissions (R2=0.99). SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations were a seven-day leading indicator ahead of compiled COVID-19 testing data and led local hospital admissions data by three days. Decisions to implement or relax public health measures and restrictions require timely information on outbreak dynamics in a community.

10.1101/2020.05.19.20105999

SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations in primary municipal sewage sludge as a leading indicator of COVID-19 outbreak dynamics

Physical distancing measures are intended to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. However, the impact these measures have on social contact and disease transmission patterns remains unclear. We ran the first comparative contact survey (N=53,708) across eight countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, United States) for the period March 13 - April 13, 2020. Our results show that social contact numbers mainly decreased after governments issued physical distancing guidelines rather than after announcing national lockdown measures. Compared to pre-COVID levels, social contact numbers decreased by 48% - 85% across countries. Except in Italy, these reductions were smaller than those observed in Wuhan (China). However, they sufficed to bring the R0 below one in almost every context considered. Finally, in all countries studied, the numbers of contacts decreased more rapidly among older people than among younger people, indicating higher levels of protection for groups at greater risk.

10.1101/2020.05.15.20102657

The differential impact of physical distancing strategies on social contacts relevant for the spread of COVID-19

10.1101/2020.05.19.20107268

To mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, much emphasis exists on implementing non-pharmaceutical interventions to keep the reproduction number below one. But using that objective ignores that some of these interventions, like bans of public events or lockdowns, must be transitory and as short as possible because of their significative economic and societal costs. Here we derive a simple and mathematically rigorous criterion for designing optimal transitory non-pharmaceutical interventions. We find that reducing the reproduction number below one is sufficient but not necessary. Instead, our criterion prescribes the required reduction in the reproduction number according to the maximum health services' capacity. To explore the implications of our theoretical results, we study the non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented in 16 cities during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we estimate the minimal reduction of the contact rate in each city that is necessary to control the epidemic optimally. We also compare the optimal start of the intervention with the start of the actual interventions applied in each city. Our results contribute to establishing a rigorous methodology to guide the design of non- pharmaceutical intervention policies.

A simple criterion to design optimal nonpharmaceutical interventions for epidemic outbreaks

When you talk to intensive care doctors across the UK, exhausted after weeks of dealing with the ravages of Covid-19, the phrase that emerges time after time is, "We've never seen anything like this before."

Coronavirus: 'Baffling' observations from the front line

Scientist who oversaw the response to Sars says country has failed the vulnerable

Sweden 'wrong' not to shut down, says former state epidemiologist

The following is a brief roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Coronavirus vaccine safe in early trial, hydroxychloroquine may increase death risk

The idea that 5G cellphone technology somehow causes COVID-19 has been just one of the false theories circulating about the pandemic

How Bad Is The COVID-19 Misinformation Epidemic?

With schools and daycares closed, and employers embracing permanent work-from-home arrangements, women will be forced to pick up the slack

This pandemic threatens to undo what generations of feminists have fought for

Humans often assign confidence to multioption decisions, but most computational research only uses two-alternative tasks. In a new study, Li and Ma begin to reveal the mechanisms of confidence generation in multialternative tasks. This research should inspire further experiments on how humans assign confidence judgments in real-world situations.

10.1016/j.tics.2020.05.005

Confidence in the Real World