Horseshoe-crab blood? Sounds awful, but could be helpful for Covid-19

Announcing the Summer Webinar of the National Pharmaceutical Congress: "Pharma's Purpose, People & Process Post-Covid. Who Will Thrive? Who Will Be Left Behind?" Featured panellists are Ronnie Miller, Hoffman-La Roche; Mike Egli, Aspen Healthcare Canada; Claude Perron, Amicus Therapeutics; Danielle Portnik, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals; Peter Brenders, Kontollo Health [lead panellist]; Mitch Shannon, Chronicle Companies [host.] Mark the date of Tuesday, June 23, 11:00 to noon (EDT.) Registration is free. Space is limited. Sign up here.

⇒ Issue #53
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/12: 99,159*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/12: 8,071*
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/12: 7,534,325*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/12: 421,854*

June 12, 2020 — Good morning, CurveFlatteners. It's Cory Perla here with your weekend edition of this newsletter. As the only member of the Chronicle team not located in the Dominion of Canada, I have been wondering to myself if I’ll ever actually see my co-workers in person again. The word on the street (Hertel Avenue) is that reopening of the U.S.-Canada border may be delayed until late July now. This week, my biological brother, also a resident of Buffalo, N.Y., managed to make his way into Canada to see his significant other, who lives in St. Catharines, Ont., after Justin Trudeau made an exception to the rule for Americans with spouses, common-law partners, children, and other family members in Canada. They fell under the common-law partners' exemption, though now that he is in Canada, he has to self-isolate for 14 days. Recalling Will Rogers' comment about how the Okies leaving dust-bowl Oklahoma and arriving in Calfornia "raised the I.Q. of both places," I can attest that Canada got the better end of the deal on this particular one-time transaction.

Needless to say, he does not have the coronavirus, or if he does, he's totally asymptomatic. Earlier in the week, the World Health Organization said that it is "very rare" that asymptomatic carriers of the virus spread it to others. However, on Tuesday, the WHO backtracked, saying it's actually more complex than that.

There is no doubt the virus is still being spread. On Wednesday, Texas reported the "highest one-day total since the pandemic emerged," while Florida has reported almost 9,000 new cases in a week, according to the Bloomberg news agency.

In the end, could the answer be as unexpected as horseshoe-crab blood? Some pharmaceutical companies are scrambling to get their hands on the cloudy blue blood of the terrifying-looking crabs—found along the East Coast of the United States among other places—because it is often used to test for impurities in medicines, including vaccines.


COVID CHRONICLE 06/12/20

• Researchers are finding evidence that severity in coronavirus infections may be influenced in some part by an individual's genetic makeup. Now investigators may have narrowed it down to genetic variants in two specific regions: the blood type locus, and a gene cluster in chromosome 3. According to researchers, these two variants are associated with respiratory failure. Further, individuals with blood type A appeared to be more susceptible to respiratory failure, while those with blood type O seem to have more protection.
• A group of pediatricians in Southern California who are a part of the American Academy of Pediatricians have released a statement saying that the negative consequences of keeping kids out of in-person schooling may outweigh what they said research shows is a relatively unlikely chance of a child contracting coronavirus. According to the statement, “Prolonging a meaningful return to in-person education would result in hundreds of thousands of children in Los Angeles County being at risk for worsening academic, developmental and health outcomes."
• An infographic released by London's Imperial College indicates that government intervention across 11 countries in Europe likely saved up to 3 million lives. The statistics, which were updated with data up to May 4, show that the most lives were saved in France, where researchers estimate an additional 690,000 people could have been lost to the virus. 

STORIES CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY 

This video report on a survey by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention that found that 38 per cent of respondents have misused household disinfectants such as bleach by applying to the skin, ingesting, or inhaling them to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

RIGHT NOW WE'RE LISTENING TO... 

The latest season of the CBC podcast, Someone Knows Something. The sixth season looks at the case Donald Izzett Jr., who has been missing for 25 years. His mother refuses to give up the case and reporter David Ridgen helps investigate.

LATER WE'RE WATCHING...

Into the Night on Netflix. A group of Belgians (the show is in Belgian but the English voice acting is very good) are trapped on an overnight airplane flight with the information that when the sun comes up, everyone on earth will die. How long can they run from the sun?

TONIGHT WE ARE COOKING...

A pint of Ben & Jerry's Cannoli ice cream with extra chocolate syrup.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

Use the comments section at the Daily CurveFlattener to let us know what you're up to this weekend. Or feel free to check in via LinkedIn, email, or your choice of connector. By all means, pass this newsletter along to your colleagues. That's it for now. Stay in touch, stay safe. My colleague Dhiren Mahiban will be at the keyboard on Monday.