U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn addressed the ongoing work of the agency in terms of its work on potential treatments and vaccines for the COVID-19 coronavirus currently spreading globally. From a report: Despite a claim early in Thursday's White House briefing on the pandemic by President Donald Trump that one proposed treatment, anti-malarial chloroquine, had already been approved by the FDA for COVID-19 treatment, Hahn said that in fact the agency is currently looking at widespread clinical trials of the drug, but it is not yet approved for that use. "In the short term, we're looking at drugs that are already approved for other indications," Dr. Hahn said.

"Many Americans have read studies and heard media reports about this drug chloroquine, which is an anti-malarial drug. It's already approved, as the president said, for the treatment of malaria [Trump had not said this, but had instead said it was now approved for COVID-19] as well as an arthritis condition. That's a drug that the president has directed us to take a closer look at, as to whether an expanded use approach to that could be done to actually see if that benefits patients. And again, we want to do that in the setting of a clinical trial, a large pragmatic clinical trial to actually gather that information and answer the question that needs to be answered." Another potential treatment which has shown signs of possible positive effect, remdesivir, was also cited by Trump as being very "near" approval for use by the FDA. Hahn clarified that in fact, while remdesivir is currently undergoing clinical trials, it's following the normal FDA process for approval for clinical medical therapeutic use in the U.S.

More than 99% of Italy's coronavirus fatalities were people who suffered from previous medical conditions, according to a study [PDF] by the country's national health authority. Reader schwit1 shares a report: The new study could provide insight into why Italy's death rate, at about 8% of total infected people, is higher than in other countries. The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country's coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions. More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease.

On Monday, the Imperial College report on COVID-19 was released and the results are terrifying. For those who may not know, the Imperial College in London "has advised the government on its response to previous epidemics, including SARS, avian flu and swine flu," reports The New York Times. "With ties to the World Health Organization and a team of 50 scientists, led by a prominent epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson, Imperial is treated as a sort of gold standard, its mathematical models feeding directly into government policies."

In a series of tweets, Jeremy C. Young, Assistant Professor of History at Dixie State, summarized what the report says would happen if the U.S. does absolutely nothing. That is, if we treat COVID-19 like the flu, go about our business, and let the virus take its course. The Imperial College team plugged infection and death rates from China, Korea, and Italy into epidemic modeling software and ran a simulation... Here's what would happen: 80% of Americans would get the disease. 0.9% of them would die. Between 4 and 8 percent of all Americans over the age of 70 would die. 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus itself. It gets worse. People with severe COVID-19 need to be put on ventilators. 50% of those on ventilators still die, but the other 50% live. But in an unmitigated epidemic, the need for ventilators would be 30 times the number available in the US. Nearly 100% of these patients die.

So the actual death toll from the virus would be closer to 4 million Americans -- in a span of 3 months. 8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die. How many is 4 million people? It's more Americans than have died all at once from anything, ever. It's the population of Los Angeles. It's 4 times the number of Americans who died in the Civil War...on both sides combined. It's two-thirds as many people as died in the Holocaust. Americans make up 4.4% of the world's population. If we extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world (warning: MOE is high here), this gives us 90 million deaths globally from COVID-19, in 3-6 months. 15 Holocausts. 1.5 times as many people as died in all of World War II. The Imperial College then ran the numbers for what would happen if countries assumed a "mitigation" strategy and "suppression" strategy. You can read the full summarized breakdown of what happens in each scenario below, but basically the mitigation strategy flattens the curve with an actual death toll at around two million deaths while the suppression strategy has the death rate in the U.S. peaking at 3 weeks with only a few thousand deaths.

You can view a screenshot of the thread below:

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: New York City is working with the hospitality industry to possibly convert entire hotels into hospitals for patients without the novel coronavirus, in an effort to increase capacity at medical facilities as the outbreak grows. The city's emergency management commissioner, Deanne Criswell, said in an interview Wednesday that hotels could be vital as New York City needs more beds to treat those with Covid-19. The hotels would be for "those non-Covid patients who are really minor but need care," she said. It couldn't be determined how many beds would be immediately available for these patients or how much the city would pay hotels.

The city currently uses hotels for some quarantine, and could use them to house health-care workers who need places to stay, Ms. Criswell said. With the city's tourism industry hit by the virus, many hotels are now empty, she added. New York City has 1,339 confirmed cases of the virus as of Wednesday afternoon, with 10 deaths. City officials also hope to turn the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan into a large hospital, using federal medical stations, according to Ms. Criswell. Mayor Bill de Blasio said earlier this week the city had an additional 1,300 beds by reopening closed hospitals and other facilities, including Roosevelt Island's Coler hospital, a city hospital that was no longer in use. A recently built nursing home in Brooklyn will also be used to hold 600 beds, and two Bronx hospitals with more than 100 beds will also be available, according to Mr. de Blasio. To make more space, the city is also discharging patients that can leave hospitals, canceling elective surgeries, and building more capacity within hospitals. Earlier today, the U.S. and Canada announced it will suspend non-essential travel between the two countries to prevent the spread of the virus. This comes two days after Canada closed its borders to non-citizens with exceptions for U.S. citizens, air crews and diplomats.

The U.S. is also ordering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to suspend foreclosures and evictions for at least 60 days.

Hospital workers in Washington state have been making protective medical gear out of office supplies and other run-of-the-mill materials as they deal with a severe shortage of equipment needed to care for patients who may have Covid-19. From a report: Among the supplies coming in handy: clear vinyl sheets. "We are very close to being out of face shields," said Becca Bartles, executive director of infection prevention at Providence St. Joseph Health, a 51-hospital system. "Masks, we're probably a couple of days away" from running out, she said. To buy time, Providence infection control and quality experts designed prototype face-shields with off-the-shelf materials: marine-grade vinyl, industrial tape, foam and elastic. Monday night they bought supplies at craft stores and Home Depot. On Tuesday, about 20 administrative staff members at the health system's corporate headquarters volunteered to work an assembly line in a large conference room, putting together 500 home-spun face shields that were going to a hospital in Seattle that night.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The coronavirus has now been identified in all 50 U.S. states, and more than 100 deaths in the country have been linked to the illness. Those known deaths, all from the past three weeks, come as the number of diagnoses has surged into the thousands as the virus has spread and as testing has expanded significantly. On Tuesday evening, West Virginia became the 50th state to report its first case.

As of Tuesday evening, at least 5,587 people across every state, plus Washington, D.C., and three U.S. territories, have tested positive for coronavirus, according to a New York Times database, and at least 101 patients with the virus have died. Several hundred new cases are now being identified each day, including about 700 on both Saturday and Sunday and nearly 900 on Monday. The pace of diagnosis is expected to quicken as the virus spreads and testing becomes more widely available. More state and private labs have started running tests for the coronavirus in recent days, increasing the capacity to identify new patients after weeks of delays and test kit shortages. For comparison, a total of 70 cases were reported in the U.S. at the start of the month.

"Since then, new cases have poured in, including more than 200 announced on Monday in New York State alone," the report adds. "More than 2,200 cases have been announced nationwide since Friday morning, and the virus is now spreading in parts of the country where it had not been identified as recently as a week ago."

As countries affected by the coronavirus pandemic expect to run out of ventilators and other equipment, makers are desperately trying to fill the gap with proposals for open-source, do-it-yourself devices. From a report: Most cases of COVID-19 -- the disease caused by the novel coronavirus -- do not require hospitalization. But for people hospitalized with severe infections, coronavirus damages their lungs and makes it hard to breathe in and circulate the amount of oxygen that their bodies need. Ventilators, machines that provide the lungs with oxygen, are proving to be key to treating these people, who seem to comprise around 10 percent of cases. Governments are already preparing for what a shortage of ventilators could do to their health care systems.

In a call to U.S. governors on Monday that was shared with The New York Times, President Donald Trump told states not to rely fully on the federal government for equipment. "Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment -- try getting it yourselves," he said, according to The Times. "We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself." Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN that the U.S. has stockpiled 12,700 ventilators, but in a worst-case scenario that number might not be enough. In Italy, he added, physicians are having to make "very tough decisions" about whom to treat.

India could become the next global hotspot for virus cases, with experts warning containment measures that proved successful elsewhere in Asia may not work in the world's second-most populous country. From a report: The South Asian nation, which has so far reported 137 infections and three deaths, is trying to contain the virus by closing its borders, testing incoming travelers and contact tracing from those who tested positive. On Tuesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research announced it was ramping up the country's testing capacity to 8,000 samples a day from the current 500. Its director general Balram Bhargava maintained there was "no evidence" of the transmission of the virus in the community. But some experts in the nation of 1.3 billion people say that won't be enough to contain the spread. Other measures like widespread testing and social distancing may be infeasible in cities with a high population density and rickety health infrastructure.

While growth in total numbers has been slow until now, "the number will be 10 times higher" by April 15, said Dr. T. Jacob John, the former head of the Indian Council for Medical Research's Centre for Advanced Research in Virology, a government-funded institution. "They are not understanding that this is an avalanche," said John, who was also chairman of the Indian Government Expert Advisory Group on Polio Eradication and chief of the National HIV/AIDS Reference Centre at the Christian Medical College in Vellore. "As every week passes, the avalanche is growing bigger and bigger." So far India has been relatively unscathed by the virus compared with other countries in Asia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Tuesday that European Union member nations will close EU's external borders for 30 days to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. CNBC reports: Movement of people within European Union member nations will be still be allowed under the restrictions. "The union and its member states will do whatever it takes," said European Council President Charles Michel. Michel said the EU will arrange for the repatriation of citizens of member countries. Breaking...

Misleading text messages claiming that President Trump was going to announce a national quarantine buzzed into cellphones across the country over the weekend, underscoring how rapidly false claims are spreading -- and how often it is happening beyond the familiar misinformation vehicles of Facebook and Twitter. From a report: The false texts spread so widely that on Sunday night the White House's National Security Council, fearing the texts were an attempt to spook the stock market as it opened Monday, decided to directly debunk the misleading claims in a Twitter post: "Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown." But by then the messages already had spread widely, as had similar ones both in the United States and Europe in recent days. Text messages, encrypted communication apps such as WhatsApp and some social media platforms have carried similarly alarming misinformation, much of it with the apparent goal of spurring people to overrun stores to buy basic items ahead of a new wave of government restrictions.

The one claiming that Trump was going to impose a national quarantine included the advice: "Stock up on whatever you guys need to make sure you have a two week supply of everything. Please forward to your network." In fact, authorities have warned against aggressive buying that could disrupt supply chains and fuel panic. Trump addressed the misleading text messages at an afternoon news conference Monday, saying, "It could be that you have some foreign groups that are playing games." On the possibility of a national quarantine, Trump said: "We haven't determined to do that at all. ... Hopefully we won't have to."

Facebook on Tuesday told employees that it would give each of them $1,000 bonuses in an effort to support its workforce working remotely as they wait out the coronavirus pandemic. From a report: Facebook employs nearly 45,000 full-time workers, according to a January financial filing, but it also employs several thousands more contract workers. It is unclear if those contractors will also receive a bonus. Facebook isn't the only tech company providing cash bonuses to workers. Workday announced Monday it would pay cash bonuses worth two weeks of pay to its employees. Facebook on Tuesday also announced a $100 million program to help small businesses impacted by COVID-19. The program will provide up to 30,000 eligible small business with "cash grants and ad credits to help during this challenging time."

Microsoft's Bing team has launched a website for tracking coronavirus (COVID-19) infections across the globe. From a report: "Lots of Bing folks worked (from home) this past week to create a mapping and authoritative news resource for COVID19 info," said Michael Schechter, General Manager for Bing Growth and Distribution at Microsoft. The website, accessible at bing.com/covid, is a basic tracker. It shows up-to-date infection statistics for each country around the globe and all the US states. Data is aggregated from authoritative sources like the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Uber said on Tuesday that it has begun suspending shared rides on its ride-hailing platform in the United States and Canada to limit the spread of the coronavirus. From a report: The pooled option, which allows riders to book trips at lower prices by sharing the car with up to three other passengers traveling in the same direction, has been disabled for users opening the apps in the two countries. "Our goal is to help flatten the curve on community spread in the cities we serve," senior vice president Uber Rides and Platform Andrew Macdonald said in a statement. A spokesman said similar steps outside the U.S. and Canada would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Regular rides and the company's food delivery platform Uber Eats remain available, but Uber said it was in contact with local authorities to adjust operations as needed.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Already exhausted from testing for monkeypox and Lassa fever, Nigerian molecular bio-engineer Nnaemeka Ndodo had to work well past midnight earlier this month to find out if six Chinese construction workers were infected with the coronavirus. Ndodo had to collect samples from a hospital an hour away in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, then wait for six hours to get the results in what's one of only five laboratories able to test for the virus in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, with about 200 million people. In about three months' time, U.K.-based Mologic Ltd., in collaboration with Senegalese research foundation Institut Pasteur de Dakar, could shorten that wait to 10 minutes with a test that will help a continent with the world's most fragile healthcare system cope with the pandemic.

Using technology from home pregnancy and malaria tests, its saliva and finger-prick kit could be ready for sale by June for less than $1 apiece. In Africa, they will be manufactured in Senegal by diaTropix, a newly built diagnostics manufacturing facility run by the director of the Pasteur Institute, Amadou Alpha Sall, who has led training around the continent for coronavirus testing. The current Covid-19 tests, known as PCR tests, detect the genetic material of the pathogen in a laboratory process that can take several hours and cost over $400 in some private facilities. Mologic and the Institut Pasteur have joint capacity to produce 8 million tests a year and plan to sell them directly to African governments as well as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and the WHO, Fitchett said. Mologic is seeking to acquire a manufacturing facility to produce an additional 20 million tests annually, initially in the U.K. and later in Africa.

Six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area will be placed under a shelter-in-place directive by public health officials in a bid to slow the spread of the coronavirus, a move that will close virtually all businesses and direct residents to remain at home for the next three weeks. Los Angeles Times reports: San Mateo Mayor Joe Goethals said he believed that the order, announced in a pair of news conferences Monday afternoon, put the six counties -- San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda -- on perhaps the most restrictive public health footing anywhere in the U.S. since the outbreak of the potentially deadly coronavirus. San Francisco Mayor London Breed said that, effective at midnight, city residents would be required to stay at home "except for essential needs" and that all but essential businesses and public services would be asked to closed, starting at midnight Monday. The order will remain in place through April 7.

Only police and fire departments, hospitals, grocery stores, gas stations, banks and pharmacies and restaurants serving take-out and delivery customers will be allowed to remain open under the shelter-in-place order, officials said. Residents will be able to go to grocery stores and other essential services, but Goethals urged residents not to rush, adding that stores will remain fully stocked. The San Francisco Bay Area is the region hit hardest by coronavirus in the state. More than 250 cases have been reported in the six Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara, with more than 100 in Santa Clara County. San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott says violation of the health order could be enforceable as a misdemeanor, however "that is an absolute last resort," Scott said. "This is not about a criminal justice approach to a public health issue. We are asking for voluntarily compliance."

UPDATE: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has ordered statewide cancelations of events with 25+ people. All Oregon restaurants and bars are restricted to carry-out only. Anyone who doesn't comply will be subject to a Class C misdemeanor.

Israel has long been known for its use of technology to track the movements of Palestinian militants. Now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to use similar technology to stop the movement of the coronavirus. From a report: Netanyahu's Cabinet on Sunday authorized the Shin Bet security agency to use its phone-snooping tactics on coronavirus patients, an official confirmed, despite concerns from civil-liberties advocates that the practice would raise serious privacy issues. The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending an official announcement. Netanyahu announced his plan in a televised address late Saturday, telling the nation that the drastic steps would protect the public's health, though it would also "entail a certain degree of violation of privacy." Israel has identified more than 200 cases of the coronavirus. Based on interviews with these patients about their movements, health officials have put out public advisories ordering tens of thousands of people who may have come into contact with them into protective home quarantine. The new plan would use mobile-phone tracking technology to give a far more precise history of an infected person's movements before they were diagnosed and identify people who might have been exposed.

When the coronavirus pandemic started worsening in the U.K. last week, Jennie Lan knew where she would feel safest: China. From a report: The graduate student at University College London was worried Brits weren't taking precautions, such as wearing face masks. "People here didn't attach a great significance to the coronavirus," Ms. Lan said. On Tuesday, she will fly to China to stay with her parents, who live in a district with no reported infections. "The local government controlled it well," she said. Weeks ago, people fled China to dodge the new coronavirus. Now it has flipped. People are headed to China because they believe it is the safest place in the world. Apple has reopened all stores in its Chinese market, but said Friday it would close those everywhere else for two weeks.

A Chinese soccer-league team from Wuhan, where the virus was discovered, planned to leave its temporary base in Spain because of worsening conditions there to return to China. Jack Ma, billionaire founder of Chinese online-retail giant Alibaba, recently pledged to donate 1 million masks and 500,000 virus test kits -- to the U.S. Previously focused on people within the country as potential virus carriers, China's National Health Commission said Monday that preventing imported cases is now a priority. Beijing's municipal government said Sunday that people coming into the city from abroad must quarantine at designated hotels and sites for 14 days, its latest step to protect the capital.

Canada is closing its borders to non-citizens because of the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday. From a report: "We can still slow the spread of this virus," Trudeau said at a press conference. "It is time to take every precaution to keep people safe." Canada will make some exceptions to the closure of its borders, including for U.S. citizens. "We will be denying entry to Canada to people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents," Trudeau said. "This measure will carve out some designated exceptions, including for air crews, diplomats, immediate family members of Canadian citizens and, at this time, U.S. citizens."

The first participant in a clinical trial for a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus will receive an experimental dose on Monday, Associated Press has reported. From the report: The National Institutes of Health is funding the trial, which is taking place at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. The official who disclosed plans for the first participant spoke on condition of anonymity because the move has not been publicly announced. Public health officials say it will take a year to 18 months to fully validate any potential vaccine. Testing will begin with 45 young, healthy volunteers with different doses of shots co-developed by NIH and Moderna. There's no chance participants could get infected from the shots, because they don't contain the virus itself. The goal is purely to check that the vaccines show no worrisome side effects, setting the stage for larger tests.

This week saw dramatic responses to the coronavirus pandemic. At least two different U.S. states have ordered all bars and restaurants to close, according to the AP, while "officials elsewhere in the country said they were considering similar restrictions." America's Center for Disease Control is now urging the entire country to "cancel or postpone in-person events that consist of 50 people or more." At least two more states have postponed their presidential primary elections -- and lots of people now seem to be avoiding movie theatres.

Meanwhile, earlier this week GitLab released its first "Remote Work Report," arguing that "it's undeniable that the future of work will be remote."

But what are you doing? Are you working remotely? (And is the rest of your company?) Are you buying groceries during off-peak hours? Staying home to watch Frozen 2?

We're all in this together -- so let's hear about the experiences of Slashdot readers. Share your own stories in the comments.

How are you handling the coronavirus?