Trump claims he’s immune to COVID-19
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday that he is “immune” to the novel coronavirus and “can’t give it,” even though the White House has not released negative test results and immunity to the virus remains poorly understood.
The tweet was quickly flagged by Twitter, which said it contained “misleading and potentially harmful misinformation” related to the coronavirus.
Trump’s claim came one day after his physician said he is “no longer considered a transmission risk to others,” in a memo that seemed to clear Trump to return to his normal activities a little more than a week after he announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Trump is expected to hold a campaign rally Monday in Florida.
The letter from Sean Conley said that Trump had met the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s criteria for “safe discontinuation of isolation” and that “an assortment of diagnostic tests” found no evidence of actively replicating virus, which must be present for someone to infect others.
are looking at whether they can get better protection from inoculations that fight the virus at its point of attack — the nose and mouth.
Most vaccines in human testing require two shots for effectiveness, and developers still aren’t even sure if they’ll prevent infections. Scientists are hoping to generate superior immune responses with inhaled vaccines that directly target the airway cells the virus invades.
An alternative to conventional jabs, sprayed and inhaled immunizations under development in the U.S., Britain and Hong Kong could play an important role in helping society escape restrictions that have upended economies and everyday life. Among their goals is to prevent the pathogen from growing in the nose, a point from which it can spread to the rest of the body and to other people.
Altimmune, based in Gaithersburg, Md., plans to enter human testing with a nasal vaccine in the fourth quarter after positive studies in mice.
Researchers in Hong Kong are aiming for an intranasal vaccine that would simultaneously offer influenza and COVID-19 protection.
The first phase of human tests will start next month, said Yuen Kwok-Yung, chair of infectious diseases in the University of Hong Kong’s department of microbiology. birthplace of one of the two Vermont natives who founded Alcoholics Anonymous is in danger of closing, another victim of the restrictions made necessary by the coronavirus pandemic.
The shutdown from March until midsummer meant no people could stay in rooms in the hotel where AA co-founder Bill Wilson was “born behind the bar” in 1895, according to the organization’s lore.
“The house is a symbol of hope. It’s a symbol of humanity. It’s a symbol of our commonality, and it’s a place to feel it, touch it, smell it, experience it,” said Dr. Andrea Barthwell, a former official in the Office of National Drug Control Policy who visited the Wilson House in 2003 while promoting an effort of the George W. Bush administration to help people fight addiction.
As someone in recovery, Barthwell said, walking the halls of the Wilson House had a profound impact.
“It would be an incredible loss to have that go down because of COVID,” she said. “COVID has destroyed enough.”