The team is testing, for the first time, a representative sample (1,000 from 500 households) for Germany on whether they are infected with Corona virus (smear test and antibody blood test).
There was a famous carnival event in Heinsberg and in Germany it is kind of common knowledge by now that the large outbreak in Heinsberg can be traced back to that event. In the study, people were asked whether they attended that event, whether they had pre-existing conditions or take any medications; and all participants of that event were finally tested, and the researchers are reconstructing who sat next to whom and talked to whom. People had assumed that infection had spread via insufficiently clean draft-beer glasses; this seems to be wrong, most people had bottled beer. Moreover, people got ill a day or so after the event, which does not fit the incubation time. There is a school nearby in which seemingly almost all pupils and parents were ill in January. These people are now tested for antibodies.
In February, during the initial breakout in Heinsberg, the homes/apartments/houses of infected people where tested, and this is now done for newly infected as well. This includes taking air samples and samples from remote controls and door knobs. Up to now: 70 households, but they are planning for a larger sample.
They found viruses on things or door knobs and (once) in toilet water when somebody had diarrhea, but not once did the researchers succeed in breeding intact viruses from these samples. This suggests that most people are not infected via surface viruses.
The team had been among the first to find loss of taste and smell as a symptom. Now the data shows that about a third of patients have diarrhea, sometimes for several days, which is more than was assumed. Moreover, Streeck says his team heard from somewhere else several times (but not yet found in their own samples) that people report of deafness and dizziness. He says that these are things nobody originally paid attention to because they do not fit a respiratory disease. The interviewers note that it fits reports of headache and other nerve-system symptoms including findings of brain damage in the case of deceased patients (https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020201187). Streeck notes that Sars-CoV-2 is a surprising virus and mentions a two-phase pattern (pharynx first, lung later). He also mentions that authors of another study found the virus in blood samples, while the Heinsberg researchers did not find that among their 70-person sample (and that it could be possible that the virus only enters the blood in severe cases, but not the mild ones).
Both from Heinsberg and from other cases, Streeck states that infection mostly seems to happen via relatively close contact (he mentions that transmisisons of/via haircutters, taxidrivers etc did NOT seem to happen in one famous and well-researched case in Munich, but that basically the whole network of infection can be often be reconstructed).
He notes that sitting in your apartment and not getting any sun is bad for your immune system, and curfew-like restrictions and behavioral recommendations should be more evidence-based.
Some points from an interview with virologist Hendrik Streeck who is leading a systematic study in the German town of Gangelt in the county of Heinsberg, one of the epicenters of Corona in Germany (https://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/2020-04/hendrik-streeck-covid-19-heinsberg-symptome-infektionsschutz-massnahmen-studie/komplettansicht, ZEIT online, April 6, interviewed by Jakob Simmank and Florian Schumann):
The team is testing, for the first time, a representative sample (1,000 from 500 households) for Germany on whether they are infected with Corona virus (smear test and antibody blood test).
There was a famous carnival event in Heinsberg and in Germany it is kind of common knowledge by now that the large outbreak in Heinsberg can be traced back to that event. In the study, people were asked whether they attended that event, whether they had pre-existing conditions or take any medications; and all participants of that event were finally tested, and the researchers are reconstructing who sat next to whom and talked to whom. People had assumed that infection had spread via insufficiently clean draft-beer glasses; this seems to be wrong, most people had bottled beer. Moreover, people got ill a day or so after the event, which does not fit the incubation time. There is a school nearby in which seemingly almost all pupils and parents were ill in January. These people are now tested for antibodies.
In February, during the initial breakout in Heinsberg, the homes/apartments/houses of infected people where tested, and this is now done for newly infected as well. This includes taking air samples and samples from remote controls and door knobs. Up to now: 70 households, but they are planning for a larger sample.
They found viruses on things or door knobs and (once) in toilet water when somebody had diarrhea, but not once did the researchers succeed in breeding intact viruses from these samples. This suggests that most people are not infected via surface viruses.
The team had been among the first to find loss of taste and smell as a symptom. Now the data shows that about a third of patients have diarrhea, sometimes for several days, which is more than was assumed. Moreover, Streeck says his team heard from somewhere else several times (but not yet found in their own samples) that people report of deafness and dizziness. He says that these are things nobody originally paid attention to because they do not fit a respiratory disease. The interviewers note that it fits reports of headache and other nerve-system symptoms including findings of brain damage in the case of deceased patients (https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020201187). Streeck notes that Sars-CoV-2 is a surprising virus and mentions a two-phase pattern (pharynx first, lung later). He also mentions that authors of another study found the virus in blood samples, while the Heinsberg researchers did not find that among their 70-person sample (and that it could be possible that the virus only enters the blood in severe cases, but not the mild ones).
Both from Heinsberg and from other cases, Streeck states that infection mostly seems to happen via relatively close contact (he mentions that transmisisons of/via haircutters, taxidrivers etc did NOT seem to happen in one famous and well-researched case in Munich, but that basically the whole network of infection can be often be reconstructed).
He notes that sitting in your apartment and not getting any sun is bad for your immune system, and curfew-like restrictions and behavioral recommendations should be more evidence-based.
If they have a different pattern that might mean that their local strain has a mutation and actually there’s a different pattern.
I’ve seen news about this study, but no preprint. It’d be really helpful if we could get it.