COVID-19 Virtual Symposium #21

Today was the twenty-first Columbia COVID-19 Virtual Symposium.

Presentation Summaries and Video Recordings

Written summaries were kindly provided by the Presenters or the Columbia Researchers Against COVID-19 (CRAC) Team.

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Ben Neuman, PhD, Professor of Biology Head of Department of Biology Texas A&M University, Texarkana

Title: Life in a sea of corona-like viruses

Summary: Dr. Neuman in his talk covered the big family of Corona and Corona-like viruses. Starting from γ-CoV which can be found in birds, whales and dolphins, over δ-CoV which has chosen pigs as hosts over the dangerous β-CoV common in bats and rodents he moves on to nidoviruses and nido-like viruses. He gives insight into the research of identifying the relationship between the different families and especially points out the importance of comparing their genome in identifying fundamental parts and common roots.

Dong-Yan Jin, PhD, Clara and Lawrence Fok Professor in Precision Medicine University of Hong Kong

Title: Beneficial effect of combinational methylprednisolone and remdesivir in the hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection

Summary: Inhibition of the viral replication is possible at different stages of the viral life cycle. Dr. Jin’s therapy uses a helicase inhibitor to interrupt this process. Furthermore, he gave insight into other aspects of his research, such as the still unknown reasons for symptomatic disease progression and the possibility of exploiting them, once understood.

Yuguo Li, PhD, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering Associate Dean, Faculty of Engineering University of Hong Kong

Title: Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: Respiratory and fecal aerosols

Summary: Nine months into the pandemic, many aspects of the transmission of COVID-19 are still unclear. Transmission via aerosols (less than 75 μm diameter) is undoubtedly the main path. Aerosols originating from a respiratory source are hereby most dangerous within a distance of 1.5 m, where aerosol concentration is high and the size is just right for aspiration. He presents his investigation of three different infection events, in a Wuhan restaurant and bus, on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and Amoy Garden, a building complex. Besides respiratory aerosols, the latter example demonstrates the risk of faecal aerosols and their distribution.

10:15am Talk 4: David Glass, MD, Vice President of Research Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Title: The intersection between Aging- and Covid19-perturbed mechanisms

Summary: Dr. Glass asked us not to post as this work is unpublished.

Jürgen A. Richt, DVM, PhD, Regents Distinguished Professor KBA Eminent Scholar Director, Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases (CEEZAD) Kansas State University

Title: SARS-CoV-2 in Companion Animals: Susceptibility, Transmission and Reinfection in Domestic Cats

Summary: An interesting study of SARS-CoV-2 in domestic cats was presented by Dr. Richt. Reported cases of the virus in large and domestic cats, dogs and minks exist which drove attention to this topic. The animals were examined with swabs, air, environmental and blood tests as well as a terminating necropsy. All examinations were sampled over time and group, with cats being primary infected via the nose as well as infected via co-housing with infected ones. After 21 days the remaining cats were re-infected, which triggered an immune response against the virus.

Irwin Redlener, MD, Founding Director, National Center for Disaster Preparedness Director, Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative Senior Research Scholar Earth Institute at Columbia University NBC/ MSNBC Public Health Analyst

Title: Covid-19: Current Status and What We Need to Know Now

Summary: A summarizing overview of the current status of the pandemic and our knowledge of it is given by Dr. Redlener. While the hotspots at the beginning of the pandemic were urban centers, the virus now spreads more and more into rural and less developed areas, so that an end before 2022 to 2024 becomes more and more unlikely. Many medical aspects, such as viable drugs, vaccines, build up of immunity, reasons for different severity etc. are still unknown and under heavy research. He ends his presentation with a list of needed tools, in descending order in which he expects them to be available, starting with hospital drugs and ending with an effective vaccine.

Cong Liu, PhD, Associate Research Scientist Laboratory of Dr. Chunhua Weng Department of Biomedical Informatics & Jay Lee, MS, Staff Associate Laboratory of Dr. Chunhua Weng Department of Biomedical Informatics Columbia University

Title: Severity Prediction for COVID-19 Patients via Recurrent Neural Networks

Summary: A puzzling property of COVID-19 is its separation into asymptomatic and very mild cases and very severe cases, up to death. While certain risk factors for a severe progression were identified, no reliable prediction, especially at an early stage of the disease can be made. The predictive model developed by Dr. Lee and Dr. Liu is trying to do this. Focusing on EHR data as input the model, derived from 2500 hospitalized patients of 18 years and older needs only a fraction of a second per patient to predict the severity of the disease, which makes it usable for real time applications. Already now it is more reliable than for example age, the biggest risk factor for COVID-19.