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|Articles|March 19, 2020

Contagion Live News Network: Coronavirus Updates for March 19, 2020

Stay on top of coronavirus developments from March 19, 2020.

Welcome to the Contagion Live News Network. I’m Michaela Fleming. This is the coronavirus update for Thursday, March 19th.

For the first time since the global pandemic began, there were no new cases of COVID-19 recorded in China yesterday.

As of this morning, more than 222,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide. Over 9000 cases have been confirmed in the United States alone. New York State is home to almost a third of US cases with over 3000 confirmed infections and 20 associated deaths.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 80% of COVID-19 related deaths in the United States have occurred in adults aged 65 years and older.

The US Food and Drug Administration has issued Emergency Use Authorization for Abbott’s molecular COVID-19 test. The test operates on the m2000 RealTime System, a platform which uses polymerase chain reaction technology for rapid diagnosis. The systems can run up to 470 tests in 24 hours.

In case you missed it, the first volunteer was vaccinated in a phase 1 coronavirus vaccine trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

On March 25, 2020, at 6PM ET, Contagion® is hosting a live CME webinar on what clinicians need to know amid the COVID-19 pandemic. More details are available on our website.

For more on these stories, COVID-19, and the latest infectious disease news, visit ContagionLive.com. To track the spread of coronavirus in the United States and abroad, be sure to use the Contagion Outbreak Monitor.

For the Contagion Live News Network, I’m Michaela Fleming. Thanks for watching.

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