COVID-19

In this paper, the authors investigated the effects of physical distance, face masks, and eye protection on virus transmission in healthcare and non-healthcare settings.

In this paper just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the authors report the natural history of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection from part of the cohort of the 410 infected people on the cruise ship, Diamond Princess, who were asymptomatic at the time of testing.

In this paper, the authors conducted a prospective national-level data collection of patients treated with mechanical thrombectomy (MT), across 45 days of pandemic containment measures, compared to patients treated during the same calendar period in 2019.

On June 3, we published in the Breaking News section of this site the article entitled “Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis” previously published in Lancet. On June 13, the article was retracted by three of the four authors.

In this case series, the authors systematically assessed the presence of deep vein thrombosis among patients with severe COVID-19 in an intensive care unit (ICU) in France. They prospectively performed a venous ultrasonogram of the legs in all patients on admission to ICU and repeated the test after 48 hours if the first examination was normal. All patients received standard anticoagulant prophylaxis at hospital admission.

In this paper, recently published in Lancet, the authors report the findings of autopsies of six patients (four men and two women, aged 58–82 years) who died from COVID-19 in April 2020 in Munich, Germany. The period from onset of symptoms to admission ranged from 2–10 days.

This review, recently published in JAMA Neurology, serves to summarise available information regarding coronaviruses in the nervous system, identifies potential tissue targets and routes of entry of SARS-CoV-2 into the central nervous system, describes the range of clinical neurological complications that have been reported thus far in COVID-19, and their potential pathogenesis.

One of the immediate and ongoing neurological challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic is the management of patients who are undergoing immunotherapy for existing neuroimmunological disease.

In this nice paper recently published in the European Journal of Neurology, the authors systematically reviewed available evidence for reports of neurological signs and symptoms in COVID‐19 patients to identify cases with SARS‐CoV‐2 infection or immune‐mediated reaction in the nervous system.

For June 2020, we have selected: Mao L. et al. Neurologic Manifestations of Hospitalized Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Wuhan, China JAMA

This important session was held in the main auditorium and started with the lecture on “Ethical considerations during the Covid-19 pandemic” by Marco Vergano from Italy. He made a deep overview on clinical and organisational ethics for the allocations of patients in intensive care. The lecture went through strategies for scarce resources. Prioritising patients is the key point in a pandemic situation. He discussed the situation in Italy since February when the first Covid-19 case was registered and then followed the exponential increase in cases, which made Italy the most affected country by Covid-19 after China. His group has published allocation strategies for ICU resources, including triage principles and criteria. Prof Vergano gave an overview of UK well as American guidelines. Interestingly, some data showed that some patients will never completely recover after ICU admissions. Therefore, “ICU is not a panacea”. Age and associated frailty are the two most important factors in this decision-making process. Finally, the most important lessons of this time is that “tolerating uncertainty” might be the next medical revolution.

COVID-19 has swept across Europe and the world since the turn of the year, and resulted in this highly topical session being added to the virtual Congress programme 2020, as a further response to the pandemic. Reflecting the common challenges we all face, and the importance of international cooperation, this was a joint EAN/AAN session, chaired by Professor Claudio Bassetti and Professor James Stevens, the Presidents of our two Associations.

As any place in Europe and beyond, the French health system is still under pressure and Covid-19 has already and will profoundly change healthcare.

As soon as the dramatic developments in our European fellow countries Italy, France, and Spain came to our attention, an emergency plan was deployed across the country. Besides coordinating logistics of allocating protection gear and respirators, all hospitals with the respective competence and resources in intensive care medicine have systematically ramped up their capacities.

Despite some positive slowing of new cases and deaths in some countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has infected until today over 3.5 million people, leading to more than 250,000 deaths across the globe. Without a doubt, the crisis sparked by this pandemic has also wreaked havoc on healthcare systems and economies while causing massive disruption to the everyday lives of people around the world.