CDC broadens guidance on Americans facing risk of severe Covid-19

The CDC yesterday issued updates to its guidance on who could get seriously ill with Covid-19, suggesting that even younger people with health conditions such as obesity, chronic kidney disease, and type 2 diabetes can develop severe disease. The guidance also states that pregnant women have an increased risk of being hospitalized and needing a mechanical ventilator than non-pregnant women. Alongside the new warning, CDC Director Robert Redfield said evidence suggests 20 million people have contracted Covid-19, and for every person who tests positive, another 10 cases have likely gone undiagnosed. STAT's Helen Branswell has more here.

Here's what else is happening with the pandemic:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced yesterday that the state would pause its reopening plan and instead work to increase hospital space for Covid-19 cases. Texas is one of nearly 30 states that has seen an increase in cases in recent weeks, and now has more than 4,300 people in hospitals from the coronavirus, more than double the number than at the beginning of this month.
One way for the U.S. to ramp up its Covid-19 testing is to employ a broader surveillance strategy: pooling samples from multiple people and testing them as a group for the coronavirus. “Pooling would give us the capacity to go from a half a million tests a day to potentially 5 million individuals tested per day,” Deborah Birx, who is helping lead the White House’s coronavirus response, said at a conference earlier this week.
According to a new study, around 1 in 3 pediatricians in the U.K. say that patients were coming in for treatment or diagnosing conditions later than would have been expected before the pandemic hit. Children with diabetes were most likely to have delayed care, as well as those with sepsis and cancer.
Vaccine trials ideally ought to include the populations most at risk of contracting the disease, and so any Covid-19 vaccine trials ought to include a fair number of Black and Latinx participants, the authors of a new First Opinion write. And while enrollment of minority groups has historically been challenging, the authors offer concrete steps that trial organizers can take, including funding to trial sites for diversity initiatives.