CDC researchers reviewed the acute flaccid myelitis outbreak in 2018 and found that more than 50% of the cases ended up in the intensive care and almost 1 in 4 needed a ventilator to survive after the child's muscles grew too weak to breathe properly. The findings in the agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report also showed that the number of confirmed cases of AFM had increased with every-other-year outbreaks, with 120 cases in 2014, 153 in 2016 and 238 in 2018, and that a new outbreak could strike hundreds of youths in the US within the next few months.

Researchers studied 218 extremely preterm infants in Italy and found that 40% of infants who received the intubation-recruitment-surfactant administration-extubation required invasive ventilation within 72 hours of life compared with 54% of those in the intubation-surfactant-extubation group. The findings in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine showed no differences in safety outcomes or hospital mortality between the groups.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association are calling for a national strategy on masks and a federal mandate for mask wearing to fight COVID-19. There is a "critical window of time" to reduce the spread of COVID-19 before the influenza season begins and hospitals likely become overwhelmed, they write in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts that the US COVID-19 death toll could reach 295,011 by Dec. 1, but that more than 66,000 of those lives could be saved if 95% of the public wore face coverings. COVID-19 has killed 159,990 people in the US, according to Johns Hopkins University, and the CDC estimates this number will reach 181,031 by Aug. 29 with Hawaii and Puerto Rico expected to report more deaths over the next four weeks.

Zoom meetings among critical care clinicians worldwide may be leading to better care for COVID-19 patients as information sharing leads to quick changes in protocols and treatments. "If our Zoom conference was yesterday, change in practice is occurring today," said anesthesiologist Joseph Savino.

A study in JAMA Network Open found that parents of youths admitted for a life-threatening injury or illness to the pediatric intensive care, cardiology or oncology departments who received videoconference-based acceptance and commitment therapy showed significantly greater improvement in post-traumatic stress symptoms, with their average Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-Version 5 scores declining to 17.8 from 23.3, compared with a decline to 26.2 from 31.7 among parents in the waiting list control group.