As more and more health care systems across parts of the U.S. push up against一or beyond一their capacity amid widely circulating COVID-19 infections, questions about how hospitals can continue to care for patients have taken dire form. Hospitals are now filled to the brim with unvaccinated patients. Concerns over how best to ration care for scores […]
Nearly half of new coronavirus infections nationwide are in just five states—a situation that is putting pressure on the federal government to consider changing how it distributes vaccines by sending more doses to hot spots. New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey together reported 44% of the nation’s new COVID-19 infections, or nearly 197,500 […]
New data from Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge suggests that a single dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine can reduce by four-fold the number of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections. This implies that the vaccine could significantly reduce the risk of transmission of the virus from people who are asymptomatic, as well as protecting others from getting ill. […]
The Medicaid expansion facilitated by the Affordable Care Act led to increases in the identification of undiagnosed HIV infections and in the use of HIV prevention services such as preexposure prophylaxis drugs, says new research co-written by a team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign experts who study the intersection of health care and public policy. […]
Infectious diseases experts are seeing an unusual trend when it comes to influenza, and other respiratory and gastrointestinal viruses. For the first time, many viral infections other than COVID-19 are being suppressed. “Viruses, like influenza, which causes flu, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) that causes bronchiolitis and parainfluenza that causes croup, we’re seeing really low rates […]
The usual broken bones and other trauma are being treated this winter at the emergency department of St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. But one category of medical complaints has all but disappeared: infectious disease. Take influenza, for example. Typically between December and April, nurses and doctors at the Philadelphia hospital see hundreds of children with […]
Antibody testing likely undercounts the number of people who have had COVID-19: More than 25% of infected health care workers had NO signs of it in their blood work 60 days later CDC researchers found that 6% of more than 3,000 health care workers they tested had antibodies to coronavirus Within 60 days, when they […]
An aggressive COVID-19 surveillance and testing effort at Duke University was highly effective in minimizing the spread of the disease among students on campus, according to a case study appearing Tuesday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The successful Duke campaign was launched before the start of the semester. Ahead of arriving on […]
THURSDAY, Oct. 22, 2020 — In a move that widens the pool of people considered at risk for coronavirus infection, U.S. health officials released new guidance on Wednesday that redefines who’s considered a “close contact” of an infected individual. The change, issued by the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, will likely have the […]
THURSDAY, Oct. 1, 2020 — Alcoholic formulations of chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) seem to be safe and effective in preventing surgical site infections in clean surgery, according to a review published online Sept. 1 in the Annals of Surgery. Ryckie G. Wade, from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a systematic […]
