Latest healthcare news

An interesting study by Chong and others published in the International Reproductive Health Journal of Contraception on March 26, 2021 looked at this subject.  They performed the study at 10 sites providing a termination service in 13 states and Washington...

An interesting preprint in medRxiv by Milman and others posted March 31, 2021 explores this issue.   Mass vaccination has the potential to curb the current COVID-19 pandemic by protecting vaccinees from the disease and possibly lowering the chance of...

An interesting article in the Scientific American by Josh Fischman examines this issue. So how the SARS-CoV-2 virus start?   In an interview with CNN that aired on March 28 a prominent scientist speculated, without evidence, that the origin was when the...

1. What are the risks associated with the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine? This is clearly a fast-moving subject and I can only comment from a general practice point of view not a consultant haematologist or researcher. The risks, as with any vaccine, include allergy, pain...

Many people have asked us about feelings of exhaustion or fatigue after so many months of lockdown. Described as “brain fog” it can leave you feeling tired, lacking in motivation and have a negative impact on your day to day life. Some advice received on what you can...

A traveller must either quarantine in the place they are staying or in a managed quarantine hotel for 10 days due to Coronavirus.  This will depend on where the traveller has travelled from in the 10 days prior to arrival into England.   Before leaving...

How effective is it? According to a press release by Pfizer itself there was 100% efficacy against COVID-19 amongst those aged 12-15 years old in the United States without a prior history of infection. 18 cases of COVID-19 were observed in the placebo group and none...

The Independent newspaper reviewed this and suggested that researchers at MIT favour that their Trojan horse delivery system will activate a strong immune response in the cells lining the airways to attack the virus as soon as it lands.   The team have...

A comment by Peeling and Olliaro published March 25th in The Lancet Infectious Diseases suggests that scaling up testing in tandem with appropriate public health measures and vaccine rollout might effectively contribute to all our lives returning to some level of...

An interesting study by Kiang and others in the Lancet Infectious Diseases published March 22nd reviewed this question.   Routine viral testing strategies for SARS-CoV-2 infection might facilitate safe airline travel during the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigate...

An interesting preprint by Smyth and others in medRxiv suggested that waste-water based epidemiology may provide an alternative and complimentary approach for monitoring communities for the novel variants.   Given that SARS-CoV-2 can infect the cells of the...

An interesting study published as a preprint in medRxiv.org looked at this in17 schools in Wisconsin, America.   The study by Falk and others looked at the specific mitigation strategies employed at these schools during a time of exceptionally high COVID-19...

A research paper published in BMC infectious diseases on 11th March reviewed this issue.   It is essential to understand the epidemiological parameters that determine the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 for public health intervention. Globally, a number of...

An interesting, manuscript accepted in the Journal of Infectious Diseases Oxford Academic by Lewnard and others published 9th March 2021 investigated the association. They investigated Kaiser Permanente Healthcare members who were aged 65 or over as of 1st March 2020...

This is neatly defined by Corum and Zimmer in the New York Times.  Each coronavirus contains nearly 30,000 letters of RNA. This genetic information allows the virus to infect cells and hijack them to make new viruses.   As an infected cell builds new...

A study published in the Clinical Medicine Journal of the Royal College of Physicians in the United Kingdom by Robinson and others in March 2021 compared the use of the Roche and Abbott assay for antibodies amongst a large cohort of healthcare workers in Southern...

Professor Justin Stebbing in his weekly science update looks at the current research.   The risk of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection is significantly lower amongst patients who had received at least one dose of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine compared to an...

An interesting article published in PLOS1 March 15th 2021 by Hoben and others reviewed this question.   They analysed CCTV clips to assess people's behaviour in public spaces.  They concluded that compliance with social distancing directives appeared to...

An interesting commentary published in The Lancet March 12th by Benedict and Cedernaes discusses this issue.   Within an extraordinarily swift timeframe vaccines to control the COVID-19 pandemic have been developed using either an mRNA protein subunit or...

An interesting article published by Dalbeth and Robinson in The Lancet rheumatology March 9th 2021 discusses this issue.  There has been a rapid acceleration in the understanding of predictors for poor outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection since first reports of...

An article published by Hopkinson and others in the British Medical Journal Thorax looked at this important issue.  They tried to associate current tobacco smoking with the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 and the severity of illness. They looked at the...

An interesting retrospective cohort study by Wilcox and others published in the BMJ Open Respiratory Research Journals suggested that influenza vaccination may offer some protection against COVID-19 severity.  The study used routinely collected health records...