Latest healthcare news

An interesting preprint by Doshi from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, Baltimore looked at this issue. It was published by the Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Efforts to control the spread of contagious disease...

How do we Ensure Appropriate Access to the COVID-19 Vaccine and Ensure Success for this Unprecedented Public Health Challenge? An interesting commentary in The Lancet published December 10, 2020 by Peter Hotez and Walter Orenstein looks at this issue. They offer a...

Viral Load Dynamics, Duration of Viral Shedding, Infectiousness of the Various SARS Viruses Looking at SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV. How Infectious Are They? This is a systematic review and meta-analysis published in The Lancet November 19 by Cevik and others....

The CDC in the United States looked at the risk assessment and management of COVID-19 among travellers arriving at designated US airports between January 17 and September 13, 2020. This was an article published on November 13 by Phillip Dollard and others. Research...

Pfizer-BioNTech announced last week that the efficacy portion of their COVID-19 vaccine trial had been completed. The vaccine prevented 95% of cases of the disease. Professor Stebbings in his daily report evaluated results and suggested that they looked a bit better...

An article published November 12 in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine by Monk and others looked at the efficacy and safety of inhaled nebulised interferon beta-1a for the treatment of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. They did a randomised, double blind,...

An interesting article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association open network by Sarah Kreps and others in November 2020 looked at this key point. They argued that widespread public uptake of the vaccine is crucial to stem the pandemic and examined...

An interesting article published by Lelieveld and others in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health looked at this vexing issue. Their results substantiated that airborne transmission in the indoor environment is an important factor. They...

An interesting article published in The Lancet by Taquet and others November 9, 2020 look at the adverse mental health consequences of COVID-19, including anxiety and depression to evaluate whether there was an increased psychiatric risk from infection. They studied...

Original research by Steven Wilson and Charles Wiysonge published in the BMJ Global Health looked at this intriguing question. They considered the threat posed by anti-vaccination efforts on social media to be critically important with the forthcoming need for...

An interesting study published in the International Journal of Periodontics and Restorative Dentistry looked at the incidence of COVID-19 virus transmission in three dental offices as a six month retrospective study in America. SARS-CoV-2 has shown the ability to...

An interesting preprint in Medrxiv published September 2020 by Bell and others looked into this. The availability of a COVID-19 vaccine has been heralded as key to controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 vaccination programme’s success will rely on public...

An interesting comment in The Lancet Global Health published 5 November 2020 looked at this question.  Dehingia and Raj suggested that global data indicates a higher COVID-19 case fatality rate amongst men over women.  Most countries with available data...

An interesting article published by Chen and others looked at the epidemiological and clinical findings of short term recurrence of SARS-CoV-2 by PCR positivity in 1282 discharged cases.   They found that of 1282 discharged patients, 189, that is 14.74%, tested...

Professor Justin Stebbing looks at this issue in his daily update report and discusses the fact that COVID-19 was detected in nearly 200 mink farms in Denmark.   The strain which the minks had showed decreased sensitivity to COVID-19 antibodies.   He...

Boris Johnson indicated in his prime ministerial news conference on Saturday that within a very few days, there was going to be a mass testing of the whole population.   This is clearly a major undertaking but let's look and see whether it is being done in any other...

This editorial in The Lancet published November 5 looks at this vexing issue.  The editorial suggests that the UK Government's consideration of young people in its COVID-19 response has been inadequate and some eight months into the pandemic it argues that it is...