Latest healthcare news

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...

Does wearing a facemask cause a decline in oxygen saturation in adults over 65? An article published by Chan, Lee and Hirsch in the Journal of the American Medical Association, October 30, 2020 looked at this vaccine question.  Participants self-measured peripheral...

An interesting preprint on Medrxiv looked at this vexing question.   Harvey and others look at the longitudinal monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 RNA on high touch surfaces in a community setting.   They conducted longitudinal swab sampling of high touch non-porous...

An interesting preprint published by Miron and others in Medrxiv retrospectively examined COVID-19 incidence in 20 countries that held mass gathering rallies in the USA in August to September 2020.  They were compared to the rest of the United States’ counties. ...

A preprint in Medrxiv by a Dutch group looked at five commercially available rapid antigen essays on samples from 1754 people who had already tested positive for the coronavirus with a standard PCR test, which is sensitive, but slow.   The two most sensitive...

An interesting correspondence by Hernandez published October 22, 2020 in The Lancet looks at the answers to this perplexing question.  One of the most striking facts about the COVID-19 pandemic is the notable difference in approach, attitude, control measures,...

An interesting comment by Chris T Bauch in The Lancet Infectious Diseases published October 22, 2020 looked at this point. The basic reproduction number (R0) is the average number of infections produced by a single infectious person in a population with no...

An interesting article by Moutier in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry October 16, 2020 discusses this topic.  Moutier suggests that suicide was a leading cause of death with devastating emotional and societal costs prior to the COVID-19...

 An interesting abstract by Poirer in Nature looks at this in detail.  Influenza studies have shown that influenza viruses survive longer on surfaces or in droplets in cold and dry air, thus increasing the likelihood of subsequent transmission.  A...

A letter published in The Lancet October 22 by Graham Medley looks at the term which he feels has become layered with political interpretations, label strategies, and feels that they are not clearly defined. It is hoped that at some time shortly there will be a...

 An interesting article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association October 13 by Jennifer Abbasi suggested that nose and throat swab polymerase chain reaction testing could miss up to 50% of COVID-19 cases.  This is due in part because the...

An interesting study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, October 15 2020 by Anderson and others evaluated the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine.  MethodNon-human primates received 10 or 100 mcg of the mRNA-1273 vaccine encoding the profusion stabilised spike...