Latest healthcare news

SARS-CoV-2 Virus - where did it come from and where did it evolve? The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control discusses that a meta-analysis of different estimates of the time to the last common ancestor of the virus indicate that the pandemic started...

Can You Go Back to The Gym?  Should Gyms Be Re-Opened? An interesting pre-print by the TRAiN study group in Norway investigated SARS-CoV-2 virus transmission and COVID-19 disease attributable to training facilities. They randomised 18 to 64 years old with no...

SARS-CoV-2 Testing, How Frequent and How Specific? An interesting article from a group in Harvard tried to gauge the importance of test sensitivity and frequency, looking at viral spread in a large group of people.  They found that weekly surveillance testing,...

Face Masks, What Type Should You Wear? According to Scientific American, the Indiana Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering have developed a material which renders infectious particles harmless when passed by hands to the front of masks.  The team have...

COVID-19, Is There Going to be a Second Wave? An editorial by Richard Horton in The Lancet 27 June discusses the spectre of a second wave of COVID-19.  Some infectious disease specialists believe that SARS-CoV-2 might be losing virulence.  However, some are...

What are the Neurological and Neuropsychiatric Complications of COVID-19? These were evaluated in 153 patients within a UK-wide surveillance study by Varatharaj and others published in The Lancet Psychiatry June 25, 2020.  There is increased concern regarding...

Alcohol, COVID-19 and Lockdown Data from the Office for National Statistics has shown that sales in alcohol stores during March increased on a month-on-month volume by 31.4%. Alcohol consumption patterns also altered.  According to a survey by the charity Alcohol...

The antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 in patients with COVID19 An interesting article by Quan-Xin Long and others looked at the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 in 285 patients with COVID-19.  They found that within 19 days following symptom onset, 100% of patients...

Who shows evidence of past SARS-CoV-2 infection? An interesting article by Silvia Stringhini and others published in The Lancet June 2020 assessed the burden of COVID-19 within a population of Geneva.  They found that children between the age of 5 and 9 and those...

Advance in Treatment as Confirmed by Boris Johnson for COVID-19 Infection Last Week Dexamethasone This is a cheap, accessible steroid which has been available for many years.  The real breakthrough was that the recovery trial undertaken by the University of...