Jan 14th, 2022 - Guidelines Summary Numerous clinical guidelines have been issued for COVID-19. The following guidelines have been summarized at Medscape's COVID-19 Clinical Guidelines center: COVID-19 Enforcement Policy for Sterilizers, Disinfectant Devices, and Air Purifiers (FDA, 2020): 2020 COVID-19 guidance for industry and FDA staff OSHA Guidance on Preparing the Workplace for COVID-19 (2020): 2020 guidan...

Jan 14th, 2022 - The use of surgical-type face masks has become increasingly common during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent findings suggest that it is harder to categorise the facial expressions of masked faces, than of unmasked faces. To date, studies of the effects of mask-wearing on emotion recognition have used categorisation paradigms: authors have presented facial expression stimuli and examined participant...

Jan 14th, 2022 - In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, much in-person data collection has been suspended or become tele-remote. However, tele-remote methods often exclude marginalized groups, including people who use drugs, many of whom lack the technology to participate. To inform future surveillance and research during the pandemic and other public health disasters, we report methods and lessons learned from ...

Jan 14th, 2022 - PARIS (Reuters) - A French administrative tribunal on Thursday suspended an order that masks be worn on the streets of Paris, news agency AFP reported. The mask mandate, imposed by Paris prefecture, the local arm of the interior ministry, had been in place in the capital since Dec. 31 in a bid to curb the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. The ruling by the Paris Administra...

Jan 14th, 2022 - I have a breakthrough COVID infection. With the Omicron variant spreading globally, cases are rising again and I know I'm not alone. My case is mild, but it is evidence of just how vulnerable we still are in this pandemic. I live in New York. When the travel ban lifted in November, my mother came to visit and wanted to see the city. My mother is fully vaccinated and boosted, I am fully vaccinat...

Jan 13th, 2022 - WASHINGTON -- The Biden administration will make more high-quality masks available for free beginning next week as part of its strategy to stem the increasing tide of COVID-19 cases, President Biden said Thursday. "We have helped make sure that high-quality masks are widely available and [in] ample supply at affordable prices ... but for some Americans a mask is not always affordable or conveni...

Jan 13th, 2022 - COVID-19, a pandemic caused by SARS-CoV2 has been spread all over the world and is responsible for serious fatalities. SARS-CoV2 is included in the family of β-coronavirus that affects pulmonary gas exchange and triggers cytokines storm. Vigorous inflammation, hyper-coagulation, a decrease in lymphocytic count and an increase in neutrophilic count are observed in the second week after the onset...

Jan 13th, 2022 - To quantify changes in adherence to mask and distancing guidelines in outdoor settings in Philadelphia, PA before and after President Trump announced he was infected with COVID-19. We used Systematic Observation of Masking Adherence and Distancing (SOMAD) to assess mask adherence in parks, playgrounds, and commercial streets in the 10 City Council districts in Philadelphia PA. We compared adher...

Jan 13th, 2022 - A COVID-19 outbreak has been contained in China through effective prevention measures with the collaboration of the citizens. However, there is resistance to self-reported symptoms as required in the international student community. This study explored knowledge level and symptoms reporting behaviours toward COVID-19 among international students. An online cross-sectional investigation was cond...

Jan 13th, 2022 - Recent reports indicate that respiratory infectious diseases were suppressed during the novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. COVID-19 led to behavioral changes aimed to control droplet transmission or contact transmission. In this study, we examined the incidence of common infectious diseases in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 data were extracted from the national da...

Jan 13th, 2022 - Healthcare facilities are vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 introductions and subsequent nosocomial outbreaks. Antigen rapid diagnostic testing (Ag-RDT) is widely used for population screening, but its health and economic benefits as a reactive response to local surges in outbreak risk are unclear. We simulate SARS-CoV-2 transmission in a long-term care hospital with varying COVID-19 containment measure...

Jan 13th, 2022 - Doctors have welcomed a ruling by the High Court that the Government's operation of a so-called 'VIP fast track' for awarding personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts worth almost £600 million was unlawful. A 'high priority lane' for procurement was set up at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic during a rush to secure PPE supplies. Rules allowing contracts to be awarded without competition ...

Jan 13th, 2022 - In September 2020, I wrote about the risk to rural communities of being overrun with COVID from prisons. That was prompted by the 2020 plans to use West Virginia prisons FCI Gilmer and FCI Hazelton as quarantine sites for the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) system. In addition, prisoners from the overcrowded DC jails would also be sent to these two facilities before being sent yet again ...

Jan 13th, 2022 - (Reuters) - A type of mask used by healthcare providers to protect themselves from the coronavirus can be reprocessed to augment supplies, researchers believe. Unlike cloth and surgical masks, the N95 respirators are designed to achieve a very snug facial fit, with edges that form a tight seal around the nose and mouth. Early in the pandemic, shortages of N95 masks forced personnel to re-use th...

Jan 13th, 2022 - Nurses' leaders described the latest figures for NHS staff in England who were absent because of COVID-19 as "troublingly high", despite indications that the situation might be easing. Overall, 40,031 staff at acute hospital trusts were absent due to SARS-CoV-2 on January 9, an increase of 2.3% a week previously, NHS England data showed. However, the data suggests that absences because of COVID...

Jan 13th, 2022 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. The Cleveland Clinic in Weston, Florida, on Jan. 11 was treating 80 covid-19 patients — a tenfold increase since late December. Nearly half were admitted for other medical reasons. The surge driven by the extremely infectious omicron variant helped push the South Florida hospital with 206 licens...

Jan 13th, 2022 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. Students walked out of schools across New York City on Tuesday afternoon to protest inadequate COVID-19 protections and insist on a remote learning option until conditions improve. The group of students, who organized on social media, called for more testing and better screening to find positive...

Jan 13th, 2022 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. President Joe Biden announced Thursday the U.S. government will make free, upgraded face masks available for ordering online starting next week. In addition, he is ordering 500 million more rapid COVID-19 tests to meet future demand and deploying more military teams to help overwhelmed hospitals...

Jan 12th, 2022 - When the United States went into a 2-week quarantine to slow the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus in March 2020, everything changed. In the months following, social distancing, working from home, and wearing masks became the norm, and life needed to find a way to go on.

Jan 12th, 2022 - Japan recently experienced two major heavy rain disasters: the West Japan heavy rain disaster in July 2018 and the Kumamoto heavy rain disaster in July 2020. Between the occurrences of these two disasters, Japan began experiencing the wave of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, providing a unique opportunity to compare the incidence of acute respiratory infection (ARI) between the...