Author: Shannon Becker
Pulmonary Rehab May Benefit Some Patients After Severe COVID
(MedPage Today) In patients with significant respiratory disability following hospitalizations for COVID, 8 weeks of daily, supervised pulmonary rehabilitation was associated with significant improvement in exercise tolerance and quality of life in a single-center, retrospective study from India. The analysis of outcomes among 57 hospitalized patients — including 10 who needed non-invasive ventilation and 32 […]
Oct 20, 2022
It’s Gotten Awkward to Wear a Mask
(The Atlantic) Last week, just a couple of hours into a house-sitting stint in Massachusetts for my cousin and his wife, I received from them a flummoxed text: “Dude,” it read. “We are the only people in masks.” Upon arriving at the airport, and then boarding their flight, they’d been shocked to find themselves virtually […]
Oct 20, 2022
Uganda Ebola outbreak ‘rapidly evolving’ after 1 month
(ABC News) Uganda’s Ebola outbreak is “rapidly evolving” a month after the disease was reported in the East African country, a top World Health Organization official said Thursday, describing a difficult situation for health workers on the ground. “The Ministry of Health of Uganda has shown remarkable resilience and effectiveness and (is) constantly fine-tuning a response to what […]
Oct 20, 2022
@johnstone.gregory Let’s add flesh eating virus to the roster #2022update #monkeypox #polio #florida ♬ original sound – Greg Johnstone
Oct 20, 2022
As Cholera Outbreak Exacerbates Haiti’s Multiple Crises, Special Representative Says Security Council Must Act Decisively to Help Government Restore Order, Save Lives
(ReliefWeb) With the spread of cholera exacerbating the ongoing security, humanitarian, economic, and political crisis faced by Haiti, the Security Council must act — “and decisively so” — in response to its Government’s request for support to its institutions to restore order, and to save thousands of lives that will otherwise be lost, the United […]
Oct 18, 2022
Which Animals Catch COVID? This Database Has Dozens of Species and Counting
(Scientific American) Tracking how SARS-CoV-2 spreads among animals could help us prepare for the next pandemic. The virus that causes COVID-19 is a prolific sack of genes that targets not just humans but nonhuman animals as well. And just as humans and animals can infect one another, animals can also infect other animals, says Amélie Desvars-Larrive, […]
Oct 18, 2022
New Lab-Made Covid-19 Coronavirus At Boston University Raises Questions
(Forbes) This was one of those should-have-seen-it-coming moments. On October 14, a team of researchers posted on bioRxiv a preprint that described how they had created a new hybrid version of the Covid-19 coronavirus in their lab at Boston University and used this lab-created virus to infect mice, which ended up killing 80% of the mice. These days, if […]
Oct 18, 2022
Was a study that created a hybrid COVID-19 virus too risky?
(Science) Science looks at the furor over an experiment that combined Omicron with a more lethal SARS-CoV-2 variant. This week, Twitter exploded with outrage about a study that seemed to have created a Frankenstein COVID-19 virus: a version of SARS-CoV-2 that combines Omicron, the fast-spreading but relatively mild variant that’s now everywhere, and a deadlier […]
Oct 18, 2022
Risk of reinfection, vaccine protection, and severity of infection with the BA.5 omicron subvariant: a nation-wide population-based study in Denmark
(The Lancet) Estimates of immunity and severity for the SARS-CoV-2 omicron subvariant BA.5 are important to assess the public health impact associated with its rapid global spread despite vaccination. We estimated natural and vaccine immunity and severity of BA.5 relative to BA.2 in Denmark, a country with high mRNA-vaccination coverage and free-of-charge RT-PCR testing.
Oct 18, 2022
Ugandan woman with Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever isolated
(Dispatch) Soroti Regional Referral Hospital has isolated a female patient confirmed to have Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, a widespread disease caused by a tick-borne virus. The patient is from Aprikila Sub County in Kaberamaido District in Eastern Uganda. The patient was admitted to Soroti Regional Referral Hospital on Wednesday 12, October 2022 after a referral from […]
Oct 18, 2022