Month: October 2020

Major pharmacies have halted flu shot appointments. Doctors’ offices are putting people on waiting lists — or telling them to call back in December. Although the government has urged calm and said more supplies are on the way, a survey of general practitioners in Britain found that only a quarter expect to have enough flu vaccine to last the winter.  The story is similar in many countries across Europe. As coronavirus cases rise, urgings from public health officials about the need to avoid a “twindemic” has upped demand for flu vaccines — and, in some places, triggered shortages. Governments are rationing flu shots to those most vulnerable, while they scramble for supplies. In a limited way, it’s a trial run of what governments may face if and when coronavirus vaccines are available. It...

No model can predict what will happen at an individual school. Infection rates vary from one neighborhood to another. Luck plays a role. And the effectiveness of measures like mask-wearing and social distancing will depend on the dynamics at each school, how compliant students are and which activities are curtailed. School reopening has become a tangled logistical process worldwide, as public officials, administrators, teachers, parents and students have had to debate measures like face shields, ventilation, shift learning and whether to go virtual partially, or altogether. Most large school districts in the country, with the exception of New York City, have gone all virtual for most or all of the fall semester, because of stubbornly high virus rates and concerns from educators, their uni...

So you think you may have been exposed to COVID-19. How long will it take for you to know if you’re infected? The coronavirus affects everyone differently, including the amount of time it takes to start experiencing symptoms or get confirmation that you have the virus. That said, here’s a general timeline you can expect and what else you should know: COVID-19 can enter someone’s body immediately after exposure, but you likely won’t know you have it right away. There’s an incubation period for COVID-19. If you test too soon after exposure, it can result in a false negative. In one study on false negative rates after COVID-19 exposure, researchers found that in the four days prior to symptom onset, the probability of a false negative was extremely high on day one. The probability of a fals...

Breathe easy. A new study suggests that surgical face masks don’t cause a buildup of carbon dioxide or restrict oxygen, despite opposing claims. The study, on the “Effect of Face Masks on Gas Exchange in Healthy Persons and Patients with COPD,” which was published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society on Friday, was conducted after a group of Florida residents challenged Florida’s mask-wearing mandate in June, arguing that wearing the protective face coverings could result in the buildup of too much carbon dioxide. CORONAVIRUS ANTIBODIES PRESENT IN LESS THAN 10% OF AMERICANS, STUDY FINDS Researchers led by Dr. Michael Campos, a pulmonologist with the Miami VA Medical Center and the University of Miami Hospital and Clinics, looked at problems with changes in oxygen levels or c...

Countries around the world have ordered a record number of flu vaccinations in the hopes of avoiding overlap with the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. alone has ordered between 194 million and 198 million doses -- more than half the population of the U.S., even though less than half of adults received the vaccination last year. Despite the abundance of caution, it is not clear how many people will actually seek the vaccine, leading to fears of a possible “twindemic,” as some reports have labeled it. “There’s considerable concern as we enter the fall and winter months and into the flu season that we’ll have that dreaded overlap” of flu and the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said Thursday. Experts started pushing the flu shot in the s...