Month: November 2020

Rebecca Sussman got a coronavirus test because town officials in Bedford, N.Y., encouraged her to. “If you haven’t gotten your test yet, please do so for yourself, your family and our community,” Chris Burdick, the town supervisor, said in an email. More tests would mean a lower positivity rate, he said, and a faster path to reopening. He directed residents to the town’s new testing site, situated on an empty parking lot at the train station. Ms. Sussman, 51, took her whole family to get tested, and the results came back negative. Then the paperwork came: $6,816 had been charged to insurance for four coronavirus tests. Ms. Sussman’s fees alone were $1,944. She started looking through the itemized costs. One insurance claim showed that she had been tested for a dozen respiratory diseases....

COVID-19 has been linked to a greater risk of developing mental health disorders, a new study from Britain’s Oxford University states. The report published in The Lancet peer-reviewed medical journal found that 20 percent of COVID-19 survivors, or 1 in 5, will receive a first-time mental health diagnosis within 90 days of infection. Among the most common are anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, insomnia and dementia. “People have been worried that COVID-19 survivors will be at greater risk of mental health problems, and our findings ... show this to be likely,” Oxford professor of psychiatry Paul Harrison said, according to Reuters. The Oxford study evaluated health records of 69 million people in the United States, more than 60,000 of whom had been diagnosed with ...

Social distancing and other measures put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic will trigger a spike in flu cases next winter, a study warns.  So-called non-pharmaceutical interventions – behavioural changes which curb the spread of disease – have been in force for much of 2020. They include wearing face masks and social distancing.  These measures have not only helped to break the chain of transmission for Covid-19, but have also slashed infection rates of other diseases.  As a result, seasonal influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) have infected a fifth fewer people in the United States in 2020 than in an average year, data shows, a.   However, researchers caution that this apparent bonus will have a knock-on impact in the coming years, because it increases the pool of suscep...

A nasal antiviral created by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons blocked transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in ferrets, suggesting the nasal spray also may prevent infection in people exposed to the new coronavirus. The compound in the spray—a lipopeptide developed by Anne Moscona, MD, and Matteo Porotto, PhD, professors in the Department of Pediatrics and directors of the Center for Host-Pathogen Interaction—is designed to prevent the new coronavirus from entering host cells. The antiviral lipopeptide is inexpensive to produce, has a long shelf life, and does not require refrigeration. These features make it stand out from other antiviral approaches under development, including monoclonal antibodies. The new nasal lipopeptide could be ideal for ...