Comments closedIt can be surprisingly simple to protect our health and the health of others — by masking in public with high-quality masks (such as KN95 or N95), testing before gatherings, increasing ventilation, and staying home if sick.
Content warning: This article contains depictions of animal suffering and inhumane treatment of animals.
A teen in British Columbia recently became critically ill after becoming infected with H5N1. H5N1 is a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu.
Outbreaks of avian influenza, or bird flu, in livestock and flocks on industrial-scale chicken and dairy farms — so-called factory farms — in the United States are raising alarm bells for public health across the world.
Mainstream commercial animal agriculture is conducted in an intensive way in often cramped and unhygienic environments. These conditions are ideal for new viruses to jump from animals to humans.
Comments closedA new study from UK investigators shows that — while most COVID-19 patients ages 11 to 17 who reported long-COVID symptoms 3 months after the initial infection no longer experienced lingering symptoms at 2 years — 29% still did.
The findings, published in the journal Communications Medicine, come from the National Long COVID in Children and Young People cohort study, which followed up on thousands of young people after their COVID-19 diagnoses.
Comments closedThe UK Health Security Agency (HSA) today announced a contract with CSL Seqirus to buy more than 5 million doses of human H5 avian flu vaccine to prepare for a potential influenza pandemic.
In a statement, the HSA said the vaccine will be based on a current H5 strain and is part of a longer-term plans to ensure access to vaccines for a wider range of pathogens that have pandemic potential.
Comments closedAn experimental study in mice shows that SARS-CoV-2 infection can damage the retinas, with long-term implications for vision. Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection include various neurocognitive symptoms, suggesting the virus can affect the central nervous system. The eyes are also part of the central nervous system, but little is known about the virus’s effects on these organs.
Comments closedCOVID-19 may be a risk factor for multiple sclerosis (MS). This has been shown by new research at Örebro University and Örebro University Hospital, Sweden. The study is published in the journal Brain Communications.
“We saw a raised risk of MS among people who had severe COVID-19. However, only an extremely small number of people who had severe COVID-19 received a subsequent MS diagnosis,” says Scott Montgomery, professor in clinical epidemiology.
Comments closedA Kingston family doctor is being ordered to repay more than $600,000 to the Ontario government for what the province says was reimbursement for improperly billed medical services related to mobile COVID-19 vaccination clinics.
Dr. Elaine Ma has been told by the Health Services Appeal and Review Board to repay $600,962.61, plus interest, to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), to reimburse money she billed the province for vaccinations administered during drive-in COVID-19 vaccination clinics between July 2021 and January 2022.
Comments closedThe National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading public funder of biomedical research, has an enviable track record. Research supported by the agency has led to more than 100 Nobel Prizes and has supported more than 99 percent of the drugs approved by federal regulators from 2010 to 2019.
No surprise, then, that the agency has been called “the crown jewel of the federal government.” But come January, when President-elect Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans take charge, the N.I.H. may face a reckoning.
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