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In this video, Katie Boston-Leary, PhD, director of nursing programs for the American Nurses Association (ANA), discusses criticisms of the CDC’s new policy shortening quarantine periods for positive individuals and shares concerns about its effect on healthcare professionals. The following is a transcript of her remarks: The ANA’s criticisms of the guidance for healthcare workers

(Reuters) – Within weeks, the Omicron variant has fueled thousands of new COVID-19 hospitalizations among U.S. children, raising new concerns about how the many unvaccinated Americans under the age of 18 will fare in the new surge. The seven-day-average number of daily hospitalizations for children between Dec. 21 and Dec. 27 is up more than

Canadian Blood Services says there is an immediate need for blood donors over the holiday season, with thousands of donation appointments open across the country including in Ontario. Approximately 5,600 appointments in Ontario need to be booked by Jan. 15, a spokesperson for the organization said in an email to CBC News. “The holiday period

Laura Dover, MD, had carefully timed her pregnancy around the four exams required to achieve board certification in radiation oncology. But when the pandemic hit in 2020, the final test, offered each May, was pushed to October — the week of her due date. It would be impossible for her to fly the 2500 miles

A growing body of data further strengthened the case for Omicron being a less severe variant than Delta, said Anthony Fauci, MD, chief medical advisor to President Biden, during a White House COVID-19 Response Team phone briefing on Wednesday. Given certain caveats, “all indications point to a lesser severity of Omicron versus Delta,” Fauci said.

Low vitamin D is common in patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP), but supplementation does not appear to improve mental or physical symptoms, new data show. “Previous work, our own and others, has shown that people with psychosis, even soon after their first diagnosis, have low vitamin D levels, but it was not known whether supplementing with

The decision by U.S. health officials to shorten the recommended COVID-19 isolation and quarantine period from 10 days to five is drawing criticism from some medical experts and could create confusion among many Americans. To the dismay of some authorities, the new guidelines allow people to leave isolation without getting tested to see if they

The study covered in this summary was published in medRxiv.org as a preprint and has not yet been peer-reviewed. Key Takeaways An external validation study provided guidance into needed revisions to an earlier model used to predict a pregnant woman’s risk for developing gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) early during pregnancy across many settings and revised

At this point in the COVID vaccination campaign, nearly all American adults who want the vaccine have gotten it and are gratefully snapping up their boosters too. Those who decline vaccination are largely impervious to public service announcements, community pressure, and case counts turbocharged by the Omicron variant. Public health experts emphasize that primary care

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made some necessary changes to the recommended isolation and quarantine periods for people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and for those who have been exposed to the virus, respectively.  On Monday, the national public health agency released a statement via its website to announce the

Padagis US LLC has initiated a nationwide recall of certain lots of nitroglycerin lingual spray due to a possible defective delivery system. “Out of an abundance of caution, this product is being recalled from the market due to a complaint received that a unit may not dispense,” according to the company announcement posted December 27

Protection provided by COVID-19 vaccines against infection by the novel coronavirus has waned dramatically since the highly infectious Omicron variant started spreading across Ontario, according to data from the province’s Science Advisory Table. The data shows that while having two doses does protect against severe illness among those who contract the virus, its ability to

Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. One-hundred-fifty health care workers at an Israeli hospital received a second COVID booster shot Monday in an experiment to see if the extra boost offers more protection against the Omicron variant. Data from the test at Sheba Medical Centre near Tel

Can fixing what’s broken in an ailing healthcare system create a model for everything else that’s going wrong in this country, and around the world? As we come to the end of another fun-filled year in healthcare, so many conversations have been started about things we need to do, about ways we need to change,

As the holiday season is filled with get-togethers and meetups with friends and family, inevitably, this is also a time when people are more likely to indulge and enjoy. While there’s nothing wrong with having your fill of Christmas roast and sweet treats, too much of anything is always bad and can leave you bloated even before the party

Around the world, people with HIV show variations in COVID-19 vaccination rates similar to those seen in the general population, raising concerns because of their increased risk for morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 infection. “To our knowledge, this analysis presents the first and largest investigation of vaccination rates among people with HIV,” report the authors

An Ontario emergency room doctor is drawing attention to what’s seen as a troubling trend known as “granny dumping,” calling it a cry for help from families struggling to care for elderly relatives. “Granny dumping is an international ER [emergency room] event where on the days just before Christmas, one’s inconvenient elder arrives in the ER with

GI, liver, and pancreatic diseases cost the U.S. health care system about $120B per year and account for approximately 250,000 annual deaths, according to a “conservative” estimate from a recent analysis. These figures emphasize the need for more research funding in the area, along with additional clinical and public health initiatives, reported lead author Anne

It’s that time of year again: the American Diabetes Association released its annual Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes, with new updates on managing diabetes and prediabetes. (Diabetes Care) Although childhood obesity rates were already steadily rising before, the COVID-19 pandemic only seemed to accelerate this trend in Massachusetts. (JAMA Pediatrics) The FDA cleared Koios

A new program that is a spinoff from City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center is offering remote second opinions from oncologists concerning management plans for lung cancer patients. In a new study of initial data from the program, the expert-on-demand service recommended significant changes to treatment plans for more than one quarter of patients and

The recommendation by an Israeli panel to administer a fourth vaccine to those who are over 60 is being met with a tepid response by some of the country’s medical experts, who believe more data is needed. “I supported the booster recommendation in July. But that time we had better evidence. Today, we don’t have any good

A new study has revealed potential cell-specific effects of the human Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor tofacitinib, including possible targets – such as intestinal inflammation – for future research and even for increasing the drug’s effects. The work used both mice and human cell models to explore the drug’s effect in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The