When the SARS-CoV-2 virus began spreading, and COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, much of the physician services healthcare community was focused on diagnostic test availability so that we could identify those who had been infected with the virus and use that information to slow the spread of the disease. Now, however, attention has shifted from … [Read more...]
The Latest on COVID-19 Diagnostic Testing
How Can Dentists Help Patients with Urgent Dental Needs?
Given that COVID-19 has been shown to be transmitted from person to person through things like droplet inhalation and direct contact and that the transmission often occurs through contact with oral and nasal membranes as well as eye mucus, dentists have been identified as a highly vulnerable healthcare population. Like some physicians and oral … [Read more...]
How Changing Seasons May Eventually Affect the COVID-19 Infection Rate
Several weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, people are looking for answers about how the virus will respond to changing seasons. Since the outbreak began, physicians and scientists have been speculating on how environmental conditions - including weather, may impact SARS-CoV-2. A new study, published in the Journal of Infectious Disease, is shedding … [Read more...]
COVID-19 and Ibuprofen: What is the Relationship?
There has been a lot of confusion in recent weeks about how ibuprofen may increase risks for contracting the novel coronavirus or impact the severity of the illness resulting from COVID-19 infection. Questions began after the publication of a paper in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine that pointed to the possibility that ibuprofen can increase … [Read more...]
A COVID-19 Vaccine: Clinical Trial Begins
A 43-year old woman with two children has become the first study participant in a phase 1 clinical trial for an experimental vaccine against the spreading coronavirus. She was administered the vaccine, mRNA-1273, on March 16th. This move marks the official start to the open-label trial and what researchers hope will lead to the first approved … [Read more...]