Respiratory Infections News

The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America is offering a free online course for health care providers on infection control practices, hand hygiene, pneumonia and personal protective equipment, or PPE, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Donald J. Trump said Tuesday that the United States will halt funding for WHO, citing concerns regarding the agency’s relationship with China and its criticism of the president’s implementation of travel bans early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amid widespread shortages of personal protective equipment and masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA has granted several emergency use authorizations, or EUAs, for the decontamination and reuse of N95 or N95-equivilent masks.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America published rapid guidelines on the treatment and management of patients with COVID-19 that mostly recommend recruiting patients into ongoing trials for investigational therapies.

There are not many relevant data on the effectiveness of closing schools during coronavirus outbreaks, according to results from a rapid systematic review published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the United States hard, with the number of cases topping those seen in any other country, according to WHO. As the novel disease rapidly spreads, physicians, especially those caring for critically ill patients, face unique challenges and harbor questions about the future.

An analysis of four different coronaviruses over an 8-year period demonstrated that they were detected in a limited timeframe, from December to April and May, with a peak during January and February, according to a recent study published in Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Lower doses of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole for the treatment of Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia may be as effective as the standard dose, but associated with fewer adverse events, according to a meta-analysis published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

In early April, the African region had less than 6,700 confirmed cases of COVID-19, a significantly lower count than the more than 112,000 cases reported in the western pacific and the more than 655,000 cases reported in Europe at that time. A study published in The Lancet in late February notes that the African continent “has remained relatively unaffected” by COVID-19 while highlighting a number of factors — including unstable health systems with limited ICUs and ventilators for possible severe cases of COVID-19 and travel to countries with high numbers of COVID-19 cases — that make the region vulnerable to further spread.

As health care providers across the United States grapple with the unknowns of treating a novel disease, management of patients with COVID-19, especially those who are critically ill, has varied widely. Therefore, on April 6, the American Thoracic Society released interim guidance to help clinicians standardize care.