We’re starting to get a more detailed understanding of COVID immunity across variants. Here’s what we know so far . . .
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What is the best mask for COVID-19?
A mechanical engineer explains the science after 2 years of testing masks in his lab
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Can an equation be racist?
Medical algorithms that correct for gender, age, comorbidities, and race span specialties from nephrology to cardiology to pediatrics to obstetrics. Such calculators help guide practitioners in daily decisions about everything from drug dosages to surgery to organ transplants. But race modifiers especially raise problems, since race is often an imprecise proxy for actual ancestry.
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Here’s How Abortion Access Would Change if Supreme Court Erodes Roe
As the nation awaits a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could significantly erode abortion rights, state laws on the issue have taken on a whole new meaning. Soon, more than at any time in nearly half a century, obtaining an abortion will depend on where you live.
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Drug-Resistant Malaria Is Emerging in Africa. Is the World Ready?
A growing number of malaria cases are proving to be resistant to artemisinin-based combination therapies, the mainstay treatment of the deadly parasite.
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Record number sign up for Affordable Care Act coverage through Washington exchange.
A record 240,000 Washingtonians signed up for 2022 coverage. This represents an increase of more than 6% over 2021.
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How mRNA and DNA vaccines could soon treat cancers, HIV, autoimmune disorders and genetic diseases
The two most successful coronavirus vaccines developed in the U.S. – the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines – are both mRNA vaccines. The idea of using genetic material to produce an immune response has opened up a world of research and potential medical uses far out of reach of traditional vaccines.
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How the pandemic’s unequal toll on people of color underlines US health inequities – and why solving them is so critical
Differences in the social conditions in which people are born, grow, live and work can lead to health disparities.
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King County hospitals issue urgent call to action: ‘We Need your Help’
Capacity levels were critical before the current surge with non-COVID care and back-logged surgeries. The surge has exacerbated the situation, making it difficult to provide essential care for non-COVID health concerns.
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Washington launches at-home test portal
Beginning today, Washington state residents will be able to visit www.sayyescovidhometest.org to order rapid-antigen COVID tests online, and will receive those tests delivered at no cost.
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Kidney Failure, Emergency Rooms and Medical Debt. The Unseen Costs of Food Poisoning.
Hundreds of people die every year in the United States after eating food tainted with salmonella, listeria and other dangerous pathogens. As wrenching as those deaths are, though, they are only the tip of the toll that food poisoning takes on the United States, where millions more people are sickened each year.
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Myocarditis: COVID-19 is a much bigger risk to the heart than vaccination
What do the numbers tell us about COVID-19, vaccines and myocarditis?
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The journey to a pig-heart transplant began 60 years ago
On Friday, January 7 2022, David Bennett became the world’s first person to successfully receive a transplant of a pig’s heart. The eight-hour-long operation by surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, USA, was no doubt arduous. But it was a short final step in a 60-year-long journey to genetically alter the pig’s heart so that it would not be immediately rejected – a journey that began with a plane crash in Oxford in the summer of 1940.
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COVID: why T cell vaccines could be the key to long-term immunity
T cells designed to fight COVID also appear to be much longer lasting in the human body than antibodies.
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What Patients Can Learn With Confidence From One Negative Rapid Test (Hint: Very Little)
There are just so many variables. Testing may come either too soon, before enough virus is present to detect, or too late, after a person has already spread the virus to others. And most rapid tests, even according to their instructions, are meant to be used in pairs — generally a day or two apart — for increased accuracy. Despite that, a few brands are sold one to a box and, with the tests sometimes expensive and in short supply, families are often relying on a single screening.
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