Clinical

As you may know by now, the Food and Drug Administration recently granted emergency use authorization for the first at-home COVID-19 test. The benefits are obvious: patients don’t have to interact in close proximity to other possibly infected individuals or the healthcare professionals testing people all day long. Further, the home test kits promise results within 30 minutes. The less obvious benefit on the provider side is that fewer people are coming in and possibly …

While some experts find it difficult to identify an endpoint or starting point to distinguish one wave of COVID-19 from another, there is now evidence that the current upsurge in cases may be partially due to diverse genotypes. A study published in mBio reports that the most recent cases have been caused by strains with the Gly614 variant of spike protein, which exhibits significantly higher viral loads in the nasopharynx than did the Asp614 variant …

Patients are not likely to present to urgent care a primary complaint of delirium. That doesn’t mean patient exhibiting signs (such as hallucinations, but also more subtle things like restlessness, agitation, or lethargy) won’t come in for other reasons, however. There’s a very important reason to have delirium on your radar right now, though, as a new, retrospective study published in JAMA Open Network reveals that delirium is a common finding in patients who were …

Even though COVID-19 cases are through the roof (again), most areas are not seeing the same excessively high death rate they did last spring and over the summer. While this is clearly good news, the risk is that patients could interpret this as a sign that the virus is weakening. An article just published in MedPage Today points out why the data could be dangerously deceiving. With advances in both testing and treatment, more patients …

As you probably know from the inescapable mainstream media reports lately, the COVID-19 pandemic is in the midst of a surge that parallels or exceeds the conditions of last spring. Unfortunately, it’s about to get worse, in all likelihood. First, the weather is getting colder across the country, meaning less opportunity for outdoor, well-spaced social outlets. Secondly, college kids are descending on their hometowns and are eager to celebrate the holiday season with family and …

Families around the country are deliberating whether to stick with large gatherings that have been central to Thanksgiving traditions this year, or to cut down on contact with seldom-seen relations in deference to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has officially recommended the latter, insisting that getting together with people who haven’t seen each other in months is likely to increase incidence of infection, it’s likely many of your patients …

Urgent care centers have developed sound practices to ensure the safety of staff members and patients when it comes to reducing risk for exposure to COVID-19. Anecdotal evidence suggests they’ve been effective, too. However, you should be aware that a study in Minnesota found one third of COVID-19 exposures among healthcare workers can be attributed to family and community exposure. The study, conducted by the Minnesota Department of Health and published in Morbidity and Mortality …