News

Suggestions that urgent care was any more responsible for overuse of antibiotics—and subsequent drug resistance—than other practice settings were largely blown out of proportion. For one thing, patients self-select urgent care over other settings when it seems evident that an antibiotic is needed, so it’s likely that urgent care providers see more patients who really do need a prescription. Clearly there are instances where one is given even though it’s not indicated, as well. As …

Having been lulled into a fall sense of safety when it came to children and COVID-19, it came as a shock to the general public when word started to spread about multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). It’s probably less shocking, but perhaps just as frightening, then, to learn that MIS appears to strike adults with the virus. The concern about this revelation—besides caring for the individual patient who’s affected—is that this has occurred under …

Since the COVID-19 pandemic really took hold in the U.S., there’s been a presumption that patients who were infected with and then recovered from the virus had protection against reinfection. We now know that’s not correct, however; patients can get COVID-19 more than once. So far, evidence indicates reinfection is rare—but there have been confirmed cases, the first one in the U.S. being a symptomatic 25-year-old, otherwise healthy, man who first tested positive on April …

Since March, there have been many conflicting reports, as well as actual studies, on how COVID-19 is transmitted, who is at greatest risk, and how the virus is transmitted. The length of time a patient is considered infectious has been the subject of ever-changing intel, as well. At one point, 6 days was thought to be the window; then it was 10, and then 14 days. Now the Journal of Infection has published a paper …