Frank Diamond

Unclear labeling and disorganized storage can lead to the wrong dose of a COVID-19 vaccine being administered to a child.

Don’t look now, but influenza is making a comeback. What if it joins forces with COVID-19 variants?

Omicron is going hard after the pediatric population, many of whom are too young to be vaccinated and whose vital organs, which COVID-19 attacks, are still in development.

Keeping youngsters in school has become a major goal of public health and education authorities. But the current COVID-19 surge might make that harder to do.

Anthony Harris, MD, MBA, MPH: “There are nights where I go to bed thinking, ‘Will tomorrow be the day that I read about a tremendous increase in severity in Omicron, and antibody dependent enhancement could be the cause of it?’”

CDC investigators looked at what might cause reinfections during the first wave of the pandemic.

Earloop toggles or a mask brace made for a better seal and enhanced the fit of medical masks. The mask brace “significantly improved” how cloth masks fit.

One of the benefits of contact tracing is that it’s the least intrusive of the nonpharmaceutical interventions, a study says.

Heather Saunders, MPH, RN, CIC: “We really need to make sure that we’re taking care of our teams. Infection preventionists are burned out. This has been a long 22 months. There are likely some rough months ahead of us.”

With an eye on Omicron and the staffing shortages, the agency shortened isolation time for those who test positive for COVID-19. Infection preventionists will need to be extra vigilant.

The US health care system, already straining to contain a Delta spike, must now deal with Omicron. One expert predicts that Omicron will infect 20% to 30% of health care workers.

The pill, Paxlovid, showed an 88% decrease in hospitalization and death for those taking it 5 days after experiencing COVID-19 symptoms.

At a White House press briefing, President Biden outlined steps that include sending in reinforcements of doctors and nurses to areas hard hit by COVID-19.

Children in the United States will be able to avoid potentially millions of hours of at-home quarantining under a testing program unveiled by the CDC today.

Just what health care professionals don’t want to hear. Omicron multiplies about 70 times faster than Delta or other COVID-19 variants inside human respiratory tract tissue, says a preprint study.

The World Health Organization warns that vaccines alone won’t protect health care systems from being swamped.

Experts worry that the high infectivity of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 will further strain health care systems already dealing with Delta. Expect infection preventionists to be in the thick of it.

Initial clinical data out of South Africa suggest that patients with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 don't have severe illness.

“[Personal protective equipment] was splashed during most activities and did not prevent skin exposure even when properly donned and doffed,” the study states.

The debate over whether fully vaccinated should mean three shots hasn’t concluded, as the debate over the need for four doses begins.

CDC’s Michael Craig: “Every country is an importer and an exporter of resistance…. And our hope is that this could be a jumpstart to help some of these countries start to build the capacity that is needed everywhere.”

In a small study, Omicron appears to ward off vaccines, but those vaccines still carry plenty of wallop against the variant, and boosters enhance protection, say experts.

Exactly how the new variant of COVID-19 fares against vaccinated people continues to be studied.

The number of mutations to the spike protein in Omicron suggests a very different evolutionary trail than had been seen in other iterations of COVID-19, say some experts.

Scientists have yet to determine the lethality and transmissibility of the Omicron variant.

Some epidemiologists reportedly posit that Omicron might be a way out of the COVID-19 pandemic if the variant’s symptoms are mild, as some initial reports indicate.

Booster shots are being pushed as a way to offer more protection against Omicron and hopefully ward off a fifth wave of COVID-19 in the United States.

Health care workers at facilities that treat patients who have Medicare or Medicaid coverage were required to get their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by this Sunday. Ten states asked for a temporary injunction and got it.

Although not much has been disclosed about Omicrom so far, its appearance made the WHO label it a variant of concern and caused a cascade of travel restrictions around the world.

Kevin Kavanagh, MD: “One person with COVID-19 can spend months in the ICU, which would prevent 10 or 20, non-COVID-19 cases from going to the ICU, whether it’s for a coronary bypass, or just angioplasty, or getting a cancer procedure. You have 10 or 20 times the number of patients that can’t get care for other serious illnesses.”