The response of employers to the COVID-19 pandemic has been a mixed bag. Some have been successful in balancing employee productivity and health and safety through creative work arrangements, rules and regulations. Others, not so much. As the economy reopens, employers face new challenges navigating health and productivity pitfalls when bringing workers back to physical…
The great remote work experiment during the pandemic – what happens next?
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly, four experts dissect the impact a year of working from home has had on employees and the companies they work for – and what a more hybrid future might look like. And we talk to a researcher who asked people to sit in bathtubs full of ice-cold water…
COVID-19 associated with hearing loss, tinnitus and vertigos
Some viruses, such as measles, mumps and meningitis, can cause hearing difficulties, but what about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19? In the first few months of the pandemic, a rapid systematic review of COVID-19 and hearing difficulties revealed a possible link between COVID-19 and audio-vestibular symptoms (hearing loss, tinnitus and vertigo). However, both the…
What baseball can learn about COVID-19 spikes and crowd size from the NFL 2020
Baseball season is here, and thousands of cheering fans are back in the ballparks after a year of empty seats and cardboard cutouts as fan stand-ins. Still cautious of the COVID-19 risk, most teams were keeping season openers to 20-30% capacity. Only the Texas Rangers planned a packed stadium for its home opener on April…
Lessons from the past: Protecting women and girls from violence during COVID-19
COVID-19 has impacted women and girls around the globe in adverse ways. However, little attention has been paid to women and girls in humanitarian settings, those whose safety has already been reduced due to conflict, natural disaster or displacement. For these women and girls, COVID-19 has made them particularly vulnerable to increases in gender-based violence….
Higher risk of maternal mortality during the pandemic
Thursday, April 1 The number of stillborn babies and women who have died during pregnancy increased by nearly a third during the pandemic, a review of 40 studies that covered 17 countries has found. Many of the deaths were avoidable and likely caused by a lack of access to medical care, according to the authors…
Domestic air travel doesn’t appear to have been an important vector for the spread
Fear of flying and catching COVID-19 led to a massive decline in air travel in 2020. But an interesting question emerges: How much did air travel contribute to the early, and uneven, spread of COVID-19 in the U.S.? In a previous study currently undergoing peer review, we looked at the effect of air travel from…
Game changer: SARS-CoV-2 variants are gradually replacing the original strains
More contagious and sometimes resistant to antibodies, some SARS-CoV-2 variants are gradually replacing the original strains. While this virus, which appeared recently in humans, is adapting to its new host, scientists from numerous disciplines are relentlessly monitoring its evolution. Although vaccination campaigns were meant to accelerate the end of the epidemic, the appearance of different…
Architecture: there are ways design can protect us against COVID-19
The coronavirus has been escaping with distressing frequency from quarantine hotels, threatening serious outbreaks. To make things worse, multiple variants of the virus, possibly more infectious and deadly, have recently been detected. This accentuates the need for robust hotel quarantine, especially in countries like Australia that have controlled community transmission. While the hotel quarantine system…
How many people get ‘long COVID’ ~ and who is most at risk?
A few months ago, a young athletic guy came into my clinic where I’m an infectious disease physician and COVID-19 immunology researcher. He felt tired all the time, and, importantly to him, was having difficulty mountain biking. Three months earlier, he had tested positive for COVID-19. He is the kind of person you might expect…
Factors that could dictate the success or failure of the vaccine rollout
As a viral immunologist who develops immunization strategies to prevent infectious diseases and treat cancers, I would like to highlight outstanding questions about the emergency use of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. These vaccines have raised hopes that the pandemic is nearing an end. Hopefully this is true, but here are some…
Turning your bed into your office can trigger a slew of health problems
For many people, working from home, or ‘WFH’, has also come to mean ‘WFB’ – working from bed. Getting dressed and commuting to an office has been replaced by splashing water on your face and cracking open a computer as you settle back under your blanket. A staggering number of people are setting up shop…
Face masks will still be needed for “several, several months”
WASHINGTON – Dr. Anthony Fauci says people will need to wear masks “for several, several months” to avoid the coronavirus as vaccinations are rolled out. The government’s top infectious disease expert told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday by the time 75% to 80% of the population is vaccinated, “the level of virus in the…
Can people spread coronavirus even after vaccination?
There’s no evidence that any of the current Covid-19 vaccines can completely stop people from being infected – and this has implications for our prospects of achieving herd immunity. It was 17 June 2009. An 11-year-old boy returned to the US from the UK – and inadvertently brought something with him. Later that week, while…
Can just four seconds of exercise make a difference?
In what is probably the definitive word on how little exercise we can get away with, a new study finds that a mere four seconds of intense intervals, repeated until they amount to about a minute of total exertion, lead to rapid and meaningful improvements in strength, fitness and general physical performance among middle-aged and…
The pandemic has produced ‘alarming’ increase in loneliness
“Addressing mental health and substance use problems in young adults, both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, is an imperative,” says Viviana Horigian from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Her statement is in response to her new study investigating the psychological impact of the coronavirus pandemic on young adults. The study found…