#infectious-disease-specialist

#infectious-disease-specialist

For the past three years, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, and will continue to demonstrate in the future, that America is one of the unhealthiest countries in the industrialized world.Critics on the right and left harp on how the pandemic was handled, but in fact the dismal outcomes in the U.S. do not reflect management of the crisis so much as our underlying health as a country.

Have you ever been so sick you couldn't get into bed?Yes, you read me right.I've had the experience of being too sick to get out of bed before.But when COVID-19 hit me, I was too sick to get into bed.It happened a few days before Halloween.All trick, no treat.The bug came over me before bedtime, so swiftly and ruthlessly that I could barely hobble to our bedroom.

TripledemicLast winter, we faced the twindemic of COVID and flu cases.This year doctors say there's a possible "tripledemic" of illnesses from COVID, flu and RSV, the respiratory virus overwhelming children's hospitals.Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, UCSF professor and infectious disease specialist, joins us to discuss the winter surge and how to handle holiday gatherings.

Reports of Paxlovid rebound popped up in the spring of 2022, as some people who had taken the antiviral medication experienced a recurrence of Covid symptoms, days after their infection appeared to have cleared up.But that rebound effect isn't limited to people who have taken Paxlovid: a study this past fall found that symptoms can flare up again even in people who did not take the antiviral medication.

If you were infected with a previous version of Omicron recently, you can still become reinfected with BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.However, a previous infection does confer some additional protection, he added  but that protection is unlikely to last beyond three months.

Two new iterations of the Omicron variant have found their way to the top of the list of Covid subvariants circulating in the U.S. BQ.1.1 and BQ.1 now together account for nearly 70 percent of cases in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  squeezing out BA.5, which was dominant over the summer.

TripledemicLast winter, we faced the twindemic of COVID and flu cases.This year doctors say there's a possible "tripledemic" of illnesses from COVID, flu and RSV, the respiratory virus overwhelming children's hospitals.Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, UCSF professor and infectious disease specialist, joins us to discuss the winter surge and how to handle holiday gatherings.

Several children's hospitals in the U.S. have detected increases in invasive group A strep infections, a severe and sometimes life-threatening illness that occurs when bacteria spreads to areas of the body that are normally germ-free, such as the bloodstream.Children's hospitals in Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Washington told NBC News they are seeing a higher-than-average number of cases this season compared to past years.

HOUSTON  As if caring for a sick child isn't tough enough, a lot of parents are having a hard time finding fever reducers for their kids.Johnson & Johnson makes Children's Tylenol and Children's Motrin.The company said there's no supply chain issue or nationwide shortage, but admitted the high demand is leaving some shelves empty.

Ontario is considering allowing pharmacists to prescribe the COVID-19 treatment drug Paxlovid in order to expand access, the province's top doctor says.Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore said recently that the health system will see a "triple threat" of COVID-19, a bad flu season and the resurgence of a childhood respiratory virus this fall and winter.

Some patients are waiting up to 12 hours to see a doctor in the emergency department at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children due to "unseasonably high" numbers of patients coming through the doors, the hospital said on Thursday.The hospital, known as SickKids, said in a statement that it has had days this month where more than 300 patients have visited its emergency department in a 24-hour period.