Editor's Note Urban hospitals bounced back faster than rural hospitals from surgical caseload decreases caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, finds a new study released May 13 by Caresyntax, a Boston-based developer of surgical intelligence and automation technologies. The study, “The State of Surgery: An Analysis of Surgical Trends During the…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on May 13 announced that fully vaccinated individuals can discard masks and do away with social distancing outdoors and in most indoor settings. The agency still calls for wearing masks in crowded indoor settings, such as buses, planes, hospitals, prisons, and…

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Editor's Note The New York Times (NYT) reported on May 11 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) new guidelines for mask wearing are misleading because they treat outdoor transmission of COVID-19 as a major risk. The CDC reports that less than 10% of COVID-19 transmissions are occurring…

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Editor's Note This study from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, finds that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are immunogenic in pregnant and lactating women, and they induce immune responses against variants. For the study, researchers enrolled 30 pregnant, 16 lactating, and 57 neither pregnant nor lactating women…

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Editor's Note This study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, finds that disparities in access to orthopedic care persisted as orthopedic surgical patients were shifted to telemedicine during COVID-19. The researchers analyzed nearly 2,000 orthopedic patients receiving care via telemedicine from March to May…

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Editor's Note This study from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and School of Engineering, Charlottesville, finds that wastewater-based monitoring for COVID-19 is an effective means for detecting and controlling the virus in congregate living settings. The researchers monitored wastewater from two student dormitory complexes for 8 weeks and…

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Editor's Note On May 10, Reuters reported that COVID-19 cases in the US dropped 17% to less than 290,000 for the week ending May 9. This is the fourth week in a row that new cases have decreased, and the fewest weekly cases since September. COVID-19 deaths fell 1.3% to…

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Editor's Note This study from St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis,  finds an association between vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in hospital employees and a decreased risk of symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID-19 infections. Between December 17, 2020, and March 20, 2021, 5,217 healthcare workers (HCWs) met vaccination criteria—3,052 (58.5%) received…

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Editor's Note Overall healthcare employment in the US was down in April to a seasonally adjusted 15,950,300 workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on May 7. That’s down 4,100 since March. Hospital employment was down 5,800 jobs.  The overall unemployment rate went up to 6.1%.

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Editor's Note This randomized, controlled trial by Danish researchers finds that wearing surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not significantly reduce the COVID-19 infection rate, compared with no mask. Of 6,024 trial participants, 3,030 were randomly assigned to wear high-quality surgical face masks with a filtration rate…

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