Editor's Note An international study will include more than 30,000 front-line healthcare workers to assess whether chloroquine can prevent COVID-19 or decrease its severity. Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis is the clinical coordinating center for the study. Healthcare workers will be divided randomly into four groups. Three…

Read More

Editor's Note This study by researchers from Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, Bronx, NY, describes a high rate of severe COVID-19 disease in patients aged 1 month to 21 years requiring pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) admissions. Of 46 patients admitted to the hospital (33 to the general pediatric unit, 13…

Read More

Editor's Note: The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), American Hospital Association (AHA), and Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) on May 19 released a “Re-entry Guidance for Health Care Facilities and Medical Device Representatives.” The guidance, which builds on the April 17 joint statement by AORN, AHA, American College of…

Read More

Editor's Note More than 28 million elective surgical procedures worldwide will be cancelled or postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study estimates. Researchers from the University of Birmingham, UK, collected data from surgeons in 359 hospitals and 71 countries. The data was then statistically modeled to estimate…

Read More

Editor's Note The National Institutes of Health (NIH) on May 14 announced that it is enrolling adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 in a study of treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. The Phase 2b trial is enrolling around 2,000 adults across the US. Participants must have confirmed infection with SARS-CoV-2…

Read More

Editor's Note As states begin to ease restrictions imposed by COVID-19, physicians, nurse leaders, and administrators face a momentous challenge in resuming elective surgical procedures. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center developed a model that made best use of available data (eg, case logs, forecasts, etc). Adoption of an agile methodology—a…

Read More

Editor's Note The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on May 12 posted updated point-of-care (POC) testing biosafety guidelines for COVID-19. The update includes guidance for: use of instruments in a location associated with a current Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments certificate site- and activity-specific risk assessment proper staff training adherence…

Read More

Editor's Note While responding to demands of the COVID-19 pandemic, perioperative leaders also are busy preparing staff and departments for life after the initial shock subsides. Chief among their preparations are strategies to address the increased demand for surgery because of postponement of elective and nonessential surgical procedures. The sterile…

Read More

Editor's Note On May 12, California's Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California pharmacists will be allowed to collect specimens and order COVID-19 tests. Specimens will be are processed at public health, university, or commercial labs. The move is an effort to increase the state’s testing capacity as it modifies its…

Read More

Editor's Note This article from Houston Methodist Hospital and Texas A&M University researchers shares the lessons learned by an interdisciplinary team of ICU healthcare providers and their experiences of occupational fatigue and burnout as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers documented four major areas of stress with the…

Read More