Separating infants and their mothers after a Caesarean section delivery is common. A new study published in Acta Paediatrica has found that providing skin-to-skin contact with the father may provide benefits to a newborn. In the study, 95 newborns were randomized to cot, father’s arms, or skin-to-skin contact with the father after Caesarean section delivery.…
California’s daily coronavirus case tallies remain around four times what they were during the state’s summer surge, and officials predict that the aftereffects of a December surge linked to holiday gatherings will worsen as the winter drags on. After new infections — driven by Thanksgiving travel and gatherings, then Christmas festivities — resulted in a…
Genesis Community Church, outside of Boston, thought it was taking all the right safety precautions for its Christmas services: requiring an R.S.V.P. in case contact tracing was needed, limiting capacity and requiring masks. But it was not enough. More than 40 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in cases that are believed to be…
A pharmacist who was arrested on charges that he intentionally sabotaged more than 500 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine at a Wisconsin hospital was “an admitted conspiracy theorist” who believed the vaccine could harm people and “change their DNA,” according to the police in Grafton, Wis., where the man was employed. The police said Steven…
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here. Most Americans became aware of chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease more common than syphilis, gonorrhea and herpes, in the mid-1980s. But Julius Schachter, a microbiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, had already been…
Residents of the Taube Pavilion in Mountain View, Calif., wake up in private rooms with views of the wooded Santa Cruz Mountains, have breakfast in airy communal spaces and can hang out in landscaped courtyards throughout the day. It may sound like a resort, but the Taube Pavilion is a $98 million mental health facility…
California’s daily coronavirus case tallies remain around four times what they were during the state’s summer surge, and officials predict that the aftereffects of a December surge linked to holiday gatherings will worsen as the winter drags on. After new infections — driven by Thanksgiving travel and gatherings, then Christmas festivities — resulted in a…
Just as the first coronavirus reports were emerging from China in late 2019, the medical world was observing the 20th anniversary of “To Err is Human,” the seminal report from the Institute of Medicine that opened our eyes to the extent of medical error. The news media jumped on the popular aviation metaphor, that the…
Is your pandemic bubble a keeper? Among the many lessons learned in 2020, the power of a trusted friend group may be the most lasting. This summer, nearly half of Americans said they had formed a “pod” or social “bubble” — a select group of friends to help them cope with pandemic life. It took…
Doctors usually take a blood pressure reading in only one arm, but a new study in Hypertension suggests they should be checking both. The difference between the two readings may be a marker of increased risk for cardiovascular disease — and death. Researchers combined data in 24 previous studies that measured bilateral blood pressure in…