Coronavirus News Explained

 Rapid Diagnostic Testing for COVID-19     Since the start of the pandemic, clinical laboratories have performed 3 billion molecular diagnostic tests for COVID-19 globally. The United States has performed 600 million of these tests, which is more than any other country. Especially with the wave of highly transmissible Omicron cases, the need for rapid COVID-19 testing has gone up. In response to the drastic increase of Omicron cases, the Biden Administration   announced a plan to purchase 1 billion at-home rapid COVID-19 tests to distribute to Americans for free. 500 million of these tests were available for order on January 19th, 2022. But how accurate are the rapid tests? How do they work? When is the best time to get tested? A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on January 20th, 2022, reviews the implications of getting rapid tested and presents strategies for testing using real-world evidence. What are Rapid Diagnostic Tests?     Rapid Diagnostic Tests, or RDTs,

 Child and Adolescent Mental Health During the Pandemic           After almost 2 years of living in a pandemic state, many people can attest to not only the physical, but also the mental toll of COVID-19. A previous post on this blog highlighted results from a study that attributed increased risk of psychiatric illnesses to COVID-19 infection. However, it's clear that you don't just need to be infected with COVID-19 to experience the adverse psychological effects of the pandemic; for children and adolescents, just living with the pandemic and its disruptions have lead to soaring rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide. The psychiatric effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are just as critical as the physical effects of COVID-19 infection, especially for children and adolescents, who have experienced enormous disruptions this past year including lockdown, online schooling, and possibly familial instability. In fact, the mental effects of the pandemic have been so great that in Oct