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MONDAY, July 27, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a massive scientific response to the crisis, with more than 1,500 coronavirus studies kicking off between March and mid-May of this year, a new study reports. Unfortunately, much of this research has sown only confusion, producing precious little scientific evidence of sufficient quality to dramatically improve any understanding of COVID-19, researchers argue. Only about three in 10 COVID-19 studies have been designed with enough rigor to produce valuable evidence about the coronavirus, said lead researcher Dr. Mintu Turakhia, director of the Center for Digital Health at Stanford University in California. "There's been an extraordinary activation of clinical research around COVID, and that's great,"...

MONDAY, July 27, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Face masks can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 among folks trapped in a room with an infected "super spreader," a new Swiss study claims. Most infected people with a typical COVID viral load don't flood the air with coronavirus-infected respiratory droplets, and the risk of catching the virus from them tends to be low, estimates show. But a severely infected person who's coughing frequently can fill a poorly ventilated room with as many as 7.4 million copies of the coronavirus for every cubic meter of air, according to researchers Michael Riediker and Dai-Hua Tsai, from the Swiss Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health in Winterthur. "The implications of these findings for everyday life and the workplace are that individuals may...

MONDAY, July 27, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- In yet another sign that the coronavirus pandemic has pushed critical medical care aside, a new survey finds many glaucoma patients have missed appointments for monitoring their eye disease. More than half (53%) of 1,051 U.S. respondents said they had to delay and/or cancel a glaucoma appointment during the first months of the pandemic, and 36% said they were just somewhat confident or not confident that their glaucoma was well-managed in those months. Confidence levels were not associated with patients' age, gender or geography, but significantly associated with whether they'd had appointments. Patients who had the lowest levels of confidence about their glaucoma management were 30% more likely to have had an eye appointment delayed and/or...

MONDAY, July 27, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A lab-created virus that's similar to but not as dangerous as the new coronavirus could aid efforts to create COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, according to scientists who created it. Airborne and potentially deadly, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 must be studied under strict safety conditions. Precautions include full-body biohazard suits with pressurized respirators, and labs with multiple containment levels and specialized ventilation systems. But many scientists lack access to such safety measures, slowing efforts to find drugs and vaccines. So a team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis said they created a hybrid virus that doesn't require such extensive measures. To create it, they replaced...