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Just because restaurants are opening up again doesn’t mean it is safe to go. Reopening restaurants during a pandemic is a new situation, and as with all things COVID-19, we are learning as we go. Before you make your dinner reservations, here are some risk factors and precautionary measures you need to consider. Read more...

Will the virus spread slower if we lift physical distancing rules but only visit our neighbors? How many people need to follow recommendations for them to work? Is “quaranteaming” with a partner household an effective way to stay safe? You can simulate answers to these questions yourself with a little game called…Read more...

During an unprecedented rise in unemployment, there is increasing demand for one job: contact tracers. Part of the Centers for Disease Control’s multipronged response to the COVID-19 pandemic, contact tracing involves calling people with suspected and confirmed infections and keeping a record of anyone they may have…Read more...

If you’ve gotten to the stage of quarantine where you’ve watched every episode and season of “Law and Order,” “CSI” and “NCIS,” you may be looking for your next courtroom drama fix. Well, look no further than the highest court in the land: Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time in history, U.S. Supreme…Read more...

In a time when every trip out of the house brings fresh worries, it’s as important as ever to make sure children still receive their vaccinations. Over the past few months, as reported by the New York Times, vaccinations have dropped by an alarming rate: a 50 percent decrease for measles, mumps and rubella shots, a 42…Read more...

“Quarantine” was never quite right. “Reopening” isn’t an accurate term either. What we’re going through as a society is unprecedented, and we do not have the words to describe it. I think that’s because we can’t name that which we can barely wrap our minds around. Read more...

Poor air quality has long been linked to increased health issues, as well as premature death. Fine particulate matter, also called PM2.5, is the term for small particles found in the air. We have long known that PM2.5 can penetrate into the lungs, causing a number of issues, such as asthma, bronchitis, heart attacks,…Read more...

Update: and we’re done! Join us at 1 p.m. Eastern for a live Q&A with Dr. Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist who is also an infection preventionist. She works in hospitals to make sure patients, visitors, and staff are protected from infection, meaning she’s an expert in how hand washing, masks, and…Read more...

If we cannot stop COVID-19, can we at least look forward to the point in time when we are all survivors of the disease, and presumably immune? It’s a tempting idea, but fatally flawed. Herd immunity can protect individuals, but it won’t keep a population safe from a disease that has no vaccine.Read more...

Contact tracing is a critical tool for containing a disease outbreak. For COVID-19, it’s also a key part of plans like the World Health Organization’s guidelines for easing distancing restrictions. So what is contact tracing and how does it work? Read more...

In the same way my tiny daughter looks forward to Christmas all year, all of us who are physically distancing look forward to “things reopening.” Reopening is more a wish than a plan, since most likely we’ll face months of adjusting restriction. We just want things to be back to normal, right? Well, the World Health…Read more...

You’re staying at home, we hope. But when you spend so much time looking at your own four walls, it’s hard to internalize the fact that the very things you’re not doing—dropping off the kids at day care, seeing your gym buddies for a workout—are what’s truly making a difference. This little demonstration from Laval…Read more...

For a live Q&A today at 1pm, please welcome René F. Najera, DrPH. He’s an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and is currently serving on the pandemic response team at a health department in the Washington, DC, area. Read more...

We’ve just gotten used to the phrase “social distancing,” but it may already be time to move on. In a briefing on Friday, the World Health Organization’s Maria Van Kerkhove endorsed a change in phrasing that’s starting to become more common: Instead of social distancing, we need to practice “physical distancing.”Read more...

By now, we’ve all heard this from at least one person in our life: “I’m not worried about catching COVID-19 because I’m young.” That’s the rationale given by the spring breakers partying on the beaches, the travelers taking advantage of cheap deals, or the young professionals crowding the bars. Read more...

While thousands of cases of COVID-19 have been documented in other countries, most parts of the US are only now seeing a few positive tests pop up here and there. But we also haven’t been testing for the coronavirus as thoroughly as other countries have. I’d bet good money that, wherever you are in the US, there are…Read more...

After weeks of mild confusion and unwieldy hashtag names (love to type #2019-nCoV), the disease caused by the coronavirus from Wuhan finally has a catchy, accurate, non-stigmatizing name: COVID-19.Read more...

When a disease outbreak is ongoing, there are important things that uninfected people need to know and do, like washing hands. There are also things not to do, because they are mostly useless and actually interfere with proper care for people who need them. For most of us, face masks fall into the second category. Read more...