Category: Corona Virus

Ministers are seeing encouraging signs that plan B coronavirus restrictions in England could be lifted in 10 days time, the co-chair of the Conservative party Oliver Dowden has said.

Current measures in England, including guidance to work from home and the widespread use of face coverings, were imposed in early December to help tackle the spread of Omicron. They are set to be reviewed on 26 January.

In the clearest hint yet that some or all of the measures will be removed on that date, Dowden, who also serves as minister without portfolio, said that while the government would review further data this week before making a decision, the signs are encouraging.

His comments came after health and scientific experts expressed cautious optimism this weekend that the Covid situation was improving.

Dr Susan Hopkins, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) chief medical adviser, said cases appeared to be plateauing in parts of the UK, and added that while cases were still relatively high, there had also been a slowdown in hospital admissions.

Prof Linda Bauld, a professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh and chief social policy adviser to the Scottish government, said Omicron cases in the UK appeared to be stabilising. Dr Chris Smith, a consultant virologist and lecturer at Cambridge University, said the latest data gave him great cause for optimism.

Dowden told Sky News Trevor Phillips on Sunday programme: It has always been my hope that we would have the plan B restrictions for the shortest period possible. Im under no doubt the kind of burdens this puts hospitality, wider business, schools and so on under, and I want us to get rid of those if we possibly can. The signs are encouraging but, clearly, we will wait to see the data ahead of that final decision.

Sir Keir Starmer said he hoped plan B restrictions could be lifted as soon as possible. Speaking on the BBCs Sunday Morning programme, the Labour leader said: I think the sooner we can lift the final restrictions, the better. I think thats what the whole country want. Its important that were led by the science on this. We had access to the government scientific and medical advisers, and thats helped us form our views.

I hope those restrictions can be lifted as soon as possible, but I want them to be lifted because the medical science says they should be lifted, not simply because the prime minister is in a real mess and hes desperately trying to get out of it.

So, if its the right thing to lift those restrictions, we will vote to lift those restrictions. But well be led by the science as we always have been, not by the politics of propping up a broken prime minister.

The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, said he could not be confident the government was not looking to lift plan B measures in an attempt to shore up Boris Johnsons leadership.

He told Trevor Phillips on Sunday: If the prime minister or the health secretary from the Conservative party is coming forward saying, Were going to remove Plan B measures, I want to be absolutely confident they are making that decision in the national interest and not in the party interest, for party management reasons. I dont have total confidence about that.

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Encouraging signs plan B Covid measures may soon be lifted in England - The Guardian

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) Several questionable methods have been suggested as treatments for COVID-19, from a medication that fights malaria to the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin.

But milk and Benadryl?

A North Carolina state lawmaker recently posted a study on social media that suggests compounds in those two commonplace products might be effective against the virus that causes COVID-19. Experts, however, say more research is needed, and warn against attempting to self-medicate with the compounds.

Rep. Jeff McNeely, R-Iredell, said on Facebook that milk may be the answer to Covid-19, before linking to the study published in November by an immunologist at the University of Florida.

One of his replies in the chain of comments read: Drink up People.

Were those posts meant to be taken seriously, or were they made in jest?

A little bit of both, said McNeely, one of the chairs of the Houses agriculture committee who represents the states top dairy-producing county.

The study found the combination of diphenhydramine the active ingredient in Benadryl and lactoferrin a protein found in milk from cows and humans were found to slow the SARS-CoV-2 virus from replicating itself in tests in monkey cells and human long cells.

But theres a big difference between the results in a lab and those from the real world.

To push this as a potential therapy based on this work only is significantly premature, said Dr. Timothy Sheahan, a virologist at the University of North Carolinas Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Lots of things have shown antiviral activity in cells in a (Petri) dish, he added. Many of those things when further studied dont go on to actually have efficacy and activity in a person.

Dr. David Ostrov, an immunologist and associate professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine, led the study, which found that in human and monkey cells, the two drugs individually reduced virus replication by about 30 percent each but together, that reduction was 99 percent.

But its way too early for people to raid the supermarket shelves for milk and Benadryl, Ostrov said. While he is encouraged, he said more work still needs to be done, including clinical trials.

I would caution people from going out and taking it themselves, Ostrov said. The study also used a type of lactoferrin that differs slightly from the kind that is commonly available to the public, UF Health noted.

Compared to some other substances that have been pushed as treatments, Benadryl and milk come with relatively low risk. But theres still a concern that people may try to self-medicate and chug Benadryl and gallons of milk instead of consulting with their doctor, Sheahan said.

Thats the thing that worries me, is that people will take this information and be making decisions about their health when they should be talking to more knowledgeable people about it, Sheahan said.

When asked if he was worried that his post would be flagged as potential misinformation, McNeely quipped that it wont be the first time.

Youre in politics, Facebook loves to say youre giving false information, whether you are or not, he said.

But the bigger issue might be this: Why do people keep hanging onto so-called miracle treatments in the first place?

I truly believe theres a cure out there, McNeely said. And were not seeing it.

Sheahan says people need something to put hope in. And they want some kind of magical therapy that will prevent them from getting coronavirus.

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Experts warn against using Benadryl and milk to treat COVID, despite NC lawmakers post - KXAN.com

Two startlingly different figures for what is ostensibly the same count have been released within days of each other: the government reported 150,000 Covid-19 deaths days before the UKs lead statistical agency reported a death toll of more than 175,000.

The difference between the two figures is stark but easily explained: the governments figures count only those deaths that are known to have occurred within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test. The Office for National Statistics, on the other hand, counts all deaths where the virus was mentioned on the death certificate.

But regardless of the counting method, the numbers represent individual human tragedies. So, what do we know about the 175,000 people whose deaths have been recorded to date?

The pandemic has taken the greatest toll on elderly people: across the UK since the start of the pandemic more than seven in 10 registered deaths have been among those aged 75 or older. Meanwhile, deaths among those aged 44 or younger made up under 2% of the total.

Nevertheless, the proportion of deaths made up by older people has changed over the course of the pandemic.

During the first wave, which continued for most of 2020, three-quarters of all deaths were among those aged 75+. In subsequent waves this fell, in part thanks to vaccinations, decreasing to 59% of all deaths during the period where Delta dominated.

Vaccination rates are highest among elderly people, NHS figures show.

ONS analysis covering the first 10 months of 2021 shows risk of death involving Covid-19 to be 28 times higher among unvaccinated people than among the vaccinated population.

The data shows that deaths involving Covid-19 have been consistently lower for vaccinated people, which the ONS defines as people who received their vaccine at least 21 days beforehand, compared with unvaccinated people a trend apparent across all age groups.

Throughout the whole of the pandemic, gender disparities regarding coronavirus deaths have been evident. According to ONS figures regarding coronavirus deaths registered up to 31 December 2021, men made up 94,433 or 54% of total coronavirus deaths within this period, despite the fact that men make up only 49% of England and Wales population.

Although these percentages remained roughly similar throughout the pandemic, there were variations of this disproportionality between the different waves.

Within the Delta wave, 58% of deaths were of males, whereas the lowest proportion of male deaths took place within the Alpha wave at 53%. The theories as why this is include differences in lockdown behaviour between the sexes, men being more likely to drink, smoke and experience obesity; and differing immune responses.

The spread of Covid deaths has not been even across the country: the crude death rate remains highest in the north-west, driven by the high number of deaths in 2020 after high case rates in the UK in the early part of the pandemic.

Across the entire pandemic the virus has claimed 23,659 lives in the region, equivalent to a crude death rate of 321 per 100,000 population, higher than any other both by absolute numbers and rate.

Among the four nations of the UK, Wales recorded the highest death rate of 291 coronavirus deaths per 100,000 population, driven partly by the fact that it has the highest proportion of people aged 65-plus of the UKs constituency countries. The UK-wide crude death rates stood at 262 deaths per 100,000 registered deaths at the end of 2021.

At the start of the pandemic with essential workers going out to work while anyone who could stayed home research focused on the link between occupation and Covid mortality risk.

The ONS last published data on this topic in early 2021, analysing close to 8,000 deaths involving coronavirus within the working age population across England and Wales to the end of 2020, showing that those working in close proximity to others had higher death rates.

Again, men were more exposed, making up nearly two-thirds of these deaths, with male workers in the care and leisure sectors and other public-facing jobs experiencing higher death rates. Female death rates were highest among machine operatives, those in the caring and leisure industries, and other customer-facing occupations.

Among healthcare occupations, nurses had statistically significantly higher rates of death involving Covid-19 when compared with those of the same age and sex in the population.

The ONS conducted provisional analysis, looking at deaths involving coronavirus between 2 March and 15 May 2020. The analysis found that, when taking into account size and age variations across different ethnicities, the mortality rate was highest among black men.

After adjusting for region, population density and other sociodemographic characteristics, the raised risk of death for black people was two times greater for men and 1.4 times greater for women compared with white people.

The analysis was updated in May 2021 and found that the mortality risk for black people relative to white British people was reduced in the second wave. Nevertheless, most black and South Asian groups remained at higher risk than white British people in the second wave even after adjustments, according to the ONS.

Although the ONS data does not cover the whole of the pandemic, there remains evidence that minority ethnic people were at a higher risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19 compared with their white counterparts.

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What do we know about the 175,000 people who died of Covid in the UK? - The Guardian

(Washington, DC) - The Districts reported data for January 12, 2022 includes1,525new confirmed positive coronavirus (COVID-19) cases, bringing the Districts overall confirmed positive case total to 120,327.The District also reports 119 new probable cases, bringing the overall positive probable cases since October 15, 2021to7,806.

The District reported that five additional residents lost their lives due to COVID-19.

Tragically, 1,245 District residents have lost their lives due to COVID-19.

Visit coronavirus.dc.gov/data for interactive data dashboards or to download COVID-19 data.Below is the Districts current Key Metrics Summary Table.

Below is the Districts aggregated total of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, sorted by age and gender.

Patient Gender

Total Confirmed Positive Cases

%

Female

%

Male

%

Unknown

%

All

120,327*

100

63,884

100

55,065

100

1,378

100

Unknown

246

<1

90

<1

127

<1

29

2

0-18

22,917

19

11,440

18

11,133

20

344

25

19-30

33,641

28

19,210

30

14,069

26

362

26

31-40

24,597

20

12,940

20

11,350

21

307

22

41-50

14,477

12

7,444

12

6,856

13

177

13

51-60

11,444

10

5,703

9

5,652

10

89

6

61-70

7,475

6

3,847

6

3,591

7

37

3

71-80

3,498

3

1,913

3

1,565

3

20

2

81+

Read more here:

Coronavirus Data for January 12, 2022 | mayormb - Executive Office of the Mayor

I said, I am an RNA scientist. I can do anything with RNA, Dr. Karik recalled telling Dr. Weissman. He asked her: Could you make an H.I.V. vaccine?

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I can do it, Dr. Karik said.

Up to that point, commercial vaccines had carried modified viruses or pieces of them into the body to train the immune system to attack invading microbes. An mRNA vaccine would instead carry instructions encoded in mRNA that would allow the bodys cells to pump out their own viral proteins. This approach, Dr. Weissman thought, would better mimic a real infection and prompt a more robust immune response than traditional vaccines did.

It was a fringe idea that few scientists thought would work. A molecule as fragile as mRNA seemed an unlikely vaccine candidate. Grant reviewers were not impressed, either. His lab had to run on seed money that the university gives new faculty members to get started.

By that time, it was easy to synthesize mRNA in the lab to encode any protein. Drs. Weissman and Karik inserted mRNA molecules into human cells growing in petri dishes and, as expected, the mRNA instructed the cells to make specific proteins. But when they injected mRNA into mice, the animals got sick.

Their fur got ruffled, they hunched up, they stopped eating, they stopped running, Dr. Weissman said. Nobody knew why.

For seven years, the pair studied the workings of mRNA. Countless experiments failed. They wandered down one blind alley after another. Their problem was that the immune system sees mRNA as a piece of an invading pathogen and attacks it, making the animals sick while destroying the mRNA.

Eventually, they solved the mystery. The researchers discovered that cells protect their own mRNA with a specific chemical modification. So the scientists tried making the same change to mRNA made in the lab before injecting it into cells. It worked: The mRNA was taken up by cells without provoking an immune response.

Read more from the original source:

How The mRNA Vaccines Were Made: Halting Progress and Happy Accidents - The New York Times

A medical worker takes care of a patient at the intensive care unit (ICU) of Hospital das Clinicas amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Porto Alegre, Brazil January 14, 2022. REUTERS/Diego Vara

SAO PAULO, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Brazil had 48,520 new cases of the novel coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours and 175 deaths from COVID-19, the Health Ministry said on Saturday.

The South American country has now registered 22,975,723 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 659,934, according to ministry data.

Register

Reporting by Carolina Mandl; editing by Jonathan Oatis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Brazil registers 48520 new cases of coronavirus and 175 deaths-health ministry - Reuters

As Covid's omicron variant continues to rip across the United States, causing record numbers of infections and hospitalizations, new coronavirus myths keep bubbling up.

The variant has been the subject of constant scientific scrutiny since it was first detected in South Africa in late November. Recent studies have unveiled its strengths and weaknesses: It's four times more transmissible than the delta variant, it causes less severe physical symptoms than previous variants, and Covid boosters significantly increase your protection against it.

In total, the World Health Organization has collected data from more than 5,800 studies surrounding Covid-19 from all over the world. But despite the data, pandemic falsehoods are still circulating and omicron seems to have given some of them new life.

CNBC Make It asked a trio of leading infectious disease experts for the biggest Covid misconceptions they're hearing right now. Here's what they said:

It's true that vaccinated people can catch omicron: A two-dose regimen of Pfizer's Covid vaccine only provides 22.5% protection against symptomatic infection from omicron, according to an early study from South Africa last month.

But crucially, the study observed, getting vaccinated helps keep your symptoms mild if you do get sick, reducing your chances of hospitalization or death. And if you add a booster shot, your protection against symptomatic infection rises significantly to 75%, according to real-world data from the U.K.

"The vaccine does work, and that's been clearly shown by both death rates and hospitalization rates when comparing vaccinated people to unvaccinated people," says Dr. Mark Sawyer, an infectious disease specialist at Rady Children's Hospital who served on theU.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory committeethat approved Covid vaccines in 2020.

Not all states publicly track patients' vaccination status in hospitals, but the ones that do back up Sawyer's claims.

According to data compiled by Time, unvaccinated people account for a large percentage of hospitalized Covid patients in states like South Carolina, Montana and Mississippi. And recent data from New York State found that unvaccinated residents had a 13-times higher risk for hospitalization than vaccinated residents amid the state's omicron surge in late December.

That's because the vaccines prompt your body to produce an arsenal of Covid-fighting immune cells that work together to fend off the virus. Antibodies, which help prevent you from getting sick, are only the first line of defense: If you do get infected, your body's vaccine-induced T cells target and destroy virus-infected cells to make your symptoms less severe.

Dr.David Hirschwerk, an infectious disease specialist and medical director at Northwell Health's North Shore University Hospital, says he constantly reminds people that the "value of the vaccine" extends to reducing severe illness and hospitalizations.

"Hopefully, we can keep reminding ourselves about that fact," he says.

Dr. Shaun Truelove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says he's seen lots of portrayals of omicron as "super mild" and "flu and cold-like."

While omicron's physical symptoms can sometimes resemble the flu or common cold, its rate of transmission is much higher. It's more transmissible and better at evading existing antibodies than previous Covid variants, too.

In other words, Truelove says, omicron is far more severe than the cold or influenza. And it's the reason hospitals across the country have gone into emergency mode in recent weeks, declaring they're at full capacity, he adds.

"Even if it's same severity [of symptoms], it produces in terms of numbers way more hospitalizations and deaths," he says. "I think people keep missing that point."

Additionally, omicron is still a form of Covid. If you catch it, even if your symptoms are mild, you're still enabling the virus to keep circulating and the more Covid spreads, especially in unvaccinated populations, the more chances it has to potentially mutate into another dangerous variant.

It's been more than a year since the first Covid vaccine was administered in the U.S. Since then, nearly 250 million people across the country have received at least one vaccine dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet Sawyer says much of the country's unvaccinated population is still concerned about "what we might not know about these vaccines," particularly in terms of long-term safety.

"We have given hundreds of millions of doses of these vaccines, including in young children, five to 11," Sawyer says. "So if there was some mysterious side effect that was going to emerge, we would see it by now and know about it."

Long-term vaccine side effects are extremely rare. For example, J&J's one-shot vaccine carries a very small risk of "thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome," a severe blood clotting disorder. Pfizer and Moderna's mRNA vaccines can increase the risk of myocarditis, a heart inflammation condition, in men under age 29 but those cases are often mild, typically resolving on their own.

For Sawyer, the vaccine's benefits greatly outweigh its risks. As of Friday, roughly 63% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated,accordingto the CDC. Of those fully vaccinated, approximately 38% have received a booster dose, which experts say is critical in protecting yourself against omicron.

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Don't miss:

Omicron-specific vaccine is coming but may not mattereverybodys going to be infected, says expert

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Omicron could burn through the U.S. and potentially hasten the Covid pandemic's end, says expert

Read the original post:

3 big Covid misconceptions people still have, according to infectious disease experts - CNBC

Posted: Jan 15, 2022 / 07:20 PM HST / Updated: Jan 15, 2022 / 07:20 PM HST

HONOLULU (KHON2) The Kauai War Memorial Convention Hall testing site will be open on Monday, Jan. 17 to accommodate the extremely high demand for coronavirus testing in Kauai.

Mahalo to all the staff and volunteers who are working tirelessly at the Convention Hall to help keep our community safe, said Mayor Derek S. K. Kawakami.

The testing center will be offering free rapid PCR COVID-19 testing with same-day results between Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

There will be 500 tickets handed out each day that include an appointment time for that same day.

Alden Alayvilla, Kauai countys Public Information Officer, said that tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis so they are often gone by 9 a.m.

This ticketing system is meant to prevent extended lines and crowds due to the current high demand for testing, said Alayvilla. Testing at this site is not for those who are experiencing symptoms. If you are sick with COVID symptoms, please seek testing at a drive-thru or clinical site.

Find more COVID-19 news: cases, vaccinations on our Coronavirus News page

The testing center is located at 4191 Hardy St. in Lhue. Kauai also has a list of other available testing options as well.

See the article here:

High demand for COVID testing calls Kauai War Memorial Convention Hall to action - KHON2

As the Covid-19 pandemic enters its third year, the world is settling in for the moment the disease becomes endemicand less disruptiveat least in the U.S. Against that is the race to vaccinate while anticipating new variants.

The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 has continued to turn up winning numbers in the evolutionary lottery, alighting on mutations that can help it survive and thrive. With uneven Covid-19 vaccine uptake in the developed world and slow rollout in poorer nations, virologists say the virus has ample avenues to generate more variants that could challenge immune defenses developed through vaccination, infection or both.

Originally posted here:

The Covid Race to Watch: Vaccines vs. Variants - The Wall Street Journal

A COVID-19 home test in the U.S. comes with a swab to swirl in the nostrils. But some users say they're swabbing the throat too even though that's not what the instructions say to do. "They may stab themselves," cautions Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting head of the Food and Drug Administration. Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

A COVID-19 home test in the U.S. comes with a swab to swirl in the nostrils. But some users say they're swabbing the throat too even though that's not what the instructions say to do. "They may stab themselves," cautions Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting head of the Food and Drug Administration.

Lots of folks on Twitter say that swabbing your throat in addition to your nose may be a better way of using your COVID-19 testing kit to detect the omicron variant. Is this true?

If you've used a do-it-yourself COVID-19 home test in the U.S. the "antigen" rapid tests that promise results in 15 minutes or so you know the drill. You typically swirl a cotton swab around in your nostrils, mix it with some liquid and then drop it on a test strip to await the results: positive or negative for the coronavirus.

But in recent weeks, there has been an online debate about where to stick that cotton swab. Although the directions specify a nasal swab on U.S. products, some medical professionals believe the test is more effective at detecting the coronavirus, and specifically the omicron variant, if the kit's swab is used in the throat and/or cheek in addition to the nose.

Why did this hack emerge and is there any medical science to back it up?

The idea of a throat swab is not in and of itself a radical step. Even though antigen test kits in the U.S. are designed for a nasal swab, home tests are designed for a throat swab in other countries in Canada and the U.K., for example.

The idea of improvising with a throat swab is connected to the omicron variant, which was identified in late November and has swept the world. Researchers increasingly believe omicron may replicate in the throat before the nose.

That was one of the findings of a study conducted at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Researchers examined the ability of PCR tests to detect the variant by comparing diagnostic tests for 382 symptomatic COVID-19 patients who weren't hospitalized. In patients with the delta variant of the coronavirus, saliva swabs detected the virus 71% of the time, while nasal swabs found it 100% of the time. But in patients with omicron, researchers found the reverse: Saliva swabs detected the virus 100% of the time, while nasal swabs caught it 86% of the time.

The research has not been peer reviewed. And the tests used in the study were PCR tests, not antigen tests. (PCR tests are the gold standard and are administered typically in a health care facility; antigen tests are less precise and can be done at home. See this story for details on the differences.)

Nonetheless, the South African study has led some epidemiologists and immunologists in the U.S. to experiment with antigen tests by swabbing their throats or cheeks in addition to the nose when administering a self-test.

That's not an authorized use of the kits, reminds the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the kits: "FACT: When it comes to at-home rapid antigen #COVID19 tests, those swabs are for your nose and not your throat," it said in a tweet issued on Jan. 7.

And even proponents of the throat swab stop short of endorsing the practice for the public without a green light from the FDA.

One of the most often quoted voices in favor of throat swabbing is Dr. Michael Mina, formerly an epidemiologist and immunologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and now the chief science officer at the testing company eMed. He has tweeted: "We should be rigorously looking into throat swabs to add some level of sensitivity" and "Throat swab + nasal may improve chances a swab picks up virus."

But Mina has gone on to tweet that the FDA was right to warn the public not to go against manufacturer's directions: "Telling US public not to go against directions is the *right* thing to do."

"The tests haven't been designed to do [throat swabs], so we don't know whether there are false positives or negatives," agrees Dr. Jill Weatherhead, assistant professor of adult and pediatric infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine. "It logically makes sense that you'd want to do it, but that's not how [the tests have] been developed or tested."

One potential problem could be the thicker viscosity of throat saliva, says Dr. Yuka Manabe, associate director of global health research and innovation and a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. It's possible the sample would need to be filtered first, she says, to produce an accurate result.

That's not necessarily a critical concern, says Michael Daignault, an emergency physician who serves as chief medical adviser to Reliant Health Services, a medical testing company. He says that the nature of throat saliva could simply cause the test to display a message that the result is invalid rather than a false positive.

Another obvious potential problem, Manabe points out, is the length of the swab in some of the kits: "The swab that you use doesn't have a very long stick because it's just meant to be used in the front of your nose. So for you to get that into the back of your throat would not be very easy, truthfully, for some of the kits, depending on the length of the swab."

The public debate about the best way to swab has prompted a growing chorus of voices to call for new studies and a revamping of the kits and/or the instructions.

That kind of change is what Michal Tal is hoping for. Tal, an instructor at Stanford University's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a proponent of throat swabs. Before seeing anyone in person, she asks that they take a coronavirus test and swab not only their nose but their cheeks, the roof of their mouth, under their tongue and if they don't gag easily their throat near the tonsils.

"I'm feeling very frustrated that the FDA and CDC didn't jump on this and try to make more rapid changes," says Tal. "The virus is always two steps ahead and we don't adapt."

At a congressional hearing Monday, the acting head of the FDA, Dr. Janet Woodcock, noted that the National Institutes of Health has helped accelerate the authorization of new home tests so that they can get the FDA's signoff in just one or two days. But she said it may take a while for companies to change their test configurations to include larger swabs for the throat.

In the meantime, she warned people not to swab their throats with the current devices, which are designed as nasal swabs. "They may stab themselves," she said. "That would not be good."

Sheila Mulrooney Eldred is a freelance health journalist in Minneapolis. She has written about COVID-19 for many publications, including The New York Times, Kaiser Health News, Medscape and The Washington Post. More at sheilaeldred.pressfolios.com. On Twitter: @milepostmedia.

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Hacking a home COVID test by adding a throat swab is a hot topic on Twitter : Goats and Soda - NPR