In 2020, the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 offered the world an unwanted crash course in infectious-disease prevention. Mask up. Congregate outdoors. Test, and test again. Two and a half years later, what have people taken away from it? And how might people use that information in the future in order to stay healthy?

I set out to discuss what COVID-era lessons we should—and shouldn’t—apply to other illnesses with the professor, epidemiologist, and physician Jay K. Varma, who formerly worked for the CDC. Our conversation ended up veering toward a much more fundamental question: Have we actually learned from COVID? And does that even matter? Infectious diseases are, after all, collective-action problems. An individual can only do so much to prevent themselves from getting ill.

Varma noted that some of the good lessons that have come out of the world’s COVID experience are counterbalanced by an increase in vaccine misinformation and the undermining of the nation’s public-health entities. I asked him what he saw as the lingering weak spots on the individual level. His answer surprised me—the biggest wasn’t vaccine hesitation or being anti-mask or neglecting to use hand sanitizer. It was a lack of civic action: “I want individuals to demand that their elected officials take health security as seriously as they take physical security.”

Read: The pandemic’s legacy is already clear

Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Caroline Mimbs Nyce: We are entering cold-and-flu season. How might people apply the lessons of COVID to various illnesses this fall in a productive way?

Jay K. Varma: Let’s talk about prevention. The first lesson is that wearing something that covers your nose and mouth, ideally a high-quality medical face mask, can reduce your risk of all types of infections. Number two, of course, is the long-standing guidance about the importance of staying up to date on your vaccinations. A lot of the vaccines that we provide children and adults prevent respiratory infections, including pertussis or measles. And then, of course, there’s the annual flu shot.

Once you do get sick, it’s a good idea to stay home and not try to force yourself to go to work when you’re coughing or have other symptoms that could be contagious. Now, this presumes, of course, that you have paid sick leave or can work from home. And so it assumes a certain level of economic security and privilege that many people don’t have.

That also relates to school. I’m a parent of three kids. When they were younger, there were many times that we would have our kids go to school after their fever had resolved. But they still had an occasional cough or weren’t necessarily feeling perfectly great or had the sniffles. And we just didn’t think anything of it. And certainly that’s not something that we should have done or that other people should do on a regular basis. Again, asking people to keep kids home also assumes a certain amount of privilege.

I wish there was a really good way for individuals to know how likely they are to infect other people with the flu or other respiratory viruses.

Nyce: Why don’t we have rapid at-home flu or strep tests?

Varma: This is really an important issue. For many years, the basic paradigm that existed was that all tests for infectious diseases should be restricted to some type of health-care setting, that a nurse or doctor or somebody else should do the tests; people should not do their own tests at home. That’s different, of course, from pregnancy. We allow pregnancy tests. We allow people to use a thermometer. But we haven’t let people use infectious-disease tests.

One of the biggest innovations was at-home HIV testing. But that was different, because you collected your test at home but didn’t interpret the result; the specimen got sent somewhere.

COVID has really changed that paradigm. Let’s think about another health problem that’s not related to respiratory viruses: a urinary-tract infection. How many women get urinary-tract infections all the time and are basically having to struggle to find a doctor that will prescribe them, digging out old antibiotics that they stockpiled from their last infection or trying to borrow them from their friends? If women could use a urine dipstick at home—which isn’t perfect—in combination with symptoms, you can save medical visits and save people a lot of time and expenses.

I’m hoping that there’s a shift over time to the COVID experience now extending to other infectious diseases. For a lot of diseases like the flu or other respiratory viruses, we’re getting to an era in which you can make very-easy-to-use home tests that are very reliable. Think about the power of having that diagnostic information available to you.

Nyce: What are some of the lessons of COVID that are not universal, that are really more COVID-specific?

Varma: Let’s just run through all the things we recommend for COVID.

Doing activities outdoors: In general, most of the diseases that we talk about being transmitted person to person are not transmitted outdoors unless you’re talking about a vector-borne disease, like a mosquito- or tick-borne disease, or a disease that requires skin-to-skin contact. But for respiratory viruses, being outdoors is good. So that’s generally applicable.

Ventilation: Again, generally applicable to most respiratory infections.

Vaccination: We only have some diseases that are vaccine preventable, so it’s not applicable, obviously, to everything.

The next would be diagnostic testing. Pre-COVID, it was not necessary for everybody to get tested for respiratory symptoms. But unfortunately, in the era of COVID, because any type of respiratory symptoms could be COVID, it’s probably a good idea for everybody to get tested.

Hand-washing and hygiene. Even though I know there are a lot of questions about how much COVID is transmitted based on surfaces—and most of us believe that’s a very uncommon, and probably extremely rare, event—we know that surfaces do harbor many other viruses and bacteria, and that cleaning the physical environment can also be beneficial.

I do think that probably our balance as a society is a little off—we should be cleaning the air indoors more than we do. But I think there’s tremendous value in keeping your physical surfaces clean for everything. And that may be more relevant to norovirus, for example, which causes the stomach flu or some other infections, but not so important for COVID.

Nyce: I did want to talk about surface transmission, because we started off the pandemic being told to wash our hands and not touch our face. And then that turned out to be low risk. How should we be thinking about surface transmission in general? What illnesses can we get from surfaces?

Varma: A lot of the concern about physical surfaces comes from the experience in hospitals and other health-care facilities, where there is very clear evidence that contamination of physical surfaces can make both patients as well as medical providers sick. The other place where this happens a lot is restaurants or kitchens. We know that surfaces—and that doesn’t just mean the counter; it means utensils or prepping equipment—can harbor viruses and bacteria that cause gastrointestinal diseases.

So what does that mean for the average person? I think it’s important to primarily focus on washing your hands, because we know that hands are kind of the intermediary between a physical exterior surface and you infecting yourself. And there’s actual data about this: There’s a very elegant study done in Bangladesh about, gosh, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, where they randomized different households getting soap (either regular or antibacterial) and basically looked at the incidence of a whole range of different infections in kids in those households compared to those that didn’t get any soap at all. They looked at skin infections, pneumonia, and gastrointestinals. The homes that got rigorous hygiene interventions had a lower risk of all of those outcomes.

Nyce: So what if we narrow the scope to respiratory diseases? Say a friend is sniffly or coughing. Maybe you have her over for dinner. How diligently should you be masking up versus worrying about surfaces? Are you generally pretty safe if you’re outside, at least in the respiratory family?

Varma: I think so. The reality is we can’t provide you an absolute risk percentage. We can just do relative risk. The more likely you are in a place where there is good movement of air, where there’s a wind current, where there’s sunlight—which has a disinfecting property—and the greater distance you are away from somebody, the lower the risk that a virus flying out of your nose or mouth lands in their nose or mouth. In general, when we talk about respiratory viruses—so cold and flus—then yes, outdoors is always going to be safer than indoors.

Covering your nose and mouth with a high-quality mask will also lower your risk of infection. Now, do you care enough to do that? People say, “Look, if it’s not COVID …” Even for COVID, obviously, there are many parts of the country where people don’t really worry about it anymore.

Read: The masks we’ll wear in the next pandemic

Nyce: Are there COVID lessons that you worry we’ve overlearned?

Varma: It’s not so much COVID lessons that we overlearned; it’s probably misinformation that has been learned. COVID has emboldened the anti-vaccine movement. We’re now seeing polio transmission in the United States. And there is no doubt in my mind that that is linked to the anti-vaccine sentiment of the pandemic as well as the disruption of health-care services. The other harmful lesson is this notion that somehow, public-health agencies are authoritarian, that public health is about restricting liberties rather than trying to balance risks and benefits of people living and working together.

Nyce: Do you think that the pandemic has been a net-positive or a net-negative in terms of getting public-health messaging out around personal-prevention tactics?

Varma: It’s a very difficult question to answer, because I think we’re not going to know until sometime in the distant future. Positive outcomes can come from horrible humanitarian disasters. The flu pandemic of the World War I era led to the field of epidemiology getting its heyday and countries adopting universal-health-care systems. HIV brought in this massive revolution in molecular biology that’s given us the ability to do PCR testing really quickly and also changed a lot of the role of community in getting FDA regulations changed so drugs could be brought quicker to the market.

There are going to be positive outcomes that come from COVID. But it’s very hard to balance that with all the harms that have occurred. There’s been a tremendous loss of credibility in the United States for public-health agencies, the CDC being the most notable. And that is hugely harmful to public health, because public health relies on credibility. That’s really its major currency.

And so it’s hard for me right now to see the positives that have come out of the pandemic for public health, simply because the negatives are balanced against some of the good things.

Some of the good things that have come out of the pandemic are a better recognition of the importance of ventilation in indoor air quality, faster movement by the FDA to make diagnostic tests available to people, including their ability to use them in their homes. Third is that there’s a lot of interest among young people in public health. That’s a good thing for society.

The one last thing I would add is public awareness about the risk of pandemics, and the fact that we are now living in an age of pandemics. Humans are interacting with animals and the environment in ways that they haven’t in the past. A number of factors—globalization, urbanization, climate change, deforestation—are combining to make diseases emerge and spread faster.

So hopefully, that will change people’s perspective on both their personal behaviors and their investment in getting elected officials to actually care about public health.

Nyce: You mentioned the threat of future pandemics. Where are the lingering weak spots for you, in terms of personal prevention and awareness?

Varma: The biggest weakness is the one I just talked about. I want individuals to demand that their elected officials take health security as seriously as they take physical security. To me, that is the single biggest personal weakness that’s out there. If people start clamoring for more investment in public health to keep them safer, then they’re likely to be safer.

I will turn the question around on you a little bit, which is that if you asked me the same question—“What is the biggest thing an individual can do to stop crime in their community?”—there’s not a lot they can do, right? There’s no evidence that purchasing a firearm makes you safer in your home. And in fact, there’s a lot of evidence to show that it makes it more dangerous. There’s not a lot of evidence that security cameras are the things that help you. But investing in your local community makes it safer.

Nyce: Is it just that getting sick is fundamentally a communal problem?

Varma: Yes. That’s what public health is all about.

Nyce: [Laughs.] We just got to the definition of public health.

Varma: Yeah. You can do individual interventions. But they are less important than all of the things that we do at a community level. If you look at how mortality has changed in the past 150 years, the biggest improvements came from cleaning water, cleaning the air, making roads safer. All of these are things that governments, not individuals, have control over.

In recent weeks many children have returned to in-person learning and resumed after-school activities and sports. Some public health measures used to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 such as masks and social distancing, which are also effective against other respiratory viruses, have been lifted in many schools across the United States. While all of this has brought back a much-needed sense of normalcy for children and their families, it has also come with some challenges, including a significant increase in respiratory illnesses among kids.

Children’s hospitals in major U.S. cities have been reporting unusually high numbers of sick patients with respiratory illnesses caused by viruses other than the coronavirus. These include respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), enteroviruses (EV) and rhinovirus (RV), which mostly cause coldlike symptoms such as a runny nose, coughing, sneezing and fever.

Normally, these viruses emerge in the winter months. During this time, also known as respiratory viral season, pediatricians and hospitals are prepared to deal with an influx of patients sick with these viruses. However, this year the season started sooner than expected, and the number of children needing hospitalizations has been so high that in some areas hospital systems are already overwhelmed.

“In general, pediatric hospitals operate relatively close to their capacity,” Dr. Michael Chang, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at UTHealth Houston and Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, told Yahoo News. “So when you see patients needing hospitalization for respiratory viruses at unusual times of the year, then it's easy to kind of reach capacity for hospitals.”

In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alerted public health departments and doctors treating pediatric patients about some of these respiratory viruses. The agency issued a health advisory warning about an increase in the number of pediatric hospitalizations for severe respiratory illness where patients were testing positive for rhinovirus and/or enterovirus, including enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) — which has been linked to a rare but serious condition called acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM. The main purpose of the advisory, the CDC said, was for doctors to keep this information top of mind when diagnosing and treating respiratory illnesses in children, as some of these viruses “can have clinically similar presentations” and be “indistinguishable from one another.”

Chang said his home state of Texas is in the middle of “a big RSV surge” right now, which started a couple of weeks ago and wasn’t expected until at least late October. “We have something like 20% of our tests for RSV are positive, which is well above the 10% threshold that we consider kind of the epidemic level of RSV,” he said.

Cases of enterovirus D68 have also gone up and are “at a higher rate than baseline,” according to Chang. He noted that the numbers for enterovirus are not as high as those seen in previous surges. However, he said doctors are not exactly sure how far into the surge they are because this is happening at an unusual time.

In addition, doctors in the state have started to see a number of flu cases — again, earlier than expected. COVID-19 cases, however, are going down, Chang said.

Why are these respiratory viruses surging right now?

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted not only people’s lives but also historical seasonal patterns for other common respiratory viruses. Chang said these patterns have completely changed, and while it’s unclear why, it likely has a lot to do with human behavior.

“We were really focused on those infection prevention techniques, which again, not only do they work for SARS-CoV-2, but they really work for most of the respiratory viruses,” he said. “We knew that those infection prevention techniques could work for the flu and RSV. It's just that we never executed them on such a global scale, right? Like we never did it in such a widespread fashion where so many people were wearing masks, so many people were isolating, so many people were physical distancing. So we never got to see the impact that those types of preventions on such a large scale could have for RSV and flu, but were obviously very effective.”

Chang explained that the past two winters were among the mildest influenza seasons on record. Similarly, doctors didn’t see much RSV in the winter of 2020-21, when the country was facing a COVID-19 surge and there were tight public health restrictions in place. However, as some of these pandemic restrictions were loosened last summer, there was a major surge of RSV. He said two things were unusual about it: how early it happened — well before winter — and how severe some of the cases were.

This year, RSV is once again surging earlier than usual, and flu cases have also started to increase in some parts of the country, particularly the Southeast and South Central U.S. According to health experts, we could face a severe flu season that coincides with a winter surge of COVID-19.

Another explanation for why these winter respiratory viruses are affecting us more now, experts say, is not necessarily because they’ve changed but because we have less immunity against them.

“Basically for two years, two winters where kids and adults would have been infected by RSV or by the flu, they didn’t have it, and so some of that immunity that we would have had from infection before, we don't have now,” Chang explained.

Which symptoms should parents be on the lookout for?

For most parents, “all these viruses are pretty much going to be indistinguishable,” Chang told Yahoo News. Common symptoms are a runny nose, sore throat and coughing. These, the pediatrician said, can last three to five days, sometimes peaking on day five, just before they start to subside.

Most children, he said, recover fully from these viruses with no long-term complications. However, parents of children with asthma or reactive airway disease (when asthma is suspected but not confirmed) need to be more cautious about these viruses, particularly enterovirus D68, which can cause more severe disease.

“Certainly any time that you notice that they’re having difficulty, like with shortness of breath at rest, or if they’re having trouble completing their sentences, if they’re wheezing a lot, coughing is more severe, any type of shortness of breath and then any type of chest pain, you are going want to ... seek medical attention,” Chang said.

Infants and younger children, particularly if they were born premature or have a history of underlying congenital heart disease, are at increased risk of severe illness from RSV, he explained.

“The main things you want to look out for are difficulty with feeding, difficulty with catching their breath if they're taking a bottle or breastfeeding. Certainly decreased feeding, decreased appetite,” he said.

How can parents best protect children right now?

There are currently no vaccines available for RSV, enterovirus D68 or rhinovirus. But Chang said the best way to protect children this winter is to make sure parents and children are vaccinated against those viruses that we do have vaccines for, such as flu and COVID-19.

“Everybody who qualifies for [a] flu shot, which is pretty much everyone from 6 months to adult, should go and get their seasonal flu vaccine as soon as possible,” Chang said.

He also urged those who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 to get their shots.

“The best way to minimize the risk of severe illness and hospitalization, whatever your age, whatever your underlying conditions, is to get vaccinated and be fully up to date on your SARS-CoV-2 immunizations, including the new bivalent boosters.”

Cover thumbnail photo: Peter Cade via Getty Images

The COVID-19 pandemic caused so much change in so little time and life as we previously knew it has been fundamentally altered. It swamped our hospitals and brought on mass fear of illness, as well as unemployment and recession. It closed restaurants, schools and even whole nations.

We will never take for granted again how truly interconnected we all are. Despite how exhausting, painful and chaotic the past two years have been, it was a bittersweet time in the respiratory therapy profession. Through all the darkness, the COVID-19 pandemic shined a light on the respiratory therapy community and raised the public’s awareness of the role we play in patient care. Many people now have a greater appreciation for breathing and for the health care providers who help patients breathe easier.

Additionally, amidst the pandemic, respiratory therapists were given an opportunity to expand their job landscape. Despite vaccination roll-outs and optimism about returning to a sense of normalcy, respiratory therapists and millions of patients continue to overcome health care challenges related to the pandemic.

According to a 2022 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey, an estimated 1.5 million adults in Florida are still currently experiencing persistent, troublesome COVID-19 symptoms weeks or months after their bout with the disease. Known as “long haulers,” these patients complain of long-term symptoms related to the lungs.

Thus, respiratory therapists continue to play a major role in the COVID-19 recovery effort to help patients regain their quality of life. This is evident through a widespread respiratory therapy presence in a variety of unique health care settings including pulmonary and sleep labs, COVID-19 rehabilitation programs, telehealth services and primary care facilities.

So, with long-COVID conditions likely to be around for some time and an unfortunately growing patient population, comes the need for more highly trained health care professionals, especially in respiratory therapy. According to U.S. News & World Report (2022), respiratory therapists are ranked sixth on the list of Best Health Care Jobs and 16th on the 100 Best Jobs in the United States.

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Also, employment of respiratory therapists is projected to grow 19% — around 26,000 new positions — by 2029. That’s faster than the average for all occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While historically recognized as essential members of the acute care team, respiratory therapists are now carving out new advanced roles and taking their skillsets beyond the hospital walls to provide testing, education and care management in specialty medical areas. Respiratory therapists specializing in heart, lung and sleep testing can use data from medical devices to refine treatment plans and help chronic COVID-19 patients get the most appropriate therapies.

They’re using home oxygen therapy, pulse oximetry management, inhaled lung medications, breathing retraining techniques, secretion clearance practices, volume expansion therapies and noninvasive mechanical ventilation to treat those with long-haul COVID-19 symptoms.

Due to pandemic constraints and inadequate health care access, telemedicine has become a cost-effective and convenient public health service in a post-pandemic society. Respiratory therapists are uniquely qualified to provide such services including remote patient education, virtual disease-management skills training and patient monitoring services. As lung experts, respiratory therapists also have the credibility to work in primary care offices.

With respiratory therapists well-trained to evaluate, manage and educate these specific patient populations, this opens a whole new set of possibilities to provide quality patient care outside of the acute care setting in a post-pandemic world. As the demand for respiratory care increases across the country, Jacksonville University launched a master’s degree program to help fill the need for more advanced respiratory therapists.

Jacksonville University’s Master of Science in Respiratory Care program offers leadership and advanced practice opportunities that properly prepare graduates to tackle these emerging job expectations on the horizon for respiratory therapists. For more information on the respiratory therapy profession or the unique JU program please visit ju.edu/msrc. We’re currently accepting applications for spring 2023.

Amanda Dexter, MS, RRT, RCP, CHSE, director of Jacksonville University’s Master of Science in Respiratory Care Program 

This guest column is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Times-Union. We welcome a diversity of opinions.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Amanda Dexter: The respiratory therapist in a post-COVID world

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Oct 13, 2022 (The Expresswire) -- Global “Medical Pressure Sensor Market” Research Report incorporates an in-depth analysis of current industry trends, leading growth factors, restraints, industry dynamics, opportunities, and challenges. The report covers all key aspects, supported by extensive research on factors such as industry segments, size and trends, key drivers, business sales volume, and porter’s five force analysis. The Medical Pressure Sensor market is projected to grow at a tremendous rate on the explanation of its wide application scope, recent development, growing trends, merger, acquisition, business overview, and key company profiles.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

In recent weeks, there’s been a disturbing uptick in respiratory illnesses in kids, causing many to be hospitalized in the ICU — and Broward Health says they’re seeing the rise too.

In the past 48 hours, officials at Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale say they’ve had to open up overflow units for pediatric ICU patients presenting with RSV — and it’s not COVID.

“Unfortunately, for the past week, we have seen a surge of cases of children coming with respiratory symptoms secondary to a viral infection," said Dr. Hector Rodriguez-Cortes, chair of pediatrics at Broward Health.

Pediatric leaders at Broward Health say children have been coming to the emergency room and then needing ICU care because of these respiratory illnesses. Some even have to be intubated.

"These types of viruses normally present with common symptoms like a common cold," Dr. Rodriguez-Cortes said. "It can vary from just runny nose to coughing, however, what we’re seeing here is that patients have progressed to a level where they require great care.”

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common, contagious virus that causes cold-like symptoms in your respiratory tract. It can be dangerous for infants, especially preemies and older adults who are immunocompromised or with cardiac conditions or asthma.

It can cause bronchiolitis or inflammation of the lungs, which can be life-threatening for preemies.

It's key for parents to know the signs. Some symptoms to watch out for include:

• Runny nose
• Decrease in appetite
• Coughing
• Sneezing
• Fever
• Wheezing

Dr. Rodriguez-Cortes says various factors could be contributing to these cases, but he wants the public to be aware.

“We’re doing this not to alarm the community, but just to provide you a heads up that this going on and that you need to be prepared," he said.

If think your child has these symptoms, call your doctor.

MILWAUKEE - Children's Hospital of Wisconsin is seeing an uptick in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases in young children. Doctors said they are seeing more cases of young children struggling to breathe and landing in the hospital for viruses like RSV.

A FOX6 News employee shared these images of her child to help spread awareness of a surge in cases.

"RSV is very disruptive to a family lifestyle," said Dr. Michael Meyer, the Medical Director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Children's Wisconsin. "The number of positive tests more than doubled from last week, and then the number of hospitalizations also increased from last week."

The doctor said the virus is making its rounds in Wisconsin sooner than expected.

"As we've gone back to daily life with every other infection precaution related to COVID, we're starting to see a surge," Meyer said.

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The doctor said most RSV cases are mild to moderate, but some require hospitalization due to high mucus production.

"Children can struggle greatly, especially our younger babies because they breathe through their nose," Meyer said. "If your nose is full of boogers, even the smaller children can't figure out how to use their mouth to breathe."

Dr. Meyer said the best precaution is teaching children about proper hand hygiene.

"It's amazing as kids learn these things, they'll look at you and say, ‘I need to go wash my hands now’ or 'Where is the hand sanitizer?" Meyer said.

There is no vaccine for RSV, but there is one for the flu – and the doctor advises kids to get a flu shot.

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Meyer said it could take up to five days for children to recover from RSV. Children could have a lingering cough for weeks or months after getting the virus. Children can get RSV more than once, which is why teaching proper hand hygiene to those older kids is so important.

Here are some CDC guidelines that doctors recommend you follow:

• Doctors recommend that your child get an flu vaccine every year in the fall, starting when he or she is 6 months old.
• Some children 6 months through 8 years of age may need 2 doses for best protection.
• Children 6 months through 8 years getting a flu vaccine for the first time, and those who have only previously gotten one dose of flu vaccine, should get two doses of vaccine. The first dose should be given as soon as vaccine becomes available.

In a recent study published in Environmental Research, researchers investigated whether surgical and N95 face masks cause respiratory distress in children. 

Background

In a recent article published by Walach et al., they stated that the use of face masks in children raised the carbon dioxide (CO₂) amount in inhaled air so quickly to a high level that even in resting conditions it would carry serious health risks. The authors of the current work pointed out several methodological limitations of the Walach et al. study so that the parents might not consider masking harmful and dangerous for their children.

Walach et al. considered 2000 parts per million (ppm) CO₂ levels as the cut-off value of CO₂ toxicity. This value applies to indoor air quality, whereas the environment created between the face and mask is not comparable to an enclosed environment. Also, as per the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, exposure to about 50,000 ppm CO₂ for 30 minutes causes the first symptoms related to respiratory distress. Walach et al. reported CO₂ levels between 13,120 and 13,910 ppm, which are well below the threshold for CO₂ toxicity.

Second, Walach et al. study could not prove the alleged link to hypercapnia because they failed to measure blood CO₂ levels. The main physiological compensation mechanism for hypercapnia is increased respiratory and heart rates. The study subjects showed no such symptoms, and they did not show decreased oxygen saturation (SaO₂). Lastly, the measuring device used by Walach et al. in their study could not adapt to the rate of CO₂ changes, hence, yielded unreliable results.

About the study

In the present study, researchers assessed respiratory distress in children using multiple parameters, including partial pressure of end-tidal carbon dioxide (P_ETCO2), heart rate, respiratory rate, and clinical signs. They monitored the changes in respiratory parameters in all the study subjects every 15 minutes. For the first 30 minutes, these children were not wearing a face mask, but they were asked to wear a face mask later. The masked sessions consisted of a 12-minutes walking test in a 40-m long corridor.

Results and conclusion

During rest and physical activity, the use of a surgical mask did not cause any significant changes in the respiratory parameters of the children. The use of the N95 mask, particularly during physical activity, increased P_ETCO2, but it remained in the normal range. Overall, none of the children evaluated in the current study showed any clinical signs of respiratory distress throughout the duration. In support of these findings, another recent study in adults with severe lung impairment showed that surgical masks did not influence their gas exchange capabilities.

Moreover, several studies have shown the effectiveness and accuracy of methods involving the evaluation of P_ETCO2 to show changes in respiratory distress parameters, including venous pCO₂ and arterial pCO₂. The implications of mask use in pediatric age require careful consideration because it is the only non-pharmaceutical intervention measure that could reduce the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Moreover, it could help contain many common pediatric diseases, which, in turn, could reduce healthcare system expenses.

Most importantly, there is enough clinical evidence supporting the safety of masks in the pediatric age. Thus, parents should not doubt that mask use is hazardous for their children or increases carbon dioxide in the inhaled air. In fact, it prevents the spread of multiple pathogenic infections, including SARS-CoV-2, for the good of public health.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Oct 11, 2022 (The Expresswire) -- Global “Medical Pressure Sensors Market” Research Report incorporates an in-depth analysis of current industry trends, leading growth factors, restraints, industry dynamics, opportunities, and challenges. The report covers all key aspects, supported by extensive research on factors such as industry segments, size and trends, key drivers, business sales volume, and porter’s five force analysis. The Medical Pressure Sensors market is projected to grow at a tremendous rate on the explanation of its wide application scope, recent development, growing trends, merger, acquisition, business overview, and key company profiles.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus cases spike among kids, with Dr. Vinitha Moopen

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Last month, FOX43 reported that Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) cases were on the rise as we approached fall. 

Now that we're several weeks into the season, those cases are specifically affecting kids. 

The common virus is typically mild but it's also the number one cause of infant hospitalizations; symptoms are much like the common cold. This is why Dr. Vinitha Moopen, of WellSpan Family and Pediatric Medicine at Rothsville, joined FOX43 on Oct. 11 to discuss the recent spike in children. 

To learn more about the virus, and what you can do to protect your children, check out Sean Streicher's interview with Dr. Moopen above.

To learn more about Dr. Moopen and her work, click here. 

Download the FOX43 app here.