Debunking the latest fake Covid-19 news and updates on XBB.1.5 and bivalent vaccines CLINICAL MATTERS DR. EDSEL SALVANA It’s a new year and so far, so good! The first week of 2023 showed less than 500 Covid-19 cases per day and only one severe case a day for the entire week. Healthcare...
CLINICAL MATTERS DR. EDSEL SALVANA What a wonderful holiday season we just had. Face-to-face gatherings are once again the norm after two years of keeping to our own households, and celebrations have been on par or exceeded pre-pandemic festivities. The fireworks on New Year’s Eve were as noisy...
CLINICAL MATTERS DR. EDSEL SALVANA If global trends continue, it will definitely be a happy new year in 2023 as the end of the pandemic is at hand. Citing the continued decline in cases and deaths, World Health Organization (WHO) director general Tedros Ghebreyesus is hopeful that the emergency...
Why common sense isn’t so common CLINICAL MATTERS Throughout the pandemic, there were many instances when scientists and doctors were attacked by a mix of anti-science trolls, anti-vaxxers, and Covid-19 denialists. As authorities and healthcare workers raced to save lives using evidence-based...
CLINICAL MATTERS DR. EDSEL SALVANA It has been more than a month since we shifted to voluntary masking. Full face-to-face classes have been going on for some time now. Despite many misgivings, Covid-19 cases in the Philippines have remained stable. Healthcare utilization remains low. Many are...
Since before Covid-19, infectious diseases experts have been raising the alarm on rising antimicrobial resistance CLINICAL MATTERS DR. EDSEL SALVANA Before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, infectious diseases experts were already raising the alarm on the threat of antimicrobial resistance. In...
DR. EDSEL SALVANA CLINICAL MATTERS It is now over two weeks from the lifting of mask mandates indoors. As expected, cases are up by about 43 percent. This is from less than 1,000 cases a day the week before to 1,296 through the week of Nov. 7 to 13. During this period, there were only six new...
Will we need to get vaccines periodically? CLINICAL MATTERS With the seemingly unending emergence of new Covid-19 variants, many people are starting to question whether the pandemic will truly end. Despite an unprecedented vaccination rollout, daily case numbers remain in the thousands and many...
Monkeypox, Centaurus, and the future of the pandemic CLINICAL MATTERS As an infectious diseases doctor, I know the names of hundreds of pathogens that can kill you in many horrible ways. From brain-eating amoeba to a virus that liquefies your internal organs into a bloody mess, to bacteria that eat...
A trip to put Covid-19 in perspective CLINICAL MATTERS I am writing this column on a train just like the one last week, but this time toward the end of our journey on the way from Seward to Anchorage, Alaska. It is 10 p.m. at night, and daylight is still strong. In this part of the world, the sun...
Reviewing quarantine, isolation, and why these are still important CLINICAL MATTERS After a very quiet few months following the Omicron wave in January, cases are once again on the rise. Many of us were expecting thousands of cases shortly after elections but this never materialized. Indeed, WHO...
A new way of looking at Covid CLINICAL MATTERS Some media outfits and doomsayers continue to bandy the rising Covid-19 numbers and positivity rates in a way that tends to scare people into a panic. Alarmist headlines and overblown pronouncements of alleged impending lockdowns do not help. Covid-19...
