#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storythe new old ageCan Long-Term Care Employers Require Staff Members to Be Vaccinated?As legal experts and ethicists debate, some companies aren’t waiting.Joe Pendergast, a resident of Juniper Village, a nursing home in Bensalem, Pa., with Kevin Birtwell, a wellness nurse manager there. All staff members at Juniper are required to be vaccinated.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesMarch 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETFor much of the winter, Meryl Gordon worried about the people caring for her 95-year-old mother, who was rehabbing in a Manhattan nursing home after surgery for a broken hip.“Every week they sent out a note to families about how many staff members had positive Covid tests,” said Ms. Gordon, a biographer and professor at New York University. “It was a source of tremendous anxiety.”Ms. Gordon feels reassured now that her mother is fully vaccinated and has returned to her assisted living facility. But what about the two home care aides who help her 98-year-old father, David, in his Upper West Side apartment?Neither has agreed to be vaccinated. David Gordon’s doctor has advised him to delay Covid vaccination himself because of his past allergic reactions.Ms. Gordon has not insisted that the caregivers receive vaccinations. “You’re reluctant to do something that could cause you to lose the people you rely on,” she said. But she remains uneasy.It’s a question that many long-term care employers, from individual families to big national companies, are confronting as vaccines become more available, although not available enough: In a pandemic, can they require vaccination for those who care for very vulnerable older adults? Should they?Some employers aren’t waiting. Atria Senior Living, one of the nation’s largest assisted living chains, has announced that by May 1 all staff members must be fully vaccinated.Silverado, a small chain of dementia care homes, most on the West Coast, mandated vaccination by March 1. Juniper Communities, which operates 22 facilities in four states, has also adopted a mandate.“We felt it was the best way to protect people, not just our residents but our team members and their families,” said Lynne Katzmann, Juniper’s chief executive. Of the company’s nearly 1,300 employees, “about 30 individuals have self-terminated” because of the vaccination requirement, she reported.Juniper’s experience supports what public health experts have said for years: Vaccine mandates, like those that many health care organizations have established for the flu vaccine, remain controversial — but they do increase vaccination rates. As of Feb. 25, 97.7 percent of Juniper residents had received two vaccine doses, and so had 96 percent of its staff members.Tamara Moreland, executive director at Juniper Village in Bensalem. The company operates 22 facilities in four states and reports about 30 “self-terminations” of its nearly 1,300 employees.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesThat stands in stark contrast to staff vaccinations in many facilities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that during the first month of vaccine clinics in nursing homes, only 37.5 percent of staff members received the first shot, along with 77.8 percent of residents.The results of opinion surveys vary, depending on who is asked and when. In January, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that 29 percent of health care workers expressed doubts about vaccination.A national recruiting platform for health care companies, myCNAjobs.com, last month polled 250 companions, aides and nursing assistants in facilities and in home care; it interviews thousands more daily. It estimates that 35 percent plan to be vaccinated, 20 percent do not and more than 40 percent remain unsure.The Coronavirus Outbreak

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#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyCovid-19: U.S. Vaccination Pace Increases to 2 Million Doses a DayChina subjects some travelers to anal swabs, angering foreign governments.March 5, 2021, 2:39 a.m. ETMarch 5, 2021, 2:39 a.m. ETThe arrivals hall at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport in January.Credit…Aly Song/ReutersChina is requiring some travelers arriving from overseas to receive an invasive anal swab test as part of its coronavirus containment measures, a move that has outraged and shocked several foreign governments.Japanese officials said on Monday that they had formally asked China to exempt Japanese citizens from the test, adding that some who had received it complained of “psychological distress.” And the United States State Department last moth said it had registered a protest with the Chinese government after some of its diplomats were forced to undergo anal swabs, though Chinese officials denied that.It is not clear how many such swabs have been administered or who is subject to them. Chinese state media has acknowledged that some arrivals to cities including Beijing and Shanghai are required to take the tests, though the reports said the requirements might vary depending on whether the travelers were deemed to be high-risk.Chinese experts have suggested that traces of the virus may survive longer in the anus than in the respiratory tract and that samples of the former may prevent false negatives. China has imposed some of the strictest containment measures in the world, including barring most foreign arrivals, and has largely suppressed the epidemic.Lu Hongzhou, an infectious disease specialist at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the state-controlled Global Times tabloid that nasal or throat swabs could cause “uncomfortable reactions,” leading to subpar samples. He acknowledged that fecal samples could replace anal swabs, to prevent similar discomfort.But other experts — including in China — have questioned the need for anal samples. The Global Times quoted another expert, Yang Zhanqiu, as saying that nasal and throat swabs are still the most effective because the virus is contracted through the respiratory tract.Benjamin Cowling, a public health professor at the University of Hong Kong, said in an interview that even if someone did test positive on an anal swab but not a respiratory one, he or she would likely not be very contagious.“The value of detecting people with the virus is to stop transmission,” Professor Cowling said. “If someone has got an infection but they’re not contagious to anyone else, we didn’t need to detect that person.”A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said this week that the government would make “science-based adjustments” to its containment policies.Professor Cowling said he did not know what the scientific rationale was behind the existing policies. “I presume there’s some evidence leading to this decision, but I haven’t seen that evidence,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage copyrightDr Radhika Patnala/Sci Illustrate/BBCThere’s barely any country in the world that hasn’t been touched by the coronavirus pandemic and its aftershocks. But with so much information out there, it’s sometimes hard to digest all the details and fully take it in.Ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March, we invite you to meet three women who are using their artistic talents, combined with their expertise in the fields of science, health and technology to help the fight against coronavirus.Avesta Rastan: ‘You help out in whatever way you can’image copyrightAvesta Rastan/ www.azuravesta.comAvesta Rastan, 25, is a visual science communicator currently living in California. At the start of the pandemic, she realised there weren’t many infographics revealing how Covid-19 directly affected the human body.So the artist, who is of Iranian and Canadian heritage, and is a member of the Association of Medical Illustrators, saw a unique opportunity to use her skills and her training in pathological illustration (the drawing of disease) to help the wider public.”I saw lots of illustrations and 3D models of the virus itself and its protein but I didn’t really see what it did to us,” she explained.She started investigating and soon created an infographic that unexpectedly went viral on social media. Even the World Economic Forum shared it.image copyrightAvesta Rastan/ www.azuravesta.comShe was approached by people all over the world wanting to see the poster in different languages and offering to translate her explanations. It’s now available to download in 18 languages on her website.Rastan says: “I’m not a frontline worker; I’m not in health care, but you help out in whatever way you can and for me that was using my art.She adds science can have a reputation for being difficult to learn and that does deter people but illustrations bridge that gap and could encourage more to enter her field.”Science itself isn’t hard – it’s a natural process for humans; we’re naturally curious and want to understand how things work”, she adds.image copyrightAvesta Rastan/Azuravesta Design/BBC In the future she wants to be involved in building educational platforms. But for now, she’s spreading the word about her unusual career. “I have definitely noticed in the past 10 to 20 years there are more women in this field than men. In the older generations it was definitely a male dominated field but now things are changing,” she says.And while the pandemic has been a terrible thing for the world to go through, Rastan admits that for her it did offer a silver lining. She embarked on a freelance career and worked with academic researchers, medical tech start-ups, doctors and surgeons. image copyrightAvesta Rastan/ www.azuravesta.comRastan, who finds a lot of her inspiration comes from nature, has a new job in the US now. But she continues to spend her spare time on a passion project on social media called Lumi Science where she’s still visualising the virus and its variants. “Science communication is so key to society. When you understand something, you’re empowered to try to change it or try to mitigate the risk”, she says.Dr Radhika Patnala: ‘The pandemic woke everyone up’image copyrightRadhika Patnala/ www.sci-illustrate.comDr Radhika Patnala is a neuroscientist and the founder and director of the start-up Sci-Illustrate. The Indian-born entrepreneur, who studied in Singapore and Australia before moving to Munich, Germany, says one of the beauties of working in science is that the field is incredibly collaborative and crosses geographical and institutional boundaries.Her company creates science illustrations for a whole range of clients but she also has several passion projects underway, with the most recent focused on her response to the pandemic. image copyrightRadhika Patnala/ www.sci-illustrate.comIt’s a 10-part series of illustrations called Covid Dreams. “I came across this very interesting piece of information, that people who got Covid-19 were having weird dreams. I thought that was an amazing idea to explore. I also wanted to challenge myself to try to depict something which is very serious and slightly depressing, in an unusual and visually different way,” she says.Her series encompasses different parts of the coronavirus experience, from detailing the nucleo-protein packages within the virus to imagining what someone’s mouth inside the mask looks like. image copyrightRadhika Patnala/ www.sci-illustrate.comIt was when she was doing her doctorate, with a focus on immunology and epigenetics, that Patnala, 32, reconnected with her artistic side. “I’d be in a neuroanatomy lab and we would look at slices of mice and rat brains and stain them, so we could look at individual cells and the tissue architecture of the brain in detail. “A lot of my PhD involved looking under a microscope at neural tissue, how the different cells talk to each other and how beautiful the tissue architecture of the organ itself was,” she says.image copyrightRadhika Patnala/ www.sci-illustrate.comFor Patnala, the pandemic has not led to a significant difference to her day job and, with so many in the industry now focusing on virus illustrations, she was continuing to work on visualising other diseases for clients in need.”There are important things happening all the time in our industry – there are companies looking at cancer therapeutics and trying to find drugs for niche cancer types; there are people working on cardiovascular diseases,” she explains.Stating the science field has always had trouble getting money from policy makers, she suggests perhaps a change is on the way, adding: “The pandemic woke everyone up to the amazing work that people are doing in laboratories all the time.”Nujuum Hashi: ‘If I can fight coronavirus others can try’ image copyrightNujuum HashiWhen Nujuum Hashi, 26, caught coronavirus early last year, she refused to let it destroy her creative ambitions and all the dreams she had steadily been working towards over the past few years.Hashi had given up her career as a nurse in Somaliland to pursue art, despite her family’s misgivings about her chosen path, and she resolved that while the pandemic had knocked her strength, it wasn’t going to kill her spirit.Hashi, who is now living in Mogadishu, Somalia, had just returned from a trip to Kenya in April 2020 when she realised that she was sick. “First I had a headache, then I had a rough throat. I lost my sense of smell and I was shivering and cold; I had dizziness and a migraine. I lost my appetite and even my eyes were very dry and sensitive to light. My brain couldn’t do any creative work – I just felt incredibly flat.”image copyrightNujuum HashiBut while she was self-isolating, she realised it was important for her to stay connected to the world.”I still tried to do live Instagram art classes – even while I was sick – to entertain others. I’d teach people how to draw faces and hands and other things. “I wanted to show the world I was fighting corona and that I was doing my best. When I felt my brain was returning to a better place, I did an illustration of me boxing the corona as I wanted to show I was fighting this evil virus. I was angry about the virus and this was a celebration picture. “If I can fight it; others can try to do so as well.”image copyrightNujuum Hashi As well as illustrations focusing on her experiences, Hashi has been drawing and painting scenes to encourage others to take care and be more aware of the community around them. Her illustrations include an image of the Covid-19 virus on a world tour and a drawing in tribute to the frontline doctors and nurses trying to save lives.Hashi grew up in a medical family – her mother is a midwife, while her late father was an anaesthetist. And it was back in Hargeisa, Somaliland that Hashi herself trained and worked as a nurse. She said it was a job she loved as it meant she could help the community but there came a point in her life when the desire to create art overwhelmed her.image copyrightNujuum HashiShe says it is not easy being a female artist in Somalia but as a creative person, she feels a personal responsibility to share her talents with the world.While 2020 was a difficult year, she is optimistic about the future. She plans to continue seeking out more business opportunities, and she wants to use her art to tackle misinformation about the pandemic.”There’s a lot of misunderstanding in our country. Sometimes I have to show people that the right information is here and tell others to stop spreading the wrong information,” she says.The virus has had global ramifications with many calculating women will bear the brunt with long-lasting social and economic effects. But could the virus be the catalyst for change in traditionally male dominated fields? Reports suggest the pandemic has led to more women considering a career in the sciences. After all, as these three women stress, education leads to empowerment. Related Internet LinksAzuravesta Design – Scientific Art & AnimationSci-IllustrateNujuum.A.Hashi (@nujuumarts)The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Surge testing is being used in parts of the UK to help control the spread of new variants from Brazil and South Africa.The Kent variant is now the most commonly found strain of Covid-19 in the UK and it’s more easily spread than the first variant, which arrived in Spring 2020. Scientists are looking at tweaking the coronavirus vaccines to make sure they continue to be highly effective. But where are these variants coming from? And why do viruses mutate?Health correspondent Laura Foster explains.

Michael Benyo, who has dementia, hasn’t been able to properly see his family for a year, due to Covid-19 restrictions in his care home. His daughters Gillian and Jaqueline spoke to BBC Social Affairs correspondent Alison Holt, about their experience, and how they feel about changes that come into effect on 8 March. In a relaxation of the rules, care homes will allow one family member to visit their loved one. They will be able to hold hands, but won’t be allowed to hug.Produced by James MelleyFilmed by John BoonEdited by Alex Dackevych

• Virginie Courtier, Evolutionary geneticist, Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS, France (ORCID 0000-0002-9297-9230). • Francisco A. de Ribera, Industrial Engineer, MBA, MSc(Res), Data scientist, Madrid, Spain (ORCID 0000-0003-4419-636X) • Etienne Decroly, DR CNRS, molecular virologist, Aix Marseille University, France, (ORCID 0000-0002-6046-024X) • Rodolphe de Maistre, MSc engineering, MBA, ex auditor IHEDN, France (ORCID 0000- 0002-3433-2420) • Gilles Demaneuf, Engineering (ECP), Data Scientist at BNZ, Auckland, NZ, (ORCID: 0000-0001-7277-9533) (Co-Organizer) • Richard H. Ebright, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers University, USA • André Goffinet, MD, PhD, Emeritus Professor, University of Louvain Med Sch, Belgium • François Graner, biophysicist, Research Director, CNRS and Université de Paris, France, (ORCID 0000-0002-4766-3579) • José Halloy, Professor of Physics, Biophysics and Sustainability, Université de Paris, France, (ORCID 0000-0003-1555-2484) • Milton Leitenberg, Senior Research Associate, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland, USA • Filippa Lentzos, Senior Lecturer in Science & International Security, King’s College London, United Kingdom (ORCID 0000-0001-6427-4025) • Rosemary McFarlane, PhD BVSc, Assistant Professor of Public Health, University of Canberra, Australia (ORCID 0000-0001-8859-3776) • Jamie Metzl, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council, USA (Co-Organizer) • Dominique Morello, Biologist, DR CNRS and Museum of Natural History, Toulouse, France • Nikolai Petrovsky, Professor of Medicine, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University, Australia • Steven Quay, MD, PhD, Formerly Asst. Professor, Department of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA (ORCID 0000-0002-0363-7651) • Monali C. Rahalkar, Scientist ‘D’, Agharkar Research Institute, Pune, India • Rossana Segreto, PhD, Department of Microbiology, University of Innsbruck, Austria (ORCID 0000-0002-2566-7042) • Günter Theißen, Dr. rer. nat., Professor of Genetics, Matthias Schleiden Institute, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, (ORCID 0000-0003-4854-8692) • Jacques van Helden, Professor of bioinformatics, Aix-Marseille University, France, (ORCID 0000-0002-8799-8584)