If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (En Español: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
Yes. We’ve had several employees report possible (or alleged) monkeypox this past week. And no, none of them have actually been diagnosed with it (yet). There does seem to be some level of monkeypox hysteria among some medical providers (generally not MDs). One of the related issues (see bullet above) is that monkeypox isn’t particularly easy to diagnose and testing is a rather slow and challenging process.
As of earlier this week, there have only been 65 diagnosed cases of monkeypox in the US and very few did not know where or when their exposure occurred. And several had simultaneous diagnoses of sexually transmitted diseases (which is often the original reason for the medical visit).
The more likely diagnosis for someone who may be suspected of having monkeypox is chicken pox or shingles, both of which are far more common. Symptoms include rash, fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes and fatigue. There is a new Q&A in both the ZHH Crisis app document library and the Zedic app’s Knowledge base under the Basics tab.
No. You might have missed it over this past weekend, but the US finally dropped testing requirements for entry into the US (as of midnight this past Sunday evening). With that said, some countries and airlines may have specific requirements, continue to do temperature checks, and ask you to certify you are not ill. Traveling while sick poses a risk for everyone around you, and could lead to your being quarantined very inconveniently while en route.
Although the travel industry advocated for dropping the testing requirements, not everyone is in favor. Long haul travelers, especially those on flights greater than 12 hours such as flights from Asia, remain wary and some are doing their own testing before seeing family and friends on arrival.
This question is shockingly hard to answer given that we’ve now been living with this virus for over two years. Most people will stop testing positive on rapid tests at some point during the first 5-10 days after their infection. But some people can test positive for a long time after they’re infected, and it’s not always an indicator that they’re infectious. In lab tests, scientists weren’t always able to grow more virus in a culture from patients who were testing antigen positive, meaning they probably weren’t infectious. The CDC’s isolation calculator says that you can stop isolating after five days if your symptoms are improving, but buried deeper on their isolation page, they say that if you choose to test and you test positive “toward the end” of your five days, you should continue isolating until Day 10.
Our best advice is that you should wait at least five days from when your symptoms started, and if you still have symptoms (other than loss of taste or smell, which can linger for a while), you should wait until those have cleared up for about 24 hours before you end your isolation. If you do test positive toward the end of your five days (we define that as Days 3-5), it’s best to continue isolating until Day 10, even if your symptoms have improved.
Great question and unfortunately, the answer is we really don’t know. Before Omicron, experts generally said immunity lasted at least 90 days (and the CDC guidance reflected that). But now, with the newest Omicron sub-variants, which are far more infectious and still evolving, increasing your likelihood of re-exposure, it appears that immunity is much shorter. The length of time between your prior infection and subsequent exposure remains a factor (the longer the time, the more likely you are to be re-infected). You should treat any new symptoms, including a fever, sore throat, runny nose or change in taste or smell, as a potential case of COVID, and get tested to confirm if you are positive again.
Bloomberg: We're fighting COVID with faulty data
