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Rapid responses to health questions for fact-checkers and journalists.
Type 2 diabetes is considered an underlying (pre-existing) medical condition that has the "strongest and most consistent evidence" for increasing the risk of severe illness due to COVID-19, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In July 2020, U.S. health officials stated that almost 40% of people who have died with COVID-19 had diabetes. Beyond diabetes leading to COVID-19 complications, researchers are now studying the potential for COVID-19 to lead to diabetes. Medical experts have reported diabetes onset in patients who tested positive. In some cases, the patients appeared to have otherwise recovered from COVID-19, and/or had no previous history, genetic predisposition, or traditional risk factors (such as lifestyle factors) for diabetes. As of October 2020, over 300 doctors applied to share cases for review in a global registry on this topic led by King's College London. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is also funding research on how COVID-19 may cause high blood glucose levels and diabetes. Additionally, doctors as well as researchers have been raising the alarm on how more children appear to be getting diagnosed with diabetes during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to similar months in previous years. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, other viral infections including influenza and other coronaviruses have been linked to triggering Type 1 diabetes, but this is usually in people who are predisposed to developing diabetes. While researchers know that infections stress the body and can lead to higher blood glucose levels, researchers still have not fully understood why some people develop diabetes after infection and others do not. The connections between COVID-19 and diabetes are continuing to be studied. Diabetes is a disease where the blood glucose (sugar) levels are too high, and is generally differentiated into Type 1 (where the body cannot produce the insulin that is required to turn blood glucose into energy) and Type 2 (where the body does not respond well to insulin, allowing blood glucose levels to rise).
For COVID-19 vaccines that require more than one dose, such as the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, researchers are still learning about the outcomes of mixing a first dose of one vaccine with a second dose of another. In the clinical trials that have led to emergency authorization of COVID-19 vaccines, combining doses from different vaccines has not yet been tested. This means that scientists do not yet know if combining doses from different COVID-19 vaccine candidates will be as effective or safe. To help provide more data, a clinical trial was announced on February 8, 2021 to begin testing the combination of one dose from the AstraZeneca vaccine candidate with one dose from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine candidate. This clinical trial, dubbed Com-Cov, is being led by the University of Oxford and is considered the first in the world to test the combination of different COVID-19 vaccine candidates. Enrollment of 820 participants over 50 years of age is starting, and scientists hope this clinical trial can provide more data and insights by the summer of 2021. It is important to remember that outcomes can potentially vary depending on which COVID-19 vaccines are mixed. For this reason, the first clinical trial testing a combination of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine candidates may eventually add additional vaccine candidates. As more COVID-19 vaccine candidates become ready for approval, more studies may be needed to understand the outcomes of combining doses between the multiple available vaccine candidates. There are many potential benefits to being able to combine COVID-19 vaccine candidates, which is why scientists are eager for more data to evaluate this. Ramping up COVID-19 vaccine supplies and coordinating distribution remain a challenge, so being able to give vaccines based on availability could mean more people receive the vaccinations faster and more lives are saved. The U.K.'s deputy chief medical officer has said that there may be benefits to having data that could support more "flexible" vaccination programs, since there is currently an insufficient global supply of COVID-19 vaccines. Beyond the logistical benefits, there could potentially be immunological benefits of using two different vaccines to combat the same pathogen in certain cases. For COVID-19 vaccines that are given in two doses, the "prime" dose is followed by a "boost" dose to help stimulate and amplify the body's immune response, with the goal of developing immunological memory to protect against COVID-19 infections in the future. The strategy of using doses from different vaccines is known as "heterologous prime-boost." Some COVID-19 vaccine candidates, like the Russian Sputnik V, have even been designed to use this strategy with the first and second doses containing different viral components. With newer and faster-spreading variants of COVID-19 emerging around the world, some of which could be partially resistant to immune responses triggered by the vaccines, scientists are also planning to investigate whether combining different vaccines can help offer more protection. Multiple COVID-19 vaccine candidates have been developed in record speed to help combat the global pandemic. In order to take full advantage of every tool that is available for pandemic response, scientists are studying the potential of combining doses from different COVID-19 vaccine candidates. As more data becomes available, public health experts and policymakers will be able to make more informed decisions about "mixing and matching" COVID-19 vaccine doses.
Checking people for fever before they interact with others has been proposed as a means to help reduce transmission of disease. Some countries such as China and South Korea have widespread checks of body temperature to help identify individuals with fevers in offices, restaurants, airports, or other popularly-frequented locations. As a standalone measure, checking for fever is insufficient to prevent disease transmission because of how asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people can get others sick. Diagnostic testing for COVID-19 - not temperature checks - is a much more accurate, effective means of determining whether or not employees might be infected with the virus. Additionally, temperature testing may be difficult to implement in some locations due to limited resources, privacy concerns, and other reasons. Some experts have cited concerns about workplace surveillance and privacy while using infrared temperature checks. There are also questions about the effectiveness and accuracy of these workplace thermometers, especially considering how many pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic patients might not have any symptoms during the duration of their illness. Lastly, fevers might be indicative of other factors or illnesses unrelated to COVID-19; for example, elevated body temperature is commonly observed in people who are physically exerting energy or under great stress.
Janssen Pharmaceuticals, part of Johnson & Johnson, has designed a COVID-19 vaccine candidate to be delivered in a one-dose regimen. The company is also starting a clinical trial for a two-dose regimen. Johnson & Johnson announced that the new phase 3 trial for a two-dose regimen has been planned to be complementary and run in parallel with the ongoing phase 3 trial for a one-dose regimen, erring on the side of caution in case two doses have the "potential to offer enhanced durability in some participants." The existing phase 3 trial for a one-dose regimen, called ENSEMBLE, has been enrolling participants with a goal of testing the Janssen vaccine candidate with up to 60,000 people from multiple countries around the world. The newer phase 3 trial for a two-dose regimen, called ENSEMBLE 2, intends to test two doses of the Janssen vaccine candidate with up to 30,000 participants from multiple countries around the world. These ENSEMBLE and ENSEMBLE 2 trials follow the promising interim results from the phase 1/2a clinical trial of the Janssen vaccine candidate, which has been studying both one-dose and two-dose regimens for preliminary data on safety and effectiveness. Due to the urgent nature of the COVID-19 global pandemic, many phases of vaccine development and testing have been implemented in parallel. For example, sometimes clinical trial phases are combined into a phase 1/2 or 2/3 trial, or a later phase trial is started in parallel based on promising interim results of an earlier phase trial (rather than doing trials sequentially that wait for an earlier phase trial to be completed before starting a later phase trial). Johnson & Johnson is not the only major vaccine developer to be running clinical trials in parallel. Scientists will be able to say more about the effectiveness of the one-dose and two dose regimens after more data from the parallel phase 3 trials become available.
The timeline for COVID-19 vaccine availability is rapidly evolving, with differences between multiple vaccine candidates and rollout plans in different countries. While the vaccine development and testing processes normally take many years, these processes have been accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several COVID-19 vaccines have reported promising results from clinical trials so far. As of December 2, 2020, Pfizer's vaccine candidate received approval from the U.K. government to begin mass distribution, with at-risk populations and healthcare workers being the first priorities. Both Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccine candidates have applied for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. government, and have the potential to begin distribution outside of trials before the end of 2020. In a departure from the rigorous review processes typically used for vaccines, China and Russia approved and started distributing experimental vaccine candidates earlier in 2020, based on preliminary data, rather than waiting for results from large-scale trails. There are currently more than 200 potential vaccines for COVID-19 under development around the world. Each potential vaccine must be thoroughly tested to determine whether it has any harmful side effects, whether it can prevent disease in other mammals, and whether it successfully produces antibodies, which are the biological tools or instructions our immune systems need to defend against the virus. Scientists also need to assess how the immune system responds to the vaccine in general, which takes time. Even with an expedited timeline and regulatory approval process, researchers must ensure adequate clinical testing and adherence to regulatory standards, manufacturing, and quality control processes. Additionally, several COVID-19 vaccine candidates require multiple doses to be effective and cold storage during transport. There are concerns about the cost and infrastructure requirements for vaccines to be distributed equitably in certain regions of the word. Public health experts hope that multiple vaccine candidates can be widely approved and distributed in 2021, to help end the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Many people infected with COVID-19 have mild or no symptoms, but some of the short-term impacts reported by people with mild symptoms include shortness of breath, fever, cough, fatigue (tiredness), and body aches. For more severe cases, short-term impacts may include respiratory (breathing) failure, confusion or other neurological problems, and kidney or heart damage due to a lack of oxygen or blood clots that can sometimes cause long-term problems. The worse the symptoms of COVID-19 are, the more likely major organs are to be negatively impacted. COVID-19 may impact organ systems directly (in the case of the virus causing inflammation in the lungs and airways) or indirectly (where organ damage is caused by illness that is a result of COVID-19 infection, but the organ damage is not caused by the virus infecting the organ directly). Recent studies document long-term impacts of COVID-19 on different organs in the body, including lung scarring, limited lung capacity, neurocognitive impacts, heart damage, renal failure, and more. Lungs: Though it can impact other organs, COVID-19 is primarily thought of as a lung (or respiratory) illness. Patients with lung problems like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and other chronic (long-term) lung diseases may be at higher risk of having complications from COVID-19. In any infected patient, COVID-19 may cause pneumonia (where the lungs fill with fluid), acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and sepsis (a bloodstream infection). Lung problems may be short or long term, and experts have suggested that it can take months, possibly even more than a year, for lung function to return to normal after a COVID-19 infection. Early rehabilitation has been shown to improve respiratory (breathing) problems in patients who have had severe COVID-19. Heart: Studies have shown that heart problems are also common. One German study reported that 78 out of 100 patients recovering from a COVID-19 infection had heart-related problems, such as inflammation and scarring, that could have serious consequences. In addition, heart problems have been reported in 40% of COVID-19 deaths. In September, US CDC reported that heart conditions like myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the covering of the heart), are associated with COVID-19. Such heart damage might also explain long-term symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pain, and heart palpitations. Although rare, severe heart damage has also been seen in young, healthy people. Kidneys: The American Society of Nephrology reported that approximately 50% of patients with severe cases of COVID-19 in intensive care experience kidney failure. During July 2020, the impacts of COVID-19 on the kidneys made the news, following updated recommendations from the American Society of Nephrology. On this topic, Mount Sinai Health System Associate Professor of Nephrology and RenalytixAI Co-Founder, Dr. Steven Coca warns about the rise in “chronic kidney disease in the U.S. among those who recovered from the coronavirus...Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic we have seen the highest rate of kidney failure in our lifetimes. It’s a long-term health burden for patients, the medical community — and the U.S. economy.” New research and media reports are continuing to be released. Brain: Emerging evidence has revealed that some COVID-19 patients experience neurological symptoms in the brain, spinal cord, nerves, and ganglia (cell bodies that relay nerve signals). Researchers believe that these effects are an indirect impact of COVID-19 (meaning these effects occur because of illness related to COVID-19, but not as a direct result of the virus entering the tissue). Studies from around the world have reported neurological symptoms in COVID-19 patients ranging from brain inflammation and delirium to nerve damage, stroke, and impaired consciousness in as much as 30% of patients. Researchers have long been concerned about the risks of post-traumatic stress, dementia, and delirium in patients who require intensive care (even without COVID-19). The long-term implications of COVID-19 on the brain and nervous system are still unclear, since COVID-19 is a new disease and there has not been enough time to observe patients over long periods of time. Neurological complications have, however, been reported during previous epidemics, such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003 and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak more recently in 2012. Since this is a new illness, the real long-term impacts remain unknown. The longer-term effects of COVID-19 are still being studied. Exhaustion, anxiety, dizziness, headaches, muscle aches, loss of taste and smell, and difficulty breathing are often reported in patients who experience symptoms for weeks following their infection with COVID-19. For some people infected with the virus, symptoms have lasted longer than 100 days.
For COVID-19 vaccines that are designed to have two doses, it is important to get both doses to maximize protection. In late 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized emergency use of COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech, both of which are designed to be implemented in two-doses. Studies have shown each of these vaccine candidates to be relatively safe and ~95% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 disease in adults after both doses. There are many reasons why a second dose may become delayed or unavailable due to issues like limited vaccine supply and other logistical challenges. As a result, there are proposals to ration vaccine doses or to initially give a single dose to as many people as possible. The reaction of scientists to these proposals is mixed, because of limited data on the impacts of changing recommended vaccine dosing. According to data provided by Moderna, one exploratory analysis of participants who received just one dose of its vaccine suggested that the efficacy in protecting against symptomatic COVID-19 could be around 73%, in the short-term. Efficacy in protecting against symptomatic COVID-19 after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine was about 52.4%, with most of the cases happening in the days immediately following the first dose. From day 10 after the first dose until the second dose, the efficacy in protecting against symptomatic COVID-19 was around 89%. It is important to note that the second dose was given on day 21 in these Pfizer / BioNTech trials, so there is limited data on how well the first dose would protect someone after day 21. On January 4, 2021, the FDA issued a statement about following the authorized vaccine dosing schedules, saying: “We have been following the discussions and news reports about reducing the number of doses, extending the length of time between doses, changing the dose (half-dose), or mixing and matching vaccines in order to immunize more people against COVID-19. These are all reasonable questions to consider and evaluate in clinical trials. However, at this time, suggesting changes to the FDA-authorized dosing or schedules of these vaccines is premature and not rooted solidly in the available evidence.” More research is being done to help answer the question about how beneficial it is to change a recommended vaccine dosing schedule in order to stretch limited supplies to as many people as possible.
There is no proof that wearing a mask can reduce oxygen levels, also known as hypoxia. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S. CDC) recommend wearing cloth masks over a surgical mask in public, which are not too tight on our faces and allow for easy breathing. Even doctors and healthcare professionals wearing N95 masks (which fit very tightly around the face and are made to create a seal around the edge of the mask) are not at risk of hypoxia. However, for any person with preexisting lung or breathing problems in general, they should speak with their doctors about their concerns regarding masks.
COVID-19 has not been linked directly to air-pollution, and there has not been research conducted to show that reducing air pollution leads to fewer COVID-19 deaths. However, urban air-pollution (that commonly contains fine particulate matter from things like cars or trucks, fires, coal-based power) is associated with an increase risk of breathing problems and respiratory (breathing) illnesses. Exposure to high levels of bad air pollution damages the throat and lungs and causes chronic inflammation that could limit how well the lungs are able to protect themselves from infections. It has been reported that individuals with existing breathing problems (i.e. asthma, emphysema) are may be at higher risk of COVID-19. Studies conducted in China, Italy, and the United States have shown that in areas with higher amounts of air pollution there is an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases. However, the United States study notes that the findings are for county-level populations and cannot be used to link individual cases to air pollution. More studies will need to be conducted to better understand how air quality may affect individual people and their risk of COVID-19
A lot can be learned and based off of the percent-positive rate (e.g. how many tests result positive out of all the tests taken) and the number of cases in total. We cannot assume that an increase in cases or a growing percent-positive rate is purely a result of an increase in testing instead of a growing outbreak. Instead, we need to look at all of them together. A rise in the number of reported cases of COVID-19 could be related to an expansion of testing if the percentage of positive tests decreases or stays the same at the same time that the number of cases increases. Should percentage of positive tests increase while case counts also go up, this indicates that we cannot entirely blame the increase on expanded testing. The biggest indicator of a growing outbreak is if the percentage of positive tests increases along with the number of cases despite testing data staying the same or decreasing. When testing is not always widely available and reserved just for symptomatic people, the percent positivity will increase as with the number of cases. If testing is expanded and made more available, we will gain a better understanding of the true number of cases and percent-positive rate. If this percent positivity continues to grow along with the number of cases, this would be an indicator that the outbreak is worsening.
A vaccine’s role is to teach the immune system how to recognize a foreign body (the coronavirus in this case) that could make a person sick. Once the immune system is able to identify a harmful invader, it can attack the actual virus if it enters the body. Most vaccines are made from an inactivated or weakened pathogen (bacteria or virus). Because the virus in the vaccine is weakened or inactivated, they don’t cause severe disease in the body but are able to train the immune system to recognize the invader and be able to fight it by creating antibodies. These antibodies are a special kind of protein that know how to fight that specific virus. The immune system then remembers to make these antibodies in case such virus does enter our body in the future, and thus prevent disease. mRNA vaccines or "messenger RNA" vaccines are different. They're a type of vaccine that does not carry an inactivated or weakened pathogen. Instead, they carry information, which instructs the cells in the body to create a protein or a part of a protein, which in turn triggers an immune response. Teaching the cells to create this harmless but foreign protein allows the body to activate its immune system. On seeing a foreign element in the system, the immune system fires into action and starts producing antibodies to fight against the invader. Soon after making the protein, our cells break down the mRNA and get rid of it. mRNA COVID-19 vaccines cannot cause COVID-19 because they do not carry the full information needed to make the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the body. They only carry information from a specific protein found on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. mRNA vaccines are faster to produce (about a week) as compared to conventional vaccines that can take many months to produce an experimental batch. The production of mRNA vaccines is safer than traditional vaccine production as it doesn’t require actual viruses, whereas, producing traditional vaccines require growing large quantities of actual virus and can pose to be a potential biohazard. Although traditional vaccines are very effective, it has been posited that mRNA vaccines could create an even stronger immune response to certain viruses, but more evidence will need to be gathered on that. One challenge of mRNA vaccines is that it is very fragile and needs to be stored at very cold temperatures.
As of now, there is not enough evidence to indicate whether or not there may be some connection between blood type and COVID-19 risk, though the link is likely to be minimal if it does exist. Studies previously cited in the news suggested that Type A blood could be associated with higher risks of severe cases of COVID-19, and reporting included studies that had not yet been assessed by scientific experts (referred to in science as the peer-review process). One of these recent studies had been peer-reviewed and published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM); however it used genes to determine the blood type, which is a method that is not very accurate. The gene testing company, 23andMe, recently released the preprint of a study (awaiting peer-review and using a similar gene association method) that identifies a strong association between blood type and COVID-19 diagnosis. The study suggests that people with blood group O tested positive less often compared to people with other blood groups, under similar circumstances. Two more recent studies from Columbia University and Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. found that blood type is not associated with risks of intubation or death from COVID-19, after adjusting for other factors. While scientists continue to learn more, age and underlying health conditions remain more significant risk factors for severe COVID-19 symptoms, and Type A blood is not thought to be a major risk factor at this time. While some studies have suggested a potential risk reduction for people with Type O blood, not all the studies have been peer-reviewed and the use of blood donors as study participants can give the appearance of Type O being more protective than it is (Type O blood is over-represented in blood donors, compared to the general population). Type O blood does not mean immunity to COVID-19.
It's too early to know. Successful discovery and safe delivery of a vaccine are very challenging. In the pandemic context we are in, many scientists are turning to existing drugs and vaccines to try and see if they can repurpose them to tackle COVID-19, especially since their safety profiles, side effects, and effectiveness are already known. Similarly, the safety track record of the oral polio vaccine is also known, and scientists are now studying its efficacy against COVID-19. The hypothesis these scientists have suggested is that the oral polio vaccine – a weakened version of the live polio virus – is assumed to trigger a general immune response in the body - production of antibodies against a foreign organism to be protected in the future if infected again with the same organism. When the body's immune system engages this response to fight off the unknown virus, scientists believe the body will develop antibodies specific to the novel coronavirus, the virus that causes COVID-19. However these are early studies occurring in animal models only at this stage and with no results yet. Moreover, there is no consensus yet among scientists as to whether choosing the oral polio vaccine as a candidate was a good idea in the first place. Some note that there are risks in introducing the oral polio vaccine in some populations which is why in most of the world, doctors have phased out the oral formulation in favor of the inactivated polio vaccine, which is more widely used today.
By using a test-trace-isolate strategy of containing infectious diseases early in the pandemic, Iceland was viewed as a model for quickly addressing and managing the spread of COVID-19. In September and October of 2020, however, the number of daily COVID-19 cases rose, peaking higher than in the first wave of the pandemic. The number of daily COVID-19 cases has been dropping back down in November and early December of 2020. According to the World Health Organization, as of December 8, 2020, there have been 5,496 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 27 deaths in Iceland. Iceland is a small nation and, as an island, its borders are well controlled. Frequent testing, including testing for all who enter the country, in combination with contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine measures, has helped ensure that hospitals are not overwhelmed by patients. Doctors have reported that, while hospitalizations are greater in the second wave of the pandemic, intensive care admissions for COVID-19 are lower. The lower need for intensive care may be because younger, otherwise healthy people are being infected at higher rates than older individuals. In addition to earlier monitoring and supportive treatments, the lower number of deaths may also be related to the fact that most residents of Iceland (95.3%) have access to Universal Health Coverage and the incidence of pre-existing conditions (like obesity and diabetes) is lower than in many countries, including in U.S.
Calprotectin is a type of protein that is released into the body by neutrophils (a type of white blood cell). Neutrophils help heal damaged tissues and stop infections from spreading. When there is any type of swelling in a person, the amount of neutrophils produced by the immune system increases naturally, in order to help protect and defend the body. When there is inflammation in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract (the digestive system in humans and animals that help them digest, absorb, and discard food and liquids), neutrophils move to that area and release the calprotectin protein to help protect and defend the body. Because of this, studies have shown that increased levels of calprotectin in the body are linked to higher levels of inflammation in the GI tract, so calprotectin levels are often tested in people with gastrointestinal issues to determine whether or not they have illnesses like inflammatory bowel disease or other infections. Despite calprotectin normally being used as a marker for inflammation in the intestines, new research claims that measuring levels of this protein might help determine whether or not people who have tested positive for the coronavirus may develop more severe symptoms. Recent research in a pre-print study and a Letter to the Editor (in the Journal of Infection) shows a potential link between the levels of calprotectin in people infected with COVID-19 and more severe cases of the virus. In another pre-print study (which should not be used to guide medical treatments or practices) researchers found a potential link between higher levels of calprotectin in the body of COVID-19 patients with a higher number of patients who require breathing support with a ventilator (a machine that makes sure your body gets enough oxygen by moving air in and out a patient's lungs). Both of the studies suggest that testing levels of calprotectin in people with the virus might help doctors predict how severe each patient's symptoms and outcomes might be. Studies are ongoing, but there is not enough evidence at this time to support this finding and no scientific consensus whether or not calprotectin can serve as a prediction of how serious the virus will be in some patients. Researchers will continue studying calprotectin in COVID-19 patients, but for now, calprotectin is still used primarily as a way for doctors to see if patients have inflammation in their intestines.
Health Desk provides on-demand and on-deadline science information to users seeking to quickly communicate complex topics to audiences.
In-house scientists provide custom explainers for critical science questions from journalists, fact-checkers and others in need of accessible breakdowns on scientific information. Topics range from reproductive health, infectious disease, climate science, vaccinology or other health areas.
Meedan's Health-Desk.org makes every effort to provide health- and science-related information that is accurate and reflects the best evidence available at the time of publication. To submit an error or correction request, please email our editorial team at health@meedan.com. All error or correction requests will be reviewed by the Health Desk Editorial and Science Teams. Where there is evidence of a factual error or typo, we will update the explainer with a correction or clarification and follow up with the reader on the status of the request.
Our scientists, writers, journalists, and experts do not engage in, advocate for, or publicize their personal views on policy issues that might lead a reasonable member of the public to see our team’s work as biased. If you have concerns or comments about potential bias in our work, please contact our editorial team at health@meedan.com.
Health Desk provides on-demand and on-deadline science information to users seeking to quickly communicate complex topics to audiences.
In-house scientists provide custom explainers for critical science questions from journalists, fact-checkers and others in need of accessible breakdowns on scientific information. Topics range from reproductive health, infectious disease, climate science, vaccinology or other health areas.
Meedan's Health-Desk.org makes every effort to provide health- and science-related information that is accurate and reflects the best evidence available at the time of publication. To submit an error or correction request, please email our editorial team at health@meedan.com. All error or correction requests will be reviewed by the Health Desk Editorial and Science Teams. Where there is evidence of a factual error or typo, we will update the explainer with a correction or clarification and follow up with the reader on the status of the request.
Our scientists, writers, journalists, and experts do not engage in, advocate for, or publicize their personal views on policy issues that might lead a reasonable member of the public to see our team’s work as biased. If you have concerns or comments about potential bias in our work, please contact our editorial team at health@meedan.com.
Nat Gyenes, MPH, leads Meedan’s Digital Health Lab, an initiative dedicated to addressing health information equity challenges, with a focus on the role that technology plays in mediating access to health through access to information. She received her masters in public health from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, with a focus on equitable access to health information and human rights. As a research affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, she studies the ways in which health information sources and outputs can impact health outcomes. She lectures at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Health, Media and Human Rights. Before joining Meedan, Nat worked at the MIT Media Lab as a health misinformation researcher.
Megan Marrelli is a Peabody award-winning journalist and the News Lead of Health Desk. She focuses on news innovation in today’s complex information environment. Megan has worked on the digital breaking news desk of the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, and on the news production team of the Netflix series Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. She was a Canadian Association of Journalists finalist for a team Chronicle Herald investigation into house fires in Halifax, Nova Scotia. On top of her role at Meedan Megan works with the investigative journalism incubator Type Investigations, where she is reporting a data-driven story on fatal patient safety failures in U.S. hospitals. She holds a Master of Science from the Columbia Journalism School and lives in New York.
Anshu holds a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a Humanitarian Studies, Ethics, and Human Rights concentrator at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. She is a Harvard Voices in Leadership writing fellow and student moderator, Prajna Fellow, and the John C. and Katherine Vogelheim Hansen Fund for Africa Awardee. Anshu’s interests include: systemic issues of emergency management, crisis leadership, intersectoral approaches to climate risk resilience, inclusion and human rights, international development, access and sustainability of global health systems, and socio-economic equity. Anshu has worked at the United Nations, UNDP, UNICEF, Gates Foundation, and the Institute of Healthcare Improvement.
Dr. Christin Gilmer is a Global Health Scientist with a background in infectious diseases, international health systems, and population health and technology. In the last 15 years, Christin has worked for the WHO, University of Oxford, World Health Partners, USAID, UNFPA, the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights and more, including volunteering for Special Olympics International’s health programs and running health- and technology-based nonprofits across the country. She obtained her Doctor of Public Health Degree at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, her MPH at Columbia, and spent time studying at M.I.T., Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Business School. Christin has worked in dozens of countries across five continents and loves running programs and research internationally, but she is currently based in Seattle.
Dr. Jessica Huang is currently a COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative. Previously, she worked and taught with D-Lab at MIT, leading poverty reduction and humanitarian innovation projects with UNICEF, UNHCR, Oxfam, USAID, foreign government ministries and community-based organizations across dozens of countries. She also co-founded a social enterprise that has provided access to safe drinking water to thousands in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Formerly trained as an environmental engineer, she earned a Doctorate of Public Health from Harvard and a Master’s in Learning, Design and Technology (LDT) from Stanford. Her projects have won multiple awards, including the top prize in A Grand Challenge for Development: Technology to Support Education in Crisis & Conflict Settings, and led to her being recognized for Learning 30 Under 30. She enjoys being an active volunteer, supporting several non-profits in health, education, environmental sustainability and social justice.
Jenna Sherman, MPH, is a Program Manager for Meedan’s Digital Health Lab, an initiative focused on addressing the urgent challenges around health information equity. She has her MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Social and Behavioral Sciences, with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health. Prior to her graduate studies, Jenna served as a Senior Project Coordinator at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, where she worked on tech ethics with an emphasis on mitigating bias and discrimination in AI and health misinformation online. Previous experiences include helping to develop accessible drug pricing policies, researching access to quality information during epidemics, and studying the impact of maternal incarceration on infant health.
Nour is a Global Health Strategy consultant based in Dakar (Senegal) and specialized in health system strengthening. Most recently, she worked with Dalberg Advisors focusing on Epidemic Preparedness & Response and Vaccination Coverage and Equity across 15 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her previous work experiences include researching the clinical needs in point-of-care technology in cancer care at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston; and coordinating the implementation of a colonoscopy quality assurance initiative for a colorectal cancer screening program at McGill University in Montreal. Nour has a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a Master of Arts in Medical Ethics and Law from King’s College London, and a Bachelor of Science from McGill University. She is fluent in French and English.
Shalini Joshi is a Program Lead at Meedan and formerly the Executive Editor and co-founder of Khabar Lahariya - India’s only independent, digital news network available to viewers in remote rural areas and small towns. Shalini transformed Khabar Lahariya from one edition of a printed newspaper to an award-winning digital news agency available to over ten million viewers. She has a sophisticated understanding of local media and gender, and the ways in which they can inhibit women from participating in the public sphere in South Asia. Shalini was a TruthBuzz Partner & Fellow with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). She is a trainer in journalism, verification and fact-checking. She has designed, implemented and strengthened news reporting & editorial policies and practices in newsrooms and fact-checking organisations. Shalini set up and managed the tipline used to collect WhatsApp-based rumors for Checkpoint, a research project to study misinformation at scale during the 2019 Indian general elections.
Mohit Nair currently serves as Partnerships Director at FairVote Washington, a non-profit organisation based in Seattle, WA. Previously, he worked with the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Vienna Evaluation Unit and with MSF Operational Centre Barcelona in India. He has conducted research studies on diverse topics, including the drivers of antibiotic resistance in West Bengal and perceptions of palliative care in Bihar. Mohit has also worked as a research consultant with Save the Children in Laos to identify gaps in the primary health system and develop a district-wide action plan for children with disabilities. He holds a Master of Public Health from the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University.
Seema Yasmin is an Emmy Award-winning medical journalist, poet, physican and author. Yasmin served as an officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where she investigated disease outbreaks. She trained in journalism at the University of Toronto and in medicine at the University of Cambridge. Yasmin was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news in 2017 with a team from The Dallas Morning News and received an Emmy Award for her reporting on neglected diseases. She received two grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and was selected as a John S. Knight Fellow in Journalism at Stanford University iin 2017 where she investigated the spread of health misinformation and disinformation during epidemics.
Dr. Saskia Popescu is an infectious disease epidemiologist and infection preventionist with a focus on hospital biopreparedness and the role of infection prevention in health security efforts. She is an expert in healthcare biopreparedness and is nationally recognized for her work in infection prevention and enhancing hospital response to infectious diseases events. Currently, Dr. Popescu is an Adjunct Professor with the University of Arizona, and an Affiliate Faculty with George Mason University, while serving on the Coronavirus Task Force within the Federation of American Scientists, and on a data collection subcommittee for SARS-CoV-2 response with the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. She holds a PhD in Biodefense from George Mason University, a Masters in Public Health with a focus on infectious diseases, and a Masters of Arts in International Security Studies, from the University of Arizona. Dr. Popescu is an Alumni Fellow of the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Health Security. She is also an external expert for the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC), and a recipient of the Presidential Scholarship at George Mason University. In 2010, she was a recipient of the Frontier Interdisciplinary eXperience (FIX) HS-STEM Career Development Grant in Food Defense through the National Center for Food Protection and Defense. During her work as an infection preventionist, she managed Ebola response, a 300+ measles exposure resulting in an MMWR article, and bioterrorism preparedness in the hospital system. More recently, she created and disseminated a gap analysis for a 6-hospital system to establish vulnerabilities for high-consequence diseases, helping to guide the creation of a high-consequence disease initiative to enhance readiness at the healthcare level.
Ben Kertman is a behavior change scientist and public health specialist who became a user research consultant to help organizations design experiences that change behaviors and improve human well-being. Impatient with the tendency of behavior change companies to use a single discipline approach (e.g. behavioral economics) and guard their methods behind paywalls, Ben spent the last 7 years developing an open-source, multi-discipline, behavior change framework for researchers and designers to apply to UX. Ben is an in-house SME at Fidelity Investments and consults for non-profits on the side. Ben holds a masters in Social and Behavior Science and Public Health from Harvard.
Emily LaRose is a Registered Dietitian and Nutrition and Global Health Consultant who, in addition to her work with Meedan, currently works as a Technical Advisor for Nutrition for Operation Smile. She has been a dietitian for more than 18 years and, over the past 10 years, she has worked for the World Bank, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), PATH, Johnson & Wales University, and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. In her work, she has conducted analytical research and written specialty reports on infant and young child malnutrition, health misinformation, global human milk banking practices, and innovative food system programs; developed tools and protocols for clinical nutrition care delivery in humanitarian hospitals; taught university-level nutrition courses; and provided nutritional care for critically ill hospitalized patients. Emily earned her Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree with a Nutrition and Global Health Concentration at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, her Master of Science in Dietetics at Kansas State University, and her Bachelor of Science in Culinary Arts Nutrition at Johnson & Wales University.
Bhargav Krishna is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi, and adjunct faculty at the Public Health Foundation of India and Azim Premji University. He previously managed the Centre for Environmental Health at the Public Health Foundation of India, leading research and teaching on environmental health at the Foundation. He has been a member of Government of India expert committees on air pollution and biomedical waste, and has led work with Union and State governments on air pollution, climate change, and health systems. His work has been funded by the World Health Organization, Rockefeller Foundation, Packard Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, and others. He holds bachelors and masters degrees in Biotechnology and Environmental Science respectively, and graduated recently from the Doctor of Public Health program at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Bhargav also co-founded Care for Air, a non-profit working on raising awareness related to air pollution with school children in Delhi.
Dr. Christine Mutaganzwa is a medical doctor pursuing a Ph.D. program at the Université de Montréal in Biomedical Sciences. She holds a Master of Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery (MMSc-GHD) from Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, and a Master of Sciences (MSc) in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She graduated from the University of Rwanda with a degree in General Medicine and Surgery. Christine has worked with referral hospitals in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, during her medical training and after graduation. In addition, she has extensive experience working with rural communities in the Eastern province of Rwanda, where she organized clinical and research activities in active collaboration with colleagues within and outside Rwanda. Her research portfolio cuts across maternal and child health to infectious and chronic diseases. Christine is an advocate for children's healthcare services, especially for underserved populations. She is part of a community of scientists translating scientific findings into understandable and accessible information for the general population. Christine is an avid reader and a lover of classical/contemporary music.
Ahmad is an experienced physician, who earned his medical degree from Cairo University, Faculty of Medicine, in Egypt. He practiced medicine between 2012 and 2017 as a general practitioner where he was involved in primary care, health quarantine services, and radiology. He then taught medicine in Cairo for two years prior to starting his MPH program, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he supplemented his experience with knowledge on epidemiology, health systems and global health issues. Additionally, Ahmad has an interest in nutrition, which started as a personal curiosity to how he can improve his own health, then quickly saw the potential for public health nutrition in the prevention and management of multiple, lifelong diseases. His enrollment at Harvard started his transition towards learning about food, and public health nutrition. Ahmad now combines the knowledge and experience of his medical career, with the learnings of his degree to navigate public health topics in his writing and his career. He is a life-long learner and continues to gather knowledge and experience, and works towards maximizing his impact through combatting misinformation through his work with Meedan.
Dr. Uzma Alam is a global health professional working at the intersection of infectious diseases and healthcare delivery in the international development and humanitarian contexts. She focuses on the use of evidence and innovation to inform strategies and policies. Her work has appeared globally across print and media outlets.She has international experience with roles of increasing responsibility across the science value chain having served with academic, non-profit, corporate, and governmental agencies, including advisory commissions and corporate counsel. Uzma is the former secretary of the Association of Women in Science and editor of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics. Currently she serves on the Board of the Geneva Foundation. She also leads the Biomedical and Health Sciences Portfolio of the Developing Excellence, Leadership and Training in Science in Africa program (DELTAS-Africa). A US$100 million programme supporting development of world-class scientific leaders on the continent. Plus heading the African Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) Priorities Programme. A programme that engages Africa’s science and political leaders to identify the top STI priorities for the continent that if addressed, offer the highest return on investment for Africa’s sustainable development.
