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University of Queensland researchers have developed a set of recommendations to manage the mental health of frontline medical workers during viral outbreaks, such as COVID-19.

Researchers across the globe have been tracing the spread of the coronavirus through waste water and sewage and several scientific studies have picked up the clear presence of COVID-19 in patients' stools. Testing human sewage could now become a key way of tracking the pandemic's spread, and a precious early warning system for a feared second wave, said researchers from the University of Queensland and CSIRO who are developing an early warning system to track COVID-19 in the community through tracing the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA in raw sewage.

COVID-19 has infected millions and killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, but a new predictor model devised at QUT offers glimmers of hope, suggesting the worst has passed and indicating well under 1,000 deaths for Australia.

COVID-19 is very uncommon in Australian healthcare workers at present, and the large majority of those who have contracted COVID-19 have done so away from work, according to the authors of an article published by the Medical Journal of Australia.

With health services overburdened around the world, clinicians are facing an ethical dilemma in having to decide who should receive treatment. But is it wrong to prioritise younger patients with COVID-19? Two experts debate the issue in The BMJ. Dave Archard, Emeritus Professor at Queen’s University Belfast, says this is no excuse for wandering blindly into discrimination, but Arthur Caplan, Professor of Bioethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, argues age is a valid criterion when supported by data.

Current advice for COVID-19 health workers is based on the assumption that droplets bearing the virus travel no further than 2 metres and do not remain in the air. The body of published evidence suggests otherwise in a landmark Australian and US scientific review.

Cochrane has published a fast-tracked update to a 2019 Cochrane Review on personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers - "Personal protective equipment for preventing highly infectious diseases due to exposure to contaminated body fluids in healthcare staff". The full review is now published in the Cochrane Library. 

A team of Johns Hopkins experts has created a clinical guidebook to help hospitals rapidly scale up their ability to deliver so-called convalescent plasma therapy, which leverages immune system components found in the plasma portion of blood from people who have recovered from COVID-19.

Although health care workers' physical safety is paramount, their psychological, emotional and spiritual well-being are also key to their ability to function under conditions that are unlike any they've faced before, according to three experts in physician wellness.

As the COVID-19 virus situation continues to unfold, Queensland Clincal Guidelines (QCG), the Statewide Maternity and Neonatal Clinical Network, as well as scientists from The University of Western Australia’s lactation research team have put together information to help doctors and health professionals support breastfeeding mothers by outlining the known facts and providing evidence-based recommendations.