Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) News and Resources

Learn key facts about symptoms, how it spreads, who is at risk, and how it can be prevented.

Introduction In just two decades, the world has faced a relentless barrage of deadly infectious disease outbreaks— SARS in 2002, H1N1 in 2009, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2016, and COVID-19 in 2020. Each crisis has cost lives, destabilized economies, and exposed vulnerabilities in global health systems. The COVID-19 pandemic alone resulted in over 15 million excess deaths and an […]

Background Information The increasing frequency and severity of infectious disease outbreaks—driven by factors such as climate change, new methods of land use, urbanization, and global interconnectedness—underscore the urgent need for robust pandemic risk assessment frameworks. Future pandemics, which will likely be exacerbated by complex anthropogenic factors and inadequate systems for infectious disease surveillance and response, pose a substantial and underappreciated […]

Introduction Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the general public may have been unaware of the growing health care worker burnout crisis. However, during the pandemic, it was difficult to miss media reports of increasing levels of burnout, depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among health care professionals caring for seriously ill patients infected with a novel disease (Gregorio, 2020; Farrar, 2021). […]

Introduction Respirators used in U.S. health care settings, including disposable filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs), full face respirators, reusable elastomeric half mask respirators (EHMRs), and powered air purifying respirators (PAPRs), must be approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) (see Figure 1). The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires that only NIOSH Approved® respirators be used […]