Covid19

The holiday season is just around the corner. And, as we comb through our collections of treasured holiday ornaments, put Santa and his reindeer on the lawn, and plan elaborate feasts, health experts advise us to devise a strategy to keep our beloved friends and family safe from COVID-19 infection. This is especially important to protect elderly family members.

Among the concerns voiced by parents active with Families for COVID Safety are lingering questions on what measures the district will undertake to protect students, teachers and school staff against COVID outbreaks

As kids return to school this fall, parents have some homework to do: helping to keep their kids safe amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

On Friday, the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) sent an advisory to local media highlighting new data that shows a nearly 40% increase in cases last week and an uptick in hospitalizations with the virus.

The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, but restrictions are relaxing in Massachusetts. That means that whether you’ve been working through the pandemic or are just heading back to work, there’s a good chance you’re going to come in contact with more people when you’re on the job.

Back in March of 2020 when the global coronavirus pandemic took hold, states and local governments in the United States instituted varying degrees of lock downs aimed at stopping the spread of the virus, which was initially thought to be spread primarily through contact with contaminated surfaces as well as through respiratory droplets.

When the emergency vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna started making the rounds, so did sensational headlines about how the Black community wouldn’t take it. Discussion arose among the medical community on how to convince Black people to get the vaccine, and organizations in Boston mobilized to get the community to the mass vaccination site at the Reggie Lewis Center.

Stan McLaren is used to being the first. He is the first born, the first in his family to go to college. It was only fitting then that he was the first at the Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Your immune system is on constant guard looking for intruders — something that should not be there. It can distinguish between normal, healthy cells and unhealthy cells. When it detects an outsider — bacteria or a virus, for example — it readies forces to eradicate it. What’s even better, it can often remember. If the virus tries to enter again, its entry is blocked.

They call her the “vaccine evangelist.” It’s a moniker that Dr. Sabrina Assoumou bears with pride. Assoumou is an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.