Newsmakers

Many patients with severe cases of COVID-19 have extremely low levels of oxygen in the blood. That may be one reason why interest in pulse oximeters — medical devices that measure the saturation of oxygen in red blood cells — has increased recently.

Stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus have significantly accelerated the use of telehealth in California, making such visits the “new normal” during current the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent story in CalMatters.

More than 14 million people living in communities of color are subject to high levels of air pollution because “areas with cleaner air tend to be more expensive to live in,” Afif Haitham El-Hasan, MD, a pediatrician with the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, told Forbes.

Edward Lee, MD, executive vice president and chief information officer with The Permanente Federation, told Voice of America that he now sees as many as 20 patients a day using telehealth in his practice as an internal medicine physician, in order to keep patients safe during the current coronavirus pandemic.

A Healthline story discusses unusual symptoms that doctors may miss, including nausea, rash, delirium, or cardiovascular complications.

People with gastroenterological symptoms are not being tested for COVID-19, perhaps allowing numerous cases to go undetected, Douglas A. Corley, MD, PhD, of The Permanente Medical Group (TPMG), told Science magazine.

A new Kaiser Permanente study of COVID-19 patients published today as a research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) provides estimates for the percentage of test-positive patients requiring hospitalization and admission to the ICU.

David Witt, MD, an infectious disease leader with The Permanente Medical Group and a regional health care epidemiologist with Kaiser Permanente in Northern California, told Healthline that social distancing and stay-at-home orders have proved effective in California and other western states.

Fast and decisive action by Richard S. Isaacs, MD, FACS, and other physician leaders at The Permanente Medical Group played a pivotal role in mitigating the COVID-19 outbreak in Northern California, leading to an air of guarded optimism in that part of the state, according to a recent post on The Health Care Blog.

Richard S. Isaacs, MD, FACS, CEO and executive director of The Permanente Medical Group (TPMG), described how COVID-19 mitigation measures in Northern California are working, and how the disease is transforming health care.