Key Highlights
- With an aggressive new strain spreading across the country, this year’s flu season has been marked by record-high hospitalizations and reportedly intense symptoms.
- As people look for ways to contain the spread, new research has found that a few simple factors can greatly reduce transmission. Researchers from the University of Maryland Schools of Public Health and Engineering in College Park and the School of Medicine in Baltimore studied influenza spread by placing flu-positive college students in a hotel room with healthy middle-aged adult volunteers.
- FLU HOSPITALIZATIONS HIT ALL-TIME WEEKLY HIGH IN DENSELY POPULATED STATE, OFFICIALS WARN The study, published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, is reportedly the first clinical trial investigating how the flu spreads from naturally infected people to uninfected people, according to a press release.
- The participants, including 11 healthy volunteers, lived on a quarantined floor of a Baltimore-area hotel for two weeks.
- During that time, they simulated interactions, including having conversations, doing physical activities like yoga, and passing around objects like pens and tablets from infected people to the rest of the group.
