Town Hall: What to Know About Omicron, Quarantines, Outpatient Treatments and More

In this episode, Joel M. Gelfand, MD, MSCE, is joined by Leonard H. Calabrese, DO, and Amesh Adalja, MD, FIDSA, as they discuss quarantine and isolation guidelines, emerging therapies to treat COVID-19, and the anticipated future of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Welcome from Joel Gelfand, MD, MSCE :10
• About Calabrese and Adalja :11
• At day five, what's your recommendation for clinicians how to counsel people about testing to get out of isolation? Do you recommend people go ahead and get tested to end isolation or to just end isolation if not having much symptoms or improving? :51
• How should we counsel our immunocompromised patients? Should they really isolate for 20 days? 5:21
• Can people continue to test positive and antigen test beyond the infectious period? 10:13
• In the clinical setting, you know, should physicians be wearing N95 masks, and if so, what's that databased on? 15:22
• If a person has a positive antigen test but a negative PCR on the same day, how do you interpret that information for a patient? 22:12
• Now we finally have emergence of effective therapies for people with COVID-19. How do you think about these different therapies? Do you have an algorithm that you'd recommend to clinicians in the field about which one to reach for first? 24:05
• When someone has a COVID infection how soon thereafter can you give them a COVID immunization? 27:47
• With Omicron working its way through the US and obviously through the world, where do you see the next three to six months going? 28:34
• Thank you everyone 31:29

Amesh Adalja, MD, FIDSA,is senior scholar at Johns Hopkins and a practicing infectious disease and critical care physician in Pittsburgh.

Leonard H. Calabrese, DO, is chief medical editor of Healio Rheumatology, professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, and RJ Fasenmyer Chair of Clinical Immunology at the Cleveland Clinic.

Joel M. Gelfand, MD, MSCE, is chief medical editor of Healio Psoriatic Disease and professor of dermatology and epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also vice chair of clinical research, medical director at the Dermatology Clinical Studies Unit, and director of the Psoriasis and Phototherapy Treatment Center at Penn Medicine.

We’d love to hear from you! Send your comments/questions to Dr. Gelfand, Calabrese and Adalja at covid19podcast@healio.com. Be sure to check Healio.com/coronavirus for daily updates on the pandemic and follow us on Twitter @InfectDisNews, @GoHealio, @DrJoelGelfand, @LCalabreseDO and @AmeshAA.

Disclosures: Adalja reports no relevant financial disclosures. Calabrese reports consulting for AstraZeneca, GSK and Regeneron. Gelfand reports serving as a consultant for Abcentra, Abbvie, BMS, Boehringer Ingelheim, GSK, Lilly (DMC), Janssen Biologics, Novartis Corp, UCB (DSMB), Neuroderm (DSMB), Trevi, and Mindera Dx., receiving honoraria; and receives research grants (to the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania) from Boehringer Ingelheim, and Pfizer Inc.; and received payment for continuing medical education work related to psoriasis that was supported indirectly pharmaceutical sponsors. Gelfand is a co-patent holder of resiquimod for treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Gelfand is a deputy editor for the Journal of Investigative Dermatolog