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Recently I’ve been a in terrific productive flow. Due to the coronavirus situation, I have no in-person obligations now, so there’s no need to go to the gym, to guitar lessons, to run errands, or to meet up with people. My hair is growing longer, but my focus is growing deeper.
This has given me the space to tinker with my system for managing tasks and projects. I’ve had time to experiment with different approaches and to observe closely how those changes affect me. There’s less variety of activity in my life now, so I can perceive the impact of these changes more clearly. It’s like working in my own personal productivity lab where I can finally control the lab environment.
One simple change that I’ve been finding very effective has been to redefine larger projects as lots of smaller projects instead. For instance, the annual opening of Conscious Growth Club is a big project with more than 100 steps, and many of those steps have checklists of 10+ items within them. This year I decided to split that larger project into 17 smaller ones. The action steps are the same.
There’s a different feel where I have to work for weeks just to complete one project versus being able to complete multiple projects every week. I like the feeling of accomplishment I get from closing smaller projects more frequently. These smaller projects are just chunks of the larger one, but they’re crisply defined. Some of them can be completed in an afternoon.
As I continue to break off pieces of other large projects and turn them into their own projects, my projects list has grown lengthy. But the feeling of flow has increased because now I’m completing and closing projects more often. On a good day I might fully complete 2-3 smaller projects.
This helps me see myself as a project finisher. I’m feeling increasingly driven not just to work on projects but to push them towards full completion. It’s intrinsically rewarding to close out a project, and now I get to enjoy that reward 10-20x more often.
Imagine working on a project with 100 action steps to complete, and you’re only 9 steps in. How does that feel?
Now imagine fully completing one 5-step project and then finishing 4 out of 5 steps of a second project. How does that feel?
In each case you’ve completed 9 actions steps, and they’re the same actions. But the framing in the second case is likely to feel a lot better. It does a better job of building momentum and confidence, doesn’t it?
Moreover, if you only have 1 step left to go to complete that second small project, are you really going to leave that undone at the end of the day? You could, but you might feel driven to polish off that last task to fully close that project too. I’ve noticed that I’m more likely to push myself to complete an extra step or two if I’m that close to the finish line. It feels good to close out the project and move it off my plate completely. This is restful for my mind because when I complete the project, I can let it go.
Is it easier to tackle a big project like “write a novel,” knowing you won’t get far in a day, or to break off a small piece like “brainstorm and outline a rough design for one character” and complete it? Which framing leads to more procrastination?
Which is easier to face: a project that says “Clean house” or one that says “Do laundry”?
The framing of big projects may lead to thoughts like:
😓 This is gonna be a lot of work.
😓 This looks complicated.
😓 This will take a long time.
😓 How long will this actually take to finish?
😓 It will be a long time before I see results from this.
😓 I wonder what’s on Netflix…
With small projects the framing shifts to:
✅ I can knock this out this afternoon.
✅ Only 6 action steps? I can do that.
✅ This looks simple and compact.
✅ This seems pretty straightforward.
✅ I can see all the steps at a glance.
✅ It will be nice to get this project done today.
✅ I’ve already finished 5 projects this week… which one to do next?
My suggestion is to consider how you’re presenting your work to yourself. If you present a long, slow slog up a mountain of work, your mind and body may react accordingly. If you present yourself with accessible projects you can readily finish, you may enjoy some meaningful gains in focus, flow, and fulfillment.
Matt Hancock says human trials for a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford will begin on Thursday.
It’s time once again for the misery familiar to millions of people around the world: seasonal allergy season. But there may be hope, courtesy of a tiny critter with a big appetite: a new study published in Nature Communications suggests that a species of beetle could help control an invasive and highly allergenic weed at the root of many people’s suffering.
Allergies caused by the common ragweed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, impact millions, and in Europe alone, around 13.5 million people suffer with symptoms, resulting in 7.4 billion Euros worth of health costs per year, according to the research. The study suggests the leaf beetle, Ophraella communa, could reduce the number of people affected by the pollen and the associated economic impacts, since the beetle — itself a recent arrival in Europe — loves to munch on the invasive plant.
Invasive alien species, such as common ragweed, have a significant effect when introduced into new ecosystems — from crowding out ecologically important native plant species to altering and damaging the ecological services a landscape can provide, invasive plants can lead to substantial economic costs. However, the researchers note very little research has been done on the human health impacts of these species.
Using data from the European Pollen Monitoring Programme, a team of researchers including co-first authors Sandro Steinbach of UConn’s Agricultural and Resource Economics Department and Urs Schaffner of the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International, mapped seasonal total ragweed pollen in Europe from 2004-2012. They then determined ragweed sensitization rates in the European population to estimate the number of allergy sufferers.
“Assessing the human health impacts of IAS is a difficult task; it requires collaboration among scientists from different disciplines, including plant and insect ecology, aerobiology, medicine, and economics,” says Steinbach.
They estimate that 13.5 million people were affected by seasonal ragweed pollen allergies, with economic costs of approximately 7.4 billion Euros per year, including factors such as medical costs and work absences. These numbers are prior to the unintended arrival of O. communa in Europe in 2013.
By modelling the number of generations of the beetle across its suitable habitat range in Europe, the authors project that biological control of common ragweed could reduce the number of people suffering from the ragweed allergy to approximately 11.2 million, and bring the health costs down to 6.4 billion Euros per year.
“Our conservative estimates indicate that biological control of A. artemisiifolia by O. communa will reduce the number of patients by approximately 2.3 million and the health costs by Euro 1.1 billion per year,” says Steinback. “Future costs of this management approach will be basically zero since the beetle has established permanently and is propagating by itself.”
Though this research is specific for Europe, this method of biological control is already happening in China where the beetle is reared and distributed for the control of ragweed. Fortunately, the authors note that previous studies suggest the beetle would have no negative impacts on native or ornamental plants in Europe, so this form of biological control may have no unintended consequences on the local landscape.
Schaffner says, “We were not sure at first whether the leaf beetle was useful or harmful. Laboratory tests had shown that O. communa might be detrimental to sunflowers. However, field tests in China and Europe could not confirm this finding.”
This research also underscores the need for more work to be done on the human health impact of invasive alien species, since the benefits of management strategies are likely greatly undervalued, as shown by the authors’ estimated public health costs being higher than previously reported.
“Mainstreaming invasive species management into policy and decision-making is dependent on the availability of robust data regarding their ecological and economic impacts. Our study provides evidence that the health costs incurred by a single species, A. artemisiifolia, is in a similar range as the currently discussed overall economic costs of all invasive species in Europe, suggesting that the overall costs of invasive species in Europe are grossly underestimated,” says Steinbach.
Schaffner adds, “Because O. communa was accidentally introduced into Europe and did not go through a thorough risk assessment typical for deliberate releases of biological control agents, we started investigating whether this beetle can damage native European plant species. The good news is that there is only one European plant species, which is closely related to A. artemisiifolia. The risk assessment is still in progress, but so far, we have not found evidence for significant damage by this leaf beetle on native European plants.”
Schaffner says another aspect the team is currently looking into is how climate change will affect the distribution of the weed and the beetle and whether the beetle’s impact on pollen production by A. artemisiifolia will increase or decrease in the future.
When electronics need their own power sources, there are two basic options: batteries and harvesters. Batteries store energy internally, but are therefore heavy and have a limited supply. Harvesters, such as solar panels, collect energy from their environments. This gets around some of the downsides of batteries but introduces new ones, in that they can only operate in certain conditions and can’t turn that energy into useful power very quickly.
New research from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science is bridging the gap between these two fundamental technologies for the first time in the form of a “metal-air scavenger” that gets the best of both worlds.
This metal-air scavenger works like a battery, in that it provides power by repeatedly breaking and forming a series of chemical bonds. But it also works like a harvester, in that power is supplied by energy in its environment: specifically, the chemical bonds in metal and air surrounding the metal-air scavenger.
The result is a power source that has 10 times more power density than the best energy harvesters and 13 times more energy density than lithium-ion batteries.
In the long term, this type of energy source could be the basis for a new paradigm in robotics, where machines keep themselves powered by seeking out and “eating” metal, breaking down its chemical bonds for energy like humans do with food.
In the near term, this technology is already powering a pair of spin-off companies. The winners of Penn’s annual Y-Prize Competition are planning to use metal-air scavengers to power low-cost lights for off-grid homes in the developing world and long-lasting sensors for shipping containers that could alert to theft, damage or even human trafficking.
The researchers, James Pikul, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, along with Min Wang and Unnati Joshi, members of his lab, published a study demonstrating their scavenger’s capabilities in the journal ACS Energy Letters.
The motivation for developing their metal-air scavenger, or MAS, stemmed from the fact that the technologies that make up robots’ brains and the technologies that power them are fundamentally mismatched when it comes to miniaturization.
As the size of individual transistors shrink, chips provide more computing power in smaller and lighter packages. But batteries don’t benefit the same way when getting smaller; the density of chemical bonds in a material are fixed, so smaller batteries necessarily mean fewer bonds to break.
“This inverted relationship between computing performance and energy storage makes it very difficult for small-scale devices and robots to operate for long periods of time,” Pikul says. “There are robots the size of insects, but they can only operate for a minute before their battery runs out of energy.”
Worse still, adding a bigger battery won’t allow a robot to last longer; the added mass takes more energy to move, negating the extra energy provided by the bigger battery. The only way to break this frustrating inverted relationship is to forage for chemical bonds, rather than to pack them along.
“Harvesters, like those that collect solar, thermal or vibrational energy, are getting better,” Pikul says. “They’re often used to power sensors and electronics that are off the grid and where you might not have anyone around to swap out batteries. The problem is that they have low power density, meaning they can’t take energy out of the environment as fast as a battery can deliver it.”
“Our MAS has a power density that’s ten times better than the best harvesters, to the point that we can compete against batteries,” he says, “It’s using battery chemistry, but doesn’t have the associated weight, because it’s taking those chemicals from the environment.”
Like a traditional battery, the researchers’ MAS starts with a cathode that’s wired to the device it’s powering. Underneath the cathode is a slab of hydrogel, a spongy network of polymer chains that conducts electrons between the metal surface and the cathode via the water molecules it carries. With the hydrogel acting as an electrolyte, any metal surface it touches functions as the anode of a battery, allowing electrons to flow to the cathode and power the connected device.
For the purposes of their study, the researchers connected a small motorized vehicle to the MAS. Dragging the hydrogel behind it, the MAS vehicle oxidized metallic surfaces it traveled over, leaving a microscopic layer of rust in its wake.
To demonstrate the efficiency of this approach, the researchers had their MAS vehicle drive in circles on an aluminum surface. The vehicle was outfitted with a small reservoir that continuously wicked water into the hydrogel to prevent it from drying out.
“Energy density is the ratio of available energy to the weight that has to be carried,” Pikul says. “Even factoring in the weight of the extra water, the MAS had 13 times the energy density of a lithium ion battery because the vehicle only has to carry the hydrogel and cathode, and not the metal or oxygen which provide the energy.”
The researchers also tested the MAS vehicles on zinc and stainless steel. Different metals give the MAS different energy densities, depending on their potential for oxidation.
This oxidation reaction takes place only within 100 microns of the surface, so while the MAS may use up all the readily available bonds with repeated trips, there’s little risk of it doing significant structural damage to the metal it’s scavenging.
With so many possible uses, the researchers’ MAS system was a natural fit for Penn’s annual Y-Prize, a business plan competition that challenges teams to build companies around nascent technologies developed at Penn Engineering. This year’s first-place team, Metal Light, earned $10,000 for their proposal to use MAS technology in low-cost lighting for off-grid homes in the developing world. M-Squared, which earned $4,000 in second place, intends to use MAS-powered sensors in shipping containers.
“In the near term, we see our MAS powering internet-of-things technologies, like what Metal Light and M-Squared propose,” Pikul says. “But what was really compelling to us, and the motivation behind this work, is how it changes the way we think about designing robots.”
Much of Pikul’s other research involves improving technology by taking cues from the natural world. For example, his lab’s high-strength, low-density “metallic wood” was inspired by the cellular structure of trees, and his work on a robotic lionfish involved giving it a liquid battery circulatory system that also pneumatically actuated its fins.
The researchers see their MAS as drawing on an even more fundamental biological concept: food.
“As we get robots that are more intelligent and more capable, we no longer have to restrict ourselves to plugging them into a wall. They can now find energy sources for themselves, just like humans do,” Pikul says. “One day, a robot that needs to recharge its batteries will just need to find some aluminum to ‘eat’ with a MAS, which would give it enough power to for it work until its next meal.”
This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research, grant N00014-19-1-2353. It was carried out in part at the Singh Center for Nanotechnology, which is supported by the NSF National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Program under grant NNCI-1542153.
Astrophysical observations have shown that Neptune-like water-rich exoplanets are common in our galaxy. These “water worlds” are believed to be covered with a thick layer of water, hundreds to thousands of miles deep, above a rocky mantle.
While water-rich exoplanets are common, their composition is very different from Earth, so there are many unknowns in terms of these planets’ structure, composition and geochemical cycles.
In seeking to learn more about these planets, an international team of researchers, led by Arizona State University, has provided one of the first mineralogy lab studies for water-rich exoplanets. The results of their study have been recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Studying the chemical reactions and processes is an essential step toward developing an understanding of these common planet types,” said co-author Dan Shim, of ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.
The general scientific conjecture is that water and rock form separate layers in the interiors of water worlds. Because water is lighter, underneath the water layer in water-rich planets, there should be a rocky layer. However, the extreme pressure and temperature at the boundary between water and rocky layers could fundamentally change the behaviors of these materials.
To simulate this high pressure and temperature in the lab, lead author and research scientist Carole Nisr conducted experiments at Shim’s Lab for Earth and Planetary Materials at ASU using high pressure diamond-anvil cells.
For their experiment, the team immersed silica in water, compressed the sample between diamonds to a very high pressure, then heated the sample with laser beams to over a few thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
The team also conducted laser heating at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. To monitor the reaction between silica and water, X-ray measurements were taken while the laser heated the sample at high pressures.
What they found was an unexpected new solid phase with silicon, hydrogen and oxygen all together.
“Originally, it was thought that water and rock layers in water-rich planets were well-separated,” Nisr said. “But we discovered through our experiments a previously unknown reaction between water and silica and stability of a solid phase roughly in an intermediate composition. The distinction between water and rock appeared to be surprisingly ‘fuzzy’ at high pressure and high temperature.”
The researchers hope that these findings will advance our knowledge on the structure and composition of water-rich planets and their geochemical cycles.
“Our study has important implications and raises new questions for the chemical composition and structure of the interiors of water-rich exoplanets,” Nisr said. “The geochemical cycle for water-rich planets could be very different from that of the rocky planets, such as Earth.”
Story Source:
Materials provided by Arizona State University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Public Health England plans to offer home testing kits across the UK to improve uptake.
The information on Health24 is for educational purposes only, and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you are experiencing symptoms or need health advice, please consult a healthcare professional. See additional information.
The latest number of confirmed cases is 3 300.
According to the latest update, 58 have been recorded in the country.
So far, 121 510 tests have been conducted
READ MORE |All the confirmed cases of coronavirus in SA
More than 1.6 million South African workers are covered by applications already lodged by companies for special coronavirus payouts, the department of labour said on Monday.
According to broad statistics released by the government, 55 268 employers had asked the state to help pay their employees, at an average of a little under 30 employees per company.
As of 16 April the special Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) of the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) had paid out a total of R1.1 billion in Covid-19 support, the department said.
That is after processing applications dealing with some 600 000 employees – which means more than 60% of applications, as measured by employees not fully paid by their employers, are yet to be dealt with.
The Unemployment Insurance Fund has said nearly half the applications it received for coronavirus-related claims by last week were duplicates, amid concerns from organised labour that the cover was not reaching enough vulnerable workers during the national lockdown.
Spokesperson for the UIF Lungelo Mkamba said the lockdown was an extraordinary situation, and while the Fund is operating with skeleton staff, it is “doing its best under the circumstances”, through electronic platforms, to process all claims at speed.
But it has received thousands of applications, many of which are duplications of previous applications.
Others, said Mkamba, do not meet the requirements. Of the applications received so far, just over 40% are being approved.
“As of Monday 13 April 2020, we have received approximately 39 000 Covid-19 claims, of which 16 000 were duplicates. 23 000 did not the requirements and emails have been sent the applicants. 16 000 claims are currently in various stages of the approval processes,” Mkamba said.
READ MORE | UIF sifts through thousands of duplicate claims as growing unemployment threat looms
Three people have been arrested for allegedly hijacking a truck transporting medical masks in Johannesburg on Saturday.
According to South African Police Services (SAPS) national spokesperson Vish Naidoo, the truck was transporting R500 000 worth of medical masks when it was flagged down by a Hyundai sedan on the Barbara Road off-ramp in Isando.
The truck did not stop, but the sedan cornered the truck and forced it to a halt.
The three hijackers then kicked the driver and passengers out, and fled off in the truck.
READ MORE | 3 arrested for hijacking truck transporting medical masks
There has been a sharp increase in activity on South African roads as the country’s lockdown period wears on.
Vehicle tracking company, Tracker, together with Lightstone, has analysed anonymised and aggregated data from client vehicles that shows a dramatic shift in driver habits during South Africa’s initial and extended lockdown periods.
According to the data, South Africans drastically reduced their driving activity during the initial period of lockdown – the first three days of lockdown saw a 75% decrease in vehicle activity.
But from 15 April, Tracker recorded a substantial increase in trips for commercial vehicles, passenger vehicles, taxis, and busses.
The most notable increase came in the passenger vehicle category.
READ MORE | Big increase in road traffic over recent days
Gauteng hospitals are gearing up for an increase in Covid-19 patients, and their measures include created extra capacity of more than 550 beds and more than 300 intensive care units at public hospitals, with more bed space on the cards.
Private hospitals in the province are also expanding their resources, some spending hundreds of millions of rands on essential equipment.
Public hospitals are screening patients and transferring positive cases to designated hospitals. In Pretoria, this is Steve Biko Academic Hospital, working together with Tshwane District Hospital, and in Johannesburg it is Charlotte Maxeke Hospital and Thembisa Hospital.
The Gauteng Provincial Command Council, a government body set up to respond to the Covid-19 crisis, said “we have cleared some of our existing hospitals and declared them Covid-19 facilities”, creating a capacity of 555 standard beds and 308 intensive care unit (ICU) beds.
READ MORE Covid-19 | Gauteng hospitals ready themselves for increase in patients
For the latest global data, follow this interactive map from Johns Hopkins University & Medicine.
Late on Monday night, positive cases worldwide were more than 2.46 million, while deaths were close to 170 000.
The United States has the most cases in the world – more than 778 000, as well as the most deaths – more than 41 500.
Spain is now the second country to have more than 200 000 cases.
Italy on Monday reported its first symbolic drop in the number of people currently suffering from the novel coronavirus since it recorded its first infection in February.
The civil protection service said 108 237 people were either being treated in hospital or were recovering at home after testing positive – down 20 from the total reported on Sunday.
“For the first time, we have seen a new positive development: The number of currently positive has declined,” civil protection service chief Angelo Borrelli told reporters.
The Mediterranean country’s death toll still rose by 454 to 24 114 – second only to the United Sates.
READ MORE | Italy says current virus cases fall for the first time
Chancellor Angela Merkel is “greatly concerned” that virus-fighting discipline among the German public may ebb as the country takes its first steps out of a month-long lockdown, AFP learned from party sources on Monday.
The veteran leader warned against “orgies of discussion about opening up” society, in a telephone conference with leaders of her centre-right CDU party on Monday morning, participants in the call said.
After an apparent race among regional leaders last month to appear the toughest in announcing lockdown measures, some politicians have begun pushing for even faster loosening than the reopening of smaller shops and schools Merkel announced last week.
Business lobbies have been pressuring the government to move faster, but initial steps agreed between Berlin and state capitals are tentative.
READ MORE | Angela Merkel ‘concerned’ as Germany inches to reopen after month-long lockdown
New research sheds light on why the experimental drug remdesivir might become the most powerful weapon in the fight against Covid-19: It is highly effective against an enzyme that plays a crucial role in the spread of the new coronavirus.
Remdesivir is one of several drugs being fast-tracked in various coronavirus treatment trials around the world. Just last week, a small, “compassionate use” trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine found the drug improved outcomes for people with Covid-19.
More than two-thirds of 53 severely ill patients showed improvement in oxygen support, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center researchers said. Seventeen of 30 patients who were on ventilators were able to be taken off the life-support machines, the study showed.
The latest research, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, explains how remdesivir, developed in 2014 to fight the Ebola epidemic, works against the new coronavirus.
READ MORE | Why remdesivir might be a good bet against Covid-19
Trying to identify animals that are most likely to transmit viruses to humans may not help prevent future pandemics, researchers say.
Instead, the focus should be on specific types of viruses and how they spread, they suggest.
The current coronavirus pandemic is believed to have originated in bats, and most emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, meaning that they’re spread from animals to humans, according to researchers from the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
This pandemic shows the serious health and economic threat that zoonotic viruses pose, so it’s crucial to learn more about them.
READ MORE | Track viruses, not animal carriers, to prevent future pandemics
HEALTH TIPS (as recommended by the NICD and WHO)
• Maintain physical distancing – stay at least one metre away from somebody who is coughing or sneezing
• Practise frequent hand-washing, especially after direct contact with ill people or their environment
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, as your hands touch many surfaces and could potentially transfer the virus
• Practise respiratory hygiene – cover your mouth with your bent elbow or tissue when you cough or sneeze. Remember to dispose the tissue immediately after use.
If you or your child has type 1 diabetes, you already have a lot of extra health worries, and now you need to add Covid-19 infections to the list.
You may be wondering if you have a higher risk of catching Covid-19, if you’ll be able to get your diabetes supplies and how you might handle the illness if you do get sick.
Here’s some information to help you get through this trying time:
Aaron Kowalski, CEO of JDRF (formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), has some good news on this front.
“Healthy type 1 folks aren’t more at risk if they have a reasonable A1C,” he said. An A1C is a blood test that estimates blood sugar control during the past two to three months.
But, for those who are having trouble keeping their A1C down, he added that consistently high blood sugar can make people more susceptible to infection.
Dr Mary Pat Gallagher is director of the paediatric diabetes centre at NYU Langone Health in New York City.
“If you have an A1C that is less than 9.5%, you are not really considered immunocompromised,” she said. “Higher blood sugar levels for more than two weeks can impair immune function.”
But, she cautioned, “None of us has any immunity to this virus. We’re all extremely susceptible, whether or not we have type 1 diabetes.”
While some of the early data from China and Italy seems to suggest that people with diabetes have a higher risk of complications, Gallagher said those findings probably represent older people with type 2 diabetes and additional medical conditions.
“Children appear – regardless of [any other illnesses] – to be doing very well. There are definitely children in the hospital, but their risk of developing serious illness is much lower,” Gallagher noted.
And, no matter your age, if your blood sugar is well-controlled, you probably don’t have a higher risk of Covid-19-specific complications. But getting sick when you have type 1 diabetes is always a challenge.
Having an illness often wreaks havoc on your blood sugar control. Viral illnesses, like the flu, are known to increase your risk of ketones and diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), so it’s important to be extra vigilant when it comes to your type 1 diabetes management.
Ketones are chemicals that can build up in the body when it breaks down fat for energy. When there are too many ketones, DKA – a potentially life-threatening complication – can occur.
Be aware that medications can raise your blood sugar, and some drugs affect the accuracy of readings on certain continuous glucose monitors.
“Getting sick definitely adds complexity to type 1 diabetes,” Kowalski said. “Having a sick day management plan is important.”
Gallagher recommended getting a 24-hour number for your doctor’s office that you can reach in an emergency. Post it somewhere that’s easy for everyone in the family to see.
Gallagher advised filling your prescriptions as soon as possible, if you haven’t already. She suggested trying to get a three-month supply. “A lot of insurance companies are lifting prescription time restrictions,” she said.
Supplies you should have on hand typically include:
Kowalski said JDRF has been in touch with insulin and device makers, and the supply chain is strong. There are no significant shortage concerns. He said there may be spotty shortages for a few days at a time in some areas because a lot of people have been filling prescriptions all at once, and many have switched from one month at a time to three months.
If you do get sick, call your doctor for more specific instructions on what to do.
Your diabetes sick day management should tell you when to test for ketones. As a general rule, if you’re on an insulin pump and your blood sugar is over 250 milligrams per decilitre (mg/dL), and you haven’t responded to a correction dose of insulin, check your ketones and call your doctor.
If you’re on multiple daily injections and your blood sugar is over 250mg/dL (despite a correction dose of insulin) for more than two or three hours, check for ketones and call your doctor, Gallagher suggested. Someone on your doctor’s team will walk you through what to do next to help bring your blood sugar down.
Gallagher said it’s important to remember that people with type 1 diabetes always need a long-acting insulin (called “basal” insulin in a pump), even when sick. She said you can reduce the basal insulin, but you shouldn’t stop it, especially not for more than several hours without speaking with someone on your diabetes health care team.
If you have abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, excess fatigue or fruity-smelling breath, call your diabetes doctor right away. These are signs of DKA.
Kowalski suggested that everyone follow the guidelines on washing hands, keeping a safe physical distance from others, and getting up and moving. In scary times exercise can be a good way to work off stress, he said.
Gallagher emphasised the need for people with type 1 diabetes and their families to try to get some physical activity every day, while maintaining social distancing rules, of course. An hour is ideal, she said.
And, she said, “There’s a lot of worry about consistent access to food, making it harder to meal plan. It’s also easy to eat poorly when you’re under stress, so try to make good food choices when you can.”
READ | Certain health conditions increase risks for severe coronavirus cases
READ | Why is coronavirus a bigger worry for people with diabetes?
READ | Obesity ups odds for severe Covid-19 in younger patients
