Each week, the Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast shares the latest information on COVID-19. On today's episode, Dr. Gregory Poland, an infectious diseases expert and head of Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, answers listeners' coronavirus questions.

Dr. Poland discusses how to stay safe from the virus while exercising outdoors, whether temperature checks help screen for COVID-19, and how to deal with holiday travel and gatherings this year.
Research disclosures for Dr. Gregory Poland.

The second edition of "Mayo Clinic on Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias: A Guide for People With Dementia and Those Who Care for Them" answers many common questions including:

On the Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast, co-editors of the book, Dr. Jonathan Graff-Radford, a behavioral neurologist at Mayo Clinic, and Angela Lunde, co-investigator in Mayo Clinic's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, highlight the book's focus on personal stories of those living with dementia and practical advice for caregivers.

A recent Mayo Clinic study looked at the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on racial and ethnic minorities.

"We found that environmental factors, especially systemic racism and problems with housing density, predispose these patients to having more chances of infection," says Dr. Aditya Shah, a Mayo Clinic infectious diseases expert and one of the authors of the study.

In this Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast, Dr. Shah explains the research findings and discusses how clinicians can help bring awareness to health disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health emergencies.

As positive cases of COVID-19 continue to spike across much of the country, the role of contact tracing to prevent further spread becomes more important.

Contact tracing is the process of notifying people who have had close contact with people newly infected with COVID-19, to let them know they may have been exposed. When it comes to contact tracing, quarantining and isolation, timing is critical to prevent further infections.

On the Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast, Dr. Laura Breeher, a preventive medicine specialist and medical director of Occupational Health Services at Mayo Clinic, explains how digital tools were developed at Mayo Clinic to aid in contact tracing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated its guidelines for defining close contact with a person who is positive for COVID-19. Previously, close contact was defined as occurring when someone was within 6 feet of an infectious person for 15 consecutive minutes. Now close contact includes people who were within 6 feet for a total of 15 minutes over a 24-hour period, as the CDC now advises that repeated, brief encounters also carry a risk of transmission.

On the Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast, Dr. Gregory Poland, an infectious diseases expert and head of Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, discusses the updated information from the CDC and the latest information from the Food and Drug Administration on COVID-19 treatments and vaccines.
Research disclosures for Dr. Gregory Poland.