Category: COVID
How evasive and transmissible is the newest omicron offshoot, BA.2.86, that causes COVID-19?
The Conversation 1. What is BA.2.86 and how is it related to earlier variants? BA.2.86, nicknamed Pirola, is a highly mutated new omicron sublineage of SARS-CoV-2 that was first detected in Denmark in July 2023. The World Health Organization announced that, as of Sept. 6, 2023, BA.2.86 has been detected in 11 countries. A variant is […]
Sep 12, 2023
Why Florida is seeing the highest proportion of counties with ‘moderate’ COVID hospitalization rates
CBS News As COVID-19 hospitalizations rise across the country, Florida is seeing higher admissions levels than other states. As of Monday, 43 of Florida’s 67 counties reported moderate levels of weekly new hospital admissions for COVID-19 — a higher proportion than any other state in the U.S., data from the Centers for Disease Control and […]
Sep 12, 2023
Long COVID symptoms can improve, but their resolution is slow and imperfect
The Conversation Around 5–10% of people who get infected with SARS-CoV-2 will experience symptoms that persist way beyond the initial acute period, a clinical syndrome we are learning more about, known widely as long COVID. Shortness of breath, brain fog, lethargy and tiredness, loss of smell or taste are common features of long COVID, as is the development […]
Sep 5, 2023
More COVID-19 studies suggest BA.2.86 may be less immune-evasive than feared
CIDRAP Two more lab groups—one from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and the other from Harvard University—have reported results of antibody neutralization lab experiments, which suggest vaccination or previous infection offer some protection against the highly mutated BA.2.86 SARS-CoV-2 variant. In other developments, countries uploaded more BA.2.86 samples to genetic sequencing databases, and the United Kingdom updated […]
Sep 5, 2023
What to know about COVID, the flu and RSV this fall
Axios What’s happening: A potent flu virus, resurgent COVID-19 and rebounding RSV are combining to prompt new warnings in Colorado about the coming seasons when all three will be circulating. What they’re saying: “This is why we’re encouraging everyone, and especially kids, parents and grandparents, to get their vaccinations early,” Michelle Barron, the senior medical director of infection prevention […]
Sep 5, 2023
Three lessons from Covid that could help global leaders prevent the next pandemic
STAT Everyone has things that, looking back, they would have done differently in the early days of 2020, had they known how the Covid-19 pandemic would tear across the globe. But those regrets may be particularly poignant for global leaders whose actions (or lack thereof) had direct impacts on how Covid-19 spread. Joanne Liu, a […]
Sep 5, 2023
The painful pandemic lessons Mandy Cohen carries to the CDC
NPR As COVID-19 devastated communities across the nation in spring 2020, a group of Black ministers in this racially divided city made an urgent plea for more testing in their neighborhoods. Testing at the time “was outside of communities of color,” says the Rev. Jordan Boyd, pastor of Rockwell AME Zion Church in Charlotte. For […]
Aug 29, 2023
UNMC This week Dr. Lawler provides us with recent COVID trends using wastewater data & discusses the new BA.2.86 COVID-19 variant. On current COVID-19 cases: “We’re relatively close to where we were in the summer of 2021.”
Aug 22, 2023
‘Elegant’ study connects COVID with mitochondria gene disruptions, paving way for new treatments
Fierce Biotech Scientists and clinicians studying COVID-19 have long suspected that the disease doesn’t just affect the lungs, but many other organ systems too. Now, researchers have identified a mechanism that could explain why and reveal new pathways to find treatments for long COVID. In a study published Aug. 9 in Science, a team led by Children’s Hospital of […]
Aug 15, 2023
Long COVID: Mitochondria, the Big Miss, and Hope
Medscape This week there was news on Long COVID in two very different directions: emergence of strong data to support mitochondrial dysfunction as the basis for the condition in some people, and learning how the $1.15 billion allocation to the NIH RECOVER initiative has largely been wasted. In this edition of Ground Truths, I’ll review […]
Aug 15, 2023