Category: COVID
Airplane lavatories deliver new hope for the CDC’s variant hunt
(Politico) The cramped, damp and poorly lit airplane toilet is among the scourges of air travel, a source of dread for young and old alike. But the deafening “swoosh” of the airplane lavatory may have finally found a higher calling: helping government scientists detect deadly viruses entering the United States. As Covid-19 cases explode in […]
Jan 17, 2023
(The Conversation) Despite intensive public health efforts to grind the COVID-19 pandemic to a halt, the recent emergence of the highly transmissible, extensively drug-resistant and profoundly immune system-evading XBB.1.5 SARS-CoV-2 subvariant is putting the global community on edge. What is XBB.1.5? In the naming convention for SARS-CoV-2 lineages, the prefix “X” denotes a pedigree that arose […]
Jan 17, 2023
Long COVID Rehab Program Shows “Impressive” Results
(SciTechDaily) A rehabilitation program that helps people with long COVID reduce their symptoms and increase activity levels has shown “impressive” results. The program is based on a gradual or paced increase in a patient’s physical activity. The findings showed that before the start of the program, patients were reporting an average of three “crashes” a […]
Jan 17, 2023
(NYT) Some of the worst days of Covid in the U.S. have come as winters have settled in, and surges led hospitals to overflow and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. A comparable surge has yet to materialize on a similar timeline this winter. By now, hospitalizations in particular would have started to sharply rise. […]
Jan 17, 2023
Can you use an expired at-home COVID-19 test?
(NBC) Many of us may have stored extra at-home COVID-19 tests in case they are needed in the future, but what should you do if the kit is past its expiration date? According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a COVID-19 testing kit should not be used if it is expired since the parts […]
Jan 17, 2023
Pregnant Women With Covid-19 Are Eight Times More Likely To Die Than Uninfected Counterparts
(Forbes) A new BMJ Global Health study warns that getting infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus at any point during pregnancy increases the mother’s risk of death by nearly eight times compared to those who remain uninfected. A group of researchers screened 137 studies and analyzed 12 studies conducted in Sweden Italy, Spain, the United States of America, […]
Jan 17, 2023
Why it’s easier to catch a cold, the flu or COVID in the winter
(Science News) When bitter winds blew and temperatures dropped, my grandmother would urge me to come inside. “You’ll catch your death of cold out there,” she’d say. Sure, freezing to death is possible in frigid temperatures. But doctors and other health experts have long stressed that being cold won’t give you a cold. Still, winter is undisputedly […]
Jan 17, 2023
Antigenic mapping of emerging SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants BM.1.1.1, BQ.1.1, and XBB.1
(The Lancet) Novel SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants, including BM.1.1.1, BQ.1.1, and XBB.1, continue to emerge at an unprecedented rate, evading pre-existing immunity from vaccination and previous infection. Quantifying the antigenic diversity of variants might assist in selecting future vaccine strains. To determine the antigenic relationships between emerging SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants, we and others used antigenic cartography, […]
Jan 17, 2023
(BMJ) Despite a growing body of research on the risks of SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy, there is continued controversy given heterogeneity in the quality and design of published studies. We screened ongoing studies in our sequential, prospective meta-analysis. We pooled individual participant data to estimate the absolute and relative risk (RR) of adverse outcomes among pregnant […]
Jan 17, 2023
WHO recommends that China monitor excess COVID-19 mortality
(Reuters) The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday it recommended that China monitor excess mortality from COVID-19 to gain a fuller picture of the impact of the surge in cases there.
Jan 17, 2023
