Category: COVID
A booster is your best shot now
(Ground Truths Blog) I know it’s hard to keep track of the new variants, with esoteric designations and without names (Hello WHO, where are you?). But several of these are quite troubling because their growth advantage compared to BA.5 (the wave we’re getting over) is substantial, chiefly related to their ability to work around our […]
Oct 24, 2022
(Nature) The immune-inflammatory response during the acute phase of COVID-19, as assessed using peak body temperature (PBT) and peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2), predicts the severity of chronic fatigue, depression and anxiety symptoms 3–4 months later.
Oct 24, 2022
(Nature) The purposes of our study are to map high-risk areas in Canada as well as quantifying the effects of vaccination intervention and socio-demographic factors on the transmission rates of infection, recovery, and death related to COVID-19. The data of this research included weekly number of COVID‑19 cases, recovered, and dead individuals from 2020 through […]
Oct 24, 2022
A ‘Tripledemic’? Flu and Other Infections Return as Covid Cases Rise
(NYT) Flu cases are higher than usual for this time of year and are expected to soar in the coming weeks. A third virus, R.S.V., is straining pediatric hospitals in some states. Cases of flu have begun to tick up earlier than usual, and are expected to soar over the coming weeks. Children infected with […]
Oct 24, 2022
FDA’s vaccines chief sees possibility of more Covid boosters — sooner than he’d like
(STAT News) Peter Marks, who leads the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccines operation, is still losing sleep over Covid. Yes, vaccines for all age groups have been authorized or approved. Yes, an updated vaccine is now available. And, yes, multiple products are in use and hundreds of millions of doses have been given in this […]
Oct 21, 2022
Pulmonary Rehab May Benefit Some Patients After Severe COVID
(MedPage Today) In patients with significant respiratory disability following hospitalizations for COVID, 8 weeks of daily, supervised pulmonary rehabilitation was associated with significant improvement in exercise tolerance and quality of life in a single-center, retrospective study from India. The analysis of outcomes among 57 hospitalized patients — including 10 who needed non-invasive ventilation and 32 […]
Oct 20, 2022
It’s Gotten Awkward to Wear a Mask
(The Atlantic) Last week, just a couple of hours into a house-sitting stint in Massachusetts for my cousin and his wife, I received from them a flummoxed text: “Dude,” it read. “We are the only people in masks.” Upon arriving at the airport, and then boarding their flight, they’d been shocked to find themselves virtually […]
Oct 20, 2022
New Lab-Made Covid-19 Coronavirus At Boston University Raises Questions
(Forbes) This was one of those should-have-seen-it-coming moments. On October 14, a team of researchers posted on bioRxiv a preprint that described how they had created a new hybrid version of the Covid-19 coronavirus in their lab at Boston University and used this lab-created virus to infect mice, which ended up killing 80% of the mice. These days, if […]
Oct 18, 2022
Was a study that created a hybrid COVID-19 virus too risky?
(Science) Science looks at the furor over an experiment that combined Omicron with a more lethal SARS-CoV-2 variant. This week, Twitter exploded with outrage about a study that seemed to have created a Frankenstein COVID-19 virus: a version of SARS-CoV-2 that combines Omicron, the fast-spreading but relatively mild variant that’s now everywhere, and a deadlier […]
Oct 18, 2022
(The Lancet) Estimates of immunity and severity for the SARS-CoV-2 omicron subvariant BA.5 are important to assess the public health impact associated with its rapid global spread despite vaccination. We estimated natural and vaccine immunity and severity of BA.5 relative to BA.2 in Denmark, a country with high mRNA-vaccination coverage and free-of-charge RT-PCR testing.
Oct 18, 2022