Category: Emerging Infectious Diseases
Dr Anthony Fauci: long Covid is an ‘insidious’ public health emergency
Guardian – Dr. Fauci urged US Congress to avoid complacency and resume funding to combat the virus as well as long Covid, a chronic and prolonged illness that continues to elude scientists and healthcare providers. “It’s a very insidious beneath-the-radar-screen public health emergency,” Fauci said via Zoom. “It isn’t that you have people who are […]
Oct 18, 2022
Dr. Fauci: These 2 new fast-spreading omicron Covid subvariants are ‘pretty troublesome’
CNBC – As winter inches closer, Dr. Fauci is sounding the alarm about a pair of “pretty troublesome” Covid variants. The two descendants of omicron’s BA.5 subvariant, called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, both have dangerous “qualities or characteristics that could evade some of the interventions we have,” Fauci told CBS News on Friday. The two sublineages are responsible for […]
Oct 18, 2022
Could These New Variants Drive a Dreaded Winter COVID Surge?
MedPageToday – Public health experts have warned of a new winter wave of COVID-19, and now the latest data from the CDC showed several fast-spreading variants that may drive such a trend. The Omicron BA.5 variant’s dominance among sequenced cases in the U.S. has been declining since late August. Though it remained responsible for nearly 68% […]
Oct 18, 2022
Boston University researchers’ testing of lab-made version of Covid virus draws government scrutiny
STAT News – Research at Boston University that involved testing a lab-made hybrid version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is garnering heated headlines alleging the scientists involved could have unleashed a new pathogen. There is no evidence the work, performed under biosecurity level 3 precautions in BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, was conducted improperly or […]
Oct 18, 2022
Signs point to an early start for flu season, with cases already ticking up in parts of the U.S.
(Stat News) Before the Covid-19 pandemic emerged, influenza trackers would begin reading tea leaves around this time of the year, looking for signs of whether there would be an early start to the flu season in the northern hemisphere and which of the various flu viruses might be responsible for the most cases over the […]
Oct 17, 2022
Uptick of COVID-19 cases are emerging in China, with 1,026 new infections on Saturday
Reuters – China reported 1,026 new COVID-19 infections for Oct. 15, of which 244 were symptomatic and 782 were asymptomatic, the National Health Commission said on Sunday. That compared with 1,364 new cases a day earlier – 361 symptomatic and 1,003 asymptomatic, which China counts separately. There were no new deaths, the same as the […]
Oct 17, 2022
CDC – COVID subvariants BQ1 and BQ1.1 are gaining ground, making up around 5.7% each of the total U.S. cases in the last week according to CDC data. Link to data
Oct 17, 2022
Outcomes among confirmed cases and a matched comparison group in the Long-COVID in Scotland study
Nature – With increasing numbers infected by SARS-CoV-2, understanding long-COVID is essential to inform health and social care support. A Scottish population cohort of 33,281 laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections and 62,957 never-infected individuals were followed-up via 6, 12 and 18-month questionnaires and linkage to hospitalization and death records. Of the 31,486 symptomatic infections,1,856 (6%) had not […]
Oct 13, 2022
Please Just Get the Dang Updated COVID Booster Shot
GQ – It’s good for you, it’s good for your community, and it’s widely available right now. This time around a pair of new vaccines, the updated or “bivalent” boosters from Pfizer and Moderna, could curb another winter spike. They’re both FDA-approved, and they both are designed to protect against the latest omicron sub-variants. They’re available near […]
Oct 13, 2022
Foreign Policy – Authorities are scrambling to quell the country’s biggest outbreak in two decades. Ugandan authorities are scrambling to quell a deadly Ebola outbreak that is believed to have killed 39 people and infected at least 54 people, fueling concerns of a wider public health crisis since the virus strain currently circulating has no available vaccine. The latest outbreak—Uganda’s biggest in two […]
Oct 13, 2022