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An analysis by Canadian researchers suggests that a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is highly efficacious, according to a letter published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
The B117 variant has now been detected in 94 countries, with local transmission occurring in 47.
The authors conclude that pregnant women should be broadly prioritized for COVID-19 vaccine allocation.
"For months the scientific evidence has been clear: Aerosol transmissions are a major way this virus spreads."
Almost one in five meat processing workers in Nebraska contracted COVID-19 from April to July 2020, but after facility-wide mitigations and strategies were put in place, new cases appeared to decrease, according to an Emerging Infectious Diseases report yesterday. The researchers found that men and Hispanic/Latinos showed the highest burden in case numbers and severity.
New research by scientists from China and the United Kingdom shows that three widely used herbicides increase the prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes in soil bacteria, along with the mobile genetic elements that enable those genes to move between bacteria. The research appeared yesterday in Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Also, COVID-related cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children have reached 2,060.
The in-hospital death rate early in the pandemic was 31% but declined significantly within months.
South Africa officials say they'll share AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine with other African nations.
Demand surges in pharmacy and hospital prescriptions reflect early changes in COVID treatment.
Biotechnology company Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (APT) announced last week that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for bacteriophage therapy for the treatment of prosthetic joint infections (PJIs).
Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that infect bacteria and can be used to fight bacterial infections.
COVID-19 patients in a Warsaw, Poland, hospital had a significantly lower mortality rate when treated with convalescent plasma, especially early, according to a study published yesterday in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The changes could have been due to lower illness incidence, medical care avoidance, or unaddressed care needs.
"We now have all the pieces in place for the rapid distribution of vaccines."
The agency confirms 9 cases not tied to international travel but says reporting for 2020 is not yet complete.
About 1.7 million Americans get vaccinated each day, and states receive 11 million doses a week.
Six people who attended a funeral had Ebola-like symptoms, and 2 died.
The results of a National Institutes of Health-funded phase 2 study indicate the new tuberculosis (TB) drugs delamanid and bedaquiline, when combined, have only a modest effect on the electrical activity of the heart, US, South African, and Peruvian researchers reported last week in the Lancet Infectious Diseases.
B117, a SARS-CoV-2 variant believed to have increased infectivity, is linked to high viral loads in COVID-19 patients in the United Kingdom, while a small number of patients with extremely high viral loads could have largely driven the second wave of the pandemic in Houston, according to two new studies in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Study authors are testing to verify the strain is not more infectious or faster growing than other strains.
