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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.
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.
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.
"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 changes could have been due to lower illness incidence, medical care avoidance, or unaddressed care needs.
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.
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.
Study authors are testing to verify the strain is not more infectious or faster growing than other strains.
In another encouraging trend, deaths have fallen for the second week in a row.
Also, Walgreen's, Rite Aid, CVS, and other pharmacies start distributing COVID-19 vaccines.
An open-label study found the two supplements did not reduce symptom duration in outpatients.
A single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was immunogenic in 92% of recipients, with no difference in immunogenic response between men and women but a decreasing response among older recipients, researchers from Israel's Bar-Ilan University reported yesterday in Eurosurveillance.
Our weekly wrap-up of antimicrobial stewardship & antimicrobial resistance scans
A revised antimicrobial prophylaxis protocol for patients on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) was associated with reduced broad-spectrum antimicrobial use in those patients, without increased risk of infection or poor outcomes, researchers from the Mayo Clinic reported today in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Delaying antibiotics for uncomplicated respiratory tract infections did not result in longer or more severe symptoms.
