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Efforts are under way to overhaul the nation's COVID-19 strategy.
A seroepidemiologic survey of 7,010 people in Gauteng province, South Africa, before the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant outcompeted the Delta strain shows that 80% of those older than 50 years had antibodies against the virus, with most seropositivity likely generated by previous infection.
Mortality rates among children born with congenital Zika syndrome up to 3 years of age were more than 11 times higher than those without Zika, researchers reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The WHO says the more transmissible BA.2 Omicron subvariant is now dominant in 18 nations.
The risk is 1 case in 1 million vaccinated, compared with 200 in 1 million unvaccinated adolescents.
Two independent UK studies published yesterday in PLOS Medicine find only a very slight risk of blood clots in the brain after receipt of the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine and none after the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Both studies were led by University of Edinburgh researchers.
A study conducted at five acute care hospitals adds further evidence of the role the hospital environment plays in Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI), researchers reported today in the American Journal of Infection Control.
Three Moderna doses were more effective against Delta than against Omicron, and protection waned over time, but they were highly protective against hospitalization with either subtype.
In US news, the FDA is considering whether a fourth mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose will be necessary.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) yesterday issued a warning about an ongoing outbreak of the multidrug-resistant yeast Candida auris in Italy.
Infection with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.2 subvariant shortly after an initial infection with the Omicron BA.1 subvariant—the original Omicron strain—is rare, occurring mostly in young, unvaccinated people with mild symptoms, according to a non–peer-reviewed Danish study.
The new UK COVID-19 plan was met with strong pushback from several in the science and medical communities.
So far, highly pathogenic avian flu outbreaks have hit poultry in 5 states.
Lower percentages of US children visited an emergency department (ED) for any indication amid the COVID-19 pandemic, while adolescent girls accounted for the largest hikes in visits for mental illness, according to two Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) studies published late last week in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
A study of US veterans who developed Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) within 30 days of a dental antibiotic prescription found that nearly 80% received guideline-discordant antibiotics, researchers reported today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.
A meeting of 53,000 people was not a super-spreader, with social contact outside the center being a risk factor.
In US COVID-19 developments, Hawaii is the only state with a mask mandate still in place.
In the ivermectin group, 22% became severely ill, vs 17% in the standard-care group.
The risk of hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and death was much lower among more than 9,000 Canadian COVID-19 patients infected with the Omicron variant than among matched Delta patients, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA.
The risk of hospitalization or death with Omicron was 41% of—and the risk of death was one-tenth of—that of Delta.
An analysis of prescribing data from more than 80 countries found that global antimicrobial consumption declined prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers reported today in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.
