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World Health Organization (WHO) flu vaccine strain selection advisors met this week to recommend the strains to include for the Northern Hemisphere's 2022-2023 flu season, swapping out the components for the H3N2 and influenza B Victoria lineage strains.
Our weekly wrap-up of antimicrobial stewardship & antimicrobial resistance scans
A study of influenza-associated antibiotic prescribing in California suggests that increasing influenza vaccination coverage could have a modest benefit for reducing antibiotic prescribing, researchers reported today in Epidemiology & Infection.
More than 5 million children have lost a parent or caregiver during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a modeling study published yesterday in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.
Severe COVID in moms was linked to pre-labor C-section, preterm birth, stillborn birth, and infant intensive care.
Fully 40% of patients who rely on prescription drugs suspect that supply chain disruptions will put them at risk.
Efforts are under way to overhaul the nation's COVID-19 strategy.
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.
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.
The risk is 1 case in 1 million vaccinated, compared with 200 in 1 million unvaccinated adolescents.
The WHO says the more transmissible BA.2 Omicron subvariant is now dominant in 18 nations.
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.
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.
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).
