A study of 4,737 COVID-19 patients in Israel conducted during the Omicron surge concludes that Pfizer's antiviral drug Paxlovid roughly halves the risk of severe COVID-19 or death, according to findings published yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Symptomatic COVID-19 cases are responsible for more viral transmission than asymptomatic infections, suggests an updated systematic review and meta-analysis of 130 studies published yesterday in PLOS Medicine.
More adults died of COVID-19 in Massachusetts in the first 8 weeks of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant surge than in the entire 23-week Delta period, suggests a modeling study published today in JAMA.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials of antibiotic treatment for children with community-acquired pneumonia provides further support for shorter treatment duration, Finnish researchers reported yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Michigan's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) yesterday reported three highly pathogenic avian flu cases in red fox kits in three different counties, which came closely on the heels of a similar report from Minnesota.
Over 40% of 79 stool samples from COVID-19 patients admitted to one of four hospitals in Spain contained SARS-CoV-2 RNA but no live virus, suggesting a negligible ability to replicate in this medium and a very low likelihood of fecal-oral viral transmission, finds a study published yesterday in Scientific Reports.
The sensitivity of home rapid antigen COVID-19 tests peaks 4 days after symptom onset, suggesting that a negative antigen test should be followed by a second test in 1 or 2 days, according to a prospective study published today in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Adults hospitalized early in the pandemic with COVID-19 were at more than triple the risk of death than those with influenza, despite the flu patients being older and having more chronic illnesses, according to new data from Spain to be presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), which starts tomorrow.
Rates of upper airway infections (UAIs) such as croup and bacterial tracheitis among pediatric COVID-19 patients, though low, rose after the Omicron variant became dominant in December 2021, with more than one fifth of hospitalized children with both conditions developing severe illness, estimates a study today in JAMA Pediatrics.
Depression and loneliness have increased among older adults during the pandemic, prompting a need for more coordinated efforts to address the issue, according to a report on social isolation in older Canadians.
