Relative vaccine effectiveness of a second booster dose against severe COVID-19 is only about 30% after 2 to 4 months in people 80 and older, compared with one booster dose.
US adults who get the flu vaccine every year are 24.7% more likely to complete a primary COVID-19 vaccine regimen.
From 53% to 74% of students were able to end isolation early, but 15% to 22% tested positive beyond the recommended isolation period.
At a routine press briefing today, two White House officials fielded questions about President Joe Biden's recent off-the-cuff comment during a news program that the pandemic is over, while acknowledging that COVID is still a problem.
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically worsened disparities in all-cause death rates for American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Islander (NHOPI), and Black Americans and eroded mortality advantages for Asian and Hispanic groups, finds a study published yesterday in PNAS.
A study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases demonstrates that previous Omicron BA.1 infection was the most protective factor against BA.2 infection (associated with a risk reduction of 72%) and gave greater protection than primary infection with pre-Omicron SARS-CoV-2 (38%) or three doses of an mRNA vaccine in people with no previous infection (46%).
The risk of a range of neurologic conditions rose significantly in the year after COVID-19 infection among a group of US veterans—regardless of whether they had required hospitalization, according to a study published yesterday in Nature Medicine.
A new study based on COVID-19 patients in France shows high reinfection rates among people with different Omicron subvariants, including BA.1, BA.2, and BA.5. The study is published as a research letter in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
A report published yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases describes a new SARS-CoV-2 mutation that confers resistance to the COVID-19 antiviral drug remdesivir in two persistently infected kidney transplant recipients treated with immunosuppressive drugs.
High-flow oxygen didn't significantly lower death rates beyond those of standard oxygen therapy in COVID-19 patients with respiratory failure, according to a multicenter randomized clinical trial published yesterday in JAMA.
The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant is much more transmissible among household members than Delta, with an estimated secondary attack rate (SAR) from thrice-vaccinated index patients of 46%, compared with 11% for Delta, finds a study published today in Nature Communications.
The SAR is the percentage of contacts who become infected by an index (initial) patient.
Uganda's health ministry on Twitter today reported four more lab-confirmed Ebola Sudan cases, as well as one more death in a patient with a confirmed infection. The developments push the country's overall total to 54 cases, 35 of them confirmed and 19 listed as probable. The latest death brings Uganda's fatality count to 25, 7 in confirmed patients and 18 in people who had probable infections.
The oral antiviral drug Paxlovid is safe and effective for treating COVID-19 and carries no additional risk of viral rebound beyond other treatments, according to a meta-analysis published late last week in the Journal of Infection.
Nearly 13% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients had serious neurologic illnesses in the first year of the pandemic, suggests an international study published last week in Critical Care Explorations.
A study of more than 160,000 COVID-19 tests of South African healthcare workers concludes that two doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines are about 71% effective against hospitalization caused by Omicron 1 to 2 months after the second dose, with little waning at 5 months or longer.
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.
In a study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, researchers showed canine olfaction—or dog sniffing—was both highly sensitive and specific when it came to identifying patients with COVID-19, even those who were asymptomatic or presymptomatic.
An observational study using a multinational database of 447 maternal COVID-19 deaths in Latin America reveals that over 90% were attributed to acute respiratory failure after severe infection and that 35% of the women who died were never admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU), possibly due to lack of capacity.
Researchers in Singapore discovered that a Moderna COVID booster following a two-dose Pfizer vaccine series induced a stronger neutralizing antibody response against the Omicron variant in adults compared with an all-Pfizer series, according to a study today in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Estimated effectiveness of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine against infection in children 6 to 11 years old was 88% at least 14 days after the first dose amid the Delta variant surge, before the emergence of Omicron, finds an interim analysis from a phase 2/3 clinical trial.
Indications of persistent SARS-CoV-2 shedding in hospitalized COVID-19 patients is tied to a higher risk of in-hospital delirium and death by 6 months, according to a study published this week in GeroScience.
The Journal of Infectious Diseases has published studies demonstrating lower COVID-19 incidence—but a higher risk of severe disease—in people with Down syndrome (DS), and a lower COVID vaccine immune response.
A new study from researchers at Boston University (BU) shows that, for all but 17% of healthy, vaccinated young adults, the infectious period for COVID-19 from the Delta and Omicron variants was 5 days. The study was recently published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Symptoms of long COVID are more frequently reported by women, those with poor overall health before the pandemic, and those aged 50 to 60, according to a new UK-based study in Nature Communications.
The study was based on results gathered from 6,907 people with self-reported COVID-19 from 10 population-based longitudinal health surveys in the United Kingdom that had been in place prior to the pandemic.
Following a vaccine advisory group input earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today recommended that vaccine companies update their booster shots to target BA.4 and BA.5, two Omicron subvariants that are driving up cases in a number of countries.
