Covid News Watch
COVID Patients Zero in Wuhan Identified, Boosting Lab Leak Theory + More
COVID Patients Zero in Wuhan Identified, Boosting Lab Leak Theory
A report based on multiple anonymous sources inside the U.S. government says that researchers working inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were the first to be infected with the virus that went on to trigger a pandemic and kill millions worldwide.
The report in Public cites “multiple U.S. government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy investigation” saying that Ben Hu, who led WIV’s gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, was among the “patients zero” who contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus in November of 2019.
Sources told Public that Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu, all from WIV, are thought to be among the first infected with COVID-19. If confirmed, the report would seem to disprove the long-held theory that the virus was not accidentally leaked from the Wuhan coronavirus lab but instead emerged from a nearby wet market where exotic meats like pangolin are sold.
“When a source was asked how certain they were that these were the identities of the three WIV scientists who developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, we were told, “100%” it reads.
FDA Advisors Raise Doubts About Seasonal Updates to COVID Vaccines as With Flu Shots
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s independent panel of advisors raised doubts about the need to “periodically” update COVID vaccines, noting that it’s unclear if the virus is seasonal like the flu.
Advisors on Thursday unanimously voted that new jabs for the fall should be monovalent — meaning they are designed against one variant of COVID — and target one of the Omicron XBB strains. Those are now the dominant variants nationwide.
The panel’s concerns indicate there is still uncertainty around what the COVID pandemic will look like in the years ahead, even as cases and deaths decline nationwide. But several advisors cautioned against calling COVID seasonal like the flu. “It’s not clear to me that this is a seasonal virus yet,” said Henry Bernstein, a pediatrician at Cohen Children’s Medical Center.
It’s unclear how many Americans will roll up their sleeves to get updated shots this fall and winter. The uptake of the most recent bivalent boosters — which target the original COVID strain and Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 — has been sluggish.
Another Study Identifies High Rate of Severe Myocarditis Cases Post COVID Vax
A new South Korean nationwide study on vaccine-related myocarditis contains troubling implications on the severity of cardiac damage conferred by the mass experiment conducted on the population — young men in particular — without informed consent and a clear understanding of risk-reward ratios.
This new study published in the European Heart Journal is incredibly comprehensive. In South Korea, the Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) established a reporting system to make it legally obligatory to report vaccine-adverse events such as myocarditis.
Among 44,276,704 South Koreans vaccinated, 1,533 cases of suspected myocarditis were identified under the KDCA. Of the 1,533 total cases, the KDCA’s “Expert Adjudication Committee on COVID-19 Vaccination Pericarditis/Myocarditis” confirmed 480 cases. The population-wide risk comes to 1 in 100,000.
For teenage boys ages 12–17, where the risk is most concentrated, the vaccine myocarditis incidence was predictably far higher at 1 in 18,900. This reported rate is far lower than other estimates from Hong Kong’s active surveillance system (1 in 2,680 after dose two) and Kaiser Permanente (1 in 2,650 after dose two) in the same age group. While a 1 in 18,000 risk is nontrivial on a population level, several reasons explain why South Korean researchers found a lower rate of myocarditis than various other American, European, and Asian study estimates.
Unsurprisingly, this study shows that mRNAs are far more dangerous (at least on the myocarditis front) than other COVID-19 vaccines.
Another COVID Booster Is Coming. But How Many Will Get It?
A new coronavirus booster shot is likely coming this fall. In a unanimous vote yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration’s expert advisers issued their recommendation: The next round of coronavirus shots should target the XBB variants, a branch of Omicron causing almost all of the nation’s recent COVID-19 infections.
That poses another challenge for the nation’s beleaguered public health officials, who’ll be tasked with encouraging vaccinations amid poor uptake of the most recent booster. Just 1 in 5 adults have received the bivalent shot, which became available last September.
The FDA still needs to make a decision on the vaccine’s formula, which is expected in the coming days. The agency isn’t required to follow the guidance of its advisers, though it often does.
Confidence in Science Fell in 2022 While Political Divides Persisted, Poll Shows
Confidence in the scientific community declined among U.S. adults in 2022, a major survey shows, driven by a partisan divide in views of both science and medicine that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overall, 39% of U.S. adults said they had “a great deal of confidence” in the scientific community, down from 48% in 2018 and 2021. That’s according to the General Social Survey, a long-running poll conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago that has monitored Americans’ opinions on key topics since 1972.
An additional 48% of adults in the latest survey reported “only some” confidence, while 13% reported “hardly any,” according to an analysis of the survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Overall, 34% of Americans reported a great deal of confidence in medicine in 2022, compared with 39% before the pandemic.
Mpox Vaccinations Extended in London After Spike in Cases
Health officials are extending vaccinations for mpox in London after recording a fresh spike in cases in the capital in recent weeks, mostly among unvaccinated people.
The national mpox outbreak vaccination program run by the U.K. Health Security Agency is due to close at the end of July, but shots will be made available in the capital beyond this date after the detection of 11 new cases, officials said.
The agency is monitoring new cases for signs of fresh clusters and working with NHS England on alternative options to provide mpox vaccinations across the country, particularly when local outbreaks occur.
Suicides and Homicides Among Young Americans Jumped Early in the Pandemic, Study Says + More
Suicides and Homicides Among Young Americans Jumped Early in the Pandemic, Study Says
The homicide rate for older U.S. teenagers rose to its highest point in nearly 25 years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the suicide rate for adults in their early 20s was the worst in more than 50 years, government researchers said Thursday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report examined the homicide and suicide rates among 10- to 24-year-olds from 2001 to 2021.
The increase is alarming and “reflects a mental health crisis among young people and a need for a number of policy changes,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher who studies U.S. death trends and wasn’t involved in the CDC report.
Earlier this year, Woolf and other researchers looking at CDC data noted dramatic increases in child and adolescent death rates overall at the beginning of the pandemic and found suicide and homicide were important factors.
FDA Advisers to Vote on Composition of Fall COVID Boosters
A panel of outside advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will vote Thursday on the composition of updated COVID-19 vaccines that are expected to roll out in the fall, as the pandemic continues to recede from daily life but the coronavirus shows no signs of slowing its evolution.
In documents posted this week, the FDA said available evidence suggests that the new vaccine should protect against just one strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus — a departure from the currently available bivalent vaccines — and should target one of three that are currently circulating in the U.S. Called XBB.1.5, XBB.1.16 and XBB.2.3, they’re all sublineages of the Omicron variant.
This single-strain or monovalent vaccine would drop protection against the original strain of the virus that emerged in China in late 2019, a version that experts don’t expect to return and whose continued inclusion in vaccines may contribute to lower efficacy against newer strains.
Dr. David Ho, a professor of microbiology and immunology and director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University, whose research is cited in the FDA’s briefing documents, has shown that the bivalent boosters, which are designed to target both the original strain and the BA.4 and BA.5 versions of Omicron, produce an immune response that’s similar to a boost with the original vaccine alone — but that infection with the BA.5 strain, encountering the immune system without the older strain alongside it, improves the immune response against newer strains of the virus.
COVID Vaccine Maker Novavax Sees a Pathway to Survival – but It Won’t Be Easy
Novavax has a clear message for Wall Street: The cash-strapped COVID vaccine maker sees a pathway to survival.
Maryland-based Novavax said as much last month when it reported its first-quarter financial results and unveiled a broad cost-cutting push along with a higher-than-expected 2023 revenue forecast of $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion. That report stood in stark contrast to the previous quarter when the biotech company raised doubts about its ability to stay in business.
But Wall Street hasn’t entirely bought into the recovery plan: Shares of Novavax are still down roughly 18% since the start of the year after shedding more than 90% of their value in 2022. And staying afloat through 2023 and beyond may not be an easy task.
The 36-year-old company will continue to rely on its protein-based COVID vaccine — its only commercially available product — for most of its revenue this year.
COVID shot sales will largely depend on Novavax’s ability to deliver an updated version of its jab in time for the fall when the U.S. government is expected to shift vaccine distribution to the private sector. Even if Novavax can meet that timeline, it will face tough competition from mRNA rivals Pfizer and Moderna.
Monoclonal Antibody Injection Shown to Prevent COVID During Delta, Omicron
A single injection of the monoclonal antibody (mAb), adintrevimab prevented COVID-19 in the phase 2/3 EVADE trial, finds a study yesterday in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.
The randomized controlled trial measured outcomes among 2,582 vaccine-naive participants ages 12 years and older who received either a single 300-milligram intramuscular injection of adintrevimab or placebo. Safety was assessed during the 6-month follow-up, and the primary endpoint was symptomatic COVID-19 infection within 28 days and through 3 months. The study was conducted from April 27, 2021, through January 11, 2022.
Adintrevimab is derived from a survivor of the 2003 SARS-CoV epidemic and engineered for improved potency and broad neutralization against SARS-CoV-2 and other SARS-like coronaviruses with pandemic potential, the authors said. There were no serious side effects reported during the study.
Want to Predict the Next Big COVID Variant to Hit the U.S.? Look to Airports
With the summer travel season about to begin, public-health officials face a daunting challenge in keeping on top of ever-evolving COVID-19 variants. Most countries — including the U.S. — have scaled down or eliminated pandemic measures, including pre-flight testing and screening, giving the virus a greater opportunity to slip into countries undetected and start spreading.
But even though the U.S. now has less robust COVID-19 data collection, one important but little-known source remains — samples from international passengers flying into the U.S.
Launched by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in late 2021, the Traveler-Based Genomic Surveillance program is still running in seven of the busiest international airports in the U.S.: John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), San Francisco International Airport (SFO), Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), and Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD).
‘Game Changer’: 5 Long COVID Treatments Researchers Are Most Excited About
San Francisco Chronicle reported:
Three-plus years after the start of the pandemic, COVID may finally be starting to feel like a distant memory for many people. But for those suffering from long COVID, each day is a reminder that the effects of the disease can linger long after it’s gone.
More than 15% of American adults have experienced long COVID — which can include symptoms like brain fog, exhaustion and loss of smell and taste — for weeks, months or years after infection, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In an effort to organize long COVID research under one umbrella, the National Institutes of Health in 2021 created the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery Initiative, or RECOVER, a billion-dollar program that studies treatments and the long-term impacts of the disease.
For now, research into treatments for long COVID is focused on repurposing drugs that are already on the market for other ailments. These medications are largely being studied as treatments for specific symptoms of long COVID, rather than for the disease as a whole.
Early Surge of Flu Activity in Australia Has Doctors on Alert for What May Happen in U.S. This Fall and Winter
Epidemiologists this summer are closely watching the sharp rise in flu activity in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is currently winter, to see if it’s a sign of what’s to come in the U.S.
The Australian Department of Health and Aged Care reported an increase in influenza-like illness activity in almost all jurisdictions in the final two weeks of May. The illness activity was highest in young children ages 5 to 9, followed by children 4 years and younger, and then those ages 10 to 14.
A review of both the World Health Organization’s surveillance data and the latest Australian Surveillance Report shows the increasing flu activity in Australia is currently within historic ranges, said Dr. Carrie Reed, chief of CDC’s Influenza Division Epidemiology and Prevention branch. “However,” she said, the CDC “continues to monitor influenza trends across the globe.”
BioNTech Vaccine Hearing Over Alleged COVID Vaccine Side Effects Postponed + More
BioNTech Vaccine Hearing Postponed After Petition to Change Judge
The first hearing in a German court case against BioNTech (22UAy.DE) over side effects allegedly caused by its COVID-19 vaccine was postponed on Monday after the plaintiff’s lawyer petitioned for the case to be heard by different judges.
The lawyer Tobias Ulbrich of law firm Rogert & Ulbrich asked for the case to be heard by a group of judges and for the currently-assigned single judge to be recused for bias, Ulbrich and a spokesperson for the regional court in Hamburg told Reuters separately.
The court in the northern city of Hamburg said a decision on the request would take a matter of days, without providing a new date for a hearing.
BioNTech (22UAy.DE) could face hundreds of similar cases in the country. It has said that the Hamburg case, brought by a woman who is seeking damages for alleged side effects including upper-body pain and fatigue, was without merit.
Wuhan Scientists ‘Created Mutant Virus Before Pandemic’
The Telegraph via Yahoo!News reported:
Scientists in the Chinese city of Wuhan worked alongside the country’s military to combine the world’s most deadly viruses before the COVID pandemic began, it was claimed on Sunday. According to investigators who examined intercepted communications and scientific research, Chinese scientists were running the secret project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
An investigation by The Sunday Times claimed that U.S. investigators believe that one of the reasons why there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military.
The newspaper said it had examined hundreds of documents, including confidential reports, internal memos, scientific papers and email correspondence and that the institute in Wuhan was engaged in increasingly risky experiments on coronaviruses it gathered from bat caves in southern China.
U.S. investigators are said to believe the classified program was to make the mineshaft viruses more infectious to humans and may have led to the creation of the COVID-19 virus, and that it leaked into the city of Wuhan after a laboratory accident.
More Than 100 Young Children Suffered Seizures After COVID Vaccination: Study
More than 100 young children suffered seizures after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a new study.
One hundred and four children under 6 years old suffered a seizure within 42 days of a COVID-19 shot, researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other institutions found.
Others suffered strokes, blood clotting disorders, and appendicitis, the researchers said. They analyzed health records from the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), a CDC-funded network that features sites operated by Kaiser Permanente, Marshfield Clinic, Health Partners, and Denver Health.
Children were studied if they received a vaccine dose between June 18, 2022, and March 18 of this year; 247,011 doses were administered to children under 6 during that time. Researchers examined the events that occurred within 42 days of vaccination.
FDA Advisers to Consider the Next COVID Boosters
The FDA’s independent advisers will discuss and recommend this week which strain of SARS-CoV-2 should be included in the newest COVID booster to be rolled out ahead of fall and winter. The FDA doesn’t have to follow its advisers’ recommendations, but it often does.
Since the beginning of the year, the regulatory agency has made it clear that it will shift gears to prepare for annual COVID-19 shots as the virus becomes endemic. Now that we’re four months out from the intended rollout, the FDA must select a strain that will most likely be prevalent so manufacturers can start developing vaccines.
Novavax, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the companies that manufacture the three vaccines available in the U.S., need the FDA’s recommendations to begin tweaking their existing platforms. They must also conduct clinical trials to show that the updated formulas generate a similar immune response to their existing products.
Manufacturers are already developing new shots. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have said they’re working on updated mRNA-based boosters that protect against the latest strains, as well as combination shots with other seasonal respiratory viruses and those that offer more durable protection. Novavax, which has a protein-based COVID-19 vaccine, is working to develop four potential updated vaccines based on different strains.
The Great Grift: How Billions in COVID Relief Aid Was Stolen or Wasted
Much of the theft was brazen, even simple. Fraudsters used the Social Security numbers of dead people and federal prisoners to get unemployment checks. Cheaters collected those benefits in multiple states. And federal loan applicants weren’t cross-checked against a Treasury Department database that would have raised red flags about sketchy borrowers.
Much of the theft was brazen, even simple.
Fraudsters used the Social Security numbers of dead people and federal prisoners to get unemployment checks. Cheaters collected those benefits in multiple states. And federal loan applicants weren’t cross-checked against a Treasury Department database that would have raised red flags about sketchy borrowers.
An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID relief aid.
The Mystery of Long COVID Is Getting Closer to Being Unraveled
The pandemic left millions of people who suffer from lingering symptoms. To grapple with this legacy, we must continue research to find answers to a series of biomedical questions. First among them is to establish a definition of “long COVID” and identify the most common symptoms.
A new report adds to the expanding evidence that long COVID poses a protracted health challenge to the world. Published in JAMA, it comes from a National Institutes of Health project, Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery, or Recover, which aims to discover why some people develop long-term symptoms after infection and is testing ways to detect, treat and prevent the condition.
What all these studies suggest is that the long-covid problem could be quite sizable. Ten percent of the 662 million recovered cases worldwide would mean 66 million long-COVID cases in the future. That suggests enormous economic costs are looming. Long COVID might lead to changes in workplaces, economies and healthcare, and trigger cascading disability claims from workers who find they no longer have the stamina or good health they previously enjoyed. Those suffering from long COVID might face not only unemployment but also lost health insurance to support their treatment.
A number of biomedical reports have suggested in recent months that the virus can spread throughout the body, including the brain, although it seems to reserve most of its damage for the respiratory system. The virus might cause long-term damage to the endothelial cells that line blood vessels, leading to persistent symptoms.
What Happened to the Common Cold? Post-COVID, It Feels Like Every Sniffle Needs a Name
Once upon a time, say 2019, scratchy throats and runny noses were expected realities of the common cold — nothing some tissues, Vicks VapoRub and time couldn’t fix. But the pandemic, for better or worse, has fundamentally shifted how we think about respiratory illnesses and the hundreds of viruses that cause them.
Headlines warning of new COVID variants; unseasonal surges of flu, RSV and human metapneumovirus; and unusual symptoms stemming from viruses that usually cause cold-like symptoms, including adenovirus and enterovirus, have made many of us hyperaware of the germs that make us sick.
President of the College of Urgent Care Medicine, Dr. Chris Chao, an urgent care physician at WakeMed Health & Hospitals in Raleigh, North Carolina, said, “People want to know what’s wrong, with them and saying it’s just a virus is not good enough anymore. Everyone who comes in with a sore throat now wants a strep, flu and COVID test, but in most cases, none of that’s really indicated.”
Much of the paranoia surrounding common colds at this stage of the pandemic “comes from ignorance about how our microbiome and immune systems interact with the environment,” Ann Palmenberg, a researcher and professor with the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. “We’re supposed to be exposing ourselves to germs because that’s how you develop immunity, a lot of which is cross-protective with a great number of viruses.”
CDC: Arcturus Responsible for 18% of New COVID Cases
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The so-called arcturus COVID-19 variant is slowly gaining ground across the U.S. Arcturus, or XBB.1.16, was responsible for 18% of new coronavirus cases over the past two weeks, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Omicron subvariant is increasing in prevalence but remains behind XBB.1.5, which has been the dominant strain for months. XBB.1.5 caused about 40% of new cases over the past two weeks, which is a decline from nearly 55% of infections the two weeks prior.
Arcturus is believed to be more transmissible than XBB.1.5, though it doesn’t show signs of causing more severe disease. The World Health Organization considers it a “variant of interest.”
Experts don’t believe Arcturus will lead to another coronavirus surge in the U.S. given the high level of immunity in the population. A recent CDC study found that nearly all Americans had antibodies against COVID-19 last fall.
We Tried to Improve COVID Vaccine Labeling — the FDA Said ‘No Thanks’ + More
We Tried to Improve COVID Vaccine Labeling — the FDA Said ‘No Thanks’
Healthcare providers rely on product labeling for accurate, unbiased and up-to-date information on medical products. But current Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved labels for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are obsolete, misleading and out of touch with regulators elsewhere. Whatever one thought of the initial shots, people are now getting boosted indefinitely with little reliable information about scientific developments.
Take the ongoing uncertainty over whether vaccines reduce viral transmission. We asked the FDA to clarify in labeling that there isn’t substantial evidence that mRNA vaccines reduce viral transmission. This was an easy ask — the FDA has repeatedly stated that effectiveness against transmission remains unproven. The agency said so in December 2020, when vaccines were first authorized, and again in August 2021, when it fully approved Pfizer’s vaccine. The agency still states on its website today: “While it is hoped this will be the case, the scientific community does not yet know if Comirnaty will reduce such transmission.”
Viral transmission is just one of the multiple vaccine-related issues for which the FDA has not updated product labeling. In January, a group of us — current and former FDA advisers and academics from around the country — tried to fix this problem by asking the FDA to make critical changes to official product labels. But four months later, in a 33-page response letter, the agency denied almost every single request.
The FDA also failed to warn about the documented risk of sudden death, even though myocarditis is now a well-recognized side effect, particularly among young men. To support adding “sudden death” to product labeling, we pointed to multiple autopsy studies on lethal vaccination-associated myocarditis.
Diabetes Med Metformin Might Help Prevent Long COVID
U.S. News & World Report reported:
A safe, generic diabetes pill can help people avoid long COVID, a new clinical trial shows. Metformin cut the risk of long COVID by about 40% for patients who received a two-week course of the drug while battling their infection, the researchers reported.
The results were even more dramatic if COVID-19 patients began taking metformin soon after infection. Starting on the drug within three days of symptom onset cut long COVID cases by more than 60% in those folks.
This is the first clinical trial to suggest that any drug taken during COVID-19 infection might reduce the risk of long COVID, the study authors noted.
CDC Comes Under Fire for Inadequate Information About Its COVID Response
Republicans aren’t impressed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s reorganization plan, or its efforts to explain it.
The embattled public health agency late Tuesday sent answers to a set of GOP lawmakers’ questions on its “Moving Forward”’ reform, announced last spring amid building criticism of its COVID-19 response. The agency in February announced a reorganization plan that would eliminate 20 offices and add 16 new ones and has shared summary reports from its internal review, but not shared staff or external groups, much to Republicans’ chagrin.
Government watchdogs are having challenges getting answers from CDC on its COVID-19 response, an official told a House panel Wednesday. “We do need more information,” Mary Denigan-Macauley, director of the Government Accountability Office’s public health unit, told the panel.
Since assuming control of the committee earlier this year, Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chair Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-Wash.) and other Republicans have put the spotlight on science agencies’ pandemic response and overall spending, turning their ire not just on the CDC but the National Institutes of Health and former top infectious disease official Anthony Fauci. Rodgers, Morgan Griffth (R-Va.) and others last week asked that one of Fauci’s deputies, a longtime pox researcher, sit for an interview on controversial pathogen research.
White House COVID Response Coordinator Ashish Jha to Leave His Post
White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha will be leaving his post, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday in a statement in which he thanked Jha for his handling of the pandemic.
His departure was reported first by the Wall Street Journal, which said Jha will be the last of the Biden administration’s rotating COVID response coordinators. Jha plans to leave June 15 and return July 1 to his previous position as dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, the newspaper reported.
After the removal of the post of the COVID response coordinator, the director of the White House’s nascent Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, who has not been named, will advise the president and coordinate federal responses to various biological and pandemic threats, the newspaper said.
COVID Cases Trend Down in All World Regions
Except for a few hot spots, COVID-19 activity over the past month declined in all six world regions, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its weekly update today.
The pattern follows several weeks of a mixed picture, which saw rising cases in some parts of the globe.
Though two of the countries reporting rising cases — Australia and China — are both in the WHO’s Western Pacific region, cases in the area declined 5% over the past 28 days.
Mysterious COVID Lineages in U.S. Sewers Could Offer Clues to Chronic Infections
As COVID-19 testing and other coronavirus tracking efforts peter out in the United States, wastewater surveillance has become the primary method to monitor early community spread of the virus. And there’s some evidence that a close investigation of the findings could also help unravel some of the mysteries of long COVID.
Genetic sequencing of wastewater samples from sewer systems across the country has uncovered dozens of unique strains of the coronavirus, with multiple mutations in unusual combinations.
One possible explanation for these “cryptic lineages” is that they can be traced back to people who have been living with a chronic — and serious — COVID-19 infection for years.
In a recent preprint study, about two dozen researchers set out to understand the origin of these cryptic lineages by closely examining the evolution of one from Wisconsin. The lineage was linked to a single facility that served 30 people and was persistently present for more than a year. Additional data has told similar stories.
Your Risk of COVID-Linked Smell Loss Is Much Lower Now: Study
U.S. News & World Report reported:
One of the signature symptoms of COVID-19 infection in the early months of the pandemic was a loss of sense of smell. Now, new research finds that is no longer the case, thanks to the new variants that have been circulating more recently.
The risk of losing a sense of taste or smell is now only about 6% to 7% of what it was during the pandemic’s early stages, according to researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Medicine in Richmond, Va.
The findings were published recently in the journal Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery.
Researchers don’t know why fewer people are now losing their sense of smell with infection, but higher immunity to the virus could be a factor.
China Approves World’s First XBB-Specialized COVID Vaccine as Second Wave Nears End by June
A recombinant trivalent COVID-19 trimeric protein vaccine developed by WestVac Biopharma and West China Medical Center at Sichuan University, effective against the most recent XBB variants, has received emergency use approval in China.
This marks the world’s first approved XBB-targeting vaccine, highlighting China’s leading position in COVID-19 vaccine research and development, WestVac Biopharma announced on Thursday.
