Coronavirus / COVID

A large study of patients treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) demonstrates common genetic links that point to a potential reason for people progressing to life-threatening forms of the respiratory virus.

Accelerating bivalent booster vaccine campaigns for children could reduce pediatric hospitalizations and school absenteeism.

Anticoagulant treatment for 3 to 6 months was sufficient for the majority of COVID-19 patients with venous thromboembolism, the study authors found.

The recommendations look to increase usage of the antiviral and decrease the routine use of the recombinant IL-1 inhibitor for COVID-19 treatment.

Antifungal therapy was frequently initiated before essential diagnostic elements confirmed invasive fungal infections in critically ill COVID-19 patients.

COVID-19 patients treated with the monoclonal antibodies tixagevimab and cilgavimab had few hospitalizations but no deaths.

Although vaccine effectiveness against the Omicron variant drops rapidly over time, a booster dose bolsters protection levels.

This study determined the efficacy of face masks at reducing exhaled particles in children, as well as whether the type of activity affected the concentration and size of particles.

On the same day WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced she will be stepping down at the end of June.

COVID-19 symptom or viral rebound in the absence of antiviral treatment is common, but the combination of symptom and viral relapse is rare.

Decreased racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 mortalities between the first and Omicron waves of the pandemic could be explained by increased deaths in non-Hispanic White adults and changes in the geographic spread of the pandemic.

The vaccine efficacy of the Novavax’s NVX-CoV2373 was 79.5% in adolescents.

The complexity of dealing with emerging infectious diseases makes preparedness difficult.

An epidemiologist offers some insights on what we need to take into a potential next pandemic including infrastructure investment and more effectively communicating messages to the public.

Panel moderator Rodney Rohde, PhD, notes that word choice is important and clinicians should emphasize the COVID-19 vaccine is not a live virus but is instead designed to challenge the immune system to protect against the virus.

The study authors wanted to further understand post-COVID-19 infection “brain fog” and sought a new name for the phenomenon.

The antiviral is being studied for treatment for those at high-risk for severe COVID-19, no matter their vaccine status.

The key is using the right dose on the right patient at the right time.

This study surveyed parents’ opinions on the risks of COVID-19 infection versus vaccination to determine how they affected the decision to vaccinate a child against COVID-19.

The combination appears more likely than either agent alone to reduce risk of early COVID-19 symptoms worsening and requiring hospitalization.

Omicron lineages, and especially BA.5, were determined to have higher reinfection rates and lower disease severity than previously circulating variants of concern.

The CDC and FDA now recommend the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA bivalent COVID-19 vaccines be used for all vaccinations in the US.

Patients who contracted COVID-19 later in the pandemic (2021-2022) were more likely to develop new chronic diseases after infection than patients who caught COVID-19 in 2020.

Anemia is both common and independently associated with poor clinical outcomes in respiratory infections, including COVID-19.

The FDA moved to harmonize primary and booster COVID-19 vaccine doses, deciding only the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent mRNA vaccines should be administered to individuals 6 months and older.

Post-COVID-19 conditions were more common in unvaccinated children than in children who had received at least 1 dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Poor sleep quality, deterioration in sleep quality, and sleep regularity were all linked to impaired lung function.

These study findings suggest COVID-19 admission testing may not be necessary in hospitals, as most asymptomatic COVID-19 patients were not infectious.

People with COVID-19 who were hospitalized had a slightly higher rate of death than those with influenza. However, there were considerably more severe COVID-19 cases than the flu, leading to a much higher number of overall deaths associated with SARS-CoV-2.

This study of health care access and affordability found adults with long COVID reported more unmet health care needs in the past 12 months.