Author: Shannon Becker
Thanks!
It’s Thanksgiving week in the U.S, which means Americans are traveling to gather with family, and descending upon the grocery stores to buy all of the delicious carbs, and a turkey. We lived in Germany for several years, and always enjoyed our little village grocery store that put out a display of what they thought […]
Nov 21, 2022
Bird flu found in Southeast Alaska bear cub
(Alaska News) A sick bear discovered last month at Bartlett Cove in Glacier Bay National Park was found to be infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza, the Division of Wildlife Conservation said.“The virus that causes HPAI was detected on both nasal and rectal swabs and in brain tissue screening at Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory […]
Nov 21, 2022
Gang Warfare Cripples Haiti’s Fight Against Cholera
(New York Times) The disease is spreading in the Caribbean nation in part because armed groups control poor neighborhoods with ruthless violence and prevent doctors from providing basic care. To reach the hospital, the mothers traveled the front lines of a gang war, bringing sick babies during lulls in gun battles and passing corpses along […]
Nov 21, 2022
The End of Vaccines at ‘Warp Speed’
(New York Times) Financial and bureaucratic barriers in the United States mean that the next generation of Covid vaccines may well be designed here, but used elsewhere. Operation Warp Speed, the Trump-era program that poured billions of dollars into developing Covid shots, seemed to signal a new dawn of American vaccine making, demonstrating how decades […]
Nov 21, 2022
Vaccine Breakthrough Could Finally Bring COVID to Its Knees
(DailyBeast) With new COVID variants and subvariants evolving faster and faster, each chipping away at the effectiveness of the leading vaccines, the hunt is on for a new kind of vaccine—one that works equally well on current and future forms of the novel coronavirus. Now researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland think they’ve found a […]
Nov 21, 2022
Rare, convergent antibodies targeting the stem helix broadly neutralize diverse betacoronaviruses
(Cell Host and Microbe) Humanity has faced three recent outbreaks of novel betacoronaviruses, emphasizing the need to develop approaches that broadly target coronaviruses. Here, we identify 55 monoclonal antibodies from COVID-19 convalescent donors that bind diverse betacoronavirus spike proteins. Most antibodies targeted an S2 epitope that included the K814 residue and were non-neutralizing. However, 11 […]
Nov 21, 2022
MRI Reveals Significant Brain Abnormalities Post-COVID
(Neuroscience) Using a special type of MRI, researchers have uncovered brain changes in patients up to six months after they recovered from COVID-19, according to a study being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). About one in five adults will develop long-term effects from COVID-19, according to the […]
Nov 21, 2022
Flu variant that hits kids and seniors harder than other strains is dominant in U.S. right now
(CNBC) The H3N2 variant has been associated with more severe flu seasons for children and the elderly in the past, according to the CDC. Public health labs have detected H3N2 in 76% of the more than 3,500 respiratory samples that have tested positive for the flu and were analyzed for the virus subtype The flu […]
Nov 21, 2022
U.S. FDA authorizes Roche’s monkeypox test
(Reuters) The U.S. health regulator on Tuesday issued an emergency use authorization to Roche’s test for the detection of DNA from monkeypox virus in swab specimens collected from people suspected of the virus infection. The tests will be conducted on the Swiss company’s cobas systems, which can also detect HIV, hepatitis B and C viruses. […]
Nov 21, 2022