Category: Emerging Infectious Diseases
Virginia USA: “Potential disease outbreak” at high school causes hundreds of students to miss school with flu-like symptoms
(CBS News) A Virginia high school will remain open even as hundreds of students continue to stay home because of flu-like illnesses. Stafford High School, located in Fredericksburg, Virginia, had a “high number of student and staff illnesses” reported last week, prompting the school to shut down all activities and athletics scheduled from Friday through […]
Oct 25, 2022
Cardiovascular disease and mortality sequelae of COVID-19 in the UK Biobank
(BMJ) Objective To examine association of COVID-19 with incident cardiovascular events in 17 871 UK Biobank cases between March 2020 and 2021. Methods COVID-19 cases were defined using health record linkage. Each case was propensity score-matched to two uninfected controls on age, sex, deprivation, body mass index, ethnicity, diabetes, prevalent ischaemic heart disease (IHD), smoking, hypertension and high […]
Oct 25, 2022
People who caught mild Covid had increased risk of blood clots, British study finds
(NBC) Patients with mild Covid, defined as those not hospitalized, were 2.7 times more likely to develop blood clots, according to the study published in the British Medical Journal on Monday. Patients hospitalized with Covid were 27 times more likely to develop blood clots, 21 times more likely to suffer heart failure and 17 times […]
Oct 25, 2022
Merck to donate Ebola vaccine candidate for research program in Uganda
(Reuters) Merck said on Tuesday it was planning to produce and donate investigational Sudan ebolavirus vaccine to a global non-profit organization’s research program in Uganda, which is facing an outbreak of the disease. The investigational vaccine that will be donated to IAVI is similar to Merck’s Ervebo vaccine, which is approved against the Zaire ebolavirus […]
Oct 25, 2022
Anti-Inflammatory Agents May Have Role in COVID-19 Pneumonia
(MedPageToday) Infliximab and abatacept showed trends for improved outcomes in ACTIV-1 IM trial. Use of the anti-inflammatory agents infliximab (Remicade) and abatacept (Orencia) added to standard of care showed a hint of improvement in outcomes for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia, according to results from the ACTIV-1 IM trial. Compared with a median time to […]
Oct 25, 2022
During the first year of the pandemic, men died from COVID at a much higher rate than women
(CDC) Death rates in the United States are higher in rural than urban areas, andthe difference has grown over the last 2 decades (1). Death rates for all ofthe 10 leading causes of death in 2019 were higher in rural than urban areas(1). In 2020, deaths due to COVID-19 became the third leading cause ofdeath […]
Oct 25, 2022
Got questions about the timing of flu and Covid vaccines? Here’s what experts say
(STAT) Over the past few weeks, cases of flu have begun to creep up across the U.S., with spikes in the southeast and south central part of the country. Flu hospitalizations are also on the rise. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s influenza tracking team, all signs point to an earlier than usual […]
Oct 25, 2022
Omicron keeps finding new evolutionary tricks to outsmart our immunity
(NPR) Throughout the pandemic, the virus that causes COVID-19 has been evolving fast, blindsiding the world with one variant after another. But the World Health Organization hasn’t given a SARS-CoV-2 variant a Greek name in almost a year, a move that’s reserved for new variants that do or could have significant public health impacts, such […]
Oct 25, 2022
We May Have Only a Few Months to Prevent the Next Pandemic
(NYT) Dr. Spencer is an emergency doctor and professor at Brown. He survived Ebola in 2014 after treating patients in Guinea and recently treated Covid-19 patients in New York City. I’m often asked what it felt like to have Ebola. Eight years later, I still struggle to respond. But the truth is that having Ebola […]
Oct 25, 2022
A booster is your best shot now
(Ground Truths Blog) I know it’s hard to keep track of the new variants, with esoteric designations and without names (Hello WHO, where are you?). But several of these are quite troubling because their growth advantage compared to BA.5 (the wave we’re getting over) is substantial, chiefly related to their ability to work around our […]
Oct 24, 2022