Most are transient, but some develop into life-threatening disorders Neurologic symptoms occurred frequently in children and adolescents hospitalized with COVID-19, a large case series of pediatric patients in the U.S. showed. Of 1,695 people 21 or younger hospitalized for acute COVID-19 or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), more than one in five (22%) had
A group of US and European epidemiologists on Tuesday launched an open international database that presents granular information on 5 million anonymized COVID-19 cases from more than 100 countries. Each case record in the database, which is housed at Global.health, contains up to 40 variables, including information such as the patient’s demographics and location, the date
There has been some research that suggests the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine provides some protection after one dose. Researchers at Israel’s largest hospital looked at what happened after 7,000 staff got vaccinated with the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. By the second to fourth week after they got the first shot, rates of symptomatic infection were down by
Vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infection are crucial for an effective global pandemic response. In The Lancet, Merryn Voysey and colleagues report the updated primary efficacy results for the Oxford–AstraZeneca ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine from three single-blind, randomised controlled trials in the UK and Brazil and one double-blind study in South Africa. A subsequent report of
The topics was discussed in a recent webinar that the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) held to “demystify” the new viral variants. Each consists of several mutations. Will the variants fuel “a novel stage of contagion, COVID 2.0?” opened George Daley, MD, PhD, dean of Harvard Medical School. “What has been unsettling is how many times mutations
A variant of SARS-CoV-2 that emerged in southeast England in November 2020 is more transmissible than pre-existing variants, a new modeling study of Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, published on Science, finds. Further analyses suggest the variant B.1.1.7 will lead to large resurgences of COVID-19 cases.
EMA’s human medicines committee (CHMP) has started a rolling review of Sputnik V (Gam-COVID-Vac), a COVID-19 vaccine1 developed by Russia’s Gamaleya National Centre of Epidemiology and Microbiology. The EU applicant for this medicine is R-Pharm Germany GmbH. The CHMP’s decision to start the rolling review is based on results from laboratory studies and clinical studies in adults.
All current vaccines for COVID-19 utilize ancestral wild type SARS-CoV-2 Spike with the goal of generating protective neutralizing antibodies. The recent emergence and rapid spread of several SARS-CoV-2 variants carrying multiple Spike mutations raise concerns about possible immune escape. One variant, first identified in the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7, also called 501Y.V1 or 20I), contains eight
Study in JAMA reports interim findings from CDC-funded Overcoming COVID-19 Public Health Surveillance Registry; other studies ongoing Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) was first formally recognized in May 2020 as a post-infectious syndrome in children exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. In today’s JAMA, a study led by Boston Children’s Hospital refines the medical understanding of MIS-C and helps
“The Janssen COVID-19 vaccine is a very welcome addition to the arsenal of COVID-19 vaccines and other prevention strategies. When tested among 45,000 volunteers, the single-injection vaccine proved 77 percent effective in preventing severe/critical COVID-19 occurring at least 14 days after vaccination and 85 percent effective in preventing severe/critical COVID-19 occurring at least 28 days
