Covid19-Sources

The potential for masks to act as fomites in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has been suggested but not demonstrated experimentally or observationally. In this study, we aerosolized a suspension of SARS-CoV-2 in saliva and used a vacuum pump to pull the aerosol through six different types of masks. After 1 h at 28 °C and 80% RH, SARS-CoV-2 infectivity was not detectable on an N95 and surgical mask, was reduced by 0.7 log10 on a nylon/spandex mask, and was unchanged on a polyester mask and two different cotton masks when recovered by elution in a buffer. SARS-CoV-2 RNA remained stable for 1 h on all masks. We pressed artificial skin against the contaminated masks and detected the transfer of viral RNA but no infectious virus to the skin. The potential for masks contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols to act as fomites appears to be less than indicated by studies involving SARS-CoV-2 in very large droplets.

Does wearing a face mask help to prevent COVID? Three and a half years after the pandemic began, here's what scientists have learned.

null

Immunology; Virology; Structural biology; Computational bioinformatics

This report describes increases in emergency department visits for mental health conditions among adolescent females in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Why were misinformation doctors so eager to spread the easily-refutable myth that "no healthy child" had died of COVID?

Continuous SARS-CoV-2 adaptations generate increasingly transmissible variants. These succeeding variants show ever-increasing evasion of suppressive antibodies and host factors, as well as increasing invasion of susceptible host cells. Here, we evaluated ...

The COVID-19 epidemic has led to a significant increase in the number of deaths. This has resulted in forensic autopsies focusing on additional diagnostic possibilities. The following article is a summary of 23 autopsies of sudden and unexplained deaths. Particularly noteworthy are the described cases of children whose deaths were originally classified as SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). All tests were performed at the Department of Forensic Medicine and Forensic Genetics, Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin. Autopsy analyses were extended to include diagnostics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus using molecular methods and a detailed histopathological analysis of lung tissue. The material for molecular tests consisted of a nasopharyngeal swab taken postmortem and a lung tissue homogenate. In both cases, the RT-PCR method with CT cut-off point analysis was used for diagnosis. In all analyzed cases, the lungs showed massive congestion and increased fragility and cohesion. The tested material showed the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which indicated various stages of infection. It was observed that the higher the virus expression in the lungs, the lower or undetectable it was in the nasopharyngeal swab. This may explain false negative results during life in swabs. An interesting finding is that child deaths classified as SIDS also showed the presence of the virus. This may constitute a new direction of research.

Background Since the first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Africa was detected on February 14, 2020, the cumulative confirmations reached 15 207 including 831 deaths by April 13, 2020. Africa has been described as one of the most vulnerable region with the COVID-19 infection during the initial phase of the outbreak, due to the fact that Africa is a great commercial partner of China and some other EU and American countries. Which result in large volume of travels by traders to the region more frequently and causing African countries face even bigger health threat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the fact that the control and management of COVID-19 pandemic rely heavily on a country’s health care system, and on average Africa has poor health care system which make it more vulnerable indicating a need for timely intervention to curtail the spread. In this paper, we estimate the exponential growth rate and basic reproduction number (R0) of COVID-19 in Africa to show the potential of the virus to spread, and reveal the importance of sustaining stringent health measures to control the disease in Africa. Methods We analyzed the initial phase of the epidemic of COVID-19 in Africa between 1 March and 13 April 2020, by using the simple exponential growth model. We examined the publicly available materials published by the WHO situation report to show the potential of COVID-19 to spread without sustaining strict health measures. The Poisson likelihood framework is adopted for data fitting and parameter estimation. We modelled the distribution of COVID-19 generation interval (GI) as Gamma distributions with a mean of 4.7 days and standard deviation of 2.9 days estimated from previous work, and compute the basic reproduction number. Results We estimated the exponential growth rate as 0.22 per day (95% CI: 0.20–0.24), and the basic reproduction number, R0, as 2.37 (95% CI: 2.22–2.51) based on the assumption that the exponential growth starting from 1 March 2020. With an R0 at 2.37, we quantified the instantaneous transmissibility of the outbreak by the time-varying effective reproductive number to show the potential of COVID-19 to spread across African region. Conclusions The initial growth of COVID-19 cases in Africa was rapid and showed large variations across countries. Our estimates should be useful in preparedness planning against further spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in Africa.

Several indicators were employed to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, our objective was to compare the instantaneous reproductive number and the epidemic growth rate in the Spanish population.Data on daily numbers of cases, admissions into ...

Abstract. New variants of SARS-CoV-2 show remarkable heterogeneity in their relative fitness over both time and space. In this paper we extend the tools availab

An increased incidence of chilblains has been observed during the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic and attribu...

Nature Communications - Here, Dias de Melo et al. assess the clinical, olfactory, and neuroinflammatory conditions of golden hamsters infected with SARS-CoV-2 wt and VOCs and report that viruses...

Nature Communications - Here, Dias de Melo et al. assess the clinical, olfactory, and neuroinflammatory conditions of golden hamsters infected with SARS-CoV-2 wt and VOCs and report that viruses...

The emergence of different variants of SARS-CoV-2 has produced a wide range of clinical profiles and symptoms in patients. For the first time, researchers at the Institut Pasteur and Université Paris ...

Background As SARS-CoV-2 has transitioned from a pandemic to endemic disease, the majority of new infections have been among previously infected individuals. To manage the risks and benefits of ongoing COVID-19 policies, it is important to understand whether prior infection modifies the severity of subsequent infections. Methods We used data from first and second COVID-19 episodes in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), a collection of health systems who provide de-identified electronic health records for research purposes. Our analysis was a sequential series of nested trial emulations. In the first of two analytic stages, we created a month-specific model of the probability of prior infection for each individual. In the second stage, we used an ordinal logistic regression with inverse probability weights calculated in the first stage to simulate a series of monthly trials comparing severity between the cohorts of first and second infections. In addition to cohort-wide effect estimates, we also conducted analyses among race/ethnicity, sex, and age subgroups. Results From an initial cohort of 7,446,481 combined first and second infections, we identified a cohort of 2,227,484 infections, among which 7.6% were second infections. Ninety-four percent of patients with two recorded infections experienced mild disease for both. The overall odds ratio (OR) for more severe disease with prior infection was 1.06 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.03 – 1.10). Monthly point estimates of the OR ranged from 0.56 (95% CI: 0.37 – 0.84) in October 2020 to 1.64 (95% CI: 1.33 – 2.00) in February 2023. In most subgroups, the effect of prior infection was significant. In 8 out of 10 subgroups, the maximum monthly OR occurred after the minimum monthly OR, suggesting that protection has waned throughout the pandemic. Conclusion Overall, prior infection was associated with a significant slightly elevated risk of severe disease. This effect varied month to month. As the pandemic proceeded, the effect of prior infection tended to evolve from generally protective during the pre-Omicron era to unprotective during the Omicron era. This points to the need for continued strategies to avert and minimize the harms of COVID-19, rather than relying upon immunity acquired through previous infection. Question Does prior infection with SARS-CoV-2 affect the severity of subsequent COVID-19 episodes? Findings We observed a mild protective effect of prior infection during the early and mid-stages of the pandemic that waned after the rise of the Omicron variants, ultimately resulting in loss of protection or a tendency toward more severe second infections. Meaning Prior infection alone is likely not enough to avert the worst public health harms of endemic SARS-CoV-2. Interventions to avoid infection and reduce the severity of COVID-19 will still be important in the post-pandemic era. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This project was sponsored by an award from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative's Public Health Answers to Speed Tractable Results (PHASTR) program and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (Award #NCATS-P00438-E-2). ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: The study design was exempted from human subjects research review by the American Academy of Family Medicine institutional review board. I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Yes Data are available online through the National COVID Cohort Collaborative () with signed data use agreement and project approval.

The median number of organ support–free days was 7 for the vitamin C group, compared with 10 for the control group (adjusted proportional odds ratio [OR], 0.88 [95% credible interval [CrI], 0.73 to 1.06]), and the posterior probabilities were 8.6% (efficacy), 91.4% (harm), and 99.9% (futility), the authors said. For patients who were not critically ill and received vitamin C, the median number of organ support–free days was 22, the same as the placebo group.

Nature Communications - The duration of symptomatic COVID-19 and its impacts on health and quality of life are not well understood. In this study, the authors report results from a survey of...

Nature Communications - Evidence from animal models suggest a vital role for mucosal vaccination in inducing protection from coronavirus infection. Here the authors examine the B and T cell...

OBJECTIVE. The aim of this study was to investigate the incidence of type 1 diabetes in children and adolescents during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Infection-related diabetes can arise as a result of virus-associated β-cell destruction. Clinical data suggest that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), causing the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), impairs glucose homoeostasis, but experimental evidence that SARS-CoV …

OBJECTIVE. We investigated the incidence of pediatric type 2 diabetes (T2D) in Germany during 2 years of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (2020–

This study compares body mass index (BMI) of youths during the COVID-19 pandemic with BMI during the same period in 2019 to determine whether they experienced pandemic-related weight gain.

npj Vaccines - A single-dose of intranasal vaccination with a live-attenuated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate promotes protective mucosal and systemic immunity

Im Herbst leiden mehr Menschen an Erkältungen, Grippe – und Corona. Was gilt aktuell eigentlich für Beschäftigte mit positivem Corona-Test? Müssen sie zur Arbeit, auch wenn sie symptomfrei sind?

Natarajan et al. perform a longitudinal study of fecal SARS-CoV-2 RNA shedding in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19, revealing that patients can shed RNA for up to 7 months after infection, that shedding is associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, and that the gastrointestinal tract may be infected even after the respiratory infection has cleared.

Intranasal vaccination represents a promising approach for preventing disease caused by respiratory pathogens by eliciting a mucosal immune response in the respiratory tract that may act as an early barrier to infection and transmission. This study investigated immunogenicity and protective efficacy of intranasally administered messenger RNA (mRNA)–lipid nanoparticle (LNP) encapsulated vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Syrian golden hamsters. Intranasal mRNA-LNP vaccination systemically induced spike-specific binding [immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgA] and neutralizing antibodies. Intranasally vaccinated hamsters also had decreased viral loads in the respiratory tract, reduced lung pathology, and prevented weight loss after SARS-CoV-2 challenge. Together, this study demonstrates successful immunogenicity and protection against respiratory viral infection by an intranasally administered mRNA-LNP vaccine.

DMZ – FORSCHUNG ¦ Lena Wallner ¦ Die kürzlich veröffentlichte Studie "Viral kinetics of sequential SARS-CoV-2 infections" hat uns spannende Erkenntnisse darüber geliefert, wie aufeinanderfolgende SARS-CoV-2-Infektionen verlaufen. Ein Team von Forschern, darunter Stephen M. Kissler, James A. Hay, Joseph R. Fauver, Christina Mack, Caroline G. Tai, Deverick J. Anderson, David D. Ho, Nathan D. Grubaugh und Yonatan H. Grad, hat diese bemerkenswerte Arbeit durchgeführt. Die Studie konzentrierte sich hauptsächlich darauf, wie sich eine vorherige SARS-CoV-2-Infektion auf den Verlauf späterer Infektionen auswirkt. Die Forscher analysierten beeindruckende 94.812 longitudinale RT-qPCR-Messungen von Abstrichen aus den Nasenvorhöfen und dem Oropharynx. Dabei stießen sie auf 71 Personen, die zwischen dem 11. März 2020 und dem 28. Juli 2022 zwei gut dokumentierte SARS-CoV-2-Infektionen erlebten. Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie sind äußerst aufschlussreich. Im Vergleich zur ersten Infektion zeigte sich, dass die zweite Infektion in der Regel eine kürzere Clearance-Zeit aufwies. Dies bedeutet, dass der Körper das Virus schneller beseitigte. Interessanterweise blieb das relative Verhältnis der Clearance-Zeit einer Person im Vergleich zu anderen, die mit derselben Virusvariante infiziert waren, in beiden Infektionen etwa gleich. Diese Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass eine frühere SARS-CoV-2-Infektion, ähnlich wie eine Impfung, die Dauer nachfolgender akuter SARS-CoV-2-Infektionen hauptsächlich durch die Verkürzung der Clearance-Zeit verkürzt. Darüber hinaus scheint es ein inhärentes Element der Immunantwort oder einen anderen Faktor im Wirtsorganismus zu geben, der die Fähigkeit einer Person zur SARS-CoV-2-Clearance beeinflusst und über aufeinanderfolgende Infektionen hinweg bestehen bleibt. Diese Erkenntnisse sind von großer Bedeutung, da sie unser Verständnis darüber vertiefen, wie Immunität gegen SARS-CoV-2 funktioniert und wie dies den Verlauf von Infektionen beeinflussen kann. Sie könnten auch wichtige Auswirkungen auf klinische und öffentliche Gesundheitsrichtlinien haben. Dennoch müssen wir einige Einschränkungen dieser Studie berücksichtigen. Die untersuchte Kohorte war größtenteils jung, männlich und gesund. Es wurden keine Daten zu anderen Gesundheitsfaktoren erfasst, und die Ergebnisse könnten sich in verschiedenen Bevölkerungsgruppen unterscheiden. Die Forscher betonen die Notwendigkeit weiterer Studien, um ihre Ergebnisse zu bestätigen und die zugrunde liegenden Mechanismen besser zu verstehen. Trotzdem bietet diese Studie wertvolle Einblicke in die Dynamik aufeinanderfolgender SARS-CoV-2-Infektionen und deren Auswirkungen auf die Clearance-Zeit des Virus im Körper. Es wird spannend sein zu sehen, wie diese Erkenntnisse die Entwicklung von Impf- und Behandlungsstrategien beeinflussen werden. Wir können sicher sein, dass weitere Forschung folgen wird, um die Details dieser faszinierenden Entdeckungen zu klären.

The effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine in the prevention of post-COVID conditions: a systematic literature review and meta-analysis of the latest research - Volume 3 Issue 1

Post-viral syndromes are associated with serotonin reduction, which may contribute to the neurological and cognitive symptoms seen in individuals with Long COVID.