Covid

As a result precautions such as wearing masks and better ventilation in public spaces were tragically delayed, says a new report

The data also reveals that 72,000 people paid at least $6.7 million for Covid-19 consultations promoted by America’s Frontline Doctors and vaccine conspiracist Simone Gold.

The data on the drug, developed in partnership with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, could be a possible game-changer for treatment of patients.

A new leaked document is stirring up another frenzy over the pandemic’s origins. What does it really tell us?

Studies of bats in China and Laos show southeast Asia is a hotspot for potentially dangerous viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2.

A vaccine advisory panel voted Thursday to recommend that a wide swath of Americans should be offered Covid-19 vaccine booster shots.

The R.1 variant has mutations that could help it bypass the protections given to people by receiving two doses of the vaccine.

Coronavirus infections are falling in the state, and experts credit a combination of...

Hospital CEO aims to educate staff on the full scope of what they're claiming.

Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.

We were surprised, but pleased, when the US announced plans to support a patent waiver for COVID-19 treatments and vaccines (over...

The food shortages being reported by a growing number of household names are likely to last forever, a leading industry figure has said in a stark ...

On August 30, 2021, the WHO classified the SARS-CoV-2 Mu variant (B.1.621 lineage) as a new variant of interest. The WHO defines “comparative assessment of virus characteristics and public health risks” as primary action in response to the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants. Here, we demonstrate that the Mu variant is highly resistant to sera from COVID-19 convalescents and BNT162b2-vaccinated individuals. Direct comparison of different SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins revealed that Mu spike is more resistant to serum-mediated neutralization than all other currently recognized variants of interest (VOI) and concern (VOC). This includes the Beta variant (B.1.351) that has been suggested to represent the most resistant variant to convalescent and vaccinated sera to date (e.g., Collier et al, Nature, 2021; Wang et al, Nature, 2021). Since breakthrough infection by newly emerging variants is a major concern during the current COVID-19 pandemic (Bergwerk et al., NEJM, 2021), we believe that our findings are of significant public health interest. Our results will help to better assess the risk posed by the Mu variant for vaccinated, previously infected and naïve populations. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Christopher Ingraham, of the Why Axis newsletter: The net result of this relentless pressure: even in the midst of a variant surge that’s proven especially lethal in conservative areas, nearly 40 percent of Republicans say they’re either unwilling to get the vaccine or uncertain about it, compared to just 15 percent of Democrats. But the […]

STAT is making available real-time data that shows how fast Covid-19 is accelerating in every state and territory.

Our daily estimate of excess deaths around the world | Graphic detail

MIAMI (AP) — Funeral director Wayne Bright has seen grief piled upon grief during the latest COVID-19 surge. A woman died of the virus, and as her family was planning the funeral, her mother was also struck down.

I updated the covdata package for the first time in a while, as I’ll be using it to teach in the near future. As a side-effect, I ended up taking a look at what the ongoing polarization or divergence of the COVID experience is like in different parts of the United States. Here I use county-level data to draw out some of the trends. The idea is to take the time series of COVID-19 deaths and split it into deciles by some county-level quantity of interest.

Nonseroconversion after SARS-CoV-2 Infection

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Service ran the numbers and found that unvaccinated people are 15.4x (or 1,540%) more likely to die from Covid than those who received vaccines, an…

The number of COVID-19 patients in the ICU hit 71 on Friday, tying the previous high on Jan. 20 in Maine after a holiday surge in infections.

The favorite new miracle cure of the far right has been tied to a wave of calls to poison-control centers and dubious prescriptions. Now inmates are caught in the fray.

COVID-19 outbreak associated with an unvaccinated infected teacher in an elementary school from May–June 2021 in Marin County, California.

Israelis who had an infection were more protected against the Delta coronavirus variant than those who had an already highly effective COVID-19 vaccine

Background Reports of waning vaccine-induced immunity against COVID-19 have begun to surface. With that, the comparable long-term protection conferred by previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 remains unclear. Methods We conducted a retrospective observational study comparing three groups: (1)SARS-CoV-2-naïve individuals who received a two-dose regimen of the BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine, (2)previously infected individuals who have not been vaccinated, and (3)previously infected and single dose vaccinated individuals. Three multivariate logistic regression models were applied. In all models we evaluated four outcomes: SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic disease, COVID-19-related hospitalization and death. The follow-up period of June 1 to August 14, 2021, when the Delta variant was dominant in Israel. Results SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant ( P

Voices on the extreme right and extreme left are drowning out opportunities for conversations we should be having about unvaccinated people.

“I don’t want to frighten you,” Israel’s COVID czar Dr. Salman Zarka told parliament this week. “But… unfortunately, the numbers don’t lie.”

Massachusetts schools are likely to face a statewide mask mandate starting Wednesday.

A doctor featured in a Times article published Sunday on the latest wave of COVID-19 speaks for herself in a searing letter to unvaccinated people.

A surge involving the rapidly-transmitting Delta variant in heavily vaccinated countries has led to much hand-wringing that the vaccines are not effective against Delta, or vaccine efficacy wanes after 4-6 months. This has fueled anti-vaccine sentiment suggesting the vaccines are not working, and causing much stress in vaccinated people that they are not as protected as they thought they would be. In this post, I will focus on vaccine efficacy vs. severe disease/hospitalization, which is the ke