Disease/Infection News

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Researchers report loss of antibody potency against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant

Researchers find that vaccine-mediated protection against SARS-CoV-2 is significantly reduced against the Omicron variant.

23 Dec 2021

Coinfection of SARS-CoV-2 and human rhinovirus associated with more severe health outcomes

Researchers discuss the incidence and effect of coinfections with SARS-CoV-2 and human rhinovirus.

23 Dec 2021

Spatiotemporal patterns of Delta variant progression and its associated health interventions

In a new study, researchers adopted a prospective space-time scan method to conduct spatiotemporal analysis at the district level in the seven selected countries in SEA from June 2021 to October 2021.

23 Dec 2021

Impact of the rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in Southern Africa

A new study has focused on the genomic profile and early transmission dynamics of Omicron. This study revealed the dominance of the Omicron variant in regions with high levels of population immunity.

23 Dec 2021

Exploring why children have milder COVID-19 infections compared to adults

A new study has revealed that an activated pre-exposure innate interferon response in airways together with significantly reduced systemic interferon-stimulated populations are associated with relatively milder severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in children.

23 Dec 2021

Exploring immunity and severe disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant

A new study describes the findings of a seroprevalence survey intended to establish the infection rates and the incidence of severe COVID-19 through December 15, 2021, in Gauteng, a crowded province that compresses a quarter of the country’s people into less than 2% of its area.

23 Dec 2021

Assessing the clinical severity of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant

A recent preprint examines the proportion of Omicron infection and the risk of severe disease with this variant of SARS-CoV-2.

23 Dec 2021

Pediatric hospital admissions rise with omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant

A new study examines the impact of the Omicron variant on hospitalizations among children in South Africa.

23 Dec 2021

Mapping access to HIV care

In this interview, we speak to Professor Diego Cuadros about his latest research in which he mapped individuals' access to HIV care in Africa.

23 Dec 2021

Study reports that children develop sustained cross-reactive adaptive immunity against coronaviruses

A new study shows that both antibody and cellular arms of the adaptive immune response against SARS-CoV-2 are displayed strong, sustained, and cross-reactive against other coronaviruses, in young children than the immune responses in adults.

23 Dec 2021

Boceprevir-based molecules show high antiviral potency against SARS-CoV-2

In a study posted to the bioRxiv* pre-print server, a team of researchers conducted a structure-activity relationship study of boceprevir-based molecules to find antiviral drug candidates targeting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) protease MPro.

22 Dec 2021

BUSPH researcher partners with journalists, academics to reveal COVID-19's hidden mortality

Dr. Andrew Stokes, assistant professor of global health, is providing mortality data and modeling to the Documenting COVID-19 project and Muckrock in a collaboration that aims to identify the scope of underreported COVID-19 deaths in US counties.

22 Dec 2021

The transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV2 Omicron variant

In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server, researchers developed a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) model-inference system in South Africa to determine transmission dynamics and immune evasion associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus disease (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron variant.

22 Dec 2021

New allocation model to optimize the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, treatments

Lulu Kang, associate professor of applied mathematics at Illinois Institute of Technology and a team of researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago put a new twist on traditional resource allocation models to optimize the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, testing supplies, and other related resources, publishing their findings, "Fair and Diverse Allocation of Scarce Resources," in Socio-Economic Planning Sciences.

22 Dec 2021

How the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant grew to dominate the UK epidemic

Researchers examine SARS-CoV-2 genomes in England to evaluate the effectiveness of COVID-19 policies.

22 Dec 2021

Decline in protection against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron in prior infected and fully vaccinated

In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server, researchers investigated the distribution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Delta and Omicron variants among coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) positive individuals who were either naive, fully vaccinated, or had a previous infection to further investigate possible escape from vaccine- or infection-induced immunity by Omicron compared to Delta.

22 Dec 2021

Scientists develop methods to quantify the transmissibility of new COVID-19 variants

As the discovery of the new omicron variant illustrates, new COVID-19 variants will continue to regularly emerge.

22 Dec 2021

T-cell response to Omicron after an mRNA COVID vaccine booster

In a recent prospective observational study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server, researchers determined Omicron variant-associated T cell responses before and after a third dose of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccination against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in anti-CD20-treated multiple sclerosis (MS) patients.

22 Dec 2021

More breakthrough infections but less severe COVID-19 with Omicron

In a recent study posted to the bioRxiv* pre-print server, an international team of researchers reported the occurrence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) breakthrough infections (BTIs) among health care workers (HCWs) participating in a phase III vaccine trial in Sisonke, South Africa.

22 Dec 2021

Infect, replicate, and rapidly mutate: Computational virus modeling study

A new bioRxiv* preprint study led by Barbara A Jones of IBM Research-Almaden in San Jose, California, used computational modeling to investigate how viruses rapidly mutate as well as how they respond or adapt to different host conditions. They observed a range of behaviors from glassy dynamics, bimodal quasispecies distributions, and periodic steady states.

22 Dec 2021