Article Summary
May 10, 2021
School Reopenings, Mobility, and COVID-19 Spread: Evidence from Texas
[Working paper, not peer-reviewed] A modeling study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that school reopenings in Texas in the fall of 2020 may have accelerated community spread of COVID-19, with 43,000 additional cases and more than 800 additional deaths within the first two months following reopenings. The report notes that schools in…
Reverse-Transcribed SARS-CoV-2 RNA Can Integrate into the Genome of Cultured Human Cells and Can Be Expressed in Patient-Derived Tissues
A study using RNA sequencing found evidence to suggest that SARS-CoV-2 RNA may be able to integrate into human cell genomes in vitro, perhaps explaining the persistence of viral RNA among patients even after recovery from COVID-19. The authors found evidence that suggests viral–host chimeric transcripts are created via long interspersed nuclear elements, which reverse-transcribe…
Self-Reported Smell and Taste Recovery in Coronavirus Disease 2019 Patients: A One-Year Prospective Study
More than 20% of patients surveyed in Italy who recovered from mild-to-moderate symptomatic COVID-19 reported altered sense of smell or taste one year after initial symptom onset (prevalence = 57/286, 21%). 34 participants reported both smell and taste dysfunction, while 15 reported smell impairment alone and 5 taste disorder alone after 1 year. Of 187…
Vaccination Boosts Naturally Enhanced Neutralizing Breadth to SARS-CoV-2 One Year after Infection
[Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] Among 63 COVID-19 convalescent individuals assessed at 1.3, 6.2 and 12 months after infection, antibody reactivity to the receptor binding domain (RBD), neutralizing activity, and the number of RBD-specific memory B cells remained relatively stable from 6 to 12 months in those who had not been vaccinated. Among the 41% of the…
Short-Term Effects of BNT162b2 MRNA COVID-19 Vaccination on Physiological Measures a Prospective Study
[Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] A prospective study of adults (n = 160) in Israel who had not been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 evaluated physiological changes in participants before and after their second Pfizer-BioNTech dose. Participants were given a chest-patch sensor to wear for four days, starting one day before vaccination. The sensor measured 13 physiological parameters…
Meta-Analysis of Risk of Vaccine-Induced Immune Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia Following ChAdOx1-S Recombinant Vaccine
[Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] Pooled estimates of vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) cumulative incidence among individuals who received Oxford-AstraZeneca/Covishield vaccine in 10 countries found an overall risk of 1 in 139,000. For those aged 65 and over, the risk was about 1 in 1,000,000, while for those under 55, the risk was between 1 in 20,000…
Progressive and Parallel Decline of Humoral and T Cell Immunity in Convalescent Health Care Workers with Asymptomatic or Mild-Moderate SARS-CoV-2 Infection
Among healthcare workers in Spain who recovered from COVID-19 (n = 22), T-cell response was significantly lower among those with early loss of antibodies (6 cases, 27%) a median of 1.8 months after diagnosis. After 5.1 months, 77% of participants had antibody decline (41% seroreverted; p<0.01), and 36% lost T-cell response (75% lost response to…
Performance of Three SARS-CoV-2 Immunoassays, Three Rapid Lateral Flow Tests and a Novel Bead-Based Affinity Surrogate Test for the Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies in Human Serum
A study comparing the performance of three commercial immunoassays to detect SARS-CoV-2 IgA and IgG antibodies (Euroimmun SARS-COV-2 IgA/IgG, Mikrogen recomWell SARS-CoV-2 IgA/IgG, and SERION ELISA agile SARS-CoV-2 IgA/IgG) and three rapid lateral flow tests (Abbott Panbio COVID-19 IgG/IgM, NADAL COVID-19 IgG/IgM, and Cleartest Corona 2019-nCOV IgG/IgM) to a gold standard plaque-reduction neutralization test (PRNT50) found that the…
The Effect of Convalescent Plasma Therapy on Mortality Among Patients With COVID-19: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
A systematic review and meta-analysis found that patients with COVID-19 who received convalescent plasma in randomized clinical trials (n=10 studies) and matched control studies (n=20 studies) had lower mortality rates compared with patients receiving standard treatments (OR = 0.58). In addition, exploratory analysis found that early treatment (within 3 days of hospital admission) of higher…
Precision Health Diagnostic and Surveillance Network Uses S Gene Target Failure (SGTF) Combined with Sequencing Technologies to Identify Emerging SARS-CoV-2 Variants
[Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] A genomic surveillance algorithm developed to combine RT-PCR and sequencing technologies to identify SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern found the frequency of S Gene Target Failure (SGTF) exponentially to 47% and 48% by the last week of March 2021, in both Puerto Rico and US laboratories, respectively. SGTF is used as a proxy…
Previous page Next page