The U.S. announced new COVID-19 testing requirements Wednesday for all travelers from China, joining other nations imposing restrictions because of a surge of infections. ...
Pandemics don’t go away because people get bored with them. And COVID-19 has shown an unusual ability to adapt to our defenses against it. It is certainly not “just the flu” as some slackers and anti-vaxxers foolishly claim.
Researchers have discovered that the Omicron BA.2 subvariant can produce brain inflammation.
New research on the Omicron subvariant of the coronavirus has suggested the pathogen could be changing how it attacks the human body - shifting from infecting respiratory systems to increasingly targeting the brain. Researchers from Australia and France found BA.5 - the coronavirus subvariant driving what is now the world's biggest surge of infections in China - did much more severe damage to mouse brains and cultured human brain tissues than the previous BA.1 subvariant, leading to brain inflammation, weight loss and death. The findings challenge the common belief that viruses usually evolve to become less pathogenic. "Compared with BA. 1, we found that a BA.5 isolate displayed increased pathogenicity in K18-hACE2 mice with rapid weight loss, brain infection and encephalitis, and mortality. In addition, BA.5 productively infected human brain organoids significantly better than BA. 1," a manuscript of the research said.
The bivalent boosters from Pfizer and Moderna provide improved protection against BA.5.
New Covid boosters work better against infection than previous shots, CDC finds
The first real-world data on the new omicron vaccines find that they are better at preventing symptomatic Covid infections than the earlier doses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.
The findings fortify messaging from public health officials that the new shots, from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, should provide people with the best protection against Covid this winter, according to the CDC report.
Both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s new boosters target BA.4 and BA.5, along with the original coronavirus strain, in a single dose.
If you plan to attend a crowded New Year’s celebration, it’s a good idea to get the bivalent booster now.
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