COVID-19 News and Discussions

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caltrek
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Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology Researchers Detect Coronavirus Particles with “Slow Light”
April 21, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/950325

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Despite all the bad news the COVID-19 pandemic brought upon the world, it has helped us gain a better perspective of our readiness to fend off highly contagious diseases. Rapid diagnostic test kits and PCR testing quickly became essential tools when the pandemic hit, helping with timely diagnoses. However, these tools have inherent limitations. PCR tests are complex and require expensive equipment while rapid diagnostic test kits have lower accuracy.

Against this backdrop, a research group led by Professor Young Min Song of the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Korea has recently developed a new technique to easily visualize viruses using an optical microscope. A recent study explains in detail the operating principle of their detection platform, called the “Gires–Tournois immunoassay platform” (GTIP). This paper was made available online on March 22, 2022, and was published in the journal Advanced Materials on March 26, 2022.

The key element of GTIP is the Gires–Tournois “resonance structure,” a film made from three stacked layers of specific materials that produce a peculiar optical phenomenon called “slow light.” Because of how incident light rebounds inside the resonant layers before being reflected, the color of the platform seen through an optical microscope appears very uniform. However, nanometer-sized virus particles affect the resonance frequency of GTIP in their immediate vicinity by slowing down the light that gets reflected around them. The “slow light” manifests as a vivid color change in the reflected light so that, when viewed through the microscope, the virus particle clusters look like “islands” of a different color compared to the background.

To ensure that their system only detects coronavirus particles, the researchers coated the top layer of GTIP with antibody proteins specific to SARS-CoV-2. Interestingly, not only did the system enable the detection of viral particles, but, by using colorimetric analysis techniques, the researchers could even effectively quantify the number of virus particles present in different areas of a sample depending on the color of the light reflected locally.

The overall simplicity of the design is one of the main selling points of GTIP.
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weatheriscool
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Pfizer COVID-19 third dose vaccine protection against hospitalization from omicron wanes after 3 months: study
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04- ... ation.html
by Kaiser Permanente
A study released April 22 in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine shows that a booster dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine provides strong protection, roughly 80% to 90%, in the first few months against hospital admissions and emergency department visits caused by the delta and omicron variants. However, against omicron, this protection wanes over time—even after a third dose.

"Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 booster doses significantly improve protection against omicron, although that protection seems to wane after 3 months against emergency room visits, and even for hospitalization," said the study's lead author, Sara Y. Tartof, Ph.D., an epidemiologist with the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation and a faculty member of the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, both in Pasadena. "Trends in waning against delta-related outcomes were generally similar to omicron, but with higher effectiveness at each time point than those seen for omicron."
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caltrek
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Cytokine Signature that Allows COVID-19 Patients With Worst Prognosis to be Spotted Early is Identified by Italian Researchers
April 22, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/950522

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) New research being presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Lisbon, Portugal (23-26 April) has identified a panel of cytokines that can help predict which COVID-19 patients are at risk of serious illness and death.

An overreaction of the immune system, in which excessive levels of proteins called cytokines produce damaging levels of inflammation, can lead to organ failure and death in COVID-19 patients.

It isn’t known, however, which cytokines drive the process. Being able to measure levels of these cytokines when patients are admitted to the hospital would allow those with the worst prognosis to be identified and their therapy personalised.

Dr Emanuela Sozio, of the Infectious Disease Clinic, Azienda Sanitaria Universitaria Friuli Centrale, Udine, Italy, and colleagues from Department of Laboratory Medicine, carried out a retrospective study of 415 patients (65.5% male) hospitalised with COVID-19 between May 2020 and March 2021. The cohort included patients with disease of all levels of severity.
Note on Status:
This press release is based on oral presentation L0371 at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) Annual Meeting. The material has been peer reviewed by the congress selection committee. There is no full paper at this stage. As this is an oral presentation there is no poster.
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Some cases of long COVID-19 may be caused by an abnormally suppressed immune system
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04- ... mmune.html
by University of California, Los Angeles

A UCLA-led team of researchers studying the effect of the monoclonal antibody Leronlimab on long COVID-19 may have found a surprising clue to the baffling syndrome, one that contradicts their initial hypothesis. An abnormally suppressed immune system may be to blame, not a persistently hyperactive one as they had suspected.

The study, which was funded by Leronlimab maker CytoDyn Inc. and conducted by researchers either employed by or serving as consultants to the company, will be published online April 22 in the peer reviewed journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

"While this was a small pilot study, it does suggest that some people with long COVID may actually have under-active immune systems after recovering from COVID-19, which means that boosting immunity in those individuals could be a treatment," said senior author Dr. Otto Yang, a professor of medicine, division of infectious diseases, and of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

COVID-19 is known to be caused by hyperactive immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 resulting in damage to lungs and other organs, and sometimes what is known as a "cytokine storm" that overwhelms the individual, which could lead to severe illness and death.
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raklian
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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Coronavirus has infected majority of Americans
Source: Washington Post
Before omicron, one-third of Americans had been infected with the coronavirus, but by the end of February, that rate had climbed to nearly 60 percent — including about 75 percent of kids and 60 percent of people age 18 to 49, according to federal health data released Tuesday.

The data from blood tests offers the first evidence that over half the U.S. population, or 189 million people have been infected at least once since the pandemic began — double the number reflected in official case counts. Officials cautioned, however, that the data, in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, does not indicate people have protection against the virus going forward, especially against increasingly transmissible variants.

“We continue to recommend that everyone be up to date on their vaccinations, get your primary series and booster, when eligible,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a media briefing. Kristie Clarke, the CDC official who authored the report, said by February, “evidence of previous COVID-19 infections substantially increased among every age group, likely reflecting the increase in cases we noted as omicron surged in this country.”

Clarke said the greatest increases took place in those with the lowest levels of vaccination, noting that older adults were more likely to be fully vaccinated. The largest increases were in children and teenagers through age 17 — about 75 percent of them had been infected by February, based on blood samples that look at antibodies developed in response to a coronavirus infection but not in response to vaccination. That’s about 58 million children.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... nfections/
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So, basically endemic SARS. :(
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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raklian
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Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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https://www.newsweek.com/denmark-covid- ... nd-1701331
Denmark Becomes World's First Country To Suspend COVID Vaccination Campaign
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Vaccines for young kids could be available as soon as June, FDA official says
Source: Washington Post
A top Food and Drug Administration official pledged Friday not to delay the rollout of coronavirus vaccines for the youngest children and said at least one of the two shots under review could become available as soon as June. The FDA said it intends to convene meetings with its outside advisers on June 8, 21 and 22 to consider emergency use authorizations for vaccines.

Officials will decide closer to the meeting dates when the shots for young children will be considered, with that decision contingent on the status of the FDA reviews. Moderna requested emergency use authorization for its vaccine on Thursday, and Pfizer and its partner, BioNTech, are expected to request authorization for their vaccines in coming weeks. Both have started submitting data to the agency. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an interview that the agency would not delay either vaccine to wait for the other.

The vaccines’ applications, he said, would be considered as soon as they are ready. “We are not going to delay things unnecessarily here,” Marks said. “This whole concept of delaying is not something we will be doing.” Marks was reacting, in part, to a recent story in Politico that said the FDA might hold off clearing the two-dose Moderna shot so that it could review that product alongside the three-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Marks said that if both vaccines are ready within a week of each other, he might take them to the agency’s advisers on successive days. But if the time between the applications is longer, he would not try to send them to the committee at the same time. He also said that if the companies’ data hold up to scrutiny on safety, efficacy and quality, “We would anticipate June authorizations for one or more of the pediatric vaccinations.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... gn=wp_main
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