Researchers are trying to calculate how many years have been lost to disability and death. By Holly Else How do you count the cost of a pandemic? COVID-19 has killed an estimated 15 million people since it emerged at the end of 2019, but its impact on health...
COVID is spreading in deer. What does that mean for the pandemic?
Hundreds of white-tailed deer in North America have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Here’s why scientists aren’t panicking, yet. By Smriti Mallapaty Researchers prepare to swab a white-tailed deer in College Station, Texas, to check for SARS-CoV-2.Credit: Sergio...
The next variant: three key questions about what’s after Omicron
The emergence of a new variant is just a matter of time, scientists say. By Heidi Ledford Now what? After the Omicron variant brought a fresh wave of SARS-CoV-2 infections and anxiety at the start of 2022, some nations are starting to record a decline in...
Heart-disease risk soars after COVID — even with a mild case
Massive study shows a long-term, substantial rise in risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke, after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. By Saima May Sidik with Commentary from Michael Lerner We read in the media that we're moving past Covid. The word is...
How sneezing hamsters sparked a COVID outbreak in Hong Kong
Hamsters are only the second species known to have spread SARS-CoV-2 to humans. By Smriti Mallapaty Pet hamsters probably carried the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 into Hong Kong and sparked a human COVID-19 outbreak, according to a genomic analysis of viral samples...
What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity
Immunologists have raced to work out how to protect against multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2. Their research has yielded a wealth of insights and a few surprises. By Cassandra Willyard No one anticipated how quickly Omicron would sweep the globe. Although the surge...
Scientists deliberately gave people COVID — here’s what they learnt
Only half of participants who were exposed to the coronavirus developed infections, most with mild symptoms. By Ewen Callaway Healthy, young people who were intentionally exposed to the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 developed mild symptoms — if any — in a first-of-its-kind...
Omicron escapes the majority of existing SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies
By Yunlong Cao The SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.529 variant (Omicron) contains 15 mutations on the receptor-binding domain (RBD). How Omicron would evade RBD neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) requires immediate investigation. Here, we used high-throughput yeast display...
How COVID vaccines shaped 2021 in eight powerful charts
The extraordinary vaccination of more than four billion people, and the lack of access for many others, were major forces this year — while Omicron’s arrival complicated things further. By Smriti Mallapaty , Ewen Callaway , Max Kozlov , Heidi Ledford , John...
Comprehensive investigations revealed consistent pathophysiological alterations after vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines
By Jiping Liu, et al. Abstract Large-scale COVID-19 vaccinations are currently underway in many countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we report, besides generation of neutralizing antibodies, consistent alterations in hemoglobin A1c, serum sodium and...
Don’t get it or don’t spread it: comparing self-interested versus prosocial motivations for COVID-19 prevention behaviors
By Jillian J. Jordan, et al. Abstract COVID-19 prevention behaviors may be seen as self-interested or prosocial. Using American samples from MTurk and Prolific (total n = 6850), we investigated which framing is more effective—and motivation is stronger—for...
Natural infection versus vaccination: Differences in COVID antibody responses emerge
By Michel C. Nussenzweig, Senior Physician, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Zanvil A. Cohn and Ralph M. Steinman Professor, Laboratory of Molecular Immunology This news story (August 24 2021) has been updated to reflect the publication on October 7,...
The lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are inherently unreliable
By Jack M. Lawrence et al. To the Editor — The global demand for prophylactic and treatment options for COVID-19 has in turn created a demand for both randomized clinical trials, and the synthesis of those trials into meta-analyses by systematic review. This...
COVID vaccine immunity is waning — how much does that matter?
As debates about booster shots heat up, what’s known about the duration of vaccine-based immunity is still evolving. By Elie Dolgin Six months ago, Miles Davenport and his colleagues made a bold prediction. On the basis of published results from vaccine trials and...
Did the coronavirus jump from animals to people twice?
A preliminary analysis of viral genomes suggests the COVID-19 pandemic might have multiple animal origins — but the findings still have to be peer reviewed. By Smriti Mallapaty SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could have spilled from animals to people...