COVID effects
A study in the UK found that about a third of COVID survivors were diagnosed with neurological disorders, with about a quarter of the total COVID patients getting their first-ever neurological diagnosis. (My interpretation says that this is things which happened during their first bout and Long COVID — they didn’t separate them.) Here’s a popular-press article on the study.
Vaccinations
There are some who worry that with greater vaccination rates, people will get sloppy and hence the rates in unvaccinated people will go up. This paper says that as the vax rate goes up, the infection rate in under 16-year-olds goes down.
Cleaning
Yesterday, the US Center for Disease Control posted that transmission via surfaces (“fomites”) is not a major driver of COVID-19 infection. Y’all can stop obsessing about cleaning now. (But you should still wash your hands a lot, that’s just good on general principles because there are a lot of other bugs out there which do transmit via surfaces.)
Vaccines
The president of Serum Institute of India says that the embargo on shipping vax outside of India is hurting their ability to scale up manufacturing — because they sell to the Indian government at a discount, which means they are starved for cash to invest in expanding capacity.
Yet another study which shows that mRNA vaccines work really well. In this case, that Moderna is still effective after six months.
A small preprint study with mRNA vaccines says that pregnant and lactating women don’t respond as well to a first shot, but are okay with the second shot and that Pfizer works better for them than Moderna.
A preprint says that patients on dialysis who got vaccinated with Pfizer did generate an immune response, but it was weaker so they really do need a booster — maybe even two.
A preprint says that monkeys given Novavax had a good immune response to B.1.351.
Because of problems (including needing to scrap 15M doses of J&J) at the vaccine plant in Baltimore which makes the US’ AZ and J&J vax has stopped producing AZ. J&J has taken over management at the plant.