Vaccines
This article reports COVID-19 patients who got a flu shot had significantly fewer complications than patients who did not.
COVAX is getting 100M doses immediately from Sinopharm and Sinovac. This is great news. It’s not enough, of course, but double what COVAX has distributed already. (There’s another 390M coming later, which is also great news.)
This article says that Canada is donating 17.7M doses of AZ to COVAX. Awesome.
This study in Israel found that 40% of breakthrough infections were in immunocompromised people.
This small study found that most people taking Multiple Sclerosis drugs responded to vaccines, though at a lower level and slower rate.
This case study talks about a cancer patient whose immune system didn’t respond after two doses of Pfizer who did respond to one shot of J&J. I guess if one brand doesn’t do it for you, try another.
Long COVID
This article reports that scientists have found a particular autoantibody (i.e. antibodies that attack the body instead of an intruder) signature in Long COVID patients. They are hoping they can turn it into a blood test within six to eighteen months.
This article describes a study in the UK where they are going to give vaccinations to Long COVID patients every month.
Testing
This preprint describes a test which costs about $1.50 and uses — I kid you not — pencil lead!
Recommended Reading
This article talks about how important it is to look at anomalous COVID-19 cases.
This article talks about how paramedics are undervalued and why that’s bad.
This article talks about the heartbreak of rationing care in the US — in this case, Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines. (Dr. Henry got a question about availability of ECMO machines once, and said that she didn’t know of availability issues. That might just be because BC doesn’t ever try to hook people up to ECMO.)