Category: Corona Virus

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Reel back to June 2021. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., did not yet wield the committee gavel. But he had questions about COVID-19, which gripped the planet.

"For most of the pandemic, anyone who raised questions about the origin of the virus was dismissed as a crazy conspiracy theorist," opined Green on the House floor.

Many were even reluctant to dip into the idea that COVID-19 could have come from a lab in China in 2021.

FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP AND HOUSE SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: WHO NEEDS WHO?

Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., is a doctor and the top Democrat on the House panel investigating the start of the pandemic. Some Republicans touted the lab leak theory. Yet Ruiz was careful to note that the concept was far from proven. The Department of Energy and FBI suggested a lab leak was the culprit. But most U.S. intelligence agencies suspected the virus emanated from nature.

"They do not strongly with high confidence say that this was a lab leak," said Ruiz at a July 2023 hearing. "But we heard that they do from the other side. Thats a lie."

Like Green, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., argued in 2023 that Democrats "accused everyone who believes that there was a lab leak to be a conspiracy theorist."

But the theory of a lab leak potentially sparking the pandemic no longer flits around the fringes.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is sworn in prior to testifying before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic at the Rayburn House Office Building on June 3, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The House COVID committee unearthed a message last year from Dr. David Morens an associate of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Fauci was the public face of the pandemic response. He just retired as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Morens wrote that "Tony doesnt want his fingerprints on origin stories."

In an appearance on Fox in January 2023, Fauci declared that "the evidence points very strongly, very strongly to this being a natural jump from an animal species to a human."

But Fauci may have tempered those views.

"Ive also been very, very clear and said multiple times that I dont think the concept of there being a (lab) leak is inherently a conspiracy theory," said Fauci to the House coronavirus committee this month. "What is a conspiracy is the kind of distortions that it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab leak."

BIDEN'S ATTORNEY GENERAL IS FIGHTING BACK AS THE GOP-LED HOUSE CONTEMPLATES CONTEMPT

In 2020, Fauci cited an article from the British scientific magazine Nature when talking about what caused the pandemic. The House COVID committee is scrutinizing communications between Fauci and the essays authors just before the item went to print. Some Republicans accuse Fauci of trying to use the article to shield criticism about a possible lab leak.

The Senate probed the origins of the pandemic at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing this week.

"Today we are here to examine one of the most critical and debated questions of our time," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has long been suspect of what the government said about what fueled the pandemic.

"Just like the Hunter Biden laptop story, the experts said this was disinformation," snapped Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., about the lab leak concept.

Tulane Medical School Dean Dr. Robert Garry co-authored the 2020 article in Nature. Garry argued it wasnt plausible for a lab leak to trigger the pandemic.

Dr. David Morens testified in Congress about released emails between Morens and an NGO president that received federal funding for COVID-19 research in Wuhan, China. (House Oversight Committee)

"So youre saying that (idea) came to you overnight?" questioned Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

"There was new data," replied Garry.

"Like a revelation from God? Overnight? Ive figured it out, and now I can definitely rule it out. Its amazing! Is that what happened?" countered Hawley.

"Its just the scientific method," responded Garry.

Garry holds firm that he believes the pandemic started in nature. But he concedes some of the science evolved.

Thats why Republican senators chided Garry about the article, leaning on a zoonotic origin of the pandemic.

STATUESQUE REV GRAHAM TRIBUTE COMES TO THE CAPITOL, BUT SHIES AWAY FROM THE LIMELIGHT

"That is scientific misconduct and fraud," charged Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. "The reason the American public legitimately don't trust scientists and health agencies because people like you, you bear that responsibility for violating the public's trust from your scientific misconduct. And fraud."

"It was not fraud," countered Garry. "We didn't put anything in that paper that we didn't believe was true. The conclusions of that paper have held up very well. In fact, there's been an abundance of scientific evidence that has come forward since then to support all the conclusions, everything we wrote in that paper. So, there's no fraud."

But even other scientists upbraided Garry.

"This is the most egregious form of scientific misconduct. Publishing a paper where you know the conclusions are untrue," alleged Dr. Richard Ebright of Rutgers University.

Still, questions linger about what went down in Wuhan, China. Thats the site of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Its close to the Wuhan wet market. Thats the locale some identify as the geographic center of the pandemic.

"It's one jump from one animal to one human. The most likely place that happens is in a laboratory," said Steven Quay of Atossa Therapeutics and a former Stanford University faculty member. "The Wuhan Institute (of) Virology. Thats where Id look."

A worker takes a swab sample for a COVID-19 test at a mobile test site on Tuesday, March 15, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

However, China is seemingly impenetrable when it comes to providing western investigators data about the pandemic.

"The Chinese government may never fully disclose all the information they have about the initial COVID-19 outbreak," said Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Gary Peters, D-Mich., who called the hearing.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., is advocating a 9/11-style commission to investigate the origins of COVID. Marshall also raised the possibility of classifying COVID-19 as a bioweapon. The Kansas Republican framed this in the context of national security.

"What did the U.S. do to contribute to (this) and how do we keep this from happening again?" asked Marshall.

Some senators acknowledge that the start of COVID many remain a stumper.

"We might be 98% or something. But we'll always be a little uncertain," said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.

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And like much of the pandemic, that uncertainly seems to be the only thing wedoknow for sure.

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Senate stumped over COVID origins: What we know and dont know - Fox News

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Sen. Josh Hawley denounces withholding of COVID-19 information - Columbia Missourian

Coronavirus

Subjects who kept virus at bay showed rapid response in nasal immune cells and more activity in early-alert gene

Wed 19 Jun 2024 12.45 EDT

Scientists have discovered differences in the immune response that could explain why some people seem to reliably escape Covid infection.

The study, in which healthy adults were intentionally given a small nasal dose of Covid virus, suggested that specialised immune cells in the nose could see off the virus at the earliest stage before full infection takes hold. Those who did not succumb to infection also had high levels of activity in a gene that is thought to help flag the presence of viruses to the immune system.

These findings shed new light on the crucial early events that either allow the virus to take hold or rapidly clear it before symptoms develop, said Dr Marko Nikoli, senior author of the study at University College London and honorary consultant in respiratory medicine. We now have a much greater understanding of the full range of immune responses, which could provide a basis for developing potential treatments and vaccines that mimic these natural protective responses.

As part of the UK Covid-19 Human Challenge study, 36 healthy adult volunteers without previous history of having Covid and who were unvaccinated were administered a low dose of the virus through the nose. The study was carried out in 2021 at the height of the pandemic.

In 16 volunteers, the researchers monitored activity in immune cells in the blood and the lining of the nose to provide the most detailed timeline of immune activity before, during and after infection. These participants were found to fall into three distinct groups: six people developed a sustained infection and became ill; three people became transiently positive but without developing a full infection; and seven experienced an abortive infection. This subset never tested positive, but the tests showed they had mounted an immune response.

In the abortive and transient groups, samples taken from before exposure to Covid showed these volunteers had high background levels of activity in a gene called HLA-DQA2. This was seen in antigen-presenting cells, which flag danger to the immune system. These cells will take a little bit of the virus and show it to immune cells and say: This is foreign: you need to go and sort it out, said Dr Kaylee Worlock of UCL, first author of the study.

The findings, published in Nature, suggest that people who have high levels of activity in this gene may have a more efficient immune response to Covid, meaning the infection never gets beyond the bodys first line of defence. However, they were not completely immune the volunteers were followed after the study and some later caught Covid in the community.

In the people who briefly tested positive, the scientists also recorded a rapid immune response in nasal cells, within a day of exposure, and a slower immune response in blood cells. By contrast, those who developed a full infection had a much slower nasal response, starting on average five days after exposure, allowing the virus to establish itself.

The team said the findings could provide a basis for developing more effective treatments and vaccines that mimic optimal protective responses.

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Covid immune response study could explain why some escape infection - The Guardian

The circulation of respiratory viruses is normally highest in the fall and winter but COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have been increasing over the spring and as we approach the summer.

According to the government's respiratory virus dashboard, cases of COVID-19 have been on the rise since around April, prompting caution from health and science experts.

"We have to remember COVID is not gone. So, this is a little different than things like influenza where we see it nearly disappear in the summer. The last two summers, COVID has really hung around and as a result, we continue to see waves and upticks of virus throughout the year," said Craig Jenne with the University of Calgary's department of microbiology, immunology, and infectious diseases.

"There's a good chance, as we see the numbers rise in the community, that summer cold might be a COVID infection."

While case numbers are expected to continue to trend upward, particularly around summer gatherings like the Calgary Stampede, Jenne doesn't expect anything alarming.

"I don't think we're going to see a risk of filling hospitals or straining the systems but virus in the community does mean those of us that have family members may be at risk, there's that increased chance that they contract it," Jenne said.

"One of the things this virus does like is large gatherings and in a couple weeks, we're going to see one of the largest gatherings in Calgary."

There are several reasons for the recent rise, including the emergence of new variants in Alberta, with KP.2 and KP.3 making up more than half of the cases across the province.

"This is a virus that keeps changing and it will for the next several years," Jenne said.

"But we're also seeing cycles in peoples' immunizations. So people who for example were getting shots for early fall to prepare for the winter, we're now six or seven months out and unfortunately, immunity wanes with regard to coronavirus both vaccine-induced immunity but also immunity you will receive if you're infected and have recovered."

According to the provincial dashboard, just shy of 17 per cent of Albertans have received a COVID-19 vaccine since last summer.

Abdul Kanji, pharmacist at Corner Drugstore in East Village, says people aren't coming through the doors looking for a vaccine in the summer but he encourages people to check in with their pharmacist to make sure they're up to date.

"We had a full family down (who) ended up in the hospital. Luckily, nothing serious. They got some medication and stayed home and quarantined. COVID is still around but right now, people are not too keen to get the shots," he said.

"We'll look up your records and see how many shots you've had."

Kanji says it's important people still test when they have symptoms because those infected also have immunity for six months and that can impact when to get a booster shot.

"A lot of allergies right now as well, so it's kind of confusing if it's an allergy, if it's a common cold, a viral infection or COVID-19 but talk to your pharmacist, right? We'll run through the checklist," he said.

Rapid at-home test kits are still available in Alberta but are no longer free at all pharmacies.

According to provincial data, there were 422 new COVID cases in Alberta last week, 178 people were in hospital from the virus and eight were in the ICU.

Two more Albertans died from COVID last week, for a total of 605 since August 2023.

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No seasonal reprieve for COVID with cases rising heading into summer - CTV News Calgary

Powered by the dominant new COVID-19 variant KP.3, a wave of summer COVID-19 infections may be upon us. But the size of that wave remains unknown.

[1]

[2]

[3]But hospitalizations remain low.

Weve seen a steady stream of people very sick with COVID but overall its still a handful, says Peter Chin-Hong, MD, an infectious disease specialist affiliated with University of California San Francisco Medical Center. Hospitalizations usually lag a little behind other COVID indicators, so I think we will see them increasing but not as much as in the past.

He adds that many severe illnesses are now often avoidable due to vaccines and treatments such as nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid), which prevent an infection from becoming serious.

[4]

The leader of the FliRT pack is a new strain called KP.3, which now makes up 25 percent of COVID cases, surpassing KP.2, which just weeks ago was the primary cause of COVID in the United States and now accounts for 22.5 percent of infections.

The difference between the two variants is an additional mutation within the spike protein, says Dana Hawkinson, MD, medical director of infection prevention and control at the University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City. It is believed this mutation helps to make binding to our cellular receptors a little bit easier. Overall KP.3 and KP.2 are very similar to each other, however. They are both variants from the JN.1 lineage.

While both strains appear to be highly contagious, Dr. Chin-Hong notes that its difficult to determine at this point if one is much more transmissible than the other. The KPs are duking it out for whos No. 1, he says.

The dominance of the FLiRT variations is influencing public health policymakers as they consider how the COVID vaccine should be reformulated moving forward.

[5]

Regardless of which variant you pick to target, my feeling is that theyre all so related that you cant go wrong with any one of these they will still provide the main benefit, which is preventing hospitalization and death, particularly in the vulnerable, says Chin-Hong.

[6]

Chin-Hong says hes seeing fewer symptoms that were common in 2020, like shortness of breath and loss of taste and smell, and that some people are experiencing nausea and diarrhea symptoms they may not realize can be linked to COVID.

Because COVID-19 symptoms are often similar to those of allergies or the common cold, doctors warn that the only way to know for sure is to take a COVID test especially if you are especially vulnerable to severe infection (if you are older, for instance, or are immunocompromised) and want to stave off serious disease with a course of Paxlovid. You should also test if you spend time with anyone at high risk whom you might infect.

I absolutely do think people dismiss COVID-19 symptoms as allergies or a summer cold, says Dr. Hawkinson. That is why, especially if you are at higher risk for severe disease, it is important to have a plan such as testing early for COVID-19, and possibly a couple days in a row.

By this time of year, many Americans may have received their last COVID shotmonths ago and their immunity may be wearing off somewhat, according to Chin-Hong. This may partially explain why COVID numbers are currently up.

Warm weather is also a factor. While we think of winter as a time for viral spread, summer conditions increase transmission as well. When its hot and muggy outside, more people tend to gather indoors for the air conditioning, giving the virus a chance to transmit.

[7]This means more people congregating close together in airport terminals and airplane cabins, and a greater likelihood for disease spread.

People should be aware and vigilant but not scared, says Chin-Hong. Everyone, including immune-compromised people and older people, can navigate this surge very smoothly because of the availability of vaccines and antiviral drugs.

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New FLiRT Variant KP.3 Is Driving a Summer COVID Surge - Everyday Health

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Study sheds light on why some people do not get Covid-19 - Evening Standard

WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) Scientists debated the origins of COVID-19 on Tuesday, trading barbs over whether the bulk of evidence available points to a natural spillover event from a wild animal or a virus designed in a lab and then let loose through an inadvertent leak.

The hearing in front of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was part of ongoing efforts in Congress to apply the lessons learned during the pandemic to prevent or blunt the next outbreak.

Gregory Koblentz, associate professor and director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University in Virginia, said during thetwo-hour hearingthat debate continues in the scientific community about the origins.

The possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately developed as a biological weapon has been unanimously rejected by all U.S. intelligence agencies, Koblentz testified. While the intelligence community is divided on the origin of the pandemic, most of the agencies have determined that the virus was not genetically engineered.

Residents in Wuhan, China, were first diagnosed with an atypical pneumonia-like illness in December 2019, according to a COVID-19timelinefrom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Initial cases all appeared linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market at the time, though there has since been much speculation about the types of research taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Koblentz said he believes the available evidence points to a spillover event from an animal, though he added a research-related accident cant be ruled out at this time.

The lack of transparency and data from the Chinese government has significantly hindered scientists efforts to unify around the origin of COVID-19, he said.

Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology and laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, testified he believes a large preponderance of evidence indicates SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, entered humans through a research incident.

Ebright also leveled criticism at fellow panelist Robert Garry, who, along with a handful of co-authors,published an opinion articlein the journal nature medicine in March 2020, titled The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.

In the commentary, Garry and the other scientists wrote, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.

Ebright said during Tuesdays hearing that the opinion article represented scientific misconduct up to and including fraud, a characterization that Garry rejected during the hearing.

The authors were stating their opinion, but that opinion was not well-founded, Ebright said. In March of 2020, there was no basis to state that as a conclusion, as opposed to simply being a hypothesis.

Garry, professor and associate dean of the School of Medicine at Tulane University in Louisiana, argued on behalf of the spillover event during the hearing, testifying that the virus likely didnt move directly from a bat to humans, but went to an unidentified intermediary animal.

The bat coronaviruses are viruses that are spread by the gastrointestinal route, Garry said. For a virus like this to become a respiratory virus its just going to require too many mutations, too many changes for a bat virus to spill directly over to a human being. That could only really happen in nature with replication through an intermediate animal.

Garry also defended gain-of-function research during the hearing, arguing that it has had some beneficial impact, though he noted that it does need appropriate safeguards and restrictions.

Lawmakers and pundits have used several, often evolving, definitions for gain-of-function research in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Society for Microbiologydefinesit as techniques used in research to alter the function of an organism in such a way that it is able to do more than it used to do.

When research is responsibly performed on highly transmissible and pathogenic viruses, it can lead to advances in public health and national security, Garry testified.

Without gain-of-function research, wed have no Tamiflu. Without gain-of-function research, we wouldnt have a vaccine to prevent cancer caused by infection by the human papilloma virus, Garry said. And without gain-of-function research, we wont be able to identify how novel viruses infect us. And if we dont know how they infect us, we cannot develop appropriate treatments and cures for the next potential pandemic creating virus.

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan raised several questions about whether theres enough oversight of how the United States spends research dollars as well as what mechanisms are in place to monitor how private entities conduct certain types of research.

While their research has the potential to cure diseases and boost our economy, unless they accept federal funding, there is very little federal oversight to ensure that private labs are engaged in safe and ethical research, she said.

Koblentz from George Mason University said there is much less oversight of biosafety and biosecurity for private research facilities that dont receive federal funding.

In order to expand the scope of oversight to all privately funded research, (it) would require legislative action, Koblentz said.

Congress, he said, should establish a national bio-risk management agency that would have authority over biosafety and biosecurity regardless of the source of funding.

At the end of the day, it shouldnt matter where the funding comes from in terms of making sure this research is being done safely, securely and responsibly, Koblentz said.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, ranking member on the committee, said the panel will hold an upcoming hearing specifically on gain-of-function research, including what steps Congress should take to ensure it doesnt put the public at risk.

Committee Chairman Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said during the hearing that lawmakers must learn from the challenges faced during this pandemic to ensure we can better protect Americans from future potential biological incidents.

Our government needs the flexibility to determine the origins of naturally occurring outbreaks, as well as potential outbreaks that could arise from mistakes or malicious intent, Peters said.

Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, after listening to some of the debate, expressed exasperation that so much attention is going toward what caused the last pandemic and not on how to prepare for the next one.

Given the fact that it could have been either, we know what action we ought to take to protect from either, Romney said. And so why theres so much passion around that makes me think its more political than scientific, but maybe Im wrong.

The United States, he said, shouldnt be funding gain-of-function research and should insist that anyone who receives federal funding follow the standards of the International Organization for Standardization.

Continued here:

Scientists argue over the origins of COVID-19 before U.S. Senate panel - Now Habersham

Fauci backtracks on year-long pandemic school closures, admits they were 'mistake'

by JACKSON WALKER | The National Desk

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, June 3, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (TND)

Dr. Anthony Fauci backtracked his support Tuesday for a COVID-19 mitigation method which closed down schools throughout the country, calling the strategy a mistake.

Fauci helped lead the nation's initial response to COVID-19 as part of the Trump administration. In an interview with CBS Mornings this week, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases (NIAID) director explained school closures were necessary at the very beginning of the pandemic.

"I think what was not a mistake was the actual closure, he said. When we had to shut down, that 15-day to flatten the curve, we were in a tsunami of cases.

He went on to say the length of time these restrictions stayed in place proved costly.

So that was a mistake in retrospect, we will not repeat it? host Tony Dokoupil asked.

Absolutely, Fauci said.

Fauci repeatedly cast doubt on the idea of reopening schools during the spring and summer months of 2020, creating a notable rift between himself and then-President Trump.

Later in 2020, Fauci said reopening schools in areas of high transmission was not a "prudent" move.

In an opening statement during a recent House subcommittee hearing, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, condemned Faucis position as an authority on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Americans were aggressively bullied, shamed and silenced for merely questioning or debating issues such as social distancing, masks, vaccines, or the origins of COVID, Rep. Wenstrup said. And it should not have been the case that Americans were forced to comply with oppressive mandates, when those who chose to illegally cross over our southern border were not.

Follow Jackson Walker on X at @_jlwalker_ for the latest trending national news. Have a news tip? Send it to jacwalker@sbgtv.com.

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Fauci backtracks on year-long pandemic school closures, admits they were 'mistake' - Fox28 Savannah

Long COVID has been recognized since 2020 and affects an estimated 17,000 people in the U.S. Yet theres no comprehensive and widely adopted definition of the condition, which hampers diagnosis and treatment.

Now, a new report released June 11 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) proposes a consensus definition of long COVID. The definition was developed by a committee of medical specialists, researchers, and patients who incorporated input from more than 1,300 participants.

Our committee hopes this single definition, crafted with input from across research and patient communities, will help to educate the public about this widespread and highly consequential disease state, Harvey Fineberg, MD, PhD, chair of the reports authoring committee and president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, said in a news release.

Heres what you need to know about why experts think a universal definition is necessary, what the new definition entails, and how it could impact people with long COVID.

Jacob Wackerhausen / Getty Images

The report noted that several working definitions of long COVID exist, but no standard definition has yet been agreed upon. Furthermore, many definitions have been brief or vague to accommodate the rapid pace of ongoing research.

This ambiguity has created challenges for policymakers, researchers, and medical professionals. It has also had consequences for patients, including difficulty accessing care or feeling dismissed by medical professionals and others when symptoms dont align with the public perception of long COVID.

Recognizing these issues, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tasked the NASEM, an independent adviser to the nation on science and medicine, with creating a comprehensive definition of long COVID.

According to the NASEM report, long COVID can affect anyone and:

Beyond these criteria, the report highlighted some notable features of the condition.

It's not necessary for a person to have previously tested positive for COVID or have antibodies to receive a diagnosis, the report said. The infection that may have triggered long COVID could have been asymptomatic, mild, or severe.

Medical professionals can diagnose long COVID on clinical grounds, the definition continued; no lab test can currently confirm or deny a long COVID diagnosis.

Furthermore, long COVID can range from mild to severe and may improve after a few months or persist for years.

Long COVID can have more than 200 symptoms, the committee said. Of those, the most common are:

Someone with long COVID may have several symptoms or only one, and the condition can affect a persons ability to function daily.

In addition to individual symptoms, the report recognized that people living with long COVID may also develop one or more diagnosable conditions, such as heart disease, cognitive impairment, and fibromyalgia. If someone has a chronic condition before a SARS-CoV-2 infection, long COVID can make it worse.

The report stipulates that the definition must be revised within three years or if there are new research findings.

Doctors who treat patients with long COVID had largely positive reactions to the proposed definition.

Mohanakrishnan Sathyamoorthy, MD, chair of internal medicine at Burnett School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, who researches long COVID treatments, called the definition excellent and comprehensive and noted that [it] will lead to a timelier diagnosis of the condition. The simplicity of gradingmild, moderate, or severeis very helpful, he told Health.

Breaking the condition down into different subtypes would make the definition even more helpful, he added. Based on the organ system affected, we need specific diagnostic criteria in well-defined terms, he explained.

Eric Wisotzky, MD, medical director for the MedStar Health COVID Recovery Program, commended the NASEM definition for [including] both common and less common symptoms of Long COVID.

I like that it truly outlines many of the different scenarios in which we see long COVID, including a delay in symptom onset, waxing or waning symptoms, and symptoms after very mild COVID illness, he told Health.

Although Thomas Gut, DO, associate chair of medicine at Staten Island University Hospital, told Health that he believes the definition is [going] in the right direction, he sees its broad scope and very liberal interpretation of symptoms as problematic.

Allowing for patients that never had symptoms of primary COVID, with or without antigen testing, to potentially attribute their symptoms to long COVID does a disservice to getting any accurate diagnosis for some patients, he said.

Wisotzky, on the other hand, pointed out that its absolutely true that people who never had initial COVID symptoms or a positive test can end up with long Covid.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already updated its definition of long COVID to reflect the NASEM version, HHS has indicated that it is currently reviewing NASEMs recommendations and proposed definition.

If the NASEM definition is accepted as the standard, one next step will include developing simple scoring algorithms to help make diagnosing long COVID less of a challenge for clinicians, Sathyamoorthy said.

As for patients, having an established and accepted definition of the condition may help legitimize their experience, Lily Chu, MD, vice president of the International Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, said during the report release webinar. One-third of Americans are still unsure about what long COVID even is, she added.

During our engagement activities, the public told us that the number one way they would use any long COVID definition would be to explain their condition to other people, she said. I believe that our inclusive definition will help both these groups.

Hopefully, she added, family members, friends, educational institutions, and employers will understand patients limitations better.

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Expert Committee Proposes Universal Long COVID Definition - Health.com

People resistant to COVID-19 have never-seen-before immune responses and possibly high levels of HLA-DQA2. These findings come from researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University College London (UCL), Imperial College London, the Netherlands Cancer Institute, and their collaborators who used data from a unique challenge study.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was administered to healthy adult volunteers as part of the worlds first COVID-19 human challenge study. That study was initiated to allow controlled investigation of pathogenesis, correlates of protection and efficacy testing of forthcoming interventions. Then, withnasopharyngeal swabs and blood samples, they used single-cell sequencing technology to create a comprehensive timeline of how the body responds to SARS-CoV-2 exposure.

Their work was published in Nature this week. The lead author is Rik G.H. Lindeboom of the Wellcome Sanger Institute and now The Netherlands Cancer Institute.

SARS-CoV-2 has infected millions across the globe with COVID-19, which is potentially fatal. But many have had contact with someone positive for COVID-19, but have managed to avoid getting ill themselves. While previous studies have examined COVID-19 patients after symptom onset, in this new study researchers set out to capture immune responses right from exposure, in an immunologically nave cohort for the first time.

As part of the U.K. COVID-19 Human Challenge study, led by Imperial College London, 36 healthy adult volunteers without previous history of COVID-19 were administered SARS-CoV-2 virus through the nose. Researchers performed detailed monitoring in the blood and lining of their noses, tracking the entire infection as well as the immune cell activity prior to the infection event itself for 16 volunteers. The teams at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and UCL then used single-cell sequencing to generate a dataset of over 600,000 individual cells.

Not all exposed participants went on to develop a COVID-19 infection, allowing the team to uncover unique immune responses associated with resisting sustained viral infection and disease.

The team discovered previously unreported responses involved in immediate virus detection. These included activation of specialized mucosal immune cells in the blood and a reduction in inflammatory white blood cells that normally engulf and destroy pathogens.

Individuals who immediately cleared the virus did not show a typical widespread immune response but instead mounted subtle, never-seen-before innate immune responses. The researchers suggest high levels of activity from the gene HLA-DQA2 before exposure also helped people prevent a sustained infection from taking hold. In contrast, the six individuals who developed a sustained SARS-CoV-2 infection exhibited a rapid immune response in the blood but a slower immune response in the nose, allowing the virus to establish itself there.

The researchers further identified common patterns among activated T cell receptors, which recognize and bind to virus-infected cells. This offers insights into immune cell communication and potential for developing targeted T cell therapies against not just COVID-19, but other diseases.

Lindeboom said, This was an incredibly unique opportunity to see what immune responses look like when encountering a new pathogenin adults with no prior history of COVID-19, in a setting where factors such as time of infection and comorbidities could be controlled.

Sarah Teichmann, senior author of the study, co-founder of the Human Cell Atlas, and of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, said, As were building the Human Cell Atlas we can better identify which of our cells are critical for fighting infections and understand why different people respond to coronavirus in varied ways.

Link:

Unique Study Reveals New Immune Response Conferring Resistance to COVID-19 - Inside Precision Medicine