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A Texas A&M University School of Public Health study found that two doses of Modernas mRNA-1273 vaccine had an efficacy of nearly 53 percent against infection and around 71 percent against symptomatic COVID-19 in young adults.
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The COVID-19 pandemic spurred rapid development of different vaccines, including the messenger RNA (mRNA)-1273 vaccine produced by Moderna.
In a newstudy, a team of researchers includingRebecca Fischer, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, analyzed the mRNA-1273 vaccines efficacy at preventing infection and symptomatic COVID-19 in healthy young adults. The study, published in the journalOpen Forum Infectious Diseases, followed adults aged 18-29 with no known history of COVID-19 infection or prior vaccination for a six-month period to determine the effect of vaccination on the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection and on symptomatic COVID-19.
The research team recruited 1,149 young adults from 44 sites around the United States, mostly on college campuses, who were then randomly assigned to a group receiving immediate vaccination or one following the standard of care for vaccination. The researchers also included an observational group of participants who intended to decline COVID-19 vaccination altogether.
During the study period, participants were to collect nasal swab samples each day, which were then analyzed using quantitative PCR testing to detect COVID-19 infection. Infected individuals completed daily symptom diaries. Additionally, participants were surveyed about how often they followed recommendations like wearing masks indoors, maintaining physical distancing and avoiding large gatherings.
Initialstudiesof the mRNA-1273 vaccine conducted earlier in the pandemic showed a 94.1 percent efficacy for preventing symptomatic COVID-19 over the first two months, with efficacy decreasing to around 93 percent up to six months after vaccination. Laterresearchfound lower efficacy with the Delta and Omicron variants of COVID-19 at around 80 percent and 60 percent, respectively. However, these studies did not focus solely on young adults, who are often at risk of catching and spreading COVID-19. This study aimed to fill that gap and determine the efficacy of the mRNA-1273 vaccine in young adults.
Importantly, a primary goal of this study was to assess efficacy of the vaccine at preventing infection as well as illness, since vaccines are generally evaluated on how effectively they prevent illness or severe disease, Fischer said.
The analysis found 93 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection, including 11 participants who had received both vaccine doses, 13 who had received only their first dose, and 69 who were unvaccinated. Of the 93 infected individuals, 51 were considered to have symptomatic COVID-19, including four participants who had received both vaccine doses, four who had received a first dose and 41 unvaccinated participants. No participants were hospitalized or required emergency room visits for COVID-19. Ultimately, this study found that two doses of the mRNA-1273 vaccine had an efficacy of nearly 53 percent against infection and around 71 percent against symptomatic COVID-19.
These efficacy rates were lower than other studies conducted around the same time, probably due to the uniquely rigorous testing design of this study, with increased ability to detect even transient infections, and differences in COVID-19 variants present at the time, Fischer said. Notably, this study employed a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard of study designs for making such assessments, while many earlier studies were observational in nature.
In the vaccine-declined group alone, 45 infections occurred among the 311 participants, nearly double (1.8 times as many) the incidence observed in similarly unvaccinated participants in the standard of care group. This result not only shows that unvaccinated young adults were more likely to contract infection but also highlights important behavioral differences in that group that could underlie increased infection risk, such as less frequent use of masking and physical distancing. The researchers also note that socioeconomic factors that increase odds of exposure could be involved.
The research team noted a few limitations to their study. For example, the study had a short duration and was limited to healthy young adults, which limits the ability to generalize its findings to older or sicker populations. Additionally, recommendations for the standard of care cohort changed over the study period, such that about 58 percent of participants sought vaccinations later in the study, leading to some uncertainty in efficacy calculations for that group. The study was also limited to a single vaccine and variants that were present during the study period. Further research will be needed to better understand efficacy for other vaccines and later COVID-19 variants.
Despite these limitations, the findings of this analysis indicate that vaccination reduced the incidence of COVID-19 infection and illness during the study period, Fischer said. Additional research is needed on other vaccines and variants that also include other factors affecting infection risk. However, this study provides solid evidence for the value of vaccination in preventing COVID-19 in young adults.
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Scientists at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Washington University have conducted a study to estimate the incidence rate and predictors of fatigue after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.
The study is published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Study: Estimates of Incidence and Predictors of Fatiguing Illness after SARS-CoV-2 Infection. Image Credit:p.ill.i/ Shutterstock
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 is a multifactorial disease characterized by a range of mild-to-severe respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, and neuropsychological symptoms. The disease is also associated with long-term consequences, commonly known as long-COVID.
A CDC-conducted survey in January 2023 has shown that up to 15% of US adults experience long-COVID symptoms and that fatigue is the most commonly reported symptom by both hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients. Another recent study has identified fatigue as a common symptom among 85% of patients with long-COVID.
Post-COVID fatigue demonstrates many similarities with an illness called myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, which is an unexplained syndrome characterized by functional limitations that impair the daily life activities of patients.
In this study, scientists have estimated incidence rates of fatigue and chronic fatigue in patients with and without COVID-19 and determined the factors associated incident fatigue.
The study was conducted on 4,589 adult patients with confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses between February 2020 and February 2021. A total of 9,022 patients without a COVID-19 diagnosis during the same period were included as controls.
Electronic health records of the patients were collected from three US hospitals and more than 300 primary care and specialty clinics and analyzed to estimate the incidence rates of postCOVID-19 fatigue and chronic fatigue and to quantify the additional incident fatigue caused by COVID-19.
The mean follow-up periods were 11.4 months for COVID-19 patients and 11.5 months for controls. The follow-up time was calculated as the duration between the first COVID-19 diagnosis and the detection of the first incident event (fatigue) for patients with an event. For patients without an event, the follow-up time referred to the duration between the first COVID-19 diagnosis and the last follow-up date.
The study estimated that about 9.5% of COVID-19 patients included in the study had incident fatigue during the study follow-up period. This gave rise to an incidence rate of 10.2/100 person-years.
Regarding factors associated with incident fatigue, the study found that the incidence rate increases with advancing age and is higher among women than men. A comparatively lower incidence rate was also observed among patients without comorbidities and among patients who were not hospitalized for acute COVID-19.
Considering patients without COVID-19 (controls), the incidence rate was estimated to be 6.0/100 person-years. This indicated that the risk of incident fatigue is 68% higher among COVID-19 patients compared to that among controls.
According to the study estimations, the incidence rates of chronic fatigue among COVID-19 patients and non-COVID-19 patients were 1.82/100 person-years and 0.42/100 person-years, respectively.
Similar to fatigue, the risk of developing chronic fatigue was significantly higher among COVID-19 patients compared to that among non-COVID-19 patients. The difference in chronic fatigue incidence rate between COVID-19 patients and controls continued to increase even after 12 months of disease diagnosis.
Cumulative incidence of fatigue (A) and chronic fatigue (B) among 4,589 COVID-19 cases and 9,022 nonCOVID-19 controls in study of fatiguing illness after SARS-CoV-2 infection, Washington, USA, February 2020February 2021. Shading around data lines indicates 95% CIs.
The analysis conducted after adjusting for age and comorbidities revealed that women are 39% more likely to develop incident fatigue than men. After adjusting for sex and comorbidities, a non-significantly higher risk of incident fatigue was observed for older adults compared to that for young adults (18 29 years).
Patients with comorbidities showed a significantly higher risk of incident fatigue than those without comorbidities. Among 36 diseases that were diagnosed 18 months before COVID-19, 21 showed significant associations with incident fatigue after adjusting for age, sex, and number of comorbidities. Specifically, patients with hypertension, gastritis, and duodenitis showed 27% and 93% higher risks of incident fatigue, respectively.
Regarding clinical outcomes, the study found that about 25.6% of COVID-19 patients with incident fatigue were hospitalized more than once during the post-acute period. In contrast, only 13.6% of patients without incident fatigue were hospitalized during the post-acute period. Moreover, patients with fatigue showed a significantly higher risk of death compared to those without fatigue.
The study finds that COVID-19 is associated with a significantly higher risk of developing fatigue and that patients with incident fatigue have far worse clinical outcomes than those without fatigue.
The high incidence rate of post-COVID-19 fatigue observed in the study highlights the need for public health actions to control SARS-CoV-2 infection and to develop effective treatments for post-COVID-19 fatigue.
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COVID-19 linked to higher fatigue rates, says study - News-Medical.Net
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Health care use, medical costs rose in year after COVID-19, study finds - BenefitsPro
In a recent study published in the journal JAMA Network Open, a team of scientists examined how prevalent self-reported cognitive symptoms were in individuals with post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) condition as compared to individuals who had prior severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections but had not developed post-COVID-19 condition. They also evaluated the impact of these cognitive symptoms on mood, function, and employment status.
One of the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been post-COVID-19 condition, commonly referred to as long coronavirus disease (long COVID), where the symptoms of acute SARS-CoV-2 infections persist or remerge months after recovering from the initial infection. The condition consists of wide-ranging symptoms affecting numerous organ systems, with fatigue, shortness of breath, and post-exertional malaise being the most common symptoms.
Changes in mood and cognitive impairments have also been reported, with studies confirming the long-lasting impact of SARS-CoV-2 infections on neurological health. These persistent physical and neurological symptoms continue to have a significant impact on the functioning and quality of life of the patients long after they have recovered from the initial infection. Understanding how this condition impacts the individuals productivity or employment status is essential to forming effective treatment mechanisms and public health strategies.
In the present study, the researchers used data from a survey conducted across the United States (U.S.) during two COVID-19 waves among individuals who had reported post-COVID-19 condition symptoms and those who reported complete recovery after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. The data was collected between December 2022 and January 2023 and then again from April to May 2023 across 50 U.S. states.
The participants were above 18 years of age, and the study population was balanced for demographic factors such as gender, age, race, and ethnicity. A validated measure for patient-reported outcomes was used to design the questions on cognitive symptoms, which largely included questions on how often patients experienced specific symptoms over the previous week with replies on a five-point scale.
The questions addressed the prevalence of symptoms such as trouble remembering, trouble starting tasks, slowed thinking, finding multitasking difficult, decision-making problems, and needing to pay extra attention to avoid errors. The number of symptoms and presence of these symptoms based on an occurrence rate of at least once a day were recorded for each patient.
A nine-item questionnaire was also used to assess depressive symptoms in patients. Additionally, the patients were asked to describe how these cognitive post-COVID-19 symptoms interfered with their daily activities. The employment status of the participants was also recorded and categorized as full-time, contract, part-time, self-employed, homemaker, student, retired, or unemployed.
Sociodemographic information collected from the participants included self-reported race and ethnicity data. The initial SARS-CoV-2 infection and post-COVID-19 condition were defined based on self-reported symptoms from the participants, such as reports of positive test results for COVID-19.
The results showed that cognitive symptoms were prevalent in individuals experiencing post-COVID-19 conditions, and these symptoms were associated with functional impairments and a lower likelihood of holding full-time employment. The severity of depressive symptoms was also greater for individuals with cognitive post-COVID-19 symptoms.
The number of individuals with post-COVID-19 condition who reported experiencing cognitive impairments was significantly higher than those who reported cognitive symptoms but did not have post-COVID-19 condition. Furthermore, women, younger individuals, and people with lower income levels showed a higher prevalence of cognitive symptoms than those in other sociodemographic groups.
The researchers believe that the higher prevalence of cognitive impairments reported among younger individuals could be due to the notable change from the baseline measurements before the COVID-19 pandemic. Among older individuals, who might already be experiencing cognitive decline associated with age, the cognitive impairments due to post-COVID-19 condition might not be as apparent as in younger individuals.
The study also suggested that the association between increased prevalence of cognitive impairments among individuals from lower-income households could reflect the influence of economic stress on the vulnerability to cognitive symptoms of post-COVID-19 conditions.
Overall, the study found that cognitive decline was highly prevalent among individuals with long COVID or post-COVID-19 conditions, especially among younger individuals, women, and those from low-income households.
Furthermore, the probability of full-time employment was found to be lower among individuals experiencing cognitive impairments due to long COVID, highlighting the need for public health strategies and treatment measures to improve the quality of life and functional abilities of individuals suffering from post-COVID-19 condition.
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The COVID-19 virus got mutated 223 times in the world and its harmful effects have come down substantially over time, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said in Lok Sabha on Friday.
Photograph: ANI Photo
He also said that COVID-19 will continue to remain like influenza and its present variants are not deadly.
"When a virus gets mutated more than 100 times, its harmful effects get reduced. Covid also got mutated. So far, the Covid virus got mutated 223 times," he said during the Question Hour.
He said that like influenza, which hits people once or twice every year, "Covid is with us and it will remain."
"Covid sub-variants are not that deadly and there are no negative effects," he said.
Mandaviya said health is such an issue where all stake holders and countries should come together and work.
"We have seen the positive results during the pandemic when we all worked together," he said.
The minister said India has a robust medicine production infrastructure and the world has recognised this.
"We are now the producer of 70 per cent of HIV/AIDS medicines of the world. Similarly, we produce many medicines which the world considers as good," he said.
Speaker Om Birla also commented that when he was travelling in Africa, he had witnessed the demands of Indian medicines and people's admiration for it due to its effects.
Mandaviya said that due to the Ayushman Bharat scheme, under which free medical treatment up to Rs 5 lakh is provided to the poor, 13 crore people got benefited as they have gone above the poverty level since they did not have to spend money for treatment.
Similar, during the tenure of the previous government, 5.5 crore people came under the poverty line as they had to spend a large amount of money for medical care, he said.
The minister said the Modi government is now spending 1.35 per cent of the GDP in comparison to 1.13 per cent spent by the earlier government.
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From work to school to socializing, COVID-19 has impacted just about every part of our livesand now Boston University research has shown that also includes what happens in the bedroom. A study of more than 2,000 cisgender women found the coronavirus disease can impair sexual function, with long COVID having an especially detrimental effect.
"If you're sick with COVID, you're probably less interested in sex and maybe your body is less prepared to have sex," says Amelia M. Stanton, a BU College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences. "But what might be surprising to some folks is that long COVID symptoms really may have a physiological and psychological impact on sexual well-being for women."
Although previous research has investigated the effect of the pandemic on peoples' sex livesparticularly in menStanton says this is the first study to highlight long COVID's fallout on sexual health in women. An expert on sexual and mental health, she helped lead the study with researchers from Middlebury College, McLean Hospital, and the University of Vermont. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
To figure out COVID's impact on intimacy, Stanton and her colleagues conducted an online survey. Roughly half of the women taking part had reported never having had COVID, the rest said they'd tested positive. Participants were quizzed using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), an established tool that measures factors like arousal and satisfaction with questions such as, "Over the past 4 weeks, how often did you feel sexual desire?" Only women who'd had sex in the previous month were included in the results.
Among those who'd had COVID, levels of desire, arousal, lubrication, and satisfaction were all lower than in those who hadn't; orgasm and pain scores weren't significantly different between the two groups. But while women in the COVID group were still classed within the index's functional range, participants with long COVID had "an average FSFI full scale score in the dysfunctional range," according to the researchers. They found women with long COVIDa broad condition with cognitive and physical symptoms that linger for weeks, sometimes months, after an initial infectionhad markedly worse arousal, lubrication, orgasm, and pain scores.
"I hope it's validating. If women type in 'sex long COVID,' something will come up now," says Stanton, who is also a clinical health psychologist at The Fenway Institute, a Boston clinic focused on the health of sexual and gender minorities. "Sex, sexuality, and sexual function are still relatively taboo subjects. But this offers something patients can bring to their providers and say, 'This is going on for me,' and maybe create an open dialogue around sex."
In their paper, Stanton and her colleagues say the results suggest "that COVID-19 infection may be associated with impairment of both cognitive and physiological aspects of sexual function." Just as the body and mind might take some time to get back to firing on all cylinders when it comes to work, study, and exercise, the same may apply to sex. They also speculate that wider societal changes caused by the pandemic may be a factor, with fewer social events and kids hanging around at home more reducing opportunities for shared or solo sexual activities.
While a COVID infection might impact women's sexual health, previous BU research has found vaccination does not cause infertility, reduce pregnancy chances, or have a significant impact on menstruation.
"COVID-19 vaccination in either partner is unrelated to fertility among couples trying to conceive through intercourse," Amelia Wesselink, an SPH research assistant professor of epidemiology, told The Brink in 2022 when discussing her study on vaccines and fertility. That same research did, however, find that men who'd tested positive for COVID within the past 60 days had reduced fertility.
Stanton is the principal investigator of BU's Sexual, Reproductive, and Mental Health Disparities Programan effort to explore sexual and mental health in minoritized and marginalized populationsand says possible future routes for the latest project would be to expand the study's sexual and gender minority diversity, talk to women for their qualitative experiences, and design tools to help providers better support their patients.
"I'm an interventionist, so I always think about intervention design as a next step," says Stanton. In other research, she's working to develop new approaches clinicians can use to talk about sex with their patients, as well as studying how to improve sexual well-being and mental health in low-resource communities.
"I always encourage providers to initiate conversations about sex," says Stanton. "If they have someone who's coming in for long COVID, maybe ask, 'How are you doing sexually?' Asking that one question could open the door for people to say, 'You know, I've been ashamed to say that this is going on, and I really need help.' Any way we can iterate to folks that there is hope and there are strategiesyour symptoms are meaningful and relevant, and they're important to talk about."
More information: Martin Seehuus et al, The impact of COVID-19 and long COVID on sexual function in cisgender women, The Journal of Sexual Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1093/jsxmed/qdad155
Journal information: Journal of Sexual Medicine
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Having COVID-19 and Long COVID can impact women's sex lives - Medical Xpress
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Former Wenatchee resident pleads guilty to COVID-19 loan fraud - wenatcheeworld.com
Were now approaching the fourth anniversary of the first confirmed US death from COVID-19 (Feb. 29) four long years of disease, disruption, and division, truly a plague for the internet age. To mark this milestone, the Library of Congress has launched a COVID-19 oral history project, partnering with StoryCorps and the American Folklife Center, to document history as it happens. The initiative is part of a congressional mandate to preserve the experiences ordinary Americans had during the pandemic, and the Library is inviting everyone to share.
So I dug out a journal I kept in those surreal months of 2020 to see if I had any small bit to add.
Small is the operative word here. History is told on a grand scale, but stories are human-scaled, the stuff of every day, too often ignored in the great sweep of things. In that first frightful April, I listened to a podcast with the author and teacher George Saunders, who read aloud an email he had sent his marooned students at Syracuse University. Pay sharp attention in this moment, he advised them. Keep your sensory apparatus as open as possible, and record the tenor of your days. Youre bearing witness; no observation is too small. In years to come it may be some totally trivial detail that encapsulates this whole thing, he wrote.
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I cant pretend to have some revelatory truth buried in my anxious scribblings from those months, but I do have fragments of observations it would be a shame to forget. You have them, too.
Why wouldnt we want to preserve these tales of ingenuity and resilience, to appreciate what we learned? We are all citizen historians, and our small, shared stories build empathy by bringing us, however briefly, into other lives. I hope people will write for the national archives. But I also hope that they will read.
Rene Loths column appears regularly in the Globe.
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Share your memories of COVID-19 with the Library of Congress - The Boston Globe
On one of the biggest drinking days of the year, its easy to get carried away cheering on your team. But police want Vermonters to have fun responsibly. South Burlington Deputy Chief of Police Sean Briscoe says that means pacing yourself and thinking ahead.
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Health officials reflect on nearly four year anniversary of COVID-19 - WCAX
