Editor's Note This study by researchers at Umea University in Sweden finds a progressive waning in vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 of any severity during the first 9 months after the second vaccination, with the rate of waning differing by vaccine type Analyzing the total population of Sweden, vaccine effectiveness was…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on January 28 identified the recall by Empowered Diagnostics (Pompano Beach, Florida) of its CovClear COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test and ImmunoPass COVID-19 Neutralizing Antibody Rapid Test as Class I, the most serious. Empowered Diagnostics distributed these tests with labeling indicating they were…

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Editor's Note In January, 5,757 workers lost their employment because they refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as ordered by a federal mandate and various local mandates covering private businesses. Out of those workers, 4,934 were healthcare providers, the February 4 Becker’s Hospital Review reports from data gathered by executive…

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Editor's Note This study by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finds that wastewater surveillance programs in four states were the first to detect evidence of Omicron in community wastewater. California: Omicron was detected in samples collected November 25 and 30, 2021, in two Northern communities.…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on February 4 announced that it is adding wastewater surveillance to its COVID-19 dashboard data tracking system. The CDC will track the spread of COVID-19 variants based on measurements at more than 500 wastewater monitoring sites across the US. This…

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Editor's Note A new Cosmos study by Epic Research finds that cases of “hospital-developed COVID-19”—or patients who were admitted to the hospital free of infection but acquired COVID-19 during their hospital stay—are low, the American Hospital Association reported February 7. According to the study, only about 1.8% of patients admitted…

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Editor's Note This study led by Marty Makary, MD, MPH, and Dorry Segev, MD, PhD, at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, finds natural immunity in unvaccinated healthy US adults up to 20 months after testing positive for COVID-19. Of 1,580 study participants, antibodies were detected in: 99% of…

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Editor's Note Overall healthcare employment in the US was up in January to a seasonally adjusted 16,112,100 workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on February 4. That’s up 18,000 since December. Hospital employment was up by 3,400 jobs. The overall unemployment rate for January was 4.0%, for a total…

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Editor's Note This analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the incidence of COVID-19 and hospitalization of COVID-19 patients by vaccination status indicates that vaccination protects against severe COVID-19. Among 422,966 COVID-19 patients in Los Angeles County from November 7, 2021, to January 8, 2022, 141,928…

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Editor's Note This multicenter study by researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, finds that COVID-19 patients have a significantly high risk for postoperative complications, particularly elderly males. Of 1,581 patients analyzed, more than half were males over 50 years of age, and most procedures (1,261,…

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