Respiratory Infections News

Merck will help produce Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine as part of a federally facilitated partnership, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed during a press briefing Tuesday.

In this episode, Angela Rasmussen, PhD,discusses her path to becoming a virologist, her insights on risk mitigation strategies, and what’s next in her career.

The White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator said Monday that doses of Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine will be delivered as early as Tuesday.

A series of studies that assessed COVID-19-related risks and outcomes among patients with asthma were presented at this year’s virtual American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Annual Meeting.

Following weeks of good news about diminishing case counts, CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, said in a recent White House press briefing that the country had actually recorded an increase in COVID-19 cases for 3 straight days.

An FDA advisory panel voted unanimously Friday to recommend authorizing a single-shot COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in the United States, potentially changing the landscape of the nation’s response.

When predicting mortality in hospitalized patients with COVID-19-related pneumonia, researchers found that the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment, or SOFA, score was “significantly inferior to simply using age.”

A rapid vaccine rollout in Israel that prioritized older adults led to 67% decline in the ratio of COVID-19 patients aged 70 years or older who required mechanical ventilation compared with patients younger than 50 years, a study showed.

Among household contacts of patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19, approximately one-tenth subsequently tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to research published in JAMA Network Open.

Primary care physicians are often left out of efforts to bring COVID-19 under control in the United States, but increasing their involvement could have a substantial impact on the pandemic, according to experts.