Respiratory Infections News

Access to COVID-19 therapeutic drugs in U.S. counties decreased if the county had an increased population of Black individuals, according to a research letter published in JAMA Network Open.

In 2022, more than one in 20 adults in the United States reported ever having long COVID, with women more likely than men to report lingering COVID-19 symptoms months after infection, a CDC survey found.

As of last year, around one in 100 children in the United States had ever had long COVID, according to survey findings reported by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Paxlovid was associated with a significant reduction in 30-day hospitalization or death among previously uninfected patients with COVID-19 who were not hospitalized, researchers found.

Adults hospitalized with COVID-19 were less likely to experience critical outcomes such as ICU admission, respiratory failure or death during later periods of the pandemic, researchers found.

Free at-home COVID-19 tests will be available for mail order again in the United States beginning on Monday, Sept. 25.

Pregnant women who received effective multidrug-resistant/rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis treatment regimens had positive outcomes with no major negative impacts on their infants, researchers reported.

Donated lungs were the likely source of two cases of Legionnaires’ disease reported in transplant recipients at a Philadelphia hospital, investigators said.

Outreach efforts in the form of text messages and phone calls succeeded in increasing COVID-19 vaccination among children with sickle cell disease, according to a study published in Pediatrics.

Researchers observed an increase in antibiotic prescribing for respiratory tract infections in winter vs. summer months — likely driven in part by inappropriate prescribing.