Respiratory Infections News

The effectiveness of a COVID-19 booster shot waned over time, but the extra dose continued to protect against hospitalization at 4 months and beyond, according to data collected during the omicron surge and reported Friday in MMWR.

Citing the emergence of new data, the FDA on Friday announced that it has postponed a meeting scheduled for next week in which an advisory panel would have discussed Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids aged younger than 5 years.

The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections begins this weekend and is being held for a third consecutive year as an all-virtual meeting because of COVID-19.

The CDC has begun reporting the proportion of COVID-19 cases in the United States that are caused by the omicron subvariant BA.2.

The Democratic governors of several states, including New Jersey and Delaware, announced this week that they will soon lift COVID-19 mask mandates in K-12 schools, joining other states that have already eliminated such measures.

Novavax on Thursday announced that its COVID-19 vaccine was around 80% effective among adolescents aged 12 to 17 years in a phase 3 trial.

Data show that people who survived COVID-19 were more likely to report symptoms of anxiety, depression or both compared with those who did not have a history of the disease.

Prior SARS-CoV-2 infection protects against symptomatic reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 variants, including omicron, national data from Qatar showed.

People taking at-home COVID-19 tests may not follow CDC quarantine recommendations when they test negative, findings from a randomized clinical trial showed.

The governors of New Jersey and Delaware announced Monday that COVID-19 mask mandates for K-12 schools will end next month, joining other states that have already lifted such measures.