Respiratory Infections News

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine could be authorized for emergency use in children aged 5 to 11 years by the end of October, representatives from the company said, moving up the timeline by at least a month.

The United States still plans to offer COVID-19 vaccine booster doses to the general public beginning Sept. 20, pending FDA approval and CDC recommendations.

Monday marks the 10th annual World Sepsis Day, an initiative established in 2012 by the nonprofit Global Sepsis Alliance to raise awareness of sepsis, which kills at least 11 million people each year worldwide.

Tuberculosis incidence among people aged 50 years or older in the United States is high but declining rapidly within subsequent birth cohorts, according to a study in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Based on testing of more than 1.4 million blood donations, researchers estimated that the SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence from infection or vaccination among Americans aged 16 years or older was 83% in May, before the delta variant surge.

President Joe Biden announced a six-pronged plan on Thursday to combat a rise in COVID-19 cases in the United States driven by the delta variant, including federal vaccine mandates that could cover nearly 100 million workers.

Being fully vaccinated reduces the odds of developing long COVID by about half compared with being unvaccinated, researchers reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Data from before the delta variant emerged indicated that the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among pregnant women was 1% per week, which is similar to that of the general population of U.S. adults, according to a recent study.

A challenge study demonstrated that women are more likely than men to be symptomatic and have more symptoms of influenza.

In patients with positive and negative SARS-CoV-2 test results, congestion and runny nose were associated with a new loss of taste or smell, suggesting these symptoms “may not be a valid marker of test positivity,” researchers wrote.