SARS-Cov-2

President Joe Biden said Monday that his administration is “already working” with COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers “to develop contingency plans for vaccines and boosters” against the omicron variant if they are needed.

Out of more than 3 million health care workers in more than 2,000 U.S. hospitals, 30% remained unvaccinated against COVID-19 as of Sept. 15, according to a study.

Patients with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children experienced more severe illness during a second wave of cases compared with the first, according to a study published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

Screening in Mali, where 60% of people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, found no difference in the rates of respiratory or gastrointestinal symptoms among people who had been infected vs. people who were not, according to a study.

Wastewater-based surveillance for COVID-19 was shown to be effective and feasible in low-resource settings, according to data presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene meeting.

Although not recommended to treat COVID-19, ivermectin has shown the potential to stop the spread of some infectious diseases, according to several studies presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Annual Meeting.

In a new study, the use of CPAP and high-flow nasal oxygen to treat patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 did not produce higher levels of air or surface viral contamination in the immediate environment compared with supplemental oxygen.

As William Schaffner, MD, prepares for the upcoming holidays, he and his family are taking all the proper COVID-19 precautions, including testing and retesting before and after travel.

Influenza viruses and coronaviruses have both caused major pandemics. We asked Infectious Disease News Editorial Board Members Gitanjali Pai, MD, AAHIVS, FIDSA, an infectious disease physician at Memorial Hospital and Physicians Clinic in Stilwell, Oklahoma, and chief medical officer for the Oklahoma State Department of Health, and Raghavendra Tirupathi, MD, FACP, medical director for Keystone Infectious Diseases/HIV, chair of infection prevention at Summit Health and clinical assistant professor of medicine at Penn State University School of Medicine, which group of viruses they would eliminate, if possible, and why.

Following days of deliberations, vaccine advisory committees for the FDA and CDC each voted unanimously in favor of allowing eligible Americans to choose their own COVID-19 vaccine booster shots.