Covid-19 News and Discussions

[Yommie]

Colorado Teen Has Had Long Covid for 4 Years, Celebrated Prom in Hospital: 'The Virus Just Began to Take Over' (Exclusive)

Lilly Downs, 19, has been documenting her struggle with Long Covid on TikTok, sharing how "my immune system...will just give up"

people.com

Colorado Teen Has Had Long Covid for 4 Years, Celebrated Prom in Hospital: 'The Virus Just Began to Take Over' (Exclusive)​

TikToker Lilly Downs, 19, has been living with Long Covid for 4 years and says when illness strikes, "my immune system...will just give up"
By
Cara Lynn Shultz
Cara Lynn Shultz is a writer-reporter at PEOPLE. Her work has previously appeared in Billboard, Forbes, and Reader's Digest.
PEOPLE EDITORIAL GUIDELINES

Published on February 16, 2024 10:29AM EST

Lilly Downs. PHOTO:
COURTESY LILLY DOWNS
Lilly Downs was playing soccer competitively every day and taking honors classes in her Golden, Colo., hometown, living what she called the “typical life of a junior in high school.”

And then the Covid pandemic hit in March 2020.

At the time, it was widely believed that young people didn’t suffer severe symptoms from the respiratory illness. And that was Downs' experience when she first caught the virus in November.

“I woke up to get ready for school and I was about to leave and I was just like, ‘I cannot do this. I need to go back to bed,’” she tells PEOPLE exclusively of her “bad fatigue." Later when she woke up, she had all the “classic Covid symptoms,” like fever and chills.

But 9 days later, Downs ended up in the hospital with respiratory symptoms — and then developed “painful” lesions all over her skin.

“They were throwing max doses of steroids at me, which we think ended up making things much worse because that suppresses your immune system,” Downs, who spent two months in the hospital that first time, tells PEOPLE. “The virus just began to take over.”

Two months after she was sent home, Downs ended up back in the hospital with lesions in her stomach — and another case of Covid. It was then that she was officially diagnosed with Long Covid.

But as Downs, now 19, tells PEOPLE, “it all just kind of snowballed over the course of that year.”

“We would try to fix one problem and then another problem would come up because we fixed the first problem. It was just a game of Whack-a-Mole.”

As she explains, “We could fix one thing and then it would cause another.”

For example, she was prescribed antibiotics, which prompted her to develop C.Diff., a condition that can occur after taking antibiotics that causes diarrhea and colon inflammation, according to the CDC.

Lilly Downs.
COURTESY LILLY DOWNS
Children May Be More at Risk of Developing Diabetes Following COVID-19, According to CDC Report

Next she developed gastroparesis — meaning, her stomach stopped digesting food — so Downs needed surgery to have a feeding tube placed. In fact, she ended up needing two surgeries, as she had complications with the first tube.

“My intestines were just not keeping it down and it was flipping back up into my stomach,” she tells PEOPLE. “I had developed a syndrome that causes an obstruction in your intestines called SMAS," which causes bowel obstruction, according to the National Institute of Health.

Covid also triggered the autoimmune disorders Small Fiber Neuropathy, which causes burning pain, says the National Institute of Health, and Ankylosing spondylitis, which the Cleveland Clinic explains “is a type of arthritis that affects the joints in your spine, causing typical arthritis symptoms like pain and stiffness, but also digestive symptoms, rashes and weight loss."

Lilly Downs with Dr. Teodore Stathos.
COURTESY LILLY DOWNS
PEOPLE spoke with one of the doctors who treated Downs. As Dr. Theodore Stathos, the former director at Rocky Mountain Pediatric Gastroenterology, tells PEOPLE, “Lilly's case, the autoimmune portion, really became extremely difficult because she couldn't fight off infections that were very typical. Things that you and I would have no issues with, they would land her in the hospital, land her in the ICU and become a life-threatening event.”

That’s what happened during her senior year of high school, when she found herself in the ICU with a sepsis infection — on the day of her prom.

“One of my favorite doctors was like, 'We're gonna get you to prom. I will literally be your escort there and sit in the back of the room,'” Downs tells PEOPLE.

But she was too sick to attend — so the hospital threw Downs her own prom.

“I got to get dressed up in my dress and my hair and all my nurses were so excited,” she says.

Lilly Downs celebrated her prom in the hospital.
COURTESY LILLY DOWNS
But the recovery afterwards, she tells PEOPLE, was a rough road, as her infection left her so weak that, “I pretty much had to relearn how to walk afterwards.”

“That's when my goal really set in of, ‘I need to physically walk at graduation.’”

Somehow Downs made it, and she tells PEOPLE that even though she had to sit up front near the stage since she couldn’t walk very far, “I very proud of myself and relieved that I had made it to that point.”

But her struggle is far from over, as Downs — who had another case of Covid a few months ago — was hospitalized with a fungal infection in December, triggered by her feeding tube’s nutrition solution.

Bethenny Frankel Details Long COVID and Autoimmune Disorder Journey: 'It Felt Dangerous'

“The infection came on quick and slapped me in the face. because I was very much like, ‘Oh I have my freedom, you know, doing great blah, blah, blah,' and then I was just not,” she tells PEOPLE.

As she explains, “My immune system just kind of like, something will come at it and then it'll just give up and let it run its course, like, as fast as possible.”

She’s been documenting her health journey on TikTok, where she has more than 135,000 followers who watch her day-in-the-life videos.

She’s also educating her followers on what it’s like to manage her health — for example, she maintains an extensive binder full of all her medical information and sticks to a complicated night-time routine of medication.

As the CDC notes, "Living with Long Covid can be hard, especially when there are no immediate answers or solutions" — and adds that they're still working to "better understand" the long-term ramifications of the virus.

But as Dr. Stathos tells PEOPLE, “I think that there's a well above 95 percent, 99 percent chance she would have just lived her life as a normal kid without Covid coming into the picture.”

 

[Yommie]

Long COVID is highest in these states, says new CDC report

The effects of COVID are lingering longer in some states than others, according to the latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the CDC. Dr. Marc Siegel adds his insights.

www.foxnews.com

Long COVID is highest in these states, says new CDC report​

There are potential reasons for the regional variances, according to Dr. Marc Siegel, who weighed in on the new report​

By Melissa Rudy Fox News
Published February 17, 2024 5:13pm EST

CDC reportedly considers ending 5-day isolation period for COVID​

Fox News contributor Dr. Marc Siegel joins 'America Reports' to discuss the possible changes to COVID-19 isolation guidelines and his recent op-ed on President Biden's health.
The effects of COVID are lingering longer among the residents of some states than others.
That’s according to the latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which tracks reported cases of long COVID throughout the U.S.
The highest prevalence of long COVID was found in West Virginia — where 10.6% of survey respondents reported experiencing long-term effects of the virus in 2022.

SHOULD THE CDC DROP ITS 5-DAY COVID ISOLATION GUIDELINES? DOCTORS WEIGH IN
In Alabama and Montana, long COVID cases were reported by 9.8% of respondents.
Other states with long COVID cases exceeding 8% included North Dakota (9.3%), Oklahoma (9.1%), Wyoming (9.0%), Tennessee (8.9%), Mississippi (8.7%), Iowa (8.3%), South Dakota (8.3%) and Utah (8.3%).

Long COVID is a condition in which symptoms of the virus persist for an extended period of time, generally three months or more. (iStock)
Overall, 6.9% of U.S. adults reported ever experiencing long COVID, the report stated.
In general, the highest prevalence of long COVID was in the South, West and Midwest, with the lowest reported cases in New England and the Pacific.

Obesity and vaccines play a role, doctor says​

Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, who was not involved in the CDC report, called for further studies into how long COVID is reported — including who reports it and the criteria they use to define their symptoms, which varies from region to region.
"Vaccine uptake clearly plays a role, as multiple studies have shown that at least three shots decreases the risk of long COVID significantly," he told Fox News Digital.

OVER HALF THE PEOPLE WHO GET COVID HAVE LINGERING SYMPTOMS AFTER 3 YEARS, NEW STUDY FINDS
Underlying diseases represent another significant factor, Siegel pointed out.
"We know that obesity, for example, increases risk of severe COVID dramatically, and severe COVID correlates with persistent symptoms and long COVID," he said.

The highest prevalence of long COVID was found in the state of West Virginia, where 10.6% of survey respondents reported experiencing long-term effects of the virus in 2022. (iStock)
"In fact, obesity is the highest in the South and Midwest (over 35%)," noted Siegel, "and it is probably no accident that obesity is the highest in the country in West Virginia (41%), which also has the highest rate of long COVID."

Data and limitations​

The data for this report was gathered by phone from respondents who were at least 18 years old as part of the 2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a population-based cross-sectional survey, per the CDC.
The adults were all asked for their age, sex, previous COVID-19 diagnosis and whether they had ever experienced long COVID.

The CDC tracks reported cases of long COVID throughout the U.S. as part of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. (REUTERS/Tami Chappell/File Photo)
In gathering this state-specific data, the CDC said it aims to "inform policy, planning or programming to support U.S. adults experiencing long COVID."

There were some limitations associated with the study, the CDC noted.
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"BRFSS did not capture treatment during acute COVID infection, time since COVID-19 illness or duration or severity of symptoms, which could influence the reported prevalence of long COVID," the agency wrote.
"In addition, information about COVID-19 vaccination was only available for a subset of jurisdictions and is not included in this report."

What is long COVID?​

Long COVID is a condition in which symptoms of the virus persist for an extended period of time, generally three months or more.
Those symptoms can include fatigue, respiratory symptoms and neurologic symptoms (sometimes referred to as "brain fog").

The most prominent features are persistent fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, cough, and rapid heart rate or arrhythmias, according to Dr. Siegel. (iStock)
"Long COVID is still an ill-defined term, but for me, the most prominent features are persistent fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, cough, and rapid heart rate or arrhythmias," Siegel added.

Fox News Digital reached out to the CDC and the West Virginia Department of Health requesting additional comment.

 

[Yommie]

COVID-19 epidemiological update – 16 February 2024

Edition 164, SARS-CoV-2 PCR percent positivity, as detected in integrated sentinel surveillance as part of the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS) and reported to FluNet was around 10% as of 4 February 2024. In this edition, we include: The COVID-19 epidemiological update...

www.who.int

COVID-19 epidemiological update – 16 February 2024​

Edition 164

16 February 2024
| Emergency Situational Updates

Overview​

SARS-CoV-2 PCR percent positivity, as detected in integrated sentinel surveillance as part of the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS) and reported to FluNet was around 10% as of 4 February 2024.
Globally, the number of new cases decrease by 58% during the 28-day period of 8 January to 4 February 2024 as compared to the previous 28-day period, with over 503 000 new cases reported. The number of new deaths decreased by 31% as compared to the previous 28-day period, with over 10 000 new fatalities reported. As of 4 February 2024, over 774 million confirmed cases and more than seven million deaths have been reported globally.
During the period from 8 January to 4 February 2024, COVID-19 new hospitalizations and admissions to an intensive care unit (ICU) both recorded an overall decrease of 32% and 38% with over 114 000 and more than 1300 admissions, respectively.
Globally, JN.1 is the most reported VOI (now reported by 99 countries), accounting for 88.0% of sequences in week 4 of 2024 compared to 64.5% in week 52 of 2023.
In this edition, we include:

• The COVID-19 epidemiological update at the global and regional levels.
• An update on hospitalizations and ICU admissions.
• An update on the SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest (VOI) and variants under monitoring (VUM).

 

[Yommie]

Oregon Health Authority stresses though COVID-19 cases are 'coming down,' vaccines still needed​

 

[Yommie]

China 'CREATES' Deadly New MUTANT Covid Strain With 100% Kill Rate in Mice: Dr. Alina Chan Reacts​

 

[Yommie]

Dr. Eric Griggs on study showing chronic fatigue lingers for some COVID-19 patients​

 

[Yommie]

Opinion | Could Long Covid Be the Senate’s Bipartisan Cause?

After four long years, there’s reason to hope that the condition will get the attention that it and the many who suffer from it deserve.

www.nytimes.com

Could Long Covid Be the Senate’s Bipartisan Cause?​

Feb. 18, 2024, 9:00 a.m. ET

Credit...Allie Sullberg




By Zeynep Tufekci
Opinion Columnist
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Senator Roger Marshall’s voice was shaking with emotion as he made the case for speedy and focused research into long Covid. Marshall, the junior senator from Kansas, is a Republican and a medical doctor. But addressing the first-ever Senate hearing on long Covid last month, he wanted the audience to know that his interest wasn’t just professional and it definitely wasn’t just political. It was also personal.
One of his loved ones, he explained, suffered from severe long Covid. “We’ve taken my loved one to dozens of doctors,” he said. “I’ve talked to 40, 50, 60, 80. I’ve read everything there is to read about long Covid, talked to other members of the Senate that have had long Covid. What are they doing? So I share your frustration.”
It was personal for many in the audience, as well. Four years after the Covid pandemic began, leaving millions of people suffering from long-term health effects, the hearing had been announced with about a week’s notice — a scramble for people who were ill and, in many cases, in dire financial straits. But somehow the room was overflowing.
Many in attendance told me they were worried that the political polarization around everything pandemic-related would thwart even belated progress on this important issue. I came away with a very different view.

Bernie Sanders, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, kicked off the hearings by making an impassioned plea on behalf of the patients. He said the medical establishment had been too dismissive of their plight, and he conceded that Congress had not done nearly enough to help.
But it was Marshall who spoke with precision about the scientific literature. He rattled off the leading theories about why some people with long Covid are debilitated and described specific symptoms in detail.
Later in the hearing, Marshall blasted the National Institutes of Health, which at the end of 2020 received $1.15 billion to study long Covid, for “forming committees and praying about it” rather than working toward diagnostics and biomedical treatments.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Marshall said. The room broke into applause.
The N.I.H.’s long Covid initiative, called Recover, spent a substantial portion of that huge sum on a large but purely observational study that has so far yielded few practical results. Just two clinical trials got underway, only recently. Neither is reassuring.
The first trial, testing Paxlovid, is appropriate but late; three others also looking at Paxlovid have already commenced — one of them is completed and close to announcing results. The other Recover trial tests interventions against neurological symptoms, including what is described as an “online brain training program” and virtual therapy with goals such as helping patients to better “plan and manage personal goals.” These two trials are woefully undersubscribed, with only about 23 and 37 percent, respectively, of the intended number of participants.

For years, long Covid clinicians hoped for hard information about seemingly promising drugs, including those that are already being prescribed off-label. One example that came up in the hearing is low-dose naltrexone. As it happens, I previously brought low-dose naltrexone up to N.I.H. officials as an example of an existing drug they could be testing. They told me that trials for drugs already on the market were imminent. That was 18 months ago.

I truly didn’t expect that zoom therapy and brain games would jump to the front of the queue for those rapidly dwindling funds. But without trials, patients and clinicians are reduced to guessing games and information gleaned from social media.
Take Meighan Stone. Long Covid took her from a prominent life in advocacy — a former president of the Malala Fund who had worked on H.I.V./AIDS projects with the Clinton Foundation — to illness so severe that, for now, she cannot work.
“My friends used to call me the Energizer bunny,” Stone told me. Now she can barely leave her house. Low-dose naltrexone has helped. She learned of the drug from other patients, but she said her first long Covid clinic refused to prescribe it because it wasn’t approved for the condition.
Later, when Stone had to go on Medicaid, she spent months searching for a neurologist who would take that insurance and who might prescribe low-dose naltrexone. When she finally found one, Medicaid wouldn’t cover the drug, again because of lack of Food and Drug Administration approval. After two visits, that neurologist stopped accepting Medicaid, so she was left without a clinician to guide her as she started taking the drug.

Encouraged by the experience of other patients she found on Facebook, she kept taking it, despite initial side effects. After two months, she was able to leave her bed and to tolerate light and sound — not a cure but a real improvement for someone very ill.
Stone made it to the Senate hearing, barely, and contributed $5,000 from her rapidly dwindling medical GoFundMe to help other people with long Covid making the trip. It’s a generous and kind act but also a sign of desperation: If something fundamental doesn’t change, these patients are staring into an abyss.
The room Marshall spoke to was a sea of blue T-shirts reading “Long Covid Moonshot,” the name of a patient campaign calling for at least $1 billion a year for long Covid research. This week the N.I.H. announced four years of new funding for the Recover initiative, enough to allow for $129 million a year, on average. That’s a good start, but more is necessary. For comparison, the N.I.H. allocates about $3 billion annually to H.I.V., which certainly deserves ongoing research, but it already has an effective treatment and afflicts about 1.2 million people in the United States (roughly 0.3 percent of the population).
H.I.V. funding did not get that high by itself. To command the attention the illness deserved, H.I.V. activists dogged politicians, occupied government offices and threw at the White House the ashes of people who had died of AIDS.
Many people with long Covid are too sick for such confrontational action. But the AIDS crisis offers another lesson on what might be possible.

In the 1990s, millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa were dying simply because pharmaceutical companies refused to allow poor countries access to the generic, cheaper versions of effective treatments. Bill Clinton sided with the companies.
Then George W. Bush became president. Many Republican politicians initially vilified people with H.I.V., but things slowly shifted, in part because some conservative families lost loved ones and in part because the devastation in Africa exposed how false the “gay plague” framing was — to say nothing of how hateful.
In January 2003, Bush called for $15 billion over five years to fight the disease globally — far above existing U.S. commitments. Despite the country being deeply divided over the imminent Iraq war, Congress agreed. In the past two decades the resulting PEPFAR initiative spent more than $100 billion, and it is celebrated on both sides of the aisle for saving tens of millions of lives.
After the recent Senate hearing, the people with long Covid in attendance met with White House staff members. The mood was optimistic, Stone said, but when patients said long Covid needed more attention from President Biden, his representatives mentioned a single instance when he had mentioned long Covid. Stone and other patients at the meeting told me that the White House blamed partisan conflict for the lack of progress so far. (The White House told me, “We will continue to work closely with public health experts, stakeholders, others on these efforts, and call for additional support and resources from Congress.”)
The hearing — and history — told a very different story. While Marshall has a personal connection to the issue, he wasn’t the only Republican who proved to be not just sympathetic but also informed. Senator Bill Cassidy, the ranking Republican on the committee, who is also a doctor, spoke movingly about treating people with chronic fatigue syndrome, which is also believed to be a postviral illness for many, and asked probing, precise questions on even complicated long Covid topics.

Biden, no stranger to tragedy and illness in his family and with decades of experience in the Senate, could seek bipartisan support and negotiate that moonshot for long Covid: sustained, targeted funding for biomedical research and clinical trials, to be administered in a streamlined manner. And despite many lawmakers’ anger over the N.I.H.’s prior missteps, the agency has new leadership, and a chance to renew public trust.
It’s the smart thing to do: Such research could unlock much more, and history beckons. But most important, it’s the right thing to do. The suffering patients cannot wait any longer.

 

[Yommie]

Covid left more Indians with lingering lung damage than others | India News - Times of India

India News: A study by Christian Medical College, Vellore, revealed that Indians who recovered from Covid had lung function impairment and lingering symptoms. Som

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

 

[Rego]

Teacher : Which country is the World Champion in Cricket?

Student : China!!

Teacher : That's wrong

Student : Well, they took out every rival with just one bat!!!

@Sharma Ji @Joe Shearer @X

 

[Sharma Ji]

Teacher : Which country is the World Champion in Cricket?

Student : China!!

Teacher : That's wrong

Student : Well, they took out every rival with just one bat!!!

@Sharma Ji @Joe Shearer @X

I think sab mile hue thei covid19 ko le ke.... made the whole planet a prison for a bit there. No doubt led by hybrid commie China.

 

[Sharma Ji]

Modi ne bhi behti Ganga me haath dho diye and try Kar Lia

 

[Joe Shearer]

Teacher : Which country is the World Champion in Cricket?

Student : China!!

Teacher : That's wrong

Student : Well, they took out every rival with just one bat!!!

@Sharma Ji @Joe Shearer @X

Eeeek!

 

[Yommie]

Largest Covid-19 vaccine study yet finds links to health conditions

More than 13.5 billion doses of Covid vaccines have been administered globally over the past three years. A small proportion were injured by the shots, stoking debate about their benefits versus harms.

www.scmp.com

Largest Covid-19 vaccine study yet finds links to health conditions​

• Study looked at medical problems among 99 million immunised people
• Small increases in neurological, blood, heart-related issues were found

Published: 12:31pm, 19 Feb, 2024

Vaccines that protect against severe illness, death and lingering long Covid-19 symptoms from a coronavirus infection were linked to small increases in neurological, blood, and heart-related conditions in the largest global vaccine safety study to date.
The rare events – identified early in the pandemic – included a higher risk of heart-related inflammation from mRNA shots made by Pfizer Inc, BioNTech SE, and Moderna Inc, and an increased risk of a type of blood clot in the brain after immunisation with viral-vector vaccines such as the one developed by the University of Oxford and made by AstraZeneca Plc.
The viral-vector jabs were also tied to an increased risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the peripheral nervous system.

More than 13.5 billion doses of Covid vaccines have been administered globally over the past three years, saving over 1 million lives in Europe alone. Still, a small proportion of people immunised were injured by the shots, stoking debate about their benefits versus harms.

The new research, by the Global Vaccine Data Network, was published in the journal Vaccine last week.
The research looked for 13 medical conditions that the group considered “adverse events of special interest” among 99 million vaccinated individuals in eight countries, aiming to identify higher-than-expected cases after a Covid shot.
Myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, was consistently identified following a first, second and third dose of mRNA vaccines, the study found.

The highest increase in the observed-to-expected ratio was seen after a second jab with the Moderna shot. A first and fourth dose of the same vaccine was also tied to an increase in pericarditis, or inflammation of the thin sac covering the heart.

Researchers found a statistically significant increase in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome within 42 days of an initial Oxford-developed ChAdOx1 or “Vaxzevria” shot that wasn’t observed with mRNA vaccines.

Based on the background incidence of the condition, 66 cases were expected – but 190 events were observed.

​

ChAdOx1 was linked to a threefold increase in cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, a type of blood clot in the brain, identified in 69 events, compared with an expected 21.
The small risk led to the vaccine’s withdrawal or restriction in Denmark and multiple other countries. Myocarditis was also linked to a third dose of ChAdOx1 in some, but not all, populations studied.
Possible safety signals for transverse myelitis – spinal cord inflammation – after viral-vector vaccines was identified in the study.
So was acute disseminated encephalomyelitis – inflammation and swelling in the brain and spinal cord – after both viral-vector and mRNA vaccines.
Seven cases of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis after vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were observed, versus an expectation of two.
The adverse events of special interest were selected based on pre-established associations with immunisation, what was already known about immune-related conditions and preclinical research. The study didn’t monitor for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, that some research has linked with Covid vaccines.
Exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, numbness and “brain fog” were among common symptoms identified in more than 240 adults experiencing chronic post-vaccination syndrome in a separate study conducted by the Yale School of Medicine. The cause of the syndrome isn’t yet known, and it has no diagnostic tests or proven remedies.
The Yale research aims to understand the condition to relieve the suffering of those affected and improve the safety of vaccines, said Harlan Krumholz, a principal investigator of the study, and director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Centre for Outcomes Research and Evaluation.
“Both things can be true,” Krumholz said in an interview. “They can save millions of lives, and there can be a small number of people who’ve been adversely affected.”

 

[Yommie]

Long COVID prevalence varies widely across US states, CDC study finds

The CDC's nationwide study reveals varying long COVID prevalence across the USA, from 1.9% in the Virgin Islands to 10.6% in West Virginia, underscoring the need for targeted public health strategies.

www.news-medical.net

Long COVID prevalence varies widely across US states, CDC study finds​

By Dr. Sushama R. Chaphalkar, PhD. Feb 18 2024 Reviewed by Susha Cheriyedath, M.Sc.

In a recent study published in the CDC journal MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers investigated the prevalence of long coronavirus disease 2019 (long COVID) among adults across the United States of America (USA). They found that the prevalence of long COVID varied among the states and territories, ranging from 1.9% in the Virgin Islands to 10.6% in West Virginia.
Notes from the Field: Long COVID Prevalence Among Adults — United States, 2022. Image Credit: Donkeyworx / Shutterstock

Background​

Long COVID or post-COVID refers to various health issues that persist after acute COVID-19, including neurological and respiratory symptoms, as well as fatigue. About 6.9% of adults in the USA reportedly suffered from long COVID in 2022. However, the current lack of data from states and territories hinders targeted public health responses. The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists have also highlighted this gap. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA conducted a nationwide study to estimate the prevalence of long COVID among adults to address this need.

About the study​

The CDC utilized data from the 2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey of non-institutionalized adults in the USA aged 18 years and older. This cross-sectional, population-based survey employed random digit dialing of phones (cellular and landline) for sampling and gathering information on age, sex, COVID-19 history, and long COVID symptoms lasting at least three months. Prevalence estimates, standardized to the 2020 USA Census Bureau population, were calculated for all adults across states and territories. Weights specific to gender were applied to individuals aged 18–44 years, 45–64 years, and ≥65 years. Analysis was conducted using a Statistical Analysis System (SAS)-callable SUDAAN (short for Survey Data Analysis) while considering the complex survey design.

Results and discussion​

The national prevalence of long COVID among non-institutionalized adults in the USA was found to be 6.4%, with estimates ranging from 1.9% in the Virgin Islands to 10.6% in West Virginia. Seven states surpassed a prevalence of 8.8%. Variations were observed across regions, with lower prevalence in the Pacific and New England and higher prevalence in the South, West, and Midwest. Limitations of the study include the lack of data on treatment during acute COVID illness, time since illness, symptom duration or severity, and vaccination status in some jurisdictions.

Conclusion​

In conclusion, the present study fills a crucial gap by providing insights into the prevalence of long COVID, highlighting the need for continued monitoring of state- and territory-level data to inform healthcare planning and policy decisions. The findings highlight the importance of addressing the healthcare needs of individuals with long COVID and identifying geographic disparities to promote health equity through targeted interventions.

 

[Yommie]

AstraZeneca's Evusheld fails to improve Covid outcomes in Phase III trial

AstraZeneca's Evusheld failed to improve outcomes in a Phase III DISCOVERY European trial enrolling hospitalised Covid-19 patients.

www.clinicaltrialsarena.com

AstraZeneca’s Evusheld fails to improve Covid outcomes in Phase III trial​

The treatment was found to offer substantial protection by neutralising antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.
February 19, 2024

The trial did not find any significant differences in mortality or hospital admission rates between participant groups. Credit: Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock.
The University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy (CIDRAP) has reported that AstraZeneca‘s monoclonal antibody combination drug, Evusheld, failed to improve outcomes in a Phase III trial involving hospitalised Covid-19 patients.

Evusheld was given to 214 of the 399 participants in the DISCOVERY study and did not offer substantial improvement in clinical status or expedite viral clearance in these patients.

Despite this, the drug was found to cause a substantial increase in neutralising antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 at days three and eight.

Although no major safety events or increased cardiovascular risks were recorded, the trial found no significant differences in mortality or hospital admission rates between those who received Evusheld and those given standard care.

The mortality rate at day 90 was around 15% for both the control arm and the cases.

Researchers speculate that different Covid-19 variants present in the trials could have caused the discrepancy between the results of the DISCOVERY trial and the prior ACTIV-3-TICO study, which showed a decline in mortality at day 15.

In the DISCOVERY trial, 40% of infections were caused by the Omicron variant, whereas the ACTIV trial occurred primarily during the prevalence of the Delta variant.

The Omicron variant’s ability to evade Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mABs) has been noted as more pronounced than that of the original strain or Delta variant.

Evusheld is a combination of two long-acting antibodies, tixagevimab (AZD8895) and cilgavimab (AZD1061).

These antibodies were discovered by the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and were licensed to AstraZeneca in 2020.

AstraZeneca reported in June 2022 that detailed data from the Phase III TACKLE trial indicated that Evusheld provided clinically and statistically significant protection against progression to severe Covid-19 or mortality from any cause compared to a placebo.

The outpatient setting findings also suggested that early-stage Covid-19 treatment with Evusheld could lead to more favourable outcomes.