- The National Institutes of Health (NIH) yesterday announced the launch of two phase 2 trials to test the safety and effectiveness of three treatments for adults who have autonomic nervous system dysregulation due to long COVID. The dysfunction leads to problems with heart rate, digestion, and respiratory rate, which are among the symptoms long-COVID patients report as most burdensome. The trial will test Gamunex-C (a form of intravenous immunoglobulin), Ivabradine (an oral medication to reduce heart rate), and coordinator-guided nondrug care such as wearing a compression belt and eating a high-salt diet. The studies are part of the NIH Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative, a nationwide research program to fully understand, diagnose, and treat long COVID.
- The World Health Organization (WHO) this week updated its lab biosafety guidance for SARS-CoV-2, which reclassifies the virus from biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) to BSL-2. In its earlier assessment, the WHO classified the pandemic virus at the higher biosafety level due to the lack of vaccines and treatments. In the updated guidance, the WHO recommends BSL-3 precautions under some circumstances, such as when handing high concentrations of live virus that are variants of interest, variants under monitoring, or emerging variants with unknown biological profiles.
- The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said yesterday that it will expand nasal swab sampling in its traveler-based genomic sequencing program to two more airports: Chicago O'Hare International Airport and Miami International Airport. Over the current winter respiratory season, the CDC has conducted a pilot program to test for multiple pathogens including flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), SARS-CoV-2, and other respiratory pathogens. The public-private sequencing partnership is designed to spot pathogens early and fill in global surveillance gaps, sampling about 300,000 travelers each year from 135 countries. It currently operates at eight US international airports.