Soon after vaccine advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday voted to recommend updated COVID boosters that target the original virus plus the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, endorsed the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommendation, paving the way for immunization to begin.
The prevalence of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) in the United States declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, but inpatient mortality and treatment costs were higher, according to a paper published yesterday in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.
Nonhospitalized, high-risk, vaccinated COVID-19 patients who received nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (NMV-r, or Paxlovid) saw a 45% drop in their relative risk of emergency department (ED) visits, hospitalization, and death by 30 days, suggests a study published late last week in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
A new study offers a complex picture of COVID-19 incidence among the US homeless population and illustrates the difficulty of tracking disease spread among this population. The study was published today in JAMA Network Open and found the incidence of the disease lower than among the general population.
The risk of myocarditis and/or pericarditis was not significantly different among children ages 5 to 11 years after COVID-19 vaccination from that of unvaccinated children and much lower than that among children aged 12 to 17, finds a prospective study in Denmark published today in Pediatrics.
UK researchers found E coli with resistance to third-generation cephalosporins in 8% of fecal samples.
A report yesterday from the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency (FSA) shows that that the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli in retail beef and pork samples remains low.
An increase in resistance to ciprofloxacin among poultry isolates was primarily due to Salmonella Infantis.
Three new studies to be presented at the upcoming European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) conference at the end of the month demonstrate benefits of the antiviral molnupiravir against COVID-19 infections, including evidence that Merck's pill reduces symptoms of the SARS-CoV-2 virus by day 3 of administration.
The Indiana Board of Animal Health (IBAH) said today that initial tests at a third turkey farm in the state are positive for H5 avian flu. The new detection marks the United States' fifth recent outbreak in poultry. Further testing is under way to assess if the virus is the same highly pathogenic H5N1 strain that struck the first Indiana farm.