By Jim Hᴏft May. 6, 2024 Just in time for the election… Two new COVID-19 variants, collectively known as “FLiRT,” have been detected and are reportedly spreading across the United States. The FLiRT variants are sub-lineages of the Omicron variant, named for the mutations they bear. The Infectious Disease Society of America states that the nickname ‘FLiRT’ is derived […]
List of authors. Paul A. Offit, M.D New England Journal of Medicine January 23, 2023 in Wuhan, China. Two months later, the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, called the Wuhan-1 or ancestral strain, was isolated and sequenced. It was now possible to make a vaccine. All the vaccines, including the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer–BioNTech and […]
Authors: Nebraska Medicine November 1, 2022 There are currently more than 37,000 cases reported in the United States per day, with test positivity of 8.6%. When test positivity is above 5%, transmission is considered uncontrolled. There are more than 340 deaths per day, and hospitalizations have increased 8% over the last two weeks. What COVID-19 variant […]
Authors: David Axe Updated Oct. 16, 2022 A new subvariant of the novel-coronavirus called XBB dramatically announced itself earlier this week, in Singapore. New COVID-19 cases more than doubled in a day, from 4,700 on Monday to 11,700 on Tuesday—and XBB is almost certainly why. The same subvariant just appeared in Hong Kong, too. A highly mutated descendant of the Omicron […]
Authors: Ariana Eunjung Cha May 20, 2022 The Washington Post Researchers Sarah Hamer and Lisa Auckland donned their masks and gowns as they pulled up to the suburban home in College Station, Tex. The family of three inside had had covid a few weeks earlier, and now it was time to check on the pets. […]
Authors: Mint Newsletters April 29, 2022 The BA.4 and BA.5 sublineages appear to be more infectious than the earlier BA.2 lineage The sub-lineages have been detected in seven of South Africa’s nine provinces and 20 countries worldwide New omicron sublineages, discovered by South African scientists this month, are likely able to evade vaccines and natural […]
Only a few dozen cases of BA.4 and BA.5 have been reported to the global GISAID database, according to WHO Authors: Jennifer Rigby Reuters April 11, 2022 The World Health Organization said on Monday it is tracking a few dozen cases of two new sub-variants of the highly transmissible Omicron strain of the coronavirus to […]
Change in reported COVID-19 cases per 100k people in the last two weeks March 23 to April 5, 2022 Half of the states are seeing COVID case numbers rise again while nationwide totals continue to fall. The big picture: The Omicron subvariant known as BA.2 is the dominant strain circulating around the U.S., accounting for almost […]
Authors: David Axe Published Apr. 03, 2022 10:47PM ET After spreading across Asia and Europe, the BA.2 subvariant of the novel coronavirus is now dominant in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Right now, U.S. COVID cases are at a six-month low. But what happens next in the U.S. and nearby countries is hard to predict. Looking to Europe […]
Authors: Qing Xiong, View ORCID , , ei Cao, Chengbao Ma, Chen Liu, Junyu Si, Peng Liu, Mengxue Gu, Chunli Wang, Lulu Shi, Fei Tong, Meiling Huang, Jing Li, Chufeng Zhao, Chao Shen, Yu Chen, Huabin Zhao, Ke Lan, Xiangxi Wang, Huan Yan Summary Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and several bat coronaviruses employ Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP4) as their functional receptors1–4. However, the receptor for NeoCoV, the closest MERS-CoV relative yet discovered in bats, remains enigmatic5. In this study, we unexpectedly found that […]