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For Immunocompromised Patients and their Physicians In January of 2023, the FDA revoked the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for tixagevimab-cilgavimab (Evusheld), the only prophylactic measure to prevent severe COVID-19 in immunocompromised patients, particularly those that don’t make adequate antibody responses to vaccines due to primary immunodeficiencies or due to immune suppression caused by underlying diseasesContinue reading “BREAKING NEWS”

Part III Has SARS-CoV-2 become a seasonal virus and has COVID-19 become a seasonal disease? Just a quick reminder of what we have covered so far in this blog series entitled: A Comprehensive Update on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. We are taking this opportunity to look back over the first four years of the pandemic andContinue reading “A Comprehensive Update on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19”

Part II (continued) Transmission Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and the CDC’s New Respiratory Virus Guidance To refresh ourselves on this blog series, in Part I, we reviewed what we have learned about the biology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In Part II, we began the discussion of the many things we have learned about the transmission characteristicsContinue reading “A Comprehensive Update on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19”

Part II (continued) Transmission Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 This is part of a long blog series to update readers with a complete overview of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease it causes – COVID-19. In Part I, we reviewed in quite some detail the updated understanding of the biology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In Part IIContinue reading “A Comprehensive Update on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19”

Part II Transmission Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted through aerosols. This is a fine mist that is like spraying hair spray or deodorant, but is not visible. These aerosols are generated by the breathing, talking, yelling, singing, coughing or sneezing of a person who is infected by the virus. Initially, it was thought thatContinue reading “A Comprehensive Update on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19”

Part I The Biological Properties of SARS-CoV-2 Although, for the sake of illustration, I will sometimes refer to viruses as “live” or “dead,” these are not technically correct descriptors. Viruses are not living beings. Basically, they can be infectious or non-infectious and they can be replicating (producing virus offspring) or dormant [we often refer toContinue reading “A Comprehensive Update on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19”

Throughout the pandemic, I have tried to inform and educate my readers of what we were learning in real time about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease that it causes – COVID-19. We have covered a broad range of topics from virology to immunology to epidemiology. I have also tried to dispel some of theContinue reading “A Comprehensive Update on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19”

Early on in the pandemic, many touted taking vitamin D supplements as the way to prevent and to treat COVID-19 without good evidence. What does the evidence say now? Vitamin D has been identified as important to our overall health and to our immune health, in particular. Vitamin D deficiency is relatively common. The twoContinue reading “What have we Learned about whether Vitamin D Prevents or Treats COVID-19?”

We are currently experiencing what appears to be the second-highest COVID-19 wave of infections since the beginning of the pandemic. Some countries, and now one U.S. state, are reporting more hospitalizations for COVID-19 than at any prior time in the pandemic. It is hard to attribute this to any one particular factor, but likely contributingContinue reading “Does the Updated COVID-19 Booster help Protect against Recent SARS-CoV-2 Variants?”

In a blog piece I posted earlier this week, I tried to make the case that the public is being too complacent regarding COVID-19, reinfections and infections in children, especially very young children. I cited a recent study that reported elevations of a blood test (high sensitivity troponin) in infants hospitalized with COVID-19, especially inContinue reading “Viral Persistence in Kids?”