Articles

• Study in mice indicates pollution-borne pathogens can reach deep into the lungs and attack more distant organs through the bloodstream
• Researchers said results give ‘further urgency’ to air quality management and pollution reduction policies

Air pollution can “act as a Trojan horse” and worsen the severity of viral infections by driving viruses deep into the lungs and other organs, according to a study led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

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Last week when a Chinese senior health adviser projected 65 million COVID-19 cases per week in China by June, some health experts sounded the alarm.

China has been facing a new COVID-19 wave fueled by the XBB variant since April. Data from Zhong Nanshan—a respiratory disease doctor who was among the first to confirm COVID-19’s easy transmissibility—provided a rare insight into how the disease could possibly be spreading in China almost six months after Beijing abruptly ended its draconian zero-COVID strategy.

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The head of the World Health Organization on Monday warned that future health emergencies could be more severe than the Covid-19 pandemic, and urged the agency's members to start preparing for the next global health crisis, CBS News reported.  

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, issued the warning while speaking at the 76th World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. The message came just weeks after the organization ended the Covid-19 global emergency.

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The covid-19 pandemic forced us to rethink how clean indoor air should be, putting us on the cusp of a possible ventilation revolution.

Could better ventilation have prevented covid from becoming a pandemic that killed millions of people?

Even if there’s no definitive answer, there are reasons to think that cleaner indoor air could have offered a defense against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And certainly the pandemic brought the debate around indoor air quality to a head—to the point that, last week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) set a firm target for ventilation: five air changes per hour.

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The highest alerts are being unraveled globally. But with some 7 million people dead, there are hard lessons to learn from the pandemic—and a lot of work still to do.

THE EMERGENCY STAGE of Covid-19 is over—at least in official terms. The World Health Organization declared an end to the Covid global health emergency last week, and the US will end its federal public health emergency for Covid on Thursday. These announcements come a full year after the European Union moved to end its emergency declaration.

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• A new strain of SARS-CoV-2 has experts concerned
• The XBB.1.16 strain dubbed “Arcturus” was discovered in India and has spread to 29 other countries.
• This strain appears to lead to higher fevers than other omicron-related strains.

A new COVID-19 sub-variant has been catching the attention of the World Health Organization. This omicron variant, XBB.1.16, otherwise known as “Arcturus”Trusted Source causes patients to exhibit many of the familiar symptoms of previous variants of COVID-19, as well as the addition of a new symptom: conjunctivitis.

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But many Americans dispute the data and the risks — much as they have throughout the pandemic.

Millions of Americans gathered maskless in homes and houses of worship this month for Passover, Easter and Ramadan — the latest evidence that coronavirus has retreated from public view as the pandemic winds down.

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• Coronavirus was 60% more likely to kill than flu in VA study
• Pandemic’s mortality risk for hospital patients has fallen

Covid-19 isn’t “just a flu,” with a study of hospital patients finding that the virus was still 60% deadlier than influenza last winter.

Greater immunity against the coronavirus, better treatments, and different virus variants lowered Covid’s mortality risk to about 6% among adults hospitalized in the US last winter from 17-21% in 2020, researchers at the Clinical Epidemiology Center of the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri found. That was still much higher than the flu’s death rate of 3.7%.

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Fifth of hikikomori cases among working-age people attributed to pressures unleashed by pandemic.

Almost 1.5 million people of working age in Japan are living as social recluses, according to a government survey, with about a fifth of cases attributed to the pressures unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

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The fallout from a misinterpreted review on mask science only underscores the need for better protections.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about some reservations I have about a Cochrane review meta-analysis finding mask-wearing in the community probably “makes little or no difference” against respiratory infections. While the overwhelming majority of the studies included in the review weren’t about Covid — and the ones that were looked substantially more promising than the studies of masking outside a pandemic — it’s been widely taken as proof that mask mandates never worked against Covid.

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