Infection with adenovirus, a common childhood virus, is the leading hypothesis for recent cases of severe hepatitis of unknown origin in children that have led to at least six deaths, U.S. health officials said on May 20.
COVID-19 is on the rise again in the Americas as many countries have abandoned measures like masking and social distancing and many lag in vaccination rates, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on May 18.
President Joe Biden on May 12 commemorated the death of 1 million people in the United States from COVID-19, marking what he called “a tragic milestone” and urging Americans to “remain vigilant” amid the ongoing pandemic.
North Korea reported the country’s first COVID-19 outbreak on May 12, calling it the “gravest national emergency” and ordering a national lockdown, with state media saying an Omicron variant had been detected in the capital, Pyongyang.
Shanghai is tightening an already strict COVID-19 lockdown in a fresh push to eliminate infections outside quarantined areas of China’s biggest city by late this month, people familiar with the matter said.
Valneva said on May 4 the French drugmaker will conduct a trial about the use of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate VLA2001 as a booster jab following a mRNA vaccination or natural infection.
COVID-19 cases in the Americas increased by 12.7 percent last week from the prior week, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on May 4, as infections continued to rise in Central and North America.
Following the record surge in COVID-19 cases during the Omicron-driven wave, some 58 percent of the U.S. population overall and more than 75 percent of younger children have been infected with the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, according to a U.S. nationwide blood survey released on April 26.
AstraZeneca’s Phase III Provent trial results showed a statistically significant 77 percent decrease in a patient’s likelihood of developing symptomatic COVID-19 when proactively treated with Evusheld. Additionally, results were announced by Clover Biopharmaceuticals for the Phase II/III Spectra global study investigating the efficacy of the SCB-2019 (CpG 1018/Alum) vaccine booster in patients that have previously developed a COVID-19 infection.
India’s tally of daily COVID-19 cases nearly doubled on April 18 from the previous day to more than 2,000 for the first time in a month, government data showed, and the southern state of Kerala reported a big jump in deaths.