COVID-19

The Latest in COVID-19 News: Week Ending 03.27.21 – NEJM Journal Watch

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Click on the link for the NEJM Journal Watch weekly update.  Another good week for SARS-CoV-2 articles. I did not forget this week AND I’m not going out of town until Sunday.

https://www.jwatch.org/fw117653/2021/03/27/latest-covid-19-news-week-ending-mar-27

Meanwhile I just heard this for the first time this week.

The Latest in COVID-19 News: Week Ending 03.20.21 – NEJM Journal Watch

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Click on the link for the NEJM Journal Watch weekly update.  Another good week for SARS-CoV-2 articles. Sorry about not posting last week’s Journal Watch link of links. I forgot AND I was out of town which made me forget.

https://www.jwatch.org/fw117630/2021/03/20/latest-covid-19-news-week-ending-mar-20-2021

Meanwhile Sammy sings from what appears to be an empty closet.

SARS-CoV-2 Variants – (in mice)

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Pre-print therefore not peer reviewed. No, I don’t hang out on Twitter all day long. Yes, the study is somewhat geeky. BUT here’s the money sentence:

This abrogation of the species barrier raises the possibility of wild rodent secondary reservoirs and provides new experimental models to study disease pathophysiology and countermeasures.

The B1.351 and P.1 variants extend SARS-CoV-2 host range to mice — https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.18.436013v1

Now I can’t stop thinking about “secondary reservoirs”.

SARS-CoV-2 Variants – (in cats and dogs)

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And minks.

Just remember if you get vaccinated you can still curl up with your furry friends worry free.

Covid-19: Why Peru suffers from one of the highest excess death rates in the world

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Cultural norms draw people together, increasing chances of transmission. Most Peruvians shop daily. Stocking up with a weekly shop would mean breaking a lifelong habit. It’s also impossible for the 40% who do not have a refrigerator.5 As a result, markets quickly became a major vector of the disease. As many as 86% of people in Lima’s markets tested positive during the first wave of cases in May 2020.6 Then-president Martín Vizcarra acknowledged the crisis but did not shut markets down because of the need to supply food.

Covid-19: Why Peru suffers from one of the highest excess death rates in the world — BMJ 2021; 372 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n611 (Published 09 March 2021)

A sad but very informative article on the Covid-19 situation in Peru.

SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines induce a robust germinal centre reaction in humans

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That lump in your armpit may actually be a good thing. The study is a pre-print with a small number of study subjects.