Editor's Note A study by the Riken research institute and Kobe University using Fugaku, the world’s fastest supercomputer, finds that wearing two masks offers little benefit in preventing the spread of COVID-19 compared to one well-fitted disposable mask, the March 4 Reuters reports. The researchers found that tightly-fitted surgical masks…

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Editor's Note Researchers from 17 healthcare organizations report that COVID-19 hospitalizations and death can be reduced with early outpatient treatments. The researchers designed an algorithm comprising treatments in order of disease severity: Immediately give zinc lozenges 5 times per day or zinc sulphate 220 mg every day for 5 days.…

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Editor's Note This study by researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, La Jolla, California, finds that T cells fight SARS-CoV-2 by targeting a broad range of sites on the virus, beyond the key sites on the spike protein. By attacking the virus from many angles, the T cells can…

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Editor's Note This large US study of patients who contracted COVID-19 confirms and provides risk estimates for numerous complications of the disease. Using US health claims data of 70,288 patients who had a COVID-19-related healthcare visit between March 1 and April 30, 2020, researchers found that 53.4% were admitted to…

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Editor's Note This study led by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland, finds that vaccinations with mRNA-1273 (Moderna) have the potential to provide durable humoral immunity. This report describes immunogenicity data for mRNA-1273 at 119 days after the first vaccination and 90 days after the second…

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Editor's Note This study of 1,848 US Marine Corps recruits finds that despite social distancing, wearing masks, regular handwashing, and other public health measures including strict quarantine, recruits contracted COVID-19 and spread it to others, even though hardly any of them had symptoms. Study participants were told to isolate themselves…

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Editor's Note Moderna Inc (Cambridge, Massachusetts) on November 16 announced that its vaccine is 94.5% effective at preventing COVID-19. Their analysis of a 30,000-person trial (half received the vaccine and half received a placebo) finds that 90 of the 95 COVID-19 documented cases are in the placebo group. The Moderna announcement…

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Editor's Note Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can detect COVID-19 by listening to patients’ coughs, regardless if they are symptomatic or not. To build the tool, the researchers solicited audio recordings of patients coughing and accompanying information about their…

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Editor's Note The November 5 final report on data from this double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study of intravenous remdesivir in adults hospitalized with COVID-19 and lower respiratory tract infection shows that remdesivir was superior to placebo in shortening the time to recovery. A total of 1,062 patients were randomized to remdesivir…

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Editor's Note Researchers from the University of Minnesota and M Health Fairview are using artificial intelligence (AI) to detect COVID-19 in chest x-rays of hospitalized patients. The researchers used 18,000 x-rays from COVID-19 patients and 100,000 x-rays from patients without the disease to develop and train an AI program to…

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