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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Preventing infection transmission has been a chief concern of healthcare leaders and staff striving to protect their patients and themselves from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The virus poses an insidious threat that includes the possibility of bronchoscopy-associated transmission of COVID-19. Long before the pandemic, epidemiologist and researcher Cori…

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Editor's Note This study led by researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, finds that patients who survive serious COVID-19 infections have a long-lasting immune response against the virus. The study includes a cohort of case patients with known COVID-19 infection (343) and controls (1,548). Blood…

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Editor's Note In this double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study of IV remdesivir in adults hospitalized with COVID-19 and lower respiratory tract infection, remdesivir was found to be superior to placebo in shortening the time to recovery. A total of 1,062 patients were randomized to either remdesivir (541) or placebo (521). Remdesivir…

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