Coronavirus Breaking News

The U.S. CDC reported on September 25, 2020, that since mid-July 2020, there has been an overall decreasing trend in the percentage of specimens testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, however, there has been some regional variation. Using combined data from the three laboratory types, the national percentage of respiratory specimens testing positive for the new coronavirus with a molecular assay decreased from 5.1% during week #37 to 4.8% during week #38.

Separately, the COVID-19 Tracker data indicates 109,520,237 tests have been reported as of September 26, 2020.

An analysis by Public Health England (PHE) of COVID-19 cases from January to April 2020 found that people with (2) viruses were more at risk of severe illness. Most cases of coinfection were in seniors, and more than half of them died, reported the BMJ on September 23, 2020.

And when combining intensive care admission or death into a composite variable, the odds of death were 6.33 times greater in people with coinfection (3.57 to 11.23) than in those with neither COVID-19 or influenza infections.

Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, told a PHE media briefing, “There is now some emerging evidence which clearly suggests that coinfection with influenza and COVID-19 produces bad outcomes. One of these diseases is currently vaccine-preventable, and that’s the really important point.”

The PHE updated data was published as a preprint on medRxiv on September 25, 2020.

Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. announced on September 16, 2020, that it and a spin-out of Takis Biotech are expected to initiate a veterinary clinical trial of one of the Company’s five LineaDNA™ vaccine candidates upon approval of the clinical plan by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The goal of this vaccine is to prevent infections from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in companion felines (cats).

Launched in Brewster, N.Y., this study will evaluate (30) feline immune responses of the LineaDNA vaccine candidate, which will be injection 1x per month at 1mg/month for the first 3-months of the trial, with dosing administered intramuscularly. The primary endpoint is to determine evidence of antibody and T-cell response in the companion felines.

In addition to curbing feline SARS-CoV-2 infections, the vaccine may have a secondary benefit of preventing the transfer of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from cats to their human owners.

Maryland-based Novavax, Inc. announced on September 24, 2020, that it has initiated a Phase 3 study to evaluate the efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of the NVX-CoV2373 COVID-19 vaccine candidate in the United Kingdom and is expected to enroll and immunize up to 10,000 individuals over the next 6-weeks.

In a study published by the JAMA on September 16, 2020, the proportion of inpatients with COVID-19 who wore glasses for extended daily periods (>8 h/d) was smaller than that in the general population, suggesting that daily wearers of eyeglasses may be less susceptible to COVID-19.

In this cohort of 276 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Suizhou, China, the proportion of daily wearers of eyeglasses was lower than that of the local population (5.8% vs 31.5%).

A new study published on September 23, 2020, found that 'virtually all SARS-CoV-2 strains in the second wave in Houston, Texas, have a Gly614 amino acid replacement in the coronavirus spike protein, a polymorphism that has been linked to increased transmission and infectivity. Furthermore, patients infected with the Gly614 variant strains had significantly higher virus loads in the nasopharynx on initial diagnosis.

This non-peer-reviewed study by Houston Methodist researchers 'helps to understand the origin, composition, and trajectory of future coronavirus infection waves, and the potential effect of the host immune response and therapeutic maneuvers on SARS-CoV-2 evolution.'

Furthermore, this finding reinforces other researchers’ concerns of the coronavirus is gaining momentum through naturally occurring mutations capable of producing mutant coronaviruses that can escape vaccines – dubbed ‘escapians’ – or mutants that can resist drugs and other therapies, reported Newswise.