The results show COVID shots in pregnancy can offer protection, researchers say.
January 26, 2024, 6:25 PM ET
5 min read
Unvaccinated pregnant people who contracted COVID-19 were more likely to have babies who suffered from respiratory distress, a new study published this week found.
A team of researchers led by the University of California, Los Angeles, looked at 221 pregnant people for the study, including 151 who were unvaccinated before they were infected with COVID, which was confirmed with a laboratory test.
All of the 151 unvaccinated pregnant people met the National Institutes of Health criteria for severe or critical COVID-19 whereas only 4% of the 70 vaccinated pregnant people met the criteria.
Researchers were able to examine 199 babies, all of whom were born between April 2020 and August 2022, and none of whom tested positive for the virus. The remaining 28 fetuses either resulted in a miscarriage, abortion or fetal demise, or could not be followed up with.
The team found that being exposed to COVID-19 in utero "may activate an inflammatory cascade" in the airways of newborns, resulting in respiratory distress. One of the main pathways appear to be associated with the function of cilia, the tiny, hair-like structures found on the surface of cells that typically help push germs, mucus and other particles towards the mouth so they can be coughed or sneezed out.
Results, published in the journal Nature Communications, found the odds of respiratory distress were up to three times greater in babies born in those who were unvaccinated versus those who were vaccinated.
"We found unusually high rates of respiratory distress shortly after birth in the full-term babies born to mothers who had COVID-19 during pregnancy," Dr. Karin Nielsen, a professor of pediatrics in the division of pediatric infectious diseases at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, said in a statement. "The mothers had not been vaccinated prior to acquiring COVID, indicating that vaccination protects against this complication."
Further research is needed to determine if COVID-19 still impacts respiratory distress when accounting for other factors that lead to respiratory distress syndrome
Respiratory distress in infants is defined as difficulty breathing or working harder to breathe within the first 24 hours. Signs can include wheezing, sweating, changes in breathing rate or color changes around the lips or mouth, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Research has shown that pregnant people with COVID-19 are at increased risk of becoming seriously ill leading to hospitalization, intensive care, the use of a ventilator or even death. COVID-19 during pregnancy also raises the risk of a premature or stillborn baby.
"Our results demonstrate that maternal vaccination against COVID-19 not only protects against maternal disease severity, but also reduces the likelihood of neonatal [respiratory distress]," the authors wrote.
The study had several limitations, such as a small and homogenous sample size and a wide estimate range, which impacted generalizability. More research is needed to validate these findings.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommends that all pregnant people get vaccinated against COVID-19 and that studies have shown there are no safety concerns for babies born to those who have been vaccinated.
Babies born to mothers who contracted a COVID-19 infection while pregnant have “unusually high rates” of respiratory distress at birth or shortly after, a Nature Communications study found.
While studies have shown contracting COVID during pregnancy has been associated with adverse outcomes for both mothers and newborn babies, the authors of the study found there is growing concern for longer-term consequences for babies after they are born.
Previous studies found there were risks of maternal hypoxia and multiorgan failure, which may lead to premature delivery, as well as stillbirth and neurodevelopmental issues — but the recent study found that if a mother is exposed to COVID, it may inflame a newborn’s airway and lead to slower breathing rates, pale or blueish skin, flaring nostrils or a retraction of the chest with each breath.
While the study finds the virus creates an increased risk for respiratory issues for babies after birth, the risk of a mother transmitting the COVID-19 virus in utero remains low.
More than 200 women with COVID-19 were enrolled in the study in Los Angeles. None of the babies tested positive for the infection at birth, but about 17 percent were diagnosed with respiratory issues, which is higher than average for newborns.
Infants who were experiencing respiratory distress stayed in the hospital for about 24 days, Dr. Olivia Man, the study’s author, told NBC News, who first reported on the study.
The point of time the mother contracted COVID during the pregnancy did not have an impact on whether the infant experienced respiratory distress.
Vaccination played a part in the study’s results. Unvaccinated mothers had three times the odds of respiratory distress in their babies compared with mothers who had at least one dose of the COVID vaccine.
If a mother contracts the infection, her body will produce more cytokines, which are involved in the body’s immune response and trigger inflammation. Inflammation in the mother may activate inflammation cells in the infant.
Man told NBC News that the doctors believe the COVID infection in the mother will cascade from the mother to the infant, who is “responding to their mother’s own inflammation.” Long-term consequences are not known yet, but Man said it could include asthma.
Not all mothers who contract COVID while pregnant will experience negative outcomes with their babies.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is safe for a pregnant mother to receive the COVID vaccine at any point in the pregnancy, and it helps build antibodies that will protect the baby from contracting the virus.
"COVID is here to stay," emphasized World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Europe, Hans Kluge, MD, at a press briefing on January 16, 2024. He stressed the need for continuing vigilance and efforts to keep the disease at the top of the political and healthcare agendas, while attention may be drifting to other major global events.
The WHO estimated that COVID-19 vaccines have saved at least 1.4 million lives in the WHO European Region, which encompasses 53 countries across a broad geographical area including the European Union (EU) and countries like Russia and Israel. Kluge said that at present, COVID-19 rates "remain elevated but are decreasing." However, he emphasized that the region is seeing widespread circulation of other respiratory viruses, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and measles. The WHO was concerned that health services should prepare for an upsurge in the full range of respiratory virus hospitalizations in the next few weeks.
Kluge said that the unpredictable nature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus means that the emergence of new variants could cause the current situation to rapidly worsen.
Edoardo Colzani, MD, the Principal Expert on Respiratory Viruses at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), told Medscape Medical News that in the EU and European Economic Area, "Countries report a mix of increasing and decreasing trends in SARS-CoV-2 activity, COVID-19 hospitalizations, and ICU admissions and deaths, with severe outcomes predominantly among those aged 65 years and above."
The ECDC monitored the results of COVID-19 tests in selected sentinel sites chosen to give a representative sample. The percentage of positive tests in primary care sites increased from week 44 to week 49 of 2023 but fell since week 50.
Colzani said that many countries also conduct testing at non-sentinel sites, such as hospitals, schools, primary care facilities, laboratories, and nursing homes. "At the EU and EEA level, SARS-CoV-2 detections and testing in non-sentinel data were similar to those reported for sentinel data, with most countries reporting decreasing trends. However, in some countries, SARS-CoV-2 positivity and detections in non-sentinel data are notably increasing, especially in those aged 65 years and above," he explained.
Despite a decreasing trend in COVID-19 across Europe overall, data from the WHO reported an increasing trend in SARS-CoV-2 positivity in four EU reporting countries in the second week of January: Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, and Slovakia.
In terms of disease severity, Colzani said, "We wouldn't go as far as saying that there is declining severity, but surely it's not increasing...But if [vaccination] is not kept up to date, then we may see an increase in severity due to waning immunity, particularly among groups at risk."
The data available collectively from the ECDC and WHO revealed a complex picture of increasing and decreasing trends, covering rates of positive testing, hospital admissions, intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, and COVID-19associated deaths. The values were changing significantly from week to week.
In terms of death rates, the WHO stated that although levels remained relatively low in the second week of January, Malta reported a marked increase in COVID-19 death rates in people aged 65 years and older, while 10 of the 14 countries reporting age-specific death data documented a marked decrease.
"Member States should be ready for the possible need to increase emergency department and ICU capacity, in terms of adequate staffing and bed capacity, for both adult and pediatric hospitals," said Colzani. "Hospital administrators and managers should ensure that resources, such as medical and nursing staff and equipment, are also available."
As the virus continues to evolve, the ECDC view, generally shared by the WHO, is that there are currently no new variants of concern, but there are some variants of interest that are being closely monitored. "JN.1, which is a sub-lineage of the BA.2.86 variant, has been particularly increasing in proportion recently, but without so far causing a visible impact on the epidemiological indicators," said Colzani.
The prevalence of the diverse range of issues characterized as long COVID is another major aspect of the disease. The WHO estimated that 36 million people across the WHO European region may have developed long COVID over the first 3 years of the pandemic.
Several speakers at the WHO briefing highlighted lessons learned from the pandemic to help prepare for future ones, including the importance of regional resilience, with nations and regions needing to become self-sustainable in the manufacturing of medical and other supplies and in conducting clinical trials.
Looking to the future, Catherine Smallwood, MD, COVID-19 Incident Manager of WHO/Europe, told the press briefing, "We are workingin the European region and beyond to revise and update pandemic plans [to ensure] that what we've experienced in the last pandemic can be documented and included in the pandemic plan for the next one."
Hans Kluge concluded, "It's so important [to get] an international agreement, a pandemic accordto tackle some issues like much quicker exchange of information, of data on clinical trials, and of sharing also the different medical countermeasures."
LOT OF RESPIRATORY ILLNESSES. AND ONE DOCTOR I SPOKE WITH SAYS THEYRE SEEING MORE PATIENTS COMING IN NOW AS THESE COVID AND FLU CASES ARE PEAKING FOR THE SEASON. ACCORDING TO THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTHS MOSTRILLIONECENT WEEKLY REPORT, SOUTHEASTERN WISCONSIN IS SEEING HIGH LEVELS OF FLU LIKE ILLNESS. A TYPICAL FLU SEASON MEANS A LOT OF FOLKS GET SICK. IT MEANS A LOT OF PEOPLE GET HOSPITALIZED. AND, UM, AND SO THIS IS REALLY THE PEAK OF THE SEASON THAT WERE SEEING RIGHT NOW. DOCTOR BENJAMIN WESTON SAYS THAT PEAK ALSO COMING FOR COVID CASES AND THE IMPACT OF THE ILLNESSES ARE FELT BY THE MILWAUKEE COMMUNITY. THERE IS YEAH, TOO MANY PEOPLE. THEY ARE SICK AND COUGH. SAME THING TO AND A LITTLE BIT FEVER. ALVINA SCHICK IS A TEACHER WHO DODGED THE VIRUS SO FAR, BUT SHES SEEING INCREASED CASES AMONG HER STUDENTS. IT IS AROUND COUGHING, SNEEZING. THATS WHY I ALWAYS ASK MY STUDENTS, PLEASE USE HAND SANITIZER. MAKE SURE YOU STEP BACK IF YOU SOMEBODY IS PASSING BY, YOU AND AND TO BE VERY SAFE, WEAR A MASK. THE STATES WEEKLY REPORT SHOWS THAT COVID IS SENDING MORE PEOPLE 65 AND OLDER TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM WITH THE FLU, SENDING PEOPLE 17 AND YOUNGER TO THE E.R. THE HOSPITALIZATIONS ARENT AT A CRITICAL LEVEL, ACCORDING TO DOCTOR WESTON, AND HE SAYS THERE COULD BE RELIEF IN THE NEAR FUTURE. SO HOPEFULLY IN THE COMING WEEKS, WELL SEE A DECLINE IN THESE SORT OF VIRAL RESPIRATORY ILLNESSES. BUT RIGHT NOW THEYRE AT A PRETTY HIGH LEVEL. ERICA DOCTOR WESTON SAYS THERE ARE TWO THINGS PEOPLE CAN DO RIGHT NOW TO HELP STOP THE SPREAD. THATS RIGHT. HE SAYS THAT EITHER YOU COULD STAY HOME IF YOU
'Peak of the season': Wisconsin DHS reports high flu, coronavirus levels
Milwaukee County's chief health policy director says they're seeing more patients because of respiratory illnesses, but hospital capacity is not at critical level
Updated: 10:40 PM CST Jan 25, 2024
Wisconsin State Department of Health's most recent weekly respiratory virus surveillance report shows high rates of influenza and coronavirus in the southeastern region.According to Dr. Benjamin Weston, Milwaukee County's chief health policy advisor, these viruses are hitting their peak: "A typical flu season means a lot of folks get sick. It means a lot of people get hospitalized and so this is really the peak of the season that we're seeing right now."Multiple people WISN 12 News spoke with said they're feeling that impact, including Marwan Atshan who recently had a flu-like illness."There is, yeah, too many people," Atshan said. "They are sick and cough. Same thing too, and little bit fever."Alveena Sheikh is a teacher who's dodged the viruses so far, but she's seeing increased cases among her students."Coughing, sneezing. That's why I always ask my students, please use hand sanitizer," Sheikh said. "Make sure you step back if somebody is passing by you and to be very safe, wear a mask."The state's weekly report shows that coronavirus is sending more people 65 and older to the emergency room with the flu sending 17 and younger to the emergency room.Hospitalizations aren't at a critical level, according to Weston, and he expects there could be relief in the near future."So hopefully, in the coming weeks, we'll see a decline in these sort of viral respiratory illnesses. But right now, they're pretty high level," Weston said.While it's far into the respiratory illness season, Weston said it's not too late to get the vaccines, especially for those who are immunocompromised. The doctor recommends people who are sick stay home to prevent the spread.
Wisconsin State Department of Health's most recent weekly respiratory virus surveillance report shows high rates of influenza and coronavirus in the southeastern region.
According to Dr. Benjamin Weston, Milwaukee County's chief health policy advisor, these viruses are hitting their peak: "A typical flu season means a lot of folks get sick. It means a lot of people get hospitalized and so this is really the peak of the season that we're seeing right now."
Multiple people WISN 12 News spoke with said they're feeling that impact, including Marwan Atshan who recently had a flu-like illness.
"There is, yeah, too many people," Atshan said. "They are sick and cough. Same thing too, and little bit fever."
Alveena Sheikh is a teacher who's dodged the viruses so far, but she's seeing increased cases among her students.
"Coughing, sneezing. That's why I always ask my students, please use hand sanitizer," Sheikh said. "Make sure you step back if somebody is passing by you and to be very safe, wear a mask."
The state's weekly report shows that coronavirus is sending more people 65 and older to the emergency room with the flu sending 17 and younger to the emergency room.
Hospitalizations aren't at a critical level, according to Weston, and he expects there could be relief in the near future.
"So hopefully, in the coming weeks, we'll see a decline in these sort of viral respiratory illnesses. But right now, they're pretty high level," Weston said.
While it's far into the respiratory illness season, Weston said it's not too late to get the vaccines, especially for those who are immunocompromised.
The doctor recommends people who are sick stay home to prevent the spread.
Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Thursday alleged that the BJP government at the Centre has not done anything good for the people of Hindi-speaking States despite them voting substantially for the party.
It (Central government) is imposing Hindi on non-Hindi speaking States only to deceive the Hindi-speaking population. Have they done anything worthwhile for them? Mr. Stalin asked while addressing a meeting organised on the occasion of the Linguistic Martyrs Day in Chennai.
Mr. Stalin said people of Hindi-speaking States underwent untold miseries during the pandemic as they could not get transport facilities to return to their hometowns. We had shed tears for them. They walked hundreds of kilometres. Some of them were even crushed by trains. If something is more dangerous than the Corona (virus), it is the BJP government. Now the government is trying to divert peoples attention by consecrating the Ram temple, he said.
Recalling a viral video in which a Hindi-speaking boy demanded education over temple, the Chief Minister said the BJP government was particular that people should not gain awareness. The people of north India are no longer ready to believe the politics of the BJP. It cannot win in northern States in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, Mr. Stalin said.
He also said the resolution adopted in the youth wing conference of the DMK in Salem, which vowed to expose the BJP, the enemies of the Hindus should be carried out as a campaign by everyone. BJP has taken refuge in religion to save its skin. We should expose its failures and its anti-Tamil policies to save India, he added.
Training his guns on AIADMK leader Edappadi K. Palaniswami, Mr. Stalin alleged that the former Chief Minister, who played second fiddle to the BJP government and supported its anti-people policies, also connived with the partys anti-Tamil stand. He did not oppose the GST and plunged the State into a financial crisis. He helped in the imposition of Hindi, and was eventually rejected by the people of Tamil Nadu, he said.
Reiterating that the victory of the INDIA bloc in the Lok Sabha polls alone could ensure a future for India, he said a government led by the bloc would be truly federal in nature.
If we all went a little nuts during the COVID-19 lockdowns, it's absolutely true that some of usincluding many of our country's leaders and people in the mediawent absolutely batshit crazy, often with disastrous results.
Exactly why that happened is the subject of author Jon Ronson's latest season of Things Fell Apart, a podcast that explores the deep origins of today's culture wars in controversies, panics, and delusions from decades ago.
Reason's Nick Gillespie talkedwith Ronson about why he believes the creation of a fake medical condition called "excited delirium" in 1988 ultimately led to the death of George Floyd in 2020, how law enforcement fixations on white supremacy warped the investigation into a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and how the director of the massively influential Plandemic documentaries was actually rewriting the script of Star Wars.
Ronson is best known as the author of The Men Who Stare at Goats, an account of a U.S. Army unit that tried to perfect paranormal powers like walking through walls, and So You've Been Publicly Shamed, which helped define cancel culture just as it was becoming widespread via social media.
A password-less database containing an estimated 1.3 million sets of Dutch COVID-19 testing records was left exposed to the open internet, and it's not clear if anyone is taking responsibility.
Among the information revealed in the publicly accessible and seemingly insecurely configured database were 118,441 coronavirus test certificates, 506,663 appointment records, 660,173 testing samples and "a small number" of internal files. A bevy of personally identifiable information was included in the records including patient names, dates of birth, passport numbers, email addresses, and other information.
The leaky database was discovered by perennial breach sniffer Jeremiah Fowler, who reckoned it belongs to one of the Netherlands' largest commercial COVID-19 test providers, CoronaLab a subsidiary of Amsterdam-based Microbe & Lab. The US Embassy in the Netherlands lists CoronaLab as one of its recommended commercial COVID-19 test providers in the country.
If someone with malicious intent managed to find the database they could do some serious damage, Fowler warned.
"Criminal[s] could potentially reference test dates, locations, or other insider information that only the patient and the laboratory would know," he wrote. "Any potential exposure involving COVID test data combined with PII could potentially compromise the personal and medical privacy of the individuals listed in the documents."
The CoronaLab data exposure report reads in many ways like any other accidental data exposure news: It was found, and now the offending database is offline. But this one isn't that simple.
According to Fowler, no-one at CoronaLab or Microbe & Lab ever responded to his repeated attempts to reach out and inform them of the exposure.
"I sent multiple responsible disclosure notices and did not receive any reply, and several phone calls also yielded no results," Fowler claimed. "The database remained open for nearly three weeks before I contacted the cloud hosting provider and it was finally secured from public access."
The Register has asked Microbe & Lab to get more information about the incident and we haven't heard back either.
Without more information from Microbe & Lab or CoronaLab itself, it's impossible to know how long the database was actually exposed online. The CoronaLab website is down as of this writing it's not clear if the outage is related to the database exposure, or if the service will be brought back online.
Because no-one at the organization whose records were exposed can be reached, it's also not clear if customers or patients are aware that their data was exposed online.Nor, importantly, do we know if European data protection authorities have been informed.
Per article 33 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), data breaches must be reported to local officials within 72 hours of detection, and notifications also have to be made to affected individuals. We reached out to the Dutch Data Protection Authority to learn if it had been notified of the CoronaLab data exposure, and didn't immediately hear back.
The coronavirus pandemic is spreading unchecked across Europe, causing rising death rates and pushing hospitals to their limits.
On January 10, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated: In December, almost 10,000 deaths from COVID-19 were reported to WHO, and the number of hospital admissions increased by 42 percent compared to November with the number of ICU admissions at 62 percent. However, the trends [on mortality] are based on data from fewer than 50 countries, mainly in Europe and the Americas. It is certain that there is also an increase in other countries that is not being reported.
The current wave is being driven primarily by the JN.1 (Juno) variant. It is an offshoot of BA.2.86 (Pirola). Pirola has more than 20 mutations on its spike protein, Juno has just one more. However, this makes the variant significantly more immune-resistant.
The British Office for National Statistics also recently reported that, in addition to the normal symptoms of a coronavirus infection, Juno can also cause sleep problems and anxiety. According to the survey by British scientists, 10.8 percent of those infected experienced sleep problems and 10.5 percent reported anxiety disorders.
The variant is already occurring in many European countries, including Iceland, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. A number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe also reported a significant increase in respiratory illnesses at the end of last year. In Spain and Italy, the rising numbers of patients have pushed hospitals to their limits. The COVID wave also coincides with rising flu and RSV infections across Europe.
In the UK, Juno is causing new record highs. At the end of October, the JN.1 share was still at 1 percent, in mid-November it was at 5 percent, but by Christmas had risen to 51.4 percent. Professor Steve Griffin, a virologist at Leeds University, said, There has clearly been a massive surge in COVID infections in recent weeks. This is undoubtedly due to socialising indoors over the festive period. It is also likely that the return to schools, universities and businesses will increase this even further.
Asked if the UK could set a new record this month, he replied, Yes, I think we could see something similar to BA2 [the previous record wave]. Data scientist Professor Christina Pagel from University College London also expects infections to rise for another week or two, equalling or even surpassing the record waves at the beginning of 2020.
In Germany, the number of infections reached a record high at the end of the year, with hospitalisation rates on a par with previous waves. Although the wave receded in the first weeks of January, according to data from Fluweb, the incidence rate remains at 500. Almost 8,000 people had to be hospitalised in the first three weeks of the year and 1,316 have already died.
The situation in Spain is particularly dramatic. Hospitals have been under increasing pressure since the beginning of the year as a result of a triple-demic of COVID-19, influenza A and RSV. In large parts of the country, emergency departments are heavily overloaded due to the high volume of patients. The Universitario La Paz hospital in Madrid, which treats around 500,000 patients, making it one of the largest hospitals in Spain, has had to postpone operations to make room for new patients.
Due to the dramatic situation, the Spanish government was forced to reintroduce compulsory masks in healthcare facilities. However, local governments, such as those in the Basque Country, have reacted by taking legal action against the mask requirement.
The rising number of deaths from flu and COVID-19 is even putting pressure on funeral services. According to an article in Euro Weekly News, funeral service operators are warning they will struggle to cope with the rising number of deaths by the end of January.
Manuel Tejadas, head of the Interfunerarias funeral service chain in Catalonia, said, We are overwhelmed. I havent seen such an increase in deaths since the pandemic.
Piles of corpses are also being reported in hospitals in the regions of Madrid and Valencia. Hospitals are continually calling us to collect bodies and we are very overloaded here, explains Tejadas. In some cases, families have to wait up to four days for a funeral. That is twice as long as the usual period of between 24 and 48 hours.
Mehring Books
COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic
A compilation of the World Socialist Web Site's coverage of this global crisis, available in epub and print formats.
Doctors and local newspapers in Italy are also warning that hospitals could be overwhelmed by the flu and COVID wave. Hundreds of patients are having to wait days to be transferred to normal hospital wards or intensive care units. According to the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), cases of respiratory infections reached record levels in the last two weeks of 2023, surpassing corresponding periods during the pandemic. At the end of December, the number of deaths peaked at 425 per week, and the figure remained at 371 in the first weeks of January.
Foce, the Italian association of oncologists, cardiologists and haematologists, issued an appeal to the Italian government, warning: For some weeks now, we have been observing the phenomenon of worsening chaos in our emergency systems. Emergency departments are in a nightmare situation and hospital wards are under siege. It continues: It is clear that the claim made at the end of July that the COVID pandemic is numerically over is not true. The virus never disappeared.
In Portugal, Health Minister Manuel Pizarro also publicly admitted that he was concerned about the increase in admissions to intensive care units as a result of respiratory infections. The virus is causing very serious illnesses, he explained. At the beginning of January, there were long waiting times of sometimes more than 10 hours in hospitals across the country.
The massive new coronavirus wave is a direct result of the ruthless pandemic policy of all European governments. They are putting profits before the lives and health of the population and have long since cancelled all measures to contain the pandemic.
The necessary fight against the pandemic must therefore come from below and be linked to the fight against capitalism and the reorganisation of society on a socialist basis. The only way to stop the pandemic is a globally-coordinated elimination strategy, in which the entire worlds population acts in solidarity and with a collective determination to enforce a broad-based public health program, writes the WSWS in its New Years perspective.
And further: After four years of the pandemic, it is abundantly clear that such a global strategy will never arise under world capitalism, which subordinates all public health spending to the insatiable profit interests of a money-mad financial oligarchy. The very idea that an illness should be eliminated or eradicated, a central concept in public health, has been abandoned. Only through world socialist revolution will it be possible to end the pandemic, as well as stop the further descent into capitalist barbarism and World War III.
Join the fight to end the COVID-19 pandemic
Someone from the Socialist Equality Party or the WSWS in your region will contact you promptly.
A new study in Science is shining a light on the continuing impact of long COVID, with research revealing further and continuing health concerns for some of the 16 million sufferers in the U.S.
Long COVID is a syndrome, or collection of symptoms, that continue or develop after an acute COVID-19 infection and can last weeks, months or years. There is no test to confirm if symptoms are related to long COVID. Some scientists suggest that long COVID is caused by overactive immune cells, but the exact cause remains unclear.
The study followed 113 patients at four different hospitals in Switzerland with mild and severe COVID-19 and found that 40 had symptoms of long COVID at six months, 22 of whom had persistent symptoms at 12 months.
Researchers looked at blood samples from the 40 who experienced long COVID symptoms, compared them to controls who were not infected with COVID-19, and found that those who had long COVID had evidence of inflammation (increased complement activity), blood cell dysregulation (hemolysis and platelet activation) and tissue injury in their blood.
The specific details from the small study may help provide "a basis for new diagnostic solutions," according to the researchers, for the condition with no known cure or FDA-approved treatments.
While these results finding evidence of inflammation in patients with long COVID symptoms are not entirely surprising nor specific to long COVID, they are a step forward in identifying the cause of long COVID.
It's more than just researchers, though, looking into developments in our understanding of the syndrome. The condition received renewed attention from the federal government last week, as the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions convened a group of patients and experts to testify about the impacts of long COVID before a bipartisan group of Senators.
In the Senate's first-ever hearing on this topic, Sen. Tammy Baldwin said researchers and government officials need to "increase the sense of urgency" over understanding and treating the condition.
For Sen. Bernie Sanders, chairman of the committee, more needs to be done.
"We think we haven't done anywhere near enough, and we hope to turn that around," he said.
Medical experts testified at the hearing, telling the committee that the condition can emerge in patients of all ages and backgrounds, that the risk increases with multiple infections, and rates of long COVID are higher in minority communities.
"The burden of disease and disability from long COVID is on par with the burden of cancer and heart disease," Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, M.D., a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University, said. "We must develop sustainable solutions to prevent repeated infections with SARS-CoV-2 and long COVID that would be embraced by the public."
Angela Meriquez Vazquez, a long COVID patient from California, testified that she has helped over 15,000 sufferers through online advocacy.
"We are living through the largest mass destabilizing event in modern history," she told the Senators.
As she told her own story, Meriquez Vazquez, a former runner, said she is currently on 12 medications. Although she said she has managed to continue working, and she has health care, the condition has forced her to work from home, lying down to minimize her symptoms.
"Not since the emergence of the AIDS pandemic has there been such an imperative for large-scale change in healthcare, public health, and inequitable structures that bring exceptional risks of illness, suffering, disability, and mortality," Meriquez Vazzque said.
One of the Senators -- Republican Roger Marshall -- shared his own testimony, revealing to the committee that one of his loved ones "is one of the 16 million people" who has "suffered for two years" with the condition.
He told the committee his family member's illness is "like mono(nucleosis) that does not go away," adding that the person has seen 30 doctors in an attempt to find help.
Marshall said there needs to be more focus on treatments for long COVID at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"I'm frustrated that our CDC is more focused on vaccines than they are on treatments," he said.
Dr. Al-Aly, while testifying, repeatedly called on our country's leaders and medical experts to come together to tackle the ongoing health crisis.
"We are the best nation on earth, and we can solve this," he said.
One of his proposed solutions is establishing a new multidisciplinary research institute to address infection-associated chronic conditions.
Research into the condition has been "slow," Dr. Charisse Madlock-Brown, Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, said at the hearing. She noted clinical trials are in the "experimental medicine" phase and pushed for more investment to identify proven treatments.
Sen. Tim Kaine said the National Institutes of Health has been provided more than $1 billion since 2020 to study long COVID, and he urged representatives from NIH to testify before the committee. In 2021, the NIH launched the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery initiative to identify further risk factors and causes of long COVID.
"We can't take two years just to get 'geared up,'" he said.
According to the most recent information from the CDC, long COVID can cause up to 200 symptoms, including chronic fatigue, blood clots, gastrointestinal issues, brain fog and heart issues. Symptoms can last from months to years following a COVID infection. Risk factors for developing long COVID after a COVID-19 infection that have been identified include severe COVID-19 illness, underlying health conditions (such as asthma, diabetes, obesity or autoimmune diseases) and not getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
While the interest from the Senate and the new study in Science are promising, more research needs to be done to find the specific cause of why some people get long COVID from COVID-19, and others do not, and to find effective treatments.
Erin Hannon, MD, contributed to this report. Hannon is a resident physician in pediatrics from Columbia University/New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
Nearly four years into the pandemic, Australia, like many other countries, is still seeing large numbers of COVID cases. Some 860,221 infections were recorded around the country in 2023, while 30,283 cases have already been reported in 2024.
This is likely to be a significant underestimate, with fewer people testing and reporting than earlier in the pandemic. But the signs suggest parts of Australia are experiencing yet another COVID surge.
While some lucky people claim to have never had COVID, many are facing our second, third or even fourth infection, often despite having been vaccinated. You might be wondering, how long does immunity last after a previous infection or vaccination?
Lets take a look at what the evidence shows.
To answer this question, we need to understand a bit about how immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) works.
After being infected or vaccinated, the immune system develops specific antibodies that can neutralise SARS-CoV-2. B cells remember the virus for a period of time. In addition, the immune system produces memory T cells that can kill the virus, and remain in the blood for some months after the clearance of the infection or a vaccination.
A 2021 study found 98% of people had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2s spike protein (a protein on the surface of the virus that allows it to attach to our cells) one month after symptom onset. Six to eight months afterwards, 90% of participants still had these neutralising antibodies in their blood.
This means the immune system should have recognised and neutralised the same SARS-CoV-2 variant if challenged within six to eight months (if an infection occurred, it should have resulted in mild to no symptoms).
Read more: What happens in our body when we encounter and fight off a virus like the flu, SARS-CoV-2 or RSV?
As we know, SARS-CoV-2 has mutated over time, leading to the emergence of new variants such as alpha, beta, delta and omicron. Each of these variants carries mutations that are new to the immune system, even if the person has been previously infected with an earlier variant.
A new variant likely wont be perfectly recognised or even recognised at all by the already activated memory T or B cells from a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. This could explain why people can be so readily reinfected with COVID.
A recent review of studies published up to the end of September 2022 looked at the protection conferred by previous SARS-CoV-2 infections.
The authors found a previous infection provided protective immunity against reinfection with the ancestral, alpha, beta and delta variants of 85.2% at four weeks. Protection against reinfection with these variants remained high (78.6%) at 40 weeks, or just over nine months, after the previous infection. This protection decreased to 55.5% at 80 weeks (18 months), but the authors noted there was a lack of data at this time point.
Notably, an earlier infection provided only 36.1% protection against a reinfection with omicron BA.1 at 40 weeks. Omicron has been described as an immune escape variant.
A prior infection showed a high level of protection against severe disease (above 88%) up to 40 weeks regardless of the variant a person was reinfected with.
Read more: There are still good reasons to avoid catching COVID again for one, your risk of long COVID goes up each time
So far almost 70 million COVID vaccines have been administered to more than 22 million people in Australia. Scientists estimated COVID vaccines prevented around 14.4 million deaths in 185 countries in the first year after they became available.
But we know COVID vaccine effectiveness wanes over time. A 2023 review found the original vaccines were 79.6% and 49.7% effective at protecting against symptomatic delta infection at one and nine months after vaccination respectively. They were 60.4% and 13.3% effective against symptomatic omicron at the same time points.
This is where booster doses come into the picture. Theyre important to keep the immune system ready to fight off the virus, particularly for those who are more vulnerable to the effects of a COVID infection.
Plus, regular booster doses can provide immunity against different variants. COVID vaccines are constantly being reviewed and updated to ensure optimal protection against current circulating strains, with the latest shot available designed to target the omicron variant XBB 1.5. This is similar to how we approach seasonal flu vaccines.
A recent study showed a COVID vaccination provides longer protection against reinfection than natural protection alone. The median time from infection to reinfection in non-vaccinated people was only six months, compared with 14 months in people who had received one, two or three doses of vaccine after their first infection. This is called hybrid immunity, and other research has similarly found it provides better protection than natural infection alone.
It also seems timing is important, as receiving a vaccine too soon after an infection (less than six months) appears to be less effective than getting vaccinated later.
Everyones immune system is slightly unique, and SARS-CoV-2 continues to mutate, so knowing exactly how long COVID immunity lasts is complicated.
Evidence suggests immunity following infection should generally last six months in healthy adults, and can be prolonged with vaccination. But there are exceptions, and all of this assumes the virus has not mutated so much that it escapes our immune response.
While many people feel the COVID pandemic is over, its important we dont forget the lessons we have learned. Practices such as wearing a mask and staying home when unwell can reduce the spread of many viruses, not only COVID.
Vaccination is not mandatory, but for older adults eligible for a booster under the current guidelines, its a very good idea.
