Month: November 2020

Once a person develops immunity against COVID-19, it could last for years, a new study suggests. The promising research comes on the heels of the news of two vaccines with potentially remarkable effective rates — all of which combine to offer significant hope to beat back the pandemic, experts say. Scientists at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology in California found in the new study that eight months after the pandemic first surfaced in the country, most of their participant survivors still have plenty of immunity to fight off another bout of the coronavirus — indicating such a slow rate of decline in protection that it could last for years, the New York Times reported Tuesday. “That amount of [immune] memory would likely prevent the vast majority of people from getting ho...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – How much do our voices say about our health? Researchers at Mayo Clinic have teamed up with a company specializing in artificial intelligence to find out. As WCCO discovered, the fight against COVID-19 has doctors listening closely. As Director of Cardiovascular Research at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Amir Lerman believes we are just beginning to understand what he calls a new era in medicine, one that artificial intelligence is making sense of. “The body is sending us a lot of signals that we’re not paying attention to,” Dr. Lerman said. “When we talk about voice, it’s not exactly what you and I can hear. The voice is a spectrum of a lot of frequencies,” he added. Case studies at Mayo Clinic have honed in on those frequencies, identifying certain vocal biomarkers to s...

Some 300 attendees of a wedding held in Washington state earlier this month are being asked to quarantine after several people who attended the nuptials have since tested positive for the novel coronavirus.  The wedding was held at a “private location” near Ritzville on Nov. 7, officials with the Grant County Health District (GCHD) said in a Monday news release. At least 17 cases of COVID-19 in Grant County have been connected to the event, the release said, “with more being added daily.”  However, “due to the multi-jurisdictional impact of this large event, GCHD felt it was necessary to notify the public. GCHD is trying to notify attendees about possible exposure, but with more than 300 people attending the wedding from many communities, local health jurisdictions are unlikely to rea...

Major measles outbreaks will likely occur during 2021 as an unexpected consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new academic article. The article, published in The Lancet, calls for urgent international action to prevent potentially devastating measles epidemics in the coming years. Lead author Professor Kim Mulholland, from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Chair of the World Health Organization’s SAGE Working Group on measles and rubella vaccines, said that many children have missed out on measles vaccination this year, making future measles outbreaks inevitable.  Professor Mulholland said while 2020 had been a quiet year for measles, in part due to travel reductions and national COVID-19 control measures, the economic impacts would lead to many cases ...

LANSING, Mich. (WOOD) — State health officials already trying to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 say another disease is also surging in Michigan: gonorrhea. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services says on Halloween, this year’s number of reported gonorrhea infections surpassed last year’s total of 18,264 cases of the sexually transmitted disease. If this rate continues, Michigan is on track to see a 22% increase in gonorrhea cases this year. State health officials say number of people infected with gonorrhea are likely even higher because of decreased STD testing during the pandemic. Additionally, the MDHHS says a national shortage in testing supplies makes broader testing a challenge. The state health department is calling on medical providers to dia...

An encouraging new study conducted by several leading labs, including the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, found that most people who have recovered from a coronavirus infection within the last eight months likely have enough immune cells to fight off serious reinfections, The New York Times reports. While it's still unclear exactly how long immunity may last, or whether it could prevent transmission (though that is certainly plausible), the new study has eased experts' concerns of short-lived protection based on studies that pointed to declining antibodies. Antibodies, after all, are just one facet of the body's complex immune system, and the new study indicated that other factors like T cells showed only a slight decay several months out from infection, while B cells, which produce new...