Month: July 2021

Hawaii Department of Health officials reported 62 new confirmed and probable coronavirus infections today, bringing the state’s total since the start of the pandemic to 37,995 cases. No new virus-related fatalities were reported today so the statewide COVID-19 death toll remains 518. The state’s official coronavirus-related death toll includes 401 fatalities on Oahu, 57 on Maui, 55 on Hawaii island, two on Kauai and three Hawaii residents who died outside the state. The U.S. coronavirus-related death toll today is over 605,000 and the nationwide infection tally is more than 33.7 million. Today’s new confirmed and probable infection count by island includes 35 new cases on Oahu, five on Maui, eight on Hawaii island, four on Kauai and 10 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside the state....

Using a method developed for HIV, researchers have identified stable T cell vaccine targets in SARS-CoV-2. These stable targets, known as highly networked epitopes, are highly likely to be stable in different variants of the virus. The results provide a path forward for a broadly protective COVID-19 T cell vaccine. Gaurav Gaiha, MD, DPhil, a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, studies HIV, one of the fastest-mutating viruses known to humankind. But HIV’s ability to mutate isn’t unique among RNA viruses — most viruses develop mutations, or changes in their genetic code, over time. If a virus is disease-causing, the right mutation can allow the virus to escape the immune response by changing the viral pieces the immune system uses to recognize the virus as a threat...

The infectious Delta variant has become California’s most identified strain of the coronavirus, a troubling development that underscores the strain’s danger to unvaccinated populations. New data released by the California Department of Public Health now say that 35.6% of coronavirus variants so far analyzed in June have been identified as the Delta variant, which was first identified in India. That’s a dramatic relative increase from May, when the Delta variant comprised just 5.6% of analyzed coronavirus cases in California, and Delta was the state’s fourth most identified variant. The latest numbers were enough to dethrone the previous dominant variant, Alpha, which was first identified in the United Kingdom and now comprises 34.3% of analyzed coronavirus cases in June...

The women, who worked together in the IT department at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta for 10 years, didn't know about their shared struggle. But after finding out in 2019, they quickly became friends and confidants, sharing the good and the bad that came with their emotional journeys. But then a five-minute bathroom conversation last September changed everything. As they washed their hands and casually discussed the donor process, Wimbush looked at Ellis and asked her husband's blood type. Ellis' husband is O negative, a rare blood type that's difficult to match. Wimbush, whose blood type is O, was compatible. And Ellis, blood type A, was a match to Wimbush's husband -- type AB. "All that was going through my head is, 'What if we can donate our kidneys to each other's husbands...

When it came to coronavirus vaccination, the third time was the charm for Esther Jones, a dialysis nurse in rural Oregon. After two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine failed to jolt her immune system into producing antibodies, she sought out a third, this time the Moderna shot. It worked. Blood tests revealed a reasonable antibody response, although lower than what would be detected in healthy people. She received a fourth dose last month in hopes of boosting the levels even more. Ms. Jones, 45, had a kidney transplant in 2010. To prevent rejection of the organ, she has taken drugs that suppress the immune response ever since. She expected to have trouble responding to a coronavirus vaccine, and enrolled in one of the few studies so far to test the utility of a third dose in people wit...