Could a longer course of paxlovid prevent the virus from rebounding?

The UK has become the first country to approve a booster targeting the Omicron variant, Covid-19 patients may experience hair loss after infection, and more in this week’s roundup of Covid-19 news.

• The nationwide Covid-19 public health emergency (PHE) is likely to be extended until January 2023, Politico report. Currently PHE he is scheduled to end on October 13th. HHS We will give the state and health care providers 60 days notice, but this has not yet happened. “Government silence means that the public health emergency will almost certainly be extended until January 2023.” Kaiser Family FoundationIn addition, Chip Khan, CEO, American Hospital Federationsaid now wasn’t the right time to end PHE because Covid-19 is still having a huge impact on the healthcare system. We have to. “Not only is the flu coming, but also the potential spread of Covid with more hospitalizations. We are not ready to make big changes.” It has been extended every 90 days since it was first published in the month. Politico8/17; Bettelheim, Axios8/16)

• The UK on Monday approved a bivalent Covid-19 booster targeting the Omicron variant, becoming the first country to do so. modern, designed to target the original strain of coronavirus and the original Omicron variant, BA.1. “This bivalent vaccine gives us a sharp tool in our arsenal to help protect us from this disease as the virus continues to evolve,” said June Rain said. Regulatory bodies for pharmaceuticals and healthcare productsAccording to Moderna CEO Stephan Bansel, the approval underscores “the dedication and leadership of the UK Public Health Authority in helping to end the Covid-19 pandemic”. He also said the booster “plays an important role in keeping people in the UK safe from Covid-19 as we enter winter”. In contrast, US health officials rely on vaccine manufacturers to develop them. booster Instead, it targets Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. These two subvariants now account for the majority of his Covid-19 cases in the United States, and bivalent vaccines targeting BA.1 are less effective against them. (Sullivan, NPR8/16; new york times8/15; Roland, wall street journal8/15; Doherty, Axios8/15)

• As the next generation of Covid-19 boosters are geared up for the fall, FDA plans to take a controversial approach to assess its safety and efficacy, reports NPR. Instead of approving new vaccines based on studies in humans, the FDA bases its decisions on human neutralizing antibody data from studies involving mice, as well as previous studies examining bivalent BA.1 boosters. So far, some health experts have opposed this approach, saying mouse data cannot be reliably generalized to humans. “In my opinion, it’s strange that the FDA would rely on mouse data,” said immunologist John Moore. weill cornell medicine“The mouse data are not predictive of what we’ll see in humans.” They argue that there is not enough time to wait for human studies with high He said it could be treated like a flu vaccine that is changed annually to suit the strains that have been tested but not routinely tested. With all this data we’ve learned, we say, ‘The way to be agile is to do animal testing.'” Immunobiologist He Deepta Bhattacharya University of Arizona School of Medicine“We’re not really overextending here.” Pfizer – BioNTech and Moderna plan to submit booster data to the FDA by the end of this month, and the FDA hopes to have millions of new doses available in September. (Stein, “shot” NPR, 8/18)

• Some health experts have wondered whether the course of paxlovid should be extended to prevent a potential viral rebound. time report. According to data submitted to the FDA, Pfizer found rebound occurs in approximately 1% to 2% of patients taking paxlobid. However, as a professor of medicine, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and Columbia University, he thinks the prevalence of viral rebound from Paxlovid is likely much higher. “The virus is pretty persistent,” Ho said. “And I think five days of treatment isn’t enough for that form to collapse, and at the end of five days it’s not there.” The results suggest that extending the course of paxlovid from 5 days to 7-10 days can reduce the risk of rebound by a factor of 10. Additional days of treatment may eliminate more intermediate forms of the virus in the body, Ho said, but more research is needed to validate this idea. said the company is working with the FDA to set up trials to further study paxlovid’s rebound. time8/11; Twenty, becker hospital reviews8/15)

• Some Covid-19 patients may be at increased risk of hair loss after illness, according to some studies. study was announced in natural medicine It found that patients who were previously infected with Covid-19 were almost four times more likely to suffer from hair loss than those who had never been infected. study in the lancet It found that about 22% of hospitalized Covid-19 patients experienced hair loss. Many clinicians also say more patients are reporting hair loss. Mount Sinai Health SystemThe most common type of hair loss experienced by post-Covid patients is telogen effluvium, which is often due to trauma or stressful life events when the hair growth cycle is interrupted. According to dermatologist Alexis Young, Hackensack University Medical Center, patients begin to lose hair two to three months after infection, and hair loss can last up to six months. But the hair can and will grow back on its own. “It just takes time.” (D’Ambrosio, MedPage Today8/12)