COVID-19 News from Around the Web

Denmark’s State Serum Institute, which deals with infectious diseases, has found mink-related versions of coronavirus in 214 people since June, according to a report on its website updated on Nov. 5. One strain of the mutated coronavirus, which has prompted Denmark to cull its entire herd of mink, has however only been found in 12 people and on five mink farms so far.

AstraZeneca hopes to show its COVID-19 vaccine is effective by the end of this year and is ramping up manufacturing so it can supply hundreds of millions of doses starting in January, Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said Thursday. The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker is working with the University of Oxford to develop one of the most closely watched COVID-19 vaccines, which is in late stage trials in the U.S., Britain and other countries to determine its safety and effectiveness. Once those results are reported, regulators will have to approve the vaccine for widespread use.

Employees in office settings may be more likely to become infected with the novel coronavirus if they regularly commute to work rather than work from home, according to a new report. Public health investigators who examined possible exposures to COVID-19 among employed adults found that workers who tested positive for COVID-19 were almost twice as likely to report regularly commuting to work, compared with the employees studied who tested negative. In the two weeks prior to getting sick, members of the COVID-19 group were more likely to report that they exclusively went to the office or to school than control group members were. Researchers also found an association between going to the office regularly and attending church or religious gatherings.

Tinnitus — a condition characterized by whooshing, ringing, buzzing and hissing noises in the ear — can be triggered by a variety of factors, including exposure to loud noises, inner ear damage and stress. And while experts say the stress of the pandemic could be linked to worsening tinnitus symptoms, there's growing evidence that the virus itself could also play a role. A study published Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Public Health found that 40 percent of people who had symptoms of Covid-19 reported a worsening of their tinnitus. The research included more than 3,000 participants who self-reported whether they had experienced changes in their hearing since the pandemic started. Around 250 participants reported Covid-19 symptoms, although only 26 had tested positive for the virus.

Children infected with the coronavirus produce weaker antibodies and fewer types of them than adults do, suggesting they clear their infection much faster, according to a new study published Thursday. Other studies have suggested that an overly strong immune response may be to blame in people who get severely ill or die from Covid-19. A weaker immune response in children may paradoxically indicate that they vanquish the virus before it has had a chance to wreak havoc in the body, and may help explain why children are mostly spared severe symptoms of Covid.

The US recorded a staggering 102,831 new Covid-19 infections Wednesday -- the first time since the start of the pandemic it has reported a six-figure number. The new high, as harrowing as it is, is only one part of a number of grim indicators pointing to what experts have already projected: an unprecedented fall and winter surge that will likely continue to get worse.

Will the U.S. be able to tame a perilous pandemic that is surging as holidays, winter and other challenges approach? Public health experts fear the answer is no, at least in the short term, with potentially dire consequences. Donald Trump’s current term doesn’t end until Jan. 20. In the 86 days until then, 100,000 more Americans will likely die from the virus if the president doesn’t shift course, said Dr. Robert Murphy, executive director of the Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, echoing estimates from other public health experts.

New research points to another potential factor that might play into a person’s risk of death due to Covid-19: prolonged exposure to high levels of air pollution. In a study published Wednesday in Science Advances, researchers estimated long-term air pollution levels for more than 3,000 U.S. counties, which also had Covid-19 mortality data available through June 2020. While the study wasn’t designed to show whether pollution exposure directly affected a person’s risk of death due to Covid-19, it did demonstrate an association between increased pollution levels and higher Covid-19 death tolls.

For individuals with rheumatic disease, the burden of poor outcomes in COVID-19 is higher for racial/ethnic minorities compared with Whites, according to a study published online Nov. 4 in Arthritis & Rheumatology. … Compared with White patients, Black, Latinx, and Asian patients had increased odds of being hospitalized in multivariable models (odds ratios, 2.74, 1.71, and 2.69, respectively). The odds of requiring ventilator support were increased more than threefold for Latinx patients (odds ratio, 3.25). There were no differences seen in mortality based on race/ethnicity.

A study of the lungs of 41 people who died from COVID-19 in Italy has revealed extensive damage, persistent distortion of the normal organ structure, scarring of respiratory tissue, and massive blood clotting of the arteries and veins, which may help explain why it takes some people—so-called "long haulers"—months to recover from fatigue and shortness of breath. The results were published yesterday in The Lancet's EBioMedicine journal. While the researchers also examined brain, heart, and kidney tissues, those organs showed no signs of damage or viral replication.

New York City had a high rate of infection with the new coronavirus long before its first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on March 1, researchers report. By that date, more than 1.7 million people in the city (20% of the population) had already been infected, and the COVID-19 death rate was close to 1%, or 10 times deadlier than the flu. To arrive at that conclusion, the researchers analyzed nearly 10,700 plasma samples taken between Feb. 9 and July 5, 2020.

Williams realized she had last had a cold in January, and she is sure it's due to the pandemic precautions she has been taking — including social distancing, not going to large gatherings, wearing a mask when she's shopping, using hand sanitizer and washing her hands constantly. If you're also noticing you're not suffering from the seasonal sniffles, sneezes and coughs of pre-pandemic times, there is an explanation.

Americans went to the polls Tuesday under the shadow of a resurging pandemic, with an alarming increase in cases nationwide and the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 reaching record highs in a growing number of states. While daily infections were rising in all but three states, the surge was most pronounced in the Midwest and Southwest. Missouri, Oklahoma, Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and New Mexico all reported record high hospitalizations this week. Nebraska’s largest hospitals started limiting elective surgeries and looked to bring in nurses from other states to cope with the surge. Hospital officials in Iowa and Missouri warned bed capacity could soon be overwhelmed.

As voters went to the polls Tuesday across the country, they encountered an array of precautions meant to keep the presidential election from becoming a Covid-19 superspreader event. Masks and hand sanitizer were ubiquitous, of course, as was grousing about masks. In New York, some polling places handed out individual pens for voting, while others cleaned off markers in between each use. In one Ohio county, each person was given a plastic glove to wear while handling their ballot. And in a number of states, people too afraid to get out of their cars and stand in a socially distanced line could vote curbside, as if they were picking up takeout.

People struggling with obesity fared poorly during the COVID-19 lockdowns earlier this year, with their weight-control plans flying off the rails as they coped with the stress of the global pandemic, two new studies report. Seven out of 10 people with obesity reported that their weight-loss goals became harder to achieve during the lockdown, according to a survey conducted by UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Folks in lockdown also were much more likely to become couch potatoes, reporting an increase in the time they spent binge-watching TV, Johns Hopkins researchers found in another study.

Nerve damage to vocal cords could be the reason why some people recovering from COVID-19 suffer mysterious bouts of shortness of breath for months after shaking off the coronavirus, researchers say. Vocal cords are meant to constrict across the airway while you're talking, vibrating in the air moving past to create the sound of your voice. When you're not talking, the vocal cords retract to allow air to more freely flow into your lungs. But, in some patients, COVID-19 appears to damage the nerve that regulates speech, causing their vocal cords to impede breathing even when they aren't talking, said Dr. Jonathan Aviv, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.