With inputs from Dr Monica Vasudev

Over 65k active Covid cases in India

India recorded 11,692 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours taking the tally of active cases to 66,170 constituting 0.15% of the total cases. The current recovery rate is 98.67%. The daily and weekly positivity rates are 5.09% and 5.33%, respectively. Yesterday, 3647 vaccine doses were administered. So far, 220.66 crore vaccine doses have been administered, which include 95.21 crore second doses and 22.87 crore precaution doses. Nearly 2.3 lakh tests were conducted… (Source: Press Information Bureau, April 21, 2023).

Monovalent mRNA Covid-19 Vaccines no longer authorized in the US

The US FDA has authorized the bivalent Covid vaccines to be used now for all persons aged 6 months and older in the United States. It has revoked the authorization for the earlier monovalent Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines. The FDA recommends a bivalent booster after a gap of 4 months for individuals aged ≥65 years and persons with immunocompromised status who have received one bivalent dose. Most unvaccinated people including those previously vaccinated with a monovalent vaccine, can take a single shot of the bivalent vaccine, if they have not yet received a bivalent vaccine. Unvaccinated children aged 6 months to 5 years can now take 2 doses of Moderna bivalent vaccine or 3 doses of Pfizer- BioNTech bivalent vaccine… (Source: US FDA, April 18, 2023).

Post-covid hospitalization sleep disturbances 

Patients who had been hospitalized with Covid-19 were more likely to report sleep disturbances. The multicenter CircCOVID study from the UK presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious. Sixty-two percent of the participants had poor sleep quality and 53% reported that their sleep quality worsened after they were discharged from the hospital. Poor sleep quality was also associated with anxiety, muscle weakness and dyspnea… (Source: The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, April 15, 2023).

Severe Covid-19 and incident diabetes

A new study from Canada has shown risk of new-onset diabetes is nearly doubled within a year of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Male patients were at higher risk than females. Those with severe Covid-19, including patients requiring intensive care, were three times more likely to develop incident diabetes… (Source: JAMA Network Open, April 18, 2023).