Inputs from Dr Monica Vasudev

Israel data supports booster doses, says Dr Anthony Fauci

“COVID booster shots are showing good efficacy in Israel,” said Anthony Fauci, MD, chief medical advisor to President Biden, said Thursday at a briefing held by the White House COVID-19 Response Team. The impact of the third dose has been published as a preprint study in medRxiv, which demonstrated the effectiveness of a third vaccine dose in both reducing transmission and severe disease. An 11.4-fold decline in the relative risk of confirmed infection, and a >10-fold reduction in the relative risk of severe illness was noted after 12 days of the booster dose. This study also indicates the great potential of curbing the resurgence of Delta variant by administering booster shots.

Israel has approved a booster dose for adults aged 60 years and older. A total of 1.1 million people were given the booster dose between July 30 and August 22… (Medpage Today, Sept. 2, 2021; medRxiv, August 31, 2021)

Fibro-COVID, a new post-Covid entity

RMD Open: Rheumatic & Musculoskeletal Diseases has reported fibromyalgia as a new symptom of post-acute COVID-19 or long COVID. Results from a web-based survey study from Italy show that 189 (30.7%) patients met the ACR survey criteria for a diagnosis of fibromyalgia at 6 months after Covid-19. Male gender and obesity were the strongest predictors of affect the risk of developing post-COVID-19 fibromyalgia. The authors write, “It is reasonable to expect that rheumatologists will soon face up with a sharp rise of cases of this new entity that we defined ‘FibroCOVID’…(Source: RMD Open 2021;7:e001735)

CDC Expert Panel unanimously recommends Pfizer vaccine for 16 years and older

A CDC expert panel has unanimously voted to recommend Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for all US citizens aged 16 and older. The vaccine had been granted full approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week. However, the vaccine is still authorised for emergency use in the age group 12 to 15 years… (Source: Medscape, Aug. 30, 2021)

Delta variant increases risk of hospitalisation

As per a recent study from the UK published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, people infected with the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 double their risk of hospitalization when compared to patients with the alpha variant. 196 (2·3%) of patients with the delta variant were hospitalized versus 764 (2·2%) patients with the alpha variant within 14 days of test; 498 (5·7%) patients with the delta variant versus 1448 (4·2%) patients with the alpha variant were admitted to hospital or attended emergency care within 14 days. Most infections in both groups were in individuals who had not taken the vaccine…(Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Aug. 27, 2021).