covid-19

The Karolinska Institute has awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their groundbreaking discoveries, which have radically changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, and made it possible to develop vaccines at unprecedented speed during the covid-19 pandemic.

An analysis published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine reviews epidemiological research on persistent covid and concludes that many studies overestimate its prevalence due to overly loose definitions, absent or inadequate control groups and other methodological shortcomings.

Any infection can lead to sequelae and SARS-CoV-2 is no exception. However, the lack of rigorous studies has meant that, in 2023, uncertainty about the number of people affected remains high and treatments are scarce.

From May to August 2022, 157,580 deaths were recorded, 20.5% more than in the same months of 2019, before covid. This increase in mortality was mainly among people aged 75 years and older. Of the causes of death directly related to the heat, heat stroke and dehydration stood out. These are some of the provisional data published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) in relation to deaths in 2022. Covid-19 was the most frequent cause of death, with 31,559 people dying, 20% less than in 2021.

We compared semen analyses of 45 patients before and after mild covid-19 infection. We found a significant decrease in sperm volume, sperm concentration, total and progressive motility and vitality after infection, and that these effects may be long-term.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) Emergency Committee met on 4 May to assess whether covid-19 could continue to be considered a health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). The organisation's director general, Tedros Adhanom, has followed its recommendation and ended the emergency declared on 30 January 2020. "It is with great hope that I declare that covid-19 has ended as a global health emergency. However, this does not mean that covid-19 is no longer a threat to global health. Last week, it claimed one life every three minutes, and that's just the deaths we know about," he told a press conference.

Research published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health has measured the relationship between restrictions in different settings - such as leisure and catering - taken in Spain between September 2020 and May 2021, with covid-19 transmission. The authors conclude that, overall, increased restrictions decreased disease transmission.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has licensed Hipra's vaccine - currently called Bimervax - against SARS-CoV-2 as a booster in people aged 16 years and older who have previously been vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. The EMA began the ongoing evaluation of the vaccine, which was expected to be approved in the middle of last year, on 29 March 2022.

A French researcher has found genetic data showing that raccoon dogs, civets and other mammals susceptible to the infection with SARS-CoV-2 in the early 2020s in the Wuhan market in China. The findings have been presented to the Scientific Advisory Group on the Origin of Emerging Pathogens (SAGO), an expert group convened last year by the World Health Organisation. The data, collected by a team of Chinese scientists, were held in a database called GISAID, but had not been publicly reported and have been withdrawn. SAGO explained the origin of this data and the history of this research in a statement on 18 March.

In an interview with US television FOX News, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that, according to his office's assessment, "it is likely that the origin of the coronavirus pandemic was a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China". These statements follow media reports of a US Department of Energy report, accessed by the Wall Street Journal, that would also support "with low confidence" the leak hypothesis. Even so, a spokesman for the US National Security Council told AP that there is "no consensus" among intelligence agencies on the issue.