More African countries set to approve malaria shot; 20 million doses ready in 2023 African countries are lining up to approve a new vaccine for malaria, with 20 million doses available for them to buy this year, the shot’s manufacturer told Reuters. Jennifer Rigby Reuters

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The new Covid variant concerning experts worldwide has claimed its first victim, health officials have announced.

The first death from the Arcturus strain, thought to be around 1.2 times more infectious than the last major sub-variant, was recorded in Thailand yesterday, amid a surge in cases across the globe.

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The NIH has poured $1 billion into long Covid research — with little to show for it The federal government has burned through more than $1 billion to study long Covid, and there's basically nothing to show for it. Rachel Cohrs STAT

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The National Institutes of Health hasn’t signed up a single patient to test any potential treatments — despite a clear mandate from Congress to study them. And the few trials it is planning have already drawn a firestorm of criticism, especially one intervention that experts and advocates say may actually make some patients’ long Covid symptoms worse.

Two drug combos show protection against severe COVID-19 CIDRAP

Two new randomized, controlled trials published yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine describe how drug combinations lowered the risk of severe COVID-19, with one detailing use of the antidepressant fluvoxamine plus the corticosteroid budesonide, and the other outlining the monoclonal antibody duo amubarvimab plus romlusevimab.

Mozambique Asks for Additional Cholera Vaccine After Cyclone Freddy Health officials intend to vaccinate people in high-risk areas Charles Mangwiro VOA

Maputo, Mozambique —  Mozambique has asked the World Health Organization to supply an additional 2 million doses of a cholera vaccine as the country struggles to control a spreading outbreak.

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People lost faith in childhood vaccines during COVID pandemic, UNICEF says People all over the world lost confidence in the importance of routine childhood vaccines against killer diseases like measles and polio during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from UNICEF. Jennifer Rigby,Emma Farge Reuters

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The XBB.1.16 COVID Symptoms Doctors Are Seeing The Most Right Now The new strain, also known as XBB.1.16, is presenting a few new issues that we haven't really seen with infections before. Yahoo News

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Red, itchy eyes have been reported in children infected with XBB.1.16, but adults may experience the symptom as well.

Fevers are higher than in previous COVID variants.

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People infected with the coronavirus were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes within a year of their infection, compared with those who had not been exposed to the virus, researchers in Canada reported Tuesday.

Men were more likely to develop diabetes than women, the scientists found. People who were so sick that they were hospitalized were more than twice as likely to go on to a diabetes diagnosis, compared with those who were not infected.

People who were admitted to intensive care were more than three times as likely to develop diabetes, the researchers also found. The findings add to a growing body of evidence about COVID’s long-term effects.

“This is definitely a concern in terms of long-term outcomes,” said Dr. Naveed Z. Janjua, the paper’s senior author and a professor at the School of Population and Public Health at University of British Columbia.

“With a respiratory infection, you usually think, ‘Seven or eight days, and I’m done with it; that’s it,’” he added. “Here we’re seeing lingering effects that are lifelong.”

The study, published in JAMA Network Open, used a large data set from British Columbia to compare diabetes diagnoses among more than 125,000 individuals who had tested positive for COVID in 2020 and 2021 with those of more than 500,000 unexposed individuals during the same period.

Early steroid use for severe COVID-19 tied to fewer deaths CIDRAP

JAMA Network Open has published a new US national cohort study demonstrating that early administration of the steroid dexamethasone was associated with significantly reduced odds of mortality or discharge to hospice in those requiring supplemental oxygen or mechanical ventilation and/or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.

The effect was not seen, however, in patients who did not require supplemental oxygen or noninvasive positive-pressure ventilation.

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Authorizes Changes to Simplify Use of Bivalent mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines The FDA amended the EUAs of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 bivalent mRNA vaccines to simplify the vaccination schedule for most individuals. Office of the Commissioner U.S. Food and Drug Administration

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