COVID-19

A report on 2026 HIV-negative persons recruited between June 24 and November 9, 2020, into a multicenter, double-blind, randomized, controlled trial conducted in in South Africa to assess the efficacy of the AstraZeneca/Oxford (ChAdOx1) Covid-19 vaccine (AZD1222). An analysis on confirmed mild-to-moderate Covid-19 before October 31, 2020, was done as a proxy for infections with the non–B.1.351 infections. This resulted in an efficacy of 75.4%. Based on virus sequencing and classification the vaccine efficacy against B.1.351 variant was only 10.4%.

This case report documents abnormal functional MRI (fMRI) findings in a patient with continuing dysfunction of smell and taste (cacosmia and cacogeusia) after COVID-19.

This review aptly summarises nearly all of what do and do not know about imaging in the context of COVID-19 after the first year of the pandemic.

COVID-19 vaccination can cause reactive ipsilateral axillary lymphadenopathy.

Vaccine Response against Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines in solid organ transplant recipients after the first dose. 20 days after vaccination antibodies are detected in 17% of patients compared to close to 100% in healthy control subjects (historic group from literature).

Authors report the effect on COVID hopsitalization of a first COVID-19 vaccine dose in a national prospective cohort study in Scotland. Vaccine effect (VE) 28-34 days after 1 dose is 84% for the BNT162b2 vaccine, 94% for the ChAdOx1nCoV-19 vaccine, and 81% for both vaccines combined in the subgroup of >80 year-old individuals.

Both IL-6 antagonists tocilizumab and sarilumab improved survival in critically ill patients in a randomized controlled trial.

A “real world” analysis of the effectiveness of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine in Israel including almost 600 000 persons who were newly vaccinated during the period December 20, 2020 to February 1, 2021(compared to a carefully matched group of unvaccinated persons). Similar to the RCT results, the vaccine was effective for a wide range of Covid-19–related outcomes and estimated an effectiveness in preventing death from Covid-19 as 72% (95% CI, 19 to 100).

The authors developed and validated an easy to use prediction score, that allows to predict the likelihood of adverse clinical outcomes (ICU admission or death) from routine laboratory data in patients with COVID-19. Their score has very good predictive performance (AUROC = 0.85, PPV = 0.91, NPV = 0.81). They also provide access to a simple online score calculator.

Geneva's second wave seroprevalence study reveals overall SARS-Cov-2 positivity of 21% of the population with children <5 and adults >65 years being > 40% less likely to have been infected.