A weekly update on new research and developments concerning COVID-19 (and occasionally other infectious diseases that hit the news).
We take questions via call-in during the live broadcast, Mondays at 7:33am Pacific, streaming via kpfa.org. Podcasts with show notes go up later the same day. Between live shows, we take questions via email at upfront@kpfa.org .
Our guest most weeks is Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. Our question-wrangler most weeks is Brian Edwards-Tiekert, host of KPFA’s morning public affairs program, UpFront.
Music: Now Son by Podington Bear, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.
Discussed in this episode: The WHO reported a fatal human case of H5N1 avian influenza in Mexico. It’s a different variant from what’s been documented in US dairy herds. It’s unclear how the patient, who was already very sick, got infected. The FDA’s external scientific advisory panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Committee (VRBPAC) … Continued
Discussed in this episode: There’s a third confirmed case of H5N1 Avian Influenza in a farmworker. For the first time, the patient has respiratory symptoms. This raises concerns that 1) the virus has adapted to attach to a new set of receptors in the human body, and 2) more people will get exposed via droplets … Continued
Discussed in this episode: H5N1 Avian Influenza has been confirmed in a second dairy worker, this time in Michigan. There are now 56 dairy herds with confirmed outbreaks. A Letter to the Editor in the New England Journal of Medicine details how a laboratory process similar (but not identical) to pasteurization failed to completely eliminate … Continued
Discussed in this episode: Singapore is warning its estimated COVID case count doubled in a week, with 2/3 of cases involving newer subvariants in the FLiRT lineage (KP.1 and KP.2) CDC modeling suggests the COVID is “likely growing” in all states on the West Coast. This week’s show is abbreviated because KPFA’s in the midst … Continued
Discussed in this episode: Although COVID levels remain *very* low by every metric still available, there’s growing concern that one subvariant, called KP.2, makes up a rapidly-increasing share of COVID samples. That’s because a sub-variant that rapidly out-competes other sub-variants in circulation often has the properties required to drive a new case surge. The federal … Continued
Discussed in this episode: A detailed report on the investigation into the case of H5N1 avian influenza in a dairy worker has been published as a letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine. It exposes some weak points in the public health response–the worker didn’t disclose what dairy they work at, … Continued
Discussed in this episode: Testing has found viral DNA from H5N1 Avian Influenza in samples representing about 20% of the American milk supply, suggesting the virus could be much more widespread in this country’s dairy herds than previously reported. New research reduced the transmission of SARS-COV2 and influenza by swabbing the nostrils of mice and … Continued
Discussed in this episode: Four and a half years after the start of a pandemic spread by an airborne pathogen, the World Health Organization has released consensus guidance on how to describe and characterize pathogens that travel through the air. California will stop publishing data on COVID hospitalizations, because of dwindling federal support. (The state … Continued
Discussed in this episode: A new paper finds that SARS-COV2 infects a type of immune cell the in the lungs called interstitial macrophages, helping to explain the cascade of inflammation, lung damage, and scarring seen in severe COVID-19. The virus enters those cells using a receptor (CD209) different from the ACE2 receptor targeted by current … Continued
Discussed in this episode: A new peer-reviewed double-blind trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine has raised some doubts about the benefit of Paxlovid for most people. Patients receiving the placebo were hospitalized or died at twice the rate of patients receiving Paxlovid, but the 1300-person study was too small for that to … Continued
