Discussed in this episode: COVID hospitalizations continue to trend up, nearly doubling rates from mid-summer. (That’s a large increase from a low baseline: in most of the country, hospitalization rates are still what the CDC considers “low.”) A new observational study using patient data from Stockholm suggests the percent of COVID cases that result in … Continued

Discussed in this episode: A new paper in Science Translational Medicine draws results from animal experiments, human samples, and human autopsies to suggest a mechanism for some cases of Long Covid: the virus binds to a protein on our cells’ mitochondria and can enduringly alter their function. Podcast music credit:  Now Son by Podington Bear, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 … Continued

Discussed in this episode: New research published in Nature examined if people who got infected without showing symptoms had something in common genetically. They did: a mutation on the  HLA-B (that’s short for Human Leukocyte Antigen) gene. In the laboratory, T-cell samples collected from those people *before* infection reacted strongly to SARS-COV2, suggesting the mutation helps … Continued

Filling in for Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Jesse Strauss hosts Covid Calls this week, featuring Dr. John Swartzberg, Clinical Professor Emeritus of Infectious Diseases at UC Berkeley. Discussed in this episode: Covid infectiousness correlated with particular blood types: https://fortune.com/well/2023/06/27/which-blood-type-greater-risk-getting-covid-19/ The childhood diabetes rate has risen in correlation with covid – we discuss whether there’s a causal link: … Continued