COVID-19 in the News

On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration approved updated COVID boosters. On Tuesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended them for everyone age six months and up. "I think there's every reason to expect that people will make decent antibodies against the variants that we know about right now," said University of Arizona professor of immunobiology Deepta Bhattacharya.

The Food and Drug Administration appears poised poised to green light a new set of COVID boosters, just in time for peak respiratory illness season. The new shots are updated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, formulated to help people fight off the new omicron subvariant. "COVID-19 is not a pleasant thing to get even if you're not at particularly high risk of getting really sick," University of Arizona professor of immunobiology Deepta Bhattacharya said. "And so, to the extent that the vaccines reduce that chance –  and I'm sure they will – then, again, unless you've got some really compelling reason not to get it, you should go ahead and get it."

While cases of COVID-related severe illness and hospitalization remain low, infection counts are spiking again, new variants are emerging, and flu and respiratory syncytial virus loom as winter approaches. This story surveys several medical experts to learn what precautions they continue to take to avoid infections. "After the last three years, I have used up my 'worrying' capacity. It has been depleted," said Elizabeth Connick, chief of the infectious diseases division and professor of medicine and immunobiology at the University of Arizona. "We know that respiratory viral infections will be increasing, and the major question is, 'How bad will it be this year?'"

Kristen Pogreba Brown, Leslie V. Farland and Jennifer Andrews, professors at the University of Arizona, argue for more robust infrastructure to understand and research long COVID-19, which impacts one in five Americans.

Adults who have obstructive sleep apnea have up to an 75% increased risk, on average, of developing long COVID after a SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with people without sleep apnea, according to a new analysis of electronic health data on nearly 1.8 million people. "Research needs to be done in a prospective study to verify this association, and if found to be true these findings have implications for treatment of long COVID," said University of Arizona professor of medicine Dr. Sairam Parthasarathy, who was not involved in the study. "It is important to note that some of the symptoms of long COVID such as fatigue may be related to obstructive sleep apnea, and that the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea may improve such long COVID-related symptoms."

The work of University of Arizona Professor Michael Worobey, head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has taken him into dangerous jungles and raging scientific controversies. This profile centers largely on his research into the origins of COVID-19.

Operators of a gene database that holds samples taken in late 2019 from animals sold at a public market in Wuhan, China, face scrutiny and criticism both for allowing Chinese researchers to withhold related data and for cutting off archive access to researchers, including University of Arizona professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Michael Worobey, who recently published a report supporting the case that the coronavirus pandemic originated with illegally traded wild animals. That group insists they made multiple attempts to collaborate with the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data that were declined.

This column calls on the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data to release data under its control. University of Arizona professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Michael Worobey and other scientists used this data to complete a recent analysis that bolsters evidence the COVID-19 pandemic began when wild animals sold at a market in Wuhan, China, spread the coronavirus to people.

Three years after COVID-19 forced a worldwide shutdown, the origins of the virus that has claimed upwards of 7 million lives remain the source of questions for some. Photos taken in 2014 at a market in Wuhan, China show raccoon dogs in cages for sale alongside poultry, rodents and snakes in the same area of the market where positive samples of COVID-19 would be found in 2020. "What we have here is evidence from the actual time and place where we think the pandemic started, in the form of swabs from surfaces, things like cages, carts used to move animals, a feather or hair remover," said University of Arizona professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Michael Worobey.

Operators of a gene database that holds samples taken in late 2019 from animals sold at a public market in Wuhan, China, face scrutiny and criticism both for allowing Chinese researchers to withhold related data and for cutting off archive access to researchers who last week published a report supporting the case that the coronavirus pandemic originated with illegally traded wild animals. "The ramifications of cutting off access to this group of authors are huge," said University of Arizona professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Michael Worobey, a coauthor of the new report. "They're making false accusations."