The European Union is recommending new travel restrictions for American tourists as COVID-19 cases in the U.S. continue to surge. Preeti Mehrotra, MD (Infection Control, BIDMC) discussed the proposed travel restrictions and said international travel plays a role in global transmission.
Russell Phillips, MD (Internal Medicine, BIDMC) comments on how some primary care doctors are using a state-driven system to order vaccination doses for their patients.
Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC) said vaccine manufacturers have created shots updated for the Delta variant but that the reason why the Delta variant is able to cause so many breakthrough infections has more to do with its hyper infectiousness rather than its intrinsic ability to evade antibodies.
A new study submitted to medRxiv found that giving a booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson shot six months after primary vaccination results in a nine-fold increase of a crucial antibody response. Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC), who helped in the vaccine development with his team but was not involved with this trial, said that boosting after six months appears to be safe, and boosts immune responses substantially.
In this Harvard Magazine feature, Dan Barouch, MD, Ph.D. (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC) is listed amongst three scientists who took stock of the virus’s epidemiology and pathogenesis, the diagnosis and treatment of the disease it causes, and the interplay of variants and vaccines. Barouch helped develop the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, previously developed vaccines against HIV and Zika, and is actively involved in SARS-CoV-2 vaccine research and assessment.
Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC) discusses data from a clinical trial released earlier this month showing that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine his team helped develop provides substantial protection against the Delta variant.
In a first-person retrospective and analysis published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Ramy Arnaout, MD, DPhil (Pathology, BIDMC) details the collaborative and open-source effort he coordinated to address the shortage of swabs that hampered the nation’s ability to test for and track the spread of COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic, and details the lessons learned.
As Delta variant cases surge around the country, the Biden Administration renewed its call for health providers to use monoclonal antibody treatments. Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC) said monoclonal antibody treatments are important tools that have shown substantial therapeutic effects.
In a CDC advisory group meeting in June, Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC) said the hardest to vaccinate people are those who are immunosuppressed.
Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC) said the FDA’s move to make third shots available to some with weakened immune systems made sense. Barouch also commented on the long and successful history of mixing and matching different vaccine platforms for other viruses, and because of the similarities in how coronavirus vaccines were produced, mixing could potentially be particularly appealing approach.
As researchers examine the effect of COVID-19 vaccines on children, Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC) said the risks of not getting vaccinated vastly outweigh the risks of getting vaccinated for adults and children.
Peter Healy (President, BIDMC), Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC), and others urged employers to require their workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, noting the only real protection against the Delta variant of the disease is inoculation.
Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC) was awarded the George Ledlie Prize by Harvard for developing an effective COVID-19 vaccine in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson – one of three granted emergency use authorization in the U.S. Last bestowed in 2017, the prize is given no more frequently than every two years to a member of the Harvard community who has, “since the last awarding of said prize, by research, discovery, or otherwise, made the most valuable contribution to science, or in any way for the benefit of mankind.”
Data from a clinical trial in South Africa suggests single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is highly effective in preventing severe illness and death from the Delta and Beta variants of the coronavirus. Results also suggest that people who have received one dose of the vaccine don’t need a booster shot. Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC), who has led some studies with Johnson & Johnson but was not involved in the trial, said the study was conducted as a real-world efficacy study in one of the most challenging epidemiologic settings, and is very good news for the fight against the global COVID-19 pandemic.
As more data becomes available, experts comment on the efficacy of the three COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use. Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC) discusses research his team led on the neutralizing antibody coverage of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against different virus variants.
A spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations in Massachusetts hospitals tracks closely with the rise in people testing positive for COVID-19 that began after the Fourth of July holiday. BILH said its COVID-19 patients increased from 19 on July 1 to 27 patients last Thursday.
Newly published details of the Provincetown, MA COVID-19 outbreak raised concern that the now-dominant delta variant may be able to spread among fully vaccinated people. Dan Barouch, MD, PhD (Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, BIDMC) said the rules have changed as we have a different epidemic now than we did in May.
Scientists may be on the cusp of defining correlates – biological benchmarks that can show that a vaccine is achieving its desired effect – of protection against symptomatic disease for the COVID-19 vaccines. Kathryn Stephenson, MD, MPH (Infectious Disease, BIDMC) comments on the process and timeline of these determinations.
In an opinion piece for the Boston Globe, Mary LaSalvia, MD (Infectious Disease, BIDMC) and Kenneth Wener, MD (Infectious Disease, LHMC) joined other Boston infectious disease experts to address the COVID-19 questions they received from patients who are hesitant to get the vaccine with the goal of informing people, promoting fact-based decision making, and helping people join the 600 million people in the world who have opted to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Hospitals across the country are setting up programs to provide better treatment for people suffering from long-term symptoms of COVID-19. Jason Maley, MD (Pulmonary Disease, BIDMC) and Joseph Zibrak, MD (Pulmonary Disease, BIDMC) spoke about BIDMC’s recently launched the Critical Illness and COVID-19 Survivorship Program that aims to integrate care among pulmonary, critical care, sleep medicine, psychiatry, cognitive neurology, neurology, geriatrics, social work, and physical and occupational therapy clinicians.
