Coronavirus News Explained

 mRNA Vaccination and COVID hospitalization and disease  severity      Messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines, such as those developed by the companies Moderna and  Pfizer-BioNTech, are highly effective for preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections and  COVID-19 hospitalizations. However, there have been reports of breakthrough COVID-19 cases, or COVID-19 infections among those who are fully vaccinated.  Once  hospitalized, patients with COVID-19 can progress to more severe infection, including respiratory  failure and death. SARS-CoV-2 infection in vaccinated persons is expected to trigger memory  antibody and cellular responses owing to prior vaccination; these immune responses could  mitigate disease progression, possibly preventing life-threatening organ failure and  death. However, the association between prior vaccination and disease progression to the most  severe forms of COVID-19 is not well understood. A recent study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association , inves

The Search for Natural COVID-19 Resistance           As of November 2021, 249 million people have been infected with COVID-19 across the globe. Although much progress has been made in understanding the coronavirus since December 2019, there is still a lot that is unknown. Just like any other infection, each COVID-19 infected individual reacts very differently to the virus; some are asymptomatic, some have mild symptoms and recover without treatment, some are hospitalized with severe acute respiratory syndrome, and some die. In rare cases, there have been people who were exposed without protection to COVID-19 over an extended period of time and did not test positive. These clinical variabilities can be explained by human genetic factors- it’s possible that some lucky individuals have inborn resistance to COVID infection.      Looking back in history, this type of mechanism has previously been observed with HIV, the virus behind AIDS. Through genetic studies on people who were resistant