Respiratory virus activity is ‘high’ as cases increase in US: CDC
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(NEW YORK) — Respiratory illness activity – a measure of how often conditions like the common cold, flu, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus are diagnosed – is currently “high” in the United States, according to an update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Currently, New Hampshire is listed as having “very high” respiratory virus activity, and 11 states – Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – are listed as having “high” activity, CDC data shows.
Meanwhile, 29 states are listed as having “moderate” activity, and the remaining states are listed as having “low” activity.
Particularly, COVID-19, seasonal flu and RSV activity are increasing across the country with a rising number of people visiting emergency departments and the number of tests coming back positive for one of the three conditions, the CDC said.
The CDC estimates that there have been at least 3.1 million illnesses, 37,000 hospitalizations and 1,500 deaths from flu so far this season; these figures are based on the latest date for which data is available, which is the week ending Dec. 21.
Five pediatric deaths were reported during the week of Dec. 21, bringing the total number to nine so far during the 2024-25 season.
The CDC says levels of the COVID-19 virus being detected in wastewater are increasing, as are the number of emergency department visits and laboratory test positivity rates.
“Based on CDC modeled estimates of epidemic growth, we predict COVID-19 illness will continue to increase in the coming weeks as it usually does in the winter,” the CDC said in a statement.
For RSV, the CDC said emergency department visits and hospitalizations are increasing among children and hospitalizations are increasing among older adults in some areas.
Flu and COVID-19 vaccines are available for both children and adults, and RSV vaccines are available for certain groups of adults. However, vaccination coverage remains low, meaning “many children and adults lack protection from respiratory virus infections provided by vaccines,” according to the CDC.
As of Dec. 21, only 41.9% of adults were vaccinated against the flu and 21.4% were vaccinated with the updated 2024-25 COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, just 43.7% of adults ages 75 and older have received the RSV vaccine, according to CDC data.
Nearly half of all children are vaccinated against the flu at 42.5%, but just 10.3% have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine.
(NEW YORK) — People who were diagnosed with severe COVID-19 infections from the first wave of the pandemic could face double the risk of heart attack and stroke, a new study has found.
The study, published this week in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology and supported by the National Institutes of Health, found the elevated risk could last for up to three years
Researchers focused on the long-term cardiovascular risks for unvaccinated people who were sick with the virus during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and 2020.
Compared to someone who never had COVID-19, the likelihood of heart attack, stroke and death doubled for anyone who was ever ill with the virus, and was four times higher for people who required hospitalization, the study found.
The elevated danger persisted for more than three years after the initial infection, which, according to the study, posed a serious cardiovascular threat comparable to that of type 2 diabetes.
“Findings suggest severe COVID-19 infection as a catastrophic component,” Dr. Hooman Allayee, the study’s principal investigator, told ABC News. “Cardiovascular mortality trends from 2010 to 2019 were steadily going down. Then, all of a sudden, between 2020 and 2022, ten years of work [was] completely wiped out because of COVID-19.”
People with blood types A, B and AB were especially vulnerable to increased cardiovascular risk from COVID-19, while people with type O blood had a reduced chance of facing such issues, according to the study.
“Blood type is known to be associated with heart attack and stroke risk,” said Allayee, who is a professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. “If your blood type is A, B or AB, the virus is more likely to infect you and makes these blood cells open to viral entry.”
The study analyzed individuals from the UK Biobank, a large medical database consisting primarily of data taken from older, wealthier and predominantly white participants. However, similar studies looking at other populations came to nearly identical conclusions, according to Allayee.
The study emphasized the importance of COVID-19 vaccinations, Allayee said.
“No matter what vaccine you got, just six months after the vaccination or the booster, the chance of heart attack and stroke went down,” he said. “But immunity wanes over time, which is why you need the boosters. If not, you could be susceptible to getting severe COVID again.”
Anyone who has ever had a severe COVID-19 infection, especially if they required a hospital stay, should discuss the potentially increased health hazards caused by the virus with their health care provider, Allayee stressed.
“Talk to your doctor and start the discussion with your physician,” he said. “It’s not going away, so we have to start talking about it. Stay on top of your vaccinations and boosters and get regular check-ups.”
Mahir Qureshi, M.D. is an internal medicine physician resident at Cooper University Hospital and a member of the ABC Medical Unit.
(NEW YORK) — A deadly, undiagnosed disease that has been spreading in one region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) may be linked to malaria, health officials said Thursday.
As of Dec. 14, the latest date for which data is available, 592 cases have been reported with 37 confirmed deaths and 44 deaths under investigation, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the public health agency of the African Union.
Over the last week, 181 samples from 51 cases were tested in a laboratory, Dr. Ngashi Ngongo, Africa CDC chief of staff, said during a Thursday press briefing.
Laboratory testing showed 25 out of 29 tested were positive for malaria. Additionally, rapid testing showed 55 out of 88 patients were positive for malaria.
Ngashi said there are two hypotheses: The first is that the undiagnosed disease is severe malaria “on a background of malnutrition and viral infection” and the second is the disease is a viral infection “on a background of malaria and malnutrition.”
Malaria is a serious disease caused by a parasite that infects a certain type of mosquito, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most people contract malaria after being bitten by an infected mosquito.
Most cases of malaria occur in sub-Saharan Africa, but it also occurs in parts of Oceania and in parts of Central and South America and Southeast Asia.
Malaria can be deadly if is not diagnosed and treated quickly, the CDC said.
What we know about the disease
The disease first appeared in a remote area in the province of Kwango, in the southwestern part of the DRC on the border with Angola, according to Africa CDC.
The first case was documented on Oct. 24. Patients have been experiencing flu-like symptoms including fever, headache, coughing and difficulty breathing as well as anemia, Africa CDC said during a press briefing earlier this month.
A plurality of cases, or 42.7%, have occurred in children under 5 years old. This age group also has the largest number of deaths, with 21 so far, data from Africa CDC shows. Children between ages 5 and 9 make up the second highest number of cases
Africa CDC said in a post on X earlier this month that it took five to six weeks after the first case was reported for local authorities to alert the national government, highlighting “gaps in Africa’s disease detection systems: limited surveillance, testing delays & weak lab infrastructure.”
-ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — From a pig kidney transplant to restoring genetic deafness, 2024 was a year full of medical breakthroughs.
The breakthroughs include the discovery of a cause of an autoimmune disease, the development of a “game-changing” drug and potential hope for those experiencing end-stage organ failure.
Here are five of the biggest highlights in medical achievements this year:
Gene therapy restores hearing in children
Children with hereditary deafness regained their hearing thanks to a type of gene therapy, according to the results of a clinical trial published in the medical journal The Lancet in January.
Investigators from Mass Eye and Ear, a specialty hospital in Boston, examined six children who had a form of genetic deafness called DFNB9, which is caused by a gene mutation that interferes with the transmission of sound signals from the ear to the brain.
Gene therapy involved the use of an inactive virus carrying a functioning version of the gene, which was introduced into the inner ears of the six children.
After 26 weeks, five of the six children recovered their hearing and could even conduct “normal conversation.”
“Children with this genetic hearing loss…the only treatment option for them until now is [a] cochlear implant,” Dr. Zheng-Yi Chen, an associate scientist in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories at Mass Eye and Ear and study co-investigator, told ABC News. “And of course, [a] cochlear implant can help them tremendously, but it’s with its own limitations.”
“But with this gene therapy, the children regain hearing, and they were able to speak. So, in a way, the life is totally transformed,” he continued. “This study really opened up the whole field that, in the future, we’ll be able to develop a treatment for other [types] of genetic hearing loss, for which there is no treatment at all at the moment.”
Groundbreaking animal organ transplant
Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) conducted the world’s first genetically-edited pig kidney transplant into a living human in March 2024.
During a four-hour procedure, a surgical team connected the pig kidney’s blood vessels and ureter – the duct that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder – with those of 62-year-old Richard Slayman, a man living with end-stage kidney disease.
“For patients with kidney failure, we know that transplantation is the best treatment option, but unfortunately, we face an immense organ shortage,” Dr. Leonardo Riella, medical director of kidney transplantation at MGH, told ABC News. “So, we have over 100,000 patients waiting for a kidney transplant in the U.S., and more than 17 patients die every day on the waiting list.”
“So, the idea here is, how can we overcome this organ shortage barrier? And having kidneys from another species that could be delivered in a timely manner for these patients once they develop kidney failure could be game-changing for the entire field,” he added.
Slayman passed away in May of this year, but there is no evidence it was the result of the transplant, according to MGH.
Riella said over the course of Slayman’s care, much was learned about how to best deliver care when using animal organs for transplants in the hopes of making the treatment more widely available to patients waiting for a new organ.
A cause of lupus discovered
A team at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Northwestern Medicine said they have discovered a cause of the autoimmune disease lupus and a possible way to reverse it.
Lupus sees the body’s immune system mistakenly attack its own healthy cells and tissues, which can cause inflammation and damage in organs or systems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a study, published in the journal Nature in July, researchers compared blood samples from 19 lupus patients to 19 patients without the condition and found imbalances in the types of T-cells lupus patients produce.
T-cells are a certain type of white blood cell that plays a crucial role in the body’s immune response to the disease.
“We’ve identified a fundamental imbalance in the immune responses that patients with lupus make, and we’ve defined specific mediators that can correct this imbalance to dampen the pathologic autoimmune response,” co-corresponding author Dr. Deepak Rao, a rheumatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and co-director of its Center for Cellular Profiling, said in a press release at the time.
1st new class of schizophrenia drug in more than 3 decades
In September, the FDA approved the first new class of drug to treat people with schizophrenia in more than 30 years.
The pill, called Cobenfy – manufactured by Bristol Myers Squibb – combines two drugs, xanomeline and trospium chloride, and is taken twice a day.
Clinical trials showed the combination helped manage schizophrenia symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions and disorganized thinking.
Dr. René Kahn, chair of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said it took many years to develop the first medications for schizophrenia, which are effective in preventing psychosis and work by blocking dopamine receptors.
“Blocking the dopamine receptor directly or indirectly is very unpleasant. Sometimes for patients, they can have unpleasant side effects. It can decrease their energy, it can make them feel depressed, and it can give them Parkinsonian side effects,” Kahn told ABC News.
He described Cobenfy as “game-changing in the sense that this is the first drug that doesn’t directly – with the emphasis on directly – influence the dopamine system and certainly doesn’t block dopamine receptors. So that’s very important, because it may show that we don’t have to directly block or affect the dopamine system but can do that through a different mechanism.”
Kahn said the next step will be monitoring the drug as it is prescribed to thousands of schizophrenia patients to ensure it works and that side effects are minimal.
1st over-the-counter combo flu and COVID test outside of emergency use
The FDA authorized the first over-the-counter combination COVID-19 and flu test outside of emergency use in October.
The Healgen Rapid Check COVID-19/Flu A&B Antigen Test can be purchased at a pharmacy or other stores without a prescription.
While there are other over-the-counter combination tests currently available, this is the first to be marketed to consumers using the traditional approval pathway outside of a public health emergency, according to the FDA.
