To better understand COVID-19's spread during the pandemic, public health officials have expanded wastewater surveillance. These efforts track SARS-CoV-2 levels and health risks among most people, but they miss people who live without shelter, a population particularly vulnerable to severe infection.
To fill this information gap, researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology Letters tested flood-control waterways near unsheltered encampments, finding similar transmission patterns as in the broader community and identifying previously unseen viral mutations.
The study was based on ED visits to nine US hospitals participating in the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network Registry from 2017 to 2022.
Scientists have been searching for the optimal coronavirus vaccine since the COVID-19 pandemic started. The mRNA vaccines developed through the federal government's "Operation Warp Speed" program were a massive innovation; however, annually updating those boosters for specific SARS-CoV-2 variants is inefficient for scientists and patients.
SARS-CoV-2 is just one member of the Sarbecovirus (SARS Betacoronavirus) subfamily (others include SARS-CoV-1, which caused the 2002 SARS outbreak, as well as other viruses circulating in bats that could cause future pandemics).
People born recently in England and Wales can expect to spend fewer years of their life in good health than those born over a decade ago, official figures show.