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By Nancy Lapid
(Reuters) – The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the results and that has not yet been certified by peer review.
Delta variant doesn’t seem to make kids any sicker
The Delta variant of the coronavirus does not appear to cause more serious illness in children than earlier forms of the virus, suggests a British study. Earlier this year, the research team found that the Alpha variant of the virus did not appear to make children any sicker than the so-called wild or original form of the virus, first seen in China. New data suggests that children are not sicker with Delta than with Alpha. Researchers compared two groups of school-aged children with COVID-19: 694 infected with the Alpha variant between late December 2020 and early May 2021, and 706 infected with Delta between late May and early July. As reported on Thursday on medRxiv https://bit.ly/3mDJMNd ahead of the peer review, the children infected with Delta had slightly more symptoms. But in both groups, very few children required hospitalization, and long periods of illness were rare. In both groups, half of the children were not sick for more than five days. Researchers lacked information on differences between the groups that might have influenced the results, such as whether closures were in place and the effects of different seasons. “Our data suggests that the clinical features of COVID-19 due to the Delta variant in children are broadly similar to COVID-19 due to other variants,” the researchers concluded. This seems to agree with data reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Although we are seeing more cases in children… these studies have shown that there is no increase in the severity of the disease in children,” said CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, about the wave caused by Delta in a statement. “More children have COVID-19 because there is more disease in the community.”
Stronger secondary immune response after infection than vaccination
In COVID-19 survivors, important components of the body’s immune response called memory B cells continue to evolve and grow stronger for at least several months, producing very powerful antibodies capable of neutralizing new variants of the virus, a revealed a new study. In comparison, the vaccine-induced memory B cells are less robust, evolving for only a few weeks and never “learning” to protect against the variants, researchers reported in an article published Thursday in Nature https: / /go.nature.com/3AjGx2B. COVID-19 vaccines induce more antibodies than the immune system after coronavirus infection. But the immune system’s response to infection appears to surpass its response to vaccines when it comes to memory B cells. Whether antibodies are induced by an infection or a vaccine, their levels drop within six months in many people. But memory B cells are ready to make new antibodies if the body encounters the virus. Prior to this study, there was little data on how vaccine-induced B cells compared to infection-induced B cells. Researchers warn that the benefits of stronger memory B cells after infection do not outweigh the risks from COVID-19. “While a natural infection can induce the maturation of antibodies with broader activity than a vaccine, a natural infection can also kill you,” said study leader Michel Nussenzweig of Rockefeller University, in a statement. “A vaccine won’t do that and, in fact, protects against the risk of serious illness or death from infection.”
Click for a Reuters graphic https://tmsnrt.rs/3c7R3Bl on vaccines in development.
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(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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