'I don't trust it:' Vaccine hesitancy lingers even as China COVID cases surge The problem is a growing headache for Beijing as it tries to persuade more people to get vaccinated in the face of a spike in infections and the prospect of more than 1.5 million deaths after the lifting of strict anti-COVID measures. David Kirton Reuters

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COVID-19 Virus Found in the Brain: Autopsies Reveal Startling New Information An analysis of tissue samples from the autopsies of 44 people who died with COVID-19 shows that SAR-CoV-2 virus spread throughout the body—including into the brain—and that it lingered for almost 8 months. The study was published on December 14 in the journal Nature. Scientists from the National Mike O'Neill SciTechDaily

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COVID booster prompts good immune response, except after recent infection CIDRAP

A study today in Clinical Infectious Diseases finds that a third COVID-19 vaccine dose triggered a robust immune response, regardless of whether recipients had been infected more than 3 months earlier, but it didn't significantly increase antibody levels in those infected less than 3 months before.

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Omicron offshoot XBB.1.5 could drive new Covid-19 surge in US | CNN The CDC estimates that XBB.1.5 has more than doubled its share of the Covid-19 pie each week for the last four, rising from about 4% to 41% of new infections over the month of December. Brenda Goodman CNN

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COVID in 2023 and beyond—why virus trends are more difficult to predict three years on In 2020, we knew very little about the novel virus that was to become known as COVID-19. Now, as we enter 2023, a search of Google Scholar produces around five million results containing the term. Duncan Robertson

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COVID variant XBB.1.5 now accounts for 40 percent of cases in the US: CDC The omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 has rapidly spread to become the dominant COVID-19 mutation in the U.S., now accounting for 40.5 percent of all cases. The XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant as of this week … jchoi The Hill

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Lack of info on China's COVID-19 surge stirs global concern BEIJING (AP) — Moves by several countries to mandate COVID-19 tests for passengers arriving from China reflect global concern that new variants could emerge in its ongoing explosive outbreak — and that the government may not inform the rest of the world quickly enough. AP NEWS

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Flu and RSV on the decline but Covid hospitalizations rise Covid hospitalizations are rising in the United States, even as hospitalizations for other tripledemic viruses RSV and the flu continue to fall. YahooNews

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A promising new Covid pill shows key advantages over Paxlovid in trial A Chinese antiviral pill was found to be as effective as Paxlovid in a Phase 3 trial, and it appeared to cause fewer side effects. NBC News

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"You have a medication that looks to be just as good as Paxlovid, but less cumbersome," said Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

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