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FINANCE
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CARE
DELIVERY
Long COVID-19
unlikely among
fully vaccinated,
physicians say
By Erica Carbajal
I
f a person is fully vaccinated and devel-
ops a breakthrough COVID-19 infection,
early trends indicate it's unlikely they'll
experience long-haul symptoms, NBC News
reported July 15.
While it's possible and more research
is needed, some physicians working at
post-COVID-19 clinics say they haven't
seen demand from patients who've been
fully vaccinated.
At Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic's
post-COVID-19 program, it's been "quite
rare," Greg Vanichkachorn, MD, an occupa-
tional therapist who works with long-hauler
patients, told NBC.
Although anecdotal reports, physicians lead-
ing such clinics at Tulane University in New
Orleans and Washington University in St.
Louis haven't seen patients come in aer a
breakthrough infection either.
Additionally, early research hasn't indicated
there's a significant risk.
"Of the people who get vaccinated and end
up with a breakthrough infection, their risk
of coming back to the clinic with some long
COVID-19 manifestation is very, very small,"
Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, clinical epidemiologist
who is conducting research on the risk of
long-COVID-19 among fully vaccinated vet-
erans, told the news outlet.
It's possible, however, that it's still too early
to fully understand how vaccines may affect
long COVID-19 symptoms.
"I think the trends are going to only real-
ly start bearing out in the next six months,"
Natasha Altman, MD, cardiologist at UC
Health University of Colorado Hospital in
Aurora, told NBC.
Still, given the vaccines' efficacy in preventing
a COVID-19 infection to begin with, they re-
main "one of the best ways to lower your risk
of getting post-COVID-19 syndrome," Dr.
Vanichkachorn said. n
COVID-19 tied to brain tissue loss, early
research suggests
By Erica Carbajal
C
OVID-19 was linked to brain tissue loss in a U.K. brain imaging
study, according to early findings published June 15 in the preprint
server MedRxiv.
The study involved 782 participants, with researchers comparing brain
scans from before and after COVID-19 infection. Researchers pulled data
from the U.K. Biobank, which scanned more than 40,000 participants before
the pandemic hit the region, allowing them to invite participants back for a
second imaging visit.
Findings showed tissue loss in certain parts of the brain.
In a June 17 interview with CNBC, Scott Gottlieb, MD, former FDA commis-
sioner who now serves on Pfizer's board, explained the findings.
"In short, the study suggests that there could be some long-term loss of
brain tissue from COVID-19, and that would have some long-term conse-
quences," Dr. Gottlieb said.
"You could compensate for that over time, so the symptoms of that may
go away, but you're never going to regain the tissue if, in fact, it's being
destroyed as a result of the virus," he said.
The region where the tissue loss occurred could also help explain why loss
of smell is a common COVID-19 symptom.
"The diminishment in the amount of cortical tissue happened to be in re-
gions of the brain that are close to the places that are responsible for smell,"
Dr. Gottlieb said. "What it suggests is that, the smell, the loss of smell, is just
an effect of a more primary process that's underway, and that process is
actually shrinking of cortical tissue." n
Experts brace for severe flu season
By Mackenzie Bean
H
ealth experts are bracing for a severe 2021-22 flu season, CNBC
reported July 7.
"Since our COVID mitigation measures prevented influenza trans-
mission last year, there are not a whole lot of people who were recently
infected," Lauren Ancel Myers, PhD, an epidemiologist and director of the
University of Texas at Austin's COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, told CNBC.
"So we may be entering flu season with a higher level of susceptibility than
usual, which could exacerbate the risks."
This flu season's severity may also depend on the virus' evolution and Ameri-
can's personal decisions about whether they get a flu shot or take additional
precautions if the virus does start spreading widely, Dr. Ancel Meyers said.
Lynnette Brammer, who oversees the CDC's Domestic Influenza Surveil-
lance Team, said the agency is preparing for flu circulation to return to lev-
els seen before the pandemic given that other respiratory virus levels that
fell during the pandemic, such as the respiratory syncytial virus, are already
showing unseasonable increases.
"We anticipate that something similar may happen with flu, especially as
community mitigation efforts continue to be relaxed," she told CNBC. n
