Critical step in COVID viral infection identified
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 9-Jul-2025 05:10 ET (9-Jul-2025 09:10 GMT/UTC)
A new county-level dataset from Johns Hopkins University researchers reveals a national decline in the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination rate among U.S. children since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Out of 2,066 studied counties, 1,614 counties, 78%, reported drops in vaccinations and the average county-level vaccination rate fell 93.92% pre-pandemic to 91.26% post-pandemic—an average decline of 2.67%, moving further away from the 95% herd immunity threshold to predict or limit the spread of measles.
A team of scientists at NYU Abu Dhabi has developed a breakthrough paper-based diagnostic device that can detect COVID-19 and other infectious diseases in under 10 minutes, without the need for sophisticated lab equipment or trained personnel. The Radially Compartmentalized Paper Chip (RCP-Chip), engineered by researchers at the Advanced Microfluidics and Microdevices Laboratory (AMMLab), offers a fast, affordable, and portable solution for on-site screening of infectious diseases.
Mass General Brigham researchers are shining a powerful new light into the viral darkness with the development of Luminescence CAscade-based Sensor (LUCAS), a rapid, portable, highly-sensitive diagnostic tool for processing complex biological samples. Compared to its diagnostic predecessors, LUCAS creates 500-fold stronger and 8-fold longer-lasting bioluminescence signals, overcoming longstanding challenges faced by point-of-care diagnostics. Their study published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Prior COVID-19 vaccination did not stop the immune system from mounting a protective response to the Delta and Omicron strains, though new mutation-specific antibody production dipped slightly, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences and published in Nature Immunology.