Sanjay Mishra

Jeremy Warner has had six shots of the COVID vaccines. He’s an oncologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he treats immunocompromised patients with cancer who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19. To keep his patients safe,…

Mehnaz Qureshi has caught COVID-19 seven times, despite being fully vaccinated and boosted. A veterinarian and a virologist at The Pirbright Institute in England, she first caught the disease in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic was just…

A highly infectious, new COVID variant is spreading fast, barely three months after the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was no longer a global health emergency. EG.5, a descendant of a previous XBB strain of Omicron, was first…

A highly contagious subvariant of Omicron called XBB.1.5 is now the dominant strain spreading in the United States. Early data suggests it’s more evasive than other variants, efficiently dodging previously acquired immunity and raising concerns among…

For the first time, scientists have shown that two seasonal respiratory viruses currently circulating in the United States—and overwhelming hospitals with sick kids—can form a hybrid virus under the right conditions. The finding, they say, is not a…

Every few months for the first two years of the pandemic the public learned the name of a new coronavirus variant that had emerged and was more adept at infecting us or causing severe disease. Ten variants with Greek names—Alpha through Mu—killed…

Two Omicron subvariants are now causing more than half of new coronavirus infections in the United States—and both are very good at dodging antibodies in people who have been vaccinated and boosted, as well as in people who had a previous COVID-19…

After a brief two-month plateau, COVID-19 cases are rising again in the United States, propelled by the Omicron BA.2 subvariant and its more transmissible descendants. The uptick has experts worried, as more people are shedding their masks and…

After being bedridden with fever and coughing for three and half days, Elena Katzap thought COVID-19 was behind her. The writer and teacher in Los Angeles had contracted the virus at the end of January 2022, and she felt grateful that she got only a…

The great unmasking of America is in full swing even as a new Covid variant is beginning to spread, leaving many immunocompromised people wondering, “Hey, what about me?” Tinu Abayomi-Paul has B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) for which she…

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health experts have worried about people getting infected with the influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2 at the same time, a disease sometimes called flurona. Now, a multi-year study of hospital patients…

Cases of the Omicron variant are on the decline in U.S. and worldwide—but a different version of Omicron is now gaining traction. This so-called stealth variant, officially known as BA.2, is armed with even higher transmission potential, and possibly…

As the new Omicron variant spreads, experts say the best defense against all viral variants that cause COVID-19 is a full dose of a vaccine followed by a booster shot several months later. Since the first mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 was authorized…

Two weeks after the world first learned about the Omicron variant, scientists now agree that it spreads faster than Delta, and it seems to evade existing immunity more easily than previous variants. But whether it causes more severe illness is still…

Experts warned that regions with low vaccination rates could allow the virus that causes COVID-19 to evolve more rapidly, possibly yielding a more transmissible or antibody-resistant variant that would escalate the pandemic. Now this prediction may…

While the summer surge of COVID-19 wanes in the United States, a more transmissible version of the Delta variant has been spreading in the United Kingdom since July. The continuing spread of Delta has led to a newer subtype, called AY.4.2, which…

A preliminary study has shown that in the case of a breakthrough infection, the Delta variant is able to grow in the noses of vaccinated people to the same degree as if they were not vaccinated at all. The virus that grows is just as infectious as…

As the United States battles a fourth surge of COVID-19, scientists are learning much about the Delta variant that wasn’t known when it was first reported in India in March: it is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses known, it causes more…

If you’ve been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, maybe you figured you no longer need to worry about contracting the coronavirus. But along with the rising number of new COVID-19 cases globally and growing concern about highly transmissible strains…

A coronavirus variant known as Lambda, which has largely slid under the radar for the past nine months, is now causing almost all new infections in Peru. Lambda (also known as C.37) was first detected in Peru in August 2020 and has spread to 29…