Germany to start Omicron-adapted COVID vaccinations next week - minister Germany can next week start using COVID-19 vaccines which have been adapted for the Omicron variant and got approval for use in the European Union on Thursday, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said. Reuters Reuters

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Canada's Ontario allows masked people with asymptomatic COVID in public Canada's most populous province, Ontario, said on Wednesday that residents can come out of isolation with a mask as soon as 24 hours after their COVID-19 symptoms dissipate, under a strategy to homogenize guidance for all respiratory illnesses. Ismail Shakil Reuters

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EU regulator clears tweaked versions of COVID vaccines LONDON (AP) — The European Medicines Agency has recommended the authorization of two coronavirus vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Inc., tweaked to include protection against an early version of the omicron variant. AP NEWS

... the EU drug regulator said the two messenger RNA boosters offered protection both against the original version of COVID-19 and the omicron subvariant BA.1, which has since been overtaken globally by later omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. Nearly 80% of coronavirus cases worldwide are now being caused by omicron BA.5, according to the World Health Organization.

WHO: New COVID cases, deaths keep falling nearly everywhere GENEVA (AP) — The number of new coronavirus cases and deaths reported globally continued to fall nearly everywhere in the world in what the World Health Organization described as a “welcome decline” at a media briefing on Wednesday. AP NEWS

... WHO said COVID-19 infections dropped everywhere in the world while deaths decreased everywhere except for Southeast Asia, where they climbed by 15% and in the Western Pacific, where they rose by 3%. 

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UK downgrades Covid-19 alert level amid falling cases Chief medical officers said the wave of Omicron variants was ‘subsiding’, although ‘further surges are likely’ PA Media the Guardian

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Study explores differences in the efficiency of COVID-19 vaccine boosters In a new study, researchers predicted the efficacy of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine boosters. News-Medical.net

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The study findings indicated that variant-modified booster vaccines could result in significantly higher neutralization titers against prevalent and ancestral SARS-CoV-2 variants compared to ancestral-based boosters.

10 key questions about monkeypox the world needs to answer Monkeypox is not a new disease. But scant attention paid to it for decades means there are big unanswered questions about the disease and the virus that causes it. Megan Molteni STAT

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Coronavirus Antigen Levels Associated with COVID-19 Severity The levels of SARS-CoV-2 antigen in the blood of hospitalized COVID-19 patients appear to line up with how severe the illness is and other clinical outcomes, according to a new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. WebMD

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