New coronavirus subvariants escape antibodies from vaccination and prior Omicron infection, studies suggest | CNN Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 appear to escape antibody responses among both people who had previous Covid-19 infection and those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted, according to new data from researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, of Harvard Medical School. Jacqueline Howard CNN

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“We Have to Get Out of This Phase”: Ashish Jha on the Future of the Pandemic President Biden’s COVID czar talks about his public-health philosophy, his Twitter threads, his unlikely path to the White House, and where we go from here. Dhruv Khullar The New Yorker

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https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciac501/6611845

Hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19 during the Omicron wave benefited from a 4th vaccine shot--Israeli study

Waning vaccine-immunity and an increased incidence of COVID-19 during the Omicron outbreak led the Israeli Ministry of Health to recommend a fourth dose of BNT162b2 for high-risk individuals. This study assessed the effect of that dose for hospitalized patients with severe/critical, breakthrough COVID-19. ...

Among hospitalized patients with severe/critical breakthrough COVID-19, a recent fourth dose was associated with significant protection against mechanical ventilation or death, compared to three doses.

Rapid Covid tests give false negatives, but it may mean you're not contagious The tests seem to be most accurate when viral loads are high, so experts think a negative could mean you’re less likely to spread the virus. NBC News

In early January, more than 700 Stanford University athletes took rapid Covid tests upon returning to the campus. Those who tested negative — and some who tested positive — were also given PCR tests.