Chinese rush to renew passports as COVID border curbs lifted People joined long queues outside immigration offices in Beijing on Monday, eager to renew their passports after China dropped COVID border controls that had largely prevented its 1.4 billion residents from travelling for three years. Yew Lun Tian,Eduardo Baptista Reuters

...

Studies detail Omicron immune protection after infection, vaccination One study looked at BA.5 infection after vaccination, while another examined vaccine effectiveness in children and adolescents. CIDRAP

A pair of new studies describe infection- and vaccine-conferred immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, with one showing that vaccinated people have good protection against BA.5 subvariant reinfection for at least 8 months after infection, and the other finding that the vaccine is 46% and 70% effective against infection and hospitalization, respectively, in children.

...

CureVac says COVID vaccine produced immune response in early-stage trial Germany's CureVac AG said on Friday its second-generation COVID-19 vaccine produced virus-neutralizing antibodies against the BA.1 subvariant of Omicron, based on preliminary data from an early-stage trial. Reuters Reuters

...

China 'under-representing' true impact of Covid outbreak, WHO says | CNN The World Health Organization has accused China of "under-representing" the severity of its Covid outbreak and criticized its "narrow" definition of what constitutes a Covid death, as top global health officials urge Beijing to share more data about the explosive spread. Simone McCarthy CNN

... WHO executive director for health emergencies Mike Ryan said the numbers released by China “under-represent the true impact of the disease” in terms of hospital and ICU admissions, as well as deaths.

The Symptoms Of COVID Variant XBB That Doctors Are Seeing Right Now Pay attention to these common signs of infection. YahooNews

...

Because XBB is relatively new, scientists are still working to figure out if and how the variant behaves differently from other recent variants. Though XBB’s symptoms are expected to be on par with past omicron infections, doctors say they are seeing some issues becoming more prevalent than others.

...