1-4-21 Israel found that a fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer) boosts antibodies five-fold a week after the shot is administered. It is administering fourth doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to people over 60, health workers and immunocompromised patients.

1-10-22 The CDC advised against travel to Canada because of a rising number of COVID-19 cases. In the Capital Region, nearly one out of every five tests performed on residents of the eight-county area came back positive at the height of the omicron surge, which appears to have occurred Jan. 7 when the seven-day positivity rate hit 19.8 percent. About one-third of all COVID-19 patients in area hospitals did not know they had COVID and tested positive incidentally. The lessened severity of omicron and rapid-fire pace at which it spread across the globe has fueled hope that the pandemic is entering a more manageable phase — since pathogens have a tendency to become more contagious but less severe over time.

1-17-22 Omicron seems to be peaking in the Capital Region.

1-11-22 New York State is no longer requiring county health departments to do contact tracing because record-breaking case numbers due to the highly contagious omicron variant has made contact tracing more difficult. Also, there’s a tighter window for health departments to disrupt transmission, because of omicron’s short incubation period.

1-12-22 Omicron infections are associated with a 91% reduction in risk of death compared to the Delta variant, according to a new Kaiser Permanente Southern California study. The study also showed that Omicron infections were also associated with a 74% reduction in risk of going to the ICU, as well as a 53% reduction in risk of being hospitalized.

1-17-22 An Israeli hospital on Monday said preliminary research indicates a fourth dose of the coronavirus vaccine provides only limited defense against the omicron variant. It returns the level of antibodies to what it was at the beginning of the third booster.

1-18-22 People who had previously been infected with COVID-19 were better protected against the Delta variant than those who were vaccinated alone, suggesting that natural immunity was a more potent shield than vaccines against that variant, California and New York health officials reported on Wednesday. Before the Delta variant, COVID-19 vaccination resulted in better protection against a subsequent infection than surviving a previous infection. These results only apply to the Delta variant.

1-18-22 Yale University researchers have developed an easy-to-use clip-on device that can detect low levels of SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the air around you, according to research published Jan. 11 in the peer-reviewed online journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters.

1-22-22 Nathan Littauer Hospital in Gloversville is at capacity and 911 patients are being diverted to Amsterdam, where it is taking over an hour to unload patients due to volume.

1-22-22 UK health officials estimated the impact of different isolation periods on COVID-19 infectiousness: five days from symptoms or a positive test, 31% of people with COVID-19 were contagious, and testing negative on rapid tests on days 5 and 6 cut the risk of being infectious to 7%. In Japan, a study of 21 people found vaccinated people hospitalized with Omicron had peak levels of infectious virus particles three to six days after diagnosis or symptom onset and a UK study found 13% of 176 participants carried potentially infectious virus particles at day 10.

1-25-22 Edelstein(epidemiologist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel) and his team compared people who had been vaccinated twice and infected with COVID-19 and found they were no more likely to have symptoms like fatigue and headaches than people who'd never had COVID-19. What the ongoing study can't yet answer, Edelstein said, is whether this benefit is sustained. "Are people who've received at least two doses, will they continue to report these lower level of symptoms or are they going to rise? Do you need a third dose?"