10-01-21 U.S. hits 700,000 COVID-19 deaths.

10-08-21 Pfizer seeks US Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization from for their Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.

10-12-21 Scientists at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that Moderna Inc had not met all of the agency's criteria to support use of booster doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, possibly because the efficacy of the shot's first two doses has remained strong.

10-14-21 The Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel unanimously endorsed use of Moderna’s Covid-19 booster shot for the elderly and younger people whose jobs, underlying health or other factors elevate their risk. The panel recommended giving the shots at least six months after initial immunization. Its vote is not binding, but the FDA normally follows the recommendations of its advisory committees.

10-21-21 Based on a trial of 10,000 people, Pfizer says fully vaccinated people who received a booster dose of Pfizer's shot were at much lower risk of catching COVID-19. The booster group was at a 95.6% lower risk of catching COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people who received a placebo, instead of the booster (five cases of COVID-19 in the "boosted group" and 109 cases in the "non-boosted group"). Pfizer said that the booster provided the same amount of protection across all age groups. About half of people in the trial were aged 16 to 55, and just under a quarter were 65 and older.

10-22-24 A study, published Friday in medical journal JAMA Network Open, says nearly a quarter of individuals who've been infected with the coronavirus have problems retaining information and focusing months after contracting the disease

10-24-21 A new study conducted by scientists in France, Germany, and Spain has found that COVID-19 can damage specific brain cells known as endothelial cells. There's hope that the damage may be reversible.

10-27-21 Researchers at Oxford University in the UK reviewed data on nearly 20,000 U.S. COVID-19 patients, half of whom had been vaccinate and found that previous vaccination does not appear to protect against several previously documented outcomes of COVID-19 such as long COVID features, arrhythmia, joint pain, Type 2 diabetes, liver disease, sleep disorders, and mood and anxiety disorders." The absence of protection from long COVID "is concerning given the high incidence and burden" of these lasting problems, they added.

10-29-21 A CDC report indicated that people who had natural immunity from having recently fought off COVID-19 and who were not vaccinated were 5.49 times more likely to experience another COVID-19 infection than were vaccinated people who had not previously been infected.

10-29-21 The Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.

10-31-21 By the end of 2020, there was no discernible difference between the rate of people who died of COVID-19 from areas that voted for President Biden and those who voted for former President Donald Trump — but "then the vaccines arrived," and "they proved so powerful, and the partisan attitudes toward them so different, that a gap in COVID's death toll quickly emerged". Residents of heavily Trump counties were more than three times likelier to die from COVID in October than those in heavily Biden countries — 25 per 100,000 versus 7.8 per 100,000. (source: New York Times)