geoffrey modest medical blogs

one of the issues with covid is that assessing clinical outcomes lag the ever-changing virus (the important clinical information needed takes a while to see what the effects are for the newest variant; and by the time that information is available, yet another variant or so has evolved...). one frequent question now is what is the incidence of long covid with omicron. a brief UK study found that long covid was much less common from omicron than from the delta variant ( see covid long covid less with omicron vs delta lancet2022  in dropbox, or doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00946-1). Details : -- case-controlled observational study comparing long covid over 2 periods of time:     -- 56,003 adults in the UK tested positive for covid by either PCR or lateral flow antigen test between 20December 2021 and 9March2022, at a time when >70% of UK cases were from omicron     -- 41,361 adults tested positive between 1June2021 and 27November 2021, at a time when...

  A recent NIH study  (Testing Us At Home study) found that rapid antigen testing was as accurate for  the omicron as the delta variants, in a pre-print, pre-peer reviewed article (see   covid rapid antigen test accurate medrvix202 2 in dropbox, or  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.27.22271090v2.full.pdf  or  doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.27.22271090  ). Of note, this was NOT a pre-specified study analysis, but developed to answer another question (not being a pre-specified analysis might diminish the statistical rigor associated with a new study) Details: -- 5,506 participants without symptoms were enrolled from 18October2021 to 24January2022, and received rapid antigen (Ag-RDT) and nasal  PCR tests every 48 hours for 15 days, all nasal tests self-administered (with a 15-minute break between samplings)     --Ag-RDT tests used (all approved EUA tests):          -- BD Veritor At-Home, Quidel Qui...