Correlations and Timeliness of COVID-19 Surveillance Data Sources and Indicators - United States, October 1, 2020-March 22, 2023.

When the U.S. COVID-19 public health emergency declaration expires on May 11, 2023, national reporting of certain categories of COVID-19 public health surveillance data will be transitioned to other data sources or will be discontinued; COVID-19 hospitalization data will be the only data source available at the county level (1).

Mortality due to COVID-19 infection: A comparison of first and second waves.

Background: The USA suffered an initial wave of COVID-19 cases from March to July in 2020. Cases again surged in August 2020 as business restrictions were lifted. We aimed to describe demographic, treatment, and mortality differences between both waves.

Modeling of Future COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths, by Vaccination Rates and Nonpharmaceutical Intervention Scenarios - United States, April-September 2021.

After a period of rapidly declining U.S. COVID-19 incidence during January-March 2021, increases occurred in several jurisdictions (1,2) despite the rapid rollout of a large-scale vaccination program.

Considering indirect benefits is critical when evaluating SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates.

Significant progress has already been made in development and testing of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, and Phase III clinical trials have begun for 6 novel vaccine candidates to date. These Phase III trials seek to demonstrate direct benefits of a vaccine on vaccine recipients. However, vaccination is also known to bring about indirect benefits to a population through the reduction of virus circulation.

Evolutionary consequences of feedbacks between within-host competition and disease control.

Lay Summary: Competition often occurs among diverse parasites within a single host, but control efforts could change its strength. We examined how the interplay between competition and control could shape the evolution of parasite traits like drug resistance and disease severity.

Stochasticity and Infectious Disease Dynamics: Density and Weather Effects on a Fungal Insect Pathogen.

In deterministic models of epidemics, there is a host abundance threshold above which the introduction of a few infected individuals leads to a severe epidemic. Studies of weather-driven animal pathogens often assume that abundance thresholds will be overwhelmed by weather-driven stochasticity, but tests of this assumption are lacking. We collected observational and experimental data for a fungal pathogen, , that infects the gypsy moth, .

Combined Effects of Natural Enemies and Competition for Resources on a Forest Defoliator: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis.

Explanations for the dynamics of insect outbreaks often focus on natural enemies, on the grounds that parasitoid and pathogen attack rates are high during outbreaks. While natural enemy models can successfully reproduce outbreak cycles, experiments have repeatedly demonstrated the importance of resource quality and abundance. Experiments, however, are rarely invoked in modeling studies.

Causes and Consequences of Spatial Within-Host Viral Spread.

The spread of viral pathogens both between and within hosts is inherently a spatial process. While the spatial aspects of viral spread at the epidemiological level have been increasingly well characterized, the spatial aspects of viral spread within infected hosts are still understudied. Here, with a focus on influenza A viruses (IAVs), we first review experimental studies that have shed light on the mechanisms and spatial dynamics of viral spread within hosts.

Genome Sequences of Mycobacteriophages AlanGrant, Baee, Corofin, OrangeOswald, and Vincenzo, New Members of Cluster B.

AlanGrant, Baee, Corofin, OrangeOswald, and Vincenzo are newly isolated phages of Mycobacterium smegmatis mc(2)155 discovered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. All five phages share nucleotide similarity with cluster B mycobacteriophages but span considerable diversity with Corofin and OrangeOswald in subcluster B3, AlanGrant and Vincenzo in subcluster B4, and Baee in subcluster B5.

Mutations in Caenorhabditis briggsae identify new genes important for limiting the response to EGF signaling during vulval development.

Studies of vulval development in the nematode C. elegans have identified many genes that are involved in cell division and differentiation processes. Some of these encode components of conserved signal transduction pathways mediated by EGF, Notch, and Wnt.