A new study out of York University has found that the amount of atmospheric trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), the tiniest forever chemical, significantly declined in Toronto during COVID in 2020, which researchers say is good news for the world’s ability to mitigate it in the future. “When we turned off the tap, so to speak, and we all went home and stopped normal activities, we saw a really quick response, a dramatic reduction of TFA. But the real surprise is that the results point to TFA being formed from short-lived chemical precursors emitted into the atmosphere,” says York University atmospheric chemist Professor Cora Young, senior author of the paper published today.

The University of Osaka study shows that declining clinical tests lead to an underestimation of COVID-19 cases. By analyzing wastewater, researchers found viral loads remained high even as reported cases dropped. This highlights wastewater surveillance as a crucial, objective tool for accurately monitoring community-wide infection levels. The findings advocate for a multi-layered public health approach that is not solely reliant on testing data, ensuring a more realistic assessment of infection risks.

Patients with long COVID-19 in the U.S. report far higher rates of brain fog, depression and cognitive symptoms than patients in countries such as India and Nigeria, according to a large international study led by Northwestern Medicine.

The authors note that higher reported symptom burden in the U.S. may reflect lower stigma and greater access to neurological and mental health care, rather than more severe disease.

People with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and Long COVID experience a disruption to their brain connectivity during a mentally demanding task.

A UCLA-led research team demonstrated that when human immune enzymes break up the spike protein of the virus behind COVID-19, some resulting fragments have the ability to punch holes in membranes of human immune cells.

Those fragments target and kill specific cells based on their shape — the same types of sentinel cells and killer cells depleted in severe COVID-19.

Fragments of protein from the omicron variant showed less activity against the immune cells, a finding that may account for why it’s less dangerous than other strains.