Clinical Characteristics of Mild Patients with Breakthrough Infection of Omicron Variant in China after Relaxing the Dynamic Zero COVID-19 Policy.

For SARS-CoV-2 mutants, the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines is still controversial. In this study, we aimed to investigate the clinical characteristics of Omicron-infected patients who completed primary immunization and booster immunization, respectively, during the rapid propagation of the Omicron variant in China. A total of 932 patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection from 18 December 2022 to 1 January 2023 were included in this survey by filling out questionnaires online. The enrolled patients were divided into the primary immunization group and the booster immunization group according to their vaccination status. During the whole course of disease, the most frequent symptoms were fever (90.6%), cough (84.3%), weakness (77.4%), headache and dizziness (76.1%), and myalgia (73.9%). Nearly 90% of the patients had symptoms lasting for less than 10 days, and 39.8% of the patients ended the course of the disease in 4-6 days. A total of 58.8% of these patients had a fever with a maximum body temperature of over 38.5 °C. Moreover, 61.4% of the patients had a fever that lasted less than 2 days. There were no obvious differences in initial symptoms, cardinal symptoms, symptom duration time, maximum body temperature, and fever duration time between the two groups of patients. In addition, no significant difference was found in the positive or negative conversion time of SARS-CoV-2 antigen/nucleic acid between the two groups of patients. For mild patients with Omicron breakthrough infection, enhanced immunization has no significant impact on the clinical performance and duration of viral infection compared with primary immunization. The reasons behind the different clinical manifestations of patients with mild symptoms after the breakthrough infection of the Omicron strain are still worth further research. Heterologous vaccination may be a better strategy for enhanced immunization, which can help improve the immune protection ability of the population. Further research should be carried out on vaccines against mutant strains and spectral anti-COVID-19 vaccines.

Treatment cost assessment for COVID-19 inpatients in Shenzhen, China 2020-2021: facts and suggestions.

Background: Knowledge regarding the treatment cost of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the real world is vital for disease burden forecasts and health resources planning. However, it is greatly hindered by obtaining reliable cost data from actual patients. To address this knowledge gap, this study aims to estimate the treatment cost and specific cost components for COVID-19 inpatients in Shenzhen city, China in 2020-2021. Methods: It is a 2 years' cross-sectional study. The de-identified discharge claims were collected from the hospital information system (HIS) of COVID-19 designated hospital in Shenzhen, China. One thousand three hundred ninety-eight inpatients with a discharge diagnosis for COVID-19 from January 10, 2020 (the first COVID-19 case admitted in the hospital in Shenzhen) to December 31, 2021. A comparison was made of treatment cost and cost components of COVID-19 inpatients among seven COVID-19 clinical classifications (asymptomatic, mild, moderate, severe, critical, convalescent and re-positive cases) and three admission stages (divided by the implementation of different treatment guidelines). The multi-variable linear regression models were used to conduct the analysis. Results: The treatment cost for included COVID-19 inpatients was USD 3,328.8. The number of convalescent cases accounted for the largest proportion of all COVID-19 inpatients (42.7%). The severe and critical cases incurred more than 40% of treatment cost on western medicine, while the other five COVID-19 clinical classifications spent the largest proportion (32%-51%) on lab testing. Compared with asymptomatic cases, significant increases of treatment cost were observed in mild cases (by 30.0%), moderate cases (by 49.2%), severe cases (by 228.7%) and critical cases (by 680.7%), while reductions were shown in re-positive cases (by 43.1%) and convalescent cases (by 38.6%). The decreasing trend of treatment cost was observed during the latter two stages by 7.6 and 17.9%, respectively. Conclusions: Our findings identified the difference of inpatient treatment cost across seven COVID-19 clinical classifications and the changes at three admission stages. It is highly suggestive to inform the financial burden experienced by the health insurance fund and the Government, to emphasize the rational use of lab tests and western medicine in the COVID-19 treatment guideline, and to design suitable treatment and control policy for convalescent cases.

Identification of Potential TMPRSS2 Inhibitors for COVID-19 Treatment in Chinese Medicine by Computational Approaches and Surface Plasmon Resonance Technology.

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pneumonia continues to spread in the entire globe with limited medication available. In this study, the active compounds in Chinese medicine (CM) recipes targeting the transmembrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS2) protein for the treatment of COVID-19 were explored. METHODS: The conformational structure of TMPRSS2 protein (TMPS2) was built through homology modeling. A training set covering TMPS2 inhibitors and decoy molecules was docked to TMPS2, and their docking poses were re-scored with scoring schemes. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to select the best scoring function. Virtual screening of the candidate compounds (CCDs) in the six highly effective CM recipes against TMPS2 was conducted based on the validated docking protocol. The potential CCDs after docking were subject to molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) experiment. RESULTS: A training set of 65 molecules were docked with modeled TMPS2 and LigScore2 with the highest area under the curve, AUC, value (0.886) after ROC analysis selected to best differentiate inhibitors from decoys. A total of 421 CCDs in the six recipes were successfully docked into TMPS2, and the top 16 CCDs with LigScore2 higher than the cutoff (4.995) were screened out. MD simulations revealed a stable binding between these CCDs and TMPS2 due to the negative binding free energy. Lastly, SPR experiments validated the direct combination of narirutin, saikosaponin B1, and rutin with TMPS2. CONCLUSIONS: Specific active compounds including narirutin, saikosaponin B1, and rutin in CM recipes potentially target and inhibit TMPS2, probably exerting a therapeutic effect on COVID-19.

Neutralization effect of plasma from vaccinated COVID-19 convalescents on SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants.

Background: COVID-19 has caused a global pandemic and the death toll is increasing. With the coronavirus continuously mutating, Omicron has replaced Delta as the most widely reported variant in the world. Studies have shown that the plasma of some vaccinated people does not neutralize the Omicron variant. However, further studies are needed to determine whether plasma neutralizes Omicron after one- or two-dose vaccine in patients who have recovered from infection with the original strain. Methods: The pseudovirus neutralization assays were performed on 64 plasma samples of convalescent COVID-19 patients, which were divided into pre-vaccination group, one-dose vaccinated group and two-dose vaccinated group. Results: In the three groups, there were significant reductions of sera neutralizing activity from WT to Delta variant (B.1.617.2), and from WT to Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) (ps<0.001), but the difference between Delta and Omicron variants were not significant (p>0.05). The average neutralization of the Omicron variant showed a significant difference between pre-vaccination and two-dose vaccinated convalescent individuals (p<0.01). Conclusions: Among the 64 plasma samples of COVID-19 convalescents, whether vaccinated or not, Omicron (B.1.1.529) escaped the neutralizing antibodies, with a significantly decreased neutralization activity compared to WT. And two-dose of vaccine could significantly raise the average neutralization of Omicron in convalescent individuals.

B-Cell Receptor Features and Database Establishment in Recovered COVID-19 Patients by Combining 5'-RACE with PacBio Sequencing.

BACKGROUND: Antibodies induced by viral infection can not only prevent subsequent virus infection, but can also mediate pathological injury following infection. Therefore, understanding the B-cell receptor (BCR) repertoire of either specific neutralizing or pathological antibodies from patients convalescing from Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection is of benefit for the preparation of therapeutic or preventive antibodies, and may provide insight into the mechanisms of COVID-19 pathological injury. METHODS: In this study, we used a molecular approach of combining 5' Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends (5'-RACE) with PacBio sequencing to analyze the BCR repertoire of all 5 IgH and 2 IgL genes in B-cells harvested from 35 convalescent patients after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. RESULTS: We observed numerous BCR clonotypes within most COVID-19 patients, but not in healthy controls, which validates the association of the disease with a prototypical immune response. In addition, many clonotypes were found to be frequently shared between different patients or different classes of antibodies. CONCLUSIONS: These convergent clonotypes provide a resource to identify potential therapeutic/prophylactic antibodies, or identify antibodies associated with pathological effects following infection with SARS-CoV-2.

An enhanced ant colony optimizer with Cauchy-Gaussian fusion and novel movement strategy for multi-threshold COVID-19 X-ray image segmentation.

The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) is a respiratory disease of great concern in terms of its dissemination and severity, for which X-ray imaging-based diagnosis is one of the effective complementary diagnostic methods. It is essential to be able to separate and identify lesions from their pathology images regardless of the computer-aided diagnosis techniques. Therefore, image segmentation in the pre-processing stage of COVID-19 pathology images would be more helpful for effective analysis. In this paper, to achieve highly effective pre-processing of COVID-19 pathological images by using multi-threshold image segmentation (MIS), an enhanced version of ant colony optimization for continuous domains (MGACO) is first proposed. In MGACO, not only a new move strategy is introduced, but also the Cauchy-Gaussian fusion strategy is incorporated. It has been accelerated in terms of convergence speed and has significantly enhanced its ability to jump out of the local optimum. Furthermore, an MIS method (MGACO-MIS) based on MGACO is developed, where it applies the non-local means, 2D histogram as the basis, and employs 2D Kapur's entropy as the fitness function. To demonstrate the performance of MGACO, we qualitatively analyze it in detail and compare it with other peers on 30 benchmark functions from IEEE CEC2014, which proves that it has a stronger capability of solving problems over the original ant colony optimization for continuous domains. To verify the segmentation effect of MGACO-MIS, we conducted a comparison experiment with eight other similar segmentation methods based on real pathology images of COVID-19 at different threshold levels. The final evaluation and analysis results fully demonstrate that the developed MGACO-MIS is sufficient to obtain high-quality segmentation results in the COVID-19 image segmentation and has stronger adaptability to different threshold levels than other methods. Therefore, it has been well-proven that MGACO is an excellent swarm intelligence optimization algorithm, and MGACO-MIS is also an excellent segmentation method.

Effectiveness of a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccines during an outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.2.2 in China: A case-control study.

Real-world evidence on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines marketed in China against the Omicron BA.2.2 variant remains scarce. A case-control study was conducted to estimate the vaccine effectiveness (VE) of COVID-19 vaccines marketed in China (inactivated vaccines, an Ad5-nCoV vaccine, and a recombinant protein vaccine). There were 414 cases infected with SARS-CoV-2 and 828 close contacts whose test results were consecutively negative as controls during the outbreak of the Omicron variant in Lu'an City, Anhui Province, China, in April 2022. The overall adjusted VE against Omicron BA.2.2 variant infection in the vaccinated group with any COVID-19 vaccine was 35.0% (95% CI: -9.1-61.3%), whereas the adjusted VE for booster vaccination was 51.6% (95% CI: 15.2-72.4%). Subgroup analysis showed that the overall adjusted VE of the Ad5-nCoV vaccine (65.8%, 95% CI: 12.8-86.6%) during the outbreak while any dose of inactivated vaccines and recombinant protein vaccine offered no protection. The adjusted VE of three-dose inactivated vaccines was 48.0% (95% CI: 8.0-70.6%), and the two-dose Ad5-nCoV vaccine was 62.9% (95% CI: 1.8-86%). There is no protection from a three-dose recombinant protein vaccine. COVID-19 vaccines offered 46.8% (95% CI: 9.5-68.7%) protection from infection within six months. There were statistically significant differences between the VEs of heterologous booster (VE = 76.4%, 95% CI: 14.3-93.5%) and homologous booster vaccination (VE = 51.8%, 95% CI: 9.6-74.3%) (P = .036). Booster vaccination of COVID-19 vaccines offered more protection than full vaccination. A booster vaccination campaign for a booster dose after three doses of a recombinant protein vaccine must be urgently conducted.

Continuously-deformable and stiffness-tunable soft manipulator achieving unmanned COVID-19 pandemic sampling.

In recent years, COVID-19 has spread across the whole world, and manpowered collection of pharyngeal samples undoubtedly increases the possibility of cross-infections. In this article, based on our previous fabricated soft manipulator (Cell Reports Physical Science, 2021, 2, 100600), we performed the COVID-19 sampling on real human volunteers by exploiting a pre-programmed unmanned system. The unmanned sampling system mainly includes a soft manipulator and a rigid motion platform, which are adjusted by pneumatic control box and the motor control modules, respectively. Drawn on the lead-through teaching method, the unmanned sampling of COVID-19 is realized by recording the applied pressure in soft manipulator and the feed motion of rigid platform. This research provides a potential approach for unmanned COVID-19 sampling, solving the risk of cross-infection during manual collection.

Effects of Resveratrol on Pulmonary Fibrosis via TGF-ß/Smad/ERK Signaling Pathway.

Pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is a progressive pulmonary disease with no effective treatment and high mortality. Resveratrol has shown promising benefits in the treatment of PF. However, the probable efficacy and underlying mechanism of resveratrol in PF treatment remain unclear. This study investigates the intervention effects and potential mechanisms underpinning the treatment of PF with resveratrol. The histopathological analysis of lung tissues in PF rats showed that resveratrol improved collagen deposition and reduced inflammation. Resveratrol decreased the levels of collagen, glutathione, superoxide dismutase, myeloperoxidase, and hydroxyproline, lowered total anti-oxidant capacity, and suppressed the migration of TGF-[Formula: see text]1 and LPS-induced 3T6 fibroblasts. With resveratrol intervention, the protein and RNA expressions of TGF-[Formula: see text]1, a-SMA, Smad3/4, p-Smad3/4, CTGF, and p-ERK1/2 were markedly downregulated. Similarly, the protein and RNA expression levels of Col-1 and Col-3 were significantly downregulated. However, Smad7 and ERK1/2 were evidently upregulated. The protein and mRNA expression levels of TGF-[Formula: see text], Smad, and p-ERK correlated positively with the lung index, while the protein and mRNA expression levels of ERK correlated negatively with the lung index. These results reveal that resveratrol may have therapeutic effects on PF by reducing collagen deposition, oxidation, and inflammation. The mechanism is associated with the regulation of the TGF-[Formula: see text]/Smad/ERK signaling pathway.

Infection with wild-type SARS-CoV-2 elicits broadly neutralizing and protective antibodies against omicron subvariants.

The omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 have substantial ability to escape infection- and vaccine-elicited antibody immunity. Here, we investigated the extent of such escape in nine convalescent patients infected with the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 during the first wave of the pandemic. Among the total of 476 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) isolated from peripheral memory B cells, we identified seven mAbs with broad neutralizing activity to all variants tested, including various omicron subvariants. Biochemical and structural analysis indicated the majority of these mAbs bound to the receptor-binding domain, mimicked the receptor ACE2 and were able to accommodate or inadvertently improve recognition of omicron substitutions. Passive delivery of representative antibodies protected K18-hACE2 mice from infection with omicron and beta SARS-CoV-2. A deeper understanding of how the memory B cells that produce these antibodies could be selectively boosted or recalled can augment antibody immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Changes in physical activity and sedentary time among children with asthma during the COVID-19 pandemic and influencing factors.

OBJECTIVE: Regular physical activity is essential for asthma control in children, but it remains understudied within the context of COVID-19. Physical activity and sedentary time levels before and during the COVID-19 pandemic among children with asthma were documented and differences by characteristics were explored. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional self-administered online survey study of 5- to 17-year-old children with asthma from the United States between December 2020 and April 2021. RESULTS: This study included 68 children with asthma. Although only 4.6% of the children were fully inactive before the pandemic, this number increased to 24.6% during the survey period (p < 0.001). Children spent significantly less time outdoors and more time in front of screens during the pandemic versus before (p < 0.001). The variety of activities in which children with asthma engaged in during the pandemic was lower than what they used to do prior to the COVID-19 crisis. Boys, Hispanic children, those of low-income households, and those not attending school in-person were significantly associated with less participation in physical activity during the pandemic. Ethnicity remained significantly associated after adjusting for multiple comparisons. CONCLUSIONS: During the COVID-19 pandemic, children with asthma were less active and spent more time in front of screens and less time outdoors. Subgroup analyses revealed individual, parental, and organizational characteristics being associated with differential participation in physical activity, highlighting disparities in opportunities for children with asthma of different circumstances to remain active and healthy during the pandemic. Additional, more robust longitudinal studies are needed to confirm these results.

Mediating role of perceived social support in the relationship between perceived stress and job burnout among midwives in the post-COVID-19 era.

AIM: The aim of this study was to explore the mediating role of perceived social support in the association between perceived stress and job burnout in midwives. DESIGN: A descriptive, cross-sectional online survey. METHODS: Using the stratified cluster sampling method, 329 midwives in 20 hospitals in China were selected as the participants. They completed self-report assessment measures of job burnout, perceived stress and perceived social support. RESULTS: 63.5% of the participants had job burnout. Perceived stress was negatively associated with social support (r = -.350, p < .01), while it was positively associated with job burnout (r = -.382, p < .01). Social support was negatively correlated with job burnout (r = -.569, p < .01). The total effect of perceived stress on job burnout was 0.474 (95% CI: 0.367 ~ 0.596, p < .01), the direct effect was 0.242 (95% CI: 0.142 ~ 0.355, p < .01), and the indirect effect was 0.232 (95% CI: 0.160 ~ 0.316, p < .01). Social support programmes for midwives should be implemented to control the impact of perceived stress on job burnout.

Do you know your partner's personality through virtual collaboration or negotiation? Investigating perceptions of personality and their impacts on performance

Interpersonal skills, including collaborative problem solving (CPS) and negotiation skills, are essential in many aspects of the 21st century. With the rapid development of technologies in the past decades, it has become increasingly prevalent for collaborations, negotiations, and communications to occur virtually. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift from in-person interactions to virtual interactions. On the other hand, personality traits, enduring characteristics of individuals that are largely stable over time, affect a wide variety of human behaviors, including how people interact with each other. In this study, we investigated the extent to which team members' personalities, the heterogeneity in personalities among team members, and the interaction processes in virtual tasks impacted performance on these tasks with limited exposure to personal information such as appearance and voice. In addition, we examined how one perceived the team partner's personality and how people tended to project their own personality onto partners during the short-term virtual interactions. Findings suggested that higher heterogeneity in personality between partners was associated with better team negotiation performance, while it was not associated with collaboration outcomes in the CPS task. Implications of the findings and limitations of this research were also discussed. • We study how team members' personalities and the interaction processes impact performance on virtual tasks. • Relationships between personality, interaction processes, and performance differ in collaboration and negotiation contexts. • People tend to project their own personality traits onto their online partners during short-term virtual interactions. • Teams that are more heterogeneous in personality show better negotiation outcomes. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Do you know your Partner's personality through virtual collaboration or negotiation? Investigating perceptions of personality and their impacts on performance

Interpersonal skills, including collaborative problem solving (CPS) and negotiation skills, are essential in many aspects of the 21st century. With the rapid development of technologies in the past decades, it has become increasingly prevalent for collaborations, negotiations, and communications to occur virtually. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift from in-person interactions to virtual interactions. On the other hand, personality traits, enduring characteristics of individuals that are largely stable over time, affect a wide variety of human behaviors, including how people interact with each other. In this study, we investigated the extent to which team members' personalities, the heterogeneity in personalities among team members, and the interaction processes in virtual tasks impacted performance on these tasks with limited exposure to personal information such as appearance and voice. In addition, we examined how one perceived the team partner's personality and how people tended to project their own personality onto partners during the short-term virtual interactions. Findings suggested that higher heterogeneity in personality between partners was associated with better team negotiation performance, while it was not associated with collaboration outcomes in the CPS task. Implications of the findings and limitations of this research were also discussed.

Neutralizing monoclonal antibody in patients with coronavirus disease 2019: an observational study.

BACKGROUND: Clinical data on patients infected with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) delta variant are limited, especially on clinical status after the application of antibody therapy. METHODS: We evaluated clinical status in patients with the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant after BRII-196 and BRII-198 treatment in an infectious disease hospital in China. We collected data on clinical symptoms, laboratory tests, radiological characteristics, viral load, anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, treatment, and outcome. RESULTS: In mid-June 2021, 36 patients with delta variant infection were identified in Shenzhen. The most common symptoms at illness onset were cough (30.6%), fever (22.2%), myalgia (16.7%), and fatigue (16.7%). A small number of patients in this study had underlying diseases, including diabetes (5.6%) and hypertension (8.3%). The application of BRII-196 and BRII-198 can rapidly increase anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG. The median peak IgG levels in the antibody treatment group were 32 times higher than those in the control group (P < 0.001). The time from admission to peak IgG levels in the antibody treatment group (mean: 10.2 days) was significantly shorter than that in the control group (mean: 17.7 days). Chest CT score dropped rapidly after antibody therapy, with a mean duration of 5.74 days from admission to peak levels. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that the application of BRII-196 and BRII-198 antibody therapy improved clinical status in patients with SARS-CoV-2 delta variant infection.

Antigenic sin of wild-type SARS-CoV-2 vaccine shapes poor cross-neutralization of BA.4/5/2.75 subvariants in BA.2 breakthrough infections.

With declining SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody titers and increasing numbers of spike mutations, the ongoing emergence of Omicron subvariants causes serious challenges to current vaccination strategies. BA.2 breakthrough infections have occurred in people who have received the wild-type vaccines, including mRNA, inactivated, or recombinant protein vaccines. Here, we evaluate the antibody evasion of recently emerged subvariants BA.4/5 and BA.2.75 in two inactivated vaccine-immunized cohorts with BA.2 breakthrough infections. Compared with the neutralizing antibody titers against BA.2, marked reductions are observed against BA.2.75 in both 2-dose and 3-dose vaccine groups. In addition, although BA.2 breakthrough infections induce a certain cross-neutralization capacity against later Omicron subvariants, the original antigenic sin phenomenon largely limits the improvement of variant-specific antibody response. These findings suggest that BA.2 breakthrough infections seem unable to provide sufficient antibody protection against later subvariants such as BA.2.75 in the current immunization background with wild-type vaccines.

A Web Knowledge-Driven Multimodal Retrieval Method in Computational Social Systems: Unsupervised and Robust Graph Convolutional Hashing

Multimodal retrieval has received widespread consideration since it can commendably provide massive related data support for the development of computational social systems (CSSs). However, the existing works still face the following challenges: 1) rely on the tedious manual marking process when extended to CSS, which not only introduces subjective errors but also consumes abundant time and labor costs;2) only using strongly aligned data for training, lacks concern for the adjacency information, which makes the poor robustness and semantic heterogeneity gap difficult to be effectively fit;and 3) mapping features into real-valued forms, which leads to the characteristics of high storage and low retrieval efficiency. To address these issues in turn, we have designed a multimodal retrieval framework based on web-knowledge-driven, called unsupervised and robust graph convolutional hashing (URGCH). The specific implementations are as follows: first, a "secondary semantic self-fusion" approach is proposed, which mainly extracts semantic-rich features through pretrained neural networks, constructs the joint semantic matrix through semantic fusion, and eliminates the process of manual marking;second, a "adaptive computing" approach is designed to construct enhanced semantic graph features through the knowledge-infused of neighborhoods and uses graph convolutional networks for knowledge fusion coding, which enables URGCH to sufficiently fit the semantic modality gap while obtaining satisfactory robustness features;Third, combined with hash learning, the multimodality data are mapped into the form of binary code, which reduces storage requirements and improves retrieval efficiency. Eventually, we perform plentiful experiments on the web dataset. The results evidence that URGCH exceeds other baselines about 1%-3.7% in mean average precisions (MAPs), displays superior performance in all the aspects, and can meaningfully provide multimodal data retrieval services to CSS.

Neutralization effect of plasma from vaccinated COVID-19 convalescents on SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants

Background COVID-19 has caused a global pandemic and the death toll is increasing. With the coronavirus continuously mutating, Omicron has replaced Delta as the most widely reported variant in the world. Studies have shown that the plasma of some vaccinated people does not neutralize the Omicron variant. However, further studies are needed to determine whether plasma neutralizes Omicron after one- or two-dose vaccine in patients who have recovered from infection with the original strain. Methods The pseudovirus neutralization assays were performed on 64 plasma samples of convalescent COVID-19 patients, which were divided into pre-vaccination group, one-dose vaccinated group and two-dose vaccinated group. Results In the three groups, there were significant reductions of sera neutralizing activity from WT to Delta variant (B.1.617.2), and from WT to Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) (ps<0.001), but the difference between Delta and Omicron variants were not significant (p>0.05). The average neutralization of the Omicron variant showed a significant difference between pre-vaccination and two-dose vaccinated convalescent individuals (p<0.01). Conclusions Among the 64 plasma samples of COVID-19 convalescents, whether vaccinated or not, Omicron (B.1.1.529) escaped the neutralizing antibodies, with a significantly decreased neutralization activity compared to WT. And two-dose of vaccine could significantly raise the average neutralization of Omicron in convalescent individuals.

Healthy outcomes of patients with COVID-19 two years after the infection: a prospective cohort study.

The long-term effect of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been rarely known. This study aimed to investigate healthy outcomes of COVID-19 survivors up to 2 years after the infection. A total of 155 COVID-19 patients, who were discharged from Shenzhen Third People's Hospital from February 2020 to April 2020, were enrolled and followed up until March 4, 2022. COVID-19 survivors received questionnaires of long COVID symptoms and psychological symptoms, pulmonary function tests, chest computed tomography (CT) scans and routine laboratory tests. Two years after infection, 36.6% of patients had at least one symptom of long COVID. Vision impairment and fatigue were the most common symptom. 35.0% of participants still had at least one psychological symptom of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and sleep difficulties. Radiographic abnormalities were presented in 50.7% of patients, with the most common features of fibrosis-like lesions and residual ground-glass opacity. Diffuse dysfunction (24.0%) was the main abnormalities of pulmonary function tests. Most laboratory parameters returned to normal range, while persistent abnormalities in kidney and liver function test were observed in a subset of participants after discharge. Two years after COVID-19 infection, persistent symptoms of long COVID and psychological symptoms, as well as abnormalities in pulmonary function tests and CT, were still common in a subset of recovering individuals. These findings were limited by the lack of a healthy control group and pre-COVID assessments, which should be confirmed by further large-scale studies.

Expedient Synthesis of Ubiquitin‐like Protein ISG15 Tools through Chemo‐Enzymatic Ligation Catalyzed by a Viral Protease Lbpro

Ubiquitin (Ub)‐like protein ISG15 (interferon‐stimulated gene 15) regulates innate immunity and links with the evasion of host response by viruses such as SARS‐CoV‐2. Dissecting ISGylation pathways recently received increasing attention which can inform related disease interventions, but such studies necessitate the preparation and development of various ISG15 protein tools. Here, we find that the leader protease (Lbpro) encoded by foot‐and‐mouth disease virus can promote ligation reactions between recombinant ISG15 and synthetic glycyl compounds, generating protein tools such as ISG15‐propargylamide and ISG15‐rhodamine110, which are needed for cellular proteomic studies of deISGylases, and the screening and evaluation of inhibitors against SARS‐CoV‐2 papain‐like protease (PLpro). Furthermore, this strategy can be also used to load ISG15 onto the lysine of a synthetic peptide through an isopeptide bond, and prepare Ub and NEDD8 (ubiquitin‐like protein Nedd8) protein tools.