The Latest on COVID-19

• A new report in the New England Journal of Medicine analyzed lung transplant trends during the pandemic. Between August 2020 and September 2021, about 7% of lung transplants in the U.S. were related to COVID-19-related respiratory failure.
• In a White House briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the National Institutes of Health has designated tens of millions of dollars to research into COVID-19 vaccines. Some of these potential vaccines would be universal or at least aim at protecting against multiple strains.
• According to a recently published study, concerns about getting COVID-19 from contaminated surfaces in hospitals may not have been justified. Researchers have found that much of the cleaning and disinfection effort during the pandemic was unnecessary, because the risk of infection from surfaces was negligible.