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Two studies published [Dec. 22] demonstrate that COVID-19 immune responses last as long as 8 months, although the authors focus on different reasons. In the first study, all patients demonstrated the presence of memory B cells—immune cells that "remember" viral proteins and can trigger rapid production of antibodies when re-exposed to the virus—as long as 8 months after initial infection. The second study investigated antibody responses in 58 confirmed COVID-19 patients in South Korea 8 months after asymptomatic or mild SARS-CoV-2 infection, finding high rates of serum antibodies. (Kuebelbeck Paulsen, 12/23)

A study of hospital air contamination in JAMA Network Open last week found that 17.4% of air samples from environments near COVID-19 patients were positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA, the virus that causes COVID-19, but only 8.6% contained viable virus. (12/28)

No vertical—mom-to-baby—transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, occurred in a study of 64 pregnant women with confirmed COVID, reports a study yesterday in JAMA Network Open. ... The study, led by Andrea Edlow, MD, maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), focused on mothers in the third trimester of pregnancy, which is when the highest transfer of maternal antibodies occurs. (McLernon, 12/23)

Adam Millar was 18 when he started to experience a cold that wouldn't go away. It was the middle of hockey season, so he brushed his symptoms off. After what seemed like two or three months of a cough and fatigue, his cold progressed. "I didn't even have the energy to stand to brush my teeth," he told USA TODAY. Millar's heart was in failure, he later found out. Heart failure — often caused by myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle — is a rare condition for teens and young adults. It's more common in older people, often the result of heart function declining over a period of years. (Aspegren, 1/1)

Until March, when everything started tasting like cardboard, Katherine Hansen had such a keen sense of smell that she could recreate almost any restaurant dish at home without the recipe, just by recalling the scents and flavors. Then the coronavirus arrived. One of Ms. Hansen’s first symptoms was a loss of smell, and then of taste. Ms. Hansen still cannot taste food, and says she can’t even tolerate chewing it. Now she lives mostly on soups and shakes. (Rabin, 1/2)

Troy Randle’s COVID-19 symptoms were difficult yet bearable. After recovering from fever, cough, and headache that started in late March, he was cleared to return to work as a cardiologist in the Virtua Health network in South Jersey. But after Randle was back on the job for two days in mid-April, his head began to ache again, and it was different. He felt as if it were being squeezed in a vise. An MRI revealed that a blood clot had blocked an artery in Randle’s brain. He was suffering a stroke. Physicians worldwide were starting to report the same thing in some of the sickest patients with COVID, as well as a mysterious increase in smaller blood clots elsewhere in the body. In the lungs, the liver, the kidneys — even the toes, as in those purplish “COVID toes” depicted in many a social-media feed months ago. Many hospitals began treating COVID patients with high doses of blood thinners as a preventive measure. (Avril, 1/4)

Just one week after Massachusetts closed schools and daycares in March, Boston Children's Hospital saw a drastic change in asthma-related visits to the emergency room: They were down 80% from the prior two months. For two more months, during the state's stay-at-home order, they stayed that way. When the order began lifting in late May, the ER was seeing 82% and 87% fewer asthma emergency visits compared to 2018 and 2019, according to a recent study published in the journal Annals of the American Thoracic Society. (Kendrick, 1/4)