Page 2 - Virus Replication News Today

Doctors believe biden is suffering a rare case of rebound positivity experienced by some coronavirus patients. earlier i asked dr peter hotez, co—director of the texas childrens hospital center for vaccine development how a covid rebound infection comes about. well, what happens is, you know, you take a course of paxlovid, which you typically give early on in the course of the illness in order to stop virus replication. after a five—day course that should be the end of it, particularly if yo...

Minutes. what it is youre going to be watching for, of course, as we hear about the presidents condition, his condition progress and now, of course, his treatment of paxlovid. >> yeah, i think theres both a good news story and a concerning news story. the good news story, he is being maxed out on interventions, as everyone has been reporting hes been vaccinated and doubly boosted. hes on paxlovid which works in the early phase of inhibiting virus replication, the concerning news is his age and w...

Response were always going to be lagging, chasinging and hoping our immunity would outpace these variants? >> it doesnt have to be that way, laura, and the reason we say that, that is true. when you have a lot of dynamics of a virus replication in the community, you give a virus more of an opportunity to mutate. more likely, youll get a new variant. by diminishing the circulation of virus in the community by vaccinations and boosting and masking where appropriate, and testing so that you can kee...

Works is it initially, youre exposed and the virus reproduced itself hundreds and thousands of time ands you have no symptoms. that is when youre the most contagious, before you ever develop symptoms. and then you start to develop symptoms and then the virus reproduction becomes less and less. and then as your symptoms abate, meaning decrease, then the virus replication is no longer part of the disease process any more. so i think it is perfectly reasonable that when people are asymptomatic afte...

>> hi, ari. nice to be on. >> what did your study find? >> yeah. so we started looking at cbd because it has some antiinflammatory functions and we thought it would prevent the later stages of disease where disease goes haywire. we tested it and to our surprise, it directly blocks virus replication among cells. and so we tested it in animal models with our colleagues at the university of louisville. and animals taking cbd had significantly less replication. and there are patients who take cbd. i...

Symptoms. the key, as i understand it from talking to doctors today is that you have to get your hands on this pill and take it very early on in your illness. meaning if you wait any time more than five days, theres really no evidence its going to help you at all. is that right? >> thats right. so what happens is the virus attaches to the lining of your nose. multiplies thousands of times. at that point, virus replication is an important part of the disease profess. then immune response kicks in...

Its an impressive medication, an impressive drug in terms of its ability to reduce severe illness by 90%. it would be given to people with moderate and mild infection to prevent them from further deterioration. so its important to point out this is not for preexposure to the medicine. so its not like a medicine you can take before you visit somebody or after youve been exposed. only for those with mild and moderate symptoms. and its basically right now being excluded from people with severe illn...

Omicron that seems to be where it is trending right now. other encouraging news today, pfizer released more data on the antiviral after the fact pill, finding that it reduces hospitalizations and serious illness among people who take it, almost 90%. how important is this? >> it is very important. i think the way that viruses work, this one being a particular example, initially the virus attaches, enters your nose, reproduces itself and reproduces itself hundreds of times, thousands of times. the...

Is it a game changer? >> yeah, actually the drug was first developed at emory university in atlanta and it was developed as an anti influenza drug and was to inhibit virus replication and subsequently shown it does this for the sars two coronavirus. its a very interesting mechanism but actually introduces mutations while the virus is trying to replicate and then that eventually stops it cold and the great thing about it is its an oral pill. its a lot of pills. i think its something like four pil...

And yet, we really dont do anything to combat it. um, i have been calling this death by anti-science in writing and speaking about it now for a few years. and its just gotten so out of control, and its just completely heartbreaking. >> yeah. you know, the -- theres -- with that grim news, theres very promising news from merck to tell you -- everyone about. the first antiviral pill designed for covid-19. how does that work? is it a game-changer? >> yeah, actually, the -- the drug was actually fir...