Here are 21 COVID-19-related research findings covered by Becker's Hospital Review since May 27:
Note: Findings are listed from oldest to most recent.
1. COVID-19 immunity persists for at least a year, perhaps even a lifetime, according to two recent studies.
2. People with mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 cases may be just as infectious as those with severe cases who require hospitalization, a study published May 25 in Science found.
3. Nearly three-fourths of people who recover from COVID-19 have at least one lingering symptom, according to a study published May 26 in Jama Network Open.
4. Nearly half of COVID-19 patients discharged from Ann Arbor-based Michigan Medicine last spring experienced functional decline, research shows.
5. Compared to the flu, kids with a COVID-19 infection face a higher risk for hospitalization and pneumonia, among other complications, according to a study published May 28 in Pediatrics.
6. A third of adolescents hospitalized with COVID-19 need intensive care, according to CDC data published June 4.
7. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, infects immature red blood cells, reducing oxygen in the blood and hindering immune response, according to a new study published in Stem Cell Reports.
8. People who received Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna's mRNA vaccine and later contracted COVID-19, known as breakthrough infections, had milder and shorter illness compared to those who were unvaccinated and infected, according to CDC findings published June 7.
9. The COVID-19 vaccine rollout significantly cut cases, deaths, hospitalizations and emergency department visits among U.S. adults, according to the CDC's June 8 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
10. The U.S. launched COVID-19 contact tracing programs nationwide to slow the transmission of the virus, spending hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet the effort gave "suboptimal" results because only a third of infected residents were able to share their contact data, according to a June 3 study published in JAMA Network Open.
11. Cleveland Clinic researchers found close network-based relationships between SARS-CoV-2 and genes/proteins associated with Alzheimer's, as well as several other neurological diseases.
12. People infected by the delta coronavirus variant have twice the risk of hospitalization of people infected with the alpha variant first identified in the U.K., according to research from Scotland published June 14 in The Lancet.
13. Among a study of nearly 2 million people who had COVID-19, more than 20 percent were left with at least one post-COVID-19 condition at least 30 days after their initial diagnosis, according to findings published June 15 by Fair Health, a national nonprofit organization.
14. A third dose of COVID-19 vaccine strengthened antibody levels among solid organ transplant recipients who had suboptimal antibody levels after the first or second dose, according to research published June 14 in Annals of Internal Medicine.
15. Antibody testing research suggests COVID-19 may have been circulating in Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin before the first official cases were reported there, according to findings published June 15 in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
16. The delta coronavirus variant appears more commonly linked to a different range of symptoms than other variants, according to a large U.K. study.
17. COVID-19 was linked to brain tissue loss in a U.K. brain imaging study, according to early findings published June 15 in the preprint server MedRxiv.
18. The benefits of using a combination treatment for children who develop a rare inflammatory condition after contracting COVID-19 is still unclear, two studies show.
19. Nearly 17 million people — about five times more than official counts — may have had undiagnosed COVID-19 infections in the U.S. during the first few months of the pandemic, according to research published June 22 in Science Translational Medicine.
20. "Immunocompromised" is a large bucket — and not all immunocompromising conditions affect a person's ability to produce antibodies in response to COVID-19 vaccination the same way, research published June 30 in the preprint server MedRxiv suggests.
21. Hospital patients sharing a room with someone who tests positive for COVID-19 are at a high risk of contracting the virus, according to a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.