COVID-19: Durable Vaccine Response / Overdose-Related Cardiac Arrests

By Amy Orciari Herman

Edited by André Sofair, MD, MPH, and William E. Chavey, MD, MS

Here are some of the latest findings on COVID-19:

Durable vaccine response: Moderna's vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 elicited a durable immune response in 34 adults who received two 100-µg doses, 28 days apart, in its phase 1 trial. While binding and neutralizing antibodies showed an expected, slight decrease over time, they were still elevated when measured 90 days after the second dose. This held true in adults aged 18–55, 56–70, and 71 and older. In addition, the geometric mean titer of both antibody types was higher than that seen among 41 controls who were recovering from COVID-19. In the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers write, "Although correlates of protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans are not yet established, these results show that ... mRNA-1273 has the potential to provide durable humoral immunity." The company filed for emergency use authorization for the vaccine earlier this week.

Overdose-related cardiac arrests: Decreased mobility during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a spike in overdose-related cardiac arrests, according to findings in JAMA Psychiatry. Using a national emergency medical services (EMS) database, researchers observed a sharp rise in overdose-related cardiac arrests in April 2020, peaking at 74 per 100,000 EMS calls in early May. That's over twice the incidence observed for the same period in 2018 and 2019. The rate subsequently declined but remained higher than prior years through the summer. Cardiac arrests rose as mobility (based on cell phone data) decreased — and declined as mobility increased. The researchers say the findings "suggest that the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic — perhaps especially social isolation — is sharply accelerating fatal overdose trends."