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A small University of California study finds no evidence that breast milk from mothers infected with SARS-CoV-2 transmits the virus to their babies. The study, published today in Pediatrics Research, involved polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing of 285 samples and viral culture of 160 samples of breast milk from 110 women with confirmed or suspected COVID-19. (1/19)

Robin Zanak’s son was born at the end of June 2020. It was a few months into the pandemic, and so she’d had time to process what it might mean to have a baby during the COVID era. She wanted to breastfeed but intended to offer herself a little grace if it didn’t go entirely smoothly, especially after an early stomach obstruction landed her son in the NICU. But Zanak worked from home in Maryland—she was finishing a Ph.D. and now teaches communications classes part time at a college—and so it was easy to take little 10 minute breaks here and there to breastfeed. She rarely had to nurse in public and never had to switch to majority-pumping. Now, Zanak says, “My son is 17 months old, and I can’t believe I’m still nursing.” (Malone, 1/7)

In other covid research —

Americans who received their primary series of vaccines and previously contracted Covid-19 had the highest protection against reinfection and hospitalization during the Delta variant-fueled outbreak, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study, published Wednesday, looked at four categories of people in New York and California — individuals who were unvaccinated with and without a prior infection and vaccinated people with and without a prior infection. (Banco, 1/19)

A Sutter Health study released last month found that Hispanic women were more than twice as likely than their white counterparts to contract COVID-19 during pregnancy, increasing their risk for premature deliveries, stillbirths and even dying in childbirth. While the study was conducted from May 2020 to December 2020, it remains relevant as the highly contagious omicron variant continues to surge in the Bay Area and across the country, says its lead author. “Although the coronavirus had not yet mutated into the omicron variant during the time of the data collection, the results of the study are still relevant, and if not more important, given how contagious and transmissible this variant is,” Alice Pressman, research director at the Sutter Institute for Advancing Health Equity, told The Chronicle in an email. (Narayan, 1/19)

It’s one of the most well-known takeaways of the pandemic: Men die of Covid-19 more often than women do. Early on, some scientists suspected the reason was primarily biological, and that sex-based treatments for men — like estrogen injections or androgen blockers — could help reduce their risk of dying. But a new study analyzing sex differences in Covid-19 deaths over time in the United States suggests that the picture is much more complicated. (Ghorayshi, 1/19)