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Moderna’s combined Covid and flu shot outperformed the existing standalone vaccines for both viruses, according to the results of a phase 3 clinical trial published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The vaccine uses the same messenger RNA technology as Moderna’s approved Covid vaccine. (There are no approved mRNA-based flu shots.) (Lovelace Jr., 5/7)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday it will hold a meeting of experts on May 22 to discuss COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for the upcoming immunization campaign. The meeting comes after the appointment of Martin Makary as FDA commissioner. Makary had earlier raised concerns about a number of public health efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, touted the protection received from natural immunity and opposed vaccine mandates for the general public. (5/7)

Therapies involving mRNA, a key to Covid vaccines, hold great potential in treating several diseases, but some lawmakers want to ban them and the government is cutting funding. (Zernike, 5/8)

Patients with long COVID may exhibit persistent inflammation in the heart and lungs for up to 1 year following acute COVID-19 infection, even when standard medical tests return normal results, according to a new study in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. The study authors, from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, suggest the inflammation may increase the risk for future cardiac and pulmonary conditions. (Soucheray, 5/7)

Poor self-reported general health (SRGH) is substantially more common among US adults with long COVID than among those without persistent symptoms (26% vs 16%), data from Pennsylvania State University investigators suggest. Long-COVID patients also had more unfavorable mental and physical health and lower daily efficiency when completing daily activities for more than 13 days a month, according to the findings, published this week in PLOS One. (Van Beusekom, 5/7)

In the early 2000s, a coronavirus infecting bats jumped into raccoon dogs and other wild mammals in southwestern China. Some of those animals were sold in markets, where the coronavirus jumped again, into humans. The result was the SARS pandemic, which spread to 33 countries and claimed 774 lives. A few months into it, scientists discovered the coronavirus in mammals known as palm civets sold in a market at the center of the outbreak. In a study published on Wednesday, a team of researchers compared the evolutionary story of SARS with that of Covid 17 years later. (Zimmer, 5/7)