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The researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital teamed up with experts in immunology and virology to look for clues about long COVID in blood samples from patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases. The team found that among these patients, those who developed long COVID were more likely to have expanded, pro-inflammatory antibodies specific to a coronavirus that causes the common cold. (Sobey, 9/8)

At a recent medical gathering, researchers presented their latest hypotheses about what causes – and what could treat – the lingering disease. (Stone, 9/9)

At first, Debbie Tumbarello’s wedding was the height of romance — a Valentine’s Day whirlwind straight out of “Sleepless in Seattle,” she said. Tumbarello, who lives in Inverness, married her husband in Las Vegas on Feb. 14. She left Vegas with memories of a Beatles tribute show and a rooftop ceremony. However, she also left with COVID-19 — and hasn’t come back to full health since. (Arougheti, 9/11)

Among people who are still paying attention to Covid-19, there’s been a recent surge — not just in viral activity but in the concern once again being paid to Covid. While the angst is understandable, there’s something we need to grasp at this point in our coexistence with SARS-CoV-2: This is our life now. (Branswell, 9/10)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former top infectious disease expert in the U.S., isn’t sounding alarm bells on the rising number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. yet, but he did caution that the trend will continue into the fall and winter months. “I wouldn’t say that I’m alarmed but I’m certainly keeping an eye on it,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. The former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is now a professor at Georgetown University. (Garrity, 9/10)

Deer, it turns out, are susceptible to COVID infections. While the outcome of human infections can range to hospitalization, long-term health effects and death, whitetails barely show symptoms, if they show any.Most important to people, perhaps, is that the deer living alongside us in suburban settings and those roaming woods and fields are serving as a reservoir for the pathogen. In short, a path of transmission from humans to deer provides a potential path from deer to humans. (Golowenski, 9/10)

Gov. Gavin Newsom said criticism of California’s tough Covid-19 restrictions was valid and he would have taken an entirely different approach, given what he knows now about the pandemic. “I think we would’ve done everything differently,” Newsom said in a taped interview set to air on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. (Cadelago, 9/10)

New Jersey’s leaders appear to agree with Justice Department findings that state-run veterans homes failed residents during COVID-19 and continue to violate their constitutional rights, but there’s little clarity on how exactly they’ll address the issues. The Democrat-led Legislature and Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy gave the strongest indications yet that they’ll be addressing the problems highlighted in the report. (Catalini, 9/8)

In a technical briefing on SARS-CoV-2 variants today, the UK Health Security Agency (HSA) revealed that, of 34 confirmed involving the highly mutated BA.2.86 variant, 28 were from a single outbreak at a nursing home, an early sign that it can spread in close-contact settings. (Schnirring, 9/8)

The Biden administration has halted funding for a research program that sought to discover and catalogue thousands of exotic pathogens from around the world, officials confirmed Thursday, effectively ending a controversial virus-hunting endeavor that opponents say raised the risk of an accidental outbreak. The U.S. Agency for International Development quietly notified the program’s main contractor in July that the $125 million project was being terminated less than two years after its inception, amid opposition from lawmakers as well as a number of prominent scientists and public health experts. (Warrick, 9/7)