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The World Health Organization (WHO) Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine Composition, which meets about every 6 months to assess if any changes are needed, has recommended that the next COVID vaccine formulations use a monovalent (single-strain) JN.1 lineage. The group met in the middle of April to review the genetic and antigenic evolution of SARS-CoV-2, with an eye toward vaccine composition implications.  (Schnirring, 4/29)

A new cross-sectional study published in Vaccine of US adults demonstrates that people who received the COVID-19 booster vaccine had 25% lower odds of having long COVID than their unvaccinated counterparts. (Soucheray, 4/29)

Community Notes, a crowdsourced COVID-19 vaccine misinformation countermeasure on X (formerly Twitter), generally corrected false posts accurately and pointed readers to more credible sources, according to researchers who evaluated the posts. The University of California at San Diego (UCSD)-led team assessed the accuracy and credibility of a random sample of 205 Community Notes on COVID-19 vaccines from the year after the tool's December 2022 launch. The reviewers included an infectious-disease doctor and a virologist. The results were published last week in JAMA. (Van Beusekom, 4/29)

A company alleged to have fraudulently sold a face mask as N95-grade must refund more than $1.1 million to customers nationwide, the Federal Trade Commission announced Monday. Razer and its affiliates advertised the Zephyr mask as N95-grade despite never submitting it for testing or certification by the Food and Drug Administration or National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the agency said. (Gibson, 4/29)

he first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China was staging a sit-in protest after authorities locked him out of his lab. Virologist Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post Monday that he and his team had been suddenly notified they were being evicted from their lab, the latest in a series of setbacks, demotions and ousters since Zhang published the sequence in January 2020 without state approval. The move shows how the Chinese state continues to pressure and control scientists conducting research on the coronavirus. (Kang, 4/30)

Microbiological examination of cow, milk, and cat samples early in the investigation of H5N1 avian flu in some of the first affected states found that the cats died shortly after they were fed raw colostrum from sick cows, highlighting the risk of spread from cows to other animals through contaminated milk. (Schnirring, 4/29)

The H5N1 bird flu virus has been around for decades, and the damage it wreaks on chickens and other poultry is well documented. But the recent discovery that the virus has jumped into dairy cattle — whose udders seem to be where the virus either infects or migrates to — has dumbfounded scientists and agricultural authorities. (Branswell and Molteni, 4/30)