Health News Roundup: Obesity may weaken vaccine protection; unvaccinated Omicron patients face risk from variants; Shanghai tightens lockdown to hit the zero-COVID goal by late May - sources and more

Obesity may weaken vaccine protection in the never infected Shanghai tightens lockdown to hit zero-COVID goal by late May - sources Shanghai is tightening its already strict COVID-19 lockdown in a fresh push to eliminate infections outside quarantined areas of China's biggest city by late this month, people familiar with the matter said.

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Obesity may weaken vaccine protection; unvaccinated Omicron patients face risk from variants

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Obesity may weaken vaccine protection in the never infected

Shanghai tightens lockdown to hit the zero-COVID goal by late May - sources

Shanghai is tightening its already strict COVID-19 lockdown in a fresh push to eliminate infections outside quarantined areas of China's biggest city by late this month, people familiar with the matter said. Curbs will likely vary across the city's 16 districts as some have already hit the target, but the people said movement curbs will generally remain until the end of May due to fears of a rebound, despite recently falling case numbers in the country's worst coronavirus outbreak.

'Stop asking why': Shanghai tightens COVID lockdown, Beijing keeps testing

Shanghai authorities were tightening the city-wide COVID lockdown they imposed more than a month ago, prolonging into late May an ordeal that China's capital Beijing was desperate to avoid by turning mass testing into an almost daily routine. The commercial hub of 25 million was making a fresh push to bring case numbers outside the areas that were facing the strictest curbs to zero by the second half of May, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Chaos at Apple supplier Quanta shows strains of Shanghai COVID lockdown

Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City would seem like an ideal site to implement China's "closed-loop" management system to prevent the spread of COVID that requires staff to live and work on-site in a secure bubble. Sprawled overland the size of 20 football fields, the campus houses factories, living quarters for 40,000 workers, some living 12 per room, and even a supermarket.

England reports case of rare monkeypox infection

A person in England has been diagnosed with a rare viral monkeypox infection thought to be linked to travel to West Africa, health authorities said on Saturday. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said in a statement the case, in a person who had recently traveled to Nigeria, was being treated at an expert respiratory infectious disease unit at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in London.

Beijing city reports 39 new local COVID infections over past 24 hours

Beijing reported 39 new domestically transmitted COVID-19 infections during the 24 hours ending at 3 p.m. (0700 GMT) on Sunday, a disease control official at the Chinese capital said. The city has had a total of 727 COVID infections since April 22, Pang Xinghuo, deputy director at Beijing Municipal Health Commission, told a news briefing.

U.S. elections may thwart Democratic effort to cap insulin cost

U.S. lawmakers attempting to cut the cost of insulin for more than a million Americans to $35 per month are unlikely to succeed as the November elections draw near and complicate bipartisan support, health policy and political experts say. The U.S. House of Representatives in March passed a bill capping monthly out-of-pocket insulin costs for those with health insurance at $35. Senators are drafting a wider bill that also provides incentives for drugmakers to lower list prices.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Alito's abortion history lesson in dispute

Justice Samuel Alito's draft U.S. Supreme Court ruling that would overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide hinges on a contested historical review of restrictions on the procedure enacted during the 19th century. Lawyers and scholars backing abortion rights have criticized Alito's reading of history as glossing over disputed facts and ignoring relevant details as the conservative justice sought to demonstrate that a woman's constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy was wrongly recognized in the Roe ruling.

U.S. identifies 109 cases of severe hepatitis, including 5 deaths, in children

U.S. health officials on Friday said they are investigating 109 cases of severe hepatitis of unknown origin in children, including five reported deaths, updating a nationwide alert issued in April for doctors to be on the lookout for such cases of the liver disease. The cases have been identified over the past seven months in 25 states and territories, Dr. Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said during a conference call.

(With inputs from agencies.)