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Three new studies describe the link between obesity and elevated risk of COVID-19 infection and poor outcomes. The first study, published yesterday in Diabetes Care, shows that predominantly black hospitalized COVID-19 patients with metabolic syndrome (a combination of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and/or abnormal cholesterol levels that increases the risk of cardiovascular disease) were nearly five times more likely than their peers to require intensive care and a ventilator or experience respiratory distress and 3.4 times more likely to die from their infections. (Van Beusekom, 8/26)

Obesity increases the risk of contracting the coronavirus, of landing in the hospital and intensive care unit, and the risk of death from Covid-19, according to a new study from researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The researchers say there's also concern a vaccine could be less effective for people with obesity due to a weakened immune response. (Erdman, 8/26)

Household contacts of people infected with COVID-19 are 10 times more likely than non-household contacts to contract the virus, a systematic review and meta-analysis published yesterday in the Journal of Infection shows. Chinese researchers who analyzed data from 24 published retrospective cohort, prospective, and case ascertainment studies from China, South Korea, the United States, and Germany conducted from Jan 1 to Mar 31 also concluded that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is much more easily spread in households than SARS-CoV-1 (severe acute respiratory syndrome virus, which causes SARS) and MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, which causes MERS), which complicates home isolation of COVID-19 patients. (8/26)

Researchers say they have evidence that a woman caught coronavirus on a flight -- perhaps in the jet's restroom. The 28-year-old woman was among about 300 South Koreans evacuated from Italy at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in Milan last March, the researchers wrote in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. "On the flight from Milan, Italy, to South Korea, she wore an N95 mask, except when she used a toilet," they wrote. (Fox, 8/26)

With great fanfare, the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday gave emergency approval to a disinfectant it said would kill the coronavirus on surfaces for up to a week. Calling it “a major game-changing announcement,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the first to use the solution would be American Airlines and two sports clinics in Texas. But health and chemical experts say the cleanser might actually harm passengers and flight attendants and do little to protect against the virus, which is mainly transmitted through the air in closed spaces. (Mufson and Kornfield, 8/26)

The evidence in favor of aerosols is stronger than that for any other pathway, and officials need to be more aggressive in expressing this reality if we want to get the pandemic under control. (Jimenez, 8/25)