In a new study involving interviews of people with long COVID, researchers from The Ohio State University describe how the prolonged illness has affected not only patients’ job status, but also their overall well-being. 

On top of symptoms including brain fog, fatigue, weakness and headaches, study participants reported lacking enough energy to do anything after work, loss of income and added insurance expenses when employment ended or changed, and emotional distress that comes with managing a misunderstood illness. 

“For many individuals we talked to, their lives have been completely changed because of this chronic condition. And that’s really changed how they see themselves, how they experience life, how they interact with their families, how they provide for their families,” said lead author Sarah MacEwan, assistant professor of general internal medicine in Ohio State’s College of Medicine. 

“In some cases, incredible financial instability has upended their lives. They’re facing extremely difficult choices and also trying to take care of themselves. It’s so important that we hear from them so we can improve the ways we can support them.” 

Awareness of these employment-related challenges may help clinicians provide more holistic care to people with long COVID, researchers say. Examples include connecting patients to financial assistance, referring them to mental health practitioners or expediting requests for workplace accommodations. 

The research was published recently in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. 

MacEwan and colleagues conducted one-on-one interviews in late summer 2022 with 21 adult patients receiving treatment in the post-COVID recovery clinic at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. Participants reported they had been doing well in daily life before having COVID-19 and were struggling with the effects of lingering symptoms for three or more months after an acute infection. They ranged in age from 19 to 68, three-fourths were women, and most were first infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in 2020. 

Participants reported the illness interfered with both their work responsibilities and efforts to maintain work-life balance. 

“Some quit their jobs because they just couldn’t handle working anymore. Some reduced their hours. And then some were involuntarily terminated from their jobs because of their symptoms,” said MacEwan, an investigator in Ohio State’s Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics and Systems Thinking in Health Services and Implementation Science Research. 

There were both financial and emotional repercussions. Loss of income followed either being unable to work, changing to a job with lower pay or having to reduce work hours. Those whose insurance status changed often had to spend more on policies that provided less coverage – all in the context of needing more care because they were chronically ill. 

Participants also described feelings of loss of identity related to their professional and home lives and fear of judgment and stigma at work and among friends and family. In an earlier paper, the research team noted some patients faced skepticism in health care settings. 

“One thing we’ve uncovered through this work is people not being believed by their providers about their symptoms or being brushed off or pushed into other diagnoses that they feel don’t reflect their experience,” MacEwan said. “It’s a real question of whether they are getting what they need from the providers they’re able to reach where they are.” 

The current article focused in part on how patients made adjustments to get through the day – developing coping strategies they created or that were recommended by their care team, and accessing employer disability benefits and workplace accommodations. 

“Some came up with solutions on their own, but it was wonderful to hear that great suggestions also came from additional specialists or therapists that these individuals were seeing,” MacEwan said. 

Respondents reported taking frequent rest breaks, eliminating distractions, making lists, emailing themselves a daily report of completed projects, using visual prompts on whiteboards or talking themselves through tasks. Some patients were encouraged by health care providers to seek short- or long-term disability benefits or workplace accommodations such as remote work and flex time. Many participants said initial support from employers eventually waned. 

Long COVID is federally recognized as a potential disability, which provides some employment protection to patients. The study authors noted that clinicians recommending established interventions such as rest and pacing may need to anticipate how such treatment strategies affect employment, financial status and mental health – and be ready to connect patients with resources to address the strains linked to making complex life choices. 

“It’s important that we use lived experience to understand the needs of the population and not make assumptions. There are a lot of good ideas already out there, and people with other chronic conditions have solutions for some of these problems,” MacEwan said. “So maybe we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we certainly need to identify the needs and take steps to fill those gaps.” 

This work was supported by a grant from the National Cancer Institute. 

Co-authors, all from Ohio State, were Saurabh Rahurkar, Willi Tarver, Leanna Perez Eiterman, Halia Melnyk, Ramona Olvera, Jennifer Eramo, Lauren Teuschler, Alice Gaughan, Laura Rush, Stacy Stanwick, Susan Bowman Burpee, Erin McConnell, Andrew Schamess and Ann Scheck McAlearney.

Since that study’s publication, scientists at The Ohio State University have been exploring how the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 prompts this human molecule’s destructive activity, and outlined the series of steps needed to fully describe what’s going on – as well as potential strategies to stop the damage. 

The grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will fund their five-year pursuit of definitive answers and development of new ways to treat acute SARS-CoV-2 infections and, ideally, fend off long COVID. The award is the largest of its kind funding infectious diseases research at Ohio State. 

The 2022 published research showed in mice infected with SARS-CoV-2 that blocking this molecule, an enzyme called caspase 11, resulted in lower inflammation and tissue injury and fewer blood clots in the animals’ lungs. The researchers also found that the human version of the enzyme, called caspase 4, was highly expressed in COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the ICU – confirming the molecule’s link to severe disease. 

The new work funded by the NIH will extend the investigation beyond the lungs based on predictions that in response to the viral infection, caspase 11 has compounding effects in multiple cells: driving up inflammation in the body and brain, interfering with the immune response and leading to clots in small blood vessels. The team will also explore how SARS-CoV-2 infection shapes host and viral RNA modifications, which occur during gene activation and alter cell functions. 

Many of the affected cells being investigated are related to the immune response – both the innate response, the body’s first line of defense against any foreign invader, and the adaptive response, which is a later, specific response to a given pathogen. Researchers will also examine cells that line organ surfaces and blood vessel walls (epithelial and endothelial cells, respectively) as well as RNA modifications.   

“When you pull it all together, offering the scientific community a basic understanding of what happens to every cell and every organ during SARS-CoV-2 is an achievement in itself,” said Amal Amer, professor of microbial infection and immunity in Ohio State’s College of Medicine and the contact principal investigator on the grant. 

“Once you know the mechanism, then you can design what to target, where to target it and how to target it in order to reduce the damage being done,” Amer said. “And this is especially needed for long COVID – it may be in the brain, it may be in the muscles, it may be in anything and everything – and that’s an important aspect of the disease.” 

The federal award is a multi-principal investigator (PI) research program project grant composed of three scientific projects and four core activities (see descriptions below). Along with Amer, Estelle Cormet-Boyaka and Jianrong Li, both professors of veterinary biosciences at Ohio State, are MPIs on the initiative. The group also involves other experts from Ohio State, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the University of Chicago. 

Amer is an expert in innate immunity who has been studying the class of molecules called inflammasomes for years. She will lead studies of the role of caspase 11, which is an inflammasome-related enzyme, in causing inflammation in the brain and lung that drives the damaging interplay between the innate immune response and blood clot formation. 

Cormet-Boyaka is an expert in lung biology, physiology and pathology, and will oversee studies of the multiple cell types whose functions are influenced, mostly negatively, by the presence of caspase 11 during SARS-CoV-2 infection. 

“In addition to studying mice, we’ll also be using human cell samples that enable us to dissect mechanisms at the cellular level,” she said. “Having access to human primary epithelial cells is a strength because those are the cells that the virus infects first.”

Li is a virologist who has been studying respiratory viruses for more than 25 years. He and colleagues will map SARS-CoV-2-induced RNA modifications in host cells and work on experimental inhibitors of molecules that trigger the RNA changes as a strategy to suppress the virus’s ability to make copies of itself in infected cells. The team will develop and test RNA modification and caspase 11 blockers to synergistically reduce SARS-CoV-2 replication, pathology and clotting, protect tissue and prevent the over-production of pro-inflammatory proteins called cytokines. 

“The two major causes of death from COVID are the cytokine storm and uncontrolled virus replication,” Li said. “If we inhibit only one of these, it’s not ideal. If we inhibit both, that can lead to a better therapeutic approach.” 

Based on data collected since the 2022 study, blocking caspase 11 remains a chief goal – but getting the right drug formulated to do it requires the information that will be uncovered by the combined projects. Though mice lacking the gene to make caspase 11 look and act normal, the research team wants to zero in on inhibitors that pose the lowest risk for side effects. 

“When you inhibit caspase 11, you get rid of many cytokines, which damage the lung tissue and the blood-brain barrier and brain tissue,” Amer said. “Combining that together with stopping viral replication is going to be very effective at reducing deaths and severe illness from SARS-CoV-2 infection, and reducing the post-infection symptoms experienced by people with long COVID.” 

Conducting simultaneous studies on different tracks will accelerate the pace of the research, said Prosper Boyaka, chair of veterinary biosciences at Ohio State and the leader of one of the three projects. An expert in the adaptive immunity that is a major player in anti-viral immunity, Boyaka will also provide a strategy to tackle immune cells called neutrophils to avoid exacerbated immune responses. 

“Long COVID is extremely complex. And the way we do science is to understand mechanisms – but because of our collective own expertise and the tools we have, we will approach one area or one question at a time,” he said. “Having a team like this one allows us to look at those interactions and processes at the same time by experts in different fields, which makes it more likely we will capture information that would be difficult to capture otherwise. That’s why I think the outcome is likely to be more beneficial than if each project were done individually or in isolation.” 

Xiaoli Zhang, an associate professor-clinical in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Center for Biostatistics at Ohio State, is a team scientist in a broad range of biomedical research areas, mainly in cancer and microbial infection and immunity. With expertise ranging from experimental design to biostatistics and bioinformatics data analysis and modeling, she will oversee all bioinformatic and statistical analysis in the project grant.

Amer noted that program grants are very competitive, and successful applications are those that prove the PIs have a track record of working together on significant research – an indication that the team will work together efficiently for the duration of the grant.

“Being at Ohio State, we have people specializing in everything we needed for this grant, and we provided a huge list of publications going back 10 years showing we have continuously worked together and published together on cutting-edge science,” she said. “And the NIH was convinced that this group is the one that can do this.”

Grant title: “Role of the non-canonical inflammasome in SARS-CoV-2-mediated pathology and coagulopathy.”

• Project 1: Role of caspase 11 in SARS-CoV-2-induced lung pathologies and long-term immune protection (Project Leader: Prosper Boyaka; Co-Investigators: Estelle Cormet-Boyaka, Jacob Yount)
• Project 2: Caspase 11-dependent immunothrombosis and neuroinflammation during SARS-CoV-2 infection (Project Leader: Amal Amer; Co-Investigators: Stephanie Seveau, Andrea Tedeschi)
• Project 3: Caspase 11-dependent RNA modifications and their Role in Multi-Organ Pathologies (Project Leader: Jianrong Li; Co-Investigators: Mark Peeples, Chuan He)
• Administrative Core (Core Leader: Amal Amer; Co-Investigators: Estelle Cormet-Boyaka, Jianrong Li)
• Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core (Core Leader: Xiaoli Zhang; Co-Investigators: Maciej Pietrzak, Amy Webb)
• Biological Reagents and Infection Core (Core Leader: Jianrong Li; Co-Investigator: Mark Peeples)
• Cell Derivation and Maintenance Core (Core Leader: Estelle Cormet-Boyaka; Co-Investigator: Santiago Partida-Sanchez)

However, the study in cell cultures showed this SARS-CoV-2 variant can infect human cells that line the lower lung and engage in virus-host cell membrane fusion more efficiently, two features linked to severe disease symptoms. 

The study is published today (Jan. 8, 2024) in the journal Cell. 

The BA.2.86 variant of omicron is the ancestor of the currently dominating JN.1 and has about 60 more spike protein mutations than the original, or parent, coronavirus, including over 30 more than its close omicron relatives – the early BA.2 variant and the recently dominant XBB.1.5 variant among them. These mutations led scientists to worry that so many changes would make the variant as tough to contain as the initial omicron outbreak in 2021-22. 

“We found that, surprisingly, despite all those 60 mutations combined together, BA.2.86 is not as immune-evasive as the XBB.1.5 variant, which until recently had been dominating the pandemic for months. That’s good news,” said Shan-Lu Liu, senior author the study and a virology professor in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences at The Ohio State University. 

“But BA.2.86 appears to have increased infectivity of human lung epithelial cells compared to all omicron variants, so that’s a little worrisome. And, consistent with infectivity, it also has increased fusion activity with human lung epithelial cells,” said Liu, also a professor in the Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity. “That raises a potential concern about whether or not this virus is more pathogenic compared to recent omicron variants.” 

The published findings coincide with reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that after a brief increase in BA.2.86 infections, its derived sublineage JN.1 rapidly gained ground in the United States, responsible for an estimated 62% of COVID-19 cases as of Jan. 6. 

First detected in July in Europe and the Middle East, BA.2.86 and its sublineages have since been spreading with increasing frequency in different parts of the world. On Nov. 22, the World Health Organization classified BA.2.86 and sublineages as “variants of interest.” 

The Ohio State researchers analyzed neutralizing antibodies in blood serum samples from health care professionals who had received three monovalent vaccine doses or two monovalent vaccines followed by one bivalent vaccine booster, and from first responders who had COVID-19 infections during the wave dominated by the XBB.1.5 variant. They compared the ability of neutralizing antibodies to block infection by BA.2.86, an XBB-derived variant known as FLip, the parent virus and several omicron variants. 

Overall, antibodies produced by serum from the bivalent vaccine-dosed health care professionals were more efficient at neutralizing BA.2.86 than they were at neutralizing other omicron variants, including XBB.1.5. In contrast, the three monovalent vaccines and previous XBB.1.5 infection were barely effective in blocking infection by BA.2.86.

“People who have had a COVID-19 infection should remember that omicron variants are less virulent compared to prior variants such as delta, meaning they don’t make most people very sick,” Liu said. “If you have less severe disease, the antibodies generated by infection are low – almost 10-fold lower than vaccine-induced antibodies. That is why you cannot rely on natural infection alone for immunity. 

“While bivalent vaccine can still neutralize BA.2.86, the efficiency is clearly reduced. Therefore, it is important to get the newest booster vaccine, which is formulated with only XBB.1.5 and has been shown to be effective against BA.2.86,” Liu added. 

However, the researchers were surprised to find that a monoclonal antibody known as S309, which has been shown to inhibit almost all other major omicron variants, does not neutralize BA.2.86. Molecular modeling revealed that some of the BA.2.86 mutations in the spike protein might have changed the conformation and rendered S309 unable to neutralize the new variant, Liu said. 

Additional experiments pointed to the potential for BA.2.86 to be more likely to cause severe disease than its omicron relatives. Researchers found BA.2.86 was more efficient at infecting a cell line derived from the human lower airway epithelium in the lung. Infection of these cells is greatly facilitated through a cell surface protein, known as TMPRSS2, to promote membrane fusion, and this protein is a known contributor to SARS-CoV-2 infection and disease symptoms in the respiratory tract. 

First author Panke Qu, a graduate student in Liu’s lab, conducted the cell-culture studies using pseudoviruses – a non-infectious viral core surrounded by different SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins on the surface structured to match known variants. 

“Because we used a pseudovirus, we need to confirm these findings using the real virus,” said Liu, also associate director of Ohio State’s Center for Retrovirus Research and a program co-director of the Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program in Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute. “But from our past experience, we know that the infectivity in human epithelial cell lines provides very important information. The concern is whether or not this variant, as well as its descendants including JN.1, will have an increased tendency to infect human lung epithelial cells similar to the parental virus that launched the pandemic in 2020.” 

Liu noted that other labs have recently suggested that JN.1, one of fastest-growing descendants of BA.2.86, is much more resistant to neutralizing antibodies that are effective against BA.2.86. 

“We know that coronaviruses are prone to viral recombination, which can lead to new variants with huge numbers of mutations that could have increased immune evasion but also disease severity,” he said. “That’s why surveillance of the variants is still very important, even though we are in the end of year four of the pandemic.” 

This work was supported by anonymous donor funds, the National Institutes of Health, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the Glenn Barber Fellowship from Ohio State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, the Robert J. Anthony Fund for Cardiovascular Research, and Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and Center for Clinical and Translational Science. 

Additional co-authors, all from Ohio State, are Kai Xu, Julia Faraone, Negin Goodarzi, Yi-Min Zheng, Claire Carlin, Joseph Bednash, Jeffrey Horowitz, Rama Mallampalli, Linda Saif, Eugene Oltz, Daniel Jones and Richard Gumina.

The study builds upon previous studies that involved inserting a highly stable segment of the coronavirus spike protein into the measles vaccine or mumps vaccine. 

In a paper publishing this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists at The Ohio State University report on a new MMS vaccine candidate – for Measles, Mumps and SARS-CoV-2 – delivered via the nose that provides broad and long-lasting protection against COVID-19 infection. 

In two rodent models, the intranasal vaccine triggered a strong neutralizing antibody response plus protection in mucosal areas lining the nose and lungs, and prevented disease symptoms such as weight loss and tissue damage. 

Experiments suggested the lifelong immunity to measles and mumps provided by the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine would likely translate into prolonged protection against COVID-19 in people vaccinated with the MMS: In hamsters, antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 induced by the MMS vaccine lasted at least four months without any sign of decline. 

The trivalent vaccine developed in this study protected against the ancestral SARS-CoV-2 virus and two variants: delta, which was associated with more severe disease, and omicron BA.1, which spread much faster. 

“The beauty here is we already know the MMR is used in children, so we’re building on a 50-year safety record,” said Jianrong Li, senior author of the study and a professor of virology in Ohio State’s Department of Veterinary Biosciences and Infectious Diseases Institute. “We inserted three different spikes that allow broad neutralizing antibodies to protect against the different variants of concern of SARS-CoV-2. It’s quite promising, and would be a fantastic new type of vaccine to prevent COVID-19.” 

In addition to the promising platform and the bonus mucosal protection that comes with intranasal delivery, the technique used to create the coronavirus antigens that stimulate immunity contributes to the vaccine candidate’s effectiveness, Li said. 

Researchers used a prefusion version of each variant’s spike protein – the shape it is in on the viral surface before the virus infects a cell. The protein, called preS-6P, was locked into this form by changing six of its amino acids to prolines. In a previous study published in PNAS, Li’s lab found that preS-6P is much more effective in inducing immune responses than preS-2P, a spike locked by two prolines. Currently, all FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines use the preS-2P. 

“The efficacy and longevity of COVID-19 vaccines will be much higher if preS-6P is used,” Li said. 

Using one measles strain and two mumps strains, the team inserted the antigens in the same location in each platform virus’s genome to enable expression of the optimal amount of spike protein and robust replication of the platform viruses – both actions needed to trigger a strong immune response. 

Tests in mice used to model an immune response showed intranasal delivery of the MMS vaccine generated neutralizing antibodies in the bloodstream against the three variants as well as specialized antibodies called IgA on mucosal surfaces of the airways and tissue-resident T cells in lungs that help boost clearance of viral particles. 

“These are two main advantages of intranasal vaccines: generating IgA in the nose and lung to prevent the virus from traveling to other organs or the blood, and producing tissue-resident T cells in the lung to rapidly mount an effective immune response to previously encountered pathogens, in this case SARS-CoV-2,” Li said. “The mRNA vaccines injected intramuscularly primarily generate antibodies in the bloodstream, but do not produce these types of added protection for the lungs.” 

Experiments comparing the trivalent vaccine candidate to a vaccine against a single omicron variant showed the single-variant version was not able to produce antibodies that neutralize other coronavirus strains. 

“With the insertion of the three spike proteins, the MMS produces antibodies that neutralize other strains – that supports the concept of using a trivalent vaccine to produce broader immunity against different strains,” said co-first author Jiayu Xu, a graduate student in Li’s lab. 

Immunization of golden Syrian hamsters with the trivalent vaccine produced similarly high levels of neutralizing antibodies as in the mice. When the hamsters were infected with the parental, delta and omicron strains of the virus, multiple measures compared to controls showed they were protected from getting sick: a lack of clinical symptoms, only minor changes to tissue in the airways and undetectable levels of viral particles present in the lungs. 

“The MMS platform is also readily and rapidly adaptable to new variants such as XBB.1.16 and EG.5, which are currently circulating in the human population,” said co-first author Yuexiu Zhang, a graduate student in Li’s lab.  

Li said there are additional options to consider, including adding rubella back into the platform and, potentially, inserting more than three prefusion spike proteins or other coronavirus proteins into the vaccine to further broaden protective immunity. 

“We envision incorporating it into a routine immunization program for children and to provide long-term immunity against COVID-19 for adults,” he said. 

Ohio State has filed a patent application on measles virus-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates. Ohio State and Nationwide Children’s Hospital also filed a patent application on mumps virus-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates.

The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute and Ohio State’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Additional co-authors include Panke Qu, Mohamed Shamseldin, Sung Yoo, Jesse Hall, John Evans, Mostafa Eltobgy, Mijia Lu, Michelle Chamblee, Xueya Liang, Amal Amer, Jacob Yount, Prosper Boyaka, Shan-Lu Liu and Purnima Dubey of Ohio State; Mark Peeples, Jack Misny, Ilada Thongpan and Mahesh KC of the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital; and Chengjin Ye and Luis Martinez-Sobrido of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute. Jason McLellan of the University of Texas at Austin discovered the preS-6P used in this study.

The study, published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, found net viral loads among all community members declined after university vaccine requirements went into effect. Masking, isolation and antibodies from getting sick weren’t enough to decrease infection rates.  

“Before the vaccine was required, the virus was becoming more concentrated in saliva and easier to spread to vulnerable populations like young children and older adults,” said Richard Robinson, principal investigator and associate professor in the Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity. “Once the requirements were in place, we saw on average a 100% decrease in virus in saliva and up to 12,000% increase in antibody levels to block its spread.” 

Researchers looked at data generated as part of The Ohio State University’s COVID monitoring program, which occurred from August 2020 to June 2022. As part of this program, saliva specimens were collected on a weekly basis from asymptomatic students, staff and faculty. More than 850,000 diagnostic COVID tests were performed. 

“The COVID monitoring program focused on asymptomatic adults for several reasons,” Robinson said. “Asymptomatic infections are more common in young adults, asymptomatic individuals would still spread the virus and the isolation of symptomatic individuals alone wasn’t enough to flatten the curve of COVID infections.”  

Six Ohio State campuses in Columbus, Newark, Mansfield, Lima, Marion and Wooster participated in the monitoring program. The data found COVID positivity in asymptomatic adults occurred in waves which mirrored the infection rates in the regions surrounding the university campuses and were driven by newly emerging variants such as delta and omicron. 

“At the time, there was growing concern that college students were creating new waves and peaks in infection when they would return to communities after distance learning and breaks in their education, but that wasn’t the case,” Robinson said. “The rates of infection were already increasing when classes resumed, even in rural areas.” 

Additionally, researchers explored the causes of breakthrough infections in vaccinated people. They compared the antibody responses of uninfected vaccinated people with those of infected vaccinated people. The study found breakthrough infections in vaccinated people were not due to an absence of antibodies but depend on antibody levels at the time of exposure, the neutralizing ability of the antibodies and the amount of virus to which the person is exposed. 

Future research will focus on the conditions that make people more resistant to COVID infection. 

Other researchers involved in this study were Marlena R. Merling, Amanda Williams, Najmus S. Mahfooz, Marisa Ruane-Foster, Jacob Smith, Jeff Jahnes, Leona W. Ayers, Jose A. Bazan, Alison Norris, Abigail Norris Turner, Michael Oglesbee, Seth A. Faith and Mikkel B. Quam. 

Scientists collected 1,522 nasal swabs from free-ranging deer in 83 of the state’s 88 counties between November 2021 and March 2022. More than 10% of the samples were positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and at least one positive case was found in 59% of the counties in which testing took place. 

Genomic analysis showed that at least 30 infections in deer had been introduced by humans – a figure that surprised the research team. 

“We generally talk about interspecies transmission as a rare event, but this wasn’t a huge sampling, and we’re able to document 30 spillovers. It seems to be moving between people and animals quite easily,” said Andrew Bowman, associate professor of veterinary preventive medicine at The Ohio State University and co-senior author of the study. 

“And the evidence is growing that humans can get it from deer – which isn’t radically surprising. It’s probably not a one-way pipeline.” 

The combined findings suggest that the white-tailed deer species is a reservoir for SARS-CoV-2 that enables continuing mutation, and that the virus’s circulation in deer could lead to its spread to other wildlife and livestock. 

The study is published today in Nature Communications. 

Bowman and colleagues previously reported detection of SARS-CoV-2 infections in white-tailed deer in nine Ohio locations in December 2021, and are continuing to monitor deer for infection by more recent variants. 

“We expanded across Ohio to see if this was a localized problem – and we find it in lots of places, so it’s not just a localized event,” Bowman said. “Some of the thought back then was that maybe it’s just in urban deer because they’re in closer contact with people. But in rural parts of the state, we’re finding plenty of positive deer.”

Beyond the detection of active infections, researchers also found through blood samples containing antibodies – indicating previous exposure to the virus – that an estimated 23.5% of deer in Ohio had been infected at one time or another. 

The 80 whole-genome sequences obtained from the collected samples were represented groups of viral variants: the highly contagious delta variant, the predominant human strain in the United States in the early fall of 2021 that accounted for almost 90% of the sequences, and alpha, the first named variant of concern that had circulated in humans in the spring of 2021. 

The analysis revealed that the genetic composition of delta variants in deer matched dominant lineages found in humans at the time, pointing to the spillover events, and that deer-to-deer transmission followed in clusters, some spanning multiple counties. 

“There’s probably a timing component to what we found – we were near the end of a delta peak in humans, and then we see a lot of delta in deer,” Bowman said. “But we were well past the last alpha detection in humans. So the idea that deer are holding onto lineages that have since gone extinct in humans is something we were worried about.” 

The study did suggest that COVID-19 vaccination is likely to help protect people against severe disease in the event of a spillover back to humans. An analysis of the effects of deer variants on Siberian hamsters, an animal model for SARS-CoV-2 studies, showed that vaccinated hamsters did not get as sick from infection as unvaccinated animals.

That said, the variants circulating in deer are expected to continue to change. An investigation of the mutations found in the samples provided evidence of more rapid evolution of both alpha and delta variants in deer compared to humans. 

“Not only are deer getting infected with and maintaining SARS-CoV-2, but the rate of change is accelerated in deer – potentially away from what has infected humans,” Bowman said. 

How the virus is transmitted from humans to white-tailed deer remains a mystery. And so far, even with about 30 million free-ranging deer in the U.S., no substantial outbreaks of deer-origin strains have occurred in humans. 

Circulation among animals, however, remains highly likely. Bowman noted that about 70% of free-ranging deer in Ohio have not been infected or exposed to the virus, “so that’s a large body of naive animals that the virus could spread through rather uninhibited.” 

“Having that animal host in play creates things we need to watch out for,” he said. “If this trajectory continues for years and we have a virus that becomes deer-adapted, then does that become the pathway into other animal hosts, wildlife or domestic? We just don’t know.”

This work was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute.

Martha Nelson of the National Library of Medicine was co-corresponding author of the study. Ohio State co-authors Dillon McBride, Steven Overend, Devra Huey, Amanda Williams, Seth Faith and Jacqueline Nolting worked on the study with co-authors from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; the University of California, Los Angeles; the National Research Centre in Giza, Egypt; PathAI Diagnostics; the Ohio Department of Natural Resources; the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Columbus and Franklin County Metroparks; and the Rega Institute for Medical Research in Belgium.

Researchers conducted experiments in cell cultures and mice to demonstrate the therapeutic potential of these nanoparticles, which are extracellular vesicles similar to the ones circulating in humans’ bloodstream and biological fluids that carry messages between cells. 

The hope is that a drop of solution containing these nanocarriers, delivered to the lungs via the nose, could treat acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), one of the most frequent causes of respiratory failure that leads to putting patients on a ventilator. In ARDS, inflammation spiraling out of control in the lungs so seriously burdens the immune system that immune cells are unable to tend to the initial cause of the damage. 

“These extracellular vesicles would be an alternative ARDS therapy that gives a fighting chance to your own immune system,” said senior author Natalia Higuita-Castro, associate professor of biomedical engineering and neurosurgery at The Ohio State University. “The issue with ARDS is that you have a shift in the normal balance that favors inflammation. By introducing the anti-inflammatory agents, you shift that balance to a more level stage so the immune system can resolve the underlying issue.” 

The study was published online recently in the journal Advanced Materials. 

Starting the engineering process with adult skin cells called dermal fibroblasts is a significant secret to this technology’s success, noted Higuita-Castro, also director of advanced therapeutics and engineering in the College of Medicine Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute. 

Many nanocarriers are engineered from stem or progenitor cells that can differentiate into other cell types, but also have mysterious properties that aren’t yet fully understood. 

“Using skin cells from adult animals is very important for us because we wanted to demonstrate the feasibility of translating this to clinical settings, where we could have a universal donor cell from adult patients,” Higuita-Castro said. “Dermal fibroblasts are easily available, we can grow them, they’re used in the clinic for grafting and wound healing, and they don’t produce an immune response like that seen with other cell sources.” 

To create the vesicles, scientists apply an electrical charge to a donor skin cell to transiently open holes in its membrane, and deliver externally obtained DNA inside. The donor cell converts that genetic information into one of two anti-inflammatory proteins as well as into messenger RNA, molecules that translate instructions for the manufacture of more of those functional proteins. 

Those materials are the payload inside these nanocarriers, whose surfaces are tagged with a molecule enabling interaction with specific cells to improve their retention in the lungs. In this study, separate nanocarriers were packed with one of two anti-inflammatory proteins, IL-4 or IL-10, plus mRNA for recipient cells in the lung to process and make more protein.

“The proteins have an immediate effect, and adding mRNA will give a more sustained effect,” said Higuita-Castro, also a core faculty member of Ohio State’s Gene Therapy Institute. 

The different proteins were not combined into one vesicle for a reason: “Our vision for clinical applications is to have a mix-and-match platform depending on what the patient needs,” she said. “That way, we could also administer lower doses multiple times, if needed, and re-dosing with these nanocarriers will be OK because they don’t trigger a significant immune response.” 

Cell culture experiments suggested these vesicles could be used as a pre-treatment in sick patients at high risk for developing ARDS. Studies in mice showed their potential to help patients who are already severely ill. 

After mice were injected with a molecule that triggered high inflammation in the lung, researchers gave them a single drop of liquid loaded with engineered nanocarriers that traveled straight to their injured lungs and got to work. Inflammation was reduced as expected, but repeated experiments in the animals showed the vesicles also lowered damage to lung tissue. 

Even more exciting to Higuita-Castro was a finding that cells in the treated lungs secreted substances with additional therapeutic benefits – including antioxidants and more anti-inflammatory molecules.

“Honestly, that was mind-blowing,” she said. “It’s a local treatment because it’s delivered intranasally, and it stays in the lung because we designed it that way, but it has this global effect that is really powerful.” 

Finding a safe, effective treatment for ARDS is a significant medical need. The current use of ventilators and steroids comes with lots of side effects, and while the dangerous lung condition used to be relatively rare, case numbers skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“COVID-19 shined a light on the lack of effective therapeutic options for acute lung injury in general,” Higuita-Castro said. 

There is more to do with the nanocarriers, including pinning down the precise details of all they can do to repair damaged lungs and testing the therapy in larger animals. But Higuita-Castro is optimistic about the technology’s future. 

“These extracellular vesicles are naturally derived nanoparticles, and we think they’re great because nature is the best example we could have – as it has had millions of years to optimize the system,” she said. 

This research was funded by Ohio State Office of Research COVID-19 seed funding and grants from the National Institutes of Health. 

The work was led by co-first authors Ana Salazar-Puerta and María Rincon-Benavides. Additional Ohio State co-authors included Tatiana Cuellar-Gaviria, Julian Aldana, Lilibeth Ortega-Pineda, Devleena Das, Daniel Dodd, Charles Spencer, Binbin Deng, David McComb, Joshua Englert, Samir Ghadiali, Loren Wold and Daniel Gallego-Perez. Gabriela Vasquez Martinez and Diana Zepeda-Orozco of Nationwide Children’s Hospital also worked on the study.

Students in the small study conducted by researchers at The Ohio State University were less consistent in their decision making during the 2020 fall semester compared to students who had participated in similar research over several previous years.

The researchers compared responses to a hypothetical situation made by students during the pandemic to responses made by students in earlier studies. They found evidence that students in 2020 were more likely to cycle between going with their gut and more thoroughly mulling over their answers depending on how the scenario was described.

“Our theory is that feeling stressed by everything going on was limiting students’ resources to really evaluate the information that was presented to them,” said lead author Melissa Buelow, professor of psychology at Ohio State’s Newark campus. 

The research also suggests that the prolonged and wide-ranging uncertainties that came with the global lockdown – far different from an acute stressor imposed in a lab – affected the brain region responsible for problem solving and decision making. 

“I think that is one of the more important findings – that the stresses of everyday life can wax and wane, and they can potentially overwhelm your cognitive resources and you can see real downstream effects on everyday activities that require your energy and your effort,” Buelow said. “This study provides additional information to understand why students may have been having difficulty coming to class, focusing on class and getting things turned in – because there was this global event affecting every part of their lives.” 

Buelow conducted the study with Ohio State Newark psychology faculty members James Wirth and Jennifer Kowalsky. The research was published recently in the Journal of American College Health.

In autumn 2020, students on Ohio State’s campuses attended classes offered both virtually and in person with reduced density and continued physical distancing, wearing masks and undergoing routine COVID-19 testing. Students were presumed not to be infected with the coronavirus when they participated in this research. 

Buelow and her colleagues were inspired to do the study after they referred to their own foggy thinking as “pandemic brain” in casual conversation. 

“We said if we are experiencing this, we wonder if others were as well,” Buelow said. “And as we were collecting data, we heard in the popular press about this idea of the stress of COVID leading to difficulty with thinking, processing information and making decisions.” 

A clinical neuropsychologist, Buelow has used the Adult Decision Making Competence (ADMC) scale in her research for a decade. The tool presents numerous scenarios, framed in both positive and negative ways, and asks users to respond with their preferred solution or recommendation. 

For this study, researchers compared data from a pre-pandemic sample of 722 undergraduates who had been assessed with the ADMC scale to data from 161 students who participated in one of two assessments during the 2020 fall semester. 

The main finding: Instead of recognizing that ethics-based scenarios resulted in the same outcome whether presented as a gain or loss, students in 2020 were more likely to answer differently based on how the information was framed. 

“Reliance on whether ‘this is a win’ versus ‘this is a loss’ really factored into decision making,” Buelow said. 

Despite that inconsistency, the researchers noted that students in 2020 were as confident as pre-pandemic participants that their decisions on accuracy-based questions were correct. 

“That struck us as interesting, with potential implications for the health and well-being of individuals adequately perceiving risk,” Buelow said. “Are individuals aware of what they do and don’t know, so to speak? And if you aren’t, does that lead to more risk?” 

The researchers assessed another 72 students at two time points during the spring 2022 semester to gauge whether COVID-19 vaccination and loosened mask and distancing requirements lessened the pandemic’s effects on decision making. Their exploratory analysis with this smaller sample found that students were still making less consistent decisions compared to pre-pandemic participants. 

Buelow and colleagues are continuing to collect data to track changes in student decision making over a longer period of time. 

“Situational factors can affect why people make a good, advantageous decision versus a bad or risky decision, and that is important context to have,” she said. “When we acutely stress individuals in the lab, we see a subsequent lowering of decision-making consistency. These findings really fit in with that – so we can theorize, in the absence of an acute lab stressor, that it was COVID, a much more global factor affecting every aspect of our lives, that affected cognition.” 

Rather than let the next outbreak take the world by surprise, two virologists say in a Science Perspective article published today (March 10, 2023) that the scientific community should invest in a four-part research framework to proactively identify animal viruses that might infect humans.

“A lot of financial investment has gone into sequencing viruses in nature and thinking that from sequence alone we’ll be able to predict the next pandemic virus. And I think that’s just a fallacy,” said Cody Warren, assistant professor of veterinary biosciences at The Ohio State University and co-lead author of the article.

“Experimental studies of animal viruses are going to be invaluable,” he said. “By measuring properties in them that are consistent with human infection, we can better identify those viruses that pose the greatest risk for zoonosis and then study them further. I think that’s a realistic way of looking at things that should also be considered.” 

Warren co-authored the opinion piece with Sara Sawyer, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

One key message Warren and Sawyer want to get across is that knowing an animal virus can attach to a human cell receptor doesn’t paint the whole picture of its zoonotic potential. 

They propose a series of experiments to assess an animal virus’s potential to infect a human: If it is found to enter human cells, can it use those host cells to make copies of itself and multiply? After viral particles are produced, can they get past human innate immunity? And have human immune systems ever been exposed to another virus from the same family? 

Answering these questions could enable scientists to put a pre-zoonotic candidate virus “on the shelf” for further research – perhaps developing a quick way to diagnose the virus in humans if an unattributable illness surfaces and testing existing antivirals as possible treatments, Warren said. 

“Where it becomes difficult is that there may be many animal viruses out there with signatures of human compatibility,” he said. “So which ones do you pick and choose to prioritize for further study? That’s something that needs to be carefully considered.” 

A decent starting point, he and Sawyer suggest, would be operating on the assumption that viruses with the most risk to humans come from “repeat offender” viral families currently infecting mammals and birds. Those include coronaviruses, orthomyxoviruses (influenza) and filoviruses (causing hemorrhagic diseases like Ebola and Marburg). In 2018, the Bombali virus – a new ebolavirus – was detected in bats in Sierra Leone, but its potential to infect humans remains unknown. 

And then there are arteriviruses, such as the simian hemorrhagic fever virus that exists in wild African monkeys, which Sawyer and Warren recently determined has decent potential to spill over to humans because it can replicate in human cells and subvert immune cells’ ability to fight back. 

The 2020 worldwide lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is still a fresh and painful memory, but Warren notes that the terrible outcomes of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 could have been much worse. The availability of vaccines within a year of that lockdown was possible only because scientists had spent decades studying coronaviruses and knew how to attack them. 

“So if we invest in studying animal viruses early and understand their biology in more detail, then in the case that they were to emerge in humans later, we’d be better poised to combat them,” Warren said. 

“We are continually going to be exposed to the viruses of animals. Things are never going to change if we stay on the same trajectory,” he said. “And if we stay complacent and only study those animal viruses after they jump into humans, we’re constantly going to be working backwards. We’ll always be behind.”

Nearly 4,000 votes were cast in this year’s contest.

Co-senior authors Amal Amer, professor, and Jacob Yount, associate professor, both in the Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity, will receive a trophy from Ohio State News and a $500 award from the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge.

Amer, Yount and a large team of Ohio State colleagues found in mice that blocking the molecule, an enzyme known as caspase 11, holds promise in preventing or treating severe COVID-19 symptoms by reducing inflammation, tissue injury and blood clots in the lungs. Versions of this enzyme exist and have similar functions in both mice and humans, making it an attractive therapeutic target. The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Here were the other contest finalists:

Future wearable health tech could measure gases released from skin: Scientists have taken the first step to creating the next generation of wearable health monitors. New research suggests that a wearable sensor may be able to monitor the body’s health by detecting the gases released from a person’s skin. The method would allow the technology to sense biomarkers related to metabolic disorders, like heart disease or diabetes. Senior author: Pelagia-Irene Gouma, professor of materials science and engineering, published in PLOS One.

Climate change is turning the trees into gluttons: Forests appear to be bulking up on the excess carbon they pull from the atmosphere. This study showed that elevated carbon levels consistently led to an increase of wood volume in 10 different temperate forest groups across the country, suggesting that trees are helping to shield Earth’s ecosystem from the impacts of global warming through their rapid growth. Co-author: Brent Sohngen, professor of environmental and resource economics, published in Nature Communications.

Ohio State News extends thanks to readers and voters, to the faculty finalists for their enthusiastic participation in our sixth annual contest, and to all the researchers who let our staff help tell their stories.

We can’t wait till next year to do it all again!

This is our sixth annual contest, and the winner receives a very cool trophy from Ohio State News and a $500 award from Ohio State’s Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge. 

We’ve done the hard part, selecting three finalists for consideration from the over 160 stories we’ve written so far this year about cool research – and let’s just be honest, all Ohio State science is inherently cool. From here, we are asking readers to vote early and often – really! – to pick the winner.

Be sure to watch the videos above of our finalist faculty talking about their work and the excitement of being a scientist. And scroll down to VOTE!

Here are the finalists:

Climate change is turning the trees into gluttons: Forests appear to be bulking up on the excess carbon they pull from the atmosphere. This study showed that elevated carbon levels consistently led to an increase of wood volume in 10 different temperate forest groups across the country, suggesting that trees are helping to shield Earth’s ecosystem from the impacts of global warming through their rapid growth.

Future wearable health tech could measure gases released from skin: Scientists have taken the first step to creating the next generation of wearable health monitors. New research suggests that a wearable sensor may be able to monitor the body’s health by detecting the gases released from a person’s skin. The method would allow the technology to sense biomarkers related to metabolic disorders, like heart disease or diabetes. 

Blocking enzyme could hold the key to preventing, treating severe COVID-19: Blocking a single immune response-related molecule holds promise in preventing or treating severe COVID-19 symptoms by reducing inflammation, tissue injury and blood clots in the lungs, research in mice suggests. Versions of this enzyme exist and have similar functions in both mice and humans, making it an attractive therapeutic target.

Voting starts today – see the poll below – and is open until 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13, 2023. The process is decidedly unscientific: Participants may cast one vote per day until the poll closes.

Thank you in advance for helping us name the Coolest Ohio State Science Story of 2022!

Editor's note: Voting has closed. Stay tuned for news about the winner!

Jianrong Li, professor of virology in the College of Veterinary Medicine Department of Veterinary Biosciences, and Peixuan Guo, holder of the Sylvan G. Frank Endowed Chair in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery in the College of Pharmacy, are among the 169 academic inventors to be named National Academy of Inventors (NAI) fellows this year. They are the 15th and 16th Ohio State inventors to be chosen as NAI fellows. 

In 2021, Guo was named Ohio State’s Innovator of the Year, and Li, along with colleague Stefan Niewiesk, was among the finalists for the award.

Jianrong Li 

Li has led the development of a number of vaccine candidates for respiratory viruses and enteric illnesses – those that affect the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. His lab worked swiftly to develop vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 in response to the pandemic, developing separate candidates using the measles and mumps viruses as platforms for a COVID-19 vaccine. 

“The idea is that because children have been safely vaccinated for measles and mumps for decades, we could incorporate this vaccine into the MMR vaccine to prevent four diseases simultaneously: measles, mumps, rubella and COVID-19,” Li said. 

These platforms also enable delivering a “needle-free” vaccine through the nose, which generates both a system-wide antibody response – the same response as that produced by an injection in the arm – as well as a mucosal immune response in the linings of airways, where viral particles attach to host cells. All currently approved COVID-19 vaccines are delivered intramuscularly but are unable to induce sufficient mucosal immunity, the body’s first line of defense against respiratory viruses. The White House’s effort to develop the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines includes an intranasal vaccine approach. 

In each candidate, the team’s use of specific snippets of the “prefusion” version of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein – the shape the protein is in before it infects a cell – and strategic insertion of those genes into modified measles and mumps virus genomes produced strong neutralizing antibody, mucosal antibodies and T cell immune responses and protected against lung damage in animals. 

The SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates and a third vaccine candidate against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the No. 1 cause of human respiratory infections that can also cause serious illness in infants and the elderly, have been licensed to an India-based vaccine and pharmaceutical company. 

Vaccines developed in Li’s lab have also been commercialized for use in protecting piglets from two deadly viruses, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus and porcine deltacoronavirus. Previous viral outbreaks have caused significant economic losses for the pork industry in the United States and worldwide. 

A member of Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute, Li has been awarded eight patents and has eight pending patent applications, and has entered into a total of eight licensing agreements with companies that are commercializing vaccine products developed in his lab. 

Li, who joined Ohio State’s faculty in 2008, attributed his lab’s success to Ohio State’s creative and collaborative environment and support from his college and department. 

“I am humbled and truly honored that my peers have considered me for this award,” he said. “This honor really belongs to the postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and research assistants in my laboratory. In the past 14 years at Ohio State, I have had the privilege to work with them to generate innovative ideas, make new scientific discoveries, and translate basic virology research into the development of novel vaccines against viral pathogens that threaten human and animal health.” 

Peixuan Guo 

The many RNA-related discoveries attributed to Guo, also director of the College of Pharmacy Center for RNA Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine, date back to his days as a student in the 1980s, when he determined that short segments of noncoding RNA not only existed, but had important functions in cells. In findings published in Science, he called them “small RNA” or sRNA. Among those he proposed at the time were the microRNAs that have been found since to have a powerful influence over genes’ protein-building functions. 

Guo’s discoveries involve some of the most intricate cellular processes – many of which have opened the door to the development of therapies, particularly for several types of cancers. He is a member of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center Translational Therapeutics Program. 

Guo was a pioneer in the field of RNA nanotechnology, first proving RNA strands could self-assemble into a nanoparticle, and since advancing understanding of RNA particles and properties that make them useful vehicles for targeted delivery of anticancer drugs. In 2014, he proposed that RNA therapeutics would be the third milestone in pharmaceutical drug development. 

In 2020, his lab showed in animal studies that RNA nanoparticles have rubbery and amoeba properties that help explain why they target cancer tumors so efficiently and how they keep their toxicity low – by quickly leaving the body. 

He reported in 2021 on a promising liver cancer therapy: an RNA nanoparticle designed to carry both a chemotherapy drug and a molecule to prevent the pumping of the drug out of liver cells. In animal studies, these nanoparticles targeted tumor cells effectively and inhibited tumor growth. 

“RNA can be therapeutic, but it has taken some time for the field to get to pharmaceutical development,” he said. “The mRNA vaccines have opened up the public’s understanding of RNA. At one time, people didn’t believe it was possible – but now we know it is.” 

Guo also points to his first construction of a viral DNA packaging motor. He discovered the third type of biomotors that use a revolving mechanism without rotation to transport the lengthy dsDNA genome. A biomotor is a biological machine that drives movement to help with the energy-related transport of proteins and other molecules – key processes behind such activities as walking and breathing, because transport is essential to the completion of numerous cellular functions. The use of the revolution mechanism without the use of rotation avoids the coiling or tangling during the transportation of the lengthy genome. 

The finding eventually led to applications of this motor to perform “single pore sensing,” including the detection of individual peptides – short chains of amino acids – to advance cancer diagnostics.  

Guo, too, took on new projects at the start of the pandemic, including development of an at-home diagnostic test for COVID-19 infection. An invention of his dating back more than 30 years made an indispensable contribution to the mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2: a novel way of producing a molecule of vaccinia virus mRNA capping enzyme that prevents mRNA from degradation and ensures proper translation of mRNA protein-manufacturing instructions. 

Guo has been a member of Ohio State’s faculty since 2015. He has filed 70 patent applications, with 13 granted and others pending. Most of these technologies have been licensed for commercialization. 

“Of all the recognitions I have received, this is the highest honor in the field of innovation,” Guo said. “I am happy to be recognized as an NAI fellow.” 

The NAI Fellows Program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society. 

“This year’s class of NAI fellows represents a truly outstanding caliber of innovators,” said Paul R. Sanberg, president of the NAI. “The breadth and scope of their inventions is truly staggering. I am excited to see their creativity continue to define a new era of science and technology in the global innovation ecosystem.” 

The 2022 class of fellows will be inducted at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Inventors in June 2023 in Washington, D.C.

Scientists tested neutralizing antibodies in blood serum samples from vaccinated and once-boosted or recently infected health care professionals against several subvariants in circulation. Three subvariants stood out for their resistance to the antibody immune response: BQ.1, BQ.1.1 and BA.2.75.2.

BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 are subvariants of the BA.4/5 omicron variants that have been dominating the last few months in the U.S., and each now accounts for about a quarter of current infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). BA.2.75.2, a mutant of the BA.2 omicron variant, was the best of all variants tested at evading neutralizing antibodies, but currently accounts for only a very small proportion of reported illnesses in the United States.

“In general, the subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 are much better compared to prior variants at evading the booster-mediated antibody response – the neutralizing antibody titers are clearly much lower. And those two variants are becoming dominant,” said Shan-Lu Liu, senior author the study and a virology professor in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences at The Ohio State University.

“It is important to be aware while traveling and gathering over the holidays that SARS-CoV-2 variants are continuing to evolve,” said Liu, also a professor in the Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity. “If you were vaccinated with the first booster more than six months ago, you might consider getting a second booster because the antibodies from a single booster are now likely too low to be protective.”

The study is published today in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. 

Though the third booster, an updated bivalent formulation, is now being administered to those who are eligible, over 48% of the total booster-eligible population has not yet received a booster dose, according to CDC data. Liu’s lab has previously shown that a COVID-19 booster shot provided strong and broad antibody protection against a range of omicron sublineage variants, and that a second booster restored waning antibody counts to protective levels.

For the current study, serum samples came from health care professionals who had received two mRNA vaccine doses and one booster shot or who had been infected during an early or later omicron wave.

Results showed about a 20-fold decrease in vaccine and single booster-generated antibodies that could neutralize BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 compared to neutralizing antibodies against the original, or parent, SARS-CoV-2 virus. Similarly, neutralizing antibody levels, or titers, generated by infection during the BA.1 omicron wave were significantly lower against the BQ subvariants than against the parental virus, and antibody titers against the BQ subvariants generated by infection during the BA.4/5 wave did not reach the level of detection.

“Our results suggest that you cannot count on natural infection to protect against the currently circulating omicron subvariants,” said Liu, also associate director of Ohio State’s Center for Retrovirus Research and a program co-director of the Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program in Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute.

Liu and colleagues conducted cell-culture studies using pseudoviruses – a non-infectious viral core surrounded by different SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins on the surface structured to match known variants. The method used to detect neutralizing antibodies in the blood samples accounts for the varying levels of antibodies produced by individuals. 

In this study, Ohio State collaborator and co-author Kai Xu created structural models of individual amino acids changed by the newest mutations on the spike protein, identifying a few key molecules that the subvariants have rearranged so they can block antibodies from binding to the viral particles. This modeling showed that one of these amino acids, called N460K, also enables the BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 particles to enter host cells more efficiently and force host cells to fuse together, a step in viral infection that can increase pathogenesis – which contributes to disease onset, progression to more severe symptoms, and disease transmissibility.

“From my perspective, this is cause for concern because the original omicron variant was not very pathogenic – it did not cause much cell fusion at all,” Liu said. “But we now see a trend with these new subvariants of increased cell fusion, and that trend puts the virus in a better position to cause infection and pathogenesis.”

Other labs’ studies of the bivalent booster’s neutralizing antibody production suggest the updated booster would offer protection against the newer omicron subvariants, Liu said.

But Liu has submitted a paper for publication about another subvariant called XBB, a recombinant variant created by the exchange of genetic material between two BA.2 omicron subvariants, that shows what he calls “extraordinary” resistance to neutralizing antibodies produced by vaccination and previous infection.

“This virus can do unexpected things,” he said. “We still have to do a good job of surveillance and keep our eye on these emerging variants of concern.”

This work was supported by anonymous donor funds, grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the Glenn Barber Fellowship from Ohio State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, the National Cancer Institute, the Robert J. Anthony Fund for Cardiovascular Research, and Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, Office of Health Sciences, and Center for Clinical and Translational Science.

Additional co-authors, all from Ohio State, are Panke Qu, John Evans, Julia Faraone, Yi-Min Zheng, Claire Carlin, Mirela Anghelina, Patrick Stevens, Soledad Fernandez, Daniel Jones, Gerard Lozanski, Ashish Panchal, Linda Saif, Eugene Oltz and Richard Gumina.

To recognize the significance of One Health Day and the experts working on a global scale to prevent the next pandemic, the Ohio State Global One Health initiative (GOHi) has organized a panel discussion, “What’s Next: Reimagining One Health Beyond the Pandemic,” which will be held virtually and in person at the Veterinary Medical Center Auditorium on Nov. 3 from 8:30 – 10:30 a.m. EDT. Ohio State experts participating include: Michael Bisesi, College of Public Health; Sharon Santoso Clark, Ohio State Wexner Medical Center; Rebecca Garabed, College of Veterinary Medicine; Dónal O'Mathúna, College of Nursing; and Rafael Felipe da Costa Vieira, College of Veterinary Medicine, Federal University of Paraná.

For more than a decade, GOHi has been at the forefront of One Health implementation, mobilizing faculty, staff and students from 13 colleges to improve health, build capacity, address the spread of disease and emphasize the connection among humans, animals and the environment in Ohio and around the world.  

“The Global One Health paradigm is a proactive approach that builds institutional capacity to preemptively prepare and prevent the emergence and occurrence of biological and chemical hazards. Such a proactive approach is known to be cost-effective and will save a large number of human lives and improve livelihoods each year,” said Wondwossen Gebreyes, GOHi executive director. “Our priority is to strengthen and accelerate its high-impact, integrated capacity building approach through training, applied research, implementation, outreach and community engagement. This has mutually beneficial impact as solving our planet’s complex challenges necessitate it.”

As a result of GOHi’s many initiatives and advancements in the area of One Health and the growing interest and acknowledgment of the importance of One Health worldwide, Gebreyes regularly serves on international committees and advisory groups, and presents at universities. His involvement in One Health spans the globe and he currently serves as chair of the USAID One Health Workforce External Advisory Board, is a member of the Countering Zoonotic Spillover Committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, and later this month will participate in the World One Health Congress in Singapore.

GOHi’s 2022 accomplishments include:

• Expanded advanced molecular diagnostic laboratory capabilities in Ethiopia. Using funding from U.S. federal sources, GOHi and partners established these labs located in five regions across Ethiopia. This will strengthen the national disease surveillance and response system by enabling the detection of infectious diseases such as influenza, COVID-19 and other pathogens of public health significance. Not only is GOHi putting laboratories in place, but the team is also training laboratory staff and surveillance officers at the health center level to identify samples and test potential pathogens to prevent future pandemics. These new labs enable Ethiopia’s health system to be resilient and better monitor, detect, identify, report and respond to epidemics and pandemics.
• Trained current and future One Health practitioners, including laboratory workers, doctors and epidemiologists through the Global One Health Summer Institute. Over the last 10 years, GOHi and Ohio State faculty have trained more than 4,100 One Health practitioners from diverse disciplines including public health, veterinary medicine, medicine, agriculture, social science, data science and others. This year the Summer Institute, held from July 11 – Sept. 30, involved more than 70 trainers from five countries including the United States (50), Ethiopia (11), United Kingdom (6), Kenya (20) and Chile (2). These experts presented training modules and workshops to a wide variety of audiences across the world including the U.S., Africa, Asia and Latin America.
• Worked with faculty at the University of Nairobi to establish a master’s degree program in bioethics. This project, funded through the National Institutes of Health, will train future One Health practitioners and prepare them to consider ethical, social and legal issues in health care decision-making.
• GOHi and the Ohio State community hosted 27 Ethiopian university presidents and vice presidents for a Leadership, Management and Governance project sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. This cross-cutting activity is critical for strengthening leadership capabilities and facilitating partnerships that are crucial in effective implementation of complex One Health capacity building activities in Ethiopia.

In the two-survey study, people who reported greater belief in conspiracy theories about the pandemic – for which there is no evidence – were more likely to later report they believed that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump through widespread voter fraud, which is also not true. Participants’ overall inclination to believe in conspiracy theories also increased more among those who reported believing COVID-19 was a hoax. 

Based on the results, the Ohio State University researchers have proposed the “gateway conspiracy” hypothesis, which argues that conspiracy theory beliefs prompted by a single event lead to increases in conspiratorial thinking over time. 

Preliminary evidence suggests a sense of distrust may function as one trigger.

“It’s speculative, but it appears that once people adopt one conspiracy belief, it promotes distrust in institutions more generally – it could be government, science, the media, whatever,” said senior author Russell Fazio, professor of psychology at Ohio State. “Once you start viewing events through that distrustful lens, it’s very easy to adopt additional conspiracy theories.” 

The study is published today (Oct. 26, 2022) in the journal PLOS ONE. 

The field of conspiracy theory research is relatively young, and to date has tended to look for traits that predict the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories at a given point in time. 

“But if you read interviews or forums frequented by conspiracy theorists, you see a phenomenon where people tend to go down the rabbit hole after something happens in their life that triggers general interest in conspiracy theories,” said first author Javier Granados Samayoa, who completed the work while a graduate student in psychology at Ohio State. “With COVID-19, there was this large event that people could not control, so how could they make sense of it? One way is by adhering to conspiracy theories.” 

The researchers asked 501 participants in a June 2020 survey to answer questions assessing their beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, political ideology and what is called conspiracist ideation, or one’s overall affinity for conspiracy theories. In this section, participants used a 5-point scale ranging from “definitely not true” to “definitely true” to rate statements such as “Some UFO sightings and rumors are planned or staged in order to distract the public from real alien contact” and “New and advanced technology which would harm current industry is being suppressed.” 

Six months later, in December 2020, 107 of those same participants again responded to statements gauging their level of conspiratorial thinking. Researchers further assessed conspiracist ideation by asking participants to report the extent to which they believed that there had been extensive voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

Statistical analysis showed that participants who reported greater belief that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was released for dark purposes and that the severity of COVID-19 disease was blown out of proportion also reported greater belief that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. And compared to their baseline conspiracist ideation measured in the June survey, COVID skeptics had higher levels of general endorsement of conspiracy theories six months later. 

The association held true even after the analysis took into account the association between belief in conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and voter fraud and conservative political views, said Granados Samayoa, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. 

The team also cited data from a large United Kingdom multi-part survey conducted during the early spring and late fall of 2020 that supported the gateway conspiracy hypothesis: The Ohio State team’s analysis showed that belief among a nationally representative sample of UK adults that the pandemic was a hoax predicted increases in conspiracist ideation over time. 

The Ohio State data showed one strong trend suggesting that financial distress during the lockdown could have been a factor in adopting conspiracy theory beliefs about the pandemic – even among those who started off with low levels of conspiracist ideation. 

“And then there is the question: Once that happens, what changes over time? That’s where we got into this longitudinal work, which has been absent in previous research,” Fazio said. 

While some past conspiracy theories have turned out to be true, this study focused on beliefs that are not supported by evidence and are undermined by the evidence that does exist. The researchers noted that a better understanding of the dynamics of conspiratorial thinking could help stop the spread of conspiracist ideation, which is associated with a higher risk for violence and discrimination and poor health choices, among other negative individual and societal outcomes. 

“These findings show that we need to be prepared for any additional large-scale events similar to COVID-19 to stem off conspiracist ideation because once people go down the rabbit hole, they may get stuck,” Granados Samayoa said. 

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation. Additional co-authors, all from Ohio State, included Fazio lab members Courtney Moore, Shelby Boggs, Jesse Ladanyi and Benjamin Ruisch, now at the University of Kent in England.

In a perspective article published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the 14 experts cite virus pandemics dating from 1918 to the COVID-19 crisis as examples of how “the world has largely failed to meet the challenge to be better prepared to prevent or respond to the next outbreak.” 

Future outbreaks are inevitable. The team says the best way to lower chances for widespread disease outbreaks and pandemics and improve prospects for mounting a rapid response is to adopt a One Health approach to diminish these threats – working across disciplines and administrative barriers at all levels to understand and address links between animal and human health and the environment. 

Ohio State University virologist and immunologist Linda Saif, co-lead author of the paper, has been sounding the alarm about viruses that affect food animals, wildlife and humans for decades – and provided expertise very early in the pandemic about the dangers of SARS-CoV-2. In 1995, her lab was the first to document a coronavirus’s leap from wild animals to cattle and from cattle to poultry. The recognition of interspecies transmission of coronaviruses from deer to cattle was prescient: In 2021, Saif was part of an Ohio State research team that showed that SARS-CoV-2 could spill over to deer. All these years later, the scientific community is still learning about how the wily pathogens work.

“SARS-CoV-2 taught us that viruses do not respect borders, walls, demographics or politics – nor do they respect species barriers,” said Saif, a Distinguished University Professor in Ohio State’s Center for Food Animal Health with faculty appointments in the departments of animal sciences and veterinary preventive medicine.

“Emerging and re-emerging RNA viruses – including coronaviruses – are a major cause of the transmission of disease from animals to humans and back again to animals, and that spillover between species enables viruses to establish new hosts in which they can mutate and persist. The  most effective way to fight back is to work as a global community and apply One Health practices for prevention and preparedness.” 

The researchers from the United States, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe convened in 2021 as the Independent Task Force on COVID-19 and Other Pandemics: Origins, Prevention and Response. The task force was chaired by Gerald Keusch of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory and Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research at Boston University, who is co-lead author of the PNAS article. 

Recommendations are based on their findings from an expansive review of major RNA virus outbreaks over the last 50 years and research results before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. They paid particular attention to identifying places and times when targeted interventions in the past could have blocked cross-species transmission to inform their proposed solutions for the future. 

Evidence strongly suggests that the two SARS coronavirus outbreaks, in 2003 and 2019, can be traced to coronaviruses in bats that most likely spilled over to intermediate animal hosts in wildlife farms or markets before infecting people – in the case of COVID-19, at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China. The task force found the risk for a pandemic increases when people and animals interact closely in altered settings driven by land use and climate change, environmental degradation, the wildlife trade, population growth and economic pressure.

Addressing the  risk factors of these types of conditions is one focus of the group’s recommendations, which include:

• Conducting early-warning surveillance in locations where people, wildlife and domestic animals intermingle to detect high-threat potential zoonotic pathogens and inform development of potential broad spectrum vaccines and therapeutics.
• Investing in research and development of diagnostics, antivirals and vaccines for priority pathogens, and streamlining avenues to enable rapid clinical testing and manufacturing of medical countermeasures.
• Reducing drivers for spillover risk and spread, in part by minimizing high-risk human-wildlife contact, on the front lines of disease emergence from the community to country level.
• Countering misinformation and disinformation about the prevention and control of emerging diseases based on research focused on fostering public trust in and understanding of science and expert advice, and providing trusted resources and outlets for accurate information.
• Establishing an inclusive, transparent One Health governance framework at all levels for pandemic preparedness and response, and providing stable funding for all related global efforts.

“It’s not an overstatement to say that this requires worldwide collaboration and coordination to come up with measures enabling us to predict, prevent, mitigate and control future pandemics,” Saif said. “We know where opportunities have been missed in the past. We know what research questions need to be answered most urgently. We just have to seize the opportunity and have the resolve to act on what we know to improve human, animal and our ecosystem health.”

This look toward a better future comes at a time when SARS-CoV-2 is still causing infections worldwide and still has potential to circulate as viral variants that would pose new threats to human health and, as spillovers continue, potentially to animal health, the researchers noted. 

“The time to energize these processes is now,” the task force concludes, “when the tragedy of COVID-19 continues to confront the public and politicians.”

Additional task force co-authors include John Amuasi of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana; Danielle Anderson of the The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, University of Melbourne, Australia; Peter Daszak, and Su Yadana of EcoHealth Alliance, New York City; Isabella Eckerle of University Hospital of Geneva, Switzerland; Marion Koopmans of  Erasmus University, Netherlands; Hume Field of the University of Queensland, Australia; Sai Kit Lam of the University of Malaya, Malaysia; Carlos Das Neves of the Norwegian Veterinary Institute, Norway; Malik Peiris of the University of Hong Kong, China; Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa; and Supaporn Wacharapluesadee of King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital and Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.

In a new video, Dr. Mahdee Sobhanie, assistant professor of medicine at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, answers some common questions about the new COVID-19 bivalent booster shot.

Individuals can receive the new COVID-19 booster two months after completing any primary series or any previous COVID-19 booster dose.

• The Pfizer bivalent booster is approved for people who are 12 or older.
• Those between the ages of 5-11 may continue to receive the age-appropriate Pfizer monovalent booster.
• The Moderna bivalent booster is approved for people who are 18 or older. 
• Student Health Services and the Wexner Medical Center are currently offering only the Pfizer booster due to manufacturer shortages of the Moderna booster.

Complete guidance on COVID-19 vaccine dosing and timing can be accessed via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

Q &A with Dr. Mahdee Sobhanie

Why should people get the booster? What’s the benefit of one more shot?

Early on in the year when the FDA was discussing boosters, they wanted a booster which would target the predominant variant at the time. At that time, it was the omicron variant, but it was an offshoot of the omicron variant called BA.1. And they saw that patients who ended up getting vaccinated developed a robust immune response. [The] goal of the booster is that when COVID … may hit hard this fall and winter, that there is a level of protection that may wane if you got sick beforehand.

How does the booster work? How is it different?

As we’ve gone through multiple variants, the alpha, the delta, now the omicron variants, we realize that we need a vaccine that’s targeted specifically to these variants. So right now, the predominant variants that are circulating is omicron, specifically BA.4 and BA.5, [and] the vaccine should be tailored for those variants themselves.

Will it protect me from getting COVID? Will it protect from serious illness or both?

For some people, it will provide protection from getting infected. That being said, nothing is 100%. We do know that even without the current iteration of the booster, the vaccines are incredibly safe. They’re effective at keeping people out of the hospital. There’s still a lot of COVID that’s circulating, and there’s probably a lot of COVID that we’re not counting because of home tests. But we still have a vulnerable patient population that we have to worry about: those who are immunocompromised, those who are pregnant, those who can’t mount an immune response. So we want to make sure that they’re vaccinated. We want to make sure everybody else is vaccinated and boosted because it will prevent the vast majority of infections, but not all infections. We know that it will keep you out of the hospital, we know it will keep you from becoming severely ill.

How long will it offer protection?

So when we talk about protection, there are two things that we look at. Your immune system isn’t an on or off switch. When you get vaccinated, your body is getting a blueprint against COVID. So what it will do is that it gets the vaccine, it’ll take the vaccine, it’ll make antibodies against that infection, in this case, COVID. And those antibodies will circulate anywhere from three to four months in your system. And after time, they wane down or they go down. [However] your body, your immune system has a backup plan and … blueprints. If you were to be reintroduced to COVID again, it can build the antibodies up specifically. So where does the booster come in? The booster now gives you not only the original strain of the COVID infection, but it also gives you that BA.4 and BA.5 variant. Now your body not only has a blueprint for the original strain – it also has this newer blueprint for the new COVID variant that is circulating.

After the shot, how soon will I receive the enhanced protections?

Your body should produce antibodies pretty quickly, anywhere from seven to 14 days.

When should people get the booster? Are there advantages to waiting?

The current CDC recommendations are that if you have finished your primary series or received your last booster, within two months. So two months after you’ve received it. For people who have gotten infected with COVID, you can wait up to three months before you get your booster vaccine.

Is there advice for specific populations that differ from the general recommendations for adults? Is there different guidance for immunocompromised or high-risk people?

We know patients who are immunocompromised, they’re not going to build up … as robust an antibody response as somebody who has their immune system intact because they’re missing the pieces to build the antibodies up. There is a medication, or a monoclonal antibody, called Evusheld, and it’s what we’re recommending to our patients, where it’s actually the antibody that you get and it circulates for about six months. Those patients should still also be up to date on their vaccine status and be boosted because even though their immune system is suppressed and they may get infected with COVID, we are not seeing the disease severity as we were once before. However, you need to be up to date on your vaccine status. The other thing, too, is for patients who are immunocompromised, definitely keep a bunch of home tests on hand because if you test positive, we have treatment now, we have monoclonal antibodies; we have another medication called Paxlovid.

Are children eligible for the boosters?

Anybody under the age of 12 right now is not eligible. I believe Pfizer and Moderna have submitted their data to the FDA for review.

If you’re healthy and not immunocompromised, does it make sense to wait to get the booster?

You should get the booster as soon as you’re able to get the booster. The reason being is that we’re all busy, so if you’re at your doctor’s office or you’re at your local pharmacy or somewhere they’re giving it, don’t wait. If you’re eligible for the booster, go ahead and get it when you can. The reason why is it’s like the flu shot – we always say, “Get the flu shot at the first available time that you can.” Because … we’re all busy, we’re all going to forget.

Do you recommend getting the new booster and the flu shot at the same time?

There’s no reason why you can’t get both shots at the same time. You do have to be aware that there can be side effects because your body is developing an immune system. So common things that we saw in the early vaccine, or anybody who’s gotten a COVID vaccine, there’s going to be pain at the site, there’s going to be some tiredness and fatigue, but there’s no reason why you can’t get both shots.

Is there a reason to mix and match COVID shots? Should your booster match the kind of vaccine you had in your primary series or previous booster?

There’s no advantage to mixing and matching one COVID shot over the other. That being said, you can mix and match. If you’re at a place where, let’s say, you got Moderna and Pfizer is available, you can go ahead and get the Pfizer booster and vice versa.

Data from two adults in the same study who had a dramatic loss in antibodies but received a second booster showed that the second dose completely restored antibodies to protective levels.

“The message from our study is clear: If you have a dramatic loss of antibodies from the first booster, you definitely need a second booster to get antibodies back,” said Shan-Lu Liu, senior author the study and a virology professor in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences at The Ohio State University.

“It’s not surprising to us to find that we see this antibody decline – in general, vaccine-induced antibodies decline over time regardless of the virus, and especially if the virus changes over time in the way that SARS-CoV-2 has changed,” said Liu, also a professor in the Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity.

The study is published as a letter to the editor today (Sept. 7, 2022) in the New England Journal of Medicine. 

Researchers tested serum from 46 health care professionals who had received the initial two-dose mRNA vaccine course and, later, one booster shot between one and nine months before their antibody levels were tested against the parent SARS-CoV-2 virus and the most dominant omicron variants, including BA.5, among recent and current infections. The team also had access to samples from two vaccinated health care workers who had received the second booster shot.   

Using statistical modeling to account for the variable passage of time after the first boosters among the sample population, researchers estimated an average rate of decline in neutralizing antibody levels of nearly 18% against the parent virus, 19.5% against the BA.1 omicron variant, 18.4% against BA.2.12.1 and 19.6% against BA.4/5 every 30 days. Put another way: Neutralizing antibody titers were about 1.7 times higher one to three months after the first booster than the levels detected seven to nine months after the shot, dropping about 50% within 95-108 days. 

The declines were slightly less steep in vaccinated health care workers who had also had a COVID-19 infection, but the differences were not significant by statistical standards, said co-first author John Evans, a PhD candidate in Ohio State’s Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Program who works in Liu’s lab. 

In fact, the data reinforced the need for booster shots even after a COVID-19 infection: “People with infection got a small antibody benefit from having had the infection,” Evans said. “But overall, there was not much of a difference in the rate of decline across variants.” 

“We had two people who had an almost complete loss of neutralizing antibodies against the current predominant BA.5 strain at three to four months following the first booster vaccination but showed a complete recovery of antibody response in the blood after the second booster,” said Panke Qu, the leading co-first author of the study and a PhD candidate in the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Comparative Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program.

Previous work led by this research group showed the importance of a single booster to maintain protection against SARS-CoV-2, and omicron in particular. In a June 30 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, Liu’s lab reported that the BA.4/5 and BA.2.12.1 omicron subvariants showed substantial resistance to immunity generated by the two-vaccine course compared to the earlier BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants, but that a single booster shot provided sufficient neutralizing antibodies against the two later subvariants three to four weeks after the vaccination. The team also reported in May that a COVID-19 booster shot provided strong and broad antibody protection against the range of omicron sublineage variants that were in circulation at the time.

“Now we’re showing how long the booster can last, which is a very important topic because people have been talking about whether and when to get a second booster,” said Liu, also associate director of Ohio State’s Center for Retrovirus Research and a program co-director of the Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program in Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute. 

The findings on reduced antibody durability from a single booster come a week after the Food and Drug Administration announced approval of an updated booster containing components from the original SARS-CoV-2 strain and the BA.4/5 omicron subvariant. 

“Our data tells us the second booster is really important, but of course we could not say anything about the new formulation,” Liu said. “We’re continuing our studies to analyze the neutralizing antibody response and durability of a second booster, including the new formulation.”

The researchers conducted the cell-culture studies using pseudoviruses – a non-infectious viral core decorated with different SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins on the surface structured to match known mutations. The method used to detect neutralizing antibodies in the blood samples accounted for the varying concentrations of antibodies produced by individuals. 

Statistical modeling was performed by co-author Lianbo Yu, a biostatistician in biomedical informatics and the Center for Biostatistics in Ohio State’s College of Medicine. Qu conducted most of the experiments in the current study. Julia Faraone, a PhD candidate of the Liu lab in Ohio State’s MCDB graduate program, was co-first author of the paper. Other co-authors, all from Ohio State, include Yi-Min Zheng, Qin Ma, Claire Carlin, Gerard Lozanski, Linda Saif, Eugene Oltz and Richard Gumina. 

This work was supported by anonymous donor funds and grants from the National Cancer Institute, a Glenn Barber Fellowship from Ohio State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, the Robert J. Anthony Fund for Cardiovascular Research, the JB Cardiovascular Research Fund and the National Institutes of Health.

The city of Columbus and Franklin County are currently recommending the use of masks in all indoor spaces and any crowded outdoor situations, regardless of vaccination status. This aligns with CDC guidelines for communities with “high” COVID-19 levels, based on case levels, hospital bed use and hospital admissions.

The Lima and Mansfield campuses are also in counties currently with “high” COVID-19 community levels. As of July 29, the counties that include the Marion and Newark campuses are in the CDC’s “medium” community level, and CFAES Wooster is located in a “low” community level.

Individuals can check the guidelines for any county by using CDC’s COVID-19 County Check tool. Community levels are updated weekly.

People can choose to wear a mask at Ohio State at any time. The university’s mask-optional policy remains in place on our academic campuses, including classroom buildings and the Ohio Union. Masks are required in clinical health-care settings, child-care centers and COVID-19 testing locations. The Wexner Medical Center and Student Health Services have enhanced their mask requirements to include all areas of clinical buildings.

Please refer to Safe and Healthy Buckeyes for more information about Ohio State’s COVID-19 response and resources. Individuals should stay home if they are feeling sick and follow CDC guidelines if they test positive for COVID-19 or are exposed to someone with the virus.

The university’s COVID-19 response, including plans for the autumn semester, is always subject to change based on the state of the pandemic and guidance from federal, state and local authorities.

Based on these combined findings in rodent experiments, Ohio State University scientists envision one day incorporating a coronavirus antigen into the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine as a way to produce COVID-19 immunity in kids.

“We were pushing to make a vaccine for infants and children with the idea that if we could incorporate the mumps COVID vaccine into the MMR vaccine, you’d have protection against four pathogens – measles, mumps, rubella and SARS-CoV-2 – in a single immunization program,” said Jianrong Li, senior author of the study and a professor of virology in Ohio State’s Department of Veterinary Biosciences and Infectious Diseases Institute.

“If infants and children could develop immunity against COVID infection with the MMR vaccine, that would be great – no extra immunization needed.” 

The research is published today (July 27, 2022) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

To create the antigen that stimulates immunity in this vaccine candidate, researchers used a prefusion version of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein – the shape it is in on the surface of the virus before the virus infects a cell. The spike was locked into this form by changing six of its amino acids to prolines, an inflexible amino acid.

Experiments comparing the six-proline protein, 6P, to a spike protein with two prolines, 2P, showed that the 6P induces significantly more neutralizing antibodies in mice and golden Syrian hamsters than the 2P version. These are the first published results showing the 6P antigen is more effective than the 2P spike protein with which the existing mRNA and adenovirus-based COVID-19 vaccines were created, the researchers said.

“The 6P antigen is about 8 1/2 times better than 2P. That’s a big deal – that’s a lot more antibody production, which may become important since it looks like the virus is going to keep on evolving,” said study co-author Mark Peeples, professor of pediatrics at Ohio State and a researcher at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus. 

Li, in collaboration with Peeples and Veterinary Biosciences Professor Stefan Niewiesk, previously led development of a measles-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, but found that the mumps virus genome is even more amenable than measles to insertion of the spike protein gene. The study used a mumps vaccine strain that has been a component of the current MMR vaccine used in children since the 1960s. Once the 6P spike protein gene is inserted into the genome, the recombinant mumps virus replicates more slowly but is genetically stable and grows well in a World Health Organization-approved cell line for vaccine production. 

In animals, the live attenuated mumps vaccine modified in this way generated high levels of the 6P protein antigen, which triggered a strong immune response. 

Researchers compared the 6P spike protein vaccine candidate’s effectiveness to a 2P version in mumps, and to mumps without the spike protein, in mice engineered to be highly susceptible to mumps infection and in golden Syrian hamsters, a standard animal model for SARS-CoV-2 studies. In all experiments, the 6P vaccine produced the best results: higher concentrations of neutralizing antibodies after vaccination and, after introduction of a SARS-CoV-2 virus challenge a few weeks later, protection from lung damage and significantly fewer viral particles in the lungs and nasal cavity.

“We didn’t test the omicron variant for this paper, but the 6P vaccine induced neutralizing antibodies and T cell activity against several variants of concern and offered complete protection from disease caused by the parent SARS-CoV-2 virus and the delta variant,” Li said. “That’s very important and suggests that if we use the 6P spike protein for vaccine protection in the future, we can enhance a vaccine’s ability to protect humans.” 

In addition, the Li laboratory developed a rapid recombination system that enables the insertion of any antigen into a mumps or measles virus in a week. “With this technique, the MMR vaccine can be rapidly updated to protect against new SARS-CoV-2 variants as they emerge,” said study first author Yuexiu Zhang, a major contributor to this technology in Li’s lab. 

Researchers vaccinated study animals by both injections and by drops into the nose, an attractive needle-free option that, the results suggested, provides superior protection against the coronavirus by inducing not only system-wide antibodies, but a broad response of specialized antibodies called IgA on mucosal surfaces of the airways as well, Li said. 

“Like most of the injected vaccines, current mRNA and adenovirus-based COVID-19 vaccines primarily induce antibodies in the bloodstream. Unfortunately, antibodies in the bloodstream do not protect the mucosal site of the airways very well, which is the initial site of infection with SARS-CoV-2. In contrast to injected vaccines, our new intranasal vaccine may be the next generation of COVID-19 vaccine because it can induce robust IgA, which directly neutralizes the SARS-CoV-2 in the nose and airways tissues,” said co-author Prosper Boyaka, professor of mucosal immunology and chair of veterinary biosciences at Ohio State.

Added Peeples, “Having those antibodies on the surface of the airways could be a real advantage compared to hoping that some of the antibodies in the bloodstream will end up in the respiratory tract. 

The study findings also suggest that existing immunity to mumps from vaccination or previous infection may slow the initial stimulation of antibodies by the mumps-based COVID-19 vaccine, but does not prevent a strong, protective antibody response. 

“That finding suggests this candidate can be used not only in infants, but also in adults who have mumps antibodies,” Li said. 

The team began work on this mumps-based vaccine almost a year ago, long before the June 17 federal approval of COVID-19 vaccines for children 6 months or older. Given the MMR’s 50-plus-year history as a safe childhood vaccine, the scientists are now evaluating ways to modify the MMR with coronavirus antigens from multiple variants.

This study was supported by startup fund and bridge funding from Ohio State’s Department of Veterinary Biosciences and College of Veterinary Medicine, a seed grant from Nationwide Children’s Hospital and grants from the National Institutes of Health. Jason McLellan of the University of Texas at Austin provided the stabilized spike genes for this study.

Additional co-authors include Mijia Lu, Eunsoo Kim, Mohamed Shamseldin, Michelle Chamblee, Jesse Hall, Adam Kenny, Xueya Liang, Jacob Yount and Purnima Dubey of Ohio State; Mahesh K C, Piyush Dravid, Sheetal Trivedi, Supranee Chaiwatpongsakorn, Satyapramod Srinivasa Murthy, Himanshu Sharma and Amit Kapoor of Nationwide Children’s Hospital; and Chengjin Ye, Jun-Gyu Park and Luis Martinez-Sobrido of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute.

The Ohio State Innovation Foundation and the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital have filed a provisional patent application for the mumps virus-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

These fears can have such a hold on some people that they may get a flu shot one year, but skip it when the next season comes around, the survey results showed.

The pandemic enabled an evaluation of COVID-19 vaccine intention and uptake as well. Responses suggested that the combination of vaccine-related fears and feeling dizzy and lightheaded while getting a flu shot led some people to say they weren’t likely to get the COVID vaccine – and then not get it.

While researchers already knew these fears and symptoms exist, this study showing their impact on outcomes points to the need for interventions that address fear and potential dizziness at the time of vaccination – which hasn’t been studied very much, said study author Jennifer Kowalsky, assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University Newark campus.

“Interventions could be developed that help people face fears – people who want to get vaccinated but have fears holding them back,” Kowalsky said. “Beyond targeting fears, we could also improve the experience when the person is getting vaccinated to reduce the risk and severity of symptoms.”

The study was published recently in the journal Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being.

There is one technique recommended by the World Health Organization that could help people sustain oxygen flow to the brain – which may help fend off feelings of lightheadedness – when they’re getting a vaccine, Kowalsky noted. Called applied muscle tension, it involves crossing your legs and repeatedly tightening core and lower body muscles to briefly raise blood pressure. A 2018 study led by Kowalsky found this practice can reduce feelings of lightheadedness and dizziness (called vasovagal symptoms) with people highly fearful of blood and needles undergoing a simulated blood draw. She plans to further evaluate the technique’s effectiveness in vaccine settings. 

For the current study, Kowalsky recruited participants who were at least 18 years old and living in the United States through Amazon Mechanical Turk. She conducted three surveys over the course of almost two years, first asking 2,508 participants about the existence and severity of vaccine- and blood draw-related related fears in October 2019. 

In May and June 2020, she received responses from 1,077 of those participants (591 who had not gotten the most recent flu shot and 486 who had) about the degree of any feelings of faintness, dizziness, weakness and lightheadedness they experienced while getting their most recent flu shot. This survey also asked participants about their intention to get a flu vaccine the following season and a COVID-19 vaccine when it became available. In a final survey in June and July 2021, 643 remaining participants reported on whether they had received a flu and COVID-19 vaccine. 

Results showed that a younger age was linked to greater vaccine-related fears and more symptoms of dizziness and lightheadedness during and after a flu shot. And no matter what it was about vaccination that scared people – needles, pain, feeling faint or possible side effects – a higher level of overall fear was associated with more intense symptoms of dizziness or lightheadedness. 

“These symptoms have health and safety implications, because they increase the risk of falling,” Kowalsky said. “For clinicians, it’s relevant to have this in mind, that fear can predict those reactions. If someone shares they are feeling fearful, keeping a close eye on them is important because they may be at risk for those feelings of dizziness or lightheadedness.” 

A more detailed analysis of flu shot outcomes showed that having vaccine-related fears lowered intentions to get vaccinated, which in turn led to a decision not to get a shot – in some cases, even those who were vaccinated in the 2019-20 season opted out during the 2020-21 flu season.

“We should not assume that a person who has been vaccinated in the past will automatically get vaccinated again,” Kowalsky said. 

When it came to coronavirus vaccine decisions, a combination of fear and feelings of dizziness and lightheadedness with a 2019-20 flu shot contributed to lower uptake of the COVID-19 shots when they did become available, the analysis found. 

As a specialist in prosocial health behavior, or doing things that benefit the health of others, Kowalsky is extending her research program on fear and vasovagal symptoms’ influence on blood donation to vaccination, which has dropped globally since 2020 despite being one of the world’s most successful public health interventions. 

“People who are afraid to have blood drawn still give blood, and people who are afraid of vaccines still get vaccinated,” she said. “But knowing some don’t go through with getting a subsequent shot creates intervention opportunities to address the effect of fear on vaccine adopters. Their experience matters.”

This work was supported by an Ohio State University internal seed grant.

Scientists who have long studied this molecule’s functions in bacterial infections traced development of extensive lung damage in infected mice to heightened levels of the enzyme triggered by the invading SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Versions of this enzyme exist and have similar functions in both mice and humans – they’re called caspase 11 and caspase 4, respectively. After finding that the molecule is an attractive therapeutic target, researchers are exploring compounds that could safely and effectively block its activation.

“The whole idea is if this molecule is not there, the mouse will do better, which means if you target this molecule, then humans should do better,” said co-senior study author Amal Amer, professor of microbial infection and immunity in The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

The research was published online recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Amer teamed with Ohio State flu and COVID virologist Jacob Yount to look into caspase 11’s role in coronavirus infection. Their labs ran a number of experiments comparing COVID infection outcomes in normal mice and mice genetically engineered so they don’t produce the enzyme.

“From the first experiment, we saw caspase 11 knockout mice had less severe infections and started to recover after only a couple of days,” said Yount, associate professor of microbial infection and immunity and co-senior author of the study.

Previous research has shown that caspase 11 in mice has many of the same immune-response functions as caspase 4 in humans. In both species, the enzyme is produced upon the onset of an infection.

This study supports the notion that what was seen in the mice has relevance to humans: The researchers analyzed nationally available COVID-19 patient data and found that caspase 4 was highly expressed in people hospitalized in the ICU – linking its presence to severe disease. Lung tissue samples from COVID patients also showed high activation of the molecule.

The sickest COVID-19 patients develop acute respiratory distress syndrome resulting from the combination of high levels of pro-inflammatory proteins called cytokines, fluid accumulation in air sacs that seeps into lung tissue and blood clots, or thrombosis, caused by damage to cells lining vessel walls. 

In a series of experiments, the research team found that inhibiting caspase 11 reduced the intensity of multiple effects. They used a version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that other scientists have engineered specifically to cause disease in mice. (The human coronavirus does not make mice sick.)

Among the most striking findings: lower recruitment and inflammatory priming of first-responder cells called neutrophils, white blood cells whose job is to heal wounds and clear away infection – they are important, but have a tendency to perpetuate inflammation that damages tissue and contributes to blood clot formation. A technique used to image the tiniest capillaries in mouse lungs also showed that while the blood vessels in the lungs of normal mice infected with the virus were spotted with clots, the capillaries of mice lacking caspase 11 remained free of thrombosis.

“What happens in the lung with COVID can be worse than with other infections. It’s amazing that caspase 11 is controlling many of those unique aspects of COVID-19 pathology,” Yount said.

Amer said this research has opened up new ways of thinking about the enzyme’s possible role in a host of diseases. Its role in exacerbating lung damage in COVID-19 was an unexpected finding – the activation of caspase 11 and caspase 4 in bacterial infections has a protective function, setting up immune cells to kill bacterial pathogens.

Caspase 11 is known to need the help of a specific protein called gasdermin-D to ward off bacterial infections, but this work showed the enzyme intensified lung damage in COVID-19 infection without making use of gasdermin-D. The link to blood clotting also suggests caspase 11’s effects in the presence of infection probably don’t stop with the lungs, and may affect disease conditions in the heart, brain and elsewhere in the body.

“We discovered caspase 11 has other pathways, and we are looking at the function of caspase 11 in all of the types of cells that cause thrombosis,” she said.

In the meantime, Amer’s lab is already testing a caspase 11 blocker that she believes has potential to become a human drug candidate.

“This molecule has been found to inhibit thrombosis, inflammation and secretion of cytokines, and it also inhibits caspase 11,” she said. “No one had put together that inhibition of caspase 11 has an effect on these downstream problems. This caspase inhibitor may save the day.”

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the American Lung Association, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and Ohio State’s Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity, and an Ohio State Distinguished University Fellowship. 

Ohio State co-authors include Mostafa Eltobgy, Ashley Zani, Adam Kenney, Shady Estfanous, Eunsoo Kim, Asmaa Badr, Cierra Carafice, Kylene Daily, Owen Whitham, Maciej Pietrzak, Amy Webb, Jeffrey Kawahara, Adrian Eddy, Parker Denz, Mijia Lu, Mahesh KC, Mark Peeples, Jianrong Li, Jian Zhu, Richard Robinson, Oscar Rosas Gavrilin, Xiaoli Zhang, Eugene Oltz, Andrea Tedeschi, Emily Hemann, Shahid Nimjee, Prosper Boyaka and Estelle Cormet-Boyaka. Researchers from the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbia University, Emory University and Nile University in Egypt also co-authored the study. 

The small Ohio State University study also found that some people with the earliest COVID-19 infections were continuing to experience loss of these senses months later and didn’t even realize it.

In participants with active infections during the delta surge, a majority (22 of 25) had been vaccinated. Objective screenings found that 100% were experiencing a diminished or lost sense of smell – but only 54.5% self-reported any problem with odor detection.

“We’re getting this quick communication out as an early warning. We need to continue to take a closer look at COVID infection’s impact on smell and taste,” said Dr. Kai Zhao, associate professor of otolaryngology in Ohio State’s College of Medicine and senior author of the study. “Even if COVID doesn’t cause death or hospitalization, it can have long-lasting effects on some of our sensory functions.

“A lot of people are potentially suffering, which is probably not appreciated by society.”

The study is published in the journal Med.

Data for this study emerged from a project the researchers began in early 2021 to test the effectiveness of using hard candy as a screening tool for the loss of taste and smell in populations at risk for exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

As part of that work, the team used an existing objective screening tool to collect sensory function data from 123 never-infected control participants and 65 people who had previous or active COVID-19 infections. During the delta surge, the researchers became alarmed by what they found.

“At that time, there were a lot of speculations about whether smell loss is associated with the delta variant and whether the vaccine could protect against these symptoms. So we decided to do this interim data analysis,” Zhao said.

In addition, about three-fourths of participants whose mostly mild COVID infections had occurred before delta’s dominance reported no ongoing smell and taste losses – however, over half of those participants were found by the objective screening, conducted between 102 and 785 days after their infection diagnosis, to have a loss of smell. 

“Many people who had COVID in the past, probably with the original variants of the virus,  underwent some degree of smell loss, even if they didn’t think they did,” said co-author Susan Travers, professor of biosciences in Ohio State’s College of Dentistry. “This suggests the long-term impact on sensory function isn’t captured by self-reporting.”

Beyond these silent smell and taste losses, there were also people who reported that they hadn’t regained taste or smell function for longer than six months, said first author Kym Man, a graduate student in food science and technology. 

“We’re still collecting data on these long haulers, some of whom have been experiencing smell and taste loss for over a year,” she said. 

Effects on the senses include diminished or complete loss of smell and/or taste, disordered smell and/or taste and, least common, smelling odors that are not present at all. 

The sensory function screenings were conducted with a National Institutes of Health tool consisting of a 9-item scratch-and-sniff odor identifier and an intensity rating of bitterness in a sip of quinine. The odor-detection results were adjusted for age – in general, we lose some sensitivity to smell as we get older, Zhao said. 

Beyond affecting the quality of life, the loss of smell and taste has health ramifications that include negative effects on nutrition intake and a reduced ability to detect danger – such as a fire or spoiled food.

“The disease’s impact on smell and taste is underreported. This is a public health concern that there may potentially be some broader impacts of COVID-19 that we don’t realize are there,” Zhao said. 

Since submitting this article for publication in January 2022, the team has been consistently collecting data related to sensory loss and is paying particular attention to long haulers.

“There’s a substantial number of these people, and we want to characterize how long smell and/or taste loss lasts,” said co-author Christopher Simons, associate professor of food science and technology. “We’d also like to enroll them in the surveillance component of the candy screening study to see if we can track their recovery over time as well.” 

People interested in more information on the team’s ongoing study of hard candy’s effectiveness as a screening and surveillance tool can contact the researchers by emailing COVIDCandyTest@osu.edu. 

This work was supported by a grant from the National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Aayah Mohamed-Osman was also a co-author on the paper.

Researchers tested neutralizing antibody levels against the BA.2 and BA.3 omicron variants and deltacron, a recombinant variant created by the exchange of genetic material between delta and omicron.

Results showed that a third mRNA vaccine dose was required to generate a high enough concentration of antibodies to neutralize BA.2 and deltacron, as well as other sublineage omicron variants, including the original, known as BA.1, and BA.1.1. Antibodies produced by just the two-dose series of mRNA vaccines were enough to neutralize BA.3 – a sign this variant is not likely to produce a new surge of omicron infections, researchers say.

These findings were published today (May 18, 2022) in a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), and in an article published in Cell Host & Microbe on April 25, by a group of Ohio State University researchers.

“Three doses is better for everything,” said Shan-Lu Liu, the senior author of both studies and a virology professor in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences at Ohio State.

Recent national data have suggested that the BA.2 variant constitutes about 90% of COVID-19 cases in the United States.

“People have been asking about the recombinant deltacron and also BA.3, and now we have an answer. And it’s good news,” said Liu, also associate director of the university’s Center for Retrovirus Research and a program co-director of the Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program in Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute.

“Based on the neutralization pattern, one booster shot can protect against BA.2 and deltacron, and we do not suspect that BA.3 will become predominant because it’s sensitive to neutralization by even two doses.”

In the study published in NEJM, researchers tested antibody levels in serum from 10 health care professionals at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center. After two vaccine doses, on average, antibody levels were 3.3-fold and 44.7-fold lower against BA.3 and deltacron, respectively, than those that neutralized the parent SARS-CoV-2 virus. After the booster, antibody levels were much higher against all variants tested, and the same antibody level reductions were 2.9-fold and 13.3-fold – showing a dramatic improvement in protection, particularly against deltacron.

Next examining blood samples from 18 patients in the ICU during the delta wave of the pandemic, the researchers found comparable levels of antibodies against the parent virus and BA.3, but 137.8-fold lower concentrations against deltacron compared to the parent virus. Blood samples from 31 hospitalized non-ICU patients during the omicron surge showed much better antibody protection against deltacron.

“The deltacron spike protein is structured similarly to other omicron variants, so people infected with omicron seem to have pretty good protection against deltacron. But people infected with delta had pretty weak protection against deltacron,” said John Evans, a PhD candidate in Ohio State’s Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Program who works in Liu’s lab, and the first author of the new studies. “However, compared to the booster, infection by omicron provides much less protection against deltacron.”

The Cell Host & Microbe study tested antibody levels in serum from 48 health care professionals after their second mRNA vaccine dose and from 19 after their third mRNA vaccine doses, as well as 31 COVID-19 patients hospitalized during the omicron surge.

“For two vaccine doses, health care workers had very weak neutralizing antibody concentrations against the omicron variants, but after the booster it evened out,” Evans said. “The neutralizing antibody levels were still lower against omicron compared to the parental virus, but much more comparable across variants and much higher. So the booster provides much stronger protection and much broader protection.”

Patients with delta or omicron infection were similarly protected against their respective infectious variants, and a vaccine dose on top of infection improved protection. Among all of the health care professionals and infected patients studied, people who had received three vaccine doses had the broadest and strongest antibody protection overall.

The researchers conducted the cell-culture studies using pseudoviruses – a non-infectious viral core decorated with different SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins on the surface structured to match known mutations. The method used to detect neutralizing antibodies in the blood samples accounted for the varying concentrations of antibodies produced by individuals.

Liu and colleagues have completed additional tests of neutralizing antibody responses to the BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 omicron sublineages, which are growing in dominance among newly reported cases. In a paper posted May 17 on the bioRxiv preprint server (and published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 15), they described similar findings: A booster provided sufficient antibody concentrations against these three additional omicron subvariants, though to a lower extent than protection seen for BA.1 and BA.2, and previous omicron infection did not offer effective antibody protection against these variants. 

Liu’s lab is continuing this work, investigating how long antibody protection from the third booster shot lasts. Waning antibody levels seen in blood samples collected the furthest out from the third dose suggest there is a limit to the first booster’s durability, Liu said. 

“The virus is evolving, which is typical for all RNA viruses, and what we have seen is not surprising at all,” Liu said. “Especially when we have lots of variants in the population, anything can happen, including recombination between them. That’s why we still need to be very cautious. The best preparation is to get the second booster.”

This work was supported by anonymous donor funds, grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the Glenn Barber Fellowship from Ohio State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, the National Cancer Institute and the Robert J. Anthony Fund for Cardiovascular Research. Liu also acknowledged the generosity of the health professionals and patients who participated in the studies.

Additional co-authors on both papers include Cong Zeng, Panke Qu and Yi-Min Zheng of the Center for Retrovirus Research; Linda Saif of Ohio State’s Center for Food Animal Health; and Claire Carlin, Joseph Bednash, Gerard Lozanski, Rama Mallampalli, Eugene Oltz, Peter Mohler and Richard Gumina of Ohio State’s College of Medicine. Virus researchers Julia Faraone, Xue Zou and Kai Xu of Ohio State and Tongqing Zhou of the NIH were co-authors on the Cell Host & Microbe paper and the preprint.

While the university continues to require that all students, faculty and staff be vaccinated against COVID-19, Ohio State will be shifting to a voluntary testing program for the summer starting on Monday, May 9. Masks remain optional in most indoor spaces.

The university’s COVID-19 response is always subject to change. Throughout the pandemic, Ohio State has followed guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ohio Department of Health as well as federal, state and local policy.

The Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website is regularly updated to reflect current guidance.

The following guidance will be in place for the start of summer 2022:

COVID-19 testing

As of Monday, May 9, the university will be suspending its required testing program for asymptomatic individuals.

During spring semester 2022, students were required to test weekly if they lived in university residence halls; were members of social fraternities or sororities; or received exemptions from the university’s vaccination requirement. Faculty and staff who received exemptions were also required to test. Starting Monday, individuals are not required to test.

The university encourages students, faculty and staff to have COVID-19 tests on hand in case they are needed. The federal covid.gov website provides information about ordering free at-home tests as well as other testing resources. The Wexner Medical Center COVID testing site also provides information and resources.

Other testing updates:

• For the summer, PCR testing for asymptomatic individuals will continue to be available on the Columbus campus at the Biomedical Research Tower, 460 W 12th Ave. The testing center at Jesse Owens North will close after Friday, May 6. For information about availability and how to schedule appointments, see the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes testing page.
• Antigen tests are available at various locations on all campuses while supplies last.
• Because employees are no longer required to test based on their exemption status or non-compliance with the vaccination requirement, the university will no longer be providing Vault tests to faculty and staff who currently receive them.

While routine weekly testing will no longer be required, individuals may be required to complete a test to be released from isolation or quarantine after a positive COVID test or exposure.

Vaccination

Ohio State has maintained a vaccination rate exceeding 93% since establishing a vaccination requirement, and the university strongly encourages students, faculty and staff to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance about booster shots.

Students and employees must either complete their primary vaccination series or receive an exemption to complete the vaccination requirement. Students who are starting at Ohio State this fall must complete the requirement by May 31 to fully participate in orientation and schedule in-person courses. Students who do not complete the vaccination requirement may not take courses with in-person components.

Booster shots, which are under emergency use authorization from U.S. Food and Drug Administration, are currently voluntary. Students, faculty and staff are encouraged to share their booster information through the university’s reporting tools to help guide the university’s ongoing response to the pandemic.

Masks

Masks are optional in most indoor spaces on Ohio State University campuses, with the exception of clinical health-care settings and child-care centers. The mask-optional policy applies to locations including classrooms, residence halls, dining facilities, offices, the Ohio Union and public transportation. While masks are not required in these settings, individuals are welcome to wear them. Masks are available at various university locations.

Masks remain a requirement:

• In clinical settings where patient interactions occur – including at the Wexner Medical Center, the Wilce Student Health Center and other health care clinics. This includes corridors, lobbies and nursing stations of the hospital and ambulatory clinics. Please see the Wexner Medical Center website for detailed information about its mask policy.
• At the COVID-19 testing center in the Biomedical Research Tower.
• In child-care centers, including the Nisonger Center at the Wexner Medical Center.

Symptoms or Illness

Individuals should stay home if they are feeling sick and follow CDC guidelines if they test positive for COVID-19 or are exposed to someone with the virus. These guidelines include wearing a mask for at least 10 days.

The deadline for the final drawing is 11:59 p.m. Sunday. Students, faculty and staff can enter through the Buckeye Booster Drawing webpage if they have received and reported their COVID-19 vaccination booster shot.

Winners to date have come from across the university community:

• Students or employees have been selected from all six Ohio State campuses: Columbus, Lima, Mansfield, Marion, Newark and Wooster.
• Among students, 251 undergraduate, 75 graduate and 24 professional students have won a gift card.
• Employees winners have come from a diverse group of colleges, campus, units and the Wexner Medical Center.

To date, more than 26,000 students, faculty and staff have reported information about their booster shots, more than 26% of the university community.

To participate in the final Buckeye Booster Drawing, students, faculty and staff must:

1. Receive the COVID-19 booster dose. Individuals are eligible five months after completing a two-dose primary vaccine series or two months after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Boosters are available at Student Health Services, through the Wexner Medical Center and locations around the state.
2. Submit your booster information to the university. Students should report through My BuckMD. Employees should report through the Employee Health Record.
3. Complete the Buckeye Booster Drawing entry form.

The deadline to enter for the final drawing is Sunday, April 3 at 11:59:59 p.m. EDT. Rules and other information are available on the Buckeye Booster Drawing webpage.

Since March 2020, Buckeye Paws has made mental health resources more accessible at the Wexner Medical Center and across the health sciences community. Volunteers and their trained canine companions bring comfort and emotional support directly to employees who wish to interact with the dogs.

“These are stressful times, and now all Buckeye students, faculty and staff can request a visit from Ohio State-affiliated volunteers and their trained canine companions,” Johnson said in the video.

You can visit the Buckeye Paws website for more information and to request a visit.

A well-deserved spring break begins next week, said Johnson, who urged students to take safety steps before leaving to help protect their homes. This includes taking valuable items, including IDs and credit cards, and using devices such as window and door alarms, which are available for free at the Ohio Union.

Johnson also encouraged students, faculty and staff who are traveling to pick up at-home antigen COVID-19 tests before they leave. These tests should be taken in the 48 hours before returning to campus, and positive test results should be reported to the university at go.osu.edu/SelfReportTest.

Tests are available at Jesse Owens North, the Ohio Union and Younkin Success Center.

While the university continues to require masks in clinical health care settings (including at the Wexner Medical Center), COVID-19 testing locations, child care centers and on public transportation, Ohio State will be lifting indoor mask requirements in its academic and general-purpose buildings.

For most spaces, the updated masking policy will take effect at 6 p.m. on March 11, with the start of the university’s spring break. Public events, such as those that take place at the Schottenstein Center and the Covelli Center, are mask optional, effective immediately.

Throughout the pandemic, the university has followed guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ohio Department of Health as well as federal, state and local policy. Ohio State’s updated masking policy reflects improving COVID-19 case counts after the Omicron surge, the high vaccination rate of the university community and the lifting of mask requirements in many jurisdictions, including the city of Columbus this week.

In settings where masks are optional, students, faculty, staff and visitors can decide on an individual basis whether or not they will continue to wear a mask – unless they are Wexner Medical Center employees who received an exemption from the COVID-19 vaccination requirement. Those employees must wear a mask inside any medical center facility. The university continues to distribute masks at various locations on campus.

More than 93% of university community members are vaccinated, and 25% have reported that they have received a booster shot to enhance their protection against COVID-19. The positivity rate among those in Ohio State’s COVID-19 testing program has steadily improved throughout the semester. As of March 6, the seven-day average positivity rate was 0.6%, down from 8.5% on Jan. 19. 

Ohio State continues to urge all members of the community to take necessary precautions against COVID-19, including receiving all vaccination and booster shots for which they are eligible. Through the first week of April, students, faculty and staff who report their booster shots to the university are eligible for prizes in the Buckeye Booster Drawing.

The university will continue to adjust COVID-19 measures as appropriate based on science as well as guidance from national, state and local agencies.

For now, the university will maintain its COVID-19 surveillance testing program, which includes weekly testing of students in university housing, in social fraternities and sororities, and with approved exemptions to the university’s vaccination requirement. Employees with approved exemptions are also required to test weekly.

Individuals should stay home if they are feeling sick and follow CDC guidelines if they test positive for COVID-19 or are exposed to someone with the virus. These guidelines include wearing a mask for at least 10 days.

Specifics of the university’s mask policy are posted on the Personal Safety Practices page of the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website. Under the updated policy, masks must continue to be worn indoors in the following settings:

• In clinical settings where patient interactions occur – including at the Wexner Medical Center, the Wilce Student Health Center and other health care clinics. This includes corridors, lobbies and nursing stations of the hospital and ambulatory clinics.
• At COVID-19 testing centers, including Jesse Owens North.
• In child care centers, including the Nisonger Center at the Wexner Medical Center.
• And on transportation, including CABS and shuttle buses.

Philip Gleissner, assistant professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, said he will donate his winnings to humanitarian aid in Ukraine.

“I am happy to help other people identify organizations they can support,” he said.

Gleissner chose to receive a booster to protect himself, his loved ones and his community. Laura Baglereau, associate instructional designer in the Office of Technology and Digital Innovation, had specific loved ones in mind.

“My toddler can’t be vaccinated yet, so both my husband and I got boosters to better protect our child until the vaccine is available for the under-5 age group,” she said. “We also interact with my 96-year-old grandma a lot and help take care of her. She’s gotten her booster too, and we know that being boosted adds a layer of protection for her as well.”

The Buckeye Booster Drawing runs weekly through early April (the university will pause the drawing for spring break, which takes place March 14-18). To participate, students, faculty and staff must complete these steps:

1. Receive the COVID-19 booster dose. Individuals are eligible five months after completing a two-dose primary vaccine series or two months after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Boosters are available at Student Health Services, through the Wexner Medical Center and locations around the State.
2. Submit your booster information to the university if you have not already done so. Students should report through My BuckMD. Employees should report through the Employee Health Record.
3. Enter the drawing by completing this form.

The deadline to enter for the next drawing is Sunday, March 6 at 11:59:59 p.m. EDT. Rules and other information are available on the Buckeye Booster Drawing webpage.

Surveillance camera installation begins this week at the Ohio Union garages, and the university expects to have license plate reader cameras installed near the garages by the end of the week, Johnson said.

Working in tandem with the City of Columbus, there are already 30 license plate reader cameras in the University District, part of 60 expected for a new pilot program in the area in which much of the Buckeye community lives.

“We continue to closely monitor crime on and around campus and have increased police and security patrols on campus and in parking lots and garages,” Johnson said in the video. “The university and City of Columbus are in regular communication about crime and crime trends.”

Johnson recently shared the results of an outside, comprehensive review of the university’s expanded approach to off-campus safety. One of the recommendations was to install permanent, fixed lighting to replace the 20 mobile locations that dot the off-campus area. So far, the city has upgraded six of these with permanent LED fixtures, with more to come.  

The report, from Security Risk Management Consultants, also noted the university’s work in offering free personal safety devices to students since last fall. These safety devices emit a piercing, loud noise and light up when activated, bringing immediate attention to the user. 

The safety devices will now be available to all faculty and staff, including at the Wexner Medical Center, Johnson announced. More details on how to get them are forthcoming.

The president also encouraged students who qualify and have not already received a COVID-19 booster to get one before spring break. Boosters are now available at the student health center on the Columbus campus.

Lastly, Johnson acknowledged that cities across the country have removed mask requirements after the CDC’s updated mask guidance, and that the City of Columbus could soon follow. Ohio State leadership will continue to closely monitor the situation as protocols are considered.

The same Ohio State University lab found in a previous study, posted on the preprint server bioRxiv, that a third COVID-19 mRNA vaccine booster shot did produce effective levels of neutralizing antibodies against omicron. This study has not yet been peer-reviewed.

“Our new work shows that two doses of mRNA vaccine do not offer protection against omicron, and even having a breakthrough infection on top of vaccine does not help much. But our earlier study showed that the booster can really rescue the shortcomings of the two doses,” said Shan-Lu Liu, the senior author of both studies and a virology professor in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences at Ohio State.

The new research is published online as a First Release paper in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The researchers examined antibodies in serum samples from 48 health care professionals with experimental versions of the parent virus and the alpha, beta, delta and omicron variants. Serum samples were collected pre-vaccination, three to four weeks after a first vaccine dose, three to four weeks after a second vaccine dose and six months after the second vaccine.

“There was a substantial increase in neutralizing antibodies after the second dose against every variant except the omicron variant,” said first study author John Evans, a PhD student in Ohio State’s Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Program who works in Liu’s lab. “From the second dose to six months later, there was an at least five-fold drop in immunity, even against the parent virus.”

Neutralizing antibodies that block viral particles’ entry into host cells are considered the gold standard of protection against COVID-19 infection.

Twelve of the samples came from people suspected to have had a COVID-19 infection – at time points ranging from before vaccination to after two vaccine doses – based on a different kind of antibody testing. And though the findings suggested a breakthrough COVID-19 infection on top of vaccination increased immunity against most versions of the virus, antibodies from only one individual with previous infection reached levels that could put up a reasonable fight against omicron.

“Overall, nobody in this study had good immunity against omicron,” said Liu, also an investigator in the university’s Center for Retrovirus Research and a program co-director of the Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program in Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute.

The experimental viruses were what are called pseudoviruses – a non-infectious viral core decorated with different SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins on the surface structured to match known mutations in the variants studied.

The researchers used a special method to detect neutralizing antibodies in the health professionals’ blood samples to account for the varying levels of antibodies produced by individuals.

“Individuals did respond very differently to the first dose, and the same was true for the second dose,” Liu said.

Results also showed that people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine produced about two-fold lower levels of neutralizing antibodies than those who received the Moderna vaccine. Men also had significantly higher antibody levels compared to women against all variants over the post-vaccination time points.

Liu said the dramatic reduction in immunity six months after two vaccine doses and the earlier paper’s finding that a booster protects against omicron highlight how important a third shot is to avoiding infection.

“After the second vaccine dose, the neutralizing antibodies effective against omicron dropped 23-fold, but with a booster shot, immunity dropped only three- to four-fold – which is comparable to booster effectiveness previously reported against the delta variant,” he said. “Similar observations have been made by other labs.”

Additional co-authors of the Science Translational Medicine study, all from Ohio State, include Cong Zeng, Claire Carlin, Gerard Lozanski, Linda Saif, Eugene Oltz and Richard Gumina. Additional co-authors on the bioRxiv preprint include Panke Qu, Julia Faraone, Yi-Min Zheng, Joseph S. Bednash, Rama Mallampalli, Peter Mohler and Kai Xu of Ohio State and Tongqing Zhou from NIH.

This work was supported by anonymous donor funds, grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Glenn Barber Fellowship from Ohio State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, the National Cancer Institute and the Robert J. Anthony Fund for Cardiovascular Research.

Another 100 students, faculty and staff won $100 gift cards this week in the second round of the drawing, bringing the total number of winners to 200. Those who enter the Buckeye Booster Drawing early have the most chances to win prizes. Individuals are eligible to win one time in any of the remaining drawings once they report their booster vaccination status.

The Buckeye Booster Drawing runs weekly through early April (the university will pause the drawing for spring break in March). To participate, students, faculty and staff must complete these steps:

1. Receive the COVID-19 booster dose. Individuals are eligible five months after completing a two-dose primary vaccine series or two months after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
2. Submit your booster information to the university if you have not already done so. Students should report through My BuckMD. Employees should report through the Employee Health Record.
3. Enter the drawing by completing this form.

Rules and other information are available on the Buckeye Booster Drawing webpage.

The university strongly encourages everyone who can receive a booster to do so as soon as they are eligible, because the shots have been proven to reduce the chances of serious illness. Information about COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, which are safe and available at no cost, is available on the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website.

The first 100 winners of the Buckeye Booster Drawing were announced today (Feb. 10) after being randomly selected from more than 13,000 people who submitted entries before the first drawing. The incentive program, which will provide a total of 100 prizes per week through early April, is open to all Ohio State students, faculty and staff who have received their COVID-19 booster shots.

Dylan Page, a fourth-year political science and public policy analysis major, said he took time out of his busy schedule to get his booster shot because he knows from personal experience how health decisions can help protect others.

“My father is a colon cancer survivor, and I am very close with my grandparents and great-grandparents,” he said. “In fact, my great Nonna, who lives about an hour south of campus, turns 92 this summer! Getting the booster wasn’t just a personal decision or impact – it impacts my family and their safety [and] my friends on campus who don’t have strong immune systems or have preexisting conditions. Taking 10 minutes out of your day to do something like that is one of the most selfless and caring things Americans can do right now.”

Page said he was excited when he found out he was one of the winners of the booster drawing, but he was motivated to get the shot for other reasons.

“As a Buckeye, we always strive to put our community first and advocate for the well-being of all, and the booster program incentivizes Buckeyes to take that extra step to protect our community,” he said. “I am thankful for President Johnson’s leadership on this initiative.”

The university strongly encourages everyone who can receive a booster to do so as soon as they are eligible, because the shots have been proven to reduce the chances of serious illness. Information about COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, which are safe and available at no cost, is available on the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website.

The winners from this week’s drawing represent the diversity of the university community. The 50 student winners included undergraduates, graduates and professional students from at least three Ohio State campuses. The 50 faculty and staff winners were spread among at least seven colleges, seven university units and the Wexner Medical Center.

Gift card winner Vicki Wysocki, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, said she received her booster shot in October and wants others in the Ohio State community to do the same. Wysocki said she was motivated by the desire to attend an in-person conference at the end of last year.

“My research group and I really enjoyed being back at an in-person conference, and none of us were infected by COVID because all of us were at least fully vaccinated and/or boosted, and masks and daily health checks were required,” she said.

The Buckeye Booster Drawing runs weekly through early April (the university will pause the drawing for spring break in March). To participate, students, faculty and staff must complete these steps:

1. Receive the COVID-19 booster dose. Individuals are eligible five months after completing a two-dose primary vaccine series or two months after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
2. Submit your booster information to the university if you have not already done so. Students should report through My BuckMD. Employees should report through the Employee Health Record.
3. Enter the drawing by completing this form.

Rules and other information are available on the Buckeye Booster Drawing webpage.

Available to students, faculty and staff, the service provides on-demand transportation between areas of campus west of the Olentangy River and three bus stops around our academic core: Recreation and Physical Activity Center, Baker Systems Engineering and Watts Hall. CABS On-Demand daily service runs from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Overnight service operates from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. with expanded service to all campus buildings. Community members can download the TripShot app for scheduling and real-time tracking.

“I encourage everyone to use this service, which is a nice alternative to Lyft for students whose travel begins and ends on campus,” Johnson said in her new video.

She also highlighted recommendations made by the university’s Commission on Student Mental Health and Well-Being, which conducted a comprehensive analysis of students’ current and evolving mental health needs and recommended five areas for improvement and innovation. Johnson thanked Senior Vice President for Student Life Melissa Shivers and Chief Wellness Officer and College of Nursing Dean Bernadette Melnyk for co-chairing the commission of students, faculty and staff – and leading the implementation work, which is underway.

Finally, Johnson urged those who are eligible to enter the Buckeye Booster Drawing. The first 100 winners of $100 gift cards will be announced this week – with seven more drawings to occur through early April. Students, faculty and staff are eligible to sign up for the drawing as soon as they receive their booster shot.

“More than 13,000 of you have entered the drawing so far – an exceptional response,” she said. “Let’s keep it up, Buckeyes.”

The Rave Guardian safety app is available to students, faculty and staff, offering a variety of benefits, including faster delivery of Buckeye Alerts and safety notices from the Department of Public Safety. A unique aspect of the app is the ability for users to choose friends or family to follow them via GPS tracking as they travel around the campus area.

Johnson also shared information about the on-demand mental health resources the university offers. This includes wellness coaching, “Let’s Talk” and “Silver Cloud,” which serve as options for students who may not have a lot of free time, yet still want support and to be able to talk to a mental health expert.

“If you need assistance, we can help,” Johnson said in the new video.

Johnson also reminded the community about the return of monthly meet-and-greet sessions with local law enforcement. More information about these sessions, organized by the Office of Student Life, and including giveaways such as safety devices, can be found at the Off-Campus and Commuter Student Engagement website.

Additionally, the president encouraged everyone who is eligible to get a COVID-19 booster shot. Ohio State is incentivizing booster shots and will award $100 gift cards to 100 students, faculty and staff each week of the Buckeye Booster Drawing.

The university earlier this week announced the adjustment of some COVID-19 health and safety protocols. The adjustments include transitioning back to in-person student activities and events; restoring seating to full capacity in on-campus dining areas; expanding group activities at recreation centers; resuming concessions at athletic events; and more.

“I want to thank everyone for their diligence, which allowed us to make these changes,” Johnson said.

The department brought in $106,896,918 in fiscal year 2021, which runs from July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021. That’s down from a record $233,871,740 in FY 2020, according to an annual financial report filed each year with the NCAA.

The pandemic’s impact began in March 2020 and altered the competition for programs across the department. For example, the football team played only five regular season games, and all athletic events were closed to fans. As a result, ticket sales were down to $7,386 from $65,978,534 the previous year.

While the report shows a department deficit of about $63.6 million, the actual number is about $41 million. Part of the department’s expenses include $20 million in one-time payments to reduce capital loan balances on two recently completed athletic buildings. The payments will reduce interest expenses in future years.

The department may take out an interest-bearing loan from the university to cover the deficit, a decision that will be made at the end of 2022.

“This was a most challenging year for our department and for everyone, and I am so proud of our student-athletes, our coaches and our support staff who continued to deliver at a championship level,” said Gene Smith, senior vice president and Wolfe Foundation endowed athletic director. “Despite the difficulties we all faced working through the pandemic, we preserved our commitment to our student-athletes and the sports they love.”

Ohio State is home to one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, supporting 16 men’s teams, 17 women’s teams, three mixed teams and approximately 1,000 student-athletes. 

Other notes from the report include the following year-over-year changes from FY 2020:

·       Media rights revenues were down to $40,568,770 from $46,849,461.

·       Total athletic department expenses decreased to $170,551,920 from $215,209,566.

·       Football revenue declined to $41.9 million from $115.5 million.

·       Athletics-related endowments increased to $129 million from $98.6 million.

Ohio State’s athletic department is self-funded and receives no tuition or tax dollars.

Senior Vice President for Student Life Melissa Shivers and Senior Vice President and Wolfe Foundation Endowed Athletics Director Gene Smith delivered the following message to students today (Jan. 31).

It’s hard to believe we are approaching the end of the first month of 2022 and already so much has taken place on campus. As you know, for the start of spring semester, we had to put some extra safeguards in place in response to the omicron variant. The good news is that those temporary measures have already proven to be helpful, as we have seen a consistent decrease in positivity rates among our student and employee populations. Our vaccination rate remains strong at higher than 93%, and we continue to see great interest and action among students who are eligible for a booster vaccine.

Still, it is critically important that all Buckeyes continue doing all they can as we continue fighting COVID-19 – be mindful of and follow safe and healthy practices, stay or get up to date on the vaccines for which you are eligible, test if you are required or need to, stay home if you are sick and keep the best interest of your own health – and those around you – in the top of your mind always. 

As we once again renew our commitment to ourselves and each other, we are pleased to share with you some updates about our pandemic response guidance:

Events and gatherings

• We greatly appreciate the many student leaders, organizations and departments that quickly transitioned January programming to virtual formats. Your efforts paid off, and we are in a position to begin the transition back to in-person activities. If you want to make the switch, we strongly urge you to implement the appropriate safe and healthy considerations that will help you hold a safe event, and help Ohio State have an uninterrupted semester. As you plan, please incorporate measures that will promote adherence to: local/university mask mandates, appropriate physical distancing, availability of PPE and hand sanitizer, limited distribution of literature and other items, and any other recommendations your event planners, coordinators and public health advisors may have.
• We will also relax restrictions on food and drink at events and gatherings. If you decide to have food and drinks, we continue to encourage pre-packaged items and properly spaced seating/standing areas for eating/drinking and masking between bites and sips.

Athletic concessions and dining

• We appreciate everyone’s patience as we have worked to respond to health and safety needs, while providing the on-campus experiences our community desires. Following are some updates we hope you will find helpful:
  • Starting with the Feb. 3 men’s basketball game in the Schottenstein Center against Iowa, concessions will resume at all athletic events, with the full menu available for events later in February. We appreciate fans’ commitment to mask-wearing and ask that you keep up the good work.
  • Since the end of the first week of classes, we have worked to quickly increase seating capacity throughout all of our on-campus dining locations. Beginning on Feb. 1, you will begin to see all facilities reset to the capacities you enjoyed in autumn semester.

  Recreation

• If you have recently recovered from COVID-19, please use caution and be aware of any new symptoms when you resume exercise. If you had significant symptoms, you should discuss the situation with your primary care provider prior to resuming high-intensity exercise. When exercising, if you develop heart symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, abnormal heartbeats, near passing out or passing out, seek medical care from your primary care provider or Student Health Services.  If you are aware of others having these symptoms, please encourage them to seek care. 
• We know that wearing a mask during strenuous activity can be inconvenient and uncomfortable. Given our campus’s significantly high vaccination rate, state and local guidance regarding masking and the strides we have made with COVID-19 testing positivity, beginning Feb. 1, masks will be strongly recommended but not required for members who have no COVID-related symptoms and are taking part in strenuous activity (except for swimming for which masks are not required).
• When members or visitors are not strenuously exercising, masks must be worn at all other times and in all other spaces throughout the recreation facilities.
• We will also be resuming access to the following features:
  • Indoor basketball courts
  • Indoor soccer courts
  • Full capacity in group fitness classes
  • Events and gatherings including rolling resumption of club sports and intramurals, as schedules can be determined.
• We have received some questions about cleaning protocols and materials in the rec centers. We can confirm that our established sanitation protocols are still in place. Members will continue having access to cleaning materials, and we have transitioned from utilizing cleaning wipes to sanitizing spray and paper towels in all facilities. 

Common spaces in Student Life facilities

• We know that having ample space to come together informally is important to creating community. So, we are pleased that we will be able to resume full seating capacity in public and common spaces in Student Life facilities, including the Ohio Union, recreation centers and the Younkin Success Center. 

As always, we will continue to monitor the path of the virus, its effects and expected impacts, and federal, state and local guidance. We will always quickly pivot to make the necessary adjustments as we go through the semester. And don’t forget: if you are eligible for a booster, appointments are available on the Columbus campus, at the Wexner Medical Center and statewide. Those who get a booster can enter the Buckeye Booster Drawing. Weekly, the university will award $100 gift cards to 50 students who have received their booster shot and entered the drawing. You only need to submit the entry form and booster information once to be eligible for each drawing.

Thank you for your ongoing patience, spirit and resilience, Buckeyes.

“I am thrilled to announce today a new program to reward our Ohio State community for your exceptional efforts to keep each other safe and healthy: the Buckeye Booster Drawing,” President Kristina M. Johnson said in a message to the university community today.

Each week, Ohio State will award $100 gift cards to 100 students, faculty and staff who have received their COVID-19 vaccination booster shot and entered the random drawing. The first drawing will take place the week of Feb. 6 and will run weekly through early April (the university will pause the drawing for spring break in March). To participate, complete these steps:

1. Receive the booster dose as soon as you are eligible – five months after completing a two-dose primary vaccine series or two months after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
2. Enter the drawing by completing this form.
3. Submit your vaccination information.

•  Students should report through My BuckMD. Students who have already uploaded their booster information can skip this step and simply need to complete the drawing entry form.
• Employees should report through the Employee Health Record.

Rules and other information are available on the Buckeye Booster Drawing webpage.

You can learn more about how and where to get vaccinated and booster eligibility on the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website. The vaccines and boosters, which are safe and available at no cost, are critical to the university’s efforts to stay together on campus through the spring and beyond.

“Our total vaccination rate is an exceptional 93%,” Johnson said. “We want to thank our Buckeye family for all that you have done – and we want everyone to take the necessary step of getting their booster shot to protect one another from COVID-19 and its variants to the greatest possible degree.”

Ohio State offers booster shots according to eligibility standards set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Ohio Department of Health.

What is a booster shot?

A booster shot is an additional dose of vaccine given to patients expected to have had a normal immune response to the first two doses, but who are at risk for waning immunity against COVID-19 over time.

Everyone 12 and older should get a booster shot if:

• You received your second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine at least five months ago
• You received a Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months ago

Individuals 18 and older who have completed any COVID-19 vaccination series within the time frames above can get a booster dose of any of the COVID-19 vaccines authorized in the United States. 

How/where to get booster shots on campus

Booster shots are available now at Jesse Owens North on the Columbus campus. Vaccine appointments are scheduled through MyChart or by calling 614-688-8299. You can learn more and also schedule your appointment at the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website.

Individuals on regional campuses should use the Ohio Department of Health vaccine locator.  

Research has since shown that disgust sensitivity, as measured on a specific scale, can differ widely, with some individuals experiencing disgust very strongly and others less so. But the explanation for those differences is subject to debate. Is high disgust sensitivity the result of growing up with germophobes, related to neuroticism, or a way to detect an unfit sexual partner? And is disgust stable across the lifespan, or can it change?

A new study suggests disgust sensitivity can and does change – and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, concern about getting sick with a coronavirus infection was associated with an increase in disgust sensitivity.

Ohio State University researchers who had collected disgust sensitivity data for a larger project before the coronavirus outbreak compared those measures to similar data collected during and after pandemic lockdowns.

“What hasn’t been tested thoroughly is the extent to which your environment actually shapes your disgust sensitivity. What happens when you’re in an environment that has a lot of pathogens?” said Shelby Boggs, a doctoral student in psychology at The Ohio State University and first author of the study. “Disgust sensitivity was higher in studies we ran during the pandemic, but particularly higher for people who felt concerned they would actually contract COVID-19.”

Boggs conducted the study with senior author Russell Fazio, professor of psychology at Ohio State, and former postdoctoral researcher Benjamin Ruisch, who is now at Leiden University.

The research is published in the February 2022 issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Despite disgust sensitivity’s origins in dodging disease, research over the years has linked high disgust sensitivity to avoidance of “others” – people of different races, political ideologies or genders, for example. That school of thought leans toward considering disgust sensitivity an unchanging individual difference.

The Ohio State researchers focused on – and found evidence to support – what is known as the “calibration hypothesis,” which suggests that disgust sensitivity is a more fluid measure that changes with time and circumstance.

This study involved nine surveys conducted between late 2018 and June 2020. Before the pandemic, the team collected data from about 2,300 participants in seven waves that included assessment of their disgust sensitivity. The pandemic’s arrival in spring 2020 opened up an opportunity for a natural experiment to test the question of environmental effects on disgust sensitivity.

The researchers conducted two more surveys in late spring 2020, of 500 people each, questioning participants about a variety of their pandemic-related opinions and behaviors – including how concerned they were that they might contract COVID-19 – and assessing their disgust sensitivity. The first was an entirely new group of participants, but the second was a subset of people who had participated in the pre-pandemic surveys – providing a rare longitudinal look at disgust sensitivity.

“Instead of comparing two groups of people pre- and post-pandemic, you’re comparing the same people and finding that to the extent that you perceive yourself at risk of contracting COVID, we get this heightened disgust sensitivity,” Fazio said. “That’s powerful.

“The increase in disgust sensitivity really being limited to those people who were concerned about contracting COVID-19 also eliminated a number of alternative explanations for the data.”

Part of the disgust sensitivity scale asks participants to rate various experiences – such as smelling urine while walking in a tunnel under a railroad track or seeing someone put ketchup on vanilla ice cream and eat it – on a scale of 0 to 4, where 4 is extremely disgusting.

The pre-pandemic average disgust sensitivity was 2.82, a figure that increased to 3.26 during the pandemic. These results, based on the way disgust sensitivity is measured, showed that people were not repelled only by disease-related scenarios but also scenarios that had nothing to do with disease transmission – a sign that their entire disgust sensitivity profile was heightened.

“One item on the rating asks how disgusted you would be if you were on an elevator and someone next to you sneezed. Another asks whether you’d be disgusted by eating chocolate shaped like dog doo – which has nothing to do with interacting and contracting a disease,” Boggs said.

Fazio noted that the enhanced sensitivity was also evident when participants were asked to rate various visual images related to disgust, such as rotten meat with maggots in it. Those who were concerned about contracting the virus found the images more unappealing – meaning the effect extended beyond the items measured by the assessment scale.

Boggs predicted that once the most serious threats of the pandemic ease, disgust sensitivity in people concerned about getting sick would habituate to pre-pandemic levels.

“Experiencing disgust all the time is not a fun state to be in. It’s a very vigilant emotion,” she said. “My suspicion is if we recontacted people a year or two out of pandemic mode, they probably would have gone back down in disgust sensitivity levels. If the threat subsides, then presumably your disgust sensitivity should subside as well.”

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation.

The start of spring semester and the rapid spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus has posed a new challenge for Ohio State. University leaders have quickly moved to create and implement processes and procedures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 while working to maintain academic and co-curricular learning and operations.

“We realize that our approach to COVID has, by necessity, changed frequently over time, and recognize that this can be frustrating to all of us. We utilize the guidance of national, state and local health agencies and our own public health team and medical experts with the Wexner Medical Center,” said Senior Vice President of Student Life Melissa S. Shivers.

“The situation with this pandemic, and our knowledge about it, is rapidly evolving, leading to these changes in protocol. The good news is that as our understanding of COVID grows, we are increasingly better able to apply that knowledge to our efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19. This makes our community safer and our pandemic response even more effective, and, in many ways, convenient.”

Given the current positive caseload, Ohio State is prioritizing the containment of positive cases.

The university is dedicating one residence hall and spaces in nearby hotels to support students who test positive for the virus. Additionally, Ohio State has worked over the past weeks to overlay public health guidance and best practices with procedures to manage the need for isolation and quarantine spaces. The university has identified hundreds of on-campus configurations that will allow students to isolate, and in some cases quarantine, in their existing room assignment.

“Residential institutions of higher education have been supporting students through illness as long as we have been supporting them on their educational journey,” said Associate Vice President for the Residential Experience TJ Logan. “These new protocols we have developed with our public health and medical partners are so important to transitioning our approach to a new phase of pandemic response.”

Below is a general overview of the university’s current guidance for those who test positive or are a close contact of a positive case. More information and resources are available at the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website.

Isolation

• Students who test positive will be ordered to isolate for five days and required to complete a rapid antigen test on the fifth day.
• If the results are negative on day 5 and symptoms are resolving, the student should:
  • Upload their results to go.osu.edu/selfreporttest and
  • Complete a wellness check to assess when they may return to their residence hall.
• Students must complete both the wellness check and report their results at the same time on the morning of day 5 so they can receive confirmation from the contact tracing team to return to their room on day 6.
• Students who are positive on day 5 will need to complete the full 10-day isolation period. The maximum amount of time most students will be in isolation is 10 days, unless they have symptoms that are not resolving.
• To return to their room, classes and other in-person activities, students must have a release from isolation letter.
• In addition to an entire residence hall that has been dedicated to isolation for another academic year, the university has also worked with nearby hotels to expand available spaces.
• Additionally, students who live on campus in single rooms with a private, in-room bathroom will be able to isolate in their regularly assigned rooms. Food and drink deliveries will be made directly to each student’s door.
• Upon leaving physical isolation, the student will be required to wear a well-fitting mask in every environment, including at home in a shared living space, for an additional five days. For activities like brushing teeth, showering or eating, masks should be replaced as soon as possible. If someone continues to have a fever, they must complete the full 10-day isolation.

Identified close contacts and quarantine

• Automatic close contact notifications will be emailed to the roommates of students in university housing who test positive.
• Residential students who are automatically notified as a close contact of a positive roommate, and off-campus students who learn they are a close contact of a positive case, should facilitate their own quarantine according to their vaccination status.
• Residential students who receive an automatic close contact notice and are required to quarantine may, as necessary, be able to quarantine in their current room and must mask at all times (they are welcome to go home or to quarantine in another off-campus location). To allow for daily access to fresh air, students in quarantine will be able to leave their room fully masked to pick up food from a dining facility near their residence hall. All students identified as a close contact should complete the wellness check daily.
• If asymptomatic, students should schedule a test at Jesse Owens North via MyChart as soon as possible.
• If symptom free and they have completed the wellness check daily, students will receive a release from quarantine letter to return to in-person activities.
• Upon leaving quarantine, the student will be required to wear a well-fitting mask in every environment, including at home in a shared living space, for an additional five days. For activities like brushing teeth, showering or eating, masks should be replaced as soon as possible.

“We’ve communicated quite a bit in the recent weeks about our efforts to remain vigilant in protecting ourselves and others from COVID-19. With the Omicron variant surging in Ohio, we are encouraging all eligible students, faculty and staff to get their booster and sign up immediately,” Johnson said in a new video.

Information about vaccines as well as updates on return-to-campus activities such as testing and mask availability continue to be available on the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website.

With returning and new students on campus this semester, Johnson also provided information on steps the university has taken to enhance safety resources since last fall. These resources include: free personal safety devices, window and door alarms available through the Office of Student Life; expanded patrols and the university’s Buckeye Block Watch; significantly more lighting and cameras in high-trafficked areas off campus; and an online safety course offering ways to enhance personal safety through scenario-based exercises. A full list is on the Department of Public Safety website.

Additionally, the university works to keep students informed through Buckeye Alerts, Public Safety Notices and Neighborhood Safety Notices, Ohio State News Alerts and more.

Finally, Johnson thanked students in the College of Education and Human Ecology for their recent research-based work to better understand crime in the community.

Read more about the students’ projects on Ohio State News.

“The results of these projects were presented to Ohio State leaders in December, and we are working to incorporate their findings into how we address our safety efforts moving forward,” she said.

The Ohio State University community has a 92.5% vaccination rate, and with the new Omicron variant spreading in Ohio, many vaccinated individuals report only mild symptoms when they’re infected. That’s why university public health leaders are encouraging students, faculty and staff to monitor their health closely.

Ohio State has resources and guidance for those who are feeling sick.

Students

• Stay home and wear a well-fitted mask if you will be around others. 
• Do not go to class or other public settings. Let your instructor know that you are not feeling well. 
• If you are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, schedule a test at Student Health Services using My BuckMD or through your primary care provider, depending on your insurance plan. Do not test at Jesse Owens North or a regional asymptomatic location. 
• Act as if you are positive until you receive a negative test. 

Employees

• Stay home and wear a well-fitted mask if you will be around others. 
• Do not go to work. Let your supervisor know or follow your typical call-off procedures.  
• If you are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, schedule a test at a symptomatic testing location such as the Wexner Medical Center drive-through location in the CAS (Chemical Abstracts) parking garage, 2540 Olentangy River Road. Appointments can be scheduled through MyChart. 
• Act as if you are positive until you receive a negative test.   

Symptoms of COVID-19

• A fever of 100°F or higher
• Respiratory symptoms, such as a dry cough or shortness of breath
• Vomiting or diarrhea
• Muscle or body aches
• Chills 
• Loss of taste or smell

Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure. Keep in mind that many people with COVID-19 have mild symptoms and are able to recover at home. For more resources on symptoms and prevention of COVID-19, visit the Wexner Medical Center website.

When dining on campus, community members and visitors are asked to replace their masks between bites and sips. Anyone, regardless of vaccination status, who has been exposed to someone who has COVID-19 should wear a mask for 10 days after that contact.

The guidance on the best type and fit of masks continues to evolve. Ohio State strongly recommends surgical or medical-grade disposable masks. Double-masking is recommended for those using cloth masks. University community members are encouraged to regularly check the CDC guidance on masks and other health and safety measures.

Free face masks are available for students, faculty and staff at a variety of campus locations, including: all residence halls, all recreation facilities, most university libraries and the Ohio Union information desk. Masks can be picked up during business hours, and details about locations are below.

University Libraries

Masks are available at circulation desks in the university libraries listed below. Hours can be found on the University Libraries website.

• 18th Avenue Library
• Architecture Library in Knowlton Hall
• Biological Sciences/Pharmacy Library in Riffe Building
• Fine Arts Library in the Wexner Center for the Arts complex
• The Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences Library & Student Success Center in the Agricultural Administration Building
• Geology Library in Orton Hall
• Thompson Library
• Veterinary Medicine Library in the Vet Med Academic Building

Recreation Centers

Masks are available at entrances of all recreation facilities.

• Recreation and Physical Activity Center (RPAC)
• Adventure Recreation Center
• Outdoor Adventure Center
• Jesse Owens South Recreation Center
• North Recreation Center  
• Jesse Owens North Recreation Center (Also available in the COVID-19 testing location)

Ohio Union

Masks are available at the Ohio Union Information Desk.

Regional Campuses

Masks also are available at the testing sites at each of Ohio State’s regional campuses and at the following locations:

• Lima: Nutrien Welcome Desk of the Perry Webb Student Life Building
• Mansfield: Campus Recreation Center
• Marion: Alber Student Center
• Newark: Adena Recreation Center
• Wooster: Student Activity Center

On the Columbus campus, about 10,600 students completed a required COVID-19 antigen test before moving into a residence hall. The university organized a massive rapid test operation as part of the health protocols for spring semester 2022.

Students were tested at French Field House during pre-scheduled move-in periods. Students on regional campuses completed rapid tests with an online proctor.

About 3.2% of students on the Columbus campus were required to isolate after reporting positive tests; the remainder were permitted to move into their university residence halls for the beginning of spring semester. University officials said the positivity rate from move-in testing should not be compared to the weekly testing data posted on the university’s COVID-19 dashboard because of differences in type of test, testing protocol and population.

President Kristina M. Johnson greeted students and staff at the testing location this weekend to applaud their commitment to health and safety.

“I am always proud of how our university community thrives in the face of challenges. Evidence of that is found in the daily perseverance of our health care providers, the unrelenting discoveries of our scholars and the incredible success of our graduates,” Johnson wrote in a letter to the campus community today. “Even during the pandemic, each graduating class continues to be more astounding than the last — raising the bar ever higher for those who follow. If these Buckeyes can do it, so can all of us.”

In addition to the pre-semester testing, the following groups will be required to complete weekly PCR testing at this time, with the first test to be completed by the end of Friday, Jan. 14:

• All students living in university housing on all campuses, regardless of vaccination status.
• All student members of social sororities and fraternities, regardless of vaccination status.
• All students and employees who have an approved exemption for the university’s vaccination requirement.
• All students and employees who have taken no action on the university’s vaccination requirement.

Students can learn more at the testing page for information about scheduling:

During a virtual town hall to discuss the university’s plans for the semester and to answer questions from the Ohio State community, President Kristina M. Johnson reiterated the health and safety of students, faculty and staff is the university’s No. 1 priority. Johnson said easy access to vaccines, booster shots, well-fitting masks and testing would allow for in-person instruction.

“Everything you did last fall is now making it possible for us to keep our campuses open and continue in-person instruction. We’ve proven that we can be successful – just look at our 92.5% vaccination rate,” she said. “It’s now up to each of us to continue practicing the same vigilance we’ve exercised throughout the entire pandemic.”

Johnson said the university will continue to monitor the campus and community positivity rate, the number of people in quarantine or isolation, and the virus’s impact on the health care system and adapt as needed.

Some changes are already underway. The university announced a detailed return-to-campus plan earlier this week that includes a requirement for students to test before they return to on-campus housing, weekly testing requirements for some student groups and reduced seating in university dining areas.

“We very much know, believe in and endorse the importance of the residential in-person experience that so many students and their families want and deserve,” said Senior Vice President for Student Life Melissa Shivers. “Fortunately, given our extraordinary vaccination rate and the university’s ongoing efforts to build in health and safety protocols, we aren’t going all the way back to the beginning, but we will need to put some additional levels of precaution in place.”

In addition to the changes and precautions, university leaders encouraged flexibility.

“I urge all of our instructors to work with students to determine reasonable steps to help them continue their coursework if they’re impacted by COVID-19,” Executive Vice President and Provost Melissa L. Gilliam said.

She said the same efforts should apply to instructors as well, encouraging schools and departments to develop contingency plans in the event that faculty or teaching assistants become sick. Gilliam said TAs will be funded through the semester even if they miss time due to illness or quarantine.

There is reason for optimism. Andrew Thomas, interim co-leader and chief clinical officer at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, said the impact of the Omicron variant in central Ohio appears to match other cities around the world. While the virus spreads quickly and appears to be highly contagious, the symptoms are generally mild for vaccinated individuals. Ohio continues to see fewer patients in intensive care than in previous waves.

Thomas, who is vaccinated and received a booster shot, said he tested positive for COVID-19 this week. He noted his symptoms are mild and he is able to continue working while staying isolated at home, and highlighted how vaccines have helped dramatically change the direction of the pandemic. “As I started to reflect a little bit more, frankly, I was really grateful that scientists developed the vaccine. Thankful I had a medical center that had delivered the vaccine to me and thankful the vaccine was keeping me from having a more serious case,” he said. “I don’t have pneumonia. I’m not sick in the hospital and I don’t know if I could have said that 18 months ago or a little over 12 months ago, before the vaccine was out.”

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff:

We hope you had a happy and healthy winter break.

As you know, the nation and state are experiencing a dramatic increase in COVID-19 infections due in large part to the Omicron variant. As we prepare to start the spring semester and welcome students back to campus for in-person instruction, Ohio State continues to adjust health measures based on the latest data as well as evolving guidance from national, state and local agencies.  

Throughout the pandemic, Ohio State has successfully engaged our entire community to share responsibility for minimizing the spread of COVID-19. Your continued support is essential as we start the new year.

We urge all students, faculty and staff who are eligible to get booster shots to do so before returning to campus, or to take advantage of a booster clinic at Jesse Owens North beginning January 10. For spring semester, all health protocols below will be in place, including guidelines to wear well-fitted masks indoors, frequently wash your hands and stay home if you feel sick. The university will continue to monitor the situation as it evolves and will update protocols as information becomes available.

Details about our measures are listed below and at Safe and Healthy Buckeyes.

We invite students, faculty and staff to learn more during a virtual town hall at 12:15 p.m. on Thursday, January 6. To register and submit questions, sign up using your Ohio State name.# at this Zoom link.   

Return to campus for students

TEST-IN REQUIREMENTS

For students in university housing on all campuses:

• A rapid antigen test for COVID-19 will be required when you first arrive this weekend. For students living in residence halls on the Columbus campus, this testing will occur at French Field House, 460 Woody Hayes Drive. Students will know their results within 15 minutes. Those who test negative can move into their residence halls during their scheduled time.
• Students living on regional campuses will receive specific instructions about where to test in the coming days.
• Those who test positive will not be able to move in on campus and instead will need to isolate for five days, either at home or in a local hotel (see the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website for recommended spaces in the Columbus area). Limited beds in the on-campus isolation residence hall will be prioritized for out-of-state students on a first-come, first-served basis, and space is not guaranteed. After five days of isolation, students will be able to attend classes in person as long as all symptoms have resolved, and they wear a well-fitted mask for an additional five days indoors and outdoors.

For fraternity and sorority students who live in their off-campus chapter houses:

• Rapid antigen tests will be delivered early in the week of January 10 to your chapter house. Each resident of the chapter house must complete the test.
• Individuals who test positive will need to isolate for five days and, as long as all symptoms have resolved, then wear a well-fitted mask both indoors and outdoors for the next five days.

REQUIRED WEEKLY TESTING FOR SPRING SEMESTER

• The following groups will be required to complete weekly PCR testing at this time, with the first test to be completed by the end of Friday, January 14. See the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes testing page for information about scheduling.
  • All students living in university housing on all campuses, regardless of vaccination status.
  • All student members of social sororities and fraternities, regardless of vaccination status.
  • All students and employees who have an approved exemption for the university’s vaccination requirement.
  • All students and employees who have taken no action on the university’s vaccination requirement.
• If you are a part of one of these groups and tested positive for COVID-19 at a non-university location over winter break, please report your positive result to Ohio State by uploading your information and positive result to go.osu.edu/SelfReportTest. Those with verified results will receive a temporary exemption from testing.

QUARANTINE AND ISOLATION 

• Every student should have an individual plan for isolation housing if you have a positive COVID-19 test and quarantine housing if you are exposed to someone with the virus.
• Students in university housing should know that on-campus isolation and quarantine housing continues to be limited. Space is not guaranteed. (See the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website for recommended spaces).

CAMPUS DINING

• Seating capacity at dining halls will be at 40% to allow for additional physical distancing.
• Grab-and-go options, with mobile ordering, will be expanded so that students may take their meals to go.

Guidance for faculty

• Ohio State will continue to offer in-person classes, and faculty are encouraged to offer flexible arrangements for students who are sick, in isolation or in quarantine.
• Since the pandemic started, the university has upgraded the HVAC systems in campus buildings and expanded instructional technology and other resources. For more information, see the Teaching and Learning Resource Center.
• Classes are expected to be taught in the original mode as posted at registration unless there is prior approval from the Office of Academic Affairs.
• The university is prioritizing in-person teaching and learning. When possible, other in-person events, gatherings or meetings should be transitioned to virtual formats.

Work arrangements for staff

• Ohio State remains committed to a full in-person experience for students and to meet the needs of patients and the community.
• Given the differences in campus operations across the university, we are expecting each supervisor to determine specific operational needs, which may vary by area. The university’s established flexible work policy enables employees to work onsite or remotely with permission from their supervisor.
• We encourage employees and supervisors to work together to determine work arrangements, including when remote work is appropriate. Employees with questions should check with their supervisor or human resources business partner.
• The university is prioritizing in-person teaching and learning. When possible, other in-person events, gatherings or meetings should be transitioned to virtual formats.

Guidance for all students, faculty and staff

Getting your booster shot

• The university continues to strongly encourage all students, faculty and staff to receive a COVID-19 booster before the start of spring semester or as soon as they are eligible. Boosters will enhance your protection from serious illness and reduce the chance that a COVID-19 exposure disrupts your semester.
• Starting this week, booster shots will be available by appointment at Jesse Owens North on the Columbus campus. For details, see the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes Get Vaccinated page. Individuals on regional campuses should use the Ohio Department of Health vaccine locator.
• You are eligible to get a booster shot based on when you completed your primary vaccination (five months after a Pfizer-BioNTech series; six months after a Moderna series or two months after a Johnson & Johnson dose), according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

Reporting your booster

• While boosters are currently voluntary, Ohio State asks individuals to report booster information to help the university continue to plan our COVID-19 response.
• Students may report booster information to Student Health Services through My BuckMD.
• Employees will be able to report their information in the coming weeks. The university is currently working to expand the employee vaccination reporting system and will update faculty and staff when this capability is available. 

What to do if you’re sick

• If you are feeling sick in any way, stay home and get a COVID-19 test before returning to campus. If you are an employee, report your illness through your normal process.
• You may obtain a PCR test from a location that tests symptomatic people, or you may use an antigen test at home if you have access to one. Do not go to an asymptomatic testing location.
• Starting January 3, the Wexner Medical Center established a community testing site for symptomatic individuals in the parking garage at CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service), 2540 Olentangy River Road. Appointments are required. For hours and other information, see the Wexner Medical Center announcement.

University-related meetings, events and gatherings

• The university is prioritizing in-person teaching and learning. Due to the Omicron-related case numbers, when possible, other in-person events, gatherings or meetings should be transitioned to virtual formats. The university will closely monitor this so that it can be updated as needed.
• Food and drinks should not be served at any in-person event, gathering or meeting. Exceptions can be made for third-party space rentals that have already been confirmed, although masking should be strictly enforced.
• Concessions will be closed at all university-related athletic events. Water will be available.

Masking and other health measures

• Masks are still required in all indoor spaces on all campuses, regardless of vaccination status. This requirement applies to CABS and other public transportation.
• Guidance on the best type and fit of masks continues to evolve. The university strongly recommends surgical grade masks. Double-masking is recommended for those using cloth masks. University community members are encouraged to regularly check the CDC guidance on masks and other health and safety measures.
• The university is prioritizing in-person teaching and learning and will be putting de-densification practices in place in other social and non-classroom settings.
• For more information on personal health practices, please visit the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website.

As we have throughout the pandemic, we will update guidance and communicate regularly as new information is available.

Thank you for taking an active part in safeguarding the Ohio State community. We have achieved a 92.5% vaccination rate and have stayed together throughout the fall by taking care of our community. We will continue to support each other as Buckeyes and look forward to a great spring semester.

Sincerely yours,

Kristina M. Johnson, PhD 
President

Melissa L. Gilliam, MD, MPH
Executive Vice President and Provost

Grace Wang, PhD
Executive Vice President, Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge

Jeff Risinger, PhD
Senior Vice President, Talent, Culture and Human Resources

Melissa Shivers, PhD
Senior Vice President for Student Life

Andrew Thomas, MD, MBA, FACP
Interim Co-Leader and Chief Clinical Officer, Wexner Medical Center

The new testing site is located on the first floor of the CAS parking garage at 2540 Olentangy River Road. It will have the capacity to test up to 1,000 people each day. Testing services will be offered Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon. COVID-19 testing will be open to the entire community by appointment only.

“We know that testing is an important tool in our battle against COVID-19,” said Dr. Andrew Thomas, interim co-leader and chief clinical officer at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. “We remain committed to supporting the central Ohio community and to meeting the increased demand for COVID-19 testing. At this point, our focus is testing individuals with COVID-19 symptoms and those with significant exposures to people known to have COVID-19. Knowing your COVID status can help prevent you from spreading this virus to family members, friends and others you come in close contact with.”

Beginning Monday, Jan. 3, any individual with an Ohio State MyChart account will be able to self-schedule a COVID-19 test at the new CAS site. Those who do not have a MyChart account or who wish to schedule a test at another Wexner Medical Center testing site should call their Ohio State health care provider or the COVID Call Center at 614-293-4000 to schedule a test.

The new drive-thru testing location will replace the Wexner Medical Center COVID-19 testing location at 650 Ackerman Road. It will be staffed by the Wexner Medical Center clinical team as well as 10 Ohio National Guard members who are among those deployed by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to help Ohio health care facilities respond to the winter surge in COVID-19 cases.

“On behalf of all my colleagues at CAS, we are proud to partner with Ohio State Wexner Medical Center to provide this vital community service aimed at improving health, wellness and safety,” said Manuel Guzman, president of CAS. “It’s another example that when we join forces to strengthen our community, we can deliver even greater impact together.” 

Previous research led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture had shown evidence of antibodies in wild deer. This study, published today in Nature, details the first report of active COVID-19 infection in white-tailed deer supported by the growth of viral isolates in the lab, indicating researchers had recovered viable samples of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and not only its genetic traces.

Based on genomic sequencing of the samples collected between January and March 2021, researchers determined that variants infecting wild deer matched strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that had been prevalent in Ohio COVID-19 patients at the time. Sample collection occurred before the Delta variant was widespread, and that variant was not detected in these deer. The team is testing more samples to check for new variants as well as older variants, whose continued presence would suggest the virus can set up shop and survive in this species.

The fact that wild deer can become infected “leads toward the idea that we might actually have established a new maintenance host outside humans,” said Andrew Bowman, associate professor of veterinary preventive medicine at The Ohio State University and senior author of the paper.

“Based on evidence from other studies, we knew they were being exposed in the wild and that in the lab we could infect them and the virus could transmit from deer to deer. Here, we’re saying that in the wild, they are infected,” Bowman said. “And if they can maintain it, we have a new potential source of SARS-CoV-2 coming in to humans. That would mean that beyond tracking what’s in people, we’ll need to know what’s in the deer, too.

“It could complicate future mitigation and control plans for COVID-19.”

A lot of unknowns remain: how the deer got infected, whether they can infect humans and other species, how the virus behaves in the animals’ body, and whether it’s a transient or long-term infection.

The research team took nasal swabs from 360 white-tailed deer in nine northeast Ohio locations. Using PCR testing methods, the scientists detected genetic material from at least three different strains of the virus in 129 (35.8%) of the deer sampled.

The analysis showed that B.1.2 viruses dominant in Ohio in the early months of 2021 spilled over multiple times into deer populations in different locations.

“The working theory based on our sequences is that humans are giving it to deer, and apparently we gave it to them several times,” Bowman said. “We have evidence of six different viral introductions into those deer populations. It’s not that a single population got it once and it spread.”

Each site was sampled between one and three times, adding up to a total of 18 sample collection dates. Based on the findings, researchers estimated the prevalence of infection varied from 13.5% to 70% across the nine sites, with the highest prevalence observed in four sites that were surrounded by more densely populated neighborhoods.

White-tailed deer functioning as a viral reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 would likely result in one of two outcomes, Bowman said. The virus could mutate in deer, potentially facilitating transmission of new strains to other species, including humans, or the virus could survive in deer unmutated while it simultaneously continues to evolve in humans, and at some point when humans don’t have immunity to the strains infecting deer, those variants could come spilling back to humans.

How transmission happened initially in these deer, and how it could happen across species, are among the pending questions related to these findings. The research team speculated that white-tailed deer were infected through an environmental pathway – possibly by drinking contaminated water. Research has shown that the virus is shed in human stool and detectable in wastewater.

The white-tailed deer tested for this study were part of a population control initiative, so they are not a transmission threat.

Though there are an estimated 600,000 white-tailed deer in Ohio and 30 million in the United States, Bowman said this sampling focused on locations close to dense human populations and is not representative of all free-ranging deer.

This work was supported by the Ohio State Infectious Diseases Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In addition to USDA, NIAID, Ohio Wildlife Center and Cleveland Metroparks contributors, Ohio State co-authors include Vanessa Hale, Patricia Dennis, Dillon McBride, Jacqueline Nolting, Christopher Madden, Devra Huey, Margot Ehrlich, Jenessa Winston, Dubraska Diaz-Campos, Page Yaxley, Alexis McLaine, Risa Pesapane, Mark Flint, Jaylene Flint, Anastasia Vlasova, Scott Kenney, Qiuhong Wang, Linda Saif and Seth Faith.

Cell culture experiments showed that SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, limits the release of viral particles that can be inactivated by antibodies, instead staying tucked within cell walls and spreading between cells.

“It’s basically an underground form of transmission,” said lead author Shan-Lu Liu, a virology professor in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences at The Ohio State University and an investigator in the university’s Center for Retrovirus Research.

“SARS-CoV-2 can spread efficiently from cell to cell because there are essentially no blockers from the host immunity. Target cells become donor cells, and it just becomes a wave of spread, as the virus may not get out of the cells.”

Liu and colleagues found other revealing details about SARS-CoV-2: The spike protein on its surface alone enables cell-to-cell transmission, and yet the virus’s primary receptor on target cells – to which the spike binds – is not a necessary part of the cell-to-cell transmission operation. Additionally, they found that neutralizing antibodies are less effective against the virus when it spreads through cells.

The research is published today (Dec. 22, 2021) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A major point of this study was comparing SARS-CoV-2 to the coronavirus behind the 2003 SARS outbreak, known as SARS-CoV. The findings help explain why while the first outbreak led to much higher fatality rates and lasted only eight months, we’re about to surpass the two-year mark of the current pandemic, with a majority of cases being asymptomatic, Liu said.

The comparison showed that the SARS-CoV that caused SARS in 2003 is more efficient than SARS-CoV-2 at what is called cell-free transmission, when freely floating viral particles infect target cells by binding to a receptor on their surface – but also remain vulnerable to antibodies produced by previous infection and vaccines. SARS-CoV-2, on the other hand, is more efficient at cell-to-cell transmission – which makes it harder to neutralize with antibodies.

The viruses’ differing efficiencies were first demonstrated in experiments using pseudoviruses – a non-infectious viral core decorated with both kinds of coronavirus spike proteins on the surface.

“The spike protein is necessary and sufficient for both SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV cell-to-cell transmission because the only difference in these pseudoviruses were the spike proteins,” said Liu, also a program director of the Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program in Ohio State’s Infectious Diseases Institute.

Looking more deeply into those differences, the researchers found that SARS-CoV-2 is also more capable than SARS-CoV at initiating fusion with a target cell membrane, another key step in the viral entry process. And that stronger fusion action was associated with the virus’s enhanced cell-to-cell transmission.

Paradoxically, too much cell membrane fusion leads to cell death and can actually interfere with cell-to-cell transmission, Liu also found.

The team then turned to the role of the ACE2 receptor, a protein on cell surfaces that acts as the gateway for entry of the virus that causes COVID-19. The researchers found, unexpectedly, that cells with no or low levels of ACE2 on their surfaces can be penetrated by the virus, enabling robust cell-to-cell transmission.

“There is no perfect correlation between SARS-CoV-2 infection and the level of ACE2,” Liu said. “ACE2 may be needed for initial infection, but once infection is established, the virus may not need ACE2 anymore because it can spread from cell to cell.”

Finally, in experiments testing blood samples from human COVID-19 patients against the authentic SARS-CoV-2 virus, researchers determined that the virus could evade an antibody response through cell-to-cell transmission, but that antibody neutralization of the virus in the cell-free transmission mode was effective.

“We were able to confirm cell-to-cell transmission is not sensitive to inhibition from antibodies from COVID patients or vaccinated individuals,” Liu said. “Cell-to-cell transmission’s resistance to antibody neutralization is probably something we should watch for as SARS-CoV-2 variants continue to emerge, including the most recent, Omicron. In this sense, developing effective antiviral drugs targeting other steps of viral infection is critical.”

There are still many unknowns, including the exact mechanism the virus uses to spread from cell to cell, how that may influence individuals’ responses to viral infection, and whether or not efficient cell-to-cell transmission contributes to the emergence and spread of new variants. Liu’s lab is planning additional studies using the authentic virus and human lung cells to further explore these questions.

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and funds from an anonymous private donor to Ohio State.

Ohio State co-authors include Cong Zeng, Jack Evans, Tiffany King, Yi-Min Zheng, Eugene Oltz, Linda Saif and Mark Peeples, also a researcher at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Sean Whelan of the Washington University School of Medicine also contributed.