News Releases

A low-cost, rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19 developed by Penn Medicine provides COVID-19 results within four minutes with 90 percent accuracy. A paper published this week in Matter details the fast and inexpensive diagnostic test, called RAPID 1.0.

Those who recovered from COVID-19 had a robust antibody response after a single vaccine shot, but little after the second, according to Penn Immunology studies.

Nationwide, the rollout for the COVID-19 vaccine has been inequitable, with white individuals being vaccinated at higher rates compared to Black individuals. In Philadelphia, only 21 percent of the vaccine had gone to Black residents by March 2021, even though this group makes up 42 percent of the city’s population.

CORONA is the world’s largest database of COVID-19 treatments, covering 400+ treatments that have been reported to be administered to 340,000+ patients, helping researchers to identify and prioritize promising treatments for well-designed clinical trials and to inform patient care.

Despite the rising number of immunizations, more than a third of recent COVID-19 cases in the Philadelphia area are caused by concerning variants of the virus, according to a new analysis from a sample of patients from late February and early March conducted by Penn Medicine researchers.

Hormone drugs that reduce androgen levels may help disarm the coronavirus spike protein used to infect cells and stop the progression of severe COVID-19 disease, suggests a new preclinical study from researchers in the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania and published online in Cell Press’s iScience.

Penn Medicine and Mercy Catholic Medical Center – Mercy Philadelphia Campus will come together again Saturday with a coalition of religious and community leaders from West Philadelphia to hold a mass COVID-19 vaccination clinic for 1,500 members of the local community.

Taking the first deep dive into how the immune system is behaving in patients with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found that children with this condition have highly activated immune systems that, in many ways, are more similar to those of adults with severe COVID-19.

After a rapid mobilization of its telemedicine infrastructure to ensure continuity of care for patients of all kinds during the hectic days of March 2020, Penn Medicine marked telemedicine visit number one million this week.

Even as COVID-19 vaccine distribution ramps up in Philadelphia, the virus remains prevalent, and shoring up testing capabilities is a key way to protect local residents. Penn Medicine has tapped into a workforce in its own backyard to expand testing efforts in the area: Through the University City District’s West Philadelphia Skills Initiative (WPSI), the health system has hired 50 new laboratory assistants, who will play a pivotal role in collecting and processing large quantities of testing samples.