Category: Corona Virus

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Newport County reported 138 additional COVID-19 cases this week – newportri.com

October 11, 2022

Mike Stucka USA TODAY NETWORK| Newport Daily News

Rhode Island reported 1,781 new cases of coronavirus in the week ending Sunday, down 6.2% from the previous week. The previous week had 1,898 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.

Rhode Island ranked second among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week coronavirus cases in the United States decreased 7.7% from the week before, with 298,674 cases reported. With 0.32% of the country's population, Rhode Island had 0.6% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 13 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.

Newport County reported 138 cases and no deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 118 cases and no deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 24,467 cases and 99 deaths.

Across Rhode Island, cases fell in four counties, with the best declines in Washington County, with 123 cases from 190 a week earlier; in Providence County, with 1,152 cases from 1,180; and in Kent County, with 268 cases from 285.

>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases

Within Rhode Island, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Providence County with 180 cases per 100,000 per week; Newport County with 168; and Kent County with 163. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.

Adding the most new cases overall were Providence County, with 1,152 cases; Kent County, with 268 cases; and Newport County, with 138.

In Rhode Island, five people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, two people were reported dead.

A total of 427,242 people in Rhode Island have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 3,674 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 96,699,237 people have tested positive and 1,062,564 people have died.

>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States

USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, Oct. 9. Likely COVID patients admitted in the state:

Likely COVID patients admitted in the nation:

Hospitals in 18 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 15 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 29 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.

The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control. If you have questions about the data or the story, contact Mike Stucka at mstucka@gannett.com.

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Newport County reported 138 additional COVID-19 cases this week - newportri.com

Bristol County reported 694 additional COVID-19 cases this week – Fall River Herald News

October 11, 2022

Mike Stucka USA TODAY NETWORK| The Herald News

Massachusetts reported 9,942 new cases of coronavirus in the week ending Sunday, down 3.8% from the previous week. The previous week had 10,340 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.

Massachusetts ranked fifth among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week coronavirus cases in the United States decreased 7.7% from the week before, with 298,674 cases reported. With 2.07% of the country's population, Massachusetts had 3.33% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 13 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.

Bristol County reported 694 cases and six deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 745 cases and two deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 171,152 cases and 2,278 deaths.

Newport County reported 138 cases and no deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 118 cases and no deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 24,467 cases and 99 deaths.

Across Massachusetts, cases fell in nine counties, with the best declines in Middlesex County, with 1,786 cases from 1,918 a week earlier; in Hampshire County, with 202 cases from 294; and in Worcester County, with 991 cases from 1,081.

>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases

Within Massachusetts, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Berkshire County with 190 cases per 100,000 per week; Hampden County with 182; and Barnstable County with 140. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.

Adding the most new cases overall were Middlesex County, with 1,786 cases; Suffolk County, with 1,020 cases; and Worcester County, with 991. Weekly case counts rose in three counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Suffolk, Berkshire and Plymouth counties.

In Massachusetts, 65 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, 60 people were reported dead.

A total of 2,060,884 people in Massachusetts have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 21,771 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 96,699,237 people have tested positive and 1,062,564 people have died.

Note: For Massachusetts, Johns Hopkins University reports data in a combined health department for Dukes and Nantucket counties. Those two counties may appear without any cases, and this will skew rankings of counties.

>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States

USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, Oct. 9. Likely COVID patients admitted in the state:

Likely COVID patients admitted in the nation:

Hospitals in 18 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 15 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 29 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.

The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control. If you have questions about the data or the story, contact Mike Stucka at mstucka@gannett.com.

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Bristol County reported 694 additional COVID-19 cases this week - Fall River Herald News

Medium COVID Could Be the Most Dangerous COVID – The Atlantic

October 11, 2022

I am still afraid of catching COVID. As a young, healthy, bivalently boosted physician, I no longer worry that Ill end up strapped to a ventilator, but it does seem plausible that even a mild case of the disease could shorten my life, or leave me with chronic fatigue, breathing trouble, and brain fog. Roughly one in 10 Americans appears to share my concern, including plenty of doctors. We know many devastating symptoms can persist for months, the physician Ezekiel Emanuel wrote this past May in The Washington Post. Like everyone, I want this pandemic nightmare to be over. But I also desperately fear living a debilitated life of mental muddle or torpor.

Recently, Ive begun to think that our worries might be better placed. As the pandemic drags on, data have emerged to clarify the dangers posed by COVID across the weeks, months, and years that follow an infection. Taken together, their implications are surprising. Some people's lives are devastated by long COVID; theyre trapped with perplexing symptoms that seem to persist indefinitely. For the majority of vaccinated people, however, the worst complications will not surface in the early phase of disease, when youre first feeling feverish and stuffy, nor can the gravest risks be said to be long term. Rather, they emerge during the middle phase of post-infection, a stretch that lasts for about 12 weeks after you get sick. This period of time is so menacing, in fact, that it really ought to have its own, familiar name: medium COVID.

Just how much of a threat is medium COVID? The answer has been obscured, to some extent, by sloppy definitions. A lot of studies blend different, dire outcomes into a single giant bucket called long COVID. Illnesses arising in as few as four weeks, along with those that show up many months later, have been considered one and the same. The CDC, for instance, suggested in a study out last spring that one in five adults who get the virus will go on to suffer any of 26 medical complications, starting at least one month after infection, and extending up to one year. All of these are called post-COVID conditions, or long COVID. A series of influential analyses looking at U.S. veterans described an onslaught of new heart, kidney, and brain diseases (even among the vaccinated) across a similarly broad time span. The studies authors refer to these, grouped together, as long COVID and its myriad complications.

But the risks described above might well be most significant in just the first few weeks post-infection, and fade away as time goes on. When scientists analyzed Swedens national health registry, for example, they found that the chance of developing pulmonary embolisman often deadly clot in the lungswas a startling 32 times higher in the first month after testing positive for the virus; after that, it quickly diminished. The clots were only two times more common at 60 days after infection, and the effect was indistinguishable from baseline after three to four months. A post-infection risk of heart attack and stroke was also evident, and declined just as expeditiously. In July, U.K. epidemiologists corroborated the Swedish findings, showing that a heightened rate of cardiovascular disease among COVID patients could be detected up to 12 weeks after they got sick. Then the hazard went away.

This is all to be expected, given that other respiratory infections are known to cause a temporary spike in patients risk of cardiovascular events. Post-viral blood clots, heart attacks, and strokes tend to blow through like a summer storm. A very recent paper in the journal Circulation, also based on U.K. data, did find that COVIDs effects are longer-lasting, with a heightened chance of such events that lasts for almost one full year. But even in that study, the authors see the risk fall off most dramatically across the first two weeks. Ive now read dozens of similar analyses, using data from many countries, that agree on this basic point: The greatest dangers lie in the weeks, not months, after a COVID infection.

Read: Long COVID could be a mass deterioration event

Yet many have inferred that COVIDs dangers have no end. Whats particularly alarming isthat these are really life-long conditions, Ziyad Al-Aly, the lead researcher on the veterans studies, told the Financial Times in August. A Cleveland Clinic cardiologist has suggested that catching SARS-CoV-2 might even become a greater contributor to cardiovascular disease than being a chronic smoker or having obesity. But if experts who hold this assumption are correctand the mortal hazards of COVID really do persist for a lifetime (or even many months)then its not yet visible at the health-system level. By the end of the Omicron surge last winter, one in four Americansabout 84 million peoplehad been newly infected with the coronavirus. This was on top of 103 million pre-Omicron infections. Yet six months after the surge ended, the number of adult emergency-room visits, outpatient appointments, and hospital admissions across the country were all slightly lower than they were at the same time in 2021, according to an industry report released last month. In fact, emergency-room visits and hospital admissions in 2021 and 2022 were lower than theyd been before the pandemic. In other words, a rising tide of long-COVID-related medical conditions, affecting nearly every organ system, is nowhere to be found.

If mild infections did routinely lead to fatal consequences at a delay of months or years, then we should see it in our death rates, too. The number of excess deaths in the U.S.meaning those that have occured beyond historic normsshould still be going up, long after case rates fall. Yet excess deaths in the U.S. dropped to zero this past April, about two months after the end of the winter surge, and they have stayed relatively low ever since. Here, as around the world, overall mortality rates follow acute-infection rates, but only for a little while. A second wave of deathsa long-COVID wavenever seems to break.

Even the most familiar maladies of long COVIDsevere fatigue, cognitive difficulties, and breathing troubletend to be at their worst during the medium post-infection phase. An early analysis of symptom-tracking data from the U.K., the U.S., and Sweden found that the proportion of those experiencing COVIDs aftereffects decreased by 83 percent four to 12 weeks after illness started. The U.K. government also reported much higher rates of medium COVID, relative to long COVID: In its survey, 11 percent of people who caught the virus experienced lingering issues such as weakness, muscle aches, and loss of smell, but that rate had dropped to 3 percent by 12 weeks post-infection. The U.K. saw a slight decline in the number of people reporting such issues throughout the spring and summer; and a recent U.S. government survey found that about half of Americans who had experienced any COVID symptoms for three months or longer had already recovered.

This slow, steady resolution of symptoms fits with what we know about other post-infection syndromes. A survey of adolescents recovering from mononucleosis, which is caused by Epstein-Barr virus, found that 13 percent of subjects met criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome at six months, but that rate was nearly halved at one year, and nearly halved again at two. An examination of chronic fatigue after three different infectionsEBV, Q fever, and Ross River virusidentified a similar pattern: frequent post-infection symptoms, which gradually decreased over months.

Read: Its not just long COVID

The pervasiveness of medium COVID does nothing to negate the reality of long COVIDa calamitous condition that can shatter peoples lives. Many long-haulers experience unremitting symptoms, and their cases can evolve into complex chronic syndromes like ME/CFS or dysautonomia. As a result, they may require specialized medical care, permanent work accommodations, and ongoing financial support. Recognizing the small chance of such tragic outcomes could well be enough to make some people try to avoid infection or reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 at all costs.

But if youre like me, and trying to calibrate your behaviors to meet some personally acceptable level of COVID risk, then it helps to keep in mind the difference between the viruss medium- and long-term complications. Medium COVID may be time-limited, but it is far from rareand not always mild. It can mean a month or two of profound fatigue, crushing headaches, and vexing chest pain. It can lead to life-threatening medical complications. It needs recognition, research, and new treatments. For millions of people, medium COVID is as bad as it gets.

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Medium COVID Could Be the Most Dangerous COVID - The Atlantic

This UT Scientist Helped Spare Millions From COVID-19. Now He’s Unmasking Other Killer Viruses. – Texas Monthly

October 11, 2022

Jason McLellan was waiting for a pair of snowboard boots to be heat-molded to his feet when he answered a call that likely saved millions of lives. Barney Graham, a virologist with the National Institutes of Health, had reached him in a ski shop in Park City, Utah, to ask for his help in developing a vaccine to fight a novel coronavirus that had emerged in China just weeks earlier.

McLellan, a structural biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, immediately messaged Daniel Wrapp, one of the top graduate researchers in his lab, telling him they were joining Grahams effort. At that moment, the pair knew something few in the world did. Working mostly unnoticed, McLellan and his team had pioneered an entirely new process of vaccine development, one that held great promise against coronaviruses.

Five days after McLellans call from Graham, in January 2020, Chinese scientists published the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2; Wrapp needed only an hour to identify a way to lock the viruss spike protein into a shape that impeded its latching on to cells and made it vulnerable to attack from the human immune system. It was a crucial first step in creating a vaccine. A furious flurry of scientific back-and-forth followed, among McLellan, Graham, and vaccine development teams at the NIH and drugmaker Moderna. Six weeks later, Modernas mRNA-1273 vaccine was ready for testing. The Food and Drug Administration authorized it for emergency use just ten months after that.

Developing a vaccine that quickly against a new virus would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. But in 2013, McLellan engineered a stunning breakthrough against another virus that also had no treatmentrespiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. This common viral infection fills hospital beds with sick children and kills thousands of adults over age 65 each year. For decades, researchers had triedand failedto produce an RSV vaccine. Yet today, thanks to the same McLellan discovery that led to the COVID-19 vaccines, an inoculation could finally be available within the next year or two. McLellans work may again prove a lifesaver. And hes just getting started.

Youd be forgiven for mistaking Jason McLellan for a college student. Its not just that the 41-year-old wears the standard-issue uniform of sneakers, worn jeans, and an untucked T-shirt. Its also his laid-back vibechomping on a caffeine-rich gum called MEGhis youthful face, and his rough-edged, coffee-colored beard. He doesnt want to be a Harvard professor, says Dan Leahy, the former chair of UTs molecular biosciences department, who recruited McLellan from Dartmouth five years ago. He just wants a corner to do his scienceand eat good barbecue.

Time spent trimming his beard or dry-cleaning a blazer could be time spent in his lab, and little enthralls McLellan more than puzzling out the structure of a protein at the atomic level. Growing up in a suburb of Detroit, McLellan often played with Legos, and when he learned about structural biology during his senior year at Wayne State University, his fascination with tiny building blocks became a calling. I really enjoy determining the three-dimensional structures of proteins, McLellan said during one of our Zoom conversations, and Ive always found viruses fascinating.

After finishing his doctorate in biophysics at Johns Hopkins in 2008, McLellan received multiple job offers. He wanted to go where he could not only satisfy his curiosity about the structure of proteins but also use that information to save lives. He found that opportunity at the NIH Vaccine Research Center, in Bethesda, Maryland.

Antigens are like mug shots that the immune system uses to identify intruders. And RSVs F protein is like an intruder who dons a disguise after being spotted robbing a bank.

There, McLellan joined so many scientists working to find a vaccine for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, that there wasnt room for him on the fourth floor with the others. Instead, he took a spot on the second floor, near the lab of Barney Graham, who had devoted his career to studying RSV. After the NIH failed at a series of HIV vaccine efforts, McLellan began to wonder whether the lab shouldnt try its approach on a less complex virussuch as RSV.

Thats not to say RSV is simple. Disastrous vaccine trials in the mid-sixties resulted in two of the vaccinated children dying and most getting sicker than the unvaccinated kids who also had caught RSV. Those trials chilled RSV vaccine progress for decades, even though nearly everyone in the U.S. has had RSV at some point, and many get it multiple times. Studies have found that RSV infections cost the United States more than a billion dollars annually in medical expenses. The virus is particularly dangerous to infants.

When four-month-old Indie Cardenas, of Midland, was first diagnosed with RSV in May, her lungs became inflamed, blocking her airways, and her oxygen levels dropped so low that she turned blue. She was transferred to Covenant Childrens Hospital, in Lubbock, for specialized care and intubated the next day. We thought it was going to be a two-day or three-day stay at the hospital, said her mother, Bianca Cardenas. But Indie, whose Down syndrome makes her especially vulnerable to respiratory illness, spent more than a month fighting RSV before recovering. She may join the numerous children who experience long-term effects from bouts with the illness. RSV kills somewhere between 100 and 500 U.S. children and about 14,000 adults age 65 and older each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A vaccine that could prevent most of those deaths has remained elusive because an unstable protein on the viruss surfacethe F proteinchanges form when it attaches to cells inside the human body. That transformation makes the virus hard to target. Viruses bind to and enter cells so they can hijack the cells machinery to replicate. Often, the protein that binds to a cell is also the part of the virus that the immune system recognizes as a threat, called an antigen. Antigens are like mug shots that the immune system uses to identify intruders. And RSVs F protein is like an intruder who dons a disguise after being spotted robbing a bank. The key to an effective RSV vaccine, then, is to lock that protein into its original shapebefore it can make that costume changeand induce the immune system to produce antibodies against that original shape.

The problem was, back when McLellan first set his sights on RSV, no one knew what the F protein really looked like because proteins are too tiny to see except with specialized methods and tools, such as X-ray crystallography or cryo-electron microscopes. McLellan had access to that equipment at the NIH, and Graham persuaded McLellan to map both the pre- and post-change versions of the F protein. It sounded really important, McLellan says. Man, if you can save the lives of tens of thousands... that seems like a great thing to make a vaccine for.

It took three years for McLellan to map out the post-change, or post-fusion, version of the F protein, a necessary step to test antibody response and to understand how the protein morphs from one shape to another. Two years after that, in 2013, he finished mapping the pre-fusion version. All of a sudden, we could see it, Graham says. But to capture it, we had to find an antibody that bound to it and then stabilize it. They hoped to tweak the pre-fusion structure of the F protein and force it to stay in that shape, leaving it vulnerable to the immune systems attack. The team had spent two years testing thousands of human antibodies until they found one that neutralized the F protein. They could see the exact portion of the F protein that antibodies latched on to. McLellan added chemical bonds to the protein that would keep it locked into its pre-fusion shapemaking it a key ingredient for a vaccine.

The NIH holds the patent on McLellan and Grahams work, and after the researchers published their process, in 2013, Pfizer and other drug companies immediately began developing RSV vaccines. Trials began in 2017, and today drugmakers GSK, Janssen, Moderna, and Pfizer are each conducting phaseIII trials on their own vaccinesthe final step before FDA approval. All of them use the pre-fusion F protein McLellan designed.

In June, GSK announced that its vaccine offered exceptional protection against RSV in adults age sixty or older. Other trials are testing vaccines in pregnant women, designed to protect babies for several months after birth, when theyre most at risk of severe RSV disease. McLellan hopes to see results from those within the year, and Graham expects an RSV vaccine to be approved for either older adults or pregnant women by the end of 2023. There are tons of failed phaseIII trials, McLellan says, so to show a path forward, to show this new concept works, is really exciting. That was why I wanted to do this type of work, to make an impact on human health.

As significant as McLellan and Grahams discovery was for RSV, it also served as proof of concept for a new way of developing vaccines. Ever since the development of the first vaccine, against smallpox in the eighteenth century, scientists had designed inoculations the same way: introduce a pathogen to the body so that the immune system learns what it looks like and mounts a response against it. Ideally, if scientists know what antigen on the pathogen induces the immune response, they might include only that antigen in the vaccine instead of a whole virus or bacterium, potentially reducing the vaccines side effects.

But with RSV, McLellan had instead taken whats known as a structure-based design approach: determining the antigen needed for a vaccine against a particular disease, figuring out exactly what the antigen should look like to get the bodys best possible antibody response, and then building that antigen. He didnt invent this concept, first theorized in the early 2000s, but he was the first to turn it into reality.

McLellan continued refining his process, while running his own lab at Dartmouth, before moving to Austin. Instead of using the antigen the pathogen provides, McLellan maps the protein structure of the virus and pinpoints where the bodys most potent antibodies attach. Next, he reverse engineers the protein with tweaks that will keep its structure stable enough to be included in a vaccine, where it stimulates the immune response. This same approach enabled the rapid development of Modernas, Pfizers, and other companies COVID-19 vaccines.

We thought RSV would be the first, but coronavirus kind of scooped it, McLellan says. What the COVID vaccines did was shed more light, at least in the scientific community, on the role of structure-based vaccine design. And to see something we did prepandemic, just some basic science, ending up being in the arms of millions, billions of peoplemy own kids, my parents, my wife... Its really incredible.

After McLellan published his findings on the structure of RSVs F protein in 2013, he began looking for another virus to target. That same year, the world was buzzing about an outbreak of a deadly new coronavirus causing Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, commonly known as MERS, that can result in fever, coughing, and shortness of breath, among other symptoms.

In 2013 McLellan relocated to Dartmouth, where he would spend the next three years focusing on the MERS viruss spike proteinthe same one all coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, have on their surface. He was joined by Nianshuang Wang, a structural biologist from a small town in China who had traveled to the U.S. to work with McLellan after reading about his research on RSV. Wang says he wanted to do the same kind of work McLellan was doing because its so promising for being used in a real vaccine for so many people. It was Wang who cracked how to stabilize the coronavirus spike protein.

McLellans team filed a patent for that stabilized protein in October 2016 and submitted its work to top journals, including Science and Nature. The editors werent impressed, perhaps because MERS never spread far and killed fewer than five hundred people worldwide in its worst year. After five rejections, McLellans paper found a home in 2017 in PNAS, the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a respected but second-tier journal. We were very excited about it, Graham says, but the rest of the world just wasnt all that excited.

In fact, coronaviruses seemed to be of so little interest and pose so minor a threat that McLellan and his team at Dartmouth were denied a grant in 2017 for research aimed at creating a universal vaccine against all coronaviruses. Although National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reviewers rated McLellans proposal as outstanding, it was deemed a low priority.

While McLellan was working on MERS, former UT molecular biosciences chair Leahy began wooing his former Johns Hopkins student to Austin. McLellan visited Texas, and Leahy treated him to a whole mess of brisket from Franklin Barbecue while promising him extensive access to the two cryo-electron microscopes UT put into operation in December 2017 as part of a new $8million research facility. In turn, McLellan told Leahy about the paper his team had just published on the MERS spike protein. Leahy said the work seemed interesting. He says now, We didnt realize it would be critical.

In January 2018, when McLellan moved his lab from New Hampshire, he continued working on coronaviruses and on the family of viruses to which RSV belongs. Today hes turned much of his focus to vaccine development for other coronaviruses, as well as additional viral and bacterial diseases, including pertussis, better known as whooping cough, whose current vaccines begin losing effectiveness within a few years after being administered.

Hes not stopping there. McLellan is working on a vaccine for another respiratory virus that most havent heard ofmetapneumovirus, which can be deadly for immunocompromised patients, such as bone marrow transplant recipients. Hes also studying ways to prevent cytomegalovirus, the leading infectious cause of birth defects in the U.S. and a particularly dangerous virus for those with compromised immune systems. Hes targeting, as well, the tick-borne Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, which kills three out of ten who get it. And while hes doing all of that, other researchers are deploying the reverse vaccinology approach McLellan helped pioneer to work on vaccines against a range of diseaseseverything from tuberculosis and malaria to Ebola and the flu.

His work has been such a game changer for vaccine development that it seems worth wondering if the words Nobel Prize winner may one day be uttered alongside McLellans name. Many of his colleagues seem to avoid saying Nobel as superstitiously as Shakespearean actors avoid saying Macbeth. But Leahy, at least, admits, Its certainly not out of the question to discuss.

McLellan would be the last person to talk about what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the prize, might think of him. Hes almost nerdishly humble about his workhappy to detail the technical aspects of his various breakthroughs, but with little to say about his role in those achievements. Yet I did catch McLellan in an uncharacteristically introspective mood in late August, just after Pfizer reported that its RSV vaccine for older adults proved 86percent effective in preventing severe illness in trials. Im not Mr.Emotional, McLellan said, but even I get a lump in my throat on a day like today. With time, a really effective vaccine translates to thousands or even millions of peoples lives saved, people who will have more days on this earth and more hours with the people that they love. Now weve had two effective vaccines do that. Its living the dream for a vaccinologist.

Tara Haelle is an independent science and health journalist based in Dallas. Shes the author of The Informed Parent and Vaccination Investigation: The History and Science of Vaccines.

This article originally appeared in the November 2022 issue ofTexas Monthlywith the headline Unmasking a Killer Virus.Subscribe today.

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This UT Scientist Helped Spare Millions From COVID-19. Now He's Unmasking Other Killer Viruses. - Texas Monthly

Millions of People May Still Be Eligible For COVID-19 Stimulus Payments, But Time Is Running Out – Government Accountability Office

October 11, 2022

Throughout the pandemic, IRS and Treasury struggled to get COVID-relief payments into the hands of some peopleespecially those with lower-incomes, limited internet access, or experiencing homelessness. Based on IRS and Treasury data, there could be between 9-10 million eligible individuals who have not yet received those payments.

Relief might be in sight for more families and individuals. Individuals with little or no income, and therefore not required to pay taxes, have until November 15 to complete a simplified tax return to get their payments. Taxpayers who missed the April 15 deadline have until October 17. These IRS pages, irs.gov/coronavirus/EIP and ChildTaxCredit.gov, have more information on how to complete and submit a tax return.

Todays WatchBlog post looks at our work on COVID-19 payments to individuals, including the Child Tax Credit and next steps for people who may still be eligible to receive theirs.

Who can get a COVID-19 stimulus payment or a Child Tax Credit?

From April 2020 to December 2021, the federal government made direct COVID-19 stimulus payments to individuals totaling $931 billion. Congress authorized three rounds of payments that benefited an estimated 165 million eligible Americans. Generally, U.S. citizens with income below $75,000 or married couples with an income below $150,000 were eligible for all three payments and the full amount of each payment.

Congress also temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to include more families and increased the payment amounts. Most people with children qualify automatically for the CTC when they file their taxes, but there are some other eligibility requirements, too.

Millions of families may have already received some expanded CTC payments. From July to December 2021, eligible families received advance monthly payments of half their total expected CTC, benefiting around 84% of U.S. children. Generally, checks were directly deposited into the bank accounts IRS had on file for the recipient family. According to the Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve, COVID stimulus and advance CTC payments reduced financial hardship and food insufficiency among recipients.

As stated above, individuals and families can still file a tax return to see if they are eligible to take advantage of these payments and the child tax credit.

What more can Treasury and IRS do to get the word out about how eligible individuals can get their payments?

Treasury and IRS undertook sweeping communications and outreach efforts to publicize the COVID-19 payments and the expanded CTC. Even so, we found several groups of people who experienced difficulties receiving payments including those that:

Part of the challenge for the IRS and Treasury in 2020 was they only had data on taxpayers that had previously filed taxes. Since a broader set of families were eligible for the COVID-19 stimulus payments and the expanded CTC, Treasury and IRS reached out to around 9 million Americans to let them know they were eligible for the relief payments. In May 2021, the Treasury Inspector General identified potentially 10 million individuals eligible for payments. As of June, IRS had no plans to conduct additional outreach.

We made recommendations to IRS and Treasury on ways to improve outreach and communications efforts, especially to underserved communities.

What can people do who think they may be eligible, but are missing payments?

Individuals who think they may be eligible but did not receive a COVID-19 payment in 2020 or 2021 or the CTC can file a simplified return at ChildTaxCredit.gov. However, the deadlines to do so are rapidly approaching. Individuals with little or no income, and therefore not required to pay taxes, have until November 15 and taxpayers who missed the April 15 filing deadline have until October 17.

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Millions of People May Still Be Eligible For COVID-19 Stimulus Payments, But Time Is Running Out - Government Accountability Office

Lane County reports 375 additional COVID-19 cases this week – The Register-Guard

October 11, 2022

Mike Stucka| USA TODAY NETWORK

Video: Jehovah's Witnesses return to door-to-door ministry

Jehovah's Witnesses in Augusta are returning to door-to-door ministry after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19.

Katie Goodale, Augusta Chronicle

Oregon reported 4,237 new cases of coronavirus in the week ending Sunday, from 4,269 the week before of the virus that causes COVID-19.

Oregon ranked 17th among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week, coronavirus cases in the United States decreased 7.7% from the week before, with 298,674 cases reported. With 1.27% of the country's population, Oregon had 1.42% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 13 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.

Lane County reported 375 cases and four deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 299 cases and six deaths. Throughout the pandemic, it has reported 73,374 cases and 635 deaths.

'People are frustrated': Eugene residents think city moving in wrong direction, survey finds

Within Oregon, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Grant County with 500 cases per 100,000 per week; Crook County with 205; and Jefferson County with 203. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.

Adding the most new cases overall were Multnomah County, with 809 cases; Washington County, with 589 cases; and Clackamas County, with 433. Weekly case counts rose in 18 counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Lane, Klamath and Clackamas counties.

>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases

Across Oregon, cases fell in 15 counties, with the best declines in Josephine County, with 55 cases from 103 a week earlier; in Jackson County, with 162 cases from 195; and in Linn County, with 97 cases from 130.

In Oregon, 29 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, 41 people were reported dead.

A total of 899,013 people in Oregon have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 8,590 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States, 96,699,237 people have tested positive and 1,062,564 people have died.

>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States

USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, Oct. 9.

Likely COVID-19 patients admitted in the state:

Likely COVID-19 patients admitted in the nation:

Hospitals in 18 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 15 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 29 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.

Related: COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted communities of color in Oregon, report shows

The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control. If you have questions about the data or the story, contact Mike Stucka at mstucka@gannett.com.

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Lane County reports 375 additional COVID-19 cases this week - The Register-Guard

Codington County reported 35 additional COVID-19 cases this week – Watertown Public Opinion

October 11, 2022

Mike Stucka USA TODAY NETWORK| Watertown Public Opinion

New coronavirus cases leaped in South Dakota in the week ending Sunday, rising 15% as 842 cases were reported. The previous week had 732 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.

South Dakota ranked 22nd among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week coronavirus cases in the United States decreased 7.7% from the week before, with 298,674 cases reported. With 0.27% of the country's population, South Dakota had 0.28% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 13 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.

Codington County reported 35 cases and one death in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 29 cases and no deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 9,653 cases and 104 deaths.

Lac qui Parle County reported 14 cases and no deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported six cases and no deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 2,022 cases and 29 deaths.

Within South Dakota, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Corson County with 245 cases per 100,000 per week; Spink County with 220; and Todd County with 206. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.

Adding the most new cases overall were Pennington County, with 139 cases; Minnehaha County, with 136 cases; and Brown County, with 66. Weekly case counts rose in 30 counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Pennington, Brown and Davison counties.

>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases

Across South Dakota, cases fell in 26 counties, with the best declines in Dewey County, with 8 cases from 29 a week earlier; in Lincoln County, with 30 cases from 48; and in Oglala Lakota County, with 21 cases from 35.

In South Dakota, 12 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, four people were reported dead.

A total of 262,213 people in South Dakota have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 3,033 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 96,699,237 people have tested positive and 1,062,564 people have died.

>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States

USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, Oct. 9. Likely COVID patients admitted in the state:

Likely COVID patients admitted in the nation:

Hospitals in 18 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 15 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 29 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.

The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control. If you have questions about the data or the story, contact Mike Stucka at mstucka@gannett.com.

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Codington County reported 35 additional COVID-19 cases this week - Watertown Public Opinion

The association of BNT16B2b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine with thrombocytopenia and pneumonitis: A case report – News-Medical.Net

October 11, 2022

Side effects associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination have been reported in many countries. Thrombocytopenia is not uncommon; however, pneumonitis induced by vaccination is relatively rare, with only five cases that have been reported to date.

A recent Clinical Infection in Practice study presents the case report of a patient who developed pneumonitis and thrombocytopenia concurrently after being administered the COVID-19 vaccine. This study also summarizes previous cases of COVID-19 vaccination-associated pneumonitis and thrombocytopenia.

Study:Thrombocytopenia and pneumonitis associated with BNT16B2b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine: A case report. Image Credit: Boumen Japet / Shutterstock.com

The subject of the current study was an 80-year-old Japanese man who experienced seven days of cough, fever, and shortness of breath. The individual also had a history of Behets disease and hypertension but was not under any medication.

The patient quit smoking at 50 years of age; however, before that, he smoked about 30 packs each year. The patients body mass index (BMI) was 23 kg/m2.

The subject was vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT16B2b2 messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccine. One week after receiving the first dose, he developed persistent chills for another week, following which he visited the family hospital.

At the hospital, the patients body temperature was 38C and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels were 158.0 mg/L, which normally has a reference value of 1.4 mg/L. Both CRP and temperature levels eventually normalized. The patient subsequently received the second vaccine dose after three weeks of receiving the first.

The day after the administration of the second dose, the subject developed a fever of 37.8C and exhibited a low oxygen saturation level of 85%. Further blood tests revealed elevated platelet and white blood cell counts. Additionally, CRP was 172.0 mg/L and D-dimer was 3.8 g/mL, the latter of which has a reference value of less than 1.0 g/mL.

Computed tomography (CT) images revealed the right upper lung to have an area of consolidation with air bronchograms. Ground-glass opacities were noted beside the pleura of the left lung, in addition to enlarged mediastinal lymph nodes. Pneumonia was determined to be the most likely cause of these developments.

The patient received a diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia and was subsequently treated with 2 g/day of ceftriaxone. The response was not satisfactory, which led the clinicians to then initiate levofloxacin and tazobactam/piperacillin treatment. Nevertheless, the fever did not subside, with CRP and blood cell counts remaining elevated.

A bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) was scheduled for day 13 after admission; however, the procedure was not performed, as the patient exhibited reduced platelet counts. Immunoglobulin G (IgG), IgA, and D-dimer levels were elevated at 28.3 g/L, 7.0 g/L, and 1.8 g/mL, respectively. CT images did not show any thrombus.

COVID-19 vaccination was suspected to cause both thrombocytopenia and pneumonitis. After this determination was made, prednisolone treatment, platelet transfusions, and intravenous Ig (IVIG) were initiated.

Platelet counts ultimately returned to normal after five days, thus allowing the prednisolone dose to be reduced after eight days. CT images after three weeks showed an improvement in lymph node appearance and pneumonia. After the completion of steroid tapering, the subject continues to do well and is periodically monitored.

Five cases of vaccination-induced pneumonitis have been reported, with pneumonitis appearing within a few days of receiving the second vaccine dose in three of these cases. CT imaging results were similar to those reported in the current study, whereas BAL revealed elevated levels of lymphocytes in two patients.

Alveolitis with lymphocyte infiltration was also observed in one case. All patients responded well to steroid treatment.

COVID-19 vaccine-induced thrombocytopenia without thrombosis is common. The symptoms associated with this condition have been observed within one week of first-dose administration and treatment was initiated with steroids and/or IVIG. Some reports of thrombocytopenia with thrombosis have also been noted with unsatisfactory responses to steroid therapy.

The present study reported a case of pneumonitis and thrombocytopenia in a patient with Behets disease after receiving the BNT16B2b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

The authors highlight the utmost importance of considering such case reports on the adverse side effects associated with COVID-19 vaccination. This data will ultimately aid in the appropriate management of COVID-19 patients worldwide during the ongoing pandemic.

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The association of BNT16B2b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine with thrombocytopenia and pneumonitis: A case report - News-Medical.Net

My third COVID-19 infection: Why reinfection can be anything but mild – Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance

October 11, 2022

As the pandemic approaches its third anniversary, most people are well and truly bored with COVID-19. With so many of us having recovered from at least one COVID-19 infection, not to mention being vaccinated and/or boosted, it is seductive to believe that catching it again wont matter.

This is particularly true in the Omicron era, where were encouraged to believe that COVID-19 is nothing but a minor sniffle and we must learn to live with the virus. I too have been enjoying largely living life as if the pandemic never happened in recent weeks and months. Ive been to pubs and parties, packed myself onto public transport without a facemask, and entertained various guests with colds. But having just experienced COVID for the third time, I am regretting letting my guard down.

I am not advocating a return to full or even partial lockdowns; I desperately want my kids to continue attending school, and I dont think pubs or restaurants need to stop serving customers indoors either.But as evidence mounts that northern hemisphere countries could experience a new wave of COVID-19 infections as winter approaches, combined with the return of influenza and other everyday illnesses, the onus is on everyone to do what they can to keep themselves and each other healthy.

This latest bout of COVID-19, was my third in less than three years. The first, in March 2020, was characterised by a persistent cough and chest pains; the second, in June 2021, by fatigue and loss of taste and smell (I still suffer from parosmia). Having recovered from these infections, and been vaccinated, and boosted twice I had assumed that were I to catch it again, any illness would be negligible.

Ever since the rise of Omicron, scientists have talked about its relative mildness particularly in healthy people who have been vaccinated, like me. But my third experience of COVID-19 has been my worst yet.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the medical description of mild illness is at odds with the normal perception of mild, such as with mild weather or mild cheese. When doctors and scientists talk about mild COVID-19, what they mean is not severe enough to cause breathing difficulties.

This time, I experienced various cold-like symptoms sore throat, sneezing, runny nose but it was the feverishness and headaches that immobilised me in bed for three days, unable to cook, do anything for my kids, or work. Fortunately, I am gradually starting to feel better, but my experience of mild COVID was easily on par with flu an illness I previously vowed never to catch again. The possibility of going through it all again next year, assuming thats what living with coronavirus means, is already filling me with dread.

Whereas at the start of the pandemic, nobody had any immunity to SARS-CoV-2, nearly three years on, everyones immune systems are on a slightly different learning curve.

Although at the extreme end of the spectrum, reinfections tend to be less severe than peoples first brush with SARS-CoV-2, data from the UKs Office for National Statistics have suggested that the proportion of people reporting symptoms during reinfection varies according to which variants they have been infected with before. When they were infected, relative to their last COVID-19 infection or vaccination, could also influence their symptom severity, because levels of protective antibodies gradually diminish over time.

Then theres how much virus someone is exposed to. According to Ben Krishna, a postdoctoral researcher in immunology and virology at the University of Cambridge, UK, infection with a higher dose of virus (say, if someone with COVID-19 sneezes in your face) could enable higher levels of virus to gain a foothold in the body before the immune system manages to stamp them out, resulting in more severe symptoms.

My last COVID-19 booster was in June, so I was surprised to have come down with it again so soon. My experience shows that boosters do not offer total protection from the disease even though they are very effective in preventing severe disease and death.COVID-19 vaccines have had a massive impact on peoples risk of being hospitalised with or dying from the disease, and are the reason many countries have largely been able to return to normal life, without hospitals being overwhelmed.

Unfortunately, current COVID-19 vaccines still only top-up peoples immune protection for a limited period before their antibody levels begin to drop. They will still be largely protected against severe disease and death, but waning antibodies increase individuals susceptibility to reinfection.

The rationale for some countries launching COVID-19 booster campaigns in the coming weeks and months is to temporarily boost antibodies, reducing the risk of a sharp increase in severe cases, precisely when hospitals are likely to be grappling with a spike in influenza admissions. It is therefore important to take up the offer of a booster vaccine, if you are offered one, but it wont make you invincible.

Then theres the issue of increasingly immune-resistant subvariants. Although the WHO hasnt assigned any new Greek letters since Omicron, the subvariant thats making me sick is likely very different to the one that infected my husband in early March, which was itself quite different to the original BA.1 version of Omicron that emerged in November 2021. The number of new, and potentially worrying Omicron subvariants in circulation right now, is unprecedented.

Unlike the COVID-19 waves we experienced during 2020 and 2021, where a single variant, such as Delta, rapidly outcompeted all others and spread across the world, virologists are currently tracking the growth of multiple subvariants, each carrying overlapping changes to the spike protein, which SARS-CoV-2 uses to grab onto, and infect human cells. Crucially, these mutations affect the ability of antibodies to recognise the virus and block it from infecting us.

Although vaccination and previous COVID infections have left us with other weapons against the virus, its ongoing evolution and individuals waning immunity means that even people who caught COVID-19 in May or June, when the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants took off, could be susceptible to reinfection with the newest crop of subvariants, assuming they continue to spread.

If you are unfortunate enough to be reinfected, it is still likely that your infection will be mild. But mild doesnt necessarily mean trivial. Not everyone has the benefit of sick pay, or a partner who can take over all childcare duties while their other half quarantines in bed. Even for those lucky enough to have these things, the risk of Long COVID still looms large.

COVID-19 isnt just about individual risk. There are still plenty of people in our communities who risk being hospitalised, or developing lasting disability, if they catch COVID-19 even if theyve been vaccinated. This includes people who may look relatively young and healthy. Living life as if theres no pandemic is risky for everyone.

It is also unsustainable. Widespread absences due to COVID-19, flu, or any other infection, risks there being too few teachers, delivery drivers, healthcare staff and other essential workers to keep society running as normal.

Everyone wishes for a return to normal life, but behaving as if there is no COVID-19 will have consequences. Relative normality is another matter. With a few common-sense precautions such as avoiding mixing with people if you are unwell; wearing a good quality facemask in crowded indoor spaces if local case numbers are high (particularly if you are unwell); taking a COVID-19 test if you can; getting a booster vaccine if you are offered one; and keeping indoor spaces ventilated we can all help to keep everyone protected.

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My third COVID-19 infection: Why reinfection can be anything but mild - Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance

Oil falls on recession fears and China Covid worries – CNBC

October 11, 2022

Oil-storage tanks are seen from above in Carson, California.

Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images

Oil slid on Tuesday, extending losses of nearly 2% in the previous session, as recession fears and a flare-up in Covid-19 cases in China raised concern over global demand.

World Bank President David Malpass and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warned on Monday of a growing risk of global recession and said that inflation remains a continuing problem.

Brent crude fell $1.65, or 1.7%, to $94.56 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped $1.71, or 1.9%, to $89.41.

"There is growing pessimism in the markets now," said Craig Erlam of brokerage OANDA.

Oil has dropped sharply on economic fears after surging earlier in 2022, when Brent came close to its record high of $147 as Russia's invasion of Ukraine added to supply concerns.

"Warnings after warnings are being issued when it comes to global economic growth," said Avatrade analyst Naeem Aslam.

Those worries aside, fears of a further hit to demand in China also weighed. Authorities have stepped up coronavirus testing in Shanghai and other large cities as COVID-19 infections rise again.

Oil also came under pressure from a strong dollar, which hit multi-year highs on worries about increases to interest rates and escalation of the Ukraine war.

A strong dollar makes oil more expensive for buyers with other currencies and tends to weigh on risk appetite.

Losses were limited, however, by a tight market and last week's decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies including Russia, together known as OPEC+, to lower their output target by 2 million barrels per day.

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Oil falls on recession fears and China Covid worries - CNBC

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