Category: Corona Virus

Page 307«..1020..306307308309..320330..»

COVID-19 Daily Update 10-7-2022 – West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

October 8, 2022

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of October 7, 2022, there are currently 1,022 active COVID-19 cases statewide. There have been five deaths reported since the last report, with a total of 7,450 deaths attributed to COVID-19.

DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a 57-year old male from Wood County, a 90-year old female from Wayne County, a 79-year old female from Fayette County, a 93-year old female from Lincoln County, and an 84-year old female from Kanawha County.

Our thoughts are with the families who are experiencing the pain of loss due to COVID-19, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. Please schedule your COVID-19 vaccine or booster shot today to protect yourself, your family and your community.

CURRENT ACTIVE CASES PER COUNTY: Barbour (12), Berkeley (69), Boone (12), Braxton (7), Brooke (9), Cabell (27), Calhoun (3), Clay (2), Doddridge (5), Fayette (28), Gilmer (3), Grant (2), Greenbrier (18), Hampshire (10), Hancock (12), Hardy (5), Harrison (47), Jackson (14), Jefferson (46), Kanawha (69), Lewis (18), Lincoln (7), Logan (19), Marion (39), Marshall (16), Mason (8), McDowell (10), Mercer (48), Mineral (18), Mingo (18), Monongalia (41), Monroe (7), Morgan (23), Nicholas (20), Ohio (21), Pendleton (6), Pleasants (5), Pocahontas (8), Preston (43), Putnam (26), Raleigh (51), Randolph (4), Ritchie (6), Roane (11), Summers (8), Taylor (17), Tucker (1), Tyler (5), Upshur (13), Wayne (13), Webster (2), Wetzel (1), Wirt (3), Wood (48), Wyoming (38). To find the cumulative cases per county, please visit http://www.coronavirus.wv.gov and look on the Cumulative Summary tab which is sortable by county.

West Virginians ages 6 months and older are eligible for COVID-19 vaccination. All individuals ages 6 months and older should receive a primary series of vaccination, the initial set of shots that teaches the body to recognize and fight the virus that causes COVID-19. Those ages 5-11 years are recommended to get an original (monovalent) booster shot when due, and those ages 12 years and older are recommended to get an Omicron booster shot (bivalent) at least two months after completing their primary series.

Originally posted here:

COVID-19 Daily Update 10-7-2022 - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

Reno County reported 81 additional COVID-19 cases this week this week – The Hutchinson News

October 8, 2022

Mike Stucka USA TODAY NETWORK| The Hutchinson News

New coronavirus cases increased 3.9% in Kansas in the week ending Sunday as the state added 2,780 cases. The previous week had 2,676 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.

Kansas ranked 23rd 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 19.4% from the week before, with 323,859 cases reported. With 0.88% of the country's population, Kansas had 0.86% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 10 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.

Reno County reported 81 cases. A week earlier, it had reported 81 cases and no deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 21,119 cases and 262 deaths.

Within Kansas, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Logan County with 537 cases per 100,000 per week; Labette County with 474; and Pawnee County with 343. 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 Sedgwick County, with 479 cases; Johnson County, with 449 cases; and Douglas County, with 244. Weekly case counts rose in 32 counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Johnson, Douglas and Cowley counties.

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

Across Kansas, cases fell in 61 counties, with the best declines in Wyandotte County, with 99 cases from 217 a week earlier; in Riley County, with 30 cases from 113; and in Shawnee County, with 120 cases from 184.

In Kansas, 476 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, seven people were reported dead.

A total of 879,001 people in Kansas have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 9,555 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 96,397,885 people have tested positive and 1,059,605 people have died.

>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States

USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, Oct. 2. Likely COVID patients admitted in the state:

Likely COVID patients admitted in the nation:

Hospitals in 17 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 25 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 17 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.

Go here to read the rest:

Reno County reported 81 additional COVID-19 cases this week this week - The Hutchinson News

Coronavirus (Covid-19) Infection Survey, Northern Ireland: Weekly Report – Department of Health

October 8, 2022

The Department of Health today published the next in the series of weekly results from its COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS).

The findings set out in this report relate to modelled positivity estimates for NI for the week up to the 26September 2022. The aims of the CIS are to estimate how many people have the infection and the number of new cases that occur over a given time as well as estimating how many people have developed antibodies to COVID-19.

The survey over time will help track the extent of infection and transmission of COVID-19 among people in the community population (those in private residential households).

Due to the relatively small number of tests and positive swab results within our sample, credible intervals are wide and therefore results should be interpreted with caution.

The World Health Organization (WHO) have defined names forvariants of concern.

Currently, the variants under surveillance in the UK are:

The Cycle threshold (Ct) value reflects the quantity of virus (also known as viral load) found in a swab test. A lower Ct value indicates a higher viral load. The latest Ct values of coronavirus (COVID-19) positive tests, as well as analysis of the genetic lineages of coronavirus seen in the samples that are sequenced, are provided in theCoronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey: technical dataset.

Since the end of June 2022, the majority of COVID-19 infections in the UK have been Omicron variants BA.4 or BA.5, with BA.5 comprising 91.2% and BA.4 comprising 6.3% of all sequenced COVID-19 infections in the week ending 11 September 2022.

More information on how variants from positive tests on the survey are measured can be found in the ONS Understanding COVID-19 Variants blogand theCoronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey methods article.

The last published main variant analysis was included in COVID-19 Infection Survey, Northern Ireland: Weekly Report 8July 2022. This showed a very high proportion of infections compatible with the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, so a breakdown of infections by variants is not included in this release. Infections by variant will continued to be monitored and analysis will be reintroduced when considered helpful.

Share this page

See the original post:

Coronavirus (Covid-19) Infection Survey, Northern Ireland: Weekly Report - Department of Health

Long COVID could be linked to a totally different (and common) virus, new study finds – Fortune

October 8, 2022

A number of factors may increase the risk of someone developing long COVID, aside from catching COVID itself. They include having asthma, Type 2 diabetes, or autoimmune conditions, and being female.

Now researchers think prior exposure to another coronavirusone that causes a common coldmay play a role in some patients.

In the new study by Harvard Universityaffiliated scientists, published Sept. 26 to Yale Universityaffiliated preprint server medRxiv, authors tested the blood of 43 patients who had arthritis or a similar condition before the pandemic.

Such patients who later developed long COVID showed evidence of an underwhelming antibody response to COVIDand of an overwhelming antibody response to OC43, one of several circulating coronaviruses that cause common colds.

The patients were likely infected with the cold at some point in their lives before they were infected with COVID, the authors theorize. When their bodies immune systems were exposed to the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID, they responded with OC43 antibodies that, while similar, were less than ideal, leading to chronic inflammation and other long COVID symptoms.

Dr. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said the new findings come in a very interesting report that adds to the possible underpinnings of long COVID.

Researchers have looked at prior infection with Epstein-Barr virus, a form of herpes that can cause mono, and other viruses as potentially contributing to the development of long COVID, Topol tweeted Sept. 26. But the new study is the first to look at the role a common cold might play.

There are thought to be multiple categories of long COVID with, perhaps, different triggers for each, aside from COVID. While prior infection with this common cold may play a role in arthritis patients with long COVID, it may or may not play a role in other categories of patients, the authors wrote.

But for arthritis patients in particular, the discovery could serve as a way to identify long COVID and potentially develop a treatment for it, they added.

Nearly 20% of American adults whove had COVIDan estimated 50 million Americansreport having long COVID symptoms after their infection resolves, according to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau this summer.

Long COVID is roughly defined as symptoms that persist or appear long after the initial COVID infection is gone, but a consensus definition has not yet been broadly accepted.

Many experts contend that long COVID is best defined as a chronic-fatigue-syndrome-like condition that develops after COVID illness, similar to other post-viral syndromes like those that can occur after infection with herpes, Lyme disease, and even Ebola. Other post-COVID complications, like organ damage and post-intensive-care syndrome, should not be defined as long COVID, they say.

Coronaviruses, named for their crown-like appearance under a microscope, were discovered in the 1960s. Four types, including OC43, commonly circulate among humans, usually causing colds. Three additional coronaviruses involve more serious symptoms: MERS (Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome), which caused an epidemic in 2012; SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which caused an epidemic in the early 2000s; and COVID.

Read the rest here:

Long COVID could be linked to a totally different (and common) virus, new study finds - Fortune

Spatialtemporal trends of COVID-19 infection and mortality in Sudan | Scientific Reports – Nature.com

October 8, 2022

Description of COVID-19 infection rate in Sudan

COVID-19 infection in Sudan had wide variation during the study period across the different states of Sudan. The highest incidence rate had occurred in December-2020 with a total incidence of 4863 cases ranging from 0 cases in some of the states to 4164 cases in other states (mean=270946, median=21 cases). Followed by the incidence in May, 2020 with a total of 4524 cases ranging from 4 to 3509 cases (mean=251794, median=31 cases). Table 1 below illustrates the incidence rate of COVID-19 in Sudan.

The incidence rate of COVID-19 across the different states of Sudan was studied (Fig.1). The spatialtemporal trend of this pandemic varied across different states. Khartoum State was the most affected state during all the months, followed by El Gezira State. Both of these states lay in the middle of the country. The western states of the country had lower incidence rate of COVID-19 infection. October, 2020 had the lowest incidence rate in all states. Furthermore, five states had zero incidence of COVID-19 infection in October, 2020. The wavy nature was apparent in the different states across the months. Figure1 below shows the spatialtemporal presentation of COVID-19 infection.

COVID-19 Infection rate across the states of Sudan May 2020March 2021 developed through ArcGIS 10.8 by Abd El-Raheem et al. (Shp. files of the base maps https://www.diva-gis.org/gdata).

On assessing the correlation between COVID-19 infection and the population density in each state, a strong positive correlation (Pearsons correlation=0.885, p-value=0.000) was found between cumulative infection and population density across Sudan States. The middle states (Khartoum and El Gezira) had the highest infection rate and the highest population density (Fig.2). While, the western states (Western Darfur, Central Darfur and Eastern Darfur) had the lowest rate of COVID-19 infection. These western states had low population density (Fig.2).

Cumulative COVID-19 Infection across the Sudan States and population of each State developed through ArcGIS 10.8 by Abd El-Raheem et al. (Shp. files of the base maps https://www.diva-gis.org/gdata).

Mortality rate among COVID-19 cases had wide variations, yet it had less variability than the infection rate. During all of the months, some of the states had zero mortalities. Nevertheless, the rate of mortality showed similar pattern of the wavy nature. These surges of COVID-19 were apparent, the peaks of mortality rate were during May and June -2020, with total mortalities of 295 (mean=1639) and 301 (mean=1730) cases respectively. Then another surge was apparent in December-2020 and January-2021, with mortalities of 192 (mean=1137) and 191 (mean=1129) cases respectively. As well as, another surge was starting in March-2021, which showed mortality rate of 181 cases (mean=1024 cases). The cumulative mortality of COVID-19 during the 11month of the study period was 1565 cases with a mean of 87188 cases (median=29 cases). Table 2 below illustrated the statistics of mortality for each month.

Mortality rate across the different states was studied (Fig.3). The monthly mortality cases of COVID-19 were presented spatially. Mortality rate had differed from one state to another and from one month to the other (Fig.3). Interestingly, in the surge of May and June-2020, the mortalities were prevalent in almost all the states. In May-2020, Khartoum, El Gezira, Northern Darfur and Northern Kordofan had the highest mortality rates (167, 56, 23 and 12 dead cases/month respectively). In June-2020, mortality was the highest in Khartoum, El Gezira and Northern Darfur (115, 78 and 19 dead cases/month respectively). The mortality rate was zero in October-2020 in 17 states of Sudan consistent with the infection rate. Only one state (El Gezira) had reported mortalities during October-2020 (one dead case). During the surge of December-2020 and January-2021; mortalities were centered in the middle states (Khartoum and El Gezira). About 10 states had zero mortalities in the surge of December and January. In March-2021, mortality rates were rising again; especially in Khartoum State (100 dead cases/month). Figure3 illustrates the details of the mortality trend in Sudan across the different months.

COVID-19 Mortality rate across the states of Sudan May 2020-March 2021 developed through ArcGIS 10.8 by Abd El-Raheem et al. (Shp. files of the base maps https://www.diva-gis.org/gdata).

Cumulative COVID-19 mortality map (Fig.4) showed the overall mortality in Sudan at state level. The states with the highest cumulative mortality were Khartoum and El Gezira (801 and 326 dead cases respectively). While, the lowest mortalities were in Western Kordofan and Southern Darfur (1 dead case each). In general, the western and southern states of the country had the lowest mortality rates. While, the middle states (Khartoum and El Gezira) had the highest mortalities. Northern and eastern states had lower mortalities than the middle states, yet, higher than the western and southern states (Fig.4).

Cumulative COVID-19 Mortality across the Sudan States developed through ArcGIS 10.8 by Abd El-Raheem et al. (Shp. files of the base maps https://www.diva-gis.org/gdata).

Prevalence of COVID-19 infection in Sudan was obtained. The number of cases per thousand populations were calculated for each of the states of Sudan to develop the risk map (Fig.5). Areas with the highest risk were the center and the east parts of the country. Khartoum State had the highest prevalence (2.6 cases/1000 populations). While, the areas with the lowest risk were the western parts of the country; with Western Darfur having the lowest risk of COVID-19 infection (prevalence=0.09 cases/1000 populations). Figure5 presented the risk map of COVID-19 in Sudan.

Risk Map of COVID-19 Infection in Sudan developed through ArcGIS 10.8 by Abd El-Raheem et al. (Shp. files of the base maps https://www.diva-gis.org/gdata).

Infection and mortality rates were studied together to find the correlation between these rates. Strong positive correlation between infection and mortality (Pearsons correlation=0.789, p-value=0.004) was found in Fig.6, the peaky nature of COVID-19 infection is clear; showing two peaks and the third peak was starting. Infection rate was high in May and June-2020, then started decreasing until October-2020 (lowest infection rate). During the peak of May 2020, mortality accounted for 6.5% of the cases (295/4524). After that, infection had started in increase in November, reaching a peak in December-2020.On the peak, COVID-19 mortality was 3.9% (192/4863). The December 2020 peak was then decreased in February-2021. In March, the infection rate had started to rise. Mortality trend was less peaky; mortality rates were much lower than the infection rates. Even though, increases in mortality rates were apparent in Fig.6 consistent with the peaks of infection.

Correlation between COVID-19 infection and mortality over time (May, 2020March, 2021).

More:

Spatialtemporal trends of COVID-19 infection and mortality in Sudan | Scientific Reports - Nature.com

David Quammen’s ‘Breathless’ Is a Riveting Account of the Race to Understand SARS-CoV-2 – Outside

October 8, 2022

Editors note: Outside will be hosting a live Q&A with David Quammen on Thursday, October 13, at 6 P.M. Mountain Time. Join us on Zoom by registering here.

In March 2020, I was busy devouring The End of October, a novel by Lawrence Wright about a deadly new virus that shuts down the globe as epidemiologists engage in a frantic race to isolate the pathogen. That plot, of course, was also playing out in real life at that very moment. Nearly three years later, we havea compelling new nonfiction scientific thriller about SARS-CoV-2: Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus by science writer David Quammen.

The book is already a finalist for the National Book Award, and for longtime Outside readers, its something of a dream come true (even though its about a nightmare). With more than four decades of reporting on the natural world under his beltstarting as Outsides Natural Acts columnist in 1981Quammen was perfectly placed to listen in on the conversation as scientists and virologists began rapid-fire pinging each other in December 2019at first with rumors of an unidentified pathogen, and then with snippets of genetic codetrying to get a bead on something that, said one, looked very, very similar to a SARS coronavirus.

The emergence of a novel virus was, of course, a surprise to none of them. As Quammen wrote in 2012 in his similarly terrifying book Spillover, infectious disease scientists have been warning for years about the very real possibility of a pandemic caused by a virus spilling over from the nonhuman world. Thats what caused AIDs, Ebola, Marburg, MERS, Nipah, West Nile, and othersserious maladies that Quammen chronicled in in the book. (The main lesson I took from Spillover: never, ever go anywhere near a bat cave.)

In Breathless, Quammen writes that virologists had for decades seen such an event coming, like a small, dark dot on the horizon of western Nebraska, rumbling toward us at indeterminable speed and with indeterminable force, like a runaway chicken truck or an eighteen-wheeler loaded with rolled steel.

Thats the third line of the book. It only gets crazier from there.

Quammen would probably disagree with describing Breathless as a thriller. This is a book about the science of SARS-CoV-2, he writes. The medical crisis of COVID-19, the heroism of health care workers and other people performing essential services, the unjustly distributed human suffering, and the egregious political malfeasance that made it all worsethose are topics for other books. (For those stories, try The Premonition, by Michael Lewis, or The Plague Year, by Lawrence Wright.)

Quammen writes clearly, accurately, and even conversationally about the science, from the nomenclature conventions of virus variants to a viruss receptor binding domains. One of the COVID-19 viruss most nefarious adaptations is something called a furin cleavage site, which signals the infamous spike protein to change shape, as Quammen puts it, like a Transformer robot metamorphosing suddenly into a truck.

As Quammen warns us at times, the scientific going can get toughsome of the explanations are very technical. But just when your eyes glaze over, he is there to gently shake you awake. At one point, after Id zoned out reading a calculation for herd immunity (threshold = 1 1/R0,), he began the next paragraph with the words: He prints equation. Eyes roll back in heads. But no, wait, look how easy this is.

He demonizes no animal, not even the horseshoe bat from which SARS-CoV-2 likely emerged, nor the critically endangered pangolin, a group of whom died in a Chinese wildlife rescue center of an unknown respiratory disease, inactive and sobbing.

One of the best things about Breathless is Quammens familiarity with the remote areas where viruses tend to emerge. His beat, after all, has always been the wild. He has traveled with disease cowboys, as theyre sometimes called, into caves and around remote villages, looking for viral hosts. He has seen the crowded markets full of palm civets, pangolins, and raccoon dogs, with multiple animals packed into small cages, stacked atop one another, sharing their fears and their bodily fluids, while hundreds of people worked and lived and ate amid the jumble, toddlers ran back and forth amid offal from butchered animals, [and] families slept in cramped lofts above their shops.

That global experience gives him compassion for countries where virus spillovers tend to happen, and sympathy for world leaders angry that Americans are getting fourth and fifth shots while many low-income countries have had none. He demonizes no animal, not even the horseshoe bat from which SARS-CoV-2 likely emerged, nor the critically endangered pangolin, a group of whom died in a wildlife rescue center of an unknown respiratory disease, inactive and sobbing. Even viruses themselves get their due. They are like fire, he writes, the dark angels of evolution, terrific and terrible, without which the immense biological diversity gracing our planet would collapse like a beautiful wooden house with every nail abruptly removed.

The heart of the book is a meticulous investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and Quammen turns over every stone. In what will likely be the most provocative part of the book, he spends serious time examining and debunking the theory, ultimately rejected by scientists, that SARS-CoV-2, escaped from a lab.

Likewise, he doesnt merely roll his eyes at the early claims surrounding cures like the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. Ivermectin, he writes, is a trusted tool among veterinarians and a medicine that won its inventors a Nobel Prize. Very few authors could write the following sentence: Ive taken the stuff myself, in small dosage, when I was walking across swamps and forest in the Republic of the Congo and Gabon, being bitten continually by blackflies, and hoping to avoid river blindness.

It just doesnt work on COVID-19.

Luckily for the easily scared, some of the most unsettling revelations about SARS-CoV-2, are already behind us: the realizations that the virus was airborne and that asymptomatic people could silently spread it; those early CDC tests that didnt work; the long months without effective treatment or vaccine.

And yet, there is still terror to be found in these pages. Breathless introduced me to perhaps the two scariest words in virology: sylvatic cycle. After the first spillover of a pathogen from the animal kingdom to humans, humans can then infect pets or farm animals, which can then infect wild animals, providing a hiding place for the virus to mutate again. As Quammen writes: A virus with a sylvatic cycle is two-faced, like a traveling salesman with another wife and more kids in another town.

That is already happening, right here in the United States. During the 2020-2021 hunting season, Iowa wildlife researchers studying chronic wasting disease found SARS-CoV-2 in 82.5 percent of the 97 deer carcasses they tested. The United States, Quammen reminds us, is home to an estimated 25 million white-tailed deer.

This is the world we live in now. One thing is nearly certain, I believe, amid the swirl of uncertainties, Quammen writes. COVID-19 wont be our last pandemic of the twenty-first century. It probably wont be our worst.

And it isnt over yet. On October 4, when Breathless was published, the author was at home with COVID-19.

The rest is here:

David Quammen's 'Breathless' Is a Riveting Account of the Race to Understand SARS-CoV-2 - Outside

Coronavirus tally: U.S. homelessness higher than before the pandemic as housing programs are ended – Morningstar

October 8, 2022

Homelessness has risen nearly 70% in California over two years as pandemic programs aimed at stemming evictions are ended, the Associated Press reported The overall number of homeless in a federal government report to be released in coming months is expected to be higher than the 580,000 unhoused before the coronavirus outbreak, the National Alliance to End Homelessness said. The AP tallied results from city-by-city surveys conducted earlier this year and found the number of people without homes is up overall compared with 2020 in areas reporting results so far. U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where the data are not being collected. The daily average for new cases stood at 41,605 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 25% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in most Northeastern states by 10% of more, while cases in the West are rising in Montana, Washington and Oregon. The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,021, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 3910 Globally, the confirmed case tally rose above 620.5 million on Friday, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins, while the death toll is above 6.55 million with the U.S. leading the world with 96.6 million cases and 1,062,230 deaths.

-Ciara Linnane

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

10-07-22 0615ET

See more here:

Coronavirus tally: U.S. homelessness higher than before the pandemic as housing programs are ended - Morningstar

Here’s what might happen the secondor thirdtime you get Covid, experts say: ‘Theres no guarantee’ – CNBC

October 8, 2022

As the weather grows colder, you may find yourself experiencing a second or even third round of Covid infection.

That prompts a few questions: Will getting Covid again be similar to my previous experience? Will it be any different than last time? Will my symptoms be more or less severe?

The answer to all of them, experts say: It's complicated. It depends on how long it's been since you last had Covid, your risk of severe disease and how long it's been since you were last vaccinated if you're vaccinated at all.

"With reinfection, it's kind of all over the map," Dr. Gabe Kelen, chair of emergency medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, tells CNBC Make It. "By and large, it seems milder. But there's no guarantee."

Here's what might happen during your reinfection, with an emphasis on the word "might," experts say:

If you recover from a Covid infection, you'll emerge with antibodies in your system that "keep a lookout for a future infection," says Dr. Roy Gulick, chief of infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine. Not all of them will help your body fight the next infection, but ones that do can decrease the amount or severity of your symptoms.

Similarly, staying up-to-date on your Covid vaccines puts you at "a decreased risk" of severe illness, says Dr. Lucy Horton, an infectious disease expert at UC San Diego Health. Up-to-date means to completing your primary series and receiving the booster shots you're eligible for.

Both of those factors can help prevent reinfection, but neither of them can guarantee you won't get sick again nor can they guarantee mild symptoms if you do. No vaccine or natural immunity is 100% effective, and these Covid immunity boosts generally last about three to four months before "optimal protection begins to recede," Gulick says.

In other words, if it's been a while since your last vaccine dose or infection, you may not benefit as much from your immune system's symptom-fighting defenses.

"Timing is key," Gulick says.

These days, if you get Covid, you'll likely experience the virus' omicron strain or one of its subvariants. The omicron family currently makes up all U.S. cases, with BA.5 accounting for 81.3% of them, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Omicron and its subvariants generally appear to cause less severe symptoms than previous Covid variants which could partly be because Americans are more protected with vaccines and previous infections than ever before, Gulick says. So, if you first got Covid before omicron emerged in November 2021, a reinfection may be more mild the second time around.

But a "mild" infection from the omicron family still isn't a walk in the park, even for people who are otherwise healthy and vaccinated causing sore throats, headaches, fatigue, coughs, nasal congestion and muscle aches that can last for days at a time.

Those symptoms could be worse if you're at high risk of severe Covid, which includes people who are elderly, immunocompromised or have underlying medical conditions, according to the CDC.

Last year, a small CDC study found that people who got infected with previous strains of the virus before catching omicron experienced fewer symptoms the second time around. Importantly, the study only examined the original omicron strain, not any of its newer subvariants.

Different Covid variants may also cause you to experience different symptoms, Gulick says. Studies show that sore throats are more commonly associated with the omicron family than previous variants. Similarly, previous variants like delta more commonly caused symptoms like loss of taste or smell.

Horton suggests increasing your protection against reinfection by getting an omicron-specific Covid booster, which targets both the original Covid strain and omicron's BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, if you're eligible.

You can also reduce your risk of getting reinfected by avoiding crowded indoor places and wearing a mask indoors if Covid is spreading at a high level in your area, Horton adds. Use the CDC'sdata trackerto check your local infection and hospitalization rates.

"I don't think it's inevitable that some people will experience reinfection," Horton says. "I think there's a lot of things people can do to protect themselves against it."

Sign up now:Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter

Don't miss:

The rest is here:

Here's what might happen the secondor thirdtime you get Covid, experts say: 'Theres no guarantee' - CNBC

Experts say study on ivermectin, Covid-19 death risk is flawed – Yahoo News

October 8, 2022

Online posts claim a peer-reviewed study found ivermectin reduces coronavirus death risk by 92 percent. This is missing context; public health officials advise against using the anti-parasitic drug to treat Covid-19, and experts say the research cited online is flawed.

"Ivermectin reduces COVID death risk by 92%, peer-reviewed study finds," says a September 28, 2022 Instagram post with more than 43,000 likes.

Screenshot of an Instagram post taken October 3, 2022

The image shows a headline of an article from The Blaze, a media outlet launched by US conservative political commentator Glenn Beck. It was also shared on Instagram here and here.

Ivermectin, a drug approved in the United States to treat certain parasitic infections, has been the subject of misinformation throughout the coronavirus pandemic -- particularly among anti-vaccine advocates.

In 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned against using the drug to treat Covid-19, saying it could have potentially dangerous side effects. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also cautioned against ivermectin.

The social media posts reference a peer-reviewed study published August 31, 2022 by Cureus, an open-access medical journal.

The analysis examined the use of ivermectin as prophylaxis for Covid-19 by drawing upon data collected from a citywide program in Itaja, Brazil. The program offered volunteers medically prescribed ivermectin between July and December 2020.

The researchers said ivermectin prevented Covid-19 infection and hospitalization -- and that they observed a 92 percent reduction in mortality among participants who were given the drug. But Flvio Cadegiani, one of the authors, told AFP in an October 7, 2022 email that the study "is insufficient for the approval of the drug for Covid-19."

"The limitations regarding the methodology of the study are (exactly) those inherent to observational studies," he said.

Multiple experts agreed that the observational nature of the study means it alone cannot be used to determine whether ivermectin is effective at treating Covid-19.

Story continues

"An observational study can give you a hypothesis that can be followed up with a randomized controlled trial," said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, on October 6.

Adalja said there are many factors that cannot be controlled when relying on a voluntary program, including unmeasured variables such as access to health care, wealth and age. He added that randomized controlled trials have found the opposite of what the study cited on social media claims.

"There has not been any data that has shown ivermectin is beneficial," he said.

False claims about Covid-19 and vaccines ( AFP / Gal ROMA, Sophie RAMIS)

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) says it "recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of Covid-19, except in clinical trials." This is based on recently published randomized controlled trials that found no benefit from ivermectin in treating Covid-19.

Greg Tucker-Kellogg, a biology professor at the National University of Singapore, pointed to others issue with the study published in Cureus, including "time bias."

"The analysis treats everyone as if they were all comparable over the same time period, but they were not," he said in an October 7 email.

For example, someone who contracted Covid-19 in July 2020 and had not yet signed up for the program would be automatically counted in the group of participants not using ivermectin. This means "the non-user group was accumulating infected cases while the user group was enrolling non-infected participants," Tucker-Kellogg said.

Additionally, participants were advised to stop taking ivermectin if they became infected.

"This protocol inflates infection rates for non-users and irregular users in what appears to be a dose-dependent manner but is entirely an artifact," Tucker-Kellog said.

"The claims are all nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that," he concluded.

Ethical concerns were also raised about the study.

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia, tweeted to point out that some of the study authors are associated with groups that promote ivermectin.

For example, study author Pierre Kory is president and co-founder of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), a group of doctors who advocate for the use of ivermectin to treat Covid-19.

After Tucker-Kellog told Cureus about these potential conflicts of interest, the journal published a disclosure on its website.

AFP has fact-checked other false and misleading claims about Covid-19 here.

Read more from the original source:

Experts say study on ivermectin, Covid-19 death risk is flawed - Yahoo News

Challenge to governments lateral flow test contracts rejected by high court – The Guardian

October 8, 2022

A legal challenge to the governments award of multimillion-pound contracts for lateral flow tests that later failed to gain regulatory approval has been rejected by the high court.

The health and social care secretarys decision to grant three contracts to UK firm Abingdon Health was the subject of litigation by campaigning organisation Good Law Project (GLP), which has brought several cases challenging the way contracts were awarded during the pandemic.

GLP put forward a number of grounds as to why it believed the award of the Abingdon contracts was unlawful, including allegations of bias, conflict of interest and lack of equal treatment and transparency, but they were all dismissed.

In a written judgment, published on Friday, Mr Justice Waksman said assessment of the award of the contracts must involve assuming market conditions which include (1) the urgent need for the development of an effective antibody LFT that could be used for mass home-testing, (2) some uncertainty as to whether that test would be developed in time, and (3) the risk that even if it was, the need for it in very large quantities might disappear. It cannot be said that these were policy considerations which have to be disregarded.

He also said that even if any of the grounds had succeeded, the GLP did not have legal standing (sufficient interest in the dispute) entitling it to bring the claim. In reaching his conclusion, he cited the decision in the earlier challenge brought by GLP and the Runnymede Trust to the August 2020 appointment of Conservative peer Dido Harding as interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection, in which the GLP was also held not to have standing.

In a statement, Abingdon Health said it had received 10.3m from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) under the three contracts awarded in April, June and August of 2020 and was now expecting to receive a further 1.5m, which had been held on charge pending the outcome of the judicial review.

Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you through the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning

Chris Yates, the CEO of Abingdon Health, said the company did the right thing during the pandemic by responding quickly but had been caught in a political cross-fire. He added: We are, of course, pleased with this judgement, but extremely disappointed that Abingdons reputation and good standing has been called into question by the GLP.

The judgment stated that most of the tests bought by the DHSC from Abingdon were not used and became time expired.

Go here to see the original:

Challenge to governments lateral flow test contracts rejected by high court - The Guardian

Page 307«..1020..306307308309..320330..»