Category: Corona Virus

A new study analyzing the link between people's reduced movement and the spread of coronavirus in 2020 shows that in some countries, the virus spread more rapidly when people stayed at home. In addition, restricting people's mobility to some extent appeared, retrospectively, to be better at minimizing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 than extreme mobility restrictions, in many countries.

"Over two years mark the start of the pandemic which changed the lives of many of us in various ways. The current development of the SARS-CoV-2 spread suggests that this chapter of history entitled COVID-19 might, hopefully, be fading to its end. There is, however, still a lot to learn about it. Reflecting on how we have reacted to the pandemic could help us draw useful lessons on how to minimize the damage of similar challenges, especially now that infectious diseases appear to be a re-emerging threat," researchers Mounir Ould Setti and Sylvain Tollis point out.

Government-imposed lockdowns and movement restrictions were likely the hallmark of the response to this pandemic. These interventions were found invasive in some circumstances and settings. Were lockdowns and movement restrictions efficient in reducing SARS-CoV-2 spread? The researchers from the University of Eastern Finland analyzed how the movement of people aligned with daily changes of the effective replication number of SARS-CoV-2. The effective replication number reflects the rate of spread of the disease as it captures dynamic changes in person-to-person viral transmission. The mobility indicators are based on anonymized position data from users of Google services who have Location History activated on their mobile phones. The positions are classified into different mobility categories, including, for example, residential mobility, which indicates that people are staying at home. The researchers focused on the pre-vaccination and pre-variants-of-concern phase of the pandemic from February 15 to December 31, 2020 analyzing daily changes of mobility and SARS-CoV-2 spread in 125 countries and 52 United States regions or states.

The analysis identified three groups of countries based on patterns of correlations between the mobility indicators and the effective reproduction number of SARS-CoV-2. Group 1 consisted of countries with "normal" correlations, in other words negative correlations between residential mobility and SARS-CoV-2 spread, e.g. the United States, Turkey, and most OECD countries. Group 2 included countries with "inverted" correlations, referring to positive correlations between residential mobility and SARS-CoV-2 spread. Group 3 consisted of countries with more complex correlation patterns, or "inconclusive" correlations.

In group 1 countries such as Austria, the more time people spent at home, the less disease spread was recorded, while in group 2 countries such as Bolivia, the exact opposite was observed: the more time people spent at home, the more disease was spreading. In addition, in many countries, the patterns of correlation between mobility and disease spread displayed a minimum of disease spread at an intermediate level of mobility restriction ("U-shaped" correlations), indicating an optimal level above which restricting people's mobility could lead to more disease spread. In other words, complete lockdowns might have been counterproductive at certain levels and in some countries.

The authors concluded that a systematic analysis of correlations between mobility and disease spread at a regional level could help understand the optimal level of mobility restriction that minimizes the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in that specific region.

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Journal reference:

In-depth Correlation Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Effective Reproduction Number and Mobility Patterns: Three Groups of Countries. J Prev Med Public Health.Published online 10 Feb 2022.doi.org/10.3961/jpmph.21.522

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Study analyzing the link between peoples movement and coronavirus spread finds three groups of countries - News-Medical.Net

The coronavirus pandemic could have been much worse without vaccines, according to a new study that claims the number of deaths recorded worldwide from the coronavirus would be more than triple than it is today.

In the year after the vaccine was first introduced in December 2020, more than 4.3 billion people received an inoculation, saving 20 million lives, according to research published Thursday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

If the World Health Organizations goal of 40% vaccination coverage by the end of 2021 in low-income countries had been met, an additional 600,000 lives would be spared, the study said.

The findings quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines, said lead Imperial College London researcher Oliver Watson.

Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind, Watson said of the deaths that would have occurred without widespread vaccination.

More than 6.3 million people have died from the coronavirus, including more than a million Americans, according to Our World in Data. Over 40,000 New York City residents died from the virus, health officials said.

Researchers studied data from all but ten of the worlds 195 countries and found that vaccines prevented 19.8 million total deaths, including 4.2 million deaths in India and 1.9 million in the US.

One million people in Brazil were also spared death from the virus thanks to the vaccines, as were more than a half million people in both France and the United Kingdom, researchers said.

The study found that 14.4 million deaths were averted when only accounting for reported COVID-19 deaths, but the number of lives spared grew considerably when scientists accounted for deaths likely tied to the virus.

The study did have some significant limitations. China, the worlds most populated country, was among the countries excluded from the study due to the lack of information about the virus effect on its huge citizenry, researchers said. The effect of mask wearing, lockdowns and possible COVID-19 mutations in the absence of the virus were also not considered in the study.

An unpublished model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle estimated that 16.3 million lives were saved by vaccines.

We may disagree on the number as scientists, but we all agree that COVID vaccines saved lots of lives, the institutes Ali Mokdad said, explaining that stricter policies would have been implemented worldwide if vaccines were not around during the delta variant surge.

Although we did pretty well this time we saved millions and millions of lives we could have done better and we should do better in the future, said Adam Finn of Bristol Medical School in England, who was not involved in Thursdays published findings.

With AP wires

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20 million lives saved by COVID-19 vaccines in first year: report - New York Post

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS: Director of the Dutch RIVM (Center for Infectious Disease Control) Jaap van ... [+] Dissel. (Photo by Niels Wenstedt/BSR Agency/Getty Images)

The Dutch RIVM (Center for Infectious Disease Control - CDC counterpart in the Netherlands) is conducting a long-term study on long Covid. The agency released interim results on Tuesday, June 21st, which show that approximately 50% of patients enrolled in a large ongoing study still have one or more symptoms three months after becoming infected with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In addition, among adults under the age of 65, researchers detected no difference between those who are vaccinated and unvaccinated in terms of most long Covid symptoms, except for sense of smell and taste. Vaccinated adults reported less loss of smell and taste than than those who were unvaccinated.

Long Covid is a hotly debated subject. In particular, some experts have worried about lack of clarity around long Covids characterization, and causal inferences which arent necessarily well established. And so, the key questions become, what exactly are long Covid symptoms, and how likely is it that a coronavirus infection caused them?

There isnt a firm consensus on long Covids precise definition, and causality is still being analyzed by clinical researchers. Yet, since fairly early in the pandemic, a broad set of symptoms we now refer to as long Covid the literature used to label sufferers as long-haulers has been very well documented. The Dutch RIVM, in particular, has meticulously collected data on long Covid, both to characterize the syndrome and attempt to figure out whats causing symptoms.

Its evident that many people who contract the coronavirus struggle for months with lingering Covid-19 symptoms which can be debilitating. Patients exhibit shortness of breath, extreme fatigue, intermittent fevers, cough, concentration issues, chest pressure, headaches, and heart palpitations, among other symptoms.

There is a very wide range in estimates of long Covid prevalence among those who recover from a symptomatic coronavirus infection. A University of California Davis study found that 10% of Covid-19 patients suffer from long Covid symptoms. In a CDC-sponsored study, it was estimated that around 20% of adults under 65 who recover from Covid-19 experience at least one health condition that could be considered long Covid. Here, CDC researchers identified persistent health problems in different organs of the body, including the heart, lungs, and kidneys. Yet another study suggested that 30% develop at least one long Covid symptom over time.

Fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog, and loss of smell are particularly common long-term effects of Covid-19. This is apparent from the studies mentioned above, but also the interim results of the RIVM's study released on June 21st. For some, symptoms are relatively minor. For others, however, they can be disabling and life-altering.

The preliminary findings from the RIVM investigation refer to data gathered from May to December 2021. As such, they concern people who became infected with the Alpha or Delta variants of the coronavirus.

The results derive from a health survey questionnaire taken by a total of 14,572 participants. 9,166 people took the survey shortly after testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. The control group consisted of 5,406 people who tested negative for the coronavirus and applied to take part in the survey or were invited by letter from the general population. RIVM requested that all survey participants fill out questionnaires about their health at intervals of three months.

Around 33% of study participants who became infected with coronavirus still suffer from fatigue three months later. Persistent shortness of breath occurs in 16% of respondents, 15% have ongoing brain fog, and 12% have chronic loss of their normal sense of smell and taste for at least three months after their initial infection.

Whats striking is that these reported symptoms are 1.5 times more common among Covid-19 patients than among those who have had other (non Covid-19) respiratory infections.

The Dutch research also demonstrates that fully vaccinated people under 65 years of age who contracted coronavirus have fewer problems with smell and taste after three months. For other symptoms, however, no difference was found between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

The RIVM will continue to follow up with study participants for at least one year. And, the agency will eventually include results from those who became infected with the Omicron variant.

The Dutch investigation not only shows that a large percentage of Covid-19 patients continue to have symptoms after recovery from the acute, initial coronavirus infection, but also suggests that the constellation of long Covid symptoms is much more common in these patients than in people in the general population, and in patients who experienced other (non Covid-19) respiratory infections.

While there continue to challenges regarding how to precisely define long Covid and how to determine cause and effect, ignoring or downplaying the long Covid syndrome isnt going to make it go away. Its vital that more research is carried out to determine causality and to find therapies that work for long-haulers.

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Dutch Research On Long Covid Shows 50% Of Study Participants Have 1 Or More Symptoms 3 Months After Becoming Infected With Coronavirus - Forbes

Patient deaths: 1,014,835

Total vaccine doses distributed: 758,129,055

Patients whove received the first dose: 259,198,178

Patients whove received the second dose: 221,924,152

% of population fully vaccinated (both doses, not including boosters): 66.8%

% tied to Omicron variant: 100%

% tied to Other: 0%

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Coronavirus Omicron variant, vaccine, and case numbers in the United States: June 23, 2022 - Medical Economics

The number of cases and hospitalizations both rose in the last seven days.

(Rick Bowmer | AP) Melissa Peng holds her daughter Abigail, 2, as she receives the Moderna COVID-19 vaccination Tuesday, June 21, 2022, in Salt Lake City. U.S. health officials have opened COVID-19 vaccines for infants, toddlers and preschoolers the last group without the shots.

| June 23, 2022, 7:55 p.m.

| Updated: 11:11 p.m.

Editors note: The Salt Lake Tribune is providing free access to critical stories about the coronavirus. Sign up for our Top Stories newsletter, sent to your inbox every morning. To support journalism like this, please donate or become a subscriber.

Ten more Utahns died of COVID-19 in the past week, bringing the states total death toll since the pandemic began to 4,816, according to the Utah Department of Health.

Another 5,897 cases of the coronavirus were also reported, 625 fewer the previous week. Since the pandemic began, there have been more than 975,000 cases reported in the Beehive State.

The number of hospitalizations and the percentage of positive tests both rose.

In the past week, the states seven-day average of new cases rose 970.4, up from 930.6 the previous week.

State officials are looking less to new cases as a way to track COVID-19 spread, as fewer people are getting tested since the state shuttered most of its free testing facilities. In the past seven days, 23,967 people were tested, 5,516 more than the week before. The weekly rate of positive tests rose slightly, from 22.86% to 23.04%.

Instead, experts are looking at other metrics, like hospitalizations and emergency room visits, to judge the severity of coronavirus outbreaks. State data shows increases in hospitalizations and emergency room visits.

Officials urge those who test positive or have COVID-19 symptoms to stay home to avoid infecting others. Isolation guidance is available at coronavirus.utah.gov/protect-yourself.

They also urge Utahns to get up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccines, which can prevent serious illness.

Data shows coronavirus patients made up 4.61% of emergency room visits in the past week, up slightly from 4.21% the previous week.

Since last week, 243 more Utahns have been hospitalized with coronavirus, bringing the total to 35,605 patients hospitalized since the pandemic began. There were 215 COVID-19 patients in Utah hospitals as of Thursday, 23 more than a week ago.

The number of COVID-19 patients in ICUs increased by 18 to 39.

The state reported 11,714 more Utahns received a COVID-19 vaccine since June 16, the last time it released data. Of those, 1,336 are now fully vaccinated, meaning they have had two doses of an mRNA series vaccine, like Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech, or one dose of the Janssen vaccine.

About 62.5% of Utahns a total of 2,029,863 are fully vaccinated, and 29.3% have received at least one booster shot, the data shows.

Vaccine doses administered in the past week/total doses administered 11,714 / 5,238,371

Number of Utahns fully vaccinated 2,029,863 62.5% of Utahs total population.

Cases reported in the past week: 5,897.

Average cases per day reported in the past week 970.4, up from 930.6 the previous week.

Tests reported from June 11-23 23,967.

Deaths reported in the past week 10.

According to the health department, five of the deaths occurred in Salt Lake County: Three women between the ages of 65-84, and two men 85-plus.

Two Utah County residents died: A woman 65-84 and a man 85-plus.

A Davis County man 85-plus, a Wasatch County man 65-84, and a Weber County man 65-84 also died.

Hospitalizations reported this week 215 as of Thursday, an increase of 23 in the past week. There were 39 patients in intensive care, 18 more than reported a week ago.

Percentage of positive tests Counting all test results, including repeated tests of the same individual, this weeks rate was 23.04%. That is higher than the previous seven-day average of 22.86%.

Not counting individuals repeated test results, this weeks rate was 29.13%, higher than the previous seven-day average of 28.78%.

Totals to date 975,507 cases; 4,816 deaths; 35,604 hospitalizations.

Correction The Utah Department of Health has not confirmed that one of the deaths in the past week was a child, as an earlier version of this article reported.

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Ten more Utahns died of COVID-19 in the past week - Salt Lake Tribune

A research published in Wolters Kluwer Public Health Emergency Collection found that out of 206 patients with low severity COVID-19, 48 had digestive symptoms alone, 69 of them were with both digestive and respiratory symptoms, and 89 had respiratory symptoms only.

Between the 2 groups with digestive symptoms, 67 of them had diarrhea, of whom 19.4% experienced diarrhea as the first symptom. The diarrhea lasted from 1 to 14 days. Concurrent fever was found in 62.4% of patients having a digestive symptom. The researchers also found that patients with digestive symptoms had a longer duration between symptom onset and viral clearance.

Research regarding whether gastrointestinal symptoms emerge before or after respiratory symptoms is mixed. In one study conducted in the US, COVID-19 patients exclusively developed diarrhea after developing cough, fever, and shortness of breath.

Read more: Weight loss desi recipes: How to make your breakfast, lunch and dinner healthier

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Coronavirus explainer: Is it possible to have diarrhea with no fever? - Times of India

Odisha recorded 61 new cases on Friday, taking the tally to 12,89,129, the Health Department said. The toll remained at 9,126 as there were no fresh deaths. There are 391 active cases in the state at present. In the last 24 hours, 24 more people recovered from the disease, taking the total recoveries to 12,79,559.

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Coronavirus in India live updates: India reports 17,336 daily new cases, highest in over 100 days - Times of India

In a recent studypublished in PLOS ONE, researchers analyzed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disinformation on Twitter.

The widespread usage of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in an infodemic of dis- and misinformation regarding COVID-19, leading to potentially fatal consequences. Understanding the magnitude and impact of this false information is essential for the public health agencies to estimate the behavior of the general population with respect to vaccine uptake and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) like social distancing and masking.

In the present study, researchers assessed tweets circulating on Twitter containing the hashtags #Plandemic and #Scamdemic.

On 3 January 2021, the team used Twint, a Twitter scraping tool, to collect English-language tweets containing the hashtags #Plandemic or #Scamdemic posted between 1 January and 31 December 2020. On 15 January 2021, the team subsequently employed the Twitter application programming software (API) to obtain the same tweets using corresponding tweet identities. The team provided descriptive statistics for the selected tweets, such as the correlating content of the tweet and user profiles, to determine the availability of the tweets in both datasets developed according to the Twitter API status codes.

Sentiment analysis of the tweets was performed by tokenizing the tweets and cleaning them. The tokens were subsequently transformed into their root form using natural language processing techniques, including lemmatizing, stemming, and removing stop words. Pythons VADER library was employed to recognize and categorize the sentiment of the tweet as either neutral, positive, or negative and the subjectivity of the tweet as either subjective or objective. VADER applied a rule-based analysis of sentiments with a polarity scale ranging between -1 and 1.

The subjective analysis was performed using TextBlob, which labeled each tweet on a scale of zero or objective to one or subjective. Objective tweets were considered to provide facts, while subjective tweets communicated an opinion or a belief. The team visualized a histogram of the subjectivity scores for the #Plandemic and #Scamdemic hashtags. The Python library was also used to label the primary emotion associated with each tweet as fear, anticipation, anger, surprise, trust, sadness, joy, disgust, positive, or negative.

The predominant topics discussed in the tweet library were recognized, and a machine-learning algorithm was applied. This algorithm identified the clusters of tweets using a representative group of words. The words with the highest weights in each cluster were used to define the content of each topic.

The study results showed that a total of 420,107 tweets comprised the hashtags #Plandemic and #Scamdemic. The team removed tweets that were retweets, replies, non-English, or duplicates to retain 227,067 tweets from approximately 40,081 users. Almost 74.4% of the total tweets were posted by 78.4% of the active Twitter users, while 25.6% of the tweets were posted by 21.6% of users whose account was suspended by 15 January 2021. The team noted that users with suspended profiles were likely to tweet more. Users who used both the hashtags had a 29.2% chance of being suspended as opposed to 25.9% for tweets using #Plandemic and 13.2% for tweets using #Scamdemic.

The team found that most of the users were aged 40 years and above. Moreover, the suspended users majorly included males and users aged 18 years and below and 30 to 39 years. Almost 88% of active users and 79% of suspended users tweeted from their personal accounts. Notably, objectivity was displayed by almost 65% of the tweets analyzed.

Emotion analysis of the tweets revealed that fear was the predominant emotion, followed by sadness, trust, and anger. Emotions like surprise, disgust, and joy were the least expressed ones while suspended tweets were more likely to display disgust, surprise, and anger.

The overall sentiment expressed by the tweets containing #Plandemic and #Scamdemic hashtags was negative. The overall mean weekly sentiments were -0.05 for #Plandemic, and -0.09 for #Scamdemic, wherein 1 and -1 denoted completely positive and negative sentiments, respectively.

The most frequently observed tweet topic was complaints against mandates introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, which also included complaints against face masks, closures, and social distancing. This was followed by tweets with topics downplaying the dangers of COVID-19, lies and brainwashing by politicians and the media, and corporations and global agenda.

Overall, the study findings showed that the COVID-19-related tweets displayed an overall negative sentiment. While several tweets expressed anger against the restrictions during the pandemic, a significant proportion of tweets also presented disinformation.

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#Plandemic and #Scamdemic tweets during the COVID-19 pandemic - News-Medical.Net

In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* pre-print server, researchers in the United States characterized differential host immune responses in acute coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) to inform future development of novel biomarkers for both diseases.

Study: Nucleic acid biomarkers of immune response and cell and tissue damage in children with COVID-19 and MIS-C. Image Credit: NIAID

To date, COVID-19 and MIS-C, both caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), have claimed more lives of children than pediatric mortality from influenza. Both these diseases manifest highly inflammatory states and have distinct signatures of cell injury and cell death, with more heterogeneity and multi-organ involvement observed in MIS-C.

Further, both these diseases show different levels of expression for some genes, including interferon-stimulated gene 15 (ISG15), sialoadhesin (SIGLEC1), and T Cell receptor beta variable 11-2 (TRBV11-2). Previous studies have also shown specific downregulation of T cell-mediated pathways in MIS-C. Furthermore, MIS-C has overlapping clinical symptoms with other inflammatory syndromes, such as Kawasaki disease (KD), making its diagnosis difficult.

A better understanding of the MIS-C pathogenesis is critical to improve its clinical diagnosis and inform targeted interventions as new variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerge. Previous analyses of MIS-C and COVID-19 relied on a single cell or bulk ribonucleic acid sequencing (RNA-Seq) of whole blood cells, which generally use proteomic and cytokine-based assays, have fewer markers, and lack standardized reference data.

Plasma cell-free RNA (cfRNA) and plasma cell-free DNA (cfDNA) signals are derived from the cell death of circulating cells and peripheral tissues; whereas whole blood cellular RNA (wbRNA) signal originates primarily from circulating leukocytes. For dying cells, cfDNA enables precise quantification of cell numbers, whereas cfRNA enables the characterization of gene expression and pathways. Overall, wbRNA-, cfRNA-, and cfDNA-based approaches complement each other to provide a complete picture of the dynamic interplay between host and pathogen or between cell activation, proliferation, and cell death.

In the present study, researchers collected blood and plasma samples from children at three pediatric hospitals in the United States (US). They stratified all samples by diagnosis, collection time, and disease severity. They used plasma samples for cfRNA and cfDNA profiling using next-generation sequencing (NGS).

Study design and patient characteristics (A) Sample collection and processing overview.(B) Distribution of samples across analytes. (C) Distribution of disease severity for each sample group.

Likewise, they performed RNA-seq on wbRNA and compared wbRNA and cfRNA profiles from 96 paired samples in MIS-C and COVID-19. Lastly, they implemented BayesPrism and the Tabula Sapiens human single-cell transcriptome atlas as a reference to quantify cell-types-of-origin (CTO) of the cfRNA. The study cohort comprised 211 children diagnosed with COVID-19 or MIS-C and 26 controls.

The researchers identified signatures associated with cellular injury and death that distinguished MIS-C and COVID-19 and the involvement of previously unreported cell types in MIS-C using plasma cfRNA profiling. Plasma cfDNA profiling uncovered the involvement of multiple organs in MIS-C compared to COVID-19 and controls. On the other hand, the wbRNA analysis revealed a substantial overlap in pro-inflammatory pathways between MIS-C and COVID-19. In addition, it revealed pro-inflammatory pathways specific to each disease state. Together, these results provided new insights into the differential pathogenesis of MIS-C and COVID-19 to inform the development of the least invasive diagnostic tests for both acute COVID-19 and MIS-C.

The cfRNA data also uncovered enrichment of neuronal genes associated with synaptogenesis and cfRNA burden from Schwann cells, suggesting that the peripheral nervous system damage might occur in MIS-C. Future studies should elucidate the mechanisms governing neurologic involvement in acute MIS-C and their correlation with long-term neurodevelopment.

Furthermore, the observed increase of cfRNA from endothelial cells and cfRNA signatures of pyroptosis might explain the overlapping clinical presentations between MIS-C and KD in acutely ill children. The researchers also observed an increase in cell death and high levels of heterogeneity in tissues-of-origin (TOO) of cfDNA in MIS-C compared to COVID-19 and controls, consistent with the systemic inflammation observed in MIS-C.

The current large, multi-hospital study of 416 blood samples from 237 patients reported a longitudinal analysis of COVID-19 and MIS-C by deep sequencing of three nucleic acids, cfRNA, wbRNA, and cfDNA. Longitudinal sampling of these cell-associated and cell-free nucleic acids at acute, post-acute, one-month, and three post-hospitalization timepoints enabled a complete view of immune responses and tissue damage associated with MIS-C and COVID-19.

In wbRNA profiling, the researchers observed an opposing dynamics of the disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs (ADAMTS2) in MIS-C and COVID-19. While elevated ADAMTS2 levels returned to baseline in MIS-C at one-month post-hospitalization, the same did not occur in COVID-19 patients. Similarly, killer cell lectin-like receptor subfamily B, member 1 (KLRB1) levels in MIS-C recovered at one-month post-hospitalization but not in COVID-19. Despite the initial severity, most clinical MIS-C symptoms resolved within a few weeks, and inflammatory and injury biomarkers normalized. In cfRNA profiling, most biomarker measurements, such as CTO values, persisted at one month but returned to baseline after three months of hospitalization.

Overall, the study results demonstrated the usefulness of cfRNA and cfDNA as complementary nucleic acid biomarkers vis-a-vis conventional diagnostic methods based on wbRNA, cytokines, and proteomics in diagnosing complex disease states such as MIS-C.

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.

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Overlap in pro-inflammatory genes and pathways between COVID-19 and MIS-C - News-Medical.Net

In March of this year about two years after the COVID-19 pandemic took over the U.S. The Chronicle asked Bay Area experts: Is getting COVID inevitable?

At that time, the response was a qualified no. Even though the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus had recently sent cases higher than ever, the experts said that at least in the near future, people who continued to take reasonable precautions against exposure, and who got vaccinated and boosted, could avoid the disease.

Since then, omicrons subvariants have sent case numbers soaring around the world once again, with even some who had dodged the coronavirus for two years getting infected, and some even getting reinfected.

That prompted a recent follow-up with the same experts, who this time were asked: For those still uninfected, have the chances of avoiding COVID grown even slimmer, or perhaps dwindled to nothing?

With some caveats, their answers remained largely unchanged: While COVID is now harder to avoid, getting it still does not have to be inevitable, at least in the short term.

I still dont think infection is inevitable, but the chances of dodging it have gone down since March, said Dr. Bob Wachter, the chair of medicine at UCSF.

Wachter reported last month that his wife, journalist and author Katie Hafner, had contracted the coronavirus after avoiding it for more than two years, and said last week that she has developed symptoms of long COVID.

However, I remain uninfected, Wachter told The Chronicle, and am still relatively careful (no indoor dining and KN95 in indoor spaces) Id give myself a 50-50 shot at staying uninfected through 2022.

Wachter added that its all math. He said that much of the population that hasnt gotten COVID which, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions latest estimate was about 40% of Americans, as of the end of February continues to be exposed to high levels of virus.

But that virus now, with each new variant, is better at infecting people and at partly evading the immunity from vaccination, he said. At the same time, he noted, many who were previously very careful are beginning to let their guard down, both because theyre tired and because they perceive (correctly) that the risk of a severe acute case (hospitalization or death) has gone down by a lot.

The risk of long COVID is very real, he said, but isnt as obvious to people as acute harm.

He thinks these two factors more infectious variants and reduced caution together will keep cases at a high plateau, which makes the virus harder, though still possible, to avoid.

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UCSF, said in March that, biologically, its possible that everyone may eventually get COVID. But, he cautioned then, it was not the time to embrace that philosophy.

Now, he said, because of the specter looming of even more transmissible variants it is not only likely that more people will get infected, but it becomes easier for folks to get reinfected. He pointed to the Biden administrations recent estimate that there could be up to 100 million infections from the virus in the fall and winter.

But hes hopeful that an upcoming version 2.0 of the boosters could be more effective in preventing breakthrough infections, and that other developments, such as vaccines for the youngest children and improved treatments for those most at risk, protect those who do get the virus.

He urged people to get a booster shot, and for those who are over 50, to get a second booster. The older you are, the more urgent it is to get it to prevent serious disease and deaths, he said.

The viewpoint expressed by Stanford University infectious disease expert Dr. Abraar Karan in March has not changed: Widespread infections are not inevitable, but its still critical to try to prevent them, he said. The onus for that prevention, however, cant fall solely on individuals, he said, and doesnt come down only to isolation and masks.

What individual people do will only take them so far, he said. Community responsibility is also essential.

He noted that with the virus being so transmissible, even the most careful people himself included can get the coronavirus from their inner circle of friends and family whom they not be completely careful with all the time.

In the past, you could N95 your way through a wave, Karan said. Now, thats not the case while masking is still useful and important, he thinks so much more can be done to improve indoor air quality in both private and public spaces measures hes spent much of the pandemic advocating for that he says would drive community transmission down, no matter the variant, and make public spaces more safe for everyone.

He pointed out that better ventilation and air filtration which he thinks government and policymakers should push would not only help prevent the spread of COVID, but would help with any other airborne illness, allergens and even smoke from wildfires.

There are no downsides to this, only upsides, he said.

Karan argued that simply giving up and allowing infections to happen also has profound economic implications, as it can take many people out of work at the same time as is happening in his own hospital.

What people arent appreciating is that low level infections are a worthy goal even if we cannot eliminate covid. Stopping big surges should be the goal. It can be achieved if we stop superspreading, he said on Twitter. There are many ways to do this! We arent doing any of them right now.

Danielle Echeverria is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DanielleEchev

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Still haven't gotten COVID? Experts weigh in on what the latest surge means for you - San Francisco Chronicle