Category: Corona Virus

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) Kansas coronavirus cases crept up a bit more this week. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reports 2,232 new cases in the past seven days. It says the seven-day average of cases is 271, which is 12 more than last weeks seven-day average.

The Kansas COVID-19 death toll increased by 56, bringing it to 8,691. However, the KDHE said only two of those deaths happened in the past week. When the death toll increases that much, it is sometimes because officials have finalized death certificates from older cases.

The KDHE said 69 Kansans are hospitalized with COVID-19. That is 12 fewer than last week. Of the 95 hospitals reporting to the KDHE on Thursday, the patients are:

Some of the recent coronavirus cases have been tested for variants. The KDHE said 22 of the recent tests were the BA.2 stealth omicron variant.

Kansans continue to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Since last Friday:

Of Kansans who are eligible to get vaccinated, the KDHE reports 67.07% have received at least one dose of vaccine, while 58.53% have completed a vaccine series.

CDC Mask Guidelines based on community-level transmission:Low (green):No mask needed indoors (get tested if you have symptoms)Medium (yellow):Mask recommended for high-risk patients (discuss with your healthcare provider)High (orange):Should wear mask indoors in publicKansas coronavirus cases updated May 6, 2022CDC Community transmission rates updated May 5, 2022Sources:Kansas Department of Health and EnvironmentCenters for Disease Control

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KDHE gives update on coronavirus cases and deaths - KSN-TV

People wearing face masks walk down a street before the start of a mandatory total isolation decreed by the mayor's office, amidst an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Bogota, Colombia January 7, 2021. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez

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BOGOTA, May 6 (Reuters) - Colombia will offer a second coronavirus booster shot to people aged 50 and over, the government said on Friday.

Colombia has reported just under 6.1 million confirmed coronavirus infections and 139,809 deaths, according to the Health Ministry.

The decision on a second booster comes after the Andean country of around 50 million people hit its target of fully vaccinating 70% of its population, the government said.

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A second booster shot "will be important to keep protecting ourselves, saving lives, and giving confidence to the population," President Ivan Duque said in a statement.

Second boosters will consist of either a half dose of the Moderna (MRNA.O) vaccine or a full dose of the Pfizer (PFE.N) vaccine, he added.

Those eligible for the second booster can get it four months after receiving their first, the government said.

The government in March had started to offer second boosters to those with autoimmune conditions and those who had received organ transplants.

Almost 11.9 million people have received a first booster shot, according to Health Ministry figures, while just over 19,000 have had a second booster.

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Reporting by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Leslie Adler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Colombia to offer second coronavirus booster shots to over 50s, others - Reuters.com

EASTON, Pa. - Confusion about vaccines and whether to get a third or fourth COVID shot continues to grow.

"A lot of this emanates from a very uncoordinated approach from our public health agencies," said Dr. Jeffrey Jahre, the senior vice president of medical and academic affairs and an infectious disease specialist at St. Luke's University Health Network.

In a report released this week, a trio of top FDA officials said to expect vaccines to become part of the new normal, and that getting one new, updated shot each fall could save lives and minimize societal disruptions.

But Dr. Jahre believes given the data scientists have now, it's too early to be sure.

"I think that is an overreach," said Dr. Jahre. "We don't know whether this is going to be necessary."

He also says there isn't data to support the rumor everyone will always need boosters every few months.

The FDA has meetings on a variety of topics scheduled throughout the month of June.

There are set to be discussions on a new vaccine from the manufacturer Novavax, using Moderna and Pfizer shots for younger populations, and whether the current vaccines' strain composition should be modified for the fall.

"I think most things are pointing toward needing a booster sometime in the early fall," said Dr. Alex Benjamin, the chief of infection control and hospital epidemiology at Lehigh Valley Health Network.

"As we seek and gain new knowledge, we have to take advantage of that knowledge and adjust our recommendations so that it fits with that knowledge," said Dr. Benjamin.

Right now, people over age 50 or those who are immunocompromised are eligible for a fourth dose, or what's known as a second booster.

"In those populations of people who receive second boosters, we know that their immunity levels wane after the first booster dose, but are sort of rejuvenated again after the second booster," said Dr. Benjamin.

If you're over age 50, but don't have health conditions and are thinking about a fourth dose, doctors say to consider the infection rate in your community.

"Do you take care of kids who are not eligible to be vaccinated? Do you take care of older parents? Are you planning to travel anytime soon?" Dr. Benjamin said.

Dr. Jahre agrees with the mentality: one size doesn't fit all.

While the answers to many questions are still to be determined, Dr. Jahre says something that is certain: it's not too late to get vaccinated.

"There's absolutely no question that if you have had at least two doses of either the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine, that you're much more highly protected against the severe consequences of the disease," said Dr. Jahre.

Coronavirus cases in the Lehigh Valley are on the rise.

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Local doctors weigh in on the future of coronavirus vaccines, confusion surrounding boosters - 69News WFMZ-TV

Getting sick with a common cold doesn't make you immune to COVID-19, but a COVID-19 infection might, at least temporarily, boost the number of antibodies you have against common cold-causing coronaviruses and the SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV viruses, all of which are closely related. Scientists at Scripps Research have now characterized coronavirus antibodies isolated from 11 people to reveal how COVID-19 impacts the immune system's ability to recognize other coronaviruses.

"Getting a better understanding of how immunity against this broad family of coronaviruses changes with COVID-19 infection is an important step toward developing better coronavirus vaccines, both for COVID-19 and for future, related pathogens," says Andrew Ward, PhD, professor of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at Scripps Research and senior author of the new paper, published online this week in Science Advances.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 is just one in a large and diverse family of coronaviruses. A few of its relatives are equally contagious and virulent -; causing Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak -; while others, considered common cold viruses, cause much milder symptoms. Overall, many of these coronaviruses have only one quarter to one half of their genetic material in common with SARS-CoV-2, but individual sections of the viruses' structures-;most notably the spike protein that juts out of each coronavirus-;are considered relatively similar between family members.

Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists have wondered whether people's previous exposure to those common cold viruses impacts their immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and, likewise, whether infection with COVID-19 might change how the immune system recognizes the more common coronaviruses. The immune system's antibodies against one coronavirus spike protein could, potentially, also recognize other similar spike proteins as disease-causing.

In the new study, Ward's group studied serum samples from eleven people. Eight of the samples dated to before the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure the donors had never been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, while three samples were from donors who recently had COVID-19. In each case, the researchers measured how strongly the samples reacted to isolated spike proteins from different coronaviruses-; OC43 and HKU1, both associated with common colds, along with SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2.

Not surprisingly, only the serum from recovered COVID-19 patients reacted to the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. However, these COVID-19 patient samples also reacted more strongly than the pre-pandemic samples to the other spike proteins as well.

Most people have this baseline immunity to common coronaviruses and exposure to SARS-CoV-2 increases the levels of these antibodies."

Sandhya Bangaru, first author of the new paper, Scripps Research postdoctoral research associate

Ward, Bangaru and their colleagues performed high-resolution structural studies on serum antibodies from three of the healthy donors and the two COVID-19 patients to determine where on the spike proteins each antibody attached. They found that most coronavirus antibodies from before the pandemic recognized a section of the OC43 and HKU1 spike proteins known as the S1 subunit, which tends to vary greatly between coronaviruses. In COVID-19 patient samples, however, the researchers identified a broader swatch of antibodies, including ones that recognized the S2 subunit-;which varies less between different coronaviruses. Indeed, some antibodies from the COVID-19 patients not only bound to the common cold coronaviruses, but to SARS-CoV- and MERS-CoV spike proteins as well.

"The end goal of this would be to rationally design vaccines that can recognize many different coronaviruses," says Bangaru. "Our results reveal certain conserved patches on the S2 subunit targeted by antibodies naturally induced during infection, which we want to focus on."

Since these studies were done directly on serum antibodies, the researchers don't know whether the presence of these antibodies, in any of the cases, is enough to provide full immunity to coronaviruses in the more complex setting of the human immune system. The increased ability of convalescent sera to react to common coronaviruses appears to be the result of both increased production of new antibodies that can recognize several coronaviruses and also an increase in levels of pre-existing antibodies that are specific to each virus. However, it is not clear how much each of these phenomena contribute to the overall increase and how they would influence the natural course of COVID. In the future, they'd like to compare antibodies from the same individuals pre- and post-infection with COVID-19.

"Our work provides a baseline characterization of people's antibody responses to endemic coronavirus prior to SARS-CoV-2 exposure but there are a lot of open questions," says Bangaru. "We hope this leads to a lot more research."

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Bangaru, S., et al. (2022) Structural mapping of antibody landscapes to human betacoronavirus spike proteins. Science Advances. doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn2911.

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Scientists reveal how COVID-19 impacts the immune system's ability to recognize other coronaviruses - News-Medical.Net

LONDON -- The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 15 million people were killed either by coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems during the first two years of the pandemic, more than double the current official death toll of over 6 million.

Most of the deaths occurred in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas, according to a WHO report issued Thursday.

The U.N. health agencys director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described the calculated figure as sobering, saying it should prompt countries to invest more in their capacities to quell future health emergencies.

WHO tasked scientists with determining the actual number of COVID-19 deaths between January 2020 and the end of last year. They estimated that between 13.3 million and 16.6 million people died either due to the coronavirus directly or because of factors somehow attributed to the pandemics impact on health systems, such as cancer patients who were unable to seek treatment when hospitals were full of COVID patients.

Based on that range, the scientists came up with an approximated total of 14.9 million.

The estimate was based on country-reported data and statistical modeling, but only about half of countries provided information. WHO said it wasn't yet able to break down the data to distinguish between direct deaths from COVID-19 and those related to effects of the pandemic, but the agency plans a future project examining death certificates.

This may seem like just a bean-counting exercise, but having these WHO numbers is so critical to understanding how we should combat future pandemics and continue to respond to this one, said Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious diseases specialist at the Yale School of Public Health who was not linked to the WHO research.

For example, Ko said, South Koreas decision to invest heavily in public health after it suffered a severe outbreak of MERS allowed it to escape COVID-19 with a per-capita death rate around a 20th of the one in the United States.

Accurately counting COVID-19 deaths has been problematic throughout the pandemic, as reports of confirmed cases represent only a fraction of the devastation wrought by the virus, largely because of limited testing. Government figures reported to WHO and a separate tally kept by Johns Hopkins University show more than 6.2 million reported virus deaths to date.

Scientists at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington calculated for a recent study published in the journal Lancet that there more than 18 million COVID deaths from January 2020 to December 2021.

A team led by Canadian researchers estimated there were more than 3 million uncounted coronavirus deaths in India alone. WHO's new analysis estimated that missed deaths in India ranged between 3.3 million to 6.5 million.

In a statement following the release of WHO's data, India disputed the U.N. agency's methodology. India's Health and Family Welfare Ministry called the analysis and data collection methods questionable and complained that the new death estimates were released without adequately addressing India's concerns.

Samira Asma, a senior WHO director, acknowledged that numbers are sometimes controversial and that all estimates are only an approximation of the virus' catastrophic effects.

It has become very obvious during the entire course of the pandemic, there have been data that is missing," Asma told reporters during a press briefing on Thursday. "Basically, all of us were caught unprepared.

Ko said the new figures from WHO might also explain some lingering mysteries about the pandemic, like why Africa appears to have been one of the least affected by the virus, despite its low vaccination rates.

Were the mortality rates so low because we couldnt count the deaths, or was there some other factor to explain that? he asked, citing the far higher mortality rates in the U.S. and Europe.

Dr. Bharat Pankhania, a public health specialist at Britains University of Exeter, said the world may never get close to measuring the true toll of COVID-19, particularly in poor countries.

When you have a massive outbreak where people are dying in the streets because of a lack of oxygen, bodies were abandoned or people had to be cremated quickly because of cultural beliefs, we end up never knowing just how many people died, he explained.

Pankhania said that while the estimated COVID-19 death toll still pales in comparison to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which experts estimate caused up to 100 million deaths, the fact that so many people died despite the advances of modern medicine, including vaccines, is shameful.

He also warned that the cost of COVID-19 could be far more damaging in the long term, given the increasing burden of caring for people with long COVID.

With the Spanish flu, there was the flu and then there were some (lung) illnesses people suffered, but that was it, he said. There was not an enduring immunological condition that were seeing right now with COVID."

We do not know the extent to which people with long COVID will have their lives cut short and if they will have repeated infections that will cause them even more problems, Pankhania said.

Krutika Pathi and Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed to this report.

Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

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WHO: Nearly 15 million deaths associated with COVID-19 - ABC News

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has tested positive for the coronavirus, the State Department announced on Wednesday, nearly a week before he was scheduled to travel to diplomatic meetings in Europe and Morocco.

A spokesman, Ned Price, said Mr. Blinken, 60, had mild symptoms, and had not seen President Biden in several days.

Mr. Blinken, who is fully vaccinated and boosted, will work at home and looks forward to returning to the department and resuming his full duties and travels as soon as possible, Mr. Price said in the statement.

Mr. Blinken joins a handful of other prominent figures who have tested positive after attending the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 30. Among them are Steve Herman of Voice of America and, according to a person familiar with the matter, Jonathan Karl of ABC News.

Many people wondered whether it was advisable to gather a crowd of 2,600 into the packed hotel ballroom of the Washington Hilton hotel. Proof of vaccination and a same-day negative test were required; boosters were strongly encouraged; and masks were optional.

A spokesperson for the union representing Washington Hilton workers, Unite Here Local 25, said members were not subject to the dinners vaccination or testing requirements but wore masks and were allowed to choose whether they wanted to work the event.

The union was so far unaware of any members testing positive after working the dinner, the spokesperson, Benjy Cannon, said on Wednesday.

President Biden also attended the dinner. At a White House news conference, the press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Mr. Biden had most recently tested negative for the virus on Tuesday.

Mr. Blinken was expected to travel to Marrakesh, Morocco, for a meeting on May 11 of the international campaign against the Islamic State. That was to be followed by a meeting of the Group of 7, the worlds wealthiest democracies, in Germany. It was not immediately clear Wednesday whether Mr. Blinken would be able to travel to either event.

He was also notifying officials with whom he came into close contact over the last several days, Mr. Price said. Mr. Blinken met with Foreign Ministers Ann Linde of Sweden on Wednesday and Marcelo Ebrard of Mexico on Tuesday, for example.

Mr. Blinken tested positive on a P.C.R. test after feeling symptomatic on Wednesday afternoon even though he had a negative result on an antigen test just hours earlier, Mr. Price said.

He has young kids in the house. As you know, he was around a number of people this weekend, Mr. Price told reporters at the State Department. So a matter of precaution, he does regularly test.

The State Department confirmed Mr. Blinken has received a second booster shot.

Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for the virus, but returned to work on Tuesday after testing negative on Monday and following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on isolating. She attended a gala on Tuesday night for Emilys List, the fund-raising powerhouse that has helped elect hundreds of women who support abortion rights.

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Secretary Blinken Tests Positive for the Coronavirus - The New York Times

Most US kids have caught the coronavirus, antibody survey finds  Nature.com

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Most US kids have caught the coronavirus, antibody survey finds - Nature.com

A mask lies on the ground at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on April 19. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

A mask lies on the ground at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on April 19.

If it feels like everyone you know has COVID-19 right now, you're not alone. In many parts of the U.S., case numbers are going up, and much of that increase is being driven by subvariants of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

And this new wave of cases might be a glimpse into what the endemic stage of COVID-19 will look like, according to Andy Slavitt, a former senior adviser to President Biden on COVID-19 and a former head of Medicare and Medicaid in the Obama administration.

The U.S. is not in an endemic phase just yet, Slavitt said, and the country likely won't know until after it's in it because, as he put it, "the best definition of endemic that I've heard is just when the surprises are gone and it becomes predictable."

"Endemic doesn't necessarily mean everybody's safe, and endemic doesn't necessarily mean people are no longer losing their lives. It just means it's following a predictable pattern. And what we don't know, but we may be witnessing, are some clues as to what a predictable pattern will look like when we settle into one."

Slavitt outlines the tools the U.S. has to handle COVID-19 going forward, the factors that could change his assessment and the shift vs. drift calculation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On the tools that the U.S. has that can help people live as normal a life as possible

The best news of all is that we have incredible scientific tools, vaccines, boosters, oral therapeutics. And while none of them are perfect, down the road when you combine them with what our own immune system does and the continued kind of improvement of these tools, the layered immunity we have, COVID should become less and less fatal.

It will still be dangerous and still dangerous for people who are frail, people who are immunocompromised. But even in those situations, the tools are better and better. So what we really want to know is, is it going to get any more severe? And is it going to get any more frequent? And are the vaccines and tools we have going to continue to work? And if we are in a situation where we need to update our vaccines once or twice a year, we need to be prepared to do that.

On the unknowns that could change his assessment of how close the U.S. is getting to an endemic phase of COVID-19

So scientists talk about this notion of drift versus shift, and what they mean by that is a drift virus would indicate that we will just continue to see more progressions, almost laddering up of new omicron, with 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4. And a drift is a better scenario than a shift. A shift is where we would get an entirely new Greek letter in this case, with completely different mutations and characteristics.

What's better about a drift is that our body is, generally speaking, forming better immunity in prior versions that protect us against newer versions. And our vaccines will, generally speaking, be more aligned to what we see next than they would be if we were to see a shift.

So the big question is, are we going to be in drift mode? And for how long will we be in drift mode? Or are we going to go back to shift mode where we'll see a delta and omicron, et cetera? No one knows the answer, but there are a number of scientists who say that the number of times we'll see a major shift could be pretty rare could be as infrequently as once a decade.

On whether reaching the endemic phase of COVID-19 will discourage other precautions, including masks and vaccines

Well, predictability will be a good thing. You know, if we knew that we were going to see COVID-19 every June and every December, we might not like that, but at least it would tell us that we can take the kinds of precautions that we need to take then, and we don't need to take them in other parts of the year. What bothers people is feeling like they're taking precautions in periods of time when it doesn't matter. So, you know, we don't give people flu shots in April, May and June because the risk of the flu is quite low then.

So if we understand this well enough and it becomes predictable enough, I think you can then create targeted campaigns to say, "Hey, every time that this happens, these are the precautions we have to take. We have to wear masks. We have to stay away from these types of crowds and these types of situations if we're immunocompromised. But other times of the year, go on, live your life, things will be more or less safer."

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What COVID might look like in the U.S. once we reach the endemic phase - NPR

Kristen Hare | Poynter

In many places, it started with a cut in print days. Furloughs. Layoffs. Just to get through the crisis, newsroom leaders told readers.

In some places, none of it was enough.

Now, small newsrooms around the country, often more than 100 years old, often the only news source in those places, are closing under the weight of the coronavirus. Some report theyre merging with nearby publications. But that merger means the end of news dedicated to those communities, the evaporation of institutional knowledge and the loss of local jobs.

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More than 100 local newsrooms closed during the coronavirus pandemic - Editor And Publisher Magazine

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The United States might need to update its Covid-19 vaccines each year, according to a trio of top US Food and Drug Administration officials, and a new normal may include an annual Covid-19 vaccine alongside a seasonal flu shot.

Widespread vaccine- and infection-induced immunity, combined with the availability of effective therapeutics, could blunt the effects of future outbreaks. Nonetheless, it is time to accept that the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is the new normal. It will likely circulate globally for the foreseeable future, taking its place alongside other common respiratory viruses such as influenza. And it likely will require similar annual consideration for vaccine composition updates, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research; Principal Deputy Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock; and new FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf wrote in a paper published in the medical journal JAMA on Monday.

During the 2022-2023 COVID-19 vaccine planning and selection process, it is important to recognize that the fall season will present a major opportunity to improve COVID-19 vaccination coverage with the goal of minimizing future societal disruption and saving lives, they wrote. With the plan for implementation of this years vaccine selection process, society is moving toward a new normal that may well include annual COVID-19 vaccination alongside seasonal influenza vaccination.

June could be when FDA officials make a decision on the composition of Covid-19 vaccines for the fall and winter seasons and what the vaccination plans might be.

By this summer, decisions will need to be made on who should be eligible for additional Covid-19 shots in the fall, and by June, the composition of the vaccines will need to be determined, Marks, Woodcock and Califf wrote.

Last week, the FDA announced plans to convene its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on June 28 to discuss whether the composition of current Covid-19 vaccines should be modified, and if so, what updates should be selected for the fall.

In terms of practical considerations, at the recent meeting of the VRBPAC, there was relatively uniform agreement that a single vaccine composition used by all manufacturers was desirable and that data would be needed to inform and drive the selection of a monovalent, bivalent, or multivalent COVID-19 vaccine, Marks, Woodcock and Califf wrote. There was also general agreement that, should a new vaccine composition be recommended based on the totality of the available clinical and epidemiologic evidence, optimally it could be used for both primary vaccination as well as booster administration.

VRBPAC members met in April to discuss how the composition of Covid-19 vaccines could change to target any new and emerging coronavirus variants. The committee agreed that there needs to be a framework for how and when such changes take place. The advisers plan to continue their conversation in the coming months.

By summer, decisions will need to be made for the 2022-2023 season about who should be eligible for vaccination with additional boosters and regarding vaccine composition. Administering additional COVID-19 vaccine doses to appropriate individuals this fall around the time of the usual influenza vaccine campaign has the potential to protect susceptible individuals against hospitalization and death, and therefore will be a topic for FDA consideration, Marks, Woodcock and Califf wrote.

Certain immunocompromised people and adults 50 and older are eligible for additional booster doses of Covid-19 vaccine in the United States. The FDA officials added that for those who have yet to get vaccinated or boosted, getting a vaccine dose now will not have adverse effects that preempt getting an additional dose in the fall.

The composition of the current vaccines could be updated to target circulating coronavirus variants. Marks, Woodcock and Califf wrote that this coming fall and winter, three factors may come together to place the nation at additional risk of Covid-19: waning immunity, seasonal waves of more coronavirus spread, and the further evolution of the coronavirus, leading to new variants.

The timeframe to determine the composition of the COVID-19 vaccine for the 2022-2023 season, to use alongside the seasonal influenza vaccine for administration in the Northern Hemisphere beginning in about October, is compressed because of the time required for manufacturing the necessary doses, the officials wrote. A decision on composition will need to be made in the US by June 2022.

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FDA officials say annual Covid-19 shots may be needed in the future - CNN