Category: Corona Virus

From heat rash, cramps to heat exhaustion and heat stroke, heat waves can give light to different types of heat-related illnesses. Depending on the illness, you can develop various symptoms.

A heat rash may involve red, itchy skin, small bumps or blisters on the sweaty areas of the body, which can also lead to an infection.

Heat cramps are painful and can cause discomfort in the legs, arms and abdomen. Muscle spasms are common.

Heat exhaustion could lead to fast, shallow breathing along with muscle aches, headache, irritability, weak pulse and gastrointestinal issues. Dizziness, weakness and loss of consciousness are other common symptoms.

A heat stroke can go from mild to severe symptoms. It could lead to dizziness, red, inflamed skin, nausea, high body temperature upto 105 degrees. In severe cases, a person could have seizures, may hyperventilate, experience confusion, agitations and hallucinations.

As far as a COVID-19 infection is concerned, there could be some resemblance to the heat wave symptoms such as high temperature, fast, shallow breathing, headache, mental confusion and so on. However, one must take note of the associated symptoms. Look out for other respiratory ailments, such as a sore throat, runny nose, cough or impaired sense of smell and taste. If the body temperature cools down on its own and your symptoms ease off quickly after treatment, it is probably not COVID.

Excerpt from:

COVID vs. regular flu vs. heat wave: Whats causing you COVID like symptoms - Times of India

A person takes a COVID-19 test in Times Square as the Omicron coronavirus variant continues to spread in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., December 26, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

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April 11 (Reuters) - The World Health Organization said on Monday it is tracking a few dozen cases of two new sub-variants of the highly transmissible Omicron strain of the coronavirus to assess whether they are more infectious or dangerous.

It has added BA.4 and BA.5, sister variants of the original BA.1 Omicron variant, to its list for monitoring. It is already tracking BA.1 and BA.2 - now globally dominant - as well as BA.1.1 and BA.3.

The WHO said it had begun tracking them because of their "additional mutations that need to be further studied to understand their impact on immune escape potential".

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Viruses mutate all the time but only some mutations affect their ability to spread or evade prior immunity from vaccination or infection, or the severity of disease they cause.

For instance, BA.2 now represents nearly 94% of all sequenced cases and is more transmissible than its siblings, but the evidence so far suggests it is no more likely to cause severe disease. read more

Only a few dozen cases of BA.4 and BA.5 have been reported to the global GISAID database, according to WHO.

The UK's Health Security Agency said last week BA.4 had been found in South Africa, Denmark, Botswana, Scotland and England from Jan. 10 to March 30.

All the BA.5 cases were in South Africa as of last week, but on Monday Botswana's health ministry said it had identified four cases of BA.4 and BA.5, all among people aged 30 to 50 who were fully vaccinated and experiencing mild symptoms.

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Reporting by Jennifer Rigby, additional reporting by Brian Benza in Gaborone; Editing by Josephine Mason and Hugh Lawson

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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WHO says it is analysing two new Omicron COVID sub-variants - Reuters

While COVID-19 cases in Philadelphia are rising to the point that the city will reimpose a mask mandate, a different metric heralded the uptick a few weeks earlier in other parts of the country. The clues were in poop.

For months, the citys public health department has been trying to set up a wastewater surveillance system as an early warning signal for coronavirus outbreaks. As home testing becomes more popular and diagnostic testing less accessible to the uninsured, wastewater numbers are an important supplement to increasingly imperfect testing data.

Philadelphia was early on the scene with a pilot program in May 2020, but the city has gone about a year since that initiative ended without studying its wastewater, even as the technique became more popular. It hopes to restart the program in a few weeks.

In September 2020, the CDC launched a National Wastewater Surveillance System, which has set up testing sites in 44 different states across the U.S. At least 13 counties in Pennsylvania, including Chester and Montgomery, are currently monitoring COVID levels in wastewater, and the state health department is setting up a statewide program using $4 million in CDC funding.

Philadelphia has fallen behind, but this game is a long way from being over, said Howard Nadworny, an infectious disease doctor who heads Erie Countys wastewater surveillance system, which was set up in 2020.

We are at great risk in public health of getting more blind to the state of the pandemic, Nadworny said, maybe even similar to what happened in the beginning of 2020.

Wastewater testing can be a canary in the coal mine for COVID because it doesnt rely on testing people, which may only happen after known exposures or the onset of symptoms.

The lead time depends on the delay in reported cases, said Scott Olesen, a researcher at Biobot, a private wastewater testing company. Wastewater monitoring can be particularly helpful during surges, when health departments can be overwhelmed by the volume of tests.

When Philly ran its 12-month pilot program in 2020 and 2021, we did find signals in the data, and they were nice signals. They tended to precede the case data by about three days. But not always, said Jos Lojo, an epidemiologist at the citys public health department. In other cases, the wastewater data was coincident with the testing data, and so it appears to be a nice adjunct.

Wastewater data has also been a good predictor of hospital admissions, which lag cases because it takes time for infections to become severe enough to warrant hospitalization. Some health systems have looked to wastewater data to help manage hospital capacity, such as deciding whether to schedule elective surgeries.

Wastewater data isnt just an earlier indicator it could also be a more comprehensive one. Recent research has shown that wastewater has the potential to help estimate the true number of cases in a community.

Wastewater sampling, if done hyperlocally, can also be a way to monitor specific populations without subjecting them to routine testing.

When the University of Pennsylvania ran a pilot wastewater program last year, it sampled from dormitory sewers and libraries. At the time, the university also tested students twice a week. That data aligned closely with results from wastewater testing, showing that wastewater data could track disease spread, said Jennifer Pinto Martin, an epidemiologist at Penns School of Nursing. Penn no longer requires constant testing of students, so the university is considering whether to bring back wastewater testing.

In practice, wastewater testing comes with its own challenges. For one, the extent to which monitoring can serve as an early warning system depends on which variants are circulating, said Jordan Peccia, a Yale University engineering professor who has been studying wastewater. With omicron, youre usually in the hospital pretty quickly, he said, which shortens the lead time that wastewater offers.

Researchers also dont know how much viral matter a person sheds, or for how long.

We have two confounding factors: One is that these variants impact people differently and they likely shed differently, Peccia said. And No. 2 is, depending on your vaccination status you respond to the infection differently.

Peccia has gotten around the problem by studying concentrations over time together with other testing data.

The CDC emphasizes trends in concentrations on its wastewater dashboard, as opposed to the concentrations themselves, in part because different sites may have different sampling methodologies making it difficult to compare numbers. Natural phenomena like rainfall can also affect readings.

The CDC is still figuring out how best to convert viral wastewater concentrations into estimates of the number of people infected with COVID, Lojo said, which could correct undercounts in the reported case numbers.

Thats the million-dollar question, he said.

Philadelphia first started testing wastewater in May 2020, just two months after the citys first reported case. Over the next year, as part of a $140,000 pilot program, the Philadelphia Water Department each week sampled wastewater from three sewage treatment plants that handle all the wastewater the city produces.

Then Heather Murphys lab at Temple University took over.

We essentially take 100 milliliters of wastewater and concentrate it down into a pellet that we then analyze for the virus, said Murphy, an epidemiology professor.

Murphy shipped the pellets to Michigan State University, where they were analyzed. Researchers also did preliminary work to identify the presence of specific variants, Murphy said.

After the pilot program ended and the city stopped wastewater testing, Philadelphia was hit with the delta and omicron waves, both of which other jurisdictions detected early in wastewater. Unable to test wastewater in real time, the city has been freezing samples since this January to better understand the omicron surge retroactively.

Philadelphia was awarded funding last August to restart surveillance and join the CDCs national program. It took almost seven months before the city signed a $700,000 contract with Temple, two weeks ago, to conduct wastewater testing through July. That will likely be extended by three to six months.

Its unfortunate that its taken so long, Lojo said.

The city described the delay as a routine part of contracting. A new city law requiring disclosure on the diversity of recipients of city contracts added to the delay, said health department spokesperson James Garrow.

Sample testing is expected to resume soon once Temple finalizes a subcontract with Michigan State. The lab expects to start producing real-time data in a few weeks.

The city now wants to go beyond measuring overall virus levels and known variants by sequencing viral particles to identify entirely new variants. Cities that have taken this step, such as New York, have discovered variants that previously went undetected.

Philadelphia plans to sample from each of the three wastewater sites twice a week, doubling its collection. Some readings cant detect COVID because of how theyre taken. Its not necessarily because there really is no virus in a sample, but because environmental conditions can affect the minimum level of virus needed to be measurable, Lojo said: Some days, the water is crystal clear. But say, after a rain on other days, the water is cloudier.

Increasing the number of samples a week should help us with respect to not only figuring out if we actually have signals, but also establishing better trend lines, Lojo said.

The city could also collect samples from more locations, getting a more detailed picture of COVID levels across different neighborhoods. That kind of hyperlocal data could, for example, help direct testing resources. Only people who actually know theyre sick in the first place can isolate and prevent spreading COVID further, so testing wastewater doesnt replace testing people. Instead, wastewater data can help officials understand where to focus their efforts. For instance, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections studies wastewater to help determine how to more effectively deploy testing in state prisons.

City officials have discussed improving the geographic granularity by sampling from more sites.

There are some ideas trying to figure out how best to go upstream to sample wastewater in city sewers, Lojo said. Its not clear if well have enough money to be able to expand it, unfortunately.

Philadelphia could also incorporate the wastewater data into its weekly COVID alert system, but it doesnt currently have plans to do so, partly because the wastewater treatment plants also serve some of the suburbs. Theres no real good way to adjust for that in the analysis, Lojo said.

But the city isnt ruling out the possibility of using wastewater data to determine COVID restrictions in the future, Garrow said.

Wastewater sampling data were sourced from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health through a records request. The data for July 1, 2020 are excluded because the department identified it as an unexplained outlier that is not thought to be a lab error.

Hospitalization data are published by the state Department of Health. They include probable and confirmed cases of COVID-19 identified in a Philadelphia hospital setting.

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The clues are in the poop: COVID-19 sewage testing is coming to Philly - The Philadelphia Inquirer

A recent study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server assessed the impact of face masks on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) incidence among children aged between 10 and 12 years.

During the period of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Delta variant predominance in Finland, the use of face masks was recommended across the country in schools. However, there is insignificant data related to the impact of face masks in the prevention of COVID-19 transmission.

In the present study, the researchers compared the incidence of COVID-19 among children aged between 10 to 12 years, residing in different Finnish cities, with different recommendations regarding the usage of face masks in schools.

The team obtained the total number of COVID-19 cases from the National Infectious Disease Registry (NIDR) of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. They also collected demographic information including the patients date of birth, sex, and residential area. The moving averages of 14-day case incidences were employed as a dependent variable. Furthermore, the team calculated the average percent changes (APC) occurring over one month.

The cities of Helsinki with a population of 6,61,887 and Turku with a population of 1,95,818 were compared for the present study since their baseline incidence of COVID-19 was comparable in August and September 2021. Helsinki had implemented face mask usage at schools while Turku had recommended face mask usage for individuals aged 10 years and above.

The team compared the 14-day incidences of COVID-19 among individuals aged seven to nine, 10 to 12, and 30 to 49 years.

The study results showed that there were no significant differences in APC values in August between Helinski and Turku. However, the APC value was higher in Turku in September and November while the APC value was higher in Helsinki in October.

Notably, the incidence of COVID-19 in children aged seven to nine years was similar to that in children aged 10 to 12 years, while no such similarity was observed for adults aged 30 to 49 years in the two cities.

Overall, the study findings showed that there were no substantial differences in the incidence of COVID-19 after wearing face masks in children aged between 10 to 12 years and residing in Helsinki and Turku.

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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Impact of face masks on COVID-19 incidence in children in Finland - News-Medical.Net

New Jersey on Monday reported four confirmed COVID-19 deaths and 1,012 confirmed positive tests as the seven-day average for cases continues to steadily rise after hitting recent lows in March.

The states seven-day average for confirmed cases increased to 1,419 Monday, up 42% from a week ago and 83% from a month ago. The seven-day average had hit a recent low of 631 on March 17.

Mondays case total marks seven consecutive days of more than 1,000 new confirmed positive tests.

At his first public appearance last week since testing positive, Gov. Phil Murphy urged the public to continue to be smart and safe, and continue to use common sense and common courtesy.

There were 366 patients with confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases across 69 of the states 71 hospitals as of Sunday night. Two hospitals did not report data.

By comparison, hospitalizations hit a recent peak at 6,089 on Jan. 10 during the omicron wave that hit the state this winter.

There were at least 48 people discharged in that same 24-hour period ending Sunday night, according to state data. Of those hospitalized, 38 were in intensive care and 26 were on ventilators.

New Jerseys transmission rate increased to 1.23 on Monday from 1.19 Sunday. When the transmission rate is over 1, that means each new case is leading to at least 1 other new case and the outbreak is expanding.

The statewide daily positivity rate for tests conducted Wednesday, the most recent day available, was 5.3%.

The state on Monday also reported 205 probable cases from rapid antigen testing at medical sites. The daily case counts, however, come with the caveat that many people are now relying on free at-home COVID-19 tests, which are not reported to state health officials.

All of New Jerseys 21 counties were listed as having low rates of transmission, according to recently updated guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Healthy people in the low and medium categories are no longer recommended to wear masks.

BA.2, the new strain of COVID-19, has been spreading in New Jersey for weeks, though at much lower rates than the omicron surge in December and January. Officials have said the omicron stealth subvariant appears to spread more easily but generally not cause more severe illness.

For the week ending March 26, BA.2 accounted for 81.2% of the positive tests sampled (up from 70.5% the previous week), while the omicron variant accounted for 18.8% of positive tests sampled.

New Jersey has reported 1,912,503 total confirmed cases out of more than 17.5 million PCR tests conducted in the more than two years since the state reported its first known case March 4, 2020.

The Garden State has also recorded 304,301 positive antigen or rapid tests, which are considered probable cases. And there are numerous cases that have likely never been counted, including at-home positive tests that are not included in the states numbers.

The state of 9.2 million residents has reported 33,308 COVID-19 deaths in that time 30,294 confirmed fatalities and 3,014 probable.

New Jersey has the seventh-most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S. behind Mississippi, Arizona, Oklahoma, Alabama, Tennessee and West Virginia as of the latest data reported Monday. Last summer, the state still had the most deaths per capita in the country.

More than 6.83 million of the 8.46 million eligible people who live, work or study in New Jersey have received the initial course of vaccinations and more than 7.76 million have received a first dose since vaccinations began here on Dec. 15, 2020.

While the number of N.J. residents fully vaccinated has reached over 6.8 million, the latest numbers also follow a major study that reveals even a mild case of COVID-19 can significantly affect the brain.

More than 3.38 million people in the state eligible for boosters have received one.

For the week ending March 27, with around 62% of schools reporting data, another 1,910 COVID-19 cases were reported among staff (547) and students (1,363) across New Jerseys schools.

Since the start of the academic year, there have been 106,425 students and 29,063 school staff members who have contracted COVID-19 in New Jersey, though the state has never had more than two-thirds of the school districts reporting data in any week.

The state provides total student and staff cases separately from those deemed to be in-school transmission, which is narrowly defined as three or more cases linked through contact tracing.

New Jersey has reported 557 total in-school outbreaks, including 3,941 cases among students and staff. That includes 21 new outbreaks from data reported last week.

At least 9,422 of the states COVID-19 deaths have been among residents and staff members at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to state data.

There were active outbreaks at 134 facilities, resulting in 2,677 current cases among residents and 3,188 cases among staff as of the latest data.

As of Monday, there have been more than 498.1 million COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 6.17 million people having died due to the virus.

The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 80 million) and deaths (at least 985,482) of any nation.

There have been more than 11 billion vaccine doses administered globally.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Steven Rodas may be reached at srodas@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him @stevenrodasnj.

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N.J. reports 4 COVID deaths, 1,012 cases - 7th straight day with over 1K positive tests - NJ.com

Anthony Fauci predicts that the U.S. will eventually get to the point where COVID-19 vaccines are administered yearly, as the flu vaccine is. Kevin Dietsch/Pool/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Anthony Fauci predicts that the U.S. will eventually get to the point where COVID-19 vaccines are administered yearly, as the flu vaccine is.

The U.S. could follow the trend of the United Kingdom and see a surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the BA.2 subvariant of the coronavirus, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The chief medical adviser to President Biden said that though cases are still trending down across the U.S., some states are seeing a rise.

"I think without a doubt that we are going to see a turnaround as people get out more and into the inside venues without masks," he said. "That's going to be certainly resulting in infections, even in people who are vaccinated."

New modeling from the Commonwealth Fund shows the vaccination campaign in the U.S. has saved more than 2 million lives and has prevented 17 million hospitalizations.

Fauci said that a second booster shot may be needed for Americans by the fall and that eventually vaccination could shift to a yearly injection, like with the flu vaccine.

Speaking to All Things Considered, Fauci walks through what he sees coming for the U.S., the thinking behind boosters and the advice for masking indoors.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On what the BA.2 subvariant will do in the U.S.

I think we're going to be seeing an uptick of cases that we are already seeing in certain states. We had a very sharp and steady decline in everything from cases to hospitalizations to deaths, and in general, on a countrywide basis, we're still seeing that. But there are some areas, particularly in the Northeast, where we are seeing a turnaround and an uptick in cases.

If our pattern follows that of the U.K., which we usually do and are usually about three to four weeks behind them, they are having a significant upsurge in the number of cases. We are hoping that if that does happen, the degree of background immunity that we have in the country ... [means] we will not see an increase in severity in the sense of a concomitant increase significantly in the number of hospitalizations.

On the need for a second booster shot by the fall

It's difficult to predict. But I would think, given the fact that immunity wanes over a period of time ... that we will need a boost by the time we get to the fall.

I don't foresee the need to boost every four months. But what I would imagine might happen, as all of this turns around, we will get into what might be a yearly, seasonal type of an approach. We have something perhaps similar to flu.

I'm saying this merely as extrapolations. No one knows for certain what will be required. We will have to just look at the data and make decisions.

On not masking at indoor events

The CDC was very clear when they modified their metrics to make recommendations for indoor masking and said that when the level of infection in the community gets low enough so that it's in what we call the green zone, you could do that with indoor events.

But if it changes and the cases go up, I for one will go back to masking indoors if we go with a high uptick of cases.

This interview was produced by Linah Mohammad and edited by Amy Isackson.

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What Fauci sees coming with the BA.2 coronavirus subvariant in the U.S. - NPR

Several weeks into a new phase of living with the coronavirus, the U.S. is getting a first glimpse of the reality of what its like to experience COVID-19 outbreaks and the roster of the newly infected is studded with stars.

Cabinet members, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Broadway actors and the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut have all tested positive. Outbreaks at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University are bringing back mask requirements to those campuses as officials seek out quarantine space.

The known infections likely reveal only the tip of the iceberg, since actors and politicians are regularly tested at work. Official case figures are certain to be vast undercounts of how widely the coronavirus is circulating because the results of home tests dont always make it into official tallies, and many who are mildly sick dont bother to test at all.

Across the nation, mask-wearing is at its lowest level since April 2020, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. For every 100 infections, only seven are recorded in official counts, according to the latest estimate from his modeling group.

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Mokdad expects the high level of U.S. immunity built up from previous infections and vaccinations will protect the nation from a large surge.

Were going to have some infections here and there, but its not going to shut down the country, Mokdad said. Life has to go on. We have to be vaccinated and boosted. We need to protect the vulnerable, but we have to get used to it.

On Broadway, several performances of the comedy Plaza Suite were canceled after Matthew Broderick tested positive, followed by his wife and co-star, Sarah Jessica Parker. Daniel Craig too has been sidelined from his revival of Macbeth.

Large indoor gatherings with masks optional have led to infections, with a high-profile party in Washington, D.C., now seen as a possible super-spreader event. Other infection clusters outside of groups that are regularly tested might go undetected, said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington.

Its harder now than it was before to know whats happening. The future is a little fuzzier because we dont have as much information at our fingertips, Michaud said. If youre not an actor in a Broadway play or a politician you might fall through the testing cracks.

The public health response will vary from community to community based on whats happening locally, Michaud said.

Were fighting smaller fires instead of a raging blaze across the country and those smaller fires can be disruptive, Michaud said. It leaves everyone to choose their own adventure when it comes to pandemic response and individual behaviors.

In Washington, the outbreak has been particularly high-profile striking multiple Cabinet secretaries and Congress members along with Mayor Muriel Bowser and the president of Georgetown University.

At least a dozen of those infections can be traced to the Gridiron Club dinner, an annual fixture of the D.C. social calendar that took place Saturday for the first time in three years. The dinner is an example of a return to near-total normality thats taking place around the country, leading to a spike in positive tests, but not necessarily a corresponding spike in serious illnesses or hospitalizations.

Washington, like much of the rest of the country, has greatly relaxed its COVID-19 stance in recent weeks. Bowser has allowed vaccination and indoor masking mandates to expire, and the city health department stopped reporting daily virus numbers in early March. Attendees at the Gridiron Club dinner, which Bowser did not attend, had to provide proof of vaccination, but otherwise no masking or social distancing protocols were observed.

And other staples of the D.C. social calendar are also back to normal. The citys annual Cherry Blossom Festival has been going for weeks with dozens of associated events, including a parade scheduled for Saturday.

Amid that general return to pre-pandemic behavior, there are a few cautionary steps backward. Georgetown University announced it would reintroduce its indoor mask mandate amid rising infection numbers that include university President John DeGioia.

Georgetowns Chief Public Health Officer Ranit Mishori, in announcing the new restrictions, described the infection spike as significant particularly among undergraduates. Thankfully, with the vast majority of our community up to date on vaccination, we are not seeing cases involving severe illness, Mishori wrote.

D.C. health chief Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, in comments to reporters this week, has pointed to the ongoing low level of hospitalizations as proof that the vaccinations have successfully limited the severity of the illness.

Virus metrics in Washington have crept up in the past month, according to the city health department. The weekly case rate per 100,000 residents climbed from 51 at the beginning of March to 110 at the end of March. But thats still far below the weekly case rate of 865 per 100,000 residents reported in the second week of January during the Omicron surge.

Nesbitt said there were no immediate plans to reinstitute any of the lapsed virus protocols, but that always remained an option in the future.

We need to remember that living with the virus does not mean forgetting about the virus. Its still out there, its still causing people to get sick and some people to die, Michaud said. If were not prepared, we could be in a bad situation quickly again.

AP writer Ashraf Khalil in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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New outbreaks give taste of living with the coronavirus - Los Angeles Times

As the BA.2 wave reaches its peak in the UK and begins subsiding in some European countries, US health officials are looking to an uncertain future even as American lawmakers have delayed renewing funds to address the pandemic.

While the Omicron subvariant now makes up an estimated 72% of Covid cases, the US has not seen a country-wide increase in cases. Covid hospitalizations are now at the lowest point of the pandemic.

But scientists warned this week that the coronavirus will continue evolving to evade immunity, causing future surges that will be difficult to predict.

Covid-19 has evolved faster than expected, and we should expect a lot of evolution going forward, Trevor Bedford, a professor of biostatistics at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, told a panel of independent FDA advisers on Wednesday. Those viruses will do better and will spread locally and perhaps regionally and perhaps globally.

The US has generally followed surges in the UK three or four weeks later, but reported cases are holding steady at an average of about 26,000 a day. Although deaths have declined significantly from the Omicron peak, more than 500 Americans are still dying every day.

I think we are going to see some rising cases in some places, said Benjamin Linas, professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. Lifting precautions will probably result in future upticks, he and others wrote in a study published earlier this month.

Were not in the crisis that we were back in 2020, but we need to be realistic that were also not completely over and done, Linas said.

Some regions in the north-east, including New York and Massachusetts, are beginning to see ticks upward. Philadelphia is considering a return to indoor masking next week.

In Washington DC, where confirmed cases have increased by 135% in the past two weeks, several high-level politicians have tested positive, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on Thursday.

Its difficult to parse the extent to which surges elsewhere have been driven by changes in behavior, BA.2s increased transmissibility, and waning immunity, and whether factors in the US could suppress such a wave.

As the pandemic wears on, changes to how cases are reported and counted may also cloud the picture.

Home tests are frequently not counted in official tallies, making it increasingly difficult to understand how widespread infections are. Wastewater monitoring could be useful to fill in the gaps, but many places are still ramping up such programs.

Several states have moved to weekly or twice-weekly, instead of daily, reporting of cases, mirroring a similar shift in June 2021 during a lull before the Delta surge. Oklahoma is changing how it reports its seven-day average of cases.

Changes to definitions of Covid hospitalizations and deaths may also complicate pandemic tracking.

Some states have also narrowed their definitions of Covid hospitalization to focus only on patients receiving Covid-specific medications, while others have changed how they define Covid deaths.

Last Monday, US lawmakers reached a deal for $10bn in Covid funding, some of which has already lapsed. But on Thursday, several senators confirmed that the vote will not take place until after the upcoming two-week spring break.

This amount was lower than the $15bn previously cut from an omnibus spending bill or the $22.5bn requested by the White House.

The new bill will not cover tests and treatments for those without insurance, who lost that coverage in March. More than 30 million Americans arent insured, and the lack of affordable, accessible testing and treatments could further affect the countrys ability to track and address cases and severe illness.

The new funding package would also cut spending for global Covid campaigns, including vaccination, which could prolong the pandemic by allowing new variants to emerge and spread.

This is a global health problem, and if we continue to cut the budget for vaccines in developing countries, were going to get the next Omicron, Linas said. Because we have these pockets where the virus goes to reproduce, its already extended the epidemic by at least a year and if it keeps on happening, were going to chase our tail indefinitely.

An estimated half of Americans may have been infected with Omicron in a 10-week period a remarkable number, Bedford said. In comparison, influenza usually infects perhaps 10-20% of the population in about 20 weeks.

But that would also mean that about half of Americans werent infected in the first Omicron wave, potentially leaving them vulnerable to another surge now. The coronavirus, as it swept the globe and infected millions, mutated two to 10 times faster than influenza usually does, Bedford said.

Its likely that future variants will still emerge from Omicron, even overcoming immunity from previous cases of Omicron, he added.

But theres also the potential for the wildcard emergence of a new variant from a previous strain, like Delta. Omicron seems to have evolved from a much earlier version of the virus in summer 2020 before exploding across the globe in late 2021.

Its also difficult to understand if Covid-19 will eventually become a seasonal virus, like influenza or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Its not clear to me that its actually tied to the months of the year, or if thats just confounded by the virology thats been happening, Linas said. Influenza, for example, is highly seasonal but I dont think we know that yet about Sars-CoV-2.

One major treatment has been halted in the US amid questions of its efficacy. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) pulled its authorization of sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody, as studies reveal it is less likely to be effective against Omicron. Recent research also indicates that this treatment might create resistance a major concern with other monoclonal antibodies and antivirals.

Vaccines and treatments help, but they arent sufficient to halt the pandemic on their own, and they must be accompanied by measures like ventilation and masking during times of high transmission, Linas said.

Surges are also highly dependent on human behavior.

There is no virus epidemic outside the context of the way people behave, Linas said. It would be a big mistake to let off on ourselves and our leaders The actions we take or dont take matter a ton.

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After Europes latest Covid surge, will the US follow suit? - The Guardian

LONDON

In the latest Senate package targeted at stopping the coronavirus, U.S. lawmakers dropped nearly all funding for curbing the virus beyond American borders a move many health experts slammed as dangerously short-sighted.

They warn the suspension of COVID-19 aid for poorer countries could ultimately allow the kind of unchecked transmission needed for the next worrisome variant to emerge and unravel much of the progress achieved so far.

The U.S. has been the biggest contributor to the global pandemic response delivering more than 500 million vaccines and the lack of funding will be a major setback.

The money has paid for numerous interventions, including a mass vaccination campaign in the Cameroonian capital that saw hundreds of thousands of people get their first dose, as well as the construction of a COVID-19 care facility in South Africa and the donation of 1,000 ventilators to that country. Other U.S.-funded vaccination campaigns in dozens of countries, including Uganda, Zambia, Ivory Coast and Mali, could also come to a grinding halt.

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Any stoppage of funds will affect us, said Misaki Wayengera, a Ugandan official who heads a technical committee advising the government on the pandemic response. He said Uganda has leaned heavily on donor help it received more than 11 million vaccines from the U.S. and that any cuts would make it very difficult for us to make ends meet.

This is a bit of a kick in the teeth to poor countries that were promised billions of vaccines and resources last year in grand pledges made by the G7 and the G20, said Michael Head, a global health research fellow at Britains Southampton University.

Given how badly weve failed on vaccine equity, its clear all of those promises have now been broken, he said, adding that without concerted effort and money to fight COVID-19 in the coming months, the pandemic could persist for years.

While about 66% of the American population has been fully immunized against the coronavirus, fewer than 15% of people in poorer countries have received a single dose. Health officials working on COVID-19 vaccination in developing countries supported by the U.S. say they expect to see a reversal of progress once the funds disappear.

Vaccination will stop or not even get started in some countries, said Rachel Hall, executive director of U.S. government advocacy at the charity CARE. She cited estimates from USAID that the suspended funding would mean scrapping testing, treatment and health services for about 100 million people.

Although vaccines are more plentiful this year, many poorer countries have struggled to get shots into arms and hundreds of millions of donated vaccines have either expired, been returned or sat unused. To address those logistical hurdles, U.S. aid has financed critical services in countries across Africa, including the safe delivery of vaccines, training health workers and fighting vaccine misinformation.

For example, in November the U.S. Embassy in the Cameroonian capital set up a tent for mass vaccination: Within the first five days, more than 300,000 people received a dose. Those kinds of events will now be harder to conduct without American funds.

Hall also noted there would be consequences far beyond COVID-19, saying countries struggling with multiple disease outbreaks, like Congo and Mali, would face difficult choices.

They will have to choose between fighting Ebola, malaria, polio, COVID and more, she said.

Jeff Zients, the outgoing leader of the White House COVID-19 task force, expressed regret the legislation doesnt include resources for the international pandemic fight, noting that would also compromise efforts to track the virus genetic evolution.

It is a real disappointment that theres no global funding in this bill, he said. This virus knows no borders, and its in our national interest to vaccinate the world and protect against possible new variants.

Still, Zients announced the U.S. would be the first to donate tens of millions of doses for children to poorer countries and said more than 20 nations had already requested the shots.

J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, lamented that lawmakers were erring on the side of optimism about the pandemic precisely when another surge might be arriving. In recent weeks, coronavirus cases caused by the hugely infectious Omicron subvariant BA.2 have surged across Europe, and American officials say they expect a U.S. spike soon.

Weve made that mistake several times in this pandemic, Morrison said. And we may be making that mistake again.

Other experts worried the suspension of U.S. global support for COVID-19 might prompt officials to drop current vaccination goals. The World Health Organization had set a target of immunizing at least 70% of people in all countries by the middle of this year, but with nearly 50 countries vaccinating fewer than 20% of their populations, hitting that target is highly unlikely.

Instead, some organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation have pushed for officials to refocus vaccination goals away from vaccinating 70% of all adults by summer to vaccinating 90% of those most at-risk in each country, in what some critics say is an implicit acknowledgment of the worlds repeated failures to share vaccines fairly. Others point out there shouldnt be competing vaccine targets and that health authorities simply need to do more, rather than adjusting global goals.

In Nigeria, which has so far received at least $143 million in COVID-19 aid from the U.S, authorities dismissed suggestions their coronavirus programs would suffer as a result of lost funding. The Nigerian presidents office said help from the U.S. was mostly in kind via capacity building, research support and donations of laboratory equipment and vaccines. We are confident that this will not cause any disruption of our current programs, it said.

However, others warned the U.S. decision set an unfortunate precedent for global cooperation to end the pandemic at a time when fresh concerns like the Ukraine war are drawing more attention.

President Biden originally planned to convene a virtual summit in the first quarter of this year to keep international efforts on track, but no event has been scheduled.

In light of the ongoing war in Ukraine, we dont yet have a final date for the summit, but we are working closely with countries and international partners to advance commitments, said a senior Biden administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly.

As of this month, WHO said it had gotten only $1.8 billion of the $16.8 billion needed from donors to speed access to COVID-19 vaccines, medicines and diagnostics.

Nobody else is stepping up to fill the void at the moment and the U.S. decision to suspend funding may lead other donor countries to act similarly, said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of Duke Universitys Global Health Innovation Center.

Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, described the U.S. suspension of funding as devastating.

How could this possibly be what were debating right now? she asked. Its a moral obligation to the rest of the world to continue to contribute to this global pandemic response, not only to protect ourselves but to protect people from around the world.

Megerian reported from Washington. AP writers Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda; Mogomotsi Magome and Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg, and Chinedu Asadu in Lagos, Nigeria, contributed to this report.

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Experts say U.S. suspension of COVID aid will prolong pandemic - Los Angeles Times

JOHANNESBURG

The World Health Organization says up to 65% of people in Africa have been infected with the coronavirus and estimated that the number of actual cases may have been nearly 100 times more than those reported.

In a new analysis released Thursday, the U.N. health agency reviewed 151 studies of the virus in Africa based on blood samples taken from people on the continent between January 2020 and December 2021. WHO said that by last September, about 65% of people tested had some exposure, translating into about 800 million infections. In contrast, only about 8 million cases had been officially reported to WHO during that time period.

This undercounting is occurring worldwide and its no surprise that the numbers are particularly large in Africa, where there are so many cases with no symptoms, WHOs Africa Director Matshidiso Moeti said in a statement. WHOs analysis found that two-thirds of those infected showed no symptoms of COVID-19, a higher percentage than other world regions.

Despite repeated warnings from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus that the coronavirus would devastate Africa, the continent has been among the least affected by the pandemic. In its new analysis, WHO said the milder cases seen in Africa were attributable in part to the continents much smaller proportion of people with underlying risk factors like high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.

Africas youthful population is also a protective factor, the U.N. health agency said. Some studies have also suggested that previous infection with diseases including malaria may offer people some protection against the coronavirus, although those hypotheses have yet to be confirmed.

To date, Africa has reported 11.5 million cases including more than 250,000 deaths. WHO said the virus has been trending downward since January, although some countries, including South Africa, have been hit particularly hard during successive waves of disease. Last week, WHO said the number of COVID deaths fell by about 30% on the continent.

Despite Africas declining infections and high exposure to the virus, we cannot declare victory yet against COVID-19, said WHO Africa chief Moeti.

The risks of more lethal variants emerging which overwhelm immunity gained from past infections cannot be brushed aside, she said, calling for increased vaccination rates across the continent.

To date, only about 15% of people in Africa have been immunized against COVID-19.

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Up to 65% of Africans have been infected with the coronavirus, far more than thought - Los Angeles Times