Pulse Oximetry for Monitoring Patients with Covid-19 at Home A Pragmatic, Randomized Trial | NEJM nejm.org
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Fully vaccinated and boosted San Diego County residents are among those nationwide who will be able to participate in a new clinical trial that seeks to test combinations of vaccines that target variants, including Beta, Delta and Omicron.
UC San Diego is among 24 sites nationwide selected to enroll otherwise healthy residents in the COVID-19 Variant Immunologic Landscape Trial, a major nationwide effort funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. Called COVAIL for short, the investigation initially plans to enroll about 600 participants into six different randomly-selected groups, each of which will receive a different combination of vaccines developed by pharmaceutical giant Moderna.
To date, the only vaccines approved for general use are those focused on the initial strain that emerged in Wuhan China in 2019. As the virus has mutated, causing additional waves of infection, companies have worked to update their initial offerings, retargeting the same mRNA technology on new features appearing in the coronaviruss latest versions.
The idea that drives the trial, explained Dr. Susan Little, a professor of medicine at UCSD and principal investigator of the local trial site, is to map the immune system responses to different variants, populating computer models with enough information to make the best predictions about which combinations would produce the strongest protection against coronaviruss next successful mutation.
When a new variant comes along, whatever it is, we want to have an immune response that matches as closely as possible, Little said.
Initially set for 600 participants, the research effort will expand to 1,500 as additional variant vaccines are ready for testing.
Participants must be at least 18 years old and fully vaccinated with evidence that they have already received a booster shot. According to the county health departments latest update, about 1.2 million residents across the region have received their boosters, making them eligible to participate if they are in good health.
Enrollment will be targeted toward specific age groups, with the study skewing toward the older age groups that are at significantly greater risk of severe consequences if they get infected. About 45 percent of COVAIL participants will be age 65 or older.
Investigators also want to better understand how a previous coronavirus infection affects the immune response elicited by vaccines, so 35 percent will have confirmed previous infections.
More information is available at http://www.covidvaccinesd.com or by calling (619) 695-4371.
San Diegos weekly coronavirus update, published weekly, continues to show that the local pandemic is in something of a steady state. There were 125 people with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases in local non-military hospitals Tuesday, a number that, while much lower than it was in January, remains stubbornly above 100 even as the number of new cases reported daily remains greater than 200.
Many have recently turned to the amount of virus detected in local wastewater as a better indicator of the pandemics current state. The most recent update from San Diegos SEARCH coalition, a group of local organizations led by UCSD, shows evidence of 2.2 million viruses per liter in samplings made in Point Loma on March 29. That number is up only slightly from the 2.1 million viruses per liter detected on March 21, though more recent information from the first week of April had not yet been posted as of 6 p.m. Wednesday.
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San Diego will be part of national clinical trial on COVID-19 vaccines - The San Diego Union-Tribune
A health care worker administering Covid vaccines to students in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe, last week.Credit...Aaron Ufumeli/EPA, via Shutterstock
Senators announced a deal on a $10 billion coronavirus aid package on Monday to provide additional aid for domestic testing, vaccination and treatment efforts, after dropping a push to include billions for the global vaccination effort.
The agreement requires at least $5 billion to be set aside for therapeutics and $750 million for research and clinical trials to prepare for future variants. The remaining funds will be used for vaccines and testing.
It does not include $5 billion in funding for the global vaccination effort that had previously been proposed, after senators spent the weekend haggling over a Republican demand to claw back money Congress previously approved.
The package was announced by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, and Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah. Both have led negotiations in recent days. In a statement, Mr. Schumer said that President Biden supported the agreement, even though it was less than half of the White Houses original $22.5 billion request.
This $10 billion Covid package will give the federal government and our citizens the tools we need to continue our economic recovery, keep schools open and keep American families safe, Mr. Schumer said in a statement. While this emergency injection of additional funding is absolutely necessary, it is well short of what is truly needed to keep us safe from the Covid-19 virus over the long-term.
He added that he planned for additional bipartisan negotiations over another emergency aid package that could include both aid for the global vaccination effort and additional assistance for Ukraine as it battles a Russian invasion.
Every dollar we requested is essential, and we will continue to work with Congress to get all of the funding we need, but time is of the essence, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. We urge Congress to move promptly on this $10 billion package because it can begin to fund the most immediate needs, as we currently run the risk of not having some critical tools like treatments and tests starting in May and June.
The domestic spending is paid for largely by repurposing unspent money that was approved in March 2021 in the $1.9 trillion pandemic law that Democrats pushed through without any Republican votes, as well as some funds from the $2.2 trillion law approved under the Trump administration, a key Republican demand.
Among the programs and agencies affected are a grant program for shuttered venues, the Economic Injury Disaster loan program, the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, as well as agriculture and transportation funding, according to summaries provided by the two offices.
In a separate statement, Mr. Romney called for the legislation to receive broad bipartisan support and added that he was willing to explore a fiscally responsible solution to support global efforts in the weeks ahead.
Lawmakers are pushing to move the aid package through before the end of the week, when both chambers are scheduled to leave for a two-week recess. It is unclear if there will be enough support for such a swift timeline, given that Senate Democrats aim to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court this week and all 100 lawmakers would have to agree to waive procedural hurdles to speed up the process.
Multiple House Democrats have also expressed frustration with the omission of the global vaccination aid, which is central to Mr. Bidens strategy of reducing vaccine inequality and limiting the impact of the next coronavirus variant.
Without global vaccination funding, we are simply not tackling the problem of COVID, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on Twitter.
Several Democrats, however, said the urgent need to provide domestic aid was enough to warrant their support.
I understand that domestic public health spending is also urgently needed, and so I intend to vote for this bill, Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware and one of the negotiators, said in a statement. However, this is only a partial step, and I will push my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass a robust international funding bill in the coming weeks to address pandemic-related needs and the growing global hunger and food security crisis.
Recent efforts to pass an initial $15.6 billion Covid package collapsed last month when House Democrats balked at clawing back money that had been set aside for state governments in last years law.
Those funds remained untouched in the current plan. But the measure also includes a bipartisan bill, led by Senators John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, that will give state, local and tribal governments more flexibility in how coronavirus aid is spent.
While access to vaccines has gradually expanded around the world, administering the shots remains a challenge. In many low-income countries, only about 15 percent of the population has received at least one vaccine dose, compared with about 80 percent of the population in many middle- and high-income countries, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.
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Even as COVID-19 enters its third year as a pandemic, the world is no closer to knowing the source of the virus that sparked it all.
Just six weeks after declaring a global health emergency, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spread of the new coronavirus a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
But while the animal hosts of the coronaviruses that caused the 2003-2004 SARS and 2012 MERS outbreaks were identified in a matter of months, the origin of the current SARS-CoV-2 virus along with its myriad mutations and variants has proved more elusive.
Last September, a task force set up by The Lancet COVID-19 Commission to search for the pandemics ultimate source was disbanded after 14 months, amid rancour, recriminations and concerns about conflicts of interest. And the probe by the WHO, a public health agency with no investigatory powers, has largely been stalled after a tightly controlled fact-finding trip to China in January 2021.
China has yet to provide the WHO with the evidence to support Beijings assertion that the spread of coronavirus had a natural zoonotic pathway moving from bats to an animal host to humans and the Huanan Seafood Market where the first cases were traced was swiftly disinfected and closed.
The struggle to find the source has helped give more credence to the possibility that the virus might have come from elsewhere, including a laboratory leak. Whatever the case, the evidence remains within China.
I became convinced that China isnt being transparent; theyre being evasive about quite a few things, said Colin Butler, an honorary professor with the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at Australian National University in Canberra.
Late last year, Butler was commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme to write a report entitled Environmental Change and COVID-19: The Risk of Future Pandemics in Asia and the Pacific. In the study, Butler listed medical and laboratory procedures as risk factors that could allow viruses to escape from a controlled setting and spread widely. For example, China allows experiments on coronaviruses to be conducted in low-biosecurity settings that only mandate protective gear for lab workers, a sink and an eyewash station.
Mindful that the origin of a 1979 anthrax outbreak in the former Soviet Union that killed at least 66 people was only revealed after the countrys collapse in 1992, Butler says he believes the truth about the current pandemic will remain buried by the current Chinese leadership.
China isnt going to be open about this under the current regime, he said.
In the first months of the pandemic, in April 2020, Australia was one of the first countries to call for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19. But other countries, most notably the United States, have not echoed Canberras call.
Im absolutely convinced that a lot of people are being not sufficiently transparent not just in China but also in the US, Butler added.
In the US, molecular biologist Alina Chan shares Butlers suspicions.
Chan, a scientific adviser at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, was among the first scientists who advocated against dismissing a lab leak as the source of the virus.
Last November, together with British science writer Matt Ridley, Chan co-authored Viral: The Search for The Origin of COVID-19 and expounded on the evidence for the two most likely origin stories for the virus: via an animal carrier in nature or a lab accident.
In a poll last summer, a majority of Americans, regardless of political persuasion, said they believed the virus had come from a lab leak in China. Even so, Chan says the push for an investigation has been stymied by partisan politics in Washington.
Everyone is taking a side and trying to take down the other side, Chan told Al Jazeera. It isnt fantastical to say theres a cover-up.
For Chan and all those who argue that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could have originated from a lab, so long as an intermediary animal host that had passed the virus from bats to humans cannot be located, the natural-origin scenario lacks the scientific support it needs.
Also, the widely shared observation that right from the start the virus has unique features that made it extremely adapted to infecting humans en masse continues to baffle even specialists on coronaviruses.
Dispositive evidence for a natural origin of SARS1 and MERS had been quickly found despite less advanced technologies at the time. Yet, for SARS2, we still cannot find any infected animals that couldve passed the virus to humans at the market and we have not obtained evidence to tell us when and how the virus was spreading in Wuhan before mid-December 2019, Chan said.
Last month, new studies among the most detailed to have been published on the viruss origins so far pinpointed the market as the unambiguous epicentre of the pandemic given the nature and clustering of the cases.
One of the papers, awaiting peer review, suggested that the earliest known COVID-19 cases were located near Huanan, and that by November 2019 the virus had already jumped from bats to other mammals, and was spreading in the western corner of the market where live animals were kept and sold.
Virologist Marion Koopmans, who was a member of the WHO expert team that travelled to China, said the study led by Michael Worobey of the University of Arizonas Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, provided convincing evidence that the market was, indeed, the place where it had all begun.
But Chan and other scientists say the papers made claims based on incomplete data and biased samplings. And for scientists tracing how the virus spread especially in the early days the dearth of data made available by China has proved particularly challenging.
Hoping to trace the pandemic to its start, last spring virologist Jesse Bloom at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle tried to lay his hands on the genetic sequences of SARS-CoV-2 from the earliest cases out of China only to find the data had been removed from the open-access site maintained by the US National Institutes of Health, at the request of Chinese researchers. As the owners of the data, the scientists have the right to request its removal without having to give a reason.
For example, Bloom said if the Wuhan Institute of Virology were to release its entire database of bat coronaviruses, it would go a long way towards settling the question of whether one of its labs was the source.
Without that information, he says the inquiry cannot be resolved scientifically. Its an important question to understand the origin of the pandemic, said Bloom. And the public would like a more scientific explanation.
Earlier this month, Bloom and 17 other scientists signed a letter asking China to release sequencing data from samples collected at the market.
Regardless of whether the virus was transmitted by animals or via a lab, Rosemary McFarlane, assistant professor in public health at the University of Canberra, says a lot can be done to staunch the risk of the next outbreak.
That is because both scenarios point to the longstanding problems of how humans handle wild animals. Keeping them in close quarters in trade and transit has compounded the possibility of viruses jumping between animals and to humans.
We can continue to debate the origin of this pandemic, but we need to understand what the risks are now, as the virus circulates amongst people with low access to vaccination, and amongst those in close proximity to animals. All of this provides opportunity for further virus evolution, said McFarlane. This pandemic is a wake-up call to the possibility of future risk.
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COVID-19: The endless search for the origins of the virus - Al Jazeera English
A health care worker administering Covid vaccines to students in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe, last week.Credit...Aaron Ufumeli/EPA, via Shutterstock
Senators announced a deal on a $10 billion coronavirus aid package on Monday to provide additional aid for domestic testing, vaccination and treatment efforts, after dropping a push to include billions for the global vaccination effort.
The agreement requires at least $5 billion to be set aside for therapeutics and $750 million for research and clinical trials to prepare for future variants. The remaining funds will be used for vaccines and testing.
It does not include $5 billion in funding for the global vaccination effort that had previously been proposed, after senators spent the weekend haggling over a Republican demand to claw back money Congress previously approved.
The package was announced by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, and Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah. Both have led negotiations in recent days. In a statement, Mr. Schumer said that President Biden supported the agreement, even though it was less than half of the White Houses original $22.5 billion request.
This $10 billion Covid package will give the federal government and our citizens the tools we need to continue our economic recovery, keep schools open and keep American families safe, Mr. Schumer said in a statement. While this emergency injection of additional funding is absolutely necessary, it is well short of what is truly needed to keep us safe from the Covid-19 virus over the long-term.
He added that he planned for additional bipartisan negotiations over another emergency aid package that could include both aid for the global vaccination effort and additional assistance for Ukraine as it battles a Russian invasion.
Every dollar we requested is essential, and we will continue to work with Congress to get all of the funding we need, but time is of the essence, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. We urge Congress to move promptly on this $10 billion package because it can begin to fund the most immediate needs, as we currently run the risk of not having some critical tools like treatments and tests starting in May and June.
The domestic spending is paid for largely by repurposing unspent money that was approved in March 2021 in the $1.9 trillion pandemic law that Democrats pushed through without any Republican votes, as well as some funds from the $2.2 trillion law approved under the Trump administration, a key Republican demand.
Among the programs and agencies affected are a grant program for shuttered venues, the Economic Injury Disaster loan program, the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, as well as agriculture and transportation funding, according to summaries provided by the two offices.
In a separate statement, Mr. Romney called for the legislation to receive broad bipartisan support and added that he was willing to explore a fiscally responsible solution to support global efforts in the weeks ahead.
Lawmakers are pushing to move the aid package through before the end of the week, when both chambers are scheduled to leave for a two-week recess. It is unclear if there will be enough support for such a swift timeline, given that Senate Democrats aim to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court this week and all 100 lawmakers would have to agree to waive procedural hurdles to speed up the process.
Multiple House Democrats have also expressed frustration with the omission of the global vaccination aid, which is central to Mr. Bidens strategy of reducing vaccine inequality and limiting the impact of the next coronavirus variant.
Without global vaccination funding, we are simply not tackling the problem of COVID, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on Twitter.
Several Democrats, however, said the urgent need to provide domestic aid was enough to warrant their support.
I understand that domestic public health spending is also urgently needed, and so I intend to vote for this bill, Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware and one of the negotiators, said in a statement. However, this is only a partial step, and I will push my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass a robust international funding bill in the coming weeks to address pandemic-related needs and the growing global hunger and food security crisis.
Recent efforts to pass an initial $15.6 billion Covid package collapsed last month when House Democrats balked at clawing back money that had been set aside for state governments in last years law.
Those funds remained untouched in the current plan. But the measure also includes a bipartisan bill, led by Senators John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, that will give state, local and tribal governments more flexibility in how coronavirus aid is spent.
While access to vaccines has gradually expanded around the world, administering the shots remains a challenge. In many low-income countries, only about 15 percent of the population has received at least one vaccine dose, compared with about 80 percent of the population in many middle- and high-income countries, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.
The rest is here:
Covid News: Senators Announce Smaller Aid Proposal Without Global Vaccine Funds - The New York Times
Covid-related deaths in England have jumped to their highest level since mid-February, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
There were 780 deaths where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate in the seven days leading up to 25 March up 14% on the previous week. This increase follows several weeks where deaths appeared to have levelled off.
Coronavirus infections have been rising across the UK since early March, driven by the Omicron BA.2 variant. Prevalence of the virus is currently at a record high, with ONS figures suggesting approximately 4.9 million had Covid in the week to 26 March. This increase may now be having an impact on the number of deaths, which typically lag behind infections by several weeks.
The death toll is the highest since 18 February when 863 deaths were recorded although this is still lower than at the peak of the first the Omicron wave when 1,484 deaths were registered in England and Wales in the week to 21 January. It is also well below the 8,433 deaths registered at the peak of the second wave of coronavirus in the week to 29 January 2021.
In total 190,053 deaths have now occurred in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, according to the ONS. The number of people in hospital in the UK with coronavirus is close to the total reached at the start of this year but is still far below levels recorded in early 2021.
This relatively low number of deaths and hospitalisations largely reflects the success of the vaccination programme in particular the rollout of booster doses at the end of 2021. A fourth spring booster dose of vaccine is being offered to people aged 75 and over, care home residents and those aged 12 and over with weakened immune systems.
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Covid-related deaths rise in England with infections at record high - The Guardian
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (WXYZ) The University of Michigan sent an email out to students Friday saying, heads up, we are seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases and you might want to take some precautions.
These cases are almost always linked to indoor social gatherings, Dr. Preeti Malani, University of Michigan Chief Health Officer, told WXYZ.
Dr. Malani says the trends the University of Michigan sees will also likely be seen across metro Detroit. She says, fortunately, high vaccination rates mean on campus most cases are mild. The university wants students and staff to feel empowered to take precautions to protect themselves if they or someone they are around is vulnerable. For example, she suggests considering masking at large indoor gatherings and if you have any symptoms, testing.
We want to make sure the people have the types of tools to protect people around them and home tests are one of the big advances that we have seen in the last year, said Dr. Malani.
The University says students can pick up free at-home antigen tests at any central or north campus CSTP site [campusblueprint.umich.edu].
An e-mail sent to students said, Additionally, the spread of the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron has grown to represent more than half of cases in the midwest region. This is significant because the new subvariant appears to be more transmissible than the BA.1 subvariant previously circulating widely in our community.
Dr. Malani says COVID-19 is not going away and it is best that people use what we have learned about the virus and protect themselves from serious illness through vaccination.
There have now been billions of doses of vaccines given all over the world with minimal complications. These are among the safest vaccines that have ever been developed, said Dr. Malani.
Students say its not surprising that cases are increasing.
I think a lot of people are done with COVID, said Nina Haley, a student.
I have noticed a lot of students dont wear their masks as much because you dont have to in the dorms anymore. But I have noticed a lot more coughing and sneezing and hacking up a lung. So that is a little concerning, said Leila Kitchen, a student.
Additional Coronavirus information and resources:
View a global coronavirus tracker with data from Johns Hopkins University.
See complete coverage on our Coronavirus Continuing Coverage page.
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University of Michigan warns students COVID-19 cases are increasing - WXYZ 7 Action News Detroit
The devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on poor and low-income communities across America is laid bare in a new report released on Monday that concludes that while the virus did not discriminate between rich and poor, society and government did.
As the US draws close to the terrible landmark of 1 million deaths from coronavirus, the glaringly disproportionate human toll that has been exacted is exposed by the Poor Peoples Pandemic Report. Based on a data analysis of more than 3,000 counties across the US, it finds that people in poorer counties have died overall at almost twice the rate of those in richer counties.
Looking at the most deadly surges of the virus, the disparity in death rates grows even more pronounced. During the third pandemic wave in the US, over the winter of 2020 and 2021, death rates were four and a half times higher in the poorest counties than those with the highest median incomes.
During the recent Omicron wave, that divergence in death rates stood at almost three times.
Such a staggering gulf in outcomes cannot be explained by differences in vaccination rates, the authors find, with more than half of the population of the poorest counties having received two vaccine shots. A more relevant factor is likely to be that the poorest communities had twice the proportion of people who lack health insurance compared with the richer counties.
The findings of this report reveal neglect and sometimes intentional decisions to not focus on the poor, said Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor Peoples Campaign which jointly prepared the research. The neglect of poor and low-wealth people in this country during a pandemic is immoral, shocking and unjust.
The report was produced by the Poor Peoples Campaign in partnership with a team of economists at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) led by Jeffrey Sachs. They have number-crunched statistics from more than 3,200 counties as a way of comparing the poorest 10% with the richest 10%.
They then interrogate the interplay between Covid death rates and poverty, as well as other crucial demographic factors such as race and occupation.
Until now the extent to which the virus has struck low-income communities has been difficult to gauge because official mortality data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and elsewhere has not systematically factored in income and wealth information.
The new report seeks to fill that gaping hole in understanding of the US pandemic. One of its most striking findings is that within the top 300 counties with the highest death rates, 45% of the population on average lives below the poverty line as defined as 200% of the official poverty measure.
Sachs, a Columbia University professor who is president of the UN SDSN, said the findings underlined how the pandemic was not just a national tragedy but also a failure of social justice. The burden of disease in terms of deaths, illness and economic costs was borne disproportionately by the poor, women, and people of color. The poor were Americas essential workers, on the frontlines, saving lives and also incurring disease and death.
The authors rank US counties according to the intersection of poverty and Covid-19 death rates. Top of the list is Galax county, a small rural community in south-west Virginia.
Its death rate per 100,000 people stands at an astonishing 1,134, compared with 299 per 100,000 nationally. Median income in the county is little more than $33,000, and almost half of the population lives below the poverty line.
Among the counties with punishingly high poverty and death rates is the Bronx in New York City, where 56% of the population is Hispanic and 29% Black. More than half of the borough lives under the poverty line, and the Covid death rate is 538 per 100,000 within the highest 10% in the US.
Racial disparities have been at the centre of the pandemic experience in the US. Early on it became clear that Black people and Hispanics in New York City, for instance, were dying of Covid at twice the rate of whites and Asians.
The consequences of such racial inequity are still only now becoming visible. Last week a study in the journal Social Science & Medicine reached a disturbing conclusion.
It found that when white Americans were informed through the media that Black Americans were dying at higher rates than their demographic group was, their fear of the virus receded and they became less empathetic towards those vulnerable to the disease. They were also more likely to abandon Covid safety precautions such as masks and social distancing.
But low-income predominantly white communities are also in peril. Mingo county in West Virginia, for example, has one of the lowest income levels in the US following the collapse of coal mining and the scourge of the opioid epidemic.
The county is 96% white, with over half its residents living below the poverty line. Its Covid death rate is 470 per 100,000 putting it within the top quarter of counties in the nation for pandemic mortality.
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Covid had devastating toll on poor and low-income communities in US - The Guardian
Republicans are eyeing an attempt to link a Trump-era immigration policy to a coronavirus relief deal that senators are hoping to pass by the end of the week.
GOP senators are pushing for a vote targeting the Biden administrations decision to end Title 42 which allowed migrants at the border to besummarily expelled from the country instead of being processed under regular immigration rules and allowed to exercise their right to claim asylum as part of a debate over a $10 billion coronavirus relief deal announced earlier Monday.
In order to pass the $10 billion coronavirus aid deal before the chamber leaves for a two-week break, Senate leadership is going to need cooperation from all 100 senators. That could give Republicans leverage to push for an amendment vote.
It seems like theres kind of critical mass behind that idea. How the Democrats want to handle that issue may have some bearing on how and when the COVID bill proceeds, said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican.
Thune added that if Democrats want to pass the coronavirus bill this week, they are going to have to negotiate with Republicans to speed things up.
Republicans would need a decision by the Senate parliamentarian but think an amendment related to Title 42 would qualify for getting a simple majority vote if Democrats let it come up.
That could put Democrats in a politically awkward spot. Several Senate Democrats have been critical of the administrations decision to end the Trump-era policy. Because of the 50-50 Senate, Republicans would need only one of those Democrats to vote for their amendment to get it added into a coronavirus relief bill.
In addition to trying to get changes into the coronavirus bill, Republicans are expected to focus on the border heading into November.
The administration onFriday rescinded Title 42, the Trump-era policy that allows for the rapid expulsion of migrants at the border and blocks them from seeking asylum.
The order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifts Title 42 on May 23.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) called its striking a frightening decision for an administration nowhere near prepared for an influx at the border.
Meanwhile, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who is up for reelection, called it the wrong decision.
Its unacceptable to end Title 42 without a plan and coordination in place to ensure a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border, Kelly wrote.
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The Boston-area COVID wastewater tracker data keeps on rising, sending out alerts to the public that a new wave has begun, according to a leading local epidemiologist.
The latest update from the coronavirus wastewater tracker reveals that COVID levels are back up to the measurements from early February. This jump comes as the omicron BA.2 variant takes hold, while mask mandates have been lifted.
The wastewater data in both the south and north of Boston regions hit lows at the start of March. Now, the average levels in both regions are well more than double the low marks. The sewage data is the earliest sign of future virus cases in the community.
I think its getting pretty clear that a new wave has begun and we will start to see more of a jump in the case numbers soon more than we are already seeing, said Matthew Fox, a Boston University School of Public Health epidemiology professor.
The wastewater data has been a reliable predictor so far so I think we can rely on it here, he added.
The north of Bostons COVID wastewater average has increased 160% since the very low level about three weeks ago. The south of Bostons average has gone up 146% since the start of March. The wastewater levels are still far below the omicron peak.
One-day measurements in both the north and south regions during the past week are back up to the levels from the first week of February.
The gradual upward trend in the wastewater is worrisome, said Davidson Hamer, a Boston University School of Public Health infectious diseases specialist. The good news is that it has been a slow upward trend.
I suspect that its a combination of greater spread of BA.2, reduced mask use in public places, and people who have been cautious starting to let down their guard, he added. Hospitalization numbers have not increased much which is good.
The BA.2 variant is now the dominant strain in the U.S., and cases have been rising in Massachusetts over the last few weeks.
This omicron subvariant wave is not expected to surge like the omicron wave in December and January, but people should be ready to start masking again in public places and reduce their interactions, Fox said.
As for what we should do, we should take precautions and wait and see how bad this wave is, he said. My guess is it wont be as bad as previous waves in terms of severe illness but we should be prepared to take action should things get worse.
Hamer said he feels theres no need to reinstate a mandate for indoor mask use in public places, but older people and those with weak immune systems need to continue to be extra careful.
He added that anyone with symptoms consistent with COVID should do a rapid test or even two over consecutive days before having contact with family, friends, schoolmates or work colleagues.
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Boston-area coronavirus wastewater jump shows a new wave has begun - Boston Herald
