Category: Corona Virus

image:Coronaviruses tend to mutate into a fairly harmless virus, according to the opinion of PhD candidate Inger Heimdal following her study of the four common coronaviruses already in existence before the pandemic. view more

Credit: Photo: Geir Otto Johansen / NTNU

When Inger Heimdal started studying the coronavirus in children in 2014, not many people thought the topic sounded particularly exciting.

Coronavirus was considered quite harmless and of little interest to research. That has changed, to say the least.

For two years now, the movel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has ravaged populations the world over. Some researchers believe that the virus will mutate toward less harmless variants.

Heimdal, a PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, agrees.

When I started my research, there were four corona varieties that werent considered particularly dangerous. Maybe SARS-CoV-2 will become a new member of this group. In that case, it would be really useful to know more about the four older coronavirus variants. A lot of this knowledge might be transferable to SARS-CoV-2 in the near future, says Heimdal.

Heimdal is taking her doctorate in coronavirus infections in children who were admitted to St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim for acute respiratory disease in the period 2006-2017.

Of the 4312 children with respiratory infections hospitalized during the twelve-year study period, the researchers identified 341 cases (8 per cent) with coronavirus.

Although the vast majority of people become only mildly ill with the common coronavirus variants, a few patients become seriously ill and need breathing support and fluid therapy.

The risk turned out to be twice as high for the children who had a combination of coronavirus and respiratory syncytial (RS) virus and for those who only contracted the RS virus

Seriously ill patients often have to stay in hospital for a long time. This demands significant resources from the health care system. We need to know more about the disease burden that coronavirus causes in order to plan for health services in the future, Heimdal said.

One challenge in studying the disease burden of coronavirus is that it often occurs in tandem with other respiratory viruses.

NTNU researchers found other co-occurring viruses mainly RS virus and rhinovirus in 70 per cent of the cases. RS can cause pneumonia in young children, while the cold virus rhinovirus is considered a milder virus.

When Heimdal and her colleagues compared the various respiratory viruses, they discovered something interesting. Among the children who only had coronavirus, one in five developed a serious respiratory infection and required more intense medical treatment.

I think parents of young children have more reason to be concerned about the RS virus than corona.

The risk of serious illness turned out to be twice as high for the children who contracted a combination of coronavirus and RS virus and for those who only had the RS virus. Forty per cent of these children experienced a serious course of the disease.

I think parents of young children have more reason to be worried about the RS virus than coronavirus. In our study, we see that the RS virus causes hospital admissions far more frequently, and among those admitted, a much larger proportion develop a serious disease course, she says.

Is having more viruses advantageous?

Its easy to believe that the more virus variants there are, the worse the disease. But Heimdal found that the proportion of serious illness among children who had both corona and rhinovirus was clearly lower than for those who only had corona.

Could it be an advantage to contract both the rhinovirus and coronavirus?

It actually looks like having both viruses might be advantageous, but I have to emphasize that our model only enables us to study associations. We cant establish a clear causal link. But the find is really interesting, Heimdal says.

Inflicting a potentially harmful virus on a patient isnt ethically justifiable, even though it might suppress other viruses. But it would be exciting to find out what it is about the rhinovirus that reduces disease severity.

Maybe the rhinovirus triggers the immune system to be more at the ready in order to effectively attack more dangerous viruses. Hopefully, research can help us figure out whats happening so that it can be useful in treatment, she says.

According to Heimdal, cell cultures have previously shown that rhinovirus has this effect on SARS-CoV-2, but this is the first time the effect has been detected in patients.

Viruses change all the time, but it is rare for this to mean very much

Theres less room for new variants now that the population is starting to be so well immunized. Viruses change all the time, but its rare for very much to come of it. The coronavirus is also inherently limited in what it can come up with, Heimdal says.

Overall, the degree of immunity in the population is more important than which variant happens to have gained the greatest foothold, she says.

Heimdal believes indications are numerous that SARS-CoV-2 will resemble prior coronavirus variants. For children, this means that a lot of them will be infected annually, but the vast majority will only experience a mild cold.

A handful of kids could have serious enough symptoms to require being hospitalized, but overall in far lower numbers than for the RS virus and rhinovirus.

The PhD candidate's assessment is that the RS virus will probably dominate over SARS-CoV-2, while the combination of coronavirus and rhinovirus may conceivably cause milder symptoms.

Heimdal's dissertation is part of the respiratory project Childhood Airway Infection Research Group in the Childrens Clinic, Department of Medical Microbiology at St. Olavs Hospital and at NTNUs Department of Clinical and Molecular Medicine.

The first time the coronavirus was detected in humans was in the 1960s, when two different viruses were identified. A new and dangerous coronavirus SARS-CoV emerged in China in 2002-2003. The ensuing epidemic never reached Scandinavia, and the virus appears to have disappeared. In the wake of the SARS epidemic, two more coronaviruses were detected.

MERS-CoV, the sixth version, appeared in the Middle East in 2012. The disease can cause serious lung disease, but has not spread outside the Middle East.

The seventh coronavirus that we have all become well acquainted with as SARS-CoV-2 , and the resulting disease COVID-19, struck in 2019. The virus spread around the world at breakneck speed.

The four common coronaviruses that recur year after year are the "descendants" of prior pandemics. No one knows for sure when they originated. It is suspected that the Russian flu in 1889 might have been a coronavirus epidemic, says Heimdal.

Reference:

Heimdal, Inger et al., Hospitalized Children With Common Human Coronavirus Clinical Impact of Codetected Respiratory Syncytial Virus and Rhinovirus, The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.March 2022 - Volume 41 - Issue 3 - p e95-e101 doi: 10.1097/INF.0000000000003433

The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal

Data/statistical analysis

People

Hospitalized Children With Common Human Coronavirus Clinical Impact of Codetected Respiratory Syncytial Virus and Rhinovirus

1-Mar-2022

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How children are affected by coronavirus, RS virus and rhinovirus - EurekAlert

Starting in December 2019 with the first reports out ofWuhan, China, the COVID-19 pandemic very rapidly began to impact almost every aspect of daily life in Kern County, and in many respects, it continues to do so.

Here's a look at the last two-plus years with a timeline that charts how the coronavirus's rapid progression occurred:

Dec. 12, 2019: A number of patients in Wuhan report experiencing shortness of breath and fever.

Dec. 31, 2019: The World Health Organization finds out about multiple cases of pneumonia of an unknown cause in Wuhan.

Jan. 17, 2020: A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team is dispatched to Washington state to help with contact-tracing efforts after the first case of the novel coronavirus, provisionally designated by the WHO as 2019-nCoV, is reported in the United States.

Jan. 25, 2020: An Orange County manwho had recently been to Wuhan is the first case of the coronavirus found in California. The nation now has three confirmed cases.

Feb. 6, 2020: A Santa Clara resident is the first person to die of causes related to the coronavirus in the United States.

Feb. 11, 2020: The WHO announces its official designations for the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes: SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.

Feb. 27, 2020: The Californian reports 11 people in Kern County are being monitored for the highly contagious coronavirus but they are considered to be at low risk of being carriers, according to local health officials.

March 4, 2020: Gov. Gavin Newsom declares a state of emergency in California following similar declarations by a number of local governments. The move puts anti-price-gouging protections in place.

March 10, 2020: Five Kern County residents are being monitored for COVID-19 while 13 of 18 individuals have successfully moved through the monitoring process, according to county public health spokeswoman Michelle Corson. Theres been no confirmed circulation of the coronavirus locally and no confirmed cases in the county, according to the Kern Public Health Services Department.

March 11, 2020: The World Health Organization declares the fast-spreading outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic.

March 13, 2020: President Donald Trump declares a nationwide emergency.

March 15, 2020: The plans of both public and private schools in Kern County to serve students in the midst of coronavirus concerns are rapidly evolving. The following day, the heads of the Kern County Superintendent of Schools and Kern County Public Health Services Department tell public schools to temporarily close to aid in the fight against the virus.

March 17, 2020: The first patient in Kern County tests positive for the coronavirus, county health officials say, signifying the first instance of the pandemic within county borders. The Bakersfield Police Department announces that then-interim Police Chief Greg Terry is assembling a COVID-19 resource team at the department. The Kern County Sheriffs Office is evaluating inmates at its Lerdo and Central Receiving facilities for potential early release. Low-level, nonviolent inmates whose ages and medical conditions place them at risk of the virus could be let out early.

March 19, 2020: Newsom issues a shelter-in-place order for California, amid a growing number of deaths (31); the number of cases is at 7,899.

March 27, 2020: Kern County reports eight new coronavirus infections, bringing the total cases in the county to 40. Kern also reports its first death, according to county public health officials. Nearly 1,000 tests for the virus are pending results, according to data from the health department.

March 31, 2020: The county is facing more than 100 cases of COVID-19. The most recent numbers show 101 people in Kern tested positive for the disease, a number that includes three nonresidents, according to the county health department. That number represents a doubling in cases in two days; on March 29, total cases stood at 51.

April 14, 2020: Newsom charts a path to reopening for the state.

May 1, 2020:County public health officials confirm a COVID-19 outbreak at a Bakersfield nursing home that infects 16 residents and 25 staff members. Its unclear whether any of the 41 living or working at the 184-bed Kingston Healthcare Center, located at 329 Real Road, have required hospitalization or died. The outbreak is the first publicly confirmed in Kern County, where public health officials have released relatively few details about local COVID-19 cases.

May 4, 2020: The county health department begins providing more detailed information on COVID-19 cases, including the ethnic breakdown and sex of those with the virus, and the number of cases in each ZIP code in the county.

May 9, 2020: The nations jobless rate hits its highest figure since the Great Depression (14.5 percent), with more than 20.5 million out of work.

June 1, 2020:County officials worry about a coronavirus surge, as the number of reported cases over the last several days increases and crowds of protesters take to the streets in close proximity to one another. While the county health department reported an average of 43 cases per day the week prior, the past two days see Kerns total increase by 177, more than double the average.

June 17, 2020: In three months since the first COVID-19 case was announced in Kern, 57 people have died and 3,522 cases are confirmed locally. Close to 43,000 tests for the virus have been performed.

June 19, 2020: The day after Newsom announces masks are required in most public spaces, Kern County officials remain in the dark about how such an order would be enforced.

July 7, 2020: Two Bakersfield hospitals temporarily stop offering elective medical procedures in order to remain responsive to more urgent cases, as COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to rise and push local medical centers toward their limits.

July 17, 2020: Newsom announces plans for how schools in California can return to in-person learning. But the requirements mean most K-12 campuses will be distance learning for the upcoming school year.

July 19, 2020: Medical facilities in Kern County are pushed to the limit as more and more residents contract COVID-19. Kern Medical CEO Russell Judd says all local hospitals are reaching maximum capacity and beginning to implement surge plans.

Aug. 21, 2020: As a wave of evictions threatens to sweep over Bakersfield and Kern County, local leaders prepare to devote millions in federal coronavirus relief funds to rental assistance. Local advocates, however, worry the funds may not be enough to prevent many who have lost income amid the pandemic from ending up on the streets.

Sept. 22, 2020: The nations death toll surpasses 200,000.

Oct. 2, 2020: Trucks, vans and trailers wait in a long line at CityServe Kern County's F Street location to load up more than 1,200 boxes that had arrived from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farmers to Families Food Box Program. The program distributes millions of meals during the pandemic.

Nov. 18, 2020: State workplace regulators issue one of the largest fines yet for failing to protect employees from COVID-19 on the job for a Bakersfield nursing home where nearly 200 staff and residents were infected with the coronavirus. Kingston Healthcare Center is fined $92,500 as a result of numerous violations detailed in a 23-page citation report issued the previous month by Cal/OSHA, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

Dec. 9, 2020: More than 1,000 new COVID-19 infections are reported by the county health department for the second day in a row, as well as six new deaths, bringing the number of cases in Kern to 47,411 and the total number of deaths to 463.

Jan. 28, 2020: Kern County surpasses 92,000 cases of COVID-19, which means 1 in 10 county residents has tested positive for the virus. That puts Kern among the most impacted counties in the state in terms of the percentage of people infected with the virus, just behind San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Riverside counties.

Feb. 22, 2021: Kern County and the Central Valley are to receive larger portions of the COVID-19 vaccine on an ongoing basis, Newsom announces during a stop in Arvin. Moving forward, Kern is expected to receive 78 percent more vaccines than it has been, while the Central Valley as a whole is expected to receive 58 percent more. That equates to 14,850 vaccine doses arriving in Kern by the end of the week.

March 12, 2021:The county health department announces an expansion of the COVID-19 vaccines availability to include individuals with certain health conditions and those living or working in environments that put them at high risk of contracting COVID-19.

April 8, 2021: The county health department announces it will begin tracking COVID-19 variants on its online dashboard that monitors the viruss progression.

June 16, 2021: Newsom stops at In Shape, a fully reopened gym in Bakersfield, to promote "California Roars Back," the reopening plan, while also advocating for measures to keep Californians healthy, such as offering tickets to Six Flags Magic Mountain for vaccinated residents.

July 1, 2021: As rising levels of a more contagious coronavirus variant cause concern in neighboring counties, only one case of the delta variant is identified in Kern.

Aug. 7, 2021: Kern County hospitals see a dramatic increase in COVID-19 patients over the past month, leading some health officials to worry a third surge may soon overwhelm local resources.

Aug. 13, 2021: Students in Wasco Union Elementary School District have been in class for two weeks; in that time, a dozen students test positive for COVID, and 70 are sent home to quarantine because of a possible exposure under current health guidelines.

Aug. 24, 2021: Local hospital executives worry they might not be able to staff enough beds to meet official projections that COVID-19 cases in Kern County will continue rising through early October. On Sept. 3, hospitalizations exceed the peak of the first wave, with the numbers expected to rise.

Oct. 18, 2021: Local parents protesting Newsoms student COVID-19 vaccine mandate participate in a statewide walkout by keeping their students out of school.

Nov. 3, 2021: The county health department recommends that all eligible residents get a booster shot to avoid another COVID-19 surge that could surpass the most recent peak that strained local hospitals.

Dec. 5, 2021: The emergence of omicron, a new variant of concern, shines a spotlight on the way that coronavirus cases are sequenced.

Jan. 3, 2022: Kern County Superintendent of Schools spokesman Robert Meszaros confirms that hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 rapid tests are being delivered after the KCSOS receives an expected shipment.

Jan. 21, 2022:The county health department reports 2,351 new coronavirus cases and no new deaths. This number represents the highest single-day total of the pandemic as the omicron surge appears to peak in Kern. Less than a week later, Kern would see another grim milestone: On Jan. 27, the health department announces 17 new COVID deaths, bringing the tally of COVID deaths in Kern County past 2,000 (2,005).

Feb. 17, 2022: About half of eligible Americans have received booster shots, with nearly 80 million confirmed infections overall and many more infections that have never been reported. One influential model uses those factors and others to estimate that 73 percent of Americans are, for now, immune to omicron, the dominant variant, and that could rise to 80 percent by mid-March. California becomes the first state to formally shift to an endemic approach to the coronavirus with Newsom's announcement of a plan that emphasizes prevention and quick reaction to outbreaks over mandated masking and business shutdowns.

Feb. 24, 2022: The Biden administration announces plans to significantly loosen federal mask-wearing guidelines to protect against COVID-19 transmission, meaning most Americans will no longer be advised to wear masks in indoor public settings.

March 4, 2022: New York City and Los Angeles intend to lift some of their strictest COVID-19 prevention measures as officials in big cities around the U.S. push for a return to normalcy after two grueling years of the pandemic.

March 7, 2022:The global death toll from COVID-19 eclipses 6 million underscoring that the pandemic, now entering its third year, is far from over.

March 11, 2022: Newsoms mask mandate in schools expires, as local school officials and others in the education community express optimism about moving in the right direction while also sharing caution amid the ongoing pandemic.

March 15, 2022: Pfizer and its partner BioNTech ask U.S. regulators to authorize an additional booster dose of their COVID-19 vaccine for seniors, saying data from Israel suggests older adults would benefit.

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COVID-19 timeline: A look back as Kern enters third year of coronavirus - The Bakersfield Californian

The BA.2 variant of COVID-19, also known as stealth omicron, has become the dominant variant of the coronavirus around the world, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. The omicron subvariant now accounts for 75% of coronavirus cases globally.

This is the most transmissible variant we have seen of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to date, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHOs COVID-19 lead.

The BA.2 variant has driven a rapid increase in COVID-19 cases in several countries around the world over the past few weeks, including China, Australia and much of Europe.

These increases are occurring despite reductions in testing in some countries, which means the cases were seeing are just the tip of the iceberg, said WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Will the United States see a spike in COVID-19 from the BA.2 variant of omicron?

BA.2 has yet to become dominant in the U.S. It currently accounts for about 23% of COVID-19 cases nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The fact that we saw such a huge spike from BA.1, the other omicron subvariant, just a couple of months ago may protect us from another massive surge, experts say. One recent model estimated 73% of Americans had immunity to the omicron variant because so many were exposed between December and February.

Still, that would mean about 27% of Americans are not immune nearly 90 million people.

Those who havent gotten a COVID booster shot and people over 65 are especially vulnerable.

Its that group thats most problematic when it comes to the severe critical and fatal disease. It doesnt mean that younger folks dont wind up in the hospital at times; its just not at the same rate, Jeffrey Shaman, of Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health, told CNN.

Pfizer is seeking authorization to offer a fourth shot of its vaccine to seniors to boost their protection.

In the meantime, the CDC advises everyone stay up to date on their COVID vaccine. Whether or not youre up to date depends on your age, health conditions, the type of COVID shot you got, and how long its been since your last dose.

As long as the virus continued to circulate, it will continue to spawn new variants some of which could prove more contagious, more immune-evasive, or more deadly.

The virus will pick up pockets of susceptibility and will survive in those pockets for months and months until another pocket of susceptibility opens up, said Dr. Michael Ryan, a WHO executive director. This is how viruses work. They establish themselves within a community and theyll move quickly to the next community if its unprotected.

See the article here:

BA.2 now dominant COVID-19 variant: Will it cause another spike in the US? - KTLA Los Angeles

Multiple teams around the world have recently proposed another thing that makes omicron special: The variant may not use the same entry route into cells that earlier versions of the virus use.

There are two major ways the coronavirus can enter cells. Both start with grabbing ACE2. In the direct route, a scissorslike protein called TMPRSS2 snips away part of the spike protein, revealing a portion that allows the virus to fuse with human cells and immediately dump its RNA inside to make new viruses. That is the way all previous versions of the SARS-CoV-2 have entered human cells.

But omicron may take a back door through a compartment inside the cell membrane called an endosome. There, a different scissorslike protein called cathepsin L cleaves the spike protein to allow the virus to dump its payload into the cell.

Omicron doesnt use the TMPRSS2 pathway efficiently and relies more on cathepsin L to get into cells, two groups of researchers independently reported February 1 in Nature. As a result, omicron doesnt fuse as well with cell membranes as delta does, those teams and other preliminary reports suggest.

That could seem like a handicap. But for omicron, it may be a good thing, Liu of Ohio State says. While the virus needs to fuse with cell membranes to get inside and replicate, too much fusibility may lead cells to merge with each other and die, he says. That would leave the virus with nowhere to copy itself.

Omicron may have struck the perfect balance between being fusible enough to enter cells, but not enough to kill its host, he says. This characteristic may also make omicron less likely to cause severe disease.

Once in the endosome, though, the viruses come up against a gang of protein guards called IFTIMs that block entry. But both delta and omicron have that problem licked: They breeze past those backdoor guards, researchers in the United Kingdom reported January 3 at bioRxiv.org.

Still, some researchers are not convinced that omicron uses the endosome back door into cells. In mimics of human airways grown in lab dishes, omicron used the direct route, but may be using a different and still unknown set of scissors than TMPRSS2, Bart Haagmans, a virologist at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues reported January 20 at bioRxiv.org.

Haagmans team infected various types of cells with omicron, delta or earlier versions of the coronavirus. In the first couple of days of infection, omicron infected more cells than delta did, and replicated faster, giving omicron a competitive edge.

Omicron was able to infect cells that dont have an endosome back door but do have TMPRSS2. It infects these cells much less efficiently than earlier versions of virus do. In another experiment, a chemical that blocks cutting by TMPRSS2 and other similar scissors proteins stopped omicron from breaking into cells, suggesting that some sort of spike cutter is still needed. Together, those results indicate that omicron uses TMPRSS2 inefficiently and might use different scissors all together, the researchers conclude. Those unknown scissors arent on lung cells, as omicron has a hard time breaking into those cells in lab dishes, the team found. That work is still preliminary, Haagmans stresses, and it is difficult to predict from studies of cells grown in lab dishes how the virus will behave in humans.

Acharyas group sees another possibility: Omicron may not need scissors to trim it before it can enter cells. Some of omicrons mutations may expose the fusion peptide portion of the spike responsible for melding the virus with cells. Its possible that omicron could fuse directly with cells without being snipped, she speculates.

Omicron may use multiple routes for cell entry, depending on which type of cell it is infecting and what host proteins are available, Liu says. Its mixed. Its not one or the other, he says. Using different scissors or entry routes would allow omicron to break into potentially more types of cells than other versions of the virus could crack.

But the entry point may not matter as much as other of omicrons characteristics, Liu says. My take is that the major reason that this [version of the] virus spreads so fast is because it evades antibody protection.

As omicron took over globally, it quickly became obvious that the variant could slip past antibodies and patrolling immune cells. Unvaccinated people remained the most likely to get infected, with 3,230.1 of every 100,000 unvaccinated people developing a case of COVID-19 at the height of the omicron peak on January 8, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But a startling 1,467.31 of every 100,000 fully vaccinated people also got breakthrough infections at that time. And fully vaccinated people who got a booster dose were still being infected at a rate of 1,053.6 for every 100,000 people on January 8. That far exceeds even slippery deltas peak rate of 699.12 of every 100,000 unvaccinated and 140.8 of every 100,000 fully vaccinated people on August 28.

A study of the Moderna vaccines effectiveness conducted at Kaiser Permanente Southern California in December found that two doses of the mRNA vaccine were about 80 percent effective at protecting against delta infection from 14 to 90 days after inoculation. That effectiveness slipped to 68.9 percent for people three to six months out from their second shot. A booster shot raised the effectiveness against delta infection back to nearly 94 percent, though it dipped to 86 percent after two months. Both two and three doses of the vaccine gave better than 99 percent protection against hospitalization from delta, researchers reported February 21 in Nature Medicine.

Contrast those figures with omicron. Two doses of Modernas vaccine were 44 percent effective at preventing omicron infection from 14 to 90 days after getting the shot, quickly dipping to 23.5 effectiveness in the three- to six-month period after getting jabbed. A booster shot brought the effectiveness against omicron infection up to 71.6 percent for about two months, after which it declined to 47.4 percent. Against hospitalization from omicron, two doses were 84.5 percent effective. A booster dose brought effectiveness against hospitalization back above 99 percent.

How did omicron manage to get past the highly effective vaccine? The variant swapped out or is missing some of the spots on the spike protein where antibodies latch on to other variants, multiple studies show. And new data that hasnt yet been vetted by peer-review may suggest other reasons omicron is so sneaky.

First, the variants spike protein has that closed-fist stance that protects its ACE2-grabbing bits from antibodies. It has also changed shape slightly to tuck away other spots where antibodies can bind, helping the protein escape from the immune system, Acharya and colleagues found. For instance, one popular hitching post for antibodies is called the N-terminal domain, but there are so many mutations that, omicron has completely destroyed the N-terminal domain for antibodies. Nothing binds there, she says.

Another evasion tactic: Omicron is especially good at spreading from cell to cell where the immune system cant catch it as easily as when it is outside of cells, Liu and colleagues reported December 20 at bioRxiv.org. Despite not being good at fusing cells together, the variant is nearly 5 times better at cell-to-cell spread than an early version of the virus.

Plus, the same electric charge that helps omicrons receptor binding domain to hold ACE2 may repel antibodies, the New York University researchers found. The team tested a handful of monoclonal antibodies taken from people who had recovered from COVID-19 early in the pandemic. Just like the omicron spike protein, those antibodies all carried positive electrical charges, which may act like a force field keeping antibodies away from the spike protein.

A strategically placed sugar molecule stuck to the receptor binding domain may also obscure the spike protein from immune system attack, researchers at the University of WisconsinMadison reported February 10 at bioRxiv.org.

About the only good news about omicron is that it is less likely than the delta variant to cause severe disease. It is definitely less virulent than delta, says William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

But there are challenges to pinpointing just how dangerous omicron may be, Hanage and Harvard colleague Roby Bhattacharyya discussed February 2 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Hospitals full of COVID-19 patients infected with omicron attest that the variant still has teeth and can cause severe illness or kill people. While vaccines and immunity from prior or breakthrough infections may blunt omicrons edge, its increased infectiousness and slipperiness may offset its reduced nastiness.

Even so, you would definitely rather have 750,000 daily cases of omicron than delta, because delta would be much worse, Hanage says. For instance, the risk of dying from omicron is about 60 percent lower than the risk of death from a delta infection, the United Kingdoms Health Security Agency reported February 11.

One reason for omicrons relative mildness may be that it doesnt replicate as well in lung cells as it does in the airways that feed the lungs, researchers in Hong Kong reported February 1 in Nature. That finding, initially reported in December, has also been confirmed with preliminary work from Haagmans and others.

Another omicron Achilles heel may be that it triggers interferon responses, the frontline of the immune systems antiviral defenses, a study published January 21 in Cell Research found.

Gan of New York University speculates that omicrons positive charge may cause the viral variant to get trapped in negatively charged mucus more easily than previous variants were.

Still, omicron can be dangerous in a number of ways, including landing vulnerable people in the hospital and sickening large numbers of hospital staff at the same time, Hanage says. It is definitely milder, but thats not a reason to chill.

Add to that the fact that a sibling version of omicron called BA.2, which has some different mutations from the original omicron, has now burst on the scene. BA.2 seems to be slightly more infectious than the original version. Though cases of omicron are falling overall, BA.2s proportion of those cases is growing, and some experts warn that it could prolong the omicron outbreak or lead to another wave of infections.

This story was originally published by Science News, a nonprofit independent news organization.

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How omicron's mutations make it the most infectious coronavirus variant yet - ASBMB Today

New coronavirus surges are now under way in Western Europe and Asia as the BA.2 subvariant proves that it is more contagious than its cousin Omicron. Germany, France and the United Kingdom, all countries with vaccination rates similar to those in the United States, have seen significant increases in coronavirus activity in the first few weeks of March.

So far, Americas overall coronavirus numbers are still dropping, but many say they expect that to change soon.

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Experts such as Justin Meyer, an evolutionary biologist at UC San Diego who has studied the early origins of SARS-COV-2, and many other viruses, said there is no reason to think it will stay that way. Previous variants have tended to rise first in Europe before taking off in the continental U.S.

We have seen all of these steps happen in the past few weeks, and I think soon cases in the U.S. will begin to increase, just like they did for the Delta and Omicron waves, Meyer said.

This time around, those who know where to look are likely to detect the next surge before local case numbers spike.

San Diego, through a collaborative project run by researchers at UC San Diego, has more than a year of experience analyzing wastewater samples drawn from a few key locations across the region, with the longest-running public effort outside the university campus itself regularly testing effluent collected from a sewage plant in Point Loma. The county health department has also allocated $4.6 million to the Safer at School Early Alert System, which includes sampling equipment at some public schools.

For the Delta and Omicron waves, the amount of virus particles present in those samples tracked closely with local case rates. But the amount of virus detected in samples termed the viral load increased a week or more before the number of positive test results jumped.

Wastewater, then, appears to be a kind of early warning system for a return to higher levels of coronavirus activity.

Some are starting to view wastewater statistics as the new trigger for changing the pandemic response, with UC San Diego Health announcing last week that the metric will be the most closely watched in its new normal operations plan that takes effect Monday.

With the number of viral copies detected in the regions most recent wastewater sample on March 8 at 1.2 million, down precipitously from the peak of 47.6 million on Jan. 9, the university will operate under the assumption that transmission is currently low.

Relying mainly on positive test results to gauge the pandemics current pace, noted Dr. Christopher Longhurst, the health systems medical director, can provide an incomplete picture, given that not everyone in the community has equal access to testing. And with home testing now significantly more available and popular than it was in previous years, many positive results are never sent to public health departments for inclusion in regular coronavirus reporting.

For us here in San Diego, where we do have very good wastewater testing, there is no reason for us not to prioritize wastewater, from my standpoint, Longhurst said in an interview last week.

But that perspective is not necessarily universal.

Scripps Health, Sharp HealthCare and Kaiser Permanente San Diego, the regions three largest health care systems, said in statements last week that they are not yet ready to declare that viral load detected in wastewater will be the key sentinel indicator upon which their pandemic responses turn.

But all also said they are already using the information, but case rates are still likely to be a main factor in deciding whether to relax or increase COVID-related precautions such as whether to test patients before surgeries, allow indoor dining in cafeterias or congregating in shared spaces such as waiting rooms.

Dr. Ghazala Sharieff, chief medical officer of acute care and clinical excellence at Scripps Health, said that Scripps is still working on a full operational plan that will dictate when the organizations pandemic posture should change. Scripps, she said, is not yet ready to pull back on inpatient coronavirus testing and other factors.

The main trigger for rolling back current restrictions, such as those requiring no more than two visitors per patient, she said, is less than 1 percent of tests coming back positive among Scripps patients. Currently, the positivity rate for all Scripps patients, she said, stands at about 2.6 percent.

Scripps, Sharieff said, did not want to pull back on its COVID-19 precautions too quickly, given the large number of patients it has served in the recent surge.

When you see what weve seen, there is no rush to relax, Sharieff said.

Wastewater, she said, will be part of deciding when restrictions might need to change, but the approach is likely to take into account many factors.

Statewide, there seems to be a significant move toward wastewater monitoring. Californias recently released SMARTER plan, which is intended to provide a guide for maintaining readiness when viral activity drops but does not entirely disappear, calls for maintaining wastewater surveillance in all regions and sequencing at least 10 percent of positive cases to determine what variants are moving through communities.

In an emailed response, the California Department of Public Health clarified that wastewater is to complement traditional case surveillance for COVID-19 already in place in each county.

CDPH plans to expand wastewater surveillance, including through partnerships, to have representation from all regions of California, including areas that currently do not have wastewater surveillance, the department said.

Meanwhile, case rates still show that the world is not finished with this virus.

Real-time statistics compiled by Our World in Data, a nonprofit information analysis collaborative run by researchers at the University of Oxford, show that Germany, France and the United Kingdom saw local coronavirus activity increase by an average of 625 cases per million residents from March 1 through St. Patricks Day. Numbers have not yet turned decisively upward in the United States. According the the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the seven-day average of cases fell to 30,040 Wednesday compared to 55,125 on March 1.

What kind of impact would a new surge have locally? The fact that so many got sick during the recent holiday surge will definitely play a role because BA.2 is so similar to its predecessor.

Given how many people were infected by (Omicron), the U.S. population should have a lot of protection and hospitalizations will likely be reduced compared to the first Omicron wave, Meyer said. That being said, its important to get vaccinated and boosted to maintain high levels of protection.

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Another COVID-19 surge is likely coming. How will we know when it's here? - The San Diego Union-Tribune

HAGERSTOWN, Md. As dusk settled over the racetrack on the edge of town, a truck driver stood on a trailer being used as a makeshift stage and held forth on the sins of the politicians in the nations capital, an hour and a halfs drive southeast.

Lock them up! a man yelled from the crowd of several hundred.

Its all or nothing! called out another, waving a large American flag.

Tracy Graham, a Mary Kay consultant from Suffolk, Va., held her own flag neatly folded in her hands. She had driven five hours to the Hagerstown Speedway to show her support for the Peoples Convoy, a demonstration against Covid-19 vaccine mandates modeled on the one that occupied Canadas capital city of Ottawa for weeks.

But for Mrs. Graham, a Republican who is active in local politics, the American convoy was about far more than Covid restrictions. Mask and vaccine mandates were just one example of how our freedoms have been coming down brick by brick over time, she said. Shed asked the truckers to sign her flag and was thinking about framing it when she returned home. This is a part of history, she said.

Historical and biblical allusions are tossed around loosely at the convoys speedway headquarters. Organizers have compared the convoys weathering of a snowstorm last weekend to the Continental Armys winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pa., and their caravans around the Washington Beltway, which they are circuiting daily, to the Israelites marches around Jericho.

But whether the convoy can match its own aspirations remains uncertain. The 100 or so trucks plus an entourage of pickups, cars and camper vans that head off toward Washington daily have neither matched the scale of the Canadians city-paralyzing demonstration, which drew thousands of trucks at its peak, nor summoned the same media attention.

For the moment, the protest is perhaps most notable as a window onto the evolution of the American right in the wake of Donald J. Trumps presidency, and one that Republican politicians are watching. Although organizers insist that their demonstration is nonpartisan and narrowly focused on Covid restrictions, in practice, it is animated by a broad, familiar array of conservative and right-wing issues and grievances. Complaints about schools mix with far-right conspiracy theories and refusal to accept the 2020 election results.

This worldview is increasingly incorporating ideas from the anti-vaccine movement, some of them preceding the Covid outbreak, even as the virus has receded and Covid restrictions have eased.

This week, one side of the stage was piled with books written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist; while near the other, a vendor sold stickers saying WHEN I DIE DONT LET ME VOTE DEMOCRAT. On Wednesday evening, Dr. Paul Alexander, a former official in Mr. Trumps Health and Human Services Department who has become a prominent personality in the anti-mandate movement, called for President Biden to pardon the defendants facing charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol.

On Friday, organizers yielded the microphone briefly to a motorcyclist in leather chaps, who exhorted the mostly white crowd to strip the Black Lives Matter slogan from a street near the White House where it has been painted in giant letters. Were going to take it back, he declared.

Banners with symbols of the Three Percenters, an armed extremist movement, have been flown from some trucks in the convoy. Two young men in the attire of the Proud Boys, the far-right organization, were milling around the camp on a recent morning.

Asked in interviews what had drawn them to the protest, demonstrators spoke of ending a national emergency order Mr. Biden had extended in February, as well as a handful of remaining federal restrictions vaccine requirements for military service members, for instance, and mask requirements on airplanes.

But most of the dozen demonstrators interviewed also enumerated other motivations, from concern over gun rights and abortion to the Trump-aligned QAnon conspiracy theory. Not all of them identified as Republicans, but all who disclosed how they voted in 2020 had supported Mr. Trump, and said they believed or at least suspected that the election had been rigged against him.

Well be satisfied when Bidens gone, when Harris is gone and Pelosis gone, Curt Martin, a 73-year-old truck driver from upstate New York, said. When theyre gone, well be happy. Well go home. But not until then.

Besides an end to the emergency order, the convoy is calling for an investigation into Covid-19s origins and the federal response, and is encouraging state-level protests against local restrictions.

We are still looking for accountability, Brian Brase, a convoy organizer and its most visible spokesman, said.

These are narrower aims than the Canadian protest, befitting a country where there are relatively few Covid mandates left to protest against. In the United States, unlike Canada, federal vaccine mandates for private employers were never implemented and few state-level Covid restrictions remain.

When the convoy first arrived after a cross-country trip from California on March 4, its organizers avoided trying to shut down Washington as the Canadian demonstrators had Ottawa, opting instead for relatively orderly laps around the Beltway. When these failed to make any great impression, drivers began making forays into the citys heart, with noisy excursions down residential streets, drawing the attention of law enforcement and, increasingly, angering residents.

Meanwhile, some Republican politicians and candidates have come to pay their respects at the speedway camp, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator and candidate for governor who chartered buses to Mr. Trumps Jan. 6 rally preceding the storming of the Capitol. At least nine other Republican senators and congressmen have met with the organizers during their visits to Capitol Hill.

Some of these meetings were arranged by Axiom Strategies, a Republican consulting firm whose principals have worked for Mr. Cruz and Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and offered its services pro bono to connect the convoy with Republican politicians.

This is one of the major political movements in America right now, said Matt Wolking, Axioms vice president for communications.

Wolking and other Republican strategists argue that Covid restrictions remain a Democratic vulnerability in 2022, despite the few policies still in place. The Biden administrations vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers was blocked by the Supreme Court in January, and in early February, Democratic governors rushed to repeal their states indoor mask mandates, leaving only Hawaii with such a mandate in place. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has since eased mask guidelines as the spike in infections from the Omicron variant has largely abated.

I think the voters have moved on, said Brian Stryker, a partner at Impact Research, a Democratic polling firm. The Republicans very much will look like they are looking backward and talking about something voters dont really care about.

Convoy organizers insist they will continue demonstrating until their demands are met, and the Hagerstown encampment has taken on an air of increasing permanence. There have been barbecues, campfires and, on Wednesday morning, a wedding.

Along the gravel entrance road to the racetrack, Sherrie Campbell, a retired truck driver from Dallas, stood alongside her black Chevy Silverado, the exterior of which was painted with slogans related to QAnon, a conspiracy theory about the existence of a global pedophilic cabal that includes Democratic leaders. References to QAnon have appeared on a number of convoy vehicles. One truck pulled a trailer decorated with an immense American-flag-patterned skull topped by Mr. Trumps distinctive hair, alongside the phrase, Q Sent Me.

Since arriving in Hagerstown, Ms. Campbell has been sleeping in the back seat of her trucks extended cab, on a bedroll covered with an American flag-patterned bedspread. She said she would be staying with the convoy until it had achieved the aim of getting our freedom back.

People show up here because this is kind of the last stand of hope, said Tyler Lee, 34, a real estate investor who is running for Congress as a Republican in a heavily Democratic congressional district in North Carolina. Mr. Lee had driven from Charlotte, N.C., to meet the convoy in Adelanto, Calif., in February and traveled with it ever since.

He gave Mr. Cruz credit for his visit to the convoy site. But he thought politicians should spend more time at the camp, perhaps even spend the night as he himself did.

You can get a real pulse of what is going on in America, he said.

As the speedway occupation seemed to stretch ahead indefinitely, however, Mr. Lee was eyeing the calendar. His primary, on May 17, was coming up soon.

Ive committed to these guys, he said. Still, Im taking it day by day, he said. Because I do have a campaign to run.

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Black adults were hospitalized at higher rates than whites during the U.S. Omicron wave. - The New York Times

The NHS in England will on Monday start giving a second booster vaccine to millions of people who are at higher risk from Covid-19 to help combat the latest resurgence in infections.

Over-75s, care home residents and those who are immunocompromised 5 million in all will be contacted by the NHS and then be able to book an appointment online or by calling 119.

The new rollout of booster jabs comes after the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advised the government last month that those three at-risk groups should be offered a top-up because the immunity from their first booster was waning.

Cases of Covid are rising again, with 90,349 cases recorded on Friday across the UK, according to official figures, more than double the 39,000 seen on 1 March. However, the true number of infections is higher. The Office for National Statistics estimates that one in 20 people in England had Covid in the week up to 12 March.

The number of people in UK hospitals with Covid had risen to 14,671 by last Thursday.

Experts believe the increase is linked to people spending more time at their work premises, greater socialisation in bars and other venues and the lifting of restrictions.

Provision of the second boosters began in Scotland on 7 March and in Wales last week. England will follow suit from Monday when several hundred sites including high street pharmacies, vaccination centres and hospitals start delivering the jabs.

Dr Nikki Kanani, a GP who is the deputy lead for the NHS vaccination programme, said: Sadly, we are still seeing large numbers of people seriously unwell in hospital with Covid, so it remains vital that those most at risk come forward when they are invited to do so.

Ruth Rankine, the director of primary care at the NHS Confederation, which represents groups of GP surgeries, also urged those who are eligible to get their top-up. As we learn to live with Covid-19, and in the face of the new dominant BA.2 variant, we must use all the tools in our arsenal, of which vaccination has been the most important, she said.

When the JCVI recommended the spring booster programme last month to protect the most vulnerable, the committee said it would also set out advice on an autumn top-up campaign, but gave no details.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, hinted last week that it would encompass many more people than those covered by the spring campaign. [The JCVIs] most recent advice is that they think that towards the end of this year, maybe in the autumn, there will be a need to give a lot more people a boost, he said.

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NHS rollout of second Covid booster jabs begins in England - The Guardian

Stopping the spread of Covid-19 through public health measures remains vital to curbing the pandemic, one of Britains most senior scientific figures has warned.

On the eve of the second anniversary of the lockdown that began the UKs Covid response, Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, called for investment in next-generation vaccines and better access to vaccinations for poorer countries.

Farrar joined several of the UKs most eminent scientists in praising the extraordinary response to the pandemic by the clinicians, researchers and business leaders. But with Covid infections and hospital admissions rising across the UK, measures such as masks, social distancing and ventilation are key.

Progress made by researchers over the last two years has been remarkable, from delivering vaccines and treatments in record time, to the hard work of genomic sequencers tracking the spread of the virus and identifying new variants, said Farrar. We must ensure more vaccines reach low and middle-income countries while also investing in research into second and third-generation vaccines that give broader protection and block transmission.

Focus now needs to be on maintaining key public health interventions alongside vaccines, and developing and ensuring equitable access to new treatments and strengthening the supply chains for PPE and oxygen. Stopping the spread will help to break the constant and unsustainable cycle of reacting to new variants.

Another of the countrys most eminent scientists said Britains universities and private laboratories should be handed a permanent role in testing hospital and care home staff in the event of a pandemic, to avoid one of the main mistakes of the early response to Covid.

Paul Nurse, the Nobel prize winner and director of the Francis Crick Institute, said that the failure to harness the equipment and lab expertise of workers willing to offer public service meant that testing capacity took far longer than necessary to set up, leaving health and care settings fatally exposed.

There was no imaginative thinking about how to get testing rapidly in place, he said. They simply farmed it all out to commercial operations, working from big Lighthouse labs, which didnt have a chance of getting working in time to be of any use in the first round of the epidemic.

We cannot keep big commercial labs running like this for the next 10 years, 15 years, waiting for the next virulent virus outbreak. We do not have a sustainable system in place. Why not actually make use of exactly what we did, which is to identify a range of institutions around the country universities and publicly funded research places like the Crick so in an emergency you could activate a network very rapidly, relying on public service and not simply a commercial programme?

John Edmunds, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), also said that work should begin now on vaccines for the most likely candidates to provoke the next pandemic. I sincerely hope that we will not need to take such extreme measures as lockdown again, he said.

He added: One way to help reduce the chances of having to impose very harsh measures on everyone is to improve our surveillance both nationally and internationally. We must also invest in vaccine platforms and develop vaccines against a range of currently rare diseases that have epidemic potential, so that we can adapt them rapidly should we need to.

Last week the seven-day average for UK hospital admissions related to Covid rose above 1,700, with more than half being admitted directly because of Covid, the NHS Confederation said. Nearly 5% of people in England had Covid in the week ending 12 March, according to the Office for National Statisticss weekly Covid infection survey. NHS staff absences have begun to rise again too, while emergency departments are also under pressure: in a seven-day period earlier this month nearly a quarter of ambulances in England faced a delay of more than 30 minutes before being able to hand over patients.

The single biggest lesson from this pandemic is to act early, decisively and globally to prevent problems becoming much bigger, Farrar said. At the heart of this is the need for solid, trustworthy, international cooperation, with focus on long-term solutions that will help us to achieve a meaningful and long-lasting recovery.

This means preparing for all possible scenarios when dealing with an unpredictable virus, not only for the easy outcome where we hope this crisis blows over. The global response can and must be better than what we have experienced. Nearly two years after the first lockdown began on 23 March 2020, at least 185,000 people have died with Covid on their death certificate. More than 38.5 million people or almost 58% of the UK population have received at least three doses of the vaccines that were created, tested and delivered by scientists and pharmaceutical companies around the world.

About 487m virus tests have been conducted in the UK, most of them at the network of Lighthouse labs that was built after successive governments had allowed the public health laboratory system to run down. Now many of the Lighthouse labs are also being shut down, as part of the governments living with Covid plan.

Some of the institutions that played a crucial role in advising the government how to cope with the virus are also gone.

Sage, which was made up of some of the most eminent academics in the UK, has been mothballed, while funding has ended for many of the research projects that it relied on such as Imperial College Londons React-1 survey of infection prevalence, the CoMix social contacts survey and the Isaric-4C (Coronavirus Clinical Characterisation Consortium) information network that used healthcare records to discover Covids clinical features.

Three months after it was established on 23 March 2020, the Recovery trial, based at Oxford University, had discovered that dexamethasone reduced the chances of death for the sickest patients, and has since established the effectiveness of three other treatments.

Sir Martin Landray, Recoverys joint chief investigator and professor of medicine and epidemiology at Oxford Population Health, said he would not have thought it possible to go from a blank piece of paper to enrolling the first patient in nine days, to finding the first life-saving treatment within 10 weeks and for it to be made standard NHS policy within three hours.

Landray said he hoped the progress in how research is conducted would continue. We cannot afford to go backwards. Recovery was integrated into the routine care being delivered in our hospitals, and there was a commitment to act quickly and minimise bureaucracy.

With NHS staff keen to continue, he added, it could herald a new age for research, not just for this pandemic and the next but for other common infections such as influenza and chronic diseases if policy-makers invest and maintain existing staff and structures.

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Public health measures are key to curbing Covid in UK, say scientists - The Guardian

A person walks past a closed coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing station, in Berlin, Germany, March 18, 2022. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

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March 18 (Reuters) - Here's what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

COVID pandemic is 'far from over' - WHO official

A World Health Organization spokesperson said on Friday that the end of the COVID-19 pandemic was a long way off, citing a rise in cases in its latest weekly data.

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The U.N. health agency has previously said that the acute phase of the pandemic could end this year but it would depend on how quickly targets to vaccinate 70% of the population in each country are met, among other factors. read more

Moderna seeks FDA authorization for second COVID booster for all adults

Moderna on Thursday sought emergency use authorization from U.S. health regulators for a second COVID-19 booster shot, as a surge in cases in some parts of the world fuels fears of another wave of the pandemic.

The U.S. biotechnology company said its request covered all adults over the age of 18 so that the appropriate use of an additional booster dose of its vaccine, including for those at higher risk of COVID-19 due to age or co-morbidities, could be determined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health care providers. read more

Shanghai pushes ahead with mass COVID tests

The Chinese commercial hub of Shanghai is pushing ahead with a mass testing initiative as it tries to curb a new spike in COVID-19 infections, but some districts were easing lockdown rules in an effort to minimise disruptions.

The city, home to about 25 million people, saw symptomatic local community infections hit 57 on March 17, with another 203 domestically transmitted asymptomatic cases, up from eight and 150 respectively a day earlier. read more

Older people in China should get vaccinated against COVID-19, senior Chinese health officials said on Friday, adding that deaths among the elderly in the latest wave to hit Hong Kong serve as a lesson for the mainland. read more

Hong Kong reported about 20,000 new coronavirus cases on Friday as health experts called for a clear way out of a "zero COVID" policy that has left the city isolated. read more

Thailand drops pre-departure test requirement for visitors

Thailand said on Friday it will scrap a mandatory pre-departure coronavirus test for visitors starting next month but will still require entry registrations in advance and an on-arrival test.

Known for its nightlife and beach destinations, Thailand has sought to revive its pandemic-battered tourism sector by being among the first in the region to ease travel restrictions. read more

Germany to lift most COVID restrictions

Germany will lift most restrictions to contain the coronavirus despite infections hitting a record in the country on Thursday.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after talks with leaders of Germany's 16 states that a record of almost 300,000 infections in one day was not good news, but the easing of restrictions was justified given intensive care units were not overwhelmed. read more

Italy to roll back COVID curbs in the coming weeks

The Italian government announced plans on Thursday to phase out its coronavirus restrictions more than two years after the disease first swept the country, even though cases are once again on the rise.

The cabinet said COVID-19 health certificates, proving vaccination or recent recovery from coronavirus, would no longer be needed to gain access to a vast array of services, including restaurants, gyms and public transport, from May 1. read more

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Compiled by Linda Noakes; Editing by Kirsten Donovan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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What you need to know about the coronavirus right now - Reuters.com

President Biden participating in a virtual meeting with Prime Minister Micheal Martin of Ireland in the Oval Office on Thursday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden canceled his face-to-face meetings with Prime Minister Micheal Martin of Ireland on Thursday after the prime minister received a positive result on a coronavirus test during a gala event in Washington on Wednesday night that both men attended.

Daniel Mulhall, Irelands ambassador to the United States, confirmed the positive test early Thursday, complicating the prime ministers plans to spend the day with Mr. Biden for traditional St. Patricks Day celebrations.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Martin instead met virtually on Thursday morning, with Mr. Biden seated near a television monitor showing Mr. Martin, with a bowl of shamrock on a coffee table. The president said he was deeply sorry for the inconvenience for the virtual format.

White House officials said that Mr. Biden, who is 79 and has been vaccinated and boosted, was not in close contact with Mr. Martin during Wednesdays gala, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines as being within six feet of someone for at least 15 minutes. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Biden is tested weekly for the coronavirus, and that his last test was on Sunday.

We, of course, abide by what the recommendations and advice are of his medical doctor, she said at a press briefing on Thursday. And if that would be to do increased testing, we would certainly do that. But he does not feel that is necessary at this point in time based on these recent contacts.

The prime ministers test result came amid a burst of infections among public officials in Washington in recent days. At least nine Democratic members of Congress tested positive this week after a party retreat and late night voting last week. Douglas Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, also tested positive this week, as did former President Barack Obama.

White House officials have downplayed the recent spate of cases, noting that the overall rate in Washington is still extremely low. Ms. Psaki said on Thursday that that the new Omicron subvariant, known as BA.2, has been circulating around the country for some time, and the administration was monitoring cases in Europe and in China. New U.S. cases have plummeted from the height of the Omicron surge.

We expect some fluctuation, especially at this relatively low level, Ms. Psaki said, adding that the country is in a better position to manage the pandemic.

It is not gone, and it means we still need to continue to take steps we can to fight the virus, she said.

400% of last winters peak

Mr. Mulhall said on Twitter that he had accepted a leadership award for Mr. Martin on Wednesday at the gala for the Ireland Funds in Washington, an event that Mr. Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi also attended.

I filled in for the Taoiseach after he tested positive for #Covid19, he wrote, using the Irish word for the countrys leader. I wish the Taoiseach well for his recovery.

The speakers office confirmed that Ms. Pelosi, who is vaccinated and boosted, had tested negative on a P.C.R. test on Thursday morning, and would continue regular testing and to follow C.D.C. guidelines, though it was not clear which ones. It was unclear whether the Attending Physicians Office considered Ms. Pelosi, 81, to be a close contact.

Ms. Pelosi, who was photographed sitting next to Mr. Martin during the gala, appeared at her weekly news conference on Thursday, adding that she was tested nearly every day. Mr. Martin remained masked until food was served, she said, and was pulled aside during the appetizer course about his positive test.

Were very, very sad that on St. Patricks Day, the Taoiseach has this diagnosis, she said at her indoor news conference, where she removed her mask to speak and take questions. We wont be able to have the benefit of the honor of his presence.

A scheduled lunch The Friends of Ireland Luncheon on Capitol Hill proceeded on Thursday, without Mr. Martin present. Ms. Pelosi addressed the room, where lawmakers sat at round tables, while introducing Mr. Biden, who sat on a stool a few feet away. Neither wore a mask, and there were few face coverings in the room.

America has been blessed by Irish children, and one of those Irish children is now the president of the United States, Ms. Pelosi said, just before the shook hands and he took the lectern. Mr. Biden spoke, but did not stay for lunch.

Irish journalists traveling with Mr. Martins delegation reported that he had attended the early part of the gala, and photos from the event appeared to show him seated next to Ms. Pelosi.

A spokesperson for the Irish government said in a statement on Thursday that the prime minister had tested negative for the virus earlier on Wednesday and also on Sunday, before traveling to the United States.

His second test on Wednesday was administered after a member of the prime ministers delegation received a positive result on a test, the statement said.

Mr. Mulhall did not elaborate on whether Mr. Martin had symptoms.

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Covid News: 35 Companies Sign on to Produce Generic Versions of Pfizers Covid Pill - The New York Times