Category: Corona Virus

DENVER (KDVR) Colorado is moving into the endemic phase of COVID-19, the governor announced last week.

The state continues to see a decline in COVID-19rates. Only six counties saw an increase in positivity in the last week.

As of Monday, the states seven-day positivity rate was 4.01%, which is down from 5.81% seven days ago. Positivity rate measures the amount of COVID positive tests to the total amount of tests taken.

Over the last week, 55 counties saw a decrease in COVID-19 positivity, six counties saw a rise, and three counties administered fewer than 10 tests.

According to theColorado Department of Public Health and Environment, incidence rates also dropped over the last week.

Heres a look atpositivity rates for every county over the last seven days:

According toJohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the percent positive is exactly what it sounds like: the percentage of all coronavirus tests performed that are actually positive, or: (positive tests)/(total tests) x 100%. The percent positive (sometimes called the percent positive rate or positivity rate) helps public health officials answer questions suchas:

The percent positive will be high if the number ofpositive testsis too high, or if the number oftotal testsis too low. A higher percent positive suggests higher transmission and that there are likely more people with coronavirus in the community who havent been tested yet, Johns Hopkins shared.

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See which 6 counties saw a rise in COVID-19 - FOX 31 Denver

Patient deaths: 952,423

Total vaccine doses distributed: 690,435,045

Patients whove received the second dose: 215,677,777

% of population fully vaccinated: 65%

% of infections tied to the Omicron Variant: 100%

Go here to see the original:

Coronavirus Omicron variant, vaccine, and case numbers in the United States: March 2, 2022 - Medical Economics

URBANA As school districts around the state drop mask requirements, the Urbana school board voted Tuesday to keep its requirement, at least through spring break.

If we see a big increase in positivity due to spring-break travel, it will be way harder to say, Hey, weve taken our masks off, lets put them back on, Superintendent Jennifer Ivory-Tatum told the board. Once we take the toothpaste out of the tube, we cannot put it back.

Wed like to have that time to watch the positivity rates, to give our community a little more time, she added. We are really just on the downswing of omicron, and we just feel like its too soon and that we need a little more time to watch what is happening and how this is playing out in our community. After spring break, wed like to re-evaluate, assess our position and look at the big picture.

Ivory-Tatum said shes been in close contact with the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, specifically about the new omicron BA.2 variant and its prevalence, and has gotten positive feedback about the districts plan to move forward.

In addition, the district will still require students and staff members who test positive to stay home for five days, and they will still be required to wear a mask for five days after that.

Ivory-Tatum said Awais Vaid, deputy administrator at the health district, indicated to her that what were doing is smart and that were giving our community a couple more weeks to see what this variant is going to do.

She said the district hasnt had an issue with requiring asymptomatic students and staff to stay home because of the districts rigorous testing procedures. That testing availability wont change.

A few weeks ago, Ivory-Tatum said, the district was having a hard time procuring all of the testing materials it needed. Now that many districts have stepped away from their mitigation procedures, she said the district is able to get all the tests it needs. It also participates in a program in which it uses the University of Illinois SHIELD saliva test.

Only one board member, Brenda Carter, pushed for a need to move toward removing the mask requirement after spring break.

If we are going to be revisiting this conversation in three weeks, thats going to need to have a very specific road map for that to happen, board member Lara Orr said. Otherwise, we know the parameters we have the tests, we have masks, lets get to the end of school.

For board member Brian Ogolsky, the decision was clear after seeing results of a survey of teachers that showed that a majority prefer masks and hearing from the boards student ambassadors Tuesday, who said a majority of his classmates would prefer to keep the requirement in place.

For me, what it boils down to is, How do we minimize disruption in schools, Ogolsky said. When I listen to 57 percent of the teachers saying theyd prefer to see out the rest of the year with masks on, that is an extremely compelling piece of data saying that this is going to minimize disruption to the schools. When I listen to our ambassadors saying that they talk to other students and more are wanting masks than arent.

To me, we want our schools open and not be disrupted, and we need teachers in those buildings. I appreciate, though, that were willing to have these conversations.

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Coronavirus response | Urbana school board votes to keep masks required through spring break - News-Gazette.com

Way back in 2020, some people stuck at home fantasized on social media about the fun things they would do when the coronavirus pandemic ended even about what they would wear as if a light would switch on at some point.

That seems like a lifetime ago.

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There is no magical moment, just a gradual, balky transition to a more relaxed state of vigilance that, depending on new variants and possible surges, could be temporary.

So it seemed a bit anticlimactic when California officially shifted from the pandemic status to an endemic approach.

Gov. Gavin Newsom made that call, having already softened mask mandates. Some critics accused him of making a political decision. Public opinion certainly brought pressure to loosening things up, but that had been the case for a while. Newsom didnt act until it was clear the drop in COVID-19 caseloads and hospitalizations was a trend, not a blip.

The determination that COVID-19 is now endemic suggests that the virus continues to exist in the state and remains dangerous but can be managed. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic in March 2020 when the disease was growing exponentially and spreading across the globe.

Theres been some confusion about all this. Even Newsom said its not necessarily over.

This pandemic wont have a defined end. There is no finish line, he said on Feb. 17 as he announced the shift.

With coronavirus on the wane, it would be nice to think the harsh divisions exposed during the course of the outbreak also will subside.

It might be best to hold on to that thought for a while. As long as mandates exists, there will be protests. Masks are still required in various public and private buildings and on public transportation notably airliners, which have experienced high-profile disputes over masks that at times turned violent. Many governments and businesses require their employees to be vaccinated.

Some parent groups and school board members are insisting that the state should drop the indoor mask mandate for schoolchildren. The Rancho Santa Fe School District last week decided to make masks optional, in defiance of the state mandate, as Kristen Taketa of The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Other districts are struggling to abide by the state rules in the face of anti-mask protests.

The San Diego Unified School District, meanwhile, has pushed back its vaccine mandate for students, as a lawsuit challenging the policy is on appeal.

Nevertheless, opinion polls show mask and vaccine mandates have had continuous majority support in California, despite the louder minority that opposes them which can skew public perception.

A survey by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies showed nearly two-thirds of California voters, and a majority of parents, backed mask and vaccine mandates in K-12 schools.

Unless courts intervene, some vaccine mandates for schools, governments and businesses arent going anywhere.

Mask mandates are a different story. So, how will people behave as mask requirements fall away? Will we end up with mostly vaccinated people continuing to wear masks frequently, while the unvaccinated dont the opposite of what should happen?

Or will those people, vaccinated or not, who agreed that masks help slow the spread of COVID-19 simply feel more comfortable or even forgetful going without as they see more people not wearing them?

Will some people, particularly those who are immunocompromised, be less willing to go to public places?

There are other uncertainties. Dropping masks could have an unintended side effect: the return of sniffles and stomach bugs, said The Boston Globe, quoting doctors predicting a resurgence of non-COVID infections this spring.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday loosened its recommendation for wearing masks indoors. The CDC had been recommending people in areas with substantial levels of transmission most of the country wear masks indoors. The new community-level recommendation is based on three metrics: hospitalizations, hospital capacity and level of new cases.

The CDC lists San Diego as a high-level county and recommends masks continue to be worn indoors. Other high-level counties in California are Los Angeles, Fresno and Kern.

Some experts have been urging relaxed mask mandates for weeks, while others say its still too early.

People are tired of wearing masks and increasingly question why theyre necessary as they see that the infection risk and severity has declined. One theory holds that easing up when cases and hospitalizations are down could build trust so if things get hot again, people will be more game to put them back on.

That notion probably doesnt apply to the many people who refused to mask up even during the depths of the pandemic.

But a lot has changed since those dark days. Development of vaccines was the big one and more than 80 percent of eligible San Diego County residents are fully vaccinated.

Individual testing has improved, and the monitoring of sewage to detect the virus may prove to be a vital early-warning system of coming surges.

The pressure, or the lack thereof on hospitals, will continue to be a key barometer of whether more public restrictions will be implemented. The various moves in the past to shut down public activity was mostly about flattening the curve of infections to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. If medical staffing and hospital capacity needs can be foreseen in advance, that could go a long way toward warding off tougher mandates.

The hope is to jump on a virus hot spot early before it turns into a raging wildfire. Inherent in this strategy is an acknowledgement these fires may never be extinguished entirely.

There are plenty of unknowns, of course, such as whether vaccination research can keep up with mutating viruses.

California and the rest of the nation will deal with that as it comes. For now, it seems the order of the day is to move on from the pandemic. Though some mandates remain, there are more choices available without having to violate them.

We may be facing a new reality after the new normal of the pandemic. But the expectations of returning to a pre-COVID normal have to be held in check.

That doesnt mean you shouldnt break out that sharp-looking outfit. But keep a mask handy.

Tweet of the Week

Goes to Steve Herman (@W7VOA) of Voice of America.

Reporters Q: Why doesnt (Biden) want to speak with Putin right now?

Press Secretary Jen Psaki: Because hes invading a sovereign country.

Staff writer Paul Sisson contributed to this column.

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Column: Don't expect the COVID-19 political split to go away with coronavirus in 'endemic' stage - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Here's a quick wrap of what's happening in COVID-19 news across Australia.

This will be updated throughout the day, so if you do not see your state or territory, check back later.

You can jump to the COVID-19 stories you want to read by clicking below.

Victoria has recorded threeCOVID-19 deaths.

The number of people in hospital with the virus has risen slightly to 283, up from the 274 hospitalisations recorded on Sunday.

There are 42patients in intensive care units, sevenof them on ventilators.

There are 5,852new infections, taking the number of active case in the state to 41,205.

Another six COVID deaths were recorded in NSWin the 24 hours to 4pm yesterday.

There are 1,136 COVID-19 cases in hospital, 55 of them in intensive care.

That is slightly down from yesterday's figures, which had 1,146 people in hospital and 58 people in intensive care.

There are 5,856 new cases in the state.

There are 11 people with COVID-19 in hospital in Tasmania.

However, the state's Department of Health says only four are being treated specifically for their COVID symptoms.

There are no COVID patients in intensive care, the same as yesterday.

There areno new deaths.

The staterecorded 734 new COVID cases, a slight rise from yesterday.

A man in his 80s died with COVID-19 as the ACT recorded464 new cases in the 24 hours to 8pm yesterday.

ACT health authorities announced the man's death this morning, but did not reveal his vaccination status or whether he had underlying health conditions.

There are 44 people in hospital with the virus in Canberra but none are in intensive care.

Almost four in five (78 per cent) of Canberra children aged five to 11 have received a vaccine dose and more than 67per cent of Canberrans aged 16 and older have received their booster.

South Australia recorded another death, a man in his 80s.

There are currently 109 people with COVID-19 in hospital, slightly less than yesterday's 114.

Of those in hospital, 10 are in intensivecare and two people are on ventilators.

There were 1,358 new cases recorded in the state today.

Today also marks the resumption of elective surgery in SA.

"If your surgery or procedure was postponed, you will have kept your place on the list and your surgery or procedure will be rebooked," SA Health said in a tweet.

There were1,136 new local cases of COVID-19 recorded in the state, with another four travel-related cases.

Yesterday, the state recorded1,021 new local cases.

There arecurrently 11 COVID-19 patients in hospital and a total of5,540 active cases in the state.

There are 96 COVID-19 cases in hospital, four of those in intensive care.

Those numbers aredown slightly from yesterday's figures of 101 patients in hospital and six in intensive care.

There are 392 new cases, making for a total of 4,397 active cases in the territory.

The Victorian government has confirmed it is ending the state's COVID isolation payments.

The payment, introduced in July 2020, offered $450 to people who had to stay at home while waiting forPCR test results.

Victoria's Industry Support and Recovery Minister Martin Pakulasaid the program was no longer needed thanks to the availability of rapid antigen tests.

He said demand for the payments had reduced dramatically,but other support would still be offered.

Tomorrow will be the final day to claim the payment.

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COVID updates: All the coronavirus news from around Australia - ABC News

Scientists released a pair of extensive studies over the weekend that point to a large food and live animal market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.

Analyzing a wide range of data, including virus genes, maps of market stalls and the social media activity of early Covid-19 patients across Wuhan, the scientists concluded that the coronavirus was very likely present in live mammals sold at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in late 2019 and suggested that the virus spilled over into people working or shopping there on two separate occasions.

Members of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team leaving the closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market on Jan. 11, 2020. Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse

The studies, which together span 150 pages, are a significant salvo in the debate over the beginnings of a pandemic that has killed nearly six million people across the world. The question of whether the outbreak began with a spillover from wildlife sold at the market, a leak from a Wuhan virology lab or some other event has given rise to pitched debates over how best to stop the next pandemic.

When you look at all of the evidence together, its an extraordinarily clear picture that the pandemic started at the Huanan market, said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and a co-author of both new studies.

Several independent scientists said that the studies, which have not yet been published in a scientific journal, presented a compelling and rigorous new analysis of available data.

Its very convincing, said Dr. Thea Fischer, an epidemiologist at the University of Copenhagen, who was not involved in the new studies. The question of whether the virus spilled over from animals has now been settled with a very high degree of evidence, and thus confidence.

Map of Wuhan showing the location of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

Huanan Seafood

Wholesale Market

Huanan Seafood

Wholesale Market

But others pointed to some gaps that still remained. The new papers did not, for example, identify an animal at the market that spread the virus to humans.

I think what theyre arguing could be true, said Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. But I dont think the quality of the data is sufficient to say that any of these scenarios are true with confidence.

In a separate study published online on Friday, scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed genetic traces of the earliest environmental samples collected at the market, in January 2020.

By the time Chinese researchers arrived to collect these samples, police had shut down and disinfected the market because a number of people linked to it had become sick with what would later be recognized as Covid. No live market animals were left.

Photos of animals for sale in the Huanan market.

Animals for sale in the Huanan market in 2019 and 2014, including raccoon dogs, Malayan porcupines and a red fox. Source: Michael Worobey et al., preprint via Zenodo. Photos taken by a citizen and posted to Weibo in 2019 (first three), and by Edward C. Holmes in 2014.

The researchers swabbed walls, floors and other surfaces inside the market, as well as meat still in freezers and refrigerators. They also caught mice and stray cats and dogs around the market to test them, while also testing the contents of the sewers outside. The researchers then analyzed the samples for genetic traces of coronaviruses that may have been shed by people or animals.

Although the Chinese researchers conducted their study over two years ago, it was not until Fridays report that they publicly shared their results. They reported that the Huanan market samples included two evolutionary branches of the virus, known as lineages A and B, both of which had been circulating in early Covid cases in China.

These findings came as a surprise. In the early days of the pandemic in China, the only Covid cases linked to the market appeared to be Lineage B. And because Lineage B seemed to have evolved after Lineage A, some researchers suggested that the virus arrived at the market only after spreading around Wuhan.

But that logic is upended by the new Chinese study, which finds both lineages in market samples. The findings are consistent with the scenario that Dr. Worobey and his colleagues put forward, in which at least two spillover events occurred at the market.

The beauty of it is how simply it all adds up now, said Jeremy Kamil, a virologist at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport, who was not involved in the new studies.

Although the Huanan market was an early object of suspicion, by the spring of 2020 senior members of the Trump administration were promoting the idea that the new coronavirus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a coronavirus laboratory located eight miles away on the other side of the Yangtze River.

Theres no direct evidence that the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was present at the lab before the pandemic. Researchers there have denied claims of a lab leak.

But the Chinese government has come under fire for not being forthcoming about the early days of the pandemic.

The report from the Chinese C.D.C. about the Huanan markets samples, for example, had remained hidden. Starting in June 2020, two newspapers, The South China Morning Post and The Epoch Times, reported on what they claimed were leaked copies of the report.

In January 2021, a team of experts chosen by the World Health Organization traveled to China to investigate. Collaborating with Chinese experts, the group released a report in March 2021 that contained previously undisclosed details about the market. They noted, for example, that 10 stalls in the southwest corner of the market sold live animals.

The report also noted that 69 environmental samples collected from the market by the Chinese C.D.C. had turned up positive for SARS-CoV-2. But the frozen meat and live animals had all tested negative.

A member of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team inside the closed Huanan market on Jan. 11, 2020. Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse

Still, the W.H.O. left many researchers dissatisfied. Dr. Worobey and Dr. Bloom both signed a letter, along with 16 other scientists in May 2021, calling for more investigation into the origins of Covid including the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 had escaped from a lab.

The W.H.O. experts had identified 164 cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan over the course of December 2019. Unfortunately, the cases were marked by fuzzy dots scattered across a nearly featureless map of Wuhan.

Dr. Worobey and his colleagues used mapping tools to estimate the longitude and latitude locations of 156 of those cases. The highest density of December cases centered around the market a relatively tiny spot in a city of 11 million people. Those cases included not just people who were initially linked to the market, but others who lived in the surrounding neighborhood.

Spatial analysis of Covid cases in Dec. 2019.

Huanan Seafood

Wholesale Market

Concentration of Covid cases in Dec. 2019

Huanan Seafood

Wholesale Market

Concentration of Covid cases in Dec. 2019

Source: Michael Worobey et al., preprint via Zenodo The New York Times

The researchers then mapped cases from January and February of 2020. They drew upon data collected by Chinese researchers from Weibo, a social media app that created a channel for people with Covid to seek medical help. The 737 cases pulled from Weibo were concentrated away from the market, in other parts of central Wuhan with high populations of elderly residents, the study found.

Spatial analysis of Covid cases in Jan.Feb. 2020.

Huanan Seafood

Wholesale Market

Concentration of Covid cases in Jan.Feb. 2020

Huanan Seafood

Wholesale Market

Concentration of Covid cases in Jan.Feb. 2020

Source: Michael Worobey et al. The New York Times

These patterns pointed to the market as the origin of the outbreak, Dr. Worobey and his colleagues concluded. The researchers ran tests that showed it was extremely unlikely that such a pattern could be produced merely by chance.

Its very strong statistical evidence that this is no coincidence, Dr. Worobey said.

But David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, raised the possibility that these patterns might be just evidence that the market boosted the epidemic after the virus started spreading in humans somewhere else.

The virus would have arrived in a person, who then infected other people, he said. And the neighborhood of the market, or the market itself, became a kind of a sustained superspreader event.

Dr. Worobey and his colleagues argue against that possibility, pointing to signs of spillovers within the market itself.

The researchers reconstructed the floor plan of the Huanan market based on the W.H.O. report, the leaked Chinese C.D.C. study and other sources. They then mapped the locations of positive environmental samples, finding that they clustered in the area where live animals were sold.

Strikingly, five of the samples came from a single stall. That stall had been visited in 2014 by one of the co-authors of the new studies, Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney. On that trip, he had taken a photograph of a cage of raccoon dogs for sale at the time.

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China.

Huanan Seafood

Wholesale Market

West Side

Huanan Seafood

Wholesale Market

West Side

Huanan Seafood

Wholesale Market

West Side

Diagram of the Huanan market.

Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market

West Side

Coronavirus found in stall

Stall selling live mammals

Stall selling unknown meat

Photograph of raccoon dogs caged over birds in 2014.

Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market

West Side

Coronavirus found in stall

Stall selling live mammals

Stall selling unknown meat

Photograph of raccoon dogs caged over birds in 2014.

Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market

West Side

Stall where coronavirus was found

Stall selling live mammals

Stall selling unknown meat

Photo of raccoon dogs caged over birds in 2014.

Distribution of coronavirus samples in the Huanan market.

Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market

West Side

Distribution of positive coronavirus samples

in the market

Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market

West Side

Distribution of positive coronavirus samples

in the market

Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market

West Side

Distribution of positive coronavirus samples

in the market

Source: Michael Worobey et al. The New York Times; Satellite image via Google Maps

Excerpt from:

New Research Points to Wuhan Market as Pandemic Origin - The New York Times

Mayor Eric Adams announced on Sunday that New York City was poised to eliminate school mask mandates and vaccine requirements for restaurants, gyms and movie theaters, by March 7, if case numbers remain low.

The rollback of pandemic restrictions, which had served as a crucial weapon in the citys battle against the coronavirus, is a milestone that many hope will help to restore a sense of normalcy in the city and boost its economic recovery.

Mr. Adams has said for weeks that he is eager to remove virus-related restrictions across the city, including mask mandates in schools. In a statement on Sunday, he promised a final decision by Friday, saying: I want to thank the millions of New Yorkers who have gotten vaccinated to help stop the spread. New Yorkers stepped up and helped us save lives by reaching unprecedented levels of vaccination.

The mayor said he wanted to give business owners time to adapt a nod to the toll that the virus and related restrictions have taken on small businesses. Both Mr. Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul have focused on reviving the economy in New York City, where the unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high.

The news came hours after Ms. Hochul announced the statewide mask mandate for schools would be lifted, empowering local officials to assess the need for additional restrictions in their schools. Vaccine mandates in New York City for municipal workers and private employers remain in effect.

My friends, the day has come, Ms. Hochul said, reiterating that the decision, which is set to take effect on Wednesday, came in consultation with public health and education officials.

In making her announcement, Ms. Hochul said that the mask mandate had been a vital aid in battling the Omicron surge. When I look back at what was going on just a short time ago, I am so happy that we did have a mask requirement in place for schools at the time, she said. Thats how we kept these numbers from getting even worse.

The states decision does not supersede those of individual districts and counties like New York City, which can still impose mask mandates and other restrictive measures.

The rollbacks came a day after New York announced a statewide seven-day average positivity rate below 2 percent and hospitalizations under 2,000 for the first time since before the Omicron surge. The drop is part of a national decrease in coronavirus cases. Across the state, hospitals that were forced to limit elective procedures as a result of the virus have been approved to resume normal operations.

New York Citys vaccine mandate for indoor dining, movie theaters and gyms, known as the Key to NYC program, was put in effect by Mr. Adamss predecessor, Bill de Blasio, as an essential strategy to encourage New Yorkers to get the Covid vaccine and to reduce the spread of the virus. Dr. Jay Varma, a top health adviser to Mr. de Blasio, emphasized on Sunday that the vaccine mandate for all employees in New York City who work in person was still in effect, and he called on the Education Department to make high quality masks available for students who still wanted to protect themselves.

Mr. Adams has focused on the citys recovery and public safety during his first weeks in office and encouraged tourists to return. He has repeatedly encouraged New Yorkers to return to offices and argued that low-wage workers and small businesses depended on them.

For the first time last week, New York City released data showing that just 59 percent of students in city schools had received at least one dose of the vaccine. But even that rate contained significant disparities between neighborhoods and schools, the education nonprofit Chalkbeat reported, finding that the most vaccinated district in Manhattan had a vaccination rate more than double that of the least vaccinated district in Brooklyn. Vaccination rates are much higher among adults; more than 96 percent of New Yorkers who are 18 and older have received one dose.

Dr. Uch Blackstock, a doctor who focuses on health equity, said that there were wide inequities in vaccine rates among schools and that her children would continue to wear masks at their public schools in New York City.

Removing mask policies in these schools is dangerous, she wrote on Twitter.

The announcement on masks in schools seems poised to end a bitter and divisive chapter in the states pandemic history. Schools have increasingly become battlegrounds in a polarized national conversation between teachers, parents, students and politicians over what measures are appropriate to defend against the virus.

Ms. Hochul has been under pressure to roll back the states rules on masking in schools since she allowed the mandate for businesses to lapse earlier this month. At the time, the governor promised to revisit the question of masks in schools after students returned from their midwinter break in early March, but she found herself under increased pressure after nearby states with Democratic governors, including Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware, announced plans to lift their mandates.

Then, on Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Washington released new guidance that masks and social distancing were necessary only in areas where infection risk was high, clearing the way for the lifting of many virus prevention measures.

That announcement came as the agency shifted its strategy in assessing risk from one based on case counts to one that weighs the stress on hospitals by coronavirus patients, as well as new cases per 100,000 people over the previous week. The guidance starkly changes the virus assessment nationwide from one in which 95 percent of counties were considered high risk to one in which most Americans could return to lives without masking or social distancing.

Sundays announcements were celebrated by many across the state. Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, said that the rollbacks were welcomed.

The business community is eager to get beyond pandemic conditions and restrictions, she said.

And Republicans cheered the news on masks in schools. The unmasking of our school children is a long overdue victory for kids and parents, educators and common sense, State Senator Rob Ortt, a Republican and the minority leader who has pushed for a rollback of the mandate, said in a statement.

Although Ms. Hochuls decision leaves actual implementation power to the states hundreds of school districts, the announcement is a major moment in New Yorks halting efforts to keep its public schools open amid the pandemic. That is especially true in New York City, which first closed its sprawling system of roughly 1,600 schools in March 2020 and has kept strict virus mitigation measures in place since schools began to reopen in September 2020. The city lifted its outdoor mask mandate for schools only this past week.

The United Federation of Teachers, which represents teachers in New York City struck a pensive note, with its president, Michael Mulgrew, saying the union would confer with our own independent doctors, look at the data from take-home test kits and random in-school testing this week, and make sure all of that is taken into account as New York City reviews its own school masking policy.

And while many support the end of mandates, the shift will almost certainly concern a significant number of New Yorkers who believe it is premature. A recent poll from the Siena College Research Institute found that 58 percent of New York registered voters believed the state should hold off on lifting the mask mandate in schools until reviewing data from early March. That same poll, which was taken two weeks ago, found that 45 percent of respondents disapproved of the states rollback of mask mandates in private businesses.

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Hong Kong hospitals can't keep up with the deaths amid an Omicron surge. - The New York Times

It is now well known that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can mutate to evade vaccine protection against infection. The Omicron variants BA.1, B1.1 and BA.2 can infect those who were previously infected by other variants, even when vaccinated. A third booster shot offers some protection from an Omicron infection, but it wanes after three or four months, leaving most people susceptible to reinfection. That said, the immunity conveyed by prior infection or vaccination still dramatically reduces the incidence of hospitalization and death.

We have also come to realize that our main saviors against COVID-19 turn out not to be antibodies, but rather another part of the immune system: T cells. Studies show that the strength of our long-lived T-cell response to the virus proteins especially by T cells that recognize the spike protein strongly correlates with the degree of protection.

There are two types of T cells, CD4+ and CD8+, which are distinguished by proteins on their surface. Because CD4+ T cells mostly assist in the production of antibodies, the CD8+ T cells are the real heroes of the story. Once they identify an invader they remember from a previous encounter, they act quickly to move in for the kill, demolishing infected cells and cutting short the life cycle of the virus.

Until Omicron, the differences in neutralization by vaccine-induced antibodies and by monoclonal antibodies were relatively minor. But the process by which T cells recognize viral proteins is very different from that of antibodies, which recognize structures on the intact viral protein. We know that these critical structures, particularly those of the exterior spike protein, differ from variant to variant. It is precisely such structural diversity that allows the virus to evade most antibodies made in response to natural infection and vaccination.

By contrast, T cells do not recognize intact proteins. Rather, T-cell recognition occurs when a viral protein within a cell is chopped into short segments and cradled in the grip of a cellular protein called MHC type 1. MHC type 1 presents the viral fragment to the T cell at the cell surface, where the T cell can recognize the combination of the viral fragment presented by the MHC type 1 protein.

T cells recognize and react to a very broad array of viral protein fragments. For SARS-CoV-2, these fragments overlap very little with the regions of the virus that are sensitive to neutralization by antibodies. That is why T-cell responses to viral infection are generally preserved across variants.

Until Omicron, vaccines that use one viral protein raised almost the same T-cell response to all variants. But now the situation has changed. Our MHC type 1 proteins are diverse, and each recognizes a unique set of viral protein fragments. Our reaction to viral proteins thus depends on their sequence and that of our own particular MHC type 1 set of proteins.

Consider a recent study by Gaurav D. Gaiha and his colleagues, examining T-cell responses to the Wuhan, Delta and Omicron strains in people who have been either infected, vaccinated and boosted, or infected and vaccinated but not boosted. They found that most people who are infected after vaccination have strong and durable CD4+ and CD8+ responses to all three variants.

But there was one worrying discovery. Approximately 20% of those vaccinated showed a decline of greater than 50% in T-cell response to Omicron, compared to the Wuhan and Delta variants. These poor T-cell responses were not correlated with sex or age, and follow-up experiments revealed that the difference was due to lower CD8+ reactivity, rather than to the CD4+ T-cell response.

The authors speculate that CD8+ T cells inability to respond to Omicron may be due to a lack of recognition of the mutated peptides. Indeed, their theoretical calculations are consistent with the hypothesis that changes in the amino acid sequence of the Omicron spike protein underlie the observed blind spots in T-cell recognition. Inherited differences in the ability to recognize specific protein fragments likely account for some peoples failure to mount anti-Omicron defenses. The authors offer the conjecture that it is possible that these individuals will have reduced protection against severe disease.

One sobering conclusion is that Omicron has drifted so far from the original strain that 20% of people in the study may not be fully protected either from infection or from hospitalization and death. However, the study found that a third vaccine dose increases T-cell responses by 20 times or more.

While the Omicron spike protein was able to escape T cells in a subset of individuals, Gaiha told me, what we learned is that this deficiency in T-cell recognition can be overcome by booster vaccination. In addition, we found that non-spike proteins could be attractive targets for second-generation vaccines to protect against future SARS-CoV-2 evolution.

Gaiha espouses an optimistic interpretation. But Omicron is a warning that future variants may escape both antibodies and T-cell immunity. We cannot predict whether a variant will arise that evades the vaccines ability to protect against infection and serious illness, but we must be prepared for such a threat, lest we remain unguarded against it.

William A. Haseltine, a scientist and entrepreneur, is chairman and president of ACCESS Health International, a global health think tank.

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Op-Ed: Could the COVID-19 virus mutate to evade the vaccines? - Los Angeles Times

Take a deep breath, Parkites.

COVID-19 case numbers have plunged in recent weeks following the omicron-fueled surge that pushed coronavirus transmission to never-before-seen levels in Summit County and the rest of the state. For the first time since last summer, prior to the emergence of the delta and omicron variants, there is a sense of optimism that we may be nearing a point where the coronavirus recedes into the background of daily life.

State officials announced recently that they plan to close mass testing sites at the end of March and begin treating the coronavirus as endemic rather than as a pandemic. And the Summit County Health Department has indicated that it intends shortly to take a similar tack.

The current situation is particularly promising for people who are vaccinated or better yet, boosted. With case numbers similar to where they were in the early fall and hopefully continuing to decline, its reasonable for people whove been inoculated or have a measure of immunity through infection to let their guards down a bit as long as they abide by common-sense COVID guidelines.

The prospect of a time when we can learn to live with the virus like we do other diseases such as the flu is welcome as we near the two-year anniversary of the pandemic striking Summit County. It represents a kind of freedom that weve been largely living without since March 2020.

As weve seen time and again, though, predicting the course of the pandemic is tricky. There are simply too many variables to say with certainty whether we are at a turning point. It felt like we were there in the late spring and summer last year, but then the variants plunged us back into crisis.

The optimism many people are feeling as spring approaches is justified. But another variant could arrive and wash it away.

Are we truly entering a new, less dangerous phase of the pandemic, or even the long-awaited transition to the coronavirus becoming endemic? Or is this merely another brief period of calm before the disease returns with a vengeance?

Its far too early to know. But for the first time in months, a return to normalcy appears close. Heres to hoping it actually arrives.

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Record editorial: A return to normalcy appears close. But the coronavirus has proven unpredictable. - The Park Record

Long Covid the shorthand term for people who continue to have long-term side effects long after their initial COVID-19 infection has subsided has become a major condition that affects tens of millions. Doctors estimate that 10 percent of children who get COVID-19 will develop long COVID, and a study published earlier this month found that COVID-19 patients are more likely to have long-term heart problems.

Now, a new study published in the medical journal BMJ reveals that COVID-19 is linked to long-term mental health issues. The findings suggest that a dual mental-health crisis, evidently caused directly or indirectly by COVID-19 itself, now looms.

By looking at the health data of 153,848 veterans whose information had been catalogued by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the researchers learned that patients were far more likely than uninfected people to have mental health issues within 12 months of getting sick. These issues included anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, sleep disorders, cognitive decline and dependence on drugs like opioids, benzodiazepines and antidepressants. The symptoms were primarily attributed to brain inflammation, although the scientists noted that stress also likely played a role in many cases.

"I think greater awareness that this is happening is an important first step," Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the study's senior investigator and Chief of Research and Development at the VA St. Louis healthcare system, told Salon by email."I also think that health systems should anticipate this and build capacity to provide equitable care to people with mental health disorders. it is important to identify people early, and treat them to mitigate development of much larger problems down the road (e.g. suicide epidemic, or another opioid epidemic)."

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This is not the first study to link COVID-19 to long-term brain damage. Last yearDr. Ricardo Costa, author of a then-upcoming studyabout the lingering effects of COVID-19 on the brain, told Salon by email that the general public needed to be aware that the SARS-CoV-2 virus does not merely infect the lungs.

"Our in vitro study using cell cultures suggests that astrocytes and neurons the cells that make up most of our brain can be infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19," Costa explained."We also analyzed the resistance of each of these cell types to infection and saw that astrocytes seem to offer more resistance to infection, while neurons appear to be easily infected."

Beyond the physical damage done to the brains of infected patients, experts also believe that COVID-19 has caused mental health problems by inflicting collective trauma.

"This will take generations to get past," Dr. David Reiss, psychiatrist in private practice and expert in mental fitness evaluations, told Salon in an interview recently. "And that's because at every stage of development, things have been disrupted, whether you're talking about like my two-year-old grandchild who somehow has to understand seeing family members in masks, to four and five-year-old kids who are just starting to socialize, to adolescents who can't socialize and all through different stages of life."

RELATED:How the novel coronavirus attacks the brain

Experts suspect that the mental health component of the pandemic both in terms of physical damage to the brain and the psychological harm from the entire ordeal will linger with humanity long after the worst phases of the pandemic have passed. Much of the burden will rest on the shoulders of health care providers and governments to assist the people who will live with the effects of the virus for the rest of their lives. As Al-Aly told Salon when asked if he had any advice for the people concerned about COVID-19 and mental health, he emphasized realizing that they are not experiencing this on their own.

"They should know that they are not alone," Al-Aly told Salon. "There are a lot of people suffering from similar problems. And people should seek professional help. This is very important. This is not something that people should deal with on their own. Identifying these and getting them treated early is the best thing to ensure the most optimal outcome."

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COVID-19 is linked to long-term mental health issues in recovered patients, study finds - Salon