Category: Corona Virus

Tags: COVID-19

This past week, we announced that its time for Utahs response to the coronavirus pandemic to shift to better match where we are.

By March 31, our response will transition to what we are calling a Steady State. Some elements of the response will transition to being the responsibility of our highly capable health care systems. This will allow our public health system to refocus on things a public health system would normally look after, like disease surveillance, data collection and reporting, vaccinations, and public awareness. If we see another surge, we will maintain teams and contracts that allow for ramping back up quickly if necessary.

Heres what this means for you.

Testing sites across the state will close as we transition away from community sites to health care settings, private providers for events and travel and at-home testing.

We still recommend certain people seek testing, including older people with high-risk conditions, vulnerable populations and those who work with them and those who often visit vulnerable people. These Utahns should seek testing through their health care provider.

Similar to testing, health care and treatments will become more fully based in the health care system. Monoclonal antibody treatments are available in hospitals and urgent cares statewide. Health care providers across the state are now able to prescribe oral antivirals.

State contracts for COVID positive long-term care facilities are drawing to a close and we are demobilizing UDOH treatment sites. Public health will, however, continue to support navigating vulnerable populations to care.

Utah will continue to provide public information, but less often. We will be decreasing dashboard update frequency from daily to weekly.

We know this isnt over and will continue watching the data closely, tracking wastewater, clinic and ER visits, hospitalizations, and deaths. Were also keeping an eye on new variants or any increase in cases and will ramp back up if needed.

Vaccines have been and will be the surest way out of the pandemic. This administration is dedicated to getting vaccines to as many people as possible.

That includes vaccinations for children younger than five as soon as they are authorized. Weve made great strides in preparing for this: At least 79% of the states health care providers who participate in the Vaccines for Children program are also now enrolled to administer COVID vaccines. We will continue to work with the remaining 21% of providers to convince them to offer COVID vaccines to their patients as well.

We know that vaccination remains the best way to protect yourself from the coronavirus. Please help out our community by getting vaccinated today!

This is not the end of the pandemic. Were still keeping an eye on the future and are ready to ramp back up if necessary. But weve made great strides in fighting the pandemic:

In the past two years, weve

All of the key metrics are moving in the right direction. Vaccines are widely available and hopefully soon everyone older than six months will be eligible to receive the vaccine. Treatments are more widely available, and supplies are improving every week. Testing is available in the comfort of your own home! Hospitals and ICUs and the health care workers who staff them are still at high levels, as they trail behind other indicators, but they too are finally starting to see some relief.

As always, you can find coronavirus information at coronavirus.utah.gov and health.utah.gov.

###

Read more from the original source:

What you need to know about Utah's new 'Steady State' COVID-19 response - Utah Governor

Population Immunity and Covid-19 Severity with Omicron Variant in South Africa | NEJM  nejm.org

Read this article:

Population Immunity and Covid-19 Severity with Omicron Variant in South Africa | NEJM - nejm.org

And the number of local COVID-19 patients has plummeted by 59% so far in February.

SAN ANTONIO COVID-19 hospitalizations continued to decrease in Bexar County over the weekend, and health authorities say 483 patients are receiving treatment in local hospitals as of Mondaythe fewest since Jan. 2 as the community continues to recover from January's spike.

The number of county patients has gone down by 29% over the last week while decreasing by 59% since the start of February. Of those 483 patients, 140 are in intensive care and 74 are using ventilators.

Meanwhile, just once in the last week has Metro Health tallied at least 1,000 new infections as the omicron variant loosens its grip on the San Antonio area. That includes 365 additional cases reported Monday, bringing the region's seven-day case average down to 452, a new low for 2022.

February has averaged 1,163 new infections a day, a far more manageable figure than the nearly 4,200 daily cases which were being reported in January. Just 685 infections were reported over the weekend, including a new 2022 low of 151 infections on Sunday.

Nearly 521,000 county residents have been diagnosed with the virus over the last two-plus years.

Four more virus-related deaths were reported Monday, bringing the local death toll to 5,231.

How Bexar County is trending

Vaccine Progress in Bexar County

The following numbers are provided by San Antonio Metro Health. A full breakdown can be found here.

The CDC states that "when a high percentage of the community is immune to a disease (through vaccination and/or prior illness)," that community will have reached herd immunity, "making the spread of this disease from person to person unlikely."

The City of San Antonio breaks down the vaccination rates by zip code on Metro Health's Vaccination Statistics page.

Coronavirus in Texas

The total number of coronavirus cases in the state since the pandemic began grew by 5,018 on Monday, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. That total includes 3,439 new confirmed cases and 1,579 new probable cases. More details can be found on this page.

Monday's figures bring the total number of Texans diagnosed with COVID-19 to more than 6.517 million.

An additional 19 Texans have died from virus complications, meanwhile, raising the statewide death toll to 82,435.

Coronavirus symptoms

The symptoms of coronavirus can be similar to the flu or a bad cold. Symptoms include fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, new loss of taste or smell sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, and diarrhea, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Most healthy people will have mild symptoms. A study of more than 72,000 patients by the Centers for Disease Control in China showed 80 percent of the cases there were mild.

But infections can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure, and even death, according to the World Health Organization. Older people with underlying health conditions are most at risk.

Experts determined there was consistent evidence these conditions increase a person's risk, regardless of age:

Human coronaviruses are usually spread...

Help stop the spread of coronavirus

Find a Testing Location

City officials recommend getting a COVID-19 test if you experience fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, or diarrhea.

Here's a Testing Sites Locatorto help you find the testing location closest to you in San Antonio.

Latest Coronavirus Headlines

View original post here:

Coronavirus Tracker: Bexar County hospitalizations have fallen every day for the last two weeks - KENS5.com

Researchers showed last year that the elite school inside of lymph nodes where the B cells train, called the germinal center, remains active for at least 15 weeks after the second dose of a Covid vaccine. In an updated study published in the journal Nature, the same team showed that six months after vaccination, memory B cells continue to mature, and the antibodies they produce keep gaining the ability to recognize new variants.

Those antibodies at six months are better binders and more potent neutralizers than the ones that are produced one month after immunization, said Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis who led the study.

In the newest study, another team showed that a third shot creates an even richer pool of B cells than the second shot did, and the antibodies they produce recognize a broader range of variants. In laboratory experiments, these antibodies were able to fend off the Beta, Delta and Omicron variants. In fact, more than half of the antibodies seen one month after a third dose were able to neutralize Omicron, even though the vaccine was not designed for that variant, the study found.

If youve had a third dose, youre going to have a rapid response thats going to have quite a bit of specificity for Omicron, which explains why people that have had a third dose do so much better, said Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University who led the study.

Memory cells produced after infection with the coronavirus, rather than by the vaccines, seem less potent against the Omicron variant, according to a study published last month in Nature Medicine. Immunity generated by infection varies quite a lot, while the vaccine response is much more consistently good, said Marcus Buggert, an immunologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who led the study.

Although most people, vaccinated or not, show only a small drop in their T cell response against Omicron, about one in five had significant reductions of their responses of about 60 percent, Dr. Buggert said. The differences are most likely because of their underlying genetic makeup, he said.

Still, the recent studies suggest that in most people, the immunity gained from infection or vaccination will hold up for a long while. Even if mutations in new variants change some of the viral regions that T cells recognize, there would still be enough others to maintain a reasonably strong immune response, experts said.

Follow this link:

Got a Covid Booster? You Probably Wont Need Another for a Long Time - The New York Times

Queen Elizabeth II has been infected with the coronavirus, Buckingham Palace said on Sunday, becoming one of the worlds most prominent figures to battle the virus and deeply rattling the country she has led for seven decades.

The palace issued few details about the condition of the queen, who turns 96 in April. She is one of several people at Windsor Castle who are infected, a palace official said, suggesting an outbreak at the royal residence, west of London, where the queen has spent most of her time since the pandemic engulfed Britain in March 2020.

Buckingham Palace confirm that the queen has today tested positive for Covid, the palace said in a statement. Her Majesty is experiencing mild coldlike symptoms but expects to continue light duties at Windsor over the coming week. She will continue to receive medical attention and will follow all the appropriate guidelines.

Elizabeth met earlier this month with her eldest son and heir, Prince Charles, who was later reported to be reinfected with the coronavirus and went into isolation. He last contracted a mild case of the virus in March 2020. The palace on Sunday did not address whether Charles was the source, but officials pointed to the number of cases at Windsor Castle, suggesting she could have been infected by others in the royal household.

The news of the queens illness came as Prime Minister Boris Johnson was poised to relax the remainder of coronavirus restrictions in England, including a requirement to isolate for five days after receiving a positive test. Mr. Johnson will introduce plans on Monday to lift the regulations by the end of February, prompting some members of the opposition Labour Party to warn that he was acting rashly.

Britain reported 25,696 new cases on Sunday, accelerating a decline since the latest wave of the virus peaked in early January with more than 200,000 cases a day. Nearly 1,300 people were admitted to hospitals and 74 people died statistics that are also on the decline, but at a more moderate pace than cases.

Now is the moment for everybody to get their confidence back, Mr. Johnson told the BBCs Sunday Morning show, before the queens condition was made public. Hours later, on Twitter, the prime minister said he wished Her Majesty The Queen a swift recovery from Covid and a rapid return to vibrant good health one of a flood of well wishes from across Britain and around the world.

Britons have no shortage of experience with prominent public figures contracting Covid. In addition to Charles, 73, his wife, Camilla, tested positive four days after he did. His elder son, Prince William, had the virus in early 2020, disclosing it only months later. Mr. Johnson suffered a severe bout of Covid around the same time and ended up in an intensive care unit.

Still, even that alarming episode paled next to news that the queen, who recently marked her 70th anniversary on the throne and has reigned for longer than most Britons have been alive, had contracted a potentially deadly disease.

It comes on top of other health concerns about Elizabeth. In October, she canceled multiple public appearances, including a solemn anniversary to honor Britains wartime dead. She also has stiffness in her legs and has begun using a walking stick.

Last Wednesday, she appeared fragile at an audience with two senior military officers at Windsor Castle. When they asked how she was, the queen, smiling and clutching the stick, gestured to her legs, and said, Well, as you see, I cant move. Neither the queen nor her guests were wearing face masks.

Until recently, Buckingham Palace had gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the queen from exposure to the virus. She retreated to Windsor in early 2020 with her husband, Prince Philip, and lived in virtual quarantine for more than a year. When she addressed the nation during a particularly dark period, in April 2020, she recorded the speech with only a single camera operator in the room.

Elizabeth received a dose of a coronavirus vaccine in January 2021 at Windsor Castle, along with Philip. The palace has not confirmed any subsequent vaccine doses, but she is widely believed to have received two, as well as a booster. Charles and Camilla have confirmed they are fully vaccinated and boosted.

Buckingham Palace has been extremely circumspect with details about the queens health. In October, the palace confirmed that she had been admitted to a hospital for tests only after a London tabloid reported it. It did not say whether she had been tested for the virus after Charles was reinfected this month.

Philip died last April at age 99, and the queen was forced to isolate herself during his funeral service. A photographer captured a poignant image of her, grieving alone and wearing a mask, in a choir stall at St. Georges Chapel at Windsor.

That image has taken on political resonance in recent weeks, as Mr. Johnson has battled a scandal over parties held in Downing Street that violated lockdown restrictions. Two of the gatherings were on the evening before Philips funeral, prompting Mr. Johnson to apologize to the queen.

The circumstances of the queens infection remained wreathed in questions. Charles was at Windsor Castle on Feb. 8 for an investiture ceremony. He got the news that he had tested positive on Feb. 10 and postponed a trip to Winchester, England, at the last minute.

There were similar concerns about the potential exposure of the queen the first time Charles was infected. The princes royal household confirmed his positive test on March 25, 2020. He had met his mother on March 12, only a day before his doctors assessed he could have been infectious. A spokesman for the prince said on Sunday that he did not plan to issue a statement on the queens condition.

Given the transmissibility of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, which is the dominant variant in Britain, public health experts said the queen could have picked it up from anyone. In addition to the military officers, she played host to other visitors, including a group on Feb. 5 that helped mark the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

Omicron is incredibly infectious possibly the most infectious disease in recent human history and its therefore unsurprising the queen has also tested positive, said Devi Sridhar, the head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh. The queens advanced age, she said, was an added challenge.

Buckingham Palace tried to ease concerns about Elizabeth by issuing a congratulatory message from her to Britains womens curling team, which won a gold medal at the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.

I know that your local communities and people throughout the United Kingdom will join me in sending our good wishes to you, your coaches, and the friends and family who have supported you in your great success, she said.

A palace official said she had signed off on the statement on Sunday morning, before her condition was made public.

In recent weeks, Elizabeth seemed to be moving on multiple fronts to settle the royal familys business. Last week, her second son, Prince Andrew, reached an out-of-court settlement of a sexual assault case filed against him by Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of raping her when she was a teenager.

The settlement spares the royal family the prospect of Andrew having to testify under oath about his contacts with Ms. Giuffre, which would have cast a long shadow over the queens Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June.

On the weekend she marked her accession, the queen said in a statement that she hoped that when Charles succeeded her, Camilla would be known as queen consort an endorsement that the couple had long sought.

We are deeply conscious of the honor represented by my mothers wish, Charles said in a statement. As we have sought together to serve and support Her Majesty and the people of our communities, my darling wife has been my own steadfast support throughout.

On a blustery, rainy day in London on Sunday, people expressed anxiety about the queen, mixed with hope that she would get first-rate medical care. Above all, it seemed to drive home the reality that the coronavirus spares nobody.

It doesnt have boundaries, said Hussein Ahmed, 34, who was waiting for a bus in North London. It does not give a damn about whether you are the queen or a king or a normal civilian, a person in high power you are getting it.

Stephen Castle and Megan Specia contributed reporting.

Originally posted here:

Queen Elizabeth Tests Positive for Covid-19, as England Moves to Relax Rules - The New York Times

I had no particular ambition to write about the pandemic, but it was like a giant tree trunk that fell across my path, said Ian McEwan, whose forthcoming novel, Lessons, follows a British man from the 1940s to his twilight years in 2021, when hes living alone in London during lockdown, looking back on his life. Its going to be in literary novels simply because theres no way around it, if youre writing a socially realist novel.

Anne Tylers French Braid, which comes out next month, follows a Baltimore family from the late 1950s to the upheaval of 2020, when a retired couple finds unexpected joy after their adult son and their grandson come to live with them to ride out the pandemic. Nell Freudenbergers novel in progress, tentatively titled The Limits, explores the feelings of dread and uncertainty that the virus unleashed, and features a teenager struggling to balance remote learning with caring for a child, a biologist unnerved by climate change and a doctor who feels helpless as he treats Covid patients.

In Isabel Allendes Violeta, the narrators life is bookended by two pandemics, the Spanish flu and the coronavirus, a strange symmetry that she reflects on as shes dying in isolation. The experience of the whole planet frozen in place because of a virus is so extraordinary that I am sure it will be used extensively in literature, Ms. Allende said in an email. It is one of those events that mark an era.

Theres been no shortage of pandemic-themed content, from TV shows and documentaries, to long-form nonfiction, poetry and short stories. But novels often take longer to gestate, and the first wave of pandemic-inflected literary fiction is arriving at a nebulous moment, when the virus has started to feel both mundane and insurmountable, and its unclear when the crisis will end, making it an unwieldy subject for fiction writers.

You couldnt yet have the great coronavirus novel, because we dont know how this story ends yet, said the writer and critic Daniel Mendelsohn.

Feb. 21, 2022, 9:57 p.m. ET

As the first trickle of Covid-centric novels began last year, some critics questioned whether the pandemic could yield worthwhile literature. I am a little fearful of the onslaught of Covid-19 fiction heading toward us in the coming years, the reviewer Sam Sacks wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Last November, when the English author Sarah Moss published her novel The Fell about a woman who defies a mandatory quarantine order after shes exposed to Covid a handful of reviewers in Britain panned it for recreating the grueling experience of lockdown.

Read the rest here:

The Problem With the Pandemic Plot - The New York Times

The Utah health department is preparing to transition all COVID-19 testing to the health care system in the coming weeks; however, officials sent a reminder Monday that public health testing is still available in the state up until that happens.

The Utah Department of Health released its testing sites for the week on Monday, which includes dozens of sites across the state. As the number of people getting tested declines, none of the sites require a reservation.

Some of the regular daily locations are closed Monday for Presidents Day. That list includes:

The full list of testing site locations, testing times and other important information regarding COVID-19 testing can be found online, here.

The health department won't provide its daily COVID-19 case update Monday because of the holiday. Those daily updates, which originated in March 2020, will also be phased into weekly reports by the end of next month as Utah health care systems take over testing.

Utah's seven-day, running average of new cases dropped to 1,055 new cases per day compared to nearly 11,000 on Jan. 18, as the health department reported on Friday. The state's "test over test" seven-day average rate of positive tests also fell from 47% on Jan. 21 to 26% on Feb. 12.

Even though the demand for tests has fallen as the number of new cases has declined, the health department still recommends certain people get tested should they experience symptoms.

Gov. Spencer Cox, who announced the upcoming, gradual move to a "steady state," said Friday that Utah is in a "much better place" than it was when COVID-19 was first reported to be in the state nearly two years ago. That's because it's easier to find COVID-19 testing now, and there is also a vaccine and treatments that can help reduce the effects of the coronavirus that didn't exist in March 2020.

"We have tools today that we didn't have two months ago, including widespread home tests and antiviral pills," the governor, added in his reasoning to scale back Utah's pandemic response. "It's now time to transition out of an emergency posture and into a manageable risk model."

Cox went on to say Friday that testing, either at home or through various health care systems, will still be important after March 31. He said the state health department will also continue to oversee disease surveillance, data collection, vaccinations and public awareness of the coronavirus.

"This is not the end of COVID," he said, "but it is the beginning of treating COVID as we do other seasonal respiratory viruses."

Continued here:

Public COVID-19 testing in Utah isn't over. Here's where you can get tested this week - Deseret News

Cases, hospitalisations and deaths

For a detailed breakdown of cases across the country, check outCharting the Spread.

This post will be updated throughout the day as numbers are announced, so if your state or territory is not mentioned, check back later.

VIC: 14 deaths, 6,786 new cases (5,042 RAT / 1,744PCR), 345 people in hospital,48 in ICU, eight on ventilators

NSW: 14 deaths, 8,752 new cases (6,036 RAT / 2,716 PCR),1,293 people in hospital,71 in ICU, 31 on ventilators

QLD: 5 deaths,5,583 newcases (4,039 RAT / 1,544 PCR), 394 people in hospital, 34 in ICU

ACT:583 new cases,41 people in hospital, onein ICU

TAS:820new cases, 11 people in hospital, two in ICU

NT: One death, 716 new cases, 123 people in hospital, 10 on ventilators, three in ICU

SA: Three deaths, 1,378 new cases, 205 people in hospital, 12 in ICU, three on ventilators

WA:263 new cases, three people in hospital

See the rest here:

COVID updates: All the coronavirus news you need in one place - ABC News

Germany will offer its population a new protein-based Covid-19 vaccine comparable to conventional flu jabs this week, in the hope of swaying a sizeable minority that remains sceptical of the novel mRNA technology used in the most commonly used vaccines.

About 1.4m doses of the Nuvaxovid vaccine developed by the US biotech company Novavax are to arrive in Germany this week, the countrys health minister, Karl Lauterbach, confirmed last Friday. A further million doses are to arrive the week after, with the German governments total order for the year 2022 amounting to 34m doses.

Novavaxs product has until now been used only in Indonesia and the Philippines, but it was permitted for use in the EU last December. It is still awaiting authorisation in the US, as some concerns about the companys production capacity persist.

Unlike the novel mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna or viral vector made by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, Nuvaxovid is a protein subunit vaccine. It contains a non-infectious component on the surface of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which induces a protective immune response when the bodys immune cells come into contact with it.

Novavax announced in June last year that its vaccine had proven more than 90% effective against symptomatic infections with the Alpha variant, in trials including nearly 30,000 volunteers in the US and Mexico.

The company says its product is similarly effective against the Delta and Omicron variants, especially after a booster shot administered six months after the second jab. Germanys Paul Ehrlich Institute notes that the data proving the vaccines efficacy against more infectious variants remains limited.

Surveys in Germany suggest a considerable interest in the Novavax jab among the 19.8 million people in the country who have so far declined to take a jab against Covid-19. Out of 4,000 unvaccinated hospital workers surveyed in Berlin, 1,800 expressed an interest in the protein-based vaccine.

In the northern state of Lower Saxony, the health ministry said 6,000 people had put their name on a waiting list for Nuvaxovid by early February.

Some scientists question whether the new vaccine will prove a gamechanger in a country whose overall vaccination rate has been flatlining at about 75% for months. Lars Korn, a co-author of a current survey of anti-vaccine attitudes conducted by the University of Erfurt, told the public broadcaster ZDF that two-thirds of respondents would continue to completely reject any form of vaccination.

The rest is here:

Germany hopes protein-based Covid vaccine will sway sceptics - The Guardian

Childrens seeming imperviousness to Covid-19s worst effects has been one of the biggest mysteriesand reliefsof the pandemic. Now the reasons are coming into focus, scientists say: Children mobilize a first line of defense known as the innate immune system more effectively than adults.

Although some children do fall seriously ill after coming down with Covid-19, the most have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Unlike other respiratory viruses such as the flu or respiratory syncytial virus, SARS-CoV-2 doesnt hit children nearly as hard as it does adults or the elderly.

Read the original post:

The Science Behind Why Children Fare Better With Covid-19 - The Wall Street Journal