Category: Corona Virus

To have something in a sewershed that youre detecting, you need a fair bit of it around, said Dr. Adam Lauring, a virologist at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the research.

Dr. Johnson, the Missouri virologist, agrees. He favors the hypothesis that the sequences are coming from animals, perhaps a few specific populations with limited territories. In May and June of 2021, when the number of human Covid-19 cases in the city was low, the mysterious lineages made up a greater proportion of the viral RNA in wastewater, suggesting that they may have come from a nonhuman source.

The researchers initially considered a diverse array of potential hosts, from squirrels to skunks. This is a very promiscuous virus, Dr. Johnson said. It can infect all kinds of species.

To narrow down the possibilities, they went back to the wastewater, assuming that any animal that was shedding virus might be leaving its own genetic material behind, too.

Although a vast majority of the genetic material in the water came from humans, small amounts of RNA from dogs, cats and rats were also present, the scientists found.

Dr. Johnson has been considering rats, which roam the city by the millions. In his lab, he created pseudoviruses harmless, nonreplicating viruses with the same mutations present in the cryptic sequences. The pseudoviruses were able to infect both mouse and rat cells, he found. The original version of the virus does not appear able to infect rodents, although some other variants, like Beta, can.

So in and of itself, that isnt huge data, but it is at least consistent with the idea that its coming from rodents, Dr. Johnson said.

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In New York City Sewage, a Mysterious Coronavirus Signal - The New York Times

The Beijing Olympic Committee has reported 21 new Covid-19 cases among Games-related personnel as of Thursday, it said in a statement Friday ahead of the Opening Ceremony.

Since the closed-loop system officially began on Jan. 23, a total of 308 Olympic-related Covid-19 cases have now been identified, 111 of which involve athletes or team officials.

Of the 21 new cases, 14 were detected among new airport arrivals and seven from those already inside the closed-loop system, which separates Olympic athletes, stakeholders, and staff from the public.

Nineofthe 21 cases involved athletes or team officials, two of which were already inside the closed loop.

A total of 670,186 Covid-19 tests have been administered inside the closed-loop system since Jan. 23, and 11,963 people have arrived in Beijing, the statement added.

Meanwhile, Beijing reported only one case of Covid-19 on Thursday, which was found in a medical worker, authorities announced Thursday evening.

It brings the totalnumber of cases reported in Beijing since Jan. 15 to 116, according to a CNN tally.

The person, who was not identified by authorities, had worked recently at theBeijing Ditan Hospital's emergency quarantine section. The person is currently in isolation and the hospital has suspended outpatient services since Thursday morning, authorities said.

Hundreds of Covid-19 tests for people working in the hospital and environmental samples have been negative, according to the statement.

CNN's Beijing Bureau contributed to this post

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The latest on the coronavirus pandemic and the Omicron variant: Live updates - CNN

Antibody tests are becoming more available at drugstores, but what do the results really tell you? Above: A Paris pharmacist deposits a blood sample for a COVID-19 antibody test. Aurelien Morissard/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images hide caption

Antibody tests are becoming more available at drugstores, but what do the results really tell you? Above: A Paris pharmacist deposits a blood sample for a COVID-19 antibody test.

Each week, we answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you'd like us to consider for a future post, email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line "Weekly Coronavirus Questions." See an archive of our FAQs here.

My drugstore has started advertising antibody tests. Does that mean I can tell how protected I am from COVID by forking over a fee I've seen $10 to $140 and a vial of blood?

Although antibody tests are increasingly available, the answer is, unfortunately, no. We put this question to experts, who explained why these tests also called serology tests are not yet useful for most individuals and why you definitely shouldn't change your behavior based on the results.

First, some background: A COVID-19 antibody test measures one component of your body's immune response to the coronavirus or a COVID-19 vaccine. Unlike PCR tests and often hard-to-find rapid antigen tests, an antibody test is not a test of whether or not you currently have COVID-19.

"It absolutely cannot tell you if you're [currently] infected," says Cynthia Leifer, a professor at Cornell University's Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

Antibody tests analyze a sample of your blood to determine whether your immune system has mounted one type of defense, either from being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus or from getting a COVID-19 vaccine. Specifically, the test tries to measure how many antibodies are in your blood. If your result is positive, it means you've likely had some form of exposure. But if it's negative, it could mean a few different things: that you haven't been exposed to the coronavirus or the vaccine or that your antibodies have diminished to a point where the test can no longer detect them.

Early on in the coronavirus pandemic, the idea of an immunity passport based on antibody levels seemed promising. But "the thing that everyone wants to know am I protected? can't be answered with an antibody test," Leifer says.

There are several reasons why. First, the amount of antibody protection that people get from vaccines and exposures varies greatly and not just by a small amount: If you sampled 100 people a month after they were vaccinated, their antibody amounts could differ by orders of magnitude, Leifer says.

And the amount of antibodies each person needs for protection likely varies as well, she says. Research, such as this study of 1,497 fully vaccinated health care workers in Israel, has shown a link between higher levels of antibodies and higher levels of protection. But no one can say exactly how high an antibody level is enough.

Secondly, not all antibodies are the same, Leifer points out. Your body spits out IgM antibodies at the first sign of exposure, but then switches to IgGs, which are better at protecting you from viral diseases like COVID-19. You could have a lot of one type of antibody but fewer of the other, and that could affect your level of protection. But most tests won't tell you the difference and even those that do are only marginally more useful, since there's no known standardized threshold that indicates how protected you are.

Finally, antibodies are by a long shot not the only thing that protects you from getting sick with COVID-19. T cells that attack infected cells also come to your defense when activated by a vaccine or virus. And no current test measures that response. (Plus, there's a whole other arm of the immune system that also helps clear out the virus.)

So a positive test will simply tell you if you've had the vaccine (which shouldn't be news to anyone!) or if you've been exposed to the virus, but not how protected you are. If you haven't gotten the vaccine and you're tempted to take an antibody test to see if you might have been infected and not realized it, that still doesn't mean you'd have any guarantee against reinfection. And regardless of the result, the recommendation from public health agencies is to get vaccinated.

Also, although the Food and Drug Administration has authorized dozens of antibody tests to identify individuals who "may have developed an adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2" and although the tests have become more affordable and available in other countries as well, including France and South Africa the FDA does not recommend them as a means of testing your immunity level.

So is there any potential use for an antibody test?

Yes! In some immunocompromised people, a doctor may advise an antibody test to get a general sense of how their bodies have responded to the vaccine, says Charlotte Baker, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Virginia Tech.

And these tests can be very helpful in studying the population as a whole, Baker and Leifer say. Antibody tests can help "researchers figure out how much of this [virus] is floating around," Baker explains. "And in research we use them to figure out how long antibodies last," she adds, which could help scientists determine the optimal timing and number of booster shots. Studies using antibody tests are going on now.

If you think an antibody test might be useful for personal health reasons, you can contact your doctor, a provider at an urgent care center or your health department, Baker says. Make sure to ask which test your clinic or drugstore offers; then check the FDA website for information on how accurate that specific test is and whether it will give you specific levels or simply a general "positive" or "negative" result.

But if you just really want to know if you've had COVID-19? Maybe someday, when more details are known about what exactly protects you, an antibody test will give you a meaningful result, Baker says. But for now, you're probably out of luck.

Sheila Mulrooney Eldred is a freelance health journalist in Minneapolis. She has written about COVID-19 for many publications, including The New York Times, Kaiser Health News, Medscape and The Washington Post. More at sheilaeldred.pressfolios.com. On Twitter: @milepostmedia.

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Antibody tests are now in drugstores. What can they tell you about COVID? : Goats and Soda - NPR

Will COVID ever end? Three UCHealth experts weigh in on where they think the coronavirus pandemic is headed and why. Photo: Getty Images.

The omicron surge has peaked and appears to be on a double-black-diamond downslope. Three major metro Denver counties dropped mask mandates last week. Statewide hospitalizations from this omicron-driven coronavirus wave peaked at 1,676 in mid-January and stood at 1,227 as of Feb. 2, a number the Colorado COVID-19 Modeling Group expects to fall to below 500 by the end of February.

Vaccination is a big part of the story: 68% of the states residents are fully vaccinated, which is among the top one-third nationally. Those quotation marks are there because, with a coronavirus variant as contagious as omicron, its really about the COVID-19 vaccine booster, and only about 48% of residents have had that third shot.

Perhaps a bigger part of the story is just how many of us have been infected with omicron and how many more of us will soon join them. The aforementioned modeling group estimated that, as of Jan. 25, about 42% of Colorado residents had already gotten omicron. Despite cases having peaked, the ride back down will take about a month, during which that figure will rise to 65% by late February, the group estimates. By midmonth, they estimate, 80% of residents will, through SARS-CoV-2 exposure, vaccination, or both, be immune to the variant. The end of the coronavirus pandemic feels near.

The end of coronavirus felt near after the widespread introduction of vaccines a year ago, too, and then came the delta variant, and then omicron. Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, we have learned not to declare victory over this cursed microscopic foot-massager. So where are we, and where might the coronavirus pandemic be headed? To find out, UCHealth Today talked to three UCHealth and University of Colorado School of Medicine experts: Dr. Jonathan Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health and leader of the Colorado COVID-19 Modeling Group; Dr. David Beckham, a CU School of Medicine virologist and infectious disease specialist; and Ross Kedl, PhD, a CU School of Medicine immunologist and vaccine specialist. All work and do research on the Anschutz Medical Campus.

If go away means permanently gone, I think that the answer is no, Samet said.We already have routinely circulating coronaviruses that contribute to the common cold, and SARS-CoV-2 now has animal reservoirs like influenza does.

Samet added, though, that near-universal immunization with vaccines capable of conferring prolonged immunity could change that.

Its a low risk, Beckham says, and others agree. SARS-CoV-2 was attuned to invading human cells and skirting the human immune systems defenses from the beginning, and its gotten better at it since.

The likelihood of this same virus jumping back from an animal reservoir is pretty low, Beckham said. I think its just going to continue to circulate in people. Its become a people virus.

While there is no particular quantitative definition, Samet says, endemic means that the virus is with us and causing sporadic cases and outbreaks but not the surging wave of an epidemic.

Epidemiologists consider endemic to mean the rate of infection in a population is neither increasing or decreasing over time, Beckham says. You basically have a reproductive rate, or R0, of one, he says. Its just maintaining itself.

While that sounds better than pandemic (which is a border-spanning epidemic), endemic doesnt always equate to benign, he says. Ebola, dengue, and malaria are endemic diseases, and malaria alone infected 241 million people and killed 627,000 in 2020 alone.

Kedl says another difference between an epidemic/pandemic and endemic disease has to do with control.

An epidemic is one that we really have little control over. Its rising and falling at rates that we cant really pull the dial on, he says. With endemic disease, we have some degree of control, or a significant degree, such that all you really expect are limited outbreaks that dont go rampant across the population in an uncontrolled fashion. And that essentially describes the flu, right? It doesnt rage out of control, with the exception of something like the 1918 version.

Another way to phrase that is whether theres a broadly neutralizing immune response that tunes into different coronavirus variants, Beckham says. The science so far shows that while such a cross-reactive immune response happens with the coronavirus, its strength depends on how one was exposed.

Those who recovered from severe disease developed a nice, robust, long-lasting immune response that was protective, he said.

But those who had mild or even moderate disease saw a more variable immune response, meaning that protection dropped off after just a few months.

That variability is the reason why, after infection, we still recommend that people get vaccinated, because the vaccine does result in a long, durable kind of immune response, Beckham says. Natural immunity does not equal protection. Theres a lot of variability there. So, going out, getting COVID, and thinking youre done with it is probably not the way to think about this, because we definitely know people with milder infections dont develop great immune responses, and a vaccine is definitely protective for those people.

That vaccines developed for a now-extinct SARS-CoV-2 variant still work so well is an indication that immunity to one coronavirus strain extends protection to others, Kedl adds. Those infected with omicron may enjoy a strong immune boost, he adds. Its many mutations 30 on the spike protein alone suggest that It went in a number of different potential variant directions at once.

And so whichever direction the virus goes next, we may already be partly down that road to some degree in terms of our immunity, Kedl said. So omicron may have given us some potential advantages, even for the next variants. Time will tell whether thats true or not.

The original doses of the vaccines or a severe infection offer about 50% protection from repeat infection, and vaccines are highly effective at keeping people from getting sick enough to be hospitalized, Beckham says. While omicron is contagious enough to make repeat or breakthrough infections more common remnant antibodies arent bountiful enough in the nose and throat to stop the virus from gaining a foothold the more durable T-cell and memory B cell responses remain robust and appear to be preventing serious disease in those who arent immunocompromised for months and months, even against omicron, especially after boosting.

Kedl says the combination of vaccination and infection is incredibly potent, and not only elevating your level of immunity, but also the breadth of your immunity because its influenced both by the vaccine, which was for the original strain of virus we havent seen for two years, and whatever strain you got infected with, so it broadens your immune response.

Such hybrid immunity (in technical terms, a heterologous prime boost), he says, is a really, really powerful way of elevating your immunity.

Kedl adds that vaccine effectiveness should be measured in terms of preventing severe disease not in preventing infection.

The primary goal behind vaccination is to protect you from the most severe consequences of infection, independent of whether it stops you from getting infected or not, Kedl said. Using this more appropriate definition of efficacy, the vaccines have been amazingly protective, no matter what strain you look at. That said, studies have shown that fully vaccinated and boosted individuals are also highly protected against any infection at all, even from Omicron. Thats just icing on the cake.

Yes, Kedl says.

If you hadnt been boosted and got a breakthrough infection, Id get another shot and kick that immunity up as high as possible, because the virus is not leaving.

I cant speak to forever, but for now, using a respiratory protective device in crowded settings is reasonable, says Samet, who wears an N95 respirator when he travels to protect himself and others.

Beckham says its about calculating risk. Are you inside in close quarters? Are virus levels high? (In Colorado at the moment, thats the case: Samets modeling group estimates that one in 19 people are infected with omicron.) Are you at high risk of severe outcomes due to age, immune status, or vaccination status? Then consider a mask. If not, perhaps not.

Maybe there will be periods where we dont need masks, but I think you have to be flexible with the masking, depending on whats going on in the population, he said.

Kedl agrees with Beckham on the importance of evaluating ones own risk.

Show me where in the data it indicates any serious risk for a vaccinated and boosted person under 65 years of age who is in good health and with no risk factors, Kedl said. Ill save you the time: There isnt any.

But, he adds, if youre a 79-year-old with type 2 diabetes visiting a busy indoor place, masking may be the right choice even if you are vaccinated and boosted.

We have been outsourcing decisions about masking up, Kedl said. Those decisions now need to be attended to by each and every one of us, and I think we need to be considerate with each other as we work through those decisions.

The natural direction for viruses to head is in a more contagious, less virulent direction, Kedl said.

While theres no reason that the next strain couldnt be more virulent (that is, causing more severe disease), the coronavirus doesnt gain anything by mutating in that direction.

These viruses, they honestly dont care if they make you sick, Beckham says. They dont care if youre in the hospital. What theyre trying to do is infect you and then spread within the first five to seven days of that infection. Thats where the selection pressure is.

Samet agrees: Transmissibility and immune escape give advantage to a variant, not virulence, he said.

The coronavirus has followed the natural direction Kedl describes. Delta was twice as transmissible but no less virulent than alpha; omicron is twice as transmissible and less virulent than delta; and the BA.2 omicron subvariant is perhaps half again as transmissible as omicron but does not appear to cause more severe disease.

Its always possible, of course, to spin out a really dangerous variant. Its just not very likely, Kedl says. The less virulent they are, and the more contagious they are, the more likely they are to spread and to take over. And as a result, the immunity you develop against those are likely to make you resistant to a more virulent and/or less contagious strain. Those will just lose based on math.

The need for repeated vaccination will depend on how long-lasting protection against serious disease lasts, Beckham says.

As the coronavirus becomes endemic, severe disease not just case counts becomes the key metric.

It may just be that youre really well protected against severe disease and we never need another booster, Beckham said. We just dont have that data yet.

Kedls best guess is that SARS-CoV-2 will turn into another of the four current seasonal coronaviruses that cause common colds, and that vaccination will be along the lines of what we do for seasonal flu. Vaccination approaches will also depend on the nature of variants and the illnesses they cause.

The rate of variant generation is really, in my view, what will guide the frequency of boosting from here on out, Kedl said. My bet is that, for the next 10 years, every couple of years, therell be a new variant booster that you can get. And so, I would think, you would couple that with your flu vaccine, and youre good to go.

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Omicron has peaked. Will the COVID-19 pandemic ever end? - UCHealth

Washington, DC The Districts reported data for February 2, 2022 includes191new confirmed positive coronavirus (COVID-19) cases, bringing the Districts overall confirmed positive case total to 131,284.The District also reports 32new probable tests, bringing the overall positive probable tests since October 15, 2021to 9,055.

The District reported that one additional resident lost his life due toCOVID-19.

Tragically, 1,291 District residents have lost their lives due toCOVID-19.

Visit coronavirus.dc.gov/data for interactive data dashboards or to download COVID-19 data.

Below is the Districts current Key Metrics Summary Table.

Below is the Districts aggregated total of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, sorted by age and gender.

Patient Gender

Total Confirmed Positive Cases

%

Female

%

Male

%

Unknown

%

All

131,284*

100

69,703

100

59,993

100

1,588

100

Unknown

272

<1

96

<1

139

<1

37

2

0-18

25,679

20

12,803

18

12,460

21

416

26

19-30

36,726

28

21,082

30

15,240

25

404

26

31-40

26,451

20

13,918

20

12,186

20

347

22

41-50

15,575

12

7,989

12

7,387

12

199

13

51-60

12,342

9

6,131

9

6,110

10

101

6

61-70

8,160

6

4,170

6

3,944

7

46

3

71-80

3,835

3

2,092

3

1,722

3

21

Continued here:

Coronavirus Data for February 2, 2022 | mayormb - Executive Office of the Mayor

In November 2020, Covid-19 cases in Iowa surged to 32,081 cases in a single week at the time, a record high. And that was only among the humans. As scientists would learn, an epidemic was also beginning to rage among the states many white-tailed deer.

A shockingly high number of deer 80 out of 97 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, in a seven-week survey that followed the Iowa surge. We were gobsmacked, completely bowled over, says Vivek Kapur, a Penn State veterinary microbiologist who recently, with co-authors, published an analysis of the shadow deer epidemic in PNAS. We had no clue.

Its not just in Iowa. Evidence is mounting that deer infections have been widespread across the country. A separate study in Nature found infections in a third of deer surveyed in Ohio, and the USDA has reported coronavirus antibodies in Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania deer. Tens of millions of deer live across the United States. Its unknown how many total have been infected, but these studies suggest the numbers are high.

The deer themselves dont appear to get very sick from the virus lab studies show them developing asymptomatic infections when exposed but thats not the top concern here. Veterinary infectious disease experts are describing these outbreaks in deer as a possible Pandoras box and now that its open, theres a small but real chance it could lead to future variants that infect humans, or spread to other wildlife that could get sick.

Before starting the study, Kapur and his colleagues thought that deer would be highly unlikely to test positive for Covid-19. We thought it would be a long shot, Kapur says, to find even one positive test in a survey of deer that were killed by hunters or road accidents.

Theres only a limited window of time when a deers infection would show up on a PCR test before it clears their system. Thats what made the results so shocking: Our studies suggest that there were more deer, in terms of percentage of their population, than humans infected with this virus.

Despite the potential risks to animals and humans, the future of the coronavirus in animals may be largely outside of our control. We cant even control it in people, Sarah Olson, an epidemiologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, says. Theres hardly a chance were going to be able to control it in the wild. It creates a hugely chaotic space. And we dont have a lot of eyes on that space.

How the virus spreads among wildlife is a black box that scientists try to peer into through the tiniest of pinpricks. But what they do know is that when the coronavirus establishes itself in wildlife, it creates for itself a sort of insurance policy. We may be able to get the pandemic among humans under control, but the virus is likely to lurk in other species, making it that much harder to monitor and defeat.

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 in wildlife is not the most pressing issue of the pandemic right now. Humans are still catching the virus from each other and dying from it. Still, these wildlife risks, if they are realized, could have serious consequences. Scientists want to be vigilant about dangers that could emerge from the wilderness.

The fact that SARS-CoV-2 can infect animals is not new. The virus probably originated in an animal species and then jumped to humans, a process that scientists call spillover. Since the pandemic began, there have been documented cases of many animals getting the virus, with various degrees of illness.

Infections have turned up in cats, dogs, lions, tigers, pumas, ferrets, mink, certain rodents, snow leopards, and others. The CDC even has guidelines to protect pets from Covid-19. When a virus jumps from animals to humans and then back to animals, scientists call that spillback.

Most of these infections in animals appeared to be self-contained. An infected house cat presumably stays in the house when infected it doesnt start a chain of transmission. They were all isolated cases, Suresh Kuchipudi, a Penn State infectious disease researcher who collaborated with Kapur, says of known cases in animals.

The deer infections were different. This is first time that a completely free-living animal species in the wild has been found to be infected, and that infection is widespread, Kuchipudi says.

How the deer got infected in the first place remains a mystery, but researchers believe the outbreak came from humans. The virus circulating in the deer had similar genetic sequences to the virus circulating in humans at the time that they got it.

I dont believe that theres much direct human-to-deer interaction, says Andrew Bowman, a professor of veterinary preventive medicine at the Ohio State University. He co-authored a separate study of infections in deer in Ohio, which also found widespread infection. Its not like deer and people are hanging out in bars and restaurants together. Instead, Bowman suspects the deer might be picking it up from some source of environmental contamination, like garbage or sewage.

Whatever happened to start the deer outbreaks, it appears to have happened many times. The genetic analysis in the PNAS paper finds evidence of several separate jumps from humans into animals. Further research needs to be done to identify the exact pathway, and hopefully to prevent the next leap.

Once the virus jumps into the deer, they are also spreading it to each other, the studies find. There was not just human-to-deer spillover, but there was also deer-to-deer transmission, as evidenced by genomic changes that would confirm that, Kuchipudi says.

There are two main reasons to be concerned about deer that spread the virus among themselves.

As viruses copy themselves in the human body, they slowly acquire genetic changes, which can lead to variants such as alpha and delta. Now imagine that a similar parallel trajectory was also happening in some animal populations, Kuchipudi says. When the virus becomes established in a new species, the evolution of the virus becomes twice as complicated.

This is the viruss so-called insurance policy. In theory, its possible that long after the pandemic dies down in humans maybe even 10 years from now deer could reinfect humans with a new variant that our immune system isnt as good at fighting off. (Theres even some speculation that the omicron variant emerged from an animal population.)

Then it comes back, and were fighting a whole new battle, Olson says.

So far, the scientists dont have any indication that a new dangerous variant is brewing within deer. Also reassuring: Right now, we dont have any evidence that any of these animals are transmitting back to people, says Angela Bosco-Lauth, who studies infectious disease and veterinary medicine at Colorado State University. I dont really see that as much of a threat.

But if a person were to catch the virus from an animal, it would be hard to prove it, Bosco-Lauth says. Scientists have only tested several hundred of the roughly 25 million deer in the United States, and many other species havent been studied.

If you had a group of animals that all had the same virus, that had the same genetic sequence, and then you found people downstream from that who had interacted with those animals and had the same sequence as the animal, that, to me, would be pretty solid proof that thats where it came from, she says. But that solid proof would be really hard to get. Scientists just dont do a lot of testing in animals.

The next concern is that the outbreak may not stop at the deer. Olson says the deer could potentially spread the virus to other animals.

Lets say a deer infected with the coronavirus comes into contact with other mammals for example, a predator like a mountain lion that kills a deer, or a scavenger like an ermine that nibbles away at a deers carcass. Olson says shes not aware of any documented cases of SARS-CoV-2 spreading from one species remains to a new species. But she says its plausible.

If those other species pick up the virus and start an outbreak among their kind, many different species could perhaps end up with Covid-19. Then you can think about almost like a complex network of animals passing the virus back and forth, right? Kuchipudi says. What is unsettling is that we have absolutely no clue if its happening or not.

All of this is hypothetical. But if it were to happen, we wouldnt necessarily find out. Contact tracing is hard enough in humans its even more daunting when you consider the size and scope of the animal kingdom. We have to approach this with humility, Kuchipudi says.

While researchers dont have evidence that Covid-19 is killing deer, it can be lethal for mustelids think weasels, mink, and ferrets and endangered snow leopards. Considering how much the coronavirus has evolved in people, it could potentially evolve in a way that hurts some animals. Theres conservation threats there, Olson says.

The pandemic in humans is much more urgent than Covid-19 in animals. All of the scientists I spoke to agreed about that. The coronavirus is still killing thousands of people every day, and thats the problem that should get the bulk of our attention and resources.

Humans are doing such a great job at spreading Covid between each other, Bosco-Lauth says. I dont particularly worry about any animals maintaining this pandemic I think were going to do that just fine on our own.

On the other hand, the scientists say they want more visibility into whats happening in the animal world. We need wildlife surveillance, Olson says, meaning more testing of animals for coronavirus antibodies a sign they have been exposed or active infections. We just dont have the tools to begin to understand the system, to even start mapping whats going to happen here, because our ability to see it is so opaque right now.

Scientists still have a lot to learn about how viruses jump between species, Olson says, and what factors make these jumps more or less likely.

Could scientists vaccinate deer or other wildlife? Not really. Theres nothing to be done, Olson says. While some vaccines are formulated for animals and routinely administered to pets, we dont know enough about the immune system of the deer to know how it would respond to vaccines made for humans. Then come the logistical problems: Inoculations would need to be mixed with bait somehow, delivered via dart, or administered directly to captured animals. To top it off, one dose might not be enough.

How are you going to capture the same animal four times? Olson says. Theres just no toolbox for this.

For all these reasons, Covid-19 outbreaks in animals are not situations we can plausibly control. Rather, theyre something to monitor in case they start to look like pressing problems.

We have been focusing predominantly on humans because there is a global pandemic going, Kuchipudi says. But at the same time, we cant be ignoring this problem. The danger is then if we dont address it, we could be completely blindsided and caught by surprise when a new variant emerges.

The course of the pandemic continues to be impossible to predict, even in humans. The addition of it spreading in wildlife just makes it even harder. If theres a lesson here, its this: This virus never ceases to surprise us, Kapur says.

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Covid-19 in animals: Coronavirus spillover to deer could affect humans - Vox.com

Governor Reynoldssignedthefinalextension of the states Public Health DisasterEmergencyProclamationtoday,announcingitwill expire at 11:59 p.m. onTuesday,February15,2022.The signed proclamation can be foundhere.

The proclamation was firstissuedin accordance with the Governors executive authorityonMarch17, 2020,toenable certain public health mitigation measures duringthestates response to the COVID-19 pandemic.Overtime, it includedhundreds ofprovisionsassembledin the midst of an emergency to quickly addressapandemicthenationknew little about. Today, the remaining16provisionsfocusprimarilyon lingering workforce issues exacerbated by the pandemic that are best addressed outside of emergency executive powers.

The State of Iowa is working with stakeholders in an effort to address pervasiveworkforceissues through more permanent solutions like legislation, rule changes, and grant programs.

We cannot continue tosuspend duly enacted laws andtreatCOVID-19asa public health emergencyindefinitely.After two years,its no longer feasible or necessary. The flu and other infectious illnesses are part of our everyday lives,and coronavirus can be managed similarly, stated Gov. Reynolds. Stateagencieswill nowmanage COVID-19 as part of normal daily business, andreallocateresources that have beensolelydedicated to the response effort toserve other important needsforIowans.

Theexpiration of Iowas Public Health DisasterEmergencyProclamation willresult inoperational changes related to the COVID-19 response.The most noticeable change will be how data is reported publicly.The statestwoCOVID-19 websites, coronavirus.iowa.govand vaccinateiowa.gov,will be decommissionedon February 16, 2022, but information will remain accessible onlinethroughotherstate and federal resources.

While our COVID-19 reporting will look different, Iowans should rest assured that the state health department will continue to review and analyze COVID-19 and other public health data daily, just as we always have, stated Kelly Garcia, director of the Iowa Department of Public Health(IDPH).The new format willincludedata points that Iowans areused to seeing, but moves us closer to existing reporting standards for other respiratory viruses. This new phase also assures that our teams, who have been deeply committed to the COVID-19 response, can return to their pre-pandemic responsibilities, andrefocuson areaswhere the pandemic has taken a hard toll.

IDPHwillreportrelevantCOVID-19 informationweekly on its website,similar to howflu activityis reported.Data willincludepositive testssince March 2020and in the last seven days, cases by county,anepidemiologic curve, variants by weekand deaths since March 2020. Vaccine information, including total series and boosters completed, demographics for fully vaccinated Iowans,and vaccination by county, will also be reported.Aligningthe agencysreporting processes will create greater efficiency for its staffwhilecontinuing toprovideimportantinformationto Iowans.Thenew reportwill be availablestarting February 16 atidph.iowa.gov.

The State of Iowa anditshealth care providers willalsocontinue to reportCOVID-19dataas requiredbythe Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention (CDC).The CDCs COVID Data Trackerreports state-level data for cases, deaths, testing, vaccination and more. The site is available at coronavirus.gov orcovid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker.

The State Hygienic Labwill continue to operate the Test Iowa at Home program. Astesting supply increases andmore options for self-testing become available, the state willreassessthe needfor the program.For more information or to request an at-home test, visit testiowa.com.

States are not required to have adisaster proclamation in place tobe eligible forfederal coronavirus-relatedfundingor resources. Iowa will continue to receive vaccineand therapeuticallocations as normal after theproclamation expires.

Nearlyhalfof U.S.states have already discontinued their public health proclamations, and several more are set to expire in February if they arent renewed.

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Gov. Reynolds announces expiration of Public Health Proclamation, changes to COVID-19 data reporting | Office of the Governor of Iowa - Governor Kim...

With the brutal omicron wave rapidly loosening its grip, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. are falling in 49 of 50 states, even as the nation's death toll closes in on another bleak round number: 900,000.

The number of lives lost to the pandemic in the U.S. stood at over 897,000 as of midday Friday, with deaths running at an average of more than 2,400 a day, back up to where they were last winter, when the vaccine drive was still getting started.

New cases per day have tanked by almost a half-million nationwide since mid-January, the curve trending downward in every state but Maine. And the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 has fallen 15% over that period to about 124,000.

Similarly, an early-warning program that looks for the virus in sewage found that COVID-19 infections are declining in the majority of participating U.S. communities, according to data posted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Deaths are still on the rise in at least 35 states, reflecting the lag time between when victims become infected and when they succumb.

But the trends are giving public health officials hope that the worst of omicron is coming to an end, though they caution that things could still go bad again and dangerous new variants could emerge.

Los Angeles County may end outdoor mask requirements in a few weeks, Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said Thursday. But that is unlikely to happen before the Feb. 13 Super Bowl, which will draw as many as 100,000 people to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Ferrer said COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in California's biggest county are falling, and deaths may start to drop as well.

"Post-surge does not imply that the pandemic is over or that transmission is low, or that there will not be unpredictable waves of surges in the future," she warned.

Arizona has also seen its daily case and hospitalization numbers decline, though deaths are still on the rise, climbing from average of about 61 a day last week to almost 79 as of Tuesday.

"We have reason to be hopeful, but we are by no means out of the woods," Elizabeth Jacobs, a University of Arizona professor of epidemiology, said Thursday on Twitter.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said she is calling an end to the state's coronavirus public health emergency, a move that will limit the release of health data. The step reflects her long-held belief that it is time to get past pandemic restrictions and move toward the point when COVID-19 becomes, like the flu, a manageable part of everyday life.

In Washington state, the Legislature is allowing double the number of senators on the chamber floor starting Monday.

Overall, new cases in the U.S. have plummeted from a record-obliterating average of more than 800,000 a day in mid-January to about 357,000.

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Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Paul Davenport in Phoenix; Robert Jablon in Los Angeles; Michael Stobbe in New York; and Michelle Monroe in Olympia, Washington, contributed to this report.

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COVID-19 falling in 49 of 50 states as deaths near 900,000 - WPTV.com

Twenty-threemore Mainers have died and another 1,414coronavirus cases reported across the state, Maine health officials said Friday.

Fridays report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 179,915,according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Thats up from 178,501 on Thursday.

Of those, 132,560have been confirmed positive, while 47.355were classified as probable cases, the Maine CDC reported.

Eight women and 19 men have succumbed to the virus, bringing the statewide death toll to 1,800.

Three were from Androscoggin County, one from Aroostook County, three from Cumberland County, one from Hancock County, three from Kennebec County, one from Lincoln County, three from Oxford County, three from Penobscot County, one from Piscataquis County, one from Somerset County, one from Waldo County and two from York County.

Of those, seven were 80 or older, four were in their 70s, six in their 60s, five in their 50s and one in their 20s.

The number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in the past 14 days statewide is 14,224. This is an estimation of the current number of active cases in the state, as the Maine CDC is no longer tracking recoveries for all patients. Thats up from 14,177 on Thursday.

The new case rate statewide Friday was 10.56 cases per 10,000 residents, and the total case rate statewide was 1,344.25.

The most cases have been detected in Mainers younger than 20, while Mainers over 80 years old account for the largest portion of deaths. More cases have been recorded in women and more deaths in men.

So far, 4,000 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. Of those, 355 are currently hospitalized, with 82 in critical care and 36 on a ventilator. Overall, 47 out of 376 critical care beds and 252 out of 328 ventilators are available.

The total statewide hospitalization rate on Friday was 29.89 patients per 10,000 residents.

Cases have been reported in Androscoggin (18,097), Aroostook (8,561), Cumberland (37,524), Franklin (4,433), Hancock (5,282), Kennebec (17,289), Knox (4,267), Lincoln (3,795), Oxford (8,838), Penobscot (20,231), Piscataquis (2,265), Sagadahoc (3,743), Somerset (7,583), Waldo (4,427), Washington (3,161) and York (30,418) counties. Information about where an additional case was reported wasnt immediately available.

An additional 1,498 vaccine doses were administered in the previous 24 hours. As of Friday, 978,462 Mainers are fully vaccinated, or about 76.4 percent of eligible Mainers, according to the Maine CDC.

As of Friday morning, the coronavirus had sickened 756,030,403 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 897,885 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.

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23 more Mainers have died and another 1,414 coronavirus cases reported across the state - Bangor Daily News

Omicron study: Longest living variant on skin and plastic

According to researchers' report on bioRxiv.org, the omicron variant's high "environmental stability" might have helped it spread so rapidly.

STAFF VIDEO, USA TODAY

FALL RIVER The devastating fourth wave of COVID spread seems to have peaked, as weekly case numbers fell by half, dropping for the third week in a row.

According to the state Department of Public Health, another 668 positive cases of the highly contagious coronavirus were reported in Fall River last week, an average of about 94 new cases per day.

Last week,1,285 new cases were reported,an average of 183 cases per day.

This still leaves average daily cases at shockingly high levels, above where cases were last year at this time but is a relief from the astronomical levels seen in January. This past weeks case total is about half of last weeks total, and less than a third of the weekly total of three weeks ago, when 2,179 people in Fall River caught the virus in a single week.

A 'terrible disruption': COVID delays Fall River's old Bedford Street police station rehab

Since the start of the pandemic, Fall River has logged almost 29,000 cases of the virus.

The citys COVID test positivity rate also continued to fall, with 19.12% of COVID tests turning out positive in the past two weeks. The statewide average is just over 10%.

Communities in Greater Fall River also saw their COVID weekly case totals cut in half, with improvements in their test positivity rates also dropping slightly:

Fall River fire chief retires: 'My love of this department and devotion have not waned'

The statistics regarding positive cases and tests only reflect positive cases officially reported to health care centers and officials; they do not count positive results of at-home rapid tests. It also doesnt take into account people who may be positive but are asymptomatic and dont get tested at all.

COVID affects people differently. Most people who are diagnosed with COVID will recover from symptoms that include cough, sore throat, loss of taste or smell, nausea, high fever and body aches; how long the symptoms last varies from person to person. Some cases are mild. In others, the symptoms can be severe, sometimes requiring hospitalization, and those symptoms can linger for months. COVID can be fatal, and is most threatening to people such as the elderly and those who are medically vulnerable, but not exclusively.

Life in Berlin: Ex-mayor Jasiel Correia may be headed to prison in New Hampshire. What is it like there?

An already daunting fourth wave of cases that began in November2021 crested twice as high first in December as the omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus began to appear locally, and then twice as high as that in January when omicron began surging, spreading to thousands of people.

Its estimated that over 7,000 people in Fall River were sickened by COVID-19 in January alone accounting for one in four cases of the illness over the entire pandemic.

Fact check: Unvaccinated are more likely to get omicron than fully vaccinated and boosted people

Omicron is considered the likely cause, a variant of COVID that scientists have described as more easily spread, quicker to cause symptoms, and can more easily break through to infect those who are vaccinated although medical experts note that vaccination still provides substantial protection against becoming severely ill if infected.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that 99.9% of all current COVID cases are the omicron variant. But top medical officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert, say omicron's spread could peak by mid-February.

Dan Medeiros can be reached at dmedeiros@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.

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Fall River's weekly COVID cases plummet by half. Could the omicron surge have peaked? - Fall River Herald News