Category: Corona Virus

Situation Analysis

The average number of new COVID-19 cases reported per day only increased by 6.7% in the past 7 days compared to the previous week. Although average case numbers are increasing week on week, the steep rise in cases seen in other countries due to the importation of the omicron COVID-19 variant has not been seen in Thailand. This is likely due to previously introduced public health and social measures, strong adherence to personal protective measures by members of the public and increasing vaccination rates.

Bangkok continues to report the highest daily number of COVID cases. However, the average number of new COVID-19 cases reported per day for Bangkok in the past week (1,354) is only 3% higher than the week prior (1314).

The average daily number of all currently active COVID-19 cases (83,624) over the last seven days increased by only 1% compared to the previous week. This number reflects the overall burden of COVID19 cases for the healthcare delivery system since even people isolating at home are being actively monitored by healthcare workers An average of 19 daily deaths were reported in the past week, a 21% increase compared to the average number for the previous week (15).

The average daily number of severe COVID-19 cases over the past seven days (542) represents a 0.7% decrease over the average number reported for the previous week (546). The average daily number of ventilated COVID-19 cases over the past seven days (105) represents a 9.5% decrease over the average number reported for the previous week (116).

Although Thailand is not experiencing the big upsurge in laboratory-confirmed (PCR positive) cases being seen in other countries, the widespread use of rapid antigen tests (including those available over the counter) makes it difficult to accurately monitor the situation. However, the decrease in the number of severe and ventilated cases in hospitals is very encouraging and may reflect the lower levels of illness believed to be associated with omicron infection COVID-19 vaccination rates in Thailand are very likely to be significantly reducing levels of severe illness and deaths caused by circulating COVID-19 strains. High vaccination rates also help to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. However, vaccination rates are still low in some provinces and in some important risk groups.

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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) WHO Thailand Situation Report 221 - 2 February 2022 - Thailand - ReliefWeb

Eightmore Mainers have died and another 1,340coronavirus cases reported across the state, Maine health officials said Wednesday.

Wednesdays report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 177,099,according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Thats up from 175,359 on Tuesday.

Of those, 130,471have been confirmed positive, while 46,628were classified as probable cases, the Maine CDC reported.

Two men and six women have succumbed to the virus, bringing the statewide death toll to 1,759.

Three were from Cumberland County, one from Franklin County, one from Penobscot County, two from Somerset County and one from York County.

Of those, three were 80 or older, three were in their 70s, one in their 60s and one in their 50s.

The number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in the past 14 days statewide is 14,159. 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 down from 14,364 on Tuesday.

The new case rate statewide Wednesday was 10.01 cases per 10,000 residents, and the total case rate statewide was 1,323.21.

Maines seven-day average for new coronavirus cases is 1,015.4, down from 1,041.6 the day before, down from 1,028.9 a week ago and up from 706.4 a month ago.

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, 3,949Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. Of those, 344 are currently hospitalized, with 83 in critical care and 38 on a ventilator. Overall, 57 out of 376 critical care beds and 245 out of 322 ventilators are available.

The total statewide hospitalization rate on Wednesday was 29.51 patients per 10,000 residents.

Cases have been reported in Androscoggin (17,847), Aroostook (8,475), Cumberland (36,607), Franklin (4,396), Hancock (5,174), Kennebec (17,044), Knox (4,223), Lincoln (3,720), Oxford (8,758), Penobscot (19,959), Piscataquis (2,242), Sagadahoc (3,700), Somerset (7,472), Waldo (4,384), Washington (3,128) and York (19,969) counties. Information about where an additional case was reported wasnt immediately available.

An additional 1,105 vaccine doses were administered in the previous 24 hours. As of Wednesday, 977,044 Mainers are fully vaccinated, or about 76.3 percent of eligible Mainers, according to the Maine CDC.

As of Wednesday morning, the coronavirus had sickened 75,355,265 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 890,939 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.

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8 more Mainers have died and another 1,340 coronavirus cases reported across the state - Bangor Daily News

Two years into the pandemic, the coronavirus is killing Americans at far higher rates than people in other wealthy nations, a sobering distinction to bear as the country charts a course through the next stages of the pandemic.

Cumulative deaths

throughout the pandemic

Cumulative deaths

during the Omicron wave

Cumulative deaths throughout the pandemic

Cumulative deaths during the Omicron wave

Cumulative deaths

throughout the pandemic

Cumulative deaths

during the Omicron wave

The ballooning death toll has defied the hopes of many Americans that the less severe Omicron variant would spare the United States the pain of past waves. Deaths have now surpassed the worst days of the autumn surge of the Delta variant, and are more than two-thirds as high as the record tolls of last winter, when vaccines were largely unavailable.

With American lawmakers desperate to turn the page on the pandemic, as some European leaders have already begun to, the number of dead has clouded a sense of optimism, even as Omicron cases recede. And it has laid bare weaknesses in the countrys response, scientists said.

Death rates are so high in the States eye-wateringly high, said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who has supported loosening coronavirus rules in parts of Britain. The United States is lagging.

Some of the reasons for Americas difficulties are well known. Despite having one of the worlds most powerful arsenals of vaccines, the country has failed to vaccinate as many people as other large, wealthy nations. Crucially, vaccination rates in older people also lag behind certain European nations.

The United States has fallen even further behind in administering booster shots, leaving large numbers of vulnerable people with fading protection as Omicron sweeps across the country.

Other large,

high-income

countries

Share of population

fully vaccinated

Share of population

with booster dose

Other large,

high-income

countries

Share of population fully vaccinated

Share of population with booster dose

Share of population

fully vaccinated

Other large,

high-income

countries

Share of population

with booster dose

The resulting American death toll has set the country apart and by wider margins than has been broadly recognized. Since Dec. 1, when health officials announced the first Omicron case in the United States, the share of Americans who have been killed by the coronavirus is at least 63 percent higher than in any of these other large, wealthy nations, according to a New York Times analysis of mortality figures.

In recent months, the United States passed Britain and Belgium to have, among rich nations, the largest share of its population to have died from Covid over the entire pandemic.

For all the encouragement that American health leaders drew from other countries success in withstanding the Omicron surge, the outcomes in the U.S. have been markedly different. Hospital admissions in the U.S. swelled to much higher rates than in Western Europe, leaving some states struggling to provide care. Americans are now dying from Covid at nearly double the daily rate of Britons and four times the rate of Germans.

The only large European countries to exceed Americas Covid death rates this winter have been Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Greece and the Czech Republic, poorer nations where the best Covid treatments are relatively scarce.

The U.S. stands out as having a relatively high fatality rate, said Joseph Dieleman, an associate professor at the University of Washington who has compared Covid outcomes globally. Theres been more loss than anyone wanted or anticipated.

As deadly as the Omicron wave has been, the situation in the United States is far better than it would have been without vaccines. The Omicron variant also causes less serious illness than Delta, even though it has led to staggering case numbers. Together, vaccines and the less lethal nature of Omicron infections have significantly reduced the share of people with Covid who are being hospitalized and dying during this wave.

In Western Europe, those factors have resulted in much more manageable waves. Deaths in Britain, for example, are one-fifth of last winters peak, and hospital admissions are roughly half as high.

But not so in the United States. Record numbers of Americans with the highly contagious variant have filled up hospitals in recent weeks and the average death toll is still around 2,500 a day.

Chief among the reasons is the countrys faltering effort to vaccinate its most vulnerable people at the levels achieved by more successful European countries.

Twelve percent of Americans 65 and over have not received either two shots of a Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or one Johnson & Johnson shot, which the C.D.C. considers fully vaccinated, according to the agencys statistics. (Inconsistencies in C.D.C. counts make it difficult to know the precise figure.)

And 43 percent of people 65 and over have not received a booster shot. Even among the fully vaccinated, the lack of a booster leaves tens of millions with waning protection, some of them many months past the peak levels of immunity afforded by their second shots.

In England, by contrast, only 4 percent of people 65 and over have not been fully vaccinated and only 9 percent do not have a booster shot.

Its not just vaccination its the recency of vaccines, its whether or not people have been boosted, and also whether or not people have been infected in the past, said Lauren Ancel Meyers, the director of the University of Texas at Austins Covid-19 modeling consortium.

Unvaccinated people make up a majority of hospitalized patients. But older people without booster shots also sometimes struggle to shake off the virus, said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University, leaving them in need of extra oxygen or hospital stays.

In the United States, cases this winter first surged in more heavily vaccinated states in the Northeast before moving to less-protected states, where scientists said they worried that Omicron could cause especially high death tolls. Surveys suggest that the poorest Americans are the likeliest to remain unvaccinated, putting them at greater risk of dying from Covid.

Americas Omicron wave has also compounded the effects of a Delta surge that had already sent Covid deaths climbing by early December, putting the United States in a more precarious position than many European countries. Even in recent weeks, some American deaths likely resulted from lengthy illnesses caused by Delta.

But Omicron infections had edged aside Delta by late December in the United States, and epidemiologists said that the new variant was most likely responsible for a majority of Covid deaths in the U.S. today.

These are probably Omicron deaths, said Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at a branch of the C.D.C. And the increases were seeing are probably in Omicron deaths.

Still, the United States problems started well before Omicron, scientists said. Americans began dying from Covid at higher rates than people in western European countries starting in the summer, after the United States had fallen behind on vaccinations. During the Delta surge in the fall, Americans were dying from Covid at triple the rate of Britons.

By tracking death certificates that list Covid as a cause of death or as a contributing factor, Dr. Anderson said, the C.D.C. is able to ensure that it is counting only those people who died from Covid and not those who might have incidentally tested positive before dying for unrelated reasons.

It is too early to judge how much worse the United States will fare during this wave. But some scientists said there were hopeful signs that the gap between the United States and other wealthy countries had begun to narrow.

As Delta and now Omicron have hammered the United States, they said, so many people have become sick that those who survived are emerging with a certain amount of immunity from their past infections.

Although it is not clear how strong or long-lasting that immunity will be, especially from Omicron, Americans may slowly be developing the protection from past bouts with Covid that other countries generated through vaccinations at the cost, scientists said, of many thousands of American lives.

Weve finally started getting to a stage where most of the population has been exposed either to a vaccine or the virus multiple times by now, said Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Referring to American and European death rates, he continued, I think were now likely to start seeing things be more synchronized going forward.

Still, the United States faces certain steep disadvantages, ones that experts worry could cause problems during future Covid waves, and even the next pandemic. Many Americans have health problems like obesity and diabetes that increase the risk of severe Covid.

Share of population not fully vaccinated

Share of population age 65 and older

Share of adult population with obesity

Share of population not fully vaccinated

Share of population age 65 and older

Share of adult population with obesity

More Americans have also come to express distrust of the government, and of each other in recent decades, making them less inclined to follow public health precautions like getting vaccinated or reducing their contacts during surges, said Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A study published in the scientific journal The Lancet on Tuesday by Mr. Bollyky and Dr. Dieleman of the University of Washington found that a given countrys level of distrust had strong associations with its coronavirus infection rate.

What our study suggests is that when you have a novel contagious virus, Mr. Bollyky said, the best way for the government to protect its citizens is to convince its citizens to protect themselves.

While infection levels remain high in many states, scientists said that some deaths could still be averted by people taking precautions around older and more vulnerable Americans, like testing themselves and wearing masks. The toll from future waves will depend on what other variants emerge, scientists said, as well as what level of death Americans decide is tolerable.

Weve normalized a very high death toll in the U.S., said Anne Sosin, who studies health equity at Dartmouth. If we want to declare the end of the pandemic right now, what were doing is normalizing a very high rate of death.

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U.S. Has Far Higher Covid Death Rate Than Other Wealthy Countries - The New York Times

Total vaccine doses distributed: 667,094,365

Patients who've received the first dose: 250,184,240

Patients whove received the second dose: 211,954,555

% of population fully vaccinated: 63.8%

% of infections tied to the Omicron Variant: 99.9%

% of infections tied to the Delta Variant: 0.1%

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

As COVID-19 vaccination rates increased and COVID-19 cases began to decrease across New York, the need for a daily update on the states positive case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths started to feel unnecessary earlier this year.

However, as COVID-19 infections begin to increase again and omicron, a new coronavirus variant, continues to spread, keeping track of the states coronavirus numbers feels pertinent once again.

The state and city government are continuing to provide data that can help put the past, present and future of the pandemic in context. Were aggregating some key numbers here, with the caveat that state data on both COVID-19 cases and vaccinations has been called into question, both under the administration of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and under Gov. Kathy Hochul.

These numbers were last updated on Feb. 2.

New York state

66,391 The number of New York residents who have died after testing positive for the coronavirus, as reported to the CDC on Feb. 1. There were 136 deaths on Feb. 1.

9,342 Number of positive tests for the coronavirus reported on Feb. 1. There were 8,781, 5,115 and 7,119 positive tests on the three previous days.

6,628 The number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus, as reported on Feb. 1. At the height of the first wave on April 12, 2020, there were 18,825 people hospitalized with COVID-19.

1,094 The number of patients in intensive care units, as reported on Feb 1. At the height of the first wave on April 13, 2020, there were 5,225 people in intensive care units.

16,206,765 Total number of people whove received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose in New York state, as reported on Feb. 1.

14,405,423 Total number of people whove received two doses in New York state, as reported on Feb. 1.

New York City

26,894 Number of confirmed coronavirus deaths of New York City residents according to the state, as reported on Feb. 1. The states figure includes only deaths that occur in health care facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes. The city reported 33,087 confirmed deaths and 5,482 probable deaths (where there was no positive test, but symptoms were consistent with COVID-19) as of Feb. 2. City data has a three-day lag.

3,090 The seven-day average of daily positive tests reported on Feb. 2 according to the city.

7,042,356 Total number of New York City residents whove received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose in New York City, as reported on Feb. 2.

6,262,813 Total number of New York City residents whove received two doses in New York City, as reported on Feb. 2.

Elsewhere

888,784 The number of deaths from the coronavirus across the United States, as of Feb. 2, according to the CDC.

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The coronavirus in New York, by the numbers - City & State

LONDON A gaggle of masked nurses and doctors in blue paper gowns shuffled from one coronavirus patient to the next offering lifesaving care. Some patients had lingered for days or weeks. Others counted their stays in months.

If there was an end in sight to two years of pandemic, health care workers lamented, youd hardly know it here.

We live in this parallel universe, said Lucy Jenkins, who leads the team of critical care nurses at Homerton University Hospital in East London, comparing what health care workers on the frontline were experiencing with what the general public sees.

Political leaders have moved onto heralding the mild symptoms of the Omicron variant and declaring the pandemic all but over. The British government lifted nearly all coronavirus restrictions in mid-January as infection and hospitalization rates dropped steeply compared with early last year and as vaccines slashed the number of people falling seriously ill.

But for doctors and nurses a return to a normal rhythm of work is still a long way off. While Homertons intensive care units are no longer overflowing, as they were early last year, like many in England, they still face a steady influx of coronavirus patients.

So many people were infected by the coronavirus this winter a record of around 186,000 new daily cases in the first week of January that even if fewer of them ended up gravely ill, hospitals have remained under intense pressure.

In intensive care units like Homertons, which treat the most seriously ill, nearly all of those being tended are unvaccinated.

Since the start of the pandemic, the hospital has treated more than 2,000 coronavirus patients. Nearly 500 died from Covid, according to hospital data. The pandemic has by now engendered a lasting change in the way its intensive care unit, and many others in the country, work. We visited Homerton on Jan. 21.

10:30 a.m.: Morning ward rounds.

A team of doctors and nurses made their way around the escalation ward of the intensive care unit, set aside for treating coronavirus patients. They hover over charts and compare notes on the five patients. Each needs near constant care.

Four of them are hooked up to ventilators, and the rhythmic beeping of the machines hums steadily in the background.

This area was set up at the height of the pandemic to treat the most critically ill Covid patients. The space was originally a reception area for surgery and was never intended to be used for this specialized care. But since the spring of 2020, it has never closed.

Dr. Susan Jain, a specialist in anesthesia and intensive therapy, and a lead doctor, said it was like trying to set up a specialist unit in a living room. The area wasnt fit for the purpose.

Things have slowed, she said, but the staff are still on emergency footing.

We havent seen a point yet where were convinced that the number of Covid cases that are seriously ill are petering out, she said. So theres a sort of unpredictability hanging in the air, about how much and for how long the pressures continue, but it is there for the foreseeable future.

Mary Connolly, a senior nurse who has worked here for 32 years, moved with ease from bed to bed, rattling off vital details of the care of each patient. Nearly all they are now treating are unvaccinated, she explained. A handful deny that the virus even exists.

Its the new thing now, people are refusing to be tested at all, she says, shaking her head. A man with a tracheotomy moans as she and another nurse slide him up the bed to prepare him for an X-ray.

Dont pull it out, she says gently, as he grabs for the plastic pipe protruding from his neck.

One of the patients being cared for in the unit is Dean Gray, 47. He has been there for five days and is the only patient not on mechanical ventilation. Tubes run from the cannula inserted in his heavily tattooed hand. An oxygen mask is fixed over his nose and mouth.

Feb. 2, 2022, 9:06 p.m. ET

I sit at his bedside as he tells me how he had traveled to London to see his family for Christmas. He and his mother became sick with the coronavirus around the same time. She was admitted to the hospital first. He was brought in on the day she died.

I never got to see her, he said.

Mr. Gray chose not to get vaccinated and said his reluctance comes from distrust of the government and worries that the true scale of the pandemic was exaggerated.

Youve got Boris Johnson going to parties, and its really sort of put me against it, he said, pointing to the recent government scandal amid allegations that the prime minister lied about attending parties during lockdown. If all of these problems hadnt arose, I probably would have been vaccinated. But if the milk seems to be sour, I am not going to drink it.

Visitors are not allowed in areas where coronavirus patients are treated, but an exception has been made in Mohammed Tahirs case. He has been hospitalized for the last six months after contracting the coronavirus in August.

For a time he was doing better and was moved out of intensive care, but he returned in December. His bed stands alone in a separate bay. Unlike everyone else on the ward today, he was vaccinated before getting sick.

When his son, Omar Tahir, arrived for an hour visit, Mohammeds expression immediately eased. He gets anxious without his family by his side, Omar explained. So Omar quit his job and moved home to be closer to the hospital and to be with his mother, he said.

A job can be replaced, but you cant replace him, he said.

Omar rubs his fathers frail legs with lotion, his hand moving with care over the sharp angle of his shin bone. Mohammed signals to him to drive safely on his motorbike, his hands gesturing as if gripping handlebars, and he cracks a smile.

Around the world. Several European nations are easing their pandemic protocolsand starting to treat the virus as endemic. However, Tonga went into lockdownafter recording its first community transmission of the coronavirus, weeks after being battered by a volcanic eruption and tsunami.

Mohammed looks deep into his sons eyes and smiles, rarely breaking eye contact. When it comes time to say goodbye, Omar wipes away tears.

As evening comes, Ms. Jenkins, who leads the nurses here, finds out they will be getting three more patients. Its always a logistical stretch.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that coronavirus patients are treated in a separate part of the unit and the nurse-to-patient ratio is higher in intensive care than other parts of the hospital.

An uptick in patients coupled with a staff shortage caused mainly by the pandemic, Brexit and burnout have meant the hospital has to rely on more temporary I.C.U. nurses. So even as patient numbers have dropped, the pressures remain.

I think people are exhausted, they are burned out, Dr. Jain said. The incentive to work in any of these environments is very little, thats a big problem.

Still, things have improved compared with this time last year when my colleague, Andrew Testa, visited the unit. It was the height of the second wave of coronavirus infections battering Britain, and the unit was brimming with patients. Every bed was full, with 22 Covid patients in total.

Now, there are typically between a half dozen to a dozen coronavirus patients on any given day, the hospital said.

But many health care workers are still grappling with months of observing illness and death on a scale they had never experienced, with some suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

It was the sheer volume, Dr. Jain said, adding that it was the same in hospitals across the country. It was mass death and also it felt like it could have been avoided.

Outside, banners line the street facing the main entrance with messages for the staff: Thank you to all the hard workers at Homerton Hospital. We love you, reads one.

The banners edges are now tattered and blackened by the exhaust of the cars that have passed by since they were first hung in 2020, when the pandemic began.

In many ways, the staff inside feel far from those early days. In some ways, little has changed, but what has changed is profound.

You know, in Wave 1, we were heroes, said Ms. Jenkins, the leader of the nursing team. By Wave 2, we were the enemy. And thats hard.

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One Day in the Parallel Universe of a London I.C.U. - The New York Times

COVID-19 case counts are beginning to fall again in the San Francisco Bay Area. But for many of the hundreds of thousands of residents infected in the past month, a huge question lingers: Am I going to develop long COVID?

To get answers, we reached out to several experts who are working with long COVID patients in the Bay Area and beyond. They helped us understand what, exactly, researchers know so far and what there still is to find out.

There isnt a good definition of long COVID yet. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention starts the clock on long COVID four weeks after people are infected, while the World Health Organization defines it as symptoms that stick around longer than four months. Many researchers also believe extended symptoms can be separated into several distinct syndromes.

One issue is post-intensive care syndrome, a serious condition related to post-traumatic stress disorder that can affect people in the ICU for any reason.

Whether or not you end up in the ICU, COVID can cause injuries that take a long time to heal. Some of those are common to other respiratory illnesses. If you develop severe pneumonia from any virus or bacteria, including COVID, it can take as long as six months to get back to normal; in the meantime, you might have shortness of breath, coughing and fatigue.

Severe COVID also increases your risk of heart disease. In one study before vaccines were widely available, about 1 in 1,000 people diagnosed with COVID-19 also developed a type of heart inflammation called myocarditis within a month. In another pre-vaccine study, which has yet to complete peer review, 15% of people with confirmed COVID infections were diagnosed with heart disease within the next year. When researchers looked at data from 2017, only 10% of similar people had developed cardiac problems.

Some people develop symptoms that look very similar to chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis. That kind of post-viral syndrome can develop after all kinds of infection, including after mild or even asymptomatic cases of COVID. People may feel extremely tired, no matter how much they sleep; have extreme difficulty concentrating, also known as brain fog; and get exhausted just from walking across the room.

There are likely connections between the immune response to the virus and all these diverse symptoms, according to Mady Hornig, an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health, who specializes in myalgic encephalomyelitis. She developed long COVID herself about four months after being infected. For more than a year, even mild exertion could trigger her heart to race and her blood oxygen to drop.

Infection-triggered syndromes are certainly not a surprise, she told SFGATE. Theres so much that we really need to understand about what is actually wrong.

That all depends on the symptoms, said Dr. Lekshmi Santhosh, medical director of UCSFs post-COVID clinic. Someone who was hospitalized and on a ventilator will have different needs than someone who was never hospitalized, who has significant fatigue and post-exertional symptoms. Treating respiratory symptoms is different than treating headaches and brain fog, she told SFGATE by email.

Dr. Linda Geng is the co-director of the Post-Acute COVID Syndrome Clinic at Stanford in Palo Alto, and said the most common symptoms she sees in her clinic include fatigue, brain fog, exertional intolerance and sleep issues.

"Encouragingly, we do see many patients get better over time, though there are patients who have now had symptoms lasting longer than a year, so we need to make sure we continue to provide support and resources for all long COVID patients," Geng wrote in an email.

Even though its now the dominant variant in the U.S., omicron hasnt been around long enough for researchers to get a handle on what happens long-term. Its clear, though, that omicron results in less severe disease than delta does. Thats true even for unvaccinated people, although theyre still much more likely to get very sick, or even die, than people who have been immunized.

Since vaccinated people are much less likely to get very sick, theyre also less likely to have injuries that take a long time to heal, like lung and heart damage. Even if you do get sick enough to go to the hospital, its extremely unlikely youll have to be treated in the ICU. (People infected with the omicron variant are unlikely to need the ICU, whether or not theyve been vaccinated.)

Most of our patients had acute COVID prior to vaccination, Geng said. Thus far we have not seen many new patients who have long COVID from breakthrough vaccinations, but we will need to see as time passes how the patterns emerge.

One of the only published studies looking at vaccination status was published in September 2021, when delta was the dominant strain, and before booster shots were widespread. Researchers in the United Kingdom asked people to self-report COVID symptoms through an app. A month after being infected, people who had received two vaccine doses were about 50% less likely to report symptoms than people who hadnt received any shots.

"We need more data to continue to evaluate the impact of vaccines, specifically boosters in the age of Omicron and whether the probability of infection is the same," said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases expert at UCSF, via email.

Research on the prevalence of long COVID is hugely varied, with peer reviewed reports claiming anywhere from 3% to 80% of people will have extended symptoms. (Chin-Hong estimated that number is about 10% to 20%, noting that vaccination significantly reduces the risk.) Obviously, theres a huge disparity between those numbers, even accounting for differing definitions of long COVID.

The biggest issue is that it takes a long time to do this kind of research. Most of the work now being published uses data from patients infected before vaccines were widely available. While lots of vaccinated people with long-term symptoms are being followed, most were infected when the most common strain of SARS-Cov-2 was delta, which causes more severe disease than the now-dominant omicron variant.

Its also very hard to conduct public health research in America, because our medical data is scattered across tens of thousands of systems that cant talk to one another. That means a lot of this research is being conducted in countries with national health systems like the UK, where the most common vaccine uses a different technology than the Pfizer or Moderna shots.

Its hard to say. Vaccines have done such a good job at preventing serious disease that many immunized people either dont know theyve been infected or use at-home tests without reporting positive results to anyone. That means it may take a long time for people to connect long-term symptoms to a COVID infection.

The federal National Institutes of Health has pledged to spend $1.15 billion on research into long COVID.

To Hornig, the pandemic represents an enormous opportunity and obligation to learn as much as we can about this and other post-viral syndromes. So many people got this at the same time, were finally looking at all sorts of nervous system disorders, she said. But we have so far to go before we know what to do.

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Coronavirus cases are dropping. It's time to talk about long COVID. - SFGate

Weekly coronavirus cases in Oregon fell 22% in the past seven days, state data released Monday shows, marking the clearest evidence yet that the highly transmissible omicron variant is receding.

The Oregon Health Authority tallied about 43,600 confirmed or presumed infections in the past week, including 13,443 announced Monday for the preceding three days.

Several closely watched benchmarks show improvement since last week, as well.

The number of Oregonians hospitalized and testing positive for coronavirus stands at 1,099, down slightly from Friday, and new projections have been downgraded to a potential peak of about 1,200. Test positivity rates reported Monday also dipped to a still high 20.6%. And the share of emergency department patients with COVID-19-like illness stayed below the highs from earlier this month.

State officials last week offered their most optimistic statements of the surge, indicating a possible peak in cases and the potential that spring and summer may offer some semblance of normalcy following two years of pandemic precautions.

The decline seen Monday in weekly cases marks the first dip since early December. (Prompted by questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive, state officials acknowledged that a weekly report issued last week erroneously said cases declined by 9.5% when they were instead flat. The Oregonian/OregonLive also erroneously reported cases rose by 14%, based on two weeks worth of incorrect state data that has since been adjusted).

Separately, the state on Monday also reported 15 COVID-19-related deaths.

Where the new cases are by county: Baker (41), Benton (286), Clackamas (1,070), Clatsop (97), Columbia (146), Coos (164), Crook (140), Curry (45), Deschutes (893), Douglas (216), Harney (19), Hood River (61), Jackson (817), Jefferson (208), Josephine (285), Klamath (369), Lake (7), Lane (1,353), Lincoln (127), Linn (611), Malheur (61), Marion (1,622), Morrow (30), Multnomah (1,807), Polk (302), Tillamook (69), Umatilla (281), Union (120), Wallowa (10), Wasco (81), Washington (1,741) and Yamhill (364).

Who died: A 78-year-old woman from Coos County who tested positive Dec. 6 and died Dec. 19 at Southern Coos Hospital & Health Center.

A 60-year-old woman from Polk County who tested positive Aug. 27 and died Sept. 19. Location of death is being confirmed.

A 77-year-old woman from Lane County who tested positive Sept. 6 and died Sept.16 at her residence.

A 50-year-old man from Washington County who tested positive Jan. 11 and died Jan. 25 at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center.

A 76-year-old woman from Washington County who tested positive Jan. 8 and died Jan. 16 at Kaiser Westside Medical Center.

A 75-year-old woman from Wasco County who died Nov. 27 at her residence. The death certificate listed COVID-19 as a cause or significant condition contributing to death.

A 64-year-old man from Wasco County who tested positive Jan. 24 and died Jan. 28 at Mid-Columbia Medical Center.

A 56-year-old man from Umatilla County who tested positive Jan. 13 and died Jan. 27 at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at Riverbend.

A 68-year-old man from Lane County who tested positive Jan. 26 and died Jan. 27 at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at Riverbend.

An 89-year-old woman from Lane County who tested positive Jan. 21 and died Jan. 26 at McKenzie Willamette Center.

A 55-year-old man from Douglas County who tested positive Nov. 21 and died Jan. 29 at Mercy Medical Center.

A 52-year-old woman from Jackson County who tested positive Jan. 2 and died Jan. 28 at Providence Medford Medical Center.

An 83-year-old woman from Clackamas County who tested positive Jan. 24 and died Jan. 25 at her residence.

A 69-year-old woman from Clackamas County who tested positive Jan. 26 and died Jan. 28 at Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center.

An 89-year-old man from Clackamas County who tested positive Jan. 7 and died Jan. 14. Location of death is being confirmed.

Each person had underlying health conditions or the presence of conditions was being confirmed. State officials also removed a previously announced death of a 60-year-old man from Clackamas County announced Dec. 15. He did not die.

Hospitalizations: 1,099 people with confirmed coronavirus infections are hospitalized, down 26 since Friday. That includes 187 people in intensive care, up 11 since Friday.

Since it began: Oregon has reported 633,876 confirmed or presumed infections and 6,100 deaths, among the lowest per capita numbers in the nation. To date, the state has reported 7,193,854 vaccine doses administered, fully vaccinating 2,826,410 people and partially vaccinating 300,373 people.

To see more data and trends, visit https://projects.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/

-- Brad Schmidt; bschmidt@oregonian.com; 503-294-7628; @_brad_schmidt

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Coronavirus in Oregon: Weekly cases fall 22% in surest sign omicron is receding - OregonLive

People are suffering from pandemic fatigue. It has been a long two years and most of us have had to endure harsh and often unpredictable restrictions on our daily lives. Millions of people have died, livelihoods have been lost and economies have suffered. So it is understandable that many would cling to any hope that the COVID-19 pandemic is coming to an end. In some countries, the easing or complete removal of restrictions has given them that hope.

This sentiment has, in some ways, been fuelled by the Omicron variant, which has been shown to cause less severe disease, in adults at least, with one study from Imperial College London reporting that people infected with it were 40-45 percent less likely to be admitted for an overnight hospital stay than those infected with the Delta variant.

But the arrival of the Omicron variant, with its increased transmissibility and ability to evade at least some of the protection conferred by vaccines and previous infections, should remind us of how volatile the course of this pandemic can be.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, issued a stark warning this month when he said, Its dangerous to assume that Omicron will be the last variant and that we are in the end game.

While Omicron may be milder than Delta, although not mild, cases are continuing to soar, particularly across Europe. This suggests any hope that COVID-19 may soon become endemic, is misplaced.

In its most scientific terms, a disease is considered endemic once the number of cases becomes stable or static, not when the illness becomes less deadly. By this definition, COVID-19 is not yet endemic as cases are still on the rise. On the other hand, diseases such as malaria, which can kill 600,000 people a year, and dengue fever, which kills up to 25,000 people each year, are endemic in certain parts of the world.

So, when people, like the UKs health secretary, Sajid Javid, talk about learning to live with COVID, the question to ask is: What would be considered an acceptable number of COVID-19 deaths in order for the world to carry on as normal? It is, of course, important to note that this approach would put the clinically vulnerable and the elderly, who have a much higher chance of dying from the virus, at a major disadvantage.

Some may argue that flu, which we have all come to terms with, kills up to 650,000 people each year worldwide, so surely we can live with COVID-19. But flu isnt an endemic illness; rather we see waves of it during the winter months. And, although the flu virus and the SARS-CoV-2 virus are frequently compared, I am not convinced they should be. They cause two very different illnesses.COVID-19 is a multi-system inflammatory virus that is not only potentially deadly but can also lead to long-term health problems for people of all age groups. Flu, by contrast, typically affects onlythe respiratory system. This means millions of people worldwide may end up living with long COVID which in itself will have devastating effects on their livelihoods and the wider economy. In addition to this, COVID-19 deaths so far have significantly outnumbered flu deaths (although this includes deaths during the time before vaccines were widely available in wealthy countries and when we were still learning about the virus).

There is also some belief that any new variants that may arise in the future are likely to cause an even milder illness than Omicron. But there is nothing to substantiate this belief. It would only be true if the virus had anything to gain by causing a milder illness and keeping its host alive. Much of the SARS-Cov-2 transmission occurs in the days before a person develops symptoms and the first few days following the onset of symptoms. It is usually the hosts own immune response to the virus that causes much of the illness we have seen in those hospitalised with it. This is because the virus can cause an overstimulation of certain immune cells, which then become difficult to turn off as they start to attack healthy cells as well as infected ones. By the time the host becomes seriously ill, the virus has moved on to another person. This means there is no evolutionary pressure for the virus to become milder; we simply got lucky with Omicron.

So, as unpalatable as this may sound to many people, we are not yet in a position to start living with this virus. We must continue to adopt methods to suppress its spread until we are. This means putting measures in place to protect the most vulnerable by reducing their chances of getting the virus.

As COVIDs mode of transmission is airborne, we should equip schools and other buildings with air filters and look for innovative ways to improve airflow in areas where people might congregate for long periods of time. We must also accept that mask-wearing may become a part of our daily lives, much as it did in parts of Asia after MERS, a type of coronavirus first identified in 2012. But it has to be the right type of mask, with N95 or FFP2 masks being the most effective.

Also, vaccines are key, and getting them into the arms of people across the world remains paramount. Variants are more likely to arise where people remain unvaccinated. Those who are vaccinated are more likely to rid themselves of the virus more quickly compared with unvaccinated people. This means the virus has less time to multiply and less chance to mutate in those who are fully vaccinated. Pushing for global vaccine equity is in everyones best interests. We need to have at least 70-80 percent of the worlds population vaccinated to achieve global protection and significantly reduce the risk of illness. This sounds ambitious but it has been done before with the vaccine for polio, a disease that has been more or less eradicated worldwide. In addition, second-generation vaccines are being developed to tackle emerging variants more effectively and will be key to safeguarding us in the future.

It is not only the vaccines that need to be shared across the world. Antiviral treatments like molnupiravir and paxlovid, which have been shown to reduce the risk of hospital admission for those in the high-risk category who test positive for COVID-19, must also be made available. These drugs help stop viral replication which, in turn, can reduce the length of time someone is ill with COVID. A shorter illness means there is less time for mutations and variants to emerge. That is something we would all benefit from.

Continuing research into long COVID and a better understanding of the different ways this virus can affect our bodies may also lead to a time when we can consider living with this virus.

I have hope that a time will come when we are better protected from the effects of COVID-19 and equipped to deal with any emerging variants, but sadly that time is not quite now. We are in a much better position than we were two years ago and that is largely down to science, but we cannot yet claim that we are nearing the end of this pandemic.

Recent data and analysis from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows that in mid-late 2021 there was an increase in the number of cases of meningococcal disease in teenagers and young adults, mainly caused by group B meningococcal disease (MenB) with the majority of these cases detected in university students.

Meningitis B is caused by the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis. Meningitis can attack the brain and spinal cord and cause swelling in those areas as well as a serious infection of the bloodstream, called septicaemia. Approximately 10-15 percent of people infected with meningococcal disease will die, sometimes as quickly as within 24 hours after symptoms first appear. For those who survive, about one in five may experience a variety of long-term disabilities including hearing loss, brain damage, nervous system problems, kidney damage, loss of limbs, and scarring of the skin.

Commons signs and symptoms of meningitis and septicaemia are:

Early COVID-19 restrictions across the UK saw meningitis B cases fall to an all-time low in September 2021. But as restrictions eased and people were able to mix again, cases in teenagers, in particular, have begun to rise to levels higher than before the pandemic.

In the UK, teenagers are offered the meningococcal ACWY vaccine in an effort to protect them from some of the different bugs that can cause meningitis and the MenB vaccine is offered to infants. It is unclear exactly what is causing the rise in cases in these young people. One theory put forward by the authors of the report is that fewer people were exposed to the bacteria as a result of reduced mixing at the height of the pandemic. This meant that fewer people became immune,so when university campuses opened up there was an immunity debt which put them at risk of getting the illness.

The best thing students and young people can do to protect themselves from this serious illness is to take up the ACWY vaccine and to be alert to the symptoms of meningitis B so that they can seek medical help sooner rather than later.

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Are we nearing the end of the COVID-19 pandemic? - Al Jazeera English

Some PCR tests look for three genes of the virus to diagnose the infection. The delta variant, which was detected in India and was dominant across the world until the end of 2021, would show up these three genes, but the classic version of omicron only showed up two. This characteristic allowed for the assumption to be made as to whether a person was infected with delta or omicron via a simple PCR test, without the need to sequence the complete genome of the virus. The subvariant BA.2, however, does not have this mutation and is indistinguishable from delta with these specific tests, prompting the name the stealth variant, a term that is not popular among many experts, including the virologist Mara Iglesaisa, from Spains National Microbiology Center.

It has made a lot of noise for something that is supposedly silent, jokes Iglesias, in reference to the media attention received by BA.2 in recent days. The moniker of stealth is very deceptive. A person infected with this subvariant tests positive with no problem in an antigen or PCR test, the only difference is that now it is not so simple to deduce which kind of coronavirus it is in the aforementioned tests that seek these three specific genes.

Mara Iglesias points out that 83% of cases in Spain are caused by the BA.1 subvariant of omicron, the classic strain. The delta variant is behind the other 17%. BA.2 is already being detected, albeit residually, in the Spanish regions of Madrid, Catalonia, Asturias and the Balearic Islands. We are not seeing the explosion of cases that there has been in Denmark, the virologist explains. Obviously the variants need to be monitored, but on a scientific level. This is not to say that each one deserves a front page in all media outlets, Iglesias argues, given her fears of excessive attention contributing to so-called pandemic fatigue. We dont know anything, its all speculation. People are starting to get tired and not believe anything, she warns.

On January 21, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for research into BA.2 to be prioritized, after there was a rise in the proportion of cases in India, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Denmark. In Berlin, around one in every three infections is already due to BA.2. In the world, however, nearly 99% of omicron cases continue to be caused by BA.1, according to the WHO.

Doctor Roger Paredes, from the Germans Trias Hospital in the Spanish city of Badalona, huffs and puffs when imagining the future. There is no sign that suggests that BA.2 is a more serious variant than its predecessor, but it is true that it could be a bit more transmissible, he explains. The consequence of the arrival of BA.2 could be that the end of this wave is delayed, which is what is happening in England: cases were falling and now they have stabilized. In his area, Paredes explains, only two cases of BA.2 have been detected for now.

Three doses of a Covid-19 vaccine have practically the same efficiency, up to 70%, when it comes to avoiding symptomatic infections with either of the two sub-variants of omicron, according to a report from the UKs Health Security Agency published on Thursday. The document confirms 95% protection against deaths caused by BA.1, but there is no data on BA.2 for now.

We are not seeing the explosion of cases that there has been in Denmark

Roger Paredes takes for granted that the success of vaccination combined with the fact that omicron is 25% less serious than delta in the same conditions will imminently lead to a new stage. The majority of society has reached a situation where they are fed up and are against more restrictions, so we are going to enter a new phase, basically without restrictions, Paredes predicts. Fundamentally, what is happening is the pressure is passed on to hospitals. We are likely to have waves with hundreds of patients in ICUs over the coming years. We are going to need good monitoring systems to know when things are getting out of hand, Paredes warns.

Biologist Iaki Comas, from the Valencia Biomedicine Institute (CSIC), is calm. It doesnt look like the face of the epidemic will change much even if we go from BA.1 to BA.2, he explains. In the absence of control measures, such transmissible variants as these will continue to find people who are susceptible to infection, which is going to mean that the fall in cases will probably be slower than in other waves. But we have already learned in the past that the variants can be controlled in the same way: vaccination, ventilation and masks, above all indoors, Comas adds.

The idea that SARS-CoV-2 is destined to become a more benign version has become generally accepted, but this is not the case, as pointed out by geneticist Emma Hodcroft, from the University of Bern. In fact, omicron did not come from delta, nor did delta come from alpha. We will see new variants, she explains. The important thing is whether these variants will be worrying and will have an impact on the pandemic and on our way of responding. And that we dont know. Perhaps SARS-CoV-2 has been left without any new tricks that will change its behavior, she continues. But perhaps there is another combination that will increase its transmissibility, severity or ability to escape our defenses even more. Unfortunately, there is no way of predicting that. This is why its so important to continue investing in the monitoring of the virus, she concludes.

English version by Simon Hunter.

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BA.2: A new version of the omicron coronavirus variant that is even more contagious but not more serious, acco - EL PAS in English