Category: Corona Virus

The quandemic concept has clear roots in Michael Foucaults notion of biopower [11, 12]. Foucault introduced the concept of biopower to denote state power over populations and individuals that hinges fundamentally on expert knowledge of the populations biological quality and longevity [13]. Biopower seeks to optimize a populations vitality mainly through rationalized mechanisms of population monitoring and medicalization [14]. One important expression of and prerequisite for biopower is quantification. In the 1970s, Foucault described how this practice became apparent during a smallpox outbreak in the eighteenth-century. The primary focus was no longer understanding the pathology of the epidemic itself but to track the number of the infected, their age, medical consequences, and mortality using statistical methods. In the words of Foucault: when quantitative analyses are made of smallpox in terms of success and failure [] the disease no longer appears in this solid relationship of the prevailing disease to its place or milieu, but as a distribution of cases in a population circumscribed in time or space [15]. Since then, numbers and statistics have come to play a crucial role in epidemic and crisis management. However, Foucault reminds us that metrics are not only important pieces of evidence but, simultaneously, they are expressions of biopower. Decisions of what metrics to promote or ignore, and how to measure them have the power to frame the pandemic in a certain political light and therefore shape responses.

We propose four distinct dynamics that characterize a quandemic:

A few metrics tend to dominate both political, expert, and public spheres and they exhibit a great deal of rigidity over time. The metrics are produced and reproduced by key stakeholders within and across the different spheres of influence without much open debate and discussion of alternatives. Instead, the metrics are followed and reported regularly by health agencies, politicians, and major media outlets. In addition, the same metrics dominate throughout the pandemic. While new metrics might emerge, such as vaccination rates, they largely serve to accentuate the importance of the existing metrics.

These few metrics appear to crowd-out other forms of evidence relevant to pandemic response. These alternative sources of evidence can be qualitative and quantitative in nature and represent socio-economic or public health dynamics. Examples of crucial but deprioritised evidence could include anthropological perspectives of vaccine hesitancy and community engagement, economic approaches to vulnerability, and quantitative tracking of mental health impacts (public health); gender violence (social) or differences in student attainment following prolonged periods of distance teaching (educational). While it is important to emphasize that this evidence was far from ignored during COVID-19, the quantitative metrics would often constitute the point of departure for debates and deliberations and the additional evidence would primarily be an addendum used to contextualize and qualify [16, 17].

The metrics tend to favour certain outcomes of pandemic management. During COVID-19, non-pharmaceutical interventions would almost certainly improve these metrics (to varying degrees), while the potential adverse impacts of the interventions would not be the focus on these metrics. These adverse consequences would, therefore, need to be considered on an ad-hoc basis. The benefits of lockdowns would be captured by the metrics, e.g. a drop in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Whereas the costs of these interventions were largely beyond these dominant metrics. Disaster management studies have long been attentive of the need to address the socio-economic consequences of both the hazard itself as well as the mitigating measures [18]. The dominant metrics during COVID-19 appeared ill-equipped to capture the nuanced and longer-term impacts of the pandemic response.

Finally, the metrics are easily standardized across countries, and give rise to competitive dynamics based on international comparisons and benchmarking. While the metrics during COVID-19 faced limited competition internally from other types of evidence, they exhibited a substantial potential for generating external competition between countries and different administrations. Pandemic successes and failures were evaluated and compared in terms of this limited subset of metrics. Political leaders were faced daily with these metrics and were often held accountable for unfavourable developments compared to other similar countries and over time. This created a textbook suboptimal situation where decision makers would pursue policies that carried concentrated and visible benefits (lowering mortality rates, for example) while keeping the costs dispersed and less visible [19]. Policymaking can be caught in a self-fulfilling loop where the initial focus on these metrics continuously reinforces the political salience of the same metrics.

To be clear, having access to standardized measures on a wide range of health outcomes constitutes best practice during pandemic management. In fact, many countries with limited capacity faced a substantial impediment to effective pandemic management because they had little access to these types of timely and disaggregated national metrics. However, a quandemic concerns the overreliance on these metrics and the resulting unproductive competitive comparisons. We observed these quandemic dynamics in the Nordic region. From the very initial phases of the pandemic, it was clear that a few metrics permeated the political and public debates. Across the Nordic countries, the main newspapers outlets carried the development of these key metrics daily on their frontpage and/or main website. Cases and fatalities came to embody the success of the pandemic response. Only towards the end of the first wave did Finland, for example, assemble a group of scientists that were to monitor COVID-19-related results in a way that paid attention to other factors including education, the economy, to technological innovation, misinformation, and resilience [20]. Sweden famously pursued slightly more lenient non-pharmaceutical interventions in 2020, motivated by the Swedish Health Agencys emphasis on additional longer-term objectives that were not easily caught in the metrics. Equity was stated as the overarching focus of agencys mission statement and was highlighted as a key guiding principle by the actors involved in key advice making during COVID-19 [21, 22]. The decision not to close primary schools down for physical attendance nationally, for example, was rooted in a concern for ensuring educational attainment, access to school meals, and the social well-being of children and had full support of the Swedish Childrens Ombudsman the highest legal authority for the rights of children [22, 23].

This approach was met with scepticism internationally, and to some extent nationally, as the dominant metrics deteriorated in the Autumn and Winter of 2020 compared to other Nordic countries of Denmark, Norway and Finland [24,25,26]. These numbers became overtly political, with the other Nordic governments using Sweden as a cautionary tale of laissez faire pandemic management. Danish and Norwegian newspapers carried many comparisons to the Swedish strategy equating the success of their pandemic response by the lower rates of cases and deaths in 2020 compared to Sweden [27, 28]. In February 2021, the Danish government emphasized that Denmark only had one fourth of the infected compared to Sweden [29]. The correctness of Sweden's initial pandemic strategy is not the point here.Rather success or failure at the time was primarily assessed by a handful of quantitative metrics that did not reflect the national pandemic response goals.Therefore, debating achievements based only on these metrics risks obscuring comprehension.

Three years later, the media and politicians engaged rigorously in yet another comparison of pandemic responses across the Nordic countries. This time the comparison was based on excess mortality rates during the pandemic and was reported in the Norwegian media, [30] Danish media, [31] Finnish media, [32] and the Swedish media [33]. The various measures of excess mortality suggested that Sweden fared well compared to the other Nordic countries, when using population-adjusted excess mortality rates for 20202022. While the new excess mortality metric was used to vindicate parts of the Swedish pandemic strategy, the point here is much broader: that such comparison still reinforces the same quandemic mindset that had been dominant in the early phases of the pandemic: a competition of biopower where successes or failures are reduced to a few select metrics. Even excess mortality rates are insufficient to fully gauge the impact of the pandemic as well as the policies implemented to combat it. It leaves out important aspects such as morbidity, the impact on education, equity, economy, mental health, and general wellbeing.

Thus, we propose that the four quandemic characteristics risk producing suboptimal conditions for balanced public debate and policymaking, as evidenced by the Nordic example. A quandemic obscures important syndemic dynamics, as more diverse scientific evidence capturing socio-economic vulnerabilities of the outbreak tends to be muffled by the few dominant metrics. Further, it increases exposure to infodemic dynamics because the dominance of these metrics might create an information void in spaces which they do not capture. Misinformation, pseudo-science, and scientific polarisation can roam in areas where these metrics fall short.

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The COVID-19 quandemic | Globalization and Health | Full Text - Globalization and Health

L.L. Bean has just added a third shift at its factory in Brunswick, Maine, in an attempt to keep up with demand for its iconic boot.

Orders have quadrupled in the past few years as the boots have become more popular among a younger, more urban crowd.

The company says it saw the trend coming and tried to prepare, but orders outpaced projections. They expect to sell 450,000 pairs of boots in 2014.

People hoping to have the boots in time for Christmas are likely going to be disappointed. The bootsare back ordered through February and even March.

"I've been told it's a good problem to have but I"m disappointed that customers not getting what they want as quickly as they want," said Senior Manufacturing Manager Royce Haines.

Customers like, Mary Clifford, tried to order boots on line, but they were back ordered until January.

"I was very surprised this is what they are known for and at Christmas time you can't get them when you need them," said Clifford.

People who do have boots are trying to capitalize on the shortage and are selling them on Ebay at a much higher cost.

L.L. Bean says it has hired dozens of new boot makers, but it takes up to six months to train someone to make a boot.

The company has also spent a million dollars on new equipment to try and keep pace with demand.

Some customers are having luck at the retail stores. They have a separate inventory, and while sizes are limited, those stores have boots on the shelves.

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Older US adults should get another COVID-19 shot, advisers say - NBC Bay Area

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has relaxed the guidelines associated with COVID-19 to be more in line with the flu or RSV. Here's what to do if you get sick.

ATLANTA - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance on COVID-19.

The new guidelines state someone who is infected no longer needs to be isolated for 5 days after testing positive for the virus. Thats as long as the fever goes away without medication and symptoms improve.

"COVID messes me up. The first time I got it, I was fully sick for more than a month. Like, very, very, dangerously ill," said Sam Levine.

That was the first time Levine was diagnosed with COVID, but he says hes since gotten it again, each time being less severe.

That tracks with the national trend.

"We are seeing less hospitalizations, less deaths from COVID, which is a great sign," said CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen.

She says their data shows the collective immunity in the community is stronger now than ever.

"We could tell from our wastewater data that there was a lot of virus spread, but the trends and reduction of hospitalizations and death continued. That's why we felt comfortable moving to this unified guidance," Dr. Cohen said.

The unified guidance now states self-isolation should only last for 24 hours after a fever is broken without the aid of medication or if symptoms improve.

That is now in line with guidance for influence or RSV.

This replaces the CDC guidance which called for people to self-isolate for 5 days after contracting COVID.

"You can return to work or return to school faster. That's one of the positive consequences of a guideline change like this," said Dr. Jodie Guest, senior vice chair for the Rollins School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology at Emory University.

She adds that while this is good news for those who can't afford to miss work and kids who need to be in school more, people still need to take COVID-19 seriously.

"We do want to consistently point out that COVID-19 is much more deadly than either of those other two infections," Dr. Guest said.

She points to the part of the new guidelines which say to take extra precautions for up to 5 days after the 24-hour isolation period is over, like masking and social distancing.

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CDC relaxes COVID-19 isolation requirements | What you need to know - FOX 5 Atlanta

BOSTON

Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you've lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they're fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are "encouraged" to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district's decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

"This is so confusing," said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. "I just don't know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?"

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

"I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions," she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego's school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC's previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: "It's a virus. Deal with it."

That's because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

"Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy," he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care's specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can't go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso's child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they're the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

"We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth" disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children's Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it's a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemn leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

"I don't think they're considering what the impact will be for our families," she said of California officials. "It feels like they don't care that we're almost expendable."

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

"Emotionally," Wentzel said, "they're having trouble."

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CDC Relaxes COVID Guidelines; Will Schools, Day Cares Follow Suit? - Voice of America - VOA News

Key Takeaways

People with COVID-19 no longer need to isolate for five days before returning to work or school, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.

Under the updated guidance, people can leave their homes if they have been fever-free for 24 hours without the aid of medications and if their symptoms are improving.

The CDC said it is making the change due to lower rates of COVID hospitalizations and deaths and the availability of tools to combat respiratory viruses.

Todays announcement reflects the progress we have made in protecting against severe illness from COVID-19, said Mandy Cohen, Director of the CDC, in a press release. However, we still must use the commonsense solutions we know work to protect ourselves and others from serious illness from respiratory virusesthis includes vaccination, treatment, and staying home when we get sick.

The COVID isolation guidance now aligns with recommendations for influenza and respiratory syncytial viruses. The agency said that unifying the approach makes it easier to follow without relying on people to test for illness.

Streamlining those recommendations is more logically consistent, said Marc Sala, MD, pulmonary and critical care specialist and co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive COVID-19 Center.

The tradeoff is youre going to have more transmission, and you just have to be ready to deal with what that entails, he told Verywell.

The change may lead to people who are still contagious intermingling at work, at school, and in healthcare settings.

The virus appears to be evolving so that it causes less severe disease but is more transmissible than prior versions. Compared to the original Omicron variant, the now-dominant JN.1 may not cause someone to get quite as sick, but they are more likely to spread the virus to others.

Because isolation and quarantine have long been associated with a positive test result, these new guidelines might seem like a major departure from the accepted science, said Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said in a statement. The reality is that they represent an important, and reasonable, evolution in our response to the virus and to the impacts of isolation on peoples lives.

Sala said it makes sense to promote public health recommendations that are clear and easy to follow. You dont want to make a recommendation that is just completely Ivory Tower and impractical, he added.

However, he said, many people dont follow the CDC COVID safety recommendations to begin with. A more lenient isolation policy is not likely to benefit those who are most vulnerable to disease.

Unfortunately, if you make an accommodation to more of a general public opinion about isolation precautions, you end up conceding in a way that only benefits people who were not going to follow it anyway, Sala said.

While the isolation guidance has changed, the recommendations for other COVID-protective measures remain unchanged.

The best way to avoid serious illness from COVID is to be up-to-date with your vaccinations.

In the five days after someone leaves isolation, they should still take precautions, like wearing a mask, keeping a distance from others, and purifying indoor air or bringing in more outdoor air.

Wearing a snug-fitting N95 face mask can help reduce your chances of being exposed to COVID, even if others around you arent wearing masks.

The CDC guidance includes special considerations for people most vulnerable to serious complications of infection, like immunocompromised, pregnant, and older people.

Anyone who is at higher risk for complications from a COVID infection should consider taking Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir/ritonavir) or another antiviral medication.

According to Sala, Paxlovid is now relatively easy to access and proves to substantially reduce the risk of severe COVID.

If you are sick with COVID, talk to a health provider if you are unsure about whether you would benefit from taking Paxlovid and for how long you should isolate or wear a mask to avoid spreading the disease to others.

The information in this article is current as of the date listed, which means newer information may be available when you read this. For the most recent updates on COVID-19, visit ourcoronavirus news page.

By Claire Bugos Claire Bugos is a senior news reporter at Verywell Health.

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CDC Shortens COVID-19 Isolation Period - Verywell Health

Of all the lingering symptoms of long Covid, difficulty focusing and thinking, known as brain fog, may be the most frightening and baffling. A new study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, which looks at how much cognition is impaired in the months after a coronavirus infection, shows that Covid-19s impact can be measured in the equivalent of IQ points.

Researchers from Imperial College London found that even people who recovered from their Covid symptoms in four to 12 weeks had the equivalent of an IQ score three points lower than in uninfected people. Among those with long Covid defined as symptoms lasting more than 12 weeks after testing positive the drop was six IQ points. For people whose disease was severe enough to require hospital care, the deficit deepened to nine points.

People whose persistent symptoms had resolved by the time they took the test performed about as well as people whod had symptoms that didnt last very long.

What our study shows is that brain fog can correlate with objectively measurable deficits in a persons actual memory and executive task performance, lead study author Adam Hampshire, professor of restorative neurosciences at Imperial College London, said Wednesday on a call with reporters.

The online tests, which entailed eight tasks, were not IQ exams, but the authors equated their results with more familiar IQ measures. They stressed that the differences they noticed in the observational study were modest and measured between groups at a single time point, not in individuals followed over time. Still, the lower test scores, even for people who have short-duration symptoms, were a bit surprising to us, Hampshire said. The individuals themselves I dont think would recognize that theres any effect. Its really just looking at these very large numbers and finding quite small differences.

The study results came from more than 112,000 people in England who answered questionnaires about their infections and then took tests measuring such cognitive abilities as memory, reasoning, and planning. They are part of the much larger REACT research program, which is based on a random sample of people across England.

Testing took place when people were at different stages of their illness or recovery. People with unresolved persistent symptoms performed worse on the cognitive tests in terms of both speed and accuracy, particularly on memory and planning tasks. Those whod been in hospital intensive care units had more and different weaknesses, such as in two-dimensional spatial processing, compared to others whod had Covid.

We dont know what the clinical and cognitive long-term effects might be, for people still living with long Covid, senior study author Paul Elliott, chair of epidemiology and public health medicine at Imperial College London, said at the press briefing. And so following that cohort, we think, is very important in doing ongoing surveillance.

For the current study, being vaccinated slightly narrowed gaps in cognitive performance between those who had Covid and the 40% of survey respondents who didnt, while reinfection meant a minimal additional loss compared to single infections, Elliott said. People who caught the original SARS-CoV-2 strain and the Alpha strain of the virus fared worse than those infected by the Delta and Omicron variants later in the pandemic, a finding in line with other studies saying people whose Covid infections were more severe were more likely to have worse problems later.

The new study raises questions about what these IQ declines mean and if theyll disappear, a companion editorial says. What are the functional implications of a 3-point loss in IQ? Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University in St. Louis and Clifford Rosen of Tufts University School of Medicine ask. Whether these cognitive deficits persist or resolve along with predictors and trajectory of recovery should be investigated.

Hampshire said causation cant be inferred directly from an observational study, and while differences are clear, the reasons for those differences arent.

I was fully expecting that we would see some of these deficits in the hospitalized group. I was thinking we would likely see some cognitive deficits in people who had ongoing, long-term persistent symptoms, Hampshire said. I was not expecting that we would see even small cognitive differences in the shorter-duration symptom groups, and we just dont know all the implications of that.

While some issues remain unresolved, putting numbers to the problem is a crucial step on the way to developing any treatment, Steven Deeks, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, told STAT.

We need drug companies to get involved and make and design their own studies and fund their own studies, particularly Big Pharma, said Deeks, who was not involved in the study. Perhaps this paper will provide a road map to some endpoints that will make it easier to design a study, to power a study, to fund a study, to conduct a study, to interpret a study.

Research on the mechanisms of long Covid is flourishing, said Deeks, who thinks the National Institutes of Health is making progress in its RECOVER initiative. But where were making zero ground is in coming up with therapies.

Elliott, who is also director of the REACT program, sees hopeful signs in the new study results. First, as the pandemic progressed from the original virus to Omicron, the association between symptoms and cognitive deficits weakened. Second, around a third of people with persistent cognitive symptoms saw them resolve.

The important thing is that if they had persistent symptoms and then those symptoms resolved, they looked cognitively like the other people whod had Covid, the short-duration people, he said. I think its encouraging that if once it resolves and you no longer report symptoms, then basically you look much more like everybody else whod had Covid, rather than looking like the people whove still got ongoing symptoms.

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NEJM study measures Covid brain fog, impact on IQ - STAT

The updated recommendation is now similar to that of the flu and other respiratory illnesses.

NORFOLK, Va. People who test positive for COVID-19 no longer need to stay in isolation for five days.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)announced Fridayits doing away with that guidance.

The health agency now recommends people who test positive stay home until symptoms are mild and improving and they've gone at least 24 hours without a fever. However, the change does not apply to nursing homes and health care facilities.

"Whether it's an exact five days or not, it's just important to stay home if you're sick," said Karen McGoldrick, a clinical infection preventionist at Sentara Leigh Hospital.

McGoldrick said the change comes now that most people have some degree of immunity to the virus.

"For the most part, most people aren't as severely ill as they were, say, two years ago when it was at the height," she explained.

McGoldrick said it's likely many weren't following the isolation guidance anyway.

"Just like anything else, just because somebody gives guidelines, doesn't mean everybody followed it," McGoldrick said. "I don't know that everyone truly was isolating at home for five days. We hope they were."

The CDC's COVID-19 recommendations are now similar to that of the flu and other respiratory illnesses. The health agency calls it a"unified approach."

Still, health experts urge caution.

"One thing that's different about [COVID-19], it seems to be a little bit more serious of an illness than the flu in a lot of cases, and there's a lot more complications after COVID...than with the flu," McGoldrick said.

The CDC still recommends people get vaccinated and wash their hands to prevent getting infected in the first place.

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What to know about CDC's updated COVID-19 guidelines - 13newsnow.com WVEC

FILE - A student receives a temperature check before leaving the car to enter STAR Eco Station Tutoring & Enrichment Center on Sept. 2, 2020 in Culver City, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Americans who test positive for COVID-19 no longer need to stay in isolation for five days, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Friday.

The health agency changed its longstanding guidance, saying people can return to work or regular activities if their symptoms are mild and improving and they have not had a fever for a day.

The change comes at a time when COVID-19 is no longer the public health menace it once was. It dropped from being the nation's third leading cause of death early in the pandemic to 10th last year.

Most people have some degree of immunity to the coronavirus from past vaccinations or from infections. And many people are not following the five-day isolation guidance anyway, some experts say.

"Our goal here is to continue to protect those at risk for severe illness while also reassuring folks that these recommendations are simple, clear, easy to understand, and can be followed," said Dr. Mandy Cohen, the CDCs director.

However, some experts worry that the change may increase the risk of infection for those people who are more vulnerable to developing severe illness.

This is not the first time the CDC has changed its guidance on how long people who have been infected with COVID-19 should stay isolated.

Originally, it was 10 days, but in late 2021, the agency cut that down to five for Americans who catch the virus but did not have symptoms or only had a brief illness.

Under that guidance, isolation only ends if a person has been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medications and if other symptoms are resolving.

At the time, agency officials said the changes were in keeping with evidence that people with the coronavirus were most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop.

If you have symptoms, stay home until your symptoms are mild and improving and its been a day since you've had a fever. But then you can remain cautious by wearing a mask and keeping a distance from others.

There is no change to guidelines for nursing homes and health care facilities, however.

The agency is emphasizing that people should still try to prevent infections in the first place, by getting vaccinated, washing their hands, and taking steps to bring in more outdoor fresh air.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was reported from Los Angeles.

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5-day isolation for COVID-19 no longer needed, CDC says - LiveNOW from FOX

Vapers are susceptible to infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that spreads COVID-19 and continues to infect people around the world, a University of California, Riverside, study has found.

The liquid used in electronic cigarettes, called e-liquid, typically contains nicotine, propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and flavor chemicals. The researchers found propylene glycol/vegetable glycerin alone or along with nicotine enhanced COVID-19 infection through different mechanisms.

Study resultsappear in the American Journal of Physiology.

The researchers also found that the addition of benzoic acid to e-liquids prevents the infection caused by propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and nicotine.

Users who vape aerosols produced from propylene glycol/vegetable glycerin alone or e-liquids with a neutral to basic pH are more likely to be infected by the virus, while users who vape aerosols made from e-liquids with benzoic acid -; an acidic pH -; will have the same viral susceptibility as individuals who do not vape."

Rattapol Phandthong, postdoctoral researcher, Department of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biologyand research paper's first author

The researchers obtained airway stem cells from human donors to produce a 3D tissue model of human bronchial epithelium. They then exposed the tissues to JUUL and BLU electronic cigarette aerosols to study the effect on SARS-CoV-2 infection. They found all tissues showed an increase in the amount of ACE2, a host cell receptor for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Further, TMPRSS2, an enzyme essential for the virus to infect cells, was found to show increased activity in tissues exposed to aerosols with nicotine.

Prue Talbot, a professor of the graduate division and Phandthong's advisor, said e-cigarette users should be cautious about vaping as some products will increase their susceptibility to SARs-CoV-2 infection.

"It would probably be best for vapers to quit vaping for the protection of their health and to stop nicotine dependency," she said. "If they cannot stop vaping, it is better to vape aerosols produced from an e-liquid with acidic pH or with benzoic acid to prevent the enhanced SARS-CoV-2 infection caused by nicotine, propylene glycol, and vegetable glycerin. However, inhalation of benzoic acid has its own risk, and data is still limited on this topic."

The researchers acknowledge that the relationship between e-cigarettes and SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility is complex.

"The complexity is attributed to a wide range of available e-liquids, the chemical composition of each e-liquid, and different models of e-cigarettes," Phandthong said. "Our study only used Classic Tobacco Flavor JUUL e-cigarette and BLU Classic Tobacco e-cigarette. Even with just these two e-cigarettes, we found the aerosols and individual ingredients produced different effects on SARS-CoV-2 infection."

Phandthong and Talbot hope the Food and Drug Administration will use their findings to implement regulatory laws on e-cigarette products.

"Our findings could also help improve the design of clinical trials involving the use of tobacco products and SARS-CoV-2 infection," Phandthong said. "In the meantime, it is worth bearing in mind that the scientific literature has shown that a vaper who contracted SARS-CoV-2 has more complications during the recovery period and is more likely to develop long COVID-19, which can be serious and last many months post-infection. We hope our findings encourage vapers to stop vaping and discourage non-users from starting to vape."

Phandthong acknowledged the team only investigated the initial stage of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

"There are many later stages involved in infection, such as viral replication," he said. "It is likely that these additional stages can also be affected by inhalation of e-cigarette aerosols."

Phandthong and Talbot were joined in the study by Man Wong, Ann Song, and Teresa Martinez.

The research was funded by grants from the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Center for Tobacco Products of the Food and Drug Administration, and California Institute of Regenerative Medicine.

Source:

Journal reference:

Phandthong, R., et al. (2023). Does Vaping Increase the Likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 Infection? Paradoxically Yes and No.American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology. doi.org/10.1152/ajplung.00300.2022.

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Vaping increases susceptibility to COVID-19 infection, study finds - News-Medical.Net

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially changed its COVID-19 guidance on Friday, March 1.

What does it mean and how could it affect your everyday life?

Heres what to know:

The CDC no longer recommends that people who test positive for the novel coronavirus need to stay home for at least five days. However, you should still take precautions during that time.

Under the new guidelines, people can leave home isolation if they have been fever-free for at least 24 hours without fever-reducing medication, and their symptoms are not severe and are improving. This aligns with the guidance for other respiratory illnesses, including flu and RSV.

Acknowledging that people can be contagious even without symptoms, the CDC urged those who end isolation to limit close contact with others, wear well-fitted masks, improve indoor air quality and practice good hygiene, like washing hands and covering coughs and sneezes, for five days, The New York Times reported Friday.

Similar to the CDCs guidance, California public health officials say the length of someones isolation period should be determined based on the severity of their symptoms.

Under the state Department of Public Health recommendation, updated in January, Californians who test positive for the coronavirus no longer need to isolate for five days.

CDPH recommends people who test positive for COVID-19 stay home until they:

Reports first started circulating in mid-February about the potential changes to CDC guidelines.

At the time, Dr. Peter Chin-Hong told The Sacramento Bee that I think its reasonable to move on, but it comes with a responsibility. Hes a professor at UC San Francisco and specializes in infectious disease.

He said navigating the new protocols would mean an ongoing and collective effort to test and wear masks when sick, stay up to date on vaccinations and prioritize safety for the most vulnerable.

Chin-Hong said determining how to approach this new phase of COVID-19, four years after the pandemic, is really complex.

U.S. residential households are eligible for another round of free at-home COVID-19 self-tests through the U.S. Postal Service.

Each order includes four individual rapid antigen COVID-19 tests.

What do you want to know about life in Sacramento? Ask our service journalism team your top-of-mind questions in the module below or email servicejournalists@sacbee.com.

Continue reading here:

CDC shortens COVID-19 isolation period and aligns with California. Here's what to know - Yahoo News