COVID in California: Virus is mutating in ways that could make it resistant to treatments – San Francisco Chronicle

The latest surge isnt over: New variants may lift case numbers again

Two new highly infectious and immune-evasive coronavirus variants are now dominant in the United States, according to estimates released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and together they likely will drive the Bay Areas long spring surge well into summer, health experts say. Its become apparent that the pandemic pattern people have become accustomed to over the past two and a half years a rise in cases over several weeks, followed by a relatively short plateau and then a rapid drop isnt playing out this time. Read more about what impact BA.4 and BA.5 both subvariants of omicron will have in the Bay Area, where cases appear to be climbing again after several weeks of sluggish decline.

The number of weekly COVID-19 cases globally has increased for the third consecutive week, after a declining trend was observed since the last peak in March 2022, the World Health Organization reported Wednesday. The agencys latest epidemiology report says there were over 4.1 million cases reported worldwide last week, an 18% increase as compared to the previous week. The WHO said rapid-spreading BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of omicron are making up an increasing proportion of sequenced samples. This pandemic is changing but its not over, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a briefing. We have made progress, but its not over.

Several naturally occurring mutations of Mpro, the main protease of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, could soon increase its resistance to antiviral treatments such as Paxlovid, according to a study published Wednesday in bioRxiv. Taken together, this study identified several nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid) resistant hot spots that warrant close monitoring, while highlighting the future risk of mutants with multiple substitutions at these sites, the authors said. Many health experts believe mutations in newer variants such as BA.4 and BA.5 may be causing in increase in rebound infections. Eric Topol, executive vice president of Scripps Research and a prominent voice on the pandemic, indicated on Twitter that this could be the case with Dr. Anthony Fauci, who on Tuesday announced he is on his second round of Paxlovid after again testing positive for the virus.

The second year of the COVID-19 pandemic was harder than the first, with people reporting a sharp rise in daily negative thoughts and a decrease in positive experiences, according to Gallups latest annual global update on emotions. A survey of 127,000 adults in 122 countries addressing five primary emotional touchstones found that in 2021 and the first few months of 2022, about 42% said they experienced worry, 41% experienced stress, and 31% physical pain. About 28% of the respondents reported feeling sadness and 23% anger. All five emotions, except anger, showed marked increases from 2020 when they were already at or near record highs. The people surveyed also said that feelings of enjoyment, smiling and the sensation of being well-rested had vanished over the past year.

Researchers in Thailand say they have documented the first confirmed case of a pet cat infecting its owner with coronavirus, according to a report in Nature. Weve known this was a possibility for two years, Angela Bosco-Lauth, an infectious-disease researcher at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who was not involved in the study, told the journal. The study was published earlier this month in Emerging Infectious Diseases by infectious-disease researcher and physician at Prince of Songkla University in Hat Yai, southern Thailand, said a veterinarian in Thailand was diagnosed with COVID-19 after being sneezed on by an infected cat owned by an infected patient. Genetic study supported the hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2 transmission from the owner to the cat, and then from the cat to the veterinarian. Researchers say that such cases of cat-to-human transmission are probably rare. Experimental studies have shown that infected cats dont shed much virus, and shed for only a few days, Leo Poon, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, told Nature.

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COVID in California: Virus is mutating in ways that could make it resistant to treatments - San Francisco Chronicle