Comments closedThe changes in the CDC guidelines [now] are really a result of political and corporate pressure. It’s a dangerous change that goes against the science, encourages disease spread, and prioritizes corporate interests, making it easier to exploit workers.
The overwhelmingly abundant evidence for this virus over the past 4 years tells us that it is a far more dangerous pathogen than flu, which lacks seasonality, is still evolving, has induced Long Covid in tens of millions of throughout the world, and cannot be ‘FLU-ified.’
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COVID-19 patients are at least four times more likely to develop chronic fatigue than someone who has not had the virus, a new federal study published Wednesday suggests.
Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at electronic health records from the University of Washington of more than 4,500 patients with confirmed COVID-19 between February 2020 and February 2021.
They were followed for a median of 11.4 months and their health data was compared with the data of more than 9,000 non-COVID-19 patients with similar characteristics.
Fatigue developed in 9% of the COVID patients, the team found. Among COVID-19 patients, the rate of new cases of fatigue was 10.2 per 100 person-years and the rate of new cases of chronic fatigue was 1.8 per 100 person-years.
Comments closedAs seasonal virus activity surges across the United States, experts stress the importance of preventive measures – such as masking and vaccination – and the value of treatment for those who do get sick.
Tens of thousands of people have been admitted to hospitals for respiratory illness each week this season. During the week ending December 23, there were more than 29,000 patients admitted with Covid-19, about 15,000 admitted with the flu and thousands more with respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Comments closedOnly 4.5% of a cohort of pediatric COVID-19 patients admitted to US hospitals during the period of Omicron predominance had completed their primary COVID-19 vaccine series, and 7.0% had started but didn’t finish the series, The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal reports.
The study team, led by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers, enrolled 597 vaccine-eligible COVID-19 inpatients aged 8 months to 4 years at 28 hospitals participating in the Overcoming COVID-19 network from September 2022 to May 2023. A total of 62.1% of patients were aged 8 months to 1 year, and 37.9% were aged 2 to 4 years.
Comments closedThe U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday that COVID subvariant JN.1 accounts for 39% to 50% of cases in the United States as of Dec. 23, according to the agency’s projections.
Comments closedThe new COVID-19 variant that scientists call JN.1 now makes up about 44.1% of COVID-19 cases across the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Friday, marking another week of the fast-spreading variant’s steep rise in the U.S.
The increase is more than two times larger than the 21.3% that the CDC now estimates the strain made up of infections for the week ending Dec. 9, after Thanksgiving.
Comments closedHospitals and emergency rooms could be forced to ration care by the end of this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Thursday, saying recent trends in COVID-19 and influenza are now on track to again strain America’s health care system. The new COVID variant JN.1 is making up an increasing share of cases, the CDC’s tracking shows.
“COVID-19 hospitalizations are rising quickly,” the agency said in its weekly update. “Since the summer, public health officials have been tracking a rise in multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), which is caused by COVID-19. Influenza activity is growing in most parts of the country. RSV activity remains high in many areas.”
Comments closedU.S. life expectancy rose last year — by more than a year — but still isn’t close to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2022 rise was mainly due to the waning pandemic, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers said Wednesday. But even with the large increase, U.S. life expectancy is only back to 77 years, 6 months — about what it was two decades ago.
Comments closedNearly 1 in 10 new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are from the BA.2.86 variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Monday, nearly triple what the agency estimated the highly mutated variant’s prevalence was two weeks ago.
Comments closedAmid an uptick in Covid infections, administrators, staff and patients are divided over the need for masks in health care settings.
Comments closedNurses, researchers and workplace safety officers worry new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might reduce protection against the coronavirus and other airborne pathogens in hospitals.
Comments closedThe U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director on Tuesday signed off on broad use of updated COVID-19 vaccines approved by the government – covering ages 6 months and up – as the country prepares to start a vaccination campaign within days.
Comments closedComments closedThe Biden administration has made a political choice—not a scientific or public health one—to downgrade the national response to COVID-19. Included in this is the reticence or outright avoidance of mentioning masking even as cases rise in the US. The CDC director, in talking about this late increase in COVID cases, bends over backward to mention hand-washing, but not N95s. Without question, N95s offer individuals protection against infection and leaving out that fact is a disservice and an abdication of duty.
“You might’ve heard the CDC is about to make things even more dangerous for patients when they vote on new, lower standards for infection control this November. This decision will hurt everyone. It will hurt doctors and nurses. It will hurt seniors. It will hurt children. It will hurt young, healthy adults (who goes to the hospital when they’re feeling great?) There’s only one small group it will help, and that’s healthcare CEOs and their bottom lines.”
Comments closedCovid-19 vaccines that have been tweaked to teach the body how to fend off the current crop of circulating variants are now expected to land in drugstores and clinics in mid-September, CDC and FDA officials said.
Comments closedThe US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today issued its initial risk assessment of the BA.2.86 SARS-CoV-2 lineage, which says tests and treatments will likely be effective and that updated vaccines will still be able to reduce severe disease and hospitalizations.
Comments closedU.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that it was tracking a new, highly mutated lineage of the virus that causes COVID-19.
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