Comments closedThe tide is turning. Thanks to all the people making noise on social media and bugging their families, while continuing to wear masks and build air purifiers no matter what anyone says, there’s a trace of hope.
When the pandemic hit American soil, the country faced a tragic lack of leadership in President Donald Trump, a man who famously did not bother to read his daily briefs. He also spent a lot of time on Twitter, and not only religiously watched Fox News but took policy cues from it. In the emerging crisis — which happened to coincide with Trump’s reelection campaign gearing up — while scientific experts couldn’t get the ear of the president, social media and right-wing media very much could and did.
Trump, who had promised the pandemic would simply disappear, came to embrace a too-good-to-be-true pandemic “solution” in the form of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), which had captured the excitement of Silicon Valley — and the attention of Elon Musk on Twitter. Though the repurposing of existing drugs is not inherently a bad idea, Team Trump was not interested in engaging in the scientific process to test for safety and efficacy. And it certainly wasn’t the only time Musk or Trump recklessly took off with an idea because they wanted it to be true.
Comments closedThe winter COVID-and-flu season is ramping up in California and nationwide, with doctors and other experts saying the worst of the respiratory illness season is still to come.
New data show pronounced recent jumps in the rate at which coronavirus and flu tests are coming back positive, as well as the number of hospital-admitted patients testing positive for the viruses. Workplaces are also seeing higher numbers of employees call in sick due to infections.
National wastewater data suggest this winter could see the highest number of coronavirus infections occurring during any given week since the first Omicron wave began in fall 2021.
Comments closedThe pandemic is far from over, as evidenced by the rapid rise to global dominance of the JN.1 variant of SARS-CoV-2. This variant is a derivative of BA.2.86, the only other strain that has carried more than 30 new mutations in the spike protein since Omicron first came on the scene more than two years ago. This should have warranted designation by the World Health Organization as a variant of concern with a Greek letter, such as Pi.
By wastewater levels, JN.1 is now associated with the second-biggest wave of infections in the United States in the pandemic, after Omicron. We have lost the ability to track the actual number of infections since most people either test at home or don’t even test at all, but the very high wastewater levels of the virus indicate about 2 million Americans are getting infected each day.
Comments closedIndoor mask requirements have been reinstated at all New York City public hospitals amid a rise in respiratory viruses including COVID-19 and flu.
The mandate extends to the 11 hospitals, 30 health centers and five long-term care facilities run by NYC Health + Hospitals.
The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, said Wednesday masks will only be required in areas where patients are being treated, according to local ABC News affiliate ABC 7 NY.
Comments closedAt least 200 million people worldwide have struggled with long COVID: a slew of symptoms that can persist for months or even years after an infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. But research suggests that that number would likely be much higher if not for vaccines.
A growing consensus is emerging that receiving multiple doses of the COVID vaccine before an initial infection can dramatically reduce the risk of long-term symptoms. Although the studies disagree on the exact amount of protection, they show a clear trend: the more shots in your arm before your first bout with COVID, the less likely you are to get long COVID. One meta-analysis of 24 studies published in October, for example, found that people who’d had three doses of the COVID vaccine were 68.7 percent less likely to develop long COVID compared with those who were unvaccinated. “This is really impressive,” says Alexandre Marra, a medical researcher at the Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital in Brazil and the lead author of the study. “Booster doses make a difference in long COVID.”
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 closedSome hospitals across the United States are reinstating indoor masking rules amid rising cases and hospitalizations of respiratory illnesses including COVID-19 and influenza.
Hospitals in at least six states — California, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Washington and Wisconsin — have put masking guidelines in place, according to an ABC News count.
Over the weekend, Mass General Brigham, which is the largest health system in Massachusetts, told ABC News it issued guidelines requiring employee caregivers and those working in patient care areas to wear masks.
Comments closedWashington’s Department of Health has cut over 300 employees who helped with the state’s pandemic response and hundreds more of these jobs are on the chopping block as federal COVID aid dries up.
The department already slashed 356 positions and will soon lose funding for 349 more. Funding for most of the jobs will lapse by July 2024 and all federal COVID-19 funds for staff will end by July 2025, according to an agency spokesperson, Roberto Bonaccorso.
Similar cuts are happening nationwide as federal COVID relief funding expires. Public health advocates are warning that as jobs like these are eliminated, it threatens to leave states in a weaker position responding to the next public health crisis.
Only 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 closedWith both COVID-19 and other respiratory virus rates up, nearly all the major hospital groups in Massachusetts are bringing back mask requirements for doctors and staff, and in some cases for patients and visitors as well.
Beth Israel Lahey, Boston Medical Center and Dana Farber have already reimposed requirements. Mass General Brigham and UMass Memorial plan to require masking starting Jan. 2, followed by Tufts Medicine on Jan. 3.
Comments closedDoes it seem like a lot of people you know are sick?
You’re not alone. Respiratory illness season is in full swing in California and across much of the nation.
In Los Angeles County, about 23% of people participating in a weekly text-message-based survey reported having a cough or shortness of breath for the week that ended Dec. 10, higher than the total reported during a late summer peak in respiratory illnesses, when 21% said they had those symptoms. Early summer brought a lull, with only 10% of survey respondents saying they had a cough or shortness of breath.
Comments closedComments closedOur study shows that markers of brain injury are present in the blood months after COVID-19, and particularly in those who have had a COVID-19-induced brain complication (e.g. inflammation, or stroke), despite resolution of the inflammatory response in the blood. This suggests the possibility of ongoing inflammation and injury inside the brain itself which may not be detected by blood tests for inflammation.
The 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 closedWith COVID-19 cases and other respiratory illnesses rising across the region, some area hospitals have begun to bring back face mask requirements to halt the spread of infections.
Boston Medical Center said Thursday it would resume masking requirements in all patient-care areas beginning Friday. On Monday, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reinstated its mask requirements in all clinical and public spaces, and the Beth Israel Lahey Health system (BILH) updated its policies to require masking for all health care personnel upon entry to a patient room or bed space.
Comments closedWhen the coronavirus pandemic took hold in an unprepared U.S., many states like Ohio scrambled for masks and other protective gear. Supplies were so limited in 2020 that the state bought millions of medical gowns from a marketing and printing company and spent about $20 million to try to get personal protective equipment made in-state.
Three years later, as the grips of the pandemic have loosened, Ohio and other states are now trying to deal with an excess of protective gear, ditching their supplies in droves.
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.”
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