NEW YORK, Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Technavio has been monitoring the test kits market for coronavirus testing market and it is expected to decrease by USD -13.39 bn during 2021-2026, decelerating at a CAGR of -4.57% during the forecast period.
The increasing spread of COVID-19 globally, increasing screening of passengers in airports, and government regulations for healthcare service providers will offer immense growth opportunities. However, poor healthcare settings in developing countries, inaccuracy associated with rapid diagnostic tests, and threats associated with counterfeit testing kits will challenge the growth of the market participants.
To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments. Request Free Sample Report.
Test Kits Market for Corona Virus Testing Market Segmentation
Test Kits Market for Corona Virus Testing Market Scope
Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our test kits market for coronavirus testing market report covers the following areas:
This study identifies Increasing initiatives from start-ups as one of the prime reasons driving the test kits market for coronavirus testing market growth during the next few years. Buy Sample Report.
Test Kits Market for Corona Virus Testing Market Vendor Analysis
The growing competition in the market is compelling vendors to adopt various growth strategies such as promotional activities and spending on advertisements to improve the visibility of their services. Some vendors are also adopting inorganic growth strategies such as M&As to remain competitive in the market.
The report analyzes the market's competitive landscape and offers information on several market vendors, including:
To find additional highlights on the growth strategies adopted by vendors and their product offerings, Download Free Sample Report.
Test Kits Market for Corona Virus Testing Market Key Highlights
Related Reports:
Intermittent Catheters Marketby Product and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026
Surgical Clips MarketResearch Growth by End-user and Geography - Forecast and Analysis - 2022-2026
Test Kits Market For Corona Virus Testing Market Scope
Report Coverage
Details
Page number
120
Base year
2021
Forecast period
2022-2026
Growth momentum & CAGR
Decelerate at a CAGR of -4.57%
Market growth 2022-2026
$-13.39 billion
Market structure
Fragmented
YoY growth (%)
25.0
Regional analysis
Europe, Asia, North America, and Rest of World (ROW)
Performing market contribution
Rest of World (ROW) at 10%
Key consumer countries
US, UK, Spain, Russia, and India
Competitive landscape
Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope
Companies profiled
Abbott Laboratories, Advaite Inc., Beijing Innotec Biotechnology Co. Ltd., BGI Group, Bio Rad Laboratories Inc., Biomedomics Inc., bioMerieux SA, Cellex Inc., Chembio Diagnostics Inc., Danaher Corp., Dynamiker Biotechnology Tianjin Co. Ltd., F. Hoffmann La Roche Ltd., Henry Schein Inc., Mayo Medical Laboratories, Mylab Discovery Solutions Pvt Ltd., Ortho Clinical Diagnostics plc, QIAGEN NV, Robert Bosch GmbH, Safecare Biotech Hangzhou Co. Ltd, Siemens AG, and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.
Market Dynamics
Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and future consumer dynamics, and market condition analysis for the forecast period.
Customization purview
If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.
Table Of Contents :
1 Executive Summary
2 Market Landscape
3 Market Sizing
4 Five Forces Analysis
5 Market Segmentation by End-user
6 Customer Landscape
7 Geographic Landscape
8 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends
9 Vendor Landscape
10 Vendor Analysis
11 Appendix
About Us
Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.
Contact
Technavio ResearchJesse MaidaMedia & Marketing ExecutiveUS: +1 844 364 1100UK: +44 203 893 3200Email: [emailprotected]Website: www.technavio.com/
SOURCE Technavio
In March, 2020, Chelsea Kay, a twentysomething music lover who lives in New York, went to see the Australian band Rfs Du Sol play a packed show at the Orpheum Theatre in the heart of New Orleans. At some point, a murmur rippled through the crowd: Tom Hanks had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Kay thought little of it until she learned, a few days later, that states were shutting down to slow the spread of the virus. After travelling to her parents home in Chicago, fatigue set in. Her mother pulled a batch of chocolate-chip cookies from the oven, and she thought, Uh, I cant smell anything. A few weeks later, when the loss of smell became well-known as a symptom of COVID-19, she realized that shed contracted the virus. And that, she told me, was the first time I got it.
Two years later, on a cold Monday in March, Kay woke up feeling exhaustedher breathing labored, her head pounding. Wow, she thought, I feel like shit. Though a COVID test came back negative, she developed fevers, chills, night sweats, and brain fog, and a second test returned positive. Kay was young, healthy, vaccinated, and boosted, yet she grew so short of breath that she had trouble climbing stairs. Id never experienced anything like it, she told me. Her brain fog lasted weeks.
With that hard-won immunity, Kay assumed shed earned a reprieve. You deserve at least six months, right? she told me. I was, like, Im good for a while now. But, by the end of June, she again felt unwell, and her symptoms were much the same as in March. It was shocking, she said. Like, COVID can happen againanywhere, anytime. One wonders whether the cycle could continue foreverwhether many of us will eventually get COVID for a fourth time, or a fifth, or even a tenth.
During the first year of the pandemic, when reports of coronavirus reinfections started to trickle in, the phenomenon was considered exceedingly rarea microliter-sized drop in the bucket, as one virologist put it. As of October, 2020, the world had recorded thirty-eight million coronavirus cases and fewer than five confirmed reinfections. Two years later, the bucket is overflowing. Its now clear that not only will just about everyone contract the coronavirus, but were all likely to be infected multiple times. The virus evolves too efficiently, our immunity wanes too quickly, and, although COVID vaccines have proved remarkably durable against serious illness, they havent managed to break the chain of transmission.
As more of us experience repeat infections, we may sense that the virus remains a constant menace even when it is ignored, perhaps below the threshold of full-blown crisis but far more destructive than what we might have accepted in the Before Times. In the U.S., COVID is still on pace to kill more than a hundred thousand people per year; many of us share the reasonable worry that some future reinfection will be the one that causes longer-term harm to our health and quality of life. Has our battle with COVID-19 come to such a standstill that a slow burn of disruption, debility, and death will continue for years to come?
The specialists I consulted for this story shared a conviction that, despite the relentlessness of reinfections, our COVID woes are slowly starting to recede. They said that, although coronavirus infections will always carry risks, and we may still suffer periodic surges and new variants, infections should get less serious and less frequent as our immunity grows. Vaccines and therapeutics will also continue to improve, helping to lessen the worst effects of reinfection. But the duration and severity of this transitional period matters, too. How many times will we have to sit through quarantines and ride out symptoms, worrying how bad this one might be? How many more surprises could the coronavirus have in store?
The reinfection era began in earnest last winter, when the Omicron variant first spread around the globe. A recent study conducted in Serbia found that for people who were infected in the first twenty months of the pandemic, the risk of reinfection rose steadily but slowly: at six months, around one in a hundred had been reinfected; at twelve months, one in twenty; and at eighteen months, one in five. But Omicron sent reinfections skyrocketing. Nearly ninety per cent of all reinfections occurred in the studys final month, January, 2022. (The researchers found that one in a hundred reinfections led to hospitalization, and one in a thousand resulted in death.) By some estimates, the initial Omicron outbreak caused ten times as many reinfections as the earlier Delta variant. And Omicron now circulates in the form of even more contagious subvariants, such as BA.4 and BA.5.
How often is the coronavirus reinfecting us now? Were probably all getting reinfected all the time, Marcel Curlin, an infectious-disease physician at Oregon Health & Science University, told me. If you put me in a room with someone with COVID, and a little virus lands in my nose and infects one cell and makes new viruses, but then my immune system immediately wipes it outwell, Ive been infected. Its just that its not clinically recognized as an infection. Seen in this way, infections could be considered less of a binary than a spectrum: the virus can replicate inside our bodies even if it doesnt cause symptoms or show up on less-sensitive tests. I bet if we did a PCR test on every person every four days, wed see a sky-high rate of reinfection, Curlin said.
Fundamentally, our risk of reinfections depends on three main factors: how much our immunity has waned, how much the virus has changed, and how much of it we encounter. Our collective immunity increases with infections, reinfections, and vaccines. Booster shots are meant to slow the drawdowns in our immunity, and the recently approved bivalent vaccines, which target the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, may be particularly helpful. But the immune system must be judicious: it encounters countless threats and cant maintain enormous standing armies for each one. Over time, our bodies pare back their defenses, and whether were reinfected depends partly on how quickly and intensely they remobilize during the next encounter.
Our immune protections also exert pressure on the virus to evolve around them. Viruses can change so much that the body has trouble recognizing and subduing them. The original Omicron variant had at least thirty-two mutations on its spike proteintwice as many as Deltaand, in recent months, its subvariants have accumulated many more. SARS-CoV-2 is mutating faster than any of its cousin coronavirusesfaster, even, than the worlds dominant flu strain.
Finally, the chance youre reinfected is a function of viral dose. Its more than just a numbers game: our immune cells have to be stationed in the right places. Its like real estate in Manhattan, Florian Krammer, a virologist at Mount Sinais Medical School, told me. Location really matters. COVID vaccines injected into muscle produce relatively high levels of antibodies in the blood and lungs, but not in the nose, mouth, and upper airways, where the coronavirus usually enters. (Natural infection seems to produce a longer-lasting immune response in the nasal cavity.) Thats why scientists are so interested in mucosal vaccines, which are administered in the nose or mouth. India and China recently authorized such vaccines, but its still not clear how effective theyll be.
These three factors exist in a kind of equilibrium, but the balance can change, sometimes dramatically. Because Omicron is a more skilled infector of humans than prior variants, we need vastly higher levels of circulating antibodies to block it from infecting us. The intrinsic transmissibility of Omicron has changed the rules of the game, Dan Barouch, an immunologist at Harvard, told meprobably in a way that makes it impossible for us to win, if by winning we mean avoiding reinfection altogether. Are we chasing our tails trying to continuously raise antibody titers against SARS-CoV-2 to levels that would fully block infection? Barouch asked. At this point, is preventing infection even a realistic goal?
Aubree Gordon, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, has been following hundreds of households in Nicaragua to understand COVID risks over time. Gordons work has shown that, on average, a first infection lowers the severity of a second, and a second of a third. But, for some, COVID continues to present meaningful health risks. Id hoped that one or two reinfections would get us to a place where COVID was something like other coronaviruses, Gordon told me. It looks like it will take longer. But I expect well still get there.
Gordon believes that one day, SARS-CoV-2 will infect us far less frequently than it does now. She pointed to a paper published in Nature Medicine that examined how often people were infected by other coronaviruses. (Virtually everyone has antibodies against the four other coronaviruses that afflict humans, and they generally cause only mild cold symptoms.) The researchers followed ten healthy individuals for decades and found that, although reinfections can occur as soon as six months after a prior infection, the median time to reinfection was around three years. And thats for any infection, not symptomatic infection, Gordon said. My best guess would beand this is just a guessthat symptomatic COVID infections will eventually occur every five years or so. We could achieve this equilibrium within five years, and possibly sooner, she said. But that would still mean that many of us could get COVID ten times or more in our lifetimes.
Claudia, a special-education teacher with an easy smile and short, curly brown hair, was pregnant when the pandemic began. (She asked me to omit her last name to protect her privacy.) She and her husband stayed holed up in their Brooklyn apartment even after their daughter was born, in October, 2020. Essentially the only time I left the house was for my postpartum visit, she told me. But the couple decided to take PCR tests and spend Christmas, 2020, visiting her parents. Her results didnt arrive until Christmas Eve, at which point Claudia and her mother were already cooing over the baby. My mom was oh-my-God freaking out, Claudia said. We all had a moment of spinning our wheels. I felt totally fine, but somehow I had COVID?
Her second positive test came a year later, when Omicron became the dominant variant and a wave of infections affected the school where she teaches. She had no symptoms and was surprised when a precautionary test came back positive. Shed been in close contact with many students and teachers, and the school closed early for winter break. I inadvertently gave everyone that little Christmas gift, she said.
Claudias third coronavirus infection, in September, was her worsta reminder that infections and immunity do not always follow predictable patterns. Her daughter, now nearly two, developed a fever; Claudia soon experienced muscle pains, headaches, congestion, and fatigue, and then lost her sense of smell. When we spoke a few weeks later, it had mostly returned, but, she told me, Im constantly going around sniffing cinnamon, just to make sure. Claudia feels grateful to have escaped these infections relatively unscathed, but shes wary about long-term consequences. Im nervous about all these studies coming out saying, Oh, you could get dementia, depression, any number of things after even mild COVID, she told me. Im, like, Well, shit, theres nothing I can do about it now.
People who are reinfected by the virus are much more likely to suffer a range of medical problems in subsequent months, including heart attacks, strokes, breathing problems, mental-health problems, and kidney disorders, according to a major new analysis of U.S. veterans. Compared with those who werent reinfected, they are twice as likely to die. We did this paper because, for most people in the U.S., a first infection is now in the past, Ziyad Al-Aly, the studys lead author and chief of research and development at the V.A. St. Louis Health Care System, told me. Theyre thinking, Ive had it once, Im vaccinated, Im boosted. Should I still go the extra mile to protect myself? Does reinfection really matter? The short answer is: yes, it absolutely does.
There are some caveats. The study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and many veterans are older men with multiple medical conditions, so they have a higher level of risk than the general population. Its also possible that people who get reinfected are somehow dissimilar from those who dont. Al-Aly was careful to note that a second infection isnt necessarily worse than a first onerather, that its worse than not getting reinfected at all. But I think the idea that theres some elevated risk that comes with reinfection is generalizable, Al-Aly told me. Even when the health risks of any one infection go down, the cumulative risks of many infections should worry us.
Mike Stucka USA TODAY NETWORK| Newport Daily News
Rhode Island reported 1,781 new cases of coronavirus in the week ending Sunday, down 6.2% from the previous week. The previous week had 1,898 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Rhode Island ranked second among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week coronavirus cases in the United States decreased 7.7% from the week before, with 298,674 cases reported. With 0.32% of the country's population, Rhode Island had 0.6% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 13 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.
Newport County reported 138 cases and no deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 118 cases and no deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 24,467 cases and 99 deaths.
Across Rhode Island, cases fell in four counties, with the best declines in Washington County, with 123 cases from 190 a week earlier; in Providence County, with 1,152 cases from 1,180; and in Kent County, with 268 cases from 285.
>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases
Within Rhode Island, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Providence County with 180 cases per 100,000 per week; Newport County with 168; and Kent County with 163. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.
Adding the most new cases overall were Providence County, with 1,152 cases; Kent County, with 268 cases; and Newport County, with 138.
In Rhode Island, five people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, two people were reported dead.
A total of 427,242 people in Rhode Island have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 3,674 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 96,699,237 people have tested positive and 1,062,564 people have died.
>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States
USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, Oct. 9. Likely COVID patients admitted in the state:
Likely COVID patients admitted in the nation:
Hospitals in 18 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 15 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 29 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.
The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control. If you have questions about the data or the story, contact Mike Stucka at mstucka@gannett.com.
Mike Stucka USA TODAY NETWORK| The Herald News
Massachusetts reported 9,942 new cases of coronavirus in the week ending Sunday, down 3.8% from the previous week. The previous week had 10,340 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Massachusetts ranked fifth among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week coronavirus cases in the United States decreased 7.7% from the week before, with 298,674 cases reported. With 2.07% of the country's population, Massachusetts had 3.33% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 13 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.
Bristol County reported 694 cases and six deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 745 cases and two deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 171,152 cases and 2,278 deaths.
Newport County reported 138 cases and no deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 118 cases and no deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 24,467 cases and 99 deaths.
Across Massachusetts, cases fell in nine counties, with the best declines in Middlesex County, with 1,786 cases from 1,918 a week earlier; in Hampshire County, with 202 cases from 294; and in Worcester County, with 991 cases from 1,081.
>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases
Within Massachusetts, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Berkshire County with 190 cases per 100,000 per week; Hampden County with 182; and Barnstable County with 140. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.
Adding the most new cases overall were Middlesex County, with 1,786 cases; Suffolk County, with 1,020 cases; and Worcester County, with 991. Weekly case counts rose in three counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Suffolk, Berkshire and Plymouth counties.
In Massachusetts, 65 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, 60 people were reported dead.
A total of 2,060,884 people in Massachusetts have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 21,771 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 96,699,237 people have tested positive and 1,062,564 people have died.
Note: For Massachusetts, Johns Hopkins University reports data in a combined health department for Dukes and Nantucket counties. Those two counties may appear without any cases, and this will skew rankings of counties.
>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States
USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, Oct. 9. Likely COVID patients admitted in the state:
Likely COVID patients admitted in the nation:
Hospitals in 18 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 15 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 29 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.
The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control. If you have questions about the data or the story, contact Mike Stucka at mstucka@gannett.com.
I am still afraid of catching COVID. As a young, healthy, bivalently boosted physician, I no longer worry that Ill end up strapped to a ventilator, but it does seem plausible that even a mild case of the disease could shorten my life, or leave me with chronic fatigue, breathing trouble, and brain fog. Roughly one in 10 Americans appears to share my concern, including plenty of doctors. We know many devastating symptoms can persist for months, the physician Ezekiel Emanuel wrote this past May in The Washington Post. Like everyone, I want this pandemic nightmare to be over. But I also desperately fear living a debilitated life of mental muddle or torpor.
Recently, Ive begun to think that our worries might be better placed. As the pandemic drags on, data have emerged to clarify the dangers posed by COVID across the weeks, months, and years that follow an infection. Taken together, their implications are surprising. Some people's lives are devastated by long COVID; theyre trapped with perplexing symptoms that seem to persist indefinitely. For the majority of vaccinated people, however, the worst complications will not surface in the early phase of disease, when youre first feeling feverish and stuffy, nor can the gravest risks be said to be long term. Rather, they emerge during the middle phase of post-infection, a stretch that lasts for about 12 weeks after you get sick. This period of time is so menacing, in fact, that it really ought to have its own, familiar name: medium COVID.
Just how much of a threat is medium COVID? The answer has been obscured, to some extent, by sloppy definitions. A lot of studies blend different, dire outcomes into a single giant bucket called long COVID. Illnesses arising in as few as four weeks, along with those that show up many months later, have been considered one and the same. The CDC, for instance, suggested in a study out last spring that one in five adults who get the virus will go on to suffer any of 26 medical complications, starting at least one month after infection, and extending up to one year. All of these are called post-COVID conditions, or long COVID. A series of influential analyses looking at U.S. veterans described an onslaught of new heart, kidney, and brain diseases (even among the vaccinated) across a similarly broad time span. The studies authors refer to these, grouped together, as long COVID and its myriad complications.
But the risks described above might well be most significant in just the first few weeks post-infection, and fade away as time goes on. When scientists analyzed Swedens national health registry, for example, they found that the chance of developing pulmonary embolisman often deadly clot in the lungswas a startling 32 times higher in the first month after testing positive for the virus; after that, it quickly diminished. The clots were only two times more common at 60 days after infection, and the effect was indistinguishable from baseline after three to four months. A post-infection risk of heart attack and stroke was also evident, and declined just as expeditiously. In July, U.K. epidemiologists corroborated the Swedish findings, showing that a heightened rate of cardiovascular disease among COVID patients could be detected up to 12 weeks after they got sick. Then the hazard went away.
This is all to be expected, given that other respiratory infections are known to cause a temporary spike in patients risk of cardiovascular events. Post-viral blood clots, heart attacks, and strokes tend to blow through like a summer storm. A very recent paper in the journal Circulation, also based on U.K. data, did find that COVIDs effects are longer-lasting, with a heightened chance of such events that lasts for almost one full year. But even in that study, the authors see the risk fall off most dramatically across the first two weeks. Ive now read dozens of similar analyses, using data from many countries, that agree on this basic point: The greatest dangers lie in the weeks, not months, after a COVID infection.
Read: Long COVID could be a mass deterioration event
Yet many have inferred that COVIDs dangers have no end. Whats particularly alarming isthat these are really life-long conditions, Ziyad Al-Aly, the lead researcher on the veterans studies, told the Financial Times in August. A Cleveland Clinic cardiologist has suggested that catching SARS-CoV-2 might even become a greater contributor to cardiovascular disease than being a chronic smoker or having obesity. But if experts who hold this assumption are correctand the mortal hazards of COVID really do persist for a lifetime (or even many months)then its not yet visible at the health-system level. By the end of the Omicron surge last winter, one in four Americansabout 84 million peoplehad been newly infected with the coronavirus. This was on top of 103 million pre-Omicron infections. Yet six months after the surge ended, the number of adult emergency-room visits, outpatient appointments, and hospital admissions across the country were all slightly lower than they were at the same time in 2021, according to an industry report released last month. In fact, emergency-room visits and hospital admissions in 2021 and 2022 were lower than theyd been before the pandemic. In other words, a rising tide of long-COVID-related medical conditions, affecting nearly every organ system, is nowhere to be found.
If mild infections did routinely lead to fatal consequences at a delay of months or years, then we should see it in our death rates, too. The number of excess deaths in the U.S.meaning those that have occured beyond historic normsshould still be going up, long after case rates fall. Yet excess deaths in the U.S. dropped to zero this past April, about two months after the end of the winter surge, and they have stayed relatively low ever since. Here, as around the world, overall mortality rates follow acute-infection rates, but only for a little while. A second wave of deathsa long-COVID wavenever seems to break.
Even the most familiar maladies of long COVIDsevere fatigue, cognitive difficulties, and breathing troubletend to be at their worst during the medium post-infection phase. An early analysis of symptom-tracking data from the U.K., the U.S., and Sweden found that the proportion of those experiencing COVIDs aftereffects decreased by 83 percent four to 12 weeks after illness started. The U.K. government also reported much higher rates of medium COVID, relative to long COVID: In its survey, 11 percent of people who caught the virus experienced lingering issues such as weakness, muscle aches, and loss of smell, but that rate had dropped to 3 percent by 12 weeks post-infection. The U.K. saw a slight decline in the number of people reporting such issues throughout the spring and summer; and a recent U.S. government survey found that about half of Americans who had experienced any COVID symptoms for three months or longer had already recovered.
This slow, steady resolution of symptoms fits with what we know about other post-infection syndromes. A survey of adolescents recovering from mononucleosis, which is caused by Epstein-Barr virus, found that 13 percent of subjects met criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome at six months, but that rate was nearly halved at one year, and nearly halved again at two. An examination of chronic fatigue after three different infectionsEBV, Q fever, and Ross River virusidentified a similar pattern: frequent post-infection symptoms, which gradually decreased over months.
Read: Its not just long COVID
The pervasiveness of medium COVID does nothing to negate the reality of long COVIDa calamitous condition that can shatter peoples lives. Many long-haulers experience unremitting symptoms, and their cases can evolve into complex chronic syndromes like ME/CFS or dysautonomia. As a result, they may require specialized medical care, permanent work accommodations, and ongoing financial support. Recognizing the small chance of such tragic outcomes could well be enough to make some people try to avoid infection or reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 at all costs.
But if youre like me, and trying to calibrate your behaviors to meet some personally acceptable level of COVID risk, then it helps to keep in mind the difference between the viruss medium- and long-term complications. Medium COVID may be time-limited, but it is far from rareand not always mild. It can mean a month or two of profound fatigue, crushing headaches, and vexing chest pain. It can lead to life-threatening medical complications. It needs recognition, research, and new treatments. For millions of people, medium COVID is as bad as it gets.
Throughout the pandemic, IRS and Treasury struggled to get COVID-relief payments into the hands of some peopleespecially those with lower-incomes, limited internet access, or experiencing homelessness. Based on IRS and Treasury data, there could be between 9-10 million eligible individuals who have not yet received those payments.
Relief might be in sight for more families and individuals. Individuals with little or no income, and therefore not required to pay taxes, have until November 15 to complete a simplified tax return to get their payments. Taxpayers who missed the April 15 deadline have until October 17. These IRS pages, irs.gov/coronavirus/EIP and ChildTaxCredit.gov, have more information on how to complete and submit a tax return.
Todays WatchBlog post looks at our work on COVID-19 payments to individuals, including the Child Tax Credit and next steps for people who may still be eligible to receive theirs.
Who can get a COVID-19 stimulus payment or a Child Tax Credit?
From April 2020 to December 2021, the federal government made direct COVID-19 stimulus payments to individuals totaling $931 billion. Congress authorized three rounds of payments that benefited an estimated 165 million eligible Americans. Generally, U.S. citizens with income below $75,000 or married couples with an income below $150,000 were eligible for all three payments and the full amount of each payment.
Congress also temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to include more families and increased the payment amounts. Most people with children qualify automatically for the CTC when they file their taxes, but there are some other eligibility requirements, too.
Millions of families may have already received some expanded CTC payments. From July to December 2021, eligible families received advance monthly payments of half their total expected CTC, benefiting around 84% of U.S. children. Generally, checks were directly deposited into the bank accounts IRS had on file for the recipient family. According to the Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve, COVID stimulus and advance CTC payments reduced financial hardship and food insufficiency among recipients.
As stated above, individuals and families can still file a tax return to see if they are eligible to take advantage of these payments and the child tax credit.
What more can Treasury and IRS do to get the word out about how eligible individuals can get their payments?
Treasury and IRS undertook sweeping communications and outreach efforts to publicize the COVID-19 payments and the expanded CTC. Even so, we found several groups of people who experienced difficulties receiving payments including those that:
Part of the challenge for the IRS and Treasury in 2020 was they only had data on taxpayers that had previously filed taxes. Since a broader set of families were eligible for the COVID-19 stimulus payments and the expanded CTC, Treasury and IRS reached out to around 9 million Americans to let them know they were eligible for the relief payments. In May 2021, the Treasury Inspector General identified potentially 10 million individuals eligible for payments. As of June, IRS had no plans to conduct additional outreach.
We made recommendations to IRS and Treasury on ways to improve outreach and communications efforts, especially to underserved communities.
What can people do who think they may be eligible, but are missing payments?
Individuals who think they may be eligible but did not receive a COVID-19 payment in 2020 or 2021 or the CTC can file a simplified return at ChildTaxCredit.gov. However, the deadlines to do so are rapidly approaching. Individuals with little or no income, and therefore not required to pay taxes, have until November 15 and taxpayers who missed the April 15 filing deadline have until October 17.
Jason McLellan was waiting for a pair of snowboard boots to be heat-molded to his feet when he answered a call that likely saved millions of lives. Barney Graham, a virologist with the National Institutes of Health, had reached him in a ski shop in Park City, Utah, to ask for his help in developing a vaccine to fight a novel coronavirus that had emerged in China just weeks earlier.
McLellan, a structural biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, immediately messaged Daniel Wrapp, one of the top graduate researchers in his lab, telling him they were joining Grahams effort. At that moment, the pair knew something few in the world did. Working mostly unnoticed, McLellan and his team had pioneered an entirely new process of vaccine development, one that held great promise against coronaviruses.
Five days after McLellans call from Graham, in January 2020, Chinese scientists published the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2; Wrapp needed only an hour to identify a way to lock the viruss spike protein into a shape that impeded its latching on to cells and made it vulnerable to attack from the human immune system. It was a crucial first step in creating a vaccine. A furious flurry of scientific back-and-forth followed, among McLellan, Graham, and vaccine development teams at the NIH and drugmaker Moderna. Six weeks later, Modernas mRNA-1273 vaccine was ready for testing. The Food and Drug Administration authorized it for emergency use just ten months after that.
Developing a vaccine that quickly against a new virus would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. But in 2013, McLellan engineered a stunning breakthrough against another virus that also had no treatmentrespiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. This common viral infection fills hospital beds with sick children and kills thousands of adults over age 65 each year. For decades, researchers had triedand failedto produce an RSV vaccine. Yet today, thanks to the same McLellan discovery that led to the COVID-19 vaccines, an inoculation could finally be available within the next year or two. McLellans work may again prove a lifesaver. And hes just getting started.
Youd be forgiven for mistaking Jason McLellan for a college student. Its not just that the 41-year-old wears the standard-issue uniform of sneakers, worn jeans, and an untucked T-shirt. Its also his laid-back vibechomping on a caffeine-rich gum called MEGhis youthful face, and his rough-edged, coffee-colored beard. He doesnt want to be a Harvard professor, says Dan Leahy, the former chair of UTs molecular biosciences department, who recruited McLellan from Dartmouth five years ago. He just wants a corner to do his scienceand eat good barbecue.
Time spent trimming his beard or dry-cleaning a blazer could be time spent in his lab, and little enthralls McLellan more than puzzling out the structure of a protein at the atomic level. Growing up in a suburb of Detroit, McLellan often played with Legos, and when he learned about structural biology during his senior year at Wayne State University, his fascination with tiny building blocks became a calling. I really enjoy determining the three-dimensional structures of proteins, McLellan said during one of our Zoom conversations, and Ive always found viruses fascinating.
After finishing his doctorate in biophysics at Johns Hopkins in 2008, McLellan received multiple job offers. He wanted to go where he could not only satisfy his curiosity about the structure of proteins but also use that information to save lives. He found that opportunity at the NIH Vaccine Research Center, in Bethesda, Maryland.
Antigens are like mug shots that the immune system uses to identify intruders. And RSVs F protein is like an intruder who dons a disguise after being spotted robbing a bank.
There, McLellan joined so many scientists working to find a vaccine for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, that there wasnt room for him on the fourth floor with the others. Instead, he took a spot on the second floor, near the lab of Barney Graham, who had devoted his career to studying RSV. After the NIH failed at a series of HIV vaccine efforts, McLellan began to wonder whether the lab shouldnt try its approach on a less complex virussuch as RSV.
Thats not to say RSV is simple. Disastrous vaccine trials in the mid-sixties resulted in two of the vaccinated children dying and most getting sicker than the unvaccinated kids who also had caught RSV. Those trials chilled RSV vaccine progress for decades, even though nearly everyone in the U.S. has had RSV at some point, and many get it multiple times. Studies have found that RSV infections cost the United States more than a billion dollars annually in medical expenses. The virus is particularly dangerous to infants.
When four-month-old Indie Cardenas, of Midland, was first diagnosed with RSV in May, her lungs became inflamed, blocking her airways, and her oxygen levels dropped so low that she turned blue. She was transferred to Covenant Childrens Hospital, in Lubbock, for specialized care and intubated the next day. We thought it was going to be a two-day or three-day stay at the hospital, said her mother, Bianca Cardenas. But Indie, whose Down syndrome makes her especially vulnerable to respiratory illness, spent more than a month fighting RSV before recovering. She may join the numerous children who experience long-term effects from bouts with the illness. RSV kills somewhere between 100 and 500 U.S. children and about 14,000 adults age 65 and older each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A vaccine that could prevent most of those deaths has remained elusive because an unstable protein on the viruss surfacethe F proteinchanges form when it attaches to cells inside the human body. That transformation makes the virus hard to target. Viruses bind to and enter cells so they can hijack the cells machinery to replicate. Often, the protein that binds to a cell is also the part of the virus that the immune system recognizes as a threat, called an antigen. Antigens are like mug shots that the immune system uses to identify intruders. And RSVs F protein is like an intruder who dons a disguise after being spotted robbing a bank. The key to an effective RSV vaccine, then, is to lock that protein into its original shapebefore it can make that costume changeand induce the immune system to produce antibodies against that original shape.
The problem was, back when McLellan first set his sights on RSV, no one knew what the F protein really looked like because proteins are too tiny to see except with specialized methods and tools, such as X-ray crystallography or cryo-electron microscopes. McLellan had access to that equipment at the NIH, and Graham persuaded McLellan to map both the pre- and post-change versions of the F protein. It sounded really important, McLellan says. Man, if you can save the lives of tens of thousands... that seems like a great thing to make a vaccine for.
It took three years for McLellan to map out the post-change, or post-fusion, version of the F protein, a necessary step to test antibody response and to understand how the protein morphs from one shape to another. Two years after that, in 2013, he finished mapping the pre-fusion version. All of a sudden, we could see it, Graham says. But to capture it, we had to find an antibody that bound to it and then stabilize it. They hoped to tweak the pre-fusion structure of the F protein and force it to stay in that shape, leaving it vulnerable to the immune systems attack. The team had spent two years testing thousands of human antibodies until they found one that neutralized the F protein. They could see the exact portion of the F protein that antibodies latched on to. McLellan added chemical bonds to the protein that would keep it locked into its pre-fusion shapemaking it a key ingredient for a vaccine.
The NIH holds the patent on McLellan and Grahams work, and after the researchers published their process, in 2013, Pfizer and other drug companies immediately began developing RSV vaccines. Trials began in 2017, and today drugmakers GSK, Janssen, Moderna, and Pfizer are each conducting phaseIII trials on their own vaccinesthe final step before FDA approval. All of them use the pre-fusion F protein McLellan designed.
In June, GSK announced that its vaccine offered exceptional protection against RSV in adults age sixty or older. Other trials are testing vaccines in pregnant women, designed to protect babies for several months after birth, when theyre most at risk of severe RSV disease. McLellan hopes to see results from those within the year, and Graham expects an RSV vaccine to be approved for either older adults or pregnant women by the end of 2023. There are tons of failed phaseIII trials, McLellan says, so to show a path forward, to show this new concept works, is really exciting. That was why I wanted to do this type of work, to make an impact on human health.
As significant as McLellan and Grahams discovery was for RSV, it also served as proof of concept for a new way of developing vaccines. Ever since the development of the first vaccine, against smallpox in the eighteenth century, scientists had designed inoculations the same way: introduce a pathogen to the body so that the immune system learns what it looks like and mounts a response against it. Ideally, if scientists know what antigen on the pathogen induces the immune response, they might include only that antigen in the vaccine instead of a whole virus or bacterium, potentially reducing the vaccines side effects.
But with RSV, McLellan had instead taken whats known as a structure-based design approach: determining the antigen needed for a vaccine against a particular disease, figuring out exactly what the antigen should look like to get the bodys best possible antibody response, and then building that antigen. He didnt invent this concept, first theorized in the early 2000s, but he was the first to turn it into reality.
McLellan continued refining his process, while running his own lab at Dartmouth, before moving to Austin. Instead of using the antigen the pathogen provides, McLellan maps the protein structure of the virus and pinpoints where the bodys most potent antibodies attach. Next, he reverse engineers the protein with tweaks that will keep its structure stable enough to be included in a vaccine, where it stimulates the immune response. This same approach enabled the rapid development of Modernas, Pfizers, and other companies COVID-19 vaccines.
We thought RSV would be the first, but coronavirus kind of scooped it, McLellan says. What the COVID vaccines did was shed more light, at least in the scientific community, on the role of structure-based vaccine design. And to see something we did prepandemic, just some basic science, ending up being in the arms of millions, billions of peoplemy own kids, my parents, my wife... Its really incredible.
After McLellan published his findings on the structure of RSVs F protein in 2013, he began looking for another virus to target. That same year, the world was buzzing about an outbreak of a deadly new coronavirus causing Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, commonly known as MERS, that can result in fever, coughing, and shortness of breath, among other symptoms.
In 2013 McLellan relocated to Dartmouth, where he would spend the next three years focusing on the MERS viruss spike proteinthe same one all coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, have on their surface. He was joined by Nianshuang Wang, a structural biologist from a small town in China who had traveled to the U.S. to work with McLellan after reading about his research on RSV. Wang says he wanted to do the same kind of work McLellan was doing because its so promising for being used in a real vaccine for so many people. It was Wang who cracked how to stabilize the coronavirus spike protein.
McLellans team filed a patent for that stabilized protein in October 2016 and submitted its work to top journals, including Science and Nature. The editors werent impressed, perhaps because MERS never spread far and killed fewer than five hundred people worldwide in its worst year. After five rejections, McLellans paper found a home in 2017 in PNAS, the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a respected but second-tier journal. We were very excited about it, Graham says, but the rest of the world just wasnt all that excited.
In fact, coronaviruses seemed to be of so little interest and pose so minor a threat that McLellan and his team at Dartmouth were denied a grant in 2017 for research aimed at creating a universal vaccine against all coronaviruses. Although National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reviewers rated McLellans proposal as outstanding, it was deemed a low priority.
While McLellan was working on MERS, former UT molecular biosciences chair Leahy began wooing his former Johns Hopkins student to Austin. McLellan visited Texas, and Leahy treated him to a whole mess of brisket from Franklin Barbecue while promising him extensive access to the two cryo-electron microscopes UT put into operation in December 2017 as part of a new $8million research facility. In turn, McLellan told Leahy about the paper his team had just published on the MERS spike protein. Leahy said the work seemed interesting. He says now, We didnt realize it would be critical.
In January 2018, when McLellan moved his lab from New Hampshire, he continued working on coronaviruses and on the family of viruses to which RSV belongs. Today hes turned much of his focus to vaccine development for other coronaviruses, as well as additional viral and bacterial diseases, including pertussis, better known as whooping cough, whose current vaccines begin losing effectiveness within a few years after being administered.
Hes not stopping there. McLellan is working on a vaccine for another respiratory virus that most havent heard ofmetapneumovirus, which can be deadly for immunocompromised patients, such as bone marrow transplant recipients. Hes also studying ways to prevent cytomegalovirus, the leading infectious cause of birth defects in the U.S. and a particularly dangerous virus for those with compromised immune systems. Hes targeting, as well, the tick-borne Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, which kills three out of ten who get it. And while hes doing all of that, other researchers are deploying the reverse vaccinology approach McLellan helped pioneer to work on vaccines against a range of diseaseseverything from tuberculosis and malaria to Ebola and the flu.
His work has been such a game changer for vaccine development that it seems worth wondering if the words Nobel Prize winner may one day be uttered alongside McLellans name. Many of his colleagues seem to avoid saying Nobel as superstitiously as Shakespearean actors avoid saying Macbeth. But Leahy, at least, admits, Its certainly not out of the question to discuss.
McLellan would be the last person to talk about what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the prize, might think of him. Hes almost nerdishly humble about his workhappy to detail the technical aspects of his various breakthroughs, but with little to say about his role in those achievements. Yet I did catch McLellan in an uncharacteristically introspective mood in late August, just after Pfizer reported that its RSV vaccine for older adults proved 86percent effective in preventing severe illness in trials. Im not Mr.Emotional, McLellan said, but even I get a lump in my throat on a day like today. With time, a really effective vaccine translates to thousands or even millions of peoples lives saved, people who will have more days on this earth and more hours with the people that they love. Now weve had two effective vaccines do that. Its living the dream for a vaccinologist.
Tara Haelle is an independent science and health journalist based in Dallas. Shes the author of The Informed Parent and Vaccination Investigation: The History and Science of Vaccines.
This article originally appeared in the November 2022 issue ofTexas Monthlywith the headline Unmasking a Killer Virus.Subscribe today.
Mike Stucka| USA TODAY NETWORK
Video: Jehovah's Witnesses return to door-to-door ministry
Jehovah's Witnesses in Augusta are returning to door-to-door ministry after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19.
Katie Goodale, Augusta Chronicle
Oregon reported 4,237 new cases of coronavirus in the week ending Sunday, from 4,269 the week before of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Oregon ranked 17th among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week, coronavirus cases in the United States decreased 7.7% from the week before, with 298,674 cases reported. With 1.27% of the country's population, Oregon had 1.42% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 13 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.
Lane County reported 375 cases and four deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 299 cases and six deaths. Throughout the pandemic, it has reported 73,374 cases and 635 deaths.
'People are frustrated': Eugene residents think city moving in wrong direction, survey finds
Within Oregon, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Grant County with 500 cases per 100,000 per week; Crook County with 205; and Jefferson County with 203. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.
Adding the most new cases overall were Multnomah County, with 809 cases; Washington County, with 589 cases; and Clackamas County, with 433. Weekly case counts rose in 18 counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Lane, Klamath and Clackamas counties.
>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases
Across Oregon, cases fell in 15 counties, with the best declines in Josephine County, with 55 cases from 103 a week earlier; in Jackson County, with 162 cases from 195; and in Linn County, with 97 cases from 130.
In Oregon, 29 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, 41 people were reported dead.
A total of 899,013 people in Oregon have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 8,590 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States, 96,699,237 people have tested positive and 1,062,564 people have died.
>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States
USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, Oct. 9.
Likely COVID-19 patients admitted in the state:
Likely COVID-19 patients admitted in the nation:
Hospitals in 18 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 15 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 29 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.
Related: COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted communities of color in Oregon, report shows
The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control. If you have questions about the data or the story, contact Mike Stucka at mstucka@gannett.com.
Side effects associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination have been reported in many countries. Thrombocytopenia is not uncommon; however, pneumonitis induced by vaccination is relatively rare, with only five cases that have been reported to date.
A recent Clinical Infection in Practice study presents the case report of a patient who developed pneumonitis and thrombocytopenia concurrently after being administered the COVID-19 vaccine. This study also summarizes previous cases of COVID-19 vaccination-associated pneumonitis and thrombocytopenia.
Study:Thrombocytopenia and pneumonitis associated with BNT16B2b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine: A case report. Image Credit: Boumen Japet / Shutterstock.com
The subject of the current study was an 80-year-old Japanese man who experienced seven days of cough, fever, and shortness of breath. The individual also had a history of Behets disease and hypertension but was not under any medication.
The patient quit smoking at 50 years of age; however, before that, he smoked about 30 packs each year. The patients body mass index (BMI) was 23 kg/m2.
The subject was vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT16B2b2 messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccine. One week after receiving the first dose, he developed persistent chills for another week, following which he visited the family hospital.
At the hospital, the patients body temperature was 38C and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels were 158.0 mg/L, which normally has a reference value of 1.4 mg/L. Both CRP and temperature levels eventually normalized. The patient subsequently received the second vaccine dose after three weeks of receiving the first.
The day after the administration of the second dose, the subject developed a fever of 37.8C and exhibited a low oxygen saturation level of 85%. Further blood tests revealed elevated platelet and white blood cell counts. Additionally, CRP was 172.0 mg/L and D-dimer was 3.8 g/mL, the latter of which has a reference value of less than 1.0 g/mL.
Computed tomography (CT) images revealed the right upper lung to have an area of consolidation with air bronchograms. Ground-glass opacities were noted beside the pleura of the left lung, in addition to enlarged mediastinal lymph nodes. Pneumonia was determined to be the most likely cause of these developments.
The patient received a diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia and was subsequently treated with 2 g/day of ceftriaxone. The response was not satisfactory, which led the clinicians to then initiate levofloxacin and tazobactam/piperacillin treatment. Nevertheless, the fever did not subside, with CRP and blood cell counts remaining elevated.
A bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) was scheduled for day 13 after admission; however, the procedure was not performed, as the patient exhibited reduced platelet counts. Immunoglobulin G (IgG), IgA, and D-dimer levels were elevated at 28.3 g/L, 7.0 g/L, and 1.8 g/mL, respectively. CT images did not show any thrombus.
COVID-19 vaccination was suspected to cause both thrombocytopenia and pneumonitis. After this determination was made, prednisolone treatment, platelet transfusions, and intravenous Ig (IVIG) were initiated.
Platelet counts ultimately returned to normal after five days, thus allowing the prednisolone dose to be reduced after eight days. CT images after three weeks showed an improvement in lymph node appearance and pneumonia. After the completion of steroid tapering, the subject continues to do well and is periodically monitored.
Five cases of vaccination-induced pneumonitis have been reported, with pneumonitis appearing within a few days of receiving the second vaccine dose in three of these cases. CT imaging results were similar to those reported in the current study, whereas BAL revealed elevated levels of lymphocytes in two patients.
Alveolitis with lymphocyte infiltration was also observed in one case. All patients responded well to steroid treatment.
COVID-19 vaccine-induced thrombocytopenia without thrombosis is common. The symptoms associated with this condition have been observed within one week of first-dose administration and treatment was initiated with steroids and/or IVIG. Some reports of thrombocytopenia with thrombosis have also been noted with unsatisfactory responses to steroid therapy.
The present study reported a case of pneumonitis and thrombocytopenia in a patient with Behets disease after receiving the BNT16B2b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
The authors highlight the utmost importance of considering such case reports on the adverse side effects associated with COVID-19 vaccination. This data will ultimately aid in the appropriate management of COVID-19 patients worldwide during the ongoing pandemic.
Journal reference:
Mike Stucka USA TODAY NETWORK| Watertown Public Opinion
New coronavirus cases leaped in South Dakota in the week ending Sunday, rising 15% as 842 cases were reported. The previous week had 732 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.
South Dakota ranked 22nd among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week coronavirus cases in the United States decreased 7.7% from the week before, with 298,674 cases reported. With 0.27% of the country's population, South Dakota had 0.28% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 13 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.
Codington County reported 35 cases and one death in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 29 cases and no deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 9,653 cases and 104 deaths.
Lac qui Parle County reported 14 cases and no deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported six cases and no deaths. Throughout the pandemic it has reported 2,022 cases and 29 deaths.
Within South Dakota, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Corson County with 245 cases per 100,000 per week; Spink County with 220; and Todd County with 206. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.
Adding the most new cases overall were Pennington County, with 139 cases; Minnehaha County, with 136 cases; and Brown County, with 66. Weekly case counts rose in 30 counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Pennington, Brown and Davison counties.
>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases
Across South Dakota, cases fell in 26 counties, with the best declines in Dewey County, with 8 cases from 29 a week earlier; in Lincoln County, with 30 cases from 48; and in Oglala Lakota County, with 21 cases from 35.
In South Dakota, 12 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, four people were reported dead.
A total of 262,213 people in South Dakota have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 3,033 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 96,699,237 people have tested positive and 1,062,564 people have died.
>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States
USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, Oct. 9. Likely COVID patients admitted in the state:
Likely COVID patients admitted in the nation:
Hospitals in 18 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 15 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 29 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.
The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control. If you have questions about the data or the story, contact Mike Stucka at mstucka@gannett.com.
