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Twenty-seven months into the COVID-19 pandemic, our defenses against the coronavirus seem at once stronger and more penetrable than ever. A growing majority of the U.S. population now has some immunity to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, whether from vaccination, past infection, or both. However, staggeringly infectious members of the Omicron family have demonstrated an ability to evade some of those protections. Since April, they have led to a quadrupling of daily coronavirus cases; the U.S. has been reporting more than a hundred thousand a day, but, because widely used at-home tests dont show up in official tallies, the true number could be five or even ten times higher.
When the original Omicron, BA.1, swept the country this winter, it was by far the most contagious variant to date. But a subvariant that emerged more recently, BA.2, appears to be thirty per cent more transmissible, and one of its descendants, BA.2.12.1, is more contagious still. Unfortunately, people who have recovered from BA.1 infections can be reinfected by Omicron subvariants. According to some estimates, the U.S. could see a hundred million coronavirus infections this fall and winter. This is approaching one of the most transmissible pathogens in history, Eric Topol, the director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told me.
Yet the countrys response has been one of indifference. No state currently requires masks in public places, even though the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that a third of Americans should consider wearing them, and New York City recently recommended them indoors. When a judge struck down a federal mask requirement for trains and airplanes, the Biden Administration appealed, but did not seek to immediately reinstate the mandate. In April, less than a third of Americans said that they were even somewhat worried about getting COVID-19, the lowest proportion since July, 2021, and fewer people were socially distancing than at any time during the pandemic. A third of the population believes that the pandemic is over, including more than half of unvaccinated Americans and nearly six in ten Republicans.
This attitude is attributable, in part, to an indisputable reduction in the most serious consequences of COVID-19. Although new variants are causing more breakthrough infections, vaccines remain protective against severe illness. During the current surge, COVID deaths have been steady at around three hundred a daystill too many, but near pandemic lowsand hospitalizations have risen modestly. But our apathy also seems related to a pandemic malaisean inability or unwillingness to devote more cognitive and material resources to a problem that refuses to leave us alone. Congress has so far failed to fund an adequate supply of vaccines, tests, and treatments this winter, suggesting that the country has retreated not only from controversial mandates but from the most basic tools of public health.
As a physician, I have struggled to know what to make of this moment in the pandemic, and I fear that it will last a long time. We may be in this phase forever, Robert Wachter, the chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told me. Lately, Ive been seeking out people who have shaped the COVID discourseexperts who have not only shared and interpreted information but helped to construct a pandemic narrative and, in doing so, influenced policymakers and the public. I wanted to understand how their thinking has changed on key questions now facing the country: How should we live? Who should decide? How long will this last? As the coronavirus has become less deadly yet more difficult to contain, they told me, strategies that defined the early pandemic have fallen away, and responsibility for our everyday behavior has shifted away from public-health officials and toward individuals. In the coming months, well learn the consequences of this approach.
Doctors often categorize medical conditions as acute, subacute, or chronic. A patient with crushing chest pain and an alarming EKG is experiencing an acute emergency, meaning that, within minutes, they need a specific series of drugs and a team of medical professionals to unclog the culprit blood vessel. Another patient may feel his chest tighten when he walks up stairs, but the discomfort fades when he rests, and its been this way for years. His angina is said to be chronic: its serious and needs medical attention, but can usually be managed with medications and checkups. The subacute condition is somewhere in between. Last month, a man could climb three flights; last week, only two; and today, his torso feels heavy when he walks to the bathroom. Subacute illnesses are hazardous in their own way. They can often be mitigated if treated appropriately, but they may be difficult to diagnose, and, if you ignore or mismanage them, they can spiral out of control.
I sometimes think of this period as a subacute phase of the pandemic. COVID-19 is no longer an acute emergency, but its not yet clear how it will become an endemic disease that we are ready to live with. Public weariness, highly transmissible variants that evade some of our immunitythese factors may condemn us to intermittent surges long into the future. Within the realm of my imagination, I can no longer see a true game changer that alters the fundamental dynamics from where we are today, Wachter told me. For me to say otherwise would be some combination of wishful thinking and reacting to my own internal pressure, and pressure from those around me, not to be a bummer. This is, of course, a bummer. Still, it might not be as bad as it sounds. Were not going to see another million COVID deaths in the United States, Wachter said. The vast majority of severe illness will be fully preventable. Well probably wear masks in some places, maybe get regular boosters. Its not the end of the world. It doesnt diminish my life significantly.
The experts I spoke to seemed to accept that, as a society, our options for containing such a transmissible virus are limited. If cases were falling and there were not new variants that are so highly contagious, then suppressing infection would actually be a viable path, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore, told me. We have to recognize that the price of prioritizing low infection rates would be astronomical. In her view, the U.S. cant afford to close schools, restrict travel, or shutter businesses for long periods, and those stringent measures might not work anyway. Even China, with the strictest lockdown in the world, is struggling to contain these hyper-contagious variants, Devi Sridhar, a professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh and the author of Preventable: How a Pandemic Changed the World and How to Stop the Next One, told me. We have to pivot away from the idea that we can avoid getting infected.
Wen once advocated for strict measures to suppress the virus, but now argues for a return to something like normal life. She told me that she changed her mind in part because infections have grown less punishing with time, as more people acquire immunity and gain access to effective drugs. In two years, the infection fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2 has fallen dramatically. For people whove received a booster shot, it now really is on par with the flu. (Of course, the coronavirus is still infecting a lot more people.) As the risk of severe COVID-19 falls, Wen said, the threshold for policymakers to impose restrictions should rise. She argued that mandates would become appropriate only if a new and deadlier variant emerges. Reintroducing them now would erode trust in public health and weaken our ability to respond to future emergencies, she said. As soon as the emergency fades, individual choice is again the key decider.
Wen frequently hears the criticism, sometimes in the form of online vitriol, that her position does not fully account for the roughly seven million Americans who remain at higher risk for serious COVID-19, even after vaccination, because of compromised immune systems. Although she thinks that more should be done to protect the immunocompromised, she also believes that most Americans should be allowed to return to their pre-pandemic routines. In my clinical practice, I often care for immunocompromised patients who express fear and frustration that the country seems determined to move on from the pandemicand, in their minds, to leave them behind. Having treated the devastating consequences of infections in these patients, I find it hard not to empathize with them, and I dont have easy answers. Wachter told me that he is sympathetic to the idea that were not doing enough to protect vulnerable peoplebut in a country where many people dont even have access to medical care, he said, the idea that, all of a sudden, everyone in society is going to do everything possible... that strikes me as seeking a perfect world that were awfully far from. In his view, most immunocompromised people now have the tools to keep themselves relatively safe. He pointed to vaccines, boosters, antivirals, N95 masks, and Evusheld, a preventive monoclonal antibody authorized for people who are moderately or severely immunocompromised. And, of course, we should all be encouraged to get tested and mask up before we spend time with someone whos at high risk of a serious infection.
If were all likely to get COVID at some point, should everyone still try to avoid it? Wachter thinks so, and called for individuals to take precautionsmasks, tests, steering clear of large indoor gatheringsin places where the coronavirus is highly prevalent. For me at least, the long-COVID risk makes the benefits of reasonable amounts of caution outweigh the downsides, but I could see others making different choices, he told me. In the future, antivirals are likely to get better. Vaccines may be better. Well understand more about long COVID and how to manage it. At some point in my life, I know Im going to get some terrible disease, whether COVID or something else. Id like it to be as far down the road as possible. He pointed to a recent estimate from the C.D.C. that nearly sixty per cent of Americans have been infected by the coronavirus, which suggests that more than a hundred million Americans have not.
The virus will continue to evolve, but so will our tools for fighting it. Its going to be innovation, not behavior change, that gets us out of this mess, Topol, the Scripps director, told me. You cant keep people in a cave forever. Topol fears that a future variant will be more virulent. It pains me to say it, because Im an optimist, he said. But he argued that the U.S. still has the power to change the course of the pandemic, by continuing to invest in scientific research.
So far, new variants have tended to become more transmissible and better at getting around our immune defenses, but not more lethal. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspectivethe virus faces selective pressure to find new ways to spread, not killand SARS-CoV-2 could go the way of other coronaviruses that cause the common cold. Then again, it might not. People have this delusional idea that somehow the variants are just going to get milder over timewrong! Topol said. They could easily become more pathogenic. He pointed out that, compared with prior variants, Omicron has spawned more subvariants, which are chipping away at the immunity wall of vaccination.
In addition to advances such as better antiviral drugs, several types of vaccine innovations would be especially valuable. The first is a universal coronavirus vaccine. Such a vaccine could potentially give us some immunity against all SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as other coronaviruses. (A research group at the California Institute of Technology, for example, has used a vaccine platform called a mosaic nanoparticle, which incorporates proteins from up to eight types of coronaviruses and has shown promising results in mice.) A second transformative innovation would be a vaccine that produces sterilizing immunitythat is, in its ideal form, an antibody response so potent that it prevents the pathogen from infecting and reproducing within us at all. This would dramatically slow the spread of the virus, but, for COVID-19 and many other pathogens, sterilizing vaccines have remained elusive. A vaccine thats sprayed into the nose might be one path toward something closer to it. Because nasal vaccines produce high levels of antibodies inside the nose, where the virus often enters the body, they could be more effective at preventing infection altogether. There are now three such vaccine candidates in late-stage clinical trials; they present the body with many viral proteins, not just the spike, and could therefore produce broad, variant-resistant immunity. Many people have needle-phobia and would probably say, I dont want any more booster shots, but I wouldnt mind taking a nasal spray every four-to-six months, Topol told me. We should be getting the nose and mouth Teflon-coated. Hes troubled by a profound lack of investment in these kinds of advances.
BOISE - New coronavirus cases continued to climb statewide last week, but cases slowed among school-age children.
The state reported more than 1,300 new cases last week still a relatively low number compared to last falls delta variant surge and the winters record-setting omicron variant surge. Still, new cases increased by 27% last week.
Meanwhile, the state reported 86 new cases involving 5- to 17-year-olds, a 17% decrease.
Numbers from the states largest school districts were mixed:
Other metrics worsened slightly.
On Wednesday, 55 Idahoans were hospitalized with COVID-19, up from 44 the previous week. Seven patients were in ICUs, down from seven the previous week. One COVID-19 pediatric patient was hospitalized.
For the week ending May 14, 5.5% of test results came back positive, up from 4.9%. A positive test rate exceeding 5% suggests a virus is spreading.
For the past year and a half, since the COVID-19 vaccines first became availableeven as last summers reprieve gave way to Deltas surge, then Omicrons; even as the coronavirus continued to rack up mutations that lifted its speed and its stealth; even as millions of vaccinated Americans caught the pathogen and passed it ontheres been one huge slice of solace to cling to: The shots we have are still doing an excellent job of staving off severe disease and death.
Billions of people around the world have now been dosed at least once, twice, or thrice; the shots have saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives, in the United States aloneand they probably could have saved hundreds of thousands more, had more people rolled up their sleeves. Were so much better off than where we were in 2020, when nobody had any immunity, says Donna Farber, an immunologist at Columbia University. It feels, in some ways, like gazing down the side of a mountain weve been trekking up for a good 30 months: A nice, stubborn buffer of elevation now lies between us and the bottom, the sea-level status of no protection at all. The bodys defenses against severe disease are immunological bedrockonce cemented, theyre quite difficult to erode. Even as the fast-mutating virus pushes down from above, our footing has, for more than a year now, felt solid, and the ground beneath us unlikely to give.
Read: America is starting to see what COVID immunity really looks like
The shots arent perfect: They cant completely block infections or keep the debilitating symptoms of long COVID at bay. Still, against the severest outcomes, I think vaccination is holding up, Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told me. It provides a lot of comfort, just knowing that layer is there, says Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University.
As SARS-CoV-2s shape-shifting shenanigans continue, though, widening the evolutionary chasm between its current iteration and the version that inspired 2020s vaccines, our position is starting to feel more precarious. Say our immune defenses weaken, and cause us to slip; say the virus ups the ante again, and delivers a particularly powerful blow. A rapid tumble down to the trailheada total immunological resetstill seems very, very unlikely. The further away we stay from that juncture, though, the better off well be. If minimizing severe disease is a summit of sorts, its one we have to keep striving for, likely by revaccinating, and hopefully with updated shots. Knowing when to dose up again, and with what, will require keeping close watch on local conditions, trying to anticipate how the virus might shove us, and maintaining our gear in tip-top shape. Its a long way to the bottom, but backslides are possible.
Stopping severe disease and death is the first goal of any vaccine. But its not necessarily the first protective pinnacle the world set its sights on. Back when the vaccines were new and a near-perfect match for the circulating strain, many people felt hopeful that wed quickly clamber up to some Symptom-Free Vistamaybe even dart up to No-Infection Point.
As the vaccines got further out from their debut, however, it became clear that we werent going to be camping at those outcrops long-term. Which is pretty expected: For any immunization to sustainably and reliably keep people safe from all infections is rare. In the months after people get their shots, levels of infection-blocking antibodies naturally drop off, making it easier for pathogens to infiltrate the body and reproduce. At the same time, the virus is only getting better at knocking us downit strikes a new blow each time it tacks on another mutation that distances it from the version of itself that inspired our shots. That wild card worries experts far more than any immunological stumble. Virus evolution is always my biggest concern, Ellebedy told me. Members of the Omicron clanthe most formidable branch of the SARS-CoV-2 family to datehave proved themselves deft at infecting even the multiply vaccinated, slipping around shot-raised antibodies with ease.
Immunity is too multifaceted, too broad, and too flexible for SARS-CoV-2 to shove us all the way down to the mountains base; although speedy defenders such as antibodies decline in the short term, other soldiers such as B cells and T cells can stick around for years, even decades, stowing intel on the virus so they can rise up again. These veteran fighters arent fast enough to stop a virus from breaching the bodys barriers. But when it does, they can trounce it before the infection gets too severe. Theyre also far harder to stump than fickle, fragile antibodies; even weird morphs like Omicron are familiar-looking enough to evoke the ire of most vaccine-trained T cells and an appreciably large fraction of B cells. That protects us, even if antibodies are lost, says Hana El Sahly, an infectious-disease physician at Baylor College of Medicine.
Still, the viruss assaults on our position on the flanks of Protection Peak are getting stronger. Weve had to dig our heels in far deeper to stay the course. Two doses of mRNA vaccine, for instance, were enough to hold the line against SARS-CoV-2 in the Delta era and before. Omicrons mutations, though, upped the ante and made the mountain more formidable. The latest estimates provided by the CDC, which run through the first part of winter, suggest that adults who have received a duo of mRNA doses can cut their risk of serious sickness from Delta by at least 80 to 95 percent; the numbers drop into the 50ish to 70ish range with the original iteration of Omicron, or BA.1, subbed in. So experts recommended an equipment upgrade to keep the summit in sight: another dose, which can restore the bodys ability to stave off severe disease from BA.1 at rates of about 75 to 90 percent.
Whats not certain, though, is how long SARS-CoV-2 will continue to rest on its laurels. Faced with growing population immunity, the virus is being forced to repeatedly switch up its appearance. In the span of just a few months, Omicron has already sprouted several new alphanumeric offshootsBA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5that can dodge the defenses that even a tussle with their sibling BA.1 leaves behind. And its not entirely clear how wild SARS-CoV-2s costume changes could get. Parts of the virus that scientists once thought were unlikely to change much have since transformed. This coronavirus, like others that have come before it, has shown a remarkable capacity to shape-shift when faced with immunity blockades, says David Martinez, a viral immunologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Theres a lot of real estate left in spike, he told me, for the virus to continually evolve. Our vaccines, meanwhile, remain modeled on a version of the virus that first infiltrated the population more than two years ago, and that has since disappeared. Yes, vaccine effectiveness remains really high against severe disease, even months out, even against Omicron, says Saad Omer, an epidemiologist at Yale University. But that doesnt mean there isnt room to relace our boots and attempt to ascend again.
Just how well protected we are right nowhow close to the bottom or the top of the peakisnt totally clear. Our ability to capture this is clouded, Dean told me. So much of the landscape weve been meandering upon has shifted in recent months; we, the travelers, have also changed.
To really get a good grip on vaccine performance, Dean said, researchers need to carefully track large groups of people who have gotten different numbers of shotsanywhere from zero to three or moreover long periods of time, carefully tabulating whos getting infected, sick, hospitalized, or killed. Metrics like these were relatively easy to monitor during the shots clinical trials. But the real world is far messier, and gathering data is much more difficult now. Thats especially true in the U.S., which lacks a nationalized health-care system, and has no single, uniform way to record-keep. Americans immunization options also keep splintering. Shots are being administered to different people at different intervals, in different combinations, against different variants; successes and failures against the virus are now much harder to tie directly to the potency of the injections themselves. Vaccinated and unvaccinated people have also gotten way more challenging to compare: They belong to very different demographic groups, split apart by when (or if) they became eligible and how vulnerable to the virus they are, as well as the allegiances that might have swayed some of them toward opting into or out of shots.
Its also getting rougher and rougher to statistically account for how the pandemic, and the response to it, has evolved. Vaccines work better against all outcomes when the bodies theyre protecting arent constantly being taxed by heavy, frequent exposures to a pathogen; in recent months, mask mandates have lifted, and crowded indoor gatherings have gone back into full swing. On the flip side, treatments such as Paxlovid have become more available, muddying patterns that could help clue researchers in to what interventions are saving the most lives. Effectiveness estimates can also be obscured by how severity is defined. Even tracking who gets hospitalized can be a pretty coarse metric. Different hospitals use different criteria to admit patients, especially during surges, when capacity gets stretched. And parsing out the severity of an infection isnt easy in someone whos battling another ailment, says Westyn Branch-Elliman, an infectious-disease physician at VA Boston Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School. Nor are all serious COVID cases the same: Some people might be discharged after just a couple of days, while others end up on ventilatorsnuances that get lost when all cases that meet the bare minimum criteria for severity are lumped together. Add to that the complexities of actual infectionswhich happen more commonly in the unvaccinated and layer on their own patinas of protectionand its that much tougher to figure out how well the shots are performing on their own.
Read: What COVID hospitalization numbers are missing
Our estimates are also always a few steps behind. The most up-to-date effectiveness numbers in the books still largely reflect how the shots are faring against BA.1, which, thanks to its speedier siblings, has now almost entirely blipped off the American map. If were having trouble figuring out where we stand on this mountainous trail, forking paths exacerbate the confusion, along with a compass that gets more challenging to calibrate by the day.
Practically, that all makes assessing when, or whether, to intervene very difficult. A catastrophic, cliff-like plunge in effectivenessespecially one tied to the emergence of a new variant of concernmight prompt a scramble to revamp our vaccine recipes, stat. That doesnt seem to be what were seeing, though, and experts are still working on timing our next steps just right. Scientists are used to strategizing against other viruses, such as the ones that cause seasonal flus: Scientists reformulate and readminister those shots every year, in an attempt to counteract both waning immunity and viral mutations before most people hit a winter surge. By comparison, this coronaviruss spread is still too haphazard, too unpredictable. If we can barely gauge which mile marker were at, its hard to know how often well need to update our approach.
It has, at least, become clear that protection can fall off far faster in some vulnerable populations, who may need immune refurbishings more often: older people, immunocompromised people, people with certain chronic health conditions. In the rest of the population, though, the extent of the decline feels far murkier. Branch-Elliman told me that some studies are likely overestimating drops in effectiveness against severe disease: Some arent accounting for the immunity building up in the unvaccinated; others are failing to disentangle the true severity of infection in each case. Adjust for them, she said, and the evidence for waning becomes much weaker. Still, as the virus continues to change, and peoples most recent doses recede further into the past, I think we are seeing a little bit of a performance drop, says Huong McLean, an epidemiologist and a vaccine researcher at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute. The dip isnt massivemaybe a few percentage points over several months, in those who are up-to-date on their shots. But, Omer told me, it is there.
The experts I spoke with couldnt point to a single threshold at which theyd really start to worrywhen the dreaded bottom of Protection Peak might feel just too close. One tentatively offered a dip below 50 percent effectiveness against severe disease as an obvious bad-news-bears benchmark. A couple said theyd start to worry at about 70 percent, while another told me that anything below the range of the 80s would be clearly problematic (which, maybe, means now). Martinez, of UNC Chapel Hill, framed it by outcomes: If rates of hospitalization or death among people up to date on their vaccines were to approach an uncomfortably high ratemaybe half what experts are seeing among the unvaccinated, he told methats when you want to patch this.
The clearest and most immediate intervention available would be administering an additional vaccine dose. And ideally, it would be tailored to better match the circulating strains du jour, which, for now, requires at least some nod to Omicron and its offshoots. Ellebedy suspects that the U.S. may be on track to revaccinate against this virus with a new vaccine recipe as often as each autumn, as we do for the fluan annual adjustment that may become as necessary as redrawing trail maps to account for shifting mountain terrain. But it will be a behavioral hurdle as much as a technological one. Just a third of Americans are boosted, and uptake on future doses might not fare much better.
Read: The U.S. is about to make a big gamble on our next COVID winter
None of this means our vaccines have been a bust. Protection against severe disease and death is what you want out of a vaccine in a public emergencythats the most important thing, and thats what the vaccines have done, Farber, the Columbia immunologist, told me. And the shots continue to trim down symptoms, transmission, and infection, even if they do not completely stave off those outcomes; the illnesses that do occur among the vaccinated also tend, on average, to be notedly less severe, Branch-Elliman points out. But our current crop of immunizations has its limits; shots wont be enough to end the pandemic on their own, especially not with uptake lagging, and global vaccine equity still in a disastrous state. I feel worried, just looking ahead, Farber told me. As long as the virus can infect, its going to change and adapt. The virus could get more chances to transform into something more troubling; it may become even tougher to hold our ground against it, should we grow complacent now.
Longer-term solutions, better at tackling infections, transmission, and less-severe disease, may be in the pipeline. Martinez is one of several researchers hoping to cook up a universal vaccine that will teach the body to arm itself against a panoply of coronaviruses at once; others are working on up-the-nose vaccines that could post up defenses in the airway, to head off future infections at the pass. There may even someday be an immunization recipe that better cements the durability of defense, so future generations wouldnt need so many shots. Those innovations might be years away, if they appear at all. For now, well likely need more than vaccines to stay on top of protectionto reach for the zeniths where not just severe disease is minimized, but infections and transmission can stay low, too. Fortunately, its a path weve charted before, with tools and footfalls that are by now familiar: masks, ventilation, antivirals, tests. The way back up to a peak isnt always the way we came down. Sometimes, we just need to blaze a better trail.
Mike Stucka USA TODAY NETWORK| St. George Spectrum & Daily News
New coronavirus cases leaped in Utah in the week ending Sunday, rising 33.1% as 4,504 cases were reported. The previous week had 3,385 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Utah ranked 31st 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 increased 31.8% from the week before, with 796,108 cases reported. With 0.96% of the country's population, Utah had 0.57% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 42 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.
More: COVID-19 case rates are rising again in Utah. Here is what healthcare leaders think that means
Within Utah, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Summit County with 301 cases per 100,000 per week; Salt Lake County with 205; and Wasatch County with 153. 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 Salt Lake County, with 2,374 cases; Utah County, with 655 cases; and Davis County, with 473. Weekly case counts rose in six counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Salt Lake, Davis and Utah counties.
>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases
Utah ranked 28th among states in share of people receiving at least one shot, with 72.1% of its residents at least partially vaccinated. The national rate is 77.7%, a USA TODAY analysis of CDC data shows. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are the most used in the United States, require two doses administered a few weeks apart.
In the week ending Wednesday, Utah reported administering another 26,848 vaccine doses, including 3,326 first doses. In the previous week, the state administered 10,967 vaccine doses, including 1,555 first doses. In all, Utah reported it has administered 5,212,257 total doses.
In Utah, four people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, one person was reported dead.
A total of 943,368 people in Utah have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 4,765 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 83,281,329 people have tested positive and 1,002,173 people have died.
>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States
USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, May 22.
Likely COVID patients admitted in the state:
Likely COVID patients admitted in the nation:
Hospitals in 31 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 29 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 37 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.
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un covers the coffin of Hyon Chol Hae, marshal of the Korean People's Army, with earth at a cemetery in Pyongyang, North Korea Sunday, May 22, 2022. The content of this image cannot be independently verified. AP hide caption
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un covers the coffin of Hyon Chol Hae, marshal of the Korean People's Army, with earth at a cemetery in Pyongyang, North Korea Sunday, May 22, 2022. The content of this image cannot be independently verified.
SEOUL, South Korea A large number of North Koreans including leader Kim Jong Un attended a funeral for a top official, state media reported Monday, as the country maintained the much-disputed claim that its suspected coronavirus outbreak is subsiding.
Since admitting earlier this month to an outbreak of the omicron variant, North Korea has only stated how many people have fevers daily, and has only identified a few of the cases as COVID-19. Its state media said Monday that 2.8 million people have fallen ill due to an unidentified fever but only 68 of them died since late April, an extremely low fatality rate if the illness is COVID-19 as suspected.
North Korea has limited testing capability for that many sick people, but some experts say it is also likely underreporting mortalities to protect Kim from political damage.
The official Korean Central News Agency said Kim attended the funeral Sunday of Hyon Chol Hae, a Korean People's Army marshal who reportedly played a key role in grooming him as the country's next leader before Kim's father died in late 2011.
State media photos showed a bare-faced Kim carrying Hyon's coffin with other men wearing masks before he threw earth to his grave at the national cemetery. They showed many soldiers clad in olive-green uniforms saluting while other officials dressed in dark suits stood at attention. KCNA said "a great many" soldiers and citizens earlier turned out along streets to express their condolences when Hyon's coffin was moved to the cemetery.
North Korea maintains a nationwide lockdown and other stringent rules to curb the virus outbreak. Region-to-region movement is banned, but key agricultural, economic and other industrial activities were continuing in an apparent effort to minimize harm to the country's already moribund economy.
KCNA said Monday that 167,650 new fever cases had been detected in the past 24-hour period, a notable drop from the peak of about 390,000 reported about one week ago. It said one more person died and that the fever's fatality rate was 0.002%.
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, a funeral for Marshal of the Korean People's Army Hyon Chol Hae is held at the April 25 House of Culture in Pyongyang, North Korea Sunday, May 22, 2022. AP hide caption
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, a funeral for Marshal of the Korean People's Army Hyon Chol Hae is held at the April 25 House of Culture in Pyongyang, North Korea Sunday, May 22, 2022.
"All the people of (North Korea) maintain the current favorable turn in the anti-epidemic campaign with maximum awareness, in response to the call of the party central committee for defending their precious life and future with confidence in sure victory and redoubled great efforts," KCNA said.
Experts question the the true toll, given North Korea's 26 million people are mostly unvaccinated and about 40% are reportedly undernourished. The public health care system is almost broken and chronically short of medicine and supplies. In South Korea, where most of its 52 million people are fully vaccinated, the fatality rate of COVID-19 was 0.13% as of Monday.
South Korea's spy agency told lawmakers last week that some of the fever cases tallied by North Korea include people suffering from other illnesses like measles, typhoid and pertussis. But some civilian experts believe most of the cases were COVID-19.
Before admitting to the omicron outbreak on May 12, North Korea had insisted it was virus-free throughout the pandemic. It snubbed millions of vaccines offered by the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program and has not responded to offers of medicine and other aid from South Korea and the United States.
The World Health Organization has also pleaded for more information on the outbreak but not gotten a response.
Some observers say North Korea would only receive assistance from China, its last major ally, because Western aid shipments could hurt Kim's leadership as he's repeatedly called for "a self-reliance" to fight against U.S.-led pressure campaigns.
Total vaccine doses distributed: 741,676,155
Patients whove received the first dose: 258,149,591
Patients whove received the second dose: 220,914,142
% of population fully vaccinated: 66.5%
% tied to Omicron variant: 99.8%
% tied to Other: 0.2%
COVID does have an impact on the sexual health of of males. Research studies have confirmed an increased chance of new onset erectile dysfunction post-COVID-19 infection.
A recent research study published in the journal Sexual Medicine called for attention towards short- and long-term effects of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on erectile function and penile vasculature as s the virus has been found to be present within the penile tissue. The study involved over 230,000 adult men who had COVID-19 and compared them with a similar number of men who were not infected.
Apart from the biological factors, there are several social factors that affected sexual activity during COVID.
As per a research study, COVID-19 related restrictions were correlated with higher rates of sexual dysfunction and reduced sexual activity. The study on 2454 women and 3765 men found that restrictions on peoples activities, reduced sports activities, economic issues, increased psychological stress, and reduced entertainment have, indeed, dramatically impacted sexual activity and functioning.
Damage to the bodys organs including the lungs and kidneys is common in people who were admitted to hospital with Covid, with one in eight found to have heart inflammation, researchers have revealed.
As the pandemic evolved, it became clear that some people who had Covid were being left with ongoing symptoms a condition that has been called long Covid.
Previous studies have revealed that fewer than a third of patients who have ongoing Covid symptoms after being hospitalised with the disease feel fully recovered a year later, while some experts have warned long Covid could result in a generation affected by disability.
Now researchers tracking the progress of patients who were treated in hospital for Covid say they have found evidence the disease can take a toll on a range of organs.
Whats more, they say the severity of ongoing symptoms appears to be linked to the severity of the Covid infection itself.
Even fit, healthy individuals can suffer severe Covid-19 illness and to avoid this, members of the public should take up the offer of vaccination, said Prof Colin Berry, of the University of Glasgow, which led the CISCO-19 (Cardiac imaging in Sars coronavirus disease-19) study.
Our study provides objective evidence of abnormalities at one to two months post-Covid and these findings tie in with persisting symptoms at that time and the likelihood of ongoing health needs one year later, Berry added.
Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, the researchers describe how they tracked the outcomes of 159 people hospitalised with Covid between May 2020 and March 2021.
The team carried out a range of scans and blood tests at 28-60 days after the Covid patients were discharged, with patients also given questionnaires to complete. The results were compared with those from a control group of 29 people with a similar age, sex, ethnicity, and cardiovascular risk factors, who had not had Covid.
The authors write that, compared with controls, those who had been hospitalised with Covid showed several abnormalities, including in results from imaging of the heart, lungs and kidneys.
The team found about 13%, or one in eight, of those hospitalised for Covid were deemed by experts to be very likely to have myocarditis, or heart inflammation, compared with just one control participant. This led to a lower health-related quality of life, greater illness perception, higher levels of anxiety and depression [and] lower levels of physical activity, said Dr Andrew Morrow, also from the University of Glasgow.
The likelihood of myocarditis was higher among healthcare workers and those with acute kidney injury, as well as those with more severe disease requiring invasive ventilation.
These findings reinforce the importance of both the vaccine programme and novel treatments that have greatly reduced the number of severe cases of Covid-19, said Morrow.
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The results also reveal those who had been hospitalised with Covid were more likely to need outpatient secondary care or be referred for symptoms consistent with long Covid, with death and re-hospitalisations also much higher in this group.
Dr Betty Raman, a cardiologist and long Covid expert at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the work, said the study provided important insights into the prevalence of clinically adjudicated myocarditis and its association with prolonged symptoms in those hospitalised with Covid early in the pandemic.
However, Raman noted that presence of persistent heart inflammation was not assessed during later follow-up, few participants had received a Covid jab, and the Covid variants involved were unlikely to be the Omicron lineages that are prevalent today.
Current-day estimates of myocarditis following more novel Sars-CoV-2 variants in the post-vaccine era may differ from this study, given the lower risk of hospitalisation and severe disease attributable to differences in variants and vaccine effects, she said.
The COVID pandemic is most certainly not over World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday at the 75th World Health Assembly.
His warning comes as some countries are rescinding their COVID mandates, and cases are on the rise again.
Reported cases are increasing in almost 70 countries in all regions, Tedros said. This virus has surprised us at every turn a storm that has torn through communities again and again, and we still cant predict its path, or its intensity.
The WHO chief said that while more than 6 million global coronavirus deaths have been reported, the U.N. agency estimates that the worldwide tally is much higher at almost 15 million deaths.
Tedros called on countries to do all they can to eradicate COVID, including vaccinating 70% of their population, which would include 100% of people over 60 years old, 100% of health workers. and 100% of people with underlying conditions.
The pandemic will not magically disappear," warned the WHO leader, "but we can end it Science has given us the upper hand.
Meanwhile, Gallup, the global analytics firm, asks Americans every month What is the most important problem facing the United States?
The answer has been COVID since the beginning of the pandemic. That all changed this March, however, when concerns about COVID were replaced with worries about the U.S. economy.
Gallup Senior Editor Megan Brenan said in an interview on The Gallup Podcast with Mohamed Younis that apprehension about how the U.S. government is handling the economy and inflation, now tops the list of Americans worries.
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Monday more than 525 million global COVID infections and more than 6 million global coronavirus deaths.
