One roamed for hours through an oak preserve asking God to speak to her through the silence.
Another spent her days in meditation, using each exhale to send relief to her son, who had, by then, slipped out of consciousness. Not long before, a third woman had awakened in the middle of the night to what became a terrifying, recurring dream about descending into hell.
Each woman members of three generations went through a spiritual journey that had been sparked, sped up or heightened by the pandemic.
The last two years have transformed the stability of our families, our jobs and our collective understanding of science and sacrifice. But, for many of us, COVID-19s reach also rewired something more elemental: our faith.
A Pew survey conducted early in the pandemic, found that nearly 3 in 10 Americans said their religious faith had become stronger since the coronavirus outbreak.
Grace leads a meditation session for attendees from across the country.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
For others, this time has fundamentally changed their place within their religious traditions or led them to question long-held beliefs altogether processes of introspection and transfiguration that can be, at once, painful and deeply fruitful.
Suffering, one of the women said, sometimes forces us to look at the gold mine were sitting on.
During the first fall of the pandemic, as she was clawing her way through a blinding depression, Esther Loewen told her wife, Paige, something shed long feared would end both her marriage and her career as a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor.
Im afraid I might be trans.
They sobbed and hugged and Paige made a promise: Im not going anywhere.
A few months later, Loewen emailed her mother to explain that the person shed long thought of as her eldest son was, in fact, her daughter. Her new name was Esther Elizabeth.
Esther Loewen with her son as he practices the cello at home in Redlands.
(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
The revelation was hard for her mother. But Loewen, now 40, said her mother has come far in a short time, switching from using her deadname to Elle, a short version of her new middle name. Next, Loewen and her wife told their two sons, then 9 and 6, who quickly settled on a nickname of their own: Mapa.
In many ways, she said, the pandemic shutdowns provided the framework she needed to come out. For the first time ever, she was isolated from the social pressures and fears that had prevented her from transitioning. From her home in Redlands, she connected with other transgender Christians in Zoom support groups, which provided some relief from the bone-deep exhaustion that had come with pastoring a congregation with split views on masking and other COVID-19 safety measures.
Loewen knew her denomination had a longstanding record of barring LGBTQ people from church leadership, but because she was preaching remotely at the time, shed felt comfortable to begin growing out her hair, keeping her beard closely cropped and painting her toenails. But she hadnt yet decided whether to take hormones.
Before she took that step, she wanted to hear a blessing from God and it finally came in January 2021 while at a retreat for church leaders at an oak preserve in Yucaipa.
Esther Loewen poses for a portrait at her home.
(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
During several hours of solitude, she prayed What do you want to tell me today? then she rounded a corner and saw hundreds of monarch butterflies. Like many trans people, she sees the caterpillar-to-butterfly transition as a beautiful analogy and, in that moment, she burst into laughter and then tears.
It shifted from being like, Can I do this? she said, to I have to do this in order to be faithful to God.
It felt just as clear as the calling, years earlier, to a life of ministry a vocation born out of the faith shed clung to as a teenager after surviving a house fire that killed her younger brother. It was a job she loved dearly, but also one that often made her think about privacy and secrecy.
Dont put your trash in the can out front, an older pastor once had advised her, explaining that church members had interrogated him after finding an empty carton of ice cream, which would be off limits to the strictest Adventists, who are vegan.
She wouldnt lie outright, but Loewen decided that church members didnt need to know everything about her private life, including the time she wrote a letter to a friend, who is a lesbian, telling her she was loved by God exactly as she was and that the church was wrong on this issue.
She never dared say such a thing publicly, a reality that made her feel complicit then and guilty now. She sometimes thinks about times she sat around boardroom tables, listening to church leaders say hurtful, exclusionary things and didnt speak up. And yet, she tries to welcome Gods grace, understanding that deep down, even then, she knew she was trans.
Last summer, as her depression deepened, she sat down with fellow church leaders and told them she was trans. She desperately hoped she could keep her job, she told them, suggesting they move her to a church in a more liberal area. The leaders handled the situation about as generously as they could have given church rules, she said, but it was clear she had to resign.
Esther Loewen outside her home while her two boys play.
(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
It was one of the heaviest losses of her life, she said, but still she feels closer to God than ever.
On a recent afternoon, Loewen, who is studying to become a therapist, picked up her younger son from school and took him to a park. A little girl on the swing next to him looked over at Loewen and then turned to her grandmother.
Whats wrong with that lady?
Her son turned confidently toward the girl.
Shes transgender and shes my Mapa.
One day, when she was 9, Hasasha Hasulube-George recalls sitting on her bed sobbing.
Im such a bad girl, shed written in her journal.
She cant remember what she got in trouble for that day forgetting to clean her room, perhaps. But she vividly recalls her mother assuring her that if she asked Jesus into her heart, he would help her. So she prayed and relief washed over her.
By 12, she had pored through the Bible and soon after she read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, a purity culture classic during the early aughts. She proudly wore a silver promise ring inscribed with True Love Waits and woke up early on schooldays to pray.
And yet, a countervailing force buffeted her spiritual life: a dawning awareness that her familys racial identity her father is Black, her mother white set them apart from the rest of their worship community in suburban Chicago.
Hasasha Hasulube-George flips through a religious journal she kept as a girl.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Hasulube-George, now 24, recalls a church picnic where members of their congregation repeatedly told her brothers to only take what they could eat and not go back for seconds. They said nothing to the other teenagers in line, who were white.
So often, she said, conversations about race in white, evangelical circles when they happened at all quickly pivoted to the same line: One day well all go to Heaven and color will not matter.
Still, she found deep community among fellow believers. When she thought about her few friends who werent Christians, it filled her with dread. What if she never tried to convert them and they died? Going to hell, shed learned, was like getting stuck in a dark cave, separated from God for eternity and surrounded by deafening silence.
It was that same image that had haunted her dreams during the first summer of the pandemic.
By then, her then-fianc, Hunter George, whom shed met in college in Indiana, had been laid off from his job at a nonprofit and the cleaning job she had lined up after graduation fell through. The couple moved into Hunters parents basement in Rochester, N.Y.
Hasulube-George in the courtyard of her apartment in North Hollywood.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
She could almost always hear Fox News on the TV upstairs, with rotating headlines about the impending presidential election and mask mandates, or talking heads framing the social justice protests after the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd only in the context of property damage. Family members sent her and Hunter, who is white, emails suggesting that Black Lives Matter was against God and Trump was ordained by the Lord.
Thats when the nightmares started.
Like Arbery, who was shot to death by a white man while out for a jog, in her dreams Hasulube-George would be running when someone, often a neighbor, would shoot her dead. Shed then descend into the quiet-cave version of hell and be trapped there until she woke up in a panic.
She told Hunter she needed to get rid of her Bible. She couldnt stop thinking about verses shed underlined years earlier that she now felt condemned by. He understood.
In the weeks that followed, she remembers sitting on Zoom calls for Christian premarital counseling with a longtime mentor and thinking it felt like a farce. She and Hunter were actively trying to get pregnant, but she knew she couldnt be upfront about that. She was trying to hold onto the final shreds of her faith until her wedding day in September 2020.
My farewell party to my old life, she came to think of it.
Hasulube-George has begun researching African spiritualism, specifically traditions from her fathers native Uganda.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Soon after, she started having conversations, sometimes painful ones, with friends and family about her decision. A verse shed once memorized Children, obey your parents in the Lord now felt like a dagger.
Her mother initially responded with deep fear, she said, but time has softened the situation.
Since moving to North Hollywood last summer, the couple has continued to deconstruct their faiths. Hunter has vowed off organized religion and she has begun researching African spiritualism, specifically traditions from her fathers native Uganda.
She misses the structure her faith offered for years, she relied on prayer as a tool to regulate her anxiety but she has, again, found community in an online book club for fellow exvangelicals.
While she thinks she probably would have left her faith eventually, she said that watching the trifecta of pandemic-era scenarios play out in 2020 the dont-wear-a-mask-God-will-protect-you comments, the evangelical fervor for Trump and the response she saw from many Christians during the social justice protests both crystalized and sped up her decision.
That pushed me to decide, Im done.
Fran Grace clearly remembers the origin point of a twisting spiritual pathway that has helped guide her through the pandemic.
It was four decades ago and her high school English teacher was reading aloud from The Scarlet Letter. Only half-listening to Nathaniel Hawthornes tale of sin and repentance, she saw a pillar of light slice down, as if piercing through the ceiling, and felt as if she melted into the incandescence.
She interpreted it, at first, as a sign that something infinitely loving existed inside of her. But the revelation calcified into fear after her mother took her to see the pastor of a small Protestant church in her Florida town.
Youve got the devil inside you, young lady, he proclaimed.
Now, further along in a journey that has included joining and leaving a fundamentalist Christian church, divorcing her husband, falling in love with a woman for the first time, drinking herself to near-death, finding sobriety and traveling to study world religions, Grace a professor of religious studies at the University of Redlands looks back fondly on that day in high school as the start of a lifelong quest that has buoyed her during the hardest times in her life.
Graces spiritual tools, including meditation and dream work, have grounded her since her 29-year-old son died of COVID last year.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
At the tail end of last summer, Peter Boyko her partner Diane Eller-Boykos son, whod shed come to think of as her own was hospitalized with COVID-19. Before long, the 29-year-old father of three was struggling to breathe.
Restricted from frequent visits, Grace and Eller-Boyko, who both follow the Sufi path, dug into spiritual tools theyd long relied on: meditation, dream work and paying attention to small signs.
Soon after Peter died, a letter addressed to him showed up at the couples home. The note from a childrens charity included a line about accepting people just as they are a trait that was exceptionally true of Peter. It was a hint, Grace believed, from the inner world.
She felt more tuned into the kindness of others, often reflecting on the proverb about how suffering often points us to the goldmine beneath us. And as the pandemic lingers, she has tried to help others find that spiritual gold.
One Wednesday in December, Grace, 57, sat cross-legged in front of a camera inside the Meditation Room, an airy, carpeted space adjacent to her office at the University of Redlands.
Column One
A showcase for compelling storytellingfrom the Los Angeles Times.
For years, Grace has led free, weekly meditation sessions for students and other members of the community and although shed returned in person by December, most of the attendees were still joining virtually. One by one, their smiling faces popped up in small squares as they joined from San Diego, Tucson, Canada.
Grace asked everyone to close their eyes.
Relax, relax, relax, she guided them.
Sense your right leg, she said, and then your left. Let your belly fall open and relax the muscles in your throat. Open your heart and offer yourself in service to others. Think of a stranger and send them love.
Later, they went around the virtual circle, sharing about their weeks and whom they had selected as their stranger while meditating.
A 91-year-old from San Diego had thought of the volunteer who drove her to a dentist appointment a few days earlier. An Iowa State University student pictured the cafeteria employee who handed her ice cream on her birthday. A Presbyterian minister recalled a man on Death Row at San Quentin who had started as a pen pal and became a close friend; during the meditation, the minister said, she had prayed for the women he killed.
Wow, Grace whispered.
When it was his turn to share, a man from British Columbia, who was sitting cross-legged on his floor, told the group that his father had died a week earlier. He began to cry, resting his forehead on the ground.
Grace closed her eyes. As she inhaled, she focused on breathing in his suffering. With her exhale, she sent out hope.
Thousands of people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Oregons prisons. This man hopes to lead them in a class-action lawsuit. - OPB
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Attorney Juan Chavezs legal career focuses on gaining justice for people whove been injured by systems that are supposed to help keep us safe. As project director for the Civil Rights Project and a prison and police accountability lawyer with the Oregon Justice Resource Center, hes won six-figure settlements in wrongful death lawsuits against the Portland Police Bureau.
His next case could potentially be worth millions of dollars for people incarcerated in Oregon and their families.
Last year, a report from the Prison Policy Initiative found that the COVID-19 mortality rate for incarcerated Oregonians was five times higher than it was for the states general population. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 45 people in the custody of the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) have died after testing positive for COVID-19. Another 5,000 people have tested positive for the virus while in custody.
Last week, a federal judge approved a class-action lawsuit over the states response to the pandemic inside Oregons prisons. Chavez is one of the attorneys representing the prisoners in that lawsuit. He recently spoke with OPB Weekend Edition host John Notarianni about the case.
John Notarianni: This lawsuit initially began way back in April of 2020, actually. Thats when a group of people who contracted COVID-19 in custody decided to sue the state. What were they alleging?
Juan Chavez: At the beginning of the pandemic, I think we understood that this was a communicable disease. I dont know if we knew precisely how communicable, how it was transmitted, but the best we could understand was it was transmitted by being in close proximity to each other.
That became an immediate concern given what prisons are: these folks cant leave. Theyre not going to be able to be distant from one another, they cant stay at their homes, they cant limit their exposure to other folks. So, a few of these folks, all of whom had some pre-existing condition that would make them medically vulnerable to COVID-19, decided that they needed to act now and get the protections ordered by a federal court so that they could be safe.
Notarianni: Broadly speaking, how has the Oregon Department of Corrections response to this pandemic stacked up against whats been happening in other states?
Chavez: The Oregon Department of Corrections, during the height of the pandemic in the winter of 2020 into 2021, was one of the worst states for [COVID-19 related] deaths and transmission across the country. I think we were, at its height, the third-worst per capita on death. And so, a lot of folks were suffering, and it was just not being abated. We brought an injunction that we were hoping the court would order the department of corrections to institute some measure of social distancing, masking rules, and other protections that we knew folks needed. Unfortunately, the court rejected that motion for an injunction, and thats why we filed the damages class action in addition to this.
Notarianni: Yeah, and there are a number of criteria that need to be met for a class-action suit to be able to go forward. U. S. Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman issued a ruling just about a week ago, on April 1st, and said that it has a green light; that this class-action suit can go forward. What was she looking to establish in order to permit this lawsuit to move ahead?
Chavez: Well, the biggest question in every class action is whether everybodys more or less in the same boat, in terms of what kind of claims can they bring and what kind of defenses the will defendants use. In this case, we were very particular with who it is that we were suing and what it is that we were saying was the problem. We sued the top-level officials for DOC, and we sued them because they did indeed have a heavy hand in how it is that the pandemic response was managed in DOC. They werent shy about saying that on a number of occasions. The problem started at the top; if the problem started at the top, it affected everybody downwards. So, the only way that this case could properly be managed would be through a class action. Otherwise, the courts would also be facing 5,000 separate lawsuits.
Notarianni: What could this lawsuit eventually mean for the plaintiffs: those thousands of Oregonians who contracted COVID-19 while they were incarcerated and for the families of people who died in state custody?
Chavez: You know, this is a remarkable thing to say after two years, but it might be too early to tell, to be honest. Its probably the biggest unknown right now, whether or not the state will seek an appeal on this. Most cases cant be appealed until the case is entirely done, but there are some rules that could allow the state to try to seek an appeal. If this is appealed, then that puts things on pause for a very long time, more than likely.
Notarianni: Well, even with all of those unknowns in place, legal experts are saying this could be a first-of-its-kind class-action suit. So, putting aside what we know right now, looking towards a hypothetical future, do you have a sense of what implications this could have nationwide?
Chavez: I think what courts have done in the past, and what certainly departments of corrections across the country have done, is the strategy of divide and conquer amongst prisoners themselves. Theres a federal law called the Prison Litigation Reform Act that Congress passed in the nineties, during the tough on crime period. That was solely focused on diminishing the ability for prisoners to bring lawsuits, and it was definitely effective. But, I think more importantly, what it did was discourage prisoners from asserting their rights. What I think this class action does is give the power back to the people who are being harmed, which is prisoners in this context. So, if in the future there are these mass harms that are caused by administrators in departments of corrections, this could be a big game-changer.
Listen to Juan Chavezs conversation with OPB Weekend Edition host John Notarianni using the audio player above.
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A federal judge is warning prison staff at Oregons Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla to not retaliate against an adult in their custody who sued corrections officials because they wouldnt follow masking rules.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman largely ruled in favor of Aaron Hanna, a prisoner at Two Rivers. Hanna asked the court in October to force prison officials and correctional officers at Two Rivers to comply with the Oregon Department of Corrections policy on masks.
The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a 25-count indictment on Monday, charging a former nurse at Oregons only womens prison with sexually assaulting a dozen women while they were incarcerated.
Covid-19 Tests Are Easier to Find. Covering Their Cost Is Getting More Complicated. The Wall Street Journal
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Wednesday that he thinks there will be an uptick in cases of Covid-19 over the next few weeks and that it is likely that there could be a surge in the fall.
I think we should expect, David, that over the next couple of weeks, we are going to see an uptick in cases and hopefully there is enough background immunity so that we dont wind up with a lot of hospitalizations, Fauci said when asked by Bloomberg TVs David Westin about the prospect of another wave of Covid-19 from BA.2 or another variant, given the level of immunity believed to exist in the US today.
Fauci reiterated that the US often follows other countries, offering the UK, which also has the BA.2 variant, as an example. He said that as well as a pullback on many mask mandates and restrictions for indoor settings, there has been a waning of immunity.
Those conditions are also present in the United States, he said. So, I would not be surprised if we see an uptick in cases. Whether that uptick becomes a surge where there are a lot more cases is difficult to predict.
Asked later whether it should be expected that this fall will look like the past two and if people should be bracing for something around October Fauci said that he thinks it is likely that we will see a surge in the fall.
He noted that these are uncharted waters for us with this virus and that with other viruses, such as flu which people have decades of experience with predictions about what might happen can be made with some degree of accuracy.
I would think that we should expect that we are going to see some increase in cases as you get to the colder weather in the fall, he said. Thats the reason why the [Food and Drug Administration] and their advisory committee are meeting right now to plan a strategy, and we at the [National Institutes of Health] are doing studies now to determine what the best boost would be.
April 7, 2022
Categories: Academics, Health & safety
Last modified on April 7, 2022
The requirement for COVID surveillance testing of vaccinated and boosted students is being suspended and, pending further assessment, masking in classrooms will continue to be required.
In addition, two locations for Color test kit pickup are closing.
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Revised masking guidelines
COVIDExperts disagree about whether the slight upswing means a big increase in cases or just a temporary rise.This electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 virus particles which cause COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells cultured in a lab. NIAID-RML via AP
Bostons COVID-19 wastewater tracker has begun to tick slowly up again over the past couple of weeks, as it has in the past before most surges.
Experts disagree about whether the slight upswing means a big increase in cases or just a temporary rise.
The latest data from the COVID-19 wastewater tracker shows that current levels are similar to those from early February.
The upward trend comes as the omicron BA.2 variant becomes the dominant one in Boston, The Boston Herald reported, and most pandemic safety mandates in the city have been lifted.
The average COVID-19 levels in wastewater hit a low at the beginning of March, hovering around 100 RNA copies per milliliter. Now, the average levels are above 300 RNA copies per milliliter.
In November and December, scientists accurately predicted the omicron surges in late December and January based on this type of data.
Then, in mid-January, COVID wastewater data was used to accurately predict the stop of the omicron surge that happened in early March.
COVID wastewater levels are still far below what they were during the first omicron surge. At that time average levels of COVID in wastewater reached 11,500 RNA copies per milliliter.
Still, some experts believe it is highly likely that we are on the verge of the next surge.
Matthew Fox, a professor of epidemiology and global health at Boston University, said he thinks its very likely that Boston will soon see a sharp rise in case numbers.
Fox said that infectious diseases like COVID-19 follow a cyclical pattern of surges and lulls, so we can expect surges to continue until the virus becomes a regularly occurring virus like the flu.
Im still optimistic that it will be a less severe wave in terms of deaths and hospitalizations, he said.
Davidson Hamer, a Boston University School of Public Health infectious disease specialist, told the Herald he also believes the next surge is now upon us.
The gradual upward trend in the wastewater is worrisome, he told the newspaper. The good news is that it has been a slow upward trend.
Hamer told the Herald that the upward trend is likely a result of the spread of the BA.2 variant, reduced mask use in public places, and people being less cautious about getting the virus.
Still, he told the paper, hospitalization numbers havent increased much, so that at least is not currently a public health issue.
But not all COVID wastewater experts are so sure that the uptick of COVID in wastewater is a harbinger of the next surge and not just a temporary increase.
Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and the director of Boston Colleges public health program, said that this increase is what the beginning of every surge looks like, but that theres no guarantee that there will be one.
The big question is, is this the leading edge of a surge, or is it just a blip? he said.
Landrigan said the only way to know for sure what the uptick will bring is to keep a close watch on COVID wastewater numbers.
Sheree Pagsuyoin, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UMass Lowell, agreed with Landrigan, saying that when comparing the current uptick to what weve seen before past surges, this one seems minor.
Pagsuyoin said increases have gone back down without becoming a surge before, so shes not that worried right now.
We cant rule out the possibility of a surge, but theres no reason to panic, she said.
Pagsuyoin said its important to monitor the uptick, but the fact that its a slow climb and not a rapid increase is a good sign.
Johnathan Levy, the chair of the environmental health department at Boston University, also said its too early to tell whether or not a big surge is to come.
Levy said its clear that COVID cases and test percent positivity are rising in Boston, and that the UK is currently dealing with a BA.2 surge comparable to the original omicron surge. Even so, he said, COVID has proved itself to be an unpredictable virus.
Its possible that well just have a smaller blip here as we enter the warmer weather, or its possible that well have a fairly large surge, he said.
Though Massachusetts has a high rate of vaccination for the U.S., with 70% of the population fully vaccinated, Levy noted that the state lags when it comes to people getting boosters. This makes residents here less prepared to deal with another surge as compared to those countries like the UK, he said.
Experts agree that there are reasons to be hopeful. If there is a surge, it might not be as bad as the last one, because many people have immunity to the omicron variant due to vaccination or being infected. Still, they said, there is no way to predict how high cases could climb.
They also agreed that the BA.2 variant seems to be about as severe as the original omicron variant when it comes to causing symptoms, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Even though the omicron variant is known to be milder than previous variants, that doesnt mean it cant do significant damage, experts said. BA.2 is significantly more transmissible.
Even with a weaker strain, you can still have a lot of hospitalizations and deaths because its reaching so many people, Fox said.
As of April 5, Boston is experiencing 29.3 new cases a day per 100,000 people on average. The citys goal is to lower that rate to 10 new cases per 100,000 residents per day. However, its still far below the threshold at which the city said it may reinstate COVID safety policies, which is at 50 new cases per 100,000 per day.
The citys COVID test percent positivity rate as of April 5 is 5.4%, which is above the citys threshold of 5%.
Experts agree that its time for us to prepare for a surge by getting ready to wear masks in crowded spaces again and cutting down on social interaction.
Think about small ways you can reduce your risk of getting COVID, Fox said. Dont go out as much, go to fewer large gatherings. You dont have to stop doing everything you love.
As for public policy, such as mask and vaccine mandates, experts said it wont be clear what officials should do until its clear how bad the surge is.
Still, Levy said, both the public and the government should not wait to act and risk hospitals filling up when there are strong warning signs.
Its better to act early, meaning starting masking in crowded indoor settings, certainly getting as many people boosted as quickly as possible, to blunt the possibility of a substantial wave, he said.
Its hard to know when that moment arrives, but its certainly better to act with some precaution and avoid bad outcomes than to wait until something very bad happens and wish that we had done something.
But most importantly, experts agreed, that for those who havent been vaccinated or havent gotten a booster shot, now is the time. The best way to prevent a surge is to increase vaccination rates, they said.
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In late March, the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announced a new COVID-19 variant called XE.
According to the agency, this new variant is recombinant, meaning its a mix of two strains. In this case, highly infectious Omicron BA.1 has combined with the more recent BA.2 variant.
A total 637 cases of XE a recombinant of Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 have been confirmed in the U.K. so far, reported the UKHSA in late March. The earliest of these has a specimen date of 19 January 2022.
As viruses mutate over time, recombinant variants are likely to occur.
Its already happened a few times, and usually the way that it happens is you have two circulating variants, someone may get infected with both at the same time, and then the virus will recombine with characteristics of both variants, Carlos Malvestutto, MD, an infectious disease specialist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, told Healthline.
Malvestutto confirmed that so far, theres no indication that the XE variant is any better at escaping immunity gained by either prior infection or vaccination.
We dont really see in these few cases that have been seen in the U.K., China, India; we dont see that its causing severe disease, he continued.
One major question is whether this recombinant variant is more transmissible than other COVID-19 variants.
It looks like the World Health Organization is citing estimates that show the XE is 10 percent more transmissible than the BA.2, said Robert G. Lahita, MD, Director of the Institute for Autoimmune and Rheumatic Disease at Saint Joseph Health and author of Immunity Strong.
This comes as Omicron COVID-19 variant BA.2 has led to cases rising in the U.S. The variant makes up 72 percent of COVID-19 cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
BA.2 cases were just shy of 14 percent at the beginning of March, and the agency warns they expect new COVID-19 variants to continue emerging.
As variants emerge, they may impact how effective current treatments are against COVID-19.
Malvestutto said he doubts that well see reduced efficacy of currently approved monoclonal antibody treatments because XE should still have characteristics of other Omicron types.
Several times weve had to change monoclonal antibodies that worked against previous variants that did not work against more recent ones, he said. Now the only ones that were using one called sotrovimab, which worked fine against Omicron BA.1, but the neutralization activity of sotrovimab is not good against the BA.2 subvariant.
He said thats why theyve switched to bebtelovimab, which is effective against BA.2.
Its not clear at this point if there would be reduced activity of bebtelovimab, nothing Ive seen suggests that at this point, but were still waiting to see, continued Malvestutto.
Lahita says he expects that we will likely see new COVID-19 variants emerge, just like the flu.
He also said he expects that should the disease become endemic; healthcare providers will end up giving vaccines for both influenza and COVID.
And they will both, including influenza, be messenger RNA based, he predicted.
He also predicts well eventually rely on vaccines with mRNA from influenza and from all the COVID variants.
Carl Fichtenbaum, MD, of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, said a virus contagiousness doesnt indicate how dangerous it might be.
It just means that in animal models and humans, the rate of infection is higher, he explained. It does not mean it makes you sicker or more likely to be hospitalized.
However, he cautioned that its too early to know if the XE variant will dominate over the current B.A.2 Omicron variant, which is very well adapted.
[We] need more time to see if it will become predominant strain, he said.
A new, more infectious COVID-19 variant called XE has been identified that has combined genetic information from both BA.1 and BA.2 variants. In early research, it appears to be more infectious than the Omicron BA.2 variant.
Experts say that increased infectiousness doesnt mean its more dangerous and that current treatments will likely remain effective.
A misleading tweet suggested the CDC updated its guidelines to permit COVID-19 infected people to fly. The CDC has not actually changed its public travel guidance.
On April 6, a tweet with over 3,600 retweets and more than 6,800 likes, claimed that effective April 7, the CDC will now allow infectious #COVID19 cases to fly & stop such reporting.
The tweets author told VERIFY that his tweet was based on a CDC alert on travel that was sent via email to health department officials in Virginia. The email was forwarded to him by a Virginia local health department source and was sent to VERIFY for review.
THE QUESTION
Did the CDC change its COVID-19 public domestic air travel guidance?
THE SOURCES
THE ANSWER
No, that is not true. The CDCs public guidance for domestic air travel has not changed.
The email alert cited in the tweet was sent to some health departments as a notice of changes in how health departments report individual cases and a positive persons travel plans to the CDC. The CDC has never had a policy that specifically states COVID-19 infected individuals couldnt fly.
WHAT WE FOUND
The tweet that was posted on April 6 said the CDC would discontinue applying health travel restrictions to most COVID-19 cases and contacts with reported air travel.
The tweet is missing important context.
The CDC has not issued any new guidance to the public. What they have done is issued new reporting guidelines to state and local health departments.
VERIFY spoke to the Fairfax County, Virginia Health Department about this tweet. The claim in the tweet stemmed from an email alert sent to local Virginia health departments. Under the health department guidance, the CDC is discontinuing the use of the Do Not Board list in most cases. It also states the health departments can stop reporting the following to the CDC:
A person on the Do Not Board list cant obtain a boarding pass for any flight into, out of, or within the United States. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) enforces this rule. The CDC has never had a policy that specifically did not allow COVID-19 positive individuals to fly, but individual airlines could have conducted their own screening that prevented a person with symptoms from flying (i.e. temperature screening prior to boarding).
In order to be placed on the Do Not Board list, a person would have had to meet criteria outlined by the CDC. The CDC does not place every COVID-19 positive individual on the list.
Officials with the Fairfax County Health Department explained how the previous guidance for COVID-19 positive case reporting worked, and how it impacted travel for infected individuals.
Previously, when an individual received a positive COVID-19 result from a doctors office or lab, the local health department would be notified, Fairfax County officials told VERIFY. Then, that health department would receive a list of close-contact individuals and encourage them to quarantine. That original positive and close contact data would then be reported to the CDC.
If the infected person had indicated an intent to travel during the time they were advised to quarantine and the CDC would place that person on the Do Not Board list.
So, now with the new guidance, health departments arent required to send the information about an infected person and their upcoming or past travels plans to the CDC.
Because the memo from the CDC did not change any public recommendations, Fairfax County officials told VERIFY that is why the CDC would not publicize this update on their website. A spokesperson with the San Diego County Health Department in California told VERIFY they were also aware of the change in data reporting.
The CDC is still encouraging all individuals to be vaccinated against COVID-19, wear a mask during travel. The CDC is encouraging tests for domestic travel for people who are not vaccinated or someone who had a close contact with someone who tested positive.
Do not travel if you are sick, tested positive for COVID-19 and havent ended isolation, had close contact with a person with COVID-19 and havent ended quarantine, or are waiting for results of a COVID-19 test, the CDCs website said.
The CDC did not respond to VERIFYs request for comment.
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