FILE PHOTO: A health care administer gives the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine to a person at the L.A. Care Health Plan free testing and vaccination site at the First African Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 29, 2022. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo
CNN
The Omicron coronavirus variant may be reaching around the world, but different places are seeing significantly different effects.
In the United States, Covid-19 case numbers have been falling since January. They may have hit a plateau as a subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, becomes the main cause of infections.
But in China, an area of the world that has had few spikes during the pandemic, there has been a dramatic increase in cases as BA.2 rips through the country.
The difference, experts say, is part policy and part population-level immunity. Whats happening in China doesnt necessarily mean the US is in for another huge spike in cases.
Public health is very much a local thing, said Andy Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
With the first Covid-19 cases in 2020, he said, trends were similar around the globe because most peoples bodies had no experience with the coronavirus, and there were no vaccines. They had no protection against it.
Since then, different countries have used different vaccines and have had different success with vaccination campaigns. Theres also a different level of immunity among populations in different regions. All of that affects the trajectory of Covid-19 cases.
You would probably expect to see more variation from country to country in terms of case numbers and surges and fatality rates from here on out, Pekosz said. All of that means its just difficult to make blanket statements about how things are going to go forward.
Lockdowns in the US are a thing of the past and will probably stay that way, public health experts say. Though the decline in case numbers seems to be leveling off in the US, its rare to see someone wearing a face mask in many places.
By comparison, China has a zero-Covid policy. As cases have been on the rise in more than two dozen provinces, restrictions have gotten much tougher.
In Shanghai, a city of 26 million, people are confined to their homes, able to go out only for essential supplies. Regular tests are mandatory. Officials throughout China check color-based health code systems to monitor peoples movements. Everyone has a smartphone app that shows their personal QR health code: green for healthy, yellow for close contacts and red for confirmed or suspected cases.
If someone tests positive for Covid-19 even if they dont have symptoms they must isolate in large temporary facilities set up in stadiums and convention centers. They cant leave until they test negative twice. Pets are even sent to other centers for monitoring. Public health officials cordon off the persons home and disinfected everything.
With the highly contagious Omicron variant, lockdowns cant totally stop the growth in cases, but the strategy has helped, experts say.
Chinas seven-day daily new case average is more than 14,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. By way of comparison, the country has about four times as many people as the US but as of Thursday, the US is averaging more than 30,000 new Covid-19 cases per day. This is one of the lowest daily case rates since mid-July.
Thats a stark contrast, said Abram Wagner, a research assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan. Were in different trajectories, with the US case numbers going down and kind of plateauing at this point in time, so the direction is different. But I think seeing the smaller number of cases in China, I think the policies that China has in play with restrictions on some level have had an effect.
Whether strict lockdowns are too heavy-handed and infringe too much on personal liberties is a different conversation, he said. But China has kept cases much lower overall than in the US, even during a spike.
Whats made things more difficult is exactly how easy it is to catch Covid with Omicron.
Omicron has changed the equation in China, Wagner said. Its just hard to maintain a dynamic zero-Covid policy that stamps it out completely.
Omicron, to compare it to other variants before it, has really changed an awful lot of the playing field, Pekosz said. Its transmissibility is just off the charts.
Omicron is three times as likely to spread as the Delta variant. None of the vaccines made to protect against the original strain works as well, especially in populations in China that havent seen spikes over the past two years.
Sort of their firewall has broken down with Omicron, and they have a massive amount of people who are susceptible to this virus, said Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolinas Gillings School of Global Public Health.
BA.2, which is playing a role in the spike in cases in China and is now the dominant strain in the US, is especially contagious. Some epidemiologists have said BA.2s basic reproduction number may be as high as 12, meaning each sick person can infect an average of 12 others. That puts it on par with measles.
Though its difficult to predict the trajectory of the pandemic in the US, Lessler said, community immunity could keep the country from seeing an across-the-board spike. Instead, we should see a mild blip.
I expect to see some resurgence here, but its a very different picture, even with the increase in the Omicron subvariant BA.2, Lessler said.
The US population has built up immunity that China does not have. China has seen relatively few cases over the course of the pandemic, but the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 37 million Americans about 1 in 11 got Covid-19 in the past winter alone.
The [BA.2] subvariant of Omicron is not an entire leap ahead of Omicron, whereas Omicron was really quite different than Delta, said Dr. Davidson Hammer, a professor of global health and medicine at Boston University. I think that there are a lot of people, at least the United States, that have had Omicron, and theres growing evidence that theres theyre close enough in terms of their immunologic profile that if youve had 1, youre unlikely to get 2.
In other words, theres a more limited pool of people who might become infected in the US than in China.
Many in the US have some coronavirus immunity from vaccination and boosters. More than 81% of the population has at least some protection with at least one dose, according to the CDC. Boosters have been less popular, but they do work when people get them.
Another problem for China may be the kind of vaccines its used, according to Dr. Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
The increase in the number of cases reflects a combination of factors. Your population thats immunologically naive, they havent seen much of the virus in the past and because they havent been vaccinated effectively to resist them, Likpkin said.
China has mostly used the Chinese-made Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines. Both companies said their vaccines were more than 78% effective against Covid-19, but studies suggested otherwise. Late-stage trials of the Sinovac candidate in Brazil showed an efficacy rate of 50.38%, barely above the World Health Organization threshold for approval.
Other studies have suggested that immunity from two doses of these vaccines wanes rapidly and that the protection may be limited, especially among older people and especially compared with mRNA vaccines used in the US. And against Omicron, all vaccines have been found to offer less protection.
Wagner thinks the difference between US and Chinese vaccines may be more of a wash when it comes to Omicron, but Lipkin says he has been telling colleagues in China for months that they need better protection.
A way out of the surge would be to rapidly vaccinate everyone with more effective vaccines. Thats not what theyre doing, Lipkin said. The notion that you can somehow conquer this with lockdowns is not going to work unless youve coupled the lockdown with an effective vaccine strategy.
Its so disheartening and worrisome, he added. I spend enormous amounts of time in China, and Ive been advising them to switch vaccines for many months, and they just wont do it.
The US has done a pretty good job of vaccinating the elderly, who are more vulnerable to severe disease and death, Lessler said. Almost 90% of people 65 and older have gotten two doses of the vaccine, according to the CDC, and 70% have gotten a booster.
In China, my understanding is, the vaccine rates are sort of inverted somewhat, and the elderly have lower vaccination rates, he said.
With the most at-risk population unprotected in parts of China, Hong Kong has seen the worlds highest death rate by population size this month.
In the US this week, the Biden administration expanded eligibility for second boosters to people who are 50 and older, but one element that could limit this strategy is money. Congress failed to pass legislation that would fund Covid efforts. The uninsured may lose access to free treatments, tests and vaccines, and that could affect case numbers and deaths in the US.
With so many people getting sick globally, what also could change the direction of the pandemic in the US is another variant. If more people get sick, theres more of a chance that another strain could come along one that escapes the protection of current vaccines and treatments.
A new variant could certainly come along in the future that will bring another wave, and we will be forced to respond, Lessler said. Thats why it still makes sense to get vaccinated and boosted.
By Sarah Cobey, Jesse Bloom, Tyler Starr and Nathaniel Lash
Dr. Cobey studies the interaction of immunity, virus evolution and transmission at the University of Chicago. Dr. Bloom and Dr. Starr study virus evolution at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Mr. Lash is a graphics editor for Opinion.
As scientists who study how viruses evolve, we are often asked about the future of the coronavirus. Will it go away? Get worse? Fade into the background of our lives? Become seasonal like the flu?
Heres what we know: The viruss Omicron variant was significantly more infectious and more resistant to vaccines than the original strain that first emerged in Wuhan, China. Theres no reason, at least biologically, that the virus wont continue to evolve. The coronavirus variants that have emerged thus far sample only a fraction of the genetic space that is most likely available for evolutionary exploration.
A virus like SARS-CoV-2 faces one overriding pressure: to become better at spreading. Viruses that cause more infections will be more successful. The virus can do this by becoming more contagious and by skirting around the immune system. This coronavirus has undergone several adaptations that make it better at spreading in humans.
But although many scientists, including us, expected SARS-CoV-2 would be under evolutionary pressure to transmit better, its been remarkable just how well the virus has responded to that pressure. Recent variants like Omicron and Delta are several times more transmissible than the strain that first spread around the globe in early 2020. Thats a huge increase, and makes SARS-CoV-2 more contagious than many other human respiratory viruses. These big jumps in contagiousness have played a major role in driving the pandemic so far.
Chart showing properties of certain SARS-CoV-2 variants. Along the X axis, reductions in antibody effectiveness for variants is shown. Along the Y axis are figures on how much more contagious the variant is compared to the original SARS-CoV-2.
How the coronavirus has changed
Comparing coronavirus variants to early 2020 strains.
Antibodies are
less effective
Estimated reduction in antibody effectiveness
How the coronavirus has mutated
Comparing coronavirus variants to early 2020 strains.
Antibodies are
less effective
Estimated reduction in antibody effectiveness
How the coronavirus has changed
Comparing coronavirus variants to early 2020 strains.
Antibodies are
less effective
Estimated reduction in antibody effectiveness
How much more transmissible SARS-CoV-2 can become is an open question, but there are limits. Even evolution is constrained: a cheetah cant evolve to be infinitely fast, and SARS-CoV-2 wont become infinitely transmissible.
Other viruses have reached plateaus in their ability to spread. Some respiratory viruses such as measles are more contagious than todays SARS-CoV-2. Others, such as influenza, are generally not as contagious as SARS-CoV-2. We dont know when this coronavirus will hit its transmissibility plateau, but it will happen eventually.
Viruses such as this one can also spread better by escaping immunity to prior variants. Early in the pandemic, few people had immunity to SARS-CoV-2. But now much of the world has antibodies from vaccination or prior infection. Because these antibodies can block infection, variants with mutations that skirt around them have an increasing advantage.
The importance of immune escape has become apparent with Omicron. Prior variants like Delta were only modestly able to sidestep antibodies, but Omicron has many mutations that reduce the ability of antibodies to recognize it. This, coupled with how contagious Omicron is, has enabled it to cause a huge wave of infections.
The fact that the virus developed the ability to infect people who had been vaccinated or previously infected shouldnt have been a surprise, but how it happened with Omicron certainly was. Evolution often proceeds stepwise, with new successful variants descended from recent successful ones. Thats why six months ago many scientists, including us, thought the next variant would descend from Delta, which was dominant at the time. But evolution defied our expectations, and we got Omicron, which has a huge number of mutations and isnt descended from Delta. Its not known exactly how the virus made the big evolutionary jump that led to Omicron, although many scientists (including us) suspect the variant may have emerged from someone who couldnt fight off the virus well, allowing it time to mutate.
Its impossible to say whether future variants will have more big Omicron-like jumps or more typical stepwise changes, but we are confident SARS-CoV-2 will continue to evolve to escape immunity.
While transmissibility of viruses does plateau at a certain point, other human viruses that escape immunity keep doing so. The influenza vaccine has been updated annually for decades to chase viral evolution, and some influenza viruses show no sign of slowing down. Immune escape is an endless evolutionary arms race, because the immune system can always make new antibodies and the virus has a vast set of mutations to explore in response. For instance, Omicron has just a tiny fraction of the many mutations that have been observed in SARS-CoV-2 or related bat viruses, which are in turn just a small fraction of what lab experiments suggest the virus could potentially explore.
Taking all this together, we expect SARS-CoV-2 will continue to cause new epidemics, but they will increasingly be driven by the ability to skirt around the immune system. In this sense, the future may look something like the seasonal flu, where new variants cause waves of cases each year. If this happens, which we expect it will, vaccines may need to be updated regularly similar to the flu vaccines unless we develop broader variant-proof vaccines.
And of course, how much all this matters for public health depends on how sick the virus makes us. That is the hardest prediction to make, because evolution selects for viruses that spread well, and whether that makes disease severity go up or down is mostly a matter of luck. But we do know that immunity reduces disease severity even when it doesnt fully block infections and spread, and immunity gained from vaccination and prior infections has helped blunt the impact of the Omicron wave in many countries. Updated or improved vaccines and other measures that slow transmission remain our best strategies for handling an uncertain evolutionary future.
DENVER (KDVR) After weeks of declining COVID-19 cases in Colorado, several counties saw a rise in cases over the last seven days.
As of Monday, the states seven-day positivity rate was 3.33%, which is up from2.56% seven days ago. Positivity rate measures the amount of COVID positive tests to the total amount of tests taken.
Overall, 13 counties saw a decrease in COVID-19 positivity, 35 counties saw a rise, nine counties stayed the same, and seven counties administered fewer than 10 tests.
According to theColorado Department of Public Health and Environment, incidence are down slightly over the last week.
Heres a look atpositivity rates for every county over the last seven days:
According toJohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the percent positive is exactly what it sounds like: the percentage of all coronavirus tests performed that are actually positive, or: (positive tests)/(total tests) x 100%. The percent positive (sometimes called the percent positive rate or positivity rate) helps public health officials answer questions suchas:
The percent positive will be high if the number ofpositive testsis too high, or if the number oftotal testsis too low. A higher percent positive suggests higher transmission and that there are likely more people with coronavirus in the community who havent been tested yet, Johns Hopkins shared.
There is still potential for the novel coronavirus to mutate into a new coronavirus variant, an infectious disease expert recently told the Deseret News.
Driving the news: Dr. Robert Quigley, an infectious disease expert and senior vice president of International SOS, a leading medical and security services company, told the Deseret News in an email that the coronavirus is constantly evolving, which could lead to a new variant down the line.
What he said: COVID-19 is an evolving virus, and like any other virus it has a tendency to mutate, Quigley said.
The bigger picture: Moderna CEO Stephane BanceltoldBloombergThursday that theres about a 20% chance of a new dangerous coronavirus variant emerging in the near future.
Worth noting: Scientists toldNewsweekin August 2021 that there was a potentialdoomsday COVID variantdown the line. This was expressed before the rise of the omicron variant, which surged through the United States this winter.
Two years since the coronavirus pandemic started to impact us here in Kern County Bakersfield Now
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At 16, ShaNiyah McGee could see her future clearly. She wanted to go to college to become a pediatrician and own a nail salon and somehow, some way, she wanted her younger siblings to come to a university with her.
Shes that kind of person, her grandmother, Laurena Ellis, said. She didnt have a bad bone in her body.
But unfortunately, none of this will come to pass. On Sept. 28 the day ShaNiyah emerged from her bedroom where she spent days recovering from COVID-19 to return to school she collapsed in her Dallas home and died, becoming one of over 100 Texas coronavirus fatalities under the age of 19.
As the coronavirus pandemic moves into a third year, recent data provides a clearer picture of COVID-19s deadly impact in Texas. Today marks the one-year anniversary of when vaccines were widely available to anyone over the age of 16 and in that time, deaths have slowed considerably.
Vaccines became available to those older than 12 last May. Between then and January, COVID-19 killed about 29,000 Texans. About 82% of those deaths, including ShaNiyahs, were among people who had not been vaccinated.
Behind these figures are real families, broken by the deaths of loved ones lost too early to a disease that often infects several members of a family at once. ShaNiyahs mother, Felicia Boulden, eventually recovered only to arrange her oldest daughters funeral.
Ellis said her granddaughter ShaNiyah had planned to get the shots after she fully recovered from COVID-19. Now, everyone eligible in the family has received the vaccines. Ellis and Boulden have struggled to understand how Boulden lived but ShaNiyah died.
We think she bargained with God to leave her mother for her sisters and her brother, Ellis said.
Vaccination has dramatically changed the impact of the coronavirus, which first appeared in the United States in early 2020. Before vaccines were available to everyone a year ago, Texans 80 and older died most frequently from COVID-19.
But when the coronavirus delta variant hit last September, a high vaccine rate for older Texans protected them, while deaths among younger residents began rising. Adults in their 60s died more often than any other age group during the surge, followed by those in their 70s and those in their 50s.
Brent Earles, 65, of Dallas, was one of those Texans in January. He worked as a shopping mall Santa for years, hoisting children onto his lap and listening to their Christmas wishes.
My mom commented that it was probably one of the happiest times that shes ever seen him was being Santa at this [last] event, but it is almost certainly where he contracted COVID, his son Jared Earles said.
On New Years Eve, doctors rushed an unvaccinated Brent Earles, as he struggled to breathe, into the intensive care unit, where he remained for a near monthlong fight against COVID-19.
On Jan. 25, he died four days after his 65th birthday, one of the nearly 2,000 Texans in their 60s who have died in the first two months of this year from the virus.
Its the natural order of things that at some point in your life, your parents die, Earles said. Certainly, I didnt want or expect it to be like this, so suddenly and so needlessly. My dad had a lot of living left and he had a lot more to give.
In the beginning, Earles family and doctors thought Brent would make it. He had battled with COVID-19 pneumonia in both lungs. Two weeks in the hospital stripped him of 20 pounds, but he had improved enough that doctors prepared to move him out of the ICU.
In those early days at the hospital, Jared said, his father began to think seriously for the first time about getting the shots.
Brent had held concerns about the vaccines safety, which he and his son regularly discussed. His son wanted him to get vaccinated, but the older man refused. That seemed to be changing as Brent slowly regained his strength.
On one hand, my dad is a number. To most people, hes just one of an unnecessarily large number. And he also fits in that unvaccinated camp, But, Jared Earles added, He was much more than a statistic to me.
As Brent was preparing to move out of the ICU, Brents mother, who was unvaccinated, died of COVID-19. Soon after, new scans revealed a severe regression in Brents lungs.
His lung scans kind of went from mostly clear to terrible, Jared said. [For] COVID cases, its a long, slow, arduous recovery, and setbacks are extremely fast and often fatal. And thats what happened.
In Brents last moments, the father passed the torch to his son. Jared had moved back to Texas seven years ago to work with his father.
He told me that I had surpassed him, Jared said. And it was my time to continue on.
About two months have passed since the omicron surge, which took the lives of at least 6,000 Texans, and the state is seeing a relative respite from the pandemic as COVID-19 restrictions begin to lift.
Texas is now averaging about 60 deaths a day, down from over 200 daily deaths at the height of omicron. During the delta variant peak, there was an average of 300 deaths in one day.
While death rates have slowed, the United States is still on track to reach 1 million COVID-19 deaths in the coming weeks. Texas leads the nation with the second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths behind California, which records about 2,000 more deaths despite having 10 million more people. Overall, Texas has had 296 deaths per 100,000 residents since the pandemic began, ranking it roughly in the middle of all states.
However, other variants will be coming. A mutation of omicron, called BA.2, is currently causing surges across Europe. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it is at least 50% more transmissible than its predecessor but does not appear to cause a deadlier illness. Federal data showed the new strain accounting for 1 in 4 new U.S. COVID-19 cases.
While Fauci is expecting an uptick in domestic cases, it is unclear if the increase will reflect the intense surges seen this past January and last September.
Rebecca Fischer, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, said Texans should keep their guard up.
Were doing OK right now, but this is the time to gain ground on the virus, Fischer said. By no means is this a time to act like the pandemic is over.
Despite the virus mutations, vaccines are still the best defense against COVID-19. Right now, the states fully vaccinated rate sits at just below 60%. Booster rates are even lower and now theres a second booster to be made available this month. Only 22% of Texans have received a booster shot. Increasing these rates will not only prevent death but will make the emergence and transmission of new variants more difficult.
Fischer does believe there will come a time where the individual and public health measures will have largely suppressed the virus, and that time could be close, but only with significant investment in public health services.
Public health [experts] have been screaming this forever. But now, its becoming really apparent, Fischer said.
Earlier this month, Republican pushback prompted Congress to cut $15.6 billion for COVID-19 relief that would have paid for treatments, vaccines and testing. If Congress does not release additional funds, the money for COVID testing and treatment for Americas tens of millions of uninsured people could likely run out in April.
As global COVID-19 cases rise, Fischer said the United States must move aggressively before the wave hits here to combat future deaths.
When I look at the numbers that 100 Texans a day are dying, I think the numbers are a little bit down now, but thats not OK. Its never been OK, Fischer said. Its never been OK to see those numbers and think that we dont need to do anything and its all OK and normal now.
Disclosure: Texas A&M University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
By Nancy Lapid - The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. HIV drugs may curb COVID-19 risk Certain drugs used to treat HIV may have a role in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections, according to preliminary data that may help explain why people living with the condition have not appeared to be at higher risk for serious COVID-19 despite being generally more vulnerable to infections.
Doctors in France studied more than 500 people with HIV, a third of whom were receiving long-term treatment with protease inhibitor drugs as part of their antiviral therapy. Over the course of a year, SARS-CoV-2 infections were diagnosed in 12% of participants taking protease inhibitors and 22% of those not receiving these drugs. Four patients in the non-protease-inhibitor group were admitted to hospital with COVID-19. After accounting for other risk factors, individuals taking protease inhibitors were 70% less likely to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 than patients who were not taking these drugs, according to data scheduled for presentation at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases https://www.eccmid.org.
Some new treatments for COVID-19 use protease inhibitors, which block the virus from multiplying. "Protease inhibitor drugs have long history of use, a good safety profile, and are generally well tolerated," Dr. Steve Nguala from the Intercommunal Hospital Center of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, said in a statement. They have the potential "to prevent the spread of infections and mutation of future variants," he said, adding that larger studies are needed to confirm the findings.
COVID-19 and flu make for a dangerous combo
Having COVID-19 and influenza at the same time puts hospitalized adults at much greater risk of critical illness and death compared to having COVID-19 without the flu, researchers reported on Friday in The Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00383-X/fulltext.
Patients with SARS-CoV-2/influenza coinfections were more than four times as likely to require machines to help them breath and 2.4 times as likely to die compared to patients who only had COVID-19, according to a study of nearly 7,000 hospitalized patients with COVID-19, including 227 who also had the flu. Dr. Kenneth Baillie of the University of Edinburgh, who led the study, said the combination of the two viruses is particularly dangerous. "We expect that COVID-19 will circulate with flu, increasing the chance of co-infections. That is why we should change our testing strategy for COVID-19 patients in hospital and test for flu much more widely," Baillie said in a statement.
"The vaccines that protect against COVID-19 and flu are different," added Dr. Peter Openshaw of Imperial College London, "and people need both."
Experimental COVID drug may be preventive and therapeutic
An experimental drug designed to be sprayed into the nose has shown the potential to both prevent infection and treat COVID-19, at least for some variants of the coronavirus, according to a study in mice.
(Reuters) Shanghai, Chinas most populous city, on Tuesday again tightened the first phase of a two-stage COVID-19 lockdown, asking some residents to stay indoors unless they are getting tested as the number of daily cases rose beyond 4,400.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
* Eikon users, see COVID-19: MacroVitals https://apac1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/cms/?navid=1592404098 for a case tracker and summary of news.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Hong Kong private home prices dropped at a faster pace in February to their lowest since January 2021, official data showed on Tuesday, as the Asian financial hub was hit by a new wave of COVID-19 infections.
* Chinas Shanghai on Tuesday said it would roll out policies to help the local economy cope with a surge in COVID-19 cases in the city, including offering refunds that will reduce firms tax burdens by 140 billion yuan ($22 billion) in 2022.
* Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has tested positive for COVID-19 but feels well and will work while self-isolating at home, his office said.
EUROPE
* German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday he did not agree with a planned intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines as patents are a crucial way of encouraging companies to continue pushing ahead with new research.
* Italy reported 30,710 COVID-19 related cases on Monday, against 59,555 the day before, the health ministry said, while the number of deaths rose to 95 from 82.
* Londons Metropolitan Police is expected to issue the first fines for breaching a COVID-19 lockdown at No. 10 Downing Street, The Guardian reported on Monday citing government insiders.
AMERICAS
* Brazilian health regulator Anvisa recommended on Monday that COVID-19 travel restrictions be eased due to a drop in cases and deaths, requiring only full vaccination and doing away with quarantine for unvaccinated travellers.
* Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Monday that he had supposedly tested positive for COVID-19, with no major symptoms.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* Pfizers oral COVID-19 therapy will be evaluated as a potential treatment for patients hospitalised with the illness in a major British trial, scientists said on Monday, as cases rise in some parts of the world.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* Japanese shares led gains in Asian stocks on Tuesday as the Bank of Japan defended its ultra-easy stance, while oil slid on fears of lower demand from China as Shanghai applied a zero-COVID strategy by locking down despite a relatively modest caseload. [MKTS/GLOB]
* Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ordered his cabinet to put together a fresh relief package by the end of April to cushion the economic blow from rising fuel and raw material prices.
* British finance minister Rishi Sunak defended the tax cuts he announced last week, after they were widely criticised for not helping the poorest households through the most severe hit to living standards since at least the 1950s.
(Compiled by Rashmi Aich and Shailesh Kuber; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Anil DSilva)
AUSTIN (KXAN) Just after 3 a.m. Monday, Tesla founder Elon Musk said he has COVID-19 for the second time.
The billionaire, who owns both the electric car manufacturer headquartered in Austin and space exploration company SpaceX, tweeted the news early Monday, saying, Covid-19 is the virus of Theseus.
How many gene changes before its not Covid-19 anymore? he continued. I supposedly have it again, but almost no symptoms.
The reference to the Greek mythological hero seems to be about the ship of Theseus, which in philosophy, wrestles with a paradox: If an object has all the parts that comprise it replaced, is it still the same thing after the changes?
Musk, who has 79.4 million Twitter followers and tweets at all hours, caused a stir on the social media platform the first time he tested positive for the virus.
He drew the ire of a Canadian doctor who referred to him as Space Karen after he complained about conflicting test results in November 2020.
Musk said, Something extremely bogus is going on, after multiple antigen tests came back both positive and negative.
Emma Bell, Ph.D., a postdoc of bioinformatics at a Toronto hospital, unleashed an aggressive explanation as to why that could happen, and her name-calling sparked a meme that entertained internet users for weeks.
Earlier in March on Twitter, Musk tried to pick a fight with Russian president Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine, and he used Starlink satellites to restore internet service to Ukraine residents as combat from the war knocked out service.
