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The local threat level remains at Stage 2 across the area as hospitalizations remain low.
AUSTIN, Texas Data from Austin Public Health showed a 47% rise in coronavirus transmission rates Monday, a week after the conclusion of South by Southwest and just a day after the end of Dell Match Play and NASCARs events at Circuit of the Americas.
In spite of this pattern, hospitalizations remain low 41 people were in Austin-area hospitals for COVID as of Monday.
A report from KVUEs news partners at the Austin-American Statesman explains that Austin Public Health officials use community transmission rates as a key indicator to develop risk-based guidelines. Those numbers track new cases per 100,000 residents, which APH officials say were more accurate than hospitalization numbers in assessing risk during the delta variant outbreak.
On Friday, the transmission rate was 37.8 before jumping to 61.1 on Sunday. As of Monday, that rate sat at 55.7.
More people also tested positive for COVID over the last few days, with the rate jumping from 4% on Friday to 6.3% at the start of the week.
Last week, municipal leaders lifted all COVID-19 orders related to mask use in most city spaces and the risk level remains at Stage 2.
State health officials reported nine new deaths from COVID as of Monday.
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WASHINGTONU.S. healthcare spending growth is expected to have slowed last year after reaching a nearly two-decade high driven by the pandemic, according to a new report by federal regulators.
National health spending is projected to have grown 4.2% to $4.3 trillion in 2021, compared with a growth surge of 9.7% in 2020, according to the report from actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The slowdown came from a decline in the use of healthcare services and federal financial stimulus as Covid-19 cases fell amid a pandemic that has led to nearly 975,000 deaths and almost 80 million cases in the U.S.
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THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION IS PAUSING THE USE OF A COVID ANTIBODY TREATMENT IN EITGH STATES INCLUDING NEW HAMPSHIRE. THATS BECAUSE OF CONCERNS SOTROVIMAB WILL NOT WORK AGAINST THE OMICRON B.A.-2 SUBVARAT.IN CDC ESTIMATES SAY THAT IS WNO -- IT IS NOW ACCOUNTING FOR MORE THAN HALF THE NEW CASES IN THOSE EIGHT AT
Use of COVID-19 treatment paused in New Hampshire because it might be ineffective against subvariant
Sotrovimab use paused by FDA
Updated: 3:04 PM EDT Mar 28, 2022
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is pausing the use of a COVID-19 antibody treatment in eight states, including New Hampshire.The move is coming because of concerns Sotrovimab will not work against the new omicron BA.2 subvaraint.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates say the subvariant is now accounting for more than half the new cases in those eight states, which include New York, New Jersey and all of New England.** Town-by-town: COVID-19 case data | Vaccination data **----Stay in the know! Download the WMUR app for Apple or Android devices and turn on push notifications. You can choose to receive all alerts or ones that fall into certain categories like local news, national and international news, health and COVID-19 news, politics news, sports updates and weather forecasts. You can also sign up for severe weather alerts for your geolocation and/or up to three ZIP codes. In addition, you can receive word when precipitation is coming to your area.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is pausing the use of a COVID-19 antibody treatment in eight states, including New Hampshire.
The move is coming because of concerns Sotrovimab will not work against the new omicron BA.2 subvaraint.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates say the subvariant is now accounting for more than half the new cases in those eight states, which include New York, New Jersey and all of New England.
** Town-by-town: COVID-19 case data | Vaccination data **
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Stay in the know! Download the WMUR app for Apple or Android devices and turn on push notifications. You can choose to receive all alerts or ones that fall into certain categories like local news, national and international news, health and COVID-19 news, politics news, sports updates and weather forecasts. You can also sign up for severe weather alerts for your geolocation and/or up to three ZIP codes. In addition, you can receive word when precipitation is coming to your area.
The congressional stalemate threatens to upend the fragile progress that has been made since the early days of the pandemic when the federal governments decision to make Covid interventions available to everyone free of charge temporarily helped level the playing field in a nation where access to health care is usually tied to employment and income and often correlated with race.
Im concerned that well go back to the status quo, which we know carries with it great disparities and suffering, Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), the leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and an emergency physician, told POLITICO. And the hardest-to-reach communities will be the first to suffer and the most to suffer from the lack of funds.
While the lack of Covid funding is expected to have an outsize impact on communities of color, low-income white people, particularly those in rural communities where vaccine hesitancy is higher and hospital closures are on the rise, are likely to be hurt as well.
The Biden administration cautioned lawmakers in a meeting last week that without immediate new funding, the federal government will stop reimbursing doctors for testing, vaccinating and treating the uninsured. If a second booster shot is recommended for the general population, the government wont be able to provide it free of charge. Disease surveillance will also be hampered, they warned, meaning public health workers wont know about outbreaks or the emergence of new variants before theyre already widespread.
Global health experts additionally fear that congressional inaction will stall the governments efforts to vaccinate low-income countries around the world, furthering the chances of a new, more dangerous variant emerging.
Its quite a long list of very serious issues, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said as he emerged from the briefing with top administration officials. Merkley added that a new Covid surge could very well hit us again, and to fail to be prepared for the next potential wave would be failure of Congress.
Racial and ethnic gaps have narrowed considerably since the pandemic began. During the initial Covid-19 wave, Black Americans were dying at about three times the rate of white Americans. That gap began to narrow in the summer of 2020 as Covid-19 moved from more urban, densely populated areas into more rural parts of the country. The Covid death rate for white people is now higher than the rates for their Black, Latino and Asian American counterparts, and roughly even to the death rate for American Indian and Alaska Native people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Thats in part because of the vaccines. Even as people of color are more likely than whites to have housing, transportation and jobs that put them at higher risk of catching Covid, the vaccination gap that existed at the beginning of 2021 is closing, improving outcomes for people of color. Fifty-seven percent of Black Americans have had at least one shot, compared with 62 percent of whites and 64 percent of Hispanics, the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
Public health experts say the governments early decision to provide free testing for people exposed to the virus and free treatment for those who become ill eventually helped mitigate Covid-19 health disparities by making pricey new drugs and precautionary checkups accessible to many who otherwise couldnt afford them.
Cutting off funding now for those key Covid-fighting tools threatens to undo two years of progress toward more equitable health outcomes, public health experts warn.
Yet lawmakers remain at an impasse with many Republicans questioning the need for more money and demanding it be paid for with cuts to other programs. Some Democrats refused to approve the money if it came out of pandemic aid to their states, while others warned that the $22.5 billion the White House is requesting will only last a few months before another cash infusion is needed.
An analysis by the nonprofit Surgo Foundation found that Alaska, Florida and Washington, D.C., would see the biggest impact on racial disparities if new Covid funding is not approved given their higher percentages of uninsured, immunocompromised and people of color. But their researchers stress that communities of color in every state are disproportionately vulnerable to a surge in Covid cases, which many fear is looming given the rise in infections in Europe.
In Alabama, for example, Black residents were significantly more likely to die from Covid-19 than the states white residents at the beginning of the pandemic. But successful outreach campaigns have so improved vaccine uptake among Black Alabamians that their rates now exceed that of their white counterparts and white and Black residents in the state are now dying from the virus at roughly equal rates.
Some disparities have narrowed because of the higher rates of vaccine hesitancy and opposition to masking among white conservatives. When the highly contagious Omicron variant spread through those areas, hospitalization and death rates for white people matched those of people of color.
But if the federal government cant subsidize a potential fourth dose of the vaccine it could be a disaster for the states uninsured population nearly half of whom are non-white, though people of color make up just about a third of the population said Scott Harris, Alabamas state health officer.
If a second booster dose is approved soon and theres no money for booster doses, then were just creating just another health disparity on the basis of our funding policy, Harris said. Thats just a really sad situation.
A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis published Friday found that without more funding, the government could be short more than 118 million doses if a new booster is recommended for Americans of all ages. If there is a shortage, experts expect people of color will lose out to those better able to take time off work to hunt for an appointment or travel farther to find a dose.
When we have a constrained set of resources, as when the vaccines became first available, the people able to get them were the people with the resources and time to navigate the system, said Samantha Artiga, vice president and director of the Racial Equity and Health Policy Program at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Over the last year, state and local health officials have worked to convince residents that there was no cost for the shots and have seen their efforts pay off in terms of narrowing disparities. Now those on the front lines fear that work could be undone.
We know exactly what we can do to prepare. Were just choosing not to.
Philadelphia Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole
Cheryl Bettigole, Philadelphias health commissioner, said Latino residents initially experienced some of the worst outcomes from Covid-19 but now have among the highest immunization rates in the city.
The fact that we could clearly message that the vaccine is free, that tests are free, the treatment of Covid is free, it has made an immense difference because every time you have to waffle on that, people step back, Bettigole said. The fact that were having this conversation two months after the Omicron wave basically leveled us is just mind-boggling.
For those who are at high risk of becoming seriously ill if infected, treatments like monoclonal antibodies may no longer be covered by the government without new funding from Congress, worsening the disparities that plagued their distribution even when they were fully covered. CDC data released in January found that monoclonal antibodies were given to Hispanic patients 58 percent less often than to white patients over the past year, and rates for Black, Asian and other patients similarly lag. Without government funding, a single treatment could cost an uninsured person thousands of dollars.
Thats something that if you dont have insurance, Im not sure how you would even begin to pay for, said Judith ODonnell, hospital epidemiologist at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.
The lack of funding is also threatening the United States global vaccination efforts, which public health experts say will worsen already stark global health disparities. More than a dozen low-income countries that are depending on U.S. donations, for example, have vaccination rates below 10 percent, the overwhelming number of them in Africa, including Kenya, Malawi and Cameroon.
State and local health officials say its not an us vs. them situation, arguing that investing in vaccination abroad is crucial to protecting vulnerable residents at home in the U.S.
Each time as the wave hits, or just after the wave, there are people saying and Im pointing very clearly to the places where were not vaccinating the world We have to do this. We have to do this. If we dont do this, its going to happen again. And then it happens again, and somehow were surprised, Bettigole said. We know exactly what we can do to prepare. Were just choosing not to.
In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server, researchers evaluated the association between new inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) diagnoses in New York City (NYC) and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Several studies have shown an increased presentation of autoimmune diseases linked with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), such as IBD. It is an autoimmune disorder typically observed in late childhood, and its pathogenesis involves a mix of genetic predisposition, microbial exposure, and infections.
In the present study, researchers fitted an autoregressive integrated moving average model (ARIMA) to the number of cases of Crohns Disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC) between January 2016 and March 2020 to forecast the case numbers for the subsequent 21 months (between April 2020 and December 2021), with 80% and 95% prediction intervals using the forecast library.
They retrieved the data for the period between 2015 and 2021 from four collaborating institutions using electronic medical records (EMRs), in particular, the date of diagnosis for 349 CD and 145 UC cases diagnosed in NYC pediatric clinics between 2016 and 2021. They also evaluated the robustness of results to monthly versus quarterly periods, data from three participating institutions for the period between 2011 and 2021.
As demographic variables, gender, birth month/year, and age at diagnosis were available for all the participants; therefore, these were accounted for during the study analysis.
The researchers used the Pearson chi-square test and pairwise proportion tests with Holms correction to compare the pre-pandemic versus pandemic periods, taking April 2020 as the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, they plotted the total cases by month with loess regression and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using ggplot2 stratified by pandemic versus pre-pandemic diagnosis to show seasonal patterns in IBD diagnoses.
The CD model was ARIMA (0,0,0) with a residual standard deviation of 7.07, a mean absolute scaled error of less than one, and the forecast was uniform across the 80% and 95% prediction intervals. Likewise, the UC model was ARIMA (1,0,0) with a lag-1 autocorrelation (AR1) of 0.30, the residual standard deviation of 2.00, and the forecast varied slightly across the intervals.
For UC and CD, ARIMA analysis forecasted an average of 1.91 and 4.65 monthly cases with 80% and 95% prediction intervals, respectively. The Durbin-Watson statistic showed no evidence of AR1 for CD for the pre-or pandemic period and UC for the pandemic period.
Patients diagnosed with IBD during pre-pandemic versus post-pandemic times had similar demographic characteristics, including gender, age at diagnosis, country of residence, ethnicity, and race.
Two participating institutions, viz., Downstate and Maimonides, showed opposing results in terms of IBD cases during the pre-pandemic and pandemic times; however, they did not show any other differences. Accordingly, the former had a larger share of cases during the pandemic than during the pre-pandemic time (9.6% vs. 4.3%); however, the latter had fewer cases during the pandemic than during the pre-pandemic time (10.2% vs. 17.5%).
The authors also observed a significant increase in CD diagnoses in NYC in March and April 2020. In the loess plots, the authors observed more CD diagnoses than expected in June and July 2020 during the pandemic than in the pre-pandemic times.
In Q3 of 2020, the authors noted more CD cases than forecasted; likewise, in Q4 of 2020, there were more UC cases than forecasted. For CD, there were 26 cases compared with the upper limit of 95% prediction interval of 23 in the ARIMA analysis.
Robustness checks using monthly data demonstrated similar rates for the CD and UC cases during July and September 2020 and May and October 2021, respectively. Overall, a trend was apparent towards elevation in UC diagnoses over time, with eight cases compared with the upper limit of 95% prediction interval of 6.1.
Overall, the study findings suggested the possible risk of increased IBD diagnoses among pediatric patients in NYC, especially CD, due to increased SARS-CoV-2 cases. Decreases in SARS-CoV-2 cases did not decrease CD and UC diagnoses, suggesting reduced importance of SARS-CoV-2 infections as a pathogenic IBD trigger or reduced ability to drive IBD pathogenesis. The authors emphasized the need for a follow-up investigation of changes in IBD incidence using the current data infrastructure.
medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
School mask mandates are expiring across the US.
The wait for parents anxious to vaccinate their young children against COVID-19 may have gotten shorter. Moderna is joining Pfizer and BioNTech in the submission process to the US Food and Drug Administration with its vaccine for children 6 months through 5 years. The company will submit its data for authorization in the coming weeks, it said.
The immune response generated in children under age 6 with Moderna's small-dose vaccine (one-fourth the size of the adult primary series) mimics the response seen in adults -- a benchmark vaccine researchers use when gauging potential effectiveness for younger age groups. It also has a favorable safety profile in children as young as 6 months, the company said.
The company also announced it's seeking authorization for its vaccine for kids 6 to 11 and wants to extend US authorization of the vaccine for kids and teens. If Moderna gets the green light, kids and their parents will have a second COVID-19 vaccine option.
Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine is authorized for kids and teens age 5 and older. Children under 5 are the only age group who can't get vaccinated against COVID-19.
In February, Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for kids and babies was paused after the companies announced they were extending their "rolling submission" authorization process for the vaccine for kids 6 months up to 5 years in order to study a third dose of the vaccine. Though two doses of Pfizer's smallest-dose vaccine were effective in babies and toddlers up to 2 years, the vaccine wasn't effective in kids 2 through 4 years.
The smaller-dosed children's vaccines, and the circulation of the omicron variant, have riddled the authorization process for the youngest age group as researchers scramble to find a dosing that'll work. Moderna's positive announcement about its two-dose vaccine for kids is good news for parents, but it also reflects a caveat about the efficacy of primary vaccine series in the era of omicron, a variant that's diminished infection protection for adults and kids alike (and is part of the reason health officials have called for booster doses in those eligible).
Jeff Zients, the White House COVID-19 Response team coordinator, said Wednesday that the government has enough supplies to vaccinate children under age 5 if and when the COVID-19 vaccine is authorized and recommended for that age group. The White House has warned that without congressional approval for more COVID-19 funding, the government won't be able to cover, for one example, fourth shots if they're needed for all Americans. The Uninsured Program for COVID-19 testing and treatments for Americans without health insurance has already stopped accepting claims.
Though parents of kids under age 5 will need to wait for FDA authorization (and then the CDC's recommendation), children age 5 and older can get vaccinated now. Here's everything we know about COVID-19 vaccines for babies, kids and teens.
Read more: 4th COVID Vaccine: Does a Second Booster Work?
Moderna is submitting data on a vaccine for kids 6 months through 5 years (up to 6 years). It's two doses -- one-fourth the size (25 micrograms) of Moderna's vaccine for adults -- given 28 days apart.
The vaccine had a favorable safety profile in the study,Moderna said, and while the vaccine efficacy is relatively lower compared with the efficacy rates seen earlier in the pandemic (43.7% for kids 6 months to 2 years, and 37.5% for children 2 to 6 years), this is "consistent with adult observational data" during the omicron wave, the company said.
If the FDA also authorizes Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine for kids 6 to 12, it'll be the company's adult booster size -- 50 micrograms, or one half the size given to adults as their first two shots. Moderna's vaccine is regulated for kids as young as 6 in Canada, Australia and the European Union.
Moderna is asking the FDA to extend the use of its adult vaccine for kids age 12 to 17. But right now the only vaccine available for kids under 18 in the US is Pfizer's.
Read more:What to Know About BA.2, or COVID's 'Stealth Omicron' Variant
Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine for children 6 months through 4 years (up to 5 years) comes in two doses that are one-tenth the volume of the vaccine for people age 12 and up, a slightly smaller dose than Moderna's prospective vaccine for the age group. A third 3-microgram dose is being researched right now and is expected to complete the series.
The currently authorized and available COVID-19 vaccine for kids 5 to 11 is one-third the dose given to everyone 12 and up, and it's delivered in two doses. Pfizer's vaccine for kids can also be stored forup to 10 weeksin a fridge, making it easier to administer, and the cap on the vial isorange instead of purple and grayto avoid mix-ups.
And if it helps put your kids at ease, you can let them know the needle used to administer the child's dose of vaccine is also smaller.
For more information about Pfizer's vaccine for children ages 5 to 11,check out this FDA fact sheet.
Children as young as 12 can now get a booster dose of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, given at least five months after their primary vaccination series.
Most kids younger than 12 can't get a booster, although the CDC recommends a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine for children 5 and up who areimmunocompromised. They're eligible for a third shot 28 days after their second dose.
Since Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine is the lone vaccine currently authorized for kids and teens, it'll generally be available in doctor's offices and public health clinics, not pharmacies and other mass vaccination sites.
Call your pediatrician or local health clinic for a recommendation on where to go. Parents may alsotext their ZIP code to 438829oruse this vaccine finder linkto find a clinic near them that has the child vaccine available.
Read more:School Mask Mandates -- Only One State Hasn't Announced End to Masks in the Classroom
Children are much less likely to get severely sick from the virus than adults, but some children have died or been hospitalized with COVID-19. The omicron wave was specifically impactful on children, leading to an increase in hospitalizations as the nation's case count skyrocketed. State reports show that about 12.8 million kids have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
An infection, even a mild case, can disrupt a child's ability to attend school or socialize, and kids can pass the infection to more-vulnerable family or community members. Kids can also experience dangerouscomplications from COVID-19, includinglong COVIDandMIS-C.
"There is an urgent need to collect more age-specific data to assess the severity of illness related to new variants as well as potential longer-term effects," the AAP said in a March report.
There are also racial disparities when it comes to how sick children get from COVID-19. Kids ages 5 to 11 who are Black, Native American or Hispanic are three times more likely than white children to be hospitalized with COVID-19, according to an FDA advisory panel presentation given when the delta variant was circulating. Of that group, about 1 in 3 required admission to an intensive care unit.
Vaccine side effects in kids ages 5 to 11 are mostly mild and similar to those adults may experience,according to the CDC, including soreness at the injection site, fever, muscle soreness, nausea and fatigue. In a Dec. 13 report from the agency, the CDCreviewed reports from safety monitoring systems on more than 8 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine given to kids ages 5 to 11, confirming that children's immune systems respond well to the vaccine with common mild side effects, and that serious adverse events are rarely reported.
Inflammation of the heart muscle, known as myocarditis, and of the muscle's outer lining, called pericarditis, arerare and typically mild side effectslinked to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, mostly in adolescent males and young men ages 12 to 29. (Myocarditis can also occur after infection with COVID-19.)
In one study,the CDC saidthat 54 recipients out of a million males ages 12 to 17 experienced myocarditis following the second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech's Comirnaty vaccine. In contrast, kids ages 5 to 11 who catch COVID-19 have a higher risk of multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, a potentially serious complication involving inflammation of the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes or other organs.
"The bottom line is that getting COVID is much riskier to the heart than anything in this vaccine, no matter what age or sex you are," Dr. Matthew Oster, a pediatric cardiologist at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, told the CDC in November as reported byABC News.
Yes, parents generally need to consent to their children receiving medical care, including Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. This is especially true for younger children.
However,depending on which state you live in, there may be a legal precedent for teens and other kids to request the vaccine without parental permission: Tennessee's vaccine director, Michelle Fiscus, was firedin August allegedly in part for sending out a memo detailing Tennessee's "mature minor doctrine," which explains how minors may seek medical care without the consent of their parents.
The CDC recommended a third dose for children as young as 5 who are "moderately to severely" immunocompromised, 28 days after their second shot. This guidance for immunocompromised children (including kids who've had an organ transplant or are taking medications that suppress the immune system) is in line with guidance for adults whose bodies don't mount a good immune response to the COVID-19 vaccines.
Yes, though you might be asked to stick around the waiting room so health care providers can monitor them for (extremely rare) allergic reactions that can occur after any vaccination.
"If the child has a history of anaphylaxis or other severe allergies, then the observation time after the injection may be 30 minutes instead of 15," said Dr. Anne Liu, an infectious disease specialist with Stanford Hospital and Clinics and the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Children who have been prescribed an EpiPen for any reason should bring it to their vaccine appointment, Liu added.
As with adults, children with an allergy to an ingredient in Pfizer's COVID-19 shouldn't take it. You can find a list of ingredients in Pfizer's vaccine for kids ages 5 to 11 on the FDA's fact sheet.
According to the CDC, your child may get other vaccines when they go in for their COVID shot without waiting 14 days between appointments. Flu shots can be given to children ages 6 months and older.
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Covid-19 patients who have been hospitalised should also be routinely tested for flu, researchers have said. The call was made after the publication of a paper in the medical journal the Lancet that revealed having both conditions more than doubles the risk of a patient dying.
Scientists also discovered that individuals who had contracted both Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and influenza viruses were more than four times more likely to require ventilation support and 2.4 times more likely to die than if they just had Covid-19.
We found that the combination of Covid-19 and flu viruses is particularly dangerous, said Professor Kenneth Baillie of Edinburgh University. 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.
The study looked at more than 305,000 hospitalised patients with Covid-19 and involved researchers from Edinburgh University, Liverpool University, Imperial College London and Leiden University in the Netherlands.
A total of 6,965 patients were found to have had Covid-19, while 227 also had the influenza virus. These individuals experienced significantly more severe outcomes, researchers found.
We were surprised that the risk of death more than doubled when people were infected by both flu and Covid-19 viruses, said Professor Calum Semple of Liverpool University. It is now very important that people get fully vaccinated and boosted against both viruses, and not leave it until it is too late.
This point was stressed by Professor Peter Openshaw of Imperial College London. The vaccines that protect against Covid-19 and flu are different, and people need both. The way that these two infections are treated is also different so its important to test for other viruses even when you have a diagnosis in someone who is hospitalised with a respiratory infection.
The scientists warning comes as it was revealed that more than 600,000 people will be invited for a Covid-19 booster jab this week as infection levels climb close to record highs in England. About one in 16 people in private households in England or 3.5 million people are likely to have had Covid in the week to 19 March, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is up from one in 20 or 2.7 million people in the previous seven days and is the third week in a row that infections are estimated to have risen.
Since rolling out the spring boosters last week, more than 470,000 people have come forward for a jab, NHS England said. It is asking people to wait to be invited before trying to book, with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation recommending that eligible people get their vaccine six months after their initial booster for maximum effectiveness. About 5.5 million people in England aged over 75 or immunosuppressed will be able to get the booster.
Researchers say the steep rise in infections across much of the country is being driven by the Omicron BA.2 variant, a more transmissible form of Omicron. The figures are further evidence that Covid-19 is becoming rapidly more prevalent in the UK and come as the number of people in hospital with the virus continues to increase.
The percentage of people testing positive for Covid-19 in England has increased across all age groups and regions, the ONS found. Infection levels among the over-70s remain at their highest since estimates began in England in May 2020, with about one in 20 (5%) likely to have the virus, up week on week from one in 30 (3.5%).
Covid-19 remains most prevalent among young children, however. About one in 12 (8.3%) of those aged between two and school year 6 are estimated to have had the coronavirus last week, up from one in 16 (6.3%)..
California has rolled back most of its COVID-19 measures since the omicron surge died down, and Bay Area counties have followed suit, removing indoor mask mandates and loosening other precautions like vaccination mandates for indoor dining and gyms.
Yet there is still one critical tool for controlling the spread of the virus that remains in place: the five-day isolation for those who test positive for the coronavirus.
Isolation and quarantine periods were dramatically shortened during the omicron surge, as counties faced immense staffing shortages at health-care facilities and some research suggested that omicron caused people to get sick faster. Elsewhere around the world, some countries have begun to change or remove isolation mandates. Spain recently ended mandatory quarantines for those infected with the virus but showing no or mild symptoms of the disease, and the U.K. ended the legal requirement to self-isolate in February, though it still recommends staying away from others after a positive test.
Now, with the emergence of the new, even more transmissible BA.2 subvariant, is it possible the guidance here in California and the Bay Area could change again?
All Bay Area counties follow the California Department of Public Healths guidance on isolation and quarantine for the general public, which goes beyond the recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated in December of last year.
According to Californias current policy, everyone, regardless of vaccination status and whether they are symptomatic or not, must isolate at home for at least five days if they test positive for COVID-19. If they choose not to get tested after five days or if they have fever, they must isolate for 10 days.
People who are exposed to someone with COVID-19 and are unvaccinated or have not yet received their booster dose must quarantine at home for at least five days. If theyre unable to get tested, they must quarantine for 10 days, even if theyre asymptomatic.
In California, the guidance is only recommended for the general public, but employers are required to adhere to Cal/OSHA standards that follow the states guidance.
Public health officials said changes to the current guidance will be based on science and what they continue to learn about COVID-19 and its variants.
At this point, the guidance still stands people are still getting sick with COVID so there is still a need to isolate (or quarantine if exposed), Laine Hendricks, a public information officer for Marin County, said in an email.
However, it does not mean the CDC will not alter the guidance if a new variant emerges that behaves differently than past variants, she added.
Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology at UCSF, said in a phone interview that the periods (for isolating and quarantining) have both shortened over time as we get a better understanding of the natural history of the disease and as the variants have evolved to two viruses that replicate more rapidly and cause disease more quickly.
Rutherford said the duration for each may become shorter or longer if the incubation period for COVID-19 changes, but he doesnt expect the isolation and quarantine guidance to completely go away.
Its standard infection control precaution, said Rutherford. We do this (practice) for all sorts of diseases.
Hendricks also pointed out that these practices are hardly unique to COVID-19, and that other viruses, from the common flu to Ebola, come with guidance on how long to stay away from people. In each case, the recommendation is unique to the virus, as each behaves differently.
But Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley, said in an email he believes isolation and quarantine efforts could soon be eliminated when enough people get vaccinated (more than 90%) and the disease is no longer severe.
In places like Japan, people routinely wear masks during the cold or influenza season and isolate themselves not a requirement but people do this voluntarily. I think this will soon happen here with COVID-19, said Riley.
Its hard to say when this would be, but if the current decrease in cases continues for the next couple of months, probably by June or July, these mandates will be eliminated, he said. It all depends on what happens with this new subvariant of omicron.
Jessica Flores (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jessica.flores@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jesssmflores
