Yesterday's COVID numbers
For a detailed breakdown of cases across the country, check outCharting the Spread.
NSW:14 deaths, 9,995 new cases.1,447 cases in hospital, 92 in ICU
VIC:9 deaths, 8,501 new cases. 401 in hospital, 78 in ICU, 16 on ventilators
QLD:38 deaths, 5,665 cases. 408 in hospital including 26 in private hospital. 33 in ICU, 17 ventilated
TAS:0 deaths, 680 new cases. 16 in hospital, 2 in ICU
SA:3 deaths, 1,440 new cases. 221 in hospital, 13 in ICU
ACT:1 death, 537 new cases. 47 in hospital, 3 in ICU, 2 requiring ventilation
NT:0 deaths, 1,045 new cases. 137 in hospital, 21 requiring oxygen, 1 in intensive care
WA:0 deaths, 177 new cases, 0 in hospital
WASHINGTON Although new federal data suggests that the effectiveness of booster shots wanes after about four months, the Biden administration is not planning to recommend fourth doses of the coronavirus vaccine anytime soon.
We simply dont have enough data to know that its a good thing to do, Dr. Peter Marks, who heads the division of the Food and Drug Administration that regulates vaccines, said in an interview this week.
In a separate interview, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the White House, said the vaccines are still a firm bulwark against severe illness, despite data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that booster shots lose some of their potency after four to five months.
The C.D.C.s research, released last Friday, analyzed hospitalizations and visits to emergency rooms and urgent care clinics in 10 states by people who had had booster shots of either Modernas or Pfizer-BioNTechs vaccine. The study showed the level of protection against hospitalization fell from 91 percent in the two months after a third shot to 78 percent after four to five months. Effectiveness against visits to emergency rooms or urgent care clinics declined from 87 percent to 66 percent.
The data came with major caveats: Researchers did not examine variations by age group, underlying medical conditions or the presence of immune deficiencies. Still, they said, the findings underscored the possible importance of a fourth shot.
Should I get a fourth shot? Thats what a lot of people are asking me, Dr. Fauci said. The answer is if you look at where we are now, it looks like its good protection. Seventy-eight percent is good.
The administrations vaccine strategy has been under constant review since President Biden took office. What comes next, Dr. Fauci said, will depend on whether protection from boosters holds steady or continues to drop after four to five months and if it keeps dropping, how steeply.
Its not only the number, its the inflection of the curve, he said.
That means more uncertainty for Americans exhausted by frequent changes in vaccine recommendations pivots largely forced by the onset of new variants. Dr. Sterling Ransone, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said his patients keep asking about whether a fourth shot will be necessary and if so, when.
Its frustrating, right? said Dr. Ransone, who practices in the small town of Deltaville, Va. We humans want some certainty and control of the situation. And this is a case where we dont know whats going to happen in the future. We dont know the exact recommendation.
In Bangor, Maine, Dr. James W. Jarvis, who leads Covid response for Northern Light Health, a local health care system, said that he stresses to his patients how well the vaccines are working, even if boosters are needed. Although they dont offer complete protection, he said, the most recent data really suggests that these vaccines are still doing a good job.
Feb. 17, 2022, 7:00 p.m. ET
Data from Britain is similar to that from the C.D.C., indicating that boosters are about 75 percent to 85 percent effective against hospitalization four to six months after they are given. Israel has also noted waning of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines effectiveness in the months after a booster shot, according to the C.D.C.
Israel began offering a fourth shot in late December, but only to health care workers. The C.D.C. has recommended that those with immune deficiencies get three shots as part of their initial series, followed by a fourth shot as a booster.
Biden administration officials say two-thirds of eligible adults have gotten a booster shot since the additional injections were authorized in November. Uptake has been slower among children over 12, who only became eligible in early January.
Vaccines and boosters. Although new federal data suggests that the effectiveness of booster shots wanes after about four months, the Biden administration is not planning to recommend fourth dosesof the coronavirus vaccine anytime soon.
Dr. Marks said it may turn out that the best time for an additional shot is this fall, when the spread of the coronavirus is expected to pick up again. Barring any surprises from new variants, maybe the best thing is to think about our booster strategy in conjunction with the influenza vaccine next fall, and get as many people as possible boosted then, he said.
Dr. Ransone said some of his patients would prefer that, so they can get their immunizations in a single visit.
At a session hosted last month by the F.D.A. and the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Marks said he hoped that a third shot would be enough of a shield against disease that only a yearly Covid booster would be needed. But both he and Dr. Fauci said it is impossible to make any prediction without more data.
Earlier this month, Dr. Fauci suggested that any recommendation would likely be aimed at those most at risk, possibly based on age as well as underlying conditions.
I dont think youre going to be hearing, if you do, any kind of recommendations that would be across the board for everyone, he said at a White House briefing. It very likely will take into account what subset of people have a diminished, or not, protection against the important parameters such as hospitalization.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
And just like that, the national attitude on COVID is flipping like a light switch. As the United States descends the bumpy back end of the Omicron wave, governors and mayors up and down the coasts are extinguishing indoor mask mandates and pulling back proof-of-vaccination protocols. In many parts of the country, restaurants, bars, gyms, and movie theaters are operating at pre-pandemic capacity, not a face covering to be seen; even grade schools and universities have started to relax testing and isolation rules. These policy pivots mirror a turn in public resolve: Two years into the pandemic, many Americans are ready to declare the crisis chapter of COVID-19 over, and move on to the next.
We can debate ad nauseam whether these rollbacks are premature. Whats far clearer is this: Weve been at similar junctures beforeat the end of the very first surge, again in the pre-Delta downslope. Each time, the virus has come roaring back. It is not done with us. Which means that we cannot be done with it.
Whats up ahead is not COVIDs end, but the start of our control phase, in which we invest in measures to shrink the viruss burden to a more manageable size. This is the larger, longer game were having to think about, Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told me.
Read: Endemicity is meaningless
To even think of controlling COVID for the long term means knocking up against some of the limits of our knowledge. Our future will depend both on the viruss continued evolution, impossible to predict right now, and on our response, which will hinge on the strength of our resources and our willingness to deploy them. Every disease that troubles us prompts some sort of reaction; for this one, the nation is still deciding how much to invest. Control, then, cant mean putting the virus behind usquite the opposite. It means keeping tabs on it, even when its not terribly abundant; it means building and maintaining an arsenal of weapons to fight it; it means having the resources and sociopolitical will to react rapidly when the threat returns. Monitor, then intervene, then monitor, then intervene.
Taking this challenge seriouslytrying to properly contain a deadly, fast-moving, shape-shifting virus that has spent the past two years walloping uscould require a revamp of the standard American approach to quelling disease, on a scale the nations never managed before. Well have to write a brand-new public-health playbook, and figure out a way to execute it.
Control is a simple word that, in the realm of infectious disease, doesnt come with a sharp definition. It is possible, in some cases, to roughly anchor the concept to epidemiological goalscutting cases of X disease by Y percentage by Z year, say; organizations such as the World Health Organization have set benchmarks like this for the control of measles, malaria, and tuberculosis. For COVID, too, we may eventually agree upon milestones to measure where youre at, Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, told me. But hard numbers are not necessary to define a control program, says David Heymann, an epidemiologist and global-health expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. What unites diseases that are under control is human efforta sustained commitment to restrain a pathogen, and hack away at its harms.
Controlled diseases, then, might be better imagined as ones that do not impact a lot of social functions, and do not drastically exacerbate inequities, Saad Omer, an epidemiologist and global-health expert at Yale University, told me. Control manages a threat down into something that society can accept day after day after daypractically, less disease, less death, less suffering than might otherwise occur. It is how we talk about diseases were doing something about, says Ellie Murray, an epidemiologist at Boston University.
Read: How public health took part in its own downfall
With COVID, one of the only things we can be sure about is that control will be difficult. The coronavirus spreads stealthily and speedily, and can hop among many animal species; it shape-shifts frequently, such that our immune systems have trouble keeping track. All of this will make it tougher to suppress. But with the tools we haveamong them vaccines, treatments, tests, masks, and air filtrationa less chaotic reality than the one were living now also remains within reach. Exactly what degree of control is possible will depend on the precise (and still-evolving) potency of those toolsthe durability of shot-induced protection, for instanceand how broadly and equitably we can distribute them. Controls timeline can also stretch extraordinarily long. After millennia of coexistence with the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, which kills some 1.5 million people a year, humanity is still trying to diminish its staggering global burden.
We also know that COVID control wont be static. At this point, we can expect disease to wax and wane. But bringing the virus to heel, and keeping it there, will require monitoring it even when it appears scarce. That starts with a commitment to surveillancetracking where and in whom the virus is circulating, how quickly its levels are rising, and whether a new version poses an additional threat. The granular details that surveillance offers can help policy makers plan a response. Early blips of a variant thats highly immune evasive, for instance, might demand a different response (consider updating the vaccines) than one thats primarily pummeling the unvaccinated, elderly, and immunocompromised (boost the vulnerable, and shield them to squelch further spread). The virus will dictate a lot of the terms, Omer said.
That doesnt mean counting every case. But it does mean improving our capacity for testing, and being more systematic about whom and what in the population were surveyingand not just in the midst of a surge. Flu can offer us a starter package, at least technologically: The globe is freckled with surveillance sites designed to track where flu viruses are percolating, and what mutations theyre accumulating; in the U.S., an intricate network of hospitals, laboratories, and state and local health departments regularly shuttle samples and symptom data from flu patients to the CDC for analysis. To build capacity for COVID, well need better ways to zero in on infections, Nuzzo, of Johns Hopkins, told meones that arent biased by whos seeking out tests or who has access to medical care. We need a representative sampling scheme to know what were looking at, as its happening, she said. The more sensitive these systems are, the faster theyll be able to signal that a viral comeback is nigh.
Periods of relative calm, too, offer opportunities for institutions to prepare for the next difficult stretch. Medical infrastructure will need some suturing. Should COVID become a winter disease, it will slam us when many other pathogens do. We need to make sure our health-care systems are able to meet demand, Crystal Watson, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me. Theres no single or easy solution for this, but we could start with building more flexibility into the systems we use to treat the sick. Staffing shortages could be patched with a supplemental workforce, while hospitals offer retention packages; mental-health resources could ease burnout in overtaxed personnel. Trained teams of community health workers could help bridge gaps in communication, and deliver care to where its often been lacking, says Camara Jones, an epidemiologist and a health-equity researcher at UC San Francisco. At the same time, the federal government could funnel funds into developing and maintaining stocks of high-quality masks, tests, and over-the-counter antiviral pills, with a particular focus on ferrying tools to high-risk settingslong-term-care facilities, prisons, and the likeso that they could be speedily distributed right when surges start, Anne Sosin, a rural-health expert at Dartmouth College, told me.
Read: Hospitals cant accept this as normal
Proper ventilation in public spaces, as my colleague Sarah Zhang has written, could also be key to COVID control. Done well, systematically decontaminating our air can exemplify public-health intervention at its bestone so constant, invisible, and ubiquitous that people can be protected without even knowing it, the difference between everyone boils their own water versus we have clean water everywhere, Whitney Robinson, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told me. But society-wide overhauls of infrastructure tend to be slow going. Schools, for instance, have been billed as an especially important target for these upgrades, but the pandemic funds that might drive such changes have plenty of other pressing uses too. And specific indoor-air-quality standards could push lawmakers to update building codes, but these, too, have been sluggish to arrive.
Our countrys immunity will need shoring up as well. In the United States, too many people remain unvaccinated, among them 19 million kids under 5, who are still ineligible for their shots. Demand for boosters has been tepid, and people who are older or immunocompromised dont always respond to their first dose. The situation abroad is even more dire; many nations still struggle to access the supply to deliver first doses, much less seconds or thirds. And the more susceptible hosts it finds, the more SARS-CoV-2 will split itself into new and dangerous forms. For Jones, the biggest near-term goal is to, as expeditiously as possible, vaccinate the world, she told me. Even after the foundations of protection are established, they will need updates, whether because our defenses against infection are dropping, because a surprise variant has arrived on the scene, or both. Going forward, vaccine mandates may have a heightened role to play, as certain businesses, schools, or entire jurisdictions try to buoy uptake, says Jason Schwartz, a vaccine-policy expert at Yale. The policy is controversial, but the United States already has centuries of precedent to guide it, and thanks to flu shots, has long harbored the infrastructure to roll vaccines out en masse, and at a regular clip. If that capacity is partnered with policies that help close equity gaps, population immunity could soar. Ensuring that everyones up to date on their shots, Schwartz told me, is how we generate a lasting baseline of protection.
Not all COVID interventions can simply come on and stay on. Some tools operate at the individual level, and these are the control-phase wild cards. Their success depends not only on capacity and planning but on public acceptance. Protections wont work if no one is willing to adopt them.
If control is a moving target, then theres little question that response must shift in lockstep with the threat. Several experts told me we could reasonably expect a future in which we abide by a tiered system of response, with the stringency of public-health measures titrated to how much virus is around. The idea is that you can have gradations of every policy, rather than just taking everything on or off, Abraar Karan, an infectious-disease physician and global-health expert at Stanford University, told me. Such a system might be roughly analogous to how we categorize and respond to hurricanes. Most of the time, life can proceed as usual, our tools on standby, our surveillance systems whirring. But as soon as danger begins to brew, protections may start to kick back into place.
The mechanics of bringing such a system online hinge on three big questions. The first is about thresholdsdetermining what viral conditions merit what protective responses, and when those measures get rolled out or pulled back. Options abound: new cases per 100,000 people? Test positivity? Hospital capacity? A sharp upswing in viral particles, picked up by wastewater monitoring? First we have to choose one metric, or a combination, then set careful benchmarks to distinguish fine from less fine from way less fine from actually, thats quite bad. But each option has its flaws. Case counts depend on people showing up for limited available tests and arent representative of the larger population; hospitals fill too late to nip a blooming surge in the bud and dont capture less severe cases; wastewater analysis is fast and reliable, but too coarse to show whos getting infected and how bad their symptoms are. No one has pulled out a magic formula for switching measures on and off, Omer said. And different parts of the country will probably come to different conclusions.
Even if we manage to reach a consensus on cues, theres not a lot of obvious intuition about the second big question: which precautions should take priority. With COVID, the manuals still being written, but it could go something like this: Say theres a surge next winter. An initial upswing in cases might prompt your company holiday party to, once again, require employees to test to attend; your local grocery store to, once again, ask that you mask. Local leaders might set up mask- and test-distribution centers throughout the community so residents can grab and go. These early pivots put the focus on the tools that are, in theory, lower-effort investments that dont impede much mingling and help keep most businesses afloat. The leading edge of a wave is also an essential time to buttress blanket protections: If older or immunocompromised individuals have skipped boosters, they might be nudged to catch up; if hospitals are running low on personnel, reinforcements might be rallied and deployed. We dont waste the lead time were given, Omer said. Should all go well at this stage, the outbreak could quickly be quashed.
Read: The millions of people stuck in pandemic limbo
But if cases continue to climb, if ICUs begin to fill, if a new variant starts to sidestep the protection that vaccines or previous infections left behind, those are signals to go stricter. New vaccine mandates or booster requirements could kick in. Government or business owners could put in place capacity limits in restaurants and entertainment venues, flip to work-from-home policies, or amend travel protocols, to ensure that the outbreak doesnt spiral out of control. As a last resort, policy makers could consider shutting entire swaths of society downclosing schools and other essential institutions, Celine Gounder, an infectious-disease specialist and epidemiologist, and a senior fellow at Kaiser Health News, told me. Things would have to really get bad for that, she said: basically, if we get to the point where hospitals are not able to function.
The trick is balancing public well-being with palatability. Which raises the third, and thorniest, issue: Who gets to make these decisions, and who bears the cost if plans go awry? Thats what it ultimately comes down to: how much of what were doing is mandatory versus motivated by personal risk-based decisions, Nuzzo told me. Certainly, if deaths are skyrocketing, if health-care systems are near the point of collapse, governments will need to step in. Where experts start to diverge, though, is on questions of whos in charge at every other stagewhether governments or individual members of the public should conduct the brunt of risk assessment and management.
Mandates are the business of leadership. Their strength is that they reach more people, Julia Raifman, a health-policy expert at Boston University, told me. And they reach them more equitably. A coordinated response, helmed by leaders with money and a platform, can present a unified front against an incoming threat, and offer people clear-cut guidelines to follow. Denmark, which recently announced that it was lifting nearly all of its COVID restrictions, has embarked on a rather extreme version of this tactic, its government repeatedly removing and reimposing restrictions as circumstances shift. At its best, such a strategy can be especially well aligned with an infectious threat: Collective danger merits collective response.
Read: How Denmark decided COVID isnt a critical threat to society
But totally extracting personal choices from the equation of disease prevention is impossible. Adherence to mandates and long-term investments in protective behaviors are tied to the levels of trust we have in one another and in the people who lead us, Tom Bollyky, the director of the global-health program at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me. He and his colleagues have found that in outbreaks past and present, trust in government seems to buoy vaccination rates and the adoption of infection-prevention behaviorssuch as hand-washing and physical distancingthus curbing contagion. In the U.S., with its streak of individualism and eroded confidence in the government, the chances of following the Danish model appear essentially shot. Plus, policies that are constantly switching from on to off run the risk of losing public interest each time they flicker. In the United States, decisions about mandates have also been left up to states, even to local jurisdictions, seeding a patchwork of policies. Many Americans have had to wearily navigate the chaos of living in a masks required neighborhood and working in a masks not required one.
For these reasons and more, several other experts are wary of a mandate-forward approach. Nuzzos among them. We have to be sparing with what were asking people to do, Nuzzo said, both to keep people invested and to preserve their stamina for the next infectious crisis. Schwartz, of Yale, feels similarly. Most mandates are a lever to be pulled in case of emergency and, generally speaking, are far too great a sledgehammer to wield at other times.
When it comes to daily-use interventions, such as masks, Watson, of Johns Hopkins, thinks that Americans might feel better if theyre told its okay to strike out on their own; such an idea could even be actively empowering, if people feel that theyre able to make informed choices in times of crisis. Heymann, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says a version of this is now in place in England. The government shifted risk assessment and risk management to the individual, he told me. Masks, tests, and vaccines are widely available to residents; people are advised to cover their faces in certain crowded settings, but theres no outright legal requirement under most circumstances. Should Americans follow suit, Watson imagines they might benefit from a tool to help guide personal, day-to-day choicessomething like a weather forecast for infectious disease, which might take the form of a computer- or smartphone-accessible feed of data on local viral conditions. The precursors for a system like that are already taking root at the CDC, and with information in hand, she thinks that people will take their own actions to protect themselves. In the same way that weather apps issue winter-storm advisories, or flag high local pollen counts, governments could flag that a ton of virus is in the vicinity, and recommend precautions.
Still, Watson and Schwartz admit that a system like this has no precedentit would be a large-scale reimagining of how we think about prevention, Schwartz said. Americans have never had to be so keenly aware of how much of a respiratory virus is bopping around. And not everyone will be eager or able to opt in. Many will simply lack the time or resources to check such a forecast, much less act on the intel, especially if access to masks, air filtration, and tests remains a premium in this country, Deshira Wallace, a health-equity researcher at UNC Chapel Hill, told me. And while the weather provides its own feedbackprecipitation is visible and audible; temperature can be feltviruses elude our senses, so their perils are harder to gauge. Theyre much more insidious. One persons ignoring a rainy forecast risks only that they get wet, but an individuals negligence in responding to infectious disease can sicken both them and someone else.
This is the problem with wrangling viruses: They do not obey the boundaries of bodies, or of cities or states. When they spill between people and communities, they ratchet up everyones risk. In the face of collective risk, the better bet will be at least to choose some policy, with the understanding that well have to tweak and finagle it, rather than select door No. 3total inaction, an opportunity for the virus to run roughshod over us because we simply let it.
Disease control, when its done right, is as much a social undertaking as it is a scientific one. Weak social infrastructures can derail containment and push goals out of reach. But just as neglect can augment burdens, investment can diminish them. Public health travels at the speed of trust, Dartmouths Sosin told me.
Even when state or federal governments falter, trust can still be forged. Springfield, Missouri, vanished its masking requirements in May 2021, and I dont think well ever go back, Cora Scott, the citys director of public information and civic engagement, told me. But she said she and her team feel that theyre still making inroads on mitigation by recruiting local messengers. For months, theyve been pouring resources into getting the citys still-low vaccination rates upan initiative thats included sending public-health personnel door-to-door.
Leveraging the strength of communities will be an essential strategy in the months and years to come. For a long time now, American confidence in government has been troublingly low. But people still place immense trust in their own health-care providers, for instancethe individuals who feel close to home. And the tactic has played a role in halting outbreaks before. Bollyky points out that partnerships between local and national leaders, bulwarked by community liaisons, helped turn the tide during the 2014 outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Key to all of this is paying attention to the specific needs of individual communities, Andrea Milne, a medical historian at Case Western Reserve University, told me, and tailoring policies to suit them. What works to stamp out misinformation in Guinea wont necessarily be what gets shots into arms in Springfield. Locals will understand those differences best, and know how to navigate through them.
Read: The seven habits of COVID-resilient nations
HIV, too, offers an example of a virus that can be well managed via a community-centered approach, El-Sadr, of Columbia, said. In the past four decades, infections have become more bearable through the development of powerful and readily available antivirals and tests that can be taken at home, through routine surveillance for infections, and through public investment, education, and partnerships with the communities most severely affected by disease. Milne points to the San Francisco Model of AIDS care, which has centered a multisystem, holistic approach in beating the citys epidemic back. Even in its early days, the program focused not just on clinical care but on getting food to people, and making sure people could afford bus rides to the doctor, she said. Community members were doing the educating. People were treated not just as patients, but as agents in this health-care work. In the years since the models debut, new HIV diagnoses in San Francisco have plummeted.
SARS-CoV-2 is an entirely different pathogen, but our current response to it risks rehashing some of the failures of the early HIV response, shifting the burden of suffering to the vulnerable. The task of taming this new threat, El-Sadr told me, can and should bear hallmarks to the successful strategies weve leaned on before. Theres even opportunity to riff and expand on the templates that past pandemics have offered: to introduce paid sick leave and food assistance; to speed the development of safer housing options; to meet the needs of people who are chronically ill, immunocompromised, and disabled; to address the inequities that have concentrated suffering in marginalized populations, both domestically and abroad. Pandemics are an opportunity to respond in the present but also prepare for the future. And if SARS-CoV-2 sparks its own revolution, that wont be the first time a virus has catalyzed lasting change. When theres no trust, its often because people feel they havent been listened to, El-Sadr said. In the HIV world, we always say, Nothing about us without usno decisions should be made about the fate of a particular group of people without their involvement. I think thats at the core of it. Its true that some of the best public-health interventions are ones we dont notice. But others succeed precisely because they enlist peoples attention and use it.
CLEVELAND As soon as early next week, the CDC is expected to update its mask guidance and other COVID-19 precautions, as infections and hospitalizations continue to sharply fall.
Johns Hopkins University reports the seven day rolling average for new cases is now 136,000, compared to more than 455,000 two weeks ago.
The Ohio Department of Health reports new coronavirus cases continue to fall, with under 2,000 reported Thursday, compared to about 12,000 new cases three weeks ago.
On January 1st, Cuyahoga County had the highest case rate in the state of Ohio for covid-19, Cuyahoga County Board of Health Commissioner Terry Allan said during a Feb. 16 Board of Health briefing. By January 24th, we had the lowest case rate in the state and around us, communities continue to drop as well.
Nearly 65% of Americans are fully vaccinated.
For Summit County Health Commissioner Donna Skoda, this drop in new COVID-19 cases, still in the midst of winter, marks a shift from the past.
This drop has been so rapid that we want to make sure it's going to come down and stay down, she said. I think what we're looking at here is we have a lot of folks who have been vaccinated. We have a lot of folks who have had the disease and so we're seeing this sort of drop off like omicron was famous for around the world.
With the pandemic in the rearview mirror, and an endemic COVID-19 ahead of us, Skoda told News 5 her team is focused on trying to vaccinate parts of the population not vaccinated or not boosted.
On top of that, the waiting game continues for preparing for whenever those under 5 become eligible, which she says likely wont come until the nations top experts determine whether a booster should become standard or not.
If you remember when it came out, one dose for Johnson & Johnson, two for adults and then all of a sudden there's a booster, she said. Look at all the confusion that was created. I really think it's wise to wait until, you know, if in fact, you need that third dose.
As for how to shift away from whats been a two year long alternate universe, Skoda said that will vary.
You really have to evaluate your situation personally, know about the vulnerable folks in your lives and really try to take care of yourself, she said. Be careful, protect yourself, but I think were going to see the risk slowly go down.
Last modified on February 17, 2022
Dear Stanford community,
We hope you are well as we enter the latter stages of the winter quarter. We are writing today to provide an update on our COVID-19 testing program, as well as a preview of our plans for students returning to campus from travel during the upcoming spring break. The bottom of this message also provides some reminders about when you need to update Health Check.
TESTING
Based on the current status of the pandemic, we are now planning to transition to a more targeted COVID-19 testing program that focuses on those who are experiencing symptoms, concerned about possible exposure or returning to campus from travel.
For faculty, staff and postdoctoral scholars who are vaccinated for COVID-19, Stanford will suspend the requirement of weekly asymptomatic surveillance testing beginning March 1. For fully vaccinated and boosted students (undergraduates, graduate students and students enrolled in professional school programs), required weekly testing will continue through the end of winter quarter and the first two weeks of spring quarter, then likewise will be suspended.
We strongly recommend that you test whenever you are experiencing symptoms, concerned about possible exposure or returning to campus from travel. Over the coming weeks, in addition to Color testing kits, we will be making available a limited supply of rapid test kits to supplement those available from the government and retail sources. More information is available here.
Twice-weekly testing will continue to be required for faculty, staff and postdoctoral scholars who are not fully vaccinated, and for students who are not fully vaccinated and boosted. And, Color testing will continue to be available, up to two tests per week, for anyone who wishes to continue to use Color for regular asymptomatic testing.
Why this shift? Our Testing and Vaccine Committee has continually monitored the trajectory of the pandemic and now advises that the best way to manage spread at this point in the pandemic is by using a risk-based approach with rapid diagnosis and response for individuals who are displaying symptoms or are in settings with higher risks of exposure. The phased drawdown of surveillance testing, with required testing lasting a little longer for students, is based on the on-campus living situation for much of our student population and the large number of students we expect to be returning to campus from spring break in a compressed period of time.
We are fortunate to have a highly vaccinated community, and we also have gained greater experience with the Omicron variant, which among vaccinated individuals has generally resulted in fewer serious cases and hospitalizations than previous variants. While we are moving from asymptomatic to symptomatic testing for our vaccinated population, we will continue to monitor conditions, including future variants that may have different characteristics, and will be prepared to further adjust testing protocols as needed.
RETURN FROM SPRING BREAK
We are planning to return from spring break to in-person instruction for the spring quarter. To support the return process for students who travel during the break, the university plans to distribute rapid tests to students prior to the start of spring break.
Students who travel during the break should complete a rapid test before beginning their return trip. (Details on obtaining test kits will be provided in a follow-up email.) Those who test positive should delay their return travel and update their status on Health Check.
Then, students returning from travel should test twice using Color during their first week back on campus in spring quarter and once during the second week of the quarter. Students who do not travel during the break should test once during the first week of the quarter and once during the second week. Color turnaround times are expected to be much shorter than following the winter break, with fewer tests being processed in Colors system. More information will be provided to students as we get closer to the break.
As we did in the autumn and winter quarters, we also expect to have limitations on student gatherings for the opening weeks of the spring quarter. We want to get back to in-person engagement as quickly as possible. However, we have seen many recent positive cases attributable to social gatherings, and with large numbers of students returning from spring break travel all at once, we want to take reasonable steps to minimize the numbers who test positive and need to go into isolation. We will send details on social gatherings in a subsequent communication.
OTHER REMINDERS
For faculty, staff, and postdoctoral scholars, please update Health Check with your booster details and documentation if you havent already done so.
Unvaccinated employees should continue to complete Health Check every day before coming onsite and reporting to work.
If you are vaccinated, please update Health Check any time you:
Also as a reminder, Santa Clara County recently announced that masking requirements will remain in place until certain conditions are met, which could come in the next few weeks. We will continue to monitor the situation and will let you know when changes to campus protocols on face coverings are possible.
Thank you for your understanding, your flexibility, and the many ways you are supporting the work and wellbeing of our university community.
Sincerely,
Persis DrellProvost
Lloyd MinorDean, Stanford School of Medicine
Russell FurrAssociate Vice Provost, Environmental Health & Safety
Newly reported Covid-19 deaths are starting to decline in the U.S., driven by drops in the Northeast and Midwest, offering the latest sign that the surge fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant is fading.
Cases and hospitalizations have already fallen sharply from record-breaking peaks, including in places such as New York, New Jersey and Illinois where Omicron spread widely late last year. Deaths, which tend to follow cases by several weeks, appear to be following the same pattern by declining in the places hit hard early on.
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With dropping hospitalization rates, improving vaccination rates, and broad access to masks and tests, Gov. Jay Inslee today announced the state can soon move into a less restrictive phase of the COVID-19 response. The lifting of statewide measures does not prohibit local governments from the ability to enact measures in response to COVID-19 activity in their communities.
"The virus has changed significantly over the past two years, and so has our ability to fight it. While caution is still needed, we are entering a new phase of the pandemic," Inslee said at today's press conference.
Inslee and leaders from the state Department of Health said the combination of dropping COVID-19 hospitalization rates and efficacy of vaccines in preventing severe illness and hospitalization are important indicators that statewide requirements can begin to loosen.
"Vaccination remains our most essential protection against severe illness and death from COVID-19. It's also crucial to prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed again," Inslee said. "If you've been procrastinating, now is the time to get the shot."
UpdatedProclamation 21-08.01 COVID-19 Safe Workers.
UpdatedProclamation 20-25.18 COVID-19 Washington Ready.
UpdatedProclamation 20-03.07 Face Coverings - Statewide.
Read the rest of the story on the governor's Medium page.
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After studying blood samples from 244 patients hospitalized for COVID-19, a group of researchers, including those who work at the National Institutes of Health, identified rogue antibodies that correlate with severe illness and may help explain mechanisms associated with severe blood clotting. The researchers found circulatingantiphospholipid antibodies, which can be more common among people with autoimmunedisorders, such as lupus. However, these autoantibodies, which target a persons own organs and systems,canalso be activated in responseto viral infections and activate other immune responses.
Scientists compared the blood samples to those from healthy controls and found the COVID-19samples contained higher levels of the antibody IgG, which works with other immunecells,such as IgM, to respond to immune threats. Higher levels of IgG werealso associated with COVID-19 disease severity, such as in patients who required breathing assistance. The researchers observed similar patterns, but to a lesser extent,after analyzing blood samples from 100 patients hospitalized for sepsis, which can leavethe body in inflammatory shock following a bacterial or viral infection.
IgG helps bridge a gap between innate and adaptive immune responses a process that helps the body recognize, respond to, andremember danger. In normal cases, these features help protect the body from illness and infection. However, in some cases, this response can become hyperextended or altered and exacerbate illness. A unique finding from this study is that when researchers removed IgG from the COVID-19 bloodsamples, they saw molecular indicators of blood vessel stickiness fall. When they added thesesame IgG antibodies to the control samples, they saw a blood vessel inflammatory response that can lead to clotting.Since every organ has blood vessels in it, circulating factors that lead to the stickiness of healthy blood vessels during COVID-19 may help explain why the virus can affect many organs, including the heart, lungs, and brain. A query of this study was evaluating upstream factors involved with severe blood clotting and inflammation among people with severe COVID-19 illness.
The researchers note future studies could explore the potentialbenefitsof screeningpatients with COVID-19 or other forms of critical illness forantiphospholipidsand otherautoantibodies and at earlier points of infection. This mayhelp identify patientsat risk forextreme blood clotting, vascular inflammation, and respiratory failure.Corresponding studies could then assess the potential benefits ofproviding these patientswith treatmentsto protect blood vessels or fine-tune the immunesystem.
Yogen Kanthi, M.D.,a co-corresponding author,is available to discuss this research. Dr. Kanthi is a cardiologist, Clinical Lasker Research Scholar, and leads theLaboratory of Vascular Thrombosis and Inflammationat the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.He is alsoan assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at theUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Endothelial cell-activating antibodies in COVID-19. Arthritis & Rheumatology, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/art.42094.
About the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI):NHLBI is the global leader in conducting and supporting research in heart, lung, and blood diseases and sleep disorders that advances scientific knowledge, improves public health, and saves lives. For more information, visithttps://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
NIHTurning Discovery Into Health
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LONDON, Feb 17 (Reuters) - The United Kingdom reported 51,899 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, leaving the seven-day tally down by 26.6% on the previous week.
It reported 183 deaths of people who had tested positive for the disease within the previous 28 days. The seven-day total for deaths was down 25.6% on the week before.
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Reporting by William Schomberg; Editing by Alistair Smout
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Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 418 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths has now passed 5.85 million. More than 10.42 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.
Hong Kong SAR's coronavirus battle intensified on Thursday as authorities reported new cases had multiplied by 60 times so far this month. Hospitals are overwhelmed with some patients being treated on beds in the open air.
New COVID-19 infections have continued to decline across the Americas region. They were down by 31% in the last week but deaths rose by 5.6%, the Pan American Health Organization said on Wednesday. Half of the region's 34,000 deaths were reported in the United States.
Top US infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday it is time for the United States to start inching back towards normality, despite remaining risks from COVID-19. Fauci said US states face tough choices in balancing the need to protect citizens and the growing fatigue with the pandemic.
Germany will ease COVID-19 restrictions as a wave of infections from the Omicron coronavirus variant seems to have passed its peak, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday, but he warned that the pandemic was not over yet.
Switzerland has lifted almost all its coronavirus pandemic restrictions as fears wane that a spike in infections fuelled by the Omicron variant would overwhelm the healthcare system.
A drop in COVID-19 testing rates is likely contributing to a decline in reported cases even as deaths are rising, the World Health Organization's technical lead on COVID-19 Maria Van Kerkhove said on Wednesday. The WHO earlier this week urged governments to improve vaccination rates and rapid testing.
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in selected countries
Image: Our World in Data
Germany's BioNTech has developed a vaccine factory made from shipping containers that it plans to ship to Africa as assembly kits to ease what the World Health Organization has described as huge disparities in global COVID-19 vaccine access.
The factory prototype will be instrumental in helping the biotech firm deliver on a pledge made last year to Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal and the African Union to secure mRNA vaccine production on the continent, where inoculation rates are far behind other parts of the world.
Work on the first mRNA manufacturing facility in the African Union is due to begin in mid-2022 and the first container module is expected to arrive on the continent in the second half of the year, BioNTech said in a statement.
The factory, housed in two groups of six 40-foot-containers, should kick off vaccine production about 12 months after the delivery of the assembly kit.
BioNTech on Wednesday presented a prototype of one six-container module to the presidents of Senegal, Ghana and Rwanda, and other dignitaries including the WHO's director general and the German development minister, at its main vaccine production site in Marburg, Germany.
Efforts to strengthen global health security in a future health crisis will only succeed if the role of the World Health Organization is also enhanced, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday.
Speaking via a video link at a G20 meeting of finance leaders in the Indonesian capital, Tedros was responding to proposals to establish a separate global health fund tasked with delivering emergency funds, vaccines and other medical needs.
"It's clear that at the centre of this architecture, the world needs a strong and sustainably financed WHO ... with its unique mandate, unique technical expertise and unique global legitimacy," Tedros told a panel discussion at the meeting.
"Any efforts to enhance the governance, systems and financing of global health security can only succeed if they also enhance WHO's role," he said.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
