Surviving a previous infection provided better protection than vaccination against Covid-19 during the Delta wave, federal health authorities said, citing research showing that both the shots and recovery from the virus provided significant defense.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that data from 1.1 million Covid-19 cases in California and New York last year showed people who were unvaccinated and hadnt previously contracted Covid-19 faced a far greater risk than both people who had gotten the shots and people who had been infected.
The Army's COVID vaccine aims to protect against multiple viruses in one shot.
The highly contagious omicron variantand resultant huge spike in COVID-19 cases have many experts talking about yearly boosters or variant-specific vaccines. But what if there were a universal coronavirus vaccine that protected against omicron and all new COVID-19 variants? Several institutes and universities are researching "pan-coronavirus" vaccines, but it's the US Army who's made the biggest news so far with effective data in early trials.
In December, the US Army announced that its pan-coronavirus vaccine, the spike ferritin nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine (aka SpFN) had completed Phase 1 of human trials with positive results. Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of infectious diseases at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) and co-inventor of SpFN, toldDefense One, "We're testing our vaccine against all the different variants, including omicron," the straincausing breakthrough infectionseven in people who have received booster shots.
SpFN still needs to undergo Phase 2 and 3 human trials, though, to test its efficacy and safety in comparison to current treatments, Modjarrad said.
We'll share what we know about pan-coronavirus vaccines and the Army's COVID-19 vaccine, including how it works and when it could become available.
For more, learn about free at-home COVID tests, why you shouldn't "just get COVID over with," mixing and matching booster shots, and the difference between N95, KN95, and KF94 masks.
White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci recently touted the importance of a universal vaccine to protect against all COVID variants. In aninterview with NBC, Fauci said a universal COVID vaccine "would mean that the initial vaccination would cover all of these little variants, so you wouldn't have to worry."
"We want a pan-coronavirus vaccine so that you have it on the shelf to respond to the next viral pandemic," Fauci said. "Ultimately, you want to get a vaccine that covers everything."
Fauci's organization, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, committed big to that goal in fall 2021, awarding $36.3 million to three academic organizations -- Duke University, University of Wisconsin, and Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital -- to develop and research pan-coronavirus vaccines. CalTech also has announced good early results for its universal "mosaic nanoparticle" vaccine.
The three COVID-19 vaccines authorized right now for use in the US take two approaches to preventing infection: The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA to build up immunity, while the Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a harmless rhinovirus to train the body's immune system to respond to COVID.
The Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, takes a third approach, using a harmless portion of the COVID-19 virus to spur the body's defenses against COVID.
SpFN also has less restrictive storage and handling requirements than the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, allowing it to be used in a wider variety of situations. It can be stored between 36 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit for up to six months and at room temperature for up to one month, according to military scientists. Pfizer's vaccine requires an ultracold freezer (between minus 112 and minus 76 degrees F) for shipment and storage and is onlystable for 31 days when stored in a refrigerator.
The Army's vaccine has been tested with two shots, 28 days apart, and also with a third shot after six months.
The vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson all target the specific virus -- SARS-CoV-2 -- that causes COVID-19. But Army scientists designed their vaccine to protect against future strains of COVID as well as other coronaviruses.
The Army's SpFN vaccine is shaped like a soccer ball with 24 faces. Scientists can attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains to each of the different faces, allowing them to customize the vaccine for any new COVID variants that arise.
"The accelerating emergence of human coronaviruses throughout the past two decades and the rise of SARS-CoV-2 variants, including most recently omicron, underscore the continued need for next-generation preemptive vaccines that confer broad protection against coronavirus diseases," Modjarrad said in a December statement. "Our strategy has been to develop a 'pan-coronavirus' vaccine technology that could potentially offer safe, effective and durable protection against multiple coronavirus strains and species."
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No date has been set. SpFN successfully completed animal testing and wrapped Phase 1 of human trials in December, but it must still complete Phases 2 and 3 of human testing, when its safety and efficacy is compared to current vaccine options.
Normally, completing all three phases can take up to five years, but the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic is speeding up the process. The Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, for example, were tested, reviewed and authorized by the Food and Drug Administration over the course of one year.
Learn smart gadget and internet tips and tricks with our entertaining and ingenious how-tos.
After data from the Phase 1 human trials is collected, analyzed and published, Phase 2 and 3 trials will begin. There is very little information so far on when or how those trials will proceed or if the phases will overlap.
To follow the progress of the Army vaccine trials, visit the SpFN COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker provided by the US Army Medical Research and Development Command.
For more on COVID-19, here's what we know about how the CDC defines being fully vaccinated, how to store your vaccine card on your phone, and what we still don't know about the virus after two years.
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
Last fall, Apple rolled out the ability to store verifiable COVID-19 vaccination information in the Apple Health and Wallet applications. Since then, adoption among healthcare providers and health technology infrastructure companies has been slow but is finally starting to pick up.
Head below for more details on how to store your COVID-19 vaccine records in Apple Health and Apple Wallet.
Right off the bat, its incredibly important to note that the usefulness of the suggestions below is going to vary wildly based on a number of different factors. This includes things like the country and state in which you received your COVID-19 vaccination, which companys shot you received, your specific healthcare provider, and more.
Unfortunately, this is par for the course when it comes to healthcare technology in the United States and other countries. After all, theres a reason that the only widely supported system in the United States is the paper vaccination card you receive when you get your first shot.
Before you proceed with this guide, your first step should be to visit your healthcare providers website or application to figure out how to find your COVID-19 vaccination records. Once you have that information, proceed with one of the options below.
Some healthcare providers are providing patients with a QR code upon receiving their COVID-19 vaccination and booster. This is perhaps the most straightforward and easy method by which you can add your records to Apple Health and Apple Wallet. The process works like this:
Another approach being taken by some healthcare providers is giving patients a downloadable health record that contains your COVID-19 vaccination information. Heres how to add this data to your Apple Wallet and Apple Health applications:
If youve already connected your healthcare provider with Apple Health, your vaccination record should already be located in the Apple Health app. You can find a full list of institutions that support health records integration on Apples website right here.
Once youve added your health record data to Apple Health, tap Browse in the bottom right corner of the Health app, then look for the Immunizations section and find your COVID-19 vaccination. Then, you should see an Add to Wallet option.
Personally, it took me a few tries to get this feature working properly. I ultimately had to download proof of my vaccination from my healthcare providers own application, then add it to the Apple Health and Apple Wallet applications that way.
As for your COVID-19 booster, if you received your booster from the same provider as your initial vaccination, you can repeat the same process to add that booster to Apple Health and Apple Wallet. I received by booster from a different provider, and unfortunately I have not been able to figure out how to add that booster to Apple Health.
Another interesting feature that I havent tried yet is sharing verifiable health records from the Health app. Apple explains that you can choose to share health records with third-party apps when an approved app requests access to this information.
For example, if you have to show proof of vaccination to attend an event, that events application might be able to pull your information from the Health app to verify your vaccination. One app that many places are using for this information is Clear, which you can learn more about here.
Ideally, this is a feature that we hope to see Apple and healthcare providers continue to expand upon over the coming months. For now, as long as youre able to connect all (or most) of the necessary pieces, it should be pretty easy to get your COVID-19 vaccine information into Apple Health and Apple Wallet.
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Vaccines have shown themselves to be the best defense against a serious case of COVID-19: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unvaccinated adults were about 13 times more likely to be hospitalized with the disease than vaccinated adults as of late November.
But vaccines and the antibodies they generate are just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to fighting off the coronavirus. The immune system has other sets of defenders that find and kill infected cells, then preserve a living record of the virus, bacteria or other infectious agent so the body can respond faster the next time its under assault.
And speed is essential, said E. John Wherry, director of the University of Pennsylvanias Institute for Immunology.
During an infection, its a race, with the immune system pressing to stop the virus before it has multiplied to a debilitating level, Wherry explained. Thats particularly true for the Omicron variant, which replicates at an alarming rate.
Heres a breakdown of how the bodys immune system works and how its been tested by Omicron:
Think of the immune system as having three layers of defense. One tries to keep hostile molecules pathogens on the outside, looking in. That job is performed by the skin, the bodys largest organ, whose cells can defeat invaders and warn the rest of the immune system that trouble is at hand.
The second layer tries to stop the attackers once theyve entered the body, but before they have infected cells. This is where the bone marrow comes in. It produces natural killer or NK cells as well as B cells, the ones that generate antibodies. Both are types of white blood cells, or lymphocytes.
We have natural killer or NK cells in the tonsils, lymph nodes and spleen, ready to fight any attackers.
(National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
NKs earned their name because they arent produced in response to an attacker; theyre already present and ready to kill cells that dont belong in the body, such as tumor cells. NKs are part of the innate immune system, in scientific terms. According to researchers at Rockefeller University, NKs hang out in the tonsils, lymph nodes and spleen, then rush to confront attackers where they emerge.
Antibodies, on the other hand, are generated after an attacker is discovered, making them part of what scientists call the adaptive immune system. They attach themselves to specific pathogens, which then get gobbled up and destroyed by other members of the immune systems team.
In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, different antibodies bind to different parts of the virus, including the spike protein the virus uses to enter a healthy cell and replicate itself over and over. If the spike protein is gummed up by an antibody, the virus cant infect a cell.
Its conceivable that if youre freshly vaccinated or boosted, you could have so many antibodies ready to attack that you wont become infected, said Trudy U. Rey, a virologist and science communicator. This is called sterilizing immunity, although in the case of COVID-19, it would be merely temporary. But thats not the goal of a COVID-19 vaccination. (More on that later.)
A more common scenario is that some quantity of invading coronaviruses get past the antibodies. Cells have some innate defenses that can defeat the invaders, but SARS-CoV-2 has shown itself capable of evading them. Happily, there is a third line of defense: T cells.
T cells in the upper chests thymus gland can detect pathogens after theyve gotten inside a cell, where antibodies cant find them.
(National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
Like B cells and NKs, T cells are white blood cells that originate in the bone marrow, but they develop in and emanate from the thymus gland in the upper chest. Their special power is their ability to detect viruses and other germs after theyve gotten inside a cell, where theyre hidden from antibodies.
T cells come in two basic flavors: killers and messengers. The lethal version detects cells that have been infected with a virus, then kills them (by releasing a toxic version of a granule called a cytokine) to stop the virus from replicating. Wherry called this destroying the village to save the nation. The messengers alert B cells to the new threat, and they respond by making antibodies designed to meet that threat.
Its a complex molecular dance with many other vital parts, including dendritic cells or DCs, which act as sentinels and couriers within the immune system. Among other things, the DCs tell the T cells which specific threat to hunt down and kill.
Once an infection is overcome, the immune system naturally winds down and sheds some antibodies and T cells. But some T cells live on as memory T cells, ready to respond by killing infected cells and stimulating the production of new antibodies if the same attacker returns. And some B cells remain as memory cells to handle antibody production.
Daniela Weiskopf, an immunologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, said the bodys adaptive immune system is very specific. Thats good, she said, because otherwise youd be in a constant state of inflammation. But it also means that antibodies and T cells are limited in what they can bind to or recognize. They need to learn their enemy before they can defend against it.
Vaccines help us create antibodies and memory T cells that recognize a virus and infected cells so our immune systems react more quickly. Booster shots reinforce this process.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Vaccination, Weiskopf said, is nothing but training the immune system without getting sick. COVID-19 vaccines create antibodies that recognize the spike protein and other characteristics of SARS-CoV-2, along with memory T cells that can recognize cells that have been infected with the virus.
The more often your immune system sees a threat, Weiskopf said, the more detailed it makes the response. The speedier, too once your system has these memory cells, she said, it can react much, much, much faster the next time the same pathogen comes knocking. Hence the value of booster shots.
As viruses mutate, the parts that antibodies attach themselves to may change. If they change too much, the antibodies wont be as good at binding to them and preventing them from entering cells. That appears to be the case with the Omicron variant, which has multiple mutations that affect its spike protein.
But Omicrons mutations havent tempered the response of memory T cells, Weiskopf, Rey and Wherry said. Thats because the mutations havent had much effect on the parts of the virus that T cells recognize.
Beyond that, Weiskopf said, each person has multiple different T cells, and their T cells are different from everyone elses. If by some rare misfortune a new variant managed to dodge all of your memory T cells, she said, it would still encounter plenty of effective T cells in the rest of the population.
Rey added that much of the talk about waning immunity is based on the declining presence of what are known as neutralizing antibodies, which can block the virus from attaching to a cell and replicating. But other types of antibodies remain in the system.
There have even been studies that have shown that just because an antibody doesnt neutralize, it doesnt mean it cant do anything, Rey said. For example, she said, by binding just to some parts of the spike protein, it may prompt other immune cells to join the fight.
If youve never been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 or to COVID-19 vaccines, the coronavirus wont encounter any customized antibodies or T cells on its way to your respiratory system. Even if your immune system is healthy, it takes a week to 10 days to transform undifferentiated T cells into killers and get them in place to confront infected cells, Wherry said. During that time, the virus is replicating exponentially and spreading through the body.
But if youve been immunized, you can have killer T cells ready in four days or fewer, Wherry said. That head start makes a huge difference in keeping an infection from raging out of control.
Unvaccinated people may nevertheless have some T cells ready to defend at the first sign of an infection, Weiskopf said. Researchers found some T cells that responded to SARS-CoV-2 in samples taken from people whod never been exposed to the virus, she said. These cells created in response to the common cold, which can be caused by other kinds of coronaviruses helped speed up and strengthen the immune response, she said.
Not everyone whos caught a cold will have T cells with this kind of versatility, she added. But the discovery suggests to some researchers that scientists might be able to devise a vaccine capable of attacking any coronavirus variant by prompting the immune system to make T cells like these. (Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of The Times, has another company that is exploring this possibility.)
At any rate, the more a virus replicates in the body, the bigger the response from killer T cells. That raises a second issue, Wherry said: T cells cant go on killing tissue forever; at some point, the system has to shift into repair mode. Thats why there are regulatory T cells to act as a counterweight on this whole system, helping to rein in the killer cells, he said.
Sometimes, however, the system doesnt throw the off switch soon enough. Wherry said that for some seriously ill COVID-19 patients, the virus spreads to many places inside their bodies, and a huge number of killer T cells flood their systems with very damaging cytokines. Clinicians help those patients by suppressing their immune systems to tamp down this response, he said.
If they recover from COVID-19, unvaccinated people will have antibodies and memory cells to help protect against the next encounter with SARS-CoV-2. But Rey said a persons immune response is much better after vaccination than with the natural immunity conferred by an infection. The reinfection rate for unvaccinated people who only have natural immunity is twice as high as the infection rate for people whove been vaccinated, she said.
Over the course of the pandemic, elderly people have tended to suffer far more serious consequences from COVID-19 than children have. There appear to be at least a couple of reasons for that.
Rey pointed to a study led by researchers at the Charit-Universittsmedizin Berlin, which found certain innate defenses in childrens nasal passages that may help them clobber the virus before it can replicate wildly.
This type of innate immune response seems to be delayed in older adults, and in an effort to catch up, may result in excessive inflammation, thereby ultimately causing more severe damage, she wrote in a blog post.
Wherry said the immune system is susceptible to the effects of aging, just like the rest of the body.
One of the key things is you lose production of these new, what we call naive, T cells, he said. These act as blank slates, ready to learn new threats. Late in life, Wherry said, they become a much smaller portion of the cells you can call into action.
As we age, problems emerge in other elements of the immune system as well, he said. Altogether, he said, these issues make it harder for the immune system to get out of the gate.
Vaccines have shown themselves to be the best defense against a serious case of COVID-19: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unvaccinated adults were about 13 times more likely to be hospitalized with the disease than vaccinated adults as of late November.
But vaccines and the antibodies they generate are just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to fighting off the coronavirus. The immune system has other sets of defenders that find and kill infected cells, then preserve a living record of the virus, bacteria or other infectious agent so the body can respond faster the next time its under assault.
And speed is essential, said E. John Wherry, director of the University of Pennsylvanias Institute for Immunology.
During an infection, its a race, with the immune system pressing to stop the virus before it has multiplied to a debilitating level, Wherry explained. Thats particularly true for the Omicron variant, which replicates at an alarming rate.
Heres a breakdown of how the bodys immune system works and how its been tested by Omicron:
Think of the immune system as having three layers of defense. One tries to keep hostile molecules pathogens on the outside, looking in. That job is performed by the skin, the bodys largest organ, whose cells can defeat invaders and warn the rest of the immune system that trouble is at hand.
The second layer tries to stop the attackers once theyve entered the body, but before they have infected cells. This is where the bone marrow comes in. It produces natural killer or NK cells as well as B cells, the ones that generate antibodies. Both are types of white blood cells, or lymphocytes.
We have natural killer or NK cells in the tonsils, lymph nodes and spleen, ready to fight any attackers.
(National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
NKs earned their name because they arent produced in response to an attacker; theyre already present and ready to kill cells that dont belong in the body, such as tumor cells. NKs are part of the innate immune system, in scientific terms. According to researchers at Rockefeller University, NKs hang out in the tonsils, lymph nodes and spleen, then rush to confront attackers where they emerge.
Antibodies, on the other hand, are generated after an attacker is discovered, making them part of what scientists call the adaptive immune system. They attach themselves to specific pathogens, which then get gobbled up and destroyed by other members of the immune systems team.
In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, different antibodies bind to different parts of the virus, including the spike protein the virus uses to enter a healthy cell and replicate itself over and over. If the spike protein is gummed up by an antibody, the virus cant infect a cell.
Its conceivable that if youre freshly vaccinated or boosted, you could have so many antibodies ready to attack that you wont become infected, said Trudy U. Rey, a virologist and science communicator. This is called sterilizing immunity, although in the case of COVID-19, it would be merely temporary. But thats not the goal of a COVID-19 vaccination. (More on that later.)
A more common scenario is that some quantity of invading coronaviruses get past the antibodies. Cells have some innate defenses that can defeat the invaders, but SARS-CoV-2 has shown itself capable of evading them. Happily, there is a third line of defense: T cells.
T cells in the upper chests thymus gland can detect pathogens after theyve gotten inside a cell, where antibodies cant find them.
(National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
Like B cells and NKs, T cells are white blood cells that originate in the bone marrow, but they develop in and emanate from the thymus gland in the upper chest. Their special power is their ability to detect viruses and other germs after theyve gotten inside a cell, where theyre hidden from antibodies.
T cells come in two basic flavors: killers and messengers. The lethal version detects cells that have been infected with a virus, then kills them (by releasing a toxic version of a granule called a cytokine) to stop the virus from replicating. Wherry called this destroying the village to save the nation. The messengers alert B cells to the new threat, and they respond by making antibodies designed to meet that threat.
Its a complex molecular dance with many other vital parts, including dendritic cells or DCs, which act as sentinels and couriers within the immune system. Among other things, the DCs tell the T cells which specific threat to hunt down and kill.
Once an infection is overcome, the immune system naturally winds down and sheds some antibodies and T cells. But some T cells live on as memory T cells, ready to respond by killing infected cells and stimulating the production of new antibodies if the same attacker returns. And some B cells remain as memory cells to handle antibody production.
Daniela Weiskopf, an immunologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, said the bodys adaptive immune system is very specific. Thats good, she said, because otherwise youd be in a constant state of inflammation. But it also means that antibodies and T cells are limited in what they can bind to or recognize. They need to learn their enemy before they can defend against it.
Vaccines help us create antibodies and memory T cells that recognize a virus and infected cells so our immune systems react more quickly. Booster shots reinforce this process.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Vaccination, Weiskopf said, is nothing but training the immune system without getting sick. COVID-19 vaccines create antibodies that recognize the spike protein and other characteristics of SARS-CoV-2, along with memory T cells that can recognize cells that have been infected with the virus.
The more often your immune system sees a threat, Weiskopf said, the more detailed it makes the response. The speedier, too once your system has these memory cells, she said, it can react much, much, much faster the next time the same pathogen comes knocking. Hence the value of booster shots.
As viruses mutate, the parts that antibodies attach themselves to may change. If they change too much, the antibodies wont be as good at binding to them and preventing them from entering cells. That appears to be the case with the Omicron variant, which has multiple mutations that affect its spike protein.
But Omicrons mutations havent tempered the response of memory T cells, Weiskopf, Rey and Wherry said. Thats because the mutations havent had much effect on the parts of the virus that T cells recognize.
Beyond that, Weiskopf said, each person has multiple different T cells, and their T cells are different from everyone elses. If by some rare misfortune a new variant managed to dodge all of your memory T cells, she said, it would still encounter plenty of effective T cells in the rest of the population.
Rey added that much of the talk about waning immunity is based on the declining presence of what are known as neutralizing antibodies, which can block the virus from attaching to a cell and replicating. But other types of antibodies remain in the system.
There have even been studies that have shown that just because an antibody doesnt neutralize, it doesnt mean it cant do anything, Rey said. For example, she said, by binding just to some parts of the spike protein, it may prompt other immune cells to join the fight.
If youve never been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 or to COVID-19 vaccines, the coronavirus wont encounter any customized antibodies or T cells on its way to your respiratory system. Even if your immune system is healthy, it takes a week to 10 days to transform undifferentiated T cells into killers and get them in place to confront infected cells, Wherry said. During that time, the virus is replicating exponentially and spreading through the body.
But if youve been immunized, you can have killer T cells ready in four days or fewer, Wherry said. That head start makes a huge difference in keeping an infection from raging out of control.
Unvaccinated people may nevertheless have some T cells ready to defend at the first sign of an infection, Weiskopf said. Researchers found some T cells that responded to SARS-CoV-2 in samples taken from people whod never been exposed to the virus, she said. These cells created in response to the common cold, which can be caused by other kinds of coronaviruses helped speed up and strengthen the immune response, she said.
Not everyone whos caught a cold will have T cells with this kind of versatility, she added. But the discovery suggests to some researchers that scientists might be able to devise a vaccine capable of attacking any coronavirus variant by prompting the immune system to make T cells like these. (Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of The Times, has another company that is exploring this possibility.)
At any rate, the more a virus replicates in the body, the bigger the response from killer T cells. That raises a second issue, Wherry said: T cells cant go on killing tissue forever; at some point, the system has to shift into repair mode. Thats why there are regulatory T cells to act as a counterweight on this whole system, helping to rein in the killer cells, he said.
Sometimes, however, the system doesnt throw the off switch soon enough. Wherry said that for some seriously ill COVID-19 patients, the virus spreads to many places inside their bodies, and a huge number of killer T cells flood their systems with very damaging cytokines. Clinicians help those patients by suppressing their immune systems to tamp down this response, he said.
If they recover from COVID-19, unvaccinated people will have antibodies and memory cells to help protect against the next encounter with SARS-CoV-2. But Rey said a persons immune response is much better after vaccination than with the natural immunity conferred by an infection. The reinfection rate for unvaccinated people who only have natural immunity is twice as high as the infection rate for people whove been vaccinated, she said.
Over the course of the pandemic, elderly people have tended to suffer far more serious consequences from COVID-19 than children have. There appear to be at least a couple of reasons for that.
Rey pointed to a study led by researchers at the Charit-Universittsmedizin Berlin, which found certain innate defenses in childrens nasal passages that may help them clobber the virus before it can replicate wildly.
This type of innate immune response seems to be delayed in older adults, and in an effort to catch up, may result in excessive inflammation, thereby ultimately causing more severe damage, she wrote in a blog post.
Wherry said the immune system is susceptible to the effects of aging, just like the rest of the body.
One of the key things is you lose production of these new, what we call naive, T cells, he said. These act as blank slates, ready to learn new threats. Late in life, Wherry said, they become a much smaller portion of the cells you can call into action.
As we age, problems emerge in other elements of the immune system as well, he said. Altogether, he said, these issues make it harder for the immune system to get out of the gate.
The omicron variants role in ending the COVID-19 pandemic remains unclear, even as some interpret the variants quick spread as a sign that the virus will soon be endemic.
The news: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House medical adviser on the coronavirus, said the omicron variant could impact the level of immunity for people in the United States.
Why it matters: The omicron variant has changed how people perceive the pandemic endgame. Faucis comments suggest theres still a lot of unknowns with the omicron variant, which will have to be explored before the pandemic ends.
Flashback: This reminds me of an article from The Sydney Morning Herald in November, which suggested that an infectious COVID-19 variant could spread far and fast, creating less severe COVID-19 symptoms but more immunity.
Bill Gates recently said in a Twitter Q&A that the omicron variant will change the end of the pandemic, too, creating a less severe sickness.
The omicron variants role in ending the COVID-19 pandemic remains unclear, even as some interpret the variants quick spread as a sign that the virus will soon be endemic.
The news: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House medical adviser on the coronavirus, said the omicron variant could impact the level of immunity for people in the United States.
Why it matters: The omicron variant has changed how people perceive the pandemic endgame. Faucis comments suggest theres still a lot of unknowns with the omicron variant, which will have to be explored before the pandemic ends.
Flashback: This reminds me of an article from The Sydney Morning Herald in November, which suggested that an infectious COVID-19 variant could spread far and fast, creating less severe COVID-19 symptoms but more immunity.
Bill Gates recently said in a Twitter Q&A that the omicron variant will change the end of the pandemic, too, creating a less severe sickness.
A leading World Health Organization official says the worst of the coronavirus pandemic including deaths, hospitalizations and lockdowns could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly
By JAMEY KEATEN Associated Press
January 18, 2022, 8:03 PM
4 min read
GENEVA -- The worst of the coronavirus pandemic deaths, hospitalizations and lockdowns could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly, the head of emergencies at the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
Dr. Michael Ryan, speaking during a panel discussion on vaccine inequity hosted by the World Economic Forum, said we may never end the virus because such pandemic viruses end up becoming part of the ecosystem.
But we have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that weve been talking about, he said.
WHO has slammed the imbalance in COVID-19 vaccinations between rich and poor countries as a catastrophic moral failure. Fewer than 10% of people in lower-income countries have received even one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Ryan told the virtual gathering of world and business leaders that if vaccines and other tools aren't shared fairly, the tragedy of the virus, which has so far killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide, would continue.
What we need to do is get to low levels of disease incidence with maximum vaccination of our populations, so nobody has to die, Ryan said. The issue is: Its the death. Its the hospitalizations. Its the disruption of our social, economic, political systems thats caused the tragedy not the virus."
Ryan also waded into the growing debate about whether COVID-19 should be considered endemic, a label some countries like Spain have called for to better help live with the virus, or still a pandemic involving intensified measures that many countries have taken to fight the spread.
Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities. Endemic in itself does not mean good. Endemic just means its here forever," he said.
Public health officials have warned it is highly unlikely COVID-19 will be eliminated and say it will continue to kill people, though at much lower levels, even after it becomes endemic.
Fellow panelist Gabriela Bucher, executive director of the anti-poverty organization Oxfam International, cited the enormous urgency of fairer distribution of vaccines and the need for large-scale production. She said resources to fight the pandemic were being hoarded by a few companies and a few shareholders.
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, decried the total collapse of global cooperation and solidarity over the last two years, saying it was totally unacceptable how few people in Africa have gotten vaccine shots. His agency says only 10% of Africas 1.2 billion people are fully vaccinated.
He also sought to douse the belief among some that vaccine hesitancy is widespread in Africa, citing studies that say 80% of Africans were ready to get shots if the vaccines were available.
The comments came on the second day of the online alternative to the annual World Economic Forum gathering, which was postponed over pandemic health concerns.
In speeches at the event, world leaders like Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett discussed approaches to the pandemic. He said his country, which quickly rolled out a widespread vaccination campaign, has a strategy of being at the forefront of the medicines and the vaccines against COVID-19.
Israel's Health Ministry says 62% of people there are fully vaccinated, including with booster shots.
Citing advanced research in Israel, Bennett said, We want to be first in the world to know how vaccines and the new variants respond to one another.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said his country had high levels of vaccination because society values protecting the elderly and the vulnerable. He plans to keep stringent border controls in place until the end of February.
He said he was trying to balance restrictions with keeping the economy open but that a zero COVID policy against the omicron variant is not possible nor appropriate.
In a separate press briefing Tuesday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the omicron variant continues to sweep the world, adding there were 18 million new COVID-19 cases reported last week.
Associated Press reporters Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed.
Follow all AP stories on the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
A leading World Health Organization official says the worst of the coronavirus pandemic including deaths, hospitalizations and lockdowns could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly
By JAMEY KEATEN Associated Press
January 18, 2022, 8:03 PM
4 min read
GENEVA -- The worst of the coronavirus pandemic deaths, hospitalizations and lockdowns could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly, the head of emergencies at the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
Dr. Michael Ryan, speaking during a panel discussion on vaccine inequity hosted by the World Economic Forum, said we may never end the virus because such pandemic viruses end up becoming part of the ecosystem.
But we have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that weve been talking about, he said.
WHO has slammed the imbalance in COVID-19 vaccinations between rich and poor countries as a catastrophic moral failure. Fewer than 10% of people in lower-income countries have received even one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Ryan told the virtual gathering of world and business leaders that if vaccines and other tools aren't shared fairly, the tragedy of the virus, which has so far killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide, would continue.
What we need to do is get to low levels of disease incidence with maximum vaccination of our populations, so nobody has to die, Ryan said. The issue is: Its the death. Its the hospitalizations. Its the disruption of our social, economic, political systems thats caused the tragedy not the virus."
Ryan also waded into the growing debate about whether COVID-19 should be considered endemic, a label some countries like Spain have called for to better help live with the virus, or still a pandemic involving intensified measures that many countries have taken to fight the spread.
Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities. Endemic in itself does not mean good. Endemic just means its here forever," he said.
Public health officials have warned it is highly unlikely COVID-19 will be eliminated and say it will continue to kill people, though at much lower levels, even after it becomes endemic.
Fellow panelist Gabriela Bucher, executive director of the anti-poverty organization Oxfam International, cited the enormous urgency of fairer distribution of vaccines and the need for large-scale production. She said resources to fight the pandemic were being hoarded by a few companies and a few shareholders.
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, decried the total collapse of global cooperation and solidarity over the last two years, saying it was totally unacceptable how few people in Africa have gotten vaccine shots. His agency says only 10% of Africas 1.2 billion people are fully vaccinated.
He also sought to douse the belief among some that vaccine hesitancy is widespread in Africa, citing studies that say 80% of Africans were ready to get shots if the vaccines were available.
The comments came on the second day of the online alternative to the annual World Economic Forum gathering, which was postponed over pandemic health concerns.
In speeches at the event, world leaders like Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett discussed approaches to the pandemic. He said his country, which quickly rolled out a widespread vaccination campaign, has a strategy of being at the forefront of the medicines and the vaccines against COVID-19.
Israel's Health Ministry says 62% of people there are fully vaccinated, including with booster shots.
Citing advanced research in Israel, Bennett said, We want to be first in the world to know how vaccines and the new variants respond to one another.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said his country had high levels of vaccination because society values protecting the elderly and the vulnerable. He plans to keep stringent border controls in place until the end of February.
He said he was trying to balance restrictions with keeping the economy open but that a zero COVID policy against the omicron variant is not possible nor appropriate.
In a separate press briefing Tuesday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the omicron variant continues to sweep the world, adding there were 18 million new COVID-19 cases reported last week.
Associated Press reporters Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed.
Follow all AP stories on the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
New York City's surge of COVID-19 cases fueled by the omicron variant appears to be falling just as quickly as it rose.
Tens of thousands of infections are still being reported every day, and the test positivity rate is still above 20%. However, after new cases increased 26-fold in just one month, they have now fallen by 57% over the last week, an ABC News analysis found.
After a single-day peak of 50,803 COVID-19 cases reported on Jan. 3, just 9,202 cases were reported on Jan. 14, according to data from the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.
In addition, hospitalizations are declining, and the number of wastewater samples that have detected the virus have also plunged.
"Infections are coming down, even visits to the emergency room are coming down," Dr. Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist with the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, told ABC News. "And usually we see when there is a surge, we see visits to the emergency rooms going up."
New York City COVID-19 cases per day
Mokdad, who helps lead a model that projects COVID-19 cases around the country, added, "All the indications of the people being tested and found to be positive show that [omicron] appears on its way down."
On Dec. 2, the first case of omicron tied to New York City was reported in a Minnesota resident who had traveled to the Big Apple in November to attend an anime convention.
From there, COVID-19 cases began spiking. Within two weeks, the city was reporting an average of nearly 7,600 infections per day, up from 1,600 per day.
Studies have since shown that omicron is more likely to pass between vaccinated people than prior variants, though vaccines still dramatically reduce the risk of severe illness.
Coupled with the cold weather and people gathering for the holidays, Mokdad said it is no surprise the virus spread as quickly as it did.
People wait in line to receive a COVID-19 test, Jan. 4, 2022, in New York. The U.S. recorded more than 1 million cases on Jan. 3, 2022, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, as the Omicron variant spread at a blistering pace.
Even coronavirus levels in wastewater samples were showing that a surge was coming, according to wastewater analytics company Biobot.
"The scale of the amount of virus that was detected in wastewater was far greater than any point in the pandemic, so much so that [the company] had to rebuild some of the graphs around the scales, because so much more virus was being collected more than any time," said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist who is a member of Biobot's board of advisers and an ABC News contributor. "It gave us that early sense that we were going to deal with this massive surge."
However, there are signs the city may have hit its omicron peak.
New York City has been reporting nearly 12 straight days of COVID-19 case declines and is averaging about 15,000 new infections per day, down from roughly 36,000 just two weeks ago.
In yet another sign that the city's surge may be ebbing, New York City no longer holds the nation's highest case rate -- Rhode Island now does, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hospitalizations have also declined from an average of 992 new admissions on Jan. 6 to 496 as of Jan. 15, according to the city's health department.
Mount Sinai Health System, one of New York City's largest hospital systems, has seen new daily COVID-19 hospital admissions remain relatively flat over the last week to 10 days. About one-third of patients are admitted for other reasons and then test positive during their stays, Dr. Bernard Camins, medical director for infection prevention at Mount Sinai, told ABC News.
A person walks past a COVID-19 testing tent during the coronavirus pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, Jan. 14, 2022.
He said hospitalizations will not significantly come down until two or three weeks from now, because they are a lagging indicator.
"When people get sick enough with COVID, now they are going to come into the hospital, and it does take a delay," Camins said. "Sometimes people start having symptoms but they're not sick enough to need the hospital until Day 7 or 10 days later."
He added, "Eventually the ones who were coming into the hospital with 'moderate symptoms' or maybe severe enough to need oxygen, it does take them a few more days lag in terms of needing ventilators."
A rapid rise in cases followed by a dramatic decline is similar to what has been seen in other countries that detected omicron before the U.S.
In South Africa, where the variant was first identified, the surge looked like an "ice pick," according to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. In early December, the country was averaging about 10,000 cases per day, quickly rising to 20,000 by mid-December.
People wait in line at a COVID-19 testing site in Times Square, New York, Dec. 13, 2021.
But, by early January, when New York City was experiencing its peak, the average number of COVID-19 infections in South Africa had already fallen to about 8,000 per day.
"What we know and are certain about from data from South Africa and the U.K., when omicron takes hold in a location, it takes about a month to go up and a month to come down," Mokdad said.
Even though the surge is not entirely over yet, Mokdad said New York's decline is a signal for the rest of the country, with the Midwest about one week behind and the West Coast two or three weeks behind.
The University of Washington's own model suggests that the U.S. will peak at about 1.2 million cases Jan.17, and then all states will be on their way down by the end of January, Mokdad said, adding that he is still encouraging vaccination and mask-wearing.
"Everybody who's out and about will be infected by then," he said. "This is like infecting everybody out there, so basically, it's running out of people to infect and it's going to start coming down because there's no more people to infect."
