All higher education employees in Nevada must get COVID-19 vaccine or waiver by Dec. 1 KRNV My News 4
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic spread worldwide in 2019, causing a global health and economic crisis. The rapid transmission of the disease combined with the high death rates in at-risk groups led to millions of deaths, and many countries introducing social distancing measures, lockdowns, and other restrictions.
Study: The impact of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination on Alpha and Delta variant transmission. Image Credit: BaLL LunLa/ Shutterstock
Recently with the help of mass vaccination schemes, drug repurposing programs, and monoclonal antibodies, the pandemic has begun to be brought under control. However, worries are rising over variants of concern, such as the Delta variant, which is known to avoid both vaccine-induced and natural immunity.
Due to the increased threat posed by the variant, researchers from the University of Oxford have been examining the impact of vaccination on the spread of the Alpha and Delta variants through the population.
A preprint version of the study is available on the medRxiv* server while the article undergoes peer review.
The researchers used national contact testing data from England to examine the rate of transmission for the variants. They performed a retrospective observational cohort study of contacts of both symptomatic and asymptomatic convalescent individuals. The scientists only included results from those who had contact with an infected individual proved with a PCR test who then took a PCR test themselves within 1-10 days. They also only included cases from three laboratories, as they all used the same standardized procedure looking for the S gene encoding for the spike protein, the N gene encoding for the nucleocapsid, or the ORF1ab target.
Vaccination details for individuals meeting these criteria were then obtained from the national immunization database. The results of these tests estimated the specific strain the Alpha strain will show a negative result for the S gene but positive results for the rest. Any full set of results before the 10th of May 2021 was considered to be for the original strain. Still, given the prevalence of the Alpha and Delta strains following this date, any non-Alpha positive test was assumed to be Delta.
Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the transmission from the original positive test the index case to other contacts. This technique is often used to examine a series of predictor variables, which in this case were vaccine status, type of vaccine, contact event type, age, sex, symptoms, local prevalence of COVID-19, and local deprivation, to return a dichotomous result. Natural cubic splines and log transformation helped to account for non-linearity.
In total, nearly 100,000 index cases with a positive PCR test were identified, and over 150,000 positive contacts. Twelve thousand six hundred fifty-seven of these contacts had to be excluded due to incomplete information. Fifty-one thousand seven hundred ninety-eight of the remaining contacts tested positive. Ages ranged from 26-50 and were roughly split between men (44%) and women (56%). 70% of contact events were within the same household, with the rest evenly split between visitors, events, and work/education.
The vast majority of positive contacts were from unvaccinated individuals (49%). Around 27% were partially vaccinated, and the remaining 23% were partially vaccinated. These figures are for the ChADOx1 vaccination individuals; BNT162b2 cases showed small differences but followed roughly the same pattern.
Multivariable models showed that double vaccination for either vaccine significantly reduced the odds of infection for the Alpha strain, with BNT162b2 potentially providing a small amount of extra protection following either one or two doses.
The Delta variant showed increased transmission from the index case compared to Alpha for both asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals. Outside of vaccine status, other factors that were positively associated with a positive test were contact event type, age, the index case and the contact being different sexes, higher deprivation index, and higher local severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) incidence.
These findings are supported by previous studies showing higher risk for more deprived individuals, as well as up to a 12-fold lower antibody response from vaccinated individuals to the Delta strain as compared to the original strain found in Wuhan.
The authors highlight the importance of their results in showcasing the increased danger of the variants of concern, particularly considering the relatively high cases of double-vaccinated individuals who still tested positive for COVID-19. These results could be very important in informing public health policy.
medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Journal reference:
Eyre, D. et al. (2021) "The impact of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination on Alpha and Delta variant transmission". medRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2021.09.28.21264260.
SAN FRANCISCO As each passing day without accepting a COVID-19 vaccine brings Andrew Wiggins closer to sitting out home games, anxious Warriors fans are hoping someone, some way, somehow, can persuade him to join his vaccinated teammates.
Wiggins will not, however, be subjected to an intervention from his most outspoken teammate.
Draymond Green is sitting this one out.
Too political, and much too personal.
I dont think no, I know Im not in any position to go tell him what he should or should not be doing, Green said Thursday. And as a leader of this team, Im not going to go to him and say, Hey, man, we really need ... No. You do what you feel. You do what you feel you want to do. Im not going go and ask him did he get a polio vaccine, so why would I go ask him if he got a COVID vaccine?
Wiggins continues to participate in the daily team activities, including controlled scrimmages. He is one of three high profile players, the others being Brooklyns Kyrie Irving and Washingtons Bradley Beal, that have resisted taking any of the available vaccines.
The City of San Francisco has mandated that all persons entering an indoor mega-event, defined as a gathering that exceeds 5,000, must be fully vaccinated. There are exceptions, and the one that relates to the Warriors is that opposing players because they are not employed within the city need not be vaccinated but must adhere to three rules, including testing, before they are permitted to play.
For Wiggins, like Irving, as a member of a team based in Brooklyn, failing to get vaccinated comes with severe consequences. No play, no pay, according to the NBA. If Wiggins remains unvaccinated when the Warriors open their home schedule on Oct. 21, he will not be allowed inside Chase Center, much less join his teammates to participate in the game.
For each game that Wiggins misses, he would forfeit roughly $385,000 in pre-tax pay. His annual salary this season, per the website Spotrac.com, is $31,579,390.
The Warriors, moreover, would be without their starting forward. Its not ideal for a team anticipating a return to the postseason, but Green, like each of Wiggins teammates to address the issue, is clear in his intention to respect Andrews decision.
Its not my place, nor my business, on whether he gets vaccinated or not or who else is vaccinated, Green said. Or if youre vaccinated and Im not, or if he isnt and she is. Thats none of my business.
Just because I am a leader of this team, that doesnt give me the right to go tell him what to do with his. Thats his personal choice.
Green, pointing out that Wiggins earlier this year became a father for the second time, said there are some affairs that take priority over the job.
That would be like me telling him, Yo, your wife is going into labor. How dare you leave this team? Green said. Thats something thats personal to him, something thats health-related, something thats personal to his family.
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Newer variants of the coronavirus like Alpha and Delta are highly contagious, infecting far more people than the original virus. Two new studies offer a possible explanation: The virus is evolving to spread more efficiently through air.
The realization that the coronavirus is airborne indoors transformed efforts to contain the pandemic last year, igniting fiery debates about masks, social distancing and ventilation in public spaces.
Most researchers now agree that the coronavirus is mostly transmitted through large droplets that quickly sink to the floor and through much smaller ones, called aerosols, that can float over longer distances indoors and settle directly into the lungs, where the virus is most harmful.
The new studies dont fundamentally change that view. But the findings signal the need for better masks in some situations, and indicate that the virus is changing in ways that make it more formidable.
This is not an Armageddon scenario, said Vincent Munster, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who led one of the new studies. It is like a modification of the virus to more efficient transmission, which is something I think we all kind of expected, and we now see it happening in real time.
Dr. Munsters team showed that small aerosols traveled much longer distances than larger droplets and the Alpha variant was much more likely to cause new infections via aerosol transmission. The second study found that people infected with Alpha exhaled about 43 times more virus into tiny aerosols than those infected with older variants.
The studies compared the Alpha variant with the original virus or other older variants. But the results may also explain why the Delta variant is so contagious and why it displaced all other versions of the virus.
It really indicates that the virus is evolving to become more efficient at transmitting through the air, said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne viruses at Virginia Tech who was not involved in either study. I wouldnt be surprised if, with Delta, that factor were even higher.
The ultratransmissibility of the variants may come down to a mix of factors. It may be that lower doses of the variants are required for infection, or that the variants replicate faster, or that more of the variant virus is exhaled into aerosols or all three.
The Alpha variant proved to be twice as transmissible as the original virus, and the Delta variant has mutations that turbocharged its contagiousness even more. As the virus continues to change, newer variants may turn out to be even more transmissible, experts said.
But the tools at our disposal all still work well to halt the spread. Even loosefitting cloth and surgical masks block about half of the fine aerosols containing virus, according to the study of people infected with variants, published this month in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Still, at least in some crowded spaces, people may want to consider switching to more protective masks, said Don Milton, an aerosol expert at the University of Maryland who led the research.
Given that it seems to be evolving towards generating aerosols better, then we need better containment and better personal protection, Dr. Milton said of the virus. We are recommending people move to tighter-fitting masks.
Oct. 1, 2021, 6:48 p.m. ET
To compare how different variants spread through the air, his team asked participants with mild or asymptomatic infections to recite the alphabet, sing Happy Birthday loudly or shout out the University of Maryland slogan, Go Terps!
People infected with the Alpha variant had copious amounts of virus in their nose and throat, much more than those infected with the original virus. But even after adjusting for that difference, those infected with the variant released about 18 times as much virus into the smallest aerosols.
But the researchers examined only four people infected with Alpha, and 45 with older variants. That could skew the observed differences between the variants, said Seema Lakdawala, a respiratory virus expert at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in either new study.
Infected people can pass the virus along to many, many others or to none at all. How much virus they expel may depend on where in the respiratory tract it is replicating, the nature of the mucus in its environment, and what other microbes it may hitch a ride with.
The State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.
We have really no idea why some individuals are superspreaders and others are not, Dr. Lakdawala said. Theres a lot of heterogeneity between individuals.
Data from a greater number of participants would be more convincing, but the two studies together do suggest that enhanced transport through aerosols at least partly contributes to the variants contagiousness, she said.
Dr. Munsters study did not involve people at all, but Syrian hamsters. Using the animals allowed the team to control the experimental conditions tightly and focus only on the movement of aerosols, Dr. Munster said.
The researchers separated pairs of hamsters with tubes of different lengths that allowed airflow but no physical contact. They looked at how well the different variants traveled from infected donor hamsters to uninfected sentinel hamsters.
When the cages were more than two meters apart, only the smallest aerosols particles smaller than 5 microns were shown to infect the sentinel hamsters. And the team found, as expected, that the Alpha variant outcompeted the original virus in infecting the sentinel hamsters.
The results were posted on bioRxiv, a website that features papers before they have been published in a scientific journal.
The researchers are now testing the Delta variant and expect to find that it is even more efficient, Dr. Munster said.
Together, the new findings underscore the importance of masks for vaccinated people, especially in crowded spaces, experts said. Although people with breakthrough infections after vaccination are much less likely to spread the virus than unvaccinated people, the contagiousness of the variants raises the probability.
With billions of people worldwide vaccinated, and billions still unvaccinated, the virus may still change in unexpected ways, Dr. Munster said: There might be additional evolutionary pressures, shaping the evolutionary direction of this virus.
Illinois health officials on Friday reported 18,735 new COVID-19 cases in the past week, along with 236additional deaths and over 159,000 new vaccine doses administered.
In all, 1,630,864 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the state since the pandemic began, according to the latest data from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The additional deaths reported this week bring the state to 25,017 confirmed COVID fatalities.
The state has administered 842,141 tests since last Friday, officials said, bringing the total to more than 32 million tests conducted during the pandemic.
The states seven-day positivity rate on all tests dropped to 2.2% from last week 2.7% and 4.4% the week before, officials said. The rolling average seven-day positivity rate for cases as a percentage of total tests also dropped to 2.8% from 3.7% last week and 4.1% the week before.
Over the past seven days, a total of 159,278doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered to Illinois residents. The latest figures brought the states average down to 22,754 daily vaccination doses over the last week, per IDPH data.
More than 14.5 million vaccine doses have been administered in Illinois since vaccinations began in December. More than 64% of adult residents in the state are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with more than 81% receiving at least one dose.
As of midnight Thursday, 1,833 patients were hospitalized due to COVID in the state. Of those patients, 447are in ICU beds, and 236are on ventilators.
A progress report detailing controversial U.S.-funded research into bat coronaviruses in China was filed more than two years after it was due and long after the corresponding grant had concluded. The U.S.-based nonprofit the EcoHealth Alliance submitted the report to its funder, the National Institutes of Health, in September 2020, while the group was engulfed in controversy surrounding its work with partners in China. The Intercept obtained the report, along with the grant proposal and other documents, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Scientists consulted by The Intercept described the late date as highly unusual and said it merited an explanation, given the controversy surrounding the EcoHealth Alliances work at the time that the report was submitted. The scientists spoke under the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic with the NIH, the worlds leading funder of biomedical research.
The annual report described the groups work from June 2017 to May 2018, which involved creating new viruses using different parts of existing bat coronaviruses and inserting them into humanized mice in a lab in Wuhan, China. The work was overseen by the NIHs National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Anthony Fauci.
Neither the NIH nor the EcoHealth Alliance offered an explanation for the date of the report or responded to questions from The Intercept about whether another version of the report had been submitted on time and, if so, in what ways that version may have been altered.
The Intercept is seeking any missing progress reports, among other documents, through ongoing litigation against the NIH.
The agency has been criticized for withholding information that might relate to the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which is now responsible for more than 4.5 million deaths around the world. NIH has a public responsibility to be fully transparent on why it gave funding to the EcoHealth Alliance, whether it considered the potential of a possible accidental leak of dangerous bat viruses, and the ethics of approving the study, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown Universitys school of law and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. Overall, it is important to fund good basic research on bat viruses, but the project has been shrouded in uncertainty and lacks full transparency.
The progress report and other documents were released by the NIH over a year after The Intercept and others requested them. What [the NIH] really needs to do is not just react to FOIA requests. They need to be proactive and say, OK, heres the process, and heres the outcome. And they havent done that, said Gregory Koblentz, director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University. That just raises questions about why theyre dragging their heels. They should have provided all relevant information months ago.
The EcoHealth Alliance and its longtime partner the Wuhan Institute of Virology have come under intense scrutiny in the search for the pandemics origins. The two groups are at the center of the lab-origin hypothesis, the idea that the coronavirus could have emerged through a lab accident,the collection and storage of thousands of bat coronavirus samples, or through divisive research that makes viruses more transmissible in order to study how they evolve.
There has been no shortage of unsubstantiated ideas in circulation about SARS-CoV-2,the coronavirus that causes the respiratory illness Covid-19, several of which continue to be used as political wedges by former President Donald Trump and the far right. But EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak helped organize scientists to tar any discussion of a possible lab origin, even if it was science-based, as a conspiracy theory.
In February 2020, the medical journal The Lancet published a statement decrying the spread of rumours and misinformation around the origins of the pandemic. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin, read the letter. Daszak was not among its 27 signatories, but emails later obtained by U.S. Right to Know showed that he had orchestrated the effort. Daszak has also served on two international committees tasked with investigating the origins of the pandemic, despite having a clear conflict of interest. (Last weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that one of these committees, a task force convened by The Lancet, would be disbanded.)
For months, Daszak continued to push the notion that a lab origin was preposterous. Theyre coming at this with the belief system that theres a cabal of mysterious international folks who are trying to kill people, he said in an online seminar in October 2020, of those who believe its possible that the virus that causes Covid-19 emerged from a lab. They come at it with a belief system. So logic jumps out the window.
The unusually dated EcoHealth Alliance progress report adds to a string of missing, incomplete, or disappeared information that could be relevant to the origins of the pandemic.
The report describes work done in year four of the five-year, $3.1 million NIH grant Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence. It was due in April 2018. The version released by the NIH was submitted over two years later, after The Intercept had filed a public records request seeking the bat coronavirus and other NIH grants to the EcoHealth Alliance.
The NIH sends out automatic reminders ahead of key due dates and makes the distribution of new funding contingent upon receipt of the previous years annual reports. According to an NIH instruction manual, submission dates are automatically generated, meaning that the date could not be a typo.
Adding to the evidence that the annual update was submitted in 2020 are references to studies that were published after 2018, when the update was due. NIH progress reports include a section in which researchers list any papers that have been published or accepted for publication. In the EcoHealth Alliance progress report, the section lists papers published in 2019 and 2020.
Many researchers say the experiment that involved infecting humanized mice with altered bat coronaviruses described in the annual report qualifies as gain-of-function research of concern. None of the viruses described in the experiment are related to SARS-CoV-2 closely enough to have evolved into it. But scientists said the odd submission date raises questions about whether information in an earlier draft of the report had been altered or omitted amid controversy over the EcoHealth Alliances work in Wuhan.
Early on, several groups, media outlets, and individuals requested the grant documents and communications surrounding them, an effort that apparently irked Daszak. Conspiracy-theory outlets and politically motivated organizations have made Freedom of Information Act requests on our grants and all of our letters and e-mails to the NIH, he told Nature in August 2020. We dont think its fair that we should have to reveal everything we do.
The Intercept requested the grant documents from the NIH on September 3 of that year. The anomalous progress report was submitted less than two weeks later, on September 16.
The documents released to The Intercept are also missing a year-five progress report, covering the crucial period of June 2018 to May 2019, which was due in September 2019, according to NIH guidelines. Scientists said that NIH program officers sometimes overlook reports for the final reporting period, but taken together with the odd date on the year-four report, the omission raises questions that the agency should answer.
Federal funding documents are routinely released under the Freedom of Information Act. In this case, public interest in the origins of the pandemic should have led to a timely and full release of documents, transparency experts say. The presumption of disclosure is all the more crucial when dealing with documents that are squarely in the public interest, said Gunita Singh, a staff attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. And records about how the pandemic may have originated and where our taxpayer dollars have been spent are clearly worthy of public observation and scrutiny and debate.
Records about how the pandemic may have originated and where our taxpayer dollars have been spent are clearly worthy of public observation and scrutiny and debate.
The origins of the pandemic remain hotly debated. In August, President Joe Biden announced that a three-month inquiry into the matter by U.S. intelligence agencies was inconclusive. Many scientists lean toward a natural origin, but in recent months an increasing number of prominent researchers have gone on record as saying that a lab origin deserves thorough investigation.
The progress report is just one of many missing puzzle pieces that could shed light on the question. In June, evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom reported that key data from Wuhan had been deleted from an NIH database, a move allowed by NIH rules but that is nonetheless unusual. From a Google Cloud server, he recovered 13 partial viral sequences collected from people in the city in the early days of the pandemic. These added to evidence that the coronavirus was circulating in the city long before the December 2019 outbreak at the citys Huanan seafood market, which was a major focus of the recent WHO report on the origins of the pandemic. It turned out that researchers from Wuhan University had emailed the NIH in June 2020 to request that the sequences be deleted.
Then in July, after the Washington Post reported on other discrepancies in early WHO data, the WHO changed the virus sequence IDs associated with three early patients described in the joint report.
There are also important gaps in what we know about the history of RaTG13, a relative of SARS-CoV-2, which was sequenced and written about by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Last summer, Shi Zhengli,director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Wuhan Institute of Virology,admitted to Science magazine that RaTG13 was a renamed version of a virus found in a Chinese mineshaft where miners fell ill in 2012. But that admission only came following pressure from independent scientists.
Also unresolved are questions about revisions made to public databases of viruses that infect pangolins and about a database that the Wuhan Institute of Virology took offline in September 2019, claiming that it had been hacked.
In 2019, the NIH renewed the EcoHealth Alliance bat coronavirus grant for a second five-year period. The Trump administration suspended funding in April 2020. (The NIH reinstated the grant in July 2020, under strict terms that Daszak said his group could not meet.) It is unclear whether the EcoHealth Alliance would have been required to file a progress report for the final year of the grant, given that it was terminated.
To hug or not to hug? Experts say it depends on where you've been and your personal tolerance for risk. Malaka Gharib/ NPR hide caption
To hug or not to hug? Experts say it depends on where you've been and your personal tolerance for risk.
Each week, we answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you'd like us to consider for a future post, email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line: "Weekly Coronavirus Questions." See an archive of our FAQs here.
I'm vaccinated. Is it safe to hug others who aren't in my bubble if they're vaccinated, too? What about shaking hands with a stranger, say, at work. I'm eager to get back to the way it was ... but slightly nervous.
You must remember this A kiss is just a kiss A sigh is just a sigh The fundamental things apply As time goes by
The lyrics of As Time Goes By are pretty famous yet no longer hold true. A kiss, even a kiss on the cheek, in the time of a pandemic makes people nervous. Early on in this global health crisis, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested curtailing the country's beloved cheek kiss to avoid spreading COVID-19.
Now we're in a new era the vaccine era. It's not an equitable era in terms of vaccine rates. But people are getting their shots around the world.
The French have reportedly begun cheek kissing again although not everyone feels comfortable resuming this venerable tradition.
And kissing isn't the only person-to-person contact that has come in for a pandemic rethink. There's hugging and handshaking, too.
In Nigeria, says Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor, "most Nigerians have moved on as far as COVID-19 is concerned. Both the vaccinated and unvaccinated hug and shake hands freely. A few people still fist bump though."
He says he'll hug a friend who is vaccinated but otherwise prefers a fist bump.
So the question looms: For those who've been vaccinated, how up close and personal can you get?
The answer depends on various points.
First, let's consider how you catch COVID. "The data itself hasn't changed," says Dr. Jill Weatherhead, assistant professor of adult and pediatric infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine. "This virus is transmitted through respiratory and aerosol droplets. So we know closer contact with infected individuals will increase your risk of becoming infected."
But vaccination does offer protection. A vaccinated person who's infected will breathe out far fewer particles with pathogens and has greater barriers against getting infected. "Although, as we've learned with delta variant breakthrough transmission, infection is still possible in the vaccinated although much less likely," Weatherhead notes.
Then there's the matter of how much time goes by during a close contact with someone. We've all heard from public health agencies that the longer you're exposed to somebody who might be contagious, the greater the risk that you'll get infected. A lot of people talk about 15 minutes of close contact putting you at risk either a chunk of time or 15 minutes spread out.
That's a bit simplistic, says Seema Lakdawala, an associate professor at the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Even less than 5 minutes of close exposure in a packed indoor room might be all it takes to catch COVID. "If the person is extremely infectious, being up close to them indoors is very high risk," says Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious disease doctor at Stanford University. "Hugging is as close as you can get."
By contrast, if you're outdoors, where airflow disperses those particles of pathogens, 15 minutes or more of contact might not be risky.
So that brings us back to the question: to hug or not to hug?
"I am a hugger by nature," says Lakdawala. "If I know the other person is fully vaccinated and I'm fully vaccinated, I'll give them a hug. I'm OK with that level of risk." She'd generally wear a mask, although says she'd hug her sister with no mask. Knowing her sister's routine, she says, "I am willing to take on her level of risk."
But she would take circumstances into consideration. "In a crowded bar, no," she says. Too many risks you're inside, you're up close with lots of other people as well. "Outdoors, I'm OK."
A greater risk than a hug would be "sitting in an enclosed space with somebody you don't know," adds Charlotte Baker, assistant professor of epidemiology at Virginia Tech.
Baker, who is immunocompromised, is OK with hugging, too, with a couple of provisos: "As long as people are masked up, and I know where you've been, I don't really have a problem with hugging."
As for the "where you've been" point if the hugger or huggee say, was on a 6-hour flight the day before or very recently attended an indoor concert that might make you reconsider or make sure that you and the person you're hugging are wearing masks.
Then there are people outside your close family/friend "bubble" who you might want to hug but may have jobs in fields that expose them to lots of potentially contagious folks, such as health care, education or the service industry. "Their risk for getting COVID is different than mine. I don't think I'd walk up and just hug them," says Baker. "That would be a circumstance where I don't know your risk, and you don't know mine."
To sum up: The new reality is to share your personal status and preferences.
"I think most people at this point ask first because everybody has a different tolerance level," says Weatherhead. "If you are the hugger, ask if people are comfortable: 'I'm vaccinated and would love to give you a hug.' "
That would have been really weird pre-pandemic to ask "are you vaccinated against, say, the flu" before hugging (or cheek kissing or shaking the hand of a stranger). Now, she suggests, it is part of the new normal: "It's not an unreasonable or awkward thing to state anymore."
And that kind of open dialogue is important before hugging a kid, too.
"Ask the parent," says Baker. "And the parent should likewise ask any person the kid wants to give a hug to."
It's important to consider precautions when hugging children as well as adults, Baker adds: washing hands before and after, staying away from anyone who's been sick or exposed to a COVID patient.
The relationship of the adult and the child is also something to consider in weighing risks: "I would definitely rate grandparent hugs over neighbors."
Here's a rundown of potential risks from other up-close-and-personal interactions. In every case it's your own tolerance of risk and other personal details that will inform a decision.
The cheek kiss: Being vaccinated offers protection, and the cheek kiss is fleeting. "Unless you took your hand and wiped your cheek and wiped your mouth," says Weatherhead, you'd likely be at very low risk of any infection.
The air kiss: "You're blowing air in someone's face," says Lakdawala. "I think a hug is less risky than an air kiss," says Lakdawala. Blowing a kiss from across an uncrowded room doesn't concern her. But "if you're a foot away from somebody and [want to] blow them a kiss, why not give them a hug," she says.
The handshake: Getting germs on your hands doesn't make you catch COVID-19. But the risk isn't zero. Say the person you're shaking hands with is a stranger you're meeting at work. It is possible the person has been infected and shows no symptoms. Maybe they sneezed or coughed on their hand. Then you touch their hand. And ... you bring your hand to your face, because all of us touch our faces far more often than we think.
One solution is to hand sanitize after a handshake. So that little bottle of hand sanitizer you may have carried early on in the pandemic is still a useful item for your purse or pocket.
Another solution: Give up handshakes! "I don't handshake anymore," says Lakdawala. "People touch their faces way too much to adjust their glasses or mask." If someone sticks out their hand she'll say something like, "Oh yeah, we're going to elbow bump or fist bump because it's COVID time."
The elbow bump or fist bump. An elbow bump is pretty, pretty low risk, especially if you're not breathing in each other's faces while bumping. So the other person would have to have pathogens ON THEIR ELBOW OR FIST and you'd have to pick up those germs ON YOUR ELBOW OR FIST and then BRING YOUR ELBOW OR FIST to your eyes, nose or mouth to become infected. Unless you're a professional contortionist, this seems like the unlikeliest of scenarios to catch a virus. Ifeanyi Nsofor, the fist-bump loving Nigerian physician, is definitely onto something!
P.S. If you're just an extraordinarily cautious or vulnerable soul, there's always the air hug!
Whether youre in need of a COVID-19 test or vaccine, the city of Corpus Christi has got you covered.
Next week, free COVID-19 testing will be offered at the Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial site on Monday Oct. 4 and Wednesday Oct. 6 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
If you want to get yourself a little protection and spend less time getting tested, COVID-19 vaccinations are available to those 12 and older. Minors 12-17 can receive their first and second dose of the Pfizer shot with written parental consent. Those 18 and older can receive either the Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson&Johnson shot.
Booster shots are also available to those over 65, those 18 and older with high risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms, and those whose job exposure to COVID-19 puts them at a higher risk for complications. You can find out if you are eligible here.
Now lets say youre infected with the coronavirus right now. Regeneron Infusion Therapy is available to those who qualify. To receive the monoclonal treatment, you have to be at least 12-years-old, weigh at least 88 pounds, have a doctors referral, and fall into one or more of the following groups:
If you think you may fall into one of the above categories, call your doctor to get a referral. If you dont have a primary care doctor, you can call (800) 742-5990, and the staff will evaluate if you qualify.
The Regeneron Infusion Clinic is located at the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds in Robstown. Its open seven days a week from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. If you dont have an appointment, walk-ins are welcome at 8:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., and 4:00 p.m.
All testing, vaccinations, and infusion therapies are free.
PIKE COUNTY, Ky. (WTVQ) The Coronavirus has claimed the life of another educator.
This time in Pike County, she was a substitute in the public school system.
The Lexington Herald-Leader reports 46-year old Kimberly Williamson got sick in August, spent 25 days on a ventilator before dying this week.
The report said she was a mother of two, had one grandchild with another on the way and she was engaged to be married.
She was a substitute instructional assistant and custodian.
She primarily worked at Feds Creek Elementary, according to the report.
She and her brother, whos a bus driver for the school system both got the virus around the same time, he was vaccinated and survived and she was not vaccinated, according to the newspaper.
The educators group, Kentucky 120 United, said at least 49 public school employees in the state have died from the virus since the pandemic hit.
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