(CNN) Im not getting a fat check! joked Kelly R as she helped her daughters with homework in the kitchen of their Los Angeles home. But Im hoping that the kids will benefit. Thats the biggest thing that I was worried about. All kids benefitting.
Kelly is among the parents, students and community groups who successfully sued California, demanding more money, time and focus be spent to help underserved students disproportionately low-income Black and Latino kids recover from educational losses during the Covid pandemic. These students were already at a disadvantagebefore the pandemic, according to experts, then suffered more than students in affluent school districts during Covid and are not rebounding as quickly.
The plaintiffs were only identified by first name and last initial in the lawsuit, and Kelly askedCNN to do the same.
Kelly, like so many other parents, does not have fond memories of virtual schooling.She was stuck at home with her daughters who were ages 9, 11 and 14 when the pandemic began.
The computers were glitchyWe live in the airport flight paths; sometimes we werent getting internet connection. Sometimes the school Internet connection wasnt working as well, she told CNN. We were kind of just thrown into a situation to be teachers for three different kids, you know, at three different schools with no training at all.
To settle the lawsuit, California agreed to spend $2 billion to help children impacted the most to recover from lost learning and the mental health impact caused by school closures during the pandemic. The federal government granted public school districts more than $190 billion between March 2020 and March 2021 for that purpose, but the plaintiffs argued that in California the state failed to ensure local districts targeted the money for students who needed the most help.
The settlements provisions still must be enacted into law by the state legislature, directs school districts to use extended school days, tutors and mental health professionals to help these kids. The process will be closely monitored by the state. And parents can file complaints at any time.
This proposal includes changes that the Administration believes are appropriate at this stage coming out of the pandemic to focus use of these one-time dollars on the students who were most impacted and continue to need support, Alex Traverso, a spokesperson for the California Board of Education, told CNN.
It is the most urgent crisis in America today, said Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. And hopefully this settlement will be a model for 49 other states to say that there is nothing more important than we can do.
In California, around 10,000 public schools were closed during the pandemic, impacting around 6 million students.
We know in California that there were between 800,000 and a million kids who had no digital access whatsoever for 18 and 19 months, said Rosenbaum. What does that mean? It doesnt mean they got bad education. It means they got no education.
And there were other problems. Plaintiffs Cayla and Kai were second graders in Oakland when Covid hit.Between March 17, 2020 and the end of the 2019-2020 school year, their teacher held class only twice, the complaint alleges.
They and otherplaintiffs reported a lack of computer equipment, broken equipment and teachers not trained to cope with the technology or the challenges of remote learning. Plaintiff Ellori was in first grade during the 2020-2021 school year and, with 33 kids and just one teacher on Zoom, felt isolation, abandonment and anxiety.
Not enough has been done since the pandemic ended to assess students needs and help them recover lost learning, according to the lawsuit. Jordan, another plaintiff, was in elementary school in the spring of 2020 when the school closed, according to the plaintiffs.
Since returning to in-person instruction in the 2021-2022 school year, Jordan E. has not had an assessment of his learning or mental health needs, according to the suit, referring to the 2021-22 school year.
School-age children were among those with the lowest risk of serious illness from Covid-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Butthey suffered greatly from the restrictions to stem the spread of the virus because so many schools were closed for so long.
And essentially were asking poor kids to pay for the public health measures that were meant to, you know, benefit us all, said Thomas Kane, a professor at Harvard University and author of a new study tracking post-pandemic progress in education.
The average American public school student in grades 3 through 8 lost half a grade level in math achievement during the pandemic, according to Kane and his fellow researchers at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth Universities. TheirEducation Recovery Scorecardalso found a third-of-a-year drop in reading.
Some students are rebounding surprisingly well, they say. But not all.
In Alabama, for example, kids in some more affluent areas have already made up for all their lost learning in math, Kane says.
But the higher poverty districts like Montgomery are still a half a year or more behind, Kane told CNN. Here in Massachusetts, the high poverty districts did the opposite of catching up last year, they actually lost additional ground between 2022 and 2023.
The fear, say these researchers, is that some students might never catch up.
Kelly says her kids are still behind in math.
In-person tutoring would be beneficial for the kids, she said after patiently helping her 5th grader with some arithmetic at the kitchen table. Right now, she said, They do online tutoring. Sometimes.
Kelly says shes trying to fill the gap and is pretty good at 1980s math but doesnt know how to teach the subject as its taught today.
Black, Latino and low-income students have traditionally lagged behind White students in academic achievement.
Kelly hopes this suit and settlement will spur the country into addressing, once and for all, the historic inequities.
Thats one of the major reasons why I felt like this was important, she said. Because we cannot continue to let things like this happen and let our kids fall short.
The-CNN-Wire
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Its been four years since the COVID-19 virus first began to spread. The U.S. National Intelligence Council assessed that two theories on the viruss origins are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal or a laboratory-associated incident.
Recent alarming headlines of Chinese experiments involving the virus reignited pandemic-era fears online.
VERIFY reader Karen asked us on Facebook if a story from the Staten Island Advance, a newspaper local to New York Citys Staten Island, titled Chinese scientists create COVID-19 strain that is 100% lethal to humanized mice, report says is true. Similar headlines have appeared on other news sites like the New York Post.
Did Chinese scientists create a COVID-19 strain thats 100% lethal to mice?
No, Chinese scientists did not create a COVID-19 strain thats 100% lethal to mice.
Chinese scientists did recently conduct a study in which they cloned a coronavirus, not a COVID-19 strain, that killed all four mice that were infected with it. However, this is not consistent with past studies, and the researchers say it does not mean it would kill humans.
A group of Chinese scientists, the majority of which are affiliated with the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, recently pre-printed a study meaning theyve published it online before it has been reviewed by peers to confirm its scientifically sound titled Lethal Infection of Human ACE2-Transgenic Mice Caused by SARS-CoV-2-related Pangolin Coronavirus GX_P2V(short_3UTR).
The scientists did not create a mutant COVID-19 strain to conduct this study, as some of the headlines suggest, nor did they use COVID-19 at all. Instead, the scientists studied a different coronavirus using just four mice. Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that include COVID-19, but also strains of the common cold.
The studys authors clarified that the mouse infections in the study do not mean the virus would also kill humans. The exact same virus has been the subject of other studies, including those in which the virus infected similar kinds of mice. The mice in those other studies did not die.
First, well explain why the claim that the scientists created a COVID-19 strain is false. Then well add context to this coronaviruss lethality to mice both in this study and in similar studies.
Chinese scientists did not create a COVID-19 strain
The scientists explain within the text of the study that they worked with a coronavirus, which is a family of viruses that includes COVID-19, but not COVID-19 itself. This coronavirus, which they called GX_P2V, was a sample they found in an animal called a pangolin in 2017, according to the scientists.
The virus used in the study was first collected in 2018, according to an earlier study by researchers from Hong Kong and Beijing. Its collection date is confirmed by the Bacterial and Viral Bioinformatics Resource Center (BV-BRC), which shows it was one of six related viruses collected from pangolins by researchers at the time.
The virus began adapting, or mutating, after it was first collected, according to a study published in December 2022. The studys researchers, some of whom later worked on the viral lethal mouse study, said the virus rapidly adapted to a kind of animal cell commonly used as a host for viruses studied by scientists.
Lihua Song, Ph.D., one of the scientists who worked on the viral lethal mouse study, explained on ScienceCast, a forum for researchers to discuss studies with other scientists, that the sample they used is a clone of the virus sample that mutated between 2018 and 2022.
Scientists no longer have an original, unmutated version of the virus because the original sample adapted in the animal cell, Song explained. Song suspected that the original pangolin sample mutated because it had difficulty growing in the animal host cells used by scientists
Putting 100% lethal to humanized mice claim in context
The scientists in the viral study used a small sample size of mice: 12 in total, four of which were infected with the virus. All four of the infected mice died, but the researchers noted that the virus did not kill similar mice in other studies.
The mice used in the study were ACE2 humanized mice. These kinds of mice, according to the Jackson Laboratory, are humanized because their cells have human ACE2, the receptor used by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) to gain cellular entry.
While GX_P2V(short_3UTR) proved lethal in our mouse model, it's important to consider that it did not cause disease upon infecting two other distinct ACE2 humanized mouse strains, Song said on ScienceCast.
Song is referring to a January 2023 study that said it infected three groups of mice, two of which were groups of humanized ACE2 mice. The researchers noted that the infected mice presented no obvious clinical symptoms, leading them to believe that GX_P2V may not be very good at causing disease.
Song and the other researchers in the viral study wrote that the reason the virus was so lethal may have been because their mice had abnormally high ACE2.
It is very likely that the high pathogenicity of GX_P2V C7 in our hACE2 mice is due to the strong expression of hACE2 in the mouse brain, the researchers wrote. Under normal circumstances, both human and mouse brains exhibit low expression of ACE2.
The researchers said that because of this mouse infections in this study have no correlation with human infections.
The scientists said the purpose of the study was to assess a potential candidate for use in vaccines or drugs meant to protect against broad groups of coronaviruses.
The VERIFY team works to separate fact from fiction so that you can understand what is true and false. Please consider subscribing to our daily newsletter, text alerts and our YouTube channel. You can also follow us on Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Learn More
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Yomiuri Shimbun file photo The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry in Tokyo
The Yomiuri Shimbun
20:46 JST,February 2, 2024
The Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry provided an update on Friday regarding the COVID-19 situation in Japan. According to the update, an average of 14.93 cases per designated medical institution were reported for the week of January 22 to 28, using data gathered from about 5,000 institutions nationwide. This reflects a 1.22-fold increase from the previous week, marking the 10th consecutive week that cases have risen.
Broken down by prefecture, Fukushima recorded the highest number of cases with 23.94, while Ishikawa, affected by the Noto Peninsula earthquake, also reported more than 20 cases.
Analyzing the age distribution of the cases, it was observed that approximately half of the infected individuals were 14 years old or younger. An official from the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry suggested a potential connection between the uptick in infections and the conclusion of the school winter break.
Universities across the state, including Cal State LA, are relaxing COVID-19 protocols in line with new orders from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), a move that some students feel could lead to heightened exposure.
Once a state known for firm COVID-19 mandates, California is loosening recommendations, now advocating that faculty and students may return to campus just 24 hours after fever lets up and symptoms decline, so long as the individual wears a well-fitting mask.
The CDPH no longer recommends an isolation period for those who are asymptomatic and simply recommends that those individuals wear a mask while in public.
Additionally, negative tests will not be required to return to classes.
The changes come at a time when Cal State LA students are returning to classes following a winter break riddled with high levels of COVID-19 transmission and other respiratory illnesses, according to recent data from the L.A. County Public Health (LACDPH.)
Theater major Paulyn Sreekhwan was concerned about accidental exposures at times when people needed to remove their masks.
I feel like youre still contagious even after the fever breaks, she said. Even with a mask, what if youre eating lunch, youre taking [the mask] off, youre drinking water. Youre exposing yourself to other people, so I dont really agree with that.
Sreekhwan pointed out that it was strange the policy change was happening at a time when cases were higher than normal.
I would like to assume that people in the classroom are honest and that they would mask if they were positive and honor the policy, but I still feel iffy, she said.
Another student, fourth-year Koleene Martinez, said she felt that the new policy would be too easy to ignore and that it could make her feel more paranoid about getting sick on campus.
It doesnt really seem fair. I feel like you should quarantine at least five days. I feel like the 24 hour rule is way less. I know that we all have our jobs and school to get to, but at the same time, you could possibly infect people, she said, adding that as long as people are committed to masking preferably with an N95 surgical mask then she would feel safer.
Respiratory virus transmission and hospitalizations remain elevated in Los Angeles County following a spike in cases through the holiday season, prompting county health officials to ask residents to help limit exposures and take common sense precautions like masking while in a crowded environment, testing regularly and staying up-to-date on vaccinations and boosters.
And though key figures have started to trend slightly downward in recent weeks, public health data shows COVID-19 is still widely circulating in the county, with wastewater concentrations of the virus at 60% of last years winter peak, according to the LACDPH
COVID-19 hospitalizations also remain elevated, with an average of 787 COVID-positive patients per day for the week ending Jan. 12, a slight decrease from 834 the week prior. That same figure stood at just 289 in November.
LACDPH officials stated that the increase is likely driven in part by the rise of a new COVID-19 strain, dubbed JN.1.
Local data shows the variant is gaining dominance rapidly in Los Angeles County, and CDC modeling data predicts it accounts for 61% of sequenced specimens in Region 9, which includes California, for the two-week period ending Jan. 6, LADPH officials said.
TORONTO New research published today says people who are homeless have high rates of COVID-19 reinfection. The St.
TORONTO New research published today says people who are homeless have high rates of COVID-19 reinfection.
The St. Michael's Hospital study found homeless people in Toronto who had COVID-19 were more than twice as likely to be reinfected as people who had housing.
Lead author Lucie Richard says people who are homeless are more exposed to the virus through crowded living conditions such as shelters.
They are also more likely than the general public to have underlying health conditions that make them more vulnerable to illness.
Richard says repeated COVID-19 infections could also make homeless people more susceptible to long COVID.
The study is published in the BMC Infectious Diseases journal.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 2, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
Nicole Ireland, The Canadian Press
Representational image
The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were ones thoroughly saturated with uncertainty. Thoughts of how the coronavirus could persist on surfaces for days on end kept us suspended in a near-constant state of anxiety. Many became terrified of frequenting public spaces, fearing that the virus would ambush anyone unfortunate enough to touch the invisible piece of "infected" public property.
And while we've achieved great strides in battling COVID-19 within the human body, this surface contamination issue doesnt exactly have a viable solution as of yet not one that doesnt require constant manual disinfection, at least. Fortunately, Finnish researchers are developing a groundbreaking solution: anti-viral surfaces designed to curb the spread of such viruses.
A recent study led by Professor Varpu Marjomki discovered that a specific resin ingredient, when embedded in plastics, significantly reduces the infectivity of coronaviruses on these surfaces, including the infamous 2019 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic-causing strain.
The team's research delves into the behaviour of viruses on various surfaces, studying their survival rates under different temperature and humidity conditions. Understanding these factors is crucial for designing effective antiviral solutions.
Being a ubiquitous material in our daily lives, researchers focused on plastic surfaces. Specifically comparing the viruses' survival on untreated plastic with resin-embedded plastic, they found that untreated plastic allowed viruses to remain infective for over two days, while the resin-infused surface neutralised them within 30 minutes, showcasing its impressive antiviral properties.
This innovation holds immense potential for diverse applications, from public spaces like restaurants and transportation to healthcare settings and everyday household items. Professor Marjomki also emphasises the potential of bio-based antivirals, readily available in Finland, for functionalising masks and surfaces.
This research is part of the BIOPROT project, a collaborative effort whose shared goal is to develop and deliver practical antiviral solutions, anticipating future pandemics and epidemics. In addition to surface treatments, the project also encompasses bio-based materials for masks and other protective equipment. All in all, this Finnish innovation promises to reduce the spread of viruses in everyday settings and contribute to a more secure and sustainable future for all.
The findings of this research have been published in Microbiology Spectrum and can be accessed here.
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Most of the world has moved on from the pandemic with vaccines and treatment widespread. Most of us arent wearing masks anymore. Most of us arent social distancing or quarantining or doing all of the things that were such hallmarks of life with COVID-19.
But there is a big group of people for whom the COVID-19 is anything but behind them: people suffering from long COVID. For them, life hasnt been the same since they contracted COVID-19, and Lygia Navarro reports they are disproportionately Latino.
Navarro is an independent journalist and contributor for Palabra, the nonprofit news outlet for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. The Show spoke with her more about her reporting and the people she profiled in the rural, farming community of Yakima Valley, in Washington state.
Lygia Navarro
Lygia Navarro
LYGIA NAVARRO: So one of the long haulers who we spoke with was, she wanted to use the name Maria, which is not her real first name, because a lot of people feel very nervous about being public about being a long hauler. So she was infected with COVID and then she never recovered. So she, you know, started to develop really intense, full body pain, extreme exhaustion, discoloration of her hands, they turned purple. This is common with other long haulers, that happens to their hands and their feet. And so, you know, this is not just a small health nuisance.
It's really an all encompassing life-altering event, which also impacts her life in the sense that what she can do every day. So, you know, her kids had to adapt to her not being able to do everything for them that she used to do. She struggles with work some, and her family also early on really doubted what was going on with her. They thought that it was psychological, it was all in her head. And this is a common thing that we heard from other Latino long haulers, is that their communities often don't understand that it's a physical illness.
I want to ask you very straightforwardly like to give us a definition of long COVID because you've done a lot of reporting on it for this story. And I think a lot of people still see it as like this mysterious thing, but there is a real definition, right?
NAVARRO: There is. And I think it's really important to talk about that because people don't know enough about long COVID, including what it is. So I think a lot of people have it and don't realize that. So the World Health Organization's definition of long COVID is new or worsening health issues that last at least three months after a COVID infection. So that can be, it can be completely new symptoms, so it can be that you develop migraines and you've never had them before, after having had COVID. It can be that you already had diabetes but that your diabetes dramatically worsened. So those are a couple of examples, but there are over 200 symptoms that long haulers have reported while having with long COVID.
So a wide variety of symptoms. So let's talk a little bit about the challenges in that. For the people that you profiled in particular, there's a real challenge, it seems like in, in just even getting a diagnosis for folks, right?
NAVARRO: Huge challenge, huge challenge. This is something that's common among long haulers en masse. They have to, you know, suffer, go through a lot of testing that is all negative and then often they figure it out themselves. And so this is what happened with both of the long haulers who I profiled or who I followed in the story. Both of them understood that what was going on in their bodies had happened after having had COVID.
So both of them had to essentially propose the diagnosis to their own doctors or insist over and over and over, over again that the health issues that they were dealing with, which they've never had before COVID, were because of COVID. And for Maria, the woman who I spoke about a minute ago, you know, it is really detrimental that her doctors were not listening to her, her family doctor, you know, her regular practitioner tried to diagnose her with multiple sclerosis, which she doesn't have. Another specialist told her that if she didn't get better within a month that they were going to operate on her hip, she has never had hip problems. So, you know, it goes from the range of doctors being uneducated, which is kind of the best case scenario, to misdiagnosing and doing actual harm to people.
You know, something that we hear a lot about in long COVID is people who are told, oh, you're dealing with fatigue, you need to get more exercise, you're just deconditioned, or you know, you're out of breath, you have anxiety. And so people are told then to do exercise to push themselves physically, but that can actually make long haulers sicker, not just that it can, but it does.
So you're reporting something here as well that is sort of as of yet unreported and important, which is that long COVID is having a disproportionate impact on the Latino community in in particular. Tell us a little bit about that and the numbers that you uncovered.
NAVARRO: Yeah. So let me first say that the numbers are, they're hard to depend on, the numbers are hard to trust. They're hard to use as a real guide for what's happening with long COVID among Latinos because all of the statistics that exist thus far are not accurate. The federal data that's available is using a small sliver of the population. It's an online survey that's done semimonthly. And so the data that we get from that is that yes, Latinos are reporting having long COVID at a higher rate, 36% of Latinos have had or do have long COVID.
But part of that is that a lot of people do not realize that they have long COVID. So when you're talking about Latinos in particular, one of the other people who I spoke with for this story, who wanted to use the name Victoria, she figured out herself that she had long COVID, but she's never been able to get a doctor to diagnose it. But in addition to that, she sees so many people in her community having long COVID.
So first you have lack of diagnosis, right? Especially among Latinos because there is either, you know, a limited amount of time that doctors have with their patients. You know, we talk about like the average 15 minute visit and doctors are rushed and they don't, may not know their patients. Well, doctors don't have education to know what long COVID looks like and then sometimes what happens is stereotyping. So racism in medicine, you know, with doctors assuming, OK, here is a diabetic patient whose diabetes is really worsened. That's just because she's Latina, or here is another Latino patient who has developed high blood pressure. Well, that's just because cardiovascular disease is, is high among Latinos.
When I first started to report this story, some researchers and clinicians were kind of wondering aloud, well, what's the, what's the reason for this? You know, nobody thought that there was a genetic or, you know, a genetic ethnic reason. But what became clear, really pretty early on in the reporting was that this has a lot to do with who was protecting the country early in the pandemic. And that was people of color.
Let me ask you lastly, I know you are experiencing long COVID yourself. How has your own experience of this kind of played into your reporting on it?
NAVARRO: Well, in the first part, I think that it's motivated me to report on long COVID. You know, I still see that there is not enough reporting on long COVID period and it ties in with the drive to move back to normal, you know, to let's leave the pandemic behind us. And so if you don't report, you know, if you don't see media reporting on long COVID, you might think that it doesn't exist.
So that's the first part of it, you know, is that I have experienced for three years, this really catastrophic event in my health and in my life. And I wanted to tell other people's stories about that, especially these stories of you know, people who are already, you know, underserved and marginalized, who are really fighting to have to get help with it.
David Colburn
REGIONAL- The COVID news is good for the North Country this week, as a declining number of hospitalizations has caused the Centers for Disease Control to lower the regions COVID activity level from medium to low. The CDC-designated health service area that includes St. Louis, Carlton, Cook, Itasca, Koochiching, Lake, and Pine counties had been one of the few remaining areas in the state with elevated levels of COVID activity in recent weeks, but hospital admissions dropped by almost 45 percent last week, taking the rate per 100,000 people down to 7.1, solidly below the 10 per 100,000 benchmark for the elevated CDC category. The northeast region remains well above the last hard statewide data reported by the Minnesota Department of Health on Jan. 8, which was 1.32 per 100,000. Thats in line with overall declines posted for the state and the nation last week, and better than the national rate of 8.01 hospitalizations per 100,000. Another measure in northeast Minnesota that had bucked the statewide trend was the level of the COVID virus in wastewater, but it finally fell in line last week, declining by 19.2 percent. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, noted the downward COVID trend in a podcast last Thursday. I do feel quite confident that we have, in fact, reached a recent peak in activity and are now starting to see declines, Osterholm said. There is still a lot of COVID transmission in our communities. I actually had a physician this past week that informed me that he lived on COVID Avenue, based on how many people in his neighborhood were currently affected. The good news is that while we are seeing lots of cases, the number is starting to drop. One statistic that hasnt seen a decline is the number of deaths attributed to COVID, Osterholm said. Deaths have continued to increase in the U.S., approaching nearly 1800 a week towards the end of December, more than 250 deaths a day. Because of the delays involved in obtaining death data, it could still take several weeks to see some apparent declines matching up with the declines in cases as of now. Osterholm contrasted the death toll and vaccination rates for COVID against those for influenza. If you look at COVID, it is killing Americans at a rate almost three times higher than influenza, he said. Yet weve seen influenza vaccine coverage this season approaching almost 50 percent among children and adults, while uptake of the latest dose for COVID sits at roughly eight percent in children and 21 percent in adults. So clearly, we have a significant challenge here. MDH data clearly shows that the 65 and older segment of the population is bearing the brunt of the winter COVID surge. Hospitalization rates for this group were at a staggering 97.06 per 100,000 on Jan. 7, more than ten times higher than the overall statewide rate of 9.47, and those over 85 were far and away the most likely in that age group to die from COVID. Native Americans had the highest hospitalization rates of any ethnic group throughout the month of December, although in early January the rate came down to about the same as Blacks, at about 11 per 100,000. No tripledemic Osterholm also took time in his podcast to dispute the suggestion made in many media circles that the country has been experiencing a triple epidemic of COVID, influenza, and RSV. While health officials have repeatedly talked about the challenges of all three illnesses being active at the same time and the potential impact on the health care system, the data simply doesnt support the notion of a tripledemic. A triple epidemic means that were seeing all three of the viruses at epidemic levels, and that just hasnt happened, Osterholm said. RSV and influenza cases and deaths have been well within the range wed expect them to be at this point in the respiratory virus season. In Minnesota, influenza activity has remained at the minimal level throughout the entire influenza season we are the only state that has experienced this very, very quiet flu season. This has ultimately been a very average flu season in terms of the amount of activity and mortality weve seen.
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Four years have passed since the first case of Covid was confirmed in the UK - the beginning of a pandemic that would change how we all lived in our lives and kill more than 200,000 people.
After two years of intermittent lockdowns and restrictions on what people could and could not do, in February 2022 the government lifted all legal Covid rules as members of the public were asked to practice safe and responsible behaviours.
People were no longer required to wear masks in public places, limit the number of people they could see, or provide negative Covid tests to enter some venues as had been the case during previous lockdowns.
Experts say its important for people to do what they can to reduce transmission of Covid, including getting a vaccine for those who are eligible
(PA)
After most people got vaccinated against the virus, the UK began to follow a living with Covid strategy as health officials sought to manage the infection like other respiratory illnesses such as the cold and flu.
But while virus restrictions have been lifted, Covid continues circulating in the UK. But just how prevalent is it, how is it affecting the NHS and are people still dying from the illness?
The estimated prevalence of Covid in England and Scotland was 2.3 per cent ( around 1,352,000 people) according to the most recently available official data from 10 January 2024.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) and UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) winter infection study estimates the number of people who have Covid because it is no longer mandatory for people to report their test results if they get infected.
The most recent report said the prevalence of Covid in England and Scotland had decreased in the TWO weeks leading up to 10 January 2024.
It was down from 4.1 per cent on 27 December 2023 and remains much lower than the rate seen during previous waves of the virus.
Professor Steven Riley, director general for data and surveillance at UKHSA said the figures confirmed the early signs of a decline in Covid across the country.
But he warned that this did not mean the risk of becoming ill with Covidhas gone away.
A view of the National Covid Memorial Wall in London
(EPA)
In previous years, we have sometimes seen a decline in early January followed by an increase over the next few weeks, so it remains important that we continue to do what we can to reduce transmission, he said.
Those people who are most at risk of severe illness from Covid can still receive a seasonal vaccination until the end of this month, and we urge anyone eligible who has not already done so to come forward.
Far fewer people are being admitted to hospital with Covid than during previous years, although a significant are still ending up on wards for treatment.
According to official data, 3,790 people were admitted to hospital with Covid between 12 and 19 January.
This is compared with a peak of 38,000 people in the week to 20 January 2021.
In the week ending 12 January 2024, there were 388 deaths involving Covid in England and Wales and 277 deaths due to Covid, according to official data.
The most deaths reported on a single day at the height of the pandemic was on 19 January 2021, when 1,490 fatalities were logged.
