Category: Corona Virus

Prescribing PrEP: Its Easy as 1, 2, 3 KFF PrEP, prescribing PrEP, motivation, PrEP follow-up, no prior training, infectious disease doctor, HIV doctor In this video, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis explains to providers that if they are able to prescribe any medicine, they can prescribe PrEP. No pri

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Talk with Your Patients About PrEP | Covid-19 | news-journal.com - Longview News-Journal

Prescribing PrEP: Its Easy as 1, 2, 3 KFF PrEP, prescribing PrEP, motivation, PrEP follow-up, no prior training, infectious disease doctor, HIV doctor In this video, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis explains to providers that if they are able to prescribe any medicine, they can prescribe PrEP. No pri

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Millions of Americans are still experiencing long COVID more than four years since the global COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic.

According to the most recent federal Household Pulse Survey, between Jan. 9, and Feb. 5, 6.8% of U.S. adults currently have long COVID and 17.6% have had long COVID.

Using 2020 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, this means 17.5 million adults currently have long COVID and 45.4 million people have ever had long COVID.

Since the early days of the pandemic, scientists have learned a great deal about what puts someone at risk for long COVID, but researchers say we are still "scratching the surface" when it comes to our understanding of what causes the condition or how to treat it.

"We know much more today than we did four years ago; that's a fact," Dr. Alba Azola, an assistant professor of physical medicine and Rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins Medicine, told ABC News. "But we do not have clarity on the exact pathophysiology or that mechanism that's driving those symptoms."

"We're just scratching the surface, we're just beginning to understand what makes those people that develop long COVID different than those people that have COVID and completely recover after," she added.

Long COVID occurs when patients still have symptoms at least four weeks after they have cleared the infection. In some cases, symptoms can be experienced for months or years.

Symptoms vary and can include fatigue, difficulty breathing, headaches, brain fog, joint and muscle pain and continued loss of taste and smell, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Azola said not all symptoms are visible in every single patient, but they can experience a wide range of them.

Long COVID most often occurs in people who had severe illness but anyone can develop the condition. People who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 are at higher risk of developing long COVID, according to the CDC.

Scientists are not sure what causes long COVID but have identified risk factors including having underlying conditions or experiencing multi-system inflammatory syndrome due to COVID.

Research has also found that patients with long COVID tend to have lower cortisol levels and lower testosterone levels.

Another theory is that virus particles may become active again, causing people to suffer long-term symptoms.

"What we want, of course, it's just to be able to diagnose, and to treat," Dr. Fernando Carnavali, director of the Mount Sinai Center for Post-COVID Care in New York, told ABC News. "We have people that are really suffering with this, brain fog and other symptoms that are significantly impacting the quality of life. And it feels because of that some of [the research] is not enough. But I think that we are on the way."

Research is also not clear about why some patients recover and others don't.

New York City resident David Speal, 41, contracted COVID-19 in March 2020. He became seriously ill and was hospitalized at Lenox Hill Hospital. After he was discharged from the hospital, he said he experienced a consistently high heart rate.

It was several months later that he was diagnosed with long COVID. It's been a long road to recovery, but Speal has regained most of his health since his initial infection.

However, he said his wife is suffering. Speal said she contracted COVID twice -- the second time resulting in brain fog so severe that she no longer works, but its unclear whether or not she receives disability.

"I'm not 100%. Sometimes, you do a lot, you get really tired, and you can tell like, 'Okay, you know, this is still, it's still a part of me, but not to the point where I can't function,'" he told ABC News. "My biggest question is, well, how did I recover? You know, like, what happened?" We don't truly know what was the turning point for me when everything went normal."

Because those with long COVID can experience a variety of symptoms, there is no single treatment or cure for the condition.

Patients and health care providers often have to work together to create a personal care plan to manage symptoms.

"We need to remind ourselves that without really knowing the pathophysiology of the disease, without knowing biomarkers, it's complex," Carnavali said. "There are certain things that people been trying and some of these treatments do potentially have some benefit."

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) RECOVER Initiative launched several clinical trials of potential treatments for long COVID.

Currently, the only medications or treatments that can be used aim to alleviate some long COVID symptoms, but arent specifically for long COVID. Speal said he was prescribed propranolol, a medication that slows down the heart rate and makes it easier for the heart to pump blood.

Speal said he took an extremely low dose of the medicine for about two years until he got to a point where he no longer needed to take the medication.

Azola said that while she expects that clinical trials will eventually result in effective treatments, she urges patients and the general public to be patient.

"The reality is that the science is moving forward, but it's going to take a long time for that to translate into clinical improvement or treatment," she said. "So, there's a big canyon between science and clinical treatments that are available to us."

Doctors say that one of the most difficult things about treating long COVID patients is not having an answer about why they're feeling the way they feel or how to best treat them.

"I would probably say that's one of the hardest things about being a physician that takes care of this patient population," Azola said. "Because as physicians, we want to help people, we want to get them better, we want to have those answers. But in the case of long COVID, it's quite frustrating. We don't have those answers."

"You really need to kind of get comfortable with not knowing ... but also being curious and partnering with my patients to try to find creative ways that can be beneficial to them or finding creative ways to make their quality of life better," she added.

Azola said she currently helps patients better manage symptoms and pain so that, even if they are not free for long COVID symptoms, they can at least participate in their day-to-day activities.

Speal said it's often hard to describe to other people who have not gone through COVID what he may be experiencing, even his own family and friends.

"People say, 'No, it'll be okay' or 'Try this, do that' but it's like the only way you can truly understand long COVID is if it happens to you, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody," he said. "The reality is it's so hard to explain to people, because every case is totally different."

Azola also cautioned family members and caregivers of long COVID patients to not dismiss them or how they feel.

"At times, by pushing themselves too much, or trying to go beyond their energy envelope, they can actually end up harming themselves and losing function," she said. "So, it is certainly important for families and people that have caregivers to continue to help them because that's the only way they're gonna be able to get better."

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4 years later, experts are just beginning to 'scratch the surface' of understanding long COVID - ABC News

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A new report has sharply criticized the governments response to the coronavirus pandemic, writing that lockdowns, school closures and vaccine mandates were "catastrophic errors" resulting in many Americans losing faith in public health institutions.

The report, published this week by the non-profit Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP), paints a damning indictment of the governments role in the crisis and offers ten lessons that must be learned, to avoid the same mistakes from being repeated.

Some of the guidance includes halting all binding agreements or pledges to the World Health Organization (WHO), term limits for all senior health agency positions as well as limiting the powers of health agencies to make sure they are strictly advisory and do not have the power to set laws or mandates.

Then-President Donald J. Trump listens to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaking with members of the coronavirus task force during a briefing in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 17, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

COVID LOCKDOWNS INCREASED ADHD RISK AMONG 10-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN, NEW STUDY FINDS

The paper, titled "COVID Lessons Learned A Retrospective After Four Years," states that granting unprecedented powers to public health agencies, many of which imposed strict limits on basic civil liberties, had little positive benefit and instead helped stoke fear among the public.

"Conventional wisdom pre-COVID was that communities respond best to pandemics when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted," the authors wrote. "During COVID, the public health establishment followed the opposite principle: they intentionally stoked and amplified fear, which overlaid enormous economic, social, educational and health harms on top of the harms of the virus itself."

The report was written by Scott Atlas, M.D., a senior fellow in health policy at the Hoover Institution and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Steve Hanke, Ph.D., a professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University, Philip Kerpen, the president of the Committee to Unleash and Casey B. Mulligan, Ph.D., a professor in economics at the University of Chicago. It draws on various reports and research papers that studied the pandemic.

People in cars attend Easter Sunday services at the Daytona Beach Drive-in Christian Church as a way to practice social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

"SARS-CoV2 was a dangerous virus, but a calm, proportionate response would have applied the lessons from past influenza pandemics and used existing pandemic response plans. Instead, from the moment the virus was detected in America, the public health community and politicians spread an outsized message of fear and doom," the paper reads.

The group wrote that lockdowns did not work to substantially reduce deaths or stop viral circulation, and although they were timed to claim credit for declining waves of the virus, they "rarely had any discernable casual impact."

In reality, one of the results was that peoples health was negatively impacted as medical procedures were canceled, stoking fear, they wrote.

For instance, from April 2020 through the end of 2021, there were 171,000 non-COVID excess deaths, whereas there were none in Sweden, a country that did not lock down despite being heavily pressured to do so.

People gather in support of continuing the school mask mandate outside the Loudon County Government Center prior to a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, January 18, 2022, in Leesburg, VA. The report states that masking had little or no value to fight the spread of the disease. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

COVID IMPACTS: PEOPLE LOST TRACK OF TIME AS A RESULT OF PANDEMIC LOCKDOWNS, SAYS STUDY

"A much wiser strategy than issuing lockdown orders would have been to tell the American people the truth, stick to the facts, educate citizens about the balance of risks, and let individuals make their own decisions about whether to keep their businesses open, whether to socially isolate, attend church, send their children to school, and so on," the authors wrote.

School shutdowns caused dramatic and irrefutable damage to children, they wrote, with reports of poor learning, school dropouts, social isolation, mental illness, drug abuse, suicidal ideation and 300,000 cases of child abuse unreported in the spring of 2020.

Masks also had little or no value and were possibly harmful, they wrote, "amplifying fears by creating the irrational belief that an unmasked face presented a threat, causing conflict and division among citizens, and giving high-risk people the mistaken impression that masks were protective, potentially resulting in some people risking exposure who otherwise may not have."

They blasted the CDC for continuing to advise mask wearing "contrary to evidence . . . [and] undermining its credibility."

On an economic level, the lockdowns put over 49 million Americans out of work, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey data. Unemployment benefits approved by Congress prolonged unemployment and associated economic underperformance, too.

The report also criticized the media, Big Tech, the academic science and public health community for stifling debate.

U.S. President Joe Biden receives his updated COVID-19 booster in the South Court Auditorium at the White House campus on October 25, 2022. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

"Anthony Fauci, the head of the largest federal grantmaking entity, created an environment in which it was very difficult for most medical experts to break with the dominant narratives on lockdowns, masks, or overwhelmed hospitals," the report states.

"The National Institutes of Health (NIH) became the principal advocate of lockdown policies, but failed to run high-quality trials of repurposed drugs and non-pharmaceutical interventions."

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Elsewhere, the report praised the Project Warp Speed for getting effective monoclonal antibody treatments and vaccines in record time, but it failed to assess their safety. The authors wrote that the mandates and associated pressure campaign were wrong and undermined informed consent.

The authors recommend that Congress and the states define by law "public health emergency" with strict limitations on powers conferred to the executives and time limits that require legislation to be extended.

"Crises are when checks and balances and well-functioning institutions are most needed not when they should be discarded and decision-making outsourced to alleged experts like Francis Collins, who casually confessed to a completely incorrect decision calculus years later," they wrote.

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New report blasts government's COVID response, warns of repeating same mistakes - Fox News

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Teardrop-shaped particles designed to inactivate multiple strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus could one day complement existing treatments for COVID-19, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Michigan and Jiangnan University in Wuxi, China.

The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The COVID mRNA vaccines have been highly effective at preventing severe cases of the disease, but COVID-19 can still hospitalize vaccinated individuals, especially the elderly. New strains also continue to emerge, requiring constant updates to vaccines to maintain their effectiveness.

"Our immune system has to learn about a virus to generate the antibodies to fight back against infection, but by that time it may be too late for some people," said Nicholas Kotov, the Irving Langmuir Distinguished University Professor of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at U-M and co-corresponding author of the study.

Treatments are essential to help people at risk of severe COVID-19, but there are only a few options on the market today. Pfizer's Paxlovid antiviral pill has become the go-to treatment after it received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, with clinical trials showing hospitalization risk reduced by 89%. However, it may only reduce that risk by 50%, possibly as low as 26%, and the pill might not be appropriate for patients with cardiovascular disease.

"The nanoparticles could help vulnerable people during outbreaks of pandemic virus," said Liguang Xu, professor of food science and technology at Jiangnan University and co-corresponding author of the study.

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The SARS-CoV-2 spike proteinthe piece of the virus that both allows it to attack human cells and be attacked by the immune systemis made of building blocks called amino acids, and the sequence of amino acids may change from one strain of the virus to another. Antibodies tend to target a specific amino acid sequence, which is why these changes can enable new strains to evade immunity acquired from prior exposure to other SARS-CoV-2 variants or older versions of the mRNA vaccines.

Instead, the team's nanoparticles work on the direction and degree of the twist in spike proteins, also known as their chirality.

"The overall structures of coronavirus spike proteins are similar, and the chirality of these spike proteins is the same, so the particles can interact with many coronaviruses," said Chuanlai Xu, professor of food science and technology who led the work done at Jiangnan University.

The team tested the particles on common cold viruses and the Wuhan-1 and omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2. They did this by treating mice infected with pseudoviruses that bore coronavirus spike proteins on their surfaces, with different pseudoviruses representing different strains. When the mice inhaled the particles, the treatment cleared 95% of the viruses from their lungs, and they could resist infection for up to three days.

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Chirality comes in two directions, left- and right-handed. Coronavirus spike proteins have left-handed twists, so left-handed twists at the nanoparticles' points fit best.

"The matching left-handed twist makes the virus better at binding with the particles than with animal and human cells," said Andr Farias de Moura, associate professor of chemistry at the Federal University of So Carlos in Brazil and a co-author of the study. "This makes it more likely that the virus will be captured by the particles before it has a chance to infect cells."

The researchers still don't know how quickly the particles are expelled from the body and whether they come with any dangerous side effects in humans, but they hope to learn those details with further study.

The study also included researchers at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College and the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials.

More information: Rui Gao et al, Tapered chiral nanoparticles as broad-spectrum thermally stable antivirals for SARS-CoV-2 variants, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2310469121

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Nanoparticles target multiple COVID variants through the twist in the spike protein - Phys.org

From June 2020 until the third outbreak, life in Taiwan was pre-pandemic, except for the mandatory mask and temperature checks in the public transportation introduced on March 31st, 2020 and at large events9. Large events with tens of thousands of visitors were held, such as the Mayday New Years Eve pop concert at Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium on December 31st, 202010. Both the 2nd and 3rd outbreaks involved the Alpha variant (B.1.1.7), which Hsu et al.11 estimated to have a 1.44-fold higher infection probability and 57% higher basic reproduction number based on household transmissions during the 1st and 2nd outbreak, in agreement with previous estimates of 4390%12. Evidently, the measures in place to reduce transmissibility and prevent a large-scale outbreak were not sufficient, so Taiwan should have had a surge in cases of community transmission existed during the two periods without local infections. In addition, the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) was proactively seeking out patients with severe respiratory symptoms in its database and allowing all hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies to see the patients travel history obtained from the National Immigration Agency from February 18th, 2020 onwards13. The third outbreak has been traced to a cluster of infected China Airline pilots and the Novotel at Taoyuan International Airport violating the quarantine rules by housing quarantined flight crews and local guests in the same building14,15. This initial failure of the mandatory quarantine at the border and contact tracing during the third outbreak combined with the success of contact tracing during the 2nd and 3rd outbreaks and the transmissibility reduction measures remaining the same, implies that Taiwans success was due to border control and tracing of contacts upon suspicion. Thus we can with confidence say that Taiwan ended the three community outbreaks thanks to contact tracing, testing, and isolation. This leads us to the conclusion that Taiwan serves as an exemplary case, implementing a near ideal non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI).

The Taiwanese COVID-19 control strategy implemented by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), activated on January 20th, 202013, is based on six main pillars: (a) border control with quarantine upon arrival, (b) self-health monitoring when having visited a place with known cases, (c) testing when showing symptoms and seeking medical care, (d) mandatory supervised quarantine of confirmed infected and individuals at high risk of having been infected, (e) contact tracing, and (f) a four-level system of measures to suppress community spreading. These are devised to control the effective reproduction number, i.e. the expected number of people an infected individual will transmit the disease to while infectious. The reproduction number can be seen as the transmission risk per contact (transmissibility), times the number of contacts per day, and times the number of days the person is infectious. From June 7th until May 11th, 2020, no restrictions on the size of gatherings, i.e. curbing of the number of contacts, existed15,16. Taiwan had a system with four levels of non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs). The level 3 measures in place from May 19th, 2021 until July 27th, 2021 consist of mandatory wearing of masks at all times outside private spaces and social distancing, which reduce the transmissibility; indoor gatherings limited to five people and closure of certain businesses, partly including schools and preschools, which reduce the number of contacts; and mandatory COVID-19 testing in areas where community transmission has taken place, which reduces the number of days an infected person can transmit the disease before being quarantined17,18,19. As demonstrated by numerous countries, such as the United Kingdom and United States, community suppression measures, such as lockdowns, alone do not end a community outbreak.

The key to ending an outbreak is to focus on contact tracing to bring up the number of suspected and increase testing and isolation/care capacity. The focus on contact tracing and bringing up the number of suspected is key because one needs to prevent every infected person from infecting a new person to end the outbreak. It makes the ratio of confirmed infected to suspected the essential metric to follow. The Lancet Commission Task Force on public health measures to suppress the pandemic also report on the effectiveness of contact tracing and quarantine measures, albeit not on its use to end outbreaks20. Since May 19th, 2021, Taiwan has implemented an SMS text message contact tracing system based on each person upon entry in each business scanning a place specific QR code that generates a unique SMS sent to 1922the Taiwan Center for Disease Control hotline, which helps scale the contact tracing21.

Using the exponential model to fit the 7-day average of local & unknown confirmed to suspected cases, we obtained a forecast that differed by only 11 days from the real observation crossing the threshold, showing that our method can predict the end date of a community outbreak when the policy remains unchanged. Taiwan ended the three community outbreaks thanks to contact tracing, testing, and isolation. In addition to forecasting outbreak endpoints, we posit that our model can serve as a metric for assessing the alignment of an outbreak with the projected trend, indicative of effective adherence to an ideal Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention (NPI). We specifically emphasize its utility as a metric for gauging the effectiveness of contact tracing-observing that an increase in the number of suspected cases relative to confirmed cases is crucial for ending an outbreak. As illustrated in supplementary Fig. 4, our model forecasts that the outbreak will continue indefinitely until the contact tracing has been scaled up so the number of suspected cases enables capture of infected cases. The dual functionality of our model positions it as a valuable tool for governments, also aiding in the discernment of the optimal timing for easing stringent NPI measures, such as lockdowns.

After this report on how Taiwan ended three outbreaks, we hope the world would take notice and learn from the Taiwanese strategy, so unnecessary suffering and deaths can be avoided in future pandemics. Like Wang et al.13, we think Taiwan is an example of how a society can respond quickly to a crisis and protect the interests of its citizens.

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Taiwan ended third COVID-19 community outbreak as forecasted | Scientific Reports - Nature.com

A study published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Risk Analysis suggests a higher probability of COVID-19 originating from a laboratory rather than naturally.

The origin of COVID-19 is highly debated most studies have focused on a zoonotic origin, but research from the journal Risk Analysis, examined the likelihood of an unnatural origin (i.e. from a laboratory.)

The results indicate a greater likelihood of an unnatural than natural origin of the virus. The researchers used an established risk analysis tool for differentiating natural and unnatural epidemics, the modified Grunow-Finke assessment tool (mGFT) to study the origin of COVID-19. This risk assessment cannot prove the specific origin of COVID-19 but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.

The modified Grunow-Finke assessment tool (mGFT) is a methodology designed to evaluate the likelihood of whether an epidemic originated from natural or unnatural (e.g., laboratory) sources. This tool is an adaptation of the original Grunow-Finke assessment tool, developed to assess the risk and origin of infectious disease outbreaks more systematically.

The mGFT operates by analyzing specific criteria and evidence related to the outbreak in question. These criteria may include the geographical distribution of the disease, the presence of the pathogen in laboratories, the natural reservoir of the virus, the timing of the outbreak relative to other events, and any unusual patterns in the diseases spread or manifestation.

Each criterion is scored based on the available evidence, and these scores are then compiled to provide an overall assessment. The tool helps researchers, epidemiologists, and public health officials to systematically evaluate the data and determine the most probable origin of an outbreak, supporting more informed decisions on public health responses and investigations into disease origins.

Reference: Use of a risk assessment tool to determine the origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by Xin Chen, Fatema Kalyar, Abrar Ahmad Chughtai and Chandini Raina MacIntyre, 15 March 2024, Risk Analysis. DOI: 10.1111/risa.14291

Abstract

The origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is contentious. Most studies have focused on a zoonotic origin, but definitive evidence such as an intermediary animal host is lacking. We used an established risk analysis tool for differentiating natural and unnatural epidemics, the modified GrunowFinke assessment tool (mGFT) to study the origin of SARS-COV-2. The mGFT scores 11 criteria to provide a likelihood of natural or unnatural origin. Using published literature and publicly available sources of information, we applied the mGFT to the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The mGFT scored 41/60 points (68%), with high inter-rater reliability (100%), indicating a greater likelihood of an unnatural than natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. This risk assessment cannot prove the origin of SARS-CoV-2 but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.

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Breaking: Emerging Evidence Suggests COVID-19 Originated in a Lab - SciTechDaily

Aditi Debnath: The COVID-19 pandemic, whether we were infected or not, took a great toll on the mental health of millions of Americans. There was fear, there was grief, anger. How does that mental harm continue to affect people today?

Dr. Jasmine Zapata: I'll never forget the first time that even as a health care provider, I had to face that same exact fear. I got COVID when it was still very early in the pandemic, even before the vaccines came out, back in November of 2020. It was a very scary time. There were reports on the news of people dying. There was so much fear that I had. And myself, even my husband, one of my children, had it as well. And to think about, what if we don't survive? What if I don't make it? What if I'm not still here in two weeks? Was terrifying. And I even still am healing and recovering from that traumatic time. Also, I'll never forget the first time that I had to go into a patient room that was positive for COVID. And I remember being in all of my protective gear, and just standing outside of that door for about a minute or two before I went in, knowing that I was going to expose myself going in there. And it was very, very scary. That is just a small example of the mental health toll that it took even on healthcare providers, myself, but then others across the country who were on the front lines. So you can only imagine how hard of a mental health toll this took on families and communities. And so we're definitely still seeing the ripple effects of that today. Now, not only the mental health impacts of having COVID-19, or having a loved one with it, but also the different ripple effects that it had in our community from a social and emotional standpoint, from a economic standpoint. There were people who lost jobs, people who were displaced from their homes. A lot of the social impacts that it had, we're definitely still seeing that right now. In fact, some people say that this, we're in another pandemic, which is a mental health pandemic now. We are definitely having a youth mental health crisis. We're seeing increased rates of self-harm. We're seeing increased rates of suicidal thoughts and other mental health concerns across all ages in our state. And it's incredibly important to continue raising awareness about this very issue.

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Dr. Jasmine Zapata on the toll of COVID-19 on mental health - PBS Wisconsin

COVID-19 is no longer among the top five causes of death for Wyoming residents, according to newly published Department of Health statistics for 2023. The coronavirus had been a leading cause of death for Wyomingites ever since 2020.

Among Wyoming residents, there were a total of 5,566 deaths last year. That's a decrease from 2021, during the height of the pandemic, when Wyoming saw 6,574 deaths in a single year. In fact, 2023 saw the lowest death toll since 2019.

Kim Deti, spokeswoman for the Wyoming Department of Health, said many factors affect the death toll. Wyoming's population is both aging and growing, so some increase in the death toll is to be expected. But the impact of the pandemic still stands out in the data.

"What we did see with the pandemic is some very significant jumps in deaths," Deti said. "And particularly, if you're looking at that data in 2021, that's when we had the delta variant and it hit some people pretty hard."

The top five leading causes of death last year were heart diseases, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, accidents or adverse effects, and cerebrovascular diseases.

In both 2020 and 2021, the coronavirus was the third leading cause of death in the state. In 2022, it was the fifth leading cause.

Deti said COVID-19 has now fallen to possibly the tenth or eleventh most common cause of death, and is certainly killing fewer people than it did during its height. But there may be more COVID-19 deaths occurring than the state is aware of, given that testing has decreased as the threat has receded.

"Part of the problem with that is, we've been very consistent in counting COVID-19-related deaths based on what's been listed on death certificates by the people who fill them out," Deti said. "If there's less testing going on, they may not put that on there. It may or may not have been a factor in someone's death, and we may not have the test results to indicate it. People just aren't testing the same manner that they were."

Births among Wyoming residents have also gone down, but not as much. There were just under 6,000 newborns in 2023. Deti said this continues a well-known trend.

"Other than the slight increase that we had in 2021, we have had fewer births, pretty consistently each year, among Wyoming resident mothers for quite some time," she said.

Deti said the most common birth month of 2023 was August, during which 553 Wyoming mothers gave birth.

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After three years, COVID-19 is no longer a leading cause of death in Wyoming - Wyoming Public Media