Category: Corona Virus

Although vaccines and treatments are now available that didnt exist when the U.S. first declared a public health emergency in response to the novel coronavirus, the virus is still out there evolving. In fact, our immune responses are naturally influencing the trajectory of that evolution.

Thinking in terms of survival of the fittest, a virus that can evade vaccines or natural immunity will be more fit than its predecessor, Wei said. That means it will be better equipped to survive, multiply and infect others. The take-home message isnt that people shouldnt protect themselves, Wei said, but that a virus that still infects about 100,000 Americans daily isnt going to get tired, bored or just give up.

Viruses dont have a personality. They just survive, Wei said. We want to make sure we are prepared.

Spartan researchers are bringing the power of mathematics, computation and artificial intelligence to bear in the effort to prepare for evolving infectious viruses. Credit: Gerd Altmann/Pixabay

This new grant, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is an investment to improve our readiness through cutting-edge technology. But it also leverages the expertise and experience of Wei and Zheng.

Zheng has led NIH-funded grants for two decades, although this will be his first with an explicit focus on the coronavirus.

Im very proud that this is the first one, he said. But we dont want it to be the last. This new grant will expand my labs capacity to accommodate more needs campuswide and we want to use that to stimulate more collaboration.

Zheng brings a unique virology skillset to MSU. He first was recruited in 2005 as an HIV researcher and, over time, his lab has grown to study the molecular biology of influenza and Ebola. When the coronavirus pandemic struck, he knew his team could provide valuable experimental infrastructure to help better study the new virus.

For example, his team developed less dangerous versions of the virus along with lab-grown cells for these pseudo-viruses to infect while preserving the biochemistry of real, clinical infections. The researchers also created very sensitive assays, or tests, that would reveal which viruses infected which cells. All of this provided researchers safer, faster and easier ways to study a complex virus while generating valuable biological data.

Similarly, in early 2020, Weis team started putting its unique skills to work combatting the coronavirus.

Before the pandemic, we had had success in worldwide competitions, being recognized as one of the top labs in combining AI and mathematics for drug discovery, said Wei, who also holds an appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering.

Weis research had focused on using AI to help design new pharmaceuticals in partnership with Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Within days of Chinas Wuhan lockdown in January 2020, Weis team started sharing its AI resources to help find drugs to fight the coronavirus and reveal new potential drug targets. But the researchers also recognized their algorithms could do more.

With a global community working to fight the coronavirus, there was a wealth of new genomic data describing the virus being shared regularly. Wei and his team saw an opportunity to combine that data with their AI framework to understand how the virus was mutating as time went on.

For example, they were among the first to see how survival of the fittest was playing out in the virus and steering its evolution, Wei said. His team then used that knowledge to look ahead and identify two potentially vital sites on the viruss spike protein, the protein the virus uses to latch onto cells and infect them. Mutations in those two spike protein sites would later turn out to play crucial roles in the viruss most prevalent variants, Wei said.

We took what we were doing with deep learning and mathematics, then combined that with the viral genomic data to understand the evolution of the virus, look at its trajectory and ask whats going to happen, Wei said. That gives us a way to predict what can happen in the future.

Wei and Zheng have been collaborating for about a year, starting before the grant was awarded. Their teamwork has informed precise algorithms with real-world data and provided real experimental results to compare with AI predictions.

We need to have that interdisciplinary collaboration for this to work, Zheng said. Everything the computer models predicted, we had to confirm with experiments in a living system.

Although Weis team validated its AI with laboratory experiments, the researchers still knew theyd need to prove their algorithms could work with a brand-new variant with very little data. Then, in the fall of 2021, the first omicron variant appeared.

Back in late November, people didnt know what was going to happen, Wei said.

Researchers and public health officials responded immediately, but the process of experimenting and gathering data takes weeks. Meanwhile, Weis team put its AI to the test.

Their projections showed this first iteration of omicron would be more infectious, better at eluding the protection of vaccines and less responsive to antibody treatments than earlier variants.

Within days, we had our predictions, Wei said. A month and a half later, everything we predicted proved to be true by experimental labs around the world. Using AI, we can give people a month or two to prepare.

Then, in early 2022, a new subvariant of omicron called BA.2 started spreading. A similar scenario played out. Weis team predicted it would be more infective and even more elusive, which would allow it to become the next dominant variant.

We made our predictions on February 11, and on March 26, the World Health Organization announced it was the dominant form of the virus, Wei said.

Now that scientists and officials better understand omicron, the newer versions arent garnering the same level of attention as their predecessors. But new variants and subvariants are still emerging. With support from the National Institutes of Health, the MSU team is working to ensure we stay prepared for whats next, whether thats a new variant, something more familiar like the flu or something entirely different.

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MSU researchers use AI to stay ahead of COVID-19 and other diseases - MSUToday

AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) COVID-19 cases are rising across the Amarillo area, Texas, and the nation.

The city of Amarillo is seeing more than 800 more active cases than we had this time last month.

Dr. Rodney Young, Regional Chair of Family & Community Medicine at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center said what is causing the rise in new cases is a new subvariant.

It started with the Omicron, then with the BA.2 and now there is a subvariant of BA.2, said Dr. Young.

He said cases are likely to continue to rise as July 4th draws near and families gather.

When you have occasions to gather, that is the way it spreads very easily person to person, said Dr. Young.

Dr. Young added as cases do continue to rise, an upside is that they have not seen a rise in hospitalization the way they did in the earlier stages of the pandemic.

He said patients with the subvariant are not presenting with severe COVID-19 symptoms, some are presenting with a little cough, runny nose, and watery eyes.

A number of the cases that we are diagnosing now that werent COVID a few weeks ago, tend to be folks they are feeling like they are having flares in allergy symptoms or cold type symptoms, said Dr. Young.

Dr. Young said that those who are vaccinated and who get subvariant COVID illnesses are less likely to get less severe forms of the illness or experience long covid.

Dr. Young added the virus is here to stay and it will always be a part of the disease landscape to some extent and added what the medical community hopes to happen is that it moves from a pandemic to an endemic.

Some years or some times are worse than others, but hopefully there is enough immunity around and enough measures that we can take to help mitigate the spread within a community, said Dr. Young.

Dr. Young said he doesnt have an exact answer to when that could happen, but he said its possible we could be seeing the early stages of that now.

Dr. Young reiterates that the best way to keep yourself protected from these rising cases is social distancing, good hygiene practices, and getting boosted if you havent done so already.

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Coronavirus cases on the rise once again - KAMR - MyHighPlains.com

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COVID-19s 6th wave begins, with more seriously ill and more deaths - The Jerusalem Post

A new COVID wave appears to be starting in New York City, fueled by the strongest subvariant of the omicron strain of coronavirus to date, one of the city's top epidemiologists said Tuesday.

The BA.5 subvariant, first seen in South Africa and then Portugal, is considered by some experts to be the "worst version" of omicron seen yet, given its apparent capacity to escape prior immunity and transmit more readily.

Dr. Jay Varma, a Weill Cornell epidemiologist and formerly then-mayor Bill de Blasio's top public health advisor during the pandemic, said infections appear to have stabilized at a high level in the city, rather than dropping.

"The decline of reported #COVID19 cases in NYC has stopped. Reported cases are at a high plateau, which means actual transmission is very high when you account for the >20x under-counting. This is likely the beginning of a BA.5 wave," Varma tweeted.

Transmission rates in the city hit two-month lows last week, but have started to tick up since then. The health department's own testing says BA.5 accounts for 17% of infections, but that data is almost two weeks old now. Nationally, CDC data pegs BA.5 at nearly 37% of cases.

"Experience from other countries means there will be another big increase in NYC #COVID19 infections, including among those who have had #Omicron in past few months," Varma went on to add.

He did note that it's still unclear what a BA.5 wave would mean for hospitalizations and deaths. Citywide COVID hospitalizations and deaths have been falling steadily and are at two-month lows.

The question now, he said, is whether boosters that worked against the BA.1 subvariant six months ago will have any effect against BA.5.

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Top NY Doctor: New COVID Wave Is Starting, With the Worst Version' of Omicron - NBC New York

The Omicron BA.2.12.1 subvariant is now the dominant COVID-19 variant in the US, responsible for 58% of recorded new coronavirus cases in the last week alone. "I'm in Connecticut, and it's like 80% of all sequences that we see right now," says Anne Hahn, PhD., postdoctoral researcher at the Yale School of Public Health. Here are the five most dangerous spots to catch COVID-19, according to experts. Read on to find out moreand to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss Already Had COVID? These Symptoms May "Never Go Away".

Indoor gatherings such as weddings and parties are still dangerous, warns the World Health Organization. "In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no 'zero risk' when it comes to any kind of gathering especially events that bring groups of people together," says the WHO. "Regardless of the size of the event, you are at risk from COVID-19 whenever you get together with people. The virus that causes COVID-19 spreads easily indoors, especially in poorly ventilated settings."

Planning a family cruise this summer? The CDC has lifted its warning on cruise ship travel, but virus experts are still recommending caution. "This means to prepare for the cruise, all four of you should be fully vaccinated and boosted," says Jessica Justman, infectious diseases specialist and epidemiologist at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who recommends travelers make sure their ship has opted into the CDC's Covid-19 Program for Cruise Ships. "I suggest completing all booster doses a few weeks, and at least one week, before the trip starts. I would also be interested in how many inpatient beds and medical personnel are on the cruise and compare that to the number of passengers. One might confirm that the cruise follows guidelines such as the cruise ship health care guidelines from the American College of Emergency Physicians."

Buffets are risky due to close contact with both customers and staff. "While common utensils theoretically could lead to transmission of COVID from hand to spoon to hand, we actually don't have any good examples in clusters of COVID illnesses that surfaces really matter as much as people all standing close to each other does," says Benjamin Chapman, Ph.D., professor and food safety specialist in the department of Agricultural and Human Sciences at North Carolina State University. "Managing social distancing and line-ups is really the hardest part. Or in situations where staff will serve patrons from a buffet, the staff and patron interaction is the riskiest part."

Indoor gyms are still highly problematic in terms of catching the virus, experts warn. "If you're not willing to get COVID don't go," says Dr. Michael Klompas, a hospital epidemiologist and infectious disease physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital. "At a time like now, when there's a lot of COVID around, it is a high risk proposition."

Social distancing is practically impossible in airports, with people standing next to each other in check in and security lines and sitting close together on planes. "Avoid common-touch surfaces, hand hygiene wherever possible, masks, distancing, controlled-boarding procedures, try to avoid face-to-face contact with other customers, try to avoid being unmasked in flight, for meal and drink services, apart from when really necessary," says David Powell, physician and medical adviser to the International Air Transport Association. "The greatest protection you can give yourself is to be vaccinated and boosted."6254a4d1642c605c54bf1cab17d50f1e

Follow the public health fundamentals and help end this pandemic, no matter where you liveget vaccinated or boosted ASAP; if you live in an area with low vaccination rates, wear an N95 face mask, don't travel, social distance, avoid large crowds, don't go indoors with people you're not sheltering with (especially in bars), practice good hand hygiene, and to protect your life and the lives of others, don't visit any of these 35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID.

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The 5 Most Dangerous Spots You Can Catch Coronavirus Eat This Not That - Eat This, Not That

The past two and a half years have been a global crash course in infection prevention. Theyve also been a crash course in basic math: Since the arrival of this coronavirus, people have been asked to count the meters and feet that separate one nose from the next; theyve tabulated the days that distance them from their most recent vaccine dose, calculated the minutes they can spend unmasked, and added up the hours that have passed since their last negative test.

What unites many of these numbers is the tendency, especially in the United States, to pick thresholds and view them as binaries: above this, mask; below this, dont; after this, exposed, before this, safe. But some of the COVID numbers that have stuck most stubbornly in our brains these past 20-odd months are now disastrously out of date. The virus has changed; we, its hosts, have as well. So, too, then, must the playbook that governs our pandemic strategies. With black-and-white, yes-or-no thinking, we do ourselves a disservice, Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at George Mason University, told me. Binary communication has been one of the biggest failures of how weve managed the pandemic, Mnica Feli-Mjer, of the nonprofit Ciencia Puerto Rico, told me.

Here, then, are five of the most memorable numerical shorthands weve cooked up for COVID, most of them old, some a bit newer. Its long past time that we forget them all.

2 doses = fully vaccinated

At the start of the vaccination campaign, getting dosed up was relatively straightforward. In the United States, a pair of Pfizer or Moderna shots (or just one Johnson & Johnson), then a quick two-week wait, and boom: full vaccination, and that was that. The phrase became a fixture on the CDC website and national data trackers; it spurred vaccine mandates and, for a time in the spring and summer of 2021, green-lit the immunized to doff their masks indoors.

Then came the boosters. Experts now know that these additional shots are essential to warding off antibody-dodging variants such as the many members of the Omicron clan. Some Americans are months past their fifth COVID shot, and the nations leaders are weighing whether vaccinated people will need to dose up again in the fall. To accommodate those additions, the CDC has, in recent public communications, tried to shift its terminology toward up to date. Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, prefers that phrase, because it allows for flexibility as recommendations evolve. It also more effectively nods at the range of protection that vaccination affords, depending on how many doses someones gotten and when their most recent dose was.

But fully vaccinated has been hard to shake, even for the CDC. The agency, which did not respond to requests for comment, maintains that the original definition has not changed, and the term still features heavily on CDC websites. Maybe part of the stubbornness is sheerly linguistic: Up to date means something different to everyone, depending on age, eligibility, health status, and vaccine brand. Fully vaccinated is also grabby in a way that up to date is not. It carries the alluring air of completion, suggesting that youre actually done with the vaccine series, maybe even the pandemic overall, Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist and adviser at the Pandemic Prevention Institute, told me. All of this may be partly why that uptake of boosterswhich sound optional, even trivial, compared with the first two shotsremains miserably low in the U.S.

< 6 feet + > 15 minutes = close contact

Since the pandemics early days, Americans have been taught to benchmark our risk of exposure to the virus by two metrics: proximity and duration. Get within six feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes over a 24-hour period, and congratulationsyouve had a close contact. Even now, the CDC advises that this kind of encounter should trigger 10 full days of masking and, depending on your vaccination status and recent infection history, a test and/or a five-day quarantine.

Thresholds such as these made some sense when researchers werent yet savvy to the viruss main modes of transmission, and at least some efforts were made to contact trace, Jetelina told me. You needed some metric so you could call people. Nearly all contact-tracing attempts, though, have long since fizzled out. And scientists have known for years that SARS-CoV-2 can hitch a ride in bubbles of spittle and snot small enough to drift across rooms and remain aloft for hours, especially in poorly ventilated indoor spaces. Pathogens dont slam up against a magic wall at the six-foot mark, Malaty Rivera said. Nor will viruses bide their time for 14 minutes and 59 seconds before launching themselves noseward at 15 minutes on the dot. Exposure is a spectrum of high to low risk that factors in, yes, proximity and duration, but also venue, ventilation, mask quality, and more, Popescu said. Its not just exposed or not exposed.

The CDC acknowledges that SARS-CoV-2 can move beyond six feetbut the scientific justification behind its guidelines on preventing transmission was last updated in May 2021, just before the Delta variant bamboozled the nation. Since then, the coronavirus has gotten even more contagious and craftybetter at transmitting, better at dodging the antibodies that people raise. Even passing interactions and encounters have led to people becoming exposed and infected, Malaty Rivera said, especially if people are indoors and a ton of virus is being volleyed about. And yet, the mantra of six feet, 15 minutes has stayed. Schools have even cut the guidance in half, counting close contact only when children are less than three feet apart.

5 days = end of isolation

In the beginning, isolation numbers loomed large: Infected people had to wait at least 10 days after their symptoms began, or after their first positive test result, before they could reenter the world. Then, at the start of 2022, the CDC slashed the duration of isolation to just five days for people with mild or asymptomatic cases (regardless of vaccination status), as long as they kept masking and avoided travel through day 10. You didnt even need a negative test to go about your life.

This guideline has been perpetually behind the times. For much of 2021, truncating isolation might have made sense for vaccinated people, who clear the coronavirus faster than folks who havent gotten their shots, especially if negative tests confirmed the safety of exit. But only after the rise of Omicron did the guidance changeand it was based mostly on pre-Omicron data. The shift in guidance arrived just in time for the coronavirus to bust it wide open. After nearly two years of COVID symptoms starting around the time people first began to test positive, test positivity with Omicron and various iterations is now quite frequently lagging the onset of illness. Many people now report strings of negative results early in their symptom course, then positives that persist into their sixth, seventh, or eighth day of sickness or later, raising the possibility that they remain quite contagious past when formal isolation may end. I find it impossible to believe you can end isolation without testing, Malaty Rivera said.

Read: A negative COVID test has never been so meaningless

And yet, many workplaces have already embraced the five-day rule with no exit test, using that timeline as the basis for when employees should return. With masks largely gone, and paid sick leave so uncommon, defaulting to five days could drive more transmissionin some cases, likely inviting people back into public when theyre at their infectious peak.

Infection + 90 days = no retest

According to CDC guidelines, people who have caught SARS-CoV-2 dont need to test or quarantine if theyre exposed again within 90 days of their initial infection. This recommendation, which appeared in the pandemics first year, was designed in part to address the positives that can crop up on PCR tests in the weeks after people stop feeling sick. But the CDC also touts the low risk of subsequent infection for at least 6 months on one of its pages, last updated in October 2021. Reinfections can occur within 90 days, but thats early.

That framing might have once been pretty solid, before the era of widespread at-home antigen testingand before the rise of antibody-dodging variants, Popescu said. However, reinfections have gotten more common, and far closer together. They were happening even in the era of Delta; now, with so many immunity-evading Omicron offshoots at the helm, and masks and other mitigation matters mostly vanished, theyve become a quite-frequent fixture. The number of people who have caught the virus twice within just a matter of weeks has grown so much that we should forget these windows, Malaty Rivera said. Even the Department of Health and Human Services secretary recently tested positive twice in the same month.

Read: You are going to get COVID again and again and again

And yet, with these guidelines in place, many people have been lulled by the promise of rock-solid post-infection immunity, assuming that a new crop of symptoms are anything but COVID, Malaty Rivera said. That thinking is not only allowing a growing share of contagious coronavirus cases to go undetectedits also stymieing the study of reinfection dynamics writ large. Many studies, including those cited by the CDC in its guidance, wont even count reinfections earlier than 90 days. But the 90-day number, Malaty Rivera said, is no longer relevant. It has to be deleted from peoples minds.

200 cases + 10 hospital admissions per 100,000 = mask?

As obsolete as some of Americas COVID calculations may be, updates arent a universal win, either. Take the most recent iteration of mask recommendations from the CDC. The agency would like everyone to mask indoors if their county hits a high COVID community level, a threshold that is met only when the region logs 200 or more infections per 100,000 people in one week, and if local hospitals see more than 10 COVID-related admissions per 100,000 people in a week, or fill at least 15 percent of their inpatient beds. Currently, roughly 10 percent of U.S. counties are in the high category.

Read: The Biden administration killed Americas collective pandemic approach

But waiting to just suggest masks at those levels of transmission and hospitalizationnot even require themleaves far too much time for widespread disease, disability, even death, experts told me. A bar that high still lets long COVID slip through; it continues to imperil the vulnerable, immunocompromised, and elderly, who may not get the full benefit of vaccines. Case rates, Malaty Rivera pointed out, are also a terrible yardstick right now because so many people have been testing at home and not reporting the results to public-health agencies.

In Puerto Rico, Feli-Mjer and her colleagues have been struggling to reignite enthusiasm for mask wearing as their community battles its second-largest case wave since the start of the pandemic. A better system would flip on protections earliertaking a preventive approach, rather than scrambling to react. But thats a difficult stance for jurisdictions to assume when the official map looks so green and a little yellow, Feli-Mjer said. Its the problem of thresholds striking once again: No one cares to take up arms anew against the virus until the damage is already done. Thats made the pandemic that much easier to tune outits either here in full force, the thinking goes, or its totally gone. If only the calculus were that simple.

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Five COVID Numbers That No Longer Make Any Sense - The Atlantic

Since May 1, Premier has been testing about 140 swabs for COVID-19 each day.

Robust surveillance, including reporting the results of at-home tests, is critical to inform health agencies understanding of the current spread of the virus, said Ken Gordon, a spokesman with the Ohio Department of Health.

The overall volume of COVID-19 in our state and in specific areas lets Ohioans make informed decisions about what actions they should take to protect their health, he said.

Members of the Ohio National Guard work with Dayton Children's staff at the Dayton Children's Springboro COVID-19 testing site Thursday Jan. 13, 2022. MARSHALL GORBYSTAFF

Members of the Ohio National Guard work with Dayton Children's staff at the Dayton Children's Springboro COVID-19 testing site Thursday Jan. 13, 2022. MARSHALL GORBYSTAFF

Experts also say people who test positive at home should contact their primary health care providers to make sure they take appropriate steps to manage and possibly confirm their illness and avoid transmission.

Any positive test should be reported, said Nate Bednar, director of community services with Miami County Public Health.

Some experts have pointed out that the true number of infections always has been an undercount because at least some people who contract the illness do not have any symptoms and do not seek testing.

Eye on testing

Long lines for COVID-19 testing at Dayton Children's Hospital wrap around the parking lot on the northside of the complex. JIM NOELKER/STAFF

Credit: Jim Noelker

Long lines for COVID-19 testing at Dayton Children's Hospital wrap around the parking lot on the northside of the complex. JIM NOELKER/STAFF

Credit: Jim Noelker

Credit: Jim Noelker

Confirmed COVID cases have declined, but the virus is still prevalent in the community, and Premier Health continues to see a significant positivity rate, said Nick Lair, the groups system vice president of laboratory services.

We always have to keep an eye on it, he said. Were asking everybody to still be very mindful of the CDC guidelines, which is masking and/or six-foot distancing.

In May, about 13.8% of tests conducted by Premier were positive for COVID, according to its data.

By comparison, the average positivity rate was about 9.7% in 2020.

Premier, along with its partners, still operates seven testing sites down from about 11 earlier in the pandemic which continue to serve many people who need negative tests for reasons like travel, work or school.

Testing sites are still widely available across the region, but at-home testing kits are becoming increasingly popular among people who develop COVID-19 symptoms or who may have exposed to the virus.

About one-fifth of people with COVID-19-like symptoms during the omicron wave used at-home tests to try to determine if they were infected, according to a CDC survey.

Friday was the first day back for spring 2021 semester at the University of Dayton. Students were tested for COVID-19.

Credit: Jim Noelker

Friday was the first day back for spring 2021 semester at the University of Dayton. Students were tested for COVID-19.

Credit: Jim Noelker

Credit: Jim Noelker

The tests which officials say are quick, easy and pretty reliable are available for sale at local pharmacies, and many health departments also have kits to distribute and so do other organizations, like libraries and schools in some areas.

The Ohio Department of Health has distributed seven million tests to its partners since January 2021, and home testing has become a substantial part of the testing that is taking place in the state, even though it is impossible to know how many home tests have been used or are available, Gordon said.

Community members also can order free COVID-19 test kits online through http://www.covid.gov/tests that will be sent to their homes.

The plethora of available testing is helping control the spread of COVID-19 because people can easily find out if they are positive early on, Lair said.

But Premier Health says the availability of home tests can result in a undercount of COVID cases in the community because people who test positive using the kits do not typically require further testing.

At-home kits come with instructions that say people who test positive for the virus should provide the results to their health care providers for public health reporting.

But its very likely that some people possibly a significant number arent doing that, some state and local experts say.

A survey conducted from late December and early January found that nearly one-third of people who tested positive at home did not follow-up with a test at their doctors office or a testing facility, which makes it likely their positive results were not captured in the official case data.

Testing sites generally still are required to report positive results, Gordon said, but overall, testing data has become less useful as a measure of COVID-19 case burden and viral transmission in a community.

Gordon said the state encourages Ohioans to check the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions COVID-19 Community Levels as a more accurate picture of virus transmission.

The measurement combines case counts with COVID-19 hospitalization data to determine how significant a threat the virus is to various communities, he said.

Some experts say the decline in officially reported COVID-19 cases gives some people the false idea that the virus isnt a threat.

It is important that people who do self-tests report the results to their physicians, said Bednar, with Miami County Public Health.

Positive results can be reported to public health, he said, and if it is a proctored home COVID test, they should follow the instructions on the test packaging and report using the app.

Community members who test positive at home also should contact their primary care providers to find out if they need therapy, medical isolation and confirmatory or follow-up testing, said Deirdre Owsley, public health nurse in the communicable disease program at Greene County Public Health.

Owsley said Greene County residents who test positive for COVID at home should report the results to Greene County Public Health by calling 937-374-5638 or emailing cdrs@gcph.info.

Also, she said, Any follow-up test if not already reported virtually through the home-test manufacturer can be reported by the provider and/or medical laboratory.

Public Health Dayton & Montgomery County encourages people who test positive at home to contact their doctors to determine if they should begin any treatment, such as Paxlovid, which should be started within five days of the onset of symptoms, Dan Suffoletto, a spokesman for the agency.

Public Health tries to contact people who tested positive when it receives notice of positivity from doctors offices and testing facilities, Suffoletto said.

Public health notifies the Ohio Department of Health when it has confirmed COVID cases.

But Suffoletto said the number of reported cases may not fully capture the true number of infections.

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As at-home testing increases, do we know how many people have COVID-19? - Hamilton Journal News

Dr. Deborah L. Birx, President Donald J. Trumps coronavirus response coordinator, told a congressional panel on Thursday that the Trump administrations attitude toward the coronavirus had caused a false sense of security in America.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

WASHINGTON Dr. Deborah L. Birx, President Donald J. Trumps coronavirus response coordinator, told a congressional committee investigating the federal pandemic response that Trump White House officials asked her to change or delete parts of the weekly guidance she sent state and local health officials, in what she described as a consistent effort to stifle information as virus cases surged in the second half of 2020.

Dr. Birx, who publicly testified to the panel Thursday morning, also told the committee that Trump White House officials withheld the reports from states during a winter outbreak and refused to publicly release the documents, which featured data on the viruss spread and recommendations for how to contain it.

Her account of White House interference came in a multiday interview the committee conducted in October 2021, which was released on Thursday with a set of emails Dr. Birx sent to colleagues in 2020 warning of the influence of a new White House pandemic adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas, who she said downplayed the threat of the virus. The emails provide fresh insight into how Dr. Birx and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the governments top infectious disease expert, grappled with what Dr. Birx called the misinformation spread by Dr. Atlas.

The push to downplay the threat was so pervasive, Dr. Birx told committee investigators, that she developed techniques to avoid attention from White House officials who might have objected to her public health recommendations. In reports she prepared for local health officials, she said, she would sometimes put ideas at the ends of sentences so colleagues skimming the text would not notice them.

In her testimony on Thursday, she offered similarly withering assessments of the Trump administrations coronavirus response, suggesting that officials in 2020 had mistakenly viewed the coronavirus as akin to the flu, even after seeing high Covid-19 death rates in Asia and Europe. That perspective, she said, had caused a false sense of security in America as well as a sense among the American people that this was not going to be a serious pandemic.

Not using concise, consistent communication, she added, resulted in inaction early on, I think, across our agencies.

And those at fault, she said, were not just the president.

Many of our leaders were using words like, We could contain, she continued. And you cannot contain a virus that cannot be seen. And it wasnt being seen because we werent testing.

Dr. Birx became a controversial figure during her time in the Trump White House.

A respected AIDS researcher, she was plucked from her position running the governments program to combat the international H.I.V. epidemic to coordinate the federal Covid response. But her credibility came into question when she failed to correct Mr. Trumps unscientific musings about the coronavirus and praised him on television as being attentive to the scientific literature. She was also criticized for bolstering White House messaging in the early months of the coronavirus outbreak that the pandemic was easing.

Yet as outbreaks continued that year, Mr. Trump and some senior advisers grew increasingly impatient with Dr. Birx and her public health colleagues, who were insistent on aggressive mitigation efforts. Searching for a contrarian presence, the White House hired Dr. Atlas, who functioned as a rival to Dr. Birx.

They believed the counterfactual points that were never supported by data from Dr. Atlas, she said in Thursdays hearing.

In one email obtained by the committee, dated Aug. 11, 2020, Dr. Birx told Dr. Fauci and other colleagues about what she called a very dangerous Oval Office meeting with Mr. Trump. In that session, she said, Dr. Atlas had called masks overrated and not needed, and had argued against virus testing, saying it could hurt Mr. Trump politically.

Dr. Birx claimed that Dr. Atlas had inspired Mr. Trump to call for narrower recommendations on who should seek testing.

Case identification is bad for the presidents re-election testing should only be of the sick, she recounted Dr. Atlas saying.

He noted that it was the task force that got us into this ditch by promoting testing and falsely increasing case counts compared to other countries, she added, referring to a group of senior health officials that gathered regularly at the White House. The conclusion was Dr. Atlas is brilliant and the president will be following his guidance now.

In another email sent to senior health officials two days later, Dr. Birx cataloged seven ideas espoused by Dr. Atlas that she referred to as misinformation, including that the virus was comparable to the flu, that football players could not get seriously ill from the virus and that children are immune.

I am at a loss of what we should do, she wrote, warning that if caseloads kept mounting, there would be 300K dead by Dec. The United States ended the year with more than 350,000 Covid deaths.

I know what I am going to do, Dr. Fauci wrote in reply. I am going to keep saying what we have been saying all along, which contradicts each of his seven points listed below. If the press ask me whether what I say differs from his, I will merely say that I respectfully disagree with him.

In her interviews with the committee last year, Dr. Birx described regular attempts by others to undermine the weekly pandemic assessments she first sent to state and local officials in June 2020, which offered comprehensive data and state-specific recommendations regarding the status of the pandemic, the committee wrote.

Beginning in the fall of that year, Dr. Birx said, she began receiving a list of changes for three or four states each week, which sometimes involved bids to loosen mask recommendations or indoor capacity restrictions. In one instance, she was asked to soften guidance for South Dakota officials and remove some recommendations for the state, which had a surge in cases.

When she asked the White House to publish the reports so Americans would know more about outbreaks in their communities, the request was denied, she told investigators. In December 2020, she told them, the White House stopped sending the reports to states unless they were requested.

Dr. Birx told committee investigators that she was asked to change the reports about 25 percent of the time or else they would not be sent.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

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Where can the youngest U.S. children get vaccinated? Maybe not at your local pharmacy. Here's why. - The New York Times

If you've come down with a runny nose or sore throat recently, you may be wondering whether it's the common cold, allergies or a COVID-19 infection.

Health officials say it can be difficult to tell what illness you're experiencing based on the symptoms, but getting tested is one way to find out -- including people who have been vaccinated, experts say.

"Even if it's a sore throat, no matter what it is," Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said in a Facebook live last month. "I've told my own staff this, it's what I do myself... if you are sick, even a little bit sick, stay home. More true than ever right now because sick, even a little bit sick, until proven otherwise with a test - that's COVID. That's how we treat it, that's how you should treat it."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the common cold, allergies and coronavirus overlap in some symptoms, like the potential for a cough, shortness of breath or breathing difficulties, fatigue, headaches, a sore throat and congestion.

Symptoms more associated with coronavirus include fever, muscle and body aches, loss of taste or smell, nausea or vomiting and diarrhea.

For some people, coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms that clear up in a couple weeks. For others, it may cause no symptoms at all. For some, the virus can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.

Even those who receive the coronavirus vaccine can also still contract the virus and may experience symptoms.

Most vaccinated people either have no symptoms or exhibit very mild symptoms, according to health officials, and the virus rarely results in hospitalization or death for those individuals.

Coronavirus and the common cold share many symptoms.

According to the Mayo Clinic, diarrhea and nausea or vomiting are the only symptoms associated with coronavirus that don't overlap with the common cold.

The hospital also notes that whileCOVIDsymptoms generally appear two to 14 days after exposure to SARS-CoV-2, symptoms of a common cold usually appear one to three days after exposure to a cold-causing virus.

Dr. Katherine Poehling, an infectious disease specialist and member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices,told NBC Newsin January that a cough, congestion, runny nose and fatigue appear to be prominent symptoms with the omicron variant.

However, unlike the delta variant, many patients are not losing their taste or smell. She noted that these symptoms may only reflect certain populations.

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COVID Symptoms vs. Cold: Here's How to Spot the Difference - NBC Chicago

Britain is now going through its third major wave of Covid-19 infections this year. According to the ONS Infection Survey released last week, about 1.7 million people in the UK are estimated to have been infected in the week ending 18 June, a 23% rise on the previous week. This follows a 43% jump the previous week. The figures raise several important questions about how the nation will fare in the coming months as it struggles to contain the disease.

Most scientists and statisticians pin the latest jump on two fast-spreading Omicron sub-variants: BA.4 and BA.5. Crucially, two other countries Portugal and South Africa have experienced major jumps in numbers of cases due to these two sub-variants.

The waves in these countries have since peaked and neither resulted in a major increase in severe disease. Nevertheless, we should note there were some increases in hospitalisations, said John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The rise we are experiencing now is certainly not good news but it does not look, at present, like it has the potential to lead to disaster.

This point was backed by Stephen Griffin, associate professor at Leeds Universitys school of medicine We are in a better place now than in 2020 and 2021 due to the UK vaccine programme, he said. However, he warned the level of post-infections complications long Covid was troubling. It is abundantly clear the governments living with Covid strategy lacks long-term provision for wellbeing.

The government is already committed to vaccinating the over-65s, frontline health and social workers and vulnerable younger people in the autumn. However, the health and social care secretary Sajid Javid last week hinted that this might be extended to include all those over 50. The move would improve protection against Covid-19 at a time when immunity will have waned in much of the population.

However, the type of vaccine to be given is not yet settled with many scientists insisting it should be able to provide protection not just against the original Wuhan strain of Covid-19 but also against its most prevalent recent variant, Omicron. Moderna has developed such a vaccine, for example.

Omicron looks to be extremely fit, said James Naismith, of the Rosalind Franklin Institute in Oxford. We are now seeing different strains of it appearing, not a wholesale switch like the one we saw from Delta to Omicron. So I think it is perhaps unlikely we will see a completely new Omega strain, which makes it sensible to continue to target Omicron.

Sars-cov-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, is not the first coronavirus that has been found to affect human beings. Other members of this class of virus cause mild respiratory illnesses and one day Covid-19 may reach a similar, relatively safe status in the population though not in the near future, says Prof Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University.

That situation will arise when the virus is circulating quite freely and people get infected multiple times as children, and so, by the time they get to be adults, they have actually built up pretty solid immunity - certainly against serious disease. However, its going to take a long time before we live in a population where most of us have had multiple exposures as children. That is decades away, though that does not mean we will be faced with severe public health problems for all that time. These problems will diminish - though there will be bumps on the way.

However, Woolhouse added, this is not going to settle down properly in my lifetime.

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Britain is being hit by a new wave of Covid so what do we do now? - The Guardian