Category: Corona Virus

The number of new coronavirus cases in Connecticut continued to fall this week, along with hospitalizations, though Hartford Healthcares COVID-19 expert warned the virus is not going away anytime soon.

There were 3,583 positive cases recorded by the state in the past seven days, less than half of the 7,560 recorded the week before, according to state data, available at data.ct.gov. With 33,085 tests recorded, the states positivity rate is now 10.83%, down from 12.05% on May 26 and 14% on May 19, showing the decline of a wave that began in early April with a highly transmissible variant of omicron.

Hospitalizations also fell, from 379 a week ago to 311 Thursday. Officials note that many of those are incidental cases, in which people were admitted to a hospital for other reasons and then tested positive upon arrival.

Connecticut saw 39 COVID-related deaths in the past week, the data shows. There were 19 deaths recorded last week and an additional 39 the week of May 19. Research has shown that deaths from the virus tend to lag behind an increase in cases.

Omicron continues to be the dominant variant, the state said, with BA.2 accounting for 89% of cases diagnosed this week. Evolving subvariants will continue to drive transmission through the summer with a spike in the fall, Ulysses Wu, MD, chief epidemiologist for Hartford HealthCare, said in a post Thursday on Hartford Healthcares News Hub.

Levels are not going to approach winter levels or last summers delta variant levels, but we also will not approach the lows that we would like to see, Wu said. We will continue to go through waves of swells throughout the early summer at the least, with a likely spike in late fall.

He predicted new surges could come from subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which were detected in the United States in late March, and seem to evade immunity created by vaccines and previous infection.

With transmission still high, experts recommend people vaccinated or not continue to wear masks indoors and in crowded spaces.

Excerpt from:

COVID-19 positivity continues to decline, but expert warns variants will drive new surges - Hartford Courant

In a recent study published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, researchers evaluated the increase in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections among university students immediately after returning to their university in September 2020. The students relocated to their universities for the new academic term during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in England.

In the United Kingdom (UK), university students relocate to their universities in September at the commencement of the new academic term, which coincided with the surge in COVID-19 cases in the country during that period. While some United Kingdom (UK) universities preferred online teaching, some universities required students to be present in person. Unfortunately, immediately after the new academic term started, SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks occurred associated with the universities.

In the present study, researchers evaluated the increase in COVID-19 cases and outbreaks on the return of students to their universities for the new academic term beginning September 2020 during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

SARS-CoV-2-positive students (student case patients) were identified based on contact tracing records and their university attendance. Student case patients residing in university student accommodations were identified by matching their residential addresses with national property databases. SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals were asked about their activities and events within a week before the onset of COVID-19 symptoms/ date of the test, which included data on their attendance in educational settings.

For identifying university attendees among case patients, those with SARS-CoV-2-positive reports were linked to the National Health Service (NHS) test and trace exposure data. Contact tracing and case patient data were linked by the SARS-CoV-2-positive specimen number, date of birth, and the NHS number.

The types of accommodation were identified by matching the case patient address with the Ordnance Survey Address Base Premium database, wherein each address is assigned a unique property reference number (UPRN) which enables mapping case patients to a particular area of residence. Age-specific case rates were compared between towns with universities to those without using the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2019 midyear estimates. COVID-19 case rates among student case patients and the rest of the population were compared, and the geographic regions with the highest number of cases were determined.

Between 1 September 2020 and 31 December 2020, 1,999,180 COVID-19 cases were reported in England, of which 53,430 (2.7%) were student case patients. After the new academic term began (in September), a rapid increase in student case patients from 0.7% to 7.8% from September to October. The increase in COVID-19 cases was initially driven by cases and SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in university student accommodations, most pronounced in individuals aged 18 to 23 years (student population), and was two-fold higher in towns with universities.

In the student population, cases increased from 11 COVID-19 cases/100,000 individuals to 99 COVID-19 cases/100,000 individuals between 1 September 2020 and 1 October 2020. During the same period, the COVID-19 case rate among the remaining population of England increased from three to 13 COVID-19 cases/100,000 individuals. At the commencement of the academic term, 60% to 70% of student case patients lived in student accommodations, which dropped to 20% to 30% after mid-November.

The mean ages of student case patients and all case patients were 20 years and 37 years, respectively, and a higher proportion of females among student case patients (57% females vs. 53% males). Most student case patients were reported in Nottingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds. Most student case patients residing in student accommodations were reported in Nottingham, Sheffield, York, Newcastle, and Coventry.

SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in student accommodations continued for six days compared to two days for other accommodation settings. Outbreaks that involved students showed an upward trend, increasing from 0.7% to 7.3% in September 2020 but declining to 1% by December 2020. A significant reduction in COVID-19 cases was observed in November after the second period of national restrictions in university towns; however, the rates increased in December after the restrictions were lifted.

To summarize, the unprecedented increase in COVID-19 cases among university students after their term began, likely due to the physical and social interactions of students in enclosed spaces during the university fresher week, was reduced by enforcing national COVID-19 restrictions. The study highlights the need for stringent preventive measures to curtail SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

The rest is here:

COVID-19 cases and outbreaks among students after their return to university in September 2020 - News-Medical.Net

Covering COVID-19 is a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas about the coronavirus and other timely topics for journalists, written by senior faculty Al Tompkins. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.

This is the daily update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Is there a threshold that we must reach for people to care?

(CDC)

Most of the Northeast, half of Florida and parts of nearly every state are in moderate- or high-risk zones right now, and that is using the CDCs new tracking software based on hospitalizations and deaths, not just on new cases.

(CovidActNow.org)

I did a little bit of traveling last week. I had to get a COVID-19 test to enter the U.S. from Canada. I paid $38 for a person in Asia to watch me stick a swab up my nose and show her a negative test over the phone. Nobody at U.S. immigration asked to see it, and I do not know if anybody looked at the document I uploaded to the airline. They must have millions being uploaded daily, so it is hard to believe it is anything more than a computer checking to see that something has been uploaded.

Before we got on a tour bus in Vancouver, a driver yelled to a crowd of 100 people, Has everybody been vaccinated? The crowd yelled yes. He asked if anybody felt sick. The crowd yelled no. And that was that.

The seasonal flu is spreading way out of season. Stat reports four virus outbreaks that are causing summertime concern:

The past two winters were among the mildest influenza seasons on record, but flu hospitalizations have picked up in the last few weeks in May! Adenovirus type 41, previously thought to cause fairly innocuous bouts of gastrointestinal illness, may be triggering severe hepatitis in healthy young children.

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a bug that normally causes disease in the winter, touched off large outbreaks of illness in kids last summer and in the early fall in the United States and Europe.

And now monkeypox, a virus generally only found in West and Central Africa, is causing an unprecedented outbreak in more than a dozen countries in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Australia, with the United Kingdom alone reporting more than 70 cases. The U.S. has identified nine monkeypox cases.

The disruption of normal virus cycles, in part, seems to be linked to how children interact with each other. Children often spread viruses and, while they were at home, they spread them less. And babies born during the pandemic may carry fewer immunities.

We will find out today whether 1,300 resident physicians and trainees voted to unionize at three Los Angeles hospitals. Kaiser Health News notes, Since March, residents at Stanford Health Care, Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and the University of Vermont Medical Center have unionized.

Kaiser says the key issues are work schedules, lack of protective gear, low staffing and pay:

The average resident salary in the U.S. in 2021 was $64,000, according to Medscape, a physician news site, and residents can work up to 24 hours in a shift but no more than 80 hours per week. Although one survey whose results were released last year found that 43% of residents felt they were adequately compensated, those who are unionizing say wages are too low, especially given residents workload, their student loan debt, and the rising cost of living.

People visit a memorial outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Monday, May 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Maybe it is partly out of frustration that there is no easy solution to stopping Americas gun violence that some journalists are asking whether it makes sense to publish graphic images of the children who died from gunfire. The argument is that just as images of war can stir the public to act, maybe it is time to awaken the public to a reality it has been shielded from until a mass killer unloads in their town.

This is not a new idea. Far from it. In 2019, just before the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, I introduced you to some teens from Columbine and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida who asked journalists to publish graphic images of dead students. The teens even signed permission cards saying if they died in gunfire, please use the crime scene images.

I wrote in 2019 and still believe today:

Even if students place a sticker on their IDs or drivers licenses saying they want photos of their death made public, that is not the reason to publish. Take the students wishes into consideration, but dont stop there.

There should be a journalistic purpose for the image to be published. If, for example, there is any question about what occurred if the images prove an official version of the incident to be untrue, if the images illustrate a truth that the public would not have known from the descriptions of the scene then the graphic images may be newsworthy, and they could be ethically published.

I am concerned that publishing graphic images would reward shooters intentions. In Buffalo and New Zealand, the shooters livestreamed the massacres expressly to show the brutality.

Without a doubt, graphic images of death can stir the public. As I pointed out in 2019, Graphic images of death involving Emmett Till became a catalyst for the civil rights movement. The graphic image of Kim Phuc, hit by napalm, showed the horrors of the Vietnam War. Other images from Syria and Somalia have shown children as victims.

In 1929, journalists told the story of the St. Valentines Day Massacre, using graphic images of bullet-riddled gangsters shot down during the Prohibition gun battles in Chicago. Back then, the battle was about Prohibition, and the bloody photos prompted the public to consider its cost. The gangsters used Thompson submachine guns, Tommy guns, in that and other shootings of the era. In 2018, The New York Times put that weapon into todays context:

One of the first portable and fully automatic firearms, the Tommy gun was a weapon of war that missed its moment, produced too late to serve in World War I. Its manufacturer, facing ruin, tried to market the gun as a self-defense weapon, aided by the fact that the Thompson was so novel the law had yet to catch up with it. In those days, Chicagoans could buy a Tommy gun more easily than they could a handgun.

The Thompson found eager buyers among the criminal class, who appreciated its lethality and the ease with which it could be concealed. Like todays AR-15, the Tommy gun enabled many of the eras most heinous crimes from the murder of a Chicago prosecutor, William McSwiggin, in 1926 to the killing of four lawmen in what became known as the Kansas City Massacre of 1933. But while the Thompson empowered gangsters to kill more people more quickly, it hadnt created this crime wave it had merely amplified it.

In 1932, President Franklin Roosevelt said he was determined to do something about the gun crimes of the day. The War on Crime led to Americas first gun control law, the National Firearms Act of 1934. It did not ban machine guns but did heavily regulate and even license them. Subsequently, machine guns were rarely used in crimes, and that is still the case today, nearly nine decades later.

In 2019, Chicago Magazine made two other observations worth considering. The St. Valentines Day Massacre in 1929 was, at the time, the worst mass killing in U.S. history to occur on that day of the year.

It lost that distinction on February 14th, 2018 when 17 students were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. That shooting did lead to a federal ban on bump stocks, which enable a semi-automatic weapon to fire at the rate of a machine gun, but there has been no legislation to regulate the weapons themselves, nor is there likely to be.

On Monday, President Joe Biden suggested Congress should ban assault weapons. Chicago Magazine writes:

Guns also occupy a different place in American cultural than they did in the 1920s. The National Rifle Association, for instance, helped write the National Firearms Act of 1934. The associations president told Congress, I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses. At that time, the NRA was primarily concerned with marksmanship and gun safety.

Here are three thoughtful articles on the debate over publishing/airing graphic images from shooting scenes:

On Saturday, Sunday and the federal holiday on Monday, there were at least 13 mass shootings. Eight people died and 56 were injured. Since the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, there have been at least 61 mass shootings involving four or more victims.

This early season storm is passing through Mexico today and might regenerate in the Gulf of Mexico in the next 24 hours. Forecasters say there is a 30% chance the storm will not play out after clearing Mexico.

It could redevelop into the Atlantic basins first named storm. If formed, that storm would be called Alex.

(National Hurricane Center)

Well be back tomorrow with a new edition of Covering COVID-19. Are you subscribed? Sign up hereto get it delivered right to your inbox.

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Is anyone still paying attention to COVID-19 trends? - Poynter

COVIDA nurse administers a pediatric dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to a girl at a L.A. Care Health Plan vaccination clinic at the Los Angeles Mission College in January. Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

A new analysis by a Boston doctor shows that COVID-19 has killed more children than the seasonal flu, contrary to the narrative pushed by some that coronavirus is not a bad disease for children.

Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Womens Hospital, wrote in an Inside Medicine post on Monday that at the peak of the omicron wave, COVID-19 killed more children per month than flu does on average each year. In 2021, coronavirus killed about 600 children, compared to the 10-year average of 120 children dying of the flu per year.

These irrefutable figures, reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reveal that last year, pediatric COVID-19 deaths were around 500% that of pediatric flu deaths in a typical 21st century season, Faust wrote.

The doctor went on to write that since 2000, there have only been seven times that a respiratory virus killed more than 65 children in a month. Twice those deaths were from the flu, but the other five times were from COVID-19.

The numbers get a little confusing though, Faust wrote, because there are stats reported for both actual deaths and estimated numbers.

The National Center for Health Statistics, or NCHS, counts every single death in the United States, Faust wrote. Meanwhile, the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, or NCIRD, estimates the overall burden of diseases, which include both underlying and contributing causes of death.

If a person dies primarily of terminal cancer, but influenza might have played a role in the timing of their death, the NCIRD might include that death in its annual assessment of influenzas burden of disease, Faust wrote.

Because both coronavirus and influenza deaths for children are mandated for reporting to public health officials, the actual counts of deaths by the NCHS are highly accurate and are certainly the right comparator for Covid-19, Faust said.

Its important to do an apples-to-apples comparison when talking about the severity of COVID, Faust said comparing actual counts to actual counts or estimates to estimates.

In that vein, Faust cautioned against comparing pediatric outcomes to adult outcomes.

Its true that older adults are orders of magnitude more likely to die of Covid-19 than children are, Faust wrote. But in public health, you compare groups to themselves, if you want to understand a particular threat. You wouldnt downplay pediatric cancer by noting that 80-year-olds die of cancer at a rate that is 541-times greater that of 8-year-olds (which, by the way, is true).

Though Faust is pointed out that COVID-19 has severe outcomes for some children, he emphasized that he is not arguing schools should close.

Rather, he said that the discussion should be about how to keep schools safe.

Pediatric Covid-19 vaccination rates remain woefully low, Faust wrote. Understanding the real risk that Covid-19 poses to children is about the only thing I can think of that might convince parents to do the right thing.

Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus response coordinator who is on leave from his position as dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, applauded Fausts analysis and stressed the importance of vaccines to keep kids out of the hospital.

If your kid 5 or older isnt vaccinated, its time, he wrote.

Stay up to date on all the latest news from Boston.com

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Irrefutable figures show COVID-19 killed more kids than the flu, Boston doctor says - Boston.com

DENVER (KDVR) COVID-19 rates continue to steadily increasein Colorado over the last six weeks. The Centers for Disease Control and prevention has moved three counties into the high level for community transmission: Boulder County, Jackson County, and Broomfield County.

The CDC said communities with ahigh level of COVID-19transmission should do the follow:

As of Monday, the states seven-day positivity rate was 10.33%, which is up from 9.25% one week ago. Positivity rate measures the amount of COVID positive tests to the total amount of tests taken.

Overall, 44 counties saw an increase in COVID-19 positivity, 11 counties saw a decrease, two counties stayed the same, and seven counties administered fewer than 10 tests.

According to theColorado Department of Public Health and Environment, incidence rates are up over the last week.

Heres a look atpositivity rates for every county over the last seven days:

Significant spread of COVID-19 in Boulder County

According toJohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the percent positive is exactly what it sounds like: the percentage of all coronavirus tests performed that are actually positive, or: (positive tests)/(total tests) x 100%. The percent positive (sometimes called the percent positive rate or positivity rate) helps public health officials answer questions suchas:

The percent positive will be high if the number ofpositive testsis too high, or if the number oftotal testsis too low. A higher percent positive suggests higher transmission and that there are likely more people with coronavirus in the community who havent been tested yet, Johns Hopkins shared.

Link:

COVID-19 rate over 10% in Colorado; here are counties with highest rates - FOX 31 Denver

Mike Stucka USA TODAY NETWORK| Register-Guard

Oregon reported 11,082 new cases of coronavirus in the week ending Sunday, from 10,891 the week before of the virus that causes COVID-19.

Lane County reported 1,020 cases and two deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 1,037 cases and four deaths. Throughout the pandemic, Lane County has reported 61,910 cases and 547 deaths.

Oregon ranked 14th among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week coronavirus cases in the United States decreased 11.3% from the week before, with 702,236 cases reported. With 1.27% of the country's population, Oregon had 1.58% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 32 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.

Within Oregon, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Multnomah County with 354 cases per 100,000 per week; Deschutes County with 338; and Washington County with 315. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.

Adding the newest cases overall were Multnomah County, with 2,880 cases; Washington County, with 1,898 cases; and Clackamas County, with 1,191. Weekly case counts rose in 22 counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Marion, Jackson and Multnomah counties.

>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases

Oregon ranked 20th among states in the share of people receiving at least one shot, with 77.9% of its residents at least partially vaccinated. The national rate is 77.7%, a USA TODAY analysis of CDC data shows. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are the most used in the United States, require two doses administered a few weeks apart.

In the week ending Wednesday, Oregon reported administering another 55,427 vaccine doses, including 4,397 first doses. In the previous week, 51,937 vaccine doses were administered, including 3,979 first doses. In all, Oregon reported it has administered 7,803,785 total doses.

Across Oregon, cases fell in nine counties, with the best declines in Deschutes County, with 668 cases from 779 a week earlier; in Washington County, with 1,898 cases from 1,995; and in Clackamas County, with 1,191 cases from 1,221.

In Oregon, 25 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday, one less than the week before.

A total of 760,803 people in Oregon have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 7,611 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 83,984,644 people have tested positive and 1,004,733 people have died.

>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States

USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, May 29.

Likely COVID-19 patients admitted in the state:

Likely COVID-19 patients admitted in the nation:

Hospitals in 34 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 33 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 35 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.

Original post:

Oregon COVID-19 update: Lane County has 1,020 cases this week - The Register-Guard

New Jersey on Tuesday reported 1,872 COVID-19 confirmed positive tests and one confirmed death as the United States has reached over 84 million cases.

The states seven-day average for confirmed cases was 3,341 on Tuesday, down 16% from a week ago, but still up 54% from a month ago.

The statewide rate of transmission for Saturday was 1.09. The transmission rate reported daily by the Department of Health were not available Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. When the transmission rate is over 1, that means each new case is leading to at least one additional case and the outbreak is expanding.

There were 844 patients with confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases reported across 67 of the states 71 hospitals as of Monday night. Four hospitals did not report data. Hospitalizations still remain significantly lower than when they peaked at 6,089 on Jan. 10 during the omicron wave.

There were at least 80 people discharged in the 24-hour period ending Monday, according to state data. Of those hospitalized, 97 were in intensive care and 39 were on ventilators.

The positivity rate for tests conducted on Thursday, the most recent day with available data, was 11.40%.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now lists 11 New Jersey counties with high transmission rates Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Gloucester, Mercer, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Salem and Sussex.

Those in high-risk areas are recommended to wear a mask indoors in public and on public transportation and stay up-to-date on vaccinations, according to the CDC.

Ten counties are in the medium risk category: Bergen, Cumberland, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Passaic, Somerset, Union and Warren. Masks are not recommended in the medium and low regions.

New Jersey has reported 2,055,353 total confirmed COVID-19 cases out of more than 17.8 million PCR tests conducted in the more than two years since the state reported its first known case March 4, 2020.

The Garden State has also recorded about 339,242 positive antigen or rapid tests, which are considered probable cases. And there are numerous cases that have likely never been counted, including at-home positive tests that are not included in the states numbers.

The state of 9.2 million residents has reported 33,702 COVID-19 deaths 30,633 confirmed fatalities and 3,069 probable ones.

New Jersey has the seventh-most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S. behind Mississippi, Arizona, Oklahoma, Alabama, Tennessee and West Virginia as of the latest data reported May 17. Last summer, the state had the most deaths per capita in the country.

The latest numbers follow a major study that revealed even a mild case of COVID-19 can significantly affect the brain. Long COVID the term commonly used to describe symptoms stemming from the virus long after a person no longer tests positive has been found to affect between 10% and 30% of those who contract the infection, regardless of whether they have a mild or serious case. In New Jersey, that would mean that roughly 600,000 of the more than 2 million who have tested positive for COVID since the onset of the pandemic either have or have had long COVID.

More than 6.93 million of the 8.46 million eligible people who live, work or study in New Jersey have received the initial course of vaccinations and more than 7.8 million have received a first dose since vaccinations began here on Dec. 15, 2020.

More than 3.79 million people in the state eligible for boosters have received one. That number may rise after the FDA on Tuesday approved booster shots for healthy children between the ages of 5 and 11. U.S. regulators authorized the booster for kids hoping an extra vaccine dose will enhance their protection as infections once again creep upward.

For the week ending May 22, with 57.8% of schools reporting data, another 10,948 COVID-19 cases were reported among staff (3,066) and students (7,882) across New Jerseys schools.

Since the start of the academic year, there have been 135,409 students and 40,649 school staff members who have contracted COVID-19 in New Jersey, though the state has never had more than two-thirds of the school districts reporting data in any week.

The state provides total student and staff cases separately from those deemed to be in-school transmission, which is narrowly defined as three or more cases linked through contact tracing.

New Jersey has reported 876 total in-school outbreaks, including 6,234 cases among students and staff. That includes 69 new outbreaks in the latest weekly report ending May 23. The state reported 82 in-school outbreaks the previous week.

At least 9,117 of the states COVID-19 deaths have been among residents and staff members at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to state data.

There were active outbreaks at 351 facilities, resulting in 3,883 current cases among residents and 3,589 cases among staff, as of the latest data.

As of Tuesday, there have been more than 529 million COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University, and more than 6.28 million people died due to the virus.

The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 84 million) and deaths (at least 1,004,783) of any nation.

There have been more than 11.38 billion vaccine doses administered globally.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the local news you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Deion Johnson may be reached at djohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @DeionRJohhnson

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N.J. reports 1,872 COVID cases, 1 death. More than 84M positive tests in U.S. - NJ.com

NJ research lab tests for COVID variants

Dr. Barry Kreiswirth, research scientist for Hackensack Meridian Health system, explains on May 10, 2021 about lab work on COVID-19 variants in Nutley.

Danielle Parhizkaran, NorthJersey.com

Major researchinstitutions led by scientists at Hackensack Meridian Health's laboratory in Nutley are teaming up to develop new COVID-19treatments with federal grants up to $108 million as the virus continues to mutate into new forms, executives announced Tuesday.

The partnership among virologists and drugmakers aims to rapidly develop drugs that can be taken by mouth without a patient having to beadmitted to a hospital. Their goal is to be nimble enough to produce treatments that can respond to a rapidly changing virus, which can mutate into new variants that take only weeks to spread across the globe.

"The goal is to develop and bring to the market in real time the next generation of anti-viral agents that can control the current virus, future variants, future coronaviruses and future viruses of pandemic concern," saidDr. David Perlin, director of Hackensack Meridian'sCenter for Discovery and Innovation laboratories.

Dubbed the"Metropolitan AntiViral Drug Accelerator," the program is being launched at a time whenCOVID is still spreading rapidly in the U.S. and New Jersey, but physicians are seeing less severe illness, especially among the vaccinated.

Subscribers: What will COVID look like this summer in NJ? Here's what the latest models show

The initial grants from the National Institutes of Healthand the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease total a combined $65 million over three years, which could increase to $108 million if the program is re-upped for two additional years.

The teams, which include scientists from Rutgers, Columbia, Rockefeller University in New York, and pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co., will create and test "small-molecule antiviral drugs" to target all kinds ofcoronaviruses but emphasizing COVID-19. The research produced here could also help with future viral threats, scientists said Tuesday.

Current monoclonal antibody treatments have shown to be effective in keeping severe outcomes at bay. Physicians at Hackensack Meridian and Bergen New Bridge hospitals saythey have rarely had to admit COVID patients in recent months and simply send them home with the drugs.

The spring surge is being propelled by subvariants of omicron that have shown to be highly transmissible but less virulent so far.

Most New Jersey hospitals are reporting few serious cases of illness, with fewer than 50 patients on ventilators statewide over the Memorial Day weekend. The daily COVID death toll in New Jersey has been in the single digits for almost three months, after the initial omicron wave in December and January, whichsaw upwards of 80 to 100 deaths each day.

TheMetropolitan AntiViral Drug Acceleratorscientists will focus on a set of eight molecular features in the virus that play critical roles in replication, maturationand immune-system evasion.

The teams have already begun working onfive projects focusing on the viral targets andmatching drugs that would be effectiveagainst them.

The partnerships allow experts in different arenas to knock down roadblocks that ordinarily hamper drug development, said Dr. Charles Riceof Rockefeller University, who will co-lead the project.

Other institutions that will be working on the project includeMemorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,the nonprofit Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Instituteand Aligos Therapeutics, a California company.

Much of the work will be done at Hackensack Meridian'sCenter for Discovery and Innovation, which houses 21 laboratories and more than 150 researchers at itsNutley campus.

This story will be updated.

Scott Fallon has covered the COVID-19 pandemic since its onset in March 2020. To get unlimited access to the latest news about the pandemic's impact on New Jersey, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email:fallon@northjersey.com

Twitter:@newsfallon

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North Jersey to become hub of COVID drug development with $108M grant - NorthJersey.com

COVID-19 cases back on the rise in US after new subvariants appear

COVID-19 infections have spiked over the past month due to new and more infectious subvariants, waning vaccines, and fewer people wearing masks.

Damien Henderson, USA TODAY

On the cusp of last summer, as COVID vaccination rates were on the upswing and transmission rates were dropping, New Jersey officials talked excitedly about a return to normalcy, with offices filling with employees again andmasks no longer required in schools.

Then the delta variant emerged unexpectedlyin June and upended all those plans.

As summer 2022 approaches, New Jersey appears to be in a better place so long as a new, more virulent strain does not emerge.

Key metrics including severe illness and death have remainedrelatively low for more than two months, even though cases are on the upswing and every county is seeing high levels of transmission.

Public health experts and front-line physicians have expressed everything from caution to optimism over the past few weeksas New Jersey enters its third pandemic summer.

Is COVID still a virus that can mutate into the mass killer that has already taken 1 million American lives? Or is it evolving into one that jumps more benignly from host to host?

"The assumption that youre going to have milder illness is a hope but not necessarily something that will pan out,"said Dr. StanleyWeiss, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at Rutgers Medical School. "The biology of this virus is changing over time. So we don't have ironcladanswers."

Dr. Gian Varbaro, chief medical officer of Bergen New Bridge Medical Center in Paramus, said it's unlikely that the virus will mutate into a more deadly strain.

Every pandemic ends the same way, with the virus mutating to become more infectious but it also becomes less virulent, less deadly, he said. Its not in an infectious agents interests to kill the people who its infecting, because then it cant spread. The best thing for a virus would be for you to never know you have it.

As New Jerseyans spent Memorial Day weekend opening community pools, hosting neighborhood barbeques and gathering in somber ceremonies to remember this country's war dead, it may seem like the pandemic is over. But it's not.

The latest forecasting models by thestate Department of Health show two scenarios through mid-August: a "moderate plus" model, in which cases and hospitalizations remain relatively stable, and a "high" model that shows two surges.

But long-range forecasts are difficult.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention project metrics out only two orthree weeks. And as COVIDcontinues to mutate into new variants with new characteristics, the virus has shifted its trajectory multiple times over thepandemic's 30 months,making it difficult to predict its next turn.

The emergence of new variants can change any well-informed prediction, said Gemma Downham, director of infection prevention for AtlantiCare, one of the largest medical providers in South Jersey.

The daily COVID death toll has been in the single digits for almost three months, and most hospitals are reporting few serious cases of illness, with fewer than 40patients on ventilators statewide as Memorial Day weekend ended. The vast majority of patients testing positive for COVID at hospital admission are being admitted for conditions unrelated tothe virus. As of Monday night, 844 people in the state'shospitals had tested positive for COVID.

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The Health Department's worst-case scenario shows COVID cases surging in mid-June and again in mid-July, with the daily hospital census at almost 2,000. The high would hit on June 18with 7,050 cases, 1,602 hospitalizations, 154 intensive care admissions and 63 people on ventilators all about double what the numbers have been in mid-May.

The moderate forecast does not show a significant surge in the first half of the summer.

But that model appears to have already been exceeded. The model, which was completed on May 11, predicted a peak of 3,264 cases and 742 hospitalizations by May 17, compared with the actual tally of 3,842 cases and 862 hospitalizations that were reportedby health officials on May 17.

Downham, an epidemiologist, said she expects the surge to subside before the start of summer but is concerned that the virus is still transmitting at a high level, allowing it to mutate.

People who are vaccinated and boosted seem to have either no symptoms from the subvariants or symptoms so mild that they are mistaken for allergies or a cold. As a result, people let their guard down,and transmission goes up.

Many New Jerseyans have been reinfected during the latest wave, and long-term health implications of repeated COVID infections arestill unknown.

Even if you have mild to no symptoms, you are still contagious and can spread it to others who might be more vulnerable, Downham said.

"We are seeing individuals who were recently infected with omicron getting reinfected sooner than expected," she said."It appears as though immunity after an omicron infection is lasting less than 90 days."

At Bergen New Bridge, New Jersey's largest hospital,doctors are seeing more people come in with COVID, but their symptoms are not severe enough to warrant admission.

What were seeing is a lot of outpatient COVID and an increase from what it was several weeks ago, but nothing thats requiring hospitalization,Varbaro said.

Conventional wisdom holds that summer will result in less transmission in the Northeast, because people will spend less time indoors. While that held true in 2020, delta showed in 2021 that a new variant can upendthat notion.

By the end of last summer, Gov. Phil Murphy had reinstated mask-wearing in all schools, many back-to-the-office plans were postponed and New Jersey's COVID metrics ended up worse on Labor Day 2021 than they were the prior year.

Major variants detected so far this year are from the lineage of the original omicron strain that surged forcefully in December and January in New Jersey and then declined just as fast.

The region has seen the rapid emergence of the newBA.2.12.1 subvariant, which became the dominant strain in New Jersey and New York in early May.It has pushed out the BA.2subvariant and now makes up more than 70% ofstrains, according to CDC data.

On the horizon are the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, currently circulating inSouth Africa and Europe. If the patterns of transmission continue, it will be only a matter of time before they reach New Jersey.

Vaccines, booster shots and early treatment with monoclonal antibodieshave shown to be effective in preventing severe illness for now.

But health care professionals and policymakers have to remain nimble, because the virus could change dramatically in a short period of time, as seen with the delta and omicron variants, Weiss said. Using outdated data "is worse than useless, it's misleading," he said.

And scientists are constantly finding more information on how current strains behave. A study released this month suggests that COVID has the ability to linger in the body for much longer than suspected. "It shows how little we know about the virus," Weiss said.

Varbaro is optimistic that things will gradually get better even as the virus continues to spread and reinfect more people across the globe.

"We're going to see more blips and bump-ups like we're seeing now with these subvariants of omicron, butless virulent," he said."Is it possible if it makes some quantum leap in infectiousness?Sure. But it's unlikely."

Scott Fallon has covered the COVID-19 pandemic since its onset in March 2020. To get unlimited access to the latest news about the pandemic's impact on New Jersey, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email:fallon@northjersey.com

Twitter:@newsfallon

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What will COVID look like this summer in NJ? Here's what the latest models show - NorthJersey.com

COVID is infamous for wreaking havoc in almost every body organ. COVID signs can be seen in the heart, lungs, skin, and also in the digestive system.

Apart from COVID another big challenge is dealing with long COVID, in which COVID symptoms are seen weeks and months after the infection. These symptoms linger in an individual for several months. Researchers are still studying the various causes behind the possibility of long COVID conditions.

Both COVID and long COVID conditions do not limit to the respiratory tract only. This proves COVID is not just a respiratory disease and its impact on other organs can range from mild to severe.

According to one review study done in September 2020, 53% of people hospitalized with COVID experienced at least one digestive symptom.

The best way to deal with COVID and long COVID is to spot the symptoms. Here are the common symptoms of COVID associated with the digestive system:

See more here:

Coronavirus: 5 symptoms of COVID related to the digestive system - Times of India