Two years since the coronavirus pandemic started to impact us here in Kern County Bakersfield Now
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Two years since the coronavirus pandemic started to impact us here in Kern County - Bakersfield Now
There is still potential for the novel coronavirus to mutate into a new coronavirus variant, an infectious disease expert recently told the Deseret News.
Driving the news: Dr. Robert Quigley, an infectious disease expert and senior vice president of International SOS, a leading medical and security services company, told the Deseret News in an email that the coronavirus is constantly evolving, which could lead to a new variant down the line.
What he said: COVID-19 is an evolving virus, and like any other virus it has a tendency to mutate, Quigley said.
The bigger picture: Moderna CEO Stephane BanceltoldBloombergThursday that theres about a 20% chance of a new dangerous coronavirus variant emerging in the near future.
Worth noting: Scientists toldNewsweekin August 2021 that there was a potentialdoomsday COVID variantdown the line. This was expressed before the rise of the omicron variant, which surged through the United States this winter.
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New COVID variant: Will there be a new variant after omicron and BA.2? - Deseret News
DENVER (KDVR) After weeks of declining COVID-19 cases in Colorado, several counties saw a rise in cases over the last seven days.
As of Monday, the states seven-day positivity rate was 3.33%, which is up from2.56% seven days ago. Positivity rate measures the amount of COVID positive tests to the total amount of tests taken.
Overall, 13 counties saw a decrease in COVID-19 positivity, 35 counties saw a rise, nine counties stayed the same, and seven counties administered fewer than 10 tests.
According to theColorado Department of Public Health and Environment, incidence are down slightly over the last week.
Heres a look atpositivity rates for every county over the last seven days:
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.
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These 35 counties saw a rise in COVID-19 over last week - FOX 31 Denver
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At 16, ShaNiyah McGee could see her future clearly. She wanted to go to college to become a pediatrician and own a nail salon and somehow, some way, she wanted her younger siblings to come to a university with her.
Shes that kind of person, her grandmother, Laurena Ellis, said. She didnt have a bad bone in her body.
But unfortunately, none of this will come to pass. On Sept. 28 the day ShaNiyah emerged from her bedroom where she spent days recovering from COVID-19 to return to school she collapsed in her Dallas home and died, becoming one of over 100 Texas coronavirus fatalities under the age of 19.
As the coronavirus pandemic moves into a third year, recent data provides a clearer picture of COVID-19s deadly impact in Texas. Today marks the one-year anniversary of when vaccines were widely available to anyone over the age of 16 and in that time, deaths have slowed considerably.
Vaccines became available to those older than 12 last May. Between then and January, COVID-19 killed about 29,000 Texans. About 82% of those deaths, including ShaNiyahs, were among people who had not been vaccinated.
Behind these figures are real families, broken by the deaths of loved ones lost too early to a disease that often infects several members of a family at once. ShaNiyahs mother, Felicia Boulden, eventually recovered only to arrange her oldest daughters funeral.
Ellis said her granddaughter ShaNiyah had planned to get the shots after she fully recovered from COVID-19. Now, everyone eligible in the family has received the vaccines. Ellis and Boulden have struggled to understand how Boulden lived but ShaNiyah died.
We think she bargained with God to leave her mother for her sisters and her brother, Ellis said.
Vaccination has dramatically changed the impact of the coronavirus, which first appeared in the United States in early 2020. Before vaccines were available to everyone a year ago, Texans 80 and older died most frequently from COVID-19.
But when the coronavirus delta variant hit last September, a high vaccine rate for older Texans protected them, while deaths among younger residents began rising. Adults in their 60s died more often than any other age group during the surge, followed by those in their 70s and those in their 50s.
Brent Earles, 65, of Dallas, was one of those Texans in January. He worked as a shopping mall Santa for years, hoisting children onto his lap and listening to their Christmas wishes.
My mom commented that it was probably one of the happiest times that shes ever seen him was being Santa at this [last] event, but it is almost certainly where he contracted COVID, his son Jared Earles said.
On New Years Eve, doctors rushed an unvaccinated Brent Earles, as he struggled to breathe, into the intensive care unit, where he remained for a near monthlong fight against COVID-19.
On Jan. 25, he died four days after his 65th birthday, one of the nearly 2,000 Texans in their 60s who have died in the first two months of this year from the virus.
Its the natural order of things that at some point in your life, your parents die, Earles said. Certainly, I didnt want or expect it to be like this, so suddenly and so needlessly. My dad had a lot of living left and he had a lot more to give.
In the beginning, Earles family and doctors thought Brent would make it. He had battled with COVID-19 pneumonia in both lungs. Two weeks in the hospital stripped him of 20 pounds, but he had improved enough that doctors prepared to move him out of the ICU.
In those early days at the hospital, Jared said, his father began to think seriously for the first time about getting the shots.
Brent had held concerns about the vaccines safety, which he and his son regularly discussed. His son wanted him to get vaccinated, but the older man refused. That seemed to be changing as Brent slowly regained his strength.
On one hand, my dad is a number. To most people, hes just one of an unnecessarily large number. And he also fits in that unvaccinated camp, But, Jared Earles added, He was much more than a statistic to me.
As Brent was preparing to move out of the ICU, Brents mother, who was unvaccinated, died of COVID-19. Soon after, new scans revealed a severe regression in Brents lungs.
His lung scans kind of went from mostly clear to terrible, Jared said. [For] COVID cases, its a long, slow, arduous recovery, and setbacks are extremely fast and often fatal. And thats what happened.
In Brents last moments, the father passed the torch to his son. Jared had moved back to Texas seven years ago to work with his father.
He told me that I had surpassed him, Jared said. And it was my time to continue on.
About two months have passed since the omicron surge, which took the lives of at least 6,000 Texans, and the state is seeing a relative respite from the pandemic as COVID-19 restrictions begin to lift.
Texas is now averaging about 60 deaths a day, down from over 200 daily deaths at the height of omicron. During the delta variant peak, there was an average of 300 deaths in one day.
While death rates have slowed, the United States is still on track to reach 1 million COVID-19 deaths in the coming weeks. Texas leads the nation with the second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths behind California, which records about 2,000 more deaths despite having 10 million more people. Overall, Texas has had 296 deaths per 100,000 residents since the pandemic began, ranking it roughly in the middle of all states.
However, other variants will be coming. A mutation of omicron, called BA.2, is currently causing surges across Europe. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it is at least 50% more transmissible than its predecessor but does not appear to cause a deadlier illness. Federal data showed the new strain accounting for 1 in 4 new U.S. COVID-19 cases.
While Fauci is expecting an uptick in domestic cases, it is unclear if the increase will reflect the intense surges seen this past January and last September.
Rebecca Fischer, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, said Texans should keep their guard up.
Were doing OK right now, but this is the time to gain ground on the virus, Fischer said. By no means is this a time to act like the pandemic is over.
Despite the virus mutations, vaccines are still the best defense against COVID-19. Right now, the states fully vaccinated rate sits at just below 60%. Booster rates are even lower and now theres a second booster to be made available this month. Only 22% of Texans have received a booster shot. Increasing these rates will not only prevent death but will make the emergence and transmission of new variants more difficult.
Fischer does believe there will come a time where the individual and public health measures will have largely suppressed the virus, and that time could be close, but only with significant investment in public health services.
Public health [experts] have been screaming this forever. But now, its becoming really apparent, Fischer said.
Earlier this month, Republican pushback prompted Congress to cut $15.6 billion for COVID-19 relief that would have paid for treatments, vaccines and testing. If Congress does not release additional funds, the money for COVID testing and treatment for Americas tens of millions of uninsured people could likely run out in April.
As global COVID-19 cases rise, Fischer said the United States must move aggressively before the wave hits here to combat future deaths.
When I look at the numbers that 100 Texans a day are dying, I think the numbers are a little bit down now, but thats not OK. Its never been OK, Fischer said. Its never been OK to see those numbers and think that we dont need to do anything and its all OK and normal now.
Disclosure: Texas A&M University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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By Nancy Lapid - The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. HIV drugs may curb COVID-19 risk Certain drugs used to treat HIV may have a role in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections, according to preliminary data that may help explain why people living with the condition have not appeared to be at higher risk for serious COVID-19 despite being generally more vulnerable to infections.
Doctors in France studied more than 500 people with HIV, a third of whom were receiving long-term treatment with protease inhibitor drugs as part of their antiviral therapy. Over the course of a year, SARS-CoV-2 infections were diagnosed in 12% of participants taking protease inhibitors and 22% of those not receiving these drugs. Four patients in the non-protease-inhibitor group were admitted to hospital with COVID-19. After accounting for other risk factors, individuals taking protease inhibitors were 70% less likely to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 than patients who were not taking these drugs, according to data scheduled for presentation at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases https://www.eccmid.org.
Some new treatments for COVID-19 use protease inhibitors, which block the virus from multiplying. "Protease inhibitor drugs have long history of use, a good safety profile, and are generally well tolerated," Dr. Steve Nguala from the Intercommunal Hospital Center of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, said in a statement. They have the potential "to prevent the spread of infections and mutation of future variants," he said, adding that larger studies are needed to confirm the findings.
COVID-19 and flu make for a dangerous combo
Having COVID-19 and influenza at the same time puts hospitalized adults at much greater risk of critical illness and death compared to having COVID-19 without the flu, researchers reported on Friday in The Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00383-X/fulltext.
Patients with SARS-CoV-2/influenza coinfections were more than four times as likely to require machines to help them breath and 2.4 times as likely to die compared to patients who only had COVID-19, according to a study of nearly 7,000 hospitalized patients with COVID-19, including 227 who also had the flu. Dr. Kenneth Baillie of the University of Edinburgh, who led the study, said the combination of the two viruses is particularly dangerous. "We expect that COVID-19 will circulate with flu, increasing the chance of co-infections. That is why we should change our testing strategy for COVID-19 patients in hospital and test for flu much more widely," Baillie said in a statement.
"The vaccines that protect against COVID-19 and flu are different," added Dr. Peter Openshaw of Imperial College London, "and people need both."
Experimental COVID drug may be preventive and therapeutic
An experimental drug designed to be sprayed into the nose has shown the potential to both prevent infection and treat COVID-19, at least for some variants of the coronavirus, according to a study in mice.
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(Reuters) Shanghai, Chinas most populous city, on Tuesday again tightened the first phase of a two-stage COVID-19 lockdown, asking some residents to stay indoors unless they are getting tested as the number of daily cases rose beyond 4,400.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
* Eikon users, see COVID-19: MacroVitals https://apac1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/cms/?navid=1592404098 for a case tracker and summary of news.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Hong Kong private home prices dropped at a faster pace in February to their lowest since January 2021, official data showed on Tuesday, as the Asian financial hub was hit by a new wave of COVID-19 infections.
* Chinas Shanghai on Tuesday said it would roll out policies to help the local economy cope with a surge in COVID-19 cases in the city, including offering refunds that will reduce firms tax burdens by 140 billion yuan ($22 billion) in 2022.
* Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has tested positive for COVID-19 but feels well and will work while self-isolating at home, his office said.
EUROPE
* German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday he did not agree with a planned intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines as patents are a crucial way of encouraging companies to continue pushing ahead with new research.
* Italy reported 30,710 COVID-19 related cases on Monday, against 59,555 the day before, the health ministry said, while the number of deaths rose to 95 from 82.
* Londons Metropolitan Police is expected to issue the first fines for breaching a COVID-19 lockdown at No. 10 Downing Street, The Guardian reported on Monday citing government insiders.
AMERICAS
* Brazilian health regulator Anvisa recommended on Monday that COVID-19 travel restrictions be eased due to a drop in cases and deaths, requiring only full vaccination and doing away with quarantine for unvaccinated travellers.
* Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Monday that he had supposedly tested positive for COVID-19, with no major symptoms.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* Pfizers oral COVID-19 therapy will be evaluated as a potential treatment for patients hospitalised with the illness in a major British trial, scientists said on Monday, as cases rise in some parts of the world.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* Japanese shares led gains in Asian stocks on Tuesday as the Bank of Japan defended its ultra-easy stance, while oil slid on fears of lower demand from China as Shanghai applied a zero-COVID strategy by locking down despite a relatively modest caseload. [MKTS/GLOB]
* Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ordered his cabinet to put together a fresh relief package by the end of April to cushion the economic blow from rising fuel and raw material prices.
* British finance minister Rishi Sunak defended the tax cuts he announced last week, after they were widely criticised for not helping the poorest households through the most severe hit to living standards since at least the 1950s.
(Compiled by Rashmi Aich and Shailesh Kuber; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Anil DSilva)
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Factbox-Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus - KFGO
A look at some of the top headlines trending online today including the latest updates on Russias invasion of Ukraine, the Jan. 6 committee, the coronavirus and much more.
Biden says his comment about Putin not remaining in power reflects moral outrage, not a policy change (USA Today)
Ukraine and Russia resume peace talks with no handshake (Reuters)
Ukraines other fight: Growing food for itself and the world (AP)
Russia seems focused for now on liberating parts of eastern Ukraine (NPR)
Judge OKs emails to Jan. 6 panel, sees likely Trump crimes (AP)
Jared Kushner to appear before House January 6 committee on Thursday, sources say (CBS)
DeSantis signs bill dubbed dont say gay, says that its about parents rights (Miami Herald)
Bidens 2023 budget to target billionaires, boost military funds (NBC)
What to know about a 2nd COVID-19 booster for people over age 50 (ABC)
WHO examining potential hearing problems linked to Covid vaccines (NBC)
CDC adds no new destinations to its highest-risk category (CNN)
Shanghai lockdown tests zero-COVID limits, shakes markets (AP)
Will Smith Apologizes to Chris Rock After Academy Condemns His Slap (NY Times)
Phil Collins bids emotional farewell to fans at his final concert (NY Post)
Blue Origins 4th astro-tourism flight set to launch without big names (Reuters)
FedEx founder Fred Smith stepping down as CEO (Fox)
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Whats trending today: Ukraine, Jan. 6, coronavirus & more - cleveland.com
AUSTIN (KXAN) Just after 3 a.m. Monday, Tesla founder Elon Musk said he has COVID-19 for the second time.
The billionaire, who owns both the electric car manufacturer headquartered in Austin and space exploration company SpaceX, tweeted the news early Monday, saying, Covid-19 is the virus of Theseus.
How many gene changes before its not Covid-19 anymore? he continued. I supposedly have it again, but almost no symptoms.
The reference to the Greek mythological hero seems to be about the ship of Theseus, which in philosophy, wrestles with a paradox: If an object has all the parts that comprise it replaced, is it still the same thing after the changes?
Musk, who has 79.4 million Twitter followers and tweets at all hours, caused a stir on the social media platform the first time he tested positive for the virus.
He drew the ire of a Canadian doctor who referred to him as Space Karen after he complained about conflicting test results in November 2020.
Musk said, Something extremely bogus is going on, after multiple antigen tests came back both positive and negative.
Emma Bell, Ph.D., a postdoc of bioinformatics at a Toronto hospital, unleashed an aggressive explanation as to why that could happen, and her name-calling sparked a meme that entertained internet users for weeks.
Earlier in March on Twitter, Musk tried to pick a fight with Russian president Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine, and he used Starlink satellites to restore internet service to Ukraine residents as combat from the war knocked out service.
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Virus of Theseus: Elon Musk says he has COVID-19 again - KRQE News 13
California has rolled back most of its COVID-19 measures since the omicron surge died down, and Bay Area counties have followed suit, removing indoor mask mandates and loosening other precautions like vaccination mandates for indoor dining and gyms.
Yet there is still one critical tool for controlling the spread of the virus that remains in place: the five-day isolation for those who test positive for the coronavirus.
Isolation and quarantine periods were dramatically shortened during the omicron surge, as counties faced immense staffing shortages at health-care facilities and some research suggested that omicron caused people to get sick faster. Elsewhere around the world, some countries have begun to change or remove isolation mandates. Spain recently ended mandatory quarantines for those infected with the virus but showing no or mild symptoms of the disease, and the U.K. ended the legal requirement to self-isolate in February, though it still recommends staying away from others after a positive test.
Now, with the emergence of the new, even more transmissible BA.2 subvariant, is it possible the guidance here in California and the Bay Area could change again?
All Bay Area counties follow the California Department of Public Healths guidance on isolation and quarantine for the general public, which goes beyond the recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated in December of last year.
According to Californias current policy, everyone, regardless of vaccination status and whether they are symptomatic or not, must isolate at home for at least five days if they test positive for COVID-19. If they choose not to get tested after five days or if they have fever, they must isolate for 10 days.
People who are exposed to someone with COVID-19 and are unvaccinated or have not yet received their booster dose must quarantine at home for at least five days. If theyre unable to get tested, they must quarantine for 10 days, even if theyre asymptomatic.
In California, the guidance is only recommended for the general public, but employers are required to adhere to Cal/OSHA standards that follow the states guidance.
Public health officials said changes to the current guidance will be based on science and what they continue to learn about COVID-19 and its variants.
At this point, the guidance still stands people are still getting sick with COVID so there is still a need to isolate (or quarantine if exposed), Laine Hendricks, a public information officer for Marin County, said in an email.
However, it does not mean the CDC will not alter the guidance if a new variant emerges that behaves differently than past variants, she added.
Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology at UCSF, said in a phone interview that the periods (for isolating and quarantining) have both shortened over time as we get a better understanding of the natural history of the disease and as the variants have evolved to two viruses that replicate more rapidly and cause disease more quickly.
Rutherford said the duration for each may become shorter or longer if the incubation period for COVID-19 changes, but he doesnt expect the isolation and quarantine guidance to completely go away.
Its standard infection control precaution, said Rutherford. We do this (practice) for all sorts of diseases.
Hendricks also pointed out that these practices are hardly unique to COVID-19, and that other viruses, from the common flu to Ebola, come with guidance on how long to stay away from people. In each case, the recommendation is unique to the virus, as each behaves differently.
But Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley, said in an email he believes isolation and quarantine efforts could soon be eliminated when enough people get vaccinated (more than 90%) and the disease is no longer severe.
In places like Japan, people routinely wear masks during the cold or influenza season and isolate themselves not a requirement but people do this voluntarily. I think this will soon happen here with COVID-19, said Riley.
Its hard to say when this would be, but if the current decrease in cases continues for the next couple of months, probably by June or July, these mandates will be eliminated, he said. It all depends on what happens with this new subvariant of omicron.
Jessica Flores (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jessica.flores@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jesssmflores
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Covid-19 patients who have been hospitalised should also be routinely tested for flu, researchers have said. The call was made after the publication of a paper in the medical journal the Lancet that revealed having both conditions more than doubles the risk of a patient dying.
Scientists also discovered that individuals who had contracted both Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and influenza viruses were more than four times more likely to require ventilation support and 2.4 times more likely to die than if they just had Covid-19.
We found that the combination of Covid-19 and flu viruses is particularly dangerous, said Professor Kenneth Baillie of Edinburgh University. We expect that Covid-19 will circulate with flu, increasing the chance of co-infections. That is why we should change our testing strategy for Covid-19 patients in hospital and test for flu much more widely.
The study looked at more than 305,000 hospitalised patients with Covid-19 and involved researchers from Edinburgh University, Liverpool University, Imperial College London and Leiden University in the Netherlands.
A total of 6,965 patients were found to have had Covid-19, while 227 also had the influenza virus. These individuals experienced significantly more severe outcomes, researchers found.
We were surprised that the risk of death more than doubled when people were infected by both flu and Covid-19 viruses, said Professor Calum Semple of Liverpool University. It is now very important that people get fully vaccinated and boosted against both viruses, and not leave it until it is too late.
This point was stressed by Professor Peter Openshaw of Imperial College London. The vaccines that protect against Covid-19 and flu are different, and people need both. The way that these two infections are treated is also different so its important to test for other viruses even when you have a diagnosis in someone who is hospitalised with a respiratory infection.
The scientists warning comes as it was revealed that more than 600,000 people will be invited for a Covid-19 booster jab this week as infection levels climb close to record highs in England. About one in 16 people in private households in England or 3.5 million people are likely to have had Covid in the week to 19 March, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is up from one in 20 or 2.7 million people in the previous seven days and is the third week in a row that infections are estimated to have risen.
Since rolling out the spring boosters last week, more than 470,000 people have come forward for a jab, NHS England said. It is asking people to wait to be invited before trying to book, with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation recommending that eligible people get their vaccine six months after their initial booster for maximum effectiveness. About 5.5 million people in England aged over 75 or immunosuppressed will be able to get the booster.
Researchers say the steep rise in infections across much of the country is being driven by the Omicron BA.2 variant, a more transmissible form of Omicron. The figures are further evidence that Covid-19 is becoming rapidly more prevalent in the UK and come as the number of people in hospital with the virus continues to increase.
The percentage of people testing positive for Covid-19 in England has increased across all age groups and regions, the ONS found. Infection levels among the over-70s remain at their highest since estimates began in England in May 2020, with about one in 20 (5%) likely to have the virus, up week on week from one in 30 (3.5%).
Covid-19 remains most prevalent among young children, however. About one in 12 (8.3%) of those aged between two and school year 6 are estimated to have had the coronavirus last week, up from one in 16 (6.3%)..
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Patients with Covid and flu double the risk of dying, say scientists - The Guardian
