Category: Corona Virus

A monkey crosses a wire with its baby.

Here are the top stories of the week.

Like Humans, Monkeys Can Also Choke Under Pressure In Unfamiliar Stressful Situations!

Underperforming in a crucial exam, messing up a key presentation, forgetting your lines during a speech for humans, such instances of succumbing to pressure are common. But now, a study has found that this sensitivity to pressure isnt just restricted to our species, as monkeys performances are notably impacted when put under pressure! Full story here.

Male Song Sparrows Woo Females by Mixing Up Their Musical RepertoireMuch Like Shuffling On a Music App!

Who would've thought we'd ever find the animal kingdom equivalent of wooing women by showing off your music playlist? A recent study has revealed that the male song sparrows also deliberately shuffle and mix up their song repertoire to keep things interesting for their female audience! Continue reading here.

#SpaceTrends: Netizens Amazed by Dindigul Residents Stunning Video of ISROs New Launch (WATCH)

On Monday, ISRO conducted its first launch of 2022 with three satellites onboard the PSLV-C52 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, SHAR, Sriharikota. After the take-off, even the neighbouring states witnessed glimpses of Indias indigenous powerhouse rocket in the early morning sky. Watch some stunning visuals of the rocket captured from the ground, here.

A zebrafish.

Genetically-Engineered Glowing Zebrafish Are Invading Waterbodies Across Brazil!

Glowing neon-coloured zebrafish have escaped the fish farms in southeastern Brazil, and are currently multiplying in the creeks of the Atlantic Forest! In doing so, they have also become one of the first transgenic species to accidentally escape and thrive in nature! Know all about them here.

Conserving Cuteness: Australia Upgrades Conservation Status of Iconic Koalas from Vulnerable to Endangered

Over the past few decades, Australias adorable Koala species have faced the brunt of several calamities. The species once found in abundance has been disappearing at an alarming rate, and therefore, Australia has acted by upgrading the Koalas conservation status from vulnerable to endangered species. More details here.

An ornithopod in the jaws of a Cretaceous crocodilian.

Monstrous Crocodilian Eats a Baby Dinosaur! 95 Million Years Later, Its Fossil Helps Us Study Ancient Animal Behaviour

A while ago, the fossils of a 95-million-year-old crocodilian species were unearthed in eastern Australia. Whats more surprising is that it had a partly-digested and near-complete dinosaur in its belly! Now, these incredibly rare remains are helping us understand ancient animal behaviour in greater detail. Read more here.

Dinosaur Dollys Deadly Disease: Palaeontologist Detects First Evidence of Respiratory Illness in Ancient Giants Fossil

Chronic respiratory diseases have been around since time immemorial, with COVID-19 being a very recent addition to the list. However, this history of respiratory infections isnt just restricted to humans. In fact, scientists have found evidence that such an affliction did not spare even the giant dinosaurs that lived hundreds of millions of years ago! Read more here.

New Armless Dinosaur with Terrifying Predatory Skills Unearthed in Argentina

From Jurassic Park in 1993 to the most recent Jurassic World Dominion, the frenzy around the most fearsome creatures on Earth has only grown multifold. Now, in a fresh discovery of another intriguing dino species, researchers have unearthed a specimen of a giant armless dinosaur in Argentina! Know all about it here.

Snow Replica of the Taj Mahal

Gulmargs New Attraction: First-Ever Snow Replica of the Taj Mahal Melts Tourists Hearts

The Kashmiri town of Gulmarg has lately been on the top of its game to become India's new favourite travel destination! Along with several new attractions, it has now added a snow sculpture of the Taj Mahal created for the first time in history! on an already long list. Know more about it here.

Along With Immunity, COVID-19 Vaccines Can Also Improve Your Mental Health, Study Finds

Apart from successfully doing what they are meant to do, COVID-19 vaccines are also playing a major role in improving the psychological well-being across populations, a study has found. Its results showed a significant decline in COVID-related risk perception and psychological distress among people after they received their dose. Read here.

Lessons from Darjeeling: Climate Change Has Hit Home, And Its Time to End Fossil Fuels

In this guest article, Saad Amer, a Climate Activist and the CoFounder of Plus1Vote a nonprofit organisation dedicated to mobilizing youth to vote on climate change, social justice and voting rights writes about the impact of climate change on Darjeeling, and his learnings from those experiences. Read here.

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Weekly Digest (February 14-19): Top Weather, Science, Space, Environment and Coronavirus Stories of the Week | The Weather Channel - Articles from The...

In the ongoing struggle of SARS-CoV-2s genes versus our wits, the virus that causes Covid-19 relentlessly probes human defenses with new genetic gambits. New variants of this coronavirus with increasing transmissibility have sprung up every few months, a scenario that is likely to continue.

Some experts believe that the pandemic appears to be on an evolutionary slide toward becoming endemic, a new normal in which humans and the virus co-exist, as we currently do with influenza. But coronaviruses are clever. While an endemic resolution may be in sight, SARS-CoV-2 could still shock the human species with a devastating evolutionary leap.

Here are four possible scenarios, each taken directly from the known evolutionary playbook of coronaviruses.

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Epidemic means upon the people (epi + demos); endemic means within the people (en + demos). The hope is that Covid-19 will morph from the former to the latter.

Humans currently coexist with four known endemic coronaviruses. Their scientific designations sound like technical code: 229E, OC43, NL63, and HKU1. Almost every person on earth becomes infected with all four of these viruses during childhood. These infections tend to be mild, causing only transient upper respiratory infections, hence the convenient shorthand name of common cold coronaviruses (CCC) for this gang of four. Because immunity to these coronaviruses wanes with time, infections can recur throughout the human lifespan.

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When the CCCs emerged and from where are hazy, but genetic analyses suggest they probably originated in various animal species before crossing into humans hundreds of years ago. The likely ancestral origin of OC43 is a bovine coronavirus; the nearest neighbor for 229E is a llama coronavirus; and the others probably arose as inter-species jumps from the vast global reservoir of bat coronaviruses.

If the common cold coronaviruses did originally emerge from cross-species jumps of animal viruses into humans before germ theory and the modern science of microbiology, they would probably have been mistaken for influenza and not recognized as new diseases. As these species-jumping coronaviruses adapted to humans, there would have been selective pressure for more efficient transmission. When a virus adapts to a new host, it accrues no survival advantages by debilitating or killing its host. Just the opposite: a respiratory-borne virus is more easily transmitted by an ambulatory, socially interactive host.

Just as the four common cold coronaviruses likely started out as novel epidemic viruses that evolved toward endemicity, SARS-CoV-2 may well follow the same path and become the fifth CCC.

In this scenario, SARS-CoV-2 evolves to infect new cell types in the human body, changing from predominantly infecting and affecting the respiratory system to infecting and affecting other organ systems. This scenario could lead to a better outcome or a worse one, depending on the organs damaged and the extent of it.

Most animal coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, infect cells that line the gastrointestinal tract as well as those in the respiratory tract. Mutations can switch the ability of viruses to grow in the cells of one organ system to the cells of another. Among swine, a major shift occurred in 1984 when the transmissible gastroenteritis virus mutated to become the porcine respiratory virus. Among chickens, all strains of the infectious bronchitis virus affect the trachea, but some mutant strains have emerged that damage the kidneys.

In humans, SARS-CoV-2 has been found in the intestine, kidney, and central nervous system. A new SARS-CoV-2 variant with redirected preference for new organs (organ tropism) could produce new Covid-19 signs and symptoms.

Viruses like influenza, HIV, and coronaviruses routinely swap genetic material between strains. If the genetic material of the human SARS-CoV-2 were to be combined with the genetic material of an existing animal coronavirus such as a virus endemic in fowl, swine, rodents, or even dogs and cats it could create a hybrid that spawns a new pandemic, just as the occasional hybridization of human and bird influenza viruses is known to give rise to human influenza pandemics. When an animal cell happens to be co-infected with two different coronaviruses, recombination between two parental strands can occur, giving rise to a novel hybrid genome that just might be better at replication than its parents.

There is already evidence that SARS-CoV-2 strains are recombining with other SARS-CoV-2 strains. Fowl coronaviruses and swine coronaviruses are widespread problems in commercial animal husbandry, and mouse hepatitis virus has been a common nuisance infection in laboratory mouse colonies. SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals who have close contact with coronavirus-infected animals could easily serve as hosts for the generation of recombinant viruses.

Given the huge number of SARS-CoV-2 infected humans, the chances are good that someone somewhere on earth might be simultaneously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and an animal coronavirus and some of their cells infected with both giving rise to novel hybrid virus recombinants.

And given the high counts of SARS-CoV-2 genomes in human sewage systems, it is possible that a coronavirus-infected rodent or bird could encounter human SARS-CoV-2 through contact with human waste.

Regardless of where and how novel recombinant descendants of SARS-CoV-2 might arise, the new virus could evade SARS-CoV-2 immunity and could even have different disease manifestations than what has been seen with Covid-19.

In this worrisome scenario, SARS-CoV-2 evolves to not only evade its human hosts immune response but to actively exploit it. The successive major variants of SARS-CoV-2 so far Alpha through Omicron show that the relentless evolution of the virus helps evade the immune system. But some coronaviruses, like the feline infectious peritonitis virus, take evasion to the next level: exploitation.

When a person or in this case a cat encounters a virus or receives a vaccine, immune cells begin making antibodies. These proteins bind to the virus and disable it. Paradoxically, antibodies against feline infectious peritonitis virus that are infused into non-immune cats render the animals more susceptible to peritonitis and severe disease than cats that have not been infused with anti-feline infectious peritonitis virus antibodies.

A similar perverse exploitation of the immune system can occur when humans are infected with dengue virus, which is not a coronavirus. A first infection with a dengue-type virus typically produces a self-limited, week-long illness with high fever and muscle and joint pain. The antibody immune response to that first infection renders a person immune to future exposures with that same type of dengue virus. But if the individual later becomes exposed to a dengue virus of a different type, the first infection increases the risk of severe disease instead of providing protection against it. How? In the human body, some cells have receptors for dengue viruses on their surface, while other cells have receptors for antibodies. Antibodies that bind to viruses normally prevent the virus from attaching to cells with dengue receptors. But these antibody-coated viruses can instead bind to, enter, and grow in the cells with antibody receptors on their surfaces. This process is called antibody dependent enhancement of virus growth.

Other coronaviruses that infect humans, such as SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV, have been shown in laboratory studies to be able to exploit bound antibodies as a way to attach to cells and begin to replicate in them. SARS-CoV-2 viruses can also use antibody dependent enhancement to bind to cells with antibody receptors, with the virus having been shown to enter cells and begin to replicate. But in experiments so far, the full viral replication cycle wasnt completed in test cells.

The worry here is that if SARS-CoV-2 evolves to use antibody dependent enhancement to increase virus growth and transmission, the new variant could explosively retrace its spread through immune populations.

Im not confident about how the pandemic endgame will play out. While I do think the most likely future scenario for SARS-CoV-2 is that it will become endemic, the other more worrisome scenarios I describe here are within the realm of possibility: a mutant that produces a different disease, a new recombinant virus, or a variant that exploits immunity. And these scenarios are not mutually exclusive. A new SARS-CoV-2 recombinant virus containing animal coronavirus genes might well cause altered disease.

Some other scenarios I havent discussed are also worth thinking about, like ongoing back-and-forth spillover from humans to animals and back to humans, or increased transmissibility from chronically infected people with long Covid.

None of these epidemic scenarios is a fantasy. All are variations of the known evolution of real-world coronaviruses. A new viral variant can emerge anywhere on Earth to cover the globe in a matter of weeks, as SAR-CoV-2 did. Indeed, somewhere on Earth SARS-CoV-2 strains may have already evolved in one of more of the directions I describe here but have not yet been detected.

The world cannot afford to be blindsided again. Pandemic planners from the U.S., the World Health Organization, and other countries and organizations need to develop formal risk assessments and contingency plans for a wide range of possible pandemic futures.

Viral evolution requires ongoing viral transmission and replication. The more new viral particles generated, the greater the chance that new viral mutants and recombinants could emerge. Preventing disease and death is, of course, the main goal around the world. But countering the evolution of new variant viruses is another important mission. Doing this requires controlling SARS-CoV-2 replication by quenching person-to-person virus transmission. And this must happen everywhere on the planet, not just in the U.S.

Technical and financial assistance for bringing transmission-blocking vaccines to low- and middle-income countries is not just an act of charity; it is an expression of enlightened national self-interest. The national security of the U.S. and every other country depends on winning this global viral war.

Donald S. Burke is a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, where he previously served as dean.

Read more from the original source:

4 evolutionary scenarios for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 - STAT - STAT

With the omicron surge in descent, some government officials and health experts have begun talking about the potential for the coronavirus to become endemic and lifting restrictions like mask mandates. Although we still dont have a clear sense for what endemicity could look like for this disease, or when we could get there, there are some emerging ideas for what signs to look for. These include stability and predictability.

The simplest understanding of what makes a disease endemic is that it is one that is not going away. Endemic diseases can have large ranges for prevalence depending on the characteristics of how its persisting in the population. In contrast, there have been pathogens that emerge and then disappear, such as the original SARS coronavirus that caused outbreaks in 2003, never establishing itself in the human population in the long term.

The larger question is how to differentiate endemic from pandemic. Experts say there are a few signs to keep an eye out for.

When asked what to look for, one key sign is stability,said Tara Smith,a professor at the College of Public Health at Kent State University, in an email to Changing America. Fewer cycles of surge-and-decline and less of the epidemic stage that has overwhelmed hospitalsand not only here, but around the globe.

As weve seen with the omicron variant, relative stability achieved in one country is not sustainable if there isnt enough stability worldwide to prevent a new variant from emerging.

Another sign a pathogen is becoming endemic is predictability. An endemic disease typically has predictable patterns across time and space. Its about looking both backward and forward,said Delivette Castor, of the Department of Medicine at Columbia University, to Changing America. That means looking at the history of coronavirus and using that data to be able to project forward in a reliable way. Currently, researchers creating models for projecting scenarios of coronavirus may only be able to do so for a few weeks or months out, let alone for entire year-long cycles.

But this also excludes the potential for new variants that are different from what weve seen previously, and researchers cant predict those. Many infectious diseases researchers have focused their careers on trying to predict when or what new pathogens will emerge, and its a tough job. For example, scientists are not always able to predict how influenza will change and which strains will be dominant every year. It might take many years to understand how the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus mutates and changes, and even then we may not be able to predict which versions will take off in humans.

But if it can be achieved even on a small level, predictability should be able to inform preparation and response strategies.

What does it mean in terms of preparation of ICUs, the ability of the emergency department to respond, the ability to deploy testing early enough to be able to catch signals, the ability to sustain random testing centers for good surveillance, Castor said.

Part of the task of defining what endemic means for coronavirus could be establishing what threshold level of cases is tolerable. If the coronavirus settles into seasonal patterns, then wed have to figure out the expected ranges for case rates for different times of the year.

Our country is in a historic fight against the coronavirus. Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

In 2020, New York City public schools were closed when an overall 3 percent positivity rate for coronavirus testing was reached in the city. Whether this was the right move at the time is up for question, but it may not be ideal to have rigid thresholds for all age groups and situations. In addition, reliance on rapid testing has risen as availability has increased. In some school districts, rapid tests have become crucial for protocols for deciding when to keep students in school. If fewer people follow up with PCR lab tests and especially if fewer asymptomatic cases are detected, that could mean those results are not as indicative of the populations COVID status as it once was.

In preparing strategies for the pandemic to recede into endemicity, the global aspect is key, experts say.

If we focus solely on the US, we are missing an enormous part of the picture. A pandemic is global by definition,said Smith.

Just as each state in the U.S. is intricately linked to those around it and even those that are far away, weve also learned that countries on all continents are linked. An emergence of a new variant on one continent has inevitably led to spread to most others. It may be possible to independently start behaving like it is no longer a pandemic, but that may not be the reality on the whole.

This means we will have to see if there is stability and predictability globally. Its hard enough within the U.S. with waves starting and cresting at different times across the country, but we need to also consider what is happening in other countries, experts say.

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Excerpt from:

Signs the coronavirus is becoming endemic | TheHill - The Hill

Almost three-quarters of Americans are now estimated to have some level of immunity to the Omicron Covid variant that created havoc after it emerged late last year just as people hoped the pandemic was finally waning.

The subsequent Omicron wave that assaulted the US this winter has, however, bolstered its defenses, leaving enough protection against the coronavirus that future surges will probably require much less if any dramatic disruption to society, experts reckon.

Millions of individual Americans immune systems now recognize the virus and are primed to fight it off if they encounter Omicron, or even another variant.

About half of eligible Americans have received booster shots, there have been nearly 80m confirmed infections overall and many more infections have never been reported.

One influential model uses those factors and others to estimate that 73% of Americans are, for now, enjoying protection from Omicron, the dominant variant, and that could rise to 80% by mid-March, experts say.

This will prevent or shorten new illnesses in protected people and reduce the amount of virus circulating overall, probably tamping down new waves. Hospitals will get a break from overwhelmed ICUs, experts agree.

We have changed, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. We have been exposed to this virus and we know how to deal with it.

The coronavirus the current variant or future ones that are sure to pop up remains a dangerous germ. It is still infecting more than 130,000 Americans and killing more than 2,000 every day. Tens of millions of people remain vulnerable.

And there will be future outbreaks. The notion of a herd immunity that could stop the virus has slipped away under the harsh reality of new variants, waning immunity and the rejection of vaccination by some Americans.

But the White House coronavirus team on Wednesday said that the nation was moving closer to the point that Covid-19 is no longer a constant crisis, as infections drop steeply.

And knowledge is building now that the coronavirus is no longer new. Two years ago it arrived in a nation where nobodys immune system had seen it before. The entire population 330 million people were immunologically naive, that is, susceptible to infection.

I am optimistic even if we have a surge in summer, cases will go up, but hospitalizations and deaths will not, said Mokdad, who works on the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model, which calculated the 73% figure for the Associated Press.

With varying degrees of relief and caution, many Americans are starting to return to their pre-pandemic lifestyles.

Sarah Rixen, 41, of Bismarck, North Dakota, started singing again with a civic chorus after taking a year off. Now, with Omicron winding down, she said she feels more confident than at any time since the crisis began.

But I am still a little leery that there could be another variant around the corner, said Rixen, noting that her family and most of her relatives are fully vaccinated. I am still going to wear a mask.

As mask mandates ease, workers return to offices and flights fill up, experts are trying to understand whether this return to normal can last, or if another setback is looming.

To address that, researchers are using health data from other countries such as Britain, Denmark, South Africa and Qatar to project what could be in store.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health estimate that about three out of four people in the US will have been infected by Omicron by the end of the surge.

We know its a huge proportion of the population, said Shaun Truelove, an epidemiologist and disease modeler at Johns Hopkins. This varies a lot by location, and in some areas we expect the number infected to be closer to one in two.

That means different regions or groups of people have different level of protection and risk. In Virginia, disease modelers are thinking about their population in terms of groups with different levels of immunity.

They estimate about 45% of Virginians have the highest level of immunity through boosted vaccination or through vaccination plus a recent infection with Omicron.

Another 47% have immunity that has waned somewhat; and 7% are the most vulnerable because they were never vaccinated and never infected.

In all, the vast majority of Virginians have at least some immunity, said Bryan Lewis, a computational epidemiologist who leads University of Virginias Covid-19 modeling team.

Thats going to be a nice shield of armor for our population as a whole, Lewis said.

Still, while the population is better protected, many individuals are not. Even by the most optimistic estimates for population immunity, 80 million or so Americans are still vulnerable. Thats about the same as the total number of confirmed infections in the US during the pandemic.

The 26% who could still get Omicron right now have to be very careful, Mokdad said.

See original here:

Nearly three-quarters of Americans have some Covid immunity, experts say - The Guardian

The leading US health officials said on Wednesday that the nation is moving closer to the point that Covid-19 is no longer a constant crisis as more cities, businesses and sports venues began lifting pandemic restrictions around the country.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky said during a White House briefing that the government is contemplating a change to its mask guidance in the coming weeks.

Noting recent declines in Covid-19 cases, hospital admissions and deaths, she acknowledged people are so eager for health officials to ease masking rules and other measures designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

We all share the same goal to get to a point where Covid-19 is no longer disrupting our daily lives, a time when it wont be a constant crisis rather something we can prevent, protect against, and treat, Walensky said.

With the Omicron variant waning and Americans eager to move beyond the virus, government and business leaders have been out ahead of the CDC in ending virus measures in the last week, including ordering workers back to offices, eliminating mask mandates and no longer requiring proof of vaccine to get into restaurants, bars and sports and entertainment arenas.

The efforts have been gaining more steam each day.

Philadelphia officials on Wednesday said the citys vaccine mandate for restaurants was immediately lifted, though indoor mask mandates remain in place for now.

At Disney World, vaccinated guests will no longer have to wear masks at the Florida theme park starting Thursday.

Professional sports teams including the Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards and Capitols have stopped requiring proof of vaccine for fans.

Health commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said Philadelphias average daily case count had dropped to 189 cases a day in the city of more than 1.5 million people.

Bettigole said the plunge in infections has been steeper in Philadelphia than elsewhere in the state or the country, making it easier to lift the vaccine mandate for restaurants and other businesses announced in mid-December and that fully went into effect just this month.

Our goal has always been to be the least restrictive as possible while ensuring safety, she said.

She added that the vaccine mandate helped spur a very large increase in pediatric vaccinations, pushing the city way ahead of the national average for first doses among kids ages five to 11. More than 53% of Philadelphia residents in that age group have received a first dose, compared with closer to 30% nationally, she said.

In Provincetown, Massachusetts, a seaside town that became a coronavirus hot spot with an early outbreak of the Delta variant last summer, officials on Tuesday lifted a mask mandate and vaccine requirement for indoor spaces like restaurants and bars.

Town manager Alex Morse said the community of about 3,000 recorded zero active cases last week among Provincetown residents something that hasnt happened since the surge following last years July 4 celebrations.

We are learning to live with, and mitigate, the impact of the virus on our community, Morse said.

Covid-19 infections and hospitalizations have fallen sharply in the US, with the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases dropping from about 453,000 two weeks ago to about 136,000 as of Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Hospitalizations are at levels similar to September, when the US was emerging from the Delta variant surge. Almost 65% of Americans are fully vaccinated.

As a result of all this progress and the tools we now have, we are moving to a time where Covid isnt a crisis but is something we can protect against and treat, said Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator.

Walensky said the CDC will soon put guidance in place that is relevant and encourages prevention measures when they are most needed to protect public health and our hospitals.

She suggested any changes will take into account measures of community transmission, as well as hospitalization rates or other gauges of whether infected people are becoming severely ill. They also would consider available bed space in hospitals.

Several states with indoor mask mandates announced last week they would be lifted in coming weeks, also citing promising numbers.

Two music festivals that draw thousands of people to the California desert town of Indio in April and May, Coachella and Stagecoach, also said this week there will be no vaccination, masking or testing mandates, in accordance with local guidelines.

Walensky said the CDC wants to give most people a break from things like mask-wearing when circumstances improve, though be able to mask up again if things worsen.

Read more here:

CDC contemplating change to mask guidance in coming weeks - The Guardian

After having Covid, people were 55 percent more likely to be taking prescribed antidepressants and 65 percent more likely to be taking prescribed anti-anxiety medications than contemporaries without Covid, the study found.

Overall, more than 18 percent of the Covid patients received a diagnosis of or prescription for a neuropsychiatric issue in the following year, compared with less than 12 percent of the non-Covid group. Covid patients were 60 percent more likely to fall into those categories than people who didnt have Covid, the study found.

The study found that patients hospitalized for Covid were more likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues than those with less serious coronavirus infections. But people with mild initial infections were still at greater risk than people without Covid.

Some people always argue that Oh, well, maybe people are depressed because they needed to go to the hospital and they spent like a week in the I.C.U., said the senior author of the study, Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the V.A. St. Louis Health Care System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. In people who werent hospitalized for Covid-19, the risk was lower but certainly significant. And most people dont need to be hospitalized, so that is really the group thats representative of most people with Covid-19.

The team also compared mental health diagnoses for people hospitalized for Covid with those hospitalized for any other reason. Whether people were hospitalized for heart attacks or chemotherapy or whatever other conditions, the Covid-19 group exhibited a higher risk, Dr. Al-Aly said.

The study involved electronic medical records of 153,848 adults who tested positive for the coronavirus between March 1, 2020, and Jan. 15, 2021, and survived for at least 30 days. Because it was early in the pandemic, very few were vaccinated before infection. The patients were followed until Nov. 30, 2021. Dr. Al-Aly said his team was planning to analyze whether subsequent vaccination modified peoples mental health symptoms, as well as other post-Covid medical issues the group has studied.

The Covid patients were compared with more than 5.6 million patients in the Veterans system who did not test positive for the coronavirus and more than 5.8 million patients from before the pandemic, in the period spanning March 2018 through January 2019. To try to gauge the mental health impact of Covid-19 against that of another virus, the patients were also compared with about 72,000 patients who had the flu during the two and a half years before the pandemic. (Dr. Al-Aly said there were too few flu cases during the pandemic to provide a contemporaneous comparison.)

Read the original here:

Covid Patients May Have Increased Risk of Mental Health Problems - The New York Times

By the end of next year, COVID-19s economic sting is likely to be an ugly but fading memory for the worlds wealthiest economies: Their GDP levels are forecast to be somewhat higher than pre-pandemic projections indicated they would be by 2023. Not so for most emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), which will remain debilitated well into this decade.

The World Banks latest Global Economic Prospects report forecasts that by 2023, just one EMDE regionEurope and Central Asiawill come anywhere close to regaining the GDP level that had been expected before the pandemic (Figure 1). In Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa, the gap with the pre-pandemic projection is expected to be 4 percent or more. South Asia will be the farthest behind, with its GDP level nearly 8 percent below where it might have been but for COVID-19.

Each of these regions has been hit in ways that warrant customized responses. Four factors make these six regions different, and also provide the clues for quicker recovery and convergence.

For many countries, vaccine delays are prolonging the pandemic and forestalling a full economic recovery. In all regions except one, large gaps persist between the quantities of vaccine doses contracted and the amounts delivered. The exception is East Asia and the Pacificand even there, the gap remains large in many countries other than China.

In sub-Saharan Africa, only about 7 percent of the population was fully vaccinated in early Februarycompared to more than 50 percent of the population of all EMDEs (Figure 2). That reflects delivery delays and financial constraints, predominantly, but also in-country logistical challenges such as insufficient vaccine storage and vaccine sites and difficulties distributing vaccines to rural populations.

For all EMDE regions, the top priority must be to overcome vaccine challengesquickly. Success will depend on greater global cooperation, including a swift expansion of vaccine donations by nations that enjoy a vaccine surplus. Wealthy countries should also channel additional financial resourcesthrough international financial institutions and regional development banksto help poor countries improve their access to vaccines.

By the end of 2021, GDP-weighted total debt in EMDEs was more than 200 percent of GDP, a 50-year record. The uptick in debt during the pandemic follows a decadelong wave of debt accumulation. In East Asia and the Pacific, business and household debt are at record levels, as is the volume of nonperforming loans held by banks. In Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, the largest debt-related risks are in the public sector (Figure 3).

Growing indebtedness means that debt-service burdens in some economies are rising rapidly. At the same time, inflation spiked in 2021 in many EMDEs as energy and food prices rose, demand rebounded along with easing pandemic-related restrictions, and global supply-chain challenges continued. Already, about 40 percent of EMDEs have increased policy interest rates in response. In the near term, central banks in major advanced economies are on the verge of raising interest rates and unwinding exceptional monetary policy support extended during the pandemic. This combination of record-high debt and tightening global financial conditions is perilous, as it makes EMDEs vulnerable to a sudden change in risk sentiment in markets.

Under the circumstances, EMDEs need to carefully formulate their fiscal and monetary policies, focus on rebuilding foreign exchange reserves, keep a close eye on currency risks, and strengthen macroprudential policies. They should also step up efforts to mobilize domestic resources and broaden their tax base.

Two-thirds of EMDEs rely on commodity exports for growth and development. These countriesconcentrated in Europe and Central Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africaare regularly buffeted by boom-and-bust cycles, the causes of which are typically beyond their control. More than half the worlds extreme poor live in some of these commodity-exporting countries. After a sharp decline during the early stages of the pandemic, commodity prices have soared (Figure 4).

Governments in commodity-dependent economies can take advantage of the recent uptick in prices to prepare for the inevitable commodity price bust. One imperative is diversification. These countries also need to institute fiscal stabilization, build human capital, promote competition, strengthen institutions, and reduce distorting subsidies. Some commodities represent a large share of total exports, as well as a hefty portion of government revenues (Figure 5). Oil-exporting economies in the Middle East and North Africa, for example, can build their tourism, financial, and high-tech manufacturing sectors. Metal and mineral exporters in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere can capitalize on the growing demand for inputs crucial for the longer-term transition to green energy.

COVID-19 brought an end to a remarkable era of shared prosperity that started in the 1990s: when the income of the poorest nations began to catch up with those of the wealthiest. Today, inequality in incomes between countries is at levels not seen in a decade. Within-country inequality, which was already higher in EMDEs than in wealthy ones before the pandemic, has also risen. That reflects severe job and income losses, especially among vulnerable groups, including low-income people, youth, women, and informal workers. Latin America and the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa face particularly elevated levels of within-country inequality.

Rising inequality should worry us all. Widening income gaps pose risks to social and political stability. Addressing inequality is all the more important when considering that some regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa have made little progress over the past two decades on catching up to advanced-economy levels of income, while the gains in others (Latin America and Middle East and North Africa) have been partly reversed (Figure 6).

Overcoming the detrimental economic effects of the pandemic will not be easy. But it can be doneand the restoration must start now. Some of these challenges underscore the importance of strengthening global cooperation to foster rapid and equitable vaccine distribution, support health and economic policies, enhance debt sustainability in the poorest countries, and tackle the mounting costs of climate change.

National policymakers can achieve much by prioritizing investment in health and education, and by introducing policies that reduce the number of school dropouts and facilitate the reentry into the workforce for those who lost jobs because of the pandemic. Careful calibration of monetary and fiscal policy given the global financial landscape, as well as quick reactions in the case of financial market stress, could help prevent debt crises. Policy efforts that will pay off in the long termthose encouraging diversification and inclusionmust not be laid aside despite the host of near-term challenges.

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Getting out of the coronavirus economic contraction - Brookings Institution

Twenty-fivemore Mainers have died and another 3,784coronavirus cases reported across the state, Maine health officials said Thursday.

Its the third day in a row when the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported an elevated number of virus cases as it grapples with a backlog of more than 30,000 positive virus cases, making the daily case counts less reliable indicators of the severity of the virus spread across the state. Other indicators, including falling hospitalizationsand wastewater testing, suggest the coronavirus may be loosening its grip on Maine.

Thursdays report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 206,005,according to the Maine CDC. Thats up from 202,221 on Wednesday.

Of those, 151,336have been confirmed positive, while 54,669were classified as probable cases, the Maine CDC reported.

Fourteen men and 11 women have succumbed to the virus, bringing the statewide death toll to 1,883.

Five were from Androscoggin County, one from Aroostook County, one from Cumberland County, two from Hancock County, three from Kennebec County, one from Lincoln County, three from Oxford County, six from Penobscot County, one from Piscataquis County, one from Somerset County and one from York County.

Of those, seven were 80 or older, nine in their 70s, three in their 60s, five in their 50s and one in their 20s.

The number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in the past 14 days statewide is 27,504. This is an estimation of the current number of active cases in the state, as the Maine CDC is no longer tracking recoveries for all patients. Thats up from 25,122 on Wednesday.

The new case rate statewide Thursday was 28.27 cases per 10,000 residents, and the total case rate statewide was 1,539.18.

The most cases have been detected in Mainers younger than 20, while Mainers over 80 years old account for the largest portion of deaths. More cases have been recorded in women and more deaths in men.

So far, 4,204 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. Of those, 247 are currently hospitalized, with 63 in critical care and 23 on a ventilator. Overall, 47 out of 364 critical care beds and 254 out of 328 ventilators are available.

The total statewide hospitalization rate on Thursday was 31.41 patients per 10,000 residents.

Cases have been reported in Androscoggin (20,434), Aroostook (9,862), Cumberland (43,408), Franklin (5,012), Hancock (6,175), Kennebec (19,624), Knox (5,137), Lincoln (4,532), Oxford (9,770), Penobscot (23,190), Piscataquis (2,542), Sagadahoc (4,415), Somerset (8,263), Waldo (5,218), Washington (3,519) and York (34,774) counties. Information about where an additional 130 cases were reported wasnt immediately available.

An additional 70 vaccine doses were administered in the previous 24 hours. As of Thursday, 984,026 Mainers are fully vaccinated, or about 76.8 percent of eligible Mainers, according to the Maine CDC.

As of Thursday morning, the coronavirus had sickened 78,177,104 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 928,548 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.

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25 more deaths and another 3,784 coronavirus cases reported across Maine - Bangor Daily News

Yesterday's COVID numbers

For a detailed breakdown of cases across the country, check outCharting the Spread.

NSW:14 deaths, 9,995 new cases.1,447 cases in hospital, 92 in ICU

VIC:9 deaths, 8,501 new cases. 401 in hospital, 78 in ICU, 16 on ventilators

QLD:38 deaths, 5,665 cases. 408 in hospital including 26 in private hospital. 33 in ICU, 17 ventilated

TAS:0 deaths, 680 new cases. 16 in hospital, 2 in ICU

SA:3 deaths, 1,440 new cases. 221 in hospital, 13 in ICU

ACT:1 death, 537 new cases. 47 in hospital, 3 in ICU, 2 requiring ventilation

NT:0 deaths, 1,045 new cases. 137 in hospital, 21 requiring oxygen, 1 in intensive care

WA:0 deaths, 177 new cases, 0 in hospital

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COVID live updates: All the coronavirus news you need in one place - ABC News

Its suddenly become acceptable to say that COVID isor will soon belike the flu. Such analogies have long been the preserve of pandemic minimizers, but lately theyve been creeping into more enlightened circles. Last month the dean of a medical school wrote an open letter to his students suggesting that for a vaccinated person, the risk of death from COVID-19 is in the same realm, or even lower, as the average Americans risk from flu. A few days later, David Leonhardt said as much to his millions of readers in the The New York Times morning newsletter. And three prominent public-health experts have called for the government to recognize a new normal in which the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is but one of several circulating respiratory viruses that include influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more.

The end state of this pandemic may indeed be one where COVID comes to look something like the flu. Both diseases, after all, are caused by a dangerous respiratory virus that ebbs and flows in seasonal cycles. But Id propose a different metaphor to help us think about our tenuous moment: The new normal will arrive when we acknowledge that COVIDs risks have become more in line with those of smoking cigarettesand that many COVID deaths, like many smoking-related deaths, could be prevented with a single intervention.

Read: Endemicity is meaningless

The pandemics greatest source of danger has transformed from a pathogen into a behavior. Choosing not to get vaccinated against COVID is, right now, a modifiable health risk on par with smoking, which kills more than 400,000 people each year in the United States. Andrew Noymer, a public-health professor at UC Irvine, told me that if COVID continues to account for a few hundred thousand American deaths every yeara realistic worst-case scenario, he calls itthat would wipe out all of the life-expectancy gains weve accrued from the past two decades worth of smoking-prevention efforts.

The COVID vaccines are, without exaggeration, among the safest and most effective therapies in all of modern medicine. An unvaccinated adult is an astonishing 68 times more likely to die from COVID than a boosted one. Yet widespread vaccine hesitancy in the United States has caused more than 163,000 preventable deaths and counting. Because too few people are vaccinated, COVID surges still overwhelm hospitalsinterfering with routine medical services and leading to thousands of lives lost from other conditions. If everyone who is eligible were triply vaccinated, our health-care system would be functioning normally again. (We do have other methods of protectionantiviral pills and monoclonal antibodiesbut these remain in short supply and often fail to make their way to the highest-risk patients.) Countries such as Denmark and Sweden have already declared themselves broken up with COVID. They are confidently doing so not because the virus is no longer circulating or because theyve achieved mythical herd immunity from natural infection; theyve simply inoculated enough people.

President Joe Biden said in January that this continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and vaccine holdouts are indeed prolonging our crisis. The data suggest that most of the unvaccinated hold that status voluntarily at this point. Last month, only 1 percent of adults told the Kaiser Family Foundation that they wanted to get vaccinated soon, and just 4 percent suggested that they were taking a wait-and-see approach. Seventeen percent of respondents, however, said they definitely dont want to get vaccinated or would do so only if required (and 41 percent of vaccinated adults say the same thing about boosters). Among the vaccine-hesitant, a mere 2 percent say it would be hard for them to access the shots if they wanted them. We can acknowledge that some people have faced structural barriers to getting immunized while also listening to the many others who have simply told us how they feel, sometimes from the very beginning.

The same arguments apply to tobacco: Smokers are 15 to 30 times more likely to develop lung cancer. Quitting the habit is akin to receiving a staggeringly powerful medicine, one that wipes out most of this excess risk. Yet smokers, like those who now refuse vaccines, often continue their dangerous lifestyle in the face of aggressive attempts to persuade them otherwise. Even in absolute numbers, Americas unvaccinated and current-smoker populations seem to match up rather well: Right now, the CDC pegs them at 13 percent and 14 percent of all U.S. adults, respectively, and both groups are likely to be poorer and less educated.

Read: Its a terrible idea to deny medical care to unvaccinated people

In either context, public-health campaigns must reckon with the very difficult task of changing peoples behavior. Anti-smoking efforts, for example, have tried to incentivize good health choices and disincentivize bad ones, whether through cash payments to people who quit, gruesome visual warnings on cigarette packs, taxes, smoke-free zones, or employer smoking bans. Over the past 50 years, this crusade has very slowly but consistently driven change: Nearly half of Americans used to smoke; now only about one in seven does. Hundreds of thousands of lung-cancer deaths have been averted in the process.

With COVID, too, weve haphazardly pursued behavioral nudges to turn the hesitant into the inoculated. Governments and businesses have given lotteries and free beers a chance. Some corporations, universities, health-care systems, and local jurisdictions implemented mandates. But many good ideas have turned out to be of little benefit: A randomized trial in nursing homes published in January, for example, found that an intensive information-and-persuasion campaign from community leaders had failed to budge vaccination rates among the predominantly disadvantaged and low-income staff. Despite the altruistic efforts of public-health professionals and physicians, its becoming harder by the day to reach immunological holdouts. Booster uptake is also lagging far behind.

This is where the new normal of COVID might come to resemble our decades-long battle with tobacco. We should neither expect that every stubbornly unvaccinated person will get jabbed before next winter nor despair that none of them will ever change their mind. Lets accept instead that we may make headway slowly, and with considerable effort. This plausible outcome has important, if uncomfortable, policy implications. With a vaccination timeline that stretches over years, our patience for restrictions, especially on the already vaccinated, will be very limited. But there is middle ground. We havent banned tobacco outrightin fact, most states protect smokers from job discriminationbut we have embarked on a permanent, society-wide campaign of disincentivizing its use. Long-term actions for COVID might include charging the unvaccinated a premium on their health insurance, just as we do for smokers, or distributing frightening health warnings about the perils of remaining uninoculated. And once the political furor dies down, COVID shots will probably be added to the lists of required vaccinations for many more schools and workplaces.

To compare vaccine resistance and smoking seems to overlook an obvious and important difference: COVID is an infectious disease and tobacco use isnt. (Tobacco is also addictive in a physiological sense, while vaccine resistance isnt.) Many pandemic restrictions are based on the idea that any individuals behavior may pose a direct health risk to everyone else. People who get vaccinated dont just protect themselves from COVID; they reduce their risk of passing on the disease to those around them, at least for some limited period of time. Even during the Omicron wave, that protective effect has appeared significant: A person who has received a booster is 67 percent less likely to test positive for the virus than an unvaccinated person.

But the harms of tobacco can also be passed along from smokers to their peers. Secondhand-smoke inhalation causes more than 41,000 deaths annually in the U.S. (a higher mortality rate than some flu seasons). Yet despite smokings well-known risks, many states dont completely ban the practice in public venues; secondhand-smoke exposure in private homes and carsaffecting 25 percent of U.S. middle- and high-school childrenremains largely unregulated. The general acceptance of these bleak outcomes, for smokers and nonsmokers alike, may hint at another aspect of where were headed with COVID. Tobacco is lethal enough that we are willing to restrict smokers personal freedomsbut only to a degree. As deadly as COVID is, some people wont get vaccinated, no matter what, and both the vaccinated and unvaccinated will spread disease to others. A large number of excess deaths could end up being tolerated or even explicitly permitted. Noel Brewer, a public-health professor at the University of North Carolina, told me that anti-COVID actions, much like anti-smoking policies, will be limited not by their effectiveness but by the degree to which they are politically palatable.

Without greater vaccination, living with COVID could mean enduring a yearly death toll that is an order of magnitude higher than the one from flu. And yet this, too, might come to feel like its own sort of ending. Endemic tobacco use causes hundreds of thousands of casualties, year after year after year, while fierce public-health efforts to reduce its toll continue in the background. Yet tobacco doesnt really feel like a catastrophe for the average person. Noymer, of UC Irvine, said that the effects of endemic COVID, even in the context of persistent gaps in vaccination, would hardly be noticeable. Losing a year or two from average life expectancy only bumps us back to where we were in 2000.

Chronic problems eventually yield to acclimation, rendering them relatively imperceptible. We still care for smokers when they get sick, of course, and we reduce harm whenever possible. The health-care system makes $225 billion every year for doing sopaid out of all of our tax dollars and insurance premiums. I have no doubt that the system will adapt in this way, too, if the coronavirus continues to devastate the unvaccinated. Hospitals have a well-honed talent for transforming any terrible situation into a marketable center of excellence.

COVID is likely to remain a leading killer for a while, and some academics have suggested that pandemics end only when the public stops caring. But we shouldnt forget the most important reason that the coronavirus isnt like the flu: Weve never had vaccines this effective in the midst of prior influenza outbreaks, which means we didnt have a simple, clear approach to saving quite so many lives. Compassionate conversations, community outreach, insurance surcharges, even mandatesIll take them all. Now is not the time to quit.

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COVID Is More Like Smoking Than the Flu - The Atlantic