Category: Corona Virus

At the beginning of 2020, as the nation celebrated the start of a new year, many Americans were still unaware of the "mysterious pneumonia" that had sickened dozens of workers at a live animal market in Wuhan, China.

The illness, later identified as the "novel coronavirus", began spreading rapidly across the globe. Several studies have suggested that the virus had already been spreading in the United States, potentially as early as December 2019.

However, it was not until mid-January of 2020, when the virus would officially be recognized as present on U.S. soil.

Two years ago, on Jan. 21, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first domestic case of coronavirus. The positive patient was a 35-year-old man from Washington state, who had recently returned from Wuhan, China.

Now, two years later, the U.S. has confirmed more than 69 million COVID-19 cases, and 859,000 deaths, the highest in the total for any country, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. And the nation, despite the wide availability of highly effective vaccines and novel treatments, is experiencing its most significant surge on record due to the highly transmissible omicron variant and tens of millions of eligible Americans remaining unvaccinated.

Medical staff member Gabriel Cervera Rodoriguez stands and takes a moment by a deceased patient wrapped in a body bag in the COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) at the United Memorial Medical Center, Dec. 11, 2020, in Houston.

These last two years have brought transformational advancements spanning vaccines, treatments and testing. Though these tools are having a clear impact on reducing poor outcomes, we are still seeing one of the worst surges to date, said John Brownstein, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Boston Children's Hospital and an ABC News contributor.

'Low' risk morphs into pandemic

Just days before the first case was confirmed two years ago, the CDC had implemented public health entry screening at several major airports including San Francisco International Airport, New Yorks John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport.

At the time, the CDC reported that while the virus was originally thought to be spreading from animal-to-person, there were "growing indications" that "limited person-to-person spread" was taking place.

"This is certainly not a moment for panic or high anxiety. It is a moment for vigilance," Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said during a news conference that same day. "The risk is low to residents in Washington."

Less than a week after the first domestic case was confirmed, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which is a division of the CDC, stressed that the virus is not spreading in the community For that reason, we continue to believe that the immediate health risk from the new virus to the general public is low at this time.

In late February, Messonnier said she ultimately expected to see community spread in the U.S. At the time, health officials noted that the virus may not be able to be contained at the border and that Americans should prepare for a "significant disruption" in their lives.

In the months to come, Life Care Center of Kirkland, a skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility in Seattle suburbs, would become the first epicenter of the virus' deadly journey across the country. The epicenter quickly then became New York City, which experienced hundreds of deaths a day at the peak of April 2020.

Sandra Lindsay, left, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, is inoculated with the COVID-19 vaccine by Dr. Michelle Chester, Dec. 14, 2020, in New York.

It would be another seven weeks until the World Health Organization would declare the global coronavirus a pandemic, subsequently forcing borders to close, and Americans to retreat to their homes for what some thought would be just a few weeks of "social distancing" and "stay-at-home" orders.

In the first months of pandemic, through April 2020, more than 1 million Americans were sickened and 65,000 died, when the virus was still largely mysterious, treatments and supplies were scarce and hospitals were overwhelmed in large urban areas like New York. Subsequent waves of the virus each had their own characteristics from the deadly winter surge of 2020 to 2021 and the delta variant surge, which upended the optimism that the pandemic would finally come to an end after mass vaccination.

In fact, in the last year alone, more than 450,000 Americans have been lost to the virus.

17 million cases in a month

Two years into the pandemic, federal data shows that hundreds of thousands of Americans are still testing positive for the virus every day, and more than 1,600 others are dying from COVID-19.

In the last month alone, there have been more than 17.1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, and 44,700 reported virus-related deaths. In addition, more than a year into the U.S. domestic vaccine rollout, 62 million eligible Americans who are over the age of 5, about 20% of that group, remain completely unvaccinated.

After 24 months and unprecedented medical innovation, the last month has brought millions of cases and tens of thousands of deaths. While many might declare victory on the pandemic, we are clearly very far from where want we want to be right now, especially with billions of people yet to be vaccinated, Brownstein said, referring to the continued global crisis.

The U.S. is still averaging more than 750,000 new cases a day, about three times the surge from last winter in 2021. However, there is growing evidence to suggest that the latest omicron case surge may be beginning to recede in the parts of the country that were first struck by the variant.

Although preliminary global studies indicate that the omicron variant may cause less severe illness than prior variants, health officials say that the sheer numbers of infections caused by the new variant could still overwhelm the health care system.

Medical workers treat a patient who is suffering from the effects of Covid-19 in the ICU at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Conn., Jan. 18, 2022.

Glimmers of hope

In New York, daily cases have dropped by 33% in the last week, and in New Jersey, new cases are down by 43.7%. In Massachusetts, wastewater samples indicate the states omicron surge is falling rapidly.

In the Southeast, daily cases in Florida are falling too down by 30% in the last week, though the state is still averaging more than 45,000 new cases a day.

However, health officials caution that overall, the latest COVID-19 surge across much of the country has yet to peak, and hospitals could still be faced with difficult weeks ahead.

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNNs State of the Union on Sunday that the omicron surge has not yet peaked nationally.

"This is a very difficult time during this surge. We are seeing high case numbers and hospitalization rates... we're also seeing strain in many of our hospitals around the country," Murthy said. "The next few weeks will be tough."

More than 160,000 virus-positive Americans are currently hospitalized across the country, a pandemic high. It was just over two weeks ago that we hit 100,000 COVID-19 positive Americans hospitalized.

Half the country 25 states and Puerto Rico has seen their COVID-19 related hospital admission rates jump by at least 10% in the last week, and nationwide, an average of more than 21,000 virus-positive Americans are seeking care every day.

And nationally, 99% of U.S. counties are still reporting high transmission. Out of the 3,220 U.S. counties, just 16 counties are not reporting high transmission.

Earlier this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House, said at the Davos Agenda, a virtual event held by the World Economic Forum, that it is an open question as to whether the omicron variant will lead the globe into a new phase of the pandemic.

It's not going to be that you're going to eliminate this disease completely. We're not going to do that. But hopefully it will be at such a low level that it doesn't disrupt our normal, social, economic and other interactions with each other," Fauci said. To me, that's what the new normal is. I hope the new normal also includes a real strong corporate memory of what pandemics can do.

Originally posted here:

2 years after COVID first hit the US, hundreds of thousands of Americans are still falling ill - ABC News

CHICAGO, Jan 20 (Reuters) - The Omicron variant, which is spreading far faster than previous versions of the coronavirus, is not likely to help countries achieve so-called herd immunity against COVID-19, in which enough people become immune to the virus that it can no longer spread, leading disease experts say.

From the earliest days of the pandemic, public health officials have expressed hope that it was possible to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, as long as a high enough percentage of the population was vaccinated or infected with the virus.

Those hopes dimmed as the coronavirus mutated into new variants in quick succession over the past year, enabling it to reinfect people who were vaccinated or had previously contracted COVID-19.

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Some health officials have revived the possibility of herd immunity since Omicron emerged late last year.

The fact that the variant spreads so quickly and causes milder illness might soon expose enough people, in a less harmful way, to the SARS-COV-2 virus and provide that protection, they argue.

Disease experts note, however, that Omicrons transmissibility is aided by the fact that this variant is even better than its predecessors at infecting people who were vaccinated or had a prior infection. That adds to evidence that the coronavirus will continue to find ways to break through our immune defenses, they said.

Reaching a theoretical threshold beyond which transmission will cease is probably unrealistic given the experience we have had in the pandemic, Dr. Olivier le Polain, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization (WHO), told Reuters.

That is not to say that prior immunity offers no benefit. Instead of herd immunity, many experts interviewed by Reuters said there was growing evidence that vaccines and prior infection would help boost population immunity against COVID-19, which makes the disease less serious for those who are infected, or become reinfected.

As long as population immunity holds with this variant and future variants, we'll be fortunate and the disease will be manageable, said Dr. David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

NOT LIKE MEASLES

Current COVID-19 vaccines were primarily designed to prevent severe disease and death rather than infection. But clinical trial results in late 2020 showing that two of the vaccines had more than 90% efficacy against the disease initially sparked hope that the virus could be largely contained by widespread vaccination, similar to the way measles has been curbed by inoculation.

With SARS-CoV-2, two factors have since undermined that picture, said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

"The first is that immunity, especially to infection, which is the important kind of immunity, wanes quite quickly, at least from the vaccines that we have right now," he said.

The second is that the virus can quickly mutate in a way that enables it to elude protection from vaccination or prior infection - even when immunity has not waned.

"It changes the game when vaccinated people can still shed virus and infect other people," said Dr. David Wohl, an infectious disease specialist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

He cautioned against assuming that infection with Omicron would increase protection, especially against the next variant that might arise. "Just because you had Omicron, maybe that protects you from getting Omicron again, maybe," Wohl said.

Vaccines in development that provide immunity against future variants or even multiple types of coronaviruses could change that, said Pasi Penttinen, the top influenza expert at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, but it will take time.

Still, the hope for herd immunity as a ticket back to normal life is hard to shake.

"These things were in the media: 'Well reach herd immunity when 60% of the population are vaccinated.' It didn't happen. Then for 80%. Again, it didn't happen, Francois Balloux, professor of computational systems biology at University College London, told Reuters.

As horrible as it sounds, I think we have to prepare ourselves to the fact that the vast majority, essentially everyone, will get exposed to SARS-CoV-2," he said.

Global health experts expect that the coronavirus will ultimately become endemic, circulating persistently in the population and causing sporadic surges. The emergence of Omicron, however, has raised questions about exactly when that might happen.

We will get there," said the WHO's le Polain, "but we are not there at the moment.

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Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Additional reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva, Alistair Smout in London and Francesco Guarascio in Brussels; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Bill Berkrot

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Analysis: How Omicron highlights fading hope of herd immunity from COVID - Reuters

The omicron variant of the novel coronavirus could make COVID-19 more endemic unless theres a new coronavirus variant to contend with down the road.

The news: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House medical adviser on the coronavirus, told the Davos Agenda, a virtual event this week held by the World Economic Forum, that the omicron variant could infect so many people that COVID-19 will become an endemic disease, CNN reports.

Flashback: Fauci said over the weekend that the omicron variant could make more people immune to COVID-19, as I reported for the Deseret News. However, its too early to tell if omicron will have that staying power.

Why it matters: Faucis comments show that theres still more to figure out about the omicron variant and what it means for the future of COVID-19.

Yes, but: This doesnt mean you should try to get the omicron variant. The coronavirus can lead to long-term health issues. And even if omicron provides mostly mild symptoms, mild symptoms often mean youre as sick as you can possibly get without going to the hospital.

Excerpt from:

Omicron variant might not signal the end of COVID. Heres why - Deseret News

Will we ever live in a world without COVID-19?

As the pandemic enters Year 3, many people are wondering if and when COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, will become endemic. Endemic refers to the observed level of a disease or the baseline predictable level with seasonal fluctuations like the flu whereas a pandemic is typically a global public health emergency with an unpredictable level of illness and/or death.

That is a long way off, and COVID-19 will always be with us, Dr. Gregory Poland, who studies the immunogenetics of vaccine response at the Mayo Clinic, told MarketWatch and Barrons in a live video interview on Wednesday.

Measles, a highly contagious airborne virus spread through coughing and sneezing, serves as a good point of comparison. It is a stable virus and does not change, with no variants. As such, measles has for the most part been eradicated in the U.S.

Will there come a day when COVID-19 goes the way of measles? Were hoping one day [measles] will be eradicated. Will that happen with coronavirus? No, it will not, Poland said. We are not yet at any stage where we could predict endemicity. Were not going to eradicate it. We have an animal reservoir now white-tailed deer in the U.S. that are infected with SARS-CoV-2, for example.

We are not yet at any stage where we could predict endemicity. Were not going to eradicate it.

So let me make a prediction, which will be hard for any of you to hold me to because we will all be dead by then, but your great-great-great-grandchildren will still be getting immunized against coronavirus, he added. How can I even say such a thing? If you got your flu vaccine this fall you were immunized against a strain of influenza that showed up in 1918 and caused a pandemic.

Coronavirus Update: South Africa study shows boosters failed to block omicron, bolstering case for face masks, distancing and hand washing

COVID-19 haskilled 853,230Americans. Currently, there is a daily average of 753,990 new cases in the U.S., up 29% over two weeks, according to theNew York Times tracker. Deaths currently have a daily average of 1,971, up 48% over 14 days. The COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub estimates that deaths to mid-March could be between 50,000 and 300,000.

A recent viewpoint essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested the Biden administration needs to address the fact that COVID-19 is here to stay. As the U.S. moves from crisis to control, this national strategy needs to be updated. Policy makers need to specify the goals and strategies for the new normal of life with COVID-19 and communicate them clearly to the public, it said.

The new normal does not include eradication or elimination, it added. Neither COVID-19 vaccination nor infection appear to confer lifelong immunity. Current vaccines do not offer sterilizing immunity against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Infectious diseases cannot be eradicated when there is limited long-term immunity following infection or vaccination or nonhuman reservoirs of infection.

Excerpt from:

'Your great-great-great-grandchildren will still be getting immunized against coronavirus': This Mayo Clinic doctor says it's too late to eradicate...

Chicago's top doctor said the question of whether or not the omicron variant will mark the end of the coronavirus pandemic isn't quite as cut and dry as many would like it to be.

While some have questioned whether the highly-transmissible omicron variant could signal a sign that future COVID variants will become less severe or signal the end of the pandemic, Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said there are a number of possibilities for the future of the virus.

"The short answer to that is - and the honest answer to that is - I do not know for sure what is going to 'happen next after omicron' and neither does anybody else in the world," Arwady said during a Facebook Live Thursday. "There are a lot of hypotheses that range from a best case scenario - best-case scenario would say this has been enough of a spread that we'll have enough people who have had protection and that protection will be more long lasting. I don't think there's anybody in the world really who looks at this closely who thinks this will be the last variant. In a best most rosy-case scenario, future variants would be less virulent, less likely to make people sick, ideally less infectious, etc."

That could be the case, she said. But what happens next could also be very different.

Full coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak and how it impacts you

"There is nothing that says a future variant could not also be more virulent, make people sick, or not, you know, in a worst case scenario, not protect against those severe outcomes. I certainly hope that is not what is going to happen but it would be irresponsible to say that is not in you know in the range," she said. "So we have sort of a best case and worst case scenario."

Her comments echo those made by White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci earlier this week.

"It is an open question whether it will be the live virus vaccination that everyone is hoping for," Fauci said via videoconference atThe Davos Agenda virtual event.

"I would hope that that's the case. But that would only be the case if we don't get another variant that eludes the immune response of the prior variant," he added.

Arwady said she feels confident that the U.S. will "be in a pretty good place, you know, for a few month" after the omicron surge subsides, but she noted that the virus is not as predictable as influenza, for example.

"COVID has not followed a seasonal pattern clearly at this point in the way influenza does," she said. "Really every three months we've been seeing surges. Nobody expected to see a delta surge across the summer in the U.S., for example. So I expect, as we've seen with prior surges, as we sort of come down, there will be a period of relative control and yes, we will move to be lifting restrictions and you know, taking advantage of that. In a best case scenario, things would stay in very good control, but it is way too early to call that."

Arwady said earlier this week that the delta variant "has been what we call out competed by omicron."

"Meaning that because omicron is so much more infectious, so much more contagious, that it has had the opportunity to spread very, very quickly and we see it sort of replaced delta," she said Tuesday.

As of Wednesday, just 0.7% of the city's cases were believed to be caused by the delta variant.

"You can see 99.3% is the estimate of all of the COVID cases are the omicron variant and just 0.7% are delta and nothing else is showing up at this point," she said.

Arwady added that additional variants are possible going forward - and other health experts agree.

Getting progressively better at evading immunity helps a virus to survive over the long term. When SARS-CoV-2 first struck, no one was immune. But infections and vaccines have conferred at least some immunity to much of the world, so the virus must adapt.

"The faster omicron spreads, the more opportunities there are for mutation, potentially leading to more variants, Leonardo Martinez, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Boston University, said.

When new variants do develop, scientists said its still very difficult to know from genetic features which ones might take off. For example, omicron has many more mutations than previous variants, around 30 in the spike protein that lets it attach to human cells. But the so-called IHU variant identified in France and being monitored by the WHO has 46 mutations and doesnt seem to have spread much at all.

"Should we be worried about a new variant? I don't think we're done with variants," Arwady said. "Mymoney would not be on that we would see a new, very concerning variant very soon, just because omicron has been so contagious and infectious and has out competed delta and others so fast, but omicron came really quickly, too."

What will happen next, remains to be seen.

"There are doomsday options out there, there are extremely positive... I think we'll probably be somewhere in the middle there," Arwady said. "And we will learn a lot more as we see, as we come out of this omicron surge."

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Could Omicron Mark the End of the Coronavirus Pandemic? Chicago's Top Doc Weighs In - NBC Chicago

KHON2 (HONOLULU) Maui Mayor Michael Victorino was the first in the state to propose the addition of a COVID-19 booster for those eligible in order to be considered fully vaccinated.

An official announcement from Gov. David Ige to add a coronavirus booster shot to Safe Travels Hawaii is still anticipated, but Maui is just days away from adding a booster to their Safer Outside program.

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Starting on Jan. 24, the COVID-19 booster shot will be a part of Mauis Safer Outside program it is a county program that requires businesses such as bars, gyms and restaurants to verify proof of vaccination.

For some operators, the changing rules are becoming a challenge to keep up with. Javier Barberi, the co-owner of Mala Tavern on Maui, said visitors are often confused and even take issue with the vaccination requirement.

Were doing our best to not get frustrated during this process because were having to deal with very impatient customers and staff that is constantly hearing a new message every couple of months, Barberi said. Their job is constantly changing.

Victorino introduced the change amid the high transmission of COVID-19 cases in the county and the state. He has also spoken in support of adding a coronavirus booster requirement to Safe Travels Hawaii.

Part of a statement from Victorino said:

Earlier this month, I asked Gov. Ige to consider revising Safe Travels Hawaii to require travelers to show proof of a booster shot. My suggestion came after a November announcement by the Hawaii Department of Health that CDC data demonstrated vaccine immunity weakens over time and booster shots can re-energize immunity.

Hawaii Countys Mayor Mitch Roth has also shown support in adding a COVID-19 booster to Safe Travels. The countys Communications Director Cyrus Johnasen said they would like to see additional layers of protection.

Johnasen said, Definitely pre-testing for all passengers. Trans-Pacific is something that we are supportive of, and that weve voiced up the chain of command to the governor.

According to Johnasen, Big Island is not considering required proof of vaccination for gyms or restaurants, but he said the county is working on a public-private partnership to help businesses have rapid coronavirus tests handy.

The tests are going to be individual rapid tests given to employees prior to their travels, Johnasen said. Upon return, those employees will then go ahead and have to take that test within 24 hours of returning to the workplace.

Find more COVID-19 news: cases, vaccinations on our Coronavirus News page

Officials have said changes to Safe Travels Hawaii are expected to take effect sometime in late February 2022.

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Maui becomes first island to add COVID booster shot for full vaccination status - KHON2

PENNSYLVANIA, USA The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed 17,457 additional positive cases of COVID-19, bringing the statewide total to 2,523,589, on Thursday, January 20.

There were 326 new deaths identified by the Pennsylvania death registry on Tuesday.

The statewide total of deaths attributed to COVID-19 is 39,093, according to the department.

View the CDC COVID data trackerhere.

Watch more stories about the coronavirus pandemic on WNEP's YouTube page.

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Here are the latest COVID-19 numbers for Thursday, January 20 - WNEP Scranton/Wilkes-Barre

As the SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, evolves, so too do the ways we talk about it.

Thats why its important to revisit some frequently used pandemic terms, not just to get a clearer sense of the situation at hand, but to better assess the potential dangers posed by the highly transmissiblebut less deadlyomicron variant currently spreading across the country.

We asked Northeastern experts to flesh out some important distinctions in how we describe the data, what it means to be exposed to the coronavirus, and how widespread infections actually are at this stage of the pandemic. Heres what they say.

What exposure means, and what happens after

Federal officials have said in recent days that nearly everyone will be exposed to the omicron variant, given its unprecedented infectiousness. But being exposed is not the same as being infected. Exposure simply means that a person has come into contact with an infected person, says Robert Baginski, associate clinical professor and director of interdisciplinary affairs for the Department of Medical Sciences at Northeastern.

Portrait of Robert M. Baginski, director of interdisciplinary affairs and associate clinical professor. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

The CDCs guidance on exposure has been the same since roughly the start of the pandemic. The federal agency defines exposure as having come into close contactless than 6 feetwith an unmasked infected person for longer than 15 minutes.

If youre exposed, two things can happenone being you dont get the virus, Baginski says. Your chance of not getting the virus is much higher if youre vaccinated, as we know.

The alternative is that you do become infected. Many people who contract COVID-19 develop symptoms, but manyespecially those who are vaccinated and boosteddo not.

To be infected means that the virus is actively replicating in a host, Baginski says. But that doesnt necessarily mean youll experience symptoms. So, in a patient, the assumption that youre not experiencing symptoms and therefore arent infected is wrong.

If youre vaccinated, not only are you less likely to fall ill, you are less likely to pass on the infection to someone else. Thats thanks to the vaccines ability to mitigate viral replication.

Of course, if youre not fully vaccinated, your chances of getting sick and spreading the infection are, therefore, higher. Exactly how much higher is still an open question, Baginski says. Thats why, he says, its important that people continue to wear a mask, keep their distance, and get vaccinated.

Cases vs. infections: What are we missing?

The sheer scale of the omicron outbreak has underscored some of the longstanding problems in the available data and reporting methods upon which officials rely. One such problem is the underdetection of actual infections in official case counts.

Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute and Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor of physics, computer sciences, and health science at Northeastern University. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

The number of actual infections is likely amplified by a factor of five to ten, at least, says Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute and Sternberg Family Distinguished Professor at Northeastern.

By COVID-19 infections, officials mean the total number of people in whom the virus is currently replicating. Cases, on the other hand, are the number of known positive COVID-19 test results, as collected by local health authorities and reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. For a variety of reasons, countless infections are not represented in official case totals that are reported out each day; therefore, infections and cases are not interchangeable. Cases are a subset of total infections, the latter of which is unknowable.

With earlier, less-infectious variants, the discrepancy between reported cases and presumed infections was large, but probably not as wide as it is thought to be with omicron, Vespignani says.

One reason for that is that testing strategies are shifting. More people are relying on at-home tests to see if they have COVID-19, and not reporting their results to public health agencies.

While the CDC now recommends five days of isolation after testing positive, it does not require that results from at-home tests be reported to health authorities, according to its latest self-testing guidance. States like Massachusetts dont have reporting mechanisms for residents with positive at-home test results in hand to use in alerting authoritiescompounding the gap between official case counts and total infections.

Hospitalized with or for COVID-19?

Shifts back to in-person activities have been ushered in by analyses suggesting that omicron is less severe for fully vaccinated and boosted populations than previous variants. Still, record numbers of people are in the hospitals with COVID-19.

But those numbers might not reflect reality. In their count of hospitalized patients with COVID-19, hospitals also include patients who incidentally test positive for the virus while admitted for other, non-COVID-related reasons.

Many hospitals and public health officials are now working to redefine what constitutes a COVID-19 hospitalization to better account for those distinctionsbetween patients hospitalized for COVID-19 versus those with COVID-19 that happen to be hospitalized. States like Massachusetts have rolled out new guidance to reclassify hospitalizations accordingly, giving greater emphasis to those severely ill with the virus. The changes have shrunk totals in some hospitals by as much as 50%.

Despite the imperfections, the existing metricsfor hospital and testing reportingare still useful in keeping pace with pandemic fluctuations more broadly, Vespignani says; but theres always room for improving and refining methods to provide for more accurate surveillance.

All data are important, Vespignani says. We cant just discard the data. Cases might not be as important as before, but they are still an early indicator of how things are going.

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

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How Do We Talk About COVID? Explaining Common Pandemic Terms - News @ Northeastern - Northeastern University

Even before Omicron hit the United States in full force, most of our bodies had already wised up to SARS-CoV-2s insidious spikethrough infection, injection, or both. By the end of October 2021, some 86.2 percent of American immune systems may have glimpsed the viruss most infamous protein, according to one estimate; now, as Omicron adds roughly 800,000 known cases to the national roster each day, the cohort of spike-zero Americans, the truly immunologically naive, is shrinking fast. Virginia Pitzer, an epidemiologist at Yales School of Public Health and one of the scientists who arrived at the 86.2 percent estimate, has a guess for what fraction of the U.S. population will have had some experience with the spike protein when the Omicron wave subsides: 90 to 95 percent.

The close of Omicrons crush, then, should bring the country one step closer to hitting a COVID equilibrium in which SARS-CoV-2s still around, but disrupting our lives far less. In the most optimistic view of our future, this surge could be seen as a turning point in the countrys population-level protection. Omicrons reach could be so comprehensive that, as some have forecasted, this wave ends up being the pandemics last.

Read: The worst of the Omicron wave could still be coming

But there is reason to believe that this ultra-sunny forecast wont come to pass. This wave will not be the last, Shane Crotty, of the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, told me. There are not many things that I am willing to be pretty confident about. But thats one of them. A new antibody-dodging variant, for one, could still show up to clobber us. And nearly everyone having some form of spike in their past isnt as protective as it might sound. In a few months time, American immune systems will be better acquainted with SARS-CoV-2s spike than theyve ever been. But 90 to 95 percent of people exposed doesnt translate to 90 to 95 percent protected from ever getting infected or sick again; more immune doesnt have to mean immune enough. By the time the country exits this wave, each of our bodies will be in radically different immunological spotssome stronger, some weaker, some fresher, some staler. Chart that out by demography and geography, and the defensive matrix only gets more complex: Certain communities will have built up higher anti-COVID walls than others, which will remain relatively vulnerable. The malleability of the virus and the United States patchwork approach to combatting it has always meant that COVID would spread unevenly. Now the sums of those decisions will be reflected by our immunity. Theyll dictate how our next tussle with the virus unfoldsand who may have to bear the brunt of it.

Collective immunity is the key to ending a pandemic. But its building blocks start with each individual. By now we know that immunity against the coronavirus isnt binaryand while no one can yet say exactly how much more protection Person A (triple vaxxed, recently infected) might have than Person B (twice infected, once vaxxed) or Person C (once infected, never vaxxed), we have figured out some of the broad trends that can toggle susceptibility up or down. Allowing for shades of gray, a persons current immune status hinges on the number of exposures [to the spike protein], and time since last exposure, John Wherry, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told me. Infections and vaccinations add protection; time erodes it away.

Part of this boils down to relatively basic arithmetic. Each exposure to SARS-CoV-2s spike protein, whether through injection or infection, can be expected to build iteratively on the quantity, quality, and durability of the bodys defenses The more intensely and more frequently the body is bothered, the more resources it will invest to fend off that same threat. While a duo of vaccines, for instance, isnt enough to reliably guard against less severe Omicron cases, a trio of shots seems to do the trick for most. It also pays to pace encounters judiciously. Crowd the second and third too close together, for instance, and the latters effect may be blunted; a several-months-long wait, meanwhile, can supercharge the bodys response by allowing immune cells sufficient time to mull what theyve learned.

The contents of an exposure can matter too, though immunologists still debate the protective merits of tossing a dangerous, bona fide virus into the mix. Infections can blitz a smorgasbord of proteins from a currently circulating variant into the airway, tickling out immune defenses that in-the-arm, spike-centric vaccines dont reliably rousebut they can also, you know, cause COVID, and leave wildly inconsistent levels of protection behind. Its really not worth the risk, Taia Wang, an immunologist at Stanford, told me. Those who already have both types of spike exposures in their history, though, seem to reap some of the relative benefits of eachthe two stimuli synergize, and patch each others gaps. Post-vaccination Omicron infections, in particular, could awaken immune cells that didnt respond to the original-recipe spike, broadening the range of defenders available for future fights.

Read: Should I just get Omicron over with?

Neither virus-induced immunity nor vaccine-induced immunity against infection seems to last terribly long, however. (Protection against severe disease, at least, has been quite a bit more stubborn, and some experts hold out hope that additional doses or infections might eventually get our defenses against milder cases to hold as well.) For now, people who have logged only a solo encounter with SARS-CoV-2s spike, or are many months away from their last viral brush, can reasonably assume that theyre vulnerable to infection again. The fewer past brushes with spike, the speedier that relapse will be, too. Responses might be especially ephemeral in certain people, including older or immunocompromised individuals, whose immune systems arent easily tickled by vaccines.

But its not always obvious why people respond differently to the same viruses or shots. Even within a demographic group, some people generate really robust responses, and others just never do, Wang told me. Projections based on a vaccine dosing schedule, or someones infection history, arent a surefire bet. All of this underlies, then, the massive disconnect between previously exposed and currently protected, Joshua Salomon, a health-policy researcher at Stanford whos collaborating with Pitzer to model Omicrons immunological impact, told me. Salomon, Pitzer, and their colleagues estimate that although a significant majority of Americans had rendezvoused with the spike protein by Octobers end, fewer than half were still reasonably well guarded against a future infection. (Most retained resilience against severe disease.) People who enter the well defended group can also exit it, and join the susceptibles again.

Two years, 530 million vaccine doses, and 68 million documented SARS-CoV-2 infections deep into the pandemic, the range of vulnerability in our population has never been larger or more unwieldy. Some high-risk people, never vaccinated or infected, have essentially no protection to speak of; many young, healthy individuals have been triply vaccinated, and are fresh off an Omicron breakthrough. Thats a huge, huge range, Wang told me, with a chasm of immunological possibility in between. And none of this accounts for the very real risk that another wonky and wily variant, distinct from Omicron and everything else weve seen before, could still upend every rosy immunological assumption we lay down, and send us into yet another devastating surge.

And when new variants show up, they will once again reveal the cracks and crevices where protection is lacking. In the same way that single individuals with different exposure histories cant be expected to achieve the same levels of immune protection, neither can communities with different pandemic histories. Fresh, good-quality immunity simply wont distribute evenlywere likely to see islands, separated by immense seas. Many of these differences will tie straight back to how inequitably we distributed vaccines, Elaine Hernandez, a health demographer at Indiana University at Bloomington, told me. Through first, second, and now third doses, weve managed to concentrate immune protection among the privileged. Shots remain proportionally sparse in poor communities, rural communities, low-resource communities; unvaccinated people also tend to concentrate geographically, Anne Sosin, a health-equity researcher at Dartmouth, told me, seeding fertile ground for the virus to fix in a population and spread. To date, there are still plenty of pockets that may have not yet had exposure to vaccination or the virus, Bertha Hidalgo, an epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told me.

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

After flitting through urban centers, Omicron will find these isolated enclaves. It will pummel them. It will cause debilitating disease and death, but generate perhaps only a flimsy veneer of protection that, unbuttressed by vaccines, might not successfully ward off future waves. By one estimate, a third to half of all Americans may end up infected by Omicron by mid-February. The variant will not encounter all of those people on equal immunological footing, nor will it create such footing. Some people will be left with immune houses of straw, others of wood, others of brick, Sosin said. The virus is not an equalizer; it never has been.

Appending vaccinations on top of recent Omicron infections in less protected places could help even the playing fieldbut there may not be incentive to, as Omicron cases eventually fall away. In many parts of the country where vaccinations have struggled to gain traction, there is a predominant belief that infection means you are now immune, especially if you were quite sick, Hidalgo told me. If uptake of shots continues to be sluggish, the gaps in protection that existed before Omicron only stand to widen. This is the texture that national curves and figures obscure: knots of vulnerability that many Americans can easily ignore, but that the virus all too easily exploits.

Read: Our relationship with COVID vaccines is just getting started

Omicrons cross-country sweep wont amount to nothing. Immunity will be raised, on average, and we can still expect it to add friction to any future path the virus takes, Sarah Cobey, an infectious-disease modeler at the University of Chicago, told me. This may well be the last COVID surge that plays out in such a staggering fashion. We may, for a time, get a touch of reprieve. Even if a new antibody-dodging variant screeches onto the scene, there are limitations to how this virus can evolve, Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington, told me. By this point, perhaps many immune systems will have seen enough to anticipate what hijinks the virus lobs at us next.

But future surges of infection will still carry their own problems. They may be more complicated to track, because they are more local; more asynchronous, because outbreaks will start and end at different times; more patchwork, because of the communities I worry weve left behind, Sosin told me. As immunity ebbs and flows, our fates will continue to splinter, at the level of both individual and population alike. And yet, our geographies are not so divided that the pathogen wont pass between them. When the threat is this infectious, its not our immunological differences that define us, but the common ground we offer the virus when we allow it to spread.

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Will Omicron Leave Most of Us Immune? - The Atlantic

Total vaccine doses distributed: 654,197,025

Patients who've received the first dose: 249,702,939

Patients whove received the second dose: 209,509,297

% of population fully vaccinated: 63.1%

% of infections tied to the Omicron Variant: 99.5%

% of infections tied to the Delta Variant: 0.5%

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Coronavirus Omicron variant, vaccine, and case numbers in the United States: Jan. 20, 2022 - Medical Economics