Category: Corona Virus

Find an updated count of COVID-19 cases in California and by county on our tracker here.

Omicron hasnt reached Sacramento, but it will, county public officer says

California confirms second omicron case in Los Angeles

Unvaccinated Nevada state workers will be charged an insurance premium

Latest studies suggest previous COVID-19 infection may not fend off omicron variant

Status of COVID-19 vaccine mandate is still up in the air

12:10 p.m.: Convention business in downtown Sacramento has been down but will likely increase in early 2022

As 2021 comes to a close at the end of this month, many organizations are evaluating how the pandemic has affected their bottom lines.

Despite a string of large-scale events since June, including Fridays California International Marathon, in looking at how downtown may fare going into 2022, theres one significant wild card: a possible lack of state office workers, says Mike Testa, president and CEO of Visit Sacramento.

Theres a huge population of California State employees that were working in downtown every day and so many of them are working at home, Testa said. If that continues, theres great concern of the impact that will have on businesses, because its tens of thousands of people on a daily basis who just arent in Sacramento.

Testa says compared with 2019, convention business is a bit down, but several large events scheduled for early 2022 are signaling a likely increase in attendance.

11:48 a.m.: Omicron hasnt reached Sacramento, but it will, county public officer says

The omicron variant of COVID-19 thats sweeping through several South African and European countries has made its way to California, with cases popping up in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

While Sacramento has not seen any cases of the new variant, county public health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye says its still a variant of concern. She said that it's difficult to predict when the variant may spread to Sacramento, but with people traveling for the holidays, its only a matter of time.

We know its going to happen at some point, Kasirye said. So we just need to continue to be vigilant and do the things that we know will protect everyone, like getting vaccinated, getting tested and wearing masks.

As of now, very little is known about omicron. Its not clear how fast it spreads or how severe symptoms can be.

And of course that means we also need to look at, for people that are vaccinated, what is the level of protection, Kasirye said. Our hope is that our vaccines will hold up, and the people that are vaccinated will continue to be protected.

Kasirye said that it's difficult to predict when the variant may spread to Sacramento. But when it does, she says her department will be able to detect it much sooner than they have in the past, thanks to tools the countys lab just received.

In order to identify the variant, you have to do the genome sequencing, Kasirye said. So being able to do it in-house increases our capacity to be able to continue the surveillance.

Prior to getting access to the sequencing tools, Kasirye says the county was sending specimens to the states lab, which delayed identifying new cases of variants. As of now, she says delta is still the dominant variant in Sacramento.

9:27 a.m.: California confirms second omicron case in Los Angeles

California recently reported its second confirmed case of the omicron variant in Los Angeles County.

According to the Associated Press, the countys public health department said a county resident is self-isolating after apparently contracting the infection during a trip to South Africa last month.

The U.S. recorded its first confirmed omicron case on Wednesday in a San Francisco resident who had recently traveled to South Africa and developed mild symptoms after returning on Nov. 22. The little-understood variant was first identified a week ago in South Africa, and its been spreading.

California isnt the only state with infections five other states, including New York, Minnesota, Hawaii, and Colorado, have all identified omicron variant cases.

Experts have said that this shows how quickly mutations of the virus can circumnavigate the globe with speed and ease. Just one day after the first known U.S. case was found in California, tests showed that the omicron variant had infected at least five people in New York City, plus a man from Minnesota who attended an anime convention in Manhattan in late November.

Officials reported another case in a Colorado woman who had recently traveled to southern Africa. The variant was also confirmed in an unvaccinated Hawaii resident with no recent travel history.

9:23 a.m.: Unvaccinated Nevada state workers will be charged an insurance premium

Nevada state workers enrolled in public employee healthcare plans will be charged up to $55 per month if they arent fully vaccinated, according to the Associated Press.

The Nevada Public Employees Benefits Program Board voted on Thursday to impose a surcharge on unvaccinated workers to offset medical costs of those who havent gotten shots. The surcharge will fund the testing that unvaccinated workers are required to undergo.

Laura Rich, the benefits programs executive officer, said Nevada would be the first in the U.S. to impose premiums on state workers who arent vaccinated. Nevada estimates roughly 5,000 state workers arent vaccinated and hopes that the policy will convince more people to get their shots.

9:20 a.m.: Latest studies suggest previous COVID-19 infection may not fend off omicron variant

South African scientists are warning that the new omicron variant may be causing more reinfections among COVID-19 survivors than earlier virus mutations, according to the Associated Press.

A research group has been tracking reinfections in South Africa, and they spotted a jump with the arrival of omicron, saying the timing suggests substantial evidence that the variant can overcome the immunity protection provided by a prior infection more than the extra-contagious delta variant.

The findings are preliminary and were posted online Thursday before scientific review. The researchers didnt say what portion of the reinfections were confirmed as omicron cases or examine how much protection against the new variant vaccines offer.

11:33 a.m.: Status of COVID-19 vaccine mandate is still up in the air

The Biden administrations COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the U.S. is on hold because of legal challenges, but employers can still require the shots, according to the Associated Press.

The regulation says businesses with 100 or more employees need to require COVID-19 vaccinations or have workers tested weekly for the virus. It was set to take effect Jan. 4, 2022, but has faced legal challenges from businesses, Republicans and others.

A federal appeals court put the rule on hold. Then all legal challenges were consolidated in another appeals court, which is taking written arguments from parties that want to join the case.

11:26 a.m.: Omicron and delta variants could spell the return of more restrictive safety measures

Governments worldwide are weighing new measures for those who may be tired of restrictions and vaccine mandates, as the delta variant pushes up cases in Europe and other parts of the world.

According to the Associated Press, different countries have been turning to varying measures to get their populations vaccinated and healthy.

For example, residents over 60 who refuse to get vaccinated will be hit with monthly fines of 100 euros ($113) a month in Greece. Potential carriers of omicron in Israel could be tracked by the nations domestic security agency.

In South Africa, restrictions include curfews and bans on alcohol sales. However, in the U.S., there is essentially no political willpower from either major party to enact any lockdowns or contact tracing. Even enforcing simple measures like mask-wearing has become a political flashpoint.

Governments are facing a thorny calculus made more difficult by the prospect of backlash, increased social divisions and the fear of being voted out of office.

10:47 a.m.: While were looking at omicron, we cant forget the delta variant, experts stress

While all eyes are on the new and little-understood omicron variant, the delta form of the coronavirus isnt finished wreaking havoc in the U. S., sending record numbers of patients to the hospital in some states, especially in the Midwest and New England.

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. recorded its first known omicron infection on Wednesday in a fully vaccinated person who had returned to California from South Africa, where the variant was identified just over a week ago.

For now, the extra-contagious delta variant accounts for practically all cases in the U.S. and continues to inflict misery at a time when many hospitals are struggling with shortages of nurses and a backlog of patients.

The fear now is that the latest variant will foist more patients and perhaps sicker ones into more hospital beds.

11:42 a.m.: Mysteries of the omicron variant could take weeks to untangle

Scientists say it could be weeks before they better understand how dangerous the omicron variant is.

According to the Associated Press, its still unknown whether the newest coronavirus variant of concern spreads faster than delta or makes people sicker.

According to the Associated Press, it also isnt clear how much protection is offered either by our vaccines or a persons immunity after recovering from another COVID-19 variant.

There are lots of guesses but little hard evidence as scientists race to find answers amid scrutiny from an anxious public. In the meantime, scientists urge people to get vaccinated and take other public health measures such as masking indoors.

11:35 a.m.: Supply chain woes hit toy-giving charities during the holiday season

As supply chain bottlenecks create shortages of many items, some charities are struggling to secure holiday gift wishes from kids in need, according to the Associated Press.

Theyre reporting they cant find enough items in stock or are facing shipping delays both in receiving and distributing the gifts.

The founder of One Simple Wish said many gift requests for gaming consoles and electronic items submitted to the charity have been out of stock. Another charity cant find enough doll styling heads, racially diverse Barbies and other things to give to kids in need.

One expert believes charities are also bound to see fewer toy donations directly from manufacturers this holiday season.

Find older coronavirus updates on our previous blog page here.

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California coronavirus updates: Convention business in downtown Sacramento has been down but will likely increase in early 2022 - Capital Public Radio...

Governor Ned Lamont confirmed that a fully vaccinated man marks Connecticut's first case of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.

State officials said the man, who is in his 60s, is from Hartford County. Sequencing performed at the Connecticut State Public Health Laboratory confirmed the presence of the variant.

Governor Ned Lamont confirmed that a fully vaccinated man marks Connecticut's first case of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.

The man developed mild symptoms on Nov. 27. An at-home Covid-19 test was positive two days later and a molecular test also came back positive on Dec. 1, according to Lamont.

The governor's office said a family member traveled to New York City between Nov. 17 and 22 to attend the Anime NYC 2021 convention held at the Javits Center. The family member developed symptoms and took an at-home test which came back positive on Nov. 23. Their symptoms have since been resolved, officials said.

Gov. Ned Lamont said because of vaccinations, there is less of a need for COVID-19 restrictions or mandates as cases climb in the state.

Both the man and family member that tested positive for the virus are fully vaccinated, according to the governor.

Other family members are undergoing coronavirus testing.

As Ive been saying for the last several days, given the speed that this new variant has been spreading around the world and its positive identification in several states, we presumed it was already in our state and the information we received from the lab today confirms that fact, Lamont said in a statement.

This likely is not the only case of the variant in the state. That being said, I must urge everyone in Connecticut not to panic. While we are still learning more about this variant, our health providers are continuing to do their best to protect everyone. We have life-saving tools like vaccines and boosters available to fight this pandemic including the Delta and Omicron variants and I urge everyone to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves and everyone around them," he continued.

As long as there are people unprotected from the coronavirus, we are going to see variants like the new Omicron strain of COVID-19, says NBC medical correspondent Dr. John Torres.

The state Department of Public Health is urging residents to get vaccinated if they haven't already. Booster shot clinics are also open throughout the state.

Given the number of states that have identified Omicron to date, it was only a matter of time before we identified it here in Connecticut as well. Although Omicron appears to be more infectious than the Delta variant, both affected individuals have had mild symptoms to date. It is reassuring as their immunity seems to be helping them fight off this infection," Connecticut Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani said in a statement.

Originally posted here:

First Case of Omicron Covid-19 Variant Detected in Conn. is Fully Vaccinated Man - NBC Connecticut

The omicron variant is raising global concern.

Theomicron variantof COVID-19 has now been confirmed in at least 16 US states and is "likely to rise," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Sunday on This Week. Although the delta variant of COVID makes up 99.9% of US cases, Walensky said, omicron is spreading quickly. A leading European health agency predicts omicron could become the dominant COVID strain in months (more below.)

There have been more than 5.2 million reported deathsworldwide due to COVID-19.

In the US, President Joe Biden is doubling down on urging vaccines and booster shots until more information becomes available. Experts caution it could be two or three weeks before we know exactly how contagious omicron is and if it can cause more severe illness than other mutations of the virus.

So far, the COVID-19 vaccines have proved to be highly effective in preventing hospitalization and death, with people who are unvaccinated being more than10 times more likely to be hospitalized if infected. Vaccine-makers are optimistic the current vaccines authorized for use in the US will provide a degree of protection against omicron, too.

Here are eight important things to know about omicron today. For more on COVID boosters, here's a trick to easily get an appointment and free ride. Here's how you'll soon get a COVID test kit for free and details on mixing and matching vaccines.

Now playing: Watch this: What to do if you lose your vaccination card, and how...

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Omicron could become the most common COVID variant in months, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

"Mathematical modelling [sic] indicates that the Omicron VOC is expected to cause over half of all SARS-CoV-2 infections in the EU/EEA within the next few months" due to early understandings of the omicron variant's high transmissibility between people, the center said in aDec. 2 brief.

Scientists studying the omicron variant in South Africa, where it was first reported to the World Health Organization, have said it's spreadingmore than twice as fast as the delta variant. But what isn't yet known is the spread is hastened because the mutations make it easier to spread among people, if vaccines are less effective against this strain or for some other reason. Thestudy cited by the New York Times has not yet been published or peer-reviewed.

First, it was Minnesota, then California and now Hawaii, New York and points in between. The US and other countries were already bracing for an increased caseload as colder weather and holiday revelry drove more people indoors together. Now, concerns over a winter surge of the dominant delta variant join concerns about omicron's spread.

COVID latches onto cells using a spike protein in its structure. Omicron has more mutations than the delta variant, which is considered at least twice as contagious as previous strains. While it isn't clear yet if omicron is more or less contagious than delta, the presence of those mutations is one cause of concern.

That may be one reason countries around the world have banned travel from some countries in southern Africa and increased travel restrictions that include a negative COVID test 24 hours before travel, regardless of vaccination status.

Scientists are testing whether omicron could cause breakthrough infections in people who are fully vaccinated and reinfections for those who have antibodies from a prior COVID-19 infection. It may take two to three weeks before enough test data reveals how effective the Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are in protecting against the omicron mutation. Scientists are hopeful, however, that the current vaccines will continue to protect against the new variant.

"We think it's likely that people will have substantial protection against severe disease caused by omicron," said Ugur Sahin, co-founder of BioNTech,said uring an interview with Reuters on Tuesday.BioNTech worked with Pfizerto create one of the vaccines authorized in the US.

Still, the fact that omicron has rapidly mutated and spread has rung at least one alarm bell.

"The emergence of the highly mutated omicron variant underlines just how perilous and precarious our situation is," Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, leader of the World Health Organization,said on Nov. 29.

Most PCR tests to identify the presence of COVID-19 in the body are free (COVID tests for international travel are the main exception). So it's good news that the existing nasal swab test has been found to detect the omicron variant -- a blood test or other procedure so far is unnecessary.

"Fortunately for us, the PCRs that we mostly use would pick up this very unusual variant that has a real large constellation of mutations," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president's chief medical advisor, said in a Nov. 29 press briefing.

Drugmakers are exploring if the current vaccines are effective against the new variant.

Most PCR tests to identify the presence of COVID-19 in the body are free (COVID tests for international travel are the main exception). So it's good news that the existing nasal swab test has been found to detect the omicron variant -- a blood test or other procedure so far is unnecessary.

"Fortunately for us, the PCRs that we mostly use would pick up this very unusual variant that has a real large constellation of mutations," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president's chief medical advisor, said Nov. 29 in apress briefing.

Moderna: Moderna's Chief Medical Officer Paul Burtontold the BBChis company has hundreds of people examining the effectiveness of its current vaccine and booster with the variant. Moderna is also testing a COVID-19 vaccine that could protect against several mutated strains of the coronavirus looking at an omicron-specific booster vaccine. Burton said if Moderna needs to make a new vaccine modified for the variant, it could be available early in 2022.

Pfizer: A Pfizer spokesperson said the company is "constantly conducting surveillance efforts focused on monitoring for emerging variants that potentially escape protection from our vaccine."

The spokesperson said Pfizer could develop and produce a tailor-made vaccine against that variant in approximately 100 days.

Johnson & Johnson: Johnson & Johnsonsaidit's working with scientists in South Africa and around the world to evaluate the effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine against the omicron variant and has begun work on a new vaccine designed for omicron, if needed.

On Thursday, Biden announced a plan to help protect the US against the omicron variant this winter. It includes, among other things:

The World Health Organization assigns Greek letters to key COVID variants to help the public easily remember and pronounce the different mutations of the virus. When first announced, search interest in the Greek letters "omicron" and "omega" climbed as people looked for information on the new variant. So far we've heard the new omicron variant pronounced by global health leaders asOH-me-cron, OH-mih-cronandOH-my-cron(some of this boils down toancient Greek).

For additional COVID guidance, here's what to know about new travel restrictions, how to store your vaccine card on your phone and what to do if you lose your vaccine card.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

Read more here:

Omicron FAQ: 8 key things to know about the new COVID variant today - CNET

Pererenan, Bali Before the pandemic, Dicky, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, earned up to $20 a day hawking shell craft jewellery to tourists on the crowded beaches of Balis southwest coast.

But nearly two months after Indonesia reopened its doors to visitors from China and 18 other countries, the international tourists Dicky once relied upon for sales are still few and far between.

I came here at eight in the morning and have been walking up and down the beach all day. I try, try and try but I have not sold a single piece all day, he told Al Jazeera as a blindingly beautiful blood-red sun set over the Indian Ocean at Pererenan Beach last weekend. I dont understand why more tourists arent coming now that Bali is open again.

Dicky is not the only person on the island perplexed about the fact that not a single international flight has landed in Bali since the international airport reopened on October 14. The islands COVID-19 metrics just about the lowest recorded since the start of the pandemic only add to the conundrum.

According to Indonesias National Board for Disaster Management, the seven-day average for new positive cases in Bali now stands at 11, the seven-day average for deaths is just one while the seven-day positivity rate for individuals tested is 0.17 percent well below WHOs minimum threshold of 1 percent for territories it classifies as having the virus under control. Vaccine numbers are also well above the world average of 42.7 percent, with more than 77 percent of all adults fully vaccinated in Bali, according to Indonesias Ministry of Health.

But six weeks after the country reopened, only 153 people around the world had applied for tourist visas, according to Indonesias Directorate General of Immigration.

The low level of interest reflects a survey by the International Air Transport Association that showed 84 percent of people have no interest in holidaying at destinations that require quarantine, and Indonesia imposes a mandatory hotel quarantine that was recently extended in response to the Omicron variant.

Even with a short quarantine, no one will come to Bali, said Udayana University Professor I Gusti Ngurah Mahardika, the islands most senior virologist.

Confusing, complex, constantly changing, and sometimes contradictory government messaging and immigration policy is also keeping international tourists away.

Thailand has reintroduced free visas-on-arrivals for tourists, but those who want to visit Indonesia must apply for visas at foreign embassies or consulates and need a travel agency to act as guarantor. And they must show proof of booked accommodation for the entire length of their stay in Indonesia a surefire way to quench the wanderlust of any intrepid traveller.

There is no clear statement from the government of what it is trying to achieve, a process for getting there, or simple guidelines for would-be tourists, wrote Bali-based statistician Jackie Pomeroy on her popular Bali Covid-19 Update Facebook page.

And in a blow to the domestic tourism sector that saw up to 20,000 Indonesians fly to the island daily in November, restrictions have been reintroduced for the period of December 24 to January 2.

Beach clubs, restaurants and nightclubs cannot host Christmas events or celebrate New Years Eve, while voices on social media fear all leisure travel in Indonesia will be banned during the peak holiday period.

A little less than a month ago, Professor Gusti advised Indonesia to drop quarantine altogether for fully vaccinated international travellers who test negative before departure and on arrival. But that was before the WHO identified Omicron as a variant of concern, tossing a radioactive wrench into the long-awaited reboot of the global travel industry.

On November 28, Indonesia, echoing measures by the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, banned non-resident arrivals from South Africa or any of eight other African countries. It also banned travellers from Hong Kong, which has reported its fourth case of the Omicron variant. Yet it did not ban travellers from the UK, where 246 cases of the variant had been reported as of Sunday the kind of knee-jerk policy UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has described as travel apartheid.

Indonesia also extended quarantine for arrivals from all other countries from three to seven days. Less than a week later, it was extended again, this time to 10, the longest quarantine period Indonesia has seen since the start of the pandemic. The strict new rule forced Garuda, the countrys national air carrier, to axe its first planned international flight to Bali in 20 months from Haneda Airport in Japan on December 5. Subsequent weekly flights have also been removed from the airlines website.

The developments have put a dampener on Balis hopes of reviving tourism this year, which accounted for an estimated 60 percent of economic activity before the pandemic. The islands gross domestic product (GDP) shrunk by just less than three percent in the third quarter, having contracted nearly 10 percent in 2020.

Indonesias national GDP increased 3.5 percent in the same period, making Bali the hardest-hit Indonesian province by the pandemic from an economic perspective for two years in a row.

The global tourism monster that once fed Bali will probably not rebound to 2019 levels until 2024, according to management consulting firm McKinsey & Company that made the prediction in June based on various scenarios that examined the effect of virus containment.

Observers in Bali feel the same way.

History has shown that Bali is very resilient to disaster but the island will take another year or two to recover, said Mark Ching, a director of the Tamora Group, a prominent property developer on the island. Its not just opening borders. People need to feel safe before they travel again.

Excerpt from:

Six weeks after reopening, Bali wonders where the tourists are - Aljazeera.com

Unvaccinated people are over 11 times as likely to die from COVID as vaccinated individuals,recent datafrom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. At last winters peak, when the vaccines were just rolling out, an average of 3,400 people were dying of the illness each day. Now that average, while still alarming, hovers around 1,000.

And though the vaccines are not 100 percent effective at preventing infections, having a significant share of the population vaccinated will help to keep case counts from surging out of control, experts predict. Unvaccinated individuals are roughly six times as likely to test positive for COVID as their vaccinated peers. Whats more, people who arevaccinatedand do contract COVID are less likely to spread it to others, studies show.

Last November, the U.S. was seeing about 160,000 new infections each day; now, were counting about 80,000, which is still very high, but you're not seeing that exponential growth that we saw last year, Madad said.

Last year, everybody was at risk, said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the University of Texas Health School of Public Health. This year, you can protect yourself.

Another factor that could make this winter less lethal than last: advancements in the treatment of COVID-19.

Two drugmakers, Merck and Pfizer, have requested emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for antiviral pills that they say can greatly reduce the risk of hospitalization and death in people who are infected with the virus.

If authorized, the pills will be the first at-home treatment designed to keep the disease from progressing. Currentlyavailable treatmentsmust be administered in a health care facility.

If you have COVID-19 and especially if you have aweakened immune systemor are otherwise at risk these are a game-changer, Dowdy said. However, when it comes to preventing an infection in the first place, vaccines are far and away our best tool and will remain that way, he added.

The coronavirus will still have some advantages this winter. Cold weather pushes people indoors, where germs, including the one that causes COVID-19, spread more easily. Some states in the Northeast, even those with high vaccination rates, are already seeing a spike in COVID cases, Troisi pointed out.

Add to that the fact that virus transmission, driven mostly by the extremely contagiousdelta variant, is still high throughout most of the U.S., which means there's more chances of you coming in contact with the virus and being exposed to it, Madad said. Plus with the holidays on the horizon, more people will take to the rails, roads and skies to visit friends and family, giving the virus even more opportunities to circulate.

If you're unvaccinated, you should worry, Madad said, pointing to the relentless delta variant, which sent cases soaring this summer. The data and the science are clear: You are at really high risk for getting exposed to the virus and potentially having severe outcomes.

If youre fully vaccinated, the sky is not falling down; you're still well protected, she added. However, abooster shot, if you are eligible, can add even more protection. So can wearing a mask in indoor public settings.

The bottom line is, cases are increasing and it's a time to continue to be vigilant, Madad said.

When will all these COVID crests flatten out for good? Thats a little harder to predict, the experts say, and the virus has surprised us again and again, most recently with the emergence of the omicron variant. But the pandemic as we know it will likely shift when we gain more control over the outbreak, said Anthony Fauci, M.D., the nations top infectious disease expert, in a recent news briefing.

We dont know really what that number is, but we will know it when we get there, he said. It certainly is far, far lower than 80,000 new infections per day, and its far, far lower than 1,000 deaths per day and tens of thousands of hospitalizations.

In the meantime, seasonal waves will likely persist, Dowdy said, adding that we could see them for many years, if not for our lifetimes. But as we build up immunity to the virus, COVID will likely get milder over time, he said, which is why getting vaccines into the arms of as many people as possible is so important.

The world may never look like it did before the pandemic, and we may still be in for a winter surge in cases this year. But from a COVID-19 perspective, there are many reasons to believe that things will be much better in 2022 than they have been for us these past two years, Dowdy said.

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Is a Fifth Wave of COVID-19 on the Horizon? - AARP

People waiting to receive a Covid-19 vaccine in Marseille. The new potentially more contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus was detected in mainland France on Thursday.Credit...Daniel Cole/Associated Press

The French authorities confirmed the first cases of the Omicron version of the coronavirus in mainland France on Thursday, but their alarm remained focused on a surge of infections fueled by the Delta variant.

France reported nearly 50,000 new cases of the virus in 24 hours on Wednesday, the highest daily total since the spring. The number of reported cases per 100,000 people has soared from less than 100 to more than 300 over the past month.

We need to anticipate there are still a lot of uncertainties, Jean-Franois Delfraissy, the head of the French governments Covid-19 scientific advisory council, told BFMTV on Thursday, referring to Omicron. But lets not fight the wrong fight. The real fight, the real enemy, is the fifth wave with the Delta variant.

The surge has alarmed French authorities, even though they have so far ruled out a return to lockdowns or business closures. Mr. Delfraissy said that cold had pushed people indoors and that social distancing was no longer being scrupulously followed. The average number of new hospital admissions, including in intensive care, has also increased by roughly 40 percent over the past weeks, according to official statistics.

But hospitalizations are still below the peaks seen in previous waves, thanks to a vaccination rate of 75 percent of the entire population, and Mr. Delfraissy said that if people exercised renewed vigilance by avoiding gatherings, working from home when possible and wearing masks more often France could be spared the worst outcomes.

Christmas isnt in danger if we are all careful, he said.

Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days.

The French government, which recently made all adults eligible for booster shots, has steered clear of mandating vaccines, arguing that coercion would be counterproductive. Olivier Vran, the health minister, told reporters this week that a more powerful incentive was the national health pass, which is required to access museums, restaurants, cinemas and other public venues.

The announcement of two Omicron cases on Thursday in mainland France has added to concerns, even though scientists are still trying to understand the threat posed by the variant.

The health authority for the le-de-France region, which includes Paris, said that the Omicron variant had been found in a man in his 50s, who returned from Nigeria last week and tested positive for Covid-19 after disembarking from his flight, though he showed no symptoms. The man, who was not vaccinated, was isolating at home, officials said.

In eastern France, health authorities in the Grand-Est region said in a statement that Omicron had been detected in a woman in her 40s who returned from South Africa last week. The woman was vaccinated but experiencing symptoms, and has been isolating at home.

Previously, France had confirmed only one case of the Omicron variant, in the overseas department of Runion, in the Indian Ocean.

Uncertainty over how dangerous Omicron really is had prompted the French authorities to halt flights with 10 countries in southern Africa, where the variant was first detected. Flights will be allowed to resume starting this weekend, but with some restrictions on travelers still in place. France will also require all visitors arriving from outside the European Union to provide a negative coronavirus test result, regardless of their vaccination status.

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New York Reports Five Omicron Cases - The New York Times

Scientists at Pfizer's research and development laboratories in Groton, Conn., worked on the COVID-19 pill called Paxlovid. Stew Milne/AP hide caption

Scientists at Pfizer's research and development laboratories in Groton, Conn., worked on the COVID-19 pill called Paxlovid.

Two new drugs are awaiting authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for treating patients with COVID-19, and both may be effective against the omicron variant.

One is made by Merck, the other by Pfizer.

The Merck drug has been in development for years. When the pandemic began, Pfizer's drug didn't exist. The story of its development is another example of how COVID-19 has sped up the drug and vaccine development process.

Pfizer wasn't starting exactly from zero. Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer's chief scientific officer, says that during the SARS outbreak in 2003, company scientists had begun to search for ways to combat that coronavirus.

In particular, they looked for proteins crucial for the virus to replicate once it infected someone.

One viral protein they focused on is called a protease. "We have learned that protease is a key regulator for the virus to unleash its machinery and hijack the human cells," Dolsten says.

Pfizer scientists thought if they could find a compound that would disrupt the protease, it would essentially stop the virus dead in its tracks.

That search petered out when the 2003 SARS outbreak passed. No disease, no market for a drug.

But Dolsten says the knowledge that was gained convinced them that a protease inhibitor would work to corral the coronavirus causing COVID-19.

They made computer models of the viral protease protein and assembled drug candidates that might block it.

"We actually had to design and synthesize some 600 unique chemical compounds," he says.

That was just the start. They had to test each compound to see how well it prevented the virus from infecting cells in the lab. Then they had to determine whether it would do the same thing in animals infected with the coronavirus. They also needed to find a candidate that would remain in someone's body long enough to have the desired antiviral effect. And they wanted to do all this fast.

"We put in place some very aggressive timelines where we made all of this happen over four months to come down to the optimal medicine," Dolsten says.

In the end, the drug developers had a candidate they thought would work. They mixed it in a pill with an old drug called ritonavir that extended the action of the protease inhibitor.

This past July, Pfizer began a study of people infected with the coronavirus who were at high risk of developing severe COVID-19. Half got the drug, called Paxlovid, within three to five days of the onset of symptoms, half a placebo.

Dolsten says the study was halted early because the drug appeared to be working. He says there was nearly a 90% reduction in hospitalization among people taking the new drug, "And 100% protection against death."

A similar analysis for the Merck drug found it lowered the risk of hospitalization or death by 50%. In a subsequent analysis presented to the FDA, the risk reduction fell to 30%, however.

One good thing about these drugs is that because they're pills, they can be taken at home, unlike some current therapies that require an infusion.

Because Pfizer's pill isn't affected by changes in the spike protein, Dolsten says he expects the new drug will work equally well against any variant of the coronavirus, including omicron.

Although Pfizer has not yet published details of its study, researchers seem impressed.

"I think this drug along with the drug from Merck are both very promising antivirals that, as we had predicted early in this pandemic, work when given early in the infectious course," says Stanley Perlman, a microbiologist at the University of Iowa, where he's been working on coronaviruses for decades.

Perlman adds that the key to preventing damage from a coronavirus infection is to stop it from replicating and spreading throughout someone's body.

Protease isn't the only viral protein that might lead to a viable treatment.

"I think there's several other targets in how the virus reproduces," Perlman says. "But the most important thing to think about for all of them is they almost all have to be given very early after infection to really have a role in helping prevent people from progressing to more severe disease."

And since it looks like we'll be living with COVID-19 for a while, drugmakers have an incentive to develop other kinds of drugs to treat the disease.

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The Minnesota patient, who has recovered, fell ill on Nov. 22, suggesting that the variant already had begun to circulate even before South African health authorities first announced its detection there.

This case, you know, was getting ill even before we were hearing about Omicron from South Africa, Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease director for the Minnesota Department of Health, told reporters on Thursday.

Omicron carries more than 50 genetic mutations that in theory may make it both more contagious and less vulnerable to the bodys immune defenses than previous variants. Available vaccines may still offer substantial protection against severe illness and death following infection with the variant, but much remains unknown.

Most of the mutations are on the viruss spike protein, which the existing vaccines target. Federal officials are asking vaccinated people to get booster shots and the makers of the two most effective vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are preparing to reformulate their shots, if needed.

But it remains unclear whether Omicron will change the anti-coronavirus playbook. If the new variant turns out to be more transmissible than, say, the Delta variant, officials said, health guidance may stiffen more vigilance about masking indoors, sterner requirements for boosters.

Its worth re-asking the question, Ive started to get a little less careful than I was is that the right thing? said Dr. Bob Wachter, a professor and chair of the department of medicine at University of California, San Francisco. If, psychologically, you need a month to get prepared to move backwards, you should get ready for the possibility.

Dec. 3, 2021, 3:07 p.m. ET

That could be tough. The options government officials have to control the spread of the virus have proved to be politically limited in this country, even where communities have been open to restrictions. Californias health measures saved countless lives, for instance, but also helped fuel a recall effort against Gov. Gavin Newsom this year.

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San Francisco Followed Covid Rules. Will Omicron Change the Playbook? - The New York Times

The total number of recorded COVID-19 deaths has passed 5 million globally, with over 750,000 deaths in the United States alone. However, these figures are unlikely to reveal the true impact of COVID-19 on the population.

Scientists have now shown an increased risk of death among COVID-19 survivors 12 months after the infection.

For people younger than 65 who were hospitalized with COVID-19, the risk of death in the 12 months after the infection was 233% higher than it was for people who did not have the disease, results published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine have shown.

Nearly 80% of all deaths of people in the study who had recovered from COVID-19 in the past 12 months were not due to cardiovascular or respiratory causes, suggesting that the impact of the virus is significant and wide-ranging, even after the initial infection has been fought off.

Prof. Arch Mainous, an author of the paper, told Medical News Today in an email: A lot of interest in the scientific community has focused on what happens to patients after having an episode with COVID-19. Some people are focusing on long COVID or persistent symptoms like brain fog or lack of smell. We were interested in the hard outcome of death after COVID-19 recovery.

We thought that the impact of COVID-19 would be significant enough to engender complications. The overall trauma or psychological insult to the body would be dramatic enough to create lasting damage.

To measure the impact of COVID-19 on long-term health, researchers from the University of Florida looked at electronic healthcare records from patients tested for COVID-19 in any setting in the University of Florida health system, both in Gainesville and Jacksonville. People who died within 30 days of their COVID-19 tests were excluded from the analysis.

Out of 13,638 people tested for COVID-19 between January 1 and June 30, 2020, 424 people were found to have COVID-19. Of this number, 178 people were classified as having severe disease. The rest were negative for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as determined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.

The researchers then evaluated the electronic healthcare records of these people, following them for 365 days after the first PCR test. They found that 2,686 people in the cohort had died.

The team then analyzed the healthcare records to determine cause of death and compared the risk of death for people who had had COVID-19 with that of people who had not tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

They found that the vast majority of deaths among people who had had COVID-19, nearly 4 out of 5 of these deaths, were not due to cardiovascular or respiratory illness, despite much existing research into the impact of COVID-19 on these systems.

Prof. Mainous said, Treatment in the hospital is [fine for surviving] the initial episode, but our strategy should focus on keeping people out of the hospital in the first place.

Taking your chances that you might get COVID-19 but that it will be mild, or that you will just rely on treatments to pull you through a severe episode is a course of action with big risks.

These figures demonstrate that the impact of COVID-19 could last longer than we had originally anticipated. However, they do not tell us why.

Prof. Mainous continued, Although there are a variety of theories floating around about why there are post-acute complications from COVID-19, and more work needs to be done to establish definitively the mechanism, it seems likely that the intense level of inflammation in the body affects multiple parts of the body.

Children were not included in this study, but Sammie Mcfarland, founder and CEO of Long Covid Kids, told MNT in an interview that the study shed some light on a topic that should get more attention and that we still do not understand the long-term impact of COVID-19 on children.

In the United Kingdom, she said, We dont know if the children coming out of hospital go on to recover, go on to die, or go on to get long COVID, we just dont know.

She also pointed out that while cases of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a rare complication that can occur in children with COVID-19, have been recorded, we do not know what has happened to many of these kids.

Mcfarland told us: Those children are living now with some severe impairment, and some of them have died. And those children arent recorded as COVID deaths. And theyre not recorded in the COVID data. But its still from COVID.

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COVID-19 survivors have higher risk of death 12 months after infection - Medical News Today

Pedestrians wearing face masks against the coronavirus walk along Regent Street in London, Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021. The emergence of the new COVID-19 omicron variant and the worlds desperate and likely futile attempts to keep it at bay are reminders of what scientists have warned for months: The coronavirus will thrive as long as vast parts of the world lack vaccines.

Rice University researchers have been leading a project, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of mapping out mutations of the coronavirus. Most recently, they've been focusing their efforts on the omicron variant, which was classified as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization last week.

The first cases of the variant in the United States were identified this week.

Gene Godbold, a scientist with Austin-based contractor Signature Science who has compiled a list of omicron's mutations, spoke with Houston Public Media about what the research says about the new variant.

Listen or read the interview below, edited for length and clarity.

Looking at the mutations of this variant, do any of them raise alarm bells? And are any associated with higher risk of transmission or the ability to evade the protection we get from vaccines?

Thats a deep kind of question. Its not just one thing. So theres almost 1,300 residues in the spike protein. And a lot of them, if they change to something else, might not have any effect at all. But compared to the Wuhan strain, the ancestral string, this has got like 30 amino acid changes and then a couple of deletions and insertions in areas that youd want to care about.

OK, so we can break it down. We can talk about transmission first.

Theres good reason to believe that the mutations make this more transmissible. Before delta, alpha was the most transmissible variant. And (omicrons) got the same mutations as alpha does, plus its got some other concerning ones.

Obviously, the reason were talking about is because we know its already spreading. The proof is in the pudding already. So we know that the virus is a problem, and it seems to be spreading in the face of all the other variants.

Given the mutations that the science community knows and understands already, is it possible that this variant could evade protection the vaccines give to us?

Basically, the takeaway message is that the omicron variant has more immune evasive mutations than anything weve seen yet. And it may have even more than that because its got new ones that nobody studied yet. So the question of whether it evades the vaccines? It probably doesnt. I mean, it probably isnt going to evade a normal person with a normal immune system. And why is this? Like a normal immune response, you can generate dozens of different types of neutralizing antibodies. I think the most immune invasive variant so far has knocked out like six of those neutralizing antibodies.

I cant guarantee it, but it looks like Omicron is going to wipe out a lot more than six. That doesnt mean that you dont have any defense, because obviously neutralizing antibodies arent the whole thing, but neutralizing antibodies are really important to prevent transmission and colonization. So its probably going to be more likely to get a foothold into people, is what Im betting on. Even people who are vaccinated and boosted are probably still gonna be able to get this more than the other variants.

Now, theres no way to tell how this is going to work out in terms of what kind of sickness they get. It may be mild, it may be just a cold for the people that are vaccinated. Were going to have to see how that works.

You mentioned the possibility of more breakthrough infections for people that are vaccinated. And you kind of touched on people with normal immune systems. Do you have any sense in how this might play out in someone who is immunocompromised?

Theres a variety of ways a person can be immunocompromised. Actually there's like five ways that you could be compromised. Each one is going to be different, so it would be hard to generalize about something like that. But in general, it would not be good. I mean, that this is like common sense, but basically, if you're immunocompromised, you want to avoid going out. Sorry, thats lame, but that's true.

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Omicron could be tougher against the COVID-19 vaccine than other variants, Rice research shows - Houston Public Media