Tag: Omicron

Omicron BA.2 variant is spreading in U.S. and might soon pick up pace : Photographs

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Omicron BA.2 variant is spreading in U.S. and might soon pick up pace : Photographs

Hundreds of people check constructive for the coronavirus in the U.S. each day, and a compact but expanding portion of them are for the extra contagious omicron variant BA.2.

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Thousands of people examination beneficial for the coronavirus in the U.S. day by day, and a modest but developing portion of them are for the more contagious omicron variant BA.2.

Jon Cherry/Getty Visuals

As the omicron surge carries on to drop in the U.S., infectious condition professionals are trying to keep a near eye on an even more contagious model of the variant that could once once more foil the nation’s hopes of finding back again to normal.

The virus, recognized as BA.2, is a pressure of the extremely contagious omicron variant that appears to distribute even far more very easily — about 30% additional very easily.

Because BA.2 immediately overtook the original omicron in South Africa and other nations around the world and has even induced a next omicron surge in Denmark, researchers have been bracing for the identical factor to transpire in the U.S.

“A good deal of us have been assuming that it was likely to speedily just take off in the United States just like it was carrying out in Europe and turn out to be the new dominant variant,” states Nathan Grubaugh, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of General public Health.

So considerably that has not occurred. As a substitute, BA.2 has slowly and gradually, but steadily spread even as the omicron surge ongoing to dissipate. The anxiety is that unfold may be on observe to speedily accelerate in the in the vicinity of future.

Here's how to decide if you're safe to go out when you're recovering from omicron

BA.2 has now been observed from coast to coast and accounts for an estimated 3.9% all new bacterial infections nationally, according to the federal Facilities for Illness Manage and Prevention. It appears to be doubling rapid.

“If it doubles once more to 8%, that suggests we are into the exponential development phase and we may be staring at a further wave of COVID-19 coming in the U.S.,” suggests Samuel Scarpino, the supervisor director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation.

“And which is of course the just one we are truly fearful about. We’re all on the edge of our seats,” he suggests.

Some specialists think it really is unlikely BA.2 will cause a substantial new surge because so several people have immunity from prior infections and vaccination at this stage.

“The most probable issue that is likely to transpire is that it may well prolong our tail, which means it may gradual down the lessen in cases. But it’s probably not going to lead to a new wave of cases,” suggests Grubaugh.

Omicron is nevertheless infecting a lot more than 100,000 individuals and killing about 2,000 people today every single day in the U.S. So even though BA.2 does not look to make people sicker than the primary omicron, just slowing down the

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Approximated 73% of US Now Immune to Omicron: Is That Plenty of? | Wellbeing News

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Approximated 73% of US Now Immune to Omicron: Is That Plenty of? | Wellbeing News

By CARLA K. JOHNSON, AP Health care Writer

The omicron wave that assaulted the United States this winter also bolstered its defenses, leaving adequate protection versus the coronavirus that foreseeable future spikes will likely involve much fewer — if any — dramatic disruption to culture.

Thousands and thousands of specific Americans’ immune methods now identify the virus and are primed to fight it off if they come across omicron, or even another variant.

About fifty percent of eligible People have acquired booster photographs, there have been almost 80 million confirmed bacterial infections overall and many much more bacterial infections have never been noted. A person influential design makes use of those elements and other individuals to estimate that 73% of People are, for now, immune to omicron, the dominant variant, and that could rise to 80% by mid-March.

This will reduce or shorten new ailments in secured folks and lessen the total of virus circulating overall, most likely tamping down new waves. Hospitals will get a crack from confused ICUs, gurus concur.

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

The coronavirus — the latest variant or potential kinds that are sure to pop up — remains a harmful germ. It is even now infecting much more than 130,000 Americans and killing a lot more than 2,000 every working day. Tens of thousands and thousands of individuals keep on being vulnerable.

And there will be future outbreaks. The notion of a “herd immunity” that could prevent the virus has slipped away underneath the harsh reality of new variants, waning immunity, and the rejection of vaccines by some Us citizens.

But the coronavirus is no extended new. Two many years ago it arrived in a country the place nobody’s immune technique had viewed it just before. The overall populace — 330 million people — were immunologically naive, that is, vulnerable to an infection.

“I am optimistic even if we have a surge in summer time, cases will go up, but hospitalizations and deaths will not,” mentioned Mokdad, who is effective on the Institute for Health and fitness Metrics and Evaluation product, which calculated the 73% determine for The Affiliated Press.

With different degrees of relief and caution, many Us citizens are starting off to return to their pre-pandemic life.

Sarah Rixen, 41, of Bismarck, North Dakota, started out singing again with a civic refrain following taking a year off. Now, with omicron winding down, she explained she feels far more confident than at any time because the crisis started.

“But I am continue to a minor leery that there could be a further variant all-around the corner,” said Rixen, noting that her family members and most of her family are fully vaccinated. “I am even now heading to wear a mask.”

As mask mandates simplicity, staff return to offices and flights fill up,

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States Had been Sharing Covid Exam Kits. Then Omicron Hit.

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States Had been Sharing Covid Exam Kits. Then Omicron Hit.

In a handful of small months, states have gone from donating surplus quick covid-19 checks to states with shortages to hoarding them as desire pushed by the spike in scenarios strains supplies.

Very last January, North Dakota had amassed 2.7 million Abbott Laboratories BinaxNOW quick covid exams from the federal authorities — about 3½ assessments for each person in the condition of 775,000 men and women.

The condition had so quite a few covid assessments that it donated a overall of 1 million of them to Montana and Pennsylvania as aspect of a sharing plan between states that shaped when the delta variant was the dominant strain and covid outbreaks rippled throughout the nation in waves. But now that omicron has turned the entire country into a coronavirus hot place and pushed up demand from customers for checks all over the place, that method has been upended.

Some states are keeping on to expired checks for use as a very last vacation resort. In early January, North Dakota was one particular of them, with a stockpile of 600,000 expired quick checks.

“I want to make absolutely sure that our point out is included,” reported Nicole Brunelle, North Dakota’s chief nursing officer. “The total country is fighting for these exams.”

Jasmine Reed, a spokesperson for the Facilities for Disorder Command and Prevention, claimed the state exchange software has stopped running, and when federal wellbeing officials are functioning to get it likely yet again, the timing is unclear. “Once covid-19 and its variants started to ramp up and additional tests was required, states no for a longer time experienced a surplus to give extra checks,” Reed explained.

By early January, some states, together with Montana and Indiana, had depleted their inventory of immediate covid checks for distribution. Alongside with North Dakota, Florida and Maryland have held on to expired assessments in hopes the federal authorities would increase the tests’ shelf everyday living.

The inevitable outcome: States have absent from cooperation to competitiveness.

“Emergency management and federal aid across the place is crafted on the notion that we won’t have a will need all over the place at after,” reported Ken Sturrock, a Colorado-centered regional crisis coordinator for the U.S. Office of Wellness and Human Products and services.

The state check exchange application was developed amid issues that exams would expire unused. Federal wellbeing businesses developed an on the web platform that states could use to relay what they experienced or wanted.

Some states have gone exterior the application to trade assessments. For instance, Mississippi donated additional than 79,000 checks to Pennsylvania in November, claimed Jim Craig, senior deputy for the Mississippi Point out Division of Well being.

For the states that participated, the exchange program was efficient in pinpointing and shipping and delivery checks to destinations in have to have throughout the region via much of 2021. Colorado, for instance, acquired checks from five states from May perhaps via August of final calendar year, bringing in about 340,000 kits that had

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How well do rapid COVID tests work to detect omicron? : Shots

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How well do rapid COVID tests work to detect omicron? : Shots

Rapid tests can help you figure out whether you have been infected with the coronavirus. But how accurate are they? Scientists are trying to find out whether they are less sensitive to omicron and why.

Joseph Prezioso /AFP via Getty Images


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Rapid tests can help you figure out whether you have been infected with the coronavirus. But how accurate are they? Scientists are trying to find out whether they are less sensitive to omicron and why.

Joseph Prezioso /AFP via Getty Images

How much should you trust the results of a rapid antigen test? That’s a question many people are asking these days amid recent research and anecdotes suggesting these tests may be less sensitive to omicron. Researchers are working fast to figure out what’s going on and how to improve the tests.

That includes people like Dr. Wilbur Lam, a professor of pediatrics and biomedical engineering at Emory University and one of the lead investigators assessing COVID-19 diagnostic tests for the federal government. His research team began evaluating rapid antigen tests against live samples of the omicron variant last December in the lab, and in early assessments, he says, some tests failed to detect the coronavirus “at a concentration that we would have expected them to catch it if it were another variant.”

That finding prompted the Food and Drug Administration to update its online guidance in late December to note that, while rapid antigen tests do detect the omicron variant, “they may have reduced sensitivity.”

A week later, a small preprint study found that in 30 people infected with the omicron variant, rapid antigen tests only detected a positive case two or three days after a PCR test caught it — and “sometimes even longer,” says Anne Wyllie, a microbiologist at Yale School of Public Health and one of the authors of that study.

Rapid tests have always worked best when people are showing symptoms and have high viral loads, and so far, real-world data suggests they’re holding up well on that front. A recent study of 731 people found that the Abbott BinaxNOW rapid tests performed about as well with omicron as they did with other variants when people were symptomatic and had high viral loads.

A guide to COVID tests: When to test, what kind to use and what your results mean

Lam says that’s also what he’s finding when assessing rapid antigen tests with symptomatic patients who come into the clinic.

“These tests — they work,” Lam says. “When patients come in and they have symptoms …. we test them against the gold-standard PCR test and then we test with [a rapid test]. And by and large, with omicron, we see that they’re performing as expected.”

What’s different now is that with omicron, many people seem to be coming down with symptoms earlier on in an infection — before tests detect a positive case. Anecdotal reports abound of people showing symptoms of COVID-19 and testing negative at first, before eventually testing positive.

A woman picks up COVID-19 rapid antigen test

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As Omicron Surges, Effort to Vaccinate Young Children Stalls

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As Omicron Surges, Effort to Vaccinate Young Children Stalls
Rachana Pradhan and Hannah Recht

Two months after Pfizer’s covid vaccine was authorized for children ages 5 to 11, just 27% have received at least one shot, according to Jan. 12 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 18%, or 5 million kids, have both doses.

The national effort to vaccinate children has stalled even as the omicron variant upends schooling for millions of children and their families amid staffing shortages, shutdowns and heated battles over how to safely operate. Vaccination rates vary substantially across the country, a KHN analysis of the federal data shows. Nearly half of Vermont’s 5- to 11-year-olds are fully vaccinated, while fewer than 10% have gotten both shots in nine mostly Southern states.

Pediatricians say the slow pace and geographic disparities are alarming, especially against the backdrop of record numbers of cases and pediatric hospitalizations. School-based vaccine mandates for students, which some pediatricians say are needed to boost rates substantially, remain virtually nonexistent.

“You have these large swaths of vulnerable children who are going to school,” said Dr. Samir Shah, a director at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Compounding the problem is that states with low vaccination rates “are less likely to require masking or distancing or other nonpartisan public health precautions,” he said.

In Louisiana, where 5% of kids ages 5 to 11 have been fully vaccinated, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, added the shot to the list of required school immunizations for the fall, over the objections of state legislators, who are mostly Republicans. The District of Columbia and California, where about 1 in 5 elementary school kids are fully vaccinated, have added similar requirements. But those places are exceptions — 15 states have banned covid vaccine mandates in K-12 schools, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy.

Mandates are one of multiple “scientifically valid public health strategies,” Shah said. “I do think that what would be ideal; I don’t think that we as a society have a will to do that.”

Vaccine demand surged in November, with an initial wave of enthusiasm after the shot was approved for younger children. But parents have vaccinated younger kids at a slower pace than 12- to 15-year-olds, who became eligible in May. It took nearly six weeks for 1 in 5 younger kids to get their first shot, while adolescents reached that milestone in two weeks.

Experts cite several factors slowing the effort: Because kids are less likely than adults to be hospitalized or die from the virus, some parents are less inclined to vaccinate their children. Misinformation campaigns have fueled concerns about immediate and long-term health risks of the vaccine. And finding appointments at pharmacies or with pediatricians has been a bear.

“One of the problems we’ve had is this perception that kids aren’t at risk for serious illness from this virus,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases. “That’s obviously not true.”

Parents are left to

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PAHO: Omicron to become dominant variant in Americas shortly | Health and Fitness

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PAHO: Omicron to become dominant variant in Americas shortly | Health and Fitness

MIAMI (AP) — The Pan American Health Organization said Wednesday it expects omicron to become the predominant coronavirus variant in the Americas in the coming weeks, where confirmed cases have reached record levels.

The health agency added that although healthcare systems face challenges with rising hospitalizations, vaccination has meant that COVID-19 deaths have not increased at the same rate as infections.

“While delta is still causing new infections in the Americas, based on current trends, omicron is on track to become the dominant strain in our region,” Carissa Etienne, director of the agency known by its initials PAHO, said during an online news conference.

PAHO said coronavirus virus infections across the Americas almost doubled to 6.1 million on Jan. 8, from 3.4 million cases on Jan. 1. The number of cases was 250% higher than a year earlier, when there were 2.4 million.

It said that in the first week of 2022, deaths related to COVID-19 in the Americas increased 31% from the previous week.

The omicron variant, which spreads more easily, has been detected in 42 of the 56 countries and territories of the Americas.

The United States is reporting the highest number of cases, while Canada is also registering a rebound. In the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic have seen the highest increases, while Belize and Panama have seen rises in Central America.

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