Thought Portal

COVID-19 makes a worrying comeback, WHO warns amid summertime surge

COVID-19 infections are surging globally, including at the Paris Olympics, and are unlikely to decline anytime soon, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. The UN health agency is also warning that more severe variants of the coronavirus may soon be on the horizon.

“COVID-19 is still very much with us,” and circulating in all countries, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of WHO told journalists in Geneva.

“Data from our sentinel-based surveillance system across 84 countries reports that the percent of positive tests for SARS-CoV-2 has been rising over several weeks,” she said. “Overall, test positivity is above 10 per cent, but this fluctuates per region. In Europe, percent positivity is above 20 per cent,” Dr. Van Kerkhove added.

New waves of infection have been registered in the Americas, Europe and Western Pacific. Wastewater surveillance suggests that the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 is two to 20 times higher than what is currently being reported. Such high infection circulation rates in the northern hemisphere’s summer months are atypical for respiratory viruses, which tend to spread mostly in cold temperatures.

“In recent months, regardless of the season, many countries have experienced surges of COVID-19, including at the Olympics where at least 40 athletes have tested positive,” Dr. Van Kerkhove said.

As the virus continues to evolve and spread, there is a growing risk of a more severe strain of the virus that could potentially evade detection systems and be unresponsive to medical intervention. While COVID-19 hospital admissions, including for Intensive Care Units (ICUs), are still much lower than they were during the peak of the pandemic, WHO is urging governments to strengthen their vaccination campaigns, making sure that the highest risk groups get vaccinated once every 12 months.

“As individuals it is important to take measures to reduce risk of infection and severe disease, including ensuring that you have had a COVID-19 vaccination dose in the last 12 months, especially, if you are in an at-risk group,” stressed Dr. Van Kerkhove.

Vaccines availability has declined substantially over the last 12-18 months, WHO admits, because the number of producers of COVID-19 vaccines has recently decreased.“It is very difficult for them to maintain the pace,” Dr. Van Kerkhove explained. “And certainly, they don't need to maintain the pace that they had in 2021 and 2022. But let's be very clear, there is a market for COVID-19 vaccines that are out there.”

Nasal vaccines are still under development but could potentially address transmission, thereby reducing the risk of further variants, infection and severe disease.

“I am concerned, “ Dr. Van Kerkhove said. “With such low coverage and with such large circulation, if we were to have a variant that would be more severe, then the susceptibility of the at-risk populations to develop severe disease is huge,” Dr. Van Kerkhove warned.

Join us in urging Congress to fund free COVID vaccines for underinsured and uninsured adults. The CDC’s Bridge Access Program, which provides COVID vaccines to uninsured and underinsured adults, is ending prematurely in August 2024 due to a loss of congressional funding.

Thanks to our community’s advocacy, the CDC voted to recommend the upcoming 2024-2025 vaccine formulations for all ages, 6 months and up. All of us need access to the latest vaccines to reduce the risk of severe disease, reduce the risk of Long COVID, better match currently circulating variants, and combat waning immunity. Now, we need your help again to demand congressional funding for vaccine access for uninsured and underinsured adults.

You can submit a letter as seen below via our Action Network campaign, keeping our letter in full or editing it as you wish. Letters to elected officials are most effective when they start with a brief personal comment (a sentence or two) about why vaccine access for uninsured people matters to you, your loved ones, and your community.

An updated vaccine formulated to protect against new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 will be available starting next week, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) said Thursday.

The news comes as COVID cases have ticked upwards in the U.S. in recent weeks, and days after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the new vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. MDHHS recommends the vaccination for everyone 6 months and older, regardless if they were previously vaccinated.

Overall, the new FDA decision “comes at a time when COVID-19 cases are once again climbing. Now, most people 6 months or older in the U.S. are eligible to receive this season’s COVID-19 vaccine, even if they have never been vaccinated against COVID-19 before,” Albert Bourla, chairman and chief executive officer at Pfizer, said in a news release.

The updated vaccines are approved for people 12 and older and are authorized under emergency use for individuals 6 months through 11 years old.

“COVID-19 remains a leading cause of death in the U.S. and poses a significant threat to vulnerable populations, particularly as we enter peak respiratory virus season,” Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, said in a news release Monday.

Under the Affordable Care Act, most insurance plans are covering the full cost of vaccines, without co-pays. So most insured people will be able to get the updated Covid-19 vaccine at their doctor’s offices or pharmacies, such as CVS or Walgreens, at no cost.

Cuba and the COVID-19 vaccine

price gouging medication that was paid for by tax payers

Six and a half million dead. More than a hundred times that infected. The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across the globe. But in the final months of the third year of this health crisis, some now claim it’s all over.

Scientists with key roles in the global response join Claudia Hammond to consider the evidence behind the declarations that the pandemic has finished and they set out how, officially, this global health crisis will be brought to an end.

They reject claims that the pandemic is over, but say the emergency phase of this global health crisis is coming to a close.

But only if countries remain vigilant and maintain pandemic preparedness.

If vaccines reach arms, if treatments are shared equally and if nations re-introduce public health measures like mask wearing and social distancing when the inevitable new waves (and potential new variants) emerge, the appalling loss of life we saw at the beginning of the pandemic, they tell Claudia, won’t be repeated.

There are stark warnings too that the dramatic global drop in the sequencing of virus samples (which enables us to see how the virus is evolving) is posing a serious risk.

We can’t react to a new threat, Claudia’s panel say, if you can’t see it. Sequencing, as well as testing, has fallen by 90% since January this year, from 100,000 weekly sequences ten months ago to less than 10,000 now. This severely limits the ability to track the known variants (currently 200 sub-lineages of the Omicron variant).

Produced in collaboration with Wellcome and recorded in front of a live audience in Wellcome’s Reading Room in London, Claudia’s expert panel includes Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organisation’s Technical Lead for Covid-19, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, co-chair of the south African Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19 and a member of the Africa Task Force which oversees the African continent’s response to the virus and Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar, the Director of Wellcome and a former adviser to the UK government on its Covid response.

Getting the Covid-19 vaccine or a booster shot can be cause for celebration, which for some might mean pouring a drink and toasting to their new immunity. But can alcohol interfere with your immune response?

The short answer is that it depends on how much you drink.

There is no evidence that having a drink or two can render any of the current Covid vaccines less effective. Some studies have even found that over the longer term, small or moderate amounts of alcohol might actually benefit the immune system by reducing inflammation.

Heavy alcohol consumption, on the other hand, particularly over the long term, can suppress the immune system and potentially interfere with your vaccine response, experts say. Since it can take weeks after a Covid shot for the body to generate protective levels of antibodies against the novel coronavirus, anything that interferes with the immune response would be cause for concern.

“If you are truly a moderate drinker, then there’s no risk of having a drink around the time of your vaccine,” said Ilhem Messaoudi, director of the Center for Virus Research at the University of California, Irvine, who has conducted research on the effects of alcohol on the immune response. “But be very cognizant of what moderate drinking really means. It’s dangerous to drink large amounts of alcohol because the effects on all biological systems, including the immune system, are pretty severe and they occur pretty quickly after you get out of that moderate zone.”

Moderate drinking is generally defined as no more than two drinks a day for men and a maximum of one drink a day for women, whereas heavy drinking is defined as four or more drinks on any day for men and three or more drinks for women. Keep in mind that one “standard” drink is considered five ounces of wine, 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits, or 12 ounces of beer.

Some of the first concerns about alcohol and Covid vaccination began circulating after a Russian health official warned in December that people should avoid alcohol for two weeks before getting vaccinated and then abstain for another 42 days afterward. According to a Reuters report, the official claimed that alcohol could hamper the body’s ability to develop immunity against the novel coronavirus. Her warning sparked a fierce backlash in Russia, which has one of the world’s highest drinking rates.

In the United States, some experts say they have heard similar concerns about whether it is safe to drink around the time of vaccination. “We’ve been getting a lot of questions from our patients about this,” said Dr. Angela Hewlett, an associate professor of infectious diseases who directs the Covid infectious diseases team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “Understandably, people who are receiving these vaccines want to make sure they’re doing all the right things to maximize their immune response.”

Clinical trials of the Covid vaccines that are currently approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration did not specifically look at whether alcohol had any impact on the effectiveness of the vaccines, Dr. Hewlett said. It’s possible that there will be more information on that in the future. But for now, most of what is known comes from previous research, including studies that examined how alcohol affects the immune system in humans and whether it hinders the immune response in animals that received other vaccines.

One thing that is clear from studies is that heavy alcohol consumption impairs the immune response and increases your susceptibility to bacterial and viral infections. It prevents immune cells from traveling to sites of infection and carrying out their duties, like destroying viruses, bacteria and infected cells; makes it easier for pathogens to invade your cells, and causes a host of other problems.

In contrast, moderate drinking does not seem to have this effect. In one study, scientists exposed 391 people to five different respiratory viruses and found that moderate drinkers were less likely to develop colds, but not if they were smokers.

In another study, Dr. Messaoudi and colleagues provided rhesus monkeys access to alcoholic beverages for seven months and then looked at how their bodies responded to a vaccine against poxvirus. Much like humans, some rhesus monkeys enjoy alcohol and will drink a lot, while others show less interest and will limit themselves to small amounts. The researchers found that the animals that were chronically heavy drinkers had a weak response to the vaccine. “They had almost a nonexistent immune response,” Dr. Messaoudi said.

The animals that consumed only moderate amounts of alcohol, however, generated the strongest response to the vaccine, even compared to the teetotalers that consumed no alcohol at all. Studies in rats have found a similar pattern: Those consuming large amounts of alcohol have only a weak immune response to infections compared to animals given moderate amounts of alcohol or none at all. Other studies have found that when people drink moderately, it seems to lower inflammatory markers in their blood.

Another reason to moderate your alcohol intake is that heavy drinking — along with the hangover that can ensue — can potentially amplify any side effects you might have from the Covid vaccine, including fever, malaise or body aches, and make you feel worse, said Dr. Hewlett of the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Dr. Hewlett chose not to drink after getting the Covid vaccine. But she said that people should feel free to imbibe so long as they drink within reason.

“Having a glass of champagne probably won’t inhibit any immune response,” she said. “I think having a celebratory beverage in moderation is fine.”

https://linktr.ee/dr.noc

Onesimus (late 1600s–1700s[1]) was an African man who was instrumental in the mitigation of the impact of a smallpox outbreak in Boston, Massachusetts. His birth name is unknown. He was enslaved and, in 1706, was given to the New England Puritan minister Cotton Mather, who renamed him. Onesimus introduced Mather to the principle and procedure of inoculation to prevent the disease, which laid the foundation for the development of vaccines.[2] After a smallpox outbreak began in Boston in 1721, Mather used this knowledge to advocate for inoculation in the population, a practice that eventually spread to other colonies. In a 2016 Boston magazine survey, Onesimus was declared one of the "Best Bostonians of All Time".[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onesimus_(Bostonian)

A growing body of scientific evidence suggest the omicron variant of COVID-19 is less severe than the delta variant -- but according to one prominent New York City emergency room physician, it all depends on what shots you've had.

Omicron is surging out of control in the city, with some Manhattan neighborhoods approaching 20% positivity rates, and hospitalizations doubling or more in recent weeks, particularly in children.

Against that backdrop, the city's emergency rooms are seeing a huge spike in patients - the asymptomatic seeking tests, the symptomatic who don't know where else to go and those in the ER for other reasons altogether who end up having COVID anyway.

Craig Spencer, a Manhattan ER doctor affiliated with Columbia University who became a Twitter superstar in the early days of the pandemic for his running commentary on the battle against the virus, tweeted a detailed breakdown late Sunday of what omicron cases look like.

Omicron symptoms by vaccine type

"Every patient I’ve seen with Covid that’s had a 3rd ‘booster’ dose has had mild symptoms. By mild I mean mostly sore throat. Lots of sore throat. Also some fatigue, maybe some muscle pain. No difficulty breathing. No shortness of breath. All a little uncomfortable, but fine," Spencer wrote.

From there, it goes downhill - slowly, though.

"Most patients I’ve seen that had 2 doses of Pfizer/Moderna still had ‘mild’ symptoms, but more than those who had received a third dose. More fatigued. More fever. More coughing. A little more miserable overall. But no shortness of breath. No difficulty breathing. Mostly fine," he said.

For those who just had the one shot of the J&J vaccine and never took a booster, the situation isn't as good.

"Most patients I’ve seen that had one dose of J&J and had Covid were worse overall. Felt horrible. Fever for a few days (or more). Weak, tired. Some shortness of breath and cough. But not one needing hospitalization. Not one needing oxygen. Not great. But not life-threatening," he tweeted.

And then there are the unvaccinated, who by all data are being hospitalized at a rate 15x or more the vaccinated.

"And almost every single patient that I’ve taken care of that needed to be admitted for Covid has been unvaccinated. Every one with profound shortness of breath. Every one whose oxygen dropped when they walked. Every one needing oxygen to breath regularly," he said.

Spencer's recommendations were straightforward -- get vaccinated if you haven't, get a second dose of something else if you've had one J&J shot, and if you're eligible, get a booster.