SARS-CoV-2/COVID related discussion

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The Hypermobility, Long-Covid, and MAST Cell Activation Connections.​

 

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Health experts explain COVID-19 spike​

 

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COVID-19 deaths up 14% CDC says, but levels 'nowhere near' pandemic​

 

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How COVID impacted our Church​

 

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Medical experts keeping a close eye on rise in COVID cases​

 

[Yommie]

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/cold-flu-virus-can-trigger-long-covid-relapses-2024a1000cau?form=fpf

Cold, Flu Virus Can Trigger Long COVID Relapses​

Tinker Ready
July 03, 2024

People who have recovered from long COVID can suffer relapses or flare-ups from new viral infections — not just from COVID but from cold, flu, and other viral pathogens, researchers have found.
In some cases, they may be experiencing what researchers call viral interference, something also experienced by people with HIV and other infections associated with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
Clinical studies on the issue are limited, but patients, doctors, and researchers report many people who previously had long COVID have developed recurring symptoms after consequent viral infections.

Viral persistence — where bits of virus linger in the body — and viral reactivation remain two of the leading suspects for Yale researchers. Viral activation occurs when the immune system responds to an infection by triggering a dormant virus.
Anecdotally, these flare-ups occur more commonly in patients with long COVID with autonomic dysfunction — severe dizziness when standing up — and other symptoms of ME/CFS, said Alba Azola, MD, a Johns Hopkins Medicine rehabilitation specialist who works with patients with long COVID and other "fatiguing illnesses."

At last count, about 18% of those surveyed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they had experienced long COVID. Nearly 60% of those surveyed said they had contracted COVID-19 at least once.

Azola said that very afternoon she had seen a patient with the flu and a recurrence of previous long COVID symptoms. Not much data exist about cases like this, she said.

"I can't say there is a specific study looking at this, but anecdotally, we see it all the time," Azola said.
She has not seen completely different symptoms; more commonly, she sees a flare-up of previously existing symptoms.

David Putrino, PhD, is director of Rehabilitation Innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. He treats and studies patients with long COVID and echoes what others have seen.
Patients can "recover (or feel recovered) from long COVID until the next immune challenge — another COVID infection, flu infection, pregnancy, food poisoning (all examples we have seen in the clinic) — and experience a significant flare-up of your initial COVID infection," he said.
"Relapse" is a better term than reinfection, said Jeffrey Parsonnet, MD, an infectious diseases specialist and director of the Dartmouth Hitchcock Post-Acute COVID Syndrome Clinic, Lebanon, New Hampshire.

"We see patients who had COVID-19 followed by long COVID who then get better — either completely or mostly better. Then they've gotten COVID again, and this is followed by recurrence of long COVID symptoms," he said.
"Every patient looks different in terms of what gets better and how quickly. And again, some patients are not better (or even minimally so) after a couple of years," he said.

Patients Tell Their Stories​

On the COVID-19 Long Haulers Support Facebook group, some of the many of the 100,000 ask about viral reactivation. Delainne "Laney" Bond, RN, who has battled postinfection chronic illness herself, runs the Facebook group. From what she sees, "Each time a person is infected or reinfected with SARS-CoV-2, they have a risk of developing long COVID or experiencing worse long COVID. Multiple infections can lead to progressive health complications."

The posts on her site include many queries about reinfections. A post from December included nearly 80 comments with people describing the full range of symptoms. Some stories relayed how the reinfection symptoms were short-lived. Some report returning to their baseline — not completely symptom-free but improved.
Doctors and patients say long COVID comes and goes — relapsing-remitting — and shares many features with other complex multisystem chronic conditions, according to a new National Academy of Sciences report. Those include ME/CFS and the Epstein-Barr virus.
As far as how to treat, Putrino is one of the clinical researchers testing antivirals. One is Paxlovid; the others are drugs developed for the AIDS virus.

"A plausible mechanism for long COVID is persistence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in tissue and/or the reactivation of latent pathogens," according to an explanation of the research on the PolyBio Institute website, which is involved with the research.

In the meantime, "Long COVID appears to be a chronic condition with few patients achieving full remission," according to a new Academy of Sciences report. The report concludes that long COVID recovery can plateau at 6-12 months. They also note that 18-22% of people who have long COVID symptoms at 5 months are still ill at 1 year.

 

[Yommie]

COVID kills four more New Brunswickers

New Brunswick government releases data for the last month about COVID-19 and influenza activity in the province

tj.news

 

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/07/03/covid-rising-kp2-flirt-lb1/

 

[Yommie]

What to know about the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines

A NIH-sponsored clinical trial has begun testing a nasal COVID-19 vaccine. Here's what you need to know about the possible next generation of shots.

abcnews.go.com

What to know about the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines​

Researchers believe the nasal vaccine may be more effective than current shots.
ByMary Kekatos
July 2, 2024, 6:10 PM

Trial for next-generation nasal COVID-19 vaccine begins
This week, the National Institutes of Health began testing an experimental COVID-19 vaccine.

The first phase of human trials studying a possible nasal COVID-19 vaccine has opened, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced.
The clinical trial, sponsored by the federal health agency, is enrolling participants at three sites across the U.S.
Researchers believe the vaccine candidate may provide even better protection against emerging variants than the COVID vaccines given via injection.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/understanding-long-covid/story?id=108040827
"The concept is that we're looking for next generation vaccines," said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children's Hospital and an ABC News contributor. "Throughout the pandemic, we had the incredible scientific breakthrough of COVID vaccines that happened, that got into production incredibly quickly and were safe and effective. But of course, we also recognize that there are challenges of the existing vaccines."
Here's what you need to know about the nasal COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial now underway:

What is the new vaccine candidate?​

The candidate, MPV/S-2P, uses a live-weakened version of a virus called murine pneumonia virus (MPV), which does not cause disease in humans.
MPV will deliver a stabilized version of the spike protein, which the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that causes COVID-19, uses to attach and infect human cells. This will teach the body to recognize the protein and train immune cells to attack if a person is infected.

Colorized scanning electron micrograph of a cell (blue) infected with the Omicron strain of SAR...Show more
NIAID Integrated Research Facility

Pre-clinical trials in non-human primates found MPV/S-2P to be safe and well-tolerated and that it produced a robust immune response, both in SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and in the epithelial cells that line the nose and respiratory tract.
"Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 come into the body through the nose, into the lungs and then gets integrated into our bloodstream and disseminated through the body," Dr. Reynold Panettieri, a professor of medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University, told ABC News.
"What we realized is that systemic vaccination -- when we inject it and it goes through the body to build up immunity -- is not as effective as generating a mucosal, or lining cell, immunity in the nose or in the lungs," he said. "And so, when people can inhale the protein, in this case, the spike protein ... it actually builds up an immune response that's much more robust than that when it is injected."

Challenges with the current vaccine​

In December 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized two new messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines, from Pfizer-BioNTech and from Moderna, to target the original variant.
While most vaccines use a weakened or inactivated virus to stimulate an immune response, mRNA vaccines teach the body how to make proteins that can trigger an immune response and fight off an infection.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/increase-covid-cases-summer-experts-concerned/story?id=111210227
Because researchers can design mRNA vaccines more quickly than they can produce the live or weakened pathogens needed for a traditional vaccine, mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 were quickly developed, tested, mass produced and delivered to the general population, preventing millions of hospitalizations and deaths, according to analyses.
Both have been updated over time to target new variants including in September 2022 to target both the original variant and BA.4 and BA.5 – offshoots of the omicron variant -- and in September 2023 to target the XBB offshoot of the omicron variant. Only the latter is currently in use.
"The current vaccines have diminished efficacy over time," Brownstein said. "These vaccines were highly protective against severe COVID hospitalizations and deaths, [but] it wasn't as effective at slowing cases and preventing transmission."
Additionally, mRNA vaccines require a multi-step process to manufacture as well as ultra-cold storage, which can present logistical challenges. Further, some people may not want to receive mRNA vaccines because they are averse to needles.
"Nasal spray is often more often more accepted by a population, so if it's a less concerning mode of delivery, plus it offers better protection, plus it offers potentially better storage and distribution potential, it highlights that this could be a really important new step in controlling this virus," Brownstein said.

How will the trial work?​

The clinical trial will enroll 60 healthy adult participants between ages 18 and 64 who received at least three doses of an MRNA COVID-19 vaccine approved or authorized by the FDA.
There will be several trial sites including at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Texas; The Hope Clinic of Emory University in Decatur, Georgia; and New York University Grossman Long Island School of Medicine in Long Island.

Stock photo
Lev Dolgachov/Syda Productions/Adobe Stock

Participants will be split into three groups, each receiving different dosages. Researchers will follow-up with the volunteers seven times over the course of a year and measure if the vaccine is safe and if it produces an immune response in the nose and in the blood.
Because clinical trials take time to produce data and require at least three phases before being submitted for FDA authorization, experts say it's unlikely these vaccines will be available in fall 2024.
"Early in the pandemic, we were moving quicker than usual to get a get a vaccine out there," Panettieri said. "Not that any steps were skipped, but we needed to save lives."
Because a COVID-19 infection now results in mild symptoms for most healthy people, "we do have time to actually go through the typical process the FDA takes to approve a new therapy," he added. "That is going to help everyone. It's going to be making sure it's safe and effective."
Dr. John Beigel, associate director for clinical research in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' (NIAID) division of microbiology and infectious diseases, told ABC News that MPV/S-2P falls under Project NextGen.
The project, led by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the NIAID, plans to support 15 next generation vaccines into Phase 1 clinical trials, of which MPV/S-2P is the first.

 

[Yommie]

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/07/03/nx-s1-5021811/peak-covid-vaccine-nursing-home-patients-low-rate-fewer-than-half-summer-surge

Nursing homes falling further behind on vaccinating patients for COVID​

JULY 3, 202410:19 AM ET
By Sarah Boden

Mary Ann Herbst, a patient at the Good Samaritan Society nursing home in Le Mars, Iowa, gets her first COVID-19 vaccine shot on Dec. 29, 2020. A recent study found only 4 out of 10 nursing home residents in the U.S. have gotten at least one dose of the most recent COVID vaccine, which was released last fall.

It seems that no one is taking COVID-19 seriously anymore, said Mollee Loveland, a nursing home aide who lives outside of Pittsburgh.
Loveland has seen patients and coworkers at the nursing home die from the virus.
Now she has a new worry: bringing COVID home and unwittingly infecting her infant daughter, Maya, born in May.

---

This story was produced in partnership with KFF Health News.
“She’s still so tiny,” said Loveland, whose maternity leave ended in late June. Six months is the earliest an infant can get vaccinated for COVID.
Loveland is also troubled by the possibility that the nursing home could experience a summer COVID surge, just like last year.
“It’s more amplified with the breathing issues because of how humid it is, how hot it is, how muggy it is,” she said.
Between her patients’ complex medical needs and their close proximity to each other, COVID continues to pose a grave threat to Loveland’s nursing home — and to the 15,000 other certified nursing homes in the U.S. where some 1.2 million people live.
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Despite this risk, an April report found that just four out of 10 nursing home residents in the U.S. have received the most recent COVID vaccine, which was released last fall. The analysis drew on data from October 16, 2023 through February 11, 2024, and was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The CDC report also revealed that during January’s COVID peak, the rate of hospitalizations among nursing home residents was more than eight times higher when compared to all U.S. adults, age 70 and older.

Billing complexities and patient skepticism​

The low vaccination rate is partly driven by the fact that the federal government is no longer picking up the tab for administering the shots, said Dr. Rajeev Kumar, a Chicago-based geriatrician.
While the vaccine remains free to patients, clinicians must now bill each person’s insurance company separately. That makes vaccinating an entire nursing home more logistically complicated, said Kumar.

Molly Loveland and her daughter, Maya, at a park in Washington, Pennsylvania. Loveland works at a nearby nursing home. Loveland is concerned about catching COVID and bringing it home to her baby after her return to work. Federal data show that just 4 out of 10 nursing home residents in the U.S. have gotten at least one dose of the most recent COVID vaccine, which was released last fall.
Sarah Boden
Kumar is president of The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents clinicians who work in nursing homes and similar settings, such as post-acute care, assisted living and hospice facilities.
“The challenges of navigating through that process and arranging vaccinations, making sure that somebody gets to bill for services and collect money, that's what has become a little bit more tedious,” he said.

(In April, after the study was released, the CDC recommended that adults who are 65 or older get an additional dose of the updated vaccine if it's been more than four months since their last vaccine. That means that going forward, most nursing home patients who have had only one shot in fall or winter are not considered up-to-date on the COVID vaccine.)
Another issue is that Kumar and his colleagues are encountering more skepticism of the COVID vaccine, compared to when it first rolled out.


“The long term care population is a microcosm of what’s happening across the country, and unfortunately, COVID vaccine reluctance remains persistent throughout the general public. It’s our most significant challenge,” according to an emailed statement from Dr. David Gifford, chief medical officer at AHCA/NCAL, which represents both for-profit and not-for-profit nursing homes.
Nursing aide Mollee Loveland also has observed doubts and misinformation cropping up among patients at her job: “It’s the Facebook rabbit hole.”
But there are ways to push back against bad information, and states show wide variation in the proportion of nursing home residents who have been recently vaccinated.
For example, in both North and South Dakota, more than 60% of nursing home residents in those states have gotten at least one COVID shot since early October.

Building trust through relationships​

One major medical system operating in the Dakotas, Sanford Health, has managed more than two dozen nursing homes since a 2019 merger with the long-term care chain the Good Samaritan Society.
In some of these nursing homes more than 70% of residents have been vaccinated since early October — at one Sanford facility in Canton, South Dakota, the rate exceeds 90%.
Sanford achieved this by leveraging the size of the health system to make delivering the vaccine more efficient, said Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, Sanford’s chief medical officer. He also credited a close working relationship with a South Dakota-based pharmacy chain, Lewis Drug.


But the most crucial factor was that many of Sanford’s nursing home patients are cared for by doctors who are also employed by the health system.
At the majority of Sanford’s North and South Dakota nursing homes, these clinicians provide on-site primary care, meaning patients don’t have to leave the facilities to see their doctors.
Another benefit of this integration is that Sanford clinicians and nursing home staffers both have access to the same patient medical records, which helps them keep track of which patients have and have not been vaccinated.

These employed doctors have been critical in persuading patients to stay up-to-date on their COVID shots, said Cauwels. For example, a medical director who worked at the Good Samaritan nursing home in Canton was a long-serving physician with close ties to that community.
“An appropriate one-on-one conversation with someone who cares about you and has a history of doing so in the past, for us, has resulted in much better numbers than other places have been able to get to nationally,” said Cauwels, who added that Sanford still needs to work on reaching the remaining patients who haven’t gotten the recent COVID shot.
Sanford’s success shows that the onus of getting patients vaccinated extends beyond nursing homes, said Jodi Eyigor, the director of nursing home quality and policy for LeadingAge, which represents nonprofit nursing homes. She said primary care providers, hospitalists, pharmacists and other health care stakeholders need to step up.
“What conversations have occurred before they walked into a nursing home’s doors, between them and their doctors? Because they’re probably seeing their doctors quit frequently before they come into the nursing home,” said Eyigor, who notes these other clinicians are also regulated by Medicare, which is the federal health insurance program for adults who are 65 and older.

Critics: shot uptake linked to residents’ dissatisfaction​

Still, nursing homes are required to educate patients — as well as staff — about the importance of the COVID vaccines. Industry critics contend that one-on-one conversations, based on trusted relationships with clinicians, are the least that nursing homes should do.
But many facilities don’t seem to be doing even that, according to Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, a watchdog group that monitors nursing homes. A 40% recent vaccination rate is inexcusable, he said, given the danger the virus poses to people who live in nursing homes.
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A study from the Journal of Health Economics estimates that from the start of the pandemic through August 15, 2021, 21% of COVID deaths in the U.S. were among people who live in nursing homes.
The alarmingly low COVID vaccination rate is actually a symptom of larger issues throughout the industry, according to Mollot. He hears from patients’ families about poor food quality and a general apathy that some nursing homes have toward residents’ concerns. He also cites high rates of staff turnover, and substandard, and even dangerous, care.
These problems intensified in the years since the start of the COVID pandemic, Mollot said, causing extensive stress throughout the industry.


“That has resulted in much lower care, much more disrespectful interactions between residents and staff, and there’s just that lack of trust,” he added.
Mollee Loveland, the nursing aide, also thinks the industry has fundamental problems when it comes to daily interactions between workers and residents. She said the managers at her job often ignore patients’ concerns.
“I feel like if the facilities did more with the patients, they would get more respect from the patients,” she said.
So when administrators announce it’s time for residents to get the newest COVID vaccine, Loveland said, they often are simply ignored, even if it puts their own health at risk.
This story comes from NPR's health reporting partnership with KFF Health News.

 

[Yommie]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/covid-19-new-brunswick-risk-summer-tests-vaccine-1.7248532

COVID-19 experts warn of risks of summer surge as N.B. hazard index leads country​

1 in 42 New Brunswickers currently infected, says infectious disease researcher​

Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon · CBC News · Posted: Jun 28, 2024 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: June 28

COVID-19 is killing and hospitalizing about 10 times more people than influenza each year, according to infectious disease researcher Tara Moriarty. (Patrick Lacelle/Radio-Canada)

Two infectious disease experts are warning New Brunswickers about the risks of COVID-19 heading into the summer, when they say many people mistakenly believe infections decrease.
New Brunswick has the highest COVID-19 risk index in the country right now — more than double the national average, according to Tara Moriarty, an infectious disease researcher and lead of COVID-19 Resources Canada, which produces a weekly forecast.
The province is listed as "severe" for June 22 to July 5, with a score of 28.2, based on current infections and spread, health-care system impact and mortality. Canada's overall rate is 13.6.
No breakdowns by province are currently available, but Moriarty said an estimated one in 42 New Brunswickers are currently infected "and could be infecting other people."
That means there are between 10,000 and 21,000 infections in New Brunswick per week, said Moriarty, an associate professor at the University of Toronto.
"So it's important for [people] to keep that in mind when they're planning activities and deciding whether they should mask, for example, or take other precautions," she said, as the effectiveness of their last COVID-19 vaccine wanes and new variants emerge.

Not a seasonal illness​

Although people tend to think of COVID-19 as being seasonal and tapering off in the summer, much like the common cold or flu, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the World Health Organization both recently reminded people that COVID-19 isn't seasonal yet, said Moriarty.
The number of infections has actually increased over the past two summers, she said.
Cases will spike when the virus that causes COVID-19 evolves in a way that allows it to do so, regardless of the season, said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information.
"COVID is continuing to mutate and it's continuing to find ways to evade our immune systems, which means it's way more contagious than seasonal viruses like the common cold and influenza," he said.

Moriarty, an infectious diseases researcher at the University of Toronto, said infections are high partly because few people got updated vaccines and for those who did, the effectiveness is already starting to wane. (Submitted by Tara Moriarty)
A surge has already started, according to Moriarty.
It comes as New Brunswick has reduced its COVID-19 updates to monthly, with the next Respiratory Watch report due on July 3. The spring COVID-19 vaccine booster campaign for those considered most at risk for severe illness ended on June 15. And the government has stopped distributing free rapid tests.

End of free rapid tests will have higher costs​

Moriarty called the decision to stop providing free rapid tests "problematic." She said it's important for people to continue to test so they know if they have COVID-19, particularly those who are at high risk of severe illness and are eligible for Paxlovid treatment.
The tests are expensive and many people can't afford them, she said, including seniors on fixed incomes.
Furness agreed, saying "the consequences of not letting people monitor their health in an era where we have said, 'It's on you. It's up to the individual,' to not provide those tools, you're asking for more COVID," he said.

The Department of Health announced in May it would stop distributing free COVID-19 rapid tests when its supply ran out, which was expected to be by the end of June. (CBC)
"And when you get more COVID, you get more sickness. And when you get more sickness, it costs the health system more. So it's just foolish."
The provincial Department of Health did not respond to a request for comment Thursday, but has previously said not everyone needs to be tested.
"For the general public, anyone feeling unwell should stay at home while sick and until symptoms improve," spokesperson Sean Hatchard has said.
Furness said people are tired of COVID and don't want to isolate. Testing enables them to protect the people around them without the burden of isolating, and without the burden of potentially passing the virus on to someone who ends up dying, he said.

Lack of information 'a travesty'​

The COVID-19 virus hasn't gone away and remains a "serious concern," said Moriarty. It's still killing and hospitalizing about 10 times more people than influenza each year, according to her data.
"It's very disheartening to see this happen and to see how much preventable illness there is and how we're choosing not to protect people with at least information," she said.

Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Toronto, said he feels for people who don't know how to make decisions on how to avoid infection because they don't have the information they need. (Katarina Kuruc)
Furness called the lack of information available to help parents decide whether to send their children to camp, or to help people decide if or where to take a road trip, a travesty.
"I don't want to say to people, 'Hide in your basement.' I want people to be able to make smart decisions," he said.
Furness encourages people to call their MLA.
"The only thing you can do, I think, is express outrage that the people you elected to take care of you, to take care of the population, because they're not doing their job," he said. "It's not a question of asking them to spend money. It's a question of asking them to keep people healthier, which saves money."

How to stay safe​

Furness believes summer camp is lower risk than frequently eating at restaurants in a city core because the children are part of an isolated group, rather than interacting with a wide range of different people, and most activities are outdoor-oriented. His own kids will be going to camp, he said.
He recommends people avoid crowded indoor spaces without a respirator mask. They can also carry a carbon dioxide monitor to test the air quality of a space, he said.

Moriarty said people should hold gatherings outdoors, or open windows and use air filters. They should also ask people not to come if they, or someone they live with is sick, and make sure people feel welcome to mask.
A lot of people who should be masking aren't because it's stigmatized, she said.
For people who can't afford to buy masks or tests, Donate a Mask, a registered Canadian charity, can help, said Moriarty.
NB Lung still has free rapid tests available. If people are buying tests, they should make sure they're Health Canada-approved, she said.

 

[Yommie]

FLiRT COVID-19 variant is on the rise. What to know, updated fall vaccine information

FLiRT might sound fun, but the popular group of COVID variants is anything but. What you need to know and how this impacts the fall 2024 COVID vaccine

www.delawareonline.com

 

[Yommie]

https://www.thelocal.de/20240702/germany-sees-spike-in-summer-flu-and-covid-infections

Germany sees spike in summer flu and Covid infections​

Imogen Goodman- news@thelocal.de
Published: 2 Jul, 2024 CET.Updated: Tue 2 Jul 2024 10:53 CET

Medicines behind the counter at a pharmacy in Bad Essen, Lower Saxony. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Friso Gentsch

According to official data released by the Robert Koch Institute, instances of respiratory infections like coronavirus are unusually high for this time of year.​

There's a common joke in Germany, normally made during the winter flu season: "Husten (cough), we have a problem." But this year the number of respiratory infections, causing coughs, fevers and aches, is rising in the middle of summer.
According to the Robert Koch Institute's (RKI) most recent respiratory infection statistics (ARE), the number of Covid-19 infections in Germany has been rising steadily over the past weeks to reach 500 cases per 100,000 residents in the week beginning June 17th. This increase follows a drop-off at the turn of the season.

In Berlin, meanwhile, the number of Covid infections recorded in the laboratories and by local authorities has doubled within a week, the RKI told regional newspaper Tagesspiegel.

This reflects a general trend of rising flu-like infections this summer, with viruses like rhinovirus and enterovirus among the most commonly recorded.
The past week saw an increase in the incidence of this type of infection rom 1,200 to 1,300 per 100,000 people.
Meanwhile, the overall incidence of respiratory viruses hit 5,900 per 100,000 residents, which equates to around five million cases in the population as a whole.

In its weekly infection report, the RKI states that this type of virus is "currently at a comparatively high level for this time of year", but adds that severe cases remain rare so far.
The health authority advises people with symptoms of an acute respiratory infection to stay home for three to five days or until their symptoms have improved significantly.
Self-reported data
Since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, the public health authority has been relying heavily on data self-submitted through its GrippeWeb portal to monitor the prevalence of flu-type viruses in Germany.
This data is then extrapolated out to the general population to create estimated incidences for society as a whole.

Infections are also partially monitored through local health authorities and lab reports, as well as through samples from waste water plants that contain traces of the virus.
According to the RKI, water from around 100 waste plants was available for the latest report, covering around 19 percent of the population.
New viruses
Though Covid has been far less prevalent since the pandemic became endemic, top Berlin virologist Christian Drosten has recently issued warnings that other new virus could potentially spark a new global health crisis.
Speaking to RND at the end of June, Drosten cited the MERS virus and the H5N1 bird flu virus - the first human case of which was recently recorded in the US - as possible triggers for a new pandemic.

According to the Charité virologist, there have even been traces of H5N1 in wholesale milk from the US that has come from infected cows.
"There has never been anything like this before, such extremely large outbreaks in cows - all the experts are worried," he said, adding that the outlook was still unclear.
"We don't really know what will happen now because we don't have very good insight into the data," Drosten said.

 

[Yommie]

A new COVID variant is on the rise in the US. What are its most common symptoms?

What is the LB.1 variant, and will it cause a summer COVID-19 wave? Experts discuss symptoms, vaccines, isolation guidelines, and more.

www.today.com

 

[Yommie]

https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticut/article/ct-covid-summer-wave-kp3-surge-spike-coronavirus-19551764.php

A lack of data may be hiding a summer COVID wave in CT: 'There is an ostriching that is going on'​

By Jordan Nathaniel Fenster,Staff writerJuly 4, 2024


Linda Ilse, RN, prepares a COVID-19 booster shot at a clinic at the Senior Center in Stamford, Conn., in 2021.
Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media
The state’s dashboard for data on respiratory diseases shows a huge COVID-19 bump in January followed by a steep decline, and barely any movement at all since April.

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There were 69 hospitalizations for COVID-19 statewide last week, about as much as there were for weeks before, and a far cry from the 482 there were on Jan. 13.
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But those numbers don’t tell the story: There’s a COVID-19 summer wave in Connecticut, and a lack of data may be helping to hide that fact.
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“We have seen a summer rise in cases for several years, usually in August,” said Connecticut Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani. “This year, it seems this rise is happening now.”
Ulysses Wu, head of infectious disease prevention for Hartford HealthCare, said the new KP.3 variant is driving the wave, and that numbers are “definitely up.”

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“Hospitalizations are definitely up since three weeks ago,” Wu said.
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COVID-19 hospitalizations may increase more as the summer progresses. Scott Roberts, associate medical director of infection prevention at Yale New Haven Hospital, said there was a “little bit of an uptick from last week” in his hospital, but that “we’re still way less than we were before.”
That, Roberts said, leads him to ask “are we at the beginning of something that’s going to start going up? Because, usually, hospitalization lags two to three weeks or more behind infections.”
Wu called hospitalizations “the canary in the coal mine.”
“We don’t want people getting sick, but if they’re not making it into the hospital, then that’s a good thing,” he said. “It’s the old analogy, where do you draw your line? Where do you set your border wall? I’ve always set it at hospitalizations.”
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The statewide testing data that used to be available is not any more, which means people like Wu and Roberts have to guess.
“Since the omicron wave, we have had self-test kits so although we do see an increase in laboratory confirmed cases, there are many more cases out there than evident from our surveillance,” Juthani said.
A team at Yale University still tracks the wastewater under New Haven for COVID-19, and though it’s only New Haven, Roberts said that metric remains one of his best early warnings for COVID-19 spikes.
That wastewater data shows a surge, but perhaps half of where it was in January.
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“It certainly shows in New Haven, we are definitely seeing more COVID in the wastewater than before,” Roberts said. “Maybe we’re at the beginning of a wave, but I don’t think it’s going to be nearly as bad as it was in the winter.”
There’s little statewide case data and little if any accurate vaccination data, which means, “The only thing we have is our own internal positivity rate for COVID and our own internal positive caseloads,” Roberts said.
Wu said that the plethora of data that had been available was helpful, but that it also created an unreasonable expectation, and that the availability of data has encouraged the general public to ignore COVID-19.
The lack of data is “very similar to all of our other respiratory diseases that we never really looked at until COVID came along,” Wu said.
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“All these other ones, like parainfluenza, human metapneumovirus, adenovirus, nobody cared about these things. We got it every year, and everybody’s like, ‘Oh, you just have a cold,’” he said. “Then if somebody died in the hospital, the general public never knew about it. There is an ostriching that is going on with COVID.”
While both Roberts and Wu said COVID-19 remains more virulent than other respiratory diseases, it has gotten more manageable.
“My own hospital system numbers, they are up just a touch, and the ones that are making it into the hospital, are not being intubated,” Wu said. “There’s still deaths happening, don’t get me wrong, but not to the extent of what it was.”
The same prevention measures continue to work, but how often they are utilized may be anyone’s guess.
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“We don’t want to ignore it, that’s for sure. But when you beat that drum beat every day, every week, then the message starts getting lost,” Wu said. “We saw that with masking, for example. Masking is still your best way to prevent COVID, short of avoiding people, but that drumbeat of masking turned off 50 percent of the populace all of a sudden. It gets lost on deaf ears. Barely anybody masks anymore, in either political party.”
Juthani said this summer wave may be the result of a decrease in immunity.
“It is unclear why this wave is happening earlier in the summer than in previous years. It is possible that since many people did not receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine last fall, their immunity from prior infections may have waned,” she said. “For adults aged 65 and older, if you received your last COVID-19 shot four months or more ago, you could receive another vaccine at this time to boost your immunity. All persons 6 months and older are recommended to receive an updated vaccine when they become available this fall.”
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