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      New SARS-CoV-2 variant gains dominance in US amid mild summer COVID wave

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 7 August, 2023 - 22:21

    New SARS-CoV-2 variant gains dominance in US amid mild summer COVID wave

    Enlarge (credit: Getty | Thomas Trutschel )

    For a fourth consecutive summer, COVID-19 is on the rise, though this year's warm-weather wave appears milder than those in the emergency period of the pandemic.

    COVID-19 indicators of hospital admissions, emergency department visits, test positivity, and wastewater levels have all been increasing in the past month, with a peak not yet clearly in sight, according to data tracking by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From June 10 to July 29, test positivity rose from 4.1 percent to 8.9 percent. For reference, the most recent winter wave had a peak test positivity of 10.6 percent on December 31, 2022.

    On the brighter side, however, weekly COVID-19 hospital admissions and deaths continue to be at their lowest points since the start of the pandemic. For now, deaths do not appear to be rising, though there are lags in data reporting. Weekly new hospital admissions are ticking up only slightly—with admissions rising to about 8,000 in the week of July 22, up from around 6,300 the week of June 24.

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      Over a million could die as China’s COVID wave crashes into huge holiday

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 5 January, 2023 - 18:14 · 1 minute

    An elderly female patient with COVID-19 is treated at No. 2 People's Hospital of Fuyang City in China.

    Enlarge / An elderly female patient with COVID-19 is treated at No. 2 People's Hospital of Fuyang City in China. (credit: Getty | Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocke )

    With China's zero-COVID policy abruptly scrapped last month, the pandemic virus is now ripping through the country's population, and health experts are bracing for a wave of devastation as peak transmission shifts from urban centers to more vulnerable rural communities. The dire situation is expected to be "dramatically enhanced" by mass travel later this month for celebrations of the Lunar New Year on January 22.

    Multiple modeling studies have suggested that China could see around 1 million deaths in the coming weeks as the country reopens amid a raging outbreak. Last month, modeling by The Economist estimated that 96 percent of China's 1.4 billion people could catch the virus within the next three months, resulting in 1.5 million deaths . Of those deaths, 90 percent would be among people aged 60 and over.  Another modeling study, partly funded by China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also estimated that 957,600 would die in the coming weeks if the country doesn't swiftly roll out fourth-dose COVID-19 vaccines.

    Because China was previously able to keep COVID-19 waves at bay with its zero-tolerance policies, most of the country's immune protection derives from vaccination rather than prior infection or hybrid protection. Around 90 percent of China's population has had two shots of COVID-19 vaccines, but fewer than 60 percent have received a third shot as a booster dose. And even for those who have gotten a third dose, many of those doses were taken months ago, and peak protection has passed. Vaccination coverage among the elderly is particularly worrying. About 30 percent of people aged 60 and over have not gotten a third dose, and for people aged 80 and over, a startling 60 percent have not gotten a third dose.

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      New omicron subvariant surges to 40.5% as COVID hospitalizations rise

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 3 January, 2023 - 17:18 · 1 minute

    Revelers celebrate New Year’s Eve in Times Square on January 1, 2023, in New York City. This year's New Year's Eve returned to pre-COVID-19 pandemic numbers, with around 1 million people estimated to fill Times Square.

    Enlarge / Revelers celebrate New Year’s Eve in Times Square on January 1, 2023, in New York City. This year's New Year's Eve returned to pre-COVID-19 pandemic numbers, with around 1 million people estimated to fill Times Square. (credit: Getty | Alexi Rosenfeld )

    A new omicron coronavirus subvariant dubbed XBB.1.5 now accounts for an estimated 40.5 percent of all US COVID-19 cases amid a winter wave that is driving up hospitalizations, particularly in places where XBB.1.5 is most prevalent.

    Nationwide, new reported cases are hovering around 59,000 per day, which is still relatively low compared with previous waves. But case data has become murkier over the 3-year-old pandemic, with fewer testing sites available now and the results of common at-home tests going unreported. Additionally, data reporting generally lags around end-of-year holidays, meaning case reports may jump in the coming days as backlogged data rolls in.

    Hospitalizations, however, are clearly rising, with an average of around 45,000 hospitalized per day, according to data tracking by The New York Times. National hospitalization rates now rival those from the peak over this past summer driven by bygone omicron subvariants, federal data shows. Some of the areas seeing the large upticks in hospitalizations are those where the new subvariant, XBB.1.5 is most prevalent. For instance, in the Northeast (federal health region 1), XBB.1.5 has the highest regional proportion, accounting for 75 percent of cases, and hospitalizations have risen 16 percent over the prior seven days, the largest region-specific rise, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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      US COVID death toll would be 4X higher without vaccines, modeling study finds

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 13 December, 2022 - 16:51

    A woman watches white flags on the National Mall on September 18, 2021, in Washington, DC. Over 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19.

    Enlarge / A woman watches white flags on the National Mall on September 18, 2021, in Washington, DC. Over 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19. (credit: Getty | Chen Mengtong )

    Without COVID-19 vaccines, the US would have seen four times more deaths from the pandemic virus—an additional 3 million lives lost—as well as nearly four times more hospitalizations, 1.5 times more infections, and an additional $1.5 trillion in medical bills since December of 2020.

    Those are the top-line results from a new modeling study by the Commonwealth Fund , which simulated the unmitigated effects of COVID-19 in the US from December 2020 to November 2022.

    The age-stratified model accounted for US demographics, the prevalence of disease-enhancing comorbidities, social networks, limited social contact during pandemic restrictions, COVID-19 case data, hospitalization rates, vaccination administration eligibility and rates, vaccine efficacy estimates, waning protection from vaccination and infection, and the characteristics of five SARS-CoV-2 variants (Iota, Alpha, Gamma, Delta, Omicron). The model was calibrated to replicate real-world data of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths before the researchers removed vaccines from the scenario.

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      With help from BA.5, new COVID hospitalizations quadrupled since April

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 3 August, 2022 - 22:36

    A thrown-away surgical mask lays on the ground.

    Enlarge / A thrown-away surgical mask lays on the ground. (credit: Getty | David Gannon )

    As the wave of omicron coronavirus subvariant BA.5 continues to flood the US, daily COVID-19 hospitalizations are four times higher than four months ago, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The data reflects the high ongoing transmission of coronavirus subvariants adept at evading fading immune responses in a population that is largely unboosted.

    In early April, as the US fell into a brief pandemic lull in the wake of the towering BA.1 omicron wave, the seven-day rolling average for new hospitalizations sunk to around 1,420 per day nationwide. Now, after waves of subvariants BA. 2, BA.2.12.1, and the current BA.5, hospitalizations have floated back up. The current seven-day rolling average is nearing 6,300. Overall, more than 37,000 people in the US are currently hospitalized with COVID-19.

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