Enlarge (credit: Getty | Lindsey Nicholson )

More than a month since US health officials recommended updated COVID-19 vaccines for all Americans, only 7.1 percent of US adults have rolled up their sleeves for the shot and just 2.1 percent of children have been immunized.

The uptake is sluggish at best, and the current rates were dubbed " abysmal " Thursday by one immunization adviser for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC's advisory panel got an update yesterday on the fall campaign to boost protection against COVID-19 ahead of the winter respiratory illness season.

The current uptake is far short of survey data from last month that indicated more than half of American adults planned to get the shots. And survey data presented yesterday to the CDC advisory committee didn't differ dramatically from that. In a National Immunization Survey-Adult COVID Module that ran from October 8 to 14 that polled 14,715 adults, 24.6 percent said they "definitely will" get vaccinated, and an additional 30.6 percent said they "probably will." That's on top of the 7.1 percent who reported they were already vaccinated. The remaining 37 percent said they will definitely or probably not get vaccinated.

Enlarge / Transmission electron micrograph of a SARS-CoV-2 virus particle isolated from a patient sample and cultivated in cell culture. (credit: Getty | BSIP )

A remarkably mutated coronavirus variant classified as BA.2.86 seized scientists' attention last week as it popped up in four countries, including the US.

So far, the overall risk posed by the new subvariant is unclear. It's possible it could lead to a new wave of infection; it's also possible (perhaps most likely) it could fizzle out completely. Scientists simply don't have enough information to know. But, what is very clear is that the current precipitous decline in coronavirus variant monitoring is extremely risky.

In a single week, BA.2.86 was detected in four different countries, but there are only six genetic sequences of the variant overall —three from Denmark, and one each from Israel, the UK, and the US (Michigan). The six detections suggest established international distribution and swift spread. It's likely that more cases will be identified. But, with such scant data, little else can be said of the variant's transmission or possible distribution.

Enlarge (credit: Raymond Gehman / Getty Images )

People in the US transmitted the pandemic coronavirus to white-tailed deer at least 109 times, and the animals widely spread the virus among themselves, with a third of the deer tested in a large government-led study showing signs of prior infection. The work also suggests that the ubiquitous ruminants returned the virus to people in kind at least three times.

The findings, announced this week by the US Department of Agriculture, are in line with previous research, which suggested that white-tailed deer can readily pick up SARS-CoV-2 from humans, spread it to each other , and, based on at least one instance in Canada, transmit the virus back to humans .

But the new study , led by the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), provides a broader picture of deer transmission dynamics in the US and ultimately bolsters concern that white-tailed deer have the potential to be a virus reservoir. That is, populations of deer can acquire and harbor SARS-CoV-2 viral lineages, which can adapt to their new hosts and spill back over to humans, causing new waves of infection. It's conceivable that viruses moving from deer to humans could at some point qualify as new variants, potentially with the ability to dodge our immune protections built up from past infection and vaccination.

Enlarge / Passengers on an Air France flight on April 20, 2021. (credit: Getty | Francois LOCHON )

In a small trial, aircraft wastewater proved easy and useful for monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 variants touching down in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

The study found that the testing could be done cheaply and easily; it only added about three extra minutes to aircraft maintenance times at airports and didn't require hassling passengers with nose swabs or other sampling methods. Moreover, the testing could be easily scaled up as needed as the world largely abandons other SARS-CoV-2 testing and monitoring strategies, the CDC authors concluded.

"This investigation demonstrated the feasibility of aircraft wastewater surveillance as a low-resource approach compared with individual testing to monitor SARS-CoV-2 variants without direct traveler involvement or disruption to airport operations," the authors concluded.

Enlarge / US President Joe Biden speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. (credit: Getty | Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg )

President Joe Biden plans to end two national emergency declarations over the COVID-19 pandemic on May 11, which will trigger a restructuring of the federal response to the deadly coronavirus and will end most federal support for COVID-19 vaccinations, testing, and hospital care.

The plan was revealed in a statement to Congress opposing House Republicans' efforts to end the emergency declarations immediately.

“An abrupt end to the emergency declarations would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system—for states, for hospitals and doctors’ offices, and, most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans,” the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a Statement of Administration Policy.

Enlarge / A passenger wearing protective clothing amid the COVID-19 pandemic waits to board a domestic flight at Shanghai Pudong International Airport on January 3. (credit: Getty | HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP )

Although China has largely abandoned COVID-19 case reporting, evidence of its massive wave of infection readily shows up in airports outside its borders.

On a December 26 flight from the southeastern city of Wenzhou to Milan, Italy, 42 percent of the 149 passengers on board tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Eurosurveillance .

The Italian researchers behind the study also looked at test-positivity rates of three other flights from eastern cities in China to Italy, two to Milan and two to Rome, all at the end of December. Collectively, 23 percent of the passengers from the four flights (126 of 556 passengers) were positive for SARS-CoV-2. The other three flights had positivity rates of 19 percent, 11 percent, and 14 percent.

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.

Enlarge / US President Joe Biden receives the latest COVID-19 booster shot in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, in Washington, DC, on October 25, 2022. (credit: Getty | Saul Loeb )

The Biden administration is struggling to refocus the country's attention back on the pandemic as the fall booster campaign drags and the latest models project that tens of thousands of Americans will needlessly die this winter of COVID-19.

“This year, nearly every [COVID-19] death is preventable," President Biden said Tuesday just before rolling up his sleeve to receive his own updated COVID-19 booster.

Few Americans are following his lead. The White House has pushed Halloween as a soft deadline for Americans to get their updated, bivalent COVID-19 booster, arguing that such timing of the dose will allow for the immune system to mount maximal antibody and other immune responses before Americans begin gathering for fall and winter holidays, such as Thanksgiving, when transmission risks increase. But, with Halloween just days away, only 19.4 million Americans have received a bivalent booster—that's just 6 percent of the people eligible for the shot, which is free and available to everyone ages 5 and above.

Enlarge / Transmission electron micrograph of a variant strain of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (UK B.1.1.7), isolated from a patient sample and cultivated in cell culture. Image captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. (credit: Getty | BSIP )

New omicron coronavirus sublineages are finally threatening BA.5's dominance, as many experts fear the US is on the cusp of a winter wave.

For months, BA.5 has reigned in the US and worldwide. The hypertransmissible omicron subvariant rose up early in the summer to elbow out previous subvariants BA.2 and BA.2.12.1, which had themselves displaced the original omicron strain, BA.1, that swept the world at the start of the year.

But amid BA.5's months-long rule, hundreds of other sublineages have been stewing in the background, gaining new mutations. Of the legions of new viruses, the most concerning stem from BA.5 and BA.2. Many have seemed to independently converge on similar sets of mutations that allow the virus to better skirt strengthening immune responses, generated as more people get infections, vaccinations, and boosters.