Category Archives: Corona Virus

There are signs that the omicron variant wave of the novel coronavirus is dropping off, which could be a sign that a return to normal isnt too far away.

Yes, but: The novel coronavirus is still mutating, and there is no guarantee that future variants will be mild. There is a high chance that more surges are in our future, particularly for unvaccinated people, Dr. Megan Ranney, professor of emergency medicine and academic dean of public health at Brown University, recently wrote for NBC News.

Why it matters: The coronavirus could mutate again, which would once again delay a return to normal. Thats why it might be better to prepare now for any future variants.

Potential new variants: The World Health Organization recently said that its too soon to declare victory against COVID-19 as it continues to monitor the subvariants of the omicron variant, as I reported for the Deseret News.

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What is the next COVID variant? How to prepare for new COVID strains - Deseret News

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Seventeen more Wyoming deaths tied to coronavirus | Coronavirus | wyomingnews.com - Wyoming Tribune

Pfizer projects it will generate record-high revenue in 2022, saying Tuesday it expects to sell $32 billion of its Covid-19 shots and $22 billion of its antiviral coronavirus treatment pill Paxlovid this year.

However, the company posted mixed fourth-quarter results, beating on earnings but missing on revenue. Pfizer's stock was down more than 5.7% in morning trading.

Here's how the company performed compared to what Wall Street expected, based on analysts' average estimates compiled by Refinitiv:

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said sales of Paxlovid could be higher than the company's guidance, but the expectations are based on deals signed or close to being signed. Angela Hwang, head of biopharmaceuticals, said Pfizer is an active discussions with over 100 countries around the world on Paxlovid.

Pfizer's miss on revenue was driven by lackluster sales in its internal medicine and hospital segments. Fourth-quarter internal medicine sales fell 3% year-over-year to $2.24 billion, while hospital sales were largely flat at $1.88 billion. Pfizer's oncology sales expanded 7% to $3.24 billion compared with the year-earlier period.

However, Pfizer's fourth-quarter revenue more than doubled overall to $23.84 billion year-over-year, driven by $12.5 billion in sales of its Covid vaccine. The company's antiviral pill that fights Covid, Paxlovid, contributed $76 million in U.S. sales during the fourth quarter. The Food and Drug Administration gave the pill emergency approval in December.

On an unadjusted basis, Pfizer's fourth-quarter profit increased more than fourfold to $3.39 billion from $847 million during the same three months in 2020. Pfizer expects $98 billion to $102 billion in sales for 2022, and adjusted earnings per share of $6.35 to $6.55.

Bourla said the company plans to aggressively expand the use of the Covid vaccine's underlying technology, messenger RNA, to treat rare genetic diseases of the liver, muscle and central nervous system through a collaboration with Beam Therapeutics. Bourla said the company also hopes to reduce the time to produce new vaccines from three months to two months as it explores automated solutions to produce mRNA in collaboration with Codex DNA. Pfizer is also developing a shingles vaccine with BioNTech.

Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten said a phase two or three study of an mRNA flu vaccine could start this year and conclude in 2023. Pfizer could also have a readout of clinical trials from its respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, vaccine sometime in the second quarter.

Pfizer started a clinical trial late last month of a Covid vaccine that targets the omicron variant in adults ages 18 to 55. Dolsten said Pfizer expects data in the coming weeks on the omicron vaccine. Bourla has previously said the company expects to have the vaccine ready by March.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech also are working with the FDA to expedite authorization of their Covid vaccine for children under 5 years old this month, the last age group left in the U.S. that is not eligible for immunization. The companies expect kids under 5 will ultimately need three doses, but they are working to get the first two shots FDA authorized while they finish trials on the third dose.

Bourla said the eradication of Covid is unlikely because the global spread of the virus makes it difficult to contain and it mutates often. Data also indicates that natural infection does not lead to durable protection needed to prevent transmission and mutations, he said.

In addition, the company also working to ramp up production and delivery of Paxlovid. Bourla said Pfizer expects to produce 6 million courses in the first quarter and 120 million by year-end.

The U.S. government has ordered 20 million courses, with 10 million expected by June. The U.S. allocated 265,000 courses since the FDA approved Paxlovid in December and 85% of the treatments have been ordered by the states, according to Hwang. Bourla said the states are immediately placing new orders after using the treatments.

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Pfizer expects $54 billion in 2022 sales on Covid vaccine and treatment pill - CNBC

As omicron numbers drop at Denver Health, Dr. Anuj Mehta is reminded of the scene in the 1980 comedy The Blues Brothers when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd pile out of a battered car after a police chase.

Suddenly, all the doors pop off the hinges, the front wheels fall off and smoke pours from the engine.

And thats my fear, said Mehta, a pulmonary and critical care physician. Im worried that as soon as we stop, everythings just going to fall apart.

Across the U.S., the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 has tumbled more than 28% over the past three weeks to about 105,000 on average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the ebbing of the omicron surge has left in its wake postponed surgeries, exhausted staff members and uncertainty over whether this is the last big wave or whether another one lies ahead.

What we want to see is that the omicron surge continues to decrease, that we dont see another variant of concern emerge, that we start to come out of the other side of this, said Dr. Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

But he added: Weve been proven wrong twice already, with delta and omicron. So that adds to peoples anxiety and uncertainty and sense of like `When does this end?'

Another reason for anxiety: COVID-19 hospitalizations arent even all that low. They are at a level seen in January 2021, amid last winters surge.

Hospitals limped through the omicron surge with workforces that already were depleted after many staff members quit the profession. The remaining health care workers got sick in droves. In some hospitals, office staff was assigned to help make beds.

Now, many hospitals are still in crisis mode, as they work to reschedule people whose hip replacements and even cancer and brain surgeries were put off during the omicron crisis to free up bed space and nurses to care for COVID-19 patients.

Even in North Dakota, which has consistently ranked near the top in the number of COVID-19 cases relative to the population, hospitals have seen a dramatic drop in virus patients. However, executives at Dakotas-based Sanford Health said their hospitals are still full.

Weve been running hard for a couple years here now, but I am not sure that I sense relief, said Dr. Doug Griffin, a vice president and medical officer for Sanford in Fargo, North Dakota. Most of our caregivers are giving care to other patients. We still have some very, very sick people coming in for all sorts of reasons.

At the Cleveland Clinics 13 Ohio hospitals, the number of patients with COVID-19 has fallen to 280, down from an all-time pandemic high of around 1,200. Surgeries began to be delayed at the end of December, and the situation is just now returning to normal, said Dr. Raed Dweik, head of the systems respiratory institute.

The hope, he said, is that this is the last big surge and that the hospitals can begin to catch up.

Weve had our hopes dashed before that. Oh, this is the end of the pandemic and this virus,' he said. Every time we we say something like this, its kind of laughed at us, and it comes back with a new variant.

Dr. Craig Spencer, a New York City emergency room physician, tweeted a week ago: Just worked 12 hours in the ER on a busy Monday and didnt have a single Covid patient. Not one. This aint over. But its a helluva lot better than even just a few weeks ago.

Spencer said Tuesday that he had another COVID-free shift during the overnight hours Friday and Saturday.

I am getting a somewhat random sample, of course, but just compared to a month ago, its a complete sea change, which is great, he said.

Mary Turner, who is president of the Minnesota Nurses Association and works as a COVID-19 ICU nurse, said patient numbers remain high because of all the other people who didnt go to their appointments or their follow-ups who are coming in with all the other conditions.

If there is any relief, Turner said, its being able to walk into a patients room without having to wear full protective gear.

Its like heaven to walk in and just don a pair of gloves, she said.

At the eight-hospital Beaumont Health system in Michigan, the number of COVID-19 patients fell to 250 on Tuesday, down from last months omicron peak of 851.

Dr. Justin Skrzynski, an internal medicine physician who runs a COVID-19 floor at Beaumont Healths hospital in Royal Oak, said patient care is about 90% back to normal and he finds reason for optimism, noting that the combination of vaccinations and immunity from infections should provide some protection.

But he noted: I think there needs to be a lot of awareness of how much a lot of health care has degenerated.

He said nurses subjected to abuse from patients have left the profession in large numbers. Costs have risen.

Right now, theres so much that were doing to prop up the health care system financially, he said, noting the billions of dollars that the federal stimulus package provided to help hospitals deal with the pandemic. Unfortunately, once the dust settles, I think all these things are going to come due.

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Hospitals begin to limp out of the latest COVID-19 surge - WPRI.com

Another Russian women's hockey player has tested positive for the coronavirus after playing against Canada in the Beijing Olympics.

Russian Olympic Committee team coach Evgeny Bobariko tells state news agency RIA Novosti that Polina Bolgareva tested positive.

The forward played against Canada in a game Monday that was delayed because of virus concerns on both teams before the Russians and Canadians agreed to start the game in masks. The Canadians kept their masks on and won 6-1.

The Russians removed theirs at the start of the third period. Bobariko says the team found out about the positive test after arriving back at the Olympic village following the game.

Russia has eight players unavailable in Beijing because of the virus and another player was left in Moscow after a positive test.

"I don't know how it's happening," Bobariko said.

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Polina Bolgareva of Russia women's hockey team tests positive for coronavirus at Beijing Olympics - ESPN

Two years after the death of Li Wenliang, the doctor who tried to warn China about the coronavirus only to succumb to it himself, his memory remains a source of equal parts grief, anger and hope for many Chinese.

Dr. Li, an ophthalmologist from Wuhan, where the pandemic began, rose to national attention after he warned friends on social media in late December 2019 of a mysterious new virus in his hospital, only to be reprimanded by the local police for spreading rumors. When the government belatedly confirmed that there was an outbreak at hand, Dr. Li became a national hero, seen as an embodiment of the importance of free expression.

But Dr. Li soon fell ill with the virus himself. On Feb. 6, 2020, he died.

Chinese social media exploded in fury and grief, at both Dr. Lis fate and the governments sluggish response to the outbreak generally. Many users flocked to Dr. Lis profile on Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform. They thanked him for his bravery in speaking up, apologized for his treatment by the authorities and shared a quote he gave in an interview with Chinese media before his death: A healthy society should have more than one voice.

Two years later, much of that anger has faded from view, because of both censorship and the governments subsequent success at controlling the outbreak. But Dr. Lis Weibo profile suggests that the memory of those early days remains strong.

In the days before the anniversary of his death, a torrent of comments accumulated under his last post, in which he had shared the news that he had tested positive.

Some urged him to rest in peace, telling him not to worry about the pandemic in China anymore and that the Beijing Winter Olympics were proceeding well. Others treated him like a confidante or guardian angel. Dr. Li, please bless me to find somebody I love, wrote one user.

The construction industry is having mass layoffs, wrote a man who said he worried about his career prospects.

Other posts were more explicitly political. Several commenters quoted the written apology that police forced Dr. Li to sign after he was reprimanded. Others mentioned recent news events that have stoked public anger, including officials tepid response to the case of a mentally ill woman who was found chained in a shed this month. Theyre ignoring peoples anger, one user wrote.

Users have left more than one million comments under Dr. Lis last post in the past two years, though it is not clear how many have been deleted by censors.

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Li Wenliang, Doctor Who Warned of Covid, Is Still Mourned in China - The New York Times

As tens of millions of at-home COVID-19 tests from the government make their way to Americans in the mail, many parts of the country are facing sub-zero temperatures.

So what happens if your test kit freezes on the way to your house? Can you still use it?

All at-home COVID-19 tests should be stored within a certain temperature range, usually 3686F (230C).

The temperature range for your test will be listed on the instructions that came with the box or on the manufacturers website.

Storage of these kinds of rapid antigen tests for extended periods outside this range can produce less accurate results, according to a study last year in the Journal of Clinical Virology.

How much the results are impacted depends on how long the kit has been hot or cold and whether it went through repeated cycles of freezing and thawing.

At-home COVID-19 tests contain liquid and other components that, if frozen or too cold for a long time, can skew the results.

To ensure that the test will work as intended, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends that people follow the instructions that come with the test or online, which includes temperature and other storage guidelines.

Manufacturers have also developed the tests with temperature fluctuations during shipping in mind.

Since shipping conditions may vary, test developers perform stability testing to ensure that the test performance will remain stable when tests are stored at various temperatures, the FDA said, including shipping during the summer in very hot regions and in the winter in very cold regions.

Dr. Amy Karger, chair of the College of American Pathologists Point-of-Care Testing Committee, thinks we need more independent study of the impact of temperature fluctuations during shipping on at-home tests.

However, there havent been any reports or any evidence to suggest that the kits are compromised by shipping temperatures, she said. So I would cautiously say that they should be fine.

In addition, a single freeze-thaw isnt going to destroy the rapid antigen test, epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina wrote on Twitter. [It] may reduce sensitivity a little bit, but not much.

A spokesperson for Abbott Laboratories, maker of the BinaxNOW test, confirmed this.

If the test is stored outside the [35.686F] temperature range for a relatively short period of time for a couple of hours up to a day or two it will be fine to use, the spokesperson told Healthline.

If your at-home test arrives in the mail very cold or frozen, the FDA recommends that you bring the package inside your home and leave it unopened at room temperature for at least two hours before opening it.

If you were to perform the test with a kit thats too cold or too hot, that does affect the accuracy of the test, said Karger.

Room temperature for most at-home tests is approximately 5986F (1530C). But again, check the instructions that came with your test.

You probably wont know if your at-home test froze and thawed several times during shipping, but Karger said there are some signs that a test may not be working properly.

Most tests have a control line that should always appear whether youre positive or negative for the coronavirus.

Karger said if the control line doesnt show up, takes longer to appear than indicated on the instructions or appears before you run the test, you should not rely on the result.

The Ellume COVID-19 Home Test has an internal control that will trigger a Test Error result if the product is exposed to extreme temperature and humidity that could be damaging to the test reagents.

If you think your test may not be working properly, take another test, either an at-home test or a PCR test.

High temperatures can also cause a problem with at-home COVID-19 tests.

The maximum storage temperature for most COVID-19 tests is 86F (30C), but check the instructions that came with the test.

Very high heat can cause a lot of damage to a rapid antigen test, wrote Mina on Twitter. Dont let your test boil in the sun in the summer the proteins can fall apart and the test can be irreparably harmed.

The instructions for some tests also recommend against placing the test in direct sunlight, which may damage the components in the test. This is a good rule of thumb to follow for all tests.

If your at-home COVID-19 test is positive, thats a good indication that you have a coronavirus infection. For most tests, the chance of a false positive occurring is small.

In this case, follow the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions guidelines, including isolating and wearing a well-fitting face mask if you have to be around others.

A negative test indicates that no coronavirus was detected in your sample.

This might be because you dont have a coronavirus infection. However, a negative result can also happen for other reasons.

If you get a negative result, especially if you have [COVID-19] symptoms, you should take that negative with a grain of salt, said Karger.

For example, if you take the test early during a coronavirus infection, the test can give a negative result because the amount of virus in your body isnt high enough for the test to detect. There could also be a problem with the test kit.

If you do get a negative result and youre symptomatic, you should still stay at home, said Karger.

You should still behave as if you have COVID and continue to test on a daily basis, for a few days at least, because some people are reporting not turning positive until day three and even four.

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Can Freezing Temps Affect COVID-19 Tests Delivered to Your Mailbox? - Healthline

LANSING, Mich. The Michigan House has passed a $1.2 billion plan that would expand aid for COVID-19 patients, healthcare employees and students.

Rep. Thomas Albert says if the bill is signed into law, it would keep students in the classroom, address shortages in hospitals and expand capacity for early treatment for patients battling COVID-19.

This plan addresses some of the most important COVID-related issues facing Michigan today, says Albert. It will help more people infected with the virus recover faster and more fully. It will help keep our kids in school so they can catch up on lost learning. And it will provide reinforcements for weary workers at short-staffed hospitals and other health care providers who have bravely battled this pandemic the past two years.

Albert highlights the following details laid out in House Bill 5523:

The bill is currently awaiting Senate approval.

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Bill to help expand access to COVID treatment, keep students in classroom passes House - Fox17

There are many theories, none entirely satisfying. An infectious hunter might encounter a deer, Dr. Mubareka noted, but if theyre good at hunting, she added, its a terminal event for the deer.

If an infected hiker sneezes and the wind is blowing in the right direction, it could cause an unlucky event, said Dr. Tony Goldberg, a veterinary epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Or if people feed deer from their porch, they could be sharing more than just food.

And white-tailed deer are expert leapers, reaching heights of eight feet. If you want to fence deer out of a place, you have to be trying very hard, said Scott Creel, an ecologist at Montana State University. Deer would have no trouble jumping into alfalfa fields to graze alongside cattle, perhaps inviting a close encounter with a farmer, Dr. Creel said.

Transmission could also happen indirectly, through wastewater or discarded food or other human-generated trash. Deer, like most other animals, will sniff before they eat, Dr. Kapur said. And deer release their feces as they feed, creating conditions where other deer might forage in areas contaminated with waste, or snuffle around waste that has feed mixed in, experts say.

But its not clear how long the virus would remain viable in a polluted water source or on the surface of a half-eaten apple, or whether enough of it would be present to pose a transmission risk.

An intermediate host, such as an itinerant cat, might ferry the virus from humans to deer. Farmed deer, which have frequent contact with humans, might also pass the virus to their wild counterparts through an escapee or their feces, Dr. Seifert said. (More than 94 percent of the deer in one captive site in Texas carried antibodies for the virus, researchers found more than double the rate found in free-ranging deer in the state.)

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Is the Coronavirus in Your Backyard? - The New York Times

Living with the virus

More governments across the world are saying theyre ready to live with the virus.

Australia, a nation that once imposed lockdowns in response to handfuls of cases, now says that its done with all that even as cases soar. New Zealand plans to reopen to travelers, if gradually. Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Norway and other European countries are also beginning to treat Covid more like the flu.

On Tuesday, Denmark essentially declared an end to the pandemic in the country, lifting most of its remaining Covid restrictions and making it among the first E.U. members to abandon rules in favor of treating the virus as endemic.

For a look at the new approach, I spoke to Camilla Holten Moller, the head of the expert group for mathematical modeling at the Statens Serum Institute, the public health agency in Denmark that tracks the virus and advises the government on how to approach Covid.

Your institute recommended that the government remove virus restrictions. Why did you do that, given that cases in Denmark are rising?

We based it upon a really precise picture of the development of the epidemic, and what we saw with the Omicron variant taking over in the country.

Overall, the Omicron variant is less severe. So even though we see really high case counts, we dont need to flatten the curve like we used to, simply because we dont see as severe a picture as we used to with Delta for instance.

When we look deeper into the numbers of hospitalizations, what we see is that we have a low and stable number of admissions to intensive care units. Yesterday I think we had 26 admissions to I.C.U.s, which is really low given that we also had 55,000 new cases.

So for us, here in Denmark, it is extremely important that we can accept to not flatten the curve, to let loose the epidemic, to accept that it can grow, as long as it doesnt cause severe illness.

How are people in Denmark feeling about the lifting of restrictions?

I think overall the majority are simply happy that the restrictions are lifted and that we can start to get back to normal. The main task now is to protect those who are still at risk, like the elderly population or the immunocompromised. And there are still some measures in place that protect those who are at risk. We still recommend mask-wearing and taking a test before visiting hospitals and nursing homes.

In general, people are still wearing masks in some places in the supermarkets or in the metro but I think overall people may accept that its their responsibility to take care of those who need to be protected. But its more up to you to do that sort of risk assessment of your own.

What does your modeling say about the countrys future?

We released the latest modeling results just before Christmas, and we projected that we would see the peak of the epidemic here in late January, with hospitalizations peaking a little bit later, in mid-February. But what weve seen is that BA.2 [the Omicron subvariant] is more transmissible, theres no doubt about it. And that means that we would expect the peak be to be a little bit higher and maybe extend a little bit into February.

Feb. 6, 2022, 3:28 p.m. ET

But so many people have had an infection or have been vaccinated in certain geographical areas and in certain age groups that it simply slows down the growth of the epidemic. Of course, opening up and lifting all restrictions could lead to additional growth, especially when you open the nightlife. But we still see that the population immunity is so high that we still expect the peak to come within the coming weeks.

So is this the end in Denmark?

No. We are quite alert that something new could happen. And both the Epidemic Commission and the government have clearly stated that they are ready to act accordingly.

What we know is that immunity from SARS-CoV-2 isnt lifelong immunity, like the immunity from measles, for instance. That means we will have waning immunity. We know what waning immunity looks like from the seasonal flu. Each winter people get back together inside, immunity starts to wane, you have new strains, and you start to see a rise in the flu and a small epidemic occur.

Its also possible that we still have Omicron in the fall, and we see another peak then, simply because immunity will start to wane in the population. And that would probably mean we would do something, maybe start vaccinating again, or testing to a higher degree, or whatever other tools we have to contain that wave.

Last January, researchers searching for the coronavirus in New York Citys wastewater spotted something strange in their samples: viral fragments with mutations that had never been reported before in human patients potentially a sign of a new undetected variant.

The state of the virus in the U.S. The coronavirus has now claimed more than 900,000 livesacross the country, and the Covid death ratesremain alarmingly high. The number of new infections, however, has fallen by more than half since mid-January, and hospitalizations are also declining.

Boosters. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that booster doses are most beneficial to older adults. For younger Americans, vaccination decreased the risk of hospitalization and death so sharply that the additional shot did not seem to add much benefit.

Around the world. Several countries are easing their pandemic protocols, though publichealth leaders at the World Health Organization continued to urge caution about relaxing restrictions. In Austria, a sweeping Covid vaccine mandate is set to become law.

These oddball sequences, or what the scientists call cryptic lineages, have continued to pop up in the citys wastewater over the past year, my colleague Emily Anthes reports. There is no evidence that the lineages pose an elevated health risk to humans, but the researchers are torn about their origins.

Some suspect that the virus is coming from people whose infections arent being sequenced. But others think that the lineages may be coming from virus-infected animals, possibly wait for it the citys enormous population of rats.

Read more about the mysterious fragments.

I am still isolating most of the time, although I think the risk is much reduced in my area, and Im fully vaxxed. The reason? My professor is immunocompromised, and is still as much at risk as he was during the worst of times, even with three jabs. Im timing my shopping and socializing so as to reduce the likelihood of infecting him, and using one of the government rapid tests if I think I may have been exposed, in case I do become infected. As a nation we seem to be willing to ignore the needs of those who cant protect themselves. In some cultures they used to put their old people out in the snow to die of exposure. We dont seem to have moved beyond those times.

Meg, Chicago

Let us know how youre dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.

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Coronavirus Briefing: Living With the Virus - The New York Times