Daily Archives: March 10, 2024

BEIJING: China will draw on its experience in COVID-19 prevention and control, as well as make proactive preparations for future pandemics, such as Disease X, said the countrys chief of the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration, Wang Hesheng.

Addressing a press conference on the sidelines of the second session of the 14th National Peoples Congress (NPC) in Beijing today, Wang said the Chinese government would implement a holistic approach to national security and work with relevant authorities to boost its preparedness.

Although Disease X is hard to avoid, the pandemic it could cause can be prevented. We need to be better prepared, he added.

In May 2023, World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the world should be ready for the next pandemic, which might be even deadlier than COVID-19.

He noted that the threat of another variant emerging that could cause new surges of infection and death remains, and so is the threat of another pathogen emerging with even deadlier consequences.

Wang elaborated that China would take preventive measures such as improving its systems and regulations, carry out disease prevention control according to law, improve resource allocation and the mechanism to shift between normal operations and emergency risks.

We will (also) build and improve a multichannel monitoring and early warning system and strengthen risk assessment in infectious diseases to identify them early, he added.

Wang said China would also play an active role in its global public health governance, advance cooperation with the WHO and other international organisations and countries, as well as actively participate in concluding a pandemic treaty and global health regulations.

At the same press conference, China vows to keep employment steady, supported by five focus areas, including encouraging entrepreneurship, improving workers skills, keeping the job market vibrant and supporting key groups.

Human Resources and Social Security Minister Wang Xiaoping said there was a strong demand for talent in fields such as artificial intelligence and big data, while demand is also on the rise in sectors like healthcare, accommodation, catering and cultural tourism.

These changes are fuelled by Chinas economic recovery and the unleashing of the potential in service consumption.

In 2023, over 12.44 million new urban jobs were created while surveyed urban unemployment stood at an average of 5.2 per cent. - Bernama

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China to draw on Covid-19 experience to tackle future pandemics - theSun

Today, March 8, marks the last day that the government is offering free COVID-19 test kits through the United States Postal Service (USPS). Citing slowing rates as the reason for suspending the program, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) says that tests will still be delivered to long-term care facilities, food banks, health centers, and schools. Over 1.8 billion free COVID-19 tests have been distributed through this program and the agency states that the program could start again sometime in the future.

For now, though, only orders made through today will be honored. The program ends a week after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unveiled new COVID-19 guidelines that reduce the amount of time needed to isolate when infected with COVID or other respiratory illnesses.

Though the program ending is a blow, you can still stay on top of COVID-19, whether you're looking out for your own safety or that of those around you by buying COVID-19 tests online. Here's where you can find them online.

If you need COVID test kits for yourself or others, you're probably dealing with COVID symptoms yourself or seeing them in another person. Here are the most common symptoms of COVID-19 across different variants. If your symptoms are severe or worsening over time, talk to your doctor about the best path to recovery for you.

Though the free tests through the government are coming to an end, you may still be able to find them for free through local programs. For additional tests, here are various stores that offer COVID tests online that will ship right to your door.

Buy at Amazon

Buy at Walmart

Buy at Target

Buy at CVS

Buy at Walgreens

Buy at Instacart

Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.

The product experts at Reviewed have all your shopping needs covered. Follow Reviewed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or Flipboard for the latest deals, product reviews, and more.

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Free COVID tests through USPS are ending todayhere's where to get tests online - Reviewed

Concern about the health threat posed by COVID-19 has reached a record low across the political spectrum, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.

Twenty percent of all Americans in the survey said they think the virus is a “major threat” to “[t]he health of the U.S. population as a whole.” Twelve percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and 28 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said the threat posed by the virus to their country was “major.”

The drop in concern about the health threat posed by the coronavirus, as measured by the survey, is drastically different from concern levels two years ago.

In May 2022, 41 percent of Americans said they thought that the COVID-19 pandemic was a “major threat” to “[t]he health of the U.S. population as a whole.” In the same year, 57 percent of surveyed Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 20 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said the virus posed a “major threat” to the health of their country, according to Pew.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently stopped recommending that Americans not go to work or school for five days following testing positive for COVID-19. It set forth new guidance recommending people stay home when sick — despite possibly not knowing what is causing their illness — and go back to their regular routine if they feel better and don’t have a fever for at least 24 hours with no medication.

“However, we still must use the commonsense solutions we know work to protect ourselves and others from serious illness from respiratory viruses — this includes vaccination, treatment, and staying home when we get sick,” CDC Director Mandy Cohen said in a statement.

The Pew survey was conducted between Feb. 7-11 and had an overall sample size of 10,133 U.S. adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points. 

The sample size for the question on the threat posed by the coronavirus to the U.S. “as a whole” was 5,050 people, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points. The sample size of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents was 4,954 people, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points. The sample size of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents was 5,227 people, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points. 

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Concern about COVID reaches record low across political spectrum: Survey - The Hill

Two years ago, German doctors stumbled across news reports of a man being investigated for receiving scores of coronavirus vaccines with no medical explanation.

Then followed a flurry of speculation about what he had been up to. As it turned out, prosecutors were looking into whether he had been receiving so many extra doses as part of a scheme to collect stamped immunization cards that he could later sell to people who wanted to skirt vaccine mandates.

But to the doctors, the man was a medical anomaly, someone who had defied official recommendations and turned himself into a guinea pig for measuring the outer limits of an immune response. Last year, they asked prosecutors investigating his vaccine splurge to pass along a request: Would he like to join a research project?

Once prosecutors closed their fraud investigation without criminal charges, the man agreed.

By the time the doctors first saw him, the 62-year-old man had received 215 doses of coronavirus vaccine, they said. Flouting their pleas to stop, he received another two shots in the next months, expanding his immunological stockpile to a combined 217 doses of eight different Covid vaccine types over two and a half years.

After months of studying him, the doctors, led by Dr. Kilian Schober, an immunologist at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in the German state of Bavaria, reported their findings this week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, a medical journal.

The man had seemingly never been infected with the coronavirus. He reported no vaccine side effects. And, most interestingly to the researchers, his repertoire of antibodies and immune cells was considerably larger than that of a typical vaccinated person, even if the precision of those immune responses remained effectively unchanged.

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He Had 217 Covid Shots Without Side Effects, Study Finds - The New York Times

COVID-19 vaccines have been key to controlling the pandemic, but researchers in Germany report on one man who took the vaccination message to the extreme.

The subject of the research published in Lancet Infectious Diseases is a 62-year-old man from Magdeburg, Germany who claims to have received 217 COVID-19 vaccinations within about 2.5 years. (German prosecutors confirmed he received 130 shots in nine months during an investigation into fraud; ultimately, they did not file criminal charges.)

It's not clear why the man wanted so many vaccinations or how he obtained them. But after reading news reports of the man's story, scientists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg (FAU) became intrigued and wanted to study how the vaccinations affected his immune system. The manwho told researchers he hadn't experienced side effects from his shotsvolunteered to provide blood and saliva samples to the scientists and allowed them to mine his health records so that they could better understand what effect aggressively stimulating the immune system with a COVID-19 vaccine might have. Even during this analysis, the man requested and received an additional two COVID-19 shots, against the advice of the study researchers.

The mans extreme vaccination history provided a unique opportunity for scientists to see whether hyper-vaccination would positively or negatively affect the immune system's ability to respond to pathogens like viruses. It was unclear in which direction the 200 vaccinations would go, says Dr. Kilian Schober, the study's lead author and group leader at the Institute for Clinical Microbiology, Immunology, and Hygiene in Erlangen at FAU. Would these shots enhance his immune response"like we want to see with multiple vaccinations and booster shots"or perhaps damage it?

Read More: Why Older Adults Need Another COVID-19 Shot

Schober and the team compared the mans immune responsesmeasured by his blood antibody levels, the first line of defense against a virus, and T cell levels, which are responsible for the body's longer-term responseto those of a control group of 29 people who had received three COVID-19 shots.

Based on how the immune system works, Schober and his team thought that the man's immune response might mirror that of people with chronic infections, such as HIV or hepatitis B. In those conditions, in which the immune system is constantly stimulated, immune cells can become overwhelmed and start to mount weaker responses.

But that's not what they found. The man's antibody levels and a type of T cell called effector T cells were six times higher than those in the control group on average. Those high levels proved that his immune response was strong.

However, his level of memory T cellswhich are responsible for remembering viruses that a person has been infected with and replenishing the immune system's overall T-cell populationwere about the same as those in the control group. It made sense, says Schober, since memory T cells are reactivated when the body sees the same virus again. "But it was intriguing for us to actually see it in the data.

According to repeated negative tests for COVID-19, which the researchers confirmed by the fact that that his immune system showed no sign that it had dealt with the virus yet, says Schober, the man was likely never infected with SARS-CoV-2. Schober cautions, however, against assuming that his hyper-vaccinated status was responsible for protecting him.

The researchers concluded that overall, while the man's excessive vaccination history increased his antibody levels and apparently protected him from infection, hyper-activating his immune system did not seem to have a negative effect on his ability to mount an adequate response. At the same time, his extreme measures did not seem to afford him a level of super-immunity that distinguished his response dramatically from others who followed the recommended vaccination schedule. His immune system was neither positively nor negatively affected," says Schober.

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A Man Got 217 COVID-19 Vaccines. Here's What Happened - TIME

German researchers have examined a hypervaccinated man they say received more than 200 coronavirus shots without any noticeable side effects or harm to his immune system.

Their findings, published Monday in the Lancet Infectious Diseases, a medical journal, indicate that coronavirus vaccines have a good degree of tolerability, the researchers said, although they noted this was an isolated case of extraordinary hypervaccination.

The 62-year-old man came to researchers attention when German prosecutors opened up a fraud investigation, gathering evidence that he had obtained 130 coronavirus shots in a nine-month period far more than recommended by health authorities.

We learned about his case via newspaper articles, Kilian Schober, one of the studys authors, said in a statement. We then contacted him and invited him to undergo various tests. He was very interested in doing so.

The man agreed to provide blood samples, including new samples, the results from past blood tests and blood samples that had been frozen in recent years.

The man said he had received 217 vaccinations for private reasons. German authorities did not file criminal charges.

Going into the study, the researchers had speculated that having so many shots could cause his immune system to become fatigued. Vaccines create immune memory cells that are on standby, ready to rapidly activate the bodys defenses in the event of an infection.

But in fact, the researchers found that the man had more of these immune cells known as T-cells than a control group that had received the standard three-dose vaccine regimen. They also did not detect any fatigue in these cells, which they said were just as effective as those of people who had received a typical number of coronavirus shots.

Overall, we did not find any indication for a weaker immune response, rather the contrary, said Katharina Kocher, one of the lead authors of the study.

Even by the 217th vaccination, researchers say the shot still had an effect: The mans antibodies against the coronavirus increased significantly as a result. (Researchers say the man insisted on receiving another shot during the study. They took blood samples, which helped them determine how his immune system was responding.)

The researchers made it clear that despite their findings, they do not endorse hypervaccination as a strategy to enhance adaptive immunity.

Although they could not find any signs that the man had ever contracted the coronavirus, they said they werent able to establish a causal relationship between his hypervaccination regimen and avoiding infection.

More than 60 million people in Germany have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, and most of them have received several doses.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended last month that people 65 and older get a second dose of a coronavirus vaccine made available in the fall because they are at higher risk for severe disease from the virus.

Uptake since the CDC recommended that people age 5 and older get an updated vaccine has been low only about 22 percent of those 18 and older have received a dose of an updated vaccine. And only about 42 percent of those 65 and older have received a dose, The Washington Post previously reported.

Lena H. Sun contributed to this report

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German man vaccinated 217 times against covid with no ill effects - The Washington Post

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has been subpoenaed to appear before a House subcommittee to answer for his administrations handling of nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic, reigniting a flashpoint that could further damage his chances at a political comeback.

The Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic accused Mr. Cuomo of recklessly exposing nursing home residents to the virus with deadly consequence.

The subcommittee chairman, Representative Brad Wenstrup of Ohio, said in a letter sent Tuesday to Mr. Cuomo that there was troubling evidence suggesting the Cuomo administration at best downplayed the effects of its nursing home policies and at worst covered them up.

The subpoena is the latest in a multiyear saga surrounding the former governors decision to require nursing homes to accept residents who had tested positive for Covid-19 in the spring of 2020. The decision, which presaged a virus outbreak in those facilities leading to thousands of deaths, has drawn broad scrutiny from state and federal investigators.

In January 2021, the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, a Democrat, concluded that the state had severely undercounted deaths in nursing homes charges that were validated when the state later revised its figures upward some 40 percent. But while her offices report found that returning residents to their facilities may have put residents at increased risk, it stopped short of blaming the governors policy for nursing home outbreaks, acknowledging that the policy was consistent with federal guidance at the time.

The former governor, also a Democrat, has repeatedly denied that the policy led to additional deaths.

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Andrew Cuomo Faces House Subpoena Over Covid Deaths in Nursing Homes - The New York Times

Four years have passed since Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency to address the COVID-19 pandemic on March 10, 2020. But the disease remains more than a memory, especially for those whose lives are continually impacted by the illness.

Robert McCann, 46, was exposed to COVID-19 at a Lansing-area veterinary clinic which was tied to an outbreak of the disease in June 2020. About a day after testing positive, McCann, the executive director of the K-12 Alliance of Michigan, said he started to feel sick.

At the time, it wasnt anything, like, horrible and the symptoms went away probably after a week or so, McCann said. I figured, OK, that wasnt too bad, Ive moved on.

In the fall, McCanns symptoms returned and persisted, despite testing negative for the illness. More than three and a half years later, McCann says he still faces issues with severe fatigue, nerve pain and brain fog from Long COVID.

Overall, you know, I consider myself one of the more fortunate ones, McCann said.

Theres days I struggle a little more than others to be sure, but you know, Im able to function reasonably well the majority of the time and theres people out there that arent, McCann said.

But describing his fatigue symptoms to others has proved difficult.

Theres a connotation there, or at least that you worry about sometimes, that people just think youre lazy, McCann said.

There are nights where I will be so tired that I will sleep for 15 hours, and I still cant wake up in the morning. Just I have no energy and its hard to really describe that to people, McCann said. There are days where its hard to do your job. Theres days where its hard to, you know, do the things you enjoy doing.

Prior to developing Long COVID, McCann said hed done quite a bit of traveling and hiking.

Ive been fortunate to kind of get all over the world, he said. In like 2019, I did a hike through the Austrian Alps that was pretty astonishing, quite frankly.

Im still fortunate that I can do some of that, but there are days where its like, yeah, thats not going to happen today, McCann said.

As far as seeking solutions for Long COVID, You name it. Ive probably tried it, McCann said. From clinical treatments, to supplements to prescription medication, none have had a major impact on his condition.

While McCann has received his COVID-19 vaccine and boosters, he said it has not helped relieve his symptoms in the way others with Long COVID have reported.

There are some people that do seem to have found some relief from that from various things, and Im certainly glad to see that. But for me, it just wasnt the case, McCann said.

According to the World Health Organization, there have been more than 7 million reported deaths worldwide from COVID-19 since Dec. 31, 2019, with 1.2 million deaths in the United States. As of March 5, Michigan has reported 44,654 deaths from the disease.

Vaccines became widely available by spring 2021, and now 70% of the Michigan population is fully vaccinated, the same as the U.S. rate.

Visible signs of the pandemic have all but disappeared. Its been almost three years since Whitmer removed capacity limits on indoor and outdoors events and ended the states masking requirement in June 2021.

And thankfully, the number of COVID deaths has been ramping down. Although the state recorded more than 9,000 deaths among confirmed cases of COVID-19 in 2022, that number dropped to just over 2,300 in 2023.

But while the World Health Organization declared an end to the global emergency posed by the virus on May 5, 2023, the body noted this does not mean the pandemic is over.

Long COVID continues to present challenges for medical professionals working to treat the condition, despite breakthroughs in vaccines and antiviral medications since the pandemic began. An August 2022 Brookings Institution report, which analyzed Census Bureau survey information, estimated that 16 million people of working age in the U.S. suffer from Long COVID.

Arianna Perra, a psychologist for Mary Free Bed at Munson Healthcare in Traverse City who leads a Long COVID recovery group, said the tricky thing about treating the condition is that it has around 200 documented symptoms.

Everyones profile is slightly different. The most common ones that we see in the COVID rehab setting and psychology setting are related to fatigue and brain fog, like cognitive dysfunction, Perra said.

According to an article published in Nature Reviews Microbiology, many Long COVID patients experience dozens of symptoms across multiple organ systems. The condition also encompasses a number of adverse outcomes, with common new-onset conditions including Type 2 diabetes, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, cardiovascular, thrombotic and cerebrovascular disease and dysautonomia, particularly POTS, a condition that can cause a fast heart rate, dizziness and fatigue while transitioning from laying down to standing up.

A 2024 University of Michigan study also found that individuals with a chronic overlapping pain condition were at greater risk for developing Long COVID conditions.

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), individuals who experienced severe illness from COVID-19, people who experienced multisystem inflammatory syndrome during or after their illness, and people with underlying health conditions like diabetes, asthma, autoimmune diseases or obesity are more likely to develop Long COVID. Women, people of color, sexual and gender minorities and people without college degrees are also more likely to have Long COVID.

Studies have also found that the COVID-19 vaccine dramatically lowers the risk of developing Long COVID.

In treating Long COVID, Megan Jabin, an occupational therapist for Mary Free Bed, emphasized the importance of a multidisciplinary approach.

Even if maybe the patient is coming in and then only, originally, has a referral for physical therapy, the other disciplines are always looking out for can we have speech therapy or occupational therapy or psychology involved based on what the patients main concerns are, based on what their goals are, and what their symptoms are, Jabin said.

While every Long COVID patient presents symptoms differently, one of the main attributes is that patients are often deconditioned, have a difficult time maintaining their stamina and have overall weakness, Jabin said.

In a multidisciplinary treatment, physical therapists will usually focus on strengthening and endurance as it relates to a patients mobility, while a speech-language pathologist will focus on cognition and brain fog and memory issues. An occupational therapist will focus more on helping patients achieve their day to day independence including dressing, bathing and grocery shopping, Jabin said. In some cases, getting back to driving has also been an issue.

All of these disciplines, including psychology, work together, especially when a patient is more receptive to a particular treatment, or education from their therapists, Jabin said.

For psychological treatment, Perra said Long COVID is approached from a rehabilitation perspective similar to treatment for a stroke or a major car accident.

That also includes helping patients who may be frustrated with the lifestyle changes included as part of their treatment.

Figuring out how to pace is a really important part of the rehab process. And that is tackled with [physical therapy], right, so figuring out how to find the right dose of movement so that we can get stronger and build our tolerance for exercise and our energy stores, Perra said.

From a psychological perspective, how do I deal with the fact that I might be really annoyed or irritated that I have to pace myself, or I might fall into the trap of thinking, Well, Ill just push myself through it and then Ill deal with it later, and then being in an extreme amount of fatigue and being down for the count for a few days also impacts my mental health and my relationships with other people, Perra added.

Its not just finding the right dose of movement to help people build their strength and stamina. Addressing barriers and thought processes, and looking at how treatment can impact relationships with others, and how to receive support from people when a patient may need to rest, Perra said.

The hardest thing about making any behavioral change is not the act. It is what is between our ears, right? Its our cognitive processes, its our expectations, assumptions, predictions, how we compare ourselves to our pre-COVID lives. And so psychology has a lot of skills to be able to recognize when were caught in unhelpful loops and to manage that, Perra said.

When treating brain fog, treatment focuses on strategies to address sympathetic nervous system responses, Perra said.

A lot of folks were told or given the message that it can't be that bad, or it's all in your head or you know, I had COVID too and I recovered just fine. So I think there's a lot of folks that were coming to our program feeling like they weren't believed.

Arianna Perra, psychologist for Mary Free Bed at Munson Healthcare in Traverse City

Were understanding more and more about how the nervous system is affected by COVID in the long run. Its not just that people are anxious, right? This isnt caused by anxiety. There are functional changes in how our body regulates itself. So learning strategies to downshift, how to stimulate our rest and digest response, those are really specific health psychology strategies we can learn, Perra said.

One of the most effective ways someone can counteract their bodys stress response is through controlling the rate and rhythm of their breath through breathing exercises and learning how to decrease muscle tension, Perra said.

The life-changing nature of Long COVID can also bring mental health symptoms, Perra said. Depression is fairly common in patients, as well as anxiety, in regard to symptoms getting worse or being reexposed to COVID-19.

Its also not uncommon to see traumatic responses from being hospitalized or from the active illness phase, Perra said.

From a mental health perspective, not only are we sort of mourning the loss of the life we thought we would have, at this point after COVID were also dealing with some of the mood changes, sleep changes, how we think about things changes. So psychology is an integral part to that treatment plan, Perra said.

How Long COVID has become the silent pandemic

Additionally, research suggests COVID-19 may impact serotonin production, so the illness is not only disrupting peoples lives in functional ways, but changing the way their bodies produce hormones and chemicals needed to effectively manage their mood, Perra said.

While theres still a lack of research surrounding Long COVID, Perra said one of the biggest changes that has changed since she began treating the condition in 2021 was the amount of evidence in support of symptoms reported by patients.

A lot of folks were told or given the message that it cant be that bad, or its all in your head or you know, I had COVID, too, and I recovered just fine. So I think theres a lot of folks that were coming to our program feeling like they werent believed, Perra said.

We still lack evidence. We still lack research. Theres more and more coming out. And Im really heartened by that, Perra said. Being able to tell someone, yes, this is why we think this is happening for you and theres research to support that, its really relieving and validating for patients to hear that.

Looking at the Long COVID recovery group, theres a powerful aspect to being around others who may not share the exact same story, but can understand someones frustration in not being able to get up from the couch and load a dishwasher when they were previously able to run a household, Perra said.

While we continue to understand Long COVID better, McCann said there are likely more people realizing they have some form of the illness.

As we start figuring this out, you know, I think the best thing that people can do is just have empathy for those struggling with things, McCann said.

Everybodys going through something, right? If someones just like, You know, Im not feeling like Ive got the energy for it today, they dont need a motivational speech from you. They just need, You know, I get it. No problem, McCann said.

One of the most difficult parts of treating Long COVID is the slow progression and the different impacts the condition has on people, Jabin said.

Perra also noted that the rate of improvement differs between patients because of how their symptom profile may be impacted by other health conditions.

This is what I tell folks at the beginning of our group treatments too: People get better. It takes time. Its up and down. Its different. I mean, this is a major medical event in your life, and we have to treat it as such. So its not that theres no guarantee that we can go back to being the same person that we were before you had COVID, just like theres no guarantee that youre going to get back the same level of functioning that you had before your stroke, but there could be, Perra said.

If there's a way to be any less empathetic than denying the very thing that causes so many people to be suffering right now, I don't know what that is.

In her treatment sessions, Jabin said she works with patients on what they enjoy doing before they began experiencing Long COVID symptoms, using small goals to build toward a larger goal, like walking around their neighborhood, going shopping or seeing a movie.

McCann said he is grateful he has been able to find a middle ground with his body to where he is able to travel and go hiking.

There are days where, yeah, Im not climbing a mountain, but I can at least enjoy the atmosphere of where Im at, wander around the city a little bit or something. And, you know, on a good day, I can do more, McCann said.

Its not 100% of how you used to live your life and the things you used to enjoy, but you get to still do them at a level that still makes you happy, McCann said.

McCann also shared frustration at COVID-19 denial.

If theres a way to be any less empathetic than denying the very thing that causes so many people to be suffering right now, I dont know what that is, he said.

On March 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its isolation recommendations for COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses, reducing isolation to 24 hours if symptoms have improved and if a fever is no longer present without the use of fever-reducing medication.

With the decision drawing concern and criticism from medically vulnerable individuals, with Long COVID activists arguing the decision ignoring the risk of post-COVID-19 symptoms and the lack of a clear cure.

While it is a laudable goal to have guidelines that are streamlined across common respiratory viruses that are easier to understand, these new guidelines fail to accurately reflect the reality of some of the key differences between COVID, the flu, and RSV, Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities said in a statement.

Efforts to treat COVID more like the flu fail to recognize that COVID is not the flu, COVID is COVID a virus that, per the CDCs own resources, is more contagious than the flu, can cause more severe illness than the flu, causes more post-viral illness than the flu, and is infectious to others longer than the flu, Town said.

There's days I struggle a little more than others to be sure, but you know, I'm able to function reasonably well, you know, the majority of the time and there's people out there that aren't.

As researchers continue to search for a treatment for Long COVID, McCann said another big question was the long term impact. He also called for a reevaluation of the health care system.

I cant tell you how frustrating its been to have doctors want to do various tests on me and my insurance company say, Well, you can do it, but were not paying for it because you dont have a disease that meets the criteria for that, McCann said

I am fortunate that Im in a position where I can still move forward and pay things out of pocket if I need to, but if I were to total up the bills that I pay in the last three years dealing with this, it would be shocking, McCann said.

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It's been 4 years since COVID hit Michigan. For Long COVID patients, the pandemic isn't over. Michigan Advance - Michigan Advance