Category Archives: Corona Virus

Just getting on the ice on Sunday felt like a victory.

Tahli Gill of Australias mixed doubles curling team had her bags packed and a flight booked to return home. Any hopes of finishing her Olympic run had seemingly been dashed by a series of positive coronavirus tests.

Yet, after a whirlwind of developments on Sunday, Gill and her partner, Dean Hewitt, notched Australias first-ever wins in curling. The pair beat Switzerland, 9-6.

I only had time to pull out my uniforms, Gill told reporters after the match, recounting the dizzying turn of events that led to health officials delivering an unexpected reprieve that sent her scrambling to make the game. I only played with one glove!

She had been excluded from her final two matches after a series of positive tests on Saturday, Australian Olympic officials said. Gill had alternated between positive and negative tests in recent days, which she had blamed on the residual effects of contracting the virus in December.

The call came late on Sunday when Chinese officials decided that Gills CT levels, a measure of how much viral material is detected, were within an acceptable range.

It was a sudden turn after Australian Olympic officials said that discussions with the health authorities and the International Olympic Committee went late into Saturday without success. By Sunday, Australian officials said, they were making plans to get Gill and Hewitt home after Gill had been moved into an isolation hotel.

When word started trickling in of a possible reprieve, Hewitt said he was reluctant to believe it. Dont do this to us, please! he said of the tantalizing possibility of returning. Are you serious?

The news was true.

It was just crazy, mate, Hewitt said after the game on Sunday. The excitement in the room was unbelievable.

That excitement, Hewitt said, fueled their play on Sunday. You dont realize what youve got until its gone, he said. The win? That was a bonus.

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For Australian Curler, a Positive Covid Test and Then a Surprise Win - The New York Times

THORNTON, Colo. It's been nearly two years since the start of the pandemic in Colorado. One man who made a miraculous recovery after contracting the virus is reflecting on the last year.

On February 8, 2021, Jaime Gonzalez-Tolentino was admitted to the hospital during a battle with the virus and was given a 1% chance of survival. Nearly a year later he and his family share this story of a miraculous recovery.

Gonzalez contracted a severe case of the coronavirus in 2021 after suffering a stroke and battling Pneumonia just a few years earlier. He was in a coma, intubated, and put on an ECMO machine that provides heart and lung support. The days in the hospital turned into months.

"They told me, you know, he has a 1% chance. I mean, there was just, they didn't have any hope for him," said Jaime's oldest son, Jesus. "It was hard, especially me being the oldest. And, you know, how are you going to tell your siblings, your younger siblings that his dad is going to, is going to die?"

Despite all odds against them, his family did not lose hope and did what they could to help. Jaime's oldest son suggested a rare steroid treatment. With few options left one doctor agreed to try it.

She took a leap of faith on us because we told her that we were people of faith that we believe God was going be there for us," said Jesus.

On Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021, which also happened to be Jaime's youngest son's birthday, a miracle happened: the dad-of-three woke up after a couple of months in a coma.

Jaime says he remembers that moment, being surrounded by his family and mother. He says seeing their excitement gave him the same feeling and motivation to push forward.

Gonzalez spent exactly 100 days hospitalized before making it home on May 20, 2021. Since then, Jaime has been able to resume his normal life with a few restrictions like having to use an oxygen pack.

He says doctors at his latest appointment have told him that his health is progressing and his lungs are improving. His message to those who hear his story is, "Life is beautiful and is something that should be enjoyed by everyone."

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Thornton man given 1% survival chance reflects 1-year after COVID hospitalization - The Denver Channel

Jerusalem, February 6, 2022- An additional grant of US$3.75 million was allocated to the ongoing West Bank and Gaza COVID-19 Emergency Response. The additional financing will continue to support the Palestinian Authority's response to the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic while ensuring continuity of essential health services and contributing to long-term resilience.

The grant will be contributed from the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response (HEPR) Multi-donor Trust Fund administered by the World Bank. It is a flexible mechanism for rapid financing to support countries and territories to improve their capacities to prepare for, prevent, respond to, and mitigate the impact of epidemics on populations.

"*COVID-19 continues to pose a high risk of morbidity and mortality, as well as a burden to healthcare systems. Due to low capacity of testing in the Palestinian territories, the number of COVID-19 cases are underestimated. Still, the numbers of new infections reported daily continue to reach new highs. The additional financing will support the original project by providing immediate response to COVID-19, but also contributing to long-term resilience,*" said Kanthan Shankar, World Bank Country Director for West Bank and Gaza.

Beyond strengthening the overall healthcare services and clinical capacity in immediate response to COVID-19 under the framework of the parent project, the new grant focuses on procuring supplies and equipment that could be utilized to promote resilience to future pandemics and health shocks. These include medicines for the treatment of health emergencies and chronic conditions as well as emergency medical devices and equipment including defibrillators, vital-signs monitors, emergency trolleys, patient beds, mobile blood banks, ultrasound machines, generators, and more.

The operation will also seek to reduce limitations to access to healthcare experienced by rural and marginalized communities. For instance, women in remote areas often find it difficult to access health services due to distance to health facilities and lack of transportation. Mobile clinics financed through the additional financing will ensure equitable access to quality care for populations that are often left behind. The World Bank will continue to strengthen resilience and pandemic preparedness in the health system through technical and operational engagement with the Ministry of Health and other partners in the sector.

Mary Koussa

+(972) 2-2366500

mkoussa@worldbank.org

Serene Jweied

+1 (202) 473-8764

sjweied@worldbankgroup.org

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New US$3.75 million Grant to Help Palestinians Fight the Coronavirus Outbreak and Future Health Shocks - occupied Palestinian territory - ReliefWeb

The test kits alone, the city estimated, caught 25,000 cases. School attendance hovered around 70 percent in early January, as children were out sick or kept home by their parents to try to avoid infection.

While Omicron often causes milder illness in adults, it sometimes has a more severe impact on children, particularly those too young to be vaccinated, creating new challenges for health care workers. Hospitalization rates for children rose more quickly than in previous waves, mirroring trends elsewhere.

Still, of the 181 children that Cohen Childrens Medical Center in Queens admitted with Covid-19 in the recent wave, only one, an unvaccinated 17-year-old boy, died, a spokesman said. From Jan. 1 to Jan. 27, three children under 18 died of Covid-19 in the city, bringing the citys total death toll in that age group during the pandemic to 32, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Although Omicron is receding quickly, the wave is not totally gone. There were 2,633 people with Covid-19 in city hospitals on Feb. 2, fewer than half than at the Omicron peak, but still more than four times as many as before the variant was first detected in December.

Even with the numbers declining, medical workers on the front lines say staffing shortages remain acute.

At SUNY Downstate, employees from across departments pitched in when the emergency room was taking in four times its regular number of patients in early January. Vaccines and new treatments helped limit severe cases. But there were too many patients flooding the entire health system at once to load balance, or transfer patients, between Downstate and other hospitals that were also being hit hard.

Still, strategies that had been developed after earlier waves helped, said Patricia A. Winston, the hospitals senior vice president for operations. Those included regular check-in calls with state and city officials and the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group that followed the situation across medical centers.

Before, it was like, you were in this by yourself, Ms. Winston said. Now you talk to each other and work together and figure out how to strategize. Even if you cant move somebody, you have someone to talk to.

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How New York Citys Hospitals Withstood the Omicron Surge - The New York Times

A statistician has said he was "overly-optimistic" at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, chairman of the Winton Centre for Risk of Evidence Communication at Cambridge University confessed he "didn't take it seriously enough".

He added that he had a naturally optimistic personality "and that's why I'm very glad I'm not a government adviser".

"The pandemic has been a net lifesaver for younger people, if you look at people between 15 and 30 in 2020, 300 fewer died than would normally have died and that includes the 100 that died from COVID sadly," Sir David said.

"So that's 300 fewer families mourning the death of a young person because of the pandemic.

"Now that's because young people were essentially locked up, they couldn't go out driving fast, they couldn't go out and get drunk, and they couldn't get into fights and whatever, and so all these lives were saved."

However, the professor said that this doesn't necessarily mean he advocates for lockdowns, because "on the flip side of that you have a big increase in mental health problems".

Sir David, who has been a regular commentator on the pandemic, admitted he had an "optimistic" disposition during the pandemic.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, he said: "I think it's very important that we have to acknowledge that we can never take an objective view about evidence, we always bring our, I think, personalities into it, and mine is unfortunately very optimistic and that's why I'm very glad I'm not a government adviser, I don't think I'd be very good at it because I do tend to hope for the best and sort of expecting the best as well.

"I was terribly over-optimistic at the start of the pandemic and didn't take it seriously enough."

'Could he have been caught earlier?'

Sir David was knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics, including leading the statistical team for the public inquiry into high rates of deaths among babies following heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary.

He also discussed his work as an expert witness to the public inquiry into serial killer doctor Harold Shipman.

Shipman was jailed for life in January 2000 for murdering 15 patients while working in Manchester but official predictions are that he killed between 215-260 people during a 23-year-period in West Yorkshire.

He said: "I was part of the team that was asked to say 'well, could he have been caught earlier if people had been looking at the data?'.

"We looked at the statistical methods that were used in industrial quality control, where you monitor whether a process is going out of kilter by seeing whether you're getting more failures than you would expect and, in Harold Shipman's case, it was looking for when more people were dying in his practice than you would expect.

"And we adapted the methods used in industrial quality control and showed that, actually Shipman could have been caught much earlier and if someone had been looking at the data and had blown the whistle you might have been able to save 200 lives."

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COVID-19: Cambridge professor admits he was 'over-optimistic' at the start of the coronavirus pandemic - Sky News

Australia will reopen its borders to fully vaccinated tourists from February 21, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced, ending some of the worlds strictest and longest-running pandemic travel restrictions.

Its almost two years since we took the decision to close the borders to Australia, Morrison said during a media briefing on Monday.

If youre double vaccinated, we look forward to welcoming you back to Australia.

Australia shut its borders in March 2020 to protect itself against a surging COVID-19 pandemic.

For most of the time since then, Australians have been barred from leaving and only a handful of visitors have been granted exemptions to enter.

The rules have split families, hammered the countrys large tourist industry and prompted sometimes acrimonious debates about Australias status as a modern, open and outward-looking nation.

With the rollout of its vaccination programme last year, Morrisons government has slowly relaxed the rules for Australians, long-term residents and students.

Mondays decision will see almost all remaining caps lifted.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said it greatly welcomed the move.

The Asia Pacific region has been very cautious in its approach to border restrictions so far but in recent weeks, we have seen growing momentum towards relaxation of travel restrictions in the Philippines, Thailand, and to some extent New Zealand, Philip Goh, IATAs Regional Vice President for Asia Pacific said in a statement.

We urge other governments in the Asia Pacific to look at similarly further easing their border restrictions so as to enable aviation businesses to accelerate their much needed recovery and to bring maximum benefits to their economies.

Tim Soutphommasane, a professor of sociology at the University of Sydney, Australia, said the reopening of borders meant Australia can re-engage with the world. But challenges remain, he cautioned.

We may be seeing the beginning of the end for Fortress Australia, but psychologically the country still has some way to go, Soutphommasane told Al Jazeera.

The pandemic has seen Australia retreat into seeing itself as a sanctuary, sheltered from the rest of the world. With a highly vaccinated population, Australia should be confident about reopening. But there is still a lot of caution and anxiety, with the country still learning to live alongside the virus.

For most of the pandemic, Australia pursued what it called a COVID-zero policy that included strict snap lockdowns. But it abandoned the policy after rolling out vaccines.

Some 79 percent of Australias population has now received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, and the country has pushed ahead with easing curbs even as the Omicron variant began to drive up infections.

The past week has seen a slowdown in daily infections and hospital admissions, with Australia reporting just over 23,000 new cases on Monday.

The figure marks the lowest daily case count this year and is well below the peak of 150,000 about a month ago.

Approximately 2.4 million cases have been recorded since the first Omicron case was detected in Australia in November. Until then, Australia had counted about 200,000 cases.

Some 4,248 people in Australia have died from the virus since the pandemic began.

Continued here:

Australia to open borders to vaccinated tourists on February 21 - Al Jazeera English

In November 2020, Covid-19 cases in Iowa surged to 32,081 cases in a single week at the time, a record high. And that was only among the humans. As scientists would learn, an epidemic was also beginning to rage among the states many white-tailed deer.

A shockingly high number of deer 80 out of 97 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, in a seven-week survey that followed the Iowa surge. We were gobsmacked, completely bowled over, says Vivek Kapur, a Penn State veterinary microbiologist who recently, with co-authors, published an analysis of the shadow deer epidemic in PNAS. We had no clue.

Its not just in Iowa. Evidence is mounting that deer infections have been widespread across the country. A separate study in Nature found infections in a third of deer surveyed in Ohio, and the USDA has reported coronavirus antibodies in Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania deer. Tens of millions of deer live across the United States. Its unknown how many total have been infected, but these studies suggest the numbers are high.

The deer themselves dont appear to get very sick from the virus lab studies show them developing asymptomatic infections when exposed but thats not the top concern here. Veterinary infectious disease experts are describing these outbreaks in deer as a possible Pandoras box and now that its open, theres a small but real chance it could lead to future variants that infect humans, or spread to other wildlife that could get sick.

Before starting the study, Kapur and his colleagues thought that deer would be highly unlikely to test positive for Covid-19. We thought it would be a long shot, Kapur says, to find even one positive test in a survey of deer that were killed by hunters or road accidents.

Theres only a limited window of time when a deers infection would show up on a PCR test before it clears their system. Thats what made the results so shocking: Our studies suggest that there were more deer, in terms of percentage of their population, than humans infected with this virus.

Despite the potential risks to animals and humans, the future of the coronavirus in animals may be largely outside of our control. We cant even control it in people, Sarah Olson, an epidemiologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, says. Theres hardly a chance were going to be able to control it in the wild. It creates a hugely chaotic space. And we dont have a lot of eyes on that space.

How the virus spreads among wildlife is a black box that scientists try to peer into through the tiniest of pinpricks. But what they do know is that when the coronavirus establishes itself in wildlife, it creates for itself a sort of insurance policy. We may be able to get the pandemic among humans under control, but the virus is likely to lurk in other species, making it that much harder to monitor and defeat.

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 in wildlife is not the most pressing issue of the pandemic right now. Humans are still catching the virus from each other and dying from it. Still, these wildlife risks, if they are realized, could have serious consequences. Scientists want to be vigilant about dangers that could emerge from the wilderness.

The fact that SARS-CoV-2 can infect animals is not new. The virus probably originated in an animal species and then jumped to humans, a process that scientists call spillover. Since the pandemic began, there have been documented cases of many animals getting the virus, with various degrees of illness.

Infections have turned up in cats, dogs, lions, tigers, pumas, ferrets, mink, certain rodents, snow leopards, and others. The CDC even has guidelines to protect pets from Covid-19. When a virus jumps from animals to humans and then back to animals, scientists call that spillback.

Most of these infections in animals appeared to be self-contained. An infected house cat presumably stays in the house when infected it doesnt start a chain of transmission. They were all isolated cases, Suresh Kuchipudi, a Penn State infectious disease researcher who collaborated with Kapur, says of known cases in animals.

The deer infections were different. This is first time that a completely free-living animal species in the wild has been found to be infected, and that infection is widespread, Kuchipudi says.

How the deer got infected in the first place remains a mystery, but researchers believe the outbreak came from humans. The virus circulating in the deer had similar genetic sequences to the virus circulating in humans at the time that they got it.

I dont believe that theres much direct human-to-deer interaction, says Andrew Bowman, a professor of veterinary preventive medicine at the Ohio State University. He co-authored a separate study of infections in deer in Ohio, which also found widespread infection. Its not like deer and people are hanging out in bars and restaurants together. Instead, Bowman suspects the deer might be picking it up from some source of environmental contamination, like garbage or sewage.

Whatever happened to start the deer outbreaks, it appears to have happened many times. The genetic analysis in the PNAS paper finds evidence of several separate jumps from humans into animals. Further research needs to be done to identify the exact pathway, and hopefully to prevent the next leap.

Once the virus jumps into the deer, they are also spreading it to each other, the studies find. There was not just human-to-deer spillover, but there was also deer-to-deer transmission, as evidenced by genomic changes that would confirm that, Kuchipudi says.

There are two main reasons to be concerned about deer that spread the virus among themselves.

As viruses copy themselves in the human body, they slowly acquire genetic changes, which can lead to variants such as alpha and delta. Now imagine that a similar parallel trajectory was also happening in some animal populations, Kuchipudi says. When the virus becomes established in a new species, the evolution of the virus becomes twice as complicated.

This is the viruss so-called insurance policy. In theory, its possible that long after the pandemic dies down in humans maybe even 10 years from now deer could reinfect humans with a new variant that our immune system isnt as good at fighting off. (Theres even some speculation that the omicron variant emerged from an animal population.)

Then it comes back, and were fighting a whole new battle, Olson says.

So far, the scientists dont have any indication that a new dangerous variant is brewing within deer. Also reassuring: Right now, we dont have any evidence that any of these animals are transmitting back to people, says Angela Bosco-Lauth, who studies infectious disease and veterinary medicine at Colorado State University. I dont really see that as much of a threat.

But if a person were to catch the virus from an animal, it would be hard to prove it, Bosco-Lauth says. Scientists have only tested several hundred of the roughly 25 million deer in the United States, and many other species havent been studied.

If you had a group of animals that all had the same virus, that had the same genetic sequence, and then you found people downstream from that who had interacted with those animals and had the same sequence as the animal, that, to me, would be pretty solid proof that thats where it came from, she says. But that solid proof would be really hard to get. Scientists just dont do a lot of testing in animals.

The next concern is that the outbreak may not stop at the deer. Olson says the deer could potentially spread the virus to other animals.

Lets say a deer infected with the coronavirus comes into contact with other mammals for example, a predator like a mountain lion that kills a deer, or a scavenger like an ermine that nibbles away at a deers carcass. Olson says shes not aware of any documented cases of SARS-CoV-2 spreading from one species remains to a new species. But she says its plausible.

If those other species pick up the virus and start an outbreak among their kind, many different species could perhaps end up with Covid-19. Then you can think about almost like a complex network of animals passing the virus back and forth, right? Kuchipudi says. What is unsettling is that we have absolutely no clue if its happening or not.

All of this is hypothetical. But if it were to happen, we wouldnt necessarily find out. Contact tracing is hard enough in humans its even more daunting when you consider the size and scope of the animal kingdom. We have to approach this with humility, Kuchipudi says.

While researchers dont have evidence that Covid-19 is killing deer, it can be lethal for mustelids think measles, mink, and ferrets and endangered snow leopards. Considering how much the coronavirus has evolved in people, it could potentially evolve in a way that hurts some animals. Theres conservation threats there, Olson says.

The pandemic in humans is much more urgent than Covid-19 in animals. All of the scientists I spoke to agreed about that. The coronavirus is still killing thousands of people every day, and thats the problem that should get the bulk of our attention and resources.

Humans are doing such a great job at spreading Covid between each other, Bosco-Lauth says. I dont particularly worry about any animals maintaining this pandemic I think were going to do that just fine on our own.

On the other hand, the scientists say they want more visibility into whats happening in the animal world. We need wildlife surveillance, Olson says, meaning more testing of animals for coronavirus antibodies a sign they have been exposed or active infections. We just dont have the tools to begin to understand the system, to even start mapping whats going to happen here, because our ability to see it is so opaque right now.

Scientists still have a lot to learn about how viruses jump between species, Olson says, and what factors make these jumps more or less likely.

Could scientists vaccinate deer or other wildlife? Not really. Theres nothing to be done, Olson says. While some vaccines are formulated for animals and routinely administered to pets, we dont know enough about the immune system of the deer to know how it would respond to vaccines made for humans. Then come the logistical problems: Inoculations would need to be mixed with bait somehow, delivered via dart, or administered directly to captured animals. To top it off, one dose might not be enough.

How are you going to capture the same animal four times? Olson says. Theres just no toolbox for this.

For all these reasons, Covid-19 outbreaks in animals are not situations we can plausibly control. Rather, theyre something to monitor in case they start to look like pressing problems.

We have been focusing predominantly on humans because there is a global pandemic going, Kuchipudi says. But at the same time, we cant be ignoring this problem. The danger is then if we dont address it, we could be completely blindsided and caught by surprise when a new variant emerges.

The course of the pandemic continues to be impossible to predict, even in humans. The addition of it spreading in wildlife just makes it even harder. If theres a lesson here, its this: This virus never ceases to surprise us, Kapur says.

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Covid-19 in animals: Coronavirus spillover to deer could affect humans - Vox.com

Feb 5th 2022

SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING moves slowly. Depending on the academic field, it can take years for a single paper to get published in a well-regarded journal. In that time, a paper might undergo several rounds of peer-review by academic volunteers, followed by correctionsand possibly rejectionsbefore a new scientific result sees the light of day.

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This rigmarole is meant to ensure that the research that enters the scientific record is reputable, rigorous and trustworthy. That is admirableand the system generally works wellbut it also introduces a bottleneck, delaying the circulation of new scientific results. To get around this, scientists can release a preprint: a manuscript of a paper posted to a public server online before it has completed a formal peer-review process.

Preprints are commonplace in physics and mathematics. During the covid-19 pandemic, these publications took off in bio logy, genomics and medicine too, reflecting the urgency of communicating corona virus-related findings to other scientists, government officials, and the public.

Some have expressed concerns over the quality of preprints, however, arguing that publishing research prematurely risks undermining the integrity of science if conclusions may later need to be revised, after comments from peer-reviewers, say. Fortunately, a study published in the journal PLOS Biology this week suggests that they have little to worry about.

A team of researchers led by Jonathon Coates, a biologist at Queen Mary University in London, decided to analyse how reliable preprints were early in the covid-19 pandemic. They compiled a set of 184 research papers in the life sciences that had initially been posted as preprints on bio Rxiv and medRxivtwo large preprint serversand later published in one of 23 major scientific journals in the first four months of the pandemic.

They compared each preprint with its more polished version that had later appeared in a journal. They looked for content that had been added or removed from the body of the manuscript, tables or figures that had been rearranged, and when key wording had been changed.

Dr Coatess analysis found that 82.8% of coronavirus-related preprints and 92.8% of non-coronavirus-related preprints saw no material change to their conclusions upon journal publication. Of the changes that were made, most involved only strengthening or weakening of conclusions. Only one paper out of 184 saw one of its conclusions reversed. This is a welcome finding, says Dr Coates. Ultimately, scientists share preprints because they think the work is ready, not simply to rush it outthe results of our study reflect that.

That more coronavirus-related papers saw changes upon publication than non-coronavirus papers could reflect two factors, suggests Dr Coates. The first is that scientists were moving as quickly as possible to make coronavirus-related results public to aid the early pandemic response, meaning that the language in early covid-19 preprints was more likely to require a final edit. Dr Coates adds that, in his experience, journal editors were also being more rigorous in their treatment of early covid-19 research, precisely because the stakes were so high.

These findings support arguments made by advocates of open science, who say that new scientific results should be made available to other researchers and the public freely and quickly. Dr Coatess work suggests that the usual gatekeepers of the research, scientific journals, may add little scientific value to the original research manuscripts. Their large subscription fees, therefore, look increasingly at odds with the value they provide.

Dr Coates also discovered an annoying wrinkle in the publishing and sharing of data in the life sciences. Whenever his team tried to gain access to the supplementary data for a journal-published version of an article, all too often the links were dead or did not lead to the data they were looking for. That seems troubling, not least during a public-health crisis in which access to timely data has been critical in working out what to do and when.

To enjoy more of our mind-expanding science coverage, sign up to Simply Science, our weekly newsletter.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline "Handsome prints"

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Preprints on the coronavirus have been impressively reliable - The Economist

Washington, DC The Districts reported data for February 1, 2022 includes144new confirmed positive coronavirus (COVID-19) cases, bringing the Districts overall confirmed positive case total to 131,093.The District also reports 28new probable tests, bringing the overall positive probable tests since October 15, 2021to 9,023.

The District reportednoadditionallives lost related toCOVID-19.

Tragically, 1,290 District residents have lost their lives due toCOVID-19.

Visit coronavirus.dc.gov/data for interactive data dashboards or to download COVID-19 data.

Below is the Districts current Key Metrics Summary Table.

Below is the Districts aggregated total of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, sorted by age and gender.

Below is the Districts aggregated total of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, sorted by ward of residence.

Below is the Districts aggregated total of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, sorted by neighborhood of residence.

Below is the Districts aggregated total of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, sorted by race.

Below is the Districts Hospital Census and hospital bed availability at District hospitals.

Below is the ventilator use and availability at District hospitals.

The District currently has 51 intensive care unit (ICU) beds available in hospitals out of 345 total ICU beds.

Below is the Districts total lives lost due to COVID-19, sorted by race.

Below is the Districts total lives lost due to COVID-19, sorted by sex.

Below is the Districts total lives lost due to COVID-19, sorted by age.

Below is the Districts total lives lost due to COVID-19, sorted by ward of residence.

Guidance has been published for healthcare providers, employers and the public to provide information on what to do if you have been diagnosed with or are a contact of someone who has COVID-19. Residents are encouraged to get vaccinated at one of our free walk-up vaccination sites located throughout the District. For more information, please visit vaccines.gov.

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Coronavirus Data for February 1, 2022 | mayormb - Executive Office of the Mayor

The U.S. Army is developing a vaccine capable of protecting against multiple coronaviruses, but Dr. Fauci said it will be years before one is potentially available.

The discovery of the COVID-19 virus in 2020 prompted a global race for an effective vaccine. Scientists have now developed several vaccines to fight COVID-19. While the vaccines authorized for use in the United States still significantly reduce rates of hospitalization and death, concerns of vaccine efficacy have grown as variants such as omicron appear to evade some vaccine protections.

At a White House press briefing on Jan. 26, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that now there is an urgent need for a universal vaccine that could protect people from multiple COVID-19 variants, as well as other coronaviruses such as SARS. And some news outlets tweeted that the Army was developing a universal coronavirus vaccine.

THE QUESTION

Is the Army working on a universal vaccine that would protect people from multiple coronaviruses?

THE SOURCES

THE ANSWER

Yes, researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research are working to develop a universal vaccine that would protect people against multiple COVID-19 variants and other coronaviruses. But the vaccine likely wont be available to the general public for several years.

WHAT WE FOUND

According to a U.S. Army press release, researchers at the The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research began work on the universal coronavirus vaccine in early 2020, when they were given the first DNA sequencing of the COVID-19 virus.

This vaccine would protect against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and may provide broad protection against variants associated with the alpha strain. It would also provide protection against other coronaviruses like SARS-origin viruses. The development of this vaccine could provide researchers with the tools they need to prevent another pandemic, the release said, by acting as the first line of defense against variants of concern and similar viruses that could emerge in the future.

DefenseOne reported the Army-developed vaccine uses a soccer ball-shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein. This would allow the virus to attack multiple coronaviruses at the same time, because different strains could be built into the vaccine.

The first phase of clinical trials in humans began in April 2021. Prior to that, primates were used as test subjects. According to results of the animal testing phase, the antibody responses exceed those observed for other major vaccines and rapidly protects against respiratory infection and disease in the upper and lower airways and lung tissue of nonhuman primates.

The initial vaccine trials did not include the omicron variant, because the omicron variant did not exist at the time. The delta variant was included in initial testing.

Even though the Army is working on developing a universal coronavirus vaccine, that doesnt mean it will be available to the general public any time soon, if at all. For now, its still in the development and research phase in the U.S.

Dr. David Morens, senior advisor to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told VERIFY to make a universal vaccine is a challenge because if you try to broaden the recipe to add different viruses or variants, like the Army is working to do, your chance of success diminishes."

To make a mostly-universal or fully-universal vaccine is at the moment beyond our technical capacities for any virus group I know of, but that doesnt mean that basic science research wont in the future give us clues to go further, Morens said.

Its not only a question of mutations and bat emergences, its the whole question of breadth of coverage. How do you get a vaccine to do a hundred different jobs when it is barely possible to get it to do one? How do you get the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback to play all 22+ positions on the team at the same level? Morens added.

During a White House press briefing, Fauci also said it could be years before the vaccine would be available in the U.S.

I dont want anyone to think that pan-coronavirus vaccines are literally around the corner in a month or two. Its going to take years to develop in an incremental fashion. Some of these are already in phase one clinical trials. Dont forget, however, that our current vaccine regimens do provide strong protection, particularly when used with a booster, against severe coronavirus disease and death, Fauci said. So, do not wait to receive your primary vaccine regimen. And if you are vaccine [vaccinated], please get your booster if you are eligible.

The Armys universal coronavirus vaccine effort is not the only universal vaccine in development. Scientists are also working on a universal flu vaccine, which, according to the National Academy of Sciences, could be available within the next ten years.

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Yes, the Army is working on a universal coronavirus vaccine - 12news.com KPNX