Category Archives: Corona Virus

CHICOPEE, Mass (WWLP) Its cold and flu season in most of the United States and with the coronavirus pandemic still raging on, how can people tell the difference between the two common illnesses?

According to the Mayo Clinic, the two illnesses share a number of similar symptoms as both are caused by a virus. Ordinarily, people with COVID-19 can expect to experience such symptoms as: fever, muscle aches, tiredness, fever, and loss or changes to sense of taste or smell. Many of these symptoms are much less likely to develop when experiencing a cold but are possible. A full list of possible symptoms of both illnesses is below.

According to the CDC, COVID-19 can be spread 1 or more days can pass between when a person becomes infected and when they starts to notice symptoms. Additionally the CDC notes that while COVID-19 can lead to serious complications colds typically do not.

The CDC urges that anyone experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 be tested as soon as possible and minimize exposure to others while waiting on test results.

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What is the difference between COVID-19 and the common cold? - WWLP.com

Eight people are dead and just shy of 100 more have become infected with COVID-19 after an outbreak at a Connecticut nursing home.

The outbreak at the Geer Village Senior Community, a nursing home and rehabilitation center in Canaan, started around the beginning of October when the nursing home was reporting three positive COVID-19 cases.

Now, eight residents have died, and 67 residents and 22 staff members caught COVID-19 sometime in the past month and a half. Nursing home officials said 48 residents and 21 staff members have recovered from the virus.

The state Department of Public Health said they're monitoring and providing on-site consultation at this facility.

"Family members of residents in long-term care facilities should also encourage their loved ones being cared for in these facilities to get a booster vaccine," a spokesperson for the DPH said.

The nursing and rehab center houses only 70 residents and all eight people who died has serious underlying health issues.

Of the 89 total infections, 87 people were fully vaccinated, the nursing home said.

"While we must continue with Covid-19 prevention protocols, we want to assure everyone we are doing our best to keep residents and staff safe," officials said.

All visits will continue to remain on hold because of the outbreak; anyone who wishes to see their loved ones can do so virtually or through window visits.

"Despite the highly infectious nature of this disease, our employees were able to protect their residents, themselves, and their families through the initial peak of this pandemic. They did this during a time when we least understood Covid-19 and struggled to find the supplies and funding to persevere as the virus spread. We are tremendously proud of our employees for their dedication to the people we care for," Geer Village Senior Community CEO Kevin O'Connell said in a statement.

Anyone whose loved one tests positive for coronavirus or becomes symptomatic will be notified.

"Our priority is always the health and safety of the staff and residents at Geer. We are saddened to see some in the Geer family become ill. We pray for their speedy recovery and continue to do everything in our power to minimize the risk across all our operations, OConnell said.

Residents and staff will become eligible for the booster shot when the community has gone two full weeks without any new COVID-19 cases, they said. For more information on the outbreak, click here.

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8 Dead, Dozens Infected With COVID-19 Due to Outbreak at Connecticut Nursing Home - NBC Connecticut

Amazon fulfillment center warehouse.

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Amazon on Monday reached a settlement with California's attorney general over claims it concealed Covid-19 case numbers from its warehouse workers.

The company has agreed to notify warehouse workers within one day of new Covid cases, as well as provide the exact number of cases in their workplace, California State Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. Amazon employs tens of thousands of warehouse workers in the state, he added.

Under the agreement, which is still subject to court approval, Amazon will also notify local health agencies within 48 hours of new Covid cases and pay $500,000 toward additional enforcement of California consumer protection laws, Bonta said.

Amazon spokesperson Barbara Agrait said there's no change to, nor allegations of any problems with, the company's protocols related to notifying employees who may have been exposed to Covid.

"We're glad to have this resolved and to see that the AG found no substantive issues with the safety measures in our buildings," Agrait said in a statement.

The settlement comes after California in January enacted stricter Covid workplace regulations as part of Assembly Bill 685, or the "right-to-know" law. The regulations require businesses to report Covid cases to workers within one business day, among other stipulations.

Throughout the pandemic, Bonta said Amazon inadequately notified warehouse workers and local health agencies of Covid case numbers, "often leaving them in the dark and unable to effectively track the spread of the virus."

Amazon sends notifications of new Covid cases to warehouse workers via its internal messaging portal, called A to Z, and works to determine if other employees came into contact with the person who tested positive by reviewing on site camera footage, as well as interviewing workers.

Warehouse and delivery workers have previously criticized Amazon's contact tracing and case notification protocols, claiming they're inadequate.

Last year, then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra opened a probe into Amazon's treatment of warehouse workers during the pandemic.

California's division of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration also fined Amazon last October for coronavirus safety violations at two warehouses in the state. At one site, Amazon didn't notify contracted delivery drivers of confirmed cases, the citation said.

Amazon said at the time that it believed its coronavirus safety measures were "more than adequate."

WATCH: Inside the rapid growth of Amazon Logistics and how it's taking on third-party shipping

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Amazon settles with California over claims it concealed Covid-19 cases from warehouse workers - CNBC

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EXCLUSIVE: Former Trump administration COVID special adviser Dr. Scott Atlas said his forthcoming memoir will clarify "the facts" of the coronavirus pandemic, "free from the filter of government bureaucrats, the media and politically biased academics and scientists."

Atlas told Fox News that his new book, "A Plague Upon Our House," was written "with several purposes in mind."

DR. SCOTT ATLAS UNLOADS ON FAUCI, BIRX, REDFIELD IN FORTHCOMING MEMOIR: 'I WAS DISGUSTED'

"The four-month period during my service as an adviser to the president of the United States provides a candid perspective on how our leaders functioned in the greatest health care crisis in the past century the pandemic and its management without the distorting sense of media and politics," Atlas told Fox News.

Atlas said his book also "clarifies the facts underlying the pandemic, free from the filter of government bureaucrats, the media, and politically-biased academics and scientists," while also exposing "profound issues in our society" that he warned "could interfere with our ability to address future crises and threaten the very principles of freedom and order that we often take for granted and that the rest of the world depends on."

Atlas told Fox News that his book "exposes the unvarnished truth" about the COVID-19 Task Force under the Trump administration, COVID data and issues within the nation that were "exposed by the management of the pandemic."

Atlas slammed "those leading Americas public health" during the onset of the COVID pandemic as "failures."

"With their draconian measures focused on one thing, stopping COVID cases at all costs instead of considering all of health harms, and a shocking lack of critical thinking about the science, this was a reckless abuse of public health and a moral failure in what should be expected from public health leaders," Atlas said. "Inflicting enormous harms with lockdowns and restrictions, they failed to protect the elderly, they failed to stop the spread of the infection, they failed to stop the deaths - all the while destroying lower income families and sacrificing the health of our children,while sparing the affluent and the elite."

Atlas added that "trust in Americas institutions has been severely damaged."

"Science itself has been politicized, while universities and the media prohibit the free exchange of ideas necessary to solve future crises," Atlas said. "This book is a first step toward restoring that trust by exposing the truth."

He added: "And truth matters."

Atlas jointed the Trump White House COVID-19 Task Force in August 2020 as a special government employee, serving just a 130-day detail. Atlas' role expired in November 2020.

Atlaswas criticized throughout his time at the White House for advocating for a reopening while blasting COVID-19 lockdowns as "extremely harmful" to Americans.

SCOTT ATLAS DEFENDS COVID WORK, SLAMS DEBORAH BIRX TESTIMONY AS 'ORWELLIAN ATTEMPT TO REWRITE HISTORY'

Meanwhile, Atlas has been at odds with Trump's coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, defending himself after reports of her closed-door testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis last month.

CNN first reported Friday that part of Birxs testimony included comments suggesting that Atlas sought to change COVID-19 testing guidance, and called for less testing for those without symptoms.

Atlas, reacting to Birxs testimony, said it was her "desperate attempt" to "deflect blame for her failed policies she advised."

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"At no time did I try to reduce testing or in any way interfere with any CDC guidance," Atlas told Fox News, adding that his efforts "were always focused on increasing testing and smartly using the administrations massive testing apparatus to save more lives."

"While in Washington, I worked hard specifically toincreasetesting, especially in nursing homes and staff, in historically black colleges, in senior centers, and elsewhere, to protect Americans and stop the dying - and those efforts were successfully implemented," Atlas told Fox News. "From my arrival into the Task Force in mid August until I left Washington in late November, testing increased from about 700,000 to 1.4 million per day."

He added: "Any blame for that failure lies on those who advised what was actually implemented, not on those who criticized the lockdowns and tried to stop the death and destruction."

Continued here:

Scott Atlas says new book will clarify 'the facts' of the COVID-19 pandemic - Fox News

Over the past year, coronavirus vaccines have gone into billions of human arms and into the fuzzy haunches of an arks worth of zoo animals. Jaguars are getting the jab. Bonobos are being dosed. So are orangutans and otters, ferrets and fruit bats, and, of course, lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!).

Largely left behind, however, are two creatures much closer to home: domestic cats and dogs.

Pet owners have noticed.

I get so many questions about this issue, Dr. Elizabeth Lennon, a veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania, said. Will there be a vaccine? When will there be a vaccine?

Technically, a pet vaccine is feasible. In fact, several research teams say that they have already developed promising cat or dog vaccines; the shots that zoo animals are receiving were initially designed for dogs.

But vaccinating pets is simply not a priority, experts said. Although dogs and cats can catch the virus, a growing body of evidence suggests that Fluffy and Fido play little to no role in its spread and rarely fall ill themselves.

A vaccine is quite unlikely, I think, for dogs and cats, Dr. Will Sander, a veterinarian at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said. The risk of disease spread and illness in pets is so low that any vaccine would not be worth giving.

In February 2020, a woman in Hong Kong was diagnosed with Covid-19. Two other people in her home soon tested positive for the virus, as did one unexpected member of the household: an elderly Pomeranian. The 17-year-old dog was the first pet known to catch the virus.

But not the last. A German shepherd in Hong Kong soon tested positive, too, as did cats in Hong Kong, Belgium and New York. The cases were exceedingly mild the animals had few or no symptoms and experts concluded that humans had spread the virus to the pets, rather than vice versa.

To date, there hasnt been any documented cases of dogs or cats spreading the virus to people, Dr. Lennon said.

But the prospect of a pet pandemic sparked interested in an animal vaccine. Zoetis, a veterinary pharmaceutical company based in New Jersey, began working on one as soon as they heard about the Hong Kong Pomeranian.

We figured, Wow, this could become serious, so lets start working on a product, Mahesh Kumar, a senior vice president at Zoetis who leads vaccine development, said.

By the fall of 2020, Zoetis had four promising candidates for a vaccine, each of which elicited robust antibody responses in cats and dogs, the company announced. (The studies, which were small, have not been published.)

But as vaccine development progressed, it became increasingly apparent that the infection of pets was unlikely to pose a serious threat to animals or people.

In one study of 76 pets living with people who had the virus, 17.6 percent of cats and 1.7 percent of dogs also tested positive. (Studies have consistently shown that cats are more susceptible to infection than dogs, perhaps for both biological and behavioral reasons.) Of the infected pets, 82.4 percent had no symptoms.

When pets do fall ill, they tend to have mild symptoms, which may include lethargy, coughing, sneezing, runny noses or diarrhea. The animals typically make full recoveries without treatment, although a handful of more severe cases do occur occasionally.

Moreover, there is no evidence that cats or dogs spread the virus to humans and there are few signs that they readily transmit it among themselves. Stray cats, for instance, are much less likely to have antibodies to the virus than cats that live with people, suggesting that the animals are largely getting the virus from us, rather than from each other.

It doesnt look like cats or dogs would ever be a reservoir for this virus, Dr. Jeanette OQuin, a veterinarian at Ohio State University, said. We believe that if there werent sick people around them, they would not be able to continue spreading it from animal to animal it would not continue to exist in their population.

Together, these factors convinced experts that a vaccine for pets was not necessary. In November 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates veterinary medicines, said that it was not accepting any applications for cat or dog vaccines because data do not indicate such a vaccine would have value.

But as the pet threat was receding, another problem was coming into focus: mink. The sleek, svelte mammals, which are farmed in large numbers, turned out to be highly susceptible to the virus. And not only were they dying from it, they were spreading it to each other and back to humans.

I think that the situation in mink absolutely warrants a vaccine, Dr. Lennon said.

The U.S.D.A. thought so, too, and in the same November notice in which the agency said it was not considering cat or dog vaccines, it declared itself open to applications for a mink vaccine.

Zoetis pivoted, deciding to repurpose one of its dog vaccines for mink ones. (Several other teams are also developing mink vaccines, and Russia has already approved a shot for all carnivores, including mink, and has reportedly started administering it to animals.)

Studies in mink are ongoing, but when word got out about Zoetiss work, zoos came calling. Some of their animals including gorillas, tigers and snow leopards had already caught the virus, and they wanted to give the mink vaccine a whirl. We got a huge number of requests, Dr. Kumar said.

Zoetis, which decided to supply the vaccine to zoos on an experimental basis, has now committed to donating 26,000 doses enough to vaccinate 13,000 animals to zoos and animal sanctuaries in 14 countries.

The development means that many zoo-dwelling cats, like lions and tigers, are getting vaccinated, while their domestic cousins are not. In part, thats because these species appear to be more susceptible to the virus; some have died after becoming infected, although the cause of death is often difficult to conclusively determine.

The big cats seem to be getting sicker than the house cats, Dr. Lennon said.

Moreover, zoo animals are exposed to many more people than the average house cat, and many are highly endangered.

I dont want to diminish anybodys pets, Dr. Sander said. I have a cat myself. But I think a lot of those animals are high conservation status. Theyre genetically very valuable. And so they want to try and provide the best protection possible.

Although the evidence so far suggests that the virus is not a major threat to pets, there is a lot left to learn, scientists acknowledge. It is still not clear how frequently infected humans pass the virus to their pets, especially because officials do not recommend routine testing for companion animals, and the virus may have health effects in pets that have not yet been identified.

In a paper published earlier this month, scientists raised the possibility that the Alpha variant, which was first identified in Britain, might cause heart inflammation in dogs and cats. The evidence is circumstantial, but the virus has been linked to the same problem in humans and the connection is worth exploring, experts said.

We need to do more research in this area to find out if this is a real association, Dr. OQuin said.

There may be individual pets who are at especially high risk from the virus. Dr. Lennon and her colleagues recently identified an immunocompromised dog who appeared to become severely ill from the virus. Unlike most infected dogs, this one also shed high levels of the virus for more than a week.

Of course, thats one case, but it really does illustrate that Covid isnt the same in all pets, just like it isnt in all people, Dr. Lennon said.

It is certainly possible that future research or changes in the virus could change the calculus on a pet vaccine. If the virus turns out to be more prevalent, virulent or transmissible in dogs or cats than is currently known, that would make the case for a vaccine more compelling, scientists said. The U.S.D.A. has said that it may re-evaluate its position if more evidence of transmission and clinical disease emerges in a particular species.

If that time comes, Zoetis is prepared to pick up where it left off with its pet vaccines, Dr. Kumar said. He said that if the companys mink vaccine is licensed, veterinarians might be able to use it off-label in the event of an unexpected outbreak in cats or dogs.

Applied DNA Sciences, a New York-based biotech company, has also developed a promising cat vaccine as a just in case, James Hayward, the companys chief executive, said. (Like Zoetis, the company, which is working in partnership with the Italian company Evvivax, is now more focused on a mink vaccine.)

For now, there are steps that pet owners can take to protect their animals. People who test positive for the virus should isolate away from their pets, if possible, or wear a face mask while caring for them.

And, of course, a vaccine for humans is now widely available in the United States. The best way to prevent SARS-CoV-2 in our pets is to prevent the disease in people, Dr. OQuin said. So please get vaccinated.

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Why Dont We Have a Covid Vaccine for Pets? - The New York Times

COLUMBUS, Ohio A bill in the Ohio House would provide nursing homes $300 million in coronavirus relief money, with no guardrails around how it would get spent.

House Bill 461, sponsored by Cincinnati-area Republican Rep. Sara Carruthers, would provide nursing homes a one-time payment from the American Rescue Plan Act by Dec. 31. The bill contains a formula specifying how the money would get divided among the states nearly 1,000 homes.

Ohio could receive $5.8 billion over two years from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill passed in Congress in March. The first years installment was already distributed to the state, and much of it was spent on paying back the federal government for unemployment payments advanced to the state, a water and sewer program, pediatric behavioral health care, among other items.

About $850 million remains from the first installment. HB 461 would spend over a third of it.

The nursing home industry is reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, with staff shortages, increased costs and fewer patients.

Yet, HB 461 doesnt contain any rules about how homes or the companies that own them should spend the money. As a result, the money could be spent on anything from staff pay raises and personal protective equipment to C-suite bonuses and stock buybacks.

Nursing home staff cared for our parents and grandparents throughout a pandemic that devastated Ohios care facilities. They have earned COVID hero pay and more. But this bill as written fails to ensure the money goes to workers on the front lines, said Desiree Tims, president and CEO of the progressive policy organization Innovation Ohio.

Representatives of two of the states largest nursing home associations, the Ohio Health Care Association and LeadingAge Ohio, said that while they are seeking coronavirus relief money, they did not suggest HB 461. A third prominent association, the Academy for Senior Health Sciences, formerly known as the Ohio Academy of Nursing Homes, also lobbies the legislature and has been concerned about the industrys financial losses. Ohio Academy for Senior Health Sciences officials havent commented for this article.

Nursing homes are among a long list of sectors that have suffered financially during the pandemic. Foodbanks, housing organizations and childrens groups also have argued that coronavirus relief money should be spent on health and human services.

Nursing homes have a successful history of receiving money from Ohio lawmakers, said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, a good government group.

Nursing homes have a long history of making campaign contributions to legislators, and when I say legislators, I mean all legislators, and obviously more to those in leadership, she said. They also have a strong lobbying history as well. And when you think about nursing homes, were talking about the care of the elderly. You combine heartstrings and cash, they have garnered good support from legislators over the years.

If the state wants to rescue an industry, there should be parameters on how the money is spent, she said.

We always want to make sure that theres as much detail as possible when we help out industries, period, she said. We want to make sure that theres a healthy debate and deliberation over it.

Ohio nursing home operating revenue decreased 11.7% between the first quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, due to many families choosing to keep their loved ones at home, concerned about coronavirus spreading in the congregate care settings, according to research by Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University that was promoted in September by LeadingAge Ohio, the Ohio Health Care Association and the Academy for Senior Health Sciences.

In that same time, labor costs increased 17.9%, and the costs of staffing agencies that provide employees to fill in at nursing homes increased by over five times in that time, the study said.

Homes may continue to rely on staffing agencies because some employees do not want to be vaccinated, believing misinformation about COVID-19 shots pedaled on the internet. President Joe Biden is requiring all nursing home employees must be vaccinated by Jan. 4 that accept Medicare or Medicaid as payment.

Nearly every nursing home in the state relies on Medicare and Medicaid, said Patrick Schwartz, a spokesman for LeadingAge Ohio, which represents mostly nonprofit homes.

While LeadingAge isnt behind HB 461, it believes nursing homes should get some relief.

Older adults and their caregivers and the long-term care workforce have born an extraordinary amount of stress, and this pandemic has been so harmful to them, he said. The population of older adults is going to skyrocket over the next 20 years all over the state. The time is now to really invest in long-term care and aging services.

The nursing home industry has been generous with Ohio politicians.

Since 2016, nursing home political action committees and employees have contributed $1.3 million to state legislative candidates, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign finance.

In the last five years, the Academy for Senior Health Sciences PAC has donated $107,000 to Ohio politicians, all Republicans.

Carruthers, the sponsor of HB 461, hasnt received any money from the Academy for Senior Health Sciences PAC or others in the nursing home industry. But the Academy for Senior Health Sciences PAC gave the Ohio Republican State Central & Executive Committee State Candidate Fund received $10,000 in 2019.

Lt. Gov. Jon Husteds campaign committee received $12,500 in 2016.

Virtually every sector of the economy has experienced hardship during the pandemic.

Child care agencies are pushing the General Assembly to release another pot of American Rescue Plan Act money, Child Care Stabilization Grants. The state received $800 million to award stabilization grants for use over two years. Ohio still has $638 million remaining. Of that, Ohio will lose $400 million if its not directed to agencies by Dec. 11, said Katie Kelly, executive director of PRE4CLE, a Cleveland initiative to increase access to high-quality preschool.

Kelly said that childcare teachers have left the profession due to low pay and the risks of working during a pandemic. Many childcare centers have closed classrooms due to the lack of staff. Child care center owners borrowed money to continue operating. Even though the economy has reopened, some children have not returned because their parents are not working and dont have access to childcare subsidies.

Similar to what the nursing homes are doing, there needs to be legislation (for the childcare grants.) Half of that $800 million needs to be appropriated by Dec. 11 of this year, or else we risk turning those back to be used by another state, Kelly said. Those dollars are desperately needed to help providers pay off those debts. To attract staff back to the workforce through signing bonuses and to pay for ongoing costs due to PPE and sanitation strategies they need to have in place. Were not out of this pandemic. Ohio doesnt need to lose significant childcare capacity permanently. We have many providers who are on the brink of closure.

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Ohio bill would give nursing homes $300 million in coronavirus relief money - cleveland.com

As Americas pandemic for now seems to be moving into a new phase with national rates in decline from the September peak and vaccines rolling out to children, a new worry has appeared on the horizon: wildlife passing on the virus.

A new study shows that deer can catch the coronavirus from people and give it to other deer in overwhelming numbers, the first evidence of animals transmitting the virus in the wild. Similar spillover and transmission could be occurring in certain animal populations around the world, with troubling implications for eradicating the virus and potentially even for the emergence of new variants.

One-third of Iowa deer sampled over nine months had active infections, with a peak of 80% testing positive between November and January, according to a preprint study that has not yet been peer-reviewed or published.

It builds on previous findings that one-third of deer in other US states were exposed to the virus and developed antibodies, but it differs in showing high rates of active infections, which last for a much narrower window of time.

The virus very likely spilled over from humans to deer through several different interactions, and then it probably spread to other deer, according to the analysis.

Nearly everything about their study shocked the scientists. They knew deer could be infected with the coronavirus. But they were stunned by the numbers four out of five deer tested positive at the highest peak as well as high viral loads that were truly gobsmacking, Suresh Kuchipudi, clinical professor of virology at Penn State and coauthor of the study, told the Guardian. They were also surprised by the fairly clear links in the genetic analysis connecting human transmission to the animals and then the rapid transmission to other deer.

If there is spillover into free-living deer, it will rip through like wildfire, said Vivek Kapur, professor of microbiology at Penn State and coauthor of the study. This analysis was limited to Iowa, but the researchers believe widespread infection is just as likely among deer in other states.

Deer, which are abundant in North America and a popular target for hunters, are highly susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, and they may contract it by grazing on discarded food, drinking contaminated wastewater, or nosing through undergrowth where a person has spit or relieved themselves.

If they come in contact with the virus from any means of source, they are going to be infected, Kuchipudi said. It is highly likely that the animal will pick up the infection even though face-to-face interaction never happened.

These results have implications for other wildlife as well. It is possible certain other animals are also contracting and spreading the coronavirus around the world, which would make it difficult to eradicate the virus and to prevent mutations that could lead to new variants.

Around the world, SARS-CoV-2 has been reported in cats, dogs, ferrets, minks, lions, tigers, pumas and gorillas. Hyenas at the Denver zoo recently tested positive, the first confirmed cases in those animals.

In August 2020, an outbreak at a mink farm in Utah led investigators to sample wild mink nearby and they found antibodies and active infections in some of the wild animals.

In November 2020, Denmark killed 17 million mink after the virus jumped from people to farmed mink and back to people again the only documented case of animals passing the coronavirus back to people. The virus mutated, but none of the changes were dangerous.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, coronaviruses were well known for infecting animals, and vaccinations against common coronaviruses were standard for pets in the US.

Another coronavirus, which now causes mild cold symptoms, may have driven the 1889 pandemic that claimed 1 million lives and it probably spilled over from cattle. Notably, cattle have also passed coronaviruses to deer, prompting concerns that SARS-CoV-2 could similarly move between deer, cattle and people to possibly catastrophic effect.

A virus that can circulate among animals as well as people is much harder to eradicate.

Its much harder to get rid of a virus if it has a reservoir, Stanley Perlman, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa, said. As people build immunity to viruses, fatalities begin to drop, but the viruses dont go anywhere the flu virus behind the 1918 pandemic still circulates today.

Its always gonna be with us. What form its in, I dont know hopefully, itll be an attenuated, weakened form, Perlman said.

This cross-species contagion can result in mutations and its hard to know whether these variations will be milder or more severe. So far, theres just been no evidence of spillback into humans from animals, Perlman said.

But the more any virus circulates and moves around, the more opportunity it has to mutate, Ellen Carlin, assistant research professor at Georgetown Universitys Center for Global Health Science and Security, told the Guardian.

Just because a virus mutates, that doesnt mean its a problematic mutation for human or animal health. But it could be, so we need to watch for that, Carlin said. Anything is possible at this point.

The emerging evidence on animal reservoirs increasingly points to the need for several long-term efforts to stem the viruss spread, Carlin said. Vaccines for humans, for instance, can only go so far in preventing cases when a virus is circulating among animals.

We need to do a better job detecting these viruses in animals before they reach people, and we need to be doing a better job preventing spillover before it happens. And that requires addressing really tough challenges, like land use change and deforestation and climate change and urbanization, Carlin said. It also requires investing in health care and monitoring systems, experts say.

The study in deer is a really hard reminder that we need to do a much better job funding wildlife research, not just for SARS-CoV-2 but for other infectious diseases, Carlin said. We have scientists who are more than capable of going out there and figuring out whats going on with SARS-CoV-2, but theres no real system in place to do that on a national level.

More research would also reveal whether or how animals spread the virus across species, including to people.

If research like this hadnt been conducted, Kuchipudi said, the outbreaks among Iowa deer would have gone undetected. There was a silent epidemic, if you will, happening in the deer, he said. We would have never known unless we tested the samples.

More:

As Covid recedes in US a new worry emerges: wildlife passing on the virus - The Guardian

A child and a dog run along a beach in Haiti, from where health workers appear to have contracted a new coronavirus. Around the world, in Malaysia, a similar coronavirus has been found apparently being passed to humans from dogs. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A child and a dog run along a beach in Haiti, from where health workers appear to have contracted a new coronavirus. Around the world, in Malaysia, a similar coronavirus has been found apparently being passed to humans from dogs.

Early in 2017, a team of medical personnel, including doctors, nurses and volunteers, returned home to Florida after volunteering at a clinic in Haiti. Soon after their return, 20 members of the team began to feel a bit under the weather.

"They had a slight fever and didn't feel 100% right," says virologist John Lednicky at the University of Florida. "But they weren't very sick."

At the time, Zika virus was circulating in Haiti, and health officials were worried the travelers might have been infected, potentially importing the mosquito-borne illness to Florida. So officials took urine samples from each traveler and asked Lednicky to test for Zika.

Lednicky ran the standard PCR tests for the virus, and they all came back negative. But he wasn't satisfied. He had a hunch that the urine samples did contain a virus not Zika but something else.

So he took a little bit of the urine from six of the travelers and added it to a special solution of monkey cells. The goal was deceptively simple: to see if any viruses in the urine would infect the monkey cells, start replicating and grow to detectable levels. Then Lednicky could collect the virus's genes and identify it.

"This is what we do in our lab," Lednicky says. "We cast a wide net. We try to isolate viruses. And oftentimes, when we do that, the unexpected happens."

Indeed, the unexpected occurred.

"We found a coronavirus," he says. And not just any coronavirus, but one that many scientists believe may be a new human pathogen likely the eighth coronavirus known to cause disease in people. Turns out, this coronavirus in the Haiti travelers has cropped up previously, on the other side of the globe.

Back in May, scientists at Duke University reported they had detected a nearly identical virus coronavirus in children at a Malaysian hospital.

The researchers found the virus in the upper respiratory tract of 3% of the 301 patients they tested in 2017 and 2018.

The genetic sequence of the Malaysian virus suggested it likely originated in dogs and then jumped into people. "The majority of the genome was canine coronavirus," virologist Anastasia Vlasova told NPR in May.

Although the findings sounded alarming, the researchers had no evidence that the virus could spread among people or that it was widespread around the world.

"These human infections with ... canine coronaviruses appear to be isolated incidents which did not lead to extensive human transmission," virologist Vincent Racaniello wrote on the Virology Blog.

Now Lednicky and his colleagues have found an almost identical virus infecting people 11,000 miles away at the same time. The genetic sequence of the virus in Haiti is 99.4% identical to the one in Malaysia. Lednicky and his colleagues reported this past Sunday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

And the big question is: How does a dog virus in Malaysia wind up in doctors and nurses in Haiti?

"The virus probably circulates widely, but no one has paid attention to it," Lednicky says. He suspects it's all over the world. And if you've been around dogs frequently, you might have been infected with this virus or developed an immunity to it by exposure to similar virus. "We'll know when scientists start looking for antibodies inside older blood samples taken from patients with respiratory disease. How many of them were misdiagnosed all along?"

Some scientists also think doctors and researchers should start actively looking for this virus in patients. "I think that's important for several reasons," says virologist Linda Saif at Ohio State University, who has studied coronaviruses for about 40 years.

"No. 1, this virus has been associated with a number of pneumonia cases in children, and No. 2, we really don't know if it can transmit from human to human," she adds.

The fact that scientists detected the almost-identical viruses in both Haiti and Malaysia, at the same time, suggests the virus does spread among people, Saif says.

"There's a temporal sequence here. These two viruses which are very, very similar have been detected in a similar time frame but in widely separated regions of the world," she explains. That could happen if a nearly-identical virus was circulating in dogs in both Haiti and Malaysia and then jumped over to people in both countries during the same year.

"I would be very surprised if that happened," Saif says.

The second hypothesis is that the virus is circulating in people, at low levels, in many parts of the world, under the radar. "That hypothesis is more likely," Saif says.

If that hypothesis turns out to be true, this canine coronavirus will be the eighth coronavirus known to spread among humans.

On the surface, these new findings sound like horrible news. The last thing the world needs right now is another coronavirus one that may trigger pneumonia in children. But Jonna Mazet says it's actually good news because it means scientists have caught this virus before it has caused a big problem.

"The very exciting part is that people are starting to do virus discovery and characterization, even when large groups of people aren't dying and or getting severely ill, which is how most virus discovery has happened in the past," says Mazet, who's an epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis and the founding executive director of the One Health Institute there.

By finding this virus early, scientists now have time to study it, create tools to diagnose it and understand what it might take to stop it. Although it's not a cause for deep concern at this time, there's always the risk the virus could evolve and become a bigger problem, Mazet says, as was likely the case with SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

"Almost certainly, SARS-CoV-2 was circulating for quite some time and making people either a tiny bit sick or not sick enough to be noticed," she says. If scientists had detected it at this stage, perhaps the world would have had time to develop a test for it, some promising treatments and even a preliminary vaccine. Perhaps the pandemic would have taken a much different perhaps less deadly course.

"We need to find these novel viruses well before they fully adapt to humans and become a pandemic problem," writes epidemiologist Gregory Gray, from the University of Texas Medical Branch, in an email to NPR. "Fortunately, today we have the tools to both detect and evaluate the risk of such novel viruses. We just need the political will and financial support to do so."

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New coronavirus, likely from dogs, could be 8th coronavirus to spread in humans : Goats and Soda - NPR

The contagious delta variant is driving up COVID-19 hospitalizations in the Mountain West and fueling disruptive outbreaks in the North, a worrisome sign of what could be ahead this winter in the U.S.

While trends are improving in Florida, Texas and other Southern states that bore the worst of the summer surge, its clear that delta isnt done with the United States. COVID-19 is moving north and west for the winter as people head indoors, close their windows and breathe stagnant air.

Were going to see a lot of outbreaks in unvaccinated people that will result in serious illness, and it will be tragic, said Dr. Donald Milton of the University of Maryland School of Public Health.

In recent days, a Vermont college suspended social gatherings after a spike in cases tied to Halloween parties. Boston officials shut down an elementary school to control an outbreak. Hospitals in New Mexico and Colorado are overwhelmed.

In Michigan, the three-county metro Detroit area is again becoming a hot spot for transmissions, with nearly 400 COVID-19 patients in hospitals. Mask-wearing in Michigan has declined to about 25% of people, according to a combination of surveys tracked by an influential modeling group at the University of Washington.

Concern over COVID in general is pretty much gone, which is unfortunate, said Dr. Jennifer Morse, medical director at health departments in 20 central and northern Michigan counties. I feel strange going into a store masked. Im a minority. Its very different. Its just a really unusual atmosphere right now.

New Mexico is running out of intensive care beds despite the states above-average vaccination rate. Waning immunity may be playing a role. People who were vaccinated early and have not yet received booster shots may be driving up infection numbers, even if they still have some protection from the most dire consequences of the virus.

Delta and waning immunity the combination of these two have set us back, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington. This virus is going to stick with us for a long, long time.

The delta variant dominates infections across the U.S., accounting for more than 99% of the samples analyzed.

No state has achieved a high enough vaccination rate, even when combined with infection-induced immunity, to avoid the type of outbreaks happening now, Mokdad said.

In a deviation from national recommendations, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order Thursday that allows any resident 18 or older access to a COVID-19 booster shot, another step to prevent hospitals and health care workers from being overwhelmed by the states surge in delta infections.

Progress on vaccination continues, yet nearly 60 million Americans age 12 and older remain unvaccinated. Thats an improvement since July, when 100 million were unvaccinated, said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients.

First shots are averaging about 300,000 per day, and the effort to vaccinate children ages 5 to 11 is off to a strong start, Zients said at a briefing Wednesday.

Virginia Techs Linsey Marr, a leading researcher on the airborne spread of the coronavirus, predicted the northward spread of the virus in a Twitter post Sept. 15. The virus spreads in the air and can build up in enclosed rooms with poor ventilation. Colder weather means more people are indoors breathing the same air, Marr said.

Imagine that everyone you spend time with is a smoker and you want to breathe as little of their smoke as possible, she said.

The closer you are to a smoker the more exposure you have to that smoke, Marr said. And if youre in a poorly ventilated room, the smoke builds up over time.

Marr said she and her vaccinated family will use rapid tests before gathering for Christmas to check for infection.

Its hard to know whats coming next with this virus, Marr said. We thought we knew, but delta really surprised us. We thought the vaccine would help end this, but things are still dragging on. Its hard to know whats going to happen next.

___

Associated Press Writer Ed White in Detroit contributed to this report.

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COVID-19 hot spots offer sign of what could be ahead for US - Associated Press

BERLIN The University Hospital of Giessen, one of Germanys foremost clinics for pulmonary disease, is at capacity. The number of Covid-19 patients has tripled in recent weeks. Nearly half of them are on ventilators.

And every single one is unvaccinated.

I ask every patient: Why didnt you get vaccinated? said Dr. Susanne Herold, head of infectious diseases, after her daily round on the ward on Thursday. Its a mix of people who distrust the vaccine, distrust the state and are often difficult to reach by public information campaigns.

Patients like hers are the main drivers of a fourth wave of Covid-19 cases in Germany that has produced tens of thousands of new daily infections more than the country has had at any point in the pandemic.

For Germany it is a startling turnabout. At the onset of the pandemic, Germany had set an example for how to manage the virus and keep the death toll low. It was quick to put in place widespread testing and treatment, expand the number of intensive care beds and had a trusted leader in Chancellor Angela Merkel, a trained scientist, whose governments social distancing guidelines were widely observed.

But today, a combination of factors has propelled a new surge, among them wintry temperatures, a slow rollout of booster vaccines, and an even more pronounced spike in infections in neighboring eastern European nations like the Czech Republic. The fact that Germany is in a kind of political limbo as it transitions between governments has not helped.

But virologists and pandemic experts say there is little doubt that it is the unvaccinated who are contributing most to the wave of infections burdening in hospitals across the country.

Its our low rate of vaccination we havent done what was necessary, said Dr. Herold in Giessen. She was part of a team of scientists who modeled the impact of a fourth wave and warned in early summer that with the hyper contagious Delta variant at least 85 percent of the whole population would need to be vaccinated to avert a crisis in the health care system.

We are still below 70 percent, she said. I dont know how we can win this race against time with the fourth wave. I fear weve already lost.

Germanys vaccination rate is far better than that of many central and eastern European countries, where the death toll from coronavirus is soaring. In Romania, for example, only about four in 10 people have had two shots, and coronavirus deaths have hit record levels.

Still, with about one in three Germans not yet fully vaccinated, the German vaccination rate is among the lowest in Western Europe. In Belgium, Denmark and Italy three in four people are fully vaccinated. In Spain and Iceland, only about two in 10 have yet to get the second shot. Portugal has a vaccination rate of close to 90 percent.

The German rate lags because of pockets of vaccine resistance that are not limited to, but especially deep, in the former Communist east, where the far-right Alternative for Germany party is strong. Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, leaders of the AfDs parliamentary group, are both proudly unvaccinated and both tested positive for the virus in recent weeks.

What we are experiencing is above all a pandemic of the unvaccinated, the minister of health, Jens Spahn, said earlier this month.

Infections have also spiked in parts of Bavaria and Baden-Wrttemberg, two wealthy southern states that are home to a noisy protest movement against measures to combat the virus, known as the Querdenker, or contrarians.

We have two viruses in the country, Markus Sder, the Bavarian governor, said in a television debate recently. We have coronavirus and we have this poison, which is being spread on a massive scale, he said referring to misinformation about vaccines.

Nov. 11, 2021, 4:16 p.m. ET

Klaus-Peter Hanke knows about that poisonous propaganda firsthand.

He is the mayor of Pirna, a town of less than 40,000 in the eastern state of Saxony, which experienced a wave of violent protests from anti-vaxxers in the final days of the lockdown last spring.

One in three voters in the voting district that includes Pirna cast their ballots for the AfD in Septembers national election. And just under half of inhabitants refuse to get vaccinated. They have helped to make Saxony the state with the lowest vaccination rate in Germany and with the highest per capita number of new infections.

The readiness to get vaccinated is low here, Mr. Hanke said in an interview. We tried to counter that with dialogue. But there is a point where you hit a wall, and you just cant get any further and one result is that it has escalated.

The Covid ward at the hospital is running out of beds. There, too, almost all patients are unvaccinated, Mr. Hanke said: Nine out 10.

And still, several restaurants in town have signs in the window, inviting everyone not just those vaccinated or recovered from an infection as per state rules to come inside.

There are now 10 control teams of three people each a police officer a health official and someone from the department of public order who roam the citys restaurants, bars and hairdressers and fine those disregarding the rules on the spot: Owners have to pay 500 euros, about $572, patrons 150 euros, $170.

Its pretty drastic, said Mr. Hanke, who has vaccine resisters in his own circle of friends. But we see no other way to get people to change their behavior.

Anecdotally at least, the tough approach might be paying off. Waiting times at mobile vaccination units increased to two hours this week, Mr. Hanke reported, suggesting that the threat of exclusion from much of indoor public life might be nudging more people to get a shot.

Several other German states are now working on similar regulations, introducing stricter mask mandates and instead of a negative test, making proof of vaccination or past infection mandatory for entry to many venues.

That may no longer be enough, said Sandra Ciesek, director of the Institute of Medical Virology at the University Hospital of Frankfurt and cosignatory of a paper by seven prominent scientists published last week, in which they urge politicians to speed up booster shots and consider a range of measures, including partial lockdowns for the unvaccinated or even a short-term national lockdown.

The absence of political leadership at the national level at a time when the number of new daily infections is soaring beyond 50,000 has added to the muddled approach to containing the virus.

Since her conservative party lost the national election in September, Ms. Merkel remains only as the head of a caretaker government while her likely successor, Olaf Scholz, has been absorbed by difficult coalition talks with two other parties.

Where is Angela Merkel? Der Spiegel asked in an article this week, before asking a few paragraphs lower: Where is Scholz?

It is a question many virologists across the country are asking, too, concerned that a lack of political leadership is wasting valuable time and potentially costing lives.

There is no real center of power and responsibility: The country is missing leadership, said Michael Meyer-Hermann, head of the department of Systems Immunology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research and a member of the council of experts that has advised Ms. Merkel throughout the pandemic.

The outgoing government no longer really reacts, and the incoming government is playing everything down, he added.

After the number of daily new coronavirus infections hit a record high on Nov. 3, reaching 33,949, German virologists sounded the alarm. The response from Mr. Scholzs future coalition partners was a statement promising that there would not be another lockdown.

For me it was a key moment, Professor Meyer-Hermann said. They act like the pandemic is over at a time when the numbers are exploding.

Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting.

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Germanys Fourth Covid Wave: A Pandemic of the Unvaccinated - The New York Times