Category Archives: Covid-19

Dear Campus Community,

We were very pleased to greet students as they returned to campus this week. With an extensive set of public health protocols in place to manage the impact of COVID-19, we welcome the start of the spring semester.

Vaccination continues to be the best public health measure to fight COVID-19. While vaccines do not prevent all infections, they have proven to be very effective at preventing severe illness and hospitalization.Earlier this week, we conducted two large-scale booster clinics, and we will continue to provide convenient access to vaccines.The Public Health Promotion Center (PHPC) plans to conduct vaccine clinicseach Thursday and Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Campus Center. Walk-ins are accepted, butwe encourage everyone to book an appointment.

This week we also distributed KN95 masksto departments, schools, colleges and residential halls across campus. Faculty, staff and students can also stop by the PHPC during operating hours to pick up two masks per person.We strongly urge you to use a high-grade mask, such as an N95, KN95 or KF94, or a double mask with a surgical mask under a cloth mask.

With the start of the semester, we have received some inquiries about testing protocols.Our approach to testing has been one of the most rigorous and effective aspects of the universitys pandemic mitigation efforts, and that commitment continues. With the development of vaccines over the past two years, our testing regimen has evolved to best address changing conditions.

Previously, the primary purpose of surveillance testing (testing everyone) was to identify individuals with COVID and isolate them from the community. In a vaccinated and boosted population, testing serves different purposes.We now employ a combination of more effective measures. These are especially valuable given how quickly the Omicron variant spreads, since the majority of people testing regularly are not identified as positive during their peak period of being contagious. Our current approach features continuous testing of wastewater on the scale of the entire campus, providing an accurate and real-time assessment of infectivity. Adaptive testing is then deployed to the populations showing increases in infectivity to identify individual cases. Meanwhile, convenient, unobserved voluntary testing is available and used regularly by the campus community. This comprehensive approach provides the PHPC enhanced tools to continuously analyze the state of the virus on our campus and enact real-time COVID-mitigation measures to keep our campus and the surrounding communities safe. These testing protocols, employed in concert with our vaccination and masking policies, are designed to create a safe environment for all, including vulnerable individuals with medical conditions, and families with young children at home who are not vaccinated.

The latest COVID-19 testing data for the UMass communityfrom Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 shows 191 new positive cases. The universitys cumulative positivity rate is 2.58%, down from last weeks rate of 6.33%.The states seven-day positivity rate is 10.37%. Most cases are of short duration resulting in mild-to-moderate illness, and there are no current hospitalizations.

Everyone must continue to monitor themselves forCOVID-19 symptomsevery day before coming to campus.If you feel unwell, stay home.

Thank you for all you are doing to care for yourselves and one another, and to support the health of our community.

Sincerely,

Co-Directors of the Public Health Promotion Center (PHPC)

Ann Becker, Public Health DirectoJeffrey Hescock, Executive Director of Environmental Health and Safety

Link:

COVID-19 Update from the UMass Public Health Promotion Center - UMass News and Media Relations

The Marine Corps has approved a third religious exemption to the required COVID-19 vaccine, according to its latest statement about the forces vaccination rate.

Historically religious exemptions to vaccines were completely nonexistent, with the Corps having no history of granting one over the past ten years, Marine spokesman Capt. Andrew Wood told Marine Corps Times in October 2021.

But in mid-January, the Corps said it granted two religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine the first for the U.S. military. Now, it has approved a third.

A total of 3,428 Marines have requested religious exemptions and 3,377 have been processed through Marine Corps Manpower and Reserve Affairs, leaving 51 to still be decided.

The Marine Corps, following Department of Defense policy, issued an order that all Marines were required to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 by the end of November 2021 or they would be separated.

The only way to avoid both the vaccine and separation was to get an approved medical, administrative or religious exception.

With the politicization of the current vaccine rollout, thousands of Marines have applied for religious exemptions, hoping to keep their careers and avoid the shot.

All current exemption requests are being reviewed on a case-by-case basis, Wood said in the emailed statement. Each request will be given full consideration with respect to the facts and circumstances submitted in the request.

The Marine Corps is tracking 627 administrative or medical exemptions to the vaccine, most of which are temporary, Wood said.

With the third Marine receiving the exemption, the Marine Corps is approving just 0.088% of all religious exemption requests.

The Marine Corps has a compelling governmental interest in mission accomplishment at the individual, unit, and organizational levels, Wood said. Adjudication Authorities pay particular attention to how religious accommodation request determinations will impact the Marines and units ability to accomplish the mission and consider the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling government interest.

Currently 95% of the active duty Marine Corps is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while 97% of active duty Marines are fully or partially vaccinated.

For the reserves, 87% of the force is fully vaccinated while 88% of the force is fully or partially vaccinated.

Holding true to its promise to separate Marines who refuse the vaccine, the Corps already has administratively separated 399 Marines, Wood said.

No other U.S. military branch has yet approved any religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine.

In the active duty Army, 2,910 permanent religious exemptions have been requested, with 266 disapproved so far and zero approved, according to data released Wednesday.

More here:

Another Marine receives a religious exemption to the COVID-19 vaccine - Marine Corps Times

Vaccines have shown themselves to be the best defense against a serious case of COVID-19: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unvaccinated adults were about 13 times more likely to be hospitalized with the disease than vaccinated adults as of late November.

But vaccines and the antibodies they generate are just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to fighting off the coronavirus. The immune system has other sets of defenders that find and kill infected cells, then preserve a living record of the virus, bacteria or other infectious agent so the body can respond faster the next time its under assault.

And speed is essential, said E. John Wherry, director of the University of Pennsylvanias Institute for Immunology.

During an infection, its a race, with the immune system pressing to stop the virus before it has multiplied to a debilitating level, Wherry explained. Thats particularly true for the Omicron variant, which replicates at an alarming rate.

Heres a breakdown of how the bodys immune system works and how its been tested by Omicron:

Think of the immune system as having three layers of defense. One tries to keep hostile molecules pathogens on the outside, looking in. That job is performed by the skin, the bodys largest organ, whose cells can defeat invaders and warn the rest of the immune system that trouble is at hand.

The second layer tries to stop the attackers once theyve entered the body, but before they have infected cells. This is where the bone marrow comes in. It produces natural killer or NK cells as well as B cells, the ones that generate antibodies. Both are types of white blood cells, or lymphocytes.

We have natural killer or NK cells in the tonsils, lymph nodes and spleen, ready to fight any attackers.

(National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

NKs earned their name because they arent produced in response to an attacker; theyre already present and ready to kill cells that dont belong in the body, such as tumor cells. NKs are part of the innate immune system, in scientific terms. According to researchers at Rockefeller University, NKs hang out in the tonsils, lymph nodes and spleen, then rush to confront attackers where they emerge.

Antibodies, on the other hand, are generated after an attacker is discovered, making them part of what scientists call the adaptive immune system. They attach themselves to specific pathogens, which then get gobbled up and destroyed by other members of the immune systems team.

In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, different antibodies bind to different parts of the virus, including the spike protein the virus uses to enter a healthy cell and replicate itself over and over. If the spike protein is gummed up by an antibody, the virus cant infect a cell.

Its conceivable that if youre freshly vaccinated or boosted, you could have so many antibodies ready to attack that you wont become infected, said Trudy U. Rey, a virologist and science communicator. This is called sterilizing immunity, although in the case of COVID-19, it would be merely temporary. But thats not the goal of a COVID-19 vaccination. (More on that later.)

A more common scenario is that some quantity of invading coronaviruses get past the antibodies. Cells have some innate defenses that can defeat the invaders, but SARS-CoV-2 has shown itself capable of evading them. Happily, there is a third line of defense: T cells.

T cells in the upper chests thymus gland can detect pathogens after theyve gotten inside a cell, where antibodies cant find them.

(National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

Like B cells and NKs, T cells are white blood cells that originate in the bone marrow, but they develop in and emanate from the thymus gland in the upper chest. Their special power is their ability to detect viruses and other germs after theyve gotten inside a cell, where theyre hidden from antibodies.

T cells come in two basic flavors: killers and messengers. The lethal version detects cells that have been infected with a virus, then kills them (by releasing a toxic version of a granule called a cytokine) to stop the virus from replicating. Wherry called this destroying the village to save the nation. The messengers alert B cells to the new threat, and they respond by making antibodies designed to meet that threat.

Its a complex molecular dance with many other vital parts, including dendritic cells or DCs, which act as sentinels and couriers within the immune system. Among other things, the DCs tell the T cells which specific threat to hunt down and kill.

Once an infection is overcome, the immune system naturally winds down and sheds some antibodies and T cells. But some T cells live on as memory T cells, ready to respond by killing infected cells and stimulating the production of new antibodies if the same attacker returns. And some B cells remain as memory cells to handle antibody production.

Daniela Weiskopf, an immunologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, said the bodys adaptive immune system is very specific. Thats good, she said, because otherwise youd be in a constant state of inflammation. But it also means that antibodies and T cells are limited in what they can bind to or recognize. They need to learn their enemy before they can defend against it.

Vaccines help us create antibodies and memory T cells that recognize a virus and infected cells so our immune systems react more quickly. Booster shots reinforce this process.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Vaccination, Weiskopf said, is nothing but training the immune system without getting sick. COVID-19 vaccines create antibodies that recognize the spike protein and other characteristics of SARS-CoV-2, along with memory T cells that can recognize cells that have been infected with the virus.

The more often your immune system sees a threat, Weiskopf said, the more detailed it makes the response. The speedier, too once your system has these memory cells, she said, it can react much, much, much faster the next time the same pathogen comes knocking. Hence the value of booster shots.

As viruses mutate, the parts that antibodies attach themselves to may change. If they change too much, the antibodies wont be as good at binding to them and preventing them from entering cells. That appears to be the case with the Omicron variant, which has multiple mutations that affect its spike protein.

But Omicrons mutations havent tempered the response of memory T cells, Weiskopf, Rey and Wherry said. Thats because the mutations havent had much effect on the parts of the virus that T cells recognize.

Beyond that, Weiskopf said, each person has multiple different T cells, and their T cells are different from everyone elses. If by some rare misfortune a new variant managed to dodge all of your memory T cells, she said, it would still encounter plenty of effective T cells in the rest of the population.

Rey added that much of the talk about waning immunity is based on the declining presence of what are known as neutralizing antibodies, which can block the virus from attaching to a cell and replicating. But other types of antibodies remain in the system.

There have even been studies that have shown that just because an antibody doesnt neutralize, it doesnt mean it cant do anything, Rey said. For example, she said, by binding to parts of the virus other than the spike protein, it may prompt other immune cells to join the fight.

If youve never been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 or to COVID-19 vaccines, the coronavirus wont encounter any customized antibodies or T cells on its way to your respiratory system. Even if your immune system is healthy, it takes a week to 10 days to transform undifferentiated T cells into killers and get them in place to confront infected cells, Wherry said. During that time, the virus is replicating exponentially and spreading through the body.

But if youve been immunized, you can have killer T cells ready in four days or fewer, Wherry said. That head start makes a huge difference in keeping an infection from raging out of control.

Unvaccinated people may nevertheless have some T cells ready to defend at the first sign of an infection, Weiskopf said. Researchers found some T cells that responded to SARS-CoV-2 in samples taken from people whod never been exposed to the virus, she said. These cells created in response to the common cold, which can be caused by other kinds of coronaviruses helped speed up and strengthen the immune response, she said.

Not everyone whos caught a cold will have T cells with this kind of versatility, she added. But the discovery suggests to some researchers that scientists might be able to devise a vaccine capable of attacking any coronavirus variant by prompting the immune system to make T cells like these. (Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of The Times, has another company that is exploring this possibility.)

At any rate, the more a virus replicates in the body, the bigger the response from killer T cells. That raises a second issue, Wherry said: T cells cant go on killing tissue forever; at some point, the system has to shift into repair mode. Thats why there are regulatory T cells to act as a counterweight on this whole system, helping to rein in the killer cells, he said.

Sometimes, however, the system doesnt throw the off switch soon enough. Wherry said that for some seriously ill COVID-19 patients, the virus spreads to many places inside their bodies, and a huge number of killer T cells flood their systems with very damaging cytokines. Clinicians help those patients by suppressing their immune systems to tamp down this response, he said.

If they recover from COVID-19, unvaccinated people will have antibodies and memory cells to help protect against the next encounter with SARS-CoV-2. But Rey said a persons immune response is much better after vaccination than with the natural immunity conferred by an infection. The reinfection rate for unvaccinated people who only have natural immunity is twice as high as the infection rate for people whove been vaccinated, she said.

Over the course of the pandemic, elderly people have tended to suffer far more serious consequences from COVID-19 than children have. There appear to be at least a couple of reasons for that.

Rey pointed to a study led by researchers at the Charit-Universittsmedizin Berlin, which found certain innate defenses in childrens nasal passages that may help them clobber the virus before it can replicate wildly.

This type of innate immune response seems to be delayed in older adults, and in an effort to catch up, may result in excessive inflammation, thereby ultimately causing more severe damage, she wrote in a blog post.

Wherry said the immune system is susceptible to the effects of aging, just like the rest of the body.

One of the key things is you lose production of these new, what we call naive, T cells, he said. These act as blank slates, ready to learn new threats. Late in life, Wherry said, they become a much smaller portion of the cells you can call into action.

As we age, problems emerge in other elements of the immune system as well, he said. Altogether, he said, these issues make it harder for the immune system to get out of the gate.

Read more:

How the body's immune system tries to fight off COVID-19 - Los Angeles Times

New York City's surge of COVID-19 cases fueled by the omicron variant appears to be falling just as quickly as it rose.

Tens of thousands of infections are still being reported every day, and the test positivity rate is still above 20%. However, after new cases increased 26-fold in just one month, they have now fallen by 57% over the last week, an ABC News analysis found.

After a single-day peak of 50,803 COVID-19 cases reported on Jan. 3, just 9,202 cases were reported on Jan. 14, according to data from the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.

In addition, hospitalizations are declining, and the number of wastewater samples that have detected the virus have also plunged.

"Infections are coming down, even visits to the emergency room are coming down," Dr. Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist with the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, told ABC News. "And usually we see when there is a surge, we see visits to the emergency rooms going up."

New York City COVID-19 cases per day

Mokdad, who helps lead a model that projects COVID-19 cases around the country, added, "All the indications of the people being tested and found to be positive show that [omicron] appears on its way down."

On Dec. 2, the first case of omicron tied to New York City was reported in a Minnesota resident who had traveled to the Big Apple in November to attend an anime convention.

From there, COVID-19 cases began spiking. Within two weeks, the city was reporting an average of nearly 7,600 infections per day, up from 1,600 per day.

Studies have since shown that omicron is more likely to pass between vaccinated people than prior variants, though vaccines still dramatically reduce the risk of severe illness.

Coupled with the cold weather and people gathering for the holidays, Mokdad said it is no surprise the virus spread as quickly as it did.

People wait in line to receive a COVID-19 test, Jan. 4, 2022, in New York. The U.S. recorded more than 1 million cases on Jan. 3, 2022, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, as the Omicron variant spread at a blistering pace.

Even coronavirus levels in wastewater samples were showing that a surge was coming, according to wastewater analytics company Biobot.

"The scale of the amount of virus that was detected in wastewater was far greater than any point in the pandemic, so much so that [the company] had to rebuild some of the graphs around the scales, because so much more virus was being collected more than any time," said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist who is a member of Biobot's board of advisers and an ABC News contributor. "It gave us that early sense that we were going to deal with this massive surge."

However, there are signs the city may have hit its omicron peak.

New York City has been reporting nearly 12 straight days of COVID-19 case declines and is averaging about 15,000 new infections per day, down from roughly 36,000 just two weeks ago.

In yet another sign that the city's surge may be ebbing, New York City no longer holds the nation's highest case rate -- Rhode Island now does, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hospitalizations have also declined from an average of 992 new admissions on Jan. 6 to 496 as of Jan. 15, according to the city's health department.

Mount Sinai Health System, one of New York City's largest hospital systems, has seen new daily COVID-19 hospital admissions remain relatively flat over the last week to 10 days. About one-third of patients are admitted for other reasons and then test positive during their stays, Dr. Bernard Camins, medical director for infection prevention at Mount Sinai, told ABC News.

A person walks past a COVID-19 testing tent during the coronavirus pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, Jan. 14, 2022.

He said hospitalizations will not significantly come down until two or three weeks from now, because they are a lagging indicator.

"When people get sick enough with COVID, now they are going to come into the hospital, and it does take a delay," Camins said. "Sometimes people start having symptoms but they're not sick enough to need the hospital until Day 7 or 10 days later."

He added, "Eventually the ones who were coming into the hospital with 'moderate symptoms' or maybe severe enough to need oxygen, it does take them a few more days lag in terms of needing ventilators."

A rapid rise in cases followed by a dramatic decline is similar to what has been seen in other countries that detected omicron before the U.S.

In South Africa, where the variant was first identified, the surge looked like an "ice pick," according to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. In early December, the country was averaging about 10,000 cases per day, quickly rising to 20,000 by mid-December.

People wait in line at a COVID-19 testing site in Times Square, New York, Dec. 13, 2021.

But, by early January, when New York City was experiencing its peak, the average number of COVID-19 infections in South Africa had already fallen to about 8,000 per day.

"What we know and are certain about from data from South Africa and the U.K., when omicron takes hold in a location, it takes about a month to go up and a month to come down," Mokdad said.

Even though the surge is not entirely over yet, Mokdad said New York's decline is a signal for the rest of the country, with the Midwest about one week behind and the West Coast two or three weeks behind.

The University of Washington's own model suggests that the U.S. will peak at about 1.2 million cases Jan.17, and then all states will be on their way down by the end of January, Mokdad said, adding that he is still encouraging vaccination and mask-wearing.

"Everybody who's out and about will be infected by then," he said. "This is like infecting everybody out there, so basically, it's running out of people to infect and it's going to start coming down because there's no more people to infect."

Continue reading here:

COVID-19 cases in NYC show omicron infections may be plummeting - ABC News

A leading World Health Organization official says the worst of the coronavirus pandemic including deaths, hospitalizations and lockdowns could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly

By JAMEY KEATEN Associated Press

January 18, 2022, 8:03 PM

4 min read

GENEVA -- The worst of the coronavirus pandemic deaths, hospitalizations and lockdowns could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly, the head of emergencies at the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

Dr. Michael Ryan, speaking during a panel discussion on vaccine inequity hosted by the World Economic Forum, said we may never end the virus because such pandemic viruses end up becoming part of the ecosystem.

But we have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that weve been talking about, he said.

WHO has slammed the imbalance in COVID-19 vaccinations between rich and poor countries as a catastrophic moral failure. Fewer than 10% of people in lower-income countries have received even one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Ryan told the virtual gathering of world and business leaders that if vaccines and other tools aren't shared fairly, the tragedy of the virus, which has so far killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide, would continue.

What we need to do is get to low levels of disease incidence with maximum vaccination of our populations, so nobody has to die, Ryan said. The issue is: Its the death. Its the hospitalizations. Its the disruption of our social, economic, political systems thats caused the tragedy not the virus."

Ryan also waded into the growing debate about whether COVID-19 should be considered endemic, a label some countries like Spain have called for to better help live with the virus, or still a pandemic involving intensified measures that many countries have taken to fight the spread.

Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities. Endemic in itself does not mean good. Endemic just means its here forever," he said.

Public health officials have warned it is highly unlikely COVID-19 will be eliminated and say it will continue to kill people, though at much lower levels, even after it becomes endemic.

Fellow panelist Gabriela Bucher, executive director of the anti-poverty organization Oxfam International, cited the enormous urgency of fairer distribution of vaccines and the need for large-scale production. She said resources to fight the pandemic were being hoarded by a few companies and a few shareholders.

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, decried the total collapse of global cooperation and solidarity over the last two years, saying it was totally unacceptable how few people in Africa have gotten vaccine shots. His agency says only 10% of Africas 1.2 billion people are fully vaccinated.

He also sought to douse the belief among some that vaccine hesitancy is widespread in Africa, citing studies that say 80% of Africans were ready to get shots if the vaccines were available.

The comments came on the second day of the online alternative to the annual World Economic Forum gathering, which was postponed over pandemic health concerns.

In speeches at the event, world leaders like Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett discussed approaches to the pandemic. He said his country, which quickly rolled out a widespread vaccination campaign, has a strategy of being at the forefront of the medicines and the vaccines against COVID-19.

Israel's Health Ministry says 62% of people there are fully vaccinated, including with booster shots.

Citing advanced research in Israel, Bennett said, We want to be first in the world to know how vaccines and the new variants respond to one another.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said his country had high levels of vaccination because society values protecting the elderly and the vulnerable. He plans to keep stringent border controls in place until the end of February.

He said he was trying to balance restrictions with keeping the economy open but that a zero COVID policy against the omicron variant is not possible nor appropriate.

In a separate press briefing Tuesday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the omicron variant continues to sweep the world, adding there were 18 million new COVID-19 cases reported last week.

Associated Press reporters Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed.

Follow all AP stories on the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.

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COVID-19 health emergency could be over this year, WHO says - ABC News

A recent study used surveillance data for the entire population of North Carolina to evaluate the durability of protection provided by the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

This large observational study showed that all vaccines provided a high degree of protection against hospitalizations and death at least 6 months after vaccination.

However, there was a gradual decline in the ability of these vaccines to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection following 1-2 months after vaccination, with the lowest level of protection observed in individuals receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The studys first author Dr. Dan-Yu Lin, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Medical News Today, Many decisions in the United States about COVID-19 vaccination and boosters were based on data from other countries, particularly Israeli data on the Pfizer vaccine.

Our study provides a precise and comprehensive characterization of the effectiveness of the three vaccines employed in the U.S. To my knowledge, this is the largest study on vaccine effectiveness, covering more than 10 million people.

The study appears in the journal New England Journal of Medicine.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency approval for the use of the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines and the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine against COVID-19 between December 2020 and February 2021.

They based the authorization of these vaccines on short-term safety and efficacy data from clinical trials. However, they did not know how long the protection afforded by the three approved COVID-19 vaccines would last.

Moreover, the rise in the number of vaccinated people developing COVID-19 a few months after immunization and the emergence of the Delta variant led to concerns about the durability of protection provided by these vaccines.

Multiple studies have since evaluated the long-term efficiency of these vaccines. These studies have reported a decline in protection a few months after receiving the last dose of the vaccine. However, this period also coincided with the emergence of the Delta variant.

Thus, whether this decline in efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines was due to waning immunity, the emergence of new variants, or both was unclear.

The objective of the present study was to characterize further the durability of protection provided by the three FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines.

Previous studies have evaluated the effectiveness of vaccines by estimating the cumulative or overall incidence of breakthrough infections over 1-3 months after vaccination. Dr. Lin noted that Unlike other studies, we estimated the vaccine effectiveness in reducing the current risk of disease as a continuous function of time elapsed since vaccination, as opposed to cumulative incidence over a broad time interval.

To evaluate the long-term effectiveness of these vaccines, the researchers used data collected by the North Carolina COVID-19 Surveillance System and COVID-19 vaccine management system between December 2020 and September 8, 2021.

The North Carolina Covid-19 Surveillance System collects data on the number of COVID-19 cases and clinical outcomes for COVID-19 positive individuals for the entire population of North Carolina. On the other hand, the COVID-19 vaccine management system is an online repository of vaccination history.

The researchers found that Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were most effective at preventing a SARS-CoV-2 infection 2 months after the first dose, before gradually declining.

At 2 months after vaccination, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were 94.5% and 95.9% effective at preventing a SARS-CoV-2 infection, respectively. The effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines subsequently declined to 66.6% and 80.3% after 7 months, respectively.

The greater effectiveness of the Moderna vaccine (100 microgram [mcg] per dose) could be due to the higher levels of mRNA present in each dose than the Pfizer vaccine (30 mcg per dose).

The single-dose Johnson and Johnson reached peak effectiveness of 74.8% 1 month after vaccination, which gradually reduced to 54.4% after 5 months.

These changes in the effectiveness of the three vaccines did not differ with sex, race, and ethnicity. However, the vaccine effectiveness was lower in individuals over the age of 64 years than in the younger population.

The researchers also compared the patterns of changes in vaccine effectiveness over time in individuals who received their vaccinations at different dates after the vaccines became available in December 2020.

The researchers found that these patterns of change in vaccine effectiveness over time were similar in individuals, regardless of when they received the vaccine. This similarity in patterns of changes in vaccine effectiveness suggests that there was a decline in immunity conferred by the vaccines, regardless of the emergence of the Delta variant.

Furthermore, in individuals who received their first dose of the mRNA vaccines before March 2021, the emergence of the Delta virus was associated with a further 10% and 15% decline in the effectiveness of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, respectively.

These data suggest a natural waning of the immunity the vaccines confer and a decline in immunity due to the emergence of the Delta variant.

The researchers then analyzed the effectiveness of the three vaccines in preventing hospitalizations and mortality.

Although more than 800,000 people in North Carolina reported COVID-19 during the study period between December 2020 and September 2021, the researchers only had access to hospitalization and survival data on 40% and 60% of these COVID-19 cases, respectively.

Analyzing these data, the researchers found that all three vaccines, especially the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, provided high levels of protection against hospitalization and death at least 6 months after vaccination.

The Pfizer vaccine was 88.7% and 90.5% effective at preventing hospitalization and death, respectively, due to COVID-19 at 7 months after vaccination. Similarly, the Moderna vaccine had an effectiveness of over 94% against hospitalizations (94.1%) and death (95.5%) at the end of 7 months after the first dose.

At 6 months following vaccination, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 80% effective in preventing hospitalizations and 70% effective in protecting against death.

Similar to the effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 infections, the efficacy of all three vaccines in preventing severe illness was lower in individuals aged 65 years and older.

Describing the implications of the study, Dr. Lin said, First, all three vaccines are durably effective against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death. Thus, unvaccinated people should get vaccinated right away.

Second, the Pfizer vaccine is less durable than the Moderna vaccine, so the Pfizer vaccine recipients should get boosters sooner than the Moderna vaccine recipients.

Third, older adults have lower vaccine effectiveness and higher risks of hospitalization and death than younger people, so there is a greater urgency for older adults to get booster shots.

Fourth, the effectiveness of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine starts to decline after 1 month, so perhaps the Johnson & Johnson vaccine recipients should be administered a second dose after 1 month; if a second dose needs to be taken soon after the first one, there is no practical advantage of taking the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Finally, because the majority of the vaccinees in the U.S. were vaccinated more than 7 months ago and only a small percentage of the population has received boosters, waning immunity is likely contributing to the breakthrough infections with the Omicron variant. Thus, vaccination and boosting is our best hope against the Omicron variant or any new variants that may arise in the future, added Dr. Lin.

For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.

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mRNA vaccines offer lasting protection against severe COVID-19 - Medical News Today

HONG KONG, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Thousands of people in Hong Kong volunteered on Wednesday to adopt unwanted hamsters after a mass cull order from the government over COVID-19 fears raised alarm that panicky owners would abandon their pets.

Authorities ordered on Tuesday 2,000 hamsters from dozens of pet shops and storage facilities to be culled after tracing a coronavirus outbreak to a worker in the Little Boss petshop, where 11 hamsters subsequently tested positive for COVID-19.

Scientists around the world and Hong Kong health and veterinary authorities have said there was no evidence that animals play a major role in human contagion with the coronavirus.

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But having pursued a policy of zero tolerance for COVID-19, Health Secretary Sophia Chan said on Tuesday she could not rule out any transmission possibilities and therefore the government could take no chances.

Soon after, health workers in hazmat suits were seen walking out of pet shops around the city carrying red plastic bags into their vans. Some 150 of the petshop's customers were sent into quarantine.

Public broadcaster RTHK said some hamster owners were seen handing over their animals at a government facility in the New Territories, while groups swiftly formed on social media to identify new owners for unwanted pet rodents.

Ocean, 29, a hamster owner and the administrator of 'Hong Kong the Cute Hamster Group' on the Telegram social media app, said the group was contacted by almost 3,000 people willing to take care of unwanted animals temporarily.

Three young owners were pressured by their families to get rid of their hamsters even though they all owned them for more than half a year, said Ocean, who declined to give her last name fearing angry reactions from those who support the cull.

"Many pet owners are unfamiliar with the exact risks and give up their hamsters, she said.

Bowie, 27, one of those who volunteered in the group, is now the owner of two new hamsters.

"This is ridiculous," said Bowie, who already owned three other hamsters. "Animals life is also life. Today it can be hamsters or rabbits, tomorrow it can be cats or dogs.

Officers in protective suits walk outside a closed pet shop in Mong Kok district after a hamster cull was ordered to curb the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Hong Kong, China, January 19, 2022. REUTERS/Lam Yik

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The local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), which runs veterinary clinics, told Reuters "numerous" worried pet owners have been contacting them for advice.

"We urge the pet owners not to panic or abandon their pets," SPCA said in a statement.

SPCA listed ways to maintain strict personal hygiene for the safety of humans and animals, including never to kiss, cough at or snort near pets, and washing hands after handling them.

The average lifespan of a hamster is about two years, according to animal welfare groups.

'OVERBLOWN'

Aside from ordering the cull, authorities asked dozens of petshops to close, while imports and sales of small mammals were suspended. Buyers of hamsters after Dec. 22, 2021 were asked to hand them to authorities for culling and not leave them on streets.

Authorities set up a hotline for enquiries. It was unclear how many hamsters had been handed in.

Most Hong Kong newspapers featured pictures of people in hazmat suits in front of pet shops and illustrations of hamsters on their front page on Wednesday, with pro-Beijing Ta Kung Pao daily showcasing a tiny rodent inside a spiked virus particle.

Vanessa Barrs, professor of companion animal health at City University of Hong Kong, said the move to cull the hamsters up for sale could be justified on public health protection grounds, but fears of infection at home were overblown.

"Millions of people around the world have pets, and there have been no cases proven of pets transmitting infection to other humans," Barrs said.

"The theoretical risk is there, but it just doesn't happen."

Register

Additional reporting by Aleksander Solum; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Thousands in Hong Kong volunteer to adopt hamsters amid COVID-19 fears - Reuters

Ending the COVID-19 pandemic requires an understanding of how to manage the inflammatory dysfunction that the virus causes.

Consider that whether young or old, our bodies never encountered SARS-CoV-2 before 2019. Unlike a seasonal respiratory infectiona cold or flu virus that a mature immune system has seen many times before in different strainsSARS-CoV-2 requires an entirely new immune response.

That has a profound effect on how our bodies respond to it. Without existing antibodies that target the virus, the immune system launches an extremely aggressive inflammatory reaction.

In fact, thanks to COVID-19, were dealing with a larger number of cases of severe, runaway inflammation around the world than weve ever seen with previous respiratory infections. As a pharmacist with a background in pharmacological research, Ive been especially interested in this inflammatory response and the tools we have to manage it. Its not just the fight against the virus and its transmission we need to understand, but how we can deal with the inflammatory dysfunction that it leads to.

COVID-19 as inflammatory overdrive: What that means and how our bodys innate intelligence really responds

We usually experience a strong inflammatory reaction, such as fever, chills, sore throat, and other common symptoms of being sick. It can be taxing to the body on a cellular level as well, but typically the body has guardrails that keep the immune response focused where it needs to be and constrained so that it wont do collateral damage.

Our bodies quickly eradicate the invader, then switch off the inflammation and return to normal. Unfortunately, in COVID-19 infections, the immune response can become dysregulated.

In the most extreme scenario, immune cells produce more and more immune mediators called cytokines, which in turn attract other immune cells, which in turn produce more cytokines, in a runaway feedback loop that can become dangerous or deadly. This cycle is responsible for the lung damage that occurs in COVID-19 cases, which shows up on the characteristic X-ray images we associate with COVID-19.

Unfortunately, immune mediators can also attack the kidneys, the cardiac system, and cause significant blood coagulation problems and clotting. This inflammatory crisis, called a cytokine storm, is something that most people probably never heard of until COVID-19 came into existence.

Cytokine storms have actually been recognized in medical science for a few decades now and may be what killed so many healthy young people during the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918. Cytokine storms are the core part of the process that drives sepsis, a dangerous whole-body reaction to an infection that dumps huge numbers of cytokines into the blood. Its remarkable how many people are now familiar with this once-obscure term, and how relevant the idea of inflammation has become in our understanding of disease.

Because cytokine storms are hard to predict and happen in extreme situations, there just hasnt been enough research into preventing them. When they occur, physicians turn to some extremely potent immune-suppressing steroid drugs to stop them.

When it comes to COVID-19, though, steroids are blunt tools. Given early in the infection, steroids can suppress immune activity so much that the infection is able to progress further, leading to more severe disease.

Given later on, they can save a persons life; however, tissue damage has already occurred and it takes a bigger intervention to stop it from progressing. Steroids that suppress the immune system also increase the risk of secondary bacterial infections.

Similarly, the inherent risks of strong immune-suppressing steroids may outweigh the benefits they would offer at preventing the post-illness COVID-19 symptoms of inflammation, including inflammation in the brain and nervous system. Those symptoms include brain fog, ongoing fatigue, and loss of smell and tastewhen they continue for weeks or months it is known as long COVID, which represents the other major challenge with this disease.

Questions for research: Antivirals or anti-inflammatories?

The omicron variant is currently surging around the world, poised to reach every corner of the population and infect even those who are vaccinated. While the news on big pharma is focused on antivirals, anti-inflammatories are the real belle of the ball.

We need to find safer, more accessible ways to reduce inflammatory symptoms for larger numbers of people with COVID-19, quickly and at low cost. We also need to find ways to target the more destructive aspects of inflammation and prevent the lasting post-infection symptoms, without preventing the immune system from doing its work to clear the virus.

About the Author

Jackie Iversen, RPh, MS, thought leader and founder, head of Clinical Development at Sen-Jam Pharmaceutical.

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The Real Reason Why COVID-19 is Exceedingly Difficult To Manage - Pharmacy Times

The number of COVID-19 patients in Maine hospitals remained above 400 on Wednesday for the 8th consecutive day, but the number in critical care dropped to its lowest total since early December.

According to data from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 411 individuals hospitalized on Wednesday, an increase of 11 from Tuesday. Of those, 102 are in critical care beds and 53 are on ventilators.

As the omicron variant has spread rapidly throughout the state, overall hospitalizations have gone up but the number of patients needing critical care or ventilators has declined, a sign that omicron is causing less severe symptoms for some.

State health officials also reported 1,545 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, the first full case update since last Friday, and 30 additional deaths.

Maines pandemic death toll is now 1,688. Only Hawaii and Vermont have seen fewer deaths per capita during the pandemic.

The seven-day case average now stands at 915 cases, compared to 714 cases per day two week ago, although the actual rate of new infections is believed to be much higher.

Daily case updates, both in Maine and elsewhere, have become a less reliable metric for current virus transmission and significantly understate the rate of infections because of the staggering volume of positive tests flooding into state health offices and the inability of workers to keep up with screening them.

The Maine CDC, for example, has seen a significant increase in the number of positive tests received in the last two weeks, but that hasnt translated into a similar rise in the daily count of confirmed cases, which suggests staff are dealing with a major backlog of tests to process. Many of the cases reported Wednesday date back a week or two.

The state has received more than 2,000 positive test results a day for nearly the entire month of January and last week topped 3,000 per day. That is up sharply from about 1,000 positive tests a day in December and between 400 and 600 a day in September and October. Because an infected person can test positive more than once, duplicates have to be identified and removed before the state reports the number of confirmed cases.

Maine CDC director Dr. Nirav Shah is expected to address case data reporting and other topics at a media briefing on Wednesday at 2 p.m.

Other indicators show the omicron variant continues to spread rapidly through the state.

Maines most recent seven-day positivity rate was a pandemic high 21 percent, which means more than 1 out of every 5 tests conducted is coming back positive. Additionally, the state is processing more tests than ever 905 per 100,000 people on a seven-day average and that doesnt even include at-home tests, the results of which are not always reported to the CDC.

The overall increase in hospitalizations is still adding to the tremendous strain hospitals already are facing. Dozens of Maine National Guard members will arrive this week as hospitals across the state to assist in non-clinical roles that will help free up needed beds.

Vaccinations, meanwhile, have fallen off after a ramp-up in November and December, when boosters were first approved for many adults and when children ages 5-11 became eligible. Overall, Maine has administered 971,527 final doses of vaccine, which means 72.3 percent of all residents are considered fully vaccinated.

Additionally, 533,870 individuals have gotten booster shots, which accounts for 39.7 percent of the population. The only state with a higher percentage of residents who have gotten boosters is Vermont, according to a state-by-state tracker from Bloomberg.

This story will be updated

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State reports 1545 new cases of COVID-19 and 30 additional deaths - Press Herald

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) New today, a new COVID-19 testing option for schools, to replace the Test and Stay Program.

The state will now offer free at home covid tests to those who sign up. A big step as these take home test kits have been in high demand across the state.

Kelly Trudeau, Director of Giggle Gardens Learning Center told 22News, When the kids are getting tested at school and then when they come here, its definitely an amazing thing so that we dont have to worry about them.

Since the start of the 2021-2022 school year, the states education department has been determined to keep kids in the classroom. With this goal in mind, the Baker administration created the Test and Stay program for public schools across the Commonwealth.

If students or educators are exposed to COVID, the program allows them to remain in class as long as they test negative, instead of quarantining at home.

Now, this new initiative will eliminate contract tracing, instead students and staff will receive at-home test kits on a weekly basis, if they so wish.

Gov. Charlie Baker stated, This new testing program, based on conversations with school districts is just the latest way that we think we can help keep kids in school.

The tests that will be administered through the program, come from a supply of 26 million that the Baker administration released early this month.

For us to be able to implement that program would be amazing, so that way we could have kids stay in the program and also the teachers too, added Trudeau.

Schools will receive tests for students whose families opt in during the week of January 31.

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New COVID-19 testing option for schools to replace the Test and Stay program - WWLP.com