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COVID updates: Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tests positive
As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.4 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 824,000 Americans.
Up to 40% of Covid-19 vaccine appointments are no-shows, health leaders have warned, as the government said it has met its target of offering all adults a jab by the end of the year.
One possible future many experts see: In the post-pandemic period, the virus causes colds for some and more serious illness for others, depending on their overall health, vaccine status and prior infections. Mutations will continue and might eventually require boosters every so often that are updated to better match new variants.
But human immune systems will continue to get better at recognizing and fighting back. Immunologist Ali Ellebedy at Washington University at St. Louis finds hope in the body’s amazing ability to remember germs it’s seen before and create multi-layer defenses.
Memory B cells are one of those layers, cells that live for years in the bone marrow, ready to swing into action and produce more antibodies when needed. But first those memory cells get trained in immune system boot camps called germinal centers, learning to do more than just make copies of their original antibodies.
In a new study, Ellebedy’s team found Pfizer vaccinations rev up “T helper cells” that act as the drill sergeant in those training camps, driving production of more diverse and stronger antibodies that may work even if the virus changes again.
Ellebedy said baseline population immunity has improved so much that even as breakthrough infections inevitably continue, there will be a drop in severe illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths — regardless of the next variant.
“We are not the same population that we were in December of 2019,” he said. “It’s different ground now.”
If you use Twitter, it’s a good idea to follow “Chise” - she is a very assiduous collector of all information on Covid. This “new variant” is not new, and apparently nowhere near as dangerous as Delta.Oh joy.......
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Covid warning as another new variant with '46 mutations' infects 12
A WARNING has been issued by scientists over another new COVID-19 variant discovered in Southern France.www.express.co.uk
Covid warning as new variant with '46 mutations' infects 12 in southern France
A WARNING has been issued by scientists over another new COVID-19 variant discovered in Southern France.
Scientists have rung the alarm bells over "the emergence of a new variant" in southern France.
It comes after 12 patients tested positive in the same region, and their tests showed "an atypical combination".
The index case had returned from travelling to Cameroon, suggesting to experts that it may have originated in the African country.
In a preprint paper, that is yet to be peer reviewed, experts from a French government-back programme said they had identified "46 mutations" in the variant.
The variant has been given the name B.1.640.2.
Its presence was first detected by experts at the IHU Mediterranee Infection in Marseille.
They announced on their Twitter earlier this month that they had detected a new variant in COVID-19 patients from Forcalquier, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region.
There are scores of new variants discovered all the time, but it does not necessarily mean they will be more dangerous than Delta or Alpha.
What makes a variant more well-known and dangerous is its ability to multiply because of the number of mutations it has in relation to the original virus.
This is when it becomes a "variant of concern" – like Omicron.
It remains to be seen in which category this new variant will fall.
But in the new paper, dated December 29, scientists said: "SARS-CoV-2 variants have become a major virological, epidemiological and clinical concern, particularly with regard to the risk of escape from vaccine-induced immunity."
It comes as France slashed the isolation period or vaccinated people in a bid to ease the financial and social burdens of the outbreak.
Self-isolation times for fully vaccinated people who test positive will drop from 10 days to seven on Monday – and can be cut down to five days with a negative test result.
Health Minister Olivier Véran said: "Unvaccinated people will have to isolate themselves for 10 days, with a possible exit after seven days under the same conditions.
France reported 219,126 new infections on Saturday and became the sixth country in the world to surpass 10 million total recorded cases of COVID-19.
I'll bet more than 9/10 of those primarily being treated for Covid are unvaccinated.Latest updates: latest NHS England figures show that only 8,200 of 13,045 Covid hospital patients were being treated primarily for Covid.
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WHO says Delta is still dominant globally and Omicron is not mild
While the infectious Omicron variant of COVID-19 appears to produce a less severe disease than the globally dominant Delta strain, it should not be categorised as "mild", World Health Organization officials say.www.abc.net.au
A scientist who reported the existence of a new Covid variant that combines characteristics of Delta and Omicron has insisted his findings are accurate after experts dismissed them as the result of laboratory samples becoming contaminated.
Dr Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, a global health expert, also tweeted that Deltacron was most likely the result of sample contamination, but did add: “With transmission levels of SARSCoV2 at all time highs globally, it is likely that recombination is occurring and may rise to levels that we start picking up these events more frequently. Will this lead to more concerning variants? That is possible but nobody knows.”
She continued: “The best thing we can do besides worrying about it and coining variant names that sound like a Transformers villain, is ensuring that vaccines are available to everyone and combining vaccination with other strategies that give the virus fewer opportunities to spread.”
Omicron is forcing us to reconsider how we deal with mild cases of COVID, which will never completely go away. It is doing so, unfortunately, in a chaotic and dangerous moment. For the next variant and for next winter, we need to plan in advance. The challenges ahead are already clear. Hospitals, which are stressed even in bad flu seasons, will have to deal with combined COVID and flu every winter. The coronavirus will also keep evolving, and new variants that keep eroding our immunity will emerge. In a series of three papers last week, a group of former Biden advisers laid out a long-term strategy to monitor all respiratory infections—including COVID, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus—and keep their collective burden below that of a bad flu season through more robust testing, surveillance, mitigation, and vaccine and therapy development. We’ve spent the past year lurching in reaction to new variants, but what the U.S. needs now is a big-picture goal for COVID, even if the coronavirus surprises us again.