HONG KONG, Dec 14 (Reuters) – A growing number of China’s doctors and nurses are catching COVID-19 and some have been asked to keep working, as people showing mostly moderate symptoms throng hospitals and clinics, according to medical staff and dozens of posts on social media.
China’s health authority did not immediately respond to a request for comment on infections among medical staff.
Health experts say China’s sudden loosening of strict COVID rules is likely to trigger a surge in severe cases in coming months, and hospitals in big cities are already showing signs of strain.
Reuters was unable to immediately get verification from hospitals on waiting times and bed utilisation rates, but photographs circulated on social media showed patients in Beijing and neighbouring Baoding waiting for hours to get treated.
Health officials have been recommending that people with mild COVID symptoms quarantine at home and have also said most of the cases reported in the country are mild or asymptomatic.
“Our hospital is overwhelmed with patients. There are 700, 800 people with fever coming every day,” said a doctor surnamed Li at a tertiary hospital in Sichuan province.
“We are running out of medicine stocks for fever and cold, now waiting for delivery from our suppliers. A few nurses at the fever clinic were tested positive, there aren’t any special protective measures for hospital staff and I believe many of us will soon get infected,” Li added.
A nurse at another hospital in Chengdu said: “I was swamped with nearly 200 patients with COVID symptoms last night.”
Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at Hong Kong University, said insufficient medical resources to cope with an overload of COVID cases contributed to a surge in deaths in Hong Kong when infections peaked there earlier this year, and he warned that the same was going to happen in China.
“One of the reasons we had such a high mortality rate (in Hong Kong) is because we simply didn’t have enough hospital resources to cope in the surge. And unfortunately, that is what is going to happen in about one to two months time in the mainland,” Cowling said.
He said a surge in severe cases coupled with a surge of mild cases among the elderly who needed monitoring overwhelmed Hong Kong’s hospitals, and recommended separate isolation facilities for the elderly with mild cases to free up hospital beds.
State media Xinhua reported on Tuesday in capital Beijing 50 patients are currently in a serious or critical condition in hospital with COVID.
‘WHAT A MESS’
The sudden loosening of restrictions has sparked long queues outside fever clinics since last week in a worrying sign that a wave of infections is building, even though official tallies of new cases have trended lower recently as authorities eased back on testing.
Some hospitals in Beijing have up to 80% of their staff infected, but many of them are still required to work due to staff shortages, a doctor in a large public hospital in Beijing told Reuters, adding he has spoken to his peers at other big hospitals in the capital.
All operations and surgeries have been cancelled at his hospital unless the patient is “dying tomorrow”, he said, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject.
A post on the Weibo social media platform recounted a recent experience at the emergency ward at Beijing Hospital.
“Those who have not been to the emergency department of Beijing Hospital don’t know what a mess it has become,” wrote a Weibo user called Moshang. The post went on to say that people in serious need of surgery were being made to wait.
Beijing Hospital did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.
Wan Ling, a head nurse at a hospital in Huashan in China’s Anhui province, wrote on Weibo that many of her infected colleagues were relatively serious and had high fever.
Several doctors from Wuhan province’s top public hospital Tongji have also tested positive for COVID-19, but since Sunday have not been allowed to take leave, a pharmaceutical sales representative with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters, declining to be named, as the information is not public.
“They have to stay at work while they are sick,” said the person who regularly visits the hospital and spoke to its doctors recently.
Tongji hospital did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Reporting by the Beijing newsroom, David Stanway and the Shanghai newsroom, Julie Zhu and Selena Li in Hong Kong; Writing by Farah Master; Editing by Miyoung Kim & Simon Cameron-Moore
Dec. 12, 2022 – The number of Americans hospitalized because of the flu has hit the highest levels the country has seen in at least a decade, the CDC said Friday.
But the number of deaths and outpatient visits for flu or flu-like illnesses was down slightly from the week before, the CDC said in its weekly FluView report.
There were almost 26,000 new hospital admissions involving laboratory-confirmed influenza over those 7 days, up by over 31% from the previous week, based on data from 5,000 hospitals in the HHS Protect system, which tracks and shares COVID-19 data.
The cumulative hospitalization rate for the 2022-23 season is 26.0 per 100,000 people, the highest seen at this time of year since 2010-11, the CDC said, based on data from its Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Network, which includes hospitals in select counties in 13 states.
At this point in the 2019-20 season, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the cumulative rate was 3.1 per 100,000 people, the CDC’s data shows.
On the positive side, the proportion of outpatient visits for influenza-like illness dropped slightly to 7.2%, from 7.5% the week before. But these cases from the CDC’s Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network are not laboratory-confirmed, so the data could include people with the flu, COVID-19, or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
The number of confirmed flu deaths for the week of Nov. 27 to Dec. 3 also fell slightly from the last full week of November, 246 vs. 255, but the number of pediatric deaths rose from two to seven, and total deaths in children are already up to 21 for 2022-23. That’s compared to 44 that were reported during all of the 2021-22 season, the CDC said.
“So far this season, there have been at least 13 million illnesses, 120,000 hospitalizations, and 7,300 deaths from flu,” the agency estimated.
With a triple pandemic of COVID, flu, and Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) hitting the U.S. hard this winter and resulting in an explosion of cases, business executives need to take the lead on promoting the newly updated, Omicron-specific boosters. Doing so will help reduce the number of sick days taken by their workers, minimize COVID outbreaks and superspreader events in their companies, reduce employee fears about returning to the office, and position executives as trustworthy participants in stakeholder capitalism.
Research shows that the new boosters from Pfizer and Moderna, which are bivalent (they target both Omicron and the original COVID strain) are very safe, like current vaccines. They are also more effective than previous vaccines against the Omicron variants, which are prevalent in the U.S. and around the globe.
The boosters are widely available and price is not an issue: the federal government purchased plenty of doses to give away for free to anyone approved to get one. They’re authorized for Americans aged 12 or older. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky stated “there is no bad time to get your COVID-19 booster and I strongly encourage you to receive it.”
Unfortunately, these recommendations are largely falling on deaf ears. Only 7.6 million Americans received the new booster in September, the first month it became widely available.
Missing booster shots could have dire consequences
The reason for low uptake stems from vaccine hesitancy and a lack of awareness. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, less than a third of the targeted population intend to get the new boosters.
This low number is not surprising, given an Ipsos poll showing that 65% believe there is a small or no risk in returning to their normal, pre-COVID life. That belief would not be a problem if we didn’t have hundreds of COVID-related deaths per day right now, and many additional deaths from flu and RSV as part of the triple pandemic. Moreover, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projects a new wave of COVID in the winter that could more than quadruple the current infection rate, which aligns with projections of a major winter wave by the FDA.
The consequences for executives and their teams can be dire. We knew since early 2022 that, according to a CDC study, the original vaccine’s effectiveness against Omicron fades quickly. Those who received two doses of Moderna or Pfizer have 71% less likelihood of being hospitalized with COVID compared to non-vaccinated people within the first month of getting the shots. However, that effectiveness fades relatively quickly to 58% after four months and continues falling off after that. Someone who received the original two doses and then a booster gets a protection of 91% against hospitalization immediately. Effectiveness falls to 78% after four months.
By now, it’s been many months since most Americans received the original vaccine series and the booster shots. That makes us seriously vulnerable to COVID, especially the most experienced, senior staff at companies, whose age puts them in a high-risk category.
The immediate danger of staff members being out for several weeks in a hospital, or even dying, is just part of the problem. We can’t forget about the threat of long COVID, meaning long-term symptoms of COVID infection. These symptoms can range from fatigue and brain fog to sudden heart failure and strokes in otherwise healthy young and middle-aged people.
A CDC survey from June 2022 shows that 7.5% of Americans report having long COVID symptoms, defined as symptoms lasting three or more months after first contracting the virus. A study by the University of Southern California finds that 23% of those who get sick with COVID are likely to get long COVID symptoms.
Per a study published in The Lancet, 22% of those who had long COVID symptoms were unable to work, and another 45% needed reduced hours. The Brookings Institution evaluated these numbers to find that long COVID is keeping anywhere from 2 to 4 million Americans out of the labor force. No wonder we’re experiencing such labor shortages!
Nobody wants their staff–or themselves–to become part of these statistics. Yet what are executives doing about it? Not much. That’s despite serious recent outbreaks at major companies that mandated office returns, such as Google or CalPERS, the $441.9 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System.
By failing to take action, business leaders are falling into the omission bias. This term refers to a dangerous judgment error–a cognitive bias that downplays the costs of inaction in our minds.
In fact, some companies are taking steps in the opposite direction in their desperation to drive staff to the office. For example, Goldman Sachs lifted vaccination requirements everywhere except in areas that have government vaccine mandates for being in the office.
What should managers do?
What executives should be thinking about is the long-term consequences of failing to encourage new booster shots. Given the data, we can confidently state that the more employees get shots, the fewer sick days they will take. It will also lower the chance of staff having to permanently reduce their hours or even withdraw from the labor force.
Similarly, advocating for boosters will minimize COVID outbreaks in a company. Doing so avoids the bad PR from such outbreaks, as well as the decreased morale afflicting staff at a time when companies are trying to have their staff return to the office, as Google, CalPERS, and others have discovered.
On a related note, to reduce employee fears about returning to the office, encouraging everyone to get the new booster is an excellent strategy. Whether a company pursues a flexible, team-led model in returning to the office as I encourage my clients to do, or a more rigid, top-down approach, many employees have fears about COVID. An internal survey my company just completed for a Fortune 500 SaaS company showed that 64% of respondents felt somewhat concerned about COVID in the office. That aligns with broader surveys, such as one by Ipsos in September showing that 57% of those surveyed feel somewhat concerned about COVID.
Last, but far from least, comes the crucial role of executives to serve as trustworthy exemplars of what the Business Roundtable calls the new purpose of companies: stakeholder capitalism. A critical aspect of stakeholder capitalism involves “supporting the communities in which we work.”
There’s little doubt that reducing COVID among company employees supports broader community health and well-being. According to Edelman’s trust barometer, business leaders are trusted more than the government, nonprofits, and the media. Some 86% of respondents to the trust barometer expect CEOs to speak out on issues such as pandemic impact. This makes it only more urgent for executives who wish to be on the front line of stakeholder capitalism to speak out in favor of the new boosters.
Mandates are certainly not the right way to go about promoting new boosters, given that we are transitioning from the emergency of the pandemic into a more endemic stage of learning to live with the virus. A much better approach is creating appropriate norms and nudging employees to engage in win-win behaviors by using behavioral science-based approaches.
To create appropriate norms, executives need to both publicly advocate for the new boosters and get the shot themselves. The CEO at one of my client organizations wrote up a blog post for an internal company newsletter about the benefit of getting the bivalent booster, accompanied by a photo of himself getting the jab. She also strongly encouraged her C-suite and mid-level managers to get the booster and discuss doing so with their team members. The company also brought in a well-respected epidemiologist to talk about the benefits of getting a bivalent vaccine booster, who answered questions and addressed concerns among staff.
To nudge employees, this company offered paid time off for getting the shot, along with sick leave for any side effects. It also created a competition between different teams within the organization. Team members could submit anonymized proof of their shots, and the first three teams to have all their members get shots got treated to an all-expense-paid weekend getaway. The company offered the same prize through a lottery for five employees across the organization who got the booster within the first three months it became available.
Other companies I work with have adopted similar techniques to developing norms and nudging employees, customized to their own needs. These approaches help create a context that encourages employees to protect everyone’s health without forcing them to get the shot. Doing so benefits the bottom line by reducing sick days, addressing worker resistance to coming to the office, minimizing PR fiascos, and helping executives be at the forefront of stakeholder capitalism.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unwilling to accept Western vaccines despite the challenges China is facing with COVID-19, and while recent protests there are not a threat to Communist Party rule, they could affect his personal standing, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said on Saturday.
Although China’s daily COVID cases are near all-time highs, some cities are taking steps to loosen testing and quarantine rules after Xi’s zero-COVID policy triggered a sharp economic slowdown and public unrest.
Haines, speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California, said that despite the social and economic impact of the virus, Xi “is unwilling to take a better vaccine from the West, and is instead relying on a vaccine in China that’s just not nearly as effective against Omicron.”
“Seeing protests and the response to it is countering the narrative that he likes to put forward, which is that China is so much more effective at government,” Haines said.
“It’s, again, not something we see as being a threat to stability at this moment, or regime change or anything like that,” she said, while adding: “How it develops will be important to Xi’s standing.”
China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Sunday.
China has not approved any foreign COVID vaccines, opting for those produced domestically, which some studies have suggested are not as effective as some foreign ones. That means easing virus prevention measures could come with big risks, according to experts.
China had not asked the United States for vaccines, the White House said earlier in the week.
One U.S. official told Reuters there was “no expectation at present” that China would approve western vaccines.
“It seems fairly far-fetched that China would greenlight Western vaccines at this point. It’s a matter of national pride, and they’d have to swallow quite a bit of it if they went this route,” the official said.
Haines also said North Korea recognized that China was less likely to hold it accountable for what she said was Pyongyang’s “extraordinary” number of weapons tests this year.
Amid a record year for missile tests, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said last week his country intends to have the world’s most powerful nuclear force.
Speaking on a later panel, Admiral John Aquilino, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said China had no motivation to restrain any country, including North Korea, that was generating problems for the United States.
“I’d argue quite differently that it’s in their strategy to drive those problems,” Aquilino said of China.
He said China had considerable leverage to press North Korea over its weapons tests, but that he was not optimistic about Beijing “doing anything helpful to stabilize the region.”
Reporting by Michael Martina, David Brunnstrom, Idrees Ali, and Eric Beech; Additional reporting by Martin Quin Pollard in Beijing; Editing by Sandra Maler and Lincoln Feast
Formula One’s Chinese Grand Prix was cancelled for the fourth year in a row on Friday due to strict local measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, with the sport looking for a possible replacement.
The 2023 race in Shanghai would have been the first since 2019 and had been scheduled for April 16 as the fourth stop on a record 24-round calendar that also promises a spectacular debut in Las Vegas.
The cancellation came as no surprise, with the race recognised as being uncertain by Formula One chief executive Stefano Domenicali in a Liberty Media third-quarter earnings call with analysts this month.
“Formula One can confirm, following dialogue with the promoter and relevant authorities, that the 2023 Chinese Grand Prix will not take place due to the ongoing difficulties presented by the COVID-19 situation,” a statement said.
“Formula One is assessing alternative options to replace the slot on the 2023 calendar and will provide an update on this in due course.”
China, which has stuck to a zero-COVID policy, has the world’s toughest measures in place to counter the spread of the virus including enforced quarantine in centralised facilities for positive cases.
Formula One and local organisers had tried to find a solution to enable the race to go ahead but, with 10 teams and large numbers of people set to fly in, found the obstacles too great.
Various alternatives have been touted in the media, including Portugal’s Portimao circuit that was used as a replacement in 2020 and 2021 for races cancelled during the pandemic.
While Formula One is talking to interested parties, it could also reduce the calendar to 23 races — still a record — with a four-week gap between Australia on April 2 and Azerbaijan on April 30.
The cancellation will be a blow for China’s first and only Formula One driver Guanyu Zhou, who made his debut with Alfa Romeo this season and has yet to race in front of his home crowd.
Nov. 29, 2022 – Deaths from heart disease and stroke among adults living in the United States have been on the decline since 2010. But the COVID-19 pandemic reversed that downward trend in 2020, new research shows.
It was as if COVID had wiped out 5 years of progress, pushing rates back to levels seen in 2015, the researchers say.
Non-Hispanic Black people and those who were younger than 75 were affected more than others, with the pandemic reversing 10 years of progress in those groups.
Rebecca C. Woodruff, PhD, presented these study findings at the American Heart Association 2022 Scientific Sessions.
The rate of death from heart disease had been falling for decades in the United States due to better detection of risk factors, such as high blood pressure, and better treatments, such as statins for cholesterol, she said.
The reversal of this positive trend shows that it is important that people “work with a health care provider to prevent and manage existing heart disease, even in challenging conditions like the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.
Woodruff advised that “everyone can improve and maintain their cardiovascular health and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by following the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 – eating better, being more active, quitting tobacco, getting healthy sleep, managing weight, controlling cholesterol, managing blood sugar, and managing blood pressure.”
“COVID-19 vaccines can help everyone, especially those with underlying heart disease or other health conditions, and protect people from severe COVID-19,” she stressed.
Andrew J. Einstein, MD, PhD, from Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, who was not involved with this research, says the results show “very disturbing changes” to the decline in deaths from heart disease over the past decade.
The study findings underscore that “as a society, we need to take efforts to ensure that all people are engaged in the health care system, with one aim being improving heart health outcomes, which worsened significantly in 2020,” he says.
“If you don’t actively see a primary care provider, it’s important to find one with whom you can have a good relationship and can discuss with you heart-healthy living; check your blood pressure, sugar, and cholesterol; ask you about symptoms and examine you to detect disease early; and refer you for more specialized heart care as needed,” he says.
Some Study Findings
The researchers analyzed data from the CDC’s WONDER database.
They identified adults ages 35 and older with heart disease as cause of death.
They found that the number of people who died from heart disease in every 100,000 people (heart disease death rate) dropped each year from 2010 to 2019, but it increased in 2020, the first year of the pandemic.
This increase was seen in the total population, in men, in women, in all age groups, and in all race and Hispanic ethnicity groups.
In the total population, the heart disease death rate dropped by 9.8% from 2010 to 2019. But this rate increased by 4.1% in 2020, going back to the rate it had been in 2015.
Among non-Hispanic Black people, the heart disease death rate fell by 10.4% from 2010 to 2019, but it increased by 11.2% in 2020, going back to the rate it had been in 2010.
Similarly, among adults ages 35 to 54 and those ages 55 to 74, the rates of heart disease deaths decreased from 2010 to 2019 and increased in 2020 to rates higher than they had been in 2010.
In 2020, about 7 years of progress in declining heart death rates was lost among men and 3 years of progress was lost among women, the researchers said.
In a big relief to international passengers arriving in India, the Union Health Ministry has removed provision of uploading self-declaration form on Air Suvidha portal.
The revised order comes into effect from November 22. Air Suvidha form was a self declaration to be mandatorily filled by all international arriving passengers to India disclosing their current health status and recent travel details, among others.
“AirSuvidha was introduced when Covid was at its peak, aiming to track people landing in Indian airports. With normal life back, why is it still mandatory for flyers to India to submit #AirSuvidha? Urge @JM_Scindia to review this requirement & lift the dead hand of bureaucracy,” tweeted Congress leader Shashi Tharoor recently.
The revised guidelines for international arrivals state, “Planning for Travel: All travellers should preferably be fully vaccinated as per approved primary schedule against Covid in their country.”
During air travel, the ministry said that in-flight announcement about the ongoing pandemic, including precautionary measures to be followed such as preferable use of masks and following physical distances, should be made in flights/ travel at all points of entry.
Any passenger having symptoms of coronavirus during travel should be isolated as per standard protocol, the ministry added.
All travellers will need to self-monitor their health post arrival also shall report to their nearest health facility or call National helpline number (1075) / state helpline number in case they have any symptoms suggestive. The guidelines have been “revised in light of sustained declining Covid-19 trajectory and significant advances being made in Covid-19 vaccination coverage both globally as well as in India”, stated the order.
In line with the Government of India’s policy of a graded approach to the COVID-19 management response, the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s last week said that the wearing of masks would no longer be mandatory in the flights and will be only advisable now.
In the wake of the pandemic, scheduled domestic flight services were suspended for two months starting from March 25, 2020. Scheduled international flight services, which was also suspended from the same day, was restored only from March 27 this year.
India logged 406 new coronavirus infections taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 4,46,69,421 while the active cases dipped to 6,402, as per official data on Monday.
After nearly three years of constantly thinking about COVID, it’s alarming how easily I can stop. The truth is, as a healthy, vaxxed-to-the-brim young person who has already had COVID, the pandemic now often feels more like an abstraction than a crisis. My perception of personal risk has dropped in recent months, as has my stamina for precautions. I still care about COVID, but I also eat in crowded cafés and go mask-free at parties.
Heading into the third pandemic winter, things have changed. Most Americans seem to have tuned out COVID. Precautions have virtually disappeared; except for in the deepest-blue cities, wearing a mask is, well, weird. Reported cases are way down since the spring and summer, but perhaps the biggest reason for America’s behavioral let-up is that much of the country sees COVID as a minor nuisance, no more bothersome than a cold or the flu.
And to a certain degree, they’re right: Most healthy, working-age adults who are up-to-date on their vaccinations won’t get severely ill—especially now that antivirals such as Paxlovid are available. Other treatments can help if a patient does get very sick. “People who are vaccinated and relatively healthy who are getting COVID are not getting that sick,” Lisa Lee, an epidemiologist at Virginia Tech, told me. “And so people are thinking, Wow, I’ve had COVID. It wasn’t that bad. I don’t really care anymore.”
Still, there are many reasons to continue caring about COVID. About 300 people are still dying every day; COVID is on track to be the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. for the third year running. The prospect of developing long COVID is real and terrifying, as are mounting concerns about reinfections. But admittedly, these sometimes manifest in my mind as a dull, omnipresent horror, not an urgent affront. Continuing to care about COVID while also loosening up behaviors is an uncomfortable position to be in. Most of the time, I just try to ignore the guilt gnawing at my brain. At this point, when so few people feel that the potential benefit of dodging an infection is worth the inconvenience of precautions, what does it even mean to care about COVID?
In an ideal epidemiological scenario, everyone would willingly deploy the full arsenal of COVID precautions, such as masking and forgoing crowded indoor activities, especially during waves. But that kind of all-out response no longer makes sense. “It’s probably not realistic to expect people to take precautions every time, perpetually, or even every winter or fall, unless there is a particularly concerning reason to do that,” Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University, told me.
But, now more than ever, we must remember that COVID is not just a personal threat but a community one. For older and immunocompromised people, the risks are still significant. For example, people over 50 account for 93 percent of COVID-related deaths in the U.S., even though they represent just 35.7 percent of the population. As long as the death rate remains as high as it is, caring about COVID should mean orienting precautions to protect them. This idea has been around since the pandemic began, but its prominence faded as Americans put their personal health first. “If you’re otherwise healthy, it’s so easy just to think about yourself,” Lee said. “We have to think very carefully about that other part of infectious disease, which is the part where we can potentially hurt other people.”
Orienting behavior in this way gives low-risk people a way to care about COVID that doesn’t entail constant masking or skipping all indoor activities: They can relax when they know they aren’t going to encounter vulnerable people. Like the productivity adage “work smarter, not harder,” this perspective allows people to take precautions strategically, not always. In practice, all it takes is some foresight. If you don’t live with vulnerable people, make it second nature to ask: Will I be seeing vulnerable people anytime soon? If the answer is no, do whatever you’re comfortable with given your own risk. If you are a healthy 30-something who lives alone, going to a Friendsgiving with other people your age is different from spending Thanksgiving dinner with parents and grandparents.
If you will be seeing someone vulnerable, the most straightforward way to avoid giving them COVID is to avoid getting infected yourself, which means wearing a good mask in public settings and minimizing your interactions with others the week before, in what some experts have called a “mini-quarantine.” Not everyone has that luxury: Parents, for example, have to send their kids to school.
Spontaneous interactions with vulnerable people are trickier to plan for, but they follow the same principle. On a crowded bus, for example, “there’s no question that if you’re close enough to someone who could be hurt by getting COVID and you could have it, then, yeah, a mask is the way to go,” Lee said. Of course, it isn’t always possible to know when someone is high-risk; young people, too, can be medically vulnerable. There’s no clear guidance for those situations, but remaining cautious doesn’t require much effort. “Carry a mask with you,” Lee said. “It’s not a big lift.”
Get boosted—if not for yourself, then for them. Just 11.3 percent of eligible Americans have gotten the latest, bivalent shot, which potentially reduces your chances of getting COVID and passing it along. It also means getting tested, so you know when you’re infectious, and being aware of respiratory symptoms—of any kind. Alongside COVID, the flu and RSV are putting many people in the hospital, especially the very young and the very old. No matter how low your personal risk, if you have symptoms, avoiding transmission is crucial. “A reasonable thing to prioritize is: If you have symptoms, take care to prevent it from spreading,” Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, told me.
As we move away from a personal approach to COVID, we have an opportunity to expand the idea of what caring looks like. Low-risk people can, and should, take an active role in bolstering the protection of vulnerable people they know. In practical terms, this means ensuring that people in your life who are over 50—especially those over 65—are boosted and have a plan to get Paxlovid if they fall sick, Nuzzo said. “I think our biggest problem right now is that not everybody has enough access to the tools, and that’s a place where people can help.” She noted that she is particularly concerned about older people who struggle to book vaccine appointments online. Caring “doesn’t mean abstaining, per se. It means facilitating. It means enabling and helping people in your community.” This holiday season, caring could mean sitting down at a computer to make Grandma’s booster appointment, or driving her to the drugstore to get it.
If you have lost your motivation to care about COVID, you might find it in the people you love. I didn’t feel a personal need to wear a mask at the concert I attended yesterday, but I did it because I don’t want to accidentally infect my partner’s 94-year-old grandfather when I see him next week. To have this experience of the pandemic is a privilege. Many don’t have the option to stop caring, even for a moment.
Barring another Omicron-esque event, we thankfully won’t ever return to a moment where Americans obsess over COVID en masse. But this virus isn’t going away, so we can’t escape having a population that is split between the high-risk minority and the low-risk majority. Rethinking what it means to care allows for a more nuanced and liveable idea of what responsible behavior looks like. Right now, Nuzzo told me, the language we use to describe one’s position on COVID is “black-and-white, absolutist—you either care or you don’t.” There is space between those extremes. At least for now, it’s the only way to compromise between the world we have and the world we want.
LONDON/WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Thousands of smartphone applications in Apple (AAPL.O) and Google’s (GOOGL.O) online stores contain computer code developed by a technology company, Pushwoosh, that presents itself as based in the United States, but is actually Russian, Reuters has found.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States’ main agency for fighting major health threats, said it had been deceived into believing Pushwoosh was based in the U.S. capital. After learning about its Russian roots from Reuters, it removed Pushwoosh software from seven public-facing apps, citing security concerns.
The U.S. Army said it had removed an app containing Pushwoosh code in March because of the same concerns. That app was used by soldiers at one of the country’s main combat training bases.
According to company documents publicly filed in Russia and reviewed by Reuters, Pushwoosh is headquartered in the Siberian town of Novosibirsk, where it is registered as a software company that also carries out data processing. It employs around 40 people and reported revenue of 143,270,000 rubles ($2.4 mln) last year. Pushwoosh is registered with the Russian government to pay taxes in Russia.
On social media and in U.S. regulatory filings, however, it presents itself as a U.S. company, based at various times in California, Maryland and Washington, D.C., Reuters found.
Pushwoosh provides code and data processing support for software developers, enabling them to profile the online activity of smartphone app users and send tailor-made push notifications from Pushwoosh servers.
On its website, Pushwoosh says it does not collect sensitive information, and Reuters found no evidence Pushwoosh mishandled user data. Russian authorities, however, have compelled local companies to hand over user data to domestic security agencies.
Pushwoosh’s founder, Max Konev, told Reuters in a September email that the company had not tried to mask its Russian origins. “I am proud to be Russian and I would never hide this.”
Pushwoosh published a blog post after the Reuters article was issued, which said: “Pushwoosh Inc. is a privately held C-Corp company incorporated under the state laws of Delaware, USA. Pushwoosh Inc. was never owned by any company registered in the Russian Federation.”
The company also said in the post, “Pushwoosh Inc. used to outsource development parts of the product to the Russian company in Novosibirsk, mentioned in the article. However, in February 2022, Pushwoosh Inc. terminated the contract.”
After Pushwoosh published its post, Reuters asked Pushwoosh to provide evidence for its assertions, but the news agency’s requests went unanswered.
Konev said the company “has no connection with the Russian government of any kind” and stores its data in the United States and Germany.
Cybersecurity experts said storing data overseas would not prevent Russian intelligence agencies from compelling a Russian firm to cede access to that data, however.
Russia, whose ties with the West have deteriorated since its takeover of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine this year, is a global leader in hacking and cyber-espionage, spying on foreign governments and industries to seek competitive advantage, according to Western officials.
Reuters Graphics
HUGE DATABASE
Pushwoosh code was installed in the apps of a wide array of international companies, influential non-profits and government agencies from global consumer goods company Unilever Plc (ULVR.L) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to the politically powerful U.S. gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and Britain’s Labour Party.
Pushwoosh’s business with U.S. government agencies and private companies could violate contracting and U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) laws or trigger sanctions, 10 legal experts told Reuters. The FBI, U.S. Treasury and the FTC declined to comment.
Jessica Rich, former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said “this type of case falls right within the authority of the FTC,” which cracks down on unfair or deceptive practices affecting U.S. consumers.
Washington could choose to impose sanctions on Pushwoosh and has broad authority to do so, sanctions experts said, including possibly through a 2021 executive order that gives the United States the ability to target Russia’s technology sector over malicious cyber activity.
Pushwoosh code has been embedded into almost 8,000 apps in the Google and Apple app stores, according to Appfigures, an app intelligence website. Pushwoosh’s website says it has more than 2.3 billion devices listed in its database.
“Pushwoosh collects user data including precise geolocation, on sensitive and governmental apps, which could allow for invasive tracking at scale,” said Jerome Dangu, co-founder of Confiant, a firm that tracks misuse of data collected in online advertising supply chains.
“We haven’t found any clear sign of deceptive or malicious intent in Pushwoosh’s activity, which certainly doesn’t diminish the risk of having app data leaking to Russia,” he added.
Google said privacy was a “huge focus” for the company but did not respond to requests for comment about Pushwoosh. Apple said it takes user trust and safety seriously but similarly declined to answer questions.
Keir Giles, a Russia expert at London think tank Chatham House, said despite international sanctions on Russia, a “substantial number” of Russian companies were still trading abroad and collecting people’s personal data.
Given Russia’s domestic security laws, “it shouldn’t be a surprise that with or without direct links to Russian state espionage campaigns, firms that handle data will be keen to play down their Russian roots,” he said.
‘SECURITY ISSUES’
After Reuters raised Pushwoosh’s Russian links with the CDC, the health agency removed the code from its apps because “the company presents a potential security concern,” spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said.
“CDC believed Pushwoosh was a company based in the Washington, D.C. area,” Nordlund said in a statement. The belief was based on “representations” made by the company, she said, without elaborating.
The CDC apps that contained Pushwoosh code included the agency’s main app and others set up to share information on a wide range of health concerns. One was for doctors treating sexually transmitted diseases. While the CDC also used the company’s notifications for health matters such as COVID, the agency said it “did not share user data with Pushwoosh.”
The Army told Reuters it removed an app containing Pushwoosh in March, citing “security issues.” It did not say how widely the app, which was an information portal for use at its National Training Center (NTC) in California, had been used by troops.
The NTC is a major battle training center in the Mojave Desert for pre-deployment soldiers, meaning a data breach there could reveal upcoming overseas troop movements.
U.S. Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee said the Army had suffered no “operational loss of data,” adding that the app did not connect to the Army network.
Some large companies and organizations including UEFA and Unilever said third parties set up the apps for them, or they thought they were hiring a U.S. company.
“We don’t have a direct relationship with Pushwoosh,” Unilever said in a statement, adding that Pushwoosh was removed from one of its apps “some time ago.”
UEFA said its contract with Pushwoosh was “with a U.S. company.” UEFA declined to say if it knew of Pushwoosh’s Russian ties but said it was reviewing its relationship with the company after being contacted by Reuters.
The NRA said its contract with the company ended last year, and it was “not aware of any issues.”
Britain’s Labour Party did not respond to requests for comment.
“The data Pushwoosh collects is similar to data that could be collected by Facebook, Google or Amazon, but the difference is that all the Pushwoosh data in the U.S. is sent to servers controlled by a company (Pushwoosh) in Russia,” said Zach Edwards, a security researcher, who first spotted the prevalence of Pushwoosh code while working for Internet Safety Labs, a nonprofit organization.
Roskomnadzor, Russia’s state communications regulator, did not respond to a request from Reuters for comment.
FAKE ADDRESS, FAKE PROFILES
In U.S. regulatory filings and on social media, Pushwoosh never mentions its Russian links. The company lists “Washington, D.C.” as its location on Twitter and claims its office address as a house in the suburb of Kensington, Maryland, according to its latest U.S. corporation filings submitted to Delaware’s secretary of state. It also lists the Maryland address on its Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.
The Kensington house is the home of a Russian friend of Konev’s who spoke to a Reuters journalist on condition of anonymity. He said he had nothing to do with Pushwoosh and had only agreed to allow Konev to use his address to receive mail.
Konev said Pushwoosh had begun using the Maryland address to “receive business correspondence” during the coronavirus pandemic.
He said he now operates Pushwoosh from Thailand but provided no evidence that it is registered there. Reuters could not find a company by that name in the Thai company registry.
Pushwoosh never mentioned it was Russian-based in eight annual filings in the U.S. state of Delaware, where it is registered, an omission which could violate state law.
Instead, Pushwoosh listed an address in Union City, California as its principal place of business from 2014 to 2016. That address does not exist, according to Union City officials.
Pushwoosh used LinkedIn accounts purportedly belonging to two Washington, D.C.-based executives named Mary Brown and Noah O’Shea to solicit sales. But neither Brown nor O’Shea are real people, Reuters found.
The one belonging to Brown was actually of an Austria-based dance teacher, taken by a photographer in Moscow, who told Reuters she had no idea how it ended up on the site.
Konev acknowledged the accounts were not genuine. He said Pushwoosh hired a marketing agency in 2018 to create them in an attempt to use social media to sell Pushwoosh, not to mask the company’s Russian origins.
LinkedIn said it had removed the accounts after being alerted by Reuters.
Reporting by James Pearson in London and Marisa Taylor in Washington
Additional reporting by Chris Bing in Washington, editing by Chris Sanders and Ross Colvin
The southern Chinese manufacturing hub of Guangzhou is the latest to see lockdowns amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, as the government presses ahead with the strict zero-COVID policy that has frustrated citizens.
The latest lockdowns have further disrupted global supply chains and sharply slowed growth in the world’s second-largest economy, as the Associated Press reported.
Residents in districts encompassing almost 5 million people have been ordered to stay home at least through Sunday, with one member of each family allowed out once a day to purchase necessities, local authorities said Wednesday.
The order came after the densely populated city of 13 million reported more than 2,500 new cases over the previous 24 hours.
China has retained its strict zero-COVID policy despite relatively low case numbers and no new deaths. The country’s borders remain largely closed, and internal travel and trade is complicated by ever-changing quarantine regulations.
Apple AAPL, -3.32%
and iPhone manufacturer Foxconn 2317, -1.95%
said over the weekend that restrictions are crimping production and will delay shipments of the high-end iPhone 14.
In the U.S., known cases of COVID are climbing again for the first time in a few months. The daily average for new cases stood at 39,578 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 5% versus two weeks ago.
As always, the increase in cases is not uniform across the nation. Some states are seeing sharp spikes, led by Nevada, where cases are up 96% from two weeks ago. Tennessee is second with cases up 69%, followed by Louisiana with cases up 68%, New Mexico, where they are up 62%, and Utah, where they have climbed 61%.
Cases are up by a double-digit percentage in 22 states.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 3% to 27,713, while the daily average for deaths was down 14% to 308.
• Novavax Inc. NVAX, -5.19%
on Tuesday tweaked its full-year sales outlook to the low end of its expected range and reported a surprise quarterly loss, but sales for the COVID-19 vaccine maker were far better than expected. The company reported a net loss of $168.6 million, or $2.15 a share, compared with a loss of $322.4 million, or $4.31 a share, in the same quarter a year ago. Sales were $735 million, compared with $178.8 million in the prior-year quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Novavax to earn $1.57 a share on revenue of $586 million.
• A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee said this week that Veru Inc.’s VERU, +3.95%
COVID treatment Sabizabulin demonstrated a clear clinical benefit with a favorable benefit-to-risk profile. Veru is seeking emergency-use authorization for treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients at high risk for acute respiratory distress syndrome.
• A Massachusetts man who admitted to lying on his application for federal coronavirus business stimulus funds and using some of the $400,000 he received to pay his mortgage has been sentenced to 15 months in prison, federal prosecutors said, as the AP reported. In addition to the time behind bars, Adley Bernadin, 44, of Stoughton, was sentenced last week to three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit more than $280,000, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.
The U.S. leads the world with 97.8 million cases and 1,072,943 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 227.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.5% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 26.3 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 8.4% of the overall population.
Nov. 7, 2022 – If you’re among the 92% or so of Americans yet to get a bivalent COVID-19 booster, here’s some news to consider. The Pfizer/BioNTech updated vaccine triggers a stronger immune response than a fourth dose of their original vaccine, the company says.
This evidence supports getting this Omicron-specific booster before a potential COVID-19 surge this winter.
The bivalent vaccine offers the strongest protection in people older than 55. One month after receiving a booster, those in this age group had four times more neutralizing antibodies against Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants than others who received the original vaccine as a booster.
The researchers compared neutralizing antibody levels before and after the booster in different age groups. They found that levels increased 13 times in the 36 people in the study older than 55 and almost 10 times in the 38 people ages 18 to 55. By contrast, levels increased three times in the group of 40 people who received the original vaccine as a booster.
The bivalent product contains two strains of vaccine – one to protect against the original COVID-19 virus and another to protect against these Omicron subvariants.
The newly released data is “very encouraging and consistent now with three studies all showing a substantial three- to fourfold increased level of neutralizing antibodies versus BA.5 as compared with the original booster,” says Eric Topol, MD, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, CA, and editor-in-chief of Medscape, WebMD’s sister site.
The bivalent vaccine is authorized for emergency use in people ages 5 and older. CDC data this week show that 8.4% of eligible Americans have received the bivalent vaccine. The agency also estimates about 2,500 Americans are dying from COVID every week.
The safety profile of the Pfizer/BioNTech bivalent booster remains favorable and similar to the original COVID-19 vaccine, the company says.
Until recently, the BA.5 Omicron variant was the dominant strain in the United States but is now getting elbowed out by the subvariants BQ.1.1, BQ.1, and BA.4.6, which together make up almost 45% of the circulating virus.
Some Skepticism
“It is important to note that these data are press-release level, which does not allow a view of the data totality,” says Hana El Sahly, MD, professor of molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX.
“For example, there may be significant differences between the groups, and the release mentions at least one difference that is of importance: the interval since the last vaccination, which often affects the response to subsequent boosting,” she says. The findings are not surprising, El Sahly says.
“In the short term, a variant-specific vaccine produces a higher level of antibody against the variant in the vaccine than the vaccines based on the ancestral strains.”
More research results are warranted.
“These data do not indicate that these differences between the two vaccines translate into a meaningful clinical benefit at a population level,” El Sahly says.
An Uncertain Winter Ahead
“As we head into the holiday season, we hope these updated data will encourage people to seek out a COVID-19 bivalent booster as soon as they are eligible in order to maintain high levels of protection against the widely circulating Omicron BA.4 and BA.5,” Albert Bourla, Pfizer chairman and chief executive officer, says in the news release.
The updated data from the Pfizer/BioNTech study are “all the more reason to get a booster, with added protection also versus BQ.1.1, which will soon become dominant in the U.S.,” Topol says.
It is unclear when the next surge will happen, as COVID-19 does not always follow a seasonal pattern — at least not yet, El Sahly says.
“Regardless, it is reasonable to recommend additional vaccine doses to immunocompromised and frail or older persons. More importantly, influenza vaccination and being up to date on pneumococcal vaccines are highly recommended as soon as feasible, given the early and intense flu season.”
First the good news: Pfizer Inc. and Germany-based partner BioNTech SE said updated trial data for their omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent booster showed a “substantially higher” immune response in adults than the original COVID-19 vaccine.
The companies said the Phase 2/3 clinical-trial data, collected one month after the boosters were given, also demonstrated that safety and tolerability profiles were similar to those of the original vaccine.
The news sent Pfizer’s stock PFE, +0.51%
rallying 1.7% and BioNTech’s U.S.-listed shares BNTX, +4.97%
“As we head into the holiday season, we hope these updated data will encourage people to seek out a COVID-19 bivalent booster as soon as they are eligible in order to maintain high levels of protection against the widely circulating Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sublineages,” said Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla.
Only 8.4% of eligible Americans have received updated COVID booster shots, while 68.5% of the total population have completed the original primary series of vaccinations, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The bivalent booster has been authorized for emergency use in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration for people age 5 and older and has also been granted marketing authorization in the European Union for those age 12 and older.
In another piece of good news, Pfizer and BioNTech shares were also lifted by a report in The Wall Street Journal that the Chinese government has agreed to approve the companies’ COVID-19 vaccines for foreign residents in China and has also held talks to approve those vaccines for the broader population.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that China was working on a plan to end the practice of penalizing airlines that bring COVID-infected people into the country.
The seven-day average of new COVID cases topped 40,000 for the first time in a month and hospitalizations have also ticked higher, with more than half of U.S. states showing increases over the past two weeks.
According to a New York Times tracker, the daily average of new cases rose to 40,101 on Thursday from 38,208 on Wednesday, and was up 6% from 14 days ago.
The New York Times
Nevada has seen a 96% jump in daily cases, followed by Tennessee with a 69% increase and Louisiana with a 68% rise, leading the 28 states that saw cases increase over the past two weeks.
Still, daily cases were less than one-third of the summer high of more than 130,000 reached during the surge of the BA.5 variant, the data show.
The daily average of COVID-related hospitalizations rose 2% to 27,252, while the number of people with COVID in intensive-care units (ICUs) fell 2% to 3,110.
The daily average of COVID-related deaths fell 6% to a four-month low of 339.
On a global basis, the total number of COVID cases has increased to 631.91 million, while deaths have reached 6,598,197, according to data provided by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. has seen a total of 97.69 million cases and 1,072,245 deaths.
There is a potential future risk of neurodegenerative conditions in people who have had Covid, according to a study conducted by scientists from the University of Queensland. The scientists involved in the research have said that Covid infection activates the same inflammatory response in the brain as Parkinson’s disease.
The research is published in Nature’s Molecular Psychiatry. Professor Trent Woodruff who led the research said: “We studied the effect of the virus on the brain’s immune cells, ‘microglia’ which are the key cells involved in the progression of brain diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.”
“Our team grew human microglia in the laboratory and infected the cells with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. We found the cells effectively became ‘angry’, activating the same pathway that Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s proteins can activate in disease, the inflammasomes,” said Woodruff.
The scientists said that triggering the inflammasome pathway sparked a ‘fire’ in the brain, which begins a chronic and sustained process of killing off neurons. “It’s kind of a silent killer because you don’t see any outward symptoms for many years,” said Dr Albornoz Balmaceda, another scientist from the University of Queensland.
“It may explain why some people who’ve had Covid are more vulnerable to developing neurological symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease,” Balmaceda said.
The researchers found the spike protein of the virus was enough to start the process and was further exacerbated when there were already proteins in the brain linked to Parkinson’s.
“So if someone is already pre-disposed to Parkinson’s, having Covid-19 could be like pouring more fuel on that ‘fire’ in the brain,” Professor Woodruff said, adding that the same would apply for a predisposition for Alzheimer’s and other dementias that have been linked to inflammasomes.
But the study also found a potential treatment. The researchers administered a class of inhibitory drugs developed at the university which are currently in clinical trials with Parkinson’s patients.
“We found it successfully blocked the inflammatory pathway activated by Covid-19, essentially putting out the fire,” Dr Albornoz Balmaceda said. He further said that the drug reduced inflammation in both Covid-19-infected mice and the microglia cells from humans, suggesting a possible treatment approach to prevent neurodegeneration in the future.
Scientists said while the similarity between how Covid-19 and dementia diseases affect the brain was concerning, it also meant a possible treatment was already in existence. “Further research is needed, but this is potentially a new approach to treating a virus that could otherwise have untold long-term health ramifications,” said Woodruff.
TUESDAY, Nov. 1, 2022 (HealthDay News) — COVID-19 is known to mess with a person’s lungs, and can have long-term effects on the brain.
Now doctors have found another way COVID harms your health — through your gut.
A COVID infection can reduce the number of bacterial species in the gut, creating an opportunity for dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria to thrive, according to a new study in the journal Nature Communications.
“Our findings suggest that coronavirus infection directly interferes with the healthy balance of microbes in the gut, further endangering patients in the process,” said study co-senior author Ken Cadwell, a microbiologist at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City.
An unhealthy gut leaves a person vulnerable to life-threatening diarrhea from harmful bacteria like C. difficile. It also can cause other health problems like bloating and acid reflux.
The study is the first to show that COVID alone damages the gut microbiome, researchers said. Before now, doctors had suspected that the use of antibiotics to treat COVID had been damaging gut bacteria.
Analysis of nearly 100 men and women hospitalized with COVID in 2020 found that most patients had low gut microbiome diversity. In fact, full quarter had guts dominated by a single type of bacteria, the researchers found.
At the same time, populations of several potentially harmful microbes increased. Some antibiotic-resistant bacteria had migrated into the bloodstream of 20% of patients.
“Now that we have uncovered the source of this bacterial imbalance, physicians can better identify those coronavirus patients most at risk of a secondary bloodstream infection,” Cadwell said in an NYU news release.
The findings were published Nov. 1.
More information
The Cleveland Clinic has more about gut health.
SOURCE: NYU Grossman School of Medicine, news release, Nov. 1, 2022
MONDAY, Oct. 31, 2022 (HealthDay News) — A person with heart failure in dire need of a new heart may have faced delays in getting one during the pandemic when potential donors tested positive for COVID-19.
As some centers began accepting these hearts for transplant anyway, data from a new study shows that hearts from COVID-19 positive donors may be as safe to transplant as those from someone without the virus.
“These findings suggest that we may be able to be more aggressive about accepting donors that are positive for COVID-19 when patients are in dire need of an organ for heart transplantation,” said study author Samuel Kim, a third-year medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles.
The study, to be presented at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting Nov. 5-7 in Chicago, reviewed the cases of transplant recipients in the first 30 days after their surgery using the United Network for Organ Sharing database.
The database included information on all adult heart transplants in the United States from February 2021 to March 2022. Among a total of 3,289 heart donations, there were 84 from COVID-positive donors.
Researchers found that both groups of donor organ recipients had similar rates of death in the hospital and at 30 days after transplantation. They also had similar rates of complications. This included lung complications or organ rejection.
For patients with the hearts from people who were not infected with COVID-19, the average hospital stay was 17 days. It was 15 days for those receiving a heart from a COVID-positive donor.
Organ rejection occurred in 2.4% of the recipients from COVID-19-positive donors. It happened in 1% of the others.
About 97% of those who received hearts from donors without the virus survived, as did 96.1% of those who received hearts from people with the virus.
None of the four patients who died after receiving a heart from a COVID-positive donor died from respiratory causes or infections, the study found.
Researchers expressed surprise at the results.
“Specifically, we thought death from respiratory or lung-related causes would be a problem among recipients receiving donor hearts with COVID-19,” Kim said in a heart association news release. “Yet, we found no such differences, and in fact, this study offers early evidence that COVID-19-positive donor hearts may be as safe as hearts without COVID-19 for heart transplantation.”
The 2022 American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology/Heart Failure Society of America guidelines for managing heart failure recommend heart transplantation for people who progress to advanced (stage D) heart failure.
By the time they reach stage D, people have shortness of breath, fatigue and swelling that interfere with daily life. This can lead to recurrent hospitalizations.
In the United States, 3,658 people received hearts in 2020, up from 1,676 in 1988, according to the American Heart Association’s Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics–2022.
More than 3,400 Americans are currently waiting for a heart.
“Despite the increased need for this operation, there is a continued shortage of available donor organs for people in need of transplantation. The COVID-19 pandemic made things worse with an increased rate of donors testing positive for COVID-19, which generally renders the donors unsuitable for transplantation,” Kim said. “However, several academic centers have started to use COVID-19-positive donor hearts for heart transplantation in recent months and have reported good results.”
Still, the study size was small. Longer-term studies are needed to assess how patients receiving hearts from COVID-19-positive donors fare beyond 30 days after surgery, researchers said.
“These findings provide evidence that outcomes were similar at 30-days post-transplant among patients who received COVID-19-positive donor hearts, so the potential risks appear to be lower than expected,” said Dr. Eldrin Lewis, an advanced heart failure and heart transplant specialist, the Simon H. Stertzer M.D. Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and chair of the division of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University in California.
“In turn, this may help to address the shortages in donor hearts for transplantation and reduce waiting times, since people often get sicker as heart failure progresses while waiting for a donor heart to become available,” Lewis said in the release.
Findings presented at medical meetings are considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
The U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute has more on heart failure.
SOURCE: American Heart Association, news release, Oct. 31, 2022
“The issue of equity and distribution of Paxlovid is similar to what we saw in the distribution of the vaccine,” she said. “You have to think about access to primary care pharmacies, particularly in economically disadvantaged communities.”
Community hesitancy also plays a role, Salas-Lopez noted. “These are new vaccines, new treatments, so the familiarity isn’t there with all of our community members, but in particular, our community members who have experienced a lack of trust in the health care system.
“In addition, guidelines for testing and vaccines and medications for treatment can quickly change, making it difficult for providers and community members to stay abreast of all the changes — your head spins,” she said.
Structural racism may also play a role, Salas-Lopez added.
One weakness of the study, she noted, is that the researchers didn’t account for prescriptions given directly at walk-in clinics and drug stores, which gave out thousands of doses of Paxlovid and might have altered the results.
Salas-Lopez said that it’s partly the responsibility of health care systems to end these disparities.
At her health care system, they created a health equity task force to identify the weak spots in health care in their community. They then began outreach programs to close these gaps.
“Health systems have to work hard to address the issue of inequity,” Salas-Lopez said. “It takes a mission and a vision to do that, and then action.”
The report, which followed patients from January to July of this year, was published Oct. 28 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
More information
For more on COVID-19, see the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
SOURCES: Tegan Boehmer, PhD, acting lead, Healthy Community Design Initiative, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Debbie Salas-Lopez, MD, MPH, senior vice president, Community and Population Health, Northwell Health, New Hyde Park, N.Y.; Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Oct. 28, 2022
Oct. 27, 2022 – The pandemic changed a lot. The way we work, educate our kids, and visit the doctor. The job market, the housing market, and entire industries. Our average life expectancy fell by nearly 3 years.
But the pandemic has also changed something else: You.
That’s not just a guess. Scientists have been putting out papers documenting the many ways you – and all of us – have changed, from habits to health. The latest such study suggests that our very personalities have changed.
Researchers from Florida State University and other institutions compared data pre-pandemic versus later and found declines in four traits: extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The changes were about “one-tenth of a standard deviation,” roughly the level of personality change you’d expect to see over a decade – not 2 years. A fifth trait, neuroticism, also increased in young adults.
In some ways, that’s the opposite of what should happen as we grow and mature, explains study author Angelina Sutin, PhD, a professor of behavioral sciences and social medicine at Florida State University College of Medicine. The paper calls it “disrupted maturity.” Normally, neuroticism goes down, and agreeableness and conscientiousness go up.
“In young adults, we found the exact opposite pattern,” Sutin says. Middle-aged adults also saw a decline in agreeableness and conscientiousness, though the oldest adults saw no significant changes.
“Having a worldwide pandemic was a stressor that affected everyone in some way,” Sutin says. “There has not been an event like that in modern time, in modern psychology, that we could look at that disrupted all of society.”
Natural disasters are disruptive and stressful but tend not to affect the entire population. They also don’t last as long.
“The pandemic has been this ongoing threat,” Sutin says. “It’s hard to have gone through this experience and not been changed in some way.”
Scientists have seized the opportunity to study all kinds of things: the pandemic’s impact on our blood pressure, our microbiomes, our eyesight, our mental health. Many more long-term changes may be revealed with time.
Are they permanent? Perhaps – but perhaps not. We are not without agency; if you’re feeling more anxious and stressed (signs of neuroticism), you can seek help and learn ways to manage that. If you’re concerned about conscientiousness, practice those skills: Stick to a schedule, follow through on commitments.
“All those things that make conscientious people conscientious,” Sutin says.
On the other hand, some changes – like washing your hands more and reevaluating what matters – may be positive. And those you can choose to keep.
It starts with taking a moment to reflect and recognize what changes are helpful or harmful, which you’d like to carry forward, and which you’ll leave behind.
So, how have we changed since the pandemic? Have a look.
Our Blood Pressure Went Up
A study of half a million U.S. adults found systolic blood pressure (the top number in your blood pressure measurement) jumped by about 2 millimeters of mercury from April 2020 to December 2020, while diastolic pressure (the bottom number) went up, too. (This after holding steady in 2019 and the first 3 months of 2020.)
Stress activates the sympathetic nervous system, raising blood pressure, says study author Luke Laffin, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Blood Pressure Disorders. It also inspires unhealthy behaviors, like scarfing down junk food, drinking alcohol, and sleeping less.
Even a small rise in blood pressure can increase heart attack and stroke risk. But you can help reverse the damage by exercising, cutting back on salt and saturated fat, making sleep a priority, and taking blood pressure medications as prescribed. Another useful exercise: Take a long look at how you react to stress triggers, no matter if they come from family, TV, or social media. Tracking your blood pressure at home can help too, Laffin says. Find validated monitors at ValidateBP.org.
We Need More Space
Remember Seinfeld’s “close talker” (Judge Reinhold) who gets uncomfortably I-can-feel-your-breath close? We all know that visceral urge to step back, and now we may be stepping back even farther.
Taking advantage of a pre-pandemic study on personal space, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital recruited the same people for a new study after the pandemic began. They found that space needs increased by 45%, from 2 to 3 feet to 3 to 4 feet, on average.
The clever part of this study is that they used both real people and avatars to test the results.
“Even though avatars are not real, we do not want an avatar in our personal space,” says study author Daphne Holt, MD, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital. You can’t catch COVID from an avatar. Yet people still needed more space in a virtual setting, suggesting the brain systems regulating personal space may have been altered.
No need to force this one. You’ll readjust at your own pace, Holt says.
“These behaviors are fairly automatic and sensitive to change, and thus should quickly adapt again to the new normal.”
We’ve Become Germ-Fighting Ninjas – and That May Be Bad for Our Health
For many of us, the pandemic was a crash course on virology and immunology. We now know what a spike protein is, the difference between an N95 and a regular-old face mask, the virtues of alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and how far and fast virus-carrying droplets can travel.
But we may have fended off good germs too, meaning your microbiome may have taken a hit.
“We have a tension in our society between hygiene and healthy [microbe] exposure,” says Brett Finlay, PhD, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of British Columbia and author of Let Them Eat Dirt.
That goes back well before the pandemic, to when scientists discovered about a century ago that germs cause infection. That’s when we broke out the disinfectant, sterilizing our world and killing healthy microbes in the process.
“When we realized this and how important the microbiome is to our health, we started pushing back,” says Finlay. “Then COVID came along, and we went back to being hyper hygienic, which will set us back considerably.”
Healthy microbes help protect against disease. And a BMJ study even found that the gut microbiome may influence COVID severity.
Strike a balance, Finlay recommends. Keep handwashing, but eat more fiber, fermented foods, and probiotics, and cut back on sugar, flour, and red meat. Also exercise, manage stress, and get outside. Microbes in the environment can be ingested and become part of your gut community, where they can help fuel healthy gut cells, he says. A pet is another good way to expose yourself to different microbes.
Our Vision Got Blurrier
The pandemic, by virtue of trapping us indoors and keeping us close to screens, may have sped up a rise in nearsightedness, or myopia, especially among young children. That’s when you can see things up close but struggle to view objects far away. The fix is simple: glasses. But if myopia worsens too quickly, it can increase the risk of retinal detachment and glaucoma, conditions that in turn can lead to permanent blindness.
Children are especially at risk.
“The younger the person, the more influence near activity has on progression of myopia,” says Howard Krauss, MD, a neuro-ophthalmologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA. “But even the young adult may induce myopia with prolonged near work,” as may be the case among law students and medical students.
You can help protect yourself (or your child) against myopia progression by getting outside, Krauss says. Exposure to bright light triggers the release of dopamine, which may prevent the eye from elongating (the basis of myopia). Maximize your outdoor time as you can, aiming for at least 2 hours a day.
Our Teeth Hurt
Some 70% of dentists saw more teeth grinding, or bruxism, among patients. Dr. Google noticed too: Searches for “bruxism,” “teeth grinding,” and “teeth clenching” spiked between May and October 2020.
Grinding is linked to stress, and some research suggests the tensing-and-relaxing motion (like chewing gum) may be a subconscious stress reducer.
If it gets bad enough, grinding can cause tooth fractures or loss of teeth, says Robert DiPilla, DDS. If you’re concerned, see your dentist. A fitted mouth guard may solve the problem.
We’re More Anxious (and More Aware of That, Too)
Rates of depression and anxiety soared during the pandemic. The reason? Take your pick: unprecedented stress, frustration, isolation, uncertainty, grief over losing loved ones. Some research points to “emotional contagion.” That’s when you see other anxious people, so you start to feel anxious too, an effect that can run rampant on social media.
But guess what? We’ve noticed. A recent survey from CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 9 out of 10 adults believe there’s a mental health crisis in the U.S. today. We’re talking more about mental health now, says Ariana Mufson, a social worker in Newton Centre, MA, and we may be more aware of it than ever, as evidenced by the rise in demand for mental health services.
“People I hadn’t seen in years came back to my practice,” says Mufson, “and I received daily referrals to the point where I had to keep a long waitlist.”
Paying more attention to your mental health is a positive change. So put down the phone and keep up the self-care. Our mental health needs “exercise” just as our bodies do, Mufson says.
We Stopped Catching Colds
It’s not true that getting infections boosts general immunity. In fact, infection can cause inflammation and may trigger autoimmune disease. One study found that prior infection with a common cold coronavirus may have increased the risk of severe illness from COVID.
“One of the things we learned from the pandemic was how effective masking is at preventing all sorts of illnesses,” says Meghan May, PhD, a professor of microbiology and infectious disease at the University of New England College of Medicine. Take the unusually low 2020-2021 flu season, she says.
“We can apply that knowledge forward to help curtail diseases other than COVID.”
Keep washing your hands, using sanitizer, and minding your personal space, May recommends. And continue to eat outside at restaurants if you can, even during the chilly months of cold and flu season. Heat lamps, fire pits, and portable stoves have become common at many places, she notes.
We Reevaluated What Matters
Amid the disruption and isolation, the pandemic may have helped us focus on what’s most important. Engagements, career shifts, and moves all spiked. Job loss and furloughs encouraged many to reconsider their careers, prompting an unprecedented high in U.S. resignations. Inflation forced some to rethink their spending – a Capital One survey found 58% of those surveyed have completely changed how they think about money due to the pandemic.
This is one change you want to make permanent, so keep fostering that compassionate and curious inner voice, says Mufson.
“Ask yourself, ‘Is this job making me happy? Is it giving me the work-life balance I want? Do I have enough free time to see family and friends?’” If not, figure out the steps needed to get where you want to be.
Earlier this month, Google Cloud announced its latest venture within the realm of healthcare: a new Medical Imaging Suite. This initiative builds on years of hard work by the Google Cloud team, aimed at creating a universally friendly, efficient, and value-providing platform, with an ode to interoperability and accessibility.
The applications behind the platform are multi-fold:
Imaging Storage: the Suite will enable a more comprehensive way to store and access advanced medical imaging
Imaging Lab: in partnership with chip maker NVIDIA, the platform will make it easier to automate routine imaging tasks (e.g. labeling)
Imaging Datasets & Dashboards: the software will utilize advanced search tools to retrieve and view large sums of data
Imaging AI Pipelines: the Suite is built to support artificial intelligence capabilities in order to integrate machine learning systems and models
Imaging Deployment: the platform will provide a comprehensive and secure tool that can be curated to each organization’s needs
Thomas Kurian, Chief Executive Officer of Google Cloud, has previously explained his overarching vision with the product line: “Our customers and partners put their trust in our team to deliver next-generation cloud technologies to help them become the best tech company in their industry. The combination of Google’s technical strengths, backed by its unique scale and deep experience in connecting that technology with consumer products and ecosystems, enables Google Cloud to put the tools of tomorrow in the hands of organizations today.”
Established healthcare players are already using the software. Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey, for example, hopes to use the robust Suite for prostate cancer detection.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – MAY 28: Sundar Pichai, Alphabet CEO.
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Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
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But AI integration and tackling data problems in healthcare are not easy tasks. Many scholars have recently expressed criticism that the so called “digital revolution” in healthcare that was especially spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic has not delivered on the lofty promises that were made; instead, healthcare technology has been difficult to integrate in a meaningful way, especially in ways that can actually impact patient care outcomes.
Much of the challenge with AI specifically is the need for large volumes of data to create learning sets, so as to actually “teach” the AI system how to interpret data. For many organizations, their data remains disorganized, inaccessible, or in legacy formats that simply require a significant amount of “clean up” and reconciliation before they can be used in a meaningful way.
The purpose of solutions like Google Cloud is to eventually make data interoperable and machine learning ready, so that organizations can progress away from the previous age of information technology. Whether or not healthcare pundits like it, healthcare is amidst a revolution, one that will seamlessly integrate new and advanced technologies into patient care. Now, it is upto new and established technology leaders to create this revolution in a meaningful and safe manner.
Pfizer will charge $110 to $130 for a dose of its COVID-19 vaccine once the U.S. government stops buying the shots, but the drugmaker says it expects many people will continue receiving it for free.
Pfizer executives said the commercial pricing for adult doses could start early next year, depending on when the government phases out its program of buying and distributing the shots.
The drugmaker said it expects that people with private health insurance or coverage through public programs like Medicare or Medicaid will pay nothing. The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover many recommended vaccines without charging any out-of-pocket expenses.
A spokesman said the company also has an income-based assistance program that helps eligible U.S. residents with no insurance to get the shots.
A Pfizer executive said Thursday that the price reflects increased costs for switching to single-dose vials and commercial distribution. The executive, Angela Lukin, said the price was well below the thresholds “for what would be considered a highly effective vaccine.”
Pfizer’s two-shot vaccine debuted in late 2020 and is easily the most common preventive shot that has been used to fight COVID-19 in the U.S.
More than 375 million doses of the original vaccine, which Pfizer developed with the German drugmaker BioNTech, have been distributed in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That doesn’t count another 12 million doses of an updated booster that was approved earlier this year.
The vaccine brought in $36.78 billion in revenue last year for Pfizer and was the drugmaker’s top-selling product.
Analysts predict that it will rack up another $32 billion this year, according to FactSet. But they also expect sales to fall rapidly after that.
More than 90% of the adult U.S. population has already received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC. But only about half that population has also received a booster dose.
FRIDAY, Oct. 21, 2022 (HealthDay News) – In an unanimous vote on Thursday, a panel of U.S. vaccine experts recommended that COVID shots be added to the list of recommended vaccinations for children and adults.
Now it’s up to the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention to decide whether to follow the advice of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Even if the agency does approve adding the shots to the schedule, it doesn’t amount to a vaccine mandate. State and local jurisdictions will still decide what vaccines are required for schools, NBC News reported.
“Moving COVID-19 to the recommended immunization schedule does not impact what vaccines are required for school entrance, if any,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “Local control matters. And we honor that the decision around school entrance for vaccines rests where it did before, which is with the state level, the county level and at the municipal level, if it exists at all.”
“This discussion does not change that,” he told NBC News.
An example of local jurisdictions making their own choices includes the HPV vaccine, which has been on the immunization schedule since 2006. Only Puerto Rico, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., actually require it for both girls and boys. Virginia requires the vaccine for girls, NBC News reported.
Despite having a recommended national vaccine schedule, vaccination rates for American children have dropped during the pandemic.
COVID cases are also declining among U.S. children, totally close to 28,000 last week, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. It is the first time since early April that cases were under 30,000.
An advantage to having COVID-19 shots on the vaccine schedule is that insurance providers typically will cover recommended vaccines. Though federal dollars are still paying for those vaccines, that will eventually end, NBC News reported.
The COVID vaccines could also become a part of the federal Vaccines for Children program, which would provide them free to children covered by Medicaid.
“By adding it to the VFC program, it now makes these vaccines available to these uninsured and underinsured children,” said Dr. Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, former public health commissioner for Chicago and a former practicing pediatrician.
Morita called the schedule the “gold standard” for clinicians.
“I used to look every year, waiting for this vaccine schedule, to make sure I was following the best vaccination guidance available,” Morita told NBC News.
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