China’s closely watched reopening is now causing concern as the number of new COVID-19 cases grows and the country reports the first deaths in several weeks.
Much of the news out of China this week is in stark contrast to zero COVID, the strict policy that was in place up until a month ago. In response to widespread protests, authorities have lifted many of the restrictions that limited how people in China were able to move, work and treat their illnesses.
•In the U.S., it’s still hard to find children’s cold medications. CVS Health CVS, -0.31%
and Walgreens Boots Alliance WBA, +0.95%
this week put limits on purchases of children’s cold and flu medicines in response to high demand amid a surge in cases of pediatric COVID, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, according to the Wall Street Journal. This includes medications like acetaminophen and ibuprofen.
• Testing positive a second or third time may worsen long-COVID symptoms, according to a study published in Nature in November. However, it can be hard to predict how each new infection will affect an individual patient. “It makes sense that repeat infections would not be beneficial to a person’s health,” one doctor told WebMD. “But I think it’s really hard to know what the additional risk of each subsequent infection would be because there are all sorts of other things in the mix.”
• COVID hospitalizations are rising in the U.S. There are about 40,000 people hospitalized with COVID right now, a figure that is 11% higher than it was two weeks ago, according to the most recent update of a New York Times tracker. The numbers of new infections and COVID-related deaths are also rising this month. The seven-day daily average of new cases is about 66,000, while about 413 people are dying each day.
Outgoing Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is considering a presidential run, took a shot at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s call to investigate the COVID-19 vaccines, arguing that “we shouldn’t undermine the science.”
Hutchinson, a Republican, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Arkansas didn’t have vaccine mandates, but that he and other medical experts had sought to educate state residents about why the shots are beneficial.
DeSantis, a Republican who is also mulling a presidential run, last week called for the Florida Supreme Court to have a grand jury investigate what information was disseminated about the vaccines, including by the drugmakers that developed them. DeSantis had previously encouraged people to get vaccinated but has recently changed his views.
“We do need to make sure we get the protection, whether it’s a flu shot or whether it’s a COVID vaccine,” Hutchinson said. “Everybody makes their decision, but I’m for the education and the science behind it.”
The comments came as the U.S. is facing an uptick in COVID cases with temperatures dropping and the holiday season well under way. About 65,000 people are testing positive every day, a daily average that’s 26% higher than it was two weeks ago, according to a New York Times tracker.
The number of people who are dying, hospitalized or being treated in intensive-care units is also increasing. About 400 deaths are being reported in the U.S. every day, a 63% increase over the past 14 days. The higher counts come about two weeks after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Other COVID news to know:
The bivalent boosters do a good job preventing severe disease. New research, published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that the new shots are better at reducing the risk of hospitalization than the first round of shots. The bivalent shots, which are designed to equally protect against the original strain of the virus and the BA.4/BA.5 subvariants of omicron, “provide a modest degree of protection against symptomatic infection.” the study found.
Los Angeles is running out of hospital beds. There were only 242 available hospital beds in Los Angeles last week as a result of the recent increase in COVID, flu and RSV cases, along with patients receiving long-delayed elective care, the Los Angeles Times reports. It’s the fewest number of beds available in the county over the past four years.
China adds two to its COVID death count. Chinese health officials said Monday that two people have died in Beijing, the first COVID-related deaths to be reported since Dec. 4. The country recently began lifting its stringent zero-COVID restrictions amid a surge of cases and widespread protests, according to the Associated Press. China has said that about 5,200 people in the country have died from COVID since the pandemic began.
A bill to rescind the COVID vaccine mandate for members of the U.S. military and to provide nearly $858 billion for national defense passed the Senate on Thursday and is headed to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
An amendment from Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz of Texas was defeated. It would have allowed for the reinstatement of service members who were discharged for failing to obey an order to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and compensate them for any pay and benefits lost as a result of the separation.
Opponents worried about the precedent of rewarding members of the military who disobeyed an order. Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the Democratic chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said orders are not suggestions — they are commands.
“What message do we send if we pass this [amendment]? It is a very dangerous one,” Reed said. “What we’re telling soldiers is, ‘If you disagree, don’t follow the order, and then just lobby Congress, and they’ll come along and they’ll restore your rank, or restore your benefits, or restore everything.’ ”
People took shelter inside metro stations in Kyiv as Russia fired missiles at Ukraine’s capital and other cities on Friday. It’s the latest attack targeting the country’s energy infrastructure, while Ukrainian forces step up shelling of occupied territories. Photo: DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Friday found that new omicron subvariants that emerged just weeks ago continued to replace the BA.5 variant in the U.S. in the latest week.
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounted for 69.1% of new COVID cases in the week through Friday, while BA.5 accounted for 10%. Last week, the two subvariants accounted for 67.9% of all cases, while BA.5 accounted for 11.5%.
In the New York region, which includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the numbers were even higher, with BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounting for 70.2% of new cases, while BA.5 accounted for 9.6%.
When another subvariant, XBB, is included in the tally, the three accounted for 82.7% of all new cases in the region.
U.S. known cases of COVID were still trending higher at the end of the week, along with hospitalizations, fatalities and test-positivity rates.
The daily average for new cases stood at 64,889 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 33% from two weeks ago.
Cases are climbing in 43 states, led by South Carolina, where they are up 114% from two weeks ago. Cases have more than doubled in Rhode Island and Mississippi, as well as in American Samoa.
The average for hospitalizations was up 19% to 40,155, led by Texas, where hospitalizations are up 80% from two weeks ago, and Vermont, where they are up 62%.
• Public attitudes toward vaccine requirements for schoolchildren have eroded during the pandemic, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The study found just seven in 10 adults, or 71%, say say healthy children should be required to get the MMR vaccine — which protects against measles, mumps and rubella — in order to attend public schools, down from 82% who said the same in an October 2019 Pew Research Center poll. Almost three in 10, or 28%, say parents should be allowed to decide not to vaccinate their children even if it creates health risks for others, up from16% in 2019. “Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, there has been a 24-percentage-point increase in the share who hold this view (from 20% to 44%),” the study found.
• China’s government on Friday ordered rural areas to prepare for the return of migrant workers during the Chinese New Year holiday season in hopes of preventing a major surge in COVID cases in communities with limited medical resources, the AP reported. People returning home for the holiday must wear masks and avoid contact with elderly people, and village committees must monitor their movements, the guidelines said, but there was no mention of the possibility of isolation or quarantining. The news comes a week after China announced the easing of its strict zero-COVID measures.
• California will stop making companies pay employees who can’t work because they caught the coronavirus while on the job, the AP reported separately. For the past two years, California workplace regulators have tried to slow the spread of the coronavirus by requiring infected workers to stay home while also guaranteeing they would still be paid. But Thursday, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted to end that rule in 2023 — in part because the rule has become harder to enforce.
The U.S. leads the world with 99.8 million cases and 1,087,014 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.8 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 44.1 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 14.1% of the overall population.
The White House has unveiled a fresh push to increase COVID preparedness heading into the holidays and will again make free tests available to Americans, after a three-month hiatus.
Starting Thursday, households can order four rapid virus tests through covidtest.gov, a senior administration official told the Associated Press.
A growing chorus of voices is questioning why there is no concerted effort to persuade Americans to wear face masks in public settings again as COVID cases, hospitalizations, fatalities and test-positivity rates rise across the nation.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to encourage people to keep up with vaccines and boosters and to urge others to do so too. But for now, there is no push for face masks or social distancing, the public safety measures that helped contain the spread of the virus at the peak of the pandemic.
The daily average for new cases stood at 65,528 on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 56% from two weeks ago. Cases are climbing in 47 states, led by Mississippi, where they are up 356% from two weeks ago.
The average for hospitalizations is up 24% to 38,331. Hospitalizations are climbing in 44 states, led by Vermont, where they are up 83% from two weeks ago.
The number of COVID deaths is up 48% to a daily average of 468, a disappointing reversal of the declining trend seen over the past several months. The test-positivity rate has climbed 25% to 12%.
New York City and New York state have emerged as hot spots, with an average of 6,405 new cases a day in the state in the last week, the tracker shows. Cases are up 74% from two weeks ago.
The omicron strains called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 have become dominant in the Empire State, replacing BA.5. Both are sublineages of BA.5 but are more infectious than the original variant, meaning they can spread faster and more easily.
Meanwhile, other respiratory illnesses including flu, RSV and strep throat are also circulating, adding to the burden on healthcare systems.
Children are having an especially rough winter so far amid shortages of medicines to treat common childhood illnesses such as flu, ear infections and sore throats, CNN reported.
“Right now, we are having severe shortages of medications. There’s no Tamiflu for children. There’s barely any Tamiflu for adults. And this is brand-name and generic,” Renae Kraft, a relief pharmacist in Oklahoma City, told the network. Additionally, she said, “as far as antibiotics go, there’s not a whole lot.”
Physicians are reporting high numbers of respiratory illnesses like RSV and the flu earlier than the typical winter peak. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what the early surge means for the winter months. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang
Families have taken to social media to highlight their hunt for oseltamivir, the generic for Tamiflu, as well as for the antibiotics amoxicillin and augmentin, said CNN. And there is also a shortage of the inhaler albuterol, which helps open airways in the lungs, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
• Some two years after they were first introduced, COVID vaccines have prevented more than 3 million additional deaths and about 18 million additional hospitalizations in the U.S., according to a new study from the Commonwealth Fund. More than 655 million doses of vaccine have been administered in the U.S., and 80% of the overall population has had at least one dose. “The swift development of the vaccine, emergency authorization to distribute widely, and rapid rollout have been instrumental in curbing hospitalization and death, while mitigating socioeconomic repercussions of the pandemic,” the authors wrote.
• Chinese universities say they will allow students to finish the semester from home in hopes of reducing the potential for a large COVID-19 outbreak during the January Lunar New Year travel period, the AP reported. It wasn’t clear how many schools were participating, but universities in Shanghai and nearby cities said students would be given the option of returning home early or staying on campus and undergoing testing every 48 hours. The Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 22, is traditionally China’s busiest travel season.
Some movie theaters in China reopened and COVID-testing booths were dismantled ahead of an announcement by authorities on Wednesday to scrap most testing and quarantine requirements. The changes come after nationwide protests against Beijing’s zero-COVID policy. Photo: Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
• The Nasdaq-listed 111 Inc. YI, +4.80%
has started retail sales of Pfizer’s PFE, +1.74%
oral COVID-19 treatment pill in China, according to the healthcare platform’s website, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The sales page for the Chinese platform on Tuesday showed it is now offering Paxlovid, the COVID medication that Beijing approved in February, for customers with positive results from polymerase chain reaction or antigen tests. Paxlovid has been used by medical practitioners to treat patients in China since March, when Shanghai was hit by a COVID outbreak, according to local media reports.
The U.S. leads the world with 99.5 million cases and 1,084,766 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.6 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 42 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 13.5% of the overall population.
Omicron subvariants continued to account for more new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. in the latest week than did BA.5, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, which are sublineages of BA.5, accounted for 67.9% of cases in the week through Dec. 10, while BA.5 accounted for 11.5%, the data show.
Last week, BQ.1.1 and BQ.1 accounted for 62.8% of all cases in the U.S., while BA.5 accounted for 13.8%.
In the New York region, which includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the numbers were even higher, with BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounting for 73.3% of new cases, compared with 10% for BA.5.
In the previous week, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounted for 72.4% of all cases, compared with 6.9% for BA.5.
New York City is again emerging as a hot spot for COVID, according to a New York Times tracker, which shows cases up about 60% in recent weeks and hospitalizations at their highest level since February.
The test-positivity rate in New York City stood at 13% on Thursday, the tracker shows.
Overall, known U.S. cases are up 53% from two weeks ago. The daily average for hospitalizations is up 30% at 37,066, while the daily average for deaths is up 35% to 460.
For now, the numbers remain far below the peaks seen last winter, when omicron first hit, but with flu and other respiratory infections currently sweeping the country and affecting young children, experts are warning people to take precautions.
• A rash of COVID-19 cases in schools and businesses was reported by social-media users Friday in areas across China. This comes after the ruling Communist Party loosened its antivirus rules as it tries to reverse a deepening economic slump, the Associated Press reported. Official data showed a fall in new cases, but after the government on Wednesday ended mandatory testing for many people, those data no longer cover large parts of the population. That was among the dramatic changes aimed at gradually emerging from the zero-COVID restrictions that have confined millions of people to their homes and sparked protests and demands for President Xi Jinping to resign.
• U.S.-listed shares of China Jo-Jo Drugstores Inc. CJJD, +51.20%
rallied on Friday as the stores filled with customers buying cold medicines after COVID restrictions were eased, MarketWatch’s Jaimy Lee reported. The stock was up 22%. The company, which is based in Hangzhou, China, operates drugstores and an online pharmacy in China. It is also a wholesale distributor of pharmacy products and grows and sells herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Some movie theaters in China reopened and COVID-testing booths were dismantled ahead of an announcement by authorities on Wednesday that will scrap most testing and quarantine requirements. The changes come after nationwide protests against Beijing’s zero-COVID policy. Photo: Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
• Pfizer PFE, -0.12%
and German partner BioNTech BNTX, -0.88%
have received fast-track designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a single-dose mRNA-based vaccine candidate targeting both COVID and flu. The companies have already announced that they are in early-stage trials to review the safety and immunogenicity of their combined vaccine in healthy adults. The vaccine will target the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron sublineages, which have become dominant globally, as well as four different flu strains recommended for use in the Northern Hemisphere by the World Health Organization. If approved, the vaccine would be the first to target both COVID and flu.
• A bill to rescind the COVID vaccine mandate for members of the U.S. military and to provide nearly $858 billion for national defense was passed by the House on Thursday as lawmakers scratch one of the final items off their yearly to-do list, the AP reported. The bill provides about $45 billion more for defense programs than President Joe Biden requested, the second consecutive year Congress has significantly exceeded his request, as lawmakers seek to boost the nation’s military competitiveness with China and Russia. The bill is expected to easily pass the Senate and then be signed into law by Biden.
The U.S. leads the world with 99.4 million cases and 1,084,236 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.6 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 42 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 13.5% of the overall population.
More than 80% of people in the U.S. say, “We are in a better place than we were a year ago,” according to the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus index, as many say they have returned to their pre-COVID routines.
“With majorities getting out and about and only about 1 in 4 saying they’re taking steps to avoid COVID or the flu, for most people this is going to be a COVID worry- free holiday,” Cliff Young, president of Ipsos U.S. Public Affairs, told Axios.
Another poll tracking COVID sentiment in the U.S. showed that concern about the virus was low among all age groups in November — though not as low as it was earlier this fall.
COVID news to know:
China loosens more COVID restrictions; worries about Chinese deaths persist. The country said Wednesday that mass testing will no longer occur in regions that aren’t high risk, people with mild symptoms can isolate at home instead of quarantine centers, and authorities cannot block fire escapes and public exits in locked-down areas, according to the New York Times. However, there are concerns that loosening restrictions could lead to 1 million deaths in China this winter, based on predictions from Wigram Capital Advisors, the Financial Times reported.
Did political ideology interfere with the U.S. COVID response? Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical officer to President Joe Biden, told NBC’s “Nightly News” that “the degree of divisiveness in this country right now has really led to such a polarization that it has interfered with an adequate science-based public health response.” Fauci is set to retire this year.
Vaccines reduce the risk of long COVID. A new analysis, published Tuesday in the Antimicrobial Stewardship & Healthcare Epidemiology by researchers at the University of Iowa, examined a handful of medical studies and found that people who had received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine had a long COVID prevalence rate of 37.6%, compared with 39.1% among the unvaccinated. That’s from data gathered from about 250,000 people in four countries.
COVID cases continue to rise across the U.S. The daily average of new infections is up about 28% over the last two weeks, according to a New York Times tracker. There were at least 54,000 new cases on Tuesday, while about 34,000 people are currently hospitalized with COVID. The number of people being treated in intensive care units has also increased, by 21% over the last two weeks, with about 4,100 people with COVID in ICU beds.
HONG KONG — China on Sunday reported two additional deaths from COVID-19 as some cities move cautiously to ease anti-pandemic restrictions following increasingly vocal public frustrations.
The National Health Commission said one death was reported each in the provinces of Shandong and Sichuan. No information was given about the ages of the victims or whether they had been fully vaccinated.
China, where the virus first was detected in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan, is the last major country trying to stop transmission completely through quarantines, lockdowns and mass testing. Concerns over vaccination rates are believed to figure prominently in the ruling Communist Party’s determination to stick to its hard-line strategy.
While nine in 10 Chinese have been vaccinated, only 66% of people over 80 have gotten one shot while 40% have received a booster, according to the commission. It said 86% of people over 60 are vaccinated.
Given those figures and the fact that relatively few Chinese have been built up antibodies by being exposed to the virus, some fear millions could die if restrictions were lifted entirely.
Yet, an outpouring of public anger appears to have prompted authorities to lift some of the more onerous restrictions, even as they say the “zero-COVID” strategy — which aims to isolate every infected person — is still in place.
The demonstrations, the largest and most widely spread in decades, erupted Nov. 25 after a fire in an apartment building in the northwestern city of Urumqi killed at least 10 people. That set off angry questions online about whether firefighters or victims trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other anti-virus controls. Authorities denied that, but the deaths became a focus of public frustration.
The country saw several days of protests across cities including Shanghai and Beijing, with protesters demanding an easing of COVID-19 curbs. Some demanded Chinese President Xi Jinping step down, an extraordinary show of public dissent in a society over which the ruling Communist Party exercises near total control.
Beijing and some other Chinese cities announced that riders can board buses and subways without a virus test for the first time in months. The requirement has led to complaints from some Beijing residents that even though the city has shut many testing stations, most public venues still require COVID-19 tests.
On Sunday, China announced another 35,775 cases from the past 24 hours, 31,607 of which were asymptomatic, bringing its total to 336,165 with 5,235 deaths.
While many have questioned the accuracy of the Chinese figures, they remain relatively low compared to the U.S. and other nations which are now relaxing controls and trying to live with the virus that has killed at least 6.6 million people worldwide and sickened almost 650 million.
China still imposes mandatory quarantine for incoming travelers even as its infection numbers are low compared to its 1.4 billion population.
ASTORIA, Ore. — Scientists along the West Coast are calling for action to help sunflower sea stars, among the largest sea stars in the world, recover from catastrophic population declines.
Experts say a sea star wasting disease epidemic that began in 2013 has decimated about 95% of the population from the Aleutian Islands of Alaska to Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, The Astorian reported.
The decline triggered the International Union for Conservation of Nature to classify the species as critically endangered in 2020. A petition to list the species under the federal Endangered Species Act was filed in 2021.
Steven Rumrill, shellfish program leader at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said in his more than 40 years as a marine scientist, he hasn’t seen a widespread decline of a species on the same scale as the sunflower sea star.
The sea stars, which are among the largest in the world and can span more than 3 feet (91 centimeters), are predators to the kelp-eating sea urchin. Without them, sea urchin populations have exploded, causing a troubling decline in kelp forests that provide food and shelter to many aquatic species along the West Coast.
Rumrill contributed to a recently published roadmap to recovery for the sea star as a guide for scientists and conservationists.
“It just sort of breaks your heart to see a species decline so rapidly to the point of extinction,” Rumrill said. “At the global scale, we’re recognizing that the impacts of humans have had major impacts on populations and lots of extinctions worldwide. Here’s one that’s happening right in front of our eyes.”
The roadmap was completed in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, National Marine Fisheries Service, and state agencies in California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.
The sea star wasting disease is estimated to have killed over 5.75 billion sunflower sea stars, according to the document.
The source of the outbreak has not been conclusively identified, but the document points to evidence that warming ocean waters from human-caused climate change increases the severity of the disease and could have triggered the outbreak.
Rumrill said listing through the Endangered Species Act could result in federal funding to continue research.
Matthew Burks, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said whether the agency recommends the sea star be listed under the Endangered Species Act will be posted to the Federal Register by early next year.
While sunflower sea stars appear to be the most affected by the sea star wasting disease, they are among about 20 documented species of sea stars at risk along the West Coast.
In recent weeks, Apple Inc. has accelerated plans to shift some of its production outside China, long the dominant country in the supply chain that built the world’s most valuable company, say people involved in the discussions. It is telling suppliers to plan more actively for assembling Apple products elsewhere in Asia, particularly India and Vietnam, they say, and looking to reduce dependence on Taiwanese assemblers led by Foxconn Technology Group.
Turmoil at a place called iPhone City helped propel Apple’s shift. At the giant city-within-a-city in Zhengzhou, China, as many as 300,000 workers work at a factory run by Foxconn to make iPhones and other Apple products. At one point, it alone made about 85% of the Pro lineup of iPhones, according to market-research firm Counterpoint Research.
COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the U.S. are rising and intensive-care-unit beds are being filled again, in a trend that may spell an end to the stable period the country experienced during the fall months.
The daily average of new cases was up 22% on Thursday from two weeks ago, to 49,070, according to a New York Times tracker. Cases are rising in 40 states, led by Oklahoma, where they are up 89% from two weeks ago.
The daily average for hospitalizations is up 21% from two weeks ago to 33,708, although as always, the trend is not uniform across the nation. Louisiana is the state with the highest increase in hospitalizations, up 109% from two weeks ago, followed by California, where they have climbed 66%.
Visits to the ICU are up 17%, while test-positivity rates are up 29%, to 10%, the tracker shows. On a brighter note, the daily average for deaths is down 3% to 274.
Experts are warning that new omicron subvariants are on the rise and are quickly replacing earlier ones.
That was up from 57.3% of cases in the week through Nov. 26, when 19.4% of cases were caused by BA.5.
In the New York region, which includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, those numbers were even higher, with BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounting for 72.4% of all cases, compared with 6.9% for BA.5.
That was up from the prior week, when BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounted for 70.8% of all cases, compared with 10.4% for BA.5.
For now, the new sublineages have not been shown to be likely to cause more severe disease than earlier ones, but they are more transmissible, which is why they have become dominant.
Experts continue to urge people to get their updated booster, which is the best protection against developing severe COVID or dying of it.
• Local governments in China are facing a new challenge in the battle against COVID: They are running out of cash needed to finance mass testing and enforce quarantines, CNN reported on Friday. The zero-COVID policy kept China out of recession in 2020, but now the bills are mounting, placing financial strain on municipal authorities across the world’s most populous nation, said CNN. For nearly three years, local governments have borne the brunt of enforcing pandemic controls.
• Former NBA star Jeremy Lin, who plays for a Chinese team, was fined 10,000 yuan ($1,400) for criticizing quarantine facilities, according to China’s professional league and a news report Friday, the AP reported. The ruling Communist Party is trying to crush criticism of the human cost and disruption of its zero-COVID strategy, which has confined millions of people to their homes.
Large protests erupted across China as crowds voiced their frustration over nearly three years of COVID-19 controls. Here’s how a deadly fire in Xinjiang sparked domestic upheaval and a political dilemma for Xi Jinping’s leadership. Photo: Thomas Peter/Reuters
• Formula One confirmed Friday that the Chinese Grand Prix will not take place in 2023, making it the fourth year in a row the race has been canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, the AP reported separately. “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,” Formula One said in a statement.
• German doctors are warning that pediatric units are stretched to the breaking point in some hospitals in part due to rising cases of respiratory infections among infants, the AP reported. The intensive-care association DIVI said the seasonal surge in cases of respiratory syncytial virus and a shortage of nurses was causing a “catastrophic situation” in hospitals. RSV is a common, highly contagious virus that infects nearly all babies and toddlers by age 2, some of whom can fall seriously ill. Experts say the easing of coronavirus pandemic restrictions means RSV is currently affecting a larger number of babies and children whose immune systems aren’t primed to fend off the infection.
Physicians are reporting high numbers of respiratory illnesses like RSV and the flu earlier than the typical winter peak. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what the early surge means for the winter months. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang
The U.S. leads the world with 98.9 million cases and 1,081,147 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.4 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.8% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 39.7 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 12.7% of the overall population.
Major Chinese cities on Thursday announced a further easing of COVID restrictions, as police continued to patrol streets to avert protests and the ruling Communist Party prepared for the funeral of late leader Jiang Zemin.
Guangzhou in the south, Shijiazhuang in the north, Chengdu in the southwest and other major cities announced they were easing testing requirements and controls on movement, as the Associated Press reported. In some areas, markets and bus service has reopened.
In Beijing, officials will let those infected patients who are at low risk to quarantine at home for a week, rather than in a government center, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.
China has required anyone with any degree of COVID to stay at those sites to cut transmission. The first signs of the shift have been seen in the heavily populated Chaoyang district, home to foreign embassies and offices.
Beijing is hoping to avoid more protests, while resources are also getting thin, those sources said. However, anyone wanting to isolate at home will have to provide a written guarantee to stay at home, with a magnetized alarm fitted on their door that will alert authorized if they try to leave, one source said. Bloomberg was unable to confirm the reports with officials from Beijing or its health department.
Large protests erupted across China as crowds voiced their frustration at nearly three years of Covid-19 controls. Here’s how a deadly fire in Xinjiang sparked domestic upheaval and a political dilemma for Xi Jinping’s leadership. Photo: Thomas Peter/Reuters
The World Health Organization’s weekly update shows the global tally of cases was flat in the week through Nov. 27 from the week earlier. The number of fatalities fell by 5% from the previous week.
Japan again led the world by new cases, with an 18% increase to 698,772. It was followed by South Korea, where cases rose 4% to 378,751 and the U.S., where they rose 8% to 296,882.
Omicron and its many subvariants and sublineages remained dominant in the period from Oct. 28 to Nov. 28, accounting for 99.9% of sequences reported to a central database. The BA.5 omicron subvariant and its sublineages were dominant in the week through Nov. 13 at 73.% of all sequences, and newer strains, including BQ. 1 and XBB continued to spread in November, the agency said.
In the U.S., known cases of COVID are rising again with the daily average standing at 45,219 on Wednesday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 15% from two weeks ago. Cases are now rising in 37 states from two weeks ago, as well as in Guam and Washington, D.C., led by Georgia, where they are up 60%, and California, where they have climbed 57%.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 16% at 32,445, but again, the pace of the increase is not uniform across the country. Louisiana has the highest increase in hospitalizations at 99% from two weeks ago, followed by California, where they are up 62%.
The daily average for deaths is down 7% at 262.
Physicians are reporting high numbers of respiratory illnesses like RSV and the flu earlier than the typical winter peak. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what the early surge means for the coming winter months. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang
• Nineteen people, including 17 New York City and New York state public employees, were charged in a federal complaint unsealed Wednesday with submitting fraudulent applications for funds intended to help small businesses survive the coronavirus pandemic, the AP reported. The accused, including employees of New York City’s police department, correction department and public school system, listed themselves as owners of businesses that in some cases did not exist in their applications for funds through the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program and Paycheck Protection Program, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. The defendants collectively stole more than $1.5 million from the SBA and financial institutions that issued SBA-guaranteed loans, prosecutors said.
• The number of people in Europe with undiagnosed HIV has risen as testing rates fell during the pandemic, threatening a global goal of ending the disease by 2030, Reuters reported, citing a report from the WHO and European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. The report found that in 2021 a quarter fewer HIV diagnoses were recorded compared to pre-pandemic levels in the WHO’s European region.
• Republican Gov. Jim Justice said Wednesday that West Virginia’s state of emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic will end at the start of the new year, the AP reported. The state of emergency has been in effect since March 16, 2020. It allows the governor to suspend certain rules on personnel and purchasing. “The truth is, the state of emergency doesn’t affect a whole lot, you know, anymore,” he said. “We absolutely declared an emergency at a time that we had an emergency. … Now, we need to move on.”
The U.S. leads the world with 98.8 million cases and 1,080,444 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.4 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.8% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 37.6 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 12.1% of the overall population.
The U.S.-listed shares of China-based electric vehicle maker XPeng Inc. skyrocketed Wednesday, as investors cheered changes in China’s COVID policy while shrugging off weak third-quarter results and a downbeat outlook.
The stock XPEV, +45.44%
charged up 45.0% in midday trading, enough to pace all gainers on the New York Stock Exchange. It was also headed for the biggest one-day gain since going public in August 2020, surpassing the previous record advance of 33.9% on Nov. 23, 2020.
The rally comes even after XPeng reported a wider-than-expected loss for the third-straight quarter, missed on revenue for the first time and said it expected fourth-quarter revenue to fall 40% to 44% from a year ago while the FactSet consensus called for just a 4.4 decline.
Instead, investors seemed China appeared to move toward easing its zero-COVID policy, amid growing social unrest and a slowing economy. China’s government said Tuesday that it would renew its push to vaccinate the elderly, and said it would amend COVID control measures.
XPeng’s stock rally also comes at a time when investor sentiment had soured. Earlier this week, Jefferies analyst Johnson Wan downgraded the EV maker, citing recent “missteps” by the company at a time that the “honeymoon stage” for EVs in China was coming to an end.
In addition, short interest, or bearish bets on XPeng’s stock, was 5.7% of the public float, or freely tradable shares, based on the latest available exchange data. That compares with short interest as a percent of float for China-based rivals Nio Inc. NIO, +20.14%
at 4.1% and Li Auto Inc. LI, +18.35%
at 4.7%.
For Tesla Inc. TSLA, +2.12%,
which generated $5.13 billion in revenue from China in its latest quarter, or about 24% of total revenue, short interest as a percent of float was 2.9%.
XPeng’s stock has soared 60.7% in November but has still tumbled 41.7% over the past three months. In comparison, the Invesco Golden Dragon China exchange-traded fund PGJ, +8.98%
has shed 11.7% the past three months while the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.62%
has slipped 1.1%.
The head of the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday joined the chorus of people urging China to adopt a more targeted approach to the coronavirus pandemic as the country’s zero-COVID policy sparks protests over lockdowns and hobbles the world’s second-biggest economy.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva urged a “recalibration” of China’s tough “zero-COVID” approach, which is aimed at isolating every case, “exactly because of the impact it has on both people and on the economy,” as the Associated Press reported.
Georgieva made the comments in an interview with the AP on Tuesday, after protests erupted in Chinese cities and in Hong Kong over the weekend, marking the strongest public dissent in decades.
“We see the importance of moving away from massive lockdowns, being very targeted in restrictions,” Georgieva said Tuesday in Berlin. “So that targeting allows [China] to contain the spread of COVID without significant economic costs.”
Georgieva also urged China to look at vaccination policies and focus on vaccinating the “most vulnerable people.”
A low rate of vaccinations among the elderly is a major reason Beijing has had to resort to lockdowns, while the emergence of more-contagious variants has made it increasingly hard to halt the spread of the virus.
In a rare show of defiance, crowds in China gathered for the third night as protests against COVID restrictions spread to Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. People held up blank sheets of paper, symbolizing censorship, and demanded the Chinese president step down. Photo: Kyodo News/Zuma Press
Chinese health officials said Tuesday they are preparing a push to get more older people vaccinated, the Guardian reported. The National Health Commission told reporters it would target more vaccinations at people older than 80 and would reduce to three months the gap between basic vaccination and booster shots for elderly people.
But experts, including President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, have expressed concern that China’s homegrown vaccines are not effective enough. China has not yet approved the vaccines developed by Pfizer PFE, -0.39%,
BioNTech BNTX, +1.16%
and Moderna MRNA, -0.17%
for public use. The shortcomings of China’s vaccines have led Chinese doctors to warn that a lifting of the zero-COVID policy could lead to a massive surge in cases that could overwhelm China’s healthcare system.
Meanwhile, with police out in force, there was little news of protests in Beijing, Shanghai or other cities on Tuesday, the AP reported separately.
In the U.S., known cases of COVID are rising again, with the daily average standing at 41,755 on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 6% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in 22 states, as well as Guam and Washington, D.C., and are flat in Nebraska. They are rising fastest in Arizona, where they are up 82% from two weeks ago, followed by Michigan, where they are up 77%.
The daily average for hospitalizations is flat at 28,135, while the daily average for deaths is up 6% to 314.
Physicians are reporting high numbers of respiratory illnesses like RSV and the flu earlier than the typical winter peak. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what the early surge means for the winter months. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang
• The World Health Organization has issued an emergency-use listing for the Novavax NVAX, +6.19%
protein-based COVID vaccine as a primary series for children ages 12-17 and as a booster for those ages 18 and older, Novavax said Tuesday. The WHO previously granted an emergency-use listing for the Nuvaxovid vaccine in adults ages 18 and older in December 2021, the company said. The new listing also paves the way for adults to get a booster shot of the vaccine about six months after completing the primary two-dose series.
• New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said Monday his administration has launched a promised review of its handling of the pandemic, the AP reported. The administration hired regional law firm Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads — which has offices in the state as well as Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York — along with management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group to conduct the review. The review is expected to end with a report in late 2023, the governor said.
• A Connecticut program that offered “hero pay” to essential workers at the peak of the pandemic got so many applicants that state lawmakers had to go back into session Monday to provide extra funding and put new limits on who could get the biggest bonuses, the AP reported. Initially, the state had expected to award about $30 million in bonuses to people who had to go to work, in person, in jobs in healthcare, food distribution, public safety and other essential services. But after getting 155,730 applications from eligible people, lawmakers realized they would have to either put more money in or slash benefits.
The U.S. leads the world with 98.6 million cases and 1,079,477 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.4 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.8% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 37.6 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 12.1% of the overall population.
People hold white sheets of paper and flowers in a row as police check their IDs during a protest over coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions in mainland China, during a commemoration of the victims of a fire in Urumqi, in Hong Kong, China November 28, 2022.
Tyrone Siu | Reuters
The White House on Monday criticized Beijing’s zero Covid strategy as ineffective and said the Chinese people have a right to peacefully protest.
“We’ve long said everyone has the right to peacefully protest, here in the United States and around the world. This includes in the PRC,” a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s National Security Council said in a statement.
Rare protests broke out against Covid lockdowns in Beijing, Shanghai, Urumqi and other cities over the weekend. Nearly three years after the virus first emerged in Wuhan, China is still imposing strict social controls to quash Covid outbreaks, while countries such as the U.S. have largely returned to normal life.
“We’ve said that zero COVID is not a policy we pursuing here in the United States,” the NSC spokesperson said. “And as we’ve said, we think it’s going to be very difficult for the People’s Republic of China to be able to contain this virus through their zero COVID strategy.”
The U.S. Covid response is focused on increasing vaccination rates and making testing and treatment more accessible, the spokesperson said.
China’s stringent Covid controls have kept deaths very low compared to the U.S., but the measures have also deeply disrupted economic and social life. In China, more than 30,000 people have died from Covid since the pandemic began, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.S., more than 1 million people have died.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the U.S., said China’s approach to Covid “doesn’t make public health sense.” Vaccination rates among the elderly, one of the groups most vulnerable to Covid, are low in China compared to other countries. The vaccination campaign in China focused on people in critical positions first, those ages 18 to 59 next, and only then people ages 60 and over.
“If you look at the prevalence of vaccinations among the elderly, that it was almost counterproductive, the people you really needed to protect were not getting protected,” Fauci told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. A temporary lockdown might make sense if the goal was to buy time to boost vaccination rates but China doesn’t seem to be doing that, he said.
“It seems that in China, it was just a very, very strict extraordinary lockdown where you lock people in the house but without any seemingly endgame to it,” Fauci said.
Fauci said China’s domestically developed vaccines are also not very effective.
The authors of the China CDC report said older people are more skeptical of the vaccine. The clinical trials didn’t enroll enough older people and as a consequence there wasn’t sufficient data on the vaccine’s safety and efficacy for this age group when the immunization campaign started, they wrote.
Dr. Ashish Jha, head of the White House Covid task force, said China should focus on making sure the elderly get vaccinated.
“That I think is the path out of this virus. Lockdowns and zero COVID is going to be very difficult to sustain,” Jha told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
Widespread protests across China over the government’s zero-COVID policy dominated pandemic headlines Monday, with Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, weighing in with the view that the strategy does not make public-health sense.
China’s biggest challenge is low vaccination rates — and a vaccine that has not been “particularly effective at all” compared with the ones being used in the West that are made by Pfizer PFE, +0.50%
and its German partner BioNTech BNTX, +5.68%
and by Moderna MRNA, +1.08%,
said Fauci, who is retiring next month.
Fauci recalled that when New York hospitals were overwhelmed by COVID cases three years ago, the decision was made to introduce restrictions, such as social distancing and shutdowns, to help flatten the curve of infections. But he noted that it was a temporary move aimed at buying time to get more people vaccinated and move personal protective equipment to where it was needed.
The first vaccine was distributed in the U.S. in December 2020.
“It seems that in China, it was just a very, very strict, extraordinary lockdown where you lock people in the house, but without, seemingly, any endgame to it,” said Fauci, who is also head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Fauci said one mistake the Chinese government has made is to refuse outside vaccines. “But also, interestingly, they did not, for reasons that I don’t fully appreciate, protect the elderly by making sure the elderly got vaccinated,” he said. “So if you look at the prevalence of vaccinations among the elderly, that was almost counterproductive. The people you really needed to protect were not getting protected.”
The protests have roiled financial markets and caused oil prices to erase their entire year-to-date gain. In a highly unusual move, protesters in Shanghai called for China’s powerful leader Xi Jinping to resign, an unprecedented rebuke as authorities in at least eight cities struggled Sunday to suppress demonstrations that represent a rare direct challenge to the ruling Communist Party, as the Associated Press reported.
The BBC said reporter Ed Lawrence, who was arrested while covering protests, was beaten and kicked by police while in custody.
“We have had no explanation or apology from the Chinese authorities, beyond a claim by the officials who later released him that they had arrested him for his own good in case he caught COVID from the crowd,” the broadcaster said in a statement. “We do not consider this a credible explanation.”
In a rare show of defiance, crowds in China gathered for a third night as protests against COVID restrictions spread to Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. People held blank sheets of paper, symbolizing censorship, and demanded that the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, step down. Photo: Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
In the U.S., known cases of COVID are rising again with the daily average standing at 41,997 on Sunday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 6% from two weeks ago.
Cases are currently rising in 22 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Guam, but are falling elsewhere.
The daily average for hospitalizations is up 4% to 29,053. Hospitalizations are rising in 23 states, the tracker shows.
• The World Health Organization said Monday it is recommending the term “mpox” as a new name for monkeypox disease and that it would use both names for a year while “monkeypox” is phased out. “When the outbreak of monkeypox expanded earlier this year, racist and stigmatizing language online, in other settings and in some communities was observed and reported to WHO,” the agency said in a statement. “In several meetings, public and private, a number of individuals and countries raised concerns and asked WHO to propose a way forward to change the name.” The WHO has responsibility for assigning names to new — and exceptionally, to existing — diseases, under the International Classification of Diseases and the WHO Family of International Health Related Classifications through a consultative process that includes WHO member states, it explained. The new name was decided upon following consultations with global experts, it said.
Residents in Shanghai received the world’s first inhaled COVID-19 vaccine by taking sips from a cup. WSJ’s Dan Strumpf explains how the new type of vaccine works and what it means for China’s reopening. Photo: Associated Press/Shanghai Media Group
• Unrest at one of China’s biggest manufacturing centers may cause a production shortfall this year of possibly 6 million Apple iPhone Pros, according to a source cited by Bloomberg. The Foxconn Technology 2354 facility in Zhengzhou, which makes the majority of Apple’s premium phones, has been struggling for weeks as workers rebel against COVID lockdown policies. Apple AAPL, -2.13%
recently lowered its overall production target from 90 million units to 87 million units. However, Foxconn believes it can make up any shortfall from Zhengzhou in 2023.
• A blood-thinning drug called Apixaban, which has been used for patients recovering from COVID, does not work and can cause major bleeding, according to new research reported by the Guardian. The anticoagulant, given to patients when they are discharged from a hospital after being treated for moderate or severe COVID, is widely used by hospitals across the U.K.’s National Health Service. However, the government-funded Heal-Covid trial has found that the drug does not work. Charlotte Summers, the chief investigator of the trial, said: “These first findings from Heal-Covid show us that a blood-thinning drug, commonly thought to be a useful intervention in the post-hospital phase, is actually ineffective at stopping people dying or being readmitted to hospital.”
The U.S. leads the world with 98.6 million cases and 1,079,199 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.4 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.8% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 37.6 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 12.1% of the overall population.
A healthcare worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic in the Peabody Institute Library in Peabody, Massachusetts, U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022.
Vanessa Leroy | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The new omicron Covid boosters probably aren’t very effective at preventing Covid infections and mild illness, but they will likely help keep the elderly and other vulnerable groups out of the hospital this winter, experts say.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a real-world study published this week, found the boosters are less than 50% effective against mild illness across almost all adult age groups when compared to people who are unvaccinated.
For seniors, the booster was 19% effective at preventing mild illness when administered as their fourth dose, compared to the unvaccinated. It was 23% effective against mild illness when given as their fifth dose.
Though the vaccine’s effectiveness against mild illness was low, people who received the boosters were better off than those who did not. The booster increased people’s protection against mild illness by 28% to 56% compared to those who only received the old shots, depending on age and when they received their last dose.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized the boosters in late August with the goal of restoring the high levels of protection the vaccines demonstrated in late 2020 and early 2021. At that time, the shots were more than 90% effective against infection. But the first real-world data from the CDC indicates that the boosters aren’t meeting those high expectations.
“The boosters give you some additional protection but it’s not that strong, and you shouldn’t rely on it as your sole protective device against infection,” said John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Moore said people at higher risk from Covid have every reason to get a booster since it modestly increases protection. But he said common sense measures such as masking and avoiding large crowds remain important tools for vulnerable groups since the boosters aren’t highly effective against infection.
The CDC study looked at more than 360,000 adults with healthy immune systems who tested for Covid at retail pharmacies from September to November when omicron BA.5 was dominant. The participants received either the booster, got two or more doses of the old shots or they were unvaccinated. It then compared those who tested positive for Covid with those who did not.
The study did not evaluate how well the boosters performed against severe disease, so it’s still unclear whether they will provide better protection against hospitalization than the old shots. The CDC in a statement said it will provide data on more severe outcomes when it becomes available.
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Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University, said the fact that the shots are providing some protection against infection in an era of highly immune evasive omicron subvariants is a good sign that they will provide strong protection against hospitalization. The vaccines have always performed better against severe disease than mild illness, he said.
“It’s better than nothing. Certainly, it doesn’t sort of show that the protection is incredibly high against infection,” Pekosz said. “I would expect that you would then see even greater protection from hospitalization or death.”
Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, said trying to prevent mild illness is not a viable public health strategy because the antibodies that block infection simply wane over time.
“Protection against mild disease just isn’t that good in the omicron subvariant era. The goal is protecting against severe disease,” said Offit, an infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who helped develop the rotavirus vaccine.
Dr. Celine Gounder, a senior public health fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said she’s not alarmed by the data. Reducing risk by even a modest amount at the individual level can have a significant positive effect on public health at the population level.
“If you can reduce risk among the elderly by even 30%, even 20%, that is significant when 90% of the COVID deaths are occurring in that group,” Gounder said. “For me, what’s really gonna matter is are you keeping that 65 year old out of the hospital.”
The boosters, called bivalent vaccines, target both omicron BA.5 and the original Covid strain that first emerged in Wuhan, China in 2019. The original shots, called monovalent vaccines, only include the first Covid strain.
It’s still unclear how the boosters will perform against more immune evasive omicron subvariants, such as BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, which are now dominant in the U.S. Pfizer and Moderna last week said early clinical trial data shows the boosters induce an immune response against these subvariants.
About 11% of those eligible for the new booster, or 35 million people, have received it so far, according to CDC data. About 30% of seniors have received the shot.
A person receives a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) test as the Omicron coronavirus variant continues to spread in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., December 22, 2021.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
The omicron BQ coronavirus subvariants have risen to dominance in the U.S. as people gather and travel for the Thanksgiving holiday, putting people with compromised immune systems at increased risk.
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 are causing 57% of new infections in the U.S., according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday. The omicron BA.5 subvariant, once dominant, now makes up only a fifth of new Covid cases.
The BQ subvariants are more immune evasive and likely resistant to key antibody medications, such as Evusheld and bebtelovimab, used by people with compromised immune systems, according to the National Institutes of Health. This includes organ transplant and cancer chemotherapy patients.
There are currently no replacements for these drugs. President Joe Biden, in an October speech, told people with compromised immune systems that they should consult with their physicians and take extra precautions this winter.
“New variants may make some existing protections ineffective for the immunocompromised. Sadly, this means you may be at a special risk this winter,” Biden said.
The XBB subvariant is also circulating at a low level right now, causing about 3% of new infections. Chief White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a briefing Tuesday, said XBB is even more immune evasive than the BQ subvariants.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the new boosters, which were designed against omicron BA.5, probably aren’t as effective against infection and mild illness from XBB. But the shots should protect against severe disease, he said. Singapore saw a spike in cases from XBB, but there wasn’t a major surge in hospitalizations, he added.
Moderna and Pfizer said last week that their boosters induce an immune response against BQ.1.1, which is a descendent of the BA.5 subvariant.
Fauci, in the press briefing, said public health officials believe there is enough immunity from vaccination, boosting and infection to prevent a repeat of the unprecedented Covid surge that occurred last winter when omicron first arrived.
PORTLAND, Ore. — District attorneys in Oregon are once again sounding the alarm over the state’s critical shortage of court-provided attorneys for low-income defendants. The lack of public defenders has strained the criminal justice system and left more than 700 people statewide without legal representation.
Judges in Multnomah County, which is home to Portland, have dismissed nearly 300 cases this year due to a lack of defense attorneys able to handle cases. The county’s top prosecutor, Mike Schmidt, said that the shortage poses “ an urgent threat to public safety ” and released a tally this week of dismissed cases. He pledged to release new numbers each week to draw attention to the crisis.
More than two-thirds of the dismissed cases are felonies; in 53% of them, property crime was the primary charge. The next most common primary charge was for weapon crimes, which accounted for 16% of dismissed felonies, while person crimes, which include assault and robbery, accounted for 12%.
“Months into this crisis, many are still waiting for their day in court while others have seen their cases dismissed altogether,” said Schmidt, a progressive prosecutor who was elected in 2020 on a platform of criminal justice reforms. “This sends a message to crime victims in our community that justice is unavailable and their harm will go unaddressed. It also sends a message to individuals who have committed a crime that there is no accountability while burning through scarce police and prosecutor resources.”
The statement reflects an increasingly popular tactic used by prosecutors in Oregon. Powerless to fix the problem on their own, they have tried to force the state’s hand. Earlier this month, Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton said that his office would seek a court order requiring the state’s public defense agency to appoint its own staff attorneys to represent defendants if no other attorneys were available.
The head of Oregon’s public defenders’ office said that she would work with Schmidt “to address this systemic access to justice emergency.”
“Public defense is a critical component of the public safety system,” Jessica Kampfe, executive director of the Office of Public Defense Services, said in an email, adding that “public defenders need significant investments to retain existing staffing levels and increase capacity.”
As of Wednesday, statewide there were 763 low-income defendants who lack legal representation, according to the state Judicial Department.
The Oregon Legislature is set to tackle the issue when the next session begins in January. A working group that includes lawmakers has been meeting for months and considering major reforms that could overhaul the system. One proposal would reassign the Office of Public Defense Services from the Judicial Department, where it’s currently housed, to the governor’s office, in response to criticism of conflicts of interest.
Oregon’s system for providing attorneys to criminal defendants who can’t afford them has shown cracks for years, but case backlogs have significantly worsened since the coronavirus pandemic. The public defender shortage has overwhelmed the courts, frustrated defendants and impacted crime victims, who experts say experience more trauma when cases are dismissed or take longer to be resolved.
The state has been sued twice this year for allegedly violating defendants’ constitutional rights to legal counsel and a speedy trial. While the original lawsuit was dismissed, a similar second suit was filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court last month.
An American Bar Association report released in January found that Oregon has only 31% of the public defenders it needs to run effectively. Every existing attorney would have to work more than 26 hours a day during the work week to cover the caseload, the report said.
Oregon’s public defense system is unique in that it’s the only one in the country to rely entirely on contractors. Cases are doled out to either large nonprofit defense firms, small cooperating groups of private defense attorneys that contract for cases or independent attorneys who can take cases at will.
The public defender shortage is “the predictable end result” of the unique contracting system, said Jon Mosher, deputy director of the Sixth Amendment Center. According to Mosher, the contracting and subcontracting of public defense services makes it difficult for the state to track which attorneys are assigned to which cases.
“On any given day, the state of Oregon can’t know literally the identity of the lawyers providing the services, which means that Oregon can’t know whether those lawyers are qualified to handle the cases or whether they have enough time to handle their cases effectively,” he said. “That creates a massive amount of … a lack of oversight, a lack of accountability.”
Public defenders say that uncompetitive pay, high stress and overwhelming caseloads also affects staffing levels.
“You’re being asked as a public defender to be a lawyer, a social worker, a counselor, an investigator,” said Carl Macpherson, executive director of Metropolitan Public Defender, a large nonprofit public defender firm in Portland. “The criminal legal system doesn’t help people with severe issues. It’s a short-term punitive response to a bigger issue.”
Macpherson said that the crisis extends beyond the public defense system and includes “multiple system failures.”
“It doesn’t just affect the individuals that are without representation,” he said, before mentioning victims of crime, prosecutors, police and the public. “It affects everyone.”
———
Claire Rush is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Claire on Twitter.
The U.S. is unlikely to suffer the same surge of COVID-19 infections this winter as it did last year, when the omicron variant first emerged and swept across the country, senior health officials said Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, addressed reporters for the last time ahead of his retirement, saying that the current combination of infections and vaccinations means there’s “enough community protection that we’re not going to see a repeat of last year at this time.”
But Fauci urged those Americans who have not yet gotten their updated booster to do so quickly, telling them it’s the best one so far. Only 35 million Americans have received the bivalent booster since it was rolled out in September.
“[What] may be the final message I give you from this podium is that please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible,” Fauci said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that the new boosters, which target the original virus as well as the latest omicron variants, provide an additional 30% to 56% protection against symptomatic infection, depending on a person’s age, how many prior vaccine shots they have had and when they had them, as the Associated Press reported.
The people who get the greatest benefit from the new booster are those who got two doses of the original COVID-19 vaccine at least eight months earlier and never got a prior booster, said the CDC’s Ruth Link-Gelles, who led the study.
The original shots have offered strong protection against severe disease and death no matter the variant, but their protection against mild infection wanes. The CDC’s analysis has tracked only the first few months of the new boosters’ use, so it’s too early to know how long the added protection against symptomatic infection will last.
But “certainly as we enter the holiday season, personally I would want the most possible protection if I’m seeing my parents and grandparents,” Link-Gelles said. “Protection against infection there is going to be really helpful, because you potentially would stop yourself from getting a grandparent or other loved one sick.”
The Biden administration announced a six-week campaign urging people — especially older people — to get the boosters, saying the shots could save lives as Americans gather for the holidays.
Physicians are reporting high numbers of respiratory illnesses like RSV and the flu earlier than the typical winter peak. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what the early surge means for the winter months. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang
In the U.S., known cases of COVID are rising again, with the daily average standing at 42,220 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 7% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in 25 states, led by Washington state, where they are up 279% from two weeks ago.
The daily average for hospitalizations is flat at 27,923, while the daily average for deaths is up 3% to 319.
• Employees at the world’s biggest Apple AAPL, +0.59%
iPhone factory were beaten and detained in protests over contract disputes amid antivirus controls, according to witnesses and videos posted on social media Wednesday, as tensions mount over Beijing’s severe zero-COVID strategy, the AP reported. Videos reportedly filmed at the factory in the central city of Zhengzhou showed thousands of people in masks facing rows of police in white protective suits with plastic riot shields. Police kicked and hit one protester with clubs after he grabbed a metal pole that had been used to strike him. Frustrations have boiled over into protests in some parts of China where shops and offices have been closed and millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time with little warning. Videos on social media show residents in some areas tearing down barricades set up to enforce neighborhood closures.
Footage shows police in protective suits beating workers at the Foxconn facility in Zhengzhou, China. The world’s biggest Apple iPhone factory had been under COVID-19 lockdowns in recent weeks. Screenshot: Associated Press
• The Ohio Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Gov. Mike DeWine’s authority to end Ohio’s participation in a federal pandemic unemployment aid program ahead of the federal government’s 2021 deadline for stopping the payments, the AP reported. The court’s unanimous decision on Tuesday called the case “moot” without any additional explanation. At issue before the court was a weekly $300 federal payment for Ohioans to offset the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The federal government ended that in September of last year, but DeWine stopped the payments two months earlier, saying the need was over.
• Infections from antibiotic-resistant pathogens known as superbugs have more than doubled in healthcare facilities in Europe, an EU agency said on Thursday, providing further evidence of the wider impact of the COVID pandemic, Reuters reported. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said reported cases of two highly drug-resistant pathogens increased in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, then sharply jumped in 2021.
• The National Institutes of Health has set up a website for people to anonymously self-report the results of at-home COVID-19 tests, whether positive or negative. The site, MakeMyTestCount.org, will gather the data and then share the information, stripped of personal identifiers, with the public-health systems that track COVID-19 test results provided by healthcare providers and laboratories. The widespread use of at-home COVID tests in 2022 meant the U.S. had a more limited understanding of COVID surges than in the past.
The U.S. leads the world with 98.4 million cases and 1,077,800 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.2 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.7% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
