Bonsoir. I’m Karen Kaplan, and it’s Tuesday, June 21st. Here’s the latest news on what’s happening with the coronavirus in California and beyond.
California has recorded an average of 13,768 new coronavirus cases per day over the past week. If fitness had reported a number like this in the early months of the pandemic, we would have been seriously scared.
What makes me so safe? It’s at least 4 times more than any statewide case count reported in the first spring of the pandemic, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, California didn’t see successful cases at that point until last November 2020, when the devastating fall and winter surge took off. (We were definitely panicking at the time. )
Now that we have more than two years after the outbreak, this number of cases is slightly among the public as a cause for concern.
Nearly every public fitness official, from CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, have pushed for other people to get their COVID-19 withdrawals, but only 47% of eligible Americans have done so. that other people wear masks in enclosed public places, but most do not.
To some extent, this indifference is a sign of exhaustion due to COVID-19. We are tired of letting the coronavirus dictate what we can and cannot do. We just need our lives to get back to normal.
At the same time, there is an explanation for why masks are “highly recommended” but not mandatory (at least, not yet): although the Omicron variant is circulating widely and the existing wave includes the third highest peak of the pandemic, the number of other people hospitalized with COVID-19 is still quite manageable and deaths are getting out of control.
That’s not to say the deaths are insignificant: California reported 74 deaths monday and averaged 30 deaths consistent with last week’s day. (Many of those deaths may have been avoided; the threat of death for other unvaccinated people is more than 10 times more consistent than for those who are vaccinated and reinforced, state health officials report. )
But compared to previous periods of the pandemic, we have many more equipment at our disposal to avoid the worst effects of COVID-19. And those teams are much more focused than internal orders, capacity constraints, and mandates in the past. .
The ultimate equipment is vaccines: 72% of Californians are fully vaccinated, and 58% of those eligible have gained at least one booster.
Added to this is the herbal immunity that other people have acquired by surviving an infection. In December, the CDC estimated that nearly 95% of Americans had antibodies to the coronavirus due to vaccination, a previous infection, or a combination of both.
There are also many coronavirus control kits, antiviral pills such as Paxlovid and Lagevrio (also known as molnupiravir) and the intravenous drug Veklury (remdesivir). (Monoclonal antibodies were once on this list, but they are very effective compared to Omicron and its subvariants. ). )
And let’s not revel in what doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, and other healthcare professionals have gained by caring about millions of COVID-19 patients.
This is helping to explain why the existing wave, fed through the Omicron subvariant known as BA. 2. 12. 1, has noticed far fewer hospitalizations than Last year’s Delta surge, though it caused more infections.
The existing wave peaked with about 16,700 new instances per day in California, up from 14,400 delta days. But Delta sent 8342 coronavirus patients to state hospitals on its worst day, while BA. 2. 12. 1 did not exceed 2808.
ICU admissions have diverged further. With Delta, there were up to 2008 inflamed patients in extensive care sets across the state at the same time. This number has not exceeded three hundred in the existing wave.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, we immediately noticed that the game changes would be easy vaccines, tests and treatments, and now we have all those things,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told my colleague. Luc Money.
This progress is worthy of appreciation, but it does not guarantee that we are out of danger. If a variant emerges capable of circumventing our vaccines and remedies, we may begin to see cumulative hospitalizations and deaths over a given period. accumulating infections.
“We’re not at a point where you’d say, ‘OK, it’s now, quote, endemic, and we’re proceeding as usual,'” UCLA epidemiologist Dr. Robert Kim-Farley told Money.
“However, I think this is probably indicative of what we might see in the future,” he added. “Hopefully, those waves will be smaller, more dispersed and less intense as we go along. “
Cases and deaths in California at 4:40 p. m. Tuesday:
Follow the evolution of the coronavirus in California and vaccination efforts, adding the most recent numbers and their breakdown, with our charts.
If you suffer to swallow the glass half full of the customers described above, not only. What looks like hard-won progress to some sounds like complacency, even capitulation, to others.
Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal is the maxim in the latter field. In an editorial, the editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News lays out the litany of tactics in which the United States has just abandoned the fight against the coronavirus.
The country’s vaccination rate has stagnated at around 67% (although it will most likely increase now that vaccines are available to the country’s 18. 7 million children under 5). Boosters are even less popular than starting doses.
President Biden has asked for a $22. 5 bill to continue reversing the country’s reaction to COVID-19, adding cash to pay doctors concerned about uninsured patients and cash to buy vaccines, tests and treatments. The Senate responded with a $10 bill package that does not include a budget to quell epidemics abroad. Now, even this commitment bill is blocked by immigration policy.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID coordinator, warned that “we would see a lot of loss of life” if cash didn’t materialize. So far, this has not been an incentive enough to break the deadlock.
The lack of urgency is shared across state and local governments, according to Rosenthal. They have canceled mask-wearing orders even for high-risk environments, adding places like bars and concert halls where other people gather indoors. Health officials are not acting urgently to stimulate more people, it has become increasingly clear that a booster dose is imperative to keep Omicron away.
When the government doesn’t take preventative measures seriously, it’s hard to blame personal employers for doing the same. Few retail outlets still require staff and consumers to cover themselves; even if mask regulations are still displayed, they are rarely enforced. (The most recent example: Broadway theaters in New York announced Tuesday that performances dressed in a mask will become “optional” next week. )
In March, Biden’s leadership unveiled a plan to help Americans live with the coronavirus as safely as possible. The stated goal of the plan is to “return to our more general routines. “Who doesn’t?
“Unfortunately, in response, our elected officials and much of the country necessarily sighed, who prefer to go ahead and abandon the fight,” Rosenthal wrote.
The challenge is that other people are tired of worrying about public health. The challenge is that it’s inherently complicated to get other people to worry.
“It’s because if public fitness officials are respected, well-funded, and allowed to do their jobs, here’s the bottom line: Literally, things happen,” Rosenthal writes. “Epidemics lead to pandemics. “
Health officials can’t boast of bad things that didn’t happen. But when other people don’t take their warnings seriously, it’s they who are blamed.
They are also the ones that politicians and the public overlook. In the year before the pandemic, the CDC’s budget was reduced by nine percent, according to the Trust for America’s Health. Money for systems such as suicide prevention and HIV care was only higher in 2020 than in 2008, after accounting for inflation.
At the state level, public spending on fitness didn’t particularly grow between 2008 and 2018, with the exception of injury-preventing systems, according to a 2021 study in the journal Health Affairs. State fitness departments have suffered major cuts to cope with the Great Recession, and that investment had not been restored by the time COVID-19 arrived, leaving them “ill-equipped to respond,” the study authors wrote.
The cuts have resulted in the elimination of at least 38,000 state and local fitness-related public jobs, Rosenthal says. “That’s one part of why states and cities have yet to spend much of the $2250 million allocated in March 2021 through the Biden administration to decrease COVID disparities. “”he writes. ” Now there are very few public fitness officials on the floor who know how to spend it. “
Public exercise was in the spotlight for a time in the pre-vaccine era, when other people were more afraid of the coronavirus and had to use an iPad to say goodbye to a user connected to a ventilator in an intensive care unit. Now our attention has focused on mass shootings, inflation, the war in Ukraine, and the abortion case before the U. S. Supreme Court.
A trio of anthropologists at George Washington University agree that it’s vital to keep COVID-19 sufferers in our most sensible minds, especially when much of the culture forces us to behave as if things have already returned to “normal. “And they have some concepts to do it.
Sarah E. Wagner, Roy R. Grinker and Joel C. Kuipers begin by suggesting that a national commission take a close look at how the country has allowed the death toll from the pandemic to exceed one million. , the country would take responsibility, in the end a healing act for the survivors,” they write.
They also proposed a national day of remembrance for COVID-19 sufferers. House and Senate resolutions would make the first Monday in March the “Day of Remembrance for victims and survivors of COVID-19. “
“A designated national day of remembrance would make the pandemic visual for decades to come,” they write.
Discover the advances in vaccination in California with our tracker.
It’s been a year and a half since the first COVID-19 vaccines obtained emergency use authorization from the U. S. Food and Drug Administration. catching other recalcitrant people into rolling up their sleeves.
So if you’re feeling bored with the latest news about vaccines, that COVID-19 vaccines are now available to children up to 6 months of age, take a look at them from McKenzie Pack’s perspective.
Pack has a 3-year-old son named Fletcher. No old enough not to forget a while before the pandemic. But once the vaccine has boosted your immunity to the coronavirus, you can start doing things you would do differently. they have taken it for granted.
“I’ve never played with another inner child before,” McKenzie Pack said. “He will be a great replacement for our family. “
This update was made possible by the FDA’s decision to grant emergency use authorization to two COVID-19 vaccines for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Both are reformulated versions of mRNA vaccines for American adults.
Moderna’s is a series of two injections for children from 6 months to 5 years. Each injection comprises a quarter of the dose used for adults. Both injections should be given with an interval of 4 to 8 weeks; young young people with weakened immune systems also receive a third dose.
The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine requires 3 doses for everyone. The first two injections are given with an interval of 3 to 8 weeks, and the third follows at least 8 weeks after the dose of the moment. It is designed for children older than 6 months to four years and one-tenth of the dose used in the adult vaccine.
The CDC’s Vaccine Advisory Committee spent two days debating the pros and cons of vaccines before approving them on Saturday. Walensky accepted his recommendation and suggested parents and caregivers make an appointment with a needle, even for young people who have already had COVID-19.
In clinical trials, pediatric vaccines were less effective than adult versions when they began to be implemented 18 months ago. In fact, new coronavirus variants, especially Omicron versions, have more ability to evade weapons-induced antibodies. likely reduce the risk of COVID-19 symptoms in young children by 30 to 60 percent.
“We can’t let the best be the enemy of the good,” said Dr. Oliver Brooks, chief fitness officer at Watts Medical Corp. in Los Angeles and a member of CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. . “
The counselors said they were convinced through the evidence that young children’s antibody reaction to the new vaccines was comparable to the antibody reaction seen in older children and adults, two teams for whom the vaccine was found to be protective. Clinical trials also established that the vaccine was: among only about 8,000 young children, there were no deaths and very few serious adverse events, such as high fever.
The Western States Scientific Safety Review Task Force, a coalition of public fitness experts from California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, conducted its own review over the weekend and announced the new vaccines on Sunday.
California ordered about 400,000 doses and began allowing parents and caregivers to make appointments on the My Turn site on Tuesday. But many of the providers who gave the impression that the search effects did not seem to be in a position to take in the youngest children.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health website informed users that vaccines for children under five were on the way. He provided a list of sites that should “offer the vaccine as soon as it arrived. “Those sites are expected to have doses available through Wednesday.
The county and state fitness branch announced that pharmacies cannot vaccinate children under the age of 3. This means that a consultation with a pediatrician or fitness clinic is required.
In other NEWS about the COVID-19 vaccine, a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine found that two initial doses without a follow-up booster provided virtually no lasting coverage against Omicron infection. The researchers also reported that an infection as effective as a booster in preventing a new disease was fed through Omicron.
On the plus side, they found that any type of immunity presented lasting coverage against serious illness, hospitalization, and death.
“I think that’s the vital part: immunity to severe COVID-19 has been well preserved,” said study co-author Laith Jamal Abu-Raddad, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar.
Turning to treatments, Pfizer said Paxlovid doesn’t appear to help COVID-19 patients who weren’t at the highest risk of becoming seriously ill. This was evident in a study that tested its antiviral drug on a wider population of other people who were healthy and unvaccinated, or who were fully vaccinated but had a medical condition that made them more vulnerable to a severe case of COVID-19.
California is struggling to bring Paxlovid to patients in need. In the month since the state introduced its “test-to-treat” system, fewer than 800 people got a prescription, though thousands of Californians became inflamed every day.
The goal of the program is to quickly provide antivirals to high-risk patients who test positive for coronavirus infection, as the drugs are most effective when taken some time after the onset of symptoms. examined the drugs until mid-June and 768 had gained paxlovid pills.
“I think it’s a new concept that other people are still getting used to,” said Katharine Sullivan, who oversees a check to deal with at West Berkeley.
And finally, the World Health Organization’s most recent weekly report on COVID-19 indicates that there were more than 8700 deaths in the week ending June 12. This figure is remarkable because it represents an increase of 4% during the last week and the first accumulation since the beginning of May.
The Americas experienced the highest cumulative COVID-19 deaths (21%), followed by the Western Pacific region (17%). Europe, Southeast Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa experienced declines.
Today’s comes from readers who need to know: what are the criteria for having a “high” COVID-19 network level?
That’s because if Los Angeles County crosses this threshold and stays there for two weeks, it will return to its mandate as an indoor mask.
To go back for a moment, the degrees of the COVID-19 network are a measure that the CDC uses to assess how the coronavirus, and the disease it causes, affects the physical condition of people in a specific place, either directly (through illness) or (by removing it they put pressure on local fitnesscare resources, making them unavailable to others. )They come in 3 flavors: “low”, “medium” and “high”.
Three points the COVID-19 network level of a county: the number of new infections diagnosed in the following week; the number of new COVID-19 patients admitted to local hospitals in the past week; and the percentage of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients.
There are several such variables that would rate a county (or state or territory) for having a “high” COVID-19 network level.
Start with the number of coronavirus cases. See if your county has recorded at least 200 new cases compared to another 100,000 people in the past week. L. A. The county did: It saw 337 cases in line with another 100,000 people last week.
As we have passed the two hundred mark, we are not eligible for the “low” point. But we can stay at the “average” point if we have fewer than 10 new COVID-19 hospitalizations consistent with 100,000 citizens in the past week and less than 10% of hospital beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients.
The most recent CDC figures show that hospitals in Los Angeles County admit 7. 3 new COVID-19 patients consistent with a week-consistent population of 100,000, and that 3. 5% of hospital beds are committed to COVID-19 patients. This is that our COVID-19 network point is still “average”. But if any of the measures go up too high, we will be reclassified into the “high” category.
If our new number of cases is less than 200 compared to another 100,000 people in a week, we may still have a “high” COVID-19 network point if we had at least 20 new hospitalizations in 100,000 in a week, or if at least 15% of hospital beds were full of COVID-19 patients. However, those combinations are much less likely.
You can search the COVID-19 network for any U. S. state, territory, or county. U. S. on the CDC website.
We need to hear from you. Email us with your coronavirus inquiries and we will do our best to respond to them. Wondering if your query has already been answered? Check out our archives here.
He is the last user who expected to contract the coronavirus, but this pandemic is full of surprises.
The National Institutes of Health announced Wednesday that none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci has a mild case of COVID-19. Fauci, 81, is fully vaccinated and doubly reinforced and still well enough to work from home, where he isolates himself according to the CDC. Guidelines.
Less than two months ago, the country’s most sensitive infectious disease expert announced the arrival of a “more controlled phase” of the pandemic. But he was quick to add: “This in no way means that the pandemic is over. “
In that case, I’m sure I wish I had.
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Karen Kaplan is a science and medical editor at the Los Angeles Times. Before joining the Panel, he worked in the Business section. He graduated from MIT and Columbia University.
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