House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) and lawmakers participate in a moment
of silence in memory of the 800,000 American lives lost to COVID-19 on December 14, 2021, in Washington, DC. alternative. Omicron outbreaks in
New York and New Jersey are spreading faster than those in other states. Compare states’ vaccination progress or select a state to see detailed information
COVID Live Update: Deaths from the Coronavirus – (worldometers.info)
The US death toll from Covid-19 has passed 800,000, a once-unimaginable figure seen as doubly tragic given that more than 200,000 of those lives were lost after vaccines became available last spring. The figure represents the highest reported toll of any country in the world and is likely even higher.
The US accounts for approximately 4% of the world’s population but about
15% of the 5.3 million known deaths from the coronavirus since the outbreak began in China two years ago.
Related: What makes boosters more effective than the first two Covid jabs?
The grim milestone comes as the world braces for rise in cases of the new Omicron variant, with the World Health Organization (WHO) warning it was spreading at an unprecedented rate. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters on Tuesday the variant had been detected in 77 countries and was probably present in most countries worldwide. Omicron, first detected by South Africa and reported to the WHO on 24 November, has a large number of mutations, which has concerned scientists.
The new variant is posing a fresh threat as it gains a foothold in the US, though experts are not yet sure how dangerous it is. The number of Covid deaths in the US, compiled and released by Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday, is about equal to the population of Atlanta and St Louis combined, or Minneapolis and Cleveland put together. It is roughly equivalent to how many Americans die each year from heart disease or stroke. A closely watched forecasting model from the University of Washington projects a total of over 880,000 reported deaths in the US by 1 March.
The deadly milestone comes as cases and hospitalizations are on the rise again in the US, a spike driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, which arrived in the first half of 2021 and now accounts for nearly all infections. Health experts lament that many of the deaths in the US were especially heartbreaking because the widely available and effective vaccines made them preventable. About 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated, or just over 60% of the population. That is well short of what scientists say is needed to keep the virus in check.
“Almost all the people dying are now dying preventable deaths,” said Dr Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “And that’s because they’re not immunized.” When the vaccine was first rolled out, the country’s death toll stood at about 300,000. It hit 600,000 in mid-June and 700,000 on 1 October. Beyrer recalled that in March or April 2020, one of the worst-case scenarios projected upwards of 240,000 American deaths. “And I saw that number, and I thought that is incredible – 240,000 American deaths?” he said.
“And we’re now past three times that number.” He added: “And I think it’s fair to say that we’re still not out of the woods.”
Related: US air force discharges 27 service members for refusing Covid vaccine
The pandemic could end in 2022 — here’s what ‘normal’ life might look like soon, according to medical experts The pandemic could end in 2022 — here’s what ‘normal’ life might look like soon, according to medical experts By Cory Stieg
Almost two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, an end might finally be in sight.
Experts say that Covid will likely lose its “pandemic” status sometime in 2022, due largely to rising global vaccination rates and developments of antiviral Covid pills that could become more widespread next year.
Instead, the virus will likely become “endemic,” eventually fading in severity and folding into the backdrop of regular, everyday life. Various strains of influenza have followed a similar pattern over the past century or more, from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 to the swine flu pandemic in 2009.
Covid will probably remain dangerous once the pandemic ends — much like the flu, which killed as many as 62,000 people in the U.S. between October 2019 and April 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But barring any major developments, “normal” post-pandemic life could arrive soon.
Here’s what you can expect from the next year and beyond:
Covid could become much more seasonal.
Once endemic, Covid won’t dictate your daily decision-making as much, as billionaire health philanthropist Bill Gates described in his end-of-year blog post last week: “It won’t be primary when deciding whether to work from the office or let your kids go to their soccer game or watch a movie in a theater.”
Endemic illnesses are always circulating throughout parts of the world but tend to cause milder illness because more people have immunity from past infection or vaccination. You might get a cough and sniffles, but if you’re up to date on your vaccinations, you’ll be protected enough to prevent severe illness or hospitalization.
Like other respiratory viruses, there will be times of year when Covid infections peak — most likely the colder fall and winter months, meaning Covid and flu seasons could regularly coincide going forward.
When sick, you’ll be advised to keep wearing masks and staying home.
If the virus does become more seasonal, wearing a mask on public transit and indoors during Covid season could become the norm — potentially even in offices, says Shaun Truelove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and member of The Covid Scenario Modeling Hub, a team of researchers who make Covid projections.
Other familiar prevention strategies, like regularly washing your hands and maintaining distancing practices in high-risk settings, could also stick around.
“We don’t necessarily have to come up with new interventions [to prevent Covid],” Dr. Timothy Brewer, a professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, told CNBC Make It last week. “It’s just that we’ve got to do a better job continuing to do the things we know that work.”
To that end, Truelove hopes people “take a little bit more personal responsibility and stay home when they’re sick,” he says. That could mean working from home if you’re symptomatic but still able to work or taking a sick day when you know you need to rest, he adds.
Covid tests could get more affordable and accessible.
If you’ve ever waited in a long line to get a Covid test, or stressed about getting your results back in time for an event, you know firsthand how the country has been “hamstrung by the delays and challenges with getting PCR tests,” Truelove says.
In early December, President Joe Biden announced a plan to require private insurance companies to cover the cost of rapid at-home Covid-19 tests. If you’re one of the 150 million people in the U.S. with private health insurance, you could potentially one day get reimbursed for a Covid test that you buy at the drugstore.
The plan is imperfect, experts say, because not everyone can afford to wait for reimbursement — and the responsibility would fall on consumers to figure out how to file a claim.
At-home Covid tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration are widely available now, but the tests can cost upwards of $20 a pop. Elsewhere around the world, you can get a rapid Covid test for free, a model that some experts say could be replicated in the U.S.
More kids will be able to get vaccinated against Covid.
On November 2, children ages 5 to 11 finally became eligible to get the Covid vaccine. Seven million shots have been administered to those kids so far in December alone, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing Monday.
If you have children under age 5, you might wonder when vaccine eligibility will expand to those young children. Scientists are currently working on getting you an answer, by determining an appropriate dosage for the age group.
It’s an important determination. Too high of a dosage could lead to unwanted side effects, while too low of a dosage won’t effectively protect your child.
Pfizer anticipates having data on its Covid vaccine in this age group by the end of this year, and potentially getting federal authorization in early 2022. Moderna’s researchers won’t have enough comparable data to move forward until mid-January, Dr. Bill Hartman, a principal investigator for UW Health’s KidCOVE Moderna pediatric vaccine trial, told TODAY last week.
Annual Covid boosters could become a reality.
On Monday, Walensky touted boosters as the best available defense against the threat of new Covid variants like omicron. Currently, 27% of fully vaccinated people who are eligible for booster shots have gotten them, according to the CDC.
There’s a chance you might need to get regular Covid boosters going forward. Some experts say that Covid vaccines could become an annual occurrence, similar to your flu shot.
This might be a good thing: If new Covid variants keep popping up, each year’s booster can be specifically designed to fight whichever variant is dominant at the time.
But convincing people to follow through could prove challenging. It’s hard enough to convince people to get their annual flu shots: During the last flu season before Covid, only 48% of American adults got a flu vaccine, according to the CDC.
The CDC currently recommends annual flu vaccinations for anyone 6 months or older.
“People in a pandemic can accept things,” Ali Ellebedy, an associate professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, told STAT on Wednesday. “But I think if you’re talking about a regular vaccine that’s not really needed because of a pandemic, I’m not sure if people would be more accepting of that.”
Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect that it is nearly two years into the pandemic.
Sign up now: Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter
Don’t miss: Is returning to the office in January actually Covid-safe? Here’s what experts say
AMBRIDGE, Mass. – The omicron variant of the coronavirus is moving faster than surveillance systems can track it and has so unnerved some medical experts that they’re starting to put the brakes on preparations for their holiday gatherings.
“Personally, I’m reevaluating plans for the holidays,” Bronwyn MacInnis, director of pathogen genomic surveillance at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, said on a call with reporters Tuesday. “It’s the responsible thing to do and what feels right given the risk.”
She and a handful of other Massachusetts-based researchers on the call said they’ve been stunned by the pace by which omicron has been crowding out other variants and taking over the pandemic.
Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 3% of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are omicron. But MacInnis said she believes that number was probably an underestimate on Dec. 11 – just three days ago – when the CDC first announced it, and now it’s likely much higher.
HOW DOES COVID-19 AFFECT ME?
Don’t miss an update with the Coronavirus Watch newsletter
“At the rate that it seems to be spreading, there isn’t a surveillance system on the planet truly that could keep up with it,” MacInnis said.
In some parts of the country, there are hints omicron already accounts for about 15% of cases, said Jeremy Luban, a virus expert at the UMass Chan Medical School.
Omicron has been moving “faster even than the most pessimistic among us thought that it was going to move,” said Dr. Jacob Lemieux, an infectious disease expert at Massachusetts General Hospital. “There’s a high likelihood that it will come to your holiday gathering.”
While previous variants popped up in one country and then another, and “you could watch it unfold from place to place to place,” Lemieux said, omicron “seems to be happening in every place at once.”
Lemieux said he is particularly worried because the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 has already killed more than 5.3 million people around the world, including 800,000 in the United States.
Although the variant was identified only the day before Thanksgiving, as more data emerges it is confirming omicron’s ability to spread incredibly fast – probably twice as fast as the delta variant, which has dominated the global pandemic since this summer.
THE OMICRON VARIANT IS FUELING MISINFORMATION ABOUT COVID: Experts explain why and how to spot false claims.
Even if omicron is less dangerous, it will still cause a huge number of infections and, therefore, a large number of hospitalizations and deaths, Lemieux said.
Plus, the U.S. was already seeing a growing number of infections, largely with the delta variant. An average of 118,000 new infections a day were reported over the past week – a 37% increase over the previous week.
“Our hospitals are already filling up. Staff are fatigued,” Lemieux said. “We’re almost two years into the pandemic, and there may be limits on capacity to handle the kinds of the caseloads that we see from an omicron wave superimposed on top of the delta surge.”
Cases of omicron have been skyrocketing in South Africa since the variant was first identified last month. Omicron already accounts for as many cases as when delta reached its peak there, about two months after arriving.
Early data from South Africa’s largest private health insurer, Discovery Health, suggests vaccines and prior infections are less protective against omicron than they have been with earlier variants, though they may still prevent severe disease.
Hospitalization rates are still lower with omicron than with earlier waves and patients are less likely to require ventilation, though it’s not clear whether that’s because of the newness of the variant, because it is less dangerous, or because prior infections and vaccinations provide protection, MacInnis and the others said. About 16% of South Africans hospitalized with COVID-19 have been vaccinated.
For these reasons, the scientists on the Tuesday call said they were reconsidering gathering for Christmas. “It’s time to step back and reevaluate,” said Dr. Amy Barczak, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “My family has changed our plans so that we are no longer going to be getting together with particularly vulnerable members of the family over the holidays the way we had been planning to do.”
People who have been the most vulnerable throughout the pandemic – senior citizens, those who are immune-compromised and people who have other health conditions like diabetes – will remain most vulnerable to omicron, she said.
Asked if rapid home tests before gatherings could mitigate some of the risk, MacInnis said it was “tricky” because it’s not yet known how sensitive the tests are for the omicron variant.
‘JUST A MATTER OF TIME’: How scientists in San Francisco found the first case of the omicron COVID-19 variant in the US
Lemieux said that if a group is definitely getting together, at-home rapid tests could be useful as a risk-mitigation strategy, but he urged caution.
“I think it’s time to reevaluate whether a gathering is necessary and big gatherings are necessary,” he said.
If people do go ahead with a gathering, they should “do everything you can to conduct it as safely as possible,” Lemieux said, which means staying outdoors as much as possible, ventilating indoor spaces by opening windows and masking when indoors.
Flying, Luban and others said, remains relatively safe because of masking, vaccination requirements and good air filtration. Travel restrictions don’t work, the experts on the call said, because the virus has already spread across the globe.
They also all supported the idea of booster shots, which seemingly can restore protection that may have faded with time. The fact that fewer people are dying in South Africa from omicron than earlier variants suggests that vaccines, though they aren’t preventing all infections, may be stopping the most severe cases.
The rise of omicron, MacInnis said, “does not mean our vaccines are failing us.” Contact Elizabeth Weise at eweise@usatoday.com and Karen Weintraub at kweintraub@usatoday.com.
Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare.
The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:
Omicron is spreading ‘every place at once,’ experts say. What it could mean for holiday plans.
Current Covid boosters are enough to fight the omicron variant, Fauci says (msn.com)
17 Easy Ways To Beat Bloat Without Totally Changing Your Diet (msn.com)