Medical staff treat a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patient of their isolation room on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Western Reserve Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, U.S., January 4, 2022.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Covid hospitalizations are increasing substantially across much of the U.S. for the primary time this yr, just as students are returning to highschool and shortly before updated shots arrive at pharmacies for a fall vaccination campaign.
Latest hospitalizations have jumped about 16% within the U.S. over the past week, continuing an upward trend that began in late July, in accordance with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Latest hospital admissions increased greater than 30% over the past week in Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming, in accordance with the information.
The late summer Covid spike comes after a quiet yr through which hospitalizations and deaths declined week after week since January.
Dr. Deborah Birx, former White House coronavirus response coordinator through the Trump administration, said the U.S. has largely let its guard down and is ignoring the summer wave of infections, despite the incontrovertible fact that the virus is following a predictable pattern the nation has been through ever yr of the pandemic.
“We’re living in a little bit of a fantasy world where we’re pretending Covid isn’t relevant,” Birx told ABC in a podcast interview last week. “There may be a whole lot of Covid on the market and we’re not testing for it and we’re not telling people to get tested,” she said.
The U.S. is rolling out updated shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax later this month for a fall vaccination campaign, but the general public health response continues to be struggling to maintain up with a fast-evolving virus. The shots were designed months ago to focus on a variant, XBB.1.5, that isn’t any longer dominant.
Birx said those vaccines must have been released weeks ago to combat the predictable summer wave, adding the U.S. should already be developing latest shots for January to focus on the emerging BA.2.86 variant.
Scientists in China conducted lab studies that found BA.2.86 has a lot of mutations that allow the variant to dodge the protection conferred by vaccination or previous infection. BA.2.86 has to this point been detected in 11 countries in small numbers, including the U.S.
“This booster is most probably not going to work with the winter wave because we have already got a fairly significant escape variant on the market,” Birx said.
Subsequent studies indicated BA.2.86 will not be as immune-evasive as originally feared. Moderna said Wednesday its updated shot produced a powerful immune response against BA.2.86 during a clinical trial.
The CDC, in a risk assessment published last month, said BA.2.86 could also be more proficient at causing infection, but there isn’t any evidence the variant ends in more severe illness. The updated shots needs to be effective at reducing severe disease and hospitalization from the variant, in accordance with the agency.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday the Biden administration believes the U.S. is well prepared with shots, antivirals and at-home tests heading into the autumn and winter.
‘It isn’t going to be the tsunami of cases’
Though Covid is on the rise again, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the variety of hospitalizations and deaths are low and the U.S. has a considerable wall of immunity from vaccination and prior infection.
“I doubt very seriously whether you are going to see the hospital and death surge that we have seen prior to now even when we get a surge of infections, because there’s enough fundamental, community-level protection,” Fauci told the BBC in an interview last week.
“It isn’t going to be the tsunami of cases that we have seen,” said Fauci, who stepped down last yr from his role as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and White House chief medical advisor.
Still, the rise in Covid transmission is causing some disruption in communities. Some school districts in Kentucky and Texas recently canceled classes attributable to a surge in respiratory illnesses.
And the virus struck the White House again with first lady Jill Biden testing positive this week and showing mild symptoms. President Joe Biden, who’s attending the G20 summit in India this week, has tested negative. The primary lady last caught Covid in August 2022 and the president tested positive in July of last yr.
Birx said it was a “huge mistake” for the CDC to stop tracking cases after the general public health emergency ended and rely totally on hospitalization data to watch how the virus is spreading: “By the point you see hospitalizations in your area, the virus has been circulating for 4 to 6 weeks,” she said.
Birx said the summer wave comes about two weeks later every yr, which suggests the U.S. should expect a winter surge in late December or early January. “We should always be making vaccine immediately for that wave,” she told ABC.
