Protect yourself, other holiday travelers, by masking up on public transit, CDC says
Because the last week before Christmas counts down, federal health officials are allotting pandemic safety advice for travelers, urging “actions to assist prevent spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections.” That features wearing a high-quality mask in “indoor public transportation settings.” The guidance Monday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also urges travelers to: Be up up to now on COVID-19 vaccines, including an updated booster; get a flu vaccine no less than weeks 2 weeks before travel; practice good cough and sneeze etiquette by covering your mouth and nose with a tissue or your elbow; and delay travel on public transportation while you’re sick. Air travel levels this holiday season have been approaching what they were within the pre-pandemic yr of 2019, security checkpoint statistics from the federal government show.
East Bay university cites COVID fallout in closure decision
Declining enrollment in pandemic times was cited Monday as a contributing factor, together with soaring administrative costs, within the closure of venerable 154-year-old Holy Names University in Oakland. The college is preparing to shut down at the tip of the spring semester, and had issued advance warnings Dec. 1 of possible mass layoffs. “Five years ago we decided to construct a marketing strategy and use it to secure long-term financing. We were plugging along and hitting milestones, after which COVID-19 hit,” said the college’s board chairperson Steven Borg. While the university had a powerful five-year strategic marketing strategy, Borg said, it was unable to resist the intensifying challenges of COVID-19 and a turbulent economy, each of which derailed students’ academic profession. Read more about Holy Names University’s decision to shut its doors.
FDA looks at updating shots and boosters to attack evolving coronavirus
Federal regulators are considering whether today’s COVID-19 vaccines are sufficiently protective or may have updating to fight emerging generations of the coronavirus. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee plans to fulfill Jan. 26, together with CDC and National Institutes of Health officials to contemplate “whether and the way the composition of currently available primary vaccines needs to be modified,” and whether booster shot composition and schedules needs to be adjusted to attack 0evolutionary virus strains. “COVID-19 vaccines remain our greatest available protection against COVID-19, particularly probably the most devastating consequences of the disease, including hospitalization and death,” an FDA release stated. Scientists have learned that vaccine protection wanes over time, and breakthrough infections occur because the virus mutates into latest variants. “Subsequently, it’s vital to proceed discussions in regards to the optimal composition of COVID-19 vaccines for primary and booster vaccination, in addition to the optimal interval for booster vaccination,” FDA’s statement said. On the meeting, manufacturers also will present their timeline needs relating to vaccine composition changes. After evaluation of the science and issues, “the FDA will consider probably the most efficient and transparent process to make use of for number of strains for inclusion in the first and booster vaccines.”
Child deaths soared in pandemic’s first yr, Black children disproportionately victimized
Because the pandemic spread in 2020, the variety of American children who were killed rose precipitously, as did the number injured by firearms, the Latest York Times reports, citing two scientific studies on Monday. A majority of the deaths were amongst Black children, and almost half were amongst children within the southern United States. TheTimes reported last week that gun homicides involving children had increased by greater than 73% since 2018 and that the disparity in risk between Black children and others was rapidly widening. The speed of kid homicide in america rose by about 28 percent in 2020, from 2.2 per 100,000 in 2019 to 2.8 per 100,000 in 2020, researchers on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. Homicide is the leading explanation for death amongst American children, with about half brought on by firearms. The authors of the brand new study published in JAMA Pediatrics, said the trend revealed a public health concern “warranting immediate attention.” Child homicides are “fundamentally preventable,” yet they have gotten “more common, not less,” an accompanying editorial said.
Dr. Wachter cites “confusion & misinformation” on myriad COVID topics
UCSF’s Dr. Bob Wachter, considered one of the Bay Area’s most outstanding voices on COVID-19, says COVID confusion and misinformation abound, and he sees it focused largely around masks, vaccines, and residential tests. In a lengthy, he told his many Twitter followersover the past couple of days that these “correct” statements are the start line: “Wearing the incorrect mask, or wearing a mask incorrectly, doesn’t work. Vaccination/boosters don’t work in addition to they used to in stopping infection. Home tests yield more false negative results than they used to.”
But he warned against “unambiguously incorrect” statements holding that masks, vaccines, booster shots, and residential tests don’t work. He called it “dangerous” to say that vaccines don’t work. For masking he himself wears an N95 mask in crowded indoor spaces, Wachter said, adding that cloth masks work less well, “though higher than nothing” — and a mask worn incorrectly, comparable to not covering the mouth and nose snugly, won’t work.
Regarding vaccination, Wachter noted that despite early evidence showing about 95% effectiveness of the first shot series against infection, that protection has fallen over time “mostly owing to the immune-evasive properties of successive variants” of the coronavirus. “We now know that current boosters cut the danger of infection by only ~50%, and the effect only lasts for 2-3 months. That’s not nothing,” he wrote. But more vital are studies showing the newest bivalent booster shot reduces hospitalization risk by about half across all age groups, he said.
As to home tests, he said, confusion often stems from the upper rate of false negatives seen with rapid antigen home tests than for the PCR tests. It owes to the proven fact that PCR tests can pick up tinier amounts of virus and thus detect COVID in an individual longer. But antigen tests in actual fact are useful, and he often uses them himself, Wachter said.