Nearly 3 years into the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 faces a formidable challenge: finding new ways around the immunity humans have built up through vaccines and countless infections. Worrisome new data show it is up to the challenge. Several new and highly immune-evasive strains of the virus have caught scientists’ attention in recent weeks; one or more may well cause big, new COVID-19 waves this fall and winter.
“We can say with certainty that something is coming. Probably multiple things are coming,” says Cornelius Roemer, who studies viral evolution at the University of Basel. Whether they will also lead to many hospitalizations and deaths is the big question.
“It’s not surprising that we’re seeing changes that yet again help the virus to evade immune responses,” says molecular epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft of the University of Bern, who notes that SARS-CoV-2 faces “the same challenge that things like the common cold and influenza face every year—how to make a comeback.”
The strains that look poised to drive the latest comeback are all subvariants of Omicron, which swept the globe over the past year. Several derived from BA.2, a strain that succeeded the initial BA.1 strain of Omicron but then was itself outcompeted in most places by BA.5, which has dominated in recent months. One of these, BA.2.75.2, seems to be spreading quickly in India, Singapore, and parts of Europe. Other new immune-evading strains have evolved from BA.5, including BQ.1.1, which has been spotted in multiple countries around the globe.
Despite their different origins, several of the new strains have chanced upon a similar combination of mutations to help scale the wall of immunity—a striking example of convergent evolution. They all have changes at half a dozen key points in the viral genome that influence how well neutralizing antibodies from vaccination or previous infection bind to the virus, says evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center…
Sheward and Murrell agree we should expect lots of infections in the next few months, as happened last winter when Omicron entered the scene. But they’re less pessimistic than Cao, noting that many more people have recovered from an infection now or have received additional vaccine doses, including Omicron-specific boosters, whose rollout began this month. Those will boost overall antibody levels and will likely broaden the antibody repertoire, Sheward says: “I don’t think we’re quite back to square one.”
“The choice to put BA.5 in the vaccine booster is still looking like a good one,” Bloom adds. “The boosters are always going to be a step behind, but the good news is that the BA.5 booster is going to be one or two steps behind the virus’ evolution, instead of five steps behind.”
Just how brutal a comeback the coronavirus has managed will become clear once more people become infected with the new strains. The next wave may also provide better clues about what factors trigger or prevent severe disease, Murrell says: “I think we’re going to learn a lot this winter.”
Around 3.2 mln Americans received updated COVID boosters last week -CDC https://t.co/6BvlBxIPR6 pic.twitter.com/5awpTIykpd
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 30, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Sept. 26-27
No, it ain't over.https://t.co/QVleZ8rfwa
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) September 26, 2022
(link)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Sept. 26-27Post + Comments (26)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Sept. 22-23
People have decided the pandemic should be over, unfortunately:
News: the US & Pfizer amended their vaccine donation contract to add time to find takers. Joe Biden bought a billion vaccines at cost to donate to the world but world demand is lower. Target is now 600m this year, maybe more later.
with @rileyraygriffin:https://t.co/EYNn431HP2
— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) September 22, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Sept. 19-20
Note: The FYWP function that lets me post screen-shots here decided to go on strike just as I started the process here, so I’ve pruned the list down a bit to get as much as possible updated.
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People have decided that the pandemic is over, would’ve been a more accurate phrasing, but in context, President Biden’s remarks are far less shocking than his opponents would like to pretend:
here are the in-context remarks pic.twitter.com/klWMIChllC
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) September 19, 2022
… Reaching the end of a pandemic is not like driving out of one county into the next. There is no fixed demarcation between a pandemic and post-pandemic period, especially for the first recorded pandemic caused by a coronavirus. It’s not like we know it’s over if cases drop to a certain level for a prescribed length of time.
Experts say there are no accepted metrics or defined international rules that tell us when we can call the code on this horrible event. In reality, things are much more ephemeral when it comes to knowing when a pandemic is over.
“It’s over when people decide that it’s over. … And most people seem to have decided it’s over,” said John Barry, author of “The Great Influenza,” a history of the 1918 Spanish flu.
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Sept. 19-20Post + Comments (58)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Sept. 15-16
The world has never been in a better position to end the COVID-19 pandemic, the head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, his most optimistic outlook yet on the years-long health crisis which has killed over six million people. https://t.co/D6IMv5uh0U
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) September 14, 2022
Guest Post: Zero Covid – Report From the Ground
My thanks to commentor YY_Sima Qian, who has done so much to keep us all updated on the situation in China since I first started my Covid / Coronavirus Update post:
In last Friday’s Covid post comments, there were some questions of why is China persisting w/ the “Dynamic Zero COVID” strategy, and the costs being incurred. I thought I will share my perspective here, as someone who has lived through the entire pandemic to date within China, in Wuhan, but having family, friends & colleagues throughout Mainland China, as well as Taiwan & the US.
I am also fairly confident that I have followed the course of the outbreaks & their suppression & elimination in China more closely than just about any journalist or commentators in open source anywhere.
First, let’s get the political motivations out of the way. A number have been suggested, all have at least an element of truth, most a considerable amount:
1) The CCP regime in general, & Xi Jinping specifically, need the “Dynamic COVID Zero” strategy to be seen as effective leading up to the 20th Party Congress (scheduled to start on 10/16), where Xi is expected to obtain his 3rd term; the regime has staked its legitimacy as China’s ruling government, Xi has staked his personal credibility as China’s unquestioned leader, & the regime has staked its claim to a “superior” governing model relative to the West, on containing the spread of COVID-19 w/in China’s borders.
2) The CCP regime & Xi cannot afford to have the immensely negative impact of an exit wave from ending of “Dynamic COVID Zero” – overwhelmed hospitals, large number of deaths of the vulnerable elders, massive worker absenteeism from uncontrolled spread – leading up to the 20th Party Congress.
3) To ensure 1) & 2), any dissent, or anything that could be construed as questioning the “Dynamic Zero COVID” (even if unintended) are immediately stifled; these could be (& indeed especially) public comments from high level officials, technocrats in the health care bureaucracy (such as the Chinese national CDC), & respected health experts in academia.
Where foreign (even domestic) commentators tend to go awry is when they extrapolate to conclusions that evidence do not necessarily support:
1) Comparing the CCP regime’s singled minded focus on pursuing “Dynamic Zero COVID” to Mao’s anti-scientific campaigns against sparrows/snakes/weasels, which in the end led to heightened infestations of rodents & locusts.
2) Suggesting that the CCP regime aims to gradually close off China to the world & return to the autarky of the Mao decades, using “Dynamic Zero COVID” as the excuse.
3) Suggesting that Xi & the CCP regime are blind to the economic costs of “Dynamic Zero COVID”.
Based on my close following of COVID developments in China since the beginning, my assessment is that the regime’s actions are still rational within its perceived reality, albeit having certain self-imposed limitations. Most importantly, I believe the regime’s perceived reality is still not too far off from the actual reality (unlike, say, in the case of V. Putin).
1) Even in the face of Omicron BA.5 variants, the tools employed in the execution of the “Dynamic Zero COVID” strategy are still effective in containing, suppressing & eliminating outbreaks; even as massive an outbreak as the one in Shanghai from April-May 2022 was successfully eliminated, though at enormous economic & social cost due to the terrible execution of the lock down there.
Guest Post: <em>Zero Covid – Report From the Ground</em>Post + Comments (33)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Sept. 12-13
… The protection generated by influenza vaccines erodes pretty quickly over the course of a flu season. A vaccine dose given in early September may offer limited protection if the flu season doesn’t peak until February or even March, as it did during the unusually late 2021-2022 season.
“If you start now, I am not a big fan of it,” Florian Krammer, an influenza expert at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, told STAT. “I understand why this is promoted, but from an immunological point of view it doesn’t make much sense.”
A number of studies have shown that the benefit of a flu shot wanes substantially over the course of a flu season — exacerbating effectiveness problems that are frequently seen when some of the strains in the vaccine aren’t well matched to the strains making people sick.
Work done by researchers from the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center and the Harvard School of Public Health estimated vaccine effectiveness declined by about 18% for every 28-day period after vaccination. A study done by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and elsewhere showed that the vaccine’s protection against flu that is severe enough to trigger hospitalization decreases by between 8% and 9% per month after vaccination. In older adults, who are more likely to get seriously ill from flu, the decline happened at a rate of about 10% to 11% per month.
“You’ve got about four months of pretty solid protection,” said Emily Martin, an associate professor of epidemiology who specializes in flu at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Martin was an author on the latter study.
If you ask someone who researches flu and flu vaccines, they will likely quietly — or in some cases, not so quietly — advise you to wait at least until the end of October to get a flu shot, though they’ll attach the caveat that if you start to hear about flu activity picking up where you live, you should fast-forward your plans…
Noel Brewer, a professor of health behavior at the University of North Carolina, said he thinks moving to this joint-administration approach is the right idea. Covid vaccine delivery has been overly complicated, he said, requiring people to keep track of too many things. How many shots they’ve had. When they last had a shot. When they are next eligible for a shot.
People have been tuning out, he said — an assertion bolstered by the booster uptake rate. The percentage of eligible people who got a second Covid booster is lower than the percentage of people who got a first booster, which is lower than the percentage of people who got a primary series of two shots.
Making things simple and pairing Covid shots with another health intervention makes it easier for people, Brewer said — even if the combination benefits one of the interventions more than the other…