COVID-19 Coronavirus

U.S: Covid in wastewater at highest level since February 2023https://t.co/l72x8Njccm pic.twitter.com/WWW4UGRcVJ

— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) September 1, 2023

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“Federal data suggests that the current increases have stayed far below earlier peaks and notable surges. But judging by word of mouth among family, friends and coworkers, it can seem like everyone knows someone who’s sick with Covid-19 right now…”https://t.co/nCG5Dn470F

— Project N95 (@projectn95) September 1, 2023

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… Tracking Covid-19 trends has always had its challenges. But the rise of rapid home tests — and general waning of public interest in testing at all — has all but erased the ability to grasp current case counts nationwide. The CDC officially stopped reporting aggregate Covid-19 case counts months ago, noting that data had become less representative of actual infections or transmission levels over time.

As case counts started to become less reliable, some experts first pointed to hospitalization metrics as a reasonable substitute to gauge transmission. Hospitals were regularly testing all patients, whether they were coming in for Covid-related symptoms or for something else entirely, and they are required to report positive cases. The idea was that case rates in a hospital could serve as a proxy for case rates in the broader community.

There were about 15,000 new hospital admissions for Covid-19 in the week ending August 19, according to CDC data — less than half of what the numbers were at this time last year and lower than they were for about 80% of the pandemic…

Weekly hospital admissions have nearly doubled over the past month, including a 19% bump in the most recent week, CDC data shows. And a sample of laboratories participating in a federal surveillance program show that test positivity rates have tripled in the past two months.

There are some hopeful signs: Biobot data shows that wastewater levels may be starting to flatten, and relatively low hospitalization rates suggest that there may be a lower risk of severe disease for many.

But despite the clear signs of a summer surge, the US has been living in a “fantasy world” where people pretend Covid-19 is “not relevant,” Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Task Force coordinator during the Trump administration, told ABC’s “Start Here” podcast.

Precautions like masking and staying up-to-date on vaccinations are especially important as this rise in Covid-19 carries into the broader respiratory virus season, experts say.

“With every respiratory disease season — whether it’s Covid, whether it’s influenza, whether it’s RSV — those increases can impact different individuals in different ways, and there are always severe outcomes associated with respiratory disease season,” Hamilton said.

“Now is the time for us to be practicing good respiratory etiquette. Now is the time for us to remind ourselves to think about our own individual health status and those individuals that we may be around.”

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Worth reading the whole thing:

…. Long COVID has been pushing the limits of hospital systems everywhere, not just at Yale. As Americans emerged from the most acute phase of the pandemic, as mask and vaccine mandates lifted and life returned to a semblance of normal for the people who had contracted COVID and recovered, primary-care physicians started to say, “‘I’m not interested in long COVID,’ or ‘I don’t treat long COVID. Let me refer you to a specialist,’” said David Putrino, who runs the new chronic-illness recovery clinic at Mount Sinai. For their part, Putrino added, the specialists were saying, “This is not what my practice is. This is not an emergency anymore.” Patients all over the country reported monthslong waiting times for appointments at long-COVID clinics. All the while, scientists and pundits heaped skepticism on the very notion of long COVID, arguing that infection made people stronger, that new variants posed no threats, that the danger of long COVID was overblown — implying that what patients were suffering from was all in their heads.

Forgotten in this debate are the 65 million people worldwide for whom the pandemic remains a torturous everyday reality. Absent the kind of long-term studies that can provide more definitive answers on what long COVID is and how it can be treated, these people are in desperate need of clarity from someone devoted to their care. Spatz and her colleagues were proposing an alternative model: a clinic led by an internal-medicine doctor with a full hour to listen to each patient. This physician would create a treatment plan, communicate extensively with the patient’s primary-care team, and refer out to subspecialists when necessary. It wasn’t glamorous. It might never produce patents or profits or win prizes.

As Sanders listened to her friend unspool this idea, her excitement mounted. Hearing patients’ complicated problems and solving them was her sweet spot, the talent and interest upon which she had built a storied career. Now 67, she has long been known as the Arthur Conan Doyle of medical diagnosis, “a paragon of the modern medical-detective storyteller,” as the celebrated surgeon Atul Gawande once described her. In addition to teaching internal medicine at Yale, she writes “Diagnosis,” a monthly medical-mysteries column for The New York Times Magazine, which was the inspiration for the long-running television series House. She has written two books on diagnosis and in 2019 was featured on a Netflix docuseries also called Diagnosis.

Sanders, energetic and brusque, had been casting about for her next challenge. And here, unexpectedly, it was. “I was like, Yes! This is what I’ve been looking for,” she tells me. The Monday after the party, Sanders sent an email inquiring about the position. “I was really the only qualified person who applied for the job,” she says. Among the ambitious academics at Yale, evaluating frustrated patients for long COVID — and then treating their ever-changing and unremitting symptoms — was not seen as an auspicious professional trajectory. But in their lack of interest, Sanders saw a path forward beyond diagnosis: As an internal-medicine doctor, she was already an expert at managing chronic disease. “There are no antibiotics for diabetes. There’s no magic pill for hypertension,” she says. She has spent more than two decades not offering cures but helping people improve their imperfect health. She could aim these skills at a new subset of patients suffering from this novel disease…

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: September 6, 2023Post + Comments (38)

… The CDC’s immunization panel is scheduled to vote on the vaccines at a Sept. 12 meeting, a notice posted on the federal register website showed.

Vaccine makers such as Pfizer (PFE.N) and its German partner BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE), Moderna (MRNA.O) and Novavax (NVAX.O) have created versions of their shots aimed at the XBB.1.5 subvariant of the virus.

CDC Director Mandy Cohen said earlier this month the vaccines were anticipated to be available by the third or fourth week of September, after being recommended by the CDC and authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration…

26 states are currently seeing a 20%+ surge in #Covid cases.

How do you know if those #Covid19 home tests in your cabinet are still useful?
https://t.co/xA1bj8nWOj

— Michael Conn (@michaelconn_ny) August 29, 2023

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WHO: Latest global Covid case numbers

*Excludes ALL of the Americas.

An entire continent engages in concealing vital medical data.

https://t.co/omCjlUL54N pic.twitter.com/gWXCq6ihQJ

— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) August 27, 2023

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