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Tag Archives: Cases
R. Kelly: Illinois prosecutors drop pending criminal cases against singer
CNN
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Prosecutors in Illinois’ Cook County have dropped state sex-crime charges against singer R. Kelly, who has already been convicted of federal charges set to keep him in prison for decades.
The Illinois charges – aggravated criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse counts involving four accusers – are being dropped in part because of the prison sentences he’s already facing for his federal convictions, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said Monday.
CNN has reached out to Kelly’s lawyer for comment.
After Foxx’s office filed charges in 2019, Kelly was charged in federal courts in New York and Chicago, her office noted.
In his federal case in New York, the disgraced R&B singer was sentenced to 30 years in prison after he was convicted in 2021 on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
In federal court in Chicago, Kelly was convicted of multiple child pornography charges and acquitted on others in 2022, after a trial that included anonymous testimony from a woman who said Kelly sexually abused her and recorded the interactions when she was as young as 14.
While a sentence hasn’t been announced in the latter trial, Kelly faces a minimum of 10 to 90 years in prison for that conviction, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office said.
“I understand how hard it was for these victims to come forward and tell their stories. I applaud their courage and have the utmost respect for everyone who came forward,” Foxx said in a news release.
“While this may not be the result they were expecting, due to the sentences that Mr. Kelly is facing, we do feel that justice has been served,” Foxx added.
Cook County prosecutors had called for victims to come forward after the airing of “Surviving R. Kelly,” a Lifetime documentary series that chronicled allegations of abuse, predatory behavior and pedophilia against the singer.
The office set up a hotline and interviewed hundreds of witnesses in Chicago, Atlanta and New York, according to the news release.
“My office will direct our resources to find justice for other victims of sexual abuse who do not have the power of a documentary to bring their abusers to light,” Foxx added.
Gonorrhea is becoming unstoppable; highly resistant cases found in US
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria, which causes gonorrhea.
The most highly drug-resistant cases of gonorrhea detected in the US to date appeared in two unrelated people in Massachusetts, state health officials announced Thursday.
The cases mark the first time that US isolates of the gonorrhea-causing bacterium, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, have shown complete resistance or reduced susceptibility to all drugs that are recommended for treatment.
Fortunately, both cases were successfully cured with potent injections of the antibiotic ceftriaxone, despite the bacterial isolates demonstrating reduced susceptibility to the drug. Ceftriaxone is currently the frontline recommended treatment for the sexually transmitted infection.
But health officials said the cases are a warning. “N. gonorrhoeae is becoming less responsive to a limited arsenal of antibiotics,” they said.
Brewing resistance
For years, global surveillance data collected by the World Health Organization has shown that gonorrhea is becoming more and more resistant to our entire lineup of drugs, including frontline drugs like ceftriaxone. Though surveillance is spotty globally, a study of WHO’s 2017–2018 data published in 2021 found N. gonorrhoeae isolates with decreased susceptibility or resistance to ceftriaxone have turned up in 21 of the 68 reporting countries, or 31 percent.
Resistance against alternative antibiotics was even higher. Among the 61 countries reporting data on an alternative antibiotic, azithromycin, 51 countries (84 percent) reported resistance. And of 51 countries reporting data on the alternative antibiotic treatment, cefixime, 24 countries (47 percent) reported resistance. For ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic largely abandoned as a gonorrhea treatment due to resistance, all 70 reporting countries found resistance.
“In many countries, ciprofloxacin resistance is extremely high, azithromycin resistance is rapidly increasing, and resistance or decreased susceptibility to ceftriaxone and cefixime continue to emerge,” the WHO said in 2021. “Without new gonorrhoea treatments, there will be people with gonorrhoea infections that will be difficult to treat and cure.”
The agency wasn’t exaggerating. Last year, WHO added that reports of gonorrhea treatment failure are stacking up. “In the past decade, confirmed failure to cure gonorrhoea with ceftriaxone alone or combined with azithromycin or doxycyline was reported in Australia, France, Japan, Slovenia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,” WHO reported.
One of the isolates reported in Massachusetts yesterday demonstrated reduced susceptibility to ceftriaxone, cefixime, and azithromycin and resistance to ciprofloxacin, penicillin, and tetracycline in lab tests. The second isolate appeared to have a similar profile based on genetic data, Massachusetts’ public health department reported. This strain of N. gonorrhoeae has been seen circulating in Asia-Pacific countries and has been detected in recent cases in the UK.
High cases
Alongside the worrying trend of increased resistance is the fact that gonorrhea cases are high worldwide and are on the rise in the US. In 2020, WHO estimated that there were 82.4 million new cases of gonorrhea worldwide. In the US, there were nearly 700,000 cases in 2021, up more than 25 percent from 2017, according to preliminary estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In many people, gonorrhea has no symptoms. In others, it’s so mild that it may be mistaken as a minor bladder infection or yeast infection. Over time, however, it can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, severe pain, and fertility problems. Health officials stress the need for screening and surveillance to treat infections early before they become severe and have a chance to spread.
For the two Massachusetts cases, health officials are now working on contact tracing. Without a clear link between the two cases, officials say it’s likely it’s more widespread than currently known.
“The discovery of this strain of gonorrhea is a serious public health concern which DPH, the CDC, and other health departments have been vigilant about detecting in the US,” Massachusetts Public Health Commissioner Margret Cooke said in a statement. “We urge all sexually active people to be regularly tested for sexually transmitted infections and to consider reducing the number of their sexual partners and increasing their use of condoms when having sex. Clinicians are advised to review the clinical alert and assist with our expanded surveillance efforts.”
Massachusetts health officials announce first cases of ‘concerning’ new gonorrhea strain – Boston 25 News
BOSTON — Massachusetts health officials on Thursday announced the state’s first two cases of a highly “concerning” new gonorrhea strain.
A novel strain of gonorrhea was detected in a Bay State resident who showed reduced response to multiple antibiotics, in addition to another case with genetic markers that indicate a similar drug response, according to the Department of Public Health.
This marks the first time that resistance or reduced response to five classes of antibiotics has been identified in gonorrhea in the United States, health officials noted.
Both cases were successfully cured with ceftriaxone, the antibiotic currently recommended to treat gonorrhea. To date, no direct connection between the two individuals has been identified.
Gonorrhea is a bacterial sexually transmitted infection. It may present without symptoms, and if left untreated, can result in pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, and other health problems.
This new strain of gonorrhea has been previously seen in Asia-Pacific countries and in the United Kingdom, but not in America, according to Public Health Commissioner Margret Cooke.
“The discovery of this strain of gonorrhea is a serious public health concern which DPH, the CDC, and other health departments have been vigilant about detecting in the US,” Cooke said in a news release. “We urge all sexually active people to be regularly tested for sexually transmitted infections and to consider reducing the number of their sexual partners and increasing their use of condoms when having sex. Clinicians are advised to review the clinical alert and assist with our expanded surveillance efforts.”
Field epidemiologists in the state’s Division of Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention are now conducting contact tracing to determine if other individuals have acquired this infection.
Gonorrhea has been increasing in Massachusetts and nationally, adding to concerns about the potential spread of this strain, health officials noted. In Massachusetts, laboratory-confirmed cases of gonorrhea have increased 312% since a low point of 1,976 cases in 2009 to 8,133 in 2021.
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First cases of gonorrhea resistant to several classes of antibiotics identified in the U.S.
CNN
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Public health officials says they have found two cases of gonorrhea that appear to have reduced susceptibility to every kind of antibiotic available to treat them. It’s the first time strains of gonorrhea this resistant to antibiotics have been identified in the United States.
Increased sexual activity during the pandemic, coupled with fewer people getting routine health screenings, supercharged the spread of sexually transmitted infections around the world.
Those infections, including gonorrhea, are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics available to treat them, a problem that is becoming a dire threat to public health.
Globally, infections that are resistant to antibiotics kill approximately 700,000 people each year. That number is expected to rise to 10 million deaths per year by 2050 if steps aren’t taken to stop the spread of resistant organisms.
Experts say it was never a question of when this highly resistant gonorrhea strain would reach the US, but when.
“The concern is that this particular strain has been circulating around the world, so it was only a matter of time before it would hit the US,” says Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a clinical professor of public health at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.
“It’s a reminder that gonorrhea is becoming increasingly resistant, increasingly hard to treat. We don’t have any new antibiotics. We haven’t had new antibiotics to treat gonorrhea for years and we really need a different treatment strategy,” said Klausner, who sits on the CDC workgroup for gonorrhea treatment.
Gonorrhea is sexually transmitted, and one of the most commonly diagnosed infections in the US. It is caused by the bacteria Niesseria gonorrhoeae, which can infect the mucous membranes in the genitals, rectum, throat and eyes.
People can be infected without having symptoms. Left untreated, the infection can cause pelvic pain and infertility in women and blindness in newborns.
In addition to reduced susceptibility to ceftriaxone, the strains of gonorrhea identified in Massachusetts also showed reduced susceptibility to cefixime and azithromycin; the strains were resistant to ciprofloxacin, penicillin and tetracycline, according to a clinical alert sent to physicians by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
The MDPH says it hasn’t yet found any connection between the two cases.
In 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended giving a double dose of the antibiotic ceftriaxone in an effort to overcome the bacteria’s building resistance to this antibiotic, and that seems to have worked in these cases, but that antibiotic is the last line of defense against this infection, and experts say a new approach is needed.
Klausner is hoping to win FDA approval for a test that would tailor antibiotic treatment to the genetic susceptibilities of the particular strain of gonorrhea that is infecting a person. This is called resistance-guided treatment, and Klausner says it works for HIV, TB and some other hospital acquired infections, but it’s never really been tried for gonorrhea.
This strain of gonorrhea has been previously seen in Asia-Pacific countries and in the United Kingdom, but not in the US. A genetic marker common to these two Massachusetts residents was also previously seen in a case in Nevada, though that strain retained sensitivity to at least one class of antibiotics.
The first symptoms of gonorrhea are often painful urination, abdominal or pelvic pain, increased vaginal discharge, or bleeding between periods, but many infections are asymptomatic, according to the CDC, making routine screenings important for catching the infection.
U.S. investigating first cases of “concerning” new drug-resistant gonorrhea strain
Health authorities in Massachusetts announced Thursday they have identified two cases of a new strain of gonorrhea that appears to have developed resistance to a broad swath of antibiotic treatments.
Both patients got better after getting injections of ceftriaxone, the main drug currently recommended to treat cases of the sexually transmitted infection. But state health officials warn the strain that infected them shows signs of at least some resistance to almost every drug to treat the bacteria, the first of its kind confirmed in the U.S. to date.
Investigators are now working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to test other samples collected from gonorrhea cases in the state. Massachusetts is also conducting contact tracing to find out if the drug-resistant strain has spread to others.
“The discovery of this strain of gonorrhea is a serious public health concern which DPH, the CDC, and other health departments have been vigilant about detecting,” Margret Cooke, head of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said Thursday in a statement.
Gonorrhea is the second most common sexually transmitted infection reported to health authorities in the U.S., behind chlamydia, according to the CDC.
Many who are infected by the bacteria often have little to no symptoms. However, some can develop bleeding, discharge, and more serious complications that can lead to infertility and pain.
The initial case was identified in a patient who went to a primary care clinic with symptoms of urethritis, a kind of irritation that can make it difficult to urinate. Samples examined by the state’s health laboratory flagged a “concerning” pattern later verified by follow-up testing by the CDC.
A spokesperson for the state declined to clarify additional details about the two cases, beyond those identified in the department’s announcement and alert to providers.
No direct connection has been identified between the two cases. One had no recent travel history, suggesting the strain could be spreading within the state.
“We urge all sexually active people to be regularly tested for sexually transmitted infections and to consider reducing the number of their sexual partners and increasing their use of condoms when having sex,” Cooke said.
Gonorrhea’s “alarming” drug resistance
For years, health authorities have been working to respond to the “alarming” ability that gonorrhea has to develop resistance against antibiotics that have been deployed to combat it.
In 2013, the CDC named gonorrhea as one of the three most urgent threats posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Both U.S. and world health authorities have launched campaigns to curb new cases of gonorrhea in hopes of controlling the bacteria until vaccines and new treatments are developed.
The Massachusetts cases are the first confirmed in the lab to have developed the ability to sidestep six of the seven drugs that health authorities track for potential resistance. It carries a change to the “penA60 allele” – a gene mutation – which has been linked to previous ceftriaxone-resistant cases in Nevada, the United Kingdom, and Asia.
“This case is a reminder that antimicrobial-resistant gonorrhea remains an urgent public health threat nationally and internationally; all providers in all clinical settings need to remain vigilant,” Dr. Laura Hinkle Bachmann, chief medical officer of the CDC Division of STD Prevention, said Thursday in a letter to providers.
Ceftriaxone injections, boosted with other oral antibiotics like azithromycin and doxycycline, have been the last recommended treatment for gonorrhea since 2012. At the time, laboratory data showed a related drug known as cefixime had been losing effectiveness and risked creating resistance to ceftriaxone too.
Only one drug tested against the Massachusetts strain by the CDC’s panel – gentamicin – showed no sign of reduced susceptibility. However, that drug is already generally considered a less effective treatment for gonorrhea.
Scientists have pursued new drugs for gonorrhea like zoliflodacin, which showed promising early results in a 2018 study backed by the National Institutes of Health. That drug is currently being studied in clinical trials and has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for gonorrhea.
“Timely identification and treatment, as well as rapid public health response, are essential to keeping patients safe and reducing the risk of community transmission. We must all remain alert for potential gonococcal treatment failures as we combat the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance,” Bachmann said.
David Carrick: London Metropolitan Police officer admits to dozens of offenses against women, including 24 cases of rape
London
CNN
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A serving officer in London’s Metropolitan Police has admitted to 49 offenses, including 24 counts of rape over an 18-year period, reigniting calls for urgent reform in the United Kingdom’s largest police force.
David Carrick appeared at Southwark Crown Court in the British capital Monday to plead guilty to four counts of rape, false imprisonment and indecent assault relating to a 40-year-old woman in 2003, the UK’s PA Media news agency reported.
At the Old Bailey criminal court in London last month, Carrick admitted to 43 charges against 11 other women, including 20 counts of rape, between March 2004 and September 2020, according to PA.
A series of recent scandals has shed light on what the UK police watchdog called a culture of misogyny and racism in London’s police service.
In September 2021, Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, a case that horrified the nation and sparked debate about violence against women.
The Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner Cressida Dick resigned from her post in 2022, after a damning review by the Independent Office for Police Conduct issued 15 recommendations “to change policing practice” in the country.
London’s Metropolitan Police are now investigating as many as 1,000 sex offenses and domestic abuse claims involving approximately 800 of its officers, the force’s Commissioner Mark Rowley admitted Monday.
“That’s 1,000 cases to look at. Some of those will be things of no concern in the end when we look at them because it will be an argument overheard by neighbors where inquiries show there’s nothing to be concerned about,” Rowley said in an interview with UK media.
“But in there, I’m sad to say, there will be some cases where in the past we should have been more assertive and looked to throw officers out and we haven’t done.”
“We are going to turn all those stones over, we’re going to come to the right conclusions and we’ll be ruthless about rooting out those who corrupt our integrity. You have my absolute assurance on that,” he said.
The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) called Carrick’s case one of the “most shocking” it’s ever seen.
“The scale of the degradation Carrick subjected his victims to is unlike anything I have encountered in my 34 years with the Crown Prosecution Service,” CPS Chief Crown Prosecutor Jaswant Narwal said.
“I commend every single woman who courageously shared their traumatic experience and enabled us to bring this case to court and see justice served,” Narwal continued while speaking outside Southwark Crown Court Monday.
The senior investigating officer in the case, Detective Chief Inspector Iain Moor, called Carrick’s crimes “truly shocking.”
“The police service is committed to tackling violence against women and girls in all its forms,” Moor said, adding “no one is above the law.”
Assistant Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Barbara Gray also apologized on behalf of the police force to all the victims.
Gray said Monday that Carrick “should have been dismissed from the police service a long time ago.”
She later added: “We should have spotted his pattern of abusive behavior and because we didn’t, we missed opportunities to remove him from the organization. We are truly sorry that Carrick was able to continue to use his role as a police officer to prolong the suffering of his victims.”
“The duration and nature of Carrick’s offending is unprecedented in policing. But regrettably he is not the only Met officer to have been charged with serious sexual offences in the recent past,” she said.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “Londoners will be rightly shocked that this man was able to work for the Met for so long and serious questions must be answered about how he was able to abuse his position as an officer in this horrendous manner.”
Khan commented that work to reform the culture and standards of the Met has already started following an interim review and that a new, anonymous police complaints hotline and anti-corruption team has recently been established by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley.
“But more can and must be done,” added Khan on Twitter. “It’s vital that all victims of crime have confidence in our police, and we simply must do more to raise standards and empower police leaders to rid the Met and all other police services of those officers who are clearly unfit to serve.”
Women’s rights organizations called for an inquiry into the Met following Carrick’s case.
UK domestic abuse charity Refuge called Carrick’s crimes “utterly abhorrent.”
“When a man who has been charged with 49 offences, including 24 charges of rape, is a serving police officer, how can women and girls possibly be – or feel – safe,” Refuge tweeted Monday.
UK organization End Violence Against Women also posted on Twitter: “This is an institution in crisis. That Carrick’s pattern of egregious behaviour was known to the Met and they failed to act speaks more loudly than their empty promises to women.”
“Solidarity with the victims & all who are feeling the weight of the traumatic details being reported,” it added.
The British Women’s Equality Party tweeted: “The Met knew about the allegations for TWENTY years. They did nothing as a serial rapist abused his power. They are complicit. Misogyny will never be stripped from the police without a nationwide, statutory inquiry.”
The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality and women’s rights, said on Twitter: “Any act of sexual violence is a disgrace. But it is particularly harmful when, yet again, these crimes have been perpetrated by a person who has additional responsibilities to keep the public safe.”
Flu activity peaked without post-holiday spike in cases, but respiratory virus season is still in full swing
CNN
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Flu continues to be very prevalent in the US, but the first wave of the season – which swept through the country weeks earlier than usual – appears to have peaked.
The weeks after the year-end holidays brought sustained high levels of transmission and hospitalization, but flu activity doesn’t seem to have spiked as many public health experts cautioned.
Still, even after weeks of improvement, data published Friday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that more than 12,400 people were admitted to the hospital for flu in the first week of the new year, and nearly 9% of lab tests were positive for flu.
About 4% of everyone who visited a health care provider last week had respiratory virus symptoms, including fever plus a cough or sore throat, which is nearly twice as high as the national baseline.
Flu is notoriously unpredictable, and a season can bring multiple peaks of activity.
“It’s pretty clear that there was a peak of activity, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have another one,” Lynnette Brammer, lead of the CDC’s domestic influenza surveillance team, said last week. “Things could turn around and go back up.”
Flu vaccination rates remain far below ideal levels, and hospitals remain very full, leaving the US vulnerable as respiratory virus season drags on.
“It’s certainly something we’re gonna watch really carefully. We’re just going to have to keep an eye on all the data, see what viruses are circulating and who’s getting sick, and what sort of impact that’s having,” Brammer said.
“And I want to remind people that if they haven’t yet gotten vaccinated, please do so. It’s not too late.”
As of December 31, about 171 million doses of flu vaccine have been distributed in the US – enough to cover only about half of the population. Just 40% of adults had gotten their shot by the end of November, and just 48% of children had gotten their shot by the end of December, according to CDC data.
Through January 7, the CDC estimates that there have been 24 million illnesses, 260,000 hospitalizations and 16,000 deaths from flu this season.
Although this season did hit earlier than usual, outcomes are within an expected range – at least so far.
“It’s not an unusually high influenza season. It’s sort of falling in with the mid- to higher range, but it’s within the limits of what we normally expect to see during a regular flu season, unfortunately,” Brammer said. “So basically, this is looking like a typical flu season, except in terms of the timing. It was just a little bit earlier than normal.”
Overall, flu and other respiratory virus activity remains “high” or “very high” in about half of states, according to the new CDC data, and the US continues to contend with multiple respiratory viruses that are circulating at high levels.
RSV activity has also peaked in the US, reaching a season high in mid-November. But even after a sharp decrease in trends over the past month and a half, weekly hospitalization rates for RSV remain higher than the peaks for most recent seasons.
RSV is particularly dangerous for children, and at least 13 out of every 100,000 children younger than 5 were hospitalized for RSV in the last week of the year, bringing the cumulative hospitalization rate this season up to 5 out of every 1,000 children in this age group.
Meanwhile, Covid-19 activity has been trending up for the past few months.
Hospitalizations have been on the rise since November and have surpassed the most recent peak from this summer, before the updated booster shot was available, federal data shows.
Case reporting has become more irregular over the course of the pandemic, but wastewater monitoring data from Biobot Analytics suggests that Covid-19 activity is higher than it was during the Delta surge, too.
The rapidly growing Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 now accounts for an estimated 43% of new Covid-19 cases in the US, according to the CDC, making it the strain that is causing the most new infections in the US.
Notably, it is the only variant that is gaining ground in the U.S.
XBB.1.5 was first detected in New York in October. It grew quickly throughout the Northeast, and the CDC estimates that it accounts for more than 80% of new cases in that region.
From there, XBB.1.5 seems to be picking up steam along the Eastern Seaboard. It now accounts for about half of Covid-19 cases in the mid-Atlantic states and nearly one-third of cases in the Southeast. It is less prevalent in other US regions.
The rise of XBB.1.5 has coincided with an increase in Covid-19 hospitalizations, especially among seniors.
XBB.1.5 has a key mutation that helps it bind more tightly to cells. Experts believe that may be helping it be more infectious.
Still, just 16% of the US population has received their updated Covid-19 booster shot. Data from October shows that people ages 5 and up who had received an updated booster had 19 times lower risk of dying from Covid-19 compared with those who were unvaccinated. Chances of testing positive were three times lower for those who had their updated booster.
Samsung Galaxy S23 leather cases leak ahead of announcement
Samsung usually launches a bunch of accessories for its high-end smartphones and tablets. This year, too, the company is expected to launch various first-party cases and covers for the Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+, and Galaxy S23 Ultra. Now, the leather cases for its upcoming high-end phones have leaked.
Galaxy S23 Leather Case comes in two colors
All three Galaxy S23 series phones will get an official Leather Case and come in two colors: Black and Camel. The images of those cases leaked through eBay listings in Germany (via @_snoopytech_). The model numbers of these cases are EF-VS911 (Galaxy S23), EF-VS916 (Galaxy S23+), and EF-VS918 (Galaxy S23 Ultra). While the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s Leather Case looks exactly similar to the one of the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the leather covers for the Galaxy S23 and the Galaxy S23+ look different than their predecessors as they lack the camera island design.
Apart from the Leather Case, the Galaxy S23 series will get various other first-party cases, including Clear Cover, Clear Standing Cover, Frame Cover, Silicone Cover, Silicone Cover With Strap, Smart Clear View Cover, and Smart LED View Cover. The South Korean firm’s upcoming high-end phones will also get a ton of third-party protective cases and screen protection films.
Since Samsung launched the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro and the Galaxy Watch 5 series a few months ago, we don’t expect the company to unveil new smartwatches or wireless earbuds during the Galaxy S23 launch event. The company could offer Galaxy Buds 2 Pro for free with Galaxy S23 pre-orders.
Long COVID Stemmed From Mild Cases Of COVID-19 In Most People, According To A New Multicountry Study
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Even mild COVID-19 cases can have major and long-lasting effects on people’s health. That is one of the key findings from our recent multicountry study on long COVID-19 — or long COVID — recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Long COVID is defined as the continuation or development of symptoms three months after the initial infection from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. These symptoms last for at least two months after onset with no other explanation.
We found that a staggering 90% of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness with COVID-19. After developing long COVID, however, the typical person experienced symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive problems such as brain fog — or a combination of these — that affected daily functioning. These symptoms had an impact on health as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury. Our study also found that women have twice the risk of men and four times the risk of children for developing long COVID.
We analyzed data from 54 studies reporting on over 1 million people from 22 countries who had experienced symptoms of COVID-19. We counted how many people with COVID-19 developed clusters of new long-COVID symptoms and determined how their risk of developing the disease varied based on their age, sex and whether they were hospitalized for COVID-19.
We found that patients who were hospitalized for COVID-19 had a greater risk of developing long COVID — and of having longer-lasting symptoms — compared with people who had not been hospitalized. However, because the vast majority of COVID-19 cases do not require hospitalization, many more cases of long COVID have arisen from these milder cases despite their lower risk. Among all people with long COVID, our study found that nearly one out of every seven were still experiencing these symptoms a year later, and researchers don’t yet know how many of these cases may become chronic. https://www.youtube.com/embed/e0REUL7pniU?wmode=transparent&start=0 Long COVID can affect nearly any organ in the body.
Why it matters
Compared with COVID-19, relatively little is known about long COVID.
Our systematic, multicountry analysis of this condition delivered findings that illuminate the potentially steep human and economic costs of long COVID around the world. Many people who are living with the condition are working-age adults. Being unable to work for many months could cause people to lose their income, their livelihoods and their housing. For parents or caregivers living with long COVID, the condition may make them unable to care for their loved ones.
We think, based on the pervasiveness and severity of long COVID, that it is keeping people from working and therefore contributing to labor shortages. Long COVID could also be a factor in how people losing their jobs has disproportionately affected women.
We believe that finding effective and affordable treatments for people living with long COVID should be a priority for researchers and research funders. Long COVID clinics have opened to provide specialized care, but the treatments they offer are limited, inconsistent and may be costly.
What’s next
Long COVID is a complex and dynamic condition — some symptoms disappear, then return, and new symptoms appear. But researchers don’t yet know why.
While our study focused on the three most common symptoms associated with long COVID that affect daily functioning, the condition can also include symptoms like loss of smell and taste, insomnia, gastrointestinal problems and headaches, among others. But in most cases these additional symptoms occur together with the main symptoms we made estimates for.
There are many unanswered questions about what predisposes people to long COVID. For example, how do different risk factors, including smoking and high body-mass index, influence people’s likelihood of developing the condition? Does getting reinfected with SARS-CoV-2 change the risk for long COVID? Also, it is unclear how protection against long COVID changes over time after a person has been vaccinated or boosted against COVID-19.
COVID-19 variants also present new puzzles. Researchers know that the omicron variant is less deadly than previous strains. Initial evidence shows lower risk of long COVID from omicron compared with earlier strains, but far more data is needed.
Most of the people we studied were infected with the deadlier variants that were circulating before omicron became dominant. We will continue to build on our research on long COVID as part of the Global Burden of Disease study — which makes estimates of deaths and disability due to all diseases and injuries in every country in the world — in order to to get a clearer picture of how COVID-19’s long-term toll shifted once omicron arrived.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.