PARIS — A French nun who was believed to be the world’s oldest person but had been reportedly growing weary of the burdens of age has died a few weeks before her 119th birthday, her nursing home in southern France said Wednesday.
Lucile Randon, known as Sister André, was born in the town of Ales, southern France, on Feb. 11, 1904, and lived through the two world wars. As a little girl she was astonished by her first contact with electric lighting at school and, more recently, survived COVID-19 without even realizing she’d been infected.
Spokesman David Tavella said she died at 2 a.m. on Tuesday at the Sainte-Catherine-Laboure nursing home in the southern port city of Toulon.
The Gerontology Research Group, which validates details of people thought to be 110 or older, listed her as the oldest known person in the world after the death of Japan’s Kane Tanaka, aged 119, last year.
The oldest living known person in the world listed by the Gerontology Research Group is now American-born Maria Branyas Morera, who is living in Spain, and is 115.
Sister André tested positive for the coronavirus in January 2021, shortly before her 117th birthday, but she had so few symptoms that she didn’t even realize she was infected. Her survival made headlines both in France and beyond.
In April last year, asked about her exceptional longevity through two world wars, she told French media that “working … makes you live. I worked until I was 108.”
But the local newspaper Midi Libre reported Sister Andre saying in 2020, after recovering from COVID-19, that “God has forgotten me.”
Her health was deteriorating and the paper reported that during a visit with her last May she was imprisoned by the infirmities of age, with loss of eyesight, poor hearing and her face contorted by joint pain.
In better days, Sister Andre was known to enjoy a daily glass of wine and some chocolate, and toasted her 117th birthday in 2021 with Champagne, red wine and port.
“It made me very, very, very, very happy,” she said in a telephone interview at the time with The Associated Press. “Because I met all those I love and I thank the heavens for giving them to me. I thank God for the trouble they went to.”
Sister Andre, who reportedly took her religious name in honor of a favorite brother, recalled the high points of her long life in the May interview with Midi Libre, saying: “The most beautiful day of my life was when the Armistice (ending World War I) was declared,” and the population of Ales gathered in the main square to sing the French national anthem.
Electricity, which she first encountered turning on a light in a classroom as a little girl, was a new word for her to learn and, she said, “a joy.”
Jeanne Calment, a French woman who also lived in southern France, died in 1997 at the age of 122, said to be the record of longevity.
BEIJING (AP) — Moves by several countries to mandate COVID-19 tests for passengers arriving from China reflect global concern that new variants could emerge in its ongoing explosive outbreak — and that the government may not inform the rest of the world quickly enough.
There have been no reports of new variants to date, but China has been accused of not being forthcoming about the virus since it first surfaced in the country in late 2019. The worry is that it may not be sharing data now on any signs of evolving strains that could spark fresh outbreaks elsewhere.
The U.S., Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Italy have announced testing requirements for passengers from China. The U.S. cited both the surge in infections and what it said was a lack of information, including genomic sequencing of the virus strains in the country.
Authorities in Taiwan and Japan have expressed similar concern.
“Right now the pandemic situation in China is not transparent,” Wang Pi-Sheng, the head of Taiwan’s epidemic command center, told The Associated Press. “We have a very limited grasp on its information, and it’s not very accurate.”
The island will start testing everyone arriving from China on Jan. 1, ahead of the expected return of about 30,000 Taiwanese for the Lunar New Year holiday later in the month. The new Japanese rules, which restrict flights from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao to designated airports beginning Friday, are already disrupting holiday travel plans.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin noted Thursday that many countries have not changed their policies for travelers from China and said that any measures should treat people from all countries equally.
Every new infection offers a chance for the coronavirus to mutate, and it is spreading rapidly in China. Scientists can’t say whether that means the surge will unleash a new mutant on the world — but they worry that might happen.
Chinese health officials have said the current outbreak is being driven by versions of the omicron variant that have also been detected elsewhere, and a surveillance system has been set up to identify any potentially worrisome new versions of the virus. Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at China’s Center for Disease Control, said Thursday that China has always reported the virus strains it has found in a timely way.
“We keep nothing secret,” he said. “All work is shared with the world.”
Italy’s health minister told the Senate that sequencing indicates that the variants detected in passengers arriving from China are already in circulation in Europe. “This is the most important and reassuring news,″ Orazio Schillaci said.
That squares with what the European Union’s executive branch has said. The EU refrained Thursday from immediately following member Italy in requiring tests for visitors from China, but is assessing the situation.
More broadly, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the body needs more information on the severity of the outbreak in China, particularly on hospital and ICU admissions, “in order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground.”
China rolled back many of its tough pandemic restrictions earlier this month, allowing the virus to spread rapidly in a country that had seen relatively few infections since an initial devastating outbreak in the city of Wuhan. Spiraling infections have led to shortages of cold medicine, long lines at fever clinics, and at-capacity emergency rooms turning away patients. Cremations have risen several-fold, with a request from overburdened funeral homes in one city for families to postpone funeral services until next month.
Chinese state media has not reported the fallout from the surge widely and government officials have blamed Western media for hyping up the situation.
The global concerns, tinged with anger, are a direct result of the ruling Communist Party’s sudden exit from some of the world’s most stringent anti-virus policies, said Miles Yu, director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.
“You can’t conduct the lunacy of ‘zero-COVID’ lockdowns for such a long period of time … and then suddenly unleash a multitude of the infected from a caged China to the world,” risking major outbreaks elsewhere, Yu said in an email.
Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the move by the U.S. may be more about increasing pressure on China to share more information than stopping a new variant from entering the country.
China has been accused of masking the virus situation in the country before. An AP investigation found that the government sat on the release of genetic information about the virus for more than a week after decoding it, frustrating WHO officials.
The government also tightly controlled the dissemination of Chinese research on the virus, impeding cooperation with international scientists.
Research into the origins of the virus has also been stymied. A WHO expert group said in a report this year that “key pieces of data” were missing on the how the pandemic began and called for a more in-depth investigation.
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Wu reported from Taipei, Taiwan. Associated Press journalists Geir Moulson in Berlin, Colleen Barry in Milan, Carla K. Johnson in Seattle and Kanis Leung in Hong Kong and video producer Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people stayed at home, and therefore there were more opportunities to spend time eating delicious food. In addition, most gyms and outdoor sports venues were closed due to the pandemic, and therefore many people gained a lot of weight.
Yu Jiashan licensed Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner in Southern California, pointed out that many people believe that to “lose weight” requires dieting and a lot of exercises, but although exercise is necessary TCM has a different overall approach.
He said that the first step in helping patients to lose weight is to adjust their daily routine and develop appropriate habits and then according to their individual physique, add acupuncture, massage, and TCM to improve their physique.
In an interview with the Epoch Times, Yu said that many people who are trying to lose weight have the same problem. Although they lose weight, they regain weight soon, and they even become fatter than before they lost weight.
He said that this is mainly because they did not change his lifestyle or adjust his physique after losing weight, so once he stopped losing weight and resumed his past routine, he would easily gain the weight back, or even get fatter than before.
Most obese people have Dampness, phlegm, qi (vital energy) deficiency, Blood Stasis, and so on, so TCM will adjust their physique from these aspects.
Yu said that he had encountered a patient who wanted to lose weight and had the problem of turning night into day. Because he was in good spirits at night, he ate a lot. And after eating, he went straight to sleep. All the calories and fat were accumulated in his body and it was difficult to consume.
Finally, the patient became fatter, he was so fat that he could not sit on the double sofa. The Hispanic patient weighed more than 500 pounds and lost more than 100 pounds after a 7-month course of treatment, and had not regained weight since.
After seven months of treatment, a patient weighing more than 500 pounds (top) lost more than 100 pounds (lower), leaving a lot of space on the double sofa that was once full when he sat there. (Courtesy of Yu Jiashan)
“You can eat whatever you want during the treatment, but during the treatment, your appetite will naturally decrease,” Yu said.
First, he helped the patient to change the habit of turning night into day, using acupuncture and massage to make him fall asleep at night easier; later gradually removed damp phlegm, invigorated qi deficiency, activated the Blood Stasis, and adjusted the symptoms of his body according to different developments.
Some people mistakenly think that to lose weight through TCM is to treat constipation. Yu said, “TCM is not a laxative for losing weight. We use TCM to lower lipids, regulate blood sugar, and then combine treatment with acupuncture, and massage to remove the Dampness and oil.”
He also teaches patients massage techniques, allowing them to use their spare time at home to massage themselves. They can do it while watching TV or chatting with their family members, but the patients often feel pain during the massage.
Yu said that finally, the patient lost more than 100 pounds successfully. He could actually continue to lose weight, but he felt it was too difficult, so he ended the treatment.
Modern people live under high pressure constantly, and it is easy to be “obese from stress.” Yu explained that when the human body faces stress, it secretes a hormone that quickly converts high-calorie food into fat, and then stores fat to fight stress.
This kind of obesity caused by stress is called “obesity from stress.” This type of obese physique needs treatment for soothing the Liver and concentrating the Mind. In addition to taking TCM for regulating the body, it is more important to solve the source of stress in life. When there is no stress, there is no “obesity from stress.”
Yu pointed out that losing weight by TCM is a slow process, but it is relatively safer than Western medicine. He believed that if the method of losing weight from TCM and Western medicine can be combined, and the advantages of both sides can be gained, the result will be better.
Most people lose weight from the chin and the face first, and then lose the weight of the limbs and abdomen gradually. Yu suggested that those who want to lose weight must be persistent. He said, “you have to exercise to lose weight. Doctors only provide auxiliary methods.”
He recommended that people should exercise during sunny days, use sun protection, walk more and walk fast to let the body sweat a little bit, and you can slowly soften the accumulated fat naturally, and it will be easier to lose weight.
A new study published this week found that the second COVID-19 booster that was made available to U.S. adults older than 50 this year was highly effective at protecting nursing home residents from hospitalizations and deaths, though its ability to prevent infections was not as potent.
The analysis, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, compared nursing home residents who received a second original mRNA booster dose to those who did not get the additional shot.
According to the study, the second shot was 90 percent effective at preventing coronavirus-related deaths and 74 percent effective at preventing severe cases that led to either hospitalizations or deaths.
The shot was about 26 percent effective at preventing infection, however. This study looked at cases between March 29 and July 25. It was within this period that the BA.5 omicron subvariant grew to become dominant in the U.S.
By the end of July, BA.5 was accounting for four out of five coronavirus cases, and experts had noted its ability to evade protection from immunization and prior infection.
The 9,527 nursing home residents who were included in the study had received their booster within 60 days when they were followed up on by researchers. In order to be eligible, participants had to have stayed in a nursing home for more than 100 days, spent less than 10 outside of the facility and received three prior vaccine doses, with the last dose received more than 120 days beforehand.
Nearly 200 nursing homes from 19 states were included in the study.
Nursing homes have been disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus throughout the pandemic. Roughly three out of four COVID-19 deaths have been among those over the age of 65. When the delta variant spread throughout the U.S. last year, coronavirus deaths rose at a faster rate in nursing homes than in the rest of the country.
“These findings suggest that among nursing home residents, second mRNA COVID-19 vaccine booster doses provided additional protection over first booster doses against severe COVID-19 outcomes during a time of emerging Omicron variants,” researchers wrote.
“Facilities should continue to ensure that nursing home residents remain up to date with COVID-19 vaccination, including bivalent vaccine booster doses, to prevent severe COVID-19 outcomes.”
White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha hailed the study’s findings.
“This is why we’re so focused on ensuring folks, particularly the high risk, get the latest vaccine,” Jha tweeted.
If they have not been recently vaccinated once more or infected with the virus, many of the participants in this study would now be eligible to receive the bivalent omicron-specific COVID-19 booster. The updated shot was authorized at the end of August.
The White House has strongly encouraged eligible individuals to get the bivalent booster, hoping to avoid another surge in coronavirus cases in the fall and winter. The dose has been followed by some uncertainty, as it was approved before a full human study was completed, with both Pfizer and Moderna submitting animal data, as is done for annual flu shots.
Pfizer and Moderna have recently submitted applications seeking authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to administer their shots in younger populations. Pfizer’s bivalent booster is authorized for children as young as 12, while Moderna’s is currently only authorized for adults.
REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — Ending his most recent COVID-19 isolation, President Joe Biden on Sunday left the White House for the first time since becoming infected with the coronavirus last month, settling in for a reunion with first lady Jill Biden in their home state of Delaware.
The president tested negative Saturday and Sunday, according to his doctor, clearing the way for him to emerge from an isolation that lasted longer than expected because of a rebound case of the virus. “He will safety return to public engagement and presidential travel,” Dr. Kevin O’Connor wrote.
“I’m feeling great,” Biden said before boarding Marine One outside the White House.
The Bidens were expected to spend the day in Rehoboth Beach, a popular vacation destination.
Biden originally tested positive on July 21, and he began taking the anti-viral medication Paxlovid, which is intended to decrease the likelihood of serious illness from the virus. According to his doctor, Biden’s vital signs remained normal throughout his infection, but he his symptoms included a runny nose, cough, sore throat and body aches.
After isolating for several days, Biden tested negative on July 26 and July 27, when he gave a speech in the Rose Garden, telling Americans they can “live without fear” of the virus if they get booster shots, test themselves for the virus if they become sick and seek out treatments.
But Biden caught a rare rebound case of COVID-19 on July 30, forcing him to isolate again. He occasionally gave speeches from a White House balcony, such as when he marked the killing of an al-Qaida leader or a strong jobs report.
He continued to test positive until Saturday, when he received his first negative result. While the president was isolating in the White House residence, the first lady remained in Delaware.
The Bidens are scheduled to visit Kentucky on Monday to view flood damage and meet with families.
The expanding monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries is an “extraordinary” situation that qualifies as a global emergency, the World Health Organization chief said Saturday, a declaration that could spur further investment in treating the once-rare disease and worsen the scramble for scarce vaccines.
A global emergency is WHO’s highest level of alert but the designation does not necessarily mean a disease is particularly transmissible or lethal. Similar declarations were made for the Zika virus in 2016 in Latin America and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the decision on calling monkeypox a global emergency despite a lack of consensus among experts on the U.N. health agency’s emergency committee, saying he acted as “a tiebreaker.” It was the first time a U.N. health agency chief has unilaterally made such a decision without an expert recommendation.
“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little,” Tedros said. “I know this has not been an easy or straightforward process and that there are divergent views.”
WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Michael Ryan, said the director-general declared monkeypox a global emergency to ensure that the world takes the current outbreaks seriously.
Although monkeypox has been established in parts of central and west Africa for decades, it was not known to spark large outbreaks beyond the continent or to spread widely among people until May, when authorities detected dozens of epidemics in Europe, North America and elsewhere.
Last month, WHO’s expert committee said the monkeypox outbreak did not yet amount to an international emergency, but the panel convened this week to reevaluate the situation.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 74 countries since about May. To date, monkeypox deaths have only been reported in Africa, where a more dangerous version of the virus is spreading, mainly in Nigeria and Congo.
In Africa, monkeypox mainly spreads to people by infected wild animals like rodents in limited outbreaks that typically have not crossed borders. In Europe, North America and elsewhere, however, monkeypox is spreading among people with no links to animals or recent travel to Africa.
WHO’s top monkeypox expert, Dr. Rosamund Lewis, said this week that 99% of all the monkeypox cases beyond Africa were in men and that of those, 98% involved men who have sex with men. Experts suspect the monkeypox outbreaks in Europe and North America were spread via sex at two raves in Belgium and Spain.
“Although I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern for the moment, this is an outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners,” Tedros said. “That means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies.”
Britain recently downgraded its assessment of monkeypox after seeing no signs of widespread transmission beyond men who are gay, bisexual or have sex with other men and noting the disease does not spread easily or cause severe illness.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was “supportive” of WHO’s emergency declaration and hoped it would galvanize international action to stamp out the outbreaks. The U.S. has reported more than 2,800 monkeypox cases and sent more than 370,000 vaccine doses to U.S. states reporting cases.
Some experts had questioned whether such a declaration would help, arguing the disease isn’t severe enough to warrant the attention and that rich countries battling monkeypox already have the funds to do so. Most people recover without needing medical attention, although the lesions may be painful.
Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Southampton University, said WHO’s emergency declaration could help donors like the World Bank make funds available to stop the outbreaks both in the West and in Africa.
In the U.S., some experts have speculated whether monkeypox might be on the verge of becoming an entrenched sexually transmitted disease in the country, like gonorrhea, herpes and HIV.
“The bottom line is we’ve seen a shift in the epidemiology of monkeypox where there’s now widespread, unexpected transmission,” said Dr. Albert Ko, a professor of public health and epidemiology at Yale University. “There are some genetic mutations in the virus that suggest why that may be happening, but we do need a globally-coordinated response to get it under control.”
Ko called for testing to be immediately scaled up, saying there are significant gaps in surveillance.
“The cases we are seeing are just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The window has probably closed for us to quickly stop the outbreaks in Europe and the U.S., but it’s not too late to stop monkeypox from causing huge damage to poorer countries without the resources to handle it.”
WHO’s Tedros called for the world to “act together in solidarity” regarding the distribution of treatments, tests and vaccines. for monkeypox. The U.N. agency has previously said it’s working to create a vaccine-sharing mechanism for the most-affected countries, but offered few details of how it might work. Unlike the numerous companies that made COVID-19 vaccines, there is only one maker for the vaccine used against monkeypox, Denmark’s Bavarian Nordic.
Dr. Placide Mbala, a virologist who directs the global health department at Congo’s Institute of National Biomedical Research, said he hoped any global efforts to stop monkeypox would be equitable. Although countries including Britain, Canada, Germany and the U.S. have ordered millions of monkeypox vaccine doses, none have gone to Africa.
“The solution needs to be global,” Mbala said, adding that any vaccines sent to Africa would be used to target those at highest risk, like hunters in rural areas.
“Vaccination in the West might help stop the outbreak there, but there will still be cases in Africa,” he said. “Unless the problem is solved here, the risk to the rest of the world will remain.”
Gwyneth Paige didn’t want to get vaccinated against COVID-19 at first. With her health issues — hypertension, fibromyalgia, asthma — she wanted to see how other people fared after the shots. Then her mother got colon cancer.
“At that point, I didn’t care if the vaccine killed me,” she said. “To be with my mother throughout her journey, I had to have the vaccination.”
Paige, who is 56 and lives in Detroit, has received three doses. That leaves her one booster short of federal health recommendations.
Like Paige, who said she doesn’t currently plan to get another booster, some Americans seem comfortable with the protection of three shots. But others may wonder what to do: Boost again now with one of the original vaccines, or wait months for promised new formulations tailored to the latest, highly contagious Omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5?
The rapidly mutating virus has created a conundrum for the public and a communications challenge for health officials.
“What we’re seeing now is a little bit of an information void that is not helping people make the right decision,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, a professor of infectious diseases at the Emory University School of Medicine.
Del Rio said the public isn’t hearing enough about the vaccines’ value in preventing severe disease, even if they don’t stop all infections. Each new COVID variant also forces health officials to tweak their messaging, del Rio said, which can add to public mistrust.
About 70% of Americans age 50 and older who got a first booster shot — and nearly as many of those 65 and older — haven’t received their second COVID booster dose, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency currently recommends two booster shots after a primary vaccine series for adults 50 and older and for younger people with compromised immune systems. Multiple news outlets recently reported that the Biden administration was working on a plan to allow all adults to get second COVID boosters.
Officials are worried about the surge of BA.4 and BA.5, which spread easily and can escape immune protection from vaccination or prior infection. A recent study published in Nature found BA.5 was four times as resistant to mRNA vaccines as earlier Omicron subvariants.
New COVID subvariant responsible for summer surge
02:07
Consistent messaging has been complicated by the different views of leading vaccine scientists. Although physicians like del Rio and Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine see the value in getting a second booster, Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, is skeptical it’s needed by anyone but seniors and people who are immunocompromised.
“When experts have different views based on the same science, why are we surprised that getting the message right is confusing?” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, chief of global public health strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation and Offit’s colleague on the FDA panel.
Janet Perrin, 70, of Houston hasn’t gotten her second booster for scheduling and convenience reasons and said she’ll look for information about a variant-targeted dose from sources she trusts on social media. “I haven’t found a consistent guiding voice from the CDC,” she said, and the agency’s statements sound like “a political word salad.”
On July 12, the Biden administration released its plan to manage the BA.5 subvariant, which it warned would have the greatest impact in the parts of the country with lower vaccine coverage. The strategy includes making it easier for people to access testing, vaccines and boosters, and COVID antiviral treatments.
During the first White House COVID briefing in nearly three weeks, the message from top federal health officials was clear: Don’t wait for an Omicron-tailored shot. “There are many people who are at high risk right now, and waiting until October, November for their boost — when in fact their risk is in the moment — is not a good plan,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC.
With worries about the BA.5 subvariant growing, the FDA on June 30 recommended that drugmakers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna get to work producing a new, bivalent vaccine that combines the current version with a formulation that targets the new strains.
The companies both say they can make available for the U.S. millions of doses of the reformulated shots in October. Experts think that deadline could slip by a few months given the unexpected hitches that plague vaccine manufacturing.
“I think that we have all been asking that same question,” said Dr. Kathryn Edwards, scientific director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program. “What’s the benefit of getting another booster now when what will be coming out in the fall is a bivalent vaccine and you will be getting BA.4/5, which is currently circulating? Although whether it will be circulating in the fall is another question.”
The FDA on July 13 authorized a fourth COVID vaccine, made by Novavax, but only for people who haven’t been vaccinated yet. Many scientists thought the Novavax shot could be an effective booster for people previously vaccinated with mRNA shots from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna because its unique design could broaden the immune response to coronaviruses. Unfortunately, few studies have assessed mix-and-match vaccination approaches, said Gellin, of the Rockefeller Foundation.
Edwards and her husband got COVID in January. She received a second booster last month, but only because she thought it might be required for a Canadian business trip. Otherwise, she said, she felt a fourth shot was kind of a waste, though not particularly risky. She told her husband — a healthy septuagenarian — to wait for the BA.4/5 version.
People at very high risk for COVID complications might want to go ahead and get a fourth dose, Edwards said, with the hope that it will temporarily prevent severe disease “while you wait for BA.4/5.”
The Omicron vaccines will contain components that target the original strain of the virus because the first vaccine formulations are known to prevent serious illness and death even in people infected with Omicron.
Those components will also help keep the earlier strains of the virus in check, said Dr. David Brett-Major, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. That’s important, he said, because too much tailoring of vaccines to fight emerging variants could allow older strains of the coronavirus to resurface.
Brett-Major said messages about the value of the tailored shots will need to come from trusted, local sources — not just top federal health officials.
“Access happens locally,” he said. “If your local systems are not messaging and promoting and enabling access, it’s really problematic.”
Although some Americans are pondering when, or whether, to get their second boosters, many people tuned out the pandemic long ago, putting them at risk during the current wave, experts said.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said he doesn’t expect to see the public’s level of interest in the vaccine change much even as new boosters are released and eligibility expands. Parts of the country with high vaccine coverage will remain relatively insulated from new variants that emerge, he said, while regions with low vaccine acceptance could be set for a “rude awakening.”
Even scientists are at a bit of a loss for how to effectively adapt to an ever-changing virus.
“Nothing is simple with COVID, is it? It’s just whack-a-mole,” said Edwards. “This morning I read about a new variant in India. Maybe it’ll be a nothingburger, but — who knows? — maybe something big, and then we’ll wonder, ‘Why did we change the vaccine strain to BA.4/5?'”
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
LOS ANGELES (KABC) — COVID-19 cases are rising across Southern California, and in Los Angeles County, more than 4,000 new cases were added Wednesday.
This comes as Governor Gavin Newsom rolled up his sleeves for a second booster shot.
“Just two months ago, we had a positivity rate of less than 3%. And unfortunately, It seems like the fourth wave may be knocking at our doorstep once again,” said Steve Farzam, CEO of 911-COVID Testing. “As of midnight last night, our positivity rate is just hovering under 15%.”
That’s a 500% increase in two months.
And as demand for testing goes up, Farzam warns the public to make sure they’re going to a licensed testing site.
“We can’t tell you how many people come to us who have literally fell victim to getting tested at one of these booths, that never receive their results,” Farzam said. “And that’s difficult. That’s difficult for us.”
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Hospitalizations across the state are ticking back up again as well, but as of now, it’s something Gov. Newsom says is not concerning. He stopped by a clinic in Bakersfield to receive his second booster.
“They work. They’re effective. They save lives,” Newsom said. “They mitigate the impacts of this virus.”
Those fourth doses are available right now to anyone over 50 years of age, and it sounds like they may soon be available for almost everyone else.
“With regard to a fourth dose for those under the age of 50, that is going to require action from the FDA, and we’re in conversations there as well,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
Walensky recommends that even if people are not in an area of high transmission, to wear a mask indoors if in a high-risk setting like a group or gathering.
L.A. County is about to rise into the medium level of transmission. If it goes even higher, to the high level, that’s when indoor masking would come back.
Health officials say they have detected more cases of a mysterious liver disease in children that was first identified in Britain, with new infections in Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain
By MARIA CHENG AP Medical Writer
19 April 2022, 14:28
• 3 min read
LONDON — Health officials say they have detected more cases of a mysterious liver disease in children that was first identified in Britain, with new infections spreading to Europe and the U.S.
Last week, British officials reported 74 cases of hepatitis, or liver inflammation, found in children since January. The usual viruses that cause infectious hepatitis were not seen in the cases, and scientists and doctors are considering other possible sources.
Additional cases of hepatitis had been identified in Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in a statement Tuesday without specifying exactly how many cases were found.
U.S. officials have spotted nine cases in Alabama in children aged 1 to 6.
“Mild hepatitis is very common in children following a range of viral infections, but what is being seen at the moment is quite different,” said Graham Cooke, a professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London. Some of the children in the U.K. have required specialist care at liver units and a few have needed a liver transplant.
The liver processes nutrients, filters the blood and fights infections. The infections caused symptoms like jaundice, diarrhea and abdominal pain. Hepatitis can be life-threatening if left untreated.
While it’s unclear what’s causing the illnesses, a leading suspect is an adenovirus. Only some of the children tested positive for coronavirus, but the World Health Organization said genetic analysis of the virus was needed to determine if there were any connections among the cases.
There are dozens of adenoviruses, many of them associated with cold-like symptoms, fever, sore throat and pink eye. U.S. authorities said the nine Alabama children tested positive for adenovirus and officials there are exploring a link to one particular version — adenovirus 41 — that’s normally associated with gut inflammation.
Public health officials ruled out any links to COVID-19 vaccines, saying none of the affected children was vaccinated.
The WHO noted that although there has been an increase in adenovirus in Britain, the potential role of those viruses in triggering hepatitis is unclear. WHO said there were fewer than five possible cases in Ireland and three confirmed cases in Spain, in children aged 22 months to 13 years.
The U.N. health agency said that given the jump in cases in the past month and heightened surveillance, it was “very likely” more cases will be detected.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
NEW YORK — 2021 was the deadliest year in U.S. history, and new data and research are offering more insights into how it got that bad.
The main reason for the increase in deaths? COVID-19, said Robert Anderson, who oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s work on death statistics.
The agency this month quietly updated its provisional death tally. It showed there were 3.465 million deaths last year, or about 80,000 more than 2020’s record-setting total.
Early last year, some experts were optimistic that 2021 would not be as bad as the first year of the pandemic — partly because effective COVID-19 vaccines had finally become available.
“We were wrong, unfortunately,” said Noreen Goldman, a Princeton University researcher.
COVID-19 deaths rose in 2021 — to more than 415,000, up from 351,000 the year before — as new coronavirus variants emerged and an unexpectedly large numbers of Americans refused to get vaccinated or were hesitant to wear masks, experts said.
The coronavirus is not solely to blame. Preliminary CDC data also shows the crude death rate for cancer rose slightly, and rates continued to increase for diabetes, chronic liver disease and stroke.
Drug overdose deaths also continued to rise. The CDC does not yet have a tally for 2021 overdose deaths, because it can take weeks of lab work and investigation to identify them. But provisional data through October suggests the nation is on track to see at least 105,000 overdose deaths in 2021 — up from 93,000 the year before.
New research released Tuesday showed a particularly large jump in overdose deaths among 14- to 18-year-olds.
Adolescent overdose death counts were fairly constant for most of the last decade, at around 500 a year, according to the paper published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. They almost doubled in 2020, to 954, and the researchers estimated that the total hit nearly 1,150 last year.
Joseph Friedman, a UCLA researcher who was the paper’s lead author, called the spike “unprecedented.”
Those teen overdose deaths were only around 1% of the U.S. total. But adolescents experienced a greater relative increase than the overall population, even though surveys suggest drug use among teens is down.
Experts attributed the spike to fentanyl, a highly lethal drug that has been cut into heroin for several years. More recently it’s also been pressed into counterfeit pills resembling prescription drugs that teens sometimes abuse.
The total number of U.S. deaths often increases year to year as the U.S. population grows. But 2020 and 2021 saw extraordinary jumps in death numbers and rates, due largely to the pandemic.
Those national death trends affect life expectancy — an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live.
With rare exceptions, U.S. life expectancy has reliably inched up year after year. But the CDC’s life expectancy estimate for 2020 was about 77 years — more than a year and a half lower than what it was in 2019.
The CDC has not yet reported its calculation for 2021. But Goldman and some other researchers have been making their own estimates, presented in papers that have not yet been published in peer-reviewed journals.
Those researchers think U.S. life expectancy dropped another five or six months in 2021 — putting it back to where it was 20 years ago.
A loss of more than two years of life expectancy over the last two years “is mammoth,” Goldman said.
One study looked at death data in the U.S. and 19 other high-income countries. The U.S. fared the worst.
“What happened in the U.S. is less about the variants than the levels of resistance to vaccination and the public’s rejection of practices, such as masking and mandates, to reduce viral transmission,” one of the study’s authors, Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, said in a statement.
Some experts are skeptical that life expectancy will quickly bounce back. They worry about long-term complications of COVID-19 that may hasten the deaths of people with chronic health problems.
Preliminary — and incomplete — CDC data suggest there were at least 805,000 U.S. deaths in about the first three months of this year. That’s well below the same period last year, but higher than the comparable period in 2020.
“We may end up with a ‘new normal’ that’s a little higher than it was before,” Anderson said.
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