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Why Don’t Kids Get COVID Badly? Scientists Are Unraveling One of the Pandemic’s Biggest Mysteries
Scientists are still somewhat baffled as to why children are not badly affected by COVID, although studies are slowly shedding light on how, and why, children’s responses to COVID differ from those among adults.
“A number of theories have been suggested, including a more effective innate immune response, less risk of immune over-reaction as occurs in severe COVID, fewer underlying co-morbidities and possibly fewer ACE-2 receptors in the upper respiratory epithelium — the receptor to which SARS-CoV-2 [COVID] binds,” Dr. Andrew Freedman, an academic in infectious diseases at the U.K.’s Cardiff University Medical School, told CNBC in emailed comments, adding that nonetheless the phenomenon was not “fully understood.”
He noted more research will be required before we have a definitive answer but a body of evidence has already emerged showing that COVID poses a much smaller risk to kids, and why that might be.
Africa’s COVID Immunity Is a Medical Mystery as Mortality Rates Fall Below Early Pandemic Projections
Despite pessimistic projections that the coronavirus would cripple the African continent, it seems that wealthier and more well-equipped countries have higher death tolls and that the effect of COVID in Africa was comparatively minimal.
In Sierra Leone only 125 coronavirus-related deaths have been reported according to Reuters. And in Kamakwie, Sierra Leone in particular, the district’s COVID response center has registered a mere 11 cases since the beginning of the pandemic and no deaths, as reported by The New York Times.
And it’s not just Sierra Leone that has a low death toll. Ghana has reported 1,445 deaths since the pandemic started, according to Reuters. Some countries in Africa are reporting coronavirus-related deaths that don’t even reach the four-figure mark, like Tanzania which has reported 800 COVID-related deaths since the start of the pandemic, and Togo which has reported 272 total coronavirus-related deaths.
And one thing is for certain, the low COVID mortality rates in various African countries are not owed to incredibly widespread vaccine access. Liberia, for example, has administered about 1.2 million doses of the COVID vaccine which would amount to about 12.2% of the country being vaccinated and yet has only reported 294 total coronavirus-related deaths.
Dr. Fauci Just Issued a New Warning for Fully Vaccinated People
The U.S. is still experiencing a significant fall in COVID numbers following Omicron‘s disastrous winter surge. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), infections have decreased by more than 16 percent in just the last week, with hospitalizations down by over 27 percent as well.
As another potential COVID wave looms on the horizon, top White House COVID adviser Anthony Fauci, MD, is urging people in the U.S. to get prepared for cases to start going back up soon. “I would not be surprised at all, if we do see somewhat of an uptick,” Fauci said during a March 22 Washington Post Live event.
To prevent that potential severity, Fauci warned that more fully vaccinated people need to be boosted. If you are vaccinated and eligible for a booster but have not gotten your additional dose yet, “please get yourself boosted,” Fauci said.
Variant Worse Than Omicron Could Emerge, Says Medical Advisor Chris Whitty
COVID variant that produces “worse problems” than Omicron could arise in the future, the U.K. government’s chief medical adviser has said.
Speaking to attendees at the Local Government Association and Association of Directors of Public Health (LGA/ADPH) conference this week, top health expert Sir Chris Whitty warned that COVID is something that the world will have to live with for the foreseeable future after he was asked when the pandemic might shift to an endemic state.
Whitty said that the term “endemic” — which refers to a disease or condition being found regularly among particular people or in a certain area, rather than globally — is often misused. “The pandemic is going to become, over time, less dominant steadily, but we’re going to have a significant problem with it in multiple parts of the world for the rest of our lives,” Whitty said in the conference, U.K. newspaper The i reported. “Let’s have no illusions about that.”
How to Best Prepare for the Next Pandemic? Have Healthy People — David Aronoff, MD, Calls for Equitable Policies That Will Improve Overall Population Health
What we have in the United States is really quite a patchwork quilt of health policies and social determinants of health. All of that played an important role in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While there is some randomness to how sick someone gets with SARS-CoV-2, there’s also a lot of non-random effects on risk for getting sick, things like comorbid conditions, or the baseline health of people prior to getting infected, being obese, having underlying diabetes, having high blood pressure, or chronic organ diseases — affecting things like heart or the lungs or the kidneys — absolutely made it a much higher risk for people to have complications of COVID-19 or even to die of COVID-19.
It’s Time to Rethink Your COVID Risk Tolerance
The U.S. is taking a crash course in learning to “live with the virus.” Policymakers and health experts agree that we have migrated to a less-disruptive COVID-19 endemic phase. This has produced extensive commentary on what living with the virus, and achieving the “new normal” might look like — liberating some while confusing others.
Many people have spent two years avoiding and fearing the virus and are now being advised that it’s safe to unmask and to resume a normal social life. For them, this has not ushered in a comfortable sense of natural transition, but instead has caused a national emotional whiplash. Psychologists call this avoidance conflict.
In this era of cautious fraught optimism, few have grasped the stark reality that for the country to successfully navigate to a sustainable endemic phase, most of us must transition from avoiding to accepting transmission and infections.
Let’s sit with that for a second. This should be the center-point of our endemic-phase policies and practices. This is the seismic shift that will ultimately enable us to live in a sustainable new normal.
Moderna Wants to Give FDA ‘Flexibility’ in Deciding Eligibility for 4th Covid Shot, CEO Says
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC on Thursday the drugmaker wanted to provide U.S. regulators “flexibility” in determining eligibility for a fourth COVID vaccine dose.
Moderna submitted its application last week for a so-called second booster, asking the Food and Drug Administration to clear the additional shot for all Americans ages 18 and up. The biotech firm’s request was considerably more broad than competing mRNA vaccine maker Pfizer, whose fourth-dose application covered only people 65 and older.
“I think we wanted to give the regulators, the FDA and regulators in other countries, the flexibility,” Bancel said an interview on “Squawk Box.” “You have people that are younger adults that have comorbidity factors, and they might need [a] sooner fourth dose to protect them.”
AstraZeneca’s Preventative COVID Shot Set to Win EU Clearance This Week — Sources
Europe’s drug regulator is expected to give the go-ahead this week for AstraZeneca‘s (AZN.L) antibody-based injection for preventing COVID-19 infections, two people familiar with the review said, following U.S. and UK approvals.
The treatment is meant for adults whose immune system is too weak to respond to vaccines and offers a new tool to ease the pandemic burden on healthcare systems.
An EMA expert panel on drug assessment is due to discuss AstraZeneca’s Evusheld treatment this week, according an agenda posted on the EMA’s website.
Health Officials See Bright Future in Poop Surveillance
Across the country, academics, private companies, public health departments, and sewage plant operators have been working to hone a new public health tool, one with uses that could reach well beyond COVID.
Wastewater surveillance is not a new concept, but the scale and scope of the current pandemic have vaulted the technique over the narrow walls of academic research to broader public use as a crucial tool for community-level tracking of COVID surges and variants.
Sewage surveillance is proving so useful that many researchers and public health officials say it should become standard practice in tracking infectious diseases, as is already the case in many other countries.
COVID Pandemic Fueled 2021 Population Drop in 73% of U.S. Counties
The toll of the COVID-19 pandemic was reflected in a natural decrease last year in the population of nearly three-quarters of U.S. counties versus the two previous years, the census bureau said on Thursday.
More than 73% of U.S. counties experienced natural decrease, or an excess of deaths over births, up from 55.5% in 2020 and 45.5% in 2019, bureau data showed.
The U.S. population grew at a slower pace in 2021 than any other year on record as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the more subdued growth of recent years, the bureau has said.
How 10 Largest U.S. Metros Changed in COVID’s 1st Full Year
Here’s a look at how the 10 most populous metro areas in the U.S. changed during the first full year of the pandemic, from mid-2020 to mid-2021, according to U.S. Census Bureau population estimates released Thursday.
The population estimates calculate births and deaths, as well as domestic and international migration.
