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Growing Share of COVID Deaths Are Among Vaccinated People, but Booster Shots Substantially Lower the Risk

CNN Health reported:

Since COVID-19 vaccines became widely available, there has been a wide gap in deaths between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. But recent COVID deaths are much more evenly split as highly transmissible variants take hold, vaccine protection wanes and booster uptake stagnates.

Breakthrough infections have become more common in recent months, putting vulnerable populations at increased risk of severe disease or death as more and more transmissible variants continue to spread. This seems to be especially true for seniors in the United States, who were among the first to get their initial vaccine series.

COVID-Era Babies Are ‘Talking’ Less, Signaling Future Reading Challenges

Forbes reported:

We know the pandemic has had a serious negative impact on the academic achievement of school-age children. But recent evidence shows we also need to worry about COVID-era babies and toddlers.

Because of COVID-related disruptions, about a third of early elementary students will likely need intensive support to become proficient readers, according to one study. Now two additional studies suggest that many children born during the pandemic will also be at risk for academic failure.

It seems that overburdened parents haven’t been able to engage babies and toddlers in the kind of “conversation” that is crucial for language development — and eventually, for reading.

Both of the recent studies relied on an innovative piece of technology that enables researchers to determine how much verbal interaction young children experience.

Gun-Related Homicides Soar to a Level Unseen in 21st Century — Data Revealed A ‘Widening of Some Longstanding Disparities,’ Says CDC Researcher

MedPage Today reported:

Homicides involving firearms during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic reached the highest rates the country has seen in more than a quarter-century, according to new CDC data.

From 2019 to 2020, gun-related homicides increased from 14,392 to 19,350, representing a 35% increase (4.6 to 6.1 per 100,000 persons), reported Thomas Simon, Ph.D., of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), and colleagues in Vital Signs.

The increased rate of gun homicides was “pervasive,” affecting both rural and metropolitan areas alike, males and females, and all age groups, Simon said, with the greatest increases seen among those ages 10 to 44, males, and in Middle Atlantic states and large metropolitan areas.

While the study was not designed to address whether the pandemic was responsible for the increase in homicides, “disruptions to services and education, social isolation, economic stressors such as job loss, housing instability and difficulty covering daily expenses,” may have played a role, said Simon.

In 2021, U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths Hit Highest Level on Record, CDC Data Shows

CNN Health reported:

Drug overdoses in the United States were deadlier than ever in 2021, according to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly 108,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2021, and about two-thirds of those deaths involved fentanyl or another synthetic opioid.

Overdose deaths have been on the rise for years in the U.S. but surged amid the COVID-19 pandemic: Annual deaths were nearly 50% higher in 2021 than in 2019, CDC data shows.

The spike in overdose deaths in the second year of the pandemic wasn’t quite as dramatic as in the first year: Overdose deaths were up about 15% between 2020 and 2021, compared with a 30% jump between 2019 and 2020.

‘Significant Uptick’ in California Coronavirus Outbreaks Brings New Warnings

Los Angeles Times reported:

Coronavirus conditions are likely to worsen, with case rates continuing to rise and hospitalizations starting to increase, according to the top health official in the San Francisco Bay Area’s most populous county.

“We are also seeing a pretty significant uptick in reports of outbreaks, from schools, worksites and other congregate facilities,” Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County public health director and health officer, said at a news conference Tuesday. “Many of them are related to social gatherings. It’s spring — school is ending and people are gathering, and COVID is spreading.”

“Even if you got Omicron during the Omicron surge, you can still get COVID again, unfortunately,” Cody said.

NY COVID Rates Keep Rising; Gov. Hochul Calls Tests ‘Critical Tool’

New York Daily News reported:

With yet another virus wave testing New Yorkers’ patience with the 25-month-old pandemic, Gov. Hochul on Tuesday called on people across the state to keep using test swabs to stop the spread.

The governor herself tested positive for the virus on Sunday, caught in a spring surge that has been marked by a drumbeat of symptom-light cases among vaccinated and boosted Americans, but has nonetheless driven death tolls higher in New York recently.

Hyper-infectious subvariants of the Omicron strain continue to circulate, and the weeklong statewide case rate has roughly doubled over the last month, according to state data.

Doctors Say These Pandemic Side Effects Are Serious Problems — and Unlikely ‘to Go Away Anytime Soon’

CNBC reported:

In September 2021, I collapsed from exhaustion.

My vision went blurry. Then, my eyelids grew so heavy that I could barely keep them up for milliseconds at a time. Panicked, I stumbled approximately 50 yards toward a nearby friend and slumped over her shoulders. She guided me to a shady spot under a tree, where I floated in and out of consciousness for about two hours.

As far as I knew, I was a healthy guy in my late 20s with no known risks of major health issues.

Curious if I was alone, I spoke with a half-dozen medical experts in fields ranging from internal medicine and oncology to dermatology and podiatry. All of them said that in recent months, they’ve seen upticks in health issues that don’t involve contracting the COVID-19 virus but are caused by the pandemic nonetheless.

Sarah Breithaupt: Pandemic Years Have Hit Teens Hard, Especially in DuPage County. But There’s Reason to Hope.

Chicago Tribune reported:

Rarely has an entire population of young people suffered collectively with what is known as an adverse childhood experience, or ACE, a traumatic event with potentially lasting impacts on mental and physical health.

It is safe to say the COVID-19 pandemic is the latest adverse experience shared by many people, joining such historical events as the Sept. 11 attacks, the Great Depression and both world wars. Typically, ACEs are experienced individually or within families, such as domestic violence, neglect and parents who divorce, die or abuse substances.

While the immediate effects of such experiences can be sudden, traumatic and disruptive, the long-range effects are less well known and slowly revealed. Many adults point to ACEs as the reason for personal and lifelong challenges.

More recently, COVID-19 has caused spikes in depression, anxiety, suicide and suicide attempts, which is interrupting normal childhood development and overwhelming mental health care providers. The rate of depression among DuPage County teens, pre-pandemic, was already double the national average of 15.7% for adolescents, as reported in the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Smell, Taste Loss Less Likely With Newer COVID Variants: Study

U.S. News & World Report reported:

Since the early days of the pandemic, loss of smell and taste have been tied to COVID-19 infection. But a new study shows those telltale traits are much less likely with the Omicron variant than with the earlier Alpha and Delta versions of the coronavirus.

The findings are significant in determining whether someone has COVID-19, said lead study author Dr. Daniel Coelho. He is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, in Richmond.

Rates of smell and taste loss were 17% for Omicron, compared with 44% for Delta and 50% for Alpha, the investigators found.

WHO Calls on Pfizer to Make Its COVID Pill More Available

Associated Press reported:

The head of the World Health Organization called on Pfizer to make its COVID-19 treatment more widely available in poorer countries, saying Tuesday that the pharmaceutical company’s deal allowing generic producers to make the drug was insufficient.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news briefing that Pfizer’s treatment was still too expensive. He noted that most countries in Latin America had no access to Pfizer’s drug, Paxlovid, which has been shown to cut the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization or death by up to 90%.

South Africa Cuts Back COVID Vaccine Drive Amid Citizen Apathy

Bloomberg reported:

South Africa is scaling back its COVID-19 vaccination drive and may have to destroy doses because of a lack of demand from citizens even as the country heads into the fifth wave of infections.

Take up has slowed to the point where keeping some sites running is unaffordable, said Nicholas Crisp, deputy director-general at the department of health and the person in charge of the program. COVID-19 vaccinations will need to be incorporated into South Africa’s standard medical programs, which means these specific shots will be less accessible, he said.

“No one is arriving” to get shots, Crisp said in an interview on Monday. “The numbers are just terrible.”

New Versions of Omicron Are Masters of Immune Evasion

Science reported:

Once again, South Africa is at the forefront of the changing COVID-19 pandemic. Epidemiologists and virologists are watching closely as cases there rise sharply again, just 5 months after the Omicron variant caused a dramatic surge. This time, the drivers are two new subvariants of Omicron named BA.4 and BA.5, which the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa first detected in January.

The new strains didn’t have much of an impact initially, but over the past few weeks case numbers in South Africa jumped from roughly 1,000 per day on April 17 to nearly 10,000 on May 7. A third subvariant called BA.2.12.1 is spreading in the United States, driving increases along the East Coast.

It’s still unclear whether the new subvariants will cause another global COVID-19 wave. But like the earlier versions of Omicron, they have a remarkable ability to evade immunity from vaccines, previous infection, or both — a disturbing portent for the future of the pandemic and a potentially serious complication for vaccine developers.