Zoonotic Bird Flu News since 6 Jan till 6 Sep 2022

COLUMN: Avian flu could threaten Oregon birds through winter [Salem Reporter, 6 Sep 2022]

by Harry Fuller

The human flu season begins each autumn. It is usually worst from December through February here in the Northern Hemisphere. There is another flu season already surrounding us, killing some of its victims. It is avian flu.

The particular strain that is spreading now is EA H5N1. This strain will not diminish its presence over the winter as the virus is not harmed by sub-freezing temperatures. Worse, the virus survives in bird feces, on feathers and solid surfaces, and can live and spread in water, even seawater for days. Think of a neighbor’s chicken coop, the geese in the golf course pond, those thousands of ducks and gulls headed our way for the coming rainy season. It is not always fatal but highly contagious.

Avian flu victims have been found among wild birds in all parts of Oregon. It often affects clusters of birds. Among species being killed: Canada geese and other waterfowl, White Pelicans, raptors up to and including eagles; Great Blue Heron. If smaller birds start dying they are less likely to be detected as easily. Raccoons and house cats will see to that.

This avian flu strain is present in Canada and Alaska. That means migrating flocks coming our way over the next weeks might be carriers, spreading the flu to refuges, estuaries and riparian corridors, and even mountain meadows where it has not been … yet. Already most states have reported flu cases. Highest positive case numbers come from states with lots of waterfowl: North Dakota, Florida, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina. Migration could bring widespread outbreaks and alter the stats. Right now, Oregon ranks 15th in number of cases with 51. North Dakota leads with 248—it has many nesting ducks over the summer.

Most identified victims in Oregon so far have been larger birds, often waterfowl: Canada goose, mallard, cinnamon teal, white pelican, bald eagle. In areas where the drought has reduced the amount of water the waterfowl will be con concentrated and that will help the fly spread faster among the crowded birds. This could include Malheur, Summer Lake, Roger River Valley, Klamath. Down in California it could be an unhappy winter for large birds in the Sacramento River Valley. All along the Pacific Coast our marshes and estuaries could become lethal.

To report a sick or dead wild bird: contact the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife at 866-968-2600 or [e-mail].

Where is avian flu in the U.S.? View federal data here and Oregon data here.

For information about upcoming Salem Audubon programs and activities, see www.salemaudubon.org, or Salem Audubon’s Facebook page.

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Bird flu cases reported in Ashland & Defiance counties in Ohio [Wooster Daily Record, 6 Sep 2022]

By Rachel Karas

Chickens in Ashland and Defiance counties have contracted the bird flu, prompting state agricultural officials to issue a warning.

According to the Ohio Department of Agriculture, the influenza – also known as highly pathogenic avian influenza – has affected a backyard flock in Ashland and a commercial flock in Defiance. Those premises are under quarantine by state officials with additional surveillance and testing that will be conducted around the area.

No human cases have been recorded but it “is a highly contagious virus that spreads quickly and can be fatal to flocks and devastating to poultry owners,” according to a news release issued Tuesday.

Local officials hope to learn more information following a meeting with the state department but here are the current recommendations from the agency:
Who and what can catch the bird flu?
The virus can infect poultry, including animals like chickens, turkeys and quails, and is carried by free flying waterfowl such as ducks, geese, and shorebirds.

Although humans can get infected as well, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that the recent cases do not present an immediate public health concern.

Can I get sick from eating animal products from an infected bird?
According to USDA, the virus cannot be transmitted through any meat or eggs that are cooked properly, meaning they have reached an internal temperature of 165 degrees or higher.

However, as an additional safety precaution, any products coming from an infected flock are "prohibited from entering the food system,” according to the release.

What can I do to protect myself from getting sick from bird flu?
Additional attention to cleanliness is recommended for those coming in contact with livestock.
Using soap and water – or hand sanitizer – to clean your hands before and after touching poultry is important.

Cleaning boots and feet is also important with the use of disposable boot covers as a possible option.

Disinfecting any tools or equipment – such as trucks, tractors, tools – used around livestock can help limit spread. It is recommended not to move or reuse anything that cannot be cleaned.

What can I do to protect my animals against the virus?
It is recommended to limit the contact a flock has with any outside visitors and wild animals. This can be done by keeping the birds inside when possible and only allowing caregivers to have contact with them.

Food, water and bedding products for the livestock should also be stored safely away from wild animal exposure. It is also recommended to not use surface water for drinking or cleaning.

Monitoring the birds for any of the following symptoms:
• discoloration and/or swelling of legs
• wattles and combs
• labored breathing
• reduced feed/water consumption

Any changes in egg production and death among the flock as a whole should be monitored.

Detection of a novel bird flu virus with pandemic potential [News-Medical.Net, 31 Aug 2022]

By Nidhi Saha

Global public health continues to be threatened by zoonotic and pandemic influenza. The virus has a high mutation rate, owing to its interspecies transmissibility and adaptability. The influenza A virus has diverse avian and animal origins with several viral subtypes; those in aquatic birds differ in neuraminidase (N1-N9) and hemagglutinin (H1 – H16).

Subtypes H6 and H9 of the influenza A virus infect game birds like pheasants, quails, and domestic chickens. H9N2 viruses containing acquired neuraminidase (NA) and hemagglutinin (HA) genes generate H5N1, H5N6, H10N8, and H7N9 viruses that may infect poultry and thereby threaten another zoonotic outbreak and onset of a pandemic.

The study
A recent virological study published in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal identified the novel influenza A virus (H3N8) in live poultry in Hong Kong, genetically similar to the zoonotic H3N8 viruses reported in mainland China with its origin akin to H5N1, H5N6, H10N8, and H7N9 viruses. In addition, a risk assessment approach has been described to estimate the effects of human age stratified immunity in a population.

Results
The study entailed virologic surveillance between December 2021 and March 2022. Influenza A(H3N8) virus was identified in samples collected from four farms (A-D) in the study duration. All four farms were serologically positive for past H3N8 infections. Consequently, the caretakers were advised to disinfect their farms thoroughly and strengthen their biosecurity measures. Follow-up testing was conducted in May 2022 and again at the end of June 2022; all four farms tested negative for the influenza A(H3N8) virus.

Between January and June 2022, many swab samples of drinking water from poultry cages, defeathering machines, fecal droppings, and chopping boards were sampled from stalls and markets. One swab specimen from a defeathering machine and one chopping board from two different live poultry markets were H3N8 positive. DNA barcoding determined that the virus detected in the swab specimens originated from domestic chickens.

Full-genome phylogenetic analysis of the isolated influenza A (H3N8) viruses revealed a close relationship between H3N8 viruses isolated from farms and poultry markets and an H3N8 viral strain implicated in the zoonotic outbreak in mainland China. The polymerase acidic, nonstructural protein, NA, polymerase basic 1 and 2, and M gene segments were identical to the G57 sublineage of the H9N2 virus found in mainland China. The sequences of the HA gene were derived from the Eurasian avian H3 lineage, which is found in wild birds and ducks.

NA gene sequence of H3N8 in poultry A was from the North American lineage. On the other hand, the N8 NA sequence detected by DNA barcoding of a virus from a fecal specimen in Hong Kong in 2018 was derived from Northern pintail duck or Anas acuta.

Two H3N8 viruses from fecal dropping samples from Hong Kong were related to the Northern shoveler duck or Anus clypeata; these strains were unrelated to chicken H3N8 in all gene segments. A similarity was found between the N8 gene segment sequence and the H3N8 virus from other aquatic birds in mainland China. Except for the N8 NA gene segment, no other gene segments detected in poultry Influenza A(H3N8) virus were from the wild bird H3N8 virus from Hong Kong.

Referencing was carried out of HI titers with the World Health Organization (WHO) antiserum to A/Switzerland/8060/2017 against A/chicken/MKT-AB13cp/2020 H3N8 virus and on comparing with the A/Switzerland/8060/2017 homologous virus. Limited antigenic cross-reactivity was noted among the novel avian influenza A(H3N8) virus and the seasonal human H3N2 viruses.

The overall seroprevalence was insignificant in human serum samples stratified by age. In contrast, high seroprevalence in the same serum samples was observed in a recent seasonal influenza A (H3N8) virus in humans.

Herd immunity is an important parameter when assessing any pandemic threat of zoonotic origin.

Conclusion
According to the study, the influenza (AH3N8) virus has been detected among poultry in Hong Kong. This virus might pose a serious zoonotic and pandemic threat. Therefore, it is recommended that poultry surveillance for this virus be enhanced, a comprehensive risk assessment be conducted, and pandemic seed vaccine strains be prepared if necessary.

Journal reference:
• Sit THC, Sun W, Tse ACN, Brackman CJ, Cheng SMS, Yan Tang AY, er al. Novel zoonotic avian influenza virus A(H3N8) virus in chicken, Hong Kong, China. Emerg Infect Dis. 2022 Dec [date cited]. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2810.221067, https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/28/10/22-1067_article

Bird flu has killed 700 wild black vultures, says Georgia sanctuary [The Guardian, 24 Aug 2022]

Exclusion zone set up around Noah’s Ark sanctuary in US amid outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 strain

Bird flu has killed hundreds of wild black vultures at a Georgia sanctuary that houses more than 1,500 other animals.
At least 700 black vultures have died, Noah’s Ark animal care manager Allison Hedgecoth told WXIA-TV. State workers euthanized 20 to 30 other birds, she said.
“All of our chickens were euthanized yesterday and our turkeys and our guinea hens,” she said.
State officials have set up a six-mile (9.6km) perimeter around the sanctuary in hope of containing the spread, according to WXIA.

“With birds that are able to move around and airborne, this disease could spread pretty rapidly if it’s not contained very quickly,” state Senator Emanuel Jones told the station.

Calls to ban gamebird release to avoid ‘catastrophic’ avian flu outbreak
Read more

A sign on the Noah’s Ark website said it would be closed until 3 September.

No other birds at the Noah’s Ark sanctuary have tested positive for or shown symptoms of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, sanctuary officials told news outlets.

An outbreak of the virus in the US has led to the deaths of 40 million chickens and turkeys and about 2,000 wild birds this year. The wild birds include more than 240 black vultures and nearly 220 bald eagles, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Even seals have died from it.

Officials said they were told Saturday that initial tests indicate the black vultures that roost at Noah’s Ark died of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain. State authorities were notified when an unusual number of dead vultures were found on 13 August, according to a statement released to news outlets.

Noah’s Ark is in Locust Grove, about 30 miles (48km) miles south-east of Atlanta. It’s more than 100 miles (160km) north-west of the area where hundreds of birds in a mixed backyard flock died or were euthanized earlier this year and most of the previously reported 15 wild bird deaths from the virus were located.

‘We take this disease seriously’: Many exhibits remain closed due to bird flu concerns in Washington [KING5.com, 22 Aug 2022]

By Kaila Lafferty

At least 32 backyard flocks have been affected by bird flu in Washington state. Several places across the region have pulled their bird exhibits to protect animals.

SEATTLE — Avian influenza, also called bird flu, has infected birds across the United States, including more than 2,100 cases that have been detected in Washington state.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was first detected in Washington on May 5 in a small backyard flock in Pacific County. HPAI is a strain of avian influenza (H5N1) that’s very contagious and deadly among chickens. The most recent case in Washington was detected in Kitsap County on Aug. 17, according to the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA)

“There’s a particularly virulent strain this year that is causing a lot of fatalities in wild birds as well as domestics,” said Dr. Tim Storms, director of animal health at the Woodland Park Zoo.
While at least 32 backyard flocks have been affected in Washington state, the risk to people is very low.

The Woodland Park Zoo and the Washington State Fair are among those that have pulled most of their bird exhibits to protect the animals. The Point Defiance Zoo said in May it was also taking extra precautions and moved the most highly susceptible birds to off-exhibit covered areas.

“I come as a zoo walker on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” said Ellen Margrethe Beck.

Margrethe Beck is a zoo walker, which is a group of seniors that walk the zoo grounds multiple times a week. One of her favorite parts of the zoo is the duck exhibit.

“I just love the ducks because they are so beautiful, different colors and they eat different food," said Margrethe Beck. "And the caretaker there, he knows all their names. They’re gorgeous, their colors are all so different and you’d never see a duck like that anyplace else.”

The ducks are part of the temperate forest exhibit. The trail leading through the duck area has been closed to the public for months.

“An assessment of all the species and their enclosures in terms of risks to them and, in many cases, they were kept either indoors, inside or protected from traveling waterfowl mostly mallards in our case,” Storms said. “We take this disease seriously, but we’re constantly balancing the risk to animals with their well fair and their quality of life and making sure their lives are as good as they can be in this situation given risks.”

Woodland Park Zoo staff are constantly evaluating the risks and rewards of which exhibits are open and which are being held back for safety, Storms explained. The penguins, for example, are in the process of molting, which has an effect on their immune systems.

Storms’ team decided the more confined space used behind the scenes to house the penguins was adding extra risk for other illnesses to spread amongst the waddle, so they let them back out into the exhibit area.

“The penguins are a great example of diving in and, no pun intended, making sure that the ongoing risks to their health are balanced with the risk of infection out there,” he said.

“It’s great to see [the penguins] back out, the ones that have been let out,” said Margrethe Beck.

One of the main concerns with bird flu is domesticated chickens.

In May, the WSDA urged bird owners to skip fairs and exhibitions until “until 30 days after the last confirmed detection of HPAI in Washington state.”

“Reducing or eliminating contact between wild birds and domestic flocks and practicing good biosecurity is the best way to protect domestic birds from this disease,” the WSDA said in a press release. “Bird owners should bring their flocks inside or undercover to protect them from wild waterfowl.”

The WSDA shared resources on its website for chicken owners on what to look out for and how to protect their flock.

Highly contagious bird flu outbreak has wildlife centers scrambling to isolate birds [CBS San Francisco, 8 Aug 2022]

BY JOHN RAMOS

SAN RAFAEL (KPIX) -- California wildlife officials made an announcement on July 15 that sent shivers through the animal care community: there is a bird flu outbreak.

Three cases of bird flu, or influenza, were discovered in the Sacramento area. Since then, more infected birds have been found in Sonoma County, and now wildlife facilities are scrambling to isolate themselves from the virus.

When 11-year-old Izzy Dettweiler shakes a box of oats, her ten chickens come running. She's cared for them in her backyard for more than a year now.

"I don't really know why. I just saw them once and thought, that is the bird for me," she said.

So how attached has she become?

"Well, I'd say I am in love with them," said Izzy. "If one died, I would cry."

It's the same feeling at Wildcare, a wildlife hospital in San Rafael. They normally have a group of animal ambassadors, from pelicans to a woodpecker, to a turkey vulture named Vlad. They are meant to educate the public during tours, but now the pelicans' pool has been drained and all the resident birds have been sent to other locations. The flu, scientists call 'Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza,' is deadly to waterfowl, raptors and even mammals that may eat infected birds.

According to Assistant Director of Animal Care, Brittany Morse, it is incredibly contagious.
"It is spread very rapidly through populations, and a lot of the birds that come here hang out in big groups," she said. "So, if we get an outbreak, it could hit us very hard, very fast."

As a result, the hospital has set up a receiving area at the front gate for people dropping off injured wildlife. In the courtyard, the turkey vulture's enclosure has been converted to a kind of outdoor MASH unit that can triage and treat new arrivals without even taking them indoors.
Because the virus can be spread just by walking on infected bird droppings, anyone entering the facility must wear shoe coverings.

"It is spread through respiratory droplets. It is spread through fecal particles. It is spread on contaminated surfaces. So that is why wearing shoe covers is so crucial when coming into a facility like this," said Morse.

The plague has ravaged poultry farms back East, killing millions of birds and causing national shortages of chicken and eggs. Now it's in California, and with the Bay Area being a key migratory route, it could spread here in a matter of days. No one knows how long an outbreak could last, but for Izzy's domesticated chickens or Wildcare's feathered ambassadors, the only way to protect them is to keep them as isolated as possible.

"We have never had to do something like this before," said Morse. "One of the common things we say around here is, 2020 COVID with no volunteers was terrible and so hard, but this is harder. This is so much harder."

Wildcare says anyone finding a dead bird, especially a large one, should report it to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. There's a link to a reporting form on the hospital's website.

Beach horror scene as birds spotted 'gasping for air' with 62 discovered dead amid avian flu crisis [Daily Record, 18 July 2022]

By Ryan Thom

Dog walker Sandra McDerment has described the horror scene at Maidens beach.

A dog walker says she spotted 62 dead birds with dozens of sick birds ‘gasping for breath’ amidst a horror scene on an Ayrshire beach.

Sandra McDerment was visiting Maidens beach with her husband Jim and two cocker spaniels when she came across the grim discovery of stricken birds on Thursday.

It comes as a bird flu warning was issued by two councils who were working to clean up beaches of infected animals.

The pair were walking along to Culzean beach when they were stunned to find tens of deceased birds dotted across the shore.

Sandra has told how they began counting after their dogs sniffed out one or two and were stunned to see so many.

Sandra told Ayrshire Live: “It was horrible when we go out a walk with the dogs we sometimes spot one or two dead sea gulls.

“But this was just bird, after bird, after bird. To have so many dead birds en masse like that was awful to see.

“In half a mile we counted 62 we only walked along the beach we could see there was more on the other side when we got to the entrance at Culzean. There was literally hundreds.

“We saw about half a dozen birds who were still alive and they were gasping for air, it was so distressing, there was absolutely nothing you could do.

“You were seeing them taking their last breath, their beaks were open and they just couldn’t move.”

Sandra immediately reported the grim find to DEFRA who are dealing with outbreaks across the country.

Sandra has urged other dog walkers or parents with young children to be aware if they sea any dead birds on beaches.

Sandra added: “The minute we saw there was loads of dead birds we worried it might be bird flu and put our dogs on a leash.

“We saw there was young children playing with a ball, we don’t know how far they went along the beach but they need to be careful.

“You don’t want your dog or child going near sick birds.”

South Ayrshire Council have warned the public to stay away from wild or sick birds to prevent the spread of bird flu.

Council posters have appeared across beaches to warn visitors.

What South Ayrshire Council are advising:
• Don’t touch any wild or sick birds you may come across
• Keep dogs and other animals away from the birds
• Avoid feeding wild birds, as this causes them to congregate and may encourage the spread of the disease
• Do not touch wild bird feathers or surfaces contaminated with wild bird droppings
• If you keep poultry or other birds, wash your hands and clean and disinfect your footwear before tending to your birds
• Please report any sightings to our Waste Management team on 0300 123 0900

DEFRA were unable to confirm or deny if they had received a report from Maidens beach.

Why unprecedented bird flu outbreaks sweeping the world are concerning scientists [Nature.com, 26 May 2022]

by Brittney J. Miller

Mass infections in wild birds pose a significant risk to vulnerable species, are hard to contain and increase the opportunity for the virus to spill over into people.

A highly infectious and deadly strain of avian influenza virus has infected tens of millions of poultry birds across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. But scientists are particularly concerned about the unprecedented spread in wild birds — outbreaks pose a significant risk to vulnerable species, are hard to contain and increase the opportunity for the virus to spill over into people.

Since October, the H5N1 strain has caused nearly 3,000 outbreaks in poultry in dozens of countries. More than 77 million birds have been culled to curb the spread of the virus, which almost always causes severe disease or death in chickens. Another 400,000 non-poultry birds, such as wild birds, have also died in 2,600 outbreaks — twice the number reported during the last major wave, in 2016–17.

Researchers say that the virus seems to be spreading in wild birds more easily than ever before, making outbreaks particularly hard to contain. Wild birds help to transport the virus around the world, with their migration patterns determining when and where it will spread next.
Regions in Asia and Europe will probably continue to see large outbreaks, and infections could creep into currently unaffected continents such as South America and Australia.

Although people can catch the virus, infections are uncommon. Only two cases have been reported since October, one each in the United Kingdom and the United States. But scientists are concerned that the high levels of virus circulating in bird populations mean that there are more opportunities for spillover into people. Avian influenza viruses change slowly over time, but the right mutation could make them more transmissible in people and other species, says Ian Barr, deputy director of the World Health Organization (WHO)-collaborating influenza centre at the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, Australia. “These viruses are like ticking time bombs,” he says. “Occasional infections are not an issue — it’s the gradual gaining of function of these viruses” that is the real concern, he says.

Virus origin
The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain emerged in commercial geese in Asia in around 1996, and spread in poultry throughout Europe and Africa in the early 2000s. By 2005, the strain was causing mass deaths in wild birds, first in East Asia and then in Europe. Since then, the strain has repeatedly infected wild birds in many parts of the world, says Andy Ramey, a research wildlife geneticist at the US Geological Survey Alaska Science Center in Anchorage. Through repeated spillovers, Ramey says, H5N1 seems to have become more adapted to wild birds. It’s “now become an emerging wildlife disease”, he says.

In 2014, a new highly pathogenic H5 lineage — called 2.3.4.4 — emerged and started infecting wild birds without always killing them. This created opportunities for the virus to spread to North America for the first time. The lineage has since dominated outbreaks around the world, including the current ones.

The virus affects some wild bird species more severely than others. For instance, some infected mallard ducks (Anas platyrhynchos) show no signs of disease, whereas the virus killed roughly 10% of the breeding population of barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard late last year and hundreds of Dalmatian pelicans (Pelecanus crispus) in Greece earlier this year. Wildlife researchers are trying to understand why the virus affects species differently. They are particularly concerned about the virus’s impact on vulnerable bird species with smaller populations or restricted geographic ranges, and species that are particularly susceptible to infection, such as whooping cranes (Grus americana) and emperor geese (Anser canagicus), Ramey says.

Ramey adds that only a fraction of cases in wild birds are diagnosed and reported. More monitoring could unveil the true magnitude of wild bird mortality, he says.

Controlling the spread
Better monitoring of infected wild birds could also help to alert poultry facilities to the risk of future outbreaks — although regions with large poultry or migratory bird populations are at high risk of further outbreaks no matter how good their surveillance is, says Keith Hamilton, head of the department for preparedness and resilience at the World Organisation for Animal Health.

Tracking disease in wild birds is resource-intensive and challenging owing to the sheer size of their populations, Hamilton says. He suggests targeted surveillance in areas more likely to encounter the virus, such as popular flyways or breeding grounds.

An effective vaccine for poultry could help to stem the spread, along with decreases in the number of birds in production facilities, says Michelle Wille, a wild-bird virologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. The poultry industry can also continue to improve biosecurity by restricting entry to facilities, protecting their water sources and decreasing contact between poultry and wild birds.

Although poultry populations can be culled to stop the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza, researchers emphasize that wild birds should not be harmed to mitigate outbreaks.
Killing wild birds to prevent further infections would not work because of the huge size and vast ranges of their populations, says Lina Awada, a veterinary epidemiologist at the World Organisation for Animal Health. It could even make the situation worse, because it would disrupt wild-bird movements and behaviours, helping the virus spread further, she says.

“The same way we shouldn’t be shooting bats because of coronavirus, the solution to this is not trying to kill wild birds,” Wille says.

Researchers say that what is needed is a holistic approach that considers how avian influenza spreads through wild birds, poultry and people. Collaboration between public-health researchers and animal-health groups is vital for picking up spillover events into people. “If we control this in poultry, we control this in humans, and it’s likely that we control this in wild birds, as well,” Wille says.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01338-2

Colorado prison inmate diagnosed with human avian flu; first case of strain detected in US [HSToday, 28 Apr 2022]

By Jeanine Santucci

A Colorado prison inmate who had direct exposure to poultry infected with avian flu is the first person in the USA to test positive with the current strain.

The man, an inmate at a state correctional facility in Delta County, showed mild symptoms of fatigue, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

"This case does not change the human risk assessment for the general public, which CDC considers to be low," the CDC said in a statement.

According to the Colorado health department, the man who tested positive is isolating and being treated with an antiviral drug. He worked at a commercial farm with poultry as part of a correctional pre-release employment program.

The infected flock was euthanized and disposed of, the department said; more than 24 million chickens, turkeys and other domestic birds have been killed in the USA since February. The H5 avian flu outbreak is the biggest outbreak since 2014-15.

The CDC said H5N1 has been found in U.S. commercial and backyard birds in 29 states and in wild birds in 34 states since it began tracking the outbreak in late 2021.

"Because the person was in close contact with infected poultry, the virus may have been present in the person’s nose without causing infection," the Colorado department said. The CDC said it was appropriate to contain and treat the case as an infection.

The CDC recommends that people who work in direct contact with poultry increase precautions, including wearing gloves, mask and eye protection and washing hands.

Though the H5N1 virus can spread between an infected person and a close contact only very rarely, based on previous outbreaks, it does not lead to sustained spread between humans, the CDC said.

Only one other person is known to have tested positive with the current strain: A person in the U.K. who raises birds became infected but did not have any symptoms in December 2021.

Bird flu cases are creeping west. Could it reach California? [San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Mar 2022]

by Michael Cabanatuan

While the world continues to battle COVID-19, another deadly virus — the bird flu — is winging its way west across the U.S., threatening to potentially invade California.

Outbreaks of the avian virus have been reported as far west as Colorado, where infected geese were discovered by Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials, according to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. Previous outbreaks had been confined to the East Coast and the Midwest.

No cases of the bird flu have yet been detected in California, said Steve Lyle, a spokesperson for the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

Avian influenza rarely infects humans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but people can become infected from direct contact with birds that have the virus. For birds, including domestic poultry, however, the virus can be deadly, agriculture authorities said.

The virus spreads through direct contact with infected animals, as well as from their feces and respiratory emissions, which can be carried by clothing and hands of workers at poultry farms.

Ducks on the Pacific Flyway, migratory route used by birds, often bring the virus to California, spreading it though droppings that make direct contact with other birds or contaminate workers, their clothing or even vehicles on commercial ranches, said Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation, an industry group.

The biggest potential threat to humans at this point is the food supply, already suffering the aftereffects of COVID shutdowns with supply-chain problems that have driven up prices.

According to agriculture officials, the avian flu could infect poultry farms, cutting the availability of chicken and eggs as well as other poultry products.

When an outbreak hits a commercial ranch, Mattos said, the birds have to be euthanized and buried, and the ranch has to be thoroughly sanitized. The process can close down the facility for three to four months, he said, reducing poultry production.

“It’s a big deal,” Mattos said. “We really don’t want to get (avian influenza) here.”

California poultry and egg producers have increased “biosecurity” procedures, Lyle said, taking measures such as perimeter control, keeping poultry away from wild birds, requiring employees to use dedicated clothing, gloves and masks, and cleaning and disinfecting vehicles and equipment. Guests at farms, including feed truck drivers, wear white hazmat suits, Mattos said.

They’re also stressing disease prevention and detection procedures with employees and working with the USDA and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife in hopes that if the avian flu does make it to California, it’s detected early.

California is also limiting the import of poultry coming from areas affected by the avian flu, Lyle said.

Lyle said the state is well-positioned to combat the bird flu because it’s home to one of the world’s top animal health laboratories, the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System, managed by UC Davis and funded by the state. The system has labs throughout the state with a high capacity for testing, Lyle said.

“The objective is to ensure we are ready to quickly detect, contain and eliminate (the virus) in domestic poultry, should it arrive in California,” Lyle said.

The state Department of Public Health did not respond to inquiries about whether the virus poses a danger to people in California. The CDC said on its website that while the risk to humans is low, those who could be exposed to infected birds on the job or in recreational activities face a greater risk.

Bird Flu Outbreak Reported in Two More Minnesota Counties [KNSI, 29 Mar 2022]

by Jennifer Lewerenz

(KNSI) — The Minnesota Board of Animal Health says Kandiyohi and Lac Qui Parle Counties are the latest to report flocks with highly pathogenic avian influenza infections.

Those two counties join Meeker, Mower and Stearns Counties with flocks showing signs of H5N1. There are now more than 370,000 birds in Minnesota that are affected. Minnesota joins Colorado, North Dakota and Pennsylvania with the HPAI strain. The infections in those states were all detected in waterfowl rather than commercial birds.

So far, 18 states have reported H5N1 poultry outbreaks this year.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s emergency response team is being deployed in the state Wednesday and will remain for at least three weeks. The team will work alongside animal health officials and producers to respond to the incident, including quarantining the infected flocks, supporting infected-site response activities, engaging in diseas
e surveillance, and coordinating state and federal logistics and finances.

Minnesota is ranked number one in turkey production in the nation. Minnesota has more than 660 turkey farms that raise about 40 million birds annually, more than any other state. Turkey production generates $774 million in cash receipts annually, and in 2020, Minnesota exported about 15% of its production, worth approximately $114 million.

New bird flu outbreaks push number of birds destroyed in Iowa to 8.2 million [Des Moines Register, 29 Mar 2022]

by Donnelle Eller

New bird flu outbreaks in a pair of Iowa commercial poultry facilities have resulted in the destruction of nearly 1.53 million birds to prevent the spread of the deadly avian ailment, Iowa agriculture officials said Tuesday.

The outbreak were at a Guthrie County egg facility with 1.5 million laying hens and the a Hamilton County operation that had 28,000 turkeys, said Chloe Carson, spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Agriculture.

Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig said in a call with reporters that there now have been nine outbreaks in Iowa since the beginning of the month — two in backyard flocks and in seven commercial facilities.

The birds destroyed in the latest round push the statewide total to nearly 8.2 million, or about half of the birds killed nationwide to as a result of highly pathogenic avian influenza. Iowa is the nation's largest producer of eggs and sixth-largest producer of turkeys.

Iowa State Veterinarian Jeff Kaisand said all the birds are being disposed of on location, even large numbers like the 5.3 million laying hens destroyed in mid-March at an egg facility in Buena Vista County.

"It's being done on site. We're not moving anything," Kaisand said.

A 2015 bird flu outbreak resulted in the destruction of 32.7 million birds in Iowa.

Naig said the state has called the U.S. Department of Agriculture for help in its response to the current outbreak. The state wants the birds in the infected facilities to be destroyed within 24 hours to prevent the virus' spread.

"We asked for support because we needed additional folks with additional expertise," Naig said.
Kaisand said he believes wild birds, in which the disease is prevalent, are infecting Iowa's poultry. The state is part of the Mississippi flyway, a migration route for millions of birds each year.

"It doesn't look like there's lateral spread" between facilities, Kaisand said.

State and federal agencies have said none of the birds nor any poultry products from flocks where avian influenza is detected will reach U.S. food supplies. No human cases of the disease have been detected in the United States.

Gov. Kim Reynolds is expected to issue disaster proclamations for Guthrie and Hamilton counties, enabling the state agriculture department and other agencies to help track, monitor and contain the disease.

Officials will test flocks within six miles of an infected facility and restrict movement inside the area, but the state couldn't immediately say how many more facilities were being tested.

Hong Kong suspends import of poultry products from US over bird flu [National Herald, 21 Mar 2022]

The CFS has instructed the trade to suspend the import of poultry meat and products, including poultry eggs, from the areas with immediate effect

Hong Kong's food safety authority decided on Monday to suspend the import of poultry meat and products from bird flu-affected areas in the US.

The Centre for Food Safety (CFS) of the Hong Kong government's Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said the decision was made in view of a notification from the World Organization for Animal Health about outbreaks of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza in Queen Anne's County in Maryland, Jefferson County in Wisconsin, Taylor County in Iowa, and Lawrence County and Jasper County in Missouri in the US, reports Xinhua news agency.

The CFS has instructed the trade to suspend the import of poultry meat and products, including poultry eggs, from the areas with immediate effect.

Can humans catch bird flu? What you need to know about virus amid 'biggest ever' wave [NationalWorld, 21 Mar 2022]

By Henry Sandercock

Hundreds of cases of bird flu have been detected across the UK, which has led to free range eggs no longer being available in supermarkets

A record breaking wave of bird flu cases has been recorded across Great Britain since autumn 2021.

The virus has been recorded in more than 100 locations across England, Scotland and Wales and has led to the culling of thousands of birds.

It has forced Britain’s chief veterinary officers and the Government to implement a Covid-style ‘bird lockdown’ across the UK in a bid to control the wave of cases.

So how did bird flu reach the UK - and is it harmful to humans?
Here is everything you need to know.

What is bird flu?
Bird flu is a form of the influenza virus - the same family of viruses which causes flu in humans.
It is a completely different virus to coronaviruses - the category Covid-19 belongs to.

Also known as avian influenza, it is so called because it tends to affect birds more than humans.

The virus either has low pathogenicity - i.e. it does not damage the health of its host much - or high pathogenicity, whereby it can be fatal.

While birds with low pathogenicity tend to have minor breathing problems and might not produce as many eggs, those with highly pathogenic strains can display a whole host of symptoms.

These include: unresponsiveness, closed and excessively watery eyes, a swollen head and tremoring.

Bird flu only tends to become a major problem in the UK when birds reared for food, such as chickens and turkeys, get infected.

Many thousands of birds have already had to be put down to stop the spread of the virus to other flocks - while housing restrictions have stopped free range eggs from going on sale.

Last winter’s outbreak was also a big one and meant birds had to be kept indoors for a number of weeks by law because there were so many wild birds carrying the virus.

But major outbreaks tend not to happen every year.

If you find a dead or visibly sick bird, especially if it’s a duck, goose, swan or a bird of prey, you should contact DEFRA.

It is hoped that the current wave of infections will disappear due to sunnier, warmer spring weather - conditions which stop the virus from being as active.

How has bird flu come to the UK?
Bird flu tends to come to the UK when birds migrate to the southern hemisphere from Russia and northern regions of Asia ahead of the winter months.

The virus circulates naturally among wild birds.

Migrating ducks commonly seen in and around UK ponds during the winter, like mallards and wigeons, as well as geese are currently believed to be bringing it to the UK and Europe.

Scientists are especially interested in this year’s outbreak because it appears the strain of the virus is different to what it has been in recent winters.

Is bird flu harmful to humans?
According to the NHS, bird flu does not infect humans easily.

Indeed, the UK Health Security Agency describes the risk to the general public as very low.

There is also very little risk of bird flu infecting you via eggs or poultry, according to the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

However, in January 2022 a 79-year-old man from Devon caught the virus from his flock of ducks - all 160 of whom have had to be culled.

Alan Gosling was forced to remain indoors to avoid spreading avian influenza, while his family have set up a GoFundMe page to raise £10,000 needed for the disinfection of his house and land.

Other human beings have been infected by the virus in the past and most cases have been in people who keep poultry or tend to be in close proximity to it.

In October, Reuters reported there had been a jump in the number of human infections reported in China, with 21 people infected, one critically.

Scientists said a strain had mutated to the extent that it could prove more infectious to humans.

But this number of infections was much lower than the amount recorded in the country in 2017, when hundreds of people were infected.

Many were seriously ill and at least six people died.

In June, health officials in China reported the first known human case of a certain strain of bird flu known as H10N3.

China rears the most amount of poultry in the world and is a top producer of ducks, which can be especially susceptible to flu viruses.

Russia also recorded cases in February 2021, with seven workers at a poultry plant becoming unwell.

How to avoid catching bird flu
The NHS says the only way a human can catch bird flu is through close contact with an infected bird.

It advised the general public to avoid: touching infected birds, touching droppings or bedding as well as killing or preparing infected poultry for cooking.

Symptoms of bird flu in humans include:
• A very high temperature or feeling hot or shivery
• Aching muscles
• Headache
• A cough or shortness of breath
• Diarrhoea
• Sickness
• Stomach pain
• Chest pain
• Bleeding from the nose and gums
• Conjunctivitis

These symptoms can take three to five days to appear after you’ve been infected.

If you think you’ve caught bird flu, the NHS said you should seek out medical treatment as soon as possible.

France to cull millions more poultry as bird flu hits west [Reuters, 1１ Mar 2022]

PARIS, March 11 (Reuters) - France is to slaughter several million poultry birds in the second mass cull of flocks this winter as the country tries to contain outbreaks of avian influenza, the agriculture ministry said on Friday.

After a wave of cases in the southwest led to the culling of around 4 million animals, the ministry said the disease has spread rapidly since last month in the Pays de la Loire region, another major poultry zone further up France's west coast.

The authorities had slaughtered 1.2 million birds so far in the region and expect to cull another 3 million, as they adopt the same strategy as in the southwest by emptying poultry farms in areas near outbreaks, a ministry official said.

Avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, is often carried by wild birds in autumn and winter. The highly contagious H5N1 strain has been spreading quickly in Europe in recent months, prompting massive culls in several countries.

Bird flu cannot be passed on to humans through the eating of poultry products, although there have been occasional cases of humans catching strains of the disease.

As the Pays de la Loire region is a major supplier of chicks, the authorities would grant an exemption to allow reproduction farms in high-risk zones to continue supplying the rest of the country, notably the southwest that is about to resume breeding after its bird flu lockdown, the ministry added.

Bird flu outbreaks have added to pressure on poultry producers who are facing a jump in feed costs due to record grain prices, partly linked to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

France and the European Union have promised special aid for livestock sectors.

12 European states report avian flu in poultry [WATTAgNet Industry News & Trends, 2１ Feb 2022]

France and Italy are most affected by the spread of this disease
Over the past two weeks, further cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in poultry were officially reported by 12 countries across Europe. Among these, France and Italy continue to be the most affected by the spread of infection.

The most prevalent virus serotype — H5N1 — also continues to be detected in wild birds widely across the continent.

So far this year, 16 European countries have registered one or more HPAI outbreaks in poultry. This is according to the Animal Disease Information System of the European Commission (EC; as of February 13). Up to that date, the System has a total of 408 outbreaks in 2022 up to that date. This is an increase of 45 since the previous edition on February 6.

Registering the most outbreaks has been France with 285 so far this year, followed by Hungary (29), Poland (20), Italy (16), and Germany (15).

The first outbreak of the year has occurred in poultry in Northern Ireland. As previously reported, this affected a farm during the first week of February.

Also reporting new cases through this system since the end of last month were the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain.
France: 379 outbreaks in poultry this season

So far this winter, 364 HPAI outbreaks linked to the H5N1 virus serotype have occurred on farms in France, and 15 more in non-commercial flocks. These figures are from the agriculture ministry (as on February 18).

While this source does not given details of size or type of flock, the season’s first cases on commercial premises have been confirmed in Indre-et-Loire and Mayenne. These departments are in the Centre-Val de Loire, and Pays de la Loire regions, respectively, in central and western France. Accounting for by far the most outbreaks on farms — 230 — is the department of Landes in the southwestern region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

In the past week, French authorities have officially registered 101 new HPAI outbreaks, all on commercial farms. These were confirmed in the period January 5-February 10 in a notification to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Directly impacted were almost 415,000 poultry. Mainly affected were flocks of ducks, but cases were also detected among chickens, broilers, guinea fowl, turkeys, and mixed species.
Individual outbreaks involved flocks of between 250 and more than 42,000 poultry in three regions — mainly Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie in the southwest. One outbreak was in Pays de la Loire. For the majority of the more recent outbreaks in ducks, birds are being culled following testing, but before signs of illness or mortality rises.

In this winter season, France’s first HPAI outbreak was confirmed at the end of November. Since then, the nation’s authorities have recorded 302 confirmed outbreaks with the OIE, involving more than 1.83 million commercial and backyard birds.

Around 3.4 million poultry — mainly ducks in the southwest of the country — were culled in France during the 2020-2021 winter.

France pushes for poultry vaccination in Europe
As France took over the presidency of the European Council, the country’s agriculture minister repeated his support for vaccinating poultry against HPAI.

Minister Julien Denormandie raised the issue as he addressed his first meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council, reported Euractiv. Although the virus currently circulating in Europe so far presents only a very low risk to human health, the minister described the continent’s disease situation as the worst wave of avian flu in poultry ever recorded.

He said that two new vaccines against the disease will shortly enter a test phase in France.
Currently, vaccination against avian flu is not permitted in the European Union (EU). This is primarily because it has been impossible to distinguish vaccinated birds from those that are infected.

Further outbreaks in southern Europe
In the first two weeks of February, HPAI outbreaks have occurred at seven more farms in Spain.

According to the OIE reports, positive tests for the H5N1 HPAI virus serotype were obtained from six premises in Andalusia in the south of the country, and at one farm in the north-west in Castile and León. Affected were a total of more than 259,000 birds, including four flocks of turkeys, as well as laying hens and breeder hens.

Since the first cases in Spain in mid-January, nine outbreaks have been confirmed in these two regions. More than 319,000 poultry have been directly impacted.

In Portugal, the number of outbreaks in poultry since the end of December currently stands at five, affecting more than 124,500 birds.

Reported to the OIE over the past week are three new outbreaks, all in the western district around the capital, Lisbon. Testing positive for the H5N1 virus were two breeder flocks — two of chickens and one of ducks.

Italy has confirmed one new HPAI outbreak in poultry, bringing its total outbreaks to 309. According to the national health authority and research organization for animal health and food safety, IZSVe, the disease hit a farm with meat ducks in Pavia in the Lombardy region.

Earlier this month, the H5N1 virus was also detected in two small backyard flocks in Prato province in Tuscany.

Prior to these outbreaks, Italy had reported no new cases for almost one month. These are the first HPAI outbreaks of this season in the provinces of Pavia and Prato.

So far this year, almost 14.7 million poultry in Italy have been directly impacted by the H5N1 HPAI virus. The country’s first cases of the season were confirmed in mid-October of 2021.
More cases on poultry farms in Poland, Russia

So far this year, there have been 21 confirmed HPAI outbreaks in Poland. This is according to the nation’s chief veterinary office (as of February 18).

The most recent cases have been detected at three farms, with the latest to be affected were a mixed flock of around 41,717 poultry in Pomerania, and two premises with meat ducks in Lodz and Greater Poland (Wielkopolskie).

Previously, the Polish veterinary authority reported to the OIE that two flocks had tested positive for the H5N1 virus in Kuyavia-Pomerania during the first week of February.

In Russia’s North Caucasus federal district, the H5N1 HPAI virus has been detected at a fourth turkey farm operated by AgroPlus. As reported to the OIE, the firm’s latest unit to be hit by the disease housed around 65,000 birds, bringing the total losses of poultry so far in Stavropol krai to more than 186,600 birds.

The most recent reports to the OIE from the Czech Republic and Romania indicate one additional outbreak in a small non-commercial poultry flock in each country.

Poultry involved in outbreaks in northwestern Europe
In mid-February, broilers at a farm in the German state of Lower Saxony tested positive for the H5N1 virus serotype. Of the around 92,200 birds at the premises, 30 died, according to the OIE notification. The rest of the flock has been destroyed.

Meanwhile, the Dutch animal health agency has confirmed a further four HPAI outbreaks in poultry with the OIE. These affected one backyard flock, and three farms with laying hens — around 6,000 and 77,000 birds in Gelderland, and 51,000 more in Groningen. So far this winter, almost 1.36 million poultry in the Netherlands have been involved in HPAI outbreaks.

Latest poultry flocks in the United Kingdom (U.K.) to test positive for the H5N1 HPAI virus were one commercial flock and a two groups of other birds.

According to the latest reports to the OIE, more than 18,000 broiler breeders were on the affected farm in the southern English county of Hampshire. Other outbreaks were also in England — at a nature reserve in Norfolk, and ornamental birds in Northumberland.

Earlier this month, half of a small flock of laying hens in Denmark died. Investigations at the premises in the Zealand region revealed the presence of the H5N1 virus variant, and the remaining 400 birds have been destroyed.

HPAI cases in European wild birds approach 1,000
For the year to date, HPAI outbreaks in wild birds across Europe reported to the EC animal disease system have reached 962 (as of February 13). This represents an increase of 167 compared with the previous update one week earlier.

Of the 23 states that have registered cases through this system, Germany has detected the most outbreaks in wild species (494), followed by the Netherlands (185), and Denmark (55).

Also confirming with the EC new outbreaks since February 6 were Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, and Sweden.

Over the past week, Croatia, Hungary, Norway, and the U.K. have notified the OIE about new cases of HPAI in wild birds. In all these cases, presence of the H5N1 HPAI virus serotype was confirmed.

Ireland’s veterinary authority has also registered with the OIE a single case of an infection with this virus variant in an unusual species. Testing positive was a fox found dead in County Donegal. Subsequently, the agency closed the outbreaks series, without any further cases being detected in this species.

Also declaring to the OIE that a disease situation was “resolved” was the Belgian animal health agency. Applying to the H5N8 HPAI variant, the declaration followed three confirmed outbreaks in captive birds and backyard flocks during August of 2021.

Public warning issued over bird flu outbreak after swans found dead in Birmingham park [Birmingham Live, 28 Jan 2022]

By Harry Leach

Avian influenza has been detected in birds across two parks in the city

A stark health warning has been issued over Birmingham's bird flu outbreak after more than a dozen swans were found dead in a city park.

Dead and sick birds were discovered at Brookvale Park in Erdington this week.

Birmingham City Council confirmed a fortnight ago that there was also confirmed cases of avian influenza in waterfowl at Cannon Hill Park.

Now, the the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is urging members of the public to not to touch sick or dead birds - or anything that might have been in contact with infected droppings.

People are also being reminded not to get close to, or hand feed to wild birds in the city.

Dr Roger Gajraj of UKHSA said: “The A(H5N1) strain is highly pathogenic to poultry and other birds, but the risk to human health is considered very low.

"While it's unusual for humans to be affected, it is possible for people to catch the virus.

Therefore, it's vital that people do not touch sick wild birds, carcasses or anything that might be contaminated from bird droppings.

"Infection control measures may be necessary if they do."

Dr Gajraj added it is difficult to know if a bird is infected, as symptoms may not show at first.

Cllr John O’Shea, cabinet member at Birmingham City Council, said: “This is a very serious situation. We would urge people to follow the guidance on how to safely use our parks and open spaces.

“This will help reduce risk to both wildlife and people, including our park staff.

"The council and partner agencies are working closely on the response to this outbreak, which follows others across the country.

"We will continue doing whatever needs to be done to address and control the situation.”

Anyone who has been in contact with wild birds or droppings should first make sure their footwear is properly cleaned, before thoroughly washing their hands.

They should then contact UKHSA's West Midlands Health Protection Team on 0344 225 3560.

From there, the team will offer antiviral medication and maintain close monitoring for 10 days.

First wild case of bird flu detected in US in 5 years [Q13 FOX (Seattle), 28 Jan 2022]

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - A duck killed by a hunter in South Carolina had a contagious and dangerous bird flu that has not been detected in the wild in the U.S. in five years, officials said.

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspective Service (APHIS) recently announced the first detections of Asian highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5 viruses in wild birds in the United States since 2016external icon. Wild birds can carry HPAI A(H5N1) bird flu without showing symptoms, but these viruses can cause illness and death in domestic poultry," the CDC wrote on Thursday.

The flu poses a low risk to people but can spread quickly through chicken houses and other poultry businesses.

The Eurasian H5 avian influenza was first detected by Clemson University scientists and confirmed by federal testing, the school said in a news release.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture alerted global health officials. Scattered Eurasian H5 infections have been detected in 2022 from Portugal to Bulgaria and in December, two cases were reported in eastern Canada, officials said.

Anyone who has poultry, including backyard farms, needs to review their practices to keep birds safe from disease, said State Veterinarian Michael J. Neault, who runs Clemson University's Livestock Poultry Health program.

Those practices include thoroughly washing hands before and after handling wild and domesticated birds and using gloves and other protective gear when handling live birds.
Farmers should also keep their birds away from areas where geese and ducks roam, clean their cages and coops regularly and buy new birds from reputable sources and keep them away from the rest of the flock for 30 days, the university said.

"So far we have no indication that (the flu) has jumped from wild migratory birds to poultry and we’d very much like to keep it that way," Neault said in a statement.

Bird Flu That Can Infect Humans Found for First Time in Namibia [Bloomberg, 27 Jan 2022]

By Kaula Nhongo

A deadly form of bird flu that can be transmitted to humans has been detected for the first time in Namibia’s history, the Directorate of Veterinary Services said.

The highly-pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza, or HPAI, was found in wild birds in the towns of Walvis Bay and Swakopmund on the southwest African nation’s coastline.

Bird flu 2021: Is bird flu in the US? What to expect from H5N1 [Deseret News, 24 Jan 2022]

By Herb Scribner

COVID-19, the omicron and delta variants and, now, bird flu

The bird flu has been detected in the United States, raising more questions and concerns amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The news: A recent lab analysis from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that the Asian strain of H5N1 avian influenza — commonly known as the bird flu — was recently discovered in a South Carolina duck.

• This is the first sighting of the bird flu in the U.S. in years.
• The USDA found two more birds — which had been shot by hunters — carried the same H5N1 avian influenza pathogen.
• Officials are warning hunters to be wary of potential bird flu symptoms in their flocks as they monitor the potential outbreak of avian influenza.

Why it matters: “It is far too soon to say whether the arrival of this virus in the U.S. is a blip, an imminent danger to agriculture, or a zoonotic pathogen probing for a path to attack humanity,” according to Wired. “But it is a reminder that Covid is not the only disease with pandemic potential, and of how easy it is to lose focus when it comes to other possible threats.”

Another pandemic: Officials said it’s unlikely that the bird flu — which is spreading through Israel’s bird population right now — will rival COVID-19 in terms of a pandemic, per Haaretz.
• However, “it is still a possibility that must be prepared for by the government and public health authorities,” Haaretz reports.
• “The risk is always there and is always substantial and as long as humans are in close contact with birds. Then the risk of an event during which high pathogenic avian flu will infect a human and will become transmissible between humans is always possible,” said Eyal Leshem, director of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, to Haaretz.

Flashback: The bird flu has been a potential virus for years. It grew a lot of media attention back in the early aughts.
• In fact, in 2006, the H5N1 virus was hitting places in Germany, Egypt and Nigeria. A pandemic seemed possible. Utah leaders even prepared what to do if a pandemic started.
• But, as The Associated Press reported, the virus’ human-to-human transmission rate slowed.
But this isn’t the only bird flu we’ve seen. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there are plenty of avian influenzas, most marked by the “H” and “N” in their names.
• These letters are used to identify avian influenzas representing different hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins of the specific virus.
For example, in June 2021, a Chinese man become ill with what many considered to be the first human case of H10N3 avian influenza, as I reported for the Deseret News.
• “This infection is an accidental cross-species transmission,” Chinese authorities said in a statement at the time, the AP reported. “The risk of large-scale transmission is low.”

Namibia: Avian Flu Kills 200 Birds [AllAfrica.com, 24 Jan 2022]

By Eveline de Klerk

Investigations are underway to establish whether the suspected Avian Influenza strain that killed over 200 wild birds at the coast can infect humans.

The outbreak of Avian Influenza, also known as bird flu at the coastal towns of Swakopmund and Walvis Bay among aquatic birds have been confirmed over the weekend by the ministry of agriculture.

The ministry also sent out a cautionary message to farmers around the country.

Coastal residents are cautioned not to touch dead birds in any circumstances while health workers have been tasked to be on high alert not to miss people who might have caught the flu, amidst Covid-19, as symptoms may mimic each other.

Bird flu: New outbreak confirmed in Herefordshire [BBC News, 21 Jan 2022]

A second outbreak of avian flu has been confirmed in Herefordshire.

The outbreak was confirmed near Ross-on-Wye on Thursday by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which said all birds at the site would be humanely culled.
A 1.9-mile (3km) protection zone and a 6.2-mile (10km) surveillance zone have been

It is rare for avian flu to pass from birds to humans, typically requiring close, prolonged contact and human-to-human transmission of bird flu is very rare.
Anyone who finds dead birds is advised not to touch them and to report it to Defra.
An Avian Influenza Prevention Zone is currently in place cross the whole of Great Britain to mitigate the risk of the disease spreading among poultry and captive birds.
This makes it a legal requirement for all bird keepers in the country to follow strict biosecurity measures to help protect their flocks.

Bird flu: New outbreak confirmed in Herefordshire [BBC News, 21 Jan 2022]

A second outbreak of avian flu has been confirmed in Herefordshire.

The outbreak was confirmed near Ross-on-Wye on Thursday by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which said all birds at the site would be humanely culled.
A 1.9-mile (3km) protection zone and a 6.2-mile (10km) surveillance zone have been established around the premises.

Another control zone is also in action in the county near Clifford after a confirmed outbreak in December.

There have been a large number of incidents and outbreaks of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in birds across the UK.

It is rare for avian flu to pass from birds to humans, typically requiring close, prolonged contact and human-to-human transmission of bird flu is very rare.

Anyone who finds dead birds is advised not to touch them and to report it to Defra.

An Avian Influenza Prevention Zone is currently in place cross the whole of Great Britain to mitigate the risk of the disease spreading among poultry and captive birds.

This makes it a legal requirement for all bird keepers in the country to follow strict biosecurity measures to help protect their flocks.

Bird Flu: 2 People Dead In China From H5N6 Avian Influenza [Forbes, 16 Jan 2022]

BY Bruce Y. Lee

Avian influenza A (H5N6) can be a fowl virus to get, so to speak. An outbreak of this clucking virus has now unfortunately left two people dead, two others in critical condition, and a fifth in serious condition in China, according to the Department of Health for Hong Kong.

All of these cases of the bird flu have been in mainland China and not Hong Kong. All five of these patients got sick and were hospitalized last month in December. None of them have made it out of the hospital alive yet. One of the deaths was a 75 year old male from Luzhou, Sichuan, who first got sick on December 1, was admitted to the hospital three day later, and passed away on December 12. The second was a 54 year old man from Leshan, Sichuan, who succumbed on December 24, after eight days in the hospital, 16 days after he had first noticed symptoms. Both had had exposure to live domestic poultry.

Three of the patients are still in the hospital with two in critical condition: a 51 year old female from Hangzhou, Zhejiang, and a 28 year old male from Liuzhou, Guangxi, both of whom have been hospitalized since mid-December. The person who’s in serious condition is a 53 year old male from Liuzhou, Guangxi, who’s been in the hospital since December 23.

This obviously is bad news for those affected. The H5N6 strain is usually for the birds, so to speak. Since 2014, there have only been 63 reported human cases of avian influenza A(H5N6) in China. Therefore, human immune systems don’t tend to be very familiar this strain of flu virus. Thus, when your body gets infected with such a virus, it can behave like a guy who’s been on a date for the first time. It doesn’t know what to do and end up firing in random directions, potentially causing more damage than good. This means that the risk of bad outcomes and death are much higher than for more typical human strains of influenza.

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP), which is within the Hong Kong Department of Health, is now warning anyone traveling to mainland China and any other affected areas to avoid visiting wet markets, live poultry markets or farms. They should be alert to the presence of backyard poultry when visiting relatives and friends. They should also avoid purchasing live or freshly slaughtered poultry, and avoid touching poultry/birds or their droppings. They should strictly observe personal and hand hygiene when visiting any place with live poultry.

Also, if you’ve gone to any of the affected areas and develop symptoms, contact your doctor as soon as you can. Tell your doctor about any encounters with poultry you may have had. This is not the time to be coy about your drunken night out partying with chickens. The CHP suggests wearing a mask if you have any fever or respiratory symptoms until you can get a clear diagnosis.

Another CHP warning is to avoid touching bird droppings. Of course, this is good advice for practically all situations regardless of the bird flu situation. There is rarely a situation where public health officials will encourage you to touch bird droppings. In fact, droppings aren’t the only thing from birds that can transmit the virus. Therefore, you should be careful about touching your bird in general. Or any bird for that matter.

Furthermore, the CHP specifically says, “When buying live chickens, do not touch them and their droppings. Do not blow at their bottoms.” In other words, if your evening will consist of blowing at chickens’ bottoms, reconsider your plans. Blowing at anyone’s bottom is probably not a great idea, unless you’ve been specifically invited to do so.

The CHP offers some cooking advice as well. They urge you to cook eggs and poultry
thoroughly. That means egg whites and yolk should become firm. Here’s a segment from Inside Edition on how to tell whether your eggs are safe to eat:
Adequately cooked poultry meat shouldn’t have pinkish juice running through it or reddish portions. It shouldn’t talk to or run away from you either.

On top of all this, don’t forget to wash your hands frequently and thoroughly with soap and water. This is preferable to using hand sanitizer. Make sure your lather up with soap for at least 20 seconds. For reference, if you sing the Divinyls song “I Touch Myself” at the same time, 20 seconds will get you past the first chorus.

While this outbreak is concerning, don’t respond to this news by flapping your arms, yelling “another pandemic, another pandemic,” and panicking. So far, there’s no evidence that this will turn into anything more than a limited outbreak. The influenza A(H5N6) virus can only spread so far without human-to-human transmission, as I’ve covered for Forbes previously. After all, birds have not taken over and integrated themselves into our society yet. And the CHP did not mention any evidence of people getting infected by another person. Three of the five patients had confirmed exposure to live domestic poultry. One had exposure to dead poultry.
Investigators are in the midst of confirming whether the 28 year old male had exposure to any type of poultry.

Nevertheless, it will be important to follow this situation closely and make sure that not too many other people get the bird, the bird flu that is. Such viruses can mutate change unexpectedly. To adapt a quote from Ferris Bueller, viruses can move pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss them.

Britain's bird flu 'patient zero' is BANNED from keeping ducks for a year [Daily Mail, 14 Jan 2022]

By CONNOR BOYD

• Alan Gosling has been told he can't adopt any new ducks for a year, family claim
• His flock of 160 birds were culled last month to prevent a deadly flu outbreak
• 'They took away all his friends, now he is left with nothing,' daughter-in-law said

Britain's bird flu 'patient zero' has been left 'absolutely distraught' after being banned from keeping ducks for more than a year.

Alan Gosling's flock of 160 pet ducks were culled earlier this month after some were found to be infected with a deadly strain of the virus.

The grandfather, 79, also tested positive and is thought to have caught the disease from one of the 20 Muscovy birds he kept inside his home in Buckfastleigh, Devon.

Mr Gosling said this week he planned to adopt more ducks after finishing his self-isolation period after being left heartbroken by the death of his flock. But relatives revealed today that he has been told he can't have any pet birds for a whole year.

Daughter-in-law Ellesha Gosling, 26, said: 'When the ducks were killed, his only bit of hope was that he'd be able to get more.

'He thought hope was not lost because he could fill the void after losing his closest companions.

'But now he's been told it's not safe for new ducks to go onto his land for a whole year. Dad's face dropped when he was told.

'It really hurt him because that's what was keeping him going. They took away all his friends and now he has been left with nothing.'

The family say they have not been told why Mr Gosling has been banned from getting new pets. The Animal and Plant Health Agency has been approached for comment.

All of Mr Gosling's adopted ducks were culled after several of them fell ill in late December - leaving him alone for Christmas.

A few days later he also was confirmed to be the first UK case - despite having no symptoms - and has remained isolated in his empty home since.

He said of the culling: 'I keep turning it over in my head and when I go to sleep it's what I dream about - it never leaves my mind.

'They were like my family and I miss them like hell. I hand-reared them from chicks and some of them were 12 or 13 years old.'

Mr Gosling tested negative for the virus on Sunday and has since been given the all-clear.

Ellesha and husband Richard Gosling, 47, said they have been told no ducks will be allowed in his home or garden for at least 12 months.

She added: 'We were told that his property wouldn't be suited to a full cleanse then a restock.

'Dad's face dropped when he was told he couldn't have any more for a year - he couldn't believe it.

'He is absolutely distraught. When the ducks were killed, his only bit of hope was that he'd be able to get more.

'He thought all was not lost because of that, but now he has been told no - it really hurt him. They took away all his friends and now he has been left with nothing.'

Mr Gosling is the first ever human case of H5N1 — which is fatal for up to half of the people it infects — recorded in the UK and Europe.

Despite killing millions of poultry worldwide, animal to human transmission of H5N1 is extremely rare.

There have been fewer than 1,000 cases globally since the virus emerged in the late 1990s. Human-to-human spread is even rarer.

Mr Gosling is believed to have started co-living with ducks after his divorce from ex wife June Axford, who also lives in Buckfastleigh,

She told MailOnline: 'He never kept any ducks or birds when we were together.' She said the couple divorced more than 20 years ago, but she added that despite being in the same small town, they never saw each other.

H5N1 has for years been highlighted as a potential pandemic threat due to how contagious it is in animals.

It is feared that as the virus spreads, it may acquire mutations which make it easier to infect humans.

The current H5N1 outbreak is the largest bird flu crisis ever recorded in Britain, with 2million poultry culled as part of efforts to control the virus.

Britain's outbreak is part of the spiralling crisis currently ravaging Europe and has been going on for weeks, which sparked fears of a turkey shortage in the run-up to Christmas.

Bird to human transmission of bird flu — also known as avian flu — is rare and has only occurred a small number of times in the UK. However, the public is being urged not to touch sick or dead birds.

Subsequent human-to-human transmission of avian influenza is even rarer, meaning the risk of a major outbreak in people is deemed to be even lower.

A virus that kills up to 50% of humans... but transmission is rare: Everything you need to know about bird flu

What is bird flu?
Bird flu, or avian flu, is an infectious type of influenza that spreads among bird species but can, on rare occasions, jump to human beings.

Like human influenza there are many strains of bird flu:
• H5N1
• H7N9
• H5N6
• H5N8

The current outbreak in birds in the UK is H5N1, the strain that the infected Briton has.

Where has it been spotted in the UK?
A case of bird flu has been spotted in a human in the South West of England.

Officials did not disclose the exact location of the case, but UKHSA said all close personal contacts of the individual have been traced and there is 'no evidence' of the infection having spread to anyone else.

The UK is facing a particularly bad year for cases in birds, with around one million having to be culled in Lincolnshire — where the virus was first spotted on December 11.

Exclusion sites were put around Mablethorpe, Alford and South Elkington in the region.

There have also been outbreaks North Yorkshire and Pocklington in East Yorkshire.

How deadly is the virus?
Fatality rates for bird flu in humans have been estimated to be as high as 50 per cent.

But because transmission to humans is so rare, fewer than 500 bird flu deaths have been reported to the World Health Organization since 1997.

Paul Wigley, professor of avian infection and immunity at the University of Liverpool, said: 'The advice given by APHA and UKHSA over contact with infected birds is sensible and should be followed.

'The risk of wider infection in the general public remains low.'

Is it transmissible from birds to humans?
Cases of bird-to-human transmission are rare and usually do not spread on human-to-human.

Bird flu is spread by close contact with an infected bird or the body of one.

This can include:
• touching infected birds
• touching droppings or bedding
• killing or preparing infected poultry for cooking

Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, said: 'Transfer of avian flu to people is rare as it requires direct contact between an infected, usually dead, bird and the individual concerned.

'It is a risk for the handlers who are charged with the disposal of carcasses after an outbreak but the virus does not spread generally and poses little threat.

'It does not behave like the seasonal flu we are used to.

'Despite the current heightened concern around viruses there is no risk to chicken meat or eggs and no need for public alarm.'

What are the symptoms? Symptoms of bird flue usually take three to five days to appear with the most common being:
• a very high temperature
• or feeling hot or shivery
• aching muscles
• headache
• a cough or shortness of breath

Bird flu: Belfast Zoo takes action to prevent spread of disease [BBC News, 11 Jan 2022]

Belfast Zoo has introduced new measures to prevent the spread of bird flu among its flocks, including moving some species into enclosed areas.

The zoo said its free-roaming bird species had been moved into enclosed habitats but that all birds could still be viewed by visitors

It added that "additional precautions" had been taken to stop wild bird entering into any of its enclosures.

Dublin Zoo and Fota Wildlife Park in Cork have moved birds indoors.

A spokesperson for Belfast Zoo added: "Belfast Zoo follows strict biosecurity measures as required by the Department of Environment, Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums."

Visitors to Dublin Zoo will not be able to see the Humboldt penguin, Chilean flamingo, waldrapp ibis, ostrich, little egret, peafowl, citron-crested cockatoo or the Indian runner duck, according to Irish broadcaster RTÉ.

Last month, Fota Wildlife Park announced it was housing its Humboldt penguins and blue-throated macaws and closing its duck feeder.

"These measures have been taken to reduce the risk of the avian influenza/bird flu spreading from migratory birds to the captive populations in Fota Wildlife Park," it said.

Avian flu, also known as bird flu, is a disease that spreads among birds and there have been a number of outbreaks across the UK and Ireland in recent weeks, leading to culls of some commercial flocks.

Although it is extremely rare and the risk to human health is considered very low, some strains of bird flu can pass from birds to people.

Earlier in January, UK officials confirmed that a person living in the south-west of England had caught bird flu - the first human case in the UK.

Experts said there was no evidence of onward spread and all close contacts of the person were being monitored.

An Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (AIPZ) was put in place across Great Britain on 3 November last year and the same measure was introduced in Northern Ireland the Republic of Ireland on 17 November.

Deadly bird flu threatens Israel's wildlife, triggers hunting ban [National Geographic, 10 Jan 2022]

BYDINA FINE MARON
The outbreak is 'worst blow to wildlife' in the country's history.

Israel has canceled the final month of its five month-long hunting season in a bid to contain a severe bird flu outbreak that’s killed as many as 8,000 wild cranes and sparked concerns about infection among threatened bird species.

Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg tweeted in December that this outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu is the “worst blow to wildlife” in Israel’s history and that the full extent of its damage is “still unclear.”

The January hunting ban will help limit human-wildlife interactions. The ministry says it’s concerned that hunters unwittingly could spread the disease by carrying the virus on their shoes, tires, or via the dogs they use to collect the ducks and pigeons they shoot. Also, other birds disturbed by hunters may fly to new sites, spreading the virus. (The ministry did not respond to requests for comment about if there’s any evidence that hunters already had contributed to spread in these ways.)

H5N1 was first detected at Israeli poultry farms about two months ago and it’s since been confirmed as the cause of death among common cranes, with a fifth of the population of majestic, long-necked birds already infected, according to Israeli authorities.

Each fall, the cranes migrate from Russia, Ukraine, and Scandinavia to wintering grounds in Ethiopia and elsewhere, including Israel, where tens of thousands await the spring, many around a lake in the Hula Valley. There, in the north of the country, workers in hazmat suits have been scooping up the bodies of cranes from the water and surrounding areas.

As with human influenza viruses, there are many strains of avian influenza, some more deadly than others. H5N1 is particularly virulent this season. It has hopscotched across Europe, where thousands of barnacle geese died in Scotland last month, and recently spread to North America.

Avian flu can sicken other animals too, including those that eat infected birds or their remains. To help control its spread in Israel, about a million farmed turkeys, ducks, and hens have been killed, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

People rarely have contracted H5N1, and typically only after lengthy exposure to infected birds. The last reported H5N1 human infection occurred in India in July 2021. So far, no Israeli cases have been detected, but last week, a case in southwestern England was reported to the World Health Organization, although the particular strain still has to be identified. Israeli governmental guidance advises that poultry and eggs are safe to eat if they’re properly cooked.

The hunting ban is a “preventive measure” to protect both wildlife and people, says Yoav Perlman, the director of BirdLife Israel, an arm of the nonprofit Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. His group has been helping count the thousands of dead cranes. He says a few other wild birds—mostly pelicans, herons, and some raptors—have been confirmed with the virus.

Crane deaths are tapering off, but “we are concerned that avian flu might hit raptors, especially eagles in the Hula Valley and other valleys where cranes concentrate,” Perlman says. Hula Valley is important as a wintering site for globally threatened greater spotted eagles and eastern imperial eagles and for white-tailed eagles, which are threatened in Israel. The eagles are scavengers and have been seen feeding on dead cranes in the Hula Valley, he says.

Other threatened birds at risk in Israel include the endangered white-headed duck, with about 10 percent of its global population passing the winter in Israel at reservoirs also used by cranes and other waterbirds, according to Perlman. Also, he says, the globally threatened MacQueen’s bustard shares foraging and roosting sites with cranes in the northern Negev.
Origins of the deadly virus

The H5N1 virus was first detected in 1996, in geese in China, and in humans in 1997 during a poultry outbreak in Hong Kong. In subsequent years, it’s been found in many countries around the world, showing up in Israel in March 2006, where it’s occurred almost every year since. The current outbreak is different, Israeli officials say, because it’s causing massive mortality rates among infected birds.

“No one knows why this time it’s so severe,” says ornithologist Yossi Leshem, a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University. Humans may have helped fuel some of the transmission, he says. As part of a government bird feeding program designed to keep the cranes from eating farmers’ crops, workers put out corn for them, causing dense concentrations of the birds in a small area. “It almost certainly increased the infection rates of this avian flu outbreak,” Perlman adds.

For the future, Perlman says, “relevant conservation authorities and stakeholders will need to think hard about the feeding and the role of feeding.” But for now, they’re watching for further signs of H5N1. “This is by far the largest avian influenza event in cranes globally,” he says. It’s “unprecedented, and we need to investigate what happened.”

Man with bird flu heartbroken after flock culled [BBC News, 7 Jan 2022]

Mr Gosling said he had always cared for wild birds and rescued many from his local area
A man who tested positive for bird flu says he is "absolutely broken-hearted" after his flock of birds was culled on New Year's Day.

Alan Gosling from Buckfastleigh, Devon, tested positive for avian flu after his flock was confirmed to be infected.

Health officials said there was no evidence of onward transmission and all close contacts were being monitored.

The government said the birds were "humanely culled in order to limit the risk of the disease".
The 79-year-old said he had always cared for wild birds and rescued many from his local area.
'I'm disgusted'

Avian flu, also known as bird flu, is a type of influenza that spreads among birds.

The UK has recently seen a large number of outbreaks and incidents of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in birds.

Human-to-human transmission of bird flu is very rare.

Mr Gosling said: "All my chickens have been killed, they're all gone - I haven't got any left at all, they destroyed the lot, including my ducklings as well.

"I'm disgusted, I'm absolutely broken-hearted, I've never felt this way in my life after losing something so close to me.

"They're absolutely fantastic animals and for them to be destroyed like that with no thought about the people involved, just killed them and that's it."

The lake where many of Mr Gosling's wild birds would reside near his home

More than 100 ducks living outside Mr Gosling's house and in the surrounding area were culled to prevent the spread of disease.

Mr Gosling said he also kept about 20 ducks inside his home that were unwell.

He was unaware he had the virus until he was advised to have a test.

He said: "For 20 years I've been looking after these chickens now, some were about 13 years old.

"I felt as healthy as I always have been, I didn't have any flu symptoms or any aches."

Mr Gosling is now in isolation, and is unable to see anyone.

A spokesperson from the Animal and Plant Health Agency said: "These birds tested positive for bird flu and, in line with our standard procedure, were humanely culled in order to limit the risk of the disease spreading to other birds and to manage the potential risk to public health.

"Our sympathies remain with the owner and all those with animals affected by this terrible disease."

Israel detects bird flu outbreak in 107000 turkeys [Xinhua, 6 Jan 2022]

JERUSALEM, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Israel detected on Wednesday an outbreak of the pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza in about 107,000 turkeys, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said in a statement.

The flu-infected turkeys were found in a farm in the village of Aviel near the coastal town of Caesarea, according to the ministry.

This hotspot joins two coops in the northern village of Ram On, where 62,500 infected turkeys were detected on Tuesday, and dozens of coops with infected chickens and turkeys in northern and southern Israel detected in recent weeks.

The outbreaks resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands of chickens and caused an egg shortage in Israel.

"Ministry workers continue to work around the clock to eradicate the spread of the virus, and continue to maintain human and animal health," said Israeli Agriculture Minister Oded Forer.

The contagious H5N1 bird flu can also infect other animals such as cats, pigs, and tigers, and in rare cases humans as well.

New Coronavirus News from 29 Jan 2022

"NeoCov": Chinese Scientists Warn Of New Kind Of Coronavirus From Bats [NDTV, 29 Jan 2022]

New Type Of Coronavirus NeoCov: Researchers from Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuhan University noted that NeoCov is found in a population of bats in South Africa and to date spreads exclusively among these animals.

Beijing:
A type of coronavirus, NeoCov, that spreads among bats in South Africa may pose a threat to humans in future if it mutates further, according to a study by Chinese researchers.

The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study recently posted on the preprint repository BioRxiv, shows that NeoCov is closely related to the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), a viral disease first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012.

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that can cause diseases ranging from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

Researchers from Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuhan University noted that NeoCov is found in a population of bats in South Africa and to date spreads exclusively among these animals.

In its current form, NeoCov does not infect humans but further mutations may make it potentially harmful, the researchers noted.

"In this study, we unexpectedly found that NeoCoV and its close relative, PDF-2180-CoV, can efficiently use some types of bat Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and, less favourably, human ACE2 for entry," the authors of the study noted.

ACE2 is a receptor protein on cells that provides the entry point for the coronavirus to hook into and infect a wide range of cells.

"Our study demonstrates the first case of ACE2 usage in MERS-related viruses, shedding light on a potential bio-safety threat of the human emergence of an ACE2 using "MERS-CoV-2" with both high fatality and transmission rate," they said.

The researchers further noted that infection with NeoCov could not be cross-neutralised by antibodies targeting SARS-CoV-2 or MERS-CoV.

"Considering the extensive mutations in the RBD regions of the SARS-CoV-2 variants, especially the heavily mutated Omicron variant, these viruses may hold a latent potential to infect humans through further adaptation," the authors of the study added.

A receptor-binding domain (RBD) is a key part of a virus that allows it to dock to body receptors to gain entry into cells and lead to infection.

Beijing Winter Olympics reports jump in daily Covid cases [The Guardian, 29 Jan 2022]

Number of infections rises by 19 as Games organisers warn of more cases in coming days

China has reported a jump in Covid cases among athletes and team officials at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

The number of daily Covid infections rose to 19 on Friday from two a day earlier, and Games organisers said more cases could be expected in the coming days.

Thirty-six Games-related personnel, including the athletes and officials, have been found to be infected, 29 when they arrived at the airport in Beijing and seven already in the “closed loop” bubble that separates event personnel from the public, the organising committee said in a statement on Saturday.

“We are now just going through the peak period of people arriving in China and therefore we expect to see the highest numbers at this stage,” the Games’ medical chief, Brian McCloskey, told a news conference.

Organisers are confident in their Covid-19 prevention system and infections are unlikely to leak out to the public, he said.

Cases among athletes and team officials exceeded those for “other stakeholders”, including media, sponsors and staff, for the first time since China started releasing daily numbers of Olympics-related coronavirus cases on 23 January, according to a Reuters tally of previous statements.

“It’s annoying that every morning you need to get up a little earlier specially to get a PCR test. I think that in a few days, it will be like brushing your teeth,” the Russian ice hockey player Anton Slepyshev told the RIA news agency.

“Everyone is concerned that the test result will suddenly turn out to be positive, but the reality is such that we are living with Covid. We accept all the risks and fears.”

The Games are to run from Friday to 20 February, its bubble sealed off from the rest of China, where the government’s zero-tolerance Covid-19 policy has all but shut the country’s border to international arrivals.

New Coronavirus News from 11 Jan 2022

What Is 'Flurona'? Cases of Co-Infections Increase Amid Peak Influenza Season and Omicron Variant Surge [Smithsonian, 11 Jan 2022]

By Elizabeth Gamillo

In the United States, most infections are being reported in young children and teens
As the flu season in the United States hits its peak, scattered cases of individuals testing positive for Covid-19 and the flu are emerging, reports Ed Cara for Gizmodo. Cases of so-called "flurona" refer to simultaneous infections of both SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and influenza. Flurona is not a new virus, nor is it an official medical term or diagnosis.

“Yes, it is possible to catch both diseases at the same time,” the World Health Organization (WHO) explains in a statement. “The most effective way to prevent hospitalization and severe Covid-19 and influenza is vaccination with both vaccines.”

Reports of co-infection in the U.S. have occurred since the pandemic began in 2020. For instance, a New York man was seen at a hospital for fever and a severe cough in late February 2020. At this time, the city had not reported any cases of Covid-19. After being swabbed, the man tested positive for influenza, and he was also swabbed for Covid-19. When the results came in few weeks later in early March, he found out he had also tested positive for Covid-19, reported Roxanne Khamsi for the Atlantic in November 2021.

By late summer 2020, experts cautioned of the possibility of a “twindemic” where both Covid-19 and flu cases could threaten to overwhelm hospitals with infected patients, per the Atlantic.
However, the rises of co-infection did not occur during the 2020 to 2021 flu season, possibly due to mask-wearing and social distancing, and overall, flu cases were actually lower than usual.

Still, more recently, experts anticipate more co-infection cases as the Omicron variant continues to surge and infect a record-breaking number of Americans during peak flu season, reports Nathan Place for the Independent.

More reported cases of flurona, or a dual infection of the flu virus and coronavirus, have already been reported in various parts of the globe. In the first week of January, Israel confirmed its first case of flurona when an unvaccinated pregnant woman with mild symptoms tested positive for both the seasonal flu and Covid-19, per the Times of Israel.

A growing number of co-infection cases in children are also being reported in the U.S., reports the New York Times’ Amelia Nierenberg. A teenager from Los Angeles tested positive for both Covid-19 and the flu last week after returning from a family vacation in Mexico. Hospitals in South Florida and in Houston, Texas, have also reported flurona cases in children and teens, per the Independent. Officials say this is no surprise since younger age groups are more susceptible to co-infection than adults.

Experts are still debating whether co-infection is more severe than only having Covid-19 alone, per the Independent. With more reports on the rise, doctors and public health experts are emphasizing that vaccines against Covid-19 and influenza are the best way to protect against cases of severe infection, reports Jennifer Hassan for the Washington Post.

Here’s a breakdown of what experts know so far:
Will a Co-Infection Make Individuals Twice as Sick or Worse?

“I expect to see plenty of co-infections (of flu and COVID-19) going forward, but I don’t see anything that suggests it makes COVID infections worse,” says Frank Esper, a physician at the Cleveland Clinic Children’s Center for Pediatric Infectious Diseases, to USA Today’s Adrianna Rodriguez. “Those are two viral pathogens that we actually have medicines for.”

While a dual infection could cause more complications, it could also trigger an even more robust defense response because immune system can simultaneously create antibodies for multiple pathogens, says Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist who studies influenza at the University of California Irvine, to the New York Times.

Which Groups Are More Susceptible to a Co-Infection?

Immunocompromised individuals and children, especially those who are too young for Covid-19 vaccines, are more likely to develop flurona symptoms.

Children are more likely to get multiple infections at once, like walking Petri dishes, per the New York Times. Children generally experience co-infections more frequently than adults.

Despite the presence of two viruses in their systems, children don't seem to become much sicker.

Because children haven't been exposed to most common viruses yet, their immunity has not been built up against different viral strains of the flu, USA Today reports. However, this does not mean that children will be overwhelmed with flurona. Covid-19 cases in children have been milder than those in adults.

Unvaccinated adults are also more susceptible to co-infection. Individuals who refuse one vaccine might refuse other types of vaccines as well, making them more vulnerable to co-infections, as Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, tells the New York Times.

What Are the Symptoms of a Coronavirus and Influenza Co-Infection?

Both Covid-19 and seasonal influenza infections affect the respiratory system. They also share comparable symptoms like fever, fatigue, coughing, a runny nose, a sore or scratchy throat, muscle and body aches, and even diarrhea, per the Washington Post.

How Can I Protect Myself and Others?

Respiratory viruses like influenza and Covid-19 are transmitted through droplets or aerosols.
These transmission methods occur when an infected individual coughs or sneezes. Droplets and aerosols can also be dispersed through speaking, singing, and breathing. To prevent infection, the WHO encourages getting vaccinated for both Covid-19 and the flu, practicing social distancing, wearing a well-fitted mask, and avoiding overly crowded or poorly ventilated places and settings.

BA.2 'stealth' variant makes up 80% of Kolkata's Omicron infections [Times of India, 11 Jan 2022]

BY Sumati Yengkhom

KOLKATA: Nearly 80% of Covid-positive samples sent for genome-sequencing by laboratories in the city have been found to contain the BA.2 sub-lineage of the Omicron variant, nicknamed the 'stealth version', as it cannot be picked up in RT-PCR tests and requires genome-sequencing.

Interestingly, almost none of those found infected with BA.2 had any immediate history of foreign travel; the other sub-lineage - BA.1 - has been detected in those who had travelled abroad in the recent past, said a senior health official.

From the original B.1.1.529 variant (first detected in South Africa), Omicron has now split into three sub-types: BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3. No instance of BA.3 has so far been identified in India. In Maharashtra and some other states, BA.1 is dominantly circulating in the community, rapidly replacing the Delta variant, as reported in Monday's TOI.

BA.2 cannot be identified by primers used in the RT-PCR test. The BA.1 sub-lineage carries the characteristic S-gene dropout mutation, which BA.2 does not. The absence of an S-gene mutation in an RT-PCR test is, therefore, indicative of an Omicron indication. But, to identify a BA.2 infection, genome-sequencing is a must.

Around 150 positive samples from the community have already been sequenced. While about 80% are Omicron-positive, all were found BA.2-positive, except for one or two samples. All these samples had a CT value below 30, indicating high viral load. These samples were sent for genome-sequencing between December 22 and 28.

'BA.2 reason for cluster infection'
The findings indicate that the BA.2 sub-lineage is dominantly circulating in the community in Kolkata and adjoining areas, from where most of the samples had been sent for genome-sequencing. "It is possible that BA.2 is causing the local cluster infection. Even as this sub-lineage is different from its other siblings, genetically it belongs to the same family and hence there is no significant difference in the clinical course of the disease," said immunologist Dipyaman Ganguly from the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology.

In the samples sent by one laboratory, 34 Covid-positive samples were found with BA.2. One sample was Omicron BA.1 and eight were Delta and Delta plus. Of the 17 Covid-positive samples sent by another lab, 14 were Omicron and belonged to the BA.2 lineage and the rest Delta. Findings on the 50 samples sent by the third lab showed that 35 were BA.2.

Omicron live updates
"The virus will keep mutating. Hence the need for genomic sequence surveillance," said Peerless Hospital microbiologist Bhaskar Narayan Chaudhuri.

The government, around the third week of December, had decided to send all positive samples with CT value under 30 for genome-sequencing to detect community transmission of Omicron. Accordingly, labs in Kolkata, Salt Lake and New Town started sending in samples. The health department had reversed the decision a week later when it was clear that community transmission of Omicron had begun.

"About 70% of our samples tested positive to Omicron, mostly of the BA.2 lineage. This was a week ago. Given the high transmissibility, presence of Omicron is likely to have increased a lot more," said Shelly Sharma Ganguly, AMRI Dhakuria microbiologist.

The health department has asked labs to send only those samples that have foreign travel history.

"Omicron is replacing Delta. Though there is an indication about the BA.2 subtype being more prevalent, we need a bigger sample size to draw a conclusion," said RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences microbiologist Swatilekha Banerjee.

New Coronavirus News from 28 Jan 2022

Israel among 'populist' nations which mishandled pandemic in 2020 [The Jerusalem Post, 28 Jan 2022]

By IAIN ROGERS

Those countries were less likely to implement “unpopular policies” to check the spread of the pandemic such as contact restrictions.

Israel, the US, Britain, Brazil and other nations with “populist” governments mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and caused unnecessary deaths with relatively lenient policies, according to an academic research paper.

Excess mortality — the number of deaths beyond those that could be expected without the pandemic — was more than twice as high on average in populist-governed countries, Michael Bayerlein, a researcher at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and one of the authors of the paper, said Thursday.

The main reason for the difference was that “citizen mobility” — measured using Google data on the number of people in places like grocery stores or parks — was higher in populist countries at similar infection rates, the study showed. Excess mortality was 18% in populist-led countries and 8% in non-populist nations.

For the purposes of the study, 11 governments were classified as “populist.” As well as those in the US, Britain and Brazil, the list included Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Mexico, Israel and Turkey.

Those countries were less likely to implement “unpopular policies” to check the spread of the pandemic such as contact restrictions, according to the authors.

They also determined that the communication strategy of populist administrations typically downplayed the severity of the pandemic and discredited scientific findings. Citizens were therefore less inclined to take the virus seriously and restrict their movements on their own initiative.

The US has suffered the most deaths from COVID-19, with almost 880,000, followed by Brazil with nearly 625,000, according to the Bloomberg Virus Tracker. India has recorded more than 490,000 and the U.K. over 150,000.

As well as Bayerlein of the Kiel Institute, the authors included researchers at universities in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Britain.

“Stealth” Omicron accounts for 4.5% of imported COVID-19 cases in S. Korea [The Hankyoreh, 28 Jan 2022]

By Hwang Chun-hwa

The KDCA chief said that the subvariant is detectable with Korean PCR tests

As the number of COVID-19 cases involving the Omicron variant rises rapidly in South Korea, 4.5% of confirmed patients arriving from overseas have been identified as having the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron.

BA.2 has been referred to as the “stealth” version of Omicron due to genetic mutations that make it difficult to distinguish from other variants via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.

“Around 4.5% of infected people arriving from overseas are confirmed to have the ‘stealth’ subvariant of Omicron. The subvariant can be identified in the PCR reagents we currently use to analyze viral variants,” said Jeong Eun-kyeong, commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), during a press briefing Thursday.

When the “stealth” subvariant was first discovered in South Africa and other countries in December last year, concerns were raised that PCR testing would struggle to distinguish it from other variants, which could make it hard to monitor. But Jeong said the subvariant can be detected with the reagents Korea uses in its PCR tests.

The KDCA commissioner noted that Korea doesn’t detect variants using the genetic component responsible for the subvariant’s so-called stealth, and said that it “won’t have any impact on detection.”

“This subvariant of Omicron hasn’t been identified in locally transmitted cases of COVID-19,” Jeong added.

A team of researchers in Japan found that this Omicron subvariant is 18% more transmissible than the standard Omicron variant.

The UK Health and Safety Executive recently designated the subvariant as a topic for research, noting that transmission of the subvariant is on the rise in several countries.

Stealth Omicron Variant BA.2 1.5 Times More Contagious Than Original but Vaccines Still Work [Newsweek, 28 Jan 2022]

BY ED BROWNE

The Omicron BA.2 COVID-19 sub-type may be 1.5 times more contagious than the previous BA.1 type, according to new data from Denmark—but booster shots work against it.

The country has been one of the worst-affected in Europe by the BA.2 sub-type which has been responsible for an increasing proportion of COVID-19 cases in a number of nations recently.

As of January 26, BA.1 was still the most common Omicron sub-variant worldwide, accounting for 98 percent of cases at that time, according to Denmark's Statens Serum Institut (SSI) infectious diseases organization.

But in Denmark itself, BA.2 developed quickly and has become the country's dominant COVID type.

In a press release on Wednesday, the SSI said BA.2 appeared to be one and a half times more contagious than BA.1, based on preliminary calculations.

Dr. Tyra Grove Krause, an infection epidemiology expert at the organization, stated: "Of course, we follow the development closely, and if BA.2 is more contagious, it may mean that the wave of infections will be higher and will extend further into February compared to the previous projections."

BA.2 had been reported from at least 54 countries worldwide, including the U.S. as of January 27, according to Outbreak.Info which uses data from the virus genetic database GISAID.

While experts shed more light on how infectious BA.2 might be, data has also suggested that vaccines are still effective against it.

On Thursday the U.K.'s Health Security Agency (HSA) reported that vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease with BA.2 compared to BA.1 had recently been analyzed. The results showed that vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease was similar for BA.1 and BA.2.

The early data showed that, two weeks after a booster dose, vaccine effectiveness was around 63 percent for BA.1 and 70 percent for BA.2. Effectiveness was significantly lower—between 9 and 13 percent—in those who had only had two doses after 25 weeks. The data refers to all vaccine brands combined.

That same day Dr Mary Ramsay, Head of Immunisation at HSA, said in a press release: "The evidence is clear—the vaccine helps to protect us all against the effects of COVID-19 and the booster is offering high levels of protection from hospitalization and death in the most vulnerable members of our society."

The U.K. vaccines minister Maggie Throup called boosters "absolutely crucial" for increasing immunity against Omicron.

The BA.2 variant has sometimes been referred to as the "stealth" variant of Omicron due to a change in the way it is detected compared to BA.1. However, the variant will still result in a positive COVID-19 test.

New Coronavirus News from 23 Jan 2022

UK is over worst of Covid but beware of bumps on the road, says Prof Ferguson [The Guardian, 23 Jan 2022]

by Nicola Davis

Epidemiologist optimistic that UK deaths and hospitalisations will fall thanks to high immunity levels

The UK is past the worst of the Covid pandemic but should be braced for some “possible bumps on the road”, according to the scientist who helped shape Britain’s lockdown strategy.

Prof Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, said things were looking up as the country passed the peak of yet another wave of coronavirus infections.

“I am optimistic that the bulk of the pandemic, in terms of deaths and hospitalisations, is behind us. Though we should still be prepared for some possible bumps on the road,” he said, adding that any new variants – which were highly likely to arise – may have a less dramatic impact than Omicron.

“The very high level of immunity in the UK population – acquired via both vaccination and infection – means that the risk of a new variant causing unmanageable levels of healthcare demand is much reduced,” he said. “An additional positive is that if any new variant arises from Omicron – not a certainty – there is a fair chance it will retain the reduced severity of that strain.”

Ferguson said a key development was Covid vaccines, in particular those based on mRNA technology, while important lessons had also been learned, such as the need for data to make informed decisions. “Compared with now, in March 2020 we were basically blundering around in the dark in terms of our real knowledge of how much infection was in the country.”

Another lesson was the need to tailor the speed of policymaking to the speed of the virus. “That means in particular you may have to make decisions before you have the full picture on severity,” he said.

With Omicron spreading rapidly in the UK late last year, ministers were faced with a stark message from scientific advisers: to avoid the potential worst-case scenarios, measures needed to be brought in quickly.

But while the UK government introduced plan B in England, it resisted calls to go further, despite stronger measures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Ferguson said the political stance had evolved over time. “I think we’re in a different place, in terms of how policymakers think about this two years in than we were back in February, March of 2020,” he said, adding that the change had led to more nuanced and difficult decisions.

On Wednesday the prime minister announced that plan B measures in England would be lifted as cases were now falling. But Ferguson does not believe this will cause Omicron to come back in force.

“Restrictions are always a trade-off between infection control and economic cost,” he said.
“However, given that case numbers are in decline in all regions and that hospitalisations are starting to drop, I don’t think lifting restrictions poses a large risk of causing a major resurgence. Though obviously trends will need to continue to be monitored closely.”

According to Ferguson, scientists rarely interact with politicians, with Sir Patrick Vallance and Sir Chris Whitty acting as mediators. But at times there were frustrations, such as in autumn 2020 when the Alpha variant took off.

“Because then we were seeing case numbers go up. There was a lot of misinformation around, frankly, at that point,” he said.

Covid was evolving to become more transmissible and was not yet in a classic endemic disease scenario in the UK, he said. Flu mutated each year and could cause seasonal epidemics, but the immunity we have acquired over our lifetimes means it is manageable. And, as experts have noted, endemic does not necessarily mean mild.

“[Covid] is going to become an endemic disease, which unfortunately kills people every year,” said Ferguson. But, with careful management and building immunity, he hoped waves of infection would bring a lower toll of hospitalisations and deaths – although it may be necessary to expand hospital bed capacity.

But politicians had short memories, he said, and he worries that we may stop preparing for the next pandemic once the immediate shock of coronavirus starts to fade from the national consciousness.

“I’m sure for the next 10 years, pandemic preparedness will be a top priority for governments, for research funders around the world,” Ferguson said. “What I worry about is in 15 or 20 years’ time, does that memory fade? That’s the real risk.”

Kishida and Biden in lockstep, but COVID-19 means 2022 goals may prove elusive [The Japan Times, 23 Jan 2022]

BY JESSE JOHNSON

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was able to tick many of the boxes on Japan’s wishlist during his virtual summit with U.S. President Joe Biden, but now the hard part begins.

The prime minister will need to buckle down for a busy year to bring that wishlist to fruition, especially if COVID-19 continues to roil his best-laid plans.

Kishida and Biden held an online summit Friday after the spread of the virus’s omicron variant made in-person talks impossible. The talks, initially scheduled for one hour, lasted for 80 minutes, with the two leaders discussing a range of issues and agreeing to “push back” against China’s assertive actions in the region, cooperate to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and to work closely to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“I had frank discussions with President Biden on how Japan and the United States can work together and lead the international community, and I believe that it was a very meaningful meeting that will lead to the further strengthening of the Japan-U.S. alliance,” Kishida told reporters late Friday.

The allies also unveiled a plan to set up an economic version of its “two-plus-two” security ministerial meeting in what was likely the biggest item to emerge from the talks.

The launch of the bilateral Cabinet-level economic meeting, similar to security talks involving the allies’ foreign and defense chiefs, will involve Japan’s foreign and industry ministers and the U.S. secretaries of state and commerce.

It comes as Japan and other Asian nations have urged the United States to take a more active economic role in the Indo-Pacific after the administration of Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. It also comes as China continues to see its economic clout grow in the region.

A senior White House official said that while the economic meeting’s agenda has not been fully worked out, the expectation is that the two sides “will work in a number of areas, including export controls, but most directly in the current environment — supply chains, technology investments, and standard-setting.”

“We think those are areas that the United States and Japan can step up their game and take a much more active role in such a critical period,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
Kishida has also voiced concerns about technology and Japan’s own economic security, pointing to China’s key role in global production chains — a position that Tokyo says puts its national interests at risk — and the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted shortcomings in global supply chains.

The concerns prompted Kishida to create a Cabinet-level post for economic security and saw him pledge to submit legislation on the issue to this year’s ordinary session of parliament.
Experts say Kishida and Biden appear to be in lockstep on the need for even closer cooperation on this front.

“The start of the economic two-plus-two is very welcome, especially given the rising importance of economic security in national security policy for both Japan and the U.S.,” said Robert Ward, a London-based expert on Japan at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

“For Japan, this dovetails with the new economic security legislation being put together in Tokyo now, which will also be a centerpiece of the Kishida administration’s policy program for this year.”

But Japan — as well as other American allies and partners in the region — is widely seen as thirsty for more U.S. economic engagement in the region. Top Kishida administration officials have repeatedly urged Biden to consider returning to the trade agreement now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), only to be rebuffed, likely because of lack of support in U.S. Congress and among voters who fear it could cost American jobs.

Instead, Biden said Friday that the U.S. intends to “intensify” a new economic framework for the Indo-Pacific, which is widely expected to be revealed this year.

But, according to Ward, the U.S. economic leadership in the region would be better served by the U.S. joining the CPTPP.

Currently, the economic framework floated by Biden remains too vague to be of practical use, Ward said, noting that looming midterm congressional elections are also likely to provide even more political headwinds for the U.S. president in implementing any kind of economic plan for the region.

“Japan will continue to have to use its weight in the CPTPP and its position as the leading developed economy in RCEP to hold the line on the interests of the ‘like-minded’ in the region,” he said, referring to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership — the world’s largest free-trade deal — grouping 15 nations, including China.

‘In-depth’ China talks
The Biden-Kishida summit built on two-plus-two discussions earlier this month, where the allies’ top diplomats and defense chiefs voiced strong concerns over China’s growing military might and vowed to respond if necessary to its “destabilizing activities” in the Indo-Pacific region.

In a win for Kishida, Biden accepted his invitation to travel to Japan for an official visit and take part in a meeting of “the Quad” leaders in Tokyo in late spring, the senior U.S. official told reporters. The Quad, a strategic dialogue, groups four Asia-Pacific democracies — Japan, the U.S., India and Australia — but has been criticized by Beijing as an anti-China bloc.

During Friday’s talks, the two leaders held “very in-depth” discussions on China, including “concerns about some of the steps that China had taken across the board in terms of intimidating neighbors,” according to the senior U.S. official.

The subjects covered included China’s moves in the East and South China seas, Hong Kong, and its far-west Xinjiang region.

In what has now become a common mantra, the two leaders also agreed on the importance of “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” calling for a “peaceful” resolution of the cross-strait issue with China. Last April, Biden and then-Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga mentioned Taiwan in a joint statement for the first time since 1969.

Tokyo and Washington have reportedly begun work on formalizing a joint operations plan between the U.S. military and Self-Defense Forces to prepare for an emergency over the self-ruled island, with this month’s two-plus-two meeting welcoming “robust progress” on “evolving alliance roles… and on bilateral planning for contingencies.”

Kishida hinted on Friday at deeper discussions on Taiwan with Biden, saying that the pair had “spent a lot of time exchanging views on China,” but refused to reveal more details about the talks.

Tokyo’s willingness to publicly mention the Taiwan issue — and its characterization by some as one that could threaten Japan’s own security — has stoked anger in China, which regards the self-ruled island as a renegade province.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida holds virtual summit talks with U.S. President Joe Biden at the Prime Minister’s Office in Tokyo on Friday. | CABINET PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICE / VIA KYODO

Despite the growing concerns, Kishida is likely to keep the current, stable trajectory of the Sino-Japanese relationship in place, especially as Tokyo and Beijing mark 50 years of bilateral ties this year.

“Japanese policy towards China will remain pragmatic, even as the 50th anniversary provides an opportunity for some useful diplomatic (public relations),” said IISS’s Ward. “The strong attention given to security issues by Kishida suggests a strong element of continuity in Japanese China policy. So, no shift by Kishida to a more friendly stance, I suspect.”

Whatever the case, Japan will need to strike a balance in its relationship with its ally, the U.S., and China, its top trading partner.

“Japan will have to walk a fine line in its alliance politics, backing the U.S. in its commitment to the defense of Taiwan and its own security interests in the region, which also include economic cooperation with China for example in form of RCEP,” said Sebastian Maslow, an expert on Japanese politics at Sendai Shirayuri Women’s University.

Striking back?
The idea to hold the virtual summit was reportedly broached by the U.S. side, with the allies judging that a recent spate of North Korean missile tests, as well as a growing list of pending issues, necessitated early talks, including on regional strategy going forward.

On Thursday, North Korea said it may bolster its defenses against the United States and consider restarting “all temporally-suspended activities” — an apparent reference to a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear weapons and long-range missile tests.

The announcement came after the North launched two apparent ballistic missiles on Jan. 17 as the nuclear-armed country continues to test weapons capable of evading missile defenses at a frenetic pace in 2022.

That pace of testing has heightened concerns in Tokyo, with top officials including Kishida and defense chief Nobuo Kishi openly suggesting Japan acquire a so-called strike capability as a deterrent to potential attacks as part of revisions to its National Security Strategy (NSS) set for later this year.

Such a move would represent a major shift for the country’s defense posture and would likely appeal to U.S. defense planners in terms of fulfilling Japan’s promise to bolster its defenses.
Japan is due to complete a review of the country’s long-term diplomacy and defense strategy within the year, including the first ever update of its NSS and a revision to its National Defense Program Guidelines, which detail key defense policy challenges and how they will be tackled over a 10-year period, and its Mid-Term Defense Program, which outlines five-year plans for defense spending.

During their talks, Biden and Kishida vowed to “further strengthen the deterrence and response capabilities of the Japan-U.S. alliance,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday, adding that Kishida had “expressed his determination to fundamentally reinforce Japan’s defense capabilities” by revising the country’s three main diplomacy and defense documents.

Biden, the statement added, “expressed his support” for these moves “and underscored the importance of sustaining vital investments in defense over time.”

Observers say that by gaining Biden’s understanding on the issue during their talks, Kishida hopes to use it as a driving force for further discussions on the possibility of acquiring a strike capability in the NSS revisions.

COVID takes precedence
But exactly how the goals and commitments laid out during the summit ultimately play out will hinge on the coronavirus situation in both countries, especially Japan.

On Saturday, Japan topped 50,000 daily COVID-19 cases for the first time as the omicron variant rampages across the country, while the U.S. reported upwards of 700,000 new infections per day last week.

Experts say that the unpredictable fight against the virus, as well as a looming election scheduled for the summer in Japan, are likely to put more crucial diplomatic and security decisions on the backburner until the situation stabilizes.

“With Upper House elections this summer, I think it’s safe to say that foreign policy will not be Kishida’s main priority, as he will be committed to his economic ‘new capitalism’ reform agenda and Japan’s battle against corona,” said Maslow of Sendai Shirayuri Women’s University.

New Coronavirus News from 27 Jan 2022

Japan in Turmoil Over Omicron – The Diplomat [The Diplomat, 27 Jan 2022]

By Thisanka Siripala

Japan has put two-thirds of the country under quasi-emergency measures as it struggles to curb the latest explosion of COVID-19 infections.

Japan is in the grip of its worst COVID-19 wave of infections, driven by the Omicron variant. In less than two months the number of coronavirus infections across Japan has surged more than 1,000-fold, with daily cases nationwide topping 70,000 for the first time. Japan has expanded its quasi-emergency measures to 34 prefectures in an effort to bring the latest outbreak of COVID-19 under control.

The number of severely ill patients has jumped roughly eight-fold since the start of the new year. Infections among children and the elderly have also spiked and there is growing concern hospital beds could reach capacity before the “sixth wave” reaches its peak.

The Tokyo Metropolitan government has raised the COVID-19 alert to the highest possible level, warning residents of the large-scale spread of coronavirus. The alert for the local medical system has also been raised to the second highest level, indicating that medical services are partially restricted.

Currently, Tokyo and Osaka, the two worst affected cities, have a rapidly increasing hospitalization rate for people with mild to moderate symptoms. In Tokyo, hospital beds designated for COVID-19 are being taken up at a rate of 200 beds per day. The bed utilization rate in Tokyo has reached approximately 43 percent and 48 percent in Osaka. The government is mulling whether to introduce a state of emergency in the capital as the hospital bed utilization rate approaches 50 percent.

With the number of infections rising, so are the number of people deemed close contacts of a confirmed case, which requires a self-isolation period of 10 days. There are concerns over how businesses and essential services will be able function with so many staff absent. Prime Minister Kishida Fumio said authorities would consider shortening the isolation period but did not give a deadline for the decision.

In Osaka prefecture there have been incidents where people needing urgent medical attention are not able to be treated at local hospitals due to a shortage of staff or the limited scope of medical services. People showing COVID-19 symptoms or deemed close contacts to an infected person have also been turned away. Some hospitals and public health services are running low on coronavirus testing kits and have been unable to provide an official diagnosis.
Local governments are being allowed to adopt flexible measures based on the varying levels of strain facing local public health services. In Osaka, authorities decided to relax mandatory isolation at a private facility for people deemed close contacts due to the risk that the facilities would reach 50 percent capacity in under three weeks. The government is also encouraging phone or online consultations, and it has approved treatment for people with symptoms of coronavirus without a positive test.

In Japan the number of COVID-19 patients recuperating at home exceeded 30,000 for the first time on Monday. The switch to home care has led to greater strain on outpatient appointments and doctors undertaking home visits. In Osaka prefecture there have been some 2,000 calls each day to the telephone counseling service from home care patients concerned about their condition.

Last month the government announced that antigen and PCR tests would be made free to those without symptoms. But Japan’s test capacity remains one of the lowest in the developed world. Currently, capacity stands at approximately 380,000 per day but Japan is testing well below its capacity with some 110,000 PCR tests conducted on January 24. Globally, Japan’s current rate of PCR testing per one million is ranked below Malaysia, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, India, Iran, Ukraine, South Africa, and Brazil.

The quasi-emergency measures in place for three weeks have focused on curbing the number of people dining out rather than banning outdoor social outings entirely. The Tokyo Metropolitan government is allowing some restaurants and bars to choose to serve alcohol if they have been certified for COVID-19 prevention measures. But restaurants are being encouraged to take alcohol off the menu or stop serving alcohol by 8 p.m. and close at 9 p.m. The government’s subsidy for cooperating eateries starts at approximately $260 per day.

Japan is getting ready to administer booster shots to the general population aged 18 and over where six months have passed since their second dose. At this stage roughly 20 percent of the population have received a booster shot, which has been prioritized for medical workers and the elderly.

More COVID cases confirmed in Israel in January than all of 2021, data shows [The Times of Israel, 27 Jan 2022]

960,500 people tested positive in 2021, compared to 1,160,000 this month so far; PM announces immediate addition of 45 more hospital beds in intensive care wards

There were more COVID-19 cases identified in Israel during January this year than the entirety of 2021, according to a report released Thursday.

The Coronavirus National Information and Knowledge Center said some 960,500 coronavirus cases were identified during 2021, while in January alone, as of Wednesday, more than 1,160,000 have tested positive.

The massive rise in cases has been blamed on the fast-spreading Omicron variant. On Wednesday, 67,723 new cases were recorded, according to Health Ministry data published Thursday. With more than 307,000 PCR and antigen tests carried out on Wednesday, the positivity rate stood at 24.58 percent.

As of Thursday afternoon, 480,501 Israelis were actively infected, with 2,483 hospitalized, 931 of those in serious condition, and 212 of them on ventilators. A week ago, serious cases stood at 587, and two weeks ago the figure was just 283.

Over the past week, more than 520,000 Israelis have tested positive for COVID, with experts believing that the actual figure could be several times higher. Also in the past week, 146 Israelis with COVID died — a 73.8% increase over the previous week — bringing the total death toll since the start of the pandemic to 8,541. A month ago, the average weekly death toll was less than 10.

In response to the rise in COVID-related hospitalizations, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, and Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman announced Thursday a plan to immediately implement 45 more hospital beds in intensive care wards in medical centers around the country.

“The health system is working around the clock, day and night, to safeguard public health. Now we are further strengthening the intensive care wards. We are in the height of the wave and soon we will see the light at the end of the tunnel. We will get through this wave together,” Bennett said in a statement released by his office.

As of Thursday afternoon, hospital occupancy nationwide stood at 82.1%, and more than 9,800 medical staffers were out from work due to COVID, including 1,282 doctors and 2,793 nurses.

Starting Thursday, schoolchildren are exempt from needing to quarantine if they come into contact with a coronavirus carrier, despite concerns from health officials that the scheme could end up putting more kids in the hospital with COVID complications.

Health experts had initially supported the move to end precautionary isolation for children who come into contact with confirmed carriers when the plan was announced last week, but many reversed course amid reports of increased pediatric hospitalizations and instances of PIMS, a rare but dangerous condition affecting children after they recover from the virus.

Nachman Ash, director general of the Health Ministry, said Thursday that health experts are under constant personal attacks, especially after the government moved ahead with the plan notwithstanding their concerns.

“It is unfortunate that baseless accusations continue. Our decision-making is purely professional. If there is disagreement on the part of one party or another, our door is open to hearing any different opinion,” Ash said in a briefing, slamming those who use anonymous press briefings to attack health experts. “It must stop,” he said.

Under the new rules, all students both vaccinated and unvaccinated will need to take two home antigen tests a week, on Sundays and Wednesdays, and report negative results to an Education Ministry portal.

Children who test positive for COVID-19 at home will need to take an official antigen test at a state facility and isolate for five days if that test also shows a positive result.

Some officials have warned that the necessary test kits had not yet been delivered to all students as promised by the government, with the Education Ministry saying there was a nationwide shortage of tests.

Yes, Omicron Is Loosening Its Hold. But the Pandemic Has Not Ended. [The New York Times, 27 Jan 2022]

By Apoorva Mandavilli

With spotty immunity in the population and a churn of new variants, the coronavirus is likely to become a persistent but hopefully manageable threat.

After a frenetic few weeks when the Omicron variant of the coronavirus seemed to infect everyone, including the vaccinated and boosted, the United States is finally seeing encouraging signs.

As cases decline in some parts of the country, many have begun to hope that this surge is the last big battle with the virus — that because of its unique characteristics, the Omicron variant will usher Americans out of the pandemic.

The variant spiked in South Africa and Britain, then fell off quickly. Twitter is agog over charts showing declining virus levels in sewage in Boston and San Francisco. On Monday, the top European regional official of the World Health Organization suggested that “Omicron offers plausible hope for stabilization and normalization.”

“Things are looking good,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administration’s top adviser on the pandemic, said on Sunday. “We don’t want to get overconfident, but they look like they’re going in the right direction right now.”

What’s driving the optimism? The idea is that so many people are gaining immunity through vaccination or infection with Omicron that soon the coronavirus will be unable to find a foothold in our communities, and will disappear from our lives.

But in interviews with more than a dozen epidemiologists, immunologists and evolutionary biologists, the course of the virus in the United States appeared more complicated — and a bit less rosy.

By infecting so many people, Omicron undoubtedly brings us closer to the end of the pandemic, they said. The current surge in infections is falling back, and there is reason to hope that hospitalizations and deaths will follow.

The path to normalcy may be short and direct, the goal just weeks away, and horrific surges may become a thing of the past. Or it may be long and bumpy, pockmarked with outbreaks over the coming months to years as the virus continues to find footing.

In any case, it is not likely that the coronavirus will ever completely disappear, many scientists said, and herd immunity is now just a dream. The population’s immunity against the virus will be imperfect, for a variety of reasons.

“Maybe there was a short while where we could have reached that goal,” said Shweta Bansal, an infectious disease modeler at Georgetown University. “But at this point, we are well beyond that.”

Instead, the coronavirus seems likely to become endemic — a permanent part of American lives, a milder illness, like the flu, that people must learn to live with and manage.

But the future also depends on a wild card: new variants. Omicron surfaced only at the end of November. Most researchers believe other variants are coming, because too little of the world is vaccinated. Eventually some may be both highly contagious and have a knack for short-circuiting the body’s immune defenses, lengthening the misery for everyone.

“This is a choose-your-own-adventure story, and the ending is not written yet,” said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Nobody is going to be able to tell us what will happen.”

As of Wednesday, the United States was reporting more than 650,000 new cases daily, on average, down from more than 800,000 two weeks ago. Deaths continue to rise, at more than 2,300 per day, on average, but hospitalizations seem to be nearing a plateau, at about 155,000 per day, on average.

In the best-case scenario, as those numbers fall, many Americans may soon be able to reclaim much of their prepandemic lives. Perhaps by the spring in the Northeast, and probably later in other regions, many Americans may go to work mask-free, send their children to school and socialize with family and friends without worry.

Only those at high risk from Covid — because of their age, health status or occupation — would need regular boosters tailored to the latest variant.

“If we could keep people out of the hospital and not get terribly ill, I think we could get back to normal basically with the tests and with vaccines,” said Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York.

In the long run, many of us might experience a mild infection every few years, as with coronaviruses that cause the common cold, but would not become seriously ill.

The idea of Omicron as the last stand of the coronavirus holds enormous appeal. It’s what everybody wants, every scientist hopes for. But to get there, Americans would need to be both lucky and smart.

An endemic virus does not necessarily indicate a minor threat. Tuberculosis is endemic in India and other countries, and kills more than a million people each year. In African countries, measles is endemic. That virus constantly circulates at low levels and periodically triggers large outbreaks.

The Coronavirus Pandemic: Latest Updates

Earlier in the pandemic, health officials estimated that for the coronavirus, vaccinating about 70 percent of the population might get us past the herd immunity threshold, meaning the coronavirus becomes a negligible threat.

But the more contagious a variant, the higher the percentage of vaccinated people needed to reach the threshold. When the Alpha variant surfaced, scientists revised the level to 90 percent.

By early last year, they acknowledged that the herd immunity goal was probably out of reach.

Imperfect Immunity
How big a threat the coronavirus remains depends in part on the level of immunity that the country maintains over time. That’s a difficult assessment to make.

There are still millions in the United States and elsewhere who have no protection from the virus and no plans to be immunized. Booster shots are needed to prevent Omicron infection, and only about half of eligible Americans have received them.

Moreover, scientists know little about the strength or duration of immunity left by an Omicron infection, and they do know that the protection against infections conferred by vaccines wanes after a relatively short period. (The protection against hospitalization and death remains strong over a longer period.)

If the population’s protection against the virus is weak or transient, as is possible, then Americans may continue to experience outbreaks large enough to flood hospitals for years. To contain them, people would have to line up for annual coronavirus shots, perhaps in the fall, as they do for flu shots.

If the virus persists as an endemic threat, the number of people vulnerable to it will also change over time. Young people will age into higher risk groups or develop conditions that put them at risk, and babies will arrive without immunity.

“Whether it’s because of evolution, whether it’s because of waning or whether it’s because of population turnover, we’ve got an influx of susceptibility which allows for future transmission,” said Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The lack of widespread vaccination, in the United States and worldwide, coupled with the uncertainty regarding the strength of immunity left behind by Omicron, opens the door to the possibility of new variants. Someday, one of them may dodge immune defenses as well as, or even better than, Omicron does.

“I consider Omicron an example of what endemic Covid-19 looks like,” said Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. “But this doesn’t end with Omicron, because future variants will emerge.”

The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to Know
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Card 1 of 4
Omicron in retreat. Though the U.S. is still facing overwhelmed hospitals and more than 2,500 deaths a day, new cases are falling rapidly across the country. But experts warned that spotty immunity and the threat of new variants mean the virus is not likely to ever completely disappear.

Covid shots. More than 10 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally according to the University of Oxford, though distribution is uneven. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that third vaccine shots reduced the hospitalization risk for immunocompromised people.

Around the world. China has instituted a wide range of high-tech controls on society as part of a mostly successful effort to stop Covid, but the sharpened surveillance may last beyond the pandemic. In England, officials are extending the country’s vaccine rollout to vulnerable children ages 5 to 11.

Neither vaccines nor infections offer so-called sterilizing immunity, meaning that the protection they offer appears to weaken over time. The protection gained from a Delta or Omicron infection may not be as effective against new variants, as the virus is changing unexpectedly quickly and in unusual ways.

Viruses typically evolve in a ladderlike pattern, with each new variant developing from the one before it. But the three riskiest variants of the coronavirus — Alpha, Delta and Omicron — evolved independently. The coronavirus wasn’t building on previous work, so to speak — it repeatedly reinvented itself.

As more and more of the world is vaccinated, evolution will favor forms of the coronavirus that can sidestep antibodies and other immune defenses.

“We could get another variant kind of out of the blue that’s responding to a selection pressure that we hadn’t really thought about, or with mutations that we didn’t really put together,” said Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Contrary to popular myth, the coronavirus is not guaranteed to transform into a milder form over time. A virus may evolve to be less virulent if it kills its hosts before it has been passed on to others, or if it runs out of hosts to infect. Neither is true of the coronavirus.

“It doesn’t kill enough of us, to be perfectly blunt, to actually deplete its reservoir of people to infect,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University. “And it certainly is passed on from an infected person long before the virus kills.”

Even if the next variant is as mild as Omicron or even milder, a highly contagious variant may still wreak havoc on the health care system.

“When you’ve got something as transmissible as Omicron, you don’t need it to be incredibly severe to really screw things up,” said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Treading Carefully
The future will also depend on our risk tolerance, both as individuals and as a nation. The most relevant comparison is to the flu virus, which has survived alongside humans for hundreds of years.

Like the coronavirus, the flu is primarily a threat to certain groups — in this case, older adults, children under age 5, and those with weaker immune systems.

The rest of the population takes few precautions. Businesses and schools don’t require negative tests for those who have had the flu, nor do people wear masks to protect themselves against it. Only about half of adult Americans choose to be vaccinated each year.
With the coronavirus, public health officials are just now wrestling with what normal should look like, including which trade-offs are acceptable. But they do acknowledge that trade-offs are coming.

“We don’t have a vision of what level of control we’re aiming for,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. “I just don’t think zero cases is the target for any of us.”

This month, a group of former advisers to President Biden called on the administration to plan for a “new normal” that entails living with the coronavirus and the flu long term. Like Dr. Nuzzo, they argued that the administration should set targets for the number of hospitalizations and deaths that would trigger emergency measures.

Given how frequently the coronavirus has upended expectations, Americans should hope for the best — but be prepared for living a bit longer with something short of that.

“We all want this to be over,” Dr. Shaman said. “But I think we have to be a little more agnostic in our approach to this whole thing.”

“We don’t know,” he added. “We just don’t know.”

COVID: 'Stealth' Omicron Found Near New York, May Be More Contagious [Hudson Valley Post, 27 Jan 2022]

BY Bobby Welber

Health officials are now worried about what’s called "stealth" Omicron. It's a relative of the super-spreading variant, which was just detected very close to New York. Officials think it may be even more infections.

The latest COVID numbers in New York show COVID continues to be on the decline. On Wednesday, Gov. Katy Hochul reported 7.18 percent of COVID tests came back positive in the previous 24 hours.

The number of cases continues to decline in all regions of the state and there were 500 fewer New Yorkers hospitalized with COVID since the previous report.

Health officials are now worried about what’s called "stealth" Omicron.

"I am grateful for all the hard work New Yorkers have put in to bring infections down, but our fight is not over yet." Hochul said. "It is important that we continue to wear our masks and get vaccinated. For the parents hesitating to get their children vaccinated, thousands of young New Yorkers across the state have already gotten their shot - it is safe, free, widely available, and the best way to protect your children and keep them in school."

That's the good news. The bad news, health officials are now worried about a COVID Omicron sub-variant.

The first case of a COVID-19 Omicron sub-variant has been detected in Connecticut. The sub-variant is called "stealth" Omicron because it's harder to detect.

Officials think it may be even more infections.

The Omicron variant led to a record number of COVID cases in New York State.

Health officials say the sub-variant, called BA.2, has the same roots as the highly contagious Omicron variant. It's not a new variant. Officials describe it as a relative of Omicron, also known as BA.1.

The Omicron variant led to a record number of COVID cases in New York State.

Experts believe "stealth" Omicron is potentially more infectious than Omicron, NBC reports.

The reported case of "stealth" Omicron was found in person from Fairfield County.

Omicron Variant Dominating New York, Signs You May Have COVID

Experts: 'Stealth Omicron' could be even more contagious | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis [Asahi Shimbun, 27 Jan 2022]

By KAI ICHINO

A health ministry advisory board warned on Jan. 26 that another version of the Omicron variant spreading overseas could be 18 percent more contagious than the one currently dominant in Japan.

The new form of the Omicron variant is being called “stealth Omicron,” as some of the tests conducted in other countries have not been able to identify it as the Omicron variant.

But experts at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases said PCR tests conducted in Japan can still identify it as the Omicron variant.

Omicron is split into lineages, including “BA.1” and “BA.2,” depending on its genetic traits. The form of Omicron dominant throughout the world, including in Japan, is BA.1, but BA.2 is currently making gains in other countries.

“The spread of the Omicron variant is being driven further as BA.2 keeps replacing BA.1. We should be aware of BA.2’s contagiousness,” said Takaji Wakita, chair of the advisory board and head of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The advisory board said the same day that some people in Japan have been identified as being infected with BA.2 through genome sequencing after undergoing tests at Japanese airports or other places within the country. The board has argued that genome sequencing should be conducted on more Omicron patients.

The board also said it cannot yet say how many people have been identified as infected with BA.2 in Japan because officials are still compiling the data.

It said that according to information from Denmark, BA.2’s effective reproduction number, which represents how many people become infected through one carrier, is 18 percent higher than BA.1.

Hiroshi Nishiura, a professor at Kyoto University who analyzed this information, said a roughly 20 percent increase in the effective reproduction number is not as great as the difference between the Delta variant and the standard Omicron variant. But it still shows that BA.2 is much more contagious than BA.1.

In countries such as Demark and Israel, where BA.2 is increasingly replacing BA.1 as the dominant Omicron strain, Omicron infections are spreading once again after having already peaked.

However, experts also suggested it may be the case that the hospitalization rates of patients infected with Omicron would not greatly differ between those infected with BA.1 and BA.2.

Moderna official shares insight into omicron vaccine, stealth variant - WBBJ TV [WBBJ-TV, 27 Jan 2022]

by Ashley Luningham

Moderna’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Paul Burton says they have already started giving out doses.

“The first person got their first dose of it yesterday. We aim to enroll about 600 people. It will probably take about two months to enroll and complete that study to get data from it,” Burton said.

Burton says once they have collected enough data, it will be available for the general public.
“Our hope is that we will then be able to start producing that and be in a position to have it supplied and ready to go for boosting of people in the autumn of 2022,” Burton said.
While they hope to fight the omicron variant, Burton says new variants could pop up at any time.

So he says they are preparing for that future.

“Make sure that we are ready with a vaccine to protect people, specifically against omicron and against delta, and maybe other variants as we then get ready for the next winter. That is why people may be protected now, but we can’t rest on our lows. We have to be prepared with that next vaccine,” Burton said.

He says the COVID-19 virus has proven to evolve in unpredictable ways. And now the omicron variant has its own variant.

“There is a stealth variant that is called BA-2 of omicron that now accounts for 50% in Denmark, doubling every four days in the United Kingdom,” Burton said.

Burton says the stealth variant has already made it to the United States. But they are unsure how dangerous it is.

That is why he says it is important to try to stay one step ahead at all times.

“The only way we can do that is to get as many people vaccinated and as many people boosted as possible to protect them,” Burton said. “We at Moderna will continue to do the great science that we do to try to get as many new vaccines that are specifically engineered against these variants.”

Burton says the stealth variant is still too new to know how it relates to other COVID-19 variants, but he hopes to know soon.

COVID-19: New 'Stealth Omicron' Strain Identified In New York [Pleasantville Daily Voice, 28 Jan 2022]

BY Zak Failla

The newly emerging “stealth” Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus has been confirmed throughout the region, according to an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Omicron, which is known as B.1.1.529, has three sub-variants: the original BA.1 that remains the dominant strain, the “stealth” BA.2, which is picking up steam, and the more elusive BA.3.

Recently, the new “stealth” variant - named for its difficulty to identify due to a lack of certain genetic characteristics - has been becoming more of a concern, and it most recently made its way into Connecticut in Fairfield County.

To date, there have been approximately 100 BA.2 cases sequenced across the country, including at least 10 from Massachusetts and four in New York, making it likely that it would spread to neighboring Connecticut.

“We detected the first BA.2 Omicron case in Connecticut,” professor Nathan Grubaugh posted to Twitter this. “(The) sample (was) collected on (Saturday), Jan. 8 from Fairfield County.”
Officials noted that just because the variant was first detected in one area of the state, it doesn’t preclude it from having spread to other parts of the state.

Grubaugh cautioned that BA.2 is more transmissible than BA.1, and that in approximately a month it became the dominant strain in Denmark, which has been among the hardest hit by the variant early on.

However, the professor said that immunity from BA.1 “should” protect against BA.2, which “probably” won’t be any worse for vaccines, though the data is still pending.

“BA.2 is not yet a significant proportion of the cases in (the region). But considering its first detection from a sample collected on Jan. 8, that could be changing soon,” Grubaugh explained.

“I want to note that I do not think that BA.2 will lead to a significant resurgence of COVID-19 cases. While it’s more transmissible than BA.1, there is a lot of recent population immunity from the BA.1 wave, and hopefully not as many susceptible people to infect.”

Health Officials Tracking New ‘Stealth’ Omicron Variant Spreading In Europe, Detected In U.S. [CBS New York, 27 Jan 2022]

NEW JERSEY (CBSNewYork) — The first cases of a new Omicron subvariant are beginning to be seen in the Tri-State Area.
They arrived as an Appeals Court prepares to rule on the New York state mask mandate, CBS2’s Dick Brennan reported Thursday.

The crucial hearing will be held Friday, as the court will hear more arguments to decide whether to eliminate the state-wide requirement to cover up.

“There are good points and bad points, but I think it’s good in general for everybody wear masks,” said Nicholas Ng of Massapequa.

A lower court struck down the mandate, but it was temporarily reinstated until the Appeals Court can rule.

“Everybody should do what they feel comfortable doing and if there is a mandate to wear a mask then I will certainly do it,” said George Trapp of Hell’s Kitchen.

The showdown on masks comes as a new Omicron subvariant has been detected, raising new fears.

Some scientists worry it could be more contagious, but say there’s a lot they still don’t know about it, CBS2’s Meg Baker reported Thursday.

“They’re giving it the name the ‘stealth’ variant because it’s really, really easily transmissible,” Dr. Perry Halkitis of Rutgers School of Public Health said.

The latest version of the coronavirus that scientists are calling BA.2 is considered stealthier than the original. It’s genetic traits make it harder to detect and more contagious.

“We are putting up all these barriers for virus to transmit, like with vaccines and people having natural immunity and the combination of both,” Halkitis said. “As the virus mutates, it’s trying to find smarter ways to get in.”

It is also harder to classify positive cases of the new variant as Omicron in PCR tests.

“The cause of concern is that it seems to be spreading very fast in some European countries, for example in Denmark, and they’re already saying that it could be one and a half times more infectious than the Omicron,” Epidemiologist Ayman El-Mohandes, dean of CUNY Graduate School of Public Health, said. “It represents more than half the cases, 60% of the cases. There is no indication that it’s more severe than the original Omicron variant.”

“As far as I know, it’s been diagnosed in Washington state. It’s been diagnosed in California and in Texas. But it will not surprise me at all that soon thereafter we will see it all over the country,” he added.

El-Mohandes urged people to use common sense and remain vigilant, wear masks, avoid crowded places and stay home when feeling sick.

These strategies can help protect the most vulnerable, he said, like children younger than five (who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated), older adults and those who are immunocompromised.

Health officials continue to say the best protection from serious illness comes from being fully vaccinated and boosted.

Hong Kong’s battle with ‘stealth Omicron’ may provide critical clues about the rapidly spreading COVID subvariant [Fortune, 27 Jan 2022]

BY GRADY MCGREGOR

Never miss a story: Follow your favorite topics and authors to get a personalized email with the journalism that matters most to you.

From late December to mid-January, the Omicron substrain BA.2 outpaced Omicron’s parent strain, called BA.1, in Denmark to become the dominant version of COVID-19 in a matter of weeks. Now it’s hitting Hong Kong, a city that may be a perfect laboratory to better understand how contagious and deadly the subvariant really is.

On Thursday, Hong Kong recorded 164 cases of COVID-19, the most infections in one day since the beginning of the pandemic.

"Most of the infected cases are Omicron," Carrie Lam, Hong Kong's chief executive, said in a press conference on Thursday. "We are still in a severe stage of the pandemic, and there’s been major outbreaks in the community."

The record infections come as the city doubles down on its COVID-zero, or "dynamic zero," strategy that does not tolerate even one infection within its borders. Last year, Hong Kong went seven months without recording community spread of COVID-19. That streak came to an end on Dec. 31, pushing the city to impose some of its harshest social distancing restrictions since the beginning of the pandemic. Since Jan. 5, Hong Kong has closed all sporting and entertainment venues; shut down all bars, restaurants, and shops after 6 p.m.; placed thousands of people into government-run quarantine camps; locked down crowded apartment complexes; banned all flights from eight nations; and culled thousands of pet hamsters that were suspected of transmitting the virus.

But the measures have not appeared to hold up against the Omicron BA.2 substrain, which is often dubbed “stealth Omicron” due to a now-debunked theory that it was harder to spot on PCR tests. The variant has rapidly spread in individual apartment buildings, infecting hundreds of people living in the same block and prompting authorities to seal residents in the complexes for up to a week. Scientists believe the substrain could be as much as 30% more transmissible than Omicron’s original strain, and some say it will likely outpace Omicron’s original strain and rise to become the next variant of concern.

But little else is known about stealth Omicron, and the World Health Organization this week called for scientists to research how it behaves.

If the substrain spreads further in Hong Kong, the city may provide some clues.

For one, scientists are not sure what exactly makes stealth Omicron more transmissible. It might be more infectious or simply better at evading vaccines. Among vaccinated populations, it is difficult to tell the difference. Hong Kong has fully vaccinated 64% of its population, similar to the U.S. But its elderly population has lagged behind, with a fully vaccinated rate among people over 80 of 20%.

The low vaccination rate means that if the substrain spreads among unvaccinated populations in Hong Kong, scientists can gauge its transmission versus how quickly it's spreading in more vaccinated populations elsewhere. The evidence could provide clues about stealth Omicron's ability to evade vaccines versus its base level of contagiousness.

Gabriel Leung, Hong Kong’s top epidemiologist and adviser to the government on the pandemic, tells Stat News that only 16% of people in Hong Kong's nursing homes are vaccinated. He explained that if different strains of Omicron spread in different nursing homes, scientists could better understand the differences in how quickly, say, Omicron variant BA.1 and BA.2 spread. “Ironically, and, paradoxically, Hong Kong’s nursing homes…would be the perfect laboratory to sort this out," Leung told Stat News.

Michael Diamond, a viral immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, also told Stat News that because so many Hong Kongers have been neither vaccinated nor previously infected, the city could provide important clues about how deadly stealth Omicron is.

“The key measure of whether this is less pathogenic [or less severe]—apart from the animal studies—is in naive people, meaning those who have never been vaccinated and never been infected. Are they getting severe disease or not?” he said.

Hong Kong, meanwhile, is hoping to halt the spread of the variant as soon as possible to avoid becoming the subject of scientific inquiry.

"We are racing against Omicron," Lam said Thursday. "We do have the ability to stop the spread of the disease in Hong Kong…[but with this variant] exponential growth in the number of cases in the community can happen at any time."

U.S. COVID daily death toll at highest level since last winter's peak, and WHO says global case tally set record in latest week [MarketWatch, 27 Jan 2022]

By Ciara Linnane

Numbers reflect the speed with which omicron variant spread in December and January

The U.S. daily death toll from COVID-19 rose on Tuesday to its highest level since last winter’s peak, according to a New York Times tracker and other sources, after the surge in cases in December and January driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant.

Deaths lag cases and hospitalizations, with the former now finally coming down from their highs, while the latter appear to be reaching a peak.

The U.S. is averaging 2,362 deaths a day, the tracker shows, up 35% from two weeks ago. But cases are down 14% at 652,278 and hospitalizations are up 9% at 155,247.

Cases are falling fastest in northeastern states that were first to see waves of omicron cases and remain at undesirably high levels in states that were hit later, including Alabama, North Dakota and Kansas.

Most COVID deaths are happening in unvaccinated people, who remain at high risk from omicron. Those who are vaccinated and have had a booster shot are still seeing high protection from severe illness and death and while there have been many breakthrough infections in that group, most suffer mild symptoms or are unsymptomatic.

The stark reality of the risk to unvaccinated people is illustrated in this chart from data group

The World Health Organization said there was a record of more than 21 million new cases of COVID globally in the week through Jan. 25, a 5% increase from the week before. That was the most since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

The highest number of new cases were in the U.S., France, India, Italy and Brazil. The U.S. also had the higher number of fatalities, followed by Russia.

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Don’t miss: Free N95 masks roll out at pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens this week. Here’s how to get yours.

The WHO highlighted that omicron has fast become the leading variant in most countries and confirmed that data continue to show it to be more contagious but less lethal than other variants.

“However, due to the very high numbers of cases, many countries have seen a significant increase in the incidence of hospitalization, putting pressure on healthcare systems,” the agency said in its weekly epidemiological update.

The update did not mention a new subvariant of omicron that has been named BA.2 for now, although WHO earlier this week said officials should start investigating it to see if it is more risky than the original omicron variant, now called BA.1. In a statement on its website, WHO said BA.2, which differs from BA.1 in some of its mutations, “is increasing in many countries.”

“Investigations into the characteristics of BA.2, including immune escape properties and virulence, should be prioritized independently (and comparatively) to BA.1.,”
said the statement.

• Prime Minister Boris Johnson is bracing for the conclusions of an investigation into allegations of lockdown-breaching parties, a document that could help him end weeks of scandal and discontent, or could bring his time in office to an end, the Associated Press reported. Allegations that the prime minister and his staff flouted restrictions imposed on the country to curb the spread of the coronavirus have caused public anger, led some Conservative lawmakers to call for Johnson’s resignation and triggered intense infighting inside the governing party.

• A study conducted by researchers at the universities of Düsseldorf and Reading of 257 soccer players who contracted COVID found that their performance was diminished after recovery, AFP reported. The study found that players’ passing-success rate fell by up to five percentage points and that the virus affected footballers over the age of 30 more seriously. It also suggested that teams with the most players who had recovered from COVID had worse results than their rivals. “So far, the results suggest a permanent alteration in the player’s abilities,” said James Reade, director of the economics department at the University of Reading and co-author of the study, albeit with a caveat: “The majority of players had not been vaccinated (at the time of the study) and this remains a complicating factor.”

• Quest Diagnostics DGX, -0.24% is now offering consumers a new COVID-19 testing option that allows them to order a rapid at-home test and then collect the swab sample while being monitored by remote healthcare professionals. Quest said the new service can be used to complete proctored testing requirements for international travel, verification of a positive test to get a prescription from a doctor, and to return to work or school.

• Russia reported a record number of new coronavirus infections for a sixth straight day, the Moscow Times reported. A total of 74,692 new infections and 657 deaths were recorded over the last 24 hours. Russia has reduced the quarantine period for patients to seven days from 14, despite the high numbers. Germany also hit a new daily record of 164,000 COVID-19 infections on Wednesday as the lower house of parliament prepared to debate proposals to either require or robustly encourage residents to be vaccinated, Reuters reported.

Here’s what the numbers say
The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose above 359.8 million, and the death toll is now above 5.61 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. leads the world with 72.2 million cases and 872,828 fatalities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine tracker is showing that 210.6 million people living in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, equal to 63.5% of the total population.

Some 84.8 million have received a booster, equal to 40.3% of the fully vaccinated.

WHO staff complaint, email allege racism and abuse in Asia [Associated Press, 27 Jan 2022]

By MARIA CHENG

Current and former staffers have accused the top director of the World Health Organization in the Western Pacific of racist, unethical and abusive behavior that has undermined the U.N. health agency’s efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

The allegations were laid out in an internal complaint filed in October and again in an email last week, sent by unidentified “concerned WHO staff” to senior leadership and the executive board and obtained by the Associated Press. Two of the authors said more than 30 staffers were involved in writing it, and that it reflected the experiences of more than 50 people.

The internal complaint and the email describe a “toxic atmosphere” with “a culture of systemic bullying and public ridiculing” at WHO’s Western Pacific headquarters in Manila, led by Dr. Takeshi Kasai, director of a vast region that includes China and his home country of Japan. The AP also has obtained recorded snippets of meetings where Kasai is heard making derogatory remarks about his staff based on nationality. Eleven former or current WHO staffers who worked for Kasai told the AP he frequently used racist language.

Staffers, who did not identify themselves to WHO “for fear of retaliation,” said in the email that Kasai’s authoritarian style has led to the departure of more than 55 key staff in the past year and a half, most of whom have not been replaced. This resulted in a lack of understanding and involvement with member countries that “significantly contributed” to a surge of cases in many countries in the region, they said. However, other WHO staffers pointed out that spikes in COVID cases were due to numerous reasons, including countries’ own resources and the timing of their national efforts.

The complaint and message also accused Kasai of improperly sharing potentially sensitive vaccine information with Japan, one of 37 countries in the region he leads.

In an email to the AP, Kasai denied allegations of racism and unethical behavior. He said that after receiving the email last week, he immediately took steps to communicate with all his staff.
“I ask a lot of myself, and our staff,” he said. “This has particularly been the case during the COVID-19 response. But it should not result in people feeling disrespected.”

Kasai said he was committed to making changes that would ensure “a positive work environment” for all WHO staff in the region. However, an internal WHO message seen by the AP shows that in a meeting last week, Kasai ordered all his senior directors and country representatives to “reject” the accusations made in the email and to “totally support” him.

Among the most damning claims is that Kasai made “racist and derogatory remarks to staff of certain nationalities.” The internal complaint filed to WHO alleges that Kasai once aggressively questioned a Filipino staffer during a coronavirus meeting, saying: “How many people in the Pacific have you killed so far and how many more do you want to kill further?” The complaint said he then asked “if she was incapable of delivering good presentations because she was Filipina.”

Several WHO officials present when the statements were made confirmed to the AP that the regional director has made numerous racist comments in meetings denigrating people from countries including China, the Philippines and Malaysia. They said the harassed staffers were sometimes driven to tears.

The email also said Kasai had blamed the rise in COVID cases in some countries on their “lack of capacity due to their inferior culture, race and socioeconomic level.” Three WHO staffers who were part of the agency’s coronavirus response team in Asia told the AP Kasai said repeatedly in meetings that the COVID response was hampered by “a lack of sufficiently educated people in the Pacific.”

Kasai rejected allegations that he had ever used racist language.

“It is true that I have been hard on staff, but I reject the suggestion that I have targeted staff of any particular nationality,” he said. “Racism goes against all of the principles and values I hold dear as a person….I believe deeply and sincerely in WHO’s mission to serve all countries and people.”

The claims add to a litany of internal protests from WHO personnel about the agency’s management of the pandemic during the last two years, including privately complaining about China’s delayed sharing of information while publicly praising the government. In their complaint, WHO staff admonished Kasai for “not daring to criticize the Chinese authorities” and failing to disclose what happened during a trip to Beijing to meet President Xi Jinping shortly after the coronavirus was identified in Wuhan.

“We request your urgent intervention to address our serious concerns...which is negatively impacting WHO’s performance to support (countries) in the region and WHO’s ability to function as an effective public health organization, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the staffers wrote.

Kasai is a Japanese doctor who began his career in his country’s public health system before moving to WHO, where he has worked for more than 15 years. He is credited with developing the region’s response to emerging outbreaks after the SARS epidemic in 2003.

Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights at Georgetown University, said he was in contact with many people at the office in the Western Pacific, and knew they felt battered during the pandemic.

“Dr. Kasai came into office with a good reputation, as a reasonably strong public health leader with his country’s support,” Gostin said. “But I was not surprised to hear these allegations.”
Gostin said racism in a WHO office at the center of the pandemic would be “unconscionable,” and that the allegations wounded WHO’s credibility and capacity to do what was needed during the pandemic.

“If you ever needed WHO and its key regional offices to be acting with a single voice, with a single purpose and with great energy, it would be now,” he said. “And the fact that the staff are so demoralized, feel so defeated, so humiliated and morale is so low, it hurts the pandemic response in the region.”

In the email, staffers accused Kasai of not respecting WHO’s own guidelines in the pandemic through a forced return to the office and to commutes during strict lockdown in Manila. In an internal email to staff from April 1, 2020, he said that three people on the Manila team had COVID but that “we must remain functional….This has meant keeping our country offices and the Regional office open to some level.” Some staffers were concerned that parts of the advice — including car-pooling with other staff and continuing to share desks — could put them at higher risk of catching COVID-19.

WHO staffers also alleged that Kasai abused his position to aid the Japanese government in COVID-19 vaccination planning by providing confidential data. Many countries expect WHO not to share details on sensitive issues like disease rates or vaccination unless they explicitly consent.

A WHO scientist who worked on COVID-19 vaccination in Asia told the AP that Kasai shared data with Japan so that the government could decide how to donate doses to its regional neighbors for a political advantage. The staffer, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said Kasai also pressured WHO personnel to prioritize vaccine donations from Japan over the U.N.-backed COVAX effort.

In his response to the AP, Kasai disputed that he had ever inappropriately shared information with Japan.

“At no time have I pressured staff to facilitate donations from Japan rather than COVAX,” he said. “The vast majority of Japan’s vaccine donations to other countries in the Western Pacific Region have been through the COVAX (effort.)”

Japan has donated about 2.5 million doses to countries in WHO’s Western Pacific region via COVAX since June, according to data this month from its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. By contrast, Japan has donated more than 11 million doses bilaterally over the same period to countries including Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.

WHO has dealt with internal complaints from staffers alleging systemic racism, sexism and other problems before; its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ordered an internal probe in January 2019 to assess such allegations. Last year, the AP reported that senior WHO management was informed of multiple sexual abuse reports involving its own staffers during the Ebola outbreak in Congo, but failed to act.

The authors of the WHO email in the Western Pacific said most of them had “exhaustively” filed complaints through various WHO mechanisms, including its ombudsman, ethics hotline, staff association and office of internal oversight, but have not been informed of any investigation into their allegations.

Under WHO’s governance structure, regional directors are largely answerable only to the member countries that elect them and to the executive board that confirms their selection. Kasai was elected by member countries in the Western Pacific in 2019 and could run again next year.

WHO’s headquarters in Geneva said in an email that it was “aware of the allegations and is taking all appropriate steps to follow up on the matter.” Kasai said in a statement that he was “ready to cooperate fully with any process to investigate the concerns which have been raised.”

Kasai does not technically report to Tedros, but “all staffers are subject to the authority of the Director-General,” according to the agency’s staff rules. During a press briefing last April, Tedros praised Kasai as “my brother” and thanked him for “everything you continue to do to serve the people of the Western Pacific.”

At a virtual meeting this week, WHO’s executive board is slated to discuss issues including the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Also on the agenda are various “management matters,” including the prevention of abuse and harassment and “increased efforts to address racism.”

Japan lets in 87 international students [Inside Higher Ed, 27 Jan 2022]

By Pola Lem

Country lets in 87 international students out of 147,000 waiting to return.


In a fresh upset to international students hoping to enter Japan, government officials said the country will let in only 87 overseas learners next month.

The chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, told national media that the selected students—who are funded through the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology—will be allowed into the country because they are due to graduate within the year.

“We decided to allow them to enter the country, taking into account their individual circumstances from the perspective of public interest and urgency,” he said.
The announcement comes as the country tackles a spike in COVID-19 infections. On Jan. 19, Japan reported more than 40,000 cases in a day for the first time—triple the caseload it reported a week prior, according to Nikkei Asia.

In a briefing with reporters, an official reportedly said that the government understands the importance of international students to Japan’s economy and research—and that it would continue to review its approach regarding other students.

But the message appears not to have reassured many of those waiting. More than 28,000 people have signed a petition urging the government to reopen to international students as soon as possible.

In November, students saw a flicker of hope when Tokyo said it would begin allowing their limited entry in late 2021. But before the month was over, the country had shut its borders to all international visitors, with concerns mounting over the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant of COVID-19.

Davide Rossi, founder of the site EducationIsNotTourism.com—who has been advocating for international students’ return to Japan and is among those who have signed the petition—called the recent government move a “minor exception its rigid border rules.”

“This is only 0.06 percent of the total number of students waiting to enter the country, some of them for two years,” said Rossi, who estimated that about 147,000 students are waiting to enter Japan. “Disappointment is growing.”

The current approach unfairly penalizes international students, added Rossi.

“The majority of people in Japan can go out and in, while only a minority is stuck in limbo. If it’s OK for re-entry to go out and then re-enter Japan, why is it not OK for new entry such as international students, skilled workforce and spouses and dependents?” he said.

Rebecca Mazzocchi, a master’s student from Italy studying environmental studies at Japan’s Sophia University since September 2021, tried to see the silver lining in the situation.

“For the government to still activate a plan to let—still very few—students in could be a beginning for them to do something more in time for the spring semester,” she said.

But she was not getting her hopes up too high. “We will see what happens,” said Mazzocchi.
“Nonetheless, I am preparing for alternative options if in spring nothing has moved.”

Day cares struggle to stay open as COVID-19 surges across Japan [The Japan Times, 27 Jan 2022]

BY KANAKO TAKAHARA

Naoko Muto feels it is just a matter of luck that the day care center she runs hasn’t had any COVID-19 cases despite the rapid spread of the omicron variant.

With heaters on full blast, the Takakura day care center in Nagoya keeps its windows slightly open all day to improve ventilation, while everything from nursing rooms to staff break rooms are disinfected daily. Basically, Muto says, her team is doing everything it can to prevent one of its employees or children from getting infected, which would force the facility to close down.

“Day cares have a societal role that allows working parents to go to work,” said Muto, whose facility has 121 pre-schoolers up to the age of 6 under its care. “But even if we do everything possible, we may not be able to prevent one of us from being infected.”

Muto is one of the scores of day care operators nationwide fearful of having to close down if a child or staffer gets infected with the coronavirus.

On Monday, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry announced that a record 327 licensed day care facilities nationwide were closed as of Jan. 20 due to the virus. The figure exceeded the 185 facilities forced to shut down in early September during the fifth wave.

Day care closures are much more than an inconvenience for parents and can affect all sectors of society by forcing essential workers, among others, to take time off and care for their children.

In Japan, licensed day care centers are for households where both parents work or cannot take care of their child during the day for various reasons. Parents are screened by municipalities in order to be eligible to enroll their children.

When a day care shuts down, parents are typically forced to take time off work or work remotely from home if they can’t get help from family or friends.

A 38-year-old mother of two who lives in Kawasaki had to scramble to adjust her work plans last week when her 4-year-old son’s day care closed for four days after a COVID-19 case was detected in the facility.

“I had to go to the office on the Wednesday and my husband can’t work from home so he took the day off to take care of our son,” said Nori Kawashima, who works in Yokohama as an administrative staff member.

Kawashima worked from home for the remaining days while her son binge-watched Disney movies.

“He was laying around on the floor all day and only got up to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“He didn’t eat much for lunch because he wasn’t hungry.”

One of Kawashima’s friends was off on Friday, so her son was able to go out and play at a nearby park in the afternoon with her friend and her child.

The health ministry is asking day care facility operators to stay open as much as possible, but it is up to municipalities to decide whether or not to close down if a teacher or child is infected.

In Nagoya, day care centers will close if a staffer or child is a close contact of a COVID-19 patient. If one of them gets infected, facilities will close for 10 days, retroactive to the day after the infected individual was last at the center.

“At day care centers, children of all ages spend time together in the same room in the mornings or in the evenings, so we can’t just shut down one classroom like elementary schools,” said Yasunori Nagata, an official in charge of day cares at the Nagoya Municipal Government.

Still, the city allows day cares to reopen some classrooms after several days, provided they have enough teachers who are not close contacts to take care of children. As of Tuesday, 150 day cares in Nagoya were closed, but 28 of those facilities had partially reopened.

Many other municipalities under quasi-emergency measures are now asking parents to keep their children home in order to decrease the number of children at local day care centers, and, in turn, lower the infection risk.

In the latest wave, younger people are getting infected more often compared to other age groups, with those under the age of 19 accounting for 26.1% of the cases based on data from Jan. 1 to Jan. 24, according to the health ministry. The figure was higher than the 20.7% rate for December.

Takaji Wakita, head of the ministry’s COVID-19 expert panel, said Wednesday that infections are spreading, especially among children age 9 and younger, in elementary schools, kindergartens and day care centers.

Classes at elementary, junior high and high schools are shutting down as well due to students and teachers testing positive for COVID-19. The education ministry is currently compiling data on the number of schools that have shut down nationwide.

Still, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said Tuesday the government has no plans to close schools nationwide, unlike in the early days of the pandemic in 2020.

Vaccines have only been administered to people age 12 and older. The health ministry has approved Pfizer’s jab for children between the ages of 5 to 11, but the rollout won’t start until around March at the earliest. As of Monday, 74.48% of people age 12 to 19 have been vaccinated with two shots, slightly lower than the 78.7% rate for the population as a whole.
Mask-wearing is mandatory at schools, but the health ministry is advising against them for those younger than 2 at day cares, since they would likely struggle to take them off on their own or tell their teachers when they are not feeling well.

In the end, there may not be much more day care operators can do to keep their doors open given the size of the current COVID-19 wave, which has highlighted the vital role such facilities play in keeping the country running.

“About 20% to 30% of the parents at our day care are essential workers, working as medical and health care providers,” noted Muto, the head of Takakura day care. “But all of the parents, in one way or another, work to keep society functioning.”

New Coronavirus News from 26 Jan 2022

We'll all have some immunity to COVID-19 soon [The Japan Times, 26 Jan 2022]

BY JUSTIN FOX

Research shows prior infections and vaccines both provide protection from coronavirus

As COVID-19’s omicron wave begins to subside, one thing seems pretty clear: After it has passed, the number of Americans who are still immunologically naive to COVID-19 — that is, they’ve been neither infected by it nor vaccinated against it — will be quite small.

How small? By my rough estimate, 1.8% of Americans, about 6 million people, will remain untouched by either vaccines or COVID-19 a month or two from now. I arrived at this by taking the covidestim.org estimates of cumulative U.S. COVID-19 infections through Jan. 19 (257.5 million) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s estimate of how many Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (209.5 million) and making several somewhat dodgy assumptions, so I wouldn’t take the exact percentage too seriously. But it’s clearly not a whole lot of people.

This doesn’t mean the coast will be clear after, say, February. Some new variant could upend everyone’s calculations just as delta and omicron did, and even endemic COVID-19 will still be deadly for many. In October, before omicron, computational biologist Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle set out to model what COVID-19’s toll in the U.S. would be after everybody over age three had been exposed or vaccinated. His estimate: 40,000 to 100,000 deaths a year, somewhat worse than seasonal influenza, though in the same ballpark.

Still, as lots of people pointed out back in the spring of 2020 in the process of wildly underestimating the threat posed by COVID-19, we don’t shut down the country for seasonal influenza. The end of immunological naivete to COVID-19 in the U.S. should change how we think about the disease and what policies we put in place to manage it.

Some of the most obvious changes have to do with vaccination. There was a lot of talk last year, some of it from President Joe Biden, about how COVID-19 had become a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” There was some truth to this: from April through early October, according to the CDC, 79% of COVID-19 deaths for which vaccination status was available — and 92% for those younger than 65 — were among the unvaccinated.

“Pandemic of the immunologically naive” would have been more accurate, though. A CDC study released this week found that while those who had been neither vaccinated nor previously infected with COVID-19 were by far the most vulnerable to contracting and being hospitalized with the delta variant last summer and fall, prior infection actually appeared to be more protective than vaccination.

An earlier CDC study had found the opposite result with pre-delta COVID-19, and Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Sam Fazeli says (terminal only, sorry) there’s emerging evidence that vaccines protect better against severe omicron outcomes than prior infection does. But both clearly confer significant immunity, and once virtually everyone in the U.S. has one or the other or both, going to great lengths to differentiate the unvaccinated from the vaccinated makes a lot less sense.

The tricky bit here is that encouraging vaccination will remain very important. I’m no epidemiologist or immunologist or ologist of any other kind, but I have become sadly familiar with U.S. and foreign mortality data over the past 22 months and one thing that has stood out in the numbers lately is how easy it is to find evidence of the COVID-19 vaccines’ life-saving impact even when one isn’t really looking for it. The vaccines developed so far, while less effective at preventing transmission with each new variant, have been spectacularly effective at preventing severe disease and death — by the reckoning of the Commonwealth Fund they saved 1.1 million lives in the U.S. through November. Getting boosters and updated vaccines into arms will be crucial to keeping down the toll of endemic COVID-19 as immunity from past vaccines and infections fades. If scientists come up with an effective pan-coronavirus vaccine that shuts down the virus entirely, something my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Lisa Jarvis just wrote about, maybe we can even push COVID-19 from endemic to rare.

In the meantime, though, requiring restaurant guests or theatergoers to provide evidence of vaccination — which I was a big fan of this fall in New York City, as it made me and a lot of other people more comfortable with going out — starts feeling more like airport-style security theater than a useful public health measure.

As for employer vaccine mandates, they succeeded last year in getting lots of people vaccinated and thus saving lots of lives, and will continue to make sense in some sectors. But most of the low-hanging fruit from that approach has already been harvested, especially now that the U.S. Supreme Court has nixed the president’s plan to impose mandates on the private sector.

Keeping Kyrie Irving from playing home games for the Brooklyn Nets isn’t protecting anyone at this point, and I find it awfully hard to imagine that it’s persuading anyone to get vaccinated.
I cringe a little at saying all this because of the rejoicing that any relaxation of vaccination rules will give cause among the grifters who have scared millions of Americans away from getting life-saving shots. But that can’t be a reason not to say it.

While trying to persuade people to get vaccinated should remain a priority, sequestering the unvaccinated minority from the rest of us really shouldn’t. Despite having arrived via different routes, one far more dangerous than the other, we are, for now, all in more or less the same boat.

Fauci: Covid may not end, hopes to find normalcy [Lake Geneva Regional News, 26 Jan 2022]

White House officials say hopefully we will get to where COVID-19 is acceptable and "it doesn't disrupt our capability to function in society in a relatively normal way." Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top White House medical adviser says, when asked what an acceptable situation is regarding SARS Cov-2 and COVID-19 said, "the important point to make is that we are not there right now." In a White House Covid briefing Wednesday Fauci said: "We want to make it low enough so that it doesn't disrupt our capability to function in society in a relatively normal way. We do that with other respiratory viruses." Adding, "that's where we want to be, and I believe that we will get there." Fauci said where we want to be, "is a level of control that does not disrupt us in society, does not dominate our lives." In the U.S., cases have crested and are dropping rapidly, following a pattern seen in Britain and South Africa, with researchers projecting a period of low spread in many countries by the end of March.

Anthony Fauci is up against more than a virus [The Washington Post, 26 Jan 2022]

By Dan Zak and Roxanne Roberts

Two years into the pandemic, the threats and vitriol have not stopped. And the many Americans who still trust him are exhausted.

The doctor opens the front door. Never mind introductions. “I know who you are. Do you think these guys would let you get this close to me, if we didn’t know who you are?” Across the street is a security agent in Nikes, a badge on his belt. He’s not the only one watching.
“I mean, isn’t it amazing?” the doctor says. “Here I am, with cameras around my house.”

The house is modest for Washington: stucco and brick, cozy and cramped. No obvious tokens of celebrity or esteem. Icicles on the dormant hot tub out back. Bottles of red wine and olive oil on the kitchen counter.

“It’s messy because, as you know, in covid times, nobody comes over. So nobody cares.”

People are coming by outside, though. They are snapping photos. Thousands of marchers are descending on the capital to rally against vaccine mandates. Are some of them staking out Anthony Fauci’s home?

The security agents “usually leave at a certain time,” the doctor says. “But tonight they’re going to sleep in our guest room.”

Year 3 of covid times. Nearly 900,000 Americans are dead. An average of 2,000 (mostly unvaccinated) Americans are dying every day now, even though there is a simple measure to limit such suffering — made possible in large part by the Vaccine Research Center founded under Fauci. And yet many Americans would rather take their chances with a virus than a vaccine, because there’s more than just a virus going around. There’s something else in the air. Symptoms include rage, delusion, opportunism and extreme behavior — like comparing Fauci to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele (as Lara Logan did on Fox News in November), or setting out for Washington with an AR-15 and a kill list of “evil” targets that included Fauci (as a California man did last month).

“Surrealistic,” the doctor says.

He has not had a day off since the beginning. “I would say I’m in a state of chronic exhaustion.” He quickly adds: “But it’s not exhaustion that’s interfering with my function.” He is a precise man whose tour in the information war has made him extra-vigilant about his words. “I can just see, you know, Laura Ingraham: ‘He’s exhausted! Get rid of him!’”

Fauci has been a doctor and public servant for more than 50 years. He’s been the country’s top expert on infectious diseases under seven U.S. presidents. George H.W. Bush once called him his personal hero. Under George W. Bush, Fauci became an architect of an AIDS-relief program that has, according to the U.S. government, saved 21 million lives around the world.

He knows how a virus works. He knows how Washington works. He thought he knew how people worked, too — even ones who called him a murderer, as AIDS activists did decades ago because they felt left for dead by a neglectful government. Back then the angry people were motivated by truth and science. Fauci had something to learn from them, and they had something to learn from him. The shared mission was pursuing facts and saving lives. Fear and uncertainty could be eased by data and collaboration. Combatants, however scared or passionate, shared a reality.

Now?

“There is no truth,” Fauci says, for effect. “There is no fact.” People believe hydroxychloroquine works because an Internet charlatan claims it does. People believe the 2020 election was stolen because a former president says so. People believe that Fauci killed millions of people for the good of his stock portfolio because it’s implied by TV pundits, Internet trolls and even elected leaders. Fauci is unnerved by “the almost incomprehensible culture of lies” that has spread among the populace, infected major organs of the government, manifested as ghastly threats against him and his family. His office staff, normally focused on communicating science to the public, has been conscripted into skirmishes over conspiracy theories and misinformation.

“It is very, very upending to live through this,” Fauci says, seated at his kitchen table in the midwinter light. He pauses. “I’m trying to get the right word for it.” He is examining himself now, at 81, in the shadow of the past two years. “It has shaken me a bit.”

The way he can comprehend the situation is in the context of the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the Capitol. There it was, on live TV, an experiment as clear as day: The abandonment of truth has seismic consequences.

Something has been replicating in the American mind. It is not microbial. It cannot be detected by nasal swab. To treat an affliction, you must first identify it. But you can’t slide a whole country into an MRI machine.

“There’s no diagnosis for this,” Fauci says. “I don’t know what is going on.”

Avirus is a terrifying force that hijacks civilization. A bureaucracy, intricate yet imperfect, is what we have to take back control. For better and worse, Fauci became the personification of both. He has been sainted and satanized over the past two years, since he first fact-checked President Donald Trump. His inbox is a cascade of hosannas and go-to-hells. His days often start at 5 a.m. His nights are fitful. What more could he have done today? What fresh horror awaits tomorrow? He is fighting for a best-case scenario, urging preparation for the worst, and fretting that nothing will ever be good enough..

“I do worry about him,” says Francis Collins, until recently the director of the National Institutes of Health. “He’s incredibly frustrated” by the attacks “because it’s a distraction. But there is no part of Tony Fauci that’s ready to give up on a problem just because it’s hard.”

“Being two years into this, and being at the tip of the spear — it takes a certain person to be able to persevere through that,” says Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It’s almost like asking someone to run a marathon every day of their life.”

“He’s always had complete bipartisan support, up until covid,” says AIDS activist Peter Staley, who once picketed NIH and is now a dear friend of Fauci’s. “It’s flat-Earth time. Nothing makes sense. This is a guy who tries to let science dictate what he says and does. Now they’re turning what is a pristine record into something evil. They lie, and repeat the lie 100 times until people think it’s true.”

Staley calls Fauci multiple times a week to check in, ask him how he’s doing, discuss the covid response and the resistance to it.

“What do I tell him?” Staley says. “What kind of advice do I give him to win that war? It’s very frustrating. It’s almost unwinnable.”

Look at Fauci’s Jan. 11 appearance before the Senate Health Committee. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) chided Fauci and other officials for spreading “skepticism and mass confusion” with mixed messaging on covid guidelines. A harsh but fair criticism. Then two senators — who each happen to have medical degrees — got personal.

“You are the lead architect for the response from the government, and now 800,000 people have died,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Fauci scolded Paul that such an “irresponsible” statement “kindles the crazies.” “I have threats upon my life, harassments of my family,” Fauci said, suggesting that the California man targeted him because he “thinks that maybe I’m killing people.”

For years, Fauci had joked that his personal philosophy comes from “The Godfather”: “It’s not personal; it’s strictly business.” The business is science. Science helped him cure vasculitis. Science helped him and others transform HIV from a death sentence to a condition managed by a pill.

What he was facing now felt like it had nothing to do with science.

Later in the hearing, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) displayed a giant prop paycheck depicting Fauci’s $400,000-plus salary. Marshall accused Fauci and “Big Tech” of hiding his financial investments, which created an “appearance that maybe some shenanigans are going on.”

Fauci, bewildered and incensed, replied that his assets, which he had disclosed for decades, were available to the public. (While this statement was technically true, his disclosures were not just a Google search away; after the hearing, Marshall’s office requested and received the documents from NIH, then declared that Fauci “lied” about the ease of their availability.)
When Marshall finished his questioning, Fauci let his frustration get the better of him. “What a moron,” he muttered to himself, not intending it for the microphone.

Analysis: The backstory on Fauci’s ‘what a moron’ comment about a senator

What was going on here? Senators were “trying to troll Fauci, and they’re trying to bring him down to their level,” says Matthew Sheffield, a former conservative activist who now runs a political commentary website called Flux.community. “They know if they can get him to call people a moron, or engage in pettiness the way that they engage in pettiness constantly — if he does it even once, then it’s a victory for them.”

Paul disputes this characterization and claims that Fauci deserves “some culpability” for the pandemic because a grant from his agency funded research in a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus was first detected (the exact origins of the virus remain unknown, though scientific consensus points to an animal-to-human transfer).

Marshall’s office did not have comment on Sheffield’s theory. After the hearing, the senator’s campaign website did start selling $29 T-shirts, featuring the doctor’s likeness, to commemorate the moment: “Send Fauci a message by getting your own ‘MORON’ t-shirt!”

The way in which the United States funds and manages science provides a solid foundation for skepticism and conspiracy, says University of Pennsylvania professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who studies science communication and misinformation.

Yes, scientific recommendations change based on available data, a truth that can be exploited to make responsible leaders appear inconsistent or incompetent.

Yes, Fauci has a high salary by government standards, has been in the same unelected position for 38 years and oversees a budget of $6 billion that flows into grants; those are truths on which you can build a theory about corruption, unaccountable elites and a nefarious flow of money from this or that institution to this or that lab.

Yes, the virus seems unaccountable to our best efforts and fueled by our worst instincts. Yes, the ways it has ended and upended people’s lives has been undeserved, tragic, crazy-making. These are scary truths that you can neutralize with a fantasy about how a single human villain is to blame.

The attacks and misinformation seem to be having an effect. Confidence in Fauci is softening, according to polling conducted since April by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. After holding steady last summer and autumn, the percentage of Americans who are confident that Fauci provides trustworthy information about covid-19 is down six points since April, from 71 to 65 percent.

“For the first time in my lifetime — and I am an elderly woman — the voice that speaks on behalf of the best available knowledge in science has weathered sustained attack,” says Jamieson, director of the policy center. “Confidence [in Fauci] remains high despite that attack, but the erosion is worrisome.”

With Trump long gone from the White House and public exhaustion with precautions surging alongside the omicron variant, Fauci may now be more useful to the pundits who need a villain than those who need a hero. “Fauci must go,” the editors of the conservative National Review demanded this month. “I’m over covid,” talk-show host Bill Maher told Deadline before his show last week. His guest, author Bari Weiss, echoed the frustration of millions: We were told “you get the vaccine and you get back to normal. And we haven’t gotten back to normal.”

“The stalwart Fauci was the wise Oracle of Delphi to then-President Donald Trump’s babbling brook about household bleach as an injectable, anti-viral agent,” Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote this week.

“Maybe it’s my imagination,” she continued, “but Fauci appears less confident of late, perhaps weary of his own voice and exhausted by two years of on-camera appearances.”

Sen. Marshall exaggerated this erosion during the Jan. 11 hearing. “You’ve lost your reputation,” he told Fauci, adding: “The American people don’t trust the words coming out of your mouth.”

“That’s a real distortion of the reality,” Fauci answered.

Marshall replied with a truth from the world outside of medical science: “Perception is reality.”

Fauci is not naive. He gets that a third of the country won’t hear him. He still understands Washington enough to see how it is deteriorating in new and disturbing ways, as fringe thinking spreads to the central organs. As Peter Staley puts it: “Because one party has turned so anti-science, Tony’s power is no longer stable.”

Yet Fauci still thinks he is an effective messenger. And he still hasn’t totally given up on the people who are making his life miserable. After the exchange with Marshall, and a news cycle dominated by “moron” instead of “omicron,” Fauci told his own incredulous staff: Maybe the senator has a point. Maybe my financial investments, though disclosed and available, should be much easier to see.

As for the citizens who wish him harm, he can’t help but search for some signal, some symptom, that could help him understand.

“I’m always looking for the good in people, that kernel of something that’s positive,” Fauci says. “And it’s tough to imagine that that many people are bad people. And, I mean, it’s just — has something been smoldering in their lives? Something that’s sociologically evasive to me?”
He wonders: Does their resentment indicate an underlying issue that needs — for lack of a better term — healing?

“Maybe it’s pain that they’re feeling, that’s driving it?” he says, as if bedside with a patient. “And we’re focusing on the aberrancy of their actions, but we really are not fully appreciating that maybe they’re suffering. And they’re rebelling against a failing of society, maybe, to address some of their needs. Maybe we need, as a nation, to address the fundamental issues that are getting, you know, tens of millions of people to feel a certain way.”

On Sunday, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, thousands of people rallied against vaccine mandates. Fauci’s name was scrawled on many signs. The rhetoric was familiar. “Dr. Fauci is the new Jeff Mengele from World War II,” said a Long Island construction worker named Gio Nicolson, who described Fauci as both “puppet” and “dictator.” A 57-year-old woman named Robin Field drove three hours from Yorktown, Va., to hold up a homemade sign that depicted Fauci’s decapitated head in a noose, under the words “HANG EM HIGH.”

Fauci is guilty of treason, according to Field. She’s done her own research, she says, and it’s clear that his recommendations have both “killed people” and made him money.

The violence of her sign, though — where is that coming from? At a primal level, it seems to convey pain or fear.

“Of co — ” Field starts, then stops. “Well …"

How would she put it?

“I feel so bad that so many people have lost their lives. That hurts, because we all have loved ones that have touched our hearts and passed away.”

Almost no one alive has experienced this kind of sudden mass death, this level of widespread illness, this freezing and fracturing of all life. It hurts. For much of the 1980s, every single one of Fauci’s AIDS patients died. Ugly deaths that he was powerless to prevent. He had to suppress the pain and bury the emotion to get through each day. When he recalls that era, his eyes water and his throat constricts. His self-diagnosis is a quick aside (“post-traumatic stress”) as he bridges the past and the present. In the middle of a cataclysm, it’s hard to see the end. But it does end.

“As a society, when we get out of this, you know, we’re going to look up and say, ‘Oh, my goodness, what we’ve been through,’” he says. “We’ve had an outbreak where we’ve lost close to 900,000 people in the last two years. That’s going to have a long-lasting effect.”

In the early ’70s, when he was chief resident in a Manhattan hospital, Fauci remembers glancing out over the East River in the middle of the night, “Saying, you know, I’m tired, but I can’t stop until at least this patient is stabilized.” When he was the main attending physician at NIH during the AIDS crisis, he wouldn’t leave the ward until he addressed every patient need. Now he views the entire country as his patient — a patient afflicted by both a virus and an undiagnosed condition that hampers its ability to fight it.

He could spare himself further pain and exhaustion and allow America to see another doctor. He could tag out.

“That’s not my character,” he says. “I don’t do that.”

The patient, you see, is not stabilized yet.

Fauci stares out the kitchen window into his small backyard. Right now he sees a crossroads for America. The best-case scenario: increased vaccination, more immunity, antiviral drugs, a virus under control. If we work together. The worst: a new variant, as transmissible as omicron but more deadly, exacerbated by that comorbidity — the deterioration of our minds and politics.

“It’s like it’s 2 o’clock in the morning, and I’m looking out the window at the East River,” Fauci says, “and I got a patient who’s bleeding, and another patient has a myocardial infarction, and another patient who has septicemia —”

The sense memory prompts a sort of pep talk for the present.

“There’s no time to be exhausted, folks. You got a job to do.”

Fauci hits back against political attacks by COVID response critics [New York Daily News, 26 Jan 2022]

By DAVE GOLDINER

Dr. Anthony Fauci hit back at “purely political” attacks on himself and fellow public health experts for their efforts to keep a lid on COVID-19.

The nation’s top doctor on infectious diseases spoke with Dr. Marc Siegel, the host of Doctor Radio Reports on SiriusXM radio in an interview that aired on Wednesday saying that critics are using the pandemic and people’s weariness with preventative measures to make political points, even it if costs lives.

“It is very unfortunate, the distraction of those who would politicize me by saying things that just don’t make any sense,” said Fauci, who is President Biden’s top health adviser. “That does nothing, but endanger the lives of our citizens.”

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has repeatedly said Fauci lies about the pandemic and during a congressional hearing on Jan. 11, claimed that he tried to “take down” some scientists who disagreed with him.

Paul and other conservative critics have focused their ire at how the pandemic is being handled on Fauci, the National Institutes of Health infectious disease chief who also is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.

“We should be all pulling together to end this pandemic rather than making ad hominem (attacks), which are really preposterous,” he said.

Fauci also pushed back against accusations that he and other top public health officials are somehow covering up a possible Chinese government role in the spread of the virus.

He has repeatedly blasted theories that the COVID-19 virus was created in a lab, saying that the vast majority of “card-carrying” scientists and medical experts disagree.

“The evidence and the circumstances weigh very, very strongly that this is a natural occurrence in the sense of jumping from an animal species, a bat, maybe to an intermediate host, to a human,” Fauci said.

Dr. Fauci reveals worst-case scenario for COVID variants in 2022 [Deseret News, 26 Jan 2022]

By Herb Scribner

What is the worst case scenario for the COVID-19 pandemic? Here’s what Dr. Fauci said

The year 2022 has barely begun and Dr. Anthony Fauci already has a worst-case scenario prediction.

The news: Fauci, the White House medical adviser on the coronavirus, recently told Yahoo Finance! that the worst-case scenario for 2022 would be a COVID-19 variant that can evade vaccines and natural immunity.

• “The worst-case scenario is we’re on our way there and we get hit with another variant that actually eludes the immune protection. I hope that’s not the case,” Fauci said.

Fauci said the omicron variant can already evade vaccines to some extent, but the vaccine prevents hospitalizations and death. Immunity and vaccination may stop the worst-case scenario, he said.

• “The thing that makes it less likely, but not impossible, is that by that time, you will have so many people vaccinated and already infected, that you might have a level of community protection that may not get you away from the next variant, but would protect you from the severity of the next variant.”

Another prediction: Dr. Mark Dybul, a professor at Georgetown University Medical Center’s Department of Medicine and immunologist, told Fortune that he expects to see a vaccine-resistant variant by spring 2022 — at least based on trends for the virus from the last two years.

• “The faster we get boosted, the better off we’ll be for the next couple of months,” he said. “Sadly, every prediction I’ve made has pretty much come true. I hope I’m wrong this time, but I think by March, April, May, we will have a fully vaccine-resistant variant.

• “There’s simply no way you can have such low rates of vaccination around the world with the virus ping-ponging between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
• “I’m an immunologist. The probability of us seeing a vaccine-resistant strain is very high.”
Why this matters: Of course, we may have already seen this with the omicron COVID-19 variant, which has evaded vaccines and caused many breakthrough cases.
• However, it’s still a reminder that there are more troubling potential variants out there. Vaccinations can help people stay safe from these dangerous variants, though.

New Coronavirus News from 25 Jan 2022

‘Omicron won’t be the last variant’: Experts say pandemic’s end not yet in sight [Haaretz, 25 Jan 2022]

by Ido Efrati

Israeli health experts think it is too early to determine that omicron will make COVID endemic, and that antibodies from the less virulent variant won't necessarily provide long-term protection

The rapid spread of the omicron variant has raised hopes that this is the final chord of the coronavirus pandemic. The basis for this hope is the idea that widespread exposure to the virus – in a particularly infectious but less deadly variant – can create a broad protective umbrella over large parts of the population, which, along with vaccines, will make the virus endemic.

It will continue to circulate, but as a result of increased immunity as a result of vaccines and infection, there will be much less transmission, severe illness and death, and life can return to something resembling the pre-pandemic normal.

Although the director for the World Health Organization in Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge, said it was “plausible” that Europe is moving toward a “kind of pandemic endgame,” he and Israeli medical experts cautioned that mass infection will not end the pandemic.

Kluge said this week that omicron could infect 60 percent of Europeans by March, and when the current surge in illness ebbs, “there will be for quite some weeks and months a global immunity,” as a result of a combination of vaccinations and antibodies in recovered COVID-19 patients.

Kluge further told AFP that this situation should last until the end of the year – by which time, he said, COVID-19 might return, but not necessarily as a pandemic. However, he stressed that caution is still necessary despite the optimism, due to the virus’s ability to mutate. He noted that "endemic means ... that it is possible to predict what's going to happen. This virus has surprised [us] more than once so we have to be very careful."

Kluge’s remarks made waves among medical experts in Israel and elsewhere. Dr. Dorit Nitzan, regional emergency director at the WHO Europe, who was present at Kluge’s interview, said that the message taken from his remarks was distorted and is at odds with the truth.

“At no point in the interview did Kluge condition exiting pandemic status on mass omicron infection," Nitzan said. "We do not think that mass infection is the solution or that it will bring about the end of the pandemic." She added that it was possible that this year will see the virus become endemic, “but the road there should be taken with measured steps. The road is based on raising vaccination rates around the world, monitoring illness, testing, and lots of personal responsibility.”

Nitzan estimated that “omicron won’t be the last variant,” noting that the current levels of infection have a price, as well: “We’re seeing many hospitalizations, including a rise in children's hospitalizations, and many at-risk populations are paying a heavy price.” She stressed that the WHO believes that once 70 to 80 percent of the world’s population is vaccinated, the focus can shift to resuming normalcy.

“Eighty-five percent of Africa’s population has yet to receive a first vaccine dose, so we’re asking countries that have accelerated the vaccination process, like Israel, to take stock and make it easier for everyone by directing vaccines to under-vaccinated countries,” said Nitzan.

Prof. Cyril Cohen, head of the immunotherapy lab at Bar-Ilan University, also believes talk of ending the pandemic is premature. He pointed out the emergence of a new variant, BA2, “a relative of omicron,” of which some 100 cases have been discovered in Israel. At this point, there is no indication that BA2 behaves differently from omicron.

Cohen concedes that exposure to the variant may improve the body’s immunity to future variants, but “it’s not something that’s certain.” Explaining the difference between endemic and pandemic states, Cohen gave the flu as an example. “The flu kills a quarter million to half a million people around the world every year, but it’s endemic. It’s not everywhere year-round.
And flu has better seasons and worse seasons, better and worse vaccines, and once in a while comes a violent strain, like bird or swine flu, turning it from endemic to pandemic,” Cohen explained.

Therefore it is unclear to what extent broad and accumulated exposure to different variants provides a defensive barrier capable of halting the pandemic. Cohen added that “repeated exposure or infection to different variants of the virus supposedly increases the immune system’s ‘target bank,’ but that doesn’t mean it can always completely prevent the disease.”

Dr. Oren Kobiler, virology expert at Tel Aviv University, said that the level of protection promised by omicron infection will not persist for a prolonged period. “No doubt, those who are vaccinated or recovering and contract omicron have milder illness in most cases. At the same time, just last week 15,000 people died of COVID in the U.S., where it’s mostly omicron, and Denmark, which already had an omicron wave, is now experiencing a BA2 wave.”

Kobiler added that even should omicron decline, the deadlier delta variant is expected to make a comeback. “Some experts say the omicron doesn’t even make delta disappear. It had declined, but not disappeared completely, and once omicron is gone chances are not great that the protection we got from the omicron will hold against delta.”

And yet, according to Kobiler, eventually COVID-19 will become seasonal, like the flu. “The question is when, he says, “and another question is – will omicron make it happen? You have to be very optimistic to say that, and I don’t see the data to support it.”

Leyden Labs, with license from J&J, secures $140M to stop viruses 'at the gate' with nasal spray [FierceBiotech, 25 Jan 2022]

by Kyle LaHucik

Pandemic preparedness is a big buzzword these days in public health, and Leyden Labs wants to put the words into action with an intranasal spray to go after coronavirus variants, the flu and future viruses. The biotech has secured about $200 million to bankroll its mission.

That includes a $140 million series B disclosed Tuesday that will fund preclinical and early-stage testing of Leyden's platform, aimed at "attacking the viruses at the gate," said Koenraad Wiedhaup, CEO and founder, in an interview.

Helping lead the company is an executive with COVID-19 monoclonal antibody expertise. Chief Commercial Officer Suha Jhaveri helped launch Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline's solo agent sotrovimab as vice president and head of commercial at Vir.

The Dutch biotech will deploy the proceeds on developing a platform that induces protection in the mucosa, or the nose and throat, from future variants of SARS-CoV-2, the flu and other emerging respiratory viruses, Wiedhaup said.

The nascent biotech, formed in the early days of the pandemic, hit a major milestone last week by in-licensing a human monoclonal antibody for influenza A and B from Johnson & Johnson's Janssen unit. Leyden paid an undisclosed upfront fee and will dole out biobucks to Janssen in exchange for the exclusive worldwide license to develop and market CR9114 for administration in the nose and throat.

CR9114 was one of three human monoclonal antibodies discovered by J&J unit Crucell in conjunction with scientists at Scripps Research and the Centre of Influenza Research at the University of Hong Kong. The team revealed CR9114 in an August 2012 report in the journal Science.

"The awareness rises that the risk of severe respiratory infections by viruses like influenza increases with age while the response to seasonal influenza vaccines diminishes at old age. Simultaneously bird or avian flu have never been as rampant," said Jaap Goudsmit, M.D., Ph.D., Leyden chief scientific officer, in a statement. "However, current seasonal flu vaccines for the elderly protect poorly, if at all, against these influenza strains."

Wiedhaup declined to provide details on timing of clinical entry for the flu program nor the coronavirus variant work. The biotech will explore testing the nasal spray as a way to protect against initial infection, as well as on top of existing vaccines that activate the immune system. The goal is to ward off specific variants but also multiple strains, the CEO said.

The 40-person biotech is led by the former McKinsey partner and Goudsmit, who was previously a senior adviser at Janssen and before that global head of the J&J unit's Prevention Center after the pharma acquired Crucell in 2011. Also in the C-suite is Chief Business Officer Ronald Brus, another Crucell veteran.

Series A investors Casdin Capital and GV led the series B, which included participation from SoftBank, Invus, Bluebird Ventures and existing backers F-Prime and Byers Capital.

‘Peace, freedom, no dictatorship!’: Germans protest against Covid restrictions [The Guardian, 25 Jan 2022]

by Kate Connolly

The university city of Cottbus held one of 2,000 rallies across Germany on Monday, stoked by the far right

On Monday evening on the dot of 7pm people emerged from dimly lit side streets and gathered on the Oberkirchplatz square in Cottbus for what has become a weekly ritual in towns and cities across Germany: a protest against coronavirus protection measures.

The demonstrations have grown in strength as cases of the Omicron variant have surged, and in recent weeks a looming decision on bringing in a vaccine mandate has become the focus of protesters’ ire. More than 2,000 rallies were held nationwide on Monday, drawing tens of thousands of participants.

In Cottbus, a university city south-east of Berlin, a familiar pattern played out. Moments after the protest started, police declared over megaphone that it was illegal – the participants did not wear masks or physically distance from each other. Groups then broke away and began the Spaziergänge, walks that snake in a variety of directions and are designed to overwhelm any police response.

Dressed in padded coats and woolly hats, the protesters were an inconspicuous crowd. “We are just having an evening stroll,” one woman smirked amiably from under a red woollen beret. “Exercising our right to stretch our legs.”

The gentle click of heels and umbrella studs on wet cobbled stones was quickly drowned out, however, by a man who bellowed “Frieden, Freiheit, keine Diktatur!” (Peace, freedom, no dictatorship) then “Widerstand!” (Resistance).

A woman nearby took up the cry with “Wir sind das Volk!” (We are the people) – the chant that echoed around cities across communist east Germany in 1989 before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Those willing to talk mostly said they wanted to show local and national politicians they had had enough of restrictions. Several said they were not vaccinated; some refused to say. Hardly any were willing to reveal their names.

Germany toughens Covid restrictions as Omicron variant takes hold

“I just want my freedom back,” said one elderly woman. Another younger woman said she was trying to stop the government from forcibly vaccinating her nine-year-old, though there is currently no plan to oblige parents to have children vaccinated. A physiotherapist, one of the few protesters who was wearing a mask, said she was fearful of losing her job if she refuses to get vaccinated under plans for a mandate for medical staff, due to be introduced next month.

Asked why there was need for resistance, Maik, a landscape gardener who refused to wear a mask – calling them “chin nappies” – said: “When injustice becomes law, resistance is our duty.”
There is growing evidence that the protests are being manipulated behind the scenes by rightwing populists and far-right groups, who see issues such as restrictions on gatherings, insistence on the wearing of medical masks as well as a possible vaccine mandate for adults as topics ripe for political exploitation.

Zukunft Heimat (Future Homeland), a far-right group founded in 2015 at the height of the refugee crisis that spreads a nationalist, anti-refugee message, coordinates much of the activity around demonstrations in the state of Brandenburg, including Cottbus.

Ahead of Monday’s rallies, it posted a message from one of its co-founders, Christoph Berndt, a dentist who is also the parliamentary leader of the far-right populist AfD in Brandenburg and has been a speaker at anti-refugee Pegida rallies. He called on people to “defend our freedom and our democracy …” against a government which is “treating its citizens with disdain”.

Berndt has previously questioned whether anyone has died of Covid, said he does not believe the virus exists, and refused to wear a mask because it is a “symbol of suppression”.

Protesters in Cottbus in December. Photograph: Frank Hammerschmidt/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
On chat rooms and in conversations on messaging apps about the rallies, people talk about wanting to topple the government, comparing the administration to a dictatorship. Those who once rallied against the former chancellor, Angela Merkel, over her refugee policy now rail against her successor, Olaf Scholz, and his health minister, Karl Lauterbach.

Some refer, online and in person – with what generally appears as glee – to a conspiracy theory called Tag X (Day X) that predicts Germany’s “entire system” will collapse due to critical infrastructure being disabled by quarantine measures.

Rally participants are encouraged to “put sand into the cogs of a system” already perceived to be on its last legs, and lighthearted references are made to a “civil war mood”.

At the time of the refugee crisis, rightwing extremists linked to the far-right Identitarian movement, the rightwing-focused advertising agency One Per Cent and the thinktank Institut für Staatspolitik (IfS) built a digital map, showing the location of anti-Islam protests across Germany. People could put in their postcode and find their nearest rally.

A similar map has been produced for the coronavirus “Spaziergang” movement, created by the far-right association Filmkunstkollektiv, whose members and supporters include Identitarians, members of the IfS, and One Per Cent.

Germany reports record number of daily Covid cases

Filmkunstkollektiv is also known to have produced film material for the AfD, recently accompanying its youth wing on a “vaccine strike” in Berlin. It also has an association with the far-right Compact magazine, whose latest cover depicts a young man with needles and syringes embedded in his body, under the title “Vaccine dictatorship – being boosted to death”.
Much of the wind for the protests has come from neighbouring Austria, where plans for a vaccine mandate and the fightback against it are more inflamed. There, the founder of the Identitarian movement, Martin Sellner, has referred to vaccine passports and fines as “totalitarian instruments”.

This mindset was reflected in some of the protesters on Monday night, even those who declared themselves “apolitical”.

In a chat group on an instant messaging service that provides a running commentary of the Monday protests, an unvaccinated woman wrote that since she has had to to abide by rules that ban those not vaccinated or recovered from many non-essential activities, “it is possible to put oneself in the shoes of Jews who suddenly had their basic rights removed from them during the Third Reich”.

Such remarks have been widely condemned. Experts on Germany’s constitution have warned that the victimhood narrative expressed by many of the protesters is in danger of being exploited by extremist elements. They cite the murder last September of a petrol pump attendant shot by a man after he refused to serve him for not wearing a mask as proof that they are not exaggerating.

Less than an hour into the rally in Cottbus on Monday night, the several hundred peaceful protesters were playing a game of cat and mouse with the police, who managed to kettle in one group next to a Glühwein kiosk.

There were some wild theories doing the rounds. A primary school teacher called Brigitte, walking with a group of friends towards the old market square, said she gave credence to a theory that the vaccine campaign is “an attempt to thin out the world’s population”. The 73% of Germans who are vaccinated are supposed to die, she said. “If this is the case, then I am one of the 26% who will live to make this nation great again.” Asked what the source for the theory was, she replied she “read it on one of my newsfeeds”.

UK Covid: 'Unprecedented' coronavirus rates seen in January as one in 23 infected [MyLondon, 25 Jan 2022]

By Josh Bolton & Nina Massey

Omicron 'almost completely replaced' Delta, the data suggests

There were 'unprecedented' levels of Covid in January with one in 23 people in England infected.

This is the highest figure recorded by the Imperial College London's study which began in May 2020.

It found that the highest prevalence was in primary school children, with 7.81% infected from January 5 to 20.

In the overall population in England, 4.41% were infected.

The figure was three times higher than the prevalence in the previous round of the study, which looked at November 23 to December 14.

However, the data suggests the peak of the wave was around January 5 and cases flattened off over the following weeks.

Professor Paul Elliott, director of the React programme from Imperial’s School of Public Health, said: “There is good news in our data in that infections had been rapidly dropping during January, but they are still extremely high and may have recently stalled at a very high prevalence.

“Of particular concern is that there is rapidly increasing prevalence among children now they are mixing more following the start of the school term and, compared with December, prevalence in older people aged 65-plus has increased seven- to 12-fold, which may lead to increased hospitalisations.

“It’s therefore vital that we continue to monitor the situation closely to understand the impact of the Omicron variant, which now makes up almost all infections in the country.”

Meanwhile, of the 3,582 people who said whether or not they have previously had Covid, two thirds (64.6%) reported a past infection.

Researchers urged caution, however, saying it is unknown when those past infections were and that PCR tests can return positive results for more than 90 days after diagnosis.

The increase in prevalence corresponds with Omicron becoming the dominant variant in England, the researchers added.

Over the study period, prevalence increased in every region compared to the previous report, with the highest figure recorded in the North East at 6.85%, followed by Yorkshire and the Humber at 5.58%.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: “It’s reassuring to see Covid-19 infections beginning to slow across the country as we move back to Plan A.

“Covid-19 rates are still high so, as we learn to live with the virus, it is vital we continue to be vigilant – wash your hands, let in fresh air, get tested and, if you haven’t already, get boosted now.”

New Coronavirus News from 24 Jan 2022

Stealth Omicron COVID Variant BA.2 That May Spread Faster Found in at Least 40 Countries [Newsweek, 24 Jan 2022]

BY ED BROWNE

The Omicron BA.2 sub-variant, also dubbed "stealth Omicron," has been detected in at least 40 countries worldwide.

BA.2 has caught attention in recent days as it has been responsible for an increasing proportion of Omicron infections compared to the BA.1 lineage that has been the dominant Omicron type so far.

Labs in countries including Denmark and Norway have reported that the sub-variant has been gaining ground, accounting for nearly half of all COVID cases in the former as of January 20, marking a sharp increase in recent weeks.

Virologists say that there is much to learn about BA.2, but it appears the sub-variant may have a transmission advantage over BA.1.

In a press release issued last Friday, the U.K.'s Health Security Agency (HSA) said that BA.2 had been classified as a variant under investigation (VUI) due to international and domestic cases, adding that BA.2 appears to have an increased growth rate compared to BA.1, based on early analysis.

However, the HSA stated that the proportion of BA.2 cases in the country compared to BA.1 was "currently low" and that further analysis was needed to determine the significance of the sub-variant and its mutations.

"So far, there is insufficient evidence to determine whether BA.2 causes more severe illness than Omicron BA.1, but data is limited and UKHSA continues to investigate," said Dr Meera Chand, COVID-19 Incident Director at the HSA.

Effectiveness of Vaccines
A press release from Denmark's Statens Serum Institut (SSI) infectious disease research institution last week stated that it is expected that vaccines will continue to have an effect on severe illness caused by BA.2

A total of 40 countries had uploaded BA.2 sequences to the virus sequencing database GISAID since November 17, the HSA said last Friday. Outbreak.info, an online tool that presents COVID statistics using GISAID data, put that figure at 49 as of Monday.

One notable aspect of BA.2 is that it lacks a genetic characteristic that scientists had used to identify Omicron cases previously—giving credence to its "stealth Omicron" monicker.

However, Cornelius Roemer, a computational biologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, tweeted last week that BA.2 is still detectable on PCR tests and branded news reports to the contrary as "totally wrong."

"Depending on the PCR test used it may not look like BA.1 (the other Omicron). But it will still give a positive result," he wrote.

According to GISAID on Monday morning, a total of 12,842 BA.2 sequences had been uploaded to its database from around the world. Some 67 of those were reported from the USA.

UK's Covid cases tick up again after a fortnight of Omicron fizzling out: Britain records 88,447 positive tests in 5% jump on last week - but both deaths and hospital admissions fall [Daily Mail, 24 Jan 2022]

By STEPHEN MATTHEWS HEALTH EDITOR and EMILY CRAIG

Britain's Covid outbreak could be rebounding already, with infections now creeping back up after the Omicron crisis seemingly fizzled out.

UK Health Security Agency bosses today logged 88,447 positive tests, up 5 per cent on last week's tally. It marks the second day in a row that infections have risen week-on-week.

Despite question marks emerging over the true trajectory of the outbreak, both hospital admissions and deaths continue to fall.

Britain today posted 56 deaths — down by a third on last Monday's toll. Meanwhile, another 1,967 Covid-infected patients required NHS care on Tuesday — a fall of 17 per cent, according to the most up-to-date UK-wide statistics.

Both measures are expected to keep heading downwards for the next few weeks because of how long it can take for people to become severely ill after getting infected. Britain's Omicron wave collapsed at the start of January before flatlining towards the middle of the month.

Despite the extremely-transmissible variant sending cases to pandemic highs, the number of Covid patients on ventilators has barely risen throughout the wave and is now at a six-month low, illustrating how mild the Omicron wave is compared to previous surges.

A total of 521 people were in hospital yesterday receiving breathing support in England, seven times lower than at the height of the second wave this time a year ago.

Vaccines, natural immunity and the intrinsically milder nature of the Omicron variant have helped sever the once impenetrable-link between infections and severe illness.

Ministers have taken confidence from the situation in hospitals to drop Plan B curbs in England from this Thursday, while Boris Johnson has signalled his intent to scrap all Covid laws by the spring. Work from home guidance and face masks in secondary schools have already been ditched.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said last week that the promising Omicron data in the UK signalled a 'new chapter' in the pandemic, as he compared the burden of Covid to flu.

But a World Health Organization official today warned against drawing comparisons between the two viruses. Dr David Nabarro, the agency's special envoy on Covid, said Covid was still 'very, very dangerous', adding: 'The virus should not be likened to flu. It's a new virus, and we must go on treating it as though it is full of surprises, very nasty and rather cunning.'

Covid figures tend to be artificially lower on a Monday, because they are reported just after a weekend when few people turn up for a swab for the virus.

But the slight rise on the week before — for the second day in a row — suggests the Omicron wave may now be beginning to turn around.

Under-14s are currently seeing their infection rate tick upwards week-on-week amid the return to school, while the fall in cases among 35 to 50-year-olds is beginning to slow down.

It comes as:
• World Health Organization chiefs warned against comparing Covid to the flu, saying it is still 'very nasty' and 'full of surprises';
• Number of hospitalised Covid patients in England needing a ventilator plunges to six-month low;
• No plans to scrap Covid vaccine mandate for frontline workers, Downing Street says
• Tougher Covid restrictions in England and Wales 'haven't made a difference', scientists claim;
• Anti-vaxxer, 28, dies of Covid after tearing off his oxygen mask and insisting he did not have the virus.

Latest NHS data shows 14,334 people in England were in hospital yesterday with the coronavirus, 2.4 times lower than last winter's peak which saw 34,336 infected individuals requiring NHS care on January 18.

But the difference in the number of patients on ventilators was even more stark, with 524 Covid-infected patients across England requiring breathing support — roughly seven times lower than the 3,736 logged on January 24 last year, before the vaccine rollout.

The figure is also the lowest number seen since July 18, when 512 Covid patients in England were on ventilators and the Delta variant was dominant.

Since the Omicron burst onto the scene at the end of November, ventilation numbers have dropped from an average of 790 per day to 570 per day.

Ventilators are the last line of breathing support available to patients. The figures do not show the number of patients requiring support through other machines to help them breathe, such as CPAP machines.

And latest official figures suggest the majority (61 per cent) of patients who were admitted to ICU with Covid last month were unvaccinated.

And just 3.7 per cent of hospitalised patients in England are on ventilators, the smallest share since the pandemic began. For comparison, 18.8 per cent of all patients in hospital last June needed mechanical breathing assistance.

The jabs have been hailed for slashing the link between catching the virus and severe outcomes, meaning fewer people go to hospital and die from the virus in relation to the number of people who get infected.

More than eight in 10 Britons aged 12 and over are double-jabbed, while more than six in 10 have had a third dose.

And the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates 97 per cent of adults across the UK have Covid antibodies, either through vaccination or infection.

Growing immunity, large case numbers and the milder Omicron variant have also seen a rise in 'incidental' hospital admissions — patients who are in hospital for something else but also have Covid.

NHS England's most up-to-date figures show 47.9 per cent of all Covid 'patients' in the country were not primarily unwell with the virus.

Low hospitalisation and death rates has led experts to compare the burden of Covid to flu, with scientists saying the virus may get weaker each year until it poses a similar threat to the common cold.

But when asked on Sky News this morning about remarks likening Covid to the flu, WHO Covid expert Dr Nabarro said: 'I keep wondering what the people who make these amazing predictions know that I and my colleagues don't know.

'You see, what people are seeing from around the world and reporting to the WHO is this is still a very, very dangerous virus, especially for people who have not been vaccinated and who've not been exposed to it before.'

He warned that the virus will continue to mutate, with more variants 'not far away'.

'So quite honestly, we are not saying that this should be considered to be like flu or indeed like anything else. It's a new virus, and we must go on treating it as though it is full of surprises, very nasty and rather cunning,' Dr Nabarro said.

Governments 'should not suggest' that data has 'suddenly changed' or that the virus has 'suddenly got incredibly weak' and instead focus on 'keeping the virus at bay, preventing people from getting infected if at all possible, and making certain that we are well prepared to deal with further surges as they come', he said.

Dr Nabarro said the end of the pandemic was 'in sight', but warned there is uncertainties around how the pandemic will continue to unfold.

He said: 'The end is in sight, but how long is it going to take to get there? What sort of difficulties will we face on the way? Those are the questions that none of us can answer because this virus continues to give us challenges and surprises.

'It's as though we're just passing the halfway mark in a marathon and we can see that yes, there is an end and fast runners are getting through ahead of us.

'But we've still got a long, long way to trudge and it's going to be tough.'
The WHO's regional director said the continent is entering a 'new phase' of the pandemic, driven by Omicron.
Dr Hans Kluge said: 'While Omicron appears to cause much less severe disease than Delta, we are still seeing a rapid rise in hospitalisations, due to the sheer number of infections.

'This is in addition to a Delta burden that has not entirely passed, and also to the high number of incidental admissions.

'Fortunately, hospitalisations with Omicron result much less frequently in ICU admission. As predicted, most people needing intensive care across the Region are unvaccinated.'

He said the pandemic 'will end' but it is 'far too early to relax.'

Millions of daily infections worldwide, as well as waning immunity means it is 'almost a given that new Covid variants will emerge and return', Dr Kluge said.

But lockdowns may not be needed in future waves due to the high vaccine uptake and antivirals, utilising variant monitoring systems and measures such as ventilating spaces, targeted testing, shielding at-risk groups, face masks and social distancing, he added.

New Coronavirus News from 22 Jan 2022

‘I cried all day’: the anguish of people locked out of Japan by Covid [The Guardian, 22 Jan 2022]

BY Justin McCurry

Travel restrictions have stranded almost 150,000 students, workers and others hoping to join relatives

Late last year, Pablo Ortez quit his job, sold his belongings and prepared to join his wife in Japan, where she is studying for a doctorate.

But 72 hours before he was due to leave Argentina, he checked the Japanese foreign ministry website to find that the government had imposed a near-blanket travel ban to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus.

“I called the Japanese embassy and they said I couldn’t fly,” said Ortez, who has moved in with his mother and does not know when he will be able to join his wife, whom he has not seen since she visited Argentina last April.

The 33-year-old is one of tens of thousands of people with plans to study, work or join relatives in Japan who now find themselves “locked out” of a country that has maintained some of the world’s strictest travel restrictions throughout the pandemic.

The latest measures, imposed at the end of November, apply to all arrivals except Japanese citizens and returning foreign residents – new students, guest workers, technical interns and, in some cases, the foreign spouses and children of Japanese nationals.

Lewis Hussey had set his heart on studying in Japan before he graduates from university this summer. But the travel ban means the Missouri-based student has had to drastically rethink his plans.

“It’s incredibly disappointing,” Hussey, 26, said. “There have been times when it looked like Japan was about to open up, and then it didn’t. It’s frustrating because I could have considered other places. I feel like I’ve been cheated out of the opportunity to study abroad because of the inconsistent and nonsensical approach of the Japanese government.”

The World Health Organization has urged countries not to impose blanket travel bans, warning that they were ineffective in preventing the spread of the virus and created economic and social misery.

Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, is unlikely to make significant changes to the border policy, however, after a recent poll showed 88% of the public believed the measure was “appropriate”.

But it has not prevented Omicron from taking hold in Japan, which reported a record 46,000 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday. This weekend, large parts of the country, including Tokyo, will enter a quasi-state of emergency to relieve pressure on health services.

Japan has imposed tight travel restrictions throughout the pandemic, with moves to relax them quickly undone by waves of infections driven by new variants. The only exception came last summer, when tens of thousands of athletes, officials and journalists arrived for the Tokyo Olympics.

Aware of how mismanagement of the pandemic helped topple his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, Kishida is hoping that travel restrictions will play well among voters during upper house elections in July.

Kishida recently said the ban would be extended until the end of February, but Jade Barry is bracing herself for more delays.

The 29-year-old was poised to fulfil her professional ambition of expanding her hairpiece business when the latest ban went into effect, forcing her to drop plans to scout locations in Tokyo for her new outlet.

“I was devastated,” Barry said from her home near Chicago. “I cried all day and my kids were wondering what was wrong with mom.

“I have been in love with Japan since I was little. Expanding my business there was a way of realising my ultimate goal of starting a life there. I still believe it’s a beautiful country, but to be banned for so long means I feel resentment towards the government.”

Stranded students have found little sympathy among Japanese politicians but have received support from some business leaders, who say the ban will stifle innovation and threaten Japan’s long-term interests as more students look to other countries, including economic rivals such as South Korea.

“I still love Japan, but sometimes I forget why"

Hiroshi Mikitani, chief executive of the e-commerce group Rakuten, has likened the ban to the isolation brought by the sakoku “locked country” policy during the Edo period (1603-1868). On the day Kishida extended the restrictions, Mikitani tweeted: “What is the point of not letting in new foreigners now? Do you want to shut Japan off from the rest of the world?”

A letter to Kishida signed this week by hundreds of academics and experts in Japan-US studies, urged his government to relax border controls to allow educators, students and scholars to enter Japan.

“They become the bridges between Japan and other societies. They are future policymakers, business leaders and teachers,” the letter said. “They are the foundation of the US-Japan alliance and other international relationships that support Japan’s core national interests. The closure is harming Japan’s national interests and international relationships.”

“It’s frustrating,” said Imane, a 20-year-old Canadian student who has waited two years to begin her Japanese-language studies in Tokyo. “It’s been two years of wasting time, waiting for Japan to open its borders.

“I love Japan so this is heartbreaking, but I can’t spend my whole life waiting,” added Imane, who preferred to use only her first name. “If Japan doesn’t open its borders this year I’m going to have to look elsewhere.”

Her frustrations are shared by Vilhelm, a student from Lithuania, who gets up at 4.30am for online classes in international business studies at a university in Tokyo.

“The most frustrating part is that I can see no end to this,” said Vilhelm, who asked that his surname not be used. “I’ve invested in studying in Japan and I feel like it is treating me very unfairly. I still love Japan, but sometimes I forget why.”

Barry took to social media to rally students and other stranded people behind a campaign to end the restrictions, with protests outside Japanese embassies planned for later this month.

“To have the opportunity to come to Japan ripped away is devastating. And I can’t imagine what it’s like not to be able to see your child because of border restrictions. The uncertainty is no longer acceptable. This is literally ruining people’s lives.”

The government responded to mounting criticism by opening the door, if only by a fraction. It will allow 87 students on government scholarships to enter in February, the chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, said last week. But that leaves almost 150,000 others, mostly privately funded, who have been waiting up to two years to begin their studies.

They will continue to live in limbo, unsure of when they will be able to begin their new lives in a country that has effectively become a Covid hermit kingdom.

“Japan is damaging its soft power and its economy because it is punishing people who have a genuine interest in the country,” Ortez said. “It’s ruining its reputation. This will have long-term consequences for Japan.”

Recognising Italy's mistakes in the public health response to COVID-19 [The Lancet, 22 Jan 2022]

AUTHORED BY CHIARA ALFIERI, MARC EGROT,ALICE DESCLAUX, KELLEY SAMS AND ON BEHALF OFCOMESCOV

The Day of the Dead in Italy this year was not only a time for remembrance but also for demanding justice for lives lost to COVID-19. On Nov 2, 2021, members of the #Sereni (also known as Serene and Always United) Association demonstrated in Rome against institutional omerta (ie, law of silence) and for the restoration of a parliamentary commission to examine the management of the epidemic. This event followed 520 complaints that were filed by the association 4 months earlier against the national government, the Ministry of Health, and Lombardy region administrators.

To understand the association's objectives and the events that fuel its purpose, it is necessary to examine the beginning of the pandemic in Lombardy. The national government and regional government of Lombardy's decision to not create a so-called red zone around Alzano Lombardo and Nembro (blocking off entrance to and exit from the two communes) when COVID-19 was discovered in people at the end of February, 2020, is seen to be directly responsible for the spread of infection to other towns throughout the province of Bergamo, particularly the Seriana Valley,1 then throughout Europe. How could a different public health response have stopped the COVID-19 epidemic in Bergamo Province, which went on to become famous in spring of 2020 for corpses piled up in hospitals, churches, and cemeteries and transported by military trucks to the crematoria?

The Lombardy population was shocked by the events and the inconsistency of public health and government authorities alongside an obsolete and unimplemented pandemic plan.2
They were confronted by horror: loved ones dying at home without treatment and alone in hospital, scarcity of oxygen and respirators, and confusion in the identification of cremated bodies. The Istituto Nazionale di Statistica called the events a third world war.3

In reaction, the civil society of Bergamo organised itself into a grassroots justice movement.4

The objectives of the #Sereni Association are to obtain truth, justice, reparation, and dignity and offer emotional support in response to the pain, confusion, and resentment for the families of the deceased and the larger community. Many politicians and citizen activists have gravitated to the movement.

The contribution of anthropologists to documenting and analysing the social and political effects of epidemiological events has been crucial5 for other infectious diseases (eg, Ebola virus disease and AIDS)—for example, in Africa, where networks such as the Réseau Anthropologie des Épidémies Émergentes (of which we are members) have become central to addressing issues such as vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, and trust. Transdisciplinary research produces evidence on the actions of civil society associations, such as the Sereni Association. This evidence is key for institutions to identify and address mistakes in public health response, which is needed to support communities to prepare for future infectious threats, as recommended by WHO's Community Preparedness Unit.6

References
1.Costanzo G Sapienza D
La valle nel virus.
Edizioni Underground, Milan2020
2.Zambon F
Il pesce piccolo: una storia di virus e segreti.
Feltrinelli Editore, Milan2021
3.Blangiardo GC
Una terza guerra mondiale?.
https://www.istat.it/it/files//2020/04/Report_Una-terza-guerra-mondiale.pdf
Date: May 31, 2021
Date accessed: November 29, 2021
4.Alfieri C Desclaux A Sams K Egrot M
Mourning while fighting for justice: the first months of the NOI DENUNCEREMO association, Bergamo, Italy.
https://somatosphere.net/2020/mourning-while-fighting-for-justice.html
5.Sams K Desclaux A Anoko J et al.
Mobilising experience from Ebola to address plague in Madagascar and future epidemics.
Lancet. 2017; 390: 2624-2625
6.WHO
WHO COVID-19 social science in outbreak response. Community-centred approaches to health emergencies: progress, gaps and research priorities.
Date: Oct 4, 2021
Date accessed: November 29, 2021

‘I cried all day’: the anguish of people locked out of Japan by Covid [The Guardian, 22 Jan 2022]

by Justin McCurry

Travel restrictions have stranded almost 150,000 students, workers and others hoping to join relatives

Late last year, Pablo Ortez quit his job, sold his belongings and prepared to join his wife in Japan, where she is studying for a doctorate.

But 72 hours before he was due to leave Argentina, he checked the Japanese foreign ministry website to find that the government had imposed a near-blanket travel ban to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus.

“I called the Japanese embassy and they said I couldn’t fly,” said Ortez, who has moved in with his mother and does not know when he will be able to join his wife, whom he has not seen since she visited Argentina last April.

The 33-year-old is one of tens of thousands of people with plans to study, work or join relatives in Japan who now find themselves “locked out” of a country that has maintained some of the world’s strictest travel restrictions throughout the pandemic.

The latest measures, imposed at the end of November, apply to all arrivals except Japanese citizens and returning foreign residents – new students, guest workers, technical interns and, in some cases, the foreign spouses and children of Japanese nationals.

Lewis Hussey had set his heart on studying in Japan before he graduates from university this summer. But the travel ban means the Missouri-based student has had to drastically rethink his plans.

“It’s incredibly disappointing,” Hussey, 26, said. “There have been times when it looked like Japan was about to open up, and then it didn’t. It’s frustrating because I could have considered other places. I feel like I’ve been cheated out of the opportunity to study abroad because of the inconsistent and nonsensical approach of the Japanese government.”

The World Health Organization has urged countries not to impose blanket travel bans, warning that they were ineffective in preventing the spread of the virus and created economic and social misery.

Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, is unlikely to make significant changes to the border policy, however, after a recent poll showed 88% of the public believed the measure was “appropriate”.

But it has not prevented Omicron from taking hold in Japan, which reported a record 46,000 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday. This weekend, large parts of the country, including Tokyo, will enter a quasi-state of emergency to relieve pressure on health services.

Japan has imposed tight travel restrictions throughout the pandemic, with moves to relax them quickly undone by waves of infections driven by new variants. The only exception came last summer, when tens of thousands of athletes, officials and journalists arrived for the Tokyo Olympics.

Aware of how mismanagement of the pandemic helped topple his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, Kishida is hoping that travel restrictions will play well among voters during upper house elections in July.

Kishida recently said the ban would be extended until the end of February, but Jade Barry is bracing herself for more delays.

The 29-year-old was poised to fulfil her professional ambition of expanding her hairpiece business when the latest ban went into effect, forcing her to drop plans to scout locations in Tokyo for her new outlet.

“I was devastated,” Barry said from her home near Chicago. “I cried all day and my kids were wondering what was wrong with mom.

“I have been in love with Japan since I was little. Expanding my business there was a way of realising my ultimate goal of starting a life there. I still believe it’s a beautiful country, but to be banned for so long means I feel resentment towards the government.”

Stranded students have found little sympathy among Japanese politicians but have received support from some business leaders, who say the ban will stifle innovation and threaten Japan’s long-term interests as more students look to other countries, including economic rivals such as South Korea.

I still love Japan, but sometimes I forget why
Hiroshi Mikitani, chief executive of the e-commerce group Rakuten, has likened the ban to the isolation brought by the sakoku “locked country” policy during the Edo period (1603-1868). On the day Kishida extended the restrictions, Mikitani tweeted: “What is the point of not letting in new foreigners now? Do you want to shut Japan off from the rest of the world?”

A letter to Kishida signed this week by hundreds of academics and experts in Japan-US studies, urged his government to relax border controls to allow educators, students and scholars to enter Japan.

“They become the bridges between Japan and other societies. They are future policymakers, business leaders and teachers,” the letter said. “They are the foundation of the US-Japan alliance and other international relationships that support Japan’s core national interests. The closure is harming Japan’s national interests and international relationships.”

“It’s frustrating,” said Imane, a 20-year-old Canadian student who has waited two years to begin her Japanese-language studies in Tokyo. “It’s been two years of wasting time, waiting for Japan to open its borders.

“I love Japan so this is heartbreaking, but I can’t spend my whole life waiting,” added Imane, who preferred to use only her first name. “If Japan doesn’t open its borders this year I’m going to have to look elsewhere.”

Her frustrations are shared by Vilhelm, a student from Lithuania, who gets up at 4.30am for online classes in international business studies at a university in Tokyo.

A woman in India whose husband is in Japan. Photograph: handout
“The most frustrating part is that I can see no end to this,” said Vilhelm, who asked that his surname not be used. “I’ve invested in studying in Japan and I feel like it is treating me very unfairly. I still love Japan, but sometimes I forget why.”

Barry took to social media to rally students and other stranded people behind a campaign to end the restrictions, with protests outside Japanese embassies planned for later this month.
“To have the opportunity to come to Japan ripped away is devastating. And I can’t imagine what it’s like not to be able to see your child because of border restrictions. The uncertainty is no longer acceptable. This is literally ruining people’s lives.”

The government responded to mounting criticism by opening the door, if only by a fraction. It will allow 87 students on government scholarships to enter in February, the chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, said last week. But that leaves almost 150,000 others, mostly privately funded, who have been waiting up to two years to begin their studies.

They will continue to live in limbo, unsure of when they will be able to begin their new lives in a country that has effectively become a Covid hermit kingdom.

“Japan is damaging its soft power and its economy because it is punishing people who have a genuine interest in the country,” Ortez said. “It’s ruining its reputation. This will have long-term consequences for Japan.”

COVID: Germany's bars and restaurants in despair amid changing pandemic curbs [DW (English), 22 Jan 2022]

BY Sabine Kinkartz

In Germany, people have become used to staying home and eating at home. The owners of bars and restaurants say their business is all but dead.

In Germany, it is generally only people who have been fully vaccinated (three shots) who are allowed to step inside a restaurant or cafe without first taking a COVID-19 test.

In early January, Tim Mälzer, a restaurateur and celebrity TV chef, announced in an Instagram video that he was shutting down his restaurant in Hamburg because of the likelihood that Germany would be tightening COVID rules for restaurants, bars and cafes. In other words, the catering sector would have to introduce 2G+ rules across the country.

2G means "vaccinated" or "recovered" (Ger: "Geimpft" or "Genesen"). Make it 2G+ and a negative coronavirus test is also required. The only exception is for people who have triple vaccination. Tim Mälzer says he expects to reopen his restaurant in February: "In accordance, of course, with all official and enforceable 2G+ rules."

"Enforceable" 2G+ rules? Other restaurateurs, meanwhile, are not beating about the bush. They talk of "a stab in the back," a "catastrophe for businesses." Some said they would rather face another lockdown than implement 2G+ rules outlined in an agreement reached by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the leaders of Germany's federal states in response to rising infection rates across the country.

Lonely days behind the bar
The best way to find out what kind of impact 2G+ is having on the catering sector is to visit places where the new rules already came into force at the end of last year. That is the case with the northern state of Lower Saxony.

Initially, even people who had been triple vaccinated were required to undergo testing before entering a restaurant there. The result, says Robert Vogel, who runs Cafe Esprit in the university town of Göttingen, was "that simply nobody turned up. Nobody!”

Vogel spent two days on his own in the cafe, sending members of staff home. "Then, 48 hours later, authorities made a sudden turnabout, and people who were fully vaccinated didn't after all have to be tested as well," he says.

But, he says, that hardly made a difference, either. "Fact is, the politicians don't have any idea at all about the realities of the catering industry. The bottom line is: People just aren't going to get tested just to have a cup of coffee," he says.

Following massive protests, the state government in Lower Saxony backpedaled. Since mid-December, owners of cafes and restaurants could choose between 2G+ with testing for everybody or 2G if seating capacity was reduced to 70% of previous levels. "It was total chaos," remembers Robert Vogel: "The phone was ringing off the hook. Guests wanted to know what was what." Vogel opted for 2G.

Economic disaster
Cafe Esprit is open 364 days a year, from nine in the morning to two o'clock the next morning. "We do the best breakfast in Göttingen," boasts Vogel, while two waitresses carry trays laden with fresh rolls, fruit, cheese and scrambled eggs across the cafe. In the background, an espresso machine is hissing happily. About half the tables in the cafe are occupied.

"Business is not bad right now. But it's not likely to stay this way all day," says Vogel with a frown. Things begin to slow down after lunchtime, and in the evening most restaurants in town are pretty empty, he says. "The catering trade is disappearing from people's minds," he says with regret. "People are living tense lives. And they've got used to staying home and eating at home."

Olaf Feuerstein blames it on "the sheer quantity of regulations, changes, amendments." Feuerstein, who is head of Göttingen's Hotel and Restaurant Association, says it's impossible to keep up with the constant changes. His association represents 140 businesses. But a third of them have already given up the fight and closed their doors.

In a bid to survive, nearly all of the remaining businesses opted for 2G and against compulsory testing: "In the best-case scenario, it's a zero-sum game, while the alternative is to turn a loss," Feuerstein says.

Grants and subsidies recalled
Robert Vogel can only agree with that assessment. He describes his current situation as an "economic disaster."

"In December 2019, we sold gift vouchers for the cafe worth around €6,000 ($6,800). In December 2021, it was just €128," he says. For months now, he has been living from his savings and says his pension fund has now been used up.

Anybody who can prove a loss in turnover of more than 30% is entitled to financial support from the state. In the lockdown in November 2020 and May 2021, a lot of people in the catering trade took advantage of these subsidies. The first payments were, says Vogel, a "real bonanza."

In the meantime, though, auditors have been taking a closer look at what payments were made and on what basis. For some, that's led to bad news. "I know people who have had to pay back everything," Vogel says.

The state of Lower Saxony has joined ranks with Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt, and, for the time being at least, they are not applying the agreement on 2G+ in the catering business. The idea is to avoid doing anything that will put even more jobs and businesses at risk. And the eastern state of Thüringia says it will enforce tougher measures only in infection hotspots.

In other states, however, 2G+ is in force, although there are important distinctions. Berlin restaurateur Vincenzo Berenyi says he had to do a lot of research to find out whether individuals who have been vaccinated twice and then recovered from a COVID infection are in the same category as people who have had three jabs — which is standard practice in North-Rhine Westphalia. But, he was firmly told, that is not the case in Berlin.

The new coronavirus variant omicron has already spread so rapidly in Berlin that the seven-day incidence rate for new infections per 100,000 residents is over 1,000. Against this alarming backdrop, Berenyi now concedes that 2G+ might be "irritating, but it's also necessary … something we're going to have to get used to."

He is determined that his restaurant will survive the pandemic. For January, he has applied for financial assistance from three state funds, including a grant of €3,000 to meet additional costs arising from the 2G+ checks. To cut back expenditure, he has stopped taking on any new staff if people leave. "Our dishwasher handed in his notice. But I'll take care of that myself now," he says.

Will things get back to normal? And when? It's simply not possible to tell, says Berenyi. But there's one thing he is sure about: "The 2G+ rules are certainly going to remain in place until mid-May."

Germany Declares Most Countries 'High Risk Areas' [The Berlin Spectator, 22 Jan 2022]

By Imanuel Marcus

From the perspective of Germany, 145 countries in the world are ‘High Risk Areas’. Nineteen more will be added on Sunday. By now, it would be a lot easier to declare the entire world a ‘High Risk Area’ and list the few exceptions.

Berlin, January 22nd, 2022 (The Berlin Spectator) — There are 195 countries in the world.
Germany has declared 145 of them ‘High Risk Areas’ because their extremely high Coronavirus infection numbers make them dangerous places. When the Federal Republic is done adding nineteen more countries to the list tomorrow, Ukraine and the Vatican will be the only spots in Europe that are not ‘High Risk Areas’. Well, Germany itself is not on the list either, but it definitely would be if it was a foreign country.

Long List

These are the nineteen countries that will be ‘High Risk Areas’ from Sunday, January 23rd, 2022:
• Algeria
• Bhutan
• Brazil
• Chile
• Ecuador
• India
• Japan
• Kazakhstan
• Kosovo
• Maldives
• Moldova
• Mongolia
• Morocco
• Nepal
• Paraguay
• Romania
• Saudi Arabia
• Tunisia
• Uzbekistan

An this is the entire list of ‘High Risk Areas’ in the world (includes the 19 countries that are being added on Sunday, January 23rd, 2022):
• Albania (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Algeria (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Andorra (high-risk area since 19 December 2021)
• Angola (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Antigua and Barbuda (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Argentina (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Australia (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Austria with the exception of the municipality of Mittelberg and Jungholz and Risstal
in the municipal area of Vomp and Eben am Achensee (high-risk area since 16
January 2022)
• Bahamas (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Bahrain (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Barbados (high-risk area since 19 September 2021)
• Belarus (high-risk area since 1 October 2021)
• Belgium (high-risk area since 21 November 2021)
• Belize (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Benin (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Bhutan (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Bolivia, Plurinational State of (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Bosnia and Herzegovina (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Botswana (high-risk area since 4 January 2022)
• Brazil (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Bulgaria (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Burkina Faso (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Burundi (high-risk area since 26 September 2021)
• Cabo Verde (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Cameroon (high-risk area since 24 October 2021)
• Canada (high-risk area since 1 January 2022)
• Central African Republic (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Chad (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Chile (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Colombia (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Comoros (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Congo, Democratic Republic of the (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Congo, Republic of the (high-risk area since 24 October 2021)
• Costa Rica (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Côte d’Ivoire (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Croatia (high-risk area since 24 October 2021)
• Cyprus (high-risk area since 25 December 2021)
• Czech Republic (high-risk area since 14 November 2021)
• Denmark including the Faroe Islands and Greenland (high-risk area since 19
December 2021)
• Djibouti (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Dominica (high-risk area since 22 August 2021)
• Dominican Republic (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Ecuador (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Egypt (high-risk area since 24 January 2021)
• Equatorial Guinea (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Eritrea (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Estonia (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Eswatini (high-risk area since 4 January 2022)
• Ethiopia (high-risk area since 26 September 2021)
• Fiji (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Finland (high-risk area since 25 December 2021)
• France (high-risk area since 19 December 2021) and the following French overseas
departments and overseas territories:
o Guadeloupe (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
o Guiana (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
o Martinique (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
o Mayotte (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
o Réunion (high-risk area since 19 December 2021)
o Saint Barthélemy (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
o Saint Martin (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
o Saint Pierre and Miquelon (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Gabon (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Gambia (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Georgia (high-risk area since 25 July 2021)
• Ghana (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Greece (high-risk area since 21 November 2021)
• Grenada (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Guinea (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Guinea-Bissau (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Guyana (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Haiti (high-risk area since 8 August 2021)
• Hungary (high-risk area since 14 November 2021)
• Iceland (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• India (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Ireland (high-risk area since 21 November 2021)
• Israel (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Italy (high-risk area since 1 January 2022)
• Jamaica (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Japan (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Jordan (high-risk area since 5 December 2021)
• Kazakhstan (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Kenya (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Korea (Democratic People’s Republic) (high-risk area since 8 August 2021)
• Kosovo (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Kuwait (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Latvia (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (high-risk area since 14 November 2021)
• Lebanon (high-risk area since 19 December 2021)
• Lesotho (high-risk area since 4 January 2022)
• Liberia (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Libya (high-risk area since 18 July 2021)
• Liechtenstein (high-risk area since 5 December 2021)
• Lithuania (high-risk area since 1 October 2021)
• Luxembourg (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Madagascar (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Malawi (high-risk area since 4 January 2022)
• Maldives (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Mali (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Malta (high-risk area since 1 January 2022)
• Mauritania (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Mexico (high-risk area since 8 August 2021)
• Moldova, Republic of (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Monaco (high-risk area since 25 December 2021)
• Mongolia (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Montenegro (high-risk area since 15 August 2021)
• Morocco (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Mozambique (high-risk area since 4 January 2022)
• Namibia (high-risk area since 4 January 2022)
• Nepal (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Netherlands (high-risk area since 21 November 2021) and alloverseas parts of the
Kingdom of the Netherlands
o Aruba (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
o Bonaire (high-risk area since 27 July 2021)
o Curaçao (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
o Sint Eustatius (high-risk area since 27 July 2021)
o Saba (high-risk area since 27 July 2021)
o Sint Maarten (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Niger (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Nigeria (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• North Macedonia (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Norway (high-risk area since 19 December 2021)
• Panama (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Papua New Guinea (high-risk area since 8 August 2021)
• Paraguay (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Peru (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Philippines (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Poland (high-risk area since 5 December 2021)
• Portugal incl. the Azores and Madeira (high-risk area since 25 December 2021)
• Qatar (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Romania (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Russian Federation (high-risk area since 7 July 2021)
• Rwanda (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Saint Kitts and Nevis (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Saint Lucia (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• San Marino (high-risk area since 1 January 2022)
• São Tomé and Príncipe (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Saudi Arabia (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Senegal (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Serbia (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Seychelles (high-risk area since 14 February 2021)
• Sierra Leone (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Slovakia (high-risk area since 31 October 2021)
• Slovenia (high-risk area since 26 September 2021)
• Somalia (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• South Africa (high-risk area since 4 January 2022)
• South Sudan (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Spain incl. the Balearic and Canary Islands (high-risk area since 25 December 2021)
• Sudan (high-risk area since 31 January 2021)
• Suriname (high-risk area since 16 January 2022)
• Sweden (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Switzerland (high-risk area since 5 December 2021)
• Syrian Arab Republic (high-risk area since 31 January 2021)
• Tajikistan (high-risk area since 8 August 2021)
• Tanzania (high-risk area since 14 March 2021)
• Togo (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Trinidad and Tobago (high-risk area since 8 August 2021)
• Tunisia (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Turkey (high-risk area since 17 August 2021)
• Turkmenistan (high-risk area since 8 August 2021)
• Uganda (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• United Arab Emirates (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland incl. all British Overseas
Territories, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands (high-risk area since 4 January 2022)
• United States of America (high-risk area since 25 December 2021)
• Uruguay (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Uzbekistan (high-risk area since 23 January 2022)
• Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of (high-risk area since 19 September 2021)
• Vietnam (high-risk area since 15 August 2021)
• Yemen (high-risk area since 10 October 2021)
• Zambia (high-risk area since 9 January 2022)
• Zimbabwe (high-risk area since 4 January 2022)
Entry Into Germany
People who have set foot into any of the countries listed within ten days before they enter Germany have to follow several rules, unless they are commuters, truck drivers who deliver goods to Germany or part of flight crews. Here they are:
1. Persons who come in from those countries, or who have been there, need to register on this website (safe link, explanations in fifteen languages, including English) beforehand. They will receive a confirmation which they need to bring along and show at the border.
2. They need to bring a fresh and negative Corona test result (antigen or PCR), a Corona vaccination certificate which shows they got at least two shots or proof for their status as persons who recently recovered from COVID-19.
3. They are required to upload the certificates they bring to the registration website. The confirmation they receive will contain an upload link.
4. Persons who enter Germany from ‘High Risk Areas’ generally have to go into quarantine for 10 days. This period can be shortened the moment the people affected upload test certificates with negative outcomes, vaccination certificates or documents that prove they recently recovered to the website mentioned. Doing so before arriving in Germany will get rid of the quarantine.
5. Persons who come in from ‘Virus Variant Areas’ have to go into quarantine for 14 days. In this case, there is no ‘get-out-of-quarantine-for-free card’. Except there are no ‘Virus Variant Areas’ right now. All but 31 countries in the world are ‘High Risk Areas’.

Russia sees record Covid-19 cases second day running [Times of India, 22 Jan 2022]

MOSCOW: The Russian government on Saturday reported a record number of new coronavirus cases after the Kremlin warned of a looming surge in cases driven by the Omicron variant.

An online portal dedicated to the coronavirus outbreak registered 57,212 new daily cases, surging past the previous record set Friday of 49,513.

Following a strict but brief national lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic, Russia has held back on curbs hoping instead to protect its struggling economy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned last week that the country needed to ready for an Omicron-driven surge, calling for more testing and vaccinations.

In the capital Moscow -- the epicentre of the virus outbreak in Russia -- there was a record 16,094 new cases.

Several vaccines developed in Russia have been freely available for months but still only around half of the country is fully innoculated due to widespread vaccine scepticism.

Putin has previously said Russia's eminent Sputnik V vaccine could be "more effective" than Western-developed jabs.

Russian government figures show 325,433 deaths from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic -- the highest death toll in Europe.

Those figures are contradicted by state statistics agency Rosstat, which counts Covid deaths under a broader definition and says fatalities are around double the official figure.

Globally, Russia has the fourth-highest number of virus-related fatalities, according to an AFP tally, after the United States, Brazil and India.

COVID-19 fatigue sets in as US marks two years since first reported case [Fox17, 22 Jan 2022]

President Joe Biden stepped into the Oval Office with a 200-page plan to defeat COVID-19, a seven-point blueprint focused on restoring trust and safely reopening the country. It was a road map that was put to the test as an ever-evolving virus grips the United States.

On his first full day in office, the president spoke about hospitals at capacity, with short staff and low morale. One year later, the scene hasn't changed much.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the weekly average number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 is over 140,000. It's at an all-time high not seen since the Biden administration took over.

The key difference between the start of 2021 compared to 2022 is the tools at our disposal. President Biden devoted his early days in the White House to expanding access to vaccines, making a pledge in March to make shots widely available by May 1 and small gatherings returning by July 4.

Biden made it a goal to provide 100 million shots in his first 100 days in office, a target the administration was able to double by late April. It showed signs of optimism heading into the summer.

"The bottom line is the virus is on the run and America is coming back," President Biden said. "We're coming back together."

The CDC decided to strip its mask mandate for fully vaccinated individuals in most settings and situations. The guidance change was met with some smiling faces — and confusion.
Hospitalizations began dipping to a pandemic low in early June, with signs of normalcy returning.

This was joined by a pitch to sweeten the deal for Americans to roll up their sleeves. There was free pizza, free beer, lottery prizes, and other incentives totaling millions of dollars.

There were also signs of accomplishment on another major goal of getting kids back in classrooms.

However, this taste of normalcy was quickly complicated by the emergence of the Delta variant of the virus. The fast-spreading outbreak sent daily case counts soaring, hospitals back to a breaking point and mask mandates returning for indoor settings.

"We're in a tough stretch and it could last for a while," President Biden said. "This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated."

Vaccination levels began to tick back up as more Americans became eligible for the shot, including kids as young as 12. Near the holiday season, children as young as 5 were also cleared for the vaccine.

Then the more transmissible omicron variant came on the scene, dooming one of the Biden administration's early goals of reaching a semblance of "normalcy" by Christmas.

Lines wrapped around street corners for COVID tests and businesses were forced to shutter due to sick employees. It was a COVID conundrum carrying into the new year with the White House boosting its efforts with booster shots. The administration also created a website allowing Americans to order free at-home test kits.

"Testing, we should have done it quicker," President Biden said. "But we're doing remarkably well now."

COVID-19 fatigue set in across the United States, sending the president's approval rating plummeting.

According to a CBS News-YouGov poll, just under half of Americans approve the president's job in handling the pandemic, compared to 67% approval last March. The numbers are grim for an administration at risk of losing Democratic control of Congress as we near the midterm elections this November.