New Coronavirus News from 28 Mar 2022

COVID Wave That Hits Kids Hardest Is Headed to the U.S. [The Daily Beast, 28 Mar 2022]

by David Axe

New Omicron subvariant BA.2 has been disproportionately affecting children as it surges across Europe. Its next stop is the U.S.

The United Kingdom is a month into its latest surge of SARS-CoV-2 infections. It’s not nearly as lethal as previous COVID-19 surges. But that doesn’t mean it’s no big deal.

The new wave of cases in the U.K., which is part of a wider wave across Europe and Asia that’s driven by the new BA.2 subvariant of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, is disproportionately affecting children.

More pediatric cases. More hospitalizations. And possibly more long COVID, the poorly understood syndrome characterized by fatigue, brain fog, and other symptoms that can linger months or years after infection clears up.

Experts disagree on exactly how dangerous BA.2 is for kids. But they agree on the underlying factors that have driven increases in cases in younger people. Edwin Michael, an epidemiologist at the Center for Global Health Infectious Disease Research at the University of South Florida, blamed the U.K.’s spike in pediatric COVID-19 on “low vaccination rates in children and full reopening of not only schools but the whole society from prior to Christmas.”

Under-5s are the only age group in the U.K. that isn’t authorized for the vaccines. This same age group is also uniquely vulnerable to viral transmission at home. “Since children are dependent on their caregivers, it is very difficult to isolate an infected household member effectively,” Carlos Oliveira, a Yale Medicine pediatrician, told The Daily Beast. “It is also challenging to have young children consistently wear masks or maintain social distancing.”

Those factors are hardly unique to the U.K. That means that other countries, including the United States, should expect a whole bunch of sick kids once the BA.2 wave crashes on their shores.

Scientists first detected BA.2 last fall during the initial Omicron surge. The subvariant is highly mutated–even more so than BA.1, the first major Omicron subvariant to become dominant.
Some experts described BA.1 as the most contagious respiratory virus they’d ever seen. BA.2 is even worse.

So it was inevitable that BA.2 would eventually outcompete other variants and subvariants and become dominant, with a commensurate surge in cases. Sure enough, BA.2 swept across Hong Kong and neighboring Shenzhen in China earlier this year. It then flooded into Europe, including the U.K.

The numbers tell the story. The U.K.’s BA.1 surge peaked in early January with a weekly average of 180,000 daily new cases then crashed, fast. By late February, the weekly average of daily new infections was just 40,000.

Then BA.2 arrived. Cases spiked again—to a recent peak of 125,000 daily new cases.
Thankfully, a combination of vaccinations and natural immunity from past infection blunted the worst impacts of both Omicron subvariants. Three-quarters of the U.K.’s 67 million residents are fully vaccinated and more than half are boosted.

So hospitalizations and deaths didn’t increase nearly as much as cases did during both the BA.1 and BA.2 waves. On the worst day of BA.1 on Feb. 2, 535 Britons died with COVID-19. Compare that to the worst day of the surge in cases attributed to the earlier Delta variant back in January 2021, when 1,820 U.K. residents died.

But it hasn’t been all good news. Among the thousands of BA.1 and BA.2 patients, U.K. health officials have noted a growing proportion of younger people. Between late December and mid-January, the number of kids 17 or younger admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 swelled threefold to an average of 120 per day.

“Further analysis by age group shows that the rise is most rapid among children under 5 years, and highest in infants aged under 1 year,” the U.K. Health Security Agency stated in a Jan. 14 briefing. Kids now account for a higher proportion of COVID-19 patients than ever before in some countries.

According to the U.K. Office for National Statistics, 2-to-11-year-olds had the highest rate of infections of any age group in the country as of early March, with 4 percent testing positive during the week ending March 5.

That makes sense. While children generally have stronger immune systems than adults, they also come with unique lifestyle factors that can erase the benefits of a better immune response when it comes to COVID-19. They go to school—and schools have been wide open and largely unmasked in the U.K. and many other countries for months now. They also visit friends and extended family and travel with their parents.

“I do think that this increased rate of pediatric patients being hospitalized is due to more contact with people and to lower vaccination rates in this population,” Cindy Prins, a University of Florida epidemiologist, told The Daily Beast. “I think that it’s not just the reopening of schools that is causing more exposures among children, but also may be due to families participating in more activities, like travel and social activities.”

And kids have also been the last to get authorized for the vaccines, owing in part to the need to do additional trials focused on younger subjects. The U.K. authorized the vaccination for 12- to 17-year-olds last August, nine months after approving the leading vaccines for adults.
Authorization for 5- to 12-year-olds followed in February, but only vulnerable children in that age group have been offered vaccines so far. Under-5s still don’t have the green light.
Even among kids who are cleared to get the vaccines, vaccine uptake has been awful. In the U.K., just a quarter of 11- to 15-year-olds are fully vaccinated.

The fear isn’t necessarily that thousands of children are going to die from COVID-19 in the U.K. and other countries as BA.2 runs its course. All COVID-19 variants and subvariants tend to cause minor illness in younger people with their tougher immune systems and fewer comorbidities. “Pediatricians are not reporting Omicron to be a more serious or severe disease in children and young people in the U.K.,” the U.K. Health Security Agency said.

The main worry is long COVID. Even if it doesn’t kill them, SARS-CoV-2 could make a lot of kids very sick for a very long time.

As many as half of all adults who catch SARS-CoV-2 deal with some form of long COVID.

Long COVID in adults tends to manifest as lingering fatigue and confusion, and sometimes a cough. There’s also risk of long-term damage to the heart, lungs, and brain.

It’s not clear whether children are at the same risk. Up to one-third of kids who had COVID-19 could suffer long-term symptoms, according to the University of California-Davis pediatrician Dean Blumberg.

Emphasis on could. There haven’t been many high-quality studies on long COVID in children, ones that feature a good control group for comparison between kids with COVID-19 and those who are COVID-free. That lack of good scholarship makes Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, reluctant to draw firm conclusions about the danger long COVID poses to kids. “We need to figure this out better,” Offit told The Daily Beast.

Other experts are less reluctant. Oliveira cited a long list of long COVID symptoms he’s seen in children. The worst outcome for kids, post-COVID, is an inflammatory disease called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, or MIS-C.

“This inflammatory condition is rare, occurring in approximately one out of 3,000 infections, yet it is quite severe, often leading to injury in multiple organs like the heart, kidney, and liver,” Oliveira said. “Fortunately, most recover with aggressive immune therapy, though some children with MIS-C can have lingering cardiac and neurocognitive issues.”

It’s going to take more time and more study to clarify exactly how at-risk children in the U.K. and other countries are as BA.2 and other recent novel-coronavirus subvariants put more and more young people in the hospital.

Studying long COVID in under-5s is particularly difficult, Oliveira said. “Because pre-school children tend to be less verbal, it has been difficult to characterize the extent of symptoms post-infection.”

“I’m also concerned about the more long-term consequences of infection that may not show up for many years and may cause chronic health problems as these children age,” Prins chimed in.

While we wait for more data, the potential for disaster might only grow. “From a policy perspective, governments need to ensure that they can reintroduce mitigation and surveillance measures if and when a new variant of concern emerges,” Duncan Robertson, a policy analyst at the U.K.’s Loughborough University, told The Daily Beast. But there doesn’t appear to be any political will in the U.K. or other rich countries to close schools again. Mask mandates are becoming unpopular, too.

And there’s no rush to authorize vaccines for under-5s. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration appeared to be ready to authorize shots for the youngest kids back in February before abruptly changing course and calling for more data.

So it should come as no surprise if kids continue to account for a growing share of COVID-19 hospitalizations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. They’re mostly unprotected by vaccines and are mixing it up at school and on vacation while the most contagious subvariant becomes dominant in more and more countries.

“Politicians and governments are trying to downplay this as they are desperate to keep economies open,” Michael said. “This generation might pay for these types of policies with their health later in life.”

UK COVID memorial wall anniversary: The pandemic still raging, the criminals still at large [WSWS, 28 Mar 2022]

by Thomas Scripps

Today’s day of reflection, marking the first anniversary of the National Covid Memorial Wall in London is one of the few genuine expressions of the popular response to the pandemic. It combines sorrow at the enormous and needless loss of life with a call for those responsible to be brought to justice.

The wall was begun when the first red heart was painted on the 500-metre wall facing the Houses of Parliament, across the River Thames. It is the project of campaign group Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK.

A silent procession along its length will take place at 3.30pm, with a petition calling for the wall to be made a permanent memorial to be handed into Downing Street at 4.30pm. It currently has over 100,000 signatures. A candlelit procession will take place at 8pm.

These vigils are held in the face of a government determined to erase the memorial wall in the heart of Westminster. Last May, Prime Minister Boris Johnson pointedly endorsed a different memorial tucked away in St Paul’s Cathedral, telling Parliament: “Like many across this Chamber I was deeply moved when I visited the COVID memorial wall opposite Parliament and I wholeheartedly support the plan for a memorial in St Paul’s cathedral which will provide a fitting place of reflection in the heart of our capital.”

Johnson et al fear and despise the memorial wall as a testament to the crimes they have committed and now continue, and of the overwhelming popular hostility to his government.

Each individually drawn heart represents one of the more than 188,000 lives lost to the pandemic. This appalling death toll is the direct result of government policy, summed up by Johnson’s infamous outburst, “No more fucking lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” A day after this statement became public, Johnson scurried to the memorial at night so he could claim to have visited without having to encounter the people whose loved ones his government murdered.

A deadly and highly infectious novel virus has been allowed to run rampant through the population for the last two years. Its spread was only briefly interrupted by lockdowns forced on the Conservatives by an angry public and implemented to prevent a revolt in the working class prompted by the collapse of the National Health Service.

With every reopening of the economy, the government moved closer to its objective of “learning to live with the virus”.

The consequences are staggering. As well as the terrible loss of life, three quarters of a million have at some stage been hospitalised with the virus. As of January 31, 1.5 million people were suffering with Long COVID—685,000 of them had been ill for more than a year.

In remembering the dead, the memorial wall is an indictment of those responsible. It also draws attention to the ongoing dangers posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which the government is doing its best to hide.

Having ended all public health measures to combat the spread of the virus, reporting of cases is being steadily scaled back and funding to key surveillance studies cut.Testing will no longer be universally free from next month.

But for all these efforts, the reality of “living with COVID” is becoming ever clearer. According to the weekly Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey, nearly 3.5 million people were infected with COVID in the week ending March 19, a one million increase on the week before.
England’s infection rate of one in 16 people is close to its historic high of one in 15 and Scotland’s rate of one in 11 is the highest ever.

Government claims that the vaccination programme has rendered these numbers irrelevant are lies. Vaccination is a vital instrument in controlling the virus, but is undermined by a vaccine-only strategy which allows it to both continue circulating and mutating.

Imperial College London Professor of Immunology Danny Altmann published yesterday, “Why the UK can’t rely on boosters to get through each new wave of Covid”. He writes, “The vaccines rapidly induce hugely high levels of protective, neutralising antibodies in most people, but these levels wane within months of each sequential dose…

“[N]ew evidence from the past two years suggests that encounters with different variants of Covid or different vaccine types can alter the effectiveness of later jabs in surprising ways—an effect called immune imprinting. This raises the possibility that booster performance could be even less predictable and effective in the future.”

As of January 31, nearly 600,000 of the then 14.8 million total recorded infections in the UK were re-infections. Many people have been fallen ill three times with different variants.

Moreover, there are indications that the government’s relentless propaganda to declare the pandemic “over” is sabotaging the vaccine rollout. Less than half of the 560,000 severely immuno-suppressed people in the UK have received a fourth vaccination shot, on offer since September.

Claims that the emergence of the Omicron variant means that COVID’s spread can be tolerated are proving disastrous. Driven by the rising wave of infections, hospitalisations have risen significantly, with the number of COVID patients increasing from 10,554 on February 26, to 17,440 last Thursday. For over-75s, the weekly rate of admission for COVID patients is at its highest level in a year. The number of people being treated primarily for COVID increased 50 percent in the two weeks to March 24.

Since Johnson announced his “Living with COVID” strategy on February 21, nearly 4,000 people have been killed by the virus at a rate of 110 a day, equivalent to roughly 40,000 a year. According to the latest survey Long COVID figures jumped by 200,000 in a month, with 35–49-year-olds in the most deprived areas the most likely to be affected.

Unable to simply sweep the pandemic and its response under the carpet, the government has sought to defuse public anger using the tried and tested method of a public inquiry. Like every other before it, this is a stage-managed affair, designed to spend as long as possible asking the wrong questions. The chairperson, retired judge Lady Hallett, was directly appointed by Johnson. Her terms of reference exclude bringing the guilty to justice.

Anyone who wants to know where this is heading should look at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, looking into 72 deaths in one tower fire on one night, now in its fifth year and with no end in sight. In that time, the corporations involved in the refurbishment of the tower, still raking in profits, have been granted immunity from prosecution.

Johnson can promise a “frank and candid” COVID inquiry because he knows his own protection is assured.

The Labour Party poses as a supporter of the memorial wall and the campaign to make it permanent. This is revolting cynicism. The Johnson government could not have got away with its crimes in the last two years if it had not been supported by Labour every step of the way—with the party and the trade unions signing up to every unsafe reopening of the economy and of schools that became the main vectors for the virus.

The World Socialist Web Site is conducting a Global Workers’ Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic, designed to expose criminal governments and their enablers through the testimony of workers and scientific experts around the world. Through the Inquest, the WSWS is building support for a scientific policy aimed at the globally coordinated elimination of COVID-19. We encourage those affected by the pandemic to contact us today.

Commentary: UK must live with COVID-19, not pretend it no longer exists [CNA, 28 Mar 2022]

by Anjana Ahuja

If we want lasting freedom from COVID-19, we must accept the need to continue mitigating its risks, says the Financial Times' Anjana Ahuja.

LONDON: COVID-19 is a capricious foe. Just as the United Kingdom government updated its “Living with COVID-19” strategy last month, case numbers began creeping up again.

According to the Office for National Statistics, just under 4.3 million people in the UK were infected in the week ending March 19, thanks to the more transmissible Omicron BA.2 sub-variant, waning boosters and the easing of restrictions.

No matter - from April, free universal testing for COVID-19 in the UK will end and many National Health Service (NHS) testing labs will close.

The legal requirement to isolate if positive has been downgraded to guidance with related financial support scrapped. Masks have been largely discarded. Surveillance studies, including the Zoe Covid app, are being defunded or scaled back.

The government that recommended handwashing to the tune of “Happy Birthday” sung twice, marked the second birthday of the pandemic by washing its hands of responsibility to go on managing it, aside from pledging fourth jabs and antivirals.

There is a world of difference between learning to live with a virus that is still circulating and pretending it no longer exists. If we really want the former, we should avoid doing the latter.

WE LIVE WITH OTHER DANGERS BUT DON'T IGNORE THE RISKS
There are many other areas of life in which risk and uncertainty are managed as a partnership between the state and the individual, with personal responsibility exercised within a framework set by government. We do not disregard the dangers of the road or the workplace but instead work to mitigate them.

Signs in the window of a Sainsbury's supermarket store, in London, Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022. Face coverings are no longer required by law anywhere in England. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
There is a world of difference between learning to live with a virus that is still circulating and pretending it no longer exists. If we really want the former, we should avoid doing the latter.

WE LIVE WITH OTHER DANGERS BUT DON'T IGNORE THE RISKS
There are many other areas of life in which risk and uncertainty are managed as a partnership between the state and the individual, with personal responsibility exercised within a framework set by government. We do not disregard the dangers of the road or the workplace but instead work to mitigate them.

From getting behind the wheel right through to parking, my freedom to drive is circumscribed by the recognition of the rights and safety of others.

By law, I must possess a driving licence; my car must be taxed, insured and roadworthy. Seat belts, and child seats for young children, are mandatory. Speed limits, traffic lights and road signs further squeeze my freedom to cruise as I please, as do drink-driving laws, parking restrictions and a ban on mobile phone use. The worst driving offences carry the risk of a long prison sentence.

Drivers rarely rail against these measures as intolerable infringements on liberty. Rather, being able to drive at all is synonymous with freedom.

So, given those extensive restrictions, how deadly are the roads? An estimated 580 people were killed in UK road traffic accidents in the first six months of 2021 or about 22 people a week. By comparison, there were 820 deaths involving COVID-19 in the week ending March 11.

PREVENTING INFECTIONS STILL THE BETTER STRATEGY
The removal of all COVID-19 measures in England (Scotland has delayed) means infected individuals are now free to mix socially at work, in schools, public transport, shops and restaurants. The virus is spreading unchecked again.

There has been little thought, and even less empathy, spared for the clinically vulnerable, who have shielded for two years. They have been told they can continue to receive free tests (to enable early access to antivirals), but report struggling to get them.

Preventing infection in the first place, through public health measures such as masking in crowded settings, ventilation and testing is a better strategy for all of us, not just in the short term but to avoid "long COVID".

Dismantling our pandemic infrastructure is also a strategy for losing sight of new variants, wherever they may come from.

China, the sole bearer of the zero-COVID flag, is a country to watch, given that few citizens have immunity from natural infection and the country’s homegrown vaccines are not quite as protective as others. Take-up among the elderly, lulled by the zero-COVID strategy into thinking vaccines are unnecessary, has been low compared with in Europe.

Omicron is now on the rise in a global population of 1.4 billion people. If the record mortality rates in Hong Kong are a harbinger of what is to come, it will become even harder to pretend the virus no longer exists.

New Coronavirus News from 29 Mar 2022

1,000 more people die with Covid in UK as close to 600,000 new cases detected [Wales Online, 29 Mar 2022]

BY Neil Shaw

The numbers come after te relaxation of all Covid rules and amid the rise of a new strain

Some 200,000 children are off school in England due to coronavirus

A thousand more people died with Covid in the last seven days according to the UK Health Security Agency. The UKHSA says there were 998 deaths of people with Covid in the seven days up to March 28 in the UK.

Over the same time 587,721 new cases of Covid were detected. The rules on testing for Covid change on Friday when free lateral flow tests in England will be scrapped.

The surge in cases and deaths follows a relaxation of almost all Covid rules, and as experts say a new strain has now become dominant. Omicron B.2 - also known as Stealth Covid - is now the dominant strain.

Some 200,000 children are off school in England due to coronavirus, the Education Secretary said, as he promised more details on rapid testing this week when universal free provision is stopped.

Nadhim Zahawi said further information about lateral flow tests will be set out on Friday, when mass free testing will end in England.

The Government has said free tests will only be made available to the most vulnerable but an education union has said removing free access when Covid-19 cases are high “feels irresponsible”, while a health expert labelled it “a disaster” for NHS workers.

There has been confusion within the NHS as to whether tests will remain free for staff, with the NHS Confederation saying workers may be forced to pay about £50 a month if they have to fund the mandatory tests themselves, as it called for clarity over the issue.

School leaders have also expressed concern over “worrying” reports of a recent rise in Covid cases in schools, warning that the issue could get worse when families have to pay for tests.

Around one in 16 people in private households in England – or 3.5 million people – are likely to have had Covid-19 in the week to March 19, according to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures.

New Coronavirus News from 27 Mar 2022

Shanghai starts China’s biggest COVID-19 lockdown in 2 years [The Seattle Times, 27 Mar 2022]

BEIJING (AP) — China began its most extensive lockdown in two years Monday to conduct mass testing and control a growing outbreak in Shanghai as questions are raised about the economic toll of the nation’s “zero-COVID” strategy.

China’s financial capital and largest city with 26 million people, Shanghai had managed its smaller, past outbreaks with limited lockdowns of housing compounds and workplaces where the virus was spreading. But the citywide lockdown that will conducted in two phases will be China’s most extensive since the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, confined its 11 million people to their homes for 76 days in early 2020.

Shanghai’s Pudong financial district and nearby areas will be locked down from Monday to Friday as mass testing gets underway, the local government said. In the second phase of the lockdown, the vast downtown area west of the Huangpu River that divides the city will start its own five-day lockdown Friday.

Residents will be required to stay home and deliveries will be left at checkpoints to ensure there is no contact with the outside world. Offices and all businesses not considered essential will be closed and public transport suspended.

Already, many communities within Shanghai have been locked down for the past week, with their housing compounds blocked off with blue and yellow plastic barriers and residents required to submit to multiple tests for COVID-19. Shanghai’s Disneyland theme park is among the businesses that closed earlier. Automaker Tesla is also suspending production at its Shanghai plant, according to media reports.

Panic-buying was reported on Sunday, with supermarket shelves cleared of food, beverages and household items. Additional barriers were being erected in neighborhoods Monday, with workers in hazmat suits staffing checkpoints.

BEIJING (AP) — China began its most extensive lockdown in two years Monday to conduct mass testing and control a growing outbreak in Shanghai as questions are raised about the economic toll of the nation’s “zero-COVID” strategy.

China’s financial capital and largest city with 26 million people, Shanghai had managed its smaller, past outbreaks with limited lockdowns of housing compounds and workplaces where the virus was spreading. But the citywide lockdown that will conducted in two phases will be China’s most extensive since the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, confined its 11 million people to their homes for 76 days in early 2020.

Shanghai’s Pudong financial district and nearby areas will be locked down from Monday to Friday as mass testing gets underway, the local government said. In the second phase of the lockdown, the vast downtown area west of the Huangpu River that divides the city will start its own five-day lockdown Friday.

Residents will be required to stay home and deliveries will be left at checkpoints to ensure there is no contact with the outside world. Offices and all businesses not considered essential will be closed and public transport suspended.

Already, many communities within Shanghai have been locked down for the past week, with their housing compounds blocked off with blue and yellow plastic barriers and residents required to submit to multiple tests for COVID-19. Shanghai’s Disneyland theme park is among the businesses that closed earlier. Automaker Tesla is also suspending production at its Shanghai plant, according to media reports.

Panic-buying was reported on Sunday, with supermarket shelves cleared of food, beverages and household items. Additional barriers were being erected in neighborhoods Monday, with workers in hazmat suits staffing checkpoints.

That requires lockdowns and mass testing, with close contacts often being quarantined at home or in a central government facility. The strategy focuses on eradicating community transmission of the virus as quickly as possible.

While officials, including Communist Party leader Xi Jinping have encouraged more targeted measures, local officials tend to take a more extreme approach, concerned with being fired or otherwise punished over accusations of failing to prevent outbreaks.

With China’s economic growth already slowing, the extreme measures are seen as worsening difficulties striking employment, consumption and even global supply chains.

Shanghai’s announcement of the dates when the two lockdowns would be lifted appeared to show a further refinement in China’s approach. Previous citywide lockdowns had been open-ended.

Although China’s vaccination rate is around 87%, it is considerably lower among older people.
National data released earlier this month showed that over 52 million people aged 60 and older have yet to be vaccinated with any COVID-19 vaccine. Booster rates are also low, with only 56.4% of people between 60-69 having received a booster shot, and 48.4% of people between 70-79 having received one.

Older and unvaccinated people are more likely to become seriously ill if they contract the virus.

China continues to battle ‘severe and complex’ Covid outbreak, cases shoot up in UK | Top points [India Today, 27 Mar 2022]

Even as the Covid-19 situation in India remains under control, nations like China and South Korea are facing outbreaks of the infection. The UK too is seeing an uptick in Covid-19 cases.

India logged 1,660 new Covid-19 cases in 24 hours on Saturday, taking the active case tally to 16,741. With a lull in cases, India is limping (or rather, running) back to almost complete normalcy. On Sunday, scheduled international passenger flights resumed after more than two years.

However, this is not the case across the globe. Some parts of the world are, yet again, reeling under the pressure of high Covid-19 caseloads.

The World Health Organisation earlier reported that the number of new coronavirus cases increased two weeks in a row globally.

Here are the top Covid-19 developments from across the world.

CHINA
China continues to battle its worst Covid-19 outbreak, driven by the Omicron variant. On Friday, health officials called the situation “severe and complex”.

The Chinese mainland reported 1,280 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases and 55 imported cases in 24 hours on Friday. More than 20 provinces and cities in the country have imposed travel bans and lockdowns.

The country has counted more than 56,000 cases since March 1, according to national health officials. The numbers do not include Hong Kong, which tracks its Covid-19 data separately.

The city reported 10,401 new cases on Friday, continuing a downward trend. The city has recorded over 1 million cases in the latest surge.

The situation in Hong Kong has highlighted the importance of vaccinating elderly people. A vast majority of Hong Kong's Covid-19 deaths have been among those who are not fully vaccinated, with many in the elderly population.

UK
Coronavirus cases in the UK have shot up by nearly a million in a week to reach 4.26 million cases up from 3.3 million the week before, according to latest official data released on Friday.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) attributed the sharp rise in cases to the Omicron BA.2 variant, an even more transmissible form of the highly transmissible Omicron. The number of people in hospital with the virus is also on the rise, though cases of severe illness remain low.

SOUTH KOREA
South Korea registered 3,18,130 new coronavirus infections and 282 deaths on Sunday. The daily case count in the country has remained below 4 lakhs for the fourth day running. The tally has been declining since Wednesday, when 4.9 lakh cases were reported in 24 hours.

The surge in the country is attributable to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

US
With a rise in cases in parts of the world, experts are anxious about a surge in the US as well.

However, scientists have said that the wide availability of vaccines and treatments puts the nation in a better place than when the pandemic began, and that monitoring has come a long way. Additionally, US cases, hospitalisations and deaths have been falling for weeks.

That said, the highly transmissible BA.2 variant is beginning to account for a growing share of US cases -- more than one-third nationally. Small increases in overall case rates have been noted in New York.

INDIA
The cumulative Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the country crossed 183 crore on Saturday, the Union health ministry said.

More than 1.20 crore vaccine doses have been administered in the 12-14 years age group so far, the ministry said.

The countrywide vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16 last year.

New Coronavirus News from 26 Mar 2022

Brazil's COVID-19 guidelines: political hijack of public health [The Lanvet, 26 Mar 2022]

Authored by Luis C L Correia, Cristina Sette, Marisa Santos, Carlos A S Magliano and Fotini S Toscas

On Jan 20, 2022, in an unprecedented move, the Brazilian Secretary for Science, Technology, and Innovation overrode the Brazilian guideline for COVID-19 outpatient treatment. The guideline was originally demanded by the Ministry of Health, developed by a team of academics, specialists, and health technology analysts, according to GRADE-ADOLOPMENT methodology.1

The guideline, which recommended against the use of drugs without scientific proof of efficacy, such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin,2 was finally approved by the National Committee for Health Technology Incorporation (CONITEC) in December, 2021. In the Brazilian public health system, CONITEC has a central role in evaluating and recommending technology implementation on the basis of the scientific paradigms of efficacy, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been endless and polarised debate regarding the use of unproven therapies for COVID-19 in Brazil, which, combined, are known as COVID Kit. COVID Kit was popularised by a populist federal government and, unfortunately, was adopted by some members of the medical community who failed to recognise the principles of scientific reasoning in medical decision making.3

Paradoxically, the anti-scientific decision against the guideline was taken by a secretary of science. The decision was accompanied by a long note of justification, which made use of epidemiological jargon to define a logic that clearly violated basic scientific principles. First, it suggested that statistical significance should not be a necessary condition for establishing drug efficacy; second, it proposed Bradford Hill criteria as a means to claim drug efficacy in the absence of controlled empirical observations, such as large and low risk of bias clinical trials; and finally, it concluded in favour of the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, while claiming that vaccination has no demonstrated effectiveness.4

It is natural for humans to suffer from intrinsic bias in the process of judgement. However, the present situation seems to be the result of a strongly polarised environment that led to this unfortunate conspiracy to replace scientific criteria with political interests.
Brazil has been an example of two opposite phenomena: the tendency of a populist government to undermine science, and the resistance of scientists under a strong democratic regimen that supports freedom of speech. We believe that with the support of the international scientific community, the latter will prevail.

References
1. Schünemann HJ, Wiercioch W, Brozek J et al.
GRADE Evidence to Decision (EtD) frameworks for adoption, adaptation, and de novo development of trustworthy recommendations: GRADE-ADOLOPMENT.
J Clin Epidemiol. 2017; 81: 101-110
2. Ministry of Health
Diretrizes Brasileiras para tratamento medicamentoso ambulatorial do paciente com COVID-19.
http://conitec.gov.br/images/Consultas/Relatorios/2021/20211112_Diretrizes_Brasileiras_para_Tratamento_Medicamentoso_Ambulatorial_do_Paciente_com_Covid-19.pdf
3. Correia LC, Lopes JRP, Garcez FB, Campion EL, Barcellos G and Barreto-Filho JA
Physicians' preference towards the non-evidence based hydroxychloroquine treatment for COVID-19: the pandemic effect.
Evidence. 2020; 2: 10-15
4. National Commission for Health Technology Incorporation
Fundamentação e decisão acerca das diretrizes terapêuticas para o tratamento farmacológica do COVID-19.
http://conitec.gov.br/images/Audiencias_Publicas/Nota_tecnica_n2_2022_SCTIE-MS.pdf

Shanghai rules out full lockdown despite sharp rise in Covid cases [The Guardian, 26 Mar 2022]

Concern about economy leads city to try targeted approach with rolling restrictions of individual neighbourhoods

Shanghai has recorded a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases, but officials have ruled out a full lockdown over the damage it would do to the economy.

Millions of Chinese in affected areas have been subjected to city-wide lockdowns by an Omicron-led outbreak that has sent daily case counts creeping ever-higher, though they remain insignificant compared with other countries.

Shanghai, however, has aimed to ease disruption with a more targeted approach marked by rolling 48-hour lockdowns of individual neighbourhoods and large-scale testing while largely keeping the metropolis of 25 million people running.

At a daily Shanghai press conference on Saturday, officials alluded to the importance of avoiding a full lockdown of the huge port city.

“If Shanghai, this city of ours, came to a complete halt, there would be many international cargo ships floating in the East China Sea,” said Wu Fan, a medical expert with the city’s pandemic taskforce.

“This would impact the entire national economy and the global economy.”

Wu made the comments as city officials also announced that they would begin handing out self-testing kits to Shanghai residents, in the latest sign that the government was expanding its pandemic response.

The north-eastern province of Jilin also said that it had begun distributing 500,000 rapid-antigen kits.

Shanghai and Jilin have been the areas hardest hit by the outbreak, which took off in early March.

China had largely kept the coronavirus – which first emerged in the city of Wuhan in late 2019 – under control through its strict zero-tolerance measures.

But that top-down approach is increasingly being questioned amid concerns over the economic impact and public “pandemic fatigue”, especially considering Omicron’s less severe symptoms.

The National Health Commission announced two weeks ago that it would introduce the sale in China of rapid antigen self-test kits for the first time, and they have begun to appear on pharmacy shelves.

But Saturday’s announcements appeared to mark their first wide-scale use as part of official pandemic control measures.

China on Saturday reported 5,600 new confirmed domestic transmissions, most of them asymptomatic.

Chinese authorities had watched nervously as a deadly Hong Kong Omicron surge sparked panic buying and claimed a high toll of unvaccinated elderly in the southern Chinese city.

Its subsequent spread in mainland China has posed a dilemma for authorities wrestling with how forcefully they should respond.

On Wednesday, Shanghai infectious disease expert Zhang Wenhong, a top doctor in the city’s pandemic fight, called for balancing antivirus measures with maintenance of “normal life”.
The comments in his widely followed blog indicated growing official tolerance for voices who question the lockdown approach.

Frustration with Covid response grows in China as daily cases near 5,000

Shanghai’s softer strategy has so far failed to stop cases from rising, and the localised lockdowns have provoked grumbling online and a run on groceries in some districts.
Shanghai reported another steep rise in new local transmissions to 2,269 – about 40% of the national total.

New Coronavirus News from 22 Mar 2022

From a pandemic, scientific insights poised to impact more than just COVID-19 | Penn Today [Penn Today, 18 Mar2022]

by Katherine Unger Baillie

Pivoting to study SARS-CoV-2, many scientists on campus have launched new research projects that address the challenges of the pandemic but also prepare us to confront future challenges.

hen it emerged in 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus quickly revealed itself to be novel in many respects. Able to spread easily, causing a wide variety of symptoms and encircling the globe in a matter of weeks; this microscopic entity reshaped the world forever.

Looked at through a different lens, however, SARS-CoV-2 has a lot in common with pathogens that have come before. It takes advantage of gaps in its hosts’ immune response. It affects men and women differently. And SARS-CoV-2 can be neutralized by a range of vaccines and antiviral compounds that require specialized synthesis, manufacturing, and distribution.

Diving into each of these areas and many more, the pandemic prompted scientists at the University of Pennsylvania to launch new projects, sometimes pivoting from or finding new applications of their research programs. A silver lining of the pandemic may be the resulting discoveries, which stand to benefit humanity long after COVID-19—hopefully—recedes.

Prime among these is the mRNA therapeutic platform Drew Weissman, Katalin Karikó, and others developed, which is now poised to transform vaccination, gene therapy, and other biomedical horizons going forward. And the progress made in antiviral compound assays by researchers like Sara Cherry at the Perelman School of Medicine and Ronald Harty at the School of Veterinary Medicine may prove valuable in this or future pandemics. And these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Two years into this pandemic, Penn Today checked in with a selection of innovative researchers around the University whose work was transformed by the pandemic.
These are highlights of their pandemic pivots and the potential impact of their insights.

Viral mimic
Erica Korb, an assistant professor in the Perelman School of Medicine, studies neuroscience and epigenetics—on the surface, not subjects one might expect would overlap with COVID-19.

“But when the pandemic hit and we were all sent home, we were looking for ways to learn something new and keep busy,” she says.

Korb’s group specializes in histone modifications, changes to the proteins around which the genetic material chromatin wraps and twists. Histone modifications can change which portions of DNA are expressed. Other scientific groups had found that some viruses mimic histones to modify their hosts’ gene expression. With lab spaces temporarily closed early in the pandemic, Korb figured one way of “keeping busy” would be to lean into bioinformatics analyses, relying on computational methods. On a bit of a whim, she asked research assistant John Kee to run a computational analysis to see if any of the proteins in SARS-CoV-2 were a match for histone proteins.

“It was a simple thing—so simple nobody else thought to do it,” she says. “I was not expecting to find anything. But he came back to me the next day with a match for one of the most important sequences within the histone proteins. It was a better match than most previously established histone mimics.”

In fact, the virus appeared to mimic two different histone sites, both of which play significant roles in gene expression. The finding suggested that SARS-CoV-2 might be altering the host’s histones and gene expression, perhaps to ease its path to infection.

Partnering with colleagues including Shelley Berger, Susan Weiss, Edward Morrissey, Ben Garcia, and others, the Korb lab has been investigating this feature of the coronavirus ever since. They’re getting ready to publish their discoveries, including an indication that a viral protein has an overall repressive effect on gene expression. In future work, Korb hopes to dig into how this viral capability might relate to how SARS-CoV-2 evades immune defenses, perhaps even pointing to a therapeutic approach to block infection of this or other pathogens.

Gender differences
Early in the pandemic, Montserrat Anguera, an associate professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine, was intrigued by news reports about gender disparities in COVID-19 disease severity: Men tended to get sicker and had higher mortality rates. It sparked a question: Could X chromosome inactivation (XCI) and X-linked gene expression contribute to the sex bias?

Anguera’s lab studies the phenomenon, by which females with two copies of the X chromosome avoid duplicate gene expression by inhibiting expression from one of the Xs. This inhibition, however, is not always complete, and thus occasionally females may overexpress some X-chromosome-linked genes specifically from the inactive and silent X. Upon realizing that the gene for ACE2, the cellular receptor that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells, is on the X-chromosome, Anguera launched a new path of research into sex differences in coronavirus infection, in collaboration with colleague Andrew Vaughan, whose expertise lies in lung cell regeneration.

“This is just a beautiful example of a collaboration that highlights the strengths of both PIs,” Anguera says. “We’re all about X inactivation and imbalanced gene expression. And Andy is all about these lung cells and how they work.”

Together they developed a mouse with a humanized version of the ACE2 gene to study hormonal and genetic contributions to the pathologies from SARS-Co-V2 infection. Using a novel method whereby they could quantify how much gene expression was occurring from each of the X chromosomes—the “active” as well as the “inactive” X—in lung cells, the researchers found ACE2 was escaping inactivation. And hundreds of other genes were escaping inactivation as well.

“Other people have looked at X-linked gene escape in spleen, brain, and ovary and only seen about 3-7% of expressed X-linked genes escape XCI,” says Anguera. “But with these progenitor lung cells, we’re seeing a ton of escape from the inactive X.”

Despite this escape, the researchers didn’t see more expression of these genes in female mice. They’re looking next to see if that holds true in human cells.

“We’re really excited to continue this deep dive into the genetics of sex differences, and now we have a model system to look at other cell types and how they respond to various viral infections including SARS-CoV-2.”

Viral detection
Despite being more than two years into the pandemic, it’s only relatively recently that effective home tests have been widely available. In the event of a future outbreak of disease, Ping Wang of the Perelman School of Medicine hopes to be way ahead of the game.

Point-of-care diagnostics was already a focus of Wang’s efforts prior to COVID-19. In 2018, she had developed a proof-of-concept test able to detect protein biomarkers—in that case, prostate specific antigen—with high sensitivity. The approach relied on quantifying the production of microbubbles, which formed during a reaction between hydrogen peroxide, platinum nanoparticles, and the target antigen.

When COVID arrived, it immediately struck Wang that her diagnostic could be used to test for SARS-CoV-2. The microbubbling assay fills what she sees as a gap in current testing: as sensitive as a PCR but with the rapidity of antigen tests.

From that realization, the work to adopt the test platform for SARS-CoV-2 went relatively quickly. But it also made Wang rethink how to market and package the test.

“Before the pandemic we were focusing a lot more using this in physicians’ offices and maybe pharmacy testing,” Wang says. “But I think the pandemic really opened up the need and acceptability of home testing.”

The low cost of the microbubbling assay—currently around $3 a test, which may be driven lower with mass production—could also help address inequitable health care access. “Seeing the pandemic expose health disparities really propelled us to think about how we can use our technology as a means to make diagnostics more accessible,” Wang says. She founded the start-up company Instanosis to commercialize the platform.

“We didn’t set out to develop this for COVID; we set out really to use it for many other things,” Wang says. “And post-pandemic, our goal is to extend its use. We think the technology is well-poised to be used for many other emerging pathogens or existing pathogens, even multiplex testing of respiratory pathogens and cardiology or neurology biomarkers—many different things that require high-sensitivity biomarker detection.”

Intricacies of immunology
COVID-19 has familiarized many with the importance of antibodies. Made by B cells, their production also relies on T cells, which make B cells better at churning out antibodies that are highly specific to a given pathogen. The type of T cell specialized in this task is known as a T follicular helper (TFH) cell, a centerpiece of Michela Locci’s lab at the Perelman School of Medicine.

Prior to 2020, Locci’s investigations had concentrated the basic biology of TFH cells. But their translational impact was also a focus. “We were already interested in the mRNA vaccine platform, and had been collaborating with [the Perelman School of Medicine’s] Norbert Pardi on it. Even before the pandemic started, I’d never seen a vaccine platform that effective.”

To learn more about the immunological response to mRNA vaccination, Locci wanted to study TFH cells and their role in antibody production in people, not just mice. To do so, she used a technique pioneered by a few other groups in which cells are extracted from the lymph node, where B cells and TFH cells interact. “You essentially poke the lymph node,” she says, “and some cells get stuck in the needle. The analysis of these cells gives you a window into what’s going on at different time points after vaccination.”

Taking this longitudinal approach to tracking development of an immune response “was one of the most exciting changes in the way we approach human immunology during the pandemic,” she says. In collaboration with the medical school’s Ali Naji and Vijay Bhoj, she and colleagues employed the technique in a study published last month in Cell. The research followed a group of kidney transplant recipients, whose immune systems were suppressed, and a group of healthy controls after they both received COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. They found severely impaired B cell and TFH cell responses in the immunosuppressed study participants.

“But in healthy individuals, two doses of mRNA vaccines elicited robust TFH responses, connected with the production of memory B cells and protective antibodies,” Locci says. This connection was not readily appreciable from the study of surrogate populations in blood, whereas it was evident in lymph nodes.

TFH cells play a role in establishing these long-lived B cell responses, and Locci hopes to continue digging into their role in SARS-CoV-2, such as following how these responses may change upon receiving vaccine boosters. But there are myriad applications in other disease and therapeutic avenues, which Locci will explore with a special emphasis on human biology in parallel to mouse biology. “At the end of the day, we particularly care about describing molecular pathways that exist in humans.”

Decentralizing vaccine manufacture
The development of multiple effective vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a matter of months was an unprecedented scientific achievement. Yet the distribution of these medical game changers could only proceed as quickly as they could be manufactured in a limited number of facilities. Certain countries and regions waited months to get a supply, dependent on other nations to send them the products.

To Daeyeon Lee and colleagues in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, this obstacle in the supply chain is an engineering problem. In response to a call from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation Program, Lee and others developed a proposal to create a series of hubs where mRNA vaccines could be efficiently manufactured and distributed.

“The call for proposals was looking for ideas in the area of distributing manufacturing of chemicals,” says Lee, a professor and the Evan C. Thompson Term Chair for Excellence in Teaching in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “When that call came, a bunch of us here at Penn and other institutions thought, Why don’t we apply that idea of distributed manufacturing to the mRNA vaccine?”

Prior to the pandemic, Lee had been working on a system involving simultaneous reaction and separation of different chemicals from reactions, which he could translate to how mRNA molecules are produced. “The idea is, How do we make manufacturing more robust so it can be done in more places?”

Lee, together with collaborator Kathleen Stebe from Penn Engineering and colleagues from the University of Oklahoma, the University of Colorado, and Drexel University, received the NSF grant. That support has led to other funding and opportunities, working in collaboration with Michael Mitchell and David Issadore from Penn Engineering, Penn Medicine’s Drew Weissman, and Infini Fluidics’ Sagar Yadvali to develop their on-demand manufacturing system.

Their vision is a network of research labs, each with the capacity to produce different mRNA therapeutics. The potential is great, as mRNA therapies are showing promise in addressing a host of diseases and disorders, from HIV infection to gene therapy.

“It’s like how the Singh Center, while relatively compact, nevertheless has the capability of fabricating sophisticated, high-tech devices,” Lee says. “We could have these small-scale pharmaceutical mRNA manufacturing centers that can be used during normal times for research purposes but switch over to pharmaceutical production as needed. It’s a way of democratizing the process.”

COVID digest: Europe is easing restrictions too 'brutally' — WHO [DW (English), 22 Mar 2022]

European countries such as Germany and Britain are now seeing a rise in COVID-19 cases from the more transmissible BA2 omicron variant. Meanwhile, Indonesia eased rules for tourists.

Several European countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Britain, have eased their COVID-19 restrictions too "brutally," the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

These nations are now also seeing a rise in coronavirus cases, most likely caused by the more transmissible BA2 omicron variant, the global health body added.

WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said he was "optimistic but vigilant" about coronavirus developments on the continent.

The virus is on the rise in 18 out of 53 countries in the WHO European region, Kluge told a press conference in Moldova.

"The countries where we see a particular increase are the United Kingdom, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, France, Italy and Germany," he said.

He also said "those countries are lifting the restrictions brutally from too much to too few."
The number of new COVID-19 cases in Europe fell sharply after a peak at the end of January, but has been on the rise again since early March, according to the WHO database.

Within the last week, WHO reported more than 5.1 million new cases and 12,496 deaths for its European region.

Here are the latest major developments on coronavirus from around the world:

Asia
Indonesia has expanded its quarantine-free travel for tourists to include the entire country, following a successful trial run on the resort island of Bali, the Tourism Ministry said on Tuesday.

The decision comes as a result of compliance with strict health protocols and a low rate of positive COVID-19 tests, Tourism Minister Sandiaga Uno said in a statement.

International visitors now only have to produce a negative PCR test, Uno said.

China has called a lockdown on an industrial city of 9 million people late on Monday as the country registered more than 4,000 virus cases on Tuesday.

Shenyang, home to many factories, including BMW's, reported 47 new cases on Tuesday as the city locked down. Residents are barred from leaving their homes without showing a 48-hour negative test result.

In recent weeks, China's "zero-COVID" strategy had been battling a surging omicron wave that forced the government to impose localized lockdowns and increase mass testing.

But authorities have been concerned about the risk that persistent lockdowns could pose to the country's economic growth.

Last week, President Xi Jinping stressed the need to "minimize the impact" of the pandemic on China's economy, but also urged officials to stick to the current zero-COVID approach

Europe
Germany's President Frank Walter Steinmeier and his wife, Elke, have tested positive for COVID-19, the head of state's office said on Tuesday.

Both have mild symptoms and immediately went into self-isolation, the office added.

The news comes after the country's infection rates continues to be persistently high in recent weeks and German states have delayed the easing of restrictions.

Norway's King Harald V also tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday and has mild symptoms,

royal officials said.

His son and heir to the throne, Crown Prince Haakon, will take over duties while the 85-year-old Harald takes a break for a few days, the royal household said in a brief statement.

Americas
More than two-thirds of all COVID-19 cases in the United States in the week ending March 19 have been identified as the BA2 omicron subvariant, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated on Tuesday.

COVID-19 infections in the US have slowed sharply since reaching record levels in January, but a coronavirus resurgence in parts of Asia and Europe because of the spread of the omicron variant has raised concerns.

Some experts have warned that higher levels of the omicron subvariant, combined with the ending of most national coronavirus restrictions, could lead to a new wave.

Most of the country's infection rates remain low and, as of March 19, the seven-day average of COVID-19 cases was 27,747, a decrease of nearly 18% from a week earlier.

Elsewhere, former Secretary of State and US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has tested positive for COVID-19 after suffering from "mil" symptoms.

Clinton said on Twitter she was "feeling fine" and that former President Bill Clinton had tested negative and was quarantining until their household was "fully cleared."

New Coronavirus News from 23 Mar 2022

This is no time to stop tracking COVID-19 [Nature.com, 23 Mar 2022]

To live with the coronavirus, we cannot be blind to its movements.

From the way political leaders in many high-income nations are talking and acting, it would be easy to think that the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer worth keeping track of.

The pandemic might have taken upwards of 18 million lives, disabled many more than that and gut-punched the global economy, yet surveillance and reporting of the virus’s movements are starting to slow just at a time when a highly infectious subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, is spilling out across the world and case rates and hospitalizations are creeping back up.

These cutbacks are not based on evidence. They are political, and they could have disastrous consequences for the world. Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for COVID-19 at the World Health Organization (WHO), says it’s crucial that “the systems that have been put in place for surveillance, for testing, for sequencing right now be reinforced, that they are not taken apart”.

Around the world, the frequency of national reporting has slipped below five days a week for the first time since the early months of the pandemic, according to the publishers of the website Our World in Data. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is still reporting nationwide data, but there’s less real-time reporting of death and infection figures at the local level. All but eight states have scaled back to reporting data five or fewer days per week. Florida announced last week that it will now be reporting only fortnightly.

The UK government’s COVID-19 tracking dashboard, one of the world’s most comprehensive, is stopping its weekend updates of infections, mortality, hospitalizations and vaccinations, lumping Saturday and Sunday figures into Monday’s. Prime Minister Boris Johnson says this is part of plans to “live with COVID”.

The downward trend in reporting is subtle, but it mirrors other signs of complacency about COVID-19. The United Kingdom, for example, will no longer provide diagnostic tests free of cost. Several of its data-collection programmes are also ending. REACT-1, a long-running random-testing study, will lose its government funding at the end of this month. And ZOE, a mobile app that residents can use to log their COVID-19 symptoms, has lost its public funding, too. Both have been invaluable to research and policy.

The United States and United Kingdom aren’t alone. In many countries, political sentiments are shifting towards adopting a ‘new normal’. Of course, national budgets are being stretched thin as governments look to increase public expenditure on subsidizing fuel and food as the world plunges from dealing with the pandemic to tackling the global impacts of war in Ukraine. But scaling back virus surveillance at this time is short-sighted. It’s like stopping a course of antibiotics at the first sign of symptoms easing: it increases the risk that the infection will roar back. A study published last week says the next variant could well be more dangerous than those circulating now (P. V. Markov et al. Nature Rev. Microbiol. https://doi.org/hk3q; 2022).

COVID’s true death toll: much higher than official records

Public-health decisions need to be informed by the best available data. Cutting the ability to track and respond to the virus while most of the world remains unvaccinated makes these decisions less reliable. It will also reduce people’s ability make decisions about their own safety.

This is all the more infuriating given that roll-backs of public-health interventions have often come with messages that people should now decide for themselves what measures to take. The CDC, for example, recommends that people at risk of serious complications from COVID-19 “talk to their healthcare provider” about whether they should wear a mask or respirator during “medium” community transmission levels — just when data on transmission are becoming less accessible.

Researchers have worked hard to make disparate sources of data about the pandemic available to the public through several celebrated dashboards. Tools such as the WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard, Our World in Data and Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 Dashboard have empowered governments, businesses and individuals to use the best available evidence to make decisions. By reducing the data streams that power these dashboards, governments are shutting their eyes to the danger. If this trend continues, the new normal is going to look a lot like the false comfort of ignorance.

Nature 603, 550 (2022)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00788-y

Frustrations mount in Shenyang as China locks down another city of nine million people due to COVID-19 [ABC News, 23 Mar 2022]

China has locked down an industrial city of 9 million people overnight and reported more than 4,000 new cases of the COVID-19 virus, as the nation's "zero-COVID" strategy was implemented to halt an Omicron outbreak.
Key points:
• China reported its first two COVID-19 deaths in more than a year
• Authorities warned of the risk posed to economic growth by persistent lockdowns
• Mass lockdowns and mandatory testing have led to growing frustrations throughout
China
Health authorities reported 4,770 new infections across the nation, the bulk in the north-eastern province of Jilin, as the city of Shenyang in neighbouring Liaoning province was ordered to lock down late on Monday.

In Jilin, another city of nine million — Changchun — was ordered into lockdown earlier this month.

China has moved fast in recent weeks to snuff out virus clusters with a pick-and-mix of hyper-local lockdowns, mass testing and citywide closures.

It reported two COVID-19 deaths on Saturday, its first in more than a year.

Authorities warned of the risk posed to growth by persistent lockdowns as the country strives to balance the health crisis with the needs of the world's second-biggest economy.

Shenyang — an industrial base home to factories, including car-maker BMW — reported 47 new cases on Tuesday as authorities put all housing compounds under "closed management" and barred residents from leaving without a 48-hour negative test result.

'Minimise the impact'
New COVID-19 outbreaks have hit large economic centres including Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing.(AP)

Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the need to "minimise the impact" of the pandemic on China's economy, but also urged officials to "stick to" the current zero-COVID approach.

But Beijing's virus playbook has been stretched to the limit by the latest Omicron surge, which has forced authorities to free up hospital beds from mild-symptom patients.

China's elderly people are still unvaccinated
China has recorded its worst COVID outbreak in two years, but millions of people aged 60 years and above are not vaccinated.

Some cities, such as Shanghai, have avoided a full lockdown and, instead, imposed a web of individual building lockdowns, even as new daily asymptomatic infections there spiral into the hundreds.

Jilin provincial officials announced on Monday that the first 10,000 doses of Pfizer's oral COVID-19 drug arrived on Sunday, marking the first time Paxlovid has been used in China.

The province last week imposed strict travel curbs, banning locals from leaving their cities and counties, while several cities have already confined residents at home.

On Monday, the southern tech powerhouse city of Shenzhen announced it would lift its week-long lockdown "in an orderly manner", after having partially eased measures on Friday to minimise the impact of virus shutdowns on factories and ports.

Health officials last week revealed only around half of Chinese older than 80 years have been double-vaccinated, as the spectre of Hong Kong's dire COVID-19 mortality rates — mainly among the unvaccinated elderly — hangs over Beijing's decision-making.

'Refuse quarantine'
Mass lockdowns and repeated mandatory testing have led to growing frustrations throughout China.

In footage shared on social media last week, a crowd of people in Shenyang banged against the windows of a clothing market as they shouted in frustration at the announcement of yet another round of COVID-19 tests.

Why Chinese citizens support Beijing's COVID-zero policy China now has fewer officially reported COVID-19 cases than Australia, and many Chinese citizens believe maintaining "COVID zero" by keeping its international borders closed is the only way to protect them — even if it means they continue to be separated from family.

"Refuse quarantine!" said one.

"Many people have awoken to the truth," said another.

"It's actually over," said a netizen posting on WeChat under the username "Jasmine Tea".
"The common cold is more serious than this! The testing agencies want this to go on. The vaccine companies want to inoculate forever."

Residents have also complained about the arbitrary nature of the rules, as well as the unchecked power of the neighbourhood residential committees responsible for enforcing them.

In Beijing, one family said their residential committee was about to install a monitoring device on their apartment door to ensure they complied with an order to stay home for two weeks.
The order came after a family member entered a supermarket that had been visited two days before by a confirmed COVID-19 case.

In Shanghai, residents were also bewildered by the uneven testing standards and lockdown thresholds imposed by apartment blocks and compounds across the city.

However, China's policies have caused more than mere inconvenience, with netizens increasingly willing to discuss how lockdowns have led to tragedy.

A widely shared post on Weibo last week reported that a patient undergoing chemotherapy at the Shanghai Cancer Hospital died while locked down in her lodgings next to the hospital.
In posts since deleted, bereaved citizens also shared stories about the death of loved ones caused by COVID-related disruptions.

"My dad died of a stroke at the end of last year," said one, posting under the name MaDDNa.

"There was some hope of treatment. Unfortunately, we had to wait for a nucleic acid test report and missed the best treatment time."

S. Korea’s daily COVID-19 cases rebound to nearly 500,000 [The Korea Herald, 23 Mar 2022]

By Shim Woo-hyun

South Korea added nearly 500,000 daily COVID-19 cases during the 24 hours of Tuesday, pushing the country’s accumulated figure over the 10 million mark.

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the country’s daily COVID-19 cases reached 490,881, the second-highest daily tally, after 621,205 cases reported Thursday last week.

The country’s accumulated caseload surpassed 10,427,247, which accounts for around 20 percent of the country’s total population of 51 million.

South Korea has suffered more than 9.5 million new cases this year alone, a stark contrast with the 630,821 cases reported between 2020 and 2021.

The government previously estimated that the country will see decreases in the number of daily COVID-10 cases starting Wednesday.

However, the “stealth omicron” variant, BA.2, which is thought to be 30 percent more transmissible than the original omicron variant, has been spreading rapidly, prolonging the omicron wave.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum pointed out that patients infected with the stealth omicron variant accounted for some 40 percent of the total COVID-19 patients, during a COVID-19 response meeting Wednesday.

But Kim stressed that the country can still manage the spread of the stealth omicron variant, with saying that the stealth subvariant of the omicron strain will not correlate to sudden spikes in hospitalizations or deaths.

Kim added the government will continue to focus on minimizing the number of COVID-19 related deaths and critically ill patients, which are expected to continue to remain high in the following one or two weeks.

On Tuesday, the country added 291 COVID-19 deaths, down from the previous day’s 384. The death toll from COVID-19 reached 13,432, and the fatality rate stood at 0.13 percent.

The number of critically ill patients has remained over 1,000 for 16 days straight. As of midnight Tuesday, the severe cases reached 1,084 on Tuesday, down 20 from the previous day.

As the number of severe cases and COVID-19 deaths remain high, the government is speeding up the procurement of antiviral medicines for COVID-19.

South Korea said earlier that it will introduce Merck’s oral antiviral medicine Lagevrio for 100,000 patients this week, amid the ongoing shortage of antiviral treatments.

The country currently has around 70,000 doses of Pfizer’s oral COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid, but the treatment is quickly running out as the number of severe cases remained higher than expected.

Jung Ki-suck, director of Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital and the head of a COVID-19 response team within the presidential transition committee, also emphasized the importance of procuring antiviral treatments from the US or European countries.

Jung also mentioned that the country should look into possibilities of local development of a biosimilar of an antiviral medicine for COVID-19.

Meanwhile, South Korea is expected to discard hundreds of thousands of doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of this month, due to lower-than-expected demand.

UK Covid cases breach 100,000 again as daily figure rises 12% in a week [Daily Mail, 23 Mar 2022]

By LUKE ANDREWS and EMILY CRAIG

Britain's daily Covid cases breached 100,000 for the second time this month today after rising 12 per cent in a week, while hospitalisations and deaths also ticked upwards.

Government dashboard statistics show 102,483 new infections were logged over the last 24 hours, compared to the 91,345 last Wednesday.

It is the second time in just eight days that daily cases have risen above the six-figure threshold, after the Omicron wave collapsed in late January.

Another 194 Covid fatalities were reported today, up 27 per cent on a week ago.
Hospitalisations also rose 30 per cent in a week, according to the latest UK-wide data for March 19, with 2,011 new admissions.

The rising statistics have been attributed to the loosening of restrictions across the UK and the rise of the more infectious BA.2 Omicron subvariant.

The extremely transmissible sub-strain is still causing milder illness than previous variants, however, and around half of patients in hospital with Covid currently are not primarily ill with the virus, separate data suggests.

Meanwhile, in a downbeat assessment of how the next phase of the pandemic will pan out, Professor Chris Whitty warned today that there was a 'high chance' a Covid variant more severe than Omicron and BA.2 will emerge in the next two years.

Speaking at the Local Government Association's public health conference, Sir Chris said there was still a 'long way to go' because the virus will continue to 'throw surprises'. He also insisted the virus — which now poses a similar threat as flu — will be with us 'for the rest of our lives'.

The emergence of a more dangerous strain could 'significantly change our balance of risk', Sir Chris added in his speech, on the second anniversary of the historic coronavirus lockdown.

Some experts believe there is a high chance that a new Covid variant could be more severe than Omicron because the strain came from a different part of the virus's lineage and there is no guarantee the next strain will evolve directly from Omicron.

But other experts have repeatedly insisted the darkest days of the pandemic have been consigned to history, as the virus will mutate into a cold-causing pathogen over time.

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data showed daily Covid cases ticked up in England (up 34 per cent) and Scotland (up 16 per cent) compared to the same time last week.

They remained level in Wales (no change compared to last week), but fell in Northern Ireland (down five per cent).

About 770,000 swabs were carried out yesterday, similar to the same time last week, in another sign the country's outbreak is still growing.

The surging wave of infections has been blamed on BA.2, thought to be significantly more infectious than its parent Omicron strain. Although ministers say an uptick in cases was to be expected once the final Covid restrictions had been lifted.

Some experts have suggested the wave will peak before the end of this month.

Omicron burst onto the scene in November, with infection rates hitting pandemic highs and experts estimating one in 15 people in England were infected at the winter peak.

Grim modelling by SAGE had warned of up to 6,000 deaths a day, prompting the Government's own advisers to call for stringent measures. Some doom-mongering scientists even wanted a circuit-breaker.

But Boris Johnson held his nerve and stuck to the 'Plan B' measures already in place, which saw the return of work from home, face masks in public places and a ramping up of the booster programme.

Sky-high immunity rates and the variant's milder nature blunted the impact of the virus, with Covid deaths peaking at 300 a day — similar to levels seen in a bad flu winter and a fraction of rates seen during the first and second waves. NHS hospitals were never overwhelmed and intensive care admissions barely budged.

Asked at the conference today when the Covid pandemic will truly shift to an endemic stage, Sir Chris said it 'will become less dominant steadily'.

He said the UK would likely be hit by seasonal waves for the next 'two or three years' that will be 'interspersed' by new variants that could occur between peaks.

Dismissing the idea that Covid has become endemic, he said it is incorrect to assume the virus has reached a 'stable state' around the globe, despite restrictions easing for Britons.

Sir Chris added: 'The UK has chosen a particular path and we have high immunity due to vaccination rates in children, the elderly and some immunity due to infection as well.

'But others have chosen perfectly sensible paths but they're going to play out differently. So I think we need to be aware there's a long way to go with this and it'll also throw surprises as it has.

'And there's a high chance that we will all be discussing, and I will be discussing with my colleagues, a new variant at some point in the next two years that actually significantly changes our balance of risk.'

Sir Chris told the virtual conference: 'We could well end up with a new variant that produces worse problems than we've got with Omicron and the Omicron problems are by no means trivial.'

Gloomy SAGE advisers warned of a 'realistic possibility' that a more lethal variant could emerge that kills one in three people, in line with earlier coronaviruses such as MERS.

And Professor Devi Sridhar, a global public health expert at the University of Edinburgh, told the conference that she does not believe the virus will 'fade into the background' anytime soon.

It comes as the UK's daily Covid cases yesterday dropped for the first time in three weeks.
Government dashboard data showed 94,524 infections were recorded, down 14 per cent on a week ago.

But 'technical issues' meant Scotland reported four days' worth of cases last Tuesday, which artificially inflated the UK-wide daily tally.

Covid deaths rose by a quarter compared to a week ago, however, with 250 recorded.

And hospital admissions also ticked upwards 17 per cent in a week, after 1,879 admissions were logged on March 18 — the latest date UK-wide data is available for.

Experts have blamed the uptick on BA.2, which is now dominant in the country. But the strain is not thought to be any more severe than the original Omicron variant.

Cases have also been spiralling for a fortnight on the back of England's 'Freedom Day', which the Health Secretary Sajid Javid insisted was 'expected'.

Speaking about the current Covid situation, Sir Chris said the BA.2 Omicron variant is a 'large part' of the current high rates that are rising 'in virtually all parts of England'.

He said the strain, thought to be as contagious as chickenpox, is not translating into surges in deaths or intensive care admissions — but 'that doesn't mean that it is having no impact at all'.

There are 'significant numbers' in hospital and admissions will 'rise for at least the next two weeks', which Sir Chris warned would pile pressure on the NHS.

He added that the health system was already under 'significant' strain as it juggles an uptick in Covid patients alongside the national effort to tackle the record backlog of patients waiting for routine operations.

Sir Chris noted that the ratio of infections turning into hospitalisations and deaths has consistently decreased due to increasing immunity from vaccines and infection, as well as improvements in medical care.

He said: 'There has been a de-risking to some degree of Covid over time. But de-risking is not the same as no risk and there is still significant risk.'

Top 10 world news: Covid rampage in China, S.Korea, Belarus to join Russia-Ukraine war, and more [WION, 23 Mar 2022]

As coronavirus continues its rampage, the World Health Organization (WHO) has attributed the rise in Europe's cases to the hasty and 'brutal' lifting of Covid restrictions. In China's capital, people are panic buying as the country's biggest outbreak brings with it the threat of lockdowns. In South Korea, the cases have reached 10 million.

South Korea COVID-19: Cases hit 10m, leaving crematoriums and funeral homes struggling to cope [Sky News, 23 Mar 2022]

By Russell Hope

Nearly 500,000 cases were reported on Tuesday, the second highest daily tally since the pandemic began. Funeral homes across the country have been ordered to expand their facilities.

More than 10 million people in South Korea have contracted coronavirus as a surge in the highly infectious Omicron variant has caused a record wave of infections, officials have said.
The number of dead has almost doubled since early February, leaving funeral homes and crematoriums struggling to cope.

The Korean Disease Control Agency (KDCA) reported 490,881 cases for Tuesday, the second highest daily tally after it peaked at 621,205 on 16 March.

Image:Digital screens showing precautions against the coronavirus in a subway train in in Seoul
In all 291 people were reported dead after contracting the illness over the last 24 hours, after daily deaths peaked at 429 last Friday.

At least 13,432 people have died since the pandemic began, from a total of 10,427,247 cases, the KDCA said.

Nearly a fifth of the country's population of 52 million has now had or is battling the disease, according to the latest figures.

South Korea reacted to the initial outbreak with a strict regime of tracing and quarantine, but with 87% of its population fully vaccinated, they have been scrapped by Seoul, along with social distancing curbs.

More bodies to be burned
Ministers have told the country's 60 crematoriums to open longer and burn seven bodies a day, up from five.

The 1,136 funeral homes, which can hold around 8,700 bodies, have been instructed to expand their facilities.

Health ministry official Son Young-rae said: "Crematories' capacity is increasing, but there are still regional differences."

The number of bodies that can be disposed of daily was raised to 1,400 from 1,000 last week, but there is a big backlog and in the densely populated greater Seoul area, long waits are common, Mr Son said.

The percentage of intensive care beds occupied rose to around 64% on Wednesday, up from 59% two weeks earlier.

COVID treatment pills
Merck & Co's COVID-19 treatment pill, Lagevrio, has been given emergency approval by South Korea's drug safety agency, as authorities move to combat the surge.

Pfizer's highly effective Paxlovid is already being used.

Health ministry official Park Hyang said on Wednesday: "The medical system is under substantial pressure, though it is still operated within a manageable range.

"We would focus more on high risk groups going forward, and make constant checks to ensure that there is no blind spot."

Opinion | If the world doesn't act, North Korea could become a breeding ground for dangerous covid variants [The Washington Post, 23 Mar 2022]

By Victor Cha, Katrin Fraser Katz and Stephen Morrison

Victor Cha is a professor at Georgetown University and senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Katrin Fraser Katz is a fellow with the Korea Chair at CSIS. J. Stephen Morrison is senior vice president and director of the Global Health Policy Center at CSIS.

North Korea’s nuclear-tipped missiles are not the only threat from the rogue nation that
demands the world’s attention. It is also at high risk of a runaway coronavirus outbreak, which could create a breeding ground for new, dangerous variants.

For two years, North Korea has imposed a “zero covid” policy. Pyongyang claims that this has been successful in keeping the country covid-free, but it has also cut off critical food and medical supplies, resulting in severe shortages. It has also left its population of approximately 25 million people both unvaccinated (despite multiple offers from Covax, the United Nations-backed global vaccine initiative) and probably with minuscule immunity from prior infections.

An expert panel convened by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found this month that this has made North Korea uniquely susceptible to a sudden outbreak of the covid-19 omicron variant that could kill more than 100,000 people. That would obviously be terrible from a humanitarian perspective, but it could also worsen the pandemic by giving the coronavirus more chances to evolve and potentially even escape immunity provided by vaccines or previous infection.

What to do about this risk? The Biden administration has hit a rut in addressing North Korea’s nuclear threat, with Pyongyang expressing no interest in talking. But a stalemate in the denuclearization sphere should not stop the United States from considering multilateral pathways to prevent a covid-19 crisis in North Korea.

One possible initiative that might persuade North Korea to reconsider its previous rejection of coronavirus vaccines would be a high-volume offer from Covax of enough mRNA doses to inoculate more than 80 percent of North Korea’s population, combined with enhanced testing and eventual access to antivirals. This would probably get North Korea’s attention, especially as it witnesses the surge in hospitalizations and deaths in Hong Kong. In private settings, North Korean officials have indicated their preference for mRNA vaccines over the less effective Chinese Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines that Covax has previously offered. Such a program would also allow North Korean leaders to partially reopen their economy.

Such an initiative is feasible. Global supplies of mRNA vaccines and tests are ample, and North Korea has the infrastructure and experience necessary to implement mass vaccination campaigns at a relatively rapid pace (before the pandemic, more than 95 percent of North Korea’s population received shots for diseases such as measles and polio). Additional cold-chain investments for a national mRNA vaccine campaign would not be prohibitively costly.

Such a campaign would have to overcome some systematic hurdles. Although there is no “anti-vax” culture in North Korea, its leaders would have to actively engage with residents to explain why the nation is now turning to vaccines after saying that there was no need for them. North Korea would also probably push back against monitoring requirements or raise concerns that vaccine donations would be tied to requests, such as denuclearization.

North Korea’s approach to negotiation also creates challenges. Its leaders often do not reveal what they want, and they also “forum shop” among various aid organizations to seek the best possible deal. China, which adheres fiercely to its “zero covid” approach, may object to efforts to move North Korea beyond such an approach.

These problems have workarounds. Monitoring could be recast as “technical support,” with UNICEF or the World Health Organization serving as the main interlocutors with Pyongyang (not unlike their current role in sustaining health programs in Afghanistan). Washington could endorse a multilateral humanitarian approach, as it has previously, that emphasizes its de-linking of aid from strategic interests such as denuclearization.

This may seem a strange proposal coming on the heels of yet another series of North Korean missile tests. But the humanitarian crises already unfolding in North Korea, which would be exacerbated in the event of a covid-19 outbreak, can and should be addressed with urgency and separately from the nuclear issue. The inauguration of South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol in May could provide an opening for this type of initiative. While Yoon has advocated a tough line on denuclearization, he has not opposed humanitarian engagement with North Korea.

It is certainly possible that a mass-vaccination initiative could create better atmospherics between Washington and Pyongyang and dissuade North Korea from starting a new cycle of provocations. But even if it did not, it would still be a worthy endeavor. Protecting innocent North Koreans from a deadly disease is not only the right thing to do — it’s also in the interest of countries everywhere that seek to end the pandemic.

New Coronavirus News from 20 Mar 2022

Is the pandemic over? [WLBT, 20 Mar 2022]

By Quentin Smith

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - Many cities and schools in the metro are drawing back on mask requirements, and people are back outdoors again; two things now coming into play in light of low COVID numbers throughout the state.

“It’s interesting. Hospitals now have room for some of those things that probably needed to be attended to and people sort of neglected maybe some health problems over the last couple of years. We do still see a lot of people in the hospital, just not nearly as many with COVID right now,” said Dr. Steve Threlkeld, an infectious disease specialist with Baptist Memorial Health Care.

He says while these are all hopeful signs that the pandemic is nearing an end, he still warns people that we’re not out of the woods just yet.

“I think noting in caution that this is exactly where we were right about this time when we first heard about Omicron in South Africa reported to the WHO, so we’re in no way at any sort of time point where we’re uniquely beyond this compared to where we were before. We’re right about in that spot, and now we have the increased cases in Europe from the BA.2.”

Right now, the Stealth Omicron variant is rapidly spreading through Europe and Threlkeld predicts it’s only a matter of time before cases pop up in the U.S.

“We expect cases to go up,” he said. “We always thought that this BA.2 variant maybe, if not causing a repeat surge, might just drag the curve out a little bit.”

Threlkeld says he’s also not seeing as many people coming to get vaccinated. It’s a trend that he hopes will change.

“For right now, if we can just get everybody having their second vaccine, let alone their third, we’ll be in so much better condition than we are right now to really stamp out these mini-surges that we might see moving forward with variants coming and hitting us intermittently.”

New Coronavirus News from 19 Mar 2022

COVID-19 Safety at Easter and Passover [Everyday Health, 19 Mar 2022]

By Becky Upham

The rollout of vaccines will change how a lot of us celebrate spring holidays like Easter and Passover this year. But with coronavirus infection rates still high, scientists have some words of caution.

As Easter and Passover approach, celebrating pandemic-style may feel a lot more joyful than it did in 2020, for good reason: As of March 19, over 67 percent of Americans age 65 and over have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, as have close to 30 percent of all adults.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released a new set of guidelines for fully vaccinated people that allow for indoor and mask-free socializing in certain scenarios.

“It’s been a crazy roller coaster ride over the last year, but right now there’s a lot of optimism because of the vaccines, and obviously a lot of effort going into distribution and rollout and making sure that we prioritize the people that need the vaccine quickly,” says Paul K. Drain, MD, associate professor of allergy and infectious diseases at the University of Washington School of Public Health in Seattle.

Although the vaccine effort is picking up steam, the majority of Americans haven’t been fully immunized, according to the CDC. This has led to concern that the huge spike in cases that followed Thanksgiving could repeat itself after the spring holidays because of the new, more contagious coronavirus variants coupled with people being more relaxed about gathering or wearing masks, Dr. Drain says.

“My advice to everyone is to err on the side of caution when it comes to taking precautions against the virus. I’m hopeful that we’re reaching the tail end of COVID-19, but it’s going to take all of us continuing to be vigilant and following guidelines. We need to be extra careful in what are hopefully the final months of widespread infections and mortalities,” says Drain.

How careful, you ask? Keep reading to find out answers to your questions about celebrating the upcoming holidays and planning spring travel.

What Is the Safest Way to Celebrate Easter or Passover?
First, the good news: If you are fully vaccinated, you can gather indoors and mask-less with unvaccinated people from one other household, according to the CDC. That means, for instance, that vaccinated grandparents can celebrate with their unvaccinated children and grandchildren from a single household, as long as none is at risk for severe COVID-19 because of factors such as pregnancy or an underlying medical condition.

If you have not yet been vaccinated against COVID-19, the CDC recommends that you continue to avoid social gatherings with anyone outside your household who has also not been vaccinated.

If you choose to get together with people you don’t live with, remember that small gatherings are safer, according to the agency.

“At this time, just given where we are and having relatively few people vaccinated, the recommendations are still to avoid medium and large in-person gatherings,” says Drain.

Participating virtually in a religious service is the safer way to worship this year. There are many online options, and you could even do a group chat or video call at the same time as a way to feel more connected to loved ones.

If you are going to gather with people you don’t live with, follow these tips from the CDC to make the event as safe as possible:
• Wear a mask with two or more layers. Make sure the mask fits securely under your chin and cover your nose and mouth.
• Wear your mask indoors and out except when eating or drinking.
• Stay at least six feet away from people from outside your household.
• Avoid direct contact, such as handshakes and hugs.
• Gathering outdoors is safest. If you must gather indoors, keep rooms ventilated by opening doors and windows wherever possible.
• If your gathering involves food or drink, it’s better when guests bring their own. If that’s not possible, have one person serve all the food.
• People should wash their hands thoroughly (for at least 20 seconds) with soap and water when arriving at and leaving any social gathering. People should also wash their hands before serving or eating food. For drying hands, it’s recommended that people use disposable hand towels or paper towels rather than sharing a towel.
• If there is no available place to wash hands, people should use hand sanitizer with at least 60 percent alcohol.

What Does It Mean to Be Fully Vaccinated?
The CDC released updated guidelines for people who have been fully vaccinated. For the two-dose Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, you are not considered fully vaccinated until two weeks after receiving the second dose. For the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, you are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after getting the shot.

“That’s just accounting for the time period that it takes to build up the immune response and the antibodies. People need to keep that window in mind and know that you’re not automatically protected as soon as you get your shot,” says Drain.

If You’ve Been Vaccinated, Do You Still Need to Wear a Mask if You’re Getting Together With a Lot of People?
The CDC says it’s okay for fully vaccinated people to gather without masks and indoors with other fully vaccinated people as long as it’s a small group, says Drain.

This is not the case for larger gatherings that include people from multiple households, including unvaccinated adults. Scientists are still gathering data to determine whether vaccinated people can transmit the virus even if they don’t get sick themselves, so at this point public health experts urge caution.

“The recommendation is really to work to accommodate those people that have not been vaccinated,” Drain says. That means continuing to follow all the precautions around masking and social distancing, he adds.

Is It Safe to Participate in an Easter Egg Hunt or an Outdoor Religious Service?
The safest type of Easter egg hunt would only include people from your household, according to the CDC. The next safest would be a small outside gathering where everyone attending can maintain at least six feet of distance from each other. Everyone should wear a mask if the gathering includes people from more than one household.

A medium or large Easter egg hunt would carry more risk, says Drain. “You’d also have to assume that there’s going to be some people there who have not been vaccinated. In that case, the recommendation would be that anybody who participates in outdoor gatherings, Easter egg hunts, or anything else should wear a mask and practice social distancing and take the typical precautions,” says Drain.

Whether it’s safe to participate in this type of gathering also depends on whether anyone in attendance is at high risk for severe COVID-19, he says.

“For example, if there is a family member who is either elderly or pregnant or has underlying lung conditions or deficiencies, and they haven’t been vaccinated, the recommendation would still be that they themselves, as well as members of their household, avoid large or medium public gatherings even outdoors,” says Drain.

Everybody who attends that type of event should be wearing a mask and practicing social distancing, he adds.

Do Children Need to Wear Masks?
According to the CDC, everyone 2 years old and up should wear a mask when around people outside their household. If that’s not possible for a child due to certain disabilities, the agency suggests asking your healthcare provider for alternative ways to reduce the risk of transmission.

“Children younger than 2 years old shouldn’t wear a mask due to safety risks,” says Drain.

Is It Okay to Travel for Spring Break?
There are indications that people have begun traveling this spring and may continue to do so over the holiday break. U.S. airports had close to 1.4 million people pass through on Friday, March 12 — the most on any day since last March.

Travel increases the chances of getting and spreading COVID-19, and the CDC recommends delaying nonessential travel, whether or not you’re vaccinated.

There is good reason to postpone that family trip until more of the population is vaccinated and the virus is better contained. Since the pandemic began, there have been COVID-19 surges after the mass travel that occurs on holidays, according to CDC director Rochelle Walensky, MD, in a March 12 interview on MSNBC.

Keep in mind that if you do travel in the United States, you are required to wear masks on planes, buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation. If you travel outside the country, you will need to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test result or documentation of recovery before you board a flight to return to the United States, according to the CDC.

If I’ve Been Vaccinated, Can I Give Someone Else COVID-19 or Vice Versa?
Those studies are still evolving, and there really isn’t good data on that yet, says Drain. “We also need additional data about reinfection among those people that have already been vaccinated as well. Over the next couple of months and certainly through the summer we will be getting a lot more information on vaccinated people regarding whether or not they can become re-infected or if they can spread the virus to other people.”

“All the vaccines lower the chances of getting COVID-19 if you encounter the coronavirus, but they also help prevent people from developing severe infection and death. So, it’s possible for a person who is vaccinated to acquire the virus and potentially pass it on to other people, whether that’s as an asymptomatic infection or a very mild infection,” says Drain.

Will We See Another Spike in COVID-19 Cases After the Spring Holidays?
“There’s a lot of concern that the new coronavirus variants, with their increased transmission and infectivity, are going to drive the number of cases back up again,” says Drain. The new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 seem to spread more easily and quickly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Whether that happens or not depends, in large part, on how vigilant people are about following public health guidelines. “If we see people start to gather and congregate without masks and without social distancing, we’re certainly going to see cases go back up in the regions where that’s happening,” says Drain.

If people can keep their guard up and continue to practice the safety measures that have been discussed and implemented over the last year, then we should continue to move in a very positive direction, he adds.

“I feel like we’re at another precipice where it can really go either way, and it’s really going to depend a lot on the behaviors of people in the general population,” says Drain.

Boris Johnson says UK is readying fourth Covid vaccine rollout: 'We're going to need it' [iNews, 19 Mar 2022]

By Nick Duffy

‘We’re getting ready for a fourth jab, because we’re going to need it,’ the PM told Tory members

The UK will roll out another coronavirus vaccine booster shot, Boris Johnson has said.

Mr Johnson revealed the planned booster rollout on Saturday in an address at the Conservative Party’s spring conference.

In his speech, Mr Johnson praised the “instinct” of the British population to “choose freedom every time,” noting that they had “come forward to be vaccinated at such incredible speed, voluntarily, unlike many other countries.”

Mr Johnson claimed that while “part of it was that they wanted to avoid catching Covid,” many did so because “they wanted to get on with their lives, and were fed up being told what to do by people like me.”

Addressing the audience, he added: “I hope you’ve all had your boosters? Well, we’re getting ready for a fourth jab, because we’re going to need it.”

A fourth jab is already set to be rolled out for over-75s, care home residents and the immunocompromised in the coming weeks.

However, Health Secretary Sajid Javid suggested earlier this week that a fourth jab rollout for the general population will follow by the end of 2022.

He told ITV’s Peston: “When it comes to vaccinations I think we rightly take the advice of our clinicians.

“(The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) look at the data very, very carefully and their latest advice as you say is that there should be a second boost – or let’s call it a fourth dose – but to focus on those over 75, those in care homes, those who are immunosuppressed.”

When pushed as to whether this would be widened to the general population – not just those who are considered vulnerable, Mr Javid said: “I think at some point they will… their most recent advice is that they think that towards the end of this year, maybe in the autumn, there will be a need to give a lot more people a boost, but I’ll wait for that advice.”

Around one in 20 people in private households in England had Covid-19 in the week to 12 March, data from an Office for National Statistics (ONS) infection survey revealed on Friday, as infections continue to rise across most of the UK.

The figure, equivalent to 2.7 million people, is up from one in 25, or 2.1 million people, in the previous week.

Despite plans to abolish free testing and the lifting of all remaining Covid rules in England, NHS leaders have warned a surge in Covid admissions is having a “significant impact” on the health service including longer waits for emergency beds and delays to operations.

Precaution needed in view of fresh Covid surge in South Korea, China: Tope [Business Standard, 19 Mar 2022]

When asked if a fourth wave of coronavirus was imminent, he said, 'We must continue taking precautions, that is all we can do'

Looking at the new surge in coronavirus cases in South Korea, China and Europe, we can not let our guard down as yet, Maharashtra Public Health Minister Rajesh Tope said here on Saturday.

The Union health ministry had sent a letter to the states a day before about the need to remain alert, he told reporters here.

When asked by reporters whether masks should still be mandatory considering that new daily cases in Maharashtra are fast dwindling, Tope said, "The Union government's letter clearly says that we can not be careless, looking at rising cases in China, South Korea, Europe. We must continue to be alert."

South Korea, whose population is only half that of Maharashtra, is reporting more than one lakh infections a day and there were reports of hospital bed shortages in that country, he said, adding that "we must become wise from others' experience."

When asked if a fourth wave of coronavirus was imminent," he said, "We must continue taking precautions, that is all we can do."

Maharashtra on Saturday reported 97 new coronavirus infections and one death.

S. Korea adds 381454 new COVID-19 cases as of Saturday [The World On Arirang, 19 Mar 2022]

South Korea added more than 381-thousand new coronavirus cases on Saturday, with the figures slightly down from yesterday.

The authorities say, though, that it remains to be seen whether the caseload is actually on the decline.

Cases were heavily concentrated in the capital regions, with Gyeonggi-do Province reporting over 101-thousand and Seoul adding some 82-thousand.

The number of deaths was over 300, and severely ill patients were over 1-thousand.

Starting from Monday, people can gather up to eight instead of six for a private gathering.

New Coronavirus News from 18 Mar 2022

Ukraine: disease control is a casualty of war – so a surge in COVID cases is likely [The Conversation United Kingdom, 18 Mar 2022]

by Michael Head

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already – and will continue to have – extraordinary health and socioeconomic consequences for the Ukrainian people. One of those consequences will almost certainly be an increased COVID burden.

Ukraine reported 37,000 new COVID cases on February 10, 2022 – the country’s highest daily total since the beginning of the pandemic. Since COVID emerged, Ukraine has had more than 5 million confirmed cases and more than 100,000 deaths. Over a million of those cases have occurred since the beginning of 2022, and with infections climbing sharply in February, deaths were rising too.

However, following the invasion, Ukraine’s data reporting initially slowed down before stopping altogether. There’s now no record of how COVID is progressing in the country; from here onwards all case and death statistics will be an under-count. What is clear is that the war started at a time when COVID was plainly on the rise.

Compounding this problem is the fact that the country’s COVID vaccine coverage is low, with just 36% of the population having received one or more vaccine doses. So a high proportion of Ukrainians remain susceptible not only to catching COVID, but also to the potential consequences of hospitalisation and death, which are far more likely in the unvaccinated.

Thus, even in peaceful times, there would be cause for concern about how the relatively fragile health systems in Ukraine might manage further waves of COVID infections. Providing healthcare in a conflict situation is even more difficult, and outbreaks will be almost impossible to control as people seek safety in any way they can.

Optimal conditions for transmission
As of mid-March 2022, an estimated 3 million Ukraine residents have fled their country.

Humanitarian groups and health agencies who look after refugee health are therefore likely to be receiving large numbers of people unvaccinated or partially vaccinated against COVID. On top of this, there are already are high levels of COVID around Europe, and the coronavirus burden among Ukrainians, while essentially unknown, is likely to be significant.

The most recently reported test-positivity value for Ukraine (the proportion of COVID tests taken that are positive) was 60% on February 18, 2022. This is an incredibly high value, and indicates that there were already uncontrolled outbreaks around the country before the war started. It suggests that even when case numbers recently hit record highs, they were likely being under-counted by a significant margin.

All told, this means that people vulnerable to the worst effects of COVID are mixing in groups in which there’s likely to be lots of the virus circulating. Being displaced or sheltering from the conflict will then add to this risk.

The refugee emergency accommodation in neighbouring countries, with necessarily dozens or hundreds of beds in one room, provide some basic shelter and respite for refugees. However, crowded indoor settings provide an ideal space for respiratory infectious diseases to thrive.
Transmission of coronaviruses is likely, with other infections such as influenza or tuberculosis also a potential public health concern. There’s also likely to be observed increases in several other infectious disease outbreaks, ranging from diarrhoea to scabies.

Measles, though, is perhaps the best analogue for COVID in this situation. It is a highly infectious respiratory virus that is often severe in unvaccinated children, and outbreaks are very common where routine healthcare is interrupted, such as in humanitarian crises and areas of conflict.

The basic reproduction number (R0) of measles – that is, how many people on average an infected person will go on to infect in a susceptible population – is often estimated at between 12 and 18. Omicron’s R0 is still being worked out, but the variant is known to be more infectious than previous ones. One estimate puts omicron’s R0 at 8.2. Because it spreads easily, the potential for outbreaks in conflict zones and refugee shelters is high, like with measles.

The risk of another variant
An additional factor to consider is that the greater the number of COVID cases, the greater the risk that new variants may emerge. The delta variant almost certainly emerged from the catastrophe that was India’s spring wave in 2021, which led to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of COVID deaths. The alpha and beta variants are thought to have arisen in the UK and South Africa respectively, at times of uncontrolled outbreaks. With each new variant there are new risks, for example around vaccine effectiveness.

The unfolding tragedy that we see in Ukraine threatens the efforts the world has made to counter this novel coronavirus. Displaced and refugee populations need support, not just in Ukraine but elsewhere too, for example in Tigray or the Afghan refugees who have fled the Taliban regime. Bringing the COVID pandemic under control requires global cooperation around public health as well as highly vaccinated populations across all corners of the globe.

Here's how Covid-19 transitions from a pandemic to endemic [CNBC, 18 Mar 2022]

by Noah Higgins-Dunn

It’s been two years since Covid-19 crept across the globe, battered the U.S. economy and wreaked havoc on health-care systems unprepared to defend themselves against the novel pathogen.

Now, as the latest wave of infections driven by the fast-spreading omicron variant rapidly subsides, many are beginning to question: Is Covid-19 becoming endemic?

“There’s a high probability we’re moving into an endemic setting,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box’ in late February.

But what does it mean when a virus like Covid-19 becomes endemic? That can be unclear—even among global health experts.

“We’re going from the acute phase, the emergency phase, to a chronic phase where we’re going to have to look at long term sustained means of continuing to combat Covid-19,” World Health Organization spokesperson Margaret Harris told CNBC in an interview.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration recently unveiled a 96-page national preparedness plan it thinks will serve as a roadmap to return the nation to more normal routines. The White House’s pandemic playbook is already facing hurdles on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers in Congress dropped additional Covid funding in their latest $1.5 trillion spending bill. The aid is critical for ensuring future supply of booster doses, antiviral pills, tests and more, according to administration officials.

Deltacron and Stealth Omicron differences explained as Covid infections in UK surge again [The Independent, 18 Mar 2022]

by Colin Drury

Two new Covid-19 variants are surging across the globe but what exactly are they? And should we be worried?

Hopes that the pandemic was over may have been premature if the latest Covid figures are anything to go by.

Overall coronavirus cases in the UK continue to rise, with more than 170,000 new cases reported on March 14 alone.

New Covid-19 sub-variants are believed to be behind a global surge that has resulted in China’s first deaths in a year, record numbers of infections in South Korea, a 14 per cent jump in cases in Africa and, here in the UK, rising hospital numbers.

Deltacron and Stealth Omicron are two strains that appear to be ushering in yet another new phase of the fight against coronavirus.

But what exactly are they? And should we be worried?

What is Deltacron?
As the name suggests, it’s a Covid-19 strain that is made up of elements from both the previous Delta and Omicron variants: it almost certainly came into existence in a patient who was infected with both at the same time.

So far it has been detected in several regions of France and appears to have been circulating since early January.

But it was only officially recognised as a new variant after its full genomic sequence was submitted to the international Covid database, GISAID, by virologists from L’Institut Pasteur in Paris.

Around 30 cases have been detected in the UK, according to the UK Health Security Agency.

How dangerous it could be remains open to conjecture. Analysis suggests it is largely similar to Delta but comes with Omicron’s spike protein – the part that binds a virus to human cell.

By rights, this could be a worry because it means it combines Delta’s severity with Omicron’s infectiousness.

Yet because of growing human immunity to both variants, scientists suggest it is, so far, doing relatively little harm.

What is Stealth Omicron?
The better known of the two variants, this is a direct sub-lineage of Omicron also known as BA.2 (Omicron was BA.1) and first discovered in the UK in December. The UKHSA currently labels it a “variant under investigation” rather than a variant of concern.

Yet experts suggest it may be the most transmissible strain of coronavirus yet.

“The basic reproduction number…for BA.2 is about 12,” wrote Professor Adrian Esterman, a former World Health Organisation epidemiologist, on Twitter: “This makes it pretty close to measles, the most contagious disease we know about.”

Already, it is thought to account for more than half of all new cases in England, while it has also been detected in Germany, China and India. In Denmark, it is thought to have caused a huge surge through February.

That’s the bad news.

The good? Denmark’s surge plateaued remarkably quickly and is now receding, while initial data suggests that Stealth is no deadlier than the original Omicron and just as susceptible to vaccines.

How many cases are there of each?
Global numbers remain unclear for Deltacron. About 30 cases are thought to have been identified in the UK with 17 more in the US but there have also been several found in France where it was first identified, as well as in the Netherlands and Denmark.

For the more established Stealth, there is better data. In England, it is said to have accounted for 57 per cent of the 27,000 new cases recorded in the final week of February, while in the US it is thought to make up 23.1 per cent of all cases.

Surges in China, Hong Kong and South Korea – where there is far less natural immunity – are thought to be down to both the original Omicron and Stealth.

How serious could they both be? Inevitability, just by sheer force of numbers, greater transmissibility ultimately means more serious infections and more deaths.

Countries with low natural immunity and less vaccine uptake will be especially vulnerable.

Omicron and Omicron Stealth, experts say, are very much behind the large numbers of deaths in Hong Kong during the last two months, as well as growing serious case numbers in China and a record surge in South Korea.

In the UK, the picture appears more complex.

Case numbers have risen by more than half a million in the last seven days with a small but significant uptick in hospital number.

How much this is down to the seriousness of the new variants and how much is down to loosening of restrictions and waning vaccine coverage is something that currently remains unclear.

UK Covid cases are back on the rise as government scraps travel restrictions [CNBC, 18 Mar 2022]

by Vicky McKeever

LONDON — Cases of Covid-19 are rising once again in the U.K., according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, just as the government lifts its remaining travel restrictions.

ONS figures published Friday showed that close to 1 in 21 people, the equivalent of 3.28 million, in the U.K. were estimated to have tested positive for the coronavirus in the week to March 12.

In England alone, 4.87%, equal to around 2.1 million or 1 in 20 people, were thought to have been infected with Covid-19 last week. That was up from an estimated 3.8% of England’s population in the week to March 5.

Hospitalizations linked to the virus were also up in England last week, to around 13 per 100,000 people, from 11 per 100,000 the previous week.

The uptick in cases comes as the U.K. lifted the last of its Covid travel restrictions. As of Friday morning, people entering the U.K. are no longer required to test for the virus or complete a passenger locator form.

The prevalence of the omicron BA.2 subvariant was said to have increased last week across England, Scotland and Wales, according to the ONS, while the number of omicron BA.1 subvariant infections decreased.

The BA.2 variant has been described as a “stealth” variant because it has genetic mutations that could make it harder to distinguish from the delta variant using PCR tests, compared with the original omicron variant, BA.1.

Indeed, the rise in cases across Europe more broadly is being attributed to the BA.2 subvariant.

Cases were found to be rising across the U.K, with Scotland estimated to have had around 7% of its population testing positive for Covid last week, up from 5.7% the week prior.

The case rate in Wales was estimated to have risen to 4.1% from 3.2% over the same period.
ONS said the percentage of cases in Northern Ireland had increased in the two weeks up to March 12 but the trend was uncertain in the most recent week.

The number of deaths linked to Covid-19 across the U.K. fell to 814 in the last week, down from 879 for the week through to March 4.

Elsewhere, China is also dealing with its worst Covid-19 outbreak since the initial phase of the pandemic.

Covid resurgent across UK with infections in over-70s at record high [The Guardian, 18 Mar 2022]

by Hannah Devlin and Richard Adams

A resurgence of Covid cases is under way across the UK, with infections in the over-70s at a record high and school leaders fearing that preparations for A-levels and GCSEs are being disrupted by outbreaks among staff and students.

Based on random swab tests taken in the community, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that almost 5% of the population in England, or 1,544,600 people, had Covid in the week ending 12 March, and 3.5% of people in the oldest age group. Infections also reached a record high in Scotland, where one in 14 tested positive.

The high prevalence among older people has prompted unease, after reports this week that vaccine immunity declines steeply in care-home residents. It is six months since many people in this age group had their last vaccine dose.

“Older age groups, especially people who have been isolating for so long, are now quite vulnerable even if they have kept up to date with their vaccines,” said Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia.

The increase in infections is being driven by the more transmissible Omicron BA.2 variant, which has become the dominant strain across the UK. It transmits more readily than the original BA.1 strain but there is good cross-immunity between the two variants.

“It’s basically sweeping up everyone who didn’t get Omicron the first time around,” Hunter said. This, he added, meant the current wave was more likely to follow a short, sharp trajectory as seen in Denmark and the Netherlands where there had been an Omicron BA.2 wave.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if it peaks before the end of March,” he said.

Prof James Naismith, a director at the Rosalind Franklin Institute at the University of Oxford, noted the higher prevalence in Scotland than England despite its more stringent rules, including a continued mask mandate in shops and on transport.

“My main concern is for the vulnerable, for whom this disease is serious and for those whose lives will be blighted by long Covid,” he said.. “Every effort must be made to triple-vaccinate as many people as possible, quadruple-vaccinate the most vulnerable and make available antivirals.”

Sarah Crofts, the head of analytical outputs for the ONS Infection Survey, said: “These latest figures show further increases in infections across most of the UK with high levels of infection everywhere, and in Scotland the highest our survey has seen.

“It’s notable also that infections have risen in all age groups, with the over-70s reaching their highest estimate since our survey began.”

Schools in England have recorded rising numbers of Covid cases and absences as part of an “exit wave” of Omicron-variant infections. It comes after the ending of most safety measures in schools, including requirements for students to take twice-weekly tests.

Attendance data compiled by FFT Datalab shows that pupil absences in England are rising nationally for the first time since January. The south-west, including Cornwall, shows the highest rate of pupil absences, with nearly 10% of secondary school students off midway through March.

Tretherras secondary school in Newquay told parents this week that entire year groups would have to stay at home and learn remotely because more than 30 staff members were absent, including 22 with confirmed Covid cases.

Parents were told that sixth formers in year 12 were to work from home on Monday, following years 9 and 10 students working remotely this week.

“Please know that closing a school bubble is a last resort, and we have looked at alternative solutions and year groups, however, due to staffing implications this is not possible,” the school’s executive headteacher told parents.

Richard Lander school in Truro has also had more than 30 staff members off sick, the majority Covid-related, forcing it to tell students in years 8, 9 and 10 to work from home until next week.

Headteachers said supply staff remained hard to find, with schools prioritising teaching for students taking A-level, BTec and GCSE exams starting in eight weeks time.

“We are dealing with unprecedented levels of staff absence due to Covid, and despite our best efforts to ensure that all our students have a specialist, known teacher in front of them – or indeed a supply teacher – we have reached a point where sadly it is not possible,” said the head of one school who is organising a rotation of year groups working remotely.

Caroline Derbyshire, the chair of the Headteachers Roundtable group and executive head of Saffron Walden County high school in Essex, said her trust has had as many staff off with Covid in the four weeks since self-isolation and testing measures were ended as the previous 12 months.

Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “At such a critical time, with exam season looming, leaders are now faced with challenges on staffing and in some cases a sudden increase in remote learning.

“The government should reconsider its decision to end regular testing in schools and must certainly drop its premature proposals to start charging for test kits. ”

The provision of free Covid tests for the public in England is expected to end on 30 March.

COVID-19 Policies Carry Implications for South Korea's Presidential Election [Fair Observer, 18 Mar 2022]

By Timothy Rich, Andi Dahmer, Madelynn Einhorn

President-elect Yoon will need to address a changing COVID-19 environment amid a fatigued and divided Korean public.

On top of a highly contested presidential race and the election of People Power Party (PPP) candidate Yoon Suk-yeol on March 9, South Korea’s COVID-19 numbers are rapidly rising, with the country experiencing over 300,000 infections a day and record rates of COVID-related deaths. Despite the increase in cases, the South Korean government has removed several COVID-19 policies, including extending business closing times and removing the vaccine or negative test requirement to enter many public spaces.

Although South Korea has reduced its prior strict contact tracing policies, the percentage of critically ill patients is less than the country’s last peak in December 2021. The key question now is what the South Korean public thinks about the government’s COVID-19 response.
____________________
South Korea’s 2020 national assembly election was internationally praised for balancing ease of voting amid pandemic restrictions and provided a blueprint for other countries, with President Moon Jae-in’s administration largely praised for its efficient response to the pandemic. South Korea even allowed citizens who have tested positive to cast a ballot at the polls once they recovered, even if voting had officially ended.

However, with cases rising in late 2021, evaluations of the Moon administration’s handling have soured, although still hovering around 40% — the highest in the country’s democratic history for an outgoing president and similar to his vote share in 2017. Yet Yoon and the Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung, both polling under 40% in the run-up to the election, declined to outline any pandemic response plan until November, when there was already a shortage of hospital beds — likely a result of the government’s “living with COVID” plan.

Similarly, minor candidates have not presented clear COVID-19 policies. Even beyond the “living with COVID” strategies, candidates have not shared concrete plans to build back infrastructure after the public health crisis.

To understand South Korean evolving perceptions of COVID-19 policies, we conducted a pre-election web survey of 945 South Koreans on February 18-22 via Macromill Embrain using quota sampling on gender, region and age. We asked respondents to evaluate on a five-point Likert scale the following statement: “I am satisfied with the South Korean government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.”

We found, at best, mixed support for the government’s response, with overall disagreement outpacing agreement — 43.6% versus 35.8%. As before, perceptions deviate on party identification, with supporters of the ruling Democratic Party (DP) largely satisfied with the response (64.8%), while supporters of the main conservative party, the PPP, are largely dissatisfied (71.4%).

Supporters of the two smaller parties, the progressive Justice Party and the center-right People’s Party, showed responses that were more mixed, perhaps because candidates had not emphasized COVID-19 policies in campaign rhetoric. Regression analysis finds that women and older respondents are more supportive of COVID-19 policies, while after controlling for age, gender, education, income and political ideology, supporters of the DP were still more likely to evaluate pandemic policies favorably while PPP supporters were less likely to do so.

Noting this partisan divergence, we next wanted to identify whether views on COVID policy may have indirectly influenced support for one candidate over another. Regression analysis finds that even after controlling for demographic factors and party identification, satisfaction with COVID-19 policies negatively corresponds with voting for Yoon and positively for Lee.

However, we also found that views of COVID-19 policies largely correspond with evaluations of President Moon’s job performance, questioning whether these measures were driving evaluations of Moon or whether perceptions now may simply be picking up sentiments regarding Moon irrespective of the actual policies. Further analysis shows that including evaluations of Moon’s performance in our earlier statistical models results in the COVID-19 evaluation failing to reach statistical significance.

Whereas COVID-19 policies helped Moon Jae-in’s party in 2020 win a clear majority in the national assembly, our evidence suggests evaluations now may have contributed to an anti-incumbency vote even as both of the major candidates lack clear policy prescriptions related to the pandemic. Regardless, President-elect Yoon will need to address a changing COVID-19 environment amid a fatigued and divided Korean public.

New Coronavirus News from 16 Mar 2022

Scalise calls for Fauci to testify at upcoming hearing | TheHill [The Hill, 16 Mar 2022]

BY NATHANIEL WEIXEL

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) invited top infectious diseases doctor Anthony Fauci to testify alongside other administration officials at an upcoming hearing about moving beyond the current COVID-19 crisis.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis is holding a hearing on March 30 featuring other top administration health officials, including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

Fauci was not included among the witnesses.

Scalise, the panel's ranking member, said the committee has not heard from Fauci directly since a briefing on July 29, 2021.

"Notably, you are missing from this esteemed witness panel, despite being the Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden and the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases," Scalise wrote in a letter to Fauci.

Fauci and other administration officials have testified multiple times in the Senate.

The Hill has reached out to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and to the subcommittee's chairman, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.).

According to the subcommittee, the administration officials at the hearing are set to address the progress made as well as how the U.S. is preparing for any new variants.

The subcommittee has been focused on investigating the pandemic response under former President Trump, looking for evidence of political interference. The committee has heard closed-door testimony from a number of Trump officials, including former coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx.

Fauci has become a top target of congressional Republicans as they conduct their own investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, seeking to find out whether the U.S.
government played a role by funding controversial "gain of function" research in Wuhan, China.

Several Republicans in both the House and Senate allege Fauci has not been transparent and honest about his agency's funding activities, accusations he denies.