Here is Dr. Paul Klotman’s Week 198 COVID update. The highlights are:
- COVID cases, wastewater levels, test positivity, hospitalizations, and deaths are all rising though well behind 2022 levels.
- Much of what folks think are just colds are actually upper respiratory COVID infections. While many are mild, the infected individuals can infect vulnerable folks.
- The dominant variant in the USA is Omicron variant JN.1 that now represents just under 45% of all our cases.
- Although the most recent COVID vaccine offers substantial protection against the new strains including JN.1, the vaccine’s uptake is too low to provide herd immunity. Much of the immunity is due to actual COVID infections.
In addition to this update, I have recently read through the transcript of a COVID podcast that featured clinical leaders from Italy and Germany. The podcast addressed the question, “What have we learned?” The main point was something that I mentioned last week, albeit more elegantly discussed with delicate nuance. COVID continues to be a threat to specific subgroups of individuals who: are transplant recipients, are taking chemotherapy, have conditions that result in suppressed immunity, or have comorbidities in addition to advanced age. As I and many others have said before, the healthy may be done with COVID, but COVID isn’t done with all of us.
Another item that I read this week examined the CDC’s review of the still poorly defined Long COVID. Long COVID is credited with thousands of COVID deaths occurring months or even years after acute COVID infection. Some of these are due to respiratory causes, and others to vascular causes. There is still much to be learned about Long COVID; our current understanding of this condition is incomplete. Merde!