Here is Dr. Klotman’s Week 208 COVID update. The highlights are:
- Hospitalizations and wastewater COVID levels continue to fall.
- The wastewater COVID levels rise or fall about two weeks before hospitalizations do
- The CDC recommends taking COVID booster if you haven’t been infected with COVID this year and are >6 months out from your last COVID shot and are 65+ or have a condition that lowers your immunity
- The CDC also recommends isolation for COVID infection only up to 24hrs of being asymptomatic without medicines. I have mentioned that before.
The remainder of Dr. Klotman’s update focuses on Candida auris. This is a yeast that is resistant to all our anti-fungal medications. It was first reported in fragile patients in hospitals in India, if memory serves. It was exported internationally through medical tourism. Like all infectious diseases, it moves about through travel or through vectors (mosquitoes, beetles, etc) who are stowaways on vehicles.
In the US, Candida auris has become more of a problem in some states than others – Texas is significantly affected. It occurs most commonly among the elderly, people with weakened immunity, and folks who spend time in hospitals and nursing facilities. What can we do to protect ourselves? Very little other than try to avoid prolonged hospitalizations, invasive procedures, and nursing home stays.
We all tend to think of hospitals and nursing homes as places where one goes to get well. It isn’t always so. Bad things can happen in such places – acquiring untreatable infections is just one of them. We should not want to spend even one extra (unnecessary) day in either setting. Need a rest? Check into a La Quinta or your favorite motel; don’t spend it in the hospital!
In other COVID news: MIS-C (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children) is a rare complication of COVID that can cause inflammation of the heart, lungs, brain, and kidneys, and cause death. 80% of cases occur among unvaccinated children. So, the idea that we don’t need to vaccinate the children in our family because COVID is mild in kids only works until our kid, grandchild, or great-grandchild winds up fighting for life in the ICU. Then we feel really stupid.
The big respiratory illness that we foolishly believed that we had relegated to the trash bin of defeated viral epidemics, Measles, is in the news again. There have been cases in multiple states, and most recently a significant outbreak in Chicago. Many of the affected in that city are Venezuelan immigrants. In recent years outbreaks were associated with travel among Hasidic Jews. Both groups have low rates of vaccination to the virus. That makes them easy marks for contracting and spreading the illness. Merde!
People in many Central and South America countries have vaccination rates similar to or better than our own. With Measles, we need a 95% vaccination rate to interrupt virus transmission. We in the USA have about a 92-93% vaccination rate – just low enough to permit outbreaks in parts of the country where vaccine hesitancy is a religious/political/disinformation issue. I so hate it when that happens.