It’s too early to know if the Omicron variant will be the final phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease physician, on Monday.
“It’s an open question whether Omicron will be the live virus vaccine everyone is hoping for,” Fauci said, placing air quotes around the phrase “live virus vaccine.”
There are two ways to end a pandemic: the infectious disease is eradicated, or it becomes endemic, meaning it continues to exist without disrupting society—chickenpox, for example.
“If you look at the history of infectious diseases, we’ve only eradicated one infectious disease in humans, and that’s smallpox,” Fauci said at the World Economic Forum. “That’s not going to happen with this virus.”
This means that COVID-19 must evolve into a less dangerous disease for the pandemic to officially end.
And although the highly contagious Omicron variant is spreading like wildfire — infecting about 782,000 Americans a day, according to the CDC — some point to its low mortality rate as a sign the virus may be becoming less severe.
It’s possible that omicron could signal that the pandemic is ending, “but that would only be the case if we didn’t get another variant that evades the immune response,” Fauci said.
And Omicron likely won’t be the last variant of the coronavirus, said Annelies Wilder-Smith, a professor of infection research at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine.
“With the level of virus circulation that we are seeing now, there is clearly a high possibility that another variant will emerge,” she said at the World Economic Forum.
Also in the news:
►Tickets for the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games will not be sold due to the “current serious and complicated situation of the COVID-19 pandemic,” officials said in China, where the first Omicron variant infection was detected on Saturday led to increased efforts to to prevent the spread of the virus.
►Canada approved the use of Pfizer’s antiviral pill Paxlovid to treat people with COVID-19. The US approved its use in December.
►Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean International, both subsidiaries of Royal Caribbean Group, have canceled cruises as COVID-19 continues to spread.
📈 Today’s numbers: The US has recorded more than 66 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 851,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Global Totals: More than 330 million cases and over 5.5 million deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 208 million Americans — 62.9% — are fully vaccinated.
📘 What we read: Many parents are “just trying to stay afloat” as omicron is forcing daycare centers across the country to close. Read the full story.
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Study: Almost half of US adults gained weight in the first year of the pandemic
Research from New Mexico State University found that the pandemic has fueled stress-related unhealthy eating habits among Americans. Now, a study co-authored by a researcher from the NMSU Department of Public Health Sciences shows that nearly half of all adults in the United States gained weight in the first year of the pandemic.
The new findings were part of a national assessment of weight gain in America conducted by a research team that included Jagdish Khubchandani, a professor of public health at NMSU.
“Obesity was an epidemic before the pandemic, and little was known about body weight changes in adult Americans over the past year,” Khubchandani said. “We wanted to estimate the weight changes in the US population and their determinants after the first year of the pandemic.”
The study, published in Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research and Reviews, included 3,473 adult participants. The results show that 48 percent of the study group reported gaining weight during the first 12 months of the pandemic, from March 2020 to April 2021.
Participants who reported weight gain were more likely to be male, white or Hispanic, married, age 45 or older, working full-time, having less than a college education, or living in southern and western states or rural areas of the United States for study.
— Carlos Andres Lopez, Las Cruces Sun News
COVID-19 deaths and cases are on the rise again in US nursing homes
COVID-19 infections are soaring again in US nursing homes due to the Omicron wave, and deaths are also rising, prompting new restrictions on family visits and a renewed push to vaccinate and empower more residents and staff.
Nursing homes were the deadly epicenter of the pandemic early on, before the vaccine allowed many of them to reopen to visitors last year. But the wildly contagious variant has dealt them a setback.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nursing homes reported a near-record-breaking COVID-19 case among residents in the week ended Jan. 9, a nearly seven-fold increase from the previous month.
In the same week, a total of 645 COVID-19-related deaths were recorded among residents, a 47% increase from the earlier period. And there are fears the death toll could be much higher before omicron is through.
Despite the rising numbers, the situation is not as dire as it was in December 2020, when the number of care home deaths per week was around 6,200. Experts credit the now-high vaccination rates among nursing home residents: About 87% are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
— Associated Press
Contribution: The Associated Press
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