- While the highly transmissible Omicron variant continues to drive up Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations — and the numbers are likely to get worse before they get better — health experts say it’s critical Americans continue safe practices to prevent infections.
- You can lose your ability to drive if you engage in risky behaviour.
- But the CDC has faced renewed criticism in recent weeks over confusion surrounding its guidelines on testing and isolation for people who test positive for Covid-19.
While the highly transmissible Omicron variety continues to push up Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations — and the numbers are anticipated to worsen before improving — health experts say it’s vital that Americans continue to follow safe infection prevention practices as reported by CNN.
Health care facilities
“I don’t buy the idea that we are all going to get Omicron and, therefore, just give up trying.
I think that’s wrong,” Dr Robert Wachter, chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday.
It’s likely that “the next month is going to be awful,” he said.
But this does not mean that everyone should assume they will catch the virus, he said, noting the pattern of Omicron infections in the UK and South Africa.
The forecast could mean an average of 3,526 Covid-19 deaths per day, up from a current average of 1,251 each day, based on data from Johns Hopkins University.
Health care facilities are scrambling to handle staff shortages as hospitalizations for Covid-19 are increasing for both adults and children.
Disaster emergency
In the Kansas City metro area, hospitals are postponing certain surgeries due to employees out sick with Covid-19, according to more than a dozen doctors at a news conference Wednesday.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signed a state of disaster emergency on Thursday to alleviate some of the healthcare staffing shortages and constraints caused by the surge.
The best way to keep workplaces safe is to encourage mask-wearing and vaccinations, said Arthur Caplan, director of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
You can lose your ability to drive if you engage in risky behaviour.
So, we don’t live in a society that just says, “freedom means I can do what I want” or “freedom means I have the choice without any accountability or responsibility.”
Boosters for young
Access to boosters has been expanded to more children, as the CDC updated its recommendations Wednesday for the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine booster to include children as young as 12, at least five months after they finish the primary vaccine series.
The decision follows the US Food and Drug Administration’s earlier expansion of the emergency use authorization for the booster.
“It is critical that we protect our children and teens from COVID-19 infection and the complications of severe disease,” CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky said in a statement.
That’s less than half of the nearly 180 million people who are eligible to receive their booster shot and about a fifth of the total US population.
At least 67.5 million people ages 5 and up have not received their first dose of the vaccine, according to the latest CDC data.
Independent briefing
The CDC will also hold a telebriefing on Friday to give updates on the pandemic.
Walensky is scheduled to speak during that briefing.
It’s been months since the CDC has held a briefing like this.
The agency usually participates in joint briefings with officials from the White House or the National Institutes of Health, such as Fauci.
Its last independent Covid-19 briefing was July 27, 2021.
This week the agency updated that guidance after criticism from outside medical experts and said that if people have access to a Covid-19 test and want to take it, the best approach is to use a rapid test toward the end of their five-day isolation period.
Do you have symptoms?
A new preprint study involving a small group of patients published Wednesday found it may take several days for people infected with the Omicron variant to test positive for Covid-19 with a rapid antigen test after also testing positive with a PCR test, raising concerns about the reliability of rapid tests to detect Omicron Covid-19 cases when the infections are still early.
Researchers found on the day of and the day immediately following a positive PCR result, rapid antigen tests were all negative, even though 28 of the 30 people in the study had enough virus in their body to transmit it to others.
The results are considered preliminary and have yet to be peer-reviewed.
“The important thing is, when you feel symptoms, assume you’re positive at this point, especially with Omicron being so prevalent,” Mina said in an interview with eMed, where he is chief science officer.
For individuals with access to rapid tests, the FDA stated that tests should be used as authorized after several health experts on social media suggested rapid tests may be more accurate if the throat is swabbed rather than nasal passages.
“The CDC recommends that throat swabs be collected by a trained healthcare provider.”
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Source: CNN
