10/6/2023 0 Comments Chicago lockdown omicronVaccine makers have urged the approval of a fourth shot to enhance immunity for adults 65 and older, and it's possible we'll see an annual COVID-19 booster in the future. The protection afforded by vaccines, while still widely effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, is not as strong as it was when people first got vaccinated in late 2020. "So I'm wearing my mask still … I am the only person indoors, and people look at me funny and I don't care." Concerns over Omicron and increased Covid cases meant that schools in Wales were granted two extra days at the start of term in January to prepare for the return of students. "Why wouldn't it come here? Are we vaccinated enough? I don't know," Kimberly Prather, an aerosol-transmission expert at the University of California, San Diego, told The Post. No, schools in Wales will remain open in January 2022. Some experts told The Washington Post they had already opted to keep their masks despite the CDC's newest guidelines because of the rise of a new variant at home and abroad. That break could be short-lived if the US had a similar outbreak to Europe's, as CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said she'll reinstate national mask guidelines if COVID-19 levels worsen again. The findings will be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2023) scheduled to be held in Copenhagen in April.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. The participants, who were recruited between June and September 2020, underwent regular testing for Covid-19 (nasopharyngeal swabs and antibody tests) and provided information on their vaccination status till June 2022. “Long Covid is a significant public health issue with prolonged, sometimes debilitating, illness, limited treatment options and uncertain outcome,” Dr Strahm added, noting that “it is vital to find out more about who is at risk of long Covid and why.”įor the study, the team assessed rates of long Covid symptoms in 1,201 healthcare workers infected with the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 virus, the omicron variant (BA.1) or both and compared these to uninfected controls. While the reason remains unclear, the researchers speculated that “it’s probably due to a combination of the Omicron variant being less likely to cause severe illness than the wild-type virus - we know that long Covid is more common after severe illness - and immunity acquired through previous exposure to the virus through, for example, a subclinical infection without seroconversion”, according to Dr Carol Strahm, of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, Cantonal Hospital St Gallen, in Switzerland. Similarly, vaccination did not affect the risk of long Covid or fatigue in those who had Omicron after the wild-type virus. The research also found that having Omicron after a wild-type infection does not carry a greater risk of long Covid or fatigue than having a wild-type infection alone.įurther, the analysis also revealed that re-infection - an Omicron infection after a wild-type infection - didn’t carry a greater risk of long Covid or fatigue than a wild-type infection alone. However, people who were first infected with the Omicron variant were no more likely to report long Covid symptoms than those who’d never had Covid-19. The study found that healthcare workers infected with the original wild-type virus were up to 67 per cent more likely to report symptoms of long Covid than those who hadn’t had Covid-19. London, March 10 (IANS) The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is much less likely to lead to long Covid than the variant circulating at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, new research shows.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |