Inside Medicine. What Are You Seeing? [COVID-19 medical news]

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I just post articles, and the article only mentioned antibodies. T cells and B cells are also a factor but not covered in the article.

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A second Omicron variant case in the US in someone who lives in Minnesota but traveled domestically to New York (but no international travel):

  • 11/19-11/21: Attended Anime NYC 2021 convention.
  • 11/22: Developed mild symptoms. (Note that this was the day the first known Omicron variant patient returned to the US from the RSA; this patient started having symptoms 11/25.)
  • 11/24: Tested. (Note that this was the day WHO was informed about the new variant.)
  • 12/2: No longer has symptoms.

Both this patient and the previously known one were vaccinated and had mild symptoms.

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5 more in NY

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Surprise, surprise!
 not.

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Seems like we might have no idea where omicron started considering it’s in 30+countries now, and some of those infections occurrrd before South Africa announced the new variant they had isolated.

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And we have Hawaii’s case of a non-traveler with a moderate case of Omicron! Yikes—it’s already everywhere.

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I’m hopeful it’s good news that it’s being discovered by testing rather than by deaths. That would correlate with it being a mild form and if it’s mild, it’s really no big deal comparatively.

Time will tell. It’s early in the pandemic yet.

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More news from South Africa.

  • Recently had 11,500 new cases, up from 200 to 300 in mid-November.
  • Slight increase in hospital admissions, mostly unvaccinated people.
  • About 70% of sequenced genomes are Omicron.
  • 24% vaccination rate (versus 7% in Africa and 54% in Europe). No vaccine shortage.
  • South Africa had peaks in cases in winter (July/August 2020, July/August 2021) and summer (January 2021), and is seeing a rise now for this summer.
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  • Regarding time frame, “Already, doctors in Nigeria have said they’ve found omicron in a banked covid-19 sample in that country. Dutch authorities also found omicron cases there from mid-November. These could offer earlier data points.” (The virus had a head start on any travel restrictions against it.)
  • Regarding vaccine induced antibody effectiveness, “These types of tests usually take a couple of weeks to perform. For past variants, like alpha, companies like Moderna and BioNTech published answers from their laboratory tests within the month.”
  • Regarding transmissibility, “Firm evidence for higher transmissibility could take a month or more to acquire.”
  • Regarding severity, “Whether omicron causes worse disease, or different symptoms, is probably the question that will take longest to answer—likely a couple of months.”
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Interesting article on the presence of a piece of common cold virus (and HIV) in Omicron.

Omicron variant may have picked up a piece of common-cold virus (msn.com)

Maybe this will mean transmissible but mild. Trying to think positive.

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This is why I am still mostly a hermit.

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Me too.

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So those with Medicaid, Medicare and the uninsured (those most burdened by the costs) are SOL. And everyone else has to front the cost and submit a claim for reimbursement. SMH

Should be sending free tests to everyone that asks/signs up online to receive them or their physicians, pharmacists etc
 should be able to distribute them etc
Either the government supports widespread testing or they don’t. This says they don’t.

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All fully vaccinated AND tested before the Christmas party! It’s shocking how easily it is spread. Let’s hope the cases are mild.

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That page says that “Health authorities said the individuals infected were so far displaying mild symptoms, with none hospitalized.” However, the patients were all fully vaccinated, and there is mention of “young age” (both factors reducing the risk of severe sickness or needing hospitalization if one does get sick).

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Did they have boosters and was it an antigen test the day before?

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I can only tell you what is going on in a very general sense in the Montefiore health system. (Big hospital system in NYC area.) (My husband does not work with patients.) The graphs for every hospital in the system look pretty similar. Huge peaks in April 2020. That’s when the CEO talked daily about how they were running out of PPE, and they brought in the refrigerator trucks for the dead bodies. There’s another peak 1/3 to 1/4 as high in January of 2021. The one exception is the hospital in Orange County which was almost as high. While nearly everyone’s number’s are creeping up they aren’t even close to what they were last winter yet. And while more people are testing positive, the number of people hospitalized has actually gone down or stayed steady in the Bronx and NYC.

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Against Omicron, masking may be an even better defense than vaccination.