Omicron Variant Presence Confirmed in Wyoming – Wyoming Department of Health
Omicron Variant Presence Confirmed in Wyoming December 17, 2021 As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, at least one case involving the newer omicron variant has been confirmed within the state, according to the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH). Lab sequencing has confirmed an Albany County adult with recent domestic travel is infected with the omicron variant […]
Nigeria Says It Found First Case Of Omicron Variant In November
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria has detected its first case of the omicron coronavirus variant in travelers who arrived from South Africa in the past week, the country’s national public health institute said Wednesday, correcting its earlier statement that it found the variant in samples taken in October. The Nigeria Center for Disease Control said […]
Omicron Was In Netherlands Before It Was Alerted By South Africa
BRUSSELS (AP) — The omicron variant was already in the Netherlands when South Africa alerted the World Health Organization about it last week, Dutch health authorities said Tuesday, adding to fear and confusion over the new version of the coronavirus in a weary world hoping it had left the worst of the pandemic behind. The […]
Will Flight Restrictions Help Prevent New COVID-19 Variant Spread?
A new coronavirus variant identified in South Africa is leading to a new round of travel restrictions just as many had finally begun to ease. The risks of the variant, called omicron, are largely unknown. But the World Health Organization has called it a “variant of concern” and governments around the world are not waiting […]
South Africa Finds New Variant Of COVID-19 With ‘Constellation Of Mutations’
A new variant of the coronavirus has been found in South Africa, troubling scientists who say the strain has a high number of mutations and is likely already sparking a jump in new cases around Johannesburg. The variant, which is being referred to as the B1.1.529 variant until the World Health Organization decides to assign […]
‘Knocked All Our Assumptions for a Loop’: What We Heard This Week
“We’d all like it to be true. There were similar conjectures before the Delta variant appeared and knocked all our assumptions for a loop.” — Stephen Morse, PhD, of Columbia University Medical Center, on predictions that we’re all but done with the pandemic of the century. “To see a movie in the theater was quite […]
COVID Hospitalizations Soared With Delta
COVID-19 patients infected with the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) were more likely to need a higher level of care compared with those with the Alpha variant (B.1.1.7), British researchers found. Patients infected with Delta were more than twice as likely to be admitted to the hospital within 14 days after PCR testing versus those with the […]
What’s This About Delta Being 1,000 Times More Infectious?
You’ve been hearing it a lot lately: the Delta variant is 1,000 times more infectious than the original version of SARS-CoV-2. So where does that figure come from? It’s from a study by the Guangdong CDC in China — published earlier this month as a preprint on both medRxiv and virological.org — that experts are […]
Could COVID Shots in Secret Lure Holdouts?
In COVID-19 hot spots across the country where the Delta variant is thriving and vaccine hesitancy is high, hospitals have continued to urge for more people to get vaccinated. In the case of Ozarks Healthcare, based in West Plains, Mo., the health system recently issued an impassioned plea for people to get vaccinated, even if […]
What The Lambda COVID-19 Variant Means For Us Right Now
The delta variant first identified in India is spreading widely in the United States, accounting for more than half of all new COVID-19 infections. But even as it becomes the dominant strain here, threatening to increase new infections among unvaccinated individuals, a new variant, called the lambda variant, or C.37, has also caught public health […]