Science – Page 5 – The Tarbabys Blog

Superbug crisis could get worse, killing nearly 40 million people by 2050, study estimates

CNN

Superbug crisis could get worse, killing nearly 40 million people by 2050, study estimates

Jacqueline Howard – September 16, 2024

The number of lives lost around the world due to infections that are resistant to the medications intended to treat them could increase nearly 70% by 2050, a new study projects, further showing the burden of theongoing superbug crisis.

Cumulatively, from 2025 to 2050, the world could see more than 39 million deaths that are directly attributable to antimicrobial resistance or AMR, according to the study, which was published Monday in the journal The Lancet.

Antimicrobial resistance happens when pathogens like bacteria and fungi develop the ability to evade the medications used to kill them.

The World Health Organization has called AMR “one of the top global public health and development threats,” driven by the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial medications in humans, animals and plants, which can help pathogens develop a resistance to them.

The new study reveals that when it comes to the prevalence of AMR and its effects, “we expect it to get worse,” said lead author Dr. Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

“We need appropriate attention on new antibiotics and antibiotic stewardship so that we can address what is really quite a large problem,” he said.

Older adults bear the burden

The researchers – from the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance Project, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and other institutions – estimated deaths and illnesses attributable to versus associated with antimicrobial resistance for 22 pathogens, 84 pathogen-drug combinations and 11 infections across 204 countries and territories from 1990 through 2021. A death attributable to antimicrobial resistance was directly caused by it, while a death associated with AMR may have another cause that was exacerbated by the antimicrobial resistance.

About 520 million individual records were part of the data to make those estimates.

The researchers found that from 1990 to 2021, deaths from AMR fell more than 50% among children younger than 5 but increased more than 80% among adults 70 and older – trends that are forecast to continue.

It was surprising to see those patterns emerge, Murray said.

“We had these two opposite trends going on: a decline in AMR deaths under age 15, mostly due to vaccination, water and sanitation programs, some treatment programs, and the success of those,” Murray said.

“And at the same time, there’s this steady increase in the number of deaths over age 50,” he said, as the world ages; older adults can be more susceptible to severe infection.

The researchers found that the pathogen-drug combination that had the largest increase in causing the most burden among all age groups was methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. For this combination – the antibiotic methicillin and the bacteria S. aureus – the number of attributable deaths nearly doubled from 57,200 in 1990 to 130,000 in 2021.

Using statistical modeling, the researchers also produced estimates of deaths and illnesses attributable to AMR by 2050 in three scenarios: if the current climate continues, if new potent antibiotic drugs are developed to target resistant pathogens, and if the world has improved quality of health care for infections and better access to antibiotics.

The forecasts show that deaths from antimicrobial resistance will increase by 2050 if measures are not in place to improve access to quality care, powerful antibiotics and other resources to reduce and treat infections.

The researchers estimated that, in 2050, the number of global deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance could reach 1.9 million, and those associated with antimicrobial resistance could reach 8.2 million.

According to the data, the regions of the world most affected by AMR and attributable deaths are South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa – and many of these regions don’t have equitable access to quality care, Murray said.

“There are still, unfortunately, a lot of places in low-resource settings where people who need antibiotics are just not getting them, and so that’s a big part of it. But it’s not just the antibiotics. It’s when you’re sick, either as a kid or an adult, and you get sent to hospital, and you get a package of care, essentially, that includes things like oxygen,” Murray said.

“In low-resource settings, even basics like oxygen are often not available. And then, if you are very sick and you need an intensive care unit, well, there’s big parts of the low-resource world – most of them, actually – where you wouldn’t get access to that sort of care,” he said. “So there’s a spectrum of supportive care, plus the antibiotics, that really make a difference.”

But in a scenario where the world has better health care, 92 million cumulative deaths could be averted between 2025 and 2050, the researchers forecast. And in a scenario where the world has new, more potent drugs, about 11 million cumulative deaths could be avoided.

‘There is possible hope on the horizon’

The “innovative and collaborative” approach to this study provides a “comprehensive assessment” of antimicrobial resistance and its potential burden on the world, Samuel Kariuki, of the Kenya Medical Research Institute, wrote in a commentary that accompanied the new study in The Lancet.

Yet he warned that the forecast models do not consider the emergence of new superbugs “and might lead to underestimation if new pathogens arise.”

Overall, “these data should drive investments and targeted action” toward addressing the growing challenge of antimicrobial resistance in all regions of the world, Kariuki wrote.

The new paper represents decades of research on the global burden of antimicrobial resistance, said Dr. Steffanie Strathdee, associate dean of global health sciences and distinguished professor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.

Strathdee saw firsthand the effects that antimicrobial resistance can have on health when her husband nearly died from a superbug infection.

“I’m somebody who’s lived with antimicrobial resistance affecting my family for the last eight years. My husband nearly died from a superbug infection. It’s actually one of the infections that’s highlighted in this paper,” said Strathdee, who serves as co-director of the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics at UC San Diego.

During a Thanksgiving cruise on the Nile in 2015, Strathdee’s husband, Tom Patterson, suddenly developed severe stomach cramps. When a clinic in Egypt failed to help his worsening symptoms, Patterson was flown to Germany, where doctors discovered a grapefruit-size abdominal abscess filled with Acinetobacter baumannii, a virulent bacterium resistant to nearly all antibiotics.

The annual number of people dying from gram-negative bacteria, like A. baumannii, that are resistant to carbapenem – a class of last-resort antibiotics used to treat severe bacterial infections – rose 89,200 from 1990 to 2021, more than any antibiotic class over that period, according to the new study.

“That’s one of the urgent priority pathogens, which is one of these gram-negative bacteria,” Strathdee said. “And my husband, when he fell ill from this, he was 69. So he’s exactly at the age that this paper is highlighting, that older people are going to be affected by this more in the future, because our population is aging and people have comorbidities, like diabetes, like my husband has.”

Strathdee’s husband recovered after treatment with phages, viruses that selectively target and kill bacteria and that can be used as a treatment approach for antimicrobial-resistant bacterial infections.

“The most important alternative to antibiotics is phage therapy, or bacteriophage therapy, and that’s what saved my husband’s life,” Strathdee said. “Phage can be used very effectively with antibiotics, to reduce the amount of antibiotics that are needed, and they can even be used potentially in livestock and in farming.”

The new study gives Strathdee hope that the world can reduce the potential burden of antimicrobial resistance. That would require improving access to antibiotics and newer antimicrobial medications, vaccines, clean water and other aspects of quality health care around the world, she said, while reducing the use of antibiotics in livestock, food production and the environment, which can breed more resistance.

“There is possible hope on the horizon,” Strathdee said. “If we were to scale up these interventions, we could dramatically reduce the number of deaths in the future.”

CNN’s Sandee LaMotte contributed to this report.

The ideas in Project 2025? Reagan tried them, and the nation suffered

Los Angeles Times – Opinion

Opinion: The ideas in Project 2025? Reagan tried them, and the nation suffered

Joel Edward Goza – August 25, 2024

FILE - In this March 30, 1981 file photo, President Ronald Reagan acknowledges applause before speaking to the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO at a Washington hotel. In 1981, Reagan signed an executive order that extended the power of U.S. intelligence agencies overseas, allowing broader surveillance of non-U.S. suspects. Recent reports that the National Security Agency secretly broke into communications on Yahoo and Google overseas have technology companies, privacy advocates and even national security proponents calling for a re-examination of Reagan's order and other intelligence laws. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File) — President Reagan, shown in 1981, based many of his policies on ideas from the Heritage Foundation publication “The Mandate for Leadership.” Project 2025 makes up a majority of the latest edition of this title and recommends many of the same extreme policies. (Ron Edmonds / Associated Press)More

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative playbook that would overhaul much of the federal government under a second Trump administration, has sparked fear and concern from voters despite the former president’s attempt to distance his campaign from the plan. But while Project 2025 might seem radical, most of it is not new. Instead, the now-famous document seeks to reanimate many of the worst racial, economic and political instincts of the Reagan Revolution.

Project 2025 begins with its authors (one of whom stepped down last month) boasting of the Heritage Foundation’s 1981 publication “The Mandate for Leadership,” which helped shape the Reagan administration’s policy framework. It hit its mark: Reagan wrote 60% of its recommendations into public policy in his first year in office, according to the Heritage Foundation. Yet the 900-plus-page Project 2025, itself a major component of a new edition of “The Mandate for Leadership,” does not contain any analysis of the economic and social price Americans paid for the revolution the Heritage Foundation and Reagan inspired.

If today’s economic inequality, racial unrest and environmental degradation represent some of our greatest political challenges, we would do well to remember that Reagan and the Heritage Foundation were the preeminent engineers of these catastrophes. Perhaps no day in Reagan’s presidency better embodied his policy transformations or the political ambitions of the Heritage Foundation than Aug. 13, 1981, when Reagan signed his first budget.

This budget dramatically transformed governmental priorities and hollowed out the nation’s 50-year pursuit of government for the common good that began during the New Deal. Once passed, it stripped 400,000 poor working families of their welfare benefits, while removing significant provisions from another 300,000. Radical cuts in education affected 26 million students. The number of poor Americans increased by 2.2 million, and the percentage of Black Americans living in poverty rose to a staggering 34.2%.

Of course, this was just the beginning of Reagan’s war on the poor, the environment and education. Following a Heritage Foundation plan, the Environmental Protection Agency’s operating budget would fall by 27%, and its science budget decreased by more than 50%. Funding for programs by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that provided housing assistance would be cut by 70%, according to Matthew Desmond’s “Poverty, By America.” Homelessness skyrocketed. And, as Project 2025 proposes, Reagan attempted to eliminate the Department of Education but settled for gutting its funding in a manner that set public education, in the words of author Jonathan Kozol, “back almost 100 years.” As funding for these issues nosedived under Reagan, financial support for the “war on drugs” skyrocketed and the prison population nearly doubled.

All the while, protections provided to the wealthy ballooned. Tax rates on personal income, corporate revenue and capital gains plummeted. For example, the highest income tax rate when Reagan took office was 70%. He would eventually lower it to 33%.

To ensure that wealth would be a long-lived family entitlement, Reagan instituted a 300% increase in inheritance tax protections through estate tax exemptions in his first budget. In 1980, the exemption stood at $161,000. By the time Reagan left office in 1989 it was $600,000. Today it is $13,610,000. This means that today nearly all wealthy children enjoy tax-free access to generational wealth.

And beginning during Reagan’s presidency, the number of millionaires and billionaires multiplied, increasing 225% and 400%, respectively, while the poverty of Americans across racial lines intensified. Even white males were more likely to be poor following Reagan’s presidency. Today poverty is the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S., even though this is the wealthiest nation in the world.

If we feel like we live in a country that isn’t working for anyone who isn’t wealthy, these are some of the core reasons why. Looking back at the Reagan era and the Heritage Foundation’s original “Mandate for Leadership,” we must remember that our domestic wounds are largely self-inflicted, results of buying into racial, economic and environmental lies that continue to be sold. It is precisely the types of policies that devastated the nation during the Reagan administration that Project 2025 now seeks to resuscitate. Perhaps the only truly new thing Project 2025 suggests is using more authoritarian means to enact its agenda.

History has hinges, moments that change the trajectory of nations. The greatest progress in our country has almost always emerged during turbulent times. It is up to the United States’ most committed believers to close the door on terror and trauma and open one that leads to new democratic possibilities.

Our current moment represents more than an election. It is a turning point that has the potential to transform the United States for generations to come. We don’t need the version of the past that Project 2025 is trying to sell us. It didn’t work for most Americans then, and it won’t work for most of us now. But perhaps Project 2025 is the push the Democratic Party needed. While the Republican Party veers further into authoritarianism, Democrats must be equally determined to develop a truly equitable democracy and bind the wounds of a deeply divided nation.

Joel Edward Goza, a professor of ethics at Simmons College of Kentucky, is the author of the forthcoming book “Rebirth of a Nation: Reparations and Remaking America.”

Officials offer critical warning after US state confirms cases of rare but serious infection spread by animals: ‘It is transmitted by various rodents’

The Cool Down

Officials offer critical warning after US state confirms cases of rare but serious infection spread by animals: ‘It is transmitted by various rodents’

Doric Sam – August 19, 2024

Health officials in Arizona have grown concerned after seeing an increase in a rare virus spread by rodents that can cause serious health issues.

What’s happening?

As explained by Physician’s Weekly, the Arizona Department of Health Services announced in an alert that the state has seen an uptick in hantavirus infections, with seven confirmed cases and three deaths over the past six months.

“Hantavirus is a rare but important cause of serious, even fatal respiratory infection,” Dr. Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital in New York, told NBC News, per Physician’s Weekly. “It is transmitted by various rodents, especially the deer mouse, and can cause mild disease, but it does cause fatal illness in a significant percentage of people who acquire this illness.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most cases of hantavirus in the U.S. are reported in western and southwestern states, but Arizona is among the leaders in reported infections in the country. Health officials reported that there have been 11 hantavirus cases in Arizona between 2016 and 2022, per Physician’s Weekly.

Why is this important?

Hantavirus is spread when particles containing the virus get into the air from urine, saliva, or feces from deer mice. An infection can lead to hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS).

Symptoms include fever, fatigue, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Without treatment, the infection can spread to the lungs and cause shortness of breath, chest tightness and cough, according to the American Lung Association and summarized by Physician’s Weekly. Around 38% of those who experience lung symptoms may die from the infection.

Though it is a rare disease in the U.S., with the CDC reporting 850 cases between 1993 and 2021 (about 30 per year), the increase in hantavirus cases is an indication of a deeper problem.

According to Physician’s Weekly, experts theorized that “climate change, such as the extreme heat waves that have been sweeping across the county this summer, may also be partly to blame” for the rising number of infections.

Trish Lees, public information officer at Coconino County Health and Human Services in Arizona, told NBC News that cases are seen more frequently in the summer because of increased rodent activity and people coming into contact with rodents more often.

Dr. Camilo Mora, a professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, explained that rising temperatures cause rodents to seek shelter in similar ways that humans do.

“Many carrying-disease species get on the move with climate change — so while for any specific case it is difficult to conclude the role of climate change, climate change has all the attributes to cause outbreaks of vector-borne diseases,” Mora said, per Physician’s Weekly.

What’s being done about this?

Officials warned that the best way to protect yourself against hantavirus is to wear N95 masks, gloves, and protective clothing when entering an area that is dirty or riddled with rodents. Anyone who experiences symptoms should seek immediate medical attention.

“The best way to prevent infection with this illness is by carefully disinfecting and cleaning up any waste products from the rodents and by not coming into contact with them,” Glatt told NBC News.

$15 million Ohio State study takes aim at molecule at the heart of Long COVID

The Columbus Dispatch

$15 million Ohio State study takes aim at molecule at the heart of Long COVID

Samantha Hendrickson, Columbus Dispatch – August 14, 2024

COVID-19 is here to stay, and for some, that means symptoms last months, even years after developing the little-understood Long COVID — but a team at the Ohio State University has received millions to find out more.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded $15 million over the next five years to fund the university’s efforts, including developing new ways to treat COVID-19 and to further understanding of why Long COVID happens and how to fend it off.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that millions of adults and children have suffered — and continue to — suffer from Long COVID.

Dr. Amal Amer, center with glasses, stands with fellow Ohio State University researchers, who have been granted $15 million over five years to study Long COVID. The research is personal for Amer, who suffered from Long COVID herself.

The disease can be present for as short as three months, but can also last years after someone is first infected. It’s defined as a chronic condition that occurs after a COVID-19 infection with a wide range of debilitating symptoms such as severe fatigue, brain fog, heart and lung problems, bodily pain or exacerbating already existing health issues, all of which can impact someone’s daily life.

“It’s just unacceptable, you can’t just let that happen,” said Dr. Amal Amer, a professor of microbial infection and immunity at OSU and a principal investigator in the project, “We have to understand it, and if somebody, not just us, anybody, happens to have a clue or the beginning of the story, we have to follow it.”

Tiny creatures lead to big discoveries

This massive undertaking started with simple mice and a single molecule.

An OSU study published in 2022 found that mice infected with COVID-19 reacted differently to the disease depending on if they had a certain enzyme-producing molecule known as caspase 11.

More: Steady ‘summer surge’ sees Ohio COVID cases nearly triple in July

Research showed that blocking this molecule in the infected mice resulted in lower inflammation, tissue injury and fewer blood clots in the animals’ lungs.

Humans have their own version of this molecule, or caspase 4, Amer said, and researchers discovered high levels of the enzyme in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 in intensive care units — a direct link to severe disease.

“It starts getting high because it has useful functions, but any molecule, when it gets too high, then these useful functions start becoming harmful,” Amer said.

The new work funded by the NIH will go beyond the study of the lungs and into how this molecule may impact the brain and the rest of the body, interfering with immune responses and possibly resulting in more blood clots in pathways leading to the brain and other vital organs – an entertained explanation for why Long COVID impacts people differently from case to case.

Currently, there are over 200 serious symptoms associated with Long COVID, according to the CDC.

Understanding how Long COVID comes to be is the first step in creating a treatment, Amer said. “Once you know the mechanism, then you can design what to target, where to target it and how to target it in order to reduce the damage being done.”

No one left behind

For Dr. Amer, finding that mechanism is an incredible research opportunity, but it’s also personal.

She herself contracted Long COVID during the pandemic. For three months, the leader in cutting edge research in her field suffered from terrible brain fog and other neurological symptoms after her second, thought seemingly mild, COVID-19 infection.

Amer has traveled all over the world, and confessed she’s gotten sick in many countries, including contracting the often deadly malaria. But nothing compared to Long COVID.

Amer would receive emails from her students, and read one sentence, but not remember what it said after reading it. She started having trouble typing on a keyboard. She couldn’t recall things people had just said to her moments before.

“I started thinking, ‘what’s gonna happen to my life?’ My job is a brain job. I lose my job, then what’s gonna happen to me?” Amer recalled. Now, she’ll head the brain-focused part of the project.

This continued for three months, before she gradually started to recover. Around six months, Amer said she began to feel normal again. Though she can’t be certain that she’s back to where she was before Long COVID, she acknowledges some people aren’t as lucky as she is.

“I have to find out, and I have to understand it, and I’m not going to let anybody be left behind,” she said.

Scientists Drilled So Deep Into the Center of the Earth, They Knocked on the Mantle’s Door

Popular Mechanics

Scientists Drilled So Deep Into the Center of the Earth, They Knocked on the Mantle’s Door

Darren Orf – August 13, 2024

a drill breaks into the ground — Scientists Go Deeper Into Mantle Than Ever BeforeBloomberg Creative – Getty Images

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To understand the mantle—the largest layer of Earth’s rocky body—scientists drill deep cores out of the Earth.
In May of 2023, scientists drilled the deepest core yet and recovered serpentinized peridotite that forms when saltwater interacts with mantle rock.
Although this is the deepest into the mantle scientists have ever drilled, the mission didn’t uncover pristine mantle that lies beyond the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or Moho, boundary.

If you want to understand the geology of our home planet, studying the mantle is a great place to start. Separating the planet’s rocky crust and the molten outer core, the mantle makes up 70 percent of the Earth’s mass and 84 percent of its volume. But despite its outsized influence on the planet’s geologic processes, scientists have never directly sampled rocks from this immensely important geologic layer.

And that’s understandable, especially when you consider that the crust is roughly 9 to 12 miles thick on average. Luckily, that average contains outliers—areas of the world where the crust is actually incredibly thin and faulting exposes the mantle through cracks. One such area is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, specifically near an underwater mountain called the Atlantis Massif.

On the south side of this massif is an area known as the Lost City—a hydrothermal field whose vent fluids are highly alkaline and rich in hydrogen, methane, and other carbon compounds. This makes the area a particularly compelling candidate for explaining how early life evolved on Earth. Additionally, it contains mantle rock that interacts with seawater in a process known as “serpentinization,” which alters the rock’s structure and gives it a green, marble-like appearance.

It was here, 800 meters south of this field, in May of 2023 that members of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP)—aboard the JOIDES Resolution, a 470-foot-long research vessel rented by the U.S. National Science Foundation—extracted a 1,268-meter core containing abyssal peridotites, which are the primary rocks that make up the Earth’s upper mantle. The results of the study were published last week in the journal Science.

Although this makes this particular drill core the deepest sample of the mantle yet, going that deep into the rock wasn’t the goal of this record-breaking expedition.

“We had only planned to drill for 200 meters, because that was the deepest people had ever managed to drill in mantle rock,” Johan Lissenberg, a petrologist at Cardiff University and co-author of the study, told Nature. He said that the drilling was so easy that they progressed three times faster than usual. The team eventually drilled a staggering 1,268 meters, and only stopped due to the mission’s limited operations window.

Andrew McCaig—study co-author and University of Leeds scientist—said in an article from The Conversation that, according to a preliminary analysis of the rock, the core’s composition contains a variety of peridotite called harzburgite that forms via partial melting of mantle rock. It also contained rocks known as gabbros, which are coarse-grained igneous rocks. Both of these rocks then chemically reacted with seawater, changing their composition.

While this core represents an incredibly opportunity to learn more about the Earth’s mantle, as well as give an in-depth look at the geologic substrate upon which the Lost City rests, the mission didn’t quite complete the “grand challenge” of crossing the Mohorovičić discontinuity. Otherwise known as the Moho, the Mohorovičić discontinuity is recognized as the true boundary between the crust and pristine mantle.

Future missions could continue exploring this site near the Atlantis Massif, but sadly, those missions won’t include JOIDES Resolution—the NSF declined to fund more core drilling past 2024. Just as scientists are finally knocking on the door to the Earth’s most ubiquitous geologic layer, the future of these kinds of drilling missions is now uncertain.

11 Top COVID Symptoms People Are Experiencing During the Summer Surge

Good Housekeeping

11 Top COVID Symptoms People Are Experiencing During the Summer Surge

Irina Gonzalez – August 13, 2024

There are several COVID variants right now which have the same “set of mutations,” and are being referred to as FLiRT. Another strain, LB.1, is also on the rise.
KP.3.1.1 — which comes from the JN.1 strain — is now the most dominant variant, accounting for an estimated 27.8% of cases.
The symptoms are similar to other COVID strains. Being sick and experiencing a chronic cough, elevated fever, sore throat or a runny nose should prompt you to get a COVID-19 test to ensure you are not contagious.

If it seems like more people around you have gotten COVID in the last couple of months, that’s probably true. Right now, cases are on the rise and the COVID-19 FLiRT variants are dominating.

According to the most recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on August 3rd, 27.8% of cases are the KP.3.1.1 strain and 20.1% of current infections are KP.3. Both of these variants stem from the FLiRT family of the coronavirus. Another variant that is not a descendant of FLiRT, named LB.1, makes up an estimated 16% of COVID-19 cases at the moment.

“The FLiRT variant appeared in March,” says Tammy Lundstrom, M.D., J.D., the senior vice president at Trinity Health who led their COVID-19 response. “Throughout the COVID-19 era, new strains have continued to arise. Like other strains, it appears highly transmissible, but it does not appear more virulent at this point.”

While it’s great that COVID-19 cases don’t seem to be as dangerous as they used to be, it still causes unpleasant symptoms which can be severe for people with certain risk factors. Unfortunately, just 22.5% of American adults had received the most recent COVID-19 vaccine as of May 11, 2024 (when the latest data was released). Could this be contributing to the summer surge we’re experiencing? We turned to experts to learn more about the newest variants, important COVID-19 symptoms to be aware of and how to protect yourself and your loved ones.

What are the FLiRT and LB.1 variants?

As fun as the name sounds, FLiRT is not the official designation for the dominant COVID-19 variant. That is actually a cheeky nickname for a whole family of different variants (any that start with KP). “The FLiRT variants came to the forefront at the end of April,” says Nikhil K. Bhayani, M.D., FIDSA, an infectious disease specialist and assistant professor at the Burnett School of Medicine at Texas Christian University.

KP.2, KP.2.3, KP.3 and KP.3.1.1 are official names of the FLiRT variants that are circulating right now. While FLiRT took over JN.1 as the dominant variant, it’s actually a descendant of JN.1. Essentially, the “parent” variant (JN.1) was unseated by several “child” variants. Various variations of JN.1 are still swirling in some capacity, but they make up a smaller percentage of COVID-19 cases. LB.1, another variant that has been circulating this summer, is not a member of the FLiRT family, but another descendant of JN.1.

Is there a summer surge?

Yes, the wastewater viral activity for COVID-19 — how the CDC tracks trends in infectious disease circulating in a community — is currently listed as “very high,” according to the most recent CDC data. However, a summer surge is not unique to FLiRT.

“Throughout the COVID-19 era, we have seen a rise in infections during summer,” says Dr. Lundstrom. Two reasons for this, according to the CDC, are that people tend to do more traveling during the summer and also congregate indoors with air conditioners on when it’s very hot outside.

What are the symptoms?

The good news is that the FLiRT and LB.1 strains of the coronavirus don’t seem to spark any surprise symptoms. “The symptoms are similar to other COVID-19 strains,” says Dr. Lundstrom. The CDC updated its list of possible symptoms on June 25th, and those include:

Fever or chills
Cough
Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
Sore throat
Congestion or runny nose
New loss of taste or smell
Fatigue
Muscle or body aches
Headache
Nausea or vomiting
Diarrhea

“Like similar recent strains, the incidence of loss of taste and smell are not prominent,” adds Lundstrom.

How long do symptoms last?

It really depends on the person. Typically, people with mild cases will experience symptoms for 5-10 days, however, many may start to feel better sooner than that. According to the CDC, most people with long COVID will start to feel better after three months, although it can last years. It’s best to speak to your doctor if any of your symptoms are lingering.

Is there a new vaccine?

Our experts said that vaccines still provide good protection against COVID-19, “especially against severe illness and hospitalization,” says Dr. Lundstrom. However, a study published in April found that KP.2 is proving to have “the most significant resistance” to the 2023-24 COVID-19 booster, and that this “increased immune resistance ability of KP.2 partially contributes to the higher” prevalence of infections “than previous variants, including JN.1.”

At the end of June, the CDC recommended that everyone ages 6 months and older receive the updated 2024-25 COVID-19 vaccine, which was tweaked based on the most dominant variants circulating this year. The most updated COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be rolled out this fall. “The World Health Organization is recommending the upcoming COVID booster to be based on the predominant lineage for the year,” adds Dr. Bhayani.

However, the CDC and our experts still recommend the current vaccine to protect yourself before the 2024-25 booster is made available in the fall. “Adults over the age of 65 should get the last COVID-19 vaccine available,” says Bhayani. Dr. Lundstrom suggests that older adults “should be vaccinated four months after their last vaccination” and those with compromised immune systems “should get vaccinated two months after their last dose.”

How to protect yourself

In March, the CDC updated the Respiratory Virus Guidance as COVID-19 cases have decreased over time. “It is still an important health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses, including flu and RSV,” the new guidance states.

“The same precautions will help protect against the spread of most respiratory viruses: wash hands frequently, cover your mouth and nose when sneezing/coughing, stay up to date with vaccinations and stay home when ill to prevent spreading infection to others,” suggests Dr. Lundstrom. However, Dr. Bhayani reminds us that the elderly, individuals with compromised immune systems and kids “should take extra precautions, such as avoiding large crowds and wear masks if COVID-19 cases are on the rise locally.”

If you do get sick, the CDC still recommends staying at home until your symptoms are improving overall, and you have not had a fever (and are not using fever-reducing medication). Afterward, you can resume normal activities and “use added prevention strategies over the next five days.”

This is now California’s worst summer COVID wave in years. Here’s why

The Los Angeles Times

This is now California’s worst summer COVID wave in years. Here’s why

Rong-Gong Lin II – August 12, 2024

Laguna Beach, CA - July 28: Individuals walk along Laguna Beach, CA on Sunday, July 28, 2024. (Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times) — Individuals, some wearing face masks, walk in Laguna Beach on July 28. (Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)

California’s strongest summer COVID wave in years is still surging, and an unusual midsummer mutation may be partly to blame.

There are a number of possible culprits behind the worst summer infection spike since 2022, experts say. A series of punishing heat waves and smoke from devastating wildfires have kept many Californians indoors, where the disease can more easily spread. Most adults are also well removed from their last brush with the coronavirus, or their last vaccine dose — meaning they’re more vulnerable to infection.

But changes in the virus have also widened the scope of the surge.

Of particular concern is the rise of a hyperinfectious subvariant known as KP.3.1.1, which is so contagious that even people who have eluded infection throughout the pandemic are getting sick.

“COVID is extraordinarily common now,” said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious diseases for Kaiser Permanente Southern California’s 16-hospital healthcare system.

COVID hospitalizations are ticking up, but remain lower than the peaks for the last two summers, probably thanks to some residual immunity and the widespread availability of anti-COVID drugs such as Paxlovid.

The World Health Organization has warned of COVID infections rising around the world, and expressed concern that more severe variants could emerge.

“In recent months, regardless of the season, many countries have experienced surges of COVID-19, including at the Olympics,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID.

Among those caught up was 27-year-old American sprinter Noah Lyles, who after winning the gold in the men’s 100-meter finals, came up short Thursday during the 200-meter finals, taking the bronze. Lyles collapsed after the race, fighting shortness of breath and chest pain, and was later taken away in a wheelchair.

“It definitely affected my performance,” he said of the illness, estimating that he felt “like 90% to 95%” of full strength.

The rate at which reported coronavirus tests are coming back positive has been rising for weeks — to above 10% globally and more than 20% in Europe. In California, the coronavirus positive test rate was 14.3% for the week that ended Aug. 5 — blowing past the peaks from last summer and winter — and up from 10% a month ago.

There were already indications in May that the typical U.S. midyear wave was off to an early start as a pair of new coronavirus subvariants — KP.2 and KP.1.1, collectively nicknamed FLiRT — started to make a splash, displacing the winter’s dominant strain, JN.1.

But by July, a descendant strain, KP.3.1.1, had clearly taken off.

“KP.3.1.1 is extremely transmissible and a little bit more immune evasive. It kind of came out of the blue during the summer,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-diseases specialist at UC San Francisco.

Cases are up at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, and “looking through the CDC data … KP.3.1.1 is really what is driving this particular surge,” Hudson said. “We are certainly much higher than we were last summer.”

Anecdotally, some infected people report being “pretty darn miserable, actually — really severe fatigue in the first two days,” Hudson said.

People may want to think their symptoms are just allergies, she said, but “it’s probably COVID. So we’re just really encouraging folks to continue to test.”

An initial negative test doesn’t necessarily mean you’re out of the woods, though. Officials recommend testing repeatedly over as many as five days after the onset of symptoms to be sure.

California has now reported four straight weeks with “very high” coronavirus levels in its wastewater, according to data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday. That followed five weeks of “high” viral levels.

Last summer, California recorded only eight weeks with “high” coronavirus levels in wastewater, and never hit “very high” levels. In the summer of 2022, California spent 16 weeks with “high” or “very high” levels of coronavirus in wastewater.

“Fewer people got immunized this year compared to last year at this time,” Chin-Hong said. “That means, particularly amongst people who are older, they’re just not equipped to deal with this virus.”

There are 44 states with “high” or “very high” coronavirus levels in their wastewater, according to the CDC. Five states, and the District of Columbia, have “moderate” levels, and there were no data for North Dakota.

The CDC said coronavirus infections are “growing” or “likely growing” in 32 states, including California; are “stable or uncertain” in seven states, as well as the District of Columbia; are “likely declining” in Connecticut; and “declining” in Hawaii and Nevada. There were no estimates in eight states.

In Los Angeles County, coronavirus levels in wastewater jumped to 54% of last winter’s peak over the 10-day period ending July 27, the most recent available. A week earlier, coronavirus levels in wastewater were at 44% of last winter’s peak.

For the week ending Aug. 4, L.A. County reported an average of 479 coronavirus cases a day, double the number from five weeks earlier. Cases are an undercount, only reflecting tests done at medical facilities — not self-tests conducted at home.

In Santa Clara County, the most populous in the San Francisco Bay Area, coronavirus levels were high in all sewersheds, including San Jose and Palo Alto.

Hospitalizations and emergency room visits related to the coronavirus are also rising. Over the week ending Aug. 3, there were an average of 403 coronavirus-positive people in hospitals in L.A. County per day. That’s double the number from five weeks earlier, but still about 70% of last summer’s peak and one-third the height seen in summer 2022.

For the week ending Aug. 4, 4% of emergency room encounters in L.A. County were classified as related to the coronavirus — more than double the figure from seven weeks earlier. The peak from last summer was 5.1%.

“We’ve had a few people who have become very ill from COVID. Those are people who tend to be pretty severely immunocompromised,” Hudson said.

UC San Francisco has also seen a rise in the number of coronavirus-infected hospitalized patients. As of Friday, there were 28, up from fewer than 20 a week earlier, Chin-Hong said.

In the Bay Area, three counties have urged more people to consider masking in indoor public settings because of the COVID surge. Contra Costa County’s public health department “recommends masking in crowded indoor settings, particularly for those at high risk of serious illness if infected,” the agency said Tuesday, following similar pleas from San Francisco and Marin County health officials.

Compared with advice such as washing hands and staying away from sick people, suggesting wearing a mask can provoke strong opposition from some.

“The moment people see this, like in their mind, it sets off this chain reaction of, like, all the negative things of the pandemic, having to have society shut down and social isolation,” said Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious-disease doctor and researcher at Stanford University.

But masks do help reduce the risk of infection, and people don’t have to wear them all the time to benefit. Karan says he socializes and eats at indoor restaurants. But he’ll decide to mask in other situations, like “when I’m traveling,” and, obviously, at work.

Doctors say that wearing a mask is one of many tools people can use to reduce their risk, and can be especially helpful when in crowded indoor settings.

Karan said he’s seen more coronavirus-positive patients while working shifts in urgent care, and he suggested that more healthcare providers take the time to order tests. He said he worries that when people come in with relatively mild symptoms, they may be sent home without testing.

But that could miss potential COVID diagnosis, which could allow a patient to get a prescription for an antiviral drug like Paxlovid.

Without testing, “you run the risk of taking shortcuts and not prescribing people meds that they actually should technically be getting,” Karan said.

CDC says COVID wastewater levels are ‘very high’ in VA and NC

WAVY

CDC says COVID wastewater levels are ‘very high’ in VA and NC

KaMaria Braye – August 12, 2024

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that wastewater levels of COVID-19 are considered very high across the United States.

At least 26 states are either high or very high for COVID-19 infections. The data shows this summer’s COVID-19 levels could pass the previous two summers.

‘Very high’ COVID levels detected in 7 states

The CDC says sewage can be tested to find traces of infectious diseases in communities and that the diseases can be found even if people don’t have symptoms.

As of Aug. 12, Virginia and North Carolina’s viral activity level is very high.

With most Hampton Roads school districts returning back to school starting in mid-August, the CDC has recommendations for parents to help kids stay healthy while learning.

Back-to-School Guide | 2024

The CDC also released a prevention and control report for infectious diseases in grad schools.

No shots, no school: Don’t wait to vaccinate

CDC tips to stop the spread in school:

Hand hygiene
Cover nose and mouth when sneezing and coughing
Surface cleaning
Vaccination
Ventilation
Social distancing

Click here to see the Virginia Department of Health’s (VDH) COVID dashboard.

Click here to see the North Carolina Health Department of Health and Human Services (NCHHS) COVID dashboard.

Potential Tropical Cyclone Five expected to become tropical storm within next few days

WFLA

Potential Tropical Cyclone Five expected to become tropical storm within next few days

Sara Filips – August 11, 2024

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The National Hurricane Center issued its first advisory for Potential Tropical Cyclone Five on Sunday as it’s likely to develop into a tropical storm within the next few days.

The system has a 90% chance of development within the next seven days and has ramped up to an 80% chance within 48 hours, the NHC said in a 5 p.m. update.

Parrish resident says 6-foot flooding in backyard was from more than just rain

The wave, which is located about 1,530 miles east-southeast of Antigua, continues to show signs of organization.

The NHC said the system is moving toward the west-northwest at 21 mph with maximum sustained winds of 30 mph. It is expected to move across portions of the Leeward Islands on Tuesday and approach the U.S. and British Virgin Islands on Tuesday night.

“Some strengthening is forecast and the system is expected to become a tropical storm by late Monday,” the NHC said. Ernesto is the next storm name on the list.

“The good news is that it’s expected to turn to the north well to the east of the U.S. and Bahamas and may impact Bermuda later this week,” Max Defender 8 Meteorologist Eric Stone said. The system is not expected to impact Florida.

Watch Tracking the Tropics on Tuesdays at 12:30 p.m. ET/11:30 a.m. CT.
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Why Japan issued its first-ever ‘megaquake advisory’ — and what that means

NBC News

Why Japan issued its first-ever ‘megaquake advisory’ — and what that means

Evan Bush – August 10, 2024

'Megaquake' explained: Japan issues warning after 7.1-magnitude earthquake

The Summary

Japan’s meteorological agency on Thursday issued its first-ever “megaquake advisory.”
The warning followed a 7.1-magnitude earthquake off the country’s southern coast.
That raises the risk of an even larger quake on the Nankai Trough, an underwater subduction zone that scientists believe is capable of producing temblors up to magnitude 9.1.

After a 7.1-magnitude earthquake shook southern islands in Japan on Thursday, the country’s meteorological agency sent out an ominous warning: Another, larger earthquake could be coming, and the risk will be especially high over the next week. In the first “megaquake advisory” it has ever issued, the agency said that the risk of strong shaking and a tsunami are greater than usual on the Nankai Trough, a subduction zone with the potential to produce magnitude 8 or 9 temblors. Area residents, it said, should prepare.

The message was not a prediction, but a forecast of enhanced risk — and it shows how far seismologists have come in understanding the dynamics of subduction zone earthquakes.

Here’s what to know about the situation.

A dangerous subduction zone

The Nankai Trough is an underwater subduction zone where the Eurasian Plate collides with the Philippine Sea Plate, forcing the latter under the former and into the Earth’s mantle.

Subduction zone faults build stress, and a so-called megathrust earthquake takes place when a locked fault slips and releases that stress. “Megaquake” is a shortened version of the name. These zones have produced the most powerful earthquakes in Earth’s history.

The Pacific “Ring of Fire” is a collection of subduction zones. In the U.S., the Cascadia subduction zone off the West Coast runs from Vancouver Island, Canada, to Cape Mendocino, California.

The Nankai Trough fault has several segments, but if the entire margin of the fault were to slip at once, Japanese scientists believe the trough is capable of producing an earthquake of up to magnitude 9.1.

Megaquake advisory in Japan (Kyodo via Reuters Connect) — A beach is closed in Nichinan in southwestern Japan on Friday, after the country’s issued its first warning about a possible megaquake.

If a megaquake were to happen near Japan, the Philippine Sea Plate would lurch, perhaps as much as 30 to 100 feet, near the country’s southeast coast, producing intense shaking. The vertical displacement of the seafloor would cause a tsunami and push waves toward the coast of Japan. Those waves could reach nearly 100 feet in height, according to estimates from Japanese scientists published in 2020.

A history of big quakes

The Nankai Trough has produced large earthquakes roughly every 100 to 150 years, a study indicated last year. Japan’s Earthquake Research Committee said in January 2022 said there was a 70% to 80% chance of a megathrust earthquake in the subsequent 30 years.

Large Nankai Trough earthquakes tend to come in pairs, with the second often rupturing in the subsequent two years. The most recent examples were “twin” earthquakes on the Nankai Trough in 1944 and 1946.

The phenomenon is due to the segmented nature of the fault; when one segment slips, it can stress another.

Thursday’s magnitude-7.1 earthquake took place on or near the subduction zone, according to the United States Geological Survey.

People stand outside after leaving a building following an earthquake (Kyodo News via AP) — People stand outside after leaving a building following an earthquake in Miyazaki on Thursday.

Harold Tobin, a University of Washington professor who has studied the Nankai Trough, said the magnitude-7.1 quake took place in a segment that shakes more frequently than others. Regular earthquakes can relieve stress, so the possibility that the segment itself produces a big earthquake is less of a concern. The worry is the earthquake’s proximity to a segment that’s been building stress since the 1940s. “It’s adjacent to the western Nankai region and that’s clearly locked up. That’s the reason for alert and concern,” Tobin said.

A forecast, not a prediction

Scientists can’t predict earthquakes, but they are developing the ability to forecast times of heightened risk, particularly in areas with frequent shaking and good monitoring equipment, like Japan.

Firefighters walk near a fallen building following earthquakes in Wajima, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP) — Firefighters walk near a fallen building in Wajima, in Japan’s Ishikawa prefecture, after a New Year’s Day earthquake.

Japanese authorities are asking residents to prepare, review evacuation routes and pay attention to potential future warnings. While the risk of a large quake is higher than usual, that doesn’t mean it will happen anytime soon. Japanese government warning guidelines suggest that the chance a large earthquake follows a magnitude-7 within a week is roughly “once per a few hundred times,” according to the study last year.

The most likely outcome is that the recent shaking won’t trigger anything, even though the probability of a large earthquake is higher.

“We might wait decades before Nankai has another earthquake,” Tobin said.

A known danger

In 2011, an area of the seafloor roughly the size of Connecticut lurched all at once, producing a magnitude-9.1 earthquake — the third biggest recorded worldwide since 1900. That megathrust earthquake caused a tsunami off Japan’s eastern coast. More than 18,000 people died in the tsunami and earthquake, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The following year, the Japanese government revised its natural disaster scenarios and found that some 323,000 people could die in a worst-case scenario earthquake on the Nankai Trough, mostly from tsunami effects.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone poses a similar risk for the U.S. West Coast, though megathrust earthquakes are expected there less often — every 300 to 500 years. This fault has the capability of producing a magnitude-9.1 earthquake and tsunami waves 80 feet in height. Researchers recently mapped the fault in detail and found it was divided into four segments.