'In previous waves, increases in Covid hospitalizations lagged behind jumps in cases by about 10 days to two weeks. Now, in the UK, cases and hospitalizations seem to be rising in tandem, something that has experts stumped.'
Could that be explained by decrease in testing outside hospitals?... in which case the actual number of cases may be much higher.
'Covid-19 cases were up 48% in the UK last week compared with the week before. [...] cases are rising as fast as they were falling just two weeks earlier, when the country removed pandemic-related restrictions.
Daily cases are also rising in more than half of the countries in the European Union. They've jumped 48% in the Netherlands [...]
BA.2 has been growing steadily in the US. Last week, the CDC estimated it was causing about 12% of new Covid-19 cases here.
Meanwhile, BA.2 now accounts for more than 50% of cases in the UK and several other European countries.
"The tipping point seems to be right around 50%," [...] "That's when we really start to see that variant flex its power in the population" as far as showing its severity.
[...] "What we see happening in the UK is going to be perhaps a better story than what we should be expecting here," [...]
In the Netherlands, it took about a month for BA.2 to overpower BA.1[...] If the same timeline occurs in the US, that will mean the variant is taking off just as the immunity generated by winter's Omicron infections will be waning.
[...] It will be important for people to understand they may be able to take their masks off for a few weeks, Althoff said, but they might also need to go back to wearing them regularly if cases spike.'
What rising Covid-19 infections in the UK and Europe could mean for the US - CNN
... or we could just keep the damn masks on and restrictions in place. But no, that would be too 'inconvenient' for too many....
Don't seem to be nearly as many outdoor events around here as there were last year, even as the weather gets warmer. Might change with spring but I doubt it....
Still no news about the US Army's universal coronavirus vaccine (iirc they claimed results from Phase 1 would be published within a few weeks back in January)... which may be bad news.
'a pan-COVID vaccine might be slightly less effective than, say, the current mRNA vaccines were against the earliest SARS-CoV-2 lineages. The mRNA vaccines peaked at 90-percent or greater effectiveness, but have slowly lost effectiveness as newer lineages evolve to evade them.
The promise of a universal vaccine is that, while potentially less effective overall, it won’t lose effectiveness even as the various coronaviruses it combats mutate in an effort to thwart it.'
COVID’s Turbo-Mutation Is Killing This Vax Dream, So What’s Next? (thedailybeast.com)