Australia's tough flu season could spell trouble for the US |
To get a sense of what might be in store in the North American flu season, forecasters look to what's happening in countries like Australia and New Zealand, where the season typically runs from April to October -- winter months in the Southern Hemisphere. This year, Australia had its worst flu season in five years, with cases peaking about three times higher than the average for that period. They topped out about two months earlier than they normally do, according to government surveillance reports. Rates of influenza-like illness have also been higher in New Zealand this year than they have been for the past two years. The US should take heed, says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "The Southern Hemisphere has had a pretty bad flu season, and it came on early," Fauci told Bloomberg News. "Influenza -- as we all have experienced over many years -- can be a serious disease, particularly when you have a bad season." He said that means the US could see flu make a comeback while Covid-19 is still circulating at higher levels. Recent government modeling predicts that Covid-19 will peak again in early December. If that happens, it would be the first winter in which the US has had to contend with those two respiratory viruses circulating together at high levels, something infectious disease experts have cautioned about since the beginning of the pandemic. All of that underscores the need for Americans to get vaccinated. But typically, about half do not. Just 45% of Americans got their flu shots last season, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Flu vaccination rates fell for several at-risk groups, including pregnant women and children. The US government is launching a campaign this fall to urge people to get their flu shots and updated Covid-19 boosters at the same time. |
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Updated Covid-19 boosters are now available |
Last week, the US Food and Drug Administration and the CDC signed off on updated boosters that target the original strain of the coronavirus as well as the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. BA.4 and BA.5 are the dominant variants in the United States, where there's an average of 91,000 new infections each day. "These are vaccines that are made, manufactured and delivered identically to the Covid mRNA vaccines that most of us have already gotten," said Dr. Gregory Poland, who leads the vaccine research group at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "In a sense, you've just changed the blueprints." Having twice the blueprints doesn't mean you're getting twice the dose of active ingredients, though. "The total mRNA content -- the business part of the vaccine -- that leads to the immune response is the same amount," said Dr. William Gruber, senior vice president of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, which makes one of the updated vaccines. Millions of vaccines are now shipping to tens of thousands of sites across the country. These include community health centers, health departments and pharmacies. CVS and Walgreens have started offering the shots. Both chains are scheduling appointments online. Americans ages 12 and older are recommended to get the new boosters as long as they've had their primary series of vaccines and it has been at least two months since their last dose.
This new shot is unlikely to be Americans' last. Going forward, people may need to get a single Covid-19 shot every year, White House health officials said this week, making clear that the country will be living with the coronavirus for the foreseeable future.
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US life expectancy is the lowest in decades |
After a historic drop in 2020, life expectancy in the United States took another significant hit in 2021. According to provisional data published last week by the CDC, life expectancy at birth dropped by nearly a year between 2020 and 2021 -- and by more than 2½ years overall since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Life expectancy at birth fell to 76.1 years, the lowest it has been in the US since 1996 and the biggest two-year decline in a century. Covid-19 was the driving factor, with deaths from the virus contributing to half of the decline from 2020 to 2021, according to the report from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. But drug overdose deaths reached a record high in 2021, killing about 109,000 people. And deaths from unintentional injuries -- about half of which are due to drug overdose -- was the second-leading cause of the decline in life expectancy. Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said the news wasn't surprising, but it is frustrating. "It is distressing to see a continuing negative impact of drug overdose on the life expectancy of Americans. These deaths often occur in young adults and therefore represent a tragically high number of years of life lost and devastating impact on individuals, families and communities," she said. "We have the science and the tools available to help us reverse this trend and reduce the number of overdose deaths in this country. But these tools are not being used effectively." Even if it's expected, the scale of the decline is extraordinary. In 2021, mortality rates due to influenza and pneumonia decreased, and if not for these "offsetting effects," the decline in US life expectancy would have been even greater, according to the report. |
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Wastewater surveillance becomes more targeted in search for poliovirus, monkeypox and coronavirus |
Early in the coronavirus pandemic, health officials closely monitored sewage samples for signs of the virus to track where it could be circulating. Now, that technique is being used to detect other infectious diseases: polio and monkeypox. Some disease detectives in the United States are narrowing their wastewater surveillance efforts to zero in on specific buildings and to identify hot spots for a growing list of diseases. A building-level approach to wastewater surveillance is underway at all 11 hospitals within the NYC Health + Hospitals integrated health care system in New York City. The system launched a surveillance program in February to test sewage for coronavirus and flu viruses in wastewater from its hospitals, and the program expanded in August to include testing for polio and monkeypox. "With the increase in rapid tests and the decline of federal funding for the Covid response this spring, wastewater testing was an affordable, easy way for us to track the presence of Covid in the community without needing patients to take a test," Dr. Mitchell Katz, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, said in an announcement. "Now, with the arrival of monkeypox and polio in New York City, we have a system in place to test for those viruses and use that data to inform our response." The health system's surveillance program was successful at identifying Covid-19 and flu viruses in wastewater at the NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst hospital up to two weeks before viral infections were identified clinically among patients at the hospital, said Leopolda Silvera, global health deputy at NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst. A survey of 194 local public health agency leaders, published by the Rockefeller Foundation in April, found that although 38% have monitored wastewater for the virus that causes Covid-19 at some point during the pandemic, only 21% reported that they are likely to monitor their wastewater after the pandemic wanes. |
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| Getting up and moving after you eat -- even if it's only for two minutes -- can help control blood sugar levels, a new a new study says. If you can't do that, try standing. It may help, too. |
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A recent report found that as many as 4 million Americans are unable to work because of long Covid, and the federal government estimates that as many as 23 million Americans may have the condition. People with long Covid face a range of symptoms that can last months or even years after their infection, including anxiety, depression, fatigue, breathing problems, as well as something more elusive: brain fog. It's not clear exactly how Covid-19 is contributing to brain fog, but one study out of the UK has found that people diagnosed with Covid-19 had a greater loss of gray matter and abnormalities in the brain tissue compared with those who hadn't been infected. Over the past two years, I have spoken to numerous doctors and patients about their experience. Most recently, I had the chance to speak with psychologist Jim Jackson, director of behavioral health at Vanderbilt's ICU Recovery Center. The center is one of the world's first comprehensive clinical resources devoted to diagnosing and treating survivors of critical illness, including Covid-19. From his work with patients, he noticed that brain fog is often a vague description of a constellation of symptoms, making it hard to define. Over and over again, however, there was a common objective finding he noticed in most of his patients. It wasn't that they necessarily had difficulty with memory, as much as they had lost the ability to attend, or pay attention. It wasn't that they were becoming more forgetful, but instead weren't remembering things in the first place due to that lack of attention. This led him to try a novel idea. He started prescribing a video game that's been approved by the FDA for the treatment of ADHD. The program is now in trials, with participants being prescribed to play the video game 25 minutes a day, five days a week for eight weeks. Barbara VanMeter-Nivens -- who has been dealing with long Covid for nearly two years -- is one of the trial participants, and she told me that the game has already made a difference in her life. It has helped her manage a life that is now full of pills and alarms. It is by no means a panacea, but it is intriguing and provides an example of simple therapies that may have outsized impact on the lives of millions of people navigating their persistent symptoms. |
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