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Breaking News, Health and Lifestyle, Local

Washington hospitals are on the brink as COVID cases spiral upward

Editor’s Note: An early version of this story reported that the first Omicron case detected in the United States has been changed from Dec. 15 to Nov. 15.

[OLYMPIA, Wash.] – (MTN) The Washington State Department of Health (WSDOH) reported the 7 day moving average for new COVID cases had jumped to 1,047.9 over the weekend, obliterating previous records. There were 1,773 people hospitalized with COVID across Washington on Sunday, just shy of the previous record set on Sep. 6, 2021.

With an estimated 242 new COVID-related hospitalizations a day, hospitals in the Evergreen State are on the brink of running out of beds and staff. The I-5 corridor from the Canada border to the Columbia River has the highest case rates in Washington, sparked by several super spreader events in Thurston and Pierce Counties on Dec. 4.

COVID cases have exploded in Eastern Washington, including Spokane, Yakima, and Moses Lake. New cases are forecasted to peak in King County by the end of this week but are expected to continue to surge in Eastern Washington.

The updated IHME forecast model is catastrophic for Washington, projecting 3,189 acute care and 804 ICU patients hospitalized with COVID by Feb. 4. Malcontent News estimates there are 375 staffed acute care and 95 ICU beds available in Washington state, with a coming surge of 2,000 more patients in less than a month.

The Washington State Hospital Association made dire predictions last week. Dr. Francis Riedo, medical director for infection control and prevention at EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, told reporters that the state has “never been closer” to moving to crisis standards of care.

In the same briefing, Dr. John Lynch, medical director of Harborview Medical Center’s infection control program, said that UW Medicine and Harborview Medical Center had more COVID patients under care than at any previous point in the epidemic.

The situation is already dire for Puget Sound hospitals, will more than 97 percent of acute care beds occupied. King County Public Health reported 255 new COVID hospitalizations from Friday to Sunday – a rate of a new hospitalization once every 28 minutes. Hospitalizations in King County have surged 110 percent in a week as new cases skyrocket.

Earlier projections based on case data from South Africa and the United Kingdom estimated that King County hospitalization rates would be by 20% to 30% from the previous Delta wave. Projections reduced the percentage of COVID cases that resulted in hospitalization from 4.7% to 1.14%. Based on data from the first week of January, the rate is almost double – 2.13% – driving hospitalizations to a higher level than previously forecasted.

EvergreenHealth in Kirkland reported 44 hospitalized COVID patients, including one pediatric patient and another four in Monroe. A majority, 70 percent, were hospitalized due to COVID. The remainder is hospitalized for other reasons and co-infected with coronavirus. Five patients are fully vaccinated with boosters, including one in intensive care.

On Monday night, Seattle Children’s Hospital advised parents that its four walk-in urgent care clinics would not accept patients without an appointment due to the unprecedented patient load.

The Washington State Medical Association appealed to Gov. Jay Inslee to declare a crisis and deploy the national guard to support area hospitals. Previous options, including stopping elective surgeries, limiting day procedures, and “boarding” patients in emergency departments, are already being done.

“The time has come to admit that stopping electives and non-urgent care is not enough. We must declare the crisis that our health system is in,” the Jan. 6 letter stated. Cassie Sauer, the Washington State Hospital Association CEO, also signed the letter.

Unlike Idaho, Montana, and Alaska, which had to use crisis standards of care last fall, Washington state will not allow a single facility to move to the emergency protocols. The declaration would come from the state and only occur after all possible options to extend services were exhausted. Under crisis standards of care, patients could be denied care based on need, survival chances, and available resources. Washington developed computer software with Massachusetts and Wisconsin to determine who would receive care. Last week, Oregon announced it was adopting the same computer program.

The physical, mental, and emotional toll of two years of a COVID crisis has decimated the ranks of hospital workers across the country. Omicron is highly contagious and has significant vaccine escape, resulting in hospital workers being sickened. As hospitalizations have surged in the first ten days of January, the number of staffed beds available has slowly declined.

On Thursday, leadership at MultiCare, which runs 11 hospitals across Washington state, reported they had moved to crisis staffing standards in Western Washington. The standard, announced by the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Dec. 23, can require workers who are sick with COVID to continue to work if necessary to continue to provide patient care.

The Omicron variant arrived in the United States on Nov. 15 and has shattered all previous records for new cases, daily new hospital admissions, and total hospitalizations. One model projects that nation will face another 300,000 hospitalized with COVID by the middle of February, an impossible task for all existing hospital resources.

On Dec. 26, Malcotent News forecasted Washington state hospitals would reach crisis standards of care by Jan. 15, without significant national guard support or FEMA intervention.

Breaking News, Local, Weather

Local store shelves emptying as weather, holidays, and COVID stress the supply chain

[KIRKLAND, Wash.] – (MTN) Empty spots on store shelves and coolers are getting bigger across Puget Sound as the labor shortage, weather, post-holiday buying, and COVID place increasing stress on supply chains.

Shortages of cold medication and home rapid COVID tests have grown to include fresh produce, milk, pet food, and some dry goods. Shortages are spotty and vary across stores. In Seattle, social media and pictures show empty dairy sections. In Kirkland, Fred Meyer had plenty of milk, eggs, and cheese but very little fresh produce.

The holiday buying season both for goods and food products arrived just before a snowstorm and historic cold blanketed the region. The timing combined to empty shelves for some, but by New Year’s many locations had recovered.

The COVID variant Omicron is sickening a record number of people, with worker shortages across every sector from hospitals to warehouses. With national unemployment at a robust 3.9 percent, the nation was already deep into a worker shortage before the ongoing coronavirus surge.

The trucking industry is short over 80,000 drivers nationally. Drivers are typically paid by the mile, and go unpaid when they aren’t moving. Labor shortages at warehouses and distribution centers can leave bulk freight motor carriers waiting for hours, and sometimes days without pay. Additionally, trucker pay has declined 50 percent in the last 20 years, forcing experienced drivers to leave the industry. Long-haul bulk freight has suffered the most, with many drivers wanting better pay or assurances they will get to sleep in their own beds at night.

Tracking technology has turned into a double-edged sword for the freight industry. The same systems that monitor driver behavior, safety, and location, have created a Fifth Element style driving environment. As an example, if a driver is moving in a freight yard or loading dock and exceeds 5 MPH, tracking systems will consider that movement as travel. If the driver is only moving their vehicle but on a mandatory rest window, they get penalized. Drivers have complained that getting stuck in traffic results in filling out online forms and explaining to dispatchers why they aren’t moving and on schedule.

Washington awoke on Friday morning to find the region was being pummeled by another once in a 100-year weather event. Heavy rain, flooding, and historic snowfall have crippled land transit into Puget Sound closing all mountain passes, stopping railroads, and for a short period this morning, closing a 20 mile stretch of I-5 in Lewis County. A similar weather system in December of 2007 crippled transit and disrupted the supply chain in Western Washington.

Wenatchee and Leavenworth received record amounts of snowfall on Thursday, with Leavenworth declaring a state of emergency. The Bavarian-themed tourist town received three feet of snow in 24 hours. Chelan County also declared a state of emergency and made a disaster declaration due to record snowfall.

All mountain passes are closed until at least Sunday due to record amounts of snow, avalanche danger, landslides, and downed trees. Snoqualmie Pass has recorded 69 inches of snow in four-and-a-half days with more expected through Friday. Stevens, Whites, and Blewett Passes haven’t had updated snowfall reports since Jan. 5.

The same weather system that has buried the Cascades is causing historic flooding in South Puget Sound, Southwest Washington, and in communities such as Issaquah. The Washington State Department of Transportation was forced to close a 20-mile section of I-5 between Centralia and Chehalis on Friday morning, the first major closure due to flooding since 2007. The highway is temporarily reopened this afternoon, but DOT traffic cameras showed water lapping at the edges of I-5. The Chehalis River isn’t expected to crest until Friday night or early Saturday morning.

The Newaukum and Skookumchuck Rivers reached near-record levels. The Thurston County Sheriff was appealing for people to follow evacuation orders and not to ignore road closures. In Issaquah, a phase two alert was issued on Thursday, when the Issaquah Creek broke its banks. On Friday morning, floodwaters were slowly receding.

The timing of these disruptions has created a perfect storm for the delivery of goods into the region. By Friday evening, the only way in and out of Puget Sound, the Islands, and the Olympic Peninsula will be by boat or aircraft. Combined with a growing number of COVID cases sidelining more workers, Western Washington should accept more empty shelves in the days to come.

Breaking News, Health and Lifestyle, Local

Washington hospitals will face an unprecedented capacity crisis in January

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[KIRKLAND, Wash.] – (MTN) The promises of the COVID Omicron variant being “very mild” and only a cold are crumbling in London and New York. The crush of COVID-related hospitalizations has United Kingdom officials considering additional restrictions while New York officials issued a warning about a shocking rise in pediatric hospitalizations. Hospitals in Washington are more than 90 percent occupied, leaving almost no capacity to deal with any kind of surge, COVID or otherwise.

Reports, studies, and data are pouring in at an incredible rate from around the world with confusing and conflicting headlines. In the United States, the politicization of the COVID epidemic has created a news cycle more aligned to opinion and speculation, than a cautious review and analysis of available data. If Washington follows the United Kingdom and New York, hospitals across the state will be overwhelmed by the end of January.

When Omicron was first announced by the World Health Organization on Nov. 26, many latched on to the words of Dr. Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association when she described the variant as “very mild.”

“Most of them are seeing very, very mild symptoms and none of them so far have admitted patients to surgeries. We have been able to treat these patients conservatively at home,” she said.

Within hours more details emerged that had many advising caution. Dr. Coetzee isn’t a hospitalist and runs a private practice in the South Africa capital of Pretoria. She based her statements on seeing 24 patients, mostly college students, and 50 percent were vaccinated.

The World Health Organization (WHO) addressed her statement in a press release on Nov. 28.

“There is currently no information to suggest that symptoms associated with Omicron are different from those from other variants. Initial reported infections were among university students—younger individuals who tend to have more mild disease—but understanding the level of severity of the Omicron variant will take days to several weeks.”

A month has passed since the WHO announced Omicron was a Variant of Concern (VOC). Data from South Africa, the UK, and New York is providing critical information on what will happen next for other nations including the United States.

Malcontent News has analyzed multiple studies, COVID case rates, hospitalization information, and mortality data from South Africa, the United Kingdom, and New York City. Our conclusion is that without drastic action in the next seven to ten days, Washington hospitals will face an untenable crisis by the end of January.

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) estimated Omicron was doubling every 2.4 days in the UK and has an Rt or “R naught” of 4.4. Rt is a measure of how quickly a disease can spread. At 3.0, up to 50 percent of people can expect to become infected with the Omicron variant – at 4.0, the figure jumps to 90 percent.

On Dec. 23, Trevor Bedford, Ph.D. with Fred Hutch, estimated that Omicron was doubling every 2.4 days and had an Rt of 4.4 in King County.

Case information from South Africa’s hospitals has revealed that recent previous COVID Delta variant infections are not providing much protection from the Omicron variant. As hospitals in Gauteng Province became filled with COVID patients, reaching a peak days before Christmas, a pattern emerged. Over 80 percent were unvaccinated, and in the ICU, almost all the patients were unvaccinated.

Mortality rates in South Africa remained low through Dec. 10 and then started to climb. On Sunday, 66 were dying of COVID daily based on the 7 day moving average, 87 percent are unvaccinated and 466 total deaths have been recorded in the last week.

While it is factually correct that only 26 percent of all South Africans are vaccinated against COVID, in Gauteng the numbers more closely mirror some Eastern Washington counties. On Dec. 17 South African officials reported 44% of all eligible adults in Gauteng are fully vaccinated, including 66% of people over 50 years old. Even at 26 percent, Stevens County is only 33 percent vaccinated and already experiencing high transmission.

South African officials found that although the risk of hospitalization from Omicron was as much as 70% lower than Delta, once a person was hospitalized, the disease progression resembled Delta with similar patient outcomes. Scientists in Europe and North America worried that the younger, relatively healthy population was masking the true impact of Omicron. Hospitals also saw a surge of children under five being hospitalized.

Washington and King County have far fewer children under 18 and a much older population than South Africa. The single biggest factor that determines the outcome of a COVID infection is age, even among the vaccinated. Multiple studies have concluded that without a booster shot, neutralizing antibodies against COVID has faded away, leaving the T cells to respond in a secondary response. Boosters dramatically improve the body’s response to Omicron, but less than half of eligible residents of King County have been boosted.

In a damaging blow to reaching a better understanding of the Omicron variant, the South Africa Department of Health announced on Dec. 24 the nation would stop most contact tracing, reduce quarantine times for infected people, and significantly reduce COVID testing. Reducing the number of tests will lower the daily case count while inflating the percentage of hospitalization patients. Shortening of quarantine periods for positive tests while ending most contact tracing could drive a new surge of community transmission.

As Omicron started to spread around the world, the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK reported 131 Omicron variant cases on Dec. 8. The first Omicron variant death was reported on Dec. 14 and by Christmas Eve, the NHS reported 122,186 cases as hospitalizations started to surge.

Bedford predicted on Dec. 18 that King County would have 2,100 new COVID cases by Dec. 23, which would shatter previous records. King County Public Health reported 2,879 new cases, a 169 percent increase in a week. Hospitalizations are a trailing indicator and looking at London and the UK, an increase in King County is roughly a week away.

Today, UK COVID hospitalizations are doubling every ten days. For the unvaccinated, people from 50 to 79 have a 30-fold greater chance of being hospitalized. The Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre examined hospitalization data from May to November and found that the unvaccinated had a relative risk to be hospitalized 60-times higher than the vaccinated – that data was without boosters.

According to the most recent data available, the UK National Health Service reported 1,171 people were admitted to hospitals with COVID on Dec. 20 – the highest number since Feb. 19 and higher than during the Delta wave. On Dec. 22, the 7-day moving average for new hospitalizations in London had reached 386, just a handful of cases below a “trigger number” of 400. The figure is half of the previous record peak of 850. If cases double again in the next ten days, a new and awful record would be in reach.

The LSHTM released an updated pre-print study on Dec. 23 modeling four potential scenarios for the UK and the progression of Omicron. The report was adjusted to factor in newly available data from the Imperial College of London published on Dec. 22. Report 50 hypothesized previous Delta infections combined with high vaccination rates in the UK would reduce the risk of hospitalization from an Omicron infection by 50 percent.

“These results suggest that the introduction of the Omicron B.1.1.529 variant in England will lead to a substantial increase in SARS-CoV-2 transmission, which, in the absence of strict control measures, has the potential for substantially higher case rates than those recorded during the Alpha B.1.1.7 winter wave in 2020–2021. This is due to Omicron’s apparent high transmissibility and ability to infect individuals with existing immunity to SARS-CoV-2 from prior infection or from vaccination.”

Only one scenario found that hospitalizations would be below the record the UK set in January 2020. The most likely scenario of high immune escape with high booster dose efficacy predicts hospitalizations could soar to 5,000 a day by the end of January 2021. The National Health Service would have no capability to care for that many patients, even if they only required a few days of care with hydration and oxygen support.

The study also found that this was not inevitable, and additional mitigation plans to slow the spread of COVID could protect the hospital system and UK residents alike. However, the steps required are very unlikely to be taken or tolerated.

“The introduction of control measures is projected to partially suppress Omicron transmission; however, in the most pessimistic scenario, we project that stringent control measures such as those implemented following the Alpha B.1.1.7 winter wave of transmission may be required to ensure that healthcare services are not overwhelmed.”

In the United States, federal officials have openly stated concern that restrictions such as those used in the spring of 2020 could bring a wave of domestic terrorism. On Nov. 11, the National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin stated, “Pandemic-related stressors have contributed to increased societal strains and tensions, driving several plots by DVEs, and they may contribute to more violence this and next year. If a new COVID-19 variant emerges and new public health restrictions are imposed as a result, anti-government violent extremists could potentially use the new restrictions as a rationale to target government or public health officials or facilities.”

In King County, there are very few remaining public health options. The county has had a mask mandate in place since July with varying levels of compliance. Proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test is required to go to restaurants, bars, theaters, sports events, movies, gyms, and entertainment venues. However, one doesn’t have to dig deep to find Facebook groups and online lists of hundreds of businesses ignoring these requirements.

On the other side of the country, New York City is seven to ten days ahead of Seattle. Tens of thousands of, “guess who has COVID,” social media posts morphed into, “this is much worse than I thought” updates over the Christmas holiday. The number of hospitalized COVID patients almost doubled in a week in the City – from 1,046 on Dec. 18 to 1,904 on Dec. 24. The number of coronavirus patients in the ICU went from 187 to 283 during the same period. On Christmas Eve, parts of Manhattan had the highest COVID transmission rates on the planet.

New York Health Commissioner Mary T. Bassett issued a statement on Christmas Day, with pediatric COVID hospitalizations quadrupling in three weeks. “We are alerting New Yorkers to this recent striking increase in pediatric COVID-19 admissions so that pediatricians, parents, and guardians can take urgent action to protect our youngest New Yorkers.”

Officials did not release a patient census but did offer some information. Half of the hospitalized children were under five. None of the children under 12 were vaccinated, and only one-third of adolescent patients from 12 to 17 were fully vaccinated. Booster shots are not available to children under 16, and only recently became available to 16 and 17-year-olds.

The Washington Post reported that pediatric hospitalizations for COVID had jumped 31 percent in ten days, with almost 2,000 children hospitalized – a grim and new national record.

Pediatrician Aaron Milstone with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine urged parents who have children with “cold” symptoms to assume “it’s Omicron until proven otherwise,” in an interview with the Washington Post.

Unlike South Africa and the United Kingdom which released updated reports over the Christmas holiday, data hasn’t been available from the Washington State Depart of Health (WSDoH) since Thursday. With new cases doubling every 2.4 days in King County, it is almost certain Washingtonians will see a dramatic increase in new COVID cases and COVID hospitalization in the coming week.

When it comes to the state’s ability to cope with another surge, Washington State Hospital Association (WSHA) Vice President Taya Briley minced no words during a Dec. 23 press briefing.

“Even if most people don’t get really sick, there are a lot of people who are getting infected with omicron, and some portion of them will get severely ill and need hospital care. Even if it’s a small portion of the overall total, this could mean a huge number of people getting sick enough to need hospitalization.”

Mark Taylor of the Washington Medical Coordination Center at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, echoed her perspective.

“We really do not currently have the capacity within our facilities to accommodate a large surge as we just came through with the Delta surge.”

The most recent data available from the WSDoH is from Dec. 22. On Wednesday, there were 702 COVID patients hospitalized in Washington, with 95 requiring ventilators. The number of hospitalized patients had increased 13 percent in 48 hours before the Christmas holiday data break.

Using the 7 day moving average data from the Healthcare Readiness tab from the WSDoH COVID dashboard, there are an estimated 652 staffed acute care and 145 staffed ICU beds available across the state. If COVID cases were to double over the next ten days regional hospitals will run out of all beds, unless other measures are taken.

Demoralized doctors and nurses are already in a physical, emotional, and mental health crisis as the Delta wave was coming to an end. Over the weekend, many expressed fury at new guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Christmas Eve.

The new guidelines reduced the amount of time medical personnel needs to isolate if they have close contact or are positive for COVID. If hospitals move to contingency care hospital workers could be made to return to work after five days, even if they are mildly symptomatic. Under crisis standards of care, employees could be made to continue to work even if they are experiencing mild or moderate symptoms.

The CDC defines moderate illness as, “individuals who have evidence of lower respiratory disease, by clinical assessment or imaging, and a saturation of oxygen (SpO2) ≥94% on room air at sea level.”

More troubling, The update has no specific requirements for N95 masks or N100 respirators, defining facemasks as, “OSHA defines facemasks as “a surgical, medical procedure, dental, or isolation mask that is FDA-cleared, authorized by an FDA EUA, or offered or distributed as described in an FDA enforcement policy. Facemasks may also be referred to as ‘medical procedure masks’.”

The medical community is concerned that COVID could be passed to patients hospitalized for other reasons, while spreading among other staff, limiting the ability to meet rising cases. In states where medical personnel isn’t required to be vaccinated, data from South Africa and the UK suggests the CDC guidelines could have a devastating impact on hospital readiness.

As a better understanding of Omicron has become available a grim picture for January is emerging. In King County, 81.3% of all residents five and older are fully vaccinated. That is almost ten percent lower than London and the vaccination rate for Washington state isn’t much higher than Florida.

Several studies have shown that the current vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer have significantly reduced effectiveness without a booster. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is even less effective. Boosters have been proven to provide additional projection, but breakthrough cases remain frequent. For most of the vaccinated that develop symptoms, their cases are mild to moderate.

The number of breakthrough cases had driven up anti-vaccination rhetoric at a national and even local level, with Jason Rantz criticizing the King County vaccine mandate.

“But if Omicron evades the vaccine and the best protection, according to the city, and the department is to abide by procedures used before a vaccine was even available, then what sense did it make to fire unvaccinated staff? They’re just as vulnerable to the dominant variant as the vaccinated.”

The statement is factually incorrect, given the evidence from South Africa, Israel, Denmark, and the UK showing that while breakthrough cases among the vaccinated are high, hospitalizations are extremely low.

Several case studies on the true number of breakthrough cases and vaccine effectiveness have emerged in an unlikely place. Multiple cruise ships have had their itineraries disrupted due to onboard COVID cases. The Royal Caribbean ship, Odyssey of the Seas, was denied entry to two ports of call after confirming 55 coronavirus cases onboard. The ship left port with 95 percent of passengers fully vaccinated. The ship has 3,587 guests and 1,599 crew onboard. If every confirmed case was among vaccinated individuals, the breakthrough rate is around one percent. Officials have stated the cases are asymptomatic or mild.

The new case rate in King County is growing as fast as London with a similar Rt, which indicates up to 90 percent of residents will become infected with COVID in the next 60 days. Most of those cases will be asymptomatic or mild, but for the elderly, children under five years old, the unvaccinated, and the immunocompromised the data strongly suggests outcomes are similar to Delta.

Considering all we have learned about Omicron since Nov. 27 and looking at the data through a clinical, not-politically motivated lens, an unprecedented crisis will arrive with the New Year. If cases continue to double every 2.4 days and the Rt stays above 4, up to 90% of King County residents will be infected over the next 60 days. If COVID hospitalizations double every ten days starting this week, the state will be out of resources by Jan. 15.

As the Omicron variant spreads through Eastern Washington, likely fueled by Christmas holiday travel, officials will look to Western Washington to take their patients. The issues experienced during the Delta surge of patient transfers by aircraft and ambulance will be even worse due to winter weather and an increasing number of sickened personnel.

With pandemic fatigue, politicization, Christmas and New Year’s travel and celebration, and no ability to add additional public health measures without risking a violent response, it seems unlikely that we will prevent what is coming.

Breaking News, Health and Lifestyle, Local, National

Where London goes with Omicron Seattle will follow, with the rest of the US close behind

[KIRKLAND, Wash.] – (MTN) A record 93,000 new COVID cases were reported in the United Kingdom by the National Health Service just hours after Trevor Bedford, Ph.D., an Associate Professor, Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Epidemiology Program Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research indicated that where London goes, Seattle will follow five days later.

France closed its borders to the UK on Friday evening and on Saturday, London Mayor Sadiq Khan declared a “major incident” as Covid-19 hospital admissions rose 30% in a week. The National Health Service reported seven people have died from the Omicron variant and believe that “hundreds of thousands” of cases are going unreported. Cases are expected to grow at a dizzying rate well into January.

On Friday, Bedford told reporters that 50 percent of new Covid-19 cases in King County, were likely Omicron and doubling every 2.4 days. The next day, Pavitra Roychoudhury, MSc, Ph.D., of the University of Washington Virology Division tweeted that Omicron was 50 percent of all cases in Washington.

In an interview published on Saturday in the New York Intelligencer, Bedford shared his prediction on what is to come. “I can expect caseloads that are huge. I can easily expect a 50 percent attack rate from Omicron. I can easily expect that.”

“Attack rate,” is how much of the population will be infected – and Bedford predicts that half of the United States population will catch the Omicron variant. Because the United States does not take a national approach to genomic sequencing, and not all hospitals test patients for COVID at admission, the number of people already hospitalized is murky. From the earliest reports, the hospitalization rate was between 2% to 5%.

There was little good news to be found over the weekend on the impact the new wave is going to have on the United States. In the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Great Lakes Region hospitals are already at or over capacity and receiving additional aid from FEMA. Many states are struggling with dwindling testing funds and a lack of data because tracking systems were dismantled over the summer.

A cascade of drug makers indicated late in the week that the current version of monoclonal antibodies in distribution aren’t effective against the Omicron variant. Unlike vaccines, which target all antibodies, monoclonal antibodies only target one. The antibody that was “cloned” in the process was effective against previous variants but doesn’t produce a significant immune response with Omicron.

In a series of studies, only Sotrovimab, produced by GlaxoSmithKline, showed promise against the fast-spreading variant. The monoclonal antibody received Emergency Use Authorization ( EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on May 26. Health and Human Services (HHS) reported they would be distributing 55,000 doses across the United States this week, with Washington receiving 552.

Back in the UK, the National Health Service reported that on any given day, about one percent of the national health force would be absent from work due to illness. In London, the number of workers calling out sick surged 40 percent. In the United States, healthcare workers have been fleeing the profession for years, while nurses have complained about short staffing for over a decade. Area hospitals will be impacted dramatically if Omicron starts to infect their workforces.

HHS reported over 68,000 people were hospitalized with COVID across the United States. Statewide on Friday, only eight percent of acute care and 12 percent of ICU beds were available. In King County many hospitals are already at or above capacity, but not due to COVID patients. A shortage of staffed skilled nursing and rehabilitation beds has left patients ready for discharge nowhere to go.

Over the summer when patient loads were lower, the Delta wave brought Oregon and Washington hospitals to the brink of crisis standards of care while collapsing the healthcare systems in Idaho and Alaska. Hospitalization rates for COVID and non-COVID patients are already much higher as the region prepares to face the biggest challenge yet.

According to HHS, EvergreenHealth Kirkland had 19 acute care beds available while Overlake had 17. Both hospitals were reporting ICUs near capacity with 3 beds at Evergreen and 4 at Overlake.

During the Delta surge, states learned that activating the National Guard for nurses and doctors was a poor option. Trained hospital staff who are “weekend warriors” were frequently already supporting surging hospital admissions. The activation in some cases made staffing situations worse.

King County residents vented their frustration on social media about the inability to get a booster shot, find home COVID antigen tests, and PCR test results being delayed. In other circles, Seahawks fans raged against the scheduling change against the Rams due to coronavirus.

Officials in the UK pleaded with government officials to implement further public health restrictions to stem the tide of new cases, as models indicate that by January, the island nation could see 3,000 to 4,000 new hospitalizations a day. Londoners were already starting to deal with closed shops and restaurants, and delays in services because so many people have been sickened.

It is unlikely any additional restrictions will be implemented across the United States, where COVID has been turned into a political weapon. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) indicated in a Nov. 10 memo, “If a new COVID-19 variant emerges and new public health restrictions are imposed as a result, anti-government violent extremists could potentially use the new restrictions as a rationale to target government or public health officials or facilities.“

Numerous studies and growing real-world data from Africa and Europe indicate that immunity from prior COVID infections or vaccination without a booster provides enough protection to prevent severe COVID symptoms that result in hospitalization and death. Booster shots ideally received within the previous 12 weeks, boost immunity for more.

For people relying on viral vector vaccines such as Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, or Russia’s GNCEM, there appears to be even less protection without a booster. On Thursday, The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) endorsed the recommendation from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to recommend the mRNA Pfizer and Moderna vaccines over Johnson and Johnson. The decision was made due to the waning effectiveness of the J&J vax and nine confirmed fatalities, seven women including one from Seattle, and two men, from vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT).

A study published on Dec. 14 found that Moderna with a booster provided the best protection from Omicron, followed by Pfizer with a booster, and then Johnson & Johnson with a Moderna booster. The study also evaluated individuals who had a previous COVID infection and then got vaccinated. They found that immunity was better than vaccination without a booster, but not as robust.

Real-world data from Europe and Africa indicate that relying on immunity from a previous COVID infection is offering little protection from becoming symptomatic. Epidemiologists have stated it is possible to be infected with the Delta and Omicron variants at the same time. It also appears that natural immunity from Omicron won’t protect a person from a later Delta infection.

There is mounting evidence that Omicron is no more severe than Delta, but little evidence it is less so. On Friday the Imperial College of London released a report that found no evidence that Omicron is “mild.”

“The study finds no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection. However, hospitalisation data remains very limited at this time.”

The challenge for the public and health experts is comparing the current global wave to previous spikes in COVID cases. During the original wave in the spring of 2020, no one had any type of immunity. When the Alpha and Beta waves came in the winter of 2020, vaccines were just rolling out. When Delta arrived the variant was more transmissible and more severe than prior strains. It also was capable of nibbling around the edges of vaccine protection due to its mutations.

Omicron has arrived in a population that has received a variety of mRNA and viral-vector vaccines with different doses as well as disease acquired immunity from different strains. The timing of receiving a vaccine, prior infection, or a combination also impacts how much immunity a person has.

Many people are more mobile and have returned to work and school while simultaneously taking fewer precautions. An additional challenge is the rate of vaccination is not homogenous, with highly vaccinated communities adjacent to vaccine-resistant populations.

All of these factors are obscuring the true nature of Omicron and because the United States does a poor job of genomic sequencing in some states, little is known about the current hospitalized population and which variant patients have.

Although data out of South Africa has been more encouraging, experts had warned that the recent end of the Delta wave, a higher than understood vaccination rate, and the youthful nature of the South Africa population would favor better outcomes. Although only 26% of South Africa’s total population is vaccinated, over 34% of the county was ineligible due to age. On Oct. 20, the nation expanded vaccination to 12 to 17-year-olds and introduced booster shots to adults on Dec. 9. In reality, 44% of South African adults are fully vaccinated, including 61 percent of people over 50. Additionally, only 5.7% of South African residents are 60 or older.

Researchers are watching King County closely for several reasons. The region is a leader in genomic sequencing and research. As Omicron moves through the region it will provide critical data to build a better understanding of transmissibility, the impact on public health measures, prevention and treatment, and how severe Omicron is. King County is highly vaccinated, but has pockets of low vaccine acceptance, providing a more realistic cross-section. Finally, New York City is almost unique compared to other US cities due to its size, reliance on public transit, and the number of people who live in buildings with communal areas.

Dr. Cameron Webb, the senior policy advisor for equity for the White House COVID Response Team shared early symptoms to look for if you start feeling ill.

  • Sore throat, espeically if it is more than mild
  • Headache
  • Fatigue – severe fatigue appears more common in children
  • Runny nose
  • Sneezing
  • Dry cough

County health officials continue to appeal for people to get vaccinated and get a booster shot if they are eligible. They recommend frequent hand washing and wearing an N-95, KN-94, or KN95 mask whenever you’re out of your home, and to stop using cloth masks. When it comes to Christmas and New Year’s celebrations and travel plans, it is recommended to test the day off and celebrate outside or in well-ventilated indoor areas.

Because of the systems put in place by King County Public Health and supported by County Executive Dow Constantine, the region is better prepared to provide vital data to the rest of the nation. It is very likely that by Christmas, Seattle will feel a lot more like March 2020 than December 2021.

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BREAKING: King County residents are urged to prepare for the largest COVID wave to date

[SEATTLE, Wash.] – (MTN) A forecast created by Trevor Bedford, Ph.D., an Associate Professor, Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Epidemiology Program Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, projects that King County will reach record levels by Dec. 22.

In a press conference on Friday, Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, Health Officer, Public Health Seattle & King County said, “The Omicron outbreak we’ve been talking about is no longer theoretical. It is real and it’s here.”

Dr. Duchin shared the current situation in King County, adding that UW Medicine is finding 40% of tests are positive for Omicron and new COVID cases are up 50% since Thanksgiving.

Dr. Santiago Neme, MD, MPH of UW Medicine expressed concern over the number of patients already in Washington hospitals. “Our numbers for COVID infected patients have decreased,” Dr. Neme, said, “but we have been operating at a full or over full capacity for several months in many areas of the state.”

“Any increase in hospital rates or utilization will be pretty challenging for us and very concerning.”

Dr. Duchin added that In King County, hospitals are already caring for twice as many patients as before the start of the Delta wave in August.

Bedford told reporters that the Seattle-Bellevue area would be one of the first cities in the United States to experience widespread Omicron infections and the area was only “a few days” behind London. “New York City is ahead of Seattle and Rhode Island is as well,” he said. But he added this may be due to Seattle having “great S gene drop out data.” S Gene Target Failure (SGTF) is a faster way to identify a likely Omicron variant infection from a positive COVID test. Genomic sequencing is required to make an absolute determination.

Dr. Alexander L. Greninger M.D., Ph.D., M.S., M.Phil., assistant director of the UW Medicine Clinical Virology Laboratory told reporters that sequencing has a 5 to 7 day lag time.

“The number of samples coming into the labs are as high as we’ve seen during the pandemic, yesterday and the day before,” Dr. Greninger added. The UW Medicine Virology Lab has sequenced about 100 samples, and “98 or 99” were positive for Omicron.

The model was created using genomic sequencing data of positive COVID tests, and information on transmission rates from other countries such as the United Kingdom and South Africa. Bedford estimated Omicron cases were doubling in King County every 2.2 days, which is supported by reports from the University of Washington Department of Virology. If the forecast is accurate there could be 2,100 Omicron cases on top of 500 Delta cases in King County by Wednesday. That would far exceed the record number of daily new cases during the fifth wave, and the doubling would continue every one to three days into January.

“Omicron is an airborne disease like Delta and spreads easier indoors, and is a lot more contagious,” Dr. Duchin said, adding, “We do not yet have a clear picture on severity.”

To prepare for the coming wave the message was clear, “The single most important thing you can do is to get vaccinated and boosted even if you’ve had a prior infection,” said Dr. Duchin, “but vaccination alone won’t stop the spread of Omicron.”

King County Health said we need to take advantage of as many layers of protection as we can. That includes wearing tight-fitting N-95, KN-95, or KN-94 masks indoors. The public should avoid crowded indoor spaces, especially if people are unmasked and there is poor air circulation. If anyone feels sick, they should get tested for COVID and stay home to help blunt the spread.

“If you do gather please do safely as possible,” Dr. Duchin appealed. “Limit the number and size of gatherings. Avoid crowded indoor spaces. Do a rapid test on the day of the gathering. Gatherings will be better in large outdoor places or indoor with open windows and doors.”

Dr. Duchin also recommends avoiding travel, especially to areas with high COVID transmission rates. He added that King County has not closed the door on further public health safety measures, but does not plan to add additional measures beyond the guidelines already in place.

The panel stressed that the severity of illness caused by Omicron is still not known. “My read on severity is still difficult – a large portion of infections are both breakthrough and reinfections,” Bedford told reporters. “It may well be the case that Omicron is intrinsically less severe than Delta, but we don’t know. What matters is how many cases do we get and what fraction of those cases require hospitalizations. That is going to be a very large number of cases, severity is not clear enough to know if it will be very bad, bad, or not so bad.”

When asked about breakthrough cases among the vaccinated, Dr. Greninger said, “Moderna and Pfizer are significantly better than Johnson & Johnson.”

“Serious infection is the most important,” added Dr. Duchin. “Meaningful protection against serious infection, hospitalization, and death will protect many of us in vaccinated communities.”

In King County, 160,000 people 12 and older remain unvaccinated and 250,000 have only had a single dose. According to the Washington State Department of Health, about one-third of fully vaccinated King County residents have received a booster dose.

Public and private employers were urged to start contingency planning now to prepare for staffing shortages. “We need to prepare for a large wave of people becoming ill quickly together,” added Dr. Duchin. “We will try to get guidance so we can get people back to work as soon as possible but plan for ‘large scale’ absenteeism.

Public testing sites for COVID will remain open through the holiday season except on Christmas and New Year’s Day. When asked what to do if you need a test on Christmas or New Year’s, Dr. Duchin recommended using a home test versus going to a hospital emergency department.

When asked about the rest of the United States, Bedford didn’t provide an optimistic picture. “Expect things to light up across the United States shortly – first in the cities and then rural areas.”

Looking ahead to the future, Bedford shared that the models he created in the fall have changed significantly due to the Omicron variant.

“Omicron makes things ‘significantly worse.’ I’m quite worried in nine months we will have both Omicron and Delta circulating,” adding, “Omicron will not get us out of this.”

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Washington wrestling tournament Omicron super spreader event bigger than initially reported

[OLYMPIA, Wash.] – (MTN) Dr. Scott Lindquist, State Epidemiologist for Communicable Diseases, Washington State Department of Health (WSDoH), reported that the number of COVID cases caused by the Dec 4. wrestling tournament super spreader events is significantly larger than previously reported.

“If you attended or participated, you should get tested,” Dr. Lindquist told reporters during a morning media briefing.

The WSDoH reported on Wednesday that 80 to 90 COVID cases were connected to four youth wrestling tournaments in Yelm, Puyallup, Sumner, and Lacey. Dr. Lindquist said this morning that since the initial report they have identified “more locations” than what the state was aware of.

The confirmed cases are spread out across 11 local health districts across Western Washington and out to Yakima County. County health departments are in the process of contact tracing individuals and doing interviews. In a story on My Northwest, Dr. Jeff Duchin, King County health officer reported there was one known hospitalization.

Because the impact is spread out over a large area and involves 12 health departments, WSDoH doesn’t have detailed information on vaccination status or how many participants and spectators have been infected. The number of new cases is expected to rise over the next 12 to 24 hours.

Dr. Linquist explained they have requested three to five samples of positive tests from each impacted county for genomic sequencing. The first three samples were positive for the Omicron variant. He added that this “clearly is an Omicron outbreak.”

December 16 media briefing with dr. Scott Lindquist, Washington state department of health

“I have a sense this will be very large and Omicron will play a big role in this,” Dr. Linquist added.

Pictures and videos from the tournaments showed packed indoor gymnasiums with a handful of people wearing masks. Washington state guidelines would have required masks for all spectators, for unvaccinated athletes who presented a negative COVID test before the tournament and for all athletes not actively competing.

“This does not bode well to have an event this early with Omicron in Washington state.”

A lot is still not known about the Omicron variant which has spread to 77 countries and across the United States just a month after being identified by South African researchers. Early data indicates it is highly transmissible, with multiple countries seeing a doubling of cases every one to three days. Over a dozen studies have found that Omicron is resistant to vaccines. Early data out of South Africa implies that vaccination is helping blunt the severity of symptomatic cases. Additional lab analysis, and anecdotal data out of Israel indicate boosters provide a significant increase in protection against infections.

Initial reports in late November that Omicron is “very mild” and wasn’t resulting in hospitalizations were overly optimistic. According to the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, South Africa has over 7,600 hospitalized COVID patients on Dec. 16, up 258% since Nov. 11. The ratio of patients that require oxygen jumped up this week as infections are progressing. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom reported its first confirmed Omicron variant related death earlier this week.

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Omicron variant identified in 13% of recent Washington COVID tests

Editor’s Note: As a policy, Malcontent News does not quote or publish data from pre-print studies. The transmission rate of the Omicron SARS-CoV2 variant is so high it is spreading at a rate faster than the scientific review process. It is for this reason, we are using pre-print studies in our reporting and analysis for the Omicron variant. We will continue to backlink to all quoted sources to support transparency in reporting.

[SEATTLE, Wash.] – (MTN) Pavitra Roychoudhury, MSc, Ph.D., of the University of Washington Virology Division, reported 13% of tests samples submitted for genomic sequencing on Dec. 8 were positive for the Omicron variant. Tentative confirmation was made using an S Gene Target Failure (SGTF) test, with Dr. Roychoudhury indicating in a tweet that it will take a few days for genomic sequencing confirmation.

Using the data provided by the University of Washington, Omicron variant cases in Washington doubled every 24 hours from Dec. 6 to Dec. 8. The total number of new COVID cases being detected indicates that the Omicron variant is rapidly replacing Delta, not adding to confirmed cases at this time.

Nathan Grubaugh, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, tweeted researchers were seeing a similar trend among samples collected in Connecticut.

If the rate of new case growth for Omicron continues at the current rate in Washington, it would be the fastest case growth rate observed to date. In South Africa and across the United States, Omicron cases have been doubling every three days. In the United Kingdom, cases have been doubling every two-and-a-half days and in Denmark, every two days.

Sikhulile Moyo, director at the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP) lab in Gaborone and a research associate in immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health was the first person to sequence the Omicron variant on Nov. 8. He shared his findings on GISAID on Nov 11, which caught the attention of virologists around the world.

Lancet Labs in South Africa started seeing an alarming number of PCR tests from the Gauteng Province missing the target S gene in mid-November. Lancet shared the findings with the Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA), which called an urgent meeting on 23 November. “We were shocked by the number of mutations,” says Tulio de Oliveira in a report in Science, a virologist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and NGS-SA’s principal investigator.

On Nov. 24, Dr. Alex Sigal of the Africa Health Institute received three test swabs with the Omicron variant and started growing the virus to test it against sera from vaccinated and recovered individuals.

On the same day, Lancet sequenced another 100 samples with the missing S gene, and all were positive for the newly discovered variant. The South Africa Department of Health sent their findings to the World Health Organization (WHO) on Nov. 24, and Omicron was labeled a Variant of Concern (VOC) on Nov. 26.

Despite the first three cases appearing in Botswana, Omicron was likely circulating undetected on several continents by late October. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported last week that the first symptomatic Omicron case in the United States was on Nov. 15. The implementation of international travel restrictions likely had no impact on slowing the spread of the highly infectious variant.

Nevada became the most recent state to report an Omicron variant COVID case on December 14

Preliminary data has emerged over the last week on transmissibility, treatment efficacy, and vaccine effectiveness for Omicron.

A study out of South Africa published on Dec. 2, found that Omicron was 2.5 to 3.5 times more transmissible than Delta. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, indicated the Rt, a measure of how quickly a communicable disease can spread, is between R12 and R17, which is comparative to measles. On Dec. 8, Hiroshi Nishiura, professor at Kyoto University released a study that found Omicron is 4.2 times more transmissible than Delta with an Rt of R20. If additional research were to find this true, the Omicron COVID variant would be the most transmissible disease observed in the modern medicine era.

Omicron is forecasted to become the dominant strain in the United Kingdom and Denmark this week and was already 44% of detected COVID cases in the UK on Tuesday. The CDC reported tonight Omicron represents 3% of all detected COVID cases in the United States.

Eleven studies and reports, none of which have been peer-reviewed, have been published on vaccine effectiveness in the last 10 days. Studies have evaluated the Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, and AstraZeneca vaccines.

Studies that reviewed the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine found that the effectiveness of preventing symptomatic illness dropped from 80% to zero to 35%, depending on the study. Very limited real-world data out of South Africa from Discovery Health released today showed that the Pfizer vaccine was only 33% effective at preventing infection.

The same study found that the Pfizer vaccine was 70% effective at preventing “severe complications of Covid-19,” down from 93% with the Delta variant.

Dr. Peter English, Retired Consultant in Communicable Disease Control, Former Editor of Vaccines in Practice, past Chair of the BMA Public Health Medicine Committee had this to say about the findings.

“Two doses of vaccine are 70% effective at preventing hospitalization. They are not ineffective, but they are much less effective than the 90-95% protection that two doses provided against hospitalization. With a highly infectious variant, this still risks a catastrophic number of hospitalizations.”

A non-peer-reviewed study published on Tuesday evening provided the first data on the effectiveness of the Moderna vaccine, and more data for the Johnson & Johnson/Jassen vaccine.

Researchers evaluated the sera from 239 vaccinated healthcare workers in the Boston area. The study found that for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine, more than 50% of individuals had no neutralizing antibodies three months after vaccination. The Moderna vaccine showed a 43-fold decrease in antibodies while the Pfizer vaccine had a 122-fold decrease. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine performed better against the Omicron variant versus Delta but had significantly reduced effectiveness versus the original COVID strain.

For individuals who had a prior Covid-19 infection and then got vaccinated more than six months ago, the Moderna vaccine had a 9-fold decrease in neutralizing antibodies, the Pfizer vaccine had a 12-fold decrease, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had a 17-fold decrease.

The study also found an mRNA booster within the last three months provided a significant increase in neutralizing antibodies but did not provide the same level of protection versus the Delta variant. The samples from the Johnson and Johnson test subjects were all boosted with a half-dose of the Moderna vaccine.

Two studies on disease acquired immunity found that protection declined significantly compared to previous variants. A study published on Dec. 2 out of South Africa, which has not been peer-reviewed, found that protection against Omicron dropped 240% for individuals who were previously infected by the original strain, Beta, or Delta, and had never been vaccinated. Another study released on Dec. 9 reached a similar conclusion, and in an alarming find, reported up to 40% of individuals who had a previous Delta infection were experiencing reinfection with Omicron. The Delta wave ended on Sep. 19 in South Africa, suggesting it took less than three months for protection to wane.

Scientists, public health officials, and policymakers have been attempting to determine if Omicron is less severe than the Delta variant. The study released from Discovery Health today reported that Omicron was 29% less severe than the original COVID strain.

“Without seeing a preprint or the report on which this press release is based it is difficult to get a clear understanding of the validity of these conclusions,” said Prof. Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine at the University of East Anglia and a member of the National Institute of Health Research in the U.K. “If these are valid conclusions then there are both reassuring and worrying findings.  The report that reinfections are more common with Omicron has already been published and the evidence is strong that Omicron can increase the risk of infection in people who have already had a COVID infection.”

Other experts warned against reading too much into the Discovery Health report.

Dr. Simon Clarke, Associate Professor in Cellular Microbiology, University of Reading, said, “This press release outlines preliminary observations of Covid-19 in South Africa during the first three weeks of the wave of infections caused by the Omicron.  It shouldn’t be forgotten that in the UK, during the initial epidemic there was a 5-week gap between the first diagnosis and the first death.  A situation report taken in those first few weeks would not have given us an accurate picture of what was about to happen, so we shouldn’t expect these preliminary indications to be a portent of how the Omicron epidemic will play out here.”

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provided detailed information on Dec. 10 about the first 43 Omicron variant cases detected in the United States. The report found that one person required hospitalization and was released after two days. Almost 60% were 39 years old or younger and 33% had recently traveled internationally. Forty of the 43 cases were vaccinated or had a previous COVID infection. Among the 34 who were vaccinated, 14 had received a booster.

Officials believe the high infection rate for vaccinated individuals has created a data fallacy. International travelers are more likely to be vaccinated, younger, and healthier and many were not eligible for a booster.

The Washington State Department of Health (WSDoH) reported 75.3% of all Washingtonians 12 and older are fully vaccinated and almost one in four children five to eleven have received their first dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. An estimated 3.5 million residents are eligible for boosters, but only 1.35 million have received one to date.

WSDoH reported the 7 day moving average for new cases is 1,333, and the statewide 7 day moving average new case rate is 83.5 per 100K residents – moderate transmission. The state has been averaging 650 to 700 hospitalized COVID patients a day, with roughly 100 requiring ventilators.

Statewide new admissions for COVID-related illness started increasing on Nov. 27, and through Dec 7. was averaging 92 new admissions a day. On Tuesday there were approximately 642 available staffed acute care and 144 staffed ICU beds throughout Washington.

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WHO holds emergency meeting as multiple nations implement Africa travel restrictions over new COVID variant concerns

[KIRKLAND, Wash.] – (MTN) World health officials are alarmed due to a new fast-spreading Covid-19 variant in South Africa causing the World Health Organization to hold an emergency meeting as Asian stock markets plunged and the Dow Jones futures dropped 735 points.

The new variant, so far identified as B.1.1.529 has not been named, but the WHO is expected to assign it a name today, likely the Nu variant.

The variant was first detected in Botswana but has quickly spread in South Africa and two travel-related cases have been confirmed in Hong Kong. Botswana officials stated the four detected cases are among fully vaccinated individuals. in South Africa, cases are increasing rapidly in Gauteng Province, home to Johannesburg and one of the largest air travel hubs on the continent. In the span of a week, new cases went from a cluster to growing so fast scientists believe it has achieved community spread.

Officials in the U.K. are taking no chances. Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced that six African nations – South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, and Eswatini – have been placed on the red list, placing strict rules on air travel.

Starting on Friday, any non-UK and Irish residents will be banned from entering England if they have been in the red list countries in the last ten days. Beginning Sunday, British nationals who have been in those countries will be required to quarantine upon entry. Additionally, health officials in the UK are asking anyone who has traveled to the impacted regions to get a PCR test as soon as possible.

South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said the travel restrictions “seems to have been rushed,” in a statement where he expressed concern over the impact on tourism and business.

Israel and Singapore joined the U.K. early on Friday and added Mozambique to their travel restriction lists.

New case rate growth is much faster than Delta, which indicates the potential for a very high R0, or “r-naught,” which is the measure of how transmissible a communicable disease is. In little more than two weeks, B.1.1.529 has grown to almost 90% of all detected cases in South Africa.

According to Johns Hopkins University, only 24.11% of South Africans are fully vaccinated which would aid a new variant to spread unchecked. Health officials in South Africa and with the WHO are concerned that the new variant is circulating more widely than current data suggests.

The B.1.1.529 has more than 50 mutations, which is significantly higher than any other viable variant previously seen. More than 30 of those alternations are changes to the spike protein, which is the mechanism that enables the SARS-CoV-2 virus to identify hosts cell and is the primary target of the body’s immune response.

B.1.1.529 has more than twice the number of mutations as the Delta variant

In a report published by the Journal Nature, Penny Moore, a virologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, indicated that computer models suggest not only does B.1.1.529 have mutations that are already known to aid in evading an immune response from B cells but could fool the body’s T cells.

B cells do the yeoman’s work of fighting virus infections, but have a shorter memory and can be tricked by a smaller set of mutations. T cells are the second line of immune defense with better memory and capabilities to spot mutations. When T cells identify a threat that was initially missed, they summon B cells to aid in the response. This is how disease acquired and vaccine immune response works. If the new variant is capable of evading T cells then the benefits of vaccine immunity would be reduced and disease acquired immunity could be rendered ineffective.

Disease acquired and vaccine immunity works the same. Antibodies bind to the spike proteins preventing the virus from entering cells so it can replicate. If the antibodies can’t bind to spike mutations and the mutations still enable the SARS-CoV-2 virus to identify host cells, the virus can spread inside the body unchecked causing a Covid-19 infection.

Another challenge is if these findings are accurate – the new variant may be capable of outmaneuvering monoclonal antibodies – blunting a critical early treatment.

One mutation is helping scientists track the spread of the new variant. A specific mutation to the spike protein enables researchers to identify the variant through a standard PCR test instead of waiting for genomic sequencing.

Currently, there are more questions than answers. Researchers know the new variant is spreading rapidly in South Africa and causing a new surge. What is not known is if the rapid spread is being driven by a mostly unvaccinated population or because it is more transmissible. It also is not known if the new variant causes equal, more severe, or mild illness. There is no data about the capability the new antivirals Molnupiravir and Paxlovid could have in fighting B.1.1.529.

It is important to note that Beta, Gamma, and Mu were previous variants found to have high resistance to vaccine and disease acquired immunity but weren’t very transmissible. All three variants faded out because Delta was more contagious. In the simplest terms, Delta outbred the other variants. A key requirement for a new variant to spread rapidly would be the capability to outrun Delta.

Most important of all, there is no concrete scientific evidence that B1.1.529 is evading viral vector or mRNA-based vaccines. Previous variants have taken months to identify while this one was found, sequenced, and placed under investigation in a matter of days.

No cases have been detected in North America or any United States territories.

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Exclusive: California and Colorado break with the Western States Pact over COVID boosters

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[OLYMPIA] – (MTN) California governor Gavin Newsom and Colorado governor Jared Polis issued directives last week instructing healthcare providers to allow booster shots to anyone 18 and older, breaking from federal guidelines and forging a different path from the Western States Pact.

In April 2020, California, Oregon, and Washington entered into an agreement that would align the COVID response between the three states. Two weeks later Nevada and Colorado joined the pact. A similar agreement was reached on the East Coast, including many New England and Mid-Atlantic states. The cooperative agreements were created to share research and education telecommunications networks and services to align the regional response.

The states have largely been in agreement for the last 19 months so the recent fracture on booster protocols is a new development. After Colorado announced their directive on Tuesday, Charlie Boisner, the COVID-19 Public Information Officer for the Washington State Department of Health, told Malcontent News in an e-mail, “DOH is following guidance from the FDA, CDC and Western States as to whom is eligible to receive a booster shot. Additional populations may be recommended to receive a booster as more data becomes available. Washington has no plans of implementing measures outside of current authorizations.”

In a follow-up after California announced they were also breaking from FDA and CDC guidance and issuing a directive for “boosters for all,” Boisner responded, “Washington has no plans of implementing measures outside of current authorizations.”

Several Western Washington hospitals are dealing with a significant number of breakthrough cases among staff that were vaccinated in January and February.

On Monday morning New Mexico, also dealing with a late fifth wave surge, and New York City issued directives to make Covid-19 booster shots eligible for anyone 18 and over who wants one.

Colorado is facing a late fifth wave, with hospitals operating at crisis standards of care and projections indicating the state will run out of hospital resources by Christmas. Cases are also up in California with the surges in both states largely driven by the unvaccinated. Within the data, there is growing evidence that vaccines and natural immunity are waning. Among the unvaccinated reinfections are increasing dramatically and among the vaccinated, breakthrough cases among those vaccinated more than six months ago are creeping upward.

Last week Dr. Anthony Fauci urged anyone eligible to receive a booster to get one as soon as possible.

Germany may serve as a warning for the United States and the impact from a confusing rollout of booster shots. Ranked 45th for vaccination rates, only 3% of the population has received a COVID booster shot. In the eastern parts of Germany where only 50% of the population is vaccinated, cases are raging again. The German government is planning to deploy 12,000 troops to assist overwhelmed hospitals. Historically, Europe has been a leading indicator of the next surge to hit the Americas.

Earlier this year Israel dealt with a surge of Delta cases when the nation was vaccinated at a similar level to the United States today. The nation implemented a booster program in early July and expanded it twice, making boosters available for everyone 12 and older on September 25. Case rates have returned to a normal level, despite ranking 47th in vaccination rate in the world, and only slightly ahead of the United States.

During a White House briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said there continued to be a need to prioritize those who are currently eligible for a Covid-19 booster but added, “as you likely know, FDA is currently looking at the data for expanding boosters to all populations.”

Two different studies were released in October 2021, providing insight into how long natural and vaccine immunity last. Neither offer lifetime protection and lifetime protection was never promised. A growing list of studies indicates that natural and vaccine-based immunity wanes after five to seven months.

On October 1, a study on the durability of immunity against reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 was published in The Lancet. Researchers predicted that natural immunity began to fade after 142 to 185 days and natural immunity would disappear after 16 months, The study also stated that this would vary widely depending on age, overall health, genetics, and risk factors, and immunity could be as short as three months or as long as five years.

Three days later, the Lancet published a study on vaccine-based immunity titled Effectiveness of mRNA BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine up to 6 months in a large integrated health system in the USA. That study indicated that immunity waned from 30% to 50% after five months depending on the mRNA vaccine administered, age, and Covid-19 variants.

Before the first Covid-19 vaccines became publicly available, researchers and scientists were publicly stating that boosters would be likely and that testing programs would evaluate the effectiveness of future boosters. Those predictions came true.

Many people are eligible for booster shots today including 188 million American adults who are overweight with a BMI of 25 or higher.

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BREAKING: Two brothers arrested for the September 30 firebombing of Black Coffee Northwest

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[SEATTLE] – Two brothers were arraigned on an indictment today in connection with the September 30, 2020, firebombing of a coffee shop on Aurora Avenue in Shoreline, Washington, announced U.S. Attorney Nick Brown.  Taylor Lemay Rice, 23 and Daniel Lemay Rice 21, pleaded “Not Guilty” and were released on personal appearance bonds.  Trial is set before U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones on January 3, 2021.

The two men are charged with unlawful possession of a destructive device – in this case four Molotov cocktails.  The destructive devices darkened the sides of the building, but did not extensively damage the structure.  The men were identified as suspects in the early morning firebombing, after extensive work by law enforcement involving review of surveillance video and cell phone records.  Both men have been interviewed by law enforcement and agreed to turn themselves in.

January 14, 2021 coverage of black coffee northwest – security video of September 30 firebombing released

Information in the public record indicates the coffee shop shares the building with Bethany Community Church.  The coffee shop was closed and was scheduled to reopen under new operators.  The signs for the old ownership remained on the building.  Speaking in court at the detention hearing, prosecutors indicated the firebombing may have been motivated by a dispute over one of the brother’s cars being towed from the area around the coffee stand a few months earlier. 

Unlawful possession of a destructive device is punishable by up to ten years in prison.