Month: December 2021

Millions of rapid at-home Covid tests are flying off pharmacy shelves across the country, giving Americans an instant, if sometimes imperfect, read on whether they are infected with the coronavirus. But the results are rarely reported to public health departments, exacerbating the longstanding challenges of maintaining an accurate count of cases at a time when the number of infections is surging because of the Omicron variant. At the minimum, the widespread availability of at-home tests is wreaking havoc with the accuracy of official positivity rates and case counts. At the other extreme, it is one factor making some public health experts raise a question that once would have been unthinkable: Do counts of coronavirus cases serve a useful purpose, and if not, should they be continued? “O...

NEW YORK, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Within weeks, the Omicron variant has fueled thousands of new COVID-19 hospitalizations among U.S. children, raising new concerns about how the many unvaccinated Americans under the age of 18 will fare in the new surge. The seven-day-average number of daily hospitalizations for children between Dec. 21 and Dec. 27 is up more than 58% nationwide in the past week to 334, compared to around 19% for all age groups, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. Fewer than 25% of the 74 million Americans under 18 are vaccinated, according to the CDC. Omicron cases are expected to surge even faster across the United States as schools reopen next week after the winter holiday, experts cautioned. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters....

On All In With Chris Hayes Wednesday, the MSNBC host explained why he believes the COVID-19 Omicron variant's contagiousness is changing the pandemic normal. As the U.S. set a new record high for coronavirus infections this week, Chris Hayes cited Martin Hibberd, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who estimated that the R-naught of Omicron could be as high as 10, which means every person infected with Omicron infects another 10 people. In simpler terms, Omicron is way more contagious and transmissible than the original strain with an R-naught of 2.5 and the Delta variant with 7. Hayes stated, "To stop something that infectious, something with an R-naught of 10, you would need, essentially, 100% vaccination. It's like stamping o...