Health

(NEW YORK) — As the highly transmissible omicron variant of COVID-19 spreads across the country, children are being impacted, too.

Last week, nearly 200,000 children in the U.S. tested positive for COVID-19, up by about 50% since the beginning of December, according to new data from American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

And federal data shows more than 2,100 children are currently hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 — up by approximately 800 pediatric patients compared to just a month ago.

The increasing numbers are colliding with the holidays as well as cold and flu season and the upcoming return to school from the holiday break.

Amid the uncertainty of omicron, here are five tips for parents from two experts, Dr. Allison Messina, chief of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Dr. Sarah Ash Combs, an emergency medicine physician at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C.

1. Take omicron seriously, especially if your child is not yet vaccinated.

Severe illness due to COVID-19, including the omicron variant, remains “uncommon” among children, according to the AAP and CHA. But experts say young people are not immune from the virus, or from severe illness and death.

“I personally have seen many previously healthy children get really taken out by COVID,” said Ash Combs. “I think as a parent, you just want to do anything you can to prevent putting your kid in that situation, and unfortunately, there isn’t a strong predictor of is your kid going to be the unlucky one who gets harder hit by getting this strain.”

With omicron, experts say the rise in case numbers and hospitalizations among children isn’t because the variant attacks children differently, but more likely due to the fact that most children under age 18 are still not vaccinated.

In the U.S., less than a third of eligible children — ages 5 to 17 — have been fully vaccinated.

Messina said she worries that researchers do not know yet if omicron itself causes milder symptoms or if adults who are contracting the variant are experiencing milder systems because they are vaccinated against COVID-19 or have already had the virus.

“What I worry about is children are relatively unvaccinated, if you look at them as a group, and they may have less of a chance of having and recovering from coronavirus in the past,” she said. “It makes me worry a little bit that children by and large don’t have the baseline immunity that adults do.”

Messina continued, “That’s why when we’re treating omicron in children, we want to treat it seriously because we don’t know if it’s less serious or not.”

Both Messina and Ash Combs said the No. 1 thing parents can do to protect their children is to get them vaccinated and boosted if they are eligible and to make sure that all eligible adults who interact with their kids are vaccinated and boosted, too.

2. Go back to masking in public, especially indoors.

While omicron spreads and COVID-19 cases continue to increase, both Messina and Ash Combs said families should go back to mask-wearing when in public, especially in indoor spaces like grocery stores.

“I would tell parents, yes, go back to those previous measures you used to take, like masking,” said Ash Combs. “I would advocate for sending children to school both vaccinated and in masks because any multi-level protection you can get is better.”

Following coronavirus safety guidelines like hand washing and social distancing is also important for families during this surge, according to Ash Combs.

3. When in doubt, assume COVID-19.

Many of the symptoms of omicron — including sore throat, runny nose, fever and cough — closely mimic those of the flu and common cold.

As a result, according to both experts, the only way to truly diagnose your child is to get them tested for COVID-19.

“To be absolutely safe, especially if it’s a household exposure, or you’re just not sure, getting tested is key,” said Ash Combs. “You want to either get that at a facility or try and get your hands on an at home test if you can, and I recognize that’s hard to do … but if you can, as a parent, it’s good to have those on hand.”

If a parent is not sure whether their child has COVID-19 or a cold, for example, Ash Combs said to assume it’s COVID and follow CDC guidelines to isolate.

“You want to act as that could be a positive COVID case,” she said. “You certainly don’t want to go out and about if you or your child is feeling unwell, you don’t know the status of a test and you still have active symptoms.”

4. Slow down on large gatherings with other families.

If your family is gathering with people outside of your household, the best protection is to make sure that everyone your family will be in contact with is vaccinated, according to Messina, who added that families should also think about slowing down their social calendars.

“In a time like this with omicron when we’re seeing so many cases right now and we really probably haven’t hit our peak yet, this is the time to pay more attention to limiting play dates and limiting large gatherings, at least until case numbers start to drop,” she said. “Be a little bit more cautious.”

Whether or not a parent decides to let their child go on a play date or gather with friends can also depend on their age, according to Ash Combs, who noted that children who are older and vaccinated can have more flexibility to be together.

Like so much of what has happened during the pandemic, Ash Combs said that circumstances can change and parents should adjust accordingly.

“Every situation is going to change so reassess day by day, week by week,” she said. “See where you are at.”

5. Keep up good hand hygiene, but don’t overly stress about washing shared toys, door handles.

The early days of the pandemic saw people sanitizing everything that kids especially were in contact with, but experts say now that we know more about the virus, parents do not need to stress to that level.

“We know that COVID doesn’t seem to be super well transmitted by what we call fomites, those inanimate objects that you touch,” said Ash Combs. “I don’t think we need to freak out the way we did originally in quarantine with our groceries and our mail.”

Experts say it’s always a good idea to teach children good hand hygiene, including washing hands frequently for at least 20 seconds.

According to Ash Combs, one age group parents should be concerned about are young toddlers and infants who may put toys in their mouths, which is why she recommends being more cautious about gatherings of kids that young.

“I’d say play dates from multiple households of little kids who just love to share their saliva and their sneezes and coughs, that’s probably not a good idea,” she said. “But really for the bigger kids who are able to use a tissue and keep their hands to themselves, they don’t need to get super worried if they’re sharing a book or another object.”

ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — A real-world study of South African health care workers found that two doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine offer 85% protection against hospitalization from the omicron variant.

Separately, the company announced new data from a laboratory study that shows its vaccine likely also works well as a booster for people who got the Pfizer shots originally.

The lab study specifically tested two types of immune system responses — antibody and T-cell responses — against the omicron variant.

Using the J&J vaccine as a booster raised people’s antibodies and T-cells to levels higher than those seen among people who got a third dose of Pfizer — according to samples taken four weeks after each booster.

The new data adds weight to the argument that mixing and matching vaccine types could be an effective strategy, but the data is limited because it was a laboratory study, not real-world data.

The new findings were described in a press release and submitted to pre-print journals.

“As the Omicron variant has mutated from the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, there is a need to understand how effective currently authorized COVID-19 vaccines remain at protecting against severe disease,” Dr. Dan Barouch, Ph.D., director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at BIDMC, said in a statement. “Our analysis shows that a booster shot of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine generated a robust increase in both neutralizing antibodies and T-cells to Omicron.”

Since its launch, the single-shot J&J vaccine has been dogged by the perception that it is less effective than Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines. And indeed, many experts agree that one dose of J&J isn’t as effective as two shots from the other brands; but when given as two doses, the J&J shot seems to be an effective vaccine.

“While one dose to prevent COVID was always desirable to improve vaccine access and acceptance, we now have irrefutable evidence that two doses provides significantly more protection,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and ABC News contributor. “The second dose triggers the immune system to produce antibodies and memory cells that ultimately yield longer term vaccine effectiveness.”

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that anyone considering getting vaccinated should get the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, if available, over the J&J single-shot vaccine. This isn’t because the single-shot J&J vaccine — which has been associated with a risk of very rare blood clots — isn’t safe and effective, CDC researchers said, but because the Pfizer and Modern two-shot vaccines appear to work even better. Collectively, this means the risk-benefit analysis is more favorable for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the CDC said.

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(NEW YORK) — Amid a record-breaking surge, the U.S. is now averaging more COVID-19 cases per day than at any other point in the pandemic, according to new data updated on Wednesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Federal data shows the nation is now reporting an average of more than 277,000 new cases a day, shattering the previous record of 250,000 cases per day from last January.
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“These numbers are absolutely staggering, especially considering we are two years into the pandemic,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.

The record average comes after the U.S. reported two consecutive days of more than 430,000 new cases, following soaring demand for tests and a backlog of holiday reporting data.

Over the last month, the U.S. daily case average has tripled, and the nation has reported more than 1.9 million new cases in the last week alone — an average of about three Americans testing positive for COVID-19 every second.

“The combination of the most transmissible variant to date alongside holiday travel and gatherings is a recipe for record-breaking case counts,” Brownstein said, referring to the omicron variant. “These numbers are likely to be a significant undercount given, the shortages in testing and the absence of home test results in official counts.”

Although the significantly high case total is due, in large part, to the country’s latest surge, a number of factors, including data backlogs from the holiday weekend, and a surge in testing demand, may artificially increase the totals.

In addition, more than 30 states are not reporting consistently over the holiday stretch, which can also significantly skew data.

However, on Tuesday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told NPR in an interview that given the shortage in COVID-19 tests right now, ultimately, the official number of positive cases is likely undercounted.

The nation’s latest surge is widespread, with every state in the country currently experiencing high community transmission. In June, no states were reporting high community transmission.

Hospitalizations are also on the rise, according to federal data, albeit about two-thirds the levels experienced last winter.

Across the country, more than 84,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 — up by 40,000 patients in the last seven weeks. On average, more than 9,400 Americans are being admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 every day, up by nearly 20% in the last week.

With increased demand in testing and a renewed strain on the hospital system, the federal government has deployed surge teams to help to support the national COVID-19 response, from vaccinations, to testing, to clinical care.

More than 13,000 National Guard members have been activated in 48 states to support the nation’s COVID-19 response, including vaccinations, testing and clinical care.

On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC News’ Whit Johnson that it is difficult to know exactly when the country’s latest surge will peak, given the fact that so many Americans remain unvaccinated.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better — that’s for sure. We don’t expect things are going to turn around in a few days to a week. It likely will take much longer than that, but that’s unpredictable,” Fauci said.

At this time, 89 million Americans remain completely unvaccinated, and less than a third of fully vaccinated people have been boosted.

 

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(STATESVILLE, N.C.) — A North Carolina mom is celebrating after losing over 200 pounds, half of her original weight.

Tiesha Robinson, of Statesville, North Carolina, said she lost the weight even after struggling with it for her entire life.

“I can’t think back of when I haven’t had to lose weight or when I wasn’t trying to lose weight,” Robinson, 35, told Good Morning America. “Obesity runs in my family and then also I made a lot of wrong food choices.”

The push to lose weight came on strong for Robinson after she experienced two family tragedies, the death of her beloved aunt in 2016 and then the death of her son’s father in 2018.

“I didn’t want my son to have to go through that pain again if I could prevent it,” she said. “So that was kind of my motivation to save myself so that I could be here for my son.”

Speaking of her aunt’s death in 2016, Robinson said: “My aunt was kind of like everyone’s hero, like the backbone, so to watch her struggle to live was a turning point. It really made me realize that even though I’m strong and I try to be here for everyone, I have to show up for myself because if I’m not here, then I can’t help anyone.”

In 2017, one year after her aunt’s death, Robinson said she hit her highest weight of 416 pounds.

In 2019, after her son’s father died, Robinson began tracking her food using WW, formerly known as Weight Watchers.

“I didn’t know that I would be as successful as I am, but I knew I had to try,” she said of WW. “I knew I couldn’t give up because if I gave up on me, it would be like I’m giving up on my son, and that wasn’t an option, so I just had to throw away all the excuses and all the distractions.”

Robinson said WW’s method of tracking food showed her how to balance what she was eating and “now just indulge in everything that I wanted in one day.”

“I was able to balance healthy choices and just learn a new healthy lifestyle,” she said. “It saved my life by just learning how to eat healthy, be healthy, stay active.”

In the past two years, Robinson said she has lost 208 pounds and changed her life. Her weight loss transformation is featured in People magazine’s 2021 “Half Their Size” issue, available on newsstands now.

She said she is now more “mindful” and in control of her diet, and has taken up hobbies like Zumba, walking and writing poetry that she turns to instead of food.

Robinson said she and her son, now 15, joined a gym together just before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but she has since learned to love working out at home, which she said helps her eliminate any excuses.

“I learned to exercise at home and that way I don’t have no excuse,” she said, noting she takes Zumba classes on YouTube or plays a dance game on an Xbox. “If it’s too late, I’m in my house so I can exercise. If it’s early and I have energy, I have the opportunity to exercise.”

Through her weight-loss journey, Robinson said she has learned to “set goals, not limits,” which is the advice she gives to others.

“I will say just refuse to give up on yourself,” she said. “Refuse to give up, learn to adapt and if you mess up, don’t make that an excuse to give up.”

Robinson said she has also learned the importance of celebrating her own accomplishments on her weight-loss journey, instead of waiting for other people’s approval.

Her most important advice, she said, is to just start out on the journey, saying, “In order to finish, you have to start, so just get started and keep going.”

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(NEW YORK) — With coronavirus cases in the U.S. approaching near-peak levels recorded last winter, pediatric coronavirus infection and hospitalization levels are now surging to their highest point in months.

Last week, nearly 200,000 American children tested positive for COVID-19, up by about 50% since the beginning of December, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. Hospitalizations among children have been rapidly following suit.

Across the country, more than 2,100 children are currently hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 — up by approximately 800 pediatric patients, compared to just a month ago, according to federal data.

As a growing number of COVID-19 positive children are admitted into the hospital in need of care, health care workers and experts are sounding the alarm about the concerning trend.

“Our most precious commodity in this United States of America is our children,” Dr. Kenneth Remy, associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics critical care with UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, told ABC News. “And right now, we’re on fire.”

Daily pediatric COVID-19 related hospital admissions have more than doubled in the last month, increasing by 110%. Now, an average of more than 300 children are being admitted to the hospital each day.

According to the health experts, a confluence of factors have led to the surge. The initial catalyst was the delta variant, subsequently followed by the recently discovered omicron variant. Further, vaccination rates, particularly among the pediatric population, continue to lag, leaving many children vulnerable to severe illness.

To date, less than a third of eligible children — ages 5 to 17 — have been fully vaccinated.

6 states report more than 100 children hospitalized with COVID-19

At the state level, more children are hospitalized with COVID-19 in New York than in any other state in the country, particularly in New York City, where children appear to be bearing the brunt of the state’s latest surge in pediatric cases.

In less than three weeks, New York City has seen a five-fold increase since the week of Dec. 5, Mary Bassett, the state health commissioner, reported during an update with Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday.

“There’s just no reason. We have the supply. We have the capacity. We have the staff in place for every child to be vaccinated, who is eligible,” Hochul said, urging parents to use the winter break as a time to vaccinate their children.

Six states – Georgia, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas – currently have more than 100 children hospitalized with COVID-19.

In Pennsylvania, the PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia warned last week that it has seen a “sharp increase in test positivity” among children it has tested in the area.

“These data support the fact that transmission is now increasing disproportionately among children compared to adults,” the group wrote. “We are seeing cases of moderate to severe disease among hospitalized children, including otherwise healthy children, particularly those who have not been vaccinated.”

In Ohio, where more than 200 children are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, Dr. Adam Mezoff, chief medical officer at Dayton Children’s Hospital, told ABC News that he has been concerned to see the recent increase in infected children.

“It seems to be hitting younger age groups, at this time,” Mezoff said, adding that he expects to see more hospitalizations to follow, given the infectivity of omicron. “How sick they become is hard to estimate right now, because we don’t have enough information.”

Preliminary data from South Africa estimates that children had a 20% higher risk of hospitalization in the country’s omicron-driven fourth wave, given the fact that so many children were still unvaccinated, and therefore, unprotected.

“We have to keep an eye on that,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House, told ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday. “That’s one of the reasons why we say now that we have the capability and the authority to vaccinate children 5 to 11 that we’re encouraging parents, that if you have a child from 5 to 11, please get that child vaccinated to prevent them from getting anything that even resembles a serious illness.”

Although severe illness due to COVID-19 remains “uncommon” among children, according to the AAP and CHA, experts stress that young people are not immune from the virus, or from severe illness and death.

According to the CDC, children are as likely to be infected with COVID-19 as adults and the virus is now one of the top 10 causes of death for children ages 5 through 11 years.

In Northeast Ohio, Remy said that what is happening in his hospital “is a reflection” of what is happening in the rest of the country for children, further rebutting the misconception that children are unaffected by COVID-19.

“What we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks, sadly, is not even just a slow increase, but a direct shoot upward [trend] of children becoming ill from this disease, and coming into the ICU,” Remy said. “Sadly, we’ve seen children at our institution and others, lose their lives. So we’re in a different situation than we were many months ago.”

Mezoff said he worries that there will be a lot of sick children, and he is also deeply concerned that there will not be enough staff to take care of them.

“The combination of large numbers of children that are sick with challenging staffing numbers does raise a lot of concern for us,” Mezoff said.

Remy added that he and his colleagues fear that more people, including children, will be coming into the hospital in the next few weeks into the intensive care units.

“We’re not just arcing upward. We are going straight upward,” Remy said. “And suddenly over the next couple of weeks, this is going to get worse, and so sadly, too many people are going to lose their lives.”

‘This is a no brainer’

As the virus continues to spread, experts stress that vaccination remains the best tool to not only protect children from getting sick, but also to change the trajectory of the pandemic.

“If I knew that there was a fire outside my house, I would make sure that I had extinguishers. I would make sure that I had a way out and an escape plan for my children,” said Remy, using, once more, his blaze metaphor to explain the current crisis of the unfolding pandemic. “Right now … being on fire, we have something that could actually quench much of those flames.”

Mezoff noted that as of yet, Dayton’s Children’s Hospital has yet to care for a COVID-19 positive child who has been vaccinated.

Getting boosted when eligible and wearing masks also remain key to protect those who are still too young to be vaccinated, Remy said.

“We know that these things will quell those flames and protect our children. So to me, this is a no brainer,” Remy said. “We only have one goal we’ve only had one goal and that’s to improve the lives of children. That means keeping them alive.”

 

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(NEW YORK) — A new study suggests immunocompromised Americans people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 are more likely to have breakthrough infections than people without weakened immune systems, but found full vaccination still adds more protection than being partially vaccinated.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Washington found people with so-called immune dysfunction, including immunocompromised people like those with HIV or on immunosuppressant medications, had rates of breakthrough cases up to twice as high as those with normally-functioning immune systems.

“People with immune dysfunction conditions have a higher risk for COVID-19 breakthrough infection than those without such a condition, suggesting continued use of nonpharmaceutical interventions (mask-wearing, social distancing, avoid crowd gathering and travel, etc.) and alternative vaccine strategies (additional doses or immunogenicity testing) should be recommended even after full vaccination.” Dr. Jing Sun, corresponding author of the study and an assistant scientist in the department of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told ABC News.

For the study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine Tuesday, the team looked at data from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative, which is a central database of COVID-19 data from academic medical centers across the country.

More than 664,000 people were included in the study between December 2020 and September 2021.

Patients were broken into two groups: with and without immune dysfunction. Those with compromised immune systems were broken down even further into patients with diagnoses such as HIV, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis as well as people who had undergone organ transplants and bone marrow transplants.

A breakthrough infection was defined as someone who contracted COVID on or after the 14th day following vaccination.

Compared with only being partially vaccinated against COVID-19, being fully vaccinated was linked to a 28% reduced risk of breakthrough infection, regardless of immune system status.

However, those with weakened immune systems were at higher risk for breakthrough infection.

Throughout the study period, patients without immune dysfunction had a breakthrough infection rate of 7.1 per 1,000 person-months.

By comparison, those who had undergone bone marrow transplants had a breakthrough case rate of 8.6 per 1,000 person-months and multiple sclerosis patients had a rate of 8.9 per 1,000 person-months.

HIV patients had a rate of 9.1 per 1,000 person-months and rheumatoid arthritis patients had a rate of 9.3 per 1,000 person-months.

The highest breakthrough case rate was seen among organ transplant patients at 15.7 per 1,000 person-months — twice as high as those who are not immunocompromised.

Researchers believe this is because transplant patients must be on immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives so their bodies don’t reject their new organs. However, this also weakens their immune systems and makes them more susceptible to infection such as COVID-19.

The team said the findings provide further evidence that immunocompromised people may be at higher risk for breakthrough infection and that these Americans — which make up an estimated 3% of the population — should continue to wear masks even after being vaccinated and also should receive a third dose.

The findings have three caveats, with the first being that the study was conducted during the delta wave, before the omicron variant — which appears to be more transmissible — became dominant in the U.S.

Secondly, researchers only looked at the risk of breakthrough infection after a first and second dose of the vaccine and did not study the risk after a booster shot.

Finally, they only looked at certain immunocompromising conditions but not all, like cancers.

Booster shots were approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for immunocompromised people in August and have been shown to boost antibody levels in immunocompromised people after being fully vaccinated.

 

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(NEW YORK) — A new trend on TikTok could lead some teens to believe they have a serious mental disorder, according to some experts.

The app, which has become a community for users to connect and for teens to show off dance moves and share other fun videos, has recently had some trending videos of young people claiming to have a borderline personality, bipolar or dissociative identity disorder, which is spreading like wildfire on the platform.

Posts with the hashtags, “dissociative identity disorder” and “borderline personality disorder” have been viewed hundreds of millions of times. And some of those videos list possible signs to look out for and encourage viewers to self-evaluate.

Samantha Fridley, 18, said these videos influenced her to believe that she was suffering from a mental disorder.

“I remember seeing these videos on my ‘For You’ page of people saying, like, ‘These are signs that you have this disorder,’ bipolar or borderline and all these other weird disorders that I’ve never even heard of before,” Fridley told GMA. “My mind would be like, ‘Maybe I don’t have just depression and anxiety, maybe I have something else.'”

“After working with a therapist for a long time, I started realizing that I don’t have borderline personality, I don’t have disassociated identity, I don’t have bipolar. I just have what I’ve always had, which is depression and anxiety,” she added.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, borderline personality disorder is extremely rare — only 1.4% of the U.S. adult population is estimated to have this condition and it is rarely diagnosed in adolescents.

Mental health professionals say these videos may pose an alarming risk to a potentially vulnerable population.

“If you spend 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes viewing people talk about these disorders over and over again, that can make it seem like these conditions are a lot more prevalent than they actually are in the world,” said psychologist Ethan Kross, the author of Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It.

To help teens on TikTok, experts are urging parents to maintain an open line of communication with their kids about mental health.

“Take the time to empathetically hear them out,” Kross said. “How intense are these symptoms? How long are they lasting? Does it seem like they’re interfering with your child’s ability to live the life that they want to live? Again, if the answer to those questions is yes, that’s a cue to then take the next steps to get a formal diagnosis.”

In a statement to ABC News, TikTok said, “We care deeply about the well-being of our community, which is why we continue to invest in digital literacy education aimed at helping people evaluate and understand content they engage with online. We strongly encourage individuals to seek professional medical advice if they are in need of support.”

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(NEW YORK) — Amidst growing pressure as COVID-19 cases surge across the country, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has now announced that it will shorten the recommended isolation time for asymptomatic people who test positive for COVID-19, and update guidance for people who have been exposed to the virus.

“The Omicron variant is spreading quickly and has the potential to impact all facets of our society. CDC’s updated recommendations for isolation and quarantine balance what we know about the spread of the virus and the protection provided by vaccination and booster doses,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement on Monday.

The change in guidance is based on data which shows that “the majority of COVID-19 transmission occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after,” according to the CDC.

Guidance for asymptomatic individuals differs greatly depending on one’s vaccination status.

Here’s what you need to know:

Anyone COVID-19 positive should quarantine for at least five days

Anyone, regardless of vaccination status, who tests positive for COVID-19 and is asymptomatic, should isolate themselves for at least five days, the CDC said.

If you continue to have no symptoms after five days, the CDC states that you may leave isolation if you “continue to mask for five days to minimize the risk of infecting others.”

However, if symptoms, such as a fever, are present, you should continue to stay home until your fever, or the other symptoms, resolve. If your symptoms resolve after five days, and you are without fever for 24 hours, the CDC said you are free to leave your house with a mask on.

According to the CDC, an isolation period of five days, followed by wearing a well-fitting mask around others, will minimize the risk of spreading the virus to others.

What to do if you are exposed to COVID-19, and unvaccinated or not boosted

If you are exposed and unvaccinated, or not fully vaccinated, the CDC now recommends that you quarantine for five days, followed by “strict mask use” for five days after your quarantine. This guidance also applies to people who are more than six months out from their second mRNA dose of the vaccine — or more than two months out from their Johnson & Johnson Vaccine — but not yet been boosted.

However, if a five-day quarantine is not feasible, the CDC said it is “imperative” that an exposed person wear a well-fitting mask at all times and when around others, for 10 days after exposure.

Fully vaccinated, but still not eligible for a booster

If you were fully vaccinated with either the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine within the last six months, or you completed the primary series of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine within the last two months, the CDC said you do not need to be quarantined after an exposure; however, you should still wear a mask for 10 days, following the exposure.

No need to quarantine if you are boosted and asymptomatic

If you have received your booster shot, you do not need to quarantine after an exposure, but should wear a mask for 10 days following the exposure.

If symptoms do occur, the CDC stressed that you should immediately quarantine, until a negative test confirms that the symptoms are not due to COVID-19.

All individuals who have been exposed are recommended to get a COVID-19 test around five days after exposure.

The CDC pointed people to preliminary data from South Africa and the United Kingdom, which demonstrates that vaccine effectiveness against infection for two doses of an mRNA vaccine is approximately 35%, while a COVID-19 vaccine booster dose restored vaccine effectiveness against infection to 75%.

“These updates ensure people can safely continue their daily lives. Prevention is our best option: Get vaccinated, get boosted, wear a mask in public indoor settings in areas of substantial and high community transmission and take a test before you gather,” Walensky said.

 

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(WASHINGTON) — As the “extraordinarily contagious” omicron variant surges across the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that COVID-19 cases will likely continue to climb.

“Every day it goes up and up. The last weekly average was about 150,000 and it likely will go much higher,” Fauci told ABC This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

While Fauci said studies show omicron is less severe in terms of hospitalizations, he stressed, “we don’t want to get complacent” because “when you have such a high volume of new infections, it might override a real diminution in severity.”

“If you have many, many, many more people with a less level of severity, that might kind of neutralize the positive effect of having less severity when you have so many more people,” he explained. “And we’re particularly worried about those who are in that unvaccinated class … those are the most vulnerable ones when you have a virus that is extraordinarily effective in getting to people.”

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced a plan to distribute 500 million free at-home rapid tests to Americans beginning in January. The tests will be delivered by mail to Americans who request them. A website to request the tests will launch in January, according to the administration.

But the omicron surge created a massive rush for tests as Americans prepared to see relatives for the holidays, and they instead faced empty pharmacy shelves and massive test lines.

On Wednesday, ABC News’ World News Tonight anchor David Muir, asked Biden if that was a failure.

“I don’t think it’s a failure,” Biden replied in the exclusive interview. “I think it’s — you could argue that we should have known a year ago, six months ago, two months ago, a month ago.”

“I wish I had thought about ordering” 500 million at-home tests “two months ago,” he told Muir.

Biden added “nothing’s been good enough” when it comes to the availability of at-home tests.

When Karl asked about the comments, Fauci admitted to This Week he is frustrated with at-home test availability and said “we’ve obviously got to do better.”

“The beginning of the year, there were essentially no rapid point of care home tests available. Now, there are over nine of them and more coming,” Fauci said. “The production of them has been rapidly upscaled, and yet because of the demand that we have, which in some respects, Jon, is good, that we have a high demand because we should be using testing much more extensively than we have.”

“But the situation where you have such a high demand, a conflation of events, omicron stirring people to get appropriately concerned and wanting to get tested as well as the fact of the run on tests during the holiday season — we’ve obviously got to do better,” he continued. “I think things will improve greatly as we get into January. But that doesn’t help us today and tomorrow.”

Karl also asked about the FDA last week granting emergency authorization to both Pfizer and Merck’s antiviral pills to treat COVID-19.

“Is this really the breakthrough that you’ve been waiting for?” Karl questioned.

“That’s part of the comprehensive approach to this outbreak. Vaccines and boosters, masks and now very importantly, a highly effective therapy is really going to make a major, major difference,” Fauci replied. “We’ve just got to make sure that there’s the production of enough of that product that we can get it widely used for those who need it as quickly as possible.”

“I assume that will be a top priority going forward, right? I mean, possibly including Defense [Production] Act … and the like?” Karl pressed.

“Absolutely, Jon, absolutely,” Fauci said. “We’ve got to get that product into the mouths of those who need it.”

Only 61.7% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to CDC data. Many Americans remain against COVID-19 vaccines over one year into their use.

The omicron surge doesn’t appear to sway unvaccinated Americans. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll this week, just 12% percent of unvaccinated Americans polled said the variant makes them more likely to get a vaccine.

Former President Donald Trump showed his support for vaccinations, who has spread conspiracy theories about vaccines and didn’t get vaccinated publicly, showed his support for COVID-19 vaccines in a Wednesday interview with The Daily Wire’s Candace Owens, saying, “The results of the vaccine are very good. … People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”

Karl asked Fauci whether Trump’s supporters might listen to that message.

“I think that his continuing to say that people should get vaccinated and articulating that to them, in my mind is a good thing. I hope he keeps it up,” Fauci responded.

Fauci also said he was surprised when Trump was booed by some of his supporters in Texas last weekend after the former president revealed he’d gotten his booster shot.

“I was stunned by that,” Fauci said. “I mean, given the fact of how popular he is with that group, that they would boo him, which tells me how recalcitrant they are about being told what they should do.”

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(NEW YORK) — For weeks now, as public health experts have warned about the COVID-19 omicron variant and its incredible ability to infect people, they’ve followed the bad news with good: booster shots available to every adult in the U.S. drive protection against omicron back up.

One of a few glimmers of scientific optimism in the omicron era is that the variant can be held at bay or kept to a very mild infection when people get a boost. And yet, just four in 10 eligible Americans have gotten a booster shot.

Among the most vulnerable Americans — those over 65 years old — it’s slightly higher, but still low: Just over 60% have gotten their booster shots, according to White House data presented last week.

Despite the demand for other pandemic tools, like at-home rapid tests or new treatment pills from Pfizer and Merck, many experts point to booster shots as the best method to actually prevent sickness — and they’ve been there, widely available, for weeks.

“The booster is exponential. It’s not just a little bit different. It’s a lot different,” said Janet Hamilton, an epidemiologist and the executive director at Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, a group that works closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I don’t know that we have really communicated that effectively enough for people to say, ‘I really need to get this, this is a big deal,'” she said.

Why are the rates so low?

Public health directives can take a long time to circulate and have historically reached marginalized populations even slower.

But when it comes to boosters, that message was particularly muddled.

“The recommendation for the booster has come out in bits and pieces, and the most recent recommendation for everyone to get a booster is pretty new still,” Hamilton said.

The confusion began after President Joe Biden and his administration called for boosters for everyone eight months after their second dose. But experts at the CDC and Food and Drug Administration didn’t jump onboard, instead spending the summer months debating if there was a need for boosters for the whole population or only the most vulnerable.

By the time boosters were recommended in November — a recommendation that applied to all adults who’d been fully vaccinated for six months — the data was strongly backed by most in public health.

But, as Hamilton noted, “it takes time for people to hear the information.”

Unfortunately, the country didn’t have the luxury of time. It took just a few weeks for omicron to gather steam in the U.S. By Dec. 18, it was nearly 75% of all cases in the U.S., and nearing 90% along the East Coast and Midwest, the CDC found.

And because the variant evades vaccine immunity — whittling down protection from the first shot to somewhere between 30-40%, according to a study out of the U.K. — the booster shot, which brings protection up to nearly 70-80%, became an urgent public health missive.

Among nursing home residents

In nursing home patients, the CDC released data last week that showed the highest COVID cases were among the unvaccinated, but cases were also increasing among fully vaccinated patients without a booster.

Meanwhile, fully vaccinated and boosted nursing home patients had a 10 times lower rate of getting COVID, the CDC found.

“We’re sitting on an enormous vulnerability right now,” said Dr. Ali Khan, a primary care physician and executive medical director at Oak Street Health, a practice in Chicago.

MORE: Fauci says omicron can evade vaccine protection, but boosters help
Khan, who treats patients at nursing homes, said he thinks omicron has shed new light on booster urgency — but only in certain areas.

“I think it’s leading to increases in booster enthusiasm around relatively privileged populations,” he said.

“But we have a lot of work to do in people receiving those messages like nursing home residents, like minority communities that may have had more complex reactions to vaccines in the first place, to really say, ‘Hey, this is super crucial’,” he said.

Disparities in messaging

Dr. Jay Bhatt, an internist also practicing in Chicago, said among his patients on the city’s Southside, largely low-income people of color, the reasons about half have rejected a booster shot is because of “changing messages.”

Patients say they “lost trust in government,” and the different timelines on when to get a booster led to feelings that it was optional.

“They feel like they can wait longer before they get it,” Bhatt said.

But the doctors noted that the same investments the country made in the initial vaccine rollout can be made on boosters, with positive results.

“I’d say most of my patients, if they’ve already been vaccinated and we can reach them, they’re often very willing to do what’s right to protect themselves and get boosted,” said Dr. Atul Nakhasi, a physician and policy advisor with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Only a handful of vaccinated patients are hesitant to get a booster, Nakhasi said, and through discussions, he’s able to walk through their concerns — particularly if they’re logistical, like taking off work.

If that effort is not made, Nakhasi warned that disparities that have already manifested will only continue to grow, erasing much of the progress that has been made to close the racial gaps on vaccine uptake.

Outreach is needed

In Los Angeles County, Black and Hispanic people account for 60% of the population, but only 30% of people who have gotten a booster — a much smaller proportion.

“Disparities are again appearing within the data on who is getting the boosters,” Nakhasi said.

And the omicron variant has made it clear that the outreach, especially among communities that already have a shortage of health care, will need to be a long-lasting effort, not a one-and-done.

“I think that goes to the core. We want that closure but unfortunately COVID is not giving it to us,” he said. “So we need to make sure we build long lasting bonds to our communities, because it’s become evident that there’s a need for more than just the initial series.”

Khan, the physician in Chicago, also said outreach has been effective. While more patients have reached out to doctors asking for a booster in light of surging omicron cases, far and away it’s the doctors who are initiating the conversation.

“If we’re prompting them, they’re saying yeah I’ll take it. But only now is that message starting to turn,” Khan said.

“I’m just hoping we’re not too late,” he added.

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