Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Keeping Up With Omicron Will Be Tough On Labs, Hospitals
The Boston Globe: Omicron Is Spreading Faster Than Labs’ Ability To Track It
New evidence suggests that the Omicron variant may be charging across New England and the rest of the country at a breakneck pace, threatening to push legions of additional patients into hospitals already overwhelmed with patients sick from the Delta variant, the flu, and other illnesses. Boston on Wednesday reported three new cases in young adults, who had mild symptoms. And researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which does the lion’s share of COVID testing in the state, told the Globe they have reported about 15 Omicron cases to Massachusetts and federal public health agencies. But the Baker administration has so far reported only a single Omicron infection in the state, and declined to answer questions from the Globe about cases linked to the new variant. (Freyer and Andersen, 12/15)
AP: US Faces A Double Coronavirus Surge As Omicron Advances
The new omicron coronavirus mutant speeding around the world may bring another wave of chaos, threatening to further stretch hospital workers already struggling with a surge of delta cases and upend holiday plans for the second year in a row. The White House on Wednesday insisted there was no need for a lockdown because vaccines are widely available and appear to offer protection against the worst consequences of the virus. But even if omicron proves milder on the whole than delta, it may disarm some of the lifesaving tools available and put immune-compromised and elderly people at particular risk as it begins a rapid assault on the United States. (Ungar and Johnson, 12/16)
Fox News: CDC Chief Says Omicron Cases Expected To Grow, White House Remains 'Confident' Schools Will Stay Open
Speaking at a White House COVID-19 Task Force Briefing on Wednesday, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that she expected reports of omicron cases in the U.S. to increase in coming days. The "variant of concern" has been detected in at least 36 states and agency data based on national genomic sequencing analysis showed the omicron variant is estimated to represent around 3% of coronavirus cases in the U.S., including higher estimates in New York and New Jersey. (Musto, 12/15)
But the White House says there won't be any lockdowns —
Axios: Biden COVID Official: "No Need To Lock Down," Even As Cases Surge
White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday that there will be "no need" to shut down the U.S. economy "in any way," adding that the country has the tools necessary to fight the Omicron variant. There is an increase of coronavirus cases, driven by the Delta variant, across the country, and CDC director Rochelle Walensky has said that the number of Omicron cases is "likely to rise." (Gonzalez, 12/15)
In other news about the spread of omicron —
The Atlantic: What To Do When You Get An Omicron Breakthrough Infection
If only the official guidance were this straightforward. Rebecca Wurtz, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota, told me that people are perplexed “partly because, I think, the guidance is confusing.” The CDC’s guidelines are limited: Isolate if you’ve either tested positive in the past 10 days or are experiencing symptoms, and end your isolation after 10 days only if you’ve gone 24 hours with no fever (without the use of Tylenol or other anti-fever drugs) and your other symptoms are improving—not counting the loss of taste and smell, which could take a couple of weeks to return. “They’re unclear as they’re stated, and they’re a little too complicated in any case,” Wurtz said. (When I reached out to the CDC for comment on its guidance on breakthroughs, a spokesperson pointed me back to the recommendations on the agency’s website.) (Tayag, 12/15)
Fox News: Omicron Variant May Hasten Pace For COVID-19 To Become Endemic, ‘Ideal Situation For A Virus’
Some health officials have expressed reserved optimism that the coronavirus omicron strain could be a significant step in the pandemic's transition to becoming endemic, with one expert calling initial studies "the ideal situation for a virus." Dr. Adam Koppel, the managing director of Bain Capital Life Sciences, told the Massachusetts High Technology panel on Tuesday that if the projections are true and omicron becomes the dominant global strain, it will "enable us to more quickly get to an endemic state as opposed to a pandemic state where we can live more regularly with the virus more similar to the flu than what COVID has looked like," the Boston Herald reported. (DeMarche, 12/16)
CNBC: What Living With Endemic Covid Will Look Like In 2022 And Future
Almost two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, an end might finally be in sight. Experts say that Covid will likely lose its “pandemic” status sometime in 2022, due largely to rising global vaccination rates and developments of antiviral Covid pills that could become more widespread next year. Instead, the virus will likely become “endemic,” eventually fading in severity and folding into the backdrop of regular, everyday life. Various strains of influenza have followed a similar pattern over the past century or more, from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 to the swine flu pandemic in 2009. (Stieg, 12/15)
