Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Spread Of Covid Likely Linked To Temperature, Humidity
The Washington Post: Covid May Have Seasons For Different Temperature Zones, Study Suggests
Covid-19 transmission may have seasonal spikes tied to temperature and humidity, increasing at different times of the year for different locations, a new study in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene suggests. Colder regions, such as the U.S. Northeast, may experience more cases during winter, while warmer regions, such as the southern United States, may see higher transmissions in the summer. More-temperate zones could experience two seasonal peaks. (Patel, 1/28)
In other covid news —
NBC News: Covid Predictions? These Experts Are Done With Them
Scientists say they can outline scenarios for how the virus could evolve, but variants remain Covid’s unknowable wild card. In two years, they have rewritten the script so radically, many researchers are cautious to venture educated guesses of how Covid-19 will play out. “There are various scenarios and they vary between rosy and gloomy,” said John Moore, a virologist and professor at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. He emphasized, colorfully, that anyone saying they knew for sure what would happen next was full of it. (Bush, 1/30)
The Wall Street Journal: Omicron Pushes Health Authorities Toward Learning To Live With Covid-19
The Omicron variant spreads so quickly and generally causes such a mild form of illness among vaccinated populations that countries are tolerating greater Covid-19 outbreaks, willingly letting infections balloon to levels that not long ago would have been treated as public-health crises. From different starting points, authorities in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific are moving in the same direction, offering a glimpse into a future in which Covid-19 becomes accepted as a fact of everyday life, like seasonal flu. (Yoon, Solomon and Wernau, 1/30)
ABC News: Omicron Amps Up Concerns About Long COVID And Its Causes
More than a year after a bout with COVID-19, Rebekah Hogan still suffers from severe brain fog, pain and fatigue that leave her unable to do her nursing job or handle household activities. Long COVID has her questioning her worth as a wife and mother. “Is this permanent? Is this the new norm?’’ said the 41-year-old Latham, New York, woman, whose three children and husband also have signs of the condition. “I want my life back.’’ (Ungar and Tanner, 1/31)
Crain's Detroit Business: Pandemic Caused More Mental Illness But Without Staff, Industry At An Impasse
While emergency rooms and intensive care units have been filled with the physically ill during the pandemic, mental health centers are equally overwhelmed. About 400 new patients will enter CNS Healthcare's eight locations this month. That's up from an average of about 150 prior to the pandemic. And the community behavioral health clinic is managing these patients with 60 fewer workers than prior to the pandemic and more than 100 new positions that could be filled. "We're seeing more and more people experiencing levels of crisis and anxiety," said Michael Garrett, president and CEO of CNS Healthcare. "There are a lot of different stressors going on in the world, from the pandemic to economic anxiety. This isolation and loneliness is the perfect storm on our mental health system." (Walsh, 1/28)
San Francisco Chronicle: Can Cannabis Prevent COVID-19? We Asked Experts What A Viral Study Actually Means, And The Answer Is Complicated
It’s not as simple as that, either. According to physician and cannabis clinician Dr. Leigh Vinocur, there’s a major gap between a cannabis compound preventing infection in a lab and dispensary cannabis products protecting humans from COVID-19. “We’re a long way from saying cannabis can prevent COVID,” Vinocur told GreenState. “This was a preclinical in-vitro trial, meaning these cells were tested in a test tube, not in humans.” Vinocur explained that, while preclinical trials are an important part of what it takes to create a drug, human trials have to be done before a drug is considered legitimate. This is in large part because dosing does not need to be considered in a test tube, but becomes very important when you start thinking about how to get the required concentration of a given substance into the human body safely. (Esher, 1/28)
