Here is the short cut to the COVID report for Wednesday.
- US COVID hospitalizations declined for the 15th straight day.
- US COVID patients in ICU declined for the 13th straight day.
- The number of COVID patients on ventilators in the USA declined for the 10th straight day.
- The positive testing percentage stayed out of the red zone for the 7th day in a row.
BUT …
The new strain in Brazil is not only more transmissible than the original strain, but it is also more severe. Worse still, people who have had the first strain don’t seem to be immune to the new one!
Soon after the holidays, deaths and hospitalizations exploded. The hospital system buckled. The number of confirmed coronavirus deaths at home rose from a total of 35 from May through December to 178 so far this month, according to city health officials. That stunned Brazilian researchers who last month published a paper in Science proclaiming that 76 percent of Manaus’s population had already been infected with the virus.
“How can you have 76 percent of people infected and, at the same time, have an epidemic that’s bigger than the first?” asked author Ester Sabino. “This was a concern from the moment cases started to rise.”
As viruses course through a population, they inevitably mutate, although most such genetic changes are functionally insignificant. The coronavirus has spawned countless variants around the world. But P.1 — along with variants found in South Africa and Britain — is provoking particular concern. Not only does it have a spike protein mutation that could lead to a higher infection rate, it possesses what’s called an “escape mutation.” Also found in the South Africa variant, the mutation, known as E484k, could help it evade coronavirus antibodies.