Welcome to the Virus Briefing, your comprehensive guide to the latest news and expert analysis on the coronavirus pandemic and other outbreaks. |
 | | Bins at a vaccine site in Los Angeles.Alisha Jucevic for The New York Times |
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This winter, the U.S. could be in for a "tripledemic," a nasty collision of three viruses — the flu, the coronavirus and respiratory syncytial virus (R.S.V.) — which could cause a surge of patients seeking treatment at hospitals that are already stretched thin. |
To understand how the next few months might play out, I turned to my colleague Apoorva Mandavilli, who covers infectious diseases. |
Let's look ahead to the winter. How is Covid shaping up in the U.S.? |
At the moment the rates are low, but we know that a winter wave is coming. Many European countries already are having waves and we generally tend to follow them. There's almost no doubt that we will see something, it's just a matter of how big it will be. |
At the moment, it looks like the two variants that we probably need to worry about the most are BQ.1.1 and XBB, both of which are variations of Omicron, and both seem able to get around immunity pretty well, at least in terms of infection. |
BQ.1.1 and its close relative, BQ.1, together now account for about 17 percent of cases. So they've gone up really fast — their doubling time seems to be around one week. Those are the variants that have driven up cases in European countries. |
 | | Percentage share of variants among total recorded infections in the U.S.The Center for Disease Control and Prevention |
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 | | Percentage share of variants among total recorded infections in the U.S.The Center for Disease Control and Prevention |
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XBB just arrived here and it's circulating at a low rate. But in Singapore, where a huge percentage of the population is vaccinated and has immunity, it caused a fairly big wave. So it seems really adept at getting around immunity. When it starts to get around here, it probably will also drive up cases. But at the moment BQ.1.1 is the leading candidate for a potential winter wave because it had a head start. |
Do either of these new variants cause more severe disease? |
That doesn't seem to be the case. There are only a couple of new variants that cause more severe disease — BA.2.75 and the closely related BA.2.75.2 — but fortunately they are still at a low prevalence in the U.S., at under 3 percent of total cases. |
At this point in time, what really gives a variant a competitive advantage is to be able to get around immunity, because so many of us have all kinds of protection — from multiple doses of vaccines or multiple infections or both. So there's a lot of pressure on the virus to evolve its way around that immunity. |
How well are the updated boosters working against these variants? |
So far it looks like they should still be fairly protective against severe disease and death. We are not seeing huge numbers of deaths in the U.K. and other European countries. They are seeing a rise in hospitalizations, but that might be unvaccinated people, or immunocompromised people, or people who haven't had a booster in a while. |
Switching gears, how is flu season shaping up? |
We always look at how the flu season has gone in the southern hemisphere before we try to predict what will happen here. And this year, Australia and New Zealand were just walloped. So that's not a good sign. Already we are seeing something like a 3 percent positivity rate for flu tests in the U.S., which is higher than usual for this time of year. |
 | | Influenza activity level across the U.S.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention |
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However, the vaccine is actually a decent match for the flu variants that are circulating. It should offer a significant amount of protection. So doctors are really urging people to go get the flu shot. It's the same as with the Covid vaccines. Even if it doesn't prevent infection, you won't get as sick — your symptoms will be milder and they won't last as long. |
What is R.S.V., and what do we need to know about it? |
It's a respiratory virus that is a significant cause of respiratory problems in young kids. And Covid has made it act in a strange way. Normally you see R.S.V. in the winter, but the U.K. and the U.S. saw R.S.V. waves in the spring and the summer — really off season, strange behavior. Right now, doctors I have been talking to are saying that their wards are already filling up with kids who have R.S.V. in particular. |
And here's the thing, really little kids just don't have as much immunity to these viruses because some were born after the pandemic started and they've never been exposed to the viruses. Or they were really young and had not built up a lot of immunity before the pandemic started. So now when their bodies are exposed to these viruses, their symptoms are more severe than they otherwise would have been. Currently there is no vaccine for R.S.V., but there are some in clinical trials. |
So how should we approach the "tripledemic"? |
Get vaccinated. There's a good vaccine for flu, and there is an OK vaccine for Covid in terms of the new variants, and it will give you some protection. Wear a mask if you are able. Wash your hands often and do not go to work or to school if you are sick. |
I have not yet gone to get a Covid booster, but now that I know that these variants are picking up so quickly, I do plan to get one. I'll probably try to time it to get the most protection for a trip to go see my parents later this year. |
At an individual level, especially if you are relatively healthy, none of those viruses is a big threat to you necessarily, but it is a threat to our health care system, which is already so stretched. And it is a threat to children and pregnant women and older people who may end up in the hospital. If they get really sick, they may not be able to get care because the hospitals are already full. |
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 | | Students who do not read well in elementary school are more likely to drop out of high school.Rosem Morton for The New York Times |
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In math, the results showed the steepest declines ever recorded on the exam, which tests a broad sampling of fourth and eighth graders. A meager 26 percent of eighth graders were proficient in the subject, down from 34 percent in 2019. |
Reading scores also declined in more than half the states, continuing a downward trend that had begun even before the pandemic. Only about one in three students met proficiency standards. No state showed sizable improvement in reading. |
The findings raise significant questions about where the country goes from here. Billions of dollars in pandemic funding are slated to expire in 2024, but research suggests that it could take billions more dollars and several years for students to recover academically. |
What else we're following |
- Many U.S. labs cannot test for the strain of Ebola that is causing an outbreak in Uganda, CBS reports.
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- Researchers found two common respiratory viruses, R.S.V. and influenza, fused together for the first time, The Guardian reports.
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We asked readers to share their journal entries from the pandemic. If you'd like to share yours, you can do so here. |
Feb. 7, 2020. Denver. It is official: We are old! Today Mat (our son) has begun insisting we NOT go to the store, the park — or basically out. Why? Because we are part of that 65-plus demo easily susceptible to Covid and all the miserable things it can bring. He can shop. He can get the car handled. He can do whatever it is we need done. Can he do my seven miles today? No. Can he help me stop being told that at MY age it is dangerous to basically do anything outside my house? NO! But his concern is, frankly, touching. — Sandy Holmes Oct. 27, 2020. Harper, Kan. After losing Dad to cancer less than four months ago, burying Mom next to him feels surreal. Shivering next to her casket, I'm trying not to see Dad's grave with fresh dirt still on top. Even more than that, I'm trying not to notice the smallness of the ceremony. No one is in attendance (again) due to Covid. These two faithful people invested a lifetime in this community, and no one is here to help us say goodbye. Though neither one of my parents has Covid on their death certificate, the pandemic stole something important from our family, too. — Lori Ann Wood |
| Thanks for reading. I'll be back Friday. — Jonathan |
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