A health care worker prepares a dose of the CoronaVac vaccine at a nursing home in Ankara, on Jan 19, 2021. (ADEM ALTAN / AFP)
SANTIAGO / BERLIN / OTTAWA / WASHINGTON – Patients infected with the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 remain contagious for just as long as patients infected with earlier variants, according to a small study.
Researchers took blood samples from 56 newly-diagnosed patients, including 37 with Delta infections and 19 with Omicron infections. All were mildly ill, such as with flu-like symptoms, but none were hospitalized. Regardless of which variant or whether or not they had been vaccinated or boosted, study participants "shed live virus for, on average, about 6 days after symptoms (began), and… about one in four people shed live virus for over 8 days," said Dr Amy Barczak of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who coauthored a report posted on medRxiv ahead of peer review.
"Although it is unknown exactly how much live virus is needed to spread the disease to others, we take these data to suggest that people with mild COVID-19 infection may be contagious on average for 6 days, and sometimes longer," Barczak said. "Decisions about isolation and masking should take such information into account, regardless of variant or prior vaccination status."
A snowman blocks a street during the trucker convoy protest against COVID-19 mandates in Ottawa on Feb 18, 2022.
(ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP)
Canada
Transport Canada announced Monday that cruise ships are set to come back to Canadian waters in April, outlining the COVID-19 rules for passengers and crew members.
According to the rules, all passengers and crew must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Only passengers under 12 and those with medical exemptions do not need to be vaccinated.
Passengers will be required to show a negative COVID-19 test to board a ship. A molecular test, like a PCR, will be accepted if taken within 72 hours before boarding, or an antigen test taken within one day of boarding.
Mask rules will be in place according to local/provincial health guidelines, and cruise ships are also required to have testing facilities on board so that passengers can take another COVID-19 test before disembarking the ships.
"We welcome cruise ships, an important part of our tourism sector, back to Canada, and we will continue working with partners to support this important industry," Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said.
The cruise ship sector contributes more than 40 billion Canadian dollars ($32 billion) to the Canadian economy and employs some 30,000 people.
The measures banning cruise ships against COVID-19 were initially announced on March 19, 2020.
A woman receives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 at a vaccination centre in Santiago, on Dec 23, 2021. (JAVIER TORRES / AFP)
Chile
Chile registered 13,820 COVID-19 infections and 149 deaths from the disease in the last day, bringing the total to 3,202,562 cases and 43,226 deaths, the Health Ministry said Monday.
In its daily report, the ministry also said there were 89,973 active cases in the South American country.
The 24-hour COVID-19 positivity rate in the past day was 17.79 percent nationwide and 12.68 percent in the Santiago Metropolitan Region.
COVID-19 cases in the country have declined by 31 percent in two weeks, with all 16 of the country's regions seeing a drop in infections.
Meanwhile, the central region of Maule recorded the highest incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Nuble, Biobio and Los Rios.
Chile was hit with a wave of infections from the Omicron variant of the virus, which has diminished in recent weeks just in time for the start of in-person classes this month.
An employee of French innovative biotech company NG Biotech manufactures COVID-19 selftests in Guipry-Messac, western France on Jan 13, 2022. (DAMIEN MEYER / AFP)
COVID-19 Study
Scientists have pinpointed 16 new genetic variants in people who developed severe COVID-19 in a large study published on Monday that could help researchers develop treatments for very sick patients.
The results suggest that people with severe COVID-19 have genes that predispose them to one of two problems: failure to limit the ability of the virus to make copies of itself, or excessive inflammation and blood clotting.
The scientists said their discoveries, published in the journal Nature, could help prioritize the likely treatments that could work against the disease.
Eventually, the information could even help predict which patients were likely to become severely ill.
"It is potentially possible in future that we will be able to make predictions about patients based on their genome at the point of presenting (for) critical care," said Kenneth Baillie, consultant in critical care medicine at the University of Edinburgh and one of the study authors, told reporters.
The genetic analysis of nearly 56,000 samples from people in Britain showed differences in 23 genes in COVID-19 patients who became critically ill, when compared with the DNA of other groups included in the study, including 16 differences that had not been previously identified.
ALSO READ: Johns Hopkins: Global COVID-19 deaths surpassed 6m
The new findings could help guide scientists in their search for existing drugs that might be useful for treating COVID-19.
For example, the researchers found changes in key genes that regulate the level of factor VIII, a protein involved in forming blood clots.
"Blood clotting is one of the main reasons why patients with COVID-19 develop a shortage of oxygen. So that's potentially targetable to prevent those clots from forming," Baillie said.
But "we can't know if these medicines will work until we try them in people".
A young man receives the Nuvaxovid vaccine against COVID-19 at the CIZ Tegel vaccination center in Berlin on Feb 28, 2022. (TOBIAS SCHWARZ / AFP)
Germany
Germany's seven-day COVID-19 incidence rate increased for the fifth day in a row, reaching 1,952 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases said on Monday.
The country reported 78,428 new cases within 24 hours, around 16,100 more than a week ago, according to the RKI.
According to the German Intensive Care Availability Register, the number of COVID-19 patients requiring treatment in intensive care units climbed to 2,436 on Friday, 54 more than on the previous day but still well below record figures during the Delta variant wave.
With only 15,000 vaccinations administered on Sunday, Germany's vaccination campaign continued to slow down. According to official figures, at least 47.7 million people have received a booster dose, while 19.6 million people are not vaccinated.
Although a new protein vaccine has been available in Germany for a week, there has been little demand for this new vaccine, which is not mRNA-based.
"We have not yet seen a run on the new Novavax vaccine in the vaccination centers," Helmut Dedy, chief executive of the German Association of Cities, told local media RND.
A child receives a dose of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine at an event launching school vaccinations in Los Angeles, California on Nov 5, 2021. (FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP)
US
Weekly child COVID-19 cases dropped below 100,000 for the first time since early August 2021, according to the latest report of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association updated Monday.
For the week ending March 3, almost 69,000 additional child COVID-19 cases were reported across the country. This marked the first time weekly child cases had dropped below 100,000 since August last year, said the report.
It was also the 6th consecutive weekly decrease of child COVID-19 cases from the pandemic peak of 1,150,000 added the week ending Jan 20, according to the report.
Reported COVID-19 cases among children spiked dramatically in 2022 during the Omicron variant surge, and over 4.8 million child cases were reported since the beginning of January.
Over 12.7 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic in the country. Almost 670,000 of these cases were added in the past 4 weeks, according to the report.
Since the first week of last September, there have been nearly 7.7 million additional child cases in the United States, according to the report.
