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It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: August 16, 2023

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: August 16, 2023

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: August 16, 2023

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: August 16, 2023 13

… As of Friday, another new player is more officially in the mix: “Fornax,” or FL.1.5.1, an Eris relative named after a constellation in the southern hemisphere. That’s according to Ryan Gregory, a biology professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, who has been assigning “street names” like Kraken to high-flying variants.

FL.1.5.1 is the top variant currently reported in New York, considered a bellwether state by variant trackers. There, wastewater levels and hospitalizations are rising, notes Raj Rajnarayanan—assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology campus in Jonesboro, Ark.—and a top COVID-variant tracker…

Regardless, cases will likely peak in late November, shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday, Rajnarayanan says.

A post-Thanksgiving peak is typical for the virus, owing to holiday gatherings. Gregory agrees with the forecast. But in many ways, the landscape of the pandemic has changed from earlier days, he says.

From COVID’s introduction to humans in late 2019 through the initial Omicron wave in January 2022, “you kind of have big, distinct, sharp waves, a big peak that went up fast and came down fast, driven by an individual variant—Alpha, Delta, Omicron,” he tells Fortune.

But since last summer, there “just hasn’t been that pattern anymore.”

Instead, a new cadence developed—and it’s likely to continue this fall and winter. It’s one of a high wall of cases sustained by mini-waves of multiple new variants overlapping each other—one slicker, faster, sleeker Omicron spawn after the next.

It’s all about the “high sea level rather than tsunamis,” says Gregory….

Updated XBB.1.5 vaccines—matched to the dominant strain of this past winter—will reportedly be available by the end of September. And they should be a fairly good match, experts say, effective at preventing severe outcomes like hospitalization and death—and could help squash the predicted late-November peak…

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Reader Interactions

20Comments

  1. 1.

    Matt McIrvin

    The current wave seems very clumpy, made of spotty local outbreaks that clear rapidly. There was one in my town near the end of July, visible in wastewater counts after the fact, that coincided with my spouse and I having a few days of sniffles and congestion–I didn’t think much of it at the time. Who knows.

    At any rate, I’m still masking in crowded public situations and will get re-vaccinated as soon as they let me. Not particularly going out of my way to isolate though.

  2. 2.

    NeenerNeener

    Monroe County, NY:

    22 new cases on 08/09/23.
    24 new cases on 08/10/23.
    35 new cases on 08/11/23.
    17 new cases on 08/12/23.
    33 new cases on 08/13/23.
    24 new cases on 08/14/23.
    19 new cases on 08/15/23.

    Deaths now at 2301, up 4 from last week.

    I’ve gone back to masking in the grocery store and/or doing curbside pickup. I haven’t been masking around people who come to my house, but I probably should.

  3. 3.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    I got bivalent last November. This fall it looks like I’ll get a flu + covid in middle of Q4, depending how it’s rolling out in Ontario.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    The development of a rare heart condition may actually be a symptom of long COVID, researchers say.

    A man was referred to a specialist clinic with doctors from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom after months of odd leg discoloration.

    The 33-year-old’s legs would rapidly turn purple when he would stand, according to a case report published in The Lancet on Aug. 12.
    [snip]
    His legs would once again go back to normal after a few minutes of sitting or lying down, they said. Source

  5. 5.

    Lapassionara

    Thanks so much, AL, for these updates. I’m still wearing a mask in public spaces, and we still don’t dine indoors at restaurants.

    I overheard the following conversation recently: “I told her, if you feel bad, don’t take a COVID test. You don’t want to know if you have it. Just don’t get close to people.”

  7. 7.

    Another Scott

    @OzarkHillbilly: +1

    My fall allergies are giving indications of starting up.  I’m mainly trying to stay away from people until the new boosters are here….

    One thing I learned during my bout with Omicron in mid-March was that my resting pulse rate went from around 65 to around 75 and stayed above 70 for a couple of months afterwards.  I keep an eye on my pulse with my Fitbit Charge 5 since then…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  8. 8.

    twbrandt

    It takes a special kind of stupidity to not wear a mask to prevent viral spread but to affirmatively wear a mask to avoid “vaccine shedding”. I mean, how do these people find there way around the real world?

  9. 9.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: That’s interesting, because usually wastewater Covid spikes about a week before cases start being confirmed

    The timing of that new vaccine will be good for us – three months after we had Covid.

  10. 10.

    wjca

    Hey, if it gets them to wear masks, who cares how dumb the reasons are?  Let’s take the win.  More than that, let’s see if we can spread the “vaccine shedding” rumor across MAGAtland.  For the sake of the rest of us.

  11. 11.

    bluefoot

    @twbrandt: ​
      I don’t even know what “vaccine shedding” is supposed to mean. Shedding fragments of Spike protein? I mean, there are very few ingredients in the mRNA vaccines, and nothing you could potentially shed, unless it’s the Spike protein produced by the mRNA. Which isn’t pathogenic. Wtf?

    I have been missing the free PCR testing that the city used to provide. I don’t even know where I could get a PCR test (paying for it) if I wanted/needed one. I still home test weekly as a surveillance measure but I haven’t seen recent data on positive predictive value of antigen tests against the newer variants.

  12. 12.

    Matt McIrvin

    @wjca: Some of the really extreme COVID hawks have ideas about the virus that are reminiscent of these people’s ideas about the vaccine– one I heard recently is that students’ grades really dropped during the pandemic because nearly all of Gen Z (along with the rest of the human population) has subtle brain damage from undiagnosed long COVID.

    Where their fears differ from the antivaxxers’ is that at least they are taking about a real, documented biological mechanism. And I can’t prove they’re wrong. But they share the suspicion of authorities and grandiose fears.

  13. 13.

    Maxim

    My recent bout of Covid was probably Eris, based on the list of its symptoms. I took Paxlovid, recovered, relapsed, and re-recovered. Not happy with my ongoing chest congestion, but otherwise everything seems okay. I will get the booster as soon as possible.

    AL, I am so thankful for this weekly roundup. Thank you for all the work you put into it.

  15. 15.

    StringOnAStick

    If it wasn’t for these posts, I’d have no idea what was going on with Covid; thank you for your hard work!

  16. 16.

    Matt McIrvin

    @bluefoot: They’re just imagining that the vaccine is a contagious contamination of some sort… like a virus! I think if you asked they’d say it was the spike protein, but, no, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. There have been live-virus vaccines in the past, like some early polio vaccines, that actually did induce some “contact immunity”– but of course the COVID vaccines used here are not of that type at all.

  17. 17.

    trollhattan

    Half of our school districts returned to class last week, the rest will be in session by Labor Day. I expect a big jump in cases as a direct consequence, but the county is no longer monitoring, just passing data to the state, so it will not be a point of focus locally.

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    @Maxim: Similar, am 3 weeks from exposure, 2.5 weeks from detection, 1.5 weeks from testing negative, and have sinus and upper chest issues even now. IOW sick of being sick, and will get the jab as soon as I can.

  19. 19.

    Ramalama

    Despite news reports attesting to France sitting on a stash of paxlovid when I caught COVID again, the nurse visiting daily to my sister in law had never heard of it. The pharmacist nearby had never heard of it. The doctor who later visited had heard of it but determined it would be of no use to elderly sister in-law. I muddled through with the only known treatment of zinc. Good times. People in France can still get free COVID tests but are apparently still required to go back to work…like a positive test means … Big whoop.

  20. 20.

    mvr

    @OzarkHillbilly: I got mine right after my birthday in June, but I suspect I could have gone in early and the local CVS would have let me have it.  I didn’t test the theory, but I would have if I thought getting the older booster then would have delayed my getting the new one coming out in the Fall.  But by the time it is around it will have been 3 months since June.

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