Tag: infected person
Is BA.5 the ‘Reinfection Wave’?
Well, here we go again. Once more, the ever-changing coronavirus behind COVID-19 is assaulting the United States in a new guise—BA.5, an offshoot of the Omicron variant that devastated the most recent winter. The new variant is spreading quickly, likely because it snakes past some of the immune defenses acquired by vaccinated people, or those infected by earlier variants. Those who have managed to avoid the virus for close to three years will find it a little harder to continue
A Stress Test for America’s New COVID Plan Is Coming
At this very moment, the United States, as a whole, remains in its legit pandemic lull. Coronavirus case counts and hospitalizations are lower than they’ve been since last summer. There’s now a nice, chonky gap between us and January’s Omicron peak.
And yet. Outbreaks have erupted across Asia. Massive swaths of Europe, including the United Kingdom—America’s best pandemic bellwether for much of 2021—are firmly in the grip of a more transmissible Omicron subvariant called BA.2 that’s been simmering stateside for
How Is COVID Testing Still This Confusing?
Updated at 12:44 p.m. ET on November, 23 2021
In a world with perfect coronavirus tests, people could swab their nose or spit in a tube and get near-instant answers about their SARS-CoV-2 status. The products would be free, fast, and completely reliable. Positives would immediately shuttle people out of public spaces and, if needed, into treatment; negatives could green-light entry into every store, school, and office, and spring people out of isolation with no second thought. Tests would guarantee
Will COVID Get Worse This Winter?
The first part of what may be the first epidemiologic text ever written begins like so: “Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly, should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year.”
The book is On Airs, Waters, and Places, written by Hippocrates around 400 B.C. Two and a half millennia later, the Northern Hemisphere is staring down its coming season of the year with growing apprehension. America’s grimmest phase of the coronavirus pandemic so