Cases: From PasadenaNOW: Los Angeles County public health officials on Friday cautioned of a new COVID-19 “variant of interest,” known as the Mu variant, that’s been detected in the county. The Mu variant, which was first identified in Colombia in January and since spread to 39 countries, has been linked to 167 COVID-19 infections in L.A. County between June and August, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
“While the most dominant circulating variant in L.A. County continues to be the highly transmissible Delta variant, a variant of concern, the Mu variant, a variant of interest, is being closely monitored,” the agency said in a written statement.
The Mu variant, lineage B.1.621, was labeled a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization on Aug. 30, county officials said.
L.A. County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said the new variant, along with others spreading worldwide, “highlights the need for L.A. County residents to continue to take measures to protect themselves and others.”
The agency reported 2,673 new COVID-19 infections and 37 deaths across L.A. County on Friday, raising the county’s pandemic totals to 1,414,854 cases of COVID-19 and 25,401 fatalities.
Additionally, 1,641 patients remained hospitalized with the illness across L.A. County, authorities said. Twenty-seven percent of them were being treated in intensive care units. L.A. County’s daily positivity rate on Friday was recorded at 3.3%.
Locally, the Pasadena Public Health Department reported 24 new COVID-19 infections and no deaths in the city on Friday.
In all, Pasadena health officials had tallied 12,807 confirmed infections and 354 fatalities.
Over the prior week, an average of 19.4 Pasadenans tested positive for the virus each day, PPHD records show.
State public health officials documented 11,742 infections and 119 fatalities on Friday, which raised the state totals to 4,267,986 cases of COVID-19 and 65,704 deaths.
The statewide weekly positivity rate held stable at 4.9%, according to California Department of Public Health data.
As of Friday, L.A. County represented 33% of California’s COVID-19 infections and 39% of the state’s fatalities.
Vaccines: From The Atlantic: Your COVID-19 booster shot might’ve just gotten bumped back a bit. Last month, President Joe Biden set a mid-September launch goal for mRNA boosters, to be distributed eight months after the second shot for most American adults. But the CDC advisory committee tasked with recommending how Americans use the vaccines never gave the green light. Now, according to a New York Times report, health officials are advising the White House to rethink its plan.
One big problem is numbers: The FDA is still waiting on more data from vaccine makers, as well as some from Israel, where research on fading immunity spooked American officials into pushing for boosters in the first place.
The numbers are important here because they point to two questions underlying the whole strategy. Our staff writer Katherine J. Wu answered them in a new report, out today.
(1) Is waning immunity actually a crisis? COVID-19 shots continue to perform very well, particularly against the worst outcomes, such as hospitalization and death. “The recent numbers on vaccine effectiveness aren’t really that alarming,” Katie writes. And some of them could be explained not by anything to do with the immune system, but by the rise of the coronavirus’s Delta variant, which didn’t exist when the vaccines were first designed.
(2) Can boosters fix it? The immunological case just isn’t there yet, most experts told Katie. And each additional shot offers diminishing returns, meaning mass boosters are like “topping off a drink that’s already on the verge of spilling over” when “billions around the globe have yet to take a sip at all.”
From the Pasadena Star-News: You can call them the “vexcluded” — workers who don’t want to get vaccinated and are irritated at being ostracized. As employers ratchet up pressure for their staff to get inoculated against COVID-19, the animosity between those who have been vaccinated and those who refuse the shot is starting to boil over. More than a third of vaccinated workers reported anger at the transmission risk posed by their unvaccinated peers, according to survey of more than 400 employees in late August by workplace consultancy Seyfarth at Work. About a quarter of non-inoculated employees said they’re upset at the growing restrictions against them.
Some workers are now hardening their stance, and “verbalizing gripes to one another and management,” the survey showed. To make their point, a group of unvaccinated employees at an engineering company has organized under the nickname of the “Vexcluded” to protest that the group is being turned into an outcast, Philippe Weiss, president of Seyfarth at Work, said in the report.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has found a consistent 13%-15% of American adults have said they “definitely” don’t intend to get the shot. Those holdouts have been blamed for slowing efforts to reach levels of immunization that health officials say may be necessary to reverse the transmission of the delta variant.
In a separate survey released last week by human resources consultant Eagle Hill, 41% of workers polled agreed that nonvaccinated employees should pay higher insurance rates, and almost two-thirds said those peers shouldn’t get special allowances to work from home. The schism also shows up in disagreement about why the delta variant continues to spread. Four out of five of the vaccinated blame the unvaccinated for the number of rising cases, according to the results Tuesday from the Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index. Among the unvaccinated, only 10% thought they were at fault.
COVID-19 Consumer Costs: Americans most likely will pay significantly more for COVID- 19 medical care during this new wave of cases — whether that is a routine coronavirus test or a lengthy hospitalization. Earlier in the pandemic, most major health insurers voluntarily waived costs associated with a COVID-19 treatment. Patients did not have to pay their normal copayments or deductibles for emergency room visits or hospital stays.
Most COVID-19 tests were free, too.
The landscape since has changed as the pandemic persists into its second year. Federal law still requires insurers to cover testing at no cost to the patient when there is a medical reason for seeking care, such as exposure to the disease or a display of symptoms. But more of the tests sought now do not meet the definition of “medical reason” and are instead for monitoring.
And insurers are now treating COVID-19 more like any other disease, no longer fully covering the costs of care. Some businesses, like Delta Air Lines, are planning to charge unvaccinated employees higher rates for insurance, citing in part the high hospitalization costs for COVID-19 cases.
The Economy: From Bloomberg News: Business travel as we’ve known it is a thing of the past. From Pfizer Inc., Michelin and LG Electronics Inc. to HSBC Holdings Plc, Hershey Co., Invesco Ltd. and Deutsche Bank AG, businesses around the world are signaling that innovative new communications tools are making many pre-pandemic-era trips history.
A Bloomberg survey of 45 large businesses in the U.S., Europe and Asia shows that 84% plan to spend less on travel post-pandemic. A majority of the respondents cutting travel budgets see reductions of between 20% and 40%, with about two in three slashing both internal and external in-person meetings. The ease and efficiency of virtual software, cost savings and lower carbon emissions were the primary reasons cited for the cutbacks. According to the Global Business Travel Association, spending on corporate trips could slide to as low as $1.24 trillion by 2024 from a pre-pandemic peak in 2019 of $1.43 trillion.
The Economy: California unemployment claims have started to decline, raising hopes the statewide economy has begun to recuperate from coronavirus-linked ailments. Workers also face a end to weekly federal benefit payments of $300. The payments cease this weekend.
California workers filed 59,755 initial claims for unemployment benefits during the week ending Aug. 28, a decrease of 3,591 from the prior week, the U.S. Labor Department reported. Jobless claims have fallen for three straight weeks.
The recent filing trends mark the first time since October 2020 that initial claims have declined in California, raising some hope the weak statewide job market may be starting to recover.
Nationwide, initial claims for unemployment totaled 340,000, a decrease of 14,000 from the prior week, the Labor Department reported. The national numbers were adjusted for seasonal volatility.