Cases: On Thursday, Pasadena reported 13 new cases and no new fatalities from COVID-19.
Pasadena Public Health Dept. Tracking New, Fast-Spreading COVID Variant BA.2-From PasadenaNOW: Pasadena Public Health Director Dr. Ying-Ying Goh said Friday her department is carefully monitoring the COVID-19 variant BA.2, which was first detected by doctors internationally two months ago and is now spreading quickly across the U.S.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the BA.2 variant appears to be on its way to becoming the dominant COVID strain in the country. For the week of March 5, BA.2 accounted for 14.2 percent of US cases but jumped to 23.1 percent of all cases by March 12.
“We are actively tracking on new information on BA.2 as it becomes available. Some of this information is coming from countries in Europe and other parts of the world where BA.2 proportions have been increasing and cases are increasing,” Dr. Goh told Pasadena Now in an interview Friday.
“Multiple factors may be contributing in addition to the predominance of BA.2, including waning immunity from prior infection or vaccination and loosening of public health measures.”
The BA.2 virus is a strain of the highly contagious Omicron variant that appears to spread even more easily. Because BA.2 quickly overtook the original Omicron in other countries, researchers have been bracing for the same thing to happen in the U.S.
As of today, it is believed Pasadena has not yet seen the circulation of the variant locally. Dr. Goh reported that COVID cases in the city have flattened recently after an earlier Omicron surge.
“In Pasadena, we are not continuing to see a rapid decline and instead are consistently seeing on average 15 new cases per day,” Dr. Goh said.
As the new COVID variant spreads in the U.S., PPHD is advising the public to be up to date on COVID-19 vaccination, including booster doses, for everyone ages 5 years and up to lower their risk of getting and spreading the virus.
PPHD is also advising residents who want to avoid illness to wear masks and avoid higher-risk situations like crowded indoor spaces, especially if they or their loved ones have incomplete or no vaccination or underlying medical conditions.
While Los Angeles County continues to enjoy relatively low COVID-19 infection numbers and falling hospitalization numbers, the public health director on Thursday urged residents to continue exercising caution The county reported 36 new COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, raising the overall death toll to 31,408.
Another 1,331 new infections were confirmed, giving the county a cumulative total from throughout the pandemic of 2,817,190.
According to state figures, there were a total of 495 COVID-19-positive patients in county hospitals as of Thursday, down from the 499 reported on Wednesday. Of those patients, 85 were being treated in intensive care units, down from 90 the previous day.
The rolling average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus was 0.7% as of Thursday, roughly the same as it has been throughout the week.
Ferrer said health officials are closely monitoring spread of the BA.2 strain of COVID-19, a mutation of the Omicron variant. BA.2 has been spreading rapidly in some countries, and Ferrer noted that she would not be surprised if it became a more dominant strain locally.
From the LA Times: Southern California fared the worst in the state during winter surge, analysis finds. By Luke Money and Sean Greene
The winter Omicron surge hit Southern California harder than any other part of the state, a Times data analysis found, again underscoring the region’s vulnerability.
The data — from Dec. 1, when the state’s first Omicron case was confirmed, through Monday — help paint a more complete picture of Omicron’s rampage throughout California and demonstrate how the pandemic’s pain continues to be unequal.
But the figures also lend further credence to what health officials have long maintained: that the surest way to stave off the worst ravages of the coronavirus is through robust vaccination.
The widely vaccinated and boosted San Francisco Bay Area, for instance, noted the lowest hospitalization and death rates in the state during the recent surge, despite having the second-highest case rates.
Conversely, rural Northern California’s death rate was roughly the same as Southern California’s, even though the latter’s case rate was more than twice as high.
Boosting vaccination rates, health officials and experts say, is all the more pressing given the widespread relaxation of other measures — namely mask mandates — that had been imposed to help stymie the virus’ spread.
Getting more people to roll up their sleeves is also important given that another wave is already emerging in other parts of the globe.
Since Dec. 1, Southern California has recorded 10,103 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people — the highest of the state’s five regions, according to a Times analysis of data from the California Department of Public Health.
Infection rates were 7,714 per 100,000 people in the Bay Area, 7,341 in the San Joaquin Valley, 6,459 in Greater Sacramento and 4,892 in Northern California, data showed.
The state defines Southern California as Imperial, Inyo, Los Angeles, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
Although it’s not surprising this region — home to more than half of all Californians — had high raw numbers of cases, the analysis revealed that many counties in the area ranked among the hardest hit in infections, even when counting for population.
Of California’s 58 counties, L.A. had the highest overall case rate during the Omicron surge. San Diego was third; Imperial, fourth; San Bernardino, eighth; Riverside, ninth; Santa Barbara, 10th; and Ventura, 11th.
These high case rates reflect a staggering number of infections. Combined, the seven Southern California counties tallied 2.1 million new coronavirus cases in the last three and a half months — including 1.2 million in L.A. County alone.
When asked about The Times’ analysis Thursday, L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said the findings don’t come as a surprise.
The massive caseload was fueled by Southern California’s testing — the most per capita of any region, The Times’ analysis showed. But experts have long noted that official infection counts are likely to be incomplete, as some people may never get screened or have their results disclosed to public health agencies. Exacerbating that issue is the availability of at-home tests, which were widely used during the Omicron surge but are not reliably reported.
Regardless of the actual count, the sheer enormity of cases had devastating effects throughout the region. More than 7,500 Southern Californians died from COVID-19 — a rate of 32.2 per 100,000 people — from Dec. 1 through March 14.
While still the worst in the state, the gap in death rates between Southern California and the four other state regions is not as wide as case rates.
oth the San Joaquin Valley (just under 32.2 per 100,000 people) and Northern California (31.7 per 100,000) had only fractionally different death rates. That’s despite their surge case rates being lower (27% and 52%, respectively) than Southern California’s.
Those regions have routinely been the least vaccinated in the state. Nearly 53% of Northern California residents and 55% of those in the San Joaquin Valley are fully vaccinated, compared with about 64% in Greater Sacramento, 69% in Southern California and 80% in the Bay Area.
Booster uptake has also been far slower in those regions. The proportion of boosted residents is 22% in the San Joaquin Valley, 26% in Northern California, 33% in Southern California, 34% in Greater Sacramento and almost 50% in the Bay Area.
The Bay Area was the most insulated against severe health outcomes during the Omicron surge. Its death and hospitalization rates were the lowest of any region.
Despite being home to almost twice as many people, the Bay Area reported fewer COVID-19 deaths than the San Joaquin Valley during the analysis period: 1,218 compared with 1,470.
Yet low vaccination rates are only one factor in coronavirus spread. Health experts have regularly said socioeconomic elements — such as the proportion of residents who live in crowded housing or need to leave home to work in a front-line job — can heighten the risk of transmission.
Residents in unhealthier areas, such as those near freeways with dirtier air, also may suffer from higher rates of respiratory disease, putting them at greater risk. More rural or impoverished areas lack the same healthcare resources as wealthier communities, making it more difficult to manage chronic conditions or treat new illnesses.
In L.A. County, all of those societal ills have played a role during the pandemic, Ferrer said.
That adds up to many residents who had to keep working on-site, even during the surge.
Vaccines: Most people ages 12 and older are considered “up to date” with their COVID-19 vaccines if they received either three doses of the mRNA shots from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, or two doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine. But some public health experts say another dose might be needed in the coming months.
On March 15, Pfizer and BioNTech requested authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a fourth dose of their vaccine in people ages 65 and older. In the past few days, Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s CEO, has said that he believes everyone will one day need a fourth dose in order to help prevent infections (a move that would have obvious benefits for the company’s bottom line.)
In order to authorize a fourth shot, the FDA will consider still emerging data that don’t paint a definitive picture about whether an additional dose is necessary for most people. One the one hand, there are troubling signs that the immunity provided by the vaccines is starting to wane, which could make people more vulnerable to COVID-19’s more severe effects. Recent data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that protection against hospitalization for COVID-19 waned even after a booster dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. From Aug. 2021 to Jan. 2022—a time span that includes waves of both Delta and Omicron variants—the booster was 91% effective at protecting against hospitalization in the first two months after people received it, but dropped to 78% four months after the shot. The vaccine efficacy against emergency room and urgent care visits for COVID-19 symptoms followed a similar decline, from 87% up to two months after the booster to 66% four to five months after the booster.
On the other hand, another small study published in the New England Journal of Medicine among younger health care workers in Isreal showed that adding a fourth dose for people vaccinated and boosted with the Pfizer-BioNTech shot may only have “marginal benefits,” according to the researchers. While the additional dose raised levels of antibodies that can neutralize the virus, including Omicron, slightly, those levels were relatively similar to peak amounts of antibodies people generated after the first booster, or third dose. The study did not focus on elderly people or those with compromised immune systems.
The U.S. CDC already recommends a fourth mRNA vaccine dose for people with weakened immune systems, including transplant patients and those undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, and other countries have similar guidelines. Israeli health officials have gone one step further; on Jan. 22, as cases and hospitalizations crept upward, the country authorized a fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine for health care workers and people over 60 years old. The decision was based on early data from Israel’s Ministry of Health and researchers at several Israeli universities showing that among nearly a million vaccinated people over age 60, a fourth dose of the vaccine offered up to twice the protection against getting infected, and up to three times the protection against severe illness, compared to those who received three doses.
There is also growing evidence that all types of vaccine-induced protection continue to wane. Scientists have long known that the antibodies people make immediately after getting vaccinated are relatively short-lived, but the vaccine triggers the body to also produce other immune defenses, including T cells, which tend to be more durable. Even those responses, however, start to taper after several months, says Dr. Otto Yang, professor of medicine, infectious diseases, microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. That means existing vaccine regimens may need to be supplemented with yet another booster dose to keep both antibody and T cell numbers high enough to protect people from severe disease, he says.
But whether everyone needs an additional vaccine dose, and whether or not we can anticipate getting one every year or every few years, depends on what we want the vaccines to accomplish. The vaccines were not designed to prevent people from getting infected by the virus, but to protect them from getting extremely sick with COVID-19, and to keep them from needing hospitalization and intensive care. Remembering that goal, says Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is useful when thinking about whether a fourth dose is necessary for most people.
COVID’s Long Shadow (from The Atlantic): In the United States, COVID cases are still in free fall. But that doesn’t mean this pandemic is over. Newly common variants aside—more on the latest one below—millions of people are suffering from long COVID, my colleague Katherine J. Wu writes, and many of them have yet to recover.
Long COVID is officially recognized by the CDC and the World Health Organization, but despite the research that’s been done, it remains poorly understood. I caught up with Katie to find out what’s currently known about long COVID and what it means for the future of the pandemic. I also asked her about the Omicron subvariant BA.2 that epidemiologists are eyeing amid a rise in cases in Europe.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What’s the most important thing we know about long COVID that we didn’t know, say, a year ago?
I would say just how diverse the condition is—and really it’s a misnomer to say it’s one condition. It’s a category of different conditions, syndromes, diseases that can affect any part of the body and in such different ways.
What are the biggest questions still remaining?
There’s a lot of basic stuff we still don’t know. Even things that sound super intuitive—such as just how common it is or who is most at risk. And we still don’t have a great grasp on things like prognosis, treatment, even how to diagnose or define it. There’s not even a universal clinical definition that doctors are using.
Why is the condition so mysterious and hard to study?
Imagine trying to figure out all cancer immediately within two years of discovering that cancer is a thing.
Everyone has had such different experiences with the coronavirus and vaccines. The human population is so diverse. We know that long COVID can affect so many different parts of the body in such different ways. Trying to cast a wide enough net to capture all of that is just this monumental task.
Does one variant in particular cause long COVID?
No. This has been really tough to figure out because the different variants have occurred at different times and people have had different levels of immunity. All we can say for sure is that no variant has yet spared us with regards to causing long COVID.
If you’re fully vaccinated and boosted, how well protected are you against long COVID?
We know that vaccination can decrease the risk of long COVID. But we don’t yet have a precise number on the degree to which vaccination reduces that risk.
Can kids get it?
Yes. It’s a persistent myth that they can’t. I’ve talked to pediatricians who have toddlers in their long-COVID clinics.
You write that this could become a “pandemic after the pandemic.” Why should people care about long COVID at this moment in particular?
It’s really essential to realize that no one is immune to the risk of long COVID, in the same way that no one is immune to the risk of getting infected by this virus at some point. We need to take this seriously. Some people have been suffering with symptoms for more than two years now. As a public-health crisis, long COVID is not going away anytime soon.
The more people who get long COVID, the more the burden of this condition grows and grows and grows. So we really need to invest in figuring out what’s causing this and how to prevent it.
On a related note: Should we be worried about BA.2, the subvariant of Omicron that’s being monitored around the world?
We should be concerned enough to be keeping an eye on it, and certainly not assume that the pandemic is over—or even that our difficult winter/spring is over.
Right now, a lot of virologists and epidemiologists are expecting cases to tick upward at least a little bit here because they have in Europe. But the extent to which it picks up, it’s really hard to say. We have a decent bit of immunity here coming off of this wave and having at least moderate vaccination levels.
I think this is going to be a stress test for our nation’s new approach to COVID, where the focus is really on severe disease.
What sets BA.2 apart?
It is moving faster than Omicron Classic. The faster movement is what we care about because we know that Omicron infected a lot of people, but it did not infect everyone. And so if we have a faster-moving version of it, it’s going to seep into the cracks that Omicron left behind.
The Economy: After beginning the year in a buying mood, Americans slowed their spending in February on gadgets, home furnishings and other discretionary items as higher prices for food, gasoline, and shelter are taking a bigger bite out of their wallet.
Retail sales increased 0.3% after registering a revised 4.9% jump from December to January, fueled by wage gains, solid hiring and more money in banking accounts, according to the Commerce Department. January’s increase was the biggest jump in spending since last March, when American households received a final federal stimulus check of $1,400.
Business at furniture and home furnishing stores fell 1% in February, while sales at consumer electronics and appliance stores slipped 0.6%. General merchandise stores saw business down 0.2%, while online sales fell 3.7%. Restaurant sales rose 2.5% as shoppers shift more of their spending to services as the threat of COVID-19 fades.
And there are new pressures that could send prices even higher, namely the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Most Western companies including retailers like Nike, fast-fashion retailer H& M, and coat maker Canada Goose have suspended sales in Russia after Russia sent tank columns toward the capital of Kyiv and heavily shelled the southern seaport of Mariupol and other urban centers.
Many retailers are bracing for how the war will worsen supply shortages, with reports already surfacing of limited supplies of wheat, vegetable oils, and electronic components like chips that will likely send prices higher. In addition to the Russian invasion, rising COVID-19 cases and renewed restrictions in China could intensify supply chain issues.
Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as layoffs continue to fall amid a strong job market rebound.
Jobless claims fell by 15,000 to 214,000 for the week ending Saturday, down from the previous week’s 229,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. First-time applications for jobless aid generally track the pace of layoffs.
The four-week average for claims, which compensates for weekly volatility, fell to 223,000 from the previous week’s 231,750.
In total, 1,419,000 Americans — a 50-year low — were collecting jobless aid the week that ended March 5, down 71,000 from the week before that.
Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates rose this week as the key 30-year loan vaulted over 4% for the first time since May 2019.
The increase came amid expectations that with inflation at a four-decade high, the Federal Reserve would raise its benchmark short-term interest rate at its policy meeting this week to cool the economy. That action came Wednesday, as the Fed increased the key rate — which it had kept near zero since the pandemic recession struck two years ago — by a quarter point. And the central bank signaled potentially up to seven additional rate hikes this year.
The increases mean that mortgage rates likely will continue to rise over the year.
Californians still are letting out a collective groan when seeing the prices at their local gas station, but some relief could be on the way this spring.
A group of mostly Democratic Assembly members outlined a proposal Thursday for a $400 rebate to all taxpayers meant to blunt the financial impact of skyrocketing gasoline prices and the increase in living expenses.
“We know too many Californians are struggling to make ends meet right now,” Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Laguna Beach, who is leading the legislation, said during a news conference in Sacramento. “We are here to offer help.”
At $400, the rebate would pay for 69 gallons of gas at current prices, or about five fill-ups of a Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord. Lawmakers said for the average California driver, the rebate equals a yearlong financial reprieve from the state’s 51-cent gas tax.
Inflation: From the New York Times' Roger Lowenstein: Many Americans have never experienced rapid inflation, and they are looking for lessons from history about how to tame it.
That’s why the late 1970s and early 1980s are an increasingly popular topic of discussion among policymakers, particularly the experience of Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chair who quashed high inflation in those years with aggressive rate increases. Jerome H. Powell, the current chair of the Federal Reserve, which began raising rates this week to fight persistently rising prices, recently called Mr. Volcker “one of the great public servants” of his era.
Recent inflation is getting harder to explain away as a temporary symptom of supply chain disruptions and trillions of dollars in emergency government stimulus. And it’s now being fueled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is pushing up energy prices in particular.
War has always spelled inflation. And looking back further — much further — into history provokes some ideas about how to contain it.
During the American Civil War, the Union and the Confederate governments each spent tremendous sums. Leaders on both sides were deeply worried about the possibility of runaway inflation. But the ways they addressed it were starkly different, as were the results.
Granted, the U.S. economy has changed a lot since the 1860s. For one thing, it now has a central bank, which has a mandate to maintain stable prices. During the pandemic, the Fed under Mr. Powell has pushed its powers, which steadied markets but also stoked inflation. Now, much of the focus is on the Fed to unwind these programs, and raise rates, to bring prices down.
But fiscal policy is also a factor, as shown by the increasing worry over deficits as President Biden enacts an ambitious, and still unfinished, spending program.
The economic experience of the Civil War went far beyond anything facing the United States today. Decisive action from the Fed may yet cool inflation, despite government spending, trade disruptions and war. Raising taxes remains politically unpopular, but the lessons of history suggest that when inflation gets uncomfortably high, the country’s fiscal stewards have an important role to play.
The U.S. grew wealthier, better educated, less impoverished and less transient during the second half of the last decade, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Median household income for the nation, which had been almost $59,000 from 2011 to 2015, rose to almost $65,000 during the 2016 to 2020 period, which was the final stretch of the longest expansion in the history of U.S. business cycles, according to American Community Survey 5-year estimates.
With the exception of Colorado, the states with the biggest gains in household income were primarily on the coasts. The Rocky Mountain state joined the District of Columbia, California, Massachusetts and Washington with household jumps ranging from $9,000 to $14,000. The smallest gain was in Louisiana, at almost $1,800, and household income declined by almost $1,500 in Alaska.