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It's Always Something:
State reports rise of another virus-Spread of norovirus has forced an L.A. County school to close temporarily. By Rong-Gong Lin II and Luke Money for the LA Times.
The highly contagious norovirus, sometimes referred to as the stomach flu, is on the rise in California, prompting state health officials to urge healthcare providers to step up disinfection efforts in a bid to check the spread. There have been at least 25 outbreaks of norovirus since Feb. 1, probably adding up to hundreds of cases statewide, according to a recent advisory from the California Department of Public Health. They include several outbreaks at long-term-care facilities and one severe enough to force a Los Angeles County elementary school to temporarily close.
“Gastrointestinal outbreaks are often not confirmed by laboratory testing, so the true number of norovirus outbreaks likely well exceeds those confirmed by laboratory testing,” state health officials wrote in a March 28 advisory.
Norovirus illness is sometimes referred to as a stomach bug or stomach flu, but it is unrelated to the flu, or influenza, which is a respiratory virus.
The highly contagious norovirus causes diarrhea, vomiting, nausea and stomach pain. It can spread through direct contact with an infected individual, by consuming contaminated food or water, or when someone touches a contaminated surface and then puts unwashed hands into his or her mouth.
In California, surveillance programs have shown “rising trends of norovirus concentrations detected in wastewater monitoring sites throughout the state, with large increases since mid-January,” according to the state public health department.
The trouble with norovirus is it can be hard to get a handle on. It can linger on surfaces for weeks, setting the stage for spread in crowded or highly trafficked areas where people are not regularly washing their hands or are more susceptible to infection. Such settings can include schools, child-care centers, healthcare facilities, cruise ships and nursing homes.
Although alcohol-based hand sanitizers can reduce germs on the skin in many circumstances, they are less effective in combating norovirus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Increases in norovirus activity have been observed nationwide since mid-January. The bulk of outbreaks happen from November through April, according to the CDC.
In a typical year, the virus can cause 19 million to 21 million cases of vomiting or diarrhea, 109,000 hospitalizations and 900 deaths, mostly among seniors.
It typically takes half a day to three days from exposure to the onset of illness, which typically begins with an abrupt onset of nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhea and abdominal pain, state health officials said. People typically recover after two or three days. Doctors caution, however, that dehydration is a risk, and especially severe symptoms can occur in infants, immunocompromised individuals and older people, according to the CDC.
Food can be contaminated by small particles of feces or vomit from an infected person, including when tiny particles of vomit spray through the air.
Ill people who have recovered should still stay home from school or work for at least 48 hours after symptoms have ended, the state public health department said. People can be contagious with norovirus even a couple of days after they feel better. According to the CDC, 61% of outbreaks involving diarrhea or vomiting are spread through contact like shaking hands or touching a dirty surface and then touching your mouth.
Cases: Pasadena reported eight new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, April 6th. There were no new fatalities in the city. Los Angeles County reported 2,731 new cases that same day (which included data from Pasadena and Long Beach). LA County reported an average of 53 deaths each day for the week previous.
Vaccine Update:
Vaccination rule is over for many county workers-Policy change allows hiring of firefighters, deputies and others without COVID shot.
MOST HEALTHCARE workers still need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because of U.S. rules covering facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid funds. By Rong-Gong Lin II and Luke Money for the LA Times.
Los Angeles County has ended its COVID-19 employee vaccination requirement, allowing workers — including sheriff’s deputies and firefighters — to be hired even if they haven’t gotten a shot. The policy change, which took effect Monday, is the latest COVID-19-related rule to be relaxed in L.A. County as officials continue to steadily unwind the emergency phase of their pandemic response.
According to a statement issued on behalf of L.A. County officials, the end of the employee vaccination requirement is “in line with decisions to end the state of emergency by the Board of Supervisors.” The board voted unanimously to rescind that emergency declaration in late February, and the move became official a week ago.
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday also approved the repeal of a rule requiring certain contractors for the county to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or to have received a medical or religious exemption. The end of the broader employee vaccine requirement doesn’t mean the end of all such mandates, however. Most healthcare workers still need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because of federal rules covering facilities that accept money from Medicare and Medicaid.
L.A. County also still requires healthcare workers to complete their primary vaccine series and get at least one booster dose, or else receive an exemption from their facilities. That policy will be reassessed by September, but in the meantime, “new healthcare employees will need to comply with the existing vaccination requirements,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.
The county’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate became effective Oct. 1, 2021, more than five months after the shots were made available to all adults in California.
The decision carried broad impact in L.A. County, the most populous in the nation. With more than 100,000 workers on the payroll, it’s Southern California’s largest employer, according to the county Department of Human Resources.
For the most recent yearly period, between April 2022 and March 2023, about 145,000 U.S. residents died from COVID-19, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By comparison, 547,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported between April 2020 and March 2021 and about 423,000 deaths from April 2021 through March 2022. The U.S. COVID-19 death toll of 1.1 million is greater than that of the last severe global pandemic of its kind, the flu pandemic that began in 1918. That pandemic caused an estimated 675,000 deaths nationally.
The Food and Drug Administration plans to allow older and immunocompromised Americans to get a second updated coronavirus booster shot in the near future, an acknowledgment of the virus’s continuing risks to vulnerable people whose immunity might be sagging months after a previous inoculation.
Federal regulators are expected to authorize the additional dose in the next few weeks, according to people familiar with the agency’s planning. Those 65 and older would be able to receive the vaccine at least four months after their previous updated shot. Those with immune deficiencies would also be eligible, and the vaccines would be free of charge.
Regulators are expected to authorize the additional dose without explicitly recommending it for those groups, a stance that emphasizes the discretion of patients and their health providers. Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is expected to sign off on the decision — a customary step in the regulatory process.
Michael Felberbaum, an F.D.A. spokesman, said in a statement that the agency was monitoring data on the virus and would “base any decision on additional updated boosters upon those data.”
More origin evidence (this time from China): From the New York Times: Chinese government scientists on Wednesday published a long-awaited study about a market in the city of Wuhan, acknowledging that animals susceptible to the coronavirus were there around the time the virus emerged. But the scientists also said that it remained unclear how the pandemic began.
The study, published in the journal Nature, focused on swabs taken from surfaces in early 2020 at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a large market where many of the earliest known Covid patients had worked or shopped. The Chinese scientists had posted an early version of their genetic analysis of those samples in February 2022, but at the time downplayed the possibility of animal infections at the market.
The scientists, many of whom are affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also wanted to publish their data in a peer-reviewed journal. And as part of that process, the scientists uploaded more genetic sequence data to a large international database, the administrators of the database said last month.
A few weeks after the data became public, a team of international scientists who had been studying the origins of the pandemic said they stumbled upon the sequences. They found that samples testing positive for the coronavirus contained genetic material belonging to animals, including large amounts that were a match for the raccoon dog, a fluffy mammal sold for fur and meat that was known to be able to spread the coronavirus.
That analysis, the subject of a report posted online in late March, did not prove that a raccoon dog itself was infected or that animals gave the virus to people. But it established that raccoon dogs deposited their genetic signatures in the same place where genetic material from the virus was left.
Many virologists said that scenario was consistent with one in which the virus spilled into people from an illegally traded wild animal at the market.
And:
Chinese officials on Saturday offered a lengthy rebuttal to accusations by the World Health Organization that they had been slow to share data about the possible origins of the coronavirus, blasting some in the organization as political “tools” whose remarks were “intolerable.”
Scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention made the remarks at a news conference after weeks of mounting criticism from the W.H.O.
The W.H.O.’s accusations referred specifically to the recent revelation that Chinese scientists had data on environmental and animal samples collected in Wuhan, the city in central China where the virus first emerged, that they had not shared earlier. On Thursday, a top W.H.O. official said that China’s “lack of data disclosure is simply inexcusable.”
Shen Hongbing, the chief of China’s C.D.C, forcefully denied those charges.
The Economy:
From the New York Times Dealbook blog: Employers in the U.S. added roughly 240,000 jobs in March, according to economists polled by Reuters. Investors worry that a strong reading on jobs — combined with potentially disappointing inflation data due out next week — will force the Fed to raise interest rates at their next meeting, on May 3, in the hope of bringing down soaring prices. Adding to the jitters: The jobs number has come in above analyst expectations in each of the last 11 reports.
Despite the layoffs sweeping the tech and finance sectors, the labor market remains strong. Employers added roughly 4.3 million jobs in the 12 months to February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, bringing the unemployment rate to a 53-year low.
The hot employment market has made the Fed’s job to bring down inflation tougher. A combination of robust hiring and higher wages has put pressure on prices even as other parts of the economy have shown signs of slowing.
The labor market appears to be at an inflection point. The Labor Department’s JOLTS report this week indicated that employers were beginning to slow the pace of hiring. But the quit rate ticked up, an indicator that workers feel confident about leaving a job and finding another.
From the New York Times: Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, who recently rallied fellow bank leaders to the rescue of smaller rivals, devoted plenty of ink to the banking crisis in his annual letter to shareholders on Tuesday.
“As I write this letter, the current crisis is not yet over, and even when it is behind us, there will be repercussions from it for years to come,” Mr. Dimon wrote in the letter, which is followed closely on Wall Street.
In diagnosing the origins of the recent turmoil, which Mr. Dimon said was “nothing like what occurred during the 2008 global financial crisis,” he said crucial risks lurking on banks’ balance sheets were “hiding in plain sight.” Silicon Valley Bank’s corporate clients, for instance, “were controlled by a small number of venture capital companies and moved their deposits in lock step,” he wrote.
Mr. Dimon said it “should not always be about more or less regulation” but should rather be about the right mix of rules, which also take into account factors such as customer concentration, uninsured deposits and limitations to accounting practices that have come to light after the recent bank collapses.
Turning to the broader economy, Mr. Dimon said “jitters” would “clearly cause some tightening of financial conditions as banks and other lenders become more conservative.” Although stricter lending practices may have the same dampening effect on the economy as higher interest rates, for now the economy is in “pretty good” shape, Mr. Dimon said.
“Even if we go into a recession, consumers would enter it in far better shape than during the great financial crisis,” Mr. Dimon wrote.
The chief of the nation’s largest bank also rejected the notion that the travails of smaller lenders has been good for JPMorgan. “While it is true that this bank crisis ‘benefited’ larger banks due to the inflow of deposits they received from smaller institutions, the notion that this meltdown was good for them in any way is absurd,” he said.