Cases of other respiratory illnesses, including flu and RSV, are also on the rise.
Several key COVID-19 trends that authorities track are now accelerating around the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. It's the first major nationwide uptick in the spread of the virus seen in months.
The largest increases are in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic, the agency said in its weekly report updated Friday, though virtually all regions of the country are now seeing accelerations.
Data reported by the agency from emergency rooms and wastewater sampling have tracked some of the steepest increases so far this season in the region spanning Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Rates of infections of nursing home residents across this Midwestern region have also soared in recent weeks, higher than in most other parts of the country, approaching levels not seen since the peak of last winter's COVID-19 wave.
My boss got the new booster and still got COVID over Thanksgiving. She likes to work while she's sick (usually from home) and it still knocked her on her butt to the point where she actually only worked a few minutes each day.
Flu is a dangerous virus, I wouldn't say we've "adapted to it." Viruses evolve much quicker than humans. They go through countless generations in the time we have one. Flu in addition has an interesting genetic mechanism for change most other viruses don't have, where it can exchange entire large sections of its genome at once with other distinct flu viruses, very quickly creating an entirely new strain. This is one of the reasons we're constantly updating the vaccine.
I'm the US, it hospitalizes half a million or so a year and kills between 10,000-50,000 a year, comparable to all people who die from gun violence in a year in the US including suicide. We're always only one unlucky recombination event away from another 1918 flu pandemic, and the more infected people and the more it spreads the more chances for that to happen.
Sorry, I don't know if this was your intention, I just have a pet peeve for flu getting written off as no big deal. It's a huge deal and we should be continuing to work on vaccine and treatment improvements. Oddly our anti viral treatments for covid are probably more effective than anti viral flu treatments at this pont, if people actually take them.
I also cannot believe that after this recent experience governments around the world aren't pouring even more investment into pandemic monitoring and response. I mean I can, we're notoriously short sighted, but seems governments and people in general are all pretending the pandemic never happened and can never happen again.
Have they updated any of the vaccines recently? I wonder if that could be contributing o increased spread. Talked to a lady who just got Covid after getting her eighth shot.
I don't believe the most recent vaccine released is fully up to date with the most recent ascendant variants. Unfortunately, even with the increased speed of conception and production that mRNA vaccines allow, large-scale viral pathogens still manage to mutate at a faster rate.
If the rate of spread was reduced through other measures than just vaccinations, we'd have a better capability to create up to date versions in time to be relevant.
Overall people actually need to get the booster to build immunity. And just because you're vaccinated doesn't mean you won't get sick at all. That's not how this works.
That's not how mRNA vaccines work. In fact, most modern vaccines don't work that way. You're referring to inoculation which is distinct from vaccination.
An mRNA vaccine works like a special set of instructions that tells your body how to make a pretend piece of a germ, but without using any real germ parts. Your body makes, then sees this pretend piece and learns how to protect you against the real germ. It's like teaching your body to recognize and fight the germ without ever having to meet it for real.
Remember the COVID spike proteins? That's what the vaccine is teaching your body about, not any actual viruses.
NovaVax has been so frustrating for me! Each shot is always approved like a month after the equivalent Pfizer/Moderna, sometimes multiple months. And by the time it's finally approved, it's always been past the window in which I needed to get vaccinated.
I finally managed to get it this year - but only because I was sick with parainfluenza and everything got pushed back two weeks. If that hadn't happened, I would've had to go with Moderna again.