Another Covid 19 wave / waves will hit globally; consequences for Ukraine, for the EU, America, Russia , China, and beyond raised
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/health/omicron-ba-5-variant-immunity-severity/index.html
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Why the Omicron offshoot BA.5 is a big deal
By Brenda Goodman, CNN
Updated 10:52 AM ET, Thu July 14, 2022
(CNN)Once again, Covid-19 seems to be everywhere. If you feel caught off-guard, you aren't alone.
After the Omicron tidal wave washed over the United States in January and the smaller rise in cases in the spring caused by the BA.2 subvariant, it might have seemed like the coronavirus could be ignored for a while. After all, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in December that?nearly all Americans?had been vaccinated or have antibodies from a past infection. Surely all that immunity bought some breathing room.
But suddenly, many people who had recovered from Covid-19 as recently as March or April found themselves exhausted, coughing and staring at two red lines on a rapid test. How could this be happening again -- and so soon?
Officials urge Americans over 50 to get Covid-19 booster right away, but younger adults have to wait
The culprit this time is yet another Omicron offshoot, BA.5. It has three key mutations in its spike protein that make it both better at infecting our cells and more adept at slipping past our immune defenses.
In just over two months, BA.5 outcompeted its predecessors to become the dominant cause of Covid-19 in the United States. Last week, this subvariant caused almost 2 out of every 3 new Covid-19 infections in this country, according to the?latest data?from the CDC.
Lab studies of antibodies from the blood of people who've been vaccinated or recovered from recent Covid-19 infections have looked at how well they stand up to BA.5, and this subvariant can outmaneuver them. So people who've had Covid as recently as winter or even spring may again be vulnerable to the virus.
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"We do not know about the clinical severity of BA.4 and BA.5 in comparison to our other Omicron subvariants," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing Tuesday. "But we do know it to be more transmissible and more immune-evading. People with prior infection, even with BA.1 and BA.2, are likely still at risk for BA.4 or BA.5."
A 'full-on' wave
The result is that we're getting sick in droves. As Americans have switched to more rapid at-home tests, official case counts -- currently hovering around 110,000 new infections a day -- reflect just a fraction of the true disease burden.
"We estimate that for every reported case there are 7 unreported," Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, wrote in an email.
Other experts think the wave could be as much as 10 times higher than what's being reported now.
"We're looking at probably close to a million new cases a day," Dr. Peter Hotez said Monday on CNN. "This is a full-on BA.5 wave that we're experiencing this summer. It's actually looking worse in the Southern states, just like 2020, just like 2021," said Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
That puts us in the range of cases reported during the first Omicron wave, in January. Remember when it seemed like everyone everywhere got sick at the same time? That's the situation in the United States again.
It may not seem like a very big deal, because vaccines and better treatments have dramatically cut the risk of death from Covid-19. Still, about 300 to 350 people are dying on average each day from Covid-19, enough to fill a large passenger jet.
"That is unacceptable. It's too high," Dr. Ashish Jha, coordinator for the White House Covid-19 Response Team, said at Tuesday's briefing.
Daily hospitalizations are also climbing in the United States. The fraction of patients needing intensive care is up by about 23% over the past two weeks. And other countries are experiencing BA.5 waves, too.
"I am concerned that cases of Covid-19 continue to rise, putting further pressure on stretched health systems and health workers. I am also concerned about the increasing trend of deaths," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, at a news briefing Tuesday after the agency's decision to maintain its emergency declaration for Covid-19.
The pandemic, he said, is "nowhere near over."
What's at stake with continued spread
There are also more insidious health risks to consider. A recent preprint study that compared the health of people who'd been infected one or more times with Covid-19 found that the risk of new and sometimes lasting health problems rose with each subsequent infection, suggesting that reinfections are not necessarily benign.
Although vaccination reduces the risk of getting long Covid, a certain percentage of people have lasting symptoms after a breakthrough infection.
That's another reason why high numbers of Covid-19 cases are a big deal: Because the virus is still spreading wildly, it has every opportunity to mutate to make even fitter and more infectious versions of itself. It's doing this faster than we can change our vaccines, leaving us stuck in the Covid-rinse-repeat period of the pandemic.
On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pleaded with Americans to use all available tools to stop the spread of the virus, including masking, ventilation and social distancing.
"We need to keep the levels of virus to the lowest possible level, and that is our best defense. If a virus is not very robustly replicating and spreading, it gives it less of a chance of a mutation, which gives it less of a chance of the evolving of another variant," Fauci said in a news briefing.
In fact, this is already happening.
Meet BA.2.75
Even as the US comes to terms with BA.5, variant hunters around the world are closely watching another Omicron descendant, BA.2.75. It's been detected in about 10 countries, including the United States, and seems to be growing quickly in India.
BA.2.75 has nine changes in its spike region that distinguish it from BA.2 and about 11 changes compared with BA.5, according to Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London.
Several of the mutations in BA.2.75 are in a region of the spike protein known to be an important place for antibodies to bind to stop the virus, said Ulrich Elling, a scientist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences who monitors coronavirus variants for that country.
There's little information to go on: It's still not known, for example, how BA.2.75 may compete against BA.5 or whether it causes more severe illness. But experts say it has all the hallmarks of a variant that could go global.
"It spread to many different countries already, so we know that it has some sort of staying power," said Shishi Luo, associate director of bioinformatics and infectious disease for Helix Labs, which decodes virus samples for the CDC and other clients.
Because of that, and because of changes in the region of the virus that our antibodies look for to shut it down, "we sort of know ahead of time that this one will cause some trouble," Luo said.
Based on what we know now, she expects that this subvariant could drive a fall Covid-19 wave in the United States.
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In the meantime, Jha said, people should get boosters that are available to them to keep their immunity as strong as possible. US health officials emphasized that people who are boosted now will still be able to get an updated shot this fall that includes the BA.4 and BA.5 strains.
Jha specifically urged Americans who are 50 and older, "if you've not gotten a vaccine shot this year, go get one now. It could save your life," he said.
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https://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/impact-war-dynamics-covid-19-ukraine
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Impact of war on the dynamics of COVID-19 in Ukraine
Format
?Analysis??SourceBMJ??Posted17 Apr 2022??Originally published15 Apr 2022??OriginView original
Attachments
Dmytro Chumachenko, Tetyana Chumachenko
Correspondence to Dr Dmytro Chumachenko; [email protected]
On 24 February 2022, Russia unreasonably attacked Ukraine. The current estimated number of victims in Ukraine is 18 million. In addition to the destruction and humanitarian crisis caused by the war, Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine came at the peak of the wave of COVID-19 caused by the Omicron strain. The calculated predictive incidence of COVID-19 in Ukraine at the beginning of March, modelled by our group as part of the National Research Foundation of Ukraine project 2020.02/0404, was about 30 000 new cases daily. War significantly exacerbates the situation with COVID-19 in Ukraine, which is confirmed by our analysis of six key factors in the spread of infection.
Identification of cases: sick people in the occupied territories and territories where hostilities are taking place do not have the opportunity to seek medical help because medical facilities have been destroyed, and medical personnel are in short supply. Consultations with family doctors are carried out online.
Diagnostics: diagnosis is difficult due to hostilities. In the territories occupied by Russian troops, medical facilities practically do not work, there is no laboratory diagnostics, and PCR and rapid tests are not done. In the east and south of Ukraine, in the territories controlled by Ukraine, including cities with more than 1 million people, such as Kyiv and Kharkiv, 2.5%–3% of the capacity of laboratories providing COVID-19 diagnostic services is operating. In this way, only severe cases requiring hospitalisation are diagnosed.
Registration: throughout Ukraine, the electronic system for recording COVID-19 incidence is limited, and data are transmitted by telephone from places where there is connection. This leads to a significant decrease in reported cases of COVID-19 compared with real ones. Thus, the Worldometers dashboard shows the incidence of 5000 cases per day, which is six times less than predicted. The Johns Hopkins University dashboard does not show data for Ukraine at all. Thus, it can be concluded that only severe cases of COVID-19 requiring hospitalisation are registered.
Treatment: hospitalisation of seriously ill patients is severely limited due to the overcrowding of hospitals with wounded military and civilians. The number of specific beds has been drastically reduced due to reprofiling to provide emergency medical care to the wounded. This results in reduced access to oxygen. Active hostilities and occupation make it impossible to deliver medicines to such territories. The sharp increase in fatal cases makes it impossible to diagnose COVID-19 after death, and autopsies are not performed. Among the internally displaced population, the provision of medical care is complex because attached family doctors remain in other territories of Ukraine. Contacting a doctor without a declaration is possible only through ambulances, which accept applications only in severe cases requiring hospitalisation.
Antiepidemic measures: people in the territories not controlled by Ukraine and territories with active hostilities are forced to hide from artillery and airstrikes in bomb shelters, basements and subways. These places are characterised by high population density, lack of social distancing, lack of mask regime, low ventilation, which increases the intensity of the circulation of the virus. The mask regime is not observed in connection with the introduction of martial law. It is impossible to trace, test and isolate contact individuals in military conditions, and it is impossible to identify epidemic chains. In the context of hostilities, self-isolation is impossible, and people with symptoms continue to infect others. An essential factor in increasing the spread of the virus is the high population density during the evacuation, both in trains and at stations. At the same time, most of the evacuees are children. In Ukraine, children under 12 years of age were not vaccinated, and vaccination of children from 12 years of age began on 13 January 2022, so the vaccination coverage of children is low.
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Prevention: the vaccine campaign against COVID-19 in Ukraine began on 24 February 2021, exactly 1 year before the war. Only 36.93% of the population were vaccinated with two doses. Such a low level was associated, among other things, with an active antivaccination information campaign conducted by Russia. The population who received two vaccine doses on the schedule should receive a booster dose. However, in the uncontrolled territories of Ukraine and in the territories where active hostilities are taking place, vaccination has been completely stopped. In Western Ukraine, the vaccination campaign continues but with much lower throughput. This is due to the high burden on medical institutions caused by a large number of internally displaced people (6.7 million1) as well as the fact that part of the medical staff was evacuated to neighbouring countries. In connection with the introduction of martial law throughout Ukraine, mandatory vaccination of special categories of citizens (teachers, civil servants, etc) has been cancelled. Vaccination history is not controlled.
The chaos of war and accompanying psychological factors have forced the problem of COVID-19 out of the minds of people in Ukraine. Military operations and the humanitarian aspects force people to live in unsanitary conditions without observing COVID-19 prevention measures. The pandemic is no longer the top priority of Ukraine’s healthcare system. This is an essential factor in increasing the dynamics of the spread of coronavirus infection in the country. The war in Ukraine is a critical factor in the new outbreak of COVID-19. This only exacerbates the humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine caused by Russia’s military intervention.
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And Russia
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102935/coronavirus-cases-by-region-in-russia/
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) confirmed cases, new cases, recoveries, and deaths in Russia as of July 8, 2022, by federal subject
Search:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_in_Russia
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The?COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Russia?is an ongoing mass?immunization?campaign against?severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2?(SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes?coronavirus disease 2019?(COVID-19), in response to the?ongoing pandemic in the country. Russia became the first country to begin a?mass COVID-19 vaccination programme?on 5 December 2020,[2]?starting with primarily doctors, medical workers and teachers. In January 2021, this was extended to the entire population.[5][6]
As of 21 June 2022, 81.5 million people have received at least one dose, with 74.3 million people fully vaccinated.[3][7][4]
Contents
Background[edit]
On 11 August 2020, President Putin said in a meeting that the?Sputnik V?vaccine (registered as Gam-COVID-Vac) developed by the?Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology?was the first vaccine against the coronavirus to be registered. He said that one of his daughters was vaccinated.[8]?The previous day, the Association of Clinical Research Organisations, a union of pharmaceutical companies in Russia, urged the head of the Ministry of Health to delay the registration due to incomplete testing.[9]?The head of the?Russian Direct Investment Fund?(RDIF) stated that 20 countries had requested in total 1 billion doses of the vaccine, nicknamed Sputnik V.[10]?On August 20 registration was called "conditional" with final registration depends on results of Phase 3 trial,[11]?such registration is limited and allowed by Decree 441 for medicines in emergency situations.[12]
On 8 September 2020, the health ministry's press service said that the first batches of the vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Centre had entered civilian circulation.[13]
On 14 October 2020, President?Vladimir Putin?announced that the?EpiVacCorona?vaccine was approved.[14]?Registration is limited ("on conditions") and regulated by Decree 441 for emergency use.[15][16]
On 20 February 2021, President?Vladimir Putin?announced that the?CoviVac?vaccine was approved.[17]?Registration is limited ("on conditions") too and regulated by Decree 441 for emergency situation.[15][16]
On 6 May 2021,?Sputnik Light?vaccine was approved.[18]
Vaccines on order[edit]
VaccineEmergency Use Approval[16]DeploymentFinal ApprovalSputnik V?10 August 2020[19]?27 November 2020[20]?4 February 2022EpiVacCorona?14 October 2020[14]?18 January 2021[21]?NoCoviVac?20 February 2021[17]?25 March 2021[22]?NoSputnik Light?6 May 2021[18]?Not yet?No
History[edit]
This article needs to be?updated.?Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.?(December 2021)
December 2020[edit]
Mobile vaccination point near the shopping center.?Tyumen, May 2021.
On 2 December 2020, President Putin ordered the start of mass vaccination of the population for the next week, starting with doctors, medical workers and teachers.[5]?On 5 December, vaccinations began in Moscow.[23]
On 10 December 2020,?Deputy Prime Minister?Tatyana Golikova?announced that approximately 6.9?million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine will enter civilian circulation in Russia before the end of February 2021.[24]?On December 15, the Ministry of Health announced the start of mass vaccination in all regions.[25]
January 2021[edit]
On 6 January 2021, the?RDIF?announced that 1 million people had been vaccinated with the Sputnik V vaccine. On January 10, 2021, the RDIF stated that over 1.5 million people had been vaccinated.[26]
February 2021[edit]
By 17 February 2021, 2.2 million people had received the first dose of the Sputnik V vaccine and another 1.7 million people had received both doses.[27]
March 2021[edit]
By 15 March 2021, over 3.5 million people had received both doses of the Sputnik V vaccine, according to the RDIF.[28]
April 2021[edit]
On 9 April 2021, Prime Minister?Mikhail Mishustin?said that less than half of those vaccinated were over the age of 60.[29]
On 14 April 2021, Moscow Mayor?Sergei Sobyanin?said that around 820,000 Muscovites had been fully vaccinated, out of a population of 12 million. Sobyanin also said that Moscow was "fully supplied" with vaccines and urged Muscovites to get vaccinated. By 14 April, an estimated 9.5 million Russians had received at least one vaccine dose, with around 5.6 million having received both doses.[30]
On 25 April 2021, Sobyanin announced that those over the age of 60 who get vaccinated would be eligible to receive a gift card worth 1,000 rubles to spend in shops, raised through contributions from businesses, in an effort to incentivize the vaccination campaign.[31][32]
On 26 April 2021, 11.9 million people overall had received at least a first dose of a vaccine, representing 10% of the adult population.[32]
May 2021[edit]
On 21 May 2021, Mayor of Moscow Sobyanin decried low demand for vaccines, despite free and easy access to them since January. In a meeting, he said: "It's a shame that we have not had any restrictions on vaccinations for six months and we were the first in the world to launch a mass vaccination campaign... Unfortunately, we still have 9,000 Muscovites in hospitals with severe cases of coronavirus... People are still dying, yet don't want to get vaccinated". Sobyanin also stated that the percentage of people vaccinated in Moscow was less than in any other European city.[33][34]
June 2021[edit]
On 16 June 2021,?Sobyanin?announced that Moscow would introduce mandatory vaccinations for service workers in the city, following a surge in cases in the city. Business operating in service sectors would be required to have at least 60% of their workforce vaccinated with a first dose by 15 July, with both doses by 15 August.[35]
On 22 June 2021, Sobyanin announced that, beginning 28 June, restaurants, bars and cafes in Moscow would be restricted to those who can show they have been vaccinated, had the virus confirmed within the last six months, or tested negative in the last three days.[36]?By 22 June, compulsory vaccinations were also decided in a number of other regions aside from Moscow and?Moscow Oblast, including the city of?St. Petersburg, the?Sakha Republic, the?Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the?Leningrad,?Tula,?Kemerovo,?Sakhalin?and?Tver?oblasts, and?Krasnodar Krai. Kremlin spokesman?Dmitry Peskov?also stated that discrimination against the unvaccinated was inevitable.[37]
July 2021[edit]
By 2 July 2021, compulsory vaccinations were introduced in a total of 24 federal subjects, with compulsory vaccinations planned to be introduced in?Crimea?and?Murmansk Oblast.[38]
Public opinion[edit]
Public scepticism of being vaccinated remains high.[30]?A poll by the?Levada Center?released on 1 March 2021 found that 62% of Russian respondents did not want to receive the country's Sputnik V vaccine, with younger respondents being more reluctant.[39]?Another poll by the Levada Center released on 12 May found that 62% of Russian respondents were not ready to get vaccinated with Sputnik V, with 75% of respondents aged 18–24 years old not ready compared to 47% for those over 55 years of age.[40]?A survey by the SuperJob.ru job portal published on 16 May found that 42% of Russian respondents would not get vaccinated under any circumstances.[41]?Public scepticism continues to exist despite Russian and Western sources detailing the positive efficacy of the vaccine.[42]?A study in 2017 indicated that anti-vaccine views had been present in Russia prior to the pandemic, which only increased after the pandemic emerged.
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https://www.statista.com/statistics/1196071/covid-19-vaccination-rate-in-europe-by-country/
?As of June 14, 2022, Malta had the highest COVID-19 vaccination rate in Europe having administered 253.48 doses per 100 people in the country, while Portugal had administered 237.07 doses per 100. The UK was the first country in Europe to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for widespread use and began inoculations on December 8, 2020, and so far have administered 217.99 doses per 100. At the latest data, Italy had carried out 228.62 doses of vaccines per 100 population. Russia became the first country in the world to authorize a vaccine - named?Sputnik V?- for use in the fight against COVID-19 in August 2020. As of June 14, 2022, Russia had administered 114.64 doses per 100 people in the country.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/14/business/china-economy-slows.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20220714&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta®i_id=69131356&segment_id=98552&user_id=bdd35c16c6f97cc9593ec0cb87503b97
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China’s Economic Growth Slows as Covid Policy Takes Toll
The humming economy of last year has been replaced by high unemployment, a housing market in crisis and sluggish consumer spending.
July 14, 2022,?10:18 p.m. ET
The Chinese economy grew this spring at its slowest rate since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, putting into sharp relief the impact of a Covid-19 policy that continues to prompt widespread lockdowns and mass quarantines, bringing some business activity to a halt.
The economy expanded 0.4 percent from a year earlier in the second quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics reported on Friday. That was the lowest pace of growth since the first three months of 2020, when China effectively shut down to fight the coronavirus, its economy shrinking for the first time in 28 years.
That 2020 downturn was short-lived.
While the world dealt with the crushing effects of the pandemic, the Chinese economy?recovered almost immediately, aided by virus restrictions that kept infections and deaths to a minimum. The current outlook, though, is not as promising. Even historically reliable indicators, such as property and manufacturing, have become far less dependable.
The?most recent economic malaise?hit in April and May, when Shanghai, China’s largest city, went into lockdown for nearly two months and the impact rippled through the economy. Office buildings were closed, and workers were ordered to remain at home. Throughout China, hundreds of millions of consumers were shut in — leaving stores, restaurants and service providers to carry on without customers.
Delays at the port in Shanghai, one of the busiest in the world, took an already congested supply chain and brought it to a standstill. The few factories that managed to stay open did so by having workers live and sleep on-site to prevent further spread of the virus.
Retail sales, an indicator of how much consumers are spending, fell 4.6 percent in the three months to June from a year earlier, the government said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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What we can summarize
A. Vaccine skepticism is very marked in Russia. Most of the population has low trust in the official Covid 19 vaccine,. The figure of 74.3 million vaccines fully vaccinated people out of 143 million Russian Federation citizens needs to be taken with skepticism
As of 21 June 2022, 81.5 million people have received at least one dose, with 74.3 million people fully vaccinated
Meanwhile the Hospitals are SWAMPED
B. In the USA in reality, 700, 000 to a million people a day getting sick from Omicron 5 with at least 354 to 400 deaths per day, IN THE summer points to a blow out in the fall
C. In the EU
?As of June 14, 2022, Malta had the highest COVID-19 vaccination rate in Europe having administered 253.48 doses per 100 people in the country, while Portugal had administered 237.07 doses per 100. The UK was the first country in Europe to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for widespread use and began inoculations on December 8, 2020, and so far have administered 217.99 doses per 100. At the latest data, Italy had carried out 228.62 doses of vaccines per 100 population. Russia became the first country in the world to authorize a vaccine - named?Sputnik V?- for use in the fight against COVID-19 in August 2020. As of June 14, 2022, Russia had administered 114.64 doses per 100 people in the country.
No one knows if the vaccines available will be effective against COVID 19 variants in the fall. The figures for vaccination look impressive, but the mutation rate of COVID 19 is impressive, too
D. In Ukraine, in 2021, only 36 % of the population was vaccinated. The widespread fighting in the south likely will mean that in the end of 2022 Ukraine, due to no fault of its own will be a hothouse for new Covid 19 infections and variants
E. In China, Zero covid 19 tolerance figures have dinged the Official economy figures, meaning that growth is for 2022 sup par. While there still maybe positive grown, unlike the almost certainty of Covid 19 induced recessions in the USA, EU, Ukraine, and Russia, which will lead to widespread malaise in affected regions.
In a word, the new variants of COVID 19 will spur subpar economic growth globally, increase instability and wreck the networks of trade used for globalization
Andrew Beckwith, PhD