Can Long Haulers Get Covid Again
Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American's senior wellness editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman take hold of you lot up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between.
You can listen to all by episodes here.
Josh Fischman: Hi, and welcome to COVID, Quickly, a Scientific American podcast series.
This is your fast-rails update on the COVID pandemic. We bring you up to speed on the science backside the most urgent questions most the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and assist you sympathise what it really means.
I'1000 Josh Fischman, Scientific American's senior health editor. Tanya Lewis, normally here with me, has the twenty-four hour period off.
Today the giant Omicron wave looks similar information technology may have peaked in the U.S. We'll look at its unusual furnishings on two groups: children and people with long-haul COVID. And we'll talk about a dramatic worldwide vaccine milestone.
Omicron cases look like they are starting to drop in many U.South. states. But they're coming downward from staggering heights. By mid-February, well-nigh xl percentage of the U.S. population will be infected by the variant. That'due south an approximate from Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Middle in Seattle, who models infection rates.
And that's inverse i important feature of the pandemic: Kids getting ill. With earlier variants, very few children got seriously ill. But recently an average of about 800 children have been admitted to the hospital with COVID every mean solar day. For kids under 5, the hospitalization rates jumped to two to four times that of previous waves.
What's going on? Has the virus mutated to become worse for kids? Probably not, scientists say. What we're seeing is a consequence of the overall vast number of Omicron infections.
In that location's a saying: a small fraction of a large number is still a large number. And that seems to be what's going on with kids and COVID. A small portion of infected kids have always gotten seriously ill. Now we have a lot more infected kids. Nigh a meg in the first two weeks of January lone. So even if the portion of infections that need a trip to the infirmary stays the same, the absolute number is going to jump upward.
The good news is that Omicron really seems less severe than the earlier variant, Delta. Rong Xu, a data scientist at Case Western Reserve University, looked at health records of 80,000 kids and found the Omicron hospitalization rate was one percent. With Delta it was higher, at three percent. But again, with a lot more than infected kids, that i pct turns into a bigger actual number.
One thing almost Omicron that may make it harder on kids is where this variant likes to hang out and multiply. Earlier versions of the virus went deep into the lungs. This one, however, seems to like the airway above the lungs, including the throat. Kids' airways are tinier, then its easier for them to become chock-full with mucus and inflamed with infection.
That leads to weather condition similar croup, which includes a wracking, barking coughing that alarms parents. Just over again some good news: croup symptoms usually get away in virtually three days. Ibuprofen can reduce the pain and swelling. Steroids assistance in more serious cases. It's a familiar illness and doctors know how to care for it. Call one if your kid is having trouble breathing.
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The other group of people that's probably going to be striking by Omicron'due south huge numbers are long haulers, or people with what'southward called long COVID. After their initial infection, these people struggle for months with a cluster of disabling symptoms. The list includes deep fatigue, shortness of breath, body pain, and headaches. Information technology can be impossible to piece of work or take care of your children, hard to melt and practise other things that are basic parts of daily life.
Doctors now estimate that fourteen to 30 per centum of people who get the coronavirus endure from this syndrome.
And as with kids and Omicron, the percent isn't as of import as the bodily number. Because the wildly contagious variant has infected tens of millions of people, if but a small fraction of those who catch it develop long COVID, millions could be burdened with symptoms for months, if not years.
And simply considering many Omicron cases are mild doesn't mean such people are allowed from lingering symptoms. David Putrino, a rehabilitation medicine specialist at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, told my colleague Melinda Wenner Moyer that people with mild illness do become on to get long COVID. A study in the U.G institute that ongoing health problems were just weakly linked to severity of illness.
One thing that does reduce the frequency of long COVID is vaccination. Some other U.K study showed that if people were fully vaccinated, and got a second, breakthrough infection, only five percent had symptoms later a month. But eleven percent of unvaccinated people did have serious symptoms.
In the U.Due south. a study establish vaccinated people were seven to x times less likely to study long COVID issues months later their initial diagnosis than were non-vaccinated people.
So simply similar with acute COVID, shots assist eliminate the risk of a long haul.
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Beyond the globe, at that place now have been ten billion COVID vaccine shots given out, a major milestone this month. There are xx dissimilar kinds of vaccines, and four.eight billion people take received at to the lowest degree one dose. That is 60 percent of the population on our planet. That's in merely over a year, an unprecedented rollout of medicine.
They accept non quite been the shots heard around the earth, however. Most of them accept gone to people in richer countries. In poor countries, simply 5.v. percent of people have received a full ii-dose regimen. In the entire continent of Africa, more than 80 percent of the people take not gotten even one dose, according to a news story in Nature mag.
Non only does that inequality put people in low-income countries at much higher risk of disease, it likewise raises the take a chance of new coronavirus variants evolving in these areas. And as the past 2 years have taught us, variants don't stay at abode.
The mode out of the pandemic is ameliorate global distribution. We're getting there–ten billion doses is a big number–simply we need to become in that location fifty-fifty faster.
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Now yous're up to speed. Thanks for joining us. Our testify is produced by the inimitable Jeff DelViscio.
Come back in two weeks for the next episode of COVID, Quickly! Stay safe and check out SciAm.com for updated and in-depth COVID news.
[The above is a transcript of this podcast.]
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Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/more-kids-get-covid-long-haulers-and-a-vaccine-milestone-covid-quickly-episode-23/
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