So, the danger is not just that COVID-19 will make a person sick or cause long-COVID, but that every new case is a potential birthplace for a new threat. Keep in mind that every person who gets infected with COVID-19 becomes a host, a potential incubator for the virus to morph again. The newest variant has gained the unofficial name “Centaurus,” after a Twitter user got the notion that the endless string variants that contain numbers and not a name are not being taken seriously enough. states, including Washington, California, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin. The variant has shown up in 15 countries and is on the move. But already, the WHO is tracking what could be the next problem: BA.2.75. We barely understand BA.5 and now BA.2.75 is on the wayĪ coronavirus variant called BA.5 is now the dominant vaccine-escaping COVID-19 variant to infect people in America. government was failing to address persistent problems worsened by COVID, including ambulances lining up outside hospitals too overloaded to accept new patients. Kamran Abbasi, of the BMJ and Alastair McLellan of the Health Service Journal wrote in a joint editorial that the U.K. “This forecast presents a huge challenge to the health workforce in country after country, already under enormous pressure dealing with unrelenting crises since 2020.”Įarlier this week, editors of two British medical journals said the country’s National Health Service has never before had so many parts of the system so close to collapsing. “With rising cases, we’re also seeing a rise in hospitalizations, which are only set to increase further in the autumn and winter months,” Kluge said. He said super-infectious relatives of the omicron variant were driving new waves of disease across the continent and that repeat infections could potentially lead to long COVID. Hans Kluge, described COVID-19 as “a nasty and potentially deadly illness” that people should not underestimate. Look at these increases from the WHO’s COVID-19 dashboard: The World Health Organization is warning that the newest variants of omicron are “super infectious” and that COVID-19 hospitalizations, which have doubled across Europe in the last few weeks, will grow worse soon. WHO warns of COVID hospitalizations rising now, worse to come in a few months It tells the nightmare story of 1,200 passengers and 600 crew stuck on the MS Zaandam when COVID-19 spread through the ship like wildfire during the first weeks of the pandemic’s rage. The CDC’s decision to take down the cruise ship monitoring page also comes just as a new book called “Cabin Fever” by Michael Smith and Jonathan Franklin goes public. But, of course, a key difference is that people don’t live in concert halls for days and go home if they notice sick or reckless people around them. Earlier this year, the CDC made the reporting program voluntary. The cruise industry argued that the CDC kept ships under scrutiny that far exceeded any monitoring for concert halls, hotels or convention centers. With no pesky COVID-19 data to plant doubts in people’s minds, cruise ship stocks rose fast on Tuesday. I’ve been extracting the data and decided to publish it here: /SNDYX4v87G They updated the data one last time last night. Yesterday, the CDC ended its opt-in “COVID-19 Program for Cruise Ships” that tracked COVID-19 tests and cases. I link to his Twitter post and his exhaustive charts with one caveat: Even the highest COVID-19 numbers on the ships are still not as high as you will find in some counties and countries. Cruise lines have varied requirements for children.Īndy Bloch, who is a master at turning data into charts, posted this. The CDC website says the now-closed system “depended upon each cruise line having the same COVID-19 screening testing standards, which may now vary among cruise lines.”ĬDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund emailed an explanation to The Washington Post:ĬDC has determined that the cruise industry has access to the necessary tools (e.g., cruise-specific recommendations and guidance, vaccinations, testing instruments, treatment modalities, and non-pharmaceutical interventions) to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 on board.Ĭruise lines generally require adult passengers to be vaccinated and provide a recent negative COVID-19 test before boarding. Instead, the CDC says, passengers “have the option of contacting their cruise line directly regarding outbreaks occurring on board their ship.” In other words, the CDC will still have the data that could allow the public to see the COVID-19 levels on each ship, but it is up to you now to call the cruise line and ask for it. Cruise lines will report COVID-19 data to the CDC, but the CDC won’t pass that information along to you.
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