{"id":4738,"date":"2023-09-26T20:13:14","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T01:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4738"},"modified":"2023-09-26T20:13:17","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T01:13:17","slug":"what-a-doctor-is-seeing-in-covid-19-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/09\/26\/what-a-doctor-is-seeing-in-covid-19-today\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Doctor Is Seeing in COVID-19 Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/6317170\/covid-19-new-variant-vaccine-essay\/\">Time<\/a> Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have been on the rise since the beginning of July. Then came the identification of the heavily mutated and possibly highly-transmissible\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/6311210\/moderna-covid-vaccine-ba286-variant\/\">BA.2.86\u00a0<\/a>variant by the global surveillance network. Such a variant has the potential to evade our vaccine- and infection-induced antibodies and cause a surge of seasonal hospitalizations. The recommendation by the FDA\u2019s VRBPAC in June that the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fda.gov\/vaccines-blood-biologics\/updated-covid-19-vaccines-use-united-states-beginning-fall-2023\">Fall updated vaccine be composed of an XBB-lineage of the Omicron variant<\/a>\u00a0appeared to be at risk. There was mounting concern we be faced with a similar situation from last year where the virus had already mutated well beyond the BA.4\/5-bivalent vaccines by the time they were rolled out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the landscape of the pandemic\u2014especially the clinical disease caused by SARS-CoV-2\u2014has significantly changed. On the front lines of the emergency department (ED), we are seeing a different virus. This is likely a combination of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/volumes\/72\/wr\/mm7222a3.htm?s_cid=mm7222a3_w\">both high levels of population hybrid immunity<\/a>&nbsp;and evolution of the virus itself to favor infection of the upper airway and cause less severe disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The CDC\u2019s recent decision to universally recommend vaccines for everyone, while falling short of a much-needed targeted recommendation for high-risk groups, paves the way for equity of access and insurance coverage for Americans needing to top up their protection against infection. And recent preliminary studies from multiple labs on BA.2.86 has actually been reassuring.<a href=\"https:\/\/covid.cdc.gov\/covid-data-tracker\/#trends_weeklyhospitaladmissions_select_00\">New hospital admissions<\/a>\u00a0had increased nationally by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/covid.cdc.gov\/covid-data-tracker\/#maps_new-admissions-rate-county\">9% in the first week of September<\/a>\u00a0and have been on an upward trajectory since the beginning of July driven by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/covid.cdc.gov\/covid-data-tracker\/#variant-proportions\">EG.5, FL.1.5.1, and the XBB subvariants<\/a>. At 16,000 current hospitalizations, this is still far below the Omicron peak of 145,000 hospitalizations that overwhelmed our health care system in January 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/6317170\/covid-19-new-variant-vaccine-essay\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"Fs lOXH\"><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have been on the rise since the beginning of July. Then came the identification of the heavily mutated and possibly highly-transmissible\u00a0BA.2.86\u00a0variant by the global surveillance network. Such a variant has the potential to evade our vaccine- and infection-induced antibodies and cause a surge of seasonal hospitalizations. The recommendation by the FDA\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4739,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions\/4739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}