Courtesy Picture / Group Labs
A lady swabs her nostril at a COVID-19 testing website in San Antonio whereas the pandemic was nonetheless raging.
COVID-19 instances are rising in Bexar County amid claims by conspiracy theorists that one other lockdown is not far off. Nonetheless, a high infectious illness physician mentioned fears over the most recent variant are largely overblown.
“Individuals like daring predictions as a result of it will get consideration,” College Well being infectious illness skilled Dr. Jason Bowling informed the Present. “However I feel we’ve additionally seen that most individuals who make daring predictions are simply as usually unsuitable as they’re appropriate.”
Regardless of the rising variety of instances and the looks of the extremely mutated BA.2.86 variant, Bowling mentioned instances and hospitalizations at College Well being and in Bexar County are nowhere close to the numbers recorded this previous winter or final summer time.
Metro Well being recorded 1,965 new instances of COVID-19 for the week ended Monday, Aug. 21. That’s 353 extra instances than the week prior and a 142% improve since instances first began rising once more in Bexar County on June 27.
“The vast majority of the individuals world wide have some baseline immunity, so we’re in a greater place than when it first emerged at first of the pandemic,” Bowling mentioned.
COVID is again within the information as a result of discovery of the brand new BA.2.86 variant, which Bowling mentioned is exclusive as a result of it’s extremely mutated, having about 36 variations within the spike protein. That would render present vaccines and boosters much less efficient.
Even so, only some instances of the brand new variant have been reported globally, together with one lone case in Michigan. And regardless of its mutation, Bowling mentioned BA.2.86 does not seem to trigger extra extreme sickness than the Omicron variants, which at the moment dominate the U.S. case depend.
“There’s no signal within the few instances to date that there’s been any change within the medical severity of the sickness,” he added. “The large query with it actually is whether or not or not it’s going to have the ability to transmit sufficient to compete with the opposite circulating strains, that are in circulation at a lot greater numbers.”
New single-dose COVID-19 boosters from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax ought to obtain FDA approval by late September, in keeping with Bowling. The brand new photographs are anticipated to be extensively accessible by early October.
Whereas Bowling mentioned the concept of the present case improve driving new lockdowns is much fetched, he added that those that are immunocompromised or are over 65 ought to consider whether or not it’s of their greatest pursuits to put on masks in public locations.
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