What does long Covid look like now?Ī study published this month found that long Covid rates declined once omicron became the dominant variant. Instead, he said, the typical Covid patients hospitalized in Burbank are older and suffering dehydration, loss of appetite, weakness or fatigue. "That’s why the priority should be to vaccinate that particular group of patients with the fall booster," he said.ĭaignault said emergency rooms generally aren’t seeing the shortness of breath, low oxygen rates or viral pneumonia that led some patients to be put on oxygen tubes or ventilators in the past. Older people in particular may have waning immunity if they haven’t been infected or vaccinated recently, Daignault said. Most people hospitalized for Covid since January had not received a bivalent booster, according to the CDC. Hospitalization rates are highest among people ages 75 and up, followed by babies under 6 months and adults ages 65 to 74. is recording around 19,000 Covid hospitalizations per week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The weekly average rose around 80% from early August to the beginning of September. Though cases of BA.2.86 are rising in the U.S., it isn’t among the top variants circulating.īarouch said the new booster shots should be effective against those three strains and others. Together, those two appear to be driving an uptick in Covid infections, though scientists are also watching BA.2.86, a variant with a large number of mutations that looks significantly different from previous versions of omicron. The most prevalent subvariant circulating now is EG.5, followed by a strain called FL.1.5.1. Other doctors think that omicron itself also changed the presentation of Covid symptoms, since some studies have shown that early versions of it weren’t as good as previous variants at infecting the lungs. It’s because the immune responses are higher," Barouch said. That’s not because the variants are less robust. "Overall, the severity of Covid is much lower than it was a year ago and two years ago. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, attributed the mild symptoms that doctors are seeing to immunity from vaccines and previous infections. Michael Daignault, an emergency physician at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California. "Especially since July, when this recent mini-surge started, younger people that have upper respiratory symptoms - cough, runny nose, sore throat, fever and chills - 99% of the time they go home with supportive care," said Dr. Eiting said he's not seeing a lot of diarrhea lately, either - a more common symptom in the past.įor the most part, the doctors said, few patients require hospitalization - even those who show up at emergency rooms - and many recover without needing the antiviral pill Paxlovid or other treatment.
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