Covid-19 Live Updates: Omicron Detected In 17 U.S. States And More Cases Likely, CDC Says – The Washington Post

The omicron variant has been identified in two coronavirus cases in a Hong Kong quarantine hotel where scientists believe the virus spread through the air in a hallway.

Two travelers, one who had arrived from South Africa and one from Canada, were staying across the hall from each other in separate rooms. Neither person left his room during the quarantine, and no items were shared between the travelers, according to the study by scientists at the University of Hong Kong published Friday in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

The lack of contact between the travelers, confirmed by a review of surveillance camera footage, suggested that “airborne transmission” in the hallway was the most likely way the virus spread between the two people, the study said.

Two hippos in Belgium that vets noticed were “expelling snot” have been placed in quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus, the Antwerp zoo said, in what appears to be the first known case of covid-19 among the species.

It remains unclear how hippopotamuses Imani, 14, and Hermien, 41, contracted the virus, but the pair appear to be doing well and have no symptoms other than their runny, sticky noses.

“To my knowledge, this is the first time in this species,” the zoo’s vet, Francis Vercammen, said, according to Reuters. “Worldwide, this virus has been reported mainly in great apes and felines.”

Microbiologist Pei-Yong Shi has studied all the variants: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, “delta-plus,” lambda and mu. So he was ready for omicron, the variant that incited global anxiety unlike any of those that came before.

Like most scientists, he was shocked by the sheer number of mutations. He also knew exactly what to do next.

Shi runs a high-containment laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston, and collaborates closely with Pfizer. Over Thanksgiving, his team began engineering a replica of the new variant to test against the antibodies generated by vaccines. But it doesn’t happen overnight: It will take about two weeks to build the omicron replica, another few days to confirm that it’s an accurate facsimile, and one more week to pit the virus against blood samples from vaccinated people.

The United States is averaging more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases each day for the first time in two months, as the delta variant remains dominant amid fears of the new omicron variant.

On Sunday, the seven-day average was more than 118,000 new cases per day, according to Washington Post tracking. The last time it topped 100,000 was Oct. 6, when the country was averaging over 101,000 new cases daily.

Demand for coronavirus vaccines has also spiked in recent weeks, as more Americans are eligible for booster shots and concerns grow over the omicron variant.

Despite concerns about omicron, which scientists are still working to fully understand, the vast majority of new infections in the United States are of the delta variant, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, said Friday.

The American biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences has issued a nationwide recall of two lots of its coronavirus treatment drug remdesivir because of the “presence of glass particulates,” the company said Friday.

Remdesivir, known also by its brand name Veklury, is normally used for adults and children over 12 requiring hospitalization for covid-19, and it is normally given by intravenous (IV) infusion once daily for up to 10 days.

“Gilead Sciences Inc. received a customer complaint, confirmed by the firm’s investigation, of the presence of glass particulates,” the company said in a statement.

Here’s what to know from news service reports about the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Cases of the omicron variant — which was first identified last month in southern Africa and has now spread to at least 17 U.S. states — are likely to rise further in the United States, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Sunday.

“We know we have several dozen cases [of omicron] and we’re following them closely, and we are every day hearing about more and more probable cases, so that number is likely to rise,” Walensky said in an interview with ABC News.

Almost all coronavirus cases in the United States are associated with the delta variant, Walensky said, and a lot of questions remain about omicron, including how it will react to coronavirus vaccines and existing treatments.

Still, Walensky said, the Food and Drug Administration is “already in conversations about streamlining the authorization … of an omicron-specific vaccine” with an eye to adjusting the mRNA code of existing vaccines to better protect against the variant if needed. Public health officials, meanwhile, are tracking existing cases of omicron in the following states:

The omicron variant doesn’t appear more likely to cause severe illness, said Anthony S. Fauci, the United States’ top infectious-disease expert, while he cautioned that more study is needed. He called initial data on the variant “encouraging.”

“Though it’s too early to really make any definitive statements about it,” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, “thus far, it does not look like there’s a great degree of severity to it.”

He expressed confidence that existing vaccines will confer “some degree, and maybe a considerable degree, of protection against the omicron variant, if in fact it starts to take hold in a dominant way in this country.”

Indications that the omicron variant may not often cause severe disease may quell concerns that it could overwhelm health-care systems this winter with a surge in hospitalizations and deaths.

Fauci had noted last week on Bloomberg TV that although omicron has led to a spike in cases across South Africa, the surge there has not yet caused a comparable increase in hospitalizations. He called the situation there “comforting but not definitive.”

A preliminary study from a Massachusetts-based firm found that the omicron variant probably shares genetic code with the common cold, which one of the study’s authors said suggests that the variant could be more contagious but cause less severe disease. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed, and Venky Soundararajan, a biological engineer and co-author, cautioned that more analysis of the variant was needed before determinations of its traits could be made.

Infectious-disease experts have said that one way out of the pandemic is if the virus mutates into one that is more transmissible but causes less severe illness, in essence becoming an endemic virus that spreads but does not cause widespread hospitalizations or deaths.

A Myanmar court on Monday found ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi guilty of charges including inciting public unrest and sentenced her to four years in prison, according to her lawyer, the first in a series of verdicts that could keep the 76-year-old Nobel laureate detained for the rest of her life.

The closed-door trial in Naypyidaw, the capital, highlights the punitive treatment that the ruling junta is imposing on Suu Kyi, whom the military previously held under house arrest for almost two decades. After her release in 2010, she led her party to successive victories in quasi-democratic elections in 2015 and 2020, before the military seized power in February, again detaining Suu Kyi.

This time, the military seems intent on eliminating Suu Kyi as a political force. Since the coup, she has been held incommunicado in an undisclosed location. The military has steadily piled on a dozen criminal charges against her, ranging from campaigning during the pandemic to corruption and sedition; she cumulatively faces more than 100 years in jail.

Rulings on two of those charges — inciting public unrest against the military and breaching covid-19 rules — were handed down on Monday in a closed hearing. Her lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a gag order, said she received a sentence of two years for each charge.