Category: Public Health

After weeks of projecting rising or stable COVID-19 deaths, the CDC said it expects deaths to fall through early March. 

More than 92.5 million people, or 43 percent of the nation’s fully vaccinated population, have received a booster dose, according to CDC data updated Feb. 17. 

COVID-19 deaths fell nationally for the second consecutive week, while hospitalizations declined for the third straight week and cases dropped for the fourth, according to the CDC’s COVID data tracker weekly review published Feb. 18.

While federal data shows COVID-19 booster effectiveness declines after four months, U.S. health officials say it’s still too soon to know whether a fourth shot will be needed for the general public, The New York Times reported Feb. 17.

Though only low or minimal flu activity was reported across the U.S. for the week ending Feb. 12, flu hospital admissions increased slightly, according to the CDC’s FluView report published Feb. 18.

COVID-19 hospitalization rates among children and adolescents were almost four times higher during omicron’s peak than during delta’s peak, according to a CDC report.

The omicron subvariant BA.2 has many genetic differences from its parent strain that would warrant it being labeled as a separate variant of concern with its own Greek letter, Japanese researchers said in a study posted Feb. 15 on the medical preprint …

After stable numbers for more than a decade, reported Legionnaires’ disease cases have been rising since 2003 in the U.S., according to a CDC report released Feb. 17.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Feb. 18 unveiled the next phase of its COVID-19 pandemic response plan, saying it’s the first state to detail plans for how to approach the virus as a manageable risk. 

The daily total of patients who acquired COVID-19 while in the hospital hit a record of about 4,700 in January — when omicron peaked — according to an analysis of federal data from The Wall Street Journal.