Total Doses Distributed = 705,215,245. Total Doses Administered = 561,659,770. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 255,654,273. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 217,774,183.
COVID-19 Vaccination Data Updates
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The prevalence of COVID-19 in the U.K. has reached record levels, with about 1 in 13 people estimated to be infected with the virus in the past week, according to the latest figures from Britain’s official statistics agency.
Some 4.9 million people were estimated to have the coronavirus in the week ending March 26, up from 4.3 million recorded in the previous week, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. The latest surge is driven by the more transmissible omicron variant BA.2, which is the dominant variant across the U.K.
Hospitalizations and death rates are again rising, although the number of people dying with COVID-19 is still relatively low compared with earlier this year. Nonetheless, the latest estimates suggest that the steep climb in new infections since late February, when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scrapped all remaining coronavirus restrictions in England, has continued well into March.
The figures came on the same day the government ended free rapid COVID-19 tests for most people in England, under Johnson’s “living with COVID” plan. People who do not have health conditions that make them more vulnerable to the virus now need to pay for tests to find out if they are infected.
“The government’s ‘living with COVID’ strategy of removing any mitigations, isolation, free testing and a considerable slice of our surveillance amounts to nothing more than ignoring this virus going forwards,” said Stephen Griffin, associate professor at the University of Leeds’ medical school.
“Such unchecked prevalence endangers the protection afforded by our vaccines,” he said. “Our vaccines are excellent, but they are not silver bullets and ought not to be left to bear the brunt of COVID in isolation.”
More than 67% of people 12 years old and above in the U.K. have been vaccinated and had their booster or a third dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Beginning Saturday, parents can also book a low-dose vaccine for children between 5 to 12 years old in England.
James Naismith, a biology professor at the University of Oxford, said he believed that except for those who are completely shielded or not susceptible to the virus, most people in the country would likely be infected with the BA.2 variant by the summer.
“This is literally living with the virus by being infected with it,” he said.
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Follow all AP stories on the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
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Hong Kong authorities on Saturday asked the entire population of more than 7.4 million people to voluntarily test themselves for COVID-19 at home for three days in a row starting next week.
The announcement by Chief Executive Carrie Lam came as the southern Chinese city is struggling to contain its worst outbreak with authorities sending mixed signals about testing and lockdowns.
Lam said a “compulsory, universal test” of the whole population is still essential, but did not say when that might happen. Authorities shelved the idea after a previous announcement caused panic buying.
The prospect of further school closures and other disruptions has the government caught between calls for loosening restrictions and Beijing’s demand for an extreme “zero-COVID” approach mandating lockdowns and mass testing.
Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous territory, on Friday lifted a ban on residents returning aboard flights from nine countries where COVID-19 cases have surged, including Britain and the U.S.
Hong Kong reported another 5,820 cases Friday as the latest surge begins to taper off.
Meanwhile, in Shanghai to the north, authorities are struggling to meet requirements for a lockdown on many of the city’s 26 million residents — the largest such undertaking by China since the virus was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
Shanghai is implementing a two-stage, eight-day lockdown, but many of those on the eastern, or Pudong, side of the city who should have been free to leave their compounds on Friday have remained in isolation.
Authorities have meanwhile placed the other half of the city, Puxi, under isolation with non-essential businesses and public transport brought to a stop and roads cleared of cars and people. A total of 14 million Puxi residents were tested on Friday, according to state media.
Residents under isolation complained of difficulty obtaining food, household items and medications, while beds and staff at isolation centers were reportedly insufficient for the number of asymptomatic patients and others being brought there for observation.
China detected another 2,086 confirmed cases on Saturday, including 260 in Shanghai, and 7,789 asymptomatic cases, of which 6,051 were in Shanghai. Total numbers of new cases have been near record highs for several days.
Total Doses Distributed = 703,016,545. Total Doses Administered = 561,173,692. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 255,582,575. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 217,703,007.
COVID-19 Vaccination Data Updates
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COVID-19 hospitalization numbers have plunged to their lowest levels since the early days of the pandemic, offering a much needed break to health care workers and patients alike following the omicron surge.
The number of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus has fallen more than 90% in more than two months, and some hospitals are going days without a single COVID-19 patient in the ICU for the first time since early 2020.
The freed up beds are expected to help U.S. hospitals retain exhausted staff, treat non-COVID-19 patients more quickly and cut down on inflated costs. More family members can visit loved ones. And doctors hope to see a correction to the slide in pediatric visits, yearly checkups and cancer screenings.
“We should all be smiling that the number of people sitting in the hospital right now with COVID, and people in intensive care units with COVID, are at this low point,” said University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi.
But, he said, the nation “paid a steep price to get to this stage. … A lot of people got sick and a lot of people died.”
The average number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the last week nationwide dropped to 11,860, the lowest since 2020 and a steep decline from the peak of more than 145,000 set in mid-January. The previous low was 12,041 last June, before the delta variant took hold. The optimistic trend is also clear in ICU patient numbers, which have dipped to fewer than 2,000, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“We’re beginning to be able to take a breath,” said Dr. Jeffrey Weinstein, the patient safety officer for the Kettering Health hospital system in western Ohio.
COVID-19 patients had filled 30% of Kettering Health’s nearly 1,600 hospital beds back in January, Weinstein said. Kettering’s eight hospitals now average two to three COVID-19 admissions a day — and sometimes zero.
And while Salemi agreed this is a good time for an exhausted health care system to take a breath, he warned that the public health community needs to keep an eye on the BA.2 subvariant of omicron. It’s driving increases in hospitalizations in Britain, and is now estimated to make up more than half of U.S. infections.
“We’re probably under-detecting true infections now more than at any other time during the pandemic,” Salemi said.
For now at least, many hospitals are noting the low numbers.
In California on Thursday, UC Davis Health tweeted that its intensive care unit had no COVID-19 patients for two consecutive days for the first time in two years.
“The first COVID-19 patient to arrive in our ICU did so in February 2020, and the unit treated at least one positive individual every day since, for at least 761 consecutive days,” the hospital system said.
Toby Marsh, the chief nursing and patient care services officer, said in a statement that they hope the numbers “are indicative of a sustained change.”
In Philadelphia, patients are spending less time in the Temple University Health System because there are no longer backlogs for MRIs, CT scans and lab tests, said Dr. Tony Reed, the chief medical officer.
Temple Health’s three hospitals had six adult COVID-19 patients on Thursday, likely its lowest patient count since March 2020, Reed said.
During the omicron surge, patients waited as long as 22 hours for a routine MRI, which is normally done within 12 hours. Longer waits affected those who came in with trouble walking — and in a lot of pain — for example, because of a herniated disc pinching their sciatic nerve.
“Nobody wants to stay in the hospital a day longer than they have to,” Reed said.
The emptying of beds is also helping patients in rural areas, said Jay Anderson, the chief operating officer for Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center in Columbus. During the surges, the hospital faced challenges accepting people from community hospitals who needed elevated care for brain tumors, advanced cancer and stroke. That burden is now being lifted.
Visitors also will return in higher numbers, starting Tuesday. Ohio State will no longer restrict patients to two designated guests, who could only stop by separately.
“Patients heal better when they have access to their family and loved ones,” Anderson said.
Doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists are also getting a much needed break in some areas.
In Colorado, Dr. Michelle Barron said the consistently low COVID-19 hospitalizations prompted smiles among staff, even as she double-checks the numbers to make sure they’re actually correct.
“I had one of these moments like, oh this is amazing,” said Barron, medical director of infection prevention and control at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital. “It feels unreal.”
UCHealth loosened some restrictions, including dropping testing requirements for anyone who entered a facility. And while that produced some anxiety among staffers, Barron says the numbers haven’t spiked.
“I think some people have started to take vacations and not feel guilty,” she said. “I had spring break with my kids and it was a level of happiness where I went, oh my god, this is actually normal.”
The omicron surge had stretched staff at work — but also at home, said Dr. Mike Hooper, chief medical officer for Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in southeastern Virginia.
“It was stressful to be at the store … to visit your family,” Hooper said. “We’re all hoping that some ‘return to normalcy’ will help people deal with the inherent stresses of being part of the health care team.”
But just because hospitalizations are down does not mean hospitals are empty, said Dr. Frank Johnson, chief medical officer for St. Luke’s Health System in Idaho.
Some measures — like wearing masks in certain settings — will remain in place.
“I don’t know when we may go back to old practices regarding mask wearing in our clinical areas,” Johnson said. “We’ve seen some benefits of that in terms of reduction in the number of other viral infections.”
In the meantime, the public health community is keeping an eye on the BA.2 subvariant of omicron.
Salemi, the University of South Florida epidemiologist, said the increase in at-home testing means that more results are not being included in official coronavirus case counts. Therefore, wastewater surveillance will be the early warning signal to watch, he said.
“BA.2 is here,” he said. “We don’t have to look that far in the rear-view mirror to know things can change very rapidly. We saw what happened with delta. We saw what happened with omicron…. We don’t want to wait until we see a lot of people hospitalized before we take action.”
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Kruesi reported from Nashville, Tennessee. AP Medical writer Carla K. Johnson in Washington state contributed to this report.
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Thousands of Malaysians working in Singapore returned home Friday as Malaysia fully reopened its borders after more than two years of pandemic closure.
Many had lined up at the border since late Thursday and crossed over at midnight on foot or by car and motorcycles. National news agency Bernama said fireworks can be heard in the background along with shouts of “welcome back” as families waited for their loved ones at the Johor Causeway linking the countries.
The Malaysia-Singapore land border, one of the busiest in the world, was partially reopened Nov. 29 but it was limited to only about 1,500 people one-way daily with strict rules. More than 350,000 people crossed the causeway daily before it was shut, mostly Malaysians working in Singapore.
Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority said in a statement that more than 11,000 travelers passed through the checkpoints early Friday. Malaysian officials estimate some 400,000 people are expected to cross the border within the first week.
With most of its population vaccinated, Malaysia has lifted remaining coronavirus restrictions on businesses as it moves to restore pre-pandemic life and revive its economy.
New daily cases have hovered around 20,000, driven by the highly contagious omicron strain but less than 1% have been categorized as serious.
There will be no quarantine for fully vaccinated tourists but they need to take a PCR test two days before arrival. At Kuala Lumpur International Airport, staff wearing traditional costumes welcomed visitors. The first regular AirAsia flight from Jakarta in two years was given a water cannon salute upon landing.
The Malaysia-based low-cost carrier, the largest on the continent, said that 12 flights from within Asia arrived at Kuala Lumpur on Friday, marking the revival of its international operations since March 2020.
“Definitely it’s starting to feel a little normal again,” said Peter Miller, an American expatriate who arrived with his family for work. “Still have to do some testing here and there but … everyone’s learning how to deal with the new phase of the virus.”