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CVS and Walgreens will sell mifepristone in pharmacies

Mifepristone (Mifeprex), one of the two drugs used in a medication abortion, is displayed at the Women’s Reproductive Clinic, which provides legal medication abortion services, in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on June 15, 2022.

Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images

Walgreens and CVS will sell the prescription abortion pill mifepristone after the Food and Drug Administration this week dropped a long-standing rule that prevented drug stores from doing so.

The decision by the two largest drug store chains in the U.S. will significantly expand access to mifepristone in states where abortion is legal. The companies cannot offer the pill in states that have completely banned abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

The FDA on Tuesday changed its regulations to allow retail drug stores to dispense mifepristone so long as they complete a certification process. The agency dropped a long-standing rule that required patients to obtain the abortion pill in-person at clinics, hospitals and other certified health-care providers.

Walgreens plans to get certified and is working through the registration and training of its pharmacists to dispense mifepristone consistent with federal and state law, spokesperson Fraser Engerman said. CVS also plans to get certified in states where it is legal to do so, spokesperson Amy Thibault said.

This means patients in many parts of the U.S. will effectively be able to obtain mifepristone like other prescription medications, either in-person at a retail pharmacy or through the mail. Patients will still need to obtain their prescription from a certified health-care provider.

Mifepristone has become a central flashpoint in the political battle over abortion at the state level in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Several conservative groups have asked a federal court in Texas to overturn the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.

Mifepristone is the most common way to terminate a pregnancy in the U.S. Some 51% of abortions were performed with mifepristone in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA first approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago in 2000 as a method to terminate early pregnancies, but the pill long had strict regulations around how it could be dispensed to patients. Medical organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists had long argued that those regulations lacked a scientific basis and were rooted in politics.

Mifepristone is approved to end a pregnancy through the 10th week. It is used in combination with another pill called misoprostol. Mifepristone stops the pregnancy from continuing and misoprostol induces contractions that empty the uterus.

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January 5, 2023
XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant is the most transmissible version of Covid yet, WHO says

XBB.1.5 strain, January 4, 2023, Suqian, Jiangsu, China.

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The XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant that’s currently dominating the U.S. is the most contagious version of Covid-19 yet, but it doesn’t appear to make people sicker, according to the World Health Organization.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, said global health officials are worried about how quickly the subvariant is spreading in the northeastern U.S. The number of people infected with XBB.1.5 has been doubling in the U.S. about every two weeks, making it the most common variant circulating in the country.

“It is the most transmissible subvariant that has been detected yet,” Van Kerkhove told reporters during a press conference in Geneva on Wednesday. “The reason for this are the mutations that are within this subvariant of omicron allowing this virus to adhere to the cell and replicate easily.”

It has been detected in 29 countries so far but it could be even more widespread, Van Kerkhove said. Tracking Covid variants has become difficult as genomic sequencing declines across the world, she said.

The WHO doesn’t have any data yet on the severity of XBB.1.5, but there’s no indication at the moment that it makes people sicker than previous versions of omicron, Van Kerkhove said. The WHO’s advisory group that tracks Covid variants is conducting a risk assessment on XBB.1.5 that it will publish in the coming days, she said.

“The more this virus circulates the more opportunities it will have to change,” Van Kerkhove said. “We do expect further waves of infection around the world but that doesn’t have to translate into further waves of death because our countermeasures continue to work.”

Scientists say XBB.1.5 is about as good at dodging antibodies from vaccines and infection as its XBB and XBB.1 relatives, which were two of the most immune evasive subvariants yet. But XBB.1.5 has a mutation that makes it bind more tightly to cells, which gives it a growth advantage.

As XBB.1.5 rapidly spreads in the U.S., China is battling a surge of cases and hospitalizations after abandoning its zero-Covid policy in response to social unrest late last year. U.S. and global health officials have said Beijing is not sharing enough data on the surge with the international community.

“We continue to ask China for more rapid regular reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths as well more comprehensive real-time viral sequencing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva on Wednesday.

A growing number of countries, including the U.S., are requiring airline passengers from China to test negative for Covid before boarding their flights. China’s foreign ministry has said such measures lack a scientific basis and has accused the governments of manipulating Covid for political purposes. But the WHO director-general said the requirements are understandable given the limited data coming out of China.

“With circulation in China so high and comprehensive data not forthcoming, it’s understandable that some countries are taking steps they believe will protect their own citizens,” Tedros said Wednesday.

Beijing’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention shared data Tuesday with the WHO indicating BA.5 sublineages, BA.5.2 and BF.7, account for about 98% of all infections in the country. But Van Kerkhove said China is not sharing enough sequencing data from around the vast country.

“It’s not just a matter of knowing what variants are circulating,” Van Kerkhove said. “We need the global community to assess these, to look at mutation by mutation to determine if any of these are new variants circulating in China but also around the world.”

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January 4, 2023
Southwest Airlines’ schedule stabilizes after holiday meltdown but costs are still piling up

Pristine Floyde searches for a friend’s suitcase in a baggage holding area for Southwest Airlines at Denver International Airport on December 28, 2022 in Denver, Colorado.

Michael Ciaglo | Getty Images

Southwest Airlines stabilized its schedule over the weekend after about 16,000 cancellations since late last month, but its systemwide holiday meltdown could cost it hundreds of millions of dollars.

Southwest had canceled 304 flights since Friday, 2% of its schedule, most of them on Monday when U.S. airlines faced bad weather and ground stops in Florida tied to a Federal Aviation Administration equipment outage. For comparison, from Dec. 21 through Dec. 29 Southwest had scrubbed about 45% of its operation, a far bigger share than other major airlines, according to FlightAware.

Now come two more difficult tasks for Southwest: going through thousands of passenger reimbursement receipts and improving the internal technology that contributed to the meltdown.

“We have plans to invest in tools and technology and processes, but there will be immediate work to understand what lessons are learned here and how we keep this from ever happening again, because it cannot happen again,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, who took the helm in February, told staff Friday.

Jordan said employees from other departments have volunteered to help customers and process refunds. The carrier is working with FedEx to help get customers their luggage.

“We’ve cut the number of bags in half since Thursday and we’re on track to get the majority if not all bags shipped to our Customers later this week,” Jordan told staff on Monday.

On Tuesday, Southwest began offering travelers whose flights were canceled or significantly delayed between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2, and who didn’t travel or rebook, 25,000 Rapid Rewards points, a roughly $300 value, according to the airline.

The miles required to redeem for a ticket vary depending on demand and capacity. Over Easter weekend, for example, it currently costs more than 25,000 Rapid Rewards points to travel roundtrip between Baltimore and Los Angeles, but it would more than cover a ticket a week later.

Bad weather kicked off the issues last month, impacting flights throughout the U.S. But Southwest crews struggled to get reassigned automatically after all of the changes and were forced to wait on hold for hours with crew scheduling services. Hundreds of thousands of passengers were impacted, and Southwest is still working through a backlog of misplaced luggage.

The carrier had canceled about two-thirds of its flights for much of the last week in an attempt to get crews and planes where they needed to go, before operating close to normally on Friday.

The chaos could cost Southwest between $600 million and $700 million, according to estimates from Bank of America airline stock analyst Andrew Didora on Tuesday. That includes both lost revenue from refunds and the reimbursements to affected passengers, which could include expenses like hotels and rental cars.

Didora cut his fourth-quarter adjusted earnings forecast for Southwest to 37 cents a share from 85 cents.

A Southwest executive last week said the cancellations will “certainly” hit its fourth-quarter results but that it will take weeks to work through customers’ reimbursement requests.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg vowed to hold Southwest accountable if it didn’t provide customers with refunds and reimbursements, though such fines associated with a failure to pay back customers can take months if not years.

Southwest shares fell 3.2% to $32.60 on Tuesday, a bigger drop than rivals. The Dallas-based airline is scheduled to report results on Jan. 26 but is likely to preview the meltdown’s costs before then.

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January 4, 2023
Buffalo Bills’ Damar Hamlin in critical condition after collapsing on field

Fans look on as the ambulance leaves carrying Damar Hamlin #3 of the Buffalo Bills. Hamlin collapsed after making a tackle against the Cincinnati Bengals during the first quarter at Paycor Stadium on Jan. 2, 2023 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Dylan Buell | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

Buffalo defensive back Damar Hamlin was in critical condition early Tuesday after the Bills say he suffered a cardiac arrest on the field after making a tackle hours earlier, leading to the indefinite postponement of Buffalo’s pivotal Monday night showdown against the Cincinnati Bengals.

“Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest following a hit in our game versus the Bengals. His heartbeat was restored on the field and he was transferred to the UC Medical Center for further testing and treatment,” the Bills said in a statement. “He is currently sedated and listed in critical condition.”

In a chilling scene, Hamlin was administered CPR on the field, ESPN reported, while surrounded by teammates, some of them in tears, while they shielded him from public view. He was hurt while tackling Bengals receiver Tee Higgins on a seemingly routine play that didn’t appear unusually violent.

The NFL announced Hamlin’s condition shortly after he was taken to a hospital, but neither the league nor the hospital released any other details about the 24-year-old’s medical condition. The team’s statement was released before its flight arrived back in Buffalo early Tuesday. There was also no immediate update about the future status of the game.

On the play Hamlin was injured, Higgins led with his right shoulder, which hit the defensive back in the chest. Hamlin then wrapped his arms around Higgins’ shoulders and helmet to drag him down. Hamlin quickly got to his feet, appeared to adjust his face mask with his right hand, and then fell backward about three seconds later and lay motionless.

Hamlin was treated on the field by team and independent medical personnel and local paramedics, and he was taken by ambulance to University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Teammate Stefon Diggs later joined Hamlin at the hospital.

An announcement is displayed on the scoreboard after the game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills is postponed following the injury of Damar Hamlin #3 at Paycor Stadium on Jan. 2, 2023 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Dylan Buell | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

About 100 Bills fans and a few Bengals fans gathered on a corner one block from the emergency room entrance, some of them holding candles.

Jeff Miller, an NFL executive vice president, told reporters on a conference call early Tuesday that the league had made no plans at this time to play the game, adding that Hamlin’s health was the main focus.

An ambulance was on the field four minutes after Hamlin collapsed while many players embraced, including quarterbacks Buffalo’s Josh Allen and Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow.

“Please pray for our brother,” Allen tweeted.

Hamlin collapsed at 8:55 p.m., and when he was taken off the field about 19 minutes later in what seemed like an eternity, the Bills gathered in prayer. A few minutes after the ambulance left the field, the game was suspended, and players walked off the field slowly and into their locker rooms where they awaited word on Hamlin and the game.

“I’ve never seen anything like it since I was playing,” NFL executive Troy Vincent, a six-time Pro Bowl cornerback during his career, said in the conference call early Tuesday morning. “Immediately, my player hat went on, like, how do you resume playing after seeing a traumatic event in front of you?”

Hamlin’s uniform was cut off as he was attended to by medical personnel. ESPN reported on its telecast that Hamlin was also given oxygen.

Buffalo Bills players kneel after teammate Damar Hamlin #3 collapsed following a tackle against the Cincinnati Bengals during the first quarter at Paycor Stadium on Jan. 2, 2023 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Kirk Irwin | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

Vincent said the league took no steps toward restarting the game and did not ask players to begin a five-minute warmup period as ESPN’s broadcasters had announced.

“It never crossed our mind to talk about warming up to resume play,” Vincent said. “That’s ridiculous. That’s insensitive. That’s not a place we should ever be in.”

Vincent said the Bills were returning early Tuesday morning to the team facility in Orchard Park, New York, with the exception of a few players who stayed behind with Hamlin.

There was a heavy police presence at Buffalo Niagara International Airport ahead of the team’s arrival. Police tape enclosed the entire parking lot area, cutting off access to where the players park.

The Bengals led 7-3 in the first quarter of a game between teams vying for the top playoff seed in the AFC. Cincinnati entered at 11-4 and leading the AFC North by one game over Baltimore, while AFC East champion Buffalo was 12-3.

“The NFLPA and everyone in our community is praying for Damar Hamlin,” the players’ union said in a statement. “We have been in touch with Bills and Bengals players, and with the NFL. The only thing that matters at this moment is Damar’s health and well being.”

The unfinished game has major playoff implications as the NFL enters the final week of the regular season, with the wild-card playoff round scheduled to begin on Jan. 14.

The aftermath of the injury was reminiscent of when Bills tight end Kevin Everett lay motionless on the field after making a tackle on the second-half opening kickoff in Buffalo’s 2007 season-opening game against the Denver Broncos.

Everett sustained a spinal cord injury that initially left him partially paralyzed.

Hamlin spent five years of college at Pittsburgh — his hometown — and appeared in 48 games for the Panthers over that span. He was a second-team All-ACC performer as a senior, was voted a team captain and was picked to play in the Senior Bowl.

He was drafted in the sixth round by the Bills in 2021, played in 14 games as a rookie and then became a starter this year once Micah Hyde was lost for the season to injury.

By late Monday night, a community toy drive organized by Hamlin had surged to more than $1.2 million in donations. His stated goal was $2,500.

Kathryn Bersani and her mother, Gayle, were among the Bills fans who traveled from Buffalo for the game and went to the hospital from the stadium.

“This is our family Christmas,” Kathryn Bersani said. “We thought it would be a great game. Joe (Burrow) and Josh (Allen) are such great men. Sad, sad time. Such a shock. I just hope he can live a normal life. It stunned us.”

Chuck and Janet Kohl went to the hospital after watching the game at home.

“This is much more important than football,” Chuck Kohl said. “Had to come and pray for Mr. Hamlin.”

Entering the game, the 6-foot, 200-pound Hamlin had 91 tackles, including 63 solo tackles, and 1 1/2 sacks.

A tweet from the Pitt football account was simple and clear: “Damar Hamlin is the best of us. We love you, 3,” the tweet said, referring to Hamlin by his college jersey number. “Praying for you.”

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January 3, 2023
Retailers brace for tougher times and more frugal customers in 2023

A shopper goes through shirts in the kids section at Old Navy in Denver, Colorado.

Brent Lewis | Denver Post | Getty Images

January is typically an overlooked month for retailers.

Shoppers make returns and exchanges. They come to stores with gift cards in hand. And they may spring for workout clothes or other items to follow through on New Year’s resolutions.

But this year, January carries higher stakes. The next few weeks, which close out many retailers’ fiscal year, could help determine whether the holiday quarter is a win or a bust. It’s an important time for helping stores clear out excess inventory, too. January could also set the tone for 2023 — when some economists and retail industry watchers anticipate the U.S. will tip into a recession.

So far, early holiday results have been better than some economists and retailers feared. Sales from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 rose 7.6%, according to data from MasterCard SpendingPulse, which measures in-store and online retail sales across all forms of payment. The figure includes restaurants and is not adjusted for inflation, which rose 7.1% year over year in November.

Yet there are signs that shoppers may be running out of gas. Credit card balances have ticked up. Personal saving rates have fallen. And sales of big-ticket items like jewelry and electronics have weakened.

Plus, Americans’ spending spree during the earlier years of the pandemic, fueled by stimulus money, boredom and socked-away savings, have made for tough comparisons.

A pivotal January

Retailers enter 2023 reckoning with the fact that store traffic already lagged during peak weeks of the holiday season.

Across six retailers — Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Kohl’s and Macy’s — foot traffic dropped by an average of 3.22% year over year for the weeks from Black Friday through the week of Christmas, according to data from Placer.ai, an analytics firm that uses anonymized data from mobile devices to estimate overall visits to locations. It also declined by nearly 5% when compared to pre-pandemic patterns.

Now retailers are more on edge.

“It seems like a lot of the brands are anticipating a bigger thud in January,” said Stacey Widlitz, president of SW Retail Advisors, a consulting firm.

She has noticed more retailers are dangling gift cards to drum up sales. For instance, Urban Outfitters-owned retail chain Anthropologie on Friday offered $50 toward a future purchase for online shoppers who spend $200 or more. But that bonus cash must be used by Jan. 31, when the company’s quarter ends.

Widlitz said those offers are focused on nudging shoppers to make purchases during a time when there’s often a post-holiday lull. It is also retailers’ last chance to sell through excess inventory and start the new fiscal year in a cleaner position.

“It just looks like they’re trying to push people to get into stores after the new year,” she said.

But for some, a more budget-sensitive consumer could be an opportunity.

On an earnings call last month, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said he anticipates a boost in sales as consumers feel stretched from holiday spending. Like many other retailers, Walmart’s holiday quarter includes January.

“Sometimes these quarters work out where the very end of December and January end up being stronger when people are particularly price sensitive,” he said. “So that’s kind of what I’m expecting.”

Already, the discounter has attracted wealthier shoppers with its lower-priced groceries and household staples. For the past two quarters, about 75% of its market share gains in food came from households that make more than $100,000 a year.

Yet like competitors Target and Costco, it has had a harder time selling discretionary merchandise that tends to drive higher profits than selling milk or paper towels.

What will the new year bring?

Economists are closely watching consumer indicators as the year begins.

On the positive side, said Michael Zdinak, an economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, unemployment is low and the jobs market is still very tight. There are signs that inflation has cooled, with prices rising less than expected in November, the most recent month of available federal data.

On the other hand, he said food prices are still high, retail demand is weakening and savings aren’t looking as robust.

Personal saving rates have declined significantly. The percentage of disposable income that people save was 2.4% in November, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s down from an average of 6.3% pre-pandemic, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, which crunched the numbers from 1991 to 2019.

Zdinak said that low rate is unsustainable, especially as consumers have been spending money they put in their savings accounts during the earlier months and years of the pandemic.

Economists at the market data firm anticipate a recession to begin in the first quarter of 2023 and to last two quarters.

Zdinak said the downturn will be fueled by slashed orders and less manufacturing as many retailers clear through unwanted inventory after consumer preferences changed abruptly in 2022.

Then there are headwinds for consumers. Reality may soon hit families who have blown the budget on gifts or holiday travel, said Widlitz of SW Retail Advisors.

“Everyone gets through the holidays in denial and Feb. 1, when you get your [credit card] statement, or Jan. 15, whenever it comes, it’s like, ‘Oh!’” she said.

— Caitlyn Freda contributed to this report.

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January 2, 2023
Highly immune evasive omicron XBB.1.5 variant is quickly becoming dominant in U.S. as it doubles weekly

Gilnature | Istock | Getty Images

The Covid Omicron XBB.1.5 variant is rapidly becoming dominant in the U.S. because it is highly immune evasive and appears more effective at binding to cells than related subvariants, scientists say.

XBB.1.5 now represents about 41% of new cases nationwide in the U.S., nearly doubling in prevalence over the past week, according to the data published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The subvariant more than doubled as a share of cases every week through Dec. 24. In the past week, it nearly doubled from 21.7% prevalence.

Scientists and public health officials have been closely monitoring the XBB subvariant family for months because the strains have many mutations that could render the Covid-19 vaccines, including the omicron boosters, less effective and cause even more breakthrough infections.

XBB was first identified in India in August. It quickly become dominant there, as well as in Singapore. It has since evolved into a family of subvariants including XBB.1 and XBB.1.5.

Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University, said XBB.1.5 is different from its family members because it has an additional mutation that makes it bind to cells better.

“The virus needs needs to bind tightly to cells to be more efficient at getting in and that could help the virus be a little bit more efficient at infecting people,” Pekosz said.

Yunlong Richard Cao, a scientist and assistant professor at Peking University, published data on Twitter Tuesday that indicated XBB.1.5 not only evades protective antibodies as effectively as the XBB.1 variant, which was highly immune evasive, but also is better at binding to cells through a key receptor.

Scientists at Columbia University, in a study published earlier this month in the journal Cell, warned that the rise of subvariants such as XBB could “further compromise the efficacy of current COVID-19 vaccines and result in a surge of breakthrough infections as well as re-infections.”

The XBB subvariants are also resistant to Evusheld, an antibody cocktail that many people with weak immune systems rely on for protection against Covid infection because they don’t mount a strong response to the vaccines.

The scientists described the resistance of the XBB subvariants to antibodies from vaccination and infection as “alarming.” The XBB subvariants were even more effective at dodging protection from the omicron boosters than the BQ subvariants, which are also highly immune evasive, the scientists found.

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Dr. David Ho, an author on the Columbia study, agreed with the other scientists that XBB.1.5 probably has a growth advantage because it binds better to cells than its XBB relatives. Ho also said XBB.1.5 is about as immune evasive as XBB and XBB.1, which were two of the subvariants most resistant to protective antibodies from infection and vaccination so far.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is leaving his role as White House chief medical advisor, has previously said that the XBB subvariants reduce the protection the boosters provide against infection “multifold.”

“You could expect some protection, but not the optimal protection,” Fauci told reporters during a White House briefing in November.

Fauci said he was encouraged by the case of Singapore, which had a major surge of infections from XBB but did not see hospitalizations rise at the the same rate. Pekosz said XBB.1.5, in combination with holiday travel, could cause cases to rise in the U.S. But he said the boosters appear to preventing severe disease.

“It does look like the vaccine, the bivalent booster is providing continued protection against hospitalization with these variants,” Pekosz said. “It really emphasizes the need to get a booster particularly into vulnerable populations to provide continued protection from severe disease with these new variants.”

Health officials in the U.S. have repeatedly called on the elderly in particular to make sure they are up to date on their vaccines and get treated with the antiviral Paxlovid if they have a breakthrough infection.

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December 30, 2022
U.S. and global health officials are worried about lack of transparency from China on Covid outbreak

U.S. and global health leaders say Beijing is not sharing enough information about the spread of Covid-19 in China, leaving the international community in the dark about the scale and severity of the current wave of infection in the world’s most populous country.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a statement Wednesday, said the lack of transparency from China could delay the identification of new Covid variants that pose a threat to public health. China is sharing very few genomic sequences used to identify such variants, according to the CDC.

The CDC on Wednesday announced new testing requirements for airline passengers whose trips originate in China. All passengers, regardless of nationality or vaccination status, must get tested for Covid no more than two days before their flight to the U.S. and present a negative result to the airline before departure. The requirements go into effect on Jan. 5.

India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan have also imposed Covid test requirements on airline passengers originating in China. The Chinese government is battling a surge of infections after easing its stringent zero-Covid policy in the wake of social unrest earlier this year.

People receive inhaled COVID-19 vaccine at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Bijie, Guizhou province, China, December 29, 2022.

CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images

A U.S. federal health official, in a call with reporters on Wednesday, said the Biden administration has very limited information on the number of new Covid cases, hospitalizations and particularly deaths in China. Testing and casing reporting has also decreased in the country, which makes the true infection rate difficult to determine, the official said.

China’s zero-Covid policy, which sought to crush outbreaks through severe measures, means a large portion of the population does not have any immunity to the highly transmissible omicron variants, the official said. As a consequence, the Biden administration is forecasting that a large number of people will be infected relatively quickly in China.

“What we’re concerned about is a new variant that may emerge actually in China,” said the official, who declined to be named as a condition of the press call. “With so many people in China being affected in a short period of time there is a chance, a probability that a new variant may emerge.”

The latest genomic sequencing data shared by health authorities in China indicates that Covid variants circulating in the country are similar to those known in the rest of the world, according to a statement this week from GISAID, a public database based in Germany.

In the past 180 days, China has sequenced and shared 412 Covid cases with GISAID, compared to more than 576,000 shared by the United States. Health authorities in China have shared fewer than 1% of reported and sequenced Covid cases, while the U.S. has shared more than 4% and the U.K. nearly 12%.

The World Health Organization has also called on China to share more information about what’s transpiring on the ground as the virus spread.

“WHO is very concerned over the evolving situation in China with increasing reports of severe disease,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the global health agency, during a press briefing in Geneva last week.

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“In order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground, WHO needs more detailed information on disease severity, hospital admissions, and requirements for ICU support,” Tedros said.

The WHO largely has anecdotal reports of emergency rooms and in some cases intensive care units filling up in China, according to Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the global health agency’s emergencies program.

“We don’t have complete knowledge of the impact,” Ryan said of the Covid wave in China during the press conference in Geneva last week.

Dr. Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid technical lead, said last week that omicron subvariants BA.5, BQ.1, BF.7 and BA.2.75 are all circulating in China. XBB has also been detected in China, which is one of the most immune evasive variants yet.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, in a report published Dec. 15, said a massive wave of infection in China is inevitable as Beijing relaxes its zero-Covid policy. There will be huge numbers of severe disease in the elderly population and the death toll will be considerable, according to the report.

China faces a difficult situation because its domestically developed vaccines are not as effective as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s mRNA shots. Vaccine coverage among the elderly population in China also lags behind other countries.

“One in seven people on the planet live in China and the acceleration of vaccination, the protection of the health system during this period, is in the interest of seven out of seven people on this planet, Ryan said.

The U.S. has offered China mRNA Covid vaccines and other support but Beijing has declined the offer, the federal health official said on Wednesday’s call.

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December 30, 2022
U.S. will require airline passengers traveling from China to test negative for Covid

Travelers check in at Shanghai’s Hongqiao International Airport in on Dec. 12, 2022, after China relaxed domestic travel restrictions.

Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Biden administration will require airline passengers traveling from China to test negative for Covid before entering the U.S. as concern grows that widespread transmission of the virus in the world’s most populous country could result in new variants.

All airline passengers 2 years and older originating from China, Hong Kong or Macau will be required to get tested for Covid-19 no more than two days before their flight to the U.S. and show a negative result to the airline upon departure, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Wednesday.

The requirements, which apply regardless of nationality and vaccination status, start Jan. 5. Travelers can get a PCR test or a rapid self test that is administered and monitored by a telehealth service. The rapid test must be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration or the relevant national authority.

Airline passengers flying through Incheon International Airport in South Korea as well as Toronto Pearson and Vancouver International Airports in Canada will also need to test negative for Covid before heading to the U.S. if they were in China 10 days beforehand.

These three airports cover the overwhelming majority of travelers whose trips originated in China but have connecting flights to the U.S., according to the CDC.

The testing requirements come as Beijing battles a major outbreak of the virus after easing its stringent zero-Covid policy in the wake of social unrest earlier this year.

The U.S. has limited information on the situation on the ground in China, a federal health official told reporters on a call Wednesday. Testing has decreased across China and it’s unclear what variants are circulating on the mainland because genomic surveillance data is also limited, the official said.

“The recent rapid increase in transmission in China increases the potential for new variants emerging,” the health official said. The U.S. is taking proactive steps to protect the public’s health and be on the alert for new Covid variants as the situation in China unfolds, according to the official.

The CDC is expanding its program that monitors international travelers for new Covid variants to include airports in Los Angeles and Seattle. The surveillance program will now include seven airports and cover about 500 weekly flights, including 290 flights from China and the surrounding region.

The surveillance program collects nasal swabs from international travelers on a voluntary basis, and the CDC then analyzes the samples that test positive for Covid to determine if they are a new virus variant.

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December 28, 2022
U.S. records 100 million Covid cases, but more than 200 million Americans have probably had it

The U.S. recorded more than 100 million formally diagnosed and reported Covid-19 cases this week, but the number of Americans who’ve actually had the virus since the beginning of the pandemic is probably more than twice as high.

Covid-19 has easily infected more than 200 million in the U.S. alone since the beginning of the pandemic — some people more than once. The virus continues to evolve into more transmissible variants that dodge immunity from vaccination and prior infection, making transmission incredibly difficult to control as we go into the fourth year of the pandemic.

The U.S. officially recorded more than 100 million cases as of Tuesday, just under one-third of the total population, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data isn’t perfect and likely a huge undercount of the actual number of infections, scientists say. While it counts people who’ve tested positive more than once or caught Covid multiple times, it doesn’t capture the number of Covid patients who were asymptomatic and never test or tested at home and didn’t report it.

Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC director under the Obama administration, estimates that the reported data reflects less than half of the actual total.

“There are have been at least 200 million infections in the U.S., so this is a small portion of them,” Frieden said. “The question really is will we be better prepared for Covid and other health threats going forward, and the jury is very much still out on that,” he said.

The CDC estimated last spring that nearly 187 million people in the U.S. had caught Covid at least once through February 2022, more than double the number of officially reported cases at the time. The estimate was based on a survey of commercial lab data that found about 58% of Americans had antibodies as a result of a Covid infection. The survey did not account for reinfections or antibodies from vaccination.

The CDC has subsequently recorded more than 21 million confirmed cases from March through Dec. 21 of this year, although this is an underestimate because people who use rapid tests at home are not picked up in the data.

The more than 21 million additional confirmed cases on top of the CDC’s February estimate of about 187 million total infections gives a low-end estimate of more than 208 million infections since the pandemic began.

“It’s really hard to stop this virus, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve shifted the focus to hospitalizations and deaths and not just counting cases,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health.

The U.S. has made significant progress since the darkest days of the pandemic. Deaths have dropped about 90% from the pandemic peak in January 2021 when more than 3,000 people were succumbing to the virus daily before widespread vaccination. Daily hospital admissions are down 77% from a peak of more than 21,000 in January 2022 during the massive omicron surge.

Despite this progress, deaths and hospitalizations remain stubbornly high given the widespread availability of vaccines and treatments. About 400 people are still dying a day from the virus and about 5,000 are admitted to the hospital daily. The virus is still circulating at what would have been considered a high level earlier in the pandemic, with nearly 70,000 confirmed cases reported a day on average, a significant undercount due to testing at home.

More than a million people have died in the U.S. from Covid since the pandemic began, more than any another country in the world.

“I think people have gotten hardened to it,” Frieden said of Covid’s toll. “Covid is a new bad thing in our environment, and it’s likely to be here for the long term. We don’t know how this will evolve, whether it will get less virulent, more virulent — have years that get better and worse.”

White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is stepping down this month, has said the U.S. can consider the pandemic over when Covid hospitalizations and deaths decline to a level similar to the burden from the flu.

For the first, the two viruses are circulating simultaneously at high levels. From October through the first week of December, flu killed 12,000 people while Covid took more than 27,000 lives during that period.

“We’re still in the middle of this — it is not over,” Fauci told the radio show “Conversations on Health Care” in November. “Four hundred deaths per day is not an acceptable level. We want to get it much lower than that.”

Frieden said 95% of people who are dying from Covid aren’t up to date on their shots and 75% of people who would benefit from the antiviral Paxlovid are not receiving it.

“We should celebrate these great tools we have, but we’re not doing a good job of getting getting them into people and that would not just save lives, but reduce the disruption from from Covid,” he said.

Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid task force coordinator, has said people who are up to date on their vaccines and get treated when they have a breakthrough infection face almost no risk of dying from Covid at this point in the pandemic. Jha has called on the older Americans in particular, who are more vulnerable to severe illness, to get boosted so they have more protection during the holidays.

“There are still too many older Americans who have not gotten their immunity updated who have not gotten themselves protected,” Jha told reporters at the White House last week.

Michael Osterholm, a leading epidemiologist, said new Covid variants will pose the biggest threat to progress the U.S. has made in 2023.

China has eased its stringent zero-Covid policy, which sought to crush outbreaks of the virus, in response to widespread social unrest during the fall. Infections are now soaring in the country, raising concern that Covid now has even more space to mutate.

The virus has continued to mutate into ever more transmissible versions of omicron over the past year, at the same time that immunity from vaccination or prior infection has waned off.

“We want to believe that after three years of activity, all the immunity that we should have acquired through either vaccination or previous infection should protect us,” said Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “But with waning immunity and the variants — we can’t say that.”

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December 28, 2022
Supreme Court extends Trump-era pandemic immigration rule to allow quicker deportations

Asylum seeking migrants from Central America sit next to a vehicle that was stopped by police after crossing the Rio Grande into Eagle Pass, Texas from Mexico along U.S. Route 90, in Hondo, Texas, U.S., June 1, 2022.

Shannon Stapleton | Reuters

A Supreme Court decision will keep in place for now a controversial Trump-era rule that allows the U.S. to deport migrants at the Mexican border as a public health measure in response to the pandemic.

The court voted 5-4 on Tuesday to grant an emergency request by 19 Republican state attorneys general who sought to intervene in defense of the policy. It also agreed to hear oral arguments in February and rule on whether the states can intervene, with a decision due by the end of June. The policy will remain in place at least until that ruling is issued.

“Title 42 is a public health measure, not an immigration enforcement measure, and it should not be extended indefinitely,” the White House said in a statement. “To truly fix our broken immigration system, we need Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform measures like the ones President Biden proposed on his first day in office.”

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the three liberals on the court in voting against the stay request. The brief court order said that while the administration cannot set aside the Title 42 policy, the decision “does not prevent the federal government from taking any action with respect to that policy.”

More than 2 million people have been deported at the southern border under the policy since 2020.

In November, a federal district court in Washington, D.C., had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to end the policy Dec. 21, criticizing the deportations as arbitrary. But Republican-led states intervened in the case and successfully petitioned the high court to block that lower court ruling. Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the Biden administration earlier this month from ending the controversial policy.

The deportation policy originated with the Trump administration. In March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used a provision under the Public Health Services Act, or Title 42, to prohibit migrants from crossing into the U.S. from Mexico or Canada due to the risk of them spreading Covid-19. The deportation policy is often referred to simply as Title 42.

But human rights groups and dozens of health experts fiercely criticized the policy as a way for the federal government to carry out arbitrary mass deportations at the southern border under the guise of public health.

The White House continued the policy until April 2022, when the CDC said it was longer necessary to prevent the spread of Covid. The CDC and DHS had planned for the policy to end in May, but Republican states sued and got a federal court in Louisiana to block the Biden administration from ending the deportations at that time as well.

Republicans and some Democrats argue that ending the policy will lead to a major increase in migration at the southern border that communities there are unequipped to deal with. El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency on Saturday in response to a recent increase in migrants crossing the border.

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December 27, 2022