Coronavirus weekly need-to-know: long COVID in adults, cases, omicron, CDC data & more

In the United States, more than 83 million people have tested positive for coronavirus as of Saturday, May 28, according to Johns Hopkins University.

To date, more than 1 million people in the U.S. have died. Worldwide, there have been more than 528 million confirmed cases of COVID-19.

Additionally, over 6.2 million have died from the virus globally. Roughly 221 million people in the U.S. are fully vaccinated as of May 26 — 66.6% of the population — and 103 million of those people have gotten their first booster shot, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Roughly 92% of the U.S. lives in a location with low or medium COVID-19 Community Level, the agency says as of May 27. About 8% of Americans reside in an area with a high COVID-19 Community Level. For them, it’s recommended to wear a mask while indoors in public.

The CDC reports the weekly average of COVID-19 cases has risen nationwide as of May 18. Cases are 18.8% higher compared to the prior week’s average, according to the CDC.

Omicron and its subvariants dominated all positive U.S. cases for the week ending May 21.

Here’s what happened between May 22 and 27.

1 in 5 adults may develop long COVID symptoms after infection, CDC says

About 1 in 5 adults may develop at least one long COVID-19 symptom after having a coronavirus infection, according to CDC research published Tuesday, May 24.

For those 65 and older, the risk of developing at least one “post-COVID condition” is slightly higher and may affect 1 in 4 people, the CDC said.

Meanwhile, it is twice as likely for adults 18 and older who get over COVID-19 to develop pulmonary embolism — a traveling blood clot that forms somewhere in the body and moves to block a lung artery — or respiratory troubles, according to the CDC report.

Based on the findings, the agency advises “routine assessment for post-COVID conditions among” those who recover from the virus and especially for adults older than 65.

The most common long COVID-19 conditions in all adult patients were found to be “respiratory symptoms and musculoskeletal pain,” the study noted.

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Fact check: Is monkeypox more contagious than COVID-19?

As the number of monkeypox cases grows around the world, health officials are working to dispel myths about the virus.

There have been 92 laboratory-confirmed cases and 28 suspected cases of monkeypox reported since May 13, according to the World Health Organization. No deaths associated with the virus have been reported.

At least three cases of monkeypox have been identified in the United States, with the most recent presumptive positive case found in Florida, ABC News reported.

During the outbreak, there have been multiple reports suggesting that the virus could be transmitted through sexual activity and that the CDC indicated that members of the LGBTQ community could face increased exposure —something that health experts say can lead to unnecessary stigma.

Some have also hinted that the outbreak could rise to the level of a pandemic, similar to COVID-19. But unlike COVID-19, monkeypox isn’t considered contagious before people develop symptoms, according to Dr. Anne Rimoin, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of California Los Angeles.

“It’s not as highly transmissible as something like smallpox, or measles, or certainly not COVID,” Rimoin told Vox.

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CDC may stop reporting suspected COVID cases to ease burden

The CDC plans to simplify the COVID-19 hospital data it collects as the demands of the pandemic evolve and some assembled information has become outdated or redundant.

The agency is likely to stop collecting data from hospitals on suspected COVID-19 cases that haven’t been confirmed by tests, for example, and may also wind down federal reporting from rehabilitation and mental health facilities that aren’t major intake points for virus cases, according to a draft of the plan that was viewed by Bloomberg News.

Early in the pandemic, when COVID-19 tests were sparse and it could take days to confirm cases, the U.S. encouraged hospitals to report all likely infections. But since most hospitals now test all patients on admission, suspect cases can be confirmed or ruled out within hours, making the data not particularly useful.

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Planning a national parks trip? Here’s what you should know ahead of the summer season

The days of walking into a national park at the last minute might be over.

National Park Service sites across the country have seen a boom in visitation and it means tourists need to plan ahead more than ever.

In 2021, over 297 million people visited national parks, according to the National Park Service.

To find out if you need a mask when visiting national parks, continue reading:

What’s next for COVID-19 vaccines for youngest US children

Parents hoping to get their youngest children vaccinated against COVID-19 got some encouraging news Monday, May 23.

Pfizer said three small doses of its vaccine offers strong protection to youngsters under 5, according to preliminary data. That news comes a month after Moderna said it would ask regulators to OK its two doses tor the youngest kids.

But a few steps remain before the shots are available. Health officials and their expert panels must first decide they are safe enough and provide enough protection to authorize them.

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How better ventilation can help ‘COVID-proof’ your home

For two years, you beat the odds. You masked, kept your distance, got your shots.

Now, despite those efforts, you, your child, or someone else in your home has come down with COVID-19. And the last thing you want is for the virus to spread to everyone in the family or household. But how do you prevent it from circulating when you live in close quarters?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends isolating COVID-19 patients for at least five days, preferably in a separate room with access to their own bathroom, as well as diligent mask-wearing for both patient and caregiver. But for many families, those aren’t easy options. Not everyone has an extra bedroom to spare, let alone a free bathroom. Young children should not be left alone, and the youngest can’t tolerate masks.

“For parents of a young child, it’s pretty difficult not to be exposed,” said Dr. Preeti Malani, chief health officer at the University of Michigan. “You have to work back from the perfect to the possible and manage your risk the best you can.”

But scientists say there is still a lot people can do to protect their families, chief among them improving ventilation and filtration of the air.

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Walt Disney World is bringing back another beloved attraction that stopped due to COVID

It’s been a slow comeback for the Magic Kingdom.

After COVID-19 hit in March 2020, the park understandably shut down for the rest of the year.

Once vaccines became available, it reopened in the summer of 2021, but not all the way.

Many of Disney’s more interactive events were closed down, both due to fears of crowd size and worker shortages.

But once more people became vaccinated, or made it clear that they were never going to get vaccinated and we’d just have to live with that, Disney’s parks began bringing back its attractions one by one.

And now a long-awaited fan favorite is making its return.

For more, keep reading:

Dominant coronavirus mutant contains ghost of pandemic past

The coronavirus mutant that is now dominant in the United States is a member of the omicron family but scientists say it spreads faster than its omicron predecessors, is adept at escaping immunity and might possibly cause more serious disease.

Why? Because it combines properties of both omicron and delta, the nation’s dominant variant in the middle of last year.

A genetic trait that harkens back to the pandemic’s past, known as a “delta mutation,” appears to allow the virus “to escape pre-existing immunity from vaccination and prior infection, especially if you were infected in the omicron wave,” said Dr. Wesley Long, a pathologist at Houston Methodist in Texas. That’s because the original omicron strain that swept the world didn’t have the mutation.

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The Associated Press reporter Laura Ungar, Bloomberg News reporters Riley Griffin and Drew Armstrong, Kaiser Health News reporter Liz Szabo, TheStreet reporter Michael Tedder and McClatchy reporters Maddie Capron and Evan Moore also contributed to this report.

This story was originally published May 27, 2022 at 7:22 AM.

Julia Marnin

McClatchy DC

Julia Marnin covers courts for McClatchy News, writing about criminal and civil affairs, including cases involving policing, corrections, civil liberties, fraud, and abuses of power. As a reporter on McClatchy’s National Real-Time Team, she’s also covered the COVID-19 pandemic and a variety of other topics since joining in 2021, following a fellowship with Newsweek. Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, she was raised in South Jersey and is now based in New York State.