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Philadelphia officials announced Monday that masks will once again be required in indoor spaces. This includes restaurants, gyms, retail stores and schools. The change goes into effect in one week, on April 18th.

The move comes as the city crossed the threshold into Response Level 2: Mask precautions. The city had been in the “All Clear” level for just over a month, since March 2nd, meaning there were no mask or vaccination requirements across the city, with the exception of health care settings and public transit.



As of Monday, the city reported an average of 142 daily new infections, and cases had increased by more than 50% over the last 10 days. Hospitalizations were at 46, still below the limit. Still, Philadelphia Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said it would be foolish to avoid the warning signs: every time so far, rising cases have been followed by rising hospitalizations and deaths. “ I suspect that this wave will be smaller than the one we saw in January,” she said, referring to the original omicron wave. “But if we wait to find out and to put our masks back on, we’ll have lost our chance to stop the wave.” She added that if it appears hospitalizations don’t increase in response to the new BA2 variant as they have in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, the health department can adjust its metrics and the mandate can be dropped again.

The new evidence reveals a critical vagus nerve role in preventing COVID-19’s dangerous cytokine storms. When famotidine was administered to mice, it significantly reduced serum and spleen levels of the cytokines TNF and Interleukin 6 (IL-6) and improved survival, which means that the inflammatory reflex is famotidine’s mechanism of action.

"It is important to understand that famotidine is safe and effective at potentially treating COVID-19, but it is equally important to understand ‘why’ that is," said Huan Yang, PhD, associate professor in the Institute of the Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes and co-senior author of the paper. "These results open up new avenues of treatment research, not only for COVID-19 but other inflammatory diseases as well."

Researchers noted that future studies are needed to replicate the findings of using famotidine to combat COVID-19 and that this new research was conducted in animal models, not humans. Just as direct electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve has shown to improve a variety of diseases, famotidine too – a well-tolerated and generic drug – may one day offer additional methods of activating the inflammatory reflex to reduce inflammation.

"Previous observations and clinical trials have suggested that famotidine, an affordable, generic drug, has the potential to shorten the symptom duration of COVID-19, but we did not know how it worked to reduce inflammation," said Dr. Tracey, co-senior author of the paper. "Now these new results point to a role of the vagus nerve inflammatory reflex in suppressing cytokine storm during COVID-19."

Vaccines offer little protection against long Covid, study finds
The vaccines provide robust protection against hospitalization and death, but when it comes to long Covid, the protection is "very modest."

AndyinPA wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 8:47 pm https://www.yahoo.com/now/famotidine-pe ... 00680.html

famotidine = Pepcid

The new evidence reveals a critical vagus nerve role in preventing COVID-19’s dangerous cytokine storms. When famotidine was administered to mice, it significantly reduced serum and spleen levels of the cytokines TNF and Interleukin 6 (IL-6) and improved survival, which means that the inflammatory reflex is famotidine’s mechanism of action.



"Previous observations and clinical trials have suggested that famotidine, an affordable, generic drug, has the potential to shorten the symptom duration of COVID-19, but we did not know how it worked to reduce inflammation," said Dr. Tracey, co-senior author of the paper. "Now these new results point to a role of the vagus nerve inflammatory reflex in suppressing cytokine storm during COVID-19."

Edited to add source link.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... 005835/en/

More than a year after people began rolling up their sleeves for cutting-edge coronavirus shots, a new vaccine, this one based on a classic decades-old technology, is expected to begin rolling out in the United States this summer.

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration are scheduled to debate Tuesday whether a shot developed by the Maryland biotechnology company Novavax, an underdog in the vaccine race, is safe and effective. If the shot gets the green light, it will become the fourth coronavirus vaccine in the nation.

For most people, some already on their third or fourth messenger RNA coronavirus shot from Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech, it looks like a puzzle: A new vaccine? Why bother? But for a small contingent of holdouts who have closely tracked the progress of the Novavax vaccine, this is a moment of truth.

“Some people can’t take the mRNA vaccines, and it is important to have a choice,” said Victoria Dawson, 74, of New York, who is allergic to an ingredient in the mRNA shots. She received a Johnson & Johnson shot and booster but hopes her next shot will be from Novavax. “I’m being very cautious. I’m staying around my apartment complex and not eating in restaurants,” she said. “I get up in the morning and just stress the minute I get up.”

Until last week, Dr. Ali Mokdad expected the United States to have “a very good summer” in terms of COVID-19. Projections by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, where he works, forecasted falling cases, hospitalizations, and deaths through at least September.
Then, circumstances changed: Researchers discovered that BA.4 and BA.5 — subvariants of Omicron spreading in the United States — are “immune escapes,” adept at avoiding the antibodies the body produces after vaccination or infection to neutralize the virus.
...
Barouch published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday that found that BA.4 and BA.5 are far better at avoiding antibodies than any prior strains — three times better than BA.1 and BA.2, and 20 times better than the “original” COVID-19.
“What we’re seeing with each subsequent variant is iteratively higher levels of transmissibility and higher levels of antibody immune escape,” he said. As a result, “we’re seeing high levels of infection in populations that are highly vaccinated, as well as populations that have a high level of natural immunity to the prior variants.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday loosened many of its recommendations for battling the coronavirus, a strategic shift that puts more of the onus on individuals, rather than on schools, businesses and other institutions, to limit viral spread.

No longer do schools and other institutions need to screen apparently healthy students and employees as a matter of course. The CDC is putting less emphasis on social distancing — and the new guidance has dropped the “six foot” standard. The quarantine rule for unvaccinated people is gone. The agency’s focus now is on highly vulnerable populations and how to protect them — not on the vast majority of people who at this point have some immunity against the virus and are unlikely to become severely ill.

The new recommendations signal that the Biden administration and its medical advisers have decided that the lower fatality rate from covid-19 in a heavily vaccinated population permits a less demanding set of guidelines.

“The current conditions of this pandemic are very different from those of the last two years,” CDC epidemiologist Greta Massetti said Thursday in a briefing for reporters.

Volkonski wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 1:13 pm