In the News

Young children in the United States were hospitalized at much higher rates this winter as omicron became the dominant variant than they were during the delta surge, according to a new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
 

Covid cases are dropping in the U.S. and mask mandates are being repealed all over. Yet over a third of the wastewater sample sites across the U.S. showed rising Covid-19 levels in the first 10 days of March. So is Covid going away or not?
 

COVID-19 vaccination rates were lower in Ukraine than in many other countries before the war began, putting many people at risk for contracting and transmitting the virus.
 

The situation in Europe has the attention of public health officials for two reasons: First, the UK offers a preview of what may play out in the United States, and second, something unusual seems to be happening.
 

As a medical anthropologist working in health security for decades, I can tell you it has a name, “panic and neglect.” Decision-makers wake up during a catastrophic outbreak to the value of a strong public health sector only to return to slumber after the crisis, until another epidemic startles them anew.
Monica Schoch-Spana wrote the piece. [Opinion]

Ending the emergency declaration now would be premature, experts said. Lifting the emergency declaration will have a major impact on the healthcare system and the temporary policies set in place, which would affect many Americans.
 

As COVID testing is scaled back, public health experts are looking to wastewater surveillance and other techniques to monitor new surges or variants.

Long COVID isn’t going away, and we still do not have a way to fully prevent it, cure it, or really to
quantify it.
Shruti Mehta, Bryan Lau, and Priya Duggal are quoted.
 

Although studies now demonstrate that the virus had already commenced its rapid spread across the country in late 2019, many Americans were still completely unaware of what the "novel coronavirus" was, and of the looming health crisis -- one that would underscore the lack of national and global preparedness to deal with such a pandemic.
 

If the coronavirus has one singular goal—repeatedly infecting us—it’s only gotten better at realizing it, from Alpha to Delta to Omicron. And it is nowhere near done.
 

As those who have so far escaped the virus venture out into reopened environments, should they worry more or less about risk than people who were infected before them? Some experts weigh in with caution against feeling invincible.
 

Maryland’s case rate, positivity rate, and hospitalizations are all at their lowest points in more than eight months, per the Maryland Department of Health.