Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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That sounds like Long Covid to me.

I hope the long hauler community does not fall into trap some in the Autism have of if you are not impaired enough you are dismissed as not having “real Long Covid”

So if you want to protect yourself from any of the variants of COVID or the next type of air born virus, This would be my suggestion.

That won't prevent you from catching the virus outside of your own home, though =|

Might prevent us from catching it from our kid (which has happened twice now), but I would really prefer that HE doesn't catch it, either >_<

You are right but in general the current strain of the virus is not as deadly as previous strains.

Three years after the pandemic began, there's still no scientific consensus on how much protection masks offer.

Laboratory studies are clear that masks – especially N95s and KN95s – decrease the number of COVID-19 particles that enter the body, and the less virus that is inhaled, the lower the risk of infection. But research has led to mixed findings on how much masks reduce the spread of COVID-19 in communities, in part because levels of mask-wearing have varied over time and not everyone wears the masks correctly.

Some studies, including some conducted earlier in the pandemic when mask-wearing was more common, concluded masks significantly reduce rates of COVID-19. Others found they only have a small effect, and still others were unable to reach firm conclusions.

A review of studies published in the June Annals of Internal Medicine concluded that “masks may be associated with a small reduction in risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection in community settings.”

Another review of previous studies, some completed before the pandemic, looked at community spread of different types of respiratory viruses, including COVID-19, and found “there is uncertainty about the effects of face masks

Some interpreted that review, published in January in the Cochrane Database of Systemic Reviews, as concluding masks don't work. But the editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Library said that is "an inaccurate and misleading interpretation."

A significant caveat in the Cochrane review illustrates the difficulty in measuring the impact of wearing masks in the real world: “Relatively low numbers of people followed the guidance about wearing masks.”

The CDC no longer has a blanket recommendation for mask-wearing, although, the agency says, "Masking is a critical public health tool for preventing spread of COVID-19."

Current CDC guidelines recommend that everyone wear masks in all indoor public spaces only when hospital admission levels are deemed high, and high-risk people do so when hospitalizations are at a medium level. Despite the recent rise in hospitalizations, current levels are considered low on Long Island and in more than 98% of U.S. counties, CDC data as of Aug. 5 shows.

Ali Khosronejad, an associate professor of civil engineering at Stony Brook University, said masks do much more to prevent someone with COVID-19 from spreading the virus than protect someone from contracting it.

“If someone has COVID, wearing a mask is very effective” at stopping that person from passing it on to others, he said.

However, even the best N95 masks don’t prevent breathing in some saliva of a nearby person with COVID-19, although they reduce the number of particles that get through, he said. (The amount of virus that a person is exposed to determines whether the individual is infected, studies show.)

Khosronejad said a study he recently led that likely will be published in the coming weeks confirmed his previous research that shows masks significantly reduce how much virus a person with COVID-19 emits. Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.

Tightfitting N95 masks are most effective, followed by KN95s, and then surgical masks and cloth masks, he said.

Even cloth masks can curb the spread of saliva to less than 2 feet, by diminishing the momentum of the "jets" of saliva as someone exhales, Khosronejad said.

“These jets have kinetic energy that can carry the particles far away, and if you have a mask, it reduces the energy of those jets significantly,” he said.

With masks more effective at blocking the spread than the inhalation of the virus, if you're the only person in a crowded place wearing a mask — or not wearing one — you have a much greater chance of getting infected than if most people were donning masks, Khosronejad said.

Sandra Sánchez of Brentwood was wearing a blue surgical mask on a recent afternoon as she sold plastic containers of cut fruit near a stoplight at the end of a Long Island Expressway exit.

Her mother died of COVID-19 in 2021, and Sánchez, 50, doesn’t want to take chances.

“I have a lot of fear of COVID, a lot of respect for COVID,” she said in Spanish.

Sánchez is one of a dwindling number of Long Islanders who still regularly wear face masks to protect against COVID-19, even as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations on Long Island have more than doubled in recent weeks.

On Long Island Rail Road trains and in supermarkets, movie theaters and other places where Long Islanders shop and gather, masks that were nearly ubiquitous early in the pandemic are now rare, outside of health care settings. Even many hospitals and doctors' offices no longer require them.


During the height of the pandemic, laws and regulations requiring mask-wearing became political and social flashpoints, with some opponents of mask mandates asserting the requirements were a violation of personal freedom and others saying they were necessary to protect others.

Today, in communities across Long Island, no matter their political leanings, you might have to wait awhile before you spot someone with a mask.

That’s a reversal from early in the pandemic, when people without masks stood out, said Perry Halkitis, a public health psychologist and dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health in New Jersey.

As more people over time stopped wearing masks, that made others more likely to leave their masks at home as well, he said.

“We want to be like the norm,” Halkitis said. “Everyone wants to be like everyone else.”

People follow how family and friends behave, and what they see celebrities and politicians do, he said.

"Nobody wants to feel like the odd person out,” he said.

People at higher risk for severe COVID-19, and those who socialize with them, are most likely to still wear masks, he said.

Halkitis said he has increased his mask-wearing as COVID-19 rates have risen in recent weeks.

Halkitis especially recommends people wear masks in tight, confined spaces such as commuter and subway trains.

"It's not just about COVID that's floating in that air," he said. "It’s going to protect you from the flu or whatever else is circulating around.”

Fraction wearing masks
Yet during a recent afternoon rush-hour at the Hicksville LIRR station, only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of people who exited and boarded trains wore masks.

In more than a dozen interviews there and in Brentwood, at a grocery store and expressway exit, some mask-wearers said they only don masks in crowded places like LIRR cars, while others said they do so in any indoor public space. Some were worried about COVID-19, either because they're at high risk for severe COVID or just don't want to get sick.

No one interviewed said they received rude comments or nasty stares.

Elias Gonel, 61, of Uniondale, said he never stopped wearing a mask.

“I wear the mask for myself, my patient and my family,” Gonel said as he waited for a bus to return home from his job as a home health aide for a 70-year-old man in Hicksville. His patient thanks him for wearing a mask, he said.

Gonel is more nervous now that most people no longer wear masks. But he doesn’t look down on people who don’t use masks.

“It’s up to you,” he said. “If you want to wear the mask, all right. If you don’t want to, it’s not a problem.”

Mercedes Hernández, 42, of Syosset, who was wearing a surgical mask as she waited for her husband at the Hicksville LIRR station after finishing her job cleaning houses, said she wears a mask because "I feel more vulnerable."

Hernández believes she is at greater risk for severe COVID-19 because of smaller openings in her nasal passages that are a result of severe burns from a muriatic acid attack more than two decades ago. She likes how the mask protects her against colds and the flu as well as COVID-19.

“There are people who have colds and sometimes cough and aren’t careful,” Hernández said in Spanish.

Gladis Mendoza, 58, of Brentwood has diabetes, which research shows increases her risk.

“I have her always wearing masks,” said her son, Arnold Cruz, 29, of Brentwood, as they left a Gala Foods supermarket in Brentwood. “I don’t want my mom catching anything.”

Masks a habit for some
Ema Han, 34, said she wears a mask on the LIRR, but she doesn’t think much about COVID-19.

“I think it’s just a forced habit,” Han said of mask-wearing as she stood on a platform at the Hicksville LIRR station waiting for a train to return to her home in Woodside, Queens, from her interior design job in Hicksville. “I’ve done it for so long."

The World Health Organization announced Thursday it had stepped up its classification of a recently discovered COVID-19 strain, BA.2.86, citing its large number of mutations.

This strain's rapid escalation to the WHO's "variant under monitoring" category is uncommon. Just four cases have been spotted of the variant worldwide. Virus trackers officially designated the strain as BA.2.86 less than a day ago.

It is too early to say whether the variant will be more dangerous than the currently circulating strains of the virus. But the U.N. agency says more data is needed to understand the threat BA.2.86 might pose, given its large number of mutations.

The strain's dozens of genetic changes — an evolutionary jump on par with the emergence of the original Omicron variant in 2021 — has raised eyebrows among virologists as cases have started to crop up around the world. Its mutations include some changes at key parts of the virus that could help it better dodge the body's immunity from prior infections or vaccination.

"Deep mutational scanning indicates BA.2.86 variant will have equal or greater escape than XBB.1.5 from antibodies elicited by pre-Omicron and first-generation Omicron variants," Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, said in a slide deck published Thursday.

XBB.1.5 is the variant from which many recent strains have descended, and Food and Drug Administration officials had previously picked out XBB.1.5 as the strain for vaccines to target in this fall's booster shots.

BA.2.86 has 36 mutations relative to the XBB.1.5 variant, Bloom said.

Experts say reports of BA.2.86 being spotted in countries in three different continents — Denmark, Israel and U.S. — also suggest it is at least capable of transmitting widely and could have been spreading undetected for some time.

The first U.S. case of BA.2.86 was reported by a lab at the University of Michigan. According to records attached to the sequence uploaded to GISAID, a global virus database, the sample was sequenced by the university's clinical microbiology lab during "baseline surveillance”.

It is unclear whether the samples were collected from a hospitalized patient in the health system run by the university or from another source.

In Denmark, health authorities say they are currently working to culture the virus, a key step towards further assessing the threat posed by the highly-mutated strain. The two cases spotted there had "no epidemiological link" and were not immunocompromised.

Tracking the spread of COVID variants BA.2.86 and EG.5
For now, experts say BA.2.86 will still need to show it can outcompete other fast-spreading descendants of the XBB Omicron variant already on the rise around the world in order to be more than a "scientific curiosity."

One XBB descendant, a variant called EG.5, had already climbed to nearly 1 in 5 cases nationwide as of CDC estimates published earlier this month. New projections are due to be published Friday.

The strain's emergence comes as drugmakers have been preparing to roll out new COVID-19 vaccines next month aimed at the XBB strains of the virus, of which EG.5 is closely related. Moderna announced Thursday that its preliminary clinical trial data from the new shots confirmed "a significant boost in neutralizing antibodies" for EG.5.

Those could face a setback if BA.2.86 is able to spread more widely. Bloom said he thinks the strain's changes are enough to risk making the XBB-targeted vaccines a "fairly poor match" to BA.2.86.

But he underscored that BA.2.86 remains rare for now, and other defenses mounted by the body may also still work to fend off the highly-mutated variant.

Firefighter and paramedic Mike Camilleri once had no trouble hauling heavy gear up ladders. Now battling long COVID, he gingerly steps onto a treadmill to learn how his heart handles a simple walk.

"This is, like, not a tough-guy test so don't fake it," warned Beth Hughes, a physical therapist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Somehow, a mild case of COVID-19 set off a chain reaction that eventually left Camilleri with dangerous blood pressure spikes, a heartbeat that raced with slight exertion, and episodes of intense chest pain.

He's far from alone. How profound a toll COVID-19 has taken on the nation's heart health is only starting to emerge, years into the pandemic.

"We are seeing effects on the heart and the vascular system that really outnumber, unfortunately, effects on other organ systems," said Dr. Susan Cheng, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

It's not only an issue for long COVID patients like Camilleri. For up to a year after a case of COVID-19, people may be at increased risk of developing a new heart-related problem, anything from blood clots and irregular heartbeats to a heart attack –- even if they initially seem to recover just fine.

Among the unknowns: Who's most likely to experience these aftereffects? Are they reversible — or a warning sign of more heart disease later in life?

"We're about to exit this pandemic as even a sicker nation" because of virus-related heart trouble, said Washington University's Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, who helped sound the alarm about lingering health problems. The consequences, he added, "will likely reverberate for generations."

Heart attack-caused deaths rose during every virus surge. Worse, young people aren't supposed to have heart attacks but Cheng's research documented a nearly 30% increase in heart attack deaths among 25- to 44-year-olds in the pandemic's first two years.

An ominous sign the trouble may continue: High blood pressure is one of the biggest risks for heart disease and "people's blood pressure has actually measurably gone up over the course of the pandemic," she said.

Cardiovascular symptoms are part of what's known as long COVID, the catchall term for dozens of health issues including fatigue and brain fog. The National Institutes of Health is beginning small studies of a few possible treatments for certain long COVID symptoms, including a heartbeat problem.

But Cheng said patients and doctors alike need to know that sometimes, cardiovascular trouble is the first or main symptom of damage the coronavirus left behind.

"These are individuals who wouldn't necessarily come to their doctor and say, 'I have long COVID,'" she said.

Verma is part of a cardiology team that studied a small group of patients with perplexing heart symptoms like Camilleri's, and found abnormalities in blood flow may be part of the problem.

How? Blood flow jumps when people move around and subsides during rest. But some long COVID patients don't get enough of a drop during rest because the fight-or-flight system that controls stress reactions stays activated, Verma said.

Some also have trouble with the lining of their small blood vessels not dilating and constricting properly to move blood through, she added.

Hoping that helped explain some of Camilleri's symptoms, Verma prescribed some heart medicines that dilate blood vessels and others to dampen that fight-or-flight response.

Back in the gym, Hughes, a physical therapist who works with long COVID patients, came up with a careful rehab plan after the treadmill test exposed erratic jumps in Camilleri's heart rate.

"We'd see it worse if you were not on Dr. Verma's meds," Hughes said, showing Camilleri exercises to do while lying down and monitoring his heart rate. "We need to rewire your system" to normalize that fight-or-flight response.

How big is the post-COVID heart risk? To find out, Al-Aly analyzed medical records from a massive Veterans Administration database. People who'd survived COVID-19 early in the pandemic were more likely to experience abnormal heartbeats, blood clots, chest pain and palpitations, even heart attacks and strokes up to a year later compared to the uninfected. That includes even middle-aged people without prior signs of heart disease

Based on those findings, Al-Aly estimated 4 of every 100 people need care for some kind of heart-related symptom in the year after recovering from COVID-19.

Per person, that's a small risk. But he said the pandemic's sheer enormity means it added up to millions left with at least some cardiovascular symptom. While a reinfection might still cause trouble, Al-Aly's now studying whether that overall risk dropped thanks to vaccination and milder coronavirus strains.

More recent research confirms the need to better understand and address these cardiac aftershocks. An analysis this spring of a large U.S. insurance database found long COVID patients were about twice as likely to seek care for cardiovascular problems including blood clots, abnormal heartbeats or stroke in the year after infection, compared to similar patients who'd avoided COVID-19.

A post-infection link to heart damage isn't that surprising, Verma noted. She pointed to rheumatic fever, an inflammatory reaction to untreated strep throat –- especially before antibiotics were common -- that scars the heart's valves.

"Is this going to become the next rheumatic heart disease? We don't know," she said.

But Al-Aly says there's a simple take-home message: You can't change your history of COVID-19 infections but if you've ignored other heart risks –- like high cholesterol or blood pressure, poorly controlled diabetes or smoking -– now's the time to change that.

"These are the ones we can do something about. And I think they're more important now than they were in 2019," he said.

But if a new variant arises, a variant that is both very contagious and also very deadly, it will produce many months of indecision, inactivity, and confusion. And many people will die.

New variant just arrived in Michigan about a week ago (BA.2.86).
They say it has a lot of mutations, and it must be pretty serious because even the CDC is concerned (but not concerned enough to say the "m" word)

Is it starting again?

A Hollywood studio has instituted a mask mandate for its employees in light of the current COVID wave. Lionsgate sent an email to staff asking them to mask up on certain floors of its Santa Monica office after several employees caught the virus. The studio is also asking employees to conduct self-screening before coming to the office.

While this is obviously just one office of one studio, the move comes amid some national buzz about whether mask mandates might be returning as variant EG.5 has become dominant in the United States.

Last May, the film industry relaxed its COVID protocols to no longer require masks in most workplace settings

Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., reinstated a mask mandate Aug. 17 amid an uptick in staff out sick with COVID-19 and an increase in patients testing positive, according to local news outlets.

"Effective immediately, mandatory masking is required by all staff, visitors, and patients in clinical areas of Upstate University Hospital, Upstate Community Hospital, and ambulatory clinical spaces, according to a memo sent to staff and obtained by Syracuse.com. "Clinical areas are defined as any location patients gather, wait, transport thorough, or receive care."

All patients being admitted will also be tested for COVID-19, according to the memo. Upstate University Hospital said it will revisit the policies in three weeks. Syracuse.com reached out to several other hospitals in the region. Crouse Hospital indicated no plans were underway to update testing or masking policies. Meanwhile, St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center said it is reviewing policies.

An Atlanta college announced this week that it is reinstating its mask mandate for everyone on campus.

Morris Brown College began classes just last week, but will require all students and employees to wear face masks.

Officials say there have been no confirmed COVID-19 cases among its students, but they have received reports from other schools in the Atlanta University Center.

The mask mandate is a precautionary move for the next 14 days. Morris Brown College will also not allow any parties or large student gatherings on campus during this time.

Other precautionary measures include: temperature checks upon campus arrival, social distancing and contact tracing. Morris Brown College does have a vaccine requirement for students with religious and medical exemptions allowed.

I am fairly sure these will be exceptions. These are private institutions. I would be surprised if there are beyond a few here or there if any government mandates.

Measures taken during the Covid pandemic such as social distancing and wearing face masks “unequivocally” reduced the spread of infections, a report has found.

Experts looked at the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – not drugs or vaccines – when applied in packages that combine a number of measures that complement one another.

The Royal Society report, called Covid-19: examining the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions, reviewed the evidence gathered during the pandemic for six groups of NPIs and their effectiveness in reducing transmission.

These included masks and face coverings, social distancing and lockdowns, test, trace and isolate, travel restrictions and controls across international borders, environmental controls, and communications.

When assessed individually, there was positive – if limited – evidence of transmission reduction from many of the NPIs used in the pandemic, the review found. However, evidence of a positive effect was clear when countries used combinations of NPIs.

Additionally, evidence showed NPIs were most effective when the intensity of transmission was low, supporting their use early in a pandemic and at first sign of resurgence.

During the early stages of responding to an emerging infectious disease, NPIs tend to be the only controls available before the development of drug treatments and vaccines.

However, as was seen during the pandemic, their use can have adverse personal, educational and economic consequences – making assessment of their effectiveness essential.

Prof Sir Mark Walport, the foreign secretary of the Royal Society and chair of the report’s expert working group, said: “There is sufficient evidence to conclude that early, stringent implementation of packages of complementary NPIs was unequivocally effective in limiting Sars-CoV-2 infections.

“That does not mean every NPI was effective in every setting, or at all times, but learning the lessons from the wealth of research generated in this pandemic will be key to equipping ourselves for the next one.”

But, officials, cautioned, “Compared to other points during the pandemic, hospitalizations and deaths remain relatively low.”

Possibly more important, test positivity has risen to 14%, a not insignificant number. That’s above the 13.8% test positivity peak last winter and very close to the peak of 15.64% the county saw last summer.

Based on the most recent variant sequencing in Los Angeles County as of July 22, XBB.1.5 and EG.5 now account for nearly equal proportions of cases. Combined, they make up 31 percent of the total sequenced cases. XBB.2.3 accounts for the next highest proportion of sequenced cases followed by XBB.1.16.1.

Ninety-eight percent of currently circulating strains in Los Angeles County are descendants of Omicron XBB, including EG.5, which is what the fall vaccine, likely to be released next month, will target. Another variant, BA.2.86, is being closely monitored because it has many mutations that may affect how our body responds to an infection. BA.2.86 has not been detected in recent samples in L.A.

Currently, Los Angeles County is reporting a daily average of 422 hospitalizations, a 30 percent increase from the week prior and there has also been a consistent, small increase in the proportion of emergency department visits attributed to Covid over the past month. While hospitalizations are increasing, the current levels are still far lower than what was seen in 2022 during the summer peak, when there was an average of 1,287 COVID patients hospitalized each day.

But contrary to many viral social media posts, there is no indication that any kind of government-ordered COVID-19 restrictions are about to begin.

In an Aug. 18 episode of “The Alex Jones Show,” the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed sources within the federal government told him “new lockdowns are coming.”

Specifically, he said a “high level manager” in the Transportation Security Administration told him that by mid-September, TSA and airport employees would be required to wear masks due to concerns over “the new variant in Canada.” By mid-October, everyone would have to wear masks on airplanes, he said. He added that the public should expect by December a return to “full COVID protocols.”

Jones then claimed that he called a source within Customs and Border Protection after hearing this, and the source allegedly told him to expect “COVID protocols” to begin rolling out in mid-September and to “get ready for a whole new rollout of what happened before.”

Clips of Jones’ show began circulating online, and dubious websites such as the Gateway Pundit, which frequently traffics in misinformation, and others reported on the “news,” helping to spread the claims on social media. An associated rallying cry, “do not comply,” briefly trended on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. Others have since repeated the claims.

Whether from Jones or not, the rumor that COVID-19 restrictions might be coming back has since been picked up by some politicians.

No Basis for Returning COVID-19 Restrictions
A TSA spokesperson denied Jones’ claims, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — not TSA — is the federal agency responsible for transportation mask requirements.

“TSA is unaware of such a requirement,” the spokesperson told us in an email. “There was no TSA meeting on the topic.”

The CDC similarly said the claims were untrue. “These rumors are utterly false,” Nick Spinelli, a CDC spokesperson, told us in an email.

Moreover, all the talk of the Biden administration reimposing “lockdowns” is not even legally feasible. “The restrictions that were put into place on businesses, on going to the movie theater, on going to the retail mall … all of those were done by states and local governments, not the federal government,” Wendy E. Parmet, a public health law expert at Northeastern University, told us in a phone interview.

The federal government did advise states on restrictions, including when to lift them, and guided Americans on what they should and should not do to stay safe. But ultimately, these were just suggestions.

“It’s conspiracy thinking and it’s catastrophizing,” Parmet said of Jones’ claims.

Parmet added that the restrictions in the U.S., which included business closures and limits on gathering sizes, were not true lockdowns, such as those imposed in China. “The ‘lockdown’ terminology is certainly a misnomer,” she said.

Parmet said that legally, TSA probably could impose mask mandates on its employees, but those would not extend to all airport workers or to passengers. That would be a “labor law issue,” she said, and there might be pushback from the union.

The CDC’s ability to impose a face mask mandate during travel has been contested in court. (Parmet is one of many public health and public health law experts who signed an amicus brief supporting the CDC on this issue.)

The CDC’s previous order expired due to the end of the public health emergency in May and had already become unenforceable in April 2022 due to a court order.

“I think CDC would be extremely wary, and I suspect that the Biden administration will be exceptionally wary right now … for both litigation and political reasons to go down that route unless they feel it is absolutely essential,” Parmet said.

Spinelli noted that the CDC “continues to recommend that all people—passengers and transportation workers, alike—are up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines before they travel and take steps to protect yourself and others.” That can include wearing a mask, if you so choose, when using public transit — but it is not mandated.

The agency currently advises higher-risk people and their contacts to mask up when a person’s county-level hospital admission level is “medium.” When it’s “high,” everyone is advised to wear a high-quality mask or respirator, such as an N95, and higher-risk people are advised to avoid “non-essential indoor activities in public.” But again, these are just recommendations.

As of Aug. 12, no counties are listed as “high,” and fewer than 3% are “medium.”

Some experts have criticized tying public health recommendations to hospital admissions, as this is a lagging indicator, and the warning to take more precautions may come too late for many people.

Some Concern from New Variants, But No Expectation of a Return to 2020
Scientists and public health officials have been watching two newer coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, variants: EG.5 and BA.2.86.

Scientists and public health officials have been watching two newer coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, variants: EG.5 and BA.2.86.

EG.5, which the CDC estimates made up about a fifth of all coronavirus cases in the U.S. in the past couple of weeks, is a spinoff of XBB.1.9.2, another omicron variant. In this regard, it doesn’t appear to be that different from its immediate predecessors, although it may be a bit more transmissible and more readily able to evade immunity, which could explain its current rise. There isn’t evidence that the variant causes more severe disease.

“Collectively, available evidence does not suggest that EG.5 has additional public health risks relative to the other currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 descendent lineages,” the WHO concluded in an Aug. 9 risk evaluation report.

Only a small number of BA.2.86 cases have been identified in the U.S. or elsewhere, but mutation analyses indicate the variant may be especially able to evade immune defenses. It is still too soon to know whether the variant causes more severe disease or is more transmissible, according to the CDC. The variant, however, has been identified in many countries, suggesting it has some ability to spread.

Even if BA.2.86 does turn out to be the next big variant, it would not be the same as 2020, when the entire world was susceptible to the coronavirus, with no kind of prior immunity and no vaccine available.

The forthcoming updated vaccine may be less effective against BA.2.86 than against other variants, but the CDC expects it will still work to reduce severe disease and hospitalization, which is the primary goal. This makes it highly unlikely that the U.S. would have to impose restrictions similar to those early in the pandemic, even if there is a bad COVID-19 surge and public health officials encourage people to take extra precautions.

“We aren’t returning to March 2020; our immune systems will still recognize the highly mutated variant, albeit suboptimally,” epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina wrote in her Substack about the possible risks of BA.2.86. “This will protect a lot of us from severe disease.”

Covid-19 vaccines that have been tweaked to teach the body how to fend off the current crop of circulating variants are now expected to land in drugstores and clinics in mid-September, CDC and FDA officials said.

The officials spoke Thursday about the US government’s preparations for the fall and winter respiratory virus season on the condition that they not be named.

The FDA plans to grant full licensure for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for people 12 and older. Vaccines for children 11 and under, as well as the Novavax vaccine, will be available under an emergency use authorization, the officials said.

While vaccines were previously provided for free by the government, this is the first time vaccines will be provided through the commercial market. Under the Affordable Care Act, most insurance plans are required to cover the full cost of vaccines, without co-pays.

People who don’t have insurance, or who don’t have enough insurance, can still get vaccines for free through a government bridge program.

“That bridge program will exist through a few channels,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in an interview with CNN last week. “Folks can go to a federally qualified health center or they can go to their public health department. … And then the third option is, we are working with pharmacy partners such as CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and others to have it available in the pharmacies as well”

The details of the pharmacy program are still being worked out, and there may be a slight lag in getting free vaccines at some stores. But health departments and federally qualified health centers should have them right away, Cohen said.

People will only need to tell their vaccine provider that they don’t have insurance to qualify for the benefit, she said.

Cohen also said unless a person has never been vaccinated and never been infected, it’s probably better to wait until the new vaccines come out in September, rather than opting to get one of the older bivalent vaccines now. Getting a bivalent vaccine now might delay a person’s ability to get the new shot within the next few weeks, she cautioned. In a video Q&A posted online, she advised anyone in this circumstance to talk with their doctor or nurse practitioner about their individual risk.

In addition, there are still a significant number of Covid-19 tests in the Strategic National Stockpile. The government has been sending those free tests to nursing homes and assisted living facilities, federally qualified health centers, school, libraries and a number of other places that serve the public. That program will continue, officials said. There’s also the option to bring back Covidtest.gov, the website where people can order free test.

Lionsgate today notified employees that the mask mandate instituted about a week ago for the 3rd and 5th floors of the studio’s five-story office building in Santa Monica is ending, sources tell Deadline. I hear the announcement was made after Los Angeles County Department of Public Health informed the company that it could lift the mask requirement following days of no new infections.