Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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Despite long COVID’s apparent prevalence, official data on who it’s affecting — which could help policymakers target resources and support where they’re needed most — is still two years away.

In the meantime, an analysis from the independent nonprofit FAIR Health, provided exclusively to Morning Consult, indicates that long COVID’s burden is widespread: About 78,000 privately insured Americans were treated for a post-COVID condition between October 2021, when federal health officials created a diagnostic code to identify such patients, and the end of January. Many more are likely being seen without being assigned this code.

Long COVID “affects the entire support system and family,” said Liza Fisher, 38, whose mother moved to Houston from Ohio to care for her after the condition left her unable to return to work as a flight attendant. And many people aren’t aware of “how severe the lived experience is of people suffering from it, and how traumatic it is.”

That can be true for even relatively young and previously healthy patients. The FAIR Health analysis doesn’t include the millions of people in the United States who are uninsured or have health coverage through Medicaid or Medicare, excluding many older adults and low-income people. But among the privately insured, nearly 35% of long COVID patients are between the ages of 36 and 50, and about 32% are ages 51-64, the claims data shows.

Notably, about 1 in 10 privately insured long COVID patients are under 23 years old. Sheehan’s teenage son is among them. He’s been experiencing severe ongoing symptoms after his second bout with COVID-19, she said, and they’ve faced “gaslighting” from clinicians who shuttle them from specialist to specialist.

The analysis also underscores a gender divide, with women and girls making up 60% of privately insured long COVID patients, in line with previous research showing that middle-aged women are more likely to experience severe symptoms after COVID-19. Long COVID researchers and clinicians still don’t fully understand the gender dynamic.

The FAIR Health data doesn’t reflect the racial or ethnic breakdown of long COVID cases, but lawmakers, patient advocates and clinicians are concerned that people of color could be disproportionately affected by the condition.

“You can’t manage what you don’t know,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said on a press call earlier this month. “We need the data.”

Diana Berrent, who leads Survivor Corps, a patient advocacy group for COVID-19 survivors with around 200,000 members, said “there are core equity issues at every step.” The group has mobilized to inject “patient-generated, real-world evidence” into research on long COVID, with partnerships across the academic medical community.

Yet without official data, there are still more questions than answers on why certain groups are being hit with long COVID and how to alleviate their suffering. The FAIR Health analysis highlights that doctors and researchers are only beginning to scrape the surface in measuring the toll long COVID is taking on Americans.

“They are really behind the ball on long COVID, because everyone’s been so consumed by acute COVID, which is understandable,” Berrent said. “But this shadow pandemic isn’t going to go away on its own.”

Their stories are shared through social media, the fear and agony front and center in almost every conversation: breathing issues, chronic pain, unexplained bruising, hallucinations, brain fog. “No way to describe besides six daggers in my back,” wrote one. Added another, a doctor exposed on the job in 2020, “I am a shell of my former self.”

Of the many facets of the COVID-19 pandemic that have baffled researchers and left governing bodies grasping for sensible policies, perhaps none will leave as deep a mark as long COVID. Its path a mystery, its complications wildly varied, it remains at this point the subject of more concern than actual knowledge.

What is clear, though, is that long COVID and its debilitating effects will ultimately affect tens of millions of Americans—and that is one reason why national health policies and preventative measures related to the disease in general remain critically important. Now is not the time to take our foot off the gas pedal.

The numbers are stark. A recent report by the Solve Long COVID Initiative estimates that some 22 million Americans, about 6.7% of our population, are already dealing with effects of the virus months after their initial infection. (The numbers are similar to those put forward by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.) Roughly 7 million in our country may be experiencing disabling long COVID symptoms. To put that in perspective, U.K. figures show that long COVID is affecting approximately 2.7% of its population.

This is not unprecedented, medically speaking. The GAO’s report notes a study indicating that 27% of survivors of a previous coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which was first discovered in Asia in 2003, were still experiencing chronic fatigue syndrome four years after their initial infection.

But COVID’s scale is vastly more significant than was SARS, and the effects of long COVID (sometimes also called post-COVID) are, for millions, severe and life-changing.

A massive study by the Veterans Administration of more than 150,000 individuals with COVID-19, meanwhile, found them to be at a substantially higher risk of heart problems or cardiovascular disorders—some 20 types in all—for at least a year after diagnosis. Those who had recovered from COVID-19 were 52% more likely to have a stroke and 72% more likely to experience heart failure, compared to a control group.

So why talk about all of this now? Because long COVID symptoms can develop in a person of any age, even after a mild or asymptomatic case of the virus. In short, more COVID means more long COVID.

The advent of home test kits for COVID, while unquestionably important, has compromised agencies’ ability to know how many people are actually testing positive, because labs never see those results. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we were only capturing one in seven or one in eight cases,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said recently. Gottlieb suggested that “when we say there’s 30,000 infections a day, it’s probably closer to a quarter of a million infections a day.” That’s a chilling thought, and if it were actually documented rather than guessed at, it would almost certainly prompt different decisions about the precautions we should take.

The notion of continued viral threat was driven home with some clarity earlier this month, when the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington, D.C., effectively served as a super-spreader event, with more than 70 people subsequently infected.

“An effective public health response depends on high-quality, real-time data,” said John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “Underreporting, driven by changes in testing behavior, lack of public interest, and severely underfunded local public health departments, creates a perfect storm of misleading case counts and hospitalizations.”

Unquestionably, people are suffering; even children are contracting the dreadful condition. Investment in large-scale clinical trials of antivirals like Paxlovid, along with anticoagulants and antiplatelet therapy, among others, may get us more rapidly on the path to answers on possible treatments. It’s time to push the accelerator.

In the meantime, the difficult journey for COVID “long haulers” goes on, and the impact on the nation cannot be discounted.

“We think [the numbers] will translate into millions of people with long COVID in need of care, and broadly speaking, our health systems need to be prepared,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, in a recent podcast. “People running health systems or clinics need to start preparing for the tide of patients that are going to hit our doors with heart problems and other long COVID problems.” Worldwide estimates are that around 100 million people are suffering or have previously suffered from this.

The reality of long COVID is upon us, even as we strain to learn more about how and under what circumstances the syndrome is most likely to appear. It’s on us as a country to remain vigilant against the spread of the disease that fosters it.

A study found that COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy waned over time for caregivers of children with autism, according to researchers at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting.

Most caregivers and their dependents received the vaccine following the FDA granting full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s formula last summer.

J. Kiely Law, MD, MPH, director of research operations at the Simons Foundation, said people with autism are at an increased risk for hospitalization from COVID-19, and autism caregivers are historically more likely to be vaccine hesitant.

“Parents were very concerned about their child's health, especially given reports of more severe illness in children with developmental disabilities,” Law told Healio. “But at the same time, parents were also very concerned about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine. We wanted to help health care providers better understand parent concerns, since additional support and guidance may be needed.”


J. Kiely Law
Law and colleagues surveyed caregivers of dependents with autism who were enrolled in SPARK, a national research cohort, about their COVID-19 vaccine beliefs twice — first during a period from October to November 2020, before to Pfizer’s adult vaccine receiving an emergency use authorization from the FDA, and again from July to November 2021, during which time the adult vaccine received full approval and the children’s vaccine was authorized. The exclusion of people with missing data resulted in 1,020 caregivers’ responses being used. The researchers used the Area Deprivation Index and chi-square tests to examine any characteristics associated with vaccine hesitancy.

Most of the initial responses from parents indicated vaccine hesitancy, with 41% saying they were “somewhat hesitant” and 20% saying they were “very hesitant,” which Law said was “surprising and concerning” at first.

“Of course, this was before the vaccines were authorized by the FDA,” Law said. “At that time, parents shared that they needed more time to assess the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.”

Characteristics associated with vaccine hesitancy included neighborhood economic disadvantage and increased general vaccine hesitancy (P < .01) and being a young female who believed that vaccines could cause autism.

Of the “very hesitant” caregivers, more than half (53%) indicated that nothing would increase their comfort level, whereas “somewhat hesitant” caregivers wanted more time to evaluate the vaccine’s safety (84%) and effectiveness (77%).

Nearly six of every 10 Americans has already had COVID-19, a rate of infection that increased dramatically from December to February, the CDC says.

About 34% of Americans had already been infected in the final month of 2021, the agency reports in a new study, but by February that figure had grown to 58%.

"I definitely expected that we were going to see an increase continue ... but I didn’t expect it to increase quite this much,” lead study researcher Kristin E.N. Clarke, MD, said during a CDC media briefing Tuesday.

Researchers looked at the presence of coronavirus antibodies to estimate the rate of infection. The existence of these antibodies varied by age, from as high as 75% in children and teenagers 17 and younger, to 33% in those 65 and older, for example.

The study showed that the antibodies were more common in age groups with the lowest vaccination numbers.

The fact that nearly 60% of Americans have antibodies from prior infection is not a reason to think people with a history of COVID-19 should skip vaccination, CDC director Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, said.

"I can't underscore enough that those with detectable antibodies from previous infection, we encourage them to still get vaccinated," Walensky said.

"We do know that reinfections happen," she said, "so that's important in terms of thinking forward."

The current state of the pandemic is “mixed,” Walensky said.

"Overall, we can continue to have some mixed trends. Deaths, fortunately, are continuing to trend downward with a 7-day average of about 300 per day, which represents an estimated 18% decline from the prior week," she said.

Hospital admissions also remain low at about 1500 per day.

"But we should note that for the second week in a row, they are slowly trending upwards," Walensky said.

There was an increase of about 9% this week compared to the prior week.

Cases remain "comparatively low" to even where we were a month ago, at 44,000 per day," Walensky said. "Although this, too, represents an increase of about 25% in the past week."

Walensky said positive test numbers are not as reliable a metric as they were before the growth in use of rapid home tests. But it's not the only measure.

"We continue to believe that our PCR testing data, especially when we collaborate it with information from our other surveillance systems -- like wastewater surveillance and emergency department surveillance, provide us a reliable picture of the trajectory of COVID-19 across our country."

What does the research show so far?
The jury is still out, but a growing number of studies suggest that getting a Covid vaccine can reduce — though not eliminate — the risk of longer-term symptoms.

The United Kingdom’s Health Security Agency conducted an analysis of eight studies that had been published on the topic before mid-January. It reported that six of the studies found that vaccinated people who became infected with the coronavirus were less likely than unvaccinated patients to develop symptoms of long Covid. The remaining two studies found that vaccination did not appear to conclusively reduce the chances of developing long Covid.

How much protection could vaccines offer, according to the studies that found benefit?
Some study results suggest substantial protection, while others find only a slight benefit.

“The overall message is that vaccines reduce but do not eliminate the risk of long Covid,” said Dr. Al-Aly, adding that “reliance on vaccination as a sole mitigation strategy is wholly inadequate. It is like going to battle with a shield that only partially works.”

What about studies that don’t show any benefit?
In an analysis of electronic medical records of patients in the United States, researchers in the United Kingdom compared about 10,000 people who had received Covid vaccines with a similar number of people who had not been vaccinated against the coronavirus but had received a flu vaccine — an effort to limit the number of people in the study who might be considered vaccine hesitant or who generally had less healthy behaviors.

The study found that having a coronavirus vaccine before being infected did not reduce the risk of most symptoms of long Covid. There was some suggestion from the data that vaccinated people might be at lower risk of long-term symptoms like abnormal breathing and cognitive issues, the authors wrote, but those results were not statistically conclusive.

The researchers said it was possible that because their data relied on electronic health records, the study might have captured only patients with the most severe symptoms, rather than a wider range of patients who did not seek medical attention for their symptoms.

Why is the research conflicting?
One reason is the differences in the studies themselves. Not all researchers have defined long Covid in the same way, measured the same symptoms or tracked patients for the same length of time.

Are the results different for different coronavirus variants?
Much of the published data followed patients infected early in the pandemic. Some recently published data included people infected by the highly contagious Delta variant, but it is too early for studies about vaccines and long Covid that include the Omicron variant. It’s also too early for studies evaluating the effect of boosters on long Covid.

Is there anything scientists can conclude for sure?
Yes. Vaccines are very effective at preventing people from getting seriously ill from infection by all the variants known so far. And many studies have found that Covid patients sick enough to be hospitalized were more likely to have lasting health issues. So, by keeping people out of the hospital, vaccines should reduce the chances of that type of long-term post-Covid case.

Still, many people with long Covid had mild or even asymptomatic initial infections, and while some studies suggest vaccines have potential to ease their long-term symptoms, the evidence is not yet conclusive.

Vaccines do offer some protection against getting infected to begin with — and avoiding infection, of course, is the surest way to prevent long Covid.

Does the brand of vaccine make a difference in potential protection against long Covid?
So far, studies have not found that different vaccines have different effects on long-term symptoms.

What are the possible scientific reasons that vaccines might protect against long Covid?
The cause of long Covid is still unclear, and different symptoms might have different underlying causes in different patients, scientists say. Some believe that the condition may be related to remnants of the virus or its genetic material lingering after the initial infection subsides. Another theory is that the continuing problems are related to inflammation or blood circulation problems spurred by an overactive immune response that is unable to shut down.

Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale, has said that vaccines may be able to provide lasting relief in people whose symptoms are caused by vestiges of the virus if the antibodies generated by the vaccines eliminate those remnants.

But in people whose symptoms may be caused by a post-viral response resembling an autoimmune disease, she said, vaccines may help only temporarily, and problems like fatigue could re-emerge.

Can getting vaccinated help if you already have long Covid?
When vaccines were first rolled out, some patients with long Covid were finding that symptoms like brain fog, joint pain, shortness of breath and fatigue improved after they had gotten vaccinated. Still, many people experienced no difference in their symptoms after vaccination, and a small percentage said they felt worse.

The agency noted that the definition of long Covid varied widely among the studies and that, because all the studies were observational, changes in symptoms could be due to factors other than vaccination.

This rapid review concentrates on results from systematic reviews and meta-analyses, updating the
evidence on the prevalence of PACS, PACS symptoms by organ system and risk factors for developing
PACS. The update includes more meta-analyses and primary research with larger sample sizes and
includes a new section reporting on the impacts of PACS on daily living.

...

Pooled mean prevalence results for any experience of PACS, extracted from nine systematic
reviews, ranged from 51%–80%.

The U.S. on Wednesday surpassed 1 million COVID-19 deaths, according to data compiled by NBC News — a once-unthinkable scale of loss even for the country with the world's highest recorded toll from the virus.

The number — equivalent to the population of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the U.S. — was reached at stunning speed: 27 months after the country confirmed its first case of the virus.

"Each of those people touched hundreds of other people," said Diana Ordonez, whose husband, Juan Ordonez, died in April 2020 at age 40, five days before their daughter Mia's fifth birthday. "It's an exponential number of other people that are walking around with a small hole in their heart."

The Covid pandemic has caused the deaths of nearly 15 million people around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates.

That is 13% more deaths than normally expected over two years.

The WHO believes many countries undercounted the numbers who died from Covid - only 5.4 million were reported.
In India, there were 4.7 million Covid deaths, it says - 10 times the official figures - and almost a third of Covid deaths globally.

The measure used by the WHO is called excess deaths - how many more people died than would normally be expected based on mortality in the same area before the pandemic hit.

These calculations also take into account deaths which were not directly because of Covid but instead caused by its knock-on effects, like people being unable to access hospitals for the care they needed. It also accounts for poor record-keeping in some regions, and sparse testing at the start of the crisis.

But the WHO said the majority of the extra 9.5 million deaths seen above the 5.4 million Covid deaths reported were thought to be direct deaths caused by the virus, rather than indirect deaths.

Countries with low excess mortality rates included China, which is still pursuing a policy of "zero Covid" involving mass testing and quarantines, Australia, which imposed strict travel restrictions to keep the virus out of the country, Japan and Norway.

The academics who helped compile the report admit their estimates are more speculative for countries in sub-Saharan Africa, because there is little data on deaths in the region. There were no reliable statistics for 41 out of 54 countries in Africa.

Statistician Prof Jon Wakefield, from Seattle's University of Washington, helped the WHO and told the BBC: "We urgently need better data collection systems.

U.S. regulators on Thursday strictly limited who can receive Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine due to a rare but serious risk of blood clots.

The Food and Drug Administration said the shot should only be given to adults who cannot receive a different vaccine or specifically request J&J’s vaccine. U.S. authorities for months have recommended that Americans starting their Covid-19 vaccinations use the Pfizer or Moderna shots instead.

FDA officials said in a statement that they decided to restrict J&J’s vaccine after taking another look at data on the risk of life-threatening blood clots within two week of vaccination.

The decision is the latest restriction to hit J&J’s one-dose vaccine, which has long been overshadowed by the more effective two shots from Pfizer and Moderna.

November 10 is a day Kim Ford remembers too well. It was the day last year when her 9-year-old son, Jack, was scheduled to get his Covid-19 vaccine at the school clinic. They were excited that he'd finally have some protection, but on November 9, he had the sniffles.

"When he woke up [November 10] and he was feeling even worse, I said, 'You know what, let's test you before you go in, because I don't want you to get the Covid vaccine if you actually have Covid,' " the Michigan mom said.

Jack tested positive for Covid-19 that day and he's lived with the symptoms ever since.

It has kept him from staying at school all day. He has to limit how much he plays baseball with the other neighborhood kids. Even playing Fortnite for too long can leave him feeling sick the next day.

He's one of potentially millions of kids with long Covid.

"My stomach hurts. It's kind of hard to breathe. You have a stuffy nose. It's just an absurd amount of things that you can feel," Jack Ford said. "It's really annoying at times. It's not like a cold, you know, it feels like Covid.
"People may think you're feeling faking it, but you're not faking it. You feel like you have Covid," he added.

It's not clear how many children go on to develop long Covid, because there's not enough research on it in this age group, some experts say.

Almost 13 million children have tested positive for Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Studies suggest that between 2% and 10% of those children will develop long Covid, but the number may be larger. Many parents may not know their child has long Covid, or the child's pediatrician hasn't recognized it as such.

In adults, some research puts the number around 30% of cases.

"I personally believe that this is a very much an undiagnosed issue," said Dr. Sara Kristen Sexson Tejtel, who helps lead a long Covid pediatric clinic at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.

Many doctors treating children at long Covid clinics across the country say they have long waits for appointments. Some are booked through September.

There are no specific tests for long Covid. It's not clear which children will have it, as it can happen even when a child has a mild case of Covid-19.

"It's startling how many of these children present and have a range of symptoms that we haven't fully appreciated. Some are coming in with heart failure after asymptomatic Covid infections," said Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "What's striking to me is that it usually occurs about four weeks after infection, and infection can be really asymptomatic, which is really startling."
Even when kids with long Covid are tested for ailments that might cause these symptoms, it's possible nothing will show up.

"The tested me, and it looked like nothing was wrong with me, but they tried their best to find something," Jack Ford said.

His pulmonary function test and EKG came back normal. "The Covid clinic said this is very common in kids with long Covid. Sometimes, all the tests come back normal," Kim Ford said.

Dr. Amy Edwards, who runs the pediatric long Covid clinic at UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, agreed that it happens a lot.

Doctors are still trying to understand why long Covid happens this way in children. They are also figuring out what symptoms define long Covid in children. Some studies in adults show a range of 200 symptoms, but there is no universal clinical case definition.

At Sexson Tejte's clinic in Texas, children tend to fall into a few categories. Some have fatigue, brain fog and severe headaches, "to the point where the some kids aren't able to go to school, grades are failing, those types of issues," she said.

Another group has cardiac issues like heart palpitations, chest pains and dizziness, especially when they go back to their regular activities.

Another group has stomach problems. A lot of these kids also have a change in their sense of taste and smell.
Sexson Tejte said it isn't totally different from the symptoms adults have, "but it's not the mixed bag of different organ system involvement with adults."

Edwards, who runs the long Covid clinic in Cleveland, says she has to talk to parents about carefully balancing how much energy their children expend. Most healthy people can push through if they're tired, but those with long Covid can't. "It's like they have one bucket of energy, and it has to be used carefully for school, for play, to watch TV. Every single thing they do takes energy, and once that bucket is empty, that's it," Edwards said.

Some of her teen patients are exhausted just dealing with typical drama at school.

"Long-haulers have to think about every single aspect of their day and when they can expend that energy. They have to have that balance. Otherwise, they run out."

Many also have anxiety. Some of that may stem from the ailment itself or from the doubt they've heard from doctors or adults when they say they don't feel well.

Experts across the country say they've heard from patients whose complaints are ignored, even after a stark change in their health. They've been told that they are being dramatic or seeking attention, or that the symptoms are all in their head.

Edwards, who runs the long Covid clinic in Cleveland, says she has to talk to parents about carefully balancing how much energy their children expend. Most healthy people can push through if they're tired, but those with long Covid can't. "It's like they have one bucket of energy, and it has to be used carefully for school, for play, to watch TV. Every single thing they do takes energy, and once that bucket is empty, that's it," Edwards said.

Some of her teen patients are exhausted just dealing with typical drama at school.

"Long-haulers have to think about every single aspect of their day and when they can expend that energy. They have to have that balance. Otherwise, they run out."

Many also have anxiety. Some of that may stem from the ailment itself or from the doubt they've heard from doctors or adults when they say they don't feel well.

Experts across the country say they've heard from patients whose complaints are ignored, even after a stark change in their health. They've been told that they are being dramatic or seeking attention, or that the symptoms are all in their head.

Yonts thinks there needs to be better acknowledgment among doctors that long Covid can be a real problem.
"I've got two kids in wheelchairs after having had Covid who were never in wheelchairs before. There's one kid on crutches. I've got a kid who lost the use of her hands," Edward said. "These kids should be believed."

The White House is preparing for as many as 100 million Americans to get infected with COVID-19 during a wave this fall and winter if Congress does not provide new funding for vaccines and tests, a senior administration official said Friday, warning new money is needed to have enough vaccines for everyone.

A senior administration official told a small group of reporters on Friday that the estimate is the median of a range of models from outside experts that the administration consults, meaning it is also possible significantly more Americans catch the virus, especially if there is a major new variant.

That compares with the roughly 130-140 million Americans who are estimated to have been infected over the omicron wave this winter, which led to a significant spike in deaths.

The administration argues the number of cases could be lower if new funding allows for many Americans to get updated vaccines this fall and for testing to be plentiful.

The Biden administration argues the new wave is not a cause for panic, given there are new tools like the highly-effective Pfizer pill known as Paxlovid, as well as vaccinations.
Pfizer and Moderna are working on new versions of the vaccine aimed at being more effective against the newer mutations of the virus. The so-called bivalent vaccine would target the omicron variant as well as the original strain.

Those new vaccines are expected to be ready by the fall, but the U.S. will not have enough money to purchase them for all Americans unless Congress provides new funding, the administration says.

The senior administration official said the contingency plan if Congress does not provide new money is to take all funding out of testing, new treatments and vaccine education and outreach, and try to pile it up to have enough to maybe be able buy enough updated vaccines only for the elderly.

Without new money, supplies of Paxlovid are expected to run out by October or November, the official said, meaning if people got the virus in a wave over the holidays the treatment would not be available.

COVID-19 cases among attendees at the White House correspondents’ dinner last weekend are mounting, highlighting the continued threat of the virus as cases rise nationally.

High-profile cases following the dinner include ABC reporter Jonathan Karl, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and reporters from The Washington Post, Voice of America and other outlets.

There is no exact count, and it is not clear which dinner attendees contracted the virus at the dinner itself or at one of the many parties last weekend surrounding it.

But the string of reported cases does emphasize the point that even as the country seeks to move on from the virus, large indoor gatherings do carry some risk.

The cases have also played into an ongoing debate, with some arguing that the current era of COVID-19 allows vaccinated and boosted people to decide to attend large gatherings even if it means a small risk, while others are more cautious, pointing to the downstream effects on other people of increased transmission.

Reactions among attendees testing positive also varied.

“I’m yet another [White House Correspondents’ Association] weekend casualty,” tweeted Julia Ioffe, a correspondent at Puck News. “I knew I was taking a risk and, well, here we are!”

Jada Yuan, who covered the dinner for The Washington Post, also tweeted she tested positive afterward and would have to miss an international work trip she had been looking forward to.

“Hindsight and all that, but wear a mask or leave or tell your employer you can’t go if you’re in a situation where you feel uncomfortable,” she tweeted. “Those consequences are usually better than the ones you’ll face if you get sick.”

The dinner did require that all attendees test negative the day of attendance and that they be vaccinated. But those measures were not always in place at the surrounding parties that weekend.

Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University, wrote in The Washington Post last month after another string of cases after a different Washington, D.C., gathering, the Gridiron Dinner, that the event “shows what living with covid-19 looks like.”

She noted on Friday that the correspondents’ dinner had testing and vaccination requirements, so some of the cases could have come from surrounding events that did not have those precautions.

More broadly, she said, referring to vaccinations and new treatments such as the highly effective Pfizer treatment Paxlovid, “we have tools that allow us to continue the social activities that all of us as humans crave.”
“The key metric that we should be looking at here is are people getting severely ill,” she added.

There are no reports so far of any dinner attendees being hospitalized.

The nature of a highly infectious disease such as COVID-19 is that cases from the dinner will not stop there, and people can transmit the virus to others.

“It’s not about the people who are at the event,” said Walid Gellad, a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. “What you do impacts what happens to other people.”

“It’s probably very easy for them to get Paxlovid,” he said of the “highly privileged” dinner attendees. “For others that the people at this gathering might affect, it may be more difficult.”