Hospitals have struggled with admissions from the Omicron surge - and the US and UK brought in the military to help. Eric Topol, a . But he did not know of any such effort for booster doses. With nearly 3,000 lives lost in less than three months, Hong Kongs fifth wave of Covid-19 led by the highly infectious Omicron variant has dealt a deadly blow to the once zero-Covid city. But compared with other age groups, hospitalizations have remained higher among patients 65 or older. Dataset is stored in CDC official site [3]. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. A team of British researchers, led by Dr. Julia Hippisley-Cox at the University of Oxford, has conducted some of the most detailed research on Covid risks for different groups of people. . All rates are relative to the 18 to 29 years age group. Unless noted, people are of average U.S. height and weight and lack major medical problems. Scientists said that the wintertime spike in Covid death rates among older Americans demanded a more urgent policy response. And critically, those older Americans had received vaccines relatively recently, leaving them with strong levels of residual protection. For the beta, delta, and now omicron waves, reported cases peaked around 4,000-5,000 cases per million. Death rates for white people in their late 30s more than tripled last fall compared to the previous winter. Our findings, published in April 2020, showed that the case fatality rate was indeed being widely overstated and predicted that it would drop by 5% for every 10% increase in the number of tests . Additionally, last winter, vaccines had only just started to roll out, children were not yet eligible and the conversation surrounding boosters was far off. Deaf or hard of hearing customers, please call 711 (Washington Relay) or email civil.rights@doh.wa.gov. Only 49% of people ages 60 and older had gotten at least two doses, with coverage declining as people got older. A booster dose with either mRNA vaccine reduces the risk of death to 18 per 10,000. At the same time, the virus walloped younger and less vaccinated Americans, many of whom were also returning to in-person work. CDC data shows that 95% of people in the United States over 65 have gotten at least one dose of vaccine, 88.5% are fully vaccinated, but only 62.5% have gotten a booster dose. Again, though, nobody knows what the next few weeks will bring. About this page: How does mortality differ across countries? I dont think we should treat the premature death of older adults as a means of ending the pandemic, Dr. Stokes said. The study shows that significant protection against hospital admission even among older age groups, with 67 percent in people aged 60 to 69 and 60 percent for people aged 70 to 79. Then he died.. New hospital admissions of kids with Covid-19 have increased 66% to 378 a day on average for the week ending Tuesday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2023 Hong Kong news - Independent, non-profit, impartial. You will be subject to the destination website's privacy policy when you follow the link. COVID-19 refers to the "coronavirus disease 2019" and is a disease that can affect the lungs and airways. We dont have to accept permanently higher levels of death, Feldman said. (In the table, a rate of 1x indicates no difference compared to the 18 to 29 years age group.). The death toll had reached 10,000 in April 2021, about 14 months later. About third of the citys population is Black but about half the COVID victims are Black, The Post said. Now she is ready to share it with others, Witnesses to war: the Hong Kong journalists on the frontlines in Ukraine, Artist considers legal action to retrieve Tiananmen crackdown monument removed from University of Hong Kong, In Pictures: Blaze engulfs high-rise construction site in Tsim Sha Tsui, nearby residents evacuated, Clockenflap 2023 guide, schedule and map: Hong Kong abuzz for mask-free, sold-out festival this weekend, Flames from Tsim Sha Tsui construction site fire spread to nearby buildings, as authorities investigate cause of blaze, Hongkongers wearing face masks at protests risk prosecution, says gov't advisor as anti-mask law set to stay, Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. More people were burned out, Wachter said. During the Omicron wave, Covid death rates were once again dramatically higher for older Americans than younger ones, Dr. Stokes said. And the new wave of omicron subvariants may create additional threats: While hospitalizations in younger age groups have remained relatively low, admission rates among people 70 and older. On 14 December, the South African private health insurer Discovery Health in Johannesburg announced that hospitalization risk has been 29% lower among people infected with Omicron, compared with. The true picture of omicrons toll is somewhat skewed by its increased transmissibility, Wachter said: Because all hospital patients are tested for Covid when they are admitted, its hard to know how many patients tested positive but died from other causes and how many specifically died from Covid. Yet the seven-day average of deaths during the omicron surge has reached 2,600 in recent days, climbing past the late September peak of about 2,000 average daily fatalities during the surge of. No week of the omicron wave saw more deaths than the week of Jan. 30 to Feb. 5. This decision was based on the evidence presented to the TAG-VE that Omicron has several mutations that may have an impact on how it behaves, for example . The unvaccinated, people over 75, and people with underlying medical conditions are the groups most endangered by Omicron, The Post said. I think we all have a date with Covid at some point, Helen Branswell, a health reporter at Stat News, said. This is especially true for more recent deaths. Analysis comparing the risk of coronavirus (COVID-19) death in people infected by Omicron and Delta variants, after adjusting for age, sex, other socio-demographic factors, vaccination status and health conditions. Nearly 80 percent of those fatalities were ages 65 and over, despite the high vaccination rate among that age group an indicator of how the omicron variant can evade vaccine and natural. Nationwide Covid deaths in recent weeks have been near the lowest levels of the pandemic, below an average of 400 a day. Saving Lives, Protecting People, Given new evidence on the B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant, CDC has updated the, The White House announced that vaccines will be required for international travelers coming into the United States, with an effective date of November 8, 2021. . Despite strong levels of vaccination among older people, Covid killed them at vastly higher rates during this winters Omicron wave than it did last year, preying on long delays since their last shots and the variants ability to skirt immune defenses. A hazard ratio is a measure of the relative differences in the instantaneous rate of mortality between groups. A March 18 report from the CDC found that Black adults were hospitalized at four times the rate of white adults. An NBC News analysis of Covid data for the week found: Older people and unvaccinated people made up the vast majority of fatalities during the week. The Washington Post: Covid deaths highest in a year as omicron targets the unvaccinated and elderly, CDC: COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States, The White House: Press Briefing by White House COVID-19 Response Team and Public Health Officials. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. It has taken only nine months for the tally to . One reassuring comparison is to a normal seasonal flu. Cases in 0-18 year-olds remain high and infections are climbing in those aged 19-35, new data shows. Something went wrong. Peter Colbert, 61, was vaccinated and boosted when he fell ill with Covid in late January, his sister, Jeanine Boucher-Colbert, said. Its too soon to know whether Omicron will change the situation, but the safest assumption absent more data is that Covid will remain dangerous for the elderly. Covid cases are again starting to rise in parts of the country, with case counts in Arizona, Florida, Georgia and New York increasing more than 50 percent in the past two weeks. The elderly had paid a very high price and suffered a high death toll in the current wave of outbreak, he said. For this analysis we define a death as involving COVID-19 if the International Classification of Diseases 10th edition (ICD-10) code U07.1 (COVID-19, virus identified) is mentioned on the death certificate. If they werent sure about it, and theyre the ones who put it out, why would I take it? Mr. Thomas said Covid recently killed a former boss of his and hospitalized an older family friend. 60 per cent [of these cases] cannot be saved, he said, According to Hui, the low vaccination coverage among older populations in Hong Kong was the main reason behind the high death toll. .chakra .wef-facbof{display:inline;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-facbof{display:block;}}You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. Unfortunately, the Pittsylvania-Danville Health District did see a large surge, particularly as Omicron swept through rural Southern Virginia, Luzynski wrote. The government wasnt sure about the booster shot, he said. Those are places where people have less ability to protect themselves, Feldman said. Peter Lee is a reporter for HKFP. By now, youve probably heard someone say it, or maybe youve said it yourself: Were all getting Covid. Nigel Chiwaya is the Senior Editor, Data Viz for NBC News Digital. Our analysis . In 2021, you see the mortality impact of the pandemic shift younger, said Ridhi Kashyap, a lead author of that study and a demographer at the University of Oxford. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cannot attest to the accuracy of a non-federal website. Risk of death involving coronavirus (COVID-19) by variant, England: December 2021 Dataset | Released 24 February 2022 Analysis comparing the risk of coronavirus (COVID-19) death in people infected by Omicron and Delta variants, after adjusting for socio-demographic factors, vaccination status and health conditions. Dr. Inouye, of Harvard Medical School, said she had waited for a notice from her mothers assisted living facility about the rollout of second booster shots even as reports started arriving of staff members becoming infected. There are still plenty of susceptible older adults living with comorbid conditions or living in multigenerational households who are highly vulnerable.. Noncommercial use of original content on www.aha.org is granted to AHA Institutional Members, their employees and State, Regional and Metro Hospital Associations unless otherwise indicated. There were no rooms in the E.R., she said. Deaths registered in England and Wales Bulletin | Released weekly Provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, including deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19), in the latest weeks for which data are available. In Hong Kong, particularly, the variant proved the danger it poses to public health as it brought an acute surge in both daily case numbers and deaths, and overwhelmed the citys public medical services. Charted: Here's how Americans are approaching healthy eating. But how bad is Hong Kongs latest wave of infections? Peggy Rampersad believed everyone should have a signature style, and hers included red lipstick and circular black-rimmed eyeglasses. Everyones immunity tomorrow is less than it was today, Wachter said, explaining that people who received their last vaccine dose or recovered from Covid six months before the omicron wave had less protection than those who were vaccinated, boosted or recovered more recently. Omicron has been found to spread much more quickly than Delta. The US Omicron death toll has now surpassed the highest seven-day average of the more severe Delta variant. High vaccination rates may have helped prevent deaths from surging in highly vaccinated areas, but Wachter said that low vaccination rates werent necessarily a signal of increased deaths during the omicron wave. But it arrived early in the booster dose effort, when immunity began to wane in those who received the earliest doses. HKFP compares the citys latest Covid-19 statistic with three other international cities London, New York and Singapore in the hope of providing a clearer picture: The highly transmissible Omicron variant caused deaths to rise in all four cities, especially after their respective holiday seasons, but Hong Kongs recent surge in fatalities was unmatched. Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses. People were waiting up to 36 hours in the E.R. I have focused on vaccinated people todays, because they are already trying to protect themselves and their communities. The omicron wave, like each previous wave, was so deadly to older adults because they mount a less effective immune response, said Dr. Justin Feldman, research associate at the Harvard T.H. (After declining last year during social distancing, flu infections are rising again now, as these Times charts show.). The fast-moving Omicron variant may cause less severe disease on average, but COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are climbing and modelers forecast 50,000 to 300,000 more Americans could die by the. I think we are going to see the death rates rising, said Dr. Sharon Inouye, a geriatrician and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. We use Cox proportional hazards regression models to measure the risk of death involving coronavirus (COVID-19) following infection by the Omicron variant compared with the Delta variant. Older adults also tend to already have serious health conditions, like diabetes, high blood pressure or histories of cancer, leaving them more vulnerable to serious illness. For purposes of entry into the United States, vaccines accepted will include FDA approved or authorized and WHO Emergency Use Listing vaccines.