Biden went into self-isolation at his Rehoboth Beach home in Delaware on Wednesday after testing positive with mild symptoms, a high-profile example of the virus’s reach. At a July 7 campaign event in Pennsylvania, Biden compared himself to Donald Trump, saying, “I’ve ended the epidemic — I haven’t.”
His administration is not treating Covid as a public health emergency, but instead is managing to obscure it as a normal respiratory virus through an annual vaccination campaign. This strategy reflects how SARS-CoV-2 has established itself as a common pathogen that does not overwhelm hospitals or the health care system—a concern that led to drastic measures to contain transmission when the outbreak began.
“Covid is not going away,” said Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, who resigned as the White House’s coronavirus coordinator, “Covid will be around forever, probably forever, and we typically see two to three waves a year.”
“It raises the question of how worried we should be,” added Jha. “It sounds scary, but not to most people.”
At the age of 81, Biden falls into the age group considered to be at the highest risk of serious complications from Covid. Experts say older people are more likely to experience milder symptoms if they are up to date on vaccinations and receive antiviral treatment early in their illness. Biden began treatment with paxlovide on Wednesday and received an improved coronavirus vaccine in September. White House officials did not respond to questions about whether Biden had received the second most recent vaccine recommended for seniors.
An estimated 50,000 Republicans attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where the arena was crowded with people without masks, presenting an opportunity for the spread of Covid. (Masks are also uncommon at Biden campaign events.)
Phil Griffin, a convention delegate from Winchester, Va., said organizers had brought two masks if they needed them, but that Biden was not worried about Covid after testing positive.
“I haven’t heard from anyone in Virginia or from the delegation — Michigan, Ohio, Louisiana — that has had any symptoms in our area,” Griffin said. “So I guess as the president, we’re blessed,” he added, referring to Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt on Saturday. We are all blessed with good health at this time – as far as we know.
Meanwhile, medically vulnerable Americans are heading into another summer fraught with the threat of Covid.
As daily e-mails from her mother’s assisted living facility in northern Virginia arrived warning of a growing outbreak in late June, Elizabeth Kidd watched in horror from the memory care unit where her mother was being treated for dementia.
Kidd, 52, takes medication to suppress her immune system to control her Crohn’s disease, which makes her more vulnerable to Covid. Her mother is 79 and has trouble remembering what Covid is. So Kid didn’t visit her for two weeks, the longer the isolation the easier it would be for her mother to forget who she was.
“It’s all very nerve-wracking,” Kidd said. “I don’t want covid and I don’t want to be the one who brings covid back to the memory room.”
Fortunately, her mother was not sick and Kidd visited Tuesday when the facility had no active cases but still needed masks. When Kidd shares updates with her mom about her grandchildren, who she doesn’t always remember, she reminds her that Covid is a highly contagious flu.
Since the outbreak began, Covid has increased every winter, they say, due to increased travel, large gatherings such as weddings and conferences, the rise of new infections and even heat that pushes people into places where the virus spreads easily.
“It’s hard to transmit Covid when we’re outside, but it’s been very oppressive, especially in the southwestern United States, and people spend a lot of time indoors,” said Andrew Pekosz, a professor of microbiology. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which focuses on respiratory viruses like Covid.
The ongoing Covid-19 outbreak coincides with the development of KP variants called FLART and the closely related LB. 1, which covers 85 percent of new cases as of early July CDC Assumptions. They have mutations that allow the virus to spread more easily than previous variants and to infect people with some degree of immunity more efficiently. But they don’t seem to cause more serious disease.
WastewaterSCANA private initiative that monitors municipal wastewater data found a 54 percent increase in viral RNA copies per gram of wastewater between June 30 and July 12. Viral levels are high in most regions and moderate in the Midwest.
“You probably have some summer travel plans that you don’t want to ruin or get hurt by getting sick,” says Alexandria Boehm. Professor of Environmental Engineering at Stanford University and Principal Investigator of WastewaterSCAN. If you’re immunocompromised, this might be a good time to think about a mask, or just be careful about going into crowded places.
Demetrius Daskalakis, the CDC’s national director of immunization and respiratory diseases, said the increase in the virus in wastewater should not be seen in isolation, and that officials are not seeing significant changes in serious outcomes such as hospitalizations and deaths.
While Covid doesn’t hospitalize and kill people as often as it used to, even mild cases can still disturb patients and cause more pain than the patient expected.
Jay Broadbar, who hasn’t flown since the outbreak began, regularly wears a mask at home and received his latest coronavirus vaccine in April, hoping to continue avoiding the virus with a two-week road trip. Northeast. But the 74-year-old developed fever and chills on July 8 while in New York and tested positive the next day.
Broadbar cut the trip short by a week and drove eight hours back to Toronto. After suffering from what he described as the worst sore throat of his life, he said he felt better after taking Paxlovide and a steroid nasal spray.
Summer’s Covid waves come at an inconvenient time for public health officials who have made fall vaccination campaigns a cornerstone of their response. The current vaccine targets the missense variants of XBB. Improved vaccines won’t be on the market for at least a month, leaving patients and their providers to discuss the trade-offs of getting them out of date. Now it provides some protection or waiting for the new version.
Reinfections pose ongoing health risks, particularly in high-risk groups. A study published this month in Communications Medicine suggests that a severe case of Covid increases a person’s chance of being readmitted to the hospital with Covid.
The so-called long covid, which can follow even mild cases, remains one of the most surprising consequences. The virus. Long-term covid has become more common as hospitals shrink, but studies show severe disease is the main risk factor.
While public health officials say Americans have the tools to fight Covid-19, those tools are getting tougher. The federal government has suspended the distribution of free masks and testing kits. The federal Bridge Access program to provide free coronavirus vaccines to the uninsured will end in August.
Health officials are questioning people at high risk. Develop severe covid to test when symptoms appear and take paxlovide early to stop viral replication as Biden does.
But the president is finding it harder for other Americans than Paxlovide. Many pharmacies are out of stock due to low demand in the past. And those who have access to the drug are sometimes hit with eye-popping bills.
27-year-old Robin Dechabert received a prescription for Paxlovide A Virginia Beach resident went to the emergency room Sunday with trouble breathing and a painful cough. She said her recovery was accelerated the last two times she was infected with Covid-19, as the federal government covered the cost and received the drug free of charge.
But when her sister went to take the order for her this time. The pharmacy charged her $1,700, which she could not afford. Her sister left without taking the medicine. DeChabert is uninsured until she starts her service industry career next month.
“It still baffles me that a drug that was so accessible to so many people two years ago is now so expensive for so many Americans,” said Dechabert, who got Paxlovid from a friend. I don’t have to go into medical debt to survive.
Pfizer, the maker of Paxlovide, offers co-pay assistance of up to $1,500 to cover out-of-pocket costs for people without health insurance or in government insurance plans. Commercial insurance.
Pfizer spokesman Keith Longley said signing up for both programs takes minutes to get electronic vouchers. But some providers and pharmacies don’t tell patients, and DeChabert said they’re never told help is available.
Laura Vozzella contributed to this report.