Indications of Another Rise in U.S. COVID Cases as BA.2 Variant Spreads in Europe
Submitted by mike kraft on
Submitted by mike kraft on
Submitted by mike kraft on
As the highly contagious Omicron variant pushes national coronavirus case numbers to record highs and sends hospitals across the country into crisis mode, public health officials are eagerly searching for an indication of how long this surge might last.
The clues are emerging from an unlikely source: sewage.
People who contract the coronavirus shed the virus in their stool, and the virus levels in local wastewater provide a strong, independent signal of how much is circulating in a given community.
The sewage data reveal an Omicron wave that is cresting at different times in different places.
Submitted by mike kraft on
Submitted by mike kraft on
Submitted by mike kraft on
With at-home Covid-19 tests in high demand and their efficacy in question, health departments from California to Massachusetts are turning to sewage samples to get a better idea of how much the coronavirus is spreading through communities and what might be in store for health care systems.
Experts say wastewater holds the key to better understanding the public health of cities and neighborhoods, especially in underserved areas that do not have equal access to care.
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Across Brazil, recycling plants stopped running for months. In Uganda, a junkyard is short on reusable plastics. And in Indonesia’s capital, disposable gloves and face shields are piling up at a river mouth.
Surging consumption of plastics and packaging during the pandemic has produced mountains of waste. But because fears of Covid-19 have led to work stoppages at recycling facilities, some reusable material has been junked or burned instead.
At the same time, high volumes of personal protective equipment have been misclassified as hazardous, solid waste experts say. That material often isn’t allowed into the normal trash, so a lot of it is dumped in burn pits or as litter.
Submitted by mike kraft on
Submitted by mike kraft on
Two national pharmacy chains that the federal government entrusted to inoculate people against covid-19 account for the lion’s share of wasted vaccine doses, according to government data obtained by KHN.
Submitted by mike kraft on
Submitted by mike kraft on
(CNN) When Rosa Inchausti and her colleagues started testing wastewater in Tempe, Arizona, it was 2018 and they were not looking for coronavirus. They were tracking the opioid epidemic.