President Joe Biden is expected to continue working from his office Tuesday as he isolates people who test positive for COVID for at least five days, in accordance with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The president tested positive again on Monday in a “rebound” case, a rare result of the antiviral Paxlovid he was treated with last week.
Do not miss: Paxlovid was administered to Biden and millions of Americans infected with COVID-19. It’s on the shelf in the UK.
However, experts are concerned that the CDC’s guidance on isolation is confusing and does not reflect the changing nature of the virus some two and a half years into the pandemic, the Washington Post reported.
The CDC recommends a five-day isolation schedule, but does not insist on a negative test, which would prove a patient is no longer shedding the virus and unlikely to infect another person. However, new research shows that people often remain contagious for more than five days, meaning they must continue to wear a well-fitting mask around others at home or indoors until day 10 after isolation is ended, the newspaper reported.
“Given that a significant proportion of people have a positive rapid test after 5 days, I believe an updated recommendation should include people who have a negative rapid test before coming out of isolation for COVID,” says Tom Inglesby, Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Biden administration’s senior adviser on testing from December to April, told The Washington Post.
The CDC is expected to come up with new recommendations in the coming weeks after an internal review, the Post said, citing three officials and advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity. However, a draft of the update does not include a test requirement before the end of isolation, it said.
Also read: On-campus COVID-19 vaccine mandates have had the greatest impact on colleges with low-income students. Here’s why they were so effective.
The daily average for new US cases remains at nearly 130,000 a day, but not all data is being collected as many people test at home. Monday’s average was 121,313, down 4% from two weeks ago, according to a New York Times tracker.
The daily average for hospitalizations increased by 5% to 43,653 in two weeks. The daily average of deaths is up 4% to 446.
Coronavirus update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting on the latest developments every weekday since the start of the coronavirus pandemic
Other COVID-19 news you should know:
• Japan is considering changing its COVID-19 reporting protocols, including a change in how case numbers are recorded, to ease the burden on hospitals as they suffer a new wave that has spread across the country, the Japan reported Times. citing government sources. Medical facilities and public health centers are currently working together to report the total number of COVID-19 cases to the government, but the change may limit case reporting to specific facilities. Because the predominant Omicron variant has a reduced risk of causing serious disease compared to previous strains, some government officials have questioned the need to report every case. The government is expected to start formal talks once the seventh wave of the pandemic has subsided.
• President Joe Biden is expected to appoint top officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to act as White House coordinators to combat the growing monkeypox outbreak, the Associated Press reported, as the disease replaces COVID in the headlines. Biden will announce Tuesday that he has tapped Robert Fenton as White House coordinator, who has helped lead FEMA’s mass vaccination efforts for COVID-19 as the agency’s acting administrator when Biden took office. dr CDC’s Demetre Daskalakis is appointed as his deputy. Daskalakis, the agency’s director of HIV prevention and a national expert on issues affecting the LGBTQ community, previously helped lead New York City’s COVID-19 response. Separately, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency to speed up efforts to control the monkeypox outbreak, becoming the second state in three days after New York to take the step.
The continued spread of monkeypox has prompted the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency. WSJ’s Denise Roland explains what you need to know about the outbreak. Photo: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images
• Apple AAPL, -0.74% is dropping its face mask mandate for employees in “most locations,” The Verge reported, citing an internal email it received from the company’s COVID response team. “Feel free to continue wearing a face mask if you feel more comfortable doing so,” the email reads. “Also, please respect each individual’s decision to wear a mask or not.” The move comes amid a surge in the highly transmissible BA.5 variant of COVID-19. Earlier this week, the Bay Area transit system BART brought back its mask mandate.
• The number of companies applying for voluntary winding up in England and Wales hit a record in the second quarter after COVID support programs ended, Portal reported. The total number of corporate bankruptcies rose 81% compared to the April-June period last year, with the majority of them being voluntary liquidations of creditors (CVLs), which were the highest since records began in 1960, the government’s bankruptcy service said . The total number of corporate bankruptcies was 13% higher than in the January-March quarter.
President Joe Biden posted a video clip to Twitter on Saturday afternoon after testing positive for COVID-19 in a so-called rebound case on Saturday morning. Photo: AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Here’s what the numbers say
The global number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 surpassed 578.5 million on Monday, while the death toll rose to over 6.40 million, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The US leads the world with 91.5 million cases and 1,030,554 deaths.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracker shows that 223.2 million people in the US are fully vaccinated, which is 67.2% of the total population. But only 107.9 million have received a booster, representing 48.3% of the vaccinated population, and only 19.9 million of those aged 50 and over who are eligible for a second booster have received, representing 30.9 % corresponds to those who received a refresher first amplifier.