Magnificent News: Coronavirus Updates: New variants cropping up in New York state

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Important developments in the pandemic.

By Salvador Rizzo
with Katie Shepherd

The Post's coronavirus coverage linked in this newsletter is free to access from this email.

The latest

New, highly transmissible versions of the omicron variant have been detected in New York and Europe, the latest evidence of the coronavirus's ability to change its genetic profile. It is too soon to tell how far the new subvariants might spread or how sick they might make people, said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, but scientists are "watching and learning" in real time. New York officials announced that so far this month, two new omicron subvariants, dubbed BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1, have accounted for 90 percent of new cases in the central part of the state. The United Kingdom reports more than 1,000 cases of another new subvariant, called omicron XE, representing less than 1 percent of that country's infections. One XE infection has been reported in Hawaii, among a handful of cases in the U.S as of Friday.

A booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine increases immune defenses in school-aged children, especially against the omicron variant of the coronavirus, the companies announced Tuesday. Pfizer and BioNTech said they will now request authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for boosters for 5-to-11-year-olds. The boosters in their study, which has not yet been published or peer-reviewed, were given six months after children were fully vaccinated. School-aged children receive a lower dose of the vaccine — a third of what older adolescents and adults get — and some experts have debated whether a higher dose is needed.

Disease trackers are trying to stay one step ahead of the constantly evolving virus — by hunting for it in sewers around the country. In Maine, hospitals are on alert for a potential surge of patients, tipped off by rising levels of the coronavirus in wastewater. New York is expanding its wastewater surveillance program as new omicron subvariants emerge. The secrets of the virus can be found in wastewater because most infected people shed tiny pieces of virus when they use the toilet. Regularly analyzing wastewater from sewage treatment plants allows scientists to measure when virus levels are rising or falling — and what variants are present — about four to six days before people start testing positive.

Other important news

German authorities said they had arrested four people linked to coronavirus protests on charges that they plotted to kidnap the country's health minister and destroy some power infrastructure with the aim of triggering a "civil war."

Coronavirus cases are rising again in the D.C. region; the seven-day average had risen 54 percent in the District, 43 percent in Maryland and 27 percent in Virginia as of Thursday.

Howard University will move many of its classes online for the final weeks of the semester after a rise in the school's positivity rate for the coronavirus.

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Your questions, answered

"When will they get rid of the testing requirement to fly back into the United States?" – Molly D., Pennsylvania

Air travelers must test negative for the coronavirus within a day of flying into the United States. That goes for all international air travelers, including citizens, residents and people who are vaccinated.

Despite pressure from travel and business groups urging the Biden administration to lift the pre-departure testing requirement, no end date has been set. Coronavirus cases are rising again in some places after dropping sharply following the omicron surge.

"There are no plans to change the international travel requirements at this point," former White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said at a briefing last week.

Lin Chen, director of the Mount Auburn Travel Medicine Center and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, told my colleague Hannah Sampson that varying testing requirements from country to country can complicate travel, but it's "reassuring" for international travelers to know that other people on their flight have tested negative.

"Catching those that test positive/deferring their travel might reduce the chance of re-introducing Covid to areas with low incidence (or introducing a new variant)," she wrote.

Peter Chin-Hong, a professor in the University of California at San Francisco's Health Division of Infectious Diseases, told The Post he is not sure the requirement is still having the desired effect, especially as millions of untested people fly within the country, including on long-distance flights to places such as Hawaii or across the continental U.S.