Unlike the flu, which tends to peak in the winter months, COVID-19 can start to spike in late summer and early fall as past years have taught. Over the past month, COVID hospital visits have begun to increase again.
However, the cases are much less deadly than in the first years of the pandemic. Some of the new strains, like JN.1, are likely more contagious but less severe than previous versions.
Still, more than 1,600 Hoosiers a week visited emergency rooms with COVID-19 with COVID-19 symptoms in July, an increase from the 800 a week seeking care in June, according to the Indiana Department of Health. The number of Hoosiers hospitalized for COVID-19 increased to more than a hundred a week, an increase from the 30 or so a week who were getting hospitalized in early summer.
The wide use of vaccines and previous infections have built more immunity among Americans so the virus isn't as deadly as it had been in 2020 and 2021, said Brian Edward Dixon, a public health researcher at Regenstrief Institute.
How effective is the vaccine?
The last COVID-19 booster shot, which is becoming an annual shot as the virus changes, is about 50% effective.
That means the vaccine cuts the chances of getting seriously sick with COVID-19 by about half, Dixon said. That's about comparable with the flu vaccine.
The COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be updated for the 2024-2025 season, to better match the changing strains. The new version will be available later this year.
How does COVID-19 compare to the flu?
While the flu circulates in the winter months in the United States, typically from about October to May, COVID-19 doesn't seem to have the same pattern.
COVID-19 tends to peak in the winter months, but also has spiked in the fall and spring since it first emerged in the United States in 2020.
While COVID-19 has become less deadly since then, it's still about twice as deadly as the flu, Dixon said.
What are the symptoms?
COVID-19 symptoms can include fever, chills, cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, congestion, loss of taste or smell, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headaches, nausea of vomiting, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Binghui Huang can be reached at 317-385-1595 and Bhuang@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: COVID-19 rises across U.S. Here's what to know.BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) — African health officials said mpox cases have spiked by 160% so far this year, warning the risk of further spread is high given the lack of effective treatments or vaccines on the continent.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released Wednesday that mpox, also known as monkeypox, has now been detected in 10 African countries this year including Congo, which has more than 96% of all cases and deaths.
Officials said nearly 70% of cases in Congo are in children younger than 15, who also accounted for 85% of deaths.
There have been an estimated 14,250 cases so far this year, nearly as many as all of last year. Compared to the first seven months of 2023, the Africa CDC said cases are up 160% and deaths are up 19%, to 456.
Burundi and Rwanda both reported the virus for the first time this week.
New outbreaks were also declared this week in Kenya and Central African Republic, with cases extending to its densely populated capital, Bangui.
“We are very concerned about the cases of monkeypox, which is ravaging (the capital region),” the Central African Republic’s public health minister, Pierre Somsé, said Monday.
On Wednesday, Kenya's Health Ministry said it found mpox in a passenger traveling from Uganda to Rwanda at a border crossing in southern Kenya. In a statement, the ministry said that a single mpox case was enough to warrant an outbreak declaration.
The Africa CDC said the mpox death rate this year, at about 3%, “has been much higher on the African continent compared to the rest of the world.” During the global mpox emergency in 2022, fewer than 1% of people infected with the virus died.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of the deadlier version of mpox, which can kill up 10% of people, in a Congolese mining town that they feared might spread more easily among people. Mpox spreads via close contact with infected people, including via sex.
An analysis of patients hospitalized from October to January in eastern Congo suggested that recent genetic mutations in the virus were the result of the ongoing spread in people.
Unlike in previous mpox outbreaks, where lesions were mostly seen on the chest, hands and feet, the new form of mpox causes milder symptoms and lesions mostly on the genitals, making it harder to spot.
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders called the expanding mpox outbreak “worrying,” noting the disease had also been seen in camps for displaced people in Congo’s North Kivu region, which shares a border with Rwanda.
“There is a real risk of explosion, given the huge population movements in and out,” said Dr. Louis Massing, the group's medical director for Congo.
Mpox outbreaks in the West have mostly been shut down with the help of vaccines and treatments, but barely any have been available in African countries including Congo.
“We can only plead … for vaccines to arrive in the country and as quickly as possible so that we can protect the populations in the areas most affected,” Massing said in a statement.
In May, WHO said that despite the ongoing outbreak in Africa and the potential for the disease to spread internationally, not a single donor dollar had been invested in containing mpox.
Earlier this week, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations announced it was starting a study in Congo and other African countries next month to see if giving people an mpox shot after they had been exposed to the disease could help prevent severe illness and death.