Cases: The number of COVID-19-positive patients in Los Angeles County hospitals has dropped to 459, while the county registered another 13 virus-related deaths in its latest data.
Pasadena reported 23 new cases on Wednesday. There have been no COVID-related deaths in Pasadena during October, according to the Pasadena Public Health Department.
There were no COVID-19 infected patients in Huntington Health’s ICU on Wednesday and just 13 such patients in the hospital overall.
The 459 COVID-positive patients in County-wide hospitals was below the 487 reported in the county on Tuesday, according to state figures. Of those patients, 56 were being treated in intensive care, up from 51 a day earlier.
County officials have said that roughly 40% of COVID-positive patients were admitted specifically for COVID, while the others were hospitalized for other reasons but tested positive upon admission.
The 13 new virus-related deaths lifted the county’s cumulative death toll to 33,785.
Another 841 infections were reported, giving the county an overall total from throughout the pandemic of 3,468,152.
Daily case numbers reported by the county have been falling steadily for weeks, although health officials have conceded that the official figures could be misleading due to residents primarily using at-home tests that aren’t reported to the county.
The seven-day average rate of people testing positive for the virus was 4.6% as of Wednesday.
Last year, the emergence of the highly transmissible omicron variant of the covid-19 virus caught many people by surprise and led to a surge in cases that overwhelmed hospitals and drove up fatalities. Now we’re learning that omicron is mutating to better evade the immune system.
Omicron-specific vaccines were authorized by the FDA in August and are recommended by U.S. health officials for anyone 5 or older. Yet only half of adults in the United States have heard much about these booster shots, according to a recent KFF poll, and only a third say they’ve gotten one or plan to get one as soon as possible. In 2020 and 2021, covid cases spiked in the U.S. between November and February.
Although we don’t know for sure that we’ll see another surge this winter, here’s what you should know about covid and the updated boosters to prepare.
1. Do I need a covid booster shot this fall?
If you’ve completed a primary vaccination series and are 50 or older, or if your immune system is compromised, get a covid booster shot as soon as possible. Forty percent of deaths are occurring among people 85 and older and almost 90% among people 65 and over. Although people of all ages are being hospitalized from covid, those hospitalizations are also skewing older.
Unvaccinated people, while in the minority in the U.S., are still at the highest risk of dying from covid. It’s not too late to get vaccinated ahead of this winter season. The United Kingdom, whose covid waves have presaged those in the United States by about a month, is beginning to see another increase in cases.
If you’ve already received three or more covid shots, you’re 12 to 49 years old, and you’re not immunocompromised, your risk of hospitalization and death from the disease is significantly reduced and additional boosters are not likely to add much protection.
However, getting a booster shot provides a “honeymoon” period for a couple of months after vaccination, during which you’re less likely to get infected and thus less likely to transmit the virus to others. If you’ll be seeing older, immunocompromised, or otherwise vulnerable family and friends over the winter holidays, you might want to get a booster two to four weeks in advance to better shield them against covid.
You may have other reasons for wanting to avoid infection, like not wanting to have to stay home from work because you or your child is sick with covid. Even if you aren’t hospitalized from covid, it can be costly to lose wages or arrange for backup child care.
One major caveat to these recommendations: You should wait four to six months after your last covid infection or vaccination before getting another shot. A dose administered too soon will be less effective because antibodies from the previous infection or vaccination will still be circulating in your blood and will prevent your immune cells from seeing and responding to vaccination.
2. Do kids need to be vaccinated even if they’ve had covid?
Although children are at lower risk for severe covid than are adults, the stakes for kids are higher than many diseases already recognized as dangerous. Their risk shouldn’t be measured against the risk that covid poses to other age groups but against the risk they face from other preventable diseases. In the first two years of the pandemic, covid was the fourth- or fifth-leading cause of death in every five-year age bracket from birth to 19, killing almost 1,500 children and teenagers. Other vaccine-preventable diseases like chickenpox, rubella, and rotavirus killed an average of about 20-50 children and teens a year before vaccines became available. By that measure, vaccinating kids against covid is a slam-dunk.
Children who have had covid also benefit from vaccination. The vaccine reduces their risk of hospitalization and missing days of school, when parents might need to stay home with them.
But it’s precisely because the stakes are higher for kids that many parents are anxious about getting their children vaccinated. As recently as July, just after the FDA authorized covid vaccines for children as young as 6 months, a KFF poll found that over half of parents of children under age 5 said they thought vaccines posed a greater risk to the health of their child than getting the disease. And in the most recent poll, half said they had no plans to get their children vaccinated. Covid vaccination rates range from 61% among children ages 12 to 17 to 2% among kids younger than 2.
Similar to influenza, covid is most deadly for the very youngest and oldest. At especially high risk are infants. They’re unlikely to have immunity from infection, and a small share have been vaccinated. Unless their mothers were vaccinated during pregnancy or got covid during pregnancy — the latter of which poses a high risk of death for the mother and of preterm birth for the baby — infants are probably not getting protective antibodies against covid through breast milk. And because infants have small airways and weaker coughs, they’re more likely to have trouble breathing with any respiratory infection, even one less deadly than covid.
3. Will I need a covid shot every year?
It depends on the targets set by public health officials whether covid becomes a seasonal virus like the flu, and how much the virus continues to mutate and evade humanity’s immune defenses.
If the goal of vaccination is to prevent severe disease, hospitalization, and death, then many people will be well protected after their primary vaccination series and may not need additional shots. Public health officials might strongly recommend boosters for older and immunocompromised people while leaving the choice of whether to get boosted to those with lower risk. If the goal of vaccination is to prevent infection and transmission, then repeat boosters will be needed after completing the primary vaccination series and as often as a couple of times a year.
Influenza is a seasonal virus causing infections and disease generally in the winter, but scientists don’t know whether covid will settle into a similar, predictable pattern. In the first three years of the pandemic, the United States has experienced waves of infection in summer. But if the covid virus were to become a wintertime virus, public health officials might recommend yearly boosters. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people 6 months and older get a flu shot every year with very rare exceptions. However, as with the flu, public health officials might still place a special emphasis on vaccinating high-risk people against covid.
And the more the virus mutates, the more often public health officials may recommend boosting to overcome a new variant’s immune evasion. Unfortunately, this year’s updated omicron booster doesn’t appear to provide significantly better protection than the original boosters. Scientists are working on variant-proof vaccines that could retain their potency in the face of new variants.
4. Are more covid variants on the way?
The omicron variant has burst into an alphabet soup of subvariants. The BA.5 variant that surfaced earlier this year remains the dominant variant in the U.S., but the BA.4.6 omicron subvariant may be poised to become dominant in the United States. It now accounts for 14% of cases and is rising. The BA.4.6 omicron subvariant is better than BA.5 at dodging people’s immune defenses from both prior infection and vaccination.
In other parts of the world, BA.4.6 has been overtaken by BA.2.75 and BF.7 (a descendant of BA.5), which respectively account for fewer than 2% and 5% of covid cases in the U.S. The BA.2.75.2 omicron subvariant drove a wave of infections in South Asia in July and August. Although the U.S. hasn’t yet seen much in the way of another variant descended from BA.5 — BQ.1.1 — it is rising quickly in other countries like the U.K., Belgium, and Denmark. The BA.2.75.2 and BQ.1.1 variants may be the most immune-evasive omicron subvariants to date.
BA.4.6, BA.2.75.2, and BQ.1.1 all evade Evusheld, the monoclonal antibody used to prevent covid in immunocompromised people who don’t respond as well to vaccination. Although another medication, bebtelovimab, remains active in treating covid from BA.4.6 and BA.2.75.2, it’s ineffective against BQ.1.1. Many scientists are worried that Evusheld will become useless by November or December. This is concerning because the pipeline for new antiviral pills and monoclonal antibodies to treat covid is running dry without a guaranteed purchaser to ensure a market. In the past, the federal government guaranteed it would buy vaccines in bulk, but funding for that program has not been extended by Congress.
Other omicron subvariants on the horizon include BJ.1, BA.2.3.20, BN.1, and XBB, all descendants of BA.2.
It’s hard to predict whether an omicron subvariant or yet another variant will come to dominate this winter and whether hospitalizations and deaths will again surge in the U.S. Vaccination rates and experience with prior infections vary around the world and even within the United States, which means that the different versions of omicron are duking it out on different playing fields.
While this might all sound grim, it’s important to remember that covid booster shots can help overcome immune evasion by the predominant omicron subvariants.
5. What about long covid?
Getting vaccinated does reduce the risk of getting long covid, but it’s unclear by how much. Researchers don’t know if the only way to prevent long covid is to prevent infection.
Although vaccines may curb the risk of infection, few vaccines prevent all or almost all infections. Additional measures — such as improving indoor air quality and donning masks — would be needed to reduce the risk of infection. It’s also not yet known whether prompt treatment with currently available monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs like Paxlovid reduces the risk of developing long covid.
6. Do I need a flu shot, too?
The CDC recommends that anyone 6 months of age or older get an annual flu shot. The ideal timing is late October or early November, before the winter holidays and before influenza typically starts spreading in the U.S. Like covid shots, flu shots provide only a couple of months of immunity against infection and transmission, but an early flu shot is better than no flu shot. Influenza is already circulating in some parts of the United States.
It’s especially important for people 65 or older, pregnant women, people with chronic medical conditions, and children under 5 to get their yearly flu shots because they’re at highest risk of hospitalization and death. Although younger people might be at lower risk for severe flu, they can act as vectors for transmission of influenza to higher-risk people in the community.
High-dose flu vaccines, also called “adjuvanted” flu vaccines, are recommended for people 65 and older. Adjuvants strengthen the immune response to a vaccine.
It is safe to get vaccinated for covid and the flu at the same time, but you might experience more side effects like fevers, headache, or body aches.
The Economy: Prices continued to climb at a brutally rapid pace in September, with a key inflation index increasing at the fastest rate in 40 years, bad news for the Federal Reserve as it struggles to wrestle the cost of living back under control.
The US consumer price index rose by 8.2 per cent last month compared to September 2021, as Washington struggles to bring down inflation before November’s midterm elections.
Even more worrisome, underlying inflation trends are headed in the wrong direction. After stripping out fuel and food — which are volatile and removed to get a better sense of the trajectory — prices climbed 6.6 percent over the year through September. That was the quickest rate since 1982.
Inflation has been rapid for a year and a half now, and it is proving stubborn even as the Fed mounts its most aggressive campaign in generations to slow the economy and bring price increases under control. Fast inflation has also triggered the highest Social Security cost-of-living adjustment in decades — an 8.7 percent increase in benefits to retired and disabled Americans, a move that was announced Thursday.
The International Monetary Fund has said there is a growing risk that the global economy will slide into recession next year as households and businesses in most countries face “stormy waters”.
Federal Reserve officials signaled they are more concerned about doing too little to rein in soaring US inflation than doing too much and doubled down on plans to tighten monetary policy so it constrains the economy, according to an account of their latest meeting.
There are 100,000 fewer child-care workers than there were before the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even as private-sector employment fully rebounded over the summer from the job losses caused by Covid-19, the child care sector shrank and was 9.7 percent smaller last month than it was in February 2020, federal data shows.
Program directors point to a few explanations for the shortage: competition from other sectors, as well as regulations — including license requirements, vaccine and masking rules — that could dim the enthusiasm of some job candidates.
The typical American child-care worker earns about $13 per hour, and many earn just above minimum wage. Last year, 29 percent were so poor that they experienced food insecurity, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the University of Oregon.
Positions stocking shelves at Target, ringing up groceries at Trader Joe’s, and packing and loading boxes at Amazon warehouses now often pay more than jobs in child-care programs in many parts of the country. Working at a nail salon or managing pharmacy benefits over the phone can also lead to higher earnings.
A recession could lessen the crunch for child-care staff, if competing employers slowed hiring or cut pay. But even before the pandemic, 98 percent of occupations paid more than child care, and the sector, which was already dealing with widespread shortages and high staff turnover, was not robust enough to meet many families’ needs.
From the LA Times: Causes, risks of U.S. inflation are growing. Higher prices have spread to the service sector, making them harder to tame. By Christopher Rugaber (Associated Press)
What keeps driving inflation so high? The answer, it seems, is nearly everything.
Supply chain snarls and parts shortages inflated the cost of factory goods when the economy rocketed out of the pandemic recession two years ago. Then it was a surge in consumer spending fueled by federal stimulus checks. Then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted gas and food supplies and sent those prices skyward.
Since March, the Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising interest rates to try to cool the price spikes. So far, there’s little sign of progress. Thursday’s report on consumer prices in September came in hotter than expected even as some previously big drivers of inflation — gas prices, used cars — fell for a third straight month.
Consumer prices, excluding volatile food and energy costs, skyrocketed 6.6% from a year earlier — the fastest such pace in four decades. Overall inflation did decline a touch, mostly because of cheaper gas . But costlier food, medical care and housing pointed to a widening of price pressures across the economy.
High inflation has now spread well beyond physical goods to the nation’s vast service sector, which includes dental care, apartment rents, auto repairs and hotel rates. The broadening of inflation makes it harder to tame. Thursday’s report underscored that the Fed may have to jack up its key short-term rate even higher than had been expected — and keep it there longer — to curb inflation.
Such action would mean even higher loan rates for consumers and businesses. It could also cause recessions in both the U.S. and global economies, international financial officials warn.
Higher U.S. rates encourage investors to pull money from foreign markets and invest it in U.S. assets for a higher return, a shift that can cause upheaval in overseas economies.
Here’s what’s driving persistent inflation and what it means.
Spending holding up in some segments
Consumers, on the whole, are managing to spend more , even though average wage gains over the last year haven’t kept up with inflation. Many businesses, particularly larger corporations, have taken advantage of rising wages and increased consumer savings from government stimulus checks to raise their prices.
PepsiCo, for example, said Wednesday that although purchases by volume fell 1% in the third quarter of the year, it was able to boost prices 17% without losing customers.
“We obviously exited the third quarter with the consumer still very healthy in terms of our particular categories,” the company’s chief financial officer, Hugh Johnston, told investors.
Still, for many Americans, declining wages (after adjusting for inflation) could eventually slow demand and help force companies to lower prices.
Already there are signs that some Americans, particularly lower-income families, are balking at inflated prices.
Sales of used cars fell over the summer; one major dealer, the CarMax chain, blamed the decline on “vehicle affordability challenges that stem from widespread inflationary pressures, as well as climbing interest rates.”
At the same time, many higher-income consumers have stepped into the used car market, offsetting at least some of the loss from previous buyers, Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive, said.
“We see increases in higher-income households buying used vehicles,” Smoke said. “The profile of who’s buying used is a dramatically upper-scale type of customer.”
Services inflation takes over
Rising prices can often lead consumers to switch their spending to other things, rather than cutting back overall. Right now, for instance, Americans are switching more of their spending from physical goods to services. And that shift is evident in the categories where prices are rising.
“Most people in America spend pretty much their whole budget anyway,” said Eric Swanson, an economics professor at UC Irvine. “So the money’s going to get spent; it’s just a question of what it’s going to get spent on.”
In September, the price of one major service — restaurant meals — jumped 8.5% from a year earlier. It was the largest such increase in 41 years. Likewise, Delta and American Airlines are reporting strong revenue gains as more Americans show a willingness to spend on travel.
Yet restaurants , airlines and hotels all have far fewer workers than they did before the pandemic. With demand healthy, companies in those industries have been forced to provide hefty pay raises to attract or keep workers. Those raises are often passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices — a cycle that feeds inflation.
Many other services are also reporting big price increases, including healthcare, car insurance, veterinarian services and dental visits. Eye care and eyeglasses jumped 3.2% from August to September, the sharpest increase for that category on record.
The housing market is feeling it
The Fed’s rate hikes have led to far higher mortgage rates, which have contributed to a 20% plunge in home sales from a year earlier.
Once-hot home prices fell in July on a monthly basis nationwide, according to the most recent data from the S&P Case-Shiller home price index.
Southern California home prices are falling after a decade of gains, with the typical home price nearly 6% below the all-time high reached in May, according to data released Wednesday by Zillow. Apartment rental costs are also starting to slow, according to real-time data from ApartmentList and Zillow.
Yet in Thursday’s inflation report, one key measure of housing costs jumped 0.8% from August to September. It was the largest monthly increase in 32 years.
The divergence occurred because the government’s rent gauge operates with a significant lag: It tracks all rent payments — not just those for new leases — and most of them don’t change from month to month.
Economists say it could be a year or more before the declines in new leases feed through to government data.
Will the Fed cause
a recession?
That’s the biggest fear overhanging the economy. Chair Jerome H. Powell and other Fed officials have said they will base their policies only on changes in the government’s inflation data, rather than in response to data from other sources.
Yet that sets up a high-risk challenge for the central bank: Will it keep hiking rates, or leave them at high levels, if forward-looking data suggest that rental costs are declining?
For now, the Fed is willing to err on the side of continuing to raise borrowing rates. According to the minutes of its most recent meeting, in September , policymakers “emphasized that the cost of taking too little action to bring down inflation likely outweighed the cost of taking too much action.”
Fed prepared to weaken economy
At their latest meeting, Fed officials warned that their rate hikes would probably slow the economy for an extended period, with growth coming in at “ a below-trend pace in this and the coming few years” and unemployment probably rising.
Among central bank officials, Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, this week sounded one of the hardest-line notes when she suggested that “it will take a couple of years before inflation returns to the Fed’s 2% goal.”
“We cannot say that inflation has even peaked yet,” Mester said.