WP Coronavirus Updates in News stories

The Washington Post
Coronavirus Updates
Important developments in the pandemic.

By Sabrina Malhi

The latest
In September, Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma decided that Oklahoma Children’s Hospital would get $39.4 million for a pediatric mental health facility only if the hospital stopped providing gender-affirming care, my colleague Kimberly Kindy reports.

“The move, which Oklahoma Gov. Kevin J. Stitt (R) signed into law on Tuesday, marks the first time conservative state lawmakers have successfully tied gender-affirming care to the receipt of funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA),” Kindy writes.

Oklahoma’s anti-transgender stance has seeped into other parts of state legislation. In March, the governor signed a transgender sports ban into law, and two months later, Stitt signed a bill banning transgender students from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

At least eight pieces of anti-LGBT legislation have been signed into law across the country. State legislators continue introducing bills affecting gay and transgender rights nationwide.

On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in collaboration with the National Center for Health Statistics, released data on long covid. The Household Pulse Survey data finds that more than 80 percent of people with long covid experience limitations in day-to-day activities.

In adults, these data also find that 14.2 percent who have tested positive for the coronavirus experienced long covid for some period of time, while nearly 2 percent of people who tested positive continue to experience long-term symptoms of long covid that have significant impact on their day-to-day activities.

“We want to highlight that there are quite a few people in the country whose day-to-day activities are still significantly impacted by long covid,” said Stephen Blumberg, director in the division of Health Interview Statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics. “It lets people know what the consequences of contracting covid may be.”

Despite the potentially deleterious — and enduring — consequences of a coronavirus infection, only 7.6 million people in the United States have received the updated booster shot targeting the omicron variant. That’s a stark difference from the first vaccines authorized in late 2020 — more than 200 million received the full dose of the primary series of shots.

Other important news:
My colleague Fenit Nirappil shares the stories of five men who describe what it’s like to have monkeypox. Kayden Coleman said his monkeypox lesions itched “like a mosquito bite and were also painful,” Nirappil reports.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ended its practice this week of providing ongoing country-by-country advisories on coronavirus risk for travelers. The agency will issue country-specific alerts only when the risk of the coronavirus is extreme, my colleague James Bikales reports.

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump examined Democratic- and Republican-voting places and found a gap in death rates that has widened since 2020. Excessive deaths during the pandemic were higher among Republicans, particularly after the vaccines were authorized.

Your questions, answered
*Does being pregnant make a person immunocompromised and, therefore, more susceptible to the coronavirus? *

Pregnancy doesn’t necessarily make someone immunocompromised, and they aren’t more likely to contract the coronavirus. But a person who is pregnant or recently pregnant is more likely to have more severe symptoms if they become infected.

“‘Immunocompromised’ would imply that the immune system wasn’t functioning well overall, but with pregnancy, it’s an immune-altering state,” Kathryn Gray, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said to The Washington Post. “Other reasons we think that women develop more severe illnesses with the coronavirus is because pregnant individuals have a change in physiology such as decreased lung capacity and changes to their cardiovascular system.”

According to a study published by the National Institutes of Health, in addition to developing severe illness, pregnant people who are exposed to the coronavirus are more likely to deliver by Caesarean section compared with uninfected people. They were also more likely to have a higher risk of experiencing other complications, including preterm birth and death of the newborn.

While the overall risk of severe illness and death from covid-19 for pregnant people is low, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that they are more likely to need a ventilator and have an increased risk of illness if they have other health conditions, such as obesity or gestational diabetes.

ACOG’s guidance indicates that pregnant or recently pregnant people should get the updated bivalent booster shot.

“It’s especially important since we know like older individuals, neonates are more susceptible to getting severe disease,” Gray said.