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Will there be a second lockdown in ny12/24/2023 “And so having measures that are aimed at a societal level, containment is not practical and won’t achieve the aim that we initially thought was possible in early 2020.” “Eliminating it is not possible,” she said. An endemic virus is one that has a constant presence in a geographic area. Leana Wen, a professor of public health at George Washington University, told the AP that the fact that COVID-19 has become an endemic virus is another reason future lockdowns or restrictions at any level of government are highly unlikely. Officials expect to see updated COVID-19 vaccines this fall that contain one version of the omicron strain, called XBB.1.5. Still, some schools and businesses are reinstating mask mandates and other restrictions. 12 - they’re a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022. While COVID-19 hospital admissions are rising - there were at 12,613 for the week ending Aug. Regardless, Gostin said that if the president or Congress tried to institute a nationwide lockdown, “they’d be slapped down by the courts in a minute” because of restrictions on federal police power. But his COVID-19 vaccination mandates were the subject of numerous legal challenges - many of which were successful. 20, 2021, required anyone in federal buildings or on federal lands, including government employees and contractors, to wear masks. An executive order issued by President Joe Biden on Jan. Similar limits apply to the president and to Congress. “They don’t even have the power to do the kinds of things that are being suggested,” Gostin explained. But the agency has no enforcement power, leaving implementation and enforcement to the states, which is why pandemic-related restrictions varied across the U.S. The CDC has authorization from Congress to issue certain orders if they are necessary to prevent infectious diseases from spreading between states, he said. Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University who also specializes in constitutional law, told the AP that the CDC could reissue the order, but he said it would likely be immediately challenged and struck down in a lower court, a decision which would probably then be upheld by the Supreme Court. A federal judge in Florida struck down the mandate on April 18, 2022, finding that the CDC failed to justify the order and that it did not follow proper rulemaking procedures. 29, 2021, the CDC issued an order requiring people to wear masks on public transportation, including airplanes, and in transportation hubs, that was implemented and enforced by the TSA. Canada has seen a steady increase of EG.5 cases, but the World Health Organization reported in early August that its risk to global public health is low. 18, no cases had been detected in the country. Health Canada confirmed to the AP that as of Aug. 23, the latter had only been reported in Denmark, South Africa, Israel, the U.S. The evolution of a veritable XBB-Delta combo isn’t an inevitability, though, Rajnarayanan says.Two new COVID-19 variants - EG.5 and BA.2.86 - have recently emerged. So far, variants with Delta signature mutations are still lingering in New Zealand and the European Union, Rajnarayanan says. Trackers are eyeing variants that have a mutation in the spike protein that could cause such a phenomenon. Hospitalizations can, however, be expected to rise if variants that combine the transmissibility of XBB with the lung involvement of Delta catch on, in China or elsewhere. It remains to be seen whether hospitalizations will rise in China, Rajnarayanan and fellow variant tracker Ryan Gregory-a Canadian biologist who has assigned “street names” to so-called high-flying variants like XBB.1.5, dubbed “Kraken”-tell Fortune. So far, XBB spawn have remained relatively innocuous for those not at increased risk of severe disease, according to the World Health Organization’s latest situation report, released Thursday. Increased circulation of XBB variants in China-and elsewhere-is likely to result in the evolution of new XBB variants, Rajnarayanan said. When it comes to XBB variants, “the rest of the world has seen them all.” But up until recently, “China hasn’t,” he says, adding that the country has a substantial population at high risk of severe outcomes from COVID owing to age, immune status, and comorbid conditions.
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