Weekly News From Los Alamos County
CORRECTED: March 10, 2022 (reissued March 11, 2002)
We are reissuing the March 10 newsletter to correct the following: The URL in the "Omicron Wave Across the U.S." in the Epidemiology Corner is fixed to link to the stated web page. In addition, the CDC "Spring Break Travel Tips" corrected two bad links in tip #1 related to additional doses for individuals who are immunocompromised
and booster doses for everyone. We regret the errors.
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Inside this newsletter you will find...
The Epidemiology Corner, Tips for Spring Break Travel, This Week's Survey,
Evusheld Prevention Update, Loss of Smell Research, COVID-19 Data and more.
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Age Dynamics of the Recent Omicron Wave...
"Holiday-associated travel and social and family gatherings were likely exposure settings contributing most to the sharp rise in incidence at the outset of the Omicron wave and through the holidays...."
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Omicron Wave Across the U.S.
The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant was first detected in South Africa in November 2021, and quickly spread and achieved global variant dominance within several months time. Early observations suggested that Omicron was more transmissible and immune evasive than the prior Delta variant but perhaps less virulent and less likely to cause severe disease. In the U.S., the Omicron wave began in early December 2021 and case counts thereafter quickly increased, reaching record peak levels around mid-January 2022, and then declined as rapidly with subsidence to near pre-Omicron levels in early March 2022. All age groups were observed to be at elevated risk of Omicron infection compared to prior waves, with incidence rates in infants, children, and teens being similar to those seen in middle-age adults. See https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographicsovertime for U.S. trends in the case incidence of Omicron and prior variants by age and other demographics.
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Omicron Wave in Los Alamos County
The Omicron wave began in Los Alamos County in late December 2021 and reached a peak within several weeks before subsiding to near pre-Omicron levels by the end of February 2022. A total of 1,701 cases were reported during the 12-week time period 12/4/21 – 2/25/22, of which adults accounted for the majority of cases (65%), with seniors 65+ years accounting for 10% alone. Infants, children, and teens comprised 35% of cases, or roughly one in three cases in the county.
The relative case burden was higher in children and youth than in adults. Positive PCR tests were reported for 12%-13% of all county residents 0-19 years, compared to 9% of those 20-59 years, and 4% of seniors 60+ years. The number of unreported infections, either among persons testing at home or persons asymptomatic, is unknown and may influence these statistics.
Analysis of age-specific case incidence data shows that risk was generally highest among children and youth and lowest among seniors. The Omicron wave clearly emerged among children and youth at a time when schools had been closed for a least a week, thus likely ruling out schools as a major transmission setting. When Omicron arrived in the County is not precisely known, but given the low incidence reported among all ages during the week ending December 24, it appears likely that introduction was sometime late in that week or early in the next week. Holiday-associated travel and social and family gatherings were likely exposure settings contributing most to the sharp rise in incidence at the outset of the Omicron wave and through the holidays.
The return to school on January 5 was accompanied by a continued rise in case incidence which peaked in children and youth during the week ending January 14 and declined rapidly thereafter. The excess incidence observed relative to adults in the two weeks following school return could be due to actual increased risk of exposure and infection, enhanced testing, or some combination of the two. The CDC has concluded that schools, such as those in Los Alamos, which maintained strong prevention measures, including masking, social distancing, and increased ventilation likely represented relatively low Omicron transmission risks. Higher transmission risks for children and youth are thought to have occurred within unprotected household and social settings. A recent CDC study found high transmission risk among all ages in households where the index Omicron case was not vaccinated and preventative measures, such as masking and case isolation, were not practiced. See MMWR Report at https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7109e1.htm.
Going forward, multi-component COVID-19 prevention strategies, including up-to-date vaccination, isolation of infected persons, and mask use at home, will remain important measures to reduce household and social transmission risk if new variants emerge as highly transmissible as Omicron.
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Spring Break Travel Tips
No matter where you travel for spring break, here are the CDC’s top 5 tips to help you have a safer and healthier spring break:
1. Stay up to date with your COVID-19 vaccines as well as all routine vaccines.
Routine vaccines protect you from infectious diseases, such as measles, that can spread quickly in groups of unvaccinated people. Many diseases prevented by routine vaccination are no longer common in the United States but are still common in other countries.
2. Check the travel requirements and recommendations for your spring break destination.
Check CDC’s webpage for your destination to see what destination-specific vaccines or medicines you may need and what diseases or health risks are a concern at your destination.
If you are traveling internationally, please visit:
If you are traveling domestically, please visit:
3. Visit your healthcare provider.
If you are traveling internationally, make an appointment with your healthcare provider or a travel health specialist before you leave. They can help you get destination-specific vaccines, medicines, and information. Discussing health concerns as well as your itinerary and planned activities with your provider allows them to give more specific advice and recommendations.
4. Plan for unexpected issues.
5. Protect yourself during travel.
Do not travel if you are sick, tested positive for COVID-19, are waiting for results of a COVID-19 test, or had close contact with a person with COVID-19 and are recommended to quarantine. Learn more about when to avoid travel.
If you feel sick or have a fever after your trip, contact a healthcare provider immediately and make sure to tell them about any areas you recently traveled to. Avoid contact with other people while you are sick.
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Are you planning to travel over spring break?
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Yes - Flying domestically
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Yes - Flying internationally
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Yes - Driving domestically
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Yes - Driving internationally
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No, but I have visitors coming here
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COVID-19 Therapeutics Update: Evusheld
Evusheld, a combination of two long-acting monoclonal antibodies, has an emergency use authorization as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for prevention of COVID-19 in certain adults and pediatric patients (12 years of age and older weighing at least 40 kg). The FDA recently amended the authorized dosing for Evusheld.
Evusheld is only authorized for those who are moderately-to-severely immunocompromised and for those whom COVID-19 vaccine is medically contraindicated due to severe adverse reaction to a COVID-19 vaccine or vaccine component. Evusheld is not authorized for post-exposure prophylaxis or treatment of existing COVID-19 disease.
On February 24th, the FDA amended the authorized dosing for Evusheld. The dosing regimen was revised because available data indicate that a higher dose of Evusheld may be more likely to prevent infection by the COVID-19 Omicron subvariants BA.1 and BA.1.1 than the originally authorized Evusheld dose.
The FDA also removed its original recommendation for redosing patients every 6 months while SARS-CoV-2 remains in circulation. The FDA stated that the duration of protection provided by Evusheld against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection may not be as long as was shown in the clinical trial supporting the initial authorization because the clinical trial data came from a time period before the emergence of the BA.1 and BA.1.1 subvariants.
The FDA will continue to monitor variant prevalence closely. The FDA will provide updates with redosing recommendations in the near future once more data are available to determine appropriate timing of redosing (e.g., 3 months or 6 months after the prior dose).
For questions, please contact the New Mexico Department of Health COVID-19 Therapeutics Team at covid.thereaputics@state.nm.us
To read the full news release, click HERE. To locate Evusheld administration sites, visit https://cv.nmhealth.org/treatments/.
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Comparing Cases, Deaths, and Hospitalizations Indicates Omicron Less Deadly Data from the three major waves of COVID-19 in the U.S. indicate that the Omicron variant was less deadly and that an easing of the pandemic may be in sight.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, clinicians, public health officials, policymakers, and the public have relied on data about cases, deaths, testing and hospitalizations to understand the ever changing realities of COVID-19. As the disease appears to be shifting into an endemic phase with less severity, these data, particularly cases, are becoming less reliable given how many infections were detected with at-home tests never recorded in public reports. When dealing with volatile numbers, it is better to rely on trends and comparisons to better understand the data. For instance, knowing that a state had 50,000 new cases is less informative than understanding that this represents a 20,000 decrease from the previous week, indicating that spread is diminishing.
The importance of tracking trends is obvious when looking at the complete U.S. datasets for cases, deaths, and hospitalizations below. Steep increases in any of the individual metrics correlate with the beginning of a wave driven by a new variant (Alpha, Delta, and Omicron in order). When the trend flips and the counts decrease, leaders consider us to be coming out of the wave, and can make policy changes accordingly. Based on the most recent data, it would appear that the Omicron wave has dwindled.
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For a better understanding of how society is actually handling these trend changes, we can turn to comparisons in the form of ratios. The ratio of deaths to cases gives some insight into the mortality rate – how many reported cases become deaths. The percentage in no way signifies the true mortality of COVID-19 due to many asymptomatic, unreported cases, but the trend can inform us as to how deadly the disease is currently. When comparing cases and deaths, we apply a three-week lag to fatality data because it takes time for cases to become deaths and then get reported. The lag is visible in the first image where the peaks for deaths during variant waves do not line up with the peaks for cases and hospitalizations.
As shown above, the deaths-to-cases ratio has been pretty consistent throughout the pandemic once our reporting systems were fully established in summer 2020. Deaths have represented about 2% of reported COVID-19 cases. However, that finally changed with Omicron. During the Omicron wave, mortality decreased significantly, with deaths now representing less than 0.5% of reported cases. Additional testing of asymptomatic or mild cases could also explain this change, but testing infrastructure use has decreased over the past few months. The data trends clearly demonstrate that Omicron is a much less deadly variant, which is critical for downgrading COVID-19 to an endemic disease. The reduced severity of Omicron could also be attributed in part to increased vaccination coverage and recovery immunity
Taken together these data tell us that Omicron was less deadly than previous variants and that if COVID-19 does become an endemic, seasonal disease with similar severity, the country is better prepared. We are not there yet and public health experts will continue to watch these data and perform surveillance for new variants before declaring the pandemic over. While it would be an atypical viral evolution trajectory, a new variant as severe as Delta or the original strain would be a significant blow to the hope kindled by the diminishing Omicron wave. We need to remain watchful and continue recording and reporting COVID-19 data, but we are on an encouraging trajectory.
To read the full article, click HERE.
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How the Coronavirus Steals the Sense of Smell
The virus does not infect nerve cells that detect odors, researchers have found. Instead, it attacks nearby supporting cells.
Few of Covid-19’s peculiarities have piqued as much interest as anosmia, the abrupt loss of smell that has become a well-known hallmark of the disease. Covid patients lose this sense even without a stuffy nose; the loss can make food taste like cardboard and coffee smell noxious, occasionally persisting after other symptoms have resolved.
Scientists are now beginning to unravel the biological mechanisms, which have been something of a mystery: The neurons that detect odors lack the receptors that the coronavirus uses to enter cells, prompting a long debate about whether they can be infected at all.
Insights gleaned from new research could shed new light on how the coronavirus might affect other types of brain cells, leading to conditions like “brain fog,” and possibly help explain the biological mechanisms behind long-COVID — symptoms that linger for weeks or months after the initial infection.
The infected cells shed virus and die, while immune cells flood the region to fight the virus. The subsequent inflammation wreaks havoc on smell receptors, proteins on the surface of the nerve cells in the nose that detect and transmit information about odors. The process alters the sophisticated organization of genes in those neurons, essentially short-circuiting them, the researchers reported.
To read the full article, click HERE.
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CDC COVID Data Tracker - March 9, 2022
To get today's break down of positive case data, demographics information, vaccine status and more for Los Alamos County or other counties across the United States, click HERE
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LAPS COVID-19 Positive Reported Case Count
Cases Reported between March 5-9 (No change since March 7) - Total: 6
To learn more about reported cases in the individual LAPS schools, click HERE.
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The charts available with this TOOL layout the key metrics for understanding the reach and severity of COVID-19 in a given area.
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Johns Hopkins
COVID-19 Status Report Dashboard for
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Mayo Clinic Vaccine Tracker
To see how many people are vaccinated and compare progress across states, click HERE
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NMDOH Epidemiology Reports Updated March 7, 2022
View data showing the percentage of new cases each week by race/ethnicity, as well as by age groups and gender. You will also find in-depth epidemiology reports - click HERE
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Have a question? Email us. |
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Vaccine/Booster Information |
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Los Alamos County Vaccine/Booster Resources
Visit the County COVID Page for information regarding vaccinations/boosters, click below:
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Testing Resources for Los Alamos County |
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Additional Los Alamos County Testing Resources
Visit the County COVID Page for information regarding testing, click below:
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What else would you like to see in this newsletter?
Click below to email us your feedback and questions!
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