Five years ago, a cluster of people in Wuhan, China, fell sick with a virus never before seen in the world.

The germ didn’t have a name, nor did the illness it would cause. It wound up setting off a pandemic that exposed deep inequities in the global health system and reshaped public opinion about how to control deadly emerging viruses.

The virus is still with us, though humanity has built up immunity through vaccinations and infections. It’s less deadly than it was in the pandemic’s early days and it no longer tops the list of leading causes of death. But the virus is evolving, meaning scientists must track it closely.

Where did the SARS-CoV-2 virus come from?

We don’t know. Scientists think the most likely scenario is that it circulated in bats, like many coronaviruses. They think it then infected another species, probably racoon dogs, civet cats or bamboo rats, which in turn infected humans handling or butchering those animals at a market in Wuhan, where the first human cases appeared in late November 2019.

That’s a known pathway for disease transmission and likely triggered the first epidemic of a similar virus, known as SARS. But this theory has not been proven for the virus that causes COVID-19. Wuhan is home to several research labs involved in collecting and studying coronaviruses, fueling debate over whether the virus instead may have leaked from one.

It’s a difficult scientific puzzle to crack in the best of circumstances. The effort has been made even more challenging by political sniping around the virus’ origins and by what international researchers say are moves by China to withhold evidence that could help.

The true origin of the pandemic may not be known for many years — if ever.

How many people died from COVID-19?

Probably more than 20 million. The World Health Organization has said member countries reported more than 7 million deaths from COVID-19 but the true death toll is estimated to be at least three times higher.

In the U.S., an average of about 900 people a week have died of COVID-19 over the past year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The coronavirus continues to affect older adults the most. Last winter in the U.S., people age 75 and older accounted for about half the nation’s COVID-19 hospitalizations and in-hospital deaths, according to the CDC.

“We cannot talk about COVID in the past, since it’s still with us,” WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

What vaccines were made available?

Scientists and vaccine-makers broke speed records developing COVID-19 vaccines that have saved tens of millions of lives worldwide – and were the critical step to getting life back to normal.

Less than a year after China identified the virus, health authorities in the U.S. and Britain cleared vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna. Years of earlier research — including Nobel-winning discoveries that were key to making the new technology work — gave a head start for so-called mRNA vaccines.

Today, there’s also a more traditional vaccine made by Novavax, and some countries have tried additional options. Rollout to poorer countries was slow but the WHO estimates more than 13 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally since 2021.

The vaccines aren’t perfect. They do a good job of preventing severe disease, hospitalization and death, and have proven very safe, with only rare serious side effects. But protection against milder infection begins to wane after a few months.

Like flu vaccines, COVID-19 shots must be updated regularly to match the ever-evolving virus — contributing to public frustration at the need for repeated vaccinations. Efforts to develop next-generation vaccines are underway, such as nasal vaccines that researchers hope might do a better job of blocking infection.

Which variant is dominating now?

Genetic changes called mutations happen as viruses make copies of themselves. And this virus has proven to be no different.

Then in late November 2021, a new variant came on the scene: omicron.

“It spread very rapidly,” dominating within weeks, said Dr. Wesley Long, a pathologist at Houston Methodist in Texas. “It drove a huge spike in cases compared to anything we had seen previously.”

But on average, the WHO said, it caused less severe disease than delta. Scientists believe that may be partly because immunity had been building due to vaccination and infections.

“Ever since then, we just sort of keep seeing these different subvariants of omicron accumulating more different mutations,” Long said. “Right now, everything seems to locked on this omicron branch of the tree.”

The omicron relative now dominant in the U.S. is called XEC, which accounted for 45% of variants circulating nationally in the two-week period ending Dec. 21, the CDC said. Existing COVID-19 medications and the latest vaccine booster should be effective against it, Long said, since “it’s really sort of a remixing of variants already circulating.”

What do we know about long COVID?

Millions of people remain in limbo with a sometimes disabling, often invisible, legacy of the pandemic called long COVID.

It can take several weeks to bounce back after a bout of COVID-19, but some people develop more persistent problems. The symptoms that last at least three months, sometimes for years, include fatigue, cognitive trouble known as “brain fog,” pain and cardiovascular problems, among others.

Doctors don’t know why only some people get long COVID. It can happen even after a mild case and at any age, although rates have declined since the pandemic’s early years. Studies show vaccination can lower the risk.

It also isn’t clear what causes long COVID, which complicates the search for treatments. One important clue: Increasingly researchers are discovering that remnants of the coronavirus can persist in some patients’ bodies long after their initial infection, although that can’t explain all cases.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Next, she crushed and dissolved pills so they could run through a separate tube into her intestines, which absorb the medicine better than her stomach.

The steps Lilly took that October morning are necessary because her stomach stopped working properly following her first bout with COVID-19 four years ago. But her routine also served another purpose: It was content she filmed for a video that she later posted on TikTok, where she has amassed nearly 470,000 followers.

Lilly added Tylenol to her mix of medicine that morning, she explained in the video, because her mom was going to be giving her an intravenous immunoglobulin, or IVIG, infusion, which doctors have found to be an effective treatment for patients who have long COVID.

“I always have to pre-medicate with Benadryl and Tylenol so that I don’t have a reaction to the infusion,” Lilly said during the minute-long clip.

For Lilly, TikTok has become a kind of a job — and definitely a distraction — while living with long COVID, the name given to the physical and cognitive symptoms that can persist for months and even years after patients’ initial infections. She’s become a social media influencer, earning thousands of dollars and brand deals by documenting what it’s like to face life with a chronic illness.

She first fell ill with COVID-19 as a teen in 2020 during the height of the pandemic, and The Denver Post has followed Lilly since 2021 through multiple hospital stints and her search for normalcy and answers as to why symptoms, including a high heart rate and brain fog, still linger.

The Post last caught up with Lilly in 2022, when she wasn’t just still sick, her symptoms were getting worse and she was hospitalized with life-threatening infections. Now, Lilly said in a recent interview, she’s doing better physically, living on her own and planning to resume her education in January while using her platform on social media to educate people about her life and illness.

“Filming and editing my videos — it gave me something else to focus on,” she said.

On TikTok, Lilly shares her experiences with feeding tubes, medications and being interviewed by news reporters. Hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of people watch her individual videos. But she also shares things you’d expect from a typical 20-year-old — moving into her first apartment, traveling with friends — and it’s these things that show how far Lilly has come.

Two years ago, Lilly was an 18-year-old who just wanted to go home after spending months at Denver’s Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children. Any travel and college plans she entertained were on hold out of fear she’d need to return to the hospital again.

Now, she’s living life outside the hospital’s walls, on her own for the first time, traveling with friends to Utah, and volunteering at a camp for chronically ill kids — and she’s sharing it with the world.

Learning more about long COVID

Lilly was 16 when she first became sick and was hospitalized during one of Colorado’s deadliest waves of the virus. Soon after, she began developing ulcers all over her body that doctors were unable to explain and struggled to treat.

When she first became ill, pediatric doctors were unprepared for patients with COVID-19 to develop persisting symptoms. Long COVID was first seen in adults, and researchers and physicians didn’t know how common it was in children and teens.

A lot has changed since Lilly first became sick, and even since 2022, when her symptoms worsened to the point she had to relearn how to walk on her own and she spent most of the year in the hospital.

While COVID-19 is still around, vaccines and treatments are now available. Doctors and researchers have also learned more about long COVID, including how it affects adolescents, and are working on finding better treatments, such as IVIG, for patients with persisting symptoms, said Dr. Alexandra Yonts, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Doctors still don’t know why someone specifically develops long COVID, but there are risk factors, such as if someone has multiple symptoms when they first get sick or have autoimmune diseases, she said.

Adolescent girls are at a higher risk of developing long COVID, although the condition also appears more in boys ages 5 and younger, said Yonts, director of the hospital’s post-COVID program.

In 2022, researchers estimated that as many as 651,000 Coloradans had long COVID, with clinics struggling to keep up with the demand for treatment.

Studies also show that the more times a person gets COVID-19, their risk of developing lingering symptoms increases, she said, adding that getting vaccinated decreases a person’s risk of getting long COVID.

“We’re definitely in a much more knowledgeable place of this disease,” Yonts said.

At Yonts’ clinic, doctors have found that patients can experience a range of long COVID symptoms. Fatigue and decreased exercise tolerance are among the most common.

Patients also appear to fall into two groups, Yonts said. One group has more cardiovascular symptoms, such as heart palpitations and difficulty breathing. The other group has more gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms, such as headaches, vomiting and stomach pain.

“It was a way to connect with people”

While there had been a period in 2021 when Lilly appeared to be doing better, she took an unexpected turn as she began vomiting and had trouble swallowing and eating. She landed in the hospital again at the end of summer 2021, missing the first days of her senior year at Lakewood High School.

Lilly was eventually diagnosed with gastroparesis, which means food doesn’t move through her body when she eats, and was placed on a feeding tube.

But her central line — the very thing that gave her nutrients — kept causing life-threatening infections that put her in repeatedly in the intensive-care unit.

So when the autumn of 2022 rolled around and Lilly’s friends left for college without her, she decided to make the best of the situation by posting on TikTok.

The social media app became not just a distraction, but a way to meet people. Lilly has met others living in Fort Collins who also follow her videos, she said.

“It was a way to connect with people because it’s a lot harder in real life when your friends are gone,” Lilly said.

TikTok helped Lilly not only make new friends, it also let her friends from high school better understand her illness, she said.

The TikTok videos help show “that I am a normal person,” she said.

Elisa Downs, Lilly’s mother, said she didn’t quite understand when her daughter started making TikToks — even as she helped make Lillly’s dance videos in the hospital.

“When she really started to pick up momentum, I was, of course, worried because this world is cruel,” Downs said, noting how controversial the topic of COVID-19 can be online.

But then, Downs said, she witnessed the community her daughter found online.

“I saw that it was giving her a sense of purpose,” she said, adding, “She was able to really find a great network of people there who understood.“

Lilly has also been able to earn money for her TikTok videos via the platform’s Creator Fund, which pays users based on how many people view and engage with their posts. To join the fund, a person must be at least 18, have a minimum of 10,000 followers and at least 100,000 video views in the past 30 days, according to the social media app.

Lilly’s videos about her illness — especially the ones about how she receives supplemental nutrition — earn the most views. One of her clips about her nighttime routine received more than 60 million views, bringing in about $5,000 alone.

Lilly said she is “technically” a social media influencer — she has a manager and has started getting brand deals, such as with BeeKeeper’s Naturals, which sells natural remedies. Lilly posted a video showing her using one of the company’s products to help with her brain fog.

But Lilly has other plans, too. She moved to Fort Collins from Golden in August and is adjusting to living on her own for the first time. She wants to get another job and start college next semester at Colorado State University, studying nutrition science in hopes of becoming a pediatric dietitian.

“I’m excited to have a routine,” Lilly said. “Being in class — I’m nervous just because my brain… is just not where it used to be.”

A new normal

Physically, Lilly said, her symptoms have gotten better. She still has days where they flare and she struggles with brain fog, which makes her lose her train of thought.

“I’m definitely having better days,” Lilly said, adding, “Just taking care of myself is a full-time job.”

Her gastroparesis has also improved to the point where Lilly can sometimes eat food without getting sick. She craves things that she didn’t like before, such as condiments and ranch dressing, and is on a self-proclaimed cream cheese kick, especially with pizza. “It’s so good,” Lilly said.

There was a time, Lilly said, when she expected that her life would go back to the way it was before the pandemic, before she got COVID-19, when she used to play soccer and go to school.

“For so long we were just holding out for the normalcy,” she said.

But, Lilly said, “This is my new normal.”

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Bhattacharya would lead the $47.5 billion agency that is the world’s largest funder of biomedical research. NIH is a collection of 27 institutes and centers focusing on cancer, infectious disease, mental health, heart and lung ailments and drug abuse, among other medical matters.

“I am honored and humbled by President Trump’s nomination of me to be the next NIHdirector,”  Bhattacharya said on X. “We will reform American scientific institutions so that they are worthy of trust again and will deploy the fruits of excellent science to make America healthy again!”

In choosing Bhattacharya, Trump is picking someone with expertise in economics and health care policy who leads Stanford’s Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. With an MD and PhD in economics, he is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, as well as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

But he has no experience in basic or applied clinical biomedical research and has never held a government post. For the past 50 years, NIH has been led by known authorities in fields ranging from radiology to genetics. Many of them directed smaller agencies before stepping up to lead NIH, a job with immense administrative responsibilities.

He would replace Dr. Monica M. Bertagnolli, a cancer surgeon and lab scientist who championed the use of artificial intelligence tools to create a research database. She also worked to make clinical trials more accessible to rural and minority patients.

Prior to spring 2020, Bhattacharya was a little-known academic who specialized in health policy issues such as physician payment, costs and quality of care, geographic variation in medical practices and regulatory surveillance of FDA-approved products. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was an economist at the RAND Corporation and taught classes in the economics department at UCLA.

But when the COVID pandemic broke out, Bhattacharya emerged as a leading critic of the interventions taken against the pandemic, such as business and school closings, mask and social distancing advisories and lockdowns.

The lockdowns and school closures created economic and societal devastation, he argued. He called for pursuing “herd immunity” through natural infections of those who were not sick or elderly.

He took aim at the NIH, saying it engaged in “massive suppression of scientific debate and research.” The CDC, he said, “exaggerated risk.” The FDA approved vaccines and therapeutics with “little to no evidence, sometimes based on faulty modeling,” he claimed.

In response, he experienced racist attacks and death threats during the pandemic, he wrote.

He praised the outcome of the 2024 election, calling it a “vote against the establishment and in favour of fundamental reforms,” in a recent essay on the website Unherd. The Biden administration engaged in “orchestrated PR campaigns,” he wrote, “spreading falsehoods and misinformation.”

Critics say he lacks the credentials needed to lead NIH.

“NIH is an institution that is founded on the basis of respect for subject matter expertise,” said Dr. Robert Morris, an epidemiologist and former professor at Tufts University School of Medicine.

“Dr. Bhattacharya has repeatedly shown disregard for subject matter expertise over the course of the COVID pandemic,” he said, “dismissing feedback from experts in virology, pathology, and epidemiology, while he, as an economist, was conducting an epidemiological study, despite having almost no training or experience in the field.”

Lucky Tran, a science communicator and PhD biochemist based in New York City, said “Dr.Bhattacharya has spread misinformation about vaccines and COVID, fought against lifesaving public health measures during the pandemic, and is backed by well-funded organizations which undermine public health in order to further corporate interests.  More than ever, the NIH needs to be led by an expert who is a strong supporter of groundbreaking research on new vaccines, treatments, and emerging infectious diseases. “

It was rumored that the Trump team was initially seeking candidates who could bring strong operational experience to helm the huge health research agency. According to the biopharma newsletter Endpoints News, the search included Moncef Slaoui, a longtime pharmaceutical executive at GSK who led Operation Warp Speed, the successful COVID-19 vaccine rollout by the previous Trump Administration.  A source told the newsletter that Slaoui said he was not interested, and volunteered other names.

But Bhattacharya’s contrarian stance has earned support with many leading conservatives on Capitol Hill, who say they are seeking reformers willing to battle the bureaucracy.

“Dr. Bhattacharya understands the need for significant reform following the failure of the public health establishment during the COVID-19 pandemic and has the knowledge and fortitude to do it,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, in a statement. “He would ensure that public health returns to science-based solutions — not bureaucratic failed practices.”

Bhattacharya is a co-author of the controversial Great Barrington Declaration, a manifesto published in October 2020 that argued for an easing of restrictions in favor of “focused protection” — sheltering those at risk of dying but allowing younger people to return to public life and build up immunity through the natural spread of the virus.

He accused Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, of  seeking to destroy the careers of dissenting scientists.

Bhattacharya was a plaintiff in a lawsuit, Murthy v. Missouri, that claimed Biden administration officials pressured social media outlets to suppress content critical of the government’s COVID policies. The U.S. Supreme Court in June ruled the plaintiffs lacked standing to pursue their claims.

He is a supporter of Health and Human Services secretary nominee Robert Kennedy Jr., commending Kennedy’s vows to end the United States’ chronic disease epidemic and clean up corruption in the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

If appointed, Bhattacharya would have no direct authority over the CDC and FDA, agencies he fiercely criticized during the COVID pandemic, The CDC, FDA and NIH are separate operating divisions within the Department of Health and Human Services.

At NIH, Bhattacharya vowed he would change NIH’s “top-down leadership,” setting term limits on institute directors to encourage the influx of new ideas, he told NewsMax TV.  He also said he would strengthen the role of replication in research, helping build confidence in the reliability and generalizability of study results.

“Turn the NIH from something that…control(s) society,” he said on NewsMax, “into something that’s aimed at the discovery of truth to improve the health of Americans.”

You probably have a cabinet full of rapid COVID-19 tests you’ve accumulated. The expiration dates have come closer and closer, with some tests even reaching them.

The Food and Drug Administration, however, has said those expiration dates are subject to change, providing a list of the tests that have had their dates extended.

COVID-19 rapid antigen tests allow people to check for SARS-CoV-2 infections without help from professionals. They provide positive or negative results for the virus, typically within 15 minutes.

Rapid COVID tests list their shelf life — how long the test should work as expected — and expiration date — the date through which the test is expected to perform accurately — on the box. According to the FDA, expiration dates can be extended when the manufacturer provides data showing the shelf life is longer than originally expected.

Finding the shelf life, called stability testing, often takes a long time for test manufacturers, with the FDA opting to give them a shelf life of four to six months instead of waiting. After the test maker finds the true results of stability testing, they will contact the FDA with their new date.

The FDA has extended the expiration date for hundreds of tests, available to search here.

When should you take a rapid COVID test?

According to the FDA, you should take a test when you start having symptoms, such as shortness of breath, fever or chills, sore throat, congestion, new loss of taste and smell, or nausea and vomiting. Headaches, body aches and diarrhea can also be signs to look for.

Respiratory virus season will begin later this month, with the probability of COVID-19 or RSV infections getting higher. It is important to stay mindful of these possible symptoms, and even if you are not in possession of an at-home rapid test, stay home if you are feeling ill until you can get one.

©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week said that people 65 and older or who are immunocompromised need a second dose of the new vaccine released in September.

But you should wait six months after the first dose. This means next March is the earliest you’d be eligible.

Why is the CDC promoting two doses when the first one is still being rolled out?

“It’s predictive,” based on previous years’ infection trends, said Castro Valley’s Dr. Jeffrey Silvers, Medical Director of Pharmacy and Infection Control for Sutter Health. This is the second year in a row that the CDC has made a biannual recommendation.

Scientists now know that a duo of doses every year is needed to maintain immunity and keep pace with the virus’s mutational hijinks, said Silvers, who serves as an advisor to the California Immunization Coalition, a nonprofit public-private partnership that seeks to reduce rates of infectious disease.

Annual autumn-and-spring rollouts will mark one of the ways that we’re permanently incorporating the COVID virus into our daily lives.

Meanwhile, if you’ve been delaying the first dose of the updated 2024-2025 COVID vaccine, now’s the time. Last year, only 40% of older adults got one dose of a revised vaccine. Willingness to get two doses was even lower: 8.9% of older adults and 5.4% of immunocompromised adults got both doses.

The complexity of the schedule and the frequent changes in vaccine recommendations have created confusion and reduced uptake, according to the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. To be sure, it’s hard to muster enthusiasm for six-month inoculations. But formalizing a two-dose fall-and-spring schedule is aimed to help.

The goal is to build a vaccine regimen that protects the most vulnerable populations for the greatest length of time. It’s an update to recommendations last summer when no additional doses for older adults were advised.

If you’re like a lot of us, you’ve probably lost track of how many times you’ve been vaccinated.

It’s time to stop counting, say experts. What matters, instead, is how recently you got a shot. Protection against severe COVID, requiring emergency room care or hospitalization, fades within four to six months.

Before you make your appointment, here are some things to know.

Q: We don’t need two doses of the flu vaccine. Why two COVID doses every year? Some diseases only need one vaccine in an entire life.

A: “Stable” viruses that don’t replicate quickly need fewer boosters, because there’s lasting immunity. For instance, we need a tetanus shot only once every 10 years. Measles, smallpox and polio need one shot a lifetime.

By contrast, both flu and COVID viruses replicate quickly. This means they have many chances to produce more mutations, which create new variants that evade immune protection.

The flu virus is very seasonal. (If it stuck around, it would require two shots, also.)

COVID circulates all year long, with peaks in the winter and late summer. So we need more frequent protection.

Q: For immunocompromised people, are two doses enough?

A: Not necessarily. CDC experts suggest additional doses — three, even more — of the new vaccine in people who are moderately to severely immunocompromised, in consultation with your doctor.

However, they advised waiting two months between each shot, depending on the patient’s circumstances.

Q: Will the second dose be the same as the dose that was released in September?

A: Yes. But it’s different from the 2023-2024 vaccine.

Q: How is the 2024-2025 vaccine different from last year’s vaccine?

A: The current vaccine more closely targets the JN.1 lineage of the Omicron variant of the virus. The vaccine introduced last fall targeted the XBB.1.5 strain. After last fall’s rollout of that updated vaccine, JN.1 surfaced with more than 30 new mutations, which worried experts.

Q: Can I mix and match the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines?

A: It is not recommended.

From year to year, it’s fine to get vaccines from different manufacturers. But when getting the second dose of a two-dose series, experts at the Oct. 24 meeting of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended sticking with the same manufacturer. A dose from a different manufacturer may be administered if the same vaccine isn’t available or if the previous manufacturer is unknown.

Q: I was sick with COVID during the summer wave. Am I eligible for the 2024-2025 vaccine?

A: Yes, but wait three months after your illness. You still have some protection, so a vaccine isn’t needed.

Q: Why isn’t a second dose recommended for younger people?

A: A second dose won’t hurt a young person and will be protective. But the CDC is most concerned about hospitalization and deaths among elders and the immunocompromised because their immunity is impaired.

When we’re young, our bodies have a well-tuned network of protection against foreign invaders such as the COVID virus. The thymus, which produces infection-fighting T cells, reaches its peak size at puberty and then steadily shrinks.

In elders, there is a decline in the number, activity and diversity of T cells, a process scientists dub “immunosenescence.” By the age of 50, our T cell production is less than 10% of its peak, so it’s harder for an older person to clear the virus from their blood. Elders are also more likely to experience chronic inflammation in the lungs and other organs.

And younger people tend to bounce back from illness. When sickened, “younger people who are otherwise healthy tend to be able to weather the storm a little better,” said Silvers.

Q: Are we destined for a lifetime of constantly updated COVID vaccines?

A: Not if research is successful. Federally funded scientific teams are working to develop a “universal”  vaccine that would confer immunity to many viral variants — even versions that don’t exist yet. They hope to do this by targeting a region of the virus that stays the same, even as it mutates.

Such targets are usually those that are least accessible to the immune system. This poses a significant challenge to vaccine researchers. But with recent progress in vaccine technology, researchers believe that universal vaccines are closer to reality than ever before.

2024-2025 COVID-19 VACCINATION SCHEDULE:Children ages 6 months-4 years• Unvaccinated: Should receive a multi-dose initial series with a 2024–2025 mRNA vaccine• Previously completed an initial series: Should receive 1 dose of a 2024–2025 mRNA vaccine from the same manufacturer as the initial seriesPeople ages 5-64 years:• Should receive 1 dose of 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccinePeople ages 65 years and older:• Should receive 2 doses of any 2024–2025 COVID-19 vaccine, spaced 6 months apartPeople who are moderately or severely immunocompromised• Unvaccinated: Complete initial series, then at least 1 2024–2025 vaccine dose, with option of others• Vaccinated: 2 or more doses of 2024–2025 mRNA vaccine, spaced 6 months apart. May receive 3 or more 2024–2025 COVID-19 vaccine doses under shared clinical decision-makingSource: CDC

While many respiratory viruses — including COVID-19, RSV and influenza — circulate year-round in California, they are typically more active between October and March, according to the California Department of Public Health.

You might be wondering whether your cold-like symptoms might be coronavirus, and whether you can use the old at-home test in your medicine cabinet.

Can you use an at-home COVID-19 test past its expiration date — and can it be extended?

Here’s what you need to know:

Do at-home COVID-19 tests really expire?

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, all at-home COVID-19 diagnostic tests come with an expiration date printed on the box or packaging.

Such self-administered tests shouldn’t typically be used past this date, the FDA said in a September FAQ about at-home tests.

However, these expiration dates can be extended as additional stability data becomes available.

“COVID-19 test manufacturers perform studies to show how long after manufacturing COVID-19 tests perform as accurately as the day the test was manufactured,” the FDA said.

The shelf life of a test refers to the period during which it should perform as expected, starting from the date of manufacture.

The expiration date marks the end of this period, indicating the latest date by which the test is expected to provide accurate results.

Can expiration dates be extended for coronavirus tests?

Stability testing determines how long a test maintains its expected performance.

The manufacturer stores the test for the proposed shelf-life, plus some additional time to ensure reliability, and then reassesses its accuracy, according to the FDA.

For example, if the intended shelf-life for an at-home test is 12 months, the manufacturer tests its accuracy after storing it for 13 months to confirm it still performs as expected.

“Since it takes time for test manufacturers to perform stability testing, the FDA typically authorizes at-home COVID-19 tests with a shelf-life of about four to six months from the day the test was manufactured, based on initial study results, and it may be extended later as additional data is collected,” the FDA said.

Once the test manufacturer obtains additional stability testing results for time periods such as 12 or 18 months, they can request FDA authorization for an extended shelf-life.

However, the FDA said, if you didn’t buy your test directly from the manufacturer, you might not receive such a notice.

How can I tell if my at-home COVID test is still good?

To see if the expiration date of your at-home OTC COVID-19 test has been extended, check the “Expiration Date” column of the list of authorized at-Home OTC COVID-19 diagnostic tests, the FDA said.

How can I get free at-home COVID tests?

Californians can request free COVID-19 at-home tests online.

The online portal re-opened in late September.

Households can order up to four COVID-19 tests, according to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.

The U.S. Postal Service will deliver the coronavirus testing supplies directly to people’s homes at no cost.

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©2024 The Sacramento Bee. Visit at sacbee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Nearly 90% of babies who had to be hospitalized with COVID-19 had mothers who didn’t get the vaccine while they were pregnant, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings appear in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Babies too young to be vaccinated had the highest COVID hospitalization rate of any age group except people over 75.

The study looked at infant medical data from October 2022 to April 2024 in 12 states and underscores the critical importance of vaccinating pregnant people. It also echoes what physicians have anecdotally reported for more than three years — that people are still skeptical of COVID vaccines due to persistent misinformation.

Of the 1,470 infants sick enough to be hospitalized due to COVID, severe outcomes occurred “frequently,” according to the report. Excluding newborns hospitalized at birth, about 1 in 5 infants hospitalized with COVID required intensive care, and nearly 1 in 20 required a ventilator.

“These aren’t necessarily high-risk, ill newborns. These are just regular, full-term, healthy newborn kids who happen to get COVID and wind up on a ventilator in the hospital,” said Neil Silverman, a professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology and the director of the Infectious Diseases in Pregnancy Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Babies can’t get the COVID vaccination until they are at least 6 months old. That leaves a “huge window” when infants are most vulnerable, Silverman said. Vaccinating pregnant women so they pass the antibodies on to their newborns is an effective way of protecting babies during that time. Vaccination during pregnancy also protects pregnant people from severe disease.

But persistent vaccine misinformation online has led to skepticism among Silverman’s pregnant patients.

“The most frustrating response that I get from folks is that they need to do more research before they think about getting the COVID vaccine,” Silverman said. “We have dozens and dozens of studies showing the safety of the mRNA vaccine. I don’t know how much more research we can provide to skeptics.”

Among the 1,000-plus babies hospitalized with COVID, the median age was just 2 months old, according to the report. Nine of the infants died.

South Carolina pediatrician Deborah Greenhouse said she plans to share the study with families she cares for. “There absolutely is a proportion of the population who will look at this and say, ‘Hey, wow, I should get that vaccine. It could protect my baby,’” she said.

Greenhouse believes the new data could solidify the risk of skipping the vaccine when she speaks to families.

“I think that it might help to convince some parents when you can actually show them hospitalization numbers and you can show them intensive care numbers and you can show them mechanical ventilation numbers,” Greenhouse said. “Those things are a big deal.”

Often, Greenhouse waits to be informed that a person is pregnant before bringing up the updated COVID shot. Now she’s rethinking that strategy. “As pediatricians we do get moms in our office who are pregnant and we have an opportunity to intervene and to do some education and make them understand how important this is,” she said.

Physicians can encourage vaccination by making it as easy and simple as possible, Silverman said. He encouraged fellow doctors to offer the shots in their offices, rather than sending patients to pharmacies or other providers.

“We lose probably 30 to 40% of vaccination opportunities once someone has to leave the office to get a vaccine,” Silverman said.

But offering COVID shots in their clinics leaves some doctors with a difficult calculation. They are struggling to predict how many patients will be interested in the vaccine and may not be able to return all their excess doses. Many providers can’t afford to lose money on doses that won’t be used, but they still need to order enough to vaccinate vulnerable patients who want the shot.

Healthbeat is a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published by Civic News Company and KFF Health News. Sign up for its newsletters here.

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 Kaiser Health News. Visit khn.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

One evening in May, nursing assistant Debra Ragoonanan’s vision blurred during her shift at a state-run Massachusetts veterans home. As her head spun, she said, she called her husband. He picked her up and drove her to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm.

It was the latest in a drumbeat of health issues that she traces to the first months of 2020, when dozens of veterans died at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, in one of the country’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks at a long-term nursing facility. Ragoonanan has worked at the home for nearly 30 years. Now, she said, the sights, sounds, and smells there trigger her trauma. Among her ailments, she lists panic attacks, brain fog, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition linked to aneurysms and strokes.

Scrutiny of the outbreak prompted the state to change the facility’s name to the Massachusetts Veterans Home at Holyoke, replace its leadership, sponsor a $480 million renovation of the premises, and agree to a $56 million settlement for veterans and families. But the front-line caregivers have received little relief as they grapple with the outbreak’s toll.

“I am retraumatized all the time,” Ragoonanan said, sitting on her back porch before her evening shift. “How am I supposed to move forward?”

COVID killed more than 3,600 U.S. health care workers in the first year of the pandemic. It left many more with physical and mental illnesses — and a gutting sense of abandonment.

What workers experienced has been detailed in state investigations, surveys of nurses, and published studies. These found that many health care workers weren’t given masks in 2020. Many got COVID and worked while sick. More than a dozen lawsuits filed on behalf of residents or workers at nursing facilities detail such experiences. And others allege that accommodations weren’t made for workers facing depression and PTSD triggered by their pandemic duties. Some of the lawsuits have been dismissed, and others are pending.

Health care workers and unions reported risky conditions to state and federal agencies. But the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration had fewer inspectors in 2020 to investigate complaints than at any point in a half-century. It investigated only about 1 in 5 COVID-related complaints that were filed officially, and just 4% of more than 16,000 informal reports made by phone or email.

Nursing assistants, health aides, and other lower-wage health care workers were particularly vulnerable during outbreaks, and many remain burdened now. About 80% of lower-wage workers who provide long-term care are women, and these workers are more likely to be immigrants, to be people of color, and to live in poverty than doctors or nurses.

Some of these factors increased a person’s COVID risk. They also help explain why these workers had limited power to avoid or protest hazardous conditions, said Eric Frumin, formerly the safety and health director for the Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of labor unions.

He also cited decreasing membership in unions, which negotiate for higher wages and safer workplaces. One-third of the U.S. labor force was unionized in the 1950s, but the level has fallen to 10% in recent years.

Like essential workers in meatpacking plants and warehouses, nursing assistants were at risk because of their status, Frumin said: “The powerlessness of workers in this country condemns them to be treated as disposable.”

In interviews, essential workers in various industries told KFF Health News they felt duped by a system that asked them to risk their lives in the nation’s moment of need but that now offers little assistance for harm incurred in the line of duty.

“The state doesn’t care. The justice system doesn’t care. Nobody cares,” Ragoonanan said. “All of us have to go right back to work where this started, so that’s a double whammy.”

‘A war zone’

The plight of health care workers is a problem for the United States as the population ages and the threat of future pandemics looms. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called their burnout “an urgent public health issue” leading to diminished care for patients. That’s on top of a predicted shortage of more than 3.2 million lower-wage health care workers by 2026, according to the Mercer consulting firm.

The veterans home in Holyoke illustrates how labor conditions can jeopardize the health of employees. The facility is not unique, but its situation has been vividly described in a state investigative report and in a report from a joint oversight committee of the Massachusetts Legislature.

The Soldiers’ Home made headlines in March 2020 when The Boston Globe got a tip about refrigerator trucks packed with the bodies of dead veterans outside the facility. About 80 residents died within a few months.

The state investigation placed blame on the home’s leadership, starting with Superintendent Bennett Walsh. “Mr. Walsh and his team created close to an optimal environment for the spread of COVID-19,” the report said. He resigned under pressure at the end of 2020.

Investigators said that “at least 80 staff members” tested positive for COVID, citing “at least in part” the management’s “failure to provide and require the use of proper protective equipment,” even restricting the use of masks. They included a disciplinary letter sent to one nursing assistant who had donned a mask as he cared for a sick veteran overnight in March. “Your actions are disruptive, extremely inappropriate,” it said.

To avoid hiring more caretakers, the home’s leadership combined infected and uninfected veterans in the same unit, fueling the spread of the virus, the report found. It said veterans didn’t receive sufficient hydration or pain-relief drugs as they approached death, and it included testimonies from employees who described the situation as “total pandemonium,” “a nightmare,” and “a war zone.”

Because his wife was immunocompromised, Walsh didn’t enter the care units during this period, according to his lawyer’s statement in a deposition obtained by KFF Health News. “He never observed the merged unit,” it said.

In contrast, nursing assistants told KFF Health News that they worked overtime, even with COVID, because they were afraid of being fired if they stayed home. “I kept telling my supervisor, ‘I am very, very sick,’” said Sophia Darkowaa, a nursing assistant who said she now suffers from PTSD and symptoms of long COVID. “I had like four people die in my arms while I was sick.”

Nursing assistants recounted how overwhelmed and devasted they felt by the pace of death among veterans whom they had known for years — years of helping them dress, shave, and shower, and of listening to their memories of war.

“They were in pain. They were hollering. They were calling on God for help,” Ragoonanan said. “They were vomiting, their teeth showing. They’re pooping on themselves, pooping on your shoes.”

Nursing assistant Kwesi Ablordeppey said the veterans were like family to him. “One night I put five of them in body bags,” he said. “That will never leave my mind.”

Four years have passed, but he said he still has trouble sleeping and sometimes cries in his bedroom after work. “I wipe the tears away so that my kids don’t know.”

High demands, low autonomy

A third of health care workers reported symptoms of PTSD related to the pandemic, according to surveys between January 2020 and May 2022 covering 24,000 workers worldwide. The disorder predisposes people to dementia and Alzheimer’s. It can lead to substance use and self-harm.

Since COVID began, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, director of the Trauma Stewardship Institute, has been inundated by emails from health care workers considering suicide. “More than I have ever received in my career,” she said. Their cries for help have not diminished, she said, because trauma often creeps up long after the acute emergency has quieted.

Another factor contributing to these workers’ trauma is “moral injury,” a term first applied to soldiers who experienced intense guilt after carrying out orders that betrayed their values. It became common among health care workers in the pandemic who weren’t given ample resources to provide care.

“Folks who don’t make as much money in health care deal with high job demands and low autonomy at work, both of which make their positions even more stressful,” said Rachel Hoopsick, a public health researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “They also have fewer resources to cope with that stress,” she added.

People in lower income brackets have less access to mental health treatment. And health care workers with less education and financial security are less able to take extended time off, to relocate for jobs elsewhere, or to shift careers to avoid retriggering their traumas.

Such memories can feel as intense as the original event. “If there’s not a change in circumstances, it can be really, really, really hard for the brain and nervous system to recalibrate,” van Dernoot Lipsky said. Rather than focusing on self-care alone, she pushes for policies to ensure adequate staffing at health facilities and accommodations for mental health issues.

In 2021, Massachusetts legislators acknowledged the plight of the Soldiers’ Home residents and staff in a joint committee report saying the events would “impact their well-being for many years.”

But only veterans have received compensation. “Their sacrifices for our freedom should never be forgotten or taken for granted,” the state’s veterans services director, Jon Santiago, said at an event announcing a memorial for veterans who died in the Soldiers’ Home outbreak. The state’s $56 million settlement followed a class-action lawsuit brought by about 80 veterans who were sickened by COVID and a roughly equal number of families of veterans who died.

The state’s attorney general also brought criminal charges against Walsh and the home’s former medical director, David Clinton, in connection with their handling of the crisis. The two averted a trial and possible jail time this March by changing their not-guilty pleas, instead acknowledging that the facts of the case were sufficient to warrant a guilty finding.

Nursing assistants sued the home’s leadership, too. The lawsuit alleged that, in addition to their symptoms of long COVID, what the aides witnessed “left them emotionally traumatized, and they continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The case was dismissed before trial, with courts ruling that the caretakers could have simply left their jobs. “Plaintiff could have resigned his employment at any time,” Judge Mark Mastroianni wrote, referring to Ablordeppey, the nursing assistants’ named representative in the case.

But the choice was never that simple, said Erica Brody, a lawyer who represented the nursing assistants. “What makes this so heartbreaking is that they couldn’t have quit, because they needed this job to provide for their families.”

‘Help us to retire’

Brody didn’t know of any cases in which staff at long-term nursing facilities successfully held their employers accountable for labor conditions in COVID outbreaks that left them with mental and physical ailments. KFF Health News pored through lawsuits and called about a dozen lawyers but could not identify any such cases in which workers prevailed.

A Massachusetts chapter of the Service Employees International Union, SEIU Local 888, is looking outside the justice system for help. It has pushed for a bill — proposed last year by Judith García, a Democratic state representative — to allow workers at the state veterans home in Holyoke, along with its sister facility in Chelsea, to receive their retirement benefits five to 10 years earlier than usual. The bill’s fate will be decided in December.

Retirement benefits for Massachusetts state employees amount to 80% of a person’s salary. Workers qualify at different times, depending on the job. Police officers get theirs at age 55. Nursing assistants qualify once the sum of their time working at a government facility and their age comes to around 100 years. The state stalls the clock if these workers take off more than their allotted days for sickness or vacation.

Several nursing assistants at the Holyoke veterans home exceeded their allotments because of long-lasting COVID symptoms, post-traumatic stress, and, in Ragoonanan’s case, a brain aneurysm. Even five years would make a difference, Ragoonanan said, because, at age 56, she fears her life is being shortened. “Help us to retire,” she said, staring at the slippers covering her swollen feet. “We have bad PTSD. We’re crying, contemplating suicide.”

I got my funeral dress out because the way everybody was dying, I knew I was going to die.

Certain careers are linked with shorter life spans. Similarly, economists have shown that, on average, people with lower incomes in the United States die earlier than those with more. Nearly 60% of long-term care workers are among the bottom earners in the country, paid less than $30,000 — or about $15 per hour — in 2018, according to analyses by the Department of Health and Human Services and KFF, a health policy research, polling, and news organization that includes KFF Health News.

Fair pay was among the solutions listed in the surgeon general’s report on burnout. Another was “hazard compensation during public health emergencies.”

If employers offer disability benefits, that generally entails a pay cut. Nursing assistants at the Holyoke veterans home said it would halve their wages, a loss they couldn’t afford.

“Low-wage workers are in an impossible position, because they’re scraping by with their full salaries,” said John Magner, SEIU Local 888’s legal director.

Despite some public displays of gratitude for health care workers early in the pandemic, essential workers haven’t received the financial support given to veterans or to emergency personnel who risked their lives to save others in the aftermath of 9/11. Talk show host Jon Stewart, for example, has lobbied for this group for over a decade, successfully pushing Congress to compensate them for their sacrifices.

“People need to understand how high the stakes are,” van Dernoot Lipsky said. “It’s so important that society doesn’t put this on individual workers and then walk away.”

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Healthbeat is a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published by Civic News Company and KFF Health News. Sign up for its newsletters here.

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(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

SEATTLE — Being a teen during the first part of the COVID pandemic meant experiencing many milestones — the first day of high school, birthdays, graduation — from behind a computer screen.

Pandemic isolation had a marked effect on young people. But a recent University of Washington study found teen girls were more adversely affected by the lockdown than teen boys, with girls’ brains aging more than three times as much.

Researchers say it’s not entirely clear what that could mean long-term for people who were teens during the early part of the pandemic. But in the immediate future, it could make teen girls more susceptible to anxiety and depression.

Neva Corrigan, the lead researcher on the study, said it highlights the need for more mental health support.

“You don’t necessarily need to wait until a person develops a full-blown depressive episode or anxiety attack,” Corrigan said. “You can help prevent that by providing mental health support in the form of counseling, to help kids deal with their feelings.”

In 2018, researchers at UW’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences studied the brain scans of 160 people ages 9 to 17 with the intention of looking at changes in their brains over a two-year period. When the pandemic hit, they had to wait an extra year to bring their subjects back.

About 130 of them came back for the second scan. The researchers used the data of about 110 people from the original group to create a model, projecting what expected brain development would look like. They used the data from about 50 other students in that group to look at how their brains had actually changed in those three years.

What they found surprised them. Between 2018 and 2021, the teen girls in the study experienced more thinning of their frontal cortices — indicating aging in the brain. They found teen girls’ brains aged 4.2 years beyond the predicted rate, whereas teen boys’ brains aged 1.2 years more than expected.

The areas where girls’ brains showed the most cortical thinning was in the part of the brain associated with social interactions, Corrigan said.

“We know that during the teen years, girls use their social network a lot to help deal with emotions and stressors,” Corrigan said. “During COVID, they lost that emotional support avenue, and males may not use that as much.”

Corrigan said cortical thinning is a normal part of aging — as people get older, the brain begins pruning its synapses, or the connections between nerve cells, in order to streamline and make functioning more efficient.

But it also reduces the brain’s plasticity, or ability to change. That reduction in connections can increase the risk of depression and anxiety — for which teenage girls already have higher rates than their male peers.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the pandemic had an overall negative effect on the mental well-being of children and teens, finding the number of visits to pediatric emergency departments increased for things like self-harm and psychological concerns after the pandemic began.

The center reported that more children visited the emergency room for certain injuries, chronic diseases and behavioral health concerns annually from 2020 to 2022 than in 2019. The center also reported that teen girls might have fared the worst during the pandemic, with emergency department visits for things like eating disorders and tic disorders tripling during the pandemic for teen girls nationwide.

A recent New York Times article highlighted some limitations of the study, quoting a brain researcher at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles who said that because the research used different subjects to model “normal” development than it did to measure the impacts of the pandemic, it wasn’t tracking changes in specific brains.

Corrigan also acknowledged that while the study showed changes during this time period, researchers couldn’t pinpoint the exact aspects of the lockdown that caused those changes. Researchers hypothesized it was because of the stress, she said, based on previous research about how chronic stress affects the brain.

Those who work with teens regularly say they’ve seen the impacts of the COVID lockdown as students have returned to school in person.

Tammy Huson, a counselor at Catharine Blaine K-8 School, said she has noticed an increase in anxiety among adolescent girls. Many have been more withdrawn and experienced a drop in confidence or self-efficacy, she said. Boys, meanwhile, she said, have become less verbal in expressing their feelings. Across student populations, she’s observed social delays, with some students feeling more apprehensive about going outside their own space.

She attributed those changes to fears developed during the pandemic, not just among kids, but among parents.

While adults typically have the ability to moderate their emotions and understand they won’t always feel a certain fear or anxiety, most children haven’t yet developed that ability, Huson said.

The uncertainty of the pandemic might have made it more difficult for parents to respond to their children’s fears, she added.

“Now they’re flooded and inundated, worried about the safety of their own children or their elderly parents,” Huson said. “So they’re not moderating their children’s fears because they’re flooded in their own fears.

Peter Faustino, the president of the National Association of School Psychologists, said that in addition to fostering relationships with each other, teens should build connections with supportive adults and try to form healthy routines, such as exercising regularly and getting enough sleep, which can help the brain develop and help teens bounce back from the trauma of the pandemic.

He also urged parents to consult with teachers and school counselors if they notice their teens are struggling. Those changes might show up on a brain scan, he said, but they may not be as evident in a student’s everyday life.

“Teachers, school psychologists who are living in those spaces and interacting with hundreds of kids a day, they can give a lot of really tailored, targeted advice about what to look for and what might be a concern,” Faustino said.

Corrigan said researchers need to do further study to find out whether teenagers’ brains will continue to age at a faster rate after the pandemic, or whether the brain might slow down its aging process to compensate.

In the meantime, she said, parents and other adults should offer as much emotional support as they can — listening to their teens and talking to them about how to cope with anxious or depressive thoughts, keeping an eye on them for signs they might be struggling and encouraging them to socialize.

“This study highlights the importance of social interaction for teenagers,” Corrigan said. “Adults should be fostering and helping teens make these connections. I know it might not be fun for parents when their kids are spending all their time with their friends, but those interactions are very critical to their teens’ development.”

Huson also encouraged parents and others who work with adolescents not to worry so much about labeling them for specific disorders, and instead just trying to help them work through their challenges.

“We want to help re-coach kids into saying, ‘Is this thought helpful?’ ” Huson said. “ ‘Is there another way I can look at this? How can I replace that thought with something else or move onto something else?’ ”

Adults can help model all those behaviors for their teens by taking care of their own mental health too, said Huson.

“When they’re getting anxious, one of the best things an adult can do is pause and reset,” she said. “If they can model that for the kids, kids can see that they can acknowledge that anxiety but not live in it.”

The Mental Health Project is a Seattle Times initiative focused on covering mental and behavioral health issues. It is funded by Ballmer Group, a national organization focused on economic mobility for children and families. Additional support is provided by City University of Seattle. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over work produced by this team.

©2024 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Coronavirus infections have come roaring back this year, prompting the Biden administration to renew one of its earliest responses to the COVID-19 pandemic: Free at-home test kits delivered via the mail.

The Department of Health and Human Services is offering to mail four test kits to any household that wants them. You can sign up for a shipment at covidtests.gov at the end of this month, the department says.

The at-home tests involve swabbing the inside of your nose to collect a sample, mixing the sample with the included reagent, placing drops of the resulting solution on a test strip, then waiting 15 to 30 minutes for the results.

In 2022 and 2023, the government sent out 900 million free test kits, but the program has been idle since. In the meantime, infections saw a surprisingly strong summer surge, powered by a more contagious COVID variant. And public health experts warn that, with cooler weather forcing more people and events indoors, the number of infections will probably rise again.

If you don’t want to wait for the tests to come by mail, you can find test kits at many pharmacies. Depending on your insurance coverage, you may be able to get reimbursed for the cost.

For low-income or uninsured families, the federal and state governments also provide free tests. Medi-Cal provides up to eight free test kits per month; to find a site that offers free tests for those without health insurance, go to testinglocator.cdc.gov.

The kits offered by the federal government contain antigen tests, which look to see whether a sample taken from your nostrils contains a protein that binds to the coronavirus’ RNA. They deliver results quickly and at low cost — in stores, boxes of two tests cost between $16 and $24 — but the more expensive molecular tests can detect lower amounts of the coronavirus in your system.

Antigen tests have proven to be as good as molecular tests at avoiding false positive results. And according to the CDC, these tests are also just as good when it comes to detecting COVID-19 in someone who is showing symptoms of the disease, such as a cough, a fever and a sore throat.

Where the tests fall short, the CDC warns, is with people who have the virus but show no symptoms, especially if they’re in the early stages of infection and may not yet have enough of a viral load to infect others. The agency recommends that people perform a second antigen test a few days after the first one, which is why the kits are sold as two-packs.

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©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.