There were plenty of phone calls on yesterday morning’s Covid Brief for special guest Dr. Christina Tuomi , the chief medical officer at South Peninsula Hospital. One caller was curious about the differences between fighting Covid and previous infections such as polio.
“Past vaccines like polio and stuff like that, how does that stop the disease versus the vaccine right now that doesn't seem to be stopping?” a caller asked.
“That is a very good question and I would let you know that I'm not an expert on vaccines. What I have learned is that it's a lot of the variance. So it's the changes within the virus that have made it able to evade some of that vaccine efficacy, and that wasn't necessarily seen with the polio virus. So some of those that we've been able to treat and decrease the frequency with other vaccines. It's because of the not having as many changes within the organism we’re preventing with the vaccine,” Tuomi said.
The follow-up asked about the infectiousness of someone who is vaccinated but still gets a “breakthrough” case of Covid-19.
“With Omicron, it does seem that vaccinated people do have an increased risk of still shedding the virus that's infected. I will say though because you don't have the severity of disease you're not as ill as long, so your viral shedding period is shorter. Which means that you're less likely to spread it to more people. So there's still a benefit. It's just you know, it's not preventing somebody who's vaccinated from spreading.” Tuomi said.
Tuomi said that when vaccinated people get a “breakthrough” case of covid, it’s usually very mild, but there’s still a chance of developing “long covid.”
“It is hard to predict who will have long covid type symptoms. So we don't know 100 percent. Again that's just something that we're still learning so much about, that we just don't have a lot of good information about it. But we're learning more every day it seems like there's more information,” Tuomi said.
“Could you describe a little bit about long covid? What systems are affected and how?” Barrett asked.
“It seems to be kind of a multi-system sort of situation. A lot of patients have kind of a prolonged brain fog or just difficulty concentrating. Many patients have increased anxiety, have depression as a result of it, body aches, chronic shortness of breath. It's just like everything's being dragged down,” Tuomi said.
The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 100 years ago eventually faded away after several waves of infections that began becoming less and less deadly. With hospitalizations lagging behind the current spike in Omicron cases, Tuomi was asked if that could be an indication of the pandemic’s end-stage?
"So there are some hopes that might be the case. Like I said it's more to come we'll always the future is hard to predict. But we're, it's a possibility that is how Spanish Flu became endemic. So, you know, the virus will never go away just like the flu never went away in that type of a situation. It just becomes endemic,” Tuomi said.
“Meaning?” Barrett asked.
“It's always there. There are periods that it'll be more active, areas that it might pop up in more, just like we have a flu season. Similar patterns like that,” Tuomi said.
Another caller asked Tuomi about testing protocols for someone in quarantine.
“Earlier you were talking about the difference between quarantine and isolation and I was just wondering where testing could be useful in there If you're pretty sure you have been exposed, or how long you have to wait to test?” a caller asked.
“So for quarantine they recommend testing at day five for the quarantine. If you don't have symptoms and you have a negative test, you can come out of quarantine at day five,” Tuomi said.
“Thank you. And my other question is about the spike protein. I learned a little bit something yesterday making some calls about why the Omicron was more transmissible, and I was told that there are 50 Spike proteins compared to six in the Delta. Is that true?” the caller asked.
“I can't tell you if it's the exact number but there were many more changes within the spike protein and that's what made it more transmissible. That is true,” Tuomi said.
Hospital spokesperson Derotha Ferraro said there’s been a jump in the number of tests sought at the SPH Bartlett Street Clinic. According to figures for the past week, she said there were 614 tests administered, which was up over 100 from the prior week. Ferraro said the positivity rate was seven percent.