"What we can't forget is we've actually made a lot of progress over the last three decades. So we've decreased cancer mortality by about 32% in the last 30 or so years," said Dr. Rich Schulick, director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center and chair of the department of surgery at the University of Colorado.
It’s not clear why hospitalizations stopped dropping for a few weeks while cases and the percentage of tests coming back positive kept falling, said Talia Quandelacy, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health. Hopefully, they’ll keep falling, though rising concentrations of the virus in wastewater are something to watch, she said.
As Dr. Daniel Pastula, a professor of neurology, infectious disease and epidemiology at The University of Colorado and Colorado School of Public Health, previously told Insider, monkeypox can spread between people who are in very close physical contact with one another, whether the contact is sexual in nature or not.
Pisney is an infectious disease specialist, and she and Dr. Ross Kedl, a professor of immunology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, explained the updated boosters use the original vaccine plus some added proteins to protect against omicron BA.4 and BA.5. “Very little is actually different. All the things that were in them before are in them again,” said Kedl.
“The most common button batteries used in readily available household devices are about the size of a quarter, which is a perfect size to get stuck in the esophagus,” said Dr. David Brumbaugh, an associate professor of pediatrics with the University of Colorado School of Medicine who did not work on the new study.
Join MPR News with Angela Davis the week of Sept. 12 as we continue the conversation about 988 and emergency mental health services. We'll talk more about local services, and hear your stories. Guests: Emmy Betz, MD, MPH is professor of emergency medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Here's part of our conversation with infectious disease specialist Dr. Michelle Barron (of CU School of Medicine): On the Omicron-specific booster: "It's Omicron specific, BA.4 and BA.5, which is what we've been seeing for the last several month circulating. The other booster previous to this and original vaccine were based on the original strain of COVID. This one in theory will give you a little bit broader protection because it's more specific to what were seeing," Barron said.
It’s possible that the downward trajectory has paused because kids returned to school and adults went back to their offices, meaning the virus has more chances to spread, said Beth Carlton, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health and a member of the state’s modeling team.
