Coronavirus vaccine and COVID variant updates for 01-11-2022

<p>Free tests are coming for American citizens, perhaps just in time for you to not need them. Starting Saturday, private health insurers must cover up to eight home COVID tests per month for people on their plans. Everyone else can submit receipts for reimbursement. This depends on your ability to find COVID tests. Later this month, the government is launching a website to start making 500 million at-home tests available via mail.&nbsp;</p><br><p>We all kinda figured out this was true, but it’s still a little shocking to hear the Director of the CDC admit it. She said for the first time on CNN the vaccines are no longer effective at preventing transmission of the virus. And not just Omicron, for Delta as well. She said the vaccines are doing very well however protecting against serious illness and death.</p><br><p>A new reason to bless people who sneeze. An Imperial College London Study found that high levels of T-cells from the common cold can protect against COVID. A reminder…the common cold is a coronavirus. The findings could lead to more effective vaccines. The study did not say how long protection from these T-cells lasts.</p><br><p>Hospitals around the U.S. are letting more and more nurses and other workers currently infected with the coronavirus stay on the job. That’s if they have only mild symptoms, or none. It’s a way to cope with staffing shortages. That doesn’t completely go against the CDC, which says asymptomatic health care workers can go back to work after seven days, but it can be sooner if there are staffing shortages.&nbsp;</p><br><p>Is the Deltacron variant real or a myth like the Loch Ness Monster? Our apologies if you believe in Nessie. Health experts are leaning on the side of dismissing reports of a fusion of Delta and Omicron, saying it’s probably just an error during genetic sequencing, specifically, the "lab contamination of Omicron fragments in a Delta specimen."</p><br><p>In the United States, cases were up 216%, deaths are up 17%, and hospitalizations are up 83% over 14 days. The 7