by: KSN News, KSN News, KSN News
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) Kansas has administered over two million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the governors office.
To date, the Centers for Disease Control reports that Kansas has administered 2,059,674 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. About 43% of Kansans have received at least their first dose, with nearly 33% fully vaccinated.
This is a great milestone for Kansas, but there is still more work to do,Dr. Lee Norman, Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said.We encourage all Kansans who have yet to be vaccinated to take that initial step to get vaccinated.
Fourteen more deaths are linked to COVID-19, bringing the states death toll to 4,999, according to the KDHE.
Since Monday, 470 more Kansans have tested positive for the coronavirus, and 33 more were hospitalized as variants are rising across the state, the governors office said.
All Kansans are encouraged to visitVaccines.govto find the nearest location with an available vaccine.
County coronavirus cases updated: May 5, 2021Weekly doses updated May 3, 2021Sources:Kansas Department of Health and EnvironmentNebraska Department of Health and Human ServicesOklahoma State Department of Health
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Coronavirus in Kansas: Over 2 million COVID-19 vaccines administered - KSN-TV
MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) -- State tourism officials say the coronavirus pandemic caused a 30% decline in direct spending by tourists in Wisconsin in 2020, but they are optimistic the industry will rebound this year.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Tourism, spending dropped about $4 billion last year to $9.8 billion. All of Wisconsin's 72 counties experienced a decline in tourism activity last year compared to 2019. But officials say the first four months of this year are shaping up to be better than 2019.
National research shows 87% of Americans plan to travel in the next six months.
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Wisconsin tourism spending takes a 30% hit due to coronavirus - kwwl.com
The announcement will come little more than a year after the novel coronavirus made landfall in Minnesota, and one day after the state reported the full vaccination of more than 2 million residents.
"As millions of Minnesotans are getting vaccinated, Governor Walz is making plans to wind down COVID-19 restrictions and get Minnesota back to business as usual," Walz's spokesperson Teddy Tschann said in a news release. "The vaccine is here and it has proven to be our best tool to control the virus. Its time to roll up our sleeves, get vaccinated, and crush the virus."
The governor in recent days has said he planned to announce the rollback of COVID-19 restrictions, loosened most recently in March. He said that disease transmission and vaccination rates were favorable enough allow for the return in August of the Minnesota State Fair, which was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Though the state appears to be recovering from a recent surge in infections, the coronavirus pandemic is by several measures still very much active in Minnesota.
While vaccination rates have also slowed somewhat, Walz said this week that he still expects approximately 70% of Minnesotans above the age of 12 to be inoculated by June, and that a "normal-looking summer" would follow. Approximately 45% of residents older than 16 were fully vaccinated as of Wednesday, May 5.
Federal health authorities are expected to approve the version of the vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer for children ages 12 and older as soon as next week, according to media reports, which could further bolster Minnesota's vaccination numbers. In an email, State Health Department spokesperson Doug Schultz said plans were being made for that possibility.
"Just as we have worked with other sectors of Minnesotas population to meet them where they are, we will use multiple strategies to reach this population," he said in an email. "Possibilities include utilizing their primary care provider, pharmacies, local public health clinics, and school-located vaccination opportunities."
Following are the Minnesota Department of Health COVID-19 case rates, deaths, hospitalizations and vaccinations as of Wednesday. Because all data is preliminary, some numbers and totals may change from one day to the next.
SEVEN-DAY, ROLLING AVERAGE OF NEW CASES PER 100,000 PEOPLE: 29 (As of Monday, April 26)
SEVEN-DAY, ROLLING AVERAGE TEST POSITIVITY RATE: 5.9% (As of Monday, April 26)
ACTIVE HOSPITALIZATIONS: 580
TOTAL HOSPITALIZATIONS: 30,691
DEATHS, NEWLY REPORTED: 17
TOTAL DEATHS: 7,191
FIRST DOSE ADMINISTERED: 2,598,691 people or 58.9% of residents ages 16 and older
COMPLETED SERIES (2 DOSES): 2,007,635 or 45.5% of residents ages 16 and older
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The global tally for the coronavirus-borne illness rose above 153.5 million on Tuesday, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University, while the death toll rose to 3.2 million. The U.S. continues to lead the world in cases and deaths by wide margins, with 32.5 million cases and 577,523 deaths, or about a fifth of the worldwide tallies. There was positive vaccine news from the Associated Press, which said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to authorize Pfizer's PFE, +0.05% COVID-19 vaccine for youngsters ages 12 to 15 by next week, citing a federal official and a person familiar with the process, setting up shots for many before the beginning of the next school year. The U.S. vaccine program has slowed as more older people have been fully vaccinated and experts say inoculating young people will go a long way toward expanding it.India is second to the U.S. by cases at 20.3 million and third by fatalities at 222,408. Indian hospitals are still overwhelmed by cases and lacking in supplies including oxygen. Brazil is third with 14.8 million cases and second by fatalities at 408,622. Mexico has the fourth-highest death toll at 217,345 and 2.3 million cases, or 15th highest tally. The U.K. has 4.4 million cases and 127,799 deaths, the fifth-highest in the world and highest in Europe.
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With India in the grip of a devastating second wave of COVID-19the country recorded more than 368,000 new cases and 3,417 deaths from the disease yesterdaysome have suggested that a variant first detected there in October could share some of the blame. The B.1.617 version of the coronavirus carries the ominous nickname double mutant, but it has more than two sequence changes from older SARS-CoV-2 variants, and little is known so far about the effects of these alterations, if any, on disease severity or the viruss ability to evade immunity gained through infection or vaccines.
One preliminary bit of insight emerged on April 23, when researchers reported in a preprint that B.1.617 was neutralized in vitro by the sera of people who had either recovered from COVID-19 or had received Indias Covaxin vaccine. That study has not yet undergone peer review. Compared with people who have recovered from COVID-19, the ability of the sera of vaccinated people to neutralize the B.1.617 variant was found to be two-fold less, coauthor Samiran Panda, a senior scientist at the Indian Council of Medical Research, tells The Hindu.
B.1.617s double mutant moniker comes from changes it harbors that are similar to those in other known variants. One mutation, known as L452R, is also found in the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant first identified in California, where it has been associated with increased transmissibility. Another B.1.617 mutation, called E484Q, is similar to the E484K mutation found in the P.1 variant that was first detected in Brazil and the B.1.351 variant, also known as the South African variant. E484K is known as an escape mutation because it appears to help the virus partially evade immunity conferred by prior infection or vaccines, according to The BMJ.
B.1.617 is now the dominant variant in Indias hardest-hit state, Maharashtra, according to Nature. In its most recent epidemiological update, released April 27, the World Health Organization (WHO) notes that multiple other variants are also circulating in the country, and that Preliminary modelling by WHO based on sequences submitted to GISAID suggest that B.1.617 has a higher growth rate than other circulating variants in India, suggesting potential increased transmissibility. It has also been found in at least 16 other countries, the organization notes. WHO still lists B.1.617 as a variant of interest rather than a variant of concern, because its effects on epidemiology or vaccine effectiveness, if any, are uncertain.
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What Scientists Know About the B.1.617 Coronavirus Variant - The Scientist
Children account for more than a fifth of new U.S. coronavirus cases in states that release statistics by age, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Tang Ming Tung/Getty Images hide caption
Children account for more than a fifth of new U.S. coronavirus cases in states that release statistics by age, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The number of children contracting COVID-19 in the U.S. is much lower than the record highs set at the start of the new year, but children now account for more than a fifth of new coronavirus cases in states that release data by age, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. It's a statistic that may surprise many: Just one year ago, child COVID-19 cases made up only around 3% of the U.S. total.
On Monday, the AAP said children represented 22.4% of new cases reported in the past week, accounting for 71,649 out of 319,601 cases. The latest report, drawn from data collected through April 29, illustrates how children's share of coronavirus infections has grown in recent weeks.
Experts link the trend to several factors particularly high vaccination rates among older Americans. The U.S. recently announced 100 million people were fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But other dynamics are also in play, from new COVID-19 variants to the loosening of restrictions on school activities.
It's also worth noting that for the vast majority of the pandemic, the age group with the highest case rates has been 18 to 24 in the U.S., as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes.
To get a sense of what's behind the rising proportion of cases in children, we spoke to Dr. Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the AAP's Committee on Infectious Diseases. O'Leary is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Medical Campus and Children's Hospital Colorado.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Does it surprise you, the kind of numbers we're seeing for children right now?
Well, yes and no. I think there are several things going on. One, of course, are the new variants that are circulating. This B.1.1.7 variant that's really becoming dominant in a lot of the country is more transmissible. I think the jury is still a bit out on if it's more severe. It's not clear if it's particularly more transmissible in kids. But at this point, it appears it's just more transmissible in everyone, including kids.
Certainly, vaccination is playing a role in terms of the changing in the demographics of who's getting infected.
In many parts of the country, depending on how states track their data 60 and older, 65 and older, 70 and older very high proportions of those populations in some places have been vaccinated.
We've seen a dramatic drop in the proportion of cases that are happening in those individuals, which is great news. But that, just by simple math, is going to change the proportion of cases that are happening in the other demographics.
In terms of raw numbers, the worst stretch of coronavirus infections for children was in a 13-week stretch from early November to February. The numbers fell as the U.S. exited its end-of-year wave. But since around mid-March, child coronavirus cases have not fallen at the same rate as adult cases.
We are seeing more outbreaks than we had related to school and school activities. We've seen those all along, and we're seeing a little bit more of those now proportionately than we had. And I think that's also due to a combination of factors. Again, the variants, but also more kids in the last couple of months are in in-person school than they had been in prior months.
With mitigation measures in place in school, it still appears that transmission is much lower than it is in the surrounding community. But when you have a surge in the surrounding community, it's inevitable that you're going to see it in schools.
The other thing that we've seen is more outbreaks in school-related activities, particularly sports and indoor sports in particular.
What do you make of the most recent data, showing kids accounted for about 20% of new cases in the past week?
As older portions of the population get vaccinated and we're still seeing circulation, it just stands to reason that the kids who are not eligible for vaccination yet are going to make up a larger share of that pie. I mean, the hope is that the overall pie itself gets smaller the number of infections overall. But yeah, if it's circulating, it's going to hit the people that are most vulnerable, which are the people that haven't been vaccinated.
Now, the good news is we may, in the coming weeks, have the vaccine approved down to age 12. We don't have any official dates on that yet, but it may be soon. Pfizer submitted their data to the FDA last month. So that could be a big game changer because we've known all along that adolescents tend to be both more likely to get infected and to spread the infection relative to the younger kids. So getting that population vaccinated is also going to make a difference in these dynamics. And I think it also can make a big difference for a lot of families' summer plans.
We should note that kids still represent a really small proportion of the worst-case outcomes.
Yeah, that is true. It's a somewhat nuanced conversation though. In Michigan, they've been reporting higher rates of hospitalizations in kids than they had [been]. It's unclear to me if that simply represents intense transmission versus actually increased severity. I think that's not entirely clear yet. Here in Colorado, we have a little surge going on. In most states actually, cases are going down. We're still kind of in a plateau, maybe increasing a bit here in Colorado. We have seen a slight uptick of kids hospitalized with COVID-19 here at Children's Hospital, but it's not dramatically so, not like what we were seeing in November, December or January.
Now, the part where that conversation about severity gets a little bit more complicated is yes, it is absolutely true that it's less severe in kids than it is in adults, and particularly older adults. But it's also not true to say that it's completely benign in kids. Fortunately, pediatric death is a fairly rare event. But when you look at the top 10 causes of death, on an annual basis, this year, we've had, depending on whose numbers you use, somewhere between 300 and 600 pediatric deaths from COVID-19 so far. That's probably an undercount. And that would fit it somewhere in the top 10, somewhere between like No. 6 and No. 9 in terms of causes of death for children.
So the point I'm making, there is that yes, it's less severe, but it's still potentially a very severe disease. We've seen tens of thousands of hospitalizations already. So we do need a vaccine for children, not just to protect, not just to achieve herd immunity, but also to protect the children themselves.
What about "long COVID" are kids showing extended months of symptoms from the disease?
In kids, we have seen it, but it doesn't seem to be as common as adults. We're taking care of a few kids now who are still having symptoms well over a month past their infections. I think, as little as we know about long COVID in adults, we know even less in kids. We really have even less of an understanding of the overall epidemiology of how common it is in kids.
The other question mark in my mind around this phenomenon is, many viruses can trigger sort of longer-term symptoms. A classic example would be mononucleosis: Some kids will have fatigue and symptoms for six to 12 months, occasionally even longer. So what's unclear to me at this point is if long-term symptoms are more frequent with COVID-19 than with some of the other viruses we've seen. But I wouldn't say that we're seeing sort of an epidemic of long COVID kids the way we have in adults.
How difficult is it to get data on children and COVID-19? I know that for its weekly reports, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association compile data from 49 states, along with New York City, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia and Guam. That leaves out the rest of New York state. And Texas only reports on the lower age range for a small percentage of the state's cases.
That's correct. There have been problems with data around this pandemic all along, including this particular situation. I think as long as you're comparing apples to apples, recognizing the limitations, I think that you can interpret the data. But, yeah, it's clearly an undercount.
Standardized data about COVID-19 cases across states has been pretty hard to get. From early on, it seemed like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies did not comprehensively standardize the different data that was out there.
Yeah, I mean, that's been a frustration throughout the pandemic. It was kind of shocking to me, frankly, even though I kind of worked in this field for a long time, that the AAP was really the best source of pediatric data through much of the pandemic for the U.S. And the AAP is a big organization, but we have a fairly small research shop, and it was the AAP that was compiling this data.
I absolutely adore my colleagues from the CDC. And they have really done herculean work through this pandemic. But they had so many things they had to deal with related to the pandemic crisis after crisis with adults that they just didn't have the capacity at the time to be able to track the kids who were, as we know, less severely affected.
What else should people understand about children and the COVID-19 pandemic?
We've been answering these questions about children and infections for almost a year, I guess. And what we've seen all along is that what is happening in children is simply reflective of what's going on in the surrounding community. It's not really driving what's going around in the surrounding community. And I think that's still the case, actually.
You know, where there are lots of cases happening in a given state that are going to be lots of cases and kids. But it's not to say that the kids are driving those numbers. And I think that that although we have seen increases in the proportion of kids, I think that that is still true.
Traditionally, people think of children sharing viruses among each other and then giving them to adults. And this seems like that dynamic is almost the inverse.
It's a strange virus, isn't it?
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Children Now Account For 22% of New U.S. COVID Cases. Why Is That? - NPR
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Air travel in the U.S. hit its highest mark since COVID-19 took hold more than 13 months ago, while European Union officials are proposing to ease restrictions on visitors to the continent as the vaccine sends new cases and deaths tumbling in more affluent countries.
The improving picture in many places contrasts with the worsening disaster in India.
In the U.S., the average number of new cases per day fell below 50,000 for the first time since October. And nearly 1.67 million people were screened at U.S. airport checkpoints on Sunday, according to the Transportation Security Administration, the highest number since mid-March of last year.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation giving him sweeping powers to invalidate local emergency measures put in place during the outbreak. While the law doesnt go into effect until July, the Republican governor said he will issue an executive order to more quickly get rid of local mask mandates.
I think this creates a structure thats going to be a little bit more respectful, I think, of peoples businesses, jobs, schools and personal freedom, he said.
Las Vegas is bustling again after casino capacity limits were raised Saturday to 80% and person-to-person distancing was dropped to 3 feet (0.9 meters). New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that New York Citys subways will begin running all night again and capacity restrictions on most businesses will end statewide in mid-May. And Los Angeles County reported no coronavirus deaths on Sunday and Monday, some of which may be attributable to a lag in reporting but was nevertheless a hopeful sign that could move the county to allow an increase in capacity at events and venues, and indoor-service at bars.
EU officials also announced a proposal Monday to relaxrestrictionson travel to the 27-nation bloc this summer, though the final decision is up to its member countries.
Time to revive EU tourism industry and for cross-border friendships to rekindle safely, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. We propose to welcome again vaccinated visitors and those from countries with a good health situation.
In Greece, restaurants and cafes reopened their terraces on Monday after six months of shutdown, with customers flocking to soak up the sunshine. In France, high schools reopened and a ban on domestic travel was lifted.
The once hard-hit Czech Republic, where cases are now declining, announced it will allow people to remove face coverings at all outdoor spaces starting next Monday if they keep their distance from others.
But with more-contagious variants taking hold, efforts are underway to boost vaccination efforts, which have begun to lag. Theaveragenumber of doses given per day fell 27% from a high of 3.26 million on April 11 to 2.37 million last Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
InDetroit, teams from the citys health department have knocked on nearly 5,000 doors since the weekend to persuade people to get immunized. And Massachusetts governor announced plans to close four of seven mass vaccination sites by the end of June in favor of a more targeted approach.
My plea to everyone: Get vaccinated now, please, President Joe Biden said in Norfolk, Virginia. He stressed that he has worked hard to make sure there are more than 600 million doses of vaccine enough for all Americans to get both doses.
Were going to increase that number across the board as well so we can also be helping other nations once we take care of all Americans, the president said.
Brazil, once the epicenter of thepandemic, has been overtaken by a surge inIndia that has overrun crematoriums and made it clear the pandemic is far from over.
As the U.S. and other countries rushed in aid, India reported nearly 370,000 new cases and more than 3,400 deaths Monday numbers that experts believe are vast undercounts because of a widespread lack of testing and incomplete reporting.
InGermany, Bavarian officials canceled Oktoberfest for a second year in a row because of the safety risks. The beer-drinking festivities typically attract about 6 million visitors from around the world.
And in Italy, medical experts and politicians expressed concern about a possible spike in infections after tens of thousands of jubilant soccer fans converged on Milans main square Sunday to celebrate Inter Milans league title.
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Coronavirus restrictions easing in U.S. and Europe amid disaster in India - MarketWatch
