Category: Corona Virus

ST. PETERSBURG The family took their seats under the green cemetery tent and passed hand sanitizer row to row. Yes, Lord, my life is yours drifted from the speakers. Boyzell Hosey prayed in front, facing the bone-white casket and the empty space beside it.

A man from the funeral home passed out two memorial cards.

In Loving Memory: Amos Hosey.

Forever in our hearts: Roy Hosey.

Boyzell wiped his glasses and nodded as the bishop talked of trusting the hand of God. It was Nov. 21. His elderly father had died on the 5th. His older brother had passed on the 15th. Soon there would be a memorial for his brother-in-law, Bob, who had died in between. Boyzell himself had fought COVID-19 and was only a week out of the hospital, where his sister had gone for treatment, too.

The Hoseys bowed their heads.

Boyzells wife, Andrida, walked the grass in a white robe overlaid in gold. She picked up her long skirt and spread it like wings. A piped-in electric organ wailed, and Beau Williams crooned: One of these mornings it wont be very long youre going to look for me, and Ill be gone

In face shields, Andrida and fellow dancers spun, shimmered, lifted their hands. With the music came the soft pop of umbrellas. The mornings pale sky had darkened, and a mist began to fall.

Boyzell swayed. At 56, he found himself the sudden patriarch, the man everybody was looking to. He watched his wife lay her hands upon his fathers casket and shout her grief. Roys body waited to be cremated.

Family members packed their chairs closer to escape the rain as the Rev. Frank Peterman echoed the words Boyzell had been clinging to all month.

In times of trouble, stand, the reverend said. When youve done all the standing, stand some more.

Andrida cried, Hallelujah!

After scripture and tributes, mourners fist-bumped and waved goodbye. As the funeral home crew packed up folding chairs, cemetery workers approached the gravesite. Without ceremony, they lowered the casket.

Boyzell stood at its foot, holding one red rose. His shoulders briefly heaved. He kissed the rose and, gently, tossed it into the earth. For a moment, he let his hand hang there, empty.

***

By fall, the Hoseys, like so many, had eased up on some early-pandemic anxieties. The compulsive hand-washers of spring were still wearing masks and scrubbing their palms but also reconnecting with a few friends theyd missed.

On Sundays, Boyzell and Andrida pulled up for drive-in church, where honking the horn meant Preach! For Andridas birthday month, they planned a couple of Doc Fords double dates on the breezy Pier. And theyd begun in-person work once more. For Andrida, that meant teaching drama at John Hopkins Middle School. Boyzell picked up a shoot here and there for the Tampa Bay Times.

He and Andrida had been married for 28 years, best friends even longer. As deputy editor of photography at the Times, Boyzell brought a sensitive hand and an artful eye. Andrida, 63, brought the big heart and legendary hugs to the couples many deep friendships. They were community fixtures involved in their church, local festivals, volunteer work and more and a family with much to be thankful for. Andrida had recently made it through a knee replacement surgery, and Boyzell was on the mend with a new hip. Their kids were grown: Jacquay, 34, in Pittsburgh, and Kiashi, 35, here in town, teaching at their churchs school.

Are we really safe? Boyzell sometimes wondered. When friends went to hug Andrida at Walmart, he teased, Honey, you cannot do that anymore. Bombarded with pandemic news, Boyzell leaned toward caution. The isolation was harder on his wife. But after a September dinner party, Boyzell told her, We have to slow down, because this thing is real, and its kicking up.

Four houses down from Boyzell and Andridas green bungalow lived Papa Hosey, or Amos. At 91, with a lung tumor, he was in declining health. Boyzells brother Roy had moved in there a couple of years ago to become his dads caregiver. At 67, Roy was mending family ties after years of being estranged.

Two days before Halloween, sister Kathy moved in to help, too. She had just retired from criminal investigations with the federal government and at 63, she looked forward to the Florida life.

Kiashi picked her aunt up from the airport. At first, Kathy worried her niece wrangled kids all day and wasnt wearing a mask. But she knew that likely didnt matter, since the two houses blended so much. Soon, shed see that Roy went to Save A Lot nearly every day, popping into the 7-Eleven for lottery tickets. Sometimes, his nose peeked out from his mask. Others at the grocery store, Kathy would see, neglected to wear one at all.

It was a jolt, coming from Los Angeles, where she had kept isolated, following all the guidelines. Because of her multiple sclerosis, she knew she was at risk.

Up the road, that same night, Boyzell roasted salmon and cooked up a pot of his famous collard greens. Andrida brought home a key lime pie and a mango version to indulge a different guest at a small dinner. It was her brother Bob McCalls 61st birthday.

She and Bob were tight, each others only sibling. He was social like her, a motivational speaker visiting from North Carolina for a conference. Around the table, the family split cornbread and talked, and kept talking as Thursday Night Football rumbled in the background. Bob, a former vice president for Duke Energy, a collector of Corvettes, was grateful for a home-cooked meal.

After dinner, the back of Boyzells head began to ache. After a while, sluggishness hit. He checked his temperature: 99.9. An hour later, Bob headed back to his hotel.

On that Friday, Oct. 30th, Andrida went to work. Home alone, Boyzell tracked his fever as it climbed: 100, 101. Tylenol helped knock it down. He developed a dry cough.

On Halloween, stomach cramping, fever rising, wracked by chills, Boyzell needed to know. The waiting room at AFC Urgent Care near Tyrone Mall was packed. Four hours, $85 and an antibiotic prescription later: Positive.

His doctor said to call if he had breathing issues. Otherwise, Boyzell would have to endure.

***

Roy insisted he was fine. He could smell and taste, he said, whereas Boyzell had lost his sense of smell. But Kathy found him, some days, shivering under the covers. She saw him using his nebulizer more and more. After years of homelessness and addiction, he struggled with weight gain and health issues, like chronic asthma. Kathy wondered. Did you get a test? she asked.

Normally, Roy handled the meals and most of Amoss needs. He was good at caregiving, and usually energetic he liked to bust into Boyzells house blasting his 70s R&B, like a 2020 Radio Raheem. But Halloween weekend, Roy didnt get up to cook breakfast. He asked, Can you take care of Dad?

One day, Amos tried to get out of bed by himself and fell. As Roy pried Amos from the floor, Kathy saw how hard he was working.

I dont need to get the test, Roy finally said. I know I have it.

***

Boyzell camped out in the family room, Andrida the office, and Kiashi her bedroom. Boyzell let Bob know he should get tested and alerted a friend whod come over for a World Series pizza.

Flung apart in the house, the family called each other to coordinate bathroom trips and snacks from the kitchen. They left mists of Lysol in their wake.

Kiashi had no symptoms, but a rapid test soon came back positive. Andrida let co-workers know shed be quarantining, though her test had been negative.

In between Star Wars movies and episodes of The Incredible Hulk, Boyzell could hear Andrida and Kiashi teaching classes online. He ate the homemade chicken noodle soup Roy sent over. He chugged water. He felt helpless.

Normally, come Election Day, he would be dispatching Times photojournalists and editing their frames. But the human resources director told him, We dont want you trying to work.

Then, on Nov. 4th, Kathy called to say, I dont think Dads doing too well.

The family had been preparing for the inevitable. But Amos was still lucid, glad for a barbershop outing. Hed been a stern father, but a giving one, too, who built the familys red-brick home frame by frame. In old age, after decades of stoking the blast furnace in a steel mill, Amos finally relaxed. Kiashi sometimes heard him singing in his room.

Kathy phoned again the next day. Amos hadnt been eating.

Hes calling for you, she told Boyzell.

Boyzell managed to walk over. His sister raised a window so the men could see each other through the screen. Hey, Pops, how you doing? Boyzell said. Amos raised up from bed, smiling and waving, saying nothing. Im sorry I cant come see you right now, Boyzell said. Amos soon fell asleep.

An hour and a half later, Kathy called. I think Dad passed away.

Boyzell walked back over. He touched his dads face, still warm. He was saying bye to me, he thought.

Roy had finally gone to get a test, but, ever stubborn, turned back, because the line was too long and because, he said, he had a feeling something was wrong. He pulled up at the house as his father was being taken away.

***

The day after their father passed, Roy and Kathy tidied Amoss room. It was stuffy. Roy got on the stepstool to open up the air conditioning vents. He could hardly lift his hands over his head.

He fell. He hit his head on a dresser and couldnt get up.

Kathy watched her brother being put into the ambulance, unsteady and straining to breathe.

Roy called Boyzell from the hospital the next day. Boyzell said, Just worry about getting better.

***

A week into November, Andrida could hear Boyzells coughs across the house. On video calls, his eyes seemed sunken in. He stared at the tube he was given to exercise his breathing, willing himself to try, but each effort zapped his energy. His fever wouldnt break. He used a pulse oximeter to measure his blood oxygen levels, which dropped to 88, 87 percent. He tried to trick it by sitting still: 92.

Andrida often checked in with her friend Sharon Irving, a nurse practitioner and Ivy League professor. They had been college roommates, and by 2020, were more like sisters. Andrida told her she, too, had started feeling strange. A fever had set in. Then, chills.

Sharon, in Philadelphia, told Andrida, Dont play with this. To Boyzell, she said, I dont like how youre sounding. She asked both: Did you eat? Did you drink? Anger flared as she thought of how the virus had kept Boyzell from his fathers side: We didnt have to be here.

Sharon feared for Roy, too. He ticked too many boxes where the virus had proven lethal: a Black man, with chronic asthma, on the overweight side.

That Sunday night, after Andrida got back from taking another test, Bayfront called. Roy was in critical condition. He was going on a ventilator. What? Boyzell and Andrida thought. Didnt we just talk to him?

The next day, Boyzell paced in the yard, pumping his arms and chanting to himself: Just keep, just keep, just keep breathing. But he knew he was going downhill.

His doctor wanted a chest X-ray. That meant the emergency room.

***

Boyzell took a shower and ate a bowl of oatmeal, some yogurt. He readied himself. Andrida watched him walk into the crowded lobby of St. Anthonys. Five steps after he was given an intake clipboard, staff called, Mr. Hosey!

A nurse led him down a lonely hallway cold as a meat locker. Hours passed there, until he was taken to a temporary room, alone.

Doctors ran tests, hooked him to an IV. His potassium was low. A lot of things were low. They wanted to keep him.

At home, taking antibiotics and contending with a 102-degree fever, Andrida called her brother, who was back in Charlotte. They talked about Boyzell and Roy. Are you doing OK? she asked. Bob sniffled a bit.

***

About 24 hours after checking in, Boyzell settled into a room in the COVID-19 unit. It was immaculate, quiet. He learned that pneumonia had taken root in his lungs.

The hours passed in his hospital bed, where, between nebulizer and steroid treatments, he worked to plan his fathers memorial. Hed been told that Amos died of natural causes, but Boyzell thought maybe it was the virus. His father had complained of a headache just days before he died.

He tried to write his dads obituary but thinking through the exhaustion was too difficult. He dozed. Though he was an asthmatic with a worrisome case, he fixated only on his family:

Roy was sedated, vitals waning. Bayfront doctors went looking for a rotating bed big enough to fit him, so they could ease the weight on his lungs.

Andrida called to say her latest test came back positive and that Bob doesnt sound good. Called again, saying, no, Bob sounded like death.

Whats going on? Andrida thought. Bob had gotten antibiotics, and he told her, Well, they said give it a day. She insisted, But youre not breathing right! By the 12th, her fever on the edge of breaking, she was begging Bobs wife to take him to the hospital.

Before her class the next morning, Bob said he felt better. Hed gotten a negative test. Still, she could hear his ragged breathing.

At 5 p.m., Bobs wife called. She had pulled up after work and found Bob in the drivers seat of his car, his eyes rolling back in his head. She had tried to pull him out, but he collapsed to the ground.

Not only was he positive for COVID-19, the hospital said, but it was full-blown.

This cant be happening, Andrida thought.

This is Bob , Boyzell thought. Bob, all muscles and work ethic and made-for-TV smile. Bob, the former bodybuilder who went to the gym at 5 a.m.

Mom, its Uncle Bob, itll be OK, Kiashi said.

At 10 p.m., they learned that doctors couldnt regulate Bobs blood pressure. He was going on a ventilator.

Andrida called her friend, asking about intubation.

Sharon took a deep breath. I dont know if Bobbys as sick as Roy, but in terms of putting him on a machine to breathe, thats the same, she said.

When she hung up, Sharon repeated to herself, Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.

Andrida and Kiashi couldnt take the separation anymore. They burrowed under the covers of the master bed, praying, holding on to each other as they cried. They left a laptop open so Boyzell could see them.

At 4 a.m., Bobs wife called. Bob was going into cardiac arrest.

Andrida watched on a video call as her brother lay with tubes blanketing his face. His wife rubbed his smooth, bald head. Hes gone, she repeated, and Andrida took a picture because she couldnt believe it. While Kiashi cried, she screamed and begged, God, please, let him breathe.

It was dark outside Boyzells hospital window. He could only listen to the womens keening through the screen, and he couldnt bear it. He tried to push himself up from the bed and pull out his IV but Kiashi began to pray, pleading with him to wait, to stay.

Boyzell breathed deep, in through his nose, out through his mouth.

They stayed on FaceTime for a long time like that, just breathing.

***

How could this be happening? Kiashi held her mother, numb, on the red loveseat in the living room.

In the hospital, Boyzell felt suspended in a nightmare. Just stand, he told himself, called back to that Bible passage. Calls flooded in from Bayfront. Roys health was cratering.

He could be flown to Tampa General Hospital across the bay. Doctors there could drill into his lungs and, with tubes, release the viral toxins.

But the doctors explained that Roy likely wouldnt survive such a flight, that trauma would take its toll on his brain. They said it was rare for someone to last so long with the ventilator so high. They asked that Boyzell consider classifying Roy as do not resuscitate.

Ive got to give him a fighting chance, Boyzell told Sharon. I want my brother back.

You want the brother that you sent to the hospital, Sharon said. Im not sure thats the brother youre going to get back.

Boyzell was quiet.

They ran through more scenarios, more questions.

It was late when Boyzell agreed. But it felt like signing Roys death warrant.

As Boyzell waited to be discharged the next morning, he tuned into Bethel Churchs livestream as leaders prayed over the Hoseys. His phone lit up with Bayfronts number. He cut off the stream.

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Two Weeks. Three Lost. One Florida Family Ravaged by the Coronavirus. - FRONTLINE

The delayed start of the Australian Open, and the meandering path that officials followed in coming to the decision, revealed much about the state of international sports and tennis specifically at this unique moment.

The three-week delay for the start of the years first Grand Slam event to early February from the middle of January became semiofficial Wednesday night when the mens tennis tour released a revised schedule for the first seven weeks of 2021. The Australian Open is now set to start on Feb. 8, according to the ATP schedule.

The announcement of a delay, which comes while Tennis Australia, government officials and leaders of the mens and womens professional tours are still completing the details, was the latest disruption in a sport that has dealt with plenty of it since March. That was when the tennis tours shut down for five months because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, the delay of one of the first major international sports events of 2021 suggests that any return to something resembling normal for sports might come later in the new year.

For months, organizers of the Open have been trying to balance the players needs withAustralian government rules on international travel, while navigating the jigsaw puzzle that is the tennis calendar.

Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, has said the protection and safety of the players and the public were the most important components of the discussions.

Getting professional tennis back on its feet has been especially challenging because the sport has no central governing body. Instead, a hodgepodge of international, national and local organizations runs the sport. The uncertainty in the game is likely to continue through the first quarter of the year or longer, until coronavirus vaccines are widely distributed in places where major tennis events occur, the danger ebbs and travel restrictions loosen. Major events in the United States in March and April appear likely to be rescheduled.

The 2020 Australian Open was held as usual in January, but the three other Grand Slam events were upended. Wimbledon was canceled for the first time since World War II. The United States Open started in New York in late August, as scheduled, but without spectators, and most players remained cloistered in a pair of Long Island hotels when they were not competing at the tournament in Queens. The start of the French Open was moved to late September from late May. It took place in front of just a smattering of spectators in cool, blustery conditions.

There was hope that Australia would be able to hold something resembling a normal Grand Slam at the start of 2021. Since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus crisis a pandemic in March, Australia has put into place some of the worlds strictest measures to prevent outbreaks, and the country has been one of the few virus success stories. Australia has averaged fewer than 10 new cases per day over the past week.

Despite those figures or perhaps because of them the government has been resistant to bending its rules on overseas travelers to accommodate tennis players, scores of whom would be arriving from virus hot spots, including many communities in the United States and Europe.

Australia has tight limits on international visitors and strict quarantines, which could have made it difficult for arriving players to get enough practice before the tournament began.

Dec. 17, 2020, 8:29 p.m. ET

Under the current plan, players and their support staff will arrive on chartered flights in mid-January, stay in designated hotels in Melbourne and not mix with the public. Players will be able to train at Melbourne Park and another tennis center during the quarantine, but they will otherwise have to follow a strict protocol and undergo multiple tests for their first 14 days in the country.

Everyone is on board, said John Tobias, an agent who represents several top players, including Sloane Stephens of the United States. Everyone knows what to expect. They understand it. They are not upset, because Australia has been so successful at managing the pandemic.

Many players probably would have skipped the tournament instead of taking the risk of playing an intense event after a two-week quarantine without training.

Expressing the sentiments of most players, Johanna Konta of Britain, who is No. 14 in the womens world rankings, told the BBC in November that her body wouldnt be able to handle two weeks of deconditioning, and then pushing me into the deep end.

Australias tennis officials also gained the support of the mens and womens pro tours, whose calendars are set years ahead of time.

The change will cause a disruption to more than a dozen events on the ATP and WTA Tours during the first two months of the year, including tournaments in Australia, China, Rotterdam, Thailand and other countries.

Several events that usually take place in Australia during the two weeks before the Australian Open including the ATP Cup, a team event in which players compete for their countries will now take place in Melbourne during the week before the Australian Open, to minimize travel.

The womens tour may hold an event in Melbourne during the second week of the Australian Open, so players who lose during the early rounds of the event will have another opportunity to play and earn money during a lengthy trip to the Southern Hemisphere.

A mens event in Florida that usually takes place in February will now take place during the first full week in January, making it easier for American players to compete without traveling. A mens event will also take place in Turkey that is likely to attract European players.

More shifting and uncertainty are expected, officials say. After the Australian Open, the two biggest events next on the calendar are in California and Florida in March and April.

With coronavirus rates still high in the United States, and medical experts predicting another surge in the winter, officials say the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, near Palm Springs, Calif., may be postponed, possibly to October, and the Miami Open could be moved to another country or rescheduled.

The last-minute cancellation of Indian Wells on March 10 was the first major disruption in the sports calendar. By the end of that week, sports everywhere had largely come to a halt.

Nine months later, little in the sport has returned to normal. For the foreseeable future, players will have to keep adjusting to a schedule that figures to remain in flux and a trip to Australia unlike any other.

Its two weeks of sticking to a hotel, but there is a good incentive, Tobias said. You get to play two or three tournaments in what everyone knows is a really safe country.

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Australian Open Is Postponed Because of the Coronavirus Pandemic - The New York Times

ICUs at 98% capacity; health department director says 'Our system is strained'

by: WREG Staff

MEMPHIS, Tenn. No country is more infectious than the U.S. and no state in the country is more infectious than Tennessee when it comes to COVID-19.

Tennessee, as we speak, is the number one hot spot for transmission for the coronavirus in the entire world, said Dr. Steve Threlkeld, infectious disease specialist with Baptist Hospital in Memphis.

Were not just high. We are the number one place in the world right now, in Tennessee, for coronavirus transmission. This is not a drill. We are the worst in the world.

Tennessee reported 8,945 new cases Thursday for a total of 493,230. The day before saw cases increase by 11,410.

The state also reported its largest one-day increase in deaths, 177 new deaths for a total of 5,845.

Shelby County on Thursday morning reported 1,163 new cases, a new daily record and the first time cases have topped 1,000 in a day.

COVID-19 Vaccines arriving today at Memphis hospitals. But will front-line workers take it?

Every day, more COVID patients are showing up at hospitals. There are nearly 2,900 of them in Tennessee alone.

Tuesday, the number of available ICU beds dropped below 170 statewide.

In Shelby County, only 11 ICU beds sat empty. The intensive care units across the Memphis area are at 98% capacity.

Its an issue health department director Alisa Haushalter was asked about during Wednesdays county commission meeting.

Our system is strained, and its not limited to the hospitals themselves, its also the ambulance services, Haushalter said. We need ambulances to transport people who have been victims of gunshot wounds, we need to transport people who have had heart attacks and strokes, and in a very timely manner. If the emergency room is full, which is not represented in that data, the ambulance cant offload that patient and then run for another patient.

Memphis hospitals are currently treating more than 500 COVID patients. One hundred fifty-two of those patients are at Baptist Memphis and Baptist DeSoto.

Threlkeld is warning of a health care catastrophe if we dont turn things around very soon.

I cannot tell you how many people, its just all day long and into the night, Im seeing people who are sick and some go into ICU and they say, Well Ive been good but we had this party the other night and ten people came to the house, and I didnt feel good doing it, I feel it was probably the wrong thing to do, Threlkeld said. And guess what it was the wrong thing to do.

This is so much more severe right now than it was when we were first dealing with this and closing things down, and the danger is so much larger and the vaccine is so close to bringing us relief from this that we really just need to practice common sense, he continued. If we cant do that were going to find ourselves in a very difficult situation, more difficult.

The first doses are expected to arrive in Shelby County on Thursday. They will go to hospitals to be given to front-line workers, but it will be some time before they are available to everyone.

Note: This story has been corrected to reflect the day the vaccine is expected to reach Shelby County hospitals.

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Doctor: Tennessee is worst in the world for coronavirus transmission - WREG NewsChannel 3

All CDC guidelines are being followed regarding the care of sisters affected by COVID-19 and to avoid spread of the virus, including wearing masks, social distancing and hand washing, the statement said. Our thoughts and prayers are with the sisters, their caregivers and families. We invite you to join us in prayer for all those affected by the pandemic.

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Coronavirus: 8 nuns living in Wisconsin convent die of COVID-19 in past week - KOKI FOX 23

EL PASO Hospitals in some of Texas' hardest-hit border counties began vaccinating health care workers against COVID-19 on Tuesday, bringing what one health authority called "cautious hope" to a heavily Hispanic, economically distressed region whose communities have been traumatized by infections and deaths at disproportionately high rates throughout the pandemic.

Some 15,600 doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine arrived Tuesday at hospitals in El Paso and Edinburg, and more will land in Laredo, McAllen, Brownsville and El Paso later this week.

At UT Health RGV in Edinburg, in the Rio Grande Valley, the first doses were administered Tuesday afternoon, and a vaccination center in the medical school's lobby will usher through 400 to 500 people per day for the next several days, said Dr. John H. Krouse, dean of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine.

In El Paso, vaccinations began within hours of the doses' arrival.

For a population that is especially susceptible to COVID-19, the beginning of the end could not come soon enough.

"People who have seen so much tragedy are going to be protected, and it's the beginning, for the rest of our community, to have the protection that they need," said Ryan Mielke, director of public affairs for the University Medical Center of El Paso, which received 2,925 doses Tuesday.

Among the first recipients in the Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday was Dr. Chelsea Chang, an internal medicine physician at UT Health RGV, who called the vaccine "a blessing."

"I was so thrilled to be able to receive the vaccine and be a part of this movement that is, hopefully, going to be the beginning of the end of the pandemic," Chang said. "It's been a challenge that none of us has ever seen before, both in the medical field and in our personal life."

But while the vaccine can protect the health care workers from dying from the disease COVID-19 has claimed 1,000 health care workers across the country, including at least five doctors and 20 nurses in the Rio Grande Valley alone authorities are warning that those around them may not be protected yet.

Vaccinated people could still carry and spread the virus and should continue to wear masks, practice frequent hand-washing and socially distance until a majority of the population is inoculated, Krouse said.

It's an especially important point to be making in places like Hidalgo County, where 1 in 9 households has three generations living together and where 1 in 3 bedrooms sleeps multiple people, said Hidalgo County Health Authority Dr. Ivan Melendez, a COVID-19 survivor who also treats patients at Mission Regional Medical Center in the Valley.

For a culture that strongly values family ties and where convincing the population to socially distance has been a challenge, Melendez said, the danger of transmission is still real even after the "miracle" vaccine brings "cautious hope" to the wracked region.

"The question is whether people who have been vaccinated can still be vectors of this disease, and the answer is absolutely," Melendez said. "I believe that with the great news of the vaccine, people who get vaccinated are also going to have a false sense of security. Therefore, I think it's important for people to know, because even though you have the vaccine, you can still infect people."

El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego said hes concerned about community spread continuing as the vaccine begins to be administered. The first dose is only one step, he said, and hes worried that the community will assume the worst is over.

Im very worried, very concerned because ... people drop their guard, he said. We have to be extremely careful. Its not a cure and its part of a long process.

One of his main concerns has been that younger El Pasoans will pass on the virus to more susceptible, older members of their families.

We have a lot of multigenerational households in El Paso, he said.

Tuesday's vaccinations on the border are part of the first phase of a rollout that will deliver a quarter-million doses to 110 sites from the Panhandle to the Valley to the Gulf of Mexico this week with more on the way next week, said Chris Van Deusen, spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services. Texas has 1.4 million doses allocated through the end of the year.

Four hospitals in the state's largest cities received the doses Monday. Doses landed at another 19 sites Tuesday. And the remainder will get doses later this week.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a late July report that Hispanics are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 for a number of reasons: systemic discrimination, lack of access to and use of health care services, a higher proportion of front-line jobs and a cultural predisposition toward living in multigenerational households, which increases exposure risk for vulnerable elderly people.

The pandemic has disproportionately affected El Paso and Hidalgo counties compared with areas of similar or larger size in Texas.

As of Wednesday, there had been more than 91,000 cases recorded in El Paso County, the fourth-highest total in the state. El Paso's COVID-19-related deaths are higher than in larger counties like Travis and Tarrant. Out of desperation, the county enlisted inmates from the jail last month to help move bodies at the morgue because staff couldnt keep up with demand.

Some of the stories would rip your heart out, they really would, said Mielke, adding that he almost got misty-eyed during interviews about the vaccine this week.

The death toll has been even higher in Hidalgo County, which has about the same population as El Paso County at over 800,000 residents, but its 1,876 coronavirus-related deaths rank second in the state. Only Harris County, the states most populous, has more.

If anywhere needed a break from the pandemic, it is the Texas border, officials there said.

Its really thrilling, Krouse said, that were finally able to begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The CDC is advising that people who take the vaccine continue to practice social distancing and other precautions theyve been taking for the past nine months.

The Pfizer vaccine protects the recipient from the ravages of the disease because it prevents the virus from entering a persons cells and reproducing, but less is known about how long the virus can survive in places like the nostrils, Krouse said.

That brings uncertainty about how contagious a person can be after receiving the vaccine, said Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia.

Studies on college campuses are being planned soon "that will look at exactly that, to see whether or not the vaccine ... also prevents asymptomatic infection where you could still be contagious," said Offit, who met with the National Institutes of Health on the idea of post-vaccine transmission Tuesday and said the studies will likely be funded soon.

The Moderna vaccine, expected to win emergency use approval from the FDA on Friday, has generated some data that suggests it could prevent spread of the virus as well as infection by reducing asymptomatic infection, according to a Tuesday report in The Wall Street Journal. That vaccine is expected to join the Pfizer vaccine in the second wave of rollouts next week.

But people shouldn't assume that the virus is any less transmissible until more is known or the general population is inoculated, Offit said.

"I think we'll know this answer fairly early next year," he said. "You could argue, not knowing in the meantime, that if you've gotten the vaccine, it would probably still be prudent to wear a mask and social distance for those you could come in contact with, because you could still infect them."

In the Rio Grande Valley, Krouse said his university is following CDC guidelines on advising people who receive the vaccine to remain cautious until more is known and enough of the overall population is inoculated, which he said is likely to be well into 2021.

Chang, who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, said socially distancing from her family has been difficult and had a "very profound" impact on personal relationships in her family-oriented community.

"It's important that we be patient," she said. "Even without the vaccine, everyone is guilty of experiencing COVID fatigue, and following the guidelines is challenging, but it's the best way to recover as a community and a nation."

But even with the end still months away, the relief in parts of the state that have been shredded economically, emotionally and physically by the coronavirus is unmistakable.

I kid you not. This is an exciting time, said Mielke, the University Medical Center of El Paso spokesperson. Its Christmas before Christmas.

Disclosure: UT Health has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Experts warn vaccinated people could still spread coronavirus - The Texas Tribune

A new at-home test for the coronavirus has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The test will cost about $30 and will be available over-the-counter, according to the company who makes it, Ellume. Ellume Health hide caption

A new at-home test for the coronavirus has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The test will cost about $30 and will be available over-the-counter, according to the company who makes it, Ellume.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday authorized the first coronavirus test that people will be able to buy at a local store without a prescription and use for immediate results at home to find out if they're positive or negative.

The test will cost about $30 and be available by January, according to the Australian company that makes it, Ellume.

The FDA had previously authorized other tests that let people avoid long lines by collecting a sample themselves at home. But those tests require people to send the sample to a lab and wait for the results. Another recently authorized test doesn't have to be sent off to a lab, but it requires a prescription to get it.

The new test is the first that people will be able to buy without a prescription at a local store and do entirely at home on their own. It takes about five minutes to collect the sample and produces results within 15 minutes.

"Today's authorization is a major milestone in diagnostic testing for COVID-19," FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement announcing the authorization.

The test kit includes a special swab that enables users to collect a sample from just inside their nose. Because it can be used on adults and children as young as 2 years old, the swab comes with a special adapter that shortens the length when swabbing youngsters.

Users add a few drops of liquid to the sample and place it into a small plastic device that looks like a home pregnancy test. Results are wirelessly transmitted to a smartphone app within about 15 minutes.

"This is the first test which is really designed to be a true at-home test yourself and obtain a result," Sean Parsons, the company's CEO, told NPR in an interview before the authorization.

"This could be used for people to test themselves, for example, before going to a sporting event or a concert or going to a church to decrease the chance that they spread it other people," Parsons says.

The company, which received about $30 million from the National Institutes of Health to ramp up production capacity, will be able to produce about 100,000 tests a day by January, Parsons says. By March, production should increase to about 250,000 tests a day. By June, productions should hit 1 million a day.

Testing experts welcome the authorization, but some note that the cost and limit on production capacity will restrict the impact the test will have on controlling the spread of the virus.

"It will be a game-changer, I think, to help people quickly identify if their symptoms are due to COVID," says Dr. Michael Mina, an infectious disease specialist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "But from the perspective of truly stopping or massively slowing this pandemic, this test isn't designed for that."

The technology the test uses detects proteins from the virus called antigens. The most commonly used tests, known as PCR tests, detect genetic material from the virus.

Mina has been advocating for the FDA to approve much simpler, less expensive antigen tests that could be produced in the tens of millions per day.

To obtain the authorization, Ellume evaluated the test on samples from 198 adults and children in five states. The test is 96% accurate, the study shows, according to the FDA and the company.

But the FDA and others note that antigen tests tend to be less accurate than PCR tests and may miss more infected people, giving false negative results.

"What you worry about is telling somebody, 'No, you don't have COVID,' when in fact they do. And if that was the case, they could continue to spread it," says Dr. Gary Procop, a testing expert at the Cleveland Clinic.

Procop says the test may be even more likely to incorrectly say someone is infected, i.e., a false positive, when they're really not, which can prompt them to isolate themselves unnecessarily.

"We don't want to take surgeons out of surgery suites and ICU nurses out of the ICU based on false-positive results," Procop says.

In announcing the authorization, the FDA acknowledged the test's potential shortcomings but stressed the advantages of speed and convenience.

"The fact that it can be used completely at home and return results quickly means that it can play an important role in response to the pandemic," said Dr. Jeff Shuren, director of FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, in the FDA's announcement.

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FDA Authorizes Coronavirus Test You Can Take At Home Without Prescription : Shots - Health News - NPR

Another six Mainers have died as health officials on Tuesday reported 417 new coronavirus cases across the state.

Tuesdays report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 16,760. Of those, 14,960 have been confirmed positive, while 2,070 were classified as probable cases, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency revised Mondays cumulative total to 16,343, down from 16,349, meaning there was an increase of 411 over the previous days report. As the Maine CDC continues to investigate previously reported cases, some are determined to have not been the coronavirus, or coronavirus cases not involving Mainers. Those are removed from the states cumulative total. The Bangor Daily News reports on the number of new cases reported to the Maine CDC in the previous 24 hours, rather than the increase of daily cumulative cases.

A man in his 60s and a man in his 80s from Androscoggin County, a man in his 70s and a woman in her 70s from Cumberland County, a woman in her 90s from Hancock County and a man in his 80s from York County have succumbed to the virus, bringing the statewide death toll to 265. There have been 26 deaths across the state in the past week. Nearly all deaths have been in Mainers over age 60.

New cases were reported in Androscoggin (25), Aroostook (10), Cumberland (152), Franklin (4), Hancock (5), Kennebec (20), Knox (2), Lincoln (5), Oxford (19), Penobscot (34), Piscataquis (5), Sagadahoc (2), Somerset (3), Waldo (6), Washington (7) and York (118) counties, state data show.

The seven-day average for new coronavirus cases is 388.3, up from 368 a day ago, up from 321.6 a week ago and up from 181 a month ago.

Health officials have warned Mainers that forceful and widespread community transmission is being seen throughout the state. Every county is seeing high community transmission, which the Maine CDC defines as a case rate of 16 or more cases per 10,000 people.

There are two criteria for establishing community transmission: at least 10 confirmed cases and that at least 25 percent of those are not connected to either known cases or travel.

In the last 30 days, there have been 440 confirmed cases at K-12 schools in the state. Of those, 360 have been confirmed positive, while 80 were classified as probable cases, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of Tuesday, 33 schools have open outbreaks.

So far, 909 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. Currently, 195 Mainers are hospitalized with 55 in critical care and 19 on ventilators.

Meanwhile, 66 more people have recovered from the coronavirus, bringing total recoveries to 10,614. That means there are 5,881 active confirmed and probable cases in the state, which is up from 5,542 on Monday.

A majority of the cases 9,868 have been in Mainers under age 50, while more cases have been reported in women than men, according to the Maine CDC.

As of Tuesday, there have been 1,037,393 negative test results out of 1,050,385 overall. About 2.1 percent of all tests have come back positive, the most recently available Maine CDC data show.

The coronavirus has hit hardest in Cumberland County, where 5,134 cases have been reported and where the bulk of virus deaths 81 have been concentrated. Other cases have been reported in Androscoggin (2,051), Aroostook (300), Franklin (349), Hancock (405), Kennebec (1,241), Knox (275), Lincoln (194), Oxford (693), Penobscot (1,343), Piscataquis (78), Sagadahoc (211), Somerset (578), Waldo (294), Washington (222) and York (3,390) counties. Information about where an additional two cases were reported wasnt immediately available.

As of Tuesday evening, the coronavirus had sickened 16,651,589 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 302,689 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.

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6 more Mainers die as another 417 coronavirus cases are reported across the state - Bangor Daily News

A wild mink in Utah has tested positive for the coronavirus. Mink on fur farms in the area have been infected with the virus, and the U.S. Agriculture Department, with other government agencies, was testing wild animals looking for potential infections spreading from those farms.

The department notified the World Organization for Animal Health of the case, stating that this appeared to be the first wild animal to have naturally been infected with the virus, which has infected mink at a number of fur farms worldwide.

The virus has spread from people to mink, and back again in a few instances. A mutated strain of the virus that jumped from mink back to people led Denmark to kill all its mink, wiping out a major industry. No further evidence has supported initial concerns that the mutated variant of the virus might affect the usefulness of vaccines, but scientists are still concerned about how easily the virus can spread on mink farms.

This is an important reminder that spill back from farms (and from people) into wildlife is also a real thing and needs to be on our radar, Jonathan Epstein, vice president for science and outreach at EcoHealth Alliance, said of the positive test in the wild mink. Dr. Epstein and other scientists and conservationists have warned about the possibility that the coronavirus could become established in some species of wild animal.

ProMed, an information site run by the International Society for Infectious Diseases, posted a notice from Thomas DeLiberto and Susan Shriner at the Agriculture Departments Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service that described the test results.

They said that the positive test showed a virus with the same genome that had been found in infected farmed mink, but noted that one test did not mean that the virus was now spreading in the wild. There is currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is circulating or has been established in wild populations surrounding the infected mink farms. Several animals from different wildlife species were sampled, but all others tested negative, the statement said.

Finding a virus in a wild mink but not in other wildlife nearby likely indicates an isolated event, but we should take all such information seriously, said Tony L. Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. He added, Controlling viruses in people is ultimately the best way to keep them from spreading to animals.

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One Wild Mink Near Utah Fur Farms Tests Positive for the Coronavirus - The New York Times

CLEVELAND, Ohio - The feared spike in new coronavirus cases following Thanksgiving has not occurred, and instead the number of serious cases appears to have leveled off after the dramatic mid-fall surge.

This is based on tracking of day-to-day hospital counts of coronavirus patients, a method which long has been a more reliable gauge of virus trends than the often erratic and incomplete daily case reports.

The number of coronavirus patients occupying hospital beds across Ohio surged by nearly tenfold from 590 on the first day of fall, Sept. 22, to a record 5,234 on Dec. 1, according to daily surveys conducted by the Ohio Hospital Association and reported by the Ohio Department of Health.

The patient count remains at historically high levels, reflecting the continued concern over the spread of the virus in Ohio. It had not reached 5,000 until Nov. 30.

But if there was a surge related to Thanksgiving gatherings, the number of patients would have gone up even more sharply a week to two weeks later, once newly infected people became sick enough to go the hospital.

However, 19 days later through Tuesday, there was no sign of that happening, at least yet.

In fact, the number of patients reported Tuesday of 5,296, though a record, was just above the record set at the beginning of the month.

In comparison, last month the patient count doubled from 1,685 on Nov. 1 to 3,390 by Nov. 15, and continued up sharply to 5,234 on Dec. 1.

Not only does the hospital trend provide a glimpse into the number of serious cases, and concerns over whether hospital capacity is in danger of being reached, from the onset of the virus in the spring it has been the most steady way to track trends.

Early on, younger people were being told not to even get tested if they werent sick enough to go to the hospital. Tests were being rationed for the oldest, the sickest and health care workers. Then lately, the daily reports for cases overall at best provided a murky look at the trends.

There was no report on Thanksgiving. For days, the state said reports were incomplete because the health department was overwhelmed. And then on a single day on Dec. 8, Ohio reported 25,721, more than double the record number. But in doing so the state said the number should not be compared to other days because several older cases were added at once and reporting standards changed.

But even with these flaws and inclusion of new reporting standards, the increase in cases did appear to slow.

In the week since that one-day big case report on Dec. 8, the state had reported an average of 9,906 new cases a day, up from previous weeks but less sharply so. The seven-day average stood at 9,131 on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, 5,306 two weeks before then and 2,477 four weeks earlier at the end of October.

Another piece of evidence is the onset of symptoms for each patient.

These dates estimated by the health department are tied to when people got sick, not when their cases were confirmed. Again, the trend line has leveled out somewhat in recent weeks, instead of shooting up after Thanksgiving.

This graphic shows the rolling seven-day daily average for Ohio coronavirus cases based on the date of onset of symptoms. The last week is not shown because of delays in reporting newer cases. Making the data unclear is the dips shown late in Thanksgiving week, perhaps linked to reporting issues.Rich Exner, cleveland.com

This piece of encouraging news comes with a caveat.

Gov. Mike DeWine on Monday reminded Ohioans that even if the curve is smoothing, it is smoothing at a far higher level than where coronavirus case rates and hospitalizations were at during late summer and early fall.

This might look like a plateau, we cant tell that yet, DeWine said during his coronavirus briefing. Even if is plateauing, it is still much, much too high.

Note: this story has been updated with new data released on Tuesday.

Rich Exner, data analysis editor for cleveland.com, writes about numbers on a variety of topics. Follow on Twitter @RichExner. See other data-related stories at cleveland.com/datacentral.

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Evidence suggests Ohios feared post-Thanksgiving spike of coronavirus cases has not occurred, instead cases - cleveland.com

One in ten residents in Spain had been infected by the coronavirus by mid-November and almost half that contagion occurred during the summer resurgence of outbreaks. Thats according to preliminary results of an official survey on the presence of antibodies.

The fourth and latest round of a national seroprevalence study found that 9.9% of the more than 51,400 people tested had developed antibodies at some point since the onset of the pandemic, officials from Spains main epidemiological study center, the Carlos III Health Institute, and the Health Ministry said Tuesday.

The study suggests that at least 4.7 million people have contracted the virus so far, although official Health Ministry figures have logged 1.75 million infections from laboratory tests as of Monday.

Spain has also confirmed 48,000 deaths for COVID-19, although excess mortality registries suggest a much higher real death toll.

Marina Polln, director of the National Epidemiological Center, said that health workers and women taking care of the elderly, working as cleaners and in nursing homes showed the highest prevalence of antibodies.

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1 in 10 residents in Spain infected with coronavirus, survey finds - KTLA