Category: Covid-19

HARLINGEN, Texas (ValleyCentral) EZ Testing, a private company, will be providing COVID-19 tests after an increased demand for test availability.

EZ Testing will provide staff and tests, including both Rapid and PCR Nasal Tests will be available according to the companys Operations Manager, Dante Hicks.

The COVID-19 testing site will open Monday through Thursday at the Harlingen Sports Complex, located at 3139 Wilson Road.

Appointments are not needed, according to a press release from the City of Harlingen.

Questions can be addressed by calling (956) 353-6055 or visiting the website HERE.

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Private company to offer COVID-19 testing in Harlingen - KGBT-TV

As of Friday, one in three patients in Ohio hospitals or the ICU has COVID-19.

COLUMBUS, Ohio Ohio is experiencing the highest number of COVID-related hospital admissions since the start of the pandemic, state health officials said Friday, though cases are beginning to drop in the northeast part of the state.

During a briefing, Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said access to the vaccine has made it possible for COVID-19 to begin to evolve into an endemic illness, but the impact of the contagious virus on Ohio's hospital systems remains a "very serious concern."

"Indeed our 24-hour COVID-19 case counts are repeatedly breaking records," said Vanderhoff.

Since Dec. 29, hospitalizations have continued to surpass previous records for new COVID-19 patients on a daily basis, Vanderhoff said. As of Friday, one in three patients in Ohio hospitals or the ICU has COVID-19.

Of the more than 6,500 total virus hospitalizations in the state Thursday, Cleveland Clinic Chief Medical Operation Officer Dr. Robert Wyllie said roughly 3,700 to 3,800 were in the northern part of the state.

Northern Ohio has increasingly been referred to as a hotspot for COVID-19. Now, Wyllie said cases are beginning to drop in that region. In Cuyahoga County, for instance, the percentage of cases has dropped by around 24-25% in the last two weeks. Wyllie said they hope to see hospitalizations follow a similar path down.

Health officials have predicted COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations will peak in Ohio toward the end of January and that central Ohio is roughly two weeks behind northeast Ohio.

In central Ohio, Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Andrew Thomas said The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center and hospitals across Franklin County have seen a "pretty significant and steep" increase in patients hospitalized with the virus over the last two weeks.

"This reflects the fact that omicron is more contagious than other variants," said Vanderhoff.

While more easily spread, health officials say the hospitalization rate for those who test positive with omicron is lower than with the delta variant. Despite this, Vanderhoff said with Ohio's low vaccination rate and so many people getting infected, "It's little surprise that we are seeing unprecedented numbers of hospitalizations."

A second wave of Ohio National Guard members were mobilized to assist hospitals across the state with a rising number of COVID-19 hospitalizations on Thursday. State health officials have said the goal is to ease the strain on medical staff at larger hospitals dealing with an overflow of COVID-19 patients.

As of Friday, Maj. General John C. Harris, adjunct general for the Ohio National Guard, says more than 1,200 guard members have deployed to 40 locations across the state.

Those members are performing bedside assistance, offering food and cleaning services, patient transport and more. Additionally, guard members are assisting with COVID-19 testing sites to alleviate the strain on emergency departments.

You can watch Fridays briefing in the player below:

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Ohio Department of Health provides update on COVID-19 pandemic - 10TV

For immediate release: January 6, 2022(22-005)

Contact: DOH Communications

OLYMPIAWashington State Department of Health(DOH)has published a new, weekly report thatprovides an insight intoCOVID-19reinfections. This report includes information on hospitalizations and deaths, demographics, trends over time, and vaccination status of people with a reinfection where DOH has information about both infection events.

Reinfection means a person was infected once with the virus that causes COVID-19, recovered, and then later became infected again.A person with a reinfection could be fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, or unvaccinated. This report is located on theCOVID-19 Data Dashboard :: Washington State Department of Healthand isupdated weekly.

We are still learning about COVID-19 and the duration and strength of immunity following infection with this virus,said Scott Lindquist, MD, MPH, state epidemiologist for communicable diseases.Based on what we know from similar respiratory viruses, we expect some COVID-19 reinfections to occur.

The first report indicates that from September 1 through December 26, 2021, in Washington state:

DOHcan only identify people who have been reinfected if both their original infection and their second infection were diagnosed by a COVID-19 test and reported tothe state. Since many COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic and not diagnosed by a test, DOH will not be able to classify those individuals as reinfected. As a result, thereportednumber of people reinfected or hospitalized or died from a reinfection is likely lower than the actual number of reinfection events.

The risk of reinfection is likely dependent on a variety of factors including:

This risk may change over time as immunity wanes or as new variants emerge.Variants associated with reinfections will be includedin theSARS-CoV-2 Sequencing and Variants in Washington State. Ongoing COVID-19 studies will help us understand more about cases of reinfection.

While reinfection is relatively rare,the best protection againstgetting any COVID-19 infectionis to get vaccinated, and then get a booster shot when eligible. Children between the ages of 5 and 11 are now eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine and should start their two-shot series immediately.As of today, youth ages 12 to 17 may receive a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at least 5 months after completing their primary vaccination series.

Toslow transmission of diseaseandprotect people, save lives, and prevent our hospitals from overcrowding, everyone is encouraged to takeCOVID-19 prevention measures includingconsistent and proper mask wearing.

The DOHwebsite is your source for a healthy dose of information. Find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Sign up for the DOH blog,Public Health Connection.

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New report tracks risk of COVID-19 reinfection in Washington state - Washington State Department of Health

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control revised its guidelines on coronavirus again which is raising questions about who should quarantine or isolate, and for how long.

One thing is certain. There is a difference between quarantine and isolation. You should quarantine if you come into contact with someone who has coronavirus and you think you have it. You should isolate if you confirm you have coronavirus even if you dont have symptoms.

If you come into close contact with someone with COVID-19, you do not need to quarantine if:

If you come into close contact with someone with COVID-19, you should quarantine if:

The CDC suggests a person quarantine for five days following their last contact with the infected person. Your day of exposure is day 0. Stay home and away from other people. If you are around people at home, wear a well-fitting mask. You should watch for a fever, shortness of breath, or other COVID-19 symptoms. If symptoms develop, get tested immediately and isolate until you receive the results.

If you test positive, the CDC suggests you follow guidelines for isolation. If you do not develop symptoms after five days, and you receive a negative test, you can leave your home but should continue to wear a facial mask until it has been 10 days since the exposure.

People in isolation should stay home in a specified sick room to be separated from others and wear a well-fitting mask if they must be around others in the home. You should isolate a full five days. Day 0 is the first day of symptoms or the date of the positive test for a person with no symptoms. You can end isolation after a full 5 days if you are fever-free for 24 hours without the use of medication and other symptoms have improved. However, you should wear a mask for an additional five days while in public.

You can find more detailed information at this CDC link.

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COVID-19: When to quarantine, or isolate? Whats the difference? - KLAS - 8 News Now

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 300.3 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths has now passed 5.47 million. More than 9.37 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 300 million globally since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins' Coronavirus Resource Centre.

India's daily COVID-19 infections have jumped to 117,100 - a five-fold increase in a week. It puts the country on course to overtake its previous infection peak.

The Omicron outbreak could peak in New South Wales - Australia's most populous state - by the end of the month, official modelling has shown. Authorities have reinstated some restrictions in a bid to slow the record spike.

Chicago Public Schools, the third-largest US education district, cancelled classes for a second day on Thursday amid a walkout by teachers demanding tougher COVID-19 protection measures, although city officials insisted schools are safe.

Chile is set to begin offering a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose to immunocompromised citizens next week. It becomes the first country in Latin America to do so and one of the first in the world to offer the additional shot.

Costa Rica will begin COVID-19 vaccinations for children aged 5 to 11 from 11 January, the country's president announced yesterday.

Canada has signed a deal with GlaxoSmithKline to buy 20,000 more doses of the pharmaceutical giant's COVID-19 drug.

Peru has tightened COVID-19 restrictions in response to rising cases; 24 provinces have been moved from 'moderate' to 'high' alert, Health Minister Hernando Cevallos said.

Nigeria is working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, President Muhammadu Buhari said in a televised interview on Thursday.

Portugal will ease some COVID-19 restrictions, with pupils returning to school next week and nightclubs reopening on 14 January.

Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in selected countries.

Image: Our World in Data

As part of work identifying promising technology use cases to combat COVID, The Boston Consulting Group recently used contextual AI to analyze more than 150 million English language media articles from 30 countries published between December 2019 to May 2020.

The result is a compendium of hundreds of technology use cases. It more than triples the number of solutions, providing better visibility into the diverse uses of technology for the COVID-19 response.

To see a full list of 200+ exciting technology use cases during COVID please follow this link.

The Omicron variant of COVID-19 appears to produce less severe disease than the globally dominant Delta strain, but should not be categorised as 'mild', World Health Organization (WHO) officials said on Thursday.

Janet Diaz, WHO lead on clinical management, said early studies showed there was a reduced risk of hospitalization from the variant first identified in southern Africa and Hong Kong in November compared with Delta.

There appears also to be a reduced risk of severity in both younger and older people, she told a media briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva.

"While Omicron does appear to be less severe compared to Delta, especially in those vaccinated, it does not mean it should be categorized as mild," WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the same briefing.

"Just like previous variants, Omicron is hospitalizing people and it is killing people."

He warned of a 'tsunami' of cases as global infections soar to records fuelled by both Omicron and Delta, healthcare systems are overwhelmed, and governments struggle to control the disease.

As the world passes the 300 million confirmed cases milestone, countries around the world continue to report record COVID-19 case numbers as a wave of infections, driven by the Omicron variant, continues to sweep the globe.

In Israel, the Health Ministry reported 16,000 new cases on Wednesday, a record daily increase since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the country's Delta wave, the number topped 11,000.

In Belgium, new daily cases of COVID-19 have exceeded November 2020's previous highs, with more than 28,000 new cases reported on 4 January. Health experts have warned this could rise as high as 125,000 cases a day by mid-January.

Argentina has also reported a record number of new confirmed daily COVID-19 cases - the third day in a row it's done so. Yesterday, 109,608 new cases were reported; however, the government said the wave of new cases had not yet translated into a similar rise in COVID-19-related deaths.

On Thursday, 219,441 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Italy - a record since the start of the pandemic.

Turkey yesterday reported 68,413 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24 hours - again the highest figure on record.

New daily COVID-19 cases fell in France on Thursday - down to 261,481 from Wednesday's record of more than 332,000. However, the seven-day moving average of new cases has risen above 200,000 for the first time.

Written by

Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Excerpt from:

COVID-19: Top news stories about the pandemic on 7 January | World Economic Forum - World Economic Forum

As Ohio and other states continue to seerecord numbers of new coronavirus cases due to the latest variant, omicron, testing remains in high demand.

And whilesupply is beginning to catch up to demand following a holiday surge, there is still uncertainty about where to find tests, whether it be at pharmacies, clinics or other sites. Pleas on social media asking for at-home rapid tests arecommonplace.

Perhaps it's no surprise, given that the United Statestopped the 1 million mark in new coronavirus cases for the first time on Jan. 3. Though the totalwas likely increased by holiday weekend backlogs, it obliterated the previous record of 591,000 set the previous week, according to USA Today.

While President Joe Biden has set agoal of providing Americans with 500 million free at-home tests as soon as possible, many are struggling in their search for a COVID-19 test. For area residents in that situation, here are some resources around Greater Columbusto get you started.

Where have you found tests? Share what you know in the comments on this story

The Ohio Department of Health compilesa directory of testing and community health centers that provide COVID-19 tests. There are almost 200 locations listed in FranklinCounty alone, and these include community clinics, libraries, pharmacies and urgent care centers.

The directory can be found atcoronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/other-resources/testing-ch-centers.

The department is referring people to their public libraries or recreation centers, where tests are distributed free when in stock. For those needing documentation for employment or travel, the department is referring people toOhio State University's Wexner Medical Center for PCR, or molecular, tests that require an appointment. For more information, go to wexnermedical.osu.edu/features/coronavirus/patient-care/covid-19-testing.

Most branch libraries in and around Columbus have been giving outantigen tests, requiring a nasal swab and providing results within minutes. Officials recommend calling first to make sure that the free tests are available and scheduling a time for curbside pickup.

Columbus Metropolitan Library's call center (614-645-2275)gave a message on ThursdayJan. 6 that tests had been depleted and would not be replenished until at least next week.

Like libraries, each community center was supplied with tests last month to give out at no cost. But the supplies have run out. A spokeswoman for the department (614-645-3300)said that officials are "brainstorming" ways to find new shipments.

Most chains such as CVS andWalgreens require appointments for tests, whether PCR or rapid. Call or check online for details. There have been reports of pharmacies scheduling appointments days or weeks out, and even those can fill quickly.

An announcement on CVS's websitenotes that appointments are limited and that "rapid test results are still available within hours, but lab test results are taking 1 to 3 days."

Most locations are providing testing only for patients who have been referred by tele-health or doctor visits. And emergency rooms are turning people away unless they have symptoms or other critical needs.

There are two main kinds of COVID-19 diagnostic tests to show if you have an active coronavirus infection, according to theU.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Molecular tests, such as PCR tests, detect the viruss genetic material. Antigentests detect specific proteins on the surface of the virus.

Columbus-area COVID numbers: COVID cases in Franklin County jump 20% in a week

Molecular tests can give results within the same day, but turnaround times to analyze the test and release the resultsare likely to be longer andcan take up to a week. The antigen test takes an hour or less.

However, the moleculartest is typically highly accurate and usually doesn'tneed to be repeated, while antigen tests can't definitively rule out active coronavirus infection and are more likely to miss an active coronavirus infection. Negative results from an antigen test may need to be confirmed with a molecular test.

dnarciso@dispatch.com

@DeanNarciso

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COVID-19 tests: Where to look for them in Greater Columbus as demand still outpaces supply - The Columbus Dispatch

(NewsNation Now) Sidney Poitier, the first Black man to ever win a Best Actor Oscar and a major star from the Golden Age of Hollywood, has died, an official from the Bahamian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Friday. He was 94.

Eugene Torchon-Newry, acting director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confirmedPoitier's death to Reuters.

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KDHE closes COVID-19 testing sites again due to cold weather - WDAF FOX4 Kansas City

AUSTIN (KXAN) The University of Texas at Austin COVID-19 modeling consortium has run updated omicron projections which show the United States will likely hit its peak number of cases in the next few days, but that we could see a healthcare surge well beyond what weve seen previously in the pandemic.

The consortium put out 16 projections last month that showed how the U.S. might fare against the omicron variant, but at the time much of the information about omicrons characteristics were unknown. Now, the consortium has rerun those projections as more data has been collected.

According to researchers at UT, studies overall suggest omicron is more transmissible, more immune evasive and less severe than delta. That was the lens researchers were looking through with the new projections.

As for what they found, theres good news and theres bad news.

The good news: Even in the most pessimistic projection, researchers believe COVID-19 cases will peak within the next week. Some models showed the peak could even happen within the next few days.

Surges and peaks in case numbers typically supersede trends in hospitalizations and deaths, which could peak several weeks after case numbers do.

The bad news: Of those updated projections, the most pessimistic which assumes omicron is as transmissible as delta but significantly more evasive of immunity and vaccines shows we will experience the largest healthcare surge to date.

In that projection, cases and hospitalizations are expected to be around three times what we saw in the January 2021 peak and deaths are projected at slightly above what we saw in January.

In the most optimistic scenario where omicron is around half as transmissible as delta, less severe and only slightly more evasive projections still show cases will be more than three times what weve seen in previous peaks, hospitalizations slightly higher than previous peaks and deaths being about half of what we saw in the January surge last year.

According to Texas Health and Human Services data, 220 people died of COVID-19 in Texas in the month of January in 2021.

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UT omicron projections: COVID-19 cases will peak in the next few days - KXAN.com

AUSTIN (KXAN) A man is accused of slashing tires and threatening people with a knife at a drive-through COVID-19 test site in north Austin earlier this week, according to an arrest affidavit.

Officers were called to investigate a man with a knife in a parking lot in the 12000 block of Interstate 35 service road on Wednesday just before 5 p.m. where COVID-19 testing was taking place. They later identified the man as Nicolas Guzman, 30. He does not have an attorney listed online as of Friday morning.

Two people who worked at the COVID-19 test site said a man had charged at them with a silver-colored knife, and a driver said the man had slashed his tires while he was in the car and appeared intoxicated.

The driver told police he saw the man yelling at the staff and demanding that they close the test site down. He said his car was the first in line and that the man spit on his windshield and slashed his tires after the staff closed the door on the man.

While officers were investigating, the affidavit said the suspect came back and multiple witnesses identified him. It said the man ran away and police chased him, eventually deploying a taser as he was in the middle of Parmer Lane.

Officers said they found a silver multitool with a knife attachment in the mans backpack and later identified him as Guzman. He faces evading arrest and two terroristic threat charges. One of the victims said they did not want to press charges.

Guzman is listed as being in custody in the Travis County Jail.

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Suspect slashed tires, made threats with knife at COVID-19 testing site, Austin police say - KXAN.com

With few masks, will 2022 Kentucky legislative session be a COVID-19 super-spreader event?  Courier Journal

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With few masks, will 2022 Kentucky legislative session be a COVID-19 super-spreader event? - Courier Journal