Category: Covid-19

SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) -- Classic car enthusiasts will want to visit a Sioux Falls bank to check out the vehicles on display. The American Bank & Trust Car Show takes place at its branch on South Minnesota Avenue from 1-4 p.m. The car show also includes live music, food and prizes. Admission is free.

The Turner County Fair officially starts tomorrow in Parker, SD. But there are some pre-fair events taking place today. There will be a community church service at 11 a.m., a ranch rodeo starting at 2 p.m., a 4-H animal show at 3 p.m., and a free meal at 4 p.m. in Heritage park featuring entertainment by Gordy & Debbie.

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Britnee Kellogg concert at the Levitt cancelled due to positive COVID-19 cases - KELOLAND.com

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the capacity at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami. The hospital, a 309-bed pediatric specialty hospital, had a total of 214 admissions on Saturday. Of those, 18 were Covid-19 positive and five were in intensive care units.

CNN

Covid-19 hospitalizations are reaching all-time highs in parts of the South, with some patients unable to get the care they would normally receive.

Susan Walker has been calling out-of-state hospitals trying to get help for her husband, who did not get vaccinated against Covid-19 and is now in a medically induced coma.

He is on a ventilator and in dire need of an ECMO treatment, which is not available at the hospital that he is in, the Florida mother said Sunday.

All the beds are taken up by Covid victims also getting ECMO.

An ECMO treatment uses external machinery that can function as the heart and lungs. Its been used with some severely ill Covid-19 patients, including young adults.

We have searched every hospital from the south of Florida to the north part of Florida trying to find availability, Walker said.

To transfer him to a hospital in Florida is next to impossible.

Across the country, states are struggling to fend off the Delta variant the most contagious strain of coronavirus yet.

But the situation in particularly worrisome in several Southern states.

Louisiana set a new record for Covid-19 hospitalizations last week.

Floridas hospitalizations recently jumped 13% above the states previous peak on July 23, 2020, according to a survey by the Florida Hospital Association.

The FHA said it expects 60% of the states hospitals to face a critical staffing shortage by this week.

And at Houstons United Memorial Medical Center, We have no beds. The emergency department is full of patients just waiting to be able to get into the hospital, Chief of Staff Dr. Joseph Varon said Sunday morning.

Over the last 12 hours, we have lost more patients than in the last five to six weeks.

According to data published Sunday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 50.1% of the total US population is now fully vaccinated more than 166 million people.

As of Sunday, Mississippi has fully vaccinated 35.2% of its residents. That makes Alabama with 34.8% of its residents fully vaccinated the only state in the US to have fully vaccinated less than 35% of its residents.

The seven-day average of doses administered each day is now 706,323 doses, per the CDC data, and an average of 449,000 people are initiating vaccination each day.

The US now is averaging more than 100,000 new Covid-19 cases every day the highest in almost six months, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Because it can take days or weeks for some Covid-19 cases to lead to hospitalization or death, doctors are bracing for an ugly repeat of scenes from 2020.

Its bad. For me, this is a deja vu of what we had last year, Varon said.

And the worst part about this is this was foreseeable. And this was preventable. So not only are (we) exhausted, were annoyed. And were annoyed because people are not doing the right thing.

The vast majority of those getting hospitalized with or dying from Covid-19 are not fully vaccinated, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, said last week.

And Americans who have already had Covid-19 shouldnt assume they dont need a shot.

For adults previously infected with Covid-19, vaccines give better protection against reinfection than natural immunity on its own, according to a CDC study published Friday.

The study suggests people who got Covid-19 in 2020 and didnt get vaccinated were more than twice as likely to be reinfected in May or June 2021, compared with people who also had Covid-19 but were later fully vaccinated.

If you have had Covid-19 before, please still get vaccinated, Walensky said Friday.

There is no minimum time to wait between recovering from Covid-19 and getting vaccinated, the CDC said.

Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, Walensky said, especially as the more contagious Delta variant spreads around the country.

Almost half the country is not fully vaccinated, including children under 12 who are not yet eligible but are still vulnerable to Covid-19.

Scientists say the Delta variant is as contagious as chicken pox, with each infected person potentially infecting eight or nine other people.

Delta may also cause more severe disease than other strains of coronavirus, according to studies cited in an internal CDC presentation.

Now some hospitals are seeing younger Covid-19 patients than before.

Something very scary now is happening in the Southern United States. We are seeing this massive surge of hospitalizations of young people that weve never seen before in hospitals across the South, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Its many, many young people, including, Im sorry to say, many childrens hospital admissions. And for the first time that I can remember, were starting to see pediatric intensive care units get overwhelmed, which we never really saw before.

As of Tuesday, an average of 192 children with Covid-19 were admitted to US hospitals every day over the past week, CDC data shows.

Thats a 45.7% increase from the previous week in daily new hospitalizations among Covid-19 patients ages 0 to 17.

In the Miami area, our childrens hospitals are completely overwhelmed, said Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University.

Our pediatricians, the nursing, the staff are exhausted. And the children are suffering, Marty said.

It is absolutely devastating Weve never seen numbers like this before.

In Texas, Ava Amira Rivera an 11-month-old Covid-19 patient had to be airlifted to a hospital 150 miles away because of a shortage of pediatric beds in the Houston area.

None of the major pediatric hospitals in the area had beds available, said Amanda Callaway, a spokeswoman for Harris Health System.

The babys condition has since stabilized, and she is no longer intubated.

With more than 164 million Americans fully vaccinated, tens of thousands might get Covid-19 later on, Walensky said.

Even though theres no coronavirus in any of the vaccines used in the US, breakthrough infections are expected like with other vaccines.

Those who do get breakthrough infections generally have mild or no symptoms. As of late July, more than 99.99% of fully vaccinated Americans have not had a Covid-19 infection leading to hospitalization, according to CDC data.

The tiny fraction of breakthrough infections that do lead to hospitalization can include those who are immunocompromised or elderly.

Those two groups may be among the first to get an additional dose of vaccine, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Because the Covid-19 vaccines require an immune response to work, those who are immunocompromised or taking immune-suppressing drugs might not get adequate protection with a vaccine.

We will almost certainly be boosting those people before we boost the general population thats been vaccinated, Fauci said Sunday. And we should be doing that reasonably soon, I believe.

He said the next group that may need boosters sooner than the general population are those over age 60. Fauci said the CDC is studying different age groups to see how long vaccines may stay effective.

As soon as they see that that level of durability of protection goes down, then youll see the recommendation to vaccinate those individuals, he said.

Quentin Bowen said he had scheduled an appointment to get vaccinated but had to cancel because of work.

The 41-year-old farmer from Nebraska said he assumed delaying his vaccination wasnt a big deal.

I didnt think I fit the profile of who Covid (could) attack, Bowen said Saturday. I was healthy. I was younger. And I was going to get (the vaccine). And I figured Id been exposed to it before and never got it, so I thought I had time.

But Bowen fell sick with Covid-19 in May. He recalled going to the hospital and asking his friend to tell his kids he loved them.

I knew I wasnt coming home that day. And I didnt know if Id come home ever, Bowen said.

He survived a pulmonary embolism but is still struggling with complications three months later.

Bowen urged Americans to get vaccinated as soon as they can, when they still have the power to help preserve their health.

Once you walk through the hospital door, he said, its all out of your hands.

CNNs Lauren Mascarenhas, Jessica Firger and Matthew Hilk contributed to this report.

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'All the beds are taken up by Covid victims': Hospitals in the South are running out of space or staff - CNN

As wealthier nations struggle to get more people to undergo vaccination, lower income nations struggle to acquire sufficient vaccine doses, and new SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge, a newly published paper states that the global eradication of COVID-19 remains possible nonetheless.

Lead author of the paper, Dr. Nick Wilson of the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand, pointed out to Medical News Today that skepticism regarding the papers conclusion is not surprising:

[The] reaction is completely understandable at the current point in time, [but] when the plans to eradicate smallpox were announced, and there were still millions of cases globally per year, many people were also very skeptical.

The paper cites the globally felt disruption resulting from COVID-19 as presenting an opportunity for a concerted international effort. Critical to an eradication programs success is establishing strong vaccine coverage and staying ahead of rapidly developing variants.

The paper entitled, We should not dismiss the possibility of eradicating COVID-19: Comparisons with smallpox and polio appears in BMJ Global Health.

The authors of the paper define eradications as the [p]ermanent reduction to zero of the worldwide incidence of infection caused by a specific agent as a result of deliberate efforts; intervention measures are no longer needed.

The paper presents a preliminary assessment of the eradicability of COVID-19 by comparing it with other worldwide diseases, including smallpox, which has been eradicated, and polio, for which just one of three serotypes persists.

Based on an established scoring system and additional technical, sociopolitical, and economic factors that the authors included, the study compiled a total of 17 variables relating to vaccine-preventable diseases, with a three-point relative scale for each variable. Each of the diseases received a score according to these metrics, with higher values indicating a greater chance of eradication.

COVID-19 scored as being slightly more eradicable than polio.

Smallpox was most eradicable with a score of 2.7. In comparison, COVID-19 scored 1.6, and polio scored 1.5.

Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, MPH, of the University of California, Los Angeless Fielding School of Public Health who was not involved in writing the article told MNT: The single greatest obstacle to true eradication will be achieving and sustaining the very high vaccination coverage (using a vaccine with no or extremely low infection breakthrough) needed to achieve full herd immunity, whereby transmission of COVID-19 in a community ceases.

Although he is not giving up on achieving higher vaccination coverage through more robust international public health and social measures, Dr. Wilson said that herd immunity is not a requirement for eradication.

Smallpox was eradicated without achieving herd immunity, said Dr. Wilson, but rather by targeted vaccination approaches. It is also notable that countries have also eliminated measles without (quite) achieving herd immunity, and, in fact, the whole of the Americas eliminated measles for a time.

The paper notes that there is also a risk of the persistence of the pandemic virus in non-human animal reservoirs, a phenomenon that is occurring with COVID-19 in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Asked whether current animal reservoirs may doom an eradication effort, Dr. Wilson said we are not there yet.

If we had the situation of influenza viruses (widespread in wild birds) then obviously eradication would not be feasible, he noted.

He added that it is possible to eradicate diseases in some wild animals for example, eliminating rabies in wild foxes via aerial bait drops containing vaccine (as per Western Europe).

Dr. Kim-Farley cited what he sees as the three most significant obstacles to eradication success.

Current vaccines, noted Dr. Kim-Farley, although offering excellent protection against severe illness and death, still have some breakthrough infections that can infect others.

Identifying cases of often-asymptomatic COVID-19 is also harder, said Dr. Kim-Farley, than it is with smallpox and measles, which are usually always symptomatic and identifiable.

Finally, there is the lack of political will to apply (and the unwillingness of some persons to accept) the strict public health measures, such as required vaccination, required mask wearing, required quarantine and isolation, and required testing.

When MNT asked Dr. Wilson whether he thinks COVID-19 eradication will occur, Dr. Wilson answered in the affirmative, adding: Our article largely focuses on technical issues as to eradication feasibility. The question of whether the global community will attempt it will depend on some international expert group (i.e., at the World Health Organization [] or United Nations-level) making an expert assessment of the technical, socioeconomic, and political feasibility.

Dr. Wilson said he was concerned about the current fractured nature of global cooperation and the vaccine nationalism that the paper describes.

Still, he is hopeful that past eradication successes will ultimately inspire the global community.

Dr. Kim-Farley suggests that it will be feasible to control COVID-19 as per the definition in the article; namely, Control: The reduction of disease incidence, prevalence, morbidity, or mortality to a locally acceptable level as a result of deliberate efforts; continued intervention measures are required to maintain the reduction.'

In any event, according to Dr. Kim-Farley, we should still try to eradicate COVID-19.

We should appreciate that control of COVID-19 is a worthy goal even if we do not achieve true eradication, Dr. Kim-Farley said. Effective vaccines and appropriate public health measures can greatly reduce serious illness and deaths due to COVID-19 to such levels that, even if endemic in our societies, COVID-19 does not take a significant toll on our populations due to needless suffering, disability, and death.

For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.

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Is the global eradication of COVID-19 possible? - Medical News Today

Florida and Louisiana are now reporting a record number of Covid-19 hospital admissions, and other states are close. In Mississippi and Arkansas, daily admissions are at more than 87% of their earlier peak, and in Oregon, Alabama and Washington, daily admissions are at more than 75% of their peak.

But patients hospitalized with Covid-19 this summer tend to be younger than in earlier surges. And with vaccines widely available, they're mostly preventable, too.

Mercy Hospital in Joplin, Missouri, has surpassed its record number of Covid-19 patients more than once in the past two weeks, according to hospital president Jeremy Drinkwitz.

Things are very different from last time, he says.

"As far as the very distinct differences -- the age of patients for us," Drinkwitz told CNN. The hospital recently had three patients between 30 and 40, multiple patients in their 40s and some in their 50s and 60s on ventilators, he said.

"In November, when we had our first big spike, we didn't," Drinkwitz said. "We didn't have that younger population; it was more of the elderly population."

Now, he said, there are fewer elderly patients. "We're just not seeing that many. We have a few, but it's not anywhere close to the younger population," Drinkwitz said.

Seniors still have the highest per capita rate of hospitalizations, but the gap is smaller than it's been.

The recent hospitalization rate among seniors age 70 and older is about a quarter of what it was in January, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But hospitalization rates among younger adults are about as high as they were in January.

In fact, the hospitalization rate among adults age 30 to 39 is the highest it's ever been, CDC data shows.

Children also account for a larger share of hospitalizations now than they did in January, as hospitalization rates among those under the age of 18 hover right around the record high.

In a few states -- including Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and Louisiana -- the number of children hospitalized with Covid-19 more than doubled over the past week, federal data shows.

But with every 12 and older eligible to be vaccinated against Covid-19, experts have different concerns about this new wave of hospitalizations.

Early in the pandemic, there weren't enough tools to care for patients and doctors didn't know if what they were doing for their patients was the right thing, Dr. O'Neal Pyke, chief medical officer of Jackson North Medical Center, Jackson Health System in Florida, told CNN. As a critical care and internal medicine doctor, he cared for patients himself during the early stages of the pandemic, from March to October of last year.

"Now, my biggest concern is that we have a very, very good tool, right, we have the vaccine, and the vaccine has been proven now to be remarkably efficacious as it pertains to preventing severe illness and death," he said. "It doesn't necessarily prevent getting the virus, but it certainly does prevent severe illness requiring hospitalization and death. And the concern is that the community still has that hesitancy."

While Pyke said he understands this hesitancy to a degree, the best way to look at it is as though the vaccine is a dam.

"We have this deluge of flooding going on, and what we're doing in terms of trying with the medicines that we're trying over the months is basically scooping out cups of water from this flood," he said. "But the vaccine is like a dam, and the vaccine can do so much more in preventing the flooding that we're seeing right now. And that's the very essence of it."

Florida has the highest hospitalization rate in the country, according to the latest data from HHS. More than 65 people are hospitalized with Covid-19 for every 100,000 people in Florida, about one out of every 1,500 state residents. That's more than triple the national rate.

Every state with a higher than average hospitalization rate has a lower than average vaccination rate, including Florida, according to a CNN analysis of data from the CDC and HHS.

And it's taking a toll on a health care system that has been operating at full strength for a year and a half, Pyke says.

"We thought we turned the corner a bit on this, and here we are going back up," he said. "Obviously whatever we are feeling pales in comparison to what patients are feeling and their families, but it's overwhelming to the staff to be caring for patients with the same disease we thought we just, we might be seeing the end of."

In Arkansas, the Covid-19 hospitalization rate is more than double the national rate and the fifth highest in the country. Hospitalization rates among children are higher than they've ever been in the state. But so, too, are hospitalization rates among young adults under 30, who have been eligible to be vaccinated for months.

Dr. Stephen Mette, CEO of UAMS Health in Arkansas, said that low vaccination rate is the "first and foremost" contributing factor to the latest increase in hospitalizations.

Like Mercy Hospital in Joplin, UAMS has recently surpassed its record high number of hospitalizations in the pandemic. The majority of patients hospitalized with Covid at UAMS are either not vaccinated at all or not fully vaccinated, Mette said. And vaccinated patients have, so far, had a significant underlying medical condition.

"We knew we would have another wave, but we were maybe lulled into that false sense of security that we would have a large enough number of Americans, or Arkansans, vaccinated so that we would not have a very high wave," Mette said. "So, we were prepared, but not for this degree of the manifestation of this wave."

Other major contributing factors, Mette said, include different characteristics of the Delta variant, the relaxation of public health measures and the public's general pandemic fatigue.

Vaccination rates in the US have ticked up over recent weeks, a trend that experts say needs to continue to curb the current surge of Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations.

"We love our community, we love our neighbors and our friends here and our community, and we're here to serve them, and because of that we're fighting like hell to save their lives. Thirty year olds and 40 year olds should have a chance to live a full life and so we're trying to do everything we can to help them after they have gotten this virus," Drinkwitz said.

But the medical professionals need the help of the community.

"I'm asking people actually to open their eyes and realize what's happening. That there are hospitals and healthcare is being challenged, there's capacity issues in communities, and that we have to do something," Drinkwitz said. "We need help on the other side. We need people to be vaccinated. And if they just can't get their minds wrapped around that, then please wear a mask, social distance, those things we know to do."

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Covid-19 hospitalizations are surging again, but they're different this time - CNN

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, here at a news conference Tuesday, has announced plans for a state-run mobile unit providing monoclonal antibody treatments. Marta Lavandier/AP hide caption

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, here at a news conference Tuesday, has announced plans for a state-run mobile unit providing monoclonal antibody treatments.

Florida is rolling out a mobile unit to administer monoclonal antibody treatments to coronavirus patients, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced.

Officials are expanding the availability of the treatments, which have emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, as a record number of new coronavirus infections is straining Florida's health care system.

"There's clear benefits to this early treatment for keeping people out of the hospital and reducing mortality," DeSantis said during a Thursday news conference.

Monoclonal antibodies which hold the coronavirus in check by mimicking the body's natural immune defenses can be used to treat people with mild to moderate COVID-19 who are 12 years of age or older. But the treatment doesn't work for those who've already developed more severe symptoms or are hospitalized.

Both vaccinated and unvaccinated people who are infected can receive the treatments, officials said.

Former President Donald Trump received Regeneron's monoclonal antibody treatment when he contracted coronavirus last fall.

But some states have struggled to make the treatment widely available since it is administered by an intravenous infusion that can take up to an hour and requires medical staff that may already be overworked.

While announcing the new rollout, DeSantis noted that monoclonal antibody treatments may not be as well-known in the battle against COVID-19 because they received emergency authorization around the same time that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines also did.

Florida is looking to offer monoclonal antibody treatments at other locations throughout the state, and it will send "strike teams" into long-term care facilities to offer the treatment to older residents and others where they live.

The state has become a hot spot for new COVID-19 cases in recent weeks as the highly contagious delta variant has caused transmission rates to explode.

Still, DeSantis has resisted forcing students, many of whom are under age 12 and ineligible for the vaccine, to wear masks during the upcoming school year. He has threatened to withhold funding from any school districts that don't let parents choose whether their children wear masks, though several counties have ignored the threat and kept their mask mandates or imposed new requirements.

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Florida Gov. DeSantis Expands Monoclonal Antibody Treatments Amid COVID-19 Spike - NPR

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of August 13, 2021, there have been 3,207,734 total confirmatory laboratory results received for COVID-19, with 171,950 total cases and 2,976 deaths.

DHHR has confirmed the death of a 62-year old female from Raleigh County.

We are deeply saddened by this news, a loss to both the family and our state, and extend our deepest sympathies, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. Vaccines are safe and effective, and if you are eligible, please do your part to end the pandemic by scheduling a COVID vaccine.

CASES PER COUNTY: Barbour (1,303), Berkeley (13,442), Boone (2,454), Braxton (1,282), Brooke (2,000), Cabell (9,171), Calhoun (415), Clay (568), Doddridge (665), Fayette (3,575), Gilmer (936), Grant (1,545), Greenbrier (2,070), Hampshire (1,979), Hancock (2,414), Hardy (1,515), Harrison (6,505), Jackson (2,373), Jefferson (4,666), Kanawha (16,401), Lewis (1,878), Lincoln (1,949), Logan (3,151), Marion (4,292), Marshall (3,171), Mason (2,020), McDowell (1,232), Mercer (5,535), Mineral (3,545), Mingo (2,585), Monongalia (9,080), Monroe (1,575), Morgan (1,909), Nicholas (2,101), Ohio (4,111), Pendleton (729), Pleasants (987), Pocahontas (724), Preston (3,515), Putnam (5,636), Raleigh (7,232), Randolph (3,111), Ritchie (788), Roane (706), Summers (888), Taylor (1,989), Tucker (570), Tyler (794), Upshur (2,898), Wayne (3,909), Webster (633), Wetzel (1,222), Wirt (479), Wood (8,585), Wyoming (2,202).

Free pop-up COVID-19 testing is available today in Berkeley, Grant, Jefferson, Lincoln, Logan, Marshall, Mineral, Monongalia, Ohio, Putnam, and Taylor counties.

August 13

Berkeley County

10:00 AM 5:00 PM, 891 Auto Parts Place, Martinsburg, WV

Grant County

11:00 AM 3:00 PM, Petersburg City Parking Lot, South Main Street (across from Walgreens), Petersburg, WV (please do not block the fire station entrance)

Jefferson County

10:00 AM 5:00 PM, Shepherd University Wellness Center Parking Lot, 164 University Drive, Shepherdstown, WV

Lincoln County

Logan County

Marshall County

12:00 PM 5:00 PM, Benwood City Building, 430 Main Street, Benwood, WV

Mineral County

10:00 AM 4:00 PM, Mineral County Health Department, 541 Harley O. Staggers Drive, Keyser, WV

Monongalia County

9:00 AM 12:00 PM, WVU Recreation Center, Lower Level, 2001 Rec Center Drive, Morgantown, WV

Ohio County

9:00 AM 3:30 PM, Ohio Valley Medical Center (Former main entrance/turning circle), 2000 Eoff Street, Wheeling, WV

Putnam County

9:00 AM 4:00 PM, Liberty Square, 613 Putnam Village, Hurricane, WV

Taylor County

2:00 PM 4:00 PM, Grafton-Taylor County Health Department, 718 West Main Street (parking lot at Operations Trailer), Grafton, WV

Free pop-up COVID-19 testing is also available tomorrow in Lewis County.

August 14

Lewis County

See more here:

COVID-19 Daily Update 8-13-2021 - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

FDA authorizes COVID-19 booster shots for the immunocompromised

The FDA determined people with suppressed immune systems may not have gotten adequate protection from initial doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Staff video, USA TODAY

Coronavirus cases in Mississippi, fueled by the highly contagious delta variant, continue to climb, with 5,023new cases Friday. It's the highest daily case count ever reported since COVID-19 came into the state in March 2020.

On Tuesday, the state saw the highest one-day coronavirus-related deaths, 36, since early March when the department reported 44 deaths.

7-day takeaway: MSCOVID-19 cases reach over 20k, over 100 deaths in aweek

Mississippireported 31coronavirus-related deaths Friday. Nineteendeathsoccurred between June 1and Aug. 8, as identified from death certificate reports.

Since the virus hit the state in March 2020, a total of 381,147cases and 7,761coronavirus-related deaths have been reported.

On Friday, the Mississippi State Department of Healthreported 166outbreaks at Mississippi nursinghomes. There have been 10,824cases of the coronavirus in long-term care facilitiesand 2,019deaths reported as of Friday.

According to aNew York Times database, at least 1,022new coronavirus deaths and 138,595new cases were reported in the UnitedStateson Thursday. Over the past week, there has been an average of 125,894cases per day,an increase of 76% from the average two weeks earlier.

Dire measures: UMMC prepping field hospital as COVID-19 cases surge

Residents between the ages of 25 and 39represent the largest portion of the infected population in the state,with 83,833cases reported Tuesday, the latest figureavailable.

Among patients under18, children between the ages of 11 and 17 have the highest infection rate, with 29,852cases identified. The 65 and older age group has the highest total number of deaths with 5,778reported.

According tohealth department data, 1,292,407people have begun the vaccination process in Mississippi, as of Thursdaymorning. Since December, about 1,065,743people are fully immunized against COVID-19.

Approximately 326,558people are presumed recovered from the virus as of Tuesday, according tothe health department's website.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Hinds County has the highest number of reported cases in the state with 26,196, followed closely by DeSoto County with 24,662,Harrison County with 24,410,Jackson County with 17,861and Rankin County with 17,004.

Reeves: Extends emergency declaration amid COVID-19 surge to ensure federal help

Schools: More than 4,000 MSK-12 students quarantined due to COVID exposure

Daily number of new deaths: 3

Daily number of new cases: 204

Total deaths: 473

Total cases: 25,992

Daily number of new deaths: 2

Daily number of new cases: 78

Total deaths: 235

Total cases:11,789

Daily number of new deaths: 0

Daily number of new cases: 170

Total deaths: 301

Total cases:17,004

Have a health story? Or a health-related tip? Send it along toshaselhorst@gannett.com, onTwitter at @HaselhorstSarahor call 601-331-9307.

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Mississippi hits all-time high record of one-day COVID-19 cases with over 5,000 infections - Clarion Ledger

As a practicing primary-care doctor, I fully empathize with parents who worry about their unvaccinated kids potential exposure to the coronavirus. Raising my own children is a daily exercise in vulnerability. One rainy night this summer, my teenage son, a new driver who was running late for a babysitting job, asked for my keys. Cant you walk there instead? I pleaded. He rolled his eyes. I let him use the car, but not before peppering him with reminders to be careful and to use the headlights and wipers. Shielding my kids from danger is a fundamental instinct; tolerating risk for them is hard emotional work.

So I understand why many parents were alarmed when, on July 27, the CDCs director, Rochelle Walensky, said that vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant could transmit the virus with the same capacity as an unvaccinated person. For people who thought that the pandemic was ending, her televised statement was like the scene late in A Nightmare on Elm Street when Freddy Kruegers claw reaches up from within Glens bed and pulls him in.

The phones at my office started ringing immediately. Are my kids no longer safe around me? Should we cancel our trip to visit the grandparents? Do the vaccines not work like they used to? Since then, reports that pediatric hospitals are filling up with COVID-19 patients in states with low vaccination rates has heightened the perception that children are uniformly in danger.

Read: Why is it taking so long to get vaccines for kids?

For most of the pandemic, children were assumed to be at low risk of serious illness from the coronavirus. But recent developments are naturally triggering many adults protective instincts. Although the evidence calls for prudence, not paniceven as the Delta variant spreadsmany parents will struggle to keep fear from racing ahead of the data.

Hopes were high during the spring and early summer, as vaccination rates rose and hospitalization rates fell. Kids enjoyed indirect protection from COVID-19 as more adults became immunized. A relatively normal return to school in the fall started to seem possible. Even now, some reassuring facts remain: So far the Delta variant isnt thought to be more lethal than prior variants. Although clearly more contagious, Delta doesnt seem to specifically target kids. No one should be surprised that nonimmune children account for a bigger share of the total number of infections as more adults get vaccinated. Although cases are certainly increasing among children as well as adults, a recent report by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that 0.9 percent of COVID-19 cases in children have resulted in hospitalizationa slight increase since the spring but well below the corresponding percentage for most of last yearand 0.01 percent have resulted in death.

A recent peer-reviewed study in Britain of nearly 260,000 children (1,700 of whom showed symptoms) reminds us that for most kids, a coronavirus infection will manifest as the common coldif anything. Also reassuring is that only 4.4 percent of children diagnosed with COVID-19 in this study had symptoms after 28 days (and 1.8 percent after 56 days). Probably not surprising to any parent, about 1 percent of kids in this study who had upper-respiratory symptoms and tested negative for COVID-19 also had lingering symptoms at 56 daysa reminder that COVID-19 is only one potential cause for a childs malaise.

Abundant evidence indicates that coronavirus transmissions rates in schools are roughly equal to or less than those of the surrounding community. In other words, educational settings are not inherently dangerous for younger children. This should reassure parents and policy makers who are nervous about sending them back to the classroom.

I do not dismiss the continuing danger that COVID-19 presents to kids. As of August 11, the CDCs National Center for Health Statistics reports, more than 350 children (out of 74 million) across the United States have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. (For perspective, weve lost more than 600,000 American adults to COVID-19, and adults older than 85 are more than 600 times more likely to die from the disease than kids are.) Pediatric hospitalizations are rising in regions of the country where vaccine uptake is low. Long COVIDthough rare in children, at least before Deltacan cause lasting symptoms for some otherwise healthy youngsters.

But fragmentary data and muddled messaging from the CDC and elsewhere have stoked the publics collective fearespecially among parents. The younger, sicker, quicker narrativewhich asserts that Delta infects people more intensely and at an earlier agehas taken hold on TV news and social media. The Delta surge has also created new opportunities for grifters, anti-vaccine propagandists, and others to spread misinformation that preys on parental anxiety.

Read: Delta is bad news for kids

Not all fear is irrational; some is actually required for survival. When parents are faced with a perceived or real threat to their childrens safety, stress hormones pour into the bloodstream, allowing us to sprint from danger, maintain alertness, and react quickly to sudden changes in our environment. During the coronavirus pandemic, individual vigilance has been essential to interpreting and responding to the steady stream of new information.

Being constantly wired like this nevertheless carries a cost: Rational thought is hijacked. Our risk tolerance goes down. Our instinct to protect shifts into overdrive. We default to primitive thought patterns including black-and-white thinking (School isnt safe until all kids are vaccinated) and catastrophizing (My childs runny nose will probably land him in the hospital). We also engage in filtering, a cognitive distortion whereby we sort through masses of information and latch onto specific ideas that reinforce a personal fear (After reading that ICU doctors Facebook post about a hospitalized infant, Im certain my child will get sick with COVID-19).

Marinating in a toxic brine of fear and uncertainty can make us sickwhether from fatigue and insomnia or irritability and burnout. And when our children hear us processing endless loops of what if thinking, they can become worried and depressed too. Fixating on a single threat to childrens health can keep us from recognizing their broad human needs. I too can be a victim of my own mental gymnastics. (Just ask my kids.)

Reclaiming rational thought amid ongoing uncertainty can be vexingly difficult, yet it is crucial for our health. Parents must first absorb the scientific evidence on Delta. We must cross-check our internal narratives about our own kids against the facts of our local public-health landscape by checking in with trusted health-care professionals.

Next, we must accept the unpleasant reality that risk is everywhere. Children face many serious threats to their well-being, including other diseases, mental illness, and accidents. Vehicular crashes kill more than 1,000 Americans younger than 15 each year. Yet weve accepted this risk; we also dont revisit it with every news story about a car crash.

When my patients ask me whether a given activity is safe, I usually tell them the answer isnt a firm yes or no. Absolutism itself can do harm. Rather, I ask about individual patients circumstances, explain medical evidence, and try to help frame their decision by offering advice about relative risks and benefits. As with fear, risk cannot be eliminated; it can only be mitigated. Health stems from allowing fear to protect us from dying but not allowing it to prevent us from living.

Similarly, victory over COVID-19 will require accepting our perilous reality, releasing ourselves from the impossible task of eradicating danger, and relishing the sometimes-immeasurable reward that comes from tolerating risk. Had I prohibited my son from driving that rainy night, for example, he might have lost his jobor, worse, his faith in how much I trust him.

Read more:

When COVID-19 Puts Kids at Risk, Parents May Overreact - The Atlantic

The City and Borough of Juneau Emergency Operations Center reports 30 new individuals 26 residents and four nonresidents identified with COVID-19 in Juneau for August 12.

Of the resident cases, Public Health attributes 11 to secondary transmission, two to community spread, and the rest are under investigation. Two resident cases are part of the cluster associated with an out-of-town youth sports event. That cluster is now at 18 cases 15 are active, three are recovered. Of the four nonresidents, two are in the tourism sector and two are visitors; Public Health attributes three cases to secondary transmission and one to out-of-state travel.

Cumulatively, Juneau has had1,717 residentstest positive for COVID-19 and 215 nonresidents. There are 110 active cases and 1,816 individuals have recovered. All individuals with active cases of COVID-19 are in isolation. There are currently six people with COVID-19 hospitalized at Bartlett Regional Hospital.

Due to the volume of positive cases in Juneau, if youve received a positive COVID-19 test result and havent heard from Public Health, please contact Public Health at 465-3353.

Statewide, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services reports406 new people identified with COVID-19 378 are residents and 28 are nonresidents. The state also reports three deaths a female Ketchikan resident in her 80s, a male Anchorage resident in his 50s, and a male Wasilla resident in his 70s bringing the total number of resident deaths to 395. Alaska has had 76,030 cumulative resident cases of COVID-19 and a total of 3,455 nonresidents.

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CBJ reports 30 new COVID-19 cases in Juneau for Aug. 12 City and Borough of Juneau - City and Borough of Juneau

When covid is detected in sewage, students, staffers and faculty members are tested, which has allowed the school to identify and isolate infected individuals who aren't yet showing symptoms potentially stopping outbreaks in their tracks.

UC-San Diego's testing program is among hundreds of efforts around California and the nation to turn waste into valuable health data. From Fresno, California, to Portland, Maine, universities, communities and businesses are monitoring human excrement for signs of covid.

Researchers have high hopes for this sludgy new data stream, which they say can alert public health officials to trends in infections and doesn't depend on individuals getting tested. And because people excrete virus in feces before they show symptoms, it can serve as an early warning system for outbreaks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds the practice so promising that it has created a federal database of wastewater samples, transforming raw data into valuable information for local health departments. The program is essentially creating a public health tool in real time, experts say, one that could have a range of uses beyond the current global pandemic, including tracking other infectious diseases and germs' resistance to antibiotics.

"We think this can really provide valuable data, not just for covid, but for a lot of diseases," said Amy Kirby, a microbiologist leading the CDC effort.

The virus that causes covid infects many types of cells in the body, including those in the respiratory tract and gut. The virus's genetic signature, viral RNA, makes its way into feces, and typically shows up in poop days before symptoms start.

At UC-San Diego and other campuses, researchers take samples flowing from individual buildings, capturing such granular data that they can often deduce the number of infected people living or working there. But in most other settings, due to privacy concerns and resource constraints, testing is done on a much larger scale with the goal of tracking trends over time.

Samples are drawn from wastewater, which is what comes out of our sewer pipes, or sludge, the solids that have settled out of the wastewater. They are typically extracted mechanically or by a human with a dipper on the end of a rod.

When researchers in Davis, California, saw the viral load rise in several neighborhood sewage streams in July, they sent out text-message alerts and hung signs on the doors of 3,000 homes recommending that people get tested.

But when covid hit the U.S. amid political chaos and a shortage of tests, local governments scrambled for any information they could get on the virus.

In rural Lake County, California, health officials had identified a handful of cases by sending nurses out to look for infected people. They were sure there were more but couldn't get their hands on tests to prove it, so in spring 2020 they signed up for a free sewage testing program run by Biobot, which pivoted to covid testing as the pandemic took off and now is charging to test in K-12 schools, office buildings and nursing homes, in addition to local governments and universities, said Mariana Matus, CEO and co-founder of the company.

The covid virus turned up in samples at four wastewater treatment facilities in Lake County.

The test data alone doesn't provide much value to health officials it needs to be translated to be useful. Scientists are still learning how to read the data, a complicated process that involves understanding the relationships between how much virus people excrete, how many people are using a wastewater system and how much rainwater is running into the system, potentially diluting the sewage, among many other factors. Since using wastewater to track diseases was not widespread before the pandemic, there's been a steep and ongoing learning curve.

Beleaguered public health officials have struggled to incorporate the new data into their already overwhelming workloads, but the CDC hopes it can address those issues with its new national system that tracks and translates wastewater data for local governments.

"Every piece of this system had to be built largely from scratch," Kirby said. "When I look at that, it really amazes me where we are now."

In the months since the system debuted, it has been able to detect an uptick in cases anywhere from four to six days before diagnostic testing shows an increase, Kirby said.

She hopes that by the end of next year the federal monitoring program will be used to check for a range of diseases, including E. coli, salmonella, norovirus and a deadly drug-resistant fungus called Candida auris, which has become a global threat and wreaked havoc in hospitals and nursing homes.

It's in these smaller communities with limited access to testing and doctors where the practice may hold the most promise, Naughton said. Covid laid bare long-standing inequities among communities that she fears will be perpetuated by the use of this new public health tool.

Public health and wastewater officials said they are thrilled by the potential of this new tool and are working on ways to address privacy concerns while taking advantage of it. Greg Kester, director of renewable resource programs at the California Association of Sanitation Agencies, wrote to CDC officials in June 2020 asking for a federal surveillance network. He can hardly believe how quickly that call became a reality. And he hopes it is here to stay, both for the ongoing pandemic and for the inevitable next outbreak.

"As vaccination rates increase and we get the variants, it's still going to be important because clinical testing is decreasing," Kester said. "We really want to make this part of the infrastructure."

This story was produced by KHN (Kaiser Health News), a national newsroom that provides in-depth coverage of health issues and that is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KHN is the publisher of California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

Originally posted here:

Sewage is the latest disease detection tool for Covid-19 -- and more - CNN