Category: Covid-19

Los Angeles County Public Health officials released the following updated COVID-19 statistics Saturday:

ICU capacity for Southern California: 0.0%

New COVID-19 cases reported in L.A. County in the past 24 hours:15,701

Total COVID-19 cases in L.A. County: 806,210

New deaths related to COVID-19 reported: 138, including an unspecified amount associated with the Spectrum service outage and holiday weekend delays.

Total COVID-19 deaths in L.A. County: 10,682

Hospitalizations countywide: 7,627; 21% of whom are in the ICU.

Hospitalizations at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital as of Jan. 2: 98, with 705 discharged since the onset of the pandemic.

COVID-19 cases reported in the Santa Clarita Valley in the past 24 hours: 334, 264 of which came from the city of Santa Clarita.

Total COVID-19 cases in the SCV: 17,490

Total COVID-19 deaths in the SCV: 118, including one death reported from Henry Mayo officials Saturday.

The numbers of SCV cases, including all area health care providers daily figures and those at Pitchess Detention Center, broken down into region, are as follows:

City of Santa Clarita: 12,394

Unincorporated Acton: 279

Unincorporated Agua Dulce: 139

Unincorporated Bouquet Canyon: 26

Unincorporated Canyon Country: 514

Unincorporated Castaic: 2,986 (majority of Castaic cases come from Pitchess Detention Center, exact number unavailable)

Unincorporated Lake Hughes: 23

Unincorporated Newhall: 57

Unincorporated Placerita Canyon: 0

Unincorporated San Francisquito Canyon/Bouquet Canyon: 8

Unincorporated Sand Canyon: 10

Unincorporated Saugus: 91

Unincorporated Saugus/Canyon Country: 27

Unincorporated Stevenson Ranch: 637

Unincorporated Val Verde: 194

Unincorporated Valencia: 105

To view all coronavirus-related stories, visit signalscv.com/category/news/coronavirus.

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Public Health reports COVID-19 hospitalizations have increased by 850 in one week - Santa Clarita Valley Signal

COVID-19: DCPS employees 65 and older to receive vaccine from Florida Department of Health  ActionNewsJax.com

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COVID-19: DCPS employees 65 and older to receive vaccine from Florida Department of Health - ActionNewsJax.com

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NFL referee Clay Martin has been hospitalized with COVID-19.

According to the Tulsa World, via FootballZebras.com, the 45-year-old Martin was admitted to a hospital on Saturday. Martins family confirmed the hospitalization via a statement to the Tulsa World.

Martin originally was removed from action on December 21, the Monday night game between the Steelers and Bengals. Martin reportedly was asymptomatic at the time.

Referee Adrian Hill replaced Martin last week, with Hill working Fridays Vikings-Saints game and a game on Sunday. Hill, who was due to be off this weekend, also will replace Martin on Sunday.

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Referee Clay Martin is hospitalized with COVID-19 - NBC Sports

SALT LAKE CITY As the new year comes, one thing that will not be left in 2020 is the financial impact on small businesses that COVID-19 and shutdowns had.

We watched our traffic go from 20-50 people a day to zero, said, Darin Newell, co-owner of Exit Outdoors shop, which is about to close its Salt Lake City location.

He isnt alone. As of late last year, the consumer rating website Yelp reported that more than 167,000 businesses had marked their establishments as closed at some point in 2020 with nearly 100,000 of them being permanent.

If 5,000 people can go to a Costco in a day, why not 20 people come see a local business? Newell said. Hopefully this year people are more open to supporting local businesses just getting out there.

But it's too late for him and his Salt Lake City location.

As he spoke to FOX 13, Newell cheerfully greeted every person who walked through his doors and told them about his closing sale.

I saw that you guys were closing, one customer said as he walked through the door.

Yeah, it's a real bummer, man, Newell responded. Nothing we planned for.

It was a perfect storm of things that caused them to lose a lot of money during 2020 despite a general uptick in outdoor recreation.

"A lot of people have been excited to do more outdoor things, but the problem is we arent seeing an increase of people coming in," Newell said.

Next was the biggest financial impact: the cancellation of outdoor trade shows.

Thats how we got the money to get this inventory to get these stores going, he said. Trade shows are just canceling one by one.

Then just days after the cancellations of most major shows, Newell got the news that the resorts in Utah were shutting their doors for the season in March.

No ski resorts, no winter sales, he remarked and shrugged his shoulders.

But the most unexpected blow didnt come from the virus or anything related to it.

You can still see the cracks and everything they literally chained up the doors and ripped them out, Newell said, showing a customer the damage still left from a robbery that took around a year's rent worth of merchandise away from them.

People with garbage bags looking like Santa Claus just grabbing entire racks, he described. I mean, one whole rack of new jackets could have been four grand.

It was a childhood dream of Newell's to own an outdoor store, and he made it his own right here in Utah.

I grew up in Hawaii and I always wanted to have a really cool surf shop, he said. We tell people we're building a mountain-style surf shop for Utah.

Exit Outdoors still has one location left, and the plan is to sell everything they can, regroup at their other store, and then wait out the pandemic until they can regroup and start again.

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COVID-19 business impacts are here to stay despite optimism of new year - fox13now.com

Posted: Jan 2, 2021 / 09:15 PM CST / Updated: Jan 2, 2021 / 09:15 PM CST

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) Doctors are learning more about COVID-19 as the pandemic progresses. Experts say there are two types of positive responses that should help slow the spread of COVID-19: active immunity and passive immunity.

Dr. Jennifer Dillaha with the Arkansas Department of Health said passive immunity is when your body is using antibodies from somewhere else to fight the virus.

You can develop passive immunity through things like monoclonal antibody treatments or getting convalescent plasma. Dr. Dillaha said this immunity lasts between 60-90 days.

Active immunity is when your own body develop0s a natural immunity to the virus. This specifically comes from the vaccine.

Dr. Dillaha said they are still not sure how long this type of immunity lasts.

In COVID-19, were concerned that the immunity would wane enough for a person to get the disease again.

Dr. Dillaha said the ADH is confident active immunity will last longer than passive immunity, making vaccinations even more crucial right now.

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Two types of COVID-19 immunity explained - KNWA

City of Charlotte ends year with over 4,000 reported COVID-19 violations, other businesses look forward to 202  WBTV

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City of Charlotte ends year with over 4,000 reported COVID-19 violations, other businesses look forward to 202 - WBTV

(NewsNation Now) First it was Colorado. Then California. And now Florida.

A new variant of COVID-19, named B117, was found in the United Kingdom last month and has made its way to the United States.

The latest case was discovered in Martin County, Florida. Health officials say a man in his 20s with no history of travel was infected.

Researchers believe it is more contagious and spreading faster than what has been discovered in the U.S.

It is hard to put an exact number on it, but when you look at modeling studies people say it may be between twenty to fifty percent more contagious. But you have to take all of those numbers with a grain of salt because they are based on modeling, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, John Hopkins University.

Dr. Adalja says regular COVID-19 tests will not detect if a positive case is from the new variant of the virus; that takes additional testing.

He says scientists are sampling 3,500 of the regular tests per week and re-testing them for the variant to see how prevalent it is in different parts of the country.

It almost certainly is in other places throughout the United States. These cases had no travel history which tells you there is a chain of transmission in the United States I suspect we will find new variant cases all over the countryI think for the general population there is nothing to panic about, said Adalja. It does give you a reason to double your efforts to try and prevent yourself from getting exposed to this virus because this new variant does likely transmit more efficiently.

While the new variant is not more deadly from a disease perspective, Dr. Adalja says if more people are infected, more people will die.

The good news is scientists say the COVID-19 vaccines should be effective against the new variant.

They say the most important thing you can do is wear a mask, practice social distancing, and get vaccinated.

Another COVID-19 variant was discovered in South Africa that is different from the U.K. variant. Health officials there say it is responsible for a resurgence in cases and it is also believe to be more contagious.

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Regular COVID-19 tests cant detect which strain youre infected with - RochesterFirst

Jennifer Law and her husband, Matthew, at their wedding in 2008. He died of the virus in November.

Some feel unacknowledged, struggling to manage the aftermath of their partners deaths amid an unending health crisis.

It was really difficult for me because I felt like, man, Im all alone, said Pamela Addison, 37, a teacher in Waldwick, N.J. Her husband, Martin, a speech pathologist who worked in a hospital, died of the virus in April. If Covid wasnt here, all of our husbands would still be here.

Ms. Addison eventually sought out other Covid-19 widows to talk to, and other women have managed to find each other by joining Facebook bereavement groups, which are also open to men. They have forged ties similar to those found among other clusters of women whose husbands died unexpectedly and prematurely, including military spouses or widows of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The women on the Zoom call in July who live in the Chicago area have since become friends who meet for dinner and check in daily with quick texts.

Widows of the coronavirus recounted a painful set of commonalities: the experience of frantically taking care of their husbands when they fell ill, worrying about when to take them to a hospital and feeling haunted by the images of their partners dying without loved ones beside them.

The generation that Im from, we took care of our husbands thats how we were raised, said Mary Smith, of Pekin, Ill., who lost her 64-year-old husband, Mike, to the virus. That was our job, to be their cheerleader. Theyre used to having that, and all of a sudden youre not there.

After her husband died, she scrolled through his phone and found the lonely pictures he had snapped from his hospital bed. His food, in a cardboard container. The oxygen machines. A selfie as he wore breathing equipment.

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The Other Half of My Soul: Widows of Covid-19 Bond Over Sudden Loss - The New York Times

Chinese travelers at a railway station in Beijing, China, wear face masks to protect themselves from the new coronavirus on Jan. 21, 2020. The virus was first identified in Wuhan, China, in Dec. 2019, and since then has quickly spread worldwide. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images hide caption

Chinese travelers at a railway station in Beijing, China, wear face masks to protect themselves from the new coronavirus on Jan. 21, 2020. The virus was first identified in Wuhan, China, in Dec. 2019, and since then has quickly spread worldwide.

Exactly one year ago today, the World Health Organization first learned of a cluster of a few dozen pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China of "unknown" origin. The cause, of course, would turn out to be the coronavirus behind the current pandemic. Here's a by-the-numbers summary of the toll the virus has taken on countries across the globe since that fateful day.

For the first two months of the pandemic nearly all reported cases were in China. But after a massive lockdown in Wuhan and other provinces, China quickly turned the corner. Today it has one of the world's lowest casualty figures with less than 100,000 reported cases and less than 5,000 deaths, according to statistics maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

About Goats and Soda

Goats and Soda is NPR's global health and development blog. We tell stories of life in our changing world, focusing on low- and middle-income countries. And we keep in mind that we're all neighbors in this global village. Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Learn more about our team and coverage.

Yet even as China gained control over its outbreak, the virus was spreading exponentially in countries on every continent of the planet. And nowhere has the toll been more severe than in the United States. Today the U.S. ranks highest when it comes to both its total reported case count of 19.7 million and its death toll of more than 342,000. Even when countries are ranked by reported cases as a percentage of their population, the U.S. ranks in the top five. And the U.S. also currently has the highest number of daily new reported cases and daily new deaths.

When considered in purely numerical terms, other hard-hit countries include India with 10.3 million reported cases, Brazil with 7.6 million, Russia with 3.1 million, France with 2.7 million, the United Kingdom with 2.4 million, Turkey with 2.2 million, Italy with 2.1 million, Spain with 1.9 million and Germany with 1.6 million. Practically all of these countries also rank in the top 10 on the number of deaths. Brazil, for instance, has had more than 193,000, India more than 148,000. And practically all are currently seeing the world's highest numbers of new reported cases and deaths.

Several countries that don't make it into the top 10 tallies of cases and deaths still bear mentioning. In the Americas for instance, Colombia and Argentina now have about 1.6 million reported cases a piece. Mexico, with 1.4 million, is close behind. And Mexico also has one of the world's highest death tolls with nearly 125,000 lives lost to date. In the Middle East, Iran has fared particularly poorly with about 1.2 million cases and more than 55,000 deaths. And while it seemed for a time that African countries might escape the brunt of the pandemic, South Africa has now seen its total case count surpass 1 million.

Then there are nations where the case and death counts don't look as serious until they are considered as a share of the population. Countries where the virus has wrought this outsized impact include the Czech Republic, Belgium, Panama and Slovenia, where the caseload per capita ranges from 5,000 to 6,000 per 100,000 people as well as, when it comes to deaths per capita, Peru, where 116 people per 100,000 have died.

China is not the only nation that showed the coronavirus can be contained. Other standouts include South Korea, with about 60,000 cases and 900 deaths, and Vietnam, with 1,465 cases and just 35 deaths.

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The Year Of Pandemic: COVID-19 By The Numbers : Goats and Soda - NPR

The recipients were supposed to get their first doses of the Moderna vaccine on Wednesday at a clinic run by the Boone County Health Department, according to a statement from the West Virginia National Guard.

Instead, they were given a Regeneron antibody product, which is used to treat Covid-19.

"The moment that we were notified of what happened, we acted right away to correct it, and we immediately reviewed and strengthened our protocols to enhance our distribution process to prevent this from happening again," said Maj. Gen. James Hoyer, adjutant general of the West Virginia National Guard, in the statement.

The National Guard is leading the planning and logistics for distributing the vaccine.

The Boone County Health Department said it has notified the 42 people and offered to give them the Covid-19 vaccine on Thursday.

Officials said it was an isolated incident but did not explain how the mix-up occurred when reached for further comment.

Boone County is south of Charleston, the state capital.

The National Guard said that the Department of Health and Human Resources would follow up with those who received the antibodies as a precaution.

Dr. Clay Marsh, the state's Covid-19 czar, said there were no risks to the 42 people.

"The product administered are antibodies that fight COVID-19," Marsh said in the statement. "In fact, this product was the same one that was administered to President Trump when he became infected. While this injection is not harmful, it was substituted for the vaccine. But this occurrence provides our leadership team an important opportunity to review and improve the safety and process of vaccination for each West Virginian."

The National Guard said that 7,855 were vaccinated on Wednesday in West Virginia.

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Health officials in West Virginia mistakenly gave 42 people Covid-19 antibodies instead of the vaccine - CNN