COVID-19 News from Around the Web

Six states set records Sunday for the most Covid-19 patients hospitalized: Alabama, California, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina. Doctors say mass holiday travel will lead to even more patients -- a huge problem because many hospitals are already beyond capacity.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration said it screened 1.28 million passengers on Sunday at U.S. airports, the highest number since mid-March, when the coronavirus pandemic slashed travel demand. The number of U.S. air travelers is still about 50% lower than the same date last year, but Sunday was the sixth day in the last 10 that volume surpassed 1 million.

[Doctors] are reporting similar cases across the country and around the world. A small number of Covid patients who had never experienced mental health problems are developing severe psychotic symptoms weeks after contracting the coronavirus. … Beyond individual reports, a British study of neurological or psychiatric complications in 153 patients hospitalized with Covid-19 found that 10 people had “new-onset psychosis.” Another study identified 10 such patients in one hospital in Spain. And in Covid-related social media groups, medical professionals discuss seeing patients with similar symptoms in the Midwest, Great Plains and elsewhere..

The House voted to increase coronavirus disaster relief payments for Americans to $2,000 per person on Monday in a bid by Democrats to capitalize on political divisions among Republicans. The vote passed with the needed two-thirds majority in order to advance and was intended to make a point following President Trump's complaints that the relief legislation he signed on Sunday didn't pay enough in individual disbursements.

The Trump administration is scrambling to send one-time stimulus payments to millions of Americans starting as soon as this week, as the U.S. government races to implement a $900 billion coronavirus aid package that President Trump signed after days of delay. … The Treasury Department is able to move more swiftly than usual to deposit checks for as much as $600 into Americans’ bank accounts as a result of its earlier work this spring, when it disbursed larger sums under an earlier stimulus program. … It remains unclear, however, whether other obstacles might result in delays — particularly given the holiday week and its impact on staffing at major banks.

The coronavirus has exposed a weakness in many rural communities, where divisive pandemic politics is alienating some of their most critical residents — health care workers. … More than a quarter of all the public health administrators in Kansas quit, retired or got fired this year, according to Vicki Collie-Akers, an associate professor of population health at the University of Kansas. Some of them got death threats. Some had to hire armed guards.

His team analyzed data on 4,711 COVID-19 patients who were admitted to the Montefiore system between March 1 and April 16. ... Among patients who had brain imaging, 55 were diagnosed with stroke and 258 had confusion or altered thinking ability. Compared to the control group, patients with stroke were twice as likely to die (49% versus 24%) and patients with confusion also had a significantly higher risk of death (40% versus 33%), according to findings published online Dec. 18 in the journal Neurology.

In Detroit, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and even smaller Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Milwaukee, 2020 has been deadly not only because of the pandemic, but because gun violence is spiking. Authorities and some experts say there is no one clear-cut reason for the spike. They instead point to social and economic upheaval caused by the COVID-19 virus, public sentiment toward police following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody and a historic shortage of jobs and resources in poorer communities as contributing factors. It’s happening in cities large and small, Democrat and Republican-led.

After collecting billions of dollars in U.S. coronavirus aid, many of the nation’s wealthiest nonprofit hospitals are now tapping into disaster relief funds that critics say they don’t need. The money from FEMA is going to some large health systems that have billions of dollars in cash reserves and investments, according to government records reviewed by Reuters.

President Trump on Sunday abruptly signed a measure providing $900 billion in pandemic aid and funding the government through September, ending last-minute turmoil he himself had created over legislation that will offer an economic lifeline to millions of Americans and avert a government shutdown. The signing was a sudden reversal for the president, who last week appeared poised to derail the bill. But the move came after two critical unemployment programs lapsed, guaranteeing a delay in benefits for millions of unemployed Americans. … The aid bill includes a revival of expanded and extended unemployment benefits, billions of dollars to help states with coronavirus vaccine distribution, a replenished small-business loan program and relief money for airlines.

The European Union began a mass vaccination campaign on Sunday to eventually inoculate some 450 million people in 27 member-states against COVID-19. EU leaders have negotiated contracts for more than 2 billion vaccine doses from various suppliers. The first 200 million doses are of the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, which was co-developed by a husband-and-wife team in Mainz, Germany. … The EU hopes to vaccinate residents of all 27 member-states by the end of next year. Brussels has also secured doses of the vaccine for non-EU countries — including Iceland and Norway.

As 2020 nears its end, December has become the nation's deadliest month since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, claiming over 63,000 American lives. According to the COVID Tracking Project, December surpassed the previous record — held by April with over 55,000 deaths — on Dec. 23, as people began traveling for the holidays and cases started to surge.

According to the TSA, more than 1.1 million people were screened at airports on Wednesday, the day before Christmas Eve. A daily tally from the TSA shows that officials screened 1,191,123 people nationwide Thursday, the largest number of people to fly since March 16, when 1,257,823 people were screened, TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein announced.