CNN -
December 2, 2020
The US reported the second highest day of Covid-19 deaths Tuesday, as rising hospitalizations signal even more deaths in the coming weeks. There were 2,597 new deaths reported across the US, bringing the total death toll to 270,642 in a pandemic that has infected more than 13.7 million people, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The only day to top it was April 15, when six more deaths were recorded.
Reuters -
December 2, 2020
U.S. officials on Tuesday unveiled plans to begin vaccinating millions of Americans against COVID-19 as early as mid-December, as coronavirus infections and hospitalizations in the US soared once more to unprecedented heights. … [the chief adviser of] Operation Warp Speed program said on Tuesday that 20 million people could be inoculated by the end of 2020, and that by the middle of 2021 most Americans will have access to highly effective vaccines. “Within 24 hours, maybe at most 36 to 48 hours, from the approval, the vaccine can be in people’s arms,” Moncef Slaoui, a former GlaxoSmithKline executive, said...
NBC News -
December 2, 2020
Stefan Hofer's ambulance company, West Traill EMS, in Mayville, North Dakota, has received only one or two calls that weren’t related to Covid-19 over the past two months. But he said the case count has ballooned by 20 to 30 percent because of the pandemic. … Private EMS services, both in urban and rural centers across the country, collectively received $350 million in Covid-19 relief funds in April, but those companies said that money ran out within weeks. Months later, the need remains great as they face another coronavirus surge.
ProPublica -
December 2, 2020
As the number of COVID-19 cases skyrockets nationwide, the extent of the public health response varies from one state — and sometimes one town — to the next. … Nowhere are these regulatory disparities more counterproductive and jarring than in the border areas between restrictive and permissive states; for example, between Washington and Idaho, Minnesota and South Dakota, and Illinois and Iowa. In each pairing, one state has imposed tough and sometimes unpopular restrictions on behavior, only to be confounded by a neighbor’s leniency.
HealthDay -
December 2, 2020
In a new study, researchers in Chicago analyzed discarded tissue from COVID-19 patients who had lung transplants and from patients who died of the disease. They found that COVID-19 can destroy the "fundamental framework" of the lungs, meaning the organs simply cannot recover. And that means a patient's treatment choices become very limited.
Kaiser Health News -
December 2, 2020
Workplace safety regulators have taken a lenient stance toward employers during the pandemic, giving them broad discretion to decide internally whether to report worker deaths. As a result, scores of deaths were not reported to occupational safety officials from the earliest days of the pandemic through late October. KHN examined more than 240 deaths of health care workers profiled for the Lost on the Frontline project and found that employers did not report more than one-third of them to a state or federal OSHA office, many based on internal decisions that the deaths were not work-related — conclusions that were not independently reviewed.
Reuters -
December 1, 2020
The US recorded 10,000 coronavirus deaths and over 1.1 million new cases last week, although state and health officials have said the Thanksgiving holiday likely caused numbers to be under-reported. New cases fell 3.8% in the week ended Nov. 29, while deaths fell 3.9%, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. Many testing centers were closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving and some private labs had reduced staffing or were closed on Friday, according to state and health officials. They said that figures for cases and deaths this week may be abnormally high due to a backlog of data from last week.
AP -
December 1, 2020
Health experts had pleaded with Americans to stay home over Thanksgiving and not gather with anyone who didn’t live with them. Nevertheless, almost 1.2 million people passed through U.S. airports Sunday, the most since the pandemic gripped the country in March, and others took to the highways to be with family and friends.
CNN -
December 1, 2020
A record-high 93,238 Covid-19 patients were hospitalized in the US as of Sunday, according to the Covid Tracking Project. California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday told reporters that the intensive care unit bed capacity in the state might reach 112% by Christmas Eve, if the trend of surging coronavirus cases continues.
Reuters -
December 1, 2020
U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine could be authorized and shipped within days of a Dec. 10 meeting of outside advisers to the FDA tasked with reviewing trial data and recommending whether it warrants approval. A vaccine from Moderna Inc could follow a week later ... “So we could be seeing both of these vaccines out and getting into people’s arms before Christmas,” Azar said on CBS’ “This Morning.” The federal government will ship the vaccines. State governors will decide how they are distributed within their states.
Fox News -
December 1, 2020
Atlas, who spoke with the president on Monday, joined the administration in August, and was considered a Special Government Employee (SGE), serving a 130-day detail. Atlas’ role is set to expire this week. …Atlas, during his tenure, sparred with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Over the summer, CDC Director Robert Redfield reportedly criticized Atlas, claiming that “everything he says is false.”
AP -
December 1, 2020
Few people showed up at the mall this weekend, with millions of pandemic-wary shoppers staying home to shop online. The result? Overall holiday sales are projected to rise a slight 0.9% in November and December — and even that modest gain will be due to an explosion in online shopping, according to the research firm eMarketer. It expects online sales to jump nearly 36%, while sales at physical stores fall 4.7%.
NPR -
December 1, 2020
With their savings running out, many Americans are being forced to use credit cards to pay for bills they can't afford — even their rent. Housing experts and economists say this is a blinking-red warning light that without more relief from Congress, the economy is headed for even more serious trouble. There's been as much as a 70% percent increase from last year in people paying rent on a credit card, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
Kaiser Health News -
December 1, 2020
Although no one tracks medical closures, recent research suggests they number in the thousands. A survey by the Physicians Foundation estimated that 8% of all physician practices nationally — around 16,000 — have closed under the stress of the pandemic. … And many more teeter on the economic brink, experts say.
NPR -
December 1, 2020
The virus and the illness that it causes, COVID-19, was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, but it wasn't until Jan. 19 that the first confirmed COVID-19 case, from a traveler returning from China, was found in the U.S. However, new findings published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases suggest that the coronavirus, known officially as SARS-CoV-2, had infected people in the U.S. even earlier.
NPR -
December 1, 2020
A sweeping new review of national test data suggests the pandemic-driven jump to online learning has had little impact on children's reading growth and has only somewhat slowed gains in math. That positive news comes from the testing nonprofit NWEA and covers nearly 4.4 million U.S. students in grades three through eight. But the report also includes a worrying caveat: Many of the nation's most vulnerable students are missing from the data.