11ALIVE -
January 6, 2021
COVID-19 News from Around the Web
Columbia Missourian -
January 6, 2021
CNN -
January 6, 2021
More than 3,770 American deaths were reported in one day -- more than two dozen above the country's previous record, set less than a week ago. The country also topped 21 million infections Tuesday and set a hospitalization record, with more than 131,100 Covid-19 hospitalized patients nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project. As numbers climb, governors are now taking new measures to get the distributed vaccines into arms faster, including mobilizing National Guard members and training more volunteers to administer vaccines.
AP -
January 6, 2021
The first Americans inoculated against COVID-19 began rolling up their sleeves for their second and final dose Monday, while Britain introduced another vaccine on the same day it imposed a new nationwide lockdown against the rapidly surging virus. … Over the weekend, U.S. government officials reported that vaccinations had accelerated significantly. As of Monday, the CDC said nearly 4.6 million shots had been dispensed in the U.S., after a slow and uneven start to the campaign, marked by confusion, logistical hurdles and a patchwork of approaches by state and local authorities.
CNN -
January 6, 2021
Almost 7,900 people are hospitalized with Covid-19 in just Los Angeles County. And 21% of them are in intensive care units, officials said Tuesday. The number of hospital patients grew by more than 200 from Monday.
Reuters -
January 6, 2021
Reuters identified 106 U.S. workplaces where employees complained of slipshod pandemic safety practices around the time of outbreaks - and regulators either never inspected the facilities or, in some cases, waited months to do so, according to the OSHA records. The agency never inspected 70 of those workplaces, where at least 4,500 workers were infected by the coronavirus and 26 died after contracting COVID-19, according to the Reuters analysis.
Kaiser Health News -
January 6, 2021
Covid-19 has taken an outsize toll on Black and Hispanic Americans. And those disparities extend to the medical workers who have intubated them, cleaned their bedsheets and held their hands in their final days, a KHN/Guardian investigation has found. People of color account for about 65% of fatalities in cases in which there is race and ethnicity data. One recent study found health care workers of color were more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to test positive for the virus. They were more likely to treat patients diagnosed with covid, more likely to work in nursing homes — major coronavirus hotbeds — and more likely to cite an inadequate supply of personal protective equipment, according to the report.
NPR -
January 6, 2021
Many patients who are hospitalized for COVID-19 are discharged with symptoms such as those associated with a brain injury. … But COVID-19 also appears to produce many other brain-related symptoms ranging from seizures to psychosis, a team reports in the Jan. 5 issue of the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia. The team … says severe COVID-19 may even increase a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. For many affected patients, brain function improves as they recover. But some are likely to face long-term disability, de Erausquin says.
HelathDay -
January 6, 2021
By Nov. 15 of last year, roughly 47 million Americans -- about 14.5% of the U.S. population -- had already been infected with the new coronavirus, a new study finds. That's much higher than the close to 11 million known U.S. cases of infection that were recorded by that date, the researchers said, because reported cases "do not represent the full SARS-CoV-2 disease burden." … "Findings of this study suggest that although more than 14% of the U.S. population was infected with SARS-CoV-2 by mid-November, a substantial gap remains before herd immunity can be reached," they reported Jan. 5 in JAMA Network Open.
HealthDay -
January 6, 2021
Stem cells derived from a baby's umbilical cord can help save the lives of the sickest COVID-19 patients, results from a small new clinical trial suggest. Severely ill COVID patients who received two intravenous doses of stem cells three days apart were much more likely to survive and recover quickly, researchers found. … After one month, 91% of patients in the stem-cell-treated group had survived compared to 42% in the control group. Among patients younger than 85 years old, everyone treated with stem cells survived.
Reuters -
January 5, 2021
December was the deadliest month of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States with nearly 78,000 deaths, and health officials warned that even more people will likely die in January despite the rollout of vaccines. In the week ended Jan. 3, more than 18,400 people died from COVID-19, bringing the pandemic’s total to over 351,000 deaths, or one in every 930 U.S. residents, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. The country reported nearly 1.5 million new infections last week, up 16.5% from the previous seven days.
BBC -
January 5, 2021
Everyone in England must stay at home except for permitted reasons during a new coronavirus lockdown expected to last until mid-February, the PM says. All schools and colleges will close to most pupils and switch to remote learning from Tuesday. Boris Johnson warned the coming weeks would be the "hardest yet" amid surging cases and patient numbers.
NPR -
January 5, 2021
Paramedics in Southern California are being told to conserve oxygen and not to bring patients to the hospital who have little chance of survival, as Los Angeles County grapples with a new wave of COVID-19 patients that is expected to get worse in the coming days. The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency issued a directive Monday that ambulance crews should only administer bottled oxygen to patients whose oxygen saturation levels fall below 90%. In a separate memo from the county's EMS Agency, paramedic crews have been told not to transfer patients who experience cardiac arrest unless spontaneous circulation can be restored on the scene.
NPR -
January 5, 2021
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday afternoon that the state had identified its first case of the U.K. variant of the coronavirus. Cuomo said the individual was a jewelry store worker in his 60s in Saratoga Springs who had no known travel history — suggesting community spread of the variant is happening. The man is now recovering, Cuomo said. The variant has already been identified in Colorado, California and Florida.
Kaiser Health News -
January 5, 2021
As covid-19 has spread from big cities to rural communities, it has stressed not only hospitals, but also what some euphemistically call “last responders.” The crush has overwhelmed morgues, funeral homes and religious leaders, required ingenuity and even changed the rituals of honoring the dead.
TIME -
January 5, 2021
“Our whole entire existence revolves around COVID right now,” Groenland says. But if the months since the pandemic began sweeping the country have been a challenge for school nurses, the coming weeks are likely to heap more strain and duties on them as students return from having celebrated the holidays. Many will have traveled and attended family gatherings, despite health experts’ warnings that this could spread the virus, and it will fall on people like Groenland to keep kids and school staff safe in districts where some or all classes are in-person.