Children are seen leaving school on a Friday after a nation-wide ban on large public gatherings to avoid coronavirus spreading in Amsterdam, Netherlands March 13, 2020. REUTERS/Eva Plevier
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AMSTERDAM, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Virologists in the Netherlands have proposed extending holidays over Christmas to slow a surge in COVID-19 cases among children that has forced half of schools nationwide to send classes home, but the government said it wanted to keep them open.
The National Institute for Health (RIVM) reported a record number of over 110,000 cases in the week to Nov. 16, an increase of 44% from the previous seven days. The strongest rise was among children aged 4-12.
Infections among children of primary school age, aged five to nine, jumped almost 85%, and among children aged 10-14 by 76%.
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"Keeping primary schools closed for longer is an effective way to keep the virus under control," immunologist Ger Rijkers told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper. "Children are virus factories and infect adults as well as each other."
However, Education Minister Arie Slob took a different stance, noting that most teachers had been vaccinated and most children only experienced mild symptoms of COVID-19.
"The cabinet has agreed to shield education as much as possible (from restrictions). I am convinced it is responsible to keep schools open," he said on Twitter.
The European Union's drug regulator is likely to disclose its view on the use of Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine in children aged 5 to 11 next week, Austria's health ministry said on Wednesday. read more
Around 85% of Dutch adults have been fully vaccinated, but infections have hit record levels in recent weeks after the government ended social distancing and other measures in September.
Authorities have reintroduced mask-wearing and reimposed a partial lockdown, with bars and restaurants closing at 8 p.m.
All 12 Dutch provinces will be dark red - the highest alert level - for the first time on a weekly chart published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control on Thursday.
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Reporting by Anthony Deutsch and Bart MeijerEditing by Gareth Jones
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) There were six new COVID-19 deaths reported in Thursdays update from the South Dakota Department of Health, bringing the total to 2,303, up from 2,297 on Wednesday.
The new deaths were four men and two women, all in the 80+ age group.
There were 486 new total COVID-19 cases reported on Thursday, bringing the states total case count to 161,960, up from Wednesday (161,474).
The number of active cases reported on Thursday is at 6,775, up from Wednesday (6,663).
Current hospitalizations are at 246, up from Wednesday (239). Total hospitalizations are at 8,233, up from 8,211 on Wednesday.
Total recovered cases are now at 152,882, up from Wednesday (152,514).
The DOH currently reports total tests each day. There have been 1,673,424 total tests reported as of Thursday, up 4,677 from 1,668,747 total tests reported on Wednesday.
The latest seven-day PCR test positivity rate for the state is 15.7% for Nov. 10 16.
Of South Dakotas 66 counties, 63 are listed as having high or substantial community spread. High community spread is 100 cases or greater per 100,000 or a 10% or greater PCR test positivity rate.
There have been 868 Delta variant cases (B.1.617.2, AY.1-AY.25) detected in South Dakota through sentinel monitoring, an increase of 38 over the previous report.
There have been 172 cases of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha variant), 3 cases of P.1. (Gamma variant) and 2 cases of the B.1.351 (Beta variant).
The DOH announced changes to how it reports vaccinations on the COVID-19 dashboard as of Monday, October 14. It now includes a breakout of how many people have received booster doses. Due to data clean-up efforts, the percentages of people whove received one dose or completed the series have changed. Findthe DOH explanation in this story.
As of Thursday, 70.08% the population 12-years-old and above has received at least one dose while 58.93% have completed the vaccination series. 13.90% of those eligible have completed their booster dose.
There have been 542,436 doses of the Pfizer vaccine administered, 387,000 of the Moderna vaccine and 32,628 doses of the Janssen vaccine.
There have been 165,102 persons who have completed two doses of Moderna. There have been 226,489 persons who have received two doses of Pfizer.
As for booster doses, 59,188 people have received a 3rd Pfizer shot, 39,003 have received a 3rd Moderna dose and 965 have received a Janssen booster.
The state is also reporting data for the number of children under 12 years of age who have received a vaccine. It shows 6,420 have gotten the vaccine, which is 4.38% of that population.
Syracuse, N.Y. -- Two more Onondaga County residents, including a woman in her 20s, died of Covid-19 over the past day, County Executive Ryan McMahon said.
The other death was a woman in her 70s, he said. Both had underlying conditions.
Since Oct. 1, McMahon said, 66 county residents have died of Covid-19. Of those, he said, 69% -- or 46 patients -- were not vaccinated. The other 20 people who died had been fully vaccinated.
McMahon noted that 84% of county residents 18 and older have been fully vaccinated while 16% have not. That means people in the smaller, unvaccinated group account for a large number of deaths here.
So that 16% is making up 69% of the deaths, he said at a news conference today.
Of the 24 Covid-19 patients in intensive care units today, he said, 79% are unvaccinated.
The vaccine continues to help those who get very sick, McMahon said. They do better than those who are unvaccinated.
The number of people in the hospital with Covid-19 today is 115, about the same as Wednesdays 116.
The county confirmed 271 new cases of Covid-19, the highest level since Oct. 30. The number of new cases over the past week is 50% higher than the previous week.
Cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all running higher this month than they were at the same time in November 2020. Experts attribute that to the higher contagiousness of the delta variant and to people getting together more and not wearing masks as much as last November.
In other Covid-19 news, McMahon said:
* So far, 2,900 children ages 5 to 11 have received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Thats a little under 10% of children of that age group.
* The county plans to ramp up testing for people with no symptoms next week in anticipation of Thanksgiving, when many residents will want to be tested just before seeing family members.
* Despite rising case numbers here, Onondaga County is faring better than others along the Thruway corridor. Onondaga Countys rate of cases over the past week is 42.6 per 100,000 population. Monroes is 46.6 cases per 100,000. Eries is 57.5 and Oneidas is 59.5.
READ MORE
McMahon to Onondaga County: Adults who feel at risk should get a Covid-19 booster
Covid-19 cases in New York state hit 7-month high
Hochul warns of more Covid-19 protocols if NYs infection numbers dont dip
Winter has a way of bringing out the worst of the coronavirus. Last year, the season saw a record surge that left nearly 250,000 Americans dead and hospitals overwhelmed around the country. This year, we are much better prepared, with effective vaccinesand, soon, powerful antiviralsthat defang the coronavirus, but cases seem to be on the rise again, prompting fears of another big surge.
How bad will it get? We are no longer in the most dangerous phase of the pandemic, but we also have not reached the end. So COVID-19s trajectory over the next few months will depend on three key unknowns: how our immunity holds up, how the virus changes, and how we behave. These unknowns may also play out differently state to state, town to town, but together they will determine what ends up happening this winter.
Here are the basic numbers: The U.S. has fully vaccinated 59 percent of the country and recorded enough cases to account for 14 percent of the population. (Though, given limited testing, those case numbers almost certainly underestimate true infections.) What we dont know is how to put these two numbers together, says Elizabeth Halloran, an epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. What percentage of Americans have immunity against the coronavirusfrom vaccines or infection or both?
This is the key number that will determine the strength of our immunity wall this winter, but its impossible to pin down with the data we have. This uncertainty matters because even a small percentage difference in overall immunity translates to a large number of susceptible people. For example, an additional 5 percent of Americans without immunity is 16.5 million people, and 16.5 million additional infections could mean hundreds of thousands more hospitalizations. Because unvaccinated people tend to cluster geographically and because many hospital intensive-care units run close to capacity even in non-pandemic times, it doesnt take very many sick patients to overwhelm a local health-care system.
Read: I think Im done
Whats happening in Europe, says Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, is also a red sign. Several countries in Western Europe, which are more highly vaccinated than the U.S., are already seeing spikes heading into winter. Cases in Germany, which has vaccinated nearly 70 percent of its population, have increased sharply, overwhelming hospitals and spurring renewed restrictions on the unvaccinated. The U.S. does have a bit more immunity from previous infections than Germany because its had bigger past COVID waves, but it still has plenty of susceptible people.
The strength of immunity also varies from person to person. Immunity from past infection, in particular, can be quite variable. Vaccine-induced immunity tends to be more consistent, but older people and immunocompromised people mount weaker responses. And immunity against infection also clearly wanes over time in everyone, meaning breakthrough infections are becoming more common. Boosters, which are poised to be available to all adults soon, can counteract the waning this winter, though we dont yet know how durable that protection will be in the long term. If the sum of all this immunity is on the higher side, this winter might be relatively gentle; if not, we could be in store for yet another taxing surge.
At the beginning of the pandemic, scientists thought that this coronavirus mutated fairly slowly. Then, in late 2020, a more transmissible Alpha variant came along. And then an even more transmissible Delta variant emerged. In a year, the virus more than doubled its contagiousness. The evolution of this coronavirus may now be slowing, but that doesnt mean its stopped: We should expect the coronavirus to keep changing.
Alpha and Delta were evolutionary winners because they are just so contagious, and the virus could possibly find ways to up its transmissibility even more. But as more people get vaccinated or infected, our collective immunity gives more and more of an edge to variants that can evade the immune system instead. Delta has some of this ability already. In the future, says Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, I think most fitness improvements are going to come from immune escape.
The Beta and Gamma variants also eroded immune protection, but they werent able to compete with the current Delta variant. There may yet be new variants that can. Whether any of this will happen in time to make a difference this winter is impossible to know, but it will happen eventually. This is just how evolution works. Other coronaviruses that cause the common cold also change every yearas does the flu. The viruses are always causing reinfections, but each reinfection also refreshes the immune systems memory.
Read: The coronavirus could get worse
A new variant could change the pandemic trajectory again this winter, but its not likely to reset the pandemic clock back to March 2020. We might end up with a variant that causes more breakthrough infections or reinfections, but our immune systems wont be totally fooled.
The coronavirus doesnt hop on planes, drive across state lines, or attend holiday parties. We do. COVID-19 spreads when we spread it, and predicting what people will do has been one of the biggest challenges of modeling the pandemic. Were constantly surprised when things are messier and weirder, says Jon Zelner, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan.
The Delta wave in the Deep South over the summer, for example, ebbed in the late summer and early fall even though many COVID restrictions didnt come back. If anything, you might have expected cases to rise at that moment, because schools full of unmasked and unvaccinated children were reopening. So what happened? One possible explanation is that people became more careful with masking and social distancing as they saw cases rising around them. More people in the South did get vaccinated, though the rates still lag behind those in the highly vaccinated Northeast. Are surges self-limiting because people are modifying their behavior in response to recent surges? Cobey says. Thats just a really open question. Weather may also drive behavior; as temperatures cooled down in the South, people might have spent more time outdoors.
Another possible factor in ending the summer surge is that the virus may have simply infected everyone it could find at the timebut that is not the same as saying it has infected everyone in those states. The coronavirus doesnt spread evenly across a region, like ink through water. Instead, it has to travel along networks of connection between people. COVID-19 can run through an entire household or workplace, but it cant jump to the next one unless people are moving in between them. By sheer chance, the coronavirus may find some pockets of susceptible people but not others in any given wave. Theres a kind of randomness to it, Zelner says. This winter, we should expect a local flare-up every time the virus finds a pocket of susceptibility. But its hard to predict exactly when and where that will happen. The countrys current COVID hot spots are Michigan, Minnesota, and New Mexico, three states with no obvious connection among them.
Read: America has lost the plot on COVID
By winters end, the U.S. will emerge with more immunity than it has noweither through infection or, much preferable, through vaccinating more people. To me, this winter is the last stand, Zelner says. However these three unknowns play out this winter, COVID will eventually begin to fade as a disruptive force in our lives as it becomes endemic. Were not quite there yet, but our second pandemic winter will bring us one step closer.
Maine is reporting 933 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, and 11 additional deaths, a day after the state expanded eligibility to everyone 18 and older to receive booster shots against the deadly virus.
The seven-day average of daily new cases stood at 535.4 on Thursday, compared to 558.3 a week ago and 527.6 a month ago.
Since the pandemic began, Maine has logged 114,065 cases of COVID-19, and 1,254 deaths.
Maine currently has the 22nd-highest cases per capita in the United States, with a daily average of 37.6 cases per 100,000 population over the past seven days, compared to the national daily average of 27 cases per 100,000, according to the Harvard Global Health Institute. Michigan and Minnesota are currently the hardest-hit states, with cases averaging about 75 cases per 100,000. Florida and Hawaii currently have the lowest cases per capita, at about 7 cases per 100,000 population.
Previously, boosters were recommended only for those 65 and older or those with immunodeficiencies, or for adults who originally received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. A federal advisory panel is set to review data Friday on the benefits of expanding booster eligibility, but Maines governor said the state is not waiting. Four other states Colorado, California, New Mexico, and Arkansas have opened eligibility as well.
Maines strong vaccination rate is saving lives and reducing hospitalizations and deaths, said Jeanne Lambrew, Maines health and human services commissioner, in a statement on Wednesday. But, with the continued surge of the delta variant, we must do all we can to protect Maine people from this deadly virus and ease the burden on our health care workers. Now, every Maine adult can get a booster shot to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their communities.
Cases have started to increase again across the country, stoking fears of another deadly wave as the holiday season approaches. According to the U.S. CDC, the seven-day case average is 83,671, an 11 percent increase from 75,186 cases on average two weeks earlier. Deaths are still averaging more than 1,000 per day across the country and more than 760,000 people have lost their lives to the virus since the pandemic began.
On the vaccination front, 952,425 Maine people have received their final dose of the vaccine, representing 70.9 percent of the states 1.3 million population.
With the rollout of vaccination for children ages 5-11 continuing into its third week, 16.8 percent of elementary schoolchildren in Maine have received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, which was approved in early November by federal regulators. In Cumberland County, where uptake of the vaccine is highest, 29 percent of children ages 5-11 have received their first dose, while rural counties such as Piscataquis, Somerset and Washington counties, less than 6 percent of elementary schoolchildren have gotten their first shot.
This story will be updated
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With Thanksgiving approaching and COVID-19 cases rising again nationwide, the NFL on Tuesday night issued a memo to its teams detailing changes to its COVID-19 protocols, including mandatory testing for all players and staff the Monday and Wednesday after the holiday and mandatory mask-wearing for all players and staff while inside club facilities from Nov. 25 through Dec. 1.
The memo, a copy of which was obtained by ESPN, also establishes new requirements for surveillance cameras in team facilities for the purpose of enforcing COVID-19 protocols. The memo says the league has been "periodically reviewing footage from surveillance cameras in club facilities to ensure Protocol compliance. Discipline has been issued against individual players and clubs as warranted."
Effective Nov. 29, all NFL teams will be required to have video cameras installed in their weight rooms and cafeterias, including weight rooms that are outdoors or in practice bubbles. Teams must retain video from those cameras for 30 days in case the league requests to view it for the purpose of finding out whether people are following mask requirements at team facilities.
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NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills said that 81 players and staff members tested positive for COVID-19 during the latest testing period, Oct. 31-Nov. 13, the highest caseload of the season. From Sept. 5 through Oct. 30, a total of 97 players and staff members tested positive, and the surge that followed sparked the decision to elevate testing and masking policies.
"That wasn't a total surprise to us," Sills said. "Because we've said our numbers in the NFL reflect what's going in our communities around us. We saw more disease in a number of areas of the country that are really spiking with caseloads. We're seeing and feeling the effect of that."
The league is testing roughly 6,500 people in each testing period.
The memo seems especially concerned about Thanksgiving. It says NFL teams "are strongly encouraged to offer drive-through testing" for friends and family of staff and players who will be staying or visiting with them for the holiday. "Such testing should be conducted before friends and family interact with players and staff."
All Tier 1 and Tier 2 individuals, regardless of vaccination status, will be Mesa [rapid PCR] tested on Monday, Nov. 29, and Wednesday, Dec. 1. Under the current protocols, unvaccinated players must be tested every day and wait for their test results to come back negative before they are allowed to enter the building, while vaccinated players and staff are tested once a week and do not have to wait for their results before entering. For the week after Thanksgiving, vaccinated individuals will be tested on Monday and Wednesday.
The memo also offers reminders about how testing procedures are expected to be conducted and about the requirements for mask-wearing for all members of the team traveling party while on buses or airplanes.
Meanwhile, Sills said the NFL and NFLPA have launched a voluntary study of COVID-19 antibody levels among vaccinated players and staff to get a better idea of whether immunity is waning. The results could inform a booster shot protocol later in the season, but for now the league is telling clubs to follow state and local guidelines on booster shots.
ESPN's Kevin Seifert contributed to this report.
Throughout the pandemic, the highest COVID-19 case rates and the lowest vaccination rates in the country have been found in persistently poor rural counties, the USDA said Wednesday in its annual Rural America at a Glance report. Those counties have also had low unemployment rates, suggesting residents continued to work despite the risk of infection by the coronavirus, said the report.
This situation could be related to industry dependence. For example, a disproportionate share of rural meatpacking-dependent counties also are persistently poor, said the report from the Economic Research Service. A county is ranked as persistently poor if at least 20% of its residents live at or below the federal poverty line for four consecutive national censuses.
In the first 18 months of the pandemic, persistently poor counties had a cumulative 16,751 weekly COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents, said the report. Urban counties that were not persistently poor had the lowest cumulative rate: 12,929 cases per 100,000 residents.
By early October, the vaccination rate in urban counties had reached 53%, while the vaccination rate in rural counties was about 42%, said the USDA report. Vaccination rates for persistently poor counties were the lowest in the nation, at 41.7%. TheDaily Yondersaid the urban/rural gap was 12 points last week, with 57% of urban Americans vaccinated compared to 45% of rural Americans.
Roughly 5.7 million of the 46 million rural Americans live in persistently poor counties. Those counties have lost nearly 6% of their population since 2010. During the same period, the overall U.S. population grew 7.4%.
The Rural America at a Glance report isavailable here.
How Detroit Red Wings must right themselves amid COVID-19 scare Detroit Free Press
Flawed COVID-19 testing protocols for international travel need to be fixed immediately
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President Joe Biden removes his mask to deliver remarks on the importance of COVID-19 vaccine requirements in Elk Grove Village, Ill., October 7, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
On the menu today: Its easily overlooked, but yesterday, we quietly entered Year Three of the COVID-19 pandemic. Certain voices in the media are worried that families gathering for Thanksgiving dinner next week will be reckless and risky, but in most of the country, a small rise in COVID-19 cases is occurring alongside a slight decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations and a larger decline in COVID-19 deaths. That said, there are some crowded hospitals right now in places such as Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
A Disquieting Anniversary
My younger sons science teacher told him yesterday that it was the two-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 case. That teacher is correct, at least as far as we know, in the sense that the South China Morning Post reported in March 2020 that the Chinese government believed the first known patient was a 55-year-old Hubei province resident, diagnosed on November 17, 2019. Because the Chinese government never shared that information, no one can independently verify it. So Patient Zero who started the pandemic might have been that 55-year-old Hubei province resident, or it could be someone else, such as the three researchers from Chinas Wuhan Institute of Virology who became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care and who lost their sense of smell. But hey, maybe its just a big strange coincidence! Big strange coincidences always seem to happen involving the Chinese government!
Dont Fear Thanksgiving . . . Unless Youre a Turkey
As we start Year Three of the COVID-19 pandemic, a minor rise in cases has a bunch of media voices warning that the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday is a potential disaster.
Holiday COVID alarm as cases rise 20 percent, warns Axios.
Were Having a Holiday Gathering. Are We Nuts? asks the New York Times.
Philadelphia Health Officials Concerned Region Could See New Wave Of COVID-19 Cases As Holidays Approach, reports the Philadelphia CBS affiliate.
But these warnings and expressions of concern are focusing on the measuring stick of an increase in the daily rate of new cases, and as I try to emphasize, over and over again, cases are no longer the most useful measuring stick for the severity and risk of this pandemic.
COVID-19 and the Delta variant are going to keep jumping around from person to person for the foreseeable future. A vaccinated person can still catch COVID-19, and they can still carry it and spread it to others. Vaccinations primary objective is to prevent you from having a severe reaction to the virus up to and including death if you do catch it. While vaccinated and unvaccinated people carry a comparable viral load how much of the virus is in their systems a recent study indicated that the viral load decreased faster for fully vaccinated people with a Delta infection than for unvaccinated people. The less time the virus is in your system, the less likely you are to spread it to someone else.
In the majority of cases, vaccinated people who get exposed to COVID-19 are either asymptomatic or have minor, manageable symptoms. The country has had more than 48 million diagnosed COVID-19 cases by now.
The more useful measuring sticks for the severity of the pandemic are hospitalizations and deaths. COVID-19 hospitalizations are down 1 percent in the past two weeks, and COVID-19 deaths are down 14 percent in the past two weeks. Right now, the U.S. has about 49,000 hospital beds being used by COVID-19 patients; back in early September, that number was about 95,000. In early January, it was about 125,000 on any given day.
In most of the country, hospitals have plenty of capacity to handle any post-Thanksgiving surge, but Ill get to the exceptions in a moment.
As of this morning, 76.7 percent of the countrys hospital beds are in use, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That means 23 percent are open thats plenty of room. (Remember, hospitals dont like to have a lot of unused capacity because that creates financial problems. They need patients in those beds to pay for all of those doctors and nurses and MRI machines and all of the other considerable expenses that come with running a hospital.) Whats more, across the country, just 6.9 percent of hospital beds are in use by COVID-19 patients. A similar percentage of ICU beds are in use, and 15 percent of ICU beds are in use by COVID-19 patients.
When you look at the New York Times color-coded-by-county national map of cases per 100,000 people the one that confused Charles Blow so much you see the southeastern states are still light yellow, and a patchy line of oranges and reds and dark reds from Arizona and New Mexico, up through Colorado and Kansas, patches of Nebraska and the Dakotas, and looking intense and dark in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and stretching into western Pennsylvania and New York. Also note that for the first time in a long time, the northern areas of New England are turning darker, indicating a higher number of cases proportional to the population size.
Some of those states have Republican governors, and some of them have Democratic ones. States with high vaccination rates have lots of cases at the moment, while states with not-so-impressive vaccination rates have low numbers of cases in large part because the Delta variant already swept through in late summer. Vermont has some counties with more than 100 cases per 100,000 residents, despite the fact that more than 82 percent of its residents have at least one dose. Louisiana has just 54.7 percent of residents with at least one dose of a vaccine, but only one Louisiana county has more than 50 cases per 100,000 residents right now.
As the virus spreads around a population more, and cases go up, the odds of the virus jumping into someone who is unvaccinated, elderly, immunocompromised, has comorbidities, or has some combination of all of these traits increase as well and those are generally the people who end up in the hospital.
While most of the countrys hospitals have plenty of capacity, there are trouble spots, including Colorado:
There are only about 100 intensive care unit beds available in hospitals across the state, and more than 90 percent of them are filled many by coronavirus patients.
It is the busiest and the most stressful Ive ever seen it in 15 years of medicine, said Dr. Eric Hill, a physician at the Medical Center of Aurora.
Its a little disheartening at times, because we listen to the national news and hear about everyone is doing better, and that is not our experience in Colorado. The numbers are on the rise and the challenges are real, said Dr. Matt Mendenhall, an emergency room doctor.
Another state of concern is Minnesota, and note that part of the surge there stems from patients who delayed regular care during the pandemic:
Statewide, only about 3 percent of ICU beds were available Friday, along with less than 5% of non-ICU beds, according to the Minnesota Department of Health Response Capacity Dashboard.
Some hospitals report, on any given day, the situation may be even more dire than the statewide data shows.
Weve been 100 percent full for more than a month, said Dr. Bret Haake, vice president of medical officers and chief medical officers at Regions Hospital, part of the HealthPartners system. Everybody is as full or more full than theyve ever been in the history of their organizations.
Hospitals are seeing a wide range of medical issues, including people suffering complications due to putting off standard health care during the pandemic.
Also keep an eye on corners of Michigan . . .
(All) mid-Michigan hospitals (and most across the state) are experiencing high patient volumes right now, Hurley spokeswoman Peggy Agar said in a Tuesday, Nov. 16 email to MLive-The Flint Journal. Our capacity numbers on the state website reflect the number of beds available given the amount of staff we have currently available to provide the best care possible.
And Wisconsin is seeing a surge as well:
According to the state Department of Health Services, in the northwest hospital region, over 85 percent of total hospital beds are in use, and only about 2 percent of all ICU beds are readily available.
Eau Claire area hospitals have fallen victim to the sudden rise in need as well. At Mayo Clinic in Eau Claire, the number of patients has gone up about 25 percent in just the last two weeks, and its ICU has already had to send patients warranting admission to other hospitals.
A similar story is being seen at Marshfield Clinic in Eau Caire. Its been at or near capacity over the last two weeks.
Oddly, as parts of Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin feel strain on their hospitals after nearly a year of vaccination efforts, I dont see much media coverage comparing Jared Polis, Tim Walz, Gretchen Whitmer, or Tony Evers to governor Ron Deathsantis down in Florida. Why, its almost like these derisive labels are applied out of partisan animus instead of the actual conditions on the ground.
ADDENDUM: I find, as time goes by, that more and more of the news stories I focus upon are the ones that are so shocking and horrible, many other people dont want to believe that they are true. They suggest that we are much less safe, and that those who govern us are much less competent, than we want to believe or than we may need to believe, in order to go about our daily lives without overwhelming anxiety.
Theres considerable circumstantial evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic is the result of work conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The U.S. government chose to leave American citizens and green-card holders behind in Afghanistan and left loyal Afghan allies to die at the hands of the Taliban.
Now we can add another grim story to the list: The former vice premier of China or someone aiming to protect his image or the Chinese Communist Partys appears to have either abducted or otherwise silenced a former tennis star after she went public with her accusations that he coerced her into sex, and as of this writing, no one knows if shes dead or alive.
