We're breaking down the trends and relaying information from across the state.
ATLANTA We're breaking down the trends and relaying information from across the state of Georgia as it comes in, bringing perspective to the data and context to the trends.
Visit the 11Alive coronavirus page for comprehensive coverage, find out what you need to know about Georgia specifically, learn more about the symptoms, and keep tabs on the cases around the world.
State and federal officials with the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are continually monitoring the spread of the virus. They are also working hand-in-hand with the World Health Organization to track the spread around the world and to stop it.
Appling 2797 95
Atkinson 1188 32
Baldwin 5286 167
Barrow 13173 192
Bartow 15547 315
Ben Hill 1867 70
Berrien 1542 50
Bleckley 1098 40
Brantley 1896 75
Bulloch 7934 98
Candler 1109 49
Carroll 10065 156
Catoosa 8513 93
Charlton 1739 43
Chatham 33309 657
Chattahoochee 5266 15
Chattooga 3704 89
Cherokee 31794 443
Clarke 17549 176
Clayton 35399 711
Cobb 85800 1296
Coffee 6347 185
Colquitt 5548 131
Columbia 14762 251
Coweta 12868 340
Crawford 837 37
DeKalb 80779 1221
Decatur 3478 78
Dougherty 9139 385
Douglas 17710 249
Effingham 7023 151
Emanuel 2697 72
Fayette 9818 216
Floyd 15557 306
Forsyth 27176 269
Franklin 3295 68
Fulton 112519 1664
Gilmer 3534 119
Glynn 12398 302
Gordon 8771 175
Gwinnett 113233 1396
Habersham 6452 193
Hancock 1000 75
Haralson 2396 47
Henry 29219 478
Houston 16183 289
Jackson 12938 205
Jeff Davis 1816 44
Jefferson 1861 67
Johnson 1024 52
Laurens 5843 203
Liberty 6639 98
Lowndes 11067 228
Lumpkin 4475 93
Madison 4239 69
McDuffie 2268 61
McIntosh 1395 28
Meriwether 2208 99
Mitchell 2181 89
Monroe 2811 118
Montgomery 1146 39
Murray 6336 132
Muscogee 20973 569
Newton 11303 318
Non-GA Resident/Unknown State 32309 759
Oglethorpe 1716 42
Paulding 16635 252
Pickens 3632 91
Randolph 603 39
Richmond 26721 585
Rockdale 9085 221
Screven 1351 35
Seminole 1214 23
Spalding 6852 273
Stephens 4559 109
Stewart 1331 28
Sumter 2803 127
Taliaferro 128 3
Tattnall 2690 72
Thomas 6060 163
Toombs 4416 152
Treutlen 890 45
Walker 9707 120
Walton 11146 315
Washington 2366 79
Whitfield 19382 319
Wilkinson 1110 41
Tag yourself. (Im the one getting COVID-19.) Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Lots of fathers are testifying about their experiences getting COVID these days.
My wife and kids and friends keep phoning to make sure Im still breathing, though secretly Im delighted that I have an ironclad excuse to see nobody, do nothing, go nowhere, wrote Bret Stephens in the New York Times today. He has a mild illness and is at home taking care of that illness! This is a very reasonable and rational response to a health situation.
There are other ways to be, though. Do not try them yourself!
Maybe reading about my mistakes can help you with your decisionmaking, wrote Alexis Madrigal on social media, introducing his recent story in The Atlantic about getting COVID. It certainly has! I am now further committed to hanging out with friends, going to awesome parties, and seeing terrible movies like Eternals, which was really awful, and if I got COVID in that theater, Im going to be so pissed.
Brother Madrigal writes that he went to a wedding, he came home and tested positive, his spouse took up the work of dealing with the kids alone while he isolated, he was mildly ill, then everything was fine, just as the vaccines hath foretold.
And yet he felt bad. He had failed his family by getting ill.I blame no one but myself for this, Madrigal wrote.
Other heterosexual family men are presenting their tales of health infidelity and failure with less blame assigned to themselves because, in their cases, the coronavirus came home via their very young children and the children are always innocent.
T.J. Muehleman, a data technologist in Seattle who also works on COVID projects, recently told his story on Twitter; Will Oremus, a tech writer, told his too but began with a reasonable point: that he hoped it would push parents to get their kids vaccinated and to get booster shots themselves. (Children ages 5 to 11 are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated.)
If we learned nothing from the AIDS pandemic and we did learn maybe a couple things, which made possible a speedier treatment pipeline, for one its that even those of us who are wildly, delightedly promiscuous dont deserve diseases. Yet were still incapable of making sane assessments about risks, fault, cause, and blame.
Every disease has its associations The tubercular is someone consumed by ardor, wrote Susan Sontag in Illness As Metaphor. COVID, it looks like, is mostly associated with incaution. If you were just even a bit more careful, more responsible, then your spouse wouldnt have to pick up the slack while you isolate and your kids would be safer.
But 5 million people didnt die because they werent responsible enough. (I will hear arguments about the relatively small number who had access to vaccines and chose not to get them, however.) Many of them did die because weve made bad decisions about wealth, poverty, global warming, and health care. Why isnt anyone feeling ashamed about that?
Madrigals confessions, at least, make for a real hate-read. A brilliant satire of the widespread COVID psychosis that grips many wealthy American liberals, wrote one of Murdochs Australian wackos, who is, unfortunately, quite rude but correct.
Im not happy about the fact that Im going to get COVID. I love smelling dumb food. Mostly, I hope that when it happens to me, I dont harm any of my immunocompromised friends, because this endless slog is really messing up their lives and its not fair to them. I will absolutely work to protect them, and you all should get your kids vaccinated and get yourself boostered so they can have a fuller life sooner.
But very preliminary data from one state suggests I have a .004 percent chance of dying if I get COVID. Thats about the chance I take of dying every time I eat a hot dog. Maybe I have COVID right now!Just two months ago, I was never going to shake hands again. A friend showed me her move clasp the hands in front of your chest and do a little namaste head nod. This is not a good look for a middle-aged white man, and now I am shaking hands with vigor like Buddy Garrity on Friday Night Lights.
Nearly every member of Americas favorite Evangelical Republican Texan real-estate-broker, milk-consuming family you remember them from last week, when everyone lost their minds because they told CNN they bought 12 gallons of milk a week for their nine children had COVID, save one of the kiddos.
To protect this last of their children from the disease, when the father of the milk-loving pack had extremely severe and extended COVID symptoms not long ago, the family members did what any real American family would do: They simply isolated Dad in their pool house until he was better. No shame there.
Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.
Over the past year, coronavirus vaccines have gone into billions of human arms and into the fuzzy haunches of an arks worth of zoo animals. Jaguars are getting the jab. Bonobos are being dosed. So are orangutans and otters, ferrets and fruit bats, and, of course, lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!).
Largely left behind, however, are two creatures much closer to home: domestic cats and dogs.
Pet owners have noticed.
I get so many questions about this issue, Dr. Elizabeth Lennon, a veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania, said. Will there be a vaccine? When will there be a vaccine?
Technically, a pet vaccine is feasible. In fact, several research teams say that they have already developed promising cat or dog vaccines; the shots that zoo animals are receiving were initially designed for dogs.
But vaccinating pets is simply not a priority, experts said. Although dogs and cats can catch the virus, a growing body of evidence suggests that Fluffy and Fido play little to no role in its spread and rarely fall ill themselves.
A vaccine is quite unlikely, I think, for dogs and cats, Dr. Will Sander, a veterinarian at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said. The risk of disease spread and illness in pets is so low that any vaccine would not be worth giving.
In February 2020, a woman in Hong Kong was diagnosed with Covid-19. Two other people in her home soon tested positive for the virus, as did one unexpected member of the household: an elderly Pomeranian. The 17-year-old dog was the first pet known to catch the virus.
But not the last. A German shepherd in Hong Kong soon tested positive, too, as did cats in Hong Kong, Belgium and New York. The cases were exceedingly mild the animals had few or no symptoms and experts concluded that humans had spread the virus to the pets, rather than vice versa.
To date, there hasnt been any documented cases of dogs or cats spreading the virus to people, Dr. Lennon said.
But the prospect of a pet pandemic sparked interested in an animal vaccine. Zoetis, a veterinary pharmaceutical company based in New Jersey, began working on one as soon as they heard about the Hong Kong Pomeranian.
We figured, Wow, this could become serious, so lets start working on a product, Mahesh Kumar, a senior vice president at Zoetis who leads vaccine development, said.
By the fall of 2020, Zoetis had four promising candidates for a vaccine, each of which elicited robust antibody responses in cats and dogs, the company announced. (The studies, which were small, have not been published.)
But as vaccine development progressed, it became increasingly apparent that the infection of pets was unlikely to pose a serious threat to animals or people.
In one study of 76 pets living with people who had the virus, 17.6 percent of cats and 1.7 percent of dogs also tested positive. (Studies have consistently shown that cats are more susceptible to infection than dogs, perhaps for both biological and behavioral reasons.) Of the infected pets, 82.4 percent had no symptoms.
When pets do fall ill, they tend to have mild symptoms, which may include lethargy, coughing, sneezing, runny noses or diarrhea. The animals typically make full recoveries without treatment, although a handful of more severe cases do occur occasionally.
Nov. 16, 2021, 5:15 p.m. ET
Moreover, there is no evidence that cats or dogs spread the virus to humans and there are few signs that they readily transmit it among themselves. Stray cats, for instance, are much less likely to have antibodies to the virus than cats that live with people, suggesting that the animals are largely getting the virus from us, rather than from each other.
It doesnt look like cats or dogs would ever be a reservoir for this virus, Dr. Jeanette OQuin, a veterinarian at Ohio State University, said. We believe that if there werent sick people around them, they would not be able to continue spreading it from animal to animal it would not continue to exist in their population.
Together, these factors convinced experts that a vaccine for pets was not necessary. In November 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates veterinary medicines, said that it was not accepting any applications for cat or dog vaccines because data do not indicate such a vaccine would have value.
But as the pet threat was receding, another problem was coming into focus: mink. The sleek, svelte mammals, which are farmed in large numbers, turned out to be highly susceptible to the virus. And not only were they dying from it, they were spreading it to each other and back to humans.
I think that the situation in mink absolutely warrants a vaccine, Dr. Lennon said.
The U.S.D.A. thought so, too, and in the same November notice in which the agency said it was not considering cat or dog vaccines, it declared itself open to applications for a mink vaccine.
Zoetis pivoted, deciding to repurpose one of its dog vaccines for mink ones. (Several other teams are also developing mink vaccines, and Russia has already approved a shot for all carnivores, including mink, and has reportedly started administering it to animals.)
Studies in mink are ongoing, but when word got out about Zoetiss work, zoos came calling. Some of their animals including gorillas, tigers and snow leopards had already caught the virus, and they wanted to give the mink vaccine a whirl. We got a huge number of requests, Dr. Kumar said.
What to Know About Covid Vaccines and Boosters
Zoetis, which decided to supply the vaccine to zoos on an experimental basis, has now committed to donating 26,000 doses enough to vaccinate 13,000 animals to zoos and animal sanctuaries in 14 countries.
The development means that many zoo-dwelling cats, like lions and tigers, are getting vaccinated, while their domestic cousins are not. In part, thats because these species appear to be more susceptible to the virus; some have died after becoming infected, although the cause of death is often difficult to conclusively determine.
The big cats seem to be getting sicker than the house cats, Dr. Lennon said.
Moreover, zoo animals are exposed to many more people than the average house cat, and many are highly endangered.
I dont want to diminish anybodys pets, Dr. Sander said. I have a cat myself. But I think a lot of those animals are high conservation status. Theyre genetically very valuable. And so they want to try and provide the best protection possible.
Although the evidence so far suggests that the virus is not a major threat to pets, there is a lot left to learn, scientists acknowledge. It is still not clear how frequently infected humans pass the virus to their pets, especially because officials do not recommend routine testing for companion animals, and the virus may have health effects in pets that have not yet been identified.
In a paper published earlier this month, scientists raised the possibility that the Alpha variant, which was first identified in Britain, might cause heart inflammation in dogs and cats. The evidence is circumstantial, but the virus has been linked to the same problem in humans and the connection is worth exploring, experts said.
We need to do more research in this area to find out if this is a real association, Dr. OQuin said.
There may be individual pets who are at especially high risk from the virus. Dr. Lennon and her colleagues recently identified an immunocompromised dog who appeared to become severely ill from the virus. Unlike most infected dogs, this one also shed high levels of the virus for more than a week.
Of course, thats one case, but it really does illustrate that Covid isnt the same in all pets, just like it isnt in all people, Dr. Lennon said.
It is certainly possible that future research or changes in the virus could change the calculus on a pet vaccine. If the virus turns out to be more prevalent, virulent or transmissible in dogs or cats than is currently known, that would make the case for a vaccine more compelling, scientists said. The U.S.D.A. has said that it may re-evaluate its position if more evidence of transmission and clinical disease emerges in a particular species.
If that time comes, Zoetis is prepared to pick up where it left off with its pet vaccines, Dr. Kumar said. He said that if the companys mink vaccine is licensed, veterinarians might be able to use it off-label in the event of an unexpected outbreak in cats or dogs.
Applied DNA Sciences, a New York-based biotech company, has also developed a promising cat vaccine as a just in case, James Hayward, the companys chief executive, said. (Like Zoetis, the company, which is working in partnership with the Italian company Evvivax, is now more focused on a mink vaccine.)
For now, there are steps that pet owners can take to protect their animals. People who test positive for the virus should isolate away from their pets, if possible, or wear a face mask while caring for them.
And, of course, a vaccine for humans is now widely available in the United States. The best way to prevent SARS-CoV-2 in our pets is to prevent the disease in people, Dr. OQuin said. So please get vaccinated.
With the advent of the worldwide SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, clinicians and researchers scrambled to find effective therapies for the life threatening complications of COVID-19. Early clinical experience suggested that administering powerful steroids improves outcomes in people with COVID-19 who require oxygen or mechanical ventilation.
However, steroids have adverse side effects, including elevated blood glucose levels. In individuals with and without a history of diabetes, this can result in short- and long-term complications, such as an increased risk of infection or metabolic imbalance.
Researchers released results at the November 2021 Society for Endocrinology meeting after observing a large group of people with COVID-19 receiving treatment with dexamethasone, a steroid that doctors use to treat patients with lung inflammation.
Dr. Victoria Salem, a principal investigator, shared with Medical News Today: Dexamethasone is now standard of care in patients hospitalized with [COVID-19] requiring oxygen based on the RECOVERY trial. We looked at over 2,000 patients hospitalized with [COVID-19] in our London hospital and performed a multivariate analysis of risk factors for death.
Its already known that diabetes is a risk factor for severe COVID. High blood sugars are also a predictor of poor outcomes. Since dexamethasone pushes up blood sugars, we were worried that dexamethasone might have been a double-edged sword for patients with diabetes, but, in fact, it turned out to be just as effective.
To understand dexamethasones effects, researchers looked at the number of ICU admissions, reduced mortality, and steroid-related complications in 2,261 patients admitted to the Imperial College Healthcare National Health Service (NHS) Trust hospitals.
The team divided data from individuals hospitalized with COVID-19 into two groups: wave one and wave two. Wave one consisted of 889 people admitted to the hospital between March and April 2020, when doctors did not routinely prescribe dexamethasone. Wave two comprised 1,372 individuals admitted between November 2020 and January 2021 who took prescription dexamethasone routinely.
The study found that people were less likely to be admitted to the ICU in wave two (18.8%) compared to 27.6% in wave one. There was also a reduction in mortality in wave two, with a 31.8% reduced risk of death. Additional risk factors for ICU admittance and reduced mortality included having high blood pressure, increased frailty, reduced kidney function, and being male.
For Medical News Today, Dr. Salem elaborated:
In wave two, [d]examethasone was used in 68% of patients in our hospital with a diagnosis of [COVID-19], 35% of whom had diabetes.
[O]f the patients treated with dexamethasone for COVID, 19% developed hyperglycemia (high blood sugars) that required additional treatment. [A]nd, of this group, 12% were new diagnoses of diabetes the [r]emainder of patients experienced worsening preexisting diabetes.
[D]r. Salem clarified that this real world figure is much higher than the result that the original RECOVERY study reported.
So, 21 people out of 935 (2%) given dexamethasone for [COVID-19] developed steroid-induced diabetes.
Dexamethasone treatment reduced the risk of death or ICU admission in study participants by 56%. Dr. Salem explained to Medical News Today:
Dexamethasone was independently associated with a decreased risk of death/ICU admission to the same extent in people with [d]iabetes and those without diabetes.
Dexamethasone-induced diabetes often resolves when the treatment is stopped. It adds an extra burden in terms of management and follow-up but [is] worth it given the overall benefits in terms of recovering from [COVID-19]. Given the current obesity epidemic, many of the patients may already have had undiagnosed type 2 diabetes, and this was a wake-up call.
The studys take-home message is that dexamethasone treatment reduced the risk of death and ICU admission. Additionally, patients with diabetes are more likely to develop steroid-induced glucose control complications, but this did not increase death rates.
For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.
(WXYZ) Health officials from Henry Ford Health System are also sounding the alarm on rising COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in our community.
We are gravely concerned, said Dr. Adnan Munkarah, Henry Fords Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer during a press update on Tuesday.
Dr. Munkarah said the health system has 330 patients with COVID across their five hospitals, with more awaiting test results. He said thats about a 60% rise from the last week in October.
Our numbers mirror what we are seeing across the state, he said.
On Monday, the state reported 21,034 new COVID cases over a three day period.
Health officials are pushing the COVID vaccination, saying people who are vaccinated are 5 to 6 times less likely to get the infection.
They released a graphic showing a majority of the patients in the ICU and on ventilators are those who are unvaccinated.
We really must act now. Our hospitals have more COVID patients than theyve had since the spring surge, and that should be alarming to all of us, because that is with more overall population vaccinated than before and with the advancements in treatment, said Bob Riney, COO of Henry Ford Health System.
Henry Ford health officials say theyve had to curtail some procedures on some days because of overall volume, but said they are evaluating that on a day-to-day basis.
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There is a growing consensus among experts that the coronavirus will likely be with us for many years to come, popping up in pockets even when most people across the globe have immunity through vaccination or natural infection.
Healers, then, should expect to be dealing with some level of ongoing COVID-19 burden once the virus enters what epidemiologists call an endemic state, one in which a pathogen simmers and smolders, producing new cases year after year, but not reaching the heights seen when the level of community immunity was low.
Just how heavy will that burden be?
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In the short term, with global vaccinations still far from universal, most are predicting that another surge this winter is likely. Vaccination, though, is expected to keep things from getting as out of control as they did in late 2020 and early 2021. A new variant capable of dislodging the Delta variant from its current dominance could change that outlook.
This being the first winter without a stay-at-home order, it is already plain to see in weekly reports that San Diego County will have a flu season this year after seeing very little influenza activity in late 2020 and early 2021.
To date, there have been 287 confirmed flu cases reported since July 1, nearly 16 times the 18 reported last season. And this years rate is slightly ahead of the prior five-year average, which includes nearly 12,000 cases per season, and 123 deaths, throughout the county.
Winter, then, will be the first year that the region and the nation feel the full force of the flu and coronavirus simultaneously, and experts fear that its not likely to be the last.
Some highly-educated guesses are already broaching the possibility that the coronavirus could end up producing as many or more cases than the flu.
Its one of three scenarios contemplated by a team of UC San Francisco researchers in a paper published in the journal Nature in July.
One possibility is that the virus will not come under relative control as global immunity builds, leading to a future with ongoing manifestations of severe disease combined with high levels of infection.
Deemed more likely, a second option is that SARS-CoV-2 will enter an endemic state that looks like the flu, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates kills between 12,000 and 52,000 Americans per year.
The virus, researchers noted, could also behave more like other coronaviruses, which tend to have a significantly lower impact than influenza, in an endemic state.
When they published four months ago, the research team was reluctant to pick a scenario among the three, stating that more information was needed.
But, as cases surged, some have begun to feel more comfortable calling their shots.
Much attention has piled up around a series of 17 tweets by Trevor Bedford, the Seattle-based computational virologist recently named a MacArthur Fellow for his work modeling the introduction and spread of novel coronavirus and his advocacy of real-time genetic sequencing as an essential method of helping predict how the pathogen is likely to evolve.
Noting that the novel coronavirus has shown an uncharacteristic ability to mutate, and that there is plenty of evidence of waning immunity among the vaccinated and unvaccinated, Bedford says his best guess is that endemic coronavirus infects between 20 percent and 30 percent of the population each year. Influenza, by comparison, is estimated to infect about 10 percent of the world population per year.
Such a high attack rate, Bedford notes, would produce a larger death rate that could range from 40,000 to 100,000 per year in the U.S.
Most infections would be relatively mild (just like the flu), but theres enough of them that even a small fraction of severe outcomes adds up, Bedford said.
Its a prediction that terrifies public health officials.
Some years, noted Dr. Seema Shah, medical director of San Diego Countys epidemiology division, the flu by itself is capable of swamping emergency departments in the winter. The idea of layering a like number of coronavirus cases on top of that is particularly daunting.
There are some predictions that coronavirus could cause double the number of yearly flu deaths, Shah said. How do we allow that level of risk for that many Americans to die every year?
I find that hard to stomach.
San Diego County is home to plenty of experts in viral evolution, and, while all say that Bedfords scenario is certainly possible, this virus has proven itself enough of a wildcard that certainty is scarce.
I would not be surprised to see SARS-CoV-2 variants continuing to arise, said Joel Wertheim, an evolutionary biologist at UC San Diego whose work traced has traced the early appearance of the the virus in China. That said, every variant, every vaccine, every re-infection, changes the dynamics.
The sands will be constantly shifting, but this virus has no reason to stop trying to evolve more efficient ways to infect and re-infect us.
Kristian Andersen, a microbiologist and immunologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla whose lab has been at the forefront of the worldwide effort to map the mutations appearing in coronavirus as it spreads across the globe, agreed that the flu outcome is very possible but not certain. The focus, he has said repeatedly in recent months, should be on reducing the overall number of new infections. Every time a virus replicates is a chance of a beneficial mutation.
For too long, he said in a recent email, the mark of public health success in the coronavirus fight has been driving down the number of people who get sick enough to need a hospital stay. But driving down infections requires greater levels of vaccination in the meantime and more-rigorous masking and social distancing practices in the short term.
Unfortunately, theres no appetite for that which Im pretty convinced (although not certain) will be a decision well come to regret further down the line, Andersen said. In fact, had we taken this virus seriously from day one, as most experts urged, I dont think wed be talking about alpha, mu, delta, and the rest of them.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, recovered from a bout of COVID-19, will travel from Glasgow, Scotland, to Washington, D.C., on Sunday, and then will return to L.A. on Tuesday, according to his office.
President Biden plans to host a signing ceremony in Washington on Monday for his infrastructure bill and will be joined by governors, mayors, and labor union and business leaders, according to his office.
A White House spokesman on Friday said the invite list was still being finalized. A spokesman for Garcetti didnt immediately respond Saturday night when asked if the mayor is attending Bidens event.
The mayor has also traveled to Washington in recent months for events related to his nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to India, and he is expected to return for more meetings.
The White House officially nominated Garcetti in July, but it remains unclear when the Senate will take up his nomination. The slow pace is a signal to some that the mayors confirmation isnt as much of a priority as getting other nominees approved.
The COVID diagnosis derailed the latter part of his trip to an international climate conference, but the mayor continued to work on city matters while quarantined abroad at a hotel, his office said when the diagnosis was announced Nov. 3.
Garcetti had told his staff in an email that he developed a fever and had symptoms of a head cold.
As some of you who have gotten COVID know, this is a beast of a virus, but I am feeling pretty good just some fever and head cold symptoms for now, probably a reflection of the strength of the vaccine I got earlier this year, wrote Garcetti, who has been strong proponent of vaccination.
The mayor, who is fully vaccinated, tested positive while attending the United Nations climate-change conference.
Garcetti had been taking rapid antigen tests daily while at the conference, which all came back negative. He took a PCR test Nov. 2 in preparation for his return home. The test came back positive the next day, delaying his intended Nov. 4 departure.
Up to that point, Garcetti had spoken about local climate action in front of the U.N. World Leaders Summit, according to schedules released by his office. He was unable to moderate a panel on international finance to support city climate action or to participate in another discussion regarding solutions and challenges in tackling climate change.
A Times reporter at the conference described the indoor venue as crammed with people from around the world, noting that physical distancing was often impossible.
Garcetti, 50, received his first dose of the Moderna vaccine in January and his second dose in February. He plans to get a booster as soon as its recommended he do so, according to a spokesman. Garcettis young daughter tested positive for COVID-19 in December. Neither she nor Garcettis wife, Amy Wakeland, was with him on the trip.
Garcettis positive test comes as many city employees in L.A. fight a new city rule requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that individuals who have tested positive for the coronavirus and have symptoms isolate from others for at least 10 days after signs of illness first appear. Individuals also shouldnt be around others until they are free of fever for at least 24 hours without using a fever-reducing medication and show signs of improving symptoms.
Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
Despite a century of advancements in treatment, education and prevention, World Diabetes Day 2021 occurs in the wake of grim statistics. One in 10 adults around the world -- some 537 million people -- are currently living with diabetes, according to figures recently released by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF).
By 2024, the IDF predicted that the number of people with diabetes is expected to rise to 1 in 8 adults.
"As the world marks the centenary of the discovery of insulin, I wish we could say we've stopped the rising tide of diabetes," IDF President Dr. Andrew Boulton told CNN. "Instead, diabetes is currently a pandemic of unprecedented magnitude."
Nearly 7 million adults have died worldwide in 2021 so far due to diabetes or its complications, the IDF estimated -- that's more than 1 in 10 global deaths from any cause.
"And if you want another startling statistic, as many as 40% of the people that have died in the US from Covid-19 had diabetes," said Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association.
The pandemic also took a toll on how well people have managed their diabetes over the past year and a half, said Boulton, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of Manchester in the UK.
"My fear is we're going to see a tsunami in the next two years of diabetes and its complications because people have missed their screening appointments due to fear of catching Covid-19," he said.
Is Covid a trigger for diabetes?
As bad as these numbers are, experts are concerned that Covid-19 might contribute to an even greater problem.
"There may be more people developing diabetes because of Covid," Gabbay told CNN.
Boulton echoed that concern: "There may be a specific Covid-induced diabetes, although there is some debate on that at the moment."
"Whether new-onset diabetes is likely to remain permanent is not known, as the long-term follow-up of these patients is limited," the study reported.
It's very possible that Covid-19 is not the culprit. Blood sugar abnormalities could be triggered by the stress of an infection and the steroids used to fight Covid-19 inflammation, Gabbay said.
People also may have had diabetes that was not previously diagnosed. The IDF estimates that of the 537 million adults living with diabetes around the world, almost half (44.7%) are as yet undiagnosed.
But there is also evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, can bind to the ACE2 receptors in the islet cells of the pancreas -- the organ that produces the body's insulin, Boulton and Gabbay told CNN.
"The virus attacks those cells in the pancreas and interferes with their production of insulin, so that may be another mechanism," Gabbay said. "And those individuals that are diagnosed in the hospital with diabetes for the first time, through whichever mechanism, sadly do worse."
Early identification is key
Reversing the rising tide of diabetes cases requires early identification. Nipping Type 2 diabetes in the pre-diabetic stages is preferred, since it's before the body begins to suffer damage from irregular blood sugars and lifestyle changes are easier to implement.
Studies in Finland a few decades ago found that people with "very slight elevated blood sugar" who followed a sensible diet and regular exercise "had a 54% reduction in proceeding to Type 2 diabetes," Boulton said.
"And it didn't have to be flogging yourself in the gym," he added. "It's sensible exercising, walking instead of riding the bus and walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, that can do the trick."
Even full-flown diabetes can be put into remission, Gabbay said, with a regime of diet, exercise and stress reduction and proper use of medications.
"People in remission may still be at risk for some of the long-term complications, and therefore, they still need to be monitored, with quarterly blood tests, a yearly eye and foot test, and yearly screening for kidney disease and cholesterol levels," he said.
Being over age 60, overweight, having had gestational diabetes while pregnant, having a family history of diabetes, currently living with high blood pressure and a lack of physical exercise all raise your risk.
JACKSON Republican Gov. Tate Reeves is ending the state of emergency order put in place during the coronavirus pandemic in Mississippi.
The emergency order was first put into effect on March 14, 2020, a few days after the state reported its first coronavirus case. It enabled the governor to mobilize the Mississippi National Guard to help with COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites. The order also authorizes the states COVID-19 System of Care Plan, which allows for transfers of patients throughout Mississippis health care systems.
It did not implement lockdowns or mask mandates.
Reeves tweeted Thursday that the order would expire Nov. 20.
With more than 3,000,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine having been administered in Mississippi and with COVID-19 infections and resulting hospitalizations being effectively managed, it is time to end the State of Emergency in Mississippi, he wrote.
Mississippi, a state with a population of roughly 3 million, has reported close to 10,190 deaths from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. A total of 46 percent of Mississippi residents are fully vaccinated against the virus, compared to 58 percent of all Americans, according to the state department of health.
A syringe containing a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine sits in a container during a vaccine clinic at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage. Dozens of physicians are asking the Alaska State Medical Board to investigate doctors who spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. (Loren Holmes / ADN archive)
Nearly 100 Alaska physicians have signed a letter asking the State Medical Board to investigate the conduct of local doctors who have publicly advocated for the use of unproven COVID-19 treatments during the latest and deadliest virus surge.
We are writing out of concern that medical misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatment is being spread in Alaska, including by physicians, said the letter, which was drafted by Merijeanne Moore, a private practice psychiatrist in Anchorage.
We hope that you will investigate this seriously, as the spread of misinformation has been identified as a threat to public health by the US Surgeon General, the Alaska Chief Medical Officer, and three medical specialty boards, the letter said.
Moore said in an interview Saturday that she wrote the letter because of concerns over an event about COVID-19 treatments featuring prominent vaccine skeptics in Anchorage late last month.
She posted a draft of the letter in a local Facebook group for physicians, and it quickly gained support. Theres probably close to 100 signers at this point, she said.
The names included a range of hospitalists, physicians and surgeons from a wide range of medical specialties, Moore said, noting that more doctors may sign on in the next couple days.
She plans to submit the letter on Tuesday before Fridays State Medical Board meeting, which includes a public comment portion.
Last months Alaska Early Treatment Medical Summit held at the ChangePoint Alaska church featured doctors, mostly from the Lower 48, who have been criticized by many in the medical community for questioning the efficacy of vaccines and advocating treatments widely considered unproven, such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Two Anchorage doctors spoke at the event: Ilona Farr, a family medicine practitioner who said shes one of 24 doctors in the state who have prescribed ivermectin for COVID-19 patients, and Hillside Family Medicine co-founder John Nolte, who introduced himself at the event as a main organizer, explaining that he met some of the other participants at a conference out of state and invited them to come to Alaska to speak.
The summit featured two sessions, one geared toward medical providers and another designed for the general public. The event was attended by about 1,200 people, according to Michael Chambers, who said he was the ticket coordinator and one of the organizers.
Moores letter calls local doctors involvement in the event harmful and a grave concern, and quotes a statement from the American Boards of Family Medicine, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics that describes providing misinformation about a lethal disease as unethical, unprofessional and dangerous. The Federation of State Medical Boards also said physicians who spread COVID-19 misinformation risk jeopardizing their medical license or facing other disciplinary actions from state medical boards, adding that sharing inaccurate vaccine information threatens to further erode public trust in the medical profession and puts all patients at risk.
Attempts to reach Farr and Nolte at their offices on Saturday afternoon were not successful.
One of the letters signees is Dr. Leslie Gonsette, an internal medicine hospitalist and member of Providences executive committee board who testified at an Anchorage Assembly meeting in September about what she was seeing inside the hospitals COVID-19 ward, which was overwhelmed at the time.
Dr. Leslie Gonsette, an internal medicine hospitalist at Providence Alaska Medical Center, testifies during the Anchorage Assembly meeting on Sept. 14, 2021. Donna Mears, vice chair of Anchorage's Health and Human Services Commission, is at right. (Bill Roth / ADN archive)
Gonsette said in an interview that she has seen the deadly consequences of vaccine misinformation firsthand through the illness and deaths of unvaccinated patients diagnosed with COVID-19. She said she was especially concerned to learn about Anchorage doctors public participation in the event.
Its very shocking to see that the very people that are supposed to care for our community are actually pushing this agenda and indirectly actually causing deaths, Gonsette said.
Moore said she believed that it is the job of the medical board to investigate the claims being made at the summit.
The Alaska State Medical Board is made up of eight members appointed by the governor, including five physicians, a physician assistant and two people with no direct financial interest in the health care industry.
According to an online roster, two positions are currently vacant and all current members were appointed by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
Speakers at Octobers event included infectious disease researcher Dr. Robert Malone, who describes himself as the inventor of the mRNA vaccines when actually the path to mRNA vaccines drew on the work of hundreds of researchers over more than 30 years, according to a September article in the journal Nature.
Another presenter, Dr. Ryan Cole, is the subject of a state medical board investigation request by the Idaho Medical Association for making numerous public statements in 2020 and 2021, concerning COVID-19 that are at significant odds with commonly understood medical treatment of COVID-19 and fail to meet the community standard of care.
Malone and others urged summit attendees not to vaccinate children or recovered COVID-19 patients for the virus, contradicting state and federal health officials who say the risks from the vaccine are far lower than the risks from the virus and its potential for long-term medical problems.
Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, who spoke at the summit, called the findings by presenters the best science available.
In an unsigned statement posted the day after the conference on Hillside Family Medicines website, clinic administrators wrote that Dr. Noltes involvement in the conference was in hopes to help educate people regarding the importance of early treatment of COVID-19 and keep people out of the hospital.
Dr. Tom Hennessy, an epidemiologist with the UAA College of Health, said in a recent interview that he was concerned about the negative impacts he believed could be caused by an event about early intervention that does not advocate for vaccination against COVID-19.
The vast majority of Alaskans who have been hospitalized or died with COVID-19 during the most recent surge have been unvaccinated. These are people who missed the opportunity to have the primary prevention that we know works, Hennessy said.
So I think there is potential harm that can come from a lot of conversation about alternative therapies and very fringe ideas about where COVID came from, and people going to a place where they inherently mistrust authority, and therefore mistrust the vaccine that millions of Americans have received, Hennessy said.
Vehicles fill the parking lot of ChangePoint Alaska in Anchorage where the Alaska Early Treatment Medical Summit took place on Oct. 30, 2021. (Emily Mesner / ADN archive)
According to state data, in Alaska through September, unvaccinated people died from COVID-19 at 11.9 times the rate of fully vaccinated people. September and October 2021 were the deadliest months of the pandemic so far.
If people are relying on sources of information that arent credible, that are not coming from an evidence-based perspective, they can be misled. The general public can be misled, and that can lead to harm and thats what worries me the most, Hennessy said.
There are few examples of state medical boards revoking licenses when medical professionals prescribe unapproved COVID-19 treatments or share misinformation.
In Washington, a physician assistant had his license suspended after more than a dozen complaints were filed against him for prescribing ivermectin to patients as a COVID-19 treatment.
In Oregon, Dr. Steven Arthur LaTulippe had his license revoked in September after he disregarded COVID-19 mandates, told his patients that masks dont work and over-prescribed opioids, The Oregonian reported.
In San Francisco, Dr. Thomas Cowan voluntarily surrendered his medical license to Californias medical board more than a year after he claimed in a viral online video that 5G technology caused COVID-19, according to reporting by Cal Matters.
There have been growing calls, particularly among national medical groups, for state medical boards to discipline medical professionals who spread misinformation or disinformation during the global pandemic.
Alaskas chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, described the devastating consequences of the spread of virus misinformation in a recent op-ed for The Washington Post.
She described an unvaccinated patient who had spent hundreds on online remedies and was suffering not just because of the virus, but also because of the deadly combination of misinformation and disinformation in a broken health-care system, in a country of broken trust.
I found myself exhausted as I sat there with him, humbled by this virus and acutely aware of how much work we have yet to do, she wrote.
