DENVER (KDVR) COVID-19 continues to rise in Colorado over the last 7-day days.
As of Monday, the states 7-day positivity rate was 6.37%, which is up from 6.06%. The highest positivity rate in the state over the past seven days is Jackson County with 41.7% positivity.
From Sept. 13-20,34 counties saw a rise in COVID-19 positivity, 25 saw a decline in COVID-19 positivity, two counties had no movement and three counties administered fewer than 10 tests in the past week.
According to theColorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the incidence rates have also risen over the last seven days.
Heres a look atpositivity rates for every county over the last seven days:
SACRAMENTO Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who four days ago beat back a pandemic-fueled attempt to recall him, is following all Covid protocols with his family after two of his four children tested positive for the coronavirus.
The governor, the first partner and their two other children have since tested negative, Erin Mellon, a spokeswoman for the governors office, confirmed late Friday. The children, she said, tested positive on Thursday and have mild symptoms. They are being quarantined.
The report came on the heels of Mr. Newsoms victory over a Republican-led recall attempt that had gained traction as Californians became impatient with health restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus. The rate of new Covid-19 cases in California is among the lowest in the nation, and the rate of vaccination is among the highest.
The governors children, however, are all under 12, the threshold age for inoculation. In a victory speech Tuesday night, the governor mentioned that his oldest daughter was about to turn 12 this weekend.
The Newsoms continue to support masking for unvaccinated individuals indoors to stop the spread and advocate for vaccinations as the most effective way to end this pandemic, Ms. Mellon said.
Governor Newsoms spokeswoman did not specify which of his children had tested positive for the virus. But this is not the first time it has affected his family. In November, three of his children were quarantined after being exposed to a California Highway Patrol officer in the familys security detail who was infected, and one child was quarantined after a classmate tested positive.
This summer, the Newsoms pulled their children out of a summer camp after it was determined that masking requirements were not being strictly followed.
The governor has been vaccinated since April, when he received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at a news conference. The unvaccinated head of the recall effort, Orrin Heatlie, said this week that he had recovered after being sidelined with Covid-19 during the last weeks of the campaign.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. The major strain on hospitals from the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be easing, state health officials said Tuesday.
Mary Mayhew has reason to feel a little better these days.
"After nearly two-and-a-half months, our hospitals seeing a dramatic reduction in overall COVID hospitalizations," said Mayhew, the CEO of the Florida Hospital Association.
Mayhew is glad to see the pressure on health providers easing across Florida, including the Palm Beaches and Treasure Coast.
Doctors credit the surge from back-to-school slowing to a rise in vaccinations, monoclonal antibody drugs, and more masking.
"I get asked this question often. When will it end? The question is, when we make it end?" said infectious disease specialist Dr. Larry Bush.
Bush said we are still far from herd immunity and putting COVID behind us.
"We may never be done with COVID. This may be something we have forever, and keep in mind, if this current coronavirus mixes with another animal coronavirus, we may get a whole new strain just like SARS, just like MERS," Bush said.
Mayhew said hospitals are still dealing with large numbers, but keeping the numbers going down is the challenge now.
"We need people to get vaccinated. That is one way we can try to avoid a future mutation of the virus and a future surge," Mayhew said.
Right now, more masking and social distancing are also helping, but medical experts worry the coming holiday travel season may likely send COVID numbers rising again by winter.
Lanson Jones did not think that the coronavirus would come for him. An avid tennis player in Houston who had not caught so much as a cold during the pandemic, he had refused a vaccine because he worried that it would spoil his streak of good health.
But contracting Covid shattered his faith in his bodys defenses so much so that Mr. Jones, nose clogged and appetite vanished, began hunting for anything to spare himself a nightmarish illness.
The answer turned out to be monoclonal antibodies, a year-old, laboratory-created drug no less experimental than the vaccine. In a glass-walled enclosure at Houston Methodist Hospital this month, Mr. Jones, 65, became one of more than a million patients, including Donald J. Trump and Joe Rogan, to receive an antibody infusion as the virus has battered the United States.
Vaccine-resistant Americans are turning to the treatment with a zeal that has, at times, mystified their doctors, chasing down lengthy infusions after rejecting vaccines that cost one-hundredth as much. Orders have exploded so quickly this summer to 168,000 doses per week in late August, up from 27,000 in July that the Biden administration warned states this week of a dwindling national supply.
The federal government, which was already covering the cost of the treatment currently about $2,100 per dose has now taken over its distribution as well. For the coming weeks, the government has told states to expect scaled-back shipments because of the looming shortages.
With seven Southern states accounting for 70 percent of orders, the new process has unsettled some of their governors, who have made the antibody treatment central to their strategy for enduring a catastrophic wave of the Delta variant.
More supplies are on the way. The federal government bought 1.8 million more doses this week, expected to arrive in the fall and winter. But for now, some hospitals are uncertain of supplies, state health officials said, even as patients keep searching for doses.
We have providers struggling to get the necessary product, Kody Kinsley, who leads operations for North Carolinas Covid-19 response, said in an interview. I think what has happened is a classic logistics issue, where all of a sudden theres much more demand.
Amid a din of antivaccine falsehoods, monoclonal antibodies have become the rare coronavirus medicine to achieve near-universal acceptance. Championed by mainstream doctors and conservative radio hosts alike, the infusions have kept the countrys death toll 2,000 per day and climbing from soaring even higher.
And after months of work by President Biden and Southern governors to promote the treatments, they have won the affection of vaccine refusers who said that the terrors and uncertainties of actually getting Covid had made them desperate for an antidote.
The people you love, you trust, nobody said anything negative about it, Mr. Jones said of the antibody treatment. And Ive heard nothing but negative things about the side effects of the vaccine and how quickly it was developed.
Some Republican governors have set up antibody clinics while opposing vaccine mandates, frustrating even some of the drugs strongest proponents. Raising vaccination rates, scientists said, would obviate the need for many of the costly antibody treatments in the first place. The infusions take about an hour and a half, including monitoring afterward, and require constant attention from nurses whom hard-hit states often cannot spare.
Its clogging up resources, its hard to give, and a vaccine is $20 and could prevent almost all of that, said Dr. Christian Ramers, an infectious disease specialist and the chief of population health at Family Health Centers of San Diego, a community-based provider. Pushing antibodies while playing down vaccines, he said, was like investing in car insurance without investing in brakes.
The government-supplied monoclonal antibodies, made by Regeneron and Eli Lilly, have been shown to significantly shorten patients symptoms and reduce their risk of being hospitalized by 70 percent, in the case of Regenerons antibody cocktail. The treatments, given in a single sitting, use lab-made copies of the antibodies that people generate naturally when fighting an infection.
Patients and doctors alike overlooked the treatments during the wintertime surge of infections. But hospitals and health centers have now ramped up their offerings, transforming dental clinics, mobile units and auditoriums into infusion centers. In states like Texas, where elective surgeries have been postponed to make room for Covid-19 patients, operating room nurses have been enlisted to give infusions.
One factor driving the demand is that many patients, including vaccine skeptics, have been spreading the word about their seemingly miraculous recoveries.
Sept. 19, 2021, 3:43 p.m. ET
Theyre like, I have Covid, I want this treatment, my friend or family told me about this, said Jennifer Berry, the Houston Methodist nursing director of infusion services. Now the word is out.
At Houston Methodist, nurses administered nearly 1,100 treatments across eight sites in the first week of September, well more than twice as many as any week last winter. The hospital reduced the average time between orders and infusions to two days this month from three days in early August, giving patients a better chance of fighting off infections.
Juggling the infusions with more seriously ill Covid patients this summer forced the hospital, in one case, to move a monoclonal antibody clinic to a strip mall storefront.
But the Texas health department has helped, providing 19 nurses for a different Houston Methodist infusion clinic, said Vicki Brownewell, the lead administrator for the hospitals program. The Biden administration has also invested $150 million in expanding access to monoclonal antibodies, and Houston Methodist has used federal money to arrange medical taxis for patients struggling with transportation.
Even so, the infusions remain inaccessible to many. Given the heavy demands on staff and the need to create separate infusion rooms for infectious patients, certain communities, especially in rural areas, do not have clinics.
In San Diego, Dr. Ramers said, some large, for-profit hospitals have decided not to administer the antibodies at all because of the logistical hassles, leaving wealthier, well-insured patients to hunt down doses at his publicly funded clinic. Some nurses that he hired for infusions left for short, better-paying assignments in hard-hit intensive care units.
The natural, capitalist incentives for health care organizations that are for profit dont really favor doing this, Dr. Ramers said. Its a lot of work.
UnderstandVaccine and Mask Mandates in the U.S.
Of the 2.4 million monoclonal antibody doses shipped nationally, at least 1.1 million have been used. Precisely how many are still sitting on shelves is hard to determine because of reporting gaps. Still, waning federal supplies and soaring demand from less-vaccinated Southern states have caused what several states have described as large shortfalls in deliveries.
North Carolina providers have requested 15,000 weekly doses, the health department there said, more than double what the federal government has allocated. Florida said its latest weekly allotment left clinics there 41,000 doses short of what they wanted.
Hospitals had previously been able to order the drugs themselves. But the Department of Health and Human Services will now decide how many doses each state receives based on case rates and use of the treatment. State governments, in turn, will decide on doses for individual sites.
The new ordering process, which the Biden administration said would ensure equitable distribution, has unsettled some backers of the drug. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, warned on Thursday that state officials were unprepared for the new responsibility of parceling out doses.
And in heavily vaccinated states, like New York, people coordinating treatments fear that shipments will plummet because of low case rates, leaving hospitals with so few doses that they shutter their programs. Some hospitals recently reported growing numbers of vaccinated patients receiving infusions.
Diana Berrent, the founder of Survivor Corps, which has worked to help patients find monoclonal antibody treatments, said that involving state governments would create delays: Youre layering in 50 new layers of bureaucracy, she said.
Doctors have warned that antibody treatments alone cannot keep pace with ballooning outbreaks. Whereas any one vaccination protects untold others from exposure, a single infusion only helps a single patient. Infusions must be given within 10 days of symptoms; they are unhelpful to most hospitalized patients. And receiving the antibodies once does not keep people from becoming seriously ill if they catch the virus again later.
Something like that just doesnt scale, said Dr. Howard Huang, the medical leader for Houston Methodists infusion program.
As a result, health officials have warned that vaccine skeptics may become so enamored of monoclonal antibodies that they become even more resistant to getting a protective shot.
Within days of his infusion, Mr. Jones, the patient in Houston, had left the bedroom where he had been quarantined and returned to his work as a landscape architect. But he was still weighing whether to be vaccinated.
His doctor was pushing for the shot, he said. But the monoclonal antibodies had worked so well that he was tempted to simply return for another infusion if he caught Covid-19 again.
If I can go get an infusion and feel as good as I do right now, man, Id rather not take a vaccine that has just been developed, he said. That makes me nervous, still.
Rebecca Robbins contributed reporting.
Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration on Friday questioned a key assertion by researchers in Israel and by the drug company Pfizer: that its coronavirus vaccine is waning in protection not just against infection, but against severe illness and hospitalization.
The advisers met to evaluate Pfizers application for approval of booster vaccine doses for all Americans over age 16. Among the details that surfaced during the lively debate: Israel and the United States define severe illness differently.
In Israel, anyone with an accelerated respiratory rate and an oxygen level of below 94 percent is severely ill. By contrast, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers people who are sick enough to be hospitalized as having severe disease, Dr. Sara Oliver, a C.D.C. scientist, said at the advisory committee meeting.
The discrepancy might help explain why the two countries have reported vastly different outcomes in people who are fully immunized.
Israeli researchers said they have seen large numbers of hospitalized patients who had received two doses months earlier. But in the United States, the C.D.C. has reported that vaccinated patients make up just 2 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19.
It is just one of many scientific discrepancies that came to light this week.
On Monday, in the journal The Lancet, an international team of scientists analyzed dozens of studies and concluded that boosters are not yet needed by the general population, and that the world would be better served by using vaccine doses to protect the billions of people who remain unvaccinated.
On Wednesday, scientists at the F.D.A. posted an assessment online hinting that they, too, are unconvinced that theres enough evidence that boosters are needed.
Overall, data indicate that currently U.S.-licensed or authorized Covid-19 vaccines still afford protection against severe Covid-19 disease and death in the United States, according to their executive summary.
But some F.D.A. leaders have publicly endorsed booster shots. The need for an additional dose at six months to provide longer-term protection should not come as a surprise, as its likely necessary for the generation of a mature for immune response, Dr. Peter Marks, one of the agencys top officials, said in the meeting on Friday.
Alarmed by the rise in cases, Israeli officials have offered third doses of the vaccine to everyone older than 12. Researchers from Israel published early results from that rollout on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine but few outside scientists found the study convincing.
UnderstandVaccine and Mask Mandates in the U.S.
The team collected data on the effects of booster shots from the health records of more than 1.1 million people over age 60. At least 12 days after the booster, rates of infection were elevenfold lower and rates of severe disease nearly twentyfold lower in those who received a booster compared with those who had received only two doses, the researchers found.
The results are unsurprising, experts said, and do not indicate long-term benefit.
We have known for some time that the vaccines elicit less robust immune responses in the elderly, said Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center and a former adviser to the Biden administration. Recommending additional doses of vaccine for the elderly isnt controversial.
Vaccination remains powerfully protective against severe illness and hospitalization in the vast majority of people in all of the studies published so far, experts said. But the vaccines do seem less potent against infections in people of all ages, particularly those exposed to the highly contagious Delta variant.
The cumulative data so far suggest that only older adults will need boosters, a view underscored by the F.D.A.s advisory committee, which voted on Friday to endorse boosters only for Americans aged 65 and older, and those who are at risk for severe illness.
Nurse Katrina Philpot (left) protests against COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates in Santa Fe, N.M., in August. Cedar Attanasio/AP hide caption
Nurse Katrina Philpot (left) protests against COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates in Santa Fe, N.M., in August.
As new data shows 1 in 500 Americans has died from COVID-19 and the delta variant continues to surge across the country, the next challenge many health care leaders face is within their own staffs: the 27% of of U.S. health care workers who have not been vaccinated against the disease as of July, according to a study by The COVID States Project.
On top of that, other research shows that since the vaccine first became available to health care workers in December 2020, the rate of vaccination among nurses and nursing home aides has been lower than that of physicians. This may be of particular concern because nurses and aides have such frequent and close contact with patients.
Data shows health care workers have gotten the COVID-19 vaccine at a higher rate than the general population: 73% versus 64% of non-health care workers. And many may assume that people who work in health care industry are more enthusiastic about the vaccine and less apprehensive.
But there are limits, says David Lazer of Northeastern University, the lead researcher on The COVID States Project report. The attitudes of health care workers toward the COVID-19 vaccine essentially mirror the rest of the country with those living in rural areas, are Republican and have less education and income more likely to be vaccine-resistant.
"The big takeaway for us is really that health care workers are like everyone else," Lazer tells NPR.
"The same things that predict vaccine resistance or reluctance among the general population is also predicted among health care workers," he says.
Melody Butler, a nurse at Long Island Community Hospital in New York and the executive director of the nonprofit Nurses Who Vaccinate, says she has heard from nurses across the country about why they don't want the vaccine.
Among the reasons: The research was done too quickly; it wasn't fully FDA-approved (at first); they already have antibodies from working the front lines of the pandemic or perhaps from getting the virus already. Many are concerned about how the vaccine affects fertility.
To be clear, all of these concerns have been addressed by scientific experts, and the overwhelming evidence is that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.
Demonstrators protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates in New York this week. Attitudes among health care workers about getting vaccinated have largely mirrored data from the general population, researchers have found. Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption
Demonstrators protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates in New York this week. Attitudes among health care workers about getting vaccinated have largely mirrored data from the general population, researchers have found.
But Butler points out that widespread misinformation plays a role here, too. And nurses are not taught the ins and outs of vaccine research. The vaccination gap between physicians and nurses, she says, comes down to an education gap.
"When you have these new diseases popping up, it's really on nurses to educate themselves on what the research is," Butler says. "You had nurses who were floundering, looking for information. So now we see this educational gap."
"We are seeing the nurses who weren't trained to recognize poorly written studies; they weren't trained to recognize anti-vaccine propaganda," she says. "And it's very convincing. That's what our struggle is in the nursing community."
Butler says her concern for getting nurses across the country vaccinated is that she wants them to be safe and protected. The best way for health care leaders to get their colleagues inoculated against COVID-19, she says, is to operate from a place of compassion.
They need workplaces that "speak to individuals in a compassionate and kind manner," she says. "Knowing that the person talking to you wants you to get vaccinated not because it's the law, but because they care."
While a majority of nurses are vaccinated and more than half support vaccine mandates in the workplace, some are pushing back against requirements to get vaccinated or face mandatory testing and say they would rather leave their jobs. And hospitals are already feeling the effects.
One New York hospital announced that it would no longer be able deliver babies because dozens of staff members quit rather than get vaccinated. In Houston, 153 hospital workers resigned or were terminated over a recent vaccine mandate. It's a crisis on top of the widespread shortage of nurses that's been a problem since even before the pandemic.
Some hospital leaders like Alan Levine, CEO of Ballad Health based in Johnson City, Tenn. say they can't afford to implement a vaccine mandate for their staff of which about 63% are already vaccinated. Enough nurses would leave, Levine says, that the hospitals wouldn't be able to take care of patients.
"We have about 6,000 nurses in our system," he says. "If we are five or 10 nurses down in our system, we feel it."
Levine says that right now, all of the ICU beds in the hospital system are full at least half with COVID-19 patients.
McNairy Regional Hospital in Selmer, Tenn., is just one of the rural hospitals that has shut down in the state in recent years. The nursing shortages in the U.S. have long affected rural hospitals the hardest. The Washington Post via Getty Images hide caption
McNairy Regional Hospital in Selmer, Tenn., is just one of the rural hospitals that has shut down in the state in recent years. The nursing shortages in the U.S. have long affected rural hospitals the hardest.
The nursing shortages in the U.S. have long affected rural hospitals the hardest. In Tennessee, 14 rural hospitals have closed since 2012, leaving behind thousands in communities that already struggle to find care.
Levine says he's not yet sure how President Biden's national vaccine mandate for health care workers will impact his hospitals, but he has concerns about how it will affect rural health care providers.
"I understand why the president felt the need to announce these mandates nationally, but each region of the country is different," Levine says. "In rural areas, it's very difficult."
"I have to keep as many nurses as I can who are capable of taking care of our community," he says.
'We're skeptics': Why Mohave County is the least vaccinated against COVID-19 in Arizona AZCentral.com
The global recovery is slowing as Covid-19 resurges, spurring governments to try to raise vaccination rates in hopes of fueling stronger economic growth.
The thinking is, first, that vaccinations will ease consumers worries about infection, prompting them to spend more on travel, dining out, going to concerts and other activities that involve proximity to other people. Second, reduced Covid-19 case counts would mean fewer government shutdowns of ports, factories and other operations critical to global supply chains.
Americans may be wondering about flu shots as the future of how additional doses of the COVID-19 vaccine will be administered to millions of people. While officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decide when more than just immunocompromised people can receive another immunity-boosting dose, there's more than a good chance that flu shot season overlaps with your timeline for another COVID-19 vaccine.
FDA officials previously determined that anyone who received a two-dose mRNA vaccine should seek another dose around eight months after their final booster dose; for many, that will fall in November, December, and January, the peak of flu season here in the United States. On Friday, September 17, the FDA group known as the Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted to move forward on this timeline for those over the age of 65.
Those in that age group wishing to plan a timeline for a third COVID-19 vaccine or, if you're hoping to begin the vaccination process now that the Pfizer shot has full FDA approval you may be wondering if there's a way to work in your seasonal flu vaccine. Officers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have planned to encourage Americans to indeed seek both, as they're both essential to lower health risks this winter (in fact, burgeoning news reports indicate teams at Moderna are working on a joint flu-and-covid shot).
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, M.D., MPH, previously told Good Housekeeping that it's best to receive a flu shot by the end of October, as it takes at least two weeks for flu antibodies to build up within your immune system. Since many are acutely aware of the side effects associated with COVID-19 vaccines, they may be wary of getting a flu shot before getting another vaccine dose, or vice versa. But Dr. Walensky and other top federal health officials have indicated that this shouldn't be a concern here's why.
The short answer? Yes! You may be confused if you've heard advice against this tactic, though, as previously CDC officials recommended waiting at least two weeks between a COVID-19 vaccine and any other shot. After having almost a full year to monitor these new vaccines, the agency has updated its instructions to reflect the current understanding of vaccination in general, as immune responses are usually unaffected by receiving more than one vaccine at a time. "You can get a COVID-19 vaccine and other vaccines in the same visit," Dr. Walensky says. "CDCs recommendation has been updated so that you no longer need to wait 14 days between getting your COVID-19 vaccine and other vaccinations."
Currently, CDC officers are working to further educate professionals from physicians to pharmacists on administering the flu shot alongside other vaccines. "Based on our prior experience and knowledge of immunology, we do not anticipate any unusual or unexpected safety problems with receiving COVID-19 vaccines and flu vaccines at the same time," she adds.
The flu shot isn't expected to make any potential side effects associated with COVID-19 vaccines particularly arm tenderness or chills, fatigue, or fever worse than it would be if you had got them separately. Dr. Walenksy indicates that an immune system often responds to multiple vaccines with the same potential side effects that have already been well documented; getting vaccinated against the seasonal flu and COVID-19 won't create new side effects altogether.
It's true that there is a lack of robust research on administering COVID-19 vaccines alongside other vaccines, given how new they are to the scientific community. But doctors in the field aren't worried that a combination of the two vaccines will heighten any side effects the biggest concern, at best, could be two sore arms, says William Schaffner, M.D., the medical director for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
"I personally wouldn't want two sore arms at the same time and so if you would wait at least a week between the two, you won't [face the possibility of] simultaneous adverse events," he tells us.
If you're someone who has a well-documented history of experiencing side effects after a flu shot such as a sore arm, or a bit of a fever on the day of you may wish to space the two out for your own personal comfort. All side effects are temporary, but the likelihood of you experiencing a potential side effect (and how mild or severe it may be) may be influenced if you decide to get both shots at the same time, Dr. Schaffner explains.
Currently, pharmacists at CVS and Walgreens, as well as retailers like Walmart and Target, are offering appointments for flu vaccinations online.
While the flu posed less of a threat to Americans during the socially distanced winter earlier this year, there's mounting evidence that influenza may pose more of a threat now than ever. "We know that antibodies that protect against flu wane over time; this means there may be many people, both children and adults, who have less immunity against flu this season than during previous seasons because they werent exposed to flu last year," Dr. Walensky warns.
It's crucial to ensure that you receive both vaccines, as they're equally important do not prioritize one over the other, especially if you are older than 65. "Everyone six months and older should get their flu vaccine each season," she says, adding that those at higher risk for severe flu complications should start planning their vaccine timeline now. "This includes adults 65 years and older, people with certain chronic health conditions asthma, diabetes, and heart disease pregnant people, and children younger than 5 years old."
This article is meant to be educational in nature and isn't a substitute for actual medical or treatment advice from a licensed professional. Please consult your primary health care provider to determine which vaccinations and vaccine schedules are best for you.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
More From Forbes
Sep 18, 2021,02:05pm EDT
Sep 18, 2021,10:00am EDT
Sep 18, 2021,09:52am EDT
Sep 17, 2021,10:28pm EDT
Sep 17, 2021,07:30am EDT
Sep 16, 2021,10:10pm EDT
Sep 16, 2021,01:28pm EDT
