The City and Borough of Juneau Emergency Operations Center reports 15 new residents identified with COVID-19 in Juneau for August 13. Public Health attributes three to secondary transmission, two to community spread, and 10 are under investigation. The cluster associated with an out-of-town youth sports event is now at 20 cases nine are active, 11 are recovered.
Cumulatively, Juneau has had1,732 residentstest positive for COVID-19 and 215 nonresidents. There are 108 active cases and 1,833 individuals have recovered. All individuals with active cases of COVID-19 are in isolation. There are currently six people with COVID-19 hospitalized at Bartlett Regional Hospital.
Due to the volume of positive cases in Juneau, if youve received a positive COVID-19 test result and havent heard from Public Health, please contact Public Health at 465-3353.
Statewide, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services reports338 new peopleidentified with COVID-19 313 are residents and 25 are nonresidents. Alaska has had 76,343 cumulative resident cases of COVID-19 and a total of 3,480 nonresidents.
The City and Borough of Juneau Emergency Operations Center reports 15 new residents identified with COVID-19 in Juneau for August 13. Public Health attributes three to secondary transmission, two to community spread, and 10 are under investigation. The cluster associated with an out-of-town youth sports event is now at 20 cases nine are active, 11 are recovered.
Cumulatively, Juneau has had1,732 residentstest positive for COVID-19 and 215 nonresidents. There are 108 active cases and 1,833 individuals have recovered. All individuals with active cases of COVID-19 are in isolation. There are currently six people with COVID-19 hospitalized at Bartlett Regional Hospital.
Due to the volume of positive cases in Juneau, if youve received a positive COVID-19 test result and havent heard from Public Health, please contact Public Health at 465-3353.
Statewide, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services reports338 new peopleidentified with COVID-19 313 are residents and 25 are nonresidents. Alaska has had 76,343 cumulative resident cases of COVID-19 and a total of 3,480 nonresidents.
SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) -- Classic car enthusiasts will want to visit a Sioux Falls bank to check out the vehicles on display. The American Bank & Trust Car Show takes place at its branch on South Minnesota Avenue from 1-4 p.m. The car show also includes live music, food and prizes. Admission is free.
The Turner County Fair officially starts tomorrow in Parker, SD. But there are some pre-fair events taking place today. There will be a community church service at 11 a.m., a ranch rodeo starting at 2 p.m., a 4-H animal show at 3 p.m., and a free meal at 4 p.m. in Heritage park featuring entertainment by Gordy & Debbie.
SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) -- Classic car enthusiasts will want to visit a Sioux Falls bank to check out the vehicles on display. The American Bank & Trust Car Show takes place at its branch on South Minnesota Avenue from 1-4 p.m. The car show also includes live music, food and prizes. Admission is free.
The Turner County Fair officially starts tomorrow in Parker, SD. But there are some pre-fair events taking place today. There will be a community church service at 11 a.m., a ranch rodeo starting at 2 p.m., a 4-H animal show at 3 p.m., and a free meal at 4 p.m. in Heritage park featuring entertainment by Gordy & Debbie.
SALT LAKE CITY (KTVX) It has been eight months since the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were administered to healthcare workers nationwide. Since then, the vaccine has become available to anyone over the age of 12.
If you have not gotten your COVID-19 vaccine you may be wondering who does not need a shot?
Dr. Tamara Sheffield, Medical Director for Community Health and Prevention at Intermountain Healthcare, spoke with Nexstars KTVX about the few instances in which a person would not qualify for, or should delay getting the vaccine.
So its very rare for an individual to not be qualified to get the vaccine, Sheffield explains. The key reason not to be vaccinated, or what is called a contraindication, is if youve had an allergic reaction to that specific COVID vaccine.
Sheffield says if you have an allergic reaction after receiving the first dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, you can still receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Its the one time you can mix the series, if theres been an allergy with one as long as youre in a supervised medical setting, Sheffield explains.
Outside of an allergy, Sheffield says there are some other conditions under which you may delay getting the COVID-19 vaccine.If you are currently infected with COVID-19, health officials encourage waiting to get your shot rather than possibly infecting others.
Additionally, if you have been on therapies like a monoclonal antibody to treat a COVID-19 infection, Sheffield says you will need to wait 90 days to prevent the treatment from interfering with the vaccine.
If you are currently on cancer therapy, Sheffield explains you may want to wait to get the shot.Instead, she recommends speaking with your doctor about the timing of when to get the vaccine.
When COVID-19 vaccines first became available to the general public, pregnant women were advised to speak with their physician before getting the shot. This was because we hadnt had enough experience, Sheffield explains.
Now weve had extraordinary amounts of experience with many millions of pregnant women getting the vaccine, Sheffield says. And weve seen that for the baby, there is no increase in terms of any of the poor outcomes that wed be worried about.
Sheffield continues, describing having COVID-19 illness while pregnant as a really dangerous situation.
We want to make sure that we protect them from that, Sheffield explains. In fact, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has said the benefits of the vaccine outweigh any of the potential side effects or risks.
While side effects with the vaccines are common, health officials have concerns about one in pregnant women a fever.
We dont want a person whos pregnant to have a fever, Sheffield tells ABC4.com. If you are pregnant and experience a fever after getting the COVID-19, she recommends treating the fever by bringing it down. You should be safe with that.
If your medications are impacting your immune system, like a monoclonal antibody, you should talk to your doctor about when to get the vaccine, Sheffield explains.
Its really rare that someone would have something that would prevent them from getting the vaccine, Sheffield says. All they need to do is consult with their physician about whats the right time.
Sheffield says there are very rare cases of a few things that we have seen that have been more common in vaccinated individuals than we would expect in the general population.
She explains that individuals who have had myocarditis pericarditis an inflammatory response that occurs in some of the muscles in the heart in the past are OK to get the COVID-19 vaccine as long as they do not still have symptoms. Those symptoms include chest pain and shortness of breath.
If you have had myocarditis after your first dose, Sheffield says you should not get the second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
Thats one of the situations and its treatable, Sheffield explains.
With the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Sheffield says there have been cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome. It is a rare syndrome in which your immune system attacks your nerves.
Weve seen those in a couple of other vaccines as well, Sheffield said. In there, were talking about a few cases per million of individuals who will get a progressive numbness and tingling, starting usually in the feet and hands and it moves up into the body, and it can cause some paralysis.
Its an immune response, she adds. This is usually temporary, according to Sheffield, and works its way out again over time.
If you have had Guillain-Barre syndrome in the past, Sheffield says it is recommended you get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
All three vaccines have received Emergency Authorization approval from the FDA. Pfizer and Moderna have begun the process to receive full approval.
Sheffield explains one of the biggest differences between emergency authorization and approval is time.
With an authorization, you need to have at least two months out of data to look at. And you have to have no other recourse for a person, Sheffield says. And then you also have to have the ongoing examination of it for approval. You just have to have six months of data.
At this point, Sheffield says the appropriate steps have been completed and we may soon see full approval.
The data was overwhelmingly good to start with, even with the authorization, and the benefits clearly outweighed any risks. And that is why [the FDA] went ahead and gave the authorization when they did.
Sheffield explains there was an increase of cases of blood clots in patients who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that tend to be younger women between 20 and 30 years old.
Locally, Sheffield says they have not seen any cases that are different from those seen nationally.
Its a very rare occurrence. But because weve given so many vaccines, we do see an occasional case pop up, Sheffield says. The key piece on this, again, is theyre treatable. You just have to be able to recognize the symptoms, and then make sure you get in for care and the anticoagulants that you need.
The first thing is there are not reported deaths due to that vaccine, Sheffield explains. So the question is, are we seeing people dying from COVID whove been vaccinated? And yes, that is true.
Sheffield continues, saying this is expected.
We didnt see cases of death in those trial participants when it was first approved, but we knew that there are individuals who would still develop COVID. When you have a 90% protection rate, that means that compared to those who werent vaccinated, you have a tenfold reduced risk, but theres still a risk that youll develop a condition. But the risk for hospitalizations and deaths are vastly smaller once youve been vaccinated, but it doesnt mean its down to zero.
When someone who has been vaccinated tests positive for the virus, officials refer to it as a breakthrough case. According to Sheffield, there is one age group seeing breakthrough cases more than others.
Sixty to 75% of those breakthrough cases are in people over age 65, she explains. It is individuals who, again, their immune system may not work as well, it may be older, and they have comorbidities, they have other diseases that make them more likely to feel the symptoms and have to be hospitalized.
Sheffield says every death or hospitalization of a vaccinated individual is recorded, regardless of the cause of death. For example, if you have been vaccinated and die in a car accident, it will be recorded.She adds most of the deaths being reported are not necessarily related to COVID disease.
Predominantly, those who are seeing the hospitalizations and death are individuals who have not been vaccinated. Those are the people that were trying to protect, Sheffield says. This delta variant is extraordinarily transmissible, meaning there are people who are vaccinated who can still colonize, can still get a virus that they could pass to somebody else.
Because there are still so many unvaccinated people, Sheffield explains it is important to mask up when in public.And if you can get vaccinated, you should.
If youre gonna be sending your kids off to school, get those kids over 12 vaccinated. So theyre not spreading disease between themselves as well, she adds.
Sheffield echoes the sentiments of so many other healthcare officials, calling on the public to help keep hospitalization numbers down.
SALT LAKE CITY (KTVX) It has been eight months since the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were administered to healthcare workers nationwide. Since then, the vaccine has become available to anyone over the age of 12.
If you have not gotten your COVID-19 vaccine you may be wondering who does not need a shot?
Dr. Tamara Sheffield, Medical Director for Community Health and Prevention at Intermountain Healthcare, spoke with Nexstars KTVX about the few instances in which a person would not qualify for, or should delay getting the vaccine.
So its very rare for an individual to not be qualified to get the vaccine, Sheffield explains. The key reason not to be vaccinated, or what is called a contraindication, is if youve had an allergic reaction to that specific COVID vaccine.
Sheffield says if you have an allergic reaction after receiving the first dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, you can still receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Its the one time you can mix the series, if theres been an allergy with one as long as youre in a supervised medical setting, Sheffield explains.
Outside of an allergy, Sheffield says there are some other conditions under which you may delay getting the COVID-19 vaccine.If you are currently infected with COVID-19, health officials encourage waiting to get your shot rather than possibly infecting others.
Additionally, if you have been on therapies like a monoclonal antibody to treat a COVID-19 infection, Sheffield says you will need to wait 90 days to prevent the treatment from interfering with the vaccine.
If you are currently on cancer therapy, Sheffield explains you may want to wait to get the shot.Instead, she recommends speaking with your doctor about the timing of when to get the vaccine.
When COVID-19 vaccines first became available to the general public, pregnant women were advised to speak with their physician before getting the shot. This was because we hadnt had enough experience, Sheffield explains.
Now weve had extraordinary amounts of experience with many millions of pregnant women getting the vaccine, Sheffield says. And weve seen that for the baby, there is no increase in terms of any of the poor outcomes that wed be worried about.
Sheffield continues, describing having COVID-19 illness while pregnant as a really dangerous situation.
We want to make sure that we protect them from that, Sheffield explains. In fact, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has said the benefits of the vaccine outweigh any of the potential side effects or risks.
While side effects with the vaccines are common, health officials have concerns about one in pregnant women a fever.
We dont want a person whos pregnant to have a fever, Sheffield tells ABC4.com. If you are pregnant and experience a fever after getting the COVID-19, she recommends treating the fever by bringing it down. You should be safe with that.
If your medications are impacting your immune system, like a monoclonal antibody, you should talk to your doctor about when to get the vaccine, Sheffield explains.
Its really rare that someone would have something that would prevent them from getting the vaccine, Sheffield says. All they need to do is consult with their physician about whats the right time.
Sheffield says there are very rare cases of a few things that we have seen that have been more common in vaccinated individuals than we would expect in the general population.
She explains that individuals who have had myocarditis pericarditis an inflammatory response that occurs in some of the muscles in the heart in the past are OK to get the COVID-19 vaccine as long as they do not still have symptoms. Those symptoms include chest pain and shortness of breath.
If you have had myocarditis after your first dose, Sheffield says you should not get the second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
Thats one of the situations and its treatable, Sheffield explains.
With the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Sheffield says there have been cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome. It is a rare syndrome in which your immune system attacks your nerves.
Weve seen those in a couple of other vaccines as well, Sheffield said. In there, were talking about a few cases per million of individuals who will get a progressive numbness and tingling, starting usually in the feet and hands and it moves up into the body, and it can cause some paralysis.
Its an immune response, she adds. This is usually temporary, according to Sheffield, and works its way out again over time.
If you have had Guillain-Barre syndrome in the past, Sheffield says it is recommended you get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
All three vaccines have received Emergency Authorization approval from the FDA. Pfizer and Moderna have begun the process to receive full approval.
Sheffield explains one of the biggest differences between emergency authorization and approval is time.
With an authorization, you need to have at least two months out of data to look at. And you have to have no other recourse for a person, Sheffield says. And then you also have to have the ongoing examination of it for approval. You just have to have six months of data.
At this point, Sheffield says the appropriate steps have been completed and we may soon see full approval.
The data was overwhelmingly good to start with, even with the authorization, and the benefits clearly outweighed any risks. And that is why [the FDA] went ahead and gave the authorization when they did.
Sheffield explains there was an increase of cases of blood clots in patients who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that tend to be younger women between 20 and 30 years old.
Locally, Sheffield says they have not seen any cases that are different from those seen nationally.
Its a very rare occurrence. But because weve given so many vaccines, we do see an occasional case pop up, Sheffield says. The key piece on this, again, is theyre treatable. You just have to be able to recognize the symptoms, and then make sure you get in for care and the anticoagulants that you need.
The first thing is there are not reported deaths due to that vaccine, Sheffield explains. So the question is, are we seeing people dying from COVID whove been vaccinated? And yes, that is true.
Sheffield continues, saying this is expected.
We didnt see cases of death in those trial participants when it was first approved, but we knew that there are individuals who would still develop COVID. When you have a 90% protection rate, that means that compared to those who werent vaccinated, you have a tenfold reduced risk, but theres still a risk that youll develop a condition. But the risk for hospitalizations and deaths are vastly smaller once youve been vaccinated, but it doesnt mean its down to zero.
When someone who has been vaccinated tests positive for the virus, officials refer to it as a breakthrough case. According to Sheffield, there is one age group seeing breakthrough cases more than others.
Sixty to 75% of those breakthrough cases are in people over age 65, she explains. It is individuals who, again, their immune system may not work as well, it may be older, and they have comorbidities, they have other diseases that make them more likely to feel the symptoms and have to be hospitalized.
Sheffield says every death or hospitalization of a vaccinated individual is recorded, regardless of the cause of death. For example, if you have been vaccinated and die in a car accident, it will be recorded.She adds most of the deaths being reported are not necessarily related to COVID disease.
Predominantly, those who are seeing the hospitalizations and death are individuals who have not been vaccinated. Those are the people that were trying to protect, Sheffield says. This delta variant is extraordinarily transmissible, meaning there are people who are vaccinated who can still colonize, can still get a virus that they could pass to somebody else.
Because there are still so many unvaccinated people, Sheffield explains it is important to mask up when in public.And if you can get vaccinated, you should.
If youre gonna be sending your kids off to school, get those kids over 12 vaccinated. So theyre not spreading disease between themselves as well, she adds.
Sheffield echoes the sentiments of so many other healthcare officials, calling on the public to help keep hospitalization numbers down.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the capacity at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami. The hospital, a 309-bed pediatric specialty hospital, had a total of 214 admissions on Saturday. Of those, 18 were Covid-19 positive and five were in intensive care units.
CNN
Covid-19 hospitalizations are reaching all-time highs in parts of the South, with some patients unable to get the care they would normally receive.
Susan Walker has been calling out-of-state hospitals trying to get help for her husband, who did not get vaccinated against Covid-19 and is now in a medically induced coma.
He is on a ventilator and in dire need of an ECMO treatment, which is not available at the hospital that he is in, the Florida mother said Sunday.
All the beds are taken up by Covid victims also getting ECMO.
An ECMO treatment uses external machinery that can function as the heart and lungs. Its been used with some severely ill Covid-19 patients, including young adults.
We have searched every hospital from the south of Florida to the north part of Florida trying to find availability, Walker said.
To transfer him to a hospital in Florida is next to impossible.
Across the country, states are struggling to fend off the Delta variant the most contagious strain of coronavirus yet.
But the situation in particularly worrisome in several Southern states.
Louisiana set a new record for Covid-19 hospitalizations last week.
Floridas hospitalizations recently jumped 13% above the states previous peak on July 23, 2020, according to a survey by the Florida Hospital Association.
The FHA said it expects 60% of the states hospitals to face a critical staffing shortage by this week.
And at Houstons United Memorial Medical Center, We have no beds. The emergency department is full of patients just waiting to be able to get into the hospital, Chief of Staff Dr. Joseph Varon said Sunday morning.
Over the last 12 hours, we have lost more patients than in the last five to six weeks.
According to data published Sunday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 50.1% of the total US population is now fully vaccinated more than 166 million people.
As of Sunday, Mississippi has fully vaccinated 35.2% of its residents. That makes Alabama with 34.8% of its residents fully vaccinated the only state in the US to have fully vaccinated less than 35% of its residents.
The seven-day average of doses administered each day is now 706,323 doses, per the CDC data, and an average of 449,000 people are initiating vaccination each day.
The US now is averaging more than 100,000 new Covid-19 cases every day the highest in almost six months, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Because it can take days or weeks for some Covid-19 cases to lead to hospitalization or death, doctors are bracing for an ugly repeat of scenes from 2020.
Its bad. For me, this is a deja vu of what we had last year, Varon said.
And the worst part about this is this was foreseeable. And this was preventable. So not only are (we) exhausted, were annoyed. And were annoyed because people are not doing the right thing.
The vast majority of those getting hospitalized with or dying from Covid-19 are not fully vaccinated, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, said last week.
And Americans who have already had Covid-19 shouldnt assume they dont need a shot.
For adults previously infected with Covid-19, vaccines give better protection against reinfection than natural immunity on its own, according to a CDC study published Friday.
The study suggests people who got Covid-19 in 2020 and didnt get vaccinated were more than twice as likely to be reinfected in May or June 2021, compared with people who also had Covid-19 but were later fully vaccinated.
If you have had Covid-19 before, please still get vaccinated, Walensky said Friday.
There is no minimum time to wait between recovering from Covid-19 and getting vaccinated, the CDC said.
Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, Walensky said, especially as the more contagious Delta variant spreads around the country.
Almost half the country is not fully vaccinated, including children under 12 who are not yet eligible but are still vulnerable to Covid-19.
Scientists say the Delta variant is as contagious as chicken pox, with each infected person potentially infecting eight or nine other people.
Delta may also cause more severe disease than other strains of coronavirus, according to studies cited in an internal CDC presentation.
Now some hospitals are seeing younger Covid-19 patients than before.
Something very scary now is happening in the Southern United States. We are seeing this massive surge of hospitalizations of young people that weve never seen before in hospitals across the South, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
Its many, many young people, including, Im sorry to say, many childrens hospital admissions. And for the first time that I can remember, were starting to see pediatric intensive care units get overwhelmed, which we never really saw before.
As of Tuesday, an average of 192 children with Covid-19 were admitted to US hospitals every day over the past week, CDC data shows.
Thats a 45.7% increase from the previous week in daily new hospitalizations among Covid-19 patients ages 0 to 17.
In the Miami area, our childrens hospitals are completely overwhelmed, said Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University.
Our pediatricians, the nursing, the staff are exhausted. And the children are suffering, Marty said.
It is absolutely devastating Weve never seen numbers like this before.
In Texas, Ava Amira Rivera an 11-month-old Covid-19 patient had to be airlifted to a hospital 150 miles away because of a shortage of pediatric beds in the Houston area.
None of the major pediatric hospitals in the area had beds available, said Amanda Callaway, a spokeswoman for Harris Health System.
The babys condition has since stabilized, and she is no longer intubated.
With more than 164 million Americans fully vaccinated, tens of thousands might get Covid-19 later on, Walensky said.
Even though theres no coronavirus in any of the vaccines used in the US, breakthrough infections are expected like with other vaccines.
Those who do get breakthrough infections generally have mild or no symptoms. As of late July, more than 99.99% of fully vaccinated Americans have not had a Covid-19 infection leading to hospitalization, according to CDC data.
The tiny fraction of breakthrough infections that do lead to hospitalization can include those who are immunocompromised or elderly.
Those two groups may be among the first to get an additional dose of vaccine, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Because the Covid-19 vaccines require an immune response to work, those who are immunocompromised or taking immune-suppressing drugs might not get adequate protection with a vaccine.
We will almost certainly be boosting those people before we boost the general population thats been vaccinated, Fauci said Sunday. And we should be doing that reasonably soon, I believe.
He said the next group that may need boosters sooner than the general population are those over age 60. Fauci said the CDC is studying different age groups to see how long vaccines may stay effective.
As soon as they see that that level of durability of protection goes down, then youll see the recommendation to vaccinate those individuals, he said.
Quentin Bowen said he had scheduled an appointment to get vaccinated but had to cancel because of work.
The 41-year-old farmer from Nebraska said he assumed delaying his vaccination wasnt a big deal.
I didnt think I fit the profile of who Covid (could) attack, Bowen said Saturday. I was healthy. I was younger. And I was going to get (the vaccine). And I figured Id been exposed to it before and never got it, so I thought I had time.
But Bowen fell sick with Covid-19 in May. He recalled going to the hospital and asking his friend to tell his kids he loved them.
I knew I wasnt coming home that day. And I didnt know if Id come home ever, Bowen said.
He survived a pulmonary embolism but is still struggling with complications three months later.
Bowen urged Americans to get vaccinated as soon as they can, when they still have the power to help preserve their health.
Once you walk through the hospital door, he said, its all out of your hands.
CNNs Lauren Mascarenhas, Jessica Firger and Matthew Hilk contributed to this report.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, here at a news conference Tuesday, has announced plans for a state-run mobile unit providing monoclonal antibody treatments. Marta Lavandier/AP hide caption
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, here at a news conference Tuesday, has announced plans for a state-run mobile unit providing monoclonal antibody treatments.
Florida is rolling out a mobile unit to administer monoclonal antibody treatments to coronavirus patients, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced.
Officials are expanding the availability of the treatments, which have emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, as a record number of new coronavirus infections is straining Florida's health care system.
"There's clear benefits to this early treatment for keeping people out of the hospital and reducing mortality," DeSantis said during a Thursday news conference.
Monoclonal antibodies which hold the coronavirus in check by mimicking the body's natural immune defenses can be used to treat people with mild to moderate COVID-19 who are 12 years of age or older. But the treatment doesn't work for those who've already developed more severe symptoms or are hospitalized.
Both vaccinated and unvaccinated people who are infected can receive the treatments, officials said.
Former President Donald Trump received Regeneron's monoclonal antibody treatment when he contracted coronavirus last fall.
But some states have struggled to make the treatment widely available since it is administered by an intravenous infusion that can take up to an hour and requires medical staff that may already be overworked.
While announcing the new rollout, DeSantis noted that monoclonal antibody treatments may not be as well-known in the battle against COVID-19 because they received emergency authorization around the same time that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines also did.
Florida is looking to offer monoclonal antibody treatments at other locations throughout the state, and it will send "strike teams" into long-term care facilities to offer the treatment to older residents and others where they live.
The state has become a hot spot for new COVID-19 cases in recent weeks as the highly contagious delta variant has caused transmission rates to explode.
Still, DeSantis has resisted forcing students, many of whom are under age 12 and ineligible for the vaccine, to wear masks during the upcoming school year. He has threatened to withhold funding from any school districts that don't let parents choose whether their children wear masks, though several counties have ignored the threat and kept their mask mandates or imposed new requirements.
Florida and Louisiana are now reporting a record number of Covid-19 hospital admissions, and other states are close. In Mississippi and Arkansas, daily admissions are at more than 87% of their earlier peak, and in Oregon, Alabama and Washington, daily admissions are at more than 75% of their peak.
But patients hospitalized with Covid-19 this summer tend to be younger than in earlier surges. And with vaccines widely available, they're mostly preventable, too.
Mercy Hospital in Joplin, Missouri, has surpassed its record number of Covid-19 patients more than once in the past two weeks, according to hospital president Jeremy Drinkwitz.
Things are very different from last time, he says.
"As far as the very distinct differences -- the age of patients for us," Drinkwitz told CNN. The hospital recently had three patients between 30 and 40, multiple patients in their 40s and some in their 50s and 60s on ventilators, he said.
"In November, when we had our first big spike, we didn't," Drinkwitz said. "We didn't have that younger population; it was more of the elderly population."
Now, he said, there are fewer elderly patients. "We're just not seeing that many. We have a few, but it's not anywhere close to the younger population," Drinkwitz said.
Seniors still have the highest per capita rate of hospitalizations, but the gap is smaller than it's been.
The recent hospitalization rate among seniors age 70 and older is about a quarter of what it was in January, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But hospitalization rates among younger adults are about as high as they were in January.
In fact, the hospitalization rate among adults age 30 to 39 is the highest it's ever been, CDC data shows.
Children also account for a larger share of hospitalizations now than they did in January, as hospitalization rates among those under the age of 18 hover right around the record high.
In a few states -- including Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and Louisiana -- the number of children hospitalized with Covid-19 more than doubled over the past week, federal data shows.
But with every 12 and older eligible to be vaccinated against Covid-19, experts have different concerns about this new wave of hospitalizations.
Early in the pandemic, there weren't enough tools to care for patients and doctors didn't know if what they were doing for their patients was the right thing, Dr. O'Neal Pyke, chief medical officer of Jackson North Medical Center, Jackson Health System in Florida, told CNN. As a critical care and internal medicine doctor, he cared for patients himself during the early stages of the pandemic, from March to October of last year.
"Now, my biggest concern is that we have a very, very good tool, right, we have the vaccine, and the vaccine has been proven now to be remarkably efficacious as it pertains to preventing severe illness and death," he said. "It doesn't necessarily prevent getting the virus, but it certainly does prevent severe illness requiring hospitalization and death. And the concern is that the community still has that hesitancy."
While Pyke said he understands this hesitancy to a degree, the best way to look at it is as though the vaccine is a dam.
"We have this deluge of flooding going on, and what we're doing in terms of trying with the medicines that we're trying over the months is basically scooping out cups of water from this flood," he said. "But the vaccine is like a dam, and the vaccine can do so much more in preventing the flooding that we're seeing right now. And that's the very essence of it."
Florida has the highest hospitalization rate in the country, according to the latest data from HHS. More than 65 people are hospitalized with Covid-19 for every 100,000 people in Florida, about one out of every 1,500 state residents. That's more than triple the national rate.
Every state with a higher than average hospitalization rate has a lower than average vaccination rate, including Florida, according to a CNN analysis of data from the CDC and HHS.
And it's taking a toll on a health care system that has been operating at full strength for a year and a half, Pyke says.
"We thought we turned the corner a bit on this, and here we are going back up," he said. "Obviously whatever we are feeling pales in comparison to what patients are feeling and their families, but it's overwhelming to the staff to be caring for patients with the same disease we thought we just, we might be seeing the end of."
In Arkansas, the Covid-19 hospitalization rate is more than double the national rate and the fifth highest in the country. Hospitalization rates among children are higher than they've ever been in the state. But so, too, are hospitalization rates among young adults under 30, who have been eligible to be vaccinated for months.
Dr. Stephen Mette, CEO of UAMS Health in Arkansas, said that low vaccination rate is the "first and foremost" contributing factor to the latest increase in hospitalizations.
Like Mercy Hospital in Joplin, UAMS has recently surpassed its record high number of hospitalizations in the pandemic. The majority of patients hospitalized with Covid at UAMS are either not vaccinated at all or not fully vaccinated, Mette said. And vaccinated patients have, so far, had a significant underlying medical condition.
"We knew we would have another wave, but we were maybe lulled into that false sense of security that we would have a large enough number of Americans, or Arkansans, vaccinated so that we would not have a very high wave," Mette said. "So, we were prepared, but not for this degree of the manifestation of this wave."
Other major contributing factors, Mette said, include different characteristics of the Delta variant, the relaxation of public health measures and the public's general pandemic fatigue.
Vaccination rates in the US have ticked up over recent weeks, a trend that experts say needs to continue to curb the current surge of Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations.
"We love our community, we love our neighbors and our friends here and our community, and we're here to serve them, and because of that we're fighting like hell to save their lives. Thirty year olds and 40 year olds should have a chance to live a full life and so we're trying to do everything we can to help them after they have gotten this virus," Drinkwitz said.
But the medical professionals need the help of the community.
"I'm asking people actually to open their eyes and realize what's happening. That there are hospitals and healthcare is being challenged, there's capacity issues in communities, and that we have to do something," Drinkwitz said. "We need help on the other side. We need people to be vaccinated. And if they just can't get their minds wrapped around that, then please wear a mask, social distance, those things we know to do."
As wealthier nations struggle to get more people to undergo vaccination, lower income nations struggle to acquire sufficient vaccine doses, and new SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge, a newly published paper states that the global eradication of COVID-19 remains possible nonetheless.
Lead author of the paper, Dr. Nick Wilson of the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand, pointed out to Medical News Today that skepticism regarding the papers conclusion is not surprising:
[The] reaction is completely understandable at the current point in time, [but] when the plans to eradicate smallpox were announced, and there were still millions of cases globally per year, many people were also very skeptical.
The paper cites the globally felt disruption resulting from COVID-19 as presenting an opportunity for a concerted international effort. Critical to an eradication programs success is establishing strong vaccine coverage and staying ahead of rapidly developing variants.
The paper entitled, We should not dismiss the possibility of eradicating COVID-19: Comparisons with smallpox and polio appears in BMJ Global Health.
The authors of the paper define eradications as the [p]ermanent reduction to zero of the worldwide incidence of infection caused by a specific agent as a result of deliberate efforts; intervention measures are no longer needed.
The paper presents a preliminary assessment of the eradicability of COVID-19 by comparing it with other worldwide diseases, including smallpox, which has been eradicated, and polio, for which just one of three serotypes persists.
Based on an established scoring system and additional technical, sociopolitical, and economic factors that the authors included, the study compiled a total of 17 variables relating to vaccine-preventable diseases, with a three-point relative scale for each variable. Each of the diseases received a score according to these metrics, with higher values indicating a greater chance of eradication.
COVID-19 scored as being slightly more eradicable than polio.
Smallpox was most eradicable with a score of 2.7. In comparison, COVID-19 scored 1.6, and polio scored 1.5.
Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, MPH, of the University of California, Los Angeless Fielding School of Public Health who was not involved in writing the article told MNT: The single greatest obstacle to true eradication will be achieving and sustaining the very high vaccination coverage (using a vaccine with no or extremely low infection breakthrough) needed to achieve full herd immunity, whereby transmission of COVID-19 in a community ceases.
Although he is not giving up on achieving higher vaccination coverage through more robust international public health and social measures, Dr. Wilson said that herd immunity is not a requirement for eradication.
Smallpox was eradicated without achieving herd immunity, said Dr. Wilson, but rather by targeted vaccination approaches. It is also notable that countries have also eliminated measles without (quite) achieving herd immunity, and, in fact, the whole of the Americas eliminated measles for a time.
The paper notes that there is also a risk of the persistence of the pandemic virus in non-human animal reservoirs, a phenomenon that is occurring with COVID-19 in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Asked whether current animal reservoirs may doom an eradication effort, Dr. Wilson said we are not there yet.
If we had the situation of influenza viruses (widespread in wild birds) then obviously eradication would not be feasible, he noted.
He added that it is possible to eradicate diseases in some wild animals for example, eliminating rabies in wild foxes via aerial bait drops containing vaccine (as per Western Europe).
Dr. Kim-Farley cited what he sees as the three most significant obstacles to eradication success.
Current vaccines, noted Dr. Kim-Farley, although offering excellent protection against severe illness and death, still have some breakthrough infections that can infect others.
Identifying cases of often-asymptomatic COVID-19 is also harder, said Dr. Kim-Farley, than it is with smallpox and measles, which are usually always symptomatic and identifiable.
Finally, there is the lack of political will to apply (and the unwillingness of some persons to accept) the strict public health measures, such as required vaccination, required mask wearing, required quarantine and isolation, and required testing.
When MNT asked Dr. Wilson whether he thinks COVID-19 eradication will occur, Dr. Wilson answered in the affirmative, adding: Our article largely focuses on technical issues as to eradication feasibility. The question of whether the global community will attempt it will depend on some international expert group (i.e., at the World Health Organization [] or United Nations-level) making an expert assessment of the technical, socioeconomic, and political feasibility.
Dr. Wilson said he was concerned about the current fractured nature of global cooperation and the vaccine nationalism that the paper describes.
Still, he is hopeful that past eradication successes will ultimately inspire the global community.
Dr. Kim-Farley suggests that it will be feasible to control COVID-19 as per the definition in the article; namely, Control: The reduction of disease incidence, prevalence, morbidity, or mortality to a locally acceptable level as a result of deliberate efforts; continued intervention measures are required to maintain the reduction.'
In any event, according to Dr. Kim-Farley, we should still try to eradicate COVID-19.
We should appreciate that control of COVID-19 is a worthy goal even if we do not achieve true eradication, Dr. Kim-Farley said. Effective vaccines and appropriate public health measures can greatly reduce serious illness and deaths due to COVID-19 to such levels that, even if endemic in our societies, COVID-19 does not take a significant toll on our populations due to needless suffering, disability, and death.
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