Hawaii Department of Health officials today reported 73 new confirmed and probable coronavirus infections statewide, bringing the states total since the start of the pandemic to 33,585 cases.
There was a sharp rise in the states total coronavirus case count after health officials today added in 1,638 probable infections that were recorded since the start of the pandemic. Future daily case counts will include probable cases, which may add an extra 10 to 20 cases a week, officials said.
The probable infections include people who never received a confirmatory test but are believed to have had the virus because of their known exposure and symptoms or because of a positive antigen test.
No new coronavirus-related fatalities were reported today so the statewide death toll remains at 492.
People who test positive with an antigen test, but do not confirm infection by taking a PCR test are counted as probable cases, said Acting State Epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Kemble in a statement Tuesday. Testing technology is evolving and we anticipate using more rapid antigen testing more often as time goes on.
State health officials reported 58 new confirmed and 15 probable cases today. By island, Oahu had 50 new cases, Hawaii island had nine, Maui had seven, Molokai had four, Kauai had one, and there were five Hawaii residents diagnosed outside the state. It appears three previous cases were removed from the count today.
>> RELATED: Probable cases will raise Hawaiis COVID case count by 1,600
The states official coronavirus-related death toll includes 380 fatalities on Oahu, 54 on Maui, 53 on Hawaii island, two on Kauai, and three Hawaii residents who died outside the state.
The U.S. coronavirus-related death toll today is more than 587,000 and the nationwide infection tally is about 33 million.
The total number of confirmed and probable coronavirus cases by island since the start of the outbreak are 26,694 on Oahu, 4,375 on Maui, 2,834 in Hawaii County, 313 on Kauai, 115 on Lanai and 64 on Molokai. There are also 1,190 Hawaii residents who were diagnosed outside of the state.
Todays probable infections added to the counts today include 795 on Maui, 714 on Oahu, 64 on Hawaii island, 15 on Molokai, three each on Kauai and Lanai, and 44 residents diagnosed outside the state.
The statistics released today reflect the new infection cases reported to the department on Monday.
Health officials also said today that of the states total infection count, 1,158 cases were considered to be active. Officials say they consider infections reported in the past 14 days to be a proxy number for active cases. The number of active cases in the state increased by 59 today.
By island, Oahu has 907 active cases, Maui has 144, the Big Island has 64, Kauai has 28, Molokai has 14 and Lanai has one.
Health officials counted 5,543 new COVID-19 test results in todays tally, for a 1.32% statewide positivity rate. The states 7-day average positivity rate is 1.6%, according to the Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard.
The Hawaii COVID-19 vaccine summary said that 1,414,910 vaccine doses have been administered through state and federal distribution programs as of today.
Of all the confirmed Hawaii infection cases, 2,269 have required hospitalizations, with 29 new hospitalizations reported today.
Ten hospitalizations in the statewide count are Hawaii residents who were diagnosed and treated outside the state. Of the 2,259 hospitalizations within the state, 1,881 have been on Oahu, 240 on Maui, 123 on the Big Island, nine on Kauai, five on Lanai and one on Molokai.
According to the latest information from the departments Hawaii COVID-19 Data dashboard, a total of 45 patients with the virus were in Hawaii hospitals as of Tuesday, with nine in intensive care units and five on ventilators.
>> RELATED: COVID-19 vaccine can come with side effects, but those fully vaccinated have no regrets
Oahu moved into the less-restrictive Tier 3 of the citys four-tier economic recovery plan on Feb. 25 after being in Tier 2 since Oct. 22. Tier 3 permits social and outdoor recreational gatherings of up to 10 people, and restaurants to seat 10 people at a table. Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi on March 11 announced modifications to Tier 3, including allowing bars to reopen under the same conditions as restaurants and extending the curfew until midnight.
Honolulu will remain in Tier 3 of the citys COVID-19 reopening framework until at least June 3, according to the mayors office.
The seven-day average case count for Oahu is 65 and the seven-day average positivity rate is 2.4%, state health officials said today.
The US has reached a "landmark day" in the Covid-19 pandemic as 60% of American adults have gotten at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
In addition, more than 3.5 million people ages 12 to 17 have received their first dose, Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.
And more people of color are getting vaccinated -- marking "encouraging national trends," said White House Covid-19 Response Team senior adviser Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith.
In the past two weeks, 51% of those vaccinated in the US were people of color. That's higher than the 40% of the general population these groups represent.
Meeting people where they are and bringing vaccines to communities seem to be working, she said.
Black, Latino and Native American communities have been hit particularly hard by Covid-19. And some in those groups were hesitant about getting vaccinated because ofmedical mistreatment in the past.
But efforts to protect minority communities appear to be paying off. From all the federal vaccination sites run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, about 60% of shots have been given to people of color, Nunez-Smith said.
And about 70% of shots administered through the federal government's community health centers have been given to people of color, she said.
But the need to vaccinate more Americans tohelp stop the virus from resurgingis far from met.
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The European Union is poised to open travel to more visitors after ambassadors approved changes to travel restrictions Wednesday. Here, people walk out of the sea last week on Italy's volcanic island of Vulcano. Gianluca Chininea/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
The European Union is poised to open travel to more visitors after ambassadors approved changes to travel restrictions Wednesday. Here, people walk out of the sea last week on Italy's volcanic island of Vulcano.
The European Union is poised to allow travelers from more countries to visit the bloc, as long as they've been vaccinated with an approved vaccine, in its latest loosening of travel restrictions.
The new policy is expected to allow EU member states to admit travelers from the U.S. and other countries, though the EU has yet to clarify to which countries the policy applies. EU ambassadors formally approved the new policy Wednesday; it now heads to the European Council, an EU official told NPR, with a formal adoption possible on Thursday.
The EU had previously allowed travelers from a small group of countries. The list is expected to expand as the EU changes its criteria for coronavirus transmission rates and other epidemiological data, according to the EU Commission's spokesperson, Christian Wigand.
The change in travel rules had been expected since at least last month when Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said she expected all EU members to widen their lists of allowed travelers soon.
The main requirement for would-be travelers is that they must have received a vaccine authorized by the European Medicines Agency which has already given its OK to the three vaccines being used in the U.S., which are made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
The EU notably omitted the United States from its list of approved travel partners last summer at a time when many U.S. states were seeing huge spikes in new coronavirus infections.
Virtually all of Europe remains under a Level 4 "Do Not Travel" advisory from the U.S. State Department, which in April added more than 115 countries to its most-severe designation. The agency lowered its advisory for the U.K. to a Level 3 "Reconsider Travel" advisory last week.
Travel restrictions and concerns about the pandemic have kept U.S. tourists out of a market that relies on them to bring in millions of dollars each year. In 2019, roughly 2 million or more Americans visited Europe in each month from May through September, according to the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office.
As they agreed to relax travel restrictions, the EU ambassadors also agreed to implement a new emergency brake mechanism aimed at limiting the risk posed by new coronavirus variants entering the European Union. The new tool will allow "member states to act quickly and in a coordinated manner," Wigand said.
In another update on the EU's attempts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, von der Leyen said Wednesday that the EU has now exceeded 200 million vaccinations.
The EU hopes to deliver enough vaccine doses to have 70% of the EU adult population vaccinated by July a target that von der Leyen said is within reach.
Im going to regret writing about this, but its not a topic to be ignored. Where did the current coronavirus come from?
If you ask that question, you get all sorts of answers from all sorts of people. Let me downgrade some of those right up front. To start at the far end of the fever scale, I do not think that this virus is some sort of deliberately engineered (and/or deliberately released) bioweapon, and I am simply not going to give that theory more time here today. But that still leaves a lot of possibilities open, and I dont think we have enough evidence yet to sort those others out.
The other end of the scale is that this is a virus that evolved into its present form in an animal host and then made the jump into infecting humans through sheer coincidence and bad luck. That does happen, and it has happened many times throughout history, so that absolutely cannot be ruled out. But there are a lot of possibilities in between those two. As the world knows, there is a research facility in Wuhan that has been studying viruses (including coronaviruses), so we also cannot rule out the possibility of an accidental escape from such a site. And theres also the possibility that such a virus might then be different from wild-type, depending on what sorts of work was done on it. Viruses most certainly have escaped from research facilities before, and this is not a crazy idea.
From here we get into a lot of details about the codons in the viral sequence, the presence of a furin cleavage site, similarities (and differences) between the current coronaviruse and the closest wild-type relatives. This Medium post by Nicholas Wade goes into many of these, but you should know up front that many virologists believe that he overstates the case (such as in the rarity of that furin cleavage site). I also should link to this letter that has just appeared in Science, calling for greater clarity on the whole issue, and I dont think anyone can disagree that its needed:
As scientists with relevant expertise, we agree with the WHO director-general (5), the United States and 13 other countries (6), and the European Union (7) that greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve. We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data. A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest. Public health agencies and research laboratories alike need to open their records to the public. Investigators should document the veracity and provenance of data from which analyses are conducted and conclusions drawn, so that analyses are reproducible by independent experts.
From what I can see, this is pretty much exactly what hasnt happened yet. I have to note that the actions of the Chinese government have not been characterized by the openness called for above. And as long as that is the case, suspicion will be hard to dispel. Their documented actions against Chinese physicians and scientists who spread early word of the pandemic do not inspire confidence, either. But at the same time, some politicians have also (for their own benefit) jumped at the chance to make accusations against the Chinese. This stuff has done nothing but sow fear, hatred, and confusion what was partly the plan on the part of the people promulgating it, of course. Thats been in all directions, too, because there are many people who probably have refused to take the lab-leak idea seriously just because some demagogues and fools love it, too. This world would be a lot easier to understand if assholes were always wrong about everything, but thats not the case. To be completely even-handed about it, there are (for example) plenty of people in both the Trump administration and in the Chinese government that I put in that category. They cant both be right, though, can they?
So its all an open question, unfortunately. And I think its important for people to realize that its an open question, and that we need a lot more hard evidence before anything can be said for certain. People up and down the spectrum of opinion need to realize that this could still go in several different directions, and that no matter what the real answer turns out to be assuming we get one that its going to make some people angry. I just hope we do get one, because its really, really important.
For those of you who have either just started your vaccination process now or havent yet gotten your first dose, heres our invitation, Murphy said.
But are the incentives enough to turn someone dead set against getting vaccinated?
Im not so sure, said Dr. David Asch, executive director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation. He says that the incentive depends on what is being offered, whether that is something the person wants, and how it is being presented.
If its a transactional incentive, like if you get vaccinated, youll get a hundred dollars, thats much less likely to be as motivating and as potent as, for example, what they did in Ohio, he said.
King, a special education teacher at Southwestern Elementary School in Chesapeake, has been teaching from home throughout the pandemic. In her dining room, she has piles of papers, two laptops and a diagram of the alphabet taped to the wall. Payton, 80, is homebound and has been nonverbal for a couple years, although shell blink to let you know shes listening.
OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) On Wednesday, the Douglas County Health Department (DCHD) confirmed 26 additional COVID-19 cases in the community and four additional deaths related to the virus.
With the additional cases, the total since the pandemic began in March of 2020 is now at 71,603.
The DCHD said the COVID-related deaths include a woman in her 60s and three men ages 50 to 90. The total number of deaths related to the virus is now at 714.
Other data from the department:
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The latest mutations of coronavirus are dodging the RT-PCR tests with many people testing negative despite having symptoms of coronavirus. But at the same time, further investigations related to lungs show that they have contracted the virus. Seeing the current trend of failed RT-PCR tests, doctors have taken the help of many other effective testing procedures D-Dimer, CRP, Interleukin-6 among others when reports of patients with symptoms come negative, said Dr Shuchin Bajaj, founder-director, Ujala Cygnus Group of Hospitals.
These tests are beneficial for monitoring the patients progression to Covid-19 related cytokine storm and help in timely medical intervention to reduce fatality. We believe that the virus is now forming a colony in the lungs leaving the throat and nose, which are very dangerous signs. The latest wave has also led to the new and rare symptoms such as blood clotting, in which case, the-above mentioned tests are required, Dr Bajaj said.
What is D-Dimer?
D-Dimer is one of the fibrin degradation products. So when a body part is damaged or is bleeding from somewhere, the body tries to stop the bleeding by clumping together the cells there to make a network. That network is formed from a protein called fibrin. So vibrating starts together at the bleeding site and makes a blood clot. That blood clot is due to the crises crossing of fibrin. When the healing is done, or when the body thinks that the cloud is no longer necessary, it starts to degrade that clot and starts breaking down the fibrin. When the fibrin breaks down, it forms fibrin degradation products or FDPs. And one of the FDP is D-Dimer.
Why do we need D-Dimer during COVID?
The test shows the presence of clots in the body when COVID becomes serious. We get a lot of clots in the body in the lung especially, because of which reason the lungs cannot breathe. The blood flow is hampered due to clotting. So, the body tries to break down these clots. D dimer is detectable for up to eight hours after formation until the time the kidney clears it out.
What does the high or low level of D-Dimer mean?
A higher level of D dimer in the body shows that there is a lot of clot presence in the body which can be a dangerous sign when affected with COVID. So we use D-Dimer to assess for severity of COVID disease and if the patient is going to need oxygen in the future, because the higher their D-dimer, higher is the number of clots in the lungs and the higher the chances that they will need oxygen.
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Biden announced on Monday his administration will be sending 20 million coronavirus vaccines abroad by the end of June. This is in addition to the 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine (not currently approved in the United States) the administration is also sending abroad. We will work with COVAXthe international organization that's set upand other partners to ensure that the vaccines are delivered in a way that is equitable and that follows the science and the public health data, said the president. Because we have done so much here, because of the power of American companies, research and manufacturing, we can continue to do more to help the rest of the world. This is a rapidly changing world, and it's a mistake to bet against democracies. Here are some of the other recent headlines you might have missed.
Biden will sign a presidential memorandum on Tuesday to expand legal access for low income and underserved populations whose long-term challenges in getting access have only increased during the public health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, said a fact-sheet from the White House. The Biden administration will re-establish the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable, which was initially created in 2015.
Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is stepping down from her role this summer, Politico reported on Monday. She has been a career scientist at the agency for over 30 years and last year sounded the alarm about the coronavirus as some Trump officials tried to downplay it. But she had clashed with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in recent months, a person familiar with the matter said, according to the report. Another senior health official said Schuchat was in the running to become the agencys director under the Biden administration before the position went to Walensky. This is the second top CDC career official in recent weeks to announce a departure.
On Monday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency released updated COVID-19 Pandemic Operational Guidance: All-Hazards Incident Response and Recovery to help emergency managers plan for disaster response and recovery while following public health guidance. While the country has made significant progress, the pandemic is not over, said the report. FEMA encourages emergency managers to apply lessons learned from the pandemic and other disasters to anticipate new operational challenges while protecting the health and safety of all disaster survivors and the disaster workforce.
The National Museum of American History will reopen on May 21 after being closed for six months. It will be open with reduced hours and health and safety measures for visitors and staff are in place, including requiring all visitors to reserve a free timed-entry pass and to wear a face covering for the duration of their visit, said a press release from the Smithsonian.
The Transportation Security Administration screened 1,734,541 people at airport checkpoints on Monday, which was the highest throughput volume on a Monday since the pandemic started, Lisa Farbstein, TSA spokesperson, tweeted on Tuesday. Remember, the federal mask mandate remains in effect so if you travel, please wear a mask, she added.
Addressing the staff at the Copenhagen Embassy on Monday on Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke about the lessons learned during the pandemic. Im a dad with two very small kids, and I think I have a new appreciation, myself, for how important it is to try to be there, if possible, for dinner or when your kids are up in the morning and having breakfast, he said. And one of the things Im taking away from this is we may have, even after COVID, new ways of thinking about how we get the work-life balance right and how we can build in more flexibility to all of our jobs so that we can do that.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency inspector general released its semi-annual report on Tuesday, which IG Laura Wertheimer said shows the broad scope of our oversight responsibilities and the extensive efforts we have undertaken...despite the pandemic.
Todays GovExec Daily podcast episode is about coronavirus and other types of government oversight.
Help us understand the situation better. Are you a federal employee, contractor or military member with information, concerns, etc. about how your agency is handling the coronavirus? Email us at newstips@govexec.com.
2. The immune response is robust
Scientists testing vaccine efficacy often focus on antibodies and their ability to block the virus from infecting cells. In lab experiments, they mix blood from people who have been infected or vaccinated with cells in a dish to see if antibodies in the blood can neutralize the virus. These experiments are easy to perform. But antibodies are a very narrow slice of what the immune response might be in the body, says Jennifer Dowd, an epidemiologist and demographer at the University of Oxford.
Immune cells called T cells also help keep infections in check. These cells cant neutralize the virus, but they can seek out infected cells and destroy them. That helps protect against severe disease. And data from people whove had covid-19 suggests that T-cell response should provide ample protection against most of the SARS-CoV-2 variants.
A vaccine that can block infection is wonderful. But the most important thing is to keep people out of the hospital and out of the ground, says Friedrich. And theres good evidence that the current vaccines do exactly that.In South Africa, one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccineprovided 85% protectionagainst covid-19-related hospitalizations and deaths. At the time, 95% of cases were caused by the B.1.351 variant.In Israel, where B.1.1.7 has become the dominant strain, two doses of Pfizer offered 97% protection against symptomatic covid-19 and hospitalizations linked to covid-19.
Once the virus enters a cell, it begins to replicate. The more copies it makes, the greater the likelihood that random errors, or mutations, will crop up. Most of these copying errors are inconsequential. A handful, however, might give the virus a leg up. For example,a spike-protein mutation known as D614G appears to help transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Another,E484K, might help the virus evade the bodys antibody response. If the viruses carrying these advantageous mutations get transmitted from one person to the next, they can start to outcompete the viruses that lack them, a process known as natural selection. Thats how the B.1.1.7 variant, which is more transmissible, became the predominant strain in the US.
In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the mutations that improve the virus keep popping up in different parts of the globe, a phenomenon known as convergent evolution. We are seeing the same combinations evolving over and over and over again, says Vaughn Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pittsburgh. Imagine a game of Tetris, Cooper writes ina recent story for Scientific American.A limited number of building blocks can be assembled in different ways, in different combinations, to achieve the same winning structures.
Cooper and some other researchers see this evidence of convergent evolution as a hopeful sign: the virus may be running out of new ways to adapt to the current environment. Its actually a small deck of cards right now, he says. If we can control infections, that deck of cards is going to remain small.
Eventually, the current vaccines will become less effective. Thats to be expected, Chandran says. But he expects that to happen gradually: There will be time for next-generation vaccines. Moderna has already begun testing the efficacy of a booster shot aimed at protecting against B.1.351 (first identified in South Africa). Last week the companyreleased the initial results. A third dose of the current covid-19 shot or a B.1.351-specific booster increased protection against the variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil. But the new variant-specific booster prompted a bigger immune response against B.1.351 than the third dose of the original shot.
Thats a relief for a couple of reasons. First, it demonstrates that variant-specific boosters can work. I think the feasibility of these RNA-based vaccines to produce boosters is the achievement of our lifetime, Cooper says.
