SO PAULOChinas effort to boost its image by providing Covid-19 vaccines to the developing world suffered a setback after one of its leading inoculation candidates turned out to be 50% effective in late-stage trials in Brazil, significantly lower than earlier results showed.
While Sinovacs CoronaVac efficacy rate still meets the 50% threshold the World Health Organization considers good enough for widespread use, scientists said a lack of transparency about the data risks damaging the credibility of a vaccine Brazilians and others world-wide are already reluctant to take.
Brazils Butantan Institute, a So Paulo-based public institute that is the first to complete late-stage trials of the CoronaVac vaccine, had said last week that it was shown to be 78% effective and offer total protection against severe cases of the disease.
But after rising pressure from Brazilian scientists, some of whom accused the trials organizers of misleading the public, Butantan said Tuesday those rates only included volunteers who suffered mild to severe cases of Covid-19. When data from all volunteers was consideredincluding those who contracted very mild cases of Covid-19 and required no medical assistancethe total efficacy rate fell to 50.4%, Butantan said.
Sinovac didnt respond to requests for comment.
Out of the more than 22 million doses of vaccine that have been distributed to hospitals and pharmacies so far in the United States, only about 6.7 million people have received their first dose, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There's no one reason for the slow rollout or doses going unused; experts say it was never going to be easy to begin a mass vaccination campaign during a pandemic. It takes time to vaccinate and monitor large numbers of people, and some facilities are staggering staff vaccinations to avoid having too many health care workers out at once.
The supply and demand don't always line up. Some in the highest priority groups -- health care workers and and long-term care facility residents -- don't want the vaccine, or at least, not yet. At the same time, the American Medical Association on Friday said it was "concerned" that some health care workers not employed by hospitals or health care systems face difficulties accessing the vaccine.
To speed up the process, the federal government is urging states to offer the vaccine to people who are older or in higher-risk groups, but some areas are still focusing on the earliest priority groups -- even if that means doses brought out of cold storage go unused.
"Every dose that's in somebody's arm is somebody that's not going to get sick with Covid," he said. "It's not doing any good trying to ration it out like this, week by week, because any dose that's sitting in a refrigerator is a life that's not being potentially saved."
Searching for people to vaccinate
That will start Monday, when New York will open up to first responders, teachers and residents 75 and older, in addition to prioritizing health care workers.
Frustration had already been mounting. On Tuesday evening last week, nurses from the Family Health Center of Harlem in New York traveled through the neighborhood trying to find people who were eligible to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.
The health center had a few extra doses of the Moderna vaccine that had been taken out of cold storage. The doses were supposed to be administered to health care workers -- but some did not show up for their appointments, and the clock was ticking.
"It expires six hours after you take the first dose out of the vial," Calman said.
That evening, the nurses "went out in the community, and they went to two open pharmacies and they asked whether any of the pharmacists who were there had wanted the vaccine," Calman said. "They went to a firehouse, which is down the street, to see if any of the people in the firehouse needed vaccine. ... They went to a residential facility."
By the end of that evening, there were still "three to four" doses left and they were discarded, Calman said.
"We should maintain the priority levels -- I think it's very important to have health care workers first, and to be able to bring teachers in now and others," Calman said. "But during that time, the health care provider community should be able to be vaccinating our highest risk patients, and be able to use our professional judgment in terms of who those people are and who we can get vaccine to."
'We expect these issues to be worked out'
Across the country, Legacy Health, a nonprofit health system with six hospitals in Oregon and southwest Washington, confirmed to CNN on Friday that, during its early vaccination efforts last month, 27 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine were thrown away because they expired before there was time to get them into arms -- and some initial information provided about the vaccine was unclear.
Brian Terrett, a spokesperson for Legacy Health, told CNN in an email that hospitals under Legacy Health scheduled vaccinations based on the initial information provided that each vial of vaccine contains five doses. It turns out that some vials contain six or seven doses -- and at the time, hospitals had extra doses, but no one scheduled or available to give them to.
So, "the 27 expired doses occurred early in our vaccination effort when we had more vaccines than patients," Terrett said. "Having six or seven doses in a vial has allowed us to vaccinate almost 700 more people than we were allocated. For every expired vaccine, Legacy vaccinated almost 25 more people than we expected."
As reports emerge nationwide of Covid-19 vaccines at some hospitals going unused, the American Hospital Association responded in a statement that it expects "these issues to be worked out."
The association represents and serves US hospitals and health care networks.
"America's hospitals and health systems are working hard to administer COVID-19 vaccines as quickly and safely as possible, doing so as prescribed in their state or local jurisdiction's microplan," Rick Pollack, AHA's president and CEO, said in a statement emailed to CNN on Friday.
"At the same time, we continue to care for a large amount of COVID-19 patients under very stressed circumstances involving PPE shortages, worker shortages and limited ICU bed capacity in certain areas. Mass vaccination is a huge and complex process -- and not unlike any other effort of this kind -- there are always bumps in the road on any large governmental endeavor, particularly at the beginning," Pollack said in part. "We expect these issues to be worked out, and the pace of vaccinations will increase dramatically over the coming weeks."
Slow rollouts in long-term care facilities
Vaccinations for long-term care facility residents and staff are also moving slowly in many places. As of Friday morning, more than 4 million doses had been distributed for use in long-term care facilities, but less than 700,000 eligible individuals had received their first dose.
The federal government partnered with CVS and Walgreens to facilitate vaccination in participating long-term care facilities.
In a statement published Wednesday, CVS said that the number of residents requiring vaccination was 20-30% lower than initial projections and that "initial uptake among staff is low," though part of that may be due to facilities staggering vaccination among staff.
Walgreens, meanwhile, told CNN that any unused doses are reallocated to the next scheduled clinic at a long-term care facility, and any doses that may expire before then "may be used to vaccinate Walgreens team members who are eligible to receive vaccines as part of the Phase 1a plan outlined by the CDC and states."
West Virginia has been leading the United States in vaccine doses administered per capita, and long-term care facilities may be part of the reason. West Virginia was the only state to opt out of the federal program to distribute Covid-19 vaccine to long-term care facility staff and residents; it started vaccinating people in those facilities about a week before the federal program started in other states.
More than 40% of pharmacies in West Virginia are not chain-affiliated, and the state wanted to prioritize existing relationships, the governor said in a press briefing on December 16.
"We have instead partnered with all the pharmacies in West Virginia," Gov. Jim Justice said in December. "We felt like that, from a state perspective, would be limiting our ability to rapidly distribute and administer the vaccine to the population in need if we had gone with the federal program."
Its a miracle of modern medicine that scientists were able to develop multiple successful vaccines against Covid-19, a disease that wasnt even on their radar a year ago. But so far, the global effort to roll out these vaccines and distribute them to vulnerable people is off to a slow start.
According to a tracker developed byOurWorldInDataa research partnership between the University of Oxford and the British non-profit Global Change Data Labthree countries have vaccinated a higher proportion of their populations than the rest of the world: Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain.
These Middle Eastern states have administered the jabs to 20.93%, 10.99%, and 5.25% of their populations, respectively, while the US, Denmark, and UK trail further behind at 2.02%, 1.98%, and 1.94%. The rest of the world hovers around 0.5%. (These are based on population estimates from the United Nations World Population Prospects, so other trackers, such as Bloombergs, may show slightly different proportions.)
Whats their secret?
First, Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain are small countries with populations of between 1.5 and 9.3 million people. For Israel and parts of the UAE, which are using the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, thats a logistical boon: Since the vaccine doses need to be stored at -70 to -80 degrees Celsius, short distances are key to preventing spoilage during transit. (Abu Dhabi and Bahrain are using the vaccine developed by Chinas Sinopharm.)
The countries universal healthcare systems are also helping get people vaccinated quickly, says Tinglong Dai, an associate professor of operations management at Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School, because it makes it easier to match [vaccine] supply and the demand. Healthcare data are centralized and digitized effectively, so citizens can either access an app or call a hotline and receive an immediate appointment for a jab if they are eligible.
In Israel, every citizen has to be part of one of four major health insurance funds, called HMOs. These funds are incentivized to compete with one another for patients in order to obtain more funding from the government. And Israelis can switch their HMO memberships every six months if theyre not satisfied, so the funds have every incentive to have their members get vaccines as soon as possible, Dai explains.
Medical authorities in the three countriesapproved the jabs early. Bahrain was the second country in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, and it approved the Sinopharm vaccine in November. Israel was the third to approve Modernas jab on Jan. 5 and it has secured 6 million doses of it already. It certainly helps that the three countries can afford it.
Israel began to trial the transportation and delivery of the vaccine on Dec. 9 and launched its vaccine rollout on Dec. 19, more than a week before the European Union. It hasnt said how much it paid for doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines, but health minister Yuli Edelstein told The New York Times that even if his country overpaid, it will have been worth it to reopen the Israeli economy early.
A key factor of the success of any vaccination rollout is the populations attitude towards it. In France, for example, vaccine skepticism, fueled bydisinformation, is seriously impeding the countrys efforts to vaccinate people. In a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in the US, 29% of respondents who work in a healthcare delivery setting said they probably or definitely wouldnt get the vaccine.
Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain have invested resources in reassuring the public that the vaccine is safe and effective. That starts at the top: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first Israeli to receive the shot, and he did so on live television, while the king of Bahrain also received the jab early on.
Health authorities in the countries liaised with religious leaders to make sure their communities turned up to get their jabs. For example, the UAEs Fatwa Council issued an Islamic ruling in favor of the vaccine and its chairman, Abdullah bin Bayyah, was vaccinated in public. Israeli health officials consulted with ultra-Orthodox media and community leaders, although there is still a lack of trust among Muslim Arab and Christian minorities there.
Yoel Hareven is international and resource development director at Sheba Medical Center, the largest healthcare center in Israel and a major vaccination hub. He argues that the mood in Israel right now is evocative of wartime. Everyone in Israel understands that this is a crisis, he told Quartz. And because we know how to act in crisis time, everyone is gathering, and unifying to fight Covid-19.
At Sheba, Hareven is part of a team that collects lessons learned from Israels vaccination drive. He highlights a few:
But Dai argues that while theres lessons to be learned from the early successes of Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain, countries who are frontrunners now shouldnt rest on their laurels. Two months from now, the focus will shift to [vaccinating] the general population, and thats where were going to see even more challenges, he explains. So its not clear who is a leader yet.
Nurse Salina Padilla prepares an infusion of a COVID-19 antibody treatment at Desert Valley Hospital in Victorville, Calif., in December. Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images hide caption
Nurse Salina Padilla prepares an infusion of a COVID-19 antibody treatment at Desert Valley Hospital in Victorville, Calif., in December.
Monoclonal antibody drugs are supposed to help people with mild to moderate COVID-19 avoid the hospital, but it can be a challenge to find out where the treatment is offered. NPR has heard from people across the country who have been frustrated by this.
They include Shirley Wagoner, an 80-year-old who still hits the ski slopes and helps run the family plumbing business in Spokane Valley, Wash.
First, her sons fell ill and were diagnosed with COVID-19. Then on the Monday after Christmas she came down with the symptoms of a bad cold, including a sore throat and laryngitis.
She went to her doctor's office for a coronavirus test and learned on New Year's Eve that she was also sick.
Her son-in-law, Myron Lee, who lives near Chicago, had been tracking the disease closely and knew his mother-in-law would be a candidate for treatment with monoclonal antibodies.
These are drugs available nationwide through an emergency authorization. They're designed to bind to the coronavirus to prevent it from invading cells. The government allocates the drug to states, which in turn decide how the drugs are distributed. Uptake has been irregular, in part because the medicines are cumbersome to deliver they're given by infusion. A committee convened by the National Institutes of Health is also not confident that the drugs actually work.
Even so, the Food and Drug Administration granted their emergency use, judging that the potential benefits outweigh the potential risks. So, Lee set about looking for somewhere in Spokane where his mother-in-law could get treated. He contacted the two companies that make the drug, Eli Lilly and Regeneron, to find it in Spokane. Information from them was discouraging.
"The weird thing is Spokane's a pretty major city in the Inland Northwest," Lee says. "It's kind of a medical center for the whole Inland Northwest, but there's not one place in Spokane that has the Eli Lilly drug."
A representative from the Eli Lilly hotline (855-LillyC19) gave him phone numbers of facilities within a few hours' drive. (Regeneron's hotline is 844-734-6643.)
Wagoner started calling around, including to her own doctor's office, which falsely informed her she would need to be hospitalized to be eligible for the drug. In fact, hospitalized patients aren't eligible for this treatment because clinical tests indicated they were only effective early in the disease.
"Then I called the Washington state public health [department], and they'd never heard of either therapeutic," Wagoner said.
State health officials eventually told Lee to call the big hospital in Spokane, but he simply got the runaround there and never learned whether it provides the treatment. Wagoner finally found a clinic about an hour and a half's drive away that would see her, but only if she could find a doctor in that town who would prescribe it.
"And then I got to thinking, by the time I had my husband drive me there, have the doctor appointment, get the infusion, which takes an hour, and then they keep you two hours to make sure you don't have a reaction, and drive home, it would almost be too much for me," Wagoner said. "It was overwhelming."
By then more than a week had elapsed since her first symptoms. The drugs are thought to work best within a few days of symptoms. Fortunately, she was starting to feel better on her own, so she simply gave up the search. She remembered President Trump promising that everyone could get this drug after he himself took it.
"That was my frustration," she said. "Trump said we could have them, but you can't get the dang things!"
The treasure-hunt aspect for patients is slowly improving. The National Infusion Center Association built a website that now lists clinics known to offer it. (It shows that the Regeneron drug has been shipped to a clinic in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which is not far from Spokane.)
Janelle Sabo, who manages COVID-19 drugs at Eli Lilly, said her company has fielded a couple of thousand calls asking for help locating the monoclonal antibody, and she's happy to see that the federal government has launched a locator website, too.
As of Monday, the federal website only had information for 22 states. (Washington was not among them.) "But hopefully that will change very soon," Sabo says. "I know the government is as motivated as we are to make sure people know how to access this medication and to try to avoid hospitalizations."
Because the drug has not been granted full FDA approval, Lilly is restricted in how it can promote the drug, Sabo says. It's also a challenge that many people learn they have COVID-19 from a testing center, not from their physician. People may in fact not have a regular physician, and doctors may not know where to refer patients for treatment in any event.
Sabo says some coronavirus testing sites are starting to hand out information about the antibody drugs, including information about where they are available locally. "Those are proving to be quite successful," she says, "because very early on the patient knows what to do with their results."
Still despite these gradual steps forward, "right now there are hundreds of thousands of doses that have been distributed and not yet used," Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said last week.
You can contact NPR science correspondent Richard Harris at rharris@npr.org.
January 11, 2021Clinical Contributors to this Story
Juan C. Ravell, M.D. contributes to topics such as Allergy and Immunology.
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were given Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in mid-December 2020. Prior to authorization by the FDA, these vaccines underwent the same rigorous safety and effectiveness standards as all other vaccines. Quickly, vaccine distribution began, starting with health care professionals on the frontlines of patient care.
Once available to the broader public, its critical that a high percentage of the population receive the vaccine in order to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19. Herd immunity occurs when most of a population is immune to an infectious disease (either from previous infection and/or vaccination) and provides indirect protection to those who are not immune to the disease.
There have been many rumors flying around on the internet about whats in the vaccine. Some rumors even suggested that the vaccines contain gluten, wheat, eggs and even bee venom! All of that is simply, untrue.
If youre among the many wondering whats actually in it? and, is it safe to receive the injection?, keep reading.
There are two COVID-19 messenger-ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines currently authorized for emergent use in the United States: the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines. Conventional vaccines rely on weakened and inactivated pathogens or a fragment of the pathogen to trigger an immune response. In contrast, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines use a novel approach by which mRNA is delivered into our cells to provide the genetic instructions for our own cells to temporarily make a specific viral protein that triggers an immune response.
There are rumors that mRNA vaccines will alter our DNA because the RNA molecule can convert information stored in DNA into proteins. Thats simply, not true. Its critical to note that the mRNA vaccines never enter the nucleus of the cell, where our DNA is stored. After injection, the mRNA from the vaccine is released into the cytoplasm of the cells. Once the viral protein is made and on the surface of the cell, mRNA is broken down and the body permanently gets rid of it, therefore making it impossible to change our DNA.
The remaining ingredients (below), including acids, acid stabilizers, salt and sugar all work together to maintain the stability of the vaccine after its produced.
Thats it!
Overall, the main ingredients in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are very similar, both vaccines were found to be safe and efficacious in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 disease in rigorously conducted clinical trials. These COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are safe and went through the same rigorous testing process as other vaccines before being approved for emergent use in the United States. Although local and systemic side effects have been reported, as is the case for many other medical interventions, the risk of lacking protection against COVID-19 and developing severe disease far exceeds those posed by the vaccine itself. says Juan Ravell, M.D., division chief of allergy and immunology at Hackensack University Medical Center. These ingredients are safe and the development of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines marks a huge step towards acquiring heard immunity and the end of this pandemic.
Sources:
The material provided through HealthU is intended to be used as general information only and should not replace the advice of your physician. Always consult your physician for individual care.
CHICAGO Even as some states continue to see a surge in new COVID-19 infections, a post-holiday rise appears to have leveled off in Illinois, opening the possibility for qualifying regions to see a lessening of restrictions this week.
The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 4,776 new confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases Monday, as well as 53 additional deaths. While the weekly average of cases reported in the state has risen steadily since late December, it has remained near 7,000 cases for the past three days.
Compared to many U.S. states, Illinois has seen a smaller rise in the number of new Covid infections which experts attribute to holiday travel and gatherings in recent weeks.
With 55.2 cases reported per 100,000 residents over the past week according to the CDC, Illinois ranks around the middle of states, while the worst-hit areas are seeing nearly twice that amount.
As Illinois seems to have avoided a major post-holiday surge of COVID-19, Governor JB Pritzker reaffirmed on Monday that qualifying regions can begin moving down to less-restrictive mitigation measures starting January 15.
WATCH ABOVE: Governor JB Pritzker and health officials give an update on COVID-19 and vaccination efforts in Illinois Monday
State health officials picked January 15 because it represented one full incubation period after the New Years holiday. As of Monday, only three regions meet the metrics for moving to Tier 2 mitigations, although many are on the cusp of qualifying.
Senators Durbin and Duckworth announced Monday that federal dollars are heading to Illinois to help with more testing and the giving of shots.
This includes $574.3 million for COVID-19 testing and $90.158 million for vaccination distribution in Illinois. The Chicago Department of Public Health will also receive $155 million for testing and $24.3 million for vaccine distribution.
Illinois has seen this leveling off of new reported cases even as the number of tests performed in the state on average is rising back towards levels seen prior to the holidays.
With 66,697 new tests reported over the past 24 hours, Illinois is now averaging more than 91,000 tests over a seven-day period. This is a marked increase from the average of about 70,000 tests seen at the start of the month, but remains below the peak of more than 100,000 around Thanksgiving.
As tests rise and cases drop on average, Illinois is seeing a decline in its 7-day case positivity rate, which dropped to 7.6% as of Monday. Additionally, while test positivity rates had been rising or flat on average in most regions after the holidays, they have begun to fall again in recent days.
Hospitalizations in the state have been falling as well, with 3,540 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Sunday night, including 759 in intensive care and 401 on ventilators.
Even as the state is seeing some promising signs, Illinois continues to average more than 100 reported Covid deaths a day, higher than the peak seen in the spring.
Pritzker said vaccination efforts continue across the state, as Illinois has received 587,900 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines as of Monday and 334,939 have been administered so far.
Some regions have substantially completed the first phase of vaccinations which includes about 850,000 frontline healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities, Pritzker said.
Those regions can begin administering doses to people 65 years of age and older and essential workers who make up the second 1B phase of vaccinations.
A new variant of COVID-19 first identified in the United Kingdom thats believed to be 50% more contagious has been identified in Indiana, state health officials said Monday.
The new variant has not yet been confirmed in Illinois, but IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said its likely just circulating in small enough numbers where it has not been detected.
Ezike said the variant would likely become the dominant strain in Illinois within a few months, after which Illinois would see more infectious spread.
We know that this is brewing and therefore we have the opportunity to use that information and make better choices around the mitigations, around avoiding gatherings, so we can get as many people vaccinated and stay safe before this variant takes over, Ezike said.
Indiana reported 3,726 new COVID-19 cases and 30 additional deaths Monday, while the state continues to see a decline in hospitalizations following a spike in early December.
Over the weekend, City of Chicago extended its stay-at-home advisory which calls on residents to only leave their homes for essential purposes and limit gatherings to household members only.
State limits which closed entertainment venues, bar indoor dining at bars and restaurants and limit capacities for businesses remain in effect in the city as well.
City health officials reported a 7-day average of 1,028 new COVID-19 cases and 13 deaths Monday, with a test positivity rate of 10.3%.
Thousands of Chicago Public School students are returning classrooms Monday, despite continued pushback from teachers and parents.
After a slow and at times rocky start, California is trying to ramp up vaccine distribution.
For now, the vaccine is still supposed to go to medical personnel and first responders. But officials expect to provide details soon about who will next be eligible.
On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to vaccinate an additional 1 million people against COVID-19 over the next nine days, though details of how he would do it were unclear.
Though California has received more than 2.1 million doses of vaccines, as of Friday about a third had been administered to frontline healthcare workers and residents at nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities who were eligible for the first round of inoculations.
The state has eased restrictions on who qualifies for vaccinations to help speed the rate at which local health departments and providers administer the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, a process that was created to ensure the well-off and well-connected couldnt jump to the front of the line.
The new guidelines allow for vaccines to be offered to those in other lower-tier groups, such as teachers, childcare workers, people who work in emergency services, food and agriculture and people over the age of 75, if there is a risk of the vaccine expiring.
Los Angeles plans to turn its massive coronavirus testing site at Dodger Stadium into a vaccination distribution center this week, with officials hoping to vaccinate up to 12,000 people a day when the site is fully operational.
City and county officials also plan to end testing at the Veterans Affairs Lot 15 site near Jackie Robinson Stadium to shift personnel, equipment and other resources to vaccine distribution.
The state might offer more details this week. But officials have said that after healthcare workers, these are some of the criteria for the next round of vaccines:
Some of those who would be at the top of the line include, in order as outlined by the state:
MADISON (WKOW/WXOW) -- Five deaths were reported Monday of people who have died in Wisconsin because of COVID-19, according to the latest numbers from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
One death was a La Crosse County resident according to the Coulee COVID-19 Collaborative. It is the 64th death of a county resident from COVID since the beginning of the pandemic.
Deaths for each day arereported by DHS HERE.
DHS also reported 56 people were newly-hospitalized.
As of Sunday afternoon, 973 COVID-19 patientswere being treated in Wisconsin hospitals. That's 81 fewer than the day before.
Of those, 219 are in the ICUaccording to the Wisconsin Hospital Association, a drop of 23 from the previous day.
There have been 1,456 positive COVID-19 tests since yesterday in Wisconsin and 3,998 negative results.
(CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL DHS DASHBOARD)
The Department of Health Servicesdashboardshows the seven-day average of both positive tests by day and test by person.(CHART)
Of all positive cases reported since the pandemic began, 474,830, or 93.4 percent, are considered recovered.
DHS now has a county-level dashboard to assess the COVID-19 activity levelin counties and Healthcare Emergency Readiness Coalition regions that measure what DHS calls the burden in each county.View the dashboard HERE.
Information from DHS now provides a breakdown of their data in a new interactive map. It can show users' data by county, municipality, school district, or zip code.Find the map here.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services said that 40 people, or one fewer than yesterday, are hospitalized in the Western Region of the state, which is comprised of Buffalo, Trempealeau, Jackson, La Crosse, Monroe, Vernon, and Crawford counties. There are currently no cases in intensive care.
58 new cases were announced on Monday in La Crosse County. They broke down demographically this way:
Here is a look at the regional numbers from the DHS update:
7-Day Average is per 100,000 people. Figures compiled by the WI. Dept. of Health Services or county health departments.
Find additional COVID-19 coverage here.
Seattle researchers say by collecting sewage samples from neighborhoods, community outbreaks can be identified while protecting peoples privacy.
University of Washington researchers are testing a unique approach to finding out if specific neighborhoods are experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks.
Researchers are using wastewater, pulled from pumping stations, to compile data on coronavirus trends.
"We go to the pumping station, and we take a sample, take it back to the lab, and then we do the same tests as you do when you take a swab sample," said Mari Winkler, a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Researchers say by collecting sewage samples from neighborhoods, community outbreaks can be identified while protecting peoples privacy.
Winkler says this anonymous approach to tracking the virus can help researchers figure out where the fire is burning.
"It allows you to target these neighborhoods with policies. As vaccinations roll out, we would expect the viral signals to go down," said Pieter Candry, UW postdoctoral researcher in civil and environmental engineering.
This isn't a new concept. Researchers across the country, including in Whatcom County, are doing something similar, but not on a hyperlocal level.
Anonymous detecting can serve as a way to account for asymptomatic people, vulnerable populations with less access to health care and individual testing, and those who may avoid testing due to the fear of discrimination from positive test results.
"If there are people that are not getting targeted by the vaccination programs, if people are skeptical about vaccination programs, these kinds of approaches would allow you to monitor these populations and actually see whether vaccination is reaching the people that it needs to reach," said Candry.
UW researchers are still testing this method. If it's adopted, it will be the first of its kind in Seattle, eventually tackling COVID-19 underground.
"To find hotspots and address these with targeted policies... we don't need to lock down an entire city or the entire country, but really go down to the neighborhoods, and sub-neighborhood level to mitigate the spread of COVID-19," said Candry.
Researchers will continue to develop and refine this testing method, and hope it will help with COVID-19 detection efforts and vaccine roll-out strategies.
