The West VirginiaDepartment of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of December 19, 2020, there have been 1,378,211total confirmatorylaboratory results received for COVID-19, with 71,215 total cases and 1,122deaths.
DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a 77-year old male from MarionCounty, an 82-year old male from Raleigh County, an 82-year old male MineralCounty, a 75-year old male from Marshall County, an 82-year old female fromGreenbrier County, a 75-year old male from Marshall County, a 90-year oldfemale from Jefferson County, a 69-year old female from Berkeley County, an 81-yearold male from Hancock County, a 65-year old female from Gilmer County, a 76-yearold male from Hancock County, a 90-year old male from Greenbrier County, a 70-yearold male from Hancock County, a 50-year old male from Marshall County, a 67-yearold male from Raleigh County, an 88-year old female from Hancock County, an 86-yearold female from Jefferson County, a 64-year old male from Wood County, a 74-yearold female from Cabell County, a 77-year old female from Kanawha County, a 72-yearold male from Morgan County, a 58-year old male from Hampshire County, a 101-yearold female from Monongalia County, an 87-year old female from Putnam County, an86-year old female from Cabell County, a 79-year old female from KanawhaCounty, a 68-year old male from Monongalia County, a 78-year old female fromKanawha County, a 93-year old male from Harrison County, a 70-year old malefrom Morgan County, an 81-year old male from Marshall County.
Thisis an incredibly difficult time for the families and friends of these WestVirginians, especially during the holiday season, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHRCabinet Secretary. We offer our sympathies to each and every person connectedto these individuals.
CASESPER COUNTY: Barbour (605), Berkeley (5,084),Boone (900), Braxton (210), Brooke (1,144), Cabell (4,390), Calhoun (114), Clay(223), Doddridge (200), Fayette (1,477), Gilmer (270), Grant (647), Greenbrier(1,087), Hampshire (780), Hancock (1,529), Hardy (614), Harrison (2,323),Jackson (982), Jefferson (2,020), Kanawha (7,611), Lewis (392), Lincoln (634),Logan (1,364), Marion (1,415), Marshall (1,767), Mason (886), McDowell (796),Mercer (2,114), Mineral (1,978), Mingo (1,207), Monongalia (4,596), Monroe(522), Morgan (525), Nicholas (546), Ohio (2,185), Pendleton (214), Pleasants(277), Pocahontas (314), Preston (1,259), Putnam (2,629), Raleigh (2,292),Randolph (983), Ritchie (282), Roane (254), Summers (354), Taylor (565), Tucker(267), Tyler (272), Upshur (699), Wayne (1,468), Webster (119), Wetzel (576),Wirt (173), Wood (4,076), Wyoming (1,005).
Please note that delaysmay be experienced with the reporting of information from the local healthdepartment to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the local healthdepartment level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain county may notbe a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual in questionmay have crossed the state border to be tested. Such is the caseof Calhoun County in this report.
Please visit the dashboard located at www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.
Free COVID-19 testing daily events scheduled fortoday:
BerkeleyCounty
9:00 AM 12:30 PM, 891 AutoParts Place, Martinsburg, WV
HampshireCounty
9:00 AM 3:00 PM, HampshireCounty Fair Grounds (at the dining hall), Fairground Drive, Augusta, WV
HancockCounty
OhioCounty
11:00 AM 4:00 PM, Valley Grove Volunteer Fire Department, 355Fire House Lane, Valley Grove, WV
11:00 AM 4:00 PM, Warwood Fire Station #9, 1301 Richland Avenue,Wheeling, WV
11:00 AM 4:00 PM, Wheeling Island Fire Station #5, 11 NorthWabash Street, Wheeling, WV
Putnam County
9:00 AM 5:00 PM, Liberty Square, 316 Putnam Village Drive,Hurricane, WV (pre-registration: bit.ly/pchd-covid)
Additional testing will be held on Monday,December 21, 2020 in Berkeley, Cabell, Clay, Hardy, Logan, Mineral, Monongalia,Nicholas, Ohio, Putnam, Taylor, and Wayne counties.
There are many ways to obtain free COVID-19 testing in WestVirginia. Please visit https://dhhr.wv.gov/COVID-19/pages/testing.aspx.
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The pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (shown above) mayunder certain conditionsintegrate its genetic material into human cells, confounding COVID-19 diagnostic tests.
By Jon CohenDec. 16, 2020 , 6:30 PM
Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.
People who recover from COVID-19 sometimes later test positive for SARS-CoV-2, suggesting their immune systems could not ward off a second attack by the coronavirus or that they have a lingering infection. A study now hints at a different explanation in which the virus hides in an unexpected place. The work, only reported in a preprint, suggests the pandemic pathogen takes a page from HIV and other retroviruses and integrates its genetic codebut, importantly, just parts of itinto peoples chromosomes. The phenomenon, if true and frequent, could have profound implications that range from false signals of active infection to misleading results from COVID-19 treatment studies.
The current study only showed this integration in a lab dish, although it also cites published sequence data from humans infected with SARS-CoV-2that suggest it has happened. The authors emphasize that their results dont imply that SARS-CoV-2 establishes permanent genetic residence in human cells to keep pumping out new copies, as HIV does.
Other scientists are divided about the importance of the new work and its relevance to human health, and some are harshly critical. There are open questions that well have to address, saysmolecular biologist Rudolf Jaenisch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who led the work.
Yet a few veteran retrovirologists are fascinated. This is a very interesting molecular analysis and speculation with supportive data provided, says Robert Gallo, who heads the Institute of Human Virology and looked at the newly posted preprint at Sciences request. I do not think it is a complete story to be certain but as is, I like it and my guess is it will be right.
All viruses insert their genetic material into the cells they infect, but it generally remains separate from the cells own DNA. Jaenischs team, intrigued by reports of people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 after recovering, wondered whether these puzzling results reflected something of an artifact from the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay, which detects specific virus sequences in biological samples such as nasal swabs, even if they are fragmented and cant produce new viruses. Why do we have this positivity, which is now seen all over the place, long after the active infection has disappeared? says Jaenisch, who collaborated with the lab of MITs Richard Young.
To test whether SARS-CoV-2s RNA genome could integrate into the DNA of our chromosomes, the researchers added the gene for reverse transcriptase (RT), an enzyme that converts RNA into DNA, to human cells and cultured the engineered cells with SARS-CoV-2. In one experiment, the researchers used an RT gene from HIV. They also provided RT using human DNA sequences known as LINE-1 elements, which are remnants of ancient retroviral infections and make up about 17% of the human genome. Cells making either form of the enzyme led to some chunks of SARS-CoV-2 RNA being converted to DNA and integrated into human chromosomes, the team reports in their preprint, posted on bioRxiv on 13 December.
If the LINE-1 sequences naturally make RT in human cells, SARS-CoV-2 integration might happen in people who have COVID-19. This could occur in people coinfected with SARS-CoV-2 and HIV, too. Either situation may explain PCR detecting lingering traces of coronavirus genetic material in people who no longer have a true infection. And it could confuse studies of COVID-19 treatments that rely on PCR tests to indirectly measure changes in the amount of infectious SARS-CoV-2 in the body.
David Baltimore, a virologist at the California Institute of Technology who won the Nobel Prize for his role in discovering RT, describes the new work as impressive and the findings as unexpected but he notes that Jaenisch and colleagues only show that fragments of SARS-CoV-2s genome integrate. Because it is all pieces of the coronaviral genome, it cant lead to infectious RNA or DNA and therefore it is probably biologically a dead end, Baltimore says. It is also not clear if, in people, the cells that harbor the reverse transcripts stay around for a long time or they die. The work raises a lot of interesting questions.
Virologist Melanie Ott, who studies HIV at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, says the findings are pretty provocative but need thorough follow-up and confirmation. I have no doubt that reverse transcription can happen in vitro with optimized conditions, Ott says. But she notes that SARS-CoV-2 RNA replication takes place in specialized compartments in the cytoplasm. Whether it happens in infected cells and leads to significant integration in the cell nucleus is another question.
Retrovirologist John Coffin of Tufts University calls the new work believable, noting that solid evidence shows that LINE-1 RT can allow viral material to integrate in people, but hes not yet convinced. The evidence of SARS-CoV-2 sequences in people, Coffin says, should be more solid, and the in vitro experiments conducted by Jaenischs team lack controls he would have liked to have seen. All in all, I doubt that the phenomenon has much biological relevance, despite the authors speculation, Coffin says.
Zandrea Ambrose, a retrovirologist at the University of Pittsburgh, adds that this kind of integration would be extremely rare if it does indeed happen. She notes that LINE-1 elements in the human genome rarely are active. It is not clear what the activity would be in different primary cell types that are infected by SARS-CoV-2, she says.
One particularly harsh Twitter critic, a postdoctoral researcher in a lab that specializes in retroviruses, went so far as to call the preprints conclusions a strong, dangerous, and largely unsupported claim. Jaenisch emphasizes that the paper clearly states the integration the authors think happens could not lead to the production of infectious SARS-CoV-2. Lets assume that we can really resolve these criticisms fully, which Im trying to do, Jaenisch says. This might be something not to worry about.
ST. PETERSBURG The family took their seats under the green cemetery tent and passed hand sanitizer row to row. Yes, Lord, my life is yours drifted from the speakers. Boyzell Hosey prayed in front, facing the bone-white casket and the empty space beside it.
A man from the funeral home passed out two memorial cards.
In Loving Memory: Amos Hosey.
Forever in our hearts: Roy Hosey.
Boyzell wiped his glasses and nodded as the bishop talked of trusting the hand of God. It was Nov. 21. His elderly father had died on the 5th. His older brother had passed on the 15th. Soon there would be a memorial for his brother-in-law, Bob, who had died in between. Boyzell himself had fought COVID-19 and was only a week out of the hospital, where his sister had gone for treatment, too.
The Hoseys bowed their heads.
Boyzells wife, Andrida, walked the grass in a white robe overlaid in gold. She picked up her long skirt and spread it like wings. A piped-in electric organ wailed, and Beau Williams crooned: One of these mornings it wont be very long youre going to look for me, and Ill be gone
In face shields, Andrida and fellow dancers spun, shimmered, lifted their hands. With the music came the soft pop of umbrellas. The mornings pale sky had darkened, and a mist began to fall.
Boyzell swayed. At 56, he found himself the sudden patriarch, the man everybody was looking to. He watched his wife lay her hands upon his fathers casket and shout her grief. Roys body waited to be cremated.
Family members packed their chairs closer to escape the rain as the Rev. Frank Peterman echoed the words Boyzell had been clinging to all month.
In times of trouble, stand, the reverend said. When youve done all the standing, stand some more.
Andrida cried, Hallelujah!
After scripture and tributes, mourners fist-bumped and waved goodbye. As the funeral home crew packed up folding chairs, cemetery workers approached the gravesite. Without ceremony, they lowered the casket.
Boyzell stood at its foot, holding one red rose. His shoulders briefly heaved. He kissed the rose and, gently, tossed it into the earth. For a moment, he let his hand hang there, empty.
***
By fall, the Hoseys, like so many, had eased up on some early-pandemic anxieties. The compulsive hand-washers of spring were still wearing masks and scrubbing their palms but also reconnecting with a few friends theyd missed.
On Sundays, Boyzell and Andrida pulled up for drive-in church, where honking the horn meant Preach! For Andridas birthday month, they planned a couple of Doc Fords double dates on the breezy Pier. And theyd begun in-person work once more. For Andrida, that meant teaching drama at John Hopkins Middle School. Boyzell picked up a shoot here and there for the Tampa Bay Times.
He and Andrida had been married for 28 years, best friends even longer. As deputy editor of photography at the Times, Boyzell brought a sensitive hand and an artful eye. Andrida, 63, brought the big heart and legendary hugs to the couples many deep friendships. They were community fixtures involved in their church, local festivals, volunteer work and more and a family with much to be thankful for. Andrida had recently made it through a knee replacement surgery, and Boyzell was on the mend with a new hip. Their kids were grown: Jacquay, 34, in Pittsburgh, and Kiashi, 35, here in town, teaching at their churchs school.
Are we really safe? Boyzell sometimes wondered. When friends went to hug Andrida at Walmart, he teased, Honey, you cannot do that anymore. Bombarded with pandemic news, Boyzell leaned toward caution. The isolation was harder on his wife. But after a September dinner party, Boyzell told her, We have to slow down, because this thing is real, and its kicking up.
Four houses down from Boyzell and Andridas green bungalow lived Papa Hosey, or Amos. At 91, with a lung tumor, he was in declining health. Boyzells brother Roy had moved in there a couple of years ago to become his dads caregiver. At 67, Roy was mending family ties after years of being estranged.
Two days before Halloween, sister Kathy moved in to help, too. She had just retired from criminal investigations with the federal government and at 63, she looked forward to the Florida life.
Kiashi picked her aunt up from the airport. At first, Kathy worried her niece wrangled kids all day and wasnt wearing a mask. But she knew that likely didnt matter, since the two houses blended so much. Soon, shed see that Roy went to Save A Lot nearly every day, popping into the 7-Eleven for lottery tickets. Sometimes, his nose peeked out from his mask. Others at the grocery store, Kathy would see, neglected to wear one at all.
It was a jolt, coming from Los Angeles, where she had kept isolated, following all the guidelines. Because of her multiple sclerosis, she knew she was at risk.
Up the road, that same night, Boyzell roasted salmon and cooked up a pot of his famous collard greens. Andrida brought home a key lime pie and a mango version to indulge a different guest at a small dinner. It was her brother Bob McCalls 61st birthday.
She and Bob were tight, each others only sibling. He was social like her, a motivational speaker visiting from North Carolina for a conference. Around the table, the family split cornbread and talked, and kept talking as Thursday Night Football rumbled in the background. Bob, a former vice president for Duke Energy, a collector of Corvettes, was grateful for a home-cooked meal.
After dinner, the back of Boyzells head began to ache. After a while, sluggishness hit. He checked his temperature: 99.9. An hour later, Bob headed back to his hotel.
On that Friday, Oct. 30th, Andrida went to work. Home alone, Boyzell tracked his fever as it climbed: 100, 101. Tylenol helped knock it down. He developed a dry cough.
On Halloween, stomach cramping, fever rising, wracked by chills, Boyzell needed to know. The waiting room at AFC Urgent Care near Tyrone Mall was packed. Four hours, $85 and an antibiotic prescription later: Positive.
His doctor said to call if he had breathing issues. Otherwise, Boyzell would have to endure.
***
Roy insisted he was fine. He could smell and taste, he said, whereas Boyzell had lost his sense of smell. But Kathy found him, some days, shivering under the covers. She saw him using his nebulizer more and more. After years of homelessness and addiction, he struggled with weight gain and health issues, like chronic asthma. Kathy wondered. Did you get a test? she asked.
Normally, Roy handled the meals and most of Amoss needs. He was good at caregiving, and usually energetic he liked to bust into Boyzells house blasting his 70s R&B, like a 2020 Radio Raheem. But Halloween weekend, Roy didnt get up to cook breakfast. He asked, Can you take care of Dad?
One day, Amos tried to get out of bed by himself and fell. As Roy pried Amos from the floor, Kathy saw how hard he was working.
I dont need to get the test, Roy finally said. I know I have it.
***
Boyzell camped out in the family room, Andrida the office, and Kiashi her bedroom. Boyzell let Bob know he should get tested and alerted a friend whod come over for a World Series pizza.
Flung apart in the house, the family called each other to coordinate bathroom trips and snacks from the kitchen. They left mists of Lysol in their wake.
Kiashi had no symptoms, but a rapid test soon came back positive. Andrida let co-workers know shed be quarantining, though her test had been negative.
In between Star Wars movies and episodes of The Incredible Hulk, Boyzell could hear Andrida and Kiashi teaching classes online. He ate the homemade chicken noodle soup Roy sent over. He chugged water. He felt helpless.
Normally, come Election Day, he would be dispatching Times photojournalists and editing their frames. But the human resources director told him, We dont want you trying to work.
Then, on Nov. 4th, Kathy called to say, I dont think Dads doing too well.
The family had been preparing for the inevitable. But Amos was still lucid, glad for a barbershop outing. Hed been a stern father, but a giving one, too, who built the familys red-brick home frame by frame. In old age, after decades of stoking the blast furnace in a steel mill, Amos finally relaxed. Kiashi sometimes heard him singing in his room.
Kathy phoned again the next day. Amos hadnt been eating.
Hes calling for you, she told Boyzell.
Boyzell managed to walk over. His sister raised a window so the men could see each other through the screen. Hey, Pops, how you doing? Boyzell said. Amos raised up from bed, smiling and waving, saying nothing. Im sorry I cant come see you right now, Boyzell said. Amos soon fell asleep.
An hour and a half later, Kathy called. I think Dad passed away.
Boyzell walked back over. He touched his dads face, still warm. He was saying bye to me, he thought.
Roy had finally gone to get a test, but, ever stubborn, turned back, because the line was too long and because, he said, he had a feeling something was wrong. He pulled up at the house as his father was being taken away.
***
The day after their father passed, Roy and Kathy tidied Amoss room. It was stuffy. Roy got on the stepstool to open up the air conditioning vents. He could hardly lift his hands over his head.
He fell. He hit his head on a dresser and couldnt get up.
Kathy watched her brother being put into the ambulance, unsteady and straining to breathe.
Roy called Boyzell from the hospital the next day. Boyzell said, Just worry about getting better.
***
A week into November, Andrida could hear Boyzells coughs across the house. On video calls, his eyes seemed sunken in. He stared at the tube he was given to exercise his breathing, willing himself to try, but each effort zapped his energy. His fever wouldnt break. He used a pulse oximeter to measure his blood oxygen levels, which dropped to 88, 87 percent. He tried to trick it by sitting still: 92.
Andrida often checked in with her friend Sharon Irving, a nurse practitioner and Ivy League professor. They had been college roommates, and by 2020, were more like sisters. Andrida told her she, too, had started feeling strange. A fever had set in. Then, chills.
Sharon, in Philadelphia, told Andrida, Dont play with this. To Boyzell, she said, I dont like how youre sounding. She asked both: Did you eat? Did you drink? Anger flared as she thought of how the virus had kept Boyzell from his fathers side: We didnt have to be here.
Sharon feared for Roy, too. He ticked too many boxes where the virus had proven lethal: a Black man, with chronic asthma, on the overweight side.
That Sunday night, after Andrida got back from taking another test, Bayfront called. Roy was in critical condition. He was going on a ventilator. What? Boyzell and Andrida thought. Didnt we just talk to him?
The next day, Boyzell paced in the yard, pumping his arms and chanting to himself: Just keep, just keep, just keep breathing. But he knew he was going downhill.
His doctor wanted a chest X-ray. That meant the emergency room.
***
Boyzell took a shower and ate a bowl of oatmeal, some yogurt. He readied himself. Andrida watched him walk into the crowded lobby of St. Anthonys. Five steps after he was given an intake clipboard, staff called, Mr. Hosey!
A nurse led him down a lonely hallway cold as a meat locker. Hours passed there, until he was taken to a temporary room, alone.
Doctors ran tests, hooked him to an IV. His potassium was low. A lot of things were low. They wanted to keep him.
At home, taking antibiotics and contending with a 102-degree fever, Andrida called her brother, who was back in Charlotte. They talked about Boyzell and Roy. Are you doing OK? she asked. Bob sniffled a bit.
***
About 24 hours after checking in, Boyzell settled into a room in the COVID-19 unit. It was immaculate, quiet. He learned that pneumonia had taken root in his lungs.
The hours passed in his hospital bed, where, between nebulizer and steroid treatments, he worked to plan his fathers memorial. Hed been told that Amos died of natural causes, but Boyzell thought maybe it was the virus. His father had complained of a headache just days before he died.
He tried to write his dads obituary but thinking through the exhaustion was too difficult. He dozed. Though he was an asthmatic with a worrisome case, he fixated only on his family:
Roy was sedated, vitals waning. Bayfront doctors went looking for a rotating bed big enough to fit him, so they could ease the weight on his lungs.
Andrida called to say her latest test came back positive and that Bob doesnt sound good. Called again, saying, no, Bob sounded like death.
Whats going on? Andrida thought. Bob had gotten antibiotics, and he told her, Well, they said give it a day. She insisted, But youre not breathing right! By the 12th, her fever on the edge of breaking, she was begging Bobs wife to take him to the hospital.
Before her class the next morning, Bob said he felt better. Hed gotten a negative test. Still, she could hear his ragged breathing.
At 5 p.m., Bobs wife called. She had pulled up after work and found Bob in the drivers seat of his car, his eyes rolling back in his head. She had tried to pull him out, but he collapsed to the ground.
Not only was he positive for COVID-19, the hospital said, but it was full-blown.
This cant be happening, Andrida thought.
This is Bob , Boyzell thought. Bob, all muscles and work ethic and made-for-TV smile. Bob, the former bodybuilder who went to the gym at 5 a.m.
Mom, its Uncle Bob, itll be OK, Kiashi said.
At 10 p.m., they learned that doctors couldnt regulate Bobs blood pressure. He was going on a ventilator.
Andrida called her friend, asking about intubation.
Sharon took a deep breath. I dont know if Bobbys as sick as Roy, but in terms of putting him on a machine to breathe, thats the same, she said.
When she hung up, Sharon repeated to herself, Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
Andrida and Kiashi couldnt take the separation anymore. They burrowed under the covers of the master bed, praying, holding on to each other as they cried. They left a laptop open so Boyzell could see them.
At 4 a.m., Bobs wife called. Bob was going into cardiac arrest.
Andrida watched on a video call as her brother lay with tubes blanketing his face. His wife rubbed his smooth, bald head. Hes gone, she repeated, and Andrida took a picture because she couldnt believe it. While Kiashi cried, she screamed and begged, God, please, let him breathe.
It was dark outside Boyzells hospital window. He could only listen to the womens keening through the screen, and he couldnt bear it. He tried to push himself up from the bed and pull out his IV but Kiashi began to pray, pleading with him to wait, to stay.
Boyzell breathed deep, in through his nose, out through his mouth.
They stayed on FaceTime for a long time like that, just breathing.
***
How could this be happening? Kiashi held her mother, numb, on the red loveseat in the living room.
In the hospital, Boyzell felt suspended in a nightmare. Just stand, he told himself, called back to that Bible passage. Calls flooded in from Bayfront. Roys health was cratering.
He could be flown to Tampa General Hospital across the bay. Doctors there could drill into his lungs and, with tubes, release the viral toxins.
But the doctors explained that Roy likely wouldnt survive such a flight, that trauma would take its toll on his brain. They said it was rare for someone to last so long with the ventilator so high. They asked that Boyzell consider classifying Roy as do not resuscitate.
Ive got to give him a fighting chance, Boyzell told Sharon. I want my brother back.
You want the brother that you sent to the hospital, Sharon said. Im not sure thats the brother youre going to get back.
Boyzell was quiet.
They ran through more scenarios, more questions.
It was late when Boyzell agreed. But it felt like signing Roys death warrant.
As Boyzell waited to be discharged the next morning, he tuned into Bethel Churchs livestream as leaders prayed over the Hoseys. His phone lit up with Bayfronts number. He cut off the stream.
The delayed start of the Australian Open, and the meandering path that officials followed in coming to the decision, revealed much about the state of international sports and tennis specifically at this unique moment.
The three-week delay for the start of the years first Grand Slam event to early February from the middle of January became semiofficial Wednesday night when the mens tennis tour released a revised schedule for the first seven weeks of 2021. The Australian Open is now set to start on Feb. 8, according to the ATP schedule.
The announcement of a delay, which comes while Tennis Australia, government officials and leaders of the mens and womens professional tours are still completing the details, was the latest disruption in a sport that has dealt with plenty of it since March. That was when the tennis tours shut down for five months because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Now, the delay of one of the first major international sports events of 2021 suggests that any return to something resembling normal for sports might come later in the new year.
For months, organizers of the Open have been trying to balance the players needs withAustralian government rules on international travel, while navigating the jigsaw puzzle that is the tennis calendar.
Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, has said the protection and safety of the players and the public were the most important components of the discussions.
Getting professional tennis back on its feet has been especially challenging because the sport has no central governing body. Instead, a hodgepodge of international, national and local organizations runs the sport. The uncertainty in the game is likely to continue through the first quarter of the year or longer, until coronavirus vaccines are widely distributed in places where major tennis events occur, the danger ebbs and travel restrictions loosen. Major events in the United States in March and April appear likely to be rescheduled.
The 2020 Australian Open was held as usual in January, but the three other Grand Slam events were upended. Wimbledon was canceled for the first time since World War II. The United States Open started in New York in late August, as scheduled, but without spectators, and most players remained cloistered in a pair of Long Island hotels when they were not competing at the tournament in Queens. The start of the French Open was moved to late September from late May. It took place in front of just a smattering of spectators in cool, blustery conditions.
There was hope that Australia would be able to hold something resembling a normal Grand Slam at the start of 2021. Since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus crisis a pandemic in March, Australia has put into place some of the worlds strictest measures to prevent outbreaks, and the country has been one of the few virus success stories. Australia has averaged fewer than 10 new cases per day over the past week.
Despite those figures or perhaps because of them the government has been resistant to bending its rules on overseas travelers to accommodate tennis players, scores of whom would be arriving from virus hot spots, including many communities in the United States and Europe.
Australia has tight limits on international visitors and strict quarantines, which could have made it difficult for arriving players to get enough practice before the tournament began.
Dec. 17, 2020, 8:29 p.m. ET
Under the current plan, players and their support staff will arrive on chartered flights in mid-January, stay in designated hotels in Melbourne and not mix with the public. Players will be able to train at Melbourne Park and another tennis center during the quarantine, but they will otherwise have to follow a strict protocol and undergo multiple tests for their first 14 days in the country.
Everyone is on board, said John Tobias, an agent who represents several top players, including Sloane Stephens of the United States. Everyone knows what to expect. They understand it. They are not upset, because Australia has been so successful at managing the pandemic.
Many players probably would have skipped the tournament instead of taking the risk of playing an intense event after a two-week quarantine without training.
Expressing the sentiments of most players, Johanna Konta of Britain, who is No. 14 in the womens world rankings, told the BBC in November that her body wouldnt be able to handle two weeks of deconditioning, and then pushing me into the deep end.
Australias tennis officials also gained the support of the mens and womens pro tours, whose calendars are set years ahead of time.
The change will cause a disruption to more than a dozen events on the ATP and WTA Tours during the first two months of the year, including tournaments in Australia, China, Rotterdam, Thailand and other countries.
Several events that usually take place in Australia during the two weeks before the Australian Open including the ATP Cup, a team event in which players compete for their countries will now take place in Melbourne during the week before the Australian Open, to minimize travel.
The womens tour may hold an event in Melbourne during the second week of the Australian Open, so players who lose during the early rounds of the event will have another opportunity to play and earn money during a lengthy trip to the Southern Hemisphere.
A mens event in Florida that usually takes place in February will now take place during the first full week in January, making it easier for American players to compete without traveling. A mens event will also take place in Turkey that is likely to attract European players.
More shifting and uncertainty are expected, officials say. After the Australian Open, the two biggest events next on the calendar are in California and Florida in March and April.
With coronavirus rates still high in the United States, and medical experts predicting another surge in the winter, officials say the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, near Palm Springs, Calif., may be postponed, possibly to October, and the Miami Open could be moved to another country or rescheduled.
The last-minute cancellation of Indian Wells on March 10 was the first major disruption in the sports calendar. By the end of that week, sports everywhere had largely come to a halt.
Nine months later, little in the sport has returned to normal. For the foreseeable future, players will have to keep adjusting to a schedule that figures to remain in flux and a trip to Australia unlike any other.
Its two weeks of sticking to a hotel, but there is a good incentive, Tobias said. You get to play two or three tournaments in what everyone knows is a really safe country.
ICUs at 98% capacity; health department director says 'Our system is strained'
by: WREG Staff
MEMPHIS, Tenn. No country is more infectious than the U.S. and no state in the country is more infectious than Tennessee when it comes to COVID-19.
Tennessee, as we speak, is the number one hot spot for transmission for the coronavirus in the entire world, said Dr. Steve Threlkeld, infectious disease specialist with Baptist Hospital in Memphis.
Were not just high. We are the number one place in the world right now, in Tennessee, for coronavirus transmission. This is not a drill. We are the worst in the world.
Tennessee reported 8,945 new cases Thursday for a total of 493,230. The day before saw cases increase by 11,410.
The state also reported its largest one-day increase in deaths, 177 new deaths for a total of 5,845.
Shelby County on Thursday morning reported 1,163 new cases, a new daily record and the first time cases have topped 1,000 in a day.
COVID-19 Vaccines arriving today at Memphis hospitals. But will front-line workers take it?
Every day, more COVID patients are showing up at hospitals. There are nearly 2,900 of them in Tennessee alone.
Tuesday, the number of available ICU beds dropped below 170 statewide.
In Shelby County, only 11 ICU beds sat empty. The intensive care units across the Memphis area are at 98% capacity.
Its an issue health department director Alisa Haushalter was asked about during Wednesdays county commission meeting.
Our system is strained, and its not limited to the hospitals themselves, its also the ambulance services, Haushalter said. We need ambulances to transport people who have been victims of gunshot wounds, we need to transport people who have had heart attacks and strokes, and in a very timely manner. If the emergency room is full, which is not represented in that data, the ambulance cant offload that patient and then run for another patient.
Memphis hospitals are currently treating more than 500 COVID patients. One hundred fifty-two of those patients are at Baptist Memphis and Baptist DeSoto.
Threlkeld is warning of a health care catastrophe if we dont turn things around very soon.
I cannot tell you how many people, its just all day long and into the night, Im seeing people who are sick and some go into ICU and they say, Well Ive been good but we had this party the other night and ten people came to the house, and I didnt feel good doing it, I feel it was probably the wrong thing to do, Threlkeld said. And guess what it was the wrong thing to do.
This is so much more severe right now than it was when we were first dealing with this and closing things down, and the danger is so much larger and the vaccine is so close to bringing us relief from this that we really just need to practice common sense, he continued. If we cant do that were going to find ourselves in a very difficult situation, more difficult.
The first doses are expected to arrive in Shelby County on Thursday. They will go to hospitals to be given to front-line workers, but it will be some time before they are available to everyone.
Note: This story has been corrected to reflect the day the vaccine is expected to reach Shelby County hospitals.
All CDC guidelines are being followed regarding the care of sisters affected by COVID-19 and to avoid spread of the virus, including wearing masks, social distancing and hand washing, the statement said. Our thoughts and prayers are with the sisters, their caregivers and families. We invite you to join us in prayer for all those affected by the pandemic.
The largest burden of Covid-19 has undoubtedly fallen on people older than 65; they account for around 80 percent of deaths in the United States. But if we momentarily eclipse that from our minds eye, something else becomes visible: The corona of this virus.
Young adults are dying at historic rates. In research published on Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, we found that among U.S. adults ages 25 to 44, from March through the end of July, there were almost 12,000 more deaths than were expected based on historical norms.
In fact, July appears to have been the deadliest month among this age group in modern American history. Over the past 20 years, an average of 11,000 young American adults died each July. This year that number swelled to over 16,000.
The trends continued this fall. Based on prior trends, around 154,000 in this demographic had been projected to die in 2020. We surpassed that total in mid-November. Even if death rates suddenly return to normal in December and we know that they will not we would anticipate well over 170,000 deaths among U.S. adults in this demographic by the end of 2020.
While detailed data are not yet available for all areas, we know Covid-19 is the driving force behind these excess deaths. Consider New York State. In April and May, Covid-19 killed 1,081 adults ages 20 to 49, according to statistics we gathered from the New York State Health Department. Remarkably, this figure towers over the states usual leading cause of death in that age group unintentional accidents including drug overdoses and road accidents which combined to cause 495 deaths in this demographic during April and May of 2018, the most recent year for which data are available to the public.
After the Northeasts horrific first surge this spring subsided, similar trends began to become apparent in other regions over the summer. As caseloads among the younger population rose nationwide, Covid-19 became a leading cause of death among younger adults in other regions. While deaths from the virus temporarily exceeded opioid deaths among young adults in some areas this year, we are also concerned that unintentional overdose deaths have increased during the pandemic as well.
Nor is it an illusion that people of color constitute a disproportionate fraction of the dead. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among adults 25 to 44, Black and Hispanic people make up not just a disproportionate number but a majority of Covid-19 deaths through Sept. 30.
Stay-at-home policies have saved lives, but their benefits have not been equally distributed. Among essential workers, many of whom are people of color, sheltering-in-place was never a real option.
Take a step back and compare what we are experiencing to what happened in the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic. Before effective treatments became available, we watched in horror as a contagious but preventable disease ravaged young adults in the prime of their lives. It claimed the lives of thousands of working-age adults every month. While too many still become infected, and too many die, public health messaging helped ease the epidemic.
Now we must deal with Covid-19. For too long, the message has been repeated by us and our colleagues, by government officials and the public that Covid-19 is dangerous for the old and that younger people do well. Its true that deaths among adults ages 25 to 44 account for fewer than 3 percent of Covid-19 deaths in the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
But what we believed before about the relative harmlessness of Covid-19 among younger adults has simply not been borne out by emerging data. In the past, it took us too long to respond to the epidemics of opioids and H.I.V./AIDS when the young started dying in large numbers. Now that we have similar information about Covid-19, we must immediately address it.
We need to amend our messaging and our policies now. Outreach in the coming weeks and months is imperative. We know it can help. The use of lifesaving medications like methadone and buprenorphine increased after awareness of the devastation of the opioid epidemic became commonly understood, saving many lives. We need to tell young people that they are at risk and that they need to wear masks and make safer choices about social distancing.
This is even more important now that safe and effective vaccines are a reality. Young, healthy people are low on the priority list for the vaccine rollout. That means that modifying behavior now can save thousands of young lives next year.
And that is the crux of it. Our messaging is no longer about merely flattening the curve to prevent hospitals from overflowing. Now with vaccines, our policies and our individual choices can together save a far larger number of lives.
That challenge is ours to confront. The sooner that reality sets in, the better.
Jeremy Samuel Faust is an attending physician at Brigham and Womens Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine in Boston and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Harlan M. Krumholz is a professor of medicine at Yale University. Rochelle P. Walensky, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School, has been nominated by President-elect Biden to be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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In June of 2020, three months after the COVID pandemic began in earnest in the United States, we wrote a report suggesting that the public health crisis and associated recession would result in 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births in 2021. Six months later, we have been asked several times if we have an updated estimate. We have revisited the issue and stand by our initial prediction of a large reduction in births. Based on our previous methodology and a labor market that improved somewhat more quickly than we anticipated, we place more emphasis on the lower range of our original estimate, likely closer to 300,000 fewer births. However, additional factors that we did not incorporate into our model in particular, ongoing school and day care closures might very well mean a larger reduction in births than that.
It will still be several months before birth data will become available that will enable us to count the missing births. Additional survey evidence has come out, though, since we released our initial report that supports a coming baby bust. Corroborating evidence generated since our June report supports our prediction of a baby bust next year. A survey conducted by Laura D. Lindberg, Alicia VandeVusse, Jennifer Mueller and Marielle Kirstein of the Guttmacher Institute reveals that that 34 percent of American women have either delayed their plans to have a child or reduced the number of children they expect to have as a result of the pandemic. A different survey conducted by Francesca Luppi, Bruno Arpino, and Alessandro Rosina shows that European women similarly report that they plan to postpone giving birth or have fewer children.
Levels of sexual activity have also fallen. In one survey (conducted by Justin Lehmiller, Justin Garcia, Amanda Gesselman, and Kristen Mark of the Kinsey Institute), almost half of adults surveyed report a decline in their sex lives. In another (conducted by Devel Hensel, Molly Rosenberg, Maya Luetke, Tsungchieh Fu, and Debby Herbenick at the University of Indiana), those with young children and, particularly, those with school-age children report the largest declines in intercourse.
One way to gauge individual behavior is to examine what they search for in Google; these data are available through Google Trends. A study by Joshua Wilde, Wei Chen, and Sophie Lohmann based on these data supports our prediction of reduced fertility. The authors report that searches for pregnancy-related terms, such as ClearBlue (a pregnancy test), ultrasound, and morning sickness have fallen since the pandemic began. Based on the reduced searches for pregnancy-related terms, the authors of that study forecast a reduction of births on the order of 15 percent, an even larger drop than what we forecasted.
In the six months that have elapsed since our original June report, labor market conditions have improved more rapidly than experts were predicting back in June. A key element of our forecast for declining births was based on our empirical analysis that found that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate is associated with a one percent drop in the birth rate. We applied that estimated relationship to the expectation of a seven to 10 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, which was in line with Federal Reserve expectations.
From todays vantage point, it looks more likely that unemployment will have risen by around 5.5 percentage points in the year following the start of the pandemic (April 2020 through March 2021) from 3.5 percent to roughly nine percent. This estimate is based on observed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for April through November and assumes little change in the next few months. Using this revised expected change in unemployment, we would predict a 5.5 percent reduction in births from the unemployment effect alone. Applying that to the number of births in 2019 (3.75 million) suggests 206,000 fewer births in 2021.
Our original forecast also incorporated an additional reduction in births coming from the anxiety and social conditions associated with the public health crisis. We incorporated this into our forecast by examining the experience of the 1918 Spanish Flu. Back then, every spike in the death rate attributable to the flu was associated with a dramatic reduction in births nine months later. We relied on that evidence to increase our forecast based solely on labor market conditions by one to three additional percent, or another 38,000 to 114,000 fewer births.
The public health crisis has unfolded much as anticipated in the spring and similar in magnitude to the 1918 experience. That pandemic led to 408,000 deaths in the year after it began. Currently 290,000 deaths have occurred as of December 8 and 539,000 deaths are forecast to occur by April 1. The population of the United States is three times as large today as it was in 1918, but medical care has significantly improved, which should have reduced the death rate for a similar level of disease. We see no reason to alter our forecast based on these data. Combining the updated impact of the recession with our earlier additional impact of the public health crisis indicates that we should expect a baby bust in the range of about 245,000 to 320,000.
Yet there are reasons to believe that our July prediction might understate the impact on fertility. Ongoing school closures are putting tremendous strain on families that may reduce their willingness to have more children. Restrictions on public gatherings and social encounters might mean fewer new couplings that could lead to pregnancies, intended or otherwise. The extended nature of this crisis also is likely to create large structural changes in the economy; a sizable share of the jobs lost will be permanent. The longer the duration of the income loss that workers expect, the more likely it is that delayed births will never happen. We did not attempt to make any predictions based on these additional factors because we had no previous context or data from which to draw empirical conclusions.
It will still be several months before data will be available on the number of post-pandemic births that we can use to begin to assess our forecast. In the meantime, we have revisited our prediction based on the most recent evidence available. As of now, we stand by our prediction of a COVID baby bust of around 300,000 fewer births. But the longer the pandemic lasts, and the deeper the economic and social anxiety runs, it is feasible that we will see an even larger reduction in births with an increasing share of them averted permanently.
The authors did not receive financial support from any firm or person for this article or from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. They are currently not an officer, director, or board member of any organization with an interest in this article.
The West VirginiaDepartment of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of December 17, 2020, there have been 1,353,347total confirmatorylaboratory results received for COVID-19, with 68,485 total cases and 1,071deaths.
DHHRhas confirmed the deaths of a 98-year old female fromBarbour County, a 78-year old male from Barbour County, an 81-year old malefrom Monongalia County, a 92-year old female from Brooke County, a 105-year oldfemale from Jefferson County, a 57-year old female from Ohio County, a 70-yearold female from Marshall County, an 84-year old male from Boone County, a 92-yearold female from Ohio County, an 85-year old male from Preston County, an 89-yearold female from Marshall County, a 100-year old female from Boone County, a 74-yearold female from Wood County, a 92-year old female from Brooke County, an 81-yearold male from Brooke County, an 80-year old male from Marshall County, a 75-yearold female from Hardy County, a 76-year old male from Mercer County, a 71-yearold male from Lewis County, an 85-year old female from Preston County, a 92-yearold female from Brooke County, a 76-year old male from Mercer County, a 59-yearold female from Harrison County, a 66-year old female from Wood County, a 61-yearold male from Wood County, a 76-year old male from Tucker County, a 60-year oldfemale from Barbour County, a 93-year old female from Kanawha County, a 74-yearold male from Monongalia County, a 90-year old female from Raleigh County, an 83-yearold female from Raleigh County, and an 81-year old male from Raleigh County.
Every life lost to this deadly virus leavesa hole in a family, a community and our state, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHRCabinet Secretary. I offer my deepest sympathies to all who are mourning aloved one today.
CASESPER COUNTY: Barbour (577), Berkeley (4,916),Boone (859), Braxton (190), Brooke (1,083), Cabell (4,221), Calhoun (112), Clay(216), Doddridge (183), Fayette (1,429), Gilmer (262), Grant (624), Greenbrier(1025), Hampshire (724), Hancock (1,441), Hardy (578), Harrison (2,205),Jackson (949), Jefferson (1,961), Kanawha (7,412), Lewis (369), Lincoln (596),Logan (1,292), Marion (1,347), Marshall (1,724), Mason (856), McDowell (773),Mercer (2,006), Mineral (1,941), Mingo (1,172), Monongalia (4,422), Monroe(505), Morgan (499), Nicholas (529), Ohio (2,102), Pendleton (202), Pleasants(228), Pocahontas (304), Preston (1,188), Putnam (2,560), Raleigh (2,212),Randolph (969), Ritchie (272), Roane (248), Summers (343), Taylor (530), Tucker(252), Tyler (254), Upshur (675), Wayne (1,417), Webster (114), Wetzel (549),Wirt (167), Wood (3,913), Wyoming (988).
Please note that delaysmay be experienced with the reporting of information from the local healthdepartment to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the local healthdepartment level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain county may notbe a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual in questionmay have crossed the state border to be tested.
Please visit the dashboard located at www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.
Free COVID-19 testing daily events scheduled fortoday, Thursday, December 17, 2020:
Berkeley County
1:00 PM-5:00PM,Shenandoah Community Health, 99 Tavern Road, Martinsburg
4:30 PM 8:00 PM, Dorothy McCormack Building, 2000 Foundation Way, Martinsburg, WV(pre-registration: https://wv.getmycovidresult.com/)
Boone County
Hampshire County
9:00 AM 3:00 PM, Hampshire County Fair Grounds (at the dining hall), Fairground Drive,Augusta, WV 26704
Hardy County
Jackson County
9:00 AM 12:00 PM, Jackson County Health Department, 504 Church Street South, Ripley, WV
Mingo County
11:00 AM 4:00 PM, Kermit Volunteer Fire Department, 49 Main Street, Kermit, WV
9:00 AM 3:00 PM, Williamson Health and Wellness Center, under the tent, 183 2ndAvenue, Williamson, WV
10:00 AM 4:00 PM, Hurley Drug Company, 210 Logan Street, Williamson, WV
Ohio County
11:00AM 4:00 PM, Valley Grove Volunteer Fire Department, 355 Fire House Lane,Valley Grove, WV (pre-registration: https://wv.getmycovidresult.com/)
11:00AM 4:00 PM, Warwood Fire Station #9, 1301 Richland Avenue, Wheeling, WV (pre-registration:https://wv.getmycovidresult.com/)
11:00AM 4:00 PM, Wheeling Island Fire Station #5, 11 North Wabash Street,Wheeling, WV (pre-registration: https://wv.getmycovidresult.com/)
Putnam County
9:00AM 5:00 PM, Liberty Square, 613 Putnam Village, Hurricane, WV(pre-registration: bit.ly/pchd-covid)
Taylor County
Wayne County
10:00 AM 2:00 PM, Wayne County Health Department, 217 Kenova Avenue, Wayne, WV
Wood County
12:00 PM 3:00 PM, New Hope Baptist Church, 1777 Rosemar Road, Vienna, WV
Additional testing will be held on Friday,December 18, 2020 in Berkeley, Brooke, Grant, Harrison, Logan, Marshall, Mason,Mercer, Mingo, Ohio, Putnam, Taylor, Wayne, Wood, and Wyoming counties.
There are many ways to obtain free COVID-19 testing in WestVirginia. Please visit https://dhhr.wv.gov/COVID-19/pages/testing.aspx.
