SPRINGFIELD -- Baystate Health has seen a 33% increase in patients treated for COVID-19 in a week bringing concerns about an uptick in infections.
On Sunday, 30 people who are confirmed to have COVID-19 are hospitalized with two being treated in the critical care unit, officials said.
While the increase is concerning, the numbers are nowhere near infections reported in April and May when more than 100 people were hospitalized with the coronavirus.
Sundays total hospitalizations is an increase from 20 confirmed cases reported a week ago and 13 confirmed cases reported two weeks ago.
The increase comes after officials at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield faced an outbreak related to an employee who returned to work after visiting another state identified as a hot spot for the virus. As of Monday 33 employees and 22 patients were infected in that outbreak that is traced to occurring between July 15 through 23. None of the employees had been hospitalized as of Wednesday.
Baystate has taken new precautions due to the outbreak. A state travel requirement also went into effect on Aug. 1 now requires people to quarantine for 14 days when coming into Massachusetts from 44 states. Exemptions are all of the New England states, except Rhode Island, New York and Hawaii.
All 30 patients being treated with COVID-19 are hospitalized at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. Baystate Health also operates Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, Baystate Wing Hospital in Palmer and Baystate Noble Hospital in Westfield.
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Alaska reported another death associated with the new coronavirus on Saturday, as cases of the illness continued to increase statewide.
The Alaskan who passed away was an Anchorage man in his 60s who had underlying conditions, according to a release from the states health department.
The state also reported eight new hospitalizations, but noted that new hospitalization reports can lag. There were 31 people hospitalized with COVD-19, according to state data on Saturday. In addition, seven other people were hospitalized and under investigation for the illness.
An Utqiagvik resident who tested positive for the illness was transferred to Anchorage, due to the severity of complications from COVID-19, the Arctic Slope Native Association said in a release.
In total, there were 86 new COVID-19 cases announced on Saturday. The daily total is a slight uptick compared with recent days in the past week. Daily case counts decreased somewhat this week after multiple days when those numbers reached over 100 at the end of July and into early August.
In the Municipality of Anchorage, there were 57 new cases announced: 48 among Anchorage residents; 3 among Chugiak residents; 5 among Eagle River residents and one in a nonresident within Anchorage.
In the Mat-Su, there were two cases of COVID-19 in people from Palmer and four in Wasilla residents.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough had four new cases, including two in Sterling residents, one in someone from Soldotna and one in a person from Seward.
There were three cases reported in Fairbanks residents and two in smaller communities in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area. There was also one new case each in residents of Cordova and Sitka.
The state announced 3 cases among Juneau residents and 3 cases among nonresidents there on Saturday.
Additionally, among nonresidents, one person working in the seafood industry in Cordova, one person from the North Slope oil industry in Prudhoe Bay and someone in an unlisted industry in Dillingham tested positive, as well as one nonresident from a location that was still under investigation, according to the states release.
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At-home testing could transform the fight against the novel coronavirus. USA TODAY
Dr. Michael Mina thinks theres a simple way to beat back COVID-19: fast, cheap tests, taken at home every day or two.
Right now, tests are designed for medical purposes. They identify whether someone with symptoms has COVID-19 or not. But they miss according toMinas estimate 97% of people when they are most infectious.
COVID-19, we now know, is most contagious in the first few days just before a person shows symptoms and in the few days after symptoms start, if they ever do. Waiting until someone has symptoms before scheduling them for a test, means they wont know they were contagious until they arent.
In recent weeks, Mina, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been lobbying heavily for fast, cheap, at-home tests, hoping to get the federal government to fund their development and remove barriers to their approval. Hes spoken with senators, foreign leaders, and company executives, who share this idea, but is increasingly frustrated by the administrations inaction.
Dr. Michael Mina(Photo: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)
On Friday, he laid out his vision to reporters on a group Zoom call. What follows is an edited version of what he said.
The tests that are being deployed now are like deluxe espresso machines. These are tests that require instrumentation. Therell be a big, big startup cost to get it going and each individual test will be expensive. They will have a difficult time getting the scale to where it needs to be to make an impact on a population level. What I really want is the instant coffee version. I want a $1 thing versus a $20 thing.
The way to do that is to use cheap tests that are highly accurate to detect somebody at the moment theyre transmitting. People can act on it, because theyre getting immediate results. I want them to take them every single day or every other day.
More: 'Totally unacceptable': Testing delays force labs to prioritize COVID tests for some, not others
If we can get a test that everyone wakes up just like they put in their contact lenses they take a test. And if it turns positive, they stay home. And they take a test the next day and they stay home until the test turns negative, or for a set number of days, maybe 7 days.
That alone, if everyones doing it, or even just a majority of people are doing it, it will stop the vast majority of transmission and it will cause these outbreaks to disappear in a matter of weeks. We dont have to wait for a vaccine.
We could reduce maybe by 90-95% transmission in this country in the next few weeks if everyone could have one of these tests tomorrow. Of course, thats not at the moment possible, but it could be if the federal government were treating this with the same urgency that theyre treating a vaccine, which may or may not even work.
(The government should)put $1 billion into really pushing the technology for $1 paper strip tests that can be printed in the millions, which they can be, and get a package of 50 in every Americans hands over the next month or not even every American it could just be Texas, Arizona and Florida right now, because those are the states that are seeding infections to other states.
Were allowing red tape and this archaic view we have so defunded and under-appreciated public health in this country for so many years that we literally dont have a recognition of the fact that there could be a test whose main goal is public health and not clinical medicine. Everything is wrapped up in insurance reimbursements and FDA regulations as diagnostics. It takes a whole rethinking of what a test that somebody might use looks like and how its defined.
Im usually not against regulation, but its just gotten so extreme here, and its truly been hindering every step of the way our ability to test our way out of this virus since February. The current landscape is bottlenecking these companies that could have a cheap test today into producing a more expensive espresso machine, because they cant actually legally use the instant coffee.
Until the regulatory landscape changes, these companies have no reason to try to bring (a fast, cheap, at-home test)to market. So, a lot of them are just kind of sitting on it. Or theyre trying to spend more time and more money to better and better optimize tests, which might take months. My fear is that what will come out of it at the end of those months is a test that does meet FDA approval, but thats too expensive and too complicated to scale and use for everyone.
A lot of people are wasting time trying to figure out how to get instant coffee to be as good as espresso. Theyre different things.
I have no financial ties or any other connection to any of these companies. Im truly just basing this on science.
We dont have a vaccine tomorrow. We dont have anything but shutting down the economy and keeping schools closed. This can work. This is a tool that tomorrow could start to go into production and within a few weeks time could start to change the whole course of outbreaks in major cities in America and in so doing, make all of the United States safer.
Contact Karen Weintraub at kweintraub@usatoday.com
Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.
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In an article published Friday in JAMA,FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Marks and Anand Shah, FDA's deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, pledged "unequivocally" to review vaccines "according to the established legal and regulatory standards for medical products." In an opinion article in The Washington Post on Wednesday, Hahn said, "I have repeatedly said that all FDA decisions have been, and will continue to be, based solely on good science and data." He also said he has been repeatedly asked whether there has been any inappropriate pressure on the FDA, but he didn't answer that question in the article. In June, in testimony to a House committee, he said he hadn't felt political pressure to make any specific decision.
In this installment of our Hope Behind the Headlines series, we look at the latest scientific advances that offer hope in the fight against SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus, including promising therapeutic finds and the most recent steps toward vaccine development.
Even as the world remains uncertain about how the coronavirus pandemic will evolve, scientists have been working tirelessly to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
In our previous Hope Behind the Headlines feature, we highlighted some of the most promising advances in coronavirus vaccine developments.
Researchers around the world continue to test new approaches to SARS-CoV-2 immunization and promising therapeutic options for COVID-19, the disease that the novel coronavirus causes.
In this feature, we present the most recent efforts to tackle the virus behind the ongoing pandemic.
Stay informed with live updates on the current COVID-19 outbreak and visit our coronavirus hub for more advice on prevention and treatment.
One of the key necessities in controlling the spread of the new coronavirus is efficient testing.
To this end, a team of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a test that, they claim, can give a result in as little as 45 minutes.
The researchers say that sample collection for this test is simple and does not require the delicate and potentially unpleasant process of swabbing that is typical of currently available tests.
Instead, all a person has to do is spit into a tube, add a special solution to this sputum sample, and return the sealed tube to the laboratory for analysis. The laboratory testing requires only readily available materials, according to the tests developers. This helps save a lot of time in processing the results.
The main question concerns accuracy: Will the test give a significant number of false-negative or false-positive results?
No, according to the researchers. The test predicted with 100% accuracy all of the negative samples, and 29 of [the] 30 positive samples were predicted accurately, says lead author Nicholas Meyerson, Ph.D.
However, the research has yet to be peer reviewed and validated through the replication of the findings, though the team has coopted a second set of investigators to verify their initial, promising, results.
Such fast-turnaround tests could help detect asymptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2, who may contribute to the spread of the virus without realizing it.
Prof. Roy Parker, the director of the universitys BioFrontiers Institute and senior author of the study paper, has commented that:
Our modeling showed that whether a test is sensitive or supersensitive is not that important. What is important is frequent testing, with the test results returned as fast as possible, which identifies more infected people faster and can limit new infections.
Nitric oxide is a gas that doctors sometimes use to treat people with very low blood oxygen levels.
Though researchers have noted that this approach does not appear to improve mortality rates among these patients, nitric oxide has demonstrated a surprising ability that has caught the eye of investigators at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Previous experiments in cell cultures have shown that nitric oxide is able to stop the replication of SARS-CoV, the coronavirus that causes SARS.
Given the genetic similarity of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 the nucleotide sequences of which have approximately 79% similarity the researchers suggest that nitric oxide may also be able to inhibit the new coronavirus.
In a review of the available evidence published in the journal Nitric Oxide, the investigators argue that the gas might help relieve some potentially fatal symptoms of COVID-19, the disease that SARS-CoV-2 causes.
Thus, they encourage other scientists to look into the therapeutic potential of nitric oxide in the context of the current pandemic.
Nitric oxide plays key roles in maintaining normal vascular function and regulating inflammatory cascades that contribute to acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome, explains review co-author Dr. Adam Friedman.
And, he adds, Interventions that are protective against acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome can play a critical role for patients and health systems during the pandemic.
In the conclusion to their paper, Dr. Friedman and his colleagues state emphatically that:
Nitric oxide has demonstrated promise in similar respiratory disease models in modulating the prominent inflammation, and the early reported proofs of concept urgently call for randomized control trials in treating COVID-19. [] If its efficacy is illustrated as therapeutics firms seek its indication for COVID-19, nitric oxide treatment can be pivotal in the worlds fight against this immediate threat to public health.
Many research teams are looking to develop targeted therapies for COVID-19, but creating a new drug from scratch can take a very long time indeed.
And since time is of the essence in putting a stop to the current coronavirus pandemic, some investigators have decided to take a different approach, by reevaluating the potential of existing drugs.
The main benefit of testing readily available medications is that these drugs have already passed human safety trials all that is left is to demonstrate their effectiveness in tackling the new coronavirus and COVID-19.
With this in mind, researchers from Yale University set out to comb through approximately 12,000 drugs that had already received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval or were at the clinical stage of testing. Their aim was to find whether any might be successfully repurposed to treat COVID-19.
They pared that enormous initial list down to 100 potentially promising drugs, then to 21, and finally to the 13 drugs most likely to show activity against SARS-CoV-2.
Of the top 13 drugs, the researchers hold out the most hope for LAM-002A, or apilimod, which treats follicular lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, and various autoimmune diseases.
They have reported the process of arriving at this promising candidate in a study paper featured in the journal Nature.
The team has now started a collaboration with the biopharmaceutical company AI Therapeutics to start a phase II clinical trial of LAM-002As potential against SARS-CoV-2.
LAM-002A holds promise to be a powerful new therapy for COVID-19 patients to prevent progression of the disease, hopefully avoiding the need for hospitalization, comments Prof. Murat Gunel, chief scientific adviser at AI Therapeutics.
Research into vaccines also continues at full speed. Two weeks ago, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin reported in a Science paper that they had developed a modified version of SARS-CoV-2s spike protein, which could ultimately help speed up vaccine production.
Spike proteins allow viruses to attach to and infect healthy cells, but scientists use them in vaccines to teach the immune system to detect the viruses associated with the spike proteins.
The research team had previously described the structure of SARS-CoV-2s spike protein. With their recent efforts, they aimed to create a more stable spike protein that would be more resistant to heat stress and easier to transport.
After looking at 100 modified versions of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, the scientists were able to pinpoint the 26 most stable ones.
Finally, they combined four of the top 26 modifications to obtain the final protein version, which they have dubbed HexaPro.
HexaPro, the team says, could eventually help bring coronavirus vaccines to more people, faster.
Depending on the type of vaccine, this improved version of the protein could reduce the size of each dose or speed up vaccine production. Either way, it could mean more patients have access to vaccines faster.
Senior author Prof. Jason McLellan
The researchers have now granted a nonexclusive license to manufacture and resell HexaPro to the biotechnology company Sino Biological, and they have also filed a United States patent application for the product.
Other researchers are looking at different experimental vaccines and their potential to keep SARS-CoV-2 at bay.
Last week, investigators from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, MA, working in collaboration with the Johnson & Johnson corporation, reported some preliminary successes with their vaccine candidate.
In a study paper published in Nature, they explain that their vaccine candidate is based on an adenovirus a common cold virus carrying the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
The team worked with 52 rhesus macaque monkeys. They immunized 32 of the macaques with single shots of various versions of their experimental vaccine, and they injected the rest with a placebo.
Only six of the macaques received a shot of the vaccine version that the researchers believed to be optimal. After 6 weeks, the scientists exposed all of the monkeys to SARS-CoV-2, to see whether the vaccines had any effect.
Of the six that had received a shot of the vaccine believed to be optimal, none presented SARS-CoV-2 in their lungs, and only one had traces of the virus in its nose, suggesting that the vaccine had repelled the virus.
A single-shot immunization has practical and logistical advantages over a two-shot regimen for global deployment and pandemic control, but a two-shot vaccine will likely be more immunogenic, and thus, both regimens are being evaluated in clinical trials, notes study co-author Dr. Dan Barouch.
At present, the researchers have started clinical trials in humans to further test their vaccine.
We look forward to the results of the clinical trials that will determine the safety and immunogenicity and, ultimately, the efficacy of the [experimental] vaccine in humans, adds Dr. Barouch.
For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.
Now, just four months later, life in Italy, the country Vice President Mike Pence once said "no one wanted to be like," is nearly back to normal, despite occasional spikes in cases that have been attributed to migrants arriving in the country or living in close quarters.
The death toll has leveled off at just over 35,000, with the number of new reported deaths now less than a dozen most days. The total number of cases now at 250,103 with daily increments in the low hundreds at most.
Nightclubs and schools aren't yet reopened, face masks are mandatory and social distancing is enforced, but summer is in full swing in this country. People are going out for dinner at restaurants, enjoying the summer tradition of an aperitivo on an open square, going on vacation and generally moving forward. It's nothing short of a miracle, especially compared to nations like Brazil and the United States, where the pandemic is still very much out of control.
Before that terrible day in March when nearly 1,000 people died, stories about how Italians were skirting the lockdown were common. Tales of clandestine dinner parties and entire apartment blocks walking the same dog just to get outside seemed to expose the Italian national pastime of bending the rules. The lockdown by then had meant that everyone but the most essential of workers were confined to within just 300 meters of their homes.
People lost jobs, businesses suffered and children lost valuable time as the country's ill-funded education system struggled to adapt to online teaching. But as hard as it was, the images of the dead, of the overcrowded hospitals, of the people -- cherished grandmothers and grandfathers -- dying alone sparked an unimaginable national grief and scared the entire country, says Gianni Rezza, director of the National Health Institute.
"The population reacted quite positively in the first phase, however fear probably played a role," he told CNN. "Images of the coffins carried on military trucks in Bergamo were harsh, and evidently they made it clear how leaving the uncontrolled circulation of the virus would lead to serious problems."
'Out of the storm'
Slowly, things only got better from that horrible day, with daily cases, finally hitting a plateau and falling to a negligible number of daily infections. People took the lockdown seriously, wore masks dutifully, as they continue to do today, and the country gradually healed.
Police strictly enforced the lockdown and civil protection cars patrolled the streets telling people to stay inside over loudspeakers. Then in early May, the country gradually started to open up, first for takeout food, then table service. With each new taste of freedom, the health authorities checked the contagion rate, never allowing more establishments to open if there was a spike, and warning they would lock back down if things turned.
Gyms opened cautiously and stores still cannot be crowded. Trains can only run at 50% capacity and public transportation is limited. Mask compliance is strong because it's the law, and hand sanitizer is a feature at nearly every business entrance.
The worst, at least for now, was finally over. Now spikes in cases can generally be attributed to clusters in migrant camps or in closed communities that are kept under control through aggressive testing.
On July 23, Italy's minister of health Roberto Speranza confirmed that the hard work paid off. "I believe Italy has made it out of the storm," he told Italy's Coldiretti agricultural group. "I'm not thinking of the government but of the country as a whole."
Speranza warned though that it was not yet time to let the guard down completely. "We were the first to be hit in the world after China, we didn't have an instruction manual. We had to learn about the virus," he said. "I think we need to be honest with each other: these have been the most difficult months in the history of the country since the Second World War."
But while Italy celebrated -- at a safe distance -- he was quick to warn that the worst may not yet be over for everyone. "The international situation worries me a lot," he said, noting that on a global scale we were at "the worst moment of the epidemic."
So what makes a country like Italy, long known for its skepticism for anything that even looks like a rule, win this battle that no one else can seem to come close? Second waves have hit Spain, France and Germany and the first wave isn't nearly over in the US or the UK.
Journalist and author Beppe Severgnini told CNN that it is the very Italianness of the Italian people that made it happen. "We coped because we found other resources that were always there: Realism, inventiveness, extended families, solidarity and memories," he told CNN. "In Italy, rules are not obeyed, or disobeyed, as they are elsewhere. We think it's an insult to our intelligence to comply with a regulation without questioning it first."
So when the government instituted a draconian lockdown on March 10, Severgnini says that Italians believed in rule. "With Covid-19, we decided the lockdown made sense, so there was no need to enforce it," he said.
Political will
Many credit Italy's unelected Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who has no political affiliation or party behind him, for not playing politics. Each time he instituted a stronger measure, he said the blame was "on me" and not on the government he led.
Still, campaigners in the north of the country, where the virus swirled unchecked from the first reported case on February 21 to when the country locked down March 10, insist that he didn't take it seriously enough at first. He was interrogated by prosecutors in June to determine if the draconian lockdown should have started sooner.
Rezza believes that not only fear played a role, but also the government is to be congratulated, citing Conte's adherence to science over popularity. "There was for once, I would say, a clarity and a certain courage on the part of politicians because they listened to the scientists, in particular the minister of health," he said, referring to Speranza.
"Politicians also made courageous decisions because the lockdown meant that a part of the population can be unhappy and have economic repercussions. The decision to lockdown on a national level was certainly brave."
In the US, lockdowns have been erratic, and in the UK, the reopening has been complex and hard for the population to understand. There are loopholes and exceptions to almost every rule. Even in Spain where the virus hit hard and the lockdown was rigid, the virus has managed to find a new footing, in part because authorities reopened too fully, too fast. You can go dancing in Spain, but not yet in Italy.
France, too, has seen a resurgence of the virus, but authorities there only instituted a mandatory face mask indoor rule on July 20. Italy has continued the requirement since the beginning and Speranza says they will likely stay for some time to come.
Despite the success story in beating back the virus, Italy has suffered tremendous economic losses. GDP is expected to contract by around 10% this year and many businesses tied to the tourism sector may never open again. But the lack of a second wave -- so far -- means that there will likely not be another lockdown and businesses can continue to build back up without fear of having to lose even more money.
Severgnini, who has lived in the US, draws the contrast between Italy's startling success so far with America's obvious struggle to flatten the national curve. "The United States was born out of a rebellion, and you can still feel it," he said. "But to rebel, sometimes, is absurd -- during a pandemic, for instance."
He also believes that fear played a role. "Fear can be a form of wisdom," he said. "Boldness, a show of carelessness," he said. "Ah, and we don't have Donald Trump, which helps."
Johnson & Johnsonannounced Wednesday that it will develop and deliver 100 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine for the U.S. in a deal totaling more than $1 billion.
The company's experimental vaccine is currently in early stage human trials and is expected to begin late-stage human trials in September, executives have previously said. The deal gives the U.S. the option to order an additional 200 million doses, according to the announcement.
"We are scaling up production in the U.S. and worldwide to deliver a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for emergency use," said Dr. Paul Stoffels, chief science officer at Johnson & Johnson, in a statement.
The U.S.earlier this year awarded J&J $456 million to develop its vaccine. The company said its goal is to supply more than 1 billion doses globallythrough 2021.
The doses will be provided to Americans at no cost if they're used in a Covid-19 vaccination campaign, the U.S. Department of Health and Human services said in a separate press release. However, health-care professionals could charge for the cost of administering the vaccine, HHS said.
"Today's investment represents the next step in supporting Janssen's vaccine candidate all the way through manufacturing, with the potential to bring hundreds of millions of safe and effective doses to the American people,"HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in the statement. Janssen Pharmaceutical, which is owned by J&J, is developing the vaccine.
J&J is one of a handful of companies that have reached a deal with the U.S. to supply their potential coronavirus vaccine upon federal approval.The U.S. announced Friday it will pay drugmakerSanofiandGlaxoSmithKlineup to $2.1 billion to develop and deliver 100 million doses of their potential vaccine.
The U.S. also said it will payPfizerand biotech firmBioNTech$1.95 billion to produce and deliver 100 million doses of their Covid-19 vaccine if it proves safe and effective, thecompanies announcedin late July.
J&J's vaccine candidate,Ad26.COV2.S,is using the same technology it used to make its experimental Ebola vaccine, which was provided to people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in late 2019.
Had the medical professionals been allowed to operate in the States, you would have belatedly gotten to a point of getting to grips with this back in March, said Scott Lucas, professor of international studies at the University of Birmingham, England. But of course, the medical and public health professionals were not allowed to proceed unchecked, he said, referring to President Donald Trumps frequent undercutting of his own experts.
Community health centers provide much more for their clientele then just medical advice and health care.
Because of the low income demographic often served at these facilities, health centers also serve as a place people can go to connect them to a world of different opportunities, from literacy and education programs to employment possibilities.
However, even in good times these centers can struggle financially. Factor in the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic might be creating an exceptionally difficult time for health centers across the country.
Larry McReynolds, Executive Director, Family Health Centers at NYU Langone, explained in an interview with HCPLive, how health centers were able to weather the initial storm and switch to telemedicine to help maintain services.
Well, it's certainly been very challenging, but I am very encouraged that health centers for the most part, were able to move from an in person face to face model to a virtual model very, very quickly, he said.
The Nature of Health Centers
Health centers generate $12.6 billion in economic benefits for low-income, rural and inner city communities and create 143,000 jobs, while serving over 24 million patients in 6000 of in Americas most economically challenged neighborhoods.
The overall goal of health centers across the country is to increase access to care and reduce health disparities. This could mean serving patients who either do not have insurance or have insurance that other institutions do not want to take.
Health centers generally serve a high proportion of Medicaid recipient, as well as a large number of uninsured individuals. McReynolds said these patients can come with multiple social economic issues, including unstable housing, low literacy levels, low education levels, low income levels, and food insecurities.
They need to be able to go to a place that doesn't ask the first question of what's your insurance in order to get in the door to see a doctor, he said. So, health centers have a sliding fee scale, so that even the poorest of individuals can have access to care to see a doctor for very little or no money.
The Impact of COVID-19
Those factors in normal times make it very difficult for health centers to even break even. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the situation even more untenable and difficult for health centers across the country.
McReynolds said one of the unfortunate byproducts of the situation is the NYU Langone Health Center was forced to lay off some workers, which more than 85% of health centers across the country were forced to do.
However, as case numbers began to improve, McReynolds said, Langone was able to rehire some of the laid off workers.
Like traditional doctors offices and hospitals, McReynolds said one of the tools health centers have successfully utilized during the ongoing pandemic has been telemedicine services. The popularity of these telehealth programs can be seen in Langones behavioral health programs, where McReynolds estimated a 130% increase in productivity from where they were before the pandemic.
The Future
Another service offered at the health center is a school-based program, with programs in more than 63 schools across New York City. However, the mass school closings forced the health center to temporarily halt their own programs.
And so, it really just kind of compounded this disparity problem that COVID adversely affects Hispanics and blacks in infection rates and mortality, McReynolds said. And now the services that are designed to help those folks had to lay people off. So that's a very big challenge for fragile organizations that serve fragile populations.
McReynolds also expects, should a vaccine gain FDA approval, that health centers will have a role in administering it to the public.
McReynolds said there have been a number of new pilot programs tried in an effort to reduce the burden on emergency room visits in favor of community health centers.
The most successful pilot that I think will stay in place is that there will be community health workers or case workers and emergency rooms that will help those people that showed up to the emergency room when it wasnt a real emergency and connect them with the primary caregiver in the community.
Since the pandemic began, there have been an increase in the type of patients needing care, including cardiovascular issues, psychiatric conditions, sleep problems, and substance abuse.
While there are certainly financial worries, to compound what might be an increase in people needing medical assistance, Reynolds said there will always be a role for community health centers.
I think that the biggest challenge is to, to reach out to patients to let them know that we're here for you regardless, he said. Regardless of if you just lost your job and now you don't have insurance anymore because there's 40 million newly unemployed people.
We're here for you, regardless of whatever your health condition is, he added. It's really building on that trust factor of getting the patient to trust us and they have always trusted us because we don't judge them based on income or citizenship or language or anything.
Nine more local residents have succumbed to COVID-19 as the virus continues to sweep through local long-term care facilities, The Villages and surrounding communities.
Six of the latest fatalities were from Lake County and the other two lived in Marion County. They were identified Saturday by the Florida Department of Health as:
Seventeen new COVID-19 cases were reported Sunday at two Villages-area long-term care facilities that clearly have been struggling with the virus. Those include:
Fifty-three new cases also were reported in The Villages and surrounding communities, bringing the total in the local area to 2,266. Those include:
Overall, the tri-county area is reporting 12,617 cases an increase of 197 from Friday to Saturday among 5,453 men, 6,984 women, 51 non-residents and 129 people listed as unknown. There have been 197 deaths and 933 people hospitalized.
Sumter County is now reporting 1,284 cases an increase of 47 in a 24-hour period among 653 men, 619 women, eight non-residents and four people listed as unknown. There have been 41 deaths and 176 people have been treated in area hospitals.
Bushnell has 231 cases 129 of which are at the Sumter Correctional Institution among 103 inmates and 26 staff members. Others have been identified in Coleman (69), Lake Panasoffkee (66), Webster (63), Center Hill (36), Lady Lake portion of the county (27) and Sumterville (27). The federal prison in Coleman also is reporting 360 cases among 270 inmates and 90 staff members.
Marion County continues to lead the tri-county area with 6,260 cases an increase of 276 in 24 hours. Those are comprised of 2,420 men, 3,794 women, 13 non-residents and 33 people listed as unknown. There have been 89 deaths and 484 people hospitalized.
Ocala continues to pace Marion County with 4,941 cases an increase of 178 overnight and 79 percent of all the cases reported in the county. Others have been identified in Dunnellon (187), Citra (132), Reddick (75), Silver Springs (74), Ocklawaha (64), Weirsdale (34), Anthony (34), Fort McCoy (17), Orange Lake (8), Lowell (5), Sparr (5), Candler (3), East Lake (3), Morriston (2), Fairfield (2), Salt Springs (1), Williston (1) and McIntosh (1). A total of 1,217 cases have been reported among inmates (1,158) and staff members (59) at Lowell Correctional Institution and Marion Correctional Institution.
Lake County has 5,023 cases an increase of 115 in 24 hours among 2,380 men, 2,571 women, 30 non-residents and 92 people listed as unknown. There have been 67 deaths and 273 people requiring some form of hospital care.
Clermont continues to lead Lake Couty with 1,322 cases an overnight increase of 50. Others have been identified in Tavares (607), Eustis (424), Groveland (366), Mount Dora (336), Mascotte (175), Minneola (143), Sorrento (131), Umatilla (94), Montverde (80), Grand Island (50), Howey-in-the-Hills (34), Astatula (34), Yalaha (25), Astor (23), Altoona (20), Paisley (17), Okahumpka (12), Ferndale (5) and Mount Plymouth (3).
All told, Florida is reporting 526,577 COVID-19 cases an increase of 8,502 from Friday to Saturday. Of those, 520,086 are residents. There have been 8,238 deaths and 30,251 people have been hospitalized across the Sunshine State. Those numbers show 187 more deaths since Friday and an additional 521 people requiring hospital care.
