Category: Covid-19

by: Braley Dodson, Nexstar Media Wire

Posted: Feb 6, 2022 / 06:00 AM MST

Updated: Feb 4, 2022 / 06:25 AM MST

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WBTW) Can you throw your at-home, rapid COVID-19 test in the trash, or is it considered hazardous biological waste?

Unlike at hospitals, at-home tests can be thrown in the normal trash, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the Miami Herald in January. However, some states have taken different stances.

In Delaware, schools should treat the kits as infectious waste, according to the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. Schools have been directed to place used test materials in red bags, mark the bags with the biohazard symbol and tie them closed. The bags must be stored away from people and be protected from the weather, rodents and insects. The state must then remove the bags, and schools must keep a copy of the manifests for at least three years.

As for South Carolina, the Department of Health and Environmental Control said that residents should follow the instructions on the at-home tests they use.

Were not aware of any stipulations preventing an individual organization, business, school, or provider from developing their own disposal policies, but we encourage them to follow practical safety and health protocols when doing so, the agency said.

Lucira at-home COVID-19 test kits include a plastic bag for the test to be placed in and disposed of in the trash. Instructions for the QuickVue, BinaxNOW and IHealth at-home tests also say the used tests can be placed in the trash.

In California, disposal of BinaxNow test cards depends on whether or not the result was positive. For negative results, the test cards can go in the trash, while positive tests along with used swabs and other test components must be disposed of in a biohazard container according to regulated medical waste guidelines.

The CDC says tests from labs and testing sites should be treated as biohazardous waste. Rules on how to dispose of the waste vary by state, contact your local health department or COVID task force with any questions.

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Can your at-home COVID-19 test go in the trash? - KRQE News 13

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After an anxious January marked by a wave of COVID-19 infections that pushed Texas hospitals and intensive care units to their limits, the number of Texans in the hospital with COVID-19 across the state has been in a steady decline for about a week, according to state health data.

The decrease is the latest in a series of hopeful signs that the surge driven by the highly contagious omicron variant may be starting to abate, forecasters and health officials say.

If the trend continues, the state would have passed its peak hospitalizations for this wave on Jan. 20, when Texas hospitals reported 13,371 patients with COVID-19 a number that has decreased daily since then. That falls short of the record 14,218 hospitalizations the state saw a year ago on Jan. 11, 2021.

On Monday, the number of Texans in the hospital with COVID-19 was 11,997, the lowest number the state has seen in nearly three weeks. Forecasters and health officials feared last month that hospitalizations could reach new pandemic highs, but now say its likely the state wont reach that mark during this surge.

The decline is a welcome development for doctors, nurses and other officials in the states overwhelmed hospitals at the tail end of what, in some areas, was the fifth wave of infections in the past two years.

In the harder-hit metro areas such as Austin and Houston, hospitals reported record-breaking numbers of patients with COVID-19 last month but the situation is improving.

At Texas Childrens Hospital in Houston, the number of young patients with COVID-19 and the percentage of positive tests in the past six weeks far outpaced any records set during the prior two years, said Dr. James Versalovic, the hospitals pathologist-in-chief.

Now, positivity rates are down by a third, and the number of patients with COVID-19 is down by about 70%, he said. Those numbers are still higher than records set in the hospital during the delta surge, but they are dropping steadily albeit slowly, he said.

We are optimistic. We are breathing a bit more easily this week, Versalovic said. We do see light at the end of the tunnel, but its a long tunnel. We are looking forward to March.

Dr. James McCarthy, a chief physician executive and executive vice president for Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston, said in a recent TV interview that the surge appears to be easing up at those facilities.

"We're feeling very optimistic that weve crested this wave, he said. We feel like the hospitals have weathered this storm again."

The state has also seen daily new COVID-19 cases decline by more than a third since last week, as well as a drop in positivity rates. And the number of ICU beds available in the state has started to increase again after it reached its lowest level since the start of the pandemic.

But with more than 25% of tests still coming out positive, the levels of virus still surpass what was seen during the delta surge and would have been mind-boggling at any point before December, said Chris Van Deusen, spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services.

So people should still be cautious, he said.

Experts also say its hard to predict whether another variant may arise that could cause another surge, or how long the natural immunity from an omicron infection might last.

But the downward trend should continue as long as people dont get too confident too fast, drop their guards and start acting like the pandemic is over, said Anass Bouchnita, a researcher at the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, which uses data and research to project the path of the pandemic.

All of that is a good sign, but of course its not the end, he said. We know that around half of the infections and hospitalizations and deaths will occur after the peak, so this is not the finish line. Its not time to let our guard down. We need to keep up the vigilance.

That means to get vaccinated but also, he said, to continue masking up, hand-washing and social distancing so the transmission continues to subside.

The number of hospitals reporting full ICUs last week was at 73, still well under the pandemic record of 100 over the summer, and a decrease from the week before.

Still increasing, however, are the daily reported deaths, which dont usually start declining until a few weeks after hospitalizations peak.

The deadliest wave of the pandemic hit over the holidays in December 2020 and January 2021, just weeks after the vaccine was given emergency use authorization in the United States and very few people had access to it. The numbers of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 hit highs that the state hadnt seen before and has not seen since.

During the delta wave of last summer, the state put record numbers of children in the hospital with COVID-19 but missed the previous pandemic record for statewide hospitalizations by only a few hundred.

The most recent surge, which started in December, shortly after the omicron variant was detected in Texas, saw case counts and positivity rates in Texas top previous pandemic records, as well as pediatric hospitalizations. The same thing happened nationally.

Compared with the deadlier delta variant surge last September, the most recent wave brought about by the more contagious omicron variant comes with some important caveats, experts say.

Omicron is more easily spread than any of the other versions, taking down vital health employees for days at a time when more people are becoming infected.

Nearly 60% of the state is fully vaccinated, which experts say protects against hospitalization, and the omicron variant itself appears to produce less-serious symptoms than previous iterations. And while treatments are in short supply, there are more approved now than there were during the last surges.

But omicron is still leaving chaos in its wake.

Were in a different situation now than we were a year ago, said Dr. David Lakey, vice chancellor for health affairs and chief medical officer at the University of Texas System, and former state health commissioner. Having some tools out there, having experience with the virus, having the most vulnerable individuals immunized that helps a lot. On the other hand, the hospitals have been doing this a long time and theyre very burned out and theyre very short-staffed right now and they are going as hard as they can to care for individuals.

ICU admissions for people with COVID are lower than they were during the last peak a year ago, and fewer of those patients need ventilators, according to state data. Smaller percentages of patients who test positive are being admitted into the hospital for COVID treatment, and hospital stays are getting shorter, according to hospital officials.

Those trends signal that the virus is making Texans less sick, overall, which officials hope will not only reduce deaths and suffering but also, eventually, the pressure on hospitals.

That is a bright spot, Lakey said.

At the height of the delta surge, more than 100 hospitals in Texas reported that their ICUs were full to capacity. By comparison, at least 73 hospitals reported that their ICUs were full last week.

In Dallas-Fort Worth-area hospitals, even though most of the areas major hospitals were reporting ICU capacity filled to more than 95%, about half of those patients have COVID-19, similar to the share during delta, said Steve Love, president and CEO of the DFW Hospital Council.

Meanwhile, the number of ICU patients needing ventilators dropped by roughly 50% in the region compared with the other two surges, Love said.

At Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital, north of Houston, theyre seeing fewer ICU beds used by COVID patients than they did during the delta surge. But chief medical officer Jason Knight said unvaccinated patients and those with preexisting medical conditions are still at risk.

With omicron, were seeing a lot more people with complex medical problems, where even though the [COVID] infection is mild, its pushing them over and causing their complex medical problems to result in ICU admissions and potentially deaths, he said.

The waves of people showing up at Texas hospitals come at a time when the health care industry is experiencing a historic staffing crisis two years into a pandemic that has killed more than 78,000 people in the state.

And while hospital stays are growing shorter, they are still extended in some cases by the lack of nursing home beds available for patients who are in postoperative recovery or need long-term care a problem exacerbated by staffing shortages at long-term care facilities.

The total number of hospital beds available statewide for all patients is lower than it was when hospitalizations peaked a year ago. Thats due to a combination of staff members and their families being out sick with omicron, nurses leaving for contract work, and employees quitting the industry altogether because of burnout or fears of infection.

At the height of last years January surge, the state had some 14,000 medical staffers deployed in the hardest-hit hospitals. During the delta wave last summer, about 8,000 nurses were sent to help.

So far during this surge, the state has contracted with about 4,400 travel nurses for hospitals that need them.

In mid-January at the Golden Plains Community Hospital in the Panhandle town of Borger, nurses were absent in the medical-surgical department as well as the emergency room, the lab and the clinic, while the hospital sees a surge in cases and hospitalizations. Only a third of that countys residents are vaccinated.

All 10 of the employees who were absent on a recent day last month were out with COVID-19, said CEO Don Bates.

Every day is a new battle, Bates wrote in an email. If it comes to shutting down surgery and pulling nurses from our clinics or OB which there arent many left well do what we have to do to care for the COVID sick, until we absolutely cant take any further admissions. Then our docs will have to focus on what the Panhandle Regional Advisory Council has been calling the salvageable.

Not my words, he added. By the end of January, Bates was home sick with COVID-19, too.

Nationwide, 81% of ICU capacity is being used, with 29% of those patients diagnosed with COVID-19, according to federal data. Texas ICUs are at a 92% occupancy rate, with about 39% of patients positive for COVID-19.

People ages 5-17 are eligible to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. People ages 18 and older are eligible to get the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, which are now preferred over the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

All vaccines in the United States must go through three phases of clinical trials to make sure they are safe and effective. During the development of COVID-19 vaccines, phases overlapped to speed up the process, but all phases were completed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. State data shows that unvaccinated Texans made up 85% of coronavirus cases and deaths from Jan. 15 to Oct. 1, 2021.

Yes. Research has not yet shown how long you are protected from getting COVID-19 again after recovering from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and vaccination will boost protection. If you were treated for COVID-19 with monoclonal antibodies or convalescent plasma, you should wait 90 days before getting a COVID-19 vaccine. Talk to your doctor if you are unsure what treatments you received or if you have more questions about getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

Most chain pharmacies and many independent ones have a ready supply of the vaccine, and many private doctors' offices also have it. Texas has compiled other options for finding vaccine appointments here, and businesses or civic organizations can set up vaccine clinics to offer it to employees, visitors, customers or members. The vaccine is free, and you dont need health insurance to get it.

The protection the vaccine offers can wane over time, so medical experts recommend getting a booster shot. People ages 18 and older are eligible for booster shots, according to recommendations from the CDC. Recipients ages 12-17 who received the Pfizer vaccine as their initial two-dose treatment are eligible to receive the Pfizer vaccine as their booster.

The influx of omicron cases has created a vicious cycle for many hospitals, where administrators fear that the increased demands on nursing staff may lead to more of them burning out or leaving the profession.

At Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital, patients are staying in the emergency department far longer than usual, waiting for a bed to open up.

Were trying to take care of essentially an inpatient unit down in our emergency department in addition to [nurses] trying to do their normal jobs, said Knight, the chief medical officer there. A lot of nurses are getting stretched really thin. Thats why a lot of them are getting frustrated. Thats why some people are leaving.

Knight said the current staffing crunch has created a competitive environment for health care, with an increase in frustrated and occasionally rude patients.

Prevention protocols such as masking, social distancing and limiting travel play a big role in lowering hospital rates, officials and experts say.

But the big weapon against overwhelming hospitals with severe cases is vaccination, which has been proven highly effective at keeping those who are inoculated out of the hospitals and intensive care units.

About 58% of Texans are fully vaccinated. Nationwide, that number is nearly 63%.

One thing Lakey, the University of Texas System chief medical officer, credits with keeping severe illnesses down and ICU numbers lower than they could be is the high vaccination rate Texas is reporting among its most vulnerable residents ages 65 and older. Some 84% of them have been fully vaccinated.

The really at-risk individuals of having severe disease, weve given them some protection so theyre less likely to go to the ICU and less likely to die because theyve been immunized, Lakey said. You are seeing breakthrough infections, but the vaccines do protect from the severe disease, a significant amount of protection.

In Montgomery County, where Houston Methodist The Woodlands is based, only 53% of residents are vaccinated, which is the lowest rate for Texas counties with populations exceeding 500,000. Roughly 17% of residents have received booster shots.

Nurses and doctors say that after nearly two years on the front lines, their empathy for the unvaccinated patients who will require their care is diminished.

The tragedy of COVID is, its happening behind the doors of our critical care rooms, in our [ER], in our ICU. Theres very few people in the community that has ever seen somebody suffocate and die from COVID, Knight said. That is totally and completely preventable. I just think that that is incredibly tragic, and thats hard emotionally on our nurses and its hard emotionally on our staff.

Eleanor Klibanoff contributed to this report.

Disclosure: Texas Childrens Hospital, Memorial Hermann Health System, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas System have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribunes journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Light at the end of the tunnel: Texas COVID-19 hospitalizations down as omicron wave appears to crest - The Texas Tribune

Researchers have discovered a mechanism that may explain why people with COVID-19 lose their sense of smell.

Published online February 1 in the journal Cell, the new study finds that infection with the pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2, indirectly dials down the action of olfactory receptors, proteins on the surfaces of nerve cells in the nose that detect the molecules associated with odors.

Led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Columbia University, the new study may also shed light on the effects of COVID-19 on other types of brain cells and other lingering neurological effects of COVID-19 such as brain fog, headaches, and depression.

Experiments showed that the presence of the virus near nerve cells (neurons) in olfactory tissue brought an inrushing of immune cells, microglia, and T cells that sense and counter infection. Such cells release proteins called cytokines that changed the genetic activity of olfactory nerve cells, even though the virus cannot infect them, say the study authors. Where immune cell activity would dissipate quickly in other scenarios, in the brain, according to the teams theory, immune signaling persists in a way that reduces the activity of genes needed for the building of olfactory receptors.

Our findings provide the first mechanistic explanation of smell loss in COVID-19 and how this may underlie long COVID-19 biology, says co-corresponding author Benjamin tenOever, PhD, professor in the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology at NYU Langone Health. The work, in addition to another study from the tenOever group, also suggests how the pandemic virus, which infects less than 1 percent of cells in the human body, can cause such severe damage in so many organs.

One unique symptom of COVID-19 infection is loss of smell without the stuffy nose seen with other infections like the common cold, researchers say. In most cases, the smell loss lasts only a few weeks, but for more than 12 percent of people with COVID-19, olfactory dysfunction persists in the form of ongoing reduction in the ability to smell (hyposmia) or changes in how a person perceives the same smell (parosmia).

To gain insight into COVID-19induced smell loss, the current authors explored the molecular consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection in golden hamsters and in olfactory tissue taken from 23 human autopsies. Hamsters represent a good model, being mammals that both depend more on the sense of smell than humans, and that are more susceptible to nasal cavity infection.

The study results build on the discovery over many years that the process that turns on genes involves complex 3D relationships, where DNA sections become more or less accessible to the cells gene-reading machinery based on key signals, and where some DNA chains loop around to form long-range interactions that enable the stable reading of genes. Some genes operate in chromatin compartmentsprotein complexes that house the genesthat are open and active, while others are compacted and closed, as part of the nuclear architecture.

In the current study, experiments confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 infection, and the immune reaction to it, decreases the ability of DNA chains in chromosomes that influence the formation of olfactory receptor building to be open and active, and to loop around to activate gene expression. In both hamster and human olfactory neuronal tissue, the research team detected persistent and widespread downregulation of olfactory receptor building. Other work posted by these authors suggests that olfactory neurons are wired into sensitive brain regions, and that ongoing immune cell reactions in the nasal cavity could influence emotions, and the ability to think clearly (cognition), consistent with long COVID.

Experiments in hamsters recorded over time revealed that downregulation of olfactory neuron receptors persisted after short-term changes that might affect the sense of smell had naturally recovered. The authors say this suggests that COVID-19 causes longer-lasting disruption in chromosomal regulation of gene expression, representing a form of nuclear memory that could prevent the restoration of olfactory receptor transcription even after SARS-CoV-2 is cleared.

The realization that the sense of smell relies on fragile genomic interactions between chromosomes has important implications, says Dr. tenOever. If olfactory gene expression ceases every time the immune system responds in certain ways that disrupts inter-chromosomal contacts, then the lost sense of smell may act as the canary in the coal mine, providing early signals that the COVID-19 virus is damaging brain tissue before other symptoms present, and suggesting new ways to treat it.

In a next step, the team is presently seeing whether treating hamsters with long COVID with steroids can restore restrain damaging immune reactions (inflammation) to protect nuclear architecture.

Along with Dr. tenOever, authors of the current study from the Department of Microbiology at NYU Langone Health were Justin Frere, Rasmus Moeller, Skyler Uhl, and Daisy Hoagland. Also leading the study were corresponding authors Jonathan Overdevest and Stavros Lomvardas from the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. Additional contributors included Marianna Zazhytska, Albana Kodra, Hani Shayya, Stuart Firestein, Peter Canoll, and James Goldman. Also making important contributions were study authors John Fullard and Panos Roussos of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai; Arina Omer of Baylor Genetics in Houston; and Qizhi Gong of the Department of Cell Biology and Human Anatomy, School of Medicine, University of California at Davis.

Funding for the study was provided by National Institutes of Health grants NIDCD 3R01DC018744-01S1 and U01DA052783, as well as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Faculty Scholars award and the Zegar Family Foundation.

Greg WilliamsPhone: 212-404-3500gregory.williams@nyulangone.org

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Mechanism Revealed Behind Loss of Smell with COVID-19 - NYU Langone Health

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 381.9 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths has now passed 5.68 million. More than 10.1 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

Tonga, hit by a tsunami last month, has gone into lockdown after two wharf workers were confirmed to have COVID-19.

Australia's COVID-19 hospitalization rate has fallen to its lowest in nearly three weeks.

Norway will scrap its remaining COVID-19 lockdown measures. A spike in infections is unlikely to jeopardize health services, the prime minister said yesterday.

The Czech Republic reported 57,195 new confirmed COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, its highest daily tally since the pandemic started.

Turkey has also recorded its highest daily case tally since the start of the pandemic, with 102,601 new confirmed COVID-19 cases - crossing the 100,000 mark for the first time.

Suspected reinfections account for around 10% of England's COVID-19 cases so far this year, a Reuters analysis suggests, after the UK Health Security Agency changed how it calculates COVID-19 data.

US regulators are considering the first COVID-19 vaccine for children under five, as Pfizer and BioNTech began the regulatory approval process on Tuesday.

The World Health Organization has warned that discarded medical waste from the COVID-19 pandemic threatens human health and the environment.

Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in selected countries.

Image: Our World in Data

The COVID Response Alliance to Social Entrepreneurs - soon to continue its work as the Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship - was launched in April 2020 in response to the devastating effects of the pandemic. Co-founded by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship together with Ashoka, Echoing Green, GHR Foundation, Skoll Foundation, and Yunus Social Business.

The Alliance provides a trusted community for the worlds leading corporations, investors, governments, intermediaries, academics, and media who share a commitment to social entrepreneurship and innovation.

Since its inception, it has since grown to become the largest multi-stakeholder coalition in the social enterprise sector: its 90+ members collectively support over 100,000 social entrepreneurs across the world. These entrepreneurs, in turn, have a direct or indirect impact on the lives of an estimated 2 billion people.

Together, they work to (i) mobilize support for social entrepreneurs and their agendas; (ii) take action on urgent global agendas using the power of social entrepreneurship, and (iii) share insights from the sector so that social entrepreneurs can flourish and lead the way in shaping an inclusive, just and sustainable world.

The Alliance works closely together with member organizations Echoing Green and GHR Foundation, as well as the Centre for the New Economy and Society on the roll out of its 2022 roadmap (soon to be announced).

The BA.2 form of the Omicron COVID-19 variant doesn't seem to be any more severe than the original BA.1 form, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said yesterday.

Vaccines also continue to provide similar protection against the different forms of Omicron, Boris Pavlin of the WHO's COVID-19 Response Team told an online briefing.

The comments come as the BA.2 subvariant begins to replace Omicron's more common 'original' BA.1 subvariant in countries such as Denmark.

"Looking at other countries where BA.2 is now overtaking, we're not seeing any higher bumps in hospitalization than expected," Pavlin said.

The subvariant is already becoming dominant in the Philippines, Nepal, Qatar, India and Denmark, Pavlin said. It's thought to be in at least 57 countries.

Many countries have not reached their peak in cases of the highly transmissible Omicron COVID-19 variant and measures imposed to curb its spread should be eased slowly, the World Health Organization's technical lead on COVID-19 said yesterday.

"We are urging caution because many countries have not gone through the peak of Omicron yet. Many countries have low levels of vaccination coverage with very vulnerable individuals within their populations," Maria Van Kerkhove told an online briefing.

"And so now is not the time to lift everything all at once. We have always urged: always (be) very cautious in applying interventions as well as lifting those interventions in a steady and in a slow way, piece by piece. Because this virus is quite dynamic," she said.

Written by

Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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COVID-19: Top news stories about the pandemic on 2 February | World Economic Forum - World Economic Forum

An extensive buildup of barriers along Chinas 3,000-mile southern border is under way, according to public documents, official statements and interviews with residents, ostensibly to battle Covid-19 but with likely long-lasting ramifications on trade and travel.

The small Chinese city of Ruili, in the far south next to Myanmar, has seen a major construction project in the past two years. It is a border fence equipped with barbed wire, surveillance cameras and sensors.

Originally posted here:

China Fortifies Its Borders With a Southern Great Wall, Citing Covid-19 - The Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON On his first full day in office, President Biden promised to order the federal Bureau of Prisons to reevaluate its Covid-19 protocolsand release additional data on the spread ofthe virusin prisons,two in a slew of pledges aimed at ensuring the United Statespandemicresponse was equitable.

But that specific order never came. And now, as Covid-19 is spiking in multiple federal prisons around the country, spurred by the Omicron variant and still-substandard infection control, advocates say that the BOPs Covid-19 protocols are as broken as ever.

Theyve continued with business as usual as a mass death event has unfolded under their watch, said Joshua Manson, the communications manager for the UCLA Law COVID Behind Bars Data Project, which tracks Covid-19 outbreaks in prisons. Its been a catastrophe.

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Nearly 3,000 incarcerated people have died of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, including roughly 300 in federal custody. People in prison are roughly three times more likely to die of Covid-19 than the general population, after adjusting for the fact that the prison population skews younger.

Biden made reversing that trend part of his pandemic strategy and a pillar of his larger goal of prioritizing equity throughout his Covid-19 response. But interviews with leading prison advocates, independent legal and medical experts, a former federal prisoner, and a U.S. senator reveal persistent and fundamental issues with the BOPs approach toward Covid-19. That includes poor infection control in prisons; inaccurate, opaque data on how many incarcerated people are infected and have died of Covid-19; a substandard vaccine rollout; and almost no public information on how the BOP is prioritizing booster shots for its population.

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They have a long runway to meeting the goals they set out for themselves with respect to health equity, racial equity, and civil and human rights more broadly, said Sakira Cook, senior program director at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of over 200 civil rights organizations.

Theyre on the path, she said, but they have miles to go.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice, which oversees the BOP, argued that the agency follows Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for infection control. She said in a statement that BOP has made significant strides in vaccinating the prison population, and outlined efforts to be transparent about the conditions in prisons.A White House spokesperson pointed to a separate executive order focused on federal workers, which was released before Biden pledged to overhaul prisons Covid response, to claim that the White House had fulfilled its promise. That order does not mention the BOP at all.

Biden does not have unilateral power to fix the disparities in the entire prison system because many facilities are run by state authorities, not to mention that roughly 3,000 jails are typically run by local agencies, like counties. But he does have the authority to make changes at federal prisons run by the BOP.

The prison systems struggles to address the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic are well-documented, and they often mirrored struggles outside the prison walls, like poor access to Covid-19 tests. But the rapid deterioration in several prison systems over the last few weeks suggest that many aspects of the BOPs Covid response remain broken two years after the pandemic began.

People at FCI Danbury in Connecticut, for example, are still waiting three days for Covid-19 test results, according to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who toured the facility last week.

And at Danbury, at least, its not just Omicron driving the surge. There were 234 new cases in a population of roughly 1,000 people during the month of January, according to data compiled by a team at the University of Iowa, but theres no frequent testing and those in quarantine arent being monitored for worsening symptoms, according to Sarah Russell, the director of the Quinnipiac Legal Clinic who previously filed a class-action lawsuit against the facility challenging its Covid-19 protocols.

She gave two other stark examples: At the start of a late December outbreak, the facilitys staff decided, at least at first, not to quarantine women with Covid-19, and also declined to tell people whether they had been infected, she said. And on Jan. 22, they similarly failed to isolate two men who tested positive until the following day.

When asked about the allegations at Danbury, a DOJ spokesperson said: The BOP follows CDC guidelines as well as BOP policy to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 infections. If it is determined that BOP staff have not adhered to COVID-19 protocols, disciplinary action may be warranted.

Paul Petruzzi, a criminal defense attorney for women at FPC Alderson in West Virginia, said the situation at that facility is worse, though theres even less information accessible. Available data suggests that Alderson experienced serious spikes in new Covid-19 cases during both late December and late January. At least 137 women tested positive in the last three weeks of December, and another 92 women tested positive the week of January 17. Alderson houses roughly 700 women.

Petruzzi says there are likely more women with Covid in the facility than the available data show, because the facility is not testing widely. He said three women have died since the start of the outbreak and two of his clients are hospitalized, including one who is intubated.

It might have the reputation of being Camp Cupcake where Martha Stewart went, but its not now. Theres too many dead women in the past month for that place to be considered or described as any type of light form of punishment. Its hellish, Petruzzi said.

Petruzzi also alleged that women who want to get vaccinated are now being told there is a waitlist.

A DOJ spokesperson said that Alderson follows CDC guidelines, denied there was a waitlist for vaccines, and said testing is conducted when warranted.

The data suggest that Omicron alone isnt responsible for the current levels of Covid-19 in federal facilities.

The numbers that we are seeing from the Bureau of Prisons, I think, show a prison system that has been unable, or unwilling unclear which it is to control the spread of Covid in its facilities, said Alison Guernsey, a law professor at the University of Iowa who has been tracking Covid-19 outbreaks in prisons.

During the week of Jan. 17, seven BOP prisons had triple-digit increases in new Covid-19 cases, including 216 new cases at FCI Berlin in Berlin, N.H., which houses only roughly 750 people, according to data compiled by Guernsey and her research assistant. Four facilities had similar triple-digit spikes the following week, including 321 new cases in four days at FCI Oakdale I, a mens prison in Louisiana that houses roughly 900 people.

Guernsey also noted that persistent issues with BOPs Covid data, like cumulative counts of Covid-19 cases for certain facilities mysteriously decreasing, likely mean that her totals of new cases likely undercount the actual number of new infections.

Bidens national pandemic strategy was supposed to prevent these sorts of emergencies from occurring.

His 198-page Covid-19 playbook included two pledges specifically aimed at stemming the viruss spread in prisons.

The first was to Ensure the Federal Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities are following sound public health guidance.

The administration promised it would release an executive order that would require the BOP and ICE to evaluate their COVID-19 protocols, release data on the spread of COVID-19 in facilities, and use federal grant programs to create incentives for state and local facilities to adhere to sound public health guidance.

Not only did the order never materialize, but several major advocacy organizations told STAT they never even knew the order was planned.

And while the BOP and the CDC have released new guidelines in recent months on managing Covid in prisons, the BOP has struggled to follow those guidelines, as evidenced by ongoing outbreaks. A July Government Accountability Office report also found that prison staff frequently were confused by how to implement BOPs guidance.

The agency also hasnt shared useful data on the spread of Covid-19 in its facilities. Legal experts have complained that it has been difficult to track the number of deaths from Covid-19 in prisons. The BOP has been slow to update the publicly available tally of deaths occurring in its facilities some deaths have taken a year or more to be reported and it does not count people who were dying of Covid-19 in prison and then released, shortly before their death, to die at home.

The DOJ spokesperson argued that the BOP updates its death counts as quickly as possible after a medical examiner conducts an autopsy and the family of the deceased is notified. They confirmed, however, that the BOP does not track changes in medical status or potential death rates for anyone who is no longer in BOPs custody.

The BOP does also report daily infection tallies for each of its facilities, but experts say those counts likely miss a large number of infections. They note, for example, that the BOP does not report granular enough testing data to calculate so-called test positivity rates, a measure often used in public health to estimate what percentage of a population likely has Covid-19, given not every person in a community is typically tested at one time.

The White House spokesman said the administration had fulfilled its promise to push to provide more data on the spread of Covid-19 in federal facilities. But the data on the webpage the spokesperson referred STAT to had been available for months before Biden took office, two researchers who track the spread of Covid in federal prisons told STAT.

If the Biden administrations claim is that they were solely responsible for initiating facility-by-facility reporting, then they are mistaken, said Guernsey, the Iowa professor, who provided screenshots of the webpage in question dating to May 2020. I just verified with my records that we have been pulling facility-specific data from the BOPs website since we started our data-tracking project in April of 2020.

The White House spokesperson also noted that the BOP now provides data on Covid-19 vaccine administration in prisons, and that CDC has created additional tools for visualizing Covid-19 rates in state and federal prisons.

Bidens other promise in his January plan was to distribute vaccines to incarcerated individuals and their staff. It has done modestly better in meeting that goal.

A DOJ spokesperson told STAT that 93,501 federal inmates 69.4% of the federal prison population are fully vaccinated, which they noted is a higher percentage than in the US population as a whole, which has a vaccination rate of 63.5%.

Medical experts have complained, however, that the BOPs vaccination efforts are likely leaving behind the most vulnerable people in prison. Thats because the BOP has not undertaken the type of educational efforts that they say are needed to convince people who have questions about the vaccine because of concurrent medical issues or distrust of the correctional system.

A court-ordered independent report of one federal facility in California from April, for example, showed that vaccinations were done in large settings where incarcerated people were called to either take the vaccine or sign a refusal. No one followed up with those who refused, and many people reported that when they tried to ask questions about the safety of the vaccine, or posed questions about their own health or medication issues in relation to the vaccine, they were told to either take the vaccine or sign a refusal form, wrote Homer Venters, the prison health expert who conducted the investigation.

Venters said only five of 33 people he spoke to who initially refused to take the vaccine said they would never take it. Instead, many had easily answered but unanswered questions, like the potential for allergic reactions and interactions between the vaccine and their current medications.

It has a paradoxical effect of creating a pool of extremely high-risk unvaccinated patients. Many of these high-risk patients were initially offered the vaccine 3 or 4 months ago, and the insistence by BOP leadership that their very valid and predictable questions and concerns go unaddressed during this time significantly increases the risk of preventable death from COVID-19, Venters wrote.

Some public health groups even took to sending their own information into prisons to explain why people there should get vaccinated.

The DOJ spokesperson said that the BOP has provided educational posters and promotional videos, developed in consultation with the CDC and has created incentives to encourage inmates to get vaccinated, like commissary incentives and movie showings.

While the BOP is now offering booster shots against Covid-19, advocates have complained that there is a lack of data on how many prisoners have been boosted. A DOJ spokesperson told STAT that 29,200 people in federal custody have had a booster dose, but that information is not publicly available on the DOJs website.

Advocates shared anecdotal reports with STAT about certain incarcerated people having difficulty finding boosters. Guernsey, the Iowa law professor, for example, shared an anecdote of an immunocompromised prisoner who was told he is not eligible for a booster because he has already contracted Covid.

The situation is even worse in immigration facilities. On Monday, the ACLUfiled a lawsuitagainst ICE on behalf of several people at high risk of Covid-19 complications who are being held in immigration detention and are not able to access boosters. Less than 700 of the 21,000 people detained in ICE facilities have been boosted, according to the lawsuit.

The CDC currently recommends boosters for everyone 12 years and older, at least several months after they complete their initial vaccination series.

There have been some other modest improvements in the BOPs management of Covid-19 since Biden took over the White House.

The CDC, for example, launched a new testing program in December that will offer no-cost PCR testing to congregate settings like prisons. The Biden administration also announced in late December that it would not require people that were released to home confinement in response to Covid to return to prison at the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Death rates have also seemed to flatten as vaccines were rolled out, though experts say its impossible to say so definitively because of the BOPs sporadic reporting of Covid-19 deaths. Of the 281 people Guernseys team identified by name as having died of Covid-19, roughly 66% died in 2020 and 30% died in 2021. Nine incarcerated people have died thus far in January, according to publicly available data.

Theres some progress but its been very slow, and very halting, and very ad hoc, said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU National Prison Project.

Pressure also appears to be building on the Biden administration to address the agencys long-standing issues.

The GAO, for example, announced last week that it was considering adding the BOP to its high-risk list of federal agencies that are vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement, or in need of transformation, partially because of its response to Covid-19. And the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the BOPs response to Covid-19 on Jan. 21 and will hold another hearing with the director of the agency this Thursday.

Blumenthal, the Connecticut senator, has also called for a federal investigation into the conditions at the Danbury facility, and told STAT he will be asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to conduct a similar inquiry into Covid conditions at the BOP nationwide.

And BOP will go through a massive transition in the coming months: a new director. The agencys current director, Miguel Carvajal, a longtime BOP employee who was first appointed to the agencys top job by President Trump, announced last month that he is retiring.

Carvajals resignation is an opportunity for the administration to finally live up to many of its campaign promises, Kendrick wrote in a recent op-ed. As another highly transmissible variant spreads throughout the country, there is no time to waste.

Read more:

Despite Biden's promises, Covid-19 is still raging through prisons - STAT

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) The South Dakota Department of Health reported five new COVID-19 deaths Wednesday.

The COVID-19 death toll is now at 2,665, up from Tuesday (2,660). The new deaths were three men and two women in the following age ranges: 60-69 (2); 70-75 (1) and 80+ (2). The deaths were in Beadle, Fall River, Lincoln, Perkins and Roberts Counties.

All 66 of South Dakotas 66 counties are listed as having high community spread. High community spread is 100 cases or greater per 100,000 or a 10% or greater PCR test positivity rate.

There are now 355 people hospitalized due to COVID-19, down from Tuesday (366). Throughout the pandemic, there have been 10,131 total people who have been hospitalized.

The latest seven-day PCR test positivity rate for the state is 30.9% for Jan. 25 31.

On Wednesday, there were 769 total new COVID-19 cases were reported, bringing the states total case count to 228,938, up from Tuesday (228,169). That total does not include at-home positive results as those are not required to be reported to the state.

Active cases are now at 28,789, down from Tuesday (30,559).

The number of recovered cases is at 197,484.

There are now 302 Omicron cases, up 22 from Tuesdays data.

There have been 1,420 Delta variant cases (B.1.617.2 and AY lineages) detected in South Dakota through sentinel monitoring, an increase of 91. There have been 176 cases of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha variant), four cases of P.1. (Gamma variant) and two cases of the B.1.351 (Beta variant).

On November 24, the South Dakota Department of Health updated how it reports the percent of the population getting vaccinated. To align with the vaccine-eligible population, the Department of Health is including children who are 5-11 years old.

For COVID-19 vaccines, 69.74% the population 5-years-old and above has received at least one dose while 56.99% have completed the vaccination series. For booster doses, 30.37% of those eligible have completed their booster dose.

There have been 649,601 doses of the Pfizer vaccine administered, 454,960 of the Moderna vaccine and 36,728 doses of the Janssen vaccine.

There have been 170,589 persons who have completed two doses of Moderna. There have been 249,789 persons who have received two doses of Pfizer.

As for booster doses, 110,018 people have received a 3rd Pfizer shot, 84,399 people have received a 3rd Moderna dose and 2,502 have received a Janssen booster.

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COVID-19 in South Dakota: 769 new total cases; Death toll up to 2,665; Active cases at 28,789 - KELOLAND.com

KINGSTON, N.Y. Ulster County reported Wednesday, Feb. 2, the death of two more people from the COVID-19 illness, according to the governments coronavirus dashboard.

The deaths now bring the total to 361 in Ulster County since the pandemic began in March 2020.

Meanwhile, the county also reported another significant single-day decline of COVID active cases. It reported 1,608 cases, down 292 from the 1,900 reported the previous day.

The county said that it has had 35,545 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 33,576 recoveries.

Dutchess County did not update its dashboard on Wednesday but reported Tuesday that it had one new COVID-19 related death, bringing the total to 606 since the pandemic began.

The county also reported a decrease in active cases to 1,017, down from the 1,242 reported the previous day. Thats a drop of 225 cases and comes after the number of active cases has been steadily declining since its Jan. 8 peak of 8,510 active cases.

Dutchess said it has had 61,646 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the pandemics start in March 2020.

Here are the latest local COVID-19 statistics.

Data as of Tuesday, Feb. 1, state Department of Health.

Ellenville Regional Hospital, 2

HealthAlliance Hospitals in Kingston, 29.

Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, 19

Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, 42

Mid-Hudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie, 44

Data as of Wednesday, Feb. 2, from the states online vaccine tracker.

Ulster County: 72.9% fully vaccinated, 80.4% with at least one dose of a two-dose regimen, 88.6% of 18+ population with at least one dose.

Dutchess County: 67.6% fully vaccinated, 75.8% with at least one dose of a two-dose regimen, 84.4% of 18+ population with at least one dose.

Appointments: vaccinateulster.com, bit.ly/dut-vax, bit.ly/ny-vaxme.

In Saugerties, a vaccination site will be set up from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m at Mount Marion Elementary School, 744 Glasco Turnpike, on Monday, Feb. 7; and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Saugerties Senior High School, 310 Washington Ave. on Monday, Feb. 28.

Ulster County will hold a free drive-through at-home test kit distribution event at Ellenville High School, 28 Maple Ave., Ellenville, on Thursday, Feb. 3, from 5 to 7 p.m. The event will have 2,000 at-home test kits available to Ulster County residents, with one kit per car.

Here are the latest reports of COVID cases in area school districts.

Kingston: One student each at Ernest C. Myer Elementary School, Crosby Elementary School, and John F. Kennedy School; one teacher at Harry L. Edson Elementary School; three students, one teacher at J. Watson Bailey Middle School; three students each at the high school and M. Clifford Miller Middle School.

Highland: Four students at the elementary school.

New Paltz: One student at the high school.

Onteora: Three high school students, one middle school teacher, and one student at Reginald Bennett Elementary School.

Rondout Valley: One student at Kerhonkson Elementary School; two students at Marbletown Elementary School; and seven students at the Rondout Valley Intermediate School.

One student at Saugerties High School; one student and one staff at Grant D. Morse Elementary School; one student at Mount Marion Elementary School; and one staff at Riccardi Elementary School.

Wallkill: Two students at Leptondale Elementary School; six students at Ostrander Elementary School; and one student at Plattekill Elementary School.

Red Hook: One student at Mill Road Intermediate School; and four students at Red Hook High School.

Kingston Catholic: One student.

High Meadow: Three students.

For online local coverage related to the coronavirus, go to dailyfreeman.com/tag/coronavirus.

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Ulster County reports two more COVID-19 deaths, drop in active cases - The Daily Freeman

The following is information about the City of San Joss response to slow and reduce the spread of COVID-19 and support of an equitable recovery to a Better Normal.

SOURCE:City of San JosCommunity and Economic Recovery Team

Contact:Carolina Camarena / Vicki Day, City of San Jos Media Line: 408-535-7777City of San Jos Customer Contact Center: 3-1-1 or 408-535-3500

Email: News/Media: EOC_PIO@sanjoseca.govResidents: 311@sanjoseca.govBusinesses: covid19sjbusiness@sanjoseca.govNon-Profits: covid19sjcbo@sanjoseca.gov

Updates on City of San Jos Services and/or Operations

Healthcare providers are required to provide COVID-19 testing if you meet any of the following criteria:

If you fall into one of these categories and request a test, your healthcare provider must provide you with a COVID-19 test (PCR or antigen) within 24 hours. Your healthcare provider may tell you to go to another clinic or testing center operated by the same healthcare provider within the county (or outside the county if within 10 miles of your home) if needed to ensure you receive a test within 24 hours. Your healthcare provider may not tell you to go to a site run by another organization, including the Countys public testing sites.

If you receive a lab-based (e.g. PCR) test, you must receive your results within 72 hours. If your healthcare provider fails to meet the above standards, or you have other complaints or concerns about COVID-19 testing, please report them to the County Health Department at http://www.sccCOVIDconcerns.org.

Booster shots are now recommended for everyone 12 and older and available to those who received Pfizer or Moderna for their second dose at least five months ago or who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months ago. The Pfizer booster dose is available to anyone 12 and older; the Moderna booster is available to anyone 18 and older.

At the sites where there are **, vaccines for 5-11 are not available.

County test sites provide COVID-19 tests free of charge, regardless of immigration status, and no doctors note is needed. For people without COVID-19 symptoms, the County currently offers indoor and drive-through sites. People with symptoms are directed to drive-through sites to reduce the chance of getting others sick.

All healthcare systems are required by the County order to offer free testing to symptomatic persons, persons who have been exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 case, and all essential workers. For more information on testing rights, see the Frequently Asked Questions page.

All available test sites are mapped on the Countys website at http://www.sccfreetest.org. The site is available in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Tagalog. Information is also available by calling 2-1-1.

Esta informacin est disponible en espaol enwww.sanjoseca.gov.

Thng tin ny c sn bng Ting Vit trn trang:www.sanjoseca.gov.

http://www.sanjoseca.gov

A persons risk for COVID-19 is not related to race, ethnicity or culture. City employees must abide by the Discrimination and Harassment policy, and treat colleagues and members of the public with courtesy and respect. Discrimination and/or Harassment of any kind is a violation of the policies and will not be tolerated.

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FLASH REPORT #197 - COVID-19 Response and Recovery | News | City of San Jose - City of San Jose, CA

As the Omicron variant emerged in New York State, the number of people who have been infected with COVID for a second time has increased dramatically (reinfection). The Department of Health recently released a studywith California and the CDC that looks at the occurrence of reinfection, among other trends. The Department will update reinfection data here on a weekly basis.

What is a reinfection?

A reinfection is when a person becomes infected with COVID, enough time passes, and later becomes infected again. A person is considered to have been reinfected if they test positive again 90 days or more after their first positive test.

What are the numbers?

Through January 30, 2022, there have been 188,401 cases of reinfection, which represents about 3.8% of all COVID infections reported to date in the State.

157,864 of these reinfections have occurred since the week of Dec 13, 2021, the week that variants sequenced in New York State increased to 20% Omicron. This corresponds to 83.8% of reinfections reported in the State to date.

How does this relate to other testing information DOH publishes?

Because data on reinfections and new infections are collected in different ways, they must be presented separately. The COVID-19 daily testing tracker and the positive tests over time dashboard show the number of first-time infections in New York State, based on when these new infections are reported to the State. The reinfection page presents the number of unique instances a person tested positive, thus including those who have tested positive again 90 days or more after their first positive test. To ensure each positive case is at least 90 days apart, reinfection cases are tracked by the date the sample was collected. Due to high volumes and differing reporting practices and timing, many testing sites do not report a case the same day the specimen is collected or the positive result is confirmed.

As a result, the total for any single day will differ between these two reports.

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COVID-19 Reinfection Data | Department of Health - COVID-19 Vaccine