U.K. Steps Up Biggest Vaccine Drive, With One in 50 Now Infectedhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-05/one-person-in-50-in-england-now-has-covid-u-k-government-saysMore than one million people in England now have coronavirus, the British government said, as medics race to vaccinate the most vulnerable against the rapidly spreading disease.
Rocketing case rates from the new virus strain mean one person in every 50 in England now has Covid-19, while in London one in 30 is infected, official survey results showed.
... Johnson defended his decision to order the country to stay at home again, and pointed to latest infection figures showing record levels of coronavirus in the population. “The number of patients in hospitals in England is now 40% higher than at the first peak in April,” he said. “When everybody looks at the position people understand overwhelmingly that we have no choice.”
The lockdown followed warnings from government medical advisers that the National Health Service could be overwhelmed within the next three weeks unless urgent action was taken.
------------------------------------------
First Case of Highly-Contagious COVID-19 Variant from U.K. Discovered in Georgiahttps://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/first-case-highly-contagious-covid-19-variant-discovered-georgia/AXZQ6XRXIBEQPHFJVDSID7NCPE/?outputType=ampGeorgia health officials have identified the first case of a highly-contagious COVID-19 variant discovered in the U.K.
The Georgia Department of Health said the variant was found in an 18-year-old male with no history of travel. He is currently isolating at home.
Officials did not release information about where in the state the variant case was discovered.
------------------------------------------
Los Angeles is Running Out of Oxygen for Patients as Covid Hospitalizations Hit Record Highs Nationwidehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/05/covid-hospitalizations-los-angeles-oxygen/?outputType=ampWith the holidays over, the governor said, more than 2.4 million Californians have been infected, some 27,000 are dead, hospitals are overwhelmed and only about a third of the state’s 1.3 million vaccine doses have made it into the arms of patients.
... Hospital officials in Southern California said they were running low not just on ICU beds but also ventilators and morgue space. But perhaps the most dire shortage is now oxygen. Because coronavirus is a respiratory disease that attack the lungs, most hospitalized patients require oxygen. The sheer number of patients has placed such a strain on oxygen systems that some hospitals are struggling to provide adequate air pressure and flow into patients’ lungs. There are also shortages of portable oxygen tanks in ambulances and ones that are sent home with patients, making it difficult to discharge some patients even as hospitals run out of capacity.
The Army Corps of Engineers has been called in and is sending crews to update oxygen-delivery infrastructure at several aging hospitals — five in downtown Los Angeles and two in San Bernardino. Separately, state emergency teams have been deployed to refill 42 oxygen tanks of medical support units across the state. The state is also leasing mobile oxygen systems to bolster supplies and looking to order several hundred oxygen concentrator units. The overarching goal, Newsom said, is to reduce the stress placed on hospitals’ existing oxygen systems so that they can maintain adequate air pressure for patients.
Expanding the oxygen supply doesn’t end the challenges for hospitals, Kim-Farley said.
... “When you get to that level of volume being pumped through, some of pipes start to freeze up. You start running out of oxygen tanks that patients need to be sent home and discharged,” Kim-Farley said. “As the cases keep increasing you’re going to see those kinds of effects start to pile up. ICU beds get full. The ER gets backed up. Ambulances have no where to take patients. You get severe, chronic staffing shortages. Elective surgeries get canceled again. The ability to care simply degrades.”In San Bernardino County, a clinical director at a large hospital told reporters that cots have been placed in conference rooms, with plans to put overflow patients in the cafeteria and lobby. In San Diego County, Mr. Newsom said, the new, highly transmissible variant of the virus has now been pinpointed in at least four cases, for a total of at least a half-dozen statewide.
--------------------------------
As the governor was briefing the news media on California’s slow vaccine distribution on Monday,
a Mendocino County hospital was furiously inoculating hundreds of people in an ad hoc response to a broken freezer where 830 doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine were thawing, rapidly. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-04/freezer-broken-california-town-had-to-use-or-lose-vaccine-shots------------------------------------------------
Anti-mask protesters stormed a Ralph’s grocery store and the Westfield Century City mall on Sunday, calling customers “mask Nazis” and ramming masked shoppers with shopping carts. The disruption comes a week after people in Trump regalia orchestrated a similar clash at a Fairfax grocery store.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-04/maskless-protesters-grocery-store-westfield-century-city-mall-------------------------------------------------
... States with the largest share of their populations hospitalized are largely concentrated in the south and west: Arizona, Nevada, Alabama, California, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Texas and Delaware.
... “Right now the entire country is essentially in uncontrolled spread, so every single state is looking for those same limited resources,” said Marjorie Bessel, chief clinical officer at Banner Health.
“It’s a sad situation to not have had more mitigation be undertaken when all the science showed us exactly what’s happening is exactly what we predicted.”... Arizona, once heralded for turning the corner after a summer surge, now has 69 of every 100,000 residents hospitalized with the virus — the highest rate in the country. Hospital leaders say they saw this coming a month ago, but they allege Gov. Doug Ducey (R) ignored their pleas to reimpose measures to curb the spread. State officials have said enacting restrictions would do little to curb transmission at private gatherings.
The day after Thanksgiving, a team of researchers issued a dire warning in a memo to the Arizona Department of Health Services. Failure to issue a shelter-in-place order to stave off a crisis in hospitals “risks a catastrophe on a scale of the worst natural disaster the state has ever experienced. It would be akin to facing a major forest fire without evacuation orders,” the memo said.
https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20417751-azdhs-recommendations-11_2020Ducey instead loosened restrictions on outdoor dining several days later. He prohibited gatherings over 50 people, double the threshold sought by medical groups, but declined to take other measures they urged, such as a statewide mask mandate and ban on indoor dining. He rejected calls from the state superintendent of schools to keep schools virtual for two weeks as a holiday quarantine period.
“Our state is doing very little to slow transmission of virus. We have a very lax policy environment. Our businesses are open,” said Joe Gerald, a University of Arizona researcher who has been tracking the spread of the virus and was among those urging a shelter-in-place order.
“The virus is just basically transmitting almost uninhibited through our population.”The researchers’ warnings of a hospital crisis came to fruition. Hospitalizations climbed past their summer peak in mid-December and have been steadily rising since then. Just seven percent of the state’s ICU beds have been available since the new year started. The seven-day average of new cases has surpassed 8,000, up from 5,700 on New Year’s Eve.
... “It’s very demoralizing sometimes to work here [AZ] and to know the science and for it to be ignored,” said Gilman, who drew national attention and a call from President-elect Biden for bringing attention to the state’s lack of hospital beds.
“A lot of people are going to die because of failed leadership.... Nearly every major hospital in the metropolitan Atlanta area is now full, prompting state officials to reopen a field hospital at the Word Congress Center, one of the nation’s largest convention centers. Northeast Georgia Health System says its four hospitals are running out of ways to expand capacity after setting up cots in gyms, creating temporary spaces in hallways and, in some cases, treating patients while they are still inside an ambulance.
Eight of the ten American counties reporting the largest per capita increases in their caseload are small, rural Georgia counties.
... Public health experts say the country faces a similar challenge it did last spring: Buying time.
------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, Trump falsely calls covid-19 death count 'fake news' as it surpasses 350,000
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/trump-calls-us-coronavirus-death-toll-fake-news-as-count-surpasses-350000/2021/01/03/6bdc0b08-4e14-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html
Poll