Calif. dropping stay-at-home orders, curfew
California health officials lifted regional stay-athome orders across the state Monday, citing a decline in the numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations and intensive care unit patients.
The stay-at-home order had included most of the state’s counties, including the San Francisco Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. The change will allow restaurants to resume outdoor dining in many areas, though local officials could choose to continue stricter rules. The state is also lifting a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.
The restrictions had fueled an angry outcry from many small-business owners. California will now return to its four-tiered, color-coded system of countyby-county restrictions, state health officials announced.
“Together, we changed our activities knowing our short-term sacrifices would lead to longer-term gains,” said Dr. Tomás Aragón, California Department of Public Health director and state public health officer.
The U.S. has more than 25.1 million confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 419,600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals: More than 99.3 million cases and 2.1 million deaths.
2 in 5 Americans live where ICUs strained
Straining to handle record numbers of patients, hundreds of the nation’s intensive care units are running out of space and supplies and competing to hire temporary traveling nurses at soaring rates. Many of the facilities are clustered in the South and West.
An Associated Press analysis of federal hospital data shows that since November, the share of U.S. hospitals nearing the breaking point has doubled. More than 40% of Americans now live in areas running out of ICU space, and only 15% of beds are still available.
Intensive care units are the final defense for the sickest of the sick, patients who are nearly suffocating or facing organ failure. Nurses who work in the most stressed ICUs, changing IV bags and monitoring patients on breathing machines, are exhausted.
NFL study finds transmission without 15 minutes of close contact
A study of NFL players found that coronavirus transmission is still possible even if exposure didn’t surpass 15 total minutes within six feet, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study, published Monday in the agency’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, tracked 20 players from Oct. 15 to Nov. 21 who were identified as high-risk contacts of a COVID-19 patient. Researchers determined through contact tracing that seven of them “had no interactions exceeding 15 cumulative minutes per day within (six feet).”
The findings put into question the CDC’s guidance on community exposure, which it defines as having close contact with an individual who is confirmed or suspected to have COVID-19. According to the agency, close contact is defined as within six feet for a total of 15 minutes or more. The CDC also noted most of the cases came from community exposure and not from the field or other work-related environments.
Japan scrambling for ‘herd immunity’ as Olympics near
Japan’s vaccine effort is falling short and could imperil the Tokyo Olympics, at least one expert warns.
Japan probably won’t achieve herd immunity to COVID-19 through mass inoculations until months after the Tokyo Olympics, which are scheduled to begin July 23, Rasmus Bech Hansen, the founder of British research firm Airfinity, told Reuters.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has pledged to have enough shots for the populace by the middle of 2021. Hansen, however, said Japan will not reach a 75% inoculation rate, a benchmark for herd immunity, until around October.
“Japan looks to be quite late in the game,” Hansen said. “They’re dependent on importing many (vaccines) from the U.S. And at the moment, it doesn’t seem very likely they will get very large quantities.”
In rural Pennsylvania, COVID-19 is making a tragic mark
The pandemic hasn’t bypassed rural America, and it’s not going away.
In the Pennsylvania town of Beaver, 35 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, vaccine shots are nearly impossible to get. Nurses at Heritage Valley Beaver had to open a second COVID-19 unit to treat all of the critically ill patients. The community-based health system recently treated 115 patients simultaneously with COVID-19.
“The struggle to just breathe. It sounds like a small thing, you just keep breathing, it is not a small thing,” said Rebecca Register, 40, of Beaver, a seven-year veteran nurse who works on the COVID-19 unit. “Watching someone struggle with that, and they’re on the highest amount of oxygen that I can give them at any time and it’s ripping your heart out.”