Healthcare

We welcome the new year with nearly 22 million confirmed covid-19 cases and 365,000 deaths. The U.S. leads the world in total confirmed cases and deaths, while also ranking second in confirmed cases per capita and seventh in deaths per capita (for countries with a population over 10 million). The impact of covid-19 on our nation has not only been significant in absolute terms, but also significant relative to other countries. Even amid the covid-19 threat, air travel has grown steadily since the summer. In December 2020, over 26 million passengers were screened, slightly more than in November, and the highest monthly total since February 2020 before covid-19 reduced air travel.

Sarah Bowers has called fruitlessly around to multiple county and state officials to see if she could find any information on when her 95-year-old mother would be eligible for the vaccine. Bowers’ mother resides in the independent living section of a senior facility in Indianapolis. Residents in the skilled nursing part of the campus have been vaccinated, but not Bowers’ mother, who’s in quarantine right now in her apartment.

Getting the COVID-19 vaccine into people's arms has proven to be a big stumbling block in North Carolina. Help is on the way, though, from many sources. The North Carolina National Guard has mobilized 50 members to help administer the vaccine and to help input data into the state's COVID-19 tracking system. "We increase our number of guardsmen on duty to help North Carolina get needles into arms with the immunization for those that are willing to take the vaccines," said Brig. Gen. Jeff Copeland.

One year ago, no one had ever heard of COVID-19. That’s because, technically, it didn’t exist. Even as reports of a mystery illness started to pop up in China on New Year’s Eve, it would be days before scientists figured out a new coronavirus was the cause; weeks before they gave the disease its name; and months before they declared COVID-19 a pandemic, putting the whole world on high alert. Since then, people across the globe have poured their energy into figuring out how the novel coronavirus works — and how to stop it. Here, Wisconsin experts discuss what COVID-19 science has taught us in its first year, and what’s ahead as we turn the corner into 2021.

It is completely normal for people to develop side effects after immunization. In medical jargon, these side effects are called adverse events. These can be 'minor', 'severe', or 'serious', with only the last category requiring hospitalization. In fact, vaccination drives that are underway the UK and the US have also reported adverse events, especially in people with allergies, says the writer of this article. None were 'serious'.

U.S. health officials acknowledged that a Covid-19 immunization campaign is crawling out of the starting gate, raising the prospect that the nation’s all-in bet on vaccines could be afflicted by the same dysfunction that hobbled other measures to contain the pandemic. Only about 3.05 million Americans had been vaccinated as of late Wednesday evening in New York, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker. With one day remaining in the year, that represented roughly 15% of the U.S.’s stated goal of immunizing 20 million Americans by the end of 2020 -- a number already repeatedly reduced.

Mass vaccination clinics could come to Georgia as early as next week, and according to state health commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey, will be vaccinating up to 5,000 people a day. Health officials are expanding access to COVID-19 vaccines after announcing that many doses in rural counties are sitting in freezers, while demand in the metro area continues to climb. A Georgia Department of Public Health spokesperson says they don't have all the logistics worked out yet, however. 

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Monday that vaccine distribution has been "a little slower rolling out than everyone initially thought." On Tuesday morning, less than 15% of available shipped vaccines had been administered. A total of 295,375 vaccines (including Pfizer and Moderna) had been shipped to Georgia but only 43,469 had been administered. Tuesday afternoon, those numbers slightly increased with a total of 372,900 vaccines shipped to Georgia and 52,242 administered. "It's well documented that it has been a little slower," said Governor Kemp in an interview with 11Alive. "That's understandable."

The US continues to struggle with insufficient COVID-19 testing capacity. At the same time, US laboratories use ultrasensitive diagnostic criteria in their tests, leading to a large proportion of positive diagnoses associated with negligible viral loads. This column seeks to construct a theory that explains both undertesting and overdiagnosis. The theory predicts both phenomena may arise in the absence of mandatory viral load reporting. Despite the obvious clinical advantages of viral load reporting, mandating such reporting may not be optimal when considering laboratories’ capacity building decisions and potential benefits of widespread quarantining.