Tue, Feb 2 20215:49 PM EST

The idea for the three-day mass vaccination event held this past weekend at Bank of America Stadium was hatched on a walk among friends, according toHoneywell InternationalCEO Darius Adamczyk.

It just so happened Adamcyzk was joined by Carolina Panthers PresidentTom Glickand Atrium Health CEOGene Wood on the stroll. "In the Covid era, one of the social things you can still kind of do is go for walks outside with some of your friends, Adamcyzk said on "Squawk Box," explaining the men live in the same neighborhood.

They were discussing the slower-than-expected start to Covid vaccinations in the U.S. when they realized their respective organizations might be able to do something about it, Adamcyzk recalled. "We said, 'You know, maybe we could help here. Maybe we could partner as a team.'"

More than 20,000 people were ultimately vaccinated from Friday to Sunday at the football stadium, he said. "We did this in the course of three days Friday, Saturday, Sunday," Adamcyzk added. "Twelve hours a day, 20,000 people. Think about if we could do that, set up 50 or 100 of these kinds of sites across the country."

Kevin Stankiewicz

Tue, Feb 2 20215:31 PM EST

Tedros Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, raised the alarm on how weak cooperation between countries could hinder the global recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

In a post published by the Foreign Policy magazine, Tedros wrote: "Despite the growing number of vaccine options, current manufacturing capacity meets only a fraction of global need. Vaccines are the best chance of bringing this pandemic under controlunless leaders succumb to vaccine nationalism."

"International collaboration among scientists was critical to vaccine development, but now weak cooperation between nations is a major barrier to achieving worldwide vaccination at the scale needed to end the pandemic," he added.

Several countries, including the U.S., have been struggling to roll out the different Covid-19 vaccines amid amid limited supplies and logistical issues.

Fred Imbert

Tue, Feb 2 20213:58 PM EST

A medical worker prepares a syringe during vaccination with the Gam-COVID-Vak (Sputnik V) vaccine against COVID-19 at Sochi's City Hospital No 4.

Dmitry Feoktistov | TASS | Getty Images

Mexico is nearing approval for the Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V after the results of an advanced study were published early in The Lancet, Mexican officials said, according to a report by Associated Press.

The Mexican government's pandemic spokesperson, Assistant Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell said the health ministry signed a contract Monday to receive 400,000 doses of Sputnik V this month, according to the report.

Once the Russian vaccine is approved, it will be the third to receive emergency approval in Mexico after prior emergency approvals of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, the Associated Press reported.

A dozen countries have already approved Sputnik V for use.

Rich Mendez

Tue, Feb 2 20213:14 PM EST

National Football League fans convene in downtown Tampa ahead of Super Bowl LV during the COVID-19 pandemic on January 30, 2021 in Tampa, Florida.

Octavio Jones | Getty Images

No NFL players tested positive for the coronavirus in the league's latest round of testing leading up to Super Bowl LV set for Sunday between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers Reuters reported.

In total, 2,567 tests were administered to 152 players and 278 team personnel in the latest round of tests, according to the report. The League releases results weekly and tests frequently, especially when there are doubts about safety.

According to the NFL Network, two players on the Kansas City Chiefs, receiver Demarcus Robinson and center Daniel Kilgore, were put on the reserve list after having close contact with a barber that recently tested positive for the coronavirus. Both players were masked during the interaction, the League said, according to the report.

Rich Mendez

Tue, Feb 2 20212:55 PM EST

The United States will begin shipping Covid-19 vaccine doses directly to retail drugstores on Feb. 11 as it looks to expand access to the life-saving shots nationwide, the Biden administration's Covid-19 response team said.

The federal program, which is separate from its partnership with CVS and Walgreens to vaccinate long-term care residents, will start with 6,500 stores nationwide, White House Covid response coordinator Jeff Zients said at a press briefing.

The U.S. is also increasing its weekly shipments of vaccine doses to states by 5%, he said. That means the federal government will now send a minimum of 10.5 million doses per week for the next three weeks across the U.S.

The administration has allocated 1 million doses to pharmacies in addition to the 10.5 million it has set aside for states, tribes and U.S. territories beginning next week, Zients said.

Noah Higgins-Dunn

Tue, Feb 2 20211:59 PM EST

The United States appears to be turning a corner on the Covid-19 pandemic as cases and hospitalizations rapidly fall across the country, but that progress could be thwarted by more contagious strains that have quickly taken hold in other parts of the world.

The seven-day average of daily new cases in the U.S. is down 41% from its peak last month and the number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 is down 29% from the peak.

But epidemiologists warn that the U.S. is at a dangerous point in the pandemic. They expressed concern that the declining numbers could lull the country into a sense of complacency when more caution than ever is needed. And while the numbers are off their peaks, the level of infection remains so high in most of the country that the loosening of restrictions as well as the spread of more contagious variants could still undo the country's progress, they say.

"There seems to be already a tendency, including in my own community, to start opening things up again, letting the bar stay open later and that sort of thing," Dr. Bill Schaffner, an epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University, said in a phone interview. "I'm worried about that because I thought we'd learned that lesson. As soon as you do that, cases start to go up again."

Will Feuer

Tue, Feb 2 20211:40 PM EST

Democrats will push forward on passing a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill without any Republican support.

Congress is set to take the first votes Tuesday toward passing a budget resolution, which allows lawmakers to use the reconciliation process. Through it, Democrats could pass an aid package with a simple majority vote in the Senate.

The party hopes to pass the budget resolution this week. It instructs committees to draft policies including $1,400 direct payments, a $400 per week unemployment benefit through September, state and local government relief and rental and mortgage assistance.

In announcing the Senate would move ahead with the budget measure, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said "time is a luxury our country does not have." He said he still hoped Republicans would join Democrats in passing a bill, a day after 10 GOP senators met with President Joe Biden about relief efforts.

Those Republicans put forward an aid proposal about a third of the size of the Democrats' plan.

Jacob Pramuk

Tue, Feb 2 202112:32 PM EST

99-year-old war veteran Captain Tom Moore at his home in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, April 16, 2020, after he achieved his goal of 100 laps of his garden - raising more than 12 million pounds for the NHS.

Joe Giddens | PA Images | Getty Images

Capt. Sir Tom Moore, who became a universally loved hero for his fundraising efforts during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, has died, his family said in a statement.

The 100-year-old recently suffered from pneumonia and was diagnosed with Covid-19 last week, his family said. The World War II veteran raised $53 million for the U.K.'s National Health Service by walking laps in his garden last year, according to Reuters.

"The care our father received from the NHS and carers over the last few weeks and years of his life has been extraordinary," his family said in a statement. "They have been unfalteringly professional, kind and compassionate and have given us many more years with him than we ever would have imagined."

Rich Mendez

Tue, Feb 2 202111:20 AM EST

Former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang stands with his family at an event announcing his candidacy for New York City Mayor in upper Manhattan in New York City, January 14, 2021.

Mike Segar | Reuters

Andrew Yang, the former Democratic presidential candidate who is now running for New York City mayor, said he's tested positive for Covid-19 and is in quarantine.

"I am experiencing mild symptoms, but am otherwise feeling well and in good spirits," Yang said in a statement. Yang said he tested negative for the virus over the weekend but then tested positive Tuesday through a rapid test.

Yang said that his campaign team, who are subject to weekly testing if they attend in-person activities, have started tracing all of his close contacts. He will continue to attend virtual campaign events.

Noah Higgins-Dunn

Tue, Feb 2 202111:09 AM EST

Russia's Sputnik V vaccine was 91.6% effective in preventing the spread of Covid-19, according to a peer-reviewed phase 3 clinical trial published in The Lancet international medical journal, according to a report by Reuters.

"The development of the Sputnik V vaccine has been criticized for unseemly haste, corner-cutting, and an absence of transparency," Professor Ian Jones of the University of Reading and Professor Polly Roy, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine told The Lancet.

"But the outcome reported here is clear and the scientific principle of vaccination is demonstrated," said the scientists, who were not involved in the study, according to Reuters. "Another vaccine can now join the fight to reduce the incidence of Covid-19."

Terri Cullen

Tue, Feb 2 202110:44 AM EST

UPS CEO Carol Tome stands with workers

Source: UPS

UPS reported better-than-expected revenue and profits over the busy holiday season, reflecting a boom in online shopping amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Shares of the company rose roughly 4% following its earnings report.

Revenue for the Atlanta-based logistics and delivery company rose 21% to $24.9 billion during the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31. Its domestic package division saw a 17.4% increase in year-over-year revenue as its network filled to the brink with deliveries from online retailers.

"Looking at the fourth quarter, our results were strong and considerably better than we expected," CEO Carol Tome said on the company's earnings call following the report. "This is the highest quarterly operating profit in the company's history, with record profit produced in each segment."

Noah Higgins-Dunn

Tue, Feb 2 202110:23 AM EST

Flor Rodriguez (L), 72, of Nevada, receives a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination from Southern Nevada Health District nurse Daliah Rubio at Jerome Mack Middle School on January 29, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Ethan Miller | Getty Images

Pfizer plans to deliver 200 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to the U.S. by May, earlier than its initial forecast of July, according to slides published by the company.

The company, also said it can potentially deliver 2 billion doses globally by the end of this year now that health-care providers can extract an additional sixth dose of the vaccine from the vials.

Pfizer, like other Covid vaccine makers, has been struggling to meet the demand for shots that hopefully will help bring an end to the pandemic. It recently enlisted the help of French drugmakerSanofito help produce 100 million doses of its vaccine.

In the slides published, Pfizer also said patients will "likely need to boost regularly to maintain immune response and to counter emerging variant strains."

Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

Tue, Feb 2 202110:01 AM EST

Concerns that coronavirus mutations could render available vaccines less effective were justified after the mutation "of most concern" occurred spontaneously in the U.K. variant, Reuters reports, citing a professor of outbreak medicine who is part of a panel that advises the British government.

The U.K. variant's mutation, known as E484K, has also been seen in the South African and Brazilian variants, according to Reuters. Studies have found that vaccines and antibody therapy are less effective against the South African variant.

Initially, early studies showed that vaccines worked just as well against the U.K. variant, called B.1.1.7, prior to the E484K mutation, the wire service reported.

"The mutation of most concern, which we call E484K, has also occurred spontaneously in the new Kent strain in parts of the country too," Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, told BBC radio.

Terri Cullen

Tue, Feb 2 20219:44 AM EST

BP reported its first full-year loss in a decade while Exxon Mobilposted its fourth-straight quarter of losses as business restrictions imposed for the ongoing pandemic drove oil and gas prices lower.

BP's fourth-quarter profit of $115million missed analyst expectations of $285.5 million and the U.K.-based oil and gas company warned the pandemic would continue to impact its performance, CNBC's Sam Meredith reports.

Exxon's fourth-quarter loss was $20.1 billion on revenue of $46.54 billion. The company earned 3 cents a share, excluding items, which was ahead of the 1 cent profit expected by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv, but revenue fell short of the Street consensus for $48.76 billion, CNBC's Pippa Stevens reported.

Melodie Warner

Tue, Feb 2 20218:26 AM EST

A Sun Tran employee offers free masks to passengers to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at the downtown bus station in Tucson, Arizona, U.S., June 20, 2020.

Cheney Orr | Reuters

The Biden administration's mask mandate for transportation took effect just before midnight Tuesday, requiring travelers on planes, trains, ferries and other modes of transportation to wear a face covering.

U.S. airlines have required travelers to wear masks on board since last spring, but workers have urged federal mask requirements to give more weight to the rule. The Trump administration recommended masks but stopped short of mandating them. Airlines have banned more than 2,000 people for refusing to wear masks on board.

"We recently got good news when President Biden signed an executive order mandating face masks across interstate travel, including airports and aircraft," Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told employees on Monday. "This adds a layer of protection for our people who have been integral in enforcing our mask policy. To date, we've banned approximately 950 people for failing to comply with the mask requirement."

The Transportation Security Administration, one of the agencies that will enforce the rule, says travelers who fail to comply could face civil penalties.

Leslie Josephs

Tue, Feb 2 20218:20 AM EST

View original post here:

Covid updates: U.S. cases and hospitalizations drop; Mexico close to approving Russian vaccine - CNBC

Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says President Biden told him from the outset: "We're going to make some mistakes along the way. We're going to stumble a bit. And when that happens, we're not going to blame anybody. We're just going to fix it." "Boy, was that refreshing," Fauci says. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says President Biden told him from the outset: "We're going to make some mistakes along the way. We're going to stumble a bit. And when that happens, we're not going to blame anybody. We're just going to fix it." "Boy, was that refreshing," Fauci says.

Less than three weeks into the new Biden administration, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who has headed up the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, is encouraged by the new president's approach to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It was very clear what President Biden wanted ... and that is that science was going to rule," Fauci says. "That we were going to base whatever we do, our recommendations or guidelines ... on sound scientific evidence and sound scientific data."

But there was something else that Biden promised, which Fauci found equally reassuring: "He said, 'We're going to make some mistakes along the way. We're going to stumble a bit. And when that happens, we're not going to blame anybody. We're just going to fix it.' "

"Boy, was that refreshing," Fauci says.

Fauci has worked with seven presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden. Much of his career has been devoted to researching viruses and the immune system. During the AIDS epidemic, he made major contributions to the understanding of how HIV affects the immune system and was instrumental in developing drugs that could prolong the lives of people with HIV.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci became something of a medical celebrity as a member of the former administration's coronavirus task force who publicly disagreed with President Donald Trump about COVID-19 treatment, the value of masks and about the timeline for reopening. In return, Trump called Fauci an "idiot" and tweeted about firing him.

"What I think happened is that the [Trump] White House, in general the president was looking for people who were saying things that were compatible with what his feeling was about, where he wanted to go," Fauci says.

Looking ahead, Fauci says the pandemic is far from over especially as the virus mutates and new strains emerge. He says controlling the spread of the virus will help tamp down mutations. The key is to vaccinate "as many people as quickly and as efficiently as you possibly can" and "to double down on the public health measures of uniform wearing of masks, physical distancing, avoiding congregate settings particularly indoors."

Fauci notes that any vaccination efforts should address the needs of the larger global population.

"You've got to be able to get with the help of the developed world the entire world vaccinated," he says. "As we allow this infection to exist to any degree in any part of the world, it will always be a threat. So we've got to approach this the way we approach smallpox, the way we approach polio, and the way we approach measles and other devastating global outbreaks."

On the major new mutations in the coronavirus and how that affects our strategy to fight it

I think people need to understand something that's very important: RNA viruses SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus will mutate, and the more the virus replicates, the more opportunity you give it to mutate. So when you have so much infection in the community, as we have had in the United States over the last few months, where you literally have hundreds of thousands of new infections per day we were up to between 300,000 to 400,000 [cases] a day. We're down now between 100,000 to 200,000 per day. But we still have 3,000 to 4,000 deaths per day. That means the virus has almost an open playing field to replicate, [which] means you give it an opportunity to mutate.

So even though this is a challenge, we should not be set back by this. We can meet the challenge and you meet the challenge by first getting a handle on the degree of mutations by doing good genomic surveillance, No. 1, but No. 2, by doing whatever you can to prevent the replication of the virus by vaccinating as many people as quickly and as efficiently as you possibly can.

And also to double down on the public health measures of uniform wearing of masks, physical distancing, avoiding congregate settings, particularly indoors.

One of the things that we do know is that the vaccines that we have, although they are less effective in preventing disease ... when you look at serious disease with hospitalizations and deaths, the vaccines still have a pretty important, positive effect even on the mutants.

But we don't want to get confident about that. We've got to be able to match future vaccines and upgrade them to be able to be directed specifically at these troublesome mutants that have evolved.

On the misleading idea that a good way to conquer COVID-19 might be to simply let more people get infected and gain immunity that way

[Trump] wanted to focus on things other than the pandemic. So anyone who would come in, like [coronavirus adviser] Dr. [Scott] Atlas, and say, "Just let people get infected, you'll get herd immunity and everything will be fine" was a welcome strategy or a welcome philosophy.

But as it turns out and we know right now very clearly that that was an incorrect strategy, if you actually pursued a strategy of "don't try and intervene. Don't wear a mask. Don't worry about congregate settings, just let the virus take its course and try and protect the vulnerable." ... We cannot effectively protect the vulnerable [that way], because they were such an important part of our population.

So if you look at the number of people right now who have died, it's close to 450,000 people. And if you look at the seroprevalence in the country how many people already will have gotten infected there are certain areas where it's high, 20-plus%. But as an average for the country, it's probably somewhere less than 20%, which means that if you wanted to get the 70 or 85% of the people that need to be infected to give you herd immunity, a lot more people will have died. We've already had 430,000 [to] 450,000 people who have died, and we aren't even anywhere close to herd immunity.

On the origin of the FDA's "emergency use authorization," which has been used to speed COVID-19 vaccines to market

To get a drug out as quickly as you possibly can, based on the fact that the benefit looks like it was better than the risk and you didn't have to fully show efficacy yet, originated way back during the years of HIV. Compassionate use of a drug even before you get an emergency use authorization originated way back in the days of HIV, because we didn't have compassionate use to any great extent until we got into the situation with HIV in the early and mid 1980s. So there's a very good connection between some of the things that we're doing now with interventions for COVID-19 that actually originated way back when we were doing HIV in its very early years.

On two things he learned from the AIDS epidemic that he's applying to the COVID-19 pandemic now

One of them is the importance of getting the community involved and dealing with the community and their special needs. ... We have a disparity here that is striking and needs to be addressed that if you look at the incidence of infection and the incidence of serious disease, including hospitalization and deaths, brown and Black people suffer disproportionately more than whites. ...

So I think that shines a bright light on what we probably should have done all along and certainly must do in the future, is to address those social determinants of health that actually lead to the great disparity of suffering in COVID-19 among brown and Black people. We had the same sort of thing with the disparities of infection in certain demographic groups with HIV. So from an epidemiological standpoint, there were similarities there.

We also learned the importance of fundamental basic science in getting solutions. ... Back in the early days, getting infected with HIV was a virtual death sentence for the overwhelming majority. ... It was the fundamental basic science of targeted drug development that allowed us to develop combinations of drugs first single drugs and then a couple at a time, and then triple and more combinations of drugs that ultimately completely transformed the lives of people living with HIV, to the point where you went from a virtual death sentence to being able to lead essentially a normal life, as well as not infecting anybody else. ...

We know now that something we've called "treatment as prevention" [works] which means if you treat someone who's living with HIV and suppressed the level of virus to below detectable, you make it essentially impossible for that person to infect someone else. So we got there through basic science.

On being vilified by AIDS activists early on in the AIDS crisis, who believed the government should expand access to experimental medicines, and how that compares to being vilified during the COVID-19 pandemic by people who are anti-science and anti-mask

That really is a stark contrast. The [AIDS] activists were justified in their concerns that the government (even though they weren't doing it deliberately) were not actually giving them a seat at the table to be able to have their own input into things that would ultimately affect their lives. So, even though they were very theatrical, they were very iconoclastic, they seemed like they were threatening, ... never for a single moment did I ever feel myself threatened by the AIDS activist.

In fact, one particular situation, I think, was very telling. At a time when there was a lot of pushback against the government and not listening to the valid concerns of the activists, I was invited to go down and I went with just one of my staff at the time to go down essentially alone to the gay and lesbian community center in the middle of Greenwich Village to meet with what must have been anywhere from 50 to 100 activists in this meeting room. Just me and one of my staff. And they were angry with the federal government because they felt the federal government was not listening to them, and they were right I think they had a really good point.

Not for a second, did I feel physically threatened to go down there, not even close. I mean, that's not the nature of what the protest was. And I think one of the things about it was that not only were they not threatening at all in a violent way, but ultimately they were [also] on the right side of history.

On his early research into the AIDS epidemic, visiting gay bathhouses to gain a better understanding of the then-mysterious outbreak that was killing gay men

This was the very, very early years of the outbreak. In fact, it may even have been before we even discovered that HIV was the cause. And we were seeing these large numbers of mostly gay men who were formerly otherwise well, who were being devastated by this terrible, mysterious disease. And it was so concentrated in the gay community that I really wanted to get a feel for what was going on there that would lead to this explosion of a sexually transmitted disease. So I did. I went to the Castro District [of San Francisco]. I went down to Greenwich Village and I went into the bathhouses to essentially see what was going on.

And the epidemiologist in me went, "Oh, my goodness, this is a perfect setup for an explosion of a sexually transmitted disease!" And the same thing going to the gay bars and seeing what was going on. And it gave me a great insight into the explosiveness of the outbreak of a sexually transmitted disease. So I think it was important, because it gave me a really on-the-ground feel for what was actually dynamically going on.

On whether COVID-19 will be with us forever like influenza

I don't think we need to make that assumption. That certainly is a possibility that you would have enough virus floating around and changing from year to year, that you would have to treat it in some respects, the way we treat seasonal influenza, where you have to upgrade the vaccine almost every year.

There is a way, if done properly, to avoid that, and that is, for example, if we successfully vaccinate 70 to 85% of the people in the United States and dramatically diminish the level of infection if we were living in a vacuum in only the United States, then I don't think we'd have to worry about seasonal turnover and having to match. But we live in a global community and unless we get the rest of the world adequately vaccinated and unless we don't have the opportunity of this virus to mutate in a place that doesn't have access to vaccines, we will always be threatened.

Fresh Air's interview with Dr. Fauci was recorded as part of a WHYY Zoom event at which Fauci accepted WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award.

Sam Briger and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Deborah Franklin adapted it for the Web.

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Dr. Fauci On Vaccinations And Biden's 'Refreshing' Approach To COVID-19 - NPR

DURHAM, N.C., Feb. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- EmitBio Inc., today announced new evidence from laboratory testing that demonstrates its proprietary light technology can inactivate multiple coronaviruses, beyond the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, to include the highly lethal Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). These findings indicate a likelihood the company's technology will also be effective against SARS-CoV-2 variants (mutations).

"Over the last 20 years we have seen three life-threatening coronavirus outbreaks, SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, and now SARS-CoV-2 the virus that causes COVID-19," stated Neal Hunter, Executive Chairman of EmitBio. "Having this countermeasure at-the-ready will not only help current COVID-19 patients but will also provide protection against future outbreaks. We are moving aggressively to make sure that everyone around the world has access to this technology."

The World Health Organization reports that MERS-CoV has a 35 40% fatality rate in those testing positive, with common signs and symptoms at hospital admission that include fever, chills, muscle pain, headache, non-productive cough and shortness of breath.Most cases have been linked to residents of the Arabian Peninsula, but cases have been reported outside of this region due to travelers returning home from Saudi Arabia.

In a controlled laboratory environment, precise wavelengths of light achieved >99.9% reduction in MERS-CoV viral load at doses of energy that have previously been proven safe to human tissue. These data extend the company's ability to inactivate different coronaviruses (including SARS-CoV-2 and MERS), providing a reasonable likelihood that visible light therapy will kill coronaviruses that may exist in animal populations, but do not yet exist in the global human population.

"What we learned from these findings is that our visible light is effective at inactivating viral particles before infecting the cell, much like antibodies inactivate viruses and prevent them from entering cells," stated Dr. Adam Cockrell, Director of Virology Research, EmitBio. "The inactivation appears to hold true against two coronaviruses (SARS-CoV-2 and MERS), which are far more genetically unique than the subtle mutations arising around the world in variants of SARS-CoV-2. It's not just the recent globally circulating variants that are of concern to the coronavirus research community, but also the imminent threat of coronaviruses that have not yet emerged into the human population."

EmitBio has developed a novel, hand-held treatment device* that directs energy into the upper respiratory tract with 100% of dose available at the site of need, thereby avoiding the possible side effects of systemic treatments. This device has been designed as an at-home treatment for mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in adults testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. The company recently reported results from a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial with the investigational treatment device, which showed a 99.9% reduction in viral load in adults with COVID-19. These clinical study results confirmed the expectations derived from in-vitro experiments that showed the antiviral effects of safe visible light on SARS-CoV-2.

"On a scale of genetic variation from A to Z, if you consider SARS-CoV-2 as A, and MERS-CoV as Z, and we can kill them both, then we can most likely kill everything in between," concluded Hunter.

AboutEmitBioInc.

EmitBio Inc. is a life science company using the precise delivery of light to stimulate, heal and protect the body. EmitBio is comprised of a superior team of internationally recognized light science specialists merged with immunology and virology life science experts, prepared to react quickly to the pandemic and rapidly scale manufacturing for lifesaving medical breakthroughs. For more information, visithttp://www.emitbio.com/.

EmitBio Inc. is headquartered in Durham, NC and is an operating subsidiary of KNOW Bio LLC.

* The EmitBio device is investigational and is not yet available for sale pending FDA action.

Scientific Collaboration:

The research team at EmitBio welcomes inquiries and offers of scientific collaboration from the global research community. Please direct communication to:

collaboration@emitbio.com

Media Contact:

John Wallace

jwallace@decacommunications.com

(619) 200-7856

Investor Contact:

John Oakley, Chief Financial Officer

joakley@knowbiollc.com

(919) 939-7715

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/emitbio-demonstrates-new-treatment-is-effective-against-multiple-types-of-coronavirus-301222119.html

SOURCE EmitBio Inc.

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EmitBio Demonstrates New Treatment Is Effective Against Multiple Types Of Coronavirus - The Mountaineer

Disinfecting your hands with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer has been crucial in preventing the spread of the new coronavirus, which causes COVID-19.

Since the virus has been shown to survive from hours to days on surfaces, a huge deal has also been made about disinfecting your home and business.

But many people enter and exit vehicles throughout the day and dont adequately disinfect commonly touched surfaces where germs can be hiding out. If youre a driver for a rideshare or taxi company, its even more important to keep your vehicle clean to stop the virus from spreading.

Disinfecting a vehicle can be more difficult than cleaning a home because of the many types of surfaces and all of the crevices and openings. Vehicle surfaces are also not made to withstand a constant onslaught of harsh cleaning products and can wear down if cleaned too often.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the most effective products to kill the coronavirus are soap and water, and alcohol solutions that contain at least 70 percent isopropyl alcohol. These products are also safe for the interior of vehicles.

Products containing bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and ammonia are effective at killing coronaviruses, but can damage upholstery and leather, and may discolor fabrics. They may also cause skin and eye irritation, and burns. Cleaning with bleach could create indoor air pollutants, according to new research.

Natural products like vinegar, tea tree oil, and vodka havent been shown to be effective against the novel coronavirus, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Take care not to use aggressive cleaners on infotainment screens and other touch screens. You should use screen wipes or a soft cloth dampened with soap and water, and wipe dry. You can also place a wipeable cover on electronics to make cleaning and disinfecting easier and safer.

Isopropyl alcohol should contain at least 70 percent alcohol. Alcohol disrupts viral membranes and can kill coronaviruses on contact.

Soap and water alone are sufficient to disrupt this outer layer that the virus needs to cause infection. This requires friction, however, so youll need to really scrub the surface youre trying to disinfect.

When preparing to disinfect a vehicle interior, youll need to gather a few supplies in addition to the cleaning solution. These include:

While cleaning, keep the doors and windows open as some cleaning products can irritate the eyes or throat. Follow these steps to thoroughly sanitize your car:

Leather is a natural material and is vulnerable to dryness. If leather loses its natural oils, it may become less flexible and start to crack.

You should avoid bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and any other abrasive cleaner for leather seats.

When youre cleaning, use a microfiber cloth to keep from scratching the leather, and dont scrub too hard. Soap and water are best to clean and disinfect leather since alcohol can damage the leather over time by stripping its moisture. Try to avoid excess foam and water.

Its a good idea to apply a leather conditioner afterward to help preserve the leathers moisture, strength, durability, and appearance.

There are quite a few high-touch surfaces in the interior of a car. Here is a checklist to ensure that you dont miss anything while cleaning:

If someone in your household has COVID-19 or another infection, like the flu, then the need to disinfect and clean high-contact surfaces in your home and vehicles is especially important.

If this is the case, it may be a better idea to just have the car professionally cleaned and detailed.

Many professional detailing centers have updated their processes to disinfect the inside of your vehicle using a product registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to kill the coronavirus and other viruses and bacteria without damaging your car.

Just like washing your hands and cleaning the surfaces in your home or workplace, cleaning your car is an important way to stay safe and prevent the spread of viruses like the new coronavirus.

Soap and water and alcohol solutions like disinfectant wipes or sprays that contain at least 70-percent isopropyl alcohol are effective in killing the coronavirus, according to the CDC. Avoid bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and ammonia-based products in your car.

At a minimum, disinfect all high-touch surfaces like door handles, steering wheels, commonly used buttons and levers, seat belts, and armrests.

Soap is the safest way to clean fabrics and leather. Take extra care to avoid harsh cleaning products on any touch screens in the vehicle. If possible, use voice commands to help avoid touching these screens altogether.

Its also a great idea for you and your passengers to wash their hands before entering a vehicle. Having clean hands can keep your car clean for a longer amount of time.

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Disinfecting a Car to Protect Against Germs, Coronavirus - Healthline

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, seen last year. Lawmakers repealed his executive order declaring a coronavirus emergency. He issued a new one. Morry Gash/AP hide caption

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, seen last year. Lawmakers repealed his executive order declaring a coronavirus emergency. He issued a new one.

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin approved a joint resolution Thursday overriding Gov. Tony Evers' most recent COVID-19 state of emergency, abolishing a state-wide mask mandate. In response, Evers declared a new state of emergency. Effective immediately, Wisconsinites must again wear masks in public places.

The legislature approved Joint Resolution 3 Thursday in a 52-42 vote in the Assembly, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. Democrats were joined by seven Republicans, but it wasn't enough. The resolution terminated Evers' Executive Order #104, calling the emergency declaration "unlawful."

Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, told lawmakers to stand up against the governor. "I don't know when legislators became comfortable with delegating their authority to the executive branch, creating an office where he can do whatever he wants," Steineke said. "That's not how this was set up."

Steineke argued the pushback wasn't about masks, which were mandated in July by Evers' second public health emergency declaration. That said, Republicans also shot down an amendment introduced by Democratic lawmakers Thursday that would have implemented a statewide mask mandate, WPR reported.

Shortly afterward, Evers countered with Executive Order #105 and Emergency Order #1, complete with another mask mandate. In a statement released by the governor's office Thursday, Evers said his efforts to contain the coronavirus have been met with lawsuits and obstruction.

"Wearing a mask is the most basic thing we can do to keep each other safe," Evers said. "If the Legislature keeps playing politics and we don't keep wearing masks, we're going to see more preventable deaths, and it's going to take even longer to get our state and our economy back on track."

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One Emergency After Another: Wisconsin Governor And Legislators Battle Over COVID-19 - NPR

Situated along the eastern banks of the St. Croix River just 18 miles from downtown St. Paul, the community of Hudson, Wisconsin, serves as a primary gateway to the Badger State for Minnesotans from the Twin Cities metro area. As such, in 2020 Hudson emerged as a magnet for would-be revelers seeking to avoid Minnesota's restrictions on bars and restaurants in response to the COVID-19 pandemic rules that fell away as soon as they would cross the Interstate 94 bridge into Wisconsin.

The stream of diners and barhoppers left local public health officials worried that Hudson, the largest city in and seat of St. Croix County, would see a subsequent surge in COVID-19 cases. A year into the pandemic, St. Croix County's COVID-19 per capita case and death rates the number of cases and deaths confirmed for every 100,000 residents are among the lowest in Wisconsin and compare favorably to other parts of the Twin Cities region.

A year after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in a patient in Wisconsin, more than 545,000 people in the state have tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 5,900 have died from the infection.

Put another way, about 1 out of every 10 Wisconsinites have received a COVID-19 diagnosis since February 2020, and among those ranks, about 1 in every 100 has died.

COVID-19's impact on Wisconsin's diverse communities has not been uniform. In line with patterns seen elsewhere around the United States, the hardest hit nation in the world, the risk of developing serious symptoms that require hospitalization or lead to death varies by age, race and ethnicity. As the pandemic enters its second year, these differences and other factors are driving a widening divergence in the impact of the disease on different parts of the state.

Health officials announced Wisconsin's first confirmed case of COVID-19 on Feb. 5, 2020. A Dane County resident received the diagnosis soon after arriving from a trip to China, where the coronavirus pandemic originated. More than a month passed before another case was confirmed in Pierce County, located immediately south of St. Croix County, and followed soon after by a rapid rise in new cases and sweeping restrictions on public life meant to slow COVID-19's spread.

In Dane County home to the state capital of Madison and Wisconsin's second largest by population with 546,695 residents in 2019 health officials have tallied more than 38,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases since February 2020. The county's case total is behind only Milwaukee and Waukesha counties, the state's first and third largest by population.

When adjusted for population, Dane County's rate of confirmed cases compares more favorably to most other Wisconsin counties, however. As of mid-January 2021, the county home to nearly one-tenth of the state's residents recorded a cumulative rate of about 6,980.9 confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents, one of the lowest rates among Wisconsin counties on a per capita basis.

Dane County's COVID-19 rates did not always compare so favorably to elsewhere around the state. From the pandemic's outset until early fall 2020, Dane County's rate consistently ranked among the highest in Wisconsin. But through the fall, the state's case numbers ballooned as the coronavirus spread through stretches of Wisconsin that had previously escaped the pandemic's worst. By the start of 2021, the county's rate was the third-lowest in Wisconsin, and it's since hovered around that position.

One of the only counties with a lower rate of confirmed cases is St. Croix County. While the county has reported more confirmed total cases than two-thirds of Wisconsin counties as of Feb. 3 on a per capita basis it ranks second lowest in the state.

Both St. Croix and Dane counties also rank at the low end in Wisconsin for confirmed COVID-19 deaths when adjusted for population, with the fifth and sixth lowest per capita rates, respectively, at the beginning of February 2021.

For comparison, Wisconsin's overall COVID-19 case rate is nearly one-third higher than the two counties', and the median rate among counties 8,931 per 100,000 is about 25% higher. The state's COVID-19 death rate is 120% higher.

Dane County anchors a cluster of counties in southern Wisconsin with generally lower COVID-19 rates, including Richland, Green, Iowa and Sauk. Meanwhile, two rural counties with case rates near or lower those in Dane and St. Croix Bayfield and Vernon have recorded much higher death rates, exceeding even the state's overall death rate.

What factors might be driving the comparatively lower case and death rates in Dane and St. Croix counties, located hundreds of miles from each other? What stories do these factors tell about COVID-19's impacts?

As with many aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing factors aren't cut and dried. Public health experts in Wisconsin are cautious about pinning a given community's experience with COVID-19 on any particular factor.

Any potential explanations for a given place's COVID-19 rates whether good or bad depends on whether those statistics accurately reflect reality. After all, a low number of official COVID-19 cases could obscure the true toll of the coronavirus in communities with poor access to or embrace of testing.

The possibility of such a scenario is one reason that epidemiologists like Patrick Remington, a professor emeritus of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, urge caution when comparing local COVID-19 rates. The amount of testing is just one source of potential inaccuracies in official figures, he said.

"There are hundreds of sources of bias that would potentially lead to differences in the number of cases and the number of deaths" in a community, Remington said. That's why it's important to contextualize local COVID-19 statistics as much as possible, he explained.

For instance, looking at case rates in conjunction with the percentage of tests that come back positive the test-positivity rate can help shed light on whether case rates reflect a reasonable estimate of the share of a community that has been infected. A low test-positivity rate, for instance below 5%, suggests that testing is catching most infections in a community, whereas higher rates indicate a higher number of infections aren't being detected and therefore aren't reflected in official public health reporting.

According to COVID-19 data released by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, after experiencing a lull in early summer, most counties saw test-positivity rates climb through the fall of 2020 to levels suggesting a significant number of infections were likely going undetected. While this pattern holds true in Dane and St. Croix counties, both have experienced lower peaks and shorter periods of consistently high positivity rates than most other counties in Wisconsin.

Public health officials in Dane County pointed to relatively easy access to testing as one of many potential reasons that it COVID-19 case rates have remained lower than in most other parts of the state. Since the spring of 2020, the Alliant Energy Center in Madison has been repurposed from a convention space to a public testing site that can collect thousands of specimens every week. That's in addition to more than a dozen other public testing sites located throughout the county, including on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, as well as through healthcare providers.

"We've had robust testing since the beginning," said Janel Heinrich, director of Public Health Madison & Dane County. "Robust testing allows us to identify folks who are symptomatic and asymptomatic and who have a positive diagnosis early on, get in touch with their [contacts], and then we can provide isolation and quarantine support."

Members of the Wisconsin National Guard collect specimens at a community-based coronavirus testing site at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison on Dec. 1, 2020.

While the widespread local availability of testing supports Dane County's COVID-19 mitigation efforts, it also suggests that the county's relatively low official case rates are likely not too far removed from reality.

Assessing the ease of testing for residents of St. Croix County is not as simple. One major factor is many residents in the border county travel to Minnesota for work, shopping and healthcare. Still, test-positivity rates in St. Croix County have consistently been among the lowest in Wisconsin throughout the pandemic, which could translate to a lower number of undetected infections there as well.

In short, evidence gleaned from testing suggests that the comparatively lower COVID-19 case rates in Dane and St. Croix counties are not simply a data mirage and do arguably reflect the reality of the pandemic.

Even when considering that COVID-19 case and death reporting is imperfect, potential data lapses are unlikely to explain the lighter case loads in Dane and St. Croix counties compared to most other Wisconsin counties.

Epidemiologists and public health officials in each acknowledge they have in part benefited from local circumstances both in terms of broad characteristics and the unique experiences they've encountered over the first year of the pandemic.

Janel Heinrich, Dane County's public health director, pointed to the state's first case as a counterintuitively fortuitous event for the local response.

"[That] supported our ability to organize very quickly and [make] early connections with the CDC," Heinrich said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lent valuable technical assistance that Heinrich credited with helping Dane County build infrastructure to respond to the virus one centered on testing, contact tracing and isolation and quarantine support.

In St. Croix County, public health officials also credited early experience with COVID-19 as beneficial to building an effective local response to the disease. In their case, this early experience was informed by the spring surge in cases in the Twin Cities metro area.

"If you were following Minnesota at all early on [in the pandemic], they were exceeding our case rates from the state of Wisconsin pretty quickly," said Kelli Engen, health officer for St. Croix County.

With the Twin Cities region seeing hundreds of new cases per day in the late spring and early summer of 2020, Engen said St. Croix County's close ties meant it too experienced an early rise in cases as the outbreak expanded across the border.

"We watched as [Minnesota's] nursing homes and other facilities really did become impacted by COVID," Engen said.

Witnessing the disease's early toll on vulnerable populations just across the St. Croix River spurred the St. Croix County Health Department to prioritize mitigation efforts aimed at local nursing homes, including assigning one of its handful of public health nurses to provide daily technical assistance to these living facilities and serve as a direct link to assistance.

While those resources have not shut the coronavirus out of long-term care facilities in the county which by the end of January 2021 counted 47 public health investigations at long-term care facilities over the course of the pandemic Engen credited her staff's work with keeping the local toll from becoming even worse.

Long-term care facilities, including skilled nursing homes and assisted living communities, are home to many of Wisconsin's residents who are most at-risk to COVID-19. Age is a primary risk factor for serious outcomes up to and including death, and the fact that the coronavirus readily transmissible via respiratory droplets indoors can spread quickly where people congregate or live in group settings.

Indeed, even as a lower percentage of Dane County residents have received COVID-19 diagnoses than in most parts of Wisconsin, nursing homes and assisted living communities have proven to be difficult settings for efforts to control the virus.

"We have seen, unfortunately, high numbers [of cases] in long-term care facility settings," said Kat Grande, a public health supervisor who leads a team charged with analyzing local COVID-19 data for Public Health Madison & Dane County.

Characteristics of Dane County's overall population may be a factor keeping COVID-19's impact particularly in terms of deaths less severe outside of group living settings than in some other parts of Wisconsin.

For starters, Dane County is home to fewer residents 65 and older as a proportion of its population than most counties in the state, as well as Wisconsin as a whole. The same is true for St. Croix County. Nearly 90% of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 have occurred in this older age group.

However, another county with a similarly small population of residents 65 and older Menominee County has experienced one of the highest COVID-19 death rates in Wisconsin, along with far and away the highest rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

The state's smallest county by population, Menominee County, is unique in that it overlaps with the reservation held by the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. The county's health outcome rankings have shown a persistent struggle with multiple health-related challenges. The local experience with COVID-19 mirrors other disparities, and on a per capita basis, Wisconsinites who are Native Americans have died from the disease at higher rates than people from any other racial or ethnic background.

For epidemiologists like UW-Madison's Ajay Sethi, the divergent patterns with St. Croix and Dane counties as one example and Menominee County as another point to factors beyond age as driving local COVID-19 impacts.

"It's not just being of that age," Sethi said. "If I were 65 or 70, because of my lifestyle I feel very confident that I can avoid getting COVID. I can work at home I can protect myself. When you're talking about places where that's less possible and that overlaps with age, and it overlaps with underlying health conditions, then you're talking about a lot of factors operating that are going to drive that death rate up."

The underlying health of communities is indeed one factor local public health officials suspect could be helping drive COVID-19 outcomes in their communities.

Members of the Wisconsin National Guard assist with community-based coronavirus testing in the St. Croix County community of Baldwin in May 2020.

"St. Croix County continuously on an annual basis is one of the healthiest counties in the state of Wisconsin," said Kelli Engen, the St. Croix County health officer.

Engen pointed to the 2020 Wisconsin county health ranking published by the UW-Madison Population Health Institute showing St. Croix County ranked first among the state's 72 counties for health outcomes in 2020. Dane County, also perennially among the healthiest in the state, ranked 12th in 2020.

"The county health rankings is just one dataset to look at," Engen said. "[But] I think that it absolutely does matter."

Janel Heinrich, the public health director in Dane County, also pointed to the county's health outcomes as likely playing a role in mitigating COVID-19's local impact.

"We have overall good health outcomes in Dane County, which gives us a bit of an advantage," she said.

Epidemiologists continue to study the impacts of different public health interventions on COVID-19 transmission, but there is a strong consensus among public health experts that interventions including physical distancing, proper mask use and quarantining after exposure (and isolating after developing symptoms or testing positive) effectively dampen transmission.

The Republican majority in both chambers of the Wisconsin Legislature, which has regularly been aligned with a conservative majority on the state Supreme Court on pandemic-related lawsuits, have often expressed opposition to statewide public health orders declared by the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. And while state Republican leaders have argued that local communities are best positioned to mitigate COVID-19, they have also questioned local health orders that close schools, businesses or places of worship.

Public health officials in Dane County have been undeterred by these politics, and have been among the most vigorous in Wisconsin in terms of setting local restrictions aimed at curbing community transmission of the coronavirus.

Janel Heinrich, the Dane County public health director, said her agency has sought to target its various orders over the course of 2020 and 2021 at the types of places where data showed community transmission was occurring.

"We have such a connection to data, and we use that to support policy response interventions here that are scientifically driven," Heinrich said.

Beyond health orders, another factor that can affect local transmission is the willingness of local residents to take up protective behaviors like mask wearing and physical distancing on their own. While solid evidence on the prevalence of these behaviors is scant, local officials in Olmstead County, Minn., speculated that the local workforce and culture there dominated by the massive Mayo Clinic healthcare campus in Rochester have had some impact on that area's relative success in keeping the disease at bay.

Home to the UW-Madison campus and multiple large hospitals, it's possible that Dane County may benefit from a similar dynamic, Heinrich acknowledged.

"We have a wealth of health care institutions," she said. "And the university, I think, also has a bit of an influence as well in our adherence to science and our understanding [and] commitment in that shared cultural space."

Despite some high-profile disagreements between UW-Madison and Dane County Executive Joe Parisi over the return of students to campus in the fall of 2000, Heinrich said the local health department has "a very strong relationship" with the university.

"We do not have policy authority over the university, but there is a desire and intent to be as aligned in policy practice on the institution as we are across the community," Heinrich said.

Meanwhile, in St. Croix County, Kelli Engen said the local health department has not enacted the types of pandemic orders issued in the state's second largest metro area.

However, Engen said the county's ties to the Twin Cities have created a unique situation where differences in pandemic restrictions between Wisconsin and Minnesota are likely playing a role in local transmission. Helping the situation, in her view, is the fact that so many county residents work, shop and seek health care in Minnesota, where she said enforcement of health orders like the state's mask mandate is more stringent. On the other hand, Engen said bars and restaurants in St. Croix County have at times become popular dining and drinking destinations for Minnesotans seeking to skirt their state's restrictions.

Engen said she viewed St. Croix County's proximity to the Twin Cities as a net positive in terms of COVID-19, pointing out the vast difference between her county's case and death rates and those seen in several suburban counties around Milwaukee.

"We definitely resemble people more influenced by what's going on in Minnesota," she said.

That interstate cultural relationship may become all the more important as the Wisconsin Legislature seeks to overturn any statewide public health orders left standing.

With legislative actions against Wisconsin's mask mandates, those localities with more robust public health restrictions, like Dane County, would be left to defend and enforce their own policies, while the fortunes of border areas like St. Croix County would continue to be tied to the policies of the neighboring state.

A year into the public health crisis, local efforts to keep COVID-19 at bay are occurring amid a race to vaccinate Americans as more virulent variants emerge and pandemic fatigue intensifies.

"In Dane County, like the state and much of the nation, folks are tired and they're fatigued by this pandemic," said Heinrich. "That is a challenge. We've become normalized as a community to higher rates of illness that's a concern we've had from the beginning, [and] I think it's going to be a bigger concern moving forward."

Originally posted here:

A Year Into The Pandemic, What's Driving Varied Coronavirus Rates Across Wisconsin? - WisContext

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Ohios weekly coronavirus alert map, originally designed to educate the public on county-level concerns for spread based on a variety of seven criteria, has evolved into a single test for nearly every Ohio county - the number of new cases per capita in the last two weeks.

That explains why the same counties have been flagged as being under Level 3 red alert (with one exception) for the last seven weeks going back to before Christmas. The one exception is Hamilton County (Cincinnati), which for two weeks was at the higher concern level of purple.

Thursdays update mirrored the others - 84 red alert counties, with the same four being assigned a step lower for concern at orange alert. Those are Gallia, Hocking, Monroe and Vinton in Southeast Ohio.

Why has this occurred?

The simple answer is that new cases over the last two weeks, excluding incarcerated individuals, have in every county remained above 100 per 100,000 - a level considered by the Centers for Disease Control as high incidence.

This level is exceeded for all 88 counties.

Why are four orange and 84 red?

Once a county reaches Level 3 red by at some point being flagged for concern in at least four of the seven areas - ranging from new cases to things like doctor and ER visits - it isnt dropped down to the lower levels of orange or yellow unless its case rate also drops below 100 per 100,000, the Ohio Department of Health confirmed.

This doesnt mean, however, that current conditions in all the red counties are worse than in the four orange counties. In fact, this week as an example, red Cuyahoga County was flagged for meeting concern criteria in two of the seven areas tracked. But orange counties Hocking and Vinton each met three areas of concern.

And in the key indicator of new cases per 100,000 orange counties, several red counties had lower rates than the four orange counties. For the orange counties, Monroe had the 29th highest rate among Ohios 88 counties (468.7 per 100,000), Gallia 61st (361.2), Hocking 69th (329) and Vinton 82nd (275.1).

As for red alert Cuyahoga, it was the middle statewide at 42nd with 415 cases per 100,000.

The lowest rates are for Harrison County (232.7), Shelby (226.4), Holmes (209.3) and Noble (173.3) - all labeled as red alert counties. The highest rates are for Brown (812.8), Muskingum (665.8) and Pickaway (653.5).

Elsewhere in Greater Cleveland: Geauga County (551 cases per 100,000), Portage (514), Lorain (500.3), Lake (469.7), Medina (409.5), Summit (396.5),

Heres a closer look at the advisory system Gov. Mike DeWine introduced in early July.

* 1. New cases - Alert triggered when there are 50 new cases per cases 100,000 residents over the last two weeks.

* 2. Increase in new cases - Alert triggered by an increase in cases for five straight days at any point over the last three weeks. This is based on the date of onset of symptoms, not when the cases are reported.

* 3. Non-congregate living cases - Alert triggered when at least 50% of the new cases in one of the last three weeks have occurred in outside congregate living spaces such as nursing homes and prisons.

* 4. Emergency rooms - Alert triggered when there is an increase in visits for COVID-like symptoms or a diagnosis for five straight days at any point in the last three weeks.

* 5. Doctor visits - Alert triggered when there is an increase in out-patient visits resulting in confirmed cases or suspected diagnosis for COVID-19 for five straight days at any point in the last three weeks.

* 6. Hospitalizations - Alert triggered when there is an increase in new COVID-19 patients for five straight days at any point over the last three weeks. This is based on the county or residence, not the location of the hospital.

* 7. Intensive Care Unit occupancy - Alert triggered when ICU occupancy in a region exceeds 80% of total ICU beds and at least 20% of the beds are being used for coronavirus patients for at least three days in the last week.

Rich Exner, data analysis editor for cleveland.com, writes about numbers on a variety of topics. Follow on Twitter @RichExner. See other data-related stories at cleveland.com/datacentral.

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Why same 84 Ohio counties are on coronavirus red alert again this week, though orange counties arent at bott - cleveland.com