Monthly Archives: September 2021

Los Angeles County recorded eight coronavirus outbreaks last week in its K-12 schools up from three the previous week. The latest outbreaks led to 72 student infections, an increase from 40 the week before.

But in a sign that school-based COVID-19 safety measures are showing promise, fewer students and staff were exposed to the coronavirus in these outbreaks: 211 people were exposed last week, down from 238 in the prior week the same week that classes began in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the nation.

This most likely reflects improved understanding of who is exposed, and great work by schools working to mitigate exposures and unnecessary quarantine of students by using cohorting, distancing strategies and seating charts in their classrooms, L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.

Many of the outbreaks are tied to athletic activities or because COVID-19 protocols were not followed. An outbreak is defined by linked cases involving three or more people in which transmission probably occurred at schools or school activities.

Of 17 school outbreaks identified since the beginning of August, eight were tied to youth sports, and another eight to classrooms. The classroom outbreaks have resulted in the infections of 117 students and seven staff members; one person has been hospitalized, Ferrer said.

The risk factors for transmission in schools include inconsistent and incorrect mask use indoors, visibly sick people showing up to school, lack of ventilation measures and lack of physical distancing in places like hallways, cafeterias, break rooms and playgrounds, as well as classrooms, where distancing cannot often done due to lack of space. State and county guidelines encourage but do not mandate physical distancing in classrooms.

Findings from these outbreaks suggests that transmission risk is highest where there is close, unmasked contact with symptomatic people, Ferrer said.

Between Aug. 15-29, among 1.5 million students and 200,000 staff members in Los Angeles County, there were 5,207 reports of coronavirus cases among students and 729 among staff.

But many of the coronavirus cases that are being identified are occurring at schools or sites where there are only one or two cases. Of 1,871 schools and related sites reporting coronavirus cases, 720 of them reported three or more cases.

L.A. Unified has launched an ambitious coronavirus testing program, which requires the screening of every student, teacher and staff member more than half a million people once a week for the foreseeable future. The effort is so vast that the number of tests done weekly through L.A. Unifieds program is equal to more than 50% of the countys weekly test results, according to data provided by the Department of Public Health.

The largest portion of these cases are identified through routine screening, and these are really people who are, in fact, asymptomatic, Ferrer said.

Still, its important to identify these cases so that infected people are removed from the classroom until they recover and are no longer contagious, she said.

Even as many schools in L.A. County have reopened, the overall number of new coronavirus infections countywide has actually declined.

Overall, L.A. County has reported an average of 2,596 new cases per day over the last week. Thats down 25% from two weeks ago, when many schools began to reopen.

The test positivity rate a metric measuring the proportion of tests that confirm coronavirus infection has also decreased notably, from 3.5% on Aug. 17 to 2.5% as of Tuesday.

Los Angeles Countys school-aged children remain in a better position than children in other parts of the country. There are some parts of the nation where pediatric COVID-19 hospitalization rates are at the highest point in the pandemic.

But in L.A. County, COVID-19 hospitalization rates for children are nowhere near [what] they were during our winter surge, Ferrer said.

This pattern may reflect the fact that many adults are vaccinated and that most people are wearing masks, Ferrer said.

Still, the concern about the Delta variant has caused L.A. County health officials to retain a stricter quarantine standard in schools than required by California for at least a few more weeks.

L.A. County officials have ordered unvaccinated students who had close contact with an infected person for at least 15 minutes in one day while within six feet of that person to be sent home and quarantined for at least eight days.

The state, meanwhile, does not require a quarantine for the close contact if both the infected person and close contact were wearing masks during the entire time of exposure.

Ferrer said she wanted to see a couple more weeks of data before relaxing the quarantine standard, to be sure that youre not creating an unintended consequence of creating a lot of spread in schools. COVID-19 vaccines are authorized only for those age 12 and older.

L.A. County health officials, however, did recently eliminate weekly testing requirements for all youth athletes or associated staff if they are fully vaccinated or have a documented coronavirus infection within the last 90 days. Also, weekly testing is no longer required for children younger than 12 if playing outdoors.

The Department of Public Health also removed a requirement that youth athletes and staff get a coronavirus test within 72 hours of a game.

In the Wednesday briefing, Debra Duardo, the superintendent of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, said that three L.A. County school districts have adopted vaccine mandates. Two of the three districts she named, ABC Unified and the Palmdale School District, said the information was incorrect and they do not have a student vaccine mandate. The third district, Culver City Unified, has approved a mandate for students, but it has not yet gone into effect.

A county spokesperson later corrected this information.

Duardo also named 13 districts that are considering vaccines mandates, but the spokesperson said this information is not confirmed and may have changed since an Aug. 19 school district survey.

But there are school systems exploring the option, including Los Angeles Unified and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified, according to officials in those districts.

The L.A. teachers union has called for mandating vaccines for students.

Times staff writer Laura Newberry contributed to this report.

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L.A. school COVID outbreaks increase, some tied to athletics - Los Angeles Times

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When the security guard at Methodist Hospital San Antonio met the visitor at the door of the childrens emergency room on a Saturday afternoon in early August, the officers request was simple: The man needed to get a temperature screening to make sure he showed no early signs of COVID-19 before entering the hospital.

The man refused, became agitated and began angrily shouting, pulling out his camera to record the guard and hospital staff.

The scene got so tense that San Antonio police were called, but the man whose identity and reason for wanting to enter the hospital werent included in a police account of the incident stormed off in anger before the officer could arrive.

It was, relatively speaking, a small blow-up, but Texas hospital workers and health care officials say incidents like it have been rising in both number and intensity this summer as tensions boil during the delta-fueled fourth surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Our staff have been cursed at, screamed at, threatened with bodily harm and even had knives pulled on them, said Jane McCurley, chief nursing executive for Methodist Healthcare System, speaking at a press conference five days after the incident in the childrens ER. It is escalating. Its just a handful at each facility who have been extremely abusive. But there is definitely an increasing number of occurrences every day.

Nurses and hospital staffers are historically vulnerable to workplace violence due to the nature of their jobs, where they deal with people who are having bad reactions to street drugs or mental breaks and often have to give bad news to patients or family already in extreme pain or emotional distress.

Half of all Texas nurses reported verbal and physical abuse at work in 2016 - the last year Texas health officials surveyed them about it.

But the pandemic has exacerbated the stress that can escalate into threats and violence, as people are now contending with not just the virus but also job loss and other stresses, said Karen Garvey, vice president of patient safety and clinical risk management at Parkland Health & Hospital System in Dallas.

Garvey said confrontations at Parkland just this year have included people being punched in the chest, having urine thrown on them and inappropriate sexual innuendos or behaviors in front of staff members. The verbal abuse, the name-calling, racial slurs weve had broken bones, broken noses.

Visitors and patients assaulting hospital staff was an epidemic before the pandemic it was just silent to the public, she added. Health care workers have been dealing with this for years, and its become more pronounced with the COVID pandemic.

The pandemic-related rise in tensions across the U.S. is not unique to the hospital industry. Airlines are reporting an increase in aggressive passengers as flight attendants take self-defense classes. Police are reporting an increase in violent crime and road rage incidents.

A similar phenomenon emerged last year when retail and grocery workers became front-line enforcers of mask mandates and limits on gatherings and indoor activities. And it resurfaced last month when parents aggressively confronted teachers at schools over oft-changing mask rules.

But unlike airlines, which can permanently ban passengers, hospitals are more limited in how they can respond or prevent those instances.

A 2013 Texas law made it a felony to assault an emergency room nurse, but legislation that would have expanded that to include nurses in other areas of a hospital died in the Texas Senate earlier this year. A bill addressing the issue is currently being considered in Washington by the U.S. Congress.

With hospitals reporting historic nursing shortages as the pandemic drags on, the fear is that the alarming rate of escalation will be the last straw for nurses who are physically worn out after fighting a pandemic for 18 months, thin on compassion for people who need care after choosing not to be vaccinated and afraid for their own personal safety, said Houston pediatrician Dr. Giancarlos Toledanes.

With the escalation of this violence toward health care workers, were going to lose the workers that are deemed essential, Toledanes said. If the problem continues to compound, then I think its going to make it much more difficult to staff these hospitals.

The Texas Department of State Health Services doesnt track incidents of aggression against hospital staff outside of its regular surveys, the next of which will be done next year, a spokesperson said.

But as health officials across Texas watch hospital ICUs and pediatric units overflow with record numbers of mostly unvaccinated people, they say the surge in aggression toward health care workers is obvious.

Many of the problems being reported in recent months include disagreements over masking and screening protocols that people dont have to follow in other places, particularly after most mandatory protocols were banned in recent months by Gov. Greg Abbott, officials said.

Confrontations are sometimes caused by hours- or dayslong waits in emergency rooms that are so full of COVID-19 patients that there is no room for anyone else, health care workers said.

Tempers are high, said Carrie Kroll, director of advocacy for the Texas Hospital Association. To the point where some systems are putting a security guard at check-in because family members are getting so abusive over the masking and some of the other screening things they need to do.

Families are often upset when they cant visit someone due to COVID-19 rules that limit the number of people who can be bedside or even come inside the hospital, said Serena Bumpus, director of practice at the Texas Nurses Association.

When our family members are sick, we want to be there by their side, and its not that easy to be by our loved ones side anymore because of this increase in the number of COVID patients in our facilities, she said.

At the Katy campus of Texas Children's Hospital west of Houston, Toledanes said some parents get verbally abusive over rules that require them to wait for COVID-19 test results before more than one parent is allowed into a room with a sick child.

With their child in the hospital and theyre the only ones handling everything, it obviously gets stressful, he said. Its escalated a lot more, especially now that weve gotten a little bit stricter with our policies due to the surge.

The threats follow health care workers online as well, and often have to do with philosophical differences over what have become political hot buttons such as masking and vaccinations, Toledanes wrote in a recent column for the online medical magazine MedScape.

Online, healthcare workers, who advocate for masking or vaccination, are often subject to death threats, threats to family members, and verbal abuse on social media, he wrote. Veiled threats of we know who you are and we will find you follow physicians who advocate for masking in schools.

At Parkland, some of the administrations actions to protect the workers include a staff of six mental health peace officers known as the Law Enforcement Intervention for Environmental/Patient Safety staff who are specially trained to respond to high-risk incidents, Garvey said. Administrators have developed a flagging system in the patient record which identifies patients who have been identified as known risks to staff, she said.

Some hospitals have hung signs in hallways reminding families to be courteous and patient with the overworked staff.

In mid-August, the escalating reports prompted the Texas Hospital Association to take to social media with an image of an exhausted nurses face, mask pulled below her chin.

Dont forget the person behind the mask, the image reads.

McCurley said that the increasing violence this year is made worse by the contrast in attitudes workers are seeing now compared with a year ago, when the public seemed to understand that nurses and hospital staff were standing between them and the deadly pandemic.

We were seen as health care heroes and our community responded with love and support, food and gifts, drive-by parades, buses and motorcycles and airplanes, and we felt so much love and support. It gave us the courage to go in and face our own fears of the unknown in the beginning, McCurley said at the August press conference. Today, those health care workers are experiencing abusive behavior by patient families. Its unfathomable that its occurring, and it has to stop.

Disclosure: Texas Children's Hospital and the Texas Hospital Association 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 Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Verbal and physical attacks on health workers surge as emotions boil during latest COVID-19 wave - The Texas Tribune

As a new coronavirus wave accelerated by the Delta variant spreads across the United States, many Republican governors have taken sweeping action to combat what they see as an even more urgent danger posed by the pandemic: the threat to personal freedom.

In Florida, Ron DeSantis has prevented local governments and school districts from enacting mask mandates and battled in court over compliance. In Texas, Greg Abbott has followed a similar playbook, renewing an order last week to ban vaccine mandates.

And in South Dakota, Kristi Noem, who like Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott is a potential 2024 candidate for president, has made her blanket opposition to lockdowns and mandates a key selling point. Arriving by horseback and carrying the American flag, she advertised the states recent Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which drew half a million people, as a beacon of liberty.

Ms. Noem brushed aside criticism from Democrats and public health experts about the gathering, which was followed by a local Covid spike, saying on Fox News that the left was accusing us of embracing death when were just allowing people to make personal choices.

The actions of Republican governors, some of the leading stewards of the countrys response to the virus, reveal how the politics of the partys base have hardened when it comes to curbing Covid. As some Republican-led states, including Florida, confront their most serious outbreaks yet, even rising death totals are being treated as less politically damaging than imposing coronavirus mandates of almost any stripe.

Freedom is good policy and good politics, Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and ally of Mr. Abbotts who has introduced federal legislation to end mask decrees and to forbid federal vaccine passports, said in an interview.

Mr. DeSantis has become a symbolic face of the battle, as President Biden has urged Republican governors opposed to mandates to at least get out of the way. This week, Mr. DeSantiss education commissioner withheld funds from two school districts that made masks mandatory.

Most top Republicans, including every Republican governor, have been vaccinated and have encouraged others to do so. But most have also stopped short of supporting inoculation requirements and have opposed masking requirements.

In many ways, Republican leaders are simply following Republican voters.

Skepticism about masks, vaccines and the rules governing them is increasingly intertwined with the cultural issues that dominate the modern Republican Party. The fear over losing medical freedom has become part of the broader worry that cancel culture is coming for conservatives way of life.

And while opposing pandemic edicts is a limited-government stance, the forceful approach of governors is at odds with the long-held principle of local control, making it the latest Republican Party orthodoxy to be cast aside since the beginning of the Trump era, along with free trade and limited spending.

The intensifying conservative mistrust of the news media and opposition to the directives of elite institutions and experts Dr. Anthony S. Fauci is now so reviled by some that Mr. DeSantis sold merchandise saying Dont Fauci My Florida have cleaved the country into two factions guided by alternative sets of beliefs.

One outlier among Republican governors is Larry Hogan, a moderate who leads Democratic-dominated Maryland. He recently required that hospital and nursing home employees be vaccinated.

Frankly, its confusing to me as to why some of my colleagues are mandating why you cant wear masks, or mandating that businesses cant make their own decisions about vaccines, or mandating that school systems cant make decisions for themselves, Mr. Hogan said in an interview. And then theyre talking about freedom? It just doesnt make sense to me.

The pandemic, public health officials say, is now largely one of the unvaccinated, and the virus is raging particularly in conservative states with far lower inoculation rates and more relaxed attitudes toward group gatherings. Of the 10 states with the most cases per capita in recent days, nine voted Republican in last years presidential race and nine are led by Republican governors, according to The New York Times coronavirus database.

Republican leaders posture, particularly on keeping schools from requiring masks, does not appear popular across the wider electorate. In Florida, a Quinnipiac poll released last week found that 60 percent of residents supported compulsory masks in schools.

But among Republicans, that figure was inverted: 72 percent of Mr. DeSantiss party said they opposed universal masking requirements in schools. The poll showed that a plurality of Republicans in the state also opposed a mask requirement for health care workers, a measure that is popular among independents.

Many Republicans are out on an island by themselves, said Whit Ayres, a veteran G.O.P. pollster. It may be a safe political place for some primary electorates at the moment. But ultimately you have to win a general election.

Sept. 2, 2021, 12:52 p.m. ET

Governors nationwide almost uniformly reject the idea that political considerations have shaped their Covid policies. Politics have played no role, said Ian Fury, a spokesman for Ms. Noem.

The offices of Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Abbott, Ms. Noem and other Republican governors did not make them available for comment. But advisers to multiple Republican governors said the widespread distribution of vaccines had changed the governing calculus when it came to masks and shutdowns. Both Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott have focused on opening antibody treatment sites for those who contract the virus.

As Florida became the first state to reach a new peak in deaths since vaccines became freely available, Mr. DeSantis has remained steadfast in keeping schools from requiring masks without a parental opt-out.

We say unequivocally no to lockdowns, no to school closures, no to restrictions and no to mandates, Mr. DeSantis said at a conservative conference in July.

These choices by governors carry a range of risks.

One Republican strategist privately lamented, only half-jokingly, that the party was going to kill off part of its own base with its vaccine hesitancy. Former President Donald J. Trump recently told donors at a New York Republican Party fund-raiser that he hoped his supporters would get vaccinated because we need our people, according to two attendees.

Even Mr. Trump is not immune from blowback, however. He received a rare rebuke from his base at an August rally in Alabama after he urged people to get vaccinated. Take the vaccines, he said. I did it. Its good.

Some in the crowd began to jeer; Mr. Trump appeared to soften his stance.

Thats OK, thats all right, he said. You got your freedoms, but I happened to take the vaccine.

Mr. Trumps political operation has clearly assessed where his base stands. FREEDOM PASSPORTS > VACCINE PASSPORTS, read one recent fund-raising text, selling $45 American flag shirts that declare, This is my freedom passport.

UnderstandVaccine and Mask Mandates in the U.S.

In Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, saw his partys pushback firsthand on a 16-stop tour to promote vaccination.

Mr. Hutchinson signed a law this spring banning mask mandates, but with cases rising again this month, he said he regretted it. In Siloam Springs, he was pelted with questions from frustrated constituents, including one woman who told him that she had been praying that God himself will step in so that Christians are not forced by their employers and a mandate to get the vaccine.

Yet even if God does not, I will not bow, she said to raucous cheers.

Then there is Ms. Noem, who last month accused other Republican governors of pretending they didnt shut down their states, that they didnt close their regions, that they didnt mandate masks. The remarks were widely interpreted to be aimed at potential 2024 rivals.

Mr. Cruz, who ran for president in 2016 and could again in 2024, predicted a reckoning for politicians, including Republicans, who had embraced pandemic edicts. Theres a range of politicians in terms of how long they shut things down, he said. In my view, the shorter the better. But that will certainly be a legitimate topic for discussion and debate.

Mr. Ayres, the Republican pollster, said that governors trying to control the virus policies of schools, employers and local officials were breaking with years of tradition on free enterprise and local control.

Liberty has never meant the freedom to threaten the health of others, Mr. Ayres said. That is a perversion of the definition of liberty and freedom.

Some governors who imposed mandates and lockdowns last year have even been targeted by state legislators who want to trim their powers.

In Ohio, the G.O.P.-controlled Legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Mike DeWine, a fellow Republican, of legislation that reined in his administrations emergency powers to manage the pandemic. After requiring masks to be worn last year in schools, he has not renewed the order this fall.

Mr. DeWine, who drew national attention for his fast and forceful response to Covid in early 2020, now faces a 2022 primary challenge from Jim Renacci, a former congressman. Mr. Renacci said the governors handling of the virus was a big part of his bid.

He said Mr. DeWine had now gone quiet on mandates because he realizes what he did the first time did not make Republicans happy.

A spokesman for Mr. DeWine said the need for mandates had changed since vaccines became freely available.

The most severe Covid outbreaks have been most concentrated in the South, and the Republican governors of Alabama and Mississippi have largely embraced the no-mandate ethos even as cases have climbed to new heights.

Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi renewed an emergency declaration in mid-August but set clear boundaries: There will be no lockdowns and there will be no statewide mandates, he said.

The same week, two field hospitals were installed in the parking lots of Mississippi medical centers.

Jennifer Medina contributed reporting.

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GOP Governors Fight Virus Mandates as the Party's Covid-19 Politics Harden - The New York Times

Health officials in Illinois have linked nearly 200 COVID-19 cases to two events a church camp for teens and a men's conference and the number of people who may have been exposed may be much greater and from multiple states.

An organization held a five-day church camp for teens and a two-day men's conference in June that have since been linked to a spike in cases following research by the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Monday. The CDC did not name the organization.

As of mid-August, 180 COVID-19 cases had been linked to those who attended one of those events or to someone who had close contact with an attendee, the CDC said.

A majority of those cases, 122, were attributed to attendees, with 87 people contracting COVID-19 during the camp and 35 during the conference. Most of those cases, 104, were unvaccinated people.

Only five people were hospitalized, none of whom had been vaccinated, and no deaths were reported. But officials say that more than 1,000 people across at least four states could have been exposed through the two events, the CDC said.

The report points to these cases as an example of the dangers of hosting large events with little to no safeguards in place. Attendees at both events were not required to be vaccinated, and organizers did not require participants to get tested before allowing entry, the report says.

Nearly 300 teens between the ages of 14 and 18 attended the camp after traveling together in large groups on buses. They spent the week living and dining together and mingling with other campers, according to the CDC.

It's unclear whether masks were required, but the report says that a list of items to pack for the week did not include masks. Similarly, another 500 people attended the men's conference, where masks were also not required, the CDC says.

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Church Camp, Conference In Illinois Linked To Almost 200 COVID Cases : Coronavirus Updates - NPR

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WJW) The Ohio Department of Health held a press conference Thursday on the spread of COVID-19 in the state.

On Wednesday, 7,102 new coronavirus cases were reported by ODH.

That included 1,021 cases that were delayed because of a lab reporting issue between Aug. 15 to Aug. 25 that has since been resolved.

As of Wednesday afternoon, 2,566 people in Ohio are hospitalized with COVID-19.

The Ohio Hospital Association says 1 in 8 hospitalized patients are being treated for coronavirus.

In intensive care that number is 1 in 5.

Ohio hospitals have 1,114 ICU beds available currently.

That includes both adult and pediatric hospitals.

ODH Director Bruce Vanderhoff, MD, MBA spoke at the press conference with Brian Taylor, MD, Inpatient Medical Director at Central Ohio Primary Care Hospitalists and Hector Wong, ICU Physician, and Head of Critical Care at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital.

Hospital staff is exhausted, Dr. Wong shared.

We can no longer say kids arent getting sick from COVID, Dr. Taylor said, comparing this stage of the coronavirus pandemic to 2020.

Were starting to see kids in the hospital, including the ICU, because of COVID, he shared.

Everyone in the ICU is seriously ill, and some of them are going to die, said Dr. Vanderhoff.

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1 in 8 people in Ohios hospitals treated for COVID-19 - WJW FOX 8 News Cleveland

Inmates do a deep cleaning in a cell pod to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the San Diego County Jail in April 2020. A new study says crowded jails may have contributed to millions of COVID-19 cases across the United States. Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images hide caption

Inmates do a deep cleaning in a cell pod to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the San Diego County Jail in April 2020. A new study says crowded jails may have contributed to millions of COVID-19 cases across the United States.

If the U.S. had done more to reduce its incarceration rate, it could have prevented millions of COVID-19 cases.

That's the conclusion of researchers who conducted what they say is the first study to link mass incarceration rates to pandemic vulnerability. Many of those preventable cases, they add, occurred in communities of color.

The U.S. jail and prison system acts as an epidemic engine, according to the study from researchers at Northwestern University and the World Bank.

That engine is driven by a massive number of people who, despite some counties' efforts to trim jail populations, have been cycling between cramped detention facilities and their home communities.

After analyzing data from 1,605 counties, the researchers linked an 80% reduction in the U.S. jail population to a 2% drop in the growth rate of daily COVID-19 cases.

Such a substantial drop in the incarceration level could have been achieved by instituting alternatives to jail for nonviolent offenses, according to the researchers Dr. Eric Reinhart of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Daniel Chen of the Toulouse School of Economics and the World Bank.

That 2% reduction is a conservative estimate, but it still represents a dramatic potential shift, Reinhart told NPR.

When compounded daily, Reinhart said in a Northwestern news release about the study, "even just a 2% reduction in daily case growth rates in the U.S. from the beginning of the pandemic until now would translate to the prevention of millions of cases."

Tens of thousands of deaths could also have been prevented, he said.

A red tag on a cell door signifies an active COVID-19 case for its inhabitants. The first medically vulnerable inmates in Minnesota were vaccinated at Faribault Prison in January. Aaron Lavinsky/Star Tribune/Getty Images hide caption

A red tag on a cell door signifies an active COVID-19 case for its inhabitants. The first medically vulnerable inmates in Minnesota were vaccinated at Faribault Prison in January.

The U.S. has long had the world's highest incarceration rate among industrialized countries reporting such statistics. During the pandemic, it has also reported more COVID-19 cases and deaths than any other country despite having less than 5% of the global population.

The new research, published Thursday in the journal JAMA Network Open, suggests those circumstances are directly related.

On average, U.S jails currently host some 650,000 detainees every day, according to Reinhart. The dynamic also includes more than 220,000 full-time jail staff, who commute back and forth from their homes each day, the study said.

Many of those detainees are held in custody for only short periods of time as they either await trial or serve short sentences. The U.S. jail population has a 55% weekly turnover rate, according to the study.

"This jail churn effectively produces epidemic machines that seed outbreaks both in and beyond jails, undermining public safety for the entire country," Reinhart said.

Citing crowded conditions and poor health care in jails and prisons, a summary of the study from Northwestern said the U.S. facilities "have effectively become infectious disease incubators," putting the country at a higher epidemiological risk.

The link between prisons and public health is one of the reasons Black and Hispanic communities have been disproportionately harmed by the coronavirus, the study's authors said.

The spread of the coronavirus between jails and communities "likely accounts for a substantial proportion of the racial disparities we have seen in COVID-19 cases across the U.S.," Reinhart said.

"Ultimately, this also harms all U.S. residents regardless of race, class or partisan affiliations, as disregarding the health of marginalized people inevitably causes harm albeit unevenly to everyone else in a society, too," he added.

The benefits of cutting the jail population would be magnified, Reinhart and Chen wrote, in counties with high proportions of Black residents as well as in urban areas with above-average population density.

The study's findings are based on data from jails that reduced their populations at rates from 20% to 50% during the pandemic in response to health risks from COVID-19.

The researchers sought to predict what the results would look like if the U.S. dropped its jail population by 80%, which would bring the country closer to the average rates seen in peer nations.

The study relied on data gathered at the county level from January 2020 to November, representing 72% of the U.S. population.

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Crowded U.S. Jails Drove Millions Of COVID-19 Cases, A New Study Says - NPR

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San Angelo listed as city in Texas where COVID-19 is growing the fastest - KXAN.com

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 218.4 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.54 million. More than 5.34 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

Australian doctors have warned that hospitals are not ready to cope with reopening plans even with higher vaccination rates as some states prepare to move from suppression to living with COVID-19.

Moderna has asked the US Food and Drug Administration to allow the use of a third booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine.

New Zealand has reported a fall in new COVID-19 infections, with authorities saying it was a sign that nationwide restrictions were working.

India has reported its biggest single-day rise in new COVID-19 cases for two months, with the state of Kerala worst hit.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll has shown that most vaccinated Americans want a booster COVID-19 vaccine dose.

It comes as the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said yesterday there was no urgent need for vaccine booster doses.

Spain has reached a goal set by the government of vaccinating 70% of its population against COVID-19.

Turkey's new confirmed daily COVID-19 cases have hit a three-week high of 23,946.

Pfizer and Merck have announced new trials of their experimental oral antiviral drugs for COVID-19.

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

Image: Our World in Data

As many as 1-in-7 children might have symptoms linked to COVID-19 months after testing positive for the disease, according to an English study of long COVID in adolescents.

The study, led by University College London and Public Health England, found that 11- to 17-year-olds who tested positive for the virus were twice as likely to report three or more symptoms 15 weeks later than those who had tested negative.

The researchers said that while the findings suggested as many as 32,000 teenagers might have had multiple symptoms linked to COVID-19 after 15 weeks, the prevalence of long COVID in the age group was lower than some had feared last year.

"Overall, it's better than people would've guessed back in December," Professor Terence Stephenson of the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health told reporters.

The research is yet to be peer-reviewed.

The COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship is a coalition of 85 global leaders, hosted by the World Economic Forum. Its mission: Join hands in support of social entrepreneurs everywhere as vital first responders to the pandemic and as pioneers of a green, inclusive economic reality.

Its COVID Social Enterprise Action Agenda, outlines 25 concrete recommendations for key stakeholder groups, including funders and philanthropists, investors, government institutions, support organizations, and corporations. In January of 2021, its members launched its 2021 Roadmap through which its members will roll out an ambitious set of 21 action projects in 10 areas of work. Including corporate access and policy change in support of a social economy.

For more information see the Alliance website or its impact story here.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus inaugurated the new WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence yesterday.

The Berlin-based hub will work to build partnerships and develop technology that uses data to detect and tackle disease and future outbreaks.

The world needs to be able to detect new events with pandemic potential and to monitor disease control measures on a real-time basis to create effective pandemic and epidemic risk management, said Dr Tedros. This Hub will be key to that effort, leveraging innovations in data science for public health surveillance and response, and creating systems whereby we can share and expand expertise in this area globally.

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: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 2 September - World Economic Forum

Americans will most likely pay significantly more for Covid medical care during this new wave of cases whether thats a routine coronavirus test or a lengthy hospitalization.

Earlier in the pandemic, most major health insurers voluntarily waived costs associated with a Covid treatment. Patients didnt have to pay their normal co-payments or deductibles for emergency room visits or hospital stays.

Most Covid tests were free, too.

The landscape has since changed, as the pandemic persists into its second year. Federal law still requires insurers to cover testing at no cost to the patient when there is a medical reason for seeking care, such as exposure to the disease or a display of symptoms. But more of the tests sought now dont meet the definition of medical reason and are instead for monitoring.

And insurers are now treating Covid more like any other disease, no longer fully covering the costs of care. Some businesses, like Delta Air Lines, are planning to charge unvaccinated employees higher rates for insurance, citing in part the high hospitalization costs for Covid cases.

Insurers are confronting the question about whether the costs of Covid treatment should fall on everyone, or just the individuals who have chosen not to get a vaccine, said Cynthia Cox, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation who has researched how insurers are covering Covid treatment.

The federal rules that make coronavirus testing free include exemptions for routine workplace and school testing, which has become more common as students head back to the classroom and as companies mandate regular testing for unvaccinated workers.

Because insurers are not required to cover that regular testing, some patients have already received testing bills as high as $200 for routine screenings, according to documents that patients have submitted to a New York Times project tracking the costs of Covid testing and treatment. If youve received a bill, you can submit it here.

Some of the highest bills, however, will probably involve Covid patients who need extensive hospital care now that most insurers no longer fully cover those bills. Seventy-two percent of large health plans are no longer making Covid treatment free for patients, a recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found.

This includes Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, the largest health plan in a state experiencing one of the countrys worst outbreaks. On Wednesday, Florida Blue began requiring patients to pay their normal deductibles and co-payments for Covid treatment. Toni Woods, a spokeswoman, said the plan was now focused on encouraging vaccinations.

When the Covid-19 pandemic began last year, we implemented several emergency provisions to temporarily help our members, she said in a statement. Medical diagnostic testing for Covid-19 as well as vaccinations continue to be available to members at $0 cost share.

Oscar Health, which sells coverage in Florida and 14 other states, also ended free Covid treatment this week. It cited the widespread availability of the vaccine as a key reason.

We started waiving cost sharing for Covid-19 treatment at the peak of the pandemic in 2020, when there were few options available for those who fell ill with the virus, said Jackie Khan, an Oscar spokeswoman. We believe that the Covid vaccine is our best way to beat this pandemic, and we are committed to covering it and testing at $0 for our members.

The new policies generally apply to all patients, including the vaccinated; people who get sick with a breakthrough infection; and children under 12, who are not yet eligible for the vaccine.

If you have a small kid who gets Covid at school and ends up at the I.C.U., that family is going to now be stuck with the bill even though that patient did not have the ability to get vaccinated, said Dr. Kao-Ping Chua, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan who researches Covid care costs.

The average Covid hospitalization costs approximately $40,000, researchers have found. A lengthy hospital stay one that requires time in the intensive care unit, or a transfer by air ambulance can cost many multiples more. Most insured patients wont pay that entire bill; they will face whatever share they owe through deductibles and co-payments.

Dr. Chua and his colleagues published research this summer finding that, among patients who had to pay a share of their Covid hospitalization, the average costs were $3,800.

There were some patients where it was $10,000 and others where it was $500, he said. It gives you some semblance of what things will now look like without the waivers.

Surprise bills for routine Covid testing could be smaller but more common, as schools and workplaces increasingly rely on regular screening to prevent coronavirus from spreading.

At many workplaces, unvaccinated workers must submit to monitoring at least weekly. Some employers, including the federal government, plan to fully cover the costs of those tests. But others, including some hotels and universities, will ask unvaccinated workers to bear some or all of the testing costs.

Rebecca Riley recently received a $200 bill from a laboratory with an unfamiliar name. When she called to inquire about the charge, she learned it was a fee for a Covid test. Her son, a high school student, is regularly tested at his Los Angeles-area high school.

I didnt expect to get any bills, she said. I feel stupid, but Id heard the tests were free.

Ms. Riley contacted her insurer about the charge, and it agreed to pay the full amount. But she now worries about future surprise testing bills. I really feel for the families that wont be able to pay, she said.

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Covid Medical Bills Are About to Get Bigger - The New York Times

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) More than 500 new COVID-19 cases were announced in Thursdays update from theSouth Dakota Department of Health.

There were 535 new total cases reported on Thursday. The states total case count is now at 133,372, up from Wednesday (132,837).

Active cases are now at 5,688, up from Wednesday (5,370).

The death toll from COVID-19 is now at 2,071, up from Wednesday (2,069). The new deaths were two men; one wasin the 70-79 age group and the other is in the 80-89 age group

Current hospitalizations are at 218, down from Wednesday (229). Total hospitalizations are now at 6,870, up from Wednesday (6,835).

Total recovered cases are now at 125,613, up from Wednesday (125,398). The latest seven-day PCR test positivity rate for the state is 15.2% for Aug. 25 through Aug. 31.

The state health department has removed the total persons negative column from its COVID-19 Dashboard Tables tab. DOH spokesman Daniel Bucheli told KELOLAND News the department will providea Total Persons Tested and Total Tests Reported table each month.South Dakota Department of Health to report persons tested, total tests for COVID-19 in monthly report.

The DOH currently reports total tests each day. Theres been 1,377,384 total tests reported as of Thursday, up 4,793 from Wednesday (1,372,591).

57 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.

The total number of cases of the Delta variant (B.1.617.2, AY.1-AY.3) detected in South Dakota is at 140.

There have been 172 cases of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha variant), 16 cases of B.1.429 and B.1427 variants (Epsilon variant), 3 cases of P.1. (Gamma variant) and 2 cases of the B.1.351 (Beta variant).

As of Thursday, 62.08% of the population 12-years-old and above has received at least one dose while 56.5% have completed the vaccination series.

There have been 416,523 doses of the Pfizer vaccine administered, 310,663 of the Moderna vaccine and 26,653 doses of the Janssen vaccine.

There have been 149,663 persons who have completed two doses of Moderna and 198,087 who have received two doses of Pfizer.

The number of people who completed the Pfizer vaccine went up by 465 patients; 150 people completed the Moderna vaccine series.

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COVID-19 in South Dakota: 535 total new cases; Death toll rises to 2,071; Active cases at 5,688 - KELOLAND.com