Category Archives: Covid-19

Sheree Gardner fills a syringe with vaccine. Rider University free COVID-19 booster clinic for students, faculty and staff, in collaboration with Capital Health, at the University in Lawrenceville, N.J. February, 15, 2022. Credit: Ed Murray

Ohio State is now offering the Pfizer bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccine through Student Health Services, the university announced in an universitywide email Sept. 18.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, the bivalent booster includes a combination of the original strain of COVID-19 and a component of the Omicron variant, which provides broader protection against newer strains.

Dr. Ashley Lipps, infectious disease physician at the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State and graduate medical student, said it is important to get a booster shot because your immunity can wane from previous vaccination or a previous infection. The FDA authorized the booster in August, according to an Aug. 31 press release.

FDA commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in the release the FDA encourages anyone eligible to receive a booster shot.

As we head into fall and begin to spend more time indoors, we strongly encourage anyone who is eligible to consider receiving a booster dose with a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variants, Califf said.

Student Health Services will hold clinics for students to get the booster Wednesday mornings from 8:30-11:30 a.m. and Friday afternoons from 1-4 p.m. Starting the week of Oct. 3, the clinic will run Tuesday mornings from 8:30-11:30 a.m. and Wednesdays from 1-4 p.m.The Pfizer booster will be administered, according to the SHS website.

According to the website, vaccines are given on a walk-in basis or by appointment, which can be scheduled in the MyChart app or by phone at 614-292-4321. Upon arrival, students will need to register at the ground floor registration desk. If available, students should also bring their insurance card.

University spokesperson Dave Issacs said in an email students, faculty and staff can receive a booster for free. SHS might bill a patients insurance if they have it on file, but they will not be asked to pay out of pocket.

Those who have already been vaccinated should bring their vaccination cards to get the booster, according to the Wexner Medical Center.

Anyone can also get their booster at Wexner Medical Centers Same-Day Care locations throughout Franklin County: McCampbell Hall, 1581 Dodd Drive, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday 160 W. Wilson Bridge Rd., Suite 100, in Worthington, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday

543 Taylor Ave., 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday

1800 Zollinger Rd., in Upper Arlington, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday

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COVID-19 bivalent boosters now available for Buckeyes on and off-campus - OSU - The Lantern

Social and emotional learning (SEL) looms large in schooling. Just last week, an analysis of how the nations largest 100 school systems are spending their federal COVID-19 relief dollars showed that 88 percent are spending funds on social-emotional support, making it the second most popular option after facilities upgrades.

At the same time, SEL continues to be hugely controversial. Earlier this week, a National Public Radio story focused on the heated ideological debates that have suffused SEL. Earlier this year, the Washington Post proclaimed SEL a new target on the right and Salon deemed it the rights new CRT panic. Last spring, SEL played a major role in Floridas recent decision to reject dozens of textbooks, and its garnered lots of airtime in angry school board meetings.

If SEL means that teachers are making a concerted effort to promote tolerance, cultivate ... [+] relationship skills, and encourage better decision-making, then its a good and healthy thing.

What should parents and educators make of all this? Should schools be spending heavily in SEL? Are there valid concerns, or is this all just politics?

Lets try to sort some of this out. And a good place to start is by getting a little clearer on just what SEL actually is or isnt. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), perhaps the nations go-to authority on SEL, says that SEL is about mastering the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. In short, SEL covers a lot of ground. Thats one reason for some of the attendant conflict.

After all, theres much about SEL that appeals. Its stuff that good educators have always done, and its been a healthy course correction for schools that got test-obsessed in recent decades while giving short shrift to character development and civic formation. As CASEL board chair Tim Shriver and I noted a few years ago, Since the dawn of the republic, teachers and schools have been tasked with teaching content and modeling character. SEL can help with all of that.

In fact, while SEL can seem like a new idea, its more of a variation on a historical themethat educators cannot focus only on academic mastery but must also develop the whole child. This is an impulse that can be traced way back, to John Dewey, Rousseaus Emile, and even Platos Republic. Given all this, SELs popularity is no great surpriseespecially after the dislocations of the pandemic.

But as with so many well-meaning education reforms, SEL has a Jekyll-and-Hyde aspect. SEL can be reasonably described both as a sensible, innocuous attempt to tackle a real challenge and, too often, an excuse for a bubbled industry of education funders, advocates, professors, and trainers to promote faddish nonsense and ideological agendas. This is why SEL serves as a commonsensical encouragement to make kids feel safe and to promote good habits, and also as a justification for doing away with traditional grading, eliminating advanced math, subjecting students and staff to privilege walks, or teaching first-graders about gender identity.

School safety illustrates the fine line that SEL seeks to walk. Its a truism that kids who are relaxed, comfortable in their own skin, and able to get along with peers are less likely to disrupt classrooms or bully other kids. So, its easy to argue that promoting SEL can make schools safer. However, SEL proponents also tend to favor restorative justice as the preferred approach to accomplishing that goal. The problem is that the evidence for restorative justice is unconvincing, at best. Rather than suspending or expelling dangerous students, schools sit them down to share their feelings. While this may sometimes be life-affirming in the right hands, theres good reason to believe this stuff makes schools less safe when done rashly or clumsily (as is too often the case).

This kind of tension crops in plenty of places besides school safety. AEIs Max Eden has pointed out, for instance, that, over the past couple years, CASEL has redefined core concepts to match woke dogma. CASELs notion of self-management now incorporates resistance and transformative/justice-oriented citizenship. In its Roadmap to ReOpening, CASEL stipulates that self-awareness now entails challenging implicit biases and self-management requires practicing anti-racism. As Eden notes, none of this is morally or politically neutral. And, when SEL is interpreted in accord with such doctrines, it should surprise no one that parents and conservative activists would push back.

Look, if SEL means that teachers are making a concerted effort to promote tolerance, cultivate relationship skills, and encourage better decision-making, then its a good and healthy thing. But if SEL winds up enabling ideologues to promote their agendas, emphasize microaggressions at the expense of math, and excuse student misbehavior, concerns are justified.

In the end, as with so many school reforms, a sensible intuition risks being undermined by hubris and agenda-driven advocates. Educators and communities are right to make use of SEL, so long as they do so with eyes wide open.

Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus

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After COVID-19, Schools Are Spending Big On Social And Emotional Learning. Is That A Problem? - Forbes

Over this past decade, young people have consistently had to process and answer the demands of an increasingly stressful world. From the COVID-19 pandemic to climate change to political and economic instability, its been a time when the mental health of children and teens has been particularly affected by complex times.

There have been several studies that have zeroed in on the state of mental health for young people today, both in the United States and around the world.

Now, a recent report is shedding light on mental health trends for children and adolescents, giving clarity to the fact that a lot of these problems (while exacerbated by the global pandemic) have been present before the emergence of the coronavirus outbreak and likely will continue to be a major issue as it subsides.

Experts say research like this is important in providing a pathway for educators, policymakers, and parents and guardians alike to provide better systems of support and interventions for young people as they encounter the realities impacting their mental health today.

In September, the Clarify Health Institute released a new report called The Kids Are Not Alright: Pediatric Mental Health Care Utilization from 2016 2021.

It offers a big picture look of where todays kids are with their mental health and gives some clues as to what more needs to be done to address their needs.

The institute is part of Clarify Health, a cloud analytics and value-based payments platform company, and put this research into action following a 2020 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that pointed to the negative impact the pandemic had on U.S. childrens overall mental health.

Clarify Healths data comes from a national sample of claims data that comes from more than 20 million American children and teens from 1 to 19 years old, between the years 2016 and 2021.

Among the findings, the use of mental health services jumped during these years. For example, emergency room visits for these young people increased by 20%, while inpatient admissions climbed by 61%.

When looking at demographic differences among different populations of young people, the data reveals inpatient admissions increased by 64% for girls and 68% for boys from 12 to 15 years old. It was only 7% for boys between 1 and 11.

After the emergence of the pandemic, the data showed that in the year 2021, utilization of mental health services for girls who were 12 to 15 years old were 2.5 times higher than for their male peers in the same age range.

As with other studies looking at mental health, disparities in who has access to the best care often drove negative health outcomes. For example, inpatient hospital admissions for kids with mental health conditions rose 103% among those who were commercially insured, while it increased by 40% among those covered by Medicaid.

The report also showed emergency department visits made by children with mental health conditions declined by 10% for those who were commercially insured. By comparison, it increased 20% in those covered by Medicaid.

They also found that emergency department rates in the year 2021 were nearly twice as high in the Medicaid population compared to children with commercial insurance, according to a press release.

Niall Brennan, Clarifys Chief Analytics and Privacy Officer, who headed this research, told Healthline that this data fits in well with other recent discussions that have surrounded mental health in general, as well as childrens mental health, in particular, in recent years.

Brennan said the report is an important look at the stark realities of mental health concerns surrounding the nations youth, leveraging big data analysis to paint a central issue affecting our society.

He said it was dispiriting to see the scale of the increases in the utilization of mental health services over that five-year period. Especially striking was just how pronounced the increases were among kids in their early teen years, especially young girls.

When asked to distill what this research says about where we are today with young peoples mental health, Brennan explained that we are living in a time when great demands are being placed on children, which can be confusing and disorienting for them.

I think what this shows is that its tough to be a kid right now, Brennan added. Social media, pandemic, existential dread over climate change, political dysfunction the list goes on and on.

Research like that released by Clarify Health suggests the mental health of Americas youth is on the decline. It should be a big warning for adults both for those in these young peoples lives as well as the policy leaders who are in a position to shape them at the macro level.

One of the biggest problems is that young people arent getting the mental health treatment they need early on. This lack of early intervention means that mental health continues to deteriorate until a young person ends up in the emergency room or on a psychiatric inpatient unit, said Dr. Jack Turban, Assistant Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at The University of California San Francisco and Affiliate Faculty at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies.

Turban, who was not affiliated with the recent report, told Healthline we currently have a major shortage of pediatric mental health providers.

To make matters worse, low reimbursement rates from insurance companies for mental health treatment mean that many of the providers who are available do not take insurance. Pediatric mental healthcare is not affordable without using insurance, meaning that many go without care, Turban said.

He stressed that it is all too common to hear from families of these young people that they often call every listed in-network pediatric mental health provider under their insurance plan, only to be told that none of them are taking on new patients.

Turban said this is an issue known as phantom networks, inaccurate provider lists that fail to connect people to the care they need.

The big elephant in the room of contributing factors to people not getting care was the ongoing pandemic. At its height in 2020, the pandemic resulted in mental healthcare utilization that actually went down, partly due to the fact that many people were either afraid to seek or discouraged from getting in-person care, Brennan said.

While telehealth services definitely brought a lot of providers straight to peoples living rooms during pandemic lockdowns, there still was a drop off in people using health services overall. This was especially true for those with less access to technology or who did not possess the financial means or insurance coverage to take advantage of those offerings.

A lack of access to care was a major problem prior to the pandemic and only became worse once the pandemic started and we saw rapidly increasing rates of mental health challenges among children and adolescents, Turban said. The system was already overburdened, and the pandemic pushed it even further over the edge.

In looking at data like this, is there a roadmap for figuring out how to improve a system that doesnt seem like its adequately serving the mental health needs of Americas young people?

I think it [the report] needs to serve as a call to action, Brennan explained.

He said the fact that acute mental health care utilization among children and teens has been so high in recent years, placed alongside the reality that there was this increase in outpatient visits, points to an urgent need for more availability of mental health professionals outside traditional office hours.

Brennan said we also need to witness more early detection screenings (and more mental health screenings in general, for that matter) to better address the demand and also put in place preventive measures to help those most at risk for negative mental health outcomes.

Ultimately, I think for kids who are struggling with these issues, it is far better to intervene early, to provide a healthcare ecosystem that, if possible, can negate that 11 p.m. trip to an emergency room or a hospital, Brennan added.

These realities are most likely increasing the stressors these children are already experiencing today.

Turban added that, recently, The American Academy of Pediatrics and The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry declared a national emergency in pediatric mental health.

They called on policy makers to implement evidence-based public policies to address the issue. While some progress has been made, there is still a long way to go, he said.

By better highlighting all of these concerns through research and advocacy, the adults most present in childrens lives can better help them.

Turban said its important that parents and guardians have an understanding of the mental health concerns children in the U.S. face today.

Its important they do what they can to provide support and guidance and connect these kids to needed resources.

Admittedly, it can be a daunting task knowing how best to support a child dealing with mental health issues.

There are many small things adults can do to promote child and adolescent mental health. First, they can work to normalize talking about emotions and mental health, while working to combat stigma surrounding mental illness, Turban explained. Having a caring adult who validates a young persons emotions and models open conversations about emotions and mental health challenges can go a long way.

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry has a collection of Facts for Families to help with specific challenges while working toward accessing professional help.

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Youth Mental Health Was Declining in the U.S. Long Before Covid-19 - Healthline

The State Fair of Texas will follow CDC guidelines and local mandates in an attempt to keep fairgoers safe from COVID-19 in 2022, a spokeswoman says. No fair-specific rules have been put in place for 2022 a change from 2021, when fairgoers were asked to bring masks and wear them indoors.

If anyone is experiencing COVID-related symptoms or other contagious illness-related symptoms, we ask they do the Texan thing and stay home to prevent the spread of any viral infections, a statement says.

The current CDC alert level for COVID-19 in Dallas County is green, which indicates a low level of community spread. Dallas County officials are telling residents to proceed carefully. High-risk individuals should wear masks indoors, and vaccines and boosters are still recommended.

The State Fair has 500 hand-sanitizing stations for public use and has hired a clean team that will disinfect tables and high-touch surfaces for the 24 days of the fair. Air purification systems were installed in some of the buildings in Fair Park in 2020, and those Active Pure systems remain in use.

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State Fair: do the Texan thing for COVID-19 safety in 2022 - The Dallas Morning News

India is repurposing its COVID-19 contact-tracing app and vaccination website to address other health concerns in the South Asian country.

A senior official said Sunday that the Indian government is planning to use Aarogya Setu as the countrysstandalone health app.

The app will offer residents the ability to book medical checkup appointments and verify the registrations with QR codes to avoid waiting in queues at hospitals, RS Sharma, the chief executive of the National Health Authority, the body that oversees implementation of the countrys flagship public health scheme, said at a public event.

Aarogya Setu, launched in 2020, has amassed more than 240 million downloads, he said. The app was initially launched as a temporary solution to a temporary problem.

Shortly after its launch, Aarogya Setu, which means bridge to health in Sanskrit, attracted some concerns from privacy advocates over the apps tracking of individuals. New Delhi dismissed the concerns and said at the time that the so-called flaws were implemented in the app by design. Weeks later, it open-sourced the app.

The Indian government is also repurposing its COVID-19 vaccination website, CoWIN, to serve the countrys universal immunization program.

The revamped site will allow individuals to locate and obtain mandatory vaccines covered by the national immunization program, including the polio drops, and attempt to help small-scale doctors use it as their health information management system, said Sharma, who previously oversaw the nations telecom regulator.

COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network, which is commonly called CoWIN, was introduced in January last year as the Indian governments platform to keep a unified record of COVID-19 vaccination.

Privacy supporters have disagreed with the governments latest move.

Its critical to note that any data which is collected for that purpose should only be exclusively used for that purpose, Kazim Rizvi, founding director of public policy think tank The Dialogue, told TechCrunch.

Prasanth Sugathan, legal director of digital civil rights group SFLC.in, also stated that the data collected through Aarogya Setu and CoWIN should not be used for any other purposes, as such use would be against the principle of purpose limitation.

The absence of a data protection law should not be an excuse to conduct such exercises affecting the rights of citizens. The fact that citizens agreed to provide their data for controlling the pandemic should not result in this data being used for other purposes without express and informed consent from the citizens, he said.

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India is repurposing its COVID-19 contact tracing app and vaccination website - TechCrunch

It means we have environmental sampling data that can place the spillover event precisely in the southwestern corner of the Huanan market, and genetic testing of virus samples from the first patients to give us a date: around November 18, 2019, for the introduction of Lineage B, with Lineage A following a week or so later. After that, though, the trail runs cold.

The researchers know which animals were being sold in the market in late 2019, and which ones were susceptible to coronaviruses, but they dont have the smoking gun. They dont have samples from animals that had the virus. Thats what theyd like to have, and theyd like to be able to trace those animals back to the farms from which they came and see whether people in those farms had been exposed to the virus or viruses, says Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in the UK, who was not involved in the research.

Thats unlikely to be possible. There are theories on how infected animals may have reached the market: Wuhan is in Hubei province, and to the west of the region there are caves that are home to horseshoe bats, close to farms that once housed millions of raccoon dogs and civets. The most likely course of events is something like: A bat infected with a novel coronavirus flies over a farm where animals are being reared for meat. It poops, and viral particles infect one of the animals below, sparking an unseen wave of infections at the farm. Maybe the virus crosses over to the farmworkers but fizzles out because theres not enough population density to sustain a human epidemic. Days or weeks later, in November 2019, some of the infected animals are shipped to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where theyre sold at stalls in the southwestern corner. The virus crosses over to humans at least eight times, maybe more. The majority of those infections fizzle out without spreading to anyone else, but two take hold, start to spread. Not long after that, dozens of people in the area start to come down with a mysterious viral pneumonia.

But the animal or animals that carried coronavirus are almost certainly long dead: shipped off and sold for meat, or killed in one of the mass culls that took place in early 2020 as the Chinese authorities clamped down on the live animal trade. It is very possible that we will never have that sample, that we may have missed our opportunity, says Worobey.

But there are still leads to follow: tracing the supply chains for the stalls in the southwestern corner of Huanan market and finding out which farms supplied them; poring over the paperwork from the culls to find out where the animals from that farm were buried; exhuming the animals and sequencing their DNA to look for remnants of a coronavirus that looks almost identical to SARS-CoV-2.

It will need patient work and international cooperation in a difficult environmentbut it could be the only way to stop the next pandemic. These things are not impossible, Worobey says. So lets look at all the options. Lets connect every single possible dot that we can.

Image updated on 8/4/22 at 11:17AM PST to include the Wuhan Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market.

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The Origins of Covid-19 Are More Complicated Than Once Thought - WIRED

Since early July, Virginias COVID-19 case counts have remained relatively stable, with an average of around 3,000 new infections reported every day. But over the same time period, hospitalizations have risen, with more than 800 inpatients as of Wednesday, according to data from the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association.

The discrepancy, experts say, can be chalked up to data limitations. In a recent report, researchers with the University of Virginias Biocomplexity Institute wrote that the states current case rates are similar to those seen during last falls delta wave, which threatened to overwhelm local hospital systems. Detecting those cases, however, has become much more challenging.

In some ways, we might be revisiting early stages of the pandemic where all were observing is severe COVID, said Bryan Lewis, a computational epidemiologist on the Biocomplexity Institutes research team. People who end up going to the hospital are the only ones who end up getting confirmed.

Thats largely because testing, once in extremely limited supply, has become easily accessible to most Virginians. Rather than seeking out more sensitive PCR tests from pharmacies and local health department events, most patients with symptoms are relying on at-home antigen tests, whose results typically arent reported back to the Virginia Department of Health. And as pandemic fatigue sets in for more and more people, many arent testing at all, said Dr. Akira Shishido, an infectious disease specialist for VCU Health.

Like other public health experts, he said the lack of clarity around rising case rates has made it more challenging to offer guidance as the pandemic approaches its third year. Currently, the Biocomplexity Institute estimates that there are roughly 16 coronavirus infections for every reported case in Virginia, given the rise of highly infectious subvariants and the decline in test results reported to VDH. If thats true, it would put the states current infection rate closer to levels seen during the winter omicron surge.

Unlike this past winter, though, most Virginians arent taking the same health precautions. The states COVID-19 state of emergency expired last summer along with previous requirements for indoor masking and social distancing in public spaces. And after Gov. Glenn Youngkins successful push to repeal mandatory masking policies in schools, students and parents are expecting a mixed approach to face coverings at the start of the year. With community transmission already high in 55 of the states 133 localities and cases rising in most local health districts some providers say theyre worried about the coming fall and winter.

We still have circulating COVID, and I think well still see some people being admitted with severe COVID pneumonia, said Dr. Kyle Enfield, the medical director of UVA Healths medical intensive care unit. People are making the choice to not get vaccinated and not wear masks. And I think that will be compounded by a larger spread of other respiratory viruses that seemed to have decreased back when masks and social distancing were common.

Thats not to say there isnt a bright side to the current stage of the pandemic. Enfield emphasized that if hospitals do feel strained over the colder months, it will likely be due to a combination of cases that includes flu and possibly even monkeypox, an emerging virus thats spreading in Virginia and across the country. And theres evidence that omicron subvariants, while highly transmissible, are causing less severe disease, bolstered by growing population immunity.

Even as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations rise across the state, Lewis pointed out that ICU admissions have remained relatively low, indicating that fewer people are developing severe illness from the virus. COVID-19 deaths have also sharply declined since mid-January, and theres evidence that vaccines and previous infections convey lasting protection against the worst outcomes.

At this point, so many Virginians have some degree of immunity against COVID-19 that its unlikely the state will experience the same rates of hospitalizations and deaths that occurred during last winters omicron surge, according to Lewis. Still, he said its unnerving to see hundreds of patients admitted for the virus every week.

Its pretty incredible were still generating a fair number of hospitalizations, Lewis added. Yeah, its not as horrible as the catastrophes that have happened a couple of times during this pandemic, but you just dont see that with other infectious agents, even during the worst flu seasons.

Thats why public health experts are still encouraging caution, especially in anticipation of cooler weather and more indoor gatherings. Shishido said the chance of reinfection is substantial even for those who have been vaccinated, boosted and previously infected with COVID, largely thanks to the antibody-evading capabilities of omicron subvariants.

Luckily, he said, vaccines still generate a type of protection known as cell-mediated immunity, which provides strong protection against hospitalization and death even in the case of breakthrough infections. But while severe outcomes are unlikely for immunized Virginians, Lewis cautioned theres limited information on the effect of repeated COVID-19 infections or long-lasting symptoms.

Long COVID is something we dont fully understand and is messing people up pretty badly, he said. Were finding a lot of studies out there where a fair portion of people were talking 20 or 30% of people, even young people were still reporting symptoms like shortness of breath, the loss of taste and smell, even six to nine months out.

Enfield said that unvaccinated and partially vaccinated Virginians are still driving hospital admissions at UVA, a trend borne out by national data (the Virginia Department of Health no longer reports cases and deaths by vaccination status). But he also warned that high community transmission increases the risk of spreading COVID-19 to more vulnerable populations including immunocompromised and elderly patients, who are still at risk of worse outcomes even if theyre fully vaccinated.

High infection rates also mean the virus will continue to mutate, and public health experts still worry an even more dangerous variant could emerge in the future. Thats unlikely, according to Shishido, given that the most successful viruses are typically highly infectious without killing their hosts. But like other doctors, he encouraged Virginians to avoid unnecessary risks.

The hard thing is, the public health measures we were pushing a year ago are the same things we want people to be doing now.

Dr. Kyle Enfield, medical director of UVA Healths medical intensive care unit

For Shishido, that means masking indoors and making use of COVID-19 therapies including Paxlovid, an antiviral pill for high-risk patients, and Evusheld, an experimental medication that can lower the risk of infection for immunocompromised patients. Enfield said people should continue to limit the size and number of social gatherings they attend, particularly if theyre regularly in contact with more vulnerable groups.

He also encouraged anyone with COVID-19 symptoms to seek confirmatory PCR testing if their antigen test results are negative given the lower sensitivity of most at-home tests. And like Shishido and Lewis, Enfield strongly encouraged Virginians to take advantage of upcoming COVID-19 boosters, which will be reformulated to offer better protection against omicron subvariants.

We know people can get reinfected with COVID even after a natural infection, and that immunity wanes over time and might not be as good as some of the vaccines, he said. So I would stress that vaccines are still in everyones best interest.

The hard thing is, the public health measures we were pushing a year ago are the same things we want people to be doing now, Enfield added. I know were at a point where people want to fully relax, but were really just not at a point where thats the right thing to do.

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Data limitations are making it harder to detect when COVID-19 is surging in Virginia - Virginia Mercury

The BidenHarris Administration is committed to helping people across America affected by Long COVID. In April, President Joe Biden issued a Memorandum on Addressing the Long-Term Effects of COVID-19, which called for the creation of two reports. Within 120 days, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), leading a whole-of-government response, developed two reports that together, pave an actionable path forward to address Long COVID and associated conditions.

The National Research Action Plan on Long COVID details advances in current research and charts a course for future study to better understand prevention and treatment of Long COVID. The Services and Supports for Longer-Term Impacts of COVID-19 report highlights resources for health care workers, and those effected by broader effects of COVID-19, including not only Long COVID but also effects on mental health and substance use, and loss of caregivers and loved ones.

Long COVID can hinder an individuals ability to work, attend school, participate in community life, and engage in everyday activities, said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. As our nation continues to make strides in the fight against COVID-19, these reports are critical to shine a light on Long COVIDs impact and how to match people to resources.

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to combating and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic with the full capacity of the federal government, said HHS Assistant Secretary for Health ADM Rachel Levine. "These initial reports are an important step as HHS continues to accelerate research and programmatic support to address the consequences of the pandemic and work across sectors to ensure no one is left behind as we continue to build a healthier future.

People with Long COVID have disease symptoms that persist for weeks or months after acute COVID-19 infection. It remains difficult to measure precisely, but an estimated 7.7 to 23 million Americans have developed Long COVID, and roughly one million people may be out of the workforce at any given time due to the conditionequivalent to about $50 billion in lost earnings annually.

The National Research Action Plan on Long COVID (the Research Plan), created in coordination with 14 government departments and agencies, introduces the first U.S. governmentwide national research agenda focused on advancing prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and provision of services and supports for individuals and families experiencing Long COVID.

The Research Plan stresses four guiding principles to govern federal government data analysis work: health equity, accelerating and expanding current research, orienting the research effort to improve patient care, and partner engagement. The plan demonstrates innovation in early achievements and highlights the importance of collaboration between the public and private sectors to advance prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and provision of health care, public health, and human services for individuals experiencing Long COVID.

The Services and Supports for Longer-Term Impacts of COVID-19 Report (Services Report) outlines federal services available to the American public to address longer-term effects of COVID-19, including Long COVID and related conditions, as well as other impacts on individuals and families. It provides valuable information in three key areas:

Federal departments will continue to engage with partners, including state and local governments, on the scope and accessibility of these services to meet the needs of individuals. Engagement of nongovernmental experts, organizations, and stakeholders, including individuals affected directly by the longer-term effects of COVID-19, has played an essential role in shaping the governments response to COVID-19 and Long COVID, including the development of these reports.

As we learn more about Long COVID, the best protection remains to prevent COVID-19 in the first place by following basic public health interventions, including getting vaccinated, boosted, and wearing a mask indoors in public where the COVID-19 community level is high.

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BidenHarris Administration Releases Two New Reports on Long COVID to Support Patients and Further Research - HHS.gov

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of August 3, 2022, there are currently 3,166 active COVID-19 cases statewide. There have been six deaths reported since the last report, with a total of 7,169 deaths attributed to COVID-19.

DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a 65-year old female from Hardy County, an 86-year old male from Marshall County, a 74-year old male from Jackson County, a 51-year old male from Mercer County, an 86-year old male from Kanawha County, and an 85-year old female from Braxton County.

We extend our deepest sympathies to all grieving the loss of their loved ones, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. Please schedule a COVID-19 vaccine or booster today to protect yourself and those around you.

CURRENT ACTIVE CASES PER COUNTY: Barbour (51), Berkeley (169), Boone (60), Braxton (14), Brooke (27), Cabell (158), Calhoun (8), Clay (8), Doddridge (8), Fayette (94), Gilmer (11), Grant (17), Greenbrier (70), Hampshire (32), Hancock (32), Hardy (41), Harrison (119), Jackson (36), Jefferson (80), Kanawha (288), Lewis (21), Lincoln (44), Logan (82), Marion (106), Marshall (59), Mason (51), McDowell (50), Mercer (152), Mineral (34), Mingo (47), Monongalia (128), Monroe (38), Morgan (16), Nicholas (44), Ohio (68), Pendleton (3), Pleasants (9), Pocahontas (12), Preston (26), Putnam (110), Raleigh (204), Randolph (25), Ritchie (16), Roane (38), Summers (27), Taylor (28), Tucker (10), Tyler (12), Upshur (40), Wayne (55), Webster (19), Wetzel (12), Wirt (11), Wood (194), Wyoming (52). To find the cumulative cases per county, please visit coronavirus.wv.gov and look on the Cumulative Summary tab which is sortable by county.

West Virginians ages 6 months and older are recommended to get vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19. Those 5 years and older should receive a booster shot when due. Second booster shots for those age 50 and over who are 4 months or greater from their first booster are recommended, as well as for younger individuals over 12 years old with serious and chronic health conditions that lead to being considered moderately to severely immunocompromised.

Visit the WV COVID-19 Vaccination Due Date Calculator, a free, online tool that helps individuals figure out when they may be due for a COVID-19 shot, making it easier to stay up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccination. To learn more about COVID-19 vaccines, or to find a vaccine site near you, visit vaccinate.wv.gov or call 1-833-734-0965.

To locate COVID-19 testing near you, please visit https://dhhr.wv.gov/COVID-19/pages/testing.aspx.

Read this article:

COVID-19 Daily Update 8-3-2022 - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios

Colorado recorded an uptick in deaths related to COVID-19 and overdoses in 2021, according to data newly finalized from the state health department.

The big picture: The death rate in 2021 didn't improve since hitting a record high in 2020.Health experts blame people not getting vaccinated and soaring fentanyl use for the elevated figures.

By the numbers: The three leading causes of death in 2021 were heart disease, cancer and COVID-19.

What to watch: Whether we see a surge in COVID-19 deaths this year may depend on how quickly vaccines are retooled to fight the latest variants, and how quickly people get them (if they even do so).

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COVID-19 and overdoses drove Colorado's death rate in 2021 - Axios