Month: August 2020

In news that may bolster arguments against reopening school campuses soon, the Centers for Disease Control has reported that a Georgia sleepaway camp saw 168 kids contract the virus. The YMCA Camp High Harbour required masks for counselors, but was forced to close in June after the outbreak. In the gathering of 344 campers and staff tested, 260 came back positive in the weeks after the camp closed, according to the CDC’s analysis, which was released on Friday. Of that total, children were 168 of the positives, with 51 of the 100 children ages 6 to 10 positive. The overnight camp opened June 21 and closed six days later. The CDC said 74 percent of attendees had symptoms, including fever, headache and sore throat. The CDC report said the camp had “multiple” safety measures...

While the rest of the Bay State has moved into Phase 3 of its coronavirus reopening plan, Somerville is continuing along a more cautious route. Officials announced Friday that the city will again hold off on moving into Step 1 of the state’s Phase 3 plans — which would allow indoor gatherings alongside the reopening of gyms, outdoor performance venues, movie theaters, and cultural centers.  But due to rising COVID-19 case counts across Massachusetts, Somerville confirmed that their reopening would be postponed indefinitely. “We are watching as the virus rages and businesses are shut back down in states that ignored clear warnings that they were opening too quickly. We are also watching state and local data head in the wrong direction,” Mayor Joseph Curtatone said in a statemen...

With organ donation, the death of one person can lead to the survival of many others. But when a donor dies, how do doctors save their organs for transplantation? "In order to be an organ donor, you have to be in a hospital, on a ventilator, and have some type of neurologically devastating injury," said Heather Mekesa, the Chief Operations Officer of Lifebanc, Northeast Ohio's organ procurement organization.  There are two ways that this can happen: brain death and cardiac death. Cardiac death occurs when the patient has such severe brain damage that they would never make a full recovery. This damage can be to different parts of the brain. They may have a small amount of brain functionality, but the physician determines that they will never be able to recover. The donor is only kept ...

The camp, which was identified as YMCA Camp High Harbour at Lake Burton by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, hosted orientation for 138 trainees and 120 staff members in mid-June, according to the Centers for Disease Control, before opening its doors to 363 campers and three senior staff members on June 21.

Currently, the TeleTracking system asks hospitals to report all of their available beds as one total number, not broken down by bed type as the NHSN system had. Therefore, hospitals’ total number of beds reported includes pediatric beds, neonatal intensive care unit (ICU) bassinets, psychiatric beds, labor and delivery beds, rehabilitation beds and others. As a practical matter, not all of these bed types could be used for caring for adult patients hospitalized with COVID-19, or other medical issues.