Month: December 2020

What happened March 4 before the dawn and into the night haunts her. The sirens seemed to blare endlessly outside the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington. "That was the night (we had) like five ambulances in the parking lot," she said. It was the night she sent patients to the hospital whom she expected would be treated and eventually released. They never came back. It was the date she figured out "the whole cascade of symptoms" of a virus the nursing home learned had invaded just four days earlier. It was also the day she had to make some gut-wrenching phone calls. One at 3 a.m. she can't shake from her mind. She remembers the conversation with the woman on the other end of the line. "I realized this was early in the morning, and this is very difficult to say that I am re...

In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, disinfecting everything from doorknobs to groceries was seen as an essential step in combatting the spread of COVID. However, more recently, as experts have gained more insight into how the virus spreads, some are claiming that all that extra cleaning may not be worth it after all. Read on to find out which steps in your cleaning routine you may be able to skip, and if you're feeling under the weather, check out The Earliest Signs You Have COVID, According to Johns Hopkins. In a new interview with NPR, Emanuel Goldman, PhD, a microbiologist at Rutgers University, reveals that frequently disinfecting surfaces to stop the spread of COVID may not be as beneficial as you think. Goldman explains that, on surfaces, the infectious material that mi...

Some patients at one Los Angeles hospital are now being treated in the gift shop and chapel as COVID-19 cases surge and capacity is limited.  COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles County continue to break records and many intensive-care units have reached 0% capacity in the past several weeks.  Public health experts attribute the rise mainly to people traveling and visiting friends and family during the holidays.  Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. A Los Angeles hospital is so overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases that it's now forced to treat some patients in the gift shop and chapel, CNN reported.  Dr. Elaine Batchlor, CEO of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital said if cases continue to rise, they may have to result to wartime techniques designed to r...

SALT LAKE CITY — It's refreshing to see Utah's COVID-19 epidemiological curve drop in the recent weeks after months of case increases; however, there are signs that recent case counts don't show a complete picture of COVID-19 in the state. In a conventional sense, the spread of COVID-19 can be determined by simply looking at new cases discovered through testing. But what happens when testing for the coronavirus isn't exactly consistent? That's where other statistics help piece together how COVID-19 is currently impacting the state. Confirmed cases down, positivity rate slowly rising The Utah Department of Health reported 972 new cases of COVID-19 from tests taken on Friday and 802 on Saturday. Those figures were the lowest single-day increases reported since early October. In fact, it sn...

Los Angeles Country recorded 44 new coronavirus deaths Monday, bringing the total number of fatalities to 9,555, according to the county Health Department. LA County Director of Public Health, Dr. Barbara Ferrer noted that the county is on its way to a stark milestone. "[We] could be approaching a total number of 10,000 deaths shortly, which will be the saddest number since the start of the pandemic," she said at a news conference. Roughly 13,661 new cases were reported Monday and the county hospitalization rate is now at 6,914, the highest since the pandemic began, according to Ferrer. "Last week we lost someone due to COVID-19 every 10-15 minutes," she said. In the meantime, the county has administered 66,628 doses of the coronavirus vaccine at acute care hospitals and 1,478 doses at sk...

Correction from the JIC: Today’s case count cumulative total overstated positive COVID-19 cases by one. A person who was added to the count last week was found to be a resident of another county and has now been removed. Today’s case count remains at 64, and the cumulative total is now 1,647. The Joint Information Center regrets the error. ### Press release from the Humboldt County Joint Information Center: Two Humboldt County residents have died after testing positive for COVID-19, and 64 new cases have been confirmed since Saturday’s report. A total of 1,648 residents of the county have tested positive for the virus. One of the individuals who died was in their 80s and the other in their 90s. Both were residents of Granada Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in Eureka. A...