Month: January 2021

(Getty Images Photo) PHOENIX — The COVID-19 variant that spreads at a faster rate has been detected in Arizona, the Arizona Department of Health Services said in a press release Friday night. AZDHS, the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, Pinal County Public Health Services and Arizona State University report the variant (B.1.1.7) has been confirmed in three test samples from the state. While the variant spreads faster, according to the release, studies suggest the vaccines authorized to fight C...

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Seattle When a freezer where the supply was stored failed, the hospitals sent out word over social media so it wouldn’t go to waste Associated Press Fri 29 Jan 2021 20.48 EST Seattle hospitals rushed out Covid-19 vaccines to hundreds of people in the middle of the night after a freezer they were being stored in failed.It’s not clear what exactly caused the freezer failure Thursday night, but the Northwest and Montlake campuses of the UW Medical Center and the Swedish Medical Center received more than 1,300 vaccine doses that needed to be used before they expired at 5.30am Friday, the Seattle Times reported.Word of the unexpected doses spread on social media, and a line of hopeful vaccine recipients snaked out the clinic door and through a parking lot at UW Medical Center-Northwest.Peopl...

Coronavirus restrictions in Austin and Travis County might be eased this weekend as the number of hospital patients with the virus continues to decline, according to the area's top health official. Dr. Mark Escott, interim Austin-Travis County health authority, in his weekly public briefing on the pandemic Friday, said the proportion of hospitalizations for the coronavirus might for the seventh day Saturday stay at or below 15%.  That means businesses would no longer have to operate at 50% capacity and could expand back to 75% under state law. Doctors' offices could also go back to offering elective procedures, he said. Gov. Greg Abbott in an executive order last year said that if more than 15% of total hospitalizations in a particular area for seven consecutive dayswere made up of corona...

We're making this important information available without a subscription as a public service. But we depend on reader support to do this work. Please consider supporting independent journalism in Alaska, at just $1.99 for the first month of your subscription. Friday’s case count continues a trend of declining infection numbers after a peak in November and early December that caused officials to worry about hospital capacity. Twice this week, the daily case count fell into the double digits for the first time since September. In response to the declining counts, acting Anchorage Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson announced this week that the city will soon relax its COVID-19 restrictions under a new emergency order that will allow more people in ...

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