Month: January 2021

Amid widespread confusion over when and how senior citizens can get the coronavirus vaccine, two Los Angeles County supervisors are urging that people 65 and older be inoculated immediately. “Gov. Gavin Newsom has encouraged all counties to start vaccinating residents 65 and older so that we can protect our residents who are most vulnerable to this virus,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said Monday on Twitter. “L.A. County needs to follow the state’s lead without further delay.” Despite the state announcing last week that it was opening up vaccinations to older people, Los Angeles County has not received enough doses to expand an already slow vaccine rollout. The county is still limiting vaccinations to healthcare workers, first responders and residents and staff in skilled nursing facilities. W...

Two days after the Los Angeles Public Health Department announced that the much-talked-about UK variant of Covid-19, known as B.1.1.7, had been identified in the region, the California Department of Public Health revealed that another lesser-known strain had been circulating in the county as well. Known as L452R, the newly-announced arrival was first identified in Denmark in March of last year. It showed up in California as early as May 2020. According to the California Department of Public Health, Santa Clara County has sequenced a large number of positive specimens collected from community testing sites and outbreaks in the county. The L452R was present in specimens from the community and from several large outbreaks, including outbreaks where very high numbers of people expo...

LOS ANGELES — California’s state epidemiologist is urging a halt to more than 300,000 coronavirus vaccinations using a Moderna vaccine version because some people received medical treatment for possible severe allergic reactions. Dr. Erica S. Pan on Sunday recommended providers stop using lot 41L20A of the Moderna vaccine pending completion of an investigation by state officials, Moderna, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the federal Food and Drug Administration. “Out of an extreme abundance of caution and also recognizing the extremely limited supply of vaccine, we are recommending that providers use other available vaccine inventory,” Pan said in a statement. She said more than 330,000 doses from the lot arrived in California between Jan. 5 and Jan. 12 and were distrib...

Implementation of a nationwide mask mandate, combined with complementary public health measures, could reduce the coronavirus’ spread to essentially zero and have a potential $1 trillion impact on the U.S. GDP, according to UCLA Fielding School of Public Health researchers. The team’s research “makes clear that even as vaccines are developed and new variants, like B.1.7.7, are being discovered, the power to protect ourselves remains in our hands, as individuals,” said co-author Anne Rimoin, a UCLA Fielding School professor of epidemiology. “Wearing a mask is one of the simplest, most effective, and cheapest ways to do exactly that — and it’s been proven by the history of epidemiology over the past century, going back to the 1918-19 influenza pandemic and even before,” she said....

This rising variant is distinct from the highly contagious British mutation, which has also been found in California, and which federal health officials project could become the dominant strain in the United States by March based on its proven higher transmissibility. Experts stress they need to look more closely at the circumstances of the northern California outbreaks, as well as at the latest variant — this one, known as L452R — before declaring it more contagious or more dangerous than the virus already broadly circulating. The L452R variant was first detected in northern Europe in March and has since been confirmed in more than a dozen states, including California in May. The discovery did not garner much attention at the time because all viruses change constantly as they replicate...

3,224 new COVID-19 cases, 52 additional deaths reported in Massachusetts Estimated active cases remain above 98,000 for third straight day Updated: 5:05 PM EST Jan 18, 2021 The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported an additional 3,224 confirmed COVID-19 cases Monday, bringing the statewide total to 451,535 since the start of the pandemic.State health officials also added 52 new confirmed COVID-19-related deaths to the state's total, which is now 13,424. An estimated 98,750 cases are active across Massachusetts, according to the report. This marks the third straight day that the number of estimated active cases in the state were above 98...