Month: February 2021

A teenager from the United Kingdom has woken up from a roughly 11-month long coma, leading his family to weigh how they will explain the coronavirus pandemic to him, according to reports this week.  Joseph Flavill, 19, from Staffordshire, suffered a severe brain injury after being hit by a car on March 1, 2020,  about three weeks before the UK entered its first national lockdown.  "He won’t know anything about the pandemic as he’s been asleep for 10 months," his aunt, Sally Flavill Smith, told the Guardian on Tuesday. "A year ago if someone had told me what was going to happen over the last year, I don’t think I would have believed it. I’ve got no idea how Joseph’s going to come to understand what we’ve all been through." CAPT. TOM MOORE, WWII VET WHOSE WALK CHEERED UK, DIES AT 100 ...

Medical personnel should not be quick to dismiss post-vaccination symptoms as vaccine-related and should always test for COVID-19 if symptoms are evident, a study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sunday stated.  The study was written by a group of Israeli doctors and scientists from the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, all of whom have been active players in the struggle to combat the spread of the virus and treat its victims in Israel.  It focuses on the occurrence of COVID-19 symptoms, and specifically, their occurrence after being vaccinated, with the purpose of preventing cases of the disease's symptoms being mistaken for vaccine side effects. Such mistakes, the study noted, are more common than expected.  "The co-occurrence...

A judge on Tuesday ordered all inmates in the Oregon prison system to be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccinations — a move that should make prisoners immediately eligible for inoculation. The preliminary injunction orders all Oregon Department of Corrections inmates be offered a vaccine as part of phase 1A, group 2, of Oregon’s COVID-19 vaccination plan — putting prison inmates in the same category as people living in nursing homes and other congregate care settings. The order should make prisoners eligible for vaccines now, but it’s not clear if they’ll move ahead of teachers or the elderly. But given that the Oregon Health Authority dictates where vaccines are shipped, the state has the ability to redirect doses for prisons. “This will save an incredible amount of lives,” said Juan Chave...

An Alabama father of two who contracted the UK COVID-19 variant has lost his battle with the highly contagious virus, his wife says. Alfonzia Jackson Jr. started to get sick around Christmas time and his symptoms got worse when he began struggling to breathe two weeks ago, wife Ashley Jackson told The Birmingham News. Jackson was admitted to UAB Hospital in Birmingham on Jan. 22 and his wife later learned he tested positive for the UK variant that’s been spreading quickly throughout the US. On Tuesday, she posted on Facebook that her beloved husband passed away. “Lord this day has been hard,” she wrote. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone as I said goodbye to my amazing husband. I was reminded of the day I said I do and we promised to spend the rest o...