Month: February 2021

To provide our community with important public safety information, the Statesman Journal is making this update free to read. To support important local journalism like this, please consider becoming a digital subscriber.  An ice storm swept through the mid-Willamette Valley Friday night, downing trees and causing widespread power outages. 8:30 p.m.: How to check on outages in your area About 112,000 customers in the Salem area were still without power Saturday evening. Some areas that had reported power was back on earlier in the afternoon were reporting that they'd again lost power Saturday night. You can find more detailed information about outages — including how to report an outage or downed wires — through your power company Pacific Power: Roughly 21,000 Pacific Power customers were...

A drive-thru clinic at Sacramento City College on Saturday reached hundreds in need of their COVID-19 vaccines.It's the second of many community clinics planned for the weeks and months to come, through which Sacramento County will enlist the help and expertise of health care workers from Dignity Health and UC Davis Health to administer vaccine doses to people who pre-registered.Clinicians provided nearly 1,500 vaccinations to people organizers said were among vulnerable community groups.“Didn't hurt at all... I'm not crying!” said Tom Rush who captured a cellphone video of the exact moment he received his Moderna COVID-19 vaccination. “I'm gonna send it to my kids, send it to my family.”Others lined up for their shots, expressing relief to have finally reached this day.“I'm great. F...

POMONA, Calif. (KABC) -- A 78-year-old woman died after receiving the Pfizer vaccine at Cal Poly Pomona, but her death is not believed to be related to that shot, according to officials. The woman received the shot Friday afternoon and was being observed when she started complaining of feeling discomfort and lost consciousness, according to a statement from Dr. Michael E. Morris, physician director of Kaiser Permanente's Southern California's COVID-19 vaccination program, which runs the site. Paramedics on scene rendered aid to the woman "but she ultimately could not be revived." "Her cause of death has not been determined; however, there were no signs or symptoms of a severe allergic or anaphylactic reaction," Morris said in the statement. The woman's family says she had a history of h...

DENVER (KDVR) — February is American Heart Month, a time when local doctors hope to raise awareness about the No. 1 killer of Americans: heart disease. Dr. Chirag Chauhan is a structural interventional cardiologist with Denver Heart at Swedish and Rose medical centers. He says the deadly disease is far too under-recognized.  “Only about 50% of patients know their heart is a problem or could become a problem based on their history,” Chauhan said.  Chauhan says generally, men are at higher risk for heart disease starting at age 40 and women at 50. However, some patients have shown him otherwise.  “I’ve had 26-year-olds come in with heart attacks because their family history was so robust and it’s sad and even difficult for us to know why it happens but it defini...

The news comes as reports of the variant, called B. 1.351, have escalated globally, including 13 cases in five states, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With the increased prevalence of the mutation, scientists have expressed concern that the variant, and two others first identified in the United Kingdom and Brazil, may become a predominant source of infection and elude coronavirus vaccines developed before the variants were detected. Studies of the vaccines produced by Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Novavax — drugmakers supported by the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed — appeared to show that the vaccines work against the B. 1.351 variant but have a lowered effectiveness. Maryland biotech company Novavax said that “data suggest that prior infecti...

Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson said that a COVID-19 vaccine candidate that the company is developing will not be ready in 2021. “This vaccine will not be ready this year, but it could be of use at a later stage all the more if the fight against variants was to continue,” Reuters reported Hudson told French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. The CEO gave no other details, according to the news outlet. The Hill has reached out to the company for comment. Sanofi partnered with U.S.-based company Translate Bio last June to developed the vaccine based on mRNA technology. Vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna — which have both been authorized for emergency use in the U.S. — also use this technology. Reuters reported that clinical trials of the company's vaccine were expected to sta...