Month: March 2021

All adults over the age of 16 in Kansas will become eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine starting Monday, after a new announcement from Gov. Laura Kelly. Kelly announced in a news release Friday that the state will move to Phase 5 of its vaccine distribution plan on March 29.Phase 5 makes all adults 16 and older eligible to sign up to receive a vaccine. "With the anticipated increase in supply from the federal government, we must get every dose of vaccine into arms quickly,” Kelly said. “I strongly encourage every Kansan to get the COVID-19 vaccine so we can get back to school, back to work, and back to normal.”According to the state, Kansas will become the 8th state to make the vaccine available to all adults. State records show as of March 26, 35.1% of all adults in the state hav...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The Illinois Department of Public Health officials reported 3,002 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 and 33 deaths Friday, as the state began taking action to address first signs of a possible resurgence of the virus. IDPH reported a total of 1,232,900 COVID-19 cases, including 21,203 deaths, since the beginning of the pandemic. As of Thursday night, 1,302 patients in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 264 patients were in the ICU and 120 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators. RELATED: Illinois COVID vaccine map shows how many residents vaccinated by county Since March 8, Illinois has seen 10 days of increases in the seven-day rolling average for hospital admissions. The COVID-19 test positivity on March 10 was 2.5%. Toda...

Nurses draw vaccine doses from a vial as Maryland residents receive their second dose of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine at the Cameron Grove Community Center on March 25, 2021 in Bowie, Maryland. Win McNamee | Getty Images A new study backed by the National Institutes of Health aims to help doctors and public officials figure out what people can and cannot do after they get vaccinated against the coronavirus, including whether they will still need to wear masks and practice social distancing. The study, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease within NIH, will test the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine's ability to prevent infection of the coronavirus, limit the amount of virus in the nose and reduce transmission from inoculated people to clo...

The first Bay Area case of the concerning Brazil variant of COVID-19 has been detected in a Santa Clara County resident, public health officials said. The variant known as P.1 is highly infectious and research has shown that it can reinfect people who have already had other strains of the virus. The individual who tested positive for P.1 was identified in mid-March after returning from out-of-state travel, according to the county health department. The county has also identified two confirmed cases of the variant first detected in South Africa and 19 confirmed cases of the variant first detected in the United Kingdom. "The presence of the P.1 variant, in addition to the spread of other variants, is a strong reminder th...

The idea of “herd immunity” against Covid-19 has achieved almost magical status in the popular imagination. Once we reach that threshold, many Americans believe, we’ll be in the clear, and the pandemic will finally fade into history. But we are unlikely ever to reach herd immunity with Covid-19—it’s not how this nightmare will end. Although case counts are now declining from their winter peak, we fear another spike from potential super-spreader events following spring break, Easter weekend, Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, or even again after the end-of-year holidays. The time to double down on our efforts to stamp out transmission is now. We must develop what amounts to a national immune system to quickly detect and repel the new outbreaks ahead, not just for t...