Month: April 2021

Citing equity reasons, San Francisco health officials on Friday opened up vaccinations to residents 16 and older in select ZIP codes. The move by the San Francisco Health Network, the health care delivery arm of the city’s Department of Public Health, comes just before all Californians 16 and older become eligible for the vaccine next week. The ZIP codes — 94124, 94134, 94107, 94110, 94112, 94102, 94130 and 94103 — are located in the following neighborhoods: the Bayview, Hunters Points, Visitacion Valley, Portola, Sunnydale, Excelsior, Mission, Oceanview, Ingleside, Balboa Park, Potrero Hill, the Dogpatch, Mission Bay, SoMa, Tenderloin and Treasure Island. “The state of California provides discretion to providers serving high impact areas on who to...

Public health officials in Hawaii are on alert for a new COVID-19 variant that has emerged in California and are urgently advising eligible residents to get vaccinated as soon as possible to avoid serious illness or hospitalization. Three mutant strains are already circulating in the islands, and one of them — the B.1.429 variant that originated in California — now accounts for 59% of COVID-19 specimens that have undergone genomic sequencing in the Department of Health’s State Laboratories Division, according to data released today. The B.1.1.7 strain from the United Kingdom has a lesser presence in Hawaii and the B.1.351 strain first found in South Africa is here to an even smaller extent, according to Dr. Edward Desmond, administrator of the State Laboratories Division. But loomin...

The Oregon Health Authority on Friday reported 560 new COVID-19 cases and one death, with nearly one in three Oregonians now at least partially vaccinated against the disease. Cases continued their upward trend, hitting their highest average in two months at 475 a day over the past week. Increasing cases returned Multnomah and Clackamas counties to the high-risk category today, once again limiting restaurants to 25% capacity indoors. Deschutes, Klamath, Linn and Tillamook also entered the high-risk category, with all six counties representing three-fifths of Oregon’s population. In 10 days, Oregon will begin offering COVID-19 vaccines to everyone 16 and older, a change made in response to President Joe Biden’s direction Tuesday. Brown originally planned to offer inoculations to every...

The CT Department of Public Health announced Friday that a case of measles has been reported in a child in Fairfield County. The child was not yet vaccinated against measles and they were infected while traveling internationally, DPH officials said. Officials warn that measles is a highly contagious disease that can spread quickly among people who are unvaccinated. However, DPH said the majority of people exposed to the virus are not at risk because they have either been vaccinated in the past or have had measles before vaccination became routine. One dose of the measles vaccine is approximately 93% effective at preventing the virus if exposed and two doses are about 97% effective. DPH officials said two doses of the Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) vaccine ar...

HUDSONVILLE, Mich. (WOOD) — As people under the age of 19 see high COVID-19 case rates, SpartanNash is hosting a vaccine clinic specifically for teens age 16 and 17. The clinic is scheduled to run from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at a former Family Fare store at 5221 Cherry Ave. off Chicago Drive in Hudsonville. “Throughout our clinics, we’ve noticed that 16- and 17-year-olds are having a hard time finding appointments,” Amy Ellis, SpartanNash’s pharmacy services manager, told News 8 in a Friday Zoom call. “We see the positivity rate going up in the under-19-year-old population and we really felt there was a need.” Availability is also a concern for teens. Of the three vaccines currently being offered in the U.S., only Pfizer’s is approved for people as young as 16.  ...