Month: April 2021

SEDRO-WOOLLEY, Wash. (AP) — With dish soap, brushes and plastic water jugs in hand, Carole Rae Woodmansee’s four children cleaned the gravestone their mother shares with their father, Jim. Each scrub shined engraved letters spelling out their mother’s name and the days of her birth and death: March 27, 1939, and March 27, 2020. Carole passed away on her 81st birthday. That morning marked a year since she died of complications of COVID-19 after contracting it during a choir practice that sickened 53 people and killed two — a superspreader event that would become one of the most pivotal transmission episodes in understanding the virus. For the siblings, the somber anniversary offered a chance at closure after the pandemic stunted their mourning. They were finally holding a memorial befitti...

As a third, intense coronavirus wave bears down on Michigan, several hospital leaders from around the state said Thursday they have no choice but to postpone some surgical procedures to ensure they have the capacity to care for the crush of sick COVID-19 patients coming through their doors.  "We are really at a very critical junction," said Bob Riney, COO and president of health care operations for Henry Ford Health System, which is delaying some procedures Thursday and Friday at its Macomb hospital to manage the capacity crisis.  "After enduring the first two surges and the gains we made to bring down hospitalizations the past couple of months, none of us expected what we are seeing today. This should make all of us extremely concerned — not just the health systems and the hospitals, but...

TACOMA, Wash. — On Monday, the state will review the metrics and announce which counties will roll back from Phase 3 to Phase 2. To stay in Phase 3, larger counties need to have fewer than 200 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents over a two-week period. When it comes to hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients, they must have fewer than five new hospitalizations per 100,000 residents within a seven-day period. If a county doesn’t meet either metric, its phase will be rolled back. Several western Washington counties are already above that benchmark. In western Washington, Pierce, Cowlitz and Kittitas are over the threshold, according to state data. According to state numbers, Pierce County sits at 238 per 100,000 residents, but Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department data puts them at 195...

Millions of American parents are now either partially or fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But for millions of kids, that prospect is still a long way off. While many teenagers ages 16 and older are now able to get vaccinated — and new data from Pfizer suggests its vaccine is safe and highly effective in children as young as 12 — we’re likely months away from large swaths of kiddos rolling up their sleeves. “It’s more likely that the majority of children won’t be vaccinated until the end of this year, or the beginning of next year,” said Steven Abelowitz, a pediatrician with Coastal Kids Pediatrics in Orange County, California. He emphasized, though, that even best guesses are “all speculation” at this point. That means parents are in for a strange stretch of months when they suddenly h...