Month: August 2021

(Update: Adding OHA weekly report showing rises in cases, hospitalizations, deaths) PORTLAND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- There are 20 new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, including Crook County's 30th death, raising the state’s death toll to 3,086, the Oregon Health Authority reported Wednesday. OHA also reported 2,777 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 as of 12:01 a.m. today, bringing the state total to 263,164. COVID-19 weekly cases, hospitalizations and deaths rise The Oregon Health Authority’s COVID-19 Weekly Report, released Wednesday, shows continued increases in daily cases, hospitalizations and deaths. OHA reported 14,800 new cases of COVID-19 during the week of Monday, Aug. 15 through Sunday, Aug. 22. That represents a 16% increase over th...

At SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City, 18 covid-19 patients lacked beds Tuesday and were being treated on mattresses on the floor of the ICU, with more than half of them on ventilators, reported KFOR-TV. Amy Petitt, an ICU charge nurse at the hospital, fought through tears during a tour of a hospital pushed to its limits by the highly transmissible delta variant. Ninety percent of the 79 covid patients in St. Anthony’s ICU are unvaccinated, Tammy Powell, president of the hospital, told The Washington Post.

COLLETON COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - A 12-year-old from Walterboro is currently on a ventilator at MUSC’s Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital in downtown Charleston fighting COVID-19. Amari Goodwin’s mother, Misty, said her daughter’s symptoms progressed quickly at the beginning of August. The child couldn’t breathe, had a 104 degree fever and was throwing up. When Misty took her daughter to the urgent care, she was diagnosed with COVID-19, pneumonia and RSV. “Once she started coughing up blood in her phlegm, I was like no that’s enough,” she said. “That’s when we came to the hospital.” Watching her daughter struggle day and night since Aug. 5 to fight the virus has been a living nightmare for Misty. She said Amari was admitted to the ICU at MUSC Aug. 11. “You’re just in there watching her,” she...

By Nancy Lapid    Aug 25 (Reuters) - Here is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that have yet to be certified by peer review.    Antibodies wane but other immune defenses remain alert    A new study may help explain why mRNA vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are more effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths than they are at preventing infection. Test-tube experiments on blood samples from 61 fully vaccinated adults showed that by six months, vaccine-induced antibodies that can immediately neutralize the virus had declined. But so-called memory B cells, which produce new antibodies if they encounter the virus later on, had increased and become better at recognizing viral variants, ...