Month: January 2022

“The main problems that we’re seeing in our hospitals are, No. 1, staffing,” Thompson, the county health director, told me Friday. “One of our hospitals had like 51 of their caregivers out with COVID. Being able to just staff the beds has been really a challenge.” In Sierra Vista, “Canyon Vista (hospital) has not been below 100% capacity in weeks,” she said. “In their ED, they’re well over 100% capacity.” The state grant could have helped the hospitals in the northern part of the county, especially, because it would have allowed the county to set up free testing sites, Thompson said. That would keep people from going to the crowded hospitals, where they have been going, for tests. English said the board has a policy of not reversing earlier decisions, meaning it is unlikely to follow Pi...

Most people are familiar with the five senses (touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste), but not everyone knows that we have an additional sense called interoception. This is the sense of our body's internal state. It helps us feel and interpret internal signals that regulate vital functions in our body, like hunger, thirst, body temperature, and heart rate.   Although we don't take much notice of it, it's an extremely important sense as it ensures that every system in the body is working optimally. It does this by alerting us to when our body may be out of balance – such as making us reach for a drink when we feel thirsty or telling us to take our jumper off when we're feeling too hot. Interoception is also important for our mental health. This is because it contributes to many psyc...

As cases seem to begin plateauing, Covid-19 hospitalizations in the Northeast are down by about 11% after reaching a peak about a week ago and have also dropped slightly -- about 6% -- in the Midwest region, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. And new Covid-19 hospital admissions are beginning to decline nationwide, a sign total hospitalizations may soon begin going down too in every part of the country. The HHS data includes both patients who are hospitalized because of Covid-19 complications and patients who may have been admitted for something else but tested positive for Covid-19. That has been true throughout the pandemic, but the share of patients who fall into each category may have changed over time. "All of the current data is showing very encourag...