WASHINGTON – Officials offered new hope for the safety of U.S. schoolchildren threatened by COVID-19 on Friday, as Gulf Coast hospitals are already full of unvaccinated patients prepared for a nightmare scenario. major hurricane that caused a wave of fractures, cuts and heart attacks without enough staff to care for the injured.
The Biden administration said half of U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 had received at least the first COVID-19 vaccine, and that the inoculation rate among teens is growing faster than any other age group.
“We have now reached an important milestone,” White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters in a briefing. “This is critical progress as millions of children return to school.”
Meanwhile, new California studies provided more evidence that schools can open safely if they do things right and highlighted the danger of not following proper precautions.
A COVID-19 case study of the winter pandemic peak in Los Angeles County found that case rates among children and adolescents were approximately 3½ times lower than in the general community when schools followed federal guidelines on laying of masks, physical distancing, testing and other virus measures, officials said.
Another study in Marin County, north of San Francisco, found that a single unvaccinated teacher who returned to school two days after showing symptoms and reading to her class without wearing a mask caused another 26 infections. in May, before the highly contagious delta variant ran wild.
“Most places where we see outbreaks and outbreaks are in places that do not implement our current orientation,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who discussed the studies in a briefing.
More than 3,100 cases of active coronavirus in Arkansas public schools have been reported among students and employees, according to recently released numbers, and most young people are enrolled in districts that require masks. The warrants came after a judge temporarily blocked a state law banning mask warrants in Arkansas, which ranks fifth nationally for new cases of virus per capita, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
On the north shore of the gulf, where Ida was expected to become a dangerous hurricane before it arrived on Sunday, Singing River Gulfport workers expect to have to lift the floodgates to keep the water from rising. ‘hospital that is full of COVID-19 patients, the vast majority of whom are not vaccinated, said Randall Cobb, director of the facility.
He noted that it was difficult for the hospital to have little personality due to the pandemic and that it also expects to have a flood of patients suffering from diseases that are usually followed by any hurricane: broken bones, heart attacks, respiratory problems and lacerations.
“It simply came to our notice then. It’s going to be really bad, ”Cobb said.
The hospital, located a few miles from the coast, has enough generator fuel, food and other supplies to run on its own for at least 96 hours, and helped anyone in a serious and life-threatening condition. But officials were trying to make it clear that people with less serious medical problems should go to shelters for storms with special needs or contact emergency management.
“It’s very stressful because it’s too late if we haven’t thought of everything. Patients have the medical care, but also the ease of being available, ”Cobb said.
About 1,100 people die daily from COVID-19 in the United States, most since mid-March, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Approximately 85,000 people were hospitalized with the disease nationwide earlier this week, according to CDC data, the highest total since the post-holiday increase in early February.
The increase is mainly based on the highly contagious delta variant of people who are not vaccinated. In areas where vaccination rates are particularly low, doctors have called on their communities to be inoculated to avoid overloading hospitals. In places like Alabama, federal teams have been incorporated to help exhausted workers and fill staff gaps caused by infections and exposure to COVID-19.
In Idaho, one of the least vaccinated states, intensive care units run out of space and a 330-bed hospital, Kootenai Health, turned classrooms into a patient care space.
The larger classroom became a treatment room for up to 21 coronavirus patients who do not need the type of specialized control that intensive care units offer. Other classrooms became treatment areas where patients hospitalized with COVID-19 may receive monoclonal antibody therapy in hopes of preventing them from needing a hospital bed.
Idaho also appeals to people with care skills or with the simple will to help enroll in the state medical reserve body. Retired health workers can get temporary license renewals and others can help you with tasks like tracking contacts and entering data.
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Reeves reported from Newnan, Georgia. AP medical writer Mike Stobbe in New York and AP journalist Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this report.