Day: September 5, 2021

JACKSON, MISS. – As patients stream into Mississippi hospitals one after another, doctors and nurses have become all too accustomed to the rampant denial and misinformation about COVID-19 in the nation’s least vaccinated state.

People in denial about the severity of their own illness or the virus itself; visitors frequently trying to enter hospitals without masks. The painful look of recognition on patients’ faces when they realize they made a mistake not getting vaccinated. The constant misinformation about the coronavirus that they discuss with medical staff.

“There’s no point in being judgmental in that situation. There’s no point in telling them, ‘You should have gotten the vaccine, or you wouldn’t be here,'” said Dr. Risa Moriarity, executive vice chair of the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s emergency department. “We don’t do that. We try not to preach and lecture them. Some of them are so sick they can barely even speak to us.”

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Mississippi’s low vaccinated rate, with about 38% of the state’s 3 million people fully inoculated against COVID-19, is driving a surge in cases and hospitalizations that is overwhelming medical workers. The workers are angry and exhausted over both the workload and refusal by residents to embrace the vaccine.

Physicians at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the only level one trauma center in Mississippi, are caring for the sickest patients in the state.

The emergency room and intensive care unit are beyond capacity, almost all with COVID patients. Moriarity said it’s like a logjam with beds in hallways, patients being treated in triage rooms. Paramedics are delayed in responding to new calls because they have to wait with patients who need care.

In one hospital in Mississippi, four pregnant women died last week, said state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs. Three of the cases required emergency C-sections and babies were born severely premature.

“This is the reality that we’re looking at and, again, none of these individuals were vaccinated,” Dobbs said.

Moriarity said it’s hard to put into words the fatigue she and her colleagues feel. Going to work each day has become taxing and heartbreaking, she said.

“Most of us still have enough emotional reserve to be compassionate, but you leave work at the end of the day just exhausted by the effort it takes to drag that compassion up for people who are not taking care of themselves and the people around them,” she said.

During a recent news conference, UMMC’s head, Dr. LouAnn Woodward, fought back tears as she described the toll on health care workers.

“We as a state, as a collective, have failed to respond in a unified way to a common threat,” Woodward said.

As the virus surges, hospital officials are begging residents to get vaccinated. UMMC announced in July that it will mandate its 10,000 employees and 3,000 students be vaccinated or wear a N95 mask on campus. By the end of August, leaders revised that policy, vaccination is the only option.

Moriarity said this surge has taken a toll on morale more than previous peaks of the virus. Her team thought in May and June that despite Mississippi’s low vaccination rate, there was an end in sight. The hospital’s ICUs were empty, and they had few COVID patients. Then cases surged with the delta variant of the virus, swamping the hospital.

Numbers of total coronavirus hospitalizations in Mississippi have dipped slightly, with just fewer than 1,450 people hospitalized for coronavirus on Sept. 1, compared with around 1,670 on Aug. 19. But they are still higher than the peaks of previous surges of the virus.

In the medical center’s children’s hospital, emergency room nurse Anne Sinclair said she is tired of the constant misinformation she hears, namely that children can’t get very ill from COVID.

“I’ve seen children die in my unit of COVID, complications of COVID, and that’s just not something you can ever forget,” she said.

“It’s very sobering,” continued Sinclair, who is the parent of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old and worries for their safety. “I just wish people could look past the politics and think about their families and their children.”

To deal with overflow COVID patients, Christian relief charity Samaritan’s Purse set up an emergency field hospital in the parking garage of UMMC’s children’s hospital.

The hospital is treating an average of 15 patients a day, with the capacity for seven ICU patients.

Nurse Kelly Sites, who has also treated COVID patients in hotspots like California and Italy, said it’s heart wrenching to know that some of the severe cases could have been prevented with the vaccine. Many patients are so sick they can’t talk. Nurses walk around with scripture verses on duct tape on their scrubs and will recite them to their patients.

Samaritan’s Purse is an international disaster relief organization with missions spanning multiple continents. It has responded to 20 missions, including Haiti, the Philippines, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“To respond to the United States is quite surreal for us,” she said. “It’s a challenge because usually, home is stable. And so when we deploy, we’re just going to the disaster. This is the first time where home is a disaster.”

Source: Voice of America

Australia recorded three new COVID-19 deaths in its most populous state of New South Wales and nearly 1,500 new cases of the coronavirus disease on Sunday.

Speaking to reporters in Sydney, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the peak of the most recent outbreak was expected “in the next couple of weeks.”

Regarding the vaccination efforts, Berejiklian said 40% of the adult population in her state had received both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The Australian state of Victoria recorded at least 180 new locally contracted cases of the coronavirus on Sunday.

Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said the majority of people hospitalized with COVID-19 were not vaccinated. Andrews urged people to take the vaccine.

Israel announced on Sunday that it would open its borders to tourists even as it battles high rates of infection from the coronavirus.

Israel was one of the fastest nations to vaccinate its population and welcomed a limited number of vaccinated tourists in May. Plans to expand the program stalled as case numbers began to rise. The country is now facing one of the highest infection rates in the world because of the highly infectious delta variant.

Israel’s Tourism Ministry said it would begin welcoming tour groups from some countries starting September 19, provided that tourists are vaccinated and pass a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test. Officials said tourists would be required to stay in their hotel rooms until their tests for COVID-19 come back negative, a process they say should not take more than 24 hours.

In Japan, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Sunday that the government plans to issue COVID-19 vaccination certificates online.

The report said the certificates for people vaccinated from around mid-December are intended for overseas travel rather than domestic use.

In Brazil, federal health regulator Anvisa has placed a 90-day suspension on the use of more than 12 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine because they were made in a plant that had not been authorized by it.

Several cities in Brazil have begun providing vaccine booster shots, even though most citizens have yet to receive their second shots. The booster shots were prompted by concerns that older Brazilians have about the efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine, The Associated Press reported.

France, Israel, China and Chile are among those countries giving boosters to some of their older citizens, and a U.S. plan to start delivering booster shots for most Americans by September 20 is facing complications that could delay third doses for those who received the Moderna vaccine, Biden administration officials said on Friday.

Bahrain announced on Sunday that it would begin giving booster shots of the Russian-made Sputnik vaccine to any of its citizens over the age of 18 who received their second dose more than six months ago.

Japan and South Korea are planning booster shots in the fourth quarter of this year. Malaysia is also considering boosters, but Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said those who have yet to receive their first shot are being prioritized.

Thailand began giving booster shots this week, but only for health and front-line workers.

Russia, Hungary and Serbia also are giving boosters, although there has been a lack of demand in those countries for the initial shots amid abundant supplies.

According to the AP, France’s worst coronavirus outbreak is unfolding 12 time zones away from Paris, devastating Tahiti and other idyllic islands of French Polynesia.

Regional health officials said the South Pacific archipelagos lack enough oxygen, ICU beds and morgue space, and that the vaccination rate of 32.2% is just half the national average.

With more than 2,800 COVID cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the region now holds France’s record for the highest infection rate. The majority of the region’s 463 documented COVID-19 deaths have taken place in the past 30 days.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Sunday that it had recorded nearly 220.6 million global COVID-19 infections and 4.56 million deaths. The center said over 5.4 billion vaccines have been administered.

Source: Voice of America

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA – For many Americans, pets offer a rare source of comfort during uncertain times. Dog lovers are quick to say their pets aren’t just companions, they’re like members of the family.

“I’m really happy to have Bentley,” said teenager Aisha Simmons, as she walked the black Labrador retriever around her neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington.

Her family adopted the dog about a year ago from a local animal shelter. They were among the thousands of people across the country who bought, fostered or adopted animals last year during the coronavirus pandemic.

With the stress of the pandemic, more people suddenly wanted a pet to snuggle and to have as company to prevent loneliness during quarantine, Kurt Krukenberg, president of the Humane Society Silicon Valley in San Jose, California, told VOA.

“With more people working from home, this may be first time they felt they could take care of a pet,” he said.

This was wonderful for dogs and cats in shelters or foster situations waiting for their “forever homes,” said Amy Good, director of development at the Dane County Humane Society in Madison, Wisconsin.

“The number of adoptions we had last year were absolutely phenomenal, and there were even times we were out of animals for people to adopt,” she said.

Jim Bouderau, the executive director of the Tompkins County SPCA in Ithaca, New York, said the shelter got an influx of people who wanted to adopt a cat or dog.

During this flurry of adoptions, though, some shelters were concerned that people adopting pets might not have fully thought through the commitment and might choose to return them later.

So far, this isn’t happening often, according to surveys of new pet owners in the U.S.

“I think people with pandemic pets have bonded with them, and so I’m not surprised we’re seeing fewer returns now,” said Gina Hardter, marketing director for the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria in Virginia.

“We’re actually seeing a lower number of animal returns or surrenders than we did in 2019,” she told VOA.

New owners in San Jose are also sticking with their pets, said Krukenberg.

“We were worried about whether this would happen, but fortunately that turned out not to be the case,” he said.

Good agreed, saying, “Our returns are the lowest we’ve had in five years.”

“More people are figuring out ways to keep their animals,” said Steve Bardy, executive director at Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando in Florida, “because they appreciate what a dog or cat adds to their lives.”

“There is no way I would ever bring back Luna,” said Amber Wright from Chevy Chase, Maryland, also near Washington, as she cuddled the little cream-colored pup she adopted last year.

Some animal welfare organizations say they are beginning to see more returns or surrenders from people who already had a pet before the pandemic began, though.

Kerry D’Amato, executive director at Pet Haven in Minneapolis, Minnesota, said her group is getting pandemic pet returns, not from her organization, but from shelters where people can walk in and take any dog without being screened. A year and a half later, a number of these people, “who were not equipped to handle behavioral challenges,” want to give up the animal that they never properly trained or socialized during quarantine.

The returns are also happening for other reasons.

Financial strains related to the pandemic are causing people to rethink pet ownership, Cindy Sharpley, executive director of Last Chance Animal Rescue in Waldorf, Maryland, told VOA.

“People were at home getting unemployment benefits during the pandemic and now they’re not,” she said.

In other cases, with parents returning to in-person work and children returning to school, there may not be anyone to care for the pet, she said. Other pet owners are suffering from long-term effects from COVID-19 and are forced to part with a pet, she added.

Now, another change is making life difficult for pets and their owners. The federal freeze on eviction moratoriums that recently expired means thousands of people, and their pets, may have to find a new place to live. This concerns Hardter, who said the organization would offer temporary boarding for these animals until their owners can find a home that allows pets.

“We are also working on a foster program where volunteers would temporarily care for the pets in their homes,” she said. “So, our goal is to try to keep people with their pets.”

Source: Voice of America