Ivermectin continues to be troublesome. Overdoses are causing delays and problems for rural hospitals and ambulance services. Some emergency rooms have been so backed up that gunshot victims can't find hospitals at which to seek treatment. One severely ill covid patient was transferred from a hospital in Oklahoma that had no room to a hospital in South Dakota.
Between covid and ivermectin, many hospitals in the US are almost full. Doctors will have to start making tough decisions on who gets treated for what and when. Vaccination is the top method to control covid spread. While important, masking is not as preventative as vaccination. Nationwide, 79.83 percent of ICU beds are in use, almost one-third of which are occupied by covid patients. Eight states have adult ICU beds at over 90 percent of capacity: Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, and Kentucky. A hospital in Albany, Georgia has nearly doubled its ICU capacity and is still experiencing overflows.
A study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology reports that kidney issues can last for months after patients recover from initial covid infections. These issues could lead to serious lifelong reduction of kidney function. The sicker a patient was initially, the more likely they were to experience lingering kidney damage. Researchers looked at patient records in the Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals of 89,216 people who tested positive for covid between March 1, 2020 and March 15, 2021. They used ata from 1,637,467 people who were not covid patients were for comparison.
The Public Health Agency of Canada says there is an "urgent need" to increase covid vaccinations in Canadians aged 18 to 39. Among Canadians aged 12 and over who are eligible for vaccination, 77 percent are fully vaccinated. The rate is lower for people in their 20s and 30s. For people aged 18 to 29, 63 percent are fully vaccinated. For people in their 30s, 68 percent are fully vaccinated.
A Vietnamese man has been sentenced to five years in prison for breaking covid quarantine. He traveled from Ho Chi Minh City to the southern province of Ca Mau, infecting eight people, one of whom died. He is lucky to have been sentenced so lightly; they take things such as this very seriously in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Hanoi plans to test all its residents and has extended covid restrictions for two more weeks.
Finland will end covid restrictions when it has vaccinated 80 percent of people over the age of 12. It expects to have accomplished this by October. As for people under 12, the advice from public health experts in the US is to surround them with vaccinated people.
The White House is asking for $65.3 billion over 10 years for a pandemic preparedness plan that will feature a "mission control" office to coordinate the work of agencies across the government to spot emerging threats and prepare to deal with them. The plan would have five goals: (1) improving and expanding an "arsenal" of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics; (2) improving surveillance of infectious disease threats; (3) strengthening public health system with focus on reducing inequities; (4) building up a supply chain and stockpile including of PPE; and (5) Mission Control. Lessons learned from this pandemic put to good use? Certainly sounds good to me!
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