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COVID-19

Expiring COVID-19 waivers could make Pa. health-care staffing shortages worse

HARRISBURG — Regulatory waivers established last year to help hospitals and health-care workers fight COVID-19 will expire this month, and those in the field are warning the lapse could exacerbate an ongoing staffing crisis as coronavirus cases rise again. At the beginning of the pandemic, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf approved nearly 100 waivers to ease some of the rules governing health-care workers and ensure as many professionals as possible were on the ground in hospitals, vaccination clinics, and long-term care facilities. They included allowing out-of-state practitioners to treat ...

CATA to suspend routes

STATE COLLEGE — For those who use public transportation in Centre County, things just got interesting. Faced with “severe staffing shortages,” the Centre Area Transportation Authority (CATA) announced on Monday that it will temporarily suspend three routes, end service early on two others and reduce frequencies for five more. In a news release, CATA said it will suspend the F (Pine Grove), G (Gray’s Woods) and S (Science Park) routes beginning Monday, Sept. 20. Starting the same day, the service on the K Route (Cato Park) will end at approximately 7 p.m., instead of the ...

School vaccine campaigns targeting students face blowback

Fearing his parents wouldn’t approve of his decision to get a COVID-19 vaccine but needing their signature, Andrew signed up for the appointment in secret, and then sprang it on them at the last minute. They said no. Andrew cursed at his mother and father and called them idiots. Andrew’s dad grabbed him by the shirt collar. “He said, ‘You’re not getting this damn vaccine; you need to lower your voice. Watch your tone when you talk to me.’ It was, it was the first time my dad had ever done something like that — he grabbed my shirt and yelled in my face,” said Andrew, a ...

School starts for one million NYC kids amid new vaccine rules

NEW YORK (AP) — School started Monday for about a million New York City public school students in the nation’s largest experiment of in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic. The first day of school coincided with several milestones in the city’s pandemic recovery that hinge ...

Indiana hospitals strained for ICU space amid latest surge

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana hospitals continue to take the brunt of a statewide surge in infections and hospitalizations spurred by the more contagious delta variant. The state Health Department’s latest report showed that hospitals around the state were treating 2,631 patients for COVID-19 as of Sunday — up more than six times for the state’s level of about 400 patients a day in early July. Hospitals reported treating 726 people with COVID-19 in intensive care units, taking up more than 33% of available ICU beds. Statewide, nearly 83% of all ICU beds are occupied. As ...

FDA experts among group opposing US booster shot plan

The average person doesn’t need a COVID-19 booster yet, an international group of scientists — including two top U.S. regulators — wrote Monday in a scientific journal. The experts reviewed studies of the vaccines’ performance and concluded the shots are working well despite the extra-contagious delta variant, especially against severe disease. “Even in populations with fairly high vaccination rates, the unvaccinated are still the major drivers of transmission” at this stage of the pandemic, they concluded. The opinion piece, published in The Lancet, illustrates the ...