Health

(JACKSON, Miss.) — As Mississippi faces a “skyrocketing” surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations — its highest increase on record — health officials are sounding the alarm about a state hospital system on the brink of collapse.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center, in partnership with state officials, will reopen a surge facility Friday in the medical center’s parking lot, with help from the federal government.

Doctors, nurses, pharmacists and respiratory therapists will be deployed to work at the field hospital for at least the next 14 days.

“Unfortunately, we were standing in a tent again. None of us wanted to come back to this point, but it’s gotten to the point where we’re just not able to care for the patients at UMMC, and in the state of Mississippi, that need the care with COVID,” Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs, said at a press conference on Thursday. “I think when you’re seeing a field hospital at a major academic medical center, we’re pretty much at a collapse-like system.”

The arrival of federal assistance comes as the state faces an influx of coronavirus patients, with more than 1,500 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state, marking the highest number of patients receiving care since the onset of the pandemic.

The bed capacity is “extremely tight,” said Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. “Our ICUs today are full. Our patient beds are full.”

Prior to the field hospital’s opening, ABC News received an inside look as federal teams worked to set up the facility Thursday afternoon.

“I feel like we’re beyond disaster. … It really should be a scary time for everybody because it means that we feel like we have no capacity to deal with the things that we should be able to take care of,” Jones told ABC News correspondent Elwyn Lopez. “It really needs to be a wake-up call for those people.”

Although the facility will give the hospital a buffer to help manage the surge, Jones said, ultimately, “it’s just a Band-Aid,” or a temporary fix, for the problem.

The surge facility will give the hospital system a bit of relief, officials said, in managing both COVID-19 patients and other patients, as the number of hospitalizations continues to increase.

“We do not believe that we’re at a point where we’ve hit the peak or we’re turning the corner. In fact, we think we’re still on that upward climb,” Woodward said.

On Thursday, Mississippi reported more than 4,400 new cases, according to State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, almost 1,000 more than the state’s previous record, he said, which will inevitably result in more hospitalizations and deaths.

“That means we’re gonna have about 93 more deaths, just for today. It means we’re gonna see over 300 new hospitalizations, just from the day. And that’s on top of a system that is already overtaxed. Let us be very clear that the vast majority of cases, and hospitalizations, and deaths are unvaccinated,” Dobbs continued.

Officials reported that they continue to see a rise in “relatively healthy” younger patients, the vast majority of them unvaccinated, in need of care. Similar to the uptick seen nationally, UMMC, which is the state’s only children’s hospital, has seen a concerning increase in pediatric patients.

“A large proportion, much larger than we’ve ever seen before, proportion of children being hospitalized, or hospitalized in the ICU, and these are not chronically ill children, these are healthy children that are being hospitalized,” Jones said.

Despite a recent bump in the state’s vaccination rate overall, Mississippi continues to struggle with its vaccine rollout, with just 35% of residents fully vaccinated — the second-lowest inoculation rate in the country.

It is of critical importance that people get the information about vaccines from reputable sources, Dobbs stressed.

“We should not be here, y’all. This is not necessary,” said Dobbs. “Too many people are getting information from wrong sources. … These Facebook conspiratorial lists are going to spread and run, and have no accountability for the people who are dying, and we’re here, picking up the mess.”

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(CHILTON COUNTY, Ala.) — An Alabama family’s life was turned upside down when their 12-year-old son, a healthy, strong athlete, caught COVID-19 and landed in the hospital struggling to breathe.

Brody Barnett, a seventh grader from Chilton County, and his family are speaking out to warn the public of the dangers of the delta variant.

His mother, GeriLynn Vowell, told ABC News that her son tested positive on Aug. 6 and suffered extreme symptoms, including coughing and trouble breathing, within a day.

“He’s told his friends, ‘This is the worst that I’ve ever been sick,'” she said.

He said being in the hospital was a “scary experience,” adding, “It ain’t nothing to joke with,” to local ABC Birmingham affiliate WBMA-LD.

Brody, who was not vaccinated, was first exposed at the beginning of last week after going to a friend’s home where someone later tested positive for the virus. After hearing news of that positive result his family bought at-home COVID-19 kits.

“I tested Brody and his test popped up positive immediately. Then we went to an actual testing site and it was the same result,” Vowell said.

Vowell explained that she had tested negative for the COVID-19 test but positive for antibodies.

“My husband nor I have been vaccinated because we were positive for antibodies previously. We had just gotten the original COVID a few months back. So, we had just kind of been waiting to be vaccinated,” she said. She says they’ll get the vaccine when they test negative for antibodies.

Health experts recommend people get vaccinated even if they have been exposed to the virus because the vaccines are known to provide more durable protection, including against the delta variant. A study released Aug. 6 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people who were unvaccinated were more than twice as likely to be reinfected compared to people who were vaccinated.

The night Brody tested positive he got a runny nose and started coughing. The next day it progressed to the point that he couldn’t breathe and felt pain in his ribcage.

“He was like, ‘I cannot breathe, I cannot take a breath,'” she said. “He couldn’t raise his arms over his head and take a breath.”

Days later she took him to Children’s of Alabama hospital in Birmingham, where he spent one night. A doctor told them Brody had COVID pneumonia.

When COVID-19 pneumonia occurs it can be severe and the lungs are most affected. Airsacs in the lunges fill with fluid and limit their ability to take in oxygen, resulting in shortness of breath and cough, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“It was scary. The doctors said there’s nothing we can do other than Tylenol or Motrin to treat symptoms,” Vowell said, noting the doctor said his symptoms were consistent with the delta variant.

He was treated in the COVID wing where there “were probably a dozen kids or more” being treated, she recalled.

Today, Brody is at home recuperating and is slowly recovering.

“Our nights are still pretty rough. I feel like he’s feeling a little better now, we’re on Day 7. As far as walking outside, he gets winded very easily, his breathing isn’t where it should be and he still has lots of big coughing spells,” Vowell said.

Brody’s struggle with the virus has left the family shaken.

“It has scared him a lot. Our COVID units in our area had shut down pretty much and we didn’t hear about it this summer, we didn’t worry about the virus as much but now I think it’s definitely scared him to the point that he feels he is definitely more leery of it,” his mother said.

Brody and his family are speaking up to warn people that kids too can suffer greatly from the virus.

“Kids do get sick and [the virus] is real. We’re not out to condemn or condone or any of the political side of it,” Vowell said. “I just want to make other mommas and parents aware that it is real for kids and kids do get sick and it’s a scary thing when they do.”

COVID-19 infections among children has become a growing concern in the U.S.

Nearly 94,000 children’s virus cases were recorded for the week ending Aug. 5, which accounted for roughly 15% of all new cases reported across the nation, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. It’s a major jump from the week prior’s when 39,000 new child cases were reported.

As of Thursday there are 22 children at the Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham hospitalized with COVID-19.

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(NEW YORK) — The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are expected to greenlight booster shots for immune-compromised individuals this week, after mounting evidence reveals they may not reach full protection with their original vaccinations.

But this expanded authorization only will apply to this very narrow group. For the rest of Americans, currently available data suggests all three authorized vaccines are offering good protection at least six months after initial vaccination — likely even longer.

“We believe sooner or later you will need a booster for durability of protection,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking at Thursday’s White House press briefing. “We do not believe that others, elderly or non-elderly, who are not immunocompromised, need a vaccine [booster] right at this moment.”

“We are evaluating this on a day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month basis,” Fauci added. “So, if the data shows us that, in fact, we do need to do that, we’ll be very ready to do it and do it expeditiously.”

Vaccine experts have said protection from current COVID-19 vaccines is expected to wane slightly over time. Meanwhile, the delta variant is expected to chip away slightly at overall vaccine effectiveness. Executives from both Moderna and Pfizer have said booster doses eventually will be needed.

But so far, vaccines are still holding up well, experts said. Some studies have indicated a slight dip in efficacy, but mostly when it comes to protection from symptomatic and mild illness. Data thus far indicates that vaccines are still extremely effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths.

Moderna and Pfizer both reported positive data from their ongoing phase 3 trials, which have continued to monitor volunteers at least six months after their initial shots. Moderna has said its vaccine remains more 93% effective against symptomatic illness after six months, while Pfizer reported a dip in efficacy to 84%, though both studies were conducted with slightly different criteria and prior to the emergence of the delta variant.

Although an independent study from the Mayo Clinic hinted that Pfizer immunity might wane faster than Moderna immunity, experts said it’s likely too soon to say that for sure.

Johnson & Johnson, meanwhile, has yet to report six-month data for its single-shot vaccine. The company, however, has released promising laboratory data showing a strong immune system response up to eight months later. And a real-world study from South Africa showed good protection against delta.

That said, some Americans aren’t waiting for a formal recommendation to get an additional shot. According to an internal CDC briefing reported by ABC News, approximately 1.1 million already have taken booster shots.

Many doctors have cautioned against this. Booster doses are still being studied formally, and there could be still-unknown risks associated with getting them. Researchers are still evaluating side effects, proper dosages and the right time to get one.

“The main thing I really want to stress to everyone,” said Dr. Simone Wildes, an infectious disease specialist at South Shore Health and an ABC News contributor, “is that, right now, we are not recommending booster shots. However, that could change.”

Other doctors and public health specialists also said they’re also not rushing to recommend boosters for the general public. Not only are current vaccines proving to be overwhelmingly effective, but doctors are also still collecting data on the potential impacts of an additional shot. And vaccine producers are still researching whether lower dosages will suffice as potential boosters.

“Everyone wants to know — when is the timeline?” Wildes said.

Experts still aren’t sure.

“We don’t know how long immunity lasts,” said John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “We don’t know what ‘waning’ means. We will clearly see that in the fall as we see a surge, and we’ll understand what delta or any future variant means for cases in the population.”

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(LAS VEGAS) — As many Americans hesitate to get vaccinated against COVID-19, NBA legend Spencer Haywood is teaming up with a medical school in Las Vegas to tackle the mistrust of the health care system prevalent in some communities of color.

The Basketball Hall of Famer and Olympic gold medalist has joined the dean’s advisory committee at Roseman University College of Medicine to work on programs increasing diversity in medicine to tackle this issue.

In an interview with ABC News Live on Thursday, Haywood said that his daughter Shaakira, who is a doctor, inspired him to lend his voice to this cause.

“This crisis that we are facing in the African American community, in particular, in the Hispanic community — we are not being vaccinated because of the fear. There’s misinformation that’s going out, you know, about the vaccine,” Haywood said.

Experts share best masking tips to protect against COVID-19 delta variant
According to Haywood, a lack of diversity in medicine is one of the factors that leads communities of color to mistrust the system and one that he hopes to tackle through his partnership with Roseman.

“It helps when you have a person of your own ilk and your color to come to you and say, ‘Hey, you know, it’s OK to get the vaccine,'” Haywood said, adding that it’s important to train more doctors of color who can serve their own communities.

Dr. Pedro “Joe” Greer Jr., founding dean of Roseman University’s College of Medicine, told ABC News in a statement that the college is grateful to partner with Haywood in “increasing diversity in medicine through programs that inspire youth to pursue medical education and serve their community.”

As delta variant surges, COVID hospitalizations rise 30% over previous week

“As far as the African American community, we have so much fear about getting health care,” said Haywood, who played in the ABA and NBA from 1969 to 1983 and averaged more than 20 points and 10 rebounds per game for his career.

“We need to get out and get vaccinated. It’s so important,” he added. “Otherwise we’re not going to pull out of this as fast as we should here in America.”

The NBA Summer League kicked off in Las Vegas this week after Nevada reinstated an indoor mask mandate.

Clark County, where Vegas is located, has experienced a 26% increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations over the past 14 days, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Meanwhile, the Southern Nevada Health District reports that as of Aug. 6 in Clark County, approximately 55.26% of adults age 18 and older are fully vaccinated. That is just shy of the national figure of 61.3%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And as the more transmissible delta variant surges, COVID-19 cases and deaths are up nationwide by more than 20% compared to last week’s seven-day average, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday, and hospitalizations are up over 30% over the previous week.

ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.

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(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) — Lila Hartley, from Jacksonville, Florida, took matters into her own hands when she heard Duval County Public Schools wouldn’t require masks for the upcoming school year: She wrote a letter to the school board and superintendent pushing for a mask mandate.

“I would like to encourage the requirement of masks at school in Duval County. Right now, especially while the Delta variant is surging, hospitalizing and killing so many kids. I really believe masks should be required,” she wrote in the letter, which was shared with “Good Morning America.”

“This pandemic is still around,” Lila told “GMA” of why she wrote the letter. “People are still dying and getting sick. Masks save lives, and I don’t want my brother to die.”

While Lila and her family are vaccinated, her brother Will, 10, is too young to receive the vaccine.

“I am so worried that if masks are not required my brother could go to school one day and the next be dying in the hospital,” the letter continued. “We are siblings so we have our rivalries but I don’t know what I would do if he died, especially if it was caused by a place that means so much to him, school.”

Will is also a big supporter of masks and finds himself reminding his friends to wear theirs properly.

“Masks do help us,” he told “GMA.” “I wear my mask because even though the rest of my family is vaccinated, there’s still a chance they can get it.”

Lila emailed a copy of her letter to the board on July 26, and has only heard back from one of the board members so far, she said.

On July 30, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order banning schools from requiring masks. If schools are found to be in violation, they may lose state funding.

According to the governor’s office, the order was in response to “several Florida school boards considering or implementing mask mandates” and to “protect parents’ freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.”

Following the executive order, the Duval County school board held a meeting Aug. 3 to decide on whether it would require masks for the upcoming school year.

Lila and her brother demonstrated with a number of others outside the meeting in favor of masks, while her father, Matt Hartley, and other parents, educators, and medical professionals voiced their opinions inside.

“We wanted to support dad because he’s been working hard,” Lila said.

“We’re fighting for ourselves, but we’re fighting for other kids too,” Hartley told “GMA.” “That’s our M.O. — we love our neighbors.”

The board voted 5-2 in favor of requiring masks with a parental opt-out. Parents will not have to provide a reason for opt-outs.

Hartley said that while the vote did “make things a lot better with masking,” he’s “disappointed” as it still leaves a lot of room for people to not wear them.

In a statement provided to ABC News, Duval County School Board Chairwoman Elizabeth Anderson said, “The Board’s emergency policy decision Tuesday night creates the best balance between our deeply held responsibility for the safety and welfare of students and staff while fully respecting parental choice under the Governor’s order.”

“It’s important to wear masks because it keeps each other safe,” Lila, who one day hopes to be secretary of state, said. “If I’m wearing a mask and the other person is wearing a mask then we’re both safe and not giving each other our germs and possibly COVID.”
 

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(NEW YORK) — As COVID-19 infections surge again in the U.S., health officials are warning of a concerning uptick in pediatric cases and hospitalizations across the country, just as many children head back to the classroom.

With more than 48 million children under 12 still not eligible for vaccination, and less than a third of those ages 12 to 17 fully vaccinated, many youths remain at risk for infection.

Since the onset of the pandemic, nearly 4.3 million children have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, with infection rates growing exponentially in recent weeks.

In the last week, 94,000 new pediatric COVID-19 cases were reported, representing 15% of all reported new infections. Similarly, pediatric COVID-19-related hospital admissions are at their highest level since the onset of the pandemic.

“In the last several weeks, we have seen an enormous increase in the number of positive patients for COVID-19,” Dr. Ronald Ford, chief medical officer at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, told ABC News. “Most of these children are coming from the emergency department, and most of them are not sick enough to come into the hospital. However, those that are admitted are sicker than what we’ve seen before, and many of them are requiring care in our sensitive care units.”

In June, there were just over 20 positive pediatric patients who required care from the hospital’s emergency room team, Ford said.

In the month of July, that number increased to over 200 patients, and in recent weeks, the hospital has already cared for 160 patients, and are “well on our way to breaking July’s record.”

Although severe illness remains uncommon among children, according to experts, there are some children, many with underlying conditions, who are so sick that they require intensive care measures, including ventilation.

The rate of pediatric hospital admissions, in children between the ages of 0 and 17, per capita, is now more than four times higher than it was just a month ago.

The increase in pediatric patients, who are coming in much sicker than those hospitalized with COVID-19 last year, has been an alarming development, said Anthony Sanders, nurse manager in Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Emergency Room. It’s “just a lot scarier this time,” he said.

The country’s largest states — California, Texas and Florida — are each dealing with 100 to 200 pediatric COVID-19 patients, according to federal data.

Sanders said that he is often struck by the fact that it is not only the child who tests positive, but also the entire family.

“I think for us the most striking thing is how the increase in the families that are coming in that are positive, not just the one patient but the parents are positive, all the siblings are positive, that’s been the biggest thing for me that’s super concerning because kids are going back to school,” Sanders said.

At Children’s Hospital New Orleans, a federal team has been called in to assist medical staff who are confronted with a significant surge in pediatric patients.

Dr. Nihal Godiwala, a pediatric intensivist at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, told ABC News that he and his team are exhausted.

“This is a surge of COVID happening, and it’s totally preventable, and that’s why it’s been so frustrating for everyone here,” Godiwala told ABC News. “It’s really taking a toll on everybody at this point.”

According to the nearly two dozen states that reported pediatric hospitalizations to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, 0.1% to 1.9% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization. ​Similarly, in states that reported virus-related deaths by age, 0.00% to 0.03% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death.

However, even for those who may not become severely ill from COVID-19, experts say there is an urgent need to collect more data on long-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including the long-term physical impacts of the virus.

Thus, many of these front-line workers are urging that proper precautions be taken, beginning with wearing masks, particularly in large settings, such as schools.

For children still ineligible for the vaccine, masking will be critical in the months to come, Ford said.

“The best thing you can do to protect your child is to keep them away from the virus,” Ford added. “Masking has been shown to reduce the incidence of transmission and reduce the chances of your children getting COVID-19. So, first and foremost masking is really going to be one of the best defenses we have.”

Getting eligible children vaccinated will also play a crucial role in keeping more children out of the hospital, added Dr. Nick Hysmith, medical director of infection prevention at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

“The majority of the patients who have been admitted, are between 10 and 13 years of age, which puts them right at or just below the age of vaccination,” said Hysmith. “This is why it is critically important for adults and children to get vaccinated as soon as possible.”

For those who are still hesitant about getting the vaccine, Godiwala pleaded for them “to stop thinking about yourself and think about others,” such as medically fragile children, the immunocompromised and the population under 12 not yet eligible for a vaccine.

“The vaccine is a lifeline to getting out of COVID and out of this mess,” said Godiwala.

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(NEW YORK) — As the number of COVID-19 infections surges across the United States, with unvaccinated children among the most vulnerable, parents across the country are left wondering what decisions to make to keep their families safe.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the COVID-19 surge, spurred on by the delta variant, is happening as millions of children are heading back to school, forcing kids to brace, along with parents and teachers, for yet another unpredictable, unprecedented school year.

“The way to think about this is, this is a rapidly evolving and dynamically changing situation,” Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News’ chief medical correspondent and a board-certified OBGYN, said. “It requires flexibility and patience and resilience and an open-mindedness to use new data, new information, new knowledge to affect a better health outcome, not only for us as individuals or our children, but for those people around us.”

Ashton, a mother of two college-aged children, said she looks at the latest COVID-19 data not only as a medical doctor, but also as a mother looking out for her children.

“I wear multiple hats,” she said. “I’m speaking to my own children about their behavior, and even though they are both fully vaccinated, what steps can they take to lower their risk as low as possible?”

Here are Ashton’s answers to five of the most pressing questions from parents amid the COVID-19 surge.

1. Why does it seem children are more vulnerable to COVID-19 now, amid the delta variant?

Viruses such as COVID-19 stay alive in their hosts, in this case humans, by mutating, which is what has created the delta variant, according to Ashton.

“The delta variant is one of several variants, you could also think about it as a mutation, compared to the novel strain of the coronavirus,” she said. “And right now, this delta variant definitely appears to be significantly more transmissible … and there is a suggestion that it may be causing more severe illness.”

Currently, only children ages 12 and older are eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. Among children younger than 12 and children of any age who are not vaccinated, the data shows an “almost exponential increase” in the number of pediatric cases of COVID-19, according to Ashton.

“The majority [of the cases], 80-90%, are thought to be the delta variant,” she said. “It is unclear at this point if the pediatric age group is more susceptible to the delta variant or if this is just the delta variant doing its thing and attacking the most vulnerable population, which is, in this case unvaccinated children.”

2. Why is there a renewed call for people, particularly children, to wear face masks?

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its mask guidance and recommended that schools embrace universal masks, backtracking on an earlier recommendation that vaccinated students and staff could go without masks indoors.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), an organization of nearly 70,000 pediatricians, has also called for schools to enforce universal masking mandates.

The reason, according to Ashton, has to do with how much more transmissible the delta variant is than other strains of COVID-19.

“[The CDC] has done outbreak investigations using delta variant data and they have found that the viral load, or the amount of virus that is shed by someone who is vaccinated compared to someone who is unvaccinated, if they’re infected with the delta variant, is largely the same,” Ashton said. “There is very little risk of recommending children of this age group wearing a face covering, and we have seen the impact positive impact of benefits in reducing transmission and infection rates.”

She continued, “It’s always better, especially in the setting of a dramatic increase in case numbers, that we do more and not less, and that’s why you’re seeing these recommendations from the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics.”

The need for face mask wearing extends beyond school to family interactions, like when an unvaccinated child interacts with vaccinated grandparents, for example, according to Ashton.

Medical experts also recommend that unvaccinated people, including children, wear face masks in indoor settings and follow other guidelines, like social distancing and hand washing. They also recommend that families who may have children of different ages who are vaccinated and unvaccinated all wear face masks when in indoor settings like grocery stores and schools.

3. How do I know what activities are safe for my children?

Ashton said parents can consider six factors when deciding what activities are safe for their children: Time, space, people, place, vaccination status and mask wearing.

1. Time: “Will your child be in a given environment for a prolonged period of time. Right now, that number, according to the CDC, is set at 15 minutes cumulative time in 24 hours. We know that the more time exposure, the higher the risk.”

2. Space: “How much space will there be between your child and the people that your child will be around? We know three to six feet right now is kind of the number whereby the risk goes up if you’re in that area. It goes down if you’re greater than six feet away, so that’s important.”

3. People: “How much space there is around people in that environment? When you take into account those parameters, that can help you stratify risk.”

4. Place: “Is there ventilation where [your] children are going to be? Is it an indoor setting, which we know has a higher risk in general? Or is it an outdoor setting, where there is a better wind or ventilation? That is very important.”

5. Vaccination status: “Certainly an option for some parents, depending on the age of their children, is to only put their children in environments where they know that the majority or all of the people in that environment are fully vaccinated. That might not be possible if you’re talking about children under the age of 12.”

6. Mask wearing: “That is a variable that is under our control. So even if everyone is not masked, if your child is masked, that can add some degree of added protection.”

4. Why do we seem to have taken several steps backwards in the pandemic?

“We are still learning about this virus,” said Ashton, responding to parents who may be frustrated by the pace of progress more than one year into the pandemic. “We’re still learning about different populations and their risk to the virus and to different variants every single day.”

“As we learn more, we have to maintain the ability to pivot and adapt our behavior, because if you look at this pandemic, and certainly what’s going on right now, there are really just two variables at play,” she said. “There’s the way the virus is behaving, and there’s the way human beings are behaving. It’s challenging enough if one of those variables is changing, but if both are changing at the same time, it can really be a moving target of sorts.”

5. Is the COVID-19 vaccine worth getting now amid the delta variant?

Absolutely, according to Ashton.

“It is critically important to understand that the goal of these vaccines is to save lives and reduce the risk of hospitalizations,” said Ashton. “And even amongst the delta variant, the vaccines are still largely doing their job.”

“That does not mean 100% of the time. That does not mean there will not be breakthrough cases of people that you know, that I know who become infected with COVID-19,” she said. “What it does mean is that the chance of dying of COVID, requiring ICU admission or hospitalization is dramatically reduced.”

Ashton said people who are getting vaccinated are taking the “most critical step” toward protecting not just themselves but also children who cannot yet be vaccinated.

“We have now nine months of personal experience in this country with hundreds of millions of people having been vaccinated with an excellent safety profile,” she said. “Right now [the vaccine] is the best tool we have so not to use it would be a tremendous missed opportunity.”

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(NEW YORK) — The contagious delta variant has complicated the country’s COVID-19 recovery, and health care experts are again suggesting Americans cover their faces.

They’re now advising all people, both unvaccinated and vaccinated, to wear marks in indoor and crowded settings. While the virus may have mutated, medical experts told ABC News people can wear the same masks they’ve used previously.

“The delta variant has raised the stakes,” Maureen Miller, an adjunct associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told ABC News. “The most important thing about the masks is that you wear them properly.”

Miller, a former epidemiologist for the New York City Health Department, said the N95 is the most secure mask to block out the virus and the variants, but due to higher prices and strained supplies, most people should consider other options, such as the cloth masks and surgical masks found in most stores.

The key thing is making sure the mask completely covers one’s mouth and nose.

“If it’s not covering your nose, or if it’s on your chin, it’s not going to protect you,” Miller added.

Dr. Nicole Iovine, chief hospital epidemiologist with UF Health in Gainesville, Florida, also told ABC News that regular face coverings sold in stores should protect people from the delta variant. Iovine also said double-masking is a good strategy, especially if you’re unvaccinated.

“We should think about it as layers of protection,” she said. “If you’re unvaccinated, the only layer you can have is wearing a mask and staying isolated. If you’re vaccinated, you have strong protection, but with a mask on you’re very, very protected.”

Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said the most important rule about masking during the delta surge is being aware of one’s surroundings. Extra care must be taken in situations in which it’s easier for air droplets to spread.

“If you’re in a crowded, poorly ventilated room, it’s a bigger risk than being out in the woods,” he said.

Miller recommended that vaccinated Americans should be masked up in any location where they’re indoors and may be in contact with someone 12 years old or younger, because they’re not yet vaccine eligible.

“The delta variant threw us a nasty curveball and set us back a step,” Miller said. “All of the things that worked before — social distancing, mask-wearing — are all the things that will get us through this next round.”

Anyone seeking help to schedule a free vaccine appointment can log onto vaccines.gov.

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(MIAMI) — Twin sisters Hadley and Delaney Robertson created the BraceTrack app to help people who use scoliosis braces.

The twins, 15, from Miami were both diagnosed with scoliosis at age 12 during their annual checkup in January 2018. According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, scoliosis affects 2-3% of the population, or an estimated 6 to 9 million people, in the United States. It can develop as early as infancy but is typically onset between 10 and 15 years old.

While Delaney’s scoliosis didn’t require treatment, Hadley was diagnosed with idiopathic scoliosis and the curve of her spine was greater than 20 degrees. Doctors prescribed her a back brace that needed to be worn for 18 hours a day to stop the progression, Hadley told Good Morning America.

“Getting used to wearing a brace can be a little daunting,” Hadley, who was able to stop bracing in June 2020, said. “It’s made of a hard plastic so it can be hot to walk around in on a daily basis and it makes it a little bit difficult to do activities like sports.”

Fortunately, if Hadley needed to take off her brace for any reason, she could wear it for extra hours another day to make up for lost time. The true difficulty was in keeping track of not just those banked hours, but also her daily use.

“One thing about that I found really difficult was figuring out how to track the time that I wore it,” Hadley said. “I tried using a lot of different things. I think we tried using a notepad, a whiteboard, and I even tried looking for an app on the app store to see if there was something that could help me track that but there really wasn’t one so we decided to develop one ourselves.”

That same year, the twins began to research more about scoliosis and app development to figure out what functions would best serve people with the condition. While the girls were previously interested in STEM, they had no prior experience with building an app.

“I think one common misconception around this sort of thing is that you have to know everything about an idea to get into it,” Delaney said. “We really didn’t know everything about app development, or scoliosis even. We just jumped in and started doing a lot of research.”

They then worked with an app developer to make sure they had everything they needed to get the app into app stores across all devices, and it officially launched in May 2019.

“Since BraceTrack is a medical app, it was really important that we were HIPAA compliant and that we had all of those things in order,” Delaney said. “So we found an app developer that would be able to help us actualize all of the vision, all of the designs that we had.”

BraceTrack has several functions to assist users. It can keep track of how long a person wears their brace each day as well as how many banked hours they have, which can be applied to other days where they’ve needed to take their brace off.

It even keeps a log of past history of brace use and creates average trend data based off that. Users also have the ability to create a report with all of the data the app collects, which they can save and send to a doctor, relative, or the like.

“These reports make it more easy to interpret and understand where you could be wearing your brace more or where you’re wearing it a lot,” Delaney said.

The app has been downloaded over 1,000 times, the sisters said, and had around 500 active users last week. Currently, BraceTrack has a 4.9 out of 5-star rating on Apple’s App Store with a myriad of positive reviews.

“We’ve been really amazed by the response we’ve gotten to the app,” Hadley said. “People have said that’s made their brace experience a lot easier and that they’re able to track their time and understand better where they are with that.”

Hadley and Delaney also founded Brace for Impact in January 2021, which is a nonprofit that aims to provide funding for scoliosis braces for children and families who are unable to afford them.

“Bracing journeys can be really expensive since braces cost anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000,” Delaney said, adding that braces are custom-fitted and kids may need multiple braces as they grow.

She continued, “It can be a real financial investment and we were sort of thinking about what we could do to support kids who aren’t able to afford these braces since insurance doesn’t always cover them and they’re really important to your spinal health.”

Brace for Impact has raised $120,000 to date to for four of its partner scoliosis centers: Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, Shriners Hospital for Children, Children’s Diagnostic and Treatment Center and Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.

“We’ve just been really amazed by the places we’ve been working with,” Delaney said. “The doctors and hospital staff that we’ve been talking to about this have just been so amazing and so inspiring.”

“It’s been really amazing so far to watch how Brace for Impact has been able to help kids,” Hadley said.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The Biden White House is continuing to push back against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABC News reported earlier this week that the state of Florida had requested 300 ventilators from the federal government to help handle the recent increase in COVID-19 related hospitalizations in the state. DeSantis said Tuesday, though, that he was unaware of that request.

 On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded to DeSantis, saying that “as a policy, we don’t send ventilators to states without their interest in receiving the ventilators.”

“I think the most important question here is why would you oppose receiving ventiltators when you clearly need those in your state, given the percentage of hospitalizations that are occuring in Florida,” she added. When asked whether it was possible that DeSantis could have been unaware of the request, she suggested the question was better posed to DeSantis and his office.

The pushback, Psaki said, wasn’t a personal attack on DeSantis.

“Our war is not on [him]. It’s on the virus, which we’re trying to kneecap, and he does not seem to want to participate in the effort to kneecap the virus.”

DeSantis has also instituted a statewide ban on mask requirements. Earlier this week, he suggested that the state Board of Education could withhold pay from school leaders who implement mask mandates for students.

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