Reuters (August 1)
“As competitors battled for the podium on the third day of Olympic athletics on Sunday, it was Tokyo’s oppressive heat that perhaps dished out the most pain. Punishing conditions greeted athletes and officials as a trackside thermometer touched 40 degrees Celsius (104°F) and the humidity hovered around 60%, with sun beating down on an Olympic Stadium devoid of spectators due to COVID-19.”
Tags: 40 degrees Celsius, Athletes, Battled, Competitors, Conditions, COVID-19, Heat, Humidity, Officials, Olympics, Oppressive, Pain, Podium, Punishing, Spectators, Sun, Tokyo, Trackside
Houston Chronicle (July 27)
“The fourth COVID-19 wave is like a sequel to a movie that no one ever wanted to watch in the first place…. Last week, the number of lab-confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide broke 4,000 for the first time since March” while Greater Houston is seeing over 1,000 people “testing positive per day…more than seven times last month’s daily average.”
Tags: COVID-19, Daily average, Fourth wave, Hospitalizations, Houston, Lab-confirmed, Positive, Sequel, Testing
Chicago Tribune (July 26)
“As companies across the Chicago area welcome workers back to offices, they’re often labeling them as either vaccinated or unvaccinated, with different treatment for each group.” Vaccinated workers may not be “required to wear masks or social distance” while unvaccinated workers may be “told to undergo weekly on-site COVID-19 testing, wear maks and social distance.”
Tags: Chicago, Companies, COVID-19, Masks, Offices, Social distance, Testing, Unvaccinated, Vaccinated, Workers
LA Times (July 23)
Covid-19 cases are “reaching levels in Los Angeles County not seen since the waning days of the winter surge…. Though L.A. County’s indoor mask mandate remains the most expansive in the state, about 60% of Californians now live in a county that either advised or instructs universal face coverings in places such as grocery stores, retail outlets, movie theaters and at restaurants when not eating or drinking.”
Tags: California, COVID-19, Expansive, Grocery stores, Indoor, Mask mandate, Movie theaters, Winter surge
Minneapolis Star Tribune (July 22)
The 1.5 year decline in U.S. life expectancy “is the largest seen in a single year since World War II” and “reflects the pandemic’s sustained toll on Americans, particularly the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color,” where life expectancy fell nearly 3 years for blacks and Latinos.
Tags: Blacks, COVID-19, Decline, Disproportionate, Impact, Life expectancy, Pandemic, U.S., WWII
USA Today (July19)
“A doubling of COVID-19 cases in the past two weeks suggests the USA has entered a fourth wave of the pandemic.” Deaths and hospitalization rates may stay lower than previous waves and instead of ravaging “entire communities,” this wave “is likely to target the unvaccinated, including children, and if rates are high enough, the most vulnerable of the vaccinated—the elderly and the immunocompromised.”
Tags: Children, COVID-19, Deaths, Doubling, Elderly, Fourth wave, Hospitalization, Pandemic, Ravaging, U.S., Unvaccinated, Vulnerable
Boston Globe (July 14)
“The Boston-Cambridge economy may never be the same after the COVID-19 pandemic.” Throughout the region, a “long-term acceptance of remote work and changes in commuting and travel habits” are expected to continue. As employees spend less time in the office, “demand for office space could drop by up to 20 percent, and commuter rail usage could fall between 15 and 50 percent from pre-pandemic levels.”
Tags: Acceptance, Boston, Cambridge, Commuter, Commuting, COVID-19, Economy, Employees, Office, Pandemic, Remote work, Travel habits
San Francisco Chronicle (July 14)
“With nearly half of California residents still not fully immunized against COVID-19 and the highly infectious delta variant in wide circulation, the state could be facing a surge up to two-thirds the size of last summer’s wave of infection despite generally high vaccination rates.” Any new surge will likely prove “far less deadly and disruptive than what the state endured over the winter when more than 22,000 Californians died between Thanksgiving and the end of January and the state was largely shut down for several months.”
Tags: California, COVID-19, Deadly, Delta variant, Disruptive, Immunized, Infectious, Shut down, Surge, Vaccination rates
Chicago Tribune (July 7)
Illinois has successfully vaccinated 70% of its citizen. The “Department of Public Health on Monday reported zero deaths from COVID-19 for the first time since march 2020—a sign of how far the state has come since the pandemic took hold.” Though concerns over variants and the unvaccinated remain, this represents tremendous “change from the spring of 2020 and this past winter when the state was frequently reporting more than 100 deaths a day,” peaking at 238 on December 2.
Tags: 2020, 70, Change, COVID-19, Illinois, Pandemic, Unvaccinated, Vaccinated, Variants, Zero deaths
Philadelphia Inquirer (July 6)
“Interviews with doctors and nurses in the Philadelphia region revealed a sense of relief over a waning pandemic leavened by fears that the virus could surge again. They use different terms to describe what almost a year and a half of being on the front lines of treating COVID-19 has done. Moral injury. Trauma. Burnout. PTSD.” Even now, these “drained health care workers must still maintain a busy schedule as hospitals face a glut of patients who had put off health care out of fears of contracting the virus.”
Tags: Burnout, Busy, COVID-19, Doctors, Drained, Fears, Front lines, Health care workers, Interviews, Nurses, Pandemic, Philadelphia, PTSD, Relief, Surge, Trauma
