The head of the UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester says there are 107 people in intensive care beds and he's calling it the“worst day we’ve ever had” for intensive care usage at city hospitals. The Worcester Telegram and Gazette reports Dr. Eric Dickson says the number of patients in ICU is up 20 from a week ago, which at that time was also a high-water mark.
It is a mystery that has left doctors questioning the basic tenets of biology: Covid-19 patients who are talking and apparently not in distress, but who have oxygen levels low enough to typically cause unconsciousness or even death.
The U.S. government was slow to understand how much coronavirus was spreading from Europe, which helped drive the acceleration of outbreaks across the nation, a top health official said Friday. Limited testing and delayed travel alerts for areas outside China contributed to the jump in U.S. cases starting in late February, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, the No. 2 official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) today announced 226 new cases of the novel coronavirus COVID-19, and 11 additional deaths. This brings the total number of people confirmed to have COVID-19 in South Carolina to 6,489 and those who have died to 267. Nine of the deaths occurred in elderly individuals from Edgefield (1), Florence (1), Greenville (1), Laurens (1), Lee (1), Lexington (1), and Richland (3) counties.
The White House has blocked Dr. Anthony Fauci from testifying about the response to the coronavirus crisis before the House Appropriations Committee, a spokesman for the committee told NBC News on Friday.
The number of confirmed coronavirus-related deaths in Massachusetts topped 3,700 on Friday. The state reported 154 new deaths, bringing to 3,716 the total number of deaths related to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, that have been recorded in Massachusetts.