Day: September 12, 2020

Coronavirus infections in the Dakotas are growing faster than anywhere else in the nation, fueling impassioned debates over masks and personal freedom after months in which the two states avoided the worst of the pandemic.The argument over masks raged this week in Brookings, South Dakota, as the city council considered requiring face coverings in businesses. The city was forced to move its meeting to a local arena to accommodate intense interest, with many citizens speaking against it, before the mask requirement ultimately passed.Amid the brute force of the pandemic, health experts warn that the infections must be contained before care systems are overwhelmed. North Dakota and South Dakota lead the country in new cases per capita over the last two weeks, ranking first and second respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers.South Dakota has also posted some of the country’s highest positivity rates for COVID-19 tests in the last week — more than 17% — an indication that there are more infections than tests are catching.Infections have been spurred by schools and universities reopening and mass gatherings like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which drew hundreds of thousands of people from across the country.”It is not a surprise that South Dakota has one of the highest [COVID-19] reproduction rates in the country,” Brookings City Council member Nick Wendell said as he commented on the many people who forgo masks in public.The Republican governors of both states have eschewed mask requirements.FILE – Residents cheer Smithfield meat plant workers as they begin their shift in Sioux Falls, S.D., May 20, 2020. Federal regulators said Sept. 10, 2020, they had cited Smithfield for failing to protect employees from coronavirus exposure.Not a problem, initiallyThe Dakotas were not always a hot spot. For months, the states appeared to avoid the worst of the pandemic, watching from afar as it raged through large cities. But spiking infection rates have fanned out across the nation, from the East Coast to the Sun Belt and now into the Midwest, where states like Iowa and Kansas are also dealing with surges.When the case count stayed low during the spring and early summer, people grew weary of constantly taking precautions, said Dr. Benjamin Aaker, president of the South Dakota State Medical Association.”People have a tendency to become complacent,” he said. “Then they start to relax the things that they were doing properly, and that’s when the increase in cases starts to go up.”Health officials point out that the COVID-19 case increases have been among younger groups that are not hospitalized at high rates. But infections have not been contained to college campuses.”College students work in places where the vulnerable live, such as nursing homes,” said Dr. Joel Walz, the Grand Forks, North Dakota, city and county health officer. “Some of them are nursing students who are doing rotations where they’re going to see people who are really at risk. I worry about that.”More than 1,000 students at the states’ four largest universities (the University of North Dakota, North Dakota State University, South Dakota State University and University of South Dakota) left campus to quarantine after being exposed to the virus, according to data released by the schools. The Sturgis rally also spread infections across the region, with health officials in 12 states reporting more than 300 cases among people who attended the event.Civil libertiesBut requiring masks has been controversial. In Brookings, opponents said they believed the virus threat was not as serious as portrayed and that a mandate was a violation of civil liberties.”There are a lot of things we have in life that we have to deal with that cause death,” business owner Teresa Holloman told the council. “We live in America, and we have certain inalienable rights.”Though Brookings passed its ban, another hot spot — North Dakota’s Morton County, just west of the capital, Bismarck — soundly rejected a mask requirement after citizens spoke against it. Brookings may be the lone municipality with such an order in the Dakotas outside Native American reservations, which have generally been more vigilant in adopting coronavirus precautions. Native Americans have disproportionately died from COVID-19, accounting for 24% of deaths statewide.FILE – South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem stands on the White House lawn during the Republican National Convention in Washington, Aug. 27, 2020. On Sept. 11, North and South Dakota had led the country in new COVID cases per capita over the past two weeks.North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem have resisted mask requirements. Burgum promotes personal choice but tried to encourage masks with a social media campaign. Noem has discouraged mask requirements, saying she doubts a broad consensus in the medical community that they help prevent infections.At a press briefing, Burgum displayed a slide that showed active cases in neighboring Minnesota rising to record levels since implementing a mask mandate July 25.”In the end, it’s about individual decisions, not what the government does,” he said.Noem, who has yet to appear at a public event with a mask, carved out a reputation as a staunch conservative when she defied calls early in the pandemic for lockdown orders.Pressure to changeBut both governors face increasing pressure to step up their approach.Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious-disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, told MSNBC that he found figures such as those in the Dakotas “disturbing,” especially as fall weather arrives and Americans begin spending more time indoors.”You don’t want to start off already with a baseline that’s so high,” Fauci said.Neither governor appears ready to yield any ground.”We will not be changing that approach,” Noem spokesman Ian Fury said Thursday, citing a low hospitalization rate and the fact that only 3% of intensive-care beds are occupied by COVID patients.Doctors in both states warn that their health care systems remain vulnerable. Small hospitals in rural areas depend on just a handful of large hospitals to handle large inflows of patients or complex procedures, said Dr. Misty Anderson, president of the North Dakota Medical Association.Aaker, the president of the South Dakota physicians group, said medical practices have seen patients delaying routine care during the pandemic, meaning that doctors could soon see an uptick in patients needing more serious attention.”Now we are adding a surge in coronavirus cases potentially,” he said. “They are worried about being overwhelmed.”
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The World Health Organization is raising the prospect that the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Equateur province could spread across borders.The latest figures put the number of cases in the province at 113, including 48 deaths. The disease has spread into 12 of the province’s 17 health zones.Bomongo, the latest area affected by Ebola, is located between the Ubangi and Congo rivers.  It is the second health zone to be affected that borders the Republic of the Congo.The World Health Organization warned that this increases chances that the outbreak could spread into another country.  WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told VOA the risk was heightened because Mbandaka, the capital of Equateur province, also is affected by the outbreak.“The population is also very highly mobile,” Chaib said. “Mbandaka, for example, is a strategic hub on the Congo River, and there is the fear and stigma surrounding the disease. … As it is a trading hub, WHO is helping also to screen travelers.”Chaib said the risk of the disease spreading from Mbandaka to DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, along the busy river route was of concern.“This makes cross-border collaboration between the DRC and Congo more important than ever and will require coordination on disease surveillance and efforts to screen travelers,” she said.Travelers screenedTo prevent the outbreak from spreading further, the WHO said it had screened nearly 1 million travelers for Ebola at 46 strategic points of control. It said those efforts had identified 72 suspected cases of Ebola, helping to reduce the disease’s spread.Equateur province is a sprawling, densely forested area, and moving around it takes a long time. The WHO said the difficulty of reaching infected areas and identifying and getting Ebola victims into treatment was hampering efforts to contain the outbreak.Another problem is funding. The WHO said the COVID-19 pandemic was draining resources and attention away from the Ebola epidemic.The agency said its appeal for $40 million had gone largely unheeded.  The WHO said it had provided $2.3 million from its emergency fund to keep its lifesaving operation in DRC from collapsing.
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Cameroon says it urgently needs more than 2,000 pints of blood to save the lives of about 300 people, including hemodialysis patients, in the central African state’s troubled English-speaking town of Bamenda.Health workers say the fear of COVID-19, coupled with increasing attacks by separatist fighters, has scared away most blood donors. People wounded in the separatist crisis and dialysis patients are being rushed to hospitals in French-speaking towns.
    
Ngum Sirri, 55, was being rushed to the General Hospital in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, in the hospital’s ambulance. The hemodialysis patient was brought in from the English-speaking town of Bamenda by her family members. She says she is in search of blood to save her life.
    
“When you give blood you save lives, so we are pleading with the population to help us donate blood in the general hospital. There are vulnerable people in the hospital who need blood, like those with dialysis, those with sickle cells. We have blood shortage in the hospital,” she said.
    
Sirri is one of the 30 patients from the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda who have received emergency assistance at the General Hospital within the past six days.   
 
Fidelis Ako, head of the blood transfusion unit of the Regional Hospital in Bamenda, confirmed that patients are leaving for French-speaking towns. He said blood banks are becoming empty in English-speaking towns. He said the separatist conflict led many blood donors to escape to safer localities and blood scarcity has now become acute with COVID-19 scare.
    
“The socio-political crisis (separatist conflict) has scared many of our donors away and then now the COVID-19. Since the hospital is a [COVID-19] treatment center, many people think that when you come here you will have coronavirus, and so we could not have persons coming to the hospital to donate blood and as well we could not organize mobile voluntary blood donation campaigns. People should not be afraid of coming to the hospital to make their blood donations because coronavirus is not injectable,” he said.
    
Ako says the blood bank of the Bameda hospital has not been able to help 40 patients in need within seven days.
    
“Last week we received over 70 requests for blood units, but we have been able to transfuse just 31 units of blood. Before the crisis we were transfusing over 4,000 units of blood per year, but as of now, we have not been able to transfuse up to 2,000 units so it shows that we are going to lose more patients because we don’t have blood units at the blood bank,” Ako said.
    
Cameroon said several patients have died as a result of the blood shortage and that its hospitals are finding it difficult to treat civilians wounded in the separatist conflict. Many of the injured are moved to hospitals in French-speaking towns like Bafoussam, Douala and Yaoundé.
 
Ako said health authorities last week announced incentives to encourage blood donation. Civilians who donate blood will have a 50% reduction in their medical bills when they become sick.
 
Non-governmental organizations have been encouraging people to donate blood. Feka Parchibel of the NGO Hope for Vulnerables and Orphans says many children they help also need blood.
    
“Our people are in dire need of blood. I am calling on all blood donors in the North West and the South West regions to help by rushing to the hospitals to donate blood to save lives. All we need is to practice all the preventive measures,” Parchibel said.
 
Cameroon has reported more than 20,000 COVID-19 cases, with 415 deaths since March 5, when the first coronavirus case was reported in the central African state, according to Johns Hopkins University data.   
 
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