Displaying items by tag: COVID

RALEIGH — COVID-19 vaccine booster shots are now available for more North Carolinians. The Food and Drug Administration has authorized, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 booster shots to help strengthen and extend protections against COVID-19 infections. 

RALEIGH — As COVID-19 cases surged this summer fueled by the Delta variant, hospitalizations and deaths among residents in North Carolina long-term care facilities were significantly lower than during the winter surge, as shown in data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. The decrease in cases and severe illness can be attributed to vaccination for residents and staff of long-term care facilities and to the work done by long-term care providers to implement measures to protect staff and residents from COVID-19.

Closing down school buildings for many months last year — and offering poorly planned and executed virtual schooling as an inadequate substitute — proved to be a disaster for North Carolina children, families, and the education system itself.

RALEIGH — Nearly all 10,000 employees at state-operated healthcare facilities are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and compliant with a mandatory vaccination requirement, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. The department’s Division of State Operated Healthcare Facilities, a state-operated health care system comprised of 14 facilities, moved to mandatory COVID-19 vaccination in July. 

A few weeks ago, a conservative writer at Breitbart, John Nolte, wrote that the liberals are trying to kill conservatives by pushing COVID vaccines. He reasons that liberals know that conservatives will reject anything liberals support, so by encouraging vaccinations, liberals are keeping conservatives from getting vaccinated and thereby killing them COVID. It’s hilarious reasoning because the writer admits two things: conservatives are united less around principles and more around opposition to liberals and, two, conservatives really are stupid enough to own the libs by dying. 

“The day the music died.”

I thought about that song a lot last year. The music didn’t die then, exactly, but rather faded like that final guitar riff, the one before the band waves and turns its collective back on the crowd, who stay hoping the lights don’t come on. Not yet, they plead. One more song.

RALEIGH — Today, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services updated North Carolina county vaccination data from the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Indian Health Services and Federal Bureau of Prisons to reflect the county of residence for the person vaccinated. This will result in the vaccination rate changing for several counties on the North Carolina COVID-19 Dashboard.

RALEIGH — Beginning Oct. 4, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ COVID-19 Support Services Program, along with the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina will provide food assistance to North Carolinians in 34 counties who face food insecurity resulting from the need to isolate or quarantine due to COVID-19. Additionally, NCDHHS is expanding program eligibility to North Carolinians in those counties who are at high risk for severe illness due to COVID-19, as defined by the CDC.

RALEIGH — The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services today, Sept. 30, at 5 p.m. will host a live fireside chat and tele-town hall on NC Medicaid and COVID-19 testing, treatment and prevention, including safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. 

RALEIGH — North Carolina’s Community Health Worker Initiative will expand as part of the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion's Community Health Workers for COVID Response and Resilient Communities initiative. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services was awarded a total of $9 million with $3 million per year distributed over the next three years.