Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday the state will spend another $125 million to increase staffing at hospitals amid a surge in coronavirus cases that has forced them to turn patients away.
The state has 1,562 intensive care unit beds but had 1,560 hospitalized patients needing intensive care Monday, according to Dr. Don Williamson, the former state health officer who now heads the Alabama Hospital Association.
Federal health officials have been actively looking at whether extra shots for the vaccinated would be needed as early as this fall, reviewing case numbers in the U.S. as well as the situation in other countries such as Israel, where preliminary studies suggest the vaccine's protection against serious illness dropped among those vaccinated in January.
Emily Osment, an American Red Cross spokesperson, said her organization has fielded questions from clients worried that vaccinated blood would be "tainted," capable of transmitting components from the COVID vaccines.
Health systems lost an estimated $2.5 billion in potential physical therapy revenue across the 3.4 million commercially insured patients studied in a new report by Luna.
