Your COVID home test is positive. Now what?

 So you’ve tested for COVID-19 using an at-home test, and the results are positive.

Now what do you do?

Do you need a PCR test to confirm? Should you call your doctor? The health department?

Below is what health experts have to say.

Do you need a PCR test to confirm? It depends.

The antigen rapid tests are less sensitive than PCR tests, but the bigger issue with rapid tests are false negatives vs. false positives.

Especially if you have COVID-19 symptoms -- cough, runny nose, sore throat, fever and/or lost of taste and smell -- a positive result on an at-home test is very likely accurate, says the federal Centers for Disease Control. It “indicates that you likely have a current infection.”

Although many people do follow up with a PCR test to confirm, it’s not necessary, said Dr. Christine Nefcy, chief medical officer at Munson Healthcare based in Traverse City. “

If you can work from home and you have a positive antigen test, I would assume it’s positive and stay home and do your masking and isolation and all that kind of stuff,” she said. “But if you’re required to travel or you’re a frontline health-care worker or first-responder, it might behoove you to do further testing.”

Call your local health department.

In some cases, the home test involves an app that would notify public health authorities, Nefcy said. But if it doesn’t, “we would highly encourage you to call your local health department to report a positive result.”

There are two reasons for that. One is so that a public-health nurse can review your symptoms and living circumstances, and offer advice about how to isolate and whether to seek medical treatment.

“But also it’s important from an epidemiological perspective, so that we know the positivity rate out there,” Nefcy said.

Call your primary care physician.

Giving your primary-care physician a heads-up also is important since COVID can impact your long-term health and you want it to be part of your health record.

“So if you just took a test and never reported a positive result, you’re going to have a much harder time from an insurance perspective” if you develop complications or symptoms of long COVID, Nefcy said.

Also, people at higher risk of developing severe COVID -- which would include people age 65 and older; have co-morbidities such as obesity, diabetes or heart disease, and/or are immune-compromised -- will want to ask their doctor about treatments such as monoclonal antibodies or the new anti-viral pills produced by Pfizer and Merck designed to keep people out of the hospital.

However, those treatments need to occur as soon as possible to be effective.

Those treatments are “for high-risk patients early on in their diagnosis of COVID 19 as a preventive measure so they don’t get sicker,” Nefcy said. “It’s not an option for people who are already hospitalized.”

Notify your close contacts

People with COVID-19 are typically contagious about 48 hours before they develop symptoms. So if you test positive, you should notify the people you might have exposed.

Close contacts are defined as ”those within six feet of an infected person for a total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period (for example, three individual 5-minute exposures for a total of 15 minutes),” according to CDC guidelines. “An infected person can spread COVID-19 starting from two days before they have any symptoms (or, if they are asymptomatic, two days before their specimen that tested positive was collected), until they meet the criteria for discontinuing home isolation.”

Close contacts who are not fully vaccinated know that they should quarantine for 10 to 14 days. This means they should stay home and away from others during this time, the CDC says.

Close contacts who are fully vaccinated do not need to quarantine, but they should continue to wear a mask around others and get tested five to seven days after exposure.

Isolate.

People who test positive for COVID-19 need to isolate for at least five days, regardless of whether they have symptoms.

That means they should stay home, and separate themselves from others in the household or wear a well-fitting mask when they are around others.

“People in isolation should stay in a specific ‘sick room’ or area and use a separate bathroom if available. Everyone who has presumed or confirmed COVID-19 should stay home and isolate from other people for at least five full days (day 0 is the first day of symptoms or the date of the day of the positive viral test for asymptomatic persons),” CDC guidelines say. “They should wear a mask when around others at home and in public for an additional five days.”

Seek immediate help if your symptoms significantly worsen.

Severe COVID can develop very quickly. Call 911 if you have:

• Trouble breathing
• Persistent pain or pressure in the chest
• New confusion
• Inability to wake or stay awake
• Pale, gray, or blue-colored skin, lips, or nail beds, depending on skin tone.

What to expect in terms of illness.

Dr. Craig Spencer, a Manhattan emergency department doctor affiliated with Columbia University, recently tweeted a detailed breakdown of what omicron cases look like -- and much depends on vaccination status.

“Every patient I’ve seen with Covid that’s had a 3rd ‘booster’ dose has had mild symptoms. By mild I mean mostly sore throat. Lots of sore throat. Also some fatigue, maybe some muscle pain. No difficulty breathing. No shortness of breath. All a little uncomfortable, but fine,” Spencer wrote.

“Most patients I’ve seen that had 2 doses of Pfizer/Moderna still had ‘mild’ symptoms, but more than those who had received a third dose. More fatigued. More fever. More coughing. A little more miserable overall. But no shortness of breath. No difficulty breathing. Mostly fine,” he said.

“Most patients I’ve seen that had one dose of J&J and had Covid were worse overall. Felt horrible. Fever for a few days (or more). Weak, tired. Some shortness of breath and cough. But not one needing hospitalization. Not one needing oxygen. Not great. But not life-threatening,” he tweeted.

“And almost every single patient that I’ve taken care of that needed to be admitted for Covid has been unvaccinated. Every one with profound shortness of breath. Every one whose oxygen dropped when they walked. Every one needing oxygen to breath regularly,” he said.

The highly infectious nature of Omicron means it’s more likely that even fully vaccinated persons will get infected, said Dr. Mark Hamed, an emergency room doctor who also serves as the medical officer for eight Michigan counties in the Thumb and northeast Lower Peninsula.

“I think we’re all going to have a date with Omicron or whatever variant is next, but you want to go into it fully prepared,” he said. That means being fully vaccinated and using a mask and social distancing to decrease the exposure to a high viral load.

“We’re probably all going to get exposed unless we sit home and do nothing,” he said. “But if you’re prepared, it’s going to be a very mild infection.”

https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2022/01/your-covid-home-test-is-positive-now-what.html

Stay home or work sick? Omicron poses conundrum

 As the raging omicron variant of COVID-19 infects workers across the nation, millions of those whose jobs don’t provide paid sick days are having to choose between their health and their paycheck.

While many companies instituted more robust sick leave policies at the beginning of the pandemic, some of those have since been scaled back with the rollout of the vaccines, even though omicron has managed to evade the shots. Meanwhile, the current labor shortage is adding to the pressure of workers having to decide whether to show up to their job sick if they can’t afford to stay home.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” Daniel Schneider, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, said. “As staffing gets depleted because people are out sick, that means that those that are on the job have more to do and are even more reluctant to call in sick when they in turn get sick.”

Low-income hourly workers are especially vulnerable. Nearly 80 percent of all private sector workers get at least one paid sick day, according to a national compensation survey of employee benefits conducted in March by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But only 33 percent of workers whose wages are at the bottom 10 percent get paid sick leave, compared with 95 percent in the top 10 percent.

A survey this past fall of roughly 6,600 hourly low-wage workers conducted by Harvard’s Shift Project, which focuses on inequality, found that 65 percent of those workers who reported being sick in the last month said they went to work anyway. That’s lower than the 85 percent who showed up to work sick before the pandemic, but much higher than it should be in the middle of a public health crisis. Schneider says it could get worse because of omicron and the labor shortage.

What’s more, Schneider noted that the share of workers with paid sick leave before the pandemic barely budged during the pandemic — 50 percent versus 51 percent respectively. He further noted many of the working poor surveyed don’t even have $400 in emergency funds, and families will now be even more financially strapped with the expiration of the child tax credit, which had put a few hundred dollars in families’ pockets every month.

The Associated Press interviewed one worker who started a new job with the state of New Mexico last month and started experiencing COVID-like symptoms earlier in the week. The worker, who asked not to be named because it might jeopardize their employment, took a day off to get tested and two more days to wait for the results.

A supervisor called and told the worker they would qualify for paid sick days only if the COVID test turns out to be positive. If the test is negative, the worker will have to take the days without pay, since they haven’t accrued enough time for sick leave.

“I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting my co-workers,” said the worker, who is still awaiting the results and estimates it will cost $160 per day of work missed if they test negative. “Now I wish I just would’ve gone to work and not said anything.”

A Trader Joe’s worker in California, who also asked not to be named because they didn’t want to risk their job, said the company lets workers accrue paid time off that they can use for vacations or sick days. But once that time is used up, employees often feel like they can’t afford to take unpaid days.

“I think many people now come to work sick or with what they call ‘allergies’ because they feel they have no other choice,” the worker said.

Trader Joe’s offered hazard pay until last spring, and even paid time off if workers had COVID-related symptoms. But the worker said those benefits have ended. The company also no longer requires customers to wear masks in all of its stores.

Other companies are similarly curtailing sick time that they offered earlier in the pandemic. Kroger, the country’s biggest traditional grocery chain, is ending some benefits for unvaccinated workers in an attempt to compel more of them to get the jab as COVID-19 cases rise again. Unvaccinated workers will no longer be eligible to receive up to two weeks paid emergency leave if they become infected — a policy that was put into place last year when vaccines were unavailable.

Meanwhile, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, is slashing pandemic-related paid leave in half — from two weeks to one — after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced isolation requirements for people who don’t have symptoms after they test positive.

Workers have received some relief from a growing number of states. In the last decade, 14 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or ballot measures requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

On the federal front, however, the movement has stalled. Congress passed a law in the spring of 2020 requiring most employers to provide paid sick leave for employees with COVID-related illnesses. But the requirement expired on Dec. 31 of that same year. Congress later extended tax credits for employers who voluntarily provide paid sick leave, but the extension lapsed at the end of September, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

In November, the U.S. House passed a version of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan that would require employers to provide 20 days of paid leave for employees who are sick or caring for a family member. But the fate of that bill is uncertain in the Senate.

“We can’t do a patchwork sort of thing. It has to be holistic. It has to be meaningful,” said Josephine Kalipeni, executive director at Family Values @ Work, a national network of 27 state and local coalitions helping to advocate for such policies as paid sick days.

The U.S. is one of only 11 countries worldwide without any federal mandate for paid sick leave, according to a 2020 study by the World Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

On the flipside are small business owners like Dawn Crawley, CEO of House Cleaning Heroes, who can’t afford to pay workers when they are out sick. But Crawley is trying to help in other ways. She recently drove one cleaner who didn’t have a car to a nearby testing site. She later bought the cleaner some medicine, orange juice and oranges.

“If they are out, I try to give them money but at the same time my company has got to survive,” Crawley said. ″If the company goes under, no one has work.”

Even when paid sick leave is available, workers aren’t always made aware of it.

Ingrid Vilorio, who works at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Castro Valley, California, started feeling sick last March and soon tested positive for COVID. Vilorio alerted a supervisor, who didn’t tell her she was eligible for paid sick leave — as well as supplemental COVID leave — under California law.

Vilorio said her doctor told her to take 15 days off, but she decided to take just 10 because she had bills to pay. Months later, a co-worker told Vilorio she was owed sick pay for the time she was off. Working through Fight for $15, a group that works to unionize fast food workers, Vilorio and her colleagues reported the restaurant to the county health department. Shortly after that, she was given back pay.

But Vilorio, who speaks Spanish, said through a translator that problems persist. Workers are still getting sick, she said, and are often afraid to speak up.

“Without our health, we can’t work,” she said. “We’re told that we’re front line workers, but we’re not treated like it.”

https://www.rochesterfirst.com/news/stay-home-or-work-sick-omicron-poses-a-conundrum/

Omicron in kids leading to a new but familiar illness: croup

 Covid-19's omicron variant appears to be affecting children under age 5 in a new way: a harsh, barking cough known as croup.

While croup generally is not harmful, it can be frightening for parents already on edge about their babies and toddlers, too young for the Covid-19 vaccine, becoming infected with the virus.

Doctors say this is most likely occurring because it appears omicron tends to settle higher up in the respiratory tract, rather than deeper in the lungs.

"Little kids' airways are so narrow that it takes far less inflammation to clog them," said Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease expert and director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

When a child with tiny, inflamed airways breathes, it makes a distinctive noise, and can result in a cough that sounds like a dog or a seal.

Creech said that he and his colleagues have noted "croup-like presentations" in young children who test positive for Covid-19. The upper part of kids' airways become very swollen. "When that happens," he said, "there's that characteristic barking cough."

A number of seasonal viruses, including parainfluenza and respiratory syncytial virus, can lead to croup and an infection of the respiratory tract called bronchiolitis. Now it seems, Covid-19 — specifically the omicron variant — should be added to that list.

Dr. Saif Al Qatarneh, a pediatric pulmonologist at West Virginia University, said that he, too, has noted an increase in such diagnoses in tandem with a rise in pediatric Covid cases.

Children under age 5 are not eligible for Covid-19 vaccines.CDC

So far, the omicron variant appears to be less severe than the delta variant, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday during a White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing. 

"But remember the caveat: Rapid community spread is seeing larger numbers of children being hospitalized — again, mostly among the unvaccinated," said Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser.

Al Qatarneh said he and his colleagues are concerned about what may occur in the coming weeks as omicron continues to spread.

"We are still two to three weeks away from the peak of omicron," he said. "The smart thought is to get ready for more patients getting bronchiolitis in children and infants."

A 'bread and butter' diagnosis

One reassuring thought for parents is that croup and bronchiolitis are well-known to doctors, who have had decades of experience treating the conditions.

"Croup is a bread and butter pediatric diagnosis," said Dr. Mark Kline, the physician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital New Orleans. "Infectious croup is one of the first diseases you learn about when you're an intern in pediatrics." Kline's team, too, has noted the uptick in Covid-related croup.

Dr. Amy Edwards, a pediatric infectious disease expert at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, agreed.

"As pediatricians, seeing more kids with croup and bronchiolitis is oddly reassuring," she said, "because we've been dealing with those conditions for our entire careers."

Croup can be "scary to hear, but it doesn't mean there is any problem with the lungs," she said. "The main treatment is to keep the upper airways open and clear until the inflammation subsides."

Croup may require a few days of steroids, but often goes away on its own. Sometimes kids with bronchiolitis need oxygen support or breathing treatments, Edwards said, before generally recovering completely.

Risk for hospitalization as vaccines lag

Edwards and others want to reassure parents that the vast majority of young children with Covid-19 are likely to have mild illness. But it is possible that some children, even previously healthy ones, can develop serious complications that require hospitalization.

On Friday, the CDC released new data showing that hospitalization rates are increasing among the youngest kids for whom there is no vaccine: ages 0 to 4.

More than 4 in 100,000 children under age 5 were admitted to a hospital with Covid-19 as of January 1, the CDC reported.

What's more an NBC News analysis of Health and Human Services data finds that at least 16 states have broken records for the number of pediatric hospitalizations linked to Covid-19.

Nearly 40 percent of the pediatric hospitalizations at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston include children under 5, said Dr. Jim Versalovic, a pathologist who is a co-leader of the hospital's Covid-19 Command Center.

Vaccines are one of the best ways to protect against infection, but those shots are not expected any time soon for the youngest children.

Vanderbilt's Creech, who is also one of the primary researchers for the Moderna KidCOVE clinical trials, predicted a rollout of vaccines for the youngest children no earlier than this summer. Versalovic of Texas Children's, one of the sites for Pfizer-BioNTech's pediatric clinical trials, also said he did not expect any early childhood vaccines until later this year.

The best defense for unvaccinated children, experts said, is to "cocoon" them. That is, surround them with adults and older children who are vaccinated.

"For those who are unvaccinated, this is going to be a rough ride," said Creech. "That may include our young children, and so we really have to protect them as best we can."

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/omicron-variant-kids-croup-cough-rcna11170

Potential for more Covid variants in Alabama as virus spreads, doctors say

 It’s been nearly two years since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. Countless lives have been lost and and for many of us, it may seem like there's no end in sight.

From Alpha to Delta, and now Omicron being the most infectious variant to date. Covid-19 is sticking around much longer than anybody anticipated.

“We may be done with the virus, but the virus is not done with us,” said Dr. Aruna Arora M.D., M.P.H, President of the Alabama Medical Association.

The longer Covid-19 spreads, the more it mutates.

“The perfect situation for the virus to continue to mutate and change, are when you have bodies of people who are together who are simply not protected,” Arora said.

The only way to stop it. Dr. Aruna Arora said is to get vaccinated. Especially, when there are not enough Covid treatments available.

“Right now, there are so few oral pills compared to the number of cases like not even, not even close,” Arora said.

She said without protection, this virus will continue to win.

“Between the fact that we don’t have treatments and there are so many people who are unvaccinated, and just because of the numbers of cases that we see, the hospital systems are going to be overburdened,” Arora said.

This week nearly half of all Covid-19 tests have come back positive in Alabama. All 67 counties are considered “high-risk” for community transmission.

“We are not doing so good," Arora said. "In terms of the nation, we’re one of the lowest vaccinated states."

Luckily, the more viruses continue to mutate, they usually get milder and milder like the common cold, but Arora said we’re not quite there yet.

https://abc3340.com/news/local/potential-for-more-covid-variants-as-virus-spreads-doctors-say

Cyprus’ Deltacron could just be contamination, Imperial College virologist says

 A researcher at Imperial College in London, which has driven much of the UK’s response to the Covid pandemic, says the ‘Deltacron’ variant Cyprus may have discovered “looks to be quite clearly contamination”.

In a Twitter thread, Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist, gave a technical explanation for his conclusion, saying “true recombinants don’t tend to appear until a few weeks/months after there’s been substantial co-circulation – we’re only a couple of weeks into Omicron – I really doubt there are any prevalent recombinants yet..”

The Cypriot ‘Deltacron’ sequences reported by several large media outlets “look to be quite clearly contamination” he said.

Peacock said there were lots of reports of Omicron sequences carrying Delta-like mutations such as P681R or L452R. “Although a subset of these might end up being real, the vast majority will most likely turn out to be contamination or coinfection. No clear signals of anything real or nasty happening (yet),” he added.

To be certain a signal like ‘Deltacron’ is real, he said “you really want multiple sequencing labs finding the same recombinant/homoplasy independently (or at least on different sequencing runs) – ideally you would look into the raw seq files as well and show no mixed bases”.

As far as he understands, such signals were appearing now for two reasons. One is that there is lots of Delta and Omicron circulating in the same areas, and secondly that some older sequencing primer sets were being less effective at picking up parts of Omicron “so low level contamination with Delta [is] being selectively picked up”.

“Finally its worth adding… much of what we understand about what makes Delta more transmissible/infectious, Omicron already possess – its currently unclear to me what Omicron could have to gain from Delta (with what we currently know at least),” he concluded.

Also, Greek virologist, Dr Gkikas Magiorkinis at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and a member of Greece’s scientific team weighed in, posting on Facebook: “Regarding the Deltacron (mix of Delta and Omicron) of Cyprus that was heard a lot in the Greek media recently, the first independent analyses show that this is a technical error of the laboratory in the process of reading the genome…”

On Saturday, Dr Leondios Kostrikis, who leads the team of scientists working at the University of Cyprus’ biotechnology and molecular virology lab, said a new coronavirus variant has been identified in the community.

Speaking to local media, Kostrikis explained that the new variant, which has been dubbed Deltacron, shares the genetic background of the Delta variant along with some of the mutations of Omicron.

He said his team had found a significant number of mutations only previously found in Omicron cases, which is different from other variants as it has 30 mutations. Ten of these were identified in these samples taken in Cyprus, he said.

Kostrikis said the variant was identified in 25 samples taken in Cyprus, 11 of which came from people hospitalised for coronavirus and 14 from the general population.

The frequency of the mutations was higher among those in hospital which could mean there is a correlation between Deltacron and hospitalisations, he said.

Kostrikis said that the sequences of the 25 samples have been submitted to the GISAID database, which will make them available to the global scientific community.

That being said, he concluded, it is still too early to predict whether Deltacron could overpower Delta and Omicron.

Kostrikis responded later on Sunday to the comment from the Greek professor, saying the statement was “incorrect and hasty”.

“They do not know the results we have,” he told Sigmalive.

At the same time, he stated that the said results of the research on Deltacron would be sent to Greece to a distinguished scientist, “in order to establish the truth of the matter”.

He said that in addition to the initial 25 individuals found in Cyprus they had found another 52.

The results showed that there was evolutionary pressure on a Delta ancestor to create polymorphisms like Omicron, and the Deltacron genealogy evolved, he concluded.

https://cyprus-mail.com/2022/01/09/coronavirus-cyprus-deltacron-could-just-be-contamination-imperial-college-virologist-says/

Almost Half Of New York COVID-19 Hospitalizations Not Due To COVID

 by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Nearly half of the patients currently in New York hospitals with COVID-19 are not in the hospital because of COVID-19, the state said Friday.

Forty-three percent of the 11,548 hospitalized patients did not have COVID-19 listed as one of the reasons for admission, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said.

Hochul, a Democrat who is seeking a full term in office, told a press conference that she wanted to drill down on the hospitalization numbers to see how many patients are actually being treated for COVID-19 versus merely having the disease, which often causes no or mild symptoms.

Some of the patients test positive for COVID-19 “but they’re in there for other reasons,” Hochul said.

“Think of all the other reasons people end up at a hospital; it’s an overdose, it’s a car accident, a heart attack.”

Hochul had announced on Monday that the state would be separating out hospitalizations for COVID-19 versus those with the disease, which is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

She said it was important to know the percentage of patients in each category as the number of hospitalizations rise.

“I just want to always be honest with New Yorkers about how bad this is. Yes, the sheer numbers of people infected are high, but I want to see whether or not the hospitalizations correlate with that. And I’m anticipating to see that at least a certain percentage overall are not related to being treated for COVID. But we’re still going to watch hospital capacity,” she said.

Most people admitted for non-COVID reasons who have COVID-19 are in New York City, with approximately half the hospitalizations there meeting that criteria, the data show. In some other areas, the percentage is much lower.

“About 50 percent are admitted with COVID and 50 percent admitted for COVID,” Dr. Steve Corwin, CEO of New York Presbyterian Hospital, which is in the city, told reporters. “Of the patients in the hospital, 50 percent are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated and 50 percent have two doses of the vaccine,” he added.

Partially vaccinated means a person has received one dose of the Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines or has received two doses but two weeks have not elapsed since their second dose.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner who sits on Pfizer’s board, said the percentage was higher than he would have expected.

“Unclear why we’d see so much incidental infection. I’m hearing similar stats in [New Jersey] and [Connecticut] hospitals. Creates some concern [that COVID-19] could be spreading by contact with healthcare system itself,” he wrote on social media.

While many jurisdictions and hospitals do not make clear how many COVID-19 patients are being treated for other reasons, researchers found last year that approximately half of the hospitalizations showed just mild or no COVID-19 symptoms. Another study found four-in-10 children hospitalized with COVID-19 were asymptomatic, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, told reporters Friday that the recent increase in pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations was due in part to non-COVID reasons.

“This is really a consistent problem we keep ignoring it as if it’s not an issue. It is an issue,” Dr. Scott Atlas, part of the White House COVID-19 response team during the Trump administration, told The Epoch Times previously.

Hochul told people who are only experiencing mild symptoms to stay home amid concerns of overburdening New York’s healthcare systems. She said that nearly 5,000 New Yorkers in the past 24 hours alone went to emergency rooms for COVID-19 testing.

“We have capacity. We have 2,000 locations where people can get tested. So, please do not go to an emergency room and tie up the resources, those individuals, so you can get a test. And don’t come in if you have very mild symptoms, either,” she said. “I know you’re anxious, I really understand this, but if you’re an adult that has very minor symptoms, you can handle a runny nose. You can handle your throat being a little bit sore, a little bit of cough. Just treat it as if you would have the flu. Follow the protocols, but please don’t overburden our emergency rooms.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/almost-half-new-york-covid-19-hospitalizations-not-due-covid-19