Public Safety
-
The Osceola County Board of Commissioners approved the purchase of new portable and dual band radios at a cost of $330,552 during its meeting Dec. 16, by a vote of 5-1. -
City Council is considering two options that would charge for paramedic care provided by the Monterey Fire Department when ambulance transport is needed. Some are concerned it would discourage people from calling 911.
-
Gov. Bob Ferguson said he would request an expedited emergency declaration from the federal government, seeking to unlock federal resources and financial support, as flooding continues in Western Washington this week.
More Stories
-
As local economies begin to reopen and more people go back to work, they may be at higher risk of falling ill. The evidence indicates that low-wage workers who can’t work from home have been at particular risk.
-
Compared with homes reporting no patient infections, California facilities with one or more patients with a COVID-19 case had on average 25% fewer registered nurses per resident in the final three months of 2019.
-
Dispatchers for the city’s 311 call line have reported that some pet owners have refused to release their animals to first responders when they had to seek treatment for the virus and wouldn’t be home for some time.
-
The staff barely spoke as they tended to the patient, who contracted the virus while on dialysis and living in a nursing home. When they did talk, they raised their voices above echoes of their masks, face shields and hoods.
-
Expert infection prevention specialists say that gathering the best available evidence, often from other virus outbreaks, and applying it to the coronavirus results in today’s guidelines for mitigating spread of the disease.
-
Jury trials in Dodge County Circuit Court are suspended until late May, with the current health order from Gov. Tony Evers set to expire May 26. Several jury trials are on the calendar after that point, and possible jurors will have to come into the courthouse for service.
-
CDC data shows that the 15% of people that live in rural areas have higher rates of preventable death from heart disease, stroke and other ailments, as well as higher rates of underlying conditions like smoking and obesity.
-
Nationwide, contact tracing is the key to reopening businesses and resuming some form of normal life as the coronavirus pandemic begins to subside, epidemiologists say. But no federal plan or funding is on the horizon.
-
Two county DAs and New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli are coordinating with other law enforcement officials to protect the public from Internet scammers who are using COVID-19 to rip off unsuspecting people.
-
Each patient’s room contains equipment that never leaves that room, to reduce the danger of nurses carrying the virus from a room and potentially into another, in addition to “washing their hands continuously.”
-
The pandemic sheds light on the disproportionately high death rate among blacks. In Detroit, nearly 80 percent of the population is black, but the city has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths: 922 deaths.
-
Erie County is not alone it its struggles. With most protective health equipment produced overseas and U.S. manufacturers unable to meet overwhelming demand, the competition among local governments stateside is immense.
-
Poison control officials in Kansas have marked a 40% increase in the ingestion of toxic chemicals following remarks made by President Trump, who seemed to suggest COVID-19 could be treated by injecting disinfectant.
-
Vancouver’s Fire Department has tested three firefighters for COVID-19, one of whom was positive. Firefighters are taking the crisis seriously, which has reduced the risk of getting sick, despite their line of work.
-
“We had isolation gowns on the way to San Francisco and then diverted to France,” said Mayor London Breed. Another order of equipment went through customs and then was “confiscated” by FEMA for other places.
-
The governor contrasted the state and Northeast’s ongoing battle with conditions in some other states, particularly across the South, where governors have started to relax stay-at-home advisories.
-
Local officials already are talking through possible issues. A COVID-19 task force in Virginia Beach is coordinating with regional partners in Norfolk and Chesapeake on how the virus could impact temporary shelters in a storm event.
-
Medical professionals, as well as police officers, firefighters and paramedics, had to adjust the way they carry out everyday tasks with limited information about COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
