WASHINGTON, United States - NBA Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing, now the head basketball coach at Georgetown University, is in hospital with COVID-19.
Ewing, 57, said on Twitter on Friday he had tested positive for the virus.
"This virus is serious and should not be taken lightly," the New York Knicks icon said in a statement. "I want to encourage everyone to stay safe and take care of yourselves and your loved ones.
"Now more than ever, I want to thank healthcare workers and everyone on the front lines. I'll be fine and we will all get through this."
Georgetown's athletics department said in a statement that Ewing was "under care and isolated at a local hospital.
"He is the only member of the men's basketball program to have tested positive for the virus," the statement said.
Ewing, who was a member of the 1992 Olympic gold medal-winning "Dream Team," and also won Olympic gold in 1984, played 17 seasons in the NBA, mostly for the Knicks, earning 11 All-Star selections.
The Knicks sent Ewing good wishes via Twitter saying "Get well soon, Big Fella. Stay strong."
He was the first overall selection in the NBA draft after leading Georgetown to a national championship in 1985 and was Rookie of the Year in 1986.
After retiring from the NBA, he turned to coaching and spent many seasons as an NBA assistant coach before taking over the head coaching job at his alma mater Georgetown.
Agence France-Presse
Staffing agencies, which have deployed thousands of healthcare workers in recent weeks to travel to jobs at hospitals in New York City and other areas hit hard by the new coronavirus, say some of those workers are no longer needed.
The trend, coupled with a flattening in the number of New Yorkers hospitalized with coronavirus infection, reinforces the sense that New York may have reached the peak of the health crisis.
"We have had to reassign some of our travelers who were going to New York," San Diego-based staffing firm Aya Healthcare said in an emailed statement.
Demand for so-called "travel nurses" had during March and early April in cities like New Orleans, and especially New York, which saw the nation's largest spike in cases of COVID-19, the serious respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus.
But New York, which ramped up its hospital bed capacity to around 90,000, has for the last several days had only around 18,000 patients hospitalized.
"We are seeing contracts in New York get cancelled," Lindsey Scott, a spokesperson for staffing agency Trusted Health, said in an email. "The hospitals in New York hired a ton of travelers as the crisis started to ramp up, and then either had more nurses than they needed, or in some cases, more than they could ingest into the system."
She said Trusted Health had "multiple nurses who left their families and in some cases full-time jobs," to travel to New York, only to find that they are no longer needed.
Karla Guerra, 27, an emergency room nurse from Arizona, said her contract at New York's Mt Sinai hospital system was abruptly cancelled on Monday, the day she completed her onsite orientation. She had expected to earn $32,000 for eight weeks' work.
Now, she is $3,000 out of pocket for her travel and first month's rent, and is trying to find a new contract as soon as possible.
"Every day I am here I am losing money," she said. "It's disappointing because I came out here with the intention to help but unfortunately things didn’t pan out."
Mt Sinai did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CALL FOR HELP
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo last month called for medical workers around the country to come to New York and help out in caring for the burgeoning numbers of COVID-19 patients.
To date, around 93,000 medical professionals have signed up through New York's online volunteer portal, around 81,000 have had their credentials vetted and about 12,000 have been referred to hospitals, according to Cuomo spokesman Jason Conwall.
Those efforts are separate from the short-term employment contracts facilitated by agencies like Aya and Trusted Health, which routinely operate to provide hospitals with licensed professionals to fill short-term staffing needs.
Cuomo on Tuesday said the total number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the state fell for the first time since the onset of the outbreak, a sign the state at the epicenter may be at the peak of its crisis.
He said that a total of 18,697 people were hospitalized across New York, down from 18,825 a day earlier and the first tick lower since the crisis began.
U.S. deaths from the virus topped 25,300 on Tuesday, doubling in one week, according to a Reuters tally. So far this week, deaths have increased by about 7% per day on average compared with 14% last week and 30% many days in March. Cases this week are up an average of 5% per day compared with 7.8% last week and 30% per day in March.
In March, many US hospitals were looking to augment their staff in preparation for a surge of coronavirus patients at the same time some healthcare workers were having to be quarantined after being exposed to the virus.
Trusted Health said at that time that nurses were being offered contracts at nearly double their typical pay rates.
-reuters-
A patient is brought out of an ambulance by medical workers wearing personal protective equipment due to COVID-19 concerns outside NYU Langone Medical Center, Monday. The USA reported 23,000 deaths from the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov2-2) with 575,000 known infections in the country.
AP
WASHINGTON - Small and medium-size US businesses have applied for more than $5.4 billion in government-backed loans as a key pillar of the country's coronavirus relief plan took effect, the Trump administration said.
Jovita Carranza, who heads the federal Small Business Administration, said late Friday on Twitter that 17,503 companies -- those with 500 or fewer employees -- had filed applications through local banks for loans totaling more than $5.4 billion.
Friday was the first day the companies were able to apply for the money, intended in large part to help them pay employees' salaries.
The loans, which could eventually total $350 billion, constitute a central part of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief plan adopted by Congress and then signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 27.
"I will immediately ask Congress for more money to support small businesses... if the allocated money runs out," Trump tweeted Saturday.
But things were "so far, way ahead of schedule," he said, adding that Bank of America and community banks "are rocking!"
On Friday, most applications were submitted to local banks. Some of the biggest US banks said they had encountered difficulties with administrative procedures, although Bank of America reported that it had processed tens of thousands of applications by the end of the day.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the Fox Business Network that "our expectation is starting next week" all big banks would be ready.
Companies that receive the money and do not fire their workers -- or that otherwise re-hire those they have laid off -- will have their debt forgiven.
The funds are intended to help hundreds of thousands of restaurants, hair salons and other small- and medium-size businesses pay wages and rent for eight weeks, allowing them to keep staff on the payroll during virus-enforced closures.
"If we run out of money, we're going to go back to Congress and get more money," Mnuchin said. "This is a great, great program with bipartisan support."
But Mnuchin said he was working with key bank executives to iron out any kinks and expected the largest banks to be taking part in the coming week.
Mnuchin also said money transfers to households would start within two weeks, down from the previously estimated three weeks. A family of four can receive up to $3,000 under the larger relief package.
The first economic effects of the crisis struck across the United States in March, when 701,000 jobs were lost. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent.
Agence France-Presse
American singer-songwriter Christopher Cross has tested positive for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), possibly the "worst illness" he has ever had, he said in a Facebook post on April 3.
"Dear Friends, I’m sorry to report that I am among the growing number of Americans who tested positive for the COVID-19 virus," Cross, a multiple Grammy award winner, said in his post.
"I’m not in the habit of discussing medical issues on social media, but I do so in hope this will help other people to understand how serious and how contagious this illness is," he said.
Cross, who is currently receiving care at home, said the disease "is possibly the worst illness I’ve ever had." He did not say how he may have contracted the highly contagious disease.
He urged the public to take COVID-19 seriously and not believe that the illness is "a "hoax" or part of some conspiracy."
"... [M]y advice to you is to understand right now that this is a deadly illness spreading like wildfire throughout the world," he said.
He also encouraged the public to take measures to protect themselves, including staying at home, proper hand washing and following the science.
He also shared a link to guidelines of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "to educate yourself on the facts and protect your loved ones."
"Last but never least: wherever you are in the world, let’s all be kind to one another. Only if we work together can we defeat COVID-19," he said.
Cross, popular for his hits "Sailing" and "Arthur's Theme," is among over 200,000 confirmed US cases of COVID-19, which has also stricken other American celebrities and athletes.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
On New Year’s Eve, Helen Branswell, a reporter at the science and medical news website Stat, was finishing an article about the development of an elusive Ebola vaccine when she got an inkling of her next big story.
“Hopefully this is nothing out of the ordinary,” she wrote on Twitter, adding a link to a report of an “unexplained pneumonia” in central China.
Two days later, she tweeted a South China Morning Post article about the outbreak and wrote, “Not liking the look of this.”
Stat published Branswell’s first article on the “growing cluster of unexplained pneumonia cases” on Jan. 4. There was some indication, she reported, of “a new virus, and perhaps even a new coronavirus.”
Stat, a digital publication in Boston founded in 2015, was early to a story that would dominate the news. In January, a month before the first confirmed case of unknown origin in the United States, the site published articles on the coronavirus’ ability to be spread by asymptomatic carriers; how it could test President Donald Trump’s penchant for undermining established science; and the determination by experts that containing it “may not be feasible.”
“We have realized this was big and have thrown a lot of resources at it, in Stat terms,” Branswell said.
The site has attracted nearly 30 million unique visitors this year, which is four to five times more traffic than usual, said Rick Berke, the executive editor, who oversees the editorial and business departments.
Part of the reason for the surge is that, like many other publications, Stat has placed its pandemic coverage outside its paywall. But with a staff of roughly 30 reporters and editors well versed in health and science, the site was well-positioned to cover an epoch-defining story.
“We’re not seeing stories first because we’re smarter, faster or more savvy,” said Jason Ukman, a managing editor. “It’s just because this is the world we’ve been plugged into the whole time. We were built for this.”
Stat was started by financier John W. Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox and the Liverpool Football Club. Before determining that Boston should have a site to cover the industries of its many hospitals, research labs and biotech startups, Henry bought The Boston Globe from The New York Times Co. for $70 million in 2013.
Berke, formerly a reporter and an editor at The Times, came aboard as a co-founder. Another key member of the leadership team is Linda Henry, Henry’s wife, the managing director.
“This realization John had was that we need to tell the story of what’s happening in life sciences, and that story needs to come from Boston,” Linda Henry said.
Berke hired a staff that included veterans of the beat — like Sharon Begley, once a science columnist and an editor for Newsweek, and Ed Silverman, who had reported on the pharmaceutical industry for The Wall Street Journal — in the belief that there was a demand for a news outlet dedicated to health and medicine.
“There wasn’t a site that aggressively, in a very ambitious way, covered these stories every day as their main focus,” Berke said.
Stat is operated separately from The Globe, but the 2 split some back-office functions, occasionally run each other’s articles and share a headquarters on Exchange Place. The site’s main source of revenue is subscriptions, starting at $35 a month with discounts available. Stat also publishes sponsored content in its newsletters and has started soliciting donations.
Before it attracted a wider readership through its pandemic coverage, Stat drew praise for its investigations of the marketing and prescribing of OxyContin; IBM’s efforts to harness artificial intelligence to cure cancer, which, Stat found, fell short of the hype; and how groupthink may have stymied an Alzheimer’s cure.
With articles written in a straightforward style, Stat is meant for a general audience. But it wants to win over specialists, too — readers like William Hanage, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, who praised the site’s coverage as “accessible” yet “still rigorous.”
“There is no single place on the internet that I would go to better update myself on the diversity of views that are out and circulating,” he said.
Hanage added that Branswell’s reporting on the coronavirus had made her “a godlike figure to people who are infectious-disease epidemiologists.”
Branswell, who has published about 50 articles on the pandemic, was a health reporter at The Canadian Press before taking on the infectious-disease beat at Stat in 2015. In October, she profiled the World Health Organization’s head of health emergencies, Mike Ryan.
“We’re not ready,” Ryan told her. “If we can’t stop Ebola, what hope do we have of stopping … Disease X?”
These days, in her time away from work, Branswell reads mysteries and checks in on friends and family (remotely, of course). She also spends time on Twitter, where she serves up reliable information from experts in the field.
“Helen used Twitter the exact same way with Ebola, with Zika, with SARS,” Ukman said. “She’s really, really good at communicating information about an infectious disease.”
Branswell said the next frontier of testing would be serological — to test not if subjects are carrying the virus but if they have already had it.
A nervous reporter asked: Are we going to get through this?
“It’s not going to be over soon,” she said. “And it’s going to be very painful. But yes. We’ll get through this.”
source: news.abs-cbn.com
