Dwell: Coronavirus day by day information updates, April 24: What to know in the present day about COVID-19 within the Seattle space, Washington state and the world

Washington State Health reiterated federal advisers and regulators on Friday when they called for the use of the COVID vaccine after an 11-day hiatus in response to 15 women who developed blood clots from nearly 8 million people who received the vaccine -19 from Johnson & Johnson to resume. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration announced that the recommended break was lifted shortly after a CDC advisory panel announced that recordings would resume. It was unclear when the single-dose recordings of Johnson & Johnson in Washington State could be resumed.

As Oregon COVID-19 cases continue to rise, officials warned Friday that a third of the state’s counties are again at risk from heightened restrictions, including restricting restaurants to outdoor dining and closing gyms. In early March, the state’s COVID-19 positivity rate was 3.9%. As of Thursday it was 5.7%. Additionally, Oregon’s COVID-19 hospital stays have increased 39% over the past week and 109% since early March.

We update this page with the latest news about the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the Seattle area, the US and the world.

Click here to see the live updates from the past few days and all other coronavirus reports. Here’s how we are tracking the daily spread in Washington and the world.

8:35 a.m.

Their stories about sleep in the coronavirus era: spider and corpse dreams, restless nights, Netflix at 3 a.m.

Pandemic sleep story # 1:

Andrea Vitalich is an assistant district attorney in the King County Division of Sexually Violent Predators.

“I’ve always had intermittent insomnia, but now I wake up between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. almost every morning and usually can’t get back to sleep for at least two hours because my mind is racing,” she says.

Vitalich says her pandemic dreams were “much livelier and stranger than I remember in the past”.

Like the one about dried up corpses. This is the kind of dream that you remember long after you wake up.

Read the whole story here.

– Erik Lacitis

8:29 am

Can’t leave your home for a COVID-19 vaccine? Mobile teams make home calls in the Seattle area for those who really need them

To get a COVID-19 shot in the usual way, Abel Córdova and his caregiver would have had to do the following:

• Arrange transportation to accommodate his wheelchair.
• Wait up to 30 minutes for the ride to arrive.
• Travel to the vaccination site and wait for the shot.
• Go home.

“By then he’ll be sitting in the chair for at least an hour and a half, maybe longer, and he’s in pain,” said Heather Morrill, who looks after Córdova at home.

Instead of doing the stressful hike, Córdova – whose right side was paralyzed from a stroke a few years ago – got a house call this week.

A two-man team from South County Fire Station 10 gave the 63-year-old Lynnwood man the first dose of Pfizer vaccine in his own bed.

“Let’s go,” said Kim Sharpe, the paramedic who stuck the needle in his arm. “It’s so quick and you’re done.”

From a public health perspective, the COVID-19 vaccination is a numbers game that is designed to get most people vaccinated as soon as possible. This is especially important now as more infectious varieties are triggering a fourth wave of infections across Washington.

Read the whole story here.

– Sandi Doughton

8:23 a.m.

From scarcity to abundance, the US is faced with a call to share vaccines

Victor Guevara knows that people his age have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in many countries. His own relatives in Houston were vaccinated.

But the 72-year-old Honduran lawyer, like so many others in his country, is still waiting. And increasingly, he wonders why the United States is not doing more to help, especially as American vaccine supply begins to surpass demand and doses approved for use in other parts of the world but not the United States are inactive stay.

“We live in a state of defenselessness at all levels,” said Guevara of the situation in his Central American homeland.

Honduras has only received 59,000 doses of vaccine for its 10 million people. Similar gaps in access to vaccines exist across Africa, where only 36 million doses have been purchased for the 1.3 billion people of the continent as well as parts of Asia.

In the United States, more than a quarter of the population – nearly 90 million people – have been fully vaccinated and supplies are so robust that some states are rejecting planned federal government shipments.

This large access gap is leading to increased demands on the US worldwide to deliver vaccines to poorer countries. This creates an early test for President Joe Biden, who is committed to restoring American leadership on the world stage and proving cautious nations that the US is a reliable partner after years of cutbacks under the Trump administration.

Read the whole story here.

-The Associated Press

Seattle Times staff and news services