Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg is one of 16 Department of Defense (DoD) locations in the continental United States receiving doses of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech this week. Fort Bragg is also DoD s only initial vaccination site in North Carolina so far as details on when doses may reach Marine Corps installations in Eastern North Carolina have not yet been announced.
A Dec. 9 DoD news article published on the Military Health System website said the department’s distribution plan “prioritizes those providing direct medical care, maintaining essential national security and installation functions, deploying forces, and those beneficiaries at the highest risk for developing severe illness from COVID-19.”
Courtesy Atrium Health
Atrium Health s Medical Director of Infection Prevention Dr. Katie Passaretti was the first to get the shot in North Carolina, Atrium said Monday. I just got my first COVID vaccine, Passaretti said. I feel perfectly fine.
UPDATE: Atrium Health s Medical Director of Infection Prevention Dr. Katie Passaretti just became the first person in North Carolina to be vaccinated for COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/Le2D1iqFR2 Atrium Health (@AtriumHealth) December 14, 2020
Describing how she felt Monday, Passaretty said, Just a moment of hope, a moment of potential for change of the course that we re on with the pandemic right now. I couldn t be more excited.
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Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported each morning this week: Monday,
299,181; Tuesday, 300,482.
For nearly a third of a million people in the United States who have died from COVID-19 this year and the tens of thousands in this country destined to become fatalities before the coronavirus is in the past, Monday’s cheering for a vaccine cure came too late.
In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, some small-scale studies found high rates of myocarditis, or heart inflammation, among college athletes who had previously tested positive for COVID-19. That prompted some universities to do cardiac testing on all athletes who were infected throughout the year, but a new study released Saturday suggests such blanket testing is unnecessary, ESPN reports.
Among the 3,018 athletes examined in the study, only 21 exhibited signs of possible, probable, or definite myocarditis, and those who did have heart issues were more likely to have had moderate COVID-19 and/or cardiopulmonary symptoms during the infections.
Dr. Jonathan Drezner, the director of the University of Washington Medicine Center for Sports Cardiology and a co-principal investigator of the study, said the results indicate athletes who had mild or no COVID-19 symptoms probably don t need to be screened for myocarditis. I would simply be comfortable doing a good review of sy