News Room

Hospitals across the country are ramping up their efforts to figure out how to store, track and administer coronavirus vaccine doses following the recent news that an effective vaccine could be on its way within weeks or months. Hospitals will play a key role once a vaccine receives an emergency use authorization from the FDA, which could happen as soon as next month. They will move quickly to vaccinate their front-line healthcare workers and then their patients and surrounding communities.

Operation Warp Speed, a Trump administration initiative to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines as fast as possible, should be lauded as a successful endeavour in what has otherwise been a poor effort to deal with the coronavirus, experts say. "No doubt, Operation Warp Speed is a huge success," said Tinglong Dai, associate professor of Operations Management and Business Analytics at Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School in Baltimore.

As coronavirus ravages the U.S. population, the disease may be taking uninfected people with it. More people died from March through May this year than died last year, even after stripping out the numbers of people who have succumbed to COVID-19, according to a new study out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Researchers have identified increases in deaths during the pandemic compared with previous years. Although this is not surprising in itself, many of these excess deaths are not due to COVID-19. The authors of a new study took a look at the demographics of this increase.

The seven-day University of Wisconsin coronavirus percent positive rose to 2.9% on Wednesday. UW’s two largest residence halls, Sellery and Witte, required mandatory testing Monday amid these rising cases. University Spokesperson Meredith McGlone said in an interview the Wisconsin State Journal that UW has modified the testing process to quickly identify rises in cases and case clusters.