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COVID-19

More public COVID-19 testing coming

HOLLIDAYSBURG — As the COVID-19 vaccination process continues to develop, arrangements are being made to again offer COVID-19 testing in February at the Blair County Convention Center. AMI Expeditionary Healthcare, the state Department of Health contractor that set up a COVID-19 drive-thru testing clinic at the convention center in November, will return to the center from Feb. 5-9 for more testing, county Director of Public Safety Mark Taylor said Tuesday when addressing commissioners. More information about the first-come, first-serve testing opportunity will be released as it ...

Levine: Biden vaccine plan OK

The state Department of Health has no problem with the upcoming Biden administration’s plan to stop withholding second doses of the COVID-19 vaccines and instead, distribute them as they’re manufactured — relying on the pharmaceutical firms to keep up with demand, so recipients’ second doses are available on schedule, according to Health Secretary Rachel Levine, speaking in a news conference Monday. But Dr. Levine is not OK with Great Britain’s strategy of postponing second doses beyond the prescribed three weeks for the Pfizer vaccine and four weeks for the Moderna vaccine or ...

State makes more eligible for vaccine

Pennsylvania on Friday released an updated coronavirus vaccine plan that makes more people eligible for shots in the initial phases of the rollout. Health care workers and nursing home residents remain at the front of the line, followed by people 75 years and older and “essential workers” like police officers, grocery store clerks and teachers. With COVID-19 continuing to rage throughout Pennsylvania, health officials cautioned the state is still months away from having enough doses of the two approved vaccines to inoculate the general public. “I know it is difficult to ask, ...

COVID-19 surveillance planned

The director of testing and contact tracing for the state Department of Health plans to launch systematic surveillance testing for COVID-19 within the next three months to identify pockets of infected but asymptomatic people. Currently, surveillance testing — which can help determine the extent of the pandemic generally, rather than simply the infection status of individuals — has occurred in long-term care facilities and on college campuses and is happening, along with generalized testing, at various testing sites around the state, whenever people without symptoms are checked, ...

Teen’s murder, COVID-19 voted top local stories of 2020

Although the COVID-19 pandemic dominated national and local news during 2020, the February murder of an Altoona teenager was voted as the top local story of the year by the Mirror’s news staff. The following is a look at the top stories as chosen by the Mirror news staff. 1. Devon ...

What really matters — Lessons from COVID’s unfulfilled resolutions

She’d wanted to frame and hang them — just three printed pictures that had been sitting in Lucy O’Donoghue’s suburban Atlanta house since the year began. That’s all. Yet with a full-time job and two small kids, she hadn’t found the time. But when COVID-19 slowed life to a ...