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COVID-19

AASD lifts mask rule

Starting today, Altoona Area School District students will no longer be required to wear masks inside district buildings, but masks will still be required on all district transportation. In an email to district parents Sunday afternoon, Altoona Superintendent Charles A. Prijatelj said the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s move Friday to affirm the Commonwealth Court’s order vacating the statewide masking mandate means students will no longer be required to wear face masks inside school buildings. “As is stated in the AASD Health & Safety Plan, fully vaccinated students and staff are ...

HASD makes masks optional

HOLLIDAYSBURG — The Hollidaysburg Area School Board voted 5-4 to allow optional masking in its schools Wednesday night. Board members Carmen Bilek and Jennifer Costanza, who were recently elected to four-year terms in November’s election, were vital in the meeting’s motions. During the first public comment session, Duncansville resident Michael Eardley called for the board to make a motion to eliminate masks, contact tracing and quarantines. Eardley cited his own child’s experiences in multiple quarantines, saying he felt his child received less of an education because of ...

Court mulls legality of school mask mandate

HARRISBURG — A lawyer for Pennsylvania’s acting health secretary on Wednesday defended the validity of the secretary’s order requiring masks inside K-12 schools to fight COVID-19, asking state Supreme Court justices to focus on a single regulation. “If this court finds that the masking order falls outside of that, then we lose,” Senior Deputy Attorney General Sean A. Kirkpatrick said during oral argument over a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the masking order. The regulation, adopted in 2000, gives the Health Department authority to direct a “modified quarantine of ...

COVID surge: Geisinger runs out of patient beds

One of Pennsylvania’s largest health systems has run out of beds because of the latest COVID-19 surge, with doctors and nurses practicing “waiting room medicine” on patients who are forced to endure 10- to 20-hour delays in the emergency department, officials said Wednesday. Geisinger is running at 110% capacity across its nine hospitals in central and northeastern Pennsylvania — overrun with largely unvaccinated COVID-19 patients who represent a quarter to well over half of all admissions, said Dr. Jaewon Ryu, Geisinger’s president and chief executive officer. He said he ...

State College extends mask rule

The Borough of State College has extended its temporary Emergency Masking Ordinance through Jan. 31, 2022. Borough council at its Monday, Dec. 6, meeting voted to extend Ordinance 2170 that mandates all borough businesses and other public facilities to require face coverings to be worn indoors for all persons, in conformance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on masking in high transmission areas, regardless of vaccination status. Businesses must post a notice at all public entries that face coverings/masks are required regardless of vaccination status. ...

UPMC: Injections working as well as IV for recovery

Monoclonal antibody therapy involving four quick injections works “essentially” as well in helping patients recover from COVID-19 as the more cumbersome intravenous infusions, according to a recent UPMC clinical trial. The injection routine has allowed UPMC to double the number of patients it can help with monoclonal therapy — which largely prevents hospitalization and death for those who qualify under Food and Drug Administration rules, according to Erin McCreary, infectious disease pharmacist at UPMC and panelist in a virtual news conference Thursday. The UPMC study is the ...