Teen Takes Coronavirus Seriously After 95 Days In Hospital

ACROSS AMERICA — Shanderick Dorsey's attitude toward the coronavirus has shifted completely from when the pandemic began 10 months ago.

At 18, the young North Carolina man known to his friends as "Shammy" couldn't envision living with an illness that could strip him of his ability to walk or talk, or that would lead doctors to tell his mother there was a real possibility her son wouldn't live to see 19.

But that's exactly what the coronavirus did.

Despite all the precautions his mother, Yateria Thomas, put in place, Dorsey contracted the virus in April.

While his mother had seemingly taken every precaution to protect herself and her children from the coronavirus, Dorsey acknowledges he didn't take the pandemic seriously.

"At first, I didn't believe there was a virus going around," Dorsey told Patch.

As the virus settled into his body, Dorsey's oxygen level plummeted and his blood pressure dropped dramatically. He was put on an ECHMO machine — a heart-lung device that provides prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to patients.

After 95 days confined to a bed at Wake Forest Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, Dorsey was released on July 17. He would need to go through physical therapy to learn how to walk again.

Now, after initially not taking the coronavirus seriously, Dorsey's attitude has changed dramatically. He never goes anywhere without a mask, and he washes his hands and uses hand sanitizer multiple times over the course of a day.

He gladly spreads the message of following guidelines designed to protect people from a virus that is still alive and well despite the development of two vaccines.

"I don't take [the coronavirus] for granted no more," Dorsey said. "There's still too many people dying because of the coronavirus, and I ain't going to go through it again."

Read more via Greensboro, NC Patch

The Latest

Some of the nation's most recognizable venues will be used as coronavirus vaccine sites.

In Los Angeles, the legendary Dodger Stadium will soon shift from a coronavirus testing site to vaccination venue, local officials announced Monday.

This shift in resources will "temporarily reduce testing capacity in L.A. County, but it will more than triple the number of daily vaccines available to be dispersed to Angelenos," according to a statement from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

• Dodger Stadium Will Become A Vaccination Site By Friday

Professional sports stadiums in San Diego and suburban Phoenix have already opened as vaccination sites, according to The Associated Press. The Oakland Coliseum could also be used as a vaccination site, a spokeswoman for the Oakland Athletics has said.

Another more-contagious variant of the coronavirus that originated in the United Kingdom has surfaced in several states across the nation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, estimates that it accounts for less than 0.5 percent of cases in the country so far.

New research suggests that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine may actually protect against the mutation found in the U.K. as well as another more-contagious variant found in South Africa. Pfizer teamed with researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston for laboratory tests to see if the mutation affected its vaccine's ability to do so.

According to The Associated Press, they used blood samples from 20 people who received the vaccine, made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, during a large study of the shots. Antibodies from those vaccine recipients successfully fended off the virus in lab dishes, according to the study posted last week on an online site for researchers.

America's vaccine rollout has not been quick enough, and a new approach should be taken, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said on CBS' "Face the Nation," according to The New York Times.

Gottlieb said federal and state leaders should "hit the reset and adopt a new strategy."

"I think we need to take an all-of-the-above approach and push it out through different channels," he said.

Problems with distributing the vaccine are specifically apparent in Florida, where officials say scammers have already been active in disrupting the process.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody took Eventbrite to task for permitting event schedulers to charge residents age 65 and older for coronavirus vaccine registrations.

"Scammers used the popular event website Eventbrite to pose as county health departments and take or attempt to take payments in exchange for COVID-19 vaccine appointments," Moody said.

Brittany Hershkowitz, senior vice president of the law firm of Burson Cohn & Wolfe, issued her own warning to the Florida Attorney General Monday, calling Moody's assertions "inaccurate and without merit."

"Our team has thoroughly investigated and not found any evidence of vaccine registration events being created with the intent to scam people," Hershkowitz said. "We have confirmed the unofficial event listings in question, some of which included a fee, were the result of user error. More specifically, we have determined people mistakenly created new event listings when they meant to sign up for a time slot."

President-elect Joe Biden has indicated support for releasing nearly all available COVID-19 doses when he takes office in less than two weeks, according to a CNN report.

The move would break with the Trump administration's strategy of holding back half of U.S. vaccine production to ensure second doses are available.

Releasing all doses could accelerate the pace at which people receive the first shot.

As of Monday, nearly 9 million Americans had received their first shot, or 2.7 percent of the U.S. population, according to the CDC. Experts say as much as 85 percent of the population will have to be inoculated to achieve "herd immunity" and vanquish the outbreak, The Associated Press has reported.

Biden's vaccine plan came after a group of governors wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Operation Warp Speed Chief Operating Officer Gen. Gustave Perna pressing the federal government to distribute "reserved doses" of the vaccine to states that need them.

Biden himself received the second dose of the vaccine on Monday.

“The No. 1 priority is getting vaccines in people’s arms as rapidly as we can,” Biden said, according to the AP.

Newest Numbers

At least 3,041 deaths and 148,994 new cases of coronavirus were reported in the United States on Tuesday as of 3 p.m. ET, according to a Washington Post database. The Post's reporting shows that over the past week, new daily cases increased 11.2 percent, new daily reported deaths rose 21.3 percent and coronavirus-related hospitalizations are up 0.3 percent.

Currently, more than 129,748 people are hospitalized with a coronavirus-related illness in the United States, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

As of Tuesday, 48 states and Puerto Rico remained above the positive testing rate recommended by the World Health Organization to safely reopen. Only Vermont, Hawaii and Alaska are currently below that rate. To safely reopen, the WHO recommends states remain at 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the United States had reported more than 22.7 million cases and more than 378,800 deaths from COVID-19-related illnesses, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Stay up to date on the latest coronavirus news via The New York Times or Washington Post.

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