'At The Forefront' Of COVID-19 Fight, Doctor Dies Of Coronavirus

CORSICANA, TX — Dr. Kent Rogers has been at the helm of the fight against the coronavirus in Navarro County, Texas, since the pandemic began nearly 11 months ago. In recent days, he became one of the nearly 500,000 Americans who have died from it.

Rogers used all known COVID-19 treatments but decided to move to comfort care instead of being on a ventilator long term, the Rev Ed Monk of St. John's Episcopal Church told Rogers' Facebook following.

The late Navarro County Regional Hospital doctor was "at the forefront" of the fight against COVID-19 as the local health authority in the county, the Navarro County Office of Emergency Management said in a statement on social media.

"Navarro County Office of Emergency Management: His leadership and key stakeholder knowledge have been invaluable as we have navigated this entire pandemic," the statement continued.

Rogers was a local icon, serving as a long-time school board member and as the physician for the local high school football team. A bronze statue of Rogers was put up in his honor in his hometown Corsicana in 2019.

“The way the community honored Dr. Rogers with a bronze statue and ceremony underscores the will of Corsicana residents to recognize and celebrate those who give back to make our city better for everyone,” Corsicana Mayor Don Denbow told the Corsicana Daily Sun.

Monk said Rogers left one simple message before he died: "1) Wear a mask, 2) Wash your hands, 3) Stay 6 feet away."

The Latest

With two vaccines approved and having immunized millions of Americans already, the United States would be in a good position, leading health experts have said, had it not been for the coronavirus variants that have arrived in the country from South Africa, the United Kingdom and Brazil.

“If we didn’t have these variants looming,” we would be in a good place, Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston told The New York Times.

Experts are predicting the variants will take over by spring, Hotez said.

“It changes everything," he said. "Now, we really have to vaccinate the American population by late spring, early summer.”

When the country's vaccine rollout began, concerns were raised over how people in rural areas might struggle to get access to it. Places such as the mostly rural West Virginia were considered likely to struggle.

But the Mountaineer State, to some surprise, has been near the top of the states boasting the strongest vaccine administration rates. As of Sunday, 85 percent of the doses the state has received had been administered, NBC News reports, citing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers.

The state's success on the vaccine front can be attributed, in some part, to its decision not to enter into a federal partnership with giants such as Walgreens and CVS, and instead rely on local drugstores, according to the NBC News report.

Interestingly, North Dakota — another mostly rural state — is the only one ahead of West Virginia in vaccine distribution. In more-urban areas, struggles have been apparent.

In Philadelphia, a vaccine scandal has erupted in connection with a 22-year-old's startup company having been given thousands of doses of the vaccine by the city, NPR has reported. The city's deputy health commissioner, Caroline Johnson, resigned over the weekend in the wake of the controversy, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In Los Angeles, the mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium had to close temporarily on Saturday as anti-vaccine protesters blocked the entrance, the Los Angeles Times reported. People were already waiting in line for hours when faced with the 55-minute delay, the report states.

A post on social media described the demonstration as the "Scamdemic Protest/March," according to the Times.

As President Joe Biden looks to see his proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package move forward, he was expected to meet Monday with 10 Senate Republicans who sent him a letter looking to negotiate the proposal. The Republicans' smaller counterproposal calls for $160 billion for vaccines, testing, treatment and personal protective equipment and more-targeted relief than the president's plan to issue $1,400 stimulus checks for most Americans, according to The Associated Press.

GOP Ohio Sen. Rob Portman suggested that the checks should be limited to individuals who make no more than $50,000 per year and families who make $100,000 per year.

"My hope is that the president will meet with us, and we'll be able to work out something that is bipartisan," Portman said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

The virus continues to hamper the American school system nearly a year after schools first began implementing versions of remote learning and hybrid models.

School day schedules have been compressed to deal with the challenges of social distancing and remote learning, the AP stated in a recent report. The pace of instruction has also been slowed by the need to cover subjects that were skipped following the school shutdowns last spring and by students' virus-related distractions and the difficulty in addressing both online and in-person audiences.

That means English teachers have been forced to decide which books to skip, and history educators which lessons to condense, among many adjustments.

"I have to make decisions constantly about what material I'm not going to cover because it is impossible to get it all done," Leigh Foy, a chemistry and Advanced Placement biology teacher at York Suburban High School in Pennsylvania, told the AP.

Meanwhile, researchers are now linking new diabetes cases to the virus. As many as 14.4 percent of coronavirus patients who had experienced severe COVID-19 symptoms have developed either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, the Washington Post reported, citing a November analysis from the Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism journal.

Scientists remain unsure, however, whether the virus is making already-developing problems worse, creating new problems, or both.

Newest Numbers

More than 49.9 million vaccine doses have been distributed and 31.1 million administered in the United States as of Monday afternoon, according to the CDC. More than 25.2 million people have received one dose and more than 5.6 million have received two.

At least 2,097 deaths and 120,256 new cases of coronavirus were reported in the United States on Sunday, according to a Washington Post database. The Post's reporting shows that over the past week, new daily reported cases fell 13.4 percent, new daily reported deaths rose 3.1 percent and COVID-19-related hospitalizations fell 14 percent.

Currently, 95,013 people are hospitalized with a coronavirus-related illness in the United States, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

As of Monday, 35 states and U.S. territories remained above the positive testing rate recommended by the World Health Organization to safely reopen. To safely reopen, the WHO recommends states remain at 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days.

As of Monday afternoon, the United States had reported more than 26.2 million cases and more than 442,400 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 The Washington Post.

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