ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Belmont County Board of Commissioners passed an estimated $22 million budget for 2022 on Wednesday and will refine it through fall. “It takes roughly $22 million a year to operate Belmont County,” Commissioner Jerry Echemann said, adding this was a ‘ballpark ...
WOODSFIELD — The Monroe County Health Department has had few active COVID-19 cases over the past couple of weeks, and officials hope it will remain that way following the Fourth of July weekend. Linda Masters, administrator, said she hopes not to see a spike in cases in the coming weeks after many gatherings were held to celebrate the holiday. She said she is concerned about the population that remains unvaccinated and may have participated in cookouts and parties for the holiday. She urges people who feel sick to stay home and get tested. "It's still out there," she said of the ...
WASHINGTON (AP) — After nearly six months in office, grappling with a pandemic every step of that way, President Joe Biden was determined to party. “This is a holiday weekend,” Biden declared on Friday as he parried journalists’ “negative” questions about the ongoing U.S. troop ...
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Americans enjoying newfound liberty are expected to travel and gather for cookouts, fireworks, concerts and beach outings over the Fourth of July weekend in numbers not seen since pre-pandemic days. Yet lingering restrictions, worker shortages and significant numbers of unvaccinated people mean some may not be as free as they would like to be. And there are fears that the mixing of large numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans at a time when the highly contagious delta variant is spreading rapidly could undo some of the progress made against the ...
Before the pandemic hit, Jacqueline Bartley, a mother of two girls and a boy, had a comfortable life. Then the 41-year-old lost her job at American Airlines, quickly spent her savings and found herself months behind on the $1,350-a-month home she rented. Until then she had never missed a rent payment. Bartley, of Durham, North Carolina, turned to the state’s rental assistance program and was relieved in January to be awarded $8,100. But she says her landlord refused the money after she rejected his request to amend her two-year lease to a shorter period. The program required ...
Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day — now down to under 300 — could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine. An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 107,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 1.1%. And only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in ...
