BILLINGS, Mont. - RiverStone Health is reporting Yellowstone County has seen an increase in COVID-19 patients in local hospitals, with the majority of patients reportedly not being fully vaccinated against
BILLINGS - As more and more people receive their COVID-19 vaccines, some may experience side effects or reactions. Medical experts say reactions to any vaccine are completely normal. In fact, getting some sort of reaction is actually a sure sign the vaccine is working. It means your immune system is revving up and doing what we want it to do, Dr. Susan Petersen, from St. Vincent Health Care, said.
Dr. Neil Ku, Hospital Epidemiologist at Billings Clinic, says soreness or pain in the injection site is the most common side effect, but fatigue, headaches or muscle aches can also occur. He also says those who have had COVID-19 in the past tend to have more intense side effects. Most of these symptoms, he says, can be treated with Tylenol or Ibuprofen.
Nine days after he tested positive for COVID-19, Dr. Adam Zelka knew things weren’t going well.
For days, he’d been trying to recover, and each day, things got a little worse. And then worse.
He woke up that day feeling dehydrated and weak. He told his wife, who is a nurse, that after their kids went to school, she’d need to drive him to the urgent-care clinic.
Zelka, a family practice physician at St. Vincent Healthcare in Billings, was relieved to find out that his lungs looked clear – no signs of pneumonia. He was given some fluids, medications and sent home.
Some COVID-19 tests in Yellowstone County are being checked for signs of a variant strain of COVID-19 first identified in the United Kingdom that may be more transmissible than other more widely circulating strains.
The strain remained undetected in Montana as of Friday. It will probably reach Yellowstone County at some point, said Dr. Neil Ku, Billings Clinic infectious disease specialist. There s likely a very good chance that s going to happen, unfortunately, Ku said, pointing to early efforts to isolate COVID-19 only to later discover the virus had been circulating more widely than was initially known.
While it s completely normal for viruses to mutate, a more infectious variant of COVID-19 in Yellowstone County could have implications for how the virus is dealt with at the local level, although existing public health guidelines at this point remain the recommended means of reducing the risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19 even in the case of this new variant.
Billings Clinic treats first patients at Outpatient COVID-19 Infusion Unit fairfieldsuntimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from fairfieldsuntimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.