INFOGRAM. EM and Response. Information Sharing and Analysis July 2021

 

View as a webpage / Share     Volume 21 — Issue 26 | July 1, 2021     New guidance from CDC on post-COVID conditions As new data continues to emerge on the COVID-19 pandemic, clinicians and scientists have become increasingly alarmed with a syndrome that has been informally termed “long COVID” – continued symptoms of COVID-19 that last 3 weeks or more after the diagnosis. Long COVID patients have a broad range of overlapping and often debilitating symptoms, such as muscle pain or chest pain, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, and severe fatigue. The physical symptoms of long COVID seem to be independent of the severity of the initial infection symptoms, according to preliminary research on this emerging pattern of illness. In June 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released Evaluating and Caring for Patients with Post-COVID Conditions: Interim Guidance. The CDC defines “post-COVID conditions” as “an umbrella term for the wide range of physical and mental health consequences experienced by some patients that are present four or more weeks after SARS-CoV-2 infection, including by patients who had initial mild or asymptomatic acute infection.” In addition to offering the most updated recommendations for health care providers, the CDC’s new guidance provides resources for patients suffering with these conditions, including information on very recently established support and advocacy groups for long COVID patients. An April 2021 article in FireRescue1 stresses that, for those who have recovered from or are recovering from COVID-19, it is important to watch for potential long-term symptoms and to allow adequate time for the body to recover. The fire service will need to be attentive to the ability of firefighters to respond to full operational capacity following a prolonged recovery period. Knowledge of post-COVID conditions is likely to change rapidly with ongoing research. The CDC recommends that both healthcare professionals and patients continue to check CDC’s website for updates on evolving guidance for post-COVID conditions. (Sources: CDC, FireRescue1) FEMA seeks public feedback on two Urban Search & Rescue resource types The recent tragic building collapse of the Surfside condo tower in Miami-Dade County, Florida resulted in deployment of several urban search and rescue teams around the country to help with rescue and recovery efforts. These elite resources are highly technically skilled and technologically equipped, and their capabilities are mission-critical during a major disaster such as the Surfside condo structural collapse. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) National Integration Center is seeking public feedback on two Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Job Title/Position Qualifications. These resource typing documents enhance the interoperability and effectiveness of mutual aid by establishing baseline qualifications for Urban Search & Rescue Logistics and Medical Specialists. This facilitates the sharing of deployable US&R resources at all jurisdictional levels. National engagement provides an opportunity for interested parties to comment on the draft documents to ensure they are relevant to all implementing partners. If you have experience with urban search and rescue, you can help by giving FEMA your feedback on these two resource-typed positions. This 30-day national engagement period will conclude at 5:00 p.m. EST on July 29, 2021. To provide feedback, review the draft documents, complete the feedback form [Excel file download, 16 KB] with your comments, and submit the form to FEMA-NIMS@fema.dhs.gov no later than 5:00 p.m. EST on July 29, 2021. (Source: FEMA) Highlights New guidance from CDC on post-COVID conditions FEMA seeks public feedback on two Urban Search & Rescue resource types Updated Funding Mechanisms Guide for Public Safety Communications from CISA, SAFECOM, NCSWIC Webinar: Emergency Response at the January 6 Incident at the US Capitol Cyber Threats The U.S. Fire Administration operates the Emergency Management and Response – Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EMR-ISAC). For information regarding the EMR-ISAC visit www.usfa.dhs.gov/emr-isac or contact the EMR-ISAC office at: (301) 447-1325 and/or fema-emr-isac@fema.dhs.gov.   Updated Funding Mechanisms Guide for Public Safety Communications from CISA, SAFECOM, NCSWIC For public safety personnel to effectively respond to incidents and events, there must be reliable, secure, operable, and interoperable communications systems in place. However, the rapid rate of technology evolution means public safety agencies must also plan for the ongoing integration and alignment of technologies such as Land Mobile Radio (LMR), Next Generation 911 (NG911), FirstNet Authority’s Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network, as well as alerts, warnings, and notifications systems. In their efforts to ensure emergency communication systems are in a secure and interoperable state, the public safety community will likely continue to face funding challenges. Public safety agencies need to be able to balance integration and alignment of communications technologies with other competing priorities and funding needs. They also need to be able to prepare clear and concise budget options that identify multiple revenue streams, especially given fluctuating funding levels. To address these needs, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in partnership with SAFECOM and the National Council of Statewide Interoperability Coordinators (NCSWIC), recently released an updated Funding Mechanisms Guide for Public Safety Communications to assist public safety agencies in identifying funding sources for emergency communications projects. This update builds on the 2015 version of the Guide. It highlights strengths, challenges, and opportunities for public safety communications funding, and incorporates examples of real-world successes and challenges from states and localities. The Funding Mechanisms Guide assists agencies in determining whether a particular strategy for obtaining funding is suitable for their community. To assist in identifying appropriate solutions, this document summarizes the Emergency Communications System Lifecycle Planning Guide Compendium’s pre-planning steps. These steps help agencies look past initial capital investments to consider acquisitions, repairs, and upgrades as necessary costs, and plan for the entire system lifecycle. Along with this guidance, the document includes an extensive inventory of all different types of funding mechanisms, and a list of resources for additional considerations, guidance, and best practices. The Funding Mechanisms Guide, along with many of the resources referenced within the Guide, are available within CISA’s Sustaining Public Safety Communications Systems Documents collection. CISA encourages public safety agency leaders to visit SAFECOM’s Funding Resources page, where you can find guidance on grant funding for emergency communications projects, as well as brief descriptions of all of the resources provided in CISA’s Sustaining Public Safety Communications Systems Documents collection. (Source: CISA) Webinar: Emergency Response at the January 6 Incident at the US Capitol The January 6 incident at the United States Capitol presented a unique set of circumstances for the District of Columbia (DC) Fire and EMS Department: a planned protest turned into a riot. There are important lessons to be learned about unified command; working with multiple agencies; having adequate resources; and making decisions in a changing tactical environment. The International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) will host a webinar on Tuesday, July 20, 2021, from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. EST to discuss the emergency response at the January 6 Incident at the U.S. Capitol. At this webinar, the Chief and Deputy Chief from the DC Fire and EMS Department will discuss the issues that arose on January 6 and lessons that can be learned for fire and EMS agencies. This webinar is free to join and open to anyone, but registration is required. (Source: IAFC)   Cyber Information and Incident Assistance Links MS-ISAC SOC@cisecurity.org 1-866-787-4722 IdentityTheft.gov IC3 Cybercrime Support Network General Information Links FTC scam list CISA alerts Law Enforcement Cyber Center TLP Information CISA’s CSET Tool sets sights on ransomware threat The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released a new module in its Cyber Security Evaluation Tool (CSET): the Ransomware Readiness Assessment (RRA). CSET is a desktop software tool that guides network defenders through a step-by-step process to evaluate their cybersecurity practices on their networks. CSET—applicable to both information technology (IT) and industrial control system (ICS) networks—enables users to perform a comprehensive evaluation of their cybersecurity posture using many recognized government and industry standards and recommendations. CISA strongly encourages all organizations to take the CSET Ransomware Readiness Assessment, available at https://github.com/cisagov/cset/releases/tag/v10.3.0.0. (Source: CISA) CISA is developing a catalog of Bad Practices As recent incidents have demonstrated, cyberattacks against critical infrastructure can have significant impacts on the critical functions of government and the private sector. All organizations, and particularly those supporting designated Critical Infrastructure or National Critical Functions (NCF) should implement an effective cybersecurity program to protect against cyber threats and manage cyber risk in a manner commensurate with the criticality of those NCFs to national security, national economic security, and/or national public health and safety.   CISA is developing a catalog of Bad Practices that are exceptionally risky, especially in organizations supporting Critical Infrastructure or NCFs. The presence of these Bad Practices in organizations that support Critical Infrastructure or NCFs is exceptionally dangerous and increases risk to our critical infrastructure, on which we rely for national security, economic stability, and life, health, and safety of the public. Entries in the catalog will be listed here as they are added. (Source: CISA) Microsoft: SolarWinds hackers continue to target IT companies Microsoft says it has observed new activity associated with Nobelium, the Russia-linked threat actor that compromised IT management and monitoring solutions provider SolarWinds. The SolarWinds attack was brought to light in early December 2020 and it involved compromising SolarWinds’ Orion monitoring product to deliver trojanized updates to the company’s customers worldwide, in an effort to breach their networks. On Friday, Microsoft revealed that it recently observed password spray and brute-force attacks associated with current Nobelium activity, with targets identified in 36 countries. (Source: Security Week) BIOS Disconnect: new high-severity bugs affect 128 Dell PC and tablet models Cybersecurity researchers on Thursday disclosed a chain of vulnerabilities affecting the BIOSConnect feature within Dell Client BIOS that could be abused by a privileged network adversary to gain arbitrary code execution at the BIOS/UEFI level of the affected device. In all, the flaws affect 128 Dell models spanning across consumer and business laptops, desktops, and tablets, totaling an estimated 30 million individual devices. Worse, the weaknesses also impact computers that have Secure Boot enabled, a security feature designed to prevent rootkits from being installed at boot time in memory. CISA’s National Cyber Awareness System encourages users and administrators to review the Dell Security Advisory DSA-2019-084 and apply the necessary update. (Source: The Hacker News) NSA shares guidance on securing voice, video communications The National Security Agency (NSA) has shared mitigations and best practices that systems administrators should follow when securing Unified Communications (UC) and Voice and Video over IP (VVoIP) call-processing systems. Since these communication systems are tightly integrated with other IT equipment within enterprise networks, they also inadvertently increase the attack surface by introducing new vulnerabilities and the potential for covert access to an organization's communications. Improperly secured UC/VVoIP devices are exposed to the same security risks and targeted by threat actors through spyware, viruses, software vulnerabilities, and other malicious means if not adequately secured and configured. Visit the NSA’s website to read the abridged and full versions of NSA’s guidance. (Source: Bleeping Computer)     The InfoGram is distributed weekly to provide members of the Emergency Services Sector with information concerning the protection of their critical infrastructures.   Fair Use Notice: This InfoGram may contain copyrighted material that was not specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The EMR-ISAC believes this constitutes “fair use” of copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use copyrighted material contained within this document for your own purposes that go beyond “fair use,” you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Disclaimer of Endorsement: The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement of the linked websites or the information, products or services contained therein. Reference to any specific commercial products, process or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the EMR-ISAC or the U.S. government. Section 504 Notice: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that FEMA grantees provide access to information for people with disabilities. If you need assistance accessing information or have any concerns about access, please contact FEMAWebTeam@fema.dhs.gov.

ADA National Network Learning Session: How Personal Assistant Services Promote the Self-Determination of People with Disabilities Recovering from Disaster"

 

ADA National Network: Emergency Management and Preparedness-Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities The following is provided by the Pacific ADA Center Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

 

Announcing a New Webinar - "ADA National Network Learning Session: How Personal Assistant Services Promote the Self-Determination of People with Disabilities Recovering from Disaster" July 8th, 2021 Registration for this webinar is now open Webinars begin at ET: 2.30pm, CT: 1.30pm, MT:12.30pm, PT:11.30am, Hawaii: 9.30am during mainland Standard Time; 8.30am during mainland Daylight Savings Time. Registration: Free on-line at http://adapresentations.org/registrationEM.php Registration closes at midnight, July 7, 2021. All webinars offer captioning. Requests for sign language interpreters must be made the Monday before the webinar to support@adapacific.org. For all other accessibility questions about Zoom webinar conferencing software, go to https://zoom.us/accessibility. The Personal Assistance Services Addendum to the Mass Care/Emergency Assistance Pandemic Planning Considerations released in January 2021 increases collaboration, planning, and knowledge surrounding the importance of establishing continuity of services for people with disabilities, prior to a disaster. Without proper planning for, or providing, Personal Assistance Services at the onset of a disaster sheltering mission, the health and safety of disaster survivors may be at risk. Learning objectives: Understanding important information regarding ensuring equitable survivor services through continuity of Personal Assistance Services (PAS). Understanding legal obligations, and potential reimbursement for services rendered. Presenters: Linda Mastandrea serves as the Director of the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination (ODIC). The office leads FEMA's commitment to whole-community emergency management by integrating individuals with disabilities into all aspects of disaster preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. Ms. Mastandrea has built a reputation as a subject matter expert on inclusive emergency management practices. She has provided training, consultation and technical assistance to emergency managers around the nation and served as a Disability Integration Adviser Reservist with FEMA. Zachary Usher currently serves as the branch chief for mass care, voluntary agency coordination, and community services at FEMA. In this role, he works with voluntary organization, faith based, and other partner organizations to help survivors and communities recover from disasters. Zach has worked in emergency management for 19 years, including roles in both mitigation and recovery. Star Black serves as the FEMA Public Assistance Training Deputy Section Chief out of FEMA Headquarters which is responsible for all Public Assistance course content/delivery, webinars, and the Grants Portal/Grants Manager hotline. Since 2002, she has served in the Public Assistance Program working with State, Local Tribes, and Territories assisting Applicants through the FEMA grant process. She not only has had over 210 deployments during her career, but has performed in various Public Assistance roles. Amy Nicholas is a Senior Attorney Advisor at the National Council on Disability (NCD) and has been with NCD for over six years. Amy has subject matter expertise in subminimum wage/AbilityOne, FEMA/emergency management and transportation. Amy served as NCD designee on FEMA's National Advisory Council (NAC) IPAWS Subcommittee and has represented NCD on multiple other emergency management committees during her tenure. Prior to joining NCD, Amy worked at the Department of Transportation as an Equal Opportunity Specialist in its Federal Transit Administration Office of Civil Rights. Mary Casey-Lockyer is currently the Senior Associate for Disaster Health Services at the national headquarters of the American Red Cross. For close to ten years, she has fulfilled this role for program development and continuous quality improvement for Disaster Health Services at national headquarters and manages a cadre of 2600 + Disaster Health Services volunteers. As a Disaster Health Services manager/chief with the Red Cross, she has been on twenty national deployments, most recently to the Disaster Relief Operation in Saipan and supporting other Red Cross Disaster Relief Operations from national headquarters' Disaster Operations Coordination Center (DOCC). Mary is currently assigned as Senior Medical Advisor to Red Cross national disaster operations. Everett Sedgwick is FEMA Individual Assistance's first Disability Advisor working in the Mass Care/Voluntary Agency/Community Services Branch. He was with the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination for seven years before joining IA in 2019. Before joining the ODIC staff in 2011, he was with the FEMA IA Mass Care and Emergency Services Section where he was the Project Manager for FEMAs 2010 "Guidance on Planning for Integration of Functional Needs Support Services in General Population Shelters" and the "Guidance on Planning for Personal Assistance Services In General Population Shelters". To view upcoming sessions, go to http://adapresentations.org/scheduleEM.php To see previous sessions, go to http://www.adapresentations.org/archiveEM.php The information presented in this webinar is intended solely as informal guidance, and is neither a determination of legal rights or responsibilities by NIDILRR.

COVID-19 State Projections 7.01

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COVID-19 State Projections 7.01.21 Posted: 01 Jul 2021 07:29 AM PDT Leveraging over 15 years of support to HHS for medical consequence modeling and our proprietary  artificial intelligence (AI) models, IEM believes that our COVID-19 model outputs can be used to  assist localities and their medical facilities to better prepare for an increase in hospitalizations,  to better plan for and locate drive-through testing facilities, and to determine where increased l evels of transmission may be occurring. Our AI model provides an accurate 7-day projections t hat can be used for operational and logistical planning. Alabama Projection 07.01.21 Alaska Projection 07.01.21 Arizona Projection 07.01.21 Arkansas Projection 07.01.21 California Projection 07.01.21 Colorado Projection 07.01.21 Connecticut Projection 07.01.21 Delaware Projection 07.01.21 Florida Projection 07.01.21 Georgia Projection 07.01.21 Guam Projection 07.01.21 Hawaii Projection 07.01.21 Idaho Projection 07.01.21 Illinois Projection 07.01.21 Indiana Projection 07.01.21 Iowa Projection 07.01.21 Kansas Projection 07.01.21 Kentucky Projection 07.01.21 Louisiana Projection 07.01.21 Maine Projection 07.01.21 Maryland Projection 07.01.21 Massachusetts Projection 07.01.21 Michigan Projection 07.01.21 Minnesota Projection 07.01.21 Mississippi Projection 07.01.21 Missouri Projection 07.01.21 Montana Projection 07.01.21 Nebraska Projection 07.01.21 Nevada Projection 07.01.21 New Hampshire Projection 07.01.21 New Jersey Projection 07.01.21 New Mexico Projection 07.01.21 New York Projection 07.01.21 North Carolina Projection 07.01.21 North Dakota Projection 07.01.21 Ohio Projection 07.01.21 Oklahoma Projection 07.01.21 Oregon Projection 07.01.21 Pennsylvania Projection 07.01.21 Puerto Rico Projection 07.01.21 Rhode Island Projection 07.01.21 South Carolina Projection 07.01.21 South Dakota Projection 07.01.21 Tennessee Projection 07.01.21 Texas Projection 07.01.21 US Virgin Islands Projection 07.01.21 Utah Projection 07.01.21 Virginia Projection 07.01.21 Vermont Projection 07.01.21 Washington Projection 07.01.21 Washington, D.C. Projection 07.01.21 West Virginia Projection 07.01.21 Wisconsin Projection 07.01.21 Wyoming Projection 07.01.21 ⟪ Return to Projections Overview The post COVID-19 State Projections 7.01.21 appeared first on IEM.

NIMHD is Hiring Social and Behavioral Sciences Administrators July 2021

 

NIMHD is Hiring Social and Behavioral Sciences Administrators NIMHD envisions an America in which all populations will have an equal opportunity to live long, healthy, and productive lives. We seek multiple candidates with a commitment to scientific excellence and the energy, enthusiasm, and innovative thinking to improve minority health and reduce health disparities. NIMHD is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive work environment and we strongly welcome candidates from underrepresented groups to apply. Delegated Examining (Open to the Public) GS-12/13/14 Social and Behavioral Sciences Administrator (Program Officer—Minority Health and Health Disparities) Merit Promotion (Open to Status Candidates) GS-12/13/14 Social and Behavioral Sciences Administrator (Program Officer—Minority Health and Health Disparities) Apply online on USAJOBS from June 30 to July 9, 2021.