 You need a financial advisor with the freedom to focus on your specific needs. Whatever your goals, Reid Potter can create a game plan tailored to you. Call Reid at 432-0777 at Pikeville, Kentucky to learn more. Monday, January 24th, physicians from Lexington hospitals gathered via Zoom to discuss the increasing case numbers and hospitalizations from COVID-19. If you look at the numbers, the highest that they've been through the whole pandemic of people with positive tests, keep in mind that those numbers are a vast underestimate of what's actually happening. It's at least four times that much. More people are doing home tests now and not reporting into public health authority, so we have huge numbers of people out there. I think if anyone doesn't have family and friends who've been infected, they'll know about that soon. With the case numbers continuing to climb, doctors are urging people to wear a mask whenever they're around others and obtaining a KN95. I think any of these masks that are well-fitting and multi-layered are going to be better than no mask at all. And remember, masks don't work if they're not over your face. So they don't work if you're down here or if you pull them down to your chin or you have to cover your nose and your mouth. And you have to keep it covered. Don't pull it down when you're talking on the telephone in front of other people, especially if you might have symptoms or I have been exposed to someone with COVID. The Omicron variant is also causing an uptick in pediatric hospitalizations. Omicron has been mild to the general pediatric population. They're getting cold symptoms and self-resolving, but not all of them. And I think that's the piece that we're still struggling with is some kids have underlying lung problems or just might be unlucky and have a more severe case that are getting hospitalized. They come in dehydrated, coordinating oxygen. And this is really difficult for the whole family. So we're really encouraging vaccinations for pediatric patients. We have vaccinations approved down to the age five. The vaccine is 91% effective at preventing multi-system inflammatory syndrome if a vaccinated child has a breakthrough case. So we would like to please get out the word to our community. We have plenty of availability. We have appointments open for kids to come get their vaccinations. To get free at-home COVID-19 tests, go to www.covid-test.gov. For Mountain Top News, I'm Breanna Robinson.