Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. The articles are more or less organized with general virus news and anecdotes first, then stories from around the US, followed by an increased number of items from other countries around the globe. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Summary:
New US Covid cases and deaths continued to rise, but the rate of increase of new cases and deaths globally has slowed considerably; in fact, the global Covid new case count would be going down were it not for the increase of new cases in the US.
New US Covid cases reported during the week ending August 14th were 9.3% higher than those reported during the week ending August 7th, which is now 955% more than the number of Covid cases reported during the week ending June 26th, ie, seven weeks earlier. That increase comes after new cases for the week ending August 7th appears to have been revised about 10% higher, which is a rough estimate since I don’t have the data as it was originally published during that week. We have now been averaging over 120,000 new cases a day this past week, 73% higher than during our worst week of last summer, or 28.5% more new cases each day than the 94,379 cases that China reported over the entire 20 months of the pandemic. New US cases during this past week were statististically equivalent to the new cases reported by India, Brazil, Indonesia, and the UK combined.
US deaths attributed to Covid during the week ending August 14th were 7.6% higher than those reported during the prior week, and that represents a 215% increase from the deaths now reported for the week ending July 10th, when our Covid death toll bottomed out after sliding all year. Our Covid death count is still 44.5% below that of the worst week of last summer, more than likely reflecting a number less severe cases contracted by those fully vaccinated.
New Covid cases reported worldwide during the week ending August 14th were just 0.5% higher than those reported during the week ending August 7th, but still 74.6% higher than those recorded during the week ending June 19th, the lowest week for global new cases this year. Without the US totals for both weeks, new Covid cases are down 1.3% globally. Even without removing US totals, this week’s global Covid deaths were 0.2% lower than the prior week’s total, but still 23.1% higher than during the week ending July 3rd, when global death totals were at their low for this year.
The chart below from WorldoMeter shows the daily number of new cases for the US, updated through 14 August. The increase over the last 5 weeks is now clear and is looking exponential with rate of growth about equal to the worst data in late October – early November 2020. If you look closely you can see a hint that the exponential rate of growth might be slowing. Another week might show that to be the case.
The chart below shows the daily number of deaths for the US, updated through 14 August. The daily deaths have clearly stopped declining and the start of a rise is now evident and starting to show some acceleration, but still less than in previous waves.
The number of active cases still remains at an elevated level, and on July 24 moved again above 5 million, now sharply above, over 6.65 million.
The graphics presented by Johns Hopkins show global new cases, global deaths, and global cummulative vaccinations in that order.
According to Johns Hopkins (first and second graphs below), a third wave has clearly begun globally, led by the US. Meanwhile global vaccinations continue to increase (third graph below).
Steven Hansen continues to summarize and link the latest news related to the pandemic and economic recovery every day, 7 days a week, plus displays over a dozen important graphics updated at least daily. The most recent article at the time this is published: 14 August 2021 Coronavirus And Recovery News: China Seems To Now Be Willing To Cooperate In Second Probe Of The Origins Of COVID-19.
This article leads the daily newsletter from Global Economic Intersection every day. Newsletter subscription is free.
Here are the rest of the articles for the past week reviewed and summarized:
Analysis: 15 percent of US coronavirus cases are now children – Recent reports show that children are accounting for 15 percent of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., as the delta variant causes an uptick in cases around the country. According to new data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics, almost 94,000 COVID-19 cases in children were reported over a two-week period from July 29 to August 5, which the academy dubbed “a continuing substantial increase.” The outbreak increased the total number of child cases by 4 percent. Since the pandemic began, nearly 4.3 million children have tested positive for the virus – 14.3 percent of total cumulative cases. The new figures come as children’s hospitals in COVID-19 hotspots have reported an increase in young patients battling the virus. An Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock reported that of 23 patients admitted for COVID-19 under the age 18, 10 were in the ICU and five were placed on ventilators. St. Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri had more than a dozen patients come in with COVID infections last week, notes NBC News. The American Academy of Pediatrics noted that although “at this time, it appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is uncommon among children,” the long-term impacts on their physical and mental health and remain unclear. “There is an urgent need to collect more data,” the report notes. “After declining in early summer, child cases have steadily increased since the beginning of July,” the report added.
Children’s hospitals see spike in COVID-19 cases in high-transmission areas- Hospitals in areas of the country where coronavirus cases are rising are seeing an uptick in the number of children who are sick with the disease, according to a new report. Health care professionals in several states and cities with rising coronavirus case counts told NBC News the age of patients they are treating for coronavirus is lowering, as the delta variant of the virus rips through the nation and parents and teachers prepare for the start of the school year.At Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, 23 patients under 18 have been admitted to the hospital’s system last week, NBC News reported, including ten in the ICU and five on ventilators.More than a dozen children came to St. Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri for coronavirus in the last week of July, the outlet reported, and at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, coronavirus positivity rates have reportedly risen from around 3 percent to above 10 percent among kids. “Absolutely, household infections are the beginning of this pandemic; that is a major driving force in the spread of infections. We see it often within households, parents to children,” Jim Versalovic, the chief pathologist and interim chief pediatrician at Texas Children’s, told NBC News. “We have certainly seen siblings – more than two at times – with an infection at the same time, so spread within households is certainly a very real phenomenon.”The reported surge in coronavirus cases comes as federal health officials race to approve a vaccine for use in children. A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official said a COVID-19 vaccine could be approved under emergency use authorization for children under 12 years old as soon as early to mid-winter.
Falls, difficulty walking, angst: A new study shows Covid can look very different in older people. Americans over 65, the age group that is most vulnerable to the effects of the coronavirus, got an early start on Covid-19 vaccination and have the highest rate in the country – more than 80 percent are fully inoculated.But with infections increasing once more, and hospitalization rising among older adults, a large-scale new study in the Journals of Gerontology provides a timely warning: Covid can look different in older patients.“People expect fever, cough, shortness of breath,” said Allison Marziliano, lead author of the study. But when the researchers combed through the electronic health records of nearly 5,000 people, all over the age of 65, who were hospitalized for Covid-19 at a dozen hospitals in March and April of 2020, they found that one-third had arrived with other symptoms, unexpected ones.The team, searching through records using language software, found that about one-quarter of older patients reported a functional decline. “This was falls, fatigue, weakness, difficulty walking or getting out of bed,” said Dr. Marziliano, a social and health psychologist at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, part of the large Northwell Health system across New York State.Eleven percent experienced altered mental status – “confusion, agitation, forgetfulness, lethargy,” she said. About half the group with atypical symptoms also suffered from at least one of the classic Covid problems – fever, trouble breathing, coughing.
Covid: Dr. Gottlieb says delta variant surge may be the ‘final wave’ in U.S. – Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday the current surge in Covid infections caused by the more contagious delta variant may be the “final wave” of the virus in the United States. “I don’t think Covid is going to be epidemic all through the fall and the winter. I think that this is the final wave, the final act, assuming we don’t have a variant emerge that pierces the immunity offered by prior infection or vaccination,” the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said on “Squawk Box.” “This is probably going to be the wave of infection that ends up affecting the people who refuse to get vaccinated.” Gottlieb said Americans have a couple months remaining where they need to take pandemic-related precautions, particularly in northern U.S. states as cases begin to peak in the South, until the wave of infections begins to decrease again. “I think this is going to be a difficult period right now,” he said. However, Gottlieb said the contagious nature of the delta variant and increased vaccination rates could change the trajectory of future infections. “We’re going to reach some level of populationwide exposure to this virus, either through vaccination or through prior infection that’s going to stop circulating at this level, at this rate,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA from 2017 to 2019 under the Donald Trump administration. The seven-day average of new daily coronavirus cases in the U.S. is 108,624, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That’s up 36% compared with one week ago. The highly transmissible delta variant, first identified in India, is estimated to comprise 83% of all sequenced Covid cases in the country, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. With the surge in infections coinciding with school reopening plans in the fall, Gottlieb warned that schools may need to begin the year with heavier mitigation measures in place like mask-wearing, testing, physical distancing and gathering through pods. “The goal has to be to get schools open and keep them open, and we can’t expect to change all the behaviors in terms of what we’re doing with respect to mitigation in schools and get the same result, especially with this new delta variant which is more contagious, and is inevitably going to be hard to control in the schools,” said Gottlieb, who serves on the board of Covid vaccine maker Pfizer.
Fauci fears a COVID variant worse than Delta could be coming — If America’s current COVID-19 surge continues unabated into the fall and winter, the country will likely face an even more deadly strain of the virus that could evade the current coronavirus vaccines, NIAID director Anthony Fauci told McClatchy Wednesday. Fauci’s comments underscore the importance of acting quickly to vaccinate the tens of millions of Americans who have not been inoculated against the virus.The current surge in coronavirus cases nationwide is being driven by the Delta variant, which is already more contagious than the original strain of the virus. As the virus continues to spread due to insufficient vaccination rates, it is being given “ample” time to mutate into a more dangerous new variant in the fall and winter, Fauci said.
- “[Q]uite frankly, we’re very lucky that the vaccines that we have now do very well against the variants – particularly against severe illness,” Fauci said, emphasizing that this might not be the case with a new variant.
- “If another one comes along that has an equally high capability of transmitting but also is much more severe, then we could really be in trouble,” he said.
- “People who are not getting vaccinated mistakenly think it’s only about them. But it isn’t. It’s about everybody else, also.”
State of play: Other variants are already cropping up. On Tuesday South Korea announced that it had detected two cases of the Delta Plus variant, one in a man who had recently returned from the U.S., Reuters reports. Some experts believe the Delta Plus variant could be more contagious than the Delta variant. The Lambda variant, which originated from Peru last year, has already been detected in the U.S. Recent studies indicated that Lambda could be more resistant to the current COVID-19 vaccines, according to Reuters. …
SARS-CoV-2 Iota variant increases mortality risk among older adults. – A study conducted at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, USA, and the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, USA, has determined the transmission rate, immune escape ability, and infection fatality rate of the B.1.526 variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The findings reveal that the variant has considerably higher transmissibility and immune escape potential than previously circulating variants and that it can increase the infection fatality rate by 62% – 82% among older adults. The study is currently available on themedRxiv* preprint server. With the progression of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, several new variants of SARS-CoV-2 have been identified. Because of increased infectivity and pathogenicity, some of these variants have been designated as Variants of Concern (VOC) or Variants of Interest (VOI) by the World Health Organization (WHO). The B.1.526 variant of SARS-CoV-2, also known as the lota variant, was first identified in New York City in November 2020. Later, the variant has been detected in all 52 states in the United States, as well as in 27 countries across the world.As observed in a laboratory-based study, this variant is modestly resistant to neutralization by therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and vaccine/infection-induced antibodies. In contrast, evidence indicates that the variant does not increase the risk of breakthrough infections in vaccinated or previously infected individuals.In the current study, the scientists have analyzed multiple epidemiological and population datasets collected in New York City and performed mathematical modeling to determine the transmission rate, immune evasion ability, and infection fatality risk of the B.1.526 variant.In New York City, the population-level prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection was estimated to be 16.6% at the end of the first pandemic wave. Similarly, at the end of the second wave, the estimated prevalence was 41.7%. While most infections occurred in the older population during the first wave, the second wave caused infections in all age groups.
Study shows Pfizer booster shot has similar side effects to second dose –A preliminary study conducted in Israel found that the Pfizer-BioNTech booster shot causes similar side effects to the second dose, such as soreness at the injection site.Israel began administering booster shots to fully vaccinated individuals over the age of 60 last month as part of its effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, especially as the highly infectious delta variant continues to take hold in the country as the dominant strain.Israel’s largest health care provider, Clalit, announced on Sunday that more than 240,000 people have received a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to Reuters.Of those recipients, roughly 4,500 people participated in a survey about the booster shot, which they all received between July 30 and Aug. 1, Reuters reported.Eighty-eight percent of participants said they felt “similar or better” compared to how they felt after receiving their second dose.Thirty-one percent reported having side effects, the most common symptom being soreness at the spot where the shot was administered.Roughly 0.4 percent of respondents said they had trouble breathing, and 1 percent said they received medical treatment because of one or more side effects.
Moderna may be superior to Pfizer against delta variant – breakthrough odds rise with time – The mRNA vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech may be less effective thanModerna‘s against the delta variant of the coronavirus, according to two reports posted on medRxiv on Sunday ahead of peer review. In a study of more than 50,000 patients in the Mayo Clinic Health System, researchers found the effectiveness of Moderna’s vaccine against infection had dropped to 76% in July – when the delta variant was predominant – from 86% in early 2021. Over the same period, the effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had fallen to 42% from 76%, researchers said. While both vaccines remain effective at preventing Covid hospitalization, a Moderna booster shot may be necessary soon for anyone who got the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines earlier this year, said Dr. Venky Soundararajan of Massachusetts data analytics company nference, who led the Mayo study.In a separate study, elderly nursing home residents in Ontario produced stronger immune responses – especially to worrisome variants – after the Moderna vaccine than after the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The elderly may need higher vaccine doses, boosters, and other preventative measures, said Anne-Claude Gingras of the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto, who led the Canadian study. When asked to comment on both research reports, a Pfizer spokesperson said, “We continue to believe… a third dose booster may be needed within 6 to 12 months after full vaccination to maintain the highest levels of protection.”People who received their second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine five or more months ago are more likely to test positive for Covid-19 than people who were fully vaccinated less than five months ago, new data suggest. Researchers studied nearly 34,000 fully vaccinated adults in Israel who were tested to see if they had a breakthrough case of Covid-19. Overall, 1.8% tested positive. At all ages, the odds of testing positive were higher when the last vaccine dose was received at least 146 days earlier, the research team reported Thursday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. Among patients older than 60, the odds of a positive test were almost three times higher when at least 146 days had passed since the second dose. Most of the new infections were observed recently, said coauthor Dr. Eugene Merzon of Leumit Health Services in Israel. “Very few patients had required hospitalization, and it is too early to assess the severity of these new infections in terms of hospital admission, need for mechanical ventilation or mortality,” he added. “We are planning to continue our research.”
More Dangerous Side Effects Potentially Linked To mRNA Vaccines, EU Warns –As shares of MRNA-vaccine purveyors Moderna and BioNTech tumbled on Wednesday, Reuters reported that the EMA, the EU’s medicines regulator, is looking into new potential side effects from the still-experimental MRNA jabs, including suspicious skin reactions and kidney ailments.According to Reuters, three new conditions have been reported by a small number of people after vaccination with jabs from Pfizer and Moderna. The ailments include Erythema multiforme, a form of allergic skin reaction; glomerulonephritis, or kidney inflammation; and nephrotic syndrome, a renal disorder that leads to heavy urinary protein losses. All of the cases are being studied by the EMA to determine whether the vaccines might be linked to the conditions. This isn’t the first time regulators have raised issues with an MRNA vaccine. As we reported a few months ago, the FDA determined that one side effect of the jabs in a small number of male patients with certain complications included heart inflammation. Still, the FDA, CDC and WHO have insisted that the risks posed by the jabs are far outweighed by their benefits to society.The finding comes as Israeli health authorities have found that a small number of patients still managed to get infected with the virus even after their third dose of the vaccine.Neither Pfizer nor Moderna responded to Reuters’ request for comment.Just over 43.5MM doses of Moderna’s vaccine, Spikevax, have been administered in the European Economic Area as of July 29, compared to more than 330MM doses of the Pfizer shot, Comirnaty, which was developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech. Details about the new side effects were pretty sparse, with the EMA saying only that it had requested more data from the vaccine’s makers so they could determine any potential relation. So far, the EMA hasn’t made any recommendation regarding the labeling of the vaccines, and whether any new side effects should be noted.The agency disclosed the new side effects during a routine update to the safety section of the approved vaccines’ database. MRNA jabs rely on new technology that reprograms the immune system to fight off the virus, however critics maintain that long term side effects and safety risks simply aren’t well understood since the jabs were rushed to the finish line.
Eric Topol Discusses Covid Vaccines Not Meeting Expectations, Breakthrough Cases Sicker – Yves Smith – It looks as if conventional wisdom on the Covid vaccines has run head first into some ugly realities. Eric Topol, formerly a “Get vaccinated, problem solved” cheerleader, grapples out loud with troubling data about Covid deaths and breakthrough cases with a serious journalist, David Wallace-Wells of New York Magazine. The short version is that both measures are much worse than expected and the trajectory bodes ill. We’ll go through many of the bad trends Topol and Wallace-Wells identify, including one we hadn’t wanted to believe when IM Doc started telling us of it privately via e-mail weeks ago, and presented in comments yesterday: that his breakthrough cases have been typically sicker than those among the unvaccinated. Topol is seeing the same thing and his population isn’t from IM Doc’s part of the world. Topol may have fallen for orthodox thinking, but sits on the Scripps Research board as the founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute , he has tremendous clout and can’t be dismissed, both by virtue of his reputation and because the data he and Wallace-Wells discuss speaks for itself. But the officialdom has bet so heavily on magical vaccines being the solution for Covid that the denialism is likely to remain strong and get even uglier. Topol and Wallace-Wells substantiate what we and our experts, IM Doc, GM, KLG and Iganacio have been saying from early on: the vaccines were overhyped. For starters, there was no basis for believing a vaccine for a coronavirus would produce immunity that lasted more than months to at most a year. While the vaccines were under development, data from Imperial College indicated that the rate of decline in neutralizing antibodies from contracting Covid provided immunity on the order of six to eight months. A vaccine might produce more durable immunity, but not vastly so. Plus no expert expected a vaccine for a respiratory virus to confer sterilizing immunity. Yet not only did our putative leaders tell outrageous howlers, with both the CDC’s Rochelle Walensky and Biden repeatedly and falsely stating that if you got vaccinated, you would not get Covid (“If you’re vaccinated, you’re protected”), they also committed the cardinal sin of betting on their own PR. They treated vaccines as the one-stop answer to the Covid problem. And not only did they actively discourage the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking and social distancing (can’t harsh the mellow of convention sponsors and holiday makers) but they also crippled an already slipshod Covid data gathering system by telling public health officials not to collect data on breakthrough cases among the vaccinated. So now we have to rely on figures from less incompetent countries like Israel, and Topol is forced to make back-of-the-envelope computations. Some of the grim news from Too Many People Are Dying Right Now: What I just can’t understand is why all three things are all moving up together so rapidly. Given everything we’ve seen in other countries and everything we think we know about the vaccines, even if cases rose dramatically, we’d expect much lower rates of hospitalization and death. But we’re not. It’s like we didn’t have vaccines. Or worse. I was just putting this talk together and I made the same observation. I’m looking at the four waves, and, as you know, in the monster wave, we got to 250,000 cases per day. And at that time we had 120,000 plus hospitalizations [per day]. About half. What’s amazing is, we’re at about 120,000 cases now, and we’re over 60,000 hospitalizations.
COVID-19 Vaccines Don’t Really Work as Hoped – Gail the Actuary – Last week, the CDC announced a surprising finding: “Delta infection resulted in similarly high SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated people.” Public officials had known from the early days of vaccine development that vaccinated people could catch COVID-19, but the assumption had been made that they were not going to be spreaders of COVID-19.It turns out that the delta variant is sufficiently different from the original Wuhan version of the virus that the vaccines work much less well. The CDC performed ananalysis of COVID-19 cases arising from one public gathering in Massachusetts. They found that the gathering led to 469 COVID-19 delta cases among Massachusetts residents, with 74% of these c ases in fully vaccinated attendees. Massachusetts is a highly vaccinated state, with approximately 64% of the population fully vaccinated.There are other issues coming up as well. How long does the vaccine really last? Is the vaccine itself part of the reason that the virus is mutating as rapidly as it is? Are we making problems for ourselves by creating an army of people with very light cases of COVID-19 who can spread the virus to both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated without realizing that they have more than a cold? Aren’t we inadvertently killing off the least able of the virus mutations and allowing the most virulent to multiply?My training is as an actuary, so I am familiar with modeling. I am also a “systems thinker.” I know that it is important to look at longer term impacts as well as short-term impacts. If a person works in the healthcare field, it is easy to consider only the obvious short-term benefits. It takes some analysis to figure out that today’s vaccines may lead to stronger variants (such as delta) and more overall spread of COVID-19.In this post, I will explain some of the issues involved.
- [1] Today’s vaccines provide only a fraction of the true level of protection required. Their actions are in many ways similar to applying weed killer at half the strength needed to kill the weeds or providing antibiotics at half the dose required to stop the spread of bacteria.
- [2] In a way, getting sick from a virus is helpful. It tells us to stay at home, away from others. It is the fact that humans experience symptoms from viruses that tends to limit their spread.
- [3] It is becoming clear that people immunized with today’s vaccines can both catch the delta variant and spread it to others.
- [4] With nearly all of the current vaccines, the immune system is trained to look for the spike protein from the original Wuhan virus. This narrow focus makes it relatively easy for the virus to mutate in ways that outsmart the vaccine.
- [5] Given the likelihood of mutations away from the narrow target, it seems strange that the governments have set very high expectations for the new vaccines.
- [6] Leaky vaccines, if widely used, can encourage the virus to mutate toward more virulent (severe) forms. Ultimately, the problem becomes viruses that mutate to more virulent forms faster than the vaccine system can keep up.
Deadly Lambda variant could be vaccine-resistant, new study says – As the US struggles to suppress the rapidly advancing coronavirus Delta variant, new evidence has emerged that the latest Lambda mutation – ravaging parts of South America – won’t be slowed by vaccines. In a July 28 report appearing on bioRxiv, where the study awaits peer review prior to getting published, researchers in Japan are sounding the alarm on the C.37 variant, dubbed Lambda. And it’s proven just as virulent as Delta thanks to a similar mutation making them even more contagious. The strain has been contained in 26 countries, including substantial outbreaks in Chile, Peru, Argentina and Ecuador. “Notably, the vaccination rate in Chile is relatively high; the percentage of the people who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine was [about] 60%,” the authors write. “Nevertheless, a big COVID-19 surge has occurred in Chile in Spring 2021, suggesting that the Lambda variant is proficient in escaping from the antiviral immunity elicited by vaccination,” they warn. The Lambda variant is thought to have emerged somewhere in South America between November and December 2020, and has since turned up in countries throughout Europe, North America and a few more isolated cases in Asia, according to GISAID data. The proportion the Lambda variant has of COVID-19 cases in the US is low with just one-tenth of 1% of the share – about 911 cases. Compare that to Delta, which has infected some 77,692 Americans so far. “In addition to increasing viral infectivity, the Delta variant exhibits higher resistance to the vaccine-induced neutralization,” the authors said. “Similarly, here we showed that the Lambda variant equips not only increased infectivity but also resistance against antiviral immunity.” Lambda has so far been labeled a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization, compared to the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta strains, which have all risen to “variant of concern,” or VOC, status.
15 states are keeping COVID-19 breakthrough cases under wraps – State health departments across the country are taking various approaches to how they keep records on COVID-19 breakthrough cases, with 15 states deciding not to publish any data on the rare incidents. An analysis by The Hill found that 35 states have disclosed some data on fully vaccinated people who later contracted COVID-19. The information ranged from a one-time percentage of residents who experienced a breakthrough infection to weekly detailed overviews broken down by demographics such as age, sex and race. Figures on breakthrough cases are not available on the health department websites, social media or other publicly accessible sites for the other 15 states: Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin. The Hill reached out to the health departments of all 15 states for comment. A handful of states, including New York, Texas and Wisconsin, provided the numbers upon request. Alicia Shoults, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Health, told The Hill that the agency plans to publish a dashboard with breakthrough hospitalizations and deaths Friday. Of the states already reporting data, Utah topped the list, with 0.36 percent or 5,265 breakthrough cases in its 1,462,313 fully vaccinated residents from Jan. 16 until this week. In that period, the state reported approximately 115,000 coronavirus cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped monitoring nonsevere breakthrough cases in May. Some states have followed the CDC in publicly reporting breakthrough hospitalizations and deaths but not the total number of cases. Tennessee’s Department of Health references the CDC’s policy in its critical indicator reports, where breakthrough cases with severe outcomes are regularly included. As of July 29, the state had reported 31 breakthrough deaths and 218 breakthrough hospitalizations. Like many other states, Tennessee does not specify when it started collecting COVID-19 breakthrough data. Illinois, too, only reports breakthrough infections that result in hospitalization or death. Its department of public health said the approach will “maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance.” On Wednesday, Illinois reported 714 breakthrough hospitalizations and 180 deaths, representing 2.58 percent of COVID-19 deaths since data collection began in January. The state is one of a handful that feature breakthrough case data on their COVID-19 dashboards, joining Virginia, Maryland, Idaho, Indiana, Utah and the District of Columbia. Either through those dashboards or separate report summaries, 18 states publish data on breakthrough infections regularly. Although most updates are weekly, Idaho’s are the most frequent, revised every weekday, while Oregon publishes breakthrough numbers monthly. The CDC announced in May it would only investigate and publish COVID-19 breakthrough cases that result in hospitalization or death. The change was intended to “help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance,” the agency said. Nationally, an exceedingly low number of fully vaccinated people have contracted the virus. Out of the 101 million people vaccinated from January through April, the CDC reported 10,262 breakthrough infections in 46 U.S. states and territories. The agency’s latest update, on July 26, identified 6,239 hospitalizations and 1,263 deaths, about a quarter of which were asymptomatic or not related to COVID-19.
Fauci urges more testing to track breakthrough Covid cases – Anthony Fauci urged on Sunday that more coronavirus testing be done among vaccinated people to learn more about breakthrough cases. “We know now from experience here and other countries that you will have people who are asymptomatic who get into contact with an asymptomatic person who is infected, and you’ll know there will be more infections that otherwise would have gone undetected,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We need to do more testing.” Fauci explained that early on in the pandemic, the protocol was to test people who had been in contact with others who were infected with Covid-19 or symptomatic. Now, he said, “It’s very clear you have to go beyond that.” With the Delta coronavirus variant on the rise, people are concerned that they are at risk even after becoming fully vaccinated. Some people hesitant to get vaccinated may be swayed if the Food and Drug Administration issues its first full approval of a Covid-19 vaccine – likely Pfizer’s – which Fauci hopes will happen this month. “Fortunately for us, the vaccines do quite well against Delta particularly in protecting you from severe disease,” Fauci said. “But if you give the virus the chance to continue to change, you’re leading to a vulnerability that we might get a worse variant and then that will impact not only the unvaccinated, that will impact the vaccinated because that variant could evade the protection of the vaccine.” “So,” he added, “people who were unvaccinated should think about their own health, that of their family, but also the community responsibility to crush this virus before it becomes even worse.” Fauci said that even though breakthrough cases among vaccinated people will occur because “no vaccine is 100 percent protective,” vaccinated people are protected “extremely well” from getting severe disease. The bad news is, if a vaccinated person does become infected, they can transmit Covid-19 to both unvaccinated and vaccinated people.
Rightwing radio host and anti-vaxxer dies of Covid -A rightwing TV and radio host who was a vociferous critic of Dr Anthony Fauci and who urged his listeners not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has died after contracting the virus.Dick Farrel, who had described Fauci as a “power-tripping, lying freak” who conspired with “power trip lib loons”, had urged people not to get vaccinated as recently as June.He reportedly changed his opinion about vaccines after falling ill and later being admitted to hospital before passing away on 4 August aged 65. “He texted me and told me to ‘Get it!’ He told me this virus is no joke and he said, “I wish I had gotten [the vaccine]!” close friend Amy Leigh Hair wrote on Facebook.Farrel, a native of Queens, New York, anchored radio shows in Florida and also acted as a stand-in anchor for the rightwing news outlet Newsmax, wasdescribed as a pioneer “shock talk” host. His partner, Kit Farley, said: “He was known as the other Rush Limbaugh. With a heavy heart, I can only say this was so unexpected. He will be missed.”
Antivax Memes — Based on various sources, including the recent NY Times podcast with interviews of vaccine resisters/hesitant, here’s my list of common elements.
- 1. Assuming the sole criterion for whether to take the vaccine is its effect on your own health – not taking into account whether you may infect someone else. Antivax people nearly always justify their choice in terms of their perceived risk of getting Covid and the personal risk posed by the vaccine and not in terms of the vaccine’s potential role (or lack of it) in reducing the extent and duration of the pandemic.
- 2. Bodily violation: resistance to accepting a foreign substance into their body. Also resistant to pressure from others, such as employers and government, to allow this substance to cross the “skin line”.
- 3. Personal responsibility for health. Some antivax people think that how sick you get from Covid depends on your general state of health, itself perhaps the result of the measures you’ve taken to protect it: if you get sick it’s because you failed to cleanse, build up your immune system, tune your energy or otherwise do what you should have done. Conversely, if you’ve followed the program you’re not at risk and don’t have to vaccinate.
- 4. Apparent inability to think probabilistically. A common remark is that you can get Covid even if you’re vaccinated, so what’s the point? Risk is perceived in binary terms: it exists or it doesn’t.
- 5. Fatalism. Whatever happens happens. There’s no point to getting vaccinated; you’ll get sick and die sooner or later anyway.
- 6. Distrust. These are experimental vaccines that haven’t been approved by the FDA yet. And even when the FDA says it’s OK, who believes them? The government and the media lie with abandon. The vaccines are also being pushed by corporations that just want to make as much money as they can.
Efforts to persuade people to drop their resistance to the vaccines need to begin by listening to them and communicating with them where they are.
FDA fast tracks review of extra shots for millions of immunocompromised people – Federal health officials are racing to ensure that millions of Americans with weakened immune systems can get additional shots of coronavirus vaccines to protect them against the highly contagious delta variant.The extra shots are expected to be authorized within days or weeks, according to federal officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan has not been announced.The stepped-up activity reflects increased urgency by the Biden administration to shield some of the nation’s most vulnerable adults as coronavirus cases rise sharply. The pressure has also grown as other countries have taken steps to get additional shots to people who are immunocompromised or older – and as some Americans pursue such shots on their own.Infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci on Aug. 5 said the U.S. is working to give additional coronavirus booster shots to at-risk Americans. (Reuters)In the next week or two, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to review data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supporting the use of additional vaccine doses for the immunocompromised. If officials are persuaded, they will amend the emergency use authorizations for the vaccines to permit the extra inoculations. Advisers to the CDC and the agency, in turn, will urge people with certain medical conditions to talk to their doctors or pharmacists about getting the shots.Immunocompromised patients represent about 7 million adults in the United States, including those who have received organ transplants, patients on cancer treatments and those with rheumatologic conditions and HIV, according to the CDC. They are more likely to become seriously ill from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and might more frequently spread the virus to others, experts say.“It is extremely important for us to move to get those individuals their boosters, and we are now working on that,” Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday at a White House briefing. He said many immunosuppressed people did not have a vaccine response “that we feel would be adequately protective.” The focus on the immunocompromised comes as officials scramble to develop a more comprehensive strategy for vaccine boosters for others, including older people, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. But those plans will not be completed until September, when additional data is collected, and would be put into effect only if officials conclude that boosters are needed more broadly because of waning immunity. Those shots would probably not be rolled out until October, they said.
The F.D.A. will authorize a third dose of vaccine for some people with weak immune systems. Federal regulators are expected to authorize a third shot of coronavirus vaccine as soon as Thursday for certain people with weakened immune systems, as the highly contagious Delta variant sweeps the nation.The decision to expand the emergency use of both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines is meant to help those patients with immune deficiencies who are considered most likely to benefit from an additional shot. It covers people who have had solid organ transplants and others whose immune systems are similarly compromised, according to an official familiar with the plan.The Food and Drug Administration is working with Pfizer and Moderna to authorize a third shot of the companies’ coronavirus vaccines for certain vulnerable populations with weakened immune systems.The development will give physicians latitude to recommend additional shots for those patients. About 3 percent of Americans have weakened immune systems for a variety of reasons, from a history of cancer to the use of certain medications such as steroids.Many scientists argue that the immunocompromised population is too diverse to uniformly recommend additional shots of coronavirus vaccine. Some may be protected by the standard vaccine dosage, despite their conditions. Others may be poorly shielded by the vaccines, but unable to benefit from an additional shot.Studies suggest that patients such as organ transplant recipients are in between – often showing little immune response to the standard vaccine regimen, but benefiting from a third shot. One recent randomized, placebo-controlled study by Canadian researchers found that a third dose of the Moderna vaccine improved the immune response of people in that group.The Food and Drug Administration’s decision to authorize a third shot for organ transplant recipients and those with similarly compromised immune systems will be considered by an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, scheduled to meet on Friday. Although the F.D.A.’s action is independent of the panel’s recommendation, in practice many physicians wait to act until the C.D.C. weighs in.If the committee votes to endorse the shots, as expected, the C.D.C. could issue a recommendation the same day. That could give further guidance to physicians and pharmacists about how to proceed.
Fauci calls booster shots ‘likely,’ not now but in future, citing early signs that vaccine immunity may wane. –With approval for additional Covid-19 vaccine shots for immunocompromised people “imminent,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said on Thursday that federal health authorities were “likely” to call for third shots as boosters for a broader swath of the population at some point, though there was no immediate need to do so.In an interview on the CBS program “This Morning,” Dr. Fauci noted that federal health authorities were tracking various cohorts of vaccinated people and had seen some early signs that the shots may need shoring up. That is often the case with vaccines.“We are already starting to see indications in some sectors about a diminution over time” in vaccines’ durability, Dr. Fauci said. Dr. Fauci made the same points in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday.Federal regulators are expected to authorize as soon as Thursdayadditional shots for people with weakened immune systems. In aninterview last week, Dr. Fauci made the point that, for people with weakened immune systems, “giving them an additional shot is almost not considered a booster, it’s considered part of what their original regimen should have been,” since they need more vaccine to be protected.In contrast, boosters would be used in the broader population to counter any diminution of the vaccines’ protective power.There are no immediate plans to authorize boosters, Dr. Fauci said, but federal authorities are actively monitoring different groups for signs of waning protection.“We are following cohorts of individuals, elderly, younger individuals, people in nursing homes, to determine if in fact the level of protection is starting to attenuate,” Dr. Fauci said. “And when it does get to a certain level we will be prepared to give boosters” – preferably, he added, with the same vaccine received earlier.Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, echoed Dr. Fauci’s comments at a briefing of the White House Covid-19 Response team on Thursday, saying that “at this time only certain immune-compromised individuals may need an additional dose.”
The F.D.A. authorized a third dose of Covid vaccines for immunocompromised people. – The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized third doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s coronavirus vaccines for some people with weakened immune systems, giving physicians more leeway to protect those who did not respond enough to an initial series of shots.The authorization, in the form of updates to the existing emergency use authorizations for the two vaccines, applies to people who received solid organ transplants and others with similarly compromised immune systems, the F.D.A. said.The agency’s decision came a day before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent advisory committee was set to consider and vote on whether to recommend the move. The committee is likely to give its approval, and the C.D.C. would follow with its own endorsement of the additional doses.“The F.D.A. is especially cognizant that immunocompromised people are particularly at risk for severe disease,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting F.D.A. commissioner, said in a statement. “After a thorough review of the available data, the F.D.A. determined that this small, vulnerable group may benefit from a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna Vaccines.”The authorization of the third doses kicks off what promises to be a busy next stretch for federal vaccine regulators – and a new phase of the nation’s inoculation drive. By the start of next month, the agency is expected to grant full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine. That will most likely prompt a wave of vaccination mandates from companies and organizations that waited to require vaccination until the F.D.A. fully cleared a vaccine.At the same time, government scientists and regulators are grappling with whether more Americans will need booster shots, a hotly debated move that many scientists argue is not yet supported by data. Other countries such as Israel and Germany have implemented booster policies.“Other individuals who are fully vaccinated are adequately protected and do not need an additional dose of Covid-19 vaccine at this time,” Dr. Woodcock said in her statement Thursday, adding that the agency was “actively engaged in a science-based, rigorous process with our federal partners to consider whether an additional dose may be needed in the future.”The United States is the latest country to begin offering third doses to those with weaker immune systems. France has offered additional vaccine doses to certain people with poor immune responses since April, and Germany and Hungary recently followed suit.
Fight-or-flight response is altered in healthy young people who were diagnosed with COVID-19 – New research published in The Journal of Physiology found that otherwise healthy young people diagnosed with COVID-19, regardless of their symptom severity, have problems with their nervous system when compared with healthy control subjects. Specifically, the system which oversees the fight-or-flight response, the sympathetic nervous system, seems to be abnormal (overactive in some instances and underactive in others) in those recently diagnosed with COVID-19. These results are especially important given the emerging evidence of symptoms like racing hearts being reported in conjunction with “long-COVID.” The impact of this alteration in fight-or-flight response, especially if prolonged, means that many processes within the body could be disrupted or affected. This research team has specifically been looking at the impact on the cardiovascular system – including blood pressure and blood flow – but the sympathetic nervous system is also important in exercise responses, the digestive system, the immune function, and more. Understanding what happens in the body shortly following diagnosis of COVID-19 is an important first step towards understanding the potential long-term consequences of contracting the disease. Importantly, if similar disruption of the flight-or-fight response, like that found here in young individuals, is present in older adults following COVID-19 infection, there may be substantial adverse implications for cardiovascular health.
The burden of the COVID-19 pandemic may contribute to outbreaks of violent protest and antigovernment sentiment –The COVID-19 pandemic is the most severe global health crisis of the 21st century. While media reports and policy directives tend to focus on the health and economic aspects of the pandemic, new research suggests that the pandemic is also destabilizing the fundamental relationship between citizens and the state. “The pandemic has disrupted our normal way of living, generating frustrations, unprecedented social exclusion, and a range of other concerns,” said Henrikas Bartusevičius, a researcher with the Peace Research Institute Oslo and coauthor on a paper published in the journal Psychological Science. “Our investigations show that the psychological toll of living through a pandemic also stoked antigovernment and antisystemic attitudes that led to political violence in a number of countries.” Bartusevičius and his colleagues asked 6,000 adults from the United States, Denmark, Italy, and Hungary if and how the COVID-19 pandemic had negatively affected their health, finances, relationships, and rights. The interviewees were asked to report if they felt dissatisfaction with their societies and governments and whether they were motivated to engage in or had already engaged in protests or political violence. The results from this survey uncovered striking associations between the psychological burden of COVID-19 and highly disruptive sentiments and behaviors, including the use of violence for a political cause. In contrast, the research revealed no consistent correlations between the COVID-19 burden and the motivation to engage in peaceful forms of activism. “We were also surprised to find that COVID-19 burden does not need additional triggers to motivate political violence,” said Bartusevičius. “It is seemingly enough on its own.”
COVID-19 cases in United States hit new six-month record -New coronavirus infection totals hit a new six-month high in the United States on Friday, with more than 130,000 cases reported, according to the Worldometer site, which compiles a running total worldwide. The rise in the United States was greater than for the next three countries combined – India, Indonesia and Brazil – although their combined population is six times that of the US, and far more of the American population have been vaccinated. Such a comparison underscores the criminal role of the American ruling class and both its political parties, the Democrats as much as the Republicans, in sabotaging the only effective public health response to a pandemic of such lethality as COVID-19: a full-scale lockdown, with mass testing and contact tracing, combined with mass vaccination, until the virus is exterminated. While the Biden administration claims to be fighting COVID-19, it is spreading the illusion that the pandemic is virtually over, and that vaccines by themselves will be sufficient, while all public health measures can be relaxed. Most dangerously, the administration is demanding that all public schools be reopened, beginning this month, with full in-person instruction. Given that there is no vaccine for children under 12 and that the Delta variant, which now dominates, is highly transmissible, this is a recipe for mass infection and death. Already, children’s hospitals across the Southern US, the current epicenter of the pandemic, are filled to capacity. Infections have been reported among infants who cannot yet walk and deaths of children barely old enough to go to school.
US facing a deluge of COVID-19 hospitalizations as Delta variant spreads rapidly – The US added 235,099 cases of COVID-19 to its growing tally of cases Monday, according to the New York Times COVID tracker. It was the highest number of new infections recorded on a single day since mid-January. However, this shocking number is clearly inaccurate, as many states have scaled back their reporting on cases and deaths, thus making sense of the sudden jump in infections challenging and troubling. As Dr. Jorge Caballero, who has called sending unvaccinated children and teachers back into schools “immoral,” recently tweeted, many states are dumping the backlog of weekend numbers, making tracking daily statistics impossible. Weekly trends now must stand in to provide a semblance of a picture, but in the context of a highly transmissible virus, they cannot aid in tracking and tracing infections. Nonetheless, the seven-day moving average continues to climb, having reached 117,000 new infections each day. The last time the US saw such a rate was in the first week in February, just over six months ago. Florida, which is facing a rapidly worsening health care crisis, only releases weekly reports, making it impossible to determine where infections are occurring and how they are spreading. Adding to the confusion, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) arbitrarily divided the 56,633 cases reported by Florida over the weekend, recording 28,316 new COVID cases on Saturday and 28,317 new cases Sunday. Rather than demanding timely and accurate data, such casual data manipulation only confirms it has abdicated its leadership. Still, what remains certain is that the positivity rate for the state is now close to 20 percent, as the state has broken hospitalization records for COVID-19 for nine consecutive days. As of last week, close to 14,000 people were hospitalized in Florida, with 2,835 in intensive care, representing 45 percent of the state’s ICU capacity. On Sunday, COVID-19 patients accounted for 25 percent of all hospital patients. On August 5, 2021, US News reported that despite the rise in cases, seven states – Florida, South Dakota, Iowa, Alaska, Maine, Michigan and Oklahoma – have reduced the frequency of reporting their COVID-19 statistics, while Nebraska stopped updating its COVID dashboard on June 30, around the time Governor Pete Ricketts ended a state of emergency. Dr. Bob Rauner, chief medical officer of OneHealth Nebraska, plainly told the Lincoln Journal Star, “It’s a bad idea to not report data so others can’t analyze it.” Presently, there are almost 69,000 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the US, an increase of 2,591 from the week before. Of these, 16,828 are in ICUs. Every state except Utah has seen a rise in new cases. The daily average of COVID-19 deaths has risen by more than 100 percent over two weeks, standing at over 550 per day. There is also a rising trend among fully vaccinated people hospitalized with severe breakthrough infections. These individuals are generally the elderly with comorbidities who live in long-term care facilities. It underscores the dangers of the new variants and the need to expose the dangerous idea that vaccination alone can navigate the world through the pandemic without the comprehensive social measures – masking, social distancing and the lockdown of non-essential businesses – that have proven to save lives.
Covid-19 is crushing Louisiana, which leads the country in new Covid-19 cases – Normalcy appears to be out of the country’s grasp with the recent uptick in Covid-19 cases fueled by the delta variant, a highly contagious strain of Covid-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the delta variant was identified in 80 to 87 percent of all US Covid-19 cases in the last two weeks of July. This has impacted states with low vaccination numbers the most.Louisiana, where just over 37 percent of residents are fully vaccinated, is the fifth-least vaccinated state, according to the Mayo Clinic, and is currently leading the country in aneruption of new cases after infection rates began to climb in early July.Daily records continue to go up and the state reported over 6,000 new cases on Friday, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. According to a recent update fromBaton Rouge General Hospital obtained by WAFB’s Steve Caparotta, 47 percent of the patients infected with Covid-19 in the hospital’s care are in the ICU and only 15 of these patients had been vaccinated. The hospital stated that workers this weekend are “in the middle of their toughest fight against this virus.”Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards reinstated the indoor masking mandate Monday in response to the worsening crisis. “It has become extremely clear that our current recommendations on their own are not strong enough to deal with Louisiana’s fourth surge of Covid,” Edwards told reporters after announcing the mandate.During a Friday press conference, Edwards made a grim assessment: “Things are, if anything, worse today than they were on Monday. Unfortunately, the eyes of the nation are on Louisiana right now.”Though less than a week old, the mask mandate has already faced backlash, notably at a school board meeting in St. Tammany parish on Thursday. One parent falsely claimed their child would be hindered from learning due to masks cutting off oxygen to the brain. The conspiracy theory was debunked last year by Reuters and others.
COVID-19 outbreaks appear in Western North Carolina, some cases in vaccinated residents –COVID-19 outbreaks have been appearing in nursing home facilities and other group settings across Western North Carolina. According to the state’s COVID-19 cluster and outbreak report updated at 4 p.m. Aug. 3, the Carolina Pines at Asheville reported two cases in staff, although none in residents. The Laurels of Summit Ridge has reported three cases in staff and 12 in residents for a total 15 cases. A COVID-19 outbreak in Haywood County has grown to eight total cases, most of whom are fully vaccinated, but has resulted in little to no symptoms among those who have tested positive. The outbreak at Maggie Valley Nursing and Rehab in Maggie Valley that’s now up to eight cases brings the total number of cases related to outbreaks in Western North Carolina to 50. As of the state’s report Aug. 3, the outbreak at Maggie Valley Nursing and Rehab only showed two cases in residents and none in staff, but Haywood County Health Department reported a total of three staff cases and five resident cases Aug. 6. “The five residents are fully vaccinated and two of the employees are fully vaccinated,” according to a statement from Maggie Valley Nursing and Rehabilitation. “We immediately began taking necessary steps to slow the spread of this virus in our facility.” Staff were immediately isolated, the statement says, and residents were isolated in the facility’s designated COVID-19 unit with designated staff. Marydith Parton, a registered nurse and director of nursing at Maggie Valley Nursing and Rehabilitation, said the virus is breaking through vaccinations and diligent cleaning, hand washing and mask-wearing.
COVID hospitalizations are rising faster in Oregon than ever before. No one is sounding the alarm The number of Oregonians hospitalized with COVID-19 has skyrocketed over the past month, rising faster than in previous waves and almost entirely among the unvaccinated. Hospital leaders say COVID-positive patients requiring hospitalization are younger on average than ever before. With a quicker onset of symptoms, patients are more ill when admitted to hospitals and rapidly declining in health compared to previous surges. On Friday, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 reached 496, including a record 135 in intensive care. At the current trajectory, Oregon is on pace to exceed its all-time high of 584 COVID-positive patients as soon as next week. But hospital leaders and Gov. Kate Brown have not sounded the alarm, as they did during earlier waves. Brown warned in June 2020 – when 108 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 – that hospitals “could be overwhelmed” within weeks based on modeling. Brown renewed restrictions in November – when 285 people were hospitalized – saying that hospitals could withstand a surge but “that needs to be a last resort.” And in April – with 328 people hospitalized – Brown again restored some restraints because rising hospitalizations were “threatening to overwhelm doctors and nurses.” • N95 and KN95 face masks, respirators on sale: Where to find them at best prices as COVID-19 cases surge amid delta variant The reasons such dire warnings and capacity concerns haven’t returned this summer appear three-fold: With vaccines readily available and known to dramatically reduce the need for hospitalization, healthcare providers have shifted their focus to pushing for more people to be vaccinated; the current hospital surge has largely spared the Portland area – where hospitals have developed ways to better manage hospital capacity – giving the state an extra buffer for more sick patients; the governor handed off COVID-19 safeguards to individual counties, where local leaders are reluctant to institute them for communities feeling worn-out after being given the green light just weeks ago. Oregon’s governor has largely taken a hands-off approach to the current wave, deferring to county officials to implement restrictions to slow spread since she lifted statewide restrictions June 30. So far, no county has acted, although some hospital systems have voluntarily postponed non-emergency procedures to manage capacity.
Lessons from Oregon’s July COVID-19 breakthrough report – OPB – About one out of every five COVID-19 infections reported in Oregon in July were breakthrough cases; those which were were diagnosed in people who are fully vaccinated, according to the Oregon Health Authority (OHA). And 18% of Oregon’s July COVID-19 fatalities were also in fully vaccinated people. That’s a big increase from the June breakthrough report, which showed that vaccinated individuals made up just 8% of COVID-19 cases and 6% of deaths.“While the July deaths show a higher percentage of vaccinated people have died from COVID-19 than in previous months, it’s too early to tell if this change represents a trend we will see in coming reports,” Dr. Melissa Sutton, the medical director for respiratory viral pathogens at OHA, said in a press release Monday.Those are concerning numbers, and they highlight two key takeaways: Vaccines make a person much less likely to both contract and die from COVID-19, but at the speed the delta variant is circulating, people should take addition measures to stay safe.COVID-19 cases are surging in Oregon and across the country, fueled by the more contagious, more severe delta variant. Oregon hospitals are quickly reaching capacity, and many counties are seeing more hospitalizations than they were in December before vaccinations were available. The delta variant appears to be two to three times more infectious than other COVID-19 variants. As Sutton put it during a Friday press conference, “for unvaccinated individuals, the risk of COVID-19 has never been greater.”
Delta Forces Hospitals Across U.S. to Ration Scarce ICU Beds – Hospitals across the U.S. are parceling out beds for Covid patients, hunting for doctors and nurses as the delta variant sweeps coast to coast. The disease is outstripping any mitigation measures. In a few states, the unvaccinated are entering intensive care at rates matching the winter wave. The vaccinated are coming to realize that a sweet summer of release may have been a fantasy, as they again calculate the risks of working, seeing relatives and circulating in society.
Austin down to just six available ICU beds as COVID cases surge – As available ICU beds trickle down to just six, Austin Public Health sent texts, phone calls and emails en masse to warn residents of the now “dire” COVID surge.With fewer than ten ICU beds and roughly 313 ventilators left available in the metro of 2.4 million people, Austin Public Health Medical Director Desmar Walkes called the situation a potential “catastrophe” and said, “the situation is critical.””Our hospitals are severely stressed and there is little we can do to alleviate their burden with the surging cases,” Walkes said.The city is at Stage 5 as of Aug. 5, the highest level of APH’s COVID-risk-based guidelines, after hospital admissions increased sixfold and cases increased 10 times in July. The seven-day moving average for new hospital admissions reached 78.4 on Friday.The highly contagious Delta variant has been largely to blame for the surge, APH officials said, and they recommend that residents stay home and mask up whenever possible regardless of vaccination status.While vaccinated residents are contracting COVID, they are being hospitalized at much lower rates. Just one ICU patient at Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin was vaccinated after receiving the shot following a positive COVID test result, pulmonary critical care specialist Dr. John David Hinze said on Friday.”No one would be in my ICU (if everyone was vaccinated),” Hinze said. “This is an overwhelming surge and we’re right at capacity in our ICU.”Hinze joins APH officials in urging Austinites to get vaxxed as the virus mutates and latches on to unvaccinated hosts. Austin is in the CDC’s “highest risk”category as APH officials raise their goal to an 80% vaccination rate in order to reach herd immunity. Before that threshold is reached, officials and frontline doctors say that new groups are being affected by this “meaner” virus, including young people and pregnant women.Hinze said that patients as young as 19 are being admitted into the ICU as they make tough calls on who receives ECMO treatment, a last-ditch lifesaving machine used to help give the lungs rest. Unlike past surges, children under 12, who are not eligible to be vaccinated, are seeing more frequent cases, and pregnant women are seeing a higher ICU admission and mortality rate.In order to combat the emergency and keep ICU beds under capacity, the city hopes to see businesses employ masking policies and social distancing as they ramp up vaccine outreach efforts to achieve herd immunity
Abbott announces COVID-19 mitigation measures, asks hospitals to postpone elective procedures – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced new COVID-19 mitigation measures on Monday, including asking hospitals to delay elective medical procedures and bringing in medical personnel from out-of-state. In a press release, Abbott’s office said the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) will be bringing in out-of-state personnel to assist in operations as coronavirus cases surge across the nation, driven by the highly contagious delta variant. Abbott also sent a letter to the Texas Hospital Association, asking that they voluntarily delay elective medical procedures that can be put off without detriment to patients in order to conserve hospital space. According to the statement, Abbott has also asked DSHS and the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) to open more COVID-19 antibody infusion centers that can treat COVID-19 patients who don’t need hospitalization. “The Governor is also directing TDEM and DSHS to increase vaccination availability across the state and encourages all Texans to get the COVID-19 vaccine,” the statement read. “The State of Texas is taking action to combat the recent rise in COVID-19 cases and ensure that our hospitals and communities have the resources and support they need to mitigate the virus,” Abbott said. “Texans can help bolster our efforts by getting vaccinated against COVID-19. The COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective, and it is our best defense against this virus.” Abbott notably did not mention any action regarding masks. In May, he banned local governments and schools from issuing mask mandates.
Texas children and children’s hospitals are under siege from two viruses: RSV and COVID-19 – Estefani López’s 11-month-old baby was struggling to breathe. López rushed her to an emergency room where the staff began initial treatments, putting tubes down her throat to pump her lungs with oxygen. But the baby’s condition required care at a pediatric hospital, and none of the ones in the Houston area could take her in. They were all full. Instead, López had to watch as hospital staff placed her baby in a helicopter to be airlifted 150 miles away to Temple for emergency care at the nearest children’s hospital with space. López spent the next three hours driving to the hospital, praying her baby would survive. More children are being treated in Texas hospitals for COVID-19 than ever before. But there’s a second factor that is putting pediatric hospitals on the path to being overwhelmed: an unseasonable outbreak of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a highly contagious virus that can require hospitalization mostly among children 5 years and younger and especially infants.During the last year, RSV was largely dormant, which experts believe was due to people masking up during the pandemic. Now, in just the last several weeks, thousands of Texas children have tested positive for the virus.In addition, the delta variant of COVID-19 appears to affect unvaccinated children more often than previous variants. It’s unclear if children are also becoming sicker from it than from other variants of COVID-19. And with the regular flu season approaching, medical experts are concerned over how hospital capacity could be affected. From the start of the pandemic through Aug. 9, over 5,800 children in Texas have been hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 783 children admitted to Texas hospitals with COVID-19 between July 1 and Aug. 9. Nationwide, nearly 94,000 children contracted COVID-19 last week, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Migrants are not causing a rise in virus cases, border-area officials say. -Cities in South Texas, the busiest crossing point along the border with Mexico, are at a harrowing place where two international crises intersect: an escalating surge of migrants and the rise of the Delta variant of the virus.Amid a ferocious resurgence of infections in many parts of the country, some conservative politicians, including the governors of Texas and Florida, have blamed the Biden administration’s failure to halt the influx of migrants for the soaring case numbers.In fact, that is extremely unlikely, public health officials and elected leaders say, noting that the region was facing rising case numbers, even before the recent increase in border crossings.“We can’t attribute the rise in Covid numbers to migrants,” Mayor Javier Villalobos of McAllen, Texas, said in an interview. He said city and county officials issued a disaster declaration on Aug. 2 andmoved to set up a quarantine center after it became apparent that the surge in border crossings posed a health risk to local residents.Of the 96,808 migrants who have passed through McAllen this year and been checked for the coronavirus, 8,559 had tested positive as of Tuesday.Yet the prevalence of the virus among migrants thus far has been no greater than among the U.S. population overall, according to medical experts, and the highest positivity rates in the country are not in communities along the border. Rather, they are in areas with low vaccination rates and no mask mandates.The positivity rate among migrants serviced by Catholic Charities in McAllen reached 14.8 percent in early August, after hovering between 5 and 8 percent from late March to early July, but it has not surpassed the rate among local residents.In Hidalgo County, the migrant positivity rate was about 16 percent last week compared with 17.59 percent for residents, who have had little, if any, interaction with the migrants.“Is this a pandemic of the migrants? No, it’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Dr. Ivfln Meléndez, the health a uthority in Hidalgo County, said last week during a news conference.
Doctors say more fully vaccinated people in Illinois are getting mild breakthrough cases of COVID-19, as delta variant spreads – — When Betsy and Chad Thalheimer’s 10-year-old daughter tested positive for COVID-19 last week, they thought they might avoid catching the illness.The Barrington couple had been vaccinated earlier this year, with Moderna shots for her and a Johnson & Johnson injection for him.But within days, both of them also started feeling ill and lost their senses of taste and smell. Their two younger daughters, ages 6 and 8, caught COVID-19 as well.All five family members had relatively mild cases. The girls continued playing through their fevers and are now feeling much better. Chad Thalheimer, 40, ran a fever for a few days before recovering, and Betsy Thalheimer, 38, developed a cough, headache and congestion but never spiked a fever – low-grade symptoms that she attributes to the fact that they were vaccinated.Still, she said, their experience shows that things have changed in the last few weeks, even for vaccinated people, as the number of COVID-19 cases again grows.“I think for a while we were living in this world of, ‘Oh we’re vaccinated, we’re untouchable, everything is fine,’” she said.That may no longer be the case, as stories of vaccinated people with mild cases of COVID-19 seem to be becoming more common in Illinois with the spread of the delta variant. There’s no way to know exactly how many fully vaccinated people in Illinois have developed mild cases of COVID-19 because the state only tracks infections of vaccinated people involving hospitalization or death. But some Chicago-area doctors say that while the vast majority of new cases are still among unvaccinated people, they’re seeing an uptick in fully vaccinated patients also catching COVID-19.
Massachusetts coronavirus breakthrough cases rise 2,232 last week amid delta variant spike -More than 300 fully vaccinated people in Massachusetts tested positive for the coronavirus on a daily basis last week, as cases rise across the state amid the more highly contagious delta variant.Breakthrough infections continue to account for about one-third of the Bay State’s cases.Last week, the state reported more than 1,000 daily COVID cases on multiple days, as those who are unvaccinated make up the significant portion of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Those who are unvaccinated are at a higher risk for infection and a severe case. Overall, 9,969 fully vaxxed people have tested positive for the virus, according to new data from the state Department of Public Health on Tuesday. That’s 0.23% of the more than 4.3 million fully vaxxed people in Massachusetts on that date.The 9,969 overall cases is an increase of 2,232 breakthrough infections from last week – or a daily average of 319 fully vaccinated people testing positive.The previous weekly increase was a jump of 1,364 cases – or a daily average of 195 breakthrough cases.The prior week to that was 1,207 breakthroughs – a daily average of 172 breakthrough infections.COVID hospitalizations remain at a significantly lower rate for those who are fully vaccinated. There have been 445 hospitalizations among fully vaccinated people in Massachusetts, which is 0.01% of those who are fully vaxxed.The 445 total patients is a one-week increase of 50 fully vaxxed patients. The previous weekly increase was 34 fully vaxxed patients.
Mass. reports 2,232 new breakthrough COVID-19 cases in past week – Massachusetts public health officials reported 2,232 new COVID-19 breakthrough cases in fully-vaccinated people in the past week, data from the Department of Public Health shows. A breakthrough case is when an individual tests positive for COVID-19 after they’ve been fully vaccinated against the disease. Numbers from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health show there have been 9,969 cases of COVID-19 in fully-vaccinated individuals as of Aug. 7. Last week, the DPH reported 7,737 total breakthrough cases of of July 31. The 9,969 positive COVID-19 cases are among the 4.39 million residents considered fully vaccinated in Massachusetts, or just over 0.2% of those individuals. The state health department said 445 of those 9,969 cases resulted in hospitalization and 106 cases resulted in death based on information reported to date. Last month, the DPH confirmed genetic sequencing of initial samples associated with the Fourth of July weekend COVID-19 cluster in Provincetown tested positive for the delta variant. Massachusetts hospitals have seen a surge in hospitalizations since the Fourth of July, with the number of COVID-19 patients more than quadrupling, from a low of 80 on July 4 to 334 as of Tuesday. The seven-day average of hospitalizations has increased from a low of 85 on July 9 to its current mark of 278.
Live updates: Minnesota logs 5,600 breakthrough COVID-19 cases, 57 deaths (AP) – Health officials say Minnesota has seen around 5,600 breakthrough cases of COVID-19 and at least 57 deaths among fully vaccinated people. The Minnesota Department of Health also says there have been 514 breakthrough cases resulting in hospitalizations. The department says it will begin reporting breakthrough case figures weekly as the highly infectious delta variant surges across the state and country. But the department cautions that the numbers will lag because of reporting delays. Health officials say COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and only a small percentage of people who are fully vaccinated will still get the disease if exposed. The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) announced Tuesday that the number of COVID-19 cases in the state has increased by 1,690, bringing the cumulative total to 620,591.Seven more people died, bringing the cumulative death total to 7,705 since the pandemic began. Health officials say 4,528 deaths have taken place in long-term care or assisted living facilities.As of Monday, officials say a total of 333 people were hospitalized and being treated for the virus on an inpatient basis. Of those patients, 92 required ICU care. Monday was the third straight day over 300 people have been in Minnesota hospitals for COVID-19. Total hospitalizations since the arrival of COVID have risen to 33,678.
US daily hospital admissions for children reach an all-time pandemic high – “We have reached a grim juncture: more US children are hospitalized with COVID than at any other time point in the pandemic, and this number will continue to grow as the Delta variant spreads.” – Dr. Heather Haq, Baylor College of Medicine, August 9, 2021 The United States has reclaimed its position as the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic – a criminal “achievement” of the American ruling elite – due to the rapid transmission of the Delta variant, which now accounts for more than 93 percent of all sequenced cases.Every reputable epidemiologist and public health official had warned that abandoning mitigation measures combined with ending mask mandates was a recipe for disaster. Now the disaster is here.The country saw almost 700,000 new cases of COVID-19 last week, a 17 percent increase over the previous week. The death toll last week was 3,500 people, a 13 percent rise from the preceding week, and deaths are a lagging indicator. They will increase more rapidly. Every state in the US is reporting a rise in daily case rates. The current cumulative totals are 36.63 million COVID-19 infections and over 633,000 deaths.According to the COVID tracker of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current seven-day moving average (the daily rate averaged over a seven-day period) is 683 percent above the lows observed on June 19, 2021. In contrast, the number of COVID tests has barely climbed 15 percent. This means that American society is flying blind into a new pandemic storm.The current seven-day average of positive tests is close to 10 percent. The seven-day average for new hospital admissions of patients with confirmed COVID-19 in the United States in the first week of August was 8,308, a 22 percent increase from the last week in July. In total, there are now 66,477 people admitted to US hospitals for complications from COVID.Much of the current surge is taking place across Southern states – Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri – that have had relatively low rates of COVID vaccinations compounded by resistance to implementing any significant measures to contain the spread of the virus. However, former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently warned that Northern states may see a rapid rise in cases once children are back in school.
Texas hospitals are overloaded. – Hospitals in Texas are warning of strained resources during a week in which more than 10,000 coronavirus patients have been admitted to hospitals in the state. At least 53 Texas hospitals had intensive care units that were at maximum capacity. Two in Houston have been so overwhelmed that officials ordered overflow tents to be erected outside. In Austin, intensive care units were running short of beds. And in San Antonio, virus cases reached alarming levels not seen in months, with infants as young as 2 months tethered to supplemental oxygen.“If this continues, and I have no reason to believe that it will not, there is no way my hospital is going to be able to handle this. There is no way the region is going to be able to handle this,” Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, president and chief executive of the Harris Health System, in Houston, told state legislators on Tuesday. “I am one of those people that always sees the glass half-full, I always see the silver lining. But I am frightened by what is coming.” Recently, Texas has averaged more than 14,000 new cases a day, more than double the number seen just two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database. The spike comes as about one in five U.S. hospitals with intensive care units, or 583 total hospitals, recently reported that at least 95 percent of their I.C.U. beds were full as the highly contagious Delta variant fuels surges across the country.The sudden increase of infections has refocused national attention on the efficacy of masks and comes as Gov. Greg Abbott of Texasremains firm in his refusal to allow cities and school districts to mandate masks. To manage the surge, he appealed to out-of-state health care workers to travel to Texas, where coronavirus-related hospitalizations are projected to exceed 15,000 by the end of August, according to the University of Texas at Austin.Dr. David Persse, Houston’s chief medical officer, blamed state officials for giving inadequate attention to the importance of vaccinations to stem the surge. Mr. Abbott’s framing of vaccinations as an issue of individual rights is “the wrong approach,” Dr. Persse said. The unvaccinated, he said, “are endangering themselves and their families.”In a new and unnerving development, as of Tuesday, about 240 Texas children were hospitalized with the virus, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Citing those figures, President Biden on Wednesday told reporters that he was exploring whether the federal government has the authority to intervene in the orders issued by Mr. Abbott. Earlier this week, at the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, an increasing number of children were being admitted with severe symptoms of coronavirus. Many arriving with unrelated illnesses were also testing positive for the virus, hospital officials said.
Florida church vaccinates hundreds after 6 members die from COVID-19 in 10 days – Six members of a Florida church died from COVID-19 within 10 days. Now, Impact Church in Jacksonville has vaccinated more than 1,000 people in the community and is looking to calm congregants’ fears about coronavirus vaccines. George Davis, a senior pastor at the nondenominal church, confirmed to USA TODAY that the church lost the six members over a 10-day span and that four of those who died were under 35. Davis said another male member of the church died from COVID-19 just days ago. Everyone who died was unvaccinated. The senior pastor noted that even though the church has about 6,000 members, “it’s just been ripping our hearts apart.” “Even those who didn’t know them, just to know that they’re part of the church community, has made it tough for all of us,” Davis said. The church held a vaccine event Sunday in partnership with Duval County health officials and University of Florida Health to vaccinate 269 people. Impact Church noted in a Facebook post that 35% of those vaccinated were teenagers. Davis told USA TODAY the church had experts from University of Florida Health come to the event to answer questions from people who had concerns about the vaccines. But Davis noted that the church has taken on encouraging congregants to get vaccinated against COVID-19 because some community members “are just more comfortable with their church than they are with government entities, or even some medical entities.”
Florida doctors are exhausted and angry as the state’s COVID-19 surge unleashes pandemonium inside hospitals: ‘Humanly, you just break at some point’ – The unrelenting pandemic has made it hard at times for Ed Jimenez – CEO of the teaching hospital in Gainesville which counts more than 1,000 beds – to sustain morale among his workforce.”Everybody I talked to was putting up a wonderful exterior: ‘We got this. We’re helping people,'” he recounted in an interview this week with Insider.Still, he could see the anguish behind their eyes. The nurse reminded him of what has become one of the pandemic’s most sobering scenes.”When we’re on that path to where somebody’s not going to make it, we go get the family, so at least they can say goodbye through the glass window,” she told him. An explosion in the virus’ highly-transmissible Delta variant hasmired the state in its most vicious fight with the disease in recent weeks. Florida has become the epicenter of a new wave of infections in the US, and its vaccination rate is far short of states like Connecticut and New York.On Saturday, nearly 24,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Florida, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, marking an all-time one-day high for the state. An additional 93 people died, and more than 13,000 people were hospitalized.For comparison, the state reported just 1,250 new infections on June 1.A spokesperson for the UF Health Shands Hospital told Insider that, as of Saturday, the facility had admitted 204 COVID-19 patients. Forty-four were receiving ICU treatment.Baptist Health, a system of 11 hospitals, counted 810 COVID-19 patients as of Friday, a representative confirmed, which is a 97% increase from two weeks ago. Intensive care units in Florida are filling up, and final moments with loved ones, separated by face shields and glass barriers, have become a resurgent reality.
More Hospitals Nearing Breaking Point as Covid Spikes; Scrimping on Nurses’ Pay Made Bad Situation Worse – Yves Smith– We warned that the failure to treat nurses well would come back to bite the hospitals that went into Scrooge mode. As we posted on August 3: In other words, if we have another crisis in hospitals, it’s due not just to Delta but also rule by MBAs: Today’s press has many stories about hospitals in Texas, Florida, and some other states being strained to the breaking point due to the latest Covid surge. Obviously, the big driver of this dire situation is the rapid rise in cases. Some also mention staffing levels and even say that their capacity constraint is not beds but manpower. That’s reflected in the super-high pay on offer for “traveling” nurses who go to hospitals that are willing to pay up for extra hands on deck. However, not being willing to ante up to give nurses and other hospital support staff hazard pay (while eventually paying through he nose for traveling nurses) is an insulting statement about how much management values them. Why should they risk life, limb, and their mental health when the top brass makes clear it cares more about preserving and increasing its pay than spending up to take care of patients and employees? It wasn’t hard to see that with Delta being super infectious and the US not heavily vaccinated enough to ground out contagion of wild type Covid, even before factoring in reduced efficacy of the Covid vaccines against Delta, that the US was set to suffer a nasty big spike and was likely to see overloaded hospitals again. We also warned that it is seen as unacceptable to the powers that be for heart attack, stroke, and car crash victims not to be able to get adequate care in emergency rooms. Associated Press reported that St. Petersburg is at that point:In St. Petersburg, some patients wait inside ambulances for up to an hour before hospitals can admit them – a process that usually takes about 15 minutes, Pinellas County Administrator Barry Burton said. While ambulances sit outside emergency rooms, they are essentially off the grid.“They’re not available to take another call, which forces the fire department on scene at an accident or something to take that transport. That’s caused quite a backlog for the system.”…At no other time during the pandemic have intensive care units seen a percentage of COVID patients as high as in the last two days. Last year around mid-July, the percentage edged to 45% with about 1,400 patients. Officials ramped up beds at hospitals and at their peak reported about 2,500 ICU patients at a time. At the height of last year’s summer surge, Florida had about 10,170 COVID-19 hospitalizations overall.Notice the manpower concerns: Nearly 70% of Florida hospitals are expecting critical staffing shortage in the next seven days, according to the Florida Hospital Association. The COVID-19 influx is also hitting as Florida hospitals are seeing “unusually high numbers of very ill non-COVID patients,” said the association’s president Mary Mayhew. Associated Press also ran a stand-alone story on nurse shortages. Key sections: The rapidly escalating surge in COVID-19 infections across the U.S. has caused a shortage of nurses and other front-line staff in virus hot spots…Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oregon all have more people hospitalized with COVID-19 than at any other point in the pandemic, and nursing staffs are badly strained.
Mississippi’s Largest Hospital Converting Garage to COVID Ward as State Short on ICU Beds – The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), the state’s largest hospital, is clearing out the bottom floor of its parking garage to build a COVID-19 ward.The hospital is asking the federal government to provide additional medical professionals to work in the garage’s field hospital, according to the hospital. UMMC does not have enough staff for the growing number of COVID-19 patients, and the current staff is pushed to its limits, the hospital said. Mississippi is one of the worst-hit states in the nation in the current wave of cases, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH). The state reported over 3,000 new cases and 25 deaths on Tuesday. Nearly 1,400 people are currently hospitalized for a confirmed COVID-19 case in the state, 388 of whom are in the ICU and 249 are on ventilators, according to MSDH. UMMC Vice Chancellor Dr. LouAnne Woodward said Mississippi is in “distress” over the latest wave of coronavirus cases. She also encouraged people to get the vaccine to prevent more hospitalizations in the state. The influx of new patients is overwhelming the entire hospital, not just the COVID-19 ward.
Mississippi requests a Navy hospital ship amid shortage of medical staff. – The Mississippi health authorities have asked the federal government to send a Navy hospital ship to ease the strain on its medical centers, as the state grapples with its highest surge in new cases since the pandemic began.The Mississippi State Department of Health asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to send to its shores either the U.S.N.S. Mercy or the U.S.N.S. Comfort, both 1,000-bed ships, the state authorities said in a news briefing on Wednesday.“The situation in many of our hospitals is much worse than what we saw last week and worse than what we saw during our peak earlier this year,” said Jim Craig, the state health department’s director of health protection.Mississippi is reckoning with one of its worst crises since the pandemic began. The state has seen a dramatic rise since July in the number of new infections and hospitalizations, according to a New York Times database.On Wednesday, the seven-day average of new infections in Mississippi reached 2,689, up from a low point of 104 on June 21. Only January’s numbers came close to this average, when the seven-day average peaked at 2,432 on Jan. 10.Mr. Craig said his department had requested a hospital ship to help cover the state’s staffing shortage. More than 200 patients in the state were waiting in emergency rooms for I.C.U. beds to open up, he said.The state’s hospitalization numbers have surged to a seven-day average of 1,404 on Wednesday. Hospitalizations and new infections waned in the summer after the Covid-19 vaccines became widely available, and the seven-day hospitalization average reached 152, its lowest point, on June 23. Only 42 percent of Mississippi’s population is at least partially vaccinated, which is much lower than the national rate of 59 percent, according to a New York Times database. While the state authorities hope a Navy hospital ship will alleviate staffing troubles, the extra help failed to solve similar hospital bed shortages in New York and Los Angeles last year. When theU.S.N.S. Comfort and the U.S.N.S. Mercy docked off Manhattan and Los Angeles, respectively, most of the beds sat unused, angering hospital leaders whose facilities had been overwhelmed with people sick with Covid-19.
State reports more COVID breakthrough cases, deaths among fully vaccinated – The Maryland Department of Health reported eight additional COVID deaths and 65 new hospitalizations among patients who are fully vaccinated. The state health agency also reported a 34% increase in the number of COVID cases among the fully vaccinated since its first report on breakthrough cases on Aug. 5.Still, breakthrough cases among the vaccinated make up a small percentage of overall coronavirus metrics reported by government health agencies.There have been 5,139 coronavirus cases among the fully vaccinated from late January through Aug. 8, according to MDH. The state previously reported 3,836 COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated earlier this month. That is an increase of 1,303 cases.The state health agency reported there have been 61 deaths statewide and 519 hospitalizations attributed to COVID among the fully vaccinated from Jan. 26 through Aug. 8.Those are also up from the state’s first report on breakthrough deaths and hospitalizations linked to the virus. On August 5, Maryland health officials reported there had been 53 deaths and 454 hospitalizations for COVID among the vaccinated since late January.The fully vaccinated make up 4.1% of the state’s coronavirus cases, 4% of deaths and 4.3% of hospitalizations since January, according to MDH.There have been 9,652 deaths attributed to COVID in Maryland since the start of the pandemic in 2020.The breakthrough cases come as Maryland and other U.S. states see a rise in overall cases and hospitalizations attributed to the coronavirus’ Delta variant. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control – which has also now recommended COVID jabs for pregnant women – reported 7,101 hospitalizations and 1,507 deaths attributed to the coronavirus among the fully vaccinated nationally.The CDC’s breakthrough cases totals were reported Aug. 2 when 164.1 million Americans had been fully vaccinated. That number now stands 167.1 million – or 50.3% of the U.S. population.Other states are also dealing with breakthrough cases. In New Jersey, 18.5% of new COVID cases at the end of July were among the vaccinated. Cases among the vaccinated are also further impetus for vaccination booster shots from the U.S. government and pharmaceutical companies.
Four more COVID-19 deaths of people fully vaccinated in Ventura County – Four more fully vaccinated Ventura County residents died of COVID-19, public health officials reported this week. The deaths push the total “breakthrough” deaths in Ventura County to seven out of 1,046 fatalities linked to the coronavirus throughout the pandemic. All seven people were 60 and older and diagnosed with pre-existing conditions that likely made them more vulnerable to the coronavirus. The four newly reported fatalities occurred in the last three weeks. They were revealed Wednesday in weekly data from the California Department of Public Health. The metrics show that as COVID-19 cases rise across the county and nation in a surge targeting the unvaccinated, infections continue to hit people who have received all of their shots. At least 289 more breakthrough infections in the county were reported or confirmed over a week, pushing the tally of fully vaccinated COVID-19 cases so far this year to 977. Doctors and public health officials said the vaccines are very effective in preventing severe illness and hospitalizations. The county’s 51 “breakthrough” hospitalizations make up only 0.01% of the more than 480,000 Ventura County residents who are fully vaccinated. “There is enough data to show that the vaccine works,” said Dr. Gagan Pawar, interim CEO of the private Clinicas del Camino Real health system, then citing masks and social distancing. “What’s changed is we stopped taking the precautions before we reached herd immunity.” The trends are confusing. About 18% of all of the county’s COVID-19 infections are breakthrough cases since mid-June when California ended many of its restrictions. Health officials say the number is misleading because far more people are now vaccinated than are not. More than 66% of county residents 12 and older are fully inoculated. Of those people, only 0.2% have tested positive for the virus. However, that rate is rising.
Coronavirus in Minnesota: Case positivity up; more than 300 hospitalized –As the delta coronavirus variant continues to surge across Minnesota and the nation, more governments and businesses are implementing – or considering – mandates requiring vaccines or masks. University of Minnesota officials said Monday the school will require vaccines for students as soon as the federal government fully approves them. Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Sunday he hoped the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would give that final authorization by the end of August. Right now, the COVID-19 vaccines are being administered under what’s known as an Emergency Use Authorization.The Associated Press reports that as more colleges require vaccines for students, school officials are worried about people buying up fake vaccine cards.Also locally, the Minnesota State Fair is mulling an indoor mask mandate.Some politicians and other officials have still objected to vaccine mandates, saying the government shouldn’t force people to make a medical decision they don’t want to. Texas has also banned mask mandates in schools and Arkansas instituted a ban on all mask requirements. But Texas’ rule has been challenged in court and a judge in Arkansas temporarily blocked that state’s regulation. Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said “any mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine must be locally negotiated.”On Tuesday, the Minnesota Department of Health said it would release data weekly on “breakthrough” COVID-19 cases, which are when someone who is fully vaccinated contracts COVID-19.The state says it has identified 5,599 people – of nearly 2.95 million fully vaccinated Minnesotans as of July 11 – who got COVID-19. Of those people with known breakthrough cases, 514 have been hospitalized and 57 (0.002 percent) have died.Data from MDH show the state added 5,601 new COVID-19 cases in the seven days between Aug. 4 and Aug. 10, for an average of 800 new cases per day. That’s up from a 593 new-case daily average the week prior. At the height of the pandemic in late November of 2020, Minnesota averaged more than 7,000 new cases per day.
Breakthrough cases up in Colorado, but serious illness among vaccinated remains low – Health experts say the increase in breakthrough COVID cases does not mean the vaccine isn’t working. Quite the opposite: The cases underscore how well the vaccines are holding up against its most formidable foe yet — the delta variant. “You can still get COVID … but there is a much higher chance you would have minimal to no symptoms,” said Dr. Bill Plauth, the chief medical officer for Penrose-St. Francis Hospital. Plauth said the numbers bear out how effective the vaccines are, even if you fall ill with the coronavirus. “About 95 percent of those who are admitted to the hospital have not been vaccinated, so we do have some patients who have finished their full vaccination and needed to be in the hospital. But they tend to be less severe and do relatively well unless they have underlying medical issues that would lead to them being sicker.” According to the state health department, between Jan. 1-Aug. 3, 8,300 breakthrough cases were reported in Colorado, accounting for less than 4 percent of all infections. No vaccine is full-proof, and doctors like Plauth always expected to see some vaccinated people get the virus. “The traditional flu vaccine might only be 30-70 percent effective, and so you would absolutely expect to see breakthrough cases. With the delta variant, it’s two to three times more contagious than the other strains of COVID and we have seen more breakthrough cases.” It’s also basic math: the more the virus circulates, the more breakthroughs are expected. El Paso County and the state as a whole are currently seeing more breakthrough cases because the region is seeing more COVID cases in general.
Don’t Panic, But Breakthrough Cases May Be a Bigger Problem Than You’ve Been Told Current public-health messaging may understate the scale and risk. The vaccines were never tested to prevent transmission, only symptomatic disease, and those who knew the science expected, from the outset, that we would see some number of such cases, and that they would be, overwhelmingly, mild. But Delta appears to have changed things. Not everything: The vaccines are working to suppress severe outcomes from COVID infection – according to a New York Times analysis, by more than a factor of 100 for some states, and at least fivefold for even the states where the effect has been most muted. That is, by the standards of historical vaccines, game-changingly well. But most of the data in that analysis comes from before the arrival of the Delta variant, and during the current surge there does seem to be considerably more “leakage” in the protection that vaccines offer against pandemic spread than has widely been acknowledged. While more severe breakthrough cases remain, in relative terms, very rare, we may be seeing a rise in those numbers with Delta, as well. Over the last few weeks, in the wake of an attention-getting internal CDC presentation on the severity of the current wave, we’ve heard a lot – from epidemiologists, public-health officials, journalists like me – about how the leaked slides lacked context, implying a much scarier near-term future than was really suggested by the data, which showed that vaccines were working, that breakthrough cases remained rare and mild, that the pandemic was now largely a pandemic of the unvaccinated. On July 30, the Kaiser Family Foundation published a comprehensive-seeming report, much passed-around, which compiled partial breakthrough data from 24 states and the District of Columbia, and declared that the relative risk to the vaccinated of infection, hospitalization, and death was close to – or mathematically equal to – zero, and that in almost all states only about one percent of identified cases were breakthrough events. This reading was echoed by the later Times analysis, and itself echoed earlier reassuring statements by Anthony Fauci, that 99.2 percent of deaths in June were unvaccinated people, and by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, that, as of July 18, “99.5 percent of COVID deaths are among the unvaccinated.” “The message that breakthrough cases are exceedingly rare and that you don’t have to worry about them if you’re vaccinated – that this is only an epidemic of the unvaccinated – that message is falling flat,” Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina told me in the long interview that follows below. “If this was still Alpha, sure. But with Delta, plenty of people are getting sick. Plenty of transmission is going on. And my personal opinion is that the whole notion of herd immunity from two vaccine shots is flying out the window very quickly with this new variant.”
What to Know About Breakthrough Infections, Cases and Symptoms – WSJ – As the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads, more vaccinated Americans are reporting they have tested positive for Covid-19. Here’s what you need to know about these so-called ‘breakthrough’ cases:A breakthrough infection is when someone who received a Covid-19 vaccine contracts the virus more than 14 days after they have been fully vaccinated. Authorized vaccines have been shown in studies to work well against the virus and variants. Yet the Delta variant, in particular, is more contagious than older versions of the virus, and breakthrough infections have happened on rare occasions. Most don’t require hospitalization, according to Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.Vaccinated people who have breakthrough Covid-19 infections may not know that they are infected, since some show no symptoms. Olympic athletes and others who are regularly tested have been surprised by positive Covid-19 results, since they didn’t feel sick.For others who do feel sick, the symptoms are often shorter in duration and milder than those who contract Covid-19 without a vaccine. Those symptoms include cough, fever, headaches and fatigue, according to a preprint study published in late May in the U.K. by researchers at King’s College London.They usually aren’t serious, on the rare occasions they occur. Research indicates that authorized vaccines are effective at preventing severe Covid-19, including hospitalizations. What some vaccinated people who developed a breakthrough case described was something worse than a cold, lasting several days. They were largely bed-bound but didn’t need to go to a hospital.Doctors say the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are most at risk for breakthrough infections.This is because aging impairs the body’s intrinsic ability to adapt to an immune response, according to Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University.People who are immunocompromised due to an underlying illness are also at risk because they may not be able to generate the amount of antibodies required to fight infection altogether, she said.Doctors and immunologists say these infections are relatively rare. A report from late May by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Infection found more than 10,000 cases of Covid-19 in vaccinated people at least 14 days after their final shot across 46 states and territories between Jan. 1 and April 30 of this year. That equates to about 0.01% of the roughly 100 million people who were fully vaccinated as of April 30. Of those roughly 10,000 people, about 10% were hospitalized. Of that 10%, nearly a third didn’t show symptoms or were in the hospital for a reason unrelated to the coronavirus; 2% – or 160 patients, died.
Arizona reports 3,418 new COVID-19 cases, 27 more deaths Saturday – Arizona health officials on Saturday reported 3,418 new COVID-19 cases, exceeding 3,000 for the second consecutive day, and 27 additional deaths from the disease. The latest documented totals are 962,410 infections and 18,462 fatalities, according to the Arizona Department of Health ServicesCOVID-19 dashboard.Hospitalizations in the state related to COVID-19 have nearly tripled since the end of May, but deaths are down significantly from Arizona’s previous waves.People who aren’t fully vaccinated now account for almost all of the serious illnesses and deaths.The number of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 inpatients in the state’s hospitals increased by 11 overnight to 1,601 on Friday, the most since Feb. 20.The number of ICU beds used by COVID-19 patients decreased by eight to 382.The dashboard also showedthat 3,886,821 people (54.1% of the state’s population, based on 7,189,020 residents) have received at least one dose of vaccine in Arizona and 3,413,642 people are fully vaccinated (47.5% of the population). The nationwide rates are 59.4% with at least one dose and 50.5% fully vaccinated, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state health department’s daily updates present case and death data after the state receives statistics and confirms them, which can lag by several days or more. They don’t represent the actual activity over the past 24 hours. The hospitalization numbers posted each morning are reported electronically the previous evening by hospitals across the state.
COVID catastrophe fuels unrest in Southeast Asia – Popular disaffection is rising across Southeast Asia as millions of people, mostly impoverished, suffer the worsening impact on lives and livelihoods of the failure of capitalist governments throughout the region and worldwide to protect society from COVID-19. Home to more than 650 million people, Southeast Asia has become an epicentre of the global Delta surge that has resulted from the corporate profit-driven policies by which governments have refused to impose, or prematurely lifted, safety restrictions, allowing more virulent mutant strains to spin out of control. Across the region, the disaster has been compounded by the near-collapse of chronically underfunded health care systems, lack of access to vaccines and widespread losses of jobs and incomes. One of the most severely affected countries, Indonesia, last week passed a damning milestone – 100,000 officially confirmed COVID-19 deaths. Just days earlier, President Joko Widodo eased restrictions on July 29, allowing small businesses and some shopping malls to reopen. To appease the financial elite, Widido lifted the already limited lockdowns, even in the worst-hit areas, such as Jakarta and Bali, despite warnings by health experts that this would lead to a resurgence of infections. Virologists also warned of the potential for new variants to emerge, which has occurred when the virus has been allowed to run rampant in countries with large populations. “The decision doesn’t seem to be related to the pandemic, but to economics,” Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist at the University of Indonesia, told Reuters. It took 14 months for Indonesia to exceed the 50,000-death mark at the end of May, and just over nine weeks to double it. Despite a fall from July’s peak of more than 57,000 new daily infections, the Health Ministry is still recording more than 1,700 new deaths of COVID-19 every day. As in other countries, these figures are believed to be a substantial undercount. Low testing rates and a lack of contact tracing means many thousands of deaths are going unrecorded. Since the beginning of June, more than 2,800 people have died at home, according to LaporCOVID-19, a non-government virus data group. Some of those deaths were counted in official figures but others were not. “They were rejected by the hospitals, so they went back home and did the self-isolation at home with limited access to medicine, no oxygen and no monitoring from doctors until they died,” Ahmad Arif, one of LaporCOVID-19’s founders, told Associated Press (AP).
Covid is hitting parts of Asia harder now than beginning of pandemic – Southeast Asia experienced a major surge in Covid-19 cases last month that has shown little signs of slowing, and the situation is expected to delay most of the region’s economic recovery.Major economies in this part of the world including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines saw a sharp rise in daily reported cases and deaths from the disease in July.Information compiled by online publication Our World In Data showed, based on a seven-day moving average basis, Malaysia recorded 515.88 confirmed Covid infections per million people on July 31. That number steadily increased since June 30, when it was around 180.85.Behind Malaysia was Thailand with 236.02 new cases per million people on July 31, followed by Indonesia with 147.20 cases even as it imposed a partial lockdown and ramped up contact tracing and quarantine efforts. Cumulatively, Indonesia recorded more than 1.2 million new cases in July.Vietnam, Philippines and Singapore also saw increases in daily new cases per million people, but the figures were smaller compared with those of the other three countries.Bank of America in a research note last week said its calculations showed average daily cases in the region surged by 162% last month to reach a new record of 72,200, while daily deaths tripled from 500 a day to 1,500 people on average.Indonesia and Malaysia recorded the highest death rates per million population in July, according to the bank.The situation forced Southeast Asian governments to reintroduce lockdowns and social restrictions in an attempt to slow the spread as some ran out ofhospital beds, medical equipment and oxygen supplies.Malaysia struggled to tame the outbreak despite implementing multiple rounds of restrictions and a state of emergency. Reports say that the country will relax some restrictions for fully vaccinated people in eight states that have reduced case numbers and achieved higher inoculation rates.Singapore tightened restrictions in July following the emergence of several clusters around karaoke lounges, wet markets and hawker food centers. Those measures are now gradually being eased.Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand have extended some of the restrictions into August as reported Covid cases show no signs of slowing down.
After Months as a Covid Success Story, China Tries to Tame Delta –In the battle against the coronavirus, few places seemed asconfident of victory as China.The country of 1.4 billion people had eradicated the virus so quickly that it was one of the first in the world to open up in spring last year. People removed their masks and gathered for pool parties. In recent months, the government has contended with sporadic outbreaks in various provinces, but stamped them out swiftly bymobilizing thousands of people to test and trace infections, as well as locking down communities.That model is now looking increasingly fragile in a world that passed a grim milestone on Wednesday: the 200 millionth recorded case of infection.China is facing its biggest challenge since the virus first erupted in the Chinese city of Wuhan last year: the highly transmissible Delta variant that is rapidly spreading throughout the country. Chinese officials have acknowledged that curbing this outbreak will be much harder than the others, owing to the fast and asymptomatic spread of the variant.Globally, the virus is continuing to infect at an astonishing rate. It took more than a year for the pandemic to reach its 100 millionth case, and little more than six months to double that.While the number of cases in China are still relatively low compared to the United States and elsewhere, these new outbreaks – happening in cities such as Nanjing, Wuhan, Yangzhou and Zhangjiajie – are showcasing the limitations of China’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid. They may also undermine the ruling Communist Party’s argument that its authoritarian style has been an unquestionable success in the pandemic.
China punishes local officials over a growing outbreak fueled by the Delta variant. — China has fired or reprimanded dozens of officials nationwide, saying they mishandled a coronavirus outbreak that is the country’s worst in more than a year.More than 30 people in four provinces, including government leaders, hospital staff and airport and tourism personnel, have been punished over the outbreak, according to the state-backed tabloid Global Times. At least 15 were in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province, where the outbreak began late last month at the city’s international airport.The outbreak, which is driven by the more contagious Delta variant of the virus, has since grown to hundreds of cases and spread to more than half of mainland China’s 31 provinces,challenging the government’s zero-tolerance approach toward the virus.Officials have also been disciplined in Zhangjiajie, a tourist city in Hunan Province; Yantai, a coastal city in Shandong Province; and Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, which was recently hit by deadly flooding.In Yangzhou, a city in Jiangsu Province that has replaced Nanjing as the country’s biggest virus hot spot, at least eight officials were punished or reprimanded after mismanagement at a testing site caused more than 20 infections, the government said. “The epidemic is in a concentrated outbreak period,” Wu Zhenglong, the governor of Jiangsu, said on Saturday, according to Yangzhou Daily. “The situation of epidemic prevention and control is very serious and complicated.”After largely eradicating the virus early last year, China has responded to periodic outbreaks with mass testing and strict lockdowns of neighborhoods or entire cities. The central city ofWuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, tested all of its 11 million residents over the weekend after reporting its first Delta cases earlier this month. Mass testing is also being carried out in Yangzhou, Zhengzhou and other cities. While countries like Singapore are shifting their strategies after concluding that it’s unrealistic to insist on zero virus cases, Chinese officials have resisted that idea. Gao Qiang, the former health minister, wrote in the official People’s Daily on Saturday that China’s antivirus measures were “a double insurance strategy” that combines precise epidemic control with widespread vaccination, rather than trying to achieve herd immunity, let alone “living with the virus.”
Republican report concludes COVID-19 leaked from Wuhan lab prior to Sept. 12, 2019 | Taiwan News – A report released by U.S. House Republicans earlier this month has concluded that the “preponderance of evidence” points to COVID-19 leaking from one of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) labs in early September 2019 at the latest. On Aug. 2, Mike McCaul (R-TX), the lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released an 84-page report on the origins of COVID. The report dismissed the infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market as a source of the outbreak and concluded that “the preponderance of the evidence proves the virus did leak from the WIV and that it did so sometime before September 12, 2019.” Rather than the Biosafety Level IV (BSL-4) lab most frequently mentioned in debates over the WIV’s new campus, the report focused on its headquarters at the institute’s original location in Wuhan’s Wuchang District, where BSL-2 and BSL-3 labs are situated. The report states it was there that the WIV’s lead researcher Shi Zhengli (石正麗) – also known as “Bat Woman” – had conducted gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses in the years leading up to the pandemic. The report pointed out that there have been a number of reports of safety concerns regarding the WIV facilities, including a warning by George Gao, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the dangers of “synthetic bat-origin SARS-like coronaviruses” that have acquired the ability to infect human cells. The document then listed a number of maintenance and repair projects undertaken at the WIV in 2019, including a hazardous waste treatment system renovation project. On Sept. 12, 2019, the WIV’s public database of 22,000 samples and virus sequences gathered from bats and mice was suddenly and inexplicably taken offline. To date, the database has yet to be made public again, with Shi giving contradictory accounts as to why it went offline. An analysis of satellite imagery over the two-and-a-half years prior to Dec. 19, 2019, found that parking lots at the six hospitals closest to WIV headquarters were at their fullest in September and October of that year. During this period, Wuhan-based searches for the terms “cough” and “diarrhea” on Chinese search engine Baidu also began to climb. China’s state-run media reported in January of 2020 that People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Major General Chen Wei, an expert in biology and chemical weapon defense, was dispatched to Wuhan to take the reins at the WIV’s BSL-4 lab. However, the report cited testimony from a former senior U.S. official as saying that Chen had actually begun overseeing the lab in late 2019, possibly indicating the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was aware of the outbreak even earlier. The authors of the report asserted that “it is reasonable to conclude” that based on the WIV’s work manipulating bat viruses and the events in September, lab scientists had become infected with either a natural virus collected from the wild or one that had been genetically manipulated. The infected researchers then likely spread the virus while taking shuttle busses or the Wuhan Metro Line 2, which serves the WIV, Wuhan CDC, Huanan Seafood Market, and Wuhan International Airport.
Wuhan Lab Worker Bat Infection a Probable COVID Origin Theory – WHO Official – COVID potentially started when a Wuhan laboratory researcher got infected by a bat, according to World Health Organization (WHO) official Peter Embarek. Embarek, who led the WHO’s COVID origins investigation mission to China earlier this year, has now told Danish news broadcaster TV 2 that the bat infection scenario is a probable theory. Embarek said: “An employee who was infected in the field by taking samples falls under one of the probable hypotheses.” However, he added that WHO experts could find no direct evidence to support the theory that the pandemic stemmed from Wuhan bat research. The so-called lab leak theory in regards to the origins of the COVID pandemic has been a controversial subject for several months, causing tensions on the international stage. In the WHO’s initial report, the scenario of COVID being introduced via a laboratory incident was labeled “extremely unlikely.” However, Embarek told TV 2 that while investigators were able to get access to laboratories in Wuhan, China, and have their questions answered, “we did not get to look at any documentation at all.” The WHO official added that while the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has received a lot of attention in regards to origin theories, another lab, run by the Chinese health authorities, is also worth looking at. Embarek said he had been told by management there that the lab had changed premises in early December 2019 – around the time COVID was first detected. He said it would be “interesting to look at that period and this laboratory” at some point.
Israel, Widely Vaccinated, Suffers Another Covid-19 Surge – WSJ – After becoming one of the first countries to open up thanks to a widespread Covid-19 vaccination campaign, Israel is again on guard, this time against the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Mask mandates are back, including requirements to mask up for large outdoor gatherings. Many venues require people to show proof of vaccination, a negative Covid-19 test or proof of recovery from the virus. People returning from most countries have to quarantine for at least a week, even if they are fully vaccinated. Over-60s are being offered a third, booster shot of Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine, and the government is planning to offer it to younger recipients with the hopes it can suppress the rise of cases of severe illness. Health officials are warning that Israel could face a fourth lockdown during the Jewish holiday season in September if the country doesn’t deliver more booster shots and improve on its wider vaccination rate; 60% of the total population are fully vaccinated, making up around 80% of adults. A little over a month ago, day-to-day life in Israel was quickly getting back to normal. People were dining indoors or attending concerts without needing the so-called green pass, a digital certificate stored on phones to show the holder is fully vaccinated. But the more contagious Delta variant is forcing a change in tack, in a test case for what could happen elsewhere, including countries with high vaccination rates. “That window when we weren’t concerned about things was so brief,” said Rena Magun, 61 years old, who co-runs a tourism and Jewish events-planning business with her husband in Jerusalem. Ms. Magun said when she sent an invite to her friends for a meal last week she was careful to emphasize it would take place outside on the porch. Her business has been badly damaged as families hoping to celebrate bar or bat mitzvahs with their children in Israel have been forced to reschedule the trips up to four times already since March 2020. “It’s absolutely devastating,” Ms. Magun said. .
TV: 14 Israelis who got 3rd shot later infected with COVID-19 | The Times of Israel – Fourteen Israelis have been diagnosed with COVID-19 despite having been inoculated with a third COVID-19 vaccine dose, according to Health Ministry data reported by Channel 12 news on Sunday. According to the network, two of those infected after receiving the booster shot have been hospitalized. It was not immediately clear whether the 14 contracted the virus before or after receiving the booster. Such sporadic instances would not be enough for medical officials to draw conclusions as to the third dose’s general effectiveness in fighting off the Delta variant of the disease. Eleven of the 14 cases were over the age of 60, and the remaining three were immunocompromised individuals under 60, the network said. The two that were hospitalized were over 60. Some 420,000 Israelis have been administered a third booster shot so far, in a drive that began last week. Meanwhile, in a Sunday meeting, government ministers fought over the prospect of a nationwide lockdown during the upcoming High Holiday period amid surging COVID-19 cases, according to leaks published on Hebrew-language media. Reports on Channels 12 and 13 and elsewhere said Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton, who has courted controversy by calling plans to vaccinate students in schools a “crime,” said during the cabinet meeting that the option of a lockdown must be “taken off the agenda.”
Israel Rolls Out Booster COVID-19 Shots for All 50+ Amid Delta Surge –Israel started delivering booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to over 50s on Friday as the country tries to control a new surge in cases.”Starting this morning, people between the ages of 50 and 60 have been vaccinated at Clalit clinics across the country,” said Ran Balicer, chief innovation officer at Clalit Health Services and the chairman of Israel’s national expert panel on COVID-19, France 24 reported.The use of booster doses of the vaccine was approved late Thursday night, the Israeli Health Ministry said in a statement.Healthcare workers, people with weakened immune systems, prisoners, and wardens can now also receive a booster shot, the ministry said in a statement.Israel started giving booster shots to people over 60 two weeks ago, citing a drop in protection over time against severe disease driven by the Delta variant. Vaccines help protect against severe COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said at the time that if the booster shot succeeds in lowering cases of severe illness, that would “give us a powerful tool against the pandemic,” The Wall Street Journal reported.The move to expand booster shots to people over 50 comes as COVID-19 cases surged in Israel, reaching more than 6,000 new cases a day, according to John Hopkins University data. That is in spite of almost 60% of the population being fully vaccinated, according to the data.
Israel Tightens Coronavirus Restrictions as New Cases Surge (AP) – Israel’s government on Wednesday advanced a raft of new coronavirus restrictions, including sweeping implementation of a digital vaccine passport and tighter restrictions on mass gatherings, as the country struggles with skyrocketing new infections. The country that had appeared to put the coronavirus pandemic behind it a few months ago after a world-leading vaccine drive is now re-imposing regulations in a bid to clamp back down on infections. The Cabinet gave its approval for the tighter measures – including limitations on people gathering indoors and restricting entry to venues and restaurants to “Green Pass” holders – as new cases of the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus surge despite widespread vaccination against COVID-19. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the government would be “giving a booster” to the country’s healthcare system as new coronavirus cases continue a precipitous climb. He said Israel had to prepare for a situation of mass hospitalizations, and was allocating 2.5 billion shekels ($774 million) to help boost capacity at hospitals nationwide. Despite its vaccination campaign, Israel has seen new coronavirus cases rise in recent weeks. The Health Ministry recorded 5,755 new cases on Wednesday, the highest daily figure since February, and serious cases have grown from 19 in mid-June to 400. At least 6,580 Israelis have died from coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, according to Health Ministry figures. The government had largely lifted coronavirus restrictions by May following its vaccine drive, but with new infections on the rise, has reinstated limitations on assemblies and indoor mask mandates. Over 58% of the country’s 9.3 million citizens have received two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Israel had secured a large supply of the Pfizer vaccines in exchange for trading medical data. Earlier this month Israel starting giving third vaccine doses to immunosuppressed individuals and citizens over the age of 60.
Sydney’s outbreak spreads across NSW as Australia’s COVID crisis continues A major coronavirus outbreak, which continues to result in hundreds of new infections in Sydney each day, is spreading across the state of New South Wales (NSW), the most-populous in the country, with growing numbers of cases and exposure sites in regional areas. Inner-west Sydney COVID-19 testing station (Photo: WSWS Media) The extension of the highly-contagious Delta variant throughout NSW further demonstrates that the outbreak is a national crisis, not confined to one city. Over the past week, the virus had already resulted in dozens of cases in Victoria and Queensland, which neighbour NSW, prompting limited snap lockdowns in both states. The pro-business policies of state, territory and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, have imperiled millions of people with infection by Delta, a particularly virulent and deadly strain, which has resulted in COVID catastrophes in countries such as India and Indonesia and ongoing surges in the US, Britain and Europe. As is the case there, public health has been subordinated to profit interests, with governments rejecting calls from medical experts for stringent lockdown measures, because of the impact they would have on business activities. Late last week, cases were detected in the Newcastle and Hunter regions several hours north of Sydney. Greater Newcastle alone has a population of close to half a million. Throughout the pandemic, there had been only a handful of infections in the areas, which include a host of working-class suburbs. The latest outbreak there has already resulted in 30 infections, including a record 13 today, with transmission continuing despite the announcement of a limited lockdown on Thursday. As is the case throughout NSW, numbers of the cases are unlinked, so sources of transmission are unknown. There are dozens of exposure sites, with 11 more added to the list yesterday. The dangers of a broader spread were underscored by a biosecurity lockdown of an inner-city Newcastle hotel yesterday, and the announcement that potentially-infected people visited several sites at the University of Newcastle, including one of its main libraries. Students in the university’s International House residential college were forced into isolation after NSW Health announced that anyone who lives on campus and has been there between July 28 and August 7 is considered a “close contact” of infected individuals. Yesterday, Tamworth, a city of more than 40,000, located in inland northern NSW was thrown into a week-long lockdown, after it was discovered that a Newcastle resident had visited last Wednesday, and had gone to a host of public venues, including stores and cafes. Armidale, another city in the northern tablelands, was placed under restrictions several days ago, after two positive cases were detected, also linked to Newcastle. Also in northern NSW, the coastal town of Byron Bay and surrounding areas, including Lismore, the Richmond Valley and Ballina Shire, were placed into a snap lockdown. A man traveled to the area from Sydney late last month, where he is thought to have contracted the virus, meaning Delta may have been circulating in the region undetected for close to two weeks. The NSW authorities are asserting in a number of cases, including the Byron Bay outbreak, that the spread is the result of individuals violating health directives. The strategy is the same that has been used in Sydney, where working-class residents of the city’s west and south-west have been accused, without a shred of public evidence, of widespread rule-breaking. In reality, the extension of the virus crisis throughout the state has been warned of since the Sydney outbreak began on June 16. As the state capital, Sydney has myriad links to regional towns and cities across NSW. The state Liberal-National government has refused to enforce any containment line around Sydney, instead merely issuing directives against the city’s residents travelling elsewhere. Even these rules contain a host of exemptions, especially for work-related activities.
Nine people died after oxygen system failed at Russian hospital. –Nine coronavirus patients died on Monday in a hospital in southern Russia after a system that supplied oxygen failed, according to statements by local authorities and reports in Russian media.The deaths are the latest in a series of accidents and fires related to oxygen supply in Russian hospitals, which have struggled to treat a new Delta variant-driven wave of patients. About 19 percent of Russia’s total population is now fully vaccinated.There were 71 patients in the intensive care unit at the Republican Clinical Hospital for Emergency Medicine in Vladikavkaz when the system failed, the regional health ministry said in a statement.The hospital relied on an oxygen generator that fed the gas through an underground pipe to the intensive care unit, Interfax reported. The underground pipe was worn out and had a leak, the news agency reported.The report cited the acting regional health minister, Soslan Tebiyev, saying doctors were carefully monitoring the survivors. “The rest of the patients are strictly controlled,” he said. Those patients get oxygen from canisters, reports said. Twenty patients died last fall in Rostov-on-Don, also in Russia’s south, when a hospital ran out of oxygen. In a separate incident last fall, the oxygen supply of a hospital in the Ural Mountain city of Chelyabinsk exploded and set the hospital on fire, forcing the evacuation of 158 critically ill Covid-19 patients. Local media reported two patients died in that incident.
Anti-vax nurse gave 8,600 people saline, not COVID vaccine: police –A German nurse is being investigated for allegedly injecting thousands of people with a placebo instead of the coronavirus vaccine. Based on witness testimony, police investigator Peter Beer said there was “a reasonable suspicion” that the rogue medical professional had administered shots of saline solution to up to 8,600 patients who were slated to receive the COVID jab, Reuters reported.. “I am totally shocked by this episode,” Sven Ambrosy, a local councilor, said of the alarming switcheroo, which reportedly occurred in March and April in Friesland in northern Germany. It’s unknown why the shot-blocker – reportedly a Red Cross nurse – had injected people with blanks; however, she had reportedly broadcast anti-vax views on social media, investigators reported. And while the faux jab was harmless, it may have disproportionately affected elderly people, who are at a greater risk of contracting the virus. In order to prevent casualties from the fake shots, authorities are imploring thousands of people to get a second jab. “The district of Friesland will do everything possible to ensure that the affected people receive their vaccination protection as soon as possible,” Ambrosy wrote in a Tuesday Facebook post.
‘Living through a war’: In Cuba, a race to vaccinate as Covid surges – Over the last month, daily case numbers in the communist-ruled island have tripled as the delta variant of the coronavirus has taken root. While total daily case numbers remain under 10,000, the country now has the highest contagion rate per capita in Latin America, although the mortality rate remains well below the regional and world averages.The central province of Ciego de Ávila, where Rodriguez lives, is the current hot spot. With the local health care system overwhelmed, the government last week converted two of 30 hotels in the province into hospitals. Two hundred Cuban doctors were also withdrawn from posts in Venezuela to treat the surge in cases.“These are good decisions, but they could have been taken earlier,” Rodr’guez said. “The local [Communist] Party has been badly organized.”Government leaders agree. “We needn’t be embarrassed that [the virus] has exceeded the capacities of our institutions – this has happened around the world,” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said last week. “But we ought to be embarrassed when … effects are increased by our shoddy work, our negligence and our errors.”Such pointed self-criticism from the government is rare. The change in language reflects a deteriorating situation on the ground, as well as, perhaps, an attempt to chime with popular discontent following unprecedented anti-government protests last month.Throughout last year the island, which touts its status as the country with the highest doctor-to-patient ratio, implemented a successful track, trace and isolation regimen. All positive patients were hospitalized, including asymptomatic patients. Cuba’s government reported that just 146 people died from the virus last year, the equivalent of 13 deaths per million throughout the year (the U.S. recorded 1,024 deaths per million over the same period). But last week alone, the death toll was 602.
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