Daily Covid Briefing
July 18, 2021, 4:43 a.m. ET
July 18, 2021, 4:43 a.m. ET
Three of the nearly 60 Texas Democrats who fled Texas this week in an effort to prevent the passage of a restrictive new voting law have tested positive for the coronavirus in Washington.
One lawmaker tested positive on a rapid test on Friday night and immediately shared the results, the Texas House Democratic Caucus said in an emailed statement. The rest of the caucus and their staff members then took rapid tests that came back negative. However, on Saturday morning, the statement said, two of the lawmakers tested again, and proved positive. All three were fully vaccinated, according to the statement, which did not name them.
“This is a sober reminder that Covid is still with us, and though vaccinations offer tremendous protection, we still must take necessary precautions,” the caucus’s chairman, Chris Turner, said in the statement.
One of the lawmakers has mild symptoms, according to The Austin American-Statesman, which first reported the infections. Most of the lawmakers are staying at the same hotel in Washington, and since they arrived on Monday had used masks sparingly, the newspaper reported.
The caucus’s statement said that after the testing on Friday turned up no new cases, the members did not take other precautions. The statement cited guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that most fully vaccinated people who have been exposed to someone who has tested positive do not need to take additional precautions, like quarantining or testing, if they are asymptomatic. (An exception applies to those who live or work at jails or homeless shelters.)
The C.D.C. also says that fully vaccinated individuals can refrain from quarantining after an exposure if they are not showing symptoms.
The Covid vaccines in use in the United States have proven to be effective at reducing the risk of severe symptoms or hospitalization, but infections among fully vaccinated individuals, known as breakthrough infections, are not unheard of. It is not yet clear whether the highly transmissible Delta variant circulating across the country increases the likelihood of breakthrough infections.
A new requirement that masks be worn indoors in Los Angeles County goes into effect Saturday night. But the local sheriff says he won’t enforce the mandate.
“Forcing the vaccinated and those who already contracted Covid-19 to wear masks indoors is not backed by science,” Sheriff Alex Villanueva wrote in a statement posted on his department’s website on Friday.
The department “will not expend our limited resources and instead ask for voluntary compliance,” the statement continued.
County public health officials have been urging residents for weeks to wear masks indoors as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads in the state, as it is across the country.
But with California fully reopened and pandemic restrictions lifted, it remains unclear how willing the public will be to pick up their masks again — especially with little enforcement.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health could issue a notice of violation or a citation to businesses that fail to comply with the mandate, a spokeswoman, Natalie Jimenez, wrote in an email. But she said that “education and information sharing” would be the department’s primary approaches.
“Our community will not be able to enforce our way out of this pandemic; we need everyone doing their part to keep themselves and each other safe,” Ms. Jimenez wrote.
Enforcing mask mandates proved an enduring challenge for public health officials across the country in earlier phases of the pandemic, as concerns about the virus’s spread, crushing hospital loads and a staggering national death toll clashed with politicized outcries over threats to personal liberty and rampant misinformation.
In Los Angeles County, Sheriff Villanueva repeatedly declined to enforce Covid restrictions, including a statewide stay-at-home order last winter. Last summer, the county’s inspector general warned that sheriff’s deputies weren’t following orders requiring them to wear masks on the job.
The Los Angeles County mask requirement is being reintroduced because the Delta-driven surge presents risks that earlier versions of the virus did not.
“People with only one vaccine are not as well protected, and there is evidence that a very small number of fully vaccinated individuals can become infected and may be able to infect others,” said a statement issued Thursday by the county health department.
Masks will continue to be required in public schools statewide, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that masks be optional for fully vaccinated students and staff members.
L.A. County is averaging over 1,877 new cases a day, a 272 percent increase from the average two weeks ago, and Covid hospitalizations are up more than 27 percent, according to a New York Times database. Still, the current situation is far less grave for the county than during the peak over the winter, when new cases hit an average of over 16,000 and hospitalizations rose to an average of more than 7,000.
Daily deaths have also remained in the single digits, down from winter’s average high of more than 240.
MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. — When the boat factory in this leafy Ozark Mountains city offered free coronavirus vaccinations this spring, Susan Johnson, 62, a receptionist there, declined the offer, figuring she was protected as long as she never left her house without a mask.
Linda Marion, 68, a widow with chronic pulmonary disease, worried that a vaccination might actually trigger Covid-19 and kill her. Barbara Billigmeier, 74, an avid golfer who retired here from California, believed she did not need it because “I never get sick.”
Last week, all three were patients on 2 West, an overflow ward that is now largely devoted to treating Covid at Baxter Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in north-central Arkansas. Mrs. Billigmeier said the scariest part was that “you can’t breathe.” For 10 days, Ms. Johnson had relied on supplemental oxygen being fed to her lungs through nasal tubes.
Ms. Marion said that at one point, she felt so sick and frightened that she wanted to give up. “It was just terrible,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t take it.”
Yet despite their ordeals, none of them changed their minds about getting vaccinated. “It’s just too new,” Mrs. Billigmeier said. “It is like an experiment.”
While much of the nation tiptoes toward normalcy, the coronavirus is again swamping hospitals in places like Mountain Home, a city of fewer than 13,000 people not far from the Missouri border. A principal reason, health officials say, is the emergence of the new, far more contagious variant called Delta, which now accounts for more than half of new infections in the United States.
The variant has highlighted a new divide in America, between communities with high vaccination rates, where it causes hardly a ripple, and those like Mountain Home that are undervaccinated, where it threatens to upend life all over again. Part of the country is breathing a sigh of relief; part is holding its breath.
Facebook pushed back on Saturday against the Biden administration’s denouncing of the social media giant for spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines, escalating tensions between the Silicon Valley company and the White House.
In a blog post, Facebook called for the administration to stop “finger-pointing” and laid out what it had done to encourage users to get vaccinated. The social network also detailed how it had clamped down on lies about the vaccines, which officials have said led people to refuse to be vaccinated.
“The Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies,” Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, said in the post. “The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the U.S. has increased.”
Mr. Rosen added that the company’s data showed that 85 percent of its users in the United States had been or wanted to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. While President Biden had set a goal of getting 70 percent of Americans vaccinated by July 4, which the White House fell short of, “Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed,” Mr. Rosen said.
Facebook’s response follows a forceful condemnation of the company by Mr. Biden. When asked on Friday about the role of social media in influencing vaccinations, Mr. Biden declared in unusually strong language that the platforms were “killing people.”
“Look,” he added, “the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and that — and they’re killing people.”
This morning I tested positive for Covid. I’m waiting for my PCR result, but thankfully I have had my jabs and symptoms are mild.
Please make sure you come forward for your vaccine if you haven’t already. pic.twitter.com/NJYMg2VGzT
— Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) July 17, 2021
Sajid Javid, Britain’s new health secretary, said on Saturday in a short video on Twitter that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, only two days before almost all of the country’s virus-related restrictions were set to be lifted.
“I was feeling a bit groggy last night, so I took a lateral flow test this morning, and it’s come out positive,” said Mr. Javid, 51, who was smiling and appeared to be in good spirits. Britain has distributed the easy-to-use lateral flow tests as a means of encouraging people to test themselves or get tested for the virus.
Mr. Javid said that he had already received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine, and that his symptoms were “very mild.” He added that he was isolating at home with his family, and that he was awaiting the results of a P.C.R. test, which is considered more accurate, for confirmation.
Mr. Javid was appointed health secretary in June after Matt Hancock, who had spearheaded the country’s pandemic response, resigned after being accused of violating coronavirus restrictions in tabloid news reports of his affair with an aide.
The British government had planned to end England’s pandemic rules on June 21, but a jump in cases driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant led Prime Minister Boris Johnson to delay the lifting of restrictions by four weeks, to Monday. Critics say that is still too early as Britain continues to report high numbers of new cases, including almost 54,000 on Saturday. The seven-day average of new daily infections is up 83 percent over two weeks ago.
So far, about 53 percent of Britain’s population has been fully vaccinated, and about 69 percent has received a single dose of a vaccine, according to a New York Times database.
In his video, Mr. Javid thanked all of those who have been involved in the country’s vaccination program, and he encouraged anyone who has yet to be vaccinated to do so.
“If everyone plays their part,” the health secretary said, “you’re not only protecting yourself and your loved ones, but you’re also safeguarding the N.H.S. and helping protect our way of life.”
Amid a rapidly spiking Delta-driven surge of coronavirus cases in Britain, the second season of the Netflix series “Bridgerton” halted filming for the second time in three days, after someone involved with the production tested positive for the coronavirus.
A spokeswoman for Netflix declined to say whether it was a cast or crew member who had tested positive, but said the individual was now isolating. Production on the popular Regency-era drama, which is set and filmed in Britain, has been paused indefinitely, Deadline first reported on Saturday.
Filming on the show, which is based on Julia Quinn’s romance novels, was halted for the first time on Thursday for 24 hours after a crew member tested positive. Everyone working on the series was tested, and no cast members were affected. Production had resumed on Friday before being paused again.
The first season of “Bridgerton,” the first original series for Netflix by Shonda Rhimes’s production company, was a hit with both fans and critics. Netflix reported that 82 million households watched the series in its first month following a Christmas Day release. The show follows the drama of a courting season in 1813 London, with social machinations, scheming and scandal galore as high-society families contrive to pair off their young eligibles.
It was also nominated for 12 Emmy Awards this week, including a nod for Regé-Jean Page, who played the Duke of Hastings Simon Bassett, in the leading actor in a drama category. There is no release date yet for the second season, but filming began in May.
A Covid-19 surge has also been shutting down London’s West End theaters after members of productions like “Hairspray” at the London Coliseum and “Romeo and Juliet” at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater tested positive earlier this month.
Despite a rise in cases that has driven England’s daily average to 35,388 — almost double the level just two weeks ago — the government has been pushing ahead in its bid to reopen. Virtually all social distancing and mask requirements will be removed in England on Monday.
Two Spanish regions reintroduced nighttime curfews on Saturday, just after local judges approved them as justified restrictions because of a recent uptick in coronavirus cases.
The regions — Catalonia and Cantabria — are enforcing curfews in municipalities where the infection rates have risen fastest. Overall, about eight million of Spain’s 47 million residents will no longer be allowed out of their homes late at night.
The curfews came into force early on Saturday. In Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, the police said that they had to force about 4,300 people to go home at 1 a.m. because they were still partying on beaches and in other areas of the city.
The virus’s latest surge has been uneven across Spain. Cumulatively, the country’s cases have risen 217 percent over the last two weeks, hitting an average of 23,290 — a level not seen since early this year, when Spain was among the European countries worst hit by the pandemic.
Catalonia, on the country’s northeastern Mediterranean coast, has the highest coronavirus case rate in the country, with 105 infections per 100,000 people. Some 77 percent of Covid patients in intensive care had not been vaccinated, according to Reuters, and the highest rate of new infections was among young people ages 20 to 29.
Catalan officials said that around 84 percent of current infections involve the highly contagious Delta variant, which has been spreading across Europe. The local authorities said that 1,349 people were hospitalized with Covid as of Friday, double the number from a week earlier.
Cantabria, on Spain’s northern Atlantic coast, has seen a far smaller spike than most of the rest of the country, but even so, its cases have risen 85 percent over the last two weeks. That area won court approval to impose curfews in 53 towns, which will take place between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. for seven days.
British medical officials announced on Friday that fully vaccinated travelers arriving in England from France must continue to quarantine because of the threat posed by the Beta variant, though vaccinated travelers from other European nations on Britain’s medium-risk amber list will no longer have to quarantine as of Monday.
Monday is being celebrated as England’s “freedom day,” when almost all coronavirus restrictions will be lifted. The British decision angered many whose travel plans to and from France have been disrupted by the new restrictions.
Travelers from France — along with anyone who has traveled to France in the prior 10 days — must quarantine for five to 10 days in their own accommodation, and they will need a coronavirus test on Day 2 and Day 8.
This is one of the country’s first major actions related to the Beta variant, which was first identified in South Africa. Clinical trials show that vaccines offer less protection against Beta. Until now, Britain has been focused on the threat from the Delta variant, first identified in India, which is now dominant in Britain and France as well as the United States.
The Beta variant accounts for 3.4 percent of new cases in France over the past four weeks, according to GISAID, an international open-source database.
France has announced new vaccination requirements in its fight against Delta, but is continuing to open up to travelers. Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Saturday that unvaccinated travelers from Britain, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, the Netherlands and Greece would be allowed entry into France as of Sunday, if they produce negative results from a coronavirus test taken within the 24 hours prior to their arrival.
Travelers who are fully vaccinated with the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson will be able to enter without a negative test.
Among those whose travel plans have been disrupted by the new restrictions is Liliane (not Lilliame, as an earlier version of this item stated) Aubourg, a French citizen living in Britain. She has not seen her 62-year-old mother, who lives alone, in almost two years. Ms. Aubourg, 36, who is fully vaccinated, planned to travel to France with her husband, who is also vaccinated, in August.
“Waking up to the news yesterday night that actually there is a U-turn for France, it is just so disheartening,” said Ms. Aubourg, who has now canceled her trip. “We haven’t told our family yet. My mother is elderly, my husband’s parents are elderly. We just want to see our family.”
Juliet Walton, 50, a British citizen who lives in southwest France, is traveling to Britain on July 24 for her daughter’s 22nd birthday party. Now with the new restrictions, Ms. Walton will have to quarantine on her arrival.
With “Brexit and a pandemic, it’s just an absolute nightmare,” Ms. Walton said. “It’s just so ill-thought out and unnecessary. I’ve had both my jabs. I was looking forward to getting some sort of normality.”
Callum Sowler, 35, who flew to the south of France on Tuesday to visit his fiancée’s family, will now have to quarantine with his fiancée and their son, who joined him on Friday for the summer holidays, when they return to England.
“It’s turned what was supposed to be a fun holiday into something that’s now caused us loss of sleep last night and stress this morning, because we really don’t know what to do for the best now,” Mr. Sowler said.
Véronique Trillet-Lenoir, a French member of the European Parliament and an oncologist, said, “I really don’t understand the decision,” adding that the Beta variant was “not an issue in mainland France,” but more so in Réunion Island, a French department about 4,000 miles from Europe, off the southeastern coast of Africa.
Some research has shown that the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, the backbone of Britain’s inoculation campaign, has been less effective in preventing mild and moderate Beta cases, which Ms. Trillet-Lenoir said could be a motivation behind the British government’s decision to announce the new restrictions..
In Case You Missed It
Representatives of the drug maker Pfizer met privately with senior U.S. scientists and regulators this week to press their case for swift authorization of Covid-19 booster vaccines, amid growing public confusion about whether they will be needed and pushback from federal health officials who say the extra doses are not necessary now.
Officials say more data — and possibly several more months — would be needed before regulators could determine whether booster shots were necessary. The meeting, held Monday, came on the same day that Israel started administering third doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to heart transplant patients and others with compromised immune systems.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website now notes that “People who are immunocompromised should be counseled about the potential for reduced immune responses to Covid-19 vaccines,” and urges them to continue wearing masks, staying six feet away from people outside their households, and avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated indoor spaces.
Debate has been intensifying about whether booster shots are needed in the United States, at what point and for whom. At the same time, the World Health Organization has pointed to the profound inequities in global vaccine access, and urged wealthy countries to share their doses with needier ones rather than consider adding booster shots domestically.
Many American experts, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic, have said that there is insufficient evidence yet that boosters are necessary.
Some, though, say Israel’s move may foreshadow a decision in the United States to at least recommend them for the vulnerable, or to begin with certain age groups, officials said.
For example, booster shots might go first to nursing home residents who received their vaccines in late 2020 or early 2021, while older people who received their first shots in the spring might have a longer wait. And then there is the question of what kind of booster: a third dose of the original vaccine, or perhaps a shot tailored to the highly infectious Delta variant, which is surging in the United States.
In other news this week:
-
A shipment of 500,000 Covid vaccine doses from the United States arrived in Haiti on Wednesday, the first shots to reach a nation thrown into turmoil after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The donation is part of the Biden administration’s effort to bolster lagging vaccination campaigns in the world’s poorer countries, and will be distributed by Covax, the global vaccine-sharing effort, according to the Pan American Health Organization, part of the World Health Organization.
-
President Biden’s surgeon general on Thursday used his first formal advisory to the United States to deliver a broadside against tech and social media companies, which he accused of not doing enough to stop the spread of dangerous health misinformation — especially about Covid. The official, Dr. Vivek Murthy, declared such misinformation “an urgent threat to public health.”
-
With less than a week to go before the Summer Olympics in Japan, organizers and competitors face ever-growing challenges as infections in Tokyo reach six-month highs. The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, insisted that the arrivals of thousands of athletes and officials from overseas would not spread infections. But dozens of cases have emerged among people involved with the Games, including the first infection within the Olympic Village, which was reported on Saturday.
"who" - Google News
July 17, 2021 at 09:27PM
https://ift.tt/3esysAA
3 Texas Democrats who fled their state to stall a voting bill test positive in Washington. - The New York Times
"who" - Google News
https://ift.tt/36dvnyn
https://ift.tt/35spnC7
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "3 Texas Democrats who fled their state to stall a voting bill test positive in Washington. - The New York Times"
Post a Comment