Category: Corona Virus

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With at least 13,790 COVID-19 patients, most of them unvaccinated, hospitalized in Texas on Thursday, the state marked a week hovering at just below the record set in January for hospitalizations during the pandemic, according to numbers released by the Texas Department of State Health Services.

The states previous pandemic peak of 14,218 hospitalized COVID-19 patients was reported Jan. 11 during the deadliest wave of infections the state had seen since the virus was first reported in Texas in March 2020.

During the current summer surge, the largest number of COVID-19 patients in Texas hospitals has been 13,932 on Aug. 25. But with just a couple hundred fewer patients statewide than the record and a much more exhausted and depleted workforce than they had over the winter hospitals have been operating at or above capacity for weeks.

The surge has put unprecedented pressure on the states health care system as the delta variant spreads largely uncontrolled at a rate up to eight times faster than previous versions of the virus. Medical professionals say the situation could have been prevented with wider acceptance of the vaccine.

In recent weeks, the state has already seen a record number of hospitals reporting that they had run out of staffed ICU beds available for new patients. Particular pressure is being felt by large metropolitan systems that have put elective surgeries on hold and report having to turn away ambulances due to overflowing emergency and intensive care departments.

Much of the problem, hospital officials say, is a severe shortage of nurses and other staff to take care of patients after large numbers of health workers quit or retired due to COVID-related during the pandemic. Health care workers who remain are expensive and in high demand.

During the winter surge, state health and emergency management leaders sent tens of thousands of relief nurses from across the state and nation to relieve the pressure on overwhelmed hospitals.

After vaccinations were made widely available in the spring and hospitalizations dropped, the state-supported nurse program ended in May. But vaccinations began to slow around that time as well, when just about a quarter of Texans had gotten injections.

That opened the door for the delta variant to spread more quickly starting around June; hospitalizations started surging later that month.

Experts say the best way to flatten the curve is to ramp up social distancing, mask-wearing and hand-washing, proven methods for stopping COVID-19's spread, while the state works to get more of Texas 29 million residents vaccinated.

But Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has stood fast against any state or local mandates that proponents say would push Texas toward more vaccinations and slower community spread.

A strong opponent of lockdowns in the wake of widespread Republican criticism of his pandemic-era rules last summer, Abbott dropped statewide business capacity restrictions and mask mandates in March.

Through a series of executive orders and legislation, Abbott and Texas lawmakers also banned Texas businesses from requiring customers to show proof of vaccination, local governments and school districts from requiring masks and public sector employers from requiring their workers to be vaccinated.

Those bans remain in legal limbo as they move through the courts.

Last week, Abbott issued an executive order saying that his bans would remain in place even after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave Pfizer's vaccine full approval for people ages 16 and up on Monday. Abbott's previous orders had applied only to vaccines that had only emergency use authorization.

Meanwhile, most Texas school districts have started classes almost entirely in person, many with mask requirements in place in defiance of Abbotts stance against them, in an effort to stop the quickening spread of the delta variant among Texas children.

Just under 48% of Texans have been fully vaccinated, which experts say protects them from serious illness, hospitalization and death.

Those who arent vaccinated constitute upward of 90% of the hospitalized patients, officials report. Cities, counties, universities and private companies are offering incentives for vaccinations, and the state has reported a small upswing in the number of daily shots being given in recent weeks.

But while that number begins to climb from its low point late July, officials are seeking to solve the hospital staffing problem.

So far, the state has paid to hire more than 8,000 contract health care workers for Texas hospitals that are under the most pressure, many of which have already seen admission rates close to or higher than they were seeing in January when they had more staff to take care of those patients.

The state-funded relief nurses have been arriving at hospitals for the last few weeks. Meanwhile, some counties are considering using or have already agreed to tap federal stimulus money to add more workers to further handle the crush of patients.

More Texas doctors are also turning to monoclonal antibody therapies for COVID-19 patients who qualify, saying that the treatment gives them a better chance of staying out of the hospital and could lower statewide hospitalization rates until more people become vaccinated.

Mandi Cai contributed to this report.

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COVID-19 hospitalizations in Texas level off just below the pandemic's winter peak - The Texas Tribune

A hiring sign gets displayed in a store window in New York City in August. Last month saw a sharp slowdown in hiring from previous months as the pandemic wears on and creates uncertainty. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

A hiring sign gets displayed in a store window in New York City in August. Last month saw a sharp slowdown in hiring from previous months as the pandemic wears on and creates uncertainty.

Hiring slowed sharply in August as a new surge in coronavirus infections slammed the brakes on the economic recovery.

U.S. employers added just 235,000 jobs last month, a sharp slowdown from the torrid pace of hiring in June and July.

"The labor market recovery has downshifted," said Nela Richardson, chief economist for the payroll processing company ADP. "The U.S. economy is facing increasing headwinds as the pandemic wears on and the delta variant creates uncertainty."

The unemployment rate fell to 5.2% in August from 5.4% in July.

Confirmed coronavirus infections have jumped nearly 20% in the last two weeks, while COVID-19 deaths have nearly doubled during that period. The worsening public health outlook threw a late-summer speed bump in the recovery, making people more cautious about traveling and eating out and reducing the need for workers.

Restaurants and bars cut 42,000 jobs in August after adding 253,000 in July.

Retailers cut 29,000 jobs last month.

Homebase, which makes scheduling software for small businesses, saw a notable decline in hours worked last month especially in the entertainment and hospitality industries.

"We are hearing anecdotally from our customers that absolutely it is a result of COVID," Homebase CEO John Waldmann said. "We are seeing similar trends in the data from what we saw last year and January of this year. It would be hard-pressed to say this is not COVID-related."

The slowdown in the Homebase data was particularly pronounced in the Southeast, where COVID-19 cases are especially high. New England, where case counts are lower, fared somewhat better.

The spike in new cases has also discouraged some people from returning to work. And it threatens to disrupt in-person schooling, which could make it harder for parents to hold down jobs.

"All of us who care about small businesses really wanted to be optimistic that a lot of the things keeping people from work were going to start to heal themselves into the fall," Waldmann said. "Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to be dealing with challenges here for a little bit longer."

The slowdown in hiring comes just as emergency unemployment benefits that Congress authorized earlier in the pandemic are about to expire. In mid-August, more than 12 million people were receiving some form of jobless aid. Most will receive their final payments next week.

Warehouses and delivery services added 53,000 jobs last month as the online retail business continues to expand.

Manufacturing is another bright spot in the economy, with new orders and output both accelerating in August. But factories continue to struggle to find enough parts and workers.

Factories added 37,000 jobs last month, up from 27,000 a month earlier.

"Companies want to hire more people," said Tim Fiore, who oversees a monthly survey of factory managers for the Institute for Supply Management. "There's no doubt that demand is calling for more people, and they can't get them."

Fiore said many factories are facing increased turnover as workers depart for higher wages elsewhere.

Wages have been rising, especially in restaurants and hotels. But prices have been climbing, too, eroding workers' buying power. Private sector wages in August were up 4.3% from a year ago. But they are not keeping pace with inflation, which was 5.4% in July matching the highest rate in nearly 13 years.

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U.S. Hiring Slows Sharply As Latest Coronavirus Surge Slams The Brakes On The Economy - NPR

Many people are seeking definitive answers about what they can and cant do after being vaccinated against Covid-19. Is it OK to travel? Should I go to a big wedding? Does the Delta variant make spending time with my vaccinated grandmother more risky?

But theres no one-size-fits-all answer to those questions because risk changes from one individual to the next, depending on a persons overall health, where they live and those they spend time with. The bottom line is that vaccines are highly protective against serious illness, and, with some precautions, will allow people to return to more normal lives, experts say. A recent study in Los Angeles County showed that while breakthrough infections can happen, the unvaccinated are 29 times as likely to end up hospitalized from Covid-19 as a vaccinated person.

Experts say anxiety about breakthrough infections remains pervasive, fueled in part by frightening headlines and unrealistic expectations about the role of vaccines.

Theres been a lot of miscommunication about what the risks really are to vaccinated people, and how vaccinated people should be thinking about their lives, said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. There are people who think we are back to square one, but we are in a much, much better place.

While the Delta variant is causing a surge in infections in various hot spots around the country, including Florida and Louisiana, there will eventually be an end to the pandemic. Getting there will require ongoing precautions in the coming months, but vaccinated people will have more freedom to enjoy life than they did during the early lockdowns. Here are answers to some common questions about the road ahead.

To understand why there is no simple answer to this question, think about another common risk: driving in a snowstorm. While we know that tens of thousands of people are injured or killed each year on icy roads, your individual risk depends on local conditions, the speed at which you travel, whether youre wearing a seatbelt, the safety features on your car and whether you encounter a reckless driver on the road.

Your individual risk for Covid after vaccination also depends on local conditions, your overall health, the precautions you take and how often you are exposed to unvaccinated people who could be infected.

People want to be told what to do is it safe if I do this? said Dr. Sharon Balter, director of the division of communicable disease control and prevention at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. What we can say is, These are the things that are more risky, and these are the things that are less risky.

Dr. Balters team has recently collected surveillance data that give us a clearer picture of the difference in risk to the vaccinated and unvaccinated as the Delta variant surged from May 1 through July 25. They studied infections in 10,895 fully vaccinated people and 30,801 unvaccinated people. The data showed that:

The rate of infection in unvaccinated people is five times the rate of infection in vaccinated people. By the end of the study period, the age-adjusted incidence of Covid-19 among unvaccinated persons was 315.1 per 100,000 people over a seven-day period compared to 63.8 per 100,000 incidence rate among fully vaccinated people. (Age adjustment is a statistical method used so the data are representative of the general population.)

The rate of hospitalization among the vaccinated was 1 per 100,000 people. The age-adjusted hospitalization rate in unvaccinated persons was 29.4 per 100,000.

Older vaccinated people were most vulnerable to serious illness after a breakthrough infection. The median age of vaccinated people who were hospitalized for Covid was 64 years. Among unvaccinated people who were hospitalized, the median age was 49.

The Delta variant appears to have increased the risk of breakthrough infections to vaccinated people. At the start of the study, before Delta was dominant, unvaccinated people became infected 10 times as often as vaccinated people did. By the end of study period, when Delta accounted for almost 90 percent of infections, unvaccinated people were five times as likely to get infected as vaccinated people.

While unvaccinated people are by far at highest risk for catching and spreading Covid-19, its also possible for a vaccinated person to become infected and transmit the illness to others. A recent outbreak in Provincetown, Mass., where thousands of people gathered in bars and restaurants, showed that vaccinated people can sometimes spread the virus.

Even so, many experts believe the risk of getting infected from a vaccinated person is still relatively low. Dr. Jha noted that after an outbreak among vaccinated and unvaccinated workers at the Singapore airport, tracking studies suggested that most of the spread by vaccinated people happened when they had symptoms.

When weve seen outbreaks, like those among the Yankees earlier in the year and other cases, almost always people are symptomatic when theyre spreading, Dr. Jha said. The asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic spread could happen, but we havent seen it among vaccinated people with any frequency.

Another study from Singapore looked at vaccinated and unvaccinated people infected with the Delta variant. The researchers found that while viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated workers are similar at the onset of illness, the amount of virus declines more rapidly in the vaccinated after the first week, suggesting vaccinated people are infectious for a shorter period of time.

In many cases it will be safe, but the answer depends on a number of variables. The risk is lower with a few close family members and friends than a large group of people you dont know. Outdoor gatherings are safer than indoor gatherings. Whats the community transmission rate? Whats the ventilation in the room? Do you have underlying health issues that would make you vulnerable to complications from Covid-19? Do any of the vaccinated people have a fever, sniffles or a cough?

Sept. 4, 2021, 4:11 p.m. ET

The big question is can five people sit around a table unmasked if we know theyre all vaccinated, Dr. Jha said. I think the answer is yes. The chances of anybody spreading the virus in that context is exceedingly low. And if someone does spread the virus, the other people are not going to get super sick from it. I certainly think most of us should not fear breakthrough infections to the point where we wont tolerate doing things we really value in life.

For larger gatherings or even small gatherings with a highly vulnerable person, rapid antigen testing using home testing kits can lower risk. Asking people to use a test a few days before the event, and then the day of the event, adds another layer of protection. Opening windows and doors or adding a HEPA air cleaner can also help.

Children under 12 probably will not be eligible for vaccination until the end of the year. As a result, the best way to protect them is to make sure all the adults and older kids around them are vaccinated. A recent report from the C.D.C. found that an unvaccinated elementary schoolteacher who didnt wear a mask spread the virus to half of the students in a classroom.

Studies show that schools have not been a major cause of Covid-spreading events, particularly when a number of prevention measures are in place. A combination of precautions masking indoors, keeping students at least three feet apart in classrooms, keeping students in separate cohorts or pods, encouraging hand washing and regular testing, and quarantining have been effective. While many of those studies occurred before the Delta variant became dominant, they also happened when most teachers, staff and parents were unvaccinated, so public health experts are hopeful that the same precautions will work well this fall.

Dr. Balter noted that masking in schools, regular testing and improving ventilation will keep children safer, and that parents should be reassured by the data.

UnderstandVaccine and Mask Mandates in the U.S.

The level of illness in children is much less than adults, she said. You do weigh all these things, but there are also a lot of consequences to not sending children to school.

In many cases it will be relatively safe for vaccinated people to spend time, unmasked, with an older relative. But the risk depends on local conditions and the precautions the visitor has taken in the days leading up to the visit. In areas where community vaccination rates are low and overall infection rates are high, meeting outdoors or wearing a mask may be advised.

If youre vaccinated but have been going to restaurants, large gatherings or spending time with unvaccinated people, its a good idea to practice more social distancing in the days leading up to your visit with an older or vulnerable person. Home testing a few days before the visit and the day of the visit will add another layer of protection.

Gregg Gonsalves, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, said he recently visited his 87-year-old mother and did not wear a mask. But that is because both of them are vaccinated and he still works mostly from home, lives in a highly vaccinated area and has low risk for exposure. He is also investing in home testing kits for reassurance that he is not infectious.

If I just came back from a big crowded gathering, and I had to go see my mom, I would put on a mask, he said.

The answer depends on the precautions your workplace has taken. Does the company require proof of vaccination to come into the office? Are unvaccinated people tested regularly? What percentage of people in the office are unvaccinated? What steps did your company take to improve indoor air quality? (Upgrading the filters in ventilation systems and adding stand-alone HEPA air cleaners are two simple steps that can reduce viral particles in the air.)

Offices that mandate vaccination will be safer, but vaccination rates need to exceed 90 percent. Even an 85-percent vaccination rate is not enough, Dr. Jha said. Its not going to work because one of those 15-percent unvaccinated is going to cause an outbreak for every single person in that room, he said. You do not want a bunch of unvaccinated people running around your offices.

The people who have the most to gain from booster shots are older people, transplant patients, people with compromised immune systems or those with underlying conditions that put them at high risk for complications from Covid. People who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine may also be good candidates for a second dose.

But many experts say healthy people with normal immune systems who received a two-dose mRNA vaccine from Pfizer or Moderna wont get much benefit right now from a third shot because their vaccine antibodies still offer strong protection against severe illness. That said, the Biden administration appears to be moving ahead with offering booster shots to the general public starting as soon as the week of Sept. 20.

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What Vaccinated People Need to Know About Breakthrough Infections - The New York Times

That meant, second, that the interventions were double-edged. Propping up the Treasury market enabled government spending on furlough schemes and paycheck protection plans to be funded in the normal way, by borrowing. But government IOUs are fuel for private speculation. When liquidity is flushed indiscriminately into the financial system, it inflates bubbles, generating new risks and outsize gains for those with substantial portfolios. Nowhere was this polarizing effect more pronounced than in the United States. While tens of millions struggled through the crisis, trillions of dollars piled up in the balance sheets of the wealthy.

Finally, the digital money creation was the easy bit. Keyness bon mot has a sting in its tail: We can afford anything we can actually do. The problem is agreeing on what to do and how to do it. In giving us a glimpse of financial freedom, 2020 also robbed us of pretenses and excuses. If we are not doing a global vaccine plan, it is not for lack of funds. It is because indifference, or selfish calculation vaccinate America first or real technical obstacles prevent us from actually doing it.

It turns out that budget constraints, in all their artificiality, had spared us from facing the all-too-limited willingness and capacity for collective action. Now if you hear someone arguing that we cannot afford to bring billions of people out of poverty or we cannot afford to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, we know how to respond: Either you are invoking technological obstacles, in which case we need a suitably scaled, Warp Speed-style program to overcome them, or it is simply a matter of priorities. There are other things you would rather do.

The challenges wont go away, and they wont get smaller. The coronavirus was a shock, but a pandemic was long predicted. There is every reason to think that this one will not be a one-off. Whether the disease originated in zoonotic mutation or in a lab, there is more and worse where it came from. And it is not just viruses that we have to worry about, but also the mounting destabilization of the climate, collapsing biodiversity, large-scale desertification and pollution across the globe.

Looking back before 2020, it seemed that 2008 was the beginning of a new era of successive and interconnected disruptions, such as the global financial crisis, Mr. Trumps election, and the trade and tech war with China. It all had a familiar ring to it. Great-power competition, nationalism and banking crises all harked back to the 19th and 20th centuries. Then came 2020. It has given us a glimpse of something radically new: the old tensions of politics, finance and geopolitics intersecting with a natural shock on a global scale.

The Biden administration declares that America is back. But to what is it returning? As recent events in Afghanistan demonstrate, President Biden is determined to clear the decks, brutally if necessary. As far as the Pentagon is concerned, at the top of the agenda is great-power competition with China a 19th century writ large. But what of the interconnected global crises of the 21st century that cannot be attributed to a national antagonist? For those, the one model that we have is central bank financial market intervention a form of crisis-fighting based on technical networks, rooted in existing hierarchies of power and backed by powerful self-interest. It is conservative, ad hoc and lacking in explicit political legitimacy. It tends to reinforce existing hierarchy and privilege.

The challenge for a progressive globalism fit for the next decades is both to multiply those crisis-fighting networks into the fields of medical research and vaccine development, renewable energy and so on and to make them more democratic, transparent and egalitarian.

Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) is an economic historian at Columbia and the author of the forthcoming Shutdown: How Covid Shook the Worlds Economy, from which this essay is adapted. He writes the Chartbook newsletter.

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Opinion | What if the Coronavirus Crisis Is Just a Trial Run? - The New York Times

More than 78% of Illinois adults have received at least one vaccine dose and more than 61% are fully vaccinated

SPRINGFIELD The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today reported 30,319 new confirmed and probable cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 178 additional deaths since reporting last Friday, August 27, 2021. More than 78% of Illinois adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose and more than 61% of Illinois adults are fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 1,538,324 cases, including 24,067 deaths, in 102 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Since reporting on Friday, August 27, 2021, laboratories have reported 609,585 specimens for a total of 29,177,890. As of last night, 2,286 individuals in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 551 patients were in the ICU and 302 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.

The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total test from August 27-September 2, 2021 is 5.0%. The preliminary seven-day statewide test positivity from August 27-September 2, 2021 is 5.4%.

A total of 14,005,857 vaccines have been administered in Illinois as of last midnight. The seven-day rolling average of vaccines administered daily is 26,431 doses. Since reporting on Friday, August 27, 2021, 185,014 doses were reported administered in Illinois.

*All data are provisional and will change. Additional information and COVID-19 data can be found at http://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19.

Vaccination is the key to ending this pandemic. To find a COVID-19 vaccination location near you, go to http://www.vaccines.gov.

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Public Health Officials Announce 30,319 New Cases of Coronavirus Disease Over the Past Week | IDPH - IDPH

Passengers queue up at Greece's Thessaloniki Makedonia Airport on Sept. 2. Recommendations about physical distancing prove hard to follow at airports and in the jetway leading to the plane. Konstantinos Tsakalidis/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

Passengers queue up at Greece's Thessaloniki Makedonia Airport on Sept. 2. Recommendations about physical distancing prove hard to follow at airports and in the jetway leading to the plane.

Each week, we answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you'd like us to consider for a future post, email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line: "Weekly Coronavirus Questions." See an archive of our FAQs here.

I waited until I was vaccinated and the CDC had OK'd non-essential travel to plan a trip but that was before the delta era. Now I have a flight scheduled in September, and cases are skyrocketing. What are the rules for flying this fall? Should I cancel?!

That depends.

The decision to travel rests on both your personal risk tolerance and on public health considerations, say medical and travel experts. If you have a flight booked for the next few weeks, now is the time to reevaluate. Ask yourself these questions, suggests Dr. Jill Weatherhead, an assistant professor of adult and pediatric infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine:

So when should you cancel a trip?

This is a particularly challenging moment of the pandemic to make decisions, our experts acknowledge, because there's just a lot we don't know about the coming months.

"We don't know what direction things will go; it's hard to predict right now," Weatherhead says. "Delta is a new variable, and some areas are not using the same mitigation strategies they used last year."

The governor of Hawaii has even asked all tourists to stay away until at least the end of October, while hospitals are at capacity.

"Given all that, my best advice is that everyone's travel threshold should be a bit higher right now," Wu says. "With this wave being so serious it is wise to scale back on activity that increases exposure risk."

Instead of canceling, however, consider postponing.

"It makes sense to wait if travel can be delayed," Wu says. "I would say delay until there's more certainty or maybe change it to a road trip" to a safer destination.

The good news is that most major airlines are still waiving change fees. One thing that hasn't changed, however? The telephone hold time. You could be waiting around 2 hours to talk to a human.

If you go:

If you do fly, the rules haven't changed for domestic flights: You're still required to mask up in airports, and you'll still reduce your risk by keeping a physical distance from others as much as possible and removing your mask as infrequently as possible. Although many people dropped some of the layering strategies after they got vaccinated, they still work and are particularly essential when you're in riskier-than-usual situations, Wu says such as the jet bridge between the airport and the airplane.

"I traveled this summer and I think the most dangerous part was the jet bridges, which still get backed up and crowded," he says. "There's not a lot you can do, but keep your mask on. The more you can avoid that crowd the better."

The snack cart presents another potentially risky situation, so take your snack to go (save it for your destination) or eat it quickly when others have their masks on, Wu and Weatherhead suggest.

Logistically, travelling domestically remains fairly straightforward: There are no temperature checks or verification systems to check your vaccination or COVID-19 testing records. (Once you get to your destination, however, your vaccination card may be required to eat at restaurants or go to concerts.)

If you're travelling overseas, things are now a little more complex: The European Union took the U.S. off its "safe list" this week, meaning individual countries may impose quarantine and testing restrictions in order to visit. Be sure to check the requirements of the country you're travelling to as well as the CDC's list of countries not to travel to.

While the CDC doesn't officially recommend testing after you're back home] if you're vaccinated, "if you have risk factors or around folks who may be frail or unvaccinated, I don't think it's a bad thing to be extra careful and get tested," Wu says.

What if you're not vaccinated?

Like most activities involving other people, travelling while unvaccinated is a lot riskier. In fact, this week the CDC asked all unvaccinated people to avoid travel over the Labor Day holiday.

"If you're going to travel anyway and not be vaccinated, then really do your best and follow protocols [masking and physical distancing] for your own safety and those around you," Wu says. And, he says, quarantine or get tested after your trip!

A simpler solution? Weatherhead and Wu say if you're eligible, get vaccinated.

Sheila Mulrooney Eldred is a freelance health journalist in Minneapolis. She's written about COVID-19 for many publications, including Medscape, Kaiser Health News, Science News for Students and The Washington Post. More at sheilaeldred.pressfolios.com. On Twitter: @milepostmedia.

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Travel In The Delta Variant Era: What You Should Know To Stay Safe : Goats and Soda - NPR

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 219 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.54 million. More than 5.41 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

Viet Nam could face a lengthy battle against COVID-19, its prime minister has warned. "The COVID-19 pandemic is evolving in a complicated and unpredictable manner and may last for a long time," Pham Minh Chinh said.

Thailand has said its COVID-19 vaccine regimen of a dose of Sinovac followed by AstraZeneca was safe and successfully boosted immunity among its first 1.5 million recipients.

Just over 10% of Venezuelans have been vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a doctors group.

The Philippines' Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 17.

Australia is set to receive 4 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in a swap deal with Britain. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it should speed up the country's reopening.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei has announced new transport and social restrictions in a bid to tackle surging COVID-19 cases and alleviate pressure on hospitals.

Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in selected countries

Image: Our World in Data

The United States plans to invest $3 billion in the vaccine supply chain, White House COVID adviser Jeffrey Zients told a news conference.

"The investments we are making, the $3 billion, are in US companies that will expand their capacity for critical supplies," Zients said.

The funding - which will start to be distributed in the coming weeks - will focus on manufacturers of the inputs used in vaccine production as well as facilities that fill and package vaccine vials, he added.

Areas of focus will include lipids, bioreactor bags, tubing, needles, syringes and personal protective equipment, Zients explained.

Each of our Top 50 social enterprise last mile responders and multi-stakeholder initiatives is working across four priority areas of need: Prevention and protection; COVID-19 treatment and relief; inclusive vaccine access; and securing livelihoods. The list was curated jointly with regional hosts Catalyst 2030s NASE and Aavishkaar Group. Their profiles can be found on http://www.wef.ch/lastmiletop50india.

Top Last Mile Partnership Initiatives to collaborate with:

South Korea has extended social distancing restrictions for several weeks to contain COVID-19 outbreaks across the country. It comes ahead of a thanksgiving holiday later this month.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said the toughest level 4 restrictions in greater Seoul and level 3 curbs in the rest of the country would run through to 3 October.

However, restaurants and cafes in the greater Seoul area would be allowed to close an hour later and families would be allowed to gather in groups of up to eight people in the week of the 21 September Chuseok holiday. At least four of the eight will need to be fully vaccinated.

"We fear a spike in outbreaks from increased movement around the Chuseok holiday," Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol told a briefing.

Written by

Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 3 September - World Economic Forum

Los Angeles County recorded eight coronavirus outbreaks last week in its K-12 schools up from three the previous week. The latest outbreaks led to 72 student infections, an increase from 40 the week before.

But in a sign that school-based COVID-19 safety measures are showing promise, fewer students and staff members were exposed to the coronavirus in these outbreaks: 211 people were exposed last week, down from 238 in the prior week the week that classes began in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the nation.

This most likely reflects improved understanding of who is exposed, and great work by schools working to mitigate exposures and unnecessary quarantine of students by using cohorting, distancing strategies and seating charts in their classrooms, L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.

Many of the outbreaks are tied to athletic activities or failures to follow COVID-19 protocols. An outbreak is defined by linked cases involving three or more people in which transmission probably occurred at schools or school activities.

Of 17 school outbreaks identified since the beginning of August, eight were tied to youth sports, and another eight to classrooms. The classroom outbreaks have resulted in the infections of 117 students and seven staff members; one person has been hospitalized, Ferrer said.

The risk factors for transmission in schools include inconsistent and incorrect mask use indoors, visibly sick people showing up to school, lack of ventilation measures and a lack of physical distancing in places including hallways, cafeterias, break rooms and playgrounds, as well as in classrooms, where distancing often isnt possible due to a lack of space. State and county guidelines encourage but do not mandate physical distancing in classrooms.

Findings from these outbreaks suggest that transmission risk is highest where there is close, unmasked contact with symptomatic people, Ferrer said.

Between Aug. 15 and Aug. 29, 5,207 coronavirus cases were reported among 1.5 million students, and 729 cases among 200,000 staff members.

But many of the coronavirus cases that are being identified are occurring at schools or sites where there are only one or two cases. Of 1,871 schools and related sites reporting coronavirus cases, 720 of them reported three or more cases.

L.A. Unified has launched an ambitious coronavirus testing program, which requires the screening of every student, teacher and staff member more than half a million people once a week for the foreseeable future. The effort is so vast that the number of tests done weekly through L.A. Unifieds program is equal to more than 50% of the countys weekly test results, according to data provided by the Department of Public Health.

The largest portion of these cases are identified through routine screening, and these are really people who are, in fact, asymptomatic, Ferrer said.

Still, its important to identify these cases so that infected people are removed from the classroom until they recover and are no longer contagious, she said.

Even as many schools in L.A. County have reopened, the overall number of new coronavirus infections countywide has actually declined.

Overall, L.A. County has reported an average of 2,596 new cases per day over the last week. Thats down 25% from two weeks ago, when many schools began to reopen.

The test positivity rate a metric measuring the proportion of tests that confirm coronavirus infection has also decreased notably, from 3.5% on Aug. 17 to 2.5% as of Tuesday.

Los Angeles Countys school-aged children remain in a better position than children in other parts of the country. There are some parts of the nation where pediatric COVID-19 hospitalization rates are at the highest point in the pandemic.

But in L.A. County, COVID-19 hospitalization rates for children are nowhere near [what] they were during our winter surge, Ferrer said.

This pattern may reflect the fact that many adults are vaccinated and that most people are wearing masks, Ferrer said.

Still, the concern about the Delta variant has caused L.A. County health officials to retain a stricter quarantine standard in schools than required by California for at least a few more weeks.

L.A. County officials have ordered unvaccinated students who had close contact with an infected person for at least 15 minutes in one day while within six feet of that person to be sent home and quarantined for at least eight days.

The state, meanwhile, does not require a quarantine for the close contact if both the infected person and close contact were wearing masks during the entire time of exposure.

Ferrer said she wanted to see a couple more weeks of data before relaxing the quarantine standard, to be sure that youre not creating an unintended consequence of creating a lot of spread in schools. COVID-19 vaccines are authorized only for those age 12 and older.

L.A. County health officials, however, did recently eliminate weekly testing requirements for all youth athletes or associated staff if they are fully vaccinated or have a documented coronavirus infection within the last 90 days. Also, weekly testing is no longer required for children younger than 12 if playing outdoors.

The Department of Public Health also removed a requirement that youth athletes and staff get a coronavirus test within 72 hours of a game.

In the Wednesday briefing, Debra Duardo, the superintendent of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, said three L.A. County school districts have adopted vaccination mandates. Two of the three districts she named, ABC Unified and the Palmdale School District, said the information was incorrect and they do not have a student mandate. The third district, Culver City Unified, has approved a mandate for students, but it has not yet gone into effect.

A county spokesperson later corrected this information.

Duardo also named 13 districts that are considering vaccination mandates, but the spokesperson said this information is not confirmed and may have changed since an Aug. 19 school district survey.

But there are school systems exploring the option, including Los Angeles Unified and Santa Monica-Malibu Unified, according to officials in those districts.

The L.A. teachers union has called for mandating vaccinations for students.

Times staff writer Laura Newberry contributed to this report.

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L.A. school COVID outbreaks increase, some tied to athletics - Los Angeles Times

Health officials in Illinois have linked nearly 200 COVID-19 cases to two events a church camp for teens and a men's conference and the number of people who may have been exposed may be much greater and from multiple states.

An organization held a five-day church camp for teens and a two-day men's conference in June that have since been linked to a spike in cases following research by the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Monday. The CDC did not name the organization.

As of mid-August, 180 COVID-19 cases had been linked to those who attended one of those events or to someone who had close contact with an attendee, the CDC said.

A majority of those cases, 122, were attributed to attendees, with 87 people contracting COVID-19 during the camp and 35 during the conference. Most of those cases, 104, were unvaccinated people.

Only five people were hospitalized, none of whom had been vaccinated, and no deaths were reported. But officials say that more than 1,000 people across at least four states could have been exposed through the two events, the CDC said.

The report points to these cases as an example of the dangers of hosting large events with little to no safeguards in place. Attendees at both events were not required to be vaccinated, and organizers did not require participants to get tested before allowing entry, the report says.

Nearly 300 teens between the ages of 14 and 18 attended the camp after traveling together in large groups on buses. They spent the week living and dining together and mingling with other campers, according to the CDC.

It's unclear whether masks were required, but the report says that a list of items to pack for the week did not include masks. Similarly, another 500 people attended the men's conference, where masks were also not required, the CDC says.

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Church Camp, Conference In Illinois Linked To Almost 200 COVID Cases : Coronavirus Updates - NPR

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When the security guard at Methodist Hospital San Antonio met the visitor at the door of the childrens emergency room on a Saturday afternoon in early August, the officers request was simple: The man needed to get a temperature screening to make sure he showed no early signs of COVID-19 before entering the hospital.

The man refused, became agitated and began angrily shouting, pulling out his camera to record the guard and hospital staff.

The scene got so tense that San Antonio police were called, but the man whose identity and reason for wanting to enter the hospital werent included in a police account of the incident stormed off in anger before the officer could arrive.

It was, relatively speaking, a small blow-up, but Texas hospital workers and health care officials say incidents like it have been rising in both number and intensity this summer as tensions boil during the delta-fueled fourth surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Our staff have been cursed at, screamed at, threatened with bodily harm and even had knives pulled on them, said Jane McCurley, chief nursing executive for Methodist Healthcare System, speaking at a press conference five days after the incident in the childrens ER. It is escalating. Its just a handful at each facility who have been extremely abusive. But there is definitely an increasing number of occurrences every day.

Nurses and hospital staffers are historically vulnerable to workplace violence due to the nature of their jobs, where they deal with people who are having bad reactions to street drugs or mental breaks and often have to give bad news to patients or family already in extreme pain or emotional distress.

Half of all Texas nurses reported verbal and physical abuse at work in 2016 - the last year Texas health officials surveyed them about it.

But the pandemic has exacerbated the stress that can escalate into threats and violence, as people are now contending with not just the virus but also job loss and other stresses, said Karen Garvey, vice president of patient safety and clinical risk management at Parkland Health & Hospital System in Dallas.

Garvey said confrontations at Parkland just this year have included people being punched in the chest, having urine thrown on them and inappropriate sexual innuendos or behaviors in front of staff members. The verbal abuse, the name-calling, racial slurs weve had broken bones, broken noses.

Visitors and patients assaulting hospital staff was an epidemic before the pandemic it was just silent to the public, she added. Health care workers have been dealing with this for years, and its become more pronounced with the COVID pandemic.

The pandemic-related rise in tensions across the U.S. is not unique to the hospital industry. Airlines are reporting an increase in aggressive passengers as flight attendants take self-defense classes. Police are reporting an increase in violent crime and road rage incidents.

A similar phenomenon emerged last year when retail and grocery workers became front-line enforcers of mask mandates and limits on gatherings and indoor activities. And it resurfaced last month when parents aggressively confronted teachers at schools over oft-changing mask rules.

But unlike airlines, which can permanently ban passengers, hospitals are more limited in how they can respond or prevent those instances.

A 2013 Texas law made it a felony to assault an emergency room nurse, but legislation that would have expanded that to include nurses in other areas of a hospital died in the Texas Senate earlier this year. A bill addressing the issue is currently being considered in Washington by the U.S. Congress.

With hospitals reporting historic nursing shortages as the pandemic drags on, the fear is that the alarming rate of escalation will be the last straw for nurses who are physically worn out after fighting a pandemic for 18 months, thin on compassion for people who need care after choosing not to be vaccinated and afraid for their own personal safety, said Houston pediatrician Dr. Giancarlos Toledanes.

With the escalation of this violence toward health care workers, were going to lose the workers that are deemed essential, Toledanes said. If the problem continues to compound, then I think its going to make it much more difficult to staff these hospitals.

The Texas Department of State Health Services doesnt track incidents of aggression against hospital staff outside of its regular surveys, the next of which will be done next year, a spokesperson said.

But as health officials across Texas watch hospital ICUs and pediatric units overflow with record numbers of mostly unvaccinated people, they say the surge in aggression toward health care workers is obvious.

Many of the problems being reported in recent months include disagreements over masking and screening protocols that people dont have to follow in other places, particularly after most mandatory protocols were banned in recent months by Gov. Greg Abbott, officials said.

Confrontations are sometimes caused by hours- or dayslong waits in emergency rooms that are so full of COVID-19 patients that there is no room for anyone else, health care workers said.

Tempers are high, said Carrie Kroll, director of advocacy for the Texas Hospital Association. To the point where some systems are putting a security guard at check-in because family members are getting so abusive over the masking and some of the other screening things they need to do.

Families are often upset when they cant visit someone due to COVID-19 rules that limit the number of people who can be bedside or even come inside the hospital, said Serena Bumpus, director of practice at the Texas Nurses Association.

When our family members are sick, we want to be there by their side, and its not that easy to be by our loved ones side anymore because of this increase in the number of COVID patients in our facilities, she said.

At the Katy campus of Texas Children's Hospital west of Houston, Toledanes said some parents get verbally abusive over rules that require them to wait for COVID-19 test results before more than one parent is allowed into a room with a sick child.

With their child in the hospital and theyre the only ones handling everything, it obviously gets stressful, he said. Its escalated a lot more, especially now that weve gotten a little bit stricter with our policies due to the surge.

The threats follow health care workers online as well, and often have to do with philosophical differences over what have become political hot buttons such as masking and vaccinations, Toledanes wrote in a recent column for the online medical magazine MedScape.

Online, healthcare workers, who advocate for masking or vaccination, are often subject to death threats, threats to family members, and verbal abuse on social media, he wrote. Veiled threats of we know who you are and we will find you follow physicians who advocate for masking in schools.

At Parkland, some of the administrations actions to protect the workers include a staff of six mental health peace officers known as the Law Enforcement Intervention for Environmental/Patient Safety staff who are specially trained to respond to high-risk incidents, Garvey said. Administrators have developed a flagging system in the patient record which identifies patients who have been identified as known risks to staff, she said.

Some hospitals have hung signs in hallways reminding families to be courteous and patient with the overworked staff.

In mid-August, the escalating reports prompted the Texas Hospital Association to take to social media with an image of an exhausted nurses face, mask pulled below her chin.

Dont forget the person behind the mask, the image reads.

McCurley said that the increasing violence this year is made worse by the contrast in attitudes workers are seeing now compared with a year ago, when the public seemed to understand that nurses and hospital staff were standing between them and the deadly pandemic.

We were seen as health care heroes and our community responded with love and support, food and gifts, drive-by parades, buses and motorcycles and airplanes, and we felt so much love and support. It gave us the courage to go in and face our own fears of the unknown in the beginning, McCurley said at the August press conference. Today, those health care workers are experiencing abusive behavior by patient families. Its unfathomable that its occurring, and it has to stop.

Disclosure: Texas Children's Hospital and the Texas Hospital Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Verbal and physical attacks on health workers surge as emotions boil during latest COVID-19 wave - The Texas Tribune