Category: Corona Virus

An unvaccinated teacher in a California elementary school infected half her students and 26 people in total when she contracted the Covid-19 Delta variant, researchers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found.

The researchers said the teacher attended school for two days despite displaying symptoms of Covid-19, and read aloud to her class without a mask during that time. Infections corresponded to the classrooms seating chart, with the students sitting closest to the teacher the most likely to be infected.

Authorities said the report showed why vaccinations, masks and other prevention measures remain critical to prevent Covid-19 infections as US schools reopen. They also warned that anyone with symptoms of Covid-19 should stay home, to avoid infecting others.

Evidence has repeatedly demonstrated that multi-layer prevention strategies such as vaccination for all children and adults who are eligible; masks for all students, teachers, staff, and visitors; ventilation; cohorting; physical distancing; and screening testing work to prevent the spread of Covid in schools, said Dr Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, at a press briefing on Friday.

The report is likely to increase calls for vaccine mandates in schools, which some districts such as New York City have already implemented. Children in the California investigation, in Marin county, were too young to be vaccinated.

Children aged 12 to 17 are eligible to be vaccinated, though coverage levels have lagged behind older age groups more susceptible to complications from Covid-19.

Tom Frieden, a former head of the CDC, said: Delta is doubly infectious, and we need to step up our game to keep kids in school safely. That means teachers, staff and eligible students need to be vaccinated, and EVERYONE needs to be masked. Multiple layers of protection are essential.

But Walensky said: Unfortunately, many schools have opted not to implement these recommended tools. We recognize and are closely following cases and hospitalizations in children at the same time as school reopening.

There have been approximately 2m Covid-19 infections in the five-to-17 age bracket and 300 associated deaths, another CDC report released on Friday found.

In the outbreak in Marin county, researchers investigated an unnamed elementary school. It is customary for the CDC to withhold identifying information in disease investigations.

The outbreak took place in mid-May to June and began with the infected teacher who was one of only two staff members at the school who were unvaccinated. The teacher had symptoms of Covid-19 in mid-May but continued working until she received a positive coronavirus test.

The teacher did not wear a mask as she read to students, even though the school required face coverings indoors. Half of the children in her class were infected, as were six students in a separate grade and eight family members of the teachers students. In total, one teacher infected 26 people.

The high levels of infections also showed, researchers said, how Delta can be especially transmissible in unvaccinated populations, such as children too young for the shot.

However, there was a bright spot. High vaccination levels in Marin county probably prevented more community infections, which would have been expected based on previous research.

The CDC also released a report on how Los Angeles county schools had reduced cases among students below the rate of community transmission.

Researchers found mitigation measures such as masks, physical distancing and tests might help reduce Covid-19 contagion in schools. Notably, the study was conducted before the Delta variant came to dominate US cases.

A third study from the CDC found just 32% of teens between 12 and 17 had been fully vaccinated, though as with adult vaccinations, levels varied widely by state. Mississippi had the lowest vaccination rate while Vermont had the highest, 20% versus 70% of adolescents respectively.

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Unvaccinated teacher infected half her students with Covid, CDC finds - The Guardian

Reengineering complex biological systems can be tricky, Jewett says. Its kind of like solving a puzzle and every time you put one piece in, the rest of the puzzle changes.

Jewett also says that compared with antibody treatments, decoys should be lower in cost and easier to use. And some experts are optimistic about the decoys ability to ward off both the original viral strain and mutations to come.

In another study, using a process called deep mutational scanning, Erik Procko, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was able to view thousands of different ACE2 mutations in a single experiment and see which ones could better attract and bind to the virus. Then his team built decoys mimicking the ones that performed best. The decoys dont attach to cells but float in the fluid between them to catch the virus before it binds to the real ACE2 receptors.

By using a combination of three mutations, his team was able to considerably increase the decoys affinity for covid-19. They created decoy receptors that bound to the virus 50 times more strongly than ACE2.

To test the approach, Prockos team used human tissue instead of live animals. In in vitro tissue culture, we know that some of the decoy receptors are just as potentsometimes a little better, sometimes a little less so, but overall just as potentas monoclonal antibodies that have emergency-use authorization or are in clinical trials, says Procko.

One concern was that one of these mutations could allow for so-called viral escape and help shore up the viruss resistance to treatment. But because the decoys closely resemble natural receptors, says Procko, the virus isnt likely to evolve unnaturally as a result of their action.

Because of differences in infrastructure and education, access to synthetic-biology technologies is unequally distributed worldwide. More researchand more fundingis needed before such a therapy will be publicly available. But advances like these may eventually help create low-cost, portable, easy-to-use treatments for the disease.

There are promising signs that decoys that very closely resemble the human ACE2 receptor will be potent and efficacious against all of these new variants, Procko says. I wouldnt be surprised if we had some of those next-generation decoys reaching the clinic within a couple of years.

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Can you spot the fake receptor? The coronavirus cant either. - MIT Technology Review

The Latest News on Coronavirus and the Delta Variant Aug. 29, 2021Updated

Aug. 29, 2021, 10:14 a.m. ET

As childrens hospitals in many parts of the United States admit more Covid-19 patients, a result of the highly contagious Delta variant, federal and state health officials are grappling with a sharp new concern: children not yet eligible for vaccination in places with substantial viral spread, who are now at higher risk of being infected than at any other time in the pandemic.

Nowhere is that worry greater than in Louisiana, which has among the highest new daily case rates in the country and where only 40 percent of people are fully vaccinated, putting children at particular risk as they return to school.

At Childrens Hospital New Orleans, the intensive care unit has been jammed with Covid-19 patients, and nurses have raced around monitoring one gut-wrenching case after another. One child was getting a complicated breathing treatment known as ECMO, a last resort after ventilators fail, which nurses said was almost unheard-of for pediatric cases. About half a dozen others were in various stages of distress.

Medical staff throughout the hospital said the causes of illness in children were often simple: parents, family members and friends who were unvaccinated and not wearing masks.

Ive had to kind of make peace with that people are not doing what theyre supposed to, said Mark Melancon, a longtime nurse at the hospital. The kids are suffering.

Not that I accept it, he added, but if I get hung up in the anger of it, I would walk around confronting people in Walmart, here, everywhere.

I cant tell them, Why didnt you isolate this kid? Mr. Melancon continued. So we just tell them, Your kid has Covid. Its really hard on the lungs. Your childs very sick. Well do everything we can to get him better.

Of the roughly 70 children admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 this month, about half were 12 or older and thus eligible for vaccination but only one was fully vaccinated, said Dr. Mark W. Kline, the hospitals physician in chief.

Most children with Covid-19 have only mild symptoms, however, and there is not enough evidence to conclude that Delta makes some of them sicker than other variants do, scientists say. Doctors and nurses at Childrens Hospital New Orleans agreed with that assessment.

Theresa Sokol, Louisianas top epidemiologist, said that people younger than 18 had among the highest test positivity rates in the state and were responsible for a significant share of transmission, with many cases probably undetected.

I dont want any kids to get this, because I cant guarantee that its not going to be your kid thats going to have a problem, she said. But overall, statistically, most of them are doing fairly well.

In Louisiana, where daily deaths from Covid reached their highest levels this week, stretched hospitals are having to modify the intense preparations they would normally make ahead of an expected strike from Hurricane Ida.

Louisianas medical director, Dr. Joseph Kanter, asked residents on Friday to avoid unnecessary emergency room visits to preserve the states hospital capacity, which has been vastly diminished by its most severe Covid surge of the pandemic.

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About this dataSource: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data. Currently hospitalized is the most recent number of patients with Covid-19 reported by hospitals in the state for the four days prior. Dips and spikes could be due to inconsistent reporting by hospitals. Hospitalization numbers early in the pandemic are undercounts due to incomplete reporting by hospitals to the federal government.

And while plans exist to transfer patients away from coastal areas to inland hospitals ahead of a hurricane, this time evacuations are just not possible, Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a news conference.

The hospitals dont have room, he said. We dont have any place to bring those patients not in state, not out of state.

The governor said officials had asked hospitals to check generators and stockpile more water, oxygen and personal protective supplies than usual for a storm. The implications of a strike from a Category 4 hurricane while hospitals were full were beyond what our normal plans are, he added.

Mr. Edwards said he had told President Biden and Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to expect Covid-related emergency requests, including oxygen.

The states recent wave of Covid hospitalizations has exceeded its previous three peaks, and staffing shortages have necessitated support from federal and military medical teams. On Friday, 2,684 Covid patients were hospitalized in the state. This week Louisiana reported its highest ever single-day death toll from Covid 139 people.

Oschner Health, one of the largest local medical systems, informed the state that it had limited capacity to accept storm-related transfers, especially from nursing homes, the groups chief executive, Warner L. Thomas, said. Many of Oschners hospitals, which were caring for 836 Covid patients on Friday, had invested in backup power and water systems to reduce the need to evacuate, he said.

The pandemic also complicated efforts to discharge more patients than usual before the storm hits. For many Covid patients who require oxygen, going home isnt really an option, said Stephanie Manson, chief operating officer of Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, which had 190 Covid inpatients on Friday, 79 of them in intensive care units.

The governor said he feared that the movement of tens or hundreds of thousands of evacuees in the state could cause it to lose gains made in recent days as the number of new coronavirus cases began to drop. Dr. Kanter urged residents who were on the move to wear masks and observe social distancing. Many of the states testing and vaccination sites were slated to close temporarily.

Caleb Wallace, a leader of the anti-mask movement in central Texas who became infected with the coronavirus and spent three weeks in an intensive care unit, has died, his wife, Jessica, said on Saturday.

Caleb has peacefully passed on. He will forever live in our hearts and minds, Mrs. Wallace wrote in a post on GoFundMe, where she had been raising money to cover medical costs.

Mrs. Wallace had said recently that her husbands condition was declining and that doctors had run out of treatment options. On Saturday, he was to be moved to a hospice at Shannon Medical Center in the city of San Angelo so that his family could say their goodbyes, she said.

Mrs. Wallace, who is pregnant with the couples fourth child, recently told the San Angelo Standard-Times that when her husband first felt ill, he took a mix of vitamin C, zinc, aspirin and ivermectin a drug typically used to treat parasitic worms in both people and animals that has been touted as a coronavirus treatment but was recently proved to be ineffective against the virus.

Mr. Wallace, 30, who campaigned against mask mandates and other Covid policies that he saw as government intrusion, lived in San Angelo for most of his life and worked at a company that sells welding equipment. He checked into the Shannon Medical Center on July 30.

Earlier that month, Mr. Wallace had organized a Freedom Rally for people who were sick of the government being in control of our lives.

He founded the San Angelo Freedom Defenders, a group that hosted a rally to end what it called Covid-19 tyranny according to a YouTube interview.

Mrs. Wallace had said her husband respected her own decision to wear a mask. We joked around about how he was on one side and I was on the other, and thats what made us the perfect couple and we balanced each other out, she told the San Angelo Standard-Times.

She added that her three children are up-to-date on their vaccines and that she herself planned to get a coronavirus vaccine after the birth of her baby in late September. We are not anti-vaxxers, she said.

Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations have been on the rise in Texas over the past few weeks. In Tom Green County, which includes the San Angelo area, cases have increased by 50 percent over the past two weeks, and hospitalizations have risen by 33 percent, according to a New York Times database.

At Shannon Medical Center, the intensive care unit is about 70 percent occupied, according to a New York Times tracker. The U.S. average of I.C.U. occupancy is about 68 percent, while the state average in Texas is 94 percent.

Under pressure from Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city leaders, the United States Tennis Association reversed its lax coronavirus protocols for the upcoming U.S. Open tournament, which opens to thousands of fans on Monday.

Originally, the tournament did not require any proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test for fans to enter, and there were no mask mandates, either. But the mayors office stepped in over the past two days to demand stricter protocols.

On Friday evening, the tournament announced on its Twitter account that proof of at least one vaccine shot would now be required for entrance to the grounds for all fans ages 12 and older. No masks are required.

The mayors office was adamant that fans entering Arthur Ashe Stadium, the largest venue on the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, be vaccinated. But the U.S.T.A. took it a step further and made it a requirement for all fans entering the grounds of the tournament.

Today, the U.S.T.A. was informed that the New York City mayors office will be mandating proof of Covid-19 vaccination for entrance to Arthur Ashe Stadium, the statement said. Given the continuing evolution of the Delta variant and in keeping with our intention to put the health and safety of our fans first, the U.S.T.A. will extend the mayors requirement to all U.S. Open ticket holders 12 years old and older.

Mr. de Blasio was not the only concerned city official. After the tournament announced on Wednesday that no vaccines or masks would be required, Mark Levine, a City Council member from Manhattan, said he was alarmed that the U.S. Open could become a superspreader event, especially with so many visitors from around the world and the country visiting the tournament in Queens, and also touring Manhattan.

Levine was pleased by the reversal.

I feel enormous relief, he said, and its just in the nick of time with crowds due to arrive on Monday.

The unexpected and unwelcome coronavirus surge now unfolding in the United States has hit hardest in states that were slow to embrace vaccines. And then there is Florida.

While leaders in that state refused lockdowns and mask orders, they made it a priority to vaccinate vulnerable older people. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, opened mass vaccination sites and sent teams to retirement communities and nursing homes. Younger people also lined up for shots.

Mr. DeSantis and public health experts expected a rise in cases this summer as people gathered indoors in the air-conditioning. But what happened was much worse: Cases spiraled out of control, reaching peaks higher than Florida had seen before. Hospitalizations followed. So did deaths, which are considerably higher than the numbers currently reached anywhere else in the country.

It was really hard to imagine us ever getting back to this place, said Natalie E. Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University who until recently worked at the University of Florida and has closely followed the states outbreaks.

The Florida story is a cautionary tale for dealing with the current incarnation of the coronavirus, showing that even a state that made a push for vaccinations about 52 percent of Floridas population is fully vaccinated, the same as the national average can be crushed by the Delta variant, reaching frightening levels of hospitalizations and deaths.

Clearly the vaccines are keeping most of these people out of the hospital, but were not building the herd immunity that people hoped, Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference this past week.

Floridas pandemic data, more scant since the state ended its declared Covid-19 state of emergency in June, reveals only limited information about who is dying. But hospitals have said that upward of 90 percent of their patients have been unvaccinated.

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About this dataSource: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data. Currently hospitalized is the most recent number of patients with Covid-19 reported by hospitals in the state for the four days prior. Dips and spikes could be due to inconsistent reporting by hospitals. Hospitalization numbers early in the pandemic are undercounts due to incomplete reporting by hospitals to the federal government.

The best explanation for the crushing surge is that Floridas vaccination rates are good, but not good enough for its demographics. It has so many older people that even vaccinating a vast majority of them left more than 800,000 unprotected, many of them in nursing homes. Vaccination rates among younger people were uneven, so clusters of people remained at risk. Before June 25, people under 65 made up 22 percent of deaths. Since then, that proportion has risen to 28 percent.

And the unvaccinated are only part of the explanation behind Floridas latest numbers. Many states slammed by the virus earlier developed deep reservoirs of natural immunity from prior infections, affording them higher levels of protection than would be evident from vaccination rates alone. Not so in Florida, which was spared the devastating wintertime wave of cases that ravaged other parts of the country in part because warm weather made it possible for people to gather outdoors.

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The Latest on Covid, Vaccines and the Delta Variant - The New York Times

For those individuals who already have received both of their coronavirus vaccine doses, the protection against the virus has been shown to moderately diminish over time, according to a new study out of the United Kingdom.

An analysis from the countrys ZOE Covid app study, which included the participation of more than 400,000 individuals who had received both shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, revealed that it was nearly 90 percent effective in protecting against the contagion a month after being fully inoculated.

The overall effectiveness, however, slumped to 74 percent five or six months after receiving both vaccine doses.

Moreover, an analysis of more than 700,000 people who had received both doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine found that effectiveness after one month dropped from 77 percent to 67 percent three or four months later.

Not All Protection Lost

Alexander Hammers, a professor of imaging and neuroscience at Kings College London, noted on a webinar that health officials have been bracing for the fact that immunity against the coronavirus wanes over time.

So, we knew there was going to be some leveling off and the way I look at this is the leveling off is actually a little slower than I would have expected, he said.

Despite the diminishing effectiveness of the vaccines, Hammers did claim that individuals were still probably at least 50 percent protected.

Remember, when the vaccines were first developed, it was hoped that they were to have 60 percent to 70 percent efficacy and everybody was pleasantly surprised that they came in well over 80 percentsometimes well over 90, he continued.

According to government data in the United Kingdom, more than forty-two million people, or nearly 80 percent of the population aged over sixteen, have received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine.

Booster Shots

Here in the United States, top health officials have confirmed that they plan to start offering coronavirus booster shots to all eligible Americans eight months after their second jabs. But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made it known that there is a possibility that Americans may not need annual booster shots after the third one.

This virus has been humbling, so I dont want to say never, but we are not necessarily anticipating that you will need this annually, CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky recently said in an interview on CBS This Morning.

It does look like after this third dose, you get a really robust response, and so we will continue to follow the science both on the vaccine side but also on the virus side, she continued.

Since the beginning of the pandemic a year and a half ago, more than 210 million people worldwide have become infected. Officials at the World Health Organization have warned that the figure could easily reach 300 million by early next year.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters.

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UK Study: Coronavirus Protection for Fully Vaccinated Waning - The National Interest

The UK has recorded 32,406 new coronavirus cases and 133 further deaths in the latest 24-hour period, daily government data shows.

The figures compare with 38,046 COVID-19 cases and 100 deaths reported on Friday.

This time last week, 21 August, 32,058 new cases and 104 deaths were recorded.

On Friday, 128,248 people received a second vaccine dose, which means 78.2% of the population aged over 16 is now fully inoculated.

And 43,160 people were given their first dose - taking the total to 47,958,928 (88.2%).

It comes as a new study suggests people infected with the Delta variant are twice as likely to be admitted to hospital compared to those with the Alpha variant.

Research carried out by Public Health England (PHE) and Cambridge University is the first of its kind to compare the risk of the two variants.

First reported in India at the end of 2020, early studies of the Delta variant found it to be up to 50% more transmissible than the Alpha variant, which was first discovered in Kent.

Dr Gavin Dabrera, a consultant epidemiologist at PHE's National Infection Service, said: "We already know that vaccination offers excellent protection against Delta and as this variant accounts for over 98% of COVID-19 cases in the UK, it is vital that those who have not received two doses of vaccine do so as soon as possible."

Meanwhile, there has been an increased uptake in vaccination amongst people from ethnically diverse communities, new analysis has found

Over 3.8 million first doses have been delivered since the start of the NHS's "grab-a-jab" campaign, launched at the end of June.

The campaign has allowed people to get vaccinated at pop-up walk in centres, mosques, town halls, football grounds and festivals.

Since the campaign was launched, more than 700,000 people from ethnically diverse backgrounds have been protected from COVID-19, NHS England said.

People from mixed Asian and white backgrounds saw the fastest growth in jab uptake, rising by almost a quarter - 81,933 people took the first dose by 20 June and 101,140 were vaccinated by 22 August.

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There was a 22.9% increase in the vaccinations for mixed white people, and it increased by 20.9% among black Africans.

In the same period, the first doses among white people increased by 11.1%.

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COVID-19: UK reports another 32,406 daily coronavirus cases and 133 deaths - Sky News

Canadas Liberal party has said that if re-elected they would provide C$1 billion to help the 10 provinces create vaccine passports for people to prove they had been inoculated against Covid-19.

Proof of vaccination systems ensure Canadians can be confident that those around them are fully vaccinated, in addition to providing businesses with important and clear guidance around how to reopen safely, the Liberals said.

Polls show the Liberals, led by prime minister Justin Trudeau, are narrowly ahead of their Conservative rivals, Reuters reports. The election is on 20 September.

The question of vaccines is being used by the Liberal as a potential wedge issue in the election. The Conservatives, led by Erin OToole, are not requiring inoculations for their candidates and has espoused his respect for personal health decisions while suggesting that rapid testing is an alternative to vaccine passports.

Trudeau admitted today that all Liberal candidates are not yet vaccinated though they intend to swiftly while he also faced criticism that the news event where he was speaking clearly breached Ontario state limits on no more than 25 people gathering inside.

He said recently at a rally:

You deserve better, you deserve a government thats going to continue to say get vaccinated. And you know what, if you dont want to get vaccinated, thats your choice. But dont think you can get on a plane or a train besides vaccinated people and put them at risk.

The C$1bn would help cover costs incurred by the provinces for creating vaccine passports for people wishing to enter nonessential businesses or public spaces. Some provinces, including Quebec, have already said they plan to set up such a system.

Earlier this month, the Liberal government said it would soon require all federal public servants and many other workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Under one of the worlds strictest vaccine policies for transportation, the mandate would also include air, train and cruise ship travellers.

The International Air Transport Association told the Wall Street Journal it was unaware of any other country in the world banning unvaccinated passengers from planes, as Trudeau proposes.

Vaccinations should not be a prerequisite for restarting international air travel alternative solutions must be offered to those who are unable to get vaccinated, the trade group said.

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Coronavirus live news: UK reports 100 deaths and 38,046 new cases as it happened - The Guardian

New Jersey on Saturday reported another 1,761 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 18 more confirmed deaths as the rate of transmission and hospitalizations dipped slightly.

The delta variant accounted for 96% of cases in New Jersey based on a sampling of positive tests over the last two weeks of July, according to state data.

All of New Jerseys 21 counties are now listed as having high rates of coronavirus transmission, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC is recommending people in all 21 counties wear masks for indoor public settings regardless of vaccination rates.

There were 994 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 or suspected cases across New Jerseys 71 hospitals on Friday night 28 fewer than the previous night. There were 165 patients discharged.

After three straight days where hospitalizations topped 1,000, the number dipped below the benchmark Saturday.

Of those hospitalized, 213 were in intensive care (five fewer than the night before), with 102 on ventilators (four more).

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter| Homepage

Hospitalizations and deaths in New Jersey have not risen anywhere near the pandemics peaks. More than 3,800 patients were hospitalized during the second peak in December. New Jerseys numbers have not grown as dire as in other states. Officials credit this, in part, to the states relatively high vaccination rate.

More than 5.5 million people who live, work or study in New Jersey have now been fully vaccinated in more than seven months since inoculations began, according to state data. About 4 million residents remain unvaccinated.

New Jerseys statewide transmission rate dropped again Saturday to 1.15 from 1.16 the previous day, 1.17 on Thursday, 1.19 on Wednesday, 1.21 on Tuesday and 1.23 on Monday. But any number over 1 indicates that each new case is leading to more than one additional case and shows the states outbreak is expanding.

An early coronavirus hotspot, New Jersey has now reported 26,844 total COVID-19 deaths in more than 17 months 24,122 confirmed and 2,722 considered probable, according to the state dashboard. Thats the most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S.

In all, the state of 9.2 million residents has reported 947,298 total confirmed cases out of the more than 15 million PCR tests conducted since it announced its first case March 4, 2020. The state has also reported 139,182 positive antigen tests, which are considered probable cases.

Gov. Phil Murphy has said all options are on the table to fight the upticks in New Jersey and on Monday said teachers and state workers must show proof of vaccination by Oct. 18 or face regular testing.

Murphy said last week that of New Jerseys 4,332 positive tests between July 20-26, nearly 18% were so-called breakthrough cases of those who had been fully vaccinated, which is up from previous weeks.

As of Saturday, there have been more than 215.73 million positive COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 4.49 million people having died due to the virus. The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 38.72 million) and deaths (more than 636,800) than any other nation.

More than 5.16 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rodrigotorrejon.

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N.J. reports 18 COVID deaths, 1,761 new cases as hospitalizations and rate of transmission dip - NJ.com

The NBA logo is displayed as people pass by the NBA Store in New York City, U.S., October 7, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Aug 28 (Reuters) - The National Basketball Association (NBA) will require referees working games during the coming season to be vaccinated against coronavirus, the league said on Saturday.

The announcement comes after the league and the National Basketball Referees Association reached an agreement, which will not enforce the requirement for referees with religious or medical exemptions.

The referees have also agreed to take any recommended booster shots.

"Any referee who does not get vaccinated and is not exempt will be ineligible to work games," the league said in a statement.

The NBA will require all coaches and staff who interact with players to take the vaccine, The Athletic reported on Friday.

The move comes as a growing number of arenas have said they will require fans to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to attend games when the 2021-2022 regular season starts on Oct. 19.

The players, who are represented by a powerful National Basketball Players Association, are not required to be vaccinated but 90% of the players already are, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts told Yahoo Sports last month.

Reporting by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles; Editing by Ken Ferris

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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NBA to require referees to have coronavirus vaccine - Reuters

"You don't know you're gonna get it, and then you get it and you're sick," Monceaux told CNN on Wednesday, breathing through an oxygen mask at Pascagoula Hospital - Singing River Health System. "You don't know whether you're gonna live or die."

The 82-year-old, from Jackson County, Mississippi, had been "on the fence" about the Covid-19 vaccine, but as she continues fighting the virus in the hospital, she has a new perspective, she said.

"All my family wasn't going to get the shot, but now we are," Monceaux said. "All my family."

The first thing she wants to tell her family when she finally gets to see them, Monceaux panted, is "to go get the shot."

"I think what's most interesting is the detachment, the complete lack of connection between what we see out in the community with what's happening in these hospitals," Dr. Ijlal Babar, who runs the ICU at Pascagoula Hospital, told CNN.

Babar, also the director of pulmonary and critical care at Singing River Health Systems, said the hospital can't expand Covid-19 capacity fast enough. Although they cleared beds to serve more patients, they lack the staff needed to open them.

The vast majority of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated.

"It's exhausting, both mentally and emotionally," Babar said. "I think the most difficult thing emotionally that we are having to deal with now is what do we do with people who been on the ventilator for weeks and weeks and weeks and aren't getting better?"

But there is a small ray of hope, with the hospital's vaccination clinic seeing an uptick in people getting shots.

One of those newly convinced people is 19-year-old Isabelle Smith, who has asthma and got such a bad case of the virus that she couldn't get out of bed.

Her mother, Robin Walls, who is vaccinated and tried to convince Smith to get the vaccine, thought her daughter might die.

"I told her, 'I'm backing off; I did all I could do,'" Walls said. "She finally came around."

Antibody therapy is helping patients -- and hospitals

To try to curb hospital stays, Singing River Health System established a site for monoclonal antibody treatment, known as mAbs, for outpatients who have the virus but don't yet need a bed.

The antibodies, which help keep the disease from progressing, are administered shortly after diagnosis and within 10 days of symptom onset. Studies suggest they don't help people with severe cases or those already on oxygen.

People with newly diagnosed cases have been clamoring for the treatment, said Chris Ayers, Singing River Health System's lead clinical pharmacist.

"I've been through disasters, hurricanes, tornadoes, things like that, but I've never seen anything like this," Ayers told CNN. "Literally, the phone is ringing off the hook."

On the treatment site's long list of patients is Edith Jordan, who is unvaccinated and tested positive last week for the coronavirus, which she believes she contracted from a family member.

Though she believes in the seriousness of the virus and has contracted it herself, Jordan still won't get the vaccine, she said.

"I'm just not trustful of the data behind it," she said. When asked what data she is referring to, she declined to respond.

While studies show that mAbs are highly effective at preventing high-risk patients from developing severe Covid-19 symptoms, they aren't a cure or an option for everyone.

"After about 60 days, these antibodies have done what they've done, they've flushed the virus out of your system, and then they disappear," Ayers said. "They don't stay circulating in your body unlike natural antibodies do, that are caused through your immune system either naturally or through exposure or a vaccine."

Still, not everyone thinks like Jordan.

Like Monceaux and Smith, Amanda Dunning is singing a different tune after contracting the virus.

"I was hesitant about the whole Covid thing in the beginning, I was like, 'It's no big deal, I'm not going get it,'" Dunning, 35, told CNN. "I don't wish this on anybody. It's hard. It's extremely hard."

Despite initial concerns about the vaccine -- and after speaking to professionals about it and doing more research -- she has decided to get the shot.

"Until you catch it or until you truly have a loved one that's going to catch it, it's not going to hit you full force," Dunning said. "I feel like Mississippi needs to come together, band together, including our government and our state officials, and say, 'Look, now's the time.'"

"I'm convinced. Please just get the vaccine," she added. "I did a 180, and it's because of getting Covid."

CNN's Jen Christensen and Madeline Holcombe contributed to this report.

Here is the original post:

Mississippi hospitals are overrun with Covid-19 patients. The state 'needs to come together,' survivor says - CNN

An updated issue brief examines COVID-19s effect on mortality rates, and finds that as of August 2021, COVID-19 has risen once again to number three on the list of the top ten leading causes of death in the U.S. As recently as January 2021, COVID was the number one leading cause of death, with an average of 3,066 people dying daily. Amid widespread availability of vaccines, that COVID rank had briefly dropped to the 8th leading cause of death in July 2021.

As of August 25, 2021, about 73% of adults in the U.S. have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.

The analysis can be found on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, an information hub dedicated to monitoring and assessing the performance of the U.S. health system.

See the original post:

COVID-19 continues to be a leading cause of death in the U.S. in August 2021 - Kaiser Family Foundation