Category: Corona Virus

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 196.6 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.19 million. More than 4.01 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

300 Australian army personnel are being lined up to help Sydney police door-knock those who've tested positive to check that they are self-isolating.

Britain's UN ambassador has warned that half of Myanmar's 54 million people could be infected with COVID-19 within the next two weeks.

The Philippines is set to introduce lockdown restrictions in its capital region.

China has reported 64 new COVID-19 cases in the mainland, compared with 49 the day before.

Almost 690,000 people in England and Wales were told to isolate by the official COVID-19 health app in the week to 21 July, official data shows.

The Federated States of Micronesia - a Pacific island nation - has mandated its adult population to be inoculated against COVID-19.

Thailand has received 1.5 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine donated by the US government.

Meanwhile, Phuket will ban travel from the rest of Thailand from 3-16 August in a bid to stop cases from spreading. However, overseas visitors will remain largely unaffected.

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

Image: Our World in Data

US President Joe Biden has asked local governments to pay people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. New rules requiring federal workers to provide proof of vaccination or face regular testing and mask mandates. Travels restrictions are also set to be introduced.

The measures are part of attempts to encourage reluctant Americans to get vaccinated as the Delta variant continues to surge across the United States. The US lags behind other developed countries in vaccination rates, despite having plenty of free vaccines on hand.

"Right now too many people are dying or watching someone they love dying," Biden told reporters at the White House.

"With freedom comes responsibility. So please exercise responsible judgment. Get vaccinated for yourself, the people you love, for your country."

The COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship is a coalition of 85 global leaders, hosted by the World Economic Forum. Its mission: Join hands in support of social entrepreneurs everywhere as vital first responders to the pandemic and as pioneers of a green, inclusive economic reality.

Its COVID Social Enterprise Action Agenda, outlines 25 concrete recommendations for key stakeholder groups, including funders and philanthropists, investors, government institutions, support organizations, and corporations. In January of 2021, its members launched its 2021 Roadmap through which its members will roll out an ambitious set of 21 action projects in 10 areas of work. Including corporate access and policy change in support of a social economy.

For more information see the Alliance website or its impact story here.

India has reported 44,230 new COVID-19 cases, its biggest daily increase in 3 weeks. The southern state of Kerala announced a new lockdown yesterday, while movement restrictions are also in place in some other states.

The country has had more than 31.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 423,217 deaths.

Health experts are calling for faster vaccinations to prevent another big surge like the country saw in April and May, reports Reuters.

Government data shows that nearly 38% of the 944 million adults in India have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.

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.

Read the original:

COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 30 July - World Economic Forum

Another 111coronavirus cases have been reported across the state, Maine health officials said Friday.

That comes as Maine, and the rest of the nation, has seen a resurgence in virus cases following the steady fall in virus transmission after the springs vaccine drive. Health officials have largely attributed this most recent surge to the more infectious delta variant spreading among the large unvaccinated population.

Fridays report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 70,372, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Thats up from 70,261 on Thursday.

Of those, 51,345have been confirmed positive, while 19,027were classified as probable cases, the Maine CDC reported.

The number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in the past 14 days statewide is 999. This is an estimation of the current number of active cases in the state, as the Maine CDC is no longer tracking recoveries for all patients. Thats up from 937 on Thursday.

The new case rate statewide Friday was 0.83 cases per 10,000 residents, and the total case rate statewide was 525.79.

Maines seven-day average for new coronavirus cases is 78, up from 69.4 a day ago, up from 58.7 a week ago and up from 23.9 a month ago. That average peaked on Jan. 14 at 625.3.

No new deaths were reported Friday, leaving the statewide death toll standing at 899.

The most cases have been detected in Mainers younger than 20, while Mainers over 80 years old make up the majority of deaths. More cases and deaths have been recorded in women than men.

So far, 2,141 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. Of those, 41 are currently hospitalized, 16 in critical care and eight on a ventilator.

The total statewide hospitalization rate on Friday was 16 patients per 10,000 residents.

Cases have been reported in Androscoggin (8,494), Aroostook (1,976), Cumberland (17,510), Franklin (1,415), Hancock (1,420), Kennebec (6,732), Knox (1,193), Lincoln (1,113), Oxford (3,693), Penobscot (6,489), Piscataquis (605), Sagadahoc (1,487), Somerset (2,336), Waldo (1,120), Washington (962) and York (13,821) counties. Information about where an additional seven cases were reported wasnt immediately available.

An additional 740 vaccine doses were administered in the previous 24 hours. As of Friday, 765,195 Mainers have received a first dose of the vaccine, while 809,888 have received a final dose.

New Hampshire reported 89 new cases on Friday and one death. Vermont reported 26 new cases and no deaths, while Massachusetts reported 905 new cases and eight deaths.

As of Friday morning, the coronavirus had sickened 34,756,006 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 612,135 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.

More articles from the BDN

The rest is here:

111 more coronavirus cases have been reported across Maine - Bangor Daily News

Add Disney to the lineup of companies that will require employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

At the Walt Disney Company, the safety and well-being of our employees during the pandemic has been and continues to be a top priority, the company said in a statement. Toward that end, and based on the latest recommendations of scientists, health officials and our own medical professionals that the COVID-19 vaccine provides the best protection against severe infection, we are requiring that all salaried and non-union hourly employees in the U.S. working at any of our sites be fully vaccinated.

Netflix, Google and Facebook also announced this week that employees working in their offices will need the coronavirus vaccine.

Disney employees have 60 days to complete their protocols and any employees still working from home will need to provide verification of vaccination prior to their return, the companys message said. Disney employees overseas are not included in the policy, and the company is still negotiating with its unions, a spokeswoman said.

All new hires will be required to be fully vaccinated before beginning employment, Disneys announcement said. Vaccines are the best tool we all have to help control this global pandemic and protect our employees.

Earlier this week, Walt Disney World announced that starting this weekend, all of its visitors will be required to wear a face mask when indoors, including in lines for rides, and on park transportation. Its a reversal from just last month, when the parks had dropped that requirement for vaccinated guests.

The policy change comes on the heels of new federal health guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that even vaccinated Americans should resume wearing masks indoors if they are in areas with high or substantial transmissibility of the COVID-19 virus.

VACCINES Q&A: Have coronavirus vaccine questions? We have answers, Florida.

GET THE DAYSTARTER MORNING UPDATE: Sign up to receive the most up-to-date information.

A TRIBUTE TO FLORIDIANS TAKEN BY THE CORONAVIRUS: They were parents and retirees, police officer and doctors, imperfect but loved deeply.

HAVE A TIP?: Send us confidential news tips

Were working hard to bring you the latest news on the coronavirus in Florida. This effort takes a lot of resources to gather and update. If you havent already subscribed, please consider buying a print or digital subscription.

Read more here:

Walt Disney World will require most of its employees to get coronavirus vaccine - Tampa Bay Times

As you rub your neck from the public-health whiplash that occurred this week when federal officials recommended that many people vaccinated against the coronavirus go back to wearing masks, consider this dizzying detail:

Residents of some of the most-vaccinated counties in Colorado the places that state officials have lauded as doing the best job in working to stop the virus are now being urged to resume donning that most prominent of pandemic precautions. Residents of some of the least-vaccinated counties in Colorado are not.

This seemingly incongruous scenario is due to the pandemic taking yet another surprising turn in Colorado.

The new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people in areas with lots of new coronavirus cases resume wearing masks when around others indoors. The guidance puts the threshold for mask-wearing at 50 new cases per every 100,000 people over the previous week or at a test-positivity rate of at least 8%.

A month or two ago in Colorado, a countys vaccination rate was a somewhat reliable predictor of what its coronavirus case rate would be. Counties with higher vaccination rates generally had lower case rates, and counties being hit hard with surges of infections Mesa County was a frequently cited example often had lower vaccination rates.

But since then, the fearsomely transmissible delta variant has exploded across the state. It is now believed to account for 95% of new cases in Colorado, having virtually squeezed out all competing variants. Around 685 new coronavirus infections are being reported a day in Colorado right now numbers not seen since late-May, when the state was on the downward slope from its previous case surge. Hospitalizations are also ticking upward, though more slowly.

And the correlation between vaccination rate and case rate has broken down.

On Thursday, 44 of the states 64 counties had case rates high enough to fall under the CDCs masking guidance, according to state data. Those counties include 18 of the 20 most-vaccinated in the state. (The CDCs map of counties in the mask zone has a different count in part because the agency is working with older data than the state is.)

The highest one-week case rate in the state on Thursday was in the third-most vaccinated county: Summit County, where more than 77% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated but which reported 287 new cases per 100,000 people over the past week, according to state figures. The fourth-highest case rate was in Mineral County, the fourth-highest vaccinated county.

Of the 20 least-vaccinated counties in Colorado, half of them Thursday reported one-week case rates low enough to exempt them from masking guidance. And, taking a longer view by looking at two-week cumulative case rates, the transmission trends are just as muddled.

So, what exactly is going on here?

May Chu, an epidemiology professor and infectious disease expert at the Colorado School of Public Health, said one explanation involves the demographic characteristics of the least-vaccinated counties. Despite having a high percentage of people who are potentially susceptible to the virus, theyre not places where the virus can spread easily.

Some of those are very rural counties where density is not a big issue, she said.

Another possible explanation involves previous coronavirus case surges. Researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health have estimated that, while the Eastern Plains has some of Colorados least-vaccinated counties, it has some of the highest rates of immunity due to a high percentage of people who have previously caught the coronavirus.

But Chu said the CDCs new guidance is also a natural result of researchers and health officials trying to understand a complex microbiology problem while simultaneously making recommendations to the public on how to stay safe. It feels whiplash-y because thats sometimes how science works.

Theres a lot of pressure as to whats the right thing to do for COVID, she said. I always try to think of it this way: Weve had the virus for about a year and a half. In terms of microbiology, this is a very, very young virus still, and there are a lot of things we dont know about it.

This is biology, she said. Biology is messy.

In particular, the mask guidance comes after a startling new revelation about the delta variant. According to reporting by The Washington Post, federal authorities reviewed research suggesting that vaccinated people may be highly capable of spreading the variant if infected by it perhaps just as capable as unvaccinated people. The data are expected to be released Friday.

Vaccination still appears effective at preventing people from getting really sick or dying, even if they are infected with the delta variant. But the new research has led to concerns that the previous CDC guidance that vaccinated people can go maskless pretty much anywhere could lead to yet another surge of the virus.

And, because there are still a lot of unvaccinated people and also a lot of people for whom the vaccine is less effective due to underlying health issues, a new surge could lead to many more deaths.

If theyre not masked, Chu said of vaccinated people, then its just like February of last year.

But the CDCs new guidance appears to have caught state and local health authorities off guard.

On Thursday, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment still had not said whether it endorses the guidance and will, likewise, recommend that people start wearing masks again.

Several county public health departments said they are still reviewing the guidance and had not made a decision on whether to recommend or re-mandate masks. Jefferson County Public Health issued a statement Thursday evening saying it strongly encourages residents to wear masks in public indoors settings, regardless of vaccination status.

We know this is discouraging news, especially after months of progress, the agencys executive director, Dr. Dawn Comstock, said in a statement. We dont want to give up the ground our communities worked so hard to take during this battle against COVID-19. By taking recommended precautions now, we can work to minimize viral transmission to prevent the delta variant from spreading even further.

The public health board in Pitkin County another highly vaccinated county with currently high case rates plans to discuss at its next meeting whether to reissue a mask order.

Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday continued to portray the pandemic as a matter of personal responsibility something that can be ended through individual action. His office sent out a news release stating that the coronavirus is spreading in areas with low vaccination rates even though there is ample supply and access to the safe and effective vaccine.

This is now becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated and we have the tool to end it, Polis said in a statement. Now more than ever it could not be more clear that you are either on the side of spreading this virus or you are on the side of helping the state get back to the Colorado we know and love.

And, to be sure, vaccination remains a key way to fight back against the delta variants onslaught. Last week, Tri-County Health Department, which serves Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties, said that 95% of its coronavirus hospitalizations since March have been in people who were not fully vaccinated against the virus.

Getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the most effective way to protect yourself against this virus, especially with the more contagious delta variant circulating, Dr. John Douglas, Tri-Countys executive director, said in a statement.

But over the past several months government leaders have often pitched vaccination as having another benefit: It allows you to return to your normal life; it allows you to take off your mask.

Chu said public health messaging through the pandemic has been imperfect. And she said the new U-turn on mask guidance should prompt a different approach: Tell people that masks are a valuable part of our lives now. They are here to stay, at least in some form.

Because, otherwise, we might be setting ourselves up for whiplash all over again.

The virus itself is going to change, she said. This delta variant, when we get over it and we will is not going to be the last one.

The Colorado Sun has no paywall, meaning readers do not have to pay to access stories. We believe vital information needs to be seen by the people impacted, whether its a public health crisis, investigative reporting or keeping lawmakers accountable.

This reporting depends on support from readers like you. For just $5/month, you can invest in an informed community.

Continued here:

Coronavirus infections are rising even in heavily vaccinated places - The Colorado Sun

From the pandemics earliest days, Dr. Anthony Fauci has drawn political fire from COVID-19 skeptics. As director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Fauci is steeped in the scientific disciplines of virology, immunology and vaccine design. But critics, especially President Trump and his political allies, continue to excoriate him for supporting textbook public health measures like wearing face coverings and building immunity with vaccines.

The latest example occurred this week on Capitol Hill, when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) effectively accused Fauci of sending U.S. tax dollars to China so scientists there could soup up coronaviruses culled from bats and make them more dangerous to people. Then he accused Fauci of lying to Congress about the purported project.

In a final shot, Paul said Fauci could be responsible for more than 4 million deaths worldwide.

Fauci has stoically endured a lot of molten rhetoric over the past 18 months, but he did not accept these charges quietly.

Sen. Paul, you do not know what youre talking about, and I want to say that officially, Fauci said. I totally resent the lie you are now propagating.

Dr. Anthony Fauci: Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about.

Paul told Fox News the following day that he will ask the Department of Justice to explore whether Fauci committed a felony by lying to Congress, a crime which is punishable by up to five years in prison. That would stem from Faucis May 11 assertion to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that the National Institutes of Health never funded so-called gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology the type of work that would give a virus new and more dangerous capabilities.

Pauls claims rest on some very specific assumptions, not all of which have been demonstrated to be true.

In science, at least, assumptions must be verified if the conclusions that emerge from them are to be taken seriously. Due to repeated interruptions, Fauci didnt get a chance to respond to all of Pauls charges at this weeks hearing. Lets consider them now and see how well they are, or could be, backed by evidence.

In 2014, the institute Fauci directs awarded a five-year, $3-million grant to the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance for a project titled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.

That project focused heavily on China, where novel coronaviruses had emerged from animals on several occasions. The work promised to explore the potential pandemic risk of such viruses by gathering samples from the field, studying viruses in the lab, and developing models about how they could evolve and spread in real life.

In an interview, Fauci said that roughly $600,000 of the grant money went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Scientists there many of them U.S.-trained were tasked with nailing down the precise origins of the original SARS-CoV-1 virus that arose in Chinas Guangdong Province in 2002. They were also asked to help us understand what we need to look for to spot what might be an inevitable subsequent SARS outbreak.

That grant allowed scientists to test coronavirus samples harvested from wild animals and their habitats to see whether they were capable of infecting human cells. To do that, the WIV researchers created an experimental backbone, a piece of inactivated virus that serves as a standardized testbed. Then, to examine a particular coronavirus sample, they spliced off its spike protein and fused it to the backbone before exposing it to human cells in lab dishes to see if it would grow.

At the time, there was a prohibition against using federal funds for gain-of-function research. That specifically barred research projects that may be reasonably anticipated to make influenza and SARS viruses more transmissible and/or more virulent in mammals via the respiratory route.

WIVs adherence to that prohibition was monitored, and if in the course of an experiment a virus appeared to have been made potentially dangerous, the instructions were clear: The experiments must stop and youve got to report to the [NIAID] immediately, Fauci said.

This bit involves a bit of trust. After all, some changes in transmissibility or virulence occur naturally during lab experiments, and watching for those changes is part of the point of doing them. To document when and how a virus might become capable of jumping to humans, its crucial to identify where genetic mutations arise, under what circumstances, and how they may change a virus behavior.

But observing such changes and making them are two different things. The purpose of the WIV research was to investigate coronaviruses that were known to circulate in animals (but had not been seen in humans) and to explore their capacity to invade human cells. That makes it hard to say whether the altered virus ability to invade human cells was a function gained or was merely uncovered by WIV scientists.

In addition, genetic tampering or editing will typically leave behind discernible marks. In a recent critical review of the origins of SARS-CoV-2, an international group of virologists notes that the virus carries no evidence of genetic markers one might expect from laboratory experiments.

Scientists at WIV created hybrid viruses, or chimeras, when they spliced the spike proteins of actual coronaviruses onto viral testbeds a procedure that makes it easier to isolate the effects of the spike protein, which is key to invading cells.

Two chimeras made with spike proteins from bat coronaviruses were able to infect human cells.

Paul, who has a medical degree and trained in ophthamology, said such experiments create new viruses not found in nature, which is true. The work matches, indeed epitomizes, the definition of gain-of-function research barred by the NIH. Viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wuhan lab to gain the function of infecting humans, he said.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) questions Dr. Anthony Fauci about NIH-funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

(J. Scott Applewhite, Pool via Associated Press)

But that view is subject to debate among scientists.

Fauci said the practice of combining spike proteins from the wild with a lab-made viral backbone was standard laboratory procedure. This particular backbone was adapted from pieces of a bat virus never known to infect humans, he said.

The experiments were reviewed at many levels by qualified professionals in virology, who judged that it was not gain-of-function work.

Were looking at spike proteins of bat viruses that are already out there, Fauci said. Were not manipulating them to make them more or less likely to bind to human cells. Were just asking, Do they, or not?

He said the assurances he provided the Senate committee in May were similarly vetted up and down the NIH.

Neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported gain-of-function research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans, NIH Director Francis Collins said in a statement issued on May 19.

One thing is clear: Federal scientists now have broad latitude to define whether a line of research could result in an enhanced potential pandemic pathogen. A 2017 document from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services allows the NIH to proceed if expert reviewers determine that it is scientifically sound, the pathogen that could be created is a credible source of a potential future human pandemic, and the investigator and his or her institution have a demonstrated capacity and commitment to conduct [the research] safely and securely.

Whether SARS-CoV-2 emerged from the Wuhan lab is the subject of ongoing debate and investigation by scientists and the U.S. intelligence community. While the World Health Organization initially judged the prospect of a lab leak extremely unlikely, the organizations director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has since said that all hypotheses remain on the table.

President Biden has given the intelligence community until late August to conduct a review of the facts and bring us closer to a definitive conclusion about which of two scenarios a laboratory accident or human contact with an infected animal began the chain of events that led to the pandemic.

Fauci rules out only one scenario: that the viruses examined under the NIAID contract initiated the pandemic.

This is the leap of logic that Fauci, in an interview, called absolutely inflammatory and slanderous. It is also the claim that is most difficult to support with evidence.

Is it conceivable that somewhere in the Wuhan institute they were looking at viruses that may have leaked out? Im leaving that to the people who are doing the investigation to figure out, Fauci said.

But there is one thing that we are sure of, he added: The grant that we funded, and the result of that grant given in the annual reports, given in the peer-reviewed literature is not SARS-CoV-2.

How can he be so sure? There is just too much evolutionary distance between the coronavirus samples the Wuhan scientists were working with all of them genetically sequenced and detailed in published work and the virus that causes COVID-19.

This is what Fauci meant when he told lawmakers this week that it was molecularly impossible for the viruses examined by WIV to evolve into SARS-CoV-2: Generally, the overlap between the genomes of the viruses in the lab and that of SARS-CoV-2 was no more than 80%.

In evolutionary terms, thats a chasm. In their critical review, the international group of virologists note that SARS-CoV-2 and its closest known relatives have an overlap of about 96%. That equates to decades of evolutionary divergence, they wrote.

Given that, Fauci said, theres no way the viruses studied at WIV could have evolved into the virus that has caused 4 million deaths around the world.

Would it be possible to bridge that gap with some deft splicing and dicing in a lab? Perhaps, but if so, telltale marks likely would have been left behind. Those have not been seen by scientists who went looking.

Those same scientists have noted that, were someone looking to make a coronavirus as transmissible as possible, he or she would have changed the spike protein in ways that were already known to improve the virus ability to spread.

Original post:

Fauci: 'There's no way' the coronavirus was made with U.S. research funds. Here's why - Los Angeles Times

Employers' emerging vaccine policies take many forms, including those requiring shots for being on site, and those that provide alternatives such as strict testing and masking rules.

Dr. Leana Wen, a CNN medical analyst and former Baltimore health commissioner said she is for such requirements, in part because they could boost vaccination levels to a point where virus levels can be tamped down.

"I think the federal government is signaling now: 'Hey, vaccine mandates are a good idea.' ... It gives cover to these businesses that have long wanted to do this," Wen said Thursday.

"Why in the world would we just stand by and not take action right now?" Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, told CNN "None of us wants to turn back and experience" any more consequences of rising cases, like the banning of indoor dining, he said.

The US averaged more than 63,600 new daily cases over the last week -- an average that's generally risen since the country hit a 2021 low of 11,299 daily on June 22, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

As of Wednesday, cases rose in all but one state in the past seven days compared to the week before, and cases rose at least 50% in 36 states in that time, according to Johns Hopkins.

'We've hit a wall' on vaccinations, expert says

The culprit is an insufficient rate of vaccinations, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the US Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee.

"We've hit a wall," Offit told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday. "We've gotten to the point where you have to compel people to do the right thing."

The rate of people getting their first Covid-19 vaccine shot has risen in recent days. An average of 382,106 people initiated vaccination each day over the last week -- a 35% increase over last week's pace, and the highest average in the three weeks, CDC data shows.

"There was a time we were giving 3 million doses a day. If we'd stayed that course, we could be at roughly 80% population immunity," Offit said.

Wednesday's Washington Nationals MLB game against the Philadelphia Phillies was postponed after 12 members of the Nationals -- four players and eight staff members -- tested positive for Covid-19.

The climbing case numbers have pushed some areas to return to mask requirements:

The mayor of Atlanta issued an executive order Wednesday requiring masks in all indoor public places.

In Kansas, state employees and visitors will be required to wear masks indoors starting Monday.

The Pentagon implemented an indoor mask requirement regardless of vaccination status.

But other leaders are pushing back against the return to pre-vaccine precautions.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp tweeted Wednesday that he will not issue any mask mandates or lockdowns in the state.

Georgia is one of the 35 states where new cases in the past week were more than 50% higher than the week prior. Currently 38.5% of the state's population is fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

Health experts have said the changes in recommendations, like those made to mask guidance, are the result of under vaccination and the Delta variant changing the landscape of the pandemic.

Experts advocate for vaccine mandates as hesitancy grows

Despite education efforts, increased accessibility and financial incentives in many places, vaccination rates have slowed -- a worrying trend for health experts who say vaccination is the best hope to end the pandemic.

About 46% of Republicans who most trust far-right news said they will refuse to get vaccinated, up from 31% who said the same in March, the survey found. However, 77% of Republicans who most trust mainstream news outlets and 64% of Republicans who most trust Fox News are "vaccine accepters," according to the survey data.

Among Democrats, 85% are vaccine accepters, up from 73% in March, and 71% of independents are vaccine accepters, up from 58% in March, according to the survey data.

One motivator that might help overcome the hesitancy, some officials and experts have suggested, is vaccine mandates. And many places have begun implementing them.

The Baylor Scott & White Health system in Texas announced Wednesday all 49,000-plus employees, volunteers, vendors and students will be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 by October.

"The Delta variant is the most contagious and dangerous strain we have seen to date, leading to exponentially increasing rates of severe illness and hospitalization. The overwhelming majority of these cases are among the unvaccinated," the company said in a statement.

CNN's Alexis Benveniste, Clare Duffy, Kevin Liptak, Kay Jones, Dave Alsup, Raja Razek, Barbara Starr, Deidre McPhillips, Taylor Romine, Alison Kosik and Andy Rose contributed to this report.

Read more:

American workers are facing increasing pressure to get vaccinated against Covid-19 - CNN

People stand in the International Arrivals area at Heathrow Airport in London on Jan. 26. The British government said that starting Monday, fully vaccinated travelers from the United States and much of Europe will be able to enter England without the need for quarantining. Matt Dunham/AP hide caption

People stand in the International Arrivals area at Heathrow Airport in London on Jan. 26. The British government said that starting Monday, fully vaccinated travelers from the United States and much of Europe will be able to enter England without the need for quarantining.

LONDON Fully vaccinated travelers from the United States and much of Europe will be able to enter England and Scotland without quarantining starting next week, U.K. officials said Wednesday a move welcomed by Britain's ailing travel industry.

The British government said people who have received both doses of a vaccine approved by the FDA in the U.S. or the European Medicines Agency, which regulates drugs for the European Union and several other countries, will be able to take pre- and post-arrival coronavirus tests instead of self-isolating for 10 days after entering England.

The rule change takes effect at 4 a.m. U.K. time (0300 GMT) on Monday.

The Scottish government, which sets its own health policy, made the same decision. Wales and Northern Ireland haven't announced what they plan to do.

Only people who have been vaccinated in Britain can currently skip 10 days of quarantine when arriving from most of Europe or North America.

There is one exception to the rule change: France, which the U.K. has dubbed a higher risk because of the presence of the beta variant of the coronavirus. Visitors from France will continue to face quarantine.

Britain's Health Secretary Sajid Javid speaks to reporters during a visit to a pop-up vaccination site in London on Wednesday. Dominic Lipinski/AP hide caption

Britain's Health Secretary Sajid Javid speaks to reporters during a visit to a pop-up vaccination site in London on Wednesday.

Heathrow Airport chief executive John Holland-Kaye said the government had made the "right decision." British Airways also welcomed the moved, but urged the government to go farther and ease restrictions on visitors from more countries.

Claire Walker, co-executive director of the British Chambers of Commerce, said the announcement was "welcome news."

"The long-term recovery of our entire economy also depends on reopening the U.K. to the two-way flows of people and trade," she said.

The change hasn't been universally reciprocated. Some European countries, including Italy, require British visitors to quarantine on arrival. The U.S. this week announced it is keeping a ban on most international visitors, and has advised Americans against travel to the U.K., citing a surge in infections driven by the more contagious delta variant of the virus.

Virgin Atlantic chief executive Shai Weiss urged the U.S. to end its travel ban and for the U.K. to go farther in opening up international travel. Weiss said "a continued overly cautious approach towards international travel will further impact economic recovery and the 500,000 U.K. jobs that are at stake."

British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he expected the U.S. to ease its travel restrictions.

"We can only set the rules at our end," he said.

"We can't change that on the other side, but we do expect that in time they will release that executive order, which was actually signed by the previous president, and bans inward travel."

Here is the original post:

England And Scotland End Their Coronavirus Quarantine For Vaccinated U.S. Travelers - NPR

A prominent Chicago infectious diseases expert is warning that "lots of people" will contract COVID-19 at Lollapalooza this weekend - but Mayor Lori Lightfoot dismissed that warning as coming from "critics on the sidelines."

Meanwhile, more than 160 people have died and nearly 650 have been hospitalized in Illinois due to COVID-19 in "breakthrough" cases after they were fully vaccinated, according to state health officials.

And in which areas is the CDC recommending people wear masks indoors? The agency points to its COVID-19 data tracker showing levels of community transmission, along with other data, for each county in the U.S.

Here's what you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic across Illinois today:

Multiple counties in the Chicago area and across Illinois are seeing "substantial" or "high" community transmission of COVID-19, placing them in the categories in which fully vaccinated people should resume wearing a mask indoors, federal health officials say.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance Tuesday to recommend that fully vaccinated people should wear masks in indoor settings again in areas of the U.S. that are seeing substantial or high transmission of COVID-19.

The new guidance marked a reversal from earlier recommendations that said fully vaccinated people could remove masks in most settings.

According to the CDC's COVID-19 data tracker, amapshowing levels of community transmission for each county in the U.S., at least eight counties in the Chicago area are seeing "substantial" community transmission as of Thursday.

Those counties include: Will, DuPage, McHenry, Boone, Winnebago, DeKalb, LaSalle and Grundy.

Many of the Illinois' southern and central counties also fall into either substantial, labeled in orange, or high transmission, labeled in red. Some central and northern counties are seeing moderate transmission, labeled in yellow, while just two are colored blue for low transmission.

Read more here.

In which areas is the CDC recommending people wear masks indoors? The agency points to its COVID-19 data tracker showing levels of community transmission, along with other data, for each county in the U.S.

You can find that map here.

The agency uses atwo measuresto group U.S. counties into four levels of community transmission: the number of new cases per 100,000 residents and the percent of COVID-19 tests that are positive over the past week.

If a county has reported 50 to 100 cases per 100,000 residents over a seven-day period or has a positivity rate of 8% to 10%, it falls into the "substantial transmission" tier, while those reporting 100 cases or more per 100,000 or have a positivity rate of at least 10% are labeled as "high transmission." Those are the two groups for which the CDC recommends mask-wearing.

Read more here.

More than 160 people have died and nearly 650 have been hospitalized in Illinois due to COVID-19 in "breakthrough" cases after they were fully vaccinated, according to state health officials.

According to data updated Wednesday by the Illinois Department of Public Health, 169 people in Illinois have died due to COVID-19 or complications after being fully vaccinated. That figure equates to 2.44% of COVID-19 deaths in the state since Jan. 1, officials said.

At least 644 fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized in Illinois, IDPH said. The state only reports breakthrough infections among those who have been hospitalized or died, following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, IDPH said.

Those totals mean 10 more fully vaccinated individuals have died and 51 more have been hospitalized in the past week since the state last updated its reported numbers.

The state does not publicize the number of residents who tested positive after being fully vaccinated but did not die or require hospitalization in order to "help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance," IDPH's website reads.

Read more here.

Masks will once again be required at Illinois driver services facilities and Secretary of State offices, as well as the State Capitol building, beginning next week, Secretary of State Jesse White announced.

Beginning Monday, Aug. 2, all employees and customers must wear masks inside these buildings.

White said the switch is being made amid a recent increase in COVID-19 cases and in an effort to keep Illinois driver services facilities and Secretary of State offices open "to reduce the heavy customer volume caused by the COVID-19 pandemic over the last year."

Read more here.

Health officials in suburban Cook County have changed their guidance on masking in schools following new recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week, which stated that fully vaccinated people should begin wearing masks indoors again in places with high transmission.

"As COVID-19 case counts continue to surge, based largely on the highly contagious Delta variant, the Cook County Department of Public Health(CCDPH) along with the Illinois Department of Public Health, strongly endorses the new CDC guidance calling for universal masking in all schools, K-12 and is revising its School Masking Guidance," the Cook County Health Department said in a statement.

The county noted the "expectation is that schools will follow the CDC masking guidance."

Read more here.

The Illinois Department of Public Health is "fully adopting"the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's updated masking guidance, the state's health department said Tuesday, recommending that fully vaccinated people begin wearing masks indoors again in places with substantial and high transmission.

IDPH also will follow the CDC's new recommendations for masking indoors at K-12 schools, recommending it be done universally among teachers, staff, students and visitors to schools, regardless of vaccination status.

"While data continues to show the effectiveness of the three COVID-19 vaccines currently authorized in the U.S., including against the Delta variant, we are still seeing the virus rapidly spread among the unvaccinated," said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike in a statement, noting that COVID cases and hospitalizations continue to increase, especially among those who are unvaccinated against the virus.

Chicago updated its travel advisory Tuesday, adding nine additional states to the list recommending that anyone entering the city from those areas test negative for COVID-19 or quarantine upon arrival.

The city added nine states - for a total of 14 states and one territory - back to the advisory, which is updated each week.

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming were all added Tuesday, the Chicago Department of Public Health said.

They join Florida, Louisiana and Nevada, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands, which were added last week, plus Missouri and Arkansas which were added two weeks prior and all remain on the list.

Recent increases in COVID metrics pushed those newly added states over the threshold of 15 cases per day per 100,000 people to get onto the "orange" list. Any below that mark are on the "yellow" list, with public health officials still warning against non-essential travel.

Read more here.

Chicago could reinstate its mask requirement and other additional COVID-19 safety precautions if the city continues to see a rise in case numbers, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has revealed.

In a conversation with the New York Times published Monday, Lightfoot said, "We're not there yet" when it comes to making such a move, but noted Chicago has reported an uptick in daily case numbers and a slight increase in hospitalizations.

"...We are working very hard to make sure that our daily case rate is below 200," the mayor explained. "If we start to see consistently going over that, we're not only going to look at a mask mandate, we're going to look at other tools we've been compelled to use."

At an unrelated event later Monday, Lightfoot expanded on that when asked about a mask mandate potentially returning.

"We are not in a danger area based upon the metrics that we follow," she said. "But I do think it's smart for people to wear masks. When you're in a group, you don't know who's vaccinated or not."

"We know that the risk to the unvaccinated is extremely high, not only for them getting sick, but also transmitting. So I think everybody's got to make their decisions about what makes the most sense for them," Lightfoot continued. "But if we see a surge anything like we've seen in the past couple cycles, then everything's on the table, but right now, I feel confident with the measures that are in place. But everything is subject to change."

Read more here.

A prominent Chicago infectious diseases expert is warning that "lots of people" will contract COVID-19 at Lollapalooza this weekend - but Mayor Lori Lightfoot dismissed that warning as coming from "critics on the sidelines."

Dr. Emily Landon, executive medical director for infection prevention and control at the University of Chicago Medical Center, says that the event is a spreader event, and that she fears individuals who become infected with COVID, vaccinated or not, could start wildfires of infection across the United States.

I think a lot of people are going to get COVID at Lollapalooza, she said. The real problem is not so much that a bunch of young people who come into Chicago getting COVID at this event. The real problem is them taking it back to places that have very low vaccination rates"

Lolla has let us down with respect to how vigorously theyre restricting people based on the things that they sort of initially told us (about how) were going to be really strict and now its like theyve lightened up quite considerably on checking vaccines and negative tests, she said.

Lightfoot disagreed with Landons assessment of the situation, calling the physician a critic standing on the sideline and saying that she trusts the medical team put together by the city and festival organizers.

God bless the critics standing on the sidelines, but I feel confident that the Lolla folks have a good, solid plan in place, and were obviously going to hold them accountable to make sure that the plan is enforced, she said.

Landon, who has appeared at events with Lightfoot during the COVID pandemic, says that she hasnt spoken to city or state officials in weeks, and says that small changes to Lollapalooza could have made it safer, even amid the COVID pandemic.

Read more here.

As questions linger about whetherLollapalooza should return this summer following a rise in COVID-19 cases,the music festival - Chicago's largest - has extended the window in which concert-goes can undergo a COVID test.

As announced earlier this year, event organizers said a full COVID-19 vaccination or negative test results within 24 hours before attending the festival would be required for admission. But according to the Lollapalooza website, as of Monday, event attendees had to receive a negative COVID-19 test result within 72 hours of attending the event, not 24. However, it's unclear when exactly the testing window expanded.

Voicing concerns about the event taking place amid a surge in cases,Dr. Emily Landon, widely regarded as one of Chicago's top coronavirus experts, said the 72-hour parameter is too lenient, and that the city is risking a massive spike in cases by allowing the event to move forward as planned.

Read more here.

Revealing city and state officials haven't asked for her advice in recent weeks, Dr. Emily Landon, widely regarded as one of Chicago's top coronavirus experts, bluntly stated Lollapalooza - the city's largest music festival - should likely be canceled, citing a rise in COVID-19 cases fueled by the Delta variant.

In an interview Monday, Landon, the executive medical director of infection prevention and control at the University of Chicago Medicine, acknowledged canceling the event, set to take place this weekend, is unlikely.

"And remember how much people are motivated by money," she said. "It really is all about money. People in many cases will throw you, your health, your family's health, grandmother's health under the bus in order to make a few more dollars."

Read more here.

Lollapalooza is set to take place this weekend in Chicago, and even with the precautions put in place by concert organizers and city health officials, a prominent disease specialist has a very simple message for those attending: Assume that you have been exposed to coronavirus.

With recent increases in cases, mostly driven by the more-contagious delta variant, Dr. Emily Landon, executive medical director for infection prevention and control at the University of Chicago, says that festival-goers must assume that they have come into contact with someone infected with coronavirus, whether or not they themselves are vaccinated.

She said there are steps attendees should take in the days after Lollapalooza to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.

Read more here.

Three winners were chosen Monday during the third $100,000 drawing ofIllinois' COVID vaccine lottery.

The winners, located in Bolingbrook, Champaign County and Vernon Hills, will be notified by the Illinois Department of Public Health by phone or email starting Monday afternoon. Each will be awarded a $100,000 cash prize.

"Illinoisans from those cities and counties should keep their phones on and check their emails regularly to find out if theyve won," IDPH said in a statement.

Health officials will call from 312-814-3524 and/or email fromDPH.communications@illinois.gov.

Read more here.

About 83 percent of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have been fueled by the delta variant, and as the surge continues, the number of associated cases is expected to rise even higher in the coming weeks, according to health officials.

Approximately one month ago, on June 19, thedelta variantaccounted for just over 30 percent of new cases. On July 3, it crossed the 50 percent threshold to become the dominant variant in the U.S. Public health experts nationwide have focused their efforts on encouraging vaccinations as most of those who've contracted the variant haven't been vaccinated.

Studies have shown that theCOVID-19 vaccinesare effective against multiple variants, including the delta variant. However, when it comes to symptoms, there appear to be key differences.

Here's what you need to know.

Illinois health officials on Friday reported 7,983 new COVID-19 cases in the past week, along with 47 additional deaths and more than 139,000 new vaccine doses administered.

In all, 1,407,929 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the state since the pandemic began. The additional deaths reported this week bring the state to 23,401 confirmed COVID fatalities.

The state has administered 241,150 tests since last Friday, officials said, bringing the total to more than 26 million tests conducted during the pandemic.

The states seven-day positivity rate on all tests rose to 3.3% from 1.9% the week before and 1.5% two weeks prior - meaning the positivity rate has more than doubled in the past two weeks. The rolling average seven-day positivity rate on individuals tested rose to 3.5%, up from 1.7% then 2.3% in the past two weeks, officials said.

Over the past seven days, a total of 139,495 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered to Illinois residents. That brings the states average to 19,928 daily vaccination doses over the last week, down from the figures reported last Friday, per IDPH data.

State officials say Illinois this week crossed the threshold of 13 million vaccine doses administered since vaccinations began in December. More than 58% of adult residents in the state are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with 73% receiving at least one dose.

As of midnight, 670 patients are currently hospitalized due to COVID in the state. Of those patients, 135 are in intensive care units, and 44 are on ventilators. All three metrics are a reported increase since last Friday.

Students and teachers will be required to wear face coverings and social distance while indoors this upcoming academic year, Chicago Public Schools announced Thursday.

Based on a letter sent to CPS families, students and staff will have to wear a mask regardless of COVID vaccination status while indoors, except when eating and drinking.

Face coverings will be able to be removed during recess and outdoor sports, the letter noted.

CPS will also require students remain three feet apart "whenever possible" and will use enhanced safety protocols, such as air purifiers, hand sanitizer and disinfecting.

Read more here.

Public health officials are sounding alarm bells throughout the United States, as the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus has led to a massive surge in cases in recent weeks.

What exactly is the delta variant? What makes it different from previous strains of the COVID-19 virus? Do vaccines protect you against it?

Here's an exhaustive list of what we know so far about the variant itself and what is being seen in Chicago and Illinois.

Visit link:

Illinois Coronavirus Updates: Breakthrough Cases, Where to Wear Masks, Lollapalooza - NBC Chicago

Companies are rushing to revisit their coronavirus precautions, with some mandating vaccines and pushing back targets for when employees are expected to return to the office, as cases rise across the United States, fueled by the Delta variant and slower pace of vaccinations.

Lyft said on Wednesday that it would not require employees to return to the office until February, while Twitter said it would close its newly reopened offices in San Francisco and New York and indefinitely postpone other reopening plans.

Their actions follow announcements by authorities in California and New York City that they will require hundreds of thousands of government workers to get inoculations or face weekly testing. And President Biden is set to announce that all civilian federal workers must be vaccinated or submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements and restrictions on most travel.

Apple will start requiring employees and customers to wear masks regardless of their vaccination status in more than half of its stores in the United States, it said on Wednesday, a new sign that shopping in the country may soon resemble earlier days of the pandemic.

Google will require employees who return to the companys offices to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. It also said it would push back its official return-to-office date to mid-October from September. Google has more than 144,000 employees globally.

Netflix will require the casts of all its U.S. productions to be vaccinated, along with anyone else who comes on set. Its the first studio to establish such a policy.

Facebook will require employees who work at its U.S. campuses to be vaccinated, depending on local conditions and regulations. Facebook, which has roughly 60,000 workers, said in June that it would permit all full-time employees to continue to work from home when feasible.

The Durst Organization, one of the largest private real estate developers in New York City, is requiring all of its employees in nonunion positions to be vaccinated by Sept. 6 or face termination. Durst has about 350 nonunion employees and about 700 union workers.

The Walt Disney Company said Wednesday that it would require cast members and guests older than 2 to wear face coverings in all indoor locations at its Walt Disney World Resort and Disneyland Resort, effective July 30.

Citigroup is reinstating mask requirements in common areas for employees across its U.S. offices, a person familiar with the situation said.

See the article here:

Here's How Companies Are Responding to the Rise in Virus Cases - The New York Times

Dr. Rochelle Walensky said such breakthrough infections are rare, and stressed that Covid-19 vaccines generally prevent hospitalizations and deaths even if vaccinated people are infected.

But "with prior variants, when (vaccinated) people had these rare breakthrough infections, we didn't see the capacity of them to spread the virus to others," Walensky, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's director, told CNN's "New Day."

That realization came only "in the last several days," and more information will be published in the coming days, she said.

Still, she said the "vast majority" of transmission is through unvaccinated people.

The CDC also recommended that everyone in and around K-12 schools wear masks, even if they are fully vaccinated.

The US averaged more than 61,300 new daily cases over the last week -- an average that's generally risen since the country hit a 2021 low of 11,299 daily on June 22, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

As of Wednesday, cases have risen in all but one state in the past seven days compared to the week before, according to Johns Hopkins.

US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said the US is seeing just how dangerous the variant is. "This is actually what you want to happen with science. You want science to be dynamic, you want recommendations to reflect the latest science, and that's what you see in the recommendations that were issued today," Murthy told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday.

Almost three-quarters of US residents live in counties where indoor masking is recommended for everyone

About 48% are in "high" transmission counties, and 23% are in counties with "substantial" transmission.

This is up from a week ago, when 50.5% of Americans lived in such counties.

Only 1% of the population lives in areas with "low" transmission.

The CDC considers a county to have "high" transmission if there have been 100 or more cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 residents in the past week, or a test positivity rate of 10% or higher during the same time frame.

For "low" transmission, those numbers must be fewer than 10 new cases per 100,000 or a test positivity rate under 5%.

Vaccinated people don't yet need a booster, surgeon general says after Pfizer news

The data, which included 23 people, has not yet been peer-reviewed or published.

But Murthy told CNN on Wednesday that fully vaccinated people don't need to get a booster at this point, if ever. And any decision on whether that will change will be made by agencies such as the CDC and the US Food and Drug Administration, he said.

"This data from Pfizer, we've been in talks with them about what they're seeing with regard to their studies related to boosters," Murthy told CNN's "Newsroom" when asked about the data release. "But at this point, I want to be very clear: People do not need to go out and get a booster shot."

Murthy also said whether it'd be ethical to recommend a third shot while there is a major vaccine supply shortage in the developing world was a "critical question." The ability to reduce the likelihood of future variants developing depends on tamping down spread around the world, he said.

Pfizer anticipates submitting data on a third dose of its coronavirus vaccine to the FDA as soon as next month, one of its research and development leaders said during a company earnings call Wednesday.

Vaccinations are still the 'bedrock' of ending the pandemic

While masking up will help reduce the spread of Covid-19 in the US, getting vaccinated is still "the bedrock" of ending the pandemic, Murthy said.

"Vaccines still work. They still save lives. They still prevent hospitalizations at a remarkably high rate," he added.

Over the past seven days, the rate of Americans getting their first vaccine shots has gone up. It was 35% higher than the previous seven-day period and the highest it has been in three weeks, according to CNN analysis of CDC data.

But vaccination rates are still not so high as to get enough of the US inoculated against the virus to slow or stop its spread, experts have said. Many experts have advocated for vaccine requirements as one way to increase vaccination rates in the US.

Los Angeles officials announced Tuesday that the city will require all of its employees to show proof of vaccination or submit to weekly testing.

"The fourth wave is here, and the choice for Angelenos couldn't be clearer -- get vaccinated or get Covid-19," Mayor Eric Garcetti said. "We're committed to pursuing a full vaccine mandate. I urge employers across Los Angeles to follow this example."

The move comes after the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus in Los Angeles County nearly doubled in the past two weeks. There are currently 745 people hospitalized with the virus, compared to 372 people two weeks ago, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Such requirements by local entities are "very reasonable," Murthy said Tuesday.

Some US hospitals and federal agencies are mandating that employees get vaccinated against Covid-19 or submit to regular testing. Murthy noted that many private institutions are considering following suit.

"Those are decisions the federal government is not going to make," Murthy said. "It's going to be institutions that make them, but I do think that they are very reasonable, because this is a time when we've got to take all steps possible to protect not just ourselves, but the people around us, from Covid-19."

CNN's Jacqueline Howard, Naomi Thomas, Lauren Mascarenhas, Sarah Moon, Jen Christensen, Raja Razek and Jennifer Feldman contributed to this report.

View post:

CDC's new masking guidance prompted by science that emerged in just the last several days, Walensky says - CNN