(NEW YORK) — Over 55 million Americans are at risk for flash flooding this weekend as severe weather heads toward the Northeast.
Portions of the Northeast are nearly five times wetter than average for July so far. New York and Boston both could approach all-time wettest July before the month’s end.
Tornadoes and damaging winds are also possible in the Northeast today.
A slow moving frontal system is bringing very heavy rain from the central U.S. to the East Coast. Over 3 inches of rain caused flash flooding in the Detroit region on Friday. Over 5 inches of rain was reported in Indiana, nearly 6 inches of rain was reported in Illinois, and over 10 inches of rain was reported in Kansas.
The system is moving east this morning and will bring more heavy rain to parts of the Ohio Valley and ultimately into the Northeast. Severe storms, including the risk for possible tornadoes and damaging winds will be possible from Maryland to New York today, including Philadelphia and New York City.
Flash flood watches are in effect from Indiana to Massachusetts. The rainfall threat across parts of the Northeast is particularly concerning. The region is well above average for rainfall.
New York City has had 8.49 inches of rain so far for the month of July. To put that in context, New York City’s average rainfall for all of July is 4.60 inches. The wettest July on record in New York city is 11.89 inches.
Boston has had 8.92 inches of rain so far in July. Boston currently is having it’s third-wettest July on record. The wettest July on record in Boston is 11.69 inches.
The precipitation forecast for storms Saturday and Sunday shows locally over 3 inches of rain. While not a certainty, it is looking possible, that Northeast cities will be approaching or exceeding their wettest July on record — and that may happen this weekend, in spots.
Flash flooding is a concern. As the ground is very saturated, the heavy rain will likely cause flash flooding very quickly.
Meanwhile, in the West, a heat wave is persisting across parts of the region, but it is not nearly as bad as the last few heat waves have been. In fact, there are only a couple of records being threatened over the next few days.
More concerning is the risk of dry lightning across California and Western Nevada on Sunday night. Dry lightning can quickly start wildfires, that will quickly burn out of control.
Additionally, more monsoon-related flooding will be possible across Arizona and New Mexico.
Here are the updated fire numbers:
Beckwourth Complex Fire
Size: 105,163 acres
70% contained
Near Beckwourth, CA
Bootleg Fire
Size: 273,582 acres
22% contained
Near Beatty, OR
River Fire
9,500 acres
59% contained
Mariposa County, CA
Snake River Complex Fire
102,866 acres
31% contained
Outside of Lewiston, ID
Red Apple Fire
11,111 acres
51% contained
Central Washington
(SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico) — With the peak of hurricane season less than two months away, many Puerto Ricans are concerned about the stability of the island’s electric grid — a problem-plagued system that left millions without power during Hurricane Maria.
After suffering multiple natural disasters in recent years including two hurricanes and thousands of earthquakes, the island’s already troubled electric system has been left damaged, leading to the grid becoming unstable.
“We all have to keep in mind that we have a very fragile electrical grid,” the island’s governor, Pedro Pierluisi, told ABC News. Some residents are also concerned about the company that is now running the electric distribution system, LUMA Energy.
LUMA took over the island’s transmission and distribution system on June 1 — the same day hurricane season started.
The system was previously managed by the governmental entity called Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which still manages electric generation.
Pierluisi blamed the current problems with the electric system on PREPA for not maintaining the grid.
“PREPA was not giving adequate maintenance to substations, to the electrical poles, electrical lines and Luma inherited that,” he told ABC News.
LUMA’s 1st month
The privatization of the country’s electric grid was announced three years ago by former Gov. Ricardo Rosello.
LUMA’s contract with the government was announced during his successor, Wanda Vazquez’s administration, but Pierluisi supported it once he took office in January 2021.
While blackouts and power outages weren’t infrequent in some areas of Puerto Rico before LUMA, some residents say conditions have worsened since the new company has been in control.
Sylvia Giansante, a resident in San Juan, said “power outages were not frequent,” but that changed in the last month. But “ever since last month,” she said, “the power goes out every two days.”
Giansante said she has three damaged air conditioning units due to the unstable power system and the frequent blackouts.
In the last month, Puerto Rico has seen multiple power outages and a major blackout caused by an explosion in one of the island’s electric substations. The Monacillo substation, where the explosion occurred, is located in San Juan and is run by LUMA Energy.
Aside from these incidents, thousands on the island have reported ongoing power outages in that time, with some lasting a couple of hours and others up to days.“The week of the explosion, we were without power for five days,” Giansante said.
A local police report said the substation explosion was due to a failure in the electric system. After rumors circulated that the explosion could have been intentionally set, federal authorities responded to the incident.
The FBI said in a statement to ABC News that their position is “one of support in assessing the events and related circumstances to determine if it was the result of an accident or of a criminal act.”
While the FBI’s spokesperson didn’t confirm an investigation they say “the people of Puerto Rico can rest assured that, should evidence of criminal action under our jurisdiction be found, we would pursue it to its fullest extent.”
Many residents in the island have been against LUMA’s takeover since the beginning of the transition process. They oppose the terms of the contract with the government and some are against privatizing the essential service.
Dozens of protests have been reported across the island demanding the cancellation of the contract between Puerto Rico’s government and the company.
Residents concerns amid hurricane season
Karina Claudio-Betancourt lives in a community called Barrio Obrero located in Santurce, Puerto Rico. She says there was a live cable hanging in her street early in June and she called LUMA every day to report the situation.
“In the beginning, we made a lot of calls, and no answers,” Claudio-Betancourt said. “I wrote to them via Twitter and Facebook.”
LUMA’s external affairs adviser, Jose Perez Velez, told ABC News that the delay in responding to calls at the beginning of the month could have been related to a cyberattack the company suffered in their first week which affected their client service.
Once Claudio-Betancourt was able to communicate with LUMA, their response was “we’re working on it, we’re going to refer it to a supervisor, ” she says.
According to the 33-year-old woman it took LUMA three weeks after she made her first claim to address the situation.
With the ongoing hurricane season, residents say they are concerned about the company’s slow response to power outages.
“It’s scary,” Claudio-Betancourt said. “It’s really a situation of life and death to lose electricity, and I don’t see them responding quickly enough.”
An investigation from the Center for Investigative Journalism of Puerto Rico indicated that most of the deaths in Hurricane Maria can be linked to the lack of electricity.
When Hurricane Maria slammed the island in 2017, it knocked out the power and all communications in the entire island. It took nearly a year to restore the electricity to the whole island. The official death toll linked to the storm is 2,975, according to Puerto Rico’s government.
Before hurricane season started this year, the Puerto Rican government held a press conference on May 26 addressing the contingency plan for any potential storm.
In that presser, LUMA’s CEO Wayne Stensby said the company was ready to work alongside the government to deal with any potential natural disaster.
In a public motion with the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau, LUMA stated that the company has enough inventory including trucks and employees to deal with a Category 2 storm. A report with more details on an emergency plan was also submitted by LUMA.
“We are ready to put the customers first as our obligations,” Stensby said during the presser on May 26.
But in recent weeks, residents including Claudio-Betancourt said they have been told by employees at the call center that LUMA does not have enough equipment to deal with rural areas in the island.
Claudio-Betancourt has a residence in Las Marias, Puerto Rico located in the center westside of the island. Her residence has been without power for weeks. She called to report the situation, but LUMA was not able to address the complaint, she said.
“They said, ‘We don’t have enough linemen in that area.’ Then I went personally to the offices in San Sebastian, and they said to me, ‘We don’t have the trucks to fix the electricity,'” Claudio-Betancourt told ABC News.
The LUMA representative, Perez Velez, reiterated that the company has the people and the tools to deal with the ongoing outages.
“We are prepared. We have the capacity and the people to handle the necessities in our island. We are going to deal with any possible atmospheric event in the most organized way,” he told ABC News.
Amid the wave of complaints against the new company, Gov. Pierluisi told ABC News his team has been talking to LUMA Energy to make check-ins and demand answers if needed.
“We will be vigilant, we will do the oversight, and there is a good plan in place to handle a disaster,” Pierluisi said.
Although the governor believes that LUMA Energy has more resources compared to when PREPA ran the transmission and distribution of the system, he admitted the company needs more equipment.
“They’re doing alliances as we speak, they’re doing MOUs [memorandum of understanding] with mayors to supplement what they’re doing, and they are also doing alliances with electrical companies and elsewhere in the states to assist them. If God forbid, we get another natural disaster here in Puerto Rico,” the governor added.
Despite LUMA’s declarations and the governor’s words, residents are still skeptical about the island’s electric system stability and the response they could get during a potential emergency.
“Maria was Category 4. What are they going to do if Category 4 comes? Are they going to leave us to die?” Claudio-Betancourt asked.
(WASHINGTON) — Six people were injured and one 6-year-old girl killed in a shooting that took place in Washington, D.C., Friday night.
The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia released a video statement regarding the shooting, which took place shortly after 11 p.m.
Executive Assistant Chief Ashan M. Benedict said police heard shots of gunfire at 2900 Block of Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue, Southeast, and rushed to the scene to find six victims injured: three male adults, two female adults and one child.
The 6-year-old girl was shot and killed at the scene and was later pronounced dead at a local hospital, Benedict said.
The five adults were being treated at area hospitals Friday night with non-life-threatening injuries.
The shooters are unknown, and police are asking for the public’s help in identifying them.
“We’re asking for the public’s assistance to bring these shooters to justice,” Benedict said.
(WASHINGTON) — Gun-inflicted injuries result in more than $1 billion in hospital costs each year and programs like Medicaid end up picking up most of the tab, according to a new report.
The report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office was requested by House and Senate Democrats and sheds a light on the financial devastation gun violence wreaks.
The report found there are about 30,000 hospital stays and 50,000 emergency room visits annually to treat firearm injuries, following an analysis of most recent hospital data available from 2016 and 2017.
Public coverage programs such as Medicaid accounted for more than 60% of the costs of care, the report found.
The report comes as President Joe Biden highlighted skyrocketing gun violence and crime rates and this week touted the ability of cities and states to repurpose COVID-19 relief funding to address the crisis.
Overall, the report found that firearm injuries led to “significant” financial hospital costs.
“While firearm injuries constitute a small proportion of overall hospital costs — less than 1% over the 2-year period we studied — per patient, these injuries are relatively expensive to treat compared with other types of injuries or conditions,” the report stated, citing the average cost of initial treatment for firearm injury patients, whether emergency deaprtment-only or inpatient care, as “more than twice the average cost of treating other patients in the hospital.”
Up to 16% of firearm injury survivors were readmitted at least once to the hospital after initial treatment, and those visits cost an additional $8,000 to $11,000 per patient, the report found.
Gun injury survivors also face hurdles to accessing care after hospital discharge such as insurance coverage, socioeconomic status and provider biases — all of which can affect access to health care more generally, the report said. Some firearm injury survivors may need lifelong care after hospital discharge, the report also stated.
A majority of firearm victims landed in lower-income brackets and the burden of those treatments largely fell on public safety-net programs, according to the report. Over the two-year period studied, more than half of firearm injury patients for both initial emergency department-only and inpatient care visits lived in zip codes with an annual median household income below $44,000.
Firearm injuries also disproportionately impacted the Black community. Although information on race and ethnicity was not available for ED-only visits, patients identified as Black accounted for over half of inpatient stays and costs, the report noted.
“Many firearm injury survivors are from communities of color and are low income. Because of this, they may be more likely than the general population to face access barriers due to systemic inequities that disproportionately affect those groups,” the report said.
Because of “racial bias in the health care system,” providers may not prescribe the “same level” of services to patients from communities of color as they do to white patients; moreover, patients’ mistrust in the health care system which can “stem from negative prior experiences” and a “lack of racial and ethnic diversity of providers within the health care system, among other things,” may hinder patients’ access to care,” the report stated.
(LOS ANGELES) — At least 10 people were injured in an altercation between sheriff’s deputies and inmates at a Southern California jail on Thursday afternoon, authorities said.
The disturbance occurred as deputies were conducting security checks at the North County Correctional Facility, one of four jails located within the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, about 40 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. During the checks, a deputy was assaulted by an inmate inside one of the dormitories, prompting “multiple” other inmates to become involved, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail.
Additional deputies were called in for back up “to prevent escalation between the inmates and restore order,” the sheriff’s department said. The deputies initially used verbal commands in an effort to get the situation under control but ultimately had to deploy pepper spray on approximately 20 to 25 inmates, according to the sheriff’s department.
Seven deputies and one custody assistant were injured during the incident. The custody assistant and six of the deputies were transported to a local hospital to be treated for non-life-threatening injuries. Two inmates were also taken to a local hospital for non-life-threatening injuries, according to the sheriff’s department.
The facility was under lockdown due to the disturbance.
(LEVELLAND, Texas) — Four law enforcement officers were shot and one was killed by a suspect barricaded in a home in Levelland, Texas.
Levelland police officers came under fire at about 1 p.m. Thursday from a person who was locked and barricaded inside a home, police said. They had previously received a call from a citizen who said their neighbor was “acting strange and appeared to be walking around with a large gun,” police said. The Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office SWAT Team was called to assist Levelland police officers at 2:15 p.m. local time.
Officers made brief contact with the suspect, but they said he was very hostile and didn’t want to talk to police. Minutes later, they said “he opened the front door of his residence and opened fire. Officers returned fire but suspect did not appear to be hit.”
SWAT Commander Sgt. Josh Bartlett was struck by gunfire shortly after arriving to help the Levelland Police Department. He was taken to Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock where he was later pronounced dead, according to the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office.
“We appreciate the public’s support during this difficult time and ask for continued prayers for his family, both blood and blue,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
Three other law enforcement officers, including one other Lubbock sheriff’s deputy, a Hockley County sheriff’s deputy and a Levelland police officer, were shot, according to officials.
One of the injured officers, Sergeant Sean Wilson, is out of surgery and is in critical but stable condition, authorities said. The others were treated and released.
The suspect was arrested following an 11-hour standoff with police.
Levelland Police Chief Albert Garcia and Lubbock County Sheriff Kelly Rowe said at a press conference Friday morning, around 1:30 a.m. ET, that the standoff was over, and the suspect was in custody. He has now been identified as Omar Soto-Chavira, 22.
Police said Soto-Chavira is known to law enforcement and they have had prior contact with him.
“Our community mourns the loss of Sgt. Josh Bartlett, with the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team,” the Levelland Police Department said in a statement. “He gave his life in the defense of the citizens of Levelland today. We send our heartfelt prayers to his family, both blood and blue. Thank you for your service, Sgt. Bartlett. It is a debt we can never repay.”
“The Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office continues to work with The Levelland Police Department, The Texas Department of Public Safety, The Lubbock Police Department, Hockley County Sheriff’s Office, ATF, Homeland Security, FBI, and US Marshal’s office to find a resolution to the current situation,” the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Levelland is located about 30 miles west of Lubbock.
(DES MOINES, Iowa) — An Iowa judge is expected to decide as early as Friday if he will grant a request from the attorneys for Cristhian Bahena Rivera the man convicted of murdering University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, to compel law enforcement agencies to allow them to review evidence in a purported sex trafficking investigation and the search for a missing 11-year-old boy.
Attorneys for Bahena Rivera argued on Thursday that they suspect the two cases are linked to a man they say could be Tibbetts’ killer.
“There’s something rotten in this area,” defense attorney Chad Frese said, saying that the sex trafficking investigation and the disappearance of Xavior Harrelson both occurred in the same rural area where Tibbetts, 20, was abducted while out for a jog in 2018 and murdered.
The request to review records in both cases came as part of a motion made by Bahena Rivera and his attorneys for a new trial based on evidence revealed by two independent witnesses who claim the same man told them he and a 50-year-old sex trafficker kidnapped Tibbetts and then killed her when the search for her whereabouts drew national attention.
Poweshiek County, Iowa, Judge Joel Yates said he will decide by the end of this week whether to force law enforcement agencies to allow the defense attorneys to review evidence in investigations that prosecutors say have no link to the Tibbetts case.
“We resist providing anything that they’re asking for. There is no discovery post-trial,” prosecutor Scott Brown, an assistant Iowa state attorney general, told Yates, calling the defense request “a fishing expedition.”
“If they want to go and knock themselves out trying to find out all of this confusing information that has been presented to the court, go right ahead and do that,” Brown said of the defense. “But there is nothing in the rules, nothing in the case law that compels the state to chase its tail because they’re asking us to do it.”
Yates has tentatively scheduled a second hearing for July 27 on the remaining part of the defense motion for a new trial.
Yates had been scheduled to sentence Bahena Rivera on Thursday, but he postponed it to hear the defense argue its motion.
During Thursday’s hearing, Bahena Rivera sat handcuffed at the defense table wearing black-and-white striped prison clothes and listening to the proceeding with the aid of a Spanish interpreter.
A jury convicted Bahena Rivera, a 27-year-old Mexican national farmworker, in May of first-degree murder. Bahena Rivera, 27, is facing a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The defense attorneys requested a new trial after Brown informed them before the verdict was announced that an inmate at a local jail came forward to authorities claiming his cellmate told him he and a 50-year-old alleged sex trafficker killed Tibbetts and framed a Hispanic man.
Bahena Rivera’s attorneys filed a motion Tuesday alleging prosecutors failed to disclose a separate investigation was occurring at the time of Tibbetts’ disappearance involving a man, who is now in prison on a gun charge, allegedly operating a sex trafficking “trap house” in New Sharon, Iowa, which is 27 miles from where Tibbetts went missing on July 18, 2018. The man, according to the defense attorneys, had once been the live-in boyfriend of the mother of Xavior Harrelson, who has been missing since May 27.
The defense attorneys also presented Yates with a search warrant executed in 2019 on the suspected sex-traffickers house that they say corroborates what the witness claims his cellmate told him. The witness purportedly claimed his cellmate, who defense attorneys named in their motion and in their arguments in court, told him he saw Tibbetts bound and gagged at the trap house and that he participated in her murder.
A second witness contacted authorities within hours of the first witness claiming the same man told her a similar story, defense attorneys said.
“That evidence is exculpatory and it has not been produced,” defense attorney Jennifer Frese, who is married to Chad Frese, said of the investigations into the sex trafficking trap house and the disappearance of the missing boy.
Brown said he disclosed the information to the defense about the jailed witness coming forward as soon as he learned about it, which he claimed was on the day the defense rested its case. He said he offered to request a halt to the trial while the new evidence was being checked out but Chad Frese declined the offer because, according to Brown, the information was “it was inconsistent to what the defendant said.”
During the trial, Bahena Rivera took the witness stand and testified that he was kidnapped by two masked men who forced him to drive them to where Tibbetts was expected to be jogging. He claimed that when they found Tibbetts, one of the men stabbed her to death, put her body in the trunk of Bahena Rivera’s car and made him drive to a cornfield, where the young woman’s badly decomposed remains were discovered a month after she went missing.
Bahena Rivera admitted on the witness stand that he placed Tibbetts’ body in the cornfield but said he was not involved in her murder. In addition, Bahena Rivera claimed during his testimony that he didn’t tell investigators about the masked men because they threatened to harm his former girlfriend, the mother of his daughter, if he did.
“There is no connection between anything with Xavior Harrelson and Mollie Tibbetts’ disappearance,” Brown said. “Wow is all I can say with regard to their (the defense’s) request to go down that road.”
(NEW YORK) — After a turbulent year that exacerbated and highlighted long-standing structural issues across the United States, the National Urban League, a civil rights advocacy organization, said in its annual “State of Black America” report released Thursday that COVID-19 has worsened racial issues in the country.
In partnership with the Brookings Institution, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity and Center for Policing Equity, the report analyzed the devastation in Black communities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Structural racism is not new to many of us. For centuries and even today, Black lives continue to be subject to laws, policies and practices that have created and sustained systematic oppression that impacts every facet of our lives,” Tracie Keesee, co-founder and senior vice president of social justice initiatives at the Center for Policing Equity, said at a virtual event Thursday discussing the release of the report.
The report highlighted three main issues in the Black community right now, including economic injustice, racism in policing and health care inequality.
COVID-19 has proven flaws in the U.S. health care system, the report asserts. Black and brown victims are disproportionately dying from the virus, compared to other white populations, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black individuals are two times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people who are white, and Hispanics are 2.3 times more likely to die, according to CDC data.
And even though the percentage of Black and white people who are vaccine hesitant or refusing to get the vaccine are roughly the same, vaccinate rates are much lower among Black populations. The report states that disparities in COVID-19 vaccination rates indicate inequities in vaccine distribution and access for Black populations.
The group’s research also found that Black people are more likely than whites to live more than 10 miles from a vaccine facility.
Poor access to health care is just one result of structural racism, the report states. Economic inequality is another, which was also worsened by COVID-19.
The typical African American household had less than 15% of the median wealth of a typical white household, and Black workers face significant pay gaps in the workforce, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank.
And during the COVID-19 pandemic, almost 17% of Black households lacked basic financial services, compared to only 3% of white households, according to the Brookings Institution.
Experts at the National Urban League said the existing inequalities can be fixed by closing the racial wealth gap, reparations and more.
“We need to look at wage suppression, and wage in equity as a racial issue in and of itself,” Jennifer Jones Austin, the CEO and executive director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, said Thursday on the panel discussing the report. “Why can’t we increase wages at the federal level? It is because this nation has determined that there will always be an underclass. And disproportionately that underclass represents Black and brown Americans.”
Police brutality and violence have also been a consequence of structural racism, according to the report.
Even as the racial reckoning took over the country following the death of George Floyd, killings of Black people at the hands of police continued, including Daunte Wright, Ma’Khia Bryant and others.
Black people are not only more likely to be killed by police, but according to the Center for Policing Equity, Black people were also about 6.5 times more likely to be stopped while driving and 20 times more likely to be searched than their white counterparts.
To solve this, the National Urban League recommended reenvisioning public safety and what its structure and function in communities looks like.
The organization also recommended holding officers accountable for misconduct, changing divisive policing policies, requiring transparency, reporting and data collection and improving training standards.
Not much has improved since last year’s “State of Black America” report, experts on the panel said, but with the data and knowledge that has been gathered this year on structural racism and how it impacts people of color, some community leaders have hope.
“Dismantling structural racism — identifying and repairing the cracks in our national foundation — will result in more resilient and dynamic institutions that expand opportunity for everyone,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said in the report. “As the pandemic becomes more of a memory, we are challenged to keep the same energy and finish what we started.”
(SPRINGFIELD, Mo.) — The Springfield, Missouri, health department is requesting funding for an alternate COVID-19 care site in response to a spike in infections and hospitalizations in recent weeks, health officials announced Wednesday.
Several local health facilities and hospitals jointly requested the alternative care site funding, which would include money for more beds, staff and antibody testing. One of those facilities was Springfield-based Mercy Hospital, which had so many hospitalized COVID patients last week that it had to call in backup ventilators from other hospitals in its network when it ran out.
The increase in severe illness is taxing the health system and sick patients are expected to outpace hospital capacity, according to the Springfield-Greene County Health Department.
Of the 231 patients currently being treated in Greene County hospitals, 104 are in critical care and 61 are on ventilators, the health department said.
“The Springfield-Greene County Health Department continues to urge anyone not fully vaccinated continue to take precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including wearing a mask,” Aaron Schekorra, a spokesperson for the health department, told ABC News. “Businesses and organizations are encouraged to implement policies in order to protect their staff, clients, and guests, such as requiring masking for all.”
The spike in Springfield is part of a larger wave of COVID in the state that has top health officials worried.
“Missouri is at the top of our list,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institute of Health, said during an interview with ABC News Kansas City affiliate KMBC, in reference to concerning COVID hotspots. “It seems to be now expanding more and more (to other areas) of Missouri,” Collins added.
Missouri’s vaccination rate trails the national average. As of Wednesday, 46% of residents had received at least one dose, and 40% were fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared with 56% of all Americans who’ve gotten at least one shot and 48% who are fully vaccinated.
In Greene County, where Springfield is located, vaccination rates are even lower than the statewide average. Just 40% of Greene County residents have received one dose of the vaccine, and only 35% are fully vaccinated, according to state health department data.
(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — A major children’s hospital in Tennessee is the latest to announce a requirement that all employees be vaccinated against COVID-19, which comes at a time when workplace mandates have sparked showdowns and lawsuits.
In a memo to staff sent Wednesday afternoon, employees of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and its fundraising offshoot ALSAC, were informed of the requirement and given a Sept. 9 deadline to get vaccinated.
“By September 10, employees who have refused vaccination or do not have an approved medical or religious exemption will be put on an unpaid administrative leave for two weeks,” wrote Dr. James R. Downing, president and CEO of the Memphis hospital.
“During this time, they have the opportunity to begin the vaccination process,” he added. “Those who fail to start the vaccination process will be terminated at the end of the two-week period.”
Downing noted the rapid spread of the delta variant, which he said is now responsible for some two-thirds of all COVID-19 cases in Memphis and Shelby County. He also expressed concern over the recent uptick in cases in the area and the potential of a corresponding surge in hospitalizations.
“Hundreds of millions of people around the world have safely received the COVID-19 vaccine,” Downing wrote. “The benefits far outweigh the risks.”
In statement to ABC News, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital said the decision to mandate vaccines was reached “after much research, analysis and discussion.”
“It is the right thing to keep our campus safe,” the hospital added. “Our duty to our patients frames everything we do. This is the logical next step to ensure we stay one step ahead of the virus.”
The statement added that ALSAC and the hospital share a campus and thereby are jointly implementing the policy.
St. Jude has more than 3,600 employees, according to its website. The Memphis Business Journal reported that ALSAC had some 1,240 local employees.
The hospital is the latest in a slew of employers — from school districts to airliners — that have announced COVID-19 vaccine mandates as workplaces begin to reopen.
The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission said employers can legally require COVID-19 vaccinations to re-enter a physical workplace, as long as they follow requirements to find alternative arrangements for employees unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons or because they have religious objections.
Still, many employers have faced legal challenges and pushback from workers who refuse the shot.
More than 175 staffers at the Houston Methodist hospital were temporarily suspended without pay last month after not complying with a mandate, and a lawsuit was filed against the hospital. A Texas judge sided with the hospital, tossing out a lawsuit filed by 117 employees who were against getting the shot. Lawsuits over workplace vaccine requirements also have been leveled against a school district in California and a sheriff’s office in North Carolina.
Some 53% of the people 18 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine in Tennessee, and 47.2% are fully vaccinated, according to data released Friday.
Nationally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 67.8% of the population over 18 has received at least one dose, and 59.1% are fully vaccinated. The public health agency has stated COVID-19 vaccines are “safe and effective,” as lawmakers and more implore more Americans to get vaccinated.
“Millions of people in the United States have received COVID-19 vaccines since they were authorized for emergency use by FDA,” the CDC said. “These vaccines have undergone and will continue to undergo the most intensive safety monitoring in U.S. history.”
ABC News’ Will Gretsky and Marlene Lenthang contributed to this report.
