(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.
More than 682,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The average number of daily deaths in the U.S. has risen about 20% in the last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. is continuing to sink on the list of global vaccination rates, currently ranking No. 45, according to data compiled by The Financial Times. Just 64.3% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the CDC.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 24, 6:23 am
CDC endorses Pfizer boosters for older and high-risk Americans
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has endorsed an independent advisory panel’s recommendation for seniors and other medically vulnerable Americans to get a booster shot of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, six months after their second dose.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, also partially overruled her agency’s advisory panel in a notable departure by adding a recommendation for a third dose for people who are considered high risk due to where they work, such as nurses and teachers — a group which the panel rejected in its recommendation. Some panelists said that without further data, they weren’t comfortable with automatically including younger people because of their jobs.
In a statement announcing her decision late Thursday, Walensky pointed to the benefit versus risk analysis she had weighed, and data rapidly evolving.
“In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good,” Walensky said. “While today’s action was an initial step related to booster shots, it will not distract from our most important focus of primary vaccination in the United States and around the world.”
With Walensky’s final sign-off, booster shots will now quickly become available for millions more Americans at pharmacies, doctors’ offices and other sites that offer the Pfizer vaccine as soon as Friday.
Sep 23, 8:40 pm
Leaving nurses out of booster recommendation ‘unconscionable,’ union charges
The nation’s largest union of registered nurses pushed back against the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel’s vote on COVID-19 booster shots, calling not including front-line workers like nurses in its recommendations “unconscionable.”
National Nurses United is urging CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to bypass what the advisory panel, ACIP, recommended and add nurses and other health care workers to the list of eligible booster recipients.
“Nurses and other health care workers were among the first to be vaccinated because of their high risk of exposure to the virus,” Deborah Burger, the union’s president, said in a statement. “Why leave them out of booster shots?”
“It is unconscionable that ACIP would not vote to keep us safer from death, severe Covid, and long Covid,” Burger continued. “We must do everything possible to ensure that the health of our nurses and other health care workers will not be put even more at risk.”
ACIP voted Thursday to recommend a third Pfizer dose for people aged 65 and older, as well as those as young as 18 if they have an underlying medical condition.
In its authorization Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration did agree to make the shots available to front-line workers. But ACIP said there was not yet enough data to support providing booster shots automatically to young people because of their jobs.
(ATLANTA) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has endorsed an independent advisory panel’s recommendation for seniors and other medically vulnerable Americans to get a booster shot of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, six months after their second dose.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, also partially overruled her agency’s advisory panel in a notable departure by adding a recommendation for a third dose for people who are considered high risk due to where they work, such as nurses and teachers — a group which the panel rejected in its recommendation. Some panelists said that without further data, they weren’t comfortable with automatically including younger people because of their jobs.
In a statement announcing her decision late Thursday, Walensky pointed to the benefit versus risk analysis she had weighed, and data rapidly evolving.
“In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good,” Walensky said. “While today’s action was an initial step related to booster shots, it will not distract from our most important focus of primary vaccination in the United States and around the world.”
With Walensky’s final sign-off, booster shots will now quickly become available for millions more Americans at pharmacies, doctors’ offices and other sites that offer the Pfizer vaccine as soon as Friday.
The CDC’s independent advisory panel voted unanimously on Thursday to recommend Pfizer boosters for people aged 65 and older, along with long-term care facility residents and people as young as 18, if they have an underlying medical condition.
People younger than 49, however, should only get that third dose if the benefits outweigh the risks, the panel said — a personal consideration to discuss with their doctor.
Walensky’s endorsement at least in part buttons up what has become a seething scientific debate after the Biden administration announced “boosters-for-all” ahead of any reviews from the regulatory bodies, or their independent groups. While the White House’s political appointees had endorsed Biden’s timeline, some of their career scientists and advisers vehemently objected to the incomplete data they were being asked to assess.
Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Walensky addressed the panelists and thanked them for “leaning in” to the complex issue at hand and “trying to put the pieces together.”
“You’re tasked with difficult decisions, weighing the risks and benefits extrapolating from sometimes a wealth and sometimes a paucity of data available,” Walensky said, but reminded them that despite the complex and contentious debate they share the goal of pulling the nation out of the pandemic.
“We all recognize that the science and data of COVID-19 are moving faster than any data we’ve ever seen before. And while I recognize a tremendously heavy lift of the past year, we all know that the pace is unlikely to let up anytime soon,” she added. “We will continue this dialogue, you will have more data to review and more recommendations to make and I will be here with you.”
Not every panelist was excited about the idea of boosters, insisting the vaccines still provide remarkable protection and that it was unvaccinated Americans who remained most at risk.
“I feel like we’re putting lipstick on hogs. This is not going to solve the pandemic,” said Dr. Keipp Talbot, a voting panel member and infectious diseases professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
The panel’s vote narrowed Wednesday’s authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, which did agree to make the shots available to frontline workers.
The vote also followed weeks of a contentious back and forth among top health experts over who should get a booster dose and when — and whether it’s still premature to be asking the question.
Scientists agreed that while vaccine protection is waning slightly, on the whole, vaccines are still working to dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization. And many feared endorsing booster doses for most would imply vaccines are no longer working.
“I feel that we’re getting too much ahead of ourselves and that we have too much hope on the line with these boosters,” said voting member Dr. James Loehr of Cayuga Family Medicine in Ithaca, New York. “Having said that, you shouldn’t let the perfect be in the way of the good.”
Panelists initially pushed back on the proposals that American adults, 18 to 64, who are at risk for severe COVID-19 infection due to underlying medical conditions, or due to their occupation and setting receive a Pfizer booster dose. Many members stressed that in order to truly “move the dial” on the pandemic, more people need to complete the initial vaccination series.
“I think two and three are fraught with peril,” said member Dr. Oliver Brooks, chief medical officer of Watts HealthCare Corporation in Los Angeles, California. “They’ll be superfluous and they’ll create great inequities and problems within the implementation, so I’m really concerned about the data for boosters in general.”
One repeated sticking point for the CDC’s panelists during deliberations on Thursday: the still-open question over whether boosting with mixed vaccines might be permitted — since for those who received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, there is no third dose protection currently available.
The FDA’s vaccine chief, Dr. Peter Marks, addressed the CDC’s panelists ahead of Thursday’s vote and acknowledged their frustrations.
“I think we understand at FDA the relative urgency here of trying to have a solution for anyone who has been vaccinated with any of the authorized or approved vaccines,” Marks said. “Unfortunately, we’re not in a place right now which I can give you an exact timeline, but I can tell you that we will proceed with all due urgency to try to get there as rapidly as possible.”
(OKLAHOMA) — Julius Jones, who has spent the past 20 years on death row, has never been closer to freedom, despite the fact that last week, his execution date was set for Nov. 18.
The Oklahoma Parole Board voted 3-1 to commute Jones’ sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole, and now, the final decision on his fate remains in the hands of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt.
Jones’ mother, Madeline Davis-Jones, told “Nightline” the news is “magical.”
“I’m still in shock, because it’s not over, you know? We still have so much ground [to] cover,” Jones’ sister, Antoinette Jones, said. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it, but it was a good feeling.”
Antoinette Jones said her brother was calm when he heard the parole board’s recommendation, as he knows work still has to be done to secure his freedom.
“He said, ‘I’m good. I’ll be even better when I get out and I can hug y’all and we can start helping change the world,'” Antoinette Jones said. “It was a relief. I could breathe a little bit easier.”
Jones’ sister remains hopeful that he will be freed, and said she can picture justice for her brother.
“Julius being able to feel the sun on his skin, the natural sun on his skin. It looks like him having no chains [on] when he gets to go outside,” she said. “It looks like freedom.”
Julius Jones was 19 years old when he was arrested for the 1999 murder of Oklahoma businessman Paul Howell, and sentenced to death in 2002. What followed were decades of public scrutiny and relentless work from his legal team.
“We think Julius was wrongfully convicted and that Oklahoma is at risk of executing an innocent man,” Jones’ attorney, Amanda Bass, said.
Now 41 years old, Jones has spent most of his life behind bars. Even after so many years, his sister and mother have yet to give up hope.
Before he was in prison, friends and teachers knew Jones as a champion high school basketball player who attended the University of Oklahoma on an academic scholarship.
That all changed in 1999 when Howell, 45, was shot in his family’s driveway after a car-jacking in the wealthy suburb of Edmond, Oklahoma.
Howell’s GMC Suburban went missing and his sister, Megan Tobey, was the only eye-witness.
“Megan Tobey described the shooter as a young black man wearing a red bandana, a white shirt, and a stocking cap or skullcap. She was not able to identify the shooter’s face because it was covered,” Bass told ABC News in 2018.
Two days after Howell was killed, police found his Suburban parked in a grocery store parking lot. They learned later that a man named Ladell King had been offering to sell the car.
King named Chris Jordan and Julius Jones to investigators and said the two men had asked him to help them sell the stolen Suburban.
“Ladell was interviewed by the lead detectives in this case. He told the police that on the night of the crime, a guy named Chris Jordan comes to his apartment. A few minutes later, according to Ladell King, Julius Jones drives up,” attorney Dale Baich told ABC News in 2018.
King accused Jordan of being the driver and claimed that he and Jones were looking for Suburbans to steal, but it was Jones who shot Howell.
“Both Ladell King and Christopher Jordan were directing police’s attention to the home of Julius Jones’ parents as a place that would have incriminating items of evidence,” Bass said.
Investigators found a gun wrapped in a red bandana in the crawl space of Jones’ family home. The next day, Jones was arrested for capital murder.
Jones’ attorneys say the evidence police found could have been planned by Jordan. They say Jordan had stayed at Jones’ house the night after the murder, but Jordan denied those claims during the trial.
In the years since, Jones’ defense team has argued that racial bias and missteps from his then public-defense team played a role.
Jones’ team has submitted files to the parole board that they said proved his innocence, including affidavits and taped video interviews with inmates who had served time in prison with Jordan. They said they allegedly heard Jordan confess to Howell’s murder.
In a statement to ABC News, Jordan’s attorney, Billy Bock, said that “Chris Jordan maintains his position that his role in the death of Paul Howell was as an accomplice to Julius Jones. Mr. Jordan testified truthfully in the jury trial of Mr. Jones and denies ‘confessing’ to anyone.”
Jordan served 15 years in prison before he was released.
In 2020, Jones’ story was thrown back into the spotlight when unlikely legal ally Kim Kardashian drew public attention to his case. Kardashian, who is studying to take California’s bar exam, has been vocal on the issue of the death penalty and prison reform and has campaigned to free a number of men and women who were incarcerated.
“Kim Kardashian, I felt like maybe one of my sorority sisters … she was down to earth,” Davis-Jones said.
Antoinette Jones said Kardashian put in the effort to help her brother.
“She sat down and she broke down my brother’s case. That means that she actually did the work,” Jones said. “She did the work to go back and check certain things, to point out certain things.”
“The fact that she told me that she was able to go see my brother, it was almost like she took a piece of him and brought it to us and then we could feel like he was there with us,” Jones added.
But despite all the efforts, Julius Jones’ execution date is still in place.
His family said they have to just wait to see if Stitt will agree with the parole board’s recommendation and commute Jones’ November death sentence. Three members of the Pardon and Parole board were appointed by the governor, a fact that gives Davis-Jones some hope.
“I’d like for [Stitt] to do the right thing, because the truth will set you free,” Davis-Jones said. “But most of all, being in leadership, I know sometimes it’s hard … to make decisions, [but] you have to try to make the right decisions.”
(NEW YORK) — The national spotlight on Gabby Petito’s disappearance has given families of other missing persons hope that they too can amplify their stories and find loves ones.
Petito made headlines after she went missing on a cross-country road trip with her boyfriend earlier this month. A body found over the weekend near Grand Teton National Park was confirmed to be hers on Tuesday. The coroner said she died by homicide, but the cause of death is pending final autopsy results.
Petito is just one of thousands reported missing each year — the FBI had over 89,000 active missing persons at the end of 2020.
The Petito case also has become a point of heartbreak for other families, including the sister of Maya Millete, a California mother missing since January.
“I know the circumstances of Gabby’s case are different but it just brought back a lot of pain,” Maricris Droualillet told ABC San Diego affiliate KGTV.
Michael Alcazar, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York Police Department detective, told ABC News the Petito case became a national frenzy because she seemed familiar to them.
“I think people see her as someone in their family, perhaps their child or they might see themselves as Gabby, a girlfriend or daughter,” Alcazar said. “I think it’s like a ‘damsel in distress’ syndrome. That’s just the culture in America — we want to protect the females.”
Her case, Alcazar added, showed the “value of social media posts and how it propelled this case nationally,” and how other people may jump on the trend to “put pressure on law enforcement to utilize their manpower to solve these cases that have been going on for months.”
The pressure could prompt police to reprioritize cases or recruit more help, as in Petito’s case, which got FBI assistance.
He pointed to the cracking of the case of a 4-year-old girl who was murdered in 1991. Dubbed Baby Hope for 22 years, she finally was identified as Anjelica Castillo. The case went cold but was reopened in 2013, finally solved through a tip.
“On his 20th anniversary, our Chief Joseph Reznick put up more posters regarding the Baby Hope case,” Alcazar explained. “I think we might have posted it in our Crime Stoppers kit. That’s how we finally were able to identify Baby Hope — somebody 20 years later called in a tip. That was through social media.”
Here’s a snapshot of families pushing forward with their own missing cases, hoping to find a break:
Jelani Day
In Illinois, a search was launched for Jelani Day, a 25-year-old graduate student at Illinois State University last seen on Aug. 24, according to the Bloomington Police Department. A body found near the Illinois River was identified as Day on Thursday after this story was initially published, Bloomington Police announced.
“Currently the cause of death is unknown, pending further investigation, and toxicology testing,” the police said in a statement.
He was reported missing Aug. 25 by his family and an ISU faculty member. He had not shown up to class the past several days before he disappeared, police said in a statement.
A missing persons post seeks Julian Day, a Illinois State University grad student.
Day was captured on surveillance footage entering a retail store called “Beyond/Hello” in Bloomington around 9 a.m. on Aug. 24, wearing a blue Detroit Lions baseball hat, a black T-shirt with a Jimi Hendrix graphic, white and silver shorts, and black shoes with white soles.
Police found his vehicle, a white 2010 Chrysler 300, two days later in a wooded area concealed by trees. Inside, cops found the clothing he was seen wearing in the video footage but no other sign of him.
Bloomington Police said in a Sept. 5 statement that a search team found an unidentified body off the south bank of the Illinois River. The LaSalle County Coroner’s Office initially said the identification process could take a few weeks.
Day’s heartbroken mother, Carmen Bolden Day, pleaded for him to be found.
“I shouldn’t have to beg, I shouldn’t have to plead, I shouldn’t have to feel that there is a racial disparity … I want these people that have their resources to realize this could happen to them,” she said on “Good Morning America.”
Anyone with information about Jelani Day is asked to contact BPD Detective Paul Jones at 309-434-2548 or at Pjones@cityblm.org
Daniel Robinson
A 24-year-old geologist, Daniel Robinson, went missing outside Buckeye, Arizona, three months ago. The Buckeye Police Department said in an update last week that the search is ongoing.
Robinson was last seen June 23 after leaving a job site near Sun Valley Parkway and Cactus Road, and he didn’t tell anyone where he was going, police said.
His jeep was found turned over in a ravine on July 19, 4 miles from where he was last seen, officials said. The airbags in the car had deployed and initial evidence indicated Daniel was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident. Officials found clothes, his cell phone, wallet and keys.
A missing persons post seeks Daniel Robinson, a 24-year-old geologist who disappeared near Buckeye, AZ on June 23.
Later in July, a human skull was found south of where the Jeep was recovered, but it was determined that it didn’t belong to Daniel, police said. No other remains were found.
Investigators have used ATVs, cadaver dogs and a drone and a helicopter to search for Robinson. His family has organized their own searches in the scorching desert.
Robinson’s father, David Robinson, traveled 2,000 miles from South Carolina to Arizona to help search for his son.
“I’m not leaving,” he told ABC Phoenix affiliate KNX. “I’m not leaving until I find my son.”
Anyone with information that can help solve this case is urged to call the Buckeye Police Department non-emergency number at 623-349-6400.
Lauren Cho
Lauren Cho, a 30-year-old from New Jersey also known as “El”, was last seen leaving a residence around 5 p.m. on June 28 in Yucca Valley in California, police said in a statement. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since then.
She had moved to California from New Jersey eight months earlier.
A missing persons poster seeks Lauren Cho who went missing June 28 in Yucca Valley, Calif.
On Tuesday, the Morongo Basic Sheriff’s Station announced that investigators from the Specialized Investigations Division, experts in homicides and suspicious deaths, are assisting in the search effort, investigating leads and working with Cho’s family and friends.
Detectives with the Morongo Basin Station have executed a search warrant in the 8600 block of Benmar Trail, where she was last seen reportedly walking away from the residence, and conducted aerial searches of a remote mountain terrain nearby.
Anyone with information regarding the search for Ms. Cho is urged to contact Detective Edward Hernandez or Sergeant Justin Giles, Specialized Investigations Division, at (909) 387-3589. You may remain anonymous by contacting the We-Tip hotline at 800-78-CRIME (27463) or www.wetip.com.
Maya Millete
Meanwhile in California, family members of Maya Millete, a married Chula Vista mother of three, are still searching for her after more than eight months after she was last seen.
Millete, 39, disappeared on Jan. 7 without a trace.
Droualillet, Millete’s sister, said the attention of the Petito case has become a painful reminder of Maya’s unknown whereabouts.
“I know Chula Vista police are working very hard, but the urgency we see in this case is heartbreaking,” Droualillet told KGTV.
A missing persons poster seeks Maya Millete, a mother-of-three who disappeared from Chula Vista California in January.
The Chula Vista Police Department is working with the San Diego County District Attorney’s office, the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
On July 22, Larry Millete, Maya’s husband, was named a person of interest in the case.
The Chula Vista Police Department said its interviewed 79 individuals and written 64 search warrants for residences, vehicles, cell and electric devices, and social media data in the case in a statement published Sept. 9.
Anyone who may have any information regarding May’s disappearance is asked to please contact San Diego County Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477 or the CVPD at 619-691-5151.
(UTAH) — The city of Moab, Utah, will launch an investigation into the Moab City Police Department’s handling of an incident involving Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie on Aug. 12.
The city said in a statement that the department’s police officers “have been both praised and criticized for their response and their resolution of the incident involving Ms. Petito and Mr. Laundrie.”
Cops had responded to a call to Grand County Dispatch about a possible domestic dispute between Petito and Laundrie. Body camera footage of that incident was later shared showing Petito visibly distraught.
“At this time, the City of Moab is unaware of any breach of Police Department policy during this incident. However, the City will conduct a formal investigation and, based on the results, will take any next steps that may be appropriate,” the city said in a statement to ABC News.
Moab City Police Chief Bret Edge said, “The police department will identify an unaffiliated law enforcement agency to conduct the formal investigation on our behalf.”
Moab city officials said, “we recognize how the death of Ms. Petito more than two weeks later in Wyoming might lead to speculation, in hindsight, about actions taken during the incident in Moab.”
The city said that the police department “has clear standards for officer conduct during a possible domestic dispute and our officers are trained to follow those standards and protocol.”
An outside party filed a request with the police department asking for a formal investigation into the Aug. 12 incident, Edge said in a statement.
Edge said the department welcomes the investigation and if the probe identifies areas for improvement, “we will take that information to heart, learn from it, and make changes if needed to ensure we are providing the best response and service to our community.”
Body camera images from the Aug. 12 incident show Petito and Laundrie talking to an officer after her 2012 Ford Transit was pulled over by Moab police. In one image, she appears to be crying while sitting in the back of a police vehicle.
The couple told police they were arguing and that Petito had slapped Laundrie, according to the police report. The couple also stated to police that Laundrie did not hit Petito.
In a statement earlier this week, Moab police said that “insufficient evidence existed to justify criminal charges” in that incident.
Petito told police she suffers from severe anxiety and other medical conditions, which were redacted from the police report, and that the couple’s argument had been building for days. Police labeled the incident as a “mental/emotional break” rather than a domestic assault, according to the police report.
The incident took place about two weeks before she last spoke with her family.
Petito, 22, disappeared during a cross-country trip with Laundrie and was reported missing by her parents on Sept. 11 after they hadn’t heard from her in two weeks.
Authorities confirmed Tuesday that a body discovered Sunday in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming belonged to Petito.
Now a search is underway for Laundrie, 23, around North Port, Florida. Investigators said he returned to his home on Sept. 1 without Petito but had her 2012 Ford Transit.
He has been named as a “person of interest” in the case. He hasn’t been seen since Tuesday, Sept. 14, police said.
(TENNESSEE) — Police are responding to a shooting at a Kroger grocery store near Memphis, Tennessee.
Memphis police said its officers are helping secure the scene in Collierville, about 30 miles from Memphis.
Memphis Police Officers are on the scene of a shooting at Kroger located at 240 New Byhalia Road in Collierville, TN to support Collierville PD. MPD is assisting with securing the perimeter and scene.
(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.
More than 681,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The average number of daily deaths in the U.S. has risen about 20% in the last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. is continuing to sink on the list of global vaccination rates, currently ranking No. 45, according to data compiled by The Financial Times. Just 64% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the CDC.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 23, 3:21 pm
More than 26 million Americans potentially eligible for booster next week
Pending the CDC panel’s recommendations and the CDC director’s sign-off, more than 26 million Americans could soon be eligible for a third Pfizer dose. This includes 13.6 million adults 65 and older and 12.8 million adults ages 18 to 64 who completed their primary series at least six months ago. Of those 18 to 64, anyone who is considered “high risk” could be eligible for an additional dose.
To date, more than 220 million Pfizer doses have been administered in the U.S.
Sep 23, 12:40 pm
CDC advisory panel expected to vote on Pfizer booster within hours
The CDC’s independent advisory panel is set to vote around 3 p.m. ET on which Americans are eligible now for a Pfizer booster.
After the vote, CDC director Rochelle Walensky is expected to weigh in with her official endorsement. The CDC is not bound by the panel’s recommendations but usually follows it. State officials may also implement their own criteria.
The FDA granted authorization Wednesday to the following groups: Anyone 65 or older as well as people as young as 18 if they have a medical condition that puts them at risk of severe COVID-19 or if they work a frontline job that makes it more likely that they would get infected. After authorization Wednesday night, the FDA’s acting commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said some of the groups that could be classified as front-line workers are health care employees, teachers and grocery store staffers, as well as people in prisons and homeless shelters.
Sep 23, 10:49 am
West Virginia, Montana case rates doubled in last month as Alaska sees record highs
Alaska currently has the country’s highest case rate, followed by West Virginia, Wyoming, Kentucky, Montana and South Carolina, according to federal data.
West Virginia and Montana have seen their case rates double over the last month. In Alaska, case metrics are at record highs, according to federal data.
Hospital admissions are down by about 12.5% in the last week, with improvements in Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to federal data.
Seven states, however, have less than 10% ICU availability: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Texas.
Even highly vaccinated states are experiencing shortages. One central Massachusetts health system, UMass Memorial Health, is running low on critical care beds following the admission of an influx of COVID-19 patients in recent weeks.
Sep 23, 8:21 am
Team USA to require COVID-19 vaccination at future Olympic and Paralympic Games
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said it will require every member of its delegation to be vaccinated against COVID-19, starting this year.
According to a new policy posted on Team USA’s website, a COVID-19 vaccine mandate will take effect on Nov. 1 for “all employees, athletes, contractors and others,” unless they obtain a medical or religious exemption prior to accessing U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee facilities.
On Dec. 1, that mandate will “extend to all Team USA delegation members or hopefuls for future Games.” Individuals on the long list for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing must submit proof of full COVID-19 vaccination by this date or have received an exemption in order to participate in the upcoming Games, according to the policy, which was dated Sept. 21.
“The health and well-being of our Olympic and Paralympic community continues to be a top priority,” Team USA says on a webpage detailing the new requirement. “This step will increase our ability to create a safe and productive environment for Team USA athletes and staff, and allow us to restore consistency in planning, preparation and optimal service to athletes.”
Sep 23, 6:38 am
COVID-19 hospitalizations reach another all-time high in Iowa for 2021
More people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in Iowa than at any other point
this year so far, according to weekly data released by the Iowa Department of Public Health on Wednesday.
The data shows that there are now 638 people hospitalized with the disease statewide, up from 578 last week. Although the figure is nowhere near Iowa’s peak of more than 1,500 in mid-November last year, it’s the highest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations that the Hawkeye State has recorded since December.
Sep 22, 7:48 pm
FDA authorizes Pfizer booster dose for those who are 65 and up, high-risk
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized a third booster dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for people who are 65 and older or at high risk of severe COVID-19, the agency announced Wednesday.
The dose is authorized to be administered at least six months after the second shot. High-risk recipients must be at least 18 years old.
The announcement comes days after a similar recommendation from FDA advisers.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory board is scheduled to vote on booster recommendations Thursday.
Sep 22, 6:04 pm
Florida letting parents choose whether to quarantine asymptomatic, close-contact children
The Florida Department of Health issued an emergency rule Wednesday that lets parents choose whether to quarantine their children if they are deemed a close contact of someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
In such cases, parents can let their children “attend school, school-sponsored activities, or be on school property, without restrictions or disparate treatment, so long as the student remains asymptomatic,” the emergency rule stated.
The move is the state’s latest to empower parents when it comes to coronavirus measures in schools. In July, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order giving parents the choice of whether to send their kids to school with masks, setting off an intense back-and-forth between the state and districts that mandated masks in the weeks since.
DeSantis touted the new “symptoms-based approach” during a press briefing Wednesday.
“Quarantining healthy students is incredibly damaging to their educational advancement,” he said. “It’s also incredibly disruptive for families all throughout the state of Florida.”
At least one superintendent in Florida has spoken out against the new quarantine rule.
“I find it ironic that the new state rule begins with the phrase ‘Because of an increase in COVID-19 infections, largely due to the spread of the COVID-19 delta variant,'” Carlee Simon, superintendent of Alachua County Public Schools, said in a statement posted to Twitter Wednesday.
“In fact, this rule is likely to promote the spread of COVID-19 by preventing schools from implementing the common-sense masking and quarantine policies recommended by the vast majority of health care professionals, including those here in Alachua County,” she added.
(NEW YORK) — It’s not easy to do schoolwork on an old laptop with a poor internet connection.
Just ask Sabina Rodriguez, who went through her junior and senior year in online learning classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Her parents were both unemployed and couldn’t afford new devices.
“I was literally on the world’s oldest computer,” Rodriguez said. Her mother is Colombian immigrant who previously worked as a house cleaner. Her father grew up in a low-income household, and chauffeured for a living.
“As a minority, especially in a financial situation, school was like our only way to success,” she said. “Our parents came here so we could go to school.”
That’s when she discovered First Tech Fund, a new nonprofit dedicated to “closing the digital divide” among underserved high school students in New York City.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the burgeoning digital divide among students of different economic backgrounds. About 25% of all school-aged children across the U.S. live without the sufficient technology or access to Wi-Fi at home, according to the National Education Association.
It’s a situation First Tech Fund co-founder Josue De Paz knew well, and when the pandemic forced kids out of school and back into their homes, it was a need he was determined to help solve.
The organization offers high school students a year-long fellowship in which they are supplied with a laptop and a Wi-Fi hotspot, with unlimited internet access. They’re also paired with a mentor and are given weekly virtual workshops on digital skills, career growth and other professional development opportunities.
“I can never repay them for the situation I’m in right now,” Rodriguez said. She said she’s spent hours on Zoom calls with mentors and professionals who’ve helped edit her resume, college essays and more.
In New York City, 14% of students didn’t have a computer or computing device, and 13% didn’t have adequate internet access, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union and New York State Education Department.
The NYSE report showed how students in Black and Latino school districts suffered disproportionately during the pandemic: Compared with students in largely white districts, they were about four times as likely to lack internet access and three times as likely to lack a device that allowed them to complete schoolwork.
De Paz said some students were doing homework from phones or sharing devices with siblings, making it much harder to complete assignments, let alone excel among peers. First Tech Fund targets these marginalized communities.
Rodriguez said students felt more encouraged and supported throughout the school year, especially those on their way to college. One of 52 students chosen from 743 applicants in the first cohort of fellowship winners, Rodriguez is now a freshman at Fordham University, pursuing a career in psychology and medicine.
Some 23 of the 24 college-eligible students in that 2020-2021 cohort are now enrolled at a two- or four-year institution.
In this upcoming school year, outreach was expanded to 86 students out of about 200 applicants. De Paz credited donors, partner organizations and elected officials for helping him help so many.
“There’s more power in the community than we often give ourselves credit for,” De Paz said. “We should be leveraging it — now more than ever — when people need that support.”
De Paz, a DACA recipient, moved to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 5 years old. He thanks his mother for working long hours at several jobs to provide him with a personal laptop and dial-up internet.
“I saw my mom work two to three jobs in order for me to get that access, and then I really saw how that impacted my entire educational career,” De Paz said. “Even before I had a bed, my mom was like, ‘You’re going to have a desk, and you’re gonna have a computer,’ so I was sleeping on the floor, but I still had what I needed for school.”
De Paz is paying forward that gratitude to help students like Rodriguez.
“I’ve always struggled financially, growing up,” she said, “so the fact that Josue, another Hispanic who grew up in the same situation, that he actually has the courage to like be like, ‘I’m going to help, I’m going to give back’ … it really comes from, like, his heart.”
(CA) — Nanette Packard, who was convicted of directing her ex-NFL lover to kill her millionaire fiance, told ABC News in an exclusive interview that she still carries “a lot of guilt over what happened.”
“Had I not been having an affair … Bill would be alive still,” Packard said. “I feel that way.”
She and former NFL linebacker Eric Naposki have spent nearly a decade behind bars as convicted killers serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for the murder of Bill McLaughlin. Both deny having any involvement in his death.
“I don’t know for sure [who killed McLaughlin],” Packard said. “I never said that Eric did it because I couldn’t say that Eric did it for sure. I don’t know that. He never said that to me.”
Packard met Naposki in the early ‘90s at a gym. Naposki, who had once played for the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts, had left professional sports by then, and was living in California, where he worked as a security guard for a nightclub and worked as a bodyguard on the side.
The two eventually started seeing each other romantically even though Packard, who was then a mother of two in her 20s, was already in a relationship with McLaughlin. He was an entrepreneur 30 years her senior who had made millions off of a medical device invention.
Packard was living with McLaughlin in Newport Beach, California, in a luxurious home located in a wealthy, gated community. However, she told Naposki that she and McLaughlin were just business partners.
“Eric knew about Bill and Bill knew that Eric was my friend. [Bill] didn’t know we were having an affair,” Packard said.
She said she met McLaughlin, a father of three, through a personal ad he had posted in the Pennysaver.
“Maybe it wasn’t the most intense [relationship] romantically but I did love him,” Packard said of McLaughlin. “He was a good man and he was good to my children, and I would never have killed him and probably would still be with him today if he were alive, because I had no reason.”
McLaughlin was 55 years old when he was shot six times in the chest by an intruder while he sat at his kitchen table on Dec. 15, 1994.
Authorities did not make any arrests in connection to his death until 15 years later, when investigators re-examined the case.
Packard and Naposki were arrested separately during a bicoastal sting operation in May 2009 on murder charges.
By the time of their arrests, Packard and Naposki had gone their separate ways. Packard had gone on to marry twice more and was still living in California. Naposki, meanwhile, had briefly gone back to playing professional American football overseas before returning to the U.S., where he had a fiancée and was living in Connecticut.
The prosecutor alleged Packard was the suspected mastermind behind McLaughlin’s death and that she convinced Naposki to kill him so they could collect a substantial sum of money.
Prosecutors argued that Packard stood to benefit from McLaughlin’s million-dollar life insurance policy, $150,000 from his will and access to his beach house.
There was reason to suspect Packard. In 1996, she had pleaded guilty to forgery and grand theft after she was accused of forging McLaughlin’s name on checks and stealing from his accounts. She served 180 days behind bars.
Packard denied the murder charges against her, saying she needed McLaughlin to continue her lifestyle.
“I only gained money if Bill was alive,” she said.
According to prosecutors, Naposki’s story evolved during questioning. He initially lied about owning a .9 mm handgun, which was the same kind of weapon used to kill McLaughlin.
“The single most important piece of evidence that we had against Eric Naposki was … the way he lied to the police,” said ABC News consultant and former Orange County prosecutor Matt Murphy, who tried the case.
When asked why he lied to police, Naposki told ABC News, “I just didn’t want to talk about it because, if I wasn’t at the scene, and I wasn’t in Newport, then I couldn’t have killed the guy even if I had a bazooka.”
Naposki went to trial first and was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2011. Afterward, he met with prosecutors and told them Packard had orchestrated a murder-for-hire plot against McLaughlin, and the killer had used his gun.
“[Naposki said] he was there, in the room, when they talked about [the plot],’” said author Caitlin Rother, who wrote a book about the case titled, “I’ll Take Care of You.” “But then he says, ‘But apparently, [the killer] went behind my back and made arrangements with Nanette. So the two of them planned this. It wasn’t me.’”
“The way he describes it, he is a co-conspirator in a murder case,” Murphy added. “Even if it was true, the way he describes that, he is still 100% guilty for exactly what he was convicted of.”
Packard was found guilty in January 2012 of first-degree murder and guilty of the special circumstance of committing murder for financial gain.
Naposki is serving time at Avenal State Prison in Avenal, California. He said he hasn’t spoken to Packard since everything “went down.”
“I didn’t kill anybody. I’m not a killer,” he said.
Packard is serving her sentence at the Central California Women’s Facility, training service dogs through a program called Little Angels.
“These dogs, they just bring so much healing,” she said. “It also helps to make a difference for me, for me to be able to live with the fact that I’m away from my kids.”
McLaughlin’s children, who at one point thought their father’s murder would never be solved, have tried to move forward. They believe justice was served.
“[Packard and Naposki’s lives] have been taken away from them … and hopefully they’re thinking about what they did,” Kim McLaughlin told ABC News. “What I miss most about my father is just having him as a friend … and I know he’d be very proud of us and the choices we’re making. And so, it’s hard not to have him be able to share that here on earth with him… We miss him dearly.”
(NEW YORK) — Prince Harry and Meghan kicked off their visit to New York City Thursday by visiting the city’s highest point.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex made an early morning visit to One World Observatory inside the One World Trade Center, the tallest building not only in New York City but also in the United States.
The Sussexes were joined at the observatory, the focal point of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex, by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, along with his wife, Chirlane McCray, and their son, Dante.
Harry and Meghan’s trip to New York City is their first joint public trip since they moved to California last year.
It is also the first live public appearance Meghan has made since giving birth to their second child, daughter Lilibet, in June.
On Saturday, Harry and Meghan are scheduled to take part in Global Citizen Live, an annual concert event held on the Great Lawn in Central Park.
The Sussexes will appear at the concert to promote vaccine equity around the world in the fight against COVID-19.
Harry and Meghan were co-chairs in May of “Vax Live: The Concert to Reunite the World,” an international COVID-19 vaccination effort organized by Global Citizen.
Earlier this month, Prince Harry gave an impassioned speech at the GQ Men of the Year Awards, pleading with governments and pharmaceutical companies to do more to vaccinate the world.
“Until every community can access the vaccine, and until every community is connected to trustworthy information about the vaccine, then we are all at risk,” he said, while adding about misinformation campaigns that are adding to vaccine hesitancy, “This is a system we need to break if we are to overcome COVID-19 and the rise of new variants.”
The Sussexes were recently featured on Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list, in which they were applauded for starting “essential conversations on topics from mental health to misinformation.”
The TIME cover portrait featuring the Duke and Duchess of Sussex marked the first time the couple has formally posed together for a magazine cover shoot.
