(NEW YORK) — More than 80 people are feared to have died in Sunday’s attack on a church in southwestern Nigeria, sources told ABC News on Wednesday.
A source with direct knowledge of the investigation said the bodies of 82 victims were in a local morgue. Another source briefed on the latest U.S. intelligence assessment said the estimate was over 80. Both sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they didn’t have authorization to speak to the press about the ongoing probe.
A spokesperson for the Nigeria Police Force, which is leading the investigation, told ABC News on Wednesday that the probe is ongoing and they can not confirm the death toll at this time.
Richard Olatunde, a spokesperson for the Ondo state governor, told ABC News on Wednesday that the casualty count was 40 people dead and 86 wounded, including 61 who were still hospitalized. However, those numbers are likely an underestimate.
The bloodshed occurred at St. Francis Catholic Church in the town of Owo in Ondo state, more than 200 miles northwest of Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, and over 200 miles southwest of Abuja, the Nigerian capital. The church was holding a service for Pentecost Sunday, a Christian holiday celebrated on the 50th day after Easter, when suddenly explosives detonated and gunshots rang out at around 11:30 a.m. local time, according to police
Several gunmen who were disguised as congregants were inside the church and opened fire at worshippers, police said, while other armed men who had positioned themselves around the church fired into the building from different directions and at worshippers as they tried to escape.
The assailants fled the scene in a stolen Nissan and remain at large, according to police, who said the vehicle has since been recovered.
Police said they have also recovered three undetonated improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from the scene, along with fragments of detonated IEDs and pellets of expended AK-47 ammunition.
The exact number of perpetrators was unknown and police have yet to identify them. A motive for the massacre was also not immediately clear, as no group has claimed responsibility.
The Catholic Laity Council of Nigeria said in a statement on Monday that the gunmen were “suspected to be bandits.”
Meanwhile, health workers at the Federal Medical Center in Owo, which was treating victims of the attack, told ABC News on Monday that there was an urgent need for blood donations for the wounded.
Nigerian Inspector-General of Police Usman Alkali Baba has ordered a “full-scale” and “comprehensive” investigation into the incident and has deployed specialized police units to help track down the assailants, according to police.
Sunday’s attack was largely unprecedented in Ondo, which has been considered one of Nigeria’s most peaceful states. Violent attacks and kidnappings for ransom have become rife in other parts of the West African country.
(NEW YORK) — The average price of a gallon of gas nationwide exceeded $5 on Thursday, crossing the milestone after a rapid rise over the past month that has alarmed public officials and strained the budgets of everyday Americans, according to GasBuddy.
In all 50 states, the average price of a gallon of gas stood above $4.40, but costs ranged considerably across different regions, as drivers in the West and Northeast suffered the highest prices and drivers in the Southeast saw the lowest, AAA data showed.
In California, the state with the highest gas prices, drivers paid an eye-popping average of $6.40 per gallon, AAA data showed.
The rising prices owe to a summer travel boom that has brought more people to the pump, experts told ABC News late last month. The spike in demand coincides with a shortage of crude oil supply amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which prompted a widespread industry exit from Russia that pushed millions of barrels of oil off the market, the experts said.
As consumer frustration has mounted in recent months, President Joe Biden has faced criticism over his handling of cost increases in essentials like fuel and groceries. Only 37% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economic recovery, according to an ABC/Ipsos poll released on Sunday.
Republican leaders in Congress have faulted Biden’s management of the U.S. oil supply for high gas prices, blasting his choice to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline last year.
As of last week, Biden was leaning toward a trip to Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, which may offer some hope of relief for U.S. gas buyers.
In March, the U.S. and its allies announced the collective release of 60 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves over the following months, which sought to alleviate some of the supply shortage and blunt price increases.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday told ABC News’ This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos that inflation is Biden’s “top economic priority.”
Stephanopoulos on Sunday asked Buttigieg about the release of oil from the strategic reserves, saying it “hasn’t made any difference at all.” Stephanopoulos asked, “Was that a failure?”
“I don’t think it’s correct to say it hasn’t made any difference at all,” Buttigieg said. “This is an action that helped to stabilize global oil prices.”
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jun 09, 8:55 am
Battle in key city to determine fate of eastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy says
The fight for the eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk will determine the fate of the wider Donbas region, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Severodonetsk remains the epicenter of the confrontation in Donbas. We defend our positions, inflict significant losses on the enemy,” Zelenskyy said late Wednesday in his nightly address. “This is a very fierce battle, very difficult. Probably one of the most difficult throughout this war. I am grateful to everyone who defends this direction. In many ways, the fate of our Donbas is being decided there.”
After launching an invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russian forces failed to take control of the capital, Kyiv, and other major government centers as they faced tough resistance from Ukrainian troops. Russian forces then switched attention to Donbas, which comprises the self-proclaimed republics controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.
Severodonetsk, an industrial hub, is the largest city still held by Ukrainian troops in contested Donbas. In recent days, Russian forces have encircled the city as they advanced in the region, creating a pocket that could trap Ukrainian defenders there and in the neighboring city of Lysychansk.
Severodonetsk and Lysychansk are the last major cities in the Luhansk area still controlled by Ukraine. Last week, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update that Russian forces had seized most of Severodonetsk, but that the main road into the pocket likely remained under Ukrainian control.
Jun 09, 7:32 am
Mariupol residents face risk of cholera epidemic under Russian occupation
The port city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine is facing the risk of a cholera epidemic amid the destruction of water supplies and sanitation during the Russian invasion, city officials and health agencies warn.
“The risk of cholera is very high, like red, red level,” Petro Andriushchenko, an advisor to Mariupol’s mayor, told ABC News, adding that the municipality could not provide an estimation of the number of infected cases due to lack of proper access to the occupants amid the occupation by Russian forces.
While the warnings have intensified in the past few days, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said on Telegram last month that due to problems with water supply, the Russian occupied city is threatened by an infectious catastrophe and more than 10,000 people may die by the end of the year.
The deteriorating water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure has set an alarmingly high risk of an outbreak, according to a report in April from the World Health Organization’s Health Cluster Ukraine agency.
The warming spring and summer weather will likely increase transmission, the report said.
“The weather is hot. There are still dead bodies on the streets of the city — especially under the debris of residential buildings. In some blocks, it is impossible to walk by — due to the stench of rotten human flesh. There was no rain for a while, and it is getting hotter,” a resident of Mariupol, who did not want to be named for security concerns, told ABC News.
Jun 08, 12:53 pm
Russian-occupied Mariupol faces ‘catastrophic lack of medical staff’
The Russian-occupied city of Mariupol, Ukraine, is facing a “catastrophic lack of medical staff,” Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said on the Telegram app.
He said Russians are trying to convince locals who are over 80 years old to go back to work at hospitals.
He warned, “In this state of medicine, any infectious disease turns into a deadly epidemic.”
Jun 08, 8:36 am
Putin-Zelenskyy meeting not possible, Kremlin says
A meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not currently possible, the Kremlin said.
When asked about a recent comment from Zelenskyy that he’s willing to meet with Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “Our position is well-known here: good preparations need to be made for a top-level meeting. We know that the Ukrainian side has withdrawn from the negotiation track, and therefore it is currently not possible to prepare for this sort of top-level meeting.”
Jun 08, 5:06 am
Ukrainian defenses in key eastern city ‘holding,’ despite Russian attacks
Ukrainian troops defending the eastern city of Sieverodonetsk are “holding,” despite attacks in three directions from Russian forces, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said Wednesday in an intelligence update.
“Russia continues to attempt assaults against the Sieverodonetsk pocket from three directions although Ukrainian defences are holding,” the ministry said. “It is unlikely that either side has gained significant ground in the last 24 hours.”
Sieverodonetsk, an industrial hub, is the largest city still held by Ukrainian troops in the contested Donbas region of Ukraine’s east, which comprises the self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. In recent days, Russian forces have encircled the city as they advanced in Donbas, creating a pocket that could trap Ukrainian defenders there and in the neighboring city of Lysychansk.
Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk are the last major cities in the Luhansk area still controlled by Ukraine.
Last week, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said Russian forces had seized most of Sieverodonetsk, but that the main road into the pocket likely remained under Ukrainian control.
With the frontage of the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine stretching for over 300 miles, “both Russia and Ukraine face similar challenges in maintaining a defensive line while freeing up capable combat units for offensive operations,” according to the ministry.
“While Russia is concentrating its offensive on the central Donbas sector, it has remained on the defensive on its flanks,” the ministry said in its intelligence update Wednesday. “Ukrainian forces have recently achieved some success by counter-attacking in the south-western Kherson region, including regaining a foothold on the eastern bank of the Ingulets River.”
Jun 07, 3:12 pm
At least 3 dead in shelling in Kharkiv
At least three people were killed and six others were injured in the Kharkiv area from ongoing shelling by Russian forces, according to the Kharkiv regional governor, Oleg Synegubov.
-ABC News’ Will Gretsky
Jun 07, 11:48 am
Ukraine official: Hard to win ‘without speeding up the supply of modern weapons’
Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, told ABC News that “it will be difficult for Ukraine to win this war without speeding up the supply of modern weapons.”
He added, “The country is ready for long-term resistance, because we are fighting for our freedom.”
This comes as the Donetsk People’s Republic claims an advance in territory.
DPR Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova told reporters, “We can say that the allied forces — the DPR militia and units of the Russian Defense Ministry — are in control of over 70% of the territory.”
Jun 07, 11:02 am
Ukrainian grain may be leaving ports — but on Russian ships
There is evidence of Russian vessels departing “from near Ukraine with their cargo holds full of grain,” a U.S. Department of State spokesperson told ABC News on Monday night.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has reported that Russia seized at least 400,000 to 500,000 tons of grain worth over $100 million, according to the State Department spokesperson.
“Ukraine’s MFA also has numerous testimonies from Ukrainian farmers and documentary evidence showing Russia’s theft of Ukrainian grain,” the spokesperson said.
The news of Ukrainian grain aboard Russian ships partly confirms a recent report by The New York Times that Moscow is seeking to profit off of grain plundered from Ukraine by selling the product while subverting sanctions. Ukraine has already accused Russia of shipping the stolen grain to buyers in Syria and Turkey.
Russia and Ukraine — often referred to collectively as Europe’s breadbasket — produce a third of the global supply of wheat and barley, but Kyiv has been unable to ship exports due to Moscow’s offensive. A Russian blockade in the Black Sea, along with Ukrainian naval mines, have made exporting siloed grain virtually impossible and, as a result, millions of people around the world — particularly in Africa and the Middle East — are now on the brink of famine.
-ABC News’ Shannon Crawford
Jun 06, 12:26 pm
Two planes owned by Russian oligarch grounded by US prosecutors
Two planes — a Gulfstream G650 and a Boeing 787 — have been grounded after federal prosecutors said their owner, Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, violated U.S. sanctions by flying the aircraft to Moscow in March.
The sanctions require a license for any U.S.-made aircraft to fly to Russia. The sanctions also prohibit an aircraft that is owned, controlled or under charter or lease by a Russian national from being flown to Russia.
“No licenses were applied for or issued. Nor was any license exception available, including because the Boeing and the Gulfstream were each owned and/or controlled by a Russian national: Roman Abramovich,” said the affidavit supporting a seizure warrant.
The Boeing plane is believed to be among the most expensive private aircraft in the world, worth $350 million, the affidavit said.
Jun 06, 9:05 am
Russia beefs up air defense on Snake Island
Russia has likely moved multiple air defense assets, including SA-15 and SA-22 missile systems, to Snake Island in the western Black Sea, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said Monday in an intelligence update.
The move follows the loss of the Russian warship Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
“It is likely these weapons are intended to provide air defence for Russian naval vessels operating around Snake Island,” the ministry added. “Russia’s activity on Snake Island contributes to its blockade of the Ukrainian coast and hinders the resumption of maritime trade, including exports of Ukrainian grain.”
Russian forces captured Ukraine’s Snake Island in the early days of the invasion, memorably when Ukrainian soldiers defending the tiny islet told an attacking Russian warship to “go f— yourself.” Ukrainian troops have failed in their attempts to retake the previously inconsequential territory.
Meanwhile, in eastern Ukraine’s contested Donbas region, heavy fighting continues in the war-torn city of Sieverodonetsk, according to the ministry.
“Russian forces continue to push towards Sloviansk as part of their attempted encirclement of Ukrainian force,” the ministry said.
And in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, Russian air-launched cruise missiles struck rail infrastructure Sunday in the early morning hours, “likely in an attempt [to] disrupt the supply of Western military equipment to frontline Ukrainian units,” according to the ministry.
Jun 05, 3:39 pm
Russian missiles target Kyiv
After five weeks of relative calm in Kyiv, Russian rockets hit Ukraine’s capital city on Sunday as Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of strikes on “new targets” if the United States goes through with plans to supply Ukraine with longer-range missiles.
Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar said the war is still in its “hot phase” and “capturing Kyiv is still Russia’s main goal.”
An ABC News crew visited Kyiv’s Darnytskyy district, where several Russian cruise missiles slammed into a railway repair plant. One building was still on fire when the ABC News crew arrived. Nearby, another missile strike left a creater on a cement path.
It took hours before Ukrainian authorities permitted media access to the site, saying the area needed to be cleared for safety first.
The Russians claimed the attack in Darnystskyy destroyed military vehicles and armaments. Ukrainian officials said the missiles hit a railway repair plant where no tanks were stored.
Speaking on Russian TV on Sunday, Putin issued a warning to the West on supplying the Ukrainians with high-powered rocket systems. He said if the West carried through with it, Russia would hit “new targets they had not attacked before.”
Jun 05, 7:05 am
Putin warns of strikes if West supplies longer-range missiles
President Vladimir Putin warned that Russian forces would strike new targets if the West began supplying Ukraine with longer-range missiles.
“But if they [missiles] are actually delivered, we will draw appropriate conclusions and apply our own weapons, which we have in sufficient quantities to carry out strikes on targets we aren’t striking yet,” Putin told Rossyia 1 TV Channel in an interview on Sunday.
(WASHINGTON) — After more than 1,000 closed-door interviews and 11 months of secretive work, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will go public in a prime-time hearing Thursday night — with never-before-seen video of the riot and testimony of former President Donald Trump’s family members.
Led by Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel will lay out a roadmap for a series of hearings in June it says are designed to show how former President Donald Trump led allies in a comprehensive effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“We’re going to lay out for the American people in a way that they haven’t been asked before about this multi-step, coordinated attempt to overturn a presidential election and stop the transfer of power,” a committee aide said Wednesday. “What the select committee is also going to lay out is clear indication of ongoing threats to American democracy.”
Thursday’s hearing, set to begin at 8 p.m. EDT, is expected to include previously unseen videos and images of the Capitol attack, along with excerpts of videotaped testimony the committee obtained from ex-Trump aides and members of the former president’s family — including his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
“We’re ready to tell the story of what led up to Jan. 6, and what happened after it,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said Wednesday.
The hearing will feature testimony from filmmaker Nick Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys on Jan. 6 and witnessed the role that some members of the far-right extremist group played in the Capitol attack.
The committee will utilize some of the graphic video Quested and his camera crew filmed of the Capitol riot from the front lines, which captured the first violent clashes on the West Front of the Capitol and rioters roaming the halls of the House looking for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.,
Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury during the attack when rioters pushed her to the ground outside the Capitol, will also appear before the committee.
Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who said that the hearings would “blow the roof off the House” at an event in May, said earlier this week that the committee “is in the business of trying to communicate to the American people the gravity and the immensity of these events.”
“We’re not looking for anything other than the transmission of truth,” he said.
A month of hearings
The series of hearings will explore different elements of the committee’s inquiry, which was divided up among roughly half-a-dozen color-coded investigative teams that focused on various themes of the effort — from Trump’s pressure campaign on local officials, to extremist groups, the “Stop the Steal” movement and fundraising efforts.
Different members of the committee are expected to take the lead in guiding and narrating the presentations on various hearing days.
Beyond reconstructing events for the historical record, Democrats — and the two Republican members of the committee — plan to argue that Trump and his GOP allies still pose a threat to democracy and future elections.
They’ve enlisted the help of former ABC News president James Goldston to help produce and compress the swaths of information gathered during the investigation into digestible, timed-out hearings. (A committee aide declined to comment on Goldston’s role with the panel.)
“The information presented needs to be truthful and accurate, but it needs to be sharp and gripping,” Norm Eisen, who served as a special counsel for House Democrats during the first Trump impeachment, told ABC News. “This will be the Watergate hearings for the streaming era.”
The committee has not yet finalized witnesses for the remainder of the hearings, though they could include state election officials, ex-Trump Justice Department officials who pushed back on attempts to investigate voter fraud, and even White House lawyers familiar with Trump’s attempts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results on Jan. 6.
Videotaped depositions of administration aides — such as Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short, and aides who worked closely with Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows — could also feature into the presentations, along with emails obtained by the committee and the text messages Meadows shared with investigators before he withdrew his cooperation.
Republicans plan to push back
Trump and top House Republicans have dismissed the committee’s work, and accused the Democrat-led panel of targeting Trump and other top GOP figures at a time when they should be focused on economic issues like gas prices, baby formula shortages and inflation. The former president huddled with some lawmakers to plot a strategy for responding to the hearing earlier this week.
“House Republicans will be setting the record straight and telling the truth,” Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who will lead GOP rapid response efforts, said Wednesday. “Most importantly, we will continue to focus on the important issues that matter.”
Other Republicans, including some of Trump’s staunchest defenders in the House, told ABC News they would ignore the hearings entirely and not tune in for the primetime session Thursday.
Reframing the midterms
Months away from the midterms and facing historic headwinds in keeping their majorities, Democrats believe the hearings could provide the party with an opportunity to sharpen the contrast with Republicans who did not stop — and in some cases, participated in — Trump’s efforts to challenge the election results.
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked with President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and has surveyed swing voters, argued that the hearings could present Democrats with an opportunity to energize unmotivated voters in the midterms, and give others a reason not to support Republicans in the key House and Senate races that will decide control of Congress.
“The economy is the number one issue for people, but I don’t think it’s an issue that’s going to draw a clear contrast that will benefit Democrats,” she said. “This is a clear distinction. We’ve got to make this election a choice, not a referendum.”
Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., who represents a swing district won by Trump in 2016 and 2020, said it wasn’t clear how much of an impact the hearings would have on her constituents heading into the fall. But she said it was important for the committee to put forward a historical record of the riot.
“It depends on what they have and it depends on what kind of teeth the evidence really has,” she said. “I see really positive signs at least in my district and in my state that people are absolutely sick of extremes … and they want a government that just actually works.”
The committee plans to release a final report with its conclusions, and legislative recommendations, in the fall. That could include proposed changes to the Electoral Count Act that Republicans used to register objections to the counting of electoral votes in key states on Jan. 6.
“We’re just going to tell the truth as we know it, and see what happens,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., told ABC News.
(NEW YORK) — In the early months of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, breakthrough cases among fully-vaccinated people were a statistical anomaly.
Preliminary clinical trial data offered an optimistic outlook for the months ahead, with many Americans hoping a vaccine would be their ticket to a return to normalcy.
However, last summer, when the highly infectious delta variant became dominant, the number of people experiencing a breakthrough infection began to grow, and those totals only increased with the omicron surge.
Now, with the majority of the country vaccinated, and immunity gradually waning over time, once-scarce breakthrough infections — which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define as when a fully vaccinated person gets infected with COVID-19 — have become a regular occurrence associated with the pandemic.
As a result, the notion early on that vaccination could be relied upon to prevent all coronavirus infection has been somewhat eroded. But vaccines have remained largely highly protective against severe illness and death.
Experts also say the sheer volume of cases now puts even the vaccinated who are vulnerable in danger and underscores the urgency of people both getting their primary series and boosters.
An ABC News analysis of data collected by the CDC found that the share of breakthrough COVID-19 cases has reached its highest point since the vaccines were introduced, with more cases occurring among the vaccinated in March and April 2022, than among the unvaccinated, partially because of the significant number of people who are now vaccinated.
However, even with overall totals increasing, per capita, unvaccinated Americans still have a greater risk of contracting and dying of COVID-19.
Increasing rates of breakthrough cases
In June 2021, prior to the emergence of the delta variant, breakthrough cases represented only 12% of new cases. By October, as the delta variant continued to dominate, and with an increasing number of people further out from their original vaccine series, breakthrough infections represented about a third of cases.
When the even more transmissible omicron variant emerged in November 2021, the percentage of breakthrough cases began to steadily grow, and by March, breakthrough infections among the vaccinated represented the majority of new cases. Between April 2021 and April 2022, the percentage of breakthrough cases grew from 3% to more than 60%.
With more vulnerable and older Americans further out from their primary series, the rate of breakthrough deaths has also grown. During April 2021, just 8% of deaths were the result of breakthroughs, but by March 2022, that number had increased to more than 41% of the month’s recorded deaths.
Breakthrough cases and deaths among the boosted have also been on the rise, albeit at a slower rate.
In September 2021, less than 1% of COVID-19 of cases and deaths occurred among Americans who had been fully vaccinated and boosted with their first dose. By April 2022, the percentage for cases had increased to more than 52%, while the proportion of deaths had grown to nearly 31%.
Health experts said the increase in breakthrough infections and deaths is expected with more Americans reaching full vaccination status and higher-risk populations getting further away from their initial vaccination series and first booster.
In March 2022, unvaccinated adults were 10 times more likely to die of COVID-19 compared to vaccinated individuals and in April 2.3 times more likely to test positive, according to data from the CDC.
The CDC notes that there are limitations to this data, including a higher prevalence of previous infection among the unvaccinated and unboosted groups, a difficulty in accounting for time since vaccination and waning protection, potential differences in use of at-home tests and prevention behaviors by age and vaccination status.
Yet to receive their first booster
During an interview with CBS News last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical advisor, acknowledged there has been an increase in the number of vaccinated people who are dying of COVID-19, many of whom are elderly, immunocompromised or have underlying conditions.
“As long as you have vulnerable people in the population, even though the unvaccinated are going to be much more at risk, even vaccinated with underlying conditions and a high degree of susceptibility to severe disease will account for those deaths,” he said.
Unvaccinated Americans also continue to become severely ill and die of the virus, Fauci said. He stressed that a large proportion — about a third of Americans — have not been fully vaccinated, while about half of eligible Americans are still unboosted with their first dose.
According to an ABC News analysis, the vast majority — between 80% and 90% — of the vaccinated Americans who are dying from COVID-19 are people over the age of 65.
Last month, the CDC announced that it is “strengthening” its recommendation for Americans over the age of 12 who are immunocompromised and those over the age of 50 to receive their second booster shot.
“Only 38% of those 50 to 64 and 43% of those 65 and older have received a vaccine dose in the past six months. This leaves about 60% of older Americans without the protection they may need to prevent severe disease, hospitalization, and death,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a meeting of the agency’s independent advisors in May. “We know immunity wanes over time, and we need to do all we can now to protect those most vulnerable.”
According to CDC data, since second booster doses were authorized in mid-March, a total of 15.4 million Americans have received their second booster. Some 14.7 million of those who have received second boosters are people over the age of 50, and 10.3 million of them are over the age of 65.
“The numbers we are keeping an eye on are the numbers of individuals with breakthrough disease that requires hospitalization, intensive care, or that results in death,” C. Buddy Creech, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program and associate professor of pediatric infectious diseases, told ABC News.
“We can anticipate some degree of this among the elderly, those with complicated underlying medical conditions and those that are immunocompromised; however, if we begin to see high numbers among otherwise healthy individuals, it may be a sign that current vaccines aren’t working as well against new variants of concerns,” he added.
The increase in the number of vaccinated people falling ill and dying underlines the urgency for high-risk Americans to get boosted, health experts said.
“For those that are immunocompromised, at high risk for complications, over 50 years of age, or who received their third dose months ago, a fourth dose reduces the likelihood of infection and complications from disease,” Creech said.
‘Vaccines are still working’
The drop in efficacy may come as a shock to some Americans who still envision protection levels of over 90% against symptomatic infection that were initially reported by vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna in late 2020.
“Vaccine efficacy in clinical trials has been very high, vaccine effectiveness in the real world is always going to be a bit lower. In clinical trials, we typically exclude those that are severely immunocompromised or medically fragile. We also measured vaccine efficacy during a time prior to the emergence of variants and when more risk mitigation strategies were in place,” Creech explained.
However, Creech noted that even with the diminution, “vaccine effectiveness remains quite high,” adding that given the reality that COVID-19 vaccines do not provide complete protection against all disease, he is not surprised that effectiveness for mild or moderate symptoms is lower than what was reported during the trials.
Given delta and omicron’s highly infectious nature, “nearly everyone who has not been vaccinated has now been infected – many people twice, three times, or more,” David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told ABC News.
“That previous infection does provide some protection — but also at the cost of often getting very sick. Over time, more people are also getting vaccinated, so the number of unvaccinated people is getting smaller and smaller. But vaccines are still working,” Dowdy explained.
People should still get vaccinated, experts say
Health experts stressed that even though more breakthrough cases are occurring, Americans should not be dissuaded from getting vaccinated.
“People should absolutely still get vaccinated and boosted if you haven’t already. Vaccines are still highly effective, and for people who have been infected already, vaccines are known to give extra protection,” Dowdy said.
For those who have yet to receive a third dose, “now is the time to get boosted,” Creech said.
Looking ahead to the fall, as the vaccine companies look to develop new and improved shots, Creech said it is important for people to assess when they should get their booster shots.
“There’s hope that they will be even more effective – but in terms of preventing serious illness, the current vaccines are still working very well,” Dowdy added.
For those who have recently received a third dose or who are a few weeks out from having COVID-19 infection, waiting until variant boosters are available might be a more reasonable approach, Creech said.
“We’re not out of the woods yet; however, vaccines have gotten us to a point where our healthcare system can withstand COVID-19 waves without reaching a breaking point,” Creech said.
(LONDON) — The port city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine is facing the risk of a cholera epidemic amid the destruction of water supplies and sanitation during the Russian invasion, city officials and health agencies warn.
“The risk of cholera is very high, like red, red level,” Petro Andriushchenko, an advisor to Mariupol’s mayor, told ABC News, adding that the municipality could not provide an estimation of the number of infected cases due to lack of proper access to the occupants amid the occupation by Russian forces.
While the warnings have intensified in the past few days, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said on Telegram last month that due to problems with water supply, the city is threatened by an infectious catastrophe and more than 10,000 people may die by the end of the year.
The deteriorating water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure has set an alarmingly high risk of an outbreak, according to a report in April from the World Health Organization’s Health Cluster Ukraine agency.
The warming spring and summer weather will likely increase transmission, the report said.
“The weather is hot. There are still dead bodies on the streets of the city — especially under the debris of residential buildings. In some blocks, it is impossible to walk by — due to the stench of rotten human flesh. There was no rain for a while, and it is getting hotter,” a resident of Mariupol, who did not want to be named for security concerns, told ABC News.
The condition of hospital staffing is also “catastrophic,” Andriushchenko wrote on his official Telegram channel on Wednesday.
“Visual demonstration of complete paralysis and collapse of medical system… In this state of medicine, any infectious disease turns into a deadly epidemic,” he said.
Andryushchenko told ABC News that swimming has been banned in the sea [of Azov] as a means to control the spread of the disease. Russian occupation authorities were beginning to quarantine the captured city of Mariupol, he said.
Dorit Nitzan, the WHO’s Ukraine incident manager, told reporters last month the international agency’s partners on the ground in Mariupol are observing “actual swamps in the streets.”
Sewage water and drinking water are getting mixed, Nitzan said at a press briefing in Kyiv.
“This is a huge hazard for many infections, including cholera,” she said.
“Accessing Mariupol is an issue, but we are looking for opportunities via partners on the ground,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told ABC News.
To take necessary measures in controlling the risk of spreading the disease, the international body “has provided Ukraine with guidance on prevention, preparedness, case definitions, detection — including in wastewater monitoring– [and] standards of care and case management,” Harris added.
Due to the lack of water, the city’s residents have drawn untreated water from rivers and lakes, the April report warns, saying Ukraine was also the last European country to declare a cholera epidemic, with 33 cases in Mariupol in 2011.
“There is still no water supply – it is delivered by trucks, and people on the streets are staying in the lines to fill some bottles,” the Mariupol resident who spoke to ABC News said, adding that people in the city have no information about possible affected cases.
Besides facilitating readiness for the use of cholera vaccines in Ukraine, the WHO says it is working with the Ministry of Health to provide risk communication materials advising people on “how to protect themselves, on prevention, but also on treatment, including on what to do at-home.”
The international body has also offered medical supplies, including WHO cholera kits with rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs), Harris said.
The city was reportedly home to over 400,000 people before Russia invaded Ukraine in February. While there are no accurate statistics on the number of current residents, Ukrainian officials estimate that 100,000 to 150,000 people are still living in the occupied city, many in hiding in the basements and bomb shelters.
Harris underlined the critical psychological condition of the people left in the city and how it would contribute to the likely outbreak.
“The fact that people have to be on the move, the fact that they often have close together, that they’re huddling in basements, in bomb shelters, and the incredible trauma, psychological pressure they are under has got to be having a severe effect on their immune systems, weakening their immune system,” she said.
“So even what’s normally just a mild infection for you or me is a much more serious infection in somebody under those conditions,” she added.
(BERLIN) — A teacher was killed and 14 schoolchildren were injured when a car plowed into a crowd in a popular shopping district in Berlin on Wednesday morning, police said.
The deadly incident took place along the busy shopping street Tauentzienstrasse in the west of Germany’s capital at around 10:30 a.m. local time. The students and their teacher were there on a class field trip from the central German state of Hesse when a small car drove into the group and crashed into a storefront, according to the Berlin Police.
A police spokesperson told ABC News on Wednesday that eight of the injured were in serious condition.
The alleged driver — a 29-year-old German-Armenian man living in Berlin — has “suspected psychological problems” and was detained at the scene, police said.
A motive was unknown and it was unclear whether the incident was terror-related, according to police.
“It is not yet known whether it was an accident or intentional action,” the Berlin Police said in a statement via Twitter on Wednesday.
The scene was near the Breitscheidplatz, a public square in Berlin where 13 people were killed when an extremist deliberately drove a truck into a Christmas market in 2016.
U.S. officials have been told that German authorities are actively trying to determine whether Wednesday’s incident was an intentional ramming. There was concern given the proximity to the 2016 attack, ABC News has learned.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took to Twitter to condemn the incident, which he described as a “cruel rampage.”
“The cruel rampage on Tauentzienstrasse leaves me deeply saddened,” Scholz tweeted Wednesday. “The trip of a Hesse school class to Berlin has ended in a nightmare. Our thoughts are with the relatives of the dead and the injured, including many children. I wish them all a speedy recovery.”
(WASHINGTON) — Documentary filmmaker Nick Quested followed the Proud Boys through Washington as members of the extremist group marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6 and clashed with police officers.
His firsthand, searing account of the riot will be a central piece of the House Jan. 6 select committee’s prime-time hearing Thursday night, which will feature both his testimony and some of the never-before-seen footage of the Proud Boys and other rioters he turned over to investigators.
ABC News has exclusively obtained some of that material, showing how a group of Trump supporters at a presidential rally transformed into an angry mob that broke into the Capitol to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“I am not allowed to say what’s going to happen today because everyone’s just gonna have to watch for themselves. But it’s gonna happen,” one woman in the crowd told Quested ominously. “Something’s gonna happen one way or another.”
Quested’s material shows some of the most infamous Capitol rioters in the hours before they appeared in the halls of Congress, including Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman” later sentenced to more than three years in prison for his role in the attack.
“Freedom!” Chansley shouts, with his horned fur hat and spear on the National Mall.
Quested captured the moment just before 1 p.m. when protesters overpowered Capitol Police officers at the outer perimeter of the complex, turning over a series of bicycle racks and rushing closer to the Capitol building.
Inside the swarming crowd at the base of the Capitol, he witnessed police officers frantically pushing rioters backwards as their perimeter crumpled, and Trump supporters swinging from scaffolding, using flags as weapons and crowd surfing closer to the violence at the Capitol’s west entrance.
A member of Quested’s film crew also followed the rioters into the halls of Congress, where some marched around the House chamber looking for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., chanting, “All we want is Pelosi!” and “Nancy!”
The speaker was evacuated by her Capitol Police detail minutes before rioters marched through her office. Some of her youngest staffers locked themselves in empty rooms and sheltered under tables.
Quested himself was assaulted during the riot, as a protestor tried to grab and smash his camera.
The committee on Thursday will also hear testimony from Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who was one of the first officers injured during the riot when she was thrown to the ground by rioters pushing bike racks forward and hit her head on the concrete stairs.
They also plan to feature clips of taped interviews with Trump administration officials and family members, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
The committee expects to use videos, social media posts and pictures throughout the public hearings planned for June and has retained former ABC News president James Goldston to help produce the upcoming sessions.
Along with Quested’s footage, the committee has also obtained 14,000 hours of security camera video from Capitol Police.
A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.
(NEW YORK) — Abbott and the Food and Drug Administration were alerted to a whistleblower complaint about Abbott’s Sturgis infant formula plant as far back as February 2021, ABC News has confirmed.
This complaint, filed with the U.S. Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, alleges quality control concerns at Abbott’s formula plant in Sturgis, Michigan — a year before the company’s massive recall and shutdown in February 2022 following contamination concerns, which helped exacerbate a nationwide shortage in baby formula, according to sources familiar with the matter.
OSHA received a complaint from a whistleblower on Feb. 16, 2021, and sent a copy three days later to the FDA and Abbott, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The complaint raises further questions about when both Abbott and federal health authorities first knew about quality and contamination concerns at the Sturgis plant, and why it took so long for action to be taken.
The OSHA complaint, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, alleges problems at the Sturgis plant like faulty equipment in need of repair or upgrade and inadequate safety validation for released product.
It was filed several months before similar allegations were made in another whistleblower report, which flagged contamination concerns at the Sturgis plant in October 2021, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The allegations made in that October report include “ongoing problems” with the “integrity” of seals on powdered products, that the facility had used “questionable practices” to test whether the issues had been fixed, made efforts to evade certain oversight and override quality checks, falsified records “on a regular and ongoing basis” and allowed “questionable practices” related to the cleaning of equipment to “proliferate.”
Abbott spokesperson Scott Stoffel told ABC News an internal investigation stemming from the February 2021 OSHA complaint has “not been able to confirm the allegations.”
“We believe this to be a former employee who was dismissed due to serious violations of Abbott’s food safety policies,” the company spokesperson added, saying the employee had never raised product safety concerns while with the company — and that these complaints continue “a pattern of ever-evolving, ever-escalating allegations.”
Responding to ABC News’ request for comment, an FDA spokesperson acknowledged the shifting timeline of events leading up to the FDA’s warning and Abbott’s ultimate recall but would not comment specifically on the OSHA complaint.
“We know there have been various questions about the timeline of events leading up to the FDA’s warning and Abbott’s recall of products manufactured at their Sturgis facility,” FDA spokesperson Michael Felberbaum said, adding the FDA’s “top priority right now is addressing the dire need for infant formula in the U.S. market, and our teams are working night and day to help make that happen.”
Felberbaum noted the FDA “can and must do better or be faster, and we’ve initiated a detailed after-action review so that we can make improvements to our programs, processes, and decision-making.”
ABC was first to report that the FDA is now under audit by the Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General for how it responded leading up to Abbott’s massive recall — probing whether the agency upheld its responsibilities to “safeguard the nation’s food supply” and whether FDA regulators followed proper recall protocol once a deadly bacteria was detected inside the plant.
Abbott’s Senior Vice President for U.S. Nutrition Chris Calamari has testified under oath that the company was not aware of the October whistleblower complaint until late April 2022, when it was made public, blaming the “time lag between October and February” on the FDA’s internal issues.
Stoffel, of Abbott, said there is an “open investigation” into those October allegations that “expand upon the federal OSHA allegations” from February 2021.
Neither the FDA nor Abbott mentioned being alerted to an OSHA complaint raising product safety concerns in February 2021 during their testimony in late May of this year.
This was not the first time questions had been raised about quality control at the plant. The FDA found sanitation issues in Sturgis in September 2021, saying the facility “did not maintain a building used in the manufacture, processing, packing or holding of infant formula in a clean and sanitary condition,” according to an inspection report. And by Feb. 1, the FDA had collected samples at the plant confirming the presence of cronobacter, according to an inspection report. Abbott maintains there is no conclusive evidence that its products contributed to infants’ illness or death.
Abbott, the largest manufacturer of infant formula in the country, shuttered its Michigan plant in February 2022, following contamination concerns and a large recall of several of its brands, exacerbating a nationwide shortage of infant formula.
In early June, it officially reopened its doors and restarted production after meeting the initial requirements of an agreement with the FDA on how to reopen safely.
“Abbott takes employee concerns very seriously and we foster a culture of compliance to produce the best and highest-quality products,” Stoffel said. “We empower our employees to identify and report any issues that could compromise our product safety or quality, which comes before any other considerations.”
(NEW YORK) — With the approval process underway for young children’s COVID-19 vaccines, the White House is preparing a rollout to doctors’ offices, pharmacies and children’s hospitals across the country.
“If in fact [the Food and Drug Administration] authorizes and [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] recommends, we’re going to immediately launch a comprehensive nationwide effort to ensure that parents can get their youngest kids vaccinated, easily, and do so at locations that they know and they trust,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters on Wednesday.
Two brands of vaccines — Pfizer and Moderna — are expected to be available as early as the week of June 21 if the review processes at the FDA and CDC find they are safe and effective for kids under 5. Both companies have said their vaccines are just that and released initial efficacy data. More information will be presented next week to the FDA and CDC.
The administration estimates that 85% of children under the age of 5 live within five miles of a potential vaccination site, another administration official said.
The government opened up orders to states on Friday and has so far received requests for around 2.3 million doses. There were five million doses available for initial orders, and another five million will be available to order soon.
Administration officials cautioned not to read into the underwhelming order numbers and said it has been common over the past two years for them to come in slowly at first.
“I wouldn’t focus on those early numbers. Our experience is that the longer the ordering stays open, the more likely the states come forward,” an official said.
“We’re not too worried or focused on that, we’ll continue to do these outreach,” the official added.
So far, states have ordered 58% of the available Pfizer doses and 34% of the available Moderna doses.
Officials said some jurisdictions had ordered only Moderna, while others ordered only Pfizer. They said they didn’t have an explanation because it was too early in the process.
But, if polling is any indication, it will be an uphill battle to convince parents to vaccinate their young kids. A recent survey from Kaiser Family Foundation found just one in five parents are eager to vaccinate their children right away.
Officials said they planned to lean into existing networks to get vaccine information out to families, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, mom blogs and PTAs, as well as groups specific to communities of color, like the League of United Latin American Citizens.
“We have learned from our previous campaigns, and one of the most important lessons that we’ve learned is that we know who people listen to when making decisions, and there are trusted people in their lives,” a senior administration official said.
“Some of them are doctors, some of them are community leaders,” the official said.
The official said the goal was twofold, both to get the vaccine to convenient places for families and to make sure they have the information they need about the vaccines.
The process to authorize vaccines for the youngest age group begins on Wednesday, when the FDA’s independent panel of advisors meet to review the data and ask questions of the vaccine companies.
Pfizer’s vaccine comes in three doses given in smaller amounts over a longer period of time, while Moderna’s is a two-dose vaccine given in slightly larger amounts over a shorter period.
If the panel approves, the FDA is expected to then authorize within a day or so.
That kicks the process over to the CDC’s group of advisers, who are expected to review the vaccine data on June 17 and 18 before voting. Then, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky can issue a final recommendation for the vaccines and doses can begin being administered.
Vaccines are expected to arrive to clinics and doctors offices the weekend after the FDA and CDC’s advisory committees meet, so long as the FDA issues its authorization for emergency use of one or both vaccines.
The White House then expects vaccines will start to be administered on the Tuesday after the long weekend of the federal holiday Juneteenth.
