(WASHINGTON) — The Washington Nationals game was called to an abrupt halt on Saturday night after a shooting outside the stadium.
Police said at a late-night press conference that the shooting was an isolated incident and believed to be a shootout between two vehicles.
Earlier, the team had confirmed there was a shooting outside the Third Base Gate at Nationals Park. After initially telling fans to stay in their seats due to an “incident” outside, they were then told to exit the stadium through the Centerfield or Right Field gates.
The game was in the bottom of the sixth inning when fans heard loud pops outside the park. The game was halted as fans were seen heading for the concourse and some even exited the stands onto the field and into the dugouts.
The D.C. Metropolitan Police Department said two people were shot outside the park and there did not appear to be an ongoing threat. Police later said a third person, a woman who was attending the game but was outside the park, was also struck by gunfire.
She is expected to be OK, police said. Two others believed to be involved in the shooting are being questioned at the hospital.
One car involved in the shooting has been recovered and they are looking for the second, authorities said.
The Nationals were losing, 8-4, at the time the game was stopped.
The team said it will pick up the game on Sunday where it left off with a nine-inning game. The game will be part of a doubleheader.
A 6-year-old child was killed in a shooting in Washington, D.C., overnight with officials holding a press conference to announce a $60,000 reward for information into the shooting. Homicides have been on the rise in the city since 2017, according to city crime data.
ABC News’ Sarah Shales contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Europe’s devastating flood death toll rose to at least 183 on Sunday with hard-hit west Germany and Belgium reeling from fast-rising waters that destroyed neighborhoods, swallowed up streets and swept away cars.
There are at least 156 dead in Germany, according to authorities. The hardest-hit areas in Germany are Rhineland-Palatinate, where 110 were killed in the catastrophic flooding and in North Rhine-Westphalia, where 46 people died, the Koblenz Police and the German Ministry of Interior said. About 150 people remain unaccounted for in Germany.
In Belgium, at least 27 are dead and 103 others remain unaccounted for on Sunday, according to the Belgian Interior Minister. The death toll is expected to rise.
The front-runner candidate poised to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany’s September election, Armin Laschet, faced backlash after he was seen in photos turning to another person and laughing as Germany’s president spoke about the catastrophic floods to reporters, The Associated Press reported. Laschet has since issued an apology.
“The fate of those affected, which we heard about in many conversations, is important to us,” he wrote on Twitter Saturday night. “So I regret all the more the impression that arose from a conversational situation. That was inappropriate and I am sorry.”
Western countries in Europe were hit with record rainfall that caused rivers to swell and triggered catastrophic flooding this week throughout Germany and Belgium, and southern parts of the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Horrific images revealed entire communities inundated with water, collapsed edifices and rescue workers combing through the wreckage.
The waters started to recede in some parts of Western Europe as of Saturday and efforts were launched to clean up the leftover debris and potentially discover more bodies.
Many areas are still grappling without electricity or telephone service.
Belgian broadcaster RTBF reported that some 17,150 houses in Belgium were without power as of Saturday and roughly 30,000 households did not have access to drinking water. About 3,500 homes had no gas and officials warned that a shortage of emergency supplies may last for several weeks.
Officials said 85% of the homes inspected in the Liege region of Belgium are at risk of collapsing.
As the water receded in some parts of Germany, an ABC News crew was able to reach the picturesque village of Ahrweiler, which had been cut off by flooding and where numerous homes dating back to the 16th century were damaged.
A large, concrete bridge leading into the Ahrweiler was destroyed by the flooding and some homes along the Ahr River were split in half. Uprooted trees littered the river.
Surrounded by medieval fortress walls, residents in the town were out over the weekend shoveling thick mud off of cobblestone streets and pointed out a water line that was well over six feet tall.
One man in Ahrweiler told ABC News he saved his elderly mother from the floodwaters. He said the water rose so quickly he sought refuge on the roof of his home where he watched as the flood carried cars down the street.
The severe weather triggered widespread evacuations. Some 700 people were evacuated from part of the German town of Wassenberg after the breach of a dike on the Run River. Thousands of residents in several Dutch towns evacuated Thursday and Friday were allowed to return home Saturday morning.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier traveled Saturday to Erftstadt, southwest of Cologne.
Caretaker Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte visited impacted towns Friday and said the region had been through “three disasters.”
“First, there was corona, now these floods, and soon people will have to work on cleanup and recovery,” he said. “It is disaster after disaster after disaster. But we will not abandon Limburg,” the southern province hit by the floods. His government has declared the flooding a state of emergency, opening up national funds for those affected.
German and Belgian officials said rescue and recovery efforts are now underway and crews are working to shore up dikes and protect roads.
In Germany, more than 19,000 emergency forces are conducting rescue operations in the state of North Rhine Westphalia, according to the regional government. In the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, police said they received reports of 618 people injured, DPA reported.
Speaking alongside U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed shock over the scope of devastation from the flooding.
“I grieve for those who have lost their lives in this disaster,” Merkel said during a joint press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C. “I fear the full extent of this tragedy will only be seen in the coming days.”
Merkel returned to Germany over the weekend and visited the hard-hit town of Schuld in the Rhineland-Palatinate region. She described the devastation as “surreal” and “terrifying,” and pledged quick financial aid.
“Germany is a strong country,” Merkel told officials in Schuld. “We will stand up to this force of nature, in the short term, but also in the medium and long term.”
ABC News’ Morgan Winsor contributed to this report
(LONDON) — Europe’s devastating flood death toll surpassed 160 on Saturday, with hard-hit west Germany and Belgium reeling from fast-rising waters that destroyed neighborhoods, swallowed up streets and swept away cars.
Western countries in Europe were hit with record rainfall that caused rivers to swell and triggered catastrophic flooding this week in Germany, Belgium, southern parts of the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Horrific images reveal entire communities inundated with water, collapsed edifices and rescue workers combing through wreckage.
As of Saturday, the waters started to recede and efforts are underway to clean up the leftover debris and potentially discover more bodies.
In Germany, 141 people have been reported dead, with 98 confirmed dead in Rhineland-Palatinate state and another 43 in the neighboring North Rhine Westphalia state. Many are still missing more than two days after massive flooding hit the region, the outlet reported.
Belgium’s national crisis center said Saturday afternoon the country confirmed 24 deaths.
Many areas are still grappling without electricity or telephone service.
Belgian broadcaster RTBF reported that some 17,500 do not have power and approximately 30,000 households do not have access to drinking water as of Saturday morning in Belgium. About 3,500 homes have no gas and the lack of supply may last for several weeks.
The severe weather triggered widespread evacuations. Some 700 people were evacuated from part of the German town of Wassenberg after the breach of a dike on the Run River. Thousands of residents in several Dutch towns evacuated Thursday and Friday were allowed to return home Saturday morning.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is slated to travel Saturday to Erftstadt, southwest of Cologne.
Rescue workers launched a harrowing effort in Erftstadt on Friday after people got trapped when the ground gave way and their homes collapsed, according to The Associated Press. By Saturday morning no casualties in that incident had been confirmed, the outlet reported.
Caretaker Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte visited impacted towns Friday and said the region had been through “three disasters.”
“First, there was corona, now these floods, and soon people will have to work on cleanup and recovery,” he said. “It is disaster after disaster after disaster. But we will not abandon Limburg,” the southern province hit by the floods. His government has declared the flooding a state of emergency, opening up national funds for those affected.
Rescue and recovery efforts are now underway to shore up dikes and protect roads, German and Belgian officials said.
In Germany, over 19,000 emergency forces are conducting rescue operations in the state of North Rhine Westphalia, according to the regional government. In the west state of Rhineland-Palatinate, police said they received reports of 618 people injured, DPA reported.
Speaking alongside U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed shock over the scope of devastation from the flooding.
“I grieve for those who have lost their lives in this disaster,” Merkel said during a joint press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C. “I fear the full extent of this tragedy will only be seen in the coming days.”
ABC News’ Morgan Winsor contributed to this report
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden has focused the opening months of his presidency largely on domestic issues, including crime and gun violence.
Last month, he unveiled a multi-tiered strategy on gun crime that includes giving federal resources to police departments and letting communities use pandemic relief funds for prevention programs, including the hiring of counselors and social workers.
“This shouldn’t be a red or blue issue — it’s an American issue,” Biden said at the time.
But how to deal with crime, particularly during ongoing conversations regarding the role of policing and alternative crime prevention matters, tends to splinter along party lines — and within the parties themselves. Not all Democrats are in lockstep with Biden’s plans, and some Republicans agree with them. Some 26% of Democrats disapprove of Biden’s work on crime, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, while only 6% of Republicans approve of how Biden has handled the issue.
One of Biden’s plans — increased funding, especially in impoverished areas, for gun crime prevention — has support across both parties: 61% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats.
“I feel like there’s always room for improvement,” Bailey Dockery, a Democratic voter from North Carolina, told ABC News after telling a pollster she disapproved, but adding that Biden is likely “doing the best he can.”
Dockery said that there “needs to definitely be control over who’s allowed to have a gun,” but she doesn’t think gun control laws should involve confiscating people’s guns: “When somebody tells you not to do something, you want to do it 10 times harder.”
“Crime reform is not what I think it should be, with the corrections system, criminal justice system … not enough rehabilitation,” Robert Bell, a Democratic voter from Ohio who also said he disapproves, told ABC News.
The administration should focus more on “what are the initiating factors in crime,” he said, including a lack of housing and community resources.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll was released during an uptick in crime in the United States, with 24% more homicides and 22% more gun assaults in the first quarter of 2021 compared with that period in 2020, according to a study by the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice. There are also ongoing discussions in both local and federal government about alternatives to policing aimed at the underlying causes of crime.
Federal policy on crime and related issues has also been under the microscope.
“Today, there is an emerging recognition that federal dollars have helped deepen today’s devastating fissures between police and the communities they purport to serve,” the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice think tank at New York University School of Law wrote in a recent analysis.
But while most Republicans polled said they disapprove of the Biden administration’s work on crime, some said they support his efforts.
“There seems to be less violence going on since he’s been in power,” Paul Brazezicke, a Republican voter from Pennsylvania, told ABC News in a follow-up interview.
Sandra Buchanan, a Republican from Mississippi, said she approves of Biden’s handling of crime because “I think he’s doing a good job on everything he’s doing” and feels that crime isn’t the fault of the president but of individuals.
Other Republicans who spoke with ABC News said they’re skeptical of some alternatives to policing, including hiring more social workers to work alongside police, but they do believe improving economic opportunities in underserved areas would help.
“I just think, if someone’s at the point where they’re committing a crime” or in a similar high-stakes situation, they won’t be talked out of it by a social worker, said David Patton, a voter from Connecticut.
But he does believe increased funding for communities could have an impact. Patton said he was a driver for Frito-Lay who delivered to inner-city communities, and in “one city where they did some nice work … [it] made people more respectful to the area, for lack of a better word.”
Sheila Tabone of Mississippi, once a Republican but now a registered independent, said she felt that using social workers to reduce crime wouldn’t work “because it’s too little, too late in a lot of cases.”
She said she was a psychiatric nurse for six years, and focused on individuals with mental illness in the community at times, adding, “We do not have the resources for these people so they can live.”
When it comes to funding communities, Tabone said “throwing money at a problem without a plan doesn’t work,” but she supports plans to fund and train police departments, and plans “to help people who want to live a decent life to live a decent life.”
The views of Democratic voters not in lockstep with the administration or national Democrats on crime echo those of recent New York City Democratic mayoral primary winner Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a former police officer. He called the priorities of national Democrats on gun crimes “misplaced” in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday, saying more focus should be on the spread of handguns than on just assault rifles.
But Adams also was among the community leaders and law enforcement officials who met with Biden in the White House on Monday to discuss plans for reducing gun crimes. He told reporters afterward, “Why did it take so long before we heard the gunshots that families were listening and hearing every night. … This president said, this is not the America we’re going to live in.”
(BRISTOL COUNTY, Mass.) — The Bristol County Sheriff’s Office in Massachusetts is the first law enforcement agency in the country to implement a K-9 unit with canines able to detect COVID-19.
“Today, festivals are happening, restaurants are full and concert venues are packed,” said Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson in a statement published Thursday. “We’ve made so much progress, and our new COVID-19 detection program is one way the people of Bristol County can stay ahead of the curve.”
Huntah, a 9-month old female black lab, and Duke, a 9-month-old male golden lab/retriever mix, are the two canines that have now joined the Bristol County K-9 unit after completing a COVID-19 detection training program developed by the International Forensic Research Institute at Florida International University.
The program, which uses masks worn by COVID-19 positive patients, kills the virus with an ultraviolet light, leaving the smell of the virus for dogs to detect.
The canines are then trained to sniff out the virus odor, or detect the change in metabolism of a person infected with COVID-19 without the risk of infection, making the program safe for dogs during the training process.
With this training, the dogs are able to detect the coronavirus with over 90% accuracy, Dr. Ken Furton, provost and executive vice president at Florida International University, told ABC Radio’s “Perspective” podcast in February.
“More than nine times out of 10, when the odor is there or a positive mask is there, the dogs alert and they get very few false positives,” Furton said. “So they’re very, very accurate, actually more accurate than even PCR testing in the laboratory.”
According to the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office, Huntah and Duke will be used to detect the virus in schools, town buildings, nursing homes and medical facilities. Captain Paul Douglas sees these two new additions to the K-9 unit as a “decontamination tool” to keep these spaces safe against the virus.
“The dogs can detect the COVID odor on a counter or table if it was recently touched by a COVID-positive individual, or even detect the odor on a tissue used by someone with COVID,” Douglas said.
With this detection program developed by scientists, trained dogs will be able to detect all variants of COVID-19, including the delta variant.
“This is all science,” Douglas said during a canine graduation ceremony on Wednesday. “This program was developed by professors, doctors and scientists at FIU, and we couldn’t be more proud or excited to execute it here in Bristol County.”
(NEW YORK) — Over 55 million Americans are at risk for flash flooding this weekend as severe weather heads toward the Northeast.
Portions of the Northeast are nearly five times wetter than average for July so far. New York and Boston both could approach all-time wettest July before the month’s end.
Tornadoes and damaging winds are also possible in the Northeast today.
A slow moving frontal system is bringing very heavy rain from the central U.S. to the East Coast. Over 3 inches of rain caused flash flooding in the Detroit region on Friday. Over 5 inches of rain was reported in Indiana, nearly 6 inches of rain was reported in Illinois, and over 10 inches of rain was reported in Kansas.
The system is moving east this morning and will bring more heavy rain to parts of the Ohio Valley and ultimately into the Northeast. Severe storms, including the risk for possible tornadoes and damaging winds will be possible from Maryland to New York today, including Philadelphia and New York City.
Flash flood watches are in effect from Indiana to Massachusetts. The rainfall threat across parts of the Northeast is particularly concerning. The region is well above average for rainfall.
New York City has had 8.49 inches of rain so far for the month of July. To put that in context, New York City’s average rainfall for all of July is 4.60 inches. The wettest July on record in New York city is 11.89 inches.
Boston has had 8.92 inches of rain so far in July. Boston currently is having it’s third-wettest July on record. The wettest July on record in Boston is 11.69 inches.
The precipitation forecast for storms Saturday and Sunday shows locally over 3 inches of rain. While not a certainty, it is looking possible, that Northeast cities will be approaching or exceeding their wettest July on record — and that may happen this weekend, in spots.
Flash flooding is a concern. As the ground is very saturated, the heavy rain will likely cause flash flooding very quickly.
Meanwhile, in the West, a heat wave is persisting across parts of the region, but it is not nearly as bad as the last few heat waves have been. In fact, there are only a couple of records being threatened over the next few days.
More concerning is the risk of dry lightning across California and Western Nevada on Sunday night. Dry lightning can quickly start wildfires, that will quickly burn out of control.
Additionally, more monsoon-related flooding will be possible across Arizona and New Mexico.
Here are the updated fire numbers:
Beckwourth Complex Fire
Size: 105,163 acres
70% contained
Near Beckwourth, CA
Bootleg Fire
Size: 273,582 acres
22% contained
Near Beatty, OR
River Fire
9,500 acres
59% contained
Mariposa County, CA
Snake River Complex Fire
102,866 acres
31% contained
Outside of Lewiston, ID
Red Apple Fire
11,111 acres
51% contained
Central Washington
(SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico) — With the peak of hurricane season less than two months away, many Puerto Ricans are concerned about the stability of the island’s electric grid — a problem-plagued system that left millions without power during Hurricane Maria.
After suffering multiple natural disasters in recent years including two hurricanes and thousands of earthquakes, the island’s already troubled electric system has been left damaged, leading to the grid becoming unstable.
“We all have to keep in mind that we have a very fragile electrical grid,” the island’s governor, Pedro Pierluisi, told ABC News. Some residents are also concerned about the company that is now running the electric distribution system, LUMA Energy.
LUMA took over the island’s transmission and distribution system on June 1 — the same day hurricane season started.
The system was previously managed by the governmental entity called Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which still manages electric generation.
Pierluisi blamed the current problems with the electric system on PREPA for not maintaining the grid.
“PREPA was not giving adequate maintenance to substations, to the electrical poles, electrical lines and Luma inherited that,” he told ABC News.
LUMA’s 1st month
The privatization of the country’s electric grid was announced three years ago by former Gov. Ricardo Rosello.
LUMA’s contract with the government was announced during his successor, Wanda Vazquez’s administration, but Pierluisi supported it once he took office in January 2021.
While blackouts and power outages weren’t infrequent in some areas of Puerto Rico before LUMA, some residents say conditions have worsened since the new company has been in control.
Sylvia Giansante, a resident in San Juan, said “power outages were not frequent,” but that changed in the last month. But “ever since last month,” she said, “the power goes out every two days.”
Giansante said she has three damaged air conditioning units due to the unstable power system and the frequent blackouts.
In the last month, Puerto Rico has seen multiple power outages and a major blackout caused by an explosion in one of the island’s electric substations. The Monacillo substation, where the explosion occurred, is located in San Juan and is run by LUMA Energy.
Aside from these incidents, thousands on the island have reported ongoing power outages in that time, with some lasting a couple of hours and others up to days.“The week of the explosion, we were without power for five days,” Giansante said.
A local police report said the substation explosion was due to a failure in the electric system. After rumors circulated that the explosion could have been intentionally set, federal authorities responded to the incident.
The FBI said in a statement to ABC News that their position is “one of support in assessing the events and related circumstances to determine if it was the result of an accident or of a criminal act.”
While the FBI’s spokesperson didn’t confirm an investigation they say “the people of Puerto Rico can rest assured that, should evidence of criminal action under our jurisdiction be found, we would pursue it to its fullest extent.”
Many residents in the island have been against LUMA’s takeover since the beginning of the transition process. They oppose the terms of the contract with the government and some are against privatizing the essential service.
Dozens of protests have been reported across the island demanding the cancellation of the contract between Puerto Rico’s government and the company.
Residents concerns amid hurricane season
Karina Claudio-Betancourt lives in a community called Barrio Obrero located in Santurce, Puerto Rico. She says there was a live cable hanging in her street early in June and she called LUMA every day to report the situation.
“In the beginning, we made a lot of calls, and no answers,” Claudio-Betancourt said. “I wrote to them via Twitter and Facebook.”
LUMA’s external affairs adviser, Jose Perez Velez, told ABC News that the delay in responding to calls at the beginning of the month could have been related to a cyberattack the company suffered in their first week which affected their client service.
Once Claudio-Betancourt was able to communicate with LUMA, their response was “we’re working on it, we’re going to refer it to a supervisor, ” she says.
According to the 33-year-old woman it took LUMA three weeks after she made her first claim to address the situation.
With the ongoing hurricane season, residents say they are concerned about the company’s slow response to power outages.
“It’s scary,” Claudio-Betancourt said. “It’s really a situation of life and death to lose electricity, and I don’t see them responding quickly enough.”
An investigation from the Center for Investigative Journalism of Puerto Rico indicated that most of the deaths in Hurricane Maria can be linked to the lack of electricity.
When Hurricane Maria slammed the island in 2017, it knocked out the power and all communications in the entire island. It took nearly a year to restore the electricity to the whole island. The official death toll linked to the storm is 2,975, according to Puerto Rico’s government.
Before hurricane season started this year, the Puerto Rican government held a press conference on May 26 addressing the contingency plan for any potential storm.
In that presser, LUMA’s CEO Wayne Stensby said the company was ready to work alongside the government to deal with any potential natural disaster.
In a public motion with the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau, LUMA stated that the company has enough inventory including trucks and employees to deal with a Category 2 storm. A report with more details on an emergency plan was also submitted by LUMA.
“We are ready to put the customers first as our obligations,” Stensby said during the presser on May 26.
But in recent weeks, residents including Claudio-Betancourt said they have been told by employees at the call center that LUMA does not have enough equipment to deal with rural areas in the island.
Claudio-Betancourt has a residence in Las Marias, Puerto Rico located in the center westside of the island. Her residence has been without power for weeks. She called to report the situation, but LUMA was not able to address the complaint, she said.
“They said, ‘We don’t have enough linemen in that area.’ Then I went personally to the offices in San Sebastian, and they said to me, ‘We don’t have the trucks to fix the electricity,'” Claudio-Betancourt told ABC News.
The LUMA representative, Perez Velez, reiterated that the company has the people and the tools to deal with the ongoing outages.
“We are prepared. We have the capacity and the people to handle the necessities in our island. We are going to deal with any possible atmospheric event in the most organized way,” he told ABC News.
Amid the wave of complaints against the new company, Gov. Pierluisi told ABC News his team has been talking to LUMA Energy to make check-ins and demand answers if needed.
“We will be vigilant, we will do the oversight, and there is a good plan in place to handle a disaster,” Pierluisi said.
Although the governor believes that LUMA Energy has more resources compared to when PREPA ran the transmission and distribution of the system, he admitted the company needs more equipment.
“They’re doing alliances as we speak, they’re doing MOUs [memorandum of understanding] with mayors to supplement what they’re doing, and they are also doing alliances with electrical companies and elsewhere in the states to assist them. If God forbid, we get another natural disaster here in Puerto Rico,” the governor added.
Despite LUMA’s declarations and the governor’s words, residents are still skeptical about the island’s electric system stability and the response they could get during a potential emergency.
“Maria was Category 4. What are they going to do if Category 4 comes? Are they going to leave us to die?” Claudio-Betancourt asked.
(LONDON) — England, which has faced more than 14 months of lockdowns as the COVID-19 pandemic raged and waned, is set to fully reopen July 19, despite a rising caseload in one of the most vaccinated places in the world.
While the other nations of the U.K. — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — are responsible for setting their own restrictions, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has moved forward with the plan to end social distancing in England, having already delayed reopening by a month.
The vulnerable section of the population has been told by the government “follow the same guidance as everyone else,” but they “may wish to think particularly carefully about additional precautions you might wish to continue to take.”
Everyone on the “Shielded Patient List” (some 3.7 million) should have been offered a vaccine, the government said.
As of July 15, 261,832 cases had been recorded in the previous seven days, a 32.6% increase from the previous week. In the seven days preceding July 11, according the latest available data, there were 3,933 hospitalizations – an increase of 46.8% from the week before, according to official government data.
The delta variant, which is more transmissible than the original coronavirus strain, is now responsible for around 95% of new cases in the U.K., according to The Lancet.
Experts warn that the reopening could lead to a surge in cases, but others say that how much they will increase is a question, which is one reason officials say there may be no good time to do it.
‘Proceed now with caution’
Ahead of the full reopening, mass events have been held including the European Championships, with tens of thousands attending soccer games in London. Social distancing collapsed during celebrations for England’s path to the final.
The relaxation will put an end to limits on social gatherings and mandated mask use, though some businesses and transport authorities have indicated mask use will continue to be mandatory.
The new Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, warned on BBC radio that lifting the restrictions could lead to 100,000 cases a day this summer. However, Javid has said that the success of the vaccine program – which has seen 67.1% of the adult population fully vaccinated – appears to have partially broken the link between cases and hospitalizations.
“When you look at hospitalizations and deaths, deaths, for example, [they are] are one thirtieth of what they were the last time we saw case numbers of that type,” Javid told Sky News this month. Javid announced that he tested positive on Saturday, and will now be isolating, although he said his symptoms were mild and he was fully vaccinated.
Some sections of the British media have dubbed the upcoming date as “Freedom Day.” But Johnson stressed that while restrictions are being lifted, personal responsibility remains. He said that while cases are rising, they are at the “middle range of [government scientists’] projections for infections and at the lower end of their projections for mortality.”
“But it is absolutely vital that we proceed now with caution,” he said earlier this week. “And I cannot say this powerfully or emphatically enough. This pandemic is not over. This disease coronavirus continues to carry risks for you and your family. We cannot simply revert instantly from Monday, the 19th of July to life as it was before COVID. We will stick to our plan to lift legal restrictions and to lift social distancing.”
Several leading doctors co-authored an open letter in The Lancet, warning that that the easing of restrictions is “dangerous and premature.” And the government’s approach contrasts with that of Israel, a similarly vaccinated population, which has moved to reimpose some social distancing restrictions after a rise in cases. At an international summit on Friday, over 1,200 scientists and public health experts backed the letter in The Lancet, warning that the reopening had the potential to allow vaccine resistant variants to emerge that could be exported to the rest of the world.
In an interview with ABC News this week, World Health Organization spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris warned that “the big numbers” of cases were coming from Europe and the Americas, lamenting the “extraordinary belief in many of you, particularly the north, the northern hemisphere, in the U.S. and in Europe, that somehow it’s over.”
Won’t disappear any time soon
While the vaccines have partially stemmed the number of hospitalizations and deaths, both long COVID and the possibility of new variants are potential concerns for any government looking to go down the same course, according to David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
“Well, I think the first thing to understand is that this disease is becoming endemic and when it becomes endemic, that means it circulates in the population on a permanent basis,” according to Heymann.
Fundamentally, that means the epidemiology of the virus is changing in the U.K., with younger people more likely to be infected and hospitalized due to being lower down on the priority list of vaccines, he said.
“Now, people have to learn how to do their own risk assessment as they’ve learned for other infectious diseases like sexually transmitted infections,” he said. “And they need then to do the proper strategies to protect themselves and to protect others.”
Whatever happens, the novel coronavirus will not disappear anytime soon, even in vaccinated populations, he said.
“It will not end even if there are 70% of the people vaccinated or more or 70% with immunity, it will still have an opportunity to circulate in those populations and it will be reintroduced from time to time. So we’re looking at a virus which is establishing itself and many countries are taking different approaches. We just don’t know which approach will be best.”
Much will depend on whether the rate of hospitalizations and deaths rise once again to a point where they become intolerable, although the government has yet to provide a number which would provoke new restrictions. For now though, the government appears set on the full reopening of society in England, with the other nations of the U.K. set to chart a more cautious path.
“To those who say ‘why take this step now’ I say ‘if not now, when?” Javid told the U.K. parliament this month. “There will never be a perfect time to take this step because we simply cannot eradicate this virus.”
(WASHINGTON) — Six people were injured and one 6-year-old girl killed in a shooting that took place in Washington, D.C., Friday night.
The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia released a video statement regarding the shooting, which took place shortly after 11 p.m.
Executive Assistant Chief Ashan M. Benedict said police heard shots of gunfire at 2900 Block of Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue, Southeast, and rushed to the scene to find six victims injured: three male adults, two female adults and one child.
The 6-year-old girl was shot and killed at the scene and was later pronounced dead at a local hospital, Benedict said.
The five adults were being treated at area hospitals Friday night with non-life-threatening injuries.
The shooters are unknown, and police are asking for the public’s help in identifying them.
“We’re asking for the public’s assistance to bring these shooters to justice,” Benedict said.
