(NEW YORK) — Global health authorities said they’re monitoring a new COVID-19 variant first identified in Botswana, with the World Health Organization saying Friday the new strain, dubbed omicron, is a variant of concern.
Previously referred to as B.1.1.529, the WHO urged countries to step up monitoring and surveillance, citing the high number of mutations and early indications that the virus was spreading in South Africa. The global health agency said it’s still not clear whether the variant is more transmissible or causes more serious illness, or if it affects vaccines. And that such studies will take time.
Scientists have now confirmed 87 cases of the new variant — 77 in South Africa, six in Botswana, two in Hong Kong, and one each in Israel and Belgium, though hundreds more diagnoses are expected.
“We don’t know very much about this yet,” said WHO COVID-19 Technical Lead Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, speaking at an “Ask WHO” briefing Thursday. But concern about this variant stems from its “large number of mutations,” Kerkhove said, which could “have an impact on how the virus behaves.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN on Friday that scientists from the United States and South Africa will discuss the new variant on Friday, as early indications suggest it could be spreading in South Africa.
“Literally,” Fauci added, “it’s something that, in real time, we’re learning more and more about.”
Concerns about this variant already have prompted the U.K., EU and India to propose travel restrictions from South Africa. The World Health Organization, meanwhile, is urging calm, saying it’s premature to close borders.
There are thousands of COVID-19 variants, with new ones emerging all the time. Usually new variants disappear quickly because they’re overrun by a more dominant strain.
The now-dominant delta variant is so highly transmissible that most of the new variants that have cropped up in recent months have been unable to gain a foothold. In the United States, the delta variant comprises an estimated 99.9% of all cases.
“There’s obviously this tension between crying wolf and exacerbating concerns about the variants, but also being caught flat-footed and not responding swiftly enough,” said Dr. John Brownstein, chief innovation office at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News Contributor. “This is where we have to cautiously respond without inciting panic, because this could easily turn out to be a variant similar to others that have never really panned out to be global concerns.”
Scientists across the globe constantly monitor all newly emerged variants to see if they’re spreading in a meaningful way, and global health authorities have said they’re monitoring this new variant closely.
Pfizer and partner BioNTech said they will conduct experiments to see if the new variant can chip away at vaccine efficacy. Vaccine experts said current COVID-19 vaccines, which rely on genetic technology, could be easily updated to better combat emerging variants — though so far, that hasn’t been necessary.
Eight variants are currently being monitored by the WHO, which designates particularly worrisome strains as variants of “interest” or “concern.” When they no longer pose a significant public health threat, the variants are reclassified — so far during the pandemic, 13 have been removed from the WHO’s list.
But public health experts said the emergence of variants underscores the urgent need to vaccinate everyone on the planet.
“It gives us a lens into why as epidemiologists we’ve been so concerned about global vaccine equity,” Brownstein added. “It’s a recognition that with not enough people around the globe immunized, it creates more opportunities for variants to emerge, and this is a very good example of that.”
(CALIFORNIA) — Yosemite National Park officials warned visitors not to feed or approach wildlife after a girl was attacked by a buck.
The girl, whose identity has not been made public, was approaching a deer being fed by other visitors when the animal became spooked and charged her with his antlers, the park service said on Wednesday.
She was taken to Yosemite Medical Clinic to be treated for deep wounds on her arm and chest lacerations, officials said.
“It is illegal to feed or approach wildlife in Yosemite! While some animals, including deer, might get used to people approaching them, they spook easily and will defend themselves if people get too close or startle them,” officials posted on Wednesday.
Earlier this year, another National Park visitor was sentenced to four days in jail for willfully remaining, approaching and photographing wildlife within 100 yards, according to an October press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Samantha R. Dehring was at Roaring Mountain in Yellowstone National Park on May 10, 2021, when visitors noticed a grizzly bear and her three cubs. While other visitors backed away, Dehring remained and continued to take pictures until the adult bear charged her.
“Wildlife in Yellowstone National Park are, indeed, wild. The park is not a zoo where animals can be viewed within the safety of a fenced enclosure. They roam freely in their natural habitat and when threatened will react accordingly,” said U.S. Attorney Bob Murray in the press release. “Approaching a sow grizzly with cubs is absolutely foolish. Here, pure luck is why Dehring is a criminal defendant and not a mauled tourist.”
Dehring pled guilty and was sentenced to four days in custody with a year of unsupervised probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.
In addition, she was ordered to make a $1,000 community service payment to Yellowstone Forever Wildlife Protection Fundt, according to the press release.
Dehring was banned from Yellowstone National Park for a year.
Yosemite officials on Wednesday urged visitors to stay away from wild animals.
“Please, for the protection of these wild animals and for the safety of all visitors, always keep your distance!” they said. “This is not how we want anyone’s visit to Yosemite to end.”
(NEW YORK) — Waning immunity has become a focal point in the pandemic.
COVID-19 cases among those fully vaccinated against the virus have been cited by several state public health officials as partly responsible for recent surges in cases. They were also behind the push for boosters for all adults ahead of federal authorization — and the reason for boosting in the first place.
“There’s no doubt that immunity wanes. It wanes in everyone. It’s more dangerous in the elderly, but it’s across all age groups,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House chief medical adviser, said earlier this month, citing data from Israel and the U.K., where more people were vaccinated sooner and both began to first document waning immunity.
Experts stress that the vaccines remain highly effective against severe COVID-19 illness, and vaccinated people continue to share a lower burden of hospitalizations and deaths among COVID-19 patients as cases and hospitalizations are on the rise again in the U.S.
The data is limited and hard to track, though knowing more about breakthrough infections is an important tool in responding to the pandemic, experts say.
Vaccinated COVID-19 cases always expected
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracking COVID-19 case rates by vaccination status since April shows a relatively flat line for vaccinated people that started to slope up in July — though not nearly as steeply as case rates among unvaccinated people.
Breakthrough cases were always expected — and expected to go up over time, Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told ABC News.
“The reason is, first of all, more people are vaccinated,” he said. “The more people who are vaccinated relative to being unvaccinated, the more likely it is that a person who gets sick is going to be vaccinated, just by pure numbers.”
As the number of unvaccinated people who get COVID-19 also continues to increase, it may look like more cases are breakthrough when comparing cases by vaccination status, he said.
COVID-19 Case Rates by Vaccination Status
Another reason for increasing cases is due to waning immunity, Dowdy said.
“There is this waning immunity to getting sick — not getting really sick, but getting infected, getting that initial illness,” he said. “And so over time, people have a little bit less protection against that.”
No vaccine provides 100% protection, though they are intended to help prevent you from getting very sick if infected. The initial immune system response is ramped up for several months after vaccination, though those antibodies “die out over time,” leaving behind a “memory response” to help protect against severe infection, Dowdy said.
When that happens varies from person to person depending on factors like age and health. In general, Pfizer’s data on its COVID-19 vaccine shows a decrease from an initial 96% efficacy to 83.7% efficacy after four months. A study by Kaiser Permanente Southern California found that efficacy against infections declined from 88% during the first month after full vaccination to 47% after five months.
A booster dose brings the immune response back up to a “robust” level seen one month after two doses, Pfizer found.
Booster doses are now eligible for all adults as COVID-19 transmission remains high in many parts of the country, “creating additional challenges and exposures for those who are vaccinated,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
“Just based on probability, with enough exposures to the virus, you will have breakthrough infections,” he said. “But those breakthrough infections doesn’t mean the vaccines aren’t working — it just means over time, the probability of getting infected through an exposure to the virus, that probability increases.”
“Despite that, we know that the vast majority of those breakthrough infections are mild, especially much milder than they would be if someone wasn’t previously vaccinated, and they don’t lead to anywhere near the same levels of severe illness and death,” he said.
In September, unvaccinated individuals had a 5.8 times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19, and a 14 times greater risk of dying from it, as compared to vaccinated individuals, according to CDC data.
COVID-19 Death Rates by Vaccination Status
Waning immunity a ‘real phenomenon’
Although the vast majority of COVID-19 infections and severe hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated, cases in vaccinated people do appear to be on the rise due to waning immunity, according to health officials.
In New Mexico, health officials have cited waning immunity as one of the reasons behind a recent surge in COVID-19 cases. The most recent state data shows that nearly 29% of cases and 21% of hospitalizations from Oct. 18 to Nov. 15 were among vaccinated people.
Similarly, health officials in Vermont, the most vaccinated state by population, have pointed to waning immunity as partly behind its worst COVID-19 surge yet.
“Waning of vaccine immunity is a real phenomenon,” Dr. Mark Levine, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health, said during a press briefing in mid-November.
Vermont also leads the nation in administering booster doses to people ages 65 and up. This week, Levine told reporters that the health department’s data reaffirms that “booster shots are working.” Case rates among those ages 65 and up in the state make up only 10-12% of COVID-19 cases, he said. The most recent state data also shows case rates among that population have decreased 14% week-over-week while increasing for every other age group.
“The need for a booster does not mean the COVID-19 vaccines have failed to do their job,” he said. “They are highly protective against the worst effects of COVID. But the protection we get from a vaccine can start to wear off over time.”
“For COVID-19, booster shots are especially important for those at higher risk who got vaccinated early on, like the majority of Vermonters who fall into this category and were vaccinated very early in this year. And at a time when COVID-19 transmission is high, when we’re indoors more and getting together over the holidays, boosters really do benefit us all,” he added.
Challenges in tracking breakthrough infections
Tracking breakthrough cases can be challenging, and most efforts likely represent an undercount due to a lack of testing of asymptomatic cases and reporting of at-home test results, according to The Pandemic Tracking Collective, a group of former members of The Covid Tracking Project that offers data solutions for tracking the pandemic. Breakthrough data is also not standardized across states, and not all report breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths, the group said in a recent report.
In this patchwork of breakthrough infection-related collection, 36 U.S. jurisdictions report cases, 34 report hospitalizations and 37 report deaths, according to The Pandemic Tracking Collective report. At the time of its report, the CDC tracked cases for 16 jurisdictions and deaths for 15 jurisdictions by vaccination status, updated monthly. That has since increased to 24 and 20 jurisdictions, respectively, in the tracker’s latest update this week. The CDC also reports on hospitalizations by vaccination status in 14 states.
“Now we have data on COVID-19 case counts and hospitalizations at our fingertips. What we lack is nuanced and detailed information on vaccine breakthroughs, which will be key to ending this pandemic,” Jessica Malaty Rivera, science communication lead at The Pandemic Tracking Collective, said in a statement.
Breakthrough infections can help scientists better understand declining vaccine efficacy and detect new variants, the group said. Having better data can also help enact effective policies, Brownstein said.
“It’s very hard to make policy decisions with imperfect data,” he said. “Being able to understand the extent to which we’re seeing breakthrough infections and their severity is important to make decisions around things like boosters, decisions around requirements for those who’ve been exposed or infected.”
“When you have that kind of data, it can tell you very clearly what the burden of disease is in vaccinated people,” he continued. “But without that, we have very limited information. So I think that is one of the real deficiencies in public health surveillance, is a lack of clarity on the impact of this virus among vaccinated and unvaccinated.”
For Dowdy, data on breakthrough cases can provide “valuable information as we think about how we can best fight this pandemic,” including the duration and level of protection that the vaccines are providing. Though he warned against reading the data as “trying to split the population in two.”
“At the end of the day, we’re all in this together, vaccinated or unvaccinated,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Classic car shows have long been a staple of car enthusiasm — a place for gearheads to gather with fellow enthusiasts to show off their antique rides.
“The vibe is usually really, really chill. It usually happens pretty early in the morning on the weekend,” says Kristen Lee, deputy editor of automotive news site, The Drive. “People bring their dogs, they get all their cars polished up and they come and they park, and they kind of just walk around and admire everybody’s ride.”
A recent show in New York City featured the usual classics. Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Corvettes and Chevelles, Pontiac Firebirds, and Dodge Challengers from the ’50s and ’60s were all well represented. The cars weren’t the only throwbacks either — music from Billy Joel and Elvis Presley echoed around the event from carefully placed speakers.
But Lee says if you’ve been to enough of these shows, you might start to notice some trends.
“For me, as a kind of a showgoer for so long, it’s kind of felt like a gatekept community. Like, no one, obviously, has turned me away, but a lot of the shows that I grew up going to was a lot of people my parents’ age,” says Lee, adding: “it never really looked like something I could participate in.”
And an older audience tends to favor older cars, says Bradley Brownell, a writer at automotive website Jalopnik.
“There’s always been this line of delineation at 1973 with the oil crisis,” he says.
Brownell says 1973 is an important year in car culture because it marks the beginning of what some call the “Malaise Era,” a term popularized after President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 “Crisis of Confidence” speech, despite the fact the word “malaise” never appears in the speech. New regulations from the federal government designed to crack down on poor fuel economy resulted in a 1970s automobile market that many complained was not as exciting as the decade prior – and echoes from that time reverberated for decades.
“Traditional enthusiasts will tell you that after ’73, everything’s garbage. ‘It’s emissions controls. fuel injection, it’s impossible to work on,'” says Brownell.
But Brownell isn’t a traditional enthusiast. He’s the co-founder of “Radwood” — a car show that caters to vehicles that came after the Malaise Era, specifically “between 1980 and 1999.”
And it all started with one of his own cars: a 1983 Porsche 944.
“I loved that car,” he says. “And I invested so much time, and occasionally money into that car.”
But the energy that went into the Porsche wasn’t always appreciated, Brownell says, which is where the idea for Radwood was born.
“I took it to a car show and when I went to pay the entry [fee], they were like ‘are you sure you want to come into this car show? You know what we’re doing here, right?'” says Brownell. “I kind of had that feeling like, ‘there needs to be a place for people like me, where I have so much emotional investment in this car, and I love this car, but it’s kind of a misfit.'”
He says the types of cars you’ll see at Radwood vary based on the region in which the show is taking place, but can feature everything from Geo Metro convertibles, to Ferrari 348s and Lamborghini Diablos. Porsche and BMW are often the best-represented marques, however.
“That’s the crazy thing about Radwood is literally everything from that era is welcome and encouraged and appreciated.”
Brownell says on average every show also features at least one Delorean – the car from the 1985 film “Back to the Future.” And it’s not just cars that are setting their flux capacitors back a few decades, according to Lee.
“Radwood kind of embodies, like, a very powerful nostalgic vibe. So people play a lot of eighties music, people dress up in eighties attire.”
The first Radwood took place in southern California in 2017, and since then it has travelled to more than a dozen cities across the country. Brownell says over the years, the show has attracted car enthusiasts from all walks of life, from “people who weren’t alive when these cars were built to people who owned them brand new.”
Lee says the success of Radwood and shows like it highlight a broader shift in car culture.
“These new shows feel a lot more inclusive, there’s a lot less gatekeeping. It feels like a safer space,” says Lee. “I think that’s – that’s also indicative of the way that automotive enthusiasm is moving as well.”
“What we’re seeing in some of the mainstream media and stuff like that – they say that ‘car culture is dying, with the introduction of the electric vehicle, car enthusiasts just no longer exist.’ And that’s not true.” says Chad Kirchner, Editor In Chief of electric car news site EV Pulse.
Kirchner says there’s a new type of car enthusiasm brewing amid the broader shift to electric power in the automotive industry. That includes everything from Tesla-specific tuner shops to homemade EV conversions of gas-powered cars.
“People on TikTok that I see that are electrifying Chargers and Challengers and all of this stuff, just homebrewing this,” he says.
Kirchner says EV enthusiasm requires a different set of skills than traditional gearheads may be used to, but it still brings out the same passion for cars that made Radwood a success.
“Sometimes hacking, sometimes it requires engineering, but what it definitely does require is enthusiasm,” says Kirchner.
That’s why he recently teamed up with Brownell to create another car show called “Autopia 2099.” The show, set to take place in early December in Los Angeles, is focused on all-electric vehicles.
“It’s supposed to be a bunch of people hanging out and expressing their enthusiasm for electrified propulsion, whether it is a brand new Tesla or whether it is – maybe somebody has a GM EV1,” says Kirchner.
“One of the things we want to do is we want to break down the barriers of fancy EV technology. We want people who are curious about EVs and how they work and how they charge to come out and meet people who actually own them and drive them every day,” says Brownell.
Brownell says they’re expecting to see everything from EV-converted Mustangs and BMWs to an electric VW Microbus. One car not likely to make it to Autopia 2099, however, is Brownell’s own EV project car: A Porsche Boxster into which he’s planning to install a Tesla motor. He says the goal is for the car to develop around 1200 horsepower.
“That’s part of why it’s not done yet. I’m afraid of what my own brain has thought up.”
(LOUISVILLE) — Two people were gunned down, including a 15-year-old boy, on Thanksgiving morning in Louisville.
The city of 600,000 residents saw its 174th and 175th homicides of the year in a span of six hours, breaking the all-time record of 173 set in 2020, according to Louisville Police Department crime statistics.
Louisville eclipsed its deadliest year in the same week that Milwaukee, Wisconsin, (183 homicides) and Columbus, Ohio, (178 homicides), surpassed annual records.
Philadelphia recorded its 500th homicide on Wednesday, tying an all-time high set in 1990 with more than a month yet to go in the year. This week, Washington, D.C., police also investigated its 200th homicide of the year, the most to occur in the nation’s capital in 18 years.
“This is not a livable way for kids to grow and thrive and grow into their dreams and ambitions,” Christopher 2X, a Louisville community activist who runs Game Changers, a nonprofit dedicated to helping vulnerable youth in the city, told ABC affiliate station WHAS in Louisville.
The latest homicide in Louisville unfolded around 2:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving. A 15-year-old boy, identified as Cortez Duncan Jr. by the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office, was suffering from multiple gunshot wounds in the Shawnee neighborhood in west Louisville when police found him, according to Dwight Mitchell, a spokesperson for the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department.
Mitchell said the boy was taken to University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
A second 15-year-old boy with bullet wounds was discovered two blocks away in the Chickasaw neighborhood and taken to a hospital in critical condition, Mitchell said. He said investigators suspect the two teenagers were shot in the same incident. No arrests had been made as of Friday afternoon.
Around 9 p.m. Wednesday, a 48-year-old man, identified by the coroner’s office as Desmond Lamont Bell of Louisville, was found shot dead in a car in the Highview neighborhood in the northeast section of the city, police said. No suspects have been arrested.
Of the 175 homicide victims this year, about 75% were Black, according to an analysis of the police data by the Louisville Courier Journal.
(NEW YORK) — A healthy athlete all his life, Jared Butler entered his college basketball physical exam as the last step before he could step on the court. But an unexpected diagnosis of a potentially lethal heart condition put him on the sidelines while he anxiously wondered if his basketball career was over.
“After a month of testing, we found out that I had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy,” Butler told ABC News. “I had never heard the term before. I was worried what this would mean for my playing career — and ultimately my life.”
That was three years ago. Today, Butler is coming off a starring role in an NCAA championship run at Baylor University and playing as a rookie in the NBA for the Utah Jazz. He has been able to continue his career thanks to routine cardiac evaluation and support by his family, doctors and team.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is this most common genetically inherited heart disease, estimated to affect between 1 in 200 and 1 in 500 people worldwide, according to a 2015 study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The condition causes the heart muscle to become too thick, which could lead to life-altering conditions such as arrhythmias, heart failure, stroke or death.
Dr. Steve Ommen, cardiologist and medical director of the Mayo Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said the disease is not gender-selective and has no ethnic or geographic hotspots.
“The disease can manifest at any time and at any age among family members carrying the mutation,” said Dr. Seema Mital, pediatric cardiologist and head of cardiovascular research at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. “Some may even go without any evidence of the disease throughout their lifetime.”
Once someone, like Butler, is found to have the disease, immediate family members are tested for the genetic mutation. In Butler’s case, his mother, Juanea, also tested positive for genetic markers of the disease. She will also be monitored regularly by a cardiologist.
“I found out that I am the culprit. I am the one who carries the gene” said Juanea. “I was really confused and in a state of shock. I grew up active as well and never had symptoms or noted to have heart problems.”
Mother and son were symptom-free their whole lives. But Dr. Michael Ackerman, genetic cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic and Jared Butler’s physician, said people and physicians should be aware of the most-concerning symptoms, including chest pain, fainting and shortness of breath.
The disease can be especially risky for professional athletes because it increases the risk of sudden cardiac death. But thanks to the medical field having a better understanding of this disease, not every athlete needs to give up their career.
“Every athlete [with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy] doesn’t need to give up what they’re doing,” said Mital. “Having the disease means you are going to be followed medically to make sure we can prevent heart failure and death. In fact, we now know that patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can live a long, healthy life without any complications.”
Ackerman has treated over 700 athletes with genetic cardiac conditions, a majority of whom do not require extensive medical procedures.
“For Jared, we made a plan with him, his family and his team and reassess that plan frequently and alter it as needed,” said Ackerman. “This is not the new and improved way, this is just the approved and best way.”
Ommen added that “shared decision-making” between a doctor and patient is meant to educate patients about the potential risks and make a group decision that is best for them.
He’s more concerned about the 85% of the patients — assuming 1 in 500 Americans have the condition — who are living undiagnosed. To raise awareness, Butler and his mom decided to launch a campaign, “Could it be HCM?” in conjunction with Bristol Myers Squibb.
Ackerman added the second aspect of the campaign is knowing your family history. Having that knowledge about the sudden death of a family member could be life saving information
“Young patients come to the doctor complaining of shortness of breath, or chest pressure, and they are mistakenly diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma,” said Ommen. “Campaigns like ‘Could it be HCM?’ are trying to raise awareness that if a young person does come in with symptoms, think about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy as one of the potential causes.”
There is no cure, but Mital said that there are medications and surgical techniques to help alleviate symptoms and a lot of research invested in finding treatments to slow progression of the disease is in the future.
“Finding out you have the condition is just the beginning. It has been a long journey, and it has changed my life,” said Butler. “But I find myself lucky that I do not have symptoms and I can continue playing basketball.”
Lily Nedda Dastmalchi, D.O., M.A., is a physician and cardiology fellow at Temple University Hospital and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
(WASHINGTON) — As people travel to visit loved ones for the holiday season, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is warning that unruly passengers on flights will not be tolerated and may face prosecution.
“Passengers who assault, intimidate or threaten violence against flight crews and flight attendants do more than harm those employees; they prevent the performance of critical duties that help ensure safe air travel,” the Attorney General wrote in a memo to U.S. Attorneys on Wednesday. “Similarly, when passengers commit violent acts against other passengers in the close confines of a commercial aircraft, the conduct endangers everyone aboard.”
He urged all 52 U.S. attorney’s offices to prioritize the prosecution of federal crimes that “endanger the safety of passengers, flight crews, and flight attendants.”
On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screened 2.3 million people, according to an agency spokesperson.
“The figure represents 88% versus pre-pandemic volume screened in 2019 for that same day of the week,” the administration said.
Airline crews have reported incidents in which visibly drunk passengers verbally abused them, shoved them, threw trash at them, kicked seats, defiled restrooms and, in some cases, even punched them in the face.
A Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson confirmed to ABC News earlier this month that the administration has referred 37 of the “most egregious” cases to the FBI out of the 227 unruly passenger cases they’ve initiated enforcement action on.
Representatives from the Justice Department and FAA began meeting in August, according to a joint statement, “to develop an efficient method for referring the most serious unruly-passenger cases for potential criminal prosecution.”
The FAA said it has received more than 5,000 reports from airlines of unruly passengers since the start of the year.
In his memo on Wednesday, Garland urged U.S. attorney’s offices to talk to state and local law enforcement. He directed them to “reaffirm” the DOJ’s willingness to help.
“The Department of Justice is committed to using resources to do it’s part to prevent violence, intimidation, threats of violence, and other criminal behavior that endangers the safety of passengers, flight crews, flight attendants, on commercial aircraft,” Garland wrote.
ABC News Mina Kaji and Amanda Maile contributed to this report.
(BERLIN) — Germany passed a grim milestone on Thursday: 100,000 deaths from COVID-19. In recent weeks, the situation has spiraled out of control as cases have spiked and intensive care beds have become scarce in some regions.
The country has one of the lowest rates vaccination rates in western Europe — only 68% of the population has been vaccinated, according to recent health statistics.
“Sadly, the coronavirus still hasn’t been beaten. Every day we see new records as far as the number of infections are concerned,” newly elected German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a press conference on Wednesday.
As of Friday morning, the country’s disease control agency, the RKI, said a record 76,414 cases had been reported in the past 24 hours.
With winter around the corner, Europe has once again become the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis. Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported deaths due to COVID-19 had reached 4,200 a day, double the death rate at the end of September. The organization warned that a further 700,000 people in the European region could die by March given the current trend.
The rise in cases is mainly do to the more contagious Delta variant and the fact that more people are staying indoors as winter begins. The number of people who remain unvaccinated is around 54%, according to WHO Executive Director Robb Butler.
“Let me be absolutely clear, the majority of people in ICU, in intensive care units and ICU today, are the unvaccinated” Butler said in an interview with Sky News.
Germany, like many countries around Europe, has moved ahead with stricter measures to cope, some of which apply to the entire country. Most blanket rules affect the unvaccinated population, which now need to show proof of vaccination, recent recovery or a negative COVID-19 test to enter public transport. Germany already had rules in place requiring similar proof when entering indoor spaces like bars, restaurants and entertainment facilities.
Yet each of Germany’s 16 states can also choose to implement their own measures. In Bavaria and Saxony where vaccination rates are low and hospitalization rates are rising to worrying levels, stricter lockdowns have been put in place. The seasonally popular Christmas markets were canceled for the second year in a row.
In Bavaria, a region with 13 million residents, politicians face grave crises in dealing with the growing number of cases.
“The situation is overwhelming and just keeps escalating,” the region’s leader, Markus Söder, told reporters. News agency DPA reported that a military plane will fly seriously ill patients from the Bavarian town of Memmingen to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia on Friday afternoon.
Söder is a proponent of making vaccinations mandatory.
“Compulsory vaccination does not violate the right to freedom — far more, it is a precondition for us to win back our freedom,” he wrote in an op-ed with politician Winfried Kretschmann of German region Baden-Württemberg in Tuesday’s newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Germany is mulling compulsory vaccination after Austria became the first European country to announce a vaccine mandate. It will go into effect February 2022. The announcement brought tens of thousands of people out to protest on the streets of Vienna last weekend.
On Monday, the country went into its fourth national lockdown, set to last for 10 days and likely to be extended to 20 days. Although less strict than previous lockdowns of 2020, citizens may only leave their houses for specific purposes, such as buying groceries, exercising or going to the doctor. Only 66% of the country of 8.9 million people have been vaccinated.
With the rise in COVID cases, particularly in northern Europe, and the introduction of new measures restricting access of unvaccinated people from public life, tensions seem to be flaring up in certain populations. Belgium and the Netherlands saw violent protests against lockdown measures last weekend.
Complicating matters is a worrying new virus variant B.1.1.529 which been discovered in southern Africa. As of Friday morning, a number of countries have implemented travel bans, including Germany, Italy and the U.K.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.1 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 775,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 59.1% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the new is developing. All times Eastern:
Nov 26, 9:24 am
Belgium confirms 1st European case of new variant
Belgium’s health department has confirmed its first case of the new B.1.1.529 variant.
The patient, a woman, had traveled to Belgium from Egypt via Istanbul. She developed symptoms 11 days after her return and was not vaccinated. Her family members have tested negative for COVID and the woman is not in a life-threatening condition, officials said.
Hong Kong has two confirmed cases and Israel has one other confirmed case of the B.1.1.529 variant. Several cases have been reported in South Africa and Botswana.
The World Health Organization is meeting Friday to discuss the new variant.
Nov 26, 4:04 am
EU to propose travel ban on southern Africa over new variant
The European Union’s executive branch said Friday that it wants to suspend air travel to the bloc from southern Africa due to concerns over a newly identified variant of the novel coronavirus.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the announcement via Twitter, saying a proposal “to activate the emergency brake to stop air travel from the Southern Africa region” will be made “in close coordination” with EU member states.
The variant, called B.1.1.529, was first detected in South Africa earlier this week and has quickly spread. At least 22 cases have been confirmed in the country so far, according to South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases. South African scientist Tulio de Oliveira told reporters Thursday that the new variant carries “a very high number of mutations,” but it’s unclear whether it will limit the effectiveness of vaccines.
Several cases of B.1.1.529 have since been confirmed in neighboring Botswana as well as in Hong Kong and Israel. The cases detected in Hong Kong and Israel were linked to travelers who had arrived from southern Africa.
The World Health Organization will meet on Friday to assess B.1.1.529 and determine whether it should be designated a variant “of interest” or “of concern.”
Nov 25, 8:01 pm
UK issues travel restrictions due to concerns over new variant
The United Kingdom announced Thursday new travel restrictions for six countries over concerns about a new variant of the novel coronavirus that emerged in South Africa.
The variant, known as B.1.1.529, has also been found in Botswana and Hong Kong in travelers from southern Africa. It has not yet been detected in the U.K., officials said.
“The early indications we have of this variant is that it may be more transmissible than the delta variant, and the vaccines that we currently have may be less effective against it,” U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said during a briefing Thursday.
Starting midday on Friday, all flights from six southern African countries — South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Botswana — will be temporarily suspended, and travelers entering the U.K. from those countries after 4 a.m. on Sunday must quarantine in a government-approved hotel for 10 days.
Currently, B.1.1.529 is not designated by the World Health Organization as a variant “of concern” or “of interest.” So far, 22 cases have been confirmed in South Africa, according to the country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases.
The WHO’s technical working group is scheduled to meet Friday to assess the new variant and may decide whether to give it a name from the Greek alphabet, based on its naming system for variants of concern and variants of interest.
The virus evolves as it spreads and many new variants, including those with worrying mutations, often just die out. Scientists monitor for possible changes that could be more transmissible or deadly, but sorting out whether new variants will have a public health impact can take time.
Nov 25, 10:18 am
Arizona hospital enters ‘crisis care’ operating mode
The Copper Queen Community Hospital in Bisbee, Arizona, is “operating in crisis care” due to the latest surge of COVID-19 cases in the state, local ABC affiliate KNXV reported.
The hospital only had 13 beds available and was “really struggling,” according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.
The state reported its 84,813th COVID-19 hospitalization on Tuesday, according to health department data. Arizona reported more than 4,000 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday.
(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — Prosecutors for the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery said they believe the cellphone video showing Arbery’s final moments and his death was the evidence that clinched the guilty verdict.
“Not a lot of homicides are on video,” Larissa Ollivierre, a Cobb County assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, told 20/20. “I think for this case in particular, that was really important because I just don’t know that we would’ve gotten the verdict that we did had it not been for that video.”
On Wednesday, Travis McMichael, who fatally shot Arbery in February 2020, was convicted by a Glynn County jury on all nine charges, including malice murder and four counts of felony murder.
His father, Gregory McMichael, was found not guilty of malice murder but was convicted on all other charges, including four counts of felony murder.
The McMichaels’ neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, who recorded the incident on a cellphone, was found guilty on six charges, including three of the felony murder counts.
All three men face up to life in prison. A sentencing date has yet to be announced.
Bryan shot the cellphone video from the driver’s seat of his pickup truck as he followed Arbery, who can be seen running alongside a residential street in the Satilla Shores neighborhood outside of Brunswick, Georgia. The video then shows Arbery tussling with Travis McMichael over the shotgun he was holding, as his father, Gregory McMichael stood in the bed of his pickup truck, also holding a gun. A gunshot is heard, and the video shows Arbery struggling with Travis McMichael for the shotgun. There is a second shot, and Arbery can be seen punching Travis McMichael, who then fires a shot at point-blank range, killing Arbery.
In addition to the video, Cobb County senior assistant district attorney Linda Dunikoski said the statements the defendants made after Arbery was killed was another key piece of evidence for their case. Travis McMichael claimed that he and his father suspected Arbery had just burglarized a home under construction in their neighborhood.
Defense attorneys had argued that Arbery was shot in self-defense when he resisted a citizen’s arrest. Prosecutors, meanwhile, alleged the defendants pursued and murdered Arbery because of incorrect “assumptions and driveway decisions” they made that the Black man running through their neighborhood had committed a burglary.
“Those statements were very, very important because those statements showed that they had absolutely no knowledge of any crime that he had committed,” Dunikoski said.
Initially after the incident, police questioned and then released the McMichaels, as well as Bryan. It wasn’t until the video was leaked online months later, sparking a widespread public outcry, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case that the three men were eventually arrested and charged with murder.
Dunikoski and Cobb County assistant district attorney Paul Camarillo said they were concerned at first about the racial makeup of the jury in this case, which was almost entirely white except for one Black person.
“But I think deep down, we knew as a team, it wasn’t going to matter,” Camarillo said. “I had faith that … we were going to get a conviction, no matter what the makeup of the jury was.”
When the guilty verdicts were announced, Dunikoski said it was a “very, very emotional” moment for Arbery’s family, especially his mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, who refused to give up her crusade for getting justice for her son.
“We could tell that the waves of relief were resonating through their bodies,” she said. “Wanda Cooper-Jones took one look at us and you could tell just everything fell away from her. She was crying and sobbing … but I think it was some relief that she’d finally gotten the justice that she was so desperately hoping for.”
Ahmaud Arbery’s mother said she is feeling especially thankful this Thanksgiving, after the three men were found guilty of her son’s murder.
“Today is Thanksgiving and I’m really, really thankful. My family and I are really, really thankful for the verdict we got yesterday,” Wanda Cooper-Jones told Good Morning America.
Arbery’s father Marcus Arbery told ABC News Wednesday that he had been skeptical that the case would result in any guilty verdicts.
Following the verdicts, attorneys for the McMichaels said they will appeal — a process that can start once sentencing is done.
“This is a very difficult day for Travis McMichael and Greg McMichael,” Travis McMichael’s defense attorney Jason Sheffield told reporters. “These are two men who honestly believe that what they were doing was the right thing to do. However, the Glynn County jury has spoken, they have found them guilty and they will be sentenced.”
Bryan’s attorney, Kevin Gough, told reporters he was “very disappointed” in the verdict.
“But we have to respect that verdict. That’s the American way,” he said, adding that he plans to file a motion for a new trial on behalf of Bryan next week.
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin, William Hutchinson and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
Watch the full story on the Ahmaud Arbery case and trial on “20/20” Friday at 9 p.m. ET
