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COVID-19 live updates: Hospitalizations drop but deaths remain high

October 7, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.

More than 708,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.8 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Just 65.8% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the CDC.

Latest headlines:
-Biden: Vaccination requirements result in more people getting vaccinated
-Hospitalizations drop but deaths remain high
-Pfizer submits kids vaccine emergency use authorization request to FDA

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern.

Oct 07, 4:14 pm
Biden: Vaccination requirements result in more people getting vaccinated

COVID-19 cases are down 40% and hospitalizations have dropped 25% in the last month, President Joe Biden said Thursday during a visit to Illinois to promote vaccinations.

In the month since Biden announced a six-part plan to fight COVID-19, the president said there’s been “real progress across the board,” including with vaccine equity.

Biden said recent data shows Latino Americans, Black Americans, Native Americans and Asian Americans are vaccinated at comparable rates to white Americans.

“Our work on equity isn’t done, but it is an important piece of progress,” he said.

Biden said a new report released Thursday shows vaccination requirements result in more people getting vaccinated.

“In the past few weeks, as more and more organizations have implemented their own requirements, they’ve seen vaccination rates rise dramatically,” Biden said. “For example, the Department of Defense has gone from 67% of active duty forces being vaccinated to 97%. … We’re also seeing this at colleges… We’re going to see it in health systems around the country.”

Vaccination rates are also good for the economy as they help send people back to work, Biden said.

Oct 07, 1:37 pm
78% of adults have had 1 dose: White House

Seventy-eight percent of adults have now had at least one vaccine dose, White House COVID-19 data director Cyrus Shahpar tweeted.

Oct 07, 12:35 pm
Hospitalizations drop but deaths remain high

Hospitalizations in the U.S. have dropped from 104,000 to about 69,000 over the last five weeks, according to federal data.

More than a third of the drop was in Florida, where there are about 13,000 fewer patients compared to just over one month ago.

Daily COVID-19-related hospital admissions are also down nationally by 13.6% in the last week, according to federal data.

But states like Alaska and West Virginia, are still experiencing record-breaking surges, while Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, Idaho and Texas still have ICU capacities near 10%.

Overnight, the U.S. reported nearly 2,000 COVID-19 related fatalities.

Around 1,400 virus-related deaths are being reported each day, which is nearly 7.5 times higher than in mid-July, according to federal data.

Texas is reporting thousands of deaths each week.

ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos

Oct 07, 9:00 am
United expects travel surge in December

United Airlines expects a travel surge and plans to fly 3,500 daily domestic flights in December, making it the largest schedule since the start of the pandemic.

Flight searches for the holidays are up 16% on the airline’s website and app compared to 2019.

Florida and ski resorts are expected to be the hottest destinations.

ABC News’ Sam Sweeney

US Marshals find, clear LA Dodgers fan who resembled fugitive John Ruffo

October 7, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Marshals have located and fingerprinted the Los Angeles Dodgers fan seen on camera during a televised 2016 home game who they said closely resembled a long-missing and most wanted fugitive. But they have determined he is not their man.

The identification came just 48 hours after the U.S. Marshals went public with a photograph of the Dodger fan, eager to determine if he was John Ruffo, a swindler convicted of a $353 million bank fraud, who has been on the run for more than 23 years. The manhunt for Ruffo is the subject of season 2 of the ABC News podcast, “Have You Seen This Man.”

A relative of the Dodgers fan alerted the U.S. Marshals Tuesday night that the man seated five rows behind home plate during the 2016 game was, in fact, a different person altogether. He has requested privacy so ABC News is not naming him.

To be certain the man was not Ruffo, the Marshals conducted a swift background investigation and on Thursday traveled to his home to verify fingerprints. The read out proved it – they had the wrong guy.

The discovery put an end to one of the most vexing aspects of the manhunt – a lead that for more than five years remained unresolved for the U.S. Marshals. It meant the investigators would have to turn their attention to other leads in the decades-long search for Ruffo.

“The ones that are the worst are when you have no resolution. That’s what bothers me, is that you just don’t know, is that him or not? The Dodgers footage, is that him? Is that Ruffo? Or is it not?,” said Deputy Marshal Danielle Shimchick, the lead investigator on the Ruffo case.

Short and balding, the unassuming one-time computer salesman is now 66 years old. He is believed to have fled with approximately $13 million. There has not been a confirmed sighting of him since he stopped at an ATM in New York City in November 1998, the day he was supposed to report for a 17-year prison term. His car was found at New York’s JFK Airport.

The look-alike baseball fan from the L.A. suburbs had put his hands on some terrific seats, placing him just off center frame every time the television feed of the game focused on the batter. It was in that prime location that he caught the eye of John Ruffo’s cousin, Carmine Pascale, of New Hampshire.

Pascale was watching the Dodgers-Red Sox game on television on Aug. 5, 2016, when he said he spotted the familiar-looking man seated four rows behind home plate.

“I’m watching and right behind home plate, they did a close up of the batter and there’s Johnny. And I said, “Holy Christ, there he is,” said Pascale, a cousin who last saw Ruffo after his arrest in 1998. “And I immediately called the Marshals. I froze the frame, kept it right in front of me.”

He phoned the tip into the US Marshals, who had placed him on the agency’s 15 most wanted list.

Deputy Pat Valdenor, an L.A.-based Marshall, was assigned to followed up on the initial tip. He said it’s rare to get a tip accompanied with video evidence. He said the resemblance was strong.

“It does look like him. It could be him,” Valdenor said. “So that was my starting point. That was the lead that I got.”

Valdenor sought help from the Dodgers, who identified the seat in Dodgers Stadium where the man had been seated: Section 1 Dugout Club, Row EE, Seat 10. He sought through baseball team’s help in identifying who bought the ticket.

The Dodgers identified the ticket holder, but he had given the ticket away. The coveted seat behind home plate passed through so many hands, Valdenor spent weeks tracking the ticket but was ultimately unable to track it to the man who actually attended the game.

It was Valdenor who traveled to a Los Angeles suburb Thursday to fingerprint the man who had attended the game.

“You can clearly see the difference between the fingerprints,” Valdenor said. “Even without the fingerprints, there was the birth certificate, and I had his whole family in front of me — three generations. I could see it wasn’t Ruffo.”

Even though the manhunt for Ruffo goes forward, he could be satisfied that he had not missed a chance to catch Ruffo.

This report is part of Season 2 of the ABC News podcast, “Have You Seen This Man?,” hosted by “The View’s” Sunny Hostin. It follows the U.S. Marshals’ ongoing mission to find John Ruffo, who engineered one of the most outlandish frauds in U.S. history, vanished in 1998 and has never been found. A four-part Hulu Original limited series on the global search for Ruffo is currently in production from ABC News Longform. MORE HERE

4-year-old girl among 4 killed in Alabama flooding

October 7, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(ARAB, Ala.) — Four people, including a 4-year-old, have died in devastating flooding in Alabama.

Up to 13 inches of rain fell — with rates as high as 5 inches per hour — in Jefferson and Shelby counties, which includes Birmingham and hard-hit Pelham.

A 4-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman died as a result of the flooding in Marshall County, located in northern Alabama, the county coroner’s office said.

In Hoover, near Birmingham, a 23-year-old-woman and 23-year-old man were found dead in their submerged car Thursday after being swept away in floodwaters Wednesday night, Hoover police said.

In Pelham, fire officials said they responded to 282 calls for service. Officials conducted 82 rescues from homes and over a dozen rescues from cars.

Schools in Pelham are closed Thursday due to the excessive flooding. A flash flood watch remains in effect through Thursday night.

The flash flooding threat is expanding Thursday into Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida.

Residents in Panama City, Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta and Asheville should be prepared for flooding.

East of Asheville, rainfall rates of 2 to 4 inches per hour have been reported. A state of emergency was issued in McDowell County, North Carolina.

By Friday, the Southeast will finally start to dry out as the heavy rain shifts into parts of the Appalachians and Mid-Atlantic.

Ahead of an unpredictable flu season, public health experts urge nation to sign up for flu shot

October 7, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The flu season is notorious for being difficult to predict. However, flu trends from last year and from other parts of the globe can help us make informed estimates.

So far, experts are on the fence if this year’s flu season may be mild like last year’s, or if it may take a turn for the worse. But experts do agree on one thing; we can do our part by getting vaccinated.

And according to newly released U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, about 52% of the U.S. population got a flu vaccination last flu season, which was similar to the prior season. The CDC and other public health agencies are trying to get even more people vaccinated this year because experts are worried about a worse flu season this year because population immunity is low due to a mild flu season last year.

“We are preparing for the return of the flu this season. The low level of flu activity last season could set us up for a severe season this year,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, speaking during a press event hosted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

With many Americans staying home, washing hands and practicing social distancing, last year’s flu season saw the lowest rates of positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths from the flu since the CDC started recording this data in 2005.

“It was the lowest influenza season we’d had in memory. It was really virtually no influenza,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease and preventative medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University, told ABC News.

Dr. Richard Webby, director of a World Health Organization Influenza Collaborating Center and infectious disease specialist, adds that it may be a “global phenomenon.”

“I think international travel has been low so, you know, just infected people moving around the globe and seeding other geographic spaces has been reduced,” Webby told ABC News.

And these changes have meant that there have been lower levels of the flu virus globally.

“The flu hasn’t really circulated for three successive seasons: southern hemisphere, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said.

The southern hemisphere – South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand – experiences its flu season during our summer. Their flu patterns can give us an idea of what to expect come fall in the U.S. And this past summer, the southern hemisphere experienced another low flu season.

“The flu is often in a cycle between the northern and southern hemispheres,” Adalja told ABC News. “There’s a high likelihood that it could also still be a mild flu season just because there’s less flu circulating on the planet, in general.”

But as COVID restrictions continue to evolve, southern hemisphere flu patterns may be less helpful for knowing what lies ahead. For example, COVID-19 restrictions are easing up in many places in the United States, but remain in place in parts of Australia, which is often a litmus test for the flu.

“I think that, generally speaking, we turned to, you know, other parts of the globe to make better predictions, and the unfortunate situation now is, given the complexity of COVID restrictions, travel pattern changes, it makes it a little bit more difficult to have a complete predictive lens on what might happen,” said Dr. John Brownstein, infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and ABC News contributor.

And as more people get vaccinated and return to work and social gatherings, along with children returning to school, there is a real possibility that this year’s flu season may be worse than last year’s.

“When they are infected with flu, they shed very large amounts of virus, more than adults and for longer periods of time,” Schaffner said. “They are a real distribution mechanism for the virus.”

Along with the potential for more spread, we may have slightly lower immunity to the flu.

“We have been through one and a half seasons, with no real flu circulation. So, it’s also possible that, as a population, our immunity to flu is a little bit lower,” Webby said.

Faced with the possibility of a worse flu season, experts said the flu shot is crucial.

“Go out, get your flu shot. This year, continue being protected,” said Dr. Jay Bhatt, an internist in Chicago and ABC News contributor.

Newly released CDC data highlighted some alarming new trends. Only 59% received the flu shot last season compared with 64% the prior season. And racial and ethnic disparities widened, with 56% of white Americans getting the flu shot, compared to 43% of Black Americans and 45% of Hispanic Americans.

The flu shot is not a 100% guarantee that you won’t get the flu, but it will reduce your symptoms, and the likelihood of winding up in the hospital.

“We want to prevent severe hospitalizations and death, but we want to prevent symptomatic infection, too,” Bhatt told ABC News. “Symptomatic infections can keep people out of work, can make you feel miserable.”

If you are eligible for a COVID vaccine booster, that is a great time to get your flu vaccine as well, health experts like Dr. Paul Goepfert, professor of medicine and microbiology at the University of Alabama and Director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic said.

“It’s perfectly fine to get them both at the same time,” Goepfert told ABC News.

And for those who worry they may get sick from the vaccine, Goepfert added, “I know a lot of people say they get sick and they got, you know, flu from the flu vaccine and that’s just not possible.”

Experts also encourage pregnant women to get the flu vaccine.

“That’s a group that, you know, if they get any of these viral infections, they can do poorly if they don’t have adequate protection,” said Dr. Simone Wildes, associate director of infectious disease at South Shore Health and ABC News contributor.

And with the uncertainty of the coming flu season looming, the CDC and other government health officials are now encouraging all eligible Americans to sign up for a flu shot, and help prevent a possible “twindemic” – a bad flu season in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year, Walensky said, “it’s doubly important this year to build up community immunity.”

Sara Yumeen, M.D., is a dermatology resident at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School and is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.

Sony Salzman contributed to this report.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio accused of misusing NYPD resources in DOI report

October 7, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio treated his New York Police Department-provided security detail like a “concierge service” that drove around his son, staff members and guests even when he was not in the car and helped his daughter move out of her apartment, the city’s Department of Investigation alleged in a report released Thursday.

The investigative report by the city’s anti-corruption watchdog also accused the mayor of failing to reimburse the more than $300,000 his security detail spent on travel outside New York City during de Blasio’s unsuccessful 2020 run for president.

“Protecting the mayor and his family is a serious and significant job that should be guided by best practices, formalized procedures, and an understanding that security details are not personal assistants in a dignitary’s daily life but provide essential protection,” DOI Commissioner Margaret Garnett said.

The NYPD inspector in charge of the Executive Protection Unit, Howard Redmond, “sought to obstruct” the investigation by refusing to turn over a City Hall-issued phone, trying to destroy his NYPD-issued phone and demonstrating a “lack of candor” during an interview, the report claims.

Redmond was referred to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office for possible prosecution. While de Blasio is not facing prosecution, he could face potential ethics violations.

“We are reviewing the referral,” a spokesperson for Manhattan DA Cy Vance said.

In her response, de Blasio’s press secretary Danielle Filson called the report “unprofessional” and “inaccurate,” claiming that it was based on “illegitimate assumptions and a naive view of the complex security challenges facing elected officials today.”

Brian Laundrie’s dad helps authorities search Florida preserve: Updates

October 7, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NORTH PORT, Fla.) — A massive search is continuing in Florida for Brian Laundrie, the boyfriend of Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old woman who went missing on a cross-country trip and who authorities confirmed as the body discovered in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming.

The search for the 23-year-old Laundrie is centered around North Port, Florida, where investigators said Laundrie returned to his home on Sept. 1 without Petito but driving her 2012 Ford Transit.

Laundrie has been named by police as a “person of interest” in Petito’s disappearance. Laundrie has refused to speak to the police and has not been seen since Tuesday, Sept. 14, according to law enforcement officials.

The search for Laundrie is the latest twist in the case that has grabbed national attention as he and Petito had been traveling across the country since June, documenting the trip on social media.

Petito’s parents, who live in Long Island, New York, reported her missing on Sept. 11 after not hearing from her for two weeks.

Latest headlines:
-Second Moab Police body camera footage shows Gabby Petito claim Brian Laundrie grabbed her face
-FBI returned to Laundrie’s house for additional items
-Florida search ends for the night, police say they don’t know cost of effort
-Nothing found so far in Friday search
-Search for Brian Laundrie continues at Carlton Reserve
-Here are the latest developments. All times Eastern.

Oct 07, 11:41 am
Brian Laundrie’s father joins police in search for son: Attorney

The father of wanted fugitive Brian Laundrie joined law enforcement officers in the search for his son on Thursday, the family’s attorney told ABC News.

Chris Laundrie began assisting police Thursday morning in the ongoing search of the 25,000-acre Carlton Reserve, near his home in North Port, said attorney Steven Bertolino.

He said the father has been asked to point out any favorite trails or spots in the nature preserve that his son favored. Chris Laundrie and his wife, Roberta, verbally told investigators roughly three weeks ago where their son may have gone in the preserve, but now searchers believe the father’s on-site assistance may be more beneficial, Bertolino said.

The preserve has been closed to the public and the Laundries as well. The parents, according to Bertolino, have been cooperating since the search began.

Oct 06, 6:42 pm
Authorities to allow Laundrie’s father to assist with search, attorney says

Steven Bertolino, the Laundrie family attorney, told ABC News Wednesday that authorities are going to allow Chris Laundrie, Brian Laundrie’s father, to assist with the search at the Carlton Reserve.

Investigators don’t currently have more details on when he will join the search.

The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office told ABC News they provided aerial support Wednesday for a search of the area.

ABC News’ Whitney Lloyd and Alondra Valle

Oct 05, 11:11 pm
Brian Laundrie left parents’ home to hike day earlier than parents originally told investigators

Laundrie family attorney Steven Bertolino confirmed to ABC News Tuesday night that the family now believes Brian Laundrie left to hike the Carlton Reserve on Monday, Sept. 13. Previously, they had told investigators he left on Tuesday, Sept. 14.

“The Laundries were basing the date Brian left on their recollection of certain events. Upon further communication with the FBI and confirmation of the Mustang being at the Laundrie residence on Wednesday September 15, we now believe the day Brian left to hike in the preserve was Monday September 13,” Bertolino said.

ABC News’ Kristin Thorne and Alondra Valle

Oct 05, 4:50 pm
Brian Laundrie flew home to Florida in early August: Family attorney

An attorney for the family of Brian Laundrie confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday that the wanted fugitive flew home to Florida from Salt Lake City on Aug. 17 and flew back to Utah six days later to rejoin his girlfriend, Gabby Petito, on their cross-country road trip.

Steven Bertolino said Laundrie flew home to “obtain some items and empty and close the (couple’s) storage unit to save money as they contemplated extending the road trip.” Bertolino said the couple paid for the flights together as they were sharing expenses.

Laundrie’s trip back to the Tampa area came five days after he and Petito were stopped by police in Moab, Utah, when witnesses reported the couple was engaged in a domestic violence incident in Moab.

COVID-19 live updates: Pfizer submits kids vaccine emergency use authorization request to FDA

October 7, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.

Just 65.7% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the CDC.

Latest headlines:
-Hospitalizations drop but deaths remain high
-Pfizer submits kids vaccine emergency use authorization request to FDA
-LA passes vaccine mandate for indoor restaurants, bars, gyms, malls and more
-More Americans died of COVID this year than all of 2020