(CASABLANCA, Morocco) — “I feel very happy to carry my child,” 26 year-old Halima Cissé told ABC News, while holding newborn Muhammad, one of the nine babies to beat the world record for most babies born at one birth.
Cissé, already a mother to a little girl, gave birth to nine children on May 5. “All the children are doing well,” said Dr. El Alaoui, head of the clinic.
The four boys, named Muhammad, Bah, El Hadj and Oumar and five girls — Adama, Hawa, Fatouma, Oumou and Kadidia, are being taken care of at the clinic Ain Borja in Casablanca, Morocco.
Cissé, a 26 year-old student and Abdelkader Arby, a 35 year-old adjudant in the Malian army, say they have always wanted children. ” Everybody wants children … but if they had told me that I, Abdelkader Arby, would one day be the father of nine, I would not have believed it,” he told ABC News.
The parents say the extraordinary birth is a “gift from God,” and said the “responsibility is heavy,”
After a consultation with an OB-GYN revealed that Cissé, was carrying seven fetuses, authorities organized her transfer from Bamako, Mali, to the clinic Ain Borja in Morocco where she would received specialized care.
The clinic prepared for the unusual birth of seven , before discovering during the operation two others.
“A lot of things were going through my mind, fear for myself, fear for my kids, how it was going to unfold,” Cissé told ABC News.
El Alaoui, head of the clinic Ain Borja, told ABC News that they tried to postpone the birth as long as they could to keep the babies’ chances high.
Cissé, who nearly lost her life due to blood loss and had to be operated on after the delivery, spent a month at the clinic on her back before the birth. She describes the difficult nights when she couldn’t sleep on the side until the day of birth, at 30 weeks pregnant.
“We thought, if we manage to save four, five children it’s already not bad,” said El Alaoui.
The birth of nine children is an extremely rare phenomenon. Only two others were recorded so far, in Australia in 1971 and in Malaysia in 1999. But Cissé’s is the the first example of nonuplets born alive.
Soumia Arkoubi, head nurse at the clinic, said “they take care of [the nonuplets] like it’s our own children” and that “it will be hard to see them go.”
With diapers changed every three hours at the clinic, the nine bundles of joy go through nearly 75 diapers a day and 100 bottles of milk.
American Nadya Suleman, nicknamed “Octomom,” holds the current Guiness world record after giving birth to eight children following an IVF treatment.
However, according to the parents and the medical staff at Ain Borja, Cissé’s children were conceived naturally.
The children were all born prematurely, the smallest weighing only one pound at birth.
They will have to stay in the neonatal care at the clinic for at least another month before they can hope to meet their big sister in Mali.
(WASHINGTON) — Handwritten notes from former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, released Friday by the House Oversight Committee, appear to show that former President Trump tried to pressure the Department of Justice to declare there was significant fraud tainting the 2020 presidential election.
The documents were obtained by the committee as part of its investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The notes are from a December 27, 2020, phone call between Trump and then-Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen.
According to Donoghue’s notes, Rosen told Trump that the Justice Department had no power to reverse the outcome of the election.
“Understand that the DOJ can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election, doesn’t work that way,” said Rosen, according to the notes.
“Don’t expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” Trump replied, per the notes.
At another point in the call, the notes showed Rosen and Donoghue trying to convince Trump that his allegations of voter fraud were false.
“Sir we have done dozens of investig., hundreds of interviews, major allegations are not supported by evid. developed,” Donoghue told Trump, per the notes. “We are doing our job. Much of the info you’re getting is false.”
Trump however would not be swayed.
“‘We have an obligation to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election,” he said, according to the notes.
“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said in a statement. “The Committee has begun scheduling interviews with key witnesses to investigate the full extent of the former President’s corruption, and I will exercise every tool at my disposal to ensure all witness testimony is secured without delay.”
The release of the notes comes days after the Justice Department determined that six former Trump Justice Department officials, including Rosen and Donoghue, can participate in Congress’ investigation.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has determined the Treasury Department must hand over former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee.
The opinion, posted Friday, says that while the committee “cannot compel the Executive Branch to disclose [tax information] without satisfying the constitutional requirement that the information could serve a legitimate legislative purpose,” the Ways and Means Committee in this instance ‘”invoked sufficient reasons for requesting the former President’s tax information.”
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal first requested six years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns in April of 2019, in addition to tax returns for eight of Trump’s businesses, under a 97-year-old law that requires the Treasury secretary to “furnish” the returns of any taxpayer to the chairman of the tax-writing panel by request.
In explaining the “legislative purpose” of the request, which Neal would need to prove under law in order to secure the returns, Neal said the committee had been “considering legislative proposals and conducting oversight related to our Federal tax laws, including … the extent to which the IRS audits and enforces the Federal tax laws against a President.”
As both a candidate and during his presidency, Trump vigorously resisted making his tax returns public, and his Justice Department backed him in his legal fight against the Ways and Means Committee, determining Neal’s reasoning didn’t amount to a legitimate legislative purpose.
After President Joe Biden took office and the Justice Department assumed new leadership, Rep. Neal renewed his request, resulting in Friday’s legal opinion reversing the Trump DOJ’s stance.
It’s not immediately clear when the Treasury Department would actually hand over Trump’s tax returns. A recent filing in the case states that Trump would need to be given 72 hours’ notice before his returns are transmitted to the Hill, giving him an opportunity to potentially appeal the decision.
If the committee is provided Trump’s tax returns, Neal would be able to designate lawmakers and committee staff to review them in a private setting — but it would still be a felony to release them publicly. However, the panel could potentially vote to enter the returns into the public record, according to the committee’s rules.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacted to news of the Justice Department’s decision in a statement Friday, applauding the administration for delivering “a victory for the rule of law.”
“Access to former President Trump’s tax returns is a matter of national security,” Pelosi said. “The American people deserve to know the facts of his troubling conflicts of interest and undermining of our security and democracy as president.”
In February, eight years of Trump’s tax returns were handed over to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s office following a years-long court battle that escalated all the way to the Supreme Court.
While the returns could be used as evidence in Vance’s ongoing criminal investigation of Trump and his company, their public release is restricted by grand jury secrecy rules.
(WASHINGTON) — Legislation introduced Thursday by a bipartisan group of women senators would honor Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor by requiring statues of them in the U.S. Capitol or on Capitol grounds.
The bill was introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and has 17 co-sponsors. Members of the Democratic Women Caucus and Bipartisan Women’s Caucus also introduced a similar bill in the House on Thursday.
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor were trailblazers long before reaching the Supreme Court, opening doors for women at a time when so many insisted on keeping them shut,” Klobuchar said. “The Capitol is our most recognizable symbol of Democracy, a place where people from across our country have their voices represented and heard. It is only fitting that we honor their remarkable lives and service to our country by establishing statues in the Capitol.”
O’Connor and Ginsburg were the first and second women, respectively, to serve on the Supreme Court. O’Connor, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan in 1981, served until she retired in January 2006. Ginsburg was appointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1993 and served until her death last year after suffering from metastatic pancreatic cancer. They served on the court together for 12 years.
“Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg will always be known as dedicated public servants, fierce champions for equality, and accomplished Americans who broke countless barriers in the field of law,” Collins said. “Statues in the nation’s capital honoring the first two women to serve on the highest court in the land will serve as fitting tributes to their invaluable contributions to our country.”
The Capitol currently has 252 sculptures of men and 14 of women. The most recent statue of a woman is of civil rights activist Rosa Parks, erected in 2013.
If passed, the legislation would require that the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library consider selecting an artist from an underrepresented background to create the statues.
(NEW YORK) — The nation’s two leading health organizations focused on the care of pregnant people have issued new guidelines calling on all pregnant people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The new joint recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) comes as the United States faces both a low vaccination rate and a summer surge of COVID-19 cases as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
Just 16% of pregnant people in the U.S. had received more than one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of May, compared to the nearly 58% of Americans ages 12 and up who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“ACOG is recommending vaccination of pregnant individuals because we have evidence of the safe and effective use of the vaccine during pregnancy from many tens of thousands of reporting individuals, because we know that COVID-19 infection puts pregnant people at increased risk of severe complications, and because it is clear from the current vaccination rates that people need to feel confident in the safety and protective value of the COVID-19 vaccines,” ACOG president Dr. J. Martin Tucker said in a statement. “Pregnant individuals should feel confident that choosing COVID-19 vaccination not only protects them but also protects their families and communities.”
Both ACOG, a national membership organization for more than 60,000 OBGYNs, and SMFM, a global organization with more than more than 5,000 physicians, scientists and women’s health professionals, previously recommended that pregnant people have access to vaccines and should “engage in shared decision-making” about the vaccine with their doctors.
“COVID-19 vaccination is the best method to reduce maternal and fetal complications of COVID-19 infection among pregnant people,” Dr. William Grobman, president of SMFM, said in a statement announcing the new recommendation, also noting the vaccines are safe before, during and after pregnancy.
Here is what pregnant and breastfeeding people may want to know about the COVID-19 vaccines to help them make informed decisions.
1. When can pregnant people get a COVID-19 vaccine?
Everyone 12 years of age and older, including pregnant people, is now eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccination, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Pregnant people can get the COVID-19 vaccine at any point in their pregnancy, and the vaccine does not need to be spaced from other vaccines, like the flu shot or Tdap booster.
2. What is the science behind the COVID-19 vaccine?
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology, which does not enter the nucleus of the cells and doesn’t alter the human DNA. Instead, it sends a genetic instruction manual that prompts cells to create proteins that look like the virus a way for the body to learn and develop defenses against future infection.
They are the first mRNA vaccines, which are theoretically safe during pregnancy, because they do not contain a live virus.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses an inactivated adenovirus vector, Ad26, that cannot replicate. The Ad26 vector carries a piece of DNA with instructions to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that triggers an immune response.
This same type of vaccine has been authorized for Ebola, and has been studied extensively for other illnesses — and for how it affects women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
The CDC has concluded that pregnant people can receive the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine after reviewing more than 200 pages of data provided by the company and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Vaccine experts interviewed by ABC News said although pregnant women are advised against getting live-attenuated virus vaccines, such as the one for measles, mumps and rubella, because they can pose a theoretical risk of infection to the fetus, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine doesn’t contain live virus and should be safe.
3. Are there studies on pregnant women and the COVID-19 vaccine?
Two recent studies found Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines appear to be “completely safe” and effective for pregnant people, according to Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Collins wrote in a blog post that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which both use mRNA technology, were found to provide in pregnant people the levels of antibodies and immune cells needed to protect them against COVID-19.
The vaccines were also found to likely offer protection as well to infants born to a vaccinated person, according to Collins.
“Overall, both studies show that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are safe and effective in pregnancy, with the potential to benefit both mother and baby,” he wrote, later adding, “While pregnant women are urged to consult with their obstetrician about vaccination, growing evidence suggests that the best way for women during pregnancy or while breastfeeding to protect themselves and their families against COVID-19 is to roll up their sleeves and get either one of the mRNA vaccines now authorized for emergency use.”
One study cited by Collins in his blog post was led by researchers at Northwestern University studying people who had been fully vaccinated during pregnancy.
The study, published May 11 in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, is believed to be the first to examine the impact of the COVID-19 vaccines on the placenta, according to the university. Researchers found the vaccine had no impact on pregnancy and no impact on fertility, menstruation and puberty.
The second study cited by Collins, led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, looked at more than 100 women who chose to get either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Researchers found that the women’s antibodies against COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated were also present in infant cord blood and breast milk, “suggesting that they were passed on to afford some protection to infants early in life,” according to Collins.
An earlier study, a study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology in March found the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are safe and effective in pregnant and lactating people and those people are able to pass protective antibodies to their newborns.
Researchers studied a group of 131 reproductive-age women who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, including 84 pregnant, 31 lactating and 16 non-pregnant women and found antibody levels were similar in all three groups. No significant difference in vaccine side effects were found between pregnant and non-pregnant study participants.
The study had some limitations. It was small and participants were primarily white health care workers from a single city. On the other hand, it’s the largest study of a group that was left out of initial vaccine trials.
4. What are health groups saying about the COVID-19 vaccine?
In addition to ACOG and SMFM, other health organizations have also said COVID-19 vaccines are safe for pregnant people.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says pregnant people at high risk of exposure to COVID-19 and those at risk of severe disease should be vaccinated.
“While pregnancy puts women at higher risk of severe COVID-19, very little data are available to assess vaccine safety in pregnancy,” WHO said in a statement. “Nevertheless, based on what we know about this kind of vaccine, we don’t have any specific reason to believe there will be specific risks that would outweigh the benefits of vaccination for pregnant women. For this reason, those pregnant women at high risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (e.g. health workers) or who have comorbidities which add to their risk of severe disease, may be vaccinated in consultation with their health care provider.”
The CDC says people who are pregnant and breastfeeding “may choose to be vaccinated” and should talk with their health care provider, noting that breastfeeding is an important consideration but “is rarely a safety concern with vaccines.”
“Getting a COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy can protect you from severe illness from COVID-19,” the CDC states on its website. “If you have questions about getting vaccinated, a conversation with your healthcare provider might help, but is not required for vaccination.”
5. What will clinical trials be like for pregnant people?
Pfizer’s phase 2/3 trial will enroll approximately 4,000 women within weeks 24-34 of their pregnancy, the company announced in a press release.
Half will get the vaccine, and half will get a placebo.
The study will include healthy, pregnant woman age 18 and older in the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mozambique, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Spain.
Participants in the vaccine group will receive two doses at 21 days apart — and each woman will be followed for at least 7-10 months in order to continuously assess for safety in both participants and their infants.
Infants will also be assessed, up until 6 months of age, for transfer of protective antibodies from their vaccinated mother.
Women enrolled in the trial will be made aware of their vaccine status shortly after giving birth to allow those women who originally received placebo to be vaccinated while staying in the study.
6. Why weren’t pregnant people included in early clinical trials?
Not recruiting parents-to-be in clinical trials and medical research is nothing new, according to Dr. Ruth Faden, the founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and a bioethicist who studies the ethics of pregnancy and vaccines.
“For a very long time, pregnant women were not included in biomedical research evaluation efforts or clinical trials, both for concerns about fetal development and what would be the implications of giving a pregnant women an experimental drug or vaccine and also for legal liability worries from manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies,” Faden told “GMA” last month. “There’s a huge gap between what we know about the safety and effectiveness of a new drug or a new vaccine for the rest of the population and what we know about it specific to pregnancy.”
In the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, health experts have only one of the three sources of evidence that are used to evaluate safety and efficacy during pregnancy: the data on non-pregnant people who were enrolled in the clinical trials, according to Faden.
From that, Faden said, health experts can try to glean what side effects may happen to people who are pregnant, but it is not an exact science.
However, it’s considered typical — and many argue ethically appropriate — to study an unknown substance first in healthy adults and then progressively in broader and broader populations. Pregnant people and children are often tested later down the line because of concerns about potential long-term harm.
Some of the volunteers in prior COVID-19 vaccine trials that didn’t include pregnant women directly may still become pregnant during the trial. This will also give researchers some insights about the vaccine’s safety among this group.
7. What risk factors should pregnant people consider?
At this time, the CDC recommends that pregnant women be prioritized for vaccinations and encourages them to speak to their doctors about the risks and benefits of a vaccination.
The question of whether an expecting parent should receive a COVID-19 vaccine will eventually come down to a number of factors, including everything from the trimester, risk factors for COVID-19, ability to remain socially distanced in their lifestyle and occupation, guidance from federal and state officials and recommendations from a person’s own physicians, experts say.
Similar to the flu vaccine, which was not tested on pregnant people in clinical trials, health experts will need to rely on continuously incoming data to make decisions around how safe the COVID-19 vaccines are during pregnancy.
Officials are doing the same for the general population, considering the speed at which the COVID-19 vaccines were developed, according to Faden, who noted that people who are pregnant should not be “unnecessarily alarmed.”
The COVID-19 vaccines can be taken during any trimester. Since other vaccines are recommended during pregnancy, the CDC currently recommends spacing out vaccine appointments a few weeks apart, if possible.
8. Is COVID-19 more dangerous for pregnant people?
Even now, more than one year into the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., some questions remain about how pregnant people are impacted by COVID-19.
The CDC has shared data showing that pregnant people infected with COVID-19 are at an increased risk for “intensive care unit admission, invasive ventilation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and death,” compared to nonpregnant people.
Health experts say that with or without the vaccine, pregnant people need to continue to remain on high alert when it comes to COVID-19 by following safety protocols, including face mask wearing, social distancing and hand washing.
ABC News’ Sony Salzman and Eric Strauss contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 612,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 4.1 million people have died worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 57.7% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC on Tuesday, citing new science on the transmissibility of the delta variant, changed its mask guidance to now recommend everyone in areas with substantial or high levels of transmission — vaccinated or not — wear a face covering in public, indoor settings.
Here’s how the news is developing Friday. All times Eastern:
Jul 30, 1:00 pm
Delta variant leaves vaccinated, unvaccinated with similarly high viral loads: CDC
Data shows that the delta variant leaves vaccinated and unvaccinated people with similarly high viral loads, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement Friday.
“High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus,” Walensky said.
“This finding is concerning and was a pivotal discovery leading to CDC’s updated mask recommendation” this week, Walensky said.
-ABC News’ Sony Salzman
Jul 30, 10:45 am
6 passengers test positive on cruise ship
Six passengers on Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas ship have tested positive for COVID-19 during routine testing, the cruise line said Friday.
Four of the passengers — who were not traveling together — are vaccinated. The other two are unvaccinated minors who were traveling together, the cruise line said.
One person has mild symptoms. The other five have no symptoms, the cruise line said.
“The guests were immediately quarantined, and their immediate travel party and all close contacts were traced and all tested negative,” Royal Caribbean said. “Each guest and their immediate travel parties disembarked in Freeport, The Bahamas, and separately traveled home via private transportation.”
This cruise started in the Bahamas on July 25. Everyone over 16 must be fully vaccinated and test negative before boarding, the cruise line said.
-ABC News’ Sam Sweeney
Jul 30, 10:30 am
Broadway audiences must be vaccinated
As Broadway gears up for its return in September, the Broadway League announced Friday that everyone attending a show must be vaccinated and wear a mask.
Guests will need to show proof of vaccination when they enter the theater.
This rule applies through October 2021 and may change in November.
All performers, staff and backstage crew also must be vaccinated.
Jul 30, 5:29 am
New Yorkers getting 1st dose to receive $100 incentive
Starting Friday, New Yorkers who receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at any city-run site will get a $100 incentive.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio made the announcement during a press briefing Wednesday.
“We will say thank you. We’ll say we’re really glad that you got vaccinated for yourself, for your family, for your community,” de Blasio said. “And here’s $100 to thank you for doing the right thing and to encourage people.”
The mayor said that New Yorkers getting vaccinated will not only get the cash, they’ll also be able to do “everything else that’s wonderful in this city, including the amazing concerts coming up. You can’t go to those concerts unless you’re vaccinated.”
Jul 30, 4:53 am
Japan to extend coronavirus state of emergency covering 3 of Tokyo’s neighboring prefectures
Japan’s government will put in place a coronavirus state of emergency covering three of Tokyo’s neighboring prefectures and Osaka on Monday, according to public broadcaster NHK.
Tokyo and Okinawa’s declarations will remain in place.
The news comes as case numbers in Japan continue to rise amid the Olympics.
As of Friday, there are 3,300 new positive cases in Tokyo, according to the Tokyo government’s COVID-19 information website. Of those 3,300 cases, 88 are severe and two have turned fatal.
Jul 30, 4:22 am
New CDC brief says vaccines may be less effective against delta variant
An internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brief published by the Washington Post Thursday reveals more details about why the delta variant is different to and more concerning than other strains of the coronavirus.
The CDC said the main differences between the delta variant and previous strains is that delta is highly contagious and likely more severe. Plus, breakthrough infections caused by delta may be as transmissible as unvaccinated cases.
“This is an incredibly, incredibly contagious version of virus, it’s almost like a whole different virus,” Dr. Ashish Jha said. “And CDC is estimating that it is probably also more deadly.”
Vaccines prevent more than 90% of severe diseases, but may be less effective at preventing infection or transmission of the delta variant, the CDC said. Therefore, there could be more breakthrough infections and more community spread despite people’s vaccination status.
“Current vaccines continue to provide strong protection against severe illness and death, but the delta variant is likely responsible for increased numbers of breakthrough infections — breakthroughs that could be as infectious as unvaccinated cases,” Dr. John Brownstein, an ABC News contributor, said. “This internal document highlights the challenge we all now face in combating the most transmissible variant of COVID so far.”
Jul 30, 3:38 am
Number of positive cases at Tokyo Olympics reaches 225
There are now 225 positive COVID-19 cases at the Tokyo Olympics, according to a tally kept by Olympics organizers.
That is an increase of 27 cases since Thursday.
Of those cases, three of them are athletes. Two were in the Olympic Village at the time of their positive case, and one was not.
(WASHINGTON) — Adding more insight into the CDC’s updated mask guidance, newly published details of the Provincetown outbreak raise concern that the now-dominant delta variant may be able to spread among fully vaccinated people.
Following multiple large gatherings in Provincetown, Mass., from July 3-17, investigators identified 469 COVID-19 cases, two-thirds of which were in fully vaccinated people. The delta variant was responsible for 90% of those cases. The breakthrough infections were among people vaccinated with Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. None of the vaccinated people died, but most had some symptoms.
During the outbreak investigation, researchers learned that the amount of virus in the noses of vaccinated people experiencing a breakthrough infection was the same as in an unvaccinated person — a worrying sign vaccinated people can spread the virus.
“This finding is concerning and was a pivotal discovery leading to CDC’s updated mask recommendation,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in a statement.
“This is a very concerning outbreak — pretty much a ‘super spreader event,'” said Dr. Carlos Del Rio, executive associate dean and global health expert at the Emory School of Medicine.
Experts caution that more studies are needed to understand if what happened in Provincetown holds up in subsequent outbreak investigations. The CDC report noted the social gatherings were “densely packed.” And breakthrough infections are still relatively uncommon, with the majority of cases driven by spread among unvaccinated people. Meanwhile, an internal CDC briefing first published by the Washington Post and confirmed by ABC News outlined additional new data suggesting that the delta variant is different from prior variants in other ways. Chiefly, this variant appears to be extraordinarily contagious — possibly more so than Ebola, Spanish flu, chickenpox and the common cold. It’s also possible delta leads to more severe illness, but for now this is only a possibility and not firmly established.
Taken collectively, these new revelations prompted the CDC to update its mask guidance Tuesday to recommend that vaccinated people once again don masks indoors, especially in high-transmission areas. And that includes schools this fall.
“The rules have changed,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “We have a different epidemic now that we did in May.”
Throughout the spring and summer, the CDC based its guidance on scientific studies of prior COVID-19 variants, including the then-dominant alpha variant, which was first identified in the U.K. and swept the United States during the 2020-2021 winter surge.
But the delta variant — which only just surpassed alpha as the dominant variant on July 6 — is different. It hit the U.S. so fast that only in the past few weeks has sufficient data emerged to show scientists just how significant those differences were.
That means that throughout the summer, the nation’s public health guidance may have been based on alpha variant rules while the nation was living in a delta variant world.
It’s a game of catch-up that’s all-too-familiar to doctors and scientists who have dedicated their lives to preventing infectious disease.
“This is what I always say in a pandemic: I wish I knew today what I’m going to learn tomorrow,” Del Rio said.
“When we released our school guidance on July 9, we had less delta variant in the country, we had fewer cases in the country,” said Walensky, speaking at a Tuesday press conference. “And importantly, we were really hopeful that we would have more people vaccinated, especially in the demographic between 12 to 17 years old,” she said.
Now, Del Rio said, new data is telling us “that the virus has changed — it’s a lot more transmissible, and it has been able to adapt.”
Although it now seems that vaccinated people can pass the virus, “the great majority of transmissions is still coming from vaccinated people,” Del Rio said. “That’s why you’re seeing mandates come left and right. People are saying, enough is enough.”
Experts say this is still a pandemic largely of the unvaccinated, with a majority of cases among unvaccinated people, meaning it’s more important than ever for anyone who is not vaccinated to get vaccinated.
Crucially, current vaccines appear to work just as well against delta to dramatically reduce the risk of severe illness and death. But they may not work as well at preventing mild infections.
“Current vaccines continue to provide strong protection against severe illness and death, but the delta variant is likely responsible for increased numbers of breakthrough infections — breakthroughs that could be as infectious as unvaccinated cases,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., the chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
The CDC brief said one of the agency’s biggest challenges moving forward is countering the public perception that vaccines don’t work. But the fact that roughly half the nation is already vaccinated likely saved the United States from an even deadlier summer surge, experts agreed.
“If it were not for the vaccines, there likely would have been a massive overwhelming surge in this county,” Barouch said.
Even still, large portions of the country — including children — remain unvaccinated. And what scientists are learning about the delta variant’s capacity to transmit between vaccinated people might mean we need to mask up again — especially in those high transmission areas.
“We have to get the unvaccinated vaccinated. And in the meantime, masking is useful, but not sufficient so we have to also add testing to the mix of mitigation strategies,” Del Rio said.
For now, the future remains uncertain. Many scientists worry about a winter surge, while others feel encouraged that the delta variant might fade away as suddenly as it arrived.
“There is some evidence — first from India and now from the U.K. — that the delta variant surges and then begins to dissolve,” Barouch said. “We don’t fully understand why the sparks catch fire, and we don’t fully understand why the flames go out.”
ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik, Anne Flaherty, Arielle Mitropoulos and Eric Strauss contributed to this report.
(ST. PETERSBURG, Russia) — At the start of June, St. Petersburg’s local administration stopped publishing information about how many COVID-19 patients had been hospitalized in the Russian city.
The sudden disappearance of the previously daily reported figures happened to coincide with the opening of one the city‘s most prestigious annual events, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
The forum, a gathering of Russia’s elite and a showcase for its biggest companies, has become a flagship event under President Vladimir Putin. Over five days, 13,000 people were expected to attend the event, where Putin told the audience that life was “gradually returning to its normal routine” after the pandemic.
But the forum was opening just as St. Petersburg was seeing a terrifying surge in COVID-19 cases, as a third wave fueled in part by the delta variant bore down on the country. The last bulletin before the numbers vanished had shown St. Petersburg hospitalizing 500 people a day — a record number and one that meant the city would run out of hospital beds within days.
Journalists and critics of the government quickly started asking if the disappearance of the COVID-19 statistics was connected to holding the forum. St. Petersburg’s administration refused to comment and the latest figures weren’t published again until nearly three weeks later. They were no longer updated daily, either.
“They need to create the impression that everything is OK,” said Boris Vishnevsky, an opposition lawmaker from St. Petersburg’s city assembly, who also opposed holding the forum. “They don’t care about people’s lives and health.”
Throughout the pandemic, Russian authorities have been accused of massaging statistics to hide the real scale of the country’s COVID-19 impact. The Kremlin has repeatedly suggested that although it has been difficult, Russia has fared better than most other countries, even as it has neglected to impose tough lockdown measures.
But publicly available mortality statistics, as well as other data, show an ever growing, yawning gap between Russia’s official COVID-19 figures and what are likely the far larger real numbers. The data suggest the true death toll may already be over a half-million people. Far from doing better than most, the data suggests that, in reality, Russia has suffered one of the deadliest COVID-19 epidemics in the world.
The toll is growing even steeper now as Russia endures a deadly third wave that has remained largely unchecked amid few restrictions and poor vaccination uptake — the latter caused in part by some of the highest levels of vaccine scepticism in the world.
Russia’s official COVID-19 death toll, published by the government’s coronavirus task force, currently stands at around 155,000. In total numbers, that still places Russia fourth in the world, behind only Brazil, India and the United States. But, given the size of the country’s 144 million population and the number of cases it has had, that number appears puzzlingly low.
There is a consensus among experts internationally that the best method to assess the true toll of the pandemic in Russia is by counting so-called “excess deaths.” That is, comparing the total number of deaths from any cause in a country during the pandemic periods with the total number of deaths in an average year.
Almost every country hit by the pandemic has seen a steep increase in total deaths compared to the average. Although some of those extra deaths can be attributed to other causes, such as disruption to health systems, most experts believe the vast majority are COVID-19 deaths.
Russia’s official death toll doesn’t take into account excess deaths, but its national statistics service, Rosstat, has quietly continued to release total mortality data for each month, publishing it in spreadsheets on its website. That has allowed independent demographers and journalists to calculate excess deaths for Russia during the pandemic.
The mortality data so far released by Rosstat shows that in 2020, Russia suffered 340,000 more deaths than in 2019. For the first five months of 2021, there were 133,000 more excess deaths.
That means Russia has sustained at least 473,000 more deaths during the pandemic than usual, already three times higher than its officially reported toll. That does not yet include June and July, the deadliest months of the current third wave.
“I think that by the end of September, the overall excess mortality will be at least 700,000 people,” said Alexey Raksha, an independent demographer who previously worked at Rosstat. “It is a huge number.”
By proportion of the population, the current figures give Russia the highest death toll of any major country in the world and place it in the top five of any country in the world, behind only Peru, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Serbia, according to a ranking by The Economist tracking excess deaths globally.
“In November and December of last year, the number of deaths have been record. The biggest in history, in post-war history in Russia,” said Raksha.
Raksha was fired from his job as a demographer at Rosstat last year after he publicly pointed out the discrepancies in the official COVID-19 statistics. He has accused Russian authorities of crudely manipulating the numbers, which he says is visible in the unnatural anomalies in the data released by the country’s coronavirus task force.
He points to line graphs showing monthly deaths for Moscow, where steep curves indicating increasing deaths at certain times suddenly flatline and hold steady for several days.
“It’s in contradiction with all statistical, epidemiological, demographical law,” Raksha said. “It’s just impossible.”
He said the sudden plateaus are nicknamed the “Soybanin’s Shelf,” referring to Moscow’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin. He said they were the result of city officials simply putting a limit on the number of deaths that could be published that day.
“At some point, Sobyanin just ordered not to show more than 75 deaths daily in Moscow. That’s it,” Raksha said.
Russian health officials have previously said they take a more conservative approach to assessing COVID-19 deaths. But that does not explain the vast difference and, at times, officials have acknowledged the real death toll is substantially higher.
In December, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, who oversees the COVID-19 response, acknowledged that around 81% of all excess deaths in Russia were caused by COVID-19. The federal statistics service in June also published an estimate suggesting there had been over 270,000 COVID-19 deaths.
But Russia’s primary official death toll, which is most often used internationally and in state media, has not been updated to match those statements.
A recent investigation by three independent Russian investigative news sites also found evidence that internal government records show it is also concealing the scale of COVID-19 cases in the country by as much as five times.
The sites, Meduza, Kholod and Mediazona, reported that an oversight by Russia’s health ministry in issuing certificates confirming recent COVID-19 patients had inadvertently revealed the ministry has a database containing 29 million recorded COVID-19 cases. The official public count currently only shows six million.
The government has denied the reports, but issued conflicting responses, saying the database was not accurate and that it also contained vaccination numbers.
Critics have said the efforts to make Russia’s bout with the pandemic appear less deadly are making it worse by discouraging people from taking the virus seriously, which they say also hampers its push to vaccinate. Although Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has been found to be effective, authorities are struggling to persuade Russians to get it.
With few restrictions in place and still less than 20% of the population fully vaccinated, doctors in the city told ABC News they feared a fourth wave in the autumn was already inevitable.
“Doctors will answer for it, not the government,” said a paramedic in St. Petersburg, who requested anonymity over concerns she could face retaliation.
In St. Petersburg last week, Alexander Yablokov, a 68-year-old soccer manager, said he did not believe the official death toll after he spent three weeks in a COVID-19 hospital. While there, he said he was in a small ward where all but one of seven patients with him died within a week. He said he had pulled his blanket over his head whenever he heard the sound of a gurney coming down the corridor, knowing another of his neighbors had passed.
“I thought I had found myself in a morgue. Not a hospital but a morgue,” he said
(LONDON) — Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has spent most of her adult life in the public spotlight, first as the wife of Prince Andrew and then as a favorite target of the British tabloid media.
Several decades later, another new royal bride, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, became the target of the tabloid media when she wed Ferguson’s nephew, Prince Harry, in 2018.
“I believe that everybody has a right to their own voice and there should be no judgment on race, creed, color or any other denomination,” Ferguson told Good Morning America about the press’ treatment of Meghan, who joined Harry in stepping down from their senior royal roles last year and moving to California.
“I personally would never be able to judge another, so I just am not like that,” she said. “I wish Harry and Meghan so much happiness and I know that [the late Princess] Diana would be so proud of her sons and their wives.”
Ferguson — whose latest chapter in life is as author of a new novel, Her Heart for a Compass — was a close friend of Princess Diana’s, her sister-in-law in Britain’s royal family. Though the two were pitted against each other in the British press, she calls Diana her best friend.
Diana, the mother of Princes William and Harry, died in 1997 after a car crash in Paris, but Ferguson said she keeps her friend’s memory alive to this day.
“She’s in my heart,” Ferguson said of the late princess, whom she calls her “laughing friend.”
“I always say it doesn’t matter whether you get the love back or you don’t get love back or she’s here or she’s not here, you can love anyway and keep the kindness,” she said
“I loved Diana and I will always love her even if she isn’t here in person. It’s a really lovely thing to have,” she said.
Ferguson, now 61 and a grandmother of one with another on the way, said she also imagines what life would be like now with Diana, whose two sons have five children between them.
“If she was here, we’d be racing to the bouncy castle with our grandchildren,” said Ferguson. “The funny thing is we’d be with our grandchildren running in the egg and spoon race. She was always a better, faster runner than me.”
Finding her voice through writing
Ferguson drew on her own journey in the spotlight to write her first novel, which is set in the Victorian era and is based on her distant relative, Lady Margaret.
“Lady Margaret is an extremely wonderful, strong, very resilient redhead who fights for her heart … against extraordinary confines of what is seen as noble and duty,” she said. “I think I couldn’t write that and I couldn’t explain it if I hadn’t had a hint of fighting my own journey through my own compass of my own heart.”
“She didn’t have a voice,” Ferguson added. “So it’s about literacy, empowerment, empowerment of a woman’s voice that has been shut away.”
Ferguson said she is just now learning in her own life to speak up and not be a self-described “people pleaser,” saying, “I don’t believe I’ve really spoken out until now, properly.”
In the novel, Margaret is portrayed as having a complicated but honest relationship with her mother, a relationship Ferguson said she never got to have with her own mom.
“When she left me, I was so young,” said Ferguson. “And then my sister went to Australia, so I became the head of the house around 13, 14 years old, and I think that that’s possibly why I still have the rebel in me.”
Ferguson spoke with GMA while doing one of her favorite activities, horseback riding, which she said she relied on as a child for stability in her life.
“My ponies really helped me so much when my mother went to live in Argentina because they were my friends,” she said, describing them as “consistent” and “steadfast.” “They don’t go anywhere and they didn’t answer back. They are just so special.”
Taking life ‘one step at a time’
Though she had a complicated time as a member of Britain’s royal family, Ferguson remains an ardent supporter of the monarchy.
“I am a number one fan of the monarchy,” she said. “And I stand very strongly for the extraordinary steadfastness of the queen.”
She also speaks fondly of Prince Andrew, whom she married in 1986 and divorced a decade later, though the two remain very close.
“He is a great man and [our wedding day] was the best day of my life,” she said. “I would do it all over again because he was a very good-looking sailor, but I fell in love with him and I think love conquers all.”
Andrew, who shares two daughters with Ferguson, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, has faced intense scrutiny over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison in 2019.
Andrew, the third child of Queen Elizabeth, spoke out in a 2019 BBC interview and categorically denied allegations he had sex on multiple occasions with an American teenager who’s claimed she was trafficked to the prince at the direction of Epstein. Shortly after the interview, Andrew announced that he would step back from public duties, “for the foreseeable future” amid heavy criticism.
When asked how she has found resilience in the face of personal drama and tabloid scandal, Ferguson said she has learned to “take one step at a time.”
“You just look at it. What do I need to learn from this? How do I feel? [You] apologize profusely to yourself, to others, mostly to yourself for letting yourself down, perhaps, and you move forward and you get on and you take one step at a time,” she said. “I have destroyed myself many times, but the most important thing is to get up and get going.”
Ferguson also gives credit to the American public for helping her regain her footing after she and Andrew divorced. She credits Americans with welcoming her and supporting her through different ventures, including working with WW, formerly Weight Watchers.
“That’s why I want to say thanks to the American people, because they have given me a life,” she said. “And they’ve given me a chance to be able to have a platform to talk and to be able to say, ‘Be yourself.'”
Speaking of her ability to continually evolve both personally and professionally, Ferguson added, “I’m 61. I’m just starting my life. “
(TAMPA, Fla.) — A jarring reality check is taking place in intensive care units across the country as thousands of COVID-19 positive patients, nearly all of them unvaccinated, are streaming into hospitals in need of care.
This is particularly true in Florida, where virus-related hospitalizations have skyrocketed in recent weeks. The situation has escalated rapidly, now nearing peak levels, with nearly 7,900 patients hospitalized with the virus across the state, up by more than 320% in the last month, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It feels like it’s an impending storm … there’s no off ramp to this getting worse,” Dr. David Wein, an emergency room physician at Tampa General Hospital in Florida, told ABC News on Wednesday.
On Tuesday this week, more than 1,450 patients with COVID-19 were admitted to hospitals across the state, marking the highest number of patients seeking care within a 24-hour period in Florida since the onset of the pandemic.
“Right now, at Tampa General Hospital, we are really feeling the crush of this increase incidence of COVID-19, and so the delta area has really brought many patients to our emergency room, requiring treatment and admission,” Peggy Dugan, the executive vice president and chief medical officer at the hospital, told ABC News in an exclusive interview.
It was just six weeks ago that some of the team thought they may be out of the woods, with metrics steadily trending down across the country.
“It felt like we were ready to move in the right direction and start seeing it plateau. And it was a surprise to see it trend up like it did,” said Erika Mergl, nurse manager for the Tampa General Hospital’s Global Emerging Diseases Institute.
However, virus-related hospitalization levels are now nearing peak levels.
“We’re getting to numbers that were as high as last summer. In early July, we were down to 12 COVID-19 patients in the hospital, and today we have 80. So we’re really just seeing an escalation over a short span of time,” Duggan said.
The situation in Tampa is not an anomaly. Nearly every state in the country is now experiencing case, and COVID-19 hospitalization increases. Virus-related hospitalizations levels are now at their highest point since April, with nearly 33,700 patients receiving care — about 10,000 more patients than a week ago.
Many of the patients at Tampa General are younger, Dugan said, some as young as 22 or 23 years old, and “almost” all of them have been unvaccinated, the hospital said.
One of the hospital’s unvaccinated patients is 64-year-old patient Gerard Considine, who spent nine days intubated after he tested positive for the virus.
“I’m not used to being scared of anything, but this scared the hell out of me,” Considine told ABC News.
Considine said he didn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine because he had experienced adverse reactions to other vaccines, but despite his ordeal, he does not think he will choose to be vaccinated, believing that he has developed some antibodies, at this point.
However, said Duggan, “we’re seeing people who are recovering now very regretful that they didn’t get the vaccination in the first place.”
Many of the patients coming to the hospital are already quite ill when they arrive, said Wein.
“Unfortunately, we’re seeing people who are coming in days, or several days, into their disease and sicker, with difficulty breathing, needing to be admitted to the hospital. So it feels more like that winter surge that we had,” Wein said, adding that a number of these patients end up on ventilators.
“This is heartbreaking because all this could have been avoided, this is unnecessary human suffering that we are witnessing right now,” Dr. Seetha Lakshmi, the medical director of the Global Emerging Diseases Institute at Tampa General Hospital, told ABC News.
Several front-line workers at Tampa General Hospital expressed to ABC News their deep concern and fear about the next several weeks for their teams, given the state’s and the hospital’s exponential increase in infections and virus-related hospitalizations, stressing that their message to Americans is that vaccinations are key to controlling the pandemic and ending the suffering.
The difference in getting vaccinated, or not getting vaccinated is ultimately akin to “the difference between having a cold and dying,” said Wein. “If a vaccinated patient gets this, they’re most likely going to be just fine, and not going to end up in the hospital. Unfortunately, the unvaccinated person has a really high likelihood that he will end up hospitalized on a ventilator.”
