(NEW YORK) — More rainy days and extreme rainfall likely will hurt global economies, according to new research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“This is about prosperity — and ultimately about people’s jobs,” Leonie Wenz, a lead scientist, told ABC News. “Economies across the world are slowed down by more wet days and extreme daily rainfall, an important insight that adds to our growing understanding of the true costs of climate change.”
“We know from previous work that flooding associated with extreme rainfall can damage infrastructure, which is critical to economic productivity, and also cause local disruptions to production,” said Wenz, adding that the new findings also suggest everyday disruptions caused by more rain will have “a disruptive effect on businesses, manufacturing, transportation.”
The analysis, conducted by a team of scientists who examined 40 years of data in more than 1,500 regions across the globe, shows that as wet days go up, economic growth goes down.
“Intensified daily rainfall turns out to be bad, especially for wealthy, industrialized countries like the U.S., Japan or Germany,” Wenz said. But smaller, more agrarian economies can see some benefits.
More rainfall is occurring as the planet warms because warm air holds more water vapor. While global precipitation trends vary wildly, and are extremely complex because of factors including geography and terrain, extreme precipitation is increasing — it’s widely accepted by many climate scientists that regions already prone to intense rainfall events will see them more frequently.
“It’s rather the climate shocks from weather extremes that threaten our way of life than the gradual changes — by destabilizing our climate, we harm our economies,” said Anders Leverman, a co-author of a study.
Some of those extremes can include devastating flooding that has massive consequences, Stamford University researcher Frances Voigt Davenport explained to ABC News in 2021.
“We’re seeing that climate change increases extreme precipitation and makes the most extreme events bigger,” said Davenport, adding that nearly one-third of U.S. flood damage from 1988 to 2017 — costing roughly $73 billion — resulted from long-term changes in precipitation.
Other recent extreme rainfall events have resulted from tropical cyclones or severe weather outbreaks, which cost the U.S. some $101 billion last year. Among the 10 costliest events from extreme rainfall, tropical cyclones and severe weather in the U.S., nine have happened since 2004.
Dr. Kai Kornhuber, a climate researcher from Columbia University, told ABC News in an interview how these extreme events have both direct and indirect consequences.
“Extreme rainfall,” Kornhuber explained, “often leads to floods, and thereby can cause significant economic damage — directly, by destroying property, and indirectly by disrupting supply chains, infrastructure and production sites.”
(WASHINGTON) — Two American women remain missing more than a week after their plane crashed off the coast of Panama, as their families plead with the United States government for assistance in the recovery effort.
Debra Ann Velleman, 70, of Waukesha, Wisconsin, and Sue Borries, 57, of Teutopolis, Illinois, both retired public school teachers, were part of a community of snowbirds and expats living in the area of Chame, Panama.
The two friends were traveling with their husbands back to Chame after spending New Year’s Eve weekend at a bed and breakfast on the Panamanian island Isla Contadora on Jan. 3 when the crash occurred. The small plane, piloted by the owner of the bed and breakfast, suffered an engine failure and crashed off the coast of Chame, according to friends and family.
Their husbands, Anthony Velleman and Dennis Borries, as well as the pilot were rescued by Panamanian search and rescue teams, though the women have yet to be found despite continued search efforts, according to Albert Lewitinn, a representative for the Velleman family. The women are believed to be in the unrecovered plane wreckage, he said.
The Panamanian government had requested that the U.S. deploy assets including Navy salvage divers and sonar to aid in the search effort and locate the wreckage, but the request was denied this week due to a lack of assets and jurisdiction, according to a family statement.
The families are continuing to “implore” the U.S. government to send equipment and personnel to aid in the search and recovery effort.
“The only acceptable outcome is that our loved ones are found and recovered so that our families can begin the long and difficult grieving process,” the Borries and Velleman families said in a statement. “Until our loved ones are recovered and brought home, that cannot occur. It is the United States government’s duty to provide much needed assistance in accomplishing this.”
ABC News has reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Panama for comment.
The Velleman family has been in touch with two of their Wisconsin representatives, Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, as they seek assistance in the search and recovery effort.
Baldwin’s office told ABC News it has contacted the Embassy and the State Department “to share our concern that Ms. Vellemen has not yet been located.” The office said it has also contacted the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Defense “to urge them to deploy and use any resources that may be available to help in the search effort.”
According to Baldwin’s office, the U.S. Coast Guard has provided Panamanian authorities with technical modeling to support the search for the aircraft.
“The Department of State, through its Embassy in Panama City, is working in close coordination with the National Transportation Safety Board and USCG to support the Panamanian search operation,” Baldwin’s office said. “The U.S. Embassy is also maintaining contact with the families of those missing and the Panamanian government throughout this response.”
A spokesperson for Fitzgerald’s office told ABC News it cannot comment on ongoing casework.
The surviving passengers continue to recover following the crash. Anthony Velleman will travel by air ambulance back to Wisconsin after having spinal surgery in Panama and “will need months of extensive medical care,” Lewitinn said.
Meanwhile, the Vellemans’ two sons are looking for closure.
“It’s been a week, and they are American citizens,” Josh Velleman told ABC Milwaukee affiliate WISN from Panama. “I believe the U.S. should do the right thing, bring those Americans home where they belong.”
(NEW YORK) — A winter storm is expected to bring up to 8 inches of snow across the Midwest beginning Thursday evening.
Winter storm watches are in effect for parts of South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa into Friday.
The system is expected to move southeast this weekend.
Some southern states, including Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, could see snow and ice.
The storm may then move up the East Coast, potentially bringing wintry impacts to the Northeast Sunday night through Monday.
In the meantime, the Northeast, which saw its coldest day in nearly three years on Tuesday, will experience another cold blast Saturday, with wind chills plunging below zero in New York City and across New England.
(BRUSSELS) — A new round of talks between Russia and NATO countries aimed at averting a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine have again ended with little progress, with the two sides still at an impasse over Russia’s demands for security guarantees.
Russia met with 30 NATO member states at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, the second of three diplomatic meetings organized this week in Europe between Russia and Western countries amid fears raised by Russia’s massing of 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border.
In Wednesday’s talks, NATO offered Russia to hold a series of meetings to discuss arms control and other confidence building measures in an attempt to persuade it to lower tensions around Ukraine. The alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said it had proposed talks on limiting missile deployments and troop exercises as well as how to improve communication and transparency. He told reporters afterward that Russia said it needed to time to consider the offer, but it had not rejected it out of hand.
“We are ready to sit down,” Stoltenberg told journalists. “And we hope Russia is ready to sit down and hold these meetings.”
But NATO unanimously rebuffed Moscow’s core demands for formal guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO and that the alliance will pull back its forces from countries in Eastern Europe that joined after the Cold War. Russia and the United States held talks on Monday in Geneva where Moscow pressed those demands and which the U.S. rejected as impossible.
NATO and the U.S. said they would never compromise on what they called the alliance’s “core principles,” after Russia’s negotiators, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko and Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin, presented the same demands again at Wednesday’s meeting.
“Together, the United States and our NATO allies made clear we will not slam the door shut on NATO’s open-door policy,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who led the U.S. delegation, said after the meeting, calling them a “non-starter.”
But while Russia’s key demand was again rejected, the door to a diplomatic solution remains open, U.S. and NATO officials said.
“There was no commitment to deescalate, nor was there a statement that there would not be,” Sherman added, even offering some praise for the Russian delegation for sitting “through nearly four hours of a meeting where 30 nations spoke — and they did — which is not an easy thing to do. I’m glad they did it.”
She and Stoltenberg said Russia now had a choice to make whether to engage with dialogue, saying she hoped the Russian negotiators would now go back to President Vladimir Putin and they would choose “peace and security.”
Russia made the sweeping demands over NATO in two draft treaties in December after building up troops close to Ukraine for months. That buildup, along with bellicose rhetoric and plans for “internal sabotage,” according to U.S. officials, raised fears that Putin may be preparing to launch a renewed attack on the country after he seized Crimea and launched a separatist war in 2014.
Russia has denied it is planning to attack Ukraine, despite the buildup on its border. Amid the diplomatic efforts, it staged live fire exercises on Tuesday with 3,000 troops and hundreds of tanks in three regions neighboring Ukraine.
The U.S. and NATO have hoped that Russia might accept more modest offers, such as limiting missile deployments and troop exercises. But Russia’s negotiator, Grushko, insisted again Wednesday that Russia could accept nothing less than the guarantees on Ukraine and NATO, calling it “imperative.” No progress on arms control or confidence-building measures could be made without progress on Moscow’s core demands, he told reporters afterward.
Grushko said Russia was now waiting for NATO and the U.S. to send written responses to the Russian proposals and that it would then make a decision on how to proceed.
Russia has complained for decades about NATO expansion into countries formerly dominated by Moscow under the Soviet Union. The Kremlin now alleges that NATO assistance to Ukraine means the former Soviet country is becoming a defacto part of the alliance. The U.S. and NATO say Moscow’s demand is an attempt to reimpose its Soviet-era sphere of influence on Eastern Europe and that it violates a fundamental right for countries to choose their security alliances.
Grushko said deescalation was “absolutely possible,” but he warned that the alliance’s enlargement into Eastern Europe had become “unbearable” for Russia, warning if Russia felt threatened it would use “military means.”
“We have a range of military-technical measures that we will use if we will feel a real threat to our security,” Grushko said. “And we already are feeling it, if they are looking at our territory as a target for guided, offensive weapons. Of course, we cannot agree with that. We will take all necessary measures in order to fend off the threat with military means, if political ones don’t work.”
But Grushko also spoke positively about the talks, saying for the first time he believed Russia had “managed to convey to the members of the alliance that the situation is unbearable.”
Stoltenberg said Russia could not have a veto over Ukraine joining the alliance, saying Russian claims to feel threatened by Ukraine were also wrong.
“Ukraine is a sovereign nation. Ukraine has the right to self-defense,” he said. “Ukraine is not a threat to Russia. To say that Ukraine is a threat to Russia is to put the whole thing upside down.”
Western officials have been trying to understand whether the threat of a Russian attack on Ukraine is real or a bluff to strengthen Moscow’s hands as it makes its demands. Sherman suggested that remained an open question, perhaps even for the Kremlin itself.
“Everyone, Russia most of all, will have to decide whether they really are about security, in which case they should engage, or whether this was all a pretext,” she said. “And they may not even know yet.”
While the buildup, including the new live-fire exercises Wednesday, could still be a negotiating tactic, some Western officials and independent experts also worry that Russia might be engaging in the talks intending for them to fail, so as to use that as a pretext for a military intervention.
“The United States and our allies and partners are not dragging our feet. It is Russia that has to make a stark choice: deescalation and diplomacy, or confrontation and consequences,” Sherman said. “If Russia walks away, however, it will be quite apparent they were never serious about pursuing diplomacy at all.”
On Thursday, the talks will move to a third round at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a Cold War-era forum that includes all of the continent’s countries, the U.S. and Canada and several in Central Asia. Those talks are expected to yield even fewer results, with 57 member states participating in an open dialogue.
The Kremlin has suggested it will make a decision whether it is worth continuing talks following this week’s meetings. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Tuesday said Moscow did not “see a substantial reason for optimism” so far but that for now it was not drawing any conclusions.
(WASHINGTON) — In a major development, the House Jan. 6 select committee on Wednesday asked GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy to voluntarily cooperate with its probe.
In a letter, the committee asked him to voluntarily provide information.
It is not compelling him to provide information or sit before the committee at this time.
Chairman Bennie Thompson said in the letter that he believes McCarthy has relevant information that could speak into the facts, circumstances, and causes leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
Thompson also wants information from McCarthy about events in the days before and after Jan. 6.
“You have acknowledged speaking directly with the former President while the violence was underway on January 6th,” Thompson writes.
“The Select Committee wishes to question you regarding communications you may have had with President Trump, President Trump’s legal team, Representative Jordan, and others at the time on that topic,” Thompson writes.
McCarthy has made multiple statements about Jan. 6 and about his conversations with Trump that day.
ABC News has reached out to McCarthy’s office for comment.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — A record number of law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in 2021, according to a report from the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund Wednesday, with most losing their lives to COVID-19.
In 2021, 458 law enforcement officers died — up 55% from 2020, according to the report.
In 2020, 295 federal, state, local and tribal officers died in the line of duty. The closest number to 2021’s was recorded was in 1930, when there were 312 law enforcement deaths.
The vast majority of deaths — 301 — were due to COVID-19 according to the report, the second year in a row COVID-19 was the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths. The vaccination status of the 301 is not known.
Customs and Border Patrol Agent David Ramirez was among those who died due to complications of COVID-19. Ramirez, a father of three, was assigned to the Sector Intelligence Unit/Joint California Forensics Center in San Diego, according to Customs and Border Protection.
“This year’s statistics demonstrate that America’s front-line law enforcement officers continue to battle the deadly effects of the Covid-19 pandemic nationwide,” the report said. “Law enforcement officers nationwide continue to be exposed to the Covid-19 virus in the course of their daily assignments; therefore, the number of line-of-duty deaths is sadly ever-increasing.”
Officers like Lubbock County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Joshua Bartlett were among the 62 officers killed by guns in 2021.
In the morning hours of July 15, a man was stopped by the Texas Highway Patrol for reckless driving. According to the NODEM page, the subject returned home after the incident and began walking around his neighborhood with a gun. When the SWAT team and Bartlett showed up, the suspect allegedly opened fire after barricading himself in his house, killing Bartlett, a military veteran.
The increase in officers killed by a gun increased by 36% from 2020. Handguns were the leading cause of death in the firearm category — with eight in October, making it the deadliest month in 2021.
Traffic-related incident killings, such as during stops, saw an increase of 38% from 2020.
(WASHINGTON) — As President Joe Biden prepared to head to Capitol Hill on Thursday to rally Senate Democrats on election reform, a visibly angry Republican Leader Mitch McConnell fired back Wednesday, saying that he didn’t recognize the man who delivered the fiery speech in Georgia on voting rights one day earlier.
McConnell characterized Biden’s speech — in which the president called for the Senate to change its rules by “whichever way they need to be changed” in order to pass Democrats’ voting bills — as “profoundly, profoundly un-presidential,” deeming the remarks a “rant” that “was incoherent, incorrect and beneath his office.”
The Kentucky Republican repeatedly took issue with Biden linking Republicans to Jim Crow-era legislation for standing in the way of election reform, as at least 19 GOP-led states have passed laws in the last year that experts at the Brennan Center for Justice say restrict voting access.
“We have a sitting president — a sitting president — invoking the Civil War, shouting about totalitarianism and labeling millions of Americans his domestic enemies?” McConnell said. “Yesterday, he poured a giant can of gasoline on the fire.”
Biden, one day earlier in Atlanta, spoke forcefully in favor of changing the Senate filibuster rule so that Democrats could pass two key voting bills that have stalled in the Senate.
“Nowhere does the Constitution give a minority the right to unilaterally block legislation,” Biden said. “The American people have waited long enough. The Senate must act.”
McConnell, in turn, closed his floor speech on Wednesday by imploring his colleagues — including an indirect call to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., whom he has courted to change parties — that it’s up to them to defend tradition in the Senate.
“Unfortunately, President Biden has rejected the ‘better angels of our nature.’ So, it is the Senate’s responsibility to protect the country. This institution was constructed as a firewall against exactly — exactly the kind of rage and false hysteria we saw on full display yesterday,” McConnell said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had promised to move toward a showdown on votes on Democrats’ voting legislation as soon as Wednesday.
The Democratic leader met Tuesday night with Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema — another Democrat who has not committed to a filibuster carveout but says she supports election reforms — and then with Manchin on Wednesday morning for around an hour as he navigates a way to push through Biden’s agenda.
While acknowledging he likely doesn’t have the votes to move the bills forward, Schumer said he wants to force a vote to put senators on the record to show Americans — and history — where they stand on the issue that Democrats call vital to democracy.
A recorded vote on those bills could be seen as the first move toward another vote on changing or eliminating the filibuster on the measures, which could potentially fall on Monday given the symbolism of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Ahead of his visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday, Biden in Atlanta on Tuesday attempted to shame the 16 sitting Republicans who voted to extend the Voting Rights Act before — to support voting rights now.
“Not a single Republican has displayed the courage to stand up to a defeated president to protect America’s right to vote, not one,” he said. “Not one.”
While Biden, having served in Congress for 36 years, has defended the filibuster in the past, he changed his tune regarding election reforms, saying Tuesday that a minority of senators shouldn’t be permitted to block actions on voting rights for all Americans.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 842,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 62.6% 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 news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jan 12, 2:32 pm
More than 15 million new cases reported globally last week
More than 15 million new COVID-19 cases were reported globally last week, according to the World Health Organization.
“By far the most cases reported in a single week, and we know this is an underestimate,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday.
He said this “huge spike” is driven by omicron.
“While omicron causes less severe disease than delta, it remains a dangerous virus, particularly for those who are unvaccinated,” Tedros warned.
WHO officials said new vaccines may be needed for different variants, and until those vaccines are developed, the current vaccines may need to be updated.
-ABC News’ Christine Theodorou
Jan 12, 1:59 pm
White House considering making high-quality masks available to all
The White House is considering making “more high-quality masks” available to all Americans, according to White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients.
“We’re in the process right now of strongly considering options to make more high-quality masks available to all Americans,” he said at Wednesday’s briefing.
-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett
Jan 12, 1:35 pm
Rhode Island reporting nation’s highest new case rate, California reaches pandemic case high
Deaths in the U.S. are on the rise. The average now stands at more than 1,600 new COVID-19-related fatalities each day — up by about 48% in the last two weeks, according to federal data.
Out of the 3,220 U.S. counties, just 26 counties are not reporting high transmission, according to federal data.
In the last week alone, the U.S. has reported more than 5.2 million new cases — that averages out to nearly nine Americans testing positive for COVID-19 every second.
Rhode Island is reporting the nation’s highest new case rate, while California is now averaging more than 100,000 new cases every day — a pandemic high for the Golden State.
But, according to experts, the surging national case numbers may not be indicative of what is happening in every region, and the nation’s overall continued increase does not necessarily mean that some areas will not see a decline.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Jan 12, 1:12 pm
91% less risk of death with omicron: Study
At Wednesday’s White House briefing Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked if people are protected from getting omicron again, and he said the information isn’t available yet.
But CDC director Rochelle Walensky outlined a study from Kaiser Permanente Southern California that showed, compared to delta, omicron had a 53% reduction in adjusted risk of symptomatic hospitalization, a 74% reduction in adjusted risk of ICU admission and a 91% reduction in adjusted risk of death.
“The data in this study remain consistent with what we are seeing from omicron in other countries, including South Africa and the U.K., and provide some understanding of what we can expect over the coming weeks as cases are predicted to peak in this country,” Walensky said.
-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett
Jan 12, 1:00 pm
CDC will update mask ‘information’ but won’t tell Americans which ones to wear
At Wednesday’s White House briefing, when asked about changing the CDC’s mask guidance CDC director Rochelle Walensky said the guidance won’t change but the CDC will update its website to reflect which masks work best, without telling Americans which one to wear.
“CDC continues to recommend that any mask is better than no mask and we do encourage all Americans to wear a well-fitting mask to protect themselves and prevent the spread of COVID 19. And that recommendation is not going to change,” Walensky said.
“We are preparing an update to the information on our mask website to best reflect the options that are available … and the different levels of protection different masks provide. And we want to provide Americans the best and most updated information to choose what mask is going to be right for them,” she said.
“The best mask that you wear is the one that you will wear and the one you can keep on all day long that you can tolerate in public indoor settings and tolerate where you need to wear it,” Walensky said. “We will provide information on improved filtration and that occurs with other masks such as N95s and information that the public needs about how to make a choice, which mask is the right one for them. But most importantly, we want to highlight the best mask for you as the one that you can wear comfortably.”
-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett
Jan 12, 12:34 pm
Quebec considering health tax for unvaccinated residents
COVID-19 hospitalizations are increasing in Quebec and Quebec Premier François Legault says the biggest challenge is staffing.
“To get through the next few weeks, we’re going to need 1,000 more employees in hospitals and 1,500 more employees” at one of Quebec’s long-term care facilities, Legault wrote on Facebook.
About 10% of adults in Quebec are unvaccinated, but they make up half of the COVID-19 ICU hospitalizations.
“This means that unvaccinated adults are nine times more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated adults. This is a huge burden on our health network,” he said. “This is why we are considering a payable health contribution for all adults who refuse, for non-medical reasons, to get vaccinated,” he said.
“The amount has not been decided yet, but it will be a significant amount,” he added.
-ABC News’ Christine Theodorou
Jan 12, 11:55 am
COVID is leading killer of law enforcement for 2nd year in a row
The vast majority of law enforcement deaths last year — 301 out of a total 458 deaths — were due to COVID-19, the second year in a row COVID-19 was the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths, according to a new report from the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund.
“Law enforcement officers nationwide continue to be exposed to the Covid-19 virus in the course of their daily assignments; therefore, the number of line-of-duty deaths is sadly ever-increasing,” the report said.
The vaccination status of the 301 officers who died is not known.
Jan 12, 10:22 am
CDC says it will update mask guidance
The CDC says it plans to update its mask guidance to “best reflect the multiple options available to people and the different levels of protection they provide.”
The CDC did not say when its guidance will be updated. In the meantime, the CDC said in a statement, “any mask is better than no mask, and we encourage Americans to wear a well-fitting mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
Since the arrival of omicron, health experts have urged Americans to upgrade their cloth masks to an N95 or KN95 because the new variant is so highly transmissible. But these higher-grade masks are costly and hard to find.
Prior to omicron, CDC director Rochelle Walensky resisted suggesting N95 masks for the average American because the CDC didn’t want to discourage people from wearing any mask.
Dawn O’Connell, a top official at the Health and Human Services Department, said Tuesday that the Biden administration plans to increase production of N95s. There are already 737 million N95 masks in the strategic national stockpile available for medical workers.
-ABC News’ Anne Flaherty
Jan 12, 9:50 am
22,000 more Americans may die from COVID over next 2 weeks
Forecast models used by the CDC suggests COVID-19-related deaths will significantly increase over the next four weeks.
The model forecasts that 22,000 more Americans could die from COVID-19 in just the next two weeks.
The CDC obtains these forecasts from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub at UMass Amherst, where a team monitors and combines forecasting models from the nation’s top researchers. The team then creates an ensemble — displayed like a hurricane forecast spaghetti plot — usually with a wide cone of uncertainty.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Jan 12, 9:50 am
22,000 more Americans may die from COVID over next 2 weeks
A forecast model used by the CDC suggests COVID-19-related deaths will significantly increase over the next four weeks.
The model forecasts that 22,000 more Americans could die from COVID-19 in just the next two weeks.
The CDC obtains these forecasts from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub at UMass Amherst, where a team monitors and combines forecasting models from the nation’s top researchers. The team then creates an ensemble — displayed like a hurricane forecast spaghetti plot — usually with a wide cone of uncertainty.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Jan 12, 8:51 am
British prime minister apologizes for attending lockdown party
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologized Wednesday for attending a party during England’s strict lockdown in 2020.
It was the first time that Johnson acknowledged he went to a garden party at his official residence and office on London’s Downing Street in May 2020. He is facing growing anger and calls for his resignation over claims he and his staff flouted COVID-19 restrictions by holding a “bring your own booze” party. At the time, Johnson’s government had imposed restrictions barring people in England from meeting more than one individual outside their household.
During the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session in the House of Commons in London on Wednesday, Johnson said he had considered the garden party to be a work event to thank his staff for their efforts during the pandemic.
“I want to apologize,” Johnson told lawmakers. “With hindsight, I should have sent everyone back inside.”
The prime minister urged people to await “the full conclusion” of an investigation by senior civil servant Sue Gray into several alleged parties by government staff. Gray will report her findings by the end of the month.
Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said Johnson’s defense was “the pathetic spectacle of a man who has run out of road” and demanded he “do the decent thing and resign.”
The prime minister declined to resign and didn’t explicitly admit that he had broken any rules, but said he understood “the rage.”
“I know that millions of people across this country have made extraordinary sacrifices over the past 18 months,” he added. “I understand the anger, the rage that they feel at the thought that people in Downing Street were not following those rules.”
-ABC News’ Guy Davies, Ian Pannell and Joseph Simonetti
Jan 12, 7:56 am
Russia sounds alarm over imminent wave of omicron infections
Russian officials are warning that an omicron-fueled wave of COVID-19 infections will soon hit, amid fears about how deadly a surge of the highly contagious variant — even if milder — might be in a country with a low vaccination rate.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, who is overseeing the COVID-19 response, and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said Wednesday that the situation could be “more critical” than previous waves of infections in Russia — a worrying prospect since earlier waves led to a high number of deaths.
Russia has reported more than 312,000 fatalities from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. However, the country registered just under 1 million excess deaths in 2021.
The Russian government has said the country will soon see six-figure daily cases. Less than 50% of Russians are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, amid widespread reluctance across the nation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has largely tried to downplay the scale of his country’s COVID-19 outbreak, warned Wednesday of the imminent increase in infections. Putin said Russia is “on the threshold of possible new outbreaks.”
Meanwhile, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said the country is at a “turning point,” which will decide how bad the wave will be. Russian authorities are calling for people to take precautions and observe social distancing measures. However, there are relatively few restrictions in most parts of the country.
Denis Logunov, deputy director of Russia’s Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology, said Tuesday that the nationwide number of omicron cases is expected to rise considerably in late January and early February. The World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge, also warned Tuesday that omicron is expected to infect more than half of Europe’s population within the next two months.
-ABC News’ Patrick Reevell
Jan 12, 5:00 am
US government to send schools millions more COVID-19 tests
As U.S. President Joe Biden vows to keep all schools safely open for full-time in-person learning amid the pandemic, his administration announced Wednesday that it will provide schools with an additional 10 million COVID-19 tests per month.
The federal government will send 5 million more rapid tests and 5 million more lab-based PCR tests to schools nationwide each month, at no cost. The rapid tests will be delivered starting later this month, while the PCR tests will be available immediately. The additional tests every month will allow the country’s schools to “more than double the volume of testing that took place in schools across the nation in November,” according to a fact sheet from the White House.
Moreover, as the Biden administration continues to surge testing sites to hard-hit and high-risk communities, the federal government will also “consider how these sites can support the safe operations of K-12 schools,” the White House said.
The U.S. Department of Education and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will also help connect schools with testing providers so they can use money allocated to them last year through the $1.9-trillion COVID-19 stimulus package. Later this week, the CDC will provide new training, resources and materials to help schools implement “test-to-stay” policies, according to the White House.
-ABC News’ Ben Gittleson
Jan 12, 4:21 am
West Virginia’s governor says he feels ‘extremely unwell’ after testing positive for COVID-19
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced Tuesday evening that he tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing moderate symptoms.
Justice, who is fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and has received a booster shot, said he has started a course of monoclonal antibody treatment, as recommended by his physicians. Everyone who has been in close contact with the governor over the past few days is being notified. His wife, Cathy Justice, tested negative for the virus on Tuesday evening, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
The governor was scheduled to deliver his State of the State address that night but was forced to do so via a written statement to the West Virginia Legislature instead.
“I feel extremely unwell at this point, and I have no choice but to postpone my State of the State address to the Legislature,” Justice said in a statement Tuesday evening. “I woke up this morning with congestion and a cough. A little while later, I developed a headache and fever, so I decided to get tested right away.”
“The rapid test that I took came back negative, but by the late afternoon, my symptoms were still getting much worse,” he continued. “My blood pressure and heart rate were extremely elevated, and I had a high fever. Finally, my PCR test results this evening confirmed I was positive. Because of all this, I began receiving my antibody treatment and I hope this will lessen these symptoms.”
Jan 12, 3:53 am
‘Most people are going to get COVID,’ FDA head warns
The acting head of the Food and Drug Administration warned Tuesday that most people in the United States will contract COVID-19, as the country grapples with record levels of infections and hospitalizations.
“I think it’s hard to process what’s actually happening right now, which is most people are going to get COVID,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the FDA, said while testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. “What we need to do is make sure the hospitals can still function, [and] transportation, you know, other essential services are not disrupted while this happens.”
(ATLANTA) — After weeks of health experts urging Americans to upgrade their masks to protect against the omicron COVID-19 variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that it was planning to update its mask guidance to “best reflect the multiple options available to people and the different levels of protection they provide.”
In a statement provided to ABC News on Wednesday, the agency said the goal is for Americans to have “the best and most updated information to choose what mask is right for them.”
The move by the CDC would be the first significant update to its mask guidance since last July when it urged all Americans to return to wearing masks, after the delta variant proved so transmissible that research found even vaccinated people could transmit the virus.
While vaccinated people are considered infectious for a shorter period of time than someone who is unvaccinated, and they are considerably less likely to end up hospitalized, the CDC urged everyone to return to masking indoors to prevent community cases from rising.
Since the arrival of omicron, however, health experts have urged caution with the usual cloth masks and cities like Los Angeles and New York have already recommended mask upgrades to their residents.
CDC would not say how soon it planned to update its online guidance, although one administration official said the goal was by week’s end. The Washington Post first reported that CDC was considering the update to its guidance.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s director, told reporters on Wednesday that the overall recommendation won’t change that “any mask is better than no mask” and that a mask should fit well.
The best mask, she told reporters, is “the one you can keep on all day long that you can tolerate in public indoor settings and tolerate where you need to wear it,” Walensky said.
“I recommend you get the highest quality mask that you can tolerate and that’s available to you,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and President Joe Biden’s senior medical adviser, told CNN on Tuesday.
One problem with pushing higher grade masks is that they can be costly, harder to find and – in the case of surgical N95s – somewhat uncomfortable to wear. The CDC also warns customers against counterfeit masks that aren’t as effective.
Prior to omicron, Walensky resisted a call for Americans to wear surgical N95 masks for the average American because the agency didn’t want to discourage people from wearing any mask.
Walensky did not wear an N95 mask while testifying on Capitol Hill Tuesday. According to a spokesperson, she wore a disposable mask with a cloth mask on top “to ensure a tight seal.” That would be in keeping with CDC’s current guidance that suggests Americans could opt for two masks for increased protection.
To address the issue of limited supply, the Biden administration says it’s planning to help ramp up production of N95s to make them more available to Americans who want one. Dawn O’Connell, a top official at the Health and Human Services Department, said Tuesday that the government planned to sign a contract within the next month or so that would identify a provider to produce 140 million N95 masks a month.
There are already 737 million N95 masks in the strategic national stockpile available for medical workers.
White House COVID Coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday the White House was seriously considering making “high quality masks” available to all Americans, although he did not provide additional details.
ABC News reporter Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly 2 million new cases of cancer are expected to be diagnosed and some 609,000 people will likely die from cancer in the U.S. in 2022, according to a new report published Wednesday.
The annual report from the American Cancer Society estimates that 1,918,030 Americans will be diagnosed with cancer, equivalent to 5,250 new cases being detected every day. This is up from approximately 1.8 million new cases that likely occurred in 2021.
Both figures — for cases and deaths — are the highest estimates made by the ACS since at least 2007.
Health experts have suggested that people missing cancer screenings and doctor’s appointments due to the COVID-19 pandemic may cause cancer rates to rise in the coming years.
However, Dr. Rebecca Siegel, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society and corresponding author of the report, told ABC News that estimates were made based on complete data, which is only available through 2018 for cases and 2019 for deaths.
“We absolutely expect that the pandemic will impact cancer rates because of delays in screenings, and diagnoses because of health care closures, but we were not able to account for that yet,” she said.
She expects future reports will likely reflect the impacts of the pandemic.
Among the findings in the report is that cases of breast cancer have been slowly increasing by about 0.5% every year. In 2022, an estimated 290,560 Americans will be diagnosed with breast cancer, mostly women.
Siegel said this is not because of an increase in screenings that detect the cancer but rather because more women are having fewer children later in life — both of which are linked to an increased likelihood of breast cancer.
“It’s thought to be related to continued declines in the fertility rate, because the higher number of childbirths and the earlier age is protective against breast cancer, and we know that women are having children later and they’re having fewer children,” she said. “So that is likely contributing to this small increase.”
She added that higher body weight also increases the risk of breast cancer and that increasing rates of obesity are likely a contributing factor.
The report also showed disparities when it comes to communities of color. For example, Black women were 40% more likely to die of breast cancer despite having lower rates than white women.
Siegel said this is because minorities have traditionally had less access to high quality health care and that more effort needs to be placed in providing access to disadvantaged communities.
However, the report also had some bright spots. The risk of death from cancer overall has been declining continuously since 1991 with about 3.5 million cancer deaths avoided as of 2019.
“The population-level data seen in this report reflects our experience treating patients. Cancer has become a curable or chronic disease for more Americans,” Dr. Deb Schrag, Chair of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who was not involved in the report, told ABC News in a statement.
Additionally, although lung cancer continues to be the leading cause of death in the U.S. — with an estimated 350 deaths per day from lung cancer — the three-year survival rate has increased from 21% in 2004 to 31%.
Siegel said declines in smoking played a role, but the bigger factors are recent improvements in treatment and lung cancer being detected in early stages.
“One finding was that twice as many lung cancers are being detected at an early stage, and that means more patients are having their cancer detected when they’re the most treatable,” Dr. Lauren Byers, a lung cancer expert at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, who was not involved with the report, told ABC News.
Siegel said she hopes the new report encourages people to stay up-to-date on their cancer screenings.
“We have a lot of effective screening tests now to prevent deaths from cancer and so, while none of these tests is perfect, being up to date and talking with your doctor about when you should screen can really help reduce your risk of dying from cancer,” she said.
