(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 670,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.6 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 63.5% of Americans ages 12 and up are 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:
Sep 17, 11:56 am
125 employees leave Indiana hospital system after refusing vaccine
Indiana University Health, the state’s largest network of physicians, said 125 employees have left after choosing to not get vaccinated.
All workers were required to be fully vaccinated by Sept. 1. Those who didn’t were given a two-week unpaid suspension ending Sept. 14, and those who still didn’t agree to the shot by that point “left the organization,” according to a statement by IU Health.
Sep 17, 11:21 am
Art exhibit commemorating COVID deaths opens to public
An art exhibit commemorating the Americans who died from COVID-19 is opening to the public on Friday.
The exhibit, which will run until Oct. 3, displays more than 660,000 white flags on the National Mall at the base of the Washington Monument.
This is the largest participatory art installation on the National Mall since the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Sep 17, 10:56 am
Kentucky school district cancels all classes due to increase in cases
Newport Independent Schools in Kentucky has canceled all classes on Friday due to an increase in the number of sick or quarantined students, the district said.
Classes will be virtual on Monday and Tuesday. The district said it plans to return to in-person learning on Wednesday.
Sep 17, 10:44 am
More than 10,000 new deaths reported in US in 1 week
The U.S. recorded more than 10,100 confirmed COVID-19 related deaths in one week, according to federal data. States with some of the highest death tolls are Texas, Georgia and North Carolina.
The U.S. reported more than 1.02 million cases over the last week. This is a major step back in the fight against COVID-19; in June, the U.S. recorded just 80,000 new cases in one week.
Tennessee and West Virginia currently have the country’s highest case rate, followed by Alaska, Wyoming, South Carolina, Montana and Kentucky, according to federal data.
(MOSCOW) — In St. Petersburg’s municipal elections this week, Boris Vishnevsky is running against himself. But that does not mean he has no challengers. Far from it, in fact.
The veteran anti-Kremlin opposition politician is running against two men who have legally changed their names to be the same as his. They have even altered their appearances on the ballots, adopting beards to resemble him.
It is an update on a long-running tactic in Russian elections, known as “a double,” where authorities try to siphon votes away from an opponent by putting up candidates with the same name in the hope confused voters will put their mark next to the wrong person on their ballot paper.
Vishnevsky filed a complaint to the elections commission but it was rejected. He said had faced similar tactics before, but not at such lengths.
“We’ve simply never had such a thing before,” Vishnevsky told ABC News in an interview last month. “We’ve had situations before where they’ve put up people with the same last names in elections, but before this we’ve never had someone changing their last name and first name.”
The clone candidate ploy — which is being used in multiple races in Moscow too — is just one of a torrent of alleged dirty tricks, manipulation and crude repression being deployed around Russia’s parliamentary elections that are taking place this weekend and that the Kremlin is determined will produce a convincing result for its ruling party. The three-day vote, which starts Friday, decides seats in Russia’s lower house of parliament, as well as in regional and local councils.
Russia’s elections are heavily managed and as usual the outcome is not in doubt: President Vladimir Putin’s ruling party, United Russia, will keep its constitutional majority in Russia’s 450-seat lower house, known as the Duma. A handful of parties, vetted by the Kremlin, make up the rest.
But the environment these elections are happening in is different, coming as Russia has rapidly slid over the past year from authoritarianism to something far closer to a full-fledged dictatorship, where no real political opposition is tolerated.
Authorities have blocked opposition candidates on a broad scale, introducing new procedural and legal barriers or, in some cases, simply jailing or driving them out of the country with the threat of arrest.
This time, anti-Kremlin candidates who once would have been tolerated on the ballot have no place. In June, Dmitry Gudkov, one of the opposition’s best-known politicians, left for exile in Ukraine, saying he and his family had been threatened with jail. Even the traditionally tame opposition parties have come under attack, in particular the Communist Party, which saw one of its top leaders, Pavel Grudinin, barred from running.
“Faster and faster democratic progress is devolving into dictatorship,” said Darya Artamonova, a 19 year-old candidate running in municipal elections in a suburb in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, one of the only opposition candidates permitted on the ballot there. During the campaign she told ABC News her parents were sent a funeral wreath expressing condolences for her death, an obvious threat.
In the past 18 months, the Kremlin has launched a broad campaign of repression larger than anything in Putin’s 20-year rule. Critics and independent analysts say the campaign is aimed at squeezing out organized dissent in the country.
That has included outlawing the movement of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s best-known opponent who authorities jailed in January after he survived a nerve agent poisoning. A new law bans anyone associated with Navalny’s organizations from running for office for five years.
An arsenal of new laws has given authorities broad capabilities to jail or block critics from the vote. Safeguards to prevent ballot stuffing have also been weakened: Authorities have pushed people to vote online, a tactic critics say will facilitate rigging. Holding the vote itself over three days also makes monitoring more difficult. Russia’s election commission this year will also not live-stream CCTV from voting stations.
Moreover, the campaign has targeted independent media. Authorities have designated most of Russia’s leading independent news sites as “foreign agents,” a label that imposes restrictions and opens reporters up to risk of criminal prosecution. A top election monitoring group, Golos, has also received the same designation.
The intense control around the elections, analysts said, reflects the Kremlin’s concerns that the ruling party United Russia is polling at below 30%, a historic low.
In Russia, where the parliament is effectively a tame extension of the Kremlin, the main purpose of elections is about producing a big result for United Russia to validate Putin, according to Andrey Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
“They are not about political representation,” Kolesnikov wrote in an article this week. “What will happen over the three days of September 17–19, 2021, is more of a confidence vote on Putin and his regime.”
To boost the result, authorities have been pressing state employees and military personnel to register to vote, with some state organizations telling staff they must persuade at least two others to do so too. On Friday, long lines appeared at some polling stations in Moscow, a sign critics said of state workers being obliged to go vote. At one station in the central Arbat neighborhood, a man in a line told ABC News many of those waiting were soldiers from a nearby defense ministry headquarters building. Moscow’s elections commission later confirmed the queue was being caused by military personnel voting.
Navalny’s team is seeking to exploit United Russia’s unpopularity. His group has launched a tactical voting campaign known as “Smart Voting.” The campaign calls for people to vote for any candidate with the best chance of beating United Russia’s, regardless of who they are. This week Navalny’s team published a list of candidates — the majority from Russia’s Communist Party — it recommends people should vote for.
The authorities have moved to block the tactical voting campaign, forcing Russian search engines to remove “Smart Voting” from their searches.
On Friday, Apple and Google deleted Navalny’s app from their stores in Russia, under pressure from Russia’s government. In a letter published by Navalny’s team, Apple said it was obliged to because Navalny’s organization is banned as extremist and that authorities allege it illegally enables “election interference.”
(WASHINGTON) — On one small, white rectangle is the name of a 29-year-old engineer, on another the name of a World War II veteran, and on a third, that of a 15-year-old — just three of more than 600,000 flags on the National Mall reflecting the devastating impact COVID-19 has had on American lives and the country.
On the grassy expanse near the Washington Monument, the field of flags is being displayed as a part of a chilling exhibition called “In America: Remember.”
Each represents a life lost to the pandemic, and each sits amid a sea of symbolic grief.
This is the second stunning exhibit based on a project trying to capture, the artist said, the “human dignity” behind the mind-numbing numbers.
Back in the fall of 2020, the first featured a then-unthinkable 200,000 flags near RFK Stadium in Washington.
Since then, the scope of the new project has more than tripled as the death toll continues to rise, coming ever closer to the number estimated to have died during the 1918 influenza pandemic, now at more than 667,000 — or one in every 500 Americans.
The exhibit, being unveiled Friday, will stay on the National Mall until Oct. 3.
Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, the artist, spoke with ABC News as more and more flags were being placed on Thursday.
“It’s really hard to think about the grief that is just embodied by one flag,” Firstenberg said. “And when as you walk amongst 660,000, it’s unimaginable the pain that people have gone through.”
Visitors can stop at a table and personalize a flag with the name of a loved one lost.
Many now also carry messages from across the country submitted on the project’s website, messages to mothers, fathers, siblings and friends. Firstenberg said she hoped it could be cathartic for families not able to hold large funerals or be with family and other loved ones given pandemic restrictions.
Some are to strangers, but fellow Americans.
She recalled one emergency room doctor who traveled to Washington from New York last fall to add the names of 12 patients he lost to COVID.
He then turned around, she said, heading back to start a new shift.
Firstenberg said she hopes the flags, and the sound of them being pulled in the wind, will give visitors “a moment of pause.”
“This is all of our art,” she said, “because it’s when people personalize flags and a complete stranger comes and meets that flag and feels something, senses the grief that is embodied by just that one flag, they created the art, too.”
(ATLANTA) — Despite the persistent pleas by public health officials to get vaccinated as coronavirus infections continue to surge, a staggeringly low number of pregnant people have been vaccinated against the virus nationwide.
Just 25% of pregnant people in the United States between the ages of 18 and 49 are currently vaccinated with at least one dose, according to data through Sept. 11 compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The decision to not get vaccinated has resulted in a growing number of pregnant people ending up in intensive care wards, many severely ill with COVID-19. This worrisome uptick has been particularly evident in Mississippi, where state health officials have been sounding the alarm not only about the influx of fetal and maternal deaths, but also about several reports of pregnant women being turned away from getting the shot.
“Some of the patients had reported to us that they had gone to be vaccinated, and were turned away because they were pregnant. Those were people who were just sharing their experiences at pharmacies and other areas around the state,” Dr. Michelle Owens, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at University of Mississippi Medical Center, told ABC News.
Owens, alongside other state health officials, reported this week that not all of their patients had been vaccine-hesitant, but instead were turned down after disclosing that they were expecting.
“People are kind of adverse to pregnant patients when they come in. They’re hesitant to give pregnant patients medications, and certainly, vaccinations kind of fall into that,” said Dr. Marty Tucker, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at UMMC, during a press conference on Thursday.
In light of the concerning reports, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs issued a standing order last week for women to receive COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy, “to give the pharmacy some reassurance for the places that it’s OK and recommended for pregnant women to get immunized at any stage in pregnancy.”
Owens added that health officials and physicians were all working together “to help reduce barriers to vaccination for pregnant women, and we just really tried to amplify this information so that wherever a pregnant person goes in order to receive care or to receive a vaccine that they are welcomed with open arms and that they receive that vaccine.”
In Mississippi, 72 patients have experienced late pregnancy loss and 15 pregnant women have succumbed to the virus, more than half of whom have died since the end of July. None of the pregnant women who died was fully vaccinated, and the majority were overweight, according Dobbs.
“There are NICUs all over this country that are filling up with babies who will not get to know their moms, and that’s devastating. There are families who are losing their matriarchs, and then, there are women who have been infected by this virus who won’t ever be the same,” Owens said.
Since the onset of the pandemic, more than 21,000 pregnant people have been hospitalized nationwide, and at least 155 have died as result of COVID-19, according to federal data. Additionally, there have been at least 266 pregnancy losses nationwide, and approximately 10.3% of patients have had to deliver prematurely.
“When we lose a mom, especially something that could be prevented, it is a tragedy. It does not discriminate, we see it in people with and without co-morbidities. We see it in people as young as 23 years old, so it is a bad actor across the board,” Tucker said.
Earlier in the pandemic, pregnant women at UMMC were not becoming as severely ill with COVID-19, but following the spread of the delta variant, Owens said, it became evident patients were becoming severely ill and deteriorating more quickly.
“We are seeing women, who may not have other co-morbid conditions, being affected at an earlier gestational age. Most of the people who we’re seeing now, are affected in the middle of their pregnancy, and they have a much more aggressive form of the disease,” Owens said. “The next thing you know, they end up progressing very quickly to need intubation.”
Pregnant people are at an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 when compared to non-pregnant people, according to the CDC. In addition, they are also at increased risk for preterm birth and other poor pregnancy outcomes.
The CDC and other leading health organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, have issued guidelines calling on all pregnant people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“CDC encourages all pregnant people or people who are thinking about becoming pregnant and those breastfeeding to get vaccinated to protect themselves from COVID-19,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement about the updated guidance last month. “The vaccines are safe and effective, and it has never been more urgent to increase vaccinations as we face the highly transmissible Delta variant and see severe outcomes from COVID-19 among unvaccinated pregnant people.”
The updated guidance from the CDC was based on further research that found pregnant people can receive an mRNA vaccine with no increased risk to themselves or their babies.
“[It] is really the most important thing to give pregnant women an opportunity to still be able to live to fight another day,” Owens said. “It’s really imperative that women get the good information to know that the COVID vaccine is safe, approved and recommended, and that it makes a big difference in whether or not a patient has severe disease, or potentially, could die.”
(ANCHORAGE, Alaska) — In January, Alaska had the highest per capita coronavirus vaccination rate in the nation. Now, hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, and the state’s largest hospital is rationing care.
Vaccine hesitancy and the delta variant have pushed the state’s fragile and limited hospital system to the breaking point.
Providence Alaska Medical Center, the state’s largest hospital, released a letter to the public Tuesday saying that more than 30% of its patients have COVID-19 and the hospital is rationing treatment.
“While we are doing our utmost, we are no longer able to provide the standard of care to each and every patient who needs our help,” wrote Chief of Staff Kristen Solana Walkinshaw on behalf of the hospital’s Medical Executive Committee. “The acuity and number of patients now exceeds our resources and our ability to staff beds with skilled caregivers, like nurses and respiratory therapists.”
Of Alaska’s 120 ICU beds, 106 were filled as of Thursday — leaving only 14 beds available statewide.
Alaska had a strong initial vaccine rollout, delivering doses to remote areas of the state by helicopters, planes, dog sleds and ferries, with additional support from the Indian Health Service and state tribal health system to vaccinate Alaska Natives. Due to the challenges posed by the state’s vast size, it received vaccine allocations monthly as opposed to weekly, giving it the ability to plan ahead and deliver many doses early on.
But, as in the rest of the country, vaccination rates slowly began dropping off over the summer, stagnating with 56.7% of Alaskans fully vaccinated as of Thursday, according to the state’s coronavirus dashboard.
“In terms of why things went stagnant, it does seem like hesitancy is the main factor behind that,” said Jared Kosin, CEO and president of the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association. “It’s not an access issue. The vaccine’s widely available in Alaska anywhere.”
Gov. Mike Dunleavy ended Alaska’s COVID-19 emergency declaration in the spring, and both the state legislature and Dunleavy’s administration have yet to reinstate one even at the pleading of hospitals and doctors.
In a spring mayoral race, Anchorage voters elected Dave Bronson, who has repeatedly said his administration will not enact citywide mask or vaccine mandates.
Bronson reiterated that commitment on Tuesday after an assembly meeting where hospital workers begged for action.
Cases in Alaska have been sharply increasing since August, and the state shattered its new daily case record with 1,068 infections reported Wednesday. As a result, hospitalizations have skyrocketed, reaching all time highs.
And health care experts warn this is only the beginning of a surge that could last weeks.
“It has brought us to the breaking point, and to be totally direct, in many respects we are broken,” said Kosin. “The situation is extremely bleak.”
Alaska runs on a “hub-and-spoke model” of health care, according to Kosin. “If you’re in a more rural area, you’re going to go to clinics, rural hospitals,” he told ABC News. “The idea is, as you need a higher level of care or (have) more needs, you will transfer in, ultimately, to our biggest hub, which is Anchorage.”
Anchorage, the state’s most populous city, is home to the state’s three largest hospitals — some of which offer the only advanced neurological and cardiovascular care in the state. While many people live in rural and geographically isolated areas, those communities still rely on the specialty medical care that can only be found in the city.
As city hospitals have reached capacity and Anchorage residents are forced to remain in their cars or emergency room waiting areas until they can receive care, health care institutions must refuse transfer patients from rural communities, leaving them without what can be lifesaving treatment, Solana Walkinshaw said.
The nearest next option are hospitals in the contiguous U.S. like Seattle, Washington — an over three-hour flight away. Seattle is also experiencing an influx of COVID-19 patients and is trying to help by taking patients from neighboring states like Idaho, which is coping with its most serious surge in cases since the beginning of the pandemic. That leaves very limited options.
Because city hospitals are inundated with COVID-19 cases, they are struggling to provide routine care and emergency services to patients who do not have the virus.
As of Tuesday night, Providence Alaska Medical Center had only a single available bed with 10 admitted patients in need of one, along with patients in the emergency room also waiting for an opening, Solana Walkinshaw said. Three of those patients needed an ICU bed, but the hospital had none available.
Between 80-85% of COVID-19 patients at the hospital are unvaccinated and the same is true of the COVID-19 patients who die, according to Providence Alaska Medical Center spokesperson Mikal Canfield.
The hospital began rationing care Saturday, leaving health care workers to decide which patients get care and which ones have to wait. The staff is demoralized, Solana Walkinshaw said, with some breaking down in tears, sad and frustrated over the situation they find themselves in.
“People are struggling, working as hard as they can and having to make these decisions is probably some of the hardest things people have done in their careers,” she said.
While rural Alaska has experienced a stark increase in coronavirus cases, with some communities seeing the worst outbreaks on record, rural health providers are not being hit as hard with COVID-19 patients, Kosin said.
That’s due to the smaller populations outside of the city, the fact that the COVID-19 patients in the most serious condition are sent to Anchorage and because some of the villages have very high vaccination rates.
The bigger problem for rural institutions is that they are being tasked with caring for non-COVID-19 patients they would typically transfer to Anchorage.
At Tuesday’s city assembly meeting, a group of health care workers from hospitals across Anchorage pleaded for residents to wear masks and get vaccinated.
Leslie Gonsette, an internal medicine hospitalist at Providence Alaska Medical Center, came to testify at the meeting during her hospital shift. One of her patients, who does not have COVID-19 and is vaccinated, was in critical condition and in need of an ICU bed, she said.
“I called my colleagues in the ICU, and I explained, ‘My patient is going to probably die. I need an ICU bed,'” she said. “And the answer I got was, ‘We are doing our best. We do not have a bed.'”
Bronson’s office released a statement after the meeting.
“My administration has been clear since the beginning that we will not mandate masks or vaccines,” it said. “If someone wants to wear a mask or get a vaccination that’s their personal choice. But we will not violate the privacy and independent health care decisions of our citizens in the process.”
Alaska’s health care providers, however, are left worrying about the kinds of choices they will be left with.
“Rationing care will take on a whole new meaning than it does today,” Kosin said. “I think it’s going to lead to the types of decisions you can’t imagine a person having to make.”
(NEW YORK) — With the FDA gearing up to decide if all Americans need booster shots, some researchers are pointing to preliminary data suggesting that mixing different vaccines could offer an even stronger immune boost.
For now, data is too sparse to support a mix-and-match strategy, experts say. But scientists are learning more about just how strong the immune response can be for someone who has previously been infected with COVID-19 then gets the vaccine — a phenomenon called “hybrid immunity.”
“The best thing we can hope for is that three vaccine doses will emulate the super immune response, found among those previously infected with the virus,” said Dr. Paul Goepfert, an infectious disease physician and director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic. “This [type of immunity] will protect against variants in the future.”
With the nation still slogging through the pandemic and contending with the delta variant’s threat of breakthrough infections, “super immunity” becomes an appealing concept.
In one review recently published in Science, people with that hybrid immunity see an immediate and “striking” improvement in protection — up to a 100-fold increase in their antibody response as compared to what they built up after their COVID-19 infection — Dr. Shane Crotty, review author and virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, said.
Experts are also discovering these hybrid antibodies appear to be more versatile and recognize more variants, including those as distant as the original SARS virus, Crotty said.
One yet to be peer reviewed study of previously COVID-19 positive patients who were then vaccinated at least six months later found participants were able to fight off both variants of concern tested: delta, the most infectious, and beta, the most lethal.
“With prior infection, their antibodies are able to recognize numerous variants, but with the addition of the vaccine, they are able to generate a large number to have a stronger effect against the virus,” Crotty said.
Like an exercise regimen that pairs weight lifting with cardio, Crotty explained that these individuals benefit from the combination of quantity and varied quality of the immune response they build. And that could indicate promising signs for boosters.
Scientists are seeking to replicate that strong protection, but without people having to contract COVID-19, as it’s universally agreed that infection is not an optimal immunization course.
Instead, they’re hoping booster doses of vaccines could convey a similar effect.
But timing is key when it comes to additional doses, whichever vaccine is given. Researchers say that exact right interval when immune response has matured — but before protection begins to wane — is the ideal target.
“Our immune system is built to have repeated exposures to the same antigen,” which will “substantially” enhance immune protection, Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said.
Experts are still gleaning what exactly is the benefit of this enhanced immunity, though it’s not novel to coronavirus.
Flu vaccines, for example, are “boosted” for children receiving them, while adults receive one dose, yearly.
“This is because of hybrid immunity. Adults have already been exposed to influenza and have primed their immune response,” Goepfert said.
“What we have seen is that waiting six months does mount a better immune response later,” he added. “It seems that our immune system likes to rest and develop antibodies, and then mount a stronger response when it sees the same pathogen again later on.”
There is not enough data yet to say if the mix-and-match approach of priming one vaccine and boosting with another is going to offer better or more durable protection. But while the jury remains out, experts are hopeful.
“The mix-and-match approach in vaccine administration has been studied for decades, but unfortunately not for COVID,” Barouch said. “while larger studies are underway, it is best to stay with the same vaccine for the booster, if approved.”
(WASHINGTON) — When President Joe Biden visited Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, he promised a key form of federal aid to those dealing with the lingering effects of the storm, but weeks after landfall getting that financial help has been easier said than done.
The money would go straight into survivors’ bank accounts “so that they can deal immediately with emergencies,” Biden said Sept. 3.
Ida roared ashore near Port Fourchon as a Category 4 hurricane on Aug. 29, wiping out homes and flooding entire neighborhoods. At least 26 people died in Louisiana.
But access to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s critical needs assistance program, designed to provide $500 checks for individuals with lifesaving needs, has been difficult in many of the affected areas.
FEMA defines critical needs as “life-saving and life-sustaining items including, but not limited to: water, food, first aid, prescriptions, infant formula, diapers, consumable medical supplies, durable medical equipment, personal hygiene items and fuel for transportation.”
But weeks after the storm, getting access to those items is still a challenge, and has left some residents who say they have urgent needs confused about why they have not received the federal aid mentioned by Biden.
Melinda Bernard, 34, is among the Ida survivors who has not received the $500 deposit, despite requesting it.
Her family stayed at their home in Houma, Louisiana, when Ida hit as they couldn’t find safe lodging to accommodate them and their pets. They were without power for 15 days, she said.
“Everything was booked. We refused to leave our animals so we stayed home,” she said.
Bernard said she wasn’t anticipating the burden of Ida’s lasting effects, and in an effort to be honest, marked “no” on the FEMA application when asked if she was in immediate need. But as power outages lingered, Bernard was forced to run her generator to power her home, especially because her son, who has asthma, sometimes needs a nebulizer, particularly in hot weather.
Costs added up. Her generator failed and she was forced to replace it.
“Due to the difficulty of finding available gas, we chose to ration the fuel we had,” she said.
In a phone call to a FEMA disaster assistance hotline, a representative told her she couldn’t amend her application, and that she should visit a local food bank for assistance.
A Sept. 14 tweet from FEMA read, in part, “if you are not eligible, this program does not have an appeal process.”
When asked to confirm whether an application marked ineligible can be appealed, FEMA Public Affairs Director Jaclyn Rothenberg said she stood by the agency’s tweet.
Rothenberg said there had been more than 640,000 applications in Louisiana in connection with Ida, and 65% had received critical needs assistance funding.
“Most people are getting the funds they apply for,” she said.
In the Louisiana parish of Tangipahoa, parish President Robby Miller said he applied for the $500 promoted by Biden in the wake of Ida, like many others there. He said on Sept. 15 that he still hadn’t received it, and wasn’t alone.
“I’ve only heard of a handful that have gotten it,” he said.
Miller added that the process of applying for the various forms of aid offered by FEMA confounded him and other parish residents.
“I would say that the messaging and the communication of what is actually available to our citizens, when it will be available, has been rather confusing,” he said.
Danielle Craig, 45, lives in Hammond, on the border of Tangipahoa and Livingston parishes, and was among those displaced by Ida. She and her husband fled their home for nearly two weeks. She said the damage to her community was “unlike anything I have ever seen.”
The widespread destruction in Hammond included roofs ripped from buildings and downed trees lining the streets.
Craig’s husband is diabetic, and needed refrigeration for his insulin, so they stayed with friends for nearly two weeks — wherever they could find electricity.
Water leaked into their damaged home, then black mold began to line the walls and ceilings.
Craig said she tried to apply online for aid from FEMA, but couldn’t confirm her address in its system. When she called, she said a representative told her their home would need to be inspected first. Nobody has showed up, Craig said.
And while she was told she’d receive the $500 promised by Biden, the money hasn’t appeared. After hours on hold, a FEMA representative told her to be patient.
FEMA officials have committed to an equitable process in terms of the allocation of federal aid, and have encouraged applicants who were not offered critical needs assistance to explore other options, including individual assistance.
Rothenberg said FEMA is “improving access to disaster assistance for underserved communities,” including by expanding the criteria for applicants to show they have expenses related to their homes.
Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., announced Sept. 10 that FEMA had granted a 10-day extension to the original deadline to apply for assistance after, his spokesperson said, constituents reported difficulty accessing aid due to long hold times on FEMA phone lines. The new deadline to apply for Critical Needs Assistance is Sept. 22.
But despite the extension, some, like Craig, are still waiting for aid they say they urgently need.
“You can only be so patient after weeks of damage and nobody’s done anything,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — By early next year, all eligible students attending a Los Angeles public school will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
The school district is the largest in the country to mandate the shot — which joins a list of other vaccines already required to attend school that protect against highly contagious diseases.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia have vaccine requirements for children to attend school and child care facilities, including laws around allowable exemptions.
Massachusetts became the first state to enact a school vaccination requirement in the 1850s for the smallpox vaccine — the first immunization developed against a contagious disease — according to a publication by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other states followed suit, and by the 1980-1981 school year, all states had vaccination requirements for students entering the classroom, the CDC said.
Children in close proximity with poor ventilation and hygiene practices can lead to “transmission events,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
“This is why vaccine mandates in schools have been super important,” Brownstein said. “They create a safe environment where you can recognize that you will not have transmission of a wide range of infectious diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough.”
The mandates have been “very successful” in preventing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, he said.
Thanks to vaccination efforts, many highly contagious diseases that were once common, such as measles, mumps, whooping cough (aka pertussis) and chickenpox, are now rare, while polio and smallpox have been eradicated in the U.S. Routine child vaccination is estimated to prevent 936,000 premature deaths and 419 million illnesses in American children born between 1994 and 2018, according to the CDC.
Vaccine mandates for child care and schools vary by state. All require vaccines that protect against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles and rubella, according to the Immunization Action Coalition (IAC), a vaccine education and advocacy organization. Nearly all states require vaccines that protect against mumps, chickenpox, hepatitis B and pneumococcal disease.
Vaccines that aren’t widely required by states include ones for the flu, hepatitis A, rotavirus and HPV, according to IAC. The U.S. stopped routine vaccination for smallpox — which has been eradicated globally — in the 1970s.
“Precedents have been set that you can protect your community by requiring school vaccination requirements,” L.J Tan, chief policy and partnerships officer for IAC, told ABC News.
For the 2019-2020 school year, about 95% of children in kindergarten in the U.S. had received the DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and varicella (chickenpox) vaccines, according to the CDC, with roughly 5% exempt from or not up to date on certain doses.
The agency has observed a decrease in vaccination rates during the pandemic, as COVID-19 has disrupted school and routine well visits for many families. There was a 14% drop in public sector vaccine ordering in 2020-2021 compared to 2019, and measles vaccine ordering decreased by over 20%, the CDC reported.
The decline in routine pediatric immunizations has been very concerning for public health experts.
“Whenever we have a decrease in coverage, that could be an opportunity for these infections to reemerge and cause outbreaks — and one of the most obvious, recent examples is measles,” Dr. Flor Munoz, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told ABC News.
In 2019, the U.S. saw its largest measles outbreak in 25 years, with 1,282 cases confirmed in 31 states, mostly among people not vaccinated against the virus, according to the CDC.
It’s especially important that children stay up-to-date on vaccines as many return to in-person learning and routine activities, Munoz said.
“All of these other diseases that are vaccine-preventable can reemerge at any time,” Munoz said. “Vaccination is the easiest way and the best way to prevent any of these potentially serious infections.”
Pediatric COVID-19 rates have reached record levels in the U.S. as students return to school. In the last two weeks, nearly half a million children have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the latest report on pediatric coronavirus cases from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for people as young as 12 and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for those ages 16 and up. The pharmaceutical company has said it plans to submit vaccine safety data on 5- to 11-year-olds to the FDA by the end of September.
Currently, no state requires the COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12 and older for school entry, though some are mandating it for certain state employees and many colleges are requiring it for students.
The Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education last week approved a mandate that students ages 12 and up be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 10, 2022, to attend class in-person. At this time, the school district said it is not requiring booster shots, which the Biden administration is planning to be made available as soon as next week for the general public at least eight months after their second dose.
Beyond Los Angeles, nearby Culver City is mandating that public school students get the vaccine this school year, and two San Francisco Bay Area districts are considering the same. More school districts may likely follow suit, creating a “domino effect,” Brownstein said, especially as younger children become eligible to get the vaccine.
“A safe vaccine that can prevent transmission, protect our kids and ensure that they can stay in in-person learning actually makes a lot of sense,” he said. “And there’s historical precedent for doing so.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration’s independent advisory committee will convene in open session Friday to review the latest data submitted by Pfizer and discuss whether a booster dose is safe enough for widespread use and whether it’s necessary and effective at improving protection levels against COVID-19.
Their vote will be non-binding — the FDA is not required to follow the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee’s (VRBPAC) recommendations — but they generally do so.
After that vote, the FDA will decide whether they will formally amend their current vaccine approval for Pfizer. Next week the matter heads to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent advisory panel (ACIP), where that panel will weigh on a more granular level who should get a booster and when? The CDC director will then formally sign off on whatever ACIP recommends.
Friday morning’s opening remarks are set to kick off at 8:30 a.m. ET, followed by introductions by the FDA, presentations from CDC representatives, a discussion about booster protection and a presentation from Pfizer executives who will make the case for why boosters are appropriate.
After a public hearing portion in the afternoon and a question-and-answer session on both Pfizer’s and the FDA’s presentations, the committee will debate the issue for roughly two hours. A vote is expected at about 4:45 p.m. ET, if they stay on schedule.
The meeting Friday comes amid a contentious debate on the timeline for boosters, with some health experts vehement that the data and timing is still premature.
Two top FDA officials who are leaving the agency later this year publicly waded into the debate on Monday, splitting from the agency and arguing in a scientific journal that it was too soon to give booster shots to the general public since the vaccines still offer strong protection against serious disease.
Both are scheduled to attend Friday’s discussion. One of them, the director of the agency’s office of vaccines research and review, is supposed to give an overarching introduction of the topic for the FDA in the beginning of the day.
Also joining Friday’s meeting is the head of Israel’s public health services, Dr. Sharon Alroy Preis, who is set to present data on booster protection against COVID infection and severe disease.
In a review of Pfizer’s data, also released Wednesday, the FDA appeared to be noncommittal on the necessity for boosters. The agency pointed out that Pfizer’s efficacy data could be hampered by the limitations of studying boosters in real-world situations, which can introduce complicating factors.
“There are many potentially relevant studies, but FDA has not independently reviewed or verified the underlying data or their conclusions,” the agency wrote in its briefing.
Naming no one — but nodding to those lingering concerns — Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla penned an open letter on Thursday making the case for booster shots.
“This week we are approaching another pivotal moment in our ongoing fight against the virus,” Bourla writes of Friday’s FDA advisory committee. “Since the start of this pandemic, Pfizer and BioNTech have pledged to follow the science and keep people informed about our progress to help bring an end to this global health crisis. We have stayed true to our commitment of full transparency without selectively cherry-picking data.”
(NEW YORK) — On Friday, an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration will weigh in on a debate that has been broiling since the Biden administration announced last month that the country would begin to roll out booster shots against COVID-19.
This panel, which is independent of the FDA and the Biden administration, will look at the data recently submitted by Pfizer on booster shots and make a recommendation. The FDA will then decide whether they will formally amend their current vaccine approval for Pfizer, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has its own advisory committee, will review the information and make a decision.
But the back-and-forth leading up to this process, and the president’s involvement in an otherwise non-political decision, has left many Americans confused about who really needs boosters and when.
Do I need a booster shot, and if so, when?
Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer to this question yet. But it will come sometime in the next week, as the FDA and CDC’s advisory committees discuss the available data.
For now, the one thing to know is that the vast majority of vaccinated people are still well-protected by their vaccines.
“If you have a good immune system, I would certainly not go out and get a booster before anything is recommended. I feel strongly that we have to go by the scientific consensus, which really hasn’t been played out yet,” said Dr. Paul Goepfert, director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic at the University of Alabama.
The latest CDC data found that over 90% of people hospitalized with COVID are still unvaccinated.
And while breakthrough infections happen, particularly as protection against mild infection wanes, the vaccines continue to protect Americans from ending up in the hospital with COVID, as well as vastly reducing their likelihood of death.
The only group that’s potentially at more risk of a serious breakthrough infection are older people who got their vaccines early on in the rollout. Recent studies by the CDC showed that protection against hospitalization for people over 65 has decreased to around 76-80%.
“At the end of the day, the purpose of the vaccines is to prevent hospitalizations and deaths, and they’re doing that very effectively still,” said Dr. Carlos Del Rio, executive associate dean of Emory University School of Medicine.
“Maybe a little less effective for people over the age of 60 or with comorbidities, but still, if you look around the hospitals, the people hospitalized today are people who haven’t received the vaccine.”
Additional vaccine doses, although not quite a booster, have already been approved by the CDC for the roughly 7 million immunocompromised Americans who didn’t have an optimal response to the first round of mRNA vaccines. Nearly 2 million Americans have gotten an additional shot since the FDA and CDC approved them in August for that subset of people.
The CDC officially recommended a third dose of an mRNA vaccine for immunocompromised Americans in August, allowing the approximately 7 million Americans who didn’t get an optimal immune response to their initial vaccine doses of Pfizer or Moderna to gain more protection.
There’s been a lot of debate as the process plays out. What’s the controversy?
When the Biden administration announced that it would roll out a booster shot program beginning Sept. 20, the White House’s COVID response team said it was to get ahead of the virus.
“You don’t want to find yourself behind, playing catch up,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said when announcing the plan. “Better stay ahead of it than chasing after it.”
The White House has relied heavily on Israel’s progress. Data from the country, where the vaccine process began sooner than in the U.S., shows that vaccine protection against serious disease has now begun to wane.
But quickly, career scientists pushed back on the White House’s announcement, saying there wasn’t enough U.S. data to support boosters yet — all the current evidence shows vaccines still protect most Americans against serious disease.
For experts in that camp, the focus usually narrows in on the 80 million Americans who aren’t vaccinated at all. Increasing protection across more of the country would stamp out transmission.
“We’re spending way too much time talking about boosters when we need to be spending time talking about the people that haven’t been vaccinated,” said Del Rio.
But on the other hand, studies do show that general protection against mild infection is waning, even if it’s staying strong against hospitalization.
“We need to reinforce the armor,” said Dr. Todd Ellerin, an ABC News medical contributor and the director of infectious diseases at South Shore Health in Massachusetts.
Ellerin predicted a triple threat ahead: a surge of delta infections, higher transmission during the winter months and close to half the country remaining unvaccinated.
“I think there are strong arguments for both sides and we just have to see,” Ellerin said.
The FDA’s independent advisory committee meets all day on Friday, and plans to vote in the late afternoon. For now, they’re only meeting about Pfizer, the first vaccine to submit its data.
If the FDA panel votes to move forward with boosters, the CDC’s advisory committee will meet almost a week later to nail down the details: who gets boosters and how soon.
The FDA and CDC committees are looking at Pfizer booster shots. What’s the deal with boosters for people who got J&J or Moderna?
Both Johnson & Johnson and Moderna are expected to follow Pfizer and run their data by the official FDA and CDC channels in the coming weeks in an effort to get approval for booster shots.
But both companies maintain protection is still strong against severe infection.
Moderna, in an analysis of various studies released on Wednesday, even made the case that the company’s original vaccine appears to generate the strongest protection among the three currently authorized vaccines.
Nevertheless, Moderna President Stephen Hoge told ABC News in an interview on Wednesday that “protection is not permanent” and “we’re not going to be able to defy gravity forever.”
Newly published data from Moderna’s booster shot trial showed a lower risk of breakthrough infections among people vaccinated eight months ago compared to people vaccinated 13 months ago.
Unlike Pfizer, Moderna’s third booster will be a half-dose. They say their data shows that boosting with a half-shot seems to generate more than enough immune response.
For J&J, the one-shot series chosen by about 14 million Americans, a study found that the vaccine still provided a durable immune response at least eight months later, even without a booster dose.
Another study, not yet peer reviewed, found more good news: The J&J booster dose actually boosted antibody levels higher than they were after the initial shot.
And while it will be a few weeks before there’s more concrete news on the J&J booster shots, there’s room in the timeline. Most Americans didn’t receive the J&J vaccine until late spring of 2020, since it was approved after the mRNA vaccines. That means the J&J boosters won’t be widely necessary until November at the earliest — if the FDA and CDC decide they’re needed at all.
There is not enough data yet on mixing and matching vaccines, though the CDC is actively researching it.
And for all three of the vaccines, recipients have a common question: will I need to get a booster routinely? Experts, wary of predicting anything about the unpredictable global pandemic, said it’s possible, but unlikely.
“My prediction is that as long as the COVID rates are going down, we will not need a continuous boost,” Goepfert said. That could change, however, if a new viral strain requires a newly tailored vaccine.
Are booster shots safe?
Pfizer, the only vaccine so far to have its data reviewed by the FDA, found no safety concerns among the 300 trial participants who were part of its clinical trial. Pfizer followed the participants for up to three months after getting their third shot.
Peoples’ reactions to the booster shots were not significantly different from their reactions to a second dose, FDA and Pfizer both wrote in their separate briefing documents.
“No deaths, vaccine-related serious adverse events, or events of myocarditis, pericarditis, anaphylaxis, appendicitis, or Bell’s palsy were reported among study participants who received the … booster dose,” the FDA wrote in a review of Pfizer’s safety data.
Moderna and J&J have not yet had their data reviewed by the FDA, but have said they found no safety concerns in their clinical trials of booster shots.
