(MIAMI BEACH, Fla.) — Tropical Depression Fred may restrengthen to a tropical storm Friday as it closes in on Florida.
The biggest threat from Fred is flash flooding, especially in South Florida, where up to 10 inches of rain is possible. A flood watch has been issued across South Florida, including Miami.
Fred will move over the Florida Keys early Saturday morning and then graze Tampa on Sunday morning with some rain and gusty winds. Fred is expected to make landfall as a weak tropical storm near Apalachicola in the Florida panhandle Sunday night into Monday early morning.
Meanwhile, another tropical threat developing in the Atlantic is expected to become Tropical Storm Grace by Saturday morning. A tropical storm watch has been issued for portions of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean.
Grace is expected to remain a tropical storm as it passes over Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
By the middle of next week, Grace will approach the Bahamas and South Florida. The storm will likely be weak at that point but the forecast could change.
Some long-range models track the storm heading to the Carolinas, but it is too early to tell.
Ty O’Neil/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Scientists are learning more about how widespread wildfires affect human health — and if there is a link between severe COVID-19 cases and regions that experience fires on a regular basis.
In 2020, a record-breaking fire season in the U.S. saw more than 10.2 million acres scorched in wildfires, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Both California and Oregon had historic wildfire seasons, and several small towns were destroyed in California, Oregon and Washington, according to NOAA. The dense smoke from the wildfires produced hazardous air quality for millions of people in the U.S. for weeks, the agency said.
Increases in the fine particulate matter from the wildfire smoke, the pollutant in smoke that poses the greatestrisk to health, were associated with spikes in severe COVID-19 cases and deaths in many counties in three West Coast states in 2020, according to a study published Friday in Sciences Advances.
Researchers studied COVID cases in 92 counties California, Oregon and Washington — all states that host annual wildfires during the dry season — ranging from mid-March to mid-December, Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public health and author of the study, told ABC News.
They found that wildfires had the largest potential effect on COVID-19 cases in the counties of Butte, California, and Whitman, Washington, where 17.3% and 18.2% of total cases, respectively, were attributable to high particulate matter levels on wildfire days, according to the study.
Wildfires had the greatest potential influence on COVID-19 deaths in Butte and Calaveras counties in California, scientists said. The COVID cases analyzed were based on reported tests, which covers more than 95% of the population in the three states, according to the study.
The effects on COVID cases from the wildfire smoke were observed up to four weeks after the exposure to the particulate matter, the researchers said.
“This is really attributable to the wildfire events, which is concerning us,” Dominici said, adding that they “keep coming” as a result of climate change.
While recent studies had reported that short-term exposure to particulate matter associated with increased risk of COVID-19 cases and deaths, the degree of how much the 2020 wildfire season exacerbated the severity of the pandemic had not been clear, the researchers said.
Dominici said she was “surprised” about the findings, adding that the research suggests an association between wildfire emissions and asymptomatic cases becoming symptomatic and an association between fine particulate matter accelerating spread of the airborne virus.
The scientists believe the research will likely apply to the 2021 fire season, which is already on track to break more records due to an early start caused by a megadrought and climate change.
“Especially for the unvaccinated,” Dominici said. “I think the vaccinated people will be more protected this year for having less severe cases.”
Dominici continued, “If I were to conduct the the same study among the unvaccinated, I think the results would probably be the same, if not even worse, as we have been learning that the delta variant is even more contagious.”
(WASHINGTON) — As the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate and criticism mounts over the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S. troop withdrawal from the country after the 20-year war, President Joe Biden has kept a low profile.
Spending the day in Wilmington, Delaware, before departing for Camp David, a presidential retreat, Biden has no public events on his schedule as he resumes what was supposed to be a week of vacation and the president did not stop to speak with reporters as he and first lady Jill Biden departed Wilmington Friday afternoon.
Biden was scheduled to receive his presidential daily briefing at 10 a.m. Friday, though the White House did not say if Biden had received additional briefings on Afghanistan Thursday evening or Friday.
A senior administration official said Biden would continue to be engaged on the issue and stay in close contact with his team about the situation Thursday afternoon.
In the hours surrounding the U.S.’s decision Thursday to send 3,000 troops into Afghanistan to assist the drawdown of the embassy in Kabul, Biden did not engage publicly on the issue.
Delivering remarks about his plan to lower prescription drug prices Thursday — his only public event before departing for Delaware — the president ignored a shouted question from the press as he left the East Room.
“Is Afghanistan lost?” someone had yelled.
Behind the scenes, Biden was briefed by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on the worsening situation in Afghanistan Thursday morning. It followed a meeting Biden held with principals Wednesday night, tasking them to come up with recommendations for next moves, according to a senior administration official.
After they met Thursday morning to review the recommendations, Biden gave the order to move forward with the new plans. The president separately spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken Thursday to discuss a diplomatic strategy, the official added.
The administration is on defense over its handling of the situation, saying it was not caught off guard or surprised at the speed of the Taliban’s advancement, arguing that there were a number of contingencies in play.
But according to a U.S. official, the precarious Afghan control over major cities growing more tenuous over the last day was a significant factor in Biden’s decision to go forward with the reduction in staffing and the new military mission.
And just over a month ago, the president doubted the country would fall to Taliban control.
“The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” he told reporters on July 8.
The conditions for total withdrawal from Afghanistan were initially put in place by President Donald Trump. In February 2020, the Trump administration struck a deal with the Taliban under which the U.S. would pull out all of its troops from Afghanistan by May 1 if the Taliban met certain requirements, including refraining from attacks on U.S. forces.
In April, Biden announced his intention to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan before the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks because it was “time to end America’s longest war.”
“We will not conduct a hasty rush to the exit. We’ll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely,” Biden said of the plan.
But in the months since that announcement, the U.S. has struggled to follow through on that promise. U.S. forces departed Bagram Air Field, its de facto headquarters in Afghanistan, in the middle of the night, without notifying Afghan commanders, Afghan military officials said.
The White House did not announce a plan to evacuate Afghan interpreters and contractors who have aided U.S. forces and diplomats, and who are now targets of the Taliban for their work, until July. While some flights for these Afghans to the U.S. have begun, thousands remain stranded in Afghanistan.
“Please send my word to the officials, if they don’t evacuate us there will be a slaughter. I have no idea what to do. I need help to leave this country or I will be dead, I need evacuation. I need help!” one Afghan interpreter wrote in a note shared with ABC News.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has requested a full House briefing on Afghanistan when the House returns to session Aug. 23, and congressional Republicans issued a swift rebuke of Biden.
“President Biden’s strategy has turned an imperfect but stable situation into a major embarrassment and a global emergency in a matter of weeks. President Biden is finding that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it. The costs and ramifications will echo across the world,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement Thursday night.
“America’s enemies know that the slogan ‘ending endless war’ actually means unconditional surrender. That is what we are seeing in Afghanistan today. American weakness is dangerously provocative,” GOP Rep. Liz Cheney tweeted.
Still, even as reports of the deteriorating situation in the region emerged this week, Biden stood by his decision to withdraw all troops.
“Look, we spent over a trillion dollars — over 20 years we trained and equipped with modern equipment over 300,000 Afghan forces. And Afghan leaders have to come together. We lost thousands — lost to death and injury thousands of American personnel. They’ve got to fight for themselves. Fight for their nation.”
“[W]e are continuing to keep our commitment. But I do not regret my decision,” he added.
ABC’s Luis Martinez, Matt Seyler and Conor Finnegan contributed to this report
(NEW YORK) — A teenager who was struck by lightning Thursday at a New York City beach has died, officials said.
Carlos Ramos, 13, of the Bronx, died at Jacobi Medical Center, city officials confirmed to ABC News Friday.
He was one of seven people who were struck by lightning while at Orchard Beach in the Bronx around 5 p.m. when a fast-moving storm approached, according to city officials.
Stacy Saldivar, 13, was among those struck when she and her parents and two sisters were running off the beach, she told New York ABC station WABC outside the hospital Friday.
“A huge lightning just went in front of me, hit in front of me and I passed out,” Saldivar told the station. “Then I was shaking and blood started coming out of my mouth.”
When she woke up, she was in the ambulance, she said.
The lightning felt like “a little tingle, it really hurt a lot,” Saldivar said. “I feel lucky because Jesus revived me.”
Saldivar told WABC she didn’t know Ramos.
“I feel lucky because Jesus revived me,” she said.
The others struck included a 41-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman and three other children — two boys ages 14 and 5 and a 12-year-old girl, according to city officials.
EMS responded and transported them to the hospital, officials said. They are expected to survive, WABC reported.
Prior to the incident, lifeguards had cleared all swimmers from the water, and NYC Parks staff instructed visitors to clear the beach, according to NYC Parks Department spokeswoman Meghan Lalor.
“Our hearts go out to the victims of this tragic incident,” Lalor said in a statement.
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 618,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 4.3 million people have died worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 58.9% 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 Friday. All times Eastern:
Aug 13, 5:36 pm
ACP says masks should be required in schools
The American College of Physicians said Friday that masks should be required in all schools “as part of a comprehensive effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19.”
The statement follows similar recommendations from the American Association of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and comes as some school districts have been defying bans on masks mandates in states including Texas and Florida.
“Masks are a key public health tool in keeping everyone in our school communities safe,” ACP President Dr. George Abraham said in a statement. “Especially with such a large segment of our schools’ populations unable to yet access COVID-19 vaccines, masks remain a necessity in our fight to control the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The ACP is the largest medical specialty society in the U.S., with over 161,000 internal medicine members.
Aug 13, 4:45 pm
CDC director endorses recommendation for additional dose for immunocompromised
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory panel voted unanimously Friday to recommend an additional dose of Pfizer or Moderna for immunocompromised people. (This recommendation applies only to people who already had an initial series of mRNA — it does not apply to people who received J&J.)
Immunocompromised people will not need a doctor’s note, prescription or proof of their condition to get their third dose, CDC officials said at Friday’s meeting.
“This is a self-attesting. We do not anticipate — we are not recommending that either prescriptions or a physician sign off, or be necessary for individuals to receive an additional dose of mRNA if they’re immunocompromised,” said Dr. Kathleen Dooling, Medical Officer for the Division of Viral Diseases, the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and the CDC.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky signed off on the recommendation later on Friday.
-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett, Sasha Pezenik
Aug 13, 4:44 pm
Mississippi governor says request for military hospital ship denied
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said Friday that the state’s request for a military hospital ship has been denied by the federal government.
Reeves said the request for a ship “was as much about the over 500 personnel that come with it as it was the actual physical facilities.”
“I don’t anticipate that the USS Comfort is going to come to Mississippi, although we would welcome any of the 550 health care professionals that are on that particular facility that the federal government would like to send us,” he said.
-ABC News’ Will McDuffie
Aug 13, 4:21 pm
In Dallas ‘your child will wait for another child to die’
Dallas has no ICU beds left for children.
“That means if your child’s in a car wreck, if your child has a congenital heart defect or something and needs an ICU bed, or more likely if they have COVID and need an ICU bed, we don’t have one,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said at a Workers Defense Action Fund event.
“Your child will wait for another child to die,” Jenkins added. “Your child will just not get on the ventilator, your child will be CareFlighted to Temple or Oklahoma City or wherever we can find them a bed, but they won’t be getting one here unless one clears. And that’s been true for 24 hours.”
Aug 13, 4:15 pm
Daily case average has skyrocketed nearly 884% since mid-June
The daily case average in the U.S. has surged to about 114,000, skyrocketing nearly 884% since mid-June, according to federal data.
Several states, including Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana and Mississippi, are now experiencing their worst surge yet, averaging more daily cases than at any point in the pandemic, according to federal data. New York City’s case average is now nearly five times higher than it was one month ago.
And more people are dying every day.
The nation’s daily death average has now climbed to nearly 500, a 183% jump in the last month. Seven weeks ago, daily deaths were at their lowest point since late March 2020.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Aug 13, 3:29 pm
Kids must get caught up on routine vaccinations, officials say
Federal health officials said Friday it is now more critical than ever for parents to get their kids’ routine vaccinations.
“There are a lot of vaccine doubters,” said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, “in part because we have been so successful with vaccination.” People no longer know what the havoc that diseases like polio, measles or smallpox can cause, because we no longer have them around, and thus, “we’re in some ways, victims of our own success,” he said.
Dr. Anne Edwards of the American Academy of Pediatrics noted that pediatricians are seeing a large number of respiratory illnesses now, and not all are COVID-19. She said that underscores the importance of having their routine vaccinations.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Aug 13, 3:03 pm
Canada to require plane passengers get vaccinated
The Canadian government will soon mandate vaccinations for commercial plane travelers, cruise ship passengers and people on trains between provinces, according to The Associated Press.
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said this will go into effect “as soon as possible in the fall and no later than the end of October,” according to the AP.
Aug 13, 2:57 pm
Louisiana hospitalizations at highest point of pandemic
Hard-hit Louisiana has 2,907 COVID-19 patients in hospitals — more than any point of the pandemic so far, the state’s Department of Health said Friday.
Louisiana’s Ochsner Health said they have 1,063 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in their system, exceeding all previous surges. Of those patients, 88.99% are unvaccinated, officials said.
Gov. John Bel Edwards said 399 patients in the state are on ventilators.
Fifty-seven people died of COVID-19 in Louisiana in the last 24 hours, the health department said.
The governor warned Friday that Louisiana isn’t near the peak of this surge and hospital leaders are more alarmed now than at any point in the pandemic.
“We are really close to the breaking point,” Edwards said.
Aug 13, 1:46 pm
Feds send ‘fatality management trailers’ to Texas
Federal officials are deploying extra resources to COVID-19 hot spots, including sending five “fatality management trailers” to Texas, according to a federal planning document obtained by ABC News.
Oklahoma was set to receive 100 ventilators on Thursday, according to the planning document, while Mississippi has requested enough medical personnel to staff more than 1,000 beds.
Aug 13, 11:49 am
Chicago requires school employees to be vaccinated
Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest school district, is requiring all employees to be vaccinated.
Seventy-eight percent of district employees were already fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated or had a vaccination scheduled as of June, the district said.
“For the social and emotional well-being of our young people, they need to be in school, and the vaccine adds another layer of protection to our plan to safely re-open schools,” the city’s department of public health commissioner, Allison Arwady, said in a statement.
Chicago’s school year starts on Aug. 30.
-ABC News’ Whitney Lloyd
Aug 13, 8:03 am
Former acting CDC head talks next steps for booster shots
Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting director of the CDC, told Good Morning America that he expects booster shots will “be available to people with immune disorders very quickly.”
The FDA announced late Thursday that immunocompromised Americans – such as cancer patients, transplant recipients, people with HIV and people on immunosuppressant drugs — will be able to get a third shot of Pfizer or Moderna.
But Besser stressed, “I think about this less as a booster shot” and more of “a recognition that for certain people with immune problems, two doses wasn’t enough” and “the third dose is necessary for them to get the same high level of protection that the rest of people do.”
The CDC panel is expected to vote to recommend the third dose when it meets Friday at 11 a.m. and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will likely sign off after a Friday afternoon vote.
Aug 13, 5:27 am
Alabama children’s hospital sees rise in patients
Children’s of Alabama reported a significant increase in the number of COVID-19 positive patients being treated at the hospital in recent weeks.
As of Thursday, the hospital said it is treating 22 COVID-19 positive patients, five of whom are on ventilators.
The hospital said in January, at the height of the last surge, their highest number of patients was 13.
“There are three proven ways to slow the spread of this highly transmissible strain of the virus: Vaccination for everyone 12 and up, masking, especially when indoors, and social distancing,” the hospital wrote in a Facebook statement.
Aug 12, 11:48 pm
FDA authorizes booster shot for immunocompromised
Immunocompromised Americans will be able to get a third shot of either of the mRNA vaccines, Pfizer or Moderna, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced late Thursday.
The booster will be targeted specifically for people who did not have an ideal immune response to their initial vaccines, which has proven to be the case for many cancer patients, transplant recipients, people with HIV and people on immunosuppressant drugs.
“The country has entered yet another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the FDA is especially cognizant that immunocompromised people are particularly at risk for severe disease,” acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement. “After a thorough review of the available data, the FDA determined that this small, vulnerable group may benefit from a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna Vaccines.”
(ATLANTA) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially recommended a third dose of an mRNA vaccine for immunocompromised Americans on Friday afternoon, allowing around 7 million Americans who didn’t get an optimal immune response to their initial vaccine doses of Pfizer or Moderna to gain more protection.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky signed off on the recommendation after a CDC panel voted Friday morning on the specifics of who should get an additional shot and when. The CDC approval was the final step in the process initiated by the Food and Drug Administration’s announcement late on Thursday night that immunocompromised Americans will be able to get a third shot.
“Today, I signed CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ (ACIP) recommendation that endorsed the use of an additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine for people with moderately to severely compromised immune systems after an initial two-dose vaccine series,” Walensky said in a statement.
She called the recommendation “an important step in ensuring everyone, including those most vulnerable to COVID-19, can get as much protection as possible from COVID-19 vaccination.”
The additional dose will specifically be targeted at cancer patients, transplant recipients, people with HIV and people on immunosuppressant drugs, plus a range of other conditions that similarly left vaccinated people with less immunity than expected.
Instead of the more than 90% protection from the vaccines that’s normally found in healthy people, vaccine effectiveness in immunocompromised people can be as low as 59% to 72%, the CDC said.
Some immunocompromised people even had no immune response to the vaccines — a disappointment considering the high risk they have for getting severely ill from the virus.
For example, in one U.S. study, 44% of breakthrough cases that led to hospitalization were in immunocompromised people. An Israeli study found it was around 40%.
But the CDC data shows that a booster shot could increase antibodies in an immunocompromised person by up to 50%.
“COVID-19 disease in immunocompromised people is an important public health problem. The anticipated desirable effects of an additional dose of mRNA vaccine are large, and undesirable effects expected to be minimal, favoring the intervention,” Dr. Kathleen Dooling, a medical officer at the CDC, said at the meeting on Friday.
The CDC estimated about 7 million people, or 2.7% of the population, fit into the category of moderate or severely immunocompromised. But there is no plan to require people to prove their conditions before receiving a third shot, either by prescription or a doctor’s note — it will be a matter of “self-attesting.”
CDC officials suggested that the third shot should come at least 28 days after finishing the primary two-dose series and recommend that people stick with the same vaccine they initially got, be it Pfizer or Moderna, though swapping the vaccines in instances where there isn’t ample supply is “permitted.”
Immunocompromised people who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are not yet eligible for additional shots, but the CDC and FDA said they’re doing research and hope to provide more guidance soon.
The CDC also assumes the vast majority of immunocompromised people got mRNA vaccines because only 12 million people nationwide have gotten the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, while 149 million have gotten Pfizer or Moderna shots.
“We think that at least there was a solution here for the very large majority of immunocompromised individuals and we believe that we’ll probably have a solution for the remainder in the not too distant future,” Dr. Peter Marks, vaccine chief for the FDA, said at the meeting.
Experts and officials have been clear that this third shot for immunocompromised people is separate from booster shots for the general public, which people are expected to need as the protection from the vaccines wane over time. But the FDA and CDC, which are monitoring immunity in multiple groups of people across the country, said the U.S. isn’t there yet.
“As we’ve previously stated, other individuals who are fully vaccinated are adequately protected and do not need an additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine at this time,” acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said in a statement Thursday. “The FDA is actively engaged in a science-based, rigorous process with our federal partners to consider whether an additional dose may be needed in the future.”
(WASHINGTON) — The State Department will begin reducing its staff levels at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the Pentagon is sending in troops “as we speak” to help facilitate those departures, the agency said Friday, as Taliban forces advance on more provincial capitals.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby wouldn’t say the advances took the Biden administration by surprise but said officials are “certainly concerned” by the speed at which the Taliban is moving.
“We’re obviously watching this just like you’re watching this and seeing it happen in real-time, and it’s deeply concerning. In fact, the deteriorating conditions are a factor — a big factor — in why the president has approved this mission to help support our — the reduction of personnel there in Kabul,” he said in a briefing from the Pentagon Friday afternoon.
Kirby said the “leading elements” of one of the two Marine battalions headed to the capital city of Kabul have arrived and that “the bulk” of the 3,000 troops will be there by the end of the weekend.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has instructed all U.S. personnel to destroy items like documents and electronic devices to “reduce the amount of sensitive material on the property,” according to an internal notice obtained by ABC News.
“Please also include items with embassy or agency logos, Americans flags, or items which could be misused in propaganda efforts,” the notice said.
A State Department spokesperson is not denying this is the case, but in a statement described things as “standard operating procedure designed to minimize our footprint.”
There wasn’t any specific event that led President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to execute the plan to send troops, Kirby said Thursday afternoon as the crisis escalated, but rather the overall worsening trend in Afghanistan.
“There wasn’t one precipitating event in the last couple of days that led the president and the secretary to make this decision. It’s a confluence of events, and as I’ve been saying for now for several weeks, we have been watching very closely with concern the security situation on the ground — and far better to be prudent about it and be responsible and watching the trends to make the best decisions you can for safety and security of our people than to wait until it’s too late,” Kirby said.
The events in Afghanistan over the last 48 hours, with the Taliban pressuring major Afghan cities, were significant factors in the decision to go forward with the reduction in embassy staffing and the new military mission, a U.S. official told ABC News.
A military analysis said Kabul could be isolated in 30 to 60 days and be captured in 90 days, a U.S. official told ABC News. That timeline seemed even more accelerated Thursday as the Taliban claimed Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city. As of Friday, the Taliban had taken control of Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, located 300 miles south of Kabul and considered the birthplace of the Taliban. The Taliban has also seized Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has urged Americans to evacuate Afghanistan immediately, amid fears that the capital could fall into Taliban hands in a matter of weeks.
“Clearly from their actions, it appears as if they are trying to get Kabul isolated,” Kirby said of the Taliban at the Pentagon Friday afternoon.
As the Taliban gained ground Friday, Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, a senior fellow for the Middle East Institute, Afghanistan war veteran and ABC News national security analyst, called on the U.S. to reverse its decision to withdraw troops in order to “prevent the country’s fall to the Taliban and the establishment of a safe haven for terrorist organizations.”
“In the absence of that, the international community must immediately establish a secure, fortified area within the Kabul region where Afghans, especially females, fleeing the Taliban can have their own safe haven,” he said.
“This should also come with a clear warning to the Taliban that if they enter the Kabul region, they will be met by military force from the United States,” he added. “This is the only thing they will understand and likely the only thing that will stop them from an assault on Kabul that will cause a major humanitarian crisis.”
Biden held a meeting with his team Wednesday night and tasked them to come up with recommendations, according to a senior administration official. Then, at a meeting Thursday morning with Austin and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the recommendations were presented to Biden and he gave the order to move forward.
The official also said the president separately spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken Thursday morning to discuss a diplomatic strategy and that Biden continues to be engaged on this issue and is staying in close contact with his team on the situation.
State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the embassy in Kabul will remain open as it reduces its civilian footprint due to the “evolving security situation.” He added that the embassy expects to draw down to a core diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.
“What this is not — this is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal,” Price said Thursday. “What this is, is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint. This is a drawdown of civilian Americans who will, in many cases, be able to perform their important functions elsewhere, whether that’s in the United States or elsewhere in the region.”
The United Kingdom is also sending military personnel — about 600 paratroopers — to Kabul on a short-term basis to provide support to British nationals leaving the country, according to a joint press release from the Ministry of Defence and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The number of staffers working at the British Embassy in Kabul has been reduced to a core team focused on providing consular and visa services for those needing to rapidly leave the country.
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Friday he believed the country was “heading towards a civil war” as the Taliban gain momentum.
At the Pentagon, Kirby announced Thursday the Defense Department was sending 3,000 troops from three infantry battalions — two Marine and one Army — to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to help out with the removal of American personnel from the U.S. Embassy. These numbers are on top of the 650 who were already in Kabul protecting the airport and the embassy.
An additional 1,000 personnel will be sent to assist with the processing of Afghans who worked as interpreters, guides and other contractors and applied for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV).
“I want to stress that these forces are being deployed to support the orderly and safe reduction of civilian personnel at the request of the State Department and to help facilitate an accelerated process of working through SIV applicants,” Kirby said. “This is a temporary mission with a narrow focus. As with all deployments of our troops into harm’s way, our commanders have the inherent right of self defense, and any attack on them can and will be met with a forceful and appropriate response.”
A brigade of 3,000 to 3,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne will also be sent to Kuwait to preposition in case they are needed.
Kirby called it a “very temporary mission for a very temporary purpose,” and said the DOD expects to keep no more than 1,000 troops in Kabul to protect the airport and embassy after the Aug. 31 deadline — a number that has notably crept up from the 650 troops originally set to remain.
Price said officials will continue to relocate qualified Afghans who assisted the American mission, such as interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government, and flights will ramp up in the coming days.
Blinken and Austin spoke to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani earlier Thursday to brief him on the U.S. plans, but the two U.S. officials did not tell Ghani to resign, according to a State Department spokesperson, who added, “Rumors indicating we have done so are completely false. Decisions about who leads the country are for Afghans to make.”
The Taliban have demanded that Ghani resign, in exchange for a reduction in violence and to lay the groundwork for a transitional government. But Ghani has said he is the democratically elected leader of the country and will remain so until negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government reach a conclusion — an increasingly distant reality.
Shabia Mantoo, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, warned Friday at a press conference in Geneva that a worsening humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Afghanistan.
“The human toll of spiraling hostilities is immense. The United Nations Assistance Mission has warned that without a significant de-escalation in violence, Afghanistan is on course to witness the highest ever number of documented civilian casualties in a single year since the UN’s records began,” she said.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for a cease-fire in remarks on Friday.
“The message from the international community to those on the warpath must be clear: seizing power through military force is a losing proposition,” he said. “That can only lead to prolonged civil war or to the complete isolation of Afghanistan.”
“I call on the Taliban to immediately halt the offensive and to negotiate in good faith in the interest of Afghanistan and its people,” Guterres continued.
According to the U.N., some 400,000 civilians have been forced to flee from their homes since the start of the year, joining 2.9 million Afghans already internally displaced across the country at the end of last year, she said.
ABC News’ Cindy Smith, Justin Gomez, Guy Davies and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — With the CDC estimating that the delta variant accounts for more than 90% of new COVID cases in the U.S., scientists are still learning more about what makes this variant different from prior versions of the virus.
There are dozens of COVID-19 variants. Some emerge and quickly fade away. Others emerge and sweep the globe. The delta variant first emerged in India in December 2020 and quickly became the dominant strain there and then in the United Kingdom.
It was first detected in the United States in March 2021 and proved so dominant it supplanted the prior strain, called the alpha variant, within a few short weeks.
Now, experts say there’s good news and bad news when it comes to this new variant.
Here’s what we know now:
1. The delta variant is more contagious than earlier strains of COVID
Delta is more contagious because it “sheds more virus into the air, making it easier to reach other people,” said Dr. Loren Miller, associate chief of infectious disease at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Researcher at Lundquist Institute in Torrance, CA .
“There is also some evidence that the virus can more easily attach to human cells in the respiratory tract,” Miller said. This means that “smaller amounts of virus [particles] are needed to cause infection compared to the original strain.”
2. It could cause more serious illness in unvaccinated persons, but scientists don’t know for sure.
Scientists are racing to study the severity of the delta variant in real time. Until more studies are verified by a panel of scientific experts or gain “peer-approval,” public health officials cannot definitively say for sure that it does cause more serious illness.
Here is what we know so far:
One peer-reviewed study in Scotland looked at over 19,000 confirmed COVID cases between April to June 2021. Scientists were able to differentiate between the delta variant and the alpha variant by molecular testing for one of multiple mutated genes known as the S gene.
About 7,800 COVID cases and 130 hospitalized patients had the delta strain confirmed by presence of the gene. Scientists noted that there was an increased risk for hospitalization in patients with delta when adjusting for common factors such as age, sex, underlying health conditions, and time of disease.
Another recent study awaiting peer approval in Singapore, noted that the delta variant was significantly associated with increased need for oxygenation, admission to an intensive care unit, and death when compared to the alpha variant.
Similarly, a Canadian study awaiting peer approval looked at over 200,000 confirmed COVID cases and found that the delta variant was more likely to cause hospitalization, ICU admission and death.
It’s hard to know whether delta is in fact making people sicker or if it is just affecting more vulnerable, unvaccinated populations with high case numbers and overburdened healthcare systems.
3. Delta is now the dominant variant in the US and around the globe.
COVID cases are skyrocketing again in the U.S., particularly where vaccination uptake has been particularly slow.
According to the CDC, more than 90% of COVID cases in the U.S. are currently caused by the delta variant. We know that “there is a lot of Delta out there … from the public health authorities who regularly survey for delta [and other strains] using special tests called molecular typing” said Miller.
4. COVID vaccines still work against the delta variant.
The “majority of currently hospitalized COVID patients are unvaccinated,” said Dr. Abir “Abby” Hussein, clinical infectious disease assistant professor and associate medical director for infection prevention and control at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, Wash.
Studies show that vaccines still dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization and death, though the delta variant may be more likely than prior variants to cause asymptomatic or mild illness among vaccinated people.
Still, even amid the delta surge, this is still a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
Although there are rare cases of severe breakthrough infections that require hospitalization that can occur in persons with a “weakened immune system,” Miller said. This comes in time for the new guidelines for booster COVID shots in immunocompromised patients.
5. The delta variant surge is hitting younger, unvaccinated people harder
More COVID cases are being reported in teens, young and middle-age adults. That’s not because delta is inherently more dangerous for younger people — but rather, because younger people are less likely to be fully vaccinated.
Hussein explains that this is likely due to early vaccination efforts to vaccinate older high-risk people, particularly those who live in nursing homes. According to the CDC, more than 80% of adults over the age of 65 have been fully vaccinated and more than 90% of adults over 65 have had one dose (of a two-dose vaccine).
“Unfortunately, many younger adults have not been vaccinated, resulting in this shift to younger hospitalized patients,” Hussein said.
Collectively, experts agree that the delta variant poses a new threat. Stopping transmission is the key to controlling all variants, not just delta. The best way for everyone to protect themselves against delta includes tools that are already at our disposal — vaccination, masking, social distance and hand washing.
While we all want to return to a state of normal, Miller said “sticking to these basic messages is a very powerful way to prevent COVID transmission and protect yourself.”
(JACKSON, Miss.) — As Mississippi faces a “skyrocketing” surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations — its highest increase on record — health officials are sounding the alarm about a state hospital system on the brink of collapse.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center, in partnership with state officials, will reopen a surge facility Friday in the medical center’s parking lot, with help from the federal government.
Doctors, nurses, pharmacists and respiratory therapists will be deployed to work at the field hospital for at least the next 14 days.
“Unfortunately, we were standing in a tent again. None of us wanted to come back to this point, but it’s gotten to the point where we’re just not able to care for the patients at UMMC, and in the state of Mississippi, that need the care with COVID,” Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs, said at a press conference on Thursday. “I think when you’re seeing a field hospital at a major academic medical center, we’re pretty much at a collapse-like system.”
The arrival of federal assistance comes as the state faces an influx of coronavirus patients, with more than 1,500 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state, marking the highest number of patients receiving care since the onset of the pandemic.
The bed capacity is “extremely tight,” said Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. “Our ICUs today are full. Our patient beds are full.”
Prior to the field hospital’s opening, ABC News received an inside look as federal teams worked to set up the facility Thursday afternoon.
“I feel like we’re beyond disaster. … It really should be a scary time for everybody because it means that we feel like we have no capacity to deal with the things that we should be able to take care of,” Jones told ABC News correspondent Elwyn Lopez. “It really needs to be a wake-up call for those people.”
Although the facility will give the hospital a buffer to help manage the surge, Jones said, ultimately, “it’s just a Band-Aid,” or a temporary fix, for the problem.
The surge facility will give the hospital system a bit of relief, officials said, in managing both COVID-19 patients and other patients, as the number of hospitalizations continues to increase.
“We do not believe that we’re at a point where we’ve hit the peak or we’re turning the corner. In fact, we think we’re still on that upward climb,” Woodward said.
On Thursday, Mississippi reported more than 4,400 new cases, according to State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, almost 1,000 more than the state’s previous record, he said, which will inevitably result in more hospitalizations and deaths.
“That means we’re gonna have about 93 more deaths, just for today. It means we’re gonna see over 300 new hospitalizations, just from the day. And that’s on top of a system that is already overtaxed. Let us be very clear that the vast majority of cases, and hospitalizations, and deaths are unvaccinated,” Dobbs continued.
Officials reported that they continue to see a rise in “relatively healthy” younger patients, the vast majority of them unvaccinated, in need of care. Similar to the uptick seen nationally, UMMC, which is the state’s only children’s hospital, has seen a concerning increase in pediatric patients.
“A large proportion, much larger than we’ve ever seen before, proportion of children being hospitalized, or hospitalized in the ICU, and these are not chronically ill children, these are healthy children that are being hospitalized,” Jones said.
Despite a recent bump in the state’s vaccination rate overall, Mississippi continues to struggle with its vaccine rollout, with just 35% of residents fully vaccinated — the second-lowest inoculation rate in the country.
It is of critical importance that people get the information about vaccines from reputable sources, Dobbs stressed.
“We should not be here, y’all. This is not necessary,” said Dobbs. “Too many people are getting information from wrong sources. … These Facebook conspiratorial lists are going to spread and run, and have no accountability for the people who are dying, and we’re here, picking up the mess.”
(MINNEAPOLIS) — More than a year after the murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the city is putting its issues with police brutality in the spotlight once again.
This time, the power is in the hands of voters, who will take to the ballot box in November to decide whether to replace the existing Minneapolis Police Department.
The vote would be on whether to change the city charter and implement a department of public safety instead, which activists say would take on a public-health approach to policing — opting for social workers and violence interrupters over the police-only model that the city has now.
Advocates have said that many cases in which police are called can often be resolved by others. Detractors say the move will undermine public safety. In either case, police reform has been a fraught issue, especially in the wake of Floyd’s death, with deep divisions forming over whether to “defund” the police or change the way departments operate.
“We want to do something different, to actually make real concrete changes, so that we don’t have to revisit this feeling of powerlessness, hopelessness, helplessness — so that we don’t have to continue to bury people year after year,” said JaNaé Bates, the communications director at Yes 4 Minneapolis, a leading coalition of activists in the effort to replace the police department.
The charter change would also put the city council in charge of the department, instead of the mayor, and remove requirements to hire police based on the city’s population size.
Activists say this effort is inspired by other policies and practices from across the country — and that they’ve taken into consideration what has worked and what has failed.
Local opponents believe the charter change has the potential to rid the city of police altogether, due to language that says police officers will respond to calls “when necessary.”
“These are trojan horses backed by radicals to achieve their goal of police defunding and abolition,” said a statement on the Operation Safety Now website. Operation Safety Now is a local pro-police political advocacy group.
The organization stated: “We are against police defunding — and the “police-less society” envisioned by some council members and their radical supporters. We need more cops, not fewer.”
Mayor Jacob Frey, a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, also rejects the effort. In a statement to the press, his office said he “appreciates the careful work and thorough analysis done by city staff to prepare fair and accurate language for voters to consider this fall,” but will not be signing onto the proposal.
Frey believes that id the city council is in charge of the department, it could lead to a major setback for “accountability and good governance.”
Residents like Bates and city council members like Steve Fletcher say that Minneapolis has struggled with racist policing for decades.
The Mayor’s office did not respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that in the past 20 years, more than 200 people have been killed in “a physical confrontation with law enforcement” in Minnesota. Only 7% of Minnesotans are Black, but Black victims accounted for 26% of these deaths.
At least 36 of these deaths occurred in Minneapolis. And last year, Black youths were disproportionately incarcerated — making up 55% of the youth incarceration population.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department also opened a pattern or practice investigation into the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department earlier this year.
“We have had a long history of producing racially unjust outcomes in our overall system and policing,” Fletcher said. “We can’t continue to operate this way.”
Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo was among several other Black officers who sued MPD for racial discrimination in 2007, MPR News reported, which was settled for almost $1 million.
To solve these issues, community leaders involved in Yes 4 Minneapolis have adopted the tactics to amend the charter in ways that have proven to work.
One of the programs that inspired this public health approach was the Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) program in Oregon, which started in 1969. The program sends out two-person teams, including a medic and a crisis worker with training in the mental health field, to crises involving mental illness, homelessness, and addiction instead of policing.
Out of roughly 24,000 CAHOOTS calls in 2019, police backup was requested only 150 times, according to the organization’s website.
The Support Team Assisted Response program in Denver started in 2020, and it similarly sends pairs of mental health and medical professionals to respond to low-level calls instead of sending law enforcement.
And disbanding efforts are nothing new either — Camden, New Jersey successfully disbanded its police department in 2013 and rebuilt the police department from the ground up, with new trainings, new officers, and a new department culture against brutality.
“We’re integrating our police officers with other services that we know, allow qualified professionals to handle things that they’re prepared and trained to handle,” Bates said. “Having mental health responders, social workers, violence interrupters different interventions for folks experiencing homelessness, and drug crisis — those things are things that should be happening within fully integrated departments that include police.”
More than 20,000 signatures gave the proposed Minneapolis charter change measure a spot on the ballot, according to Bates, and roughly $1 million was raised for the effort.
Like many states, cities, and counties across the nation, some reform efforts have already been in the works in Minneapolis — like banning chokeholds and neck restraints and requiring officers to intervene in excessive uses of force.
The city council also cut $8 million from the mayor’s proposed police budget and diverted to mental health and violence prevention units in the department.
Shortly after Floyd’s murder, City Council members tried to implement the charter change, but the council failed to meet the deadlines necessary to get it on the November 2020 ballot.
Now, they hope to set an example for policing efforts nationwide, as the country continues to confront police brutality.
“Every city is facing some version of this,” Fletcher said about the efforts to reimagine policing. “I really believe that this Minneapolis is going to rise to the occasion and create a system that is far more compassionate, far more equitable, and far more effective than the old system of policing that we’ve inherited.”
