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(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 summer surge as the delta variant spreads.

More than 611,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Just 57% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

COVID-19 has infected more than 194 million people worldwide and killed over 4.1 million.
Latest headlines:

    -US moved into ‘high’ community transmission category per CDC
    -Dept. of Veterans Affairs mandates vaccine
    -Savannah reinstates mask mandate indoors
    -Orlando area in ‘crisis mode’ as cases skyrocket

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

Jul 27, 4:10 pm
CDC reverses guidance on masks for vaccinated people  

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday reversed its mask guidance for vaccinated people due to the delta variant surge.

Vaccinated Americans should now wear masks inside if they’re in places with substantial or high transmission, the CDC said.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said data show that on “rare occasions, some vaccinated people with the delta variant … may be contagious and spread the virus to others. This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendations.”

Walensky added, “This moment — and most importantly — the associated illness, suffering and death, could have been avoided with higher vaccination coverage in this country.”

In May, the CDC said vaccinated Americans could stop wearing masks indoors.

The CDC also said Tuesday that masks should be worn in schools by all students, teachers, staff and visitors, even for those who are vaccinated. The CDC said students should return to full-time in-person learning this year with prevention strategies in place.

President Joe Biden in a statement called the CDC’s new rules “another step on our journey to defeating this virus.”

“While we have seen an increase in vaccinations in recent days, we still need to do better,” he added.

Jul 27, 3:42 pm

NYC hospital mandating vaccines for staff

New York City’s Hospital for Special Surgery is requiring its staff be vaccinated as of Sept. 15.

Only staff with a medical or religious reason will be exempt, the hospital said Tuesday.

Jul 27, 3:00 pm

CDC reverses guidance on masks for vaccinated people  

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday reversed its mask guidance for vaccinated people due to the delta variant surge.

Vaccinated Americans should now wear masks inside if they’re in places with substantial or high transmission, the CDC said.

“In rare occasions, some vaccinated people can get delta in a breakthrough infection and may be contagious,” the CDC said.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said data shows that on “rare occasions, some vaccinated people with the delta variant … may be contagious and spread the virus to others. This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendations.”

In May, the CDC said vaccinated Americans could stop wearing masks indoors.

The CDC also said Tuesday that masks should be worn in schools by all students, teachers, staff and visitors, even for those who are vaccinated. The CDC said students should return to full-time in-person learning this year with prevention strategies in place.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki, calling this an “evolving pandemic,” said Tuesday, “Our responsibility here is to always lead with the science and always lead with the advice of health and medical experts.”

“We’re not saying that wearing a mask is convenient, or people feel like it, but we are telling you that that is the way to protect yourself, protect your loved ones and that’s why the CDC is issuing this guidance,” Psaki said.

-ABC News’ Anne Flaherty and Eric Strauss

Jul 27, 2:03 pm

Cal State requiring vaccinations

California State University, the nation’s largest university system that’s home to nearly 500,000 students, will require vaccinations for in-person students, staff and faculty.

“The current surge in COVID cases due to the spread of the highly infectious delta variant is an alarming new factor that we must consider as we look to maintain the health and well-being of students, employees and visitors to our campuses this fall,” CSU Chancellor Joseph Castro said in a statement Tuesday.

Jul 27, 1:10 pm

Louisiana reports 2nd highest daily case count since January

Louisiana is in a “continued surge,” logging 6,797 new daily cases on Tuesday, the second highest single-day case count since Jan. 6, the state’s Department of Health said.

The department said 99.56% of the cases are linked to community spread, not congregate settings like nursing homes.

New Orleans city officials said Monday that hospital capacity in the region and the state are being stretched to the limits due to a large uptick in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. New Orleans officials said 97% of the hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the state are unvaccinated.

Jul 26, 7:46 pm
Delta variant is ‘a whole new virus,’ St. Louis health official

St. Louis’ top health official talked with ABC News Monday about Missouri’s rising coronavirus cases and gave a stark warning to the rest of the country.

“The delta variant is a whole new virus,” Dr. Sam Page, the county executive for St. Louis County, Missouri, told ABC News.

Since June, Missouri’s daily case average has surged by 500%, with the state now reporting its highest number of new infections since mid-January. Hospital admissions have more than doubled in recent weeks. They are up by 125% in the last month, according to Page.

At the same time, vaccinations have seen a slight increase the county, Page said. However, he reiterated that it will be at least another month before the county sees full effect of the vaccines in those patients.

“We just wish that we could get people vaccinated sooner because the illness has an unfortunate loss of life associated with it. And that’s just a terrible thing to watch,” Page said.

Page said there was no “silver bullet” that will help increase vaccination rates across the state, or drive down cases immediately, but said that officials must work together fast.

“It’s going to be multifactorial, a lot of education, a lot of time, a lot of comforting,” he said.

ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett and Arielle Mitropoulos

Jul 26, 3:45 pm
US moved into ‘high’ community transmission category per CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now categorizing the U.S. as having “high” community transmission, with nearly 62% of counties in the nation reporting high (43.79%) or substantial (18.17%) transmission.

New York County, which includes Manhattan, is among those now reporting substantial community transmission.

One month ago, only 8% of counties were reporting high transmission.

Louisiana, Florida, and Arkansas have the country’s highest case rate with over 300 new cases per 100,000 residents.

Missouri follows closely behind with 200 new cases per 100,000 residents.

Hospitalization numbers are also rising. More than 27,300 COVID-10 patients are in hospitals across the country — a 36.8% jump in the last week.

ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos

Jul 26, 2:44 pm
Dept. of Veterans Affairs mandates vaccine

Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough announced Monday that COVID-19 vaccines will be mandatory for the department’s health care personnel.

Four VA employees, all of whom were unvaccinated, died in recent weeks, the department said. At least three of those cases were linked to the delta variant.

VA employees will have eight weeks to be fully vaccinated.

McDonough said this mandate is “the best way to keep Veterans safe, especially as the Delta variant spreads across the country.”

ABC News’ Cindy Smith

Jul 26, 2:06 pm
Unvaccinated NYC municipal workers will have to get weekly testing

All unvaccinated New York City municipal workers will have to get weekly testing by the start of school in September, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office.

The new requirement will apply to all city workers, including police officers, firefighters and teachers. The new rule will go into effect on Sept. 13, when students are expected to return to public schools.

The New York Police Department has a 43% vaccination rate while about 55% of New York City Fire Department employees are vaccinated.

Workers in publicly run residential or congregate care facilities, like nursing homes, must present proof of vaccination even earlier, on Aug. 16.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a similar mandate on Monday. Beginning on Aug. 9, state employees and health care workers must show proof of vaccination or get tested regularly.

In California, 75% of those eligible have received at least one dose.

“Everyone that can get vaccinated—should,” Newsom tweeted.

ABC News’ Aaron Katersky

 

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(ATLANTA) — The 22-year-old man who killed eight people during a shooting rampage in March targeting Atlanta-area spas pleaded guilty Tuesday to four of the murders and accepted a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Robert Aaron Long entered his plea in Cherokee County Superior Court after answering a series of questions from Judge Ellen McElyea. He loathed his sexual addiction, he said, and it drove him to transfer blame from himself to sex workers at the spas he frequented for sex.

Long pleaded guilty to the killings he committed on March 16 at Young’s Asian Massage near the Atlanta suburb of Woodstock in Cherokee County.

Killed in the Cherokee County massacre were Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Yaun, 33; and Paul Michels, 54.

Long still faces multiple murder charges in Fulton County, where he allegedly continued his shooting rampage at two different spas in Atlanta.

He was indicted in Fulton County for the deaths of Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Ae Yue, 63.

Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace told McElyea that while most of the victims were Asian, a thorough investigation involving the FBI found no evidence to warrant bringing hate crimes against Long. Wallace said investigators interviewed more than 40 people, including Asian friends of Long, and found “this was not any kind of hate crime.”

McElyea responded, “Once hatred is given a gun, it doesn’t matter who gets in the way. We are all subject to being the victim of a hate crime, whether we belong to that group or not.”

In May, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed court documents saying her office intends to seek the death penalty and hate crime charges against Long.

Willis filed a motion last week requesting Long be transferred to the Fulton County jail following his court hearing in Cherokee County, and requested to schedule an arraignment for Long in Fulton County “on or before Aug. 6, 2021, or as soon as practical,” according to court documents.

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(NEW YORK) — In Watertown, Connecticut, you can hear the squeak of a swing’s chain as it glides back and forth, along with the laughter of children at play. They are sounds that harken back to the simpler and sweeter moments of childhood.

This playground has special significance. It was built in honor of Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the former principal of Sandy Hook Elementary. She was one of the five school faculty members and 20 first and second grade students shot and killed in December 2012, when a former student stormed the building.

Bill Lavin heads up the construction of the playgrounds for the charitable organization Where Angels Play. “This is the final of the 26 playgrounds that we did, and this was dedicated to really all of the children and the teachers, but in particular, Dawn Hochsprung,” he said. “This is celebrating Dawn’s life and her love of teaching.

Lavin calls it the flagship of the project, which includes playgrounds throughout Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Each one reflects the personalities, passions and lives of those who died. “So you’ll see that here there’s 20 swings that represent — for us, anyway — the special number of the children.” Six other toys represent the educators who were killed.

He says the idea grew out of an effort by the New Jersey State Firefighters’ Mutual Benevolent Association to provide support for families after 9/11 and then Superstorm Sandy. When the Sandy Hook shootings happened, Lavin said he had to act and the victims’ families united behind the project.

“So we made sure that this was their project, and that they would honor and find a way to express how these beautiful children lived, rather than how they left us,” Lavin said.

Carlos Soto helped build some of the playgrounds, including one in memory of his daughter, in nearby Stratford, Connecticut. Victoria Soto was the Sandy Hook teacher who died shielding her students.

“She always told us that she wanted to be special, different than other teachers,” he said. “And that made us very happy with that, knowing that she was helping other kids.”

Soto, along with other parents, children and colleagues, are left to cope with the loss each day. He’s working to support others affected by gun violence.

“I think that my daughter has given me that tool to help other parents that have lost kids,” he said. But he also said the inaction by lawmakers on gun violence following Sandy Hook is painful for him and his family.

What has changed?

A generation of K-12 students have grown up in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting preparing for the possibility of a shooting at their school, even if they don’t know it.

In a kindergarten classroom in New Jersey, 6-year-old Liam and his classmates practiced a drill they have yet to learn the significance of, an active shooter lockdown drill. They were told the intruder was an animal. He recalled to his mom Tara Gimbel, an ABC News producer, “We had to go down and hide under our desks and we pretended there was a bear.”

Hannah Jack, who’s 19, calls this the new normal. “That was life at that point it didn’t even dawn on me that it would be any different.”

Jack was in 5th grade in Watertown, Connecticut, when the Sandy Hook shooting happened. “I could see the pain in their face and how scared they were when the alarms went off and it scared me too, you know?”

John Woodrow Cox, the author of “Children Under Fire: an American Crisis,” estimates that during a single school year, 4 to 8 million kids experience lockdowns. He says even false alarms are leaving their mark.

“A meaningful number of that, four to eight million kids thought, at least momentarily, that they might get shot to death in their school. And we know that because they text their parents goodbye, they write wills saying who they want their toys to go. They soil themselves. They weep,” Cox said. “And none of those kids –- right? — none of those kids actually saw a school shooting. They didn’t get shot at. They didn’t see someone get shot. It was the threat of it that was so terrifying. And it’s terrifying because they know about Parkland, they know about Columbine, they know about all these other school shootings.”

Even in the safety of homes, children are getting their hands on the guns, hurting others or themselves. According to the Gun Violence Archive, more than 3,700 children and teens died or were injured in gun incidents in 2019.

Cox says the ripple effect of gun violence is far-reaching and long-lasting. “The reality of America, is that gun violence, there’s 400 million-plus guns in this country. Gun violence can affect a family or a child’s life at any time, regardless of the community that they’re in,” he said.

Cox points to other countries whose gun-fatalities numbers are far lower than ours. “There is no evidence that Americans are more evil than people in Australia or England or Canada or anywhere else,” he said. “The difference is anybody who wants to get a gun in this country at this moment, it’s not that hard.”

Back at the playground in Watertown, Lavin says the families of Sandy Hook victims want to move beyond politics and find common ground.

“You know, we should be able to figure it out,” he said. “And I think that’s what their hope is. Not that they want, you know, their children to be poster children, but maybe to prevent another family from going through what they had to experience.”

Soto says, on the bad days, he goes to his daughter’s playground. “They ask me, ‘Carlos, how can you do it?’ I say it’s not easy, but it’s not hard. And I sit there watching the kids play, and enjoying it, and that gives me more relief. And it gives me peace.”

This story is part of the series Gun Violence in America by ABC News Radio. Each day this week we’re exploring a different topic, from what we mean when we say “gun violence” – it’s not just mass shootings – to what can be done about it. You can hear an extended version of each report as an episode of the ABC News Radio Specials podcast. Subscribe and listen on any of the following podcast apps:

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(NEW YORK) — As the delta variant drives a surge in COVID-19 cases across the U.S., some local health departments are taking the lead to reimpose indoor mask mandates for all residents — despite CDC guidance that most fully vaccinated Americans can go maskless.

The move from local municipalities in several states, including Massachusetts and Nevada, follows the announcement earlier this month by Los Angeles County — the most populous county in the nation — that it would reinstate mandatory indoor masks after seeing an uptick in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

The CDC said in May that fully vaccinated Americans could go without masks — but that was before the delta variant dramatically changed the landscape of the pandemic.

Vaccines are still working, experts say. But the highly transmissible delta variant means that cases are once again surging — especially among the one-half of all Americans who are not yet fully vaccinated. Over the past few weeks, coronavirus cases and hospitalizations among unvaccinated people in nearly every state have been on the rise, just as some states were in the process of declaring an end of their state of emergency from the pandemic.

ABC News identified at least a dozen states that have seen a reversal of their mask guidance at the local level — from cities, counties and school districts — in the past couple weeks. Some of these efforts have received solid support from state government, while some others are being challenged by state officials.

In some states, local governments have imposed new mask mandates, while in other states, local officials have instead announced new recommendations or reiterated existing recommendations.

In California, while the new mask mandate has only been issued in Los Angeles County, at least 10 additional counties across the state are now strongly recommending indoor mask-wearing for all residents — including those who are fully vaccinated. In Massachusetts, several counties and municipalities have brought back mask mandates.

In the cities of Las Vegas and New Orleans, health officials have moved to implement masks for county employees regardless of their vaccination status. Savannah became the first major city in Georgia to reinstate an indoor masks policy for all residents in response to a spike in coronavirus cases in the surrounding counties.

“It’s clear to us we’re on a very dangerous trend,” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said on Monday. “And in order to try to slow this trend down, the mask mandate was the least invasive and destructive way to do it.

In some states, efforts to bring back mask requirements have faced immediate pushback.

In Missouri, as the case rate has increased and the vaccination rate remains low, St. Louis city and county officials announced last week that they will require masks to be worn in indoor public places and on public transportation — but state Attorney General Eric Schmitt said that he will be filing a lawsuit to stop the city and the county from bringing back such a mandate.

In Florida, where hospitalizations in some areas are increasing at the fastest rate since the start of the pandemic, Palm Beach officials this week went against Gov. Ron DeSantis’ statewide ban on mask mandates by imposing an indoor mask mandate for residents regardless of vaccination status.

And Miami Dade and Orange counties, while stopping short of imposing a mandate, have brought back recommendations to wear masks in crowded areas, prompting DeSantis to warn Orange County that it “cannot impose civil or criminal penalties on citizens who choose not to wear masks.”

Similar laws restricting local governments from imposing mask orders have been passed in Iowa, Montana, Arizona, and Arkansas, while governors in Texas, Tennessee and South Carolina have signed executive orders prohibiting local governments from imposing mask mandates.

In Montana, Missoula County’s health officer has blamed the state ban for the county’s inability to bring back a mask mandate despite a rise in cases.

And in Texas, many lawmakers and health officials are urging Gov. Greg Abbott to reverse his school ban and allow mask mandates in schools to be reinstated.

“We now know that even vaccinated people can catch and spread coronavirus,” 31 Texas lawmakers wrote in a letter to Abbott on Friday. “Under these circumstances, we must continue to fight against this virus with all the tools at our disposal.”

Some local school districts in Atlanta, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois have announced various mask mandates for school students and staff members, regardless of vaccine status, for the fall semester.

Officials in other states including Pennsylvania, Kansas and New York are focusing on increasing the number of vaccinations instead of reconsidering their mask guidance.

On Monday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the entire city workforce will be mandated to either get vaccinated or get tested once per week in response to rising coronavirus cases in the state.

As officials move to restore mask recommendations on the local level, Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden, told CNN on Sunday that revising national mask guidance for vaccinated individuals is “under active consideration.”

“The CDC agrees with that ability and discretion to say, you know, you’re in a situation where we’re having a lot of dynamics of infection,” Fauci said of the local mask mandates. “Even if you are vaccinated, you should wear a mask. That’s a local decision that’s not incompatible with the CDC’s overall recommendations that give a lot of discretion to the locals.”

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