Booking COVID-19 Vaccination for Children Six Months to Five Years Starts July 21 and 22 | News and Media Government of Saskatchewan
The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of July 20, 2022, there are currently 2,957 active COVID-19 cases statewide. There have been nine deaths reported since the last report, with a total of 7,115 deaths attributed to COVID-19.
DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a 67-year old male from Wyoming County, an 86-year old male from Putnam County, a 93-year old male from Boone County, a 67-year old female from Boone County, an 84-year old male from Ohio County, a 93-year old male from Cabell County, a 92-year old male from Berkeley County, an 81-year old female from Marshall County, and a 90-year old female from Mason County.
Many communities within our state have been affected by the loss of loved ones due to COVID-19, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. Protect yourself and your community by receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and boosters.
CURRENT ACTIVE CASES PER COUNTY: Barbour (22), Berkeley (154), Boone (46), Braxton (22), Brooke (22), Cabell (169), Calhoun (7), Clay (12), Doddridge (4), Fayette (88), Gilmer (11), Grant (19), Greenbrier (61), Hampshire (40), Hancock (19), Hardy (27), Harrison (133), Jackson (37), Jefferson (81), Kanawha (292), Lewis (30), Lincoln (33), Logan (70), Marion (98), Marshall (46), Mason (42), McDowell (45), Mercer (159), Mineral (34), Mingo (36), Monongalia (143), Monroe (26), Morgan (15), Nicholas (54), Ohio (49), Pendleton (3), Pleasants (14), Pocahontas (12), Preston (28), Putnam (109), Raleigh (178), Randolph (23), Ritchie (12), Roane (30), Summers (16), Taylor (25), Tucker (14), Tyler (11), Upshur (41), Wayne (42), Webster (18), Wetzel (35), Wirt (1), Wood (141), Wyoming (58). To find the cumulative cases per county, please visit coronavirus.wv.gov and look on the Cumulative Summary tab which is sortable by county.
West Virginians ages 6 months and older are recommended to get vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19. Those 5 years and older should receive a booster shot when due. Second booster shots for those age 50 and over who are 4 months or greater from their first booster are recommended, as well as for younger individuals over 12 years old with serious and chronic health conditions that lead to being considered moderately to severely immunocompromised.
Visit the WV COVID-19 Vaccination Due Date Calculator, a free, online tool that helps individuals figure out when they may be due for a COVID-19 shot, making it easier to stay up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccination. To learn more about COVID-19 vaccines, or to find a vaccine site near you, visit vaccinate.wv.gov or call 1-833-734-0965.
BEIJING, July 21 (Reuters) - China will pay close attention to variants of coronavirus in the long term, focusing on their transmission capability, pathogenicity and ability to evade immunity, a Chinese disease control official said on Thursday.
The Omicron variant is unlikely to be the final variant, Dong Xiaoping, chief expert of virology at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference.
Register
Reporting by Ryan Woo and Roxanne Liu; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Super-contagious Omicron subvariants that can reinfect people within weeks are fueling a new wave of the pandemic across California.
Hospitalizations are rising, and Los Angeles County is moving toward an indoor mask mandate, perhaps by the end of the month.
But this wave is different from previous ones.
Many who become infected are not falling seriously ill. While hospitalizations are rising, patients are generally less sick, and intensive care units are less crowded than during the peaks of previous waves.
Experts cite the availability of vaccines and treatments, as well as changes with the virus itself, for the improvements.
But it doesnt mean COVID-19 has become a toothless tiger. Deaths in L.A. County have increased significantly over the past month, and so has the number of coronavirus-positive patients in intensive care, which has reached the same level as almost exactly one year ago, the last time L.A. County enacted an indoor mask mandate.
This double-edged reality where the risk of severe illness for every case may be lower, yet there are considerable numbers of deaths is causing confusion as the pandemic stretches into its third summer.
The latest kerfuffle stems from the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, the largest of four county-run public hospitals. During an internal town hall Wednesday, which was posted online, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brad Spellberg noted that while coronavirus-positive cases have risen, this isnt because were seeing a ton of people with symptomatic disease getting admitted.
Spellberg said around 90% of the hospitals coronavirus-positive patients were admitted for other issues.
Virtually none of them go to the ICU and when they do go to the ICU, it is not for pneumonia. They are not intubated, he said, citing other issues such as electrolyte abnormalities.
It is just not the same pandemic as it was, despite all the media hype to the contrary. ... A lot of people have bad colds, is what were seeing.
Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Holtom chimed in that, as of Wednesday, we have no one in the hospital who had pulmonary disease due to COVID.
Holtom noted the possibility of a mask mandate but said theres no reason, from a hospitalization-due-to-COVID perspective, to be worried at this point.
As video from the town hall spread online, some highlighted the pairs remarks to repudiate the concept of a masking order or to argue that dangers associated with the current coronavirus wave are overstated or unfounded.
But in a statement to The Times on Monday, the L.A. County Department of Health Services, which has oversight of County-USC, said the pandemic remains a very serious public health threat that we must continue to fight with every tool available, including vaccines, masking, social distancing, and treatment.
To use our weekly internal town hall to suggest such measures are unnecessary is fundamentally contrary to our position as a medical center, the statement continued.
While its true that many coronavirus-positive patients are not presenting with serious symptoms that require admission to the ICU, the Department of Health Services credited that trend in part to the high level of vaccination coverage in L.A. County.
While we are not currently experiencing an increase in ICU admissions at [County-USC], we are seeing a significant increase in the number of infections among our patients, staff and the communities we serve, officials wrote in the statement. Rising rates of infection are extremely concerning, as the more people who become infected, the greater the probability that ICU admissions for COVID-19 will rise in the future.
While not as severely as in previous surges, hospitalizations have swelled. In L.A. County, 1,299 coronavirus-positive patients were hospitalized as of Monday up 60% since the start of the month.
And County-USCs experience in its ICU may not be representative of L.A. County as a whole. There were 137 coronavirus-positive patients in L.A. Countys intensive care units Monday, far below the highs of previous waves but an increase of almost 51% since July 1. The last time L.A. County enacted an indoor mask mandate, on July 17, 2021, there were 134 coronavirus-positive patients in ICUs.
At the end of June, roughly 20% of coronavirus-positive patients at L.A. Countys four public hospitals were being treated for COVID-19 illness.
At all hospitals, public and private, in L.A. County, about 42% of coronavirus-positive patients are being seen for COVID-19 illness. Statewide, the share is about 50%.
On Thursday, L.A., the nations most populous county, reported 10.5 new coronavirus-positive hospitalizations for every 100,000 residents, up from 8.4 the previous week.
The move above 10 per capita pushed L.A. County into the high COVID-19 community level as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials have long said that should the county reach that threshold, they would prepare to institute a mask mandate in indoor public settings. Such an order could go into effect July 29 for those age 2 and up, unless conditions improve.
COVID-19 deaths across L.A. County have increased significantly in the last month, from about 50 a week to between 86 and 100. Thats the first significant increase since the end of the winter Omicron wave. During the peak of that surge, weekly deaths topped 500.
There are a number of other indicators to explain why the L.A. County Department of Public Health and institutions across Southern California are concerned about rising levels of infection, which are resulting in large numbers of workers out sick, sometimes for weeks.
The growing number of cases at County-USC, for instance, has put strain on hospital staffing, Chief Executive Jorge Orozco said during last weeks town hall.
We have a significant number of employees who are testing positive, he said, adding that those employees may not be very ill, but they need to isolate. It causes significant challenges in terms of coverage, in terms of providing appropriate care.
Last week, L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said that while vaccinations, boosters and anti-COVID drugs are making it less likely that large numbers of people will need intensive care or ventilators, there are still some who need such resources.
Somewhere between 5% and 10% of folks that are hospitalized with COVID are still ending up in the ICU, and some of them are needing ventilators. So there still is some serious illness associated with COVID, she said. But nothing like what we were seeing during the Omicron surge.
Still, she said, we also have a lot of unknown with BA.5 and anything else that comes our way. Whats going on in our hospitals could change.
Ferrer said emergency departments, urgent care centers and community clinics are telling her department that theyre feeling very strapped. They have staffing shortages, because lots of their staff are sick with COVID and out, and they also have lots of their patients that, while they dont need to go to the hospital, they do need medical care, and that creates some stress.
Two months ago, 5% of emergency room visits countywide were coronavirus-related; now, its 10%.
Clusters of cases at work sites are disruptive and hazardous, Ferrer said during a recent briefing. Worksite outbreaks create worrisome risk for vulnerable employees, and they often contribute to additional spread of the virus across households and communities where our workers live.
Countywide, 371 workplaces reported clusters of coronavirus cases in a recent seven-day period. In early May, there were 100.
The county is also seeing an impact on nursing homes. Outbreak investigations were underway at 41 nursing homes in L.A. County over the past week, five times more than in early May.
Back in May, about 5% of all deaths occurred among nursing home residents, Ferrer said. Sadly, this number rose to 12% in June.
In 2022 so far, L.A. County has reported 4,390 deaths from COVID-19. There were nearly 12,000 COVID-associated deaths in 2020 and 14,500 in 2021.
By contrast, in the pre-pandemic era, about 1,500 residents in the county each year died from the flu, more than 2,000 from accidental drug overdoses and nearly 900 from motor vehicle accidents.
Coronavirus infection also presents the risk of long COVID, in which the risk of death due to complications of the heart, gastrointestinal or neurologic systems can persist for years.
Some question the wisdom of a renewed masking order or what sort of compliance L.A. County could hope to expect. Maria Salinas, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, and Jessica Lall, president and CEO of the Central City Assn., a downtown business group, sent a letter to Ferrer last week expressing concerns.
Requiring masks, they wrote, puts employees in the increasingly challenging position of enforcing a mandate that many customers no longer wish to or are unwilling to comply with.
L.A.s restaurants, retail stores, museums, amusement parks, sports centers and so many other establishments are working every day to recover from the pandemic, all while facing workforce shortages, supply chain challenges and more, they wrote. Businesses should not be expected to enforce a mask mandate in addition to these ongoing constraints. Businesses cannot shoulder this burden of compliance alone as they have been required to do so in the past.
If L.A. County does mandate indoor public masking, and no other counties follow suit, residents and visitors may choose to take their spending power to businesses in other parts of Southern California, which would only harm our local economy, they wrote.
Ferrer noted that weve always benefited in L.A. County from most people actually going ahead and complying with what we say are sensible precautions. Health officials, she added, will spend the time leading up to a new masking order working with our businesses so that theyre clear about their need to both supply those masks for all of their employees, make sure that their employees are masked appropriately indoors and to do their best to message to their customers.
We need an additional layer of protection, and this is the additional layer, she added. So our hope is that folks will go ahead and make every effort to come into compliance.
December 20, 2021 - Johnson City, NY - Governor Kathy Hochul tours a COVID-19 vaccination and testing site in Johnson City. (Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)
Jul 20, 2022 Governor Kathy Hochul says the state is prepping for a possible new surge of COVID-19 this fall, but she says no new rules like indoor masking are anticipated right now.
The governor also says commencing a long-promised study of the states past pandemic policies.
The first COVID-19 briefing in several weeks featured White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Ashish Jha, who says the current coronavirus variant, known as BA.5, accounts for 70 to 80% of all cases reported, and is highly contagious. It can also re-infect someone who has already had it.
But he says many tools exist to help control the spread and severity of the virus, including the second round of booster shots that are now available.
If you are over 50 years of age, and if you have not gotten a Covid shot this year (2022), Jha said. Then you need to go out and get one now.
Jha says by autumn, a new vaccine that specifically addresses Omicron and its sub-variants will likely be available.
Governor Hochul says she is also gearing up for the fall, when cases could spike once again and is launching a military-style operation for both short-term and long-term planning, if the pandemic should again worsen.
Steps include stockpiling PPE, or personal protective equipment, and distributing 3 million test kits to all of the states school districts, so they can begin testing on the first day of school.
Hochul says, for now, no masks will be required in schools, or any indoor settings.
We dont currently, based on todays numbers, anticipate the need for masks in classrooms, said Hochul. But Im going to reserve the right to return to this policy.
The governor says she is for now keeping her emergency authorization powers, so that she can act swiftly in case new public health rules need to be imposed, or if the National Guard needs to be deployed once again to hospitals and nursing homes.
Hochul has been criticized by her political opponents for delays over the start of a comprehensive review of the states pandemic policies since early 2020.
The governor announced Wednesday that an RFP, or request for proposals, is being posted to create an independent panel to look at what New York did right and did wrong during the pandemic.
Hochul says New Yorkers need to know what worked, and what did not work, and why.
The review will include the controversial March 2020 order under former Governor Andrew Cuomo that required Nursing Homes to take back from hospitals COVID-19 positive patients, a decision critics say led to many more thousands of deaths of residents and staff.
The deadline for the final report is in 6 months, which comes after the November 8th elections where Hochul is seeking a full term as governor.
Jackie Bray, the states Homeland Security commissioner will lead the review.
The state is also setting up a hotline for New Yorkers infected with COVID-19 to access anti-viral medicines. The number in New York City is 212-COVID19 and 888- TREAT- NY, in the rest of the state.
State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett also gave an update on another virus that is spreading- Monkeypox. New York leads the nation in cases, with over 600 people sick.
Bassett says anyone can get the disease, but outreach is centering on the LGBTQ community, as many cases have occurred between men having sexual encounters.
She says Monkeypox is harder to catch and spread than COVID-19, it is not airborne but is contracted through need skin-to-skin contact. In the over 2100 cases reported nationwide, no one has died. But Bassett says the illness is unpleasant, with fever, and painful pustules that last two to four weeks and can leave permanent scars.
Just like in the early days of COVID- 19 vaccinations, Bassett says theres a Monkeypox vaccine shortage, so for now, doses are being limited to those deemed most at risk
We do not at this time have (enough) vaccine to provide vaccinations to everyone who wants or needs a vaccine, Bassett said.
White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jha says there are only enough doses for around 50% of those at risk. Just one company in the world makes the vaccines. Jha says he hopes the federal Food and Drug Administration will allow 760,000 new doses to become available within a week, and he says many will be distributed to New York.
Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the chairman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol, announced on Tuesday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus and would not appear in person at what could be the committees last hearing of the summer.
But the absence of Mr. Thompson, who said he would isolate for several days as he recovers from mild symptoms, is not expected to affect plans for a prime-time hearing on Thursday. A committee spokesman, Tim Mulvey, said Mr. Thompson had instructed the panel to move forward with its schedule after he tested positive on Monday.
While Chairman Thompson is disappointed with his Covid diagnosis, he has instructed the select committee to proceed with Thursday evenings hearing, Mr. Mulvey said. Committee members and staff wish the chairman a speedy recovery.
Mr. Thompson will appear virtually, committee aides said, as lawmakers have for other congressional hearings since the start of the pandemic.
In a statement, Mr. Thompson said that he was fully vaccinated and boosted, and encouraged his constituents to receive a vaccine and take precautions against the coronavirus.
Because Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has continued to extend proxy voting, a system first implemented at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, he will be able to vote remotely on the House floor.
The next hearing, scheduled for 8 p.m. Thursday, could be the final session for the committee this summer. It is set to focus on former President Donald J. Trump and his 187 minutes of inaction as a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to stop the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.s Electoral College victory.
Representatives Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia, and Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, are expected to take leading roles as the committee walks through an accounting of how Mr. Trump refused to call off his supporters, even as his staff, lawyers and family pleaded with him to step in and help stop the violence.
Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.
(solarseven/iStock via Getty Images)
Forget what you thought you knew about catching COVID-19 more than once. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, keeps evolving and so has information about your risk of being reinfected.
"Two years ago, we thought if you had COVID once that you would never get it again," said Dr. Preeti Malani, an infectious disease physician at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. But especially with the variants that have become dominant in the U.S. this summer, that thinking no longer holds.
When it emerged last November, the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 showed an ability to reinfect people who'd had earlier versions of the virus. This summer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 are sweeping the U.S., with BA.5 accounting for the majority of COVID cases. Both appear to be even more adept than other omicron subvariants at evading the body's defenses against infection.
Even having had an earlier version of omicron does not seem to protect against symptomatic infection from the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, Malani said. The subvariants also can infect vaccinated people.
"I have friends who have had COVID three times," said Malani, who has co-written an ongoing series of updates about the virus for JAMA. "One of my kids had it twice." And Malani herself recently tested positive for the first time, despite being up-to-date on her vaccinations.
The good news is that despite spreading more easily, the subvariants do not appear to cause more severe disease. And vaccination still protects against severe illness, especially hospitalizations and death.
But heart and stroke patients might need to step up their precautions.
Dr. Deepak L. Bhatt, executive director of interventional cardiovascular programs at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said it's hard to know exactly how a pandemic is unfolding in real time, and more research is needed on COVID-19 and the heart to provide definitive answers about the risks.
But conditions such as stroke, heart failure and coronary artery disease are among those that can lead to severe illness from COVID-19, the CDC says. And in the past month, Bhatt has seen "a number of patients" with severe cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary or neurological disease die from problems related to the coronavirus.
"It's not that they specifically died from COVID," said Bhatt, who is also a professor at Harvard Medical School. "But COVID tipped them over."
Some preliminary research suggests what multiple bouts of COVID-19 might mean for heart and brain health. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, using data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, found that reinfection raised people's risks of cardiovascular and other complications when compared with people who had one infection. The risk grew with the number of infections.
The work has not been peer-reviewed, but Bhatt called its conclusions "believable" and said it made sense that with a major infection of any sort, getting infected a second time would mean more chances for problems.
The best protection against reinfection remains getting vaccinated and keeping up with boosters.
"There's still a lot of people that aren't vaccinated and were just thinking, 'Well, I'll get natural immunity, or I'll just wait it out,'" Bhatt said. "But those strategies won't work."
Vaccination helps even as the coronavirus evolves, Malani said. "It still protects against severe infection. And we shouldn't lose sight of that."
Updated vaccines tailored to omicron are expected to be available this year. Meanwhile, taking practical steps to avoid COVID-19 might be prudent, particularly for people who are traveling.
For Malani, a week ahead of a big vacation that required a negative COVID test, she urged her family to be cautious. "I said to everyone: 'Listen, I think we all need to be really extra careful. Because if one of us gets COVID, none of us are going on this trip.'"
Social connections are important, she said, but gatherings should be outdoors, or at least in well-ventilated areas. And people who are not feeling well should stay home.
The CDC says anyone who tests positive should stay home for at least five days and isolate from others. And while many guidelines about when to wear a mask have been relaxed, Bhatt encourages people to mask up in crowded indoor settings, "even if people around them aren't." Research shows it helps stop the virus's spread.
Malani acknowledged it can be confusing when advice shifts on something such as the risk of reinfection. "This isn't because the scientists and public health officials are asleep at the wheel," she said. It's what happens when experts learn more. So people should follow advice from reliable sources.
"The reason we care about this is because the vulnerable people can die, and our health care system can get overwhelmed with sick people," she said. "And we've seen that happen."
Editor's note: Because of the rapidly evolving events surrounding the coronavirus, the facts and advice presented in this story may have changed since publication. Visit Heart.org for the latest coverage, and check with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials for the most recent guidance.
If you have questions or comments about this American Heart Association News story, please email editor@heart.org.
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said Wednesday that she did not anticipate schoolchildren would need to wear masks when they return to school in September, but that she was keeping the statewide mask mandate on public transportation for now.
We are trying very hard to encourage people to come back to work, use the subways, but they have to feel safe and secure, she said of her choice to continue the mandate on trains, buses and other public transportation. So we are going to continue to monitor it, but the numbers will have to be lower than they are right now and consistently lower to lift it.
As coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths in the state tick up as a result of the rapidly spreading Omicron subvariant known as BA.5, Ms. Hochul held her first Covid briefing in months. She tried simultaneously to reassure the public that Covid levels are manageable for the moment and do not require a change of course, and to make the case that she needed to extend her pandemic emergency powers into the fall in case serious disease and hospitalizations spike higher.
Ms. Hochul has come under some criticism in recent days for continuing to declare each month that New York is facing a state of emergency because of the pandemic. The declaration allows her to issue mandates and spend tax dollars without full legislative oversight. She appeared to call the briefing in part to argue that she still needed that authority, as well as to share information about the states monkeypox response, which dominated the first half of the event.
On Covid, she said she had hoped the pandemic would be over by now, but it is becoming clear to me it isnt gone. As a result, her office needs to stay nimble, she said.
We have staffing contracts we are going to keep in place that we can reactivate people with five days notice, she said. Were not ceding that flexibility as long as were still in this environment.
Ms. Hochul concentrated her remarks on preparing for a possible fall and winter surge. For the fall, she said the state was focused on getting millions of rapid tests to schools so they could have children test before the first day of classes. She is also making sure the state has a 60-day stockpile of masks and other personal protective equipment. She urged people to get booster shots if they had not yet had them and were eligible, and publicized a state hotline that can help people with Covid get treatment.
She also discussed her administrations plan to look back and learn from the first years of the states Covid-19 response. She said she was seeking independent contractors to produce a wide-ranging pandemic after-action review that would analyze all aspects of the response, including a fraught decision by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to transfer stable coronavirus patients from hospitals into nursing homes during the first wave.
Virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been rising in New York State over the past month, but remain well below the levels seen in January during the first wave of Omicron. One reason is that most testing now happens at home and is not recorded, but also, vaccines and immunity from past infections are helping protect against severe cases, even as people are getting reinfected.
Neither the government nor most of the public seem inclined to get into high alert mode for this sixth wave of cases, reflecting a growing sense in New York City and beyond that it is time to learn to live with the pandemic without much change in behavior. Some people, however, still want heightened precautions, particularly to protect those more vulnerable to serious infection.
As of July 18, there were 2,628 people hospitalized with Covid-19 in the state, about 1,300 of whom were in New York City, according to state data. About 20 people a day have died from the virus over the past week. At the height of the first Omicron surge, there were more than 12,000 people hospitalized statewide, about 6,500 of them in New York City, and about 230 people a day died. And during the first wave, nearly 19,000 people were hospitalized statewide at the peak, with nearly 1,000 daily deaths.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand Micronesia has most likely become the final nation in the world with a population of more than 100,000 to experience an outbreak of the coronavirus.
For more than two and a half years, the Pacific archipelago managed to avoid any outbreaks thanks to its geographic isolation and border controls. Those people who flew into the country with the disease didnt spread it because all new arrivals were required to quarantine.
But as has been the case in several other Pacific nations this year, those defenses couldnt keep out the more transmissible omicron variant forever.
On Tuesday, the government announced it had become aware of multiple cases across two of the nations four states.
Authorities said that in the state of Kosrae, 25 people tested positive after showing up at a local hospital. An additional 10 people from a family of 11 tested positive after a medical team visited them.
Authorities said they had also found seven community cases in the state of Pohnpei. State leaders there have asked all residents to avoid public gatherings and to wear masks at all times.
The outbreak comes less than two weeks before Micronesia planned to end its quarantine restrictions and reopen its borders to the world on Aug. 1.
Last year, Micronesia became one of the few countries to impose a broad mandate requiring all eligible citizens get vaccinated against the coronavirus. It threatened to withhold federal funds from any individuals or business owners who didnt follow the rules, and as a result has had high vaccination rates.
Almost all nations in the world have now experienced coronavirus outbreaks.
Turkmenistan is the only other country with more than 100,000 people that hasnt reported any cases, although experts believe there has been a significant outbreak there that the autocratic leadership has chosen to ignore.
There have also been headaches for health officials trying to compile figures from North Korea.
In May, North Korea acknowledged it had a coronavirus outbreak. Since then, it has reported nearly 4.8 million cases with fever symptoms, but in state media has identified only a fraction of them as confirmed Covid-19 patients, due in part to a lack of test kits.
Elsewhere in the Pacific, the omicron variant has spread the coronavirus to several small nations for the first time in the past year, including Kiribati, Tonga, Samoa and Nauru.
Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands have so far managed to avoid any community outbreaks. The Marshall Islands plans to end its border quarantine requirements starting Oct. 1.
