Alaska currently has the country's highest case rate, followed by West Virginia, Wyoming, Kentucky,Montanaand South Carolina, according to federal data.
A visitor walks past artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg's "In America: Remember," a temporary art installation made up of white flags to commemorate Americans who have died of COVID-19, on the National Mall in Washington, Sept. 22, 2021.
West Virginia and Montana have seen their case rates double over the lastmonth. In Alaska,case metrics are at record highs, according to federal data.
Hospital admissions are down by about 12.5% in the last week, with improvements in Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to federal data.
A nurse tends to a 2-month-old on a ventilator for respiratory failure because of COVID-19 at Children's Hospital New Orleans, Aug. 18, 2021.
Seven states, however, have less than10% ICU availability: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Texas.
Evenhighly vaccinatedstates are experiencing shortages. One central Massachusetts health system, UMass Memorial Health, is running low on critical care beds following the admission of an influx of COVID-19 patients in recentweeks.
-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos
Houston Health Department to offer on campus COVID-19 testing in schools
September 23, 2021
HOUSTON- The Houston Health Department is partnering with Houston ISD and Aldine ISDto provide free on-campus COVID-19 testing to students and staff at many campuses this school year.
The program will be able to detect COVID-19 quickly to help stop outbreaks early. Regular testing is a safe, effective way to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and help keep schools open for in-person learning.
We know students learn best in the classroom, and keeping schools open for safe in-person learning is a priority, said Mayor Sylvester Turner. I urge parents to permit their children to participate in the testing program. Our goal is to keep campus staff, students, and families healthy while preventing a need to shut down schools because of a COVID-19 outbreak.
Thanks to the Houston Health Department we are continuing to expand our tool kit of protection that is keeping our students and staff safe from the deadliest virus of our lifetime, Houston Independent School District Superintendent Millard House II said. First, we mandated masks in our schools, and now the City of Houston is providing testing that can catch COVID-19 before it spreads through our schools. This partnership with the City of Houston will save lives.
Regular testing is especially important for children under 12 years old who are not yet able to get vaccinated against COVID-19, families and staff with younger children at home, and others who are not vaccinated or are otherwise at risk for getting seriously sick from COVID-19.
Many people with COVID-19, especially children and teens, dont have symptoms but can still spread the virus, said Dr. David Persse, chief medical officer for the City of Houston. Regular testing of school communities will help us find students and staff with the virus and put measures in place to slow the spread at both school and home.
The health department will partner with Fulgent Genetics to conduct the testing.
The PCR tests are conducted with a shallow nose swab that goes only half to three-quarters of an inch into the nose and is rotated three times in each nostril. Qualified medical professionals will administer the swabs.
Tests are conducted in a certified lab and results expected within one day.
Schools within communities with high COVID-19 transmission and low vaccination rates will be prioritized. The testing program will launch later this school year.
Parents at participating schools will receive a consent form that must be signed for their child to participate. If a parent is unsure if their childs school is offering the testing, they should contact the school.
Testing results will be shared only for public health purposes, which may include notifying close contacts that they may have been exposed to COVID-19. Sharing of information is done in accordance with applicable law and policies protecting privacy and the security of data.
VisitHoustonEmergency.orgfor information about the program. The site also provides locations of free testing and vaccination sites across the city.
This school testing program is supported by the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emergency Infectious Disease (ELC) Cooperative Agreement of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $69,885,366.00 with 100 percent funded by ELC/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by ELC/HHS, or the U.S. Government. For more information, please visithttps://www.cdc.gov/ncezid/dpei/epidemiology-laboratory-capacity.html.
LEE COUNTY
The Florida Highway Patrol will honor the life of Trooper Brian J. Pingry with a funeral procession on Friday.
Pingry, a seven-year veteran with FHP, died on Sunday from COVID-19 complications.
Pingry was a Lee County resident and also served as a trooper in this area.
There will be a law enforcement procession on Friday that begins at Gendron Funeral Home, at 2701 Lee Boulevard in Lehigh Acres, to Next Level Church, at 11081 Gateway Boulevard in Fort Myers.
Any public support along the procession route would be truly appreciated and meaningful to family and friends, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
The procession route will begin in the westbound lanes of Lee Boulevard to Gunnery Road, continue southbound on Gunnery Road to Daniels Parkway, and from there it will turn right onto Gateway Boulevard where it will end at the Next Level Church.
Brief traffic delays are expected.
Procession Route Time (Anticipated start 8:15 a.m.):
Gov. DeWine announces student vaccine incentives, continues push for masks
by: Ben Orner
Students return for the first day of the school year at Schoolcraft Elementary on August 30, 2021 in Schoolcraft, Michigan. The Schoolcraft Community School district, like many school districts throughout the country are adapting to mask mandates for teachers and students due to the current surge of Covid-19 cases. (Photo by Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images)
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) Ohios K-12 schools reported 9,827 new coronavirus cases among students and staff members this week, pushing the total just over a month into the school year near 40,000.
Schools have reported 38,244 cases this year, and Thursdays 9,827 cases is close to last weeks 10,682. Cases reported to the Ohio Department of Health reflect the week ending the previous Sunday.
Schools report cases among students and staff to ODH on Tuesdays, reflecting the week ending on the previous Sunday. ODH releases numbers on Thursdays at 2 p.m.
Case criteria
ODH reports new and cumulative cases. Cases only move over to cumulative once the person is no longer COVID-positive. NBC4s count of new cases every week reflects the change in cumulative cases. More info
1,301 (47%) of 2,767 schools, districts, private schools, vocational schools, preschools and other non-college institutions that the state tracks have reported cases this fall. Thats 89 more schools than last week.
The median number of cases among schools with at least one infection is 10 cases, while the median number for school districts is 33 cases.
32,466 (85%) of Ohios school cases are students and 5,778 (15%) are staff members, which include teachers, administrators, coaches and support staff. Last school year, students were roughly 2 in 3 cases, and staff were 1 in 3.
Cincinnati Public Schools, a district of more than 34,000 students, leads the state in cases with 663, well above second-place Toledo City Schools at 435. Four Columbus area school districts are in the top eight.
Gov. Mike DeWine on Thursday said 61% of Ohios public school students are in a district that requires mask wearing, nearly double what it was three weeks ago (about 31%). Ohio continues to make progress in that area, he said, but case numbers are shocking.
Since Aug. 15, there have been over 42,000 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19 among school age kids in Ohio, ages 5-17, the governor told reporters. The 27 days with the highest number of cases per day throughout our entire pandemic for children 5-17 have been since school began this year."
DeWine has said he would like to take executive action to require masks in schools, but a state law passed this summer after overriding DeWines veto Senate Bill 22 stripped that power from the governor and gave it to the state legislature.
The governor did take action on Thursday, though, announcing a vaccine incentive program for students, similar to Mays Vax-A-Million lottery.
The Vax-to-School program will offer 55 scholarships five worth $100,000 and 50 worth $10,000 to any vaccinated Ohioan aged 12-25 to cover costs of any higher education. That includes college, technical school, job training and postgraduate study. More details on these drawings will be announced next week.
ODH data DeWine referenced Thursday show the youngest age groups are the least vaccinated, including fewer than 39% of Ohioans aged 12-15 and less than 50% of those 16-29.
Here is a look at the breakdown of Ohio's vaccinations. Governor DeWine says those younger Ohioans have the largest room to grow and they are the people the state fears will miss out on in person learning. @nbc4i pic.twitter.com/bsR6cPF8Iz
Its worth it, the governor said of the Vax-to-School program. Weve got to throw the football. Weve got to try to make something happen. Weve got to move our numbers up.
Siegfried Emme, owner of Loveland Medical Clinic, was ordered to pay $40,000 for failing to comply with a cease-and-desist order, Colorado's AG says.
LOVELAND, Colo. A Loveland family nurse practitioner has been ordered to pay 10s of thousands of dollars after failing to comply with a cease-and-desist order to stop illegally marketing and overstating the effectiveness of alleged cures for COVID-19, including the anti-parasite drug Ivermectin often used in animals, the Colorado Attorney General's Office announced Thursday.
According to the consent judgment filed with the Larimer County District Court, Siegfried Emme, owner of Loveland Medical Clinic, will pay only $20,000 of the $40,000 if he complies with the order.
My office will hold accountable those who continue to break the law after they are told to stopand in so doing continue to place the public at risk, said Attorney General Phil Weiser. Falsely advertising alleged cures and providing misleading information about treatments for COVID-19 can cause direct harm to patients and delay them from seeking the care they need.
In March 2020, Emme advertised IV therapies as a treatment for the coronavirus and later began advertising other treatments he claimed were cures on his social media and blog while overstating their effectiveness in fighting COVID-19, the AG's office said.
>Video above: Tips on protecting yourself from COVID-19 scams
Emme infrequently posted disclaimers, and those that were posted on his blog page were misleading and frequently contradicted the blog posts themselves.
The Department of Law sent a cease-and-desist notice to Emme in November 2020, and he agreed to take down the misleading posts, but failed to remove them all, the AG's office said.
In addition to payment, Emme also agreed to the following in the consent judgment:
If you notice any scams, fraud, price gouging, or other attempts to take advantage of Coloradans during the COVID-19 pandemic, contact Stop Fraud Colorado at 800-222-4444 or StopFraudColorado.gov.
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Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 230 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.71 million. More than 6.01 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.
Alaska has imposed crisis-care standards for its entire hospital system after a surge in COVID-19 patients put an extreme strain on resources.
New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said the country should aim for a 90%-plus vaccination rate - and could drop lockdown measures once enough people were vaccinated.
South Korea has urged citizens to get a COVID-19 test after the Chuseok holiday week.
The Pan American Health Organization warned yesterday that countries in the region could continue to face COVID-19 outbreaks 'well into 2022'.
Uganda has eased COVID-19 restrictions following a decline in infections in the country.
Ukraine is planning mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for some jobs, including teachers and employees of state institutions and local governments, Health Minister Oleh Lyashko said yesterday.
New confirmed daily COVID-19 cases have hit their highest total this year in Romania, with cases doubling in a week.
Germany plans to stop paying compensation to unvaccinated workers who are forced into quarantine by coronavirus measures as it is unfair to ask taxpayers to subsidize those who refuse to get inoculated, Health Minister Jens Spahn said yesterday.
The United States Food and Drug Administration has approved a booster dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for those 65 and older, all people at high risk of severe disease, and others who are regularly exposed to the virus.
The World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called on countries to boost vaccine supplies to parts of the world where vaccination rates remain low.
"We need an ironclad global commitment today to support the vaccination of at least 40% of the population of every country by the end of this year, and 70% by mid-2022," Dr Tedros told a US-hosted session on ending the pandemic.
To achieve that, we need two billion doses for low- and lower-middle-income countries right now. "We call on the countries and companies that control the global supply of vaccines to swap their near-term vaccine deliveries with COVAX and AVAT; to fulfil their dose-sharing pledges immediately; and to facilitate the immediate sharing of technology, know-how and intellectual property."
Dr Tedros' calls echoed those of the United Nations Secretary-General Antnio Guterres and leaders from developing nations from around the world.
Countries including the United States, Italy, Spain and Japan have announced new or increased pledges for vaccine donations.
COVID-19 vaccine doses administered by country income group.
Image: Our World in Data
Syria is facing a new surge in COVID-19 infections that could overwhelm the country's fragile health system, aid workers, officials and medical sources said yesterday. Rising cases are being seen in government-held regions and areas outside state control.
"The occupancy of intensive care units (ICU) for COVID-19 patients have reached close to 100%," said Issam al-Amin, the head of Mouwasat University Hospital, one of the largest public hospitals in the capital city of Damascus, with over 800 beds.
Government health authorities said the number of cases reported in the last 24 hours has hit 235, the highest daily tally since the first case was reported in March last year.
NGOs, independent medics and aid workers say official data reflects a small fraction of the real toll. Just a small fraction of the country's population has received a COVID-19 vaccine.
Each of our Top 50 social enterprise last mile responders and multi-stakeholder initiatives is working across four priority areas of need: Prevention and protection; COVID-19 treatment and relief; inclusive vaccine access; and securing livelihoods. The list was curated jointly with regional hosts Catalyst 2030s NASE and Aavishkaar Group. Their profiles can be found on www.wef.ch/lastmiletop50india.
Top Last Mile Partnership Initiatives to collaborate with:
Written by
Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) Fayette County Public Schools Superintendent Demetrus Liggins announced that 15-year-old Christopher CJ Gordon Jr. died Thursday morning due to COVID-19.
CJ was a sophomore at The Learning Center.
We were heartbroken to learn that Christopher CJ Gordon Jr., died this morning, Liggins said. He was a kind, thoughtful young man with a bright future ahead of him, and we join his family in mourning his tragic death.
I cannot say enough good things about how our staff stepped up today to wrap our students in love and care, Liggins said. CJ was a beloved member of the TLC family and our FCPS community, and he will be missed.
Liggins noted that classmates and teachers remembered him as a sweetheart and a friend to everyone.
CJ brought kindness, compassion, and laughter into our lives, lifting up those around him with a supportive word or a playful gesture, said Learning Center Principal Chris Salyers. Here at The Learning Center, our promise to one another is to do right by people. CJ embodied this core commitment every day and shone as an example for our community, state, and nation to live up to.
A team of grief counselors from across the district was at The Learning Center today to support students and staff as they learned the news. Additional counselors from the district will continue to be available for as long as our students need the extra support.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) The Jonas Brothers are bringing their Remember This Tour to the St. Josephs Health Amphitheater at Lakeview on September 26, and fans at this concert have to follow certain COVID-19 measures.
Proof of a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of the event or full vaccination is required for entry, according to the Amps website.
-All fans must have received a negative COVID-19 diagnostic test within 72-hours before entry to the facility and provideprintedproof of a negative result prior to entering the venue.Or, be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (at least two weeks after final dose) and provide proof of vaccination either the original vaccination card (photo or printed copy accepted) or theNYS Excelsior Passon your mobile phone.
-Unvaccinated fansunder12 years of age will be required to take a COVID-19 diagnostic test within 72-hours before entry to the facility and will provide printed proof of negative result prior to entering the venue.
-Unvaccinated fansover12 years old with a valid medical restriction & medical note will be required to take a COVID-19 diagnostic test within 72-hours before entry to the facility, and will provide printed proof of negative result prior to entering the venue.
Pre-screening areas will be set up within the parking lot to confirm compliance with COVID-19 vaccination and testing requirements.
A list of frequently asked questions about COVID-19 and the concert can be found here.
A vaccine advisory panel voted Thursday to recommend that a wide swath of Americans should be offered Covid-19 vaccine booster shots, given at least six months after their second vaccination. But a vote that would have ensured access to boosters for health care workers and others in high-risk occupations did not pass, leaving many of them for now out of the eligibility pool.
The recommendations which pertain at this time only to people who were previously vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine now go to Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is not bound to follow recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices but it would be highly unusual for a CDC director to reject the ACIPs advice.
Walensky is expected to approve the recommendations on Thursday, opening the door for the booster shot program to begin soon, potentially in the week that the Biden administration had set as its target.
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The ACIP voted on a series of questions, each of which cast a broader net in terms of who in this country would be eligible to get a booster shot at this point. The committee agreed unanimously to recommend to boosters for people 65 and older as well as people living in nursing homes.
With each successive vote, however, the committees support for recommending boosters ebbed, with increasing numbers of members questioning the strength of the evidence supporting the need. A vote to recommend boosters for people aged 50 to 64 with medical conditions that raise the risk of severe Covid infection passed 13 to 2. A vote to recommend boosters for people aged 18 to 49 with medical problems passed with a 9 to 6 vote.
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But the committee drew the line at a recommendation that would have given access to boosters to people aged 18 to 64 who are at elevated risk because they live in a setting or work in an occupation where the risk of catching Covid-19 is significant. This would include health workers, prisoners and prison guards, and people who live in or work in homeless shelters.
The recommendation was defeated by a 9 to 6 vote.
We might as well give it to everybody, Pablo Snchez, a professor of pediatrics at Ohio State University and committee member, said of the last vote. Sarah Long, a pediatrics professor at Drexel University College of Medicine, who voted no on all but the first recommendation, called a very slippery slope that seemed uncharacteristically open-ended given the lack of data supporting both the benefit and the need.
Snchez said he was concerned offering booster shots so broadly at this point would send the wrong message about how well the Covid vaccines are working. This is like saying the vaccine isnt working. And it is working.
But Helen Keipp Talbot urged colleagues to vote for the recommendation as a way to boost the immunity of health workers. Hospitals are struggling under the crush of Covid patients, she said, and when health workers get sick, theres no one to step in.
Having the option to give health care workers a third dose helps us to maintain our staffing, said Talbot, who voted yes on all four recommendations.
Some outside experts who have been skeptical of offering boosters broadly said they supported ACIPs vote against including the last group even though the Food and Drug Administration expressly included them in its explanation of who it felt should be eligible for Covid booster shots in an emergency use authorization issued late Wednesday.
Supporting boosters based on occupation would have in effect opened up the shots to all adults who wanted to go out and get one, said Norman Baylor, a vaccine industry consultant who formerly ran FDAs vaccines program office.
Baylor noted most Covid vaccines are being administered by pharmacists, a group not equipped to check bona fides beyond age if an individual showed up for a booster saying they worked or lived in one of the named settings. You might have asked the question, 18 and above, period, he said.
Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, agreed. Offit, who serves on the FDAs vaccine advisory body, said he was planning on waiting a bit before he gets a third shot hes 70 because as of now, there was not much data about booster shots and that the data showed that two doses were continuing to offer excellent protection against severe disease.
Im going to wait to see how this plays out, Offit said.
The FDA authorization issued Wednesday covers a Pfizer booster shot for those 65 and older and a wide array of people who are at higher risk of severe Covid because of health conditions or because they have frequent and unavoidable exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in institutional or occupational settings.
Despite the fact that ACIP voted not to make the final recommendation, many Americans will now find themselves eligible to for a booster shot if they received the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine as their primary vaccination series. So far only Pfizer and BioNTech have secured FDA authorization for a booster shot. Nearly 100 million people in the United States have received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The third shots should be given sometime after six months have elapsed from receipt of the second dose.
A number of ACIP members were clearly unhappy they could not recommend the Pfizer booster be made available to all people who fall into the groups that qualify for a booster shot, regardless of their initial doses. But the FDA said it did not have evidence on which to recommend that people who got Modernas two-dose vaccine or the one-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine should get a Pfizer jab as their third or second shot respectively.
Peter Marks, director of FDAs vaccines division, told the committee FDA understands the frustration about not being able to give boosters at this point to people who did not get the Pfizer vaccine. The agency is working with manufacturers and will try to fill this gap as quickly as possible, he said.
While most members of the committee supported the use of boosters, several raised concerns that this step wont fix the countrys Covid problem. Talbot said hospitals are full of people with Covid-19 who arent vaccinated. Boosting fully vaccinated people wont change that.
I feel like were putting lipstick on frogs, she said. This is not going to solve the pandemic.
Thursdays ACIP vote punctuates a rocky five-week period in which the Biden administration found itself at odds with many in the scientific community and those who value drug and vaccine approvals playing out according to regulatory pathways.
Rather than asking the FDA and the CDC to advise it on whether it was time to make booster shots available to Americans, the administration announced a booster shot campaign would begin the week of Sept. 20. The announcement was made before any booster shots had been authorized for use and before two of the three manufacturers had even filed an application to the FDA for approval of a booster.
Whether most fully vaccinated people need a booster shot at this point remains a point of heated debate. While data from Israel one of the first countries to rapidly vaccinate a large portion of its population suggests the Pfizer vaccines ability to protect against serious disease subsides within months, many questions remain about the interpretation of those data. And as Israel only used the Pfizer vaccine, the countrys experience tells the world nothing about other vaccines in use.
The FDAs vaccine advisory committee, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC for short, voted at a meeting last Friday not to recommend boosters for everyone 16 years of age and older who had received the Pfizer vaccine. Instead, it recommended a smaller group of individuals be offered boosters people 65 and older and people at high risk of severe disease.
Pfizer had applied for approval of a booster that would be offered to anyone aged 16 and older, to be given six months after the second dose of vaccine. But Pfizers application included no data to support the safety of giving 16- and 17-year olds a booster and members of VRBPAC objected strongly to their inclusion without safety data. In the end, the FDA did not include them.
Andrew Joseph contributed reporting.
The highly infectious Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has spread to more than 140 countries and accounts for 98% of U.S. Covid-19 cases. While U.S.-authorized vaccines provide strong protection against severe illness, they arent 100% effective and breakthrough infections, though rare and generally mild, do occur.
With this in mind, scientists are working to develop shots that would target the Delta variant specifically. The mRNA platform behind some vaccines might make this process relatively straightforward, according to Matthew Johnson, senior director of product development at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute.
