CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Just days into the academic year, some Ohio schools have already transitioned to remote learning or canceled class entirely as the states August coronavirus report showed the highest daily COVID-19 case counts Ohio has experienced in seven months.
Were talking about how schools are reacting -- and whether they will scramble today to submit plans for online learning plans to the state -- on This Week in the CLE.
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Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with Leila Atassi, Jane Kahoun and me.
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Here are the questions were answering today:
Whats the latest news on school districts falling victim to COVID and cancelling classes just as the school year begins?
How much money is Joe DAmbrosio getting from the state to compensate him for the prosecutorial misconduct that put him in prison for over 20 years, including on Death Row, for a murder he did not commit?
Whats the little piece of good news that reporter Eric Heisig found in new Census results for Cleveland?
What was Jane Kahouns best day, and what was her worst, in her nearly 37 years of journalism in our Cleveland newsroom, a career that comes to a close this very day? What was her favorite story, and which one was the most difficult?
What are some of the names that people listen to this podcast thing we should use as we contemplate changing it to more accurately reflect what we talk about?
What are people saying about the big changeover in Cleveland leadership we are seeing in business, non-profits and government?
Is the battle between Westlake and Cleveland over Westlake exiting the Cleveland Water system finally over?
Why is suddenly fashionable for Republicans to attack big business?
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WELLINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) - New Zealand reported its first recorded death linked to the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the health ministry said on Monday, after a woman suffered a rare heart muscle inflammation side effect.
The report comes as the country battles an outbreak of the Delta variant of the coronavirus after nearly six months of being virus free. It followed a review by an independent panel monitoring the safety of the vaccines.
"This is the first case in New Zealand where a death in the days following vaccination has been linked to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine," the ministry said in a statement, without giving the woman's age.
The vaccine monitoring panel attributed the death to myocarditis, a rare, but known, side effect of the Pfizer (PFE.N) vaccine, the ministry added.
The board said the myocarditis "was probably due to vaccination", according to the ministry. The health ministry said other medical issues at the same time could have influenced the outcome after vaccination.
Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle that can limit the organ's ability to pump blood and can cause changes in heartbeat rhythms.
Pfizer said it recognised there could be rare reports of myocarditis after vaccinations, but such side effects were extremely rare.
"Pfizer takes adverse events that are potentially associated with our vaccine very seriously," the company said.
"The benefits of vaccination with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine continue to greatly outweigh the risk of both COVID-19 infection and vaccine side effects, including myocarditis," Pfizer said.
A health worker draws a dose of Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine from a vial during a vaccination event hosted by Miami - Dade County and Miami Heat, at FTX Arena in Miami, Florida, U.S., August 5, 2021. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo
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Regulators in the United States, the European Union and the World Health Organization have said that mRNA vaccines from Pfizer with German partner BioNTech and by Moderna (MRNA.O) are associated with rare cases of myocarditis or pericarditis, an inflammation of the lining around the heart, but that the benefits of the shots outweigh any risks.
The cases, affecting mainly younger men, tend to be mild and treatable but can lead to serious illness and hospitalization.
There have been no U.S. deaths reported for young adults who developed myocarditis after being given the mRNA vaccines, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday.
Separately, it also said that a total of 2,574 U.S. cases of myocarditis or pericarditis had been reported. More than 330 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been administered in the United States.
The risk of myocarditis was 18.5 per million doses given among people aged 18 to 24 after their second Pfizer dose and 20.2 per million for that age group among Moderna second dose recipients. The risk decreases with age, according to the CDC analysis based on its national reporting system.
The EU's drug regulator said on July 9 that five people had died due to the heart side effect after receiving either of the two mRNA vaccines in the European Economic Area, all of whom were elderly or had other diseases. More than 200 million mRNA doses have been administered in the region.
New Zealand has provisionally approved use of the Pfizer/BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and AstraZeneca (AZN.L) vaccines, but only the Pfizer vaccine has been approved for rollout to the public. More than 3 million doses have been given so far, mostly to people over 50.
New Zealand reported 53 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, taking its tally of infections in the current outbreak to 562, amid a nationwide lockdown enforced this month to limit spread of the Delta variant.
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Reporting by Praveen MenonAdditional reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt and Caroline Humer in New York; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Clarence Fernandez, Nick Macfie and Bill Berkrot
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
DENVER (KDVR) A new study highlights the latest reasoning why some unvaccinated Coloradans are refusing to get the COVID-19 shot.
According to analysts at QuoteWizard who reviewed the latest data on vaccine hesitancy here in Colorado, these are the top reasons:
(Respondents were allowed to choose multiple reasons, so the percentages in the table below wont add up to 100%.)
When we looked at Colorado specifically what we really found is that people are getting less concerned about the side-effects as COVID cases start to raise, explained Nick VinZant, a senior research analyst at QuoteWizard. But while theyre getting less concerned about side-effects, theyre becoming more skeptical about the government. So we have seen a big increase in people who are more skeptical about the government and the vaccine in Colorado over the last couple of weeks.
To collect the data, analysts looked into Household Pulse Survey vaccine hesitancy data. They also compiled vaccine hesitancy data on demographics. According to analysts at QuoteWizard, the rate of unvaccinated was taken from the United States Census Bureau Survey on Explore COVID Vaccine Attitudes.
Marc Bernier, a talk radio host in Daytona Beach for 30 years, died after a three-week battle with COVID-19.
Bernier, 65, has been remembered in the Florida community in recent days as a conservative who sought out and aired others' points of view.
He alsowas an outspoken opponent of vaccinations.
Volusia County, Florida Sheriff Mike Chitwood, a longtime guest on Bernier's radio show onWNDB, said a representative of the Florida station confirmed to him that Bernier died Saturday night.
Chitwood said he had appeared regularly on Bernier's show for the last 15 years, first as Daytona Beach police chief and then as sheriff. He said the two didn't always agree on everything, but that never got in the way of their friendship.
Jim Rose, a retired attorney who hosted his own weekly show on WNDB for 15 years recalled Bernier as a good interviewer who made guests feel at ease.
Coronavirus pandemic: Phil Valentine, Tennessee radio host who was a vaccine skeptic, dies of COVID at 61
'Exhaustion,' 'frustration': Why some vaccinated people are losing motivation to stay safe
Pat Northey, a Democrat who served on the Volusia County Council for 20 years, wasamong the liberals who werewelcomed on Bernier's show in a way that's not done on many of the nationally syndicated conservative talk shows.
"I don't think he's as right-wing as what his show is," Northey said. "I think he has an understanding of moderation. ... I find he can be persuaded. He's not dug in on any issue."
Bernier had issues with vaccines for years.
Mel Stack, an attorney and friend who regularly advertised on the program, said Bernier's anti-vaccinationviews were not based on politics, but personal experience based on howhe believed vaccines had impacted people near to him.
Bernier's concerns extended to the COVID-19 vaccines.
When Bernier reunited with Justin Gates, a vice president at Sports Network International in Ormond Beach, Florida and a longtime friend of Bernier, for a newshow on Dec. 19, the Pfizer vaccine had only gotten its initial approval about a week earlier. Gates asked Bernier whether he would get the jab.
Bernier responded: Im not taking it.
Gates: Come on!
Bernier: Are you kidding me? Mr. Anti-Vax? Jeepers.
Gates: Ever?
Bernier: No.
COVID-19 cases have spiked in Florida from earlier in the summer. Between Aug. 20 and Aug. 26, the state documented 151,749 new coronavirus cases.
Approximately 68 percent of eligible Florida residents are vaccinated against the virus, according to state data.
Mark McKinney, theWNDBoperations director, did not confirm Bernier's vaccinationstatus toThe Daytona Beach News-Journal, while the host was hospitalized. However, he noted that"If you've listened to his show, you've heard him talk about how anti-vaccine he is on the air."
WASHINGTON American intelligence agencies have not been able to determine if the coronavirus pandemic was the result of an accidental leak from a lab or if it emerged more naturally, according to declassified portions of a report to the White House that were released on Friday.
The nations spy agencies, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said, are unlikely to reach a conclusion without more cooperation from China or new sources of information.
In a statement, President Biden said the United States would continue working to understand the origins of the virus and he called on China to be more transparent about what led to its emergence there in late 2019 before spreading rapidly across the globe.
We will do everything we can to trace the roots of this outbreak that has caused so much pain and death around the world, so that we can take every necessary precaution to prevent it from happening again, Mr. Biden said. Critical information about the origins of this pandemic exists in the Peoples Republic of China, yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it.
As debates about the pandemics origins and Chinas role intensified, Mr. Biden ordered the nations intelligence agencies three months ago to draft a report on the source of the virus.
After the review, the National Intelligence Council and four other intelligence agencies reported that they believed the virus that causes Covid-19 was most likely created by natural exposure to an infected animal through an animal infected with it, or close progenitor virus.
Before the review was conducted, only two agencies favored the natural exposure theory. But the new report said the intelligence council and other agencies favoring the natural theory had only low confidence in their conclusions a sign that the intelligence behind the determination was not strong and that assessments could change.
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On the other side of the debate, one agency said it had concluded, with moderate confidence, that the pandemic was the result of a laboratory-associated incident in China. According to the declassified report, analysts at that agency gave weight to the risky nature of work on coronaviruses. The agency also said the accident most likely involved experimentation, animal handling or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
There were two labs in Wuhan doing work on the coronavirus before the pandemic, but intelligence agencies have mostly focused on the work done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The announcement from the director of national intelligence did not identify the agency that favored the laboratory-leak theory. But current and former officials said the F.B.I. believed that the virus was created in the lab. One former official said the bureau believed the virus probably escaped into the public from lab technicians.
An F.B.I. spokeswoman declined to comment.
The intelligence agencies all agreed that the virus was unlikely to have been created as any kind of biological weapon, the same stance the U.S. government has maintained for more than a year. The agencies also agreed that the initial exposures that caused the outbreak occurred no later than November 2019, according to the declassified conclusions.
Critical to the debate over the origins of the virus, American intelligence officials do not believe the Chinese officials knew about it at the time of the outbreak, the report said.
The I.C. assesses Chinas officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of Covid-19 emerged, the declassified report said, using the initials for the intelligence community.
Aug. 24, 2021, 4:52 p.m. ET
The three-month review Mr. Biden ordered was done to bring more scientific expertise into the examination of the pandemics origins. Intelligence agencies used that period to examine a trove of data that had not been fully scrutinized.
That data, taken from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, did not provide any additional information that persuaded additional agencies that a lab leak was possible.
The key piece of missing data, according to intelligence officials, is clinical virus samples from early cases in China.
Neither American intelligence officers, nor scientists around the world, have samples of the virus from the earliest known cases. That includes samples from a group of three Wuhan laboratory workers who became hospitalized with flulike symptoms last January.
Obtaining virus samples from early cases in China could help identify a location of interest or occupational exposure, the declassified report said.
Some American officials believe China has more access to such samples than it has been willing to share. The reluctance to cooperate has raised suspicions among some analysts.
American intelligence officials do not believe the Chinese government necessarily knows how the virus was created, but some think officials in Beijing are worried about what a real investigation would discover and have moved to block the World Health Organization and others from a full inquiry.
These actions reflect, in part, Chinas governments own uncertainty about where an investigation could lead as well as its frustration the international community is using the issue to exert political pressure on China, the declassified report said.
The investigation of the theory that the virus was accidentally created in the lab has made some people uneasy, especially those who believe the accusation is racist.
Sonal Shah, the president of the Asian American Foundation, questioned the intelligence communitys entire effort to examine the origins of the pandemic, and said it could increase the risk of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Even though the administrations report today contains no clear conclusions, it will likely breed misinformation, she said.
Others have defended the examination and said that neither theory is inherently racist. They have argued that a clearer understanding of the pandemics origins can help prevent a future global health crisis.
Mr. Biden said the United States would keep working with other nations and the World Health Organization to get access to more information from China.
We must have a full and transparent accounting of this global tragedy, he said. Nothing less is acceptable.
Adam Goldman contributed reporting.
Such is the strange new phase of Britains pandemic: The public has moved on, even if the virus has not. Given that Britain has been at the vanguard of so many previous coronavirus developments from incubating variants to rolling out vaccines experts say this could be a glimpse into the future for other countries.
We dont seem to care that we have these really high infection rates, said Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at Kings College London who has been leading a major study of Covid-19 symptoms. It looks like were just accepting it now that this is the price of freedom.
Some of that equanimity may stem from the fact that Britains case rate, while high, has not yet risen anywhere near the level that government officials predicted when they lifted virtually all Covid restrictions last month. Some may be because so many Britons are vaccinated, fewer serious cases are being reported. And some of it may simply reflect fatigue, after 17 months of baleful headlines and stifling lockdowns.
Theres a feeling that finally we can breathe; we can start trying to get back what weve lost, said Devi Sridhar, the head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh. Its really difficult to ask people not to mix for a prolonged period, especially if there is no solution.
With nearly 80 percent of the adult population fully vaccinated and the virus still circulating widely, Professor Sridhar said, Britain may be a model for other countries of whether you can manage Covid in a sustainable way. The evidence, she added, was inconclusive because Britain still faces critical challenges, like the reopening of schools on Wednesday.
That will almost certainly drive rates up further, particularly because Britain has resisted vaccinating children and younger teenagers. But epidemiologists are loath to make specific predictions because many were proved wrong in July when cases fell immediately after Freedom Day, when most restrictions were lifted.
New cases, in any event, are a less all-important metric than they once were, given that a much smaller percentage of those infected end up in the hospital than in the earlier stages of the pandemic. Almost 970 people were admitted to hospitals on Aug. 24, the most recent date for which data is available. That compares with 4,583 on Jan. 12, the peak of the last wave of infections.
Hospitalizations are rising, however, as is the fatality rate. Admissions last week were up 6.7 percent over the previous seven-day period, while deaths were up 12.3 percent, totaling 133 people on Saturday. With a backlog of patients with other illnesses, doctors say the National Health Service has little slack to cope with another influx of Covid victims.
Weve found rising numbers of cases, and we are under a lot of pressure again, said Susan Jain, a specialist in anesthesia and intensive therapy who works in the intensive care unit at the Homerton University Hospital in East London. All our Covid cases are unvaccinated by choice.
The government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, preoccupied with the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan, has said little about the rising hospital numbers or indeed about the pandemic at all in recent weeks.
Relieved that the more gloomy predictions of spiraling cases have not materialized, the government argues that its strategy has been vindicated, with infections manageable because of the success of its vaccination campaign.
Nadhim Zahawi, the minister responsible for the vaccine rollout, compared the daily total of new cases with a similar moment in December. There were **five times** the number of deaths we see today, he wrote on Twitter, adding, The vaccines are working.
Still, critics said a death toll of around 100 a day should not be a source of pride. Moreover, they said, Britains early lead in the vaccination race meant that some protection from inoculations was starting to fade.
Aug. 29, 2021, 10:14 a.m. ET
It is a grim new normal, said Gabriel Scally, a visiting professor of public health at the University of Bristol and a former regional director of public health.
Britains Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization is likely to recommend booster shots soon, but they will initially be targeted at people with weakened immune systems.
Because Britain was one of the first big countries to do mass vaccination, Professor Scally said, it will be one of the first to experience the waning of immunity an issue that has afflicted Israel, another early vaccine adopter. And despite its robust rollout, Britain has not reached the highest levels of population immunity because millions of young people remain unprotected.
The governments policy on vaccinating younger teenagers is in flux, with no decision yet on whether to go ahead with a campaign to jab those 12 to 15, though Britains medical regulator has authorized a vaccine for this age group.
The rollout of the vaccine program for adults has been incredibly impressive, but, for children and young people it has been frankly shambolic, Camilla Kingdon, the president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, said this month.
At the same time, public observance of measures to contain the spread of the virus seems to be slipping, a factor that some epidemiologists said accounted for Britain having a higher case rate than countries like France and Spain, where infections are now falling.
I do wear masks indoors in public places, said Philip Crossley, 69, walking on a street in the northern city of Bradford. I noticed a lot of people dont. Maybe thats not a big problem, but they still could carry the virus.
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According to official survey data, about nine in 10 Britons said they had used face coverings within the past seven days when outside their homes. But anecdotal evidence suggests that compliance is much spottier, even on buses and subways in London, where wearing a mask is still compulsory.
After most restrictions were lifted, the transport police lost legal responsibility for enforcement of that rule. That left the task to transportation workers, who have been advised by one union to avoid confrontations with the public.
Our members have no enforcement powers, and its a bit of a farce, really, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers said in a statement. Its an impossible situation, so our advice to our members is that they should not substitute for the police and should stay safe.
Outside Downing Street, an anti-lockdown protester, Simon Parry, said he had never worn a mask on public transportation and had yet to be challenged.
I get people looking at me like I want to kill my grandmother, he conceded before adding that he thought the argument was moving his way and that one woman had recently shed her face mask after an exchange on the subway. I make it my mission to get someone to take a mask off in the Tube, he said.
One government minister, Greg Hands, tweeted a picture of himself on the subway wearing a mask, but complained that only about half of the passengers around him were doing likewise.
The office of Londons mayor, Sadiq Khan, said its data showed that 82 percent of passengers said they always wore face coverings on subway trains and buses, a solid number given the central governments decision not to adopt a national mandate for face coverings on public transportation.
Other critics blame the governments mixed messages, pointing to members of Mr. Johnsons Conservative Party, many of whom abandoned their masks when they returned to a crowded chamber of Parliament recently to discuss Afghanistan. The governments official position is that people should wear face coverings when confined indoors.
For some who objected to Britains recurring lockdowns, the return to normalcy was both welcome and overdue. But some said the tensions between freedom and security could easily resurface.
The intensity has gone out of the debate, but it will come back if there is another wave, said Jonathan Sumption, a former justice on Britains Supreme Court who has been an outspoken critic of the lockdowns.
If it does come back, he added, well then be in the position that even the vaccines dont work. What is the exit route?
Aina J. Khan contributed reporting from Bradford, England.
The Latest News on Coronavirus and the Delta Variant Aug. 29, 2021Updated
Aug. 29, 2021, 10:14 a.m. ET
As childrens hospitals in many parts of the United States admit more Covid-19 patients, a result of the highly contagious Delta variant, federal and state health officials are grappling with a sharp new concern: children not yet eligible for vaccination in places with substantial viral spread, who are now at higher risk of being infected than at any other time in the pandemic.
Nowhere is that worry greater than in Louisiana, which has among the highest new daily case rates in the country and where only 40 percent of people are fully vaccinated, putting children at particular risk as they return to school.
At Childrens Hospital New Orleans, the intensive care unit has been jammed with Covid-19 patients, and nurses have raced around monitoring one gut-wrenching case after another. One child was getting a complicated breathing treatment known as ECMO, a last resort after ventilators fail, which nurses said was almost unheard-of for pediatric cases. About half a dozen others were in various stages of distress.
Medical staff throughout the hospital said the causes of illness in children were often simple: parents, family members and friends who were unvaccinated and not wearing masks.
Ive had to kind of make peace with that people are not doing what theyre supposed to, said Mark Melancon, a longtime nurse at the hospital. The kids are suffering.
Not that I accept it, he added, but if I get hung up in the anger of it, I would walk around confronting people in Walmart, here, everywhere.
I cant tell them, Why didnt you isolate this kid? Mr. Melancon continued. So we just tell them, Your kid has Covid. Its really hard on the lungs. Your childs very sick. Well do everything we can to get him better.
Of the roughly 70 children admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 this month, about half were 12 or older and thus eligible for vaccination but only one was fully vaccinated, said Dr. Mark W. Kline, the hospitals physician in chief.
Most children with Covid-19 have only mild symptoms, however, and there is not enough evidence to conclude that Delta makes some of them sicker than other variants do, scientists say. Doctors and nurses at Childrens Hospital New Orleans agreed with that assessment.
Theresa Sokol, Louisianas top epidemiologist, said that people younger than 18 had among the highest test positivity rates in the state and were responsible for a significant share of transmission, with many cases probably undetected.
I dont want any kids to get this, because I cant guarantee that its not going to be your kid thats going to have a problem, she said. But overall, statistically, most of them are doing fairly well.
In Louisiana, where daily deaths from Covid reached their highest levels this week, stretched hospitals are having to modify the intense preparations they would normally make ahead of an expected strike from Hurricane Ida.
Louisianas medical director, Dr. Joseph Kanter, asked residents on Friday to avoid unnecessary emergency room visits to preserve the states hospital capacity, which has been vastly diminished by its most severe Covid surge of the pandemic.
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About this dataSource: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data. Currently hospitalized is the most recent number of patients with Covid-19 reported by hospitals in the state for the four days prior. Dips and spikes could be due to inconsistent reporting by hospitals. Hospitalization numbers early in the pandemic are undercounts due to incomplete reporting by hospitals to the federal government.
And while plans exist to transfer patients away from coastal areas to inland hospitals ahead of a hurricane, this time evacuations are just not possible, Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a news conference.
The hospitals dont have room, he said. We dont have any place to bring those patients not in state, not out of state.
The governor said officials had asked hospitals to check generators and stockpile more water, oxygen and personal protective supplies than usual for a storm. The implications of a strike from a Category 4 hurricane while hospitals were full were beyond what our normal plans are, he added.
Mr. Edwards said he had told President Biden and Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to expect Covid-related emergency requests, including oxygen.
The states recent wave of Covid hospitalizations has exceeded its previous three peaks, and staffing shortages have necessitated support from federal and military medical teams. On Friday, 2,684 Covid patients were hospitalized in the state. This week Louisiana reported its highest ever single-day death toll from Covid 139 people.
Oschner Health, one of the largest local medical systems, informed the state that it had limited capacity to accept storm-related transfers, especially from nursing homes, the groups chief executive, Warner L. Thomas, said. Many of Oschners hospitals, which were caring for 836 Covid patients on Friday, had invested in backup power and water systems to reduce the need to evacuate, he said.
The pandemic also complicated efforts to discharge more patients than usual before the storm hits. For many Covid patients who require oxygen, going home isnt really an option, said Stephanie Manson, chief operating officer of Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, which had 190 Covid inpatients on Friday, 79 of them in intensive care units.
The governor said he feared that the movement of tens or hundreds of thousands of evacuees in the state could cause it to lose gains made in recent days as the number of new coronavirus cases began to drop. Dr. Kanter urged residents who were on the move to wear masks and observe social distancing. Many of the states testing and vaccination sites were slated to close temporarily.
Caleb Wallace, a leader of the anti-mask movement in central Texas who became infected with the coronavirus and spent three weeks in an intensive care unit, has died, his wife, Jessica, said on Saturday.
Caleb has peacefully passed on. He will forever live in our hearts and minds, Mrs. Wallace wrote in a post on GoFundMe, where she had been raising money to cover medical costs.
Mrs. Wallace had said recently that her husbands condition was declining and that doctors had run out of treatment options. On Saturday, he was to be moved to a hospice at Shannon Medical Center in the city of San Angelo so that his family could say their goodbyes, she said.
Mrs. Wallace, who is pregnant with the couples fourth child, recently told the San Angelo Standard-Times that when her husband first felt ill, he took a mix of vitamin C, zinc, aspirin and ivermectin a drug typically used to treat parasitic worms in both people and animals that has been touted as a coronavirus treatment but was recently proved to be ineffective against the virus.
Mr. Wallace, 30, who campaigned against mask mandates and other Covid policies that he saw as government intrusion, lived in San Angelo for most of his life and worked at a company that sells welding equipment. He checked into the Shannon Medical Center on July 30.
Earlier that month, Mr. Wallace had organized a Freedom Rally for people who were sick of the government being in control of our lives.
He founded the San Angelo Freedom Defenders, a group that hosted a rally to end what it called Covid-19 tyranny according to a YouTube interview.
Mrs. Wallace had said her husband respected her own decision to wear a mask. We joked around about how he was on one side and I was on the other, and thats what made us the perfect couple and we balanced each other out, she told the San Angelo Standard-Times.
She added that her three children are up-to-date on their vaccines and that she herself planned to get a coronavirus vaccine after the birth of her baby in late September. We are not anti-vaxxers, she said.
Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations have been on the rise in Texas over the past few weeks. In Tom Green County, which includes the San Angelo area, cases have increased by 50 percent over the past two weeks, and hospitalizations have risen by 33 percent, according to a New York Times database.
At Shannon Medical Center, the intensive care unit is about 70 percent occupied, according to a New York Times tracker. The U.S. average of I.C.U. occupancy is about 68 percent, while the state average in Texas is 94 percent.
Under pressure from Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city leaders, the United States Tennis Association reversed its lax coronavirus protocols for the upcoming U.S. Open tournament, which opens to thousands of fans on Monday.
Originally, the tournament did not require any proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test for fans to enter, and there were no mask mandates, either. But the mayors office stepped in over the past two days to demand stricter protocols.
On Friday evening, the tournament announced on its Twitter account that proof of at least one vaccine shot would now be required for entrance to the grounds for all fans ages 12 and older. No masks are required.
The mayors office was adamant that fans entering Arthur Ashe Stadium, the largest venue on the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, be vaccinated. But the U.S.T.A. took it a step further and made it a requirement for all fans entering the grounds of the tournament.
Today, the U.S.T.A. was informed that the New York City mayors office will be mandating proof of Covid-19 vaccination for entrance to Arthur Ashe Stadium, the statement said. Given the continuing evolution of the Delta variant and in keeping with our intention to put the health and safety of our fans first, the U.S.T.A. will extend the mayors requirement to all U.S. Open ticket holders 12 years old and older.
Mr. de Blasio was not the only concerned city official. After the tournament announced on Wednesday that no vaccines or masks would be required, Mark Levine, a City Council member from Manhattan, said he was alarmed that the U.S. Open could become a superspreader event, especially with so many visitors from around the world and the country visiting the tournament in Queens, and also touring Manhattan.
Levine was pleased by the reversal.
I feel enormous relief, he said, and its just in the nick of time with crowds due to arrive on Monday.
The unexpected and unwelcome coronavirus surge now unfolding in the United States has hit hardest in states that were slow to embrace vaccines. And then there is Florida.
While leaders in that state refused lockdowns and mask orders, they made it a priority to vaccinate vulnerable older people. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, opened mass vaccination sites and sent teams to retirement communities and nursing homes. Younger people also lined up for shots.
Mr. DeSantis and public health experts expected a rise in cases this summer as people gathered indoors in the air-conditioning. But what happened was much worse: Cases spiraled out of control, reaching peaks higher than Florida had seen before. Hospitalizations followed. So did deaths, which are considerably higher than the numbers currently reached anywhere else in the country.
It was really hard to imagine us ever getting back to this place, said Natalie E. Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University who until recently worked at the University of Florida and has closely followed the states outbreaks.
The Florida story is a cautionary tale for dealing with the current incarnation of the coronavirus, showing that even a state that made a push for vaccinations about 52 percent of Floridas population is fully vaccinated, the same as the national average can be crushed by the Delta variant, reaching frightening levels of hospitalizations and deaths.
Clearly the vaccines are keeping most of these people out of the hospital, but were not building the herd immunity that people hoped, Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference this past week.
Floridas pandemic data, more scant since the state ended its declared Covid-19 state of emergency in June, reveals only limited information about who is dying. But hospitals have said that upward of 90 percent of their patients have been unvaccinated.
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7day average
16,937
About this dataSource: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data. Currently hospitalized is the most recent number of patients with Covid-19 reported by hospitals in the state for the four days prior. Dips and spikes could be due to inconsistent reporting by hospitals. Hospitalization numbers early in the pandemic are undercounts due to incomplete reporting by hospitals to the federal government.
The best explanation for the crushing surge is that Floridas vaccination rates are good, but not good enough for its demographics. It has so many older people that even vaccinating a vast majority of them left more than 800,000 unprotected, many of them in nursing homes. Vaccination rates among younger people were uneven, so clusters of people remained at risk. Before June 25, people under 65 made up 22 percent of deaths. Since then, that proportion has risen to 28 percent.
And the unvaccinated are only part of the explanation behind Floridas latest numbers. Many states slammed by the virus earlier developed deep reservoirs of natural immunity from prior infections, affording them higher levels of protection than would be evident from vaccination rates alone. Not so in Florida, which was spared the devastating wintertime wave of cases that ravaged other parts of the country in part because warm weather made it possible for people to gather outdoors.
Reengineering complex biological systems can be tricky, Jewett says. Its kind of like solving a puzzle and every time you put one piece in, the rest of the puzzle changes.
Jewett also says that compared with antibody treatments, decoys should be lower in cost and easier to use. And some experts are optimistic about the decoys ability to ward off both the original viral strain and mutations to come.
In another study, using a process called deep mutational scanning, Erik Procko, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was able to view thousands of different ACE2 mutations in a single experiment and see which ones could better attract and bind to the virus. Then his team built decoys mimicking the ones that performed best. The decoys dont attach to cells but float in the fluid between them to catch the virus before it binds to the real ACE2 receptors.
By using a combination of three mutations, his team was able to considerably increase the decoys affinity for covid-19. They created decoy receptors that bound to the virus 50 times more strongly than ACE2.
To test the approach, Prockos team used human tissue instead of live animals. In in vitro tissue culture, we know that some of the decoy receptors are just as potentsometimes a little better, sometimes a little less so, but overall just as potentas monoclonal antibodies that have emergency-use authorization or are in clinical trials, says Procko.
One concern was that one of these mutations could allow for so-called viral escape and help shore up the viruss resistance to treatment. But because the decoys closely resemble natural receptors, says Procko, the virus isnt likely to evolve unnaturally as a result of their action.
Because of differences in infrastructure and education, access to synthetic-biology technologies is unequally distributed worldwide. More researchand more fundingis needed before such a therapy will be publicly available. But advances like these may eventually help create low-cost, portable, easy-to-use treatments for the disease.
There are promising signs that decoys that very closely resemble the human ACE2 receptor will be potent and efficacious against all of these new variants, Procko says. I wouldnt be surprised if we had some of those next-generation decoys reaching the clinic within a couple of years.
An unvaccinated teacher in a California elementary school infected half her students and 26 people in total when she contracted the Covid-19 Delta variant, researchers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found.
The researchers said the teacher attended school for two days despite displaying symptoms of Covid-19, and read aloud to her class without a mask during that time. Infections corresponded to the classrooms seating chart, with the students sitting closest to the teacher the most likely to be infected.
Authorities said the report showed why vaccinations, masks and other prevention measures remain critical to prevent Covid-19 infections as US schools reopen. They also warned that anyone with symptoms of Covid-19 should stay home, to avoid infecting others.
Evidence has repeatedly demonstrated that multi-layer prevention strategies such as vaccination for all children and adults who are eligible; masks for all students, teachers, staff, and visitors; ventilation; cohorting; physical distancing; and screening testing work to prevent the spread of Covid in schools, said Dr Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, at a press briefing on Friday.
The report is likely to increase calls for vaccine mandates in schools, which some districts such as New York City have already implemented. Children in the California investigation, in Marin county, were too young to be vaccinated.
Children aged 12 to 17 are eligible to be vaccinated, though coverage levels have lagged behind older age groups more susceptible to complications from Covid-19.
Tom Frieden, a former head of the CDC, said: Delta is doubly infectious, and we need to step up our game to keep kids in school safely. That means teachers, staff and eligible students need to be vaccinated, and EVERYONE needs to be masked. Multiple layers of protection are essential.
But Walensky said: Unfortunately, many schools have opted not to implement these recommended tools. We recognize and are closely following cases and hospitalizations in children at the same time as school reopening.
There have been approximately 2m Covid-19 infections in the five-to-17 age bracket and 300 associated deaths, another CDC report released on Friday found.
In the outbreak in Marin county, researchers investigated an unnamed elementary school. It is customary for the CDC to withhold identifying information in disease investigations.
The outbreak took place in mid-May to June and began with the infected teacher who was one of only two staff members at the school who were unvaccinated. The teacher had symptoms of Covid-19 in mid-May but continued working until she received a positive coronavirus test.
The teacher did not wear a mask as she read to students, even though the school required face coverings indoors. Half of the children in her class were infected, as were six students in a separate grade and eight family members of the teachers students. In total, one teacher infected 26 people.
The high levels of infections also showed, researchers said, how Delta can be especially transmissible in unvaccinated populations, such as children too young for the shot.
However, there was a bright spot. High vaccination levels in Marin county probably prevented more community infections, which would have been expected based on previous research.
The CDC also released a report on how Los Angeles county schools had reduced cases among students below the rate of community transmission.
Researchers found mitigation measures such as masks, physical distancing and tests might help reduce Covid-19 contagion in schools. Notably, the study was conducted before the Delta variant came to dominate US cases.
A third study from the CDC found just 32% of teens between 12 and 17 had been fully vaccinated, though as with adult vaccinations, levels varied widely by state. Mississippi had the lowest vaccination rate while Vermont had the highest, 20% versus 70% of adolescents respectively.
