"I was extremely scared," Greear said.
Describing those moments recently, Stephanie Greear broke into tears. In the emergency room, she'd feared the worst, she recalled.
"I kept thinking, 'Oh, my God. What if this is the last time they (her sons) saw their dad?'" Stephanie said.
All the while, Terry fought for his life.
"She's a superhero," Terry said. "She was my superhero."
'God ... please save him'
But one night, Terry, who's gone by Coach Beard since one of his kindergarteners had trouble pronouncing Greear, was heading out the door to coach a high school soccer game when he felt sick.
"I didn't feel right," he recalled. "My body felt hot."
"You're going to be OK," Stephanie remembers telling Terry. "You're going to be sick for seven to 10 days. You're going to be fine."
Every time Stephanie's phone rang, she felt panic, not knowing the type of news awaiting her on the other end of the line, she said.
"I held my breath the entire time," Stephanie said. "I never knew what they were going to tell me."
"It was the worst phone call I've ever received in my life. I couldn't believe it happened," Stephanie said. "I asked the doctors and nurses if he could hear me. She (the doctor) said, 'Go talk to him. He may be able to hear you. We don't know.'"
Stephanie remembers the sounds of the machines all around him. She broke into tears describing how she prayed over his body and then played his favorite music -- reggae rock -- hoping it would drown out the sounds of the machines.
"I asked God to please save him," Stephanie said.
'I don't remember because I was out'
Students and staff decorated Terry's school office with posters that said, "We coach Beard," "We miss you," and "Best coach ever!"
Physical education teachers designed "#CoachBeard" T-shirts for everyone to wear.
And Stephanie filled his hospital room with pictures of family and friends. She wanted doctors and nurses to know he was a teacher, a father and a husband and he was loved, she said.
"Whenever I was coming to, or awake, I would see pictures, and the first picture I would see was this heart that says 'We love you,'" Terry said. "That sort of gave me a little relief. Knowing that they are not physically there but I can see them."
"I don't remember because I was out," he said.
But Stephanie remembers every twist and downturn of his condition, especially when she felt she had to explain the severity of Terry's condition to their children.
"The worst part was telling my children that their father may not come home. And thinking that they didn't even really get to say goodbye to him," Stephanie said, tears welling in her eyes. "It was, it was hard. And he's my partner in life. It was, it was unimaginable for me to think about going through life without him."
'I had to start fighting'
Terry had to get his head right to battle Covid-19. He credits Stephanie for helping him tap into his competitive instincts and for getting him back into the fight.
"My wife told me, 'You've got to do this,'" Terry said. "Something kicked in where I had to start fighting. And I fought hard."
After about two months, he turned the corner. Terry was beating Covid-19, but now his body was so weak he couldn't do basic tasks.
"Trying to put a sock on with two hands was impossible. There was no way in the world I could do that," Terry said. "My brain is saying: This is what you're supposed to do. But my body is saying: No, you can't."
Terry entered an intensive rehabilitation program where he relearned how to do basic tasks, like dressing, washing dishes, walking and getting in and out of a car, he said.
"I want(ed) to do normal things," Terry said.
'Get vaccinated'
Today, Terry's beard is back and the oxygen machine is gone. He passed along the walker to his grandmother. And while he can walk around the block without getting short of breath and even play a little basketball, he doesn't feel 100%.
"I want to go run, but I'm afraid to go run," Greear said. "I'm still waiting to find out where my lungs are at this point."
His goal is to run a 5K in November.
But one thing doesn't have to wait, he said. It's a message he has for everyone who will listen:
"Get vaccinated," Terry said. "I don't want anybody else's family to have to go through what my family went through. No one's wife or husband needs to tell their kids that mom or dad may not come home."
Normalcy appears to be out of the countrys grasp with the recent uptick in Covid-19 cases fueled by the delta variant, a highly contagious strain of Covid-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the delta variant was identified in 80 to 87 percent of all US Covid-19 cases in the last two weeks of July. This has impacted states with low vaccination numbers the most.
Louisiana, where just over 37 percent of residents are fully vaccinated, is the fifth-least vaccinated state, according to the Mayo Clinic, and is currently leading the country in an eruption of new cases after infection rates began to climb in early July.
Daily records continue to go up and the state reported over 6,000 new cases on Friday, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. According to a recent update from Baton Rouge General Hospital obtained by WAFBs Steve Caparotta, 47 percent of the patients infected with Covid-19 in the hospitals care are in the ICU and only 15 of these patients had been vaccinated. The hospital stated that workers this weekend are in the middle of their toughest fight against this virus.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards reinstated the indoor masking mandate Monday in response to the worsening crisis. It has become extremely clear that our current recommendations on their own are not strong enough to deal with Louisianas fourth surge of Covid, Edwards told reporters after announcing the mandate.
During a Friday press conference, Edwards made a grim assessment: Things are, if anything, worse today than they were on Monday. Unfortunately, the eyes of the nation are on Louisiana right now.
Though less than a week old, the mask mandate has already faced backlash, notably at a school board meeting in St. Tammany parish on Thursday. One parent falsely claimed their child would be hindered from learning due to masks cutting off oxygen to the brain. The conspiracy theory was debunked last year by Reuters and others.
With the school year rapidly approaching, the safety of children in Louisiana is a major concern. There is no approved vaccine for children under age 12, and only 13 percent of people ages 12 to 17 are vaccinated in Louisiana, which leaves young people vulnerable. According to Dr. Trey Dunbar, president of Our Lady of the Lake Childrens Hospital in Baton Rouge, more than 50 percent of the children in that hospital infected with Covid-19 are under intensive care.
Before the statewide mask mandate was put in place, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education had chosen to leave masking decisions up to individual schools and only the school district of New Orleans required indoor mask wearing. The statewide mandate means that more children will be safe, but it is up to schools to enforce it.
Apart from the mask mandate, schools have the freedom to construct their own set of rules and safety precautions, which leads to disparities in how Covid-19 is managed in the education sector. According to the guidebook for the Jefferson parish school districts, schools are largely enforcing in-person K-12 learning except for high school students, who want to benefit from the flexibility and extra time that virtual school allows.
But while high school students are eligible to get vaccinated and would therefore be safer than younger children in an in-person classroom setting, children in grade school are still vulnerable. The guidebook also states: Schools should plan for and expect that some students/staff will contract COVID-19 during the school year given the levels of COVID-19 in our communities. This kind of mixed guidance can be confusing from a public health perspective, since more access to virtual learning could reduce the risk of exposure.
Making masks mandatory again is a productive step, but because the delta variant is highly transmittable, it is not enough. Increasing the number of vaccinated people in the state is the best way forward, but in a state where conspiracy theory holds more value than public health policy for some, this is easier said than done. Misinformation about what is in the vaccine has caused some people to refuse the jab. In Shreveport, a recent city council meeting grew heated when a woman began protesting against the vaccine, claiming that unvaccinated Americans would be unfairly monitored and that vaccinated people could be used in experiments.
These are both false claims, but the damage of this type of rhetoric may contribute to low vaccination rates. According to a study by Donelson Forsyth, a professor at the University of Richmond, resistance to vaccination and mask mandates is concentrated in certain geographical areas because of something called groupthink. Decisions made by a group and followed en masse prevent individuals from logically analyzing information and considering other alternatives, which may explain why certain states have remained Covid-19 hotspots.
Its important to look at the bigger picture of Louisianas wave of Covid-19 cases as well. Researchers at Georgetown University identified the largest clusters of unvaccinated people in the United States and found that most of these areas were experiencing rising cases and examples of the virus mutating, which poses a risk to the greater population. Near the top of this list: Shreveport, Louisiana. Those vulnerable clusters put all of the United States and to some extent, the world at risk for going back to 2020, since high-transmission areas can become breeding grounds for Covid-19 variants that could go on to evade Covid-19 vaccines, wrote CNNs Elizabeth Cohen and John Bonifield.
While parts of Louisiana pose a risk to the rest of the country, people in the state are also at risk from tourists arriving for vacations. There are currently no travel restrictions in Louisiana, and Americans from all over the country are able to enter the state at will. This is especially concerning because of Louisianas proximity to states like Texas and Mississippi. Amarillo, Texas has one of the largest unvaccinated clusters in the country while Mississippis partial vaccination rate is 38.6 percent, the lowest in the country.
Another new concern, while not currently as widespread, is the lambda variant that has recently infected people in Louisiana. The first cases of the lambda variant were detected in Houston, so health care officials believe that the virus variant spread across the Texas-Louisiana border.
Despite CDC warnings against nonessential travel for people who are not fully vaccinated, and despite the ever-multiplying virus variants, tourism in Louisiana is in full swing. The tourism industry typically provides more than 240,000 jobs for Louisianians and produces about $1.9 billion in tax revenue in the state, according to the Louisiana Travel Association. Before the surge in cases due to the delta variant, the tourism industry had been approaching pre-pandemic proportions, something that Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser does not want to let go of. Well be back to those regular [tourism] rates sooner than we thought if we can get through this last surge without a major hit to the tourism industry, Nungesser told the Louisiana Radio Network at the end of July.
Nungesser is just one among a group of Louisiana politicians who have contracted Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, including Rep. Clay Higgins, who last month contracted Covid-19 for a second time.
Congressman-elect Luke Letlow, who held numerous maskless campaign events ahead of his election, ultimately died from complications with Covid-19 weeks before taking office in December of last year. He was the first congressman to die from the virus. His widow, Julia Letlow, was elected to her husbands seat in a special election in March; she gave an interview with CBS News this week urging her constituents to get vaccinated.
My prayer is that not one more person has to lose their life to this virus. It is a horrific way to leave this world. Letlow said. We have the answer, lets use it.
Public health officials would agree with her. The most effective way to get through this surge is to increase vaccination rates. There has been an effort to encourage people to do this. In fact, the federal government has allocated $2.3 million in lottery money as an incentive. Louisianians have already started winning payouts, while the grand prize of $1 million is yet to be awarded.
This effort has paid off, as Louisiana has seen an uptick of 3 percent in vaccination rates since June. But as major cities in the state prepare for the slate of upcoming fall festivals including Festivals Acadiens in Lafayette amid rising Covid-19 cases, there is a looming sense of deja vu. Organizers for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival announced on Sunday they were canceling the planned two-weekend festival for fall, with plans to hold the event next spring, citing rising Covid-19 cases in New Orleans. Other New Orleans festivals, like Buku and French Quarter Fest, currently appear poised to go on as planned in October.
As the pandemic first began to spread in the US in March 2020, Mardi Gras in New Orleans was in full swing, and the high concentration of people without enforced safety precautions led to a Covid-19 death rate in the city that was at one point the highest in the world. Like the rest of the country, Louisiana is trying to balance public health guidance with a desire for normal life, so the outcome of its current surge in cases is still unclear.
Update, August 8, 3:35 pm ET: Updated to include that the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival has been canceled for the fall due to rising Covid-19 numbers.
CNN
Tens of thousands of vaccinated people may catch Covid-19, but the majority will not fall severely ill a testament to the efficacy of inoculations even against the Delta variant that has been fueling case surges across the United States, a top health official said.
The severity of the illness not the number of people who contract the virus is a crucial concept for people to understand at this point in the pandemic, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who heads the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
I think we all have to recognize that with 164 million people who are vaccinated, we should expect tens of thousands, perhaps, of breakthrough infections, Walensky told CNNs Wolf Blitzer on Thursday.
Those breakthrough infections have mild illness. They are staying out of the hospital. They are not dying, and I think that thats the most important thing to understand, Walensky added.
Breakthrough cases occur when the virus infects fully vaccinated people.
As the Delta variant of the coronavirus rips through the US, it is especially devastating regions with low vaccination rates as experts and government officials nationwide urge people to get their shots before a dire situation gets even worse.
Already, states are breaking grim records: Louisiana reported an all-time high of 2,421 people hospitalized with Covid-19 statewide, breaking a record that was set just a day earlier. Florida on Friday reported 134,506 new Covid-19 cases over the last week, more than any other 7-day period during the pandemic.
Roughly 58.4% of the US population has received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose, according to CDC data. About 50% of the population is fully vaccinated.
Full vaccination is necessary for optimal protection against Covid-19 especially the highly contagious Delta variant, which accounted for an estimated 93.4% of all cases in the US in the two weeks ending July 31.
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, echoed Walenskys take on how vaccination lowers the intensity of Covid-19 symptoms when breakthrough cases happen.
This is largely a problem when it comes to severe disease, the disease that requires hospitalization, its among the unvaccinated. It really is pretty unusual to have a vaccinated person be hospitalized. Most of those people tend to be older and very, very frail. They never were able to respond to the vaccine, and we have the occasional immunocompromised person whose immune system also couldnt respond optimally to the vaccine, Schaffner told CNN on Thursday.
So the unvaccinated continue to be the big highway of transmission. The vaccinated, theyre little side streets. Lets not get preoccupied with that. We need to get more people vaccinated.
The good news is that vaccinations have picked up recently.
An average of 694,138 doses have been administered each day over the past seven days, up from a spring/summer low average of 506,770 daily reached on July 11, according to CDC data published Friday.
And an average of 465,039 people initiated vaccination each day over the past seven days, the highest average daily pace in nearly seven weeks, since June 19, per the CDC. This is also an 11% increase over last weeks pace about 47,000 additional doses each day.
If more people do get their shots, case surges can be controlled in a matter of weeks, Walensky said Thursday.
However, our models show that if we dont (vaccinate people), we could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day, similar to our surge in early January, she said.
But even as vaccinations rise, some children who have gone back to school have tested positive for Covid-19.
Georgias largest school district, Gwinnett County Public Schools, confirmed 253 cases on Friday, three days into the new school year. However, a spokesperson said many of the cases are from communal spread, because the people reporting cases havent been in our buildings yet to have contracted the virus.
Now that were back in school, we know were going to get cases, said Bernard Watson, director of community and media relations for the school system.
Arizonas second-largest school district is dealing with 103 active cases of the virus, according to the districts online Covid-19 dashboard. Since the school year began on July 21 in Chandler Unified School District, there has been a total of more than 140 cases.
We will continue to monitor confirmed cases and make adjustments to our mitigation plan as necessary, Chandler Unified School District spokesperson Terry Locke told CNN Thursday.
Only students who exhibit symptoms are required to quarantine in Chandler, and it is optional for all students with known exposure to Covid-19, regardless of their vaccination status.
Meanwhile, Indianapolis Public Schools officials on Tuesday notified the parents of 61 fourth-grade students that their child must quarantine for 14 days after coming in close contact with a school staff member who tested positive for Covid-19, district spokesperson Alpha Garrett said in a statement.
The students will continue learning remotely during their quarantine, Garrett added, and said the district requires students to wear masks regardless of vaccination status.
Masking students in schools is exactly what Walensky is urging districts to do as children under 12 years old remain ineligible for a vaccine.
Speaking Friday at a town hall event in Boston, the CDC director said schools and summer camps where Covid-19 has spread are the ones that havent followed mitigation measures like mask-wearing.
We follow every jurisdiction, and we look for outbreaks that are happening in camps and schools, Walensky said. The places that are having a problem, the places that are having disease that is transmitted in the schools, are the places that are not taking prevention strategies.
If youre masked and youre doing all of the prevention mitigation strategies, it wont be transmitted in the school. It will be contained, Walensky said.
Some jurisdictions have mandated masks in schools, including New Jersey. Gov. Phil Murphy announced the mandate for the 2021-2022 school year on Friday, citing the spread of the Delta variant and the fact that many children are too young to be eligible for vaccination.
The University of Virginia also updated its Covid-19 policy Friday to include a temporary mask mandate for students, faculty, staff and visitors. The universitys policy statement says officials will monitor case counts and hospitalizations over the next few weeks with a goal of modifying or lifting this masking policy for fully vaccinated people by September 6th.
For adults previously infected with Covid-19, vaccines do a better job at protecting them from reinfection than natural immunity on its own, a new study shows.
The study, published Friday by the CDC, suggests that people who got Covid-19 in 2020 and didnt get a Covid-19 vaccine were more than twice as likely to be reinfected in May or June 2021, compared with people who also had Covid-19 but were later fully vaccinated.
If you have had Covid-19 before, please still get vaccinated, Walensky said Friday. Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious Delta variant spreads around the country.
The CDC has long recommended that people who have been previously infected also get vaccinated. The agency noted that reinfection risk is low in the months after initial infection but may increase with time due to waning immunity. There is no minimum time to wait between recovering from Covid-19 and getting vaccinated.
Scientists are still unraveling how long and how robust natural immunity to Covid-19 is, the authors noted. A number of earlier studies have shown evidence of lasting immunity in some people with previous Covid-19 but scientific consensus has maintained that vaccines do an even better job.
With the Delta variant driving a surge in cases, the study also noted that the emergence of new variants might affect the duration of infection-acquired immunity, and laboratory studies have shown that those antibodies from natural infection might be weaker against certain variants of concern.
Meanwhile, studies of vaccinated people have continued to show high levels of protection, particularly when it comes to severe outcomes including hospitalization and death.
The new study of hundreds of people in Kentucky did not assess severity of reinfections, and it noted that vaccinated people may be less likely to get tested, thus potentially skewing the numbers.
CNNs Dakin Andone, Lauren Mascarenhas, Michael Nedelman, Melissa Alonso, Elizabeth Stuart, Deidre McPhillips, Rebekah Riess, Cheri Mossburg, Raja Razek and Andy Rose contributed to this report.
Karina Piser:
Right. So, you know, we have seen the way that the disease itself of COVID has played out. It has affected the low income communities of color more than any others. And we also know what the state of health care looks like in this country. And the pandemic brought a lot of that to life. Safety net hospitals were ill equipped to deal with the influx of patients early in the pandemic, and they do not necessarily have the means to create these long COVID clinics.
Similarly, in rural communities, the number of hospitals in rural America have decreased dramatically over the past decade. Same with community health centers that are kind of, you know, often the first recourse for low income communities that has already been depleted. And so the communities that were hit the hardest by the pandemic are not only going to have the most difficulty accessing care, going to these major medical centers where these long COVID clinics are emerging that are often in major cities where people in rural communities, they might not even know they exist.
But also it's difficult to get there if you don't have transportation. It's difficult to miss work. There are so many reasons why people are being excluded from the treatment that is available.
In some rare cases, breakthrough infections may lead to persistent symptoms.
Long Covid is a poorly understood set of symptoms that can plague people for several months after an active infection has ended. While those symptoms eventually resolve in many patients, there are this subset of people who have long Covid who just arent able to recover at all, said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University.
Only a couple of small studies have investigated how common or severe long Covid may be after breakthrough infections. It is likely to be rare, some experts say, because breakthrough infections are uncommon to begin with and shorter in duration.
In one study in Israel, about seven of 36 people with breakthrough infections had persistent symptoms for more than six weeks. And in a survey of Covid-19 survivors, 24 of 44 people with a symptomatic breakthrough infection reported lingering problems.
We really need a wider national or even international survey, Dr. Iwasaki said.
If you get through a breakthrough infection relatively unscathed, you are likely to walk away with more robust protection against variants. The infection essentially acts as a booster shot, researchers say, strengthening your immune systems ability to recognize and fight the virus.
Studies have shown that when people who recover from Covid-19 receive even one dose of a vaccine, their antibody levels skyrocket. I expect similar things would happen when you have a breakthrough infection, Dr. Iwasaki said.
The vaccines train the immune system to recognize a piece of the original virus, a strategy that may leave us vulnerable to future variants. But every exposure broadens the repertoire of immunity, Dr. Mina said.
Eventually, through booster shots or through repeated infections, our bodies will gain an education in the virus sufficient to counter versions with new mutations, he said, adding, But were not there yet.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) The U.S. governments top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Sunday that he was hopeful the Food and Drug Administration will give full approval to the coronavirus vaccine by months end and predicted the potential move will spur a wave of vaccine mandates in the private sector as well as schools and universities.
The FDA has only granted emergency-use approval of the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, but the agency is expected to soon give full approval to Pfizer.
The Biden administration has stated that the federal government will not mandate vaccinations beyond the federal workforce, but is increasingly urging state and local governments as well as businesses to consider such mandates. Fauci, who is President Joe Bidens chief medical adviser, said mandates at the local level need to be done to help curb the spread of the virus.
I hope I dont predict I hope that it will be within the next few weeks. I hope its within the month of August, Fauci said of FDA approval of the vaccine. If thats the case, youre going to see the empowerment of local enterprises, giving mandates that could be colleges, universities, places of business, a whole variety and I strongly support that. The time has come. ... Weve got to go the extra step to get people vaccinated.
Faucis comments come as the Biden administration is weighing what levers it can push to encourage more unvaccinated Americans to get their shots as the delta variant continues to surge through much of the United States.
Biden recently approved rules requiring federal workers to provide proof of vaccination or face regular testing, mask mandates and travel restrictions. Biden is also awaiting a formal recommendation from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on potentially requiring U.S. troops to get vaccinated.
The administration has become more vocal in its support of vaccine mandates at a moment when high-profile companies have informed employees that coronavirus vaccination requirements are in the works, and some localities have adopted or are contemplating vaccine requirements to dine indoors.
United Airlines informed its employees that they will need to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 25 or five weeks after the FDA grants full approval to one of the vaccines whichever date comes first.
Disney and Walmart have announced vaccine mandates for white-collar workers, and Microsoft, Google and Facebook said they will require proof of vaccination for employees and visitors to their U.S. offices. Tyson Foods has also announced it will require all U.S. employees to get vaccinated by November.
Theres also been pushback.
The U.S. Supreme Court last week was asked to block a plan by Indiana University to require students and employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Its the first time the high court has been asked to weigh in on a vaccine mandate and comes as some corporations, states and cities are also contemplating or have adopted vaccine requirements for workers or even to dine indoors.
Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers union, said on Sunday that she personally supports a vaccine mandate for educators.
As a matter of personal conscience, I think that we need to be working with our employers not opposing them on vaccine mandates, said Weingarten, who estimated about 90% of AFT members are already vaccinated.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, on Sunday all but endorsed vaccine mandates, saying, I celebrate when I see businesses deciding that theyre going to mandate that for their employees.
Yes, I think we ought to use every public health tool we can when people are dying, Collins said.
Fauci and Weingarten spoke on NBCs Meet the Press, and Collins appeared on ABCs This Week.
Businesses mandate vaccines, implement new polices amid delta variant surge, White House says
During a White House COVID-19 briefing, Jeffrey Zients highlighted companies and businesses that are increasing vaccination mandates and implementing new policies and initiatives to help slow the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.
The United States recorded 184,346 new daily COVID-19 cases in a 24-hour time span, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday.
The 184,346 new daily cases was a significant jump from the previous day, which saw 24,234 new daily COVID-19 cases, according to Johns Hopkins.
The country is averaging about 108,000 new infections and 700,000 COVID-19 vaccines administered a day. The seven-day average for deaths rose from about 270 deaths per day two weeks ago to nearly 500 a day as of Aug. 6, according to Johns Hopkins.
Much of the surge is being driven by the highly transmissible delta variant and low vaccination rates in the South and other areas.
FILE - Registered nurse, works with a COVID positive patients room inside the ICU at Providence St. Jude Medical Center Christmas Day on Friday, Dec. 25, 2020 in Fullerton, CA.
RELATED: Surging COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations causing school districts to update health protocols
The delta variant, first detected in India, has quickly become dominant wherever it has landed, including the U.S. It has been listed as a "variant of concern" by the CDC, and the agency said its just as contagious as chickenpox.
Citing new information about the variants ability to spread among vaccinated people, the CDC recommended indoor masks for all teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools nationwide, regardless of vaccination status in late July. The agency also recommended that fully vaccinated people wear masks in areas of significant transmission, which accounts for most of the counties across the U.S.
Meanwhile, in multiple states, hospital admissions have skyrocketed among adults and some children as the delta variant continues to sweep through the population.
In Texas, two of Houstons biggest school districts are updating their health protocols amid a worrying number of pediatric COVID-19 cases.
RELATED: Fauci believes wave of vaccine mandates could follow full FDA approval
"We're seeing lots of pediatric ICU admissions and children's hospitals filling up and we never saw that before. While everybody's you know bickering about masks or no masks, I said that's small, that's small potatoes at this point. Masks are the least of it. We've got to get everybody vaccinated and that means all of the adolescents, teachers, and staff. That also probably means we may need to look at whether we can accelerate our timetable towards vaccinating school-aged kids, ages 5 to 11," Dr. Peter Hotez, from Texas Children's Hospital, said.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is urging the FDA to quickly expand authorization of COVID-19 vaccines to younger age groups, citing rising cases due to the fast-spreading delta variant and risk of poor outcomes following infection.
"We need to be approaching the trials and authorization of the COVID vaccine for children with the same urgency that we did with adults," Dr. Lee Savio Beers, president of the AAP, told ABC co-hosts on Tuesday. "Just as its a serious disease in adults, it can be a very serious disease in children."
Pfizer has said it intends to request emergency approval for use of its vaccine in kids aged 5 to 11 by the end of September, with plans to submit data on younger kids aged 6 months to 5 years "shortly thereafter."
RELATED: CDC urges against travel to Israel, France, other nations as COVID-19 delta variant spreads
The FDA had requested drugmakers behind authorized COVID-19 vaccines to broaden the size of pediatric clinical trials to better detect rare adverse events. Moderna previously told FOX News that it expects "to have a package that supports authorization in winter 2021/early 2022" for kids under 12.
In Brevard County, Florida, emergency management officials are pleading with residents to only go to the emergency room or call an ambulance if they truly have an emergency.
The warning comes as all three of the county's hospital systems are experiencing a "troubling influx of patients with COVID-19 symptoms in the ERs."
Brevard County Fire Rescue Chief Mark Schollmeyer said those unnecessarily going to the ER are slowing response times for those who truly need emergency care.
RELATED: Employers charging unvaccinated workers higher health care costs, consultants find
"Weve had a couple instances where a hospital in the county has gone on diversion because theyre at capacity with patients which causes a delay because then our closest units to the particular hospital have to transport outside their zone to another hospital further away," Schollmeyer said.
Mississippi, meanwhile, reported that 35 medical centers are completely out of intensive care unit beds. Arkansas topped its pandemic record for COVID-19 admissions in the past week, and the average number of people hospitalized nationwide has returned to levels not seen since February.
Health officials fear that cases, hospitalizations and deaths will continue to soar if more Americans dont embrace the vaccines which have been widely available since spring. The CDC reported that 71% of U.S. adults have received at least one dose.
"Our models show that if we dont (vaccinate people), we could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day, similar to our surge in early January," CDC director Rochelle Walensky said on CNN last week.
RELATED: US averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said on Aug. 8 that he was hopeful the Food and Drug Administration will give full approval to the coronavirus vaccine by month's end and predicted the potential move will spur a wave of vaccine mandates in the private sector as well as schools and universities.
"I hope I dont predict I hope that it will be within the next few weeks. I hope its within the month of August," Fauci said of FDA approval of the vaccine. "If thats the case, youre going to see the empowerment of local enterprises, giving mandates that could be colleges, universities, places of business, a whole variety and I strongly support that. The time has come. ... Weve got to go the extra step to get people vaccinated."
The Associated Press, FOX News, FOX 26 Houston and FOX 35 Orlando contributed to this report.
It's not a lawful order if it doesn't serve a government purpose, if it is unconstitutional such as an order to incriminate yourself, or if it directs you to commit a crime," said military justice attorney Eugene Fidell, who is counsel at Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell and an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law.
Once the FDA approves the available vaccines, there is no defense that the order would be unconstitutional, noted Fidell, who also expects a presidential waiver to carry the same level of authority.
"I think that would be sustained. And people who refuse the shots at that point will be in trouble," he added.
But that doesn't mean military personnel wouldn't try to use a presidential waiver-induced mandate as a defense for refusing vaccination.
"I absolutely foresee service members potentially filing suit and seeking injunction precluding them from having to get the vaccine," said Carol Thompson, a partner at the Federal Practice Group who specializes in military law. "I think the key issue for the military is that its still not FDA-approved and the Emergency Use Authorization seems to have been abused."
If a service member refuses an order to get vaccinated, then their commander can issue an administrative reprimand or a non-judicial punishment, often referred to as an NJP, explained Thompson.
Administrative reprimands are essentially written complaints that go in a service members permanent file and can affect promotions or career advancement. NJPs vary by a service members rank, status and experience, and range from a lowering in rank or a reduction or suspension in pay to an honorable or other-than-honorable discharge. These are all punishments that would take place outside the courts.
If a service member refuses an administrative reprimand or NJP, they could demand to be tried at court-martial, which Thompson described as a civilian charge similar to a misdemeanor. If service members are tried and convicted by a court-martial and the punishment triggers an appellate review, the case is brought to the respective branchs Court of Criminal Appeals, such as the Army Court of Criminal Appeals or the Navy-Marine Court of Criminal Appeals.
If they are tried and convicted in the appeals court, the case reaches the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. If a service member is convicted in this court, they would likely receive a dishonorable discharge, a bad-conduct discharge, or, in the case of an officer, a dismissal.
An enlisted member's refusal to carry out a lawful order is a violation of Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and punishment includes a dishonorable or bad-conduct discharge (an officer would be dismissed), two years confinement, and forfeiture of all pay and allowances, Fidell said, noting resignations could occur as well.
In 1998, the military rolled out its Anthrax vaccination program, though the vaccine was not approved by the FDA until 2002. One airmans refusal to take the vaccine is now the leading case U.S. vs Washington for vaccine refusals in the military. It went all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, where the program was upheld and the airman, Christopher Washington, was convicted of willfully disobeying a lawful order given by a superior officer and sentenced to a bad-conduct discharge and confinement for two months.
There is a precedent for a service member to seek a preliminary injunction from a federal district court before getting vaccinated. Thompson pointed to the 2003-2004 case of John Doe #1 vs Rumsfeld, where Judge Emmet Sullivan issued an order preventing service members from taking the anthrax vaccine. Sullivan ultimately ruled the military cant require service members to receive the vaccine.
The Anthrax vaccine is required only for troops that are deployed to high-risk locations, like the Korean Peninsula, and other designated units.
However, a key distinction between the two anthrax vaccine cases and any potential case with refusing a Covid-19 vaccination is that the anthrax cases dealt with a serious infectious disease that is not contagious.
James Klimaski, who practices military law and is the principal at Klimaski & Associates, P.C., said it is unlikely service members who refuse a required vaccination will remain in the military long-term.
Its not gonna work. They can try to resign, whatever it is, but they're not gonna stay in the military, he said. On a potential choice between vaccinations or frequent testing, Klimaski noted the option is more favorable for agencies where remote work is more common.
That might work for Department of Agriculture or Commerce, or something or other that have people who are working at home anyway. But in the military, no, he said.
Even though they can contract the delta variant, vaccinated people are far less likely to end up in the hospital.
A spike in COVID-19 infections is happening across the US due to the highly contagiousdelta variant driving up numbers-- especially in areas with low vaccination rates. But the variant is also breaking through to infect vaccinated people. Arecent studyreleased by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the delta infection has similarly high viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated people. So what does that mean asmore of these breakthrough casesare happening?
Currently,167 million peoplein the US have been fully vaccinated, a little over half the country's total population. The CDC's researchsuggesting that vaccinated people infected with delta can also easily transmit the virus was the key factor motivating the new federal guidance that fully vaccinated individuals continue to wear masks indoors. At the same time, the CDC report underlines that the number of cases and deaths among fully vaccinated people is small compared with the unvaccinated.
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Should you be concerned about getting COVID-19if you've already been inoculated? Since there's more community spread and there are more breakthrough cases despite vaccination, new data suggests yes. We'll explain what a breakthrough coronavirus infection is, how it's possible for fully vaccinated people to become infected and what it all means. This information comes from the CDC, the World Health Organization and other experts.
A breakthrough COVID-19 infection is when a fully vaccinated person becomes infected with the coronavirus without any symptoms or experiences symptoms, is hospitalized or dies from the infection. A small percentage of fully vaccinated people can get COVID-19 if exposed to the virus, but they're much less likely to become sick, according to the CDC.
If someone's fully vaccinated and does test positive for coronavirus, it's likely they'll have milder symptoms (see below) or be asymptomatic, Dr. Clare Rock, a Johns Hopkins medical professor, told me.
Now that it's been found that fully vaccinated people can be infected with high viral amounts of the delta variant, the CDC is concerned they can transmit the virus. If you do become ill, experts urge you to isolate yourself to prevent others from getting sick, especially people with medical vulnerabilities.
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Someone can become infected with COVID-19 just before or right after they get the vaccination, because it takes roughly two weeks before the vaccine is most effective. However, even after the immunity builds up, there's still a chance they can become infected, according to the WHO, since the vaccines aren't silver bullets against disease (though they're highly effective).
With millions of unvaccinated people around the world, new variants will emerge, Rock says. For example, the delta variant can pose a threat to people who are fully vaccinated -- especially those who have high-risk medical conditions (see the next section).
Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Sunday more COVID-19 testing needs to be done on fully vaccinated people to help understand how the breakthrough cases work.
Someone who's fully vaccinated has a much smaller risk of experiencing severe symptoms from COVID-19. People who've received all their doses of a vaccine are less likely to be hospitalized or die than those who haven't been vaccinated,the CDC says. Vaccinated people typically see symptoms like a runny nose, which they mistake for a sign of a common cold, Rock said.
But that's not to say serious cases can't happen. The CDC says some fully vaccinated people can still be hospitalized and die. This can include people who have medical conditions that make them immunocompromised, Rock said, including those with cancer and people who've had organ transplants -- in general, people who are more vulnerable. Data released in Israel by the Israeli Health Ministry shows that people who are unvaccinated are five times more likely to experience a severe infection, as opposed to the elderly who are fully vaccinated, Haaretz reported.
It's possible for a fully vaccinated person to become infected with COVID-19.
If you're fully vaccinated but worried about getting sick, you can take the following precautions.
At this time, there's not a clear answer. Though some people say a booster shot may be necessary down the line, the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration don't agree with that, at least not yet. Scientists are continuing to study the immunity of fully vaccinated people to get a better idea of how well the vaccines protect them.
Moderna is currently researching if and when a booster shot may be necessary. For instance, vulnerable people who don't have a robust immune system, such as those with serious medical conditions, may need an additional shot, Rock said.
Pfizer says it's working on a booster shot for its COVID-19 vaccine (PDF) to enhance immunity for those who've already received both doses. The UK is also prepping for booster shots, with vaccine experts in Britain saying a booster shot may be needed before winter.
The variant causing the most concern right now is thedelta variant, which is now thedominant strain in the USand other countries. This variant has caused an increase in COVID-19 cases, which is also affecting people who are fully vaccinated.
In comparison with the alpha variant, researchers have found delta to be60% more transmissible, and hospitalization risks are much higher in unvaccinated people.
In most instances, the cases are happening in areas with low vaccination rates. For instance, US states like Louisiana and Florida havelow vaccination ratesand their COVID-19 cases are surging again.
Wearing a mask can help you protect yourself from COVID-19.
The breakthrough infections don't mean the vaccines aren't powerful.
"The effectiveness against severe disease is still substantial," Fauci said during a White House press briefing July 22. "Get vaccinated. It offers good protection against disease."
The main reason for breakthrough cases is the number of people who still haven't been vaccinated. Once more people are fully vaccinated, the virus likely won't infect as many people. Until then, the virus can continue to mutate and spread, creating new variants.
For more information, here's everything to know about the delta variant. Also, here are more details about a potential COVID-19 booster shot, and here's info on the debate over whether fully vaccinated people should wear masks.
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
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