(CNN) If you're planning to travel to Portugal, here's what you'll need to know and expect if you want to visit during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The basics
Portugal is in a State of Calamity until August 8, with case numbers and deaths at a four-month high, according to the government. However, it is open for tourism for EU citizens plus arrivals from countries including the US, Canada and Japan.
What's on offer
Ancient towns, some of the loveliest coastline in Europe, and plenty of pasteis de nata. Portugal has long been overlooked in favor of Europe's bigger hitters, but over the last few years, that's started to change rapidly. Capital Lisbon, with its trams rattling up hills and peerless views of the river Tagus, is the place to start. Then there's the Algarve, whose beach resorts are set atop crumbling cliffs, and the dramatic Atlantic coast, beloved by surfers, and the vast Alentejo region, whose landscapes and hilltop towns have been barely touched by tourism.
Who can go
Residents of the EU and Schengen-associated countries can travel freely. Also allowed in for non-essential travel are arrivals from the following: Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Canada, China, South Korea, USA, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, New Zealand, Qatar, Moldova, Northern Macedonia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Taiwan, Ukraine and Hong Kong. See below for the rules.
Arrivals from the UK are also allowed, but further restrictions apply: see below.
Only essential travel is permitted from Brazil, India, Nepal, and South Africa. Anyone eligible to come from those countries must quarantine for 14 days on arrival.
What are the restrictions?
Arriving by sea entails the same entry regulations. Arriving by rail or train, those coming from the main list of destinations have no restrictions. Again, those coming from the UK must either show proof of vaccination or must quarantine for 14 days.
What's the Covid situation?
Portugal has had over 972,000 cases and 17,378 deaths as of August 3. The 17,348 new cases registered in the week leading up to August 3 are a far cry from the record 86,389 in one week of January 2021, but cases are rising -- both new infections and deaths are at a four-month high, according to the government.
What can visitors expect?
Face masks are mandatory on public transport. Passengers must sit in the back seats only of taxis. If renting cars, vehicles with more than five seats have a capacity limit of two thirds, unless travelers belong to the same household. Groups in restaurants and bars are limited to six inside and 10 outside, while cultural facilities are capped at 66% capacity. Alcohol cannot be sold in service areas or gas stations.
You must present an EU Covid Digital Certificate or a negative test when checking in to accommodation, eating inside restaurants on Friday nights, weekends and public holidays, and entering spas, casinos and exercise classes. PCR tests within 72 hours or antigen tests within 24 hours and certified by a medical professional are acceptable. Children under 12 are exempt.
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RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) A group of pediatricians says nearly 72,000 new cases of COVID-19 among children were reported last week.
But does that mean COVID-19 cases are rising disproportionately among kids?
Not necessarily at least, not in North Carolina.
Focusing on that big number might miss the bigger picture: That the increase could have more to do with whos vaccinated and less to do with the kids who make up a subset of that group.
READ THE AAP REPORT HERE
The state Department of Health and Human Services reported just more than 3,500 new cases last week among kids under 18 an increase of 42.9 percent from the 2,456 new cases that came a week earlier.
In a sign of proportionality, thats the exact same percentage change in the number of new cases among everyone whose age was reported to DHHS from 12,411 during the week of July 18 to 17,742 last week.
And a CBS17.com data analysis found the share of cases in kids has remained relatively constant through the past 1 1/2 months at roughly 20 percent, give or take a percentage point.
That cases among kids are rising at the same rate as they are among the general population and that the share has been steady seems to indicate that children arent necessarily driving the increase.
With experts saying the pandemic at this point is most strongly affecting the unvaccinated and kids under 12 unable to get the vaccine those numbers could be a reflection of that.
Im not sure that we have a great answer to whether its really the unvaccinated kids versus unvaccinated adults that are driving that rise in cases in kids, said Dr. Emily OBrien, an epidemiologist at the Duke Clinical Research Institute.
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, chief of the division of infectious diseases in the pediatric department at Stanford and chair of the AAP committee on infectious diseases, made the vaccinated-vs.-unvaccinated distinction in speaking to CNN.com.
Thats high and considering the fact that we are vaccinated now, what thats telling us is that unvaccinated people are getting infected in higher numbers because the virus is more infectious with the delta variant, she told the website.
Kids make up a fraction of that group of unvaccinated people who face a higher risk of catching the delta variant. About 2 million of the 5.2 million North Carolinians who have not gotten the vaccine are under 18, DHHS data show.
The ones between 12 and 17 can get the shot, but only about 30 percent of them just under 260,000 have done so.
I think youd have to be precise about what you mean by kids, OBrien said. If its 12-to-17-year-olds who have access to the vaccine, they could fall in that vaccinated group. Some of them, over half, are still unvaccinated. Even though theyre eligible, they would be with the unvaccinated group. And then, of course, kids under 12, unless theyre part of a vaccine arm of an ongoing clinical trial, would also fall in the unvaccinated group.
The AAP report also indicates that severe illness remains relatively rare among children. Those under 18 accounts for 1.4 percent of the more than 54,000 confirmed COVID-19 hospital admissions in North Carolina since Oct. 1, 2020, DHHS data show.
But OBrien says she plans to monitor the hospitalization rates among children going forward because its not yet known if the Delta variant puts kids at a higher risk of serious illness than other strains of the virus.
The hospitalizations that come as a result of having increased numbers of cases could actually be pretty high as well, OBrien said. And that is coming down the pike for us.
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A new study, to appear in the journal Cell, suggests that the first response to SARS-CoV-2 infection in the nose and throat may determine the severity of the illness.
A team from Boston Childrens Hospital, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Mississippi Medical Center looked at cells from the nose and throat of people with SARS-CoV-2 infections and compared these with the samples from healthy individuals who formed the control group.
The researchers took nasal swabs from 35 adults with COVID-19 between April and September 2020.
They then sequenced the RNA in each cell to see which cells contained RNA from the virus showing they were infected and which of the cells genes were turned on or off in response.
The researchers found that more of the genes that respond to infection were turned on in infected cells compared with healthy cells. However, the effect on the cells with SARS-CoV-2 was different in people with severe and mild infections.
Those people with COVID-19 had more mucus-secreting cells and far fewer mature ciliated cells the cells that move foreign material from the airways than their healthy counterparts. At the same time, they had more immature ciliated cells, which may have been in compensation for the loss of mature ciliated cells.
Of the 58 study participants, 35 had COVID-19, ranging from people with mild symptoms to the critically ill. The study included a control group of 15 healthy people two of whom had previously had COVID-19 and six intensive care patients, all of whom had tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 infections.
Why some people get more sick than others has been one of the most puzzling aspects of this virus from the beginning, says Dr. Jos Ordovs-Montas of Boston Childrens Hospital, co-senior investigator on the study.
Although the study had only a small sample size, there were some interesting results that may help in the development of effective treatments.
The researchers found that in those with mild symptoms, the genes involved in antiviral responses were switched on. In those with severe symptoms, this interferon response, which kick-starts the immune response, was decreased, but the inflammatory response was increased.
Speaking to Medical News Today, Dr. Christopher Coleman, assistant professor of infection immunology at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, commented: The finding about the different immune response is especially interesting. Coronaviruses have numerous proteins that block innate immunity, including interferon, so the low response may be due to high viral protein expression.
Some researchers think that it is extreme inflammatory responses that are responsible for the more severe symptoms of COVID-19.
Everyone with severe COVID-19 had a blunted interferon response early on in their epithelial cells and were never able to ramp up a defense, says Dr. Ordovs-Montas. Having the right amount of interferon at the right time could be at the crux of dealing with SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses.
This study is consistent with previous studies that have shown that a lack of good interferon response leads to more severe disease, Dr. Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, U.K., told MNT. We need to discover why some people have a good interferon response and others dont.
Focusing on the nasopharynx is key, as thats where the infection starts. For me, the next step would be to look at whether these findings could be used to come up with a diagnostic test to predict whether people will develop severe COVID-19.
Dr. Jonathan Stoye
The researchers now plan to investigate what is causing this difference in the interferon response and whether there are ways to enhance it in early COVID-19 infections, perhaps with a nasal spray or drops. Successful developments might also be useful for other viral infections, such as flu.
For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.
Sen. Lindsey GrahamLindsey Olin Graham19 House Democrats call on Capitol physician to mandate vaccines The Hill's 12:30 Report - Presented by AT&T - Simone wins bronze with altered beam routine The job of shielding journalists is not finished MORE (R-S.C.) said Monday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, even though he was fully vaccinated.
I was just informed by the House physician I have tested positive for COVID-19 even after being vaccinated, he said.
I started having flu-like symptoms Saturday night and went to the doctor this morning. I feel like I have a sinus infection and at present time I have mild symptoms. I will be quarantining for ten days, he added.
Graham was one of 17 GOP senators who have been helping advance a bipartisan infrastructurebill, meaning its supporters will be down a vote untilhe comes out of quarantine. They only need 10 GOP senators to support it if every Democrat does.
Graham is the first senator known to test positive for the coronavirus in months,and the first known "breakthrough" case among vaccinated senators. A CNN survey earlier this year found that only four out of 100 senators, at the time, were not vaccinated.
Graham's announcement comes amid growingpublic concern about the potential for so-called breakthrough cases, when a fully vaccinated persontests positive for the coronavirus.
Public health officialshave stressed that symptomaticbreakthrough infections for fully vaccinated individuals are rare and getting vaccinated makes getting a severe case of the coronavirus less likely.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), less than 1 percent of fully vaccinated Americans have had a breakthrough case that results in hospitalizationor death.
Graham, in his statement, touted the vaccine, saying that if he wasn't vaccinated "my symptoms would be far worse."
I am very glad I was vaccinated because without vaccination I am certain I would not feel as well as I do now," he said.
After largely shedding their masks in mid-May after the CDC loosened its mask guidance for vaccinated individuals, the CDC and the Capitol physician recommended last week that everyone wear a mask when indoors and around others regardless of vaccination status.
Though the House has mandated masks, the guidance to the Senate is only a recommendation. That sparked a mostly partisan split in the upper chamber. Democrats largely wore masks while walking between their offices and the Capitol, though several shed them when they were on the floor with other senators.
Republicans have largely stopped wearing masks.
Graham was spotted in the Capitol on Monday morning and spoke briefly with reporters. He was wearing a mask and appeared to be in a hurry, both of which caught the attention of reporters.
Spokespeople forthe South Carolina Republican didn't immediatelyrespond to a question about if, or when, he alerted leadership or other Senate offices to his test result.
But Sen. Lisa MurkowskiLisa Ann MurkowskiKaine says he has votes to pass Iraq War repeal in Senate Ohio special election: A good day for Democrats Graham's COVID-19 'breakthrough' case jolts Senate MORE (R-Alaska), who said she was wearing a mask in accordance with the CDC's new guidance, was not aware that Graham had tested positive.
"I haven't seen him and I didn't know that," Murkowski said when askedabout her mask. "I am wearing it because we're in the District, and the District has imposed a mask mandate."
A group of senators, including Graham, had gathered on Sen. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinSenate rejects GOP effort to add Trump border wall to bipartisan infrastructure deal Youth organizations call on Biden to ensure 'bold' climate investments Democrats barrel toward August voting rights deadline MOREs (D-W.Va.) houseboat over the weekend, a source confirmed to The Hill.
Sens. Jacky RosenJacklyn (Jacky) Sheryl RosenThe Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - White House, Dems play blame game over evictions Graham's COVID-19 'breakthrough' case jolts Senate Graham says he has COVID-19 'breakthrough' infection MORE (D-Nev.) and Mark KellyMark KellyWhite House trying to beat back bipartisan Cornyn infrastructure amendment The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - White House, Dems play blame game over evictions Graham's COVID-19 'breakthrough' case jolts Senate MORE (D-Ariz.) were also at the gathering on Manchin's houseboat with Graham. CDC guidance says fullyvaccinated individuals should get tested three to five days after a potential exposure and wear a mask for up to 14 days unless they get a negative test result.
Senator Kelly came into contact with Senator Graham during a bipartisan gathering this weekend hosted by Senator Manchin. Senator Kelly is fully vaccinated and following CDC guidelines and the advice of the Office of the Attending Physician," a spokesperson for Kelly said.
Sam Runyon, a spokeswoman for Manchin, said that he is fully vaccinated and following the CDC guidelines for those exposed to a COVID positive individual.
Updated at 5:13 p.m.
A student wears a face mask while at the Post Road Elementary School in White Plains, N.Y., last October. A recent study found the number of children contracting the coronavirus is on the rise. Mary Altaffer/AP hide caption
A student wears a face mask while at the Post Road Elementary School in White Plains, N.Y., last October. A recent study found the number of children contracting the coronavirus is on the rise.
As coronavirus cases climb worryingly across the United States, a recent study shows that the number of children contracting the virus "steadily increased" in July.
In the last week alone, according to the report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association, nearly 72,000 cases were reported in children, roughly 19% of the total number of new cases nationwide. And while hospitalizations and deaths remain low, the number of child coronavirus infections increased by 3% over the last two weeks of the month after declining earlier in the summer.
Since the pandemic began a year and a half ago, approximately 4.2 million children have tested positive for the coronavirus. The good news is that severe illness and death are still uncommon for children who contract the virus. In states reporting, children accounted for fewer than one-quarter of 1% of all COVID-19 deaths. Seven states reported no child deaths, while other states reported 0-0.03% of all child coronavirus cases resulting in death. As of July 29, a total of 358 children have reportedly been killed by COVID-19 in the U.S.
"However, there is an urgent need to collect more data on longer-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects," the report reads.
That said, the report acknowledged that the figures could be inaccurate for a handful of reasons. The ages designated as a "child" vary from state to state, ranging from newborns to 20, and some states altered their definition of a child during the pandemic.
Further complicating things, the most up-to-date numbers include testing figures from only 11 states, according to the report. Only 23 states and New York City reported hospitalizations and 43 states along with New York City, Puerto Rico and Guam reported mortality rates. Florida stopped reporting child hospitalizations in late June and Iowa stopped updating child testing data shortly after. And in Nebraska, the COVID-19 dashboard has been unavailable since the end of June.
Parts of the country are considering reimplementing protective measures as cases climb. With the start of the school year just around the corner, the same organization that conducted the report is recommending that students over the age of 2 and all staff vaccinated or not mask up.
Some states though, including Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina and Texas, have implemented laws prohibiting mask mandates in schools.
With cases running rampant across his state, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is caught in a bind. The governor is still not in favor of a statewide mandate, but he wants the law banning state and local mask mandates overturned to give schools the opportunity to implement mask mandates.
"In hindsight, I wish that it had not become law," Hutchinson said at a news conference Tuesday. "But it is the law, and the only chance we have is either to amend it or for the courts to say that it has an unconstitutional foundation."
To date, the coronavirus has claimed the lives of more than 612,000 people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently walked back its previous message that most vaccinated persons could engage in nearly all activities mask-free. It is now recommending that everyone, regardless of vaccine status, return to wearing masks indoors in areas where transmission rates are high.
Crowds on Bourbon Street in New Orleans in late July. The Delta coronavirus variant is driving record-breaking case counts in Louisiana and other states.
By Meredith WadmanAug. 4, 2021 , 6:50 PM
The United States is standing at a dire inflection point, with pandemic coronavirus cases surging and only 50% of the population fully vaccinated. Driving the latest wave is the highly contagious Delta variant, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) caused between 80% and 87% of all U.S. COVID-19 cases in the last 2 weeks of Julyup from 8% to 14% in early June. The variants exceptional infectiousness has driven cases from a 7-day average of 13,500 daily cases in early June to 92,000 on 3 August. At the same time, an internal CDC document that leaked last week says the variant may make people sicker, citing published reports from Singapore and Scotland and a preprint from Canada.
The good news is that severe disease and death are highly unlikely among the vaccinatedand U.S. vaccination rates are beginning to increase once again, if modestly.
How bad will the U.S. surge become, and how long will it take to recede? Anyone saying they know exactly what is happening is overconfident, says Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University. There is a lot of uncertainty about what will happen in the future, even on a relatively short time scale. With that proviso, here is what Dean and other scientists closely following the pandemic told Science they foresee.
Many computer models predict case counts will peak sometime between mid-August and early September. That peak may bring as many as 450,000 daily cases, according to forecasters at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. IHMEs models have drawn controversy throughout the pandemic and other groups are more conservative: The COVID-19 Forecast Hub predicts the daily case count on 21 August will be somewhere between 29,000 and 176,000, using a range of estimates from 41 different models.
But all projections rely on assumptions that are moving targetssuch as mask wearing and vaccination behaviorand accuracy quickly diminishes the further out the forecast. We can probably expect to see cases continue to rise for the next 2 or 3 weeks at least. Beyond that, I think its challenging to predict, says David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Hospitalizations and deaths will lag behind cases by several weeks and, given the number of people who are now vaccinated, deaths are expected to be lower than their peak of more than 3400 per day in January. Still, IHME researchers forecast a peak of about 1000 deaths a day in mid-September, and a total of 76,000 additional deaths by 1 November. But if 95% of the people in the United States wore masks, their model predicts, 49,000 of those lives would be saved. Americans, including young and healthy people, should not underestimate this variant, warns Ali Mokdad, an IHME epidemiologist. Delta is a nasty one, he says.
In India, where the Delta variant was first identified, a massive, Delta-driven wave began in late March and receded by late June, even though mask wearing was spotty and less than 1% of the population was vaccinated as the wave began. In the United Kingdom, a surge that began in early June peaked in mid-July and is now rapidly receding, although daily cases are still many times what they were before the Delta variant took over.
But assuming the U.S. surge will recede as quickly as the one in the United Kingdom did may be a mistake. In that country, vaccine uptake has been much higher than in the United States. Former CDC Director Tom Frieden, president of the nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives, cautioned yesterday in a tweet that the number of unvaccinated Americans could make the U.S. surge much deadlier than the United Kingdoms.
The national case count obscures the record-breaking infection rates in U.S. states with low vaccination rates such as Florida and Louisiana. In Alabama, where just 35% of the population is fully vaccinated, hospitalizations have more than doubled in the past 10 days to nearly 1700the same number of full beds as at the end of November 2020. The difference: Back then, the doubling took 6 weeks. The amount of time you need to be exposed to someone who has the Delta variant is much less than what it was with that ancestral strain, says epidemiologist Russell Griffin of the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB). Whats more, he says, the median age of patients at the UAB hospital has fallen from 65 to 52 since January, and healthy young adults are starting to turn up in the intensive care unit.
Yes, although vaccination still protects extremely well against severe disease and death.A studyof a recent Delta-driven outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts, published in CDCsMorbidity and Mortality Weekly Reportlast week, was pivotal to the agencys decision to reverse itself and advise fully vaccinated people to wear masks in indoor public places in areas where transmission is high, agency Director Rochelle Walensky said. In the Massachusetts outbreak, fully vaccinated people accounted for 74% of nearly 469 COVID-19 cases. (Four of the five people hospitalized in the outbreak were fully vaccinated; no one died.)
Strikingly, the study found that fully vaccinated people carried just as much virus in their noses and throats as the unvaccinated. Since then, a new, not-yet-peer-reviewedpreprintfrom the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has reported similar findings.
Its not surprising that, at the time theyre diagnosed, fully vaccinated people might carry a large nasal load of a variant thats known to replicate rapidly, says Sixto Leal, who directs medical microbiology at UAB hospitals. Thats because although vaccines are excellent at generating blood-borne antibodies, they are not as good at generating a form of antibody that occupies the lining of the nose and throat. Theres a window of time when fast-replicating virus can enter [the cells lining the nose], replicate like crazy in a very high amount, and [cause] symptoms, Leal says.
But in vaccinated people, the replication soon alerts the immune system to send blood-borne antibodies that neutralize the virus in the nose and throat, Leal says. Anothernew preprintfrom scientists in Singapore found that although vaccinated and unvaccinated patients infected with Delta had similar viral loads when diagnosed, those loads declined more rapidly in the vaccinated. Based on basic immunology, thats exactly what we would expectthat vaccinated individuals would clear the infection much faster, says Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at Scripps Research.
Theres every reason to suspect that SARS-CoV-2 infection rates will be worse in winter as opposed to summertime, because thats the path we see with other respiratory viruses, Dowdy says. [But] we dont have evidence yet. And with so much Delta circulating in both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, we are unwittingly exerting selection pressure for new, more dangerous variants to evolve, Andersen cautions. This fall and winter I am not sure we will be dealing with Delta. I think we will probably be dealing with a variant we havent heard about yet, he says. From a viral evolution perspective, it would be foolish not to expect that.
Scientists generally agree on the need for immunocompromised people to receive boosters soon, although a go-ahead from U.S. regulators will be needed. Israel is moving ahead with administering a third vaccine dose to people ages 60 and older, and the United Kingdom may soon follow with boosters for older people.
But experts disagree on whether Deltas emergence calls for an urgent focus on boosters in the general population. Pfizer added fuel to the conversation last week, when itposted a preprintshowing the efficacy of its vaccine declined from 96.2% to 83.7% more than 4 months after full vaccination.
But because the available U.S. vaccines are still highly effective against Delta and the vast majority of serious illness and death is occurring in people who are unvaccinated, I would strongly prioritize getting more people fully vaccinated than getting booster shots in people, Dowdy says.
Dean adds that a global view is important: We live in a world where so many people remain unvaccinated. How do you justify that boost to individuals that [already] have a certain amount of protection?
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus threw the organizations moral authority behind that viewpoint today,calling for a moratoriumon booster vaccinations through at least September. Confronted with the Delta variant, he said, We cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the worlds most vulnerable people remain unprotected.
But Andersen, who is calling for rapid development and distribution of Delta-specific boosters, calls the booster-versus-vaccine question a false choice. We need to do both, he says. And that requires warlike efforts which we are not doing right now.
Although the reasons for Delta receding in India and the United Kingdom remain unclear, increasing population immunityfrom either infection with the virus or vaccinationshould give the variant increasingly fewer new opportunities to spread. Human behavior plays a role, too. As cases start to climb [people] start to think twice about that big party they were going to go to, Dowdy says. Another factor that may bend the U.S. curve is CDCs revisedrecommendationlast week that fully vaccinated people again wear masks in public, indoor spaces in areas of high transmission. The decline will take time. People need to recognize that things are going to get worse before they get better, Dowdy cautions. But its not time to panic in thinking that this is going to be December [2020] and January all over again.
I started wearing a mask again at the grocery store, says Dean, who lives in Gainesville, Florida. I feel confident in the vaccine. I just am not going out to a bar. But I wasnt doing that a ton [anyway].
In San Diego, Andersen, who never stopped wearing a mask in indoor settings with other people, now says he is not frequenting crowded outdoor spaces eitherincluding restaurants. We get take-out instead.
At UAB, Leal required masks for his labs employees 3 weeks ahead of a new campuswide mandate. We had experienced 2 months of happiness and [a] return to normal, he says. Now, we are much more cautious again.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) Florida hospitals slammed with COVID-19 patients are suspending elective surgeries and putting beds in conference rooms, an auditorium and a cafeteria. As of midweek, Mississippi had just six open intensive care beds in the entire state.
Georgia medical centers are turning people away. And in Louisiana, an organ transplant had to be postponed along with other procedures.
We are seeing a surge like weve not seen before in terms of the patients coming, Dr. Marc Napp, chief medical officer for Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Florida, said Wednesday. Its the sheer number coming in at the same time. There are only so many beds, so many doctors, only so many nurses.
Coronavirus hospitalizations are surging again as the more contagious delta variant rages across the country, forcing medical centers to return to a crisis footing just weeks after many closed their COVID-19 wards and field hospitals and dropped other emergency measures.
The number of people now in the hospital in the U.S. with COVID-19 has almost quadrupled over the past month to nearly 45,000, turning the clock back to early March, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Thats still nowhere close to the nearly 124,000 people who were in the hospital at the very peak of the winter surge in January. But health experts say this wave is perhaps more worrying because it has risen more swiftly than prior ones. Also, a disturbingly large share of patients this time are young adults.
And to the frustration of public health experts and front-line medical workers, the vast majority of those now hospitalized are unvaccinated.
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi alone account for more than 40% of all hospitalizations in the country.
Mississippi has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, with less than 35% of its population fully inoculated, and Louisiana and Georgia arent much better, at around 38%. Florida is closer to the national rate at 49%, but none of the four Southern states comes close to the New England region, where most states are well over 60%.
The variant has sent new U.S. cases surging to 94,000 a day on average, a level not seen since mid-February. Deaths per day have soared 75% in the past two weeks, climbing from an average of 244 to 426. The overall U.S. death toll stands at more than 614,000.
Across Florida, more than 12,500 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Thursday, over 2,500 of them in intensive care. The state is averaging nearly 18,000 newly confirmed infections per day, up from fewer than 2,000 a month ago. In all, Florida has recorded more than 39,100 coronavirus deaths.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken a hard line against mask rules and other compulsory measures, saying it is important to keep Floridas economy moving.
Florida is a free state, and we will empower our people. We will not allow Joe Biden and his bureaucratic flunkies to come in and commandeer the rights and freedoms of Floridians, DeSantis, who has been exploring a possible bid for president in 2024, said in a fundraising email Wednesday.
The reversal in fortune at some hospitals has been stark.
In central Florida, AdventHealth hospitals had 1,350 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Thursday, the most ever. The health care system has postponed non-emergency surgery and limited visitors to concentrate on treating coronavirus patients.
Less than two months ago, Miamis Baptist Hospital had fewer than 20 COVID-19 patients and was closing down coronavirus units. By Monday, hospital officials were reopening some of those units to handle an influx of more than 200 new virus patients.
As fast as we are opening up units, theyre being filled with COVID patients, said Dr. Sergio Segarra, the hospitals chief medical officer.
In Georgia, more than two dozen hospitals said this week that they have had to turn away patients as the number of hospitalizations for COVID-19 has risen to 2,600 statewide.
Mississippi reported that its hospitals were overwhelmed with nearly 1,200 COVID-19 patients as of Thursday. State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said the delta variant is sweeping across Mississippi like a tsunami with no end in sight.
In Louisiana, with roughly 2,350 coronavirus patients in hospitals, any non-emergency surgery that might require an overnight stay is being delayed at the states largest hospital system. Dr. Robert Hart, chief medical officer at Ochsner Health, said an organ transplant involving a live donor was postponed.
You can imagine the expectations both the recipient and the donor had leading up to the surgery, and then to have to put that off, he said, declining to disclose the type of transplant.
The swift turn of events has been disheartening for health care workers who just weeks ago thought the battle was in its final stages. The crisis is also making it harder for hospitals to provide other crucial types of medical care.
If you dont get vaccinated, you are taking resources from people who have diseases or injuries or illnesses, said Dr. Vincent Shaw, a family physician in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. COVID doesnt call people who have had strokes, who have had heart attacks, who have had other horrific or traumatic things happen and say, Yall take the week off. I am going to take over the ER and the ICU.
In Florida, Judi Custer said she and her husband did everything they were told to do to ward off the virus. The Fort Lauderdale retirees got vaccinated and wore masks, even when the rules were lifted. Still, they fell ill with COVID-19 a few weeks ago, and 80-year-old Doug Custer was hospitalized for five days.
Judy Custer said she still believes more people need to get vaccinated.
Weve had it long enough to know it is helping people, even if they get sick with it, she said. Youre less likely to be put on a ventilator. Youre less likely to be hospitalized.
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Marcelo reported from Boston. Associated Press reporters Leah Willingham in Jackson, Mississippi; Kevin McGill and Melinda Deslatte in Louisiana; Adriana Gomez Licon and Frieda Frisaro in Miami; and Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas, contributed to this story.
Another 152coronavirus cases have been reported across the state, Maine health officials said Thursday.
Thursdays report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 70,996,according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Thats up from 70,844 on Wednesday.
Of those, 51,743have been confirmed positive, while 19,253were classified as probable cases, the Maine CDC reported.
No new deaths were reported Thursday, leaving the statewide death toll at 900.
The number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in the past 14 days statewide is 1,216. This is an estimation of the current number of active cases in the state, as the Maine CDC is no longer tracking recoveries for all patients. Thats up from 1,170 on Wednesday.
The new case rate statewide Thursday was 1.14 cases per 10,000 residents, and the total case rate statewide was 530.45.
Maines seven-day average for new coronavirus cases is 107.6, up from 102.9 a day ago, up from 69 a week ago and up from 20 a month ago. That average peaked on Jan. 14 at 625.3.
The most cases have been detected in Mainers younger than 20, while Mainers over 80 years old make up the majority of deaths. More cases and deaths have been recorded in women than men.
So far, 2,162 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. Of those, 44 people are currently hospitalized, with 18 in critical care and seven on ventilators.
The total statewide hospitalization rate on Thursday was 16.15 patients per 10,000 residents.
Cases have been reported in Androscoggin (8,530), Aroostook (2,010), Cumberland (17,661), Franklin (1,426), Hancock (1,439), Kennebec (6,774), Knox (1,204), Lincoln (1,132), Oxford (3,712), Penobscot (6,579), Piscataquis (613), Sagadahoc (1,491), Somerset (2,356), Waldo (1,189), Washington (966) and York (13,907) counties. Information about where an additional seven cases were reported wasnt immediately available.
An additional 890 vaccine doses were administered in the previous 24 hours. As of Wednesday, 770,905 Mainers have received a first dose of the vaccine, while 818,713 have received a final dose.
New Hampshire reported 122 new cases on Thursday and one death. Vermont reported 52 new cases and no deaths, while Massachusetts reported 1,032 new cases and five deaths.
AAs of Thursday morning, the coronavirus had sickened 35,347,582 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 614,858 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.
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Pharmaceutical company Moderna said its COVID-19 vaccine is 93 percent effective through six months after the second dose, but as new variants of the virus emerge, people who received the vaccine may need a booster shot before winter.
The company made the announcement as part of its second-quarter earnings release Thursday.
We are pleased that our Covid-19 vaccine is showing durable efficacy of 93 percent through six months, but recognize that the Delta variant is a significant new threat so we must remain vigilant, Moderna CEO Stphane Bancel said in a statement with the earnings release. Moderna president Stephen Hoge said during an earnings call that a third booster will likely be necessary to keep us as safe as possible through the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere.
The company is studying what type of booster will provide the best long-term protection against the Delta variant and other possible variants of the coronavirus. Moderna said both a third shot of the original vaccine and new versions have demonstrated robust antibody responses to COVID-19 variants of concern.
On Wednesday, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) asked for a moratorium on COVID-19 booster shots in higher-income countries, citing lower income countries lack of access to the vaccines. But White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a press briefing Wednesday that the WHO was offering a false choice, noting that the US has already donated 110 million doses of the vaccine to other countries. More needs to happen. But we believe we can do both, Psaki added.
Moderna said it sold $5.9 billion worth of its coronavirus vaccine during the six-month period ending June 30th, for a total of 302 million doses. The company reported a net income of $2.8 billion on total revenue of $4.4 billion for the three months ending June 30th, compared to $67 million in the year-ago quarter.
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 200.23 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.25 million. More than 4.28 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.
Sydney, Australia, has suffered its worst day of the COVID-19 pandemic to date, with 5 deaths and a record rise in locally acquired infections.
Japan is set to extend a state of emergency to 8 more prefectures to tackle rising COVID-19 case numbers.
The first Broadway play has opened in New York since the COVID-19 pandemic closed theatres last year. Vaccinations and masks are required for audiences.
Pfizer said yesterday that it will require all its US employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or take part in weekly testing.
The Indian government has asked state authorities to impose restrictions ahead of festivals around the country. It warned that overcrowding could lead to 'super spreader' events.
Thailand has reported a record 20,920 confirmed COVID-19 cases.
England has relaxed rules for travellers from France. From Sunday, fully vaccinated people will no longer be required to quarantine on return. It's also loosened restrictions on travel from seven other countries.
The spread of the Delta variant in the Americas is 'highly worrisome', Pan American Health Organization officials said yesterday.
As part of work identifying promising technology use cases to combat COVID, The Boston Consulting Group recently used contextual AI to analyze more than 150 million English language media articles from 30 countries published between December 2019 to May 2020.
The result is a compendium of hundreds of technology use cases. It more than triples the number of solutions, providing better visibility into the diverse uses of technology for the COVID-19 response.
To see a full list of 200+ exciting technology use cases during COVID please follow this link.
Confirmed global COVID-19 cases have passed 200 million, with cases rising in about one-third of the world's countries - largely driven by the Delta variant.
It means at least 2.6% of the world's population has been infected since the pandemic began, although the true figure is likely higher due to limited testing in many countries.
It took more than a year for the world to hit the 100 million case mark, but only just over six months for the next 100 million, according to Reuters. Nearly 4.4 million people have died from COVID-19.
If the number of infected people were a country, it would be the world's eighth biggest, behind Nigeria.
Cases are rising again globally.
Image: Our World in Data
The World Health Organization has called for a pause on COVID-19 vaccine booster shots until at least the end of September.
Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus instead called for supplies to go to countries with low vaccination rates.
"I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it," Tedros said.
"We need an urgent reversal from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries to the majority going to low-income countries."
Written by
Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
