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Gov. Jay Inslee today gave advance notice of the termination of two proclamations related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Advance notice is provided to give stakeholders time to adjust their procedures.
Proclamation 20-51
This proclamation waives/suspends laws that created barriers to holding community association meetings remotely and also waives/suspends statutes that permit the imposition and collection of fees for late payment of community assessments. This proclamation will expire at 11:59 PM on July 24.
This session the Legislature passed SB 5011 which will allow electronic meeting and notice provisions for community associations. The bill goes into effect on July 25.
Read the full proclamation here.
Proclamation 20-82
This proclamation delayed implementation of SB 5323, which passed the Legislature in the 2020 session and established a statewide prohibition on retailers issuance of single-use plastic bags. The delay was necessary due to supply issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This proclamation will expire at 11:59 PM on September 30, upon it's expiration the plastic bag ban as passed the legislature will go into effect.
Read the full proclamation here.
Public and constituent inquiries | 360.902.4111Press inquiries | 360.902.4136
In this time of crisis, we are often reminded of a famous quote attributed to Winston Churchill during World War II: If youre going through hell, keep going. While South Africa is not in the middle of a physical war, it is battling the COVID-19 crisis in full force. Like most other countries, South Africa could not escape the pandemic. It suffered the loss of lives and livelihoods. At the time of writing, in early July 2021, more than 64,000 South Africans have lost their lives. The third wave is hitting the country very hard and infections keep rising every day. But there is also light at the end of a very long tunnel.
The government responded swiftly and strongly to the crisis while also spearheading an international alliance for the distribution of vaccines in Africa. If the South African government would carry out with the same determination long-standing economic reform as it was fighting the pandemic, COVID-19 could serve as a turning point in reenergizing South Africas economy and labor market. While South Africa is set to emerge from the crisis weaker than it was going into it, the World Banks South Africa Economic Update argues that the reasons for low growth and high unemployment do not lie in the governments crisis response. Instead, the pandemic has exposed long-standing structural weaknesses that have progressively worsened since the global financial crisis of 200809.
For 2021, the World Bank projects a gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 4 percent, followed by 2.1 percent in 2022 and 1.5 percent in 2023. South Africas weak recovery is putting pressure on public finance. For the first time ever, public debt is now at almost 80 percent of GDP and under the current trajectory debt levels will not stabilize before 2026. However, the current global recovery is helping South Africa, especially the strong rebound in China and the United Statestwo of its key trading partners. As other emerging markets are recovering faster, South Africas economy could have benefited more in 2021 if integration with the rest of the world was stronger (Figure1).
The crisis has exposed South Africas biggest challenge: its job market. Even in the best of times, the labor market has been marked by high levels of unemployment and inactivity. Out of a working-age population of almost 40 million people, only 15 million South Africans are employed, which includes 3 million jobs in the public sector. The COVID-19 crisis has made a difficult situation worse because low-wage workers suffered almost four times more job losses than high-wage workers. In 2021, we saw a modest job recovery, but it is at risk due to the third wave.
Against the odds, there are also positive developments in the labor market, and young entrepreneurs are one of South Africas best hopes to solve the jobs crisis. There are an increasing number of startups, especially in the digital sector, which are growing fast and could in the future become an engine of jobs growth. Cape Town alone, the tech capital of Africa, has over 450 tech firms and employs more than 40,000 people. In 2020, a total of $88 million (1.2 billion rand) disclosed investments went into its tech startups.
A focus on young entrepreneurs would also help South Africa to close its large gap in self-employment (own-account workers with own businesses, freelancers), which represents only 10 percent of all jobscompared to around 30 percent in most upper-middle-income economies such as Turkey, Mexico, or Brazil (Figure 2). If South Africa were to match the self-employment rate of its peers, it could potentially halve its unemployment rates.
South Africas economy would benefit from measures to preserve macroeconomic stability, to revitalize the jobs market by improving the investment climate to build a better and more inclusive economy after the pandemic. There is a risk that the recovery leaves behind most of the potential economically active population, particularly young job seekers, which would mean that the pandemic permanently impaired the countrys long-term development prospects. Conversely, if South Africa were to engineer a broad-based recovery, this decade could bring new prosperity.
Addressing structural constraints to growth behind and at the border could support exports and higher growth, and so preserve the sustainability of public finances. The experience of major emerging economies shows that the two most potent factors for reducing public debt-to-GDP ratios are economic growth and primary surpluses. The implied priorities are self-evident: a better climate for investment and trade, and prudent fiscal policy.
To generate employment, South Africa would have to address three chronic problems in its labor market: extremely high rates of inactivity, high rates of unemployment, and low levels of self-employment. Along with enacting carefully chosen regulations to improve the business climate and investing in the workforce through better education, the government can implement reforms to encourage self-employment and support the growth of micro- and small enterprises.
By Jennifer Couzin-FrankelJul. 13, 2021 , 2:35 PM
Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.
Sixteen pandemic months have felt disorienting and arduousbut along the arc of human history, COVID-19 marks just another inflection point. Epidemics have punctuated humanitys timeline for centuries, sowing panic and killing millions, whether the culprit was plague, smallpox, or influenza. And when infections abate, their imprints on society can remain, some short-lived and some enduring.
In a series of news articles over the coming months, Science will consider how a new normal is emerging in the scientific world. Of course, COVID-19 is still with us, especially outside the minority of countries now enjoying the fruits of widespread vaccination. Still, as the pandemic enters a different phase, we ask how research may be changing, how scientists are navigating these waters, and in what directions they are choosing to sail.
Although the past may not presage the future, epidemic history illuminates how change unfolds. Historians often say that what an epidemic will do is expose underlying fault lines, says Erica Charters, a historian of medicine at the University of Oxford who is studying how epidemics end. But how we respond is up to us. When we ask, How does the epidemic change society? it suggests theres something in the disease that will guide us. But the disease doesnt have agency the way humans do.
Past epidemics have spurred scientists and physicians to reconsider everything from their understanding of disease to their modes of communication. One of the most studied, the bubonic plague, tore through Europe in the late 1340s as the Black Death, then sporadically struck parts of Europe, Asia, and North Africa over the next 500 years. Caused by bacteria transmitted via the bites of infected fleas, the plagues hallmarks included grotesquely swollen lymph nodes, seizures, and organ failure. Cities were powerless against its spread. In 1630, nearly half the population of Milan perished. In Marseille, France, in 1720, 60,000 died.
Yet the mere recording of those numbers underscores how medicine reoriented in the face of the plague. Until the Black Death, medical writers did not routinely categorize distinct diseases, and instead often presented illness as a generalized physical disequilibrium. Diseases were not fixed entities, writes Frank Snowden, a historian of medicine at Yale University, in his bookEpidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. Influenza could morph into dysentery.
The plague years sparked more systematic study of infectious diseases and spawned a new genre of writing: plague treatises, ranging from pithy pamphlets on quarantines to lengthy catalogs of potential treatments. The treatises cropped up across the Islamic world and Europe, says Nkhet Varlk, a historian of medicine at Rutgers University, Newark. This is the first disease that gets its own literature, she says. Disease-specific commentary expanded to address other conditions, such as sleeping sickness and smallpox. Even before the invention of the printing press, the treatises were apparently shared. Ottoman plague treatises often contained notes in the margins from physicians commenting on this or that treatment.
Plague and later epidemics also coincided with the rise of epidemiology and public health as disciplines, although some historians question whether the diseases were always the impetus. From the 14th to 16th centuries, new laws in the Ottoman Empire and parts of Europe required collection of death tolls during epidemics, Varlk says. Plague also hastened the development of preventive tools, including separate quarantine hospitals, social distancing measures, and, by the late 16th century, contact-tracing procedures, says Samuel Cohn, a historian of the Middle Ages and medicine at the University of Glasgow. All of these things that a lot of people think are very modern were being devised and developed back then. The term contagio took off, as officials and physicians sought to ascertain how plague was spread.
Cholera, caused by a bacterium in water, devastated New York and other areas in the 1800s. It gave rise not only to new sanitation practices, but also to enduring public health institutions. Statistics had proven what common sense had already known: In any epidemic, those who had the faintest chance of surviving were those who lived in the worst conditions, historian of medicine Charles Rosenberg, now an emeritus professor at Harvard University, wrote in his influential bookThe Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866. To improve those conditions, New York City created its Metropolitan Board of Health in 1866. In 1851, the French government organized the first in a series of International Sanitary Conferences that would span nearly 90 years and help guide the founding of the World Health Organization in 1948. Cholera was the stimulus for the first international meetings and cooperation on public health, Rosenberg says now.
Meanwhile, efforts to decipher disease continued: Although physicians who eyed germs as culprits remained a minority in the mid-1800s, disease was no longer an incident in a drama of moral choice and spiritual salvation, but a consequence of mans interaction with his environment, Rosenberg wrote. Fleas were identified as the carrier of plague during a global pandemic in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the concept of insects as vectors of disease has influenced public health and epidemiology ever since.
A curious mix of remembering and forgetting trails many epidemics. Some quickly vanish from memory, says David Barnes, a historian of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The 1918 flu, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide but was also overshadowed by World War I, is a classic example of a forgotten ordeal, he says. One would expect that that would be a revolutionary, transformative trauma, and yet very little changed in its wake. There was no vast investment in public health infrastructure, no mammoth infusion of money into biomedical research. Although the 1918 pandemic did help spur a new field of virology, that research advanced slowly until the electron microscope arrived in the early 1930s.
In contrast, the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s left a potent legacy, Barnes says. A new breed of patient-activists fought doggedly for their own survival, demanding rapid access to experimental treatments. They ultimately won the battle, reshaping policies for subsequent drug approvals. But, It wasnt the epidemic per sethe damage, the death toll of AIDSthat made that happen, Barnes says. It was activists who were organized and persistent, really beyond anything our society had ever seen.
Its through this lens of human agency that Barnes and other historians contemplate COVID-19s potential scientific legacy. The pandemic, like its predecessors, cast light on uncomfortable truths, ranging from the impact of societal inequities on health to waste in clinical trials to paltry investments in public health. Questions loom about how to buttress labsfinancially or otherwisethat were immobilized by the pandemic.
In COVID-19s wake, will researchers refashion what they study and how they work, potentially accelerating changes already underway? Or will what Snowden calls societal amnesia set in, fueled by the craving to leave a pandemic behind? The answers will come over decades. But scientists are beginning to shape them now.
JOHANNESBURGViolence and looting in parts of South Africa, triggered by the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma, are broadening to reflect more deep-seated problems in the continents most developed economy, where a third pandemic lockdown is exacerbating economic pain and joblessness that has disproportionately affected the poor.
Police,nowbolstered by asmalldeployment of soldiers, struggled for a third day to contain crowds ransacking warehouses and shopping centers in the economic capital of Johannesburg and the port city of Durban.In hospitals, doctors already stretched by a record wave of Covid-19 infectionshad trouble caringfor the injured, with many nurses and other staff unable to come to work because of roadblocks and the broader insecurity, officials said.
The countrys police ministry warned that the continued blockage of some of South Africas main transport routes could within days lead to shortages of food and other essentials and that mass gatherings could prompt a fresh rise in Covid-19 cases. At least 72 people have died amid the instability, officials said Tuesday, some trampled to death in shopping-center stampedes.
People are tired and frustrated with the whole situation, said Abram Lekganyane, who usually sells durags, sunglasses and masks at a stall at the Pan Africa Shopping Centre in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra. Mr. Lekganyane said he checked on his wares in a nearby storage facility and saw people leaving with everything from plasma televisions to sound systems and groceries.
The spark may have been Zuma. Now its a revolution against the lockdown, because nothing is being provided, he said.
A man receives a COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic in Springfield, Mo., in June. Vaccination rates in southern Missouri are low, a factor officials say is helping drive what's now the nation's largest outbreak. Nathan Papes/AP hide caption
A man receives a COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic in Springfield, Mo., in June. Vaccination rates in southern Missouri are low, a factor officials say is helping drive what's now the nation's largest outbreak.
In Springfield, Mo., firefighters are giving vaccine shots. Churches are scrambling to schedule vaccine clinics. Students and staff at summer school at the public schools are back to wearing masks.
Dozens of traveling nurses are due to arrive at one of the city's two biggest hospitals over the coming weeks; extra ventilators from around Missouri and Arkansas were transported to the other major hospital after it ran short over the July Fourth weekend.
The outbreak of COVID-19 in southwest Missouri and northern Arkansas has become the nation's largest and is mostly driven by the highly contagious delta variant. Officials warn it could continue to grow unchecked if vaccination rates stay low.
"We are truly in a very dangerous predicament," Springfield Mayor Ken McClure said Monday at a press conference. "While we are one of the unfortunate few early hot spots of the delta variant, we are not giving up. It is not too late. We need to stay the course."
In Missouri, the seven-day average of new cases is near 1,400 new positive cases each day, up more than 150% from a month ago. In Arkansas, that number is up 287%.
Caseload and hospitalization rates in the Ozarks region have reached levels not seen since the winter, officials said. In several counties across Missouri and Arkansas, caseloads have now reached or surpassed their winter peaks.
According to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the delta variant accounts for more than 73% of new cases in Missouri, by far the highest percentage of any state.
The Springfield-Greene County Health Department reported 17 new COVID-19 deaths in its most recent reporting period, which ended July 4. None had been fully vaccinated.
"Begging people to take the vaccine while there is still time. If you could see the exhaustion in the eyes of our nurses who keep zipping up body bags, we beg you," tweeted Steve Edwards, president and CEO of CoxHealth, a six-hospital system in southwest Missouri based in Springfield.
CoxHealth's hospital in Springfield was treating 125 COVID-19 patients as of Monday. The city's other major hospital, Mercy Hospital Springfield, reported 134 patients with COVID-19, including several children. More than 20 were on ventilators.
As a result of the influx, Mercy Hospital announced Sunday it was opening a sixth COVID-19 unit. Last year, it needed only five.
More than half of patients are from the rural counties around Springfield, according to Greene County health data.
There are few pandemic restrictions in place anymore in the southern part of Missouri, which is a haven for tourism in the summer. The lakes and rivers of the Ozarks attract tourists from around the region for camping, boating and lake house vacations. The city of Branson hosts dozens of live music shows every week. Memorial Day and July Fourth draw huge numbers of people to the area.
But many of the rural counties that make up this part of Missouri have among the lowest vaccination rates in the state. Overall, about 45% of Missourians have received their first shot, but in more than 20 counties in southern Missouri, fewer than a quarter of residents have done so.
"I think we were all hoping that we wouldn't see COVID much this summer, but it is definitely not the fact here in Springfield," said William Sistrunk, the lead infectious disease physician at Mercy Hospital, speaking to NPR.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signs legislation last month restricting local officials' ability to enact public health restrictions. David A. Lieb/AP hide caption
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signs legislation last month restricting local officials' ability to enact public health restrictions.
Gov. Mike Parson has encouraged Missourians to get the vaccine, as he has done. He lifted the state's pandemic restrictions in May and has been vocal about Missourians' right to reject the vaccine if they choose. In June, he signed a bill limiting local governments' ability to enact public health restrictions.
Parson said last week he would oppose a door-to-door vaccination campaign by government workers.
"We all should be working together trying to find a solution to get more vaccine in more people's arms, not trying to force people to take it, not trying to scare them into it. Just make sure that they understand the facts," Parson said, speaking to reporters in Kansas City.
Local officials in southern Missouri, especially Springfield, are taking a more active stand in encouraging vaccinations.
On Monday, the mayor and local health officials held a press conference at a church the city has partnered with to distribute vaccines, where they denounced misinformation and politicization about vaccines.
Asked about the cheers over low vaccination rates at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend, the county's acting health director said it was heartbreaking.
"To hear that people are cheering against the tool that can save lives when we're sitting in the middle of a crisis where people are dying it breaks my heart," said Katie Towns, acting director of the county's health department.
Vaccination rates have risen slowly but steadily in this part of Missouri. Mercy Hospital Springfield is seeing more demand for vaccination appointments in recent days, officials said, and is now vaccinating roughly 250 people per day, up from about 150 earlier in the summer.
"Gradually in the past week or couple weeks we have seen a small increase in the number of people who are interested. I think hopefully they're realizing this is a pretty serious situation," Dr. Nancy Yoon, chief medical officer for the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, told NPR member station KCUR.
Now, the outbreak that began in the Ozarks has started to spread around the state. Case data and sewer surveillance are showing an uptick in the Kansas City and St. Louis metro areas, state officials said. In St. Louis County, the county with the state's third-highest vaccination rate, cases are up 63% over the last two weeks.
"Unfortunately, Missouri turned out to be among those several states that do have those vulnerable spots," Dr. George Turabelidze, state epidemiologist at the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, told St. Louis Public Radio. "Those are spots where people are under-vaccinated, where people have low natural immunity levels and [where] some communities assumed the pandemic was already behind us."
In Springfield, health care workers have braced for what they expect to be a long and challenging summer, as the number of people hospitalized in the county has persistently trended up.
"You feel like you're kind of beating your head on that proverbial brick wall trying to tell people, understand what we're seeing," Erik Frederick, chief administrative officer at Mercy Hospital, said in an interview with NPR.
"This is real. It's right here in front of us."
St. Louis Public Radio and KCUR contributed to this report.
Psaki and members of the White House COVID-19 response team have explained that the trusted messengers who will be going door to door to provide information about the vaccines will be doctors, faith and community leaders, and other volunteers not federal employees. She said the campaign is actually a continuation of an effort that has been ongoing since at least April.
So, those are the people who are the trusted messengers around the country. And we believe that we need to empower these individuals to continue to work in communities to make sure people know that these vaccines are safe, that they can save lives, Psaki said in a July 8 press briefing.
Even before the first vaccines were rolled out in mid-December, Biden himself said on Dec. 4 that he would not federally mandate that Americans get a vaccine when he became president.
No, I dont think it should be mandatory, then-President-elect Biden said in response to a question about possible vaccine mandates. I wouldnt demand it to be mandatory, but I would do everything in my power, just like I dont think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide, Ill do everything in my power as president of [the] United States to encourage people to do the right thing.
In a July 12 press briefing, Psaki reaffirmed that the federal government would not mandate vaccinations although, she said the administration would support entities that do require the shots.
Thats not a decision that we are making. Thats not a that is not our intention from the federal government, she said in response to a question about local mandates. There will be decisions made by private-sector entities, by universities, by educational institutions, and even perhaps by local leaders, should they decide that is how to keep their community safe. If they decide to make that decision, we certainly support them in that step.
We asked Greenes office for support for her claim that vaccinations would be required as part of the door-to-door campaign. We have not yet received a reply.
The freshman Republican congresswoman from Georgia made other claims in her tweet that we have previously addressed.
She said there have been 5,946 reported deaths after taking the #COVID19 vaccine, leaving the misleading impression that the deaths were caused by the vaccines.
It is true that 5,946 deaths were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, as of July 6. But [r]eports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website.
As weve written before, anyone can submit a report of an adverse event to VAERS regardless of whether the vaccine was a factor. In the case of deaths, health care providers are required to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if its unclear whether the vaccine was the cause, the CDC says.
A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC said of death reports. However, recent reports indicate a plausible causal relationship between the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and TTS, a rare and serious adverse eventblood clots with low plateletswhich has caused deaths.
As of July 6, the Food and Drug Administration and CDC had identified 38 cases of the rare blood clotting condition, which is known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS. There have been three deaths from the condition among those cases, as of May 7.
Greene also tweeted that the vaccine is NOT FDA approved which is true, but misleading.
As weve noted, the FDA has authorized three COVID-19 vaccines including the one manufactured by Johnson & Johnson for emergency use. In order to grant an emergency use authorization, regulators must determine that the product may be effective and the known and potential benefits of a product outweigh its known and potential risks a standard that is typically less stringent than the standard full licensure, which is called a biologics license application, or BLA.
However, for the three COVID-19 vaccines, the FDA set up more rigorous EUA requirements that resemble the process for a BLA. The FDA required at least one well-designed Phase 3 clinical trial that demonstrates the vaccines safety and efficacy in a clear and compelling manner and wanted to see at least two months of follow-up data on half or more of the participants.
Greene disregards the rigorous clinical trials and real-world evidence that show the vaccines have been safe and effective.
According to CDC data, the seven-day rolling average of daily deaths from COVID-19 has declined by about 94% since the vaccines became available in the U.S. The seven-day average of daily deaths was 2,779 on Dec. 14; as of July 11, it was down to 176.
Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have filed for final approval of their vaccines.
Finally, while claiming that 33,631,656 Americans SURVIVED covid, Greene did not acknowledge that more than 600,000 U.S. deaths have been attributed to the disease. Even some individuals who have survived an infection have reported experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and side effects that persist for months.
Whats more, only a small percentage of recent COVID-19 deaths have been people who were vaccinated, according to government data.
In a July 1 White House COVID-19 response team briefing, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that preliminary data from a collection of states since January suggest 99.5% of deaths from COVID-19 in these states have occurred in unvaccinated people.
With vaccines available across the country, the suffering and loss we are now seeing is nearly entirely avoidable, she said.
Walenskys remarks are in line with an Associated Press analysis that found that nearly all of the people in the U.S. who died from COVID-19 in May were not vaccinated.
About 150 out of more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths that month were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average, the AP reported.
The news service also said that fully vaccinated people accounted for less than 1,200 or about 1.1% of more than 107,000 COVID-19 related hospitalizations that month.
Editors note:SciChecks COVID-19/Vaccination Projectis made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation hasno controlover our editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation. The goal of the project is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.
Biden, Joe. Remarks by President Biden on the COVID-19 Response and the Vaccination Program. Transcript. Whitehouse.gov. 6 Jul 2021.
Taylor Greene, Marjorie. @mtgreenee. 5,946 reported deaths after taking the #COVID19 vaccine. The vaccine is NOT FDA approved. 33,631,656 Americans SURVIVED covid. But Biden & the Dems are coming to your front door to force you to take the vax, schools say your healthy kids need it, and you still think your free? Twitter. 9 Jul 2021.
Psaki, Jen. Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Jen Psaki Aboard Air Force One En Route Crystal Lake, IL. Transcript. Whitehouse.gov. 7 Jul 2021.
Psaki, Jen. Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki. Transcript. Whitehouse.gov. 12 Jul 2021.
CNN New Day. Transcript. 7 Jul 2021.
Zients, Jeff. Press Briefing by White House COVID-19 Response Team and Public Health Officials. Transcript. Whitehouse.gov. 8 Jul 2021.
Joe Biden Speech on 2020 Job Numbers & Economy. Video. Rev.com. 4 Dec 2020.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Selected Adverse Events Reported after COVID-19 Vaccination. Cdc.gov. Accessed 11 Jul 2021.
Jaramillo, Catalina. Viral Posts Misuse VAERS Data to Make False Claims About COVID-19 Vaccines. FactCheck.org. 31 Mar 2021, updated 14 May 2021.
McDonald, Jessica. Q&A on COVID-19 Vaccines. FactCheck.org. 18 Dec 2020, updated 26 May 2021.
Pfizer and BioNTech Initiate Rolling Submission of Biologics License Application for U.S. FDA Approval of Their COVID-19 Vaccine. Press release. 7 May 2021.
Moderna Announces Initiation of Rolling Submission of Biologics License Application (BLA) with U.S. FDA for the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine. Press release. 1 Jun 2021.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Trends in Number of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in the US Reported to CDC, by State/Territory. Cdc.gov. Accessed 12 Jul 2021.
Walensky, Rochelle. Press Briefing by White House COVID-19 Response Team and Public Health Officials. Transcript. Whitehouse.gov. 1 Jul 2021.
Johnson, Carla K. and Mike Stobbe. Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated. Associated Press. 24 Jun 2021.
The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of July 13, 2021, there have been 3,051,586 total confirmatory laboratory results received for COVID-19, with 164,685 total cases and 2,909 deaths.
There were no deaths reported to DHHR over the last 24 hours.
CASES PER COUNTY: Barbour (1,518), Berkeley (12,909), Boone (2,185), Braxton (1,022), Brooke (2,250), Cabell (8,927), Calhoun (398), Clay (543), Doddridge (647), Fayette (3,562), Gilmer (889), Grant (1,318), Greenbrier (2,913), Hampshire (1,933), Hancock (2,846), Hardy (1,587), Harrison (6,222), Jackson (2,269), Jefferson (4,811), Kanawha (15,535), Lewis (1,314), Lincoln (1,607), Logan (3,305), Marion (4,669), Marshall (3,542), Mason (2,067), McDowell (1,631), Mercer (5,215), Mineral (2,994), Mingo (2,774), Monongalia (9,410), Monroe (1,226), Morgan (1,241), Nicholas (1,913), Ohio (4,319), Pendleton (726), Pleasants (959), Pocahontas (684), Preston (2,965), Putnam (5,362), Raleigh (7,109), Randolph (2,863), Ritchie (763), Roane (667), Summers (866), Taylor (1,290), Tucker (548), Tyler (751), Upshur (1,983), Wayne (3,187), Webster (555), Wetzel (1,399), Wirt (464), Wood (7,965), Wyoming (2,068).
Free pop-up COVID-19 testing is available today in Barbour, Berkeley, Boone, Brooke, Clay, Grant, Jefferson, Lincoln, Logan, Marshall, Mingo, Morgan, and Wyoming counties.
Barbour County
9:00 AM 11:00 AM, Barbour County Health Department, 109 Wabash Avenue, Philippi, WV
Berkeley County
10:00 AM 5:00 PM, 891 Auto Parts Place, Martinsburg, WV
Boone County
Brooke County
Clay County
1:00 PM 3:00 PM, Clay County Health Department, 452 Main Street, Clay, WV
Grant County
Jefferson County
10:00 AM 6:00 PM, Hollywood Casino, 750 Hollywood Drive, Charles Town, WV
Lincoln County
Logan County
Marshall County
Mingo County
10:00 AM 2:00 PM, Kermit Fire Department, 49 Main Street, Kermit, WV
Morgan County
1:00 PM 5:00 PM, Valley Health War Memorial Hospital, 1 Health Way, Berkeley Springs, WV
Wyoming County
11:00 AM 3:00 PM, Wyoming County Fire Department, 12 Park Street, Pineville, WV
John Lund/Marc Romanelli | Getty Images
The Covid-19 pandemic has not been the job crisis the Great Recession was for older workers. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's easier for people in that age cohort to find new work.
In fact, April 2020 saw the biggest gap ever in the unemployment rate between workers 65 and up and those ages 25 to 54.
Today, the numbers for older workers do not look as dire.
The labor force participation rate for workers 55 and over has held steady in recent months, according to the most recent jobs report.
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However, workers in that age cohort are increasingly falling into the category of long-term unemployed, which means they have been seeking work for 27 weeks or longer.
Since March, more than half of job seekers ages 55 and up fit that classification, according to Jennifer Schramm, senior strategic policy advisor at AARP.
"It's still pretty hard for older job seekers, and many of them have been out there looking for quite a while now," Schramm said.
"The longer someone is out of work, the more likely they are to potentially give up and just leave the labor force entirely," she added.
That raises the question of whether Covid-19 has caused older workers to retire earlier than they might have otherwise planned.
In most recessions, there is an increase in the number of older workers who feel compelled to retire. However, those workers may eventually decide to re-enter the work force.
"We'll have a better picture of the types of retirement decisions people made as more time goes by," Schramm said.
The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College published a report earlier this year that declared, "Covid-19 is not a retirement story."
Some people will have retired early because of the recession, but I don't think it's going to have lasting impact on the trends.
Alice Munnell
director at the Center for Retirement Research
Older workers in the labor market were not disproportionately harmed by the downturn, the Center for Retirement Research found.
One reason for that is that older workers were just as likely as younger workers to have jobs that can be done remotely. However, the less educated workers were, the more likely they might be adversely affected, according to the research.
"I think some people will have retired early because of the recession, but I don't think it's going to have lasting impact on the trends, and the numbers are small," said Alicia Munnell, director at the Center for Retirement Research.
For older workers who do decide to seek new positions, one concern age discrimination may be especially top of mind now.
A recent AARP survey found 78% of workers have either seen or experienced age discrimination in the work place.
"That number is higher than we've ever seen it," Schramm said.
That follows another AARP survey that found 44% of older workers who are concerned about their job security worry their age could negatively affect their job search.
"When we see such a high number of people experiencing age discrimination, it suggests that it's a pretty serious challenge for a lot of people," Schramm said.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) Coronavirus infections in the Netherlands skyrocketed by more than 500% over the last week, the countrys public health institute reported Tuesday. The surge follows the scrapping of almost all remaining lockdown restrictions and the reopening of night clubs in late June.
The weekly update showing that nearly 52,000 people in the Netherlands tested positive for COVID-19 over the past week came a day after caretaker Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized for the June 26 lockdown relaxation and called it an error of judgment.
Rutte backtracked Friday and reintroduced some restrictions in an attempt to rein in the soaring infection rate. Bars again have to close at midnight, while discotheques and clubs were shuttered again until at least Aug. 13.
The Netherlands, along with other European nations, is facing a rise in infections fueled by the more contagious delta variant just as governments hoped to greatly ease or eliminate remaining pandemic restrictions during the summer holiday season.
With infections rising around France, President Emmanuel Macron on Monday cranked up pressure on people to get vaccinated and said special COVID passes would be required to go into restaurants and shopping malls starting next month.
The Dutch public health institute said that of the infections that could be traced to their source, 37% happened in a hospitality venue such as a bar or club. Infections among people ages 18-24 surged by 262%, followed by a 191% rise in 25-29 year-olds.
Despite the alarming rise in confirmed cases, hospital admissions increased by a modest 11%, or 60 COVID-19 patients, over the week, the institute said. Twelve of the admissions were to intensive care units.
More than 46% of the Netherlands adult population is fully vaccinated, and more than 77% of the countrys adults have had at least one shot. Health authorities said more than 1.3 million people would receive their first or second doses this week.
Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said Monday that the late June loosening of restrictions combined with a lack of social distancing and the delta variant has had, of course, an accelerating effect. You can unfortunately see that with hindsight.
Other countries in Europe are scrambling to accelerate coronavirus vaccinations in the hope of outpacing the spread of the more infectious delta variant.
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Though the metrics remain near their recorded low points, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are rising in Massachusetts as the Delta variant continues to spread.
The Department of Public Health confirmed 322 cases of COVID-19 across Friday, Saturday and Sunday compared to 269 total new cases confirmed during the four-day July 4 holiday weekend. After counting about 1,000 new cases for the two-week period that ended July 6, DPH has confirmed more than 650 new cases in the last six days.
Since falling to a low of 64 on June 25, the average number of daily new cases confirmed by DPH has climbed to 93.1 as of Monday's update from the public health agency. Over the same period of time, the state's seven-day average positive test rate has increased from its recorded low of 0.31 percent to 0.55 percent.
Hospitalizations also increased in the latest report from DPH, rising above the 100-patient threshold for the first time since the end of June to 101 COVID-19 patients as of July 11, DPH said. At 87.75, the seven-day average patient count is just slightly above its recorded low of 84.75.
The rise in cases and hospitalization comes despite increases in the number of people fully vaccinated against COVID-19. In the last seven days, providers have administered 56,456 vaccine doses and 33,114 more people became fully vaccinated. There are now 4,273,587 people vaccinated against COVID-19 in Massachusetts.
At the same time, the more contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 appears to be gaining traction in Massachusetts as in the rest of the country.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control said the mutant was responsible for about 30 percent of all U.S. cases from June 6 through June 19. In New England, the variant caused an estimated 12 percent of cases during that time, about double its share for the prior two-week period. Data for the two weeks ending July 3 was not immediately available Tuesday, but Politico reported last week that the CDC said the Delta variant was responsible for 51.7 percent of all U.S. cases between June 20 and July 3.
