WHO asks wealthy nations to hold off on Covid boosters at least through September

 The World Health Organization on Wednesday called on wealthy nations to stop the distribution of Covid-19 booster shots, citing vaccine inequity around the world.

The agency said the halt should last at least two months, to give the world a chance to meet the director-general’s goal of vaccinating 10% of the population of every country by the end of September.

“We need an urgent reversal from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries, to the majority going to low income countries,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing.

The request is part of Ghebreyesus’ plan to vaccinate 40% of the world by December, according to his senior advisor, Dr. Bruce Aylward.

“The big picture here is as a policy not to be moving forward with boosters until we get the whole world at a point where the older populations, people with comorbidities, people who are working at the front lines, are all protected to the degree possible with vaccines,” Aylward said at the briefing.

Vaccinating all the world’s population is critical to ending the coronavirus pandemic, experts say. The delta variant that is now ravaging the U.S. was first detected by scientists in India after the original Covid strain was allowed to spread, replicate and ultimately mutate. The result was a highly infectious variant with a higher chance of vaccine evasion that has come to dominate in most countries.

More strains will emerge, posing more of a risk to all countries, vaccinated or unvaccinated, unless more of the world’s population is immunized.

“The entire world is in the middle of this and as we’ve seen with the emergence of variant after variant, we cannot get out of it unless the whole world gets out of it together, and with the huge disparity in vaccination coverage, we’re simply not going to be able to achieve that,” Aylward said.

The duration of the moratorium request could be extended if vaccine rates in countries with low rates do not increase.

“Right now, if you look at how vaccines are being used globally, the uptake rate by high-income countries, upper-middle-income countries, is absorbing too much of the global supply for the lowest-income countries,” Aylward said.

The move comes after Israel announced the country would give booster doses to its elderly population. The Dominican Republic has also been administering booster doses to its population, while neighboring country Haiti only recently secured its first batch of vaccine doses.

People in the U.S. are also finding ways to secure booster shots.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital said Tuesday that they would allow patients who have received the one dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine to receive a supplemental shot of an mRNA vaccine.

Vaccine giant Pfizer has maintained that people will need a booster shot, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said the data warranting the need for booster doses remains unclear.

WHO officials also said beyond December, they hope to have 70% of the world vaccinated by the middle of 2022, “and that’s when we can really start focusing around the edges on just how high it needs to go beyond that,” Dr. Kate O’Brien, WHO director of the department of immunization, vaccines and biologicals, said at the briefing.

Until that goal is met, global health officials hope that countries with high vaccination rates will comply with the moratorium request, and more importantly, the call to end vaccine inequity.

“We need a strategy of vaccines, and we need the public health and social measures at individual level and community level, we need everybody to step up right now,” WHO Covid-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/who-calls-for-moratorium-on-covid-vaccine-boosters-at-least-through-september.html

Mayo Clinic becomes latest Arizona hospital system to restrict visitors

 Another Arizona hospital system is restricting visitor access with COVID-19 statistics on the rise in the state.

Mayo Clinic is limiting patients to one guest per day at all facilities during visitor hours, which run from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., according to a press release.

“Limiting the number of people on our campuses assists in maintaining a safe health care environment,” Mayo said in the release.

The policy started Monday, the same day Banner Health, Arizona’s largest hospital system, also restricted visits.

Banner is allowing one visitor per patient per day in four Arizona counties where the virus is more prevalent, including Maricopa and Pinal, according to a press release.

At both hospital systems, exceptions will be made in certain circumstances, including for women in labor and end-of-life visitations.

Arizona health officials on Tuesday reported 1,974 new COVID-19 cases and 30 additional deaths from the disease.

It was the largest daily update for deaths since April 20.

Hospitalizations related to COVID-19 have more than doubled since the start of July, with unvaccinated people accounting for almost all of the serious illnesses and deaths.

https://ktar.com/story/4606381/mayo-clinic-becomes-latest-arizona-hospital-system-to-restrict-visitors/

Sturgis bike rally revs back bigger, despite virus variant

 Crowds of bikers are rumbling their way towards South Dakota’s Black Hills this week, raising fears that COVID-19 infections will be unleashed among the 700,000 people expected to show up at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

The rally, which starts Friday, has become a haven for those eager to escape coronavirus precautions. Last year, the rally hardly slowed down, with roughly 460,000 people attending. Masks were mostly ditched as bikers crowded into bars, tattoo parlors and rock shows, offering a lesson in how massive gatherings could spread waves of the virus across the country.

This year — the 81st iteration of the rally — is expected to be even bigger, drawing people from around the U.S. and beyond, despite concerns about the virus’ highly contagious delta variant.

“It’s great to see a party of hundreds of thousands of people,” said Zoltán Vári, a rallygoer who was settling into his campsite Tuesday after making the trek from Hungary.

He was eager to return to riding a Harley-Davidson through the Black Hills after missing last year. Vári evaded U.S. tourism travel restrictions on Europe by spending two weeks in Costa Rica before making his way to South Dakota. He hopes 1 million people will show up. Typical attendance is around a half a million.

The city of Sturgis, usually a sleepy community of under 7,000, tried to tamp things down last year, canceling most city-sponsored events and promotion, but hordes of bikers showed up anyway.

“The rally is a behemoth, and you cannot stop it,” said Carol Fellner, a local who worried that this year’s event would cause a fresh outbreak of cases. “I feel absolutely powerless.”

This year, the city is embracing the crowds. Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has given the rally her blessing and will appear in a charity ride. The event is a boon for tourism, powering over $800 million in sales, according to the state Department of Tourism.

The rally is happening as other giant summer events — from state fairs to music festivals like Lollapalooza — are returning around the U.S. In Wisconsin, health officials say nearly 500 coronavirus cases may be linked to the crowds that attended Milwaukee Bucks games or gathered outside the team’s arena — estimated as high as 100,000 one night — during their push to the NBA championship.

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally’s defenders argue open air is plentiful on the meandering highways and in the campgrounds where many bikers stay, but contact tracers last year reported 649 virus cases from every corner of the country linked to the rally, including one death. A team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in a published study that the 2020 rally “ had many characteristics of a superspreading event. ”

Rallygoers reasoned that after years of riding Harleys, the coronavirus was just another risk. Five motorcycle riders were killed in crashes during the 2020 rally, and one fatal crash has already been reported this year.

The attitude was summed up on a T-shirt sold last year: “Screw COVID. I went to Sturgis.”

But public health experts warned the massive gathering revved the virus far beyond those who chose to attend. One team of economists argued that the rally set off a chain reaction that resulted in 250,000 cases nationwide. However, that paper was not peer reviewed and was criticized by some top epidemiologists — as well as some bikers — for overestimating the rally’s impact.

While it’s not clear how many cases can be blamed on last year’s rally, it coincided with the start of a sharp increase across the Great Plains that ultimately crescendoed in a deadly winter.

The gathering could potentially power a fresh wave of infections like the one that is currently shattering hospitalization records in parts of the South, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

“I understand how people want to move on from this pandemic — God knows I want to — but the reality is you can’t ignore it,” he said. “You can’t just tell the virus you’re done with it.”

The current rate of cases in South Dakota is roughly half of what it was in the days leading up to last year’s rally. Deaths have also dropped significantly.

COVID-19 vaccines provide hope the rally won’t set off virus spread, but it’s not clear how many in the Sturgis crowd have received a shot. Unlike events like Lollapalooza that required attendees to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test, precautions at Sturgis are minimal and optional. The biggest step the city has taken was to allow rallygoers to drink on public property, reasoning it will spread the bacchanalia into the open air.

Only about 46% of adults in the county that hosts Sturgis are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC, compared with 60.6% nationwide. Vaccination rates were similarly low in the five counties where most 2020 rallygoers hailed from, according to an analysis of cellphone data from the Center for New Data. Only one — Maricopa County, Arizona — has cracked 50%. Campbell County in Wyoming, has the lowest rate, at just 27%.

Vári, the biker from Hungary, said he’s been fully vaccinated — but only because he falsely thought he needed proof of vaccination to get into the U.S.

“Sturgis or bust,” he wrote on Facebook.

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-health-coronavirus-pandemic-sd-state-wire-71bb16eee8ff6f9a4540405a3c69aba3

China seals city as its worst virus outbreak in a year grows

 China’s worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic a year and a half ago escalated Wednesday with dozens more cases around the country, the sealing-off of one city and the punishment of its local leaders.

Since that initial outbreak was tamed last year, China’s people had lived virtually free of the virus, with extremely strict border controls and local distancing and quarantine measures stamping out scattered, small flareups when they occurred.

Now, the country is on high alert as an outbreak of cases connected to the international airport in the eastern city of Nanjing touched at least 17 provinces. China reported 71 new cases of COVID-19 from local transmission Wednesday, more than half of them in coastal Jiangsu province, of which Nanjing is the capital.

In Wuhan, the central city where the first cases of COVID-19 were identified in late 2019, mass testing has shown some of its newly reported cases have a high degree of similarity to cases discovered in Jiangsu province. Those cases have been identified as being caused by the highly transmissible delta variant that first was identified in India.

Meanwhile, another COVID-19 hotspot was emerging in the city of Zhangjiajie, near a scenic area in Hunan province famous for sandstone cliffs, caves, forests and waterfalls that inspired the on-screen landscape in the “Avatar” films.

The city, with a population of about 1.5 million, ordered residential communities sealed Sunday, preventing people from leaving their homes. In a subsequent order on Tuesday, officials said no one, whether tourist or resident, could leave the city.

The city government’s Communist Party disciplinary committee on Wednesday issued a list of local officials who “had a negative impact” on pandemic prevention and control work who would be punished.

The city itself has only recorded 19 cases since last week, three of which were people with no symptoms, which are counted separately. However, individual cases linked to Zhangjiajie’s outbreak have spread to at least five provinces, according to the Shanghai government-owned newspaper the Paper.

Far higher numbers were reported in Yangzhou, a city next to Nanjing, which has recorded 126 cases as of Tuesday.

After announcing last week that they were suspending issuance of passports for travelers except for those with an urgent need, officials at the National Immigration Administration reiterated the message again on Wednesday at a press briefing.

As of Tuesday, China has given more than 1.71 billion vaccine doses to its population of 1.4 billion. It’s not clear how many of those are first or both doses, but at least 40% of the population is fully protected, according to earlier announcements.

Chinese companies have not publicly shared real-world data on how effective their vaccines are against the delta variant, though officials have said the vaccines prevent severe disease and hospitalization.

In addition to the 71 cases of local transmission, 25 travelers from overseas have COVID-19 and have entered quarantine, making the total for Wednesday 96 new cases. The National Health Commission also said 15 people tested positive for the virus but have no symptoms.

China has reported 4,636 deaths and 93,289 cases of COVID-19 overall, most of them from the original outbreak in Wuhan that peaked early last year.

https://apnews.com/article/business-health-china-coronavirus-pandemic-46fd21e9be94b2b3f4ebeb59ec4fa77c

U.S. developing plan to require foreign visitors to be vaccinated

 The Biden administration is developing a plan to require nearly all foreign visitors to the United States to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as part of eventually lifting travel restrictions that bar much of the world from entering the United States, a White House official told Reuters on Wednesday.

The White House wants to re-open travel, which would boost business for the airlines and tourism industry, but is not ready to immediately lift restrictions because of the rising COVID-19 case load and highly transmissible COVID-19 Delta variant, the official said.

The Biden administration has interagency working groups working "to have a new system ready for when we can reopen travel," the official said, adding it includes "a phased approach that over time will mean, with limited exceptions, that foreign nationals traveling to the United States (from all countries) need to be fully vaccinated."

The extraordinary U.S. travel restrictions were first imposed on China in January 2020 to address the spread of COVID-19. Numerous other countries have been added, most recently India in May.

The official's comments were the strongest signal to date that the White House sees a path to unwinding those restrictions.

Last month, Reuters reported that the White House was considering requiring foreign visitors to be vaccinated as part of discussions on how to relax travel restrictions.

The official added the "working groups are developing a policy and planning process to be prepared for when the time is right to transition to this new system."

Some countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom, are relaxing or lifting restrictions for vaccinated Americans to travel.

The White House has held discussions with airlines and others about how it would implement a policy of requiring vaccines for foreign visitors. The administration must also answer other questions including what proof it would accept of vaccination and if the United States would accept vaccines that some countries are using but which have not yet been authorized by U.S. regulators.

The United States currently bars most non-U.S. citizens who within the last 14 days have been in the United Kingdom, the 26 Schengen nations in Europe without border controls, Ireland, China, India, South Africa, Iran and Brazil.

The White House interagency talks previously had focused on requiring vaccines for nearly all foreign visitors arriving by air. The White House official did not immediately answer questions about whether the administration is developing plans to also require visitors arriving from Mexico and Canada to be vaccinated before crossing land borders.

Currently, the only foreign travelers allowed to cross by land into the United States from Mexico and Canada are essential workers such as truck drivers or nurses.

It was not clear how long the administration will maintain existing restrictions but the official reiterated that infections "appear likely to continue to increase in the weeks ahead" and that "the United States will maintain existing travel restrictions at this point."

Industry officials still think it will be at least weeks and potentially months before restrictions are lifted.

Former President Donald Trump's administration did not set any metrics for adding or dropping countries from the list, and neither has Biden's. Trump did attempt to lift European countries from the restrictions in January but Biden reinstated the restrictions before they were dropped.

Many critics of the restrictions say they no longer make sense because some countries with high rates of COVID-19 infections are not on the restricted list while some countries on the list have the pandemic under control.

The restrictions have separated loved ones and prevented some people working in the United States from returning to home countries and others from coming for employment.

Last week, Reuters reported the White House was discussing the potential of mandating COVID-19 vaccines for international visitors. The sources said at the time no decisions had been made.

The Biden administration has also been talking to U.S. airlines in recent weeks about establishing international contact tracing for passengers before lifting travel restrictions.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-us-developing-plan-require-foreign-visitors-be-vaccinated-official-2021-08-04/

At Least 40 Children Admitted To Fla. Hospitals For COVID On Monday

  Just released data from the Centers for Disease Control reveals that at least 40 children were admitted to hospitals in Florida for COVID-19 on Monday.

The data lists these children as “Pediatric COVID Confirmed.”

The CDC is pulling this data from 228 hospitals reporting daily information. Among the hospitals locally, Delray Medical Center, West Boca Medical Center, Boca Raton Regional Hospital, and both Baptist East and West.

Also on Monday, 1,759 adults were newly admitted with confirmed cases of COVID-19.

The admissions were logged as the American Academy of Pediatrics released a list of symptoms that pediatricians are being encouraged to look for as they examine children who have tested positive for COVID-19.

Wrote the AAP in an advisory to pediatricians:

“At the follow-up visit after infection, pediatricians should take note of ongoing or residual issues that can include:

• Respiratory: Because the lungs are the most commonly affected organ for patients with COVID-19 infection, persistent respiratory symptoms following acute COVID-19 are not uncommon. The symptoms include chest pain, cough, and exercise-induced labored breathing.
• Cardiac: One of the most concerning aspects of COVID-19 infection is the risk for heart problems, including myocarditis. Symptoms of myocarditis can include chest pain and shortness of breath, as well as arrhythmias and fatigue.
• Cognitive fogginess or fatigue: “Brain fog” (a generic term that refers to unclear or “fuzzy” thinking, inattention, difficulty with concentration or memory) is a frequent neurologic complaint in adults after COVID-19 infection. School aged-children and adolescents may have similar complaints.
• Physical fatigue/poor endurance: Children and adolescents may complain of fatigue and poor endurance even without known cardiac and respiratory symptoms. Assuming both cardiac and respiratory function are clinically normal, post-viral fatigue typically improves over time.
• Mental health/behavioral health: Pediatricians should be aware of the impact of stress and adjustment disorders when diagnosing and managing new symptoms in children who have experienced COVID-19.”

Concern over Pediatric COVID-19 cases, always high, continues to rise as the Palm Beach County School District’s first day of school is set for August 10th. As we reported earlier today, the school district is reminding parents that children must be quarantined for ten days following a positive test.

https://bocanewsnow.com/2021/08/04/florida-at-least-40-children-admitted-to-hospitals-for-covid-on-monday/

Nearly 19% of active COVID-19 cases in Arkansas are children

 Hospital administrators, doctors, and others in the health care industry in Arkansas have been warning for weeks that the COVID-19 patients they are treating lately are younger and sicker than the ones they treated earlier in the pandemic, largely as a result of the increased presence of the rapidly spreading delta variant in the state.

On Tuesday, Arkansas Secretary of Health Jose Romero shared some data to back up those claims.

Romero told reporters at a press conference held Tuesday that nearly 19% of active cases of the virus in the state are currently among children under 18.

“Between April and July of this year, there has been a 517% increase in the number of cases under 18 years of age,” he said.

Half of those children come from the under 12 group that is not yet eligible for a vaccine.

“There’s nearly a 690% increase in cases in children 12 and under,” he said.

Romero said that hospitalizations among children 18 and under are up 270% in recent weeks, with ICU admissions among children also up 275%. 20% of those individuals are under 12, he said.

“I think these numbers exemplify and bring out a very sobering aspect of the pandemic in our state,” he said. “We have a group of individuals that are extremely susceptible to infection because they do not have eligibility for a vaccine.

Romero said only 32.2% of children between 12 and 18 currently eligible to receive a vaccine have had at least one dose, and only 18.4% are considered fully vaccinated.

“I share this number with you so that we can increase our immunization numbers among those who can receive it, and that we can encourage the use of masking,” Romero said. “As the governor said, we do not have a (mask) mandate, but I clearly recommend this for children going to school.”

Wednesday’s special legislative session to address mask mandate ban, unemployment opt-out

The governor announced Tuesday he has called a special session of the General Assembly on Wednesday to reconsider Act 1002, legislation that disallows state agencies, schools, university, and other public bodies from enacting mask requirements.

The session will be held at 10 a.m.

Hutchinson reiterated on Tuesday that he is not in favor of a statewide mask mandate, but the governor is urging lawmakers to reconsider at least a portion of Act 1002 to allow public school districts to decide whether to require masking at local schools, especially for those aged 12 and under who are not yet eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine.

“The reasons for this is, they are required to go to school,” he said. “Secondly, we understand the value of in-classroom instruction, and we want those children to be as safe as possible. Local school districts are all different across the state, and they have different opinions on this. And they reflect different wishes of parents and their constituents. Local school districts should make the call, and they should have more options to make sure that their school is a safe environment during a very challenging time for education.”

Legislators will also vote on whether to affirm the governor’s decision to opt out of a federally-funded pandemic employment benefit program that would pay out-of-work Arkansans $300 per week.

Hutchinson had previously announced in May the state would opt out of federal unemployment assistance on June 26. The federal program would have extended for ten more weeks, through early September. A judge this week filed a temporary injunction against Hutchinson ordering continuation of the program pending an appeal of the Arkansas Supreme Court.

Legislators uphold governors emergency order

Arkansas legislators in the Arkansas House and Senate upheld the governor’s declaration of emergency in a special session held Tuesday in Little Rock.

Legislators took no action on the measure, essentially affirming the measure enacted by executive order last week, set to extend for 60 days from Thursday.

Last session, legislators voted to limit the governor’s power to declare a state of emergency related to public health at his sole discretion.

“In the last legislative session, the General Assembly changed the law to accept an equal responsibility in managing the state’s response to the current public health crisis,” Hutchinson said. “I know how difficult the decisions are, and how quick they have to be made when the state faces an emergency. But the law has been changed which limits my powers as governor and transfers a significant responsibility to the General Assembly. As a result of that new law, the General Assembly met today and affirmed my most recent renewal of the public health emergency. I am grateful for the quick action of the General Assembly.”

Case Update

Hutchinson announced that COVID-19 cases in Arkansas increased by 2,343 on Tuesday.

Hospitalizations were up by 30, bringing the total number of patients hospitalized in the state to 1,250.

There are currently 260 patients in the state on ventilators, up 10 since the day prior.

The state also announced 16 new deaths on Monday, bringing the total number of deaths in the state as a result of the pandemic to 6,215.

There are currently 19,499 cases of COVID-19 considered active in the state, which includes those that have tested positive by both PCR and antigen testing methods.

There were 5,106 PCR tests and 3,595 antigen tests announced Tuesday.

The new cases bring the total cumulative count in Arkansas to 391,623 since the pandemic began.

The state announced that 30,756 additional doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered, bringing the total number of doses given by the state to 2,386,676. The state lists 317,261 as partially immunized, and 1,076,733 individuals as fully immunized.

Hutchinson said he was pleased with the large number of vaccinations announced Monday.

"Yesterday, we reported 30,000 doses given out," he said. "The demand is increased, I am pleased with that.

"Thank you Arkansans for doing more research, talking to your physicians, getting information from trusted sources, and making that decision that helps us all," he said.

All Arkansans ages 12 and older are currently eligible for a vaccine.

Those who need assistance locating a vaccine can call 1-800-985-6030.

The top counties for new cases on Friday were Pulaski (276), Washington (189), and Benton (119).

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 https://www.fayettevilleflyer.com/2021/08/03/secretary-of-health-nearly-19-percent-of-active-covid-19-cases-in-arkansas-are-in-children/