Officials activated Idaho’s “crisis standards of care” for at least 10 hospitals in two public health districts, saying in a statement that a “massive increase in patients with COVID-19 who require hospitalization” had led to a shortage of staff and beds. Idaho has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, with less than 40 percent of the population fully vaccinated.
Total coronavirus infections reported in the United States passed 40 million on Tuesday, as the nation adds an average of more than 150,000 cases each day.
Here’s what to know
U.S. cases pass 40 million as nation averages more than 150,000 infections per day
Total coronavirus infections reported in the United States passed 40 million Tuesday, as the nation adds an average of more than 150,000 cases each day.
The extra-contagious delta variant has fueled an explosive new wave of infections, hospitalizations and now deaths, placing hospitals under tremendous renewed strain. Close to 650,000 people have died of covid-19 in the United States as of Tuesday, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.
Daily new cases have yet to approach a winter peak of more than 300,000, while current covid-19 hospitalizations remain below a winter record of close to 140,000. But the numbers have climbed remarkably as vaccines are widely available and proven highly effective at staving off severe cases.
Most of the country is fully vaccinated, but demand for the shots is far below a spring peak, when more than 3 million doses were given on average each day.
Tennessee leads the country in cases to date per capita, with 16,253 infections reported per 100,000 people. North Dakota and Florida rank second and third, respectively.
Northeastern states hit earliest by the pandemic — as doctors were scrambling for treatments and basic information about the virus — still have some of the highest death tolls per capita, with New Jersey leading. But in a sign of how the pandemic’s burden has shifted, Mississippi now ranks second in total deaths per capita, while Louisiana ranks fourth.
13 Miami-area school staffers have died of covid-19 this school year
Miami-Dade County Public Schools are reporting at least 13 employee deaths from covid-19 since mid-August, a tally that forecasts what could be a grim autumn for Florida educators.
Spokesperson Jaquelyn Calzadilla told The Washington Post in an email that the district is aware of 13 deaths of employees since Aug. 16 but that the figure is based on what families report.
“When relatives of employees apply for death benefits, they are not asked to disclose cause of death, so we only know about employee covid deaths anecdotally,” Calzadilla said.
Covid-19 hospitalizations in children rare but steadily rising
The average number of children hospitalized each week with covid-19 is steadily rising as the delta variant’s surge collides with the start of the school year and vaccines have yet to be approved for youth under 12.
The seven-day average of children currently hospitalized with the virus has been increasing since July and reached just shy of 2,400 on Tuesday, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. That is higher than the previous peak of 2,386 recorded in early August 2020, shortly after the Department of Health and Human Services began reporting pediatric hospitalizations.
Covid-19-related hospitalizations among people 17 or younger remain rare but have spiked in recent weeks, according to a report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the United States, the report said, between 1 and 2 children per 100,000 had a virus-related hospitalization during the week ending Aug. 14 — five times the rate observed in the week ending June 26.
In late June and July, unvaccinated adolescents between 12 and 17 years old were 10 times more likely to have a covid-19-related hospitalization than fully vaccinated members of the same age group.
“Implementation of preventive measures to reduce transmission and severe outcomes in children is critical,” researchers argued in the CDC report, advocating vaccination of those who are eligible; “universal” mask-wearing in schools; and face coverings for everyone 2 and older in child-care centers and other indoor public spaces.
The Food and Drug Administration has given full approval to Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, granting doctors new flexibility to distribute shots and fueling mounting requests to immunize children under 12. But the FDA has yet to authorize coronavirus vaccines for younger children and may not weigh in until next year.
Jacqueline Dupree contributed to this report.
Booster confusion appears to have reached epidemic proportions
Kavita Patel, a primary care physician at Mary’s Center in the District, routinely throws away perfectly good doses of coronavirus vaccine. When she opens a new multidose vial, any shots that don’t go into arms that day have to be discarded.
In recent days, she was tempted to do something different: use one of those soon-to-be wasted doses to boost her own immunity.
It might seem a no-brainer, but nothing is simple when it comes to coronavirus vaccine boosters. The Biden administration’s coronavirus task force wants to roll out boosters the week of Sept. 20. Too soon, some experts have declared. Not soon enough, others say.
Key coronavirus updates from around the world
Here’s what to know about the top coronavirus stories around the globe from news service reports.
- In Afghanistan, fears that the pandemic may worsen are intensifying. About 90 percent of 2,300 medical facilities nationally are at risk of closure, some as soon as this week, as international humanitarian donors struggle to operate and get funding into the country under Taliban leadership, the World Health Organization said.
- Indonesia’s daily coronavirus positivity rate this week dropped below the World Health Organization’s benchmark of 5 percent for the first time in the pandemic, an indicator that the country’s devastating second wave could be easing. The positivity rate, or the proportion of people tested who are positive, peaked at 33.4 percent in July, when Indonesia became Asia’s coronavirus epicenter.
- Government workers in Zimbabwe who do not want to be vaccinated against the coronavirus should resign, the country’s justice minister said. The southern African nation has vaccinated 2.7 million people, against a target of inoculating two-thirds of its 15 million population by the end of the year.
- Vietnam on Monday jailed a 28-year-old man for five years for breaking strict quarantine rules and spreading the virus, state media reported. The country is battling a delta variant surge.
- Chile has approved a coronavirus vaccine for children over 6, with its health regulator giving the green light to China’s Sinovac shot. A handful of countries, including the United States, have approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children over 12. Cuba on Monday also began vaccinating children as young as 2 with a domestically developed vaccine, as schools reopen.
Jim Jordan says vaccine mandates are un-American. George Washington thought otherwise.
At a time when the delta variant’s summer surge has renewed the nation’s divisions surrounding the coronavirus vaccines, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Monday that mandates enforcing vaccination did not reflect what it meant to be an American.
“Vaccine mandates are un-American,” Jordan tweeted.
But critics were quick to pan the lawmaker’s Labor Day message as being off — way off — by nearly 2½ centuries. History shows that George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, made the bold decision in 1777 to require his troops to be immunized after a smallpox outbreak devastated the nation.
The act would be repeated by presidents and military leaders throughout U.S. history — including just last month by the Defense Department — and a 1905 decision by the Supreme Court upheld mandatory vaccinations as American.
Three-quarters of adults have gotten at least one coronavirus vaccine dose
Three-quarters of adults in the United States have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine as of Tuesday, according to tracking by The Washington Post.
As the country headed into Labor Day, 74.9 percent of people 18 and older had received at least their first shot, The Post’s data shows. On Tuesday, the White House said an additional 1.5 million doses were administered over the holiday weekend, pushing adult vaccinations to 75 percent.
The figure marks a milestone in the country’s efforts to stop the spread of the virus and its highly infectious delta variant, which has caused infections to surge nationwide, but it masks some broad disparities in state vaccination rates.
States across the South and in the West lag behind the national average in adult vaccinations, while Northeastern states lead the country in the percentage of adults immunized. Though the shots are more accessible than ever, millions of Americans remain unvaccinated and vaccine hesitancy remains a challenge for health officials.
Still, the pace of vaccinations has ticked up from a mid-July low of about a half-million doses per day on average to an average of more than 900,000 daily shots in arms over the past week, according to tracking by The Post. Officials have attributed the rise in part to concerns about the delta variant, as well as the adoption of vaccine mandates by employers, school districts and some major metropolitan areas.
Recent polling by The Post and ABC News shows that more Americans are warming up to vaccines, including conservatives. The poll, conducted Aug. 29-Sept. 1, found that younger Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have become more willing to get vaccinated since this spring, a significant shift for one of the country’s most vaccine-hesitant groups.
Dan Balz, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
Ohio judge reverses colleague’s decision on covid patient’s ivermectin treatment
Last month, an Ohio judge ordered a hospital to treat covid patient Jeffrey Smith with ivermectin after his wife sued, alleging that the facility refused to give her husband the drug, despite him having a doctor’s prescription.
Since mid-July, Smith has been in West Chester Hospital’s intensive care unit, battling a severe case of covid-19, according to court records. Ivermectin — a deworming drug that some people are using to prevent or treat covid, despite several public health agencies advising against it — was Smith’s last shot at survival, his wife and guardian, Julie Smith, argued.
But on Monday, after Smith’s wife and the doctor who prescribed him the ivermectin failed to provide “convincing evidence” at a court hearing to show that the drug could significantly improve his condition, a different judge reversed course. Butler County Judge Michael A. Oster Jr. ordered the hospital to cease administering Smith, 51, the unproven treatment, arguing that “judges are not doctors or nurses.”
Florida doctor says she won’t treat unvaccinated patients in person
As Florida’s summer coronavirus surge takes the state into the fall with one of the nation’s highest rates of infections and hospitalizations, a physician in South Miami has told patients that she can no longer see them in person for their regular care if they are unvaccinated.
Linda Marraccini, a primary care doctor specializing in family medicine, sent a letter to her patients this month informing them that they could not be treated in person if they were not vaccinated by Sept. 15, according to WTVJ. She said she could still treat unvaccinated patients via telemedicine if they refused to get immunized at a time when the highly transmissible delta variant of the novel coronavirus has ravaged the state.
“We will no longer subject our patients and staff to unnecessary risk,” Marraccini wrote to patients, noting that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is now fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration. “This is a public health emergency — the health of the public takes priority over the rights of any given individual in this situation. It appears that there is a lack of selflessness and concern for the burden on the health and well-being of our society from our encounters.”
Idaho officials plan to start rationing medical care amid surge in hospitalizations
Idaho officials on Tuesday moved to start rationing medical care at hospitals in the northern part of the state amid a surge of coronavirus patients that has pushed the facilities beyond their limits.
Officials in a statement said they had activated the state’s “crisis standards of care” for at least 10 hospitals in two public health districts “because of a severe shortage of staffing and available beds” that was caused by a “massive increase in patients with COVID-19 who require hospitalization.”
The decision is a grim reflection of the delta variant’s rapid spread through the state, where daily cases have shot up in recent weeks to their highest point since the pandemic’s brutal wave last winter.
Idaho has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, with less than 40 percent of the population fully vaccinated.
Activating the standards means people who need medical care may have to wait for beds, or get treated in hallways or conferenced rooms that have been repurposed to deal with the overflow. Critical operations that would normally be routine may be delayed, and basic equipment may not be available.
“Crisis standards of care is a last resort. It means we have exhausted our resources to the point that our healthcare systems are unable to provide the treatment and care we expect,” Dave Jeppesen, the state’s public health director, said in the statement. “This is a decision I was fervently hoping to avoid.”
Officials urged people to get vaccinated and wear masks to slow the spread of the virus and prevent the spike in hospitalizations from worsening.
“We have reached an unprecedented and unwanted point in the history of our state,” the state’s Republican governor, Brad Little, said in the statement. “More Idahoans need to choose to receive the vaccine so we can minimize the spread of the disease and reduce the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations, many of which involve younger Idahoans and are preventable with safe and effective vaccines.”
The state health department said the standards will remain in effect until there are “sufficient resources to provide the usual standard of care to all patients.”
Hong Kong to resume quarantine-free travel for visitors from China and Macao next week
HONG KONG — Travelers who arrive in Hong Kong from mainland China as well as incoming Hong Kong residents will no longer have to quarantine beginning next week, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said in a news conference Tuesday morning.
The city has adopted a “zero covid strategy,” with some of the strictest travel restrictions in the world, in a bid to prevent imported cases. As a result, only fully vaccinated Hong Kong residents are allowed to enter from countries designated as high risk, including the United States, Britain, India, Brazil and South Africa. On arrival, residents have been required to undergo compulsory quarantine for 21 days in a hotel and take six coronavirus tests.
The city had allowed quarantine-free travel from Macao and the mainland — both which also follow a “zero tolerance strategy” — but this was curbed in August amid rising cases. Now, a daily quota of 2,000 visitors from Macao and the mainland can enter Hong Kong without compulsory quarantine via the “Come2HK” program beginning next Wednesday. Hong Kong residents will also be allowed to return from Macao and mainland China without quarantine.
Lam announced that the city had maintained having zero locally transmitted coronavirus cases for 21 days and therefore welcomed the relaunching of the program. Six areas in mainland China considered medium- or high-risk for the coronavirus will be excluded, with further details to be announced later.
Lam said the resumption of quarantine-free travel is what “the general public and the business sector hoped for.” On Tuesday, Hong Kong confirmed six additional coronavirus cases from people entering from the United States, Britain, the Philippines and Tanzania.
Amid surge in covid cases, Biden to outline plan for decreasing spread of delta variant heading into fall
Amid a surge in coronavirus cases, particularly among the unvaccinated, President Biden plans to give a speech Thursday outlining his plan to stop the spread of the delta variant as autumn approaches.
“As he has said since Day One, his administration will pull every lever to get the pandemic under control,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday aboard Air Force One. “And on Thursday, he will lay out a six-prong strategy that will help us to do just that.”
“We’re going across the public and private sectors to help continue to get the pandemic under control,” she added. “We’ll have more to preview on that, I would expect, in the coming days.”
The spread of the delta variant over the summer amid lower-than-expected vaccination rates has made it difficult for the country to get the pandemic under control. Rising infection rates, including among the vaccinated, have caused concern among medical professionals with the coming of colder weather, which will provide fewer opportunities for people to be outside — putting them in more crowded and risky situations indoors.
The number of covid-19 patients in U.S. hospitals this Labor Day was nearly twice the number recorded last Labor Day. And the rise in covid-19 hospitalizations is straining medical resources in many states.
Americans face new restrictions in the Netherlands and other European countries
Authorities in the Netherlands have made it harder for American travelers to enter their country, the latest to do so after the European Union removed the United States from its “safe” list of countries whose residents should not face travel restrictions.
As of Saturday, U.S. travelers seeking to enter the Netherlands must be vaccinated or qualify for an E.U. exemption. Regardless of vaccination status, they have to quarantine 10 days – unless they test negative for the coronavirus on their fifth day in the country. As of Monday, they also have to bring a negative test result with them even if they are vaccinated or have recovered from covid-19.
As the hyper-contagious delta variant drives up coronavirus cases in the United States, the Netherlands is the latest in Europe to downgrade the country in its sorting systems for travel restrictions. The E.U. recommended in August that member states reinstate “temporary restrictions on nonessential travel” from the United States and five other countries. (The bloc left room for member states to lift those restrictions for fully vaccinated travelers.)
Since then, Denmark has banned unvaccinated travelers from the United States unless they have a “worthy purpose” to enter the country. As of Monday, U.S. travelers can no longer enter Sweden unless they have a special reason to do so — for example, because they are residents or will “carry out essential functions” in the country.
The E.U. first lifted restrictions on American travelers in June, a decision that reflected an improving epidemiological picture, and reopened borders at the height of summer, when hard-hit southern European economies were desperate for an influx of tourism spending.
But much has changed since then as vaccination levels in many European countries have surpassed those in the United States.
According to the E.U.’s official recommendations, countries should not be on the “safe list” if they have reported more than 75 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents over the past 14 days. The United States clocked nearly 317 new cases per 100,000 people during the week ending on Sept. 4, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Activists push for delay of U.N. climate summit, citing vaccine inequity
A coalition of activists from around the globe on Tuesday called for the postponement of a major United Nations climate summit this fall in Scotland, saying a combination of coronavirus vaccine inequity, exorbitant lodging costs and the ongoing pandemic could exclude important voices — particularly those of people from small and developing nations hit hardest by global warming.
“Our concern is that those countries most deeply affected by the climate crisis and those countries suffering from the lack of support by rich nations in providing vaccines will be left out and be conspicuous by their absence,” Tasneem Essop, executive director of the Climate Action Network, a collection of hundreds of nonprofit and nongovernmental advocacy groups across 130 countries, said in a statement.
“There has always been an inherent power imbalance within the U.N. climate talks, and this is now compounded by the health crisis,” she added.
Greenpeace joined the push Tuesday to delay the global climate negotiations, saying that Britain, as the host nation, has failed to guarantee “the safe and equitable participation” of delegations from around the world, especially those battered by both the coronavirus and climate-fueled disasters.
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