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US to recommend COVID vaccine boosters at 8 months
U.S. experts are expected to recommend COVID-19 vaccine boosters for all Americans, regardless of age, eight months after they received their second dose of the shot, to ensure lasting protection against the coronavirus as the delta variant spreads across the country.
Federal health officials have been actively looking at whether extra shots for the vaccinated would be needed as early as this fall, reviewing case numbers in the U.S. as well as the situation in other countries such as Israel, where preliminary studies suggest the vaccine’s protection against serious illness dropped among those vaccinated in January.
An announcement on the U.S. booster recommendation was expected as soon as this week, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Doses would only begin to be administered widely once the Food and Drug Administration formally approves the vaccines. That action is expected for the Pfizer shot in the coming weeks.
READ: US okays Covid booster dose for those with weak immune systems
Last week, U.S. health officials recommended boosters for some with weakened immune systems, citing their higher risk of catching the virus and evidence that the vaccines’ effectiveness waned over time.
The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, said Sunday the U.S. could decide in the next couple weeks whether to offer coronavirus booster shots to Americans this fall.
Among the first to receive them could be health care workers, nursing home residents and other older Americans, who were some of the first Americans to be vaccinated once the shots received emergency use authorization last December.
Since then, more than 198 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with more than 168 million fully vaccinated. Still, the country is experiencing a fourth surge of virus cases due to the more transmissible delta variant, which is spreading aggressively through unvaccinated communities but is also responsible for an increasing number of so-called “breakthrough infections” of fully vaccinated people.
Israel, which exclusively administered the Pfizer shot, has been offering a coronavirus booster to people over 60 who were already vaccinated more than five months ago in an effort to control its own surge in cases from the delta variant.
READ: Why might COVID-19 vaccine boosters be necessary?
For months, officials had said data still indicated that people remain highly protected from COVID-19, including the delta variant, after receiving the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna regimen or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. But U.S. health officials made clear Sunday they are preparing for the possibility that the time for boosters may come sooner than later.
“There is a concern that the vaccine may start to wane in its effectiveness,” Collins said. “And delta is a nasty one for us to try to deal with. The combination of those two means we may need boosters, maybe beginning first with health care providers, as well as people in nursing homes, and then gradually moving forward” with others, such as older Americans who were among the first to get vaccinations.
He said because the delta variant only started hitting the U.S. hard in July, the “next couple of weeks” of case data will help the U.S. make a decision.
Officials were continuing to collect information as well about the J&J vaccine, which was only approved in the U.S. in late February, to determine when to recommend boosters, one of the officials said.
The White House has said that even though the U.S. has begun sharing more than 110 million vaccine doses with the world, the nation has enough domestic supply to deliver boosters to Americans should they be recommended by health officials.
Global health officials, including the World Health Organization, have called on wealthier and more-vaccinated countries to hold off on booster shots to ensure the supply of first doses for people in the developing world.
US likely to authorize COVID booster shots
After struggling for months to persuade Americans to get the COVID-19 vaccine, U.S. health officials could soon face a fresh challenge: talking vaccinated people into getting booster shots to gain longer-lasting protection as the delta variant sends infections soaring again.
As early as this week, U.S. health authorities are expected to recommend an extra dose of the vaccine for all Americans eight months after they get their second shot, according to two people who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
That means the biggest vaccination drive in U.S. history is about to get even more extensive.
The move is being driven by both the highly contagious variant and preliminary evidence that the vaccine’s protective effect starts dropping within months.
The new urgency from U.S. officials reflects how quickly the variant has knocked the country back on its heels. On July Fourth, President Joe Biden proclaimed that the nation was declaring its independence from the virus. But since then, infections, hospitalizations and deaths have increased nationwide, overloading emergency rooms across parts of the South and West.
READ: US okays Covid booster dose for those with weak immune systems
When Pfizer announced plans in July to apply for approval for boosters, U.S. officials shot back that it was too early to know whether they were needed. Experts worried that a new campaign calling for boosters would muddle the continuing campaign to win over the tens of millions of Americans who are skeptical or hesitant to get their first shots.
“We have to really make sure that while we’re spending a lot of time and effort on third doses that we don’t undermine our campaign for first vaccinations,” Lawrence Gostin, a public health specialist at Georgetown University, said Tuesday. “That’s truly the existential crisis in the United States.”
Calling for third doses could discourage people who had been skeptical of the shot’s effectiveness in the first place, Gostin warned.
Booster shots would only begin to be administered widely once the Food and Drug Administration formally approves the vaccines, which are being dispensed for now under what is known as emergency use authorization. Full approval of the Pfizer shot is expected in the coming weeks.
Last week, U.S. health officials recommended boosters for some people with weakened immune systems, such as cancer patients and organ transplant recipients.
The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, said Sunday the U.S. could decide in the next couple of weeks whether to offer booster shots this fall to other Americans as well.
Among the first to receive them could be health care workers, nursing home residents and other older Americans, who were some of the first to be vaccinated once the shots were authorized last December.
More than 198 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, or 70% of those who are eligible, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Just under 60% of Americans 12 and older are fully vaccinated.
The vaccination drive has been slower than the Biden administration had hoped for. At the same time, the variant is spreading aggressively through unvaccinated communities and also causing an increasing number of “breakthrough infections” of fully inoculated people.
Studies show the vaccine remains highly protective against severe COVID-19, but results from Israel released last month suggest its effect wanes. Its effectiveness against symptomatic infection peaked at 96% two months after study participants got their second dose. Four months later, it was down to 90%. By six months, it was about 84%.
Israel, which exclusively administered the Pfizer shot, has been offering a booster to people over 50 to control its delta surge. Researchers are still trying to understand to what extent the breakthrough infections are due to waning immunity or vulnerability to the delta variant.
On Tuesday, European medical regulators said they are talking with vaccine developers about the need for boosters but haven’t made any decisions.
On Monday, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced they submitted data to the FDA to support authorizing a booster shot for the general public. Pfizer said a small study showed people who received a third dose had higher levels of antibodies against several versions of the coronavirus, including the delta variant. The company is working on a larger study.
READ: Why might COVID-19 vaccine boosters be necessary?
Americans who received the earliest doses of Pfizer’s vaccine — mainly health care workers and nursing home residents — are approaching the eight-month mark from when they received their second dose.
“There is a concern that the vaccine may start to wane in its effectiveness,” the NIH’s Collins said. “And delta is a nasty one for us to try to deal with. The combination of those two means we may need boosters, maybe beginning first with health care providers, as well as people in nursing homes, and then gradually moving forward” with others.
He said because the variant only started hitting the country hard in July, the next couple of weeks of case data will help the U.S. make a decision.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are administered in two doses. Officials are continuing to collect information as well about the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was only approved in the U.S. in late February, to determine when to recommend boosters.
The White House has said that even though the U.S. has begun sharing more than 110 million vaccine doses with the rest of the world, the nation has enough to deliver boosters to Americans.
Global health officials, including the World Health Organization, have called on wealthier and more-vaccinated countries to hold off on booster shots to ensure the supply of first doses for people in poor corners of the world.
Gostin said the Biden administration’s plans to recommend boosters for all Americans are “a slap in the face” to other nations that haven’t yet been able to vaccinate their most vulnerable people.
“It’s tone-deaf to the rest of the world that can’t even get any doses,” he said.
US probing Autopilot problems on 765,000 Tesla vehicles
The U.S. government has opened a formal investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot partially automated driving system after a series of collisions with parked emergency vehicles.
The investigation covers 765,000 vehicles, almost everything that Tesla has sold in the U.S. since the start of the 2014 model year. Of the crashes identified by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as part of the probe, 17 people were injured and one was killed.
NHTSA says it has identified 11 crashes since 2018 in which Teslas on Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control have hit vehicles at scenes where first responders have used flashing lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board or cones warning of hazards. The agency announced the action Monday in a posting on its website.
The probe is another sign that NHTSA under President Joe Biden is taking a tougher stance on automated vehicle safety than under previous administrations. Previously the agency was reluctant to regulate the new technology for fear of hampering adoption of the potentially life-saving systems.
READ: NTSB: Tesla Autopilot, distracted driver caused fatal crash
The investigation covers Tesla’s entire current model lineup, the Models Y, X, S and 3 from the 2014 through 2021 model years.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which also has investigated some of the Tesla crashes dating to 2016, has recommended that NHTSA and Tesla limit Autopilot’s use to areas where it can safely operate. The NTSB also recommended that NHTSA require Tesla to have a better system to make sure drivers are paying attention. NHTSA has not taken action on any of the recommendations. The NTSB has no enforcement powers and can only make recommendations to other federal agencies.
“Today’s action by NHTSA is a positive step forward for safety,” NTSB Chair Jennifer L. Homendy said in a statement Monday. “As we navigate the emerging world of advanced driving assistance systems, it’s important that NHTSA has insight into what these vehicles can, and cannot, do.”
Last year the NTSB blamed Tesla, drivers and lax regulation by NHTSA for two collisions in which Teslas crashed beneath crossing tractor-trailers. The NTSB took the unusual step of accusing NHTSA of contributing to the crash for failing to make sure automakers put safeguards in place to limit use of electronic driving systems.
The agency made the determinations after investigating a 2019 crash in Delray Beach, Florida, in which the 50-year-old driver of a Tesla Model 3 was killed. The car was driving on Autopilot when neither the driver nor the Autopilot system braked or tried to avoid a tractor-trailer crossing in its path.
“We are glad to see NHTSA finally acknowledge our long standing call to investigate Tesla for putting technology on the road that will be foreseeably misused in a way that is leading to crashes, injuries, and deaths,” said Jason Levine, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, an advocacy group. “If anything, this probe needs to go far beyond crashes involving first responder vehicles because the danger is to all drivers, passengers, and pedestrians when Autopilot is engaged.”
Autopilot has frequently been misused by Tesla drivers, who have been caught driving drunk or even riding in the back seat while a car rolled down a California highway.
A message was left seeking comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations office. Shares of Tesla Inc., based in Palo Alto, California, fell 4.3% Monday.
NHTSA has sent investigative teams to 31 crashes involving partially automated driver assist systems since June of 2016. Such systems can keep a vehicle centered in its lane and a safe distance from vehicles in front of it. Of those crashes, 25 involved Tesla Autopilot in which 10 deaths were reported, according to data released by the agency.
Tesla and other manufacturers warn that drivers using the systems must be ready to intervene at all times. In addition to crossing semis, Teslas using Autopilot have crashed into stopped emergency vehicles and a roadway barrier.
The probe by NHTSA is long overdue, said Raj Rajkumar, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies automated vehicles.
Tesla’s failure to effectively monitor drivers to make sure they’re paying attention should be the top priority in the probe, Rajkumar said. Teslas detect pressure on the steering wheel to make sure drivers are engaged, but drivers often fool the system.
“It’s very easy to bypass the steering pressure thing,” Rajkumar said. “It’s been going on since 2014. We have been discussing this for a long time now.”
READ: 3 crashes, 3 deaths raise questions about Tesla's Autopilot
The crashes into emergency vehicles cited by NHTSA began on Jan. 22, 2018 in Culver City, California, near Los Angeles when a Tesla using Autopilot struck a parked firetruck that was partially in the travel lanes with its lights flashing. Crews were handling another crash at the time.
Since then, the agency said there were crashes in Laguna Beach, California; Norwalk, Connecticut; Cloverdale, Indiana; West Bridgewater, Massachusetts; Cochise County, Arizona; Charlotte, North Carolina; Montgomery County, Texas; Lansing, Michigan; and Miami, Florida.
“The investigation will assess the technologies and methods used to monitor, assist and enforce the driver’s engagement with the dynamic driving task during Autopilot operation,” NHTSA said in its investigation documents.
In addition, the probe will cover object and event detection by the system, as well as where it is allowed to operate. NHTSA says it will examine “contributing circumstances” to the crashes, as well as similar crashes.
An investigation could lead to a recall or other enforcement action by NHTSA.
“NHTSA reminds the public that no commercially available motor vehicles today are capable of driving themselves,” the agency said in a statement. “Every available vehicle requires a human driver to be in control at all times, and all state laws hold human drivers responsible for operation of their vehicles.”
The agency said it has “robust enforcement tools” to protect the public and investigate potential safety issues, and it will act when it finds evidence “of noncompliance or an unreasonable risk to safety.”
In June, NHTSA ordered all automakers to report any crashes involving fully autonomous vehicles or partially automated driver assist systems.
Tesla uses a camera-based system, a lot of computing power, and sometimes radar to spot obstacles, determine what they are, and then decide what the vehicles should do. But Carnegie Mellon’s Rajkumar said the company’s radar was plagued by “false positive” signals and would stop cars after determining overpasses were obstacles.
Now Tesla has eliminated radar in favor of cameras and thousands of images that the computer neural network uses to determine if there are objects in the way. The system, he said, does a very good job on most objects that would be seen in the real world. But it has had trouble with parked emergency vehicles and perpendicular trucks in its path.
“It can only find patterns that it has been quote-unquote trained on,” Rajkumar said. “Clearly the inputs that the neural network was trained on just do not contain enough images. They’re only as good as the inputs and training. Almost by definition, the training will never be good enough.”
Tesla also is allowing selected owners to test what it calls a “full self-driving” system. Rajkumar said that should be investigated as well.
Defiant Biden is face of chaotic Afghan evacuation
Four presidents share responsibility for the missteps in Afghanistan that accumulated over two decades. But only President Joe Biden will be the face of the war’s chaotic, violent conclusion.
The president fought that reality Monday as he spread blame for the Taliban’s swift and complete recapture of Afghanistan. He pointed to a previous agreement brokered by then-President Donald Trump, expressed frustration with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and lamented the performance of Afghan national security forces. Republicans overwhelmingly criticized Biden and he found few vocal backers among fellow Democrats.
Read: Chaos as thousands flee Afghanistan after Taliban takeover
The collapse of the Afghan government is the biggest foreign policy crisis of Biden’s young presidency, recalling setbacks for past presidents such as the withdrawal from Vietnam and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. The reverberations of the Taliban’s success were startling, endangering Afghan women and girls, posing new security threats and threatening to undercut global views of America’s reliability.
In the face of such stark consequences, Biden admitted no fault for the chaotic drawdown and instead forcefully defended his move to leave a nation the U.S. has tried to safeguard since it toppled the Taliban regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when smoke still rose from the rubble of the World Trade Center.
“Here’s what I believe to my core: It is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan’s own armed forces would not,” said Biden. “How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war? I will not repeat the mistakes we made in the past.”
Read: Biden team surprised by rapid Taliban gains in Afghanistan
When Biden took responsibility, it was more for ending the war than for the manner in which it happened.
“I know my decision will be criticized. But I would rather take that criticism than pass this on to a fifth president,” said Biden. “I am the president of the United States, the buck stops with me.”
His firm tone differed little from just five weeks ago, when he bullishly predicted what would happen as his August 31 deadline for withdrawal neared. He declared there was going to be no repeat of the humiliating U.S. evacuation from Vietnam nearly a half century ago and “no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.”
But Monday yielded devastating images from Kabul that rivaled anything witnessed in Saigon.
Thousands of Afghan citizens, many of whom worked as translators and other aides to American troops, thronged the Kabul airport, desperate to escape the Taliban. In heartbreaking footage, some tried to desperately board a U.S. military plane flying to safety, attempting to dash alongside as it raced down the runway.
A few managed to cling to the plane before it took off and video showed several falling through the air as the airplane rapidly gained altitude over the city.
The evacuation received condemnation at home and abroad, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling the latest developments “bitter, dramatic and awful.” And security officials warned that Afghanistan would soon provide safe harbor for terrorist groups again.
The Taliban seemed poised to have total of control of Afghanistan on Sept. 11, just as they did on the date two decades earlier when al-Qaida terror attacks plotted from its soil toppled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon. The fallout from 2001 attacks reshaped America’s relationship with the Middle East, and more than 3,000 American and NATO forces died in the resulting combat in Afghanistan during the manhunt for Osama bin Laden and beyond.
Under the command of President George W. Bush, American forces stormed into Afghanistan soon after the terror attacks on a hunt for bin Laden while trying to disrupt al-Qaida’s ability to conduct further assaults on the West. There was immediate success: The Taliban were routed, the terror group disrupted.
But after that came the grinding second phase of the war and a surge of troops from President Barack Obama in 2009. Though Obama later moved to reduce the number of troops, the volume of insurgent attacks and civilian causalities prevented a full drawdown.
Trump mulled meeting the Taliban at Camp David on an earlier Sept. 11 anniversary, only to back away from the idea amid an uproar. But he announced that the U.S. would pull all its forces out by May 2021, an agreement Biden honored and delayed only slightly.
Efforts were made, at great expense, across all the administrations to train and arm the Afghan forces once the U.S. departed. But that investment of American blood, time and treasure proved useless as the Taliban conquered much of the nation without a fight and Afghanistan’s president fled the country as soon as the invading forces reached Kabul.
Read: Who are the Taliban?
In the upper ranks of Biden’s staff, the rapid collapse in Afghanistan only confirmed the decision to leave: If the meltdown of the Afghan forces would come so quickly after nearly two decades of American presence, another six months or a year or two or more would not have changed anything.
His move to withdraw troops this summer, though polarizing in the national security community, had been praised by some on both sides of the aisle as timely and appropriate. But on Monday, Republicans were eager to slam Biden’s decision and blame him for the chaos, though many of them had supported a withdrawal when it had been proposed by Trump a year ago.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, however, had consistently advocated keeping troops in Afghanistan, and he said the military briefings he attended suggested the Taliban would be able to quickly regain power.
“I think the president felt strongly about this, obviously,” McConnell said. “He overruled his own military leaders to do it and he owns it.”
Biden has argued for more than a decade that Afghanistan was a kind of purgatory for the United States. He found it to be corrupt, addicted to America’s largesse and an unreliable partner that should be made to fend for itself. His goal was to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, not building a country, and his aides have pointed to polling — taken before the chaos of the last week — that shows that a majority of Americans favor bringing troops home.
But that political gamble could prove risky as the scenes of fear and violence from Afghanistan are broadcast around the globe, especially if the chaos in Kabul makes “Saigon look like Disney World,” warned Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a veteran who served in Afghanistan.
“The bottom line is that there’s going to be a lot of people that are very let down by the United States of America,” Kinzinger said in an interview. “We will inevitably, inevitably be in conflict again somewhere. How are we going to convince those locals that we’re going to follow through when we’ve abandoned those in Afghanistan?”
What makes Haiti prone to devastating earthquakes
Earthquakes have been wreaking havoc in Haiti since at least the 18th century when the city of Port-au-Prince was destroyed twice in 19 years.
Saturday's powerful quake killed hundreds and injured thousands more. Eleven years earlier a temblor killed tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands.
Haiti sits near the intersection of two tectonic plates that make up the Earth's crust. Earthquakes can occur when those plates move against each other and create friction.
Haiti is also densely populated. Plus, many of its buildings are designed to withstand hurricanes – not earthquakes. Those buildings can survive strong winds but are vulnerable to collapse when the ground shakes.
READ: Death toll of powerful earthquake in Haiti soars to 1,297
Why is Haiti prone to earthquakes?
The Earth's crust is made up of tectonic plates that move. And Haiti sits near the intersection of two of them – the North American plate and the Caribbean plate.
Multiple fault lines between those plates cut through or near the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic. What is worse, not all of those fault lines behave the same way.
"Hispaniola sits in a place where plates transition from smashing together to sliding past one another," said Rich Briggs, a research geologist at the US Geological Survey's Geologic Hazards Science Center.
What caused the most recent quake?
Saturday's magnitude 7.2 earthquake likely occurred along the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone, which cuts across Haiti's southwestern Tiburon Peninsula, according to the USGS.
It is the same fault zone along which the devastating 2010 earthquake occurred. And it is likely the source of three other big earthquakes in Haiti between 1751 and 1860, two of which destroyed Port-au-Prince.
Earthquakes are the result of the tectonic plates slowly moving against each other and creating friction over time, said Gavin Hayes, senior science adviser for earthquake and geologic hazards at USGS.
"That friction builds up and builds up and eventually the strain that is stored there overcomes the friction," Hayes said. "And that is when the fault moves suddenly. That is what an earthquake is."
Why can earthquakes in Haiti be so devastating?
It is a combination of factors that include a seismically active area, a high population density of 11 million people and buildings that are often designed to withstand hurricanes – not earthquakes.
Typical concrete and cinder block buildings can survive strong winds but are vulnerable to damage or collapse when the ground shakes. Poor building practices can also play a role.
The 2010 quake hit closer to densely populated Port-au-Prince and caused widespread destruction. Haiti's government put the death toll at more than 300,000, while a report commissioned by the US government placed it between 46,000 and 85,000.
"I think it is important to recognise that there is no such thing as a natural disaster," said Wendy Bohon, a geologist with Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology. "What you have is a natural hazard that overlaps with a vulnerable system."
What does the future hold?
READ: At least 304 dead, 1,800 hurt as powerful quake slams Haiti
Geologists say they cannot predict the next earthquake.
"But we do know that earthquakes like this can cause similar-sized earthquakes on the next portion of the fault," said Hayes of USGS. "And it is quite a significant hazard in places that do not have the construction practices to withstand the shaking."
Construction of more earthquake-resistant buildings remains a challenge in Haiti, which is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
Before Saturday's quake, Haiti was still recovering from the 2010 earthquake as well as Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Its president was assassinated last month, sending the country into political chaos.
And while there have been some success stories of Haitians building more earthquake-resistant structures, the country has lacked a centralised effort to do so, said Mark Schuller, a professor of anthropology and nonprofit and NGO studies at Northern Illinois University.
US mulls 3rd vaccine dose for elderly as early as fall
Amid warning of tough days ahead with surging Covid-19 infections, the director of the National Institutes of Health said Sunday the US could decide in the next couple of weeks whether to offer Covid booster shots to Americans this fall.
Among the first to receive them could be health care workers, nursing home residents and other older Americans.
Dr Francis Collins also pleaded anew for unvaccinated people to get their shots, calling them "sitting ducks" for a delta variant that is ravaging the country and showing little sign of letting up.
"This is going very steeply upward with no signs of having peaked out," he said.
Federal health officials have been actively looking at whether extra shots for the vaccinated may be needed as early as this fall, reviewing case numbers in the US "almost daily" as well as the situation in other countries, where preliminary studies suggest the vaccine's protection against serious illness dropped among those vaccinated in January.
No US decision has been made because cases here so far still indicate that people remain highly protected from Covid-19, including the delta variant, after receiving the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna regimen or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
But US health officials made clear Sunday they are preparing for the possibility that the time for boosters may come sooner than later.
READ: Pfizer to seek OK for 3rd vaccine dose; shots still protect
"There is a concern that the vaccine may start to wane in its effectiveness," Francis said. "And delta is a nasty one for us to try to deal with. The combination of those two means we may need boosters, maybe beginning first with health care providers, as well as people in nursing homes, and then gradually moving forward" with others, such as older Americans who were among the first to get vaccinations after they became available late last year.
He said because the delta variant only started hitting the US hard in July, the "next couple of weeks" of case data will help the US make a decision.
Moderna President Stephen Hoge said seeing some "breakthrough" infections emerge among the vaccinated within six months has been surprising, even if most symptoms so far have not been life-threatening. "I think that suggests we are going to need booster vaccines to get through the winter."
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration said people with weakened immune systems can get an extra dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines to better protect them as the delta variant continues to surge.
"If it turns out as the data come in, we see we do need to give an additional dose to people in nursing homes, actually, or people who are elderly, we will be prepared to do that very quickly," said Dr Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser.
The US is now seeing an average of about 129,000 new infections a day – a 700% increase from the beginning of July – that number could jump in the next couple weeks to 200,000, a level not seen since among the pandemic's worst days in January and February, Francis said.
Both he and Fauci stressed that the best way to stem the virus is for the unvaccinated to get their shots.
Currently, about 60% of the US population has gotten at least one dose and nearly 51% are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Areas with low vaccination rates have been particularly hit hard with infections, such as Louisiana, Texas, Florida and Mississippi.
The rapidly escalating surge in infections across the US has caused a shortage of intensive care unit beds, nurses and other front-line staff in virus hotspots that can no longer keep up with the flood of unvaccinated patients.
READ: Pfizer studying effects of 3rd vaccine dose
Health officials also warn that more children who are not yet eligible for vaccines could get infected, though it is not clear whether the delta variant leads to more severe illness among them.
Biden team surprised by rapid Taliban gains in Afghanistan
President Joe Biden and other top U.S. officials were stunned on Sunday by the pace of the Taliban’s nearly complete takeover of Afghanistan, as the planned withdrawal of American forces urgently became a mission to ensure a safe evacuation.
The speed of the Afghan government’s collapse and the ensuing chaos posed the most serious test of Biden as commander in chief, and he was the subject of withering criticism from Republicans who said that he had failed.
Read: Brac pulling foreign staff, inc. 12 Bangladeshis, out of Afghanistan
Biden campaigned as a seasoned expert in international relations and has spent months downplaying the prospect of an ascendant Taliban while arguing that Americans of all political persuasions have tired of a 20-year war, a conflict that demonstrated the limits of money and military might to force a Western-style democracy on a society not ready or willing to embrace it.
By Sunday, though, leading figures in the administration acknowledged they were caught off guard with the utter speed of the collapse of Afghan security forces. The challenge of that effort became clear after reports of sporadic gunfire at the Kabul airport prompted Americans to shelter as they awaited flights to safety after the U.S. Embassy was completely evacuated.
“We’ve seen that that force has been unable to defend the country, and that has happened more quickly than we anticipated,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN, referring to the Afghan military.
The turmoil in Afghanistan resets the focus in an unwelcome way for a president who has largely focused on a domestic agenda that includes emerging from the pandemic, winning congressional approval for trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending and protecting voting rights.
Biden remained at Camp David on Sunday, receiving regular briefings on Afghanistan and holding secure video conference calls with members of his national security team, according to senior White House officials. His administration released a single photo of the president alone in a conference room meeting virtually with military, diplomatic and intelligence experts. The next several days would be critical in determining whether the U.S. is able to regain some level of control over the situation.
Read: Taliban sweep into Afghan capital after government collapses
The Pentagon and State Department said in a joint statement Sunday that “we are completing a series of steps to secure the Hamid Karzai International Airport to enable the safe departure of U.S. and allied personnel from Afghanistan via civilian and military flights.” Biden ordered another 1,000 troops into Kabul to secure the evacuation.
Discussions were underway for Biden to speak publicly, according to two senior administration officials who requested anonymity to discuss internal conversations. Biden, who is scheduled to remain at the presidential retreat through Wednesday, is expected to return to the White House if he decides to deliver an address.
Biden is the fourth U.S. president to confront challenges in Afghanistan and has insisted he wouldn’t hand America’s longest war to his successor. But the president will likely have to explain how security in Afghanistan unraveled so quickly, especially since he and others in the administration have insisted it wouldn’t happen.
“The jury is still out, but the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” Biden said on July 8.
As recently as last week, Biden publicly expressed hope that Afghan forces could develop the will to defend their country. But privately, administration officials warned that the military was crumbling, prompting Biden on Thursday to order thousands of American troops into the region to speed up evacuation plans.
One official said Biden was more sanguine on projections for the Afghan fighters to hold off the Taliban in part to prevent a further erosion in morale among their force. It was ultimately for naught.
Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump also yearned to leave Afghanistan, but ultimately stood down in the face of resistance from military leaders and other political concerns. Biden, on the other hand, has been steadfast in his refusal to change the Aug. 31 deadline, in part because of his belief that the American public is on his side.
A late July ABC News/Ipsos poll, for instance, showed 55% of Americans approving of Biden’s handling of the troop withdrawal.
Most Republicans have not pushed Biden to keep troops in Afghanistan over the long term and they also supported Trump’s own push to exit the country. Still, some in the GOP are stepping up their critique of Biden’s withdrawal strategy and said images from Sunday of American helicopters circling the U.S. Embassy in Kabul evoked the humiliating departure of U.S. personnel from Vietnam.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell deemed the scenes of withdrawal as “the embarrassment of a superpower laid low.”
Read: Kabul airport closed to commercial traffic
Meanwhile, U.S. officials are increasingly concerned about the potential for the rise in terrorist threats against the U.S. as the situation in Afghanistan devolves, according to a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators on a briefing call Sunday that U.S. officials are expected to alter their earlier assessments about the pace of terrorist groups reconstituting in Afghanistan, the person said. Based on the evolving situation, officials believe terror groups like al-Qaida may be able to grow much faster than expected.
The officials on the call told senators that the U.S. intelligence community is currently working on forming a new timeline based on the evolving threats.
Still, there were no additional steps planned beyond the troop deployment Biden ordered to assist in the evacuations. Senior administration officials believe the U.S. will be able to maintain security at the Kabul airport long enough to extricate Americans and their allies, but the fate of those unable to get to the airport was far from certain.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has backed the Biden administration’s strategy, said in an interview that “the speed is a surprise” but would not characterize the situation as an intelligence failure. He said it has long been known that Afghanistan would fall to the Taliban if the United States pulled out.
“Given how much we have invested in the Afghan army, it’s not ridiculous for analysts to believe that they’d be able to put up a fight for more than a few days,” Murphy said. “You want to believe that trillions of dollars and 20 years of investment adds up to something, even if it doesn’t add up for the ability to defend the country in the long run.”
In the upper ranks of Biden’s staff, the rapid collapse in Afghanistan only confirmed the decision to leave: If the meltdown of the Afghan forces would come so quickly after nearly two decades of American presence, another six months or a year or two or more would not have changed anything.
Read: Afghan president flees the country as Taliban move on Kabul
Biden has argued for more than a decade that Afghanistan was a kind of purgatory for the United States. He found it to be corrupt, addicted to America’s largesse and an unreliable partner that should be made to fend for itself. His goal was to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, not building a country.
As vice president, he argued privately against Obama’s surge of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan in a bid to stabilize the country so that the United States and its allies could then pull back their forces.
As president, Biden said in July that he made the decision to withdraw with “clear eyes” after receiving daily battlefield updates. His judgment was that Afghanistan would be divided in a peace agreement with the Taliban, rather than falling all at once.
While Biden has prided himself on delivering plain truths to the American public, his bullish assessment of the situation just a month ago could come back to haunt him.
“There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan,” he said in July. “The likelihood there’s going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely.”
Rescuers racing in Haiti as storm threatens to follow quake
The death toll from a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in Haiti soared on Sunday as rescuers raced to find survivors amid the rubble ahead of a potential deluge from an approaching tropical storm.
Saturday’s earthquake left at least 724 dead and 2,800 injured in the Caribbean island nation, with thousands more displaced from their destroyed or damaged homes. Survivors in some areas were forced to shelter in streets or soccer fields with the few belongings they were able to salvage from their homes.
Yet the devastation could soon worsen with the coming of Tropical Storm Grace, which was predicted to reach Haiti late Monday or early Tuesday, bringing the potential for torrential rain, flooding and landslides. The U.S. National Hurricane Center forecast 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) of rain in Haiti and the Dominican Republican, with up to 15 inches in some southern parts of the island they share.
The earthquake struck the southwestern part of the hemisphere’s poorest nation, almost razing some towns and triggering landslides that hampered rescue efforts. The disaster added to the plight of Haitians who were already grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, a presidential assassination and a wave of gang violence.
The epicenter of the quake was about 125 kilometers (78 miles) west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Aftershocks continued jolting the area Sunday.
In the badly damaged coastal town of Les Cayes, some families salvaged their few belongings and spent the night at an open-air football pitch. On Sunday morning, people lined up to buy what little was available: bananas, avocados and water at a local street market.
Some in the town praised God for surviving the earthquake, and many went to the city’s cathedral, which appeared outwardly undamaged even if the priests’ residence was destroyed.
“We only have Jesus now,” said Johanne Dorcely, 58, whose house was destroyed. “If it wasn’t for Jesus, I wouldn’t be able to be here today.”Prime Minister Ariel Henry declared a one-month state of emergency for the whole country and said he was rushing aid to areas where towns were destroyed and hospitals overwhelmed with patients. A former senator rented a private airplane to move injured people from Les Cayes to Port-au-Prince for medical assistance.
“The most important thing is to recover as many survivors as possible under the rubble,” said Henry. “We have learned that the local hospitals, in particular that of Les Cayes, are overwhelmed with wounded, fractured people.”Sunday’s count from Haiti’s Office of Civil Protection raised the previous death toll from 304 dead. The agency said more than 7,000 homes were destroyed and nearly 5,000 damaged. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches were also affected.
People in Les Cayes tried to pull guests from the rubble of a collapsed hotel, but as the sun set on Saturday, they had only been able to recover the body of a 7-year-old girl whose home was behind the facility.
“I have eight kids, and I was looking for the last one,” Jean-Claude Daniel said through tears. “I will never see her again alive. The earthquake destroyed my life. It took a child away from me.”
Hospitals were overwhelmed at a moment when Haiti has been struggling with the pandemic and a lack of resources to deal with it. The country of 11 million people received its first batch of U.S.-donated coronavirus vaccines only last month via a United Nations program for low-income countries.
The earthquake also struck just over a month after President Jovenel Moïse was shot to death in his home, sending the country into political chaos. His widow, Martine Moïse, who was seriously wounded in the attack, posted a message on Twitter calling for unity among Haitians: “Let’s put our shoulders together to bring solidarity.”
As he boarded a plane bound for Les Cayes, Henry said he wanted “structured solidarity” to ensure the response was coordinated to avoid the confusion that followed the devastating 2010 earthquake, when aid was slow to reach residents after as many as 300,000 Haitians were killed.
U.S. President Joe Biden authorized an immediate response, calling the United State a “close and enduring friend to the people of Haiti.” He named USAID Administrator Samantha Power to oversee the U.S effort to help Haiti.
Power announced Sunday that USAID was sending a search and rescue team from Virginia t the request of Haiti’s government. The 65-person team will bring specialized tools and medical supplies to assist with the disaster response, Power said on Twitter.
Working with USAID, the U.S. Coast Guard said a helicopter was transporting medical personnel from the Haitian capital to the quake zone and evacuating the injured back to Port-au-Prince.
“For now, the Coast Guard is working where the most urgent need is,” said Lt. Commander Jason Nieman, a spokesman. Another helicopter was being sent from the Bahamas, along with other aircraft and ships, Nieman added.
Argentina and Chile also were among the first nations to promise help.
The North Carolina-based aid group Samaritan’s Purse announced Sunday it would airlift 13 disaster response specialists and 31 tons of emergency supplies to Haiti. Those include shelter materials and water filtration units.
Humanitarian workers said gang activity in the seaside district of Martissant, just west of the Haitian capital, also was complicating relief efforts.
“Nobody can travel through the area,” Ndiaga Seck, a UNICEF spokesman in Port-au-Prince, said by phone. “We can only fly over or take another route.”
Seck said information about deaths and damage was slow coming to Port-au-Prince because of spotty internet service, but UNICEF planned to send medical supplies to two hospitals in the south, in Les Cayes and Jeremie.
Haiti, where many live in tenuous circumstances, is vulnerable to earthquakes and hurricanes. A magnitude 5.9 earthquake in 2018 killed more than a dozen people.
Thunderstorms, heat fuel wildfires burning across West
Johnnie Brookwood had never heard of a road named Dixie when a wildfire began a month ago in the forestlands of Northern California.
Within three weeks, it exploded into the largest wildfire burning in the U.S., destroying more than 1,000 homes and businesses including a lodge in the gold rush-era town of Greenville where she was renting a room for $650 per month.
“At first (the fire) didn’t affect us at all, it was off in some place called Dixie, I didn’t even know what it means,” Brookwood, 76, said Saturday. “Then it was ‘Oh no we have to go too?’ Surely Greenville won’t burn, but then it did and now all we can see are ashes.”
Read:Climate-fueled wildfires take toll on tropical Pacific isles
Firefighters faced “another critical day” as thunderstorms pushed flames closer to two towns not far from where the Dixie Fire destroyed much of Greenville last week.
The thunderstorms, which began Friday, didn’t produce much rain but whipped up wind and created lightning strikes, forcing crews to focus on using bulldozers to build lines and keep the blaze from reaching Westwood, a town of about 1,700 people. Westwood was placed under evacuation orders Aug. 5.
Wind gusts of up to 50 mph (80 kph) also pushed the fire closer to Janesville, a town of about 1,500 people, east of Greenville, said Jake Cagle, the operations chief at the east zone of the fire.
“Very tough day in there yesterday in the afternoon and the night (crew) picked up the pieces and tried to secure the edge the best they could with the resources they had,” he said in a briefing Saturday.
With a similar forecast of thunderstorms Saturday, firefighters faced “another critical day, another challenging day,” Cagle said.
The fire was among more than 100 large wildfires burning in more than a dozen states in the West seared by drought and hot, bone-dry weather that turned forests, brushlands, meadows and pastures into tinder.
The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it’s operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system.
The roughly 21,000 federal firefighters working on the ground is more than double the number of firefighters sent to contain forest fires at this time a year ago, said Anthony Scardina, a deputy forester for the agency’s Pacific Southwest region.
More than 6,000 firefighters alone were battling the Dixie Fire, which has ravaged nearly 845 square miles (2,100 square kilometers) — an area the size of Tokyo — and was 31% contained.
“The size is unimaginable, its duration and its impact on these people, all of us, including me, is unbelieve,” Brookwood said while staying in her third evacuation center.
Read:Wildfire bears down on Montana towns as West burns
The cause of the fire has not been determined. Pacific Gas and Electric has said the fire may have been started when a tree fell on its power line.
There also was a danger of new fires erupting because of unstable weather conditions, including extreme heat across the northern half of the West and a chance of thunderstorms that could bring lightning to Northern California, Oregon and Nevada, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
A fast-moving fire broke out Saturday afternoon east of Salt Lake City, shutting down Interstate 80 and prompting the evacuation of Summit Park, a mountain community of 6,600 people. Fire officials said the blaze was burning about 3 square miles (8 square kilometers) and threatening thousands of homes and power lines.
In southeastern Montana, firefighters were gaining ground on a pair of fires that chewed through vast rangelands and at one point threatened the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.
The fires were caused by heat from coal seams, the deposits of coal found in the ground in the area, said Peggy Miller, a spokeswoman for the fires.
Mandatory evacuation for the tribal headquarters town of Lame Deer remained in place due to poor air quality, she added.
Smoke also drove air pollution levels to unhealthy or very unhealthy levels in parts of Northern California, Oregon and Idaho, according to the U.S. Air Quality Index.
Hot, dry weather with strong afternoon winds also propelled several fires in Washington state, and similar weather was expected into the weekend, fire officials said.
In southeastern Oregon, two new wildfires started by lightning Thursday near the California border spread rapidly through juniper trees, sagebrush and evergreen trees.
The Patton Meadow Fire about 14 miles (23 kilometers) west of Lakeview, near the California border, exploded to 11 square miles (28 square kilometers) in less than 24 hours in a landscape sucked dry by extreme drought. It was 10% contained.
Read:Wildfires in Algeria leave 42 dead, including 25 soldiers
Triple-digit temperatures and bone-dry conditions in Oregon could increase fire risks through the weekend.
Climate change has made the U.S. West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.
Dozens of fires also are burning in western Canada and in Europe, including Greece, where a massive wildfire has decimated forests and torched homes.
At least 304 dead, 1,800 hurt as powerful quake slams Haiti
A powerful magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck southwestern Haiti on Saturday, killing at least 304 people and injuring at least 1,800 others as buildings tumbled into rubble. Prime Minister Ariel Henry said he was rushing aid to areas where towns were destroyed and hospitals overwhelmed with incoming patients.
The epicenter of the quake was about 125 kilometers (78 miles) west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey said, and widespread damage was reported in the hemisphere’s poorest nations as a tropical storm also bore down.
Haiti’s civil protection agency said on Twitter that the death toll stood at 304, most in the country’s south. Rescue workers and bystanders were able to pull many people to safety from the rubble. The agency said injured people were still being delivered to hospitals.
Henry declared a one-month state of emergency for the whole country and said he would not ask for international help until the extent of the damages was known. He said some towns were almost completely razed and the government had people in the coastal town of Les Cayes to help plan and coordinate the response.
Read:Violence, protests overshadow Mass for slain Haitian leader
“The most important thing is to recover as many survivors as possible under the rubble,” said Henry. “We have learned that the local hospitals, in particular that of Les Cayes, are overwhelmed with wounded, fractured people.”
He said the International Red Cross and hospitals in unaffected areas were helping to care for the injured, and appealed to Haitians for unity.
“The needs are enormous. We must take care of the injured and fractured, but also provide food, aid, temporary shelter and psychological support,” he said.
Later, as he boarded a plane bound for Les Cayes, Henry said he wanted “structured solidarity” to ensure the response was coordinated to avoid the confusion that followed the devastating 2010 earthquake, when aid was slow to reach residents after as many as 300,000 were killed.
U.S. President Joe Biden authorized an immediate response and named USAID Administrator Samantha Power as the senior official coordinating the U.S effort to help Haiti. USAID will help to assess damage and assist in rebuilding, said Biden, who called the United States a “close and enduring friend to the people of Haiti.”
A growing number of countries offered help, including Argentina and Chile, which said it was preparing to send humanitarian aid. ″Once again, Haiti has been hit by adversity,″ Chilean President Sebastian Piñera said.
Among those killed in the earthquake was Gabriel Fortuné, a longtime lawmaker and former mayor of Les Cayes. He died along with several others when his hotel, Le Manguier, collapsed, the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported.
Philippe Boutin, 37, who lives in Puerto Rico but visits his family annually in Les Cayes, said his mother was saying morning prayers when the shaking began, but was able to leave the house.
The earthquake, he said, coincided with the festivities to celebrate the town’s patron saint, adding that the hotel likely was full and the small town had more people than usual.
“We still don’t know how many people are under the rubble,” he said.
On the tiny island of Ile-a-Vache, about 6.5 miles (10.5 kilometers) from Les Cayes, the quake damaged a seaside resort popular with Haitian officials, business leaders, diplomats and humanitarian workers. Fernand Sajous, owner of the Abaka Bay Resort, said by telephone that nine of the hotel’s 30 rooms collapsed, but he said they were vacant at the time and no one was injured.
“They disappeared — just like that,” Sajous said.
People in Les Cayes tried to pull guests from the rubble of a collapsed hotel, but as the sun set, they had only been able to recover the body of a 7-year-old girl whose home was behind the facility.
“I have eight kids, and I was looking for the last one,” Jean-Claude Daniel said through tears. “I will never see her again alive. The earthquake destroyed my life. It took a child away from me.”
Read: Violence flares in Haiti ahead of slain president’s funeral
The reports of overwhelmed hospitals come as Haiti struggles with the pandemic and a lack of resources to deal with it. Just last month, the country of 11 million people received its first batch of U.S.-donated coronavirus vaccines, via a United Nations program for low-income countries.
Richard Hervé Fourcand, a former Haitian senator, rented a private plane to move injured people from Les Cayes to Port-au-Prince for medical assistance. He told The Associated Press that Les Cayes’ hospital was at capacity.
The earthquake also struck just over a month after President Jovenel Moïse was killed, sending the country into political chaos. His widow, Martine Moïse, posted a message on Twitter calling for unity among Haitians: “Let’s put our shoulders together to bring solidarity.”
Rescue efforts were hampered by a landslide triggered by the quake that blocked a major road connecting the hard-hit towns of Jeremie and Les Cayes, according to Haiti’s civil protection agency.
Agency director Jerry Chandler told reporters that a partial count of structural damage included at least 860 destroyed homes and more than 700 damaged. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches were also affected.
The National Hurricane Center has forecast that Tropical Storm Grace will reach Haiti late Monday or early Tuesday.
“This is likely to make matters worse since the country is on the verge of suffering the effects of two disasters in quick succession, a magnitude 7 earthquake and a looming storm,” Chandler said.
Humanitarian workers said gang activity in the seaside district of Martissant, just west of the Haitian capital, also was complicating relief efforts.
“Nobody can travel through the area,” Ndiaga Seck, a UNICEF spokesman in Port-au-Prince, said by phone. “We can only fly over or take another route.”
Seck said information about deaths and damage was slow coming to Port-au-Prince because of spotty internet service, but UNICEF planned to send medical supplies to two hospitals in the south, in Les Cayes and Jeremie.
People in Port-au-Prince felt the tremor and many rushed into the streets in fear, although there did not appear to be damage there.
Naomi Verneus, a 34-year-old resident of Port-au-Prince, said she was jolted awake by the earthquake and that her bed was shaking.
“I woke up and didn’t have time to put my shoes on. We lived the 2010 earthquake and all I could do was run. I later remembered my two kids and my mother were still inside. My neighbor went in and told them to get out. We ran to the street,” Verneus said.
Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the USGS, said aftershocks likely would continue for weeks or months, with the largest so far registering magnitude 5.2.
Read: Haiti's interim prime minister to step down
The impoverished country, where many live in tenuous circumstances, is vulnerable to earthquakes and hurricanes. It was struck by a magnitude 5.9 earthquake in 2018 that killed more than a dozen people, and a vastly larger magnitude 7.1 quake that damaged much of the capital in 2010 and killed an estimated 300,000 people.
By Saturday night, the island had experienced four aftershocks stronger than 5.0 and nine above 4.0.
Claude Prepetit, a Haitian civil engineer and geologist, warned of the danger from cracked structures.
“More or less intensive aftershocks are to be expected for a month,” he said, cautioning that some buildings, “badly damaged during the earthquake, can collapse during aftershocks..”