usa
COVID-19 vaccine booster drive is faltering in the US
The COVID-19 booster drive in the U.S. is losing steam, worrying health experts who have pleaded with Americans to get an extra shot to shore up their protection against the highly contagious omicron variant.
Just 40% of fully vaccinated Americans have received a booster dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the average number of booster shots dispensed per day in the U.S. has plummeted from a peak of 1 million in early December to about 490,000 as of last week.
Also, a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that Americans are more likely to see the initial vaccinations — rather than a booster — as essential.
“It’s clear that the booster effort is falling short,” said Jason Schwartz, a vaccine policy expert at Yale University.
Read: US orders 8,500 troops on heightened alert amid Russia worry
Overall, the U.S. vaccination campaign has been sluggish. More than 13 months after it began, just 63% of Americans, or 210 million people, are fully vaccinated with the initial rounds of shots. Mandates that could raise those numbers have been hobbled by legal challenges.
Vaccination numbers are stagnant in states such as Wyoming, Idaho, Mississippi and Alabama, which have been hovering below 50%.
In Wyoming, 44% are fully vaccinated, up just slightly from 41% in September. To boost numbers, the state has been running TV ads with health care workers giving grim accounts of unvaccinated people struggling with COVID-19.
“Certainly we would like to see higher rates. But it would be wrong for anyone to think that the rates we have are due to lack of effort,” Wyoming Health Department spokeswoman Kim Deti said Tuesday.
And in neighboring Idaho, which also has one of the country’s lowest vaccination rates, the number of people getting their first vaccine dose has remained under 1,000 almost every day this year and the number getting booster shots is also declining. Still, officials say they won’t give up.
“I don’t like to use the word ‘resigned,’” said Elke Shaw-Tulloch, administrator of the Idaho Division of Public Health. “I think we just need to keep saying it over and over again, how important it is.”
At the other end of the spectrum, Vermont is a national leader in the percentage of people who have been fully vaccinated and received a booster shot. About 60% of the population over 18 has gotten a booster. But it’s not enough, said Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine.
“I’d love to see that percentage much closer to 90%,” Levine said.
The U.S. and many other nations have been urging adults to get boosters because the vaccine’s protection can wane. Also, research has shown that while the vaccines have proved less effective against omicron, boosters can rev up the body’s defenses against the threat.
As for why an estimated 86 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated and are eligible for a booster have not yet gotten one, Schwartz said public confusion is one important reason.
“I think the evidence is now overwhelming that the booster is not simply an optional supplement, but it is a foundational part of protection,” he said. “But clearly that message has been lost.”
The need for all Americans to get boosters initially was debated by scientists, and at first the government recommended only that certain groups of people, such as senior citizens, get additional doses. The arrival of omicron, and additional evidence about falling immunity, showed more clearly a widespread need for boosters.
Read: Hope seen once omicron wave increases global immunity, even as new version of variant found
But the message “has been lost in the sea of changing recommendations and guidance,” Schwartz said.
The AP-NORC Center poll found that 59% of Americans think it is essential that they receive a vaccine to fully participate in public life without feeling at risk of COVID-19 infection. Only 47% say the same about a booster shot.
Keller Anne Ruble, 32, of Denver, received her two doses of the Moderna vaccine but hasn’t gotten her booster. She said she had a bad reaction to the second dose and was in bed for four days with a fever and flu-like symptoms.
“I believe in the power of vaccines, and I know that’s going to protect me,” said Ruble, the owner of a greeting card sending service. But the vaccine “just knocked me out completely and freaked me out about getting the booster.”
She said she does plan to get the booster in the next few weeks and in the meantime wears an N95 mask and tries to stay home.
“I just don’t want to get COVID in general,” she said. “It does scare me.”
Blake Hassler, 26, of Nashville, Tennessee, said he doesn’t plan to get the booster. He received Pfizer’s two doses last year after having a mild case of COVID-19 in 2020. He said he considers himself to be in a low-risk category.
“At this point, we need to focus on prevention of serious illness at the onset of symptoms rather than creating a new shot every six weeks and more divisive mandates,” he said.
4 killed, 1 hurt in ‘ambush’ shooting at house party near LA
Four people were killed and one was wounded when multiple shooters opened fire at a house party near Los Angeles early Sunday, authorities said.
Police responded around 1:30 a.m. to reports of shots fired at a home in the city of Inglewood, Mayor James Butts told reporters.
Read: 3 teens killed, 1 injured in gas station shooting in U.S. Texas
Two women and two men were shot and killed and another man was hospitalized in critical condition and expected to survive, CBS2 reported.
Butts called the shooting an “ambush” involving multiple weapons including a rifle and a handgun. The mayor described the incident as the worst single shooting crime in Inglewood since the 1990s.
The victims appear to have been targeted, he added.
Butts urged the suspects to turn themselves in. “We will find you and prosecute you,” he said.
Authorities are searching for multiple suspects, he said. Officers interviewed witnesses and canvassed the neighborhood looking for possible security camera footage.
Read: 4 people injured after shooting at Chicago-area mall
The man who survived admitted being a member of a street gang in another city and investigators are trying to determine if the shooting was gang related, CBS2 said.
Inglewood is a city of about 100,000 people 10 miles (16 km) southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It’s home to SoFi Stadium, where the Super Bowl will be played next month.
Mexico's energy reform strains ties with US
Mexico’s plan to favor its own state-owned electrical power plants and limit energy sales by private, foreign-built projects could affect U.S. investment in Mexico, officials said during bilateral talks this week.
According to statements issued Friday, the U.S. government has “real concerns with the potential negative impact” on U.S. firms and investments.
“In each meeting, we expressly conveyed the Biden-Harris Administration’s real concerns with the potential negative impact of Mexico’s proposed energy reforms on U.S. private investment in Mexico,” according to a statement by U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The proposed reform could also hinder U.S.-Mexico joint efforts on clean energy and climate.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he received a list of U.S. and Canadian firms who had voiced complaints and said he would “review them if they believe there has been an injustice.”
READ: Mexico sees fake molnupiravir, 1 week after drug approved
Granholm said “I was assured that Mexico is committed to supporting clean energy and resolving current disputes with energy projects within the rule of law.”
Last year López Obrador proposed a constitutional reform to restrict sales by private power generators and favor Mexico’s state-owned utility company.
The bill that López Obrador submitted in October would cancel contracts under which 34 private plants sell power into the national grid. The plan would also declare “illegal” an additional 239 private plants that sell energy directly to corporate clients in Mexico. Almost all of those plants are run with renewable energy sources or natural gas.
The measure also would cancel many long-term energy supply contracts and clean-energy preferential buying programs, often affecting foreign companies.
It puts private natural gas plants almost last in line — ahead of only government coal-fired plants — for rights to sell electricity into the grid, despite the fact they produce power about 24% more cheaply. Government-run plants that burn dirty fuel oil would have preference over private wind and solar plants.
READ: Mexico ends year with inflation at 7.36%, most in 20 years
The plan guarantees the government electrical utility a market share of “at least” 54%, even though the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade pact prohibits favoring local or government businesses.
Police: Truck with 100 monkeys crashes, some of them missing
A truck carrying about 100 monkeys was involved in a crash Friday in Pennsylvania, state police said as authorities searched for at least three of the monkeys that appeared to have escaped the vehicle.
The truck carrying the animals crashed with a dump truck in the afternoon in Montour County, Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Andrea Pelachick told the Daily Item.
READ: Nepal woman spends her day feeding temple monkeys
The truck had been on its way to a lab, Pelachick said.
Authorities have asked residents who might see the monkeys to call state police at 570-524-2662.
It was unclear if any people or animals were injured in the crash.
Official: 1 officer killed, 1 seriously hurt in NYC shooting
A New York Police Department officer was killed and another gravely injured Friday night after responding to a domestic disturbance call, according to a law enforcement official.
A suspect was also killed in the shooting in Harlem, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.
The official said a call had come in shortly after 5 p.m. of a mother needing help with her son. Three officers responded to the ground floor apartment on 135th Street.
They spoke to the mother in a front room, and then two officers went to a back room where the son was, and shots rang out, the official said.
The officer who died was 22 and had been on the job since November 2020 and the injured officer, 27, has been on the job for four years, the official said.
Police dispatch audio captured some of the chaotic scene, including an officer screaming for assistance and another officer informing the dispatcher that two officers had been shot.
One officer asks for “three buses” or ambulances to the scene, a six-story apartment building, and police to block off traffic on the route to nearby Harlem Hospital. The building is on a block between two iconic Harlem avenues: Malcolm X Boulevard and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.
Mayor Eric Adams, himself a former police officer, was at the hospital where the officers were taken after the shooting, the third time in four days that officers have faced gunfire on the job. Inside the hospital entrance, a line of officers stood shoulder to shoulder at the top of some stairs.
Read: Tens of thousands protest Belgium’s tighter COVID-19 rules
An officer was wounded in the leg Tuesday night in the Bronx during a struggle with a teenager who also shot himself. On Thursday, a narcotics detective was shot in the leg on Staten Island.
The last NYPD officer fatally shot in the line of duty, Brian Mulkeen, was hit by friendly fire while struggling with an armed man after chasing and shooting at him in the Bronx in September 2019.
Mulkeen’s death came about seven months after Det. Brian Simonsen was killed by friendly fire while he and other officers were confronting a robbery suspect at a cell phone store in Queens.
In 2017, Officer Miosotis Familia was ambushed by a gunman as she wrote in a notebook in a mobile command post. In 2016, Sgt. Paul Tuozzolo was killed in a gunfight with a man who’d broken into his estranged wife’s home.
In 2015, Officer Randolph Holder was shot and killed by a man riding a stolen bicycle in Manhattan and Officer Brian Moore died after he was shot by a man in Queens.
Also read: 3 teens killed, 1 injured in gas station shooting in U.S. Texas
The year before, Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were fatally shot by a man who ambushed them as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn.
Florida man charged after 4 found dead at Canada-US border
A Florida man was charged Thursday with human smuggling after the bodies of four people, including a baby and a teen, were found in Canada near the U.S. border in what authorities believe was a failed crossing attempt during a freezing blizzard.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota said Steve Shand, 47, has been charged with human smuggling after seven Indian nationals were found in the U.S. and the discovery of the bodies.
Court documents filed Wednesday in support of Shand’s arrest allege one of the people spent a significant amount of money to come to Canada with a fraudulent student visa.
Also read: Greece: 13 dead, others missing in new migrant boat accident
“The investigation into the death of the four individuals in Canada is ongoing along with an investigation into a larger human smuggling operation of which Shand is suspected of being a part,” John Stanley, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, said in court documents.
According to documents, a U.S. Border Patrol in North Dakota stopped a 15-passenger van just south of the Canadian border on Wednesday. Shand was driving and court documents allege he was with two undocumented Indian nationals.
Around the same time, court documents said five other people were spotted by law enforcement in the snow nearby. The group, who were also Indian nationals, told officers they’d been walking for more than 11 hours outside in frigid conditions.
Also read: Migrants aided by Belarus try to storm border into Poland
A woman stopped breathing several times as she was transported to hospital. Court documents said she will require partial amputation of her hand. A man was also hospitalized for frostbite but was later released.
One of the men in the group was carrying a backpack that had baby supplies in it. Court documents said he told officers it belonged to a family who had become separated from the group overnight.
RCMP Assistant Commissioner Jane MacLatchy told a news conference in Winnipeg Thursday that once Mounties were notified the family may still be in Manitoba officers immediately began to search the area.
After a difficult search in nearly impassible terrain, she said officers found three bodies together — a man, a woman and a baby — just 10 meters from the border near Emerson, Man. The search continued and a teen boy was found a short distance away. It is believed they died from exposure.
“It is an absolute and heartbreaking tragedy,” MacLatchy said.
They were wearing winter clothing, she said, but it would not have been enough to save them with the freezing conditions.
“These victims faced not only the cold weather but also endless fields, large snowdrifts and complete darkness,” MacLatchy added.
Shand was arrested Wednesday and remains in custody. American authorities allege in court documents that Shand has likely been involved in other border crossings, including two recent incidents in December.
Shand could not be immediately reached for comment.
Officials in both countries said it is more common to see crossings north from the U.S. into Canada. Border crossings into Canada on foot increased in 2016 following the election of former U.S. president Donald Trump.
That December, two men lost their fingers to severe frostbite after getting caught in a blizzard while walking from the U.S. into Manitoba. A few months later, a woman died of hypothermia near the border on the American side.
In 2019, a pregnant woman who walked across the border was rescued after she became trapped in a snowbank and went into labor.
Emerson-Franklin Reeve Dave Carlson said illegal crossings there have dropped significantly in recent years. He was surprised to learn of the four deaths.
“If you look at the political climate on both sides of the border, it’s just mind-boggling to me that anyone had that sense of desperation to try and cross in extreme conditions.”
Deputy Patrick Klegstad with the Kittson County Sheriff’s Office in Minnesota said his department is supporting the American side of the investigation. Its officers patrol the “desolate” open fields near the border every day, he said, and the area where people crossed is treacherous, especially in the cold.
“Why they picked that spot to travel would be the million-dollar question.”
Klegstad, echoing Canadian officials, said it’s uncommon to have people make the harrowing journey from Canada into the U.S.
“It’s not very often we do have southbounders.”
Pentagon releases first video of botched Kabul airstrike
The Pentagon has declassified and publicly released video footage of a U.S. drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians in the final hours of a chaotic American withdrawal that ended a 20-year war in Afghanistan.
The New York Times obtained the footage through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against U.S. Central Command, which then posted the imagery to its website. It marks the first public release of video footage of the Aug. 29 strike, which the Pentagon initially defended but later called a tragic mistake.
Read:Suicide attack on Shiite mosque in Afghanistan kills 47
The videos include about 25 minutes of footage from what the Times reported were two MQ-9 Reaper drones, showing the scene of the strike prior to, during and after a missile struck a civilian car in a courtyard on a residential street. Indistinct images show individuals moving in or near the attack zone.
The military has said it struck what it thought was an extremist with the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate who might imminently detonate a bomb near the Kabul airport, where a hurried evacuation was still under way. Three days earlier a suicide bombing at the airport had killed 13 U.S. troops and more than 160 Afghans. When it later acknowledged its error in the Aug. 29 drone strike, Central Command said it determined that the man driving the car had nothing to do with the IS group.
The man was Zemari Ahmadi, who worked for Nutrition and Education International, a U.S.-based aid organization.
US begins offering 1B free COVID tests, but many more needed
For the first time, people across the U.S. can log on to a government website and order free, at-home COVID-19 tests. But the White House push may do little to ease the omicron surge, and experts say Washington will have to do a lot more to fix the country’s long-troubled testing system.
The website, COVIDTests.gov, allows people to order four at-home tests per household, regardless of citizenship status, and have them delivered by mail. But the tests won’t arrive for seven to 12 days, after omicron cases are expected to peak in many parts of the country.
The White House also announced Wednesday that it will begin making 400 million N95 masks available for free at pharmacies and community health centers. Both initiatives represent the kind of mass government investments long seen in parts of Europe and Asia, but delayed in the U.S.
Read:COVID deaths and cases are rising again at US nursing homes
“Should we have done more testing earlier? Yes, but we’re doing more now," President Joe Biden said Wednesday, recapping his first year in office.
Experts say the plan to distribute 1 billion tests is a good first step, but it must become a regular part of the pandemic response. In the same way that it has made vaccines free and plentiful, the government must use its purchasing power to assure a steady test supply, they say.
“The playbook for rapid tests should look exactly like the playbook for vaccines,” said Zoe McLaren, a health economist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They’re both things that help keep cases down and help keep COVID under control.”
A home test two-pack commonly sells for more than $20 at the store — if you can find one, amid the omicron-triggered rush to get tested. Since last week, insurance companies have been required to cover the cost of up to eight at-home rapid tests bought at drugstores or online retailers.
The four tests per home made available through the government website may not go very far in some households.
Kristen Keymont, 30, is a voice and piano teacher who teaches online and shares a house in Ipswich, Massachusetts, with her partner and two other people. When one of her housemates tested positive just before Christmas, she and her partner spent $275 buying more than a dozen tests.
“One test each is nice, I guess,” she said. “I’m glad we have them, but we’re still going to need to buy more if one of us gets exposed.”
It would be better, she said, if requests were linked to each person rather than each residential address.
Also, some people who live in buildings with multiple units had their requests for tests rejected, with the website saying tests had already been ordered for that address. As those complaints surfaced on social media, people began sharing advice on how to enter apartment or unit numbers in a way that the website would accept them.
There have been nearly 50 million visits to the test-ordering website since it went online Tuesday, according to a federal analytics site.
The U.S. bungled its initial rollout of government-made COVID-19 tests in the early days of the outbreak and has never really gotten back on track. While private companies are now producing more than 250 million at-home tests per month, that is still not enough to allow most Americans to frequently test themselves.
The Biden administration focused most of its early COVID-19 efforts on rolling out vaccines. As infections fell last spring, demand for testing plummeted and many manufacturers began shutting down plants. Only in September — after the delta surge was in full swing — did the Biden administration announce its first federal contracts designed to jump-start home test production.
Countries like Britain and Germany purchased and distributed billions of the tests soon after they became available last year.
“If you leave the manufacturers to their own devices, they’re just going to respond to what’s happening right now,” said Dr. Amy Karger, a testing specialist at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “And then there’s not a lot of bandwidth if something surprising happens, as it did with omicron.”
Even with government intervention, the U.S. faces a massive testing load because of its population, which is five times larger than Britain's.
The U.S. would need 2.3 billion tests per month for all teens and adults to test themselves twice per week. That’s more than double the number of at-home tests the administration plans to distribute over several months.
Dr. David Michaels, a former member of Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board, said the administration will probably need to request more federal money to fund testing for years to come.
“Congress was willing to put trillions of dollars into infrastructure primarily to improve transportation. This is infrastructure,” said Michaels, a public health professor at George Washington University. “We need billions more in testing to save lives and maintain the economy.”
For now, testing will probably continue to be strained. And even the most bullish proponents say the U.S. will have to carefully weigh where home tests can have the greatest benefit — for instance, by dispensing them to those most vulnerable to the virus.
Read:Biden says nation weary from COVID but rising with him in WH
“The fact is we just don’t have that kind of mass testing capacity in the U.S.” said Dr. Michael Mina, chief science officer for home testing service eMed, who once called for using billions of tests per month to crush the pandemic. “We should now be thinking about how to use these tests in a strategic way. We don’t want to just dilute them out across the population.”
Mina was until recently a professor at Harvard and has informally advised federal officials on testing.
Mina and others acknowledge widespread use of rapid tests is not without its downsides. Results from at-home tests are seldom reported to health authorities, giving an imperfect picture of the spread and size of the pandemic.
More than 2 million test results a day are being reported to U.S. health officials, but nearly all of them come from laboratory-processed tests. Some researchers estimate the real number of daily tests is roughly 5 million, when accounting for at-home ones.
Body cam footage released in 2018 California bar massacre
Video from cameras worn by deputies who responded to a mass shooting at a Southern California bar in 2018 and recordings of calls for help released Tuesday captured the chaos, horror and confusion of the massacre that left a dozen people dead.
Terrified patrons hiding from a gunman still stalking victims reported the shooting in whispers to dispatchers, while others sobbed over the trauma of an event still unfolding. Officers encountered patrons running for their lives and a man bleeding in the parking lot while friends tried to save him.
Read: Russia moves more troops westward amid Ukraine tensions
The footage and audio from the Borderline Bar and Grill shooting was released Tuesday by the Ventura County sheriff’s after a court fight by The Associated Press and other news outlets who sought the evidence under public records laws.
While the evidence was documented in a more than 400-page report on the shooting released in July, it was the first time the video and call recordings were released.
Investigators concluded that Ian David Long, 28, who served as a Marine in Afghanistan, felt college students disdained veterans and targeted the Thousand Oaks country bar because it was student night. Long took his own life as police surrounded the building on Nov. 7, 2018.
As lines rang off the hook at a sheriff’s call dispatch center, a woman reporting the shooting whispered: “We’re hiding. The guy’s probably still here.”
When a dispatcher asked another woman if she saw the shooting, she responded: “It’s still happening!”
Patrons were still running for cover when the first officers arrived.
Videos from the perspective of a dozen officers show how they were largely in the dark about what happened after one of their own, Sgt. Ronald Helus, went into the building after radioing: “We got multiple people down. We need a lot of ambulances.”
Surveillance footage showed Helus and CHP Officer Todd Barrett slowly entering the bar with guns raised and Helus with a flashlight on the barrel of his rifle scanning the darkness. Long, who had been hiding in the office by the entrance, ambushed the men from and began firing from his .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol.
Barrett ran outside and began returning fire. Helus stumbled as he retreated. When he stood up, he was struck by a bullet fired Barrett fired at Long.
Helus managed to roll onto his back and fire several rounds as Long shot him five times while he was down. The medical examiner, however, concluded it was Barrett’s inadvertent shot that killed the veteran officer.
Some of the body cameras captured the sporadic bursts of gunfire that erupted in the entrance of the bar.
Other cameras were either not turned on at the time of the shooting or were on officers who arrived later.
In the silence that followed the shootout, Sgt. Laura Natoli, standing behind bushes near the bar, noted the smoke she could see inside the bar and said to a deputy: “I wonder if he took himself out.”
Shortly after, a man in a plaid shirt and ball cap who had been the bar emerged from the darkness behind a dumpster and startled Natoli.
“Jesus, what are you doing dude?” she said.
The man said he was in the Army and wanted to help. He said at least one, possibly two, officers were down.
“I watched him,” he said. “By the front door.”
Deputy Charles Gallagher, who was with Natoli, cursed.
Read: COVID deaths and cases are rising again at US nursing homes
“We have no other communication from people inside that’s what I’m worried about,” Natoli said.
Meanwhile, behind a patrol vehicle where Deputy Matthew Kahn had taken cover with another officer, a shooting victim was on the ground and sounded as if he was drifting into unconsciousness as his fellow bargoers applied pressure to stop the bleeding.
“Take me to the hospital,” the man said.
A woman reassured him: “They’re on their way.”
Another officer who arrived told them they needed to carry him to a staging area where ambulances were arriving.
“He’s not going to make it sitting here,” the officer said.
The man was carried to safety. He was the only gunshot victim who survived, Cmdr. Jeff Miller said.
At some point, Kahn, who had spoken to Barrett, could be heard saying Helus had been shot. But his call was not retransmitted, according to the report.
Miller said word of Helus’ shooting wasn’t widely relayed.
“There was a lack of knowledge of Sgt. Helus being shot and down for a pretty substantial time,” Miller said when asked about the footage and radio calls.
Most of the newly released footage ends after Natoli sends Deputy Steve Manley and another officer with assault rifles to the front of the bar to see if they can see any sign of Helus.
Manley’s camera captures the barrel of his rifle as he moves along in the shadows and ducks behind a low wall and bushes in front of the bar.
With his gun trained toward the entrance area, he reported that there was no movement. Then a pop could be heard inside the building.
“I just had one shot,” he said on his radio — a transmission heard on the other videos.
The shot was Long taking his own life, Miller said.
The videos ended there.
COVID deaths and cases are rising again at US nursing homes
COVID-19 infections are soaring again at U.S. nursing homes because of the omicron wave, and deaths are climbing too, leading to new restrictions on family visits and a renewed push to get more residents and staff members vaccinated and boosted.
Nursing homes were the lethal epicenter of the pandemic early on, before the vaccine allowed many of them to reopen to visitors last year. But the wildly contagious variant has dealt them a setback.
Nursing homes reported a near-record of about 32,000 COVID-19 cases among residents in the week ending Jan. 9, an almost sevenfold increase from a month earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A total of 645 COVID-19-related deaths among residents were recorded during the same week, a 47% increase from the earlier period. And there are fears that deaths could go much higher before omicron is through.
Read:University of Michigan removes Schlissel as school president
Despite the rising numbers, the situation is not as dire as it was in December 2020, when nursing home deaths per week topped out at about 6,200. Experts credit the high vaccination rates now among nursing home residents: About 87% are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
COVID-19 shots and boosters provide strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death, but the sick and elderly are uniquely vulnerable to the virus.
Nursing home officials say they are responding to the outbreak by limiting visitors to common areas instead of allowing them into residents’ rooms, and by reinstituting social distancing.
Some states, like New York, have put their own measures in place, like requiring proof of a negative test for visitors and providing all with surgical masks.
Nursing homes are also working to drive up vaccination numbers, especially for boosters. Sixty-three percent of nursing home residents nationally have received an extra dose.
Booster numbers are much worse for staff members. About 83% are fully vaccinated, but only 29% have gotten an extra dose.
Nursing homes have been holding vaccine clinics and town hall meetings to stress the importance of the shots.
They also got another tool to increase vaccinations Thursday when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Biden administration vaccine mandate for most health care workers in the U.S.
About 57,200 nursing home workers — by far the highest number on record during the pandemic — had the virus in the week ending Jan. 9, a more than tenfold increase from a month earlier, according to the CDC.
Sharon Wheeler was shocked to learn that her 88-year-old, dementia-stricken father recently contracted COVID-19 at a Naperville, Illinois, nursing home. She said she hopes the fact that he is fully vaccinated and boosted will help him pull through.
She said she suspects visitors and residents coming and going around the holidays brought COVID-19 inside. Wheeler hasn’t been allowed to see her father, but the staff told her he had mild symptoms.
“I worked so hard to make sure he never got (COVID-19), because I was so terrified,” she said. “He’s such an older man, and I don’t want to lose him this way.”
Vaccines are just one of the many tools that should be used to defend the elderly against omicron, said Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. He also recommended testing of visitors, mandatory boosters and the use of medical-grade masks like N95s and high-efficiency air filters.
“We need to build a Fort Knox around protecting nursing homes, but we’re not doing that right now, and that’s why cases are surging,” Feigl-Ding said Thursday. “We’re going to have exponential numbers of hospitalizations and deaths.”
Read:Chicago students stage walkout, say COVID protocols lacking
The virus dealt a devastating blow in late November to the New Hampshire nursing home Todd Fernald runs, called Webster at Rye, where 100% of residents and staff were vaccinated — but not boosted.
“COVID ripped through this building in 10 seconds,” Fernald said, recalling how, on the day that extra shots were scheduled to be administered, an outbreak occurred that would ultimately kill six residents, infect dozens of others and sicken 20 employees.
Since then, nearly all residents have been boosted, and employees are getting their third shots.
“I only lost one employee who didn’t want to be vaccinated and chose to resign their job,” Fernald said. “I’m having more and more people each and every week that I see are getting boosted and bringing me their booster cards.”
Making sure that facilities have supplies like tests is crucial too, said Lisa Sanders of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit providers of aging services, including nursing homes.
“Older adults and the people they care for should be prioritized for support and supplies as they become available,” Sanders said.