health
Is the delta variant of the coronavirus worse for kids?
Is the delta variant of the coronavirus worse for kids?
No, experts say there’s no strong evidence yet that it makes children and teens sicker than earlier versions of the virus, although delta has led to a surge in infections among kids because it’s more contagious.
Read: 'Sputnik V's efficacy against Delta varies from 83-94%'
Delta’s ability to spread more easily makes it more of a risk to children and underscores the need for masks in schools and vaccinations for those who are old enough, said Dr. Juan Dumois, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Weekly infection rates among U.S. children earlier this month topped 250,000, surpassing the wintertime peak, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association. Since the pandemic began, more than 5 million children in the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19.
The delta variant has been identified in at least 180 countries, according to the World Health Organization. In many of them, the spike in infections has also meant an increase in hospitalizations in young children and teens.
In the U.S., the hospitalization rate for COVID-19 was less than 2 per 100,000 children in late August and early September — similar to the peak last winter, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the portion of kids hospitalized with severe disease hasn’t changed significantly.
Read:'10 times fewer virus particles needed to catch Delta variant'
The sheer numbers can make it seem like children are getting sicker with the delta variant, but experts say that does not appear to be the case. Most infected kids have mild infections or no symptoms and do not need to be hospitalized.
COVID-19 vaccines continue to provide protection against delta. Among children 12 and older — who are eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations — the weekly hospitalization rate in July was 10 times higher for the unvaccinated than those who have had the shots, CDC data show.
50 lakh Sinopharm doses arrive in Dhaka
Around 50 lakh more doses of the Sinopharm vaccine arrived in Dhaka from China in the early hours of Thursday.
A regular flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines landed at Shahjalal International Airport with the vaccine consignment around 2am, said Maidul Islam Prodran, senior information officer (Health).
Read: Dhaka receives 50 lakh more doses of Sinopharm vaccine
Chief Health Coordinator Dr Abu Jaher received the vaccine consignment at the airport, he added.
The vaccine doses are, in fact, part of the commercial purchase from China.
On September 18, Bangladesh received some 50 lakh doses of the Sinopharm vaccine. Besides, 54 lakh doses of the Chinese Covid vaccine arrived in Bangladesh on September 11.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina recently told Parliament that the government had made arrangements to get more than one crore Covid-19 jabs every month.
Read: 54 lakh Sinopharm doses arrive in Dhaka
According to the schedule received from the company producing Sinopharm, two crore shots will be available every month from October and six crore from December, she had said.
On August 16, Bangladesh, China and Incepta Vaccine Limited signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the co-production of the Sinopharm vaccine in Bangladesh.
CDC panel grapples with who needs a COVID-19 booster shot
An influential panel of advisers to the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention grappled Wednesday with the question of which Americans should get COVID-19 booster shots, with some members wondering if the decision should be put off for a month in hopes of more evidence.
The doubts and uncertainties suggested yet again that the matter of whether to dispense extra doses to shore up Americans’ protection against the coronavirus is more complicated scientifically than the Biden administration may have realized when it outlined plans a month ago for an across-the-board rollout of boosters. The rollout was supposed to have begun this week.
Much of the discussion at the meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices focused on the possibility of a scaled-back booster program targeted to older people or perhaps health care workers. But even then, some of the experts said that the data on whether boosters are actually needed, precisely who should get them and when was not clear-cut.
“What would be the downside” of simply waiting a month in hopes of more information? asked Dr. Sarah Long of Drexel University.
Read: Top doctors say not so fast to Biden’s boosters-for-all plan
The two-day meeting had been scheduled to resume on Thursday, but it was not immediately clear whether that would happen.
The meeting came days after a different advisory group — this one serving the Food and Drug Administration — overwhelmingly rejected a sweeping White House plan to dispense third shots to nearly everyone. Instead, that panel endorsed booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine only for senior citizens and those at high risk from the virus.
While the COVID-19 vaccines continue to offer strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death, immunity against milder infection seems to be dropping months after vaccination.
“I want to highlight that in September of 2021 in the United States, deaths from COVID-19 are largely vaccine-preventable with the primary series of any of the three vaccines available,” said CDC advisory panel member Dr. Matthew Daley, a researcher at Kaiser Permanente Colorado.
And the public must understand that no matter how good a COVID-19 vaccine is, when it comes to milder infections, “it is unlikely that we will prevent everything,” said Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of Vanderbilt University.
Several panelists said another concern is the public confusion that could result if they recommend a booster only for certain recipients of the Pfizer vaccine. That could leave people vaccinated with Moderna or Johnson & Johnson shots wondering what to do.
The meeting was devoted to Pfizer booster shots only. Moderna’s application to dispense third doses is not as far along in the process. And a major U.S. study on whether mixing-and-matching booster doses is safe and effective isn’t finished.
Read: US panel backs COVID-19 boosters only for seniors, high-risk
Many experts are torn about the need for boosters because they see the COVID-19 vaccines working as expected, even amid the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. It is normal for virus-blocking antibodies to be highest right after vaccination and then wane over the following months.
“We don’t care if antibodies wane. You care what is the minimum” needed for protection, Long said.
Yet no one knows the antibody level threshold below which someone’s risk for infection suddenly jumps. Even then, the body has backup defenses.
Antibody production and even those backup defenses don’t form as robustly in older people. But it’s impossible to pinpoint the age at which that becomes a problem, CDC microbiologist Natalie Thornburg told the committee.
Ultimately the committee must decide who is considered at high enough risk for an extra dose.
CDC officials presented data from several U.S. studies, saying there is growing evidence of a decline in the effectiveness of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in preventing new COVID-19 infections in some groups, most notably people 65 and older and health care workers who got shots early in the vaccination campaign.
There’s also a hint that at age 75, there may be some decline in protection against hospitalization. But the CDC said there is little information on waning immunity in younger people with chronic medical problems.
Some panelists also wondered about boosters for health care workers who can’t come to work if they get even a mild infection.
Read: Global vaccine disparity gets sharper amid talk of boosters
“We don’t have enough health care workers to take care of the unvaccinated. They just keep coming,” Talbot said.
Another question was how many months after the second shot the booster should be given. Scientists have talked about six months or eight months.
As for booster safety, serious side effects are exceedingly rare with the first two doses. And Pfizer pointed to 2.8 million booster doses given in Israel, mostly to people 60 and older, with fewer reports of annoying side effects like pain or fever with the third dose than with the earlier shots. There was one report of a rare risk, heart inflammation, that is sometimes seen in younger men.
In the U.S., more than 24,000 people who have volunteered for a CDC vaccine safety tracking system have reported getting an extra dose, and likewise have reported no red flags.
‘Soul-crushing’: US COVID-19 deaths are topping 1,900 a day
COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have climbed to an average of more than 1,900 a day for the first time since early March, with experts saying the virus is preying largely on a distinct group: 71 million unvaccinated Americans.
The increasingly lethal turn has filled hospitals, complicated the start of the school year, delayed the return to offices and demoralized health care workers.
“It is devastating,” said Dr. Dena Hubbard, a pediatrician in the Kansas City, Missouri, area who has cared for babies delivered prematurely by cesarean section in a last-ditch effort to save their mothers, some of whom died. For health workers, the deaths, combined with misinformation and disbelief about the virus, have been “heart-wrenching, soul-crushing.”
Twenty-two people died in one week alone at CoxHealth hospitals in the Springfield-Branson area, a level almost as high as that of all of Chicago. West Virginia has had more deaths in the first three weeks of September — 340 — than in the previous three months combined. Georgia is averaging 125 dead per day, more than California or other more populous states.
“I’ve got to tell you, a guy has got to wonder if we are ever going to see the end of it or not,” said Collin Follis, who is the coroner in Missouri’s Madison County and works at a funeral home.
Read:Biden aims to enlist allies in tackling climate, COVID, more
The nation was stunned back in December when it was witnessing 3,000 deaths a day. But that was when almost no one was vaccinated.
Now, nearly 64% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. And yet, average deaths per day have climbed 40% over the past two weeks, from 1,387 to 1,947, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Health experts say the vast majority of the hospitalized and dead have been unvaccinated. While some vaccinated people have suffered breakthrough infections, those tend to be mild.
The number of vaccine-eligible Americans who have yet to get a shot has been put at more than 70 million.
“There is a very real risk you’ll end up in the hospital or even in the obituary pages,” Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, chief medical officer for the Ohio Department of Health, said to the unvaccinated. “Don’t become a statistic when there is a simple, safe and effective alternative to go out today and get vaccinated.”
Many low-vaccination communities also have high rates of conditions like obesity and diabetes, said Dr. William Moss of Johns Hopkins. And that combination — along with the more contagious delta variant — has proved lethal.
Read:Pfizer says COVID-19 vaccine works in kids ages 5 to 11
“I think this is a real failure of society and our most egregious sin to be at this stage where we have hospitals overwhelmed, ICUs overwhelmed and hitting this mark in terms of deaths per day,” Moss lamented.
New cases of the coronavirus per day in the U.S. have dropped since the start of September and are now running at about 139,000. But deaths typically take longer to fall because victims often linger for weeks before succumbing.
In Kansas, 65-year-old cattleman Mike Limon thought he had beaten COVID-19 and went back to work for a few days. But the virus had “fried” his lungs and he died last week, said his grandson, Cadin Limon, 22, of Wichita.
He said his grandfather didn’t get vaccinated for fear of a bad reaction, and he hasn’t gotten the shot either for the same reason, though serious side effects have proved extremely rare.
He described his grandfather as a “man of faith.”
“Sixty-five is still pretty young,” the young man said. “I know that. It seems sudden and unexpected, but COVID didn’t surprise God. His death wasn’t a surprise to God. The God I serve is bigger than that.”
Cases are falling in West Virginia from pandemic highs, but deaths and hospitalizations are expected to continue increasing for as many as six more weeks, said retired National Guard Maj. Gen. James Hoyer, who leads the state’s coronavirus task force.
Dr. Greg Martin, who is president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and practices mostly at Grady Hospital in Atlanta, said the staff is buckling under the strain.
Read:COVID has killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 flu
“I think everyone in 2020 thought we would get through this. No one really thought that we would still be seeing this the same way in 2021,” he said.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon activated the state’s National Guard on Tuesday to provide assistance to hospitals dealing with a surge of COVID-19 patients.
In Oklahoma, Hillcrest South Hospital in Tulsa is among several medical centers around the country to add temporary morgues. Deaths are at an all-time high there, at three to four times the number it would see in a non-COVID-19 world, said Bennett Geister, hospital CEO.
He said the staff there, too, is worn out.
“They didn’t sign up to be ICU nurses only to have people pass away on them,” he said. “They signed up to be ICU nurses to take people to recovery and heal people from the brink of death.”
Bangladesh performing well in fulfilling SDGs, but many challenges ahead
Although Bangladesh is on track and performing well in achieving many of the UN-adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in time, it still faces the challenges of low external resources and lack of global partnership apart from lower revenue-GDP ratio.
Achieving SDGs will critically depend on the availability of resources including external resources and global partnership, according to an official document collected by UNB.
The United Nations adopted the SDGs in 2015 with a global call of action on 17 integrated goals with a pledge to end poverty, protect the earth’s environment and climate and ensure peace and prosperity for people everywhere by 2030.
Read: Hasina receives SDGs Progress Award
Bangladesh’s performance has so far been commendable in various fields, including poverty reduction, gender equality, child and maternal mortality, nutrition, sanitation, electricity, annual GDP growth and disaster management.
But it has to overcome a number of the hurdles to further improve its performance, the document observes.
“Government revenue as a proportion of GDP needs to be substantially increased through undertaking measures for increasing the number of taxpayers and improving tax collection and management mechanism,” it says.
The document calls for a substantial increase in inflow of FDI and remittance for achieving of the the goals.
Read KOICA to help generate statistics to indicate progress on SDGs
According to official data, the tax to GDP ratio of the country has been 9.9 per cent on an average since 2015-2019, while it is 19.8 per cent for India, 23.9 per cent for Nepal, 14.7 per cent for Pakistan, 13.5 per cent for Sri Lanka.
The ratio is 25.6 per cent for developing countries and 35.9 per cent for developed countries, according to the data.
Read UNDP launches Accelerator Lab in Bangladesh to support SDGs
The tax-to-GDP ratio is a ratio of a nation's tax revenue relative to its gross domestic product, the value of goods and services produced in a country during a certain period. The ratio is also a marker of how well the government controls a country's economic resources.
The document says that Bangladesh has undertaken a comprehensive strategy and actions to effectively internalise Sustainable Development Goals. The 7th Five Year Plan incorporated 82 per cent of sustainable development targets. As a result, the country is well on track in achieving SDGs.
Out of 17 SDGs, Bangladesh has made considerable progress in reducing poverty. In 2019, the proportion of population living below the international poverty line (absolute poverty measured by USD 1.90 per day) was 10.5 per cent.
Read: Hasina seeks SDGs roadmap for countries falling behind
Trudeau's Liberals win Canada election, but miss majority
Canadians gave Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party a victory in Monday's parliamentary elections, but his gamble to win a majority of seats failed and nearly mirrored the result of two years ago.
The Liberals won the most seats of any party. The 49-year-old Trudeau channeled the star power of his father, the Liberal icon and late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, when he first won election in 2015 and has led his party to the top finish in two elections since.
Trudeau’s Liberals were leading or elected in 156 seats — one less than they won 2019, and 14 short of the 170 needed for a majority in the House of Commons.
The Conservatives were leading or elected in 121 seats, the same number they won in 2019. The leftist New Democrats were leading or elected in 27, a gain of three seats, while the Quebec-based Bloc Québécois remained unchanged with 32 seats and the Greens were down to two.
“You are sending us back to work with a clear mandate to get Canada through this pandemic,” Trudeau said.
Read: Trudeau criticized for calling Canadian election in 4th wave
“I hear you when you say you just want to get back to the things you love and not worry about this pandemic or an election."
Trudeau entered the election leading a stable minority government that wasn’t under threat of being toppled.
The opposition was relentless in accusing Trudeau of calling an unnecessary early vote — two years before the deadline — for his own personal ambition.
“Trudeau lost his gamble to get a majority so I would say this is a bittersweet victory for him,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal.
“Basically we are back to square one, as the new minority parliament will look like the previous one. Trudeau and the Liberals saved their skin and will stay in power, but many Canadians who didn’t want this late summer, pandemic election are probably not amused about the whole situation,” he said.
Trudeau bet Canadians didn’t want a Conservative government during a pandemic. Canada is now among the most fully vaccinated countries in the world and Trudeau’s government spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up the economy amid lockdowns. Trudeau argued that the Conservatives’ approach, which has been skeptical of lockdowns and vaccine mandates, would be dangerous and says Canadians need a government that follows science.
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole didn’t require his party’s candidates to be vaccinated and would not say how many were unvaccinated. O’Toole described vaccination as a personal health decision, but a growing number of vaccinated Canadians are increasingly upset with those who refuse to get vaccinated.
“The debate on vaccination and Trudeau taking on the anti-vaccination crowd helped the Liberals to salvage a campaign that didn’t start well for the party,” Beland said.
Trudeau supports making vaccines mandatory for Canadians to travel by air or rail, something the Conservatives oppose. And Trudeau has pointed out that Alberta, run by a Conservative provincial government, is in crisis.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, an ally of O’Toole, said the province might run out of beds and staff for intensive care units within days. Kenney apologized for the dire situation and is now reluctantly introducing a vaccine passport and imposing a mandatory work-from-home order two months after lifting nearly all restrictions.
Read:Trudeau denounces truck attack that targeted Muslim family
“Hubris led Trudeau to call the election. He and the Liberals won the election but lost the prize they were seeking. This is only a great night for the Liberals because two weeks ago it appeared they would lose government outright something they could not fathom before they gambled on an election,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto.
Wiseman said the Conservatives were hurt by the situation in Alberta. “The explosion of the pandemic in Alberta in the past 10 days undermined O’Toole’s compliments of the Alberta Conservatives on how they had handled the pandemic and reinforced Trudeau’s argument for mandatory vaccinations,” he said.
A Conservative win would have represented a rebuke of Trudeau against a politician with a fraction of his name recognition. O’Toole, 47, is a military veteran, former lawyer and a member of Parliament for nine years.
“Canadians did not give Mr. Trudeau the majority mandate he wanted,” O’Toole said.
O'Toole said he was more determined than ever to continue but his party might dump him after it dumped the previous leader who failed to beat Trudeau in 2019.
O’Toole advertised himself a year ago as a “true-blue Conservative.” He became Conservative Party leader with a pledge to “take back Canada,” but immediately started working to push the party toward the political center.
O’Toole’s strategy, which included disavowing positions held dear by his party’s base on issues such as climate change, guns and balanced budgets, was designed to appeal to a broader cross section of voters in a country that tends to be far more liberal than its southern neighbor.
The son of a long-time politician has faced criticism he will say and do anything to get elected.
Whether moderate Canadians believed O’Toole is the progressive conservative he claims to be and whether he alienated traditional Conservatives became central questions of the campaign.
Regina Adshade, a 28-year-old Vancouver software developer, said she was bothered that an election was called early, during a pandemic and with wildfires burning in British Columbia. But it didn’t stop her from voting Liberal because the party represents her values.
Read: Trudeau looks to Biden for help in dispute with China
“I don’t love there was an election right now but it wasn’t going to change my vote,” she said.
Trudeau’s legacy includes embracing immigration at a time when the U.S. and other countries closed their doors. He also legalized cannabis nationwide and brought in a carbon tax to fight climate change. And he preserved free trade deal with the U.S. and Mexico amid threats by former U.S. President Donald Trump to scrap the agreement.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama and ex-Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton tweeted support for Trudeau. There wasn’t a Trump endorsement of O’Toole. Conservative campaign co-chair Walied Soliman said there is no alignment whatsoever between O’Toole and Trumpism. Soliman said earlier in the day holding Trudeau to a minority government would be a win for O'Toole.
Liberals governed Canada for 69 years during the 20th century. Pierre Trudeau called for a “just society” and ran the country with a panache not seen before from a Canadian leader. He is responsible for Canada’s version of the bill of rights and is credited with opening the door wide to immigration.
Trudeau's Liberals dominated in Toronto, Canada's largest city and one of the most multicultural cities in the world.
US easing virus restrictions for foreign flights to America
In a major easing of pandemic travel restrictions, the U.S. said Monday it will allow foreigners to fly into the country this fall if they have vaccination proof and a negative COVID-19 test — changes replacing a hodgepodge of rules that had kept out many non-citizens and irritated allies in Europe and beyond where virus cases are lower.
The changes, to take effect in November, will allow families and others who have been separated by the travel restrictions for 18 months to plan for long-awaited reunifications and allow foreigners with work permits to get back to their jobs in the U.S.
Airlines, business groups and travelers cheered — though they also called the step long overdue.
“It’s a happy day. Big Apple, here I come!” said French entrepreneur Stephane Le Breton, 45, finally able to book a trip to New York City that had been put on hold over the virus restrictions.
The new policy will replace a patchwork of travel bans first instituted by President Donald Trump last year and tightened by President Joe Biden that restrict travel by non-citizens who have in the prior 14 days been in the United Kingdom, European Union, China, India, Iran, Republic of Ireland, Brazil or South Africa.
Read:COVID has killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 flu
White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients announced the new policies, which still will require all foreign travelers flying to the U.S. to demonstrate proof of vaccination before boarding, as well as proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within three days of flight. Biden will also tighten testing rules for unvaccinated American citizens, who will need to be tested within a day before returning to the U.S., as well as after they arrive home.
The tougher rules for unvaccinated Americans come as the White House has moved to impose sweeping vaccination-or-testing requirements affecting as many as 100 million people in an effort to encourage holdouts to get shots.
Fully vaccinated passengers will not be required to quarantine, Zients said.
There will be no immediate change to U.S. land border policies, which restrict much cross-border travel with Mexico and Canada.
The travel bans had become the source of growing geopolitical frustration, particularly among allies in the UK and EU. The easing comes ahead of Biden meeting with some European leaders on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly this week.
“This is based on individuals rather than a country-based approach, so it’s a stronger system,” Zients said.
The EU and UK had previously moved to allow vaccinated U.S. travelers in without quarantines, in an effort to boost business and tourism. But the EU recommended last month that some travel restrictions be reimposed on U.S. travelers to the bloc because of the rampant spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus in America.
Read:Top doctors say not so fast to Biden’s boosters-for-all plan
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will require airlines to collect contact information from international travelers to facilitate tracing, Zients said.
The U.S. will accept full vaccination of travelers with any of the vaccines approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization, the CDC said. The WHO is reviewing Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine but hasn’t yet approved it.
Monday’s announcement was met with applause by the air travel industry, which has lost significant revenue from declines in international travel.
Delta Air Lines spokesman Morgan Durrant said, “Science tells us that vaccinations coupled with testing is the safest way to re-open travel, and we are optimistic this important decision will allow for the continued economic recovery both in the U.S. and abroad and the reunification of families who have been separated for more than 18 months.”
Worldwide, air travel is still down more than half from pre-pandemic levels, and the decline is much sharper for cross-border flying. By July, domestic travel had recovered to 84% of 2019 numbers, but international travel was just 26% of the same month two years ago, according to figures this month from the airline industry’s main global trade group, the International Air Transport Association.
The numbers are similar but not quite as stark for the U.S., where international travel in August was 46% of that in August 2019, according to Airlines for America. Arrivals by non-U.S. citizens were only 36% of the 2019 level.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted that he was “delighted” by the news. He said: “It’s a fantastic boost for business and trade, and great that family and friends on both sides of the pond can be reunited once again.”
Read:Washington Post editorial on COVID-19 origins distorts facts: Chinese embassy
Airlines hailed the U.S. decision as a lifeline for the struggling industry. Tim Alderslade, chief executive of industry body Airlines U.K. said it was “a major breakthrough.”
Shai Weiss, chief executive of Virgin Atlantic, said it was “a major milestone. ... The U.K. will now be able to strengthen ties with our most important economic partner, the U.S., boosting trade and tourism as well as reuniting friends, families and business colleagues.”
“The travel bans were really behind the times,” said Maka Hutson, counsel specializing in immigration issues at the law firm Akin Gump. She said they were very frustrating to European executives who’d been vaccinated but still couldn’t fly to the United States to conduct business.
The changes also drew praise from business groups, who have been contending with labor shortages as the economy bounces back with unexpected strength from last year’s coronavirus recession. U.S. employers have been posting job openings — a record 10.9 million in July — faster than applicants can fill them.
Myron Brilliant, head of international affairs for the U..S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement, “Allowing vaccinated foreign nationals to travel freely to the United States will help foster a robust and durable recovery for the American economy.”
COVID has killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 flu
COVID-19 has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic did — approximately 675,000.
The U.S. population a century ago was just one-third of what it is today, meaning the flu cut a much bigger, more lethal swath through the country. But the COVID-19 crisis is by any measure a colossal tragedy in its own right, especially given the incredible advances in scientific knowledge since then and the failure to take maximum advantage of the vaccines available this time.
“Big pockets of American society — and, worse, their leaders — have thrown this away,” medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan said of the opportunity to vaccinate everyone eligible by now.
Like the Spanish flu, the coronavirus may never entirely disappear from our midst. Instead, scientists hope it becomes a mild seasonal bug as human immunity strengthens through vaccination and repeated infection. That could take time.
“We hope it will be like getting a cold, but there’s no guarantee,” said Emory University biologist Rustom Antia, who suggests an optimistic scenario in which this could happen over a few years.
For now, the pandemic still has the United States and other parts of the world firmly in its jaws.
Read: Global Covid update: Vaccines put the brakes on pandemic's advance
While the delta-fueled surge in infections may have peaked, U.S. deaths are running at over 1,900 a day on average, the highest level since early March, and the country’s overall toll topped 675,000 Monday, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University, though the real number is believed to be higher.
Winter may bring a new surge, with the University of Washington’s influential model projecting an additional 100,000 or so Americans will die of COVID-19 by Jan. 1, which would bring the overall U.S. toll to 776,000.
The 1918-19 influenza pandemic killed 50 million victims globally at a time when the world had one-quarter the population it does now. Global deaths from COVID-19 now stand at more than 4.6 million.
The Spanish flu’s U.S. death toll is a rough guess, given the incomplete records of the era and the poor scientific understanding of what caused the illness. The 675,000 figure comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The ebbing of COVID-19 could happen if the virus progressively weakens as it mutates and more and more humans’ immune systems learn to attack it. Vaccination and surviving infection are the main ways the immune system improves. Breast-fed infants also gain some immunity from their mothers.
Under that optimistic scenario, schoolchildren would get mild illness that trains their immune systems. As they grow up, the children would carry the immune response memory, so that when they are old and vulnerable, the coronavirus would be no more dangerous than cold viruses.
The same goes for today’s vaccinated teens: Their immune systems would get stronger through the shots and mild infections.
“We will all get infected,” Antia predicted. “What’s important is whether the infections are severe.”
Something similar happened with the H1N1 flu virus, the culprit in the 1918-19 pandemic. It encountered too many people who were immune, and it also eventually weakened through mutation. H1N1 still circulates today, but immunity acquired through infection and vaccination has triumphed.
Read: US panel backs COVID-19 boosters only for seniors, high-risk
Getting an annual flu shot now protects against H1N1 and several other strains of flu. To be sure, flu kills between 12,000 and 61,000 Americans each year, but on average, it is a seasonal problem and a manageable one.
Before COVID-19, the 1918-19 flu was universally considered the worst pandemic disease in human history. Whether the current scourge ultimately proves deadlier is unclear.
In many ways, the 1918-19 flu — which was wrongly named Spanish flu because it first received widespread news coverage in Spain — was worse.
Spread by the mobility of World War I, it killed young, healthy adults in vast numbers. No vaccine existed to slow it, and there were no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections. And, of course, the world was much smaller.
Yet jet travel and mass migrations threaten to increase the toll of the current pandemic. Much of the world is unvaccinated. And the coronavirus has been full of surprises.
Markel said he is continually astounded by the magnitude of the disruption the pandemic has brought to the planet.
“I was gobsmacked by the size of the quarantines” the Chinese government undertook initially, Markel said, “and I’ve since been gob-gob-gob-smacked to the nth degree.” The lagging pace of U.S. vaccinations is the latest source of his astonishment.
Just under 64% of the U.S. population has received as least one dose of the vaccine, with state rates ranging from a high of approximately 77% in Vermont and Massachusetts to lows around 46% to 49% in Idaho, Wyoming, West Virginia and Mississippi.
Globally, about 43% of the population has received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data, with some African countries just beginning to give their first shots.
“We know that all pandemics come to an end,” said Dr. Jeremy Brown, director of emergency care research at the National Institutes of Health, who wrote a book on influenza. “They can do terrible things while they’re raging.”
COVID-19 could have been far less lethal in the U.S. if more people had gotten vaccinated faster, “and we still have an opportunity to turn it around,” Brown said. “We often lose sight of how lucky we are to take these things for granted.”
The current vaccines work extremely well in preventing severe disease and death from the variants of the virus that have emerged so far.
Read: Washington Post editorial on COVID-19 origins distorts facts: Chinese embassy
It will be crucial for scientists to make sure the ever-mutating virus hasn’t changed enough to evade vaccines or to cause severe illness in unvaccinated children, Antia said.
If the virus changes significantly, a new vaccine using the technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna shots could be produced in 110 days, a Pfizer executive said Wednesday. The company is studying whether annual shots with the current vaccine will be required to keep immunity high.
One plus: The coronavirus mutates at a slower pace than flu viruses, making it a more stable target for vaccination, said Ann Marie Kimball, a retired University of Washington professor of epidemiology.
So, will the current pandemic unseat the 1918-19 flu pandemic as the worst in human history?
“You’d like to say no. We have a lot more infection control, a lot more ability to support people who are sick. We have modern medicine,” Kimball said. “But we have a lot more people and a lot more mobility. ... The fear is eventually a new strain gets around a particular vaccine target.”
To those unvaccinated individuals who are counting on infection rather than vaccination for immune protection, Kimball said, “The trouble is, you have to survive infection to acquire the immunity.” It’s easier, she said, to go to the drugstore and get a shot.
Top doctors say not so fast to Biden’s boosters-for-all plan
Just one month ago, President Joe Biden and his health advisers announced big plans to soon deliver a booster shot of the coronavirus vaccine to all Americans. But after campaigning for the White House on a pledge to “follow the science,” Biden found himself uncharacteristically ahead of it with that lofty pronouncement.
Some of nation’s top medical advisers on Friday delivered a stinging rebuke of the idea, in essence telling the White House: not so fast.
A key government advisory panel overwhelmingly rejected Biden’s plan to give COVID-19 booster shots across the board and instead recommended the extra vaccine dose only for those who are age 65 or older or who run a high risk of severe disease.
Biden’s Aug. 18 announcement that the federal government was preparing to shore up nearly all Americans’ protection had been made with great fanfare. It was meant to calm the nerves of millions of Americans fearful of a new, more transmissible strain of the coronavirus.
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“The plan is for every adult to get a booster shot eight months after you got your second shot,” Biden said, noting that his administration would be ready to begin the program on Sept. 20.
Biden added the qualification that third doses would require the signoff of health officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but his public message glossed over the nuance.
“Just remember,” he said, “as a simple rule: Eight months after your second shot, get a booster shot.”
Biden’s plan drew immediate outrage from global health groups that encouraged the United States and other well-off nations to refrain from administering boosters until poorer countries could provide first doses to their most vulnerable citizens.
“Viewed from a global perspective, this is a squandering of a scarce global resource, as a consequence of which people will die,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “I feel completely comfortable saying this,” he added, acknowledging that domestic political considerations weigh differently on presidents.
The Biden plan was criticized, too, by medical professionals, who cited a lack of safety data on extra doses and raised doubts about the value of mass boosters, rather than ones targeted to specific groups.
“It created enormous pressure on the agency to go along with what the White House wanted,” said Lurie, who characterized the FDA panel’s decision as a “rebuke” of Biden’s efforts to circumvent standard procedures. “That’s what we’re trying to get beyond after the Trump era.”
“Following them has served FDA very well when they’ve done that,” he added. He contrasted the expeditious authorization of the vaccines to the agency’s brief flirtation with unproven COVID-19 treatments such as the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine during the Trump administration. “When they’ve strayed from it, they’ve got in trouble.”
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The nonbinding recommendation from the outside experts who advise the FDA is not the last word. The FDA will consider the group’s advice and make its own decision, probably within days. The CDC is set to weigh in next week.
One of the FDA’s advisers, Dr. Paul Offit of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told reporters after the meeting that while the Biden administration had planned for boosters for the general population, “that’s not this. This is, ‘We’re going to test the water one foot at a time.‘’’
The committee “parked all of that stuff and did their job,” said Norman Baylor, former director of the FDA’s office of vaccine review. “I’ll be very frank here: I think this meeting was rushed. I would say it should have happened later,” so that the FDA had more data to make the decision.
White House allies defended the administration’s aggressive preparation for the boosters, which has included regular messaging from doctors about their necessity and bolstering the federal stockpile of doses.
They argue that the American people elect a president, not a scientist, to act in their best interests. They reason that the alternative — holding off on preparing for boosters until federal health officials give the green light — could have cost lives.
The U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, told reporters before the panel’s vote that the administration was aiming to be transparent with the public about the promise of boosters providing enduring protection and was not trying to pressure regulators to act. He said the administration also wanted to be prepared in the event the boosters were approved.
“We have always said that this initial plan would be contingent on the FDA and the CDC’s independent evaluation,” Murthy said. “We will follow that evaluation and their recommendations, we will make sure our final plan reflects it.”
“What we were doing in August and we continue to do there is really prioritizing transparency and preparation,” he added.
Read: Biden’s vaccine rules ignite instant, hot GOP opposition
Administration officials noted that the experts’ recommendation Friday probably would result in boosters for people most likely to get them anyway had the entire population been give the go-ahead. Seniors were in the first group of Americans to be eligible for vaccination after their authorization last December, followed by those with preexisting conditions that put them at higher risk for serious disease. Those populations account for tens of millions of Americans, officials said.
After Friday’s voting, the White House tried to put the advisory panel’s action in a positive light.
“Today was an important step forward in providing better protection to Americans from COVID-19,” said White House spokesman Kevin Munoz. “We stand ready to provide booster shots to eligible Americans once the process concludes at the end of next week.”
Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner who comments regularly on the pandemic, said the decision about boosters “is not just one of science. It’s one of values.”
“Because when we’re considering issues like should additional doses go to Americans or people around the world, that is not the right decision for a scientific regulatory committee,” she said. “That is up to the president of the United States.”
Haitians on Texas border undeterred by US plan to expel them
Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their home country said they will not be deterred by U.S. plans to speedily send them back, as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border Saturday after crossing from Mexico.
Scores of people waded back and forth across the Rio Grande on Saturday afternoon, re-entering Mexico to purchase water, food and diapers in Ciudad Acuña before returning to the Texas encampment under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio.
Junior Jean, a 32-year-old man from Haiti, watched as people cautiously carried cases of water or bags of food through the knee-high river water. Jean said he lived on the streets in Chile the past four years, resigned to searching for food in garbage cans.
“We are all looking for a better life,” he said.
The Department of Homeland Security said Saturday that it moved about 2,000 of the migrants from the camp to other locations Friday for processing and possible removal from the U.S. Its statement also said it would have 400 agents and officers in the area by Monday morning and would send more if necessary.
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The announcement marked a swift response to the sudden arrival of Haitians in Del Rio, a Texas city of about 35,000 people roughly 145 miles (230 kilometers) west of San Antonio. It sits on a relatively remote stretch of border that lacks capacity to hold and process such large numbers of people.
A U.S. official told The Associated Press on Friday that the U.S would likely fly the migrants out of the country on five to eight flights a day, starting Sunday, while another official expected no more than two a day and said everyone would be tested for COVID-19. The first official said operational capacity and Haiti’s willingness to accept flights would determine how many flights there would be. Both officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Told of the U.S. plans Saturday, several migrants said they still intended to remain in the encampment and seek asylum. Some spoke of the most recent devastating earthquake in Haiti and the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, saying they were afraid to return to a country that seems more unstable than when they left.
“In Haiti, there is no security,” said Fabricio Jean, a 38-year-old Haitian who arrived with his wife and two daughters. “The country is in a political crisis.”
Haitians have been migrating to the U.S. in large numbers from South America for several years, many having left their Caribbean nation after a devastating 2010 earthquake. After jobs dried up from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, many made the dangerous trek by foot, bus and car to the U.S. border, including through the infamous Darien Gap, a Panamanian jungle.
Jorge Luis Mora Castillo, a 48-year-old from Cuba, said he arrived Saturday in Acuna and also planned to cross into the U.S. Castillo said his family paid smugglers $12,000 to take him, his wife and their son out of Paraguay, a South American nation where they had lived for four years.
Told of the U.S. message discouraging migrants, Castillo said he wouldn’t change his mind.
“Because to go back to Cuba is to die,” he said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection closed off vehicle and pedestrian traffic in both directions Friday at the only border crossing between Del Rio and Ciudad Acuña “to respond to urgent safety and security needs” and it remained closed Saturday. Travelers were being directed indefinitely to a crossing in Eagle Pass, roughly 55 miles (90 kilometers) away.
Read:Nowhere to go for Haiti quake victims upon hospital release
Crowd estimates varied, but Val Verde County Sheriff Frank Joe Martinez had said there were about 13,700 new arrivals in Del Rio as of Friday. Migrants pitched tents and built makeshift shelters from giant reeds known as carrizo cane. Many bathed and washed clothing in the river.
It is unclear how such a large number amassed so quickly, though many Haitians have been assembling in camps on the Mexican side of the border to wait while deciding whether to attempt entry into the U.S.
The number of Haitian arrivals began to reach unsustainable levels for the Border Patrol in Del Rio about 2 ½ weeks ago, prompting the agency’s acting sector chief, Robert Garcia, to ask headquarters for help, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Since then, the agency has transferred Haitians in buses and vans to other Border Patrol facilities in Texas, specifically El Paso, Laredo and Rio Grande Valley. They are mostly processed outside of the pandemic-related authority, meaning they can claim asylum and remain in the U.S. while their claims are considered. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes custody decision but families can generally not be held more than 20 days under court order.
Homeland Security’s plan announced Saturday signals a shift to use of pandemic-related authority for immediate expulsion to Haiti without an opportunity to claim asylum, the official said.
The flight plan, while potentially massive in scale, hinges on how Haitians respond. They might have to decide whether to stay put at the risk of being sent back to an impoverished homeland wracked by poverty and political instability or return to Mexico. Unaccompanied children are exempt from fast-track expulsions.
DHS said, “our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey.”
“Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion,” the agency wrote. “Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and welfare of border communities and to the lives of migrants themselves, and should not be attempted.”
U.S. authorities are being severely tested after Democratic President Joe Biden quickly dismantled Trump administration policies that Biden considered cruel or inhumane, most notably one requiring asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while waiting for U.S. immigration court hearings.
A pandemic-related order to immediately expel migrants without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum that was introduced in March 2020 remains in effect, but unaccompanied children and many families have been exempt. During his first month in office, Biden chose to exempt children traveling alone on humanitarian grounds.
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Nicole Phillips, legal director for advocacy group Haitian Bridge Alliance, said Saturday that the U.S. government should process migrants and allow them to apply for asylum, not rush to expel them.
“It really is a humanitarian crisis,” Phillips said. “There needs to be a lot of help there now.”
Mexico’s immigration agency said in a statement Saturday that Mexico has opened a “permanent dialogue” with Haitian government representatives “to address the situation of irregular migratory flows during their entry and transit through Mexico, as well as their assisted return.”
The agency didn’t specify if it was referring to the Haitians in Ciudad Acuña or to the thousands of others in Tapachula, at the Guatemalan border, and the agency didn’t immediately reply to a request for further details.
In August, U.S. authorities stopped migrants nearly 209,000 times at the border, which was close to a 20-year high even though many of the stops involved repeat crossers because there are no legal consequences for being expelled under the pandemic authority.