AP -
July 30, 2021
Federal workers will be required to sign forms attesting they’ve been vaccinated against the coronavirus or else comply with new rules on mandatory masking, weekly testing, distancing and more. The strict new guidelines are aimed at increasing sluggish vaccination rates among the huge number of Americans who draw federal paychecks — and to set an example for private employers around the country.
CNN -
July 30, 2021
Vaccination alone won't stop the rise of new variants and in fact could push the evolution of strains that evade their protection, researchers warned Friday. They said people need to wear masks and take other steps to prevent spread until almost everyone in a population has been vaccinated. Their findings, published in Nature Scientific Reports, support an unpopular decision by the CDC to advise even fully vaccinated people to start wearing masks again in areas of sustained or high transmission.
CNN -
July 30, 2021
Staff at long-term care facilities who are the most likely to interact with vulnerable patients are the least likely to have been vaccinated, researchers reported Thursday. And there is evidence they have been infecting their patients, the CDC-led team reported. They used data from 300 long-term care facilities across the US. While 75% of physicians working at these facilities had been vaccinated by March of this year, just 46% of aides had been.
HealthDay -
July 30, 2021
People fully vaccinated against COVID-19 should be tested for the virus if they come into contact with infected people, whether or not they have symptoms, say updated testing guidelines from the CDC. The agency previously said that fully vaccinated people did not need to be tested after exposure to the virus unless they had symptoms, The New York Times reported.
AP -
July 27, 2021
The Department of Veterans Affairs on Monday became the first major federal agency to require health care workers to get COVID-19 vaccines, as the aggressive delta variant spreads across the nation and some communities report troubling increases in hospitalizations among unvaccinated people.
AP -
July 27, 2021
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that all municipal workers — including teachers and police officers — will be required to get vaccinated by mid-September or face weekly COVID-19 testing, making the city one of the largest employers in the U.S. to take such action. California said it will similarly require proof of vaccination or weekly testing for all state workers and millions of public- and private-sector health care employees starting next month.
AP -
July 27, 2021
The U.S. served notice Monday that it will keep existing COVID-19 restrictions on international travel in place for now due to concerns about the surging infection rate because of the delta variant. It was the latest sign that the White House is having to recalibrate its thinking around the coronavirus pandemic as the more infectious variant surges across the U.S. and a substantial chunk of the population resists vaccination…
NPR -
July 27, 2021
[Researchers] are trying to understand why their cognitive problems persist and whether their brains have been changed in ways that elevate the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. … What scientists have found so far is concerning. For example, PET scans taken before and after a person develops COVID-19 suggest that the infection can cause changes that overlap those seen in Alzheimer's….
NBC News -
July 27, 2021
President Joe Biden announced Monday that serious long-term Covid-19 cases could qualify as a disability, making federal protections and resources available to those suffering from the disease. Speaking at an event at the White House celebrating the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, he said that lingering Covid symptoms, such as fatigue or brain fog, "can sometimes rise to the level of a disability."
Fox News -
July 27, 2021
The state accounts for one in five new infections in the U.S. and logged 73,181 cases over the past week, according to the CDC. Florida had 341 cases per 100,000 people over the past week, second only to Louisiana. The weekly total of new cases reported by Florida jumped more than fourfold between July 1 and July 22, reaching its highest point since mid-January.
AP -
July 23, 2021
Belated and beleaguered, the virus-delayed Tokyo Summer Olympics finally opened Friday night with a dazzling display of fireworks and soaring, made-for-TV choreography that unfolded in a near-empty stadium, a strangely subdued ceremony that set a striking tone to match a unique pandemic Games.
HealthDay -
July 23, 2021
Fresh data out of England shows that two doses of the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine is 88% effective in protecting people against the Delta variant, compared with about 94% effectiveness against the original strain of COVID. However, effectiveness among folks who only got one dose was drastically lower, around 31%, researchers reported July 21 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Fox News -
July 23, 2021
An advisory panel to the CDC said the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines "far outweigh" potential risks amid an ongoing review of reports of a rare nerve disorder in a small fraction of J&J jab recipients. However, given the possible link, a new update will advise patients with a history of Guillain-Barré syndrome to seek mRNA vaccines.
The Atlantic -
July 23, 2021
[Their] vulnerability to COVID-19 is the only thing that unvaccinated people universally share. They are disparate in almost every way that matters, including why they haven’t yet been vaccinated and what it might take to persuade them. “‘The unvaccinated’ are not a monolith of defectors,” … Boyd: A lot of vaccine information isn’t common knowledge. Not everyone has access to Google. This illustrates preexisting fault lines in our health-care system, where resources—including credible information—don’t get to everyone.
AP -
July 23, 2021
Vaccinations are beginning to rise in some states where COVID-19 cases are soaring, White House officials said Thursday in a sign that the summer surge is getting the attention of vaccine-hesitant Americans as hospitals in the South are being overrun with patients. Coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters that several states with the highest proportions of new infections have seen residents get vaccinated at higher rates than the nation as a whole.
CNBC -
July 23, 2021
The delta Covid variant is one of the most infectious respiratory diseases seen by experts. Currently, the more infectious variant makes up more than 83% of sequenced cases in the U.S. 97% of people admitted to hospitals with Covid symptoms are unvaccinated.