Tag Archives: CDC

U.S. drug overdose deaths jump over 28%, top 100,000 in the past year

(Reuters) – Over 100,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses during the 12-month period ending April 2021, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed on Wednesday.

That marks a 28.5% jump from the previous year, with deaths from opioids such as fentanyl, which can be 100 times more potent than morphine, and psychostimulants such as methamphetamine helping drive the increase, provisional data from the health agency showed.

“As we continue to make strides to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic, we cannot overlook this epidemic of loss, which has touched families and communities across the country,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement.

Data in July showed that last year’s drug overdoses jumped 30% as pandemic lockdowns made getting treatment difficult and dealers laced more drugs with a powerful synthetic opioid.

The new data showed that deaths from cocaine and prescription pain drugs also increased compared to data from the previous year.

(Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

World at risk of measles outbreaks as COVID-19 disrupts infant shots, report says

(Reuters) – The risk of measles outbreaks is high after more than 22 million infants missed their first vaccine doses during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned.

Reported measles cases fell by more than 80% last year compared with 2019, but a higher number of children missing their vaccine doses leaves them vulnerable, a joint report by the WHO and the U.S. CDC showed on Wednesday.

About 3 million more children missed the shots in 2020 than the previous year, the largest increase in two decades, threatening global efforts to eventually eradicate the highly infectious viral disease.

“Large numbers of unvaccinated children, outbreaks of measles, and disease detection and diagnostics diverted to support COVID-19 responses are factors that increase the likelihood of measles-related deaths and serious complications in children,” the U.S. CDC’s immunization head, Kevin Cain, said.

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known, more so than COVID-19, Ebola, tuberculosis or flu. It can be especially dangerous for babies and young children, with pneumonia among the possible complications.

In 2019, reported cases of measles were at their highest in almost a quarter of a century.

The latest report said 24 measles vaccination campaigns originally planned for 2020 in 23 countries were postponed, leaving more than 93 million people at risk.

“It’s critical that countries vaccinate as quickly as possible against COVID-19, but this requires new resources so that it does not come at the cost of essential immunization programs,” said Dr Kate O’Brien, director of the WHO’s department of immunization, vaccines and biologicals.

“Routine immunization must be protected and strengthened; otherwise, we risk trading one deadly disease for another,” she said.

(Reporting by Amna Karimi and Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

Over 900,000 U.S. kids to get first COVID-19 shot by end of Wed -White House

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Over 900,000 U.S. children aged 5-11 are expected to have received their first COVID-19 vaccine shot by the end of Wednesday, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said, as the government ramped up vaccinations of younger children.

The United States on Wednesday began administering Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine to children ages 5 to 11, the latest group to become eligible for the shots that provide protection against the illness to recipients and those around them.

“While our program is just fully up and running this week, by the end of the day today, we estimate that over 900,000 kids aged five through 11 will have already gotten their first shot,” Zients said during a briefing with reporters.

The figure comes from a White House analysis of available data from pharmaceutical partners, some states, and localities, Zients said, adding the CDC has not yet collected the full tally.

COVID-19 is the largest vaccine-preventable killer of children in that age group, with 66 children dying from it over the past year, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at the same briefing.

The seven-day average of total COVID-19 cases in the U.S. was flat at about 73,300 over the past week, she said, with the hospitalization rate also flat at 5,000 a day. The seven-day average of daily deaths fell 11% to around 1,000 per day.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Alexandra Alper, and Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio)

U.S. borders reopen, but not for asylum seekers stuck in Mexico

By Kristina Cooke, Mica Rosenberg and Caitlin O’Hara

NOGALES, Mexico (Reuters) – Leo fled his hometown in southern Mexico after his uncle was murdered by gang members and he received death threats. Earlier this year, he, his wife and their two children headed to the U.S.-Mexico border hoping to claim asylum.

After months of waiting, he hoped he would finally get his chance on Monday. But even as U.S. borders opened for travelers vaccinated against COVID-19, they remained closed to asylum seekers.

When Leo, 23, and his family approached the port of entry in Nogales, Mexico with his and his wife’s vaccination cards in hand, they were told by a border official they could not enter and seek asylum.

“I feel dispirited and sad,” said Leo, who asked his last name not be published for fear of reprisals from the gang he fled. President Joe Biden “is just continuing the same policies of Donald Trump.”

Biden has kept in place a controversial U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order, first implemented by his Republican predecessor Trump in March 2020, that allows migrants to be immediately expelled without an opportunity to seek asylum.

The Biden administration has said the CDC’s order, known as Title 42, remains necessary to prevent the spread of COVID-19, as asylum seekers are processed in crowded settings at the border.

Any foreign national attempting to enter the United States without proper documentation will be subject to expulsion regardless of vaccination status, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Advocates have criticized the Biden administration’s continuation of the expulsion policy as borders reopen.

The idea that a vaccinated asylum seeker is more of a risk than a vaccinated tourist is laughable, said Noah Gottschalk, global policy lead with Oxfam America, one of the advocacy groups suing the Biden administration to overturn the Title 42 order. Gottschalk said the exclusion of vaccinated asylum seekers strengthens the group’s argument that the policy isn’t about public health.

In September, a federal judge ordered the Biden administration to stop expelling family units – parents or legal guardians arriving with their children – under the Title 42 order. The administration appealed, and a higher court put the judge’s ruling on hold as the case moves forward.

Last month, more than 1,300 medical professionals signed letters to the CDC urging it to end the border expulsions order, saying it lacked epidemiological evidence to justify it and put migrants at risk.

New York-based nonprofit Human Rights First has documented more than 7,600 kidnappings and other attacks on migrants stuck in Mexico who were blocked from entering the United States since Biden took office in January.

Leo has been working in construction to pay rent in Nogales, but he says his earnings are not enough to support his family. “They abuse you because they know you are not from here, they pay you what they want,” he said.

He is also worried about his children getting hit by a stray bullet when gunshots ring out at night. The U.S. State Department recommends Americans reconsider travel to the Mexican state of Sonora, where Nogales is located, due to crime and kidnapping.

“We were fleeing a place that was dangerous,” said Leo. “And here it is the same.”

(Reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco, Mica Rosenberg in New York and Caitlin O’Hara in Nogales, Mexico; Editing by Mary Milliken and Karishma Singh)

COVID-19 still rages, but some U.S. states reject federal funds to help

By Andy Sullivan

(Reuters) – As the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic burns through the rural U.S. state of Idaho, health officials say they don’t have enough tests to track the disease’s spread or sufficient medical workers to help the sick.

It’s not for want of funding.

The state’s Republican-led legislature this year voted down $40 million in federal aid available for COVID-19 testing in schools. Another $1.8 billion in pandemic-related federal assistance is sitting idle in the state treasury, waiting for lawmakers to deploy it.

Some Idaho legislators have accused Washington of overreach and reckless spending. Others see testing as disruptive and unnecessary, particularly in schools, since relatively few children have died from the disease.

“If you want your kids in school, you can’t be testing,” said state Representative Ben Adams, a Republican who represents Nampa, a city of about 100,000 people in southwestern Idaho.

Meanwhile, the state is reporting the fifth-highest infection rate in the United States, at 369 confirmed cases per 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Schools in at least 14 of Idaho’s 115 districts, including Nampa, have had to close temporarily due to COVID-19 outbreaks since the start of the year, according to Burbio, a digital platform that tracks U.S. school activity.

Idaho’s experience illustrates how political ideology and polarization around the COVID-19 epidemic have played a role in the decision of mostly conservative states to reject some federal funding meant to help locals officials battle the virus and its economic fallout.

For example, Idaho was one of 26 Republican-led states that ended enhanced federally funded unemployment benefits before they were due to expire in September. Gov. Brad Little claimed that money was discouraging the jobless from returning to work. At least six studies have found that the extra benefits have had little to no impact on the U.S. labor market.

Idaho has also rebuffed $6 million for early-childhood education, as some Republicans in the state said mothers should be the primary caretakers of their children.

The state also did not apply for $6 million that would have bolstered two safety-net programs that aid mothers of young children and working families. Little’s administration said it had enough money already for those programs.

Idaho has accepted some federal COVID-19 help. In fact, the rejected funds are just a small portion of the nearly $2 billion in federal relief Idaho has spent since March 2020 to fight the virus and shore up businesses and families, state figures show.

But hundreds of millions more remain untouched. Idaho has deployed just $780 million, or 30%, of the $2.6 billion it received under the federal American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law in March.

Neighboring Washington state, by contrast, has parceled out nearly three-quarters of the $7.8 billion it received under that legislation. Washington has recorded roughly 60% as many cases per capita as Idaho since the start of the pandemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some in Idaho are exasperated that a state of just 1.8 million people would turn down a dime of assistance when it’s struggling to tame the pandemic.

With no testing in place, nurses in Nampa schools rely mainly on parents to let them know when a child is infected, the district’s top nurse, Rebekah Burley, told the school board in September. She said she needed three or four more staffers to track existing cases and attempt to keep people quarantined.

“We’re tired, we are stressed, and something needs to change,” she said.

REJECTING FEDERAL MONEY

The refusal by red states to accept some types of federal aid that would benefit their constituents isn’t new.

For example, a dozen Republican-controlled states have rejected billions of dollars available through the landmark 2010 Affordable Health Care Act to cover more people under the Medicaid health program for the poor, which is jointly funded by the federal government and the states. Lawmakers from these places contended their states couldn’t afford to pay their share of an expansion. (Idaho initially was among them, but its voters opted in to the Medicaid expansion through a 2018 ballot referendum, bypassing state leaders.)

That same dynamic has played out during the coronavirus crisis. Since March 2020, Congress has approved six aid packages totaling $4.7 trillion under Republican and Democratic administrations, including the bipartisan CARES Act in March 2020 and the Democratic-backed American Rescue Plan Act this year.

Florida and Mississippi didn’t apply for benefits that would give more money to low-income mothers of young children. Four states, including Idaho, North Dakota and Oklahoma, opted not to extend a program that provided grocery money to low-income families with school-age kids in summer months.

Iowa, like Idaho, turned down federal money for COVID-19 testing in schools. New Hampshire rejected money for vaccinations.

Republican lawmakers in Idaho, like those elsewhere, cite concerns about local control, restrictive terms attached to some of the aid, and the skyrocketing national debt.

“We are chaining future generations to a lifetime of financial slavery,” said Adams, the Idaho legislator.

Yet even before the pandemic, Idaho long relied on Washington for much of its budget. Federal funds account for 36% of state spending in Idaho, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, above the national average of 32%.

State officials say they have enough money to handle the COVID-19 crisis for now.

Critics say Idaho’s reluctance to use more federal aid is a symptom of its hands-off approach to COVID-19 safety. Few public schools require masks, and local leaders have refused to impose mask mandates, limits on indoor gatherings and other steps to contain the virus.

“There’s a lot of people in our legislature and some local officials who really have not taken this seriously,” said David Pate, the former head of St. Luke’s Health System, the state’s largest hospital network.

Idaho has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, with only 55% of adults and teens fully immunized, compared to 67% nationally.

HOSPITALS FULL

COVID-19 is pummeling Idaho even as cases have plunged in much of the nation. Intensive-care units statewide are full, forcing hospitals to turn away non-COVID patients. At least 627 residents died of the disease in October, well above the previous monthly death toll of last winter, records show.

Idaho received $18 million through the American Rescue Plan to hire more public-health workers, but lawmakers did nothing with that money this year.

Some local public health departments say they do not have enough staff to track the virus. “We have a lot of people doing two or three jobs right now,” said Brianna Bodily, a spokesperson for the public-health agency serving Twin Falls, a southern Idaho city of 50,000. The department is working with a 12% smaller budget than last year.

Such staff shortages have contributed to a backlog of test results statewide, which the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare says is hurting its ability to provide an up-to-date picture of the disease’s prevalence.

With funding bottled up in the state capitol, Little, the governor, announced in August that he would steer $30 million from a previous round of COVID-19 aid to school testing.

The Nampa school district has requested some of that money but has yet to set up a testing program, spokeswoman Kathleen Tuck said. Roughly 20% of the district’s students were not attending class regularly in the first weeks of the school year due to outbreaks, according to superintendent Paula Kellerer.

Nampa resident Jaci Johnson, a mother of two children, ages 10 and 13, said she and other parents have been torn over whether to send their children to class, due to the potential risk.

“Do we feed our kids to the lions, or do we keep them home and make them miserable?” Johnson said.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone and Marla Dickerson)

U.S. administers 423.9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines – CDC

(Reuters) – The United States has administered 423,942,794 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Tuesday morning and distributed 521,502,845 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Those figures are up from the 423,005,384 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Nov. 1 out of 518,561,375 doses delivered.

The agency said 221,961,370 people had received at least one dose while 192,726,406 people were fully vaccinated as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, as well as Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine.

About 19.8 million people have received a booster dose of either Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. Booster doses from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson were authorized by the U.S. health regulator on Oct. 20.

(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru)

U.S. vaccines for children plan fully operational next week, White House says

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Alexandra Alper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States is rolling out Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 this week, but most of the 15 million shots being shipped initially are unlikely to be available before next week, the White House said on Monday.

Millions of doses specifically formulated for children of that age group will start arriving at distribution centers over the next few days, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said, and the federal government has purchased enough supply for all eligible 28 million children.

“The whole plan is based on Pfizer vaccines,” Zients told reporters at a briefing. “So the bottom line is there’s plenty of supply of the Pfizer vaccine and we look forward to parents having the opportunity to vaccinate their kids.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE coronavirus vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years, making it the first COVID-19 shot for young children in the United States.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still needs to advise on how the shot should be administered, which will be decided after a group of outside advisers discuss the plan on Tuesday.

Following the CDC’s decision, parents will be able to visit vaccines.gov and filter locations offering the vaccine for the children, Zients said.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Alexandra Alper; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and Michael Erman in New Jersey; Editing by Alison Williams)

U.S. CDC advisers recommend COVID-19 vaccine boosters for ages 65 and older, those at high risk

By Michael Erman and Manojna Maddipatla

(Reuters) – A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel on Thursday recommended a booster shot of the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for Americans aged 65 and older and some adults with underlying medical conditions that put them at risk of severe disease.

The panel declined to recommend boosters for adults ages 18 to 64 who live or work in institutions with high risk of contracting COVID-19, based on individual risk, such as healthcare workers, teachers and residents of homeless shelters and prisons. Some panel members cited the difficulty of implementing such a proposal.

Still, the vote by the group, following U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorization, clears the way for a booster rollout to begin as soon as this week for millions of people who had their second dose of the Pfizer shot at least six months ago.

The CDC said that some 26 million people in the United States received the second Pfizer/BioNTech shot at least six months ago, including 13 million age 65 or older.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru and Michael Erman in New Jersey; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

For asylum advocates, border expulsions strain faith in Biden

By Mica Rosenberg and Kristina Cooke

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Confused and tired-looking toddlers clung to their parents at Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti on Tuesday, among the 360 family members rapidly expelled from the U.S. over the past three days.

These scenes came after U.S. border agents on horseback on Sunday used whip-like reins to block Haitian migrants wading across the Rio Grande with food and supplies from Mexico to a squalid encampment with nearly 10,000 people on the Texas side.

The images triggered anguish among some current U.S. officials interviewed by Reuters who said they once had high hopes that U.S. President Joe Biden would quickly reverse the hardline immigration policies of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump and, as he promised, “restore humanity and American values” to the immigration system.

Outside the government, disillusioned immigration advocates point to Biden’s refusal to repeal Trump’s most sweeping policy known as Title 42 – that allows border agents to quickly expel most migrants to Mexico or their home countries without a chance to apply for asylum.

Biden extended the March 2020 policy put in place by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, arguing it remained necessary as a public health measure amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These deterrence (and) expulsion measures deny due process to asylum seekers and place them in harm’s way. That is a human rights violation,” Michael Knowles, president of AFGE Local 1924, the union that represents the asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) told Reuters.

“Our members are outraged by the mistreatment of migrants and the refusal of our border authorities to allow them to have their asylum claims heard.”

Three other USCIS employees expressed similar concerns to Reuters, as did an official at another government agency.

Asylum officers interview migrants and refugees to determine if they need protection in the United States, while Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents oversee border security and detention.

Top Democratic lawmakers joined in the criticism. The dwindling goodwill among allies comes as Biden’s immigration agenda was dealt a blow on Sunday when the Senate parliamentarian ruled Democratic proposals to give legal status to millions of immigrants in the United States could not be included in a budget reconciliation bill.

‘WHAT DO THEY BELIEVE IN?’

Biden did exempt unaccompanied children from Title 42 expulsions early in his presidency. But he has included families, even after a federal judge on Thursday ordered the government to stop expelling them. The administration is appealing the order.

A two-week stay on the order was “to allow the government time to organize itself,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union suing the administration over the policy, “not to round up as many people as possible to expel them, and certainly not to expel desperate Haitian asylum seekers.”

The Trump administration argued many asylum claims were false and issued a flurry of policies to limit protections, moves that were often criticized by the USCIS’ union headed by Knowles.

One of the USCIS officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press said it was understood it would take time to roll back the Trump-era measures, but that some are now losing patience in the face of slow reform.

“It’s appalling, disgusting,” the official said. “What do they believe in, if this is acceptable?” Some colleagues were considering whether to leave their jobs, the official said.

Another USCIS official spoke of being “personally mortified.”

USCIS referred a request for comment to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who did not immediately respond.

RECORD CROSSINGS

On Tuesday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Title 42 was being applied to the fullest extent possible, while at the same time condemning the actions of the agents on horseback saying the incident was being investigated and those involved had been assigned administrative duties.

As Biden is facing criticism from the left, Republicans say he has encouraged illegal migration by moving too fast to reverse other Trump-era immigration reforms.

In recent months, the number of crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border increased to 20-year highs with close to 200,000 encounters in August alone, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, though that is counting individuals who may have crossed multiple times.

Early in his presidency, Biden took several executive actions cheered by immigration groups – such as ending Trump’s travel bans on several Muslim-majority countries and scrapping a policy that sent asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings. He also exempted unaccompanied minors from Title 42 expulsions and reduced the number of families being expelled.

In a letter to Congress, retired Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott said Biden’s reversals created a crisis at the border and constituted “a national security threat.” Unlike the USCIS union, the unions representing border and ICE agents have been vocal Trump backers.

Earlier this year, Biden also extended deportation relief to around 150,000 Haitians already living in the United States with Temporary Protected Status, though the benefits do not apply to anyone who arrived after July 29.

Biden acknowledged conditions are dire in the Caribbean country that has long struggled with violence and recently suffered a presidential assassination and a major earthquake.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Donna Bryson and Aurora Ellis)

Here’s what we know about how U.S. will lift travel restrictions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s administration plans to ease in early November COVID-19 pandemic-related travel restrictions that have barred people from much of the world from entering the United States starting in early 2020.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) still must issue a formal order that will provide details on the new rules and when they will begin.

Here is a look at the U.S. travel restriction policy.

WHO CAN TRAVEL TO THE UNITED STATES?

– The United States will lift travel restrictions on 33 countries including China, India, Brazil, Iran, South Africa and most of Europe for travelers who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 that were imposed starting in early 2020.

– Travelers will still need to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test within three days of departing for the United States.

– Until the new rules take effect, most foreign nationals who have been in the 33 countries for 14 days prior to departure cannot travel to the United States.

– Foreign nationals from all countries, with few exceptions, will need vaccinations to travel to the United States by air.

– The CDC has not yet said whether foreign nationals who recently had COVID-19 and are not currently eligible to be vaccinated will be allowed to travel to the United States.

WHAT VACCINES WILL BE ACCEPTED?

– It is not certain what vaccines the CDC will accept beyond the three already authorized in the United States – those from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson – or what proof must be presented. The Biden administration told airlines on Tuesday that it was still deciding what vaccines will be accepted.

– The CDC pointed to its prior guidance when asked by Reuters what vaccines it will accept. “The CDC considers someone fully vaccinated with any FDA-authorized or approved vaccines and any vaccines that (the World Health Organization) has authorized,” spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said.

WHAT ROLES WILL AIRLINES PLAY?

– It is expected that travelers will need to sign a form attesting to their vaccination and airlines will check passengers’ documents to certify compliance with the vaccine rules.

– Airlines currently check for proof of a negative COVID-19 test before travelers depart.

– The CDC will also issue new contact-tracing rules before the restrictions are lifted that will require international passengers to give email and phone contact information so public health authorities can reach them if needed, including if they are seated near someone who tests positive for COVID-19.

WHAT HAPPENS TO UNVACCINATED AMERICAN TRAVELERS?

– Americans traveling from abroad who are not vaccinated will face tougher rules than those who are vaccinated, including needing to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within a day of travel and proof of purchasing a viral test to be taken after arrival. Vaccinated Americans must show proof of a negative test within three days of returning to the United States.

– Exceptions from the vaccine requirements include children not yet eligible for shots.

– The Biden administration expects humanitarian exemptions will be granted for certain foreign nationals who agree to be vaccinated upon arrival in the United States, according to a White House official and a document seen by Reuters. The Biden administration expects such exemptions will be very limited.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Will Dunham)