Tag Archives: Death

Pandemic preparedness panel slams collective failure to heed warnings

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – A collective failure by political leaders to heed warnings and prepare for an infectious disease pandemic has transformed “a world at risk” to a “world in disorder,” according to a report on international epidemic preparedness.

“Financial and political investments in preparedness have been insufficient, and we are all paying the price,” said the report by The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB).

“It is not as if the world has lacked the opportunity to take these steps,” it said. “There have been numerous calls for action … yet none has generated the changes needed.”

The GPMB, co-convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), is co-chaired by former WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland.

The board’s 2019 report, released a few months before the novel coronavirus emerged in China, said there was a real threat of “a rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen” and warned such an event could kill millions and wreak havoc on the global economy.

This year’s report – entitled “A World in Disorder” – said world leaders had never before “been so clearly forewarned of the dangers of a devastating pandemic”, and yet they had failed to take adequate action.

“Tragically and catastrophically, we have seen our worst fears realized,” Brundtland told a media briefing on Monday. “The impact of COVID-19 is even worse than we anticipated.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed “a collective failure to take pandemic prevention, preparedness and response seriously and prioritize it accordingly,” the report said.

“Pathogens thrive in disruption and disorder. COVID-19 has proven the point.”

The report noted that despite calling a year ago for heads of government to commit and invest in pandemic preparedness, for health systems to be strengthened and for financial risk planning to take seriously the threat of a devastating pandemic, little progress had been made on any of these.

A lack of leadership, it said, was exacerbating the current pandemic. “Failure to learn the lessons of COVID-19 or to act on them with the necessary resources and commitment will mean that the next pandemic, which is sure to come, will be even more damaging,” it said.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity and a member of the monitoring board, urged leaders not to repeat the same mistakes. “This needs more than warm words of solidarity,” he said. “This needs a moment of visionary, historic, political and financial leadership.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, Editing by William Maclean and Alex Richardson)

‘All gone:’ Residents return to burned-out Oregon towns as many West Coast wildfires keep burning

By Adrees Latif and Patrick Fallon

TALENT, Ore. (Reuters) – Search-and-rescue teams, with dogs in tow, were deployed across the blackened ruins of southern Oregon towns on Sunday as smoldering wildfires still ravaged U.S. Pacific Coast states after causing widespread destruction.

A blitz of wildfires across Oregon, California and Washington has destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns this summer, scorching more than 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) and killing more than two dozen people since early August.

Tracy Koa, a high school teacher, returned to Talent, Oregon, on Saturday after evacuating with her partner, Dave Tanksle, and 13-year-old daughter to find her house and neighborhood reduced to heaps of ash and rubble.

“We knew that it was gone,” Koa said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “But then you pull up, and the devastation of just every home, you think of every family and every situation and every burnt-down car, and there are just no words for it.”

Crews in Jackson County, Oregon, where Talent is located, were hoping to venture into rural areas where the Almeda Fire has abated slightly with slowing winds, sending up thick plumes of smoke as the embers burned. From Medford through the neighboring communities of Phoenix and Talent, an apocalyptic scene of charred residential subdivisions and trailer parks stretched for miles along Highway 99.

Community donation centers popped up around Jackson County over the weekend, including one in the parking lot of Home Depot in Phoenix, where farmers brought a pickup truck bed full of watermelons and people brought water and other supplies.

Farther north in Clackamas County, Dane Valentine, 28, showed a Reuters journalist the remains of his house.

“This is my home,” he said. “Yep. All gone.”

Down the road, a woman with a Trump 2020 sign on her home, pointed a shotgun at the journalist and shouted at him to leave.

“You’re the reason they’re setting fires up here,” she said, perhaps referring to false rumors that left-wing activists had sparked the wildfires.

After four days of brutally hot, windy weather, the weekend brought calmer winds blowing inland from the Pacific Ocean, and cooler, moister conditions that helped crews make headway against blazes that had burned unchecked last week.

Still, emergency officials worried that the shifting weather might not be enough to quell the fires.

“We’re concerned that the incoming front is not going to provide a lot of rain here in the Medford region and it’s going to bring increased winds,” Bureau of Land Management spokesman Kyle Sullivan told Reuters in a telephone interview on Sunday.

At least 10 people have been killed in Oregon, according to the office of emergency management. Oregon Governor Kate Brown has said dozens of people remain missing across three counties.

There were 34 active fires burning in Oregon as of Sunday morning, according to the state’s office of emergency management website.

CLIMATE CHANGE ‘WAKE-UP CALL’

Thick smoke and ash from the fires have darkened skies over the Pacific Northwest since Labor Day last Monday, creating some of the world’s worst air-quality levels and driving residents indoors. Satellite images showed the smoke was wafting inland in an easterly direction, the Bureau of Land Management said on Twitter on Sunday.

Drought conditions, extreme temperatures and high winds in Oregon created the “perfect firestorm” for the blazes to grow, Brown told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

“This is a wake-up call for all of us that we’ve got to do everything in our power to tackle climate change,” the Democratic governor said.

President Donald Trump was scheduled to travel to California and meet with federal and state officials on Monday. He has said that Western governors bear some of the blame for intense fire seasons in recent years, as opposed to warming temperatures, and has accused them of poor forest management.

In California, evacuations were ordered for the northern tip of the San Gabriel Valley suburb of Arcadia as the Bobcat Fire threatened communities.

At Wilderness Park in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, firefighters prepared to stave off the blaze as it worked its way downhill.

Steep terrain and dry hills that have not burned for 60 years are providing fuel for the blaze, which started over the Labor Day weekend.

As the smoke that has been clogging the air and blocking heat from the sun begins to lift, firefighters expect the weather to heat up and fire activity could increase, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

All told in California, nearly 17,000 firefighters were battling 29 major wildfires on Sunday, Cal Fire said.

Improving weather conditions had helped them gain a measure of containment over blazes in many parts of the state, and some evacuated residents in Madera County near where the massive Creek Fire was burning, were allowed to go back home.

More than 4,000 homes and other structures have been incinerated in California alone over the past three weeks. About 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) of land have been burned in the state, according to Cal Fire.

(Reporting by Adrees Latif in Ashland, Oregon, and Patrick Fallon in Arcadia, California; Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein, Gabriella Borter, Dan Whitcomb, Doina Chiacu, Shannon Stapleton and Aishwarya Nair; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Nick Zieminski and Peter Cooney)

Mexico nears 70,000 official COVID-19 deaths, but toll likely far higher

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The confirmed coronavirus death toll in Mexico is primed to hit 70,000 when official data is released on Friday, a grim milestone for a country among those most affected by the pandemic.

Making matters worse, excess mortality data from mid-March through early August indicates that the total number of deaths beyond the official count is likely tens of thousands higher.

The spread of the virus has ravaged an already ailing economy, which is now seen contracting by up to 13% this year, the deepest recession since the 1930’s-era Great Depression.

On Thursday, the health ministry announced that 652,364 infections and 69,649 deaths have been attributed to the strain of the coronavirus that was first detected late last year in China.

Based on official data, Mexico is the nation with the fourth highest number of deaths globally, and the 13th highest on a per capita basis, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

But earlier this month, the health ministry said it recorded more than 120,000 “extra” deaths from mid-March through August 1. The measure compares mortality figures this year with a four-year average from 2015 to 2018.

Brazil remains No. 1 in Latin America, the region with the most infections globally, for both confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths. It has posted a total of 4.2 million infections and more than 128,000 deaths so far.

In a sliver of good news, the rate of new cases in Peru, Colombia and Mexico has fallen slightly in recent weeks.

Overall, more than 900,000 people have died worldwide from the pandemic, with the deadliest outbreaks in the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico.

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Tom Brown)

U.S. CDC reports 191,353 deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday reported 6,381,013 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 37,451 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 1,091 to 191,353.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 p.m. ET on Sept. 10 versus its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

U.S. West wildfires kill 16; in Oregon 500,000 flee

By Carlos Barria and Adrees Latif

(Reuters) – Around half a million people in Oregon evacuated as dozens of extreme, wind-driven wildfires scorched U.S. West Coast states on Friday, destroying hundreds of homes and killing at least 16 people, state and local authorities said.

Since Monday 11 people have died from fires in California, while four were killed in Oregon and a 1-year-old boy died in Washington state, police reported.

In Oregon alone the number of people under evacuation orders climbed to some 500,000 – about an eighth of the state’s total population – as Portland suburbs came under threat from the state’s biggest blaze, the state Office of Emergency Management said.

Thousands more were displaced north and south in the neighboring states of Washington and California.

Oregon bore the brunt of nearly 100 major wildfires raging across Western states, with around 3,000 firefighters battling nearly three dozen blazes and officials saying about twice as many people were needed.

Police have opened a criminal arson investigation into at least one Oregon blaze, the Almeda Fire, which started in Ashland near the border with California and incinerated several hundred homes in adjacent communities along Bear Creek, Ashland Police Chief Tighe O’Meara said.

The Oregon blazes tore through multiple communities in the Cascade mountain range as well as areas of coastal rainforest normally spared from wildfires. In eastern Washington state a fire destroyed most of the tiny farming town of Malden.

In central Oregon search-and-rescue teams entered devastated communities in the Santiam Valley to look for missing people.

To the south, a string of small communities along Interstate 5 near Medford were reduced to ashes after embers from a wildfire blew for miles.

Firefighters said unusually hot, dry winds out of the east supercharged blazes, spreading flames from community to community, and then from house to house.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown said some 900,000 acres (364,220 hectares) had burned, dwarfing the state’s annual 500,000-acre (202,340-hectare) average over the past decade.

“This will not be a onetime event,” Brown told a Thursday news conference. “We are feeling the acute impacts of climate change”

Climate scientists say global warming has contributed to greater extremes in wet and dry seasons, causing vegetation to flourish then dry out in the U.S. West, leaving more abundant, volatile fuel for fires.

Two of Oregon’s largest fires, burning around 20 miles (32 km) southeast of downtown Portland merged, leading to a major expansion of evacuations in densely populated Clackamas County,

In California, the United States’ most populous state, wildfires have burned over 3.1 million acres (1.25 million hectares) so far this year, marking a record for any year, with six of the top 20 largest wildfires in state history occurring in 2020.

About a third of evacuees were displaced in Butte County alone, north of Sacramento, where the North Complex wildfire has scorched more than 247,000 acres (99,960 hectares) and destroyed over 2,000 homes and structures.

The remains of 10 victims have been found in separate locations of that fire zone, according to a spokesman for the Butte County Sheriff’s Office.

Another person died in Siskiyou County in far northern California, state fire authority CalFire reported, providing no further details.

(Reporting by Carlos Barria and Adrees Latif; additional reporting by Andrew Hay, Steve Gorman and Sharon Bernstein; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. CDC reports 190,262 deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Thursday the number of deaths due to the new coronavirus had risen by 1,115 to 190,262 and reported 6,343,562 cases, an increase of 32,899 cases from its previous count.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on Sept. 9 versus its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

(Reporting by Trisha Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Ramakrishnan M.)

Germans fear Trump more than coronavirus, survey shows

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germans are more afraid of the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump than of the coronavirus which has wreaked havoc on Europe’s biggest economy, an annual survey of German attitudes showed on Thursday.

Fears that Trump’s policies would make the world a more dangerous place eclipsed economic worries, with 53% of those asked putting him top of their list, according to the survey conducted in June and July for the R+V Insurance Group.

Rising living costs, the economic situation and the cost to taxpayers of European Union debt came second, third and fourth for traditionally cautious Germans.

The coronavirus took 17th spot and only around a third of those asked said they were concerned that they or someone they knew well would get COVID-19.

Germany has kept the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths relatively low compared with some of its European neighbors, but new infections are rising again.

The survey did not give details on which aspects of Trump’s policies worried Germans but R+V quoted political scientist Manfred Schmidt of the Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg as blaming his foreign policy.

“Particularly notable are the trade-war-like conflicts with China and trade and security policy attacks against allies, including Germany. In addition, the withdrawal of the United States from international cooperation and the confrontation with Iran,” said Schmidt who advises R+V on the annual survey.

Some 2,400 people were questioned for the “Fears of Germans” survey, which has been conducted since 1992.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers, editing by Emma Thomasson and Catherine Evans)

India reports record daily jump of 95,735 coronavirus cases

BENGALURU (Reuters) – India reported record jumps in new coronavirus infections and deaths on Thursday, taking its tally of cases past 4.4 million, health ministry figures showed.

In the last 24 hours, 95,735 new infections were detected, with 1,172 deaths accounting for the highest single-day mortality figures in more than a month, to push the toll beyond 75,000.

Infections are growing faster in India than anywhere else in the world and the United States is the only nation worse affected.

(Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Severe COVID-19 riskier than heart attack for young adults; antibiotic shows no benefit

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

More young adults survive heart attacks than severe COVID-19

Among COVID-19 patients treated at 419 U.S. hospitals from April through June, only about 5% were ages 18 to 34. But that group had “substantial rates of adverse outcomes,” according to a report on Wednesday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Roughly one in five needed intensive care, one in 10 needed mechanical ventilation, and nearly 3% died. While the mortality rate is lower than in older adults, it is roughly double the death rate of young adults from heart attacks, the authors say. Obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes were tied to higher risk for adverse events. For young adults with more than one of these conditions, the risk of a bad outcome was similar to middle-aged adults without the risk factors. More than half of hospitalized young adults were Black or Hispanic, “consistent with prior findings of disproportionate illness severity in these demographic groups,” the authors said. “Given the sharply rising rates of COVID-19 infection in young adults, these findings underscore the importance of infection prevention measures in this age group,” the concluded.

Antibiotic fails to help hospitalized COVID-19 patients

The antibiotic azithromycin did not appear to provide any benefit to hospitalized COVID-19 patients who were having trouble breathing, according to a study in Brazil. At 57 hospitals, 243 COVID-19 patients who needed oxygen or mechanical ventilation were randomly assigned to receive azithromycin, while 183 similar patients did not get the antibiotic. All received other standard treatment, which in Brazil included hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug that other studies have shown provides little or no benefit. While azithromycin did not appear to do any harm, after 15 days it was not associated with any patient improvement nor did it reduce their risk of death. In an April survey of more than 6,000 physicians in 30 countries, azithromycin was the second most commonly prescribed treatment for COVID-19, the study investigators wrote in The Lancet medical journal. The absence of any benefit in this new study “suggests that the routine use of this strategy should be avoided,” they said.

Risk of catching COVID-19 while hospitalized can be low

Among nearly 8,500 patients admitted to a large Boston hospital between early March and the end of May, only two became sick with coronavirus infections that may have been acquired while they were hospitalized, doctors report. One likely was infected by a spouse who initially appeared well during daily visits but who developed symptoms while the patient was still hospitalized. That was before visitor restrictions and universal masking rules had been implemented. The other patient developed symptoms four days after leaving the hospital. The source of the infection is not known. According to a paper published on Wednesday in JAMA Network Open, infection control efforts at the hospital included dedicated COVID-19 units with airborne infection isolation rooms, personal protective equipment for staff and monitoring to make sure those were used correctly, universal masking, visitor restriction, and liberal COVID-19 testing of symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. These “robust and rigorous infection control practices may be associated with minimized risk” of COVID-19 spreading through hospitals, the authors conclude. Their findings, if replicated at other U.S. hospitals, “should provide reassurance to patients,” they said.

Longer-term COVID-19 lung damage can improve over time

COVID-19 lung damage persists long term but tends to improve, researchers reported on Monday at the European Respiratory Society International Virtual Congress. Researchers studied 86 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, 48% of whom had a smoking history and 21% of whom required intensive care. At 6 weeks after discharge, 47% of patients still reported feeling short of breath. By 12 weeks, that dropped to 39%. CT scans still showed lung damage in 88% of patients at six weeks, dropping to 56% at 12 weeks. “Overall, this study shows that COVID-19 survivors have persisting pulmonary impairment weeks after recovery. Yet, overtime, a moderate improvement is detectable,” lead researcher Dr. Sabina Sahanic, from University Clinic of Internal Medicine in Innsbruck, Austria, said during a press briefing. A related study featured at the meeting stressed the importance of early pulmonary rehabilitation after COVID-19 patients come off a ventilator. This should include balance and walking, muscle strengthening, respiratory exercises and endurance training. “The sooner rehabilitation started and the longer it lasted, the faster and better was the improvement in patients’ walking and breathing capacities and muscle gain,” coauthor Yara Al Chikhanie, from Grenoble Alps University in France, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

U.S. COVID-19 deaths surpass 190,000; Iowa and South Dakota emerge as new hotspots

By Anurag Maan

(Reuters) – Coronavirus deaths in the United States topped 190,000 on Wednesday along with a spike in new cases in the U.S. Midwest with states like Iowa and South Dakota emerging as the new hotspots in the past few weeks.

Iowa currently has one of the highest rates of infection in the nation, with 15% of tests last week coming back positive. Nearby South Dakota has a positive test rate of 19% and North Dakota is at 18%, according to a Reuters analysis.

The surge in Iowa and South Dakota is being linked to colleges reopening in Iowa and an annual motorcycle rally last month in Sturgis, South Dakota.

Kansas, Idaho and Missouri are also among the top 10 states for positive test rates.

New coronavirus infections have fallen for seven weeks in a row for the United States with a death rate of about 6,100 per week from COVID-19 in the last month.

On a per capita basis, the United States ranks 12th in the world for the number of deaths, with 58 deaths per 100,000 people, and 11th in the world for cases, with 1,933 cases per 100,000 residents, according to a Reuters analysis.

U.S. confirmed cases are highest in the world with now over 6.3 million followed by India with 4.4 million cases and Brazil with 4.2 million. The U.S. death toll is also the highest in the world.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had forecast last month that the U.S. death toll will reach 200,000 to 211,000 by Sept. 26.

The University of Washington’s health institute last week forecasted that the U.S. deaths from the coronavirus will reach 410,000 by the end of the year.

(Reporting by Anurag Maan in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)