Tag Archives: Pandemic

U.S. administers 93.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines: CDC

(Reuters) – The United States has administered 93,692,598 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Tuesday morning and distributed 123,232,775 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.

The tally is for Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, the agency said.

According to the tally posted on March 8, the agency had administered 92,089,852 doses of the vaccines, and distributed 116,378,615 doses.

A total of 7,419,240 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.

(Reporting by Trisha Roy in Bengaluru)

Palestinian hospitals fill up as Israel loosens COVID-19 restrictions

By Zainah El-Haroun

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian hospitals are overfull and intensive-care units operating at 100% capacity with coronavirus patients in some areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Tuesday.

Palestinian cities have introduced full lockdowns over the last two weeks to control soaring COVID-19 infections, even as neighboring Israel has begun to lift restrictions as it proceeds with one of the world’s fastest vaccination campaigns.

“The percentage of hospital occupancy in some areas has reached more than 100%,” Shtayyeh said in Ramallah, one of the West Bank cities where his Palestinian Authority (PA) exercises limited self-rule.

“The number of casualties is increasing and the number of deaths is increasing on a daily basis, forcing us to take strict, direct and unprecedented measures.”

The West Bank and Gaza, home to a combined 5.2 million Palestinians, have received around 34,700 vaccine doses to date. These came from small donations by Israel and Russia as well as 20,000 sent by the United Arab Emirates to Gaza.

Meanwhile in Israel, restaurants reopened on Sunday as the country kept up a fast pace of mass vaccinations.

“I brought millions of doses, now I’ll have to bring tens of millions of doses. I am currently in talks with Pfizer and Moderna to bring more,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israel Army Radio, campaigning ahead of a March 23 election.

Israel has given 53% of its 9 million population at least one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, according to Health Ministry data, and 38% have received both doses.

The contrast has not gone unnoticed among Palestinians.

On Monday, Israel extended its vaccination program to include Palestinian laborers who work in Israel and in its West Bank settlements.

Many Palestinians argue that Israel is neglecting its obligations as an occupying power by not including them in the mass roll-out.

“The number of vaccinations in Israel is really high,” Saji Khalil, 75, told Reuters. “Even the Palestinian laborers whom they vaccinated, they did it to serve the Israeli community, not to look out for the well-being of the laborers.”

Israeli officials say that under the 1990s Oslo interim peace accords, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for vaccinating its population.

Many Palestinians are dissatisfied with their leaders. The PA came under fire from rights groups last week after admitting that it had sent 10% of the COVID-19 doses that it received to VIPs.

Firas Narawesh, from Ramallah, said the government had failed to provide vaccinations to ordinary Palestinians, and had “distributed vaccinations in an unfair way and in an unequal way with clear favoritism and corruption.”

(Additional reporting by Adel Abu Nimeh and Ismael Khader in Ramallah; Editing by Stephen Farrell and Mark Heinrich)

French coronavirus patients in intensive care highest since end November

PARIS (Reuters) – The number of people in intensive care in France who have COVID-19 is at the highest level since the end of November, health officials said on Tuesday as new infections rose slightly to 23,302 from 22,857 a week ago.

The new cases pushed the cumulative total since the start of the pandemic a year ago to 3.93 million, the health ministry reported, and the seven-day moving average of new cases was virtually steady at 21,333.

While France has been registering over 20,000 new cases per day since late January, week-on-week increases have slowed from nearly five percent in mid-January, when a tighter curfew at 6 p.m. was imposed, to less than four percent over the past five days.

But despite a vaccination campaign focused on the oldest and most vulnerable people, those in intensive care with COVID-19 has risen steadily from less than 3,000 people at the end of January to nearly 4,000 on Tuesday.

The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units was up by 69 to 3,918 people, the most since the of November, in the last days of the second month-long lockdown. That month, ICU numbers peaked at just under 5,000.

In the Paris region alone, almost 1,000 people are in ICU with COVID-19, but the government is not planning to put the Ile-de-France region around the capital into lockdown, France’s public health chief said.

He said lockdown would be a last-resort measure imposed only if the hospital system could no longer cope.

The health ministry also reported on Tuesday that 4.15 million people, or 7.9 % of the adult population, had received a first coronavirus vaccine and 2.04 million had also received a second shot, for a total of nearly 6.2 million injections.

The government aims to vaccinate 10 million people by mid-April, 20 million by mid-May and 30 million by summer.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; editing by Grant McCool)

New U.S. COVID-19 cases fall 12% last week, vaccinations top 2 million a day

(Reuters) – The United States reported a 12% decline in new cases of COVID-19 last week, while vaccinations accelerated to a record 2.2 million shots per day, according to a Reuters analysis of state, county and CDC data.

New infections have dropped for eight weeks in a row, averaging 60,000 new cases per day for the week ended March 7. Deaths linked to COVID-19 fell 18% last week to 11,800, the lowest since late November and averaging 1,686 per day.

Despite the positive trends, health officials have warned that the country could see a resurgence in cases as more infectious variants of the virus have been found in nearly every state.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, has urged the nation to keep most pandemic restrictions in place until new cases fall to under 10,000 per day.

Thirteen out of 50 states reported more new infections last week compared with the previous seven days, down from 29 states in the prior week, according to the Reuters analysis. New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island had the highest rates of new infections per 100,000 residents.

As of Sunday, 18% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of a vaccine and 9% has received two doses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The country administered an average of 2.2 million shots per day last week, up from 1.6 million shots in the prior week.

The average number of COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals fell 16% to 44,000 last week, the lowest since late October, according to a Reuters tally.

Cumulatively, over 525,000 people have died from the virus in the United States, or one in every 621 residents.

(Graphic by Chris Canipe, writing by Lisa Shumaker, editing by Tiffany Wu)

French COVID-19 ICU figures at a more than 14-week high

PARIS (Reuters) – The number of people treated in French intensive care units (ICUs) for COVID-19 reached a 14-1/2-week-high on Monday, at 3,849, while total hospitalizations for the disease increased for the second day running, to 25,195.

The number of people in ICUs is still almost two times lower than the 7,184 peak recorded in April 2020 but remains well above a government target level of 2,500-3,000 for easing coronavirus limits on the circulation of people.

Illustrating the stress on the French health system, medical authorities of the greater Paris region – which accounts for roughly one-sixth of the French population – have ordered hospitals to cancel 40% of their planned normal activity to make space for COVID-19 patients in critical condition.

French health authorities also reported 5,327 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours on Monday, a high for a Monday since Dec. 21, versus 21,825 on Sunday.

COVID-19 case reporting on Mondays typically dips as fewer tests are done over the weekend. The seven-day moving average, which smooths out daily reporting swings, stands at 21,270, a five-day high.

The total of cases since the outbreak of the disease more than a year ago is now over 3.91 million, the sixth-highest in the world.

An additional 359 people died from the disease, pushing the total to 88,933, the world’s seventh-highest toll. On Sunday, 130 new deaths were reported.

(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by GV De Clercq and Jonathan Oatis)

Yellen says COVID-19 having ‘extremely unfair’ impact on women’s income, jobs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The COVID-19 pandemic has had an “extremely unfair” impact on the income and economic opportunities of women, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Monday, calling for long-term measures to improve labor market conditions for women.

Yellen, in a dialogue with International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva, said it was critical to address the risk that the pandemic would leave permanent scars, reducing the prospects for women in the workplace and the economy.

She noted that women’s participation in the workforce was already lower in the United States before the pandemic than in Europe, another issue that needed to be addressed.

“I think it’s absolutely tragic, the impact that this crisis has had on women, especially low-skilled women and minorities,” Yellen said, noting that while people at the top of the economic scale had continued to do well, those nearer the bottom, who had already been struggling, had been hardest hit.

“It is an extremely unfair thing that’s happened,” Yellen said, noting that women as a group had experienced far greater job losses since they had been disproportionately represented in the service sector and many had dropped out of the labor force to care for children, who were out of school.

“We’re really concerned about scarring, permanent scarring, from this crisis,” she said, adding her hope that President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief bill would help get the labor market back on track this year or next.

The goal, she said, was to avoid the decade-long gap seen before the labor market recovered after the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

As of January, women accounted for slightly more than half of the 10 million jobs lost during the coronavirus crisis, even though they typically make up a little less than half the U.S. work force.

More than 2.5 million women left the labor force between February 2020 and January of this year, compared to 1.8 million men.

In the longer-term, Yellen said it was critical to improve the conditions facing women in the labor market, including lack of benefits, paid leave for family emergencies and child care.

“These are things that we are going to address over time,” she said.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and David Lawder; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)

Speeding up vaccinations will lead Italy out of crisis: PM Draghi

ROME (Reuters) – Speeding up Italy’s vaccination campaign will enable the country to overcome the coronavirus crisis, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Monday, adding that his government would do whatever was necessary to protect lives.

“The pandemic is not yet over, but with the acceleration of the vaccine plan, a way out is not far off,” Draghi said in a speech to mark international women’s day, his first such public address since taking office last month.

Italy is poised to become the seventh country in the world to register more than 100,000 COVID-related deaths and health officials have warned that the country faces a third wave of cases as a more contagious variant of the disease gains ground.

“We are all facing a new worsening of the health emergency these days,” Draghi said.

“Our task, and I am referring to all the institutions, is to safeguard the lives of Italians by all means possible and to allow a return to normality as soon as possible. Every life counts,” he added.

Since taking charge of the country at the head of a broad government of national unity, Draghi has looked to speed up vaccinations and has put pressure on pharmaceutical companies to honor their contracts and make up supply shortfalls.

Italy, which has a population of around 60 million, had administered 5.41 doses of vaccines as of early Monday, with 1.65 million people receiving the recommended two shots.

Draghi has suggested that first jabs should take precedence rather than stockpiling supplies for eventual second doses.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Angelo Amante)

Italy 2020 death toll is highest since World War Two as COVID-19 hits

ROME (Reuters) – Italy registered more deaths in 2020 than in any other year since World War Two, according to data that suggest COVID-19 caused thousands more fatalities than were officially attributed to it.

Total deaths in Italy last year amounted to 746,146, statistics bureau ISTAT said, an increase of 100,525, or 15.6%, compared with the average of the 2015-2019 period.

Looking at the period from when Italy’s COVID-19 outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 to the end of the year, the “excess deaths” were even higher at 108,178, an increase of 21% over the same period of the last five years.

The Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Italy’s top health institute, officially attributed 75,891 deaths to the new coronavirus last year, some 70% of this total excess mortality.

Italy has continued to register hundreds of COVID-19 deaths per day this year. Its updated tally stood at 98,974 on Thursday.

Officially, COVID-19 accounted for 10% of deaths in Italy last year from Feb. 21, with marked regional disparities.

It was the cause of 14.5% of all deaths in the northern regions where the outbreak was first reported in Italy. In central areas it was responsible for 7% of all deaths and in southern ones it accounted for 5%.

Of the 100,525 excess deaths last year, 76% of the total were among people over the age of 80 and 20% were among those aged between 65 and 79, ISTAT said.

(Reporting By Gavin Jones, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Swiss church bells mark year since first COVID-19 death

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) – Swiss church bells rang out at noon on Friday and people observed a minute of silence to mark a year since the country’s first death from COVID-19.

President Guy Parmelin announced the measure on public television last Sunday, urging citizens to honor the more than 9,300 people who have died from the disease in Switzerland.

At the Notre-Dame cathedral in Lausanne, a French-language Swiss city in the western part of the country, watchman Renato Hausler rang the 16th-century ‘La Clemence’ bell.

In April, as the pandemic set in, Hausler told Reuters he had resumed the practice of climbing the 153 stone steps to its tower to ring the bell at night, to stir residents’ solidarity and courage.

On Friday Hausler said he was ringing the bell to pay tribute and to remind people to keep strong.

“It’s a call for bravery, but it’s especially a call for patience and perseverance, that’s for sure. Because it is not going to end like this, as easily as we would have like or thought,” he said, standing in front of Lausanne’s gothic cathedral which overlooks the city.

Enjoying the view was Lausanne resident and pharmacist Simon Reboh, who was also in a pensive mood.

“It is nice to be able to stop and to think about what is happening. We are grabbed by our daily lives, we don’t have the time to think,” he said.

“That’s why I’m here, in front of a view that allows me to slow down.”

(Reporting by Cecile Mantovani and Denis Balibouse in Lausanne; Writing by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Alabama extends mask mandate for a month, breaking with Texas, Mississippi

By Barbara Goldberg

(Reuters) – Alabama’s governor said on Thursday she was extending the state’s mask mandate for another month, heeding the advice of health experts and breaking with decisions by neighboring Mississippi and Texas earlier this week to lift their requirements.

Alabama’s mask mandate, due to expire on Friday, will remain in effect to April 9, but no longer, Governor Kay Ivey said.

“After that, it’ll be personal responsibility,” the Republican said at a briefing, adding that she plans to continue wearing her mask beyond that date. “Folks, we’re not there yet, but goodness knows we’re getting closer.”

The contrasting moves on masks in the three Southern states comes at a time when the number of new coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths had been sharply falling in the United States after a surge that followed the holiday season.

About 45,000 COVID-19 patients were being treated in U.S. hospitals as of Wednesday night, compared with a peak of about 132,000 on Jan. 6.

The improving metric in part reflects an acceleration of the drive to distribute the COVID-19 vaccines that have been approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A third authorized vaccine from Johnson & Johnson began going into arms this week.

Even so, health authorities have stressed the need for caution, urging Americans to keep wearing masks, practice social distancing and other measures to prevent the spread of the virus amid concerns that declines in new infections was plateauing with highly contagious newer virus variants widely circulating.

“Now is not the time to pull back,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease official and President Joe Biden’s COVD-19 medical adviser, told MSNBC on Thursday in an interview.

“We were going in the right direction. Now is the time to keep the foot on the accelerator and not pull off,” he said, referring to the announcements that Texas and Mississippi were lifting mask mandates.

Since the pandemic reached the United States early last year, the country has recorded 28.9 million cases and more than 519,000 deaths, more than any other country in the world.

Texas, Mississippi and Alabama are near the bottom of the list of states in terms of administering vaccines, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention based on the number of people per thousand who have gotten at least one dose. The governors of all three states are Republicans.

The delay in lifting the Alabama mandate will enable more of its 4.9 million residents to be inoculated after the state just administered its 1 millionth dose of vaccine, Ivey said.

Ivey did announce an end to indoor dining restrictions on restaurants and said summer camps can plan to reopen. She is also permitting senior centers to resume outdoor programs and increase the maximum number of visitors from one to two.

Among the improvements she cited was a 77% drop in COVID-19 hospitalizations from its Jan. 11 peak to its lowest level since last June.

“While I’m convinced that a mask mandate has been the right thing to do, I also respect those who object, and believe that this was a step too far in government overreach,” she said.

Even as he urged Americans to stay vigilant, Fauci expressed optimism about a gradual return to normalcy by the end of the summer or early fall if the vaccine rollout goes smoothly, the majority of Americans agree to be vaccinated and new virus variants prove to be manageable.

“It’s not going to be a light switch on and off… it’s going to be gradual,” he said.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington, Caroline Humer and Peter Szekely in New York; Writing by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Bill Berkrot)