Daily Archives: September 2, 2021

As a new coronavirus wave accelerated by the Delta variant spreads across the United States, many Republican governors have taken sweeping action to combat what they see as an even more urgent danger posed by the pandemic: the threat to personal freedom.

In Florida, Ron DeSantis has prevented local governments and school districts from enacting mask mandates and battled in court over compliance. In Texas, Greg Abbott has followed a similar playbook, renewing an order last week to ban vaccine mandates.

And in South Dakota, Kristi Noem, who like Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott is a potential 2024 candidate for president, has made her blanket opposition to lockdowns and mandates a key selling point. Arriving by horseback and carrying the American flag, she advertised the states recent Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which drew half a million people, as a beacon of liberty.

Ms. Noem brushed aside criticism from Democrats and public health experts about the gathering, which was followed by a local Covid spike, saying on Fox News that the left was accusing us of embracing death when were just allowing people to make personal choices.

The actions of Republican governors, some of the leading stewards of the countrys response to the virus, reveal how the politics of the partys base have hardened when it comes to curbing Covid. As some Republican-led states, including Florida, confront their most serious outbreaks yet, even rising death totals are being treated as less politically damaging than imposing coronavirus mandates of almost any stripe.

Freedom is good policy and good politics, Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and ally of Mr. Abbotts who has introduced federal legislation to end mask decrees and to forbid federal vaccine passports, said in an interview.

Mr. DeSantis has become a symbolic face of the battle, as President Biden has urged Republican governors opposed to mandates to at least get out of the way. This week, Mr. DeSantiss education commissioner withheld funds from two school districts that made masks mandatory.

Most top Republicans, including every Republican governor, have been vaccinated and have encouraged others to do so. But most have also stopped short of supporting inoculation requirements and have opposed masking requirements.

In many ways, Republican leaders are simply following Republican voters.

Skepticism about masks, vaccines and the rules governing them is increasingly intertwined with the cultural issues that dominate the modern Republican Party. The fear over losing medical freedom has become part of the broader worry that cancel culture is coming for conservatives way of life.

And while opposing pandemic edicts is a limited-government stance, the forceful approach of governors is at odds with the long-held principle of local control, making it the latest Republican Party orthodoxy to be cast aside since the beginning of the Trump era, along with free trade and limited spending.

The intensifying conservative mistrust of the news media and opposition to the directives of elite institutions and experts Dr. Anthony S. Fauci is now so reviled by some that Mr. DeSantis sold merchandise saying Dont Fauci My Florida have cleaved the country into two factions guided by alternative sets of beliefs.

One outlier among Republican governors is Larry Hogan, a moderate who leads Democratic-dominated Maryland. He recently required that hospital and nursing home employees be vaccinated.

Frankly, its confusing to me as to why some of my colleagues are mandating why you cant wear masks, or mandating that businesses cant make their own decisions about vaccines, or mandating that school systems cant make decisions for themselves, Mr. Hogan said in an interview. And then theyre talking about freedom? It just doesnt make sense to me.

The pandemic, public health officials say, is now largely one of the unvaccinated, and the virus is raging particularly in conservative states with far lower inoculation rates and more relaxed attitudes toward group gatherings. Of the 10 states with the most cases per capita in recent days, nine voted Republican in last years presidential race and nine are led by Republican governors, according to The New York Times coronavirus database.

Republican leaders posture, particularly on keeping schools from requiring masks, does not appear popular across the wider electorate. In Florida, a Quinnipiac poll released last week found that 60 percent of residents supported compulsory masks in schools.

But among Republicans, that figure was inverted: 72 percent of Mr. DeSantiss party said they opposed universal masking requirements in schools. The poll showed that a plurality of Republicans in the state also opposed a mask requirement for health care workers, a measure that is popular among independents.

Many Republicans are out on an island by themselves, said Whit Ayres, a veteran G.O.P. pollster. It may be a safe political place for some primary electorates at the moment. But ultimately you have to win a general election.

Sept. 2, 2021, 12:52 p.m. ET

Governors nationwide almost uniformly reject the idea that political considerations have shaped their Covid policies. Politics have played no role, said Ian Fury, a spokesman for Ms. Noem.

The offices of Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Abbott, Ms. Noem and other Republican governors did not make them available for comment. But advisers to multiple Republican governors said the widespread distribution of vaccines had changed the governing calculus when it came to masks and shutdowns. Both Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott have focused on opening antibody treatment sites for those who contract the virus.

As Florida became the first state to reach a new peak in deaths since vaccines became freely available, Mr. DeSantis has remained steadfast in keeping schools from requiring masks without a parental opt-out.

We say unequivocally no to lockdowns, no to school closures, no to restrictions and no to mandates, Mr. DeSantis said at a conservative conference in July.

These choices by governors carry a range of risks.

One Republican strategist privately lamented, only half-jokingly, that the party was going to kill off part of its own base with its vaccine hesitancy. Former President Donald J. Trump recently told donors at a New York Republican Party fund-raiser that he hoped his supporters would get vaccinated because we need our people, according to two attendees.

Even Mr. Trump is not immune from blowback, however. He received a rare rebuke from his base at an August rally in Alabama after he urged people to get vaccinated. Take the vaccines, he said. I did it. Its good.

Some in the crowd began to jeer; Mr. Trump appeared to soften his stance.

Thats OK, thats all right, he said. You got your freedoms, but I happened to take the vaccine.

Mr. Trumps political operation has clearly assessed where his base stands. FREEDOM PASSPORTS > VACCINE PASSPORTS, read one recent fund-raising text, selling $45 American flag shirts that declare, This is my freedom passport.

UnderstandVaccine and Mask Mandates in the U.S.

In Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, saw his partys pushback firsthand on a 16-stop tour to promote vaccination.

Mr. Hutchinson signed a law this spring banning mask mandates, but with cases rising again this month, he said he regretted it. In Siloam Springs, he was pelted with questions from frustrated constituents, including one woman who told him that she had been praying that God himself will step in so that Christians are not forced by their employers and a mandate to get the vaccine.

Yet even if God does not, I will not bow, she said to raucous cheers.

Then there is Ms. Noem, who last month accused other Republican governors of pretending they didnt shut down their states, that they didnt close their regions, that they didnt mandate masks. The remarks were widely interpreted to be aimed at potential 2024 rivals.

Mr. Cruz, who ran for president in 2016 and could again in 2024, predicted a reckoning for politicians, including Republicans, who had embraced pandemic edicts. Theres a range of politicians in terms of how long they shut things down, he said. In my view, the shorter the better. But that will certainly be a legitimate topic for discussion and debate.

Mr. Ayres, the Republican pollster, said that governors trying to control the virus policies of schools, employers and local officials were breaking with years of tradition on free enterprise and local control.

Liberty has never meant the freedom to threaten the health of others, Mr. Ayres said. That is a perversion of the definition of liberty and freedom.

Some governors who imposed mandates and lockdowns last year have even been targeted by state legislators who want to trim their powers.

In Ohio, the G.O.P.-controlled Legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Mike DeWine, a fellow Republican, of legislation that reined in his administrations emergency powers to manage the pandemic. After requiring masks to be worn last year in schools, he has not renewed the order this fall.

Mr. DeWine, who drew national attention for his fast and forceful response to Covid in early 2020, now faces a 2022 primary challenge from Jim Renacci, a former congressman. Mr. Renacci said the governors handling of the virus was a big part of his bid.

He said Mr. DeWine had now gone quiet on mandates because he realizes what he did the first time did not make Republicans happy.

A spokesman for Mr. DeWine said the need for mandates had changed since vaccines became freely available.

The most severe Covid outbreaks have been most concentrated in the South, and the Republican governors of Alabama and Mississippi have largely embraced the no-mandate ethos even as cases have climbed to new heights.

Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi renewed an emergency declaration in mid-August but set clear boundaries: There will be no lockdowns and there will be no statewide mandates, he said.

The same week, two field hospitals were installed in the parking lots of Mississippi medical centers.

Jennifer Medina contributed reporting.

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GOP Governors Fight Virus Mandates as the Party's Covid-19 Politics Harden - The New York Times

Health officials in Illinois have linked nearly 200 COVID-19 cases to two events a church camp for teens and a men's conference and the number of people who may have been exposed may be much greater and from multiple states.

An organization held a five-day church camp for teens and a two-day men's conference in June that have since been linked to a spike in cases following research by the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Monday. The CDC did not name the organization.

As of mid-August, 180 COVID-19 cases had been linked to those who attended one of those events or to someone who had close contact with an attendee, the CDC said.

A majority of those cases, 122, were attributed to attendees, with 87 people contracting COVID-19 during the camp and 35 during the conference. Most of those cases, 104, were unvaccinated people.

Only five people were hospitalized, none of whom had been vaccinated, and no deaths were reported. But officials say that more than 1,000 people across at least four states could have been exposed through the two events, the CDC said.

The report points to these cases as an example of the dangers of hosting large events with little to no safeguards in place. Attendees at both events were not required to be vaccinated, and organizers did not require participants to get tested before allowing entry, the report says.

Nearly 300 teens between the ages of 14 and 18 attended the camp after traveling together in large groups on buses. They spent the week living and dining together and mingling with other campers, according to the CDC.

It's unclear whether masks were required, but the report says that a list of items to pack for the week did not include masks. Similarly, another 500 people attended the men's conference, where masks were also not required, the CDC says.

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Church Camp, Conference In Illinois Linked To Almost 200 COVID Cases : Coronavirus Updates - NPR

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WJW) The Ohio Department of Health held a press conference Thursday on the spread of COVID-19 in the state.

On Wednesday, 7,102 new coronavirus cases were reported by ODH.

That included 1,021 cases that were delayed because of a lab reporting issue between Aug. 15 to Aug. 25 that has since been resolved.

As of Wednesday afternoon, 2,566 people in Ohio are hospitalized with COVID-19.

The Ohio Hospital Association says 1 in 8 hospitalized patients are being treated for coronavirus.

In intensive care that number is 1 in 5.

Ohio hospitals have 1,114 ICU beds available currently.

That includes both adult and pediatric hospitals.

ODH Director Bruce Vanderhoff, MD, MBA spoke at the press conference with Brian Taylor, MD, Inpatient Medical Director at Central Ohio Primary Care Hospitalists and Hector Wong, ICU Physician, and Head of Critical Care at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital.

Hospital staff is exhausted, Dr. Wong shared.

We can no longer say kids arent getting sick from COVID, Dr. Taylor said, comparing this stage of the coronavirus pandemic to 2020.

Were starting to see kids in the hospital, including the ICU, because of COVID, he shared.

Everyone in the ICU is seriously ill, and some of them are going to die, said Dr. Vanderhoff.

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1 in 8 people in Ohios hospitals treated for COVID-19 - WJW FOX 8 News Cleveland

Inmates do a deep cleaning in a cell pod to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the San Diego County Jail in April 2020. A new study says crowded jails may have contributed to millions of COVID-19 cases across the United States. Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images hide caption

Inmates do a deep cleaning in a cell pod to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the San Diego County Jail in April 2020. A new study says crowded jails may have contributed to millions of COVID-19 cases across the United States.

If the U.S. had done more to reduce its incarceration rate, it could have prevented millions of COVID-19 cases.

That's the conclusion of researchers who conducted what they say is the first study to link mass incarceration rates to pandemic vulnerability. Many of those preventable cases, they add, occurred in communities of color.

The U.S. jail and prison system acts as an epidemic engine, according to the study from researchers at Northwestern University and the World Bank.

That engine is driven by a massive number of people who, despite some counties' efforts to trim jail populations, have been cycling between cramped detention facilities and their home communities.

After analyzing data from 1,605 counties, the researchers linked an 80% reduction in the U.S. jail population to a 2% drop in the growth rate of daily COVID-19 cases.

Such a substantial drop in the incarceration level could have been achieved by instituting alternatives to jail for nonviolent offenses, according to the researchers Dr. Eric Reinhart of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Daniel Chen of the Toulouse School of Economics and the World Bank.

That 2% reduction is a conservative estimate, but it still represents a dramatic potential shift, Reinhart told NPR.

When compounded daily, Reinhart said in a Northwestern news release about the study, "even just a 2% reduction in daily case growth rates in the U.S. from the beginning of the pandemic until now would translate to the prevention of millions of cases."

Tens of thousands of deaths could also have been prevented, he said.

A red tag on a cell door signifies an active COVID-19 case for its inhabitants. The first medically vulnerable inmates in Minnesota were vaccinated at Faribault Prison in January. Aaron Lavinsky/Star Tribune/Getty Images hide caption

A red tag on a cell door signifies an active COVID-19 case for its inhabitants. The first medically vulnerable inmates in Minnesota were vaccinated at Faribault Prison in January.

The U.S. has long had the world's highest incarceration rate among industrialized countries reporting such statistics. During the pandemic, it has also reported more COVID-19 cases and deaths than any other country despite having less than 5% of the global population.

The new research, published Thursday in the journal JAMA Network Open, suggests those circumstances are directly related.

On average, U.S jails currently host some 650,000 detainees every day, according to Reinhart. The dynamic also includes more than 220,000 full-time jail staff, who commute back and forth from their homes each day, the study said.

Many of those detainees are held in custody for only short periods of time as they either await trial or serve short sentences. The U.S. jail population has a 55% weekly turnover rate, according to the study.

"This jail churn effectively produces epidemic machines that seed outbreaks both in and beyond jails, undermining public safety for the entire country," Reinhart said.

Citing crowded conditions and poor health care in jails and prisons, a summary of the study from Northwestern said the U.S. facilities "have effectively become infectious disease incubators," putting the country at a higher epidemiological risk.

The link between prisons and public health is one of the reasons Black and Hispanic communities have been disproportionately harmed by the coronavirus, the study's authors said.

The spread of the coronavirus between jails and communities "likely accounts for a substantial proportion of the racial disparities we have seen in COVID-19 cases across the U.S.," Reinhart said.

"Ultimately, this also harms all U.S. residents regardless of race, class or partisan affiliations, as disregarding the health of marginalized people inevitably causes harm albeit unevenly to everyone else in a society, too," he added.

The benefits of cutting the jail population would be magnified, Reinhart and Chen wrote, in counties with high proportions of Black residents as well as in urban areas with above-average population density.

The study's findings are based on data from jails that reduced their populations at rates from 20% to 50% during the pandemic in response to health risks from COVID-19.

The researchers sought to predict what the results would look like if the U.S. dropped its jail population by 80%, which would bring the country closer to the average rates seen in peer nations.

The study relied on data gathered at the county level from January 2020 to November, representing 72% of the U.S. population.

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Crowded U.S. Jails Drove Millions Of COVID-19 Cases, A New Study Says - NPR

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San Angelo listed as city in Texas where COVID-19 is growing the fastest - KXAN.com

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 218.4 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.54 million. More than 5.34 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

Australian doctors have warned that hospitals are not ready to cope with reopening plans even with higher vaccination rates as some states prepare to move from suppression to living with COVID-19.

Moderna has asked the US Food and Drug Administration to allow the use of a third booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine.

New Zealand has reported a fall in new COVID-19 infections, with authorities saying it was a sign that nationwide restrictions were working.

India has reported its biggest single-day rise in new COVID-19 cases for two months, with the state of Kerala worst hit.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll has shown that most vaccinated Americans want a booster COVID-19 vaccine dose.

It comes as the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said yesterday there was no urgent need for vaccine booster doses.

Spain has reached a goal set by the government of vaccinating 70% of its population against COVID-19.

Turkey's new confirmed daily COVID-19 cases have hit a three-week high of 23,946.

Pfizer and Merck have announced new trials of their experimental oral antiviral drugs for COVID-19.

Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in selected countries

Image: Our World in Data

As many as 1-in-7 children might have symptoms linked to COVID-19 months after testing positive for the disease, according to an English study of long COVID in adolescents.

The study, led by University College London and Public Health England, found that 11- to 17-year-olds who tested positive for the virus were twice as likely to report three or more symptoms 15 weeks later than those who had tested negative.

The researchers said that while the findings suggested as many as 32,000 teenagers might have had multiple symptoms linked to COVID-19 after 15 weeks, the prevalence of long COVID in the age group was lower than some had feared last year.

"Overall, it's better than people would've guessed back in December," Professor Terence Stephenson of the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health told reporters.

The research is yet to be peer-reviewed.

The COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship is a coalition of 85 global leaders, hosted by the World Economic Forum. Its mission: Join hands in support of social entrepreneurs everywhere as vital first responders to the pandemic and as pioneers of a green, inclusive economic reality.

Its COVID Social Enterprise Action Agenda, outlines 25 concrete recommendations for key stakeholder groups, including funders and philanthropists, investors, government institutions, support organizations, and corporations. In January of 2021, its members launched its 2021 Roadmap through which its members will roll out an ambitious set of 21 action projects in 10 areas of work. Including corporate access and policy change in support of a social economy.

For more information see the Alliance website or its impact story here.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus inaugurated the new WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence yesterday.

The Berlin-based hub will work to build partnerships and develop technology that uses data to detect and tackle disease and future outbreaks.

The world needs to be able to detect new events with pandemic potential and to monitor disease control measures on a real-time basis to create effective pandemic and epidemic risk management, said Dr Tedros. This Hub will be key to that effort, leveraging innovations in data science for public health surveillance and response, and creating systems whereby we can share and expand expertise in this area globally.

Written by

Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 2 September - World Economic Forum

Americans will most likely pay significantly more for Covid medical care during this new wave of cases whether thats a routine coronavirus test or a lengthy hospitalization.

Earlier in the pandemic, most major health insurers voluntarily waived costs associated with a Covid treatment. Patients didnt have to pay their normal co-payments or deductibles for emergency room visits or hospital stays.

Most Covid tests were free, too.

The landscape has since changed, as the pandemic persists into its second year. Federal law still requires insurers to cover testing at no cost to the patient when there is a medical reason for seeking care, such as exposure to the disease or a display of symptoms. But more of the tests sought now dont meet the definition of medical reason and are instead for monitoring.

And insurers are now treating Covid more like any other disease, no longer fully covering the costs of care. Some businesses, like Delta Air Lines, are planning to charge unvaccinated employees higher rates for insurance, citing in part the high hospitalization costs for Covid cases.

Insurers are confronting the question about whether the costs of Covid treatment should fall on everyone, or just the individuals who have chosen not to get a vaccine, said Cynthia Cox, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation who has researched how insurers are covering Covid treatment.

The federal rules that make coronavirus testing free include exemptions for routine workplace and school testing, which has become more common as students head back to the classroom and as companies mandate regular testing for unvaccinated workers.

Because insurers are not required to cover that regular testing, some patients have already received testing bills as high as $200 for routine screenings, according to documents that patients have submitted to a New York Times project tracking the costs of Covid testing and treatment. If youve received a bill, you can submit it here.

Some of the highest bills, however, will probably involve Covid patients who need extensive hospital care now that most insurers no longer fully cover those bills. Seventy-two percent of large health plans are no longer making Covid treatment free for patients, a recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found.

This includes Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, the largest health plan in a state experiencing one of the countrys worst outbreaks. On Wednesday, Florida Blue began requiring patients to pay their normal deductibles and co-payments for Covid treatment. Toni Woods, a spokeswoman, said the plan was now focused on encouraging vaccinations.

When the Covid-19 pandemic began last year, we implemented several emergency provisions to temporarily help our members, she said in a statement. Medical diagnostic testing for Covid-19 as well as vaccinations continue to be available to members at $0 cost share.

Oscar Health, which sells coverage in Florida and 14 other states, also ended free Covid treatment this week. It cited the widespread availability of the vaccine as a key reason.

We started waiving cost sharing for Covid-19 treatment at the peak of the pandemic in 2020, when there were few options available for those who fell ill with the virus, said Jackie Khan, an Oscar spokeswoman. We believe that the Covid vaccine is our best way to beat this pandemic, and we are committed to covering it and testing at $0 for our members.

The new policies generally apply to all patients, including the vaccinated; people who get sick with a breakthrough infection; and children under 12, who are not yet eligible for the vaccine.

If you have a small kid who gets Covid at school and ends up at the I.C.U., that family is going to now be stuck with the bill even though that patient did not have the ability to get vaccinated, said Dr. Kao-Ping Chua, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan who researches Covid care costs.

The average Covid hospitalization costs approximately $40,000, researchers have found. A lengthy hospital stay one that requires time in the intensive care unit, or a transfer by air ambulance can cost many multiples more. Most insured patients wont pay that entire bill; they will face whatever share they owe through deductibles and co-payments.

Dr. Chua and his colleagues published research this summer finding that, among patients who had to pay a share of their Covid hospitalization, the average costs were $3,800.

There were some patients where it was $10,000 and others where it was $500, he said. It gives you some semblance of what things will now look like without the waivers.

Surprise bills for routine Covid testing could be smaller but more common, as schools and workplaces increasingly rely on regular screening to prevent coronavirus from spreading.

At many workplaces, unvaccinated workers must submit to monitoring at least weekly. Some employers, including the federal government, plan to fully cover the costs of those tests. But others, including some hotels and universities, will ask unvaccinated workers to bear some or all of the testing costs.

Rebecca Riley recently received a $200 bill from a laboratory with an unfamiliar name. When she called to inquire about the charge, she learned it was a fee for a Covid test. Her son, a high school student, is regularly tested at his Los Angeles-area high school.

I didnt expect to get any bills, she said. I feel stupid, but Id heard the tests were free.

Ms. Riley contacted her insurer about the charge, and it agreed to pay the full amount. But she now worries about future surprise testing bills. I really feel for the families that wont be able to pay, she said.

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Covid Medical Bills Are About to Get Bigger - The New York Times

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) More than 500 new COVID-19 cases were announced in Thursdays update from theSouth Dakota Department of Health.

There were 535 new total cases reported on Thursday. The states total case count is now at 133,372, up from Wednesday (132,837).

Active cases are now at 5,688, up from Wednesday (5,370).

The death toll from COVID-19 is now at 2,071, up from Wednesday (2,069). The new deaths were two men; one wasin the 70-79 age group and the other is in the 80-89 age group

Current hospitalizations are at 218, down from Wednesday (229). Total hospitalizations are now at 6,870, up from Wednesday (6,835).

Total recovered cases are now at 125,613, up from Wednesday (125,398). The latest seven-day PCR test positivity rate for the state is 15.2% for Aug. 25 through Aug. 31.

The state health department has removed the total persons negative column from its COVID-19 Dashboard Tables tab. DOH spokesman Daniel Bucheli told KELOLAND News the department will providea Total Persons Tested and Total Tests Reported table each month.South Dakota Department of Health to report persons tested, total tests for COVID-19 in monthly report.

The DOH currently reports total tests each day. Theres been 1,377,384 total tests reported as of Thursday, up 4,793 from Wednesday (1,372,591).

57 of South Dakotas 66 counties are listed as having high community spread. High community spread is 100 cases or greater per 100,000 or a 10% or greater PCR test positivity rate.

The total number of cases of the Delta variant (B.1.617.2, AY.1-AY.3) detected in South Dakota is at 140.

There have been 172 cases of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha variant), 16 cases of B.1.429 and B.1427 variants (Epsilon variant), 3 cases of P.1. (Gamma variant) and 2 cases of the B.1.351 (Beta variant).

As of Thursday, 62.08% of the population 12-years-old and above has received at least one dose while 56.5% have completed the vaccination series.

There have been 416,523 doses of the Pfizer vaccine administered, 310,663 of the Moderna vaccine and 26,653 doses of the Janssen vaccine.

There have been 149,663 persons who have completed two doses of Moderna and 198,087 who have received two doses of Pfizer.

The number of people who completed the Pfizer vaccine went up by 465 patients; 150 people completed the Moderna vaccine series.

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COVID-19 in South Dakota: 535 total new cases; Death toll rises to 2,071; Active cases at 5,688 - KELOLAND.com

The European Medicines Agency said Thursday that there is no urgent need for COVID-19 booster shots for fully vaccinated people and suggested instead the emphasis should remain on primary vaccination and getting shots into the arms of the one out of three adults in the European Union who are still not inoculated.

The news, made in a statement, offers the latest stance from a regulator on the issue, which has stirred controversy among public health experts in the U.S. after President Joe Biden said last month that Americans would start getting boosters from Sept. 20. That sparked concerns that the White House was getting ahead of the science and data on vaccine boosters.

For more on the booster debate: COVID-19 vaccine booster shots are more complicated than they appear. Heres why.

The EMAs statement aligns with the World Health Organizations view on boosters: namely, that none should be offered by developed countries while the rest of the world is still hampered by a shortage of supply after wealthier countries laid claim to most of the earliest available shots.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for a moratorium on boosters on Aug. 4 to ensure poorer countries get access to first doses.The agency has said there is still not sufficient data to show that boosters are needed by people who have had both shots of a two-dose vaccine in reining in the spread of the virus.

Dont miss: WHO warns of possible 236,000 new COVID-19 deaths in Europe by December, and Fauci says U.S. could see another 100,000

The WHO has pushed to get vaccines to 10% of the populations of all countries by September, arguing that as major swaths of a population are unvaccinated, variants may emerge, with the risk that one might prove fully vaccine-resistant.

On Wednesday, the WHO said it had identified a new variant of interestcalled B.1.621, and assigned the Greek letter mu. For now, further studies are needed to evaluate its ability to resist the vaccines that have been authorized or approved for use around the world.

Dont miss: WHO identifies new coronavirus variant of interest and experts urge caution on boosters

A number of countries are already giving boosters to some of their vaccinated populations, including Israel, Germany and France. The U.K. has pledged to give them to people with severely weakened immune systems who are at high risk of severe illness, but it has not yet decided on the remaining population. Those shots are considered to be third shots and part of primary vaccination.

The EMAs statement makes clear that it would also classify shots for the immunocompromised as part of primary vaccination.

Evidence on vaccine effectiveness and duration of protection shows that all vaccines authorized in the EU/EEA are currently highly protective against COVID-19-related hospitalization, severe disease and death, said the EMA statement.

Moderna Inc. MRNA, +1.46%, meanwhile, submitted its booster data to the FDA late Wednesday. BioNTech BNTX, -1.45% and Pfizer PFE, +0.81% said last week thatthey had submitted datafor their booster shot to the FDA. That data examined antibody levels in adults who got a third dose between four and eight months after initial vaccination.

There was promising news in a study published on Wednesday in the medical journal the Lancet, which found that the risk of so-called long COVID drops nearly in half after a person receives two doses of a vaccine.

Researchers found that the odds of having symptoms for 28 days or more after post-vaccination infection were approximately halved by having two vaccine doses.

The study also found almost all symptoms were less common in vaccinated people, that more people in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated groups were completely asymptomatic and that COVID-19 was less severe (both in terms of the number of symptoms in the first week of infection and the need for hospitalization) in participants after their first or second vaccine doses compared with unvaccinated participants.

The study was based on 1.2 million people who used a COVID symptoms app in the U.K.

In the U.S., the vaccine program, which has gained some traction in recent weeks as more employers mandate vaccination for workers returning to offices and schools return to session, continued to edge up. The Centers for Disease Control and Preventions tracker is showing that 174.6 million people are now fully vaccinated, equal to 52.6% of the overall population. That means they have had two shots of Pfizer and German partner BioNTechs vaccine or of the one developed by Moderna, or one shot of Johnson & Johnsons JNJ, +0.56% single-dose vaccine.

Among U.S. adults 18 and older, 63.6% are fully inoculated and 74.4% have received at least one dose.

But cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to climb to their highest levels since winter as the delta variant shows no sign of slowing its spread. A New York Times tracker is showing that hospitalizations remain above 100,000 a day on average and average daily deaths are at 1,418.

Since the start of August, the number of daily deaths has more than quadrupled and most are among unvaccinated people.

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Elsewhere, Bulgaria is tightening restrictions to combat the spread of the virus and will close restaurants and bars at 10 p.m. from Sept. 7 and host indoor sports without spectators, the Guardian reported. Bulgaria has the lowest vaccination rate in the EU, according to Reuters, at just 16.7% of its population, and the highest mortality rate, losing some 18,950 people to COVID since the start of the outbreak.

India recorded 47,092 new COVID cases on Thursday, to mark the biggest one-day tally in two months, India Today.com reported. The last time cases were higher than this was 63 days ago, on July 1, when India reported 48,786 cases. On Wednesday, 41,965 COVID-19 cases were recorded.

Hawaii is struggling to transport tanks of oxygen from the mainland as it grapples with a surge of COVID cases, the New York Times reported. Medical officials are asking Hawaiians to postpone elective surgeries as intensive-care-unit beds are being used for COVID patients. The seven-day hospitalization average peaked at 427 on Monday, driven by the delta variant and a relatively low vaccination rate.

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The global tally for the coronavirus-borne illness climbed above 218.6 million on Thursday, while the death toll rose to 4.54 million, according todata aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. leads the world with a total of 39.4 million cases and 642,096 deaths.

India has the second highest death toll after the U.S. at 439,529 and is third by cases at 32.9 million, the Johns Hopkins data shows.

Brazil has second highest death toll at 581,150 and has had 20.8 million cases.

In Europe, Russia has recorded 181,560 deaths, followed by the U.K. with 133,066.

China,where the virus was first discovered late in 2019,has had 107,102 confirmed cases and 4,848 deaths, according to its official numbers, which are widely held to be massively underreported.

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European regulator sees 'no urgent need' for COVID-19 boosters, aligning with WHO view and not the U.S. - MarketWatch

Long COVID or post-COVID syndrome, which is said to affect 1 in 5 COVID patients is said to be a condition when a patient continues to battle lingering symptoms related to the viral illness until weeks or months after recovering. While long COVID has been discussed ever since the pandemic first peaked, the rampant rate of devastation and hospitalizations seen during the second wave can leave many many with gripping symptoms, and a deteriorating state of health. For the ones with long COVID, debilitating symptoms could range from shortness of breath, recurring infections, malaise, stress, anxiety, sleep disorders, joint pain, brain fog and a heightened risk of complications. Weaker immunity, too, can be a consequence.

Not only can COVID survivors or the ones battling long COVID have symptoms that implicate their vital health, but newer studies have also in fact suggested that in many cases long COVID symptoms can extend for almost a year's time, and impact health in a profound manner.

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Coronavirus third wave: Why a new COVID wave may be toughest for those battling long COVID - Times of India