Vaccinations looking better as virus surges

Delta variant now dominant across U.S.

Sarah Villacana, 13, holds 1-year old Christopher Rangel as they and Jaslyn Minchaca, 13, gather with their families Thursday in Los Angeles after getting Pfizer vaccine shots at a county-run site in a city park. More photos at arkansasonline.com/723covid19/.
(AP/Damian Dovarganes)
Sarah Villacana, 13, holds 1-year old Christopher Rangel as they and Jaslyn Minchaca, 13, gather with their families Thursday in Los Angeles after getting Pfizer vaccine shots at a county-run site in a city park. More photos at arkansasonline.com/723covid19/. (AP/Damian Dovarganes)

Vaccinations are beginning to rise in some states where covid-19 cases are soaring, White House officials said Thursday in a sign that the summer surge is getting the attention of vaccine-hesitant Americans as hospitals in the South become overrun with patients.

Coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters that several states with the highest proportions of new infections have seen residents get vaccinated at higher rates than the nation as a whole. Officials cited Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada as examples.

"The fourth surge is real, and the numbers are quite frightening at the moment," Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said on a New Orleans radio show. Edwards, a Democrat, added: "There's no doubt that we are going in the wrong direction, and we're going there in a hurry."

Louisiana reported 2,843 new covid-19 cases Thursday, a day after reporting 5,388 -- the third-highest level since the pandemic began. Hospitalizations are up steeply in the past month, from 242 on June 19 to 913 in the latest report. Fifteen new deaths were reported Thursday.

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Just 36% of Louisiana's population is fully vaccinated, state Health Department data shows. Nationally, 56.3% of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Warner Thomas, president and CEO of the Ochsner Health system serving Louisiana and Mississippi, said the system had seen a 10% to 15% increase in people seeking vaccination over the past week or two. It has administered vaccines at churches, the New Orleans airport, basketball games and the mall.

"We see each person we get vaccinated now as a victory," said Dr. Katherine Baumgarten, director of infection prevention and control for the 40-hospital system, noting that it has been bringing in traveling nurses and that projections show its intensive care units could fill up at the current rate of infection.

Dr. Catherine O'Neal, chief medical officer and an infectious disease specialist at Our Lady of the Lake regional medical center, said Thursday that the most shocking aspect of the surge has been its speed. The caseload has roughly tripled in the course of a week, she said.

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On Sunday, the medical center stopped taking transfers of coronavirus patients from hospitals in other parts of the state because they simply did not have the capacity, she said.

In Missouri, which is second only to Arkansas and Louisiana in the number of new cases per capita over the past 14 days, officials have rolled out a vaccine incentive program that includes $10,000 prizes for 900 lottery winners. The state lags about 10 percentage points behind the national average for people who have received at least one shot.

Hospitals in the Springfield area are under strain, reaching a pandemic high and near pandemic high numbers of patients.

"Younger, relatively healthy and unvaccinated. If this describes you, please consider vaccination," tweeted Erik Frederick, chief administrative officer of Mercy Hospital Springfield, noting that half of the covid-19 patients are ages 21-59 and just 2% of that group is vaccinated.

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The surge that began in the southwest part of the state, where some counties have vaccination rates in the teens, has started to spread to the Kansas City area, including at Research Medical Center.

"I don't want to keep putting my life on the line just because people don't want to get vaccinated or listen to what health care professionals are recommending," lamented Pascaline Muhindura, a registered nurse who has worked on the hospital's covid-19 unit for more than a year.

"A lot of them don't even believe in covid-19 to begin with. It is incredibly frustrating. You are helping someone that doesn't even believe that the illness that they have is real," Muhindura said.

DELTA VARIANT

The delta variant now accounts for an estimated 83% of coronavirus samples genetically identified in the U.S. It is the predominant strain in every region of the country and continues "spreading with incredible efficiency," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters at the White House.

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"It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of and that I have seen in my 20-year career," Walensky said.

"We are yet at another pivotal moment in this pandemic," she warned. "We need to come together as one nation."

Biden officials also announced $100 million in funding for rural health clinics in communities with low vaccination uptake, seeking to boost education and outreach, and detailed their efforts to deploy surge response teams to areas seeing virus spikes, including Missouri and Nevada.

"If you are not vaccinated, please take the delta variant seriously," Walensky said. "This virus has no incentive to let up, and it remains in search of the next vulnerable person to infect."

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SCHOOL MASKS

The CDC has not changed its guidance that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks. But in Georgia, Atlanta Public Schools announced Thursday that it will implement a "universal mask wearing" policy in all of the system's school buildings when fall classes begin Aug. 5.

In a statement, the school system cited the dangers of the delta variant and guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Just 18% of eligible students in the Atlanta school system are fully vaccinated, and 58% of its employees have said they are either fully vaccinated or plan to be, officials said.

"Given our low vaccination rates and increasing community spread, the CDC acknowledges that universal masking would be appropriate," the school system said in the statement.

Face coverings will be optional during outdoor activities, such as physical education classes and recess, the district said.

Atlanta's policy is more stringent than those of some large suburban Atlanta school districts.

Cobb County, one of Georgia's largest school systems, will not require students or staff members to wear masks on buses or indoors when their new school year begins Aug. 2. Nor will Marietta City Schools require masks, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

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In Arkansas, a group of Democratic lawmakers urged the governor and Republicans who control the Legislature to lift the state's ban on schools and local governments requiring people to wear masks.

BIDEN FRUSTRATION

President Joe Biden expressed pointed frustration over the slowing covid-19 vaccination rate in the U.S. and pleaded that it's "gigantically important" for Americans to step up and get inoculated against the virus as it surges once again.

Biden, speaking Wednesday night at a televised town-hall meeting in Cincinnati, said the public health crisis has turned largely into a plight of the unvaccinated.

"We have a pandemic for those who haven't gotten the vaccination -- it's that basic, that simple," he said.

He displayed exasperation that so many eligible Americans are still reluctant to get shots.

"If you're vaccinated, you're not going to be hospitalized, you're not going to be in the IC unit, and you're not going to die," Biden said. "So it's gigantically important that ... we all act like Americans who care about our fellow Americans."

The Democratic president noted that the rise has become so concerning that even his critics are pushing back against vaccine disinformation.

Biden made an indirect reference to high-profile conservative personalities at that Fox News Channel who have "had an altar call" and are now more openly speaking to their skeptical guests about the benefits of getting vaccinated. Sean Hannity recently told viewers, "I believe in the science of vaccination" and urged them to take the disease seriously. Steve Doocy, who co-hosts "Fox & Friends," this week told viewers that the vaccination "will save your life."

OFFICE RETURN

The Biden administration's effort to return much of the federal workforce to the office this fall is facing a new disruption just as the government was firming up detailed plans to move past the coronavirus pandemic.

Hundreds of agencies submitted their return-to-office plans to the White House budget office to meet last Monday's deadline, laying out how they would begin to phase out remote work for hundreds of thousands of employees after Labor Day, with a full return to federal offices planned by the end of the year. Detailed strategies for office cleaning, coronavirus testing, staggered work schedules and repositioned desks for social distancing were included, along with which jobs will be eligible for continued full- and part-time telework.

The Social Security Administration, the focus of increasing pressure from Republicans on Capitol Hill to reopen, has not submitted its reentry plans to the White House budget office. Acting commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi, named less than two weeks ago, told agency employees in a memo early Wednesday that "we have been given a little more time to finalize our plan so that I can ensure it is informed by our employees and stakeholders."

The White House is under pressure from disparate sides of the debate over reopening. Unions that represent the majority of the federal bureaucracy of 2.1 million workers -- and are a key Democratic constituency -- are reluctant to cede full control of workplace decisions to the administration, although they have not disagreed publicly.

Advocates for the disabled, meantime, have pushed for reopening some of the nation's 1,240 Social Security field offices. Applications for disability benefits have plummeted during the pandemic, as low-income Americans without access to the Internet have been prevented from seeking benefits.

Republicans have charged that closed offices and remote work, particularly at the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service, have led to diminished services for the public.

"This might come as a shock to some out-of-touch folks in Washington, but most Americans are back in the workplace, and many have been back for quite some time," Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform subcommittee on government operations, said in an email.

"The federal workforce must return now," he wrote. "Not by Labor Day. Not by Thanksgiving. Not by 2022. Now. The extended 'work from home' vacation for many federal workers is over, and it's long past time for them to get back to serving the American people and address the massive backlogs that resulted from their absence."

The Biden administration has not said publicly how a persistent surge in cases would affect plans to return the government to normal operations for the first time since March 2020, particularly in areas of the country hardest hit by the variant.

"Agencies are working through reentry plans, but we don't have anything new to share at this time," said deputy White House press secretary Chris Meagher. "We will continue to follow the science and listen to doctors and adhere to CDC guidelines."

BOOSTER SHOTS?

A federal advisory panel is discussing the need for additional coronavirus shots for patients with fragile immune systems amid growing concerns about waning immunity in vulnerable populations and surging infections from the delta variant.

These patients include U.S. adults who are organ transplant recipients, people on cancer treatments, and people living with rheumatologic conditions, HIV and leukemia. They are more likely to become seriously ill from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus and might more frequently spread the virus to others, experts say.

But the panel can't recommend additional shots or change clinical guidance until the Food and Drug Administration either gives full approval to the currently available vaccines, or amends its emergency use authorization. That authorization permits only a two-dose regimen of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, or a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson product.

Medical experts say data is limited on whether an additional shot or booster confers a substantial boost in protection against the virus.

Information for this article was contributed by Heather Hollingsworth, Richardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Kevin McGill, Alexandra Jaffe and Aamer Madhani of The Associated Press; and by Dan Diamond, Lisa Rein and Lena H. Sun of The Washington Post.

Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), listens during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing , Tuesday, July 20, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), listens during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing , Tuesday, July 20, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra holds up a flier promoting the Vax Nevada Days lottery after briefing from officials at the Clark County Fire Department Training Facility in Las Vegas Thursday, July 22, 2021. The vaccine lottery awards cash and prizes to Nevada residents who have received the COVID-19 vaccine. (Steve Marcus /Las Vegas Sun via AP)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra holds up a flier promoting the Vax Nevada Days lottery after briefing from officials at the Clark County Fire Department Training Facility in Las Vegas Thursday, July 22, 2021. The vaccine lottery awards cash and prizes to Nevada residents who have received the COVID-19 vaccine. (Steve Marcus /Las Vegas Sun via AP)
Rochelle Walensky, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), left, and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listen during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing, Tuesday, July 20, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
Rochelle Walensky, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), left, and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listen during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing, Tuesday, July 20, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

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