San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Florida faces its deadliest phase yet of COVID-19
Florida is in the grip of its deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, a disaster driven by the highly contagious delta variant.
While Florida’s vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average, the Sunshine State has an outsize population of elderly people, who are especially vulnerable to the virus; a vibrant party scene; and a Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who has taken a hard line against mask requirements, vaccine passports and business shutdowns.
As of mid-August, the state was averaging 244 deaths per day, up from just 23 a day in late June and eclipsing the previous peak of 227 during the summer of 2020. (Because of both the way deaths are logged in Florida and lags in reporting, more recent figures on fatalities per day are incomplete.)
Hospitals have had to rent refrigerated trucks to store bodies, and funeral homes have been overwhelmed.
Florida made an aggressive effort early on to vaccinate its senior citizens. But Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Florida, said the raw number of those who have yet to get the shot is still large, given Florida’s elderly population of 4.6 million.
“Even 10% is still a very large number, and then folks living with them who come in contact with them are not vaccinated,” Cherabuddi said. “With delta, things spread very quickly.”
Cherabuddi said there is also a “huge difference” in attitudes toward masks in Florida this summer compared with last year. This summer, “if you traveled around the state, it was like we are not really in a surge,” he said.
The majority of the deaths this summer are among the elderly. Of the 2,345 people whose deaths were reported over the past week, 1,479 of them were 65 and older — or 63%.
Demonstrators gather in Paris to protest health passes required by the government that show proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test to access many public venues.
As of 7:30 p.m. Saturday CASES DEATHS
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New cases, deaths reported since Friday
to recent European Union advice on stricter rules because of growing anxiety over coronavirus contagion in the U.S.
The European Council’s decision last week to remove the U.S. from a safe list of countries for nonessential travel also came amid unanswered calls from European officials for “reciprocity” in travel rules. Despite the EU’s move to open its borders to U.S. citizens in June, the U.S. didn’t allow EU tourists in.
Spain, a major tourism destination, is among a handful of EU countries that have announced steps to adjust their entry rules to the council’s recommendation.
The country published the new guidelines on its official gazette, also removing Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro and North Macedonia from the safe list.
Under the rules, U.S. tourists will no longer be admitted starting Monday unless they can show proof of being fully vaccinated at least 14 days before their trip.
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