As N.Y. salutes health workers, Missouri lags
New York threw a tickertape parade Wednesday for the health care workers and others who helped the city get through the darkest days of COVID19, while authorities in Missouri struggled to beat back a surge blamed on the fastspreading delta variant and deep resistance to getting vaccinated.
The splitscreen images could be a glimpse of what public health experts say may lie ahead for the U.S. in the coming months: continued progress against the coronavirus overall, but with local outbreaks in corners of the country with low vaccination rates.
Missouri not only leads the nation in new cases relative to the population, it is also averaging 1,000 new cases per day — about the same number as the entire Northeast, including major population centers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
California, with 40 million people, is posting only slightly higher case numbers than Missouri, which has a population of 6 million.
Northeastern states have seen cases, deaths and hospitalizations plummet to almost nothing amid widespread acceptance of the COVID19 vaccine. Vermont has gone 26 days with new case numbers in single digits. In Maryland, the governor’s office said every death recorded in June was in an unvaccinated person. New York City regularly goes whole days with no deaths.
Just 45% of Missouri’s residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared with 55% of the U.S. population. Some rural counties near Springfield have vaccination rates in the teens and 20s.
ILLINOIS
Students to get vaccines at school
Chicago school officials are offering student COVID19 vaccinations at school sites and events. The nation’s thirdlargest school district plans to offer five days a week of inperson instruction in the fall and says the goal is to vaccinate as many students as possible. But the shots aren’t required. Starting next week, the district will offer vaccines at three school sites for students and their families. The district is also working with hospitals for vaccination events in areas with low vaccination rates and offering shots at backtoschool events.
Public health officials say more than 50,000 children under 18 have already been vaccinated in Chicago.
TEXAS
Mass infections after church camp
More than 125 children and adults who attended a religious camp in Texas last month have now tested positive for the coronavirus, camp officials said this week in a statement that also warned that many more people may have been exposed to the virus. The church is based in League City, about 30 miles southeast of Houston. Health authorities fear hundreds of others were likely exposed
when infected people returned home from camp.
SOUTH KOREA
Cases spike amid slow vaccination
South Korea on Wednesday reported 1,212 new cases, a steep rise in coronavirus infections unseen since the winter outbreak as it slips into another surge while most of its people are still unvaccinated. Health experts say the government sent the wrong message by pushing for a premature easing of social distancing. Packed restaurants, bars and stores and huge beerdrinking crowds recently in Seoul have illustrated how the country has let its guard down despite a slow vaccine rollout. Only 30% of its population has received first doses as of Wednesday.
AUSTRALIA
Sydney lockdown is extended
Sydney’s twoweek lockdown has been extended until July 16 due to the vulnerability of an Australia population largely unvaccinated against the coronavirus, officials said on Wednesday.
Only 9% of Australian adults are fully vaccinated, heightening fears that the delta variant could quickly spread beyond control.
GLOBAL DEATHS COVID toll hits 4 million
The global death toll from COVID19 eclipsed 4 million Wednesday as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious delta variant.
The tally of lives lost over the past year and a half, as compiled from official sources by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
TURKMENISTAN Mandatory vaccinations
Turkmenistan, a secretive Central Asian nation that hasn’t officially reported any coronavirus infections, has made COVID19 vaccinations mandatory for all adults.