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      Why doesn’t Biden mail free Covid tests to all Americans? | Ross Barkan

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      Why doesn’t Biden mail free Covid tests to all Americans? Ross BarkanIn the United States, testing varies widely by city, county and state. In the UK, tests are free and sent to your home, as it should be On Monday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, boasted about the Biden administration’s coronavirus testing apparatus. “We’ve quadrupled the size of our testing plan. We’ve cut the cost significantly over the last few months,” Psaki told reporters, noting Americans will now be able to get the costs of tests reimbursed by their private insurers.“Why not make them free and give them out everywhere?” a reporter asked.“Should we just send one to every American?” Psaki asked, beginning to smile. When the reporter answered “maybe”, the press secretary dug in. “What happens if every American has one test? How much does that cost and what happens after that?”Psaki was straining to make the question seem absurd. There are more than 300 million Americans. How can the United States government just mail a test to every person?Her sarcasm revealed a dismal truth: if America is no longer unique in struggling through the pandemic, adequate testing remains in woefully short supply. The Biden administration has failed, like the Trump administration, to make free tests available everywhere. And in that failure, America has fallen behind the rest of the world.In Boris Johnson’s United Kingdom, free packs of Covid-19 rapid lateral tests are available to order daily. Germany has reintroduced free testing as cases continue to surge. South Korea, long a global leader when it comes to aggressively testing for coronavirus, even has free tests for pets.Meanwhile, in the United States, testing varies widely by city, county and state. New York City, battered by the original wave of coronavirus, now has free and easily accessible testing sites in most neighborhoods, where results can be learned within the hour. Other localities are still charging money and taking days to return tests. In rural areas, it can be especially difficult to get tested quickly for Covid-19.At-home tests are now available in most large pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens. A package can cost more than $20. For many Americans, wrangling with a test that can outstrip the cost of dinner is just not worth it.The new Biden plan is convoluted. Instead of subsidizing the cost of tests so they are freely available in stores or following the New York model of paying for testing sites in underserved areas, the Biden administration will compel private health insurers to reimburse people who buy over the counter, at-home rapid tests. Ultimately, this puts the onus on the individual to wade through paperwork or battle with an insurance company to receive a proper reimbursement. There will be Americans who won’t even bother.For those who lack health insurance, Biden’s initiative offers little. The federal government will buy another 25m tests to give to community health centers and rural clinics, a decent gesture that doesn’t account for those who either don’t live close enough to such places or may be passed over if the tests don’t happen to reach their facilities.The plan, ultimately, is frustratingly piecemeal and reflects the byzantine approach to healthcare the American government continues to take. Instead of a universal provider akin to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service or Canada’s single-payer system, America’s healthcare regime remains a predatory patchwork.Private insurance is expensive and inefficient. Comprehensive public insurance is open only to those who are very poor, old, or work for the government. The ailing American healthcare system has been on full display during the pandemic, with those who survive hospital stays sometimes returning home with enormous medical bills. Other Americans, fearing costs, avoid medical visits altogether.A well-funded rapid testing regime could help, along with vaccination and anti-viral treatments, restore normalcy. Coronavirus, as we now know, can still spread among the vaccinated, and the Omicron variant might increase the number of breakthrough cases. This new reality will require a much greater degree of testing than we now have and force the Biden administration, Psaki included, to take it all a lot more seriously. Rapid, accurate testing can make indoor gatherings safer and ensure those with Covid don’t readily infect others. The misery we all have lived through may begin to subside if the federal government does what it should do and guarantees every American a right to a free, available test.TopicsCoronavirusOpinionJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsInfectious diseasescommentReuse this content More

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      Fauci: US could face ‘fifth wave’ of Covid as Omicron variant nears

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      Fauci: US could face ‘fifth wave’ of Covid as Omicron variant nears
      Collins and Fauci emphasise need for vaccines and boosters
      Warning that variant shows signs of heightened transmissibility
      Coronavirus: live coverage
      Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday the US has “the potential to go into a fifth wave” of coronavirus infections amid rising cases and stagnating vaccination rates. He also warned that the newly discovered Omicron variant shows signs of heightened transmissibility.Biden and Harris briefed as US braces for arrival of Omicron Covid variantRead moreAs Fauci toured the US political talkshows, countries around the world including the US scrambled to guard against Omicron, which has stoked fears of vaccine resistance.A White House official told reporters Joe Biden would meet members of his Covid-19 response team, including Fauci, regarding the Omicron variant.Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Fauci discussed why Omicron has raised such alarm.“Right now we have the window into the mutations that are in this new variant,” he said, “and they are troublesome in the fact that there are about 32 or more variants in that very important spike protein of the virus, which is the business end of the virus.“In other words, the profile of the mutations strongly suggest that it’s going to have an advantage in transmissibility and that it might evade immune protection that you would get, for example, from the monoclonal antibody or from the convalescent serum after a person’s been infected and possibly even against some of the vaccine-induced antibodies.“So it’s not necessarily that that’s going to happen, but it’s a strong indication that we really need to be prepared for that.”Fauci also pointed to how Covid case numbers shifted dramatically in South Africa, where Omicron was discovered, over a short period.“You were having a low level of infection, and then all of a sudden, there was this big spike … and when the South Africans looked at it, they said, ‘Oh my goodness. This is a different virus than we’ve been dealing with.’“So it clearly is giving indication that it has the capability of transmitting rapidly. That’s the thing that’s causing us now to be concerned, but also to put the pressure on ourselves now to do something about our presentation for this.”The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said no Omicron cases have been discovered in the US.Fauci told NBC: “As we all know, when you have a virus that has already gone to multiple countries, inevitably, it will be here.”On CBS, Fauci said any fifth wave of cases “will really be dependent upon what we do in the next few weeks to a couple of months”.“We have now about 62 million people in the country who are eligible to be vaccinated,” he added, “who have not yet gotten vaccinated.“Superimpose upon that the fact that, unquestionably, the people who got vaccinated six, seven, eight, nine, 10 months ago, we’re starting to see an understandable diminution in the level of immunity. It’s called waning immunity, and it was seen more emphatically in other countries before we saw it here.”Fauci said an increase in immunization rates and booster shots might prevent another surge – but the US had to act fast.“So if we now do what I’m talking about in an intense way, we may be able to blunt that,” Fauci said. “If we don’t do it successfully, it is certainly conceivable and maybe likely that we will see another bit of a surge. How bad it gets is dependent upon us and how we mitigate.”Politically charged resistance to vaccine mandates and other public health measures would seem to make a rapid increase in US vaccination rates unlikely.While more than 70% of US adults are fully vaccinated, the most recent CDC data indicated that cases had increased 16% over the prior week’s seven-day average. By Sunday there had been 48,202,506 cases in the US with 776, 537 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.Another senior US government scientist, the National Institutes of Health director, Francis Collins, discussed the Omicron variant on Sunday.“I think the main thing that has us focused on this,” he told CNN’s State of the Union, “and it’s caused a lot of us to be sort of 24/7 on Zoom calls in the last four days, is that it has so many mutations”.Collins also said there were “good reasons to think it will probably be OK but we need to know the real answers to that and that’s going to take two or three weeks”.On Friday, Biden said the US would follow much of the rest of the world and impose restrictions on travel from South Africa and seven other countries. The restrictions, which Biden called “as a precautionary measure until we have more information”, will go into effect on Monday.Collins told CNN: “I know, America, you’re really tired of hearing these things, but the virus is not tired of us and it’s shape-shifting itself. If you imagine we’re on a racetrack here … it’s trying to catch up with us, and we have to use every kind of tool in our toolbox to keep that from getting into a situation that makes this worse.“We can do this but we have to do it all together.”Boris Johnson ‘ignored’ my plan to tackle deadly Covid variants – senior officialRead moreOn CBS, Fauci was also asked about Republican attacks on his reputation, over federal research prior to the coronavirus pandemic and about his role in the response under the Trump administration.“Anybody who’s looking at this carefully realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this,” he said. “They’re really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous. To me, that’s more dangerous than the slings and the arrows that get thrown at me.”Asked if he thought attacks were meant to scapegoat him and deflect attention from Donald Trump’s failures, Fauci said: “You have to be asleep not to figure that one out.”“I’m just going to do my job and I’m going to be saving lives and they’re going to be lying,” he said.TopicsCoronavirusAnthony FauciBiden administrationUS politicsInfectious diseasesVaccines and immunisationUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      Trump stoked Covid in red states – but there are blue anti-vaxxers too | Robert Reich

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      Trump stoked Covid in red states – but there are blue anti-vaxxers tooRobert ReichAmong my neighbors in the bluest region of the bluest county of the bluest state in America, many don’t trust big pharma or the government – or simply choose to put themselves first Is there a relationship between Covid and politics? Sure seems so.Michigan leads US in Covid case count, accounting for one in 10 new casesRead moreBy the end of October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of counties Donald Trump won by wide margins had died from Covid. That was more than three times higher than the Covid death rate in heavily Biden counties, of 7.8 per 100,000.Counties where Trump received at least 70% of the vote had an even higher average Covid death toll than counties where Trump won at least 60%.Presumably, this is because Trump counties also have the highest unvaccinated rates in the US. Almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state.There are some obvious reasons why Trump voters have been hesitant to get vaccinated. Trump politicized the issue – making the jab a hallmark of his peculiar form of rightwing populism. He and Fox News spread false rumors and conspiracy theories about the vaccine. By the time Trump finally called on people to get vaccinated, the damage was already done.In other words, it’s the same trifecta of rightwing media, inadequate education and rejection of science that gave us Trump in the first place.But this isn’t the whole story, because the US as a whole trails every other advanced country in the rate of vaccinations. Why?In recent weeks I’ve discovered that several anti-vaxxers live around me – in the bluest region of the bluest county of the bluest state in America. I’ve known several for years. They are well-informed and well-educated. But they’re as opposed to getting a shot as any Trump anti-vaxxer.Some are ex-hippies, now in their late 60s and early 70s, who regard their bodies as “sacred” and don’t want anything or anyone to “invade” it.One, who grows her own food and lives by herself in a cabin not far from here, told me she didn’t want anything going into her body that she didn’t control. When I asked whether she had been vaccinated against smallpox, measles, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, she told me she assumed so but had been too small to have had knowledge or control.Others – also in their late 60s and early 70s – don’t trust big pharma. They see Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson as greedy global corporations in search of people to exploit and tax havens to park their exorbitant profits.“Why in hell would I trust a fucking thing Pfizer says or does?” one of them asked me.None of these people trusts the government. Their generation (which is also mine) came to political consciousness during the Vietnam war – a time when the American flag became an emblem of fascism, particularly in lefty coastal enclaves. They now believe the government has been so corrupted by big money that they don’t trust agencies charged with protecting the public.I’m sympathetic to their distrust of both big pharma and big government. But this doesn’t mean the science is wrong.One of them referred me to a 2017 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association which found that about a third of the drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration between 2001 and 2010 had safety problems after reaching the market.I checked and he’s correct. But he left out a critical fact: as soon as the FDA discovered the problems it forced manufacturers to pull the drugs or issue warnings.Deep down, I think these blue anti-vaxxers are motivated by something different from mere distrust. When I pointed out that they could well be endangering others (including me), they remained unmoved.When I suggested that their concerns, however valid, had to be weighed against the public’s overall interest in conquering this epidemic, they said they didn’t care.My conclusion: They’re infected not by Covid but by a narcissism that refuses even to consider the risks and costs they’re imposing on others.Has living through Covid made me a hypochondriac? I asked some experts | Maeve HigginsRead moreI can’t say for sure that Trump anti-vaxxers share this narcissism, although the leader of their cult surely does. And, of course, my sample size was so small I can’t even generalize to all blue anti-vaxxers.If we blame Trump and the culture that produced him for the relatively low rate of vaccinations in the US, we’re missing a character trait that may offer a fuller explanation.This trait is found among Democrats and independents in blue America as well as Republicans in Trumpland. In fact, I think it’s been near the core of the American personality since before the founding of the nation – a stubborn, selfish, me-first individualism.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsCoronavirusOpinionUS politicsUS domestic policyDemocratsRepublicansUS healthcareInfectious diseasescommentReuse this content More

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      Why are so many NYPD officers fighting vaccination? | Akin Olla

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      OpinionCoronavirusWhy are so many NYPD officers fighting vaccination?Cops have been on the wrong side of public health for the entire pandemic – and yet they act like they are victims Thu 4 Nov 2021 14.24 EDTLast modified on Thu 4 Nov 2021 14.26 EDTIn New York City, the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York (PBA) tried and failed to block the city’s vaccine mandate for all city workers. New York City police officers have been on the wrong side of public health for most of the pandemic. Like other American police unions, the PBA uses its political clout and large coffers to push regressive policies and fight any move towards an even slightly more humane justice system.In an effort to prevent another rise in Covid-19 cases, New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, introduced a mandate requiring all city employees to have received at least one dose of a vaccine by 29 October. Seventy-one per cent of all city officials are already vaccinated but, according to the PBA, roughly a third of uniformed police officers are not. Even optimistic assessments of the department’s vaccination rates as a whole lag behind the rates of city residents. Despite the fact that Covid-19 is the leading cause of death among US police officers, the PBA launched a lawsuit against the city to halt the mandate. A judge struck down the suit, but the PBA plans to appeal the decision.The police union loves to play the victim card and paint even its worst officers as heroes – like when it called for a slowdown strike after an officer was fired for his role in the 2014 death of Eric Garner. Yet when faced with a real threat to the lives of their members, and to the public those officers ostensibly serve, the unions’ leaders have chosen to oppose public health recommendations. While the police commissioner has at least urged officers to get vaccinated, the department and its individual officers haven’t exactly had a stellar record of behavior from earlier phases of the pandemic.In October, unmasked police officers forced a subway rider out of a station after he asked them to put on their masks as mandated by both the city’s transportation authority and the NYPD itself. This was not an isolated incident, according to the New York Times: “[t]he flouting of mask mandates by some police officers in New York City has been the subject of criticism throughout the pandemic. Face coverings have remained required on the city’s public transit and at indoor subway stations since April 2020. But many reports on social media and in local news outlets have drawn attention to instances of officers ignoring those rules.”This behavior is especially dangerous considering that officers interact face-to-face with the public on a daily basis. According to the Legal Aid Society, the NYPD illegally detained hundreds of people during the George Floyd uprising and the second surge of the pandemic. Protesters were allegedly held for longer periods of time than legally allowed, increasing their risk of contracting Covid-19 and potentially spreading it once released. One protester complained of police stuffing protesters in vans while the officers themselves were not wearing masks. The NYPD insists that these delays were not retaliatory and just another symptom of the pandemic, but the Legal Aid Society noted the similarity to a previous lawsuit over similar alleged events at the 2004 Republican national convention.In fact, the mere existence of such a large police department is a hindrance to public health. If current trends continue, the city will probably spend more than $10bn on the police department this year, including hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to settle lawsuits for police brutality and misconduct. In comparison, the city’s department of health and mental hygiene has a budget of $1.6bn.While city residents could have benefited from an increase in healthcare access, the city was busy maintaining the largest police department in the country, spending over $100,000 a year on average for every uniformed officer, according to Business Insider. Insider also notes that a single set of riot gear could provide personal protective equipment for 33 nurses. These numbers recall the dueling images of New York healthcare workers wearing trash bags during the earlier days of the pandemic, in contrast to the heavily armored officers sweeping through neighborhoods arresting people en masse.The NYPD spent $115m in overtime in the first two weeks of the George Floyd protests alone. And large sums of that money, in the form of membership dues and donations, find their way to police unions. Those unions shell out tens of millions of dollars on campaign contributions and lobbying, much of it to elect candidates seen as pro-police and “tough on crime”. According to Dan Quart, a New York State assembly member, the PBA has “had very significant and I would say disruptive influence in blocking so much important criminal legal reform of our criminal justice system”. Between 2015 and 2018, the union gave $78,500 to the state senate Republican campaign committee. In 2020 the union endorsed Donald Trump for re-election, its first endorsement of a presidential candidate in decades. This last fact alone speaks to the depravity of the union’s perspective and priorities.The PBA insists that the vaccine mandate will cause “chaos” – that 10,000 officers will be gone from the street, that dozens of patrol precincts will go unstaffed. This outcome seems unlikely. If it does happen, however, it may be a great experiment for the city. During their 2014 slowdown strike in response to anti-police brutality protests, officers decreased their “proactive” crime duties, cutting down patrols and only responding to active calls. The department expected the city to come crawling back in fear. But the opposite happened; a peer-reviewed study in the journal Nature Human Behavior found that residents actually reported a decline in major crime.The PBA may be setting itself up for another disappointment – and offering yet more evidence that we must defund police for the sake of public health and the public good.
      Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian
      TopicsCoronavirusOpinionInfectious diseasesVaccines and immunisationNew YorkUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      Surge in Colorado Covid cases could force hospitals to ration services

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      ColoradoSurge in Colorado Covid cases could force hospitals to ration servicesIncrease can be attributed in part to the almost 40% of the state population that has not been vaccinated Eric BergerThu 4 Nov 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 4 Nov 2021 09.00 EDTEvan Faber’s 78-year-old father, Michael, has for the last three years had difficulty walking around his home in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Fabers hope that a spinal surgery scheduled for late December at a local hospital will help restore his balance and motor function.But now they are worried that the hospital will have to postpone the operation.That’s because a recent surge in Covid-19 cases around the state has increased the number of unvaccinated patients needing care and prompted concerns that hospitals may have to ration services for other issues.“If you have been waiting for an elective procedure for the last 18 months and are finally scheduled – you’re vaccinated, you don’t have Covid – your procedure might still get canceled if a hospital is totally full,” said Dr Anuj Mehta, a pulmonologist with Denver Health who serves on the governor’s expert emergency epidemic response committee. “While this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated at this point – and the surges in the hospital are entirely being driven by unvaccinated folks – it is having a massive bleed-over effect on to the entire population.”There are about 1,300 patients hospitalized with Covid-19 in Colorado, according to the New York Times data; that’s the highest number since December 2020, when more than 1,900 patients were hospitalized.That number has increased by 15% over the last two weeks, the third largest increase in the country, and at a time when the national picture for the US is of a Delta variant surge that is firmly on the way down.The trend in Colorado can be attributed in part to the almost 40% of the state population that has not been vaccinated and people again gathering indoors without masks. It also shows that, despite the national downward trends of infections, regional spikes can still happen that can cause havoc in state healthcare systems.“We clearly have events taking place in Colorado, as elsewhere, that are spreading infection,” said Dr Jon Samet, an epidemiologist who directs Covid-19 modeling for the state. “I know everyone would like for it to be 2019 all over again, but that’s not the case.”The state had also not had surges on the scale of other states, said Dr Michelle Barron, senior medical director of infection prevention and control for UCHealth.Other states “had flames from the get-go, whereas we have been smoldering along this whole time, and we are finally hitting that peak of saturation and seeing flames finally,” said Barron.Thirty per cent of Colorado hospitals are anticipating a shortage in the number of intensive care unit beds and 37% are anticipating staffing shortages within the next week, according to data from the Colorado department of public health and environment.“Staffing is becoming increasingly a problem, which is true everywhere throughout the country. We are seeing healthcare workers really burned out from everything the last two years,” said Mehta. “It just raises concerns that we are pushing the limits of how many patients we can take care of. We are still taking great care of everybody” at Denver Health, “but we are filling up fast.”In response to the surge, Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, on Sunday issued a pair of executive orders that allow the state to direct healthcare facilities to redirect patients to other centers and for the implementation of a protocol for healthcare workers to decide in an emergency who should be treated first.Mehta would also like to see the governor issue a statewide indoor mask mandate, something Polis has declined to do.“If we were to continue masking indoors, I think we would see a significant drop in transmission and hospitalization, and that would free us up to do the routine medical stuff that we do all the time,” Mehta said.Even though people who have been vaccinated against Covid face a very low risk of hospitalization, they still, of course, face other risks. The UCHealth system is seeing record number of patients with non-Covid issues, according to a spokesperson.“A year ago, most schools and businesses were virtual, and there were capacity limits on restaurants and other businesses,” Dan Weaver vice-president of communications for UCHealth stated in an email. “Now, with few people staying at home, we are seeing large numbers of traumas, other injuries, and non-Covid healthcare needs.”Even among healthy Colorado residents, the pandemic continues to affect their lives. Stephanie Danielson, a Boulder resident, had 60 children in her son and daughter’s Cub Scouts pack a year ago; there are now 10, in part because of ongoing concerns about the virus.The pack gathered for a hike in September for the first time in more than a year – and afterwards learned that a parent had tested positive for Covid.“As a leader, it felt defeating because we are trying so hard to bring back some normalcy to each other’s lives, and our very first time, we had this happen,” said Danielson, who works at Moxie Sozo, a branding agency in Boulder.Faber, the 40-year-old CEO of the company, just got a vaccine booster and said his life has not changed much because of the surge. But he continues to worry about his father, a retired restaurant owner.“Everything is so volatile, it’s a waiting game to see if [the surgery] will still happen,” said Faber. “It’s the circle of people just outside of the direct impact from Covid that are dealing” with the surge, “and I know there are more severe examples than this”.TopicsColoradoCoronavirusInfectious diseasesUS politicsVaccines and immunisationnewsReuse this content More

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      Jen Psaki, White House press secretary to Joe Biden, tests positive for Covid

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      Biden administrationJen Psaki, White House press secretary to Joe Biden, tests positive for CovidPsaki, who did not travel with the president to Europe, says her last contact with Biden was on Tuesday Martin Pengelly in New York and agencies@MartinPengellySun 31 Oct 2021 17.56 EDTLast modified on Sun 31 Oct 2021 20.08 EDTJen Psaki, Joe Biden’s White House press secretary, said on Sunday she had tested positive for Covid-19.Joe Biden dismisses bad polling and says domestic agenda set to pass Read morePsaki, 42, did not travel with Biden to Rome for this week’s G20 summit. The president is also due to travel to Glasgow for the Cop26 climate talks. Biden has been accompanied in Europe by his principal deputy press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre.News of a positive test for such a close aide to the president came a little over a year after an outbreak at the White House reached the then president, Donald Trump, who fell seriously ill and was forced to spend time in hospital.In a statement, Psaki said she last saw the 78-year-old Biden on Tuesday, “when we sat outside more than 6ft apart and wore masks”.Biden tested negative for Covid-19 on Saturday, Reuters quoted “a person familiar with the matter” as saying.Psaki said she stayed in the US “due to a family emergency, which was members of my household testing positive for Covid-19”. She has two children.“Since then,” Psaki continued, “I have quarantined and tested negative via PCR for Covid on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. However, today I tested positive for Covid.“While I have not had close contact in person with the president or senior members of the White House staff since Wednesday and tested negative for four days after that last contact, I am disclosing today’s positive test out of an abundance of transparency.”Psaki also said that “thanks to the vaccine I have only experienced mild symptoms, which has enabled me to continue working from home.“I will plan to return to work in person at the conclusion of the 10-day quarantine following a negative rapid test, which is an additional White House requirement beyond [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance, taken out an abundance of caution.”White House staff and others traveling with the president began undergoing daily tests for Covid-19 before departing Washington and are all fully vaccinated. Many officials have also received booster shots, due to the close-quarters environment and frequent travel associated with their work.Biden got his Covid-19 booster on 27 September, shortly after federal regulators approved the third dose for many Americans.On Sunday Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, responded to the news that Psaki had worn a mask around Biden by tweeting: “Good to still mask up, even if vaxxed.”Pro-vaccine Fox News host receives support from CNN anchor over death threatsRead moreAccording to Johns Hopkins University, the US has recorded nearly 46m cases of Covid-19 and more than 745,000 deaths. Resistance to vaccination mandates remains a concern, particularly among Republican voters, though case numbers are slowing.On Sunday, the CDC said the US had administered 422,070,099 doses of Covid-19 vaccines, up from 420,657,683 doses on Saturday. The agency said 221,520,153 people had received at least one dose, while 192,453,500 people were fully vaccinated.The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine. About 18.6 million people have received a booster dose.Full approval for children aged five to 12 to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is expected as soon as this week.TopicsBiden administrationJoe BidenUS politicsCoronavirusInfectious diseasesnewsReuse this content More

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      Nine percent of New York City workers still unvaccinated after Friday deadline

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      New YorkNine percent of New York City workers still unvaccinated after Friday deadline
      Last-minute rush of jabs boost vaccination rate to 91%
      Fox News host gets death threats for vaccinations plea
      Victoria Bekiempis in New YorkSun 31 Oct 2021 13.02 EDTFirst published on Sun 31 Oct 2021 08.30 EDTNine percent of New York City’s municipal workforce remains unvaccinated following a Friday deadline to demonstrate proof of receiving at least Covid shot, officials said.‘They broke my heart’: sculptor laments Central Park Covid monument removalRead moreHowever, the percentage of city workers with at least one dose rose considerably as the deadline loomed.Opposition to vaccine mandates fueled by rightwing politicians and media figures led to protests in New York this week. But on Saturday night, authorities said 91% of city workers had received at least one dose, up from 83% on Friday and 76% on Thursday.Workers who did not abide by the requirement were still due to be placed on unpaid leave from Monday, potentially spurring staffing shortages in the police, fire, emergency medical services and sanitation departments.The New York police department vaccination rate stood at 84%, officials said. Asked about the plan for dealing with a potential staff shortfall, an NYPD spokesman said in an email: “We will be prepared for any changes in personnel due to the mandate.”City data indicated that 78% of fire department workers, and 79% of sanitation department workers, had received at least one dose as of Saturday.Those agencies also said they were preparing for staffing shortfalls.Fire officials said they were prepared to close up to 20% of fire companies and see 20% fewer ambulances in operation.The department planned to change schedules, cancel vacations and seek out non-fire department EMS providers.The fire commissioner, Daniel Nigro, slammed some firefighters who took paid sick leave in advance of the vaccine deadline.“The department has not closed any firehouses,” Nigro said. “Irresponsible bogus sick leave by some of our members is creating a danger for New Yorkers and their fellow firefighters. They need to return to work or risk the consequences of their actions.”The New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, recently said the sanitation department would implement 12-hour shifts rather than the normal eight-hour shifts, and start working on Sundays so garbage did not accumulate amid staffing shortages.The Associated Press contributed to this report.TopicsNew YorkCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationInfectious diseasesUS healthcareUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Fauci predicts Covid shots for kids five to 11 will be available by early November

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      Anthony FauciFauci predicts Covid shots for kids five to 11 will be available by early November Government’s chief medical adviser makes prediction after FDA review panel finds that benefits for group outweighs risks Richard Luscombe@richluscSun 24 Oct 2021 16.16 EDTLast modified on Sun 24 Oct 2021 16.17 EDTVaccines to protect children ages five to 11 from Covid-19 will be available in the US in early to mid-November, Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s chief medical adviser, predicted on Sunday.A review panel of the US food and drug administration (FDA) found last week that the benefits of Pfizer-BioNTech shots for the younger age group outweighed the risks, setting up an advisory meeting on Tuesday of outside FDA experts who are expected to recommend emergency use authorization.With final approval from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) likely to come the following week, Fauci said he believed pediatric vaccines would start going into arms in short order.“If all goes well, and we get the regulatory approval and the recommendation from the CDC, it’s entirely possible if not very likely that vaccines will be available for children from five to 11 within the first week or two of November,” Fauci told ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos.“You never want to get ahead of the FDA in their regulatory decisions, nor the CDC and their advisers on what the recommendation would be, but if you look at the data that’s been made public, the data look good.”Pfizer has claimed its coronavirus vaccine is 91% effective in the five-11 age group. The extension of vaccine availability to those younger than 12 is seen as a key step in getting a pandemic that has killed more than 735,000 in the US under control.Despite polls showing that more parents than previously are willing to allow their children to be vaccinated, there remains significant hesitance. Only one third of parents with children ages five to 11 say they will vaccinate their child right away, according to Kaiser, while one in four say they will not allow it under any circumstances.“We know we have a lot of work to do,” Dr Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.“Those survey data look very much consistent with where we were with adults last December, when we rolled out vaccines for adults. We have done a huge amount of hard work over the last 10 months, education, communication, providing information, getting vaccines to really convenient places.”Walensky said vaccines for children would be available nationwide in tens of thousands of venues from pediatrician and primary care offices, children’s hospitals, pharmacies, school clinics and community health centers.“We’re doing absolutely all of that hard work now,” she said. “As soon as we have both the FDA authorization and the CDC recommendations there will be vaccine out there so children can start rolling up their sleeves.”TopicsAnthony FauciUS politicsCoronavirusInfectious diseasesVaccines and immunisationChildrennewsReuse this content More