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Calling DACA unlawful, judge halts applications

WASHINGTON – A federal judge in Texas has largely halted an Obama administration initiative that grants work permits and reprieves from deportation to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children – calling the program “unlawful” even as he allowed the more than 600,000 young people already in it to keep their protected status.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sided with Texas and other states in his ruling that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, overstepped his executive authority when he created the program.

Hanen’s ruling called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an “illegally implemented program” and said “the public interest of the nation is always served by the cessation of a program that was created in violation of law.”

He prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from approving new applications, issued a permanent injunction vacating the memo that created DACA in 2012 – when President Joe Biden was vice president – and remanded the issue to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for reconsideration.

The Biden administration had no immediate response to Friday’s ruling. But the long-awaited knockdown spurred a political outcry and intensified pressure on the White House and Congress to pass an immigration measure this year.

Immigrants brought to this country as children, known as “dreamers,” are among the most sympathetic of the 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally. Still, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been unable to agree on whether to grant them legal status despite months of negotiations.

Democrats are considering whether to use a budget reconciliation measure to take that action, a move that would require only a simple majority vote in the evenly divided Senate.

In statements Friday, both Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., vowed to press forward on legislation that would ensure dreamers have a pathway to citizenship. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin, D-Ill., who has sponsored legislation for the past 20 years to grant dreamers citizenship – without success – said Congress had “found excuses to put off this decision” for too many years.”Congress will now act quickly – with or without the party of Donald Trump – to allow these Americans to finally become citizens,” Durbin said Friday.

Congressional Democrats and advocates for immigrants called Friday for the government to appeal Hanen’s ruling, which Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., described as “cruel.”

“To current #DACA recipients, you are safe here,” she said on Twitter. “To our young immigrants, we will not stop our work until every Dreamer is treated as they are: American.”

But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called on Democrats to vote on a proposal he and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., floated earlier this month to Durbin, who has sponsored legislation for the past 20 years to grant dreamers citizenship – without success.

Cornyn and Tillis said they propose “targeted legislation” that would offer permanent legal status to “active participants” in DACA, and opined that anything broader is not “politically viable.”

“Now will Senator Durbin schedule debate and vote on a bill that will provide DACA recipients some certainty?” Cornyn said in a tweet after the ruling.

Google, which employs DACA recipients and is one of many companies that have defended their right to stay in the United States, condemned the ruling, saying “we are very disappointed by today’s decision.”

To qualify for DACA, immigrants must have been under age 31 as of June 15, 2012, when the program was created, arrived in this country before turning 16, and resided in the United States since mid-2007. They also must have pursued studies or enlisted in the military, and passed a criminal-background check.

Those criteria left out thousands of immigrants whom the White House has said it hoped to legalize this year. Most DACA recipients are from Mexico, but they hail from all over the world, including South Korea, the Philippines, Uganda and New Zealand. They include software engineers, teachers, and doctors and nurses working the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

Republican officials from Texas and several other states had called for an “orderly wind down” of the program in their lawsuit, arguing that it was unlawful and burdened states with costs for health care, education and law enforcement.

But Hanen said he recognized that legions of young immigrants and their communities need the program, and would not wrest it from them as the Biden administration attempts to correct its deficiencies.

“Hundreds of thousands of individual DACA recipients, along with their employers, states, and loved ones, have come to rely on the DACA program,” Hanen, an appointee of President George W. Bush, a Republican, wrote in the ruling. “Given those interests, it is not equitable for a government program that has engendered such a significant reliance to terminate suddenly. This consideration, along with the government’s assertion that it is ready and willing to try to remedy the legal defects of the DACA program indicates that equity will not be served by a complete and immediate cessation of DACA.”

Hanen directed the Department of Homeland Security to post a notice within three calendar days saying that “a United States District Court has found the DACA program to be illegal and that, though applicants may continue to submit applications, the Government is prohibited from granting such applications.”

He said his order was a “reasonable” decision that took into consideration the competing interests of dreamers and states such as Texas that had argued that the program granted people work permits who could then get driver’s licenses and compete with Americans for jobs.

“Not a surprise, just a painful reminder that we need to stop relying on temporary immigration fixes,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who is the lead Senate sponsor of the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, Biden’s blueprint to create a path to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants. “Congress must seize the moment.”

Advocates for immigrants said the ruling would once again upend the lives of people who have lived in the United States for much or most of their lives and consider it their home.

“If you can renew, you still have the lingering question of: Until when?” said José Muñoz, spokesman for United We Dream, the nation’s largest immigrant youth-led organization, and himself a DACA recipient. He estimated that tens of thousands of first-time applicants will be shut out of the program, endangering their plans to attend school or apply for driver’s licenses so they can legally drive.

“It’s beyond time for Congress to act,” Muñoz said. “We need a path to citizenship.”

The Trump administration attempted to terminate DACA starting in 2017, with a wind-down plan that would have ended the program by 2020. Federal courts blocked the effort.

In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had not properly considered the impact of rescinding DACA in 2017, and ordered the administration to start again – without weighing in on the legality of the DACA program.

Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that is defending DACA in the Texas lawsuit, expressed hope for the program on Friday since the Supreme Court has never declared the program unlawful.

But he said the immigrants deserve permanent residency and not the “ongoing cruel roller coaster that our nation has placed DACA recipients on.”

Saenz said his organization will decide in the next few days whether to appeal.

Published : July 17, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Maria Sacchetti

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Fairfax schools adopt protections for trans students

In a win for transgender students and advocates, Virginias largest public school system has adopted guidelines granting children access to restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities and requiring school staffers to address transgender students by their preferred names and pronouns.

The school board of Fairfax County Public Schools in Northern Virginia voted unanimously Thursday night to approve a revised version of its “Student Rights and Responsibilities” document, which outlines expectations for student behavior. The new rules also mandate that all students receive “safe and equitable access to all school . . . facilities and activities” and that students have “the right to non-disclosure of gender identity and/or sexual orientation.”

Moreover, the guidelines state that internal, school-generated lists of students – such as in the honor roll, yearbooks and school newspapers – must identify transgender children by their preferred names and pronouns. The new rules mark the first time the document has ever explicitly affirmed rights and protections for transgender students, said Karl Frisch, the first openly LGBTQ member of Fairfax’s school board.

“This was the right thing to do [and] long overdue,” Frisch said. “But it will not sweep away the pain and hurt transgender and other gender-expansive students have experienced for years at the hands of careless peers or adults who should know better.”

Before the meeting, parents, educators and activists held passionate dueling protests – one against critical race theory and the other in support of Fairfax students generally and transgender rights specifically – that attracted controversy when one protesting parent filmed a Fairfax NAACP leader, Michelle Leete, apparently wishing death to her opponents. Leete wrote in an email Friday that what she meant to say was she hopes her opponents’ ideals die out.

Northern Virginia recently has become a major battleground in America’s culture wars over transgender rights. Research suggests there are about 4,000 transgender youths between ages 13 and 17 in Virginia and shows that transgender youth are far more likely to attempt suicide.

Some recent developments have been triumphs for transgender rights supporters. For example, Fairfax adopted its new policy on transgender students in accordance with a 2020 state law requiring that school districts treat transgender students according to their gender identities, in part by permitting these children to use sex-specific facilities and sports teams. And in late June, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a high-profile legal battle over the rights of transgender students in Virginia, effectively handing a victory to those who believe transgender students should be able to use bathrooms that match their gender identities.

But a potent backlash is also building – in part from White, Christian, conservative parents, who see the updated treatment of transgender students as infringing on their religious beliefs and forcing teachers to lie to children. Many are also dissatisfied with the idea that transgender female students would be allowed to compete on sports teams, which they argue is unfair to athletes assigned female at birth.

Two conservative groups are suing the Virginia Department of Education to block implementation of the transgender guidelines statewide. And in Loudoun County Public Schools, Fairfax’s neighbor, a Christian teacher recently sued the school system, arguing he should not be forced to call transgender students by their pronouns given his beliefs.

A June school board meeting in Loudoun ended in an arrest after raucous parents – some of whom showed up to protest transgender rights – refused to quiet down.

At Thursday’s meeting in Fairfax, Frisch introduced the vote on the district’s transgender guidelines by referencing the uproar.

“In recent months, school board meetings in neighboring counties have descended into chaos as extremists attempt to deny these students their very existence,” Frisch said. “To the gender-expansive and transgender students and their families who have witnessed these attacks . . . I am sorry. You deserve much, much better.”

The Fairfax meeting saw its own controversy, however, when parents, educators and activists held dueling protests ahead of the start of the meeting.

Some were there for a “STOP CRT” rally – to fight what they see as the infiltration of critical race theory into schools. The theory is an academic framework that holds racism is systemic and perpetuated in present-day American institutions, laws and policies.

Critics say they see the theory’s influence in many schools’ recent efforts to seek more equal academic and disciplinary outcomes and create a welcoming environment for all students by doing things like adding more diverse viewpoints to school curriculums and holding bias trainings for employees. Some parents allege school districts are actually teaching students critical race theory, a charge that school officials throughout Northern Virginia have repeatedly denied.

In Fairfax, critical race theory opponents – many of whom are Asian parents – see a particularly noxious manifestation of the theory in the school system’s recent updates to admissions at its flagship magnet school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. The revisions, meant to boost diversity by eliminating a $100 application fee and admissions test, led to the most diverse class in the school’s history, but also drove down the percentage of Asian students by a large margin.

Those who support the school system’s equity initiatives and its new guidelines for transgender students showed up for their own rally, meant to offset the STOP CRT event. Leete, one of the speakers, gave a speech that is now drawing heavy criticism.

Videos circulating online show Leete calling the critical race theory opponents “anti-education, anti-teacher, anti-equity, anti-history” and a long string of other negatives ending in, “anti-live-and-let-live people.”

She then added, “Let them die,” generating applause at the time – and later, serious blowback online, especially from conservative voices such as the official account of the Fairfax GOP. In a tweet about Leete’s speech, the county’s GOP committee called her a “hard leftist” spouting “hateful, incendiary rhetoric.”

The speech also drew broader backlash. On Friday evening, the Virginia Parent Teacher Association – for which Leete serves as vice president of training – tweeted out a statement condemning her remarks. The statement called Leete’s comment a “disturbing choice of words” and said “that statement does not reflect the values of Virginia PTA.” The news release also said that Virginia PTA board members will undergo “sensitivity training” over the summer to ensure officials “remain mindful of . . . the impact of the words we use.”

In an statement emailed to The Washington Post on Friday, Leete wrote that her “Let them die” comment was only ever meant to refer to “the ideals that show a disregard and lack of support for our teachers who have a truly difficult job to do even without a pandemic.”

Leete sent The Post a written copy of her speech, which read, “Let them (ideals) die.” That sentence was followed in the document by a paragraph in which Leete instructed herself to “ad lib – referring to ideals that would have schools open during a pandemic, guns in schools, not supporting teachers . . . etc.”

In her email Friday, Leete added, “I will certainly admit, it was ineloquently stated and with a pause for the applause, the timing was off.”

Published : July 17, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Hannah Natanson

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Oregons Bootleg Fire is torching an area larger than NYC. Firefighters are scrambling to contain it.

The fast-moving Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon has scorched an area thousands of acres larger than New York City – prompting new evacuations and increasing concerns over thinning resources as the state enters the highest level of wildfire preparedness.

The conflagration is one of thousands of wildfires torching areas as far east as Minnesota, signs of another potentially dire fire season.

“We are seeing conditions that we usually see in mid-August,” said Alison Green, public affairs director for the Oregon Office of State Fire Marshals. “It’s been extreme fire behavior over the last week that has created conditions that are certainly challenging.”

As of Friday, the Bootleg Fire was the largest in the country and one of nine burning in Oregon. Some 28 miles away from Klamath Falls, it had scorched 241,497 acres, with 7% of the flames contained by a team of almost 2,000 firefighters, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.

Since igniting July 6, flames have moved up to three miles per day, fueled by dry timber and fanned by 15 to 20 mph winds, said Ryan Berlin, a Bootleg Fire Zone 1 information officer. The fire’s cause remains under investigation.

The fire’s rapid pace and substantial growth have worried officials that it could merge with the smaller Log Fire, eight miles southwest of Summer Lake.

“It’s a pretty good possibility because the Log Fire yesterday blew up also,” Berlin said.

Another concern is the extreme weather surrounding the fire. It has generated a pyrocumulus cloud, what NASA has deemed “the fire-breathing dragon of clouds.” The vertical plume generated by intense pressure and dry conditions spreads embers and pollutants and “creates erratic fire behavior for firefighters to contend with,” Green said.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality issued an air-quality advisory Friday for parts of Harney, Lake and eastern Klamath counties due to smoke from the plumes.

The Bootleg Fire’s expansion has destroyed 117 outbuildings and 67 residences in Klamath County, said Holly Krake, a spokeswoman for the Bootleg Fire Incident Management Team. The fire is still raging in Lake County, home to a population of more than 7,000 residents, and the damage is being assessed, she said.

As of Friday, Krake said, some 2,000 residents across both counties had been evacuated, with over 5,000 residences threatened by the growing flames.

With an unprecedented wildfire season underway, the American Red Cross has opened four shelters throughout the state, said Chad Carter, the organization’s Oregon regional communications director. He said they are prepared to open more if needed.

“We are all planning for this to be a prolonged event this summer,” he said. “We’ve got several shelters open right now, and we’ll continue to adjust based on the need throughout the summer.”

The Bootleg Fire comes at a time when Oregon has moved into Preparedness Level 5 (PL5) – the highest level of wildfire preparedness – which is determined by a combination of factors, including burning conditions, fire activity and resources available, said Robin DeMario, a public affairs specialist at NWCC.

That designation is reached when resources are beginning to stretch thin, raising the possibility of them getting exhausted, she said. Usually, states enter this level by the wildfire season’s peak in August.

“Here at the NWCC our records go back to 2006, and since then this is the earliest a level five has occurred,” DeMario said.

Oregon is part of a national trend that points to a potentially harrowing wildfire season.

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According to National Interagency Fire Center data, 34,596 wildfires have broken out in the United States so far this year – the most in the January to July time period since 2011. Additionally, 2,364,643 acres have burned, slightly up from last year’s total at this point.

Across the country, 17,718 firefighters are battling to control the flames – almost triple the number of personnel since the month began, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

In her July 14 annual fire season letter, Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen directed all “red-carded” employees – those qualified to assist in fire operations – to be made available for dispatching.

“This means all hands on deck,” said Riva Duncan, a retired fire staff officer for the U.S. Forest Service. “That has downstream consequences on all the other program areas. So it’s not a good place to be this early in the fire season.”

For Duncan, who also serves as secretary-treasurer for the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters – a group that advocates for the well-being of Federal Wildland Fire personnel – this reality underscores a catastrophic fusion of seasons “lasting longer, starting earlier and ending later” with resources dwindling out.

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“We’re now at a tipping point where we’re seeing a really bad problem with staffing and retention, coupled with another very catastrophic fire season,” Duncan said.

With federal firefighters leaving to work for state agencies that offer better pay – or sometimes dropping out of the career altogether – frustrations have mounted and finally sounded the alarms at the federal level.

On Tuesday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee finalized language in the bipartisan Energy Infrastructure Act – a legislative package that would authorize over $100 billion to invest the country’s infrastructural needs.

Of the 48 amendments to the bill that were adopted, Sen. Joe Manchin III’s, D-W.Va., Amendment 65 seeks to increase the base salary of federal wildland firefighters – a move welcomed by the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.

“It’s definitely a step in the right direction to make sure that we’re retaining the skilled and expert workforce that we need to combat these ever-growing fires,” said Jonathon Golden, a special adviser to this advocacy group and former wildland firefighter.

The proposed legislation might not come into effect in the near future, but Golden said it could still provide a much-needed positive impact: a “morale booster” for the men and women that are currently on the line.

“Looking at this season, we’re definitely going to need it,” he said.

Published : July 17, 2021

By : The Washington Post · María Luisa Paúl

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Republican governor says anti-vaccine rhetoric is killing people and denounces propaganda

The Republican governor of Utah on Thursday decried “propaganda” spread against coronavirus vaccines, warning that those discouraging immunization are “killing people.”

“We have these – these talking heads who have gotten the vaccine and are telling other people not to get the vaccine,” Gov. Spencer Cox said in response to a reporter’s question about anti-vaccine rhetoric coming in large part from the political right. “That kind of stuff is just, it’s ridiculous. It’s dangerous, it’s damaging, and it’s killing people. I mean, it’s literally killing their supporters. And that makes no sense to me.”

Cox’s sharp words at a news conference came as some lawmakers and other prominent Republicans fan doubts about the coronavirus vaccines or speak about them with outright hostility, framing efforts to promote the shots as unwelcome incursions from big government.

Members of Congress have derided “door-to-door” outreach; a host at the conservative network Newsmax recently declared vaccines “against nature”; and audience members at a conservative conference cheered last weekend when a speaker said the United States missed its immunization goals. Those in counties won by President Joe Biden are more likely to be fully vaccinated than those in counties won by former president Donald Trump, the Kaiser Family Foundation found this month.

Most covid-19 deaths now occur among the unvaccinated, something Cox underscored as true for Utah. Yet recent polling shows that 29% of Americans say they are unlikely to get their shots, with most of those people saying they definitely will not. That’s a slight uptick from three months earlier when 24% said they were unlikely to get vaccinated.

Asked about anti-vaccine messages Thursday, Cox said they are “harmful” and that “it does concern me deeply.” He said he sees the coronavirus vaccines as a key accomplishment of the Trump administration and believes the herculean effort to develop them in less than a year will go down as “one of the greatest achievements of medicine in human history.”

Trump has taken credit for that accomplishment and got vaccinated, although not in public like other leaders such as Biden and former vice president Mike Pence, a Republican.

“I don’t think we can take credit for getting the vaccine and then tell people that there’s something wrong with the vaccine,” Cox said Thursday.

He used the news conference to plead with residents – again – to get their shots. “We know why the cases are going up. We know why hospitalizations are going up. And it’s just because we need more people to get vaccinated.”

Cox is not the only Republican official to express frustration over vaccine messaging from the right. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, this week said that “politicizing vaccinations is moronic” and asked aloud why supporters of Trump are resistant.

“President Trump and his supporters take credit for developing the vaccine,” he said, according to the Deseret News. “Why the heck won’t they take advantage of the vaccine they received plaudits for having developed?”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters this week that he is a “huge fan of vaccinations” and “perplexed by the difficulty we have in finishing the job” of immunizing the country. “We need to keep preaching that getting the vaccine is important.” he said.

But when asked about GOP colleagues such as Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who have fueled doubts about the vaccines, McConnell declined to criticize and said he could only speak for himself.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy highlighted the threat of misinformation on covid-19 at a White House news briefing this week, where he said he has lost 10 family members to the disease. He accused tech companies of allowing falsehoods to “poison our information environment with little accountability to their users.”

With Biden joining Murthy’s criticisms Friday, Facebook spokesperson Dani Lever said that the tech giant is “helping save lives” and that “more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet.”

Conservative media’s framing of the vaccines came into this spotlight this week after Newsmax prime-time host Rob Schmitt – a former Fox News co-host – said on air that he was neither “anti-vaxxer” nor “pro-vaxxer.”

“I feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature,” he said. Newsmax later told The Washington Post that the network “strongly supports President Biden’s efforts to widely distribute the covid vaccine.”

The popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson has called himself “pro-vaccine” but also suggested that “maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that.”

Utah has seen its coronavirus cases, deaths and hospitalizations drop significantly with vaccination but tick up in recent weeks, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. A state website seeks to dispel misinformation about the shots: “COVID-19 vaccines don’t change your DNA.” “COVID-19 vaccines don’t contain microchips or tracking devices.” “COVID-19 vaccines have not been linked to infertility or miscarriage.”

With at least one dose for 66.5% of adults, Utah is more than 10 percentage points ahead of the country as a whole. Among American adults, 48.4 are fully vaccinated, according to Post tracking. Biden originally set a goal of giving at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine to 70% of adults by July 4.

Published : July 17, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Hannah Knowles

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Asean Covid-19 cases and related deaths hit record numbers

Southeast Asia reported a record number of new Covid-19 cases and deaths on Friday, collated data showed.

Asean added 93,745 new patients on Friday, higher than Thursday’s 93,143, while 1,784 people died, up from the previous day’s 1,549.

The number of Covid-19 cases crossed 5.94 million across the region, and the death toll rose to 113,556.

Indonesia, which reported 54,000 new cases, received one million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday as part of the total 50 million doses the government has purchased. The next lot of 4 million doses will be delivered within next month, and then 3.7 million doses per month until the end of 2021. The balance 30 million doses will be delivered next year. The country has been using Sinovac as the main vaccine, accounting for around 90 per cent of all vaccine it has procured.

Indonesia also signed a contract with Pfizer to deliver 50 million doses of vaccine within this year to combat the rising infections.

Malaysia’s ministry of public health on Friday allowed China’s Sinopharm and Johnson and Johnson vaccines for use in the country under special conditions. The announcement came one day after the ministry had announced that it would stop giving the Sinovac vaccine when the stock depletes, as the country has procured adequate quantities of other vaccines.

Published : July 17, 2021

By : THE NATION

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EU removes Thailand from safe travel list

The European Union has removed Thailand from its safe travel list as the Kingdom’s Covid-19 caseload continues to soar.

Travellers from Thailand will now face restrictions on entering EU countries, including possible quarantine.

The EU countries are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

Thailand was removed from the EU safe travel list along with Rwanda on Thursday.

Ukraine was added to the list, which also features 23 other countries – Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Brunei, Canada, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, New Zealand, Qatar, Moldova, North Macedonia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine and the United States.

China’s Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions are also on the safe list.

However, individual EU countries can still demand a negative Covid-19 test or quarantine for people arriving from countries on the safe list.

As of press time on Friday, Thailand was still on the safe list posted at the EU’s www.schengenvisainfo.com website. However, the list is regularly updated to reflect the changing Covid-19 situation around the world.

Published : July 16, 2021

By : THE NATION

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COVID-19 cases surge in over half of U.S. states, territories.

A total of 31,815 new cases were reported across the United States on Tuesday, highest single-day increase since mid May, latest CDC data show. The 7-day average of daily new cases is 24,141, up 65.9 percent from the week before.

The numbers of COVID-19 cases are surging in more than half of U.S. states and territories, with 7-day average of daily new cases up over 65 percent from the week before, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A total of 31,815 new cases were reported across the United States on Tuesday, highest single-day increase since mid May, latest CDC data show.
The 7-day average of daily new cases is 24,141, up 65.9 percent from the week before.
Cases related to the highly transmissible Delta and other variants are rising in the United States. The CDC said it is working with its partners to analyze COVID-19 testing specimens to better understand different variants.
Delta, which was first found in India and is now in over 100 countries, represented over 50 percent of new infections in the United States over the two weeks ending on July 3, according to the CDC.
Delta is now the dominant strain in the United States, drawing concerns from experts that the variant will cause a surge in new cases this fall.
The pace of vaccinations has dropped in the country sharply in the past few months. About 48.2 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and 55.7 percent of the population has received at least one shot as of Wednesday, CDC data show.

Inequality in access to the vaccine and a racial gap have impacted the success of the nation’s vaccination campaign. Federal figures show that counties with higher percentages of black residents have lower vaccination rates in the country.
Non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic persons experience higher COVID-19-associated morbidity and mortality, yet COVID-19 vaccination coverage is lower in these groups, according to a CDC study released on Thursday.
Coverage and efforts to improve equity in vaccination coverage are critical, especially among populations disproportionately affected by COVID-19, said the CDC.
Experts have said COVID-19 vaccines are key to managing spread and prevent variants from mutating into even more dangerous forms. COVID-19 cases surge in over half of U.S. states, territories.

Published : July 16, 2021

By : Xinhua

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Covid-19 surge in Asean adds record over-93,000 new patients

Southeast Asia reported a record 93,143 new cases on Thursday, as the situation continued to worsen in Indonesia and Myanmar.

The number of new cases were higher than Wednesday’s 90,330, while deaths hit a single-day high of 1,549, up from the previous day’s 1,519.

The number of Covid-19 cases in the region crossed 5.85 million, while total Covid-19-related deaths are at 111,772.

Indonesia reported 56,757 cases, the highest on a single day in the country since the pandemic began, with 982 deaths. Cumulative cases in the country rose to 2,726,803 patients and total deaths to 70,192. The country’s infection rate is now 10 times higher than that at the beginning of June despite many disease-control measures having been imposed. Public health experts estimated that daily infections could reach 100,000, as new cases in Java and Bali islands continued to increase. However the government is not expecting the number to exceed 60,000 patients per day.

Myanmar reported 4,188 new cases on Wednesday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 212,545, and total deaths to 4,346.

Yangon is facing a severe shortage of oxygen with hundreds of people lining up at oxygen plants at dawn as soon as the night curfew ends to buy or refill oxygen canisters for family members who have contracted Covid-19 and have to stay at home. Despite the government ordering an increase in manufacturing capacity and lifting tax and other regulations for manufacturers, the oxygen situation in the country has not improved.

Published : July 16, 2021

By : THE NATION

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How vaccine chaos left covid-zero haven Australia locked down and exposed

Just a few months ago, Australias virtually Covid-free status made it the envy of the world. Then the delta variant flipped the script.

After about half a year of relatively normal daily life, Australia’s biggest city is now in the third week of a strict lockdown that on Wednesday was extended until at least July 30. Sydney’s normally bustling central business district is all but deserted, schools are closed and households are forbidden from mixing for fear of further spread among the 6 million population.

Even as the U.S. and U.K. reopen, Australia seems to be stuck in place. And it’s all for a daily caseload a third the size of New York’s and less than 3% of what London is currently encountering. About 900 cases have been recorded in Sydney since an un-vaccinated chauffeur was infected while transporting airline crew last month. New South Wales state recorded 65 new infections on Thursday, with a higher number expected on Friday.

Arguably the most devoted adherent of the “Covid Zero” strategy followed by a few Asia-Pacific economies, Australia has limited the pandemic’s health impacts with strict quarantines, snap lockdowns and a closed-border policy that even bans citizens from leaving.

But a slow vaccine rollout has left the country exposed to outbreaks as newer, more virulent strains slip through border curbs.

A Covid-19 public health order sign for social distancing on Bondi Beach in Sydney on July 4, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Brendon Thorne.

Like other Covid Zero economies from Singapore to Taiwan, Australia is finding its elimination strategy increasingly difficult to maintain. And the government’s early successes against Covid meant it was slower than other nations in securing and rolling out what looks to be the only real, long-term solution to the pandemic: vaccinations.

Back in March, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said of the vaccine rollout: “It’s not a race.” Now he’s increasingly being criticized by health experts and political rivals for failing to quickly secure enough vaccines from a wide range of drug-makers as the country’s rollout lags behind those of other major economies.

“The government drank their own Kool-Aid and thought that they had the answers, when other comparable countries spread the risks by backing many options,” said Bill Bowtell, an adjunct professor in infection and immunity at the University of New South Wales.

“Morrison boasted about Australia’s Covid-zero status, but did nothing effective or in time about vaccination or quarantine before delta hit,” he added. “Nature creates viruses; bad politics prolong pandemics.”

Australia has administered enough doses for 18% of its population, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker, compared with 52% in the U.S. and 61% in the U.K. The AstraZeneca inoculation has comprised the bulk of the nation’s rollout so far — it is one of two options available to Australians — but mixed messaging over giving the jab to under-40s has caused some vaccine hesitancy, a problem faced by other Covid Zero economies too.

Morrison’s critics also point to failures in the quarantine system, which requires returning residents to isolate in a hotel room for two weeks after re-entering the country. About 20 community cases this year can be traced back to hotel quarantine breaches, according to one measure — a significant rise in the number of “leaks” compared to last year.

Sydney’s lockdown is likely to drag on for weeks and could trigger an economic contraction for the country in the short term, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia said Wednesday. Australians outside of Sydney are nervous they will be next: Last year the city of Melbourne spent three months in one of the world’s longest and harshest lockdowns, which successfully stamped out infections but at significant economic cost.

The state of Victoria, which includes Melbourne, confirmed 10 new locally acquired cases on Thursday. The escalation of the outbreak has led to additional restrictions including stricter mask rules, while Western Australia state has reintroduced a hard border to keep out residents of the city.

“Australians are constantly on tenterhooks worrying that an outbreak is going to force their lives into these huge disruptions,” said Marion Maddox, an honorary professor of politics at Macquarie University.

“We had this aura of everything being under control,” she said. “But now we’ve earned a reputation of being ill-prepared to vaccinate our people, who are becoming more frustrated.”

The contrast with the U.S. and Europe is stark. Those places are reopening their economies despite thousands of new infections every week. While the risk of fresh outbreaks is inevitably heightened, with about 40% of the EU population fully vaccinated many nations are deciding it is time to “live with the virus,” as one French minister put it.

Australia remains among the top 10 places to be during the pandemic according to Bloomberg’s latest Covid Resilience Ranking, but has fallen four places due to its inability to loosen border restrictions.

The prime minister has defended his government’s vaccine strategy, saying an accelerated rollout puts it on track to provide enough jabs for all Australians who want them by the end of the year.

Still, he’s yet to offer a time-line for reopening, or to indicate how many Australians will need to be vaccinated before that can happen. With elections due by May, the conservative government now narrowly trails the main Labor opposition in one major poll, and Morrison’s personal popularity has slumped.

Governments such as Australia’s need to start better explaining how to live with Covid once a vaccine threshold is reached, said Ben Cowling, head of the University of Hong Kong’s department of epidemiology and biostatistics.

“It’s the kind of infection that will continue to circulate around the world,” Cowling said.

While opening up will “scare some people,” Morrison’s government will need to outline the advantages of “not having to worry about having lockdowns of cities, all of the social-distancing measures and, of course, quarantine.”

Published : July 16, 2021

By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jason Scott

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Tokyo virus cases hit six-month high just days before Olympics

New coronavirus virus cases hit a six-month high in Tokyo, a worrying sign just a little more than a week before the city hosts the Olympics.

Cases in the capital tallied 1,308 on Thursday, the most since January, when the capital was experiencing its worst wave of infections, hitting a daily record of 2,520 new cases.

The surge comes as International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach is visiting Japan ahead of the July 23 opening ceremony, trying to reassure residents the IOC and local government are doing all they can to reduce public health risks. The Olympics will be held without spectators for events in the Tokyo area, a first for the modern Olympic movement that dates back to the late 19th century.

The IOC chief said about 85% of the residents in the Olympic Village will arrive in Japan vaccinated and almost 100% of the IOC members and staff will be as well. He also said the medal presentation ceremony will break from tradition for safety. Instead of placing medals around the neck, the awards will be presented on a tray for the athlete to take.

Tokyo Governor Wants Olympics to Light Way for Pandemic Recovery

While the pace of vaccinations has picked up speed in Japan, the country has the lowest inoculation rate among its peers in the Group of Seven countries. About 19% of the Japanese population is fully vaccinated, well behind other G-7 members such as the U.S. at about 49%, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Published : July 16, 2021

By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jon Herskovitz