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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has relaxed its warning for cruise travel for the first time since several outbreaks on ships brought the industry to a halt last year. But it also recommended that only fully vaccinated people embark when cruises resume from U.S. ports this summer.
“Since the virus spreads more easily between people in close quarters aboard ships, the chance of getting COVID-19 on cruise ships is high,” the agency said. It recommended that all passengers get tested a few days before and after their trip, while urging unvaccinated travelers to self-quarantine for seven days after disembarkation.
The new guidelines come after the CDC gave the green light for cruises from U.S. ports to resume this summer amid pressure from hard-hit cruise operators and pent-up customer demand. But one of the first cruises scheduled to sail from the United States was postponed earlier this week after eight crew members tested positive for the virus.
Here are some significant developments:
- The Biden administration announced Thursday a $3.2 billion plan to fund drugs that would be ready to treat future viral threats — whether a hemorrhagic fever, influenza or another coronavirus.
- The head of an international expert panel established by the World Health Organization to investigate the pandemic says the WHO was wrong to oppose bans on flights from China early last year.
- A government study in Britain said 90 percent of new coronavirus cases in the country are the delta variant, and it is growing rapidly, according to test results from 100,000 people — further justifying the postponement of England’s total reopening that had been set for June 21.
- Poor quality hospitals may explain higher covid mortality rates among Blacks, a study says.
- The United States on Thursday reported a seven-day rolling average of 11,974 infections. The seven-day average of covid deaths is below 300 for the first time since March 27, 2020, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Thursday.
Covid-battered Sri Lanka detects delta variant in community
Sri Lankan health authorities said Thursday that they have detected the delta variant of the coronavirus domestically, compounding the challenges for the South Asian country as it grapples with both a virulent pandemic wave and an environmental disaster.
“It is the worst we could have [imagined] at such a time,” Chandima Jeewandara, who leads genetic sequencing efforts at the country’s Sri Jayewardenepura University, told India’s Hindu newspaper. “We are already dealing with a spike in cases with the alpha variant. Delta poses a greater risk because our vaccine coverage is low.”
(The alpha variant of the coronavirus was first detected in Britain, while the delta strain was originally observed in India.)
Sri Lanka had previously detected the delta variant in a quarantine facility, but countries like Singapore and the United Arab Emirates have barred people who have recently been in Sri Lanka as part of travel bans that cover much of South Asia. Sri Lanka has close ties with India, which was stricken by the delta variant.
“It could have [entered Sri Lanka] from anywhere, we do not know yet,” Jeewandara said.
The country’s latest wave began in April, following celebrations during the traditional new year festival, the Associated Press reported.
Sri Lanka, home to 22 million people, reported a seven-day rolling average of 2,471 infections on Wednesday, roughly comparable to mid-May. Only about 3 percent of the island nation’s residents have been fully vaccinated. More than 2,300 people have died of the virus there since the start of the pandemic.
Australia’s biggest city imposes public transit mask mandate amid delta outbreak
SYDNEY — Masks will be compulsory on public transit in the greater Sydney area for five days, officials announced Friday, as Australia’s most populous city grapples with an outbreak of the contagious delta variant.
A limousine driver transporting international aircrews, his wife, an elderly woman at a cafe he visited while infectious, and a man in his 50s that the driver had only passing contact with at a shopping mall, according to CCTV footage, have tested positive in recent days.
“Every time any of us leave our home, we have to assume we have the virus, or the people we’re coming into contact with have the virus,” Gladys Berejiklian, the premier of the state Sydney is in, told reporters on Friday. “A fleeting passing is all it takes.”
Mask wearing is relatively uncommon in Australia, which quashed the virus with a combination of strict border closures and lockdowns last year. However, officials are concerned about the contagiousness of the delta strain first detected in India.
Relatively few people in Australia are fully vaccinated, making the country vulnerable to fresh outbreaks. Melbourne, in southeastern Victoria state, locked down last month as the delta and kappa variants were detected. Berejiklian, the New South Wales premier, stopped short of mandating masks in other settings, although she encouraged people to wear them indoors and in places where it is difficult to physically distance.
The latest outbreak ended a 40-day streak without any community transmission in New South Wales. As of Wednesday, about three percent of Australia’s 25 million people have been fully inoculated.
He promised 6 million N95 masks and couldn’t deliver. Now he’s going to prison.
Last April, as veterans hospitals struggled to find masks to protect their workers and patients from the coronavirus, a veteran reached out with promises to help.
“Unlike most vendors we are commitment [sic] to providing support during this time and are offering a COVID-19 discount to agencies who need large quantities of these items shipped,” Robert Stewart Jr. wrote to a contracting officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs. “I am glad I can help . . . support our men/women in uniform and vets.”
Top investigator says WHO was wrong to oppose China travel bans
The head of an international expert panel established by the World Health Organization to investigate the coronavirus pandemic says the WHO was wrong to oppose bans on flights from China last year.
Helen Clark, a former top United Nations official who also served as prime minister of New Zealand, said her country and Australia were right to quickly block travel from China after the outbreak in Wuhan, where the virus was first detected. The two countries soon expanded travel restrictions to the rest of the world.
“We did that even though it was against the advice of the WHO and the international health regulations, which discourage constraints on travel,” she said on an episode of the Australian podcast Rekindling Hope.
Clark was last year appointed co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Last month, the 13-member panel released a report that was critical of the WHO, though some critics felt that it did not go far enough.
Her comments on the podcast appeared to go further than the report at times.
The WHO relies on rules “written in 2005 before anything like the level of global connection via travel,” she said. “And it’s not appropriate when there’s a dangerous respiratory pathogen on the loose, as with this one, to say you don’t have to do anything about travel — of course you do.”
Clark did not rule out the theory that the virus could have originated from a lab leak, but said there was “no firm evidence.”
“All I’ll say is that the jury’s out,” she said. “I don’t think that should be seen as any geopolitically motivated attack to say that the jury is out.”
The pandemic devastated an immigrant community. Its first Latino priest is spreading hope.
Halfway through the service, the Rev. Juan de la Cruz Turcios bounded out from behind the lectern with a sheet of paper in his hand and a winsome smile on his face.
Gesturing eagerly, he opened his homily on this recent Tuesday with a funny story from his childhood.
It was his first time celebrating daily Mass, as well as one of his last times doing so at St. Camillus Parish in Silver Spring, from which he departs this month for a new assignment. In May, Turcios became the first Latin American from nearby Langley Park to be ordained as a Catholic priest — an optimistic sign for his fellow immigrants whose struggles with poverty, crime and lack of education have been made more difficult by the coronavirus pandemic.
Millions of workers are quitting their jobs during the pandemic. Meet six who made a big change.
American workers have decided it’s time for a change — a decision at least partly brought on by a more than year-long pandemic that shifted the way many understood the norms of work life.
In a year when millions lost their jobs, many also switched career paths, launched their own companies, quit without set plans or left the workforce altogether. There’s no one reason for all the change. There have been fears about health and safety during a public health crisis. Routines have turned upside down as people juggled jobs and family and adjusted to remote work.