US Coronavirus: Governor sees “astronomical” variety of circumstances as officers await full FDA approval for Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine

Overall, hospital stays in Alabama continue to rise as the “unvaccinated pandemic continues,” said state health officer Dr. Scott Harris on Friday. Alabama hospitals have negative ICU bed capacity available, he said, and the state has the highest number of Covid-19 cases in children than ever before during the pandemic.

Louisiana has seen an “astronomical” number of Covid-19 cases during the recent surge, according to Governor John Bel Edwards, as infections increase, particularly among younger populations.

“I can tell you that in the past few days, 28% of all new cases we report are in children between the ages of zero and 17,” he said on Friday.

And Kansas Governor Laura Kelly said more people were hospitalized in the state on Wednesday than any other day. Almost everyone in intensive care for Covid-19 is unvaccinated and six of the state’s largest hospitals have 100% ICU bed capacity, she said.

Amid the soaring case numbers, experts and officials hope that an awaited decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granting full approval of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine will help convince more Americans of its effectiveness and those who live in Question come and vaccines are reluctant to gain board with vaccinations. A person familiar with the plan told CNN that the decision is expected early next week, and a Biden government official said approval of the two-dose vaccine, which was distributed under the FDA’s emergency clearance, “could be approved as soon as possible Take place on Monday. “The New York Times reported that the FDA was pushing for approval of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine on Monday, according to those familiar with the agency’s planning. I’m going to vaccinate this weekend.” What you asked comes, vaccinated .

24 states have fully vaccinated more than half of their residents: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, and Washington, DC.

More and more universities need vaccines

To ward off a greater spread of infection, additional university campuses and school systems are introducing mandatory vaccination in order to attend classes or sporting events.

All students at state colleges, universities, and community colleges across the state of Nevada will need to be vaccinated against Covid-19 this fall in order to enroll for personal spring courses, according to Governor Steve Sisolak’s office. The mandate was approved by the State Health Office on Friday afternoon.

Nevada students must present proof of vaccination by November 1 to enroll in the following semester’s courses. The mandate is valid for at least 120 days and provides for medical and religious exceptions. In addition, students who do not attend classes in person are excluded.

The University of Oregon announced that college activities and sporting events requiring attendees 12 and older will be required to provide proof of vaccination or a recent negative Covid-19 test starting Monday. At the beginning of this week, the state government announced mandatory vaccinations for all K-12 teachers and employees. At least one university has already started enforcing its vaccine mandates. The University of Virginia in Charlottesville on Friday de-registered 238 students for their fall semester for failing to comply with the university’s Covid-19 vaccination mandate, according to university spokesman Brian Coy.

About 96.6% of the UVA’s student body are vaccinated, Coy said, while about 1.3% were allowed to apply for religious or medical exemptions. Students who were enrolled at the university on Wednesday still have one week to update their vaccination status and can then enroll again.

Data shows that significant racial differences were found in excessive deaths over the past year

In the meantime, researchers continue to study the effects of the 2020 pandemic before vaccines that helped keep infected people out of hospitals were spread.

According to new research, adults aged 65 and over not only had higher rates of excessive death over the past year compared to other age groups, but significant racial differences were also found.

The highest rates of deaths were among black and Hispanic Americans among adults aged 65 and over, according to a new study released Thursday by the CDC. Among people under 65 years of age, Blacks, Native Americans, and Alaskan Native Americans had the highest rates when compared to other races and ethnic groups.

Findings “were driven in part by factors such as occupational risk, socioeconomic factors, housing conditions, limited access to health care, and discrimination,” researchers at the US National Center for Health Statistics, Yale University, and Harvard Medical School wrote in their new study.

The researchers analyzed data from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System on the weekly number of all-cause deaths and Covid-19 that occurred between December 29, 2019 and January 2, 2021. The researchers looked at population estimates from the US Census Bureau for previous years, from 2015 to 2019, to model how many deaths would normally be expected by 2020.

“The resulting weekly expected deaths were subtracted from observed deaths to produce estimates of additional deaths,” the researchers wrote.

In the data, they identified racial differences across all age groups when it came to the number of excessive deaths. Overall, they wrote that “These results could help guide more targeted public health and mitigation messages to reduce the mortality gap associated with the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States by changing racial / ethnic groups and age groups identified with the highest excess ”. Mortality rates. “

Contributors to this report were Jacqueline Howard, Elizabeth Cohen, Kaitlan Collins, Kevin Liptak, Andy Rose, Deidre McPhillips, Deanna Hackney, Jill Martin, Lauren Mascarenhas and Kay Jones of CNN.