CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s capital city of Canberra will remain locked down for a second month after the local government reported 22 new coronavirus infections.
The Australian Capital Territory locked down Aug. 12 after a single case linked to a Sydney outbreak of the virus’ delta variant was detected.
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Territorial Chief Minister Andrew Barr said Tuesday that Canberra’s lockdown will be extended until Oct. 15.
Canberra is surrounded by New South Wales state, where Australia’s delta outbreak began when a limousine driver tested positive June 16. He was infected while transporting a U.S. cargo flight crew from Sydney’s airport.
Sydney is Australia’s largest city and has been locked since June 26.
Before delta came to Canberra last month, the city of 430,000 people had not recorded a single case of coronavirus community infection since July 10, 2020.
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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:
— UK to vaccinate 12-to-15-year-olds despite opposition from some scientists
— School starts for 1 million New York City kids amid new vaccine rules
— Northern Idaho’s anti-government streak hampers COVID fight
— West Virginia sets 2 daily records for positive virus cases
— See AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
CULLMAN, Ala. — As hundreds of mostly unvaccinated COVID-19 patients filled Alabama intensive care units, hospital staff in north Alabama contacted 43 hospitals in three states to find a specialty cardiac ICU bed for Ray Martin DeMonia, his family writes in his obituary.
The resident of Cullman, Alabama, was finally transferred to Meridian, Mississippi, about 170 miles (274 kilometers) away. The 73-year-old antiques dealer died Sept. 1 because of the cardiac event he suffered.
Now, his family is making a plea.
“In honor of Ray, please get vaccinated if you have not, in an effort to free up resources for non-COVID related emergencies,” his obituary reads. After describing the search for an ICU bed for DeMonia, the obituary adds: “He would not want any other family to go through what his did.”
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GREAT FALLS, Mont. — Great Falls High School in Montana is moving to remote learning for the rest of the week due to an increase in coronavirus cases among students and staff.
School officials said Monday that more than 35 people have tested positive for the virus. Moving to remote learning will allow for quarantine or isolation times for students and staff to lapse and give sanitation crews time to disinfect more than 40 classrooms.
Student athletic activities will continue as scheduled, but there will be a mask requirement when students and coaches are in close proximity.
Other school districts have switched to remote classes because of outbreaks.
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DENVER — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is urging the Food and Drug Administration to quickly authorize booster shots for the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine as well as permit children ages 5 to 11 to be vaccinated.
Polis said Monday that foot-dragging by U.S. health officials has cost lives. In his words, “The FDA needs to get out of their ivory tower and realize there is a real life pandemic.”
In August, Pfizer said it had started the application process for a third dose of its vaccine for everyone age 16 and older. It asserts that people’s antibody levels jump fivefold to tenfold after a third dose, compared to their second dose months earlier.
The White House has begun planning for boosters later this month, if both the FDA and the CDC agree. Advisers to the FDA will weigh evidence about an extra Pfizer shot Friday. The U.S. already offers an extra dose of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to people with severely weakened immune systems.
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The number of coronavirus infections and people hospitalized for COVID-19 in West Virginia have set new highs as Gov. Jim Justice scolds residents who continue to balk at getting vaccinated.
At least 40% of the state’s people older than 12 have not received all doses.
The governor said Monday that “this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” He has balked at issuing either a vaccination or mask mandate.
Officials said Monday that confirmed virus cases statewide totaled about 8,860 last week, breaking the previous weekly high of about 8,200 set in early January. A record 852 people were in hospitals Monday for COVID-19, the disease that can be caused by the virus. The previous high of 818 was set Jan. 5.
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gaza’s Hamas authorities say they are destroying 50,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine, blaming Israeli delays made the shots “invalid.”
The Hamas-run Health Ministry said Monday that the vaccine doses sent by the Palestinian Authority arrived at the coastal enclave via an Israeli commercial crossing Thursday.
The ministry says the single-dose version of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine was found to be “invalid and unfit for usage.” It accuses Israel of “leaving them waiting for long hours in improper shipping and cooling conditions.”
There has been no immediate comment from Israel, which had facilitated the delivery of previous vaccine shipments.
Gaza is home to nearly 2 million people, and the ministry says that so far a little over 354,000 are vaccinated,
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ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has threatened local governments with $5,000 fines per violation for requiring their employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus that has overrun hospitals across the state.
DeSantis said Monday that local municipalities potentially face millions of dollars in fines for implementing a requirement that their employees get a COVID-19 vaccine.
Gainesville and Orange County officials say they still are going ahead with the vaccine requirements. Florida has been a national epicenter for the virus this summer, with COVID-19 deaths in Florida accounting for more than 20% of the virus-related deaths across the country last week.
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BANGOR, Maine — Maine is starting the week with more than a dozen outbreaks of COVID-19 in schools, and many schools are testing to mitigate the risk.
As of Friday, 384 of Maine’s 720 public and private schools had signed up with Concentric, a branch of Boston-based Ginkgo Bioworks, for pool testing of students.
The Bangor Daily News reports that the program calls for student tests to be pooled and sent to a lab in Massachusetts. If there’s a positive test for a school, then individual students will be tested.
The school outbreaks come amid a surge in infections tied to the delta variant, which is spreading in Maine.
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NEW YORK — Classroom doors are swinging open for about a million New York City public school students in the nation’s largest experiment of in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic.
The start of the school year Monday coincides with several other milestones in the city’s pandemic recovery that hinge on vaccine mandates.
Nearly all of the city’s 300,000 employees will be required to be back in their workplaces as the city ends remote work. Most will either need to be vaccinated, or undergo weekly COVID-19 testing.
The city was also set to start enforcing rules requiring workers and patrons to be vaccinated to go indoors at restaurants, museums and entertainment venues.
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OLYMPIA, Wash. — Washington state troopers, prison correctional officers, ferry workers and other public sector employees have filed a lawsuit to try to overturn Gov. Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
The Northwest News Network reports the lawsuit filed by more than 90 workers on Friday in Walla Walla County says the mandate is unlawful and unconstitutional. The lawsuit says the penalty of being fired for not getting the vaccine is “arbitrary and capricious,” especially for employees who can work from home or have natural immunity from having previously contracted COVID-19.
An Inslee spokesperson, Mike Faulk, said the office had not yet reviewed the lawsuit.
Inslee issued his vaccine mandate last month. It requires most state employees, on-site contractors and volunteers, as well as private health care and long-term care workers, to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18. Inslee later expanded the mandate to include workers in educational settings from preschool through higher education.
While Inslee did not offer a testing alternative in lieu of the vaccine, workers subject to the mandate can apply for religious or medical exemptions.
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BUCHAREST, Romania — Almost 3 million students returned to schools Monday in Romania after a summer break and face restrictions as COVID-19 infections rapidly rise in the country.
Authorities have mandated that children wear protective masks inside schools and implemented social distancing to try to curb the spread of the virus.
“The resumption of the school year takes place, unfortunately, under the spectrum of the pandemic,” President Klaus Iohannis said Monday. “It is important to strictly follow the measures set by the authorities to protect us and our loved ones.”
Throughout the pandemic, Romanian students have faced long, periodic schools closures with lessons moved online. While authorities want to avoid a repeat of remote learning, schools will be forced to move lessons online if an area surpasses an infection rate of 6 per 1,000 residents.
In recent weeks, daily COVID-19 infections in Romania — a country of 19 million, which has the second-lowest vaccination uptake in the European Union at 27% — have risen dramatically from around 300 a day a month ago to more than 2,500 infections a day last week.
Romania’s education ministry says about 61% of education workers have been vaccinated.
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ROME — Italy will begin administering a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to people who are considered at greater risk for exposure to the virus or at higher risk for developing a severe form of the illness.
The office of the Italian general leading the government’s COVID-19 vaccination program announced the decision after a meeting on Monday with the health minister. Those who have compromised immune systems will be the first group to receive the booster shots starting on Sept. 20. Which of the more fragile populations will next get a booster vaccine is being worked out with Italy’s regions.
A day earlier, the governor of Lazio, the region which includes Rome, said Lazio will shortly start contacting transplant recipients to get a third COVID-19 vaccine dose. As of Monday, some 74% of people in Italy 12 or older and thus eligible for COVID-19 vaccines are fully vaccinated.
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ROME — Some 4 million students in Italy have returned to the classroom after summer break, with the Italian government determined to avoid any replay of remote learning. Schools in 10 of the nation’s 20 regions began the academic year on Monday.
Students in the Alpine Alto Adige region started classes last week, and other regions, including Campania in the Naples area, begin the school year later this week.
Italian students in the last 1 1/2 years have seen relatively little in-classroom time. Starting this month, all teachers and administrative staff must have a Green Pass. That means they received at least one vaccine dose, have recovered from COVID-19 in the last six months or tested negative for the virus in the previous 48 hours.
Education Minister Patrizio Bianchi says school reopening went smoothly on Monday, with 93% of teachers presenting Green Passes, and some others provided certification that they cannot be vaccinated for health reasons.
One critical area is transport. Many regions and cities have warned there aren’t enough buses, including local public transport, to avoid crowding during the trips to and from school.
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LONDON — Britain’s chief medical officers say children aged 12 to 15 should be vaccinated against coronavirus, despite a ruling by the government’s vaccine advisors that the step would have only marginal health benefits.
England Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and his counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, said Monday that the children should be given a single dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. They have yet to decide on a second dose.
The government has said it will follow the medical officers’ recommendations. Expanded vaccinations are expected to be part of a “tool kit” for dealing with the coronavirus in the fall and winter that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to announce on Tuesday.
Earlier this month Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization said the vaccine should be given to 12- to 15-year-olds with underlying health conditions. But it did not back a rollout to healthy children in that age group, saying the balance of benefit and risk was unclear.
However, it said there might be wider societal factors to consider, such as on education or children acting as sources of transmission.
Countries including the United States, Canada, France and Italy already offer coronavirus vaccines to people aged 12 and up.