THE NEW YORK TIMES
More than 90 percent of federal employees will have had at least one coronavirus vaccine shot by the end of Monday, the deadline set by President Biden when he announced vaccine mandates earlier this fall, according to a senior administration official.
The vast majority of those employees are fully vaccinated, and an additional 5 percent of employees are seeking or already have an exception or an extension, the official said. The news was first reported by Reuters.
This means the Biden administration will have achieved 95 percent compliance with the president’s requirement that federal employees have at least one shot or have an approved or pending exception or extension request by Nov. 22, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview an announcement that White House officials will make later in the day.
Mr. Biden’s mandate for federal workers, announced in September, was part of an aggressive effort to combat the spread of the Delta variant, which has driven caseloads up to levels last recorded a year ago, before vaccines were widely available. The president also mandated vaccination for health care workers and ordered all companies with more than 100 workers to require vaccination or weekly testing for their employees.
“We’ve been patient,” Mr. Biden said then, in a pointed message to people who refused to be vaccinated. “But our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.”
More than 3.5 million federal workers, both in the United States and around the world, are covered by Mr. Biden’s mandate. Employees who have not complied, and do not have a pending or approved exception or extension request, will be expected to undergo education and counseling, the official said, followed by “additional enforcement steps.”
On Wednesday morning, the Office of Management and Budget will release data on the percentage of employees at each agency who are in compliance with the requirement.
A personnel change in the White House’s coronavirus team is expected next week. On Monday, Dr. Bechara Choucair, the former Chicago health commissioner whom Mr. Biden brought in to oversee the vaccination effort, will leave the administration, according to Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator.
Dr. Choucair was a senior executive at Kaiser Permanente before joining Mr. Biden’s staff and is “returning to the West Coast after staying longer than originally planned,” Mr. Zients said.
VIENNA — As Europe experiences a menacing fourth wave of the coronavirus, Austria entered a nationwide lockdown on Monday and the possibility of a vaccine mandate in Germany was under discussion as the only way to sustainably overcome the pandemic.
“Probably by the end of this winter, as is sometimes cynically said,” the German health minister, Jens Spahn, said on Monday, “pretty much everyone in Germany will be vaccinated, recovered or dead.”
Mr. Spahn had spoken out against a universal vaccine mandate in Germany.
The lockdown in Austria, in which people are allowed to leave their homes only to go to work or to procure groceries or medicines, will last at least 10 days and as many as 20 and comes after months of struggling attempts to halt the contagion through widespread testing and partial restrictions.
While Austria may be the first European country to respond with a lockdown, it may not be the last. That prospect, along with increasingly stringent vaccine mandates, has set off a backlash in Austria and elsewhere, with mass demonstrations in Vienna, Brussels and the Dutch city of Rotterdam over the weekend, sometimes punctuated with violent outbreaks.
transcript
transcript
Austrians Protest Lockdown and Vaccine Mandate
Thousands in Vienna over the weekend demonstrated against the measures, which include a nationwide lockdown.
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[drums] [chanting] [drums] [whistles] [drums]
The new Covid wave is being driven by widespread resistance to vaccines, despite the growing prevalence of vaccine and mask mandates. Austrian officials have said they will enforce a nationwide vaccine mandate in February, the first European nation to do so.
Austria, where 66 percent of the population is vaccinated, reported more than 14,000 new cases of the virus within 24 hours on Sunday. Over the past week the Netherlands has been averaging more than 20,000, while Germany has seen roughly double that number.
The German health ministry said on Monday that the country was facing a dwindling supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, which was partly developed in the country, as it races to provide booster shots.
And while the European Medicines Agency is poised to approve the vaccine for use on children 5 to 11 this week, first doses will not begin until Dec. 20, when shots for children are scheduled to be delivered to European Union countries, Mr. Spahn, the health minister, said.
The opposition to the lockdown and vaccine mandates in Austria is being fueled in part by the far-right Freedom Party, which has used its platform in the Austrian Parliament to spread doubt about the effectiveness of the vaccines and to promote ivermectin, a drug typically used to treat parasitic worms that has repeatedly failed against the coronavirus in clinical trials.
But the fury is not limited to far-right activists, as the throngs that filled Vienna’s streets on Saturday attested. The police estimated the crowd at 40,000, with many families and others far outnumbering the right-wing extremists.
A month ago, new coronavirus cases in the United States were ticking steadily downward and the worst of a miserable summer surge fueled by the Delta variant appeared to be over. But as Americans travel this week to meet far-flung relatives for Thanksgiving dinner, new virus cases are rising once more, especially in the Upper Midwest and Northeast.
Federal medical teams have been dispatched to Minnesota to help at overwhelmed hospitals. Michigan is enduring its worst case surge yet, with daily caseloads doubling since the start of November. Even New England, where vaccination rates are high, is struggling, with Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire trying to contain major outbreaks.
Nationally, case levels remain well below those seen in early September, when summer infections peaked, and are below those seen last Thanksgiving. But conditions are worsening rapidly, and this will not be the post-pandemic Thanksgiving that Americans had hoped for. More than 90,000 cases are being reported each day, comparable to early August, and more than 30 states are seeing sustained upticks in infections. In the hardest-hit places, hospitalizations are already climbing.
“This thing is no longer just throwing curveballs at us — it’s throwing 210-mile-an-hour curveballs at us,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota. He said that the virus had repeatedly defied predictions and continues to do so.
The new rise in cases comes at a complicated moment. Last Thanksgiving, before vaccines were available, federal and local officials had firmly urged Americans to forgo holiday gatherings. But in sharp contrast, public health officials, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, have mostly suggested this year that vaccinated people could gather in relative safety.
Violent protests over vaccine mandates have rocked France’s overseas department of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean over the past week, fueled by longstanding social and economic frustrations over inequality with the mainland and simmering anger at being overlooked by the French government.
Guadeloupe, an archipelago of islands, is one of several French overseas territories that have been hit hard by the pandemic over the past few months and where France’s vaccination campaign has been met with the most suspicion and resistance.
A mix of old grievances and new distrust over Covid-19 rules has made the unrest particularly volatile.
Demonstrations that started peacefully with road blocks and pickets in front of the main hospital in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe’s largest city, grew increasingly violent over the weekend, as protesters burned cars, looted businesses and clashed with riot police officers, who responded with tear gas.
More than 30 people accused of violence or looting have been arrested, and the local authorities imposed a nighttime curfew. The central government also announced over the weekend that it was sending over 200 police reinforcements.
On Monday, the remains of charred cars littered roads and schools remained closed as President Emmanuel Macron of France appealed for calm and order.
“Our priority is to continue convincing that vaccination is the best protection,” Mr. Macron told reporters during a visit to Amiens, his hometown in northern France. “And to yield nothing to lies, disinformation and the manipulation by some of this situation.”
“There is a very explosive situation, tied to a very local context, to historical tensions that we know of,” Mr. Macron acknowledged, as he accused some of the government’s critics of “using this context and these anxieties” to aggravate the situation.
Over 40 percent of the adult population in Guadeloupe is fully vaccinated, but that figure is nearly 90 percent for all of France including overseas regions, according to official statistics.
The unrest started last week with a strike by local unions that are opposed to France’s vaccine mandate for health workers. Those unions say it was imposed by the central government with little consultation, and are particularly infuriated that unvaccinated health professionals are suspended without pay.
“That is an unheard level of violence against them and their families,” Jean-Marie Nomertin, the secretary general of the Confédération Générale du Travail de la Guadeloupe, one of the protesting unions, said in a statement last week.
Protesters have also rejected France’s health pass, which is needed to gain access to restaurants, museums and other public places and can only be obtained through full vaccination, proof of Covid recovery, or a recent negative test — which must now be paid for out of pocket for those who are not vaccinated and do not have a prescription.
As in other overseas departments like Réunion or French Guiana that are a legacy of France’s colonial empire, Guadeloupe has long felt overlooked by policymakers in Paris, with decades-old anger over stagnant unemployment, high living costs and dysfunctional public utilities that have fueled protests in the past.
Suspicion of public health policies is especially high in the French Caribbean, where the government authorized the use of a highly toxic pesticide called chlordecone on banana plantations for decades, despite repeated health warnings.
“People are afraid, they have no trust,” Harry Durimel, the mayor of Pointe-à-Pitre, told Franceinfo on Monday, adding that local residents were “ready for a confrontation” over vaccine rules if they felt they were being forced “to inject a product in their body.”
On the nearby island of Martinique, unions on Monday called for a general strike over similar concerns.
Kenya will require people to show proof of coronavirus vaccination to enter many businesses, restaurants and government offices starting next month, a major policy shift that has prompted outrage in a country where less than 5 percent of the total population is fully vaccinated.
Mutahi Kagwe, the cabinet secretary for health, said on Sunday that he was concerned about a slowdown in vaccinations and hoped the new rules would persuade more people to get their shots. With schools closing and the country heading into the festive season, he said there were concerns that people would become complacent about public health measures, including social distancing and wearing masks.
The new measure was swiftly criticized by the public and activists, who cautioned against a stringent vaccine mandate just weeks after the lifting of a longstanding nationwide night curfew that dampened economic activity.
Vaccination campaigns in Kenya have been hampered by the lack of awareness campaigns or widespread nationwide vaccination sites with authorities scrambling to access or purchase the cold storage facilities needed to store the shots.
Beginning Dec. 21, unvaccinated people will be denied access to visit government agencies, including those providing immigration, tax, education and transport services Mr. Kagwe said on Sunday.
The new rules will also extend to those planning to visit hospitals, prisons, eateries, bars, national parks and any business serving 50 or more people daily. Drivers of public transportation, along with pilots and air hostesses, will be expected to always carry proof of vaccination. In addition, visitors from Europe will be required to be fully vaccinated to enter Kenya.
Kenya has recorded over 254,700 cases and 5,328 deaths from the coronavirus. While average case rates have dropped in recent weeks, the lag in vaccinations and the spread of the more contagious Delta variant had overwhelmed the country’s health care system. Kenya hopes to vaccinate at least 30 million people before the end of 2022, but like many African countries, it has also struggled to gain access to vaccines.
The new restrictions were met with skepticism, with many lamenting its impracticality. Some pointed to the low vaccination rates among the adult population, with just 8.8 percent of them fully vaccinated. Others said the mandate could open the door to more corruption, bribery and the proliferation of fake vaccine certificates.
Critics said the government should not only make sure that vaccines are available to all, but also come up with better strategies to address vaccine hesitancy.
“A generalized mandatory vaccination, especially one that gives such a short notice within which people must be vaccinated in order to access even basic services, is unconstitutional,” Waikwa Wanyoike, a prominent constitutional lawyer, wrote on Twitter.
The American Medical Association voted last week to allow only licensed physicians to write requests for patients seeking medical exemptions from vaccine mandates.
But the association does not have the power to enforce what is, in effect, a symbolic action intended to show concern as tens of thousands of people seek exemptions. While some states prohibit alternative practitioners like homeopaths, osteopaths, chiropractors and naturopaths from writing medical exemptions for vaccines, other states allow it.
“Science supports a vaccine mandate,” said Dr. Gerald E. Harmon, the president of the American Medical Association, “and we do not need to offer routes to evade mandates and undermine public health by seeking out practitioners who are not licensed or medically trained.”
The A.M.A.’s stance reflects increasing frustration among doctors with the spread of misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines and the virus. The association says that alternative practitioners are less likely than licensed physicians to recommend vaccines, and that they may even advise people not be vaccinated.
But removing power from alternative practitioners would not stop patients from getting invalid medical exemption requests. Licensed medical doctors are also writing bogus requests, according to doctors who are being asked to rule on them.
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, sees the problem with invalid exemptions firsthand. Although California prohibits alternative practitioners from writing vaccine exemptions, patients are finding licensed doctors who will write them.
Dr. Chin-Hong said the university often called on him to evaluate the requests.
“I have never seen one that passed muster,” he said.
Some patients seeking a medical exemption will simply hop from one doctor to another if they are turned down, said Lawrence O. Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University. If the university denies their request, he added, people often turn up again with a request for a religious exemption.
Australia, 20 months after shutting its borders, will allow skilled workers and international students to enter the country next month, the government announced on Monday.
The move comes as the Australian government, faced with a severe labor shortage, turns its focus to economic recovery, with 72 percent of the country fully vaccinated.
The new rules go into effect on Dec. 1, the beginning of summer in Australia. Some categories of visa holders, including skilled workers, international students, and those on working holiday and prospective marriage visas, will be allowed to enter Australia for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Over 200,000 people will fall into those categories.
“The return of skilled workers and students to Australia is a major milestone in our pathway back,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday at a news conference. “The steps that we are taking today are about securing our economic recovery.”
At the start of the pandemic, Australia shut its borders to noncitizens, leaving hundreds of thousands of visa holders stranded outside the country and contributing to a significant worker shortage. Australia has relied on temporary workers for many industries, such as hospitality and agriculture. The travel restrictions also created a severe funding shortfall for universities.
Most tourists are still barred from traveling to Australia, except those from Singapore, South Korea and Japan, all countries that have established travel bubbles with Australia.
Visitors entering Australia will need to be fully vaccinated and return a negative PCR test within three days of boarding their flight. Upon arrival, they will need to follow some quarantine restrictions, depending on the state in which they arrive.
On Sunday, the first planes from Singapore arrived in Sydney and Melbourne under the new travel bubble arrangement, bringing the first tourists into the country since the start of the pandemic.
The lines are getting longer at the Halal Guys food cart in the heart of Manhattan. The number of international visitors buying Statue of Liberty tickets has jumped more than 50 percent. And a few thousand more people are walking through Times Square.
After more than 18 months, the United States reopened its borders on Nov. 8 to vaccinated foreign travelers. Early indications suggest that they have been trickling back to New York, the top American destination city for international tourists.
But many businesses that depend on international visitors, including hotel operators and restaurants, see signs that even more tourists could start streaming in as the year-end holiday season approaches, providing a badly needed boost as the city’s labor force struggles to recover from the pandemic.
The tourism industry has increasingly become a pillar of New York’s economy. A record 66.6 million travelers visited the city in 2019, and their spending supported hundreds of thousands of jobs, from restaurant workers to museum security guards to bus drivers.
Some airlines reported that their first flights carrying tourists to New York in 20 months were fully booked.
“It really seems like the city is happy to show itself to the world again,” said Christiaan Vander Kuylen, who arrived recently from Brussels. “The energy is amazing.”
As a company in India tests a cheap and possibly highly effective Covid-19 vaccine, a large group of researchers, most of whom are at Harvard, made the same vaccine and figured out how and why it could work so well, especially in vulnerable older adults.
The Harvard group began with a crucial question about Covid: Which population is most important to protect?
The answer, of course, is older people who are most at risk for severe disease and death.
The Harvard group began testing the vaccine with old mice. Like older people, old mice are much more susceptible to the coronavirus and much more likely to die.
The researchers made a vaccine that included a fragment of the virus’s spike protein, the part that latches onto cells, allowing the virus to enter. Vaccines like the ones made by Moderna and by Pfizer-BioNTech spur cells to make complete copies of the spike, prompting the immune system to make antibodies to block it if a coronavirus tried to infect the person.
But those vaccines are expensive to make and store. In contrast, a snippet of the spike is cheap and can be stored at room temperature. The problem was that it does not elicit much of an immune response.
The Harvard group, led by David Dowling, turned to adjuvants — chemicals that enhance the immune system’s response to vaccines — trying one adjuvant combination after another until they found one that seemed spectacularly successful. With that adjuvant, the vaccine protected mice at least as well as the Pfizer vaccine, said Dr. Ofer Levy, the director of Harvard’s Precision Vaccines Program.
But what about people? Dr. Levy recruited volunteers from his Cambridge synagogue — people in their 60s, 70s and 80s — to provide blood for lab tests to see if the adjuvant that was so good in mice also stimulated the immune system in older people.
It did.
Now the question is what will happen in the trial in India? If the vaccine works, the hope is that it could help solve one of the thorniest problems in stemming the pandemic — how to make vaccines accessible to everyone worldwide.
The Indian government seems to be betting on success. In June, while clinical trials were in their early stages the government preordered 300 million doses. Its maker, Biological E Limited, estimates it will cost $3 a dose.
In contrast, Pfizer’s price is $19.50 a dose but is expected to rise after its pandemic pricing phase ends.
Papua New Guinea will have vaccinated only a third of its adult population by 2026 if it continues at its current rate, according to new research by an Australian think tank that predicts that some countries in the Pacific will take years to vaccinate their populations.
The research by the think tank, the Lowy Institute, using modeling based on existing vaccination rates and factors such as demography, vaccine acceptance rates and health sector capacity, found that while some countries in the Pacific are leading the world in vaccination rates, others are lagging far behind.
“The Pacific is divided when it comes to vaccinations,” said Alexandre Dayant, the author of the study and a Lowy Institute research fellow, warning that the slow vaccination speed in some nations raised the risk of new variants emerging.
Palau has given 99 percent of residents at least one vaccine dose. Tonga and Samoa are set to vaccinate their adult populations before the end of the year, according to the modeling, which is subject to change.
However, the Solomon Islands are not expected to fully vaccinate their adult population until April 2026, while it is estimated to take Vanuatu until then to vaccinate 86 percent of its adult population. And Papua New Guinea, the slowest in the region, will have vaccinated only about 16 percent of its population by December 2022.
These countries have been hampered by overstretched health care systems and rampant vaccine misinformation, Mr. Dayant said.
Facebook is often people’s primary source of information there, and unsubstantiated theories of Western plots to inoculate people with microchips and black magic circulate on social media, he said, adding: “misinformation spreads much quicker than the virus in the Pacific.”
He said wealthy countries could do more, like bolstering local health care systems. “It is in the interest of the world to vaccinate developing countries,” he said.
source https://perilofafrica.com/2021/11/covid-19-news-vaccine-and-booster-updates.html