Covid Live Updates: China Sends Military Medics to Shanghai as Outbreak Grows

[Boats]

Covid Live Updates: China Sends Military Medics to Shanghai as Outbreak Grows
By: The New York Times Int'l News - Vivian Wang & Joy Dong - 04-04-22
Re: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/04...rs-to-shanghai

#1. Shanghai is battling its worst outbreak since the pandemic began, with the number of new daily cases increasing tenfold from two weeks ago. Australia begins offering fourth vaccine doses to vulnerable people to help stave off a surge in cases as winter approaches.

[Here’s what you need to know:
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* China deploys 2,000 military medics and 10,000 medical workers to Shanghai.
* Australia begins offering vulnerable groups a second booster shot.
* Taiwan relaxes its quarantine measures even as it confronts an outbreak.
* U.S. nursing home deaths appear to be at pandemic lows.
* Some U.S. states see new cases increase.
* Carrie Lam, racked by Covid failures, won’t seek a new term to lead Hong Kong.]

More than 2,000 military medics and 10,000 medical workers from around China have been deployed to Shanghai in recent days to help tame the city’s coronavirus outbreak — a potential sign of the central Chinese government’s concern that cases there have spiraled out of local officials’ control.

Shanghai is battling its worst outbreak since the pandemic began over two years ago. Since cases began spiking last month, driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant, the city of 26 million has recorded more than 60,000 cases. On Monday, officials confirmed more than 9,000 new cases from the day before.

The numbers, while low compared with those in most other countries, have been a source of significant anxiety in a country that is still refusing to coexist with the virus. The number of new daily cases has increased tenfold from just two weeks ago.

At first, Shanghai — China’s financial hub, and a place that has long prided itself on its cosmopolitan reputation — had tried to chart a more nuanced course than the heavy-handed lockdowns that have marked China’s virus response elsewhere. City officials insisted that a full lockdown would be too disruptive economically, opting for a staggered one instead. Some experts also floated the prospect of eventually loosening restrictions.

But over the weekend, the official line began to shift. On Saturday, a top central government official visited Shanghai and called for the government there to continue pursuing a policy of having no cases “without hesitation.” In addition, parts of the city that were due to be released from lockdown were not, effectively leaving the entire city paralyzed.

The mass mobilization of workers from around the country echoed the central government’s response to the outbreak in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, in early 2020. As that city staggered under the weight of the then-new virus, tens of thousands of medical workers poured into the city to help, according to the state news media.

In Shanghai, 10,000 workers arrived from other provinces in recent days to staff makeshift hospitals and assist with citywide testing, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. In addition, the 2,000 military medics — accompanied by military transport planes — arrived on Sunday.

While many residents have already been tested multiple times, the city is kicking off a renewed three-day citywide testing campaign on Monday. — Vivian Wang and Joy Dong

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#2 - Australia begins offering vulnerable groups a second booster shot.
Getting a booster shot in Sydney, Australia, last month. About 84 percent of the population in Australia is fully vaccinated, and half of all Australians have received one booster shot.Credit...Isabella Moore for The New York Times

Australia on Monday began providing fourth coronavirus vaccine doses to vulnerable people as it seeks to head off a surge of cases in the coming colder winter months.

The additional shot will be available for residents over 65 who got their first booster dose over four months ago, Indigenous Australians over 50, residents in disability care and people who are severely immunocompromised.

Over four million people will be eligible for the vaccine dose. Only about 160,000 residents in the over-65 age group meet the four-month requirement, according to the country’s immunization advisory body.

There are no plans to introduce a fourth vaccine dose for other segments of the population, the immunization advisory body said.

About 84 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, and half of all Australians have received one booster shot, according to a New York Times database.
Latest Reports fro AU - As of Feb. 2020 50k patients now as of March 2022 they have over 100k.

Coronavirus cases in Australia have been rising over the past month, linked to the more transmissible BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, although hospitalization and death rates have remained low. The authorities fear that the coming winter season will see dual waves of coronavirus and influenza cases.

The second booster shot comes as Australia continues to ease pandemic restrictions. Last week, the government said that international travelers would no longer require a negative coronavirus test before boarding their flights to Australia, starting on April 17. The authorities are considering whether to remove the requirement for close contacts of infected people to quarantine.

Australia has recorded a daily average of 57,293 cases over the past seven days, a 32 percent increase in the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database. Deaths are averaging 70 per day, triple the average from two weeks ago.

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#3. Taiwan relaxes its quarantine measures even as it confronts an outbreak.
Taiwan has thrived as a bubble of normalcy through most of the pandemic. But now, as it faces a growing coronavirus outbreak, the island’s heath authorities have relaxed several preventive measures to ease pressure on medical resources for the long battle against the virus.

In the latest move on Sunday against the highly transmissible Omicron variant, health officials announced that newly infected people with no symptoms or only mild ones no longer needed to stay in quarantine facilities for 10 days once they are tested and found not to be highly contagious.

Chen Shih-chung, Taiwan’s health minister, said in a press briefing on Sunday that the island’s health experts had examined the 1,530 locally transmitted cases confirmed from Jan. 1 through Saturday and found that 99.8 percent were asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. The experts therefore decided that those who do not need to stay at the health facilities for treatment could leave early, Mr. Chen said.

Taiwan has kept its Covid death count and case numbers relatively low, and reported an average daily case count of 220 over the past week, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Over the past few weeks, health officials have reiterated that the current outbreaks in several cities in Taiwan are stable and controllable.

In March, the health authorities shortened the quarantine period for all international arrivals and for close contacts of anyone who tests positive to 10 days, down from 14.

The health officials are also considering including a vaccination campaign in their efforts to gradually lift the quarantine measures, according to Mr. Chen. He said that the authorities were considering including people with three vaccine doses into the groups that are not required to quarantine. As of Friday, Taiwan had fully vaccinated 78 percent of its eligible population, according to the Taiwanese government.

Whether Taiwan will further lift the quarantine measures depends on the control of the current outbreaks, health officials say.

Taiwan has favored a less heavy-handed approach than neighboring China, which is struggling to contain its worst Covid-19 surge since the coronavirus first emerged in the city of Wuhan. But unlike other Asian countries like South Korea and Singapore that are reopening the borders, Taiwan has opened only for foreigners who come for business.
by: — Amy Chang Chien

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#4. - U.S. nursing home deaths appear to be at pandemic lows
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Deaths at American nursing home residents from Covid appear to be at their lowest levels since the coronavirus first swept the United States more than two years ago, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some 67 residents died during the week ending March 27. While that number could be adjusted in the coming weeks, it mirrors the lows last reached during June 2021 before facilities were hit with the Delta and Omicron variants. Although cases among residents climbed much more sharply in the fall and winter, deaths still reached roughly 1,500 in January before steadily dropping.

But experts say there is little reason for complacency. Nursing home residents remain highly vulnerable to the virus because of their age and underlying medical conditions. While booster shots proved to be protective against severe illness during the latest surge, federal regulators already authorized second booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines last week. There is also growing concern over a highly contagious subvariant of Omicron, known as BA.2.

Getting the second booster shot to nursing home residents “is a real policy priority,” said David Grabowski, a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School who studies nursing homes. “We know this is protective.”

While there was a significant push by the federal government and the large pharmacy chains to vaccinate nursing home residents when the initial shots first became available, many facilities were slow to roll out booster shots last fall even as there began to be outbreaks. About 88 percent of residents are fully vaccinated, and about 76 percent have received a booster shot, according to the latest federal data.

Immunizing staff members has been harder, with the federal mandate to require health care workers to be vaccinated facing legal challenges. While 86 percent of staff are fully vaccinated, only 43 percent have received a booster shot. In 13 states, fewer than a third of employees have received the added immunizations.

“We have a lot of nursing homes around the country that lag behind,” said Dr. Grabowski, adding that he was concerned about residents in facilities that serve predominantly people on Medicaid and people of color. “I think there are going to be real issues of equity here,” he said.

The gap between those who received the initial vaccinations and those who receive additional doses could continue to widen, said Brendan Williams, the chief executive of the New Hampshire Health Care Association, a state nursing home trade group. People appear more skeptical over the need for additional shots. “I worry there has been a lot of mixed messages from the federal government,” he said.

While many nursing homes say they will provide the additional doses to their staff and residents, there does not seem to be significant urgency, Dr. Grabowski said. In Connecticut, which this year had issued an executive order mandating booster shots for workers in nursing homes, state health officials were reported to have indicated a similar directive for second boosters was not imminent.

Mr. Williams remains cautious. “Right now, there doesn’t appear to be a crisis,” he said. “There’s not that attention being paid, but things can always change. It’s concerning.”
by: Reed Abelson

Note: Some U.S. states see new cases increase.

Across the United States, officials have dropped mask mandates and are closing mass vaccine and testing sites as new coronavirus cases have fallen nationally to about 27,000 a day on average. But several states — mostly in the Northeast — have had some increases in case numbers over the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database

Though their average number of new cases remains much lower than during the winter Omicron surge, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York have seen cases jump more than 40 percent over the latest 14-day period as of Saturday, according to the Times database.

Some other states have also had slight upticks in new cases over the past two weeks, including Delaware (17 percent), Florida (25 percent), Illinois (13 percent), New Hampshire (19 percent) and Wisconsin (11 percent), the Times database shows.

Coronavirus cases in the United States by region:
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...vid-cases.html
This chart shows how reported cases per capita have changed in different parts of the country. The state with the highest recent cases per capita is shown.

Those shifts come as the highly transmissible Omicron subvariant known as BA.2, which had led to cases increasing in Europe, became the dominant version of the coronavirus among new cases in the United States, according to federal estimates last week. BA.2 is similar to the form of Omicron that recently swept the United States over the winter.

“We are in a watch-and-see period, unfortunately, because so many states have removed mitigation, and so many people are fatigued by said mitigation,” Bertha Hidalgo, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said when asked recently about the current state of the pandemic in the United States.

Some U.S. health officials have said they expect case numbers to rise without a major surge caused by BA.2, though at-home test results are not always officially reported. Still, other scientists worry that the nation isn’t doing enough to prevent another possible surge.

“Cases are ticking up as we thought they might,” President Biden said last week as he called for Congress to approve stalled emergency aid, adding that “Americans are back to living their lives again. We can’t surrender that now.”

Dr. Hidalgo said that a new surge could potentially increase hospitalizations in some parts of the country, particularly in places where a majority of eligible people have not received a booster shot of a coronavirus vaccine. Federal health officials cleared second boosters for some people last week, and scientists have cautioned that future variants may be better able to sidestep our defenses.

“We cannot be cavalier about this virus,” Dr. Hidalgo said, adding, “We need mitigation, a push for vaccination and overall a preventive approach instead of a reactive approach to prevent additional cases this time.”

Vaccines continue to protect against the worst outcomes, but only about 60 percent of Americans over 65 have had a first booster shot, according to federal data. That leaves many people vulnerable, said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California, though the emergence of new treatments, such as an antibody drug for people with weakened immune systems, and antiviral pills, kept him optimistic. — Eduardo Medina

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#5. Carrie Lam, racked by Covid failures, won’t seek a new term to lead Hong Kong.

HONG KONG — Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong, announced on Monday that she would not seek a second term, after a huge surge in coronavirus infections left the global financial hub with one of the highest virus death rates in the world.

Mrs. Lam announced her plans at a news conference, citing family reasons.

“My family is my priority and they think it is time for me to go back home. That is my only consideration,” Mrs. Lam said, adding that she had already informed Beijing of her decision.

Mrs. Lam has been criticized by Hong Kong residents and pro-Beijing lawmakers for mixed messaging amid the city’s fifth outbreak, its biggest and most devastating since the beginning of the pandemic. Officials wavered on citywide mass testing, at one point indicating that the city might have to lock down residents, a prospect that triggered anxiety and panic buying.

As cases surged in February, Beijing stepped in, sending health workers, epidemiologists and technicians for testing. Hong Kong’s inability to get cases under control prompted warnings from China’s most senior leaders, including Xi Jinping. It also caused an exodus of the city’s expatriate community.

Mrs. Lam became chief executive in July 2017 after pledging her loyalty to Beijing and promising to foster a stronger sense of Chinese identity among young Hong Kong residents. But her five-year term was marked first by a deepening polarization of Hong Kong society, with broad demands among the young for more democracy and economic opportunities, and later by discontent over the way her government handled a coronavirus outbreak that ravaged the city’s world-class hospital system and further isolated Hong Kong from other countries.

A strong-willed chief executive, Mrs. Lam had previously become the target of huge street protests in 2019. Demonstrators demanded her resignation over an extradition bill that was met with strong opposition and protests that lasted months.

Mrs. Lam on Monday referred to these protests, as well as the coronavirus and “nonstop interference of foreign forces” during her time as leader of Hong Kong.

“I have faced unprecedented and enormous pressure,” she said.

After the 2019 protests, Beijing imposed a sweeping new national security law to silence opposition in Hong Kong. It also drastically revamped election rules, giving pro-Beijing lawmakers greater power to choose the city’s top leader and members of its legislature.

Hong Kong’s chief executive is determined every five years in a vote closely managed by Beijing and determined by an election committee made up of 1,500 officials who back the Communist Party. The election was to take place on March 27, but was postponed until May 8 amid Hong Kong’s Omicron surge.

Hong Kong’s last three chief executives since the former British colony was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 were forced to leave office before completing two five-year terms.

Mrs. Lam rose through the Hong Kong Civil Service, first under British rule and later under Beijing. She became known among her colleagues as a “good fighter” who defended policy stances and refused to back down from arguments. But over the past few months, as Hong Kong tried to hew to China’s zero-Covid policy, Mrs. Lam was criticized for sending mixed signals.

While facing increased criticism from the city’s business sector and expatriate community, Mrs. Lam doubled down on social distancing measures and an effort to make the city’s 7.4 million people test for the virus. Amid criticism from Beijing and local lawmakers, she later backed off from mass testing. Then, in late March, said the city would begin to lift a flight ban on nine countries and relax restrictions, after officials indicated the worst of the latest outbreak was likely over.

Hong Kong has reported nearly 1.2 million Covid-19 cases and 8,172 deaths, most of them tied to the most recent outbreak, and many of them among Hong Kong’s older and unvaccinated population. The city’s fatality rate from the virus was at one point among the highest in the world, at three per 100,000 residents, in large part because so many older Hong Kongers were not vaccinated.

Addressing rumors that Hong Kong’s number two official, John Lee, would be a favorite to replace her, Mrs. Lam said that she has yet to receive a resignation from any government officials.

She also said that she would focus on pandemic-related work until the end of her term on June 30. On Saturday, government officials issued a statement exempting candidates for chief executive from some social distancing bans while campaigning. Currently, no more than two households are allowed to gather indoors.

By: — Alexandra Stevenson and Tiffany May
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This ranking states that their Coverage of the Coronavirus Pandemic:

#1 - In the United States:

* Senators are nearing a deal to slash a stalled Covid-19 aid package to $10 billion from $15.6 billion, as they worked to break a logjam over the funds urgently requested by President Biden.

* Many states are closing mass testing and vaccination sites, but experts worry that a new uptick in cases driven by the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron is looming.

* The Biden administration plans to lift an emergency public health order that has restricted immigration at U.S. land borders since the beginning of the pandemic.

#2 - In China:

* In a rare move, Shanghai’s local government acknowledged that it was not “sufficiently prepared” for the Omicron surge. Officials in the city of 26 million have imposed a staggered lockdown that they said would allow them to conduct mass testing.

* A coronavirus outbreak at a hospital in Shanghai for older adults underscores the difficulties officials have had in containing infections.
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New Research:

* Scientists found that vaccines shielded adolescents from life-threatening Covid-19, but not less severe illness, during the Omicron surge.

* Ivermectin, a popular alternative treatment for Covid-19 despite a lack of strong research to back it up, showed no sign of alleviating the disease, according to a large clinical trial.

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Personal note: It looks like this virus hasnt' been whipped yet. The variences seem to be
more than they can handle. When the summer comes again I wonder if this will drive up
more variances and require additional actions?
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