One hospital in rural Washington state is still dealing with a surge of patients, with 15 of its 20 intensive-care unit beds being occupied by Covid patients. The hospital has had to delay more than two dozen heart surgeries because of its shortage of ICU beds.
Experts are hoping that hospitalizations and deaths will decrease as the surge in cases due to the Delta variant seems to be decreasing and vaccine mandates are starting to roll out.
“Reaching 700,000 deaths is a tragic and completely avoidable milestone. We had the knowledge and the tools to prevent this from happening, and unfortunately politics, lack of urgency and mistrust in science got us here,” John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston children’s hospital, tol...
Public health experts attribute the slowed death rate to the effectiveness of the vaccine but say that the milestone could have been avoided altogether with a higher vaccination rate.
With a slight majority of the population fully vaccinated, the Covid death rate has significantly decreased compared with the death rate during previous surges of the virus, when the vaccine was unavailable. Following the surge in cases seen last winter, 100,000 people died in a 34-day period b...
Recent deaths have primarily been in southern states that have lagging vaccine rates, including Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. Nationally, about 65% of people 12 and older who are eligible to receive the vaccine have been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
Over the last few months, the overwhelming majority of people who died from Covid were unvaccinated. A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published last month found that after the Delta variant became the most common variant in the US over the summer, unvaccinated A...
Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the US went just past 700,000 deaths on Friday; the US had previously reached 600,000 deaths in June. The country has had a total of 43.6m confirmed cases of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins.
Joe Biden laments ‘astonishing death toll’ as 100,000 die since June despite the availability of vaccines
He said: “Expect anything from one, two or even 3p a litre increases at the pump. This is not profiteering. This is genuine wholesale price increases caused by global factors.”
“We do need a prioritisation of deliveries to filling stations – particularly the independent ones, which are the neighbourhood retail sites – in London and the south-east, starting immediately.”
Madderson added that while he welcomed this move he believed it would have a limited impact. “This isn’t going to be the major panacea,” he said. “It’s a large help but in terms of the volume, they are not going to be able to carry that much.
The government and retailers say there is enough fuel at UK refineries, but a shortage of drivers has slowed down the transport of it to some petrol stations.
Madderson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme of the fuel problems: “In London and the south-east and possibly parts of eastern England, if anything it had got worse.”
Fuel shortages are getting worse in some parts of the country, in particular London and the south-east, the chairman of the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA) has said.
The specific policies that led to our supply constrained world are lax antitrust, deregulation of basic infrastructure industries like shipping, railroads and trucking, disinvestment in domestic production, and trade policy emphasizing finance over manufacturing.