While the delta variant of the coronavirus got off to a slower start in Washington compared to other states, it’s recently bullied its way to the front of the variant pack here, coinciding with what some public health officials are calling a “fifth wave” of COVID-19 infections.
Health officials on Friday released more research on the impact of the delta variant, announcing that vaccinated people who got so-called breakthrough infections carried about the same amount of the coronavirus as those who did not get the shots.
We’re updating this page with the latest news about the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the Seattle area, the U.S. and the world. Click here to see previous days’ live updates and all our other coronavirus coverage, and here to see how we track the daily spread across Washington and the world.
Bring in the kids: Estonian city targets youths for jabs
TARTU, Estonia (AP) — With her father in tow, 13-year-old Gloria Raudjarv marched through a vaccination center inside a sports hall in Estonia’s second-largest city and up to a nurse for her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
So far, around half of Tartu’s teenagers from 12 to 17 have already received their first vaccine shot, and local health officials are working to reach 70% by the time school resumes on Sept. 1.
“I really want to go to school already, we have been distance learning for so long,” she said, gripping her vaccination certificate.
Two months after the European Medicines Agency recommended that the coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech be expanded to children 12 to 15, large disparities in the access to vaccination are being seen for youths across Europe. Last week, the EU drug regulator also cleared the vaccine made by Moderna for the same age group.
While countries like Estonia, Denmark and France are actively encouraging families to vaccinate their children before the new school year begins, others such as Sweden and the United Kingdom have yet to begin mass vaccinations for those under 18.
The World Health Organization, meanwhile, has said that children are not a priority for vaccination given the extremely limited global supplies and the fact that they face a significantly lower risk of severe disease and death. It has urged rich countries to stop vaccinating children and donate their doses to the developing world instead.
But as the highly transmissible delta variant creates new infections even as vaccination rates rise among adults in Europe, there are fears that young people will now accelerate the spread of the virus.
Obstetrician groups recommend COVID vaccine during pregnancy
Two leading obstetricians’ groups on Friday recommended COVID-19 shots for all pregnant women, citing concerns over rising cases and low vaccination rates.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine said vaccinations in tens of thousands of pregnant women over the past several months have shown the shots are safe and effective during pregnancy.
COVID-19 during pregnancy increases risks for severe complications and can also increase chances for preterm birth. U.S. government data show only about 16% of pregnant women have received one or more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The two groups had previously said pregnant people shouldn’t be excluded from vaccination but stopped short of endorsing the shots.
The president of the OB-GYN group, Dr. Martin Tucker, said in a statement that doctors should enthusiastically recommend the shots to their patients.
Dr. Emily Miller, obstetrics chief at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said she hopes the new recommendation “will help pregnant people feel more confident in their decision to get the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible.”
Miller is a member of the maternal-fetal medicine group’s COVID-19 task force.
Pregnant women weren’t included in studies that led to emergency authorization of the vaccines. Experts including the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not discouraged vaccination during pregnancy and have said available safety information is reassuring.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
West African health officials race to vaccinate amid spikes
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — A resurgence of coronavirus cases in West Africa is hitting the region hard, inundating cemeteries where funeral numbers are rising and hospitals where beds are becoming scarce.
Those visible shifts are also pushing a reluctant population to seek out the vaccines in larger numbers at a time when shipments of doses are arriving from multiple sources after nearly grinding to a halt in recent months.
Thousands of new COVID-19 cases have been reported in the region in the past few weeks amid low vaccination rates and the spread of the delta variant, with some countries seeing their highest numbers since the pandemic began.
Residents who were previously wary of getting shots as conspiracy theories spread online are now lining up by the thousands from Liberia to Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal.
“At the beginning, there were people who gave false information, but when people noticed an increase of contaminations and deaths, people understood that only vaccination can save them,” said Bamba Fall, mayor of the Medina municipality in Senegal’s capital, Dakar.
Mask guidance divides parents heading into new school year
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — With U.S. health officials recommending that children mask up in school this fall, parents and policy makers across the nation have been plunged anew into a debate over whether face coverings should be optional or a mandate.
The delta variant of the coronavirus now threatens to upend normal instruction for a third consecutive school year. Some states have indicated they will probably heed the federal government’s guidance and require masks. Others will leave the decision up to parents.
The controversy is unfolding at a time when many Americans are at their wits’ end with pandemic restrictions and others fear their children will be put at risk by those who don’t take the virus seriously enough. In a handful of Republican-led states, lawmakers made it illegal for schools to require masks.
In Connecticut, anti-mask rallies have happened outside Gov. Ned Lamont’s official residence in Hartford, and lawn signs and bumper stickers call on him to “unmask our kids.” The Democrat has said that he’s likely to follow the latest advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC on Tuesday recommended indoor masks for all teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools nationwide, regardless of vaccination status. The agency cited the risk of spread of the highly contagious delta variant, even among vaccinated people.
Language schools, a link to home for Asian American families, struggled during the pandemic
To hear Liam Li tell it, getting his children to learn Chinese was hard.
“My eldest daughter was in a local Chinese school for eight years,” Li joked. “She didn’t remember a thing!”
A little harsh? Perhaps. But Li, like many immigrant parents in Seattle, is eager for his children to stay connected to their heritage language and culture from the other side of theworld.
For families like the Lis, Seattle’s language schools are a vital tether, teaching Chinese, Korean, Japanese and other languages to a diverse community of children of immigrants and first-time learners. But when COVID-19 closed traditional schools last year, their doors shut too.
Switching to online classes carried additional challenges for language schools that sustain not only linguistic skills, but culture and identity for students. Some aren’t sure when they’ll be able to return to normal.
Tenants prepare for unknown as eviction moratorium ends
BOSTON (AP) — Tenants saddled with months of back rent are facing the end of the federal eviction moratorium Saturday, a move that could lead to millions being forced from their homes just as the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus is rapidly spreading.
The Biden administration announced Thursday it would allow the nationwide ban to expire, saying it wanted to extend it due to rising infections but its hands were tied after the U.S. Supreme Court signaled in June that it wouldn’t be extended beyond the end of July without congressional action.
House lawmakers on Friday attempted, but failed, to pass a bill to extend the moratorium even for a few months. Some Democratic lawmakers had wanted it extended until the end of the year.
“August is going to be a rough month because a lot of people will be displaced from their homes,” said Jeffrey Hearne, director of litigation Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc. “It will be at numbers we haven’t seen before. There are a lot of people who are protected by the … moratorium.”
The moratorium, put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in September to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, is credited with keeping 2 million people in their homes over the past year as the pandemic battered the economy, according to the Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. Eviction moratoriums will remain in place in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, California and Washington, D.C., until they expire later this year.
In Washington state, when the coronavirus hit in spring 2020, Gov. Jay Inslee halted most evictions. Today, a “bridge” policy limits financial evictions but allows some others. In Seattle, a city moratorium remains in place through the end of September.
Elsewhere, the end of the federal moratorium means evictions could begin Monday, leading to a years’ worth of evictions over several weeks and ushering in the worst housing crisis since the Great Recession.
Most Washington state community colleges will require students to get COVID vaccines this fall
Three months after many of their four-year higher education counterparts announced COVID-19 vaccination requirements for the fall, most Washington state community and technical colleges are swiftly putting vaccine mandates in place.
More than 25 of the state’s 34 community and technical colleges will require vaccines come September, state officials said.
In a proclamation issued July 1, Gov. Jay Inslee encouraged institutions of higher education to have a “fully vaccinated population” in order to offer in-person classes and gatherings. Colleges that don’t institute mandates will have to follow a lengthy set of health and safety rules.
Although the proclamation identifies schools with vaccine mandates as “fully vaccinated,” students, faculty and staff may still opt out by claiming a medical, religious or philosophical reason for not getting the vaccine.
Washington has 34 community and technical colleges, which served about 180,000 students during the winter quarter of 2020-21. About 70% of students who were enrolled in the winter quarter attended schools that now mandate vaccines.
This COVID sequel is maddening. Time to flip the script and up the pressure on the unvaccinated.
Here we go again.
Masks are supposed to go back on. Some businesses are being forced to close. Hospitals, at least in some parts of the state, have begun to warn about jammed emergency rooms.
“It’s déjà vu all over again,” said Reza Kaleel, a hospital executive in the Tri-Cities — right now the state’s hottest COVID hot spot. A delta variant outbreak there has caused a disheartening “fifth wave,” filling the local ICU this past week to the point that patients had to be medevaced out of town.
“The hardest thing for us to see, as health professionals, is that this is entirely preventable,” Kaleel said.
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