HomeWorld News UpdatesCoronavirus daily news updates, July 6: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world – The Seattle Times
Coronavirus daily news updates, July 6: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world – The Seattle Times
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed 74% of people who haven’t been vaccinated say they probably or definitely won’t get vaccinated — and that the divide fell sharply along party lines. According to the survey, 86% of Democrats have received at least one vaccine shot compared with 45% of Republicans. Only 6% of Democrats said they are not likely to get vaccinated, compared with 47% of Republicans, including 38% of Republicans who said they definitely will not get the vaccine.
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.
Malaysians suffering amid lockdown fly white flag for help
When Mohamad Nor Abdullah put a white flag outside his window late at night, he didn’t expect the swift outpouring of support. By morning, dozens of strangers knocked on his door, offering food, cash and encouragement.
Malaysia’s nationwide lockdown to curb a coronavirus surge was tightened further on Saturday, banning people in certain areas from leaving their homes except to buy food and necessities.
It lurched Mohamad Nor into desperation. He ekes out a living by selling packed nasi lemak, a popular dish of coconut milk rice with condiments, at a roadside stall every morning, but that income has vanished and government aid was insufficient.
The white flag campaign that emerged on social media last week aims to help people like Mohamad Nor, who is 29 and was born without arms. By chance, he saw the campaign on Facebook and decided to try to seek help.
“It was so unexpected. So many people reached out to help, support and also encouraged me,” Mohamad Nor said, sitting in his dingy room amid boxes of biscuits, rice, cooking oil and water that were swiftly donated to him. He said kind Samaritans offered to help pay his room rental and that the assistance should be enough to tide him through the next few months.
The #benderaputih campaign began as Malaysian society’s response to rising suicides believed linked to economic hardships caused by the pandemic. Police reported 468 suicides in the first five months this year, an average of four a day and up sharply from 631 for the whole of 2020.
Luxembourg PM in ‘serious but stable’ condition with virus
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel is in a “serious but stable” condition and will remain in the hospital for several more days after he was unable to shake a bout of COVID-19 that developed over a week ago, the government said.
In a statement, it added that the running of state affairs will be taken over by Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna in the meantime, even if Bettel still coordinates some work remotely.
Bettel, 48, was diagnosed with insufficient oxygen saturation, forcing him to remain under medical observation since the weekend. He was also suffering from other coronavirus symptoms including coughing, headaches and a fever.
Since he self-isolated last week, Bettel has continued to work remotely and through video conferences. He was taken in for 24 hours of testing and medical analysis on Sunday and those tests continued Monday afternoon.
‘Don’t sacrifice your life to visit the Taj Mahal’: India reopens but fear pervades
While the Taj Mahal partially reopened in mid-June — with strict limits on the number of visitors — Sumit Chaurasia’s life, like much of India, remains in limbo: no longer totally shut down, but far from fully normal or safe.
“The corona is still with us,” said Chaurasia, who has made his living giving tours on his boat to tourists, pointing out the flames licking the riverbank from a crematory next to the monument. This spring, Agra, like India’s capital, New Delhi, ran out of space to cremate its dead, with thousands a day dying from COVID as India experienced one of the world’s most catastrophic encounters with the disease.
The crowds that usually throng the Taj at sunset have been reduced to a handful of mostly local residents, roaming around the 25-acre complex for just over $3 a ticket.
This near-emptiness makes Chaurasia cry, but he prefers it to the alternative despite the hardships it imposes on him and the family he supports: elderly parents, a wife and two young daughters.
“Don’t sacrifice your life to visit the Taj Mahal,” he said as the boat gently bobbed on the holy Yamuna while monarch butterflies fluttered and pelicans soared over the trash-clogged shores.
99% of U.S. COVID deaths are unvaccinated people, Fauci says
WASHINGTON — America’s top infectious disease expert says about 99.2% of recent COVID-19 deaths in the United States involved unvaccinated people. And Dr. Anthony Fauci says “it’s really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable.”
He tells NBC’s “Meet the Press” it’s frustrating “where you have a formidable enemy” in the coronavirus and “yet we do have a countermeasure that’s highly, highly effective. And that’s the reason why it’s all the more sad and all the more tragic why it isn’t being completely implemented in this country.”
Fauci cites the reasons for opposition to the vaccine by some Americans, whether it’s “ideological” or whether some “are just fundamentally anti-vax or anti-science.”
He says the country does “have the tools to counter” the pandemic and he’s asking people to “put aside all of those differences and realize that the common enemy is the virus.”
Fauci notes the United States is “very fortunate” that it has “enough vaccines to vaccinate essentially everybody in the country. And there are people throughout the world who would do anything to get vaccines.”
The United States has registered over 605,000 deaths in the pandemic, the highest national toll in the world.
Unending grief of COVID-19 deaths causing problems for some
With more than 605,000 dead of COVID-19 in the United States and nearly 4 million worldwide, there are thousands or more who could be experiencing prolonged grief, the kind of mourning that experts say can prevent people from moving beyond a death and functioning normally again.
“It’s the most horrible thing to have to go through,” said Kelly Brown who lost bot parents just a week apart last August, sending her into a black tunnel of grief that doesn’t seem to have an end. “I would not wish this upon anyone.”
Natalia Skritskaya, an expert on grieving, said it’s too early to say whether prolonged grieving, also known as complicated grief, will be a major complication from the pandemic — it isn’t yet over, with thousands still dying daily worldwide, including hundreds in the United States. Many mourners have yet to pass the one-year anniversary of a loss, and few studies have been published so far on the psychiatric fallout, she said.
But prolonged grief is both real and potentially debilitating, said Skritskaya, a research scientist and clinical psychologist with the Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia University in New York.
As Tokyo Olympics approach, virus worries rise in Japan
The pressure of hosting an Olympics during a still-active pandemic is beginning to show in Japan.
The games begin July 23, with organizers determined they will go on, even with a reduced number of spectators or possibly none at all. While Japan has made remarkable progress to vaccinate its population against COVID-19, the drive is losing steam because of supply shortages.
With tens of thousands of visitors coming to a country that is only 13.8% fully vaccinated, gaps in border controls have emerged, highlighted by the discovery of infections among the newly arrived team from Uganda, with positive tests for the highly contagious delta variant.
As cases grow in Tokyo, so have fears that the games will spread the virus.
Israel to ship 700K Pfizer doses to South Korea in swap deal
Israel is sending 700,000 coronavirus vaccine doses to South Korea in exchange for a future shipment of vaccines from South Korea to Israel.
Under the deal, Israel will transfer the Pfizer vaccines to South Korea in an effort to inoculate more of the Asian nation’s citizens this month. South Korea will send the same number of doses to Israel as early as September, the officials added.
“This is a win-win deal,” Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in his statement. The agreement will “reduce the holes” in the vaccine’s availability.
Jung Eun-kyeong, South Korea’s top infectious disease expert, confirmed the deal. She said the Seoul government will continue to pursue swap deals with other countries.
Japan to ship another 1.1M AstraZeneca doses to Taiwan
Japan is set to send another 1.1 million donated AstraZeneca doses to Taiwan this week to help the self-governing island fight its worst COVID-19 outbreak amid a struggle to get vaccines.
Taiwan, which had only a handful of deaths before the latest outbreak, has seen its death toll spike to more than 700. The number of daily new cases has eased, with authorities reporting 29 on Tuesday and 17 more deaths.
Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Tuesday the AstraZeneca vaccine is set for shipment on Thursday — Japan’s second shipment to Taiwan a month after it donated 1.24 million AstraZeneca doses.
Pandemic wave of automation may be bad news for workers
When Kroger customers in Cincinnati shop online these days, their groceries may be selected by a robot in a nearby warehouse.
An increase in automation may prove to be an economic legacy of the pandemic. “Once a job is automated, it’s pretty hard to turn back,” said Casey Warman, an economist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
A working paper published by the International Monetary Fund this year predicted that pandemic-induced automation would increase inequality in coming years, not just in the United States but around the world.
“Six months ago, all these workers were essential,” said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing grocery workers. “Everyone was calling them heroes. Now, they’re trying to figure out how to get rid of them.”
They didn’t expect to retire early. The pandemic changed their plans
Millions of Americans have decided to retire since the pandemic began, part of a surge in early exits from the workforce. The trend has broad implications for the labor market and is a sign of how the pandemic has transformed the economic landscape.
For a fortunate few, the decision was made possible by 401(k) accounts bulging from record stock values. That wealth, along with a surge in home values, has offered some the financial security to stop working well before Social Security and private pensions kick in.
But most of the early retirements are occurring among lower-income workers who were displaced by the pandemic and see little route back into the job market
“They might call themselves retired, but basically they are unemployed and in a precarious state,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economics and policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Economic downturns typically induce more people to leave the workforce, but there has been a faster wave of departures this time than during the 2008-09 recession, she said.
Not everyone can move on from pandemic despair. In Washington, this is an especially strange time for people who lost loved ones during the pandemic, whether the cause was COVID-19 or not. It is a time of dissonance with an atmosphere of celebration — and also a time when many are finally able to grieve together as restrictions on gatherings ease.
The Tokyo Olympics are shaping upas a TV-only event, with few fans in the seats, as COVID-19 cases surge.
Restrictions on travel between Canada and the U.S.began to loosen Monday, and new steps to completely reopen the border are expected soon.
As cases ease, epidemiologists are recommending that you still keep one useful thing in your cabinet, whether you’re vaccinated or not: a home COVID-19 test.
No comments:
Post a Comment