Tag: updates

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Johnny Depp v Amber Heard trial live: breaking news and updates, Kate Moss testimony today, 25 May

Johnny Depp v Amber Heard trial live: breaking news and updates, Kate Moss testimony today, 25 May

Depp vs Heard: some of the crucial details early in the trial

If you are only just coming to the Depp-Read situation now, below is a range of some of the key points from before in the demo that will enable get you up to speed:

— Depp testified that he never ever strike Read or any other woman. He stated she was the 1 who became abusive and “bullied” him with “demeaning identify contacting.” “It appeared like pure hatred for me,” Depp claimed. “If I stayed to argue, eventually, I was confident it was heading to escalate into violence, and in many cases it did.”

— During an argument in Australia in early 2015, Depp claimed Listened to threw a vodka bottle that severed the leading of his ideal center finger. The actor mentioned he went into shock and wrote messages to Read on the wall employing blood from the finger. Heard presented a diverse account, sobbing as she informed the jury that Depp sexually assaulted her that evening by inserting a liquor bottle in her vagina. “I was worried,” she said. “I had just married him.”

— A few months later, Read stated, Depp broke her nose and ripped out chunks of her hair through yet another violent come upon.

— Heard’s attorneys launched shots that they explained showed injuries following numerous arguments, together with scars on her arm that have been seen as she posed on a purple carpet, and redness and inflammation about an eye that she explained was struck by a mobile phone thrown by Depp. Lawyers for Depp showed visuals from community appearances that they reported ended up taken about the time of their fights and appeared to show no injuries.

— Depp testified that feces had been observed in the couple’s bed in 2016. 1 of his stability guards reported Heard explained to him it was “a terrible realistic joke long gone erroneous.” Read denied any involvement and instructed just one of the couple’s puppies was responsible.

— Listened to reported Depp to start with became bodily abusive when he slapped her following she laughed at a tattoo that claimed “Wino Eternally.” The tattoo formerly explained “Winona Endlessly,” referring to Depp’s previous girlfriend, Winona Ryder.

— Jurors heard an audio clip of Depp threatening to slice himself with a knife through one particular of their very last in-individual encounters. “That’s psychologically, emotionally wherever I was,” Depp claimed. “At the stop, I was damaged … I imagined the only remedy is below, just take my blood, that is all I’ve acquired still left.”

— Heard’s attorneys launched textual content messages in which Depp termed Heard a “filthy whore” and said he preferred her dead. Writing to actor Paul Bettany in 2013, Depp mentioned: “Let us drown her in advance of we burn her” and “I will fuck her burnt corpse afterward to make guaranteed she is useless.”

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Coronavirus daily news updates, May 18: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world

Coronavirus daily news updates, May 18: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world

Editor’s note: This is a live account of COVID-19 updates from Wednesday, May 18, as the day unfolded. It is no longer being updated. Click here to see all the most recent news about the pandemic, and click here to find additional resources.

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday cleared a booster shot for children ages 5 to 11. The authorization comes as COVID-19 infections rise in the U.S. Officials hope the extra dose will enhance children’s protection against the virus.

Meanwhile, immunocompromised individuals are finding it difficult to navigate the latest wave of the pandemic as officials move to drop safety measures despite increasing hospitalization rates in several U.S. cities.

King County will close three testing sites as federal funding wanes, citing low demand and an increasing availability of PCR and at-home tests.

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 the rest of our coronavirus coverage and here to see how we track the daily spread across Washington.

Navigating the pandemic


US health secretary tests positive for COVID on Germany trip

President Joe Biden’s top health official tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, the latest member of his Cabinet to be infected with the virus.

U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra tested positive while visiting Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said. Becerra, who is fully vaccinated and boosted, was experiencing mild symptoms.

HHS spokeswoman Sarah Lovenheim said he will continue to work in isolation in Berlin.

Becerra was last at the White House last Thursday. He is not considered a close contact of Biden.

Read the full story here.

—Tom Murphy and Frank Jordans, The Associated Press


Apple delays and modifies its return to office plans

Apple, in a blow to its efforts to restore normalcy to its operations, has suspended its requirement that employees return to the office this month because of a resurgence of COVID-19 cases.

The reversal was welcome news for thousands of employees who pushed back against the company’s demand that they begin coming to the office for at least three days a week starting in late May. Early this month, the group, which calls itself “Apple Together,” published a letter calling on the executive team to allow for a hybrid and flexible work schedule, saying they could collaborate remotely using online tools such as Slack and spare themselves hours of commuting.

One of Apple’s leading artificial intelligence engineers, Ian Goodfellow, resigned in early May because of the office-return policy. Goodfellow did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

Apple said in a note to employees Tuesday that it would proceed with a pilot program to bring some workers back to the office twice a week in the weeks ahead. It said anyone in that program who felt “uncomfortable coming into the office” would have the “option to work remotely.”

The company also asked that employees who do come to campus wear masks in common areas and elevators. It said it would continue to monitor COVID cases and provide employees with updates at least two weeks before any future changes to its office policy.

Read the story here.

—Tripp Mickle The New York Times


Insiders bemoan culture, data gaps that limit CDC in crises

An internal review by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has uncovered deep concerns among current and former employees and other federal health officials about its urgency, responsiveness and culture, according to interviews with more than half a dozen people involved in the process.

Findings from the review announced last month, some of which could be released in coming weeks, may give CDC Director Rochelle Walensky momentum to usher in change at an agency that’s been criticized by members of Congress, prominent health experts and local public officials for not having the tools and culture needed to respond effectively to a pandemic that’s resulted in one million American deaths.

One part of the review meant to look at how the agency performed during COVID-19 is being led by longtime Health and Human Services Department official James Macrae, who for the last month has interviewed people who work at or alongside the Atlanta-based CDC. Other aspects of the review are scrutinizing the agency’s wider operations and capabilities.

Bloomberg spoke to more than half a dozen people who have met with Macrae, both from inside the CDC and from other parts of government that work with the agency. Many raised longstanding frustrations with how the health agency operates. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because the work is ongoing.

Read the full story here.

—Drew Armstrong and Riley Griffin, Bloomberg


LA is doing much better than New York with new coronavirus wave. Can it last?

Los Angeles County is doing significantly better than New York City so far in this latest spring wave of omicron cases, and officials remain hopeful that California can avoid the significant increases in coronavirus hospitalizations seen on the East Coast.

The New York City health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, said Tuesday that the city was entering a high COVID-19 alert level, warning that there is high community spread of the coronavirus and “pressure on the health care system is increasing.” He reiterated a call to wear masks in indoor settings and also urged seniors or others at high risk of severe COVID-19 to wear a mask in crowded outdoor settings and to avoid gatherings.

By contrast, L.A. County is poised to enter the medium COVID-19 community level this week, and “COVID-19 is not currently straining our health care system and our health care resources,” L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Tuesday.

Ferrer has urged residents to wear high-quality masks — like KF94, KN95 and N95 respirators — while indoors, get vaccinated and boosted, get tested when feeling sick or potentially exposed to the coronavirus, and opt to gather in well-ventilated areas, with outdoors offering the lowest risk.

But Ferrer added that she is optimistic that L.A. could potentially avoid reaching a high COVID-19 community level, which would prompt the Department of Public Health to require universal masking in indoor public settings.

Read the story here.

—Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times


Detainees at Northwest immigration detention center on hunger strike over COVID concerns

Nine people detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma have joined in a hunger strike to protest what they say are unclean conditions in the detention center amid worries about COVID spread, according to an advocacy organization that’s been in touch with the protesters.

The strike began Friday, according to the group La Resistencia, at the fenced facility that is among the largest immigration detention centers in the U.S. The center has capacity for about 1,500 people held as they go through immigration-status proceedings.

The detention center is operated by the for-profit GEO Group in partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The hunger strikers have asked for better cleaning of the facility and units, more nutritious food, better access to medical services and jobs that pay a minimum wage.

Read the full story here.

—Paige Cornwell


Officials say more areas of US may see mask recommendations

COVID-19 cases are increasing in the United States – and could get even worse over the coming months, federal health officials warned Wednesday in urging areas hardest hit to consider reissuing calls for indoor masking.

Increasing numbers of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are putting more of the country under guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that call for masking and other infection precautions.

Right now, the increases are concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest. “(But) prior increases of infections, in different waves of infection, have demonstrated that this travels across the country,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said at a White House briefing with reporters.

For an increasing number of areas, “we urge local leaders to encourage use of prevention strategies like masks in public indoor settings and increasing access to testing and treatment,” she said.

However, officials were cautious about making concrete predictions, saying how much worse the pandemic gets will depend on several factors, including to what degree previous infections will protect against new variants.

Read the story here.

—Mike Stobbe and Zeke Miller, The Associated Press


Coronavirus vaccine could have saved 319,000 people in U.S., study says

About a third of the 1 million lives lost to COVID-19 could have been saved with vaccines, a new analysis shows.

Researchers at the Brown School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Microsoft AI for Health analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The New York Times and came up with not only 319,000 needless deaths but also a state-by-state breakdown of where they could have been prevented.

Between January 2021 and April 2022, about every second person who died from COVID-19 since vaccines became available might have lived if they had gotten the shots, the researchers found. Nationwide, about half of the 641,000 people who have died since vaccines became available could have lived if every single eligible adult had gotten jabbed.

“At a time when many in the U.S. have given up on vaccinations, these numbers are a stark reminder of the effectiveness of vaccines in fighting this pandemic,” said Stefanie Friedhoff, associate professor of the practice in Health Services, Policy and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health, and a co-author of the analysis, in a statement. “We must continue to invest in getting more Americans vaccinated and boosted to save more lives.”

They created a dashboard showing the number of vaccine-preventable deaths per 1 million residents in each state and in the U.S. as a whole. Then they created an “alternative scenario” positing what it would look like if the vaccination pace had been sustained at its highest point last spring and stayed aloft long enough for 85{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}, 90{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} or even 100{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of the adult population to get jabbed.

Read the story here.

—Theresa Braine, New York Daily News


Traveling this summer? CDC recommends everyone test for COVID-19 in days before flying

If you are traveling internationally or within the U.S. this summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends you test for COVID-19 in the days before flying.

The agency’s recommendation for all travelers regardless of vaccination status came in an update to its COVID-19 testing website on May 16.

“Consider getting tested as close to the time of departure as possible (no more than 3 days) before your trip” when heading to any destination, the CDC said.

Before the update, the CDC’s recommendation did not include domestic travelers considered up-to-date on their vaccines, according to CNN.

The agency still recommends wearing masks when using public transportation, but doing so is no longer enforced as of April 18.

Read the story here.

—Julia Marnin, McClatchy Washington Bureau


More than 75{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of nation’s long COVID patients hadn’t been hospitalized for initial illness

It is the most succinct and dispassionate name for long COVID: U09.9 — a medical diagnostic code created last year to allow doctors to document post-COVID conditions.

Now a large new study has analyzed data from the first few months after the code took effect, and the results paint a sobering picture of long COVID’s serious and ongoing impact on people’s health and the U.S. health care system.

The analysis, based on what the report calls the largest database of private health insurance claims in the United States, found 78,252 patients who were diagnosed with the U09.9 code from the International Classification of Diseases between Oct. 1, 2021, and Jan. 31, 2022, and the vast majority of them had not been hospitalized for their initial infection.

Dr. Claire Steves, a clinical academic and physician at King’s College London, who was not involved in the new research, said the overall number of people who received the diagnosis was “huge,” especially given that the study covered only the first four months after the diagnostic code was introduced and did not include people covered by government health programs like Medicaid or Medicare (though it did include people in private Medicare Advantage plans). “That’s probably a drop in the ocean compared to what the real number is,” Steves said.

The study, conducted by FAIR Health, a nonprofit organization that focuses on health care costs and insurance issues, found that for 76{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of the patients, the initial coronavirus infection did not make them sick enough to require hospitalization. Yet months later, they were experiencing symptoms that were diagnosed as post-COVID conditions, including breathing problems, coughing, fatigue and hypertension.

Read the story here.

—Pam Belluck, The New York Times


Eric Clapton cancels shows after testing positive for COVID

Eric Clapton, a critic of coronavirus vaccines and pandemic restrictions, has tested positive for COVID-19 and canceled two upcoming European gigs.

Clapton’s upcoming shows in Zurich on Tuesday and Milan on Wednesday will be rescheduled, he announced on his Facebook page and official online site. The 77-year-old rocker tested positive following his concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall on May 8.

“It is very frustrating that having avoided COVID throughout lockdown and throughout the period when travel restrictions have been in place Eric should have succumbed to COVID at this point in time,” his Facebook page and official online site announced.

Read the story here.

—The Associated Press


Germany OKs more COVID-19 vaccine spending for this fall

Germany plans to spend another 830 million euros ($872 million) to buy new coronavirus vaccines that will allow the country to deal with a series of possible variants this fall, the health minister said Wednesday.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said that the government, via the European Union, already has ordered enough of the existing vaccines and of one that has been developed by Germany’s BioNTech to counter the omicron variant. He said the new funding is earmarked for a vaccine being developed by Moderna to tackle both omicron and other variants.

“We are betting on a broad portfolio of vaccines; we must be prepared for all eventualities,” Lauterbach said. “We don’t know what variants will confront us in the fall.”

“One lesson from the pandemic is that we never again want to have too little vaccine,” he added, alluding to the sluggish start early last year of the EU’s and Germany’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign. “We want to be able to offer all those who need or want it a fourth shot.”

The minister left open, however, whether a fourth vaccine shot will be recommended for everyone, saying that will depend on what variant comes later this year.

Read the story here.

—The Associated Press


N. Korea reports another jump in suspected COVID cases

North Korea on Wednesday added hundreds of thousands of infections to its growing pandemic caseload but also said that a million people have already recovered from suspected COVID-19 just a week after disclosing an outbreak, a public health crisis it appears to be trying to manage in isolation as global experts express deep concern about dire consequences.

The country’s anti-virus headquarters announced 232,880 new cases of fever and another six deaths in state media Wednesday. Those figures raise its totals to 62 deaths and more than 1.7 million fever cases since late April. It said more than a million people recovered but at least 691,170 remain in quarantine.

Outside experts believe most of the fevers are from COVID-19 but North Korea lacks tests to confirm so many. The outbreak is almost certainly larger than the fever tally, since some virus carriers may not develop fevers or other symptoms.

Read the story here.

—Kim Tong-Hyung, The Associated Press


Seattle Times staff & news services

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Live: Coronavirus daily news updates, May 16: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world

Live: Coronavirus daily news updates, May 16: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world

U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, has tested positive for COVID-19 and is planning to isolate until she tests negative, her office said Sunday. The U.S. has reached another grim milestone in the pandemic, with one million lives lost to the virus.

As North Korea struggles to contain its first reported COVID-19 outbreak, leader Kim Jong Un on Monday blasted his country’s response.

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 the rest of our coronavirus coverage and here to see how we track the daily spread across Washington.

Navigating the pandemic


It’s not just elderly still dying from COVID in Tri-Cities, weekly death report shows

Three more residents of the Tri-Cities area have died from complications of COVID-19, and it is not only the elderly who are dying.

The deaths announced this week by the Benton Franklin Health District were of two men in their 40s and a man in his 50s.

They come as the death toll from COVID in the nation reaches 1 million people.

The latest Tri-Cities deaths were despite low rates of confirmed disease in Benton and Franklin counties and low numbers of hospital patients with COVID.

Although numbers are low, they have increased over the past month.

Read the full story here.

—Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald


Shanghai says lockdown to ease as virus spread mostly ends

Most of Shanghai has stopped the spread of the coronavirus in the community and fewer than 1 million people remain under strict lockdown, authorities said Monday, as the city moves toward reopening and economic data showed the gloomy impact of China’s “zero-COVID” policy.

Vice Mayor Zong Ming said 15 out of Shanghai’s 16 districts had eliminated virus transmission among those not already in quarantine.

“The epidemic in our city is under effective control. Prevention measures have achieved incremental success,” Zong said at a news briefing.

Supermarkets, malls and restaurants were allowed to reopen Monday with limits on the numbers of people and mandated “no contact” transactions. But most of the city’s 25 million people remain under some form of restriction, movement around the city is highly limited and the subway train system remains closed for now.

Read the story here.

—The Associated Press


How often can you be infected with the coronavirus?

A virus that shows no signs of disappearing, variants that are adept at dodging the body’s defenses and waves of infections two, maybe three times a year — this may be the future of COVID-19, some scientists now fear.

The central problem is that the coronavirus has become more adept at reinfecting people. Already, those infected with the first omicron variant are reporting second infections with the newer versions of the variant — BA.2 or BA2.12.1 in the United States, or BA.4 and BA.5 in South Africa.

Those people may go on to have third or fourth infections, even within this year, researchers said in interviews. And some small fraction may have symptoms that persist for months or years, a condition known as long COVID.

“It seems likely to me that that’s going to sort of be a long-term pattern,” said Juliet Pulliam, an epidemiologist at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

“The virus is going to keep evolving,” she added. “And there are probably going to be a lot of people getting many, many reinfections throughout their lives.”

Read the story here.

—Apoorva Mandavilli, The New York Times


The pandemic was hard on office suck-ups. Now they’re back and ready to schmooze

Daniel Distant didn’t register it right away. All the software engineer knew was that three or four times a day, a director or senior engineer would walk outside, and “the next thing you know, no one’s at their desks,” he says. “I’m like, ‘What’s going on here?’”

He started to notice that he was out of the loop on team-project developments and that assignments and promotions were going to people who disappeared every few hours while he stayed at his station plugging away. Then it dawned on him.

“Folks would go outside and smoke cigarettes, and they would have these talks that were high-level — what directions projects were taking, who would be entitled to what kind of work,” explains Distant. “Some things are more fun to work on; others are more challenging or might look better on your résumé. I noticed more and more that those positions were going to the folks who were outside smoking with the directors.”

He’s talking, of course, about the office suck-ups — the employees who succeed at business without really working.

In a just world, the shift to remote work over the last two years would reward productivity and expose the slackers. But as corporations have been returning to business as usual, guess who can’t wait to get back to the office? Suck-ups, the co-workers we love to hate.

For millions of employees, 2022 means a return of the commute, the cubicle — and the suck-up.

Read the story here.

—Roxanne Roberts and Ashley Fetters Maloy, The Washington Post


Where WA long-term care facilities stand, 2 years into COVID and amid a ‘whole new crisis’

Inside a Bellingham nursing home, life feels a bit closer to normal compared to the past two years, even as workers at the 122-bed facility still feel like they’re in crisis mode.

North Cascades Health and Rehabilitation Center is no longer on lockdown, so visitors can come inside and see their loved ones. Residents having a hard night can stay in the nurses station and do arts and crafts. There’s weekly coronavirus testing, and workers only have to wear surgical masks.

But there is still a frantic energy in the building, said Shelly Hughes, a certified nursing assistant. She wonders: What if there’s another COVID-19 outbreak, like the brutal one they experienced this winter? With turnover so high, will there be enough staff for the week? What’s going to happen tomorrow?

“The level of frustration is high, in workers and residents,” Hughes said. “We feel like we are past the pandemic in a lot of ways, but we have this whole new crisis.”

Few environments in Washington witnessed the devastation of the pandemic quite as severely as the state’s 4,760 long-term care facilities.

Washington’s nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and adult family homes account for 30{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of all COVID deaths over two years, but just 3{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of total cases, according to the Washington State Department of Health. Because of visitor restrictions, even residents who survived the virus were still susceptible to the mental and physical effects of isolation. Workers experienced high rates of burnout amid low pay and an ongoing threat of illness.

Read the story here.

—Paige Cornwell


Meatpackers misled public and influenced Trump administration during COVID-19, report says

The country’s largest meatpackers successfully lobbied the Trump administration in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic to keep processing plants open despite knowing the health risks to their workers, according to a congressional report released Thursday.

The report, prepared by a select House committee, describes the extent of the meat industry’s influence on the administration’s response to the pandemic: Companies stoked “baseless” fears of an imminent meat shortage in an effort to prevent plant closures. The legal department of Tyson Foods drafted the initial version of an executive order that President Donald Trump issued in April 2020 declaring processing plants “critical infrastructure.” And industry concerns prompted the government to adjust its federal recommendations on worker safety at a meatpacking plant.

Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., chair of the committee, said the findings underlined the companies’ interest in prioritizing production over the health of their workers.

“The shameful conduct of corporate executives pursuing profit at any cost during a crisis and government officials eager to do their bidding regardless of resulting harm to the public must never be repeated,” he said in a statement.

Read the full story here.

—Linda Qiu, The New York Times


‘Another unequal burden’: working with long COVID-19

After graduating in the spring of 2020, Clare Banaszewski landed her dream job as a nurse practitioner in a maternity ward at a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.

That winter, Banaszewski, 24, contracted the coronavirus. It was a mild case, and she bounced back after two weeks. But it wasn’t long before she started feeling new symptoms: She was overcome with fatigue, struggling to make it through her 12-hour shifts, which used to fly by. She felt heart palpitations, suffered from cognitive problems and had severe headaches — telltale symptoms of a condition known as “long COVID.”

She took three months of medical leave and started back with shortened, six-hour shifts. Even those were too much. Her manager was understanding, but she eventually told Banaszewski that the hospital would need to hire a replacement. Banaszewski resigned six months ago. She has been unemployed since.

“It’s scary,” she said. “I have a lot of student loans I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to pay off. I don’t really have much to fall back on.”

Banaszewski is one of at least 7 million people in the United States, by one estimate, who are unable to work full time or who have had to scale back their work because of long COVID-19, which is defined as when COVID symptoms persist weeks, months or even years after the initial onset of an infection.

Read the full story here.

—Jenny Gross, The New York Times


US deaths from COVID hit 1 million, less than 2 1/2 years in

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 1 million on Monday, a once-unimaginable figure that only hints at the multitudes of loved ones and friends staggered by grief and frustration.

The confirmed number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal to how many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II combined. It’s as if Boston and Pittsburgh were wiped out.

“It is hard to imagine a million people plucked from this earth,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, who leads a new pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island. “It’s still happening and we are letting it happen.”

Some of those left behind say they cannot return to normal. They replay their loved ones’ voicemail messages. Or watch old videos to see them dance. When other people say they are done with the virus, they bristle with anger or ache in silence.

“’Normal.’ I hate that word,” said Julie Wallace, 55, of Elyria, Ohio, who lost her husband to COVID-19 in 2020. “All of us never get to go back to normal.”

Read the story here.

—Carla K. Johnson, The Associated Press


South Africa in new surge of COVID from versions of omicron

South Africa is experiencing a surge of new COVID-19 cases driven by two omicron sub-variants, according to health experts.

For about three weeks the country has seen increasing numbers of new cases and somewhat higher hospitalizations, but not increases in severe cases and deaths, said Professor Marta Nunes, a researcher at Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Analytics at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.

South Africa’s new cases have gone from an average of 300 per day in early April to about 8,000 per day this week. Nunes says the actual number of new cases is probably much higher because the symptoms are mild and many who get sick are not getting tested.

Read the full story here.

—Andrew Meldrum, The Associated Press


Kim blasts pandemic response as North Korean outbreak surges

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un criticized officials over slow medicine deliveries and mobilized the military to respond to a surge in suspected COVID-19 infections, as his nation struggled to contain a fever that has reportedly killed dozens and sickened nearly a million others in a span of three days.

North Korean health authorities said Monday that eight more people died and an additional 392,920 were newly found to have feverish symptoms. That brings the death toll to 50 and illnesses to more than 1.2 million, respectively. It’s a sharp jump from six dead and 350,000 sick reported last Friday, a day after the North said that it found that an unspecified number of people in capital Pyongyang tested positive for the omicron variant.

Kim has acknowledged that the fast-spreading fever, highly likely driven by COVID-19, is causing “great upheaval” in the country, and outside experts say the true scale of the outbreak is likely much bigger than what’s described in the state-controlled media.

Some suspect that North Korea has understated its fatalities or illnesses to shield Kim’s leadership from criticism. The North likely lacks test kits and other tools to detect virus carriers with no or mild symptoms, which means that several million might already have been infected.

“When people die, North Korean authorities will say they’ve died of overwork or from natural deaths, not because of COVID-19,” said Nam Sung-wook, a professor at Korea University in South Korea. Nam said the North is likely understating the death toll to protect “the dignity of its supreme leader.”

While neighboring South Korea and China have offered to send medical supplies and other help, experts say it’s too late to inoculate the North’s 26 million people, and that the only realistic outside help would be offering limited supplies of vaccines to reduce deaths among high-risk groups, including the elderly and people with preexisting conditions.

Read the story here.

—Kim Tong-Hyung and Hyung-Jin Kim, The Associated Press


Seattle Times staff & news services

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Earnings and Business News: Live Updates

Earnings and Business News: Live Updates

BEIJING — Lockdowns to quit a developing quantity of Covid-19 outbreaks have snarled logistics and increased unemployment across China, prompting the country’s leaders this 7 days to buy a wide vary of actions to reduce the financial state from slowing further more.

Lots of providers will be authorized to end spending unemployment insurance coverage to the governing administration delivered they keep away from mass layoffs. Energy and world wide web rates will be slice for firms. Youthful persons now graduating from faculty will be subsidized to begin their possess corporations since couple careers are out there.

Truck drivers will be offered many a lot more permits to bypass Covid-19 roadblocks. And migrant staff will be offered governing administration allowances if they are not able to locate jobs.

“Now we need to position larger value on stabilizing work,” Premier Li Keqiang stated in a statement issued late Wednesday next a cabinet conference. “The new spherical of Covid flare-ups has hit work fairly hard.”

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, convened a individual conference of top rated Communist Get together officers on Tuesday to prepare for accelerated investments in infrastructure. These investments have been a mainstay of past attempts in China to fight financial slowdowns, but they are sometimes slow to start out and have by now saddled numerous neighborhood governments with large money owed.

Some cities are striving to move far more aggressively and speedily to restart the financial system. Two extremely large, affluent ports, Shenzhen and Ningbo, commenced on Thursday to give their citizens a vary of searching and eating reward certificates with a whole price of $122 million.

“I believe what you see in Ningbo and Shenzhen will be replicated nationally,” reported Xu Sitao, the main economist in the Beijing business office of Deloitte, later adding that, “The greatest plan is not to develop yet another subway, it is to emphasis on client paying out.”

The city of Beijing disclosed late Thursday afternoon that it had located 56 scenarios of the coronavirus in the preceding 24 hours, up from 46 noted a working day earlier. The city has mobilized 139,000 healthcare staff and guidance team in a massive effort and hard work to test practically all of its 22 million residents each individual other working day for 5 days this week.

Credit history…Jade Gao/Agence France-Presse — Getty Pictures

Beijing also announced on Thursday that its faculty program would be closed on Friday and that pupils would commence a working day early the five-day Could Working day national vacation. City officers explained they would decide in the coming times whether or not lessons would resume as scheduled next Thursday, soon after the vacation.

China’s broader economic problems can be observed in the current struggles of Gao Yang, the standard supervisor of an industrial electrical machines company primarily based in Tangshan, a steelmaking hub in the vicinity of Beijing.

The city has been beneath intermittent lockdowns for a lot more than a month. The community authorities has authorized some firms, which include Mr. Gao’s, to resume generation if the personnel eat, snooze and are living at the factories devoid of leaving. But his manufacturing facility even now are unable to restart functions because vehicles cannot provide uncooked resources into the city.

“Many areas and add-ons from other locations cannot arrive in,” he reported. “So even if we resume do the job, we are not equipped to make.”

Some businesses, significantly in the car business, are commencing to reopen, despite the fact that generally at pretty reduced amounts of output. Volkswagen, the industry leader in China’s vehicle sector, commenced step by step reopening its massive assembly plant in the northeastern Jilin Province previous week soon after a 5-week shutdown induced by a lengthy lockdown there. This 7 days, Volkswagen started steadily reopening its even larger sized factory sophisticated on Shanghai’s outskirts.

Other suppliers, like SAIC Motor and Tesla in Shanghai, have also restarted some manufacturing. But automakers have refrained from predicting when they could possibly get to total manufacturing, much considerably less when they may be equipped to get started jogging the additional time they have to have to catch up on the output they have lost this spring.

After falling sharply on Monday and a very little additional on Tuesday, share prices in China rebounded strongly on Wednesday and edged up a minor more on Thursday.

China has also permitted the value of its currency, the renminbi, to slide steadily by way of the week. That makes China’s exports even much more competitive in international marketplaces and could additional widen China’s trade surplus.

Ever-climbing exports, coupled with weak demand from customers for imports, have been a vital motor for the Chinese financial system in the course of the earlier two yrs. But they have also fed increasing trade tensions specially with Europe, which has viewed its approximately balanced trade with China switch into a huge deficit that has harm economic advancement and employment there.

Credit…Reuters

China’s ports have retained operating as a result of the present lockdowns, and many port staff have been necessary considering the fact that final calendar year to reside complete time at the docks for months at a time to prevent bacterial infections. But Chinese factories are having difficulties to obtain trucks to deliver merchandise to the docks.

Container freight rates out of Chinese ports have in fact declined immediately after placing information early this calendar year. Ships formerly committed to carrying goods straight to the United States from China are now creating far more stops in other places in Asia to decide on up goods as perfectly.

“When the ships leave China and appear to the rest of Asia, there is much more ability,” explained Sanjay Bhatia, the chief government of Freightwalla, an on the web freight forwarder centered in Mumbai.

China’s logistical troubles are continue to escalating. Air and rail journey are progressively paralyzed by the lockdowns, with a knock-on influence on hotels, dining places and other support sector enterprises.

The immense Baiyun Global Airport in Guangzhou, the hub of southern China, canceled 92 percent of its flights on Thursday immediately after what the airport described as an abnormal Covid check reading through in a single worker.

Baiyun airport is China’s premier by passenger volume and second-greatest by cargo, soon after Shanghai’s Pudong Intercontinental Airport. Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu all have additional whole air vacationers than Guangzhou but each and every of those people towns divides its air travel between two substantial airports apiece, even though Baiyun airport handles all of Guangzhou’s aviation.

Train website traffic has also plummeted as cities and provinces discourage visitors from elsewhere in China. Zhou Min, deputy director of the unexpected emergency reaction division at the Transportation Ministry, said at a information convention on Thursday that passenger site visitors on trains more than the coming May well Working day nationwide holiday break weekend would be down 62 {cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} from now depressed ranges past calendar year.

Massive banking institutions and worldwide institutions have responded by decreasing their forecasts in latest times for the Chinese economy’s expansion this year. The Intercontinental Financial Fund very last week decreased its forecast for China’s advancement to 4.4 {cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}, from 4.8 p.c beforehand.

The government’s goal is nevertheless about 5.5 per cent.

Li You contributed investigate.

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Coronavirus news and updates for Friday, April 15, 2022

Coronavirus news and updates for Friday, April 15, 2022

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Friday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

8:54 p.m.: It’s gonna be an egg-stra special day on Monday when the White House Easter Egg Roll returns from a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are expected to welcome some 30,000 kids and their adult chaperones for the egg roll, an egg hunt and other activities.

The annual egg rolling event was canceled by former President Donald Trump in 2020 and by Biden last year due to the pandemic that has killed nearly 1 million Americans.

First Lady Jill Biden, an educator, has dubbed this year’s all-day event the “Egg-ucation Roll,” aides said, turning the South Lawn into a school community with various educational stations.

Besides eggs-treme fun, the all-day event will include a schoolhouse activity area, reading nook, talent show, obstacle course and other exercise stations, and a cafe where kids will learn to make and eat supposedly healthy treats.

The shindig also includes celebs like “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon, singer Ciara and actor/singer Kristin Chenoweth.

More than two dozen costumed characters will roam the grounds, including Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, the Racing Presidents mascots for the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball, Rosita and Cookie Monster from “Sesame Street” and Snoopy and Charlie Brown, among others.

8 p.m.: After a sustained pandemic-induced dip in air travel, Canadians are slowly starting to board flights again. International arrivals are up compared to last year, Statistics Canada data shows, although still significantly below pre-pandemic levels.

While people are on the move, the country is staring down a sixth wave of COVID-19 infections — driven by the BA. 2 variant spreads and the lifting of public health measures.

System-wide decisions, from mask mandates to access to testing, have a significant impact on overall safety, said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) at the University of Saskatchewan. These policies also reduce the chance that Canadian travellers will take the virus elsewhere.

Yet travellers can still make the best of the tools at their disposal to keep themselves and others safe. Speaking to the Star, Rasmussen — who is about to attend a work conference in Portugal — shared her advice on how to navigate travel in the age of Omicron.

Click here to read more of this story from the Star’s Sara Mojtahedzadeh.

7:22 p.m.: The 75-year-old Republican said in an announcement late Friday he was diagnosed by his personal physician after experiencing mild symptoms such as a runny nose, head ache, body aches and a sore throat.

DeWine was administered a monoclonal antibody treatment, which is designed to fight the infection. He said he is following the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention protocol and quarantining.

The governor’s office said First Lady Fran DeWine was experiencing no symptoms and has tested negative. Both the governor and his wife have received two coronavirus vaccines and a booster.

DeWine’s diagnosis comes just 18 days before Ohio’s May 3 primary, in which he faces two Republican challengers, and just eight days before former President Donald Trump plans an Ohio rally.

It was unclear whether his diagnosis would affect DeWine’s attendance at the rally, or if he would have attended in any case. He had previous plans to attend a celebration of the 200th birthday of President Ulysses S. Grant, an Ohio native, on that day.

DeWine tested positive for COVID-19 once before, in 2020, before testing negative later the same day. Those conflicting results came just before the governor was to meet with Trump, then the president, in Cleveland.

4:55 p.m.: Yet again, the U.S. is trudging into what could be another COVID-19 surge, with cases rising nationally and in most states after a two-month decline.

One big unknown? “We don’t know how high that mountain’s gonna grow,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University.

No one expects a peak nearly as high as the last one, when the contagious omicron version of the coronavirus ripped through the population.

But experts warn that the coming wave – caused by a mutant called BA.2 that’s thought to be about 30 per cent more contagious – will wash across the nation. They worry that hospitalizations, which are already ticking up in some parts of the Northeast, will rise in a growing number of states in the coming weeks. And the case wave will be bigger than it looks, they say, because reported numbers are vast undercounts as more people test at home without reporting their infections or skip testing altogether.

2:02 p.m. A hospital in western Quebec is suspending its obstetrics services for the holiday weekend due to a lack of staff.

The health authority for the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region says the service at the hospital in Ville-Marie is suspended until Monday at 8 a.m. due to an unforeseen staffing issue.

The Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue says on Facebook that it has reached out to women who are affected by the closure, and those giving birth will be redirected to another hospital about 130 kilometres away.

The health authority also announced on Thursday that emergency services at the Témiscaming-Kipawa health facility would be closed Friday, Saturday and Sunday night from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.

Quebec’s health minister has warned that the province’s health services are looking at a difficult few weeks ahead as they struggle with a sixth wave of COVID-19 coupled with a rise in influenza and other viruses.

While officials did not say what caused the closures in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, the province has said about 13,000 health workers are off the job due to COVID-19.

1:08 p.m. Los Angeles County on Friday ended its order to quarantine asymptomatic people exposed to the coronavirus.

The rule change means anyone — even someone not vaccinated for COVID-19 or up-to-date with a booster shot — who is exposed to an infected person no longer needs to stay home for at least five days to see whether they will test positive or become sick, provided they remain symptom-free.

But unlike the California Department of Public Health, which universally relaxed its quarantine recommendations for the public earlier this month, L.A. County has established a few conditions for waiving the waiting period.

The county will require, not merely recommend, that people who were in close contact with an infected person “wear a highly protective mask around others, especially indoors, for a total of 10 days after the last contact with a person infected” with the coronavirus, and get tested within three to five days after their last exposure to the infected person.

Anyone who lives or works in L.A. County is subject to that masking order.

Someone is considered exposed to the coronavirus if they share the same indoor airspace — like a home, clinic waiting room or airplane — with an infected person during his or her contagious period for at least 15 minutes over a 24-hour period.

12:46 p.m. Yet again, the U.S. is trudging into what could be another COVID-19 surge, with cases rising nationally and in most states after a two-month decline.

One big unknown? “We don’t know how high that mountain’s gonna grow,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University.

No one expects a peak nearly as high as the last one, when the contagious omicron version of the coronavirus ripped through the population.

But experts warn that the coming wave – caused by a mutant called BA.2 that’s thought to be about 30 per cent more contagious – will wash across the nation and push up hospitalizations in a growing number of states in the coming weeks. And the case wave will be bigger than it looks, they say, because reported numbers are vast undercounts as more people test at home without reporting their infections or skip testing altogether.

At the height of the previous omicron surge, reported daily cases reached into the hundreds of thousands. On April 14, the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose to 39,521, up from 30,724 two weeks earlier, according to data from Johns Hopkins collected by The Associated Press.

11:41 a.m. Starting Monday, Minneapolis students will no longer have to wear masks at school or on buses, the school district said Thursday as it announced changes to its COVID-19 protocols.

The news came two days after St. Paul’s school board voted 6-1 to change the mask policy for that district, removing the mandate and allowing students and faculty to choose whether or not to wear a face covering in school buildings.

Besides dropping its mask mandate, Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) will discontinue universal contract tracing, officials said. That means families may not be notified if someone in their student’s class tests positive for COVID-19.

District officials also said that beginning Monday, fully vaccinated students and staff will no longer be required to isolate after COVID-19 exposure and the quarantine time for unvaccinated students and adults in the schools will drop from 10 days to five days.

10:27 a.m. A Toronto public school board committee that advocates on behalf of students with special needs wants to bring back mandatory masking and vaccination for those who work with medically fragile children.

The Special Education Advisory Committee has written to the province’s top doctor requesting permission for the board to reintroduce masking rules and its vaccination policy at congregated schools that serve students with complex special needs, many of whom have multiple disabilities.

“Recent changes to COVID-19 safety measures, specifically regarding masking and vaccination requirements, have put these students at great risk of contracting the virus,” say SEAC members in a letter to the chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore. “The COVID-19 virus poses great risks for any of these students, as it may exacerbate existing symptoms of their already complex disabilities and medical fragilities.”

Read the full story from the Star’s Isabel Teotonio

5:58 a.m.: Small business owners have made a plea to the federal finance minister to consider more help paying off their pandemic-related debts as the sixth wave of COVID-19 causes customers to stay home and sales to fall.

The request is one Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has faced repeatedly in recent days during a cross-country post-budget tour.

Her response has been that emergency measures are no longer needed with the crisis passed, the economy running hot and the government needing to tighten its fiscal belt.

Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said underneath the headline economic numbers only two in five of his members report being back to normal sales.

He said more are worried about the impact on revenues and their ability to repay loans with people staying home despite provinces removing public health restrictions.

His members put those concerns to Freeland during a webinar on the budget and Kelly said he walked away believing the finance minister heard their concerns.

The budget doesn’t include any further extensions of emergency benefit programs that will come to a close on May 7, but Freeland told those on the webinar, “I hear you,” when asked about debt relief, adding a moment later, “let’s keep on talking.”

Thursday, 9:35 p.m.: California is sticking with its coronavirus vaccine mandate for schoolchildren, but it won’t happen until at least the summer of 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration announced Thursday.

Last year, California was the first state to announce it would require all schoolchildren to receive the coronavirus vaccine. But it hasn’t happened yet because Newsom said he was waiting for regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to give final approval to the vaccine for school-aged children.

At the time, Newsom estimated the mandate would take effect for the start of the 2022-23 school year. But while federal regulators have authorized use of the coronavirus vaccine for children as young as 5 in an emergency, it has still not given final approval to anyone younger than 16.

As the calendar inches closer to the fall, school administrators had worried they would not have enough time to implement the vaccine mandate.

“So based on these two facts — we don’t have full FDA approval, and we recognize the implementation challenges that schools and school leaders would face — that we are not moving to have a vaccine requirement for schools in this coming academic year and no sooner than July 2023,” California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said in an interview.

Read Thursday’s coronavirus news.

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Coronavirus news and updates for Sunday, April 3, 2022

Coronavirus news and updates for Sunday, April 3, 2022

The hottest coronavirus news from Canada and all-around the globe Sunday. This file will be updated in the course of the working day. World wide web links to lengthier tales if available.

11:45 a.m.: Ontario noted 10 additional deaths due to COVID-19 and 3,077 new conditions on Sunday, a lessen of 4.8 for each cent in new bacterial infections from the prior day.

Specified new provincial restrictions about testing that came into outcome on Dec. 31, 2021, case counts are not thought of an precise evaluation of how popular COVID-19 is ideal now.

Due to “server maintenance,” the province didn’t update data on vaccinations and COVID-19 in hospitals on Sunday.

Meanwhile, 1 additional resident in a very long-term care has died for a total of 4,420 due to the fact the pandemic started.

10 a.m.: Ontario is coming into a sixth wave of COVID-19 with couple remaining community overall health steps and specialists say now is the time for a renewed vaccination technique aimed at boosting third-dose uptake, photographs for little ones and planning for wider fourth doses.

When initial and 2nd doses turned obtainable, Ontario — and Canada at big — was the envy of the planet in how immediately the inhabitants obtained vaccinated, mentioned Dr. Fahad Razak, an internist and member of the province’s science advisory table.

But while 91 for each cent of Ontarians 12 and older have gained two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, only about 60 per cent have acquired three.

9 a.m.: A 60-year-previous gentleman allegedly had himself vaccinated from COVID-19 dozens of times in Germany in purchase to market cast vaccination cards with serious vaccine batch numbers to folks not wanting to get vaccinated on their own.

The guy from the jap Germany metropolis of Magdeburg, whose identify was not introduced in line with German privacy guidelines, is explained to have acquired up to 90 photographs from COVID-19 at vaccination facilities in the jap state of Saxony for months until eventually criminal law enforcement caught him previously this month, the German news agency dpa documented Sunday.

7:57 a.m.: COVID-19 instances in China’s biggest metropolis of Shanghai are still mounting as millions continue being isolated at residence below a sweeping lockdown.

Health and fitness officers on Sunday described 438 verified scenarios detected above the prior 24 hrs, along with 7,788 asymptomatic cases. Each figures ended up up a bit from the working day in advance of.

Whilst modest by the requirements of some nations around the world, the day by day scenario quantities are some of the most significant because the virus was initial detected in the central metropolis of Wuhan in late 2019.

Shanghai with its 26 million men and women very last week began a two-stage lockdown, with residents of the eastern Pudong segment meant to be permitted to leave their residences Friday, whilst their neighbours in the western Puxi section underwent their own 4-day isolation interval.

Regardless of that assurance, hundreds of thousands in Pudong keep on to be confined to their properties amid grievances over food deliveries and the availability of drugs and health expert services.

Notices shipped to citizens mentioned they ended up demanded to self-exam for COVID-19 every day and choose safety measures together with donning masks at property and avoiding call with spouse and children customers — actions not commonly enforced due to the fact the early times of the pandemic.

Read Saturday’s coronavirus information.

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