California and New York City impose vaccine on officials | new York

Meanwhile, a possible sign that increasingly serious health warnings are reaching more Americans, vaccination rates have started to rise again, offering hope that people who were previously hesitant to receive the vaccine could. finally be vaccinated.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that all city workers – including teachers and police officers – will need to get vaccinated by mid-September or undergo weekly tests for Covid-19, causing the city one of the largest employers in the United States. to take such a step.

“Let’s be clear on why this is so important: this is about our recovery,” said de Blasio.

California has said it will also require proof of vaccination or weekly testing for all state and health care workers starting next month.

The move comes amid an increase in the number of cases in California, which have risen 218% in the past two weeks, while hospitalizations have increased 62%, according to data from the New York Times. In the month since California lifted all Covid security restrictions for its “grand reopening,” the state capital reinstated a mask requirement after several aides contracted Covid-19, and the county of Los Angeles again requires indoor masks to be worn, even for people who are fully immunized. The San Francisco Bar Alliance, which represents nearly 500 bars, recommends that members require guests to present proof of vaccination to enter establishments.

California saw a 16% increase in vaccinations over the past week and is one of the most vaccinated states in the country with 77% of adults having received at least one dose of the vaccine, but there are still plenty of people unprotected to transmit the virus, according to experts.

“Primarily, we’re seeing infections in the unvaccinated,” said George Rutherford, epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

The VA’s decision came on a day when nearly 60 major medical and healthcare organizations appealed through the American Medical Association for healthcare facilities to demand that their workers get vaccinated.

“I’m doing it because it’s the best way to keep our veterans safe, period,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough told The New York Times.

Elsewhere, St. Louis became the second major city to require face masks to be worn indoors, regardless of vaccination status, joining Los Angeles to reimpose the prescriptions.

“For those who are vaccinated, it may sound like punishment, punishment for doing the right thing,” St. Louis County Director Sam Page, a Democrat, said on Monday. “I have heard this and I feel this frustration.

Former Baltimore health commissioner Dr Leana Wen applauded the measures but called on President Joe Biden to “lead by example” and impose similar mandates on federal employees and in public places where the government has jurisdiction. , as in planes, trains and government buildings.

She also said all hospitals and nursing homes should require all employees to get vaccinated.

“We need immunization and vaccine verification warrants,” Wen said. “We’re way over time for the Biden administration to join in on this. What we are doing is not working. Doing more of the same is not the answer here.

The White House has so far referred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for masking guidelines, which recommend those who are not vaccinated to wear masks indoors. But officials admitted over the weekend that they were considering changing those guidelines and recommending that those vaccinated also wear masks indoors.

“We’re going in the wrong direction,” Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s foremost infectious disease expert, said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

Wen, who is also an emergency physician and public professor at George Washington University, said public health experts have been concerned for months about the same scenario.

“We were concerned that the honor system was not working, the unvaccinated would behave as if they were vaccinated and people would think the pandemic is over,” she said. “This is precisely what happened, and it is incredibly frustrating.”

Dr Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist at Yale’s School of Public Health, said the United States should not have been caught off guard after seeing the Delta variant ravage India in May and then land in the Kingdom United, Israel and other countries highly vaccinated with force for the last month.

“We have learned over and over again not to take anything for granted with CovidO,” he said.

The United States is about 67% immune to Covid-19 when past infections are factored in, but it will need to move closer to 85% to crush the resurgent virus, said Dr Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health of Brown University.

“So we need a lot more vaccinations. Or a lot more infections, ”he tweeted on Sunday.

Jha said the nation needs to prepare for a few more months. The disease has killed nearly 611,000 people in the United States since the pandemic began last year.

Vaccinations increased over the weekend, with about 657,000 reported vaccines given on Saturday and nearly 780,000 on Sunday, according to CDC data. The seven-day moving average on Sunday was about 583,000 vaccinations per day, up from about 525,000 the week before.

Public health experts on Monday said the rise in vaccinations was encouraging, but warned it was far too early to say whether the numbers mean millions of unvaccinated people are finally starting to overcome their reluctance.

The seven-day moving average of daily new cases in the country has risen over the past two weeks, from more than 19,000 on July 11 to nearly 52,000 on July 25, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Some prominent conservative and Republican voices who have spent months questioning the vaccination effort have recently started to sound a different tune.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana, was among members of the GOP Doctors Caucus who held a press conference on Capitol Hill late last week, imploring their constituents to put aside the lingering doubts.

A week ago, on July 19, Fox News host Sean Hannity said, “It makes perfect sense that many Americans get vaccinated. I believe in science. I believe in the science of vaccinations.

And in Tennessee, the brother of a popular local conservative radio host who had been a vaccine skeptic urged listeners to get the shot because his brother was in intensive care at a hospital battling Covid -19.

“For those who are listening, I know if he was able to tell you, he would say, ‘Go get the vaccine. Stop worrying about politics. Stop worrying about all the conspiracy theories, ”Mark Valentine said of his brother, Phil Valentine, Thursday on WWTN-FM in Nashville.

Associated Press contributed to this report