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A two-week state of emergency triggered by an upsurge in new Covid-19 cases went into effect Monday in Utah and the governor ordered residents to mask themselves “for the foreseeable future.”
Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican who supported wearing masks but resisted the imposition of a warrant, turned the tide after the state saw a 46% increase in new cases over the past two weeks, according to the latest figures from NBC News.
“We can no longer afford to debate this issue”, Herbert said in a video posted Sunday on Twitter. “Individual freedom is certainly important, and it is our rule of law that protects that freedom.”
Herbert signed the order the same day that Covid-19 cases surpassed 50 million worldwide and before the electrifying news from pharmaceutical company Pfizer on Monday that an early analysis of its potential coronavirus vaccine showed that it was 90% effective in preventing infections.
Pfizer’s announcement follows Joe Biden’s projected victory over President Donald Trump in a presidential election that became a referendum on the Trump administration’s much-criticized response to a pandemic that has killed nearly 240,000 people in the United States and infected more than 10 million. Both are prominent figures in the world.
“Today is a great day for science and humanity,” said Albert Bourla, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, in a statement. “We are reaching this crucial milestone in our vaccine development program at a time when the world needs it most, with infection rates setting new records, hospitals close to overcapacity and economies struggling to reopen.”
In other coronavirus news:
- President-elect Joe Biden has announced that former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former FDA Commissioner David Kessler and Yale University professor Dr Marcella Nunez-Smith will lead his new Covid-19 task force .
- Ben Carson has become the latest member of the Trump administration to test positive for coronavirus, NBC News has confirmed. The Housing and Urban Development Secretary attended a post-election White House event on Wednesday in which Trump falsely claimed to have won the election.
- David Bossie, who was recently chosen to lead legal challenges to the president’s re-election, has also tested positive for the coronavirus. “Because he can’t be at the campaign headquarters and he can’t be in the Oval Office, Dave is no longer part of the decision-making process,” a source told NBC News.
- While Trump has frequently pointed out that the number of new coronavirus cases is increasing rapidly in Europe, the United States has nearly 20% of deaths recorded worldwide for Covid-19 and the 12th worst death ratio per capita in the world, according to the Johns Hopkins University Pandemic Dashboard. This is much higher than those of most other developed countries.
- Wall Street surged after the announcement of the Pfizer vaccine, building on gains that came after Biden was cast as the winner in the presidential election.
- So many people have died from the coronavirus in El Paso, Texas that the city is running out of morgue space and is now storing the bodies in refrigerated trailers.
- Want to be with your family for Thanksgiving? Then you should quarantine yourself for two weeks before the holidays, experts told NBC News.
Vice President Mike Pence hailed Pfizer’s apparent breakthrough as the end result of the “public-private partnership forged by” Trump to develop a Covid-19 vaccine called “Operation Warp Speed”.
Not so fast, Dr Kathrin Jansen, head of vaccine development at Pfizer, told The New York Times
“We’ve never been in Warp Speed,” Jansen said. “We never took money from the US government, or from anyone.”
Trump had repeatedly promised the American people, without offering any evidence, that a Covid-19 vaccine would be ready on election day.
Dr Tom Kenyon, chief medical officer of the international healthcare organization Project HOPE, said the first beneficiaries of any new Covid-19 vaccine would likely be doctors, nurses and other frontline workers.
“It will take time, but to end this pandemic we will all need to unite and be vaccinated, as well as continue to follow scientists’ recommendations to wear a mask, keep a safe distance from others, and wash ourselves. . hands, ”Kenyon said.
Utah, a reliable Republican state that has opted for Trump in this election, has reported 132,621 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 659 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to NBC News data.
While those numbers are low compared to Texas, which leads the country with more than a million cases, Utah is one of the mid-section states of the country that has seen a surge in new infections within weeks. preceding the presidential election.
Trump, who himself caught the infection as the coronavirus spread through the White House, continued to try to convince skeptical Americans that the pandemic was under control during a series of campaign shutdowns in the United States. Battlefield states where few of his supporters wore masks or attempted to practice. social distancing. He also helped politicize the issue of wearing masks by refusing to wear them at most public events.
Biden kicked off his presidential transition on Monday by imploring Americans to put on masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“A mask is not a political statement, but it is a way to start bringing the country together,” Biden said. “The point of wearing a mask is not to make you less comfortable or to take anything off you. It’s to give back something to all of us, a normal life. “
Herbert’s order, which ends a few days before Thanksgiving, is far from draconian.
It does not require the closure of businesses and does not affect churches in this deeply religious state. It also does not put middle and high school classrooms online as the local teachers’ union required, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
“Our hospitals are full,” Herbert said on the clip. “It threatens patients who depend on hospital care for everything from Covid-19 to emergencies such as heart attacks, strokes, surgeries and trauma.”
Nigel chiwaya contributed.
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