COVID-19 Live Updates - September 21, 2021!
Unedited Report below!
COVID-19 live updates: 3 states account for about one-third of last week's deaths - The U.S. daily death average has now climbed over 1,400. Last Updated: September 21, 2021, 3:35 PM ET
The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread. More than 677,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time?data ?compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The average number of daily deaths in the U.S. has risen about 20% in the last week, according to data from the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. is continuing to sink on the list of global vaccination rates, currently ranking No. 45, according to data compiled by the?Financial Times . Just 64% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to?data ?from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here's how the news is developing. All times Eastern.
Texas, Georgia, Alabama account for about one-third of last week's deaths
The U.S. daily death average has now climbed over 1,400 despite skewed reporting from the weekend, according to federal data.
Houston Fire Department paramedics transport a COVID-19 positive woman to a hospital, Sept...
About one-third of?the nearly 9,500?virus-related deaths in the last week came from just three states: Texas, Georgia and Alabama.
About 90,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, compared to more than 100,000 patients about three weeks ago, according to federal data. But in the past month, at least?10 states -- Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia -- have reported record hospitalizations.
Ann Enderle R.N. attends to a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St...
West Virginia?is leading the nation in cases, followed by Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming,?Kentucky, North Dakota, Tennessee and Ohio, according to federal data.
-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos
Over half of Louisiana's new cases are among people under 40
In Louisiana, 1,268 COVID-19 cases have been reported since Monday, and over half of those are people under 40. A clinician cares for COVID-19 patients in a converted negative pressure room in the Intensive C...Those ages 5 to 17 make up 21% of the cases, state health officials said. Louisiana residents ages 18 to 29 make up 16% and people between the ages of?30 to 39?account for?16%. Louisiana has lost 13,558 residents to COVID-19 since the pandemic began, state health officials said. The state currently has 1,239 COVID-19 patients in hospitals.
Pelosi visits art installation commemorating Americans lost to COVID
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday visited the public art installation on the National Mall that commemorates the American lives lost to COVID-19. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visits the art installation, In America: Remember, comprised of mor...More than 660,000 white flags were planted in the biggest participatory art installation on the National Mall since the?AIDS?Quilt.?The installation is open to the public from Sept. 17 to Oct. 3.
Feds sending resources to North Carolina, Alaska, West Virginia, Tennessee
FEMA is preparing to send 50 ambulances and 100 personnel to North Carolina to help with shortages statewide, according to a federal planning document obtained by ABC News.
Alaska and West Virginia have each asked the Department of Health and Human Services to provide 50 ventilators, the document said, while the Defense Department is sending a 23-person military medical team to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
-ABC News' Brian Hartman
Biden addresses UN, touts global vaccine donations
President Joe Biden kicked off his first speech at the United Nations General Assembly since taking office by focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic, the global death toll and the need to "act together."
"Will we work together to save lives, defeat COVID-19 everywhere and take the necessary steps to prepare ourselves for the next pandemic, if there will be another one? Or will we fail to harness the tools at our disposal as the dangerous variants take hold?" Biden said Tuesday.
President Joe Biden addresses the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N...
"To fight this pandemic, we need a collective act of science and political will. We need to act now to get shots in arms as fast as possible. Expand access to oxygen, tests, treatments, to save lives around the world," he said. "And for the future, we need to?create a new mechanism to finance global health security."
The president touted global vaccine donations, saying the U.S. has sent more than 160 million doses to 100 other countries.
Biden said he would announce "additional commitments" at Wednesday's virtual COVID-19 summit.
-ABC News' Justin Ryan Gomez
Washington state requests federal staff for overwhelmed hospitals
Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee sent a letter to the White House Monday requesting staffing resources to help the state's overwhelmed hospitals.
Rick Agrella, the assistant nurse manager at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, in Spokan...
"Once the Delta variant hit Washington state, COVID-19 hospitalizations skyrocketed. From mid-July to late August, we saw hospitalizations double about every two weeks," Inslee wrote. "The hospitals have surged to increase staffed beds and stretch staff and have canceled most non-urgent procedures, but are still over capacity across the state."
"While there are hopeful signs that the current wave of infection is peaking, and some states are beginning to see declines, we have not yet seen that effect here," the governor said.
Washington state had already asked for 1,200 federal government staffers and is now "requesting the deployment of Department of Defense medical personnel to assist with the current hospital crisis," Inslee said.
2nd dose of J&J vaccine results in stronger protection, company says
A second dose of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine given two months after the first?leads to stronger protection,?the company said Tuesday .
National Guard Spc. Noah Vulpi, left, administers the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to Ir...
Compared to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Johnson & Johnson's single-shot vaccine always had slightly lower efficacy. Peak efficacy from the two-shot Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was 95% and 94%, respectively, against symptomatic illness, compared to 72% with J&J's one shot. But two Johnson & Johnson shots, given two months apart, resulted in a similarly high effectiveness level: 94% protection against any symptomatic infection in the?U.S. and?100% against severe disease.
J&J?chief scientific officer?Dr. Paul Stoffels said the single-shot vaccine still provides "strong and long-lasting protection" while also being "easy to use, distribute and administer."
"At the same time," Stoffels said, "we now have generated evidence that a booster shot further increases protection against COVID-19 and is expected to extend the duration of protection significantly."
-ABC News' Sony Salzman
US records 1.1 million pediatric COVID-19 cases over past 5 weeks
The U.S. reported more than 225,000 child COVID-19 cases, marking the fourth consecutive week with over 200,000 new pediatric cases reported,?according to?a newly released weekly report from the American Academy of?Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
In the last five weeks alone, the country has reported more than 1.1 million?pediatric?cases, according to the organizations.
"The weekly figure is now about 26 times higher than it was in June, when just 8,400 pediatric cases were reported over the span of a week," the organizations wrote in their report.
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The South accounted for about half --110,000-- of last week's pediatric cases, according to the report.
The organizations added that more than 2,200 children are hospitalized with a confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infection.
-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos
US deaths surpass 675,000, more than 1918 flu pandemic
The U.S. surpassed 675,000 coronavirus deaths Monday, according to?Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center .
The 675,446 deaths since the pandemic began in March of 2020 now surpasses the deaths from the 1918 pandemic.
White flags are seen on the National Mall near the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., S...
Although the seven-day average of new deaths is nowhere near the 3,600 deaths recorded in mid-January, the average has been increasing since mid-July, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The seven-day average of new deaths has gone from 191 on July 10 to 1,353 on Sept. 19,?the CDC data showed .
The majority of recent deaths has been among unvaccinated Americans, according to the data.
NYC updates school testing, quarantine guidelines
One week after public schools opened for the new school year, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced new changes to student testing.
Starting Sept. 27, students in all grade levels will be tested weekly instead of bi-weekly. In addition, any student who is in a classroom with a positive case won't have to quarantine if they were masked and three feet distant, according to the mayor.
"We've been looking at these two issues over the last few weeks. We looked at it in light of the data from the first week of school, we decided to make both of these changes simultaneously, and they do complement each other," de Blasio said during his daily news conference.
The United Federation of Teachers had pushed the mayor to switch to weekly testing. All teachers must have at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 27, as part of the city's mandate for education employees.
CVS to hire 25,000 in preparation for flu season, booster shots?
CVS Health is launching a major hiring spree to fill 25,000 clinical and retail jobs in preparation for an expected increase in vaccine and testing demand in the months ahead.
The move is in anticipation of the need for COVID-19 booster shots and flu vaccines.
The positions will largely be for pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and nurses at their retail locations to be filled “as soon as possible,” the company announced Monday.
A CVS Pharmacy logo hangs on the side of a store, Aug. 12, 2021, in Bayonne, N.J.
Pharmacy executives predict a far greater staffing need than usual this year, especially should flu season get severe and if COVID-19 boosters become authorized for more expanded groups. Pharmacies are also hoping to avoid a repeat of last year’s scenes of slammed testing sites and the chaotic start to the vaccine rollout.
“Every flu season we need additional team members,” said Neela Montgomery, the executive vice president of CVS health and the president of CVS Pharmacy. “But this year we’re looking for even more. With the continued presence of COVID-19 in our communities, we’re estimating a much greater need for pharmacists, trained pharmacy technicians, nurses, and retail store associates. These jobs offer a rewarding opportunity to really make an impact on public health in our country.”
A virtual hiring event Friday will spearhead the recruiting push.
-ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik
Booster shot recommendations still unclear, says acting FDA commissioner?
There is still uncertainty and questions to be answered regarding whether all Americans will be recommended to receive booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine, said acting U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock.
Woodcock spoke with former senior White House COVID-19 response adviser Andy Slavitt on his podcast program “The Bubble” on Monday, raising questions on what the booster shots may or may not do and discussing any uncertainties that could have factored into the FDA’s decision to recommend boosters only for high-risk Americans and those over the age of 65.
Student Jasen Ortiz receives a dose of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination cl...
Right now, the FDA does not know enough about how an additional shot will impact transmissibility or about cellular immunity and whether T-cells are protected, among other factors, Woodcock said.
“Basically the FDA decision is, do the overall benefits outweigh the potential harms for any given vaccination and that’s how to proceed,” Woodcock said. “But obviously individuals benefit from not having a transmissible virus circulating around."
-ABC News’ Matthew Vann
Average daily death count rises by 20%
In the wake of weeks of increasing COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the U.S. is once again experiencing a surge in virus-related deaths.
The average number of deaths in the U.S. has risen to more than 1,500 per day, an increase of about 20% in the last week and nearly eight times the death average from two months ago, when the national average dropped to a near-low of 191 deaths reported each day, according to data from the CDC and the Department of Health & Human Services.
Twenty-two states and Washington, D.C. are seeing increasing case averages, while seven states are experiencing increasing hospital admissions, according to the HHS.
However, overall hospitalizations in the U.S. are down, with about 10,000 fewer patients currently hospitalized compared to three weeks ago.
Alex Awad, RN is works inside the ICU with a covid patient at Adventist Health Glendale, Sept. 1...
About 93,000 Americans are currently hospitalized. In recent weeks, there had been more than 103,000 patients receiving care across the country.
The drop is largely attributed to plummeting figures in Florida, where there are nearly 10,000 fewer patients hospitalized now, compared to a month ago.
The presence of the virus is shifting away from states in the deep South such as Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi, and further into other regions of the country that were not as hard hit in the first delta surge.
Tennessee?and West Virginia?currently have the country's highest case rate, followed by Alaska, South Carolina,?Wyoming,?Montana and Kentucky, which all have case rates above 500 per 100,000 people.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Reference:
Julia Jacobo , Ivan Pereira ,?and Emily Shapiro . (2021, September 21). COVID-19 live updates: 3 states account for about one-third of last week's deaths - The U.S. daily death average has now climbed over 1,400. ABC News. COVID-19 live updates: 3 states account for about one-third of last week's deaths - ABC News (go.com)
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