The latest on the Covid-19 pandemic in the US

The number of people in Los Angeles hospitalized with Covid-19 has doubled over the past two weeks, L.A. County’s Department of Public Health announced Monday, urging the importance of vaccinations amid a surge in new cases countywide.

There are 1,437 people in L.A. County currently hospitalized with the virus, health officials said in a news release – nearly double the 745 people hospitalized on July 26. The number has continued to rise since June 15, when the state fully reopened its economy and 218 people were hospitalized.

The latest wave of positive cases is mostly affecting unvaccinated people, the department said. From May to July 2021, 92% of those hospitalized were not fully vaccinated.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council will consider a motion that would require proof of vaccination to enter indoor public spaces like retails stores, gyms and restaurants, expanding on a similar order in New York City.

According to latest local health data, L.A. County’s test positivity rate currently stands at 4.4% – a decrease from last week’s rate of 6%.

There were 2,919 new Covid-19 cases reported in L.A. County on Monday, bringing the total number of cases to date to 1,329,262, the department said.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler said he believes both students and teachers should be required to wear masks in school despite Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates statewide. 

“Kids need to be wearing masks in school, so do teachers,” Adler told CNN as the Austin Independent School District considers taking on the governor’s executive order by requiring students and teachers to wear masks on school property. 

Adler suggested that Abbot and other Republican leaders in Texas are looking to please donors with bans on masks and vaccination requirements, rather than following the latest research and data to protect Texans. 

“At this point, rather than being governed by the data, I think we’re being governed by Republican donors,” Adler said. “We’re going to have to do what it is necessary to keep the kids safe.”

Leon County Schools will start the school year with a temporary mask requirement for pre-K-8 students, unless otherwise noted by a physician or psychologist, the district’s superintendent, Rocky Hanna, said Monday.

The superintendent emphasized that the requirement is temporary, saying he hopes to revisit the issue before Labor Day. 

Hanna said he took the advice of Dr. Thomas Truman, a specialist in Pediatric Critical Care with Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare. “Dr. Truman, who put it very bluntly, said ‘Rocky, I think the prudent thing to do, especially for children who are most vulnerable, and those are the ones who do not yet have an opportunity to become vaccinated, would be to start the school year off with a mask requirement,’” Hanna said Monday.

Earlier Monday Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that Florida’s State Board of Education could move to withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who “led to the violation of law” prohibiting mask mandates for school districts.

Hanna acknowledged the governor’s announcement. According to reporting by the Tallahassee Democrat, Hanna told school officials at a meeting Monday afternoon, “you can’t put a price tag on someone’s life, including my salary.”

“We want to make sure that children also have access to a high quality education but they can’t if they’re sick and in the hospital,” he added, according to the paper.

School children wearing facemasks walk outside Condit Elementary School in Bellaire, outside Houston, Texas, on December 16, 2020.

A CNN analysis from Aug. 5 has found that at least seven states – Arkansas, Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah – prohibit districts from requiring masks in schools 

On Aug. 6, an Arkansas judge temporarily blocked the enforcement of the state’s law banning mask mandates in schools, in response to two lawsuits – one from a school district, and one from parents – who want schools to be able to require masks if they so choose.

The temporary restraining order is in Arkansas is in effect, but the state law banning mandates is also in place. With the injunction in place, school districts can now enforce mask requirements, while the suits continue.

The state laws prohibiting mask mandates in schools conflict with guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends universal masking in school of everyone over the age of two, regardless of vaccination status – a stricter position than that taken earlier this month by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC recently updated its Covid-19 school guidance to advise that fully vaccinated students, teachers and staff do not need to wear masks in school.

There are some states, including Connecticut, Hawaii, New Mexico, New York and Washington, that follow the AAP guidance to require masks among K-12 students regardless of their vaccination status. 

Texas Governor Greg Abbott attends a security briefing with former President Donald Trump and state officials and law enforcement at the Weslaco Department of Public Safety DPS Headquarters on June 30 in Weslaco, Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott sent a letter to the Texas Hospital Association asking hospitals to voluntarily postpone elective medical procedures to increase hospital capacity for coronavirus patients, according to a news release from his office. 

Abbott is also directing the Texas Department of Emergency Management and Department of State Health Services to open additional antibody infusion centers across the Lone Star State.

The governor is also directing those agencies to increase vaccination availability across the state and encourages all Texans to get the Covid-19 vaccine.

Oregon’s Multnomah County is issuing a mandate this week that everyone must wear a mask indoors regardless of vaccination status. If they don’t, they could be fined up to $1,000.

The executive order from County Chair Deborah Kafoury comes after Covid-19 cases have surged in the area causing strain on local health care systems, a news release said.

Enforcement will be based on complaints phoned or emailed into the county, and the punishment could range from a warning to a $1,000 fine, the release added.

The mandate starts Friday and applies to everyone five years and older. It’s expected to remain in place until January, although officials say that timeline could change depending on disease trends and immunization rates. 

Nurses check on a patient in the ICU Covid-19 ward at NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital in Jonesboro, Arkansas, on August 4.

Current Covid-19 hospitalization rates in some of the states hit hardest by the latest surge are more than double the national rate, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.  

In the United States overall, there are currently about 21 people hospitalized with Covid-19 for every 100,000 people. That translates to about one in every 4,900 Americans. 

In Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, current hospitalization rates are more than double the national rate. 

And in Florida, the hospitalization rate is more than triple the national rate. There are more than 65 people hospitalized with Covid-19 for every 100,000 people in Florida, about one out of every 1,500 state residents. 

Overall, about one in five intensive care unit beds in the US are occupied by Covid-19 patients. But in these five states with the highest hospitalization rates, the share of ICU beds occupied by Covid-19 patients is even higher, ranging from 25% in Alabama to more than a third in Florida 

Also, each of these five states – Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas – have fully vaccinated less than half of their residents, lagging behind the US overall, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In fact, every state with a higher-than-average hospitalization rate had a lower than average vaccination rate, according to a CNN analysis of data from the CDC and HHS. 

In SEATTLE, WA - MARCH 16: Washington state Governor Jay Inslee, joined by King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan hold a press conference to provide details on a temporary statewide shutdown of restaurants, bars, and entertainment and recreational facilities to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak, on March 16, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. Inslee declared a state of emergency in response to new cases of COVID-19 earlier this month. (Photo by Elaine Thompson - Pool/Getty Images)

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced a major effort to increase vaccinations in the state by implementing a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for all state employees, private health workers and those working in long-term settings.

The mandate would cover 60,000 state employees and 400,00 health workers plus thousands of contractors. Under the mandate these workers are required to be vaccinated in places where the state is doing business. 

Those workers covered by the order will have to get fully vaccinated by Oct. 18

The governor’s measure does not apply to certain state employees, like employees of agencies that are controlled by separately elected statewide officials and does not include students in K-12 or universities.  

While there is a recommendation to use masks indoors, there is no mask mandate, Inslee added. 

Limited exemptions based on religious or medical issues will be considered, he said. The exceptions do not include philosophical or personal reasons. 

“We are in this pickle today because 30% of our eligible citizens so far have chosen not to get this life-saving vaccine, but we trust they’ll make the right choice,” Inslee said. “The overwhelming majority of recent hospitalizations is of people that have not been vaccinated.” 

At least 69% of the Washington state residents 12 and older have received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to the state’s Department of Health Covid-19 dashboard. 

At least 4.5 million Washington state residents have received a vaccine, Health Secretary Dr. Umair Shah told reporters. 

Inslee said that the severe rise in the cases in the state was due to the Delta variant, and that cases among unvaccinated individuals were on the rise with cases doubling in just one week. 

Mississippi has 200 patients waiting in emergency rooms for beds statewide, according to the state’s senior health officer.

The Mississippi State Department of Health reported 6,912 more cases of Covid-19, and 28 new Covid-19 deaths for the three-day period from Aug. 6 through Aug. 8.

The state’s health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, said in a tweet Monday that there are no intensive care unit beds available at Level 1, 2 and 3 hospitals.

According to Mississippi’s Department of Health, there are also 153 ongoing Covid-19 outbreaks in long-term care facilities across the state.

A 17-year-old receives a first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at a mobile vaccination clinic during a back to school event offering school supplies, Covid-19 vaccinations, face masks, and other resources for children and their families at the Weingart East Los Angeles YMCA.

Children ages 12 to 17 may need a vaccine mandate to curb Covid-19 spread as schools go back to in-person learning, Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN on Monday. 

Speaking about the rise in pediatric intensive care unit admissions in certain parts of the country, Hotez told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “schools are going to be an accelerant” for child infections without universal masking. 

“It’s not even going to be enough to have mask mandates in the schools,” he said. “We need all of the adolescents vaccinated, and really we need to move towards vaccine mandates for the 12- to 17-year-olds in the schools.”

“In the South right now, we’ve got states like Louisiana, Mississippi, etcetera, only about 25% of the adolescents are vaccinated. So the vast majority are not vaccinated. We have counties not far from Houston where there are similar numbers or they’re less.”

A Culver City Fire Department paramedic prepares a syringe with a dose of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic on August 5 in California.

Politicians who spread Covid-19 vaccine misinformation and celebrate low vaccination rates should stop, and leave it to the experts, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said Monday.

When asked what he would tell the politicians spreading vaccine misinformation, Jha told CNN’s Pamela Brown, “I would ask them to just stop talking about things they don’t know much about.”

Jha noted that healthcare professionals are best equipped to address concerns and questions about coronavirus and the vaccine.

“For any other disease, you would not turn to your political leader for medical advice, right?” he said. “If you had cancer or if you had heart attack, you wouldn’t call up your congressman or woman and say, ‘What’s the right therapy I should get?’ You should be talking to your doctor. You should be talking to your healthcare provider.”

A nurse checks on a patient in the ICU Covid-19 ward at NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital in Jonesboro, Arkansas, on Wednesday, August 4.

Arkansas recorded its largest single-day increase in Covid-19 hospitalizations, eclipsing its previous high of coronavirus hospitalizations, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Monday.

The Arkansas Department of Health is reporting at least 995 new Covid-19 cases Monday, and at least 21 new Covid-19-related deaths.

According to the Department, there are at least 1,376 people currently hospitalized with Covid-19, up by 103 from Sunday. At least 286 of those patients are currently on ventilators, 25 more than the previous day, the department said. There are only eight intensive care unit beds available in the state, the governor said.

“Vaccinations reduce hospitalizations,” Hutchison tweeted Monday.

A parent confronts a police officer while protesting against wearing masks in schools before the special called school board workshop at the Pinellas County Schools Administration Building in Largo, Florida, on August 9.

Florida’s State Board of Education could move to withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who “led to the violation of law” prohibiting mask mandates for school districts.

The move was announced by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office Monday. A statement released by his office described the potential penalty as “financial consequences for noncompliance.”

Here’s some of what it said:

“Education funding is intended to benefit students first and foremost, not systems. The Governor’s priorities are protecting parents’ rights and ensuring that every student has access to a high-quality education that meets their unique needs,” the statement added.

Some background: DeSantis issued an executive order on July 30 directing the state’s health and education departments to issue rules preventing the implementation of school mask mandates.

The order comes in response to “several Florida school boards considering or implementing mask mandates,” the governor’s office said, and is meant to “protect parents’ freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.”

Two different lawsuits have been filed against the governor in response. You can read more about them here.

A syringe is filled with a dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at a mobile vaccination site in Los Angeles on August 7.

The daily pace of new Covid-19 vaccinations in the US is the highest in about seven weeks, but 31.2% of eligible people in the US remain unvaccinated.

Here’s the latest data on vaccination efforts in the United States, published Monday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

This is the highest average daily pace in about seven weeks, since June 18. It is a 10% increase over last week’s pace. An average of 715,547 doses is being administered each day.

22 states have fully vaccinated more than half of their residents: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, as well as Washington, D.C.

Nebraska is the latest state to cross this threshold. Vermont leads the nation with 68% of residents fully vaccinated. Alabama is the only state to have fully vaccinated less than 35% of residents. 

A healthcare worker prepares a dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine in Secaucus, New Jersey, on February 28.

Among the 4,332 positive Covid-19 cases reported from July 20 through July 26, fully vaccinated people accounted for 18.5% of total new cases, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said on Monday. 

And of the 378 total new hospitalizations during the same period, 3% of the patients are fully vaccinated individuals. 

During this week, New Jersey reported 21 new Covid-related deaths, none of which were from people who were fully vaccinated.

“That’s the second week in a row when we did not have one death from among the fully vaccinated,” Governor Murphy said. 

As of yesterday, there are currently 648 Covid-19 patients in the hospital, of which 117 are in intensive care units. Of the 117 patients, 59 have required a ventilator to breathe, which is almost a 50% increase since last week.  

According to an announcement made on Friday, all students, educators, and staff in New Jersey are required to wear masks at the beginning of the school year, the New Jersey governor said. 

“We are doing this for one reason,” Governor Murphy said. “To protect the health of our kids and education communities so we can get back to full-time, in person instruction.”

Vaccine advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet on Friday to discuss booster shots of Covid-19 vaccines and additional doses for immunocompromised people, according to a meeting agenda posted by the agency on Monday.

The meeting is scheduled for 11 a.m. ET Friday.

Some background: Internal discussions at the US Food and Drug Administration have centered around an early September timeline for laying out a strategy on Covid-19 vaccine booster shots, a Biden administration official told CNN.

The strategy would apply for all vaccinated people. A decision for those who are immunocompromised and face greater risk from the virus is expected sooner, the official said Thursday.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Maegan Vazquez contributed reporting to this post. 

Two hospitals in northern Texas temporarily closed their emergency rooms on Friday due to a surge in Covid-19 patients.

Hunt Regional Medical Center at Commerce in Greenville and Texas Health Hospital in Rockwall both shut doors on their emergency rooms in an effort to transfer medical staff to treat Covid-19 patients instead.

Hunt Regional Medical Center at Commerce said the closure is “due to a critical Covid surge.” Those who are in a medical emergency are advised to “proceed to the nearest emergency room in Greenville or Quinlan,” a nearby city, according to the hospital’s announcement.

Texas Health Hospital in Rockwall said in its announcement that the closure would allow medical team members to transfer to the hospital’s main campus. There, medical staff “will provide care related to the pandemic,” according to the statement on the hospital’s website.

As of Sunday afternoon, more than 9,000 people statewide are hospitalized with Covid-19, according to Texas’ Department of State Health Services. Throughout the state, 428 intensive care nit beds are currently available.

New York statewide Covid-19 hospitalizations have increased over 245% in just over a month, according to data released by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office.

On Monday, coronavirus hospitalizations reached 1,225, up from 354 on July 8, marking a 246% increase, according to state data.

The data also shows that the statewide daily death toll has returned to double digits. On Saturday, 11 deaths were recorded after nearly a month of low single digit reports. The last double digit death toll was 11 deaths on June 12.  

Data from the CDC shows that three quarters of counties in New York state are now classified under high or substantial Covid-19 transmission. 

The latest CDC guidance recommends universal indoor mask mandates for counties at the high or substantial level.

As of the governor’s office update on Sunday, 61.8% of New Yorkers have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

One in four patients at all hospitals in the Harris Health System in Texas have tested positive for Covid-19, according to the health care system, which covers Harris County, including Houston. 

Ben Taub Hospital’s intensive care unit is at 95% capacity with 27% of utilization by Covid-19 patients, McLeod said.  

President Biden said in a statement Monday he supports Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s decision to make the Covid-19 vaccine mandatory for all for all active duty military members by mid-September or sooner if fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

“Secretary Austin and I share an unshakable commitment to making sure our troops have every tool they need to do their jobs as safely as possible,” Biden continued. “Being vaccinated will enable our service members to stay healthy, to better protect their families, and to ensure that our force is ready to operate anywhere in the world.”

“I am proud that our military women and men will continue to help lead the charge in the fight against this pandemic, as they so often do, by setting the example of keeping their fellow Americans safe,” he concludes the statement.