New York must allow religious exemptions from the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for medical workers, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
U.S. Northern District Judge David Hurd of Utica granted a preliminary injunction temporarily barring New York State and employers from enforcing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate against medical workers claiming an exemption legitimate religious. Last month, Hurd issued a temporary restraining order blocking the application of the warrant with respect to religious beliefs.
The warrant requires most medical workers in the state to receive the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine by September 27, or lose their jobs. It prompted around 55,000 workers to be vaccinated, but left uncertain the fate of at least 35,600 other workers refusing the shots.
Many medical workers who had called for religious exemptions had been suspended pending the outcome of the legal battle. These workers, potentially in the thousands, could now return to work as some hospitals and nursing homes face staff shortages.
– David Robin
Also in the news:
►Southwest Airlines and its pilots union have strongly denied workers quit their jobs to protest a federal vaccine mandate after thousands of flights were canceled over the weekend.
►Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves has once again extended the state’s declaration of COVID-19 emergency, as the state continues to recover from the pandemic.
The numbers of the day: The United States has recorded more than 44.4 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 714,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Global totals: Over 238.4 million cases and 4.8 million deaths. More than 187 million Americans – 56% of the population – are fully immunized, according to the CDC.
What we read: COVID-19 vaccines offer the best protection against serious illness and death. New antibody and antiviral treatments offer “interlocking benefits”, experts say. Read more here.
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Texas Governor Abbott extends ban on vaccination warrants
Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order banning COVID-19 vaccination warrants for employees or consumers across the state, an extension of an earlier executive order limited to government entities. Abbott has also called on lawmakers to tackle the issue in the current special legislative session, ensuring that “no entity in Texas can compel receipt” of the vaccine.
“The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective and our best defense against the virus, but should remain voluntary and never forced,” Abbott said in a statement.
Abbott, who has previously been vaccinated and also tested positive for COVID-19, urged Texans to get vaccinated throughout the pandemic, but had previously banned school districts, cities, counties and government agencies to require vaccines. The Legislature passed a law earlier this year banning so-called “vaccine passports,” meaning private companies cannot force customers to wear masks, but until Monday, companies were allowed to impose vaccines on their employees.
– Madlin Mekelburg, American statesman from Austin
The Illinois VA nursing home did not follow the guidelines. 11 residents died.
Executives and staff at a federal veterans retirement home in Illinois mismanaged a coronavirus outbreak that killed 11 residents in the fall of 2020, long after employees were warned of the danger of the pandemic accounted for its elderly population, a government investigation found. A staff member exposed at the home was refused a test and told to simply wear a mask while finishing a shift to care for residents. The employee tested positive the next day. The tests were inconsistent, even after the virus began to spread within the Veterans Affairs compound in Danville. The isolation of those exposed was random, according to the survey.
“Direct care staff described the chaos and a lack of awareness of what to do,” the US Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general concluded in a report released last month. Read more here.
– Donovan Slack
More antivirus treatments expected soon
Several new COVID-19 treatments should be available in the coming months. Each drug serves a slightly different role, but together they could change the course of the disease, at least in the United States. An experimental antiviral from Merck and a monoclonal antibody from AstraZeneca, along with a handful of other drugs that find their way through the developmental process, could make COVID-19 a much less dreaded disease.
“We’re at the point where if we could use these drugs for all of their interrelated benefits… we could really start to control the impact of this virus on us, and in particular on the healthcare system,” said Dr William Schaffner. , an infectious disease physician at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.
– Karen Weintraub
Moderna has no plans to share its COVID-19 vaccine recipe
Moderna does not intend to share the recipe for its COVID-19 vaccine as executives have concluded that increasing the company’s production is the best way to increase global supply, the president said. of the company. The United Nations health agency urged Moderna to share its vaccine formula. Afeyan said the company has analyzed whether it would be better to share messenger RNA technology and determined that it could increase production and deliver billions more doses in 2022.
“Over the next six to nine months, the most reliable way to manufacture high quality and efficient vaccines will be to manufacture them,” said Moderna President Noubar Afeyan. When asked about calls from the World Health Organization and others, he said those calls assume “we can’t get enough capacity, but in fact we know we can.”
The COVID-19 vaccine is Moderna’s only commercial product. The company announced last week that it plans to open a vaccine factory somewhere in Africa. Afeyan said he hopes a decision will be made soon on an exact location. Still, it could take years for the plant to be operational.
Health workers and educators see high immunization rates with warrants
Almost all health workers in Washington state and North Carolina are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while 99.99% of Cincinnati public school employees have complied with the mandatory vaccination policy of the district. The high immunization rates come after the mandates of the federal government, states and local school districts. The White House released a report last week claiming vaccination warrants would lead to the vaccination of millions more Americans.
The report found that companies instituting vaccination mandates have seen their number of fully vaccinated workers exceed 90%.
California coronavirus death toll exceeds 70,000 as cases decline
California’s coronavirus death toll hit another unfathomable milestone on Monday – 70,000 people – as the state emerges from the latest wave of infection with the lowest rate of new cases among any state. Around the same time last year, cases in the state began to increase and by January, California was in the grip of the worst peak of the pandemic and was the national epicenter of the virus. Daily deaths approached 700.
The last wave started in the summer and was caused by the delta variant which mainly targeted the unvaccinated. At its worst during this peak, the average daily death toll in California was a few hundred.
Contribution: The Associated Press