SAN FRANCISCO — California will become the first state in the nation to require all teachers and school staff to get vaccinated or undergo weekly COVID-19 testing.
The statewide vaccine mandate for K-12 educators comes as schools return from summer break amid growing concerns of the highly contagious delta variant. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the new policy Wednesday as he visited a San Francisco Bay Area school that has already reopened after summer break.
Several large school districts in the state have issued similar requirements in recent days, including San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and the Long Beach Unified school districts.
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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:
— California 1st state to require COVID-19 vaccine or test for teachers, staff
— CDC urges COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy as delta surges
— US to deliver nearly 837K Pfizer vaccines to Caribbean nations
— WHO will test 3 current drugs for potential use against coronavirus
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— Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine
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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey is considering mandating regular negative PCR tests from vaccine-hesitant parents as the country prepares to return to face-to-face education.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca says the government was determined to reopen schools on Sept. 6.
“Vaccination must become indispensable if we don’t want our education and business life to be uninterrupted,” Koca said in a televised speech. “Parents especially, will either complete their vaccinations or will have to regularly check that they don’t carry the disease.”
The announcement comes as the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths continued to rise.
On Wednesday, the country reported 27,356 new cases in past 24 hours, the highest number of daily infections since May 4. Deaths rose by 128 in the last 24 hours.
Earlier, the minister announced on Twitter that 50% of all adults in Turkey had been fully vaccinated.
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PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron is warning the coronavirus crisis “is not behind us” after a government meeting focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Macron urged all French people who are eligible to get the vaccine. He says “the health crisis is not behind us, very clearly... We will live for several more months with this virus.”
About 56% of France’s population is fully vaccinated. But for several weeks, France has been facing an increasing number of daily infections, driven by the highly contagious delta variant, which now accounts for most cases.
France is sending medical help to French overseas territories in the Caribbean. The islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe are struggling with COVID-19 outbreaks.
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NEW YORK — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging all pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The advice comes as hospitals in hot spots around the U.S. see disturbing numbers of unvaccinated mothers-to-be seriously ill with the virus. The CDC recommendation echoes recent guidance from top obstetrician groups.
The agency had previously encouraged pregnant women to consider vaccination. Pregnant women run a higher risk of severe illness from the coronavirus. But their vaccination rates are low, with only about 23% having received at least one dose, according to the CDC.
‘’The vaccines are safe and effective, and it has never been more urgent to increase vaccinations as we face the highly transmissible delta variant and see severe outcomes from COVID-19 among unvaccinated pregnant people,’’ CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement.
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COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina surpassed 10,000 COVID-19 deaths Wednesday, prompting health officials to urge the unvaccinated to get their shots as the state lags nationally in vaccine uptake.
“There is only one way to prevent more lives from being lost and that is through vaccination,” said Dr. Edward Simmer, director of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Nearly 2 million South Carolinians -- less than half of the eligible population -- have been fully vaccinated so far.
State health officials have tracked nearly 650,000 coronavirus cases since the start of the outbreak, with 2,560 new cases and 15 deaths recorded Wednesdays. Average case counts are approaching 3,000 daily amid a delta variant surge, surpassing levels seen during last summer’s peak.
“Until we reach a critical percentage of South Carolinians vaccinated that can stifle COVID-19’s spread, we are not out of danger,” Simmer says. “And the longer that takes, the more time the virus has to mutate into new, harder-to-control variants.”
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SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile started giving booster shots of a COVID-19 vaccine to people over 55 years old who had already received two vaccine doses.
President Sebastián Piñera was present for the first AstraZeneca booster shots given to people who had previously received Sinovac vaccinations.
“Chile was one of the first countries in the world and in Latin America to initiate a vaccination process and now we are at a stage in which we have to take the last steps,” Piñera said.
The application of the booster dose began after a study by Chile’s Ministry of Health in July showed that the effectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine in preventing symptomatic infections of COVID-19 decreased by 5% compared to June.
The Pfizer vaccine, the second-most used in the South American country, decreased in effectiveness by 3% in the same time period, according to the government study. For now, the booster dose only applies to those vaccinated with Sinovac. Some 72% of Chileans have received the Chinese vaccine.
Both Sinovac and Pfizer maintain high levels of effectiveness in preventing hospitalizations and death, the study says.
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The U.S. government says it will deliver nearly 837,000 Pfizer vaccines to Caribbean nations as the region struggles with a spike in coronavirus cases.
The Bahamas will receive 397,000 doses, followed by Trinidad and Tobago with more than 305,000 doses. Barbados will receive 70,200 doses, with 35,100 slated for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, 17,550 for Antigua and 11,700 for St. Kitts and Nevis.
“The Biden-Harris administration’s highest priority in the Americas today is managing and ending the COVID pandemic and contributing to equitable recovery,” said Juan González, the National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere.
Haiti is among the hardest hit Caribbean nation, which on July 14 received its first vaccine shipment — 500,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine donated by the U.S. via the United Nations’ COVAX program.
Haiti, with more than 11 million people, has reported 20,400 confirmed cases and 575 deaths. However, health experts believe those numbers are severely underreported because of a lack of testing.
The Caribbean region has registered 1.29 million cases and more than 16,000 confirmed deaths. About 10.7 million people are vaccinated, according to the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency.
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Doctors in Florida say they’re seeing more coronavirus infections among children as students return to classrooms.
There has been “an enormous increase” in cases among children in July and August at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ronald Ford says. About 20 children with the coronavirus sought treatment at the South Florida hospital’s emergency department in June, he said.
“That number went to well over 200 in July and, even at this point in the month of August, we are already up to over 160. So, we’re well on the way to breaking July’s record,” Ford says
Most children have been treated in the emergency room and sent home, but “those that are admitted are sicker than what we’ve seen before, and many of them are requiring care in our intensive care units,” Ford says.
Ford’s advice to parents sending their children back to school: Ignore misinformation. “The best thing you can do to protect your child is to keep them away from the virus. This virus is extremely infectious. And it doesn’t take much virus to infect and cause symptoms and disease.”
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, has handled about 40% less passenger traffic in the first half of 2021, compared to the same period last year.
The hub’s chief executive announced the decline on Wednesday, as more contagious variants of the coronavirus cut off its biggest markets and impact the global aviation industry. However, he remained optimistic about the crucial East-West transit point as authorities gradually re-open Dubai’s key routes to the Indian subcontinent and Britain.
The airport handled 86.4 million people before the pandemic hit in 2019. It’s held the title of the world’s busiest for the past seven years.
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GENEVA — The World Health Organization says it will soon test three drugs used for other diseases to see if they might help patients sickened by the coronavirus.
In a statement on Wednesday, the U.N. health agency says the three drugs would be adopted into the next phase of its ongoing global research into identifying potential treatments for COVID-19. The drugs were chosen by an independent panel based on the likelihood they could prevent deaths in people hospitalized for coronavirus.
They include artesunate, a malaria drug, the cancer drug imatinib, and infliximab, currently used in people with diseases of the immune system.
WHO’s ongoing study into COVID-19 treatments previously assessed four drugs. Among its findings, the agency determined that remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine didn’t help people hospitalized with the virus. WHO’s research includes thousands of researchers in hundreds of hospitals in 52 countries.
“Finding more effective and accessible therapeutics for COVID-19 patients remains a critical need,” says WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
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MADRID — The Spanish Medicines Agency has given the go-ahead for the first clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine developed in Spain.
The agency, which regulates the country’s health products sector, said Wednesday it has approved the PHH-1V vaccine developed by Spanish company Hipra for testing on humans.
It said in a statement that dozens of volunteers aged between 18 and 39 are to receive two doses of the vaccine.
Hipra has its headquarters is northeastern Spain. Its main work is in the field of prevention and diagnosis of human and animal health, specializing in innovative vaccines.
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CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne, has extended its lockdown in a bid to stamp out an outbreak of the coronavirus.
Melbourne’s lockdown will be extended for a second week until the end of Aug. 19, the Victoria state government said Wednesday as it reported 20 new infections.
Meanwhile, authorities in Sydney say they are considering easing restrictions for vaccinated residents despite the delta variant.
Australian cities have used lockdowns to successfully end coronavirus outbreaks throughout the pandemic. But the highly contagious delta variant poses new challenges.
The New South Wales state government reported 344 new infections and says some lockdown restrictions could be eased for vaccinated Sydney residents in September.
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BEIJING — State media say one of China’s most serious recent outbreaks of COVID-19 partly stemmed from people gathered at mahjong parlors and at a virus testing site.
The city of Yangzhou in the eastern province of Jiangsu added another 54 confirmed cases on Wednesday, bringing its total to 448 since the outbreak spread from the international airport in the provincial capital of Nanjing on July 20.
Reports said the cluster has been traced partly to a 64-year-old woman who visited several mahjong parlors after returning from Nanjing and was positive for the virus during mass testing following the outbreak.
Dozens of others were infected at a testing site in the village of Lianhe on the outskirts of Yangzhou, the ruling Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily said. While China has imposed stiff rules on testing, lockdowns and mask wearing, test sites in Beijing and elsewhere have experienced crowding and relatively little social distancing.
China currently has 1,789 COVID-19 patients in treatment, 666 of them in Jiangsu. The country has reported a total of 94,080 cases and 4,636 deaths from the illness since the first cases in the pandemic were discovered in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand’s government is warning its citizens to be prepared for a strict lockdown at the first sign of an outbreak of the delta variant of the coronavirus.
COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said the government’s response is likely to be “swift and severe.” New Zealand has stamped out the spread of the virus and had previously planned to rely primarily on contact tracing for any small outbreaks.
But Hipkins said the problems that Sydney currently faces in trying to contact trace a growing outbreak showed the delta variant was extremely hard to manage and that New Zealand’s tolerance for risk was now very low.
He also hinted that New Zealand might soon mandate more mask use during outbreaks and change its strategy on administering second doses of the Pfizer vaccine to ensure more people got a first dose earlier, saying the details on the changes would be announced soon.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s daily increase in coronavirus infections has exceeded 2,000 for the first time since the start of the pandemic, continuing an alarming spread despite the enforcement of strict virus restrictions in large population centers.
Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol on Wednesday pleaded for people to stay home during the holiday break around Liberation Day on Friday. He said that “in our fight against COVID-19, we are entering a new phase, a new crisis.”
Officials said more than 1,400 of the 2,223 new cases are in the Seoul metropolitan region. Kwon says transmissions are also spreading at faster speeds in other parts of the country.
South Korea has so far administered first doses of coronavirus vaccine to 42% of a population of more than 51 million.
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FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is ordering that students and employees in the state’s schools wear masks indoors, as the fast-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus brings more infections and hospitalizations.
Beshear’s executive order issued Tuesday applies to everyone in Kentucky schools for kindergarten through 12th grade, regardless of vaccination status. He says the requirement also applies to child care and pre-kindergarten programs.
The governor says “we are to the point where we cannot allow our kids to go into these buildings unprotected, unvaccinated and face this delta variant.”
Beshear says he wants to avoid schools shutting down in-person teaching and shifted to remote learning as occurred earlier in the pandemic. The number of children infected with the virus has risen sharply, and children under age 12 aren’t eligible for the vaccines.
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HOUSTON — The latest wave of coronavirus infections in Texas continues to tax the state’s health care systems as health officials report that 10,000 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 for the first time since early February.
State health officials reported 10,041 hospital patients in Texas were ill with COVID-19 as of Monday. That is the most since 10,259 COVID-19 hospitalizations were reported Feb. 4.
Meantime, a state district judge in San Antonio granted a temporary restraining order to allow the governments of San Antonio and Bexar County to require public school students to wear masks in class and to quarantine unvaccinated students exposed to the virus.
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