California is desperately searching for healthcare workers to handle the pandemic. The state is seeking 3,000 temporary medical workers to meet the demand, according to the Associated Press. Officials are asking foreign partners, including in Australia and Taiwan, for help.
State officials are reaching out to foreign partners amid a shortage of temporary medical workers in the United States, particularly “nurses trained in critical care.”
Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s Health and Human Services secretary, said that regions might run out of surge capacity units “by the end of the month and early in January.”
The U.S. is expected to top 3 million deaths for the first time in a single year, with the coronavirus pandemic as a significant contributor.
Although final figures will not be available for months, the Associated Press reported that preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate there will be 3.2 million deaths in 2020, an uptick of at least 400,000 from 2019. More than 321,000 have died of the coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
To date, more than 18 million infections have been confirmed in the U.S. Current case totals are undercounts, given that many infections go undetected and undiagnosed.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 614,117 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered in the U.S. That is expected to accelerate as the Moderna vaccine begins to be distributed. Worldwide, an estimated 2.2 million doses have been administered.
The pandemic has reached Antarctica. Chilean public officials announced on Monday that 26 members of the Chilean army and 10 maintenance workers had contracted the virus while stationed at General Bernardo O’Higgins Riquelme, a Chilean base on the southernmost continent. Some of the infected were experiencing symptoms prior to their positive diagnoses.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis disparaged the decision made by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Sunday to recommend that essential workers and people over age 75 would be next in line to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
“There were discussions among the CDC that actually had a proposal to place ‘younger essential workers’ ahead of elderly individuals. Now, that was met with, deserved, a lot of backlash,” DeSantis said Tuesday.
He emphasized that Florida would not follow the ACIP’s recommendation.
“Let me be very clear … our vaccines are going to be targeted towards our elderly population first,” DeSantis said. “If you’re 22 working at a grocery store, you take preference over a 74-year-old grandma … I don’t think that’s the direction we want to go In Florida.”
Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the leading public health experts on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, said she intends to retire in the near future, citing the treatment of her family after it was reported she traveled for Thanksgiving.
Birx, 64, has served as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator for President Barack Obama and President Trump since 2014. She announced her intention to step down shortly in an interview with Newsy’s Amber Strong.
“I want the Biden administration to be successful,” she said. “I’ve worked since 1980 in the federal government, first through the military, then through [the Department of Health and Human Services], and then detailed to the State Department and detailed here, where I hope I was helpful. I will be helpful in any role people think I can be helpful in, and then I will retire.”
Other top officials, meanwhile, got vaccinated Tuesday. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, received his first round of the coronavirus vaccine Tuesday morning on television.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who emerged as a prominent member of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force during the pandemic, received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in Bethesda, Maryland, where the National Institutes of Health has its main campus.
Fauci said that he wanted his vaccination to serve “as a symbol to the rest of the country that I feel extreme confidence in the safety and the efficacy of this vaccine, and I want to encourage everyone who has the opportunity to get vaccinated so that we can have a veil of protection over this country that would end this pandemic.”
“What we’re seeing now is the culmination of years of research, which have led to a phenomenon that has truly been unprecedented,” he added.
NIH Director Francis Collins, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and a handful of front-line workers also received the vaccine on Tuesday.
“We’ve all said it is nothing short of miraculous to have a safe and effective vaccine within one year of a novel virus becoming known to the world,” Azar said.
Two days after closing its borders to Britain, France reopened them on a limited basis. The closure was in response to a new strain of the coronavirus discovered in Britain that was spreading rapidly.
France has agreed to allow French and European Union citizens, noncitizens with a permanent residence in France, and other people whose travel is deemed essential to go from Britain to France if they can provide proof of a recent coronavirus test.
French and British officials are also working on a plan to allow truck drivers carrying freight to ferry back and forth between the two countries.
