Cases surged in the upper Midwest. Some schools in Michigan kept students at home before Thanksgiving. The military sent medical teams to Minnesota to relieve hospital staff overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients.
The outlook for the Midwest is getting worse, because more and more places are available to everyone in boosters. Massachusetts and Utah have become the latest countries to announce that anyone 18 years of age or older can roll up their sleeves for booster injections. An advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet on Friday to discuss expanded booster injections.
According to federal data, cold weather states have dominated the new wave of cases in the past 7 days, including New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. But there are also problems in the Southwest, where more than 90% of inpatient beds in Arizona are occupied.
In Detroit, only 35% of eligible residents are fully vaccinated, and the school district said it will switch to online learning on Friday in December because of the increase in COVID-19 cases, the need to clean buildings, and the overtime of “mental health relief”. “A high school has changed to all online learning until November 29.
In another high school, some students and teachers left briefly on Wednesday. They said that the class size is still too large for the pandemic and the school needs to be scrubbed.
Detroit Health Officer Denise Fair Razo said that the city’s new cases have surged to 3,858 in the past 14 days, compared with 2,322 in the previous two weeks.
“We are in Michigan, so we don’t find ourselves spending time outdoors wearing flip-flops and vests,” Ferlazzo said on Thursday. “We were indoors and, frankly, we became a little too relaxed. We no longer wear masks. We no longer wash our hands as often as we should. But we know these precautions.”
Fair Razo urges people to be tested for COVID-19 before the Thanksgiving party, even if they are vaccinated. She “absolutely” predicted the post-holiday peak.
Elsewhere in Michigan, some schools will be closed for Thanksgiving next week instead of just three days.
“There have been some major stressors that have attracted attention and recognition this school year,” Greg Helmer, the head of the school district, told parents, mentioning the staff shortage and student absences in Ravenna.
In Minnesota, the U.S. Department of Defense will dispatch two 22-person medical teams to Hennepin County Medical Center and St. Cloud’s Hospital next week to treat patients immediately and assist exhausted medical staff.
“I need the people of Minnesota to realize that, as we have been saying, this is a dangerous time,” Governor Tim Walz said as he pushed for vaccination.
In New Hampshire, 327 people were reported to have contracted COVID-19 in the hospital, surpassing the high of the pandemic since December 31 last year. The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in neighbouring Maine also hit a new high this week.
Vermont Governor Phil Scott called on lawmakers to attend a special meeting next week to pass a bill that would give local governments the power to use temporary masks. Although the number of new daily cases in Vermont is close to the lowest level since the beginning of the pandemic, he has always opposed the statewide mask order.
In Florida, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law prohibiting companies from ordering workers to be vaccinated unless they also allow them to opt out for various reasons, including regular testing. Schools and local governments are prohibited from compulsory vaccination, and parents can sue the school for wearing masks.
Florida recently has one of the lowest rates of new cases in the country. By opposing the blockade and other virus rules, DeSantis has become one of the most prominent Republicans in the United States.
The United States now has an average of nearly 87,000 new coronavirus cases per day, which is higher than the 72,000 cases two weeks ago. Since the peak of the delta mutation surge in the summer, the number of hospitalizations has begun to increase again after a steady decline. On average, more than 1,100 people still die every day in the country, and the number of Americans now dying from COVID-19 is 768,000.
Approximately 59% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, or approximately 195 million Americans. The government and health officials urge more people to get vaccinated, especially the 60 million who have not yet received the first dose of vaccine.
