Denmark will cull its mink population of up to 17 million after a mutation of the coronavirus found in the animals spread to humans, the prime minister said on Wednesday.
Health authorities found virus strains in humans and in mink which showed decreased sensitivity against antibodies, potentially lowering the efficacy of future vaccines, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said.
“We have a great responsibility towards our own population, but with the mutation that has now been found, we have an even greater responsibility for the rest of the world as well,” Frederiksen told a news conference.
The findings, which have been shared with the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, were based on laboratory tests by the State Serum Institute, the Danish authority dealing with infectious diseases.
The head of the WHO’s emergencies program, Mike Ryan, called on Friday for full-scale scientific investigations of the complex issue of humans – outside China – infecting mink which in turn transmitted the virus back to humans.
“We have been informed by Denmark of a number of persons infected with coronavirus from mink, with some genetic changes in the virus,” WHO said in a statement emailed to Reuters in Geneva. “The Danish authorities are investigating the epidemiological and virological significance of these findings.”
Authorities in Denmark said five cases of the new virus strain had been recorded on mink farms and 12 cases in humans, and that there were between 15 million and 17 million mink in the country.
Outbreaks at mink farms have persisted in the Nordic country, the world’s largest producer of mink furs, despite repeated efforts to cull infected animals since June.
Denmark’s police, army and home guard will be deployed to speed up the culling process, Frederiksen said.
Christian Sonne, professor of Veterinary and Wildlife Medicine at Aarhus University, said in an email he believed culling the herd now as a precautionary measure was a sound decision and could prevent a future outbreak that would be more difficult to control. Sonne co-authored a letter published in the journal Science last week calling for the cull.
“China, Denmark, and Poland should support and extend the immediate and complete ban of mink production,” Sonne and his co-authors wrote last week.
Tougher lockdown restrictions and intensified tracing efforts will be implemented to contain the virus in some areas of Northern Denmark, home to a large number of mink farms, authorities said.
“The worst case scenario is a new pandemic, starting all over again out of Denmark,” said Kare Molbak, director at the State Serum Institute.
Minks have also been culled in the Netherlands and Spain after infections were discovered.
Dr. Philip R. Lee, who as a number one federal well being official and fighter for social justice below President Lyndon B. Johnson wielded authorities Medicare money as a cudgel to desegregate the nation’s hospitals within the Sixties, died on Oct. 27 in a hospital in Manhattan. He was 96.
The trigger was coronary heart arrhythmia, his spouse, Dr. Roz Lasker, mentioned.
From his workplace at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, because the assistant secretary for well being and scientific affairs from 1965 to 1969, Dr. Lee engineered the introduction of Medicare, which was established for older Americans in 1965, one 12 months after Johnson had bulldozed his landmark civil-rights invoice via Congress.
“To Phil, Medicare wasn’t just a ‘big law’ expanding coverage; it was a vehicle to address racial and economic injustice,” his nephew Peter Lee, the manager director of Covered California, which runs the state’s well being care market below the Affordable Care Act, was quoted as saying in a tribute by the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Lee was the college’s chancellor from 1969 to 1972, after leaving the Johnson administration.
Dr. Lee’s use of Medicare funding to desegregate hospitals “changed the economic lives of millions of seniors,” Mr. Lee added.
Provisions within the Medicare laws subjected 7,000 hospitals nationwide to guidelines barring discrimination towards sufferers on the premise of race, creed or nationwide origin. The regulation required equal remedy throughout the board — from medical and nursing care to mattress assignments and cafeteria and restroom privileges — and barred discrimination in hiring, coaching or promotion.
Before the regulation took impact in 1966, fewer than half the hospitals within the nation met the desegregation commonplace and fewer than 25 p.c did within the South.
“I remember during one of my visits,” Dr. Lee instructed the journal of the American Society on Aging in 2015, “a cardiologist at Georgia Baptist Hospital told me, ‘Well, you know, Dr. Lee, if I put a nigger in with one of my white patients, it would kill the patient. My patient would die of a heart attack.’”
By February 1967, a 12 months or much less after many of the regulation’s provisions had taken impact, 95 p.c of hospitals have been compliant, Dr. Lee mentioned.
“He was largely responsible for that effort,” mentioned Professor David Barton Smith of Drexel University and writer of “The Power to Heal: Civil Rights, Medicare and the Struggle to Transform America’s Health System” (2016).
Dr. Lee hailed from a household of physicians — his father and 4 siblings have been medical doctors — and whereas working within the Palo Alto Medical Clinic (now the Palo Alto Medical Foundation), which his father based, he noticed firsthand the consequences on the poor and the aged of insufficient well being care and the shortage of insurance coverage protection.
As early as 1961, he was a guide on growing older to the Santa Clara Department of Welfare in California, and as a member of the American Medical Association and a Republican at the time, he defied each the A.M.A. and his celebration in testifying earlier than Congress on behalf of a precursor to Medicare that might have helped pay for hospital and nursing dwelling care via Social Security for sufferers over 65.
Dr. Lee was branded a socialist and a Communist (irrespective of that he had served as a physician within the Korean War).
In 1987, after main the University of California, San Francisco, and heading well being coverage and analysis packages there as a professor of social drugs, he additional riled fellow physicians when, as chairman of Congressional fee, he really helpful a standardized nationwide restrict on how a lot medical doctors enrolled within the Medicare program, with an enormous pool of sufferers obtainable to them, might cost above a set schedule.
He was referred to as again to Washington in 1993, once more to be an assistant secretary, this time of the renamed Department of Health and Human Services below the Clinton administration. Serving till 1997, he suggested the White House on its in the end failed effort on well being care reform.
In 2015 he endorsed the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act and steered that the nation might go even additional in guaranteeing common well being care.
“In 1967, President Johnson said we would continue to work until equality of treatment is the rule,” Dr. Lee wrote in Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging. “By making Medicare an option for all Americans, the kind of care I receive could be available to everyone.”
Philip Randolph Lee was born in San Francisco on April 17, 1924, to Dr. Russell Van Arsdale Lee, who had lobbied for nationwide medical insurance as a member of a fee appointed by President Harry S. Truman, and Dorothy (Womack) Lee, an newbie musician.
His curiosity in drugs, he instructed Stanford Medicine Magazine in 2004, “began with house calls with my dad from the age of 6 or 7.”
He earned his bachelor’s and medical levels at Stanford University in 1945 and 1948. As a member of the Naval Reserve, he was on lively responsibility as a physician at the top of World War II and once more from 1949 to 1951, through the Inchon invasion in Korea. He obtained a grasp of science diploma from the University of Minnesota in 1955 and had fellowships at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in New York and the Mayo Clinic.
“Phil moved from clinical medicine to health policy and then devoted his life to addressing issues at the nexus of civil rights, social justice and health,” Dr. Lasker, his spouse, mentioned in an e-mail.
His distinguished function in shaping Medicare and different federal well being insurance policies was preceded by a stint, 1963-65, as director of well being for the Agency for International Development. As chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco, he was credited with rising racial variety amongst its workers, college and pupil physique.
He was additionally lauded for his aggressive function in confronting the AIDS epidemic because the president of the newly-formed Health Commission of the City and County of San Francisco from 1985 to 1989.
The writer of a half-dozen books, Dr. Lee was an early critic of the pharmaceutical trade in “Pills, Profits and Politics” (1974, with Milton Silverman).
There have been 9,487,080 coronavirus cases in the United States, and 233,729 people have died (Johns Hopkins). Around 3,743,527 people have recovered, and the United States has conducted 150,969,797 tests. Worldwide, there have been 48,107,322 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 1,225,881 deaths. At least 31,917,411 people have recovered from the virus.
U.S. Reports More Than 100,000 New Cases on Wednesday, Following Second-Highest Daily Covid-19 Cases on Election Day; Hospitalizations Increase; Covid-19 Becomes Third Leading Cause of Death in Arkansas.
The U.S. recorded more than 91,000 new cases of Covid-19 on Election Day, Nov. 3, and more than 100,000 new cases on Wednesday, Nov. 4 (CNN, Johns Hopkins, NYT). Six states – Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania – reported single-day highs on Tuesday. And five states — Maine, Minnesota, Indiana, Nebraska and Colorado — set single-day case records on Wednesday. The seven-day average for daily new cases now tops 90,000, the highest since the pandemic began and more than twice as high as the average during the low point in early September.
More than 50,000 people were hospitalized with the virus during voting on Tuesday. In the Midwest in particular, hospitalizations are rising steeply. Some Midwest hospitals are under strain as they work to provide care for large numbers of Covid-19 patients.
In Arkansas on Tuesday, Governor Asa Hutchinson announced that Covid-19 has become the third leading cause of death in the state, after cancer and heart attacks. “It is a deadly virus that takes people’s lives,” the governor said. “We want to make sure everybody understands the seriousness of it.” Bo Ryall, president and CEO of the Arkansas Hospital Association, asked residents to “please adhere to safety measures again” to help mitigate the strain on hospitals.
Despite increased production of protective gear, levels of N95 face masks are lower than recommended at many health-care facilities.
Manufacturers and health officials are reporting shortages of N95 masks, critical protective equipment for frontline workers (WSJ). Although supplies of masks, gloves, and other equipment have improved since the start of the pandemic, new Covid-19 surges around the country are making it difficult for health care facilities to keep up with demand for N95 masks.
Many facilities are being forced to ration and reuse supplies. In Michigan, approximately two-thirds of health systems report less than a three-week supply of protective equipment, far below the state’s recommended 90-day supply. In New Mexico, 90% of hospitals are now reusing N95 masks. State health officials around the country expect shortages to be exacerbated in the coming weeks as Covid-19 cases continue to rise.
Manufacturers are scrambling to keep up, ramping up production, and working with state officials to direct supplies to areas in greatest need. 3M, the largest manufacturer of N95 masks in the country, is producing four times the number of N95 masks per month compared to pre-pandemic production. Even so, Chief Executive Mike Roman told reporters, “N95s are still in high demand. We have more demand than we can supply.”
The coronavirus pandemic reached a dire milestone Wednesday when the number of new U.S. infections topped 100,000 in one day for the first time, continuing a resurgence that showed no sign of slowing.
The pandemic is roaring across the Midwest and Plains states. Seven states set records for hospitalizations for covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. And Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska and North Dakota saw jumps of more than 45 percent in their seven-day rolling average of new infections, considered the best measure of the spread of the virus.
The record, 104,004 cases, was reached a day after the deeply divided nation went to the polls to choose between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, an election widely seen as a choice between fully reopening the economy and aggressively quelling the outbreak.
“It’s clear we’re heading into a period where we’re going to see increasing hospitalization and deaths in the U.S. And it worries me how little we’re doing about it,” said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Obama administration. “We know by now how fast this virus can move. You have to get ahead of it.”
After more than nine months of restrictions, some state leaders are hesitant to risk further pandemic fatigue, Frieden said.
But if case counts continue rising at the current rate and strong action isn’t taken, viral transmission may soon reach a point in some areas where nothing will stop the virus except another shutdown, he said.
“The numbers keep going up, and we’re only getting closer and closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas,” when some families are expected to congregate indoors and risk spreading the virus further, said Eleanor Murray, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University. “For so many reasons, the next few weeks are going to be bad for us and good for covid.”
With Trump and his aides fighting to hold on to the White House, the federal response to the pandemic, which already leaves major responsibilities to the states, may be even more fractured, Murray said.
“Something that deeply worries me is either way this election goes, Trump will still be in charge the next few weeks, when cases are higher than they’ve ever been,” she said. “And he’s made clear there will be no top-down, coordinated action coming from the federal government.”
Despite months of surveys that clearly indicated strong voter disapproval of the president’s response to the pandemic could weigh heavily against his reelection effort, more voters chose the economy as the primary issue in casting their ballots, exit polling showed.
Even if Biden captures the White House, the results appear to signal that, for many people, covid-19 is not as daunting as the prospect of being unable to pay their bills or send their children to school.
“I got news for you, pal. Covid-19 is over. It’s done,” said Nick Arnone, owner of HLSM, a software company for the power sports industry in Plains, Pa. “We have therapeutics, so deaths are way down. We are very close to a vaccine. We’ve got to ride it out now.
About 35 percent of voters said the economy was the most important issue for them, while about 17 percent cited the pandemic and about 2 in 10 were motivated most by racial inequality.
At the same time, however, just over half the voters said it is more important to contain the virus, even if that hurts the economy, while slightly more than 4 in 10 said rebuilding the economy is most critical, even if that impairs work to quell the virus.
In El Paso, where the pandemic is surging, James Clark said he voted for Biden because of the uncontrolled outbreak.
“Covid was the main reason . . . and the things he was saying specifically about it,” Clark said. “I mean there were some things Trump was doing well, too, but overall it was covid.”
Some analysts were surprised and concerned that voters appeared to view the decision before them as a choice between the virus and their livelihoods, rather than as intertwined problems that could be solved together.
“That was shocking to me, that Trump could convince so many people it was a choice between the economy and pandemic,” said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego. “I’m amazed the extent he pulled that off, because it’s so obviously a false dichotomy. There’s no way for the economy to thrive unless we get control of the pandemic.”
On the campaign trail, Biden warned voters of a “dark winter” and invoked empty chairs in homes where families grieved the death of a loved one. He suggested he would follow science and tighten restrictions in places where that was necessary.
Trump repeatedly declared that the country was “rounding the turn” on the pandemic and said a vaccine was almost ready to be distributed. “You know what we want? We want normal,” Trump said this past weekend in Butler, Pa.
The two political messages were consistent with the viewpoints of each candidate’s base, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Biden has much more support among urban voters and people of color who, until recently, have been hit harder by the pandemic. Trump’s base is more White and rural, constituencies that have been slammed by the virus only in recent weeks, as the number of infections soared in the Upper Midwest and Plains states, she said.
“Who’s more likely to know someone’s who’s died? People who are already more likely to be Democrats than Republicans,” Jamieson said. “The lived experience of the two constituencies, the base vote for each side, is different.”
In Florida, which Trump carried more easily than expected, Biden’s emphasis on the pandemic hampered grass-roots campaigning, said Susan MacManus, an emerita professor of political science at the University of South Florida. With Biden emphasizing social distancing, the Democratic campaign there followed his lead.
“The Republicans never let their foot off the pedal in terms of continuing to register [voters] and going door to door, all through the covid,” she said. “The Democrats, once covid hit, they made a conscious effort, not going door to door.”
Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), who appeared to be headed toward losing her seat to television newscaster Maria Elvira Salazar (R) in Miami, campaigned heavily on Trump’s response to the virus.
Stefan Baral, a physician and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Wednesday faulted Democrats’ pandemic messaging, saying Biden did not adequately express empathy for the economic hardships caused by the pandemic-related shutdowns.
“This is a terrible virus. But empathy for all the folks who have lost their jobs and lost their opportunities and kids who are out of school — I just never felt that message of empathy come across at all,” Baral said.
When some people heard Biden talk about the dark winter ahead, they thought, “The first thing he’s going to do is close my business,” Baral said.
Voters also had to make up their minds amid a torrent of misinformation and purposeful distortion about the pandemic, said Matthew Seeger, a risk communication expert at Wayne State University in Michigan, who helped the CDC develop its past communications plans.
“The messaging around the pandemic has been deliberately confused and strategically manipulated to downplay its significance,” Seeger said. “You combine that with the fact that this is a slow-moving crisis with risk fatigue starting to settle in, and you can see why public perception is what it is.”
In Chandler, Ariz., a suburb southeast of Phoenix last week, Al Fandick said he considers the pandemic wildly overblown and masks largely pointless. Fandick, 53, who runs a transport company, said he found it absurd that he was required to wear a mask to enter a restaurant but could remove the face covering once he sat down.
“Having a face mask on while I walk into that restaurant, but then I can take that face mask off, that’s like having a peeing section in a pool,” Fandick said.
Aside from trips to visit people in the hospital, he never wore a mask until Maricopa County began mandating it for public spaces, a policy he vehemently opposes, he said.
“Don’t need the hassle,” he said.
On the other side of the gulf are those who see the accelerating pandemic and a possibly very deadly period ahead.
“It is demoralizing to feel like: Here we are in November. A third surge is not just underway, but has already surpassed past surges. And people still don’t understand what’s happening and what’s at stake,” said Murray of Boston University.
“We are in the middle of an emergency. We have cases higher than they have ever been since this pandemic started, and yet you will have people paying less attention than ever to covid,” Murray said. “We as a country are not in a place right now where it’s safe to do that.”
HENRY KOTULA 