Day: June 12, 2021

Global leaders meeting at the G-7 summit in England are expected to commit to the “Carbis Bay Declaration” to crush any future pandemics within the first 100 days.

The leaders held talks Saturday on the second day of the summit in southwestern England’s resort village of Carbis Bay. They were expected to pledge support for the plan before the summit ends Sunday.

Hard-hit India was invited to the summit, but its delegation elected not to attend in person because of the nation’s severe outbreak.

India’s health ministry said Saturday that 84,332 new COVID-19 infections had been reported in the previous 24 hours, its lowest daily count in 70 days.

Russia said Saturday that it had a daily toll of 13,510 new cases, more than 1,000 more than it reported Friday.

As of midafternoon Saturday, the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center in the U.S. was reporting that the global count of COVID-19 infections had reached more than 175.4 million. The U.S. has recorded the most cases at 33.5 million, followed by India with 29.4 million. Russia has recorded more than 5.1 million cases, according to Johns Hopkins.

The main doctors union in Britain called on the government to delay its plans to ease coronavirus lockdown restrictions, as new data showed a spike in cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant.

The British Medical Association said Friday that a “sensible delay” would help stop infections from rising.

Government figures on Friday showed 8,125 new COVID-19 cases, the highest daily total since February. The Delta variant, originally identified in India, now accounts for 90% of all new cases in the country.

According to the COVID-19 road map laid out by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, all pandemic-related restrictions were scheduled to be lifted June 21, a week from Monday.

Minister urges caution

However, in an interview Friday, British vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said the nation must be very careful about the opening, given the dominance of the Delta variant.

Zahawi said the government should examine the data from this weekend very carefully and share it with the nation, and then decide about reopening.

Johnson is expected to announce Monday that the restrictions will stay in place, likely for another four weeks.

Meanwhile, Chicago became the largest U.S. city to fully reopen Friday. During a news conference formally announcing the reopening, Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters that for more than a year, Chicago residents have endured so much, but they did their part every step of the way.

“You masked up, you got vaxxed up, and now it’s time for you to get up, get out of the house this summer and fully and safely enjoy the events of the best city on the planet, our beloved city of Chicago,” Lightfoot said.

Earlier Friday, G-7 leaders announced they would donate a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to low- and medium-income nations. The U.S. will donate 500 million shots, while Britain will donate 100 million doses.

US vaccinations

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that 64% of Americans 18 and older had had at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.

The Associated Press reported Friday that because of slowing demand for vaccinations, some states have stopped new orders for vaccine doses and others have sent millions of doses back to the federal government. States sending vaccines back to the government included Tennessee and North Carolina, even though less than half of their populations have been vaccinated.

In other developments Friday, Malaysia’s government said it would extend a two-week nationwide lockdown by another two weeks because daily infections remained high at more than 6,000.

Sri Lanka also extended its lockdown for another week as deaths from COVID-19 surpassed 2,000 on Friday.

Source: Voice of America

DALLAS – The airline industry’s recovery from the pandemic passed a milestone as more than 2 million people streamed through U.S. airport security checkpoints on Friday for the first time since early March 2020.

The Transportation Security Administration announced Saturday that 2.03 million travelers were screened at airport checkpoints on Friday. It was the first time in 15 months that the number of security screenings had surpassed 2 million in a single day.

Airline bookings have been picking up since around February, as more Americans were vaccinated against COVID-19 and – at least within the United States – travel restrictions such as mandatory quarantines began to ease.

The recovery is not complete. Friday’s crowds were only 74% of the volume compared with the same day in 2019. However, the 2.03 million figure was 1.5 million more travelers than on the same day last year, according to the TSA.

The 2 million mark represents quite a turnaround for the travel industry, which was hammered by the pandemic. There were days in April 2020 when fewer than 100,000 people boarded planes in the U.S., and the CEO of Boeing predicted that at least one major U.S. airline would go bankrupt.

Most of the airlines are still losing money. Southwest eked out a narrow first-quarter profit thanks to its share of $64 billion in federal pandemic relief to the industry, and others are expected to follow suit later this year.

The fear of large-scale furloughs has lifted. United Airlines, which lost $7 billion and threatened to furlough 13,000 workers last fall, told employees this week that their jobs were secure even when the federal money runs out in October.

That’s because airlines like United are upbeat about salvaging the peak summer vacation season. International travel and business trips are still deeply depressed, but domestic leisure travel is roughly back to pre-pandemic levels, airline officials say.

The airlines are recalling employees from voluntary leave and planning to hire small numbers of pilots and other workers later this year.

Hotel operators say they, too, have seen bookings improve as vaccination rates rise.

Mike Gathright, a senior vice president at Hilton, said the company’s hotels were 93% full over the Memorial Day weekend. He said the company was “very optimistic” about leisure travel over the summer and a pickup in business travel this fall.

“The vaccine distribution, the relaxed travel restrictions, consumer confidence — all of that is driving occupancy and improvement in our business,” Gathright said.

Prior to the pandemic, TSA screened on average 2 million to 2.5 million travelers per day. The lowest screening volume during the pandemic was on April 13, 2020, when just 87,534 individuals were screened at airport security checkpoints.

By the middle of last month, TSA’s average daily volume for screenings was approximately 65% of pre-pandemic levels.

As the summer travel season approaches, TSA is advising passengers to arrive at airports with sufficient time to accommodate increased screening time, as traveler volumes are expected to approach, and in some cases exceed, pre-pandemic levels at certain airports.

Source: Voice of America