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 More than 10,000 patients were hospitalized in Florida as of Sunday,
surpassing that state's record. Louisiana was expected to break its
record within 24 hours, prompting Governor John Bel Edwards, a
Democrat, to order residents to wear masks again indoors.
"These are the darkest days of this pandemic," Dr. Catherine O'Neal,
chief medical officer of Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical
Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said at a news conference with
Edwards. "We are no longer giving adequate care to patients."
O'Neal urged Louisianans to get vaccinated, warning that hospitals
were overwhelmed. Many nurses were out sick with the virus, she
said, leaving the state with a staffing deficit of 6,000 people.
Hospitalizations in Arkansas are also soaring and could eventually
break records. (Graphic on U.S. outbreak)
https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR
In California, political leaders in eight San Francisco Bay Area
counties reinstated mandatory indoor mask orders in public places as
of midnight Tuesday morning.
Governors of New York and New Jersey said transport, jail, hospital
and nursing home workers would be required to get vaccinated or
submit to regular testing. Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said
inoculation would be mandatory for the city's more than 11,000
employees.
NEW YORK GOVERNOR CRACKS DOWN
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo urged bars, restaurants and other
private businesses to require that customers be vaccinated before
they can enter. Cuomo said vaccines could be made mandatory for
nursing home workers, teachers and healthcare workers if case
numbers do not drop.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy suggested he could clamp down even
further on residents and businesses.
The moves represent the latest attempts by policy makers to spur
reluctant Americans to get vaccinated as the highly contagious Delta
variant of the coronavirus surges nationwide.
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 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis,
a Republican, has taken the opposite stance. He
issued an executive order last week barring
schools from requiring face coverings, saying
parents should make that decision for their
children. District officials in
Broward and Gadsden counties, facing a threat by DeSantis to
withhold state funds, said on Monday they were dropping mask
mandates this fall, the News Service of Florida reported.
Florida has one of the worst outbreaks in the nation and about
one-quarter of the country's hospitalized COVID patients, according
to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
https://bit.ly/2Vj3tjZ.
Mary Mayhew, head of Florida's hospital association, said the latest
surge sent hospitalizations rising to 10,000 from 2,000 in less than
30 days, although deaths have remained well below peak numbers.
"It is a much younger age group that is getting hospitalized,"
Mayhew said. "For the last year, so many heard repeatedly that COVID
had the greatest risk for our elderly, for individuals with serious
underlying conditions, but the Delta variant is clearly a
significant risk for younger people."
(Reporting by Joseph Ax in Princeton, New Jersey; Nathan Layne in
Wilton, Connecticut; Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas, Sharon Bernstein
in Sacramento, California and Brendan O'Brien in Chicago;Writing by
Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Dan Grebler)
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