https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAbQMGXrBE4
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Northern Indiana nurse on lifting of mask mandates: “Children are like petri dishes—we can’t take risks with children’s lives”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/28/nurs-a28.html
George Kirby
iPrep Academy on the first day of school, August 23, 2021, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
As of August 16, there were total of 37,234 positive cases among students and more than 13,000 among teachers and staff reported to the Indiana Department of Health. After the sharp drop of the positivity rate due to vaccination and brief mitigation, rates have increased again since June 21, reaching 10.2 percent. On April 6, Republican Governor Eric Holcomb joined Republican and Democratic governors nationwide in loosening restrictions. Despite the increase in cases, the demand has been to get schools and workplaces reopened.
Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to a northern Indiana nurse protesting the against the removal of mask mandates in schools on Facebook groups with fellow parents. Mary described the conditions of the pandemic and her opposition to the removal of mask mandates. Her name has been changed to protect her identity.
In Mary’s town of Michigan City, schools opened on August 18 and LaPorte, Indiana, 10 miles away, has a no mask mandate. LaPorte went against the state’s recommendation of mandating masks. “We shall see in the next week, hopefully our numbers stay great for children,” she said. “But by what we are seeing in the South and what we’re seeing in the schools that have masks on everyone will do much better than the ones that don’t.” COVID-19 cases are rising sharply with the reopening of schools across the US underway.
Mary described the effects on her hospital of children going back to school: “We went from dismantling the COVID unit and only having a few positive cases to reopening COVID units. Here in northern Indiana, the schools are just opening so we’re not seeing kids yet in the hospital. I’m really, really hopeful that we don’t, but with them going back into school starting tomorrow in this area, and the numbers increasing, I’m sure we will.”
In Los Angeles, 600,000 public school students and 24,000 teachers have brought back to in-person classes. Mary stated that major pediatric hospitals in Texas and Louisiana are filled to capacity. The New Orleans Public School District’s 3,000 students and employees have been quarantined this week due to outbreaks. About 577 students and 352 employees tested positive just this month. Already almost 20 percent of ICU beds in Indiana are filled by COVID patients, while 27 percent of all ICU beds are available. Even though the state has not yet reached the reported peak of 3,381 hospitalizations last year, cases have continued to rise since July. Regardless of the risks, schools are re-opening and workplaces are keeping workers on the job.
Mary related the broader conditions to what she has seen in Indiana:
“Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis just last week alone treated 36 children in their ICU unit. Here in Indiana, the school system just put out that even if we go into the red [high positivity and community spread], they will remain open and will be treated case by case. I think when it comes to children if you have a huge number of them affected you have to shut it down. Unfortunately, children are like petri dishes to begin with and will spread it like wildfire. We can’t take risks with children’s lives; we just cannot. We haven’t even entered the time period of children’s normal viruses, like RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] and flu.”
Health care workers have noted surges among children diagnosed with COVID-19 and RSV. Dr. Pannaraj, an infectious diseases specialist at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, noted that this phenomenon puts “babies up until about a year and a half or two years of life” at risk. Even before the pandemic, hospital workers faced a crisis with the epidemic of nurse burnout. Like all sections of the working class, hospital workers have felt the brunt of the rising cases.
In 2019, nurses conducted a strike at St. Vincent hospital in Toledo, Ohio over pay, staffing and forced overtime that undermined patient care. With the pandemic escalating hospitalizations, hospital workers who are already understaffed are spread thin.
At St. Vincent hospital in Massachusetts, nurses are continuing their three-month-long struggle against the Tenet Healthcare operator. Without answering the demand for better staffing ratio, the hospital proposed increased wages and bonuses to end the strike. The hospital hired replacement nurses in May and has posted additional job openings to break the strike.
The Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) has minimized the strike-breaking effort. In May, the MNA presented a contract proposal that was thoroughly denounced by rank-and-file nurses. While the Tenet company has profited over $414 million throughout the pandemic, the MNA and AFL-CIO have isolated these nurses and provided no strike pay. Rather, the MNA has promoted illusions in the Democratic Party that has no intention of mobilizing wider working class support for the striking nurses.
Five hundred nurses from McLaren Macomb Hospital near Detroit have voted 90 percent for strike action. Nurses have been handling patient loads of six patients at a time.
In New Zealand, 1,500 public hospital midwives joined by parents and students held an eight-hour strike in the second week of August for increase in staffing and funding for health care. The new Delta variant sweeping internationally puts more pressure on hospital workers and an already precarious health care system.
A nurse in Sri Lanka described COVID-19 wards not being properly cleaned and nurses become infected. Like in the US, Sri Lanka also faces a shortage of hospital workers, mainly due to the vast amount of infections and lack of investment in health care infrastructure.
Moved by Massachusetts nurses on strike, Mary compared conditions of nurses in Portage, Indiana. “In a hospital in Portage, Indiana they’ve now decided that they can have eight patients. What hospitals are doing to the nurses is absolutely insane and I support nurses going on strike 100 percent. They are being used and abused, bringing in traveling nurses paying them $150 to $200 an hour. Meanwhile, their staff nurses are being mistreated and dumped; nursing is not good right now. What people don’t understand is nurses could up and walk out and cripple our hospital system.”
Hospitals and other businesses—along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Biden administration and the corporate-controlled unions, instead of following the science, are telling people in the midst of a new surge of the pandemic that that they have earned the right to take their masks off and have opposed shutdowns of schools and businesses. In a May speech, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten declared, “There is no doubt: Schools must be open. In person. Five days a week.” Later, she added, “Given current circumstances, nothing should stand in the way of fully reopening our public schools this fall and keeping them open.”
Even before school reopenings, the American Academy of Pediatrics noted over 121,000 new cases during the second week of August. The safeguarding of children and livelihood of workers through the eradication of COVID-19 can be achieved with an allocation of needed social resources. The Democrats and Republicans have centered the discussion as one of pro- or against mask mandates, as they defend the insatiable drive for profit of the financial oligarchy. However, numerous epidemiologists have demonstrated and argued that a total shutdown is required to eradicate the pandemic. The Socialist Equality Party calls on all parents, workers and students to form rank-and-file committees as part of a national and international campaign to stop the murderous school reopening drive and to fight for the shutdown of nonessential production, with compensation for all workers.
As of August 16, there were total of 37,234 positive cases among students and more than 13,000 among teachers and staff reported to the Indiana Department of Health. After the sharp drop of the positivity rate due to vaccination and brief mitigation, rates have increased again since June 21, reaching 10.2 percent. On April 6, Republican Governor Eric Holcomb joined Republican and Democratic governors nationwide in loosening restrictions. Despite the increase in cases, the demand has been to get schools and workplaces reopened.
Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to a northern Indiana nurse protesting the against the removal of mask mandates in schools on Facebook groups with fellow parents. Mary described the conditions of the pandemic and her opposition to the removal of mask mandates. Her name has been changed to protect her identity.
In Mary’s town of Michigan City, schools opened on August 18 and LaPorte, Indiana, 10 miles away, has a no mask mandate. LaPorte went against the state’s recommendation of mandating masks. “We shall see in the next week, hopefully our numbers stay great for children,” she said. “But by what we are seeing in the South and what we’re seeing in the schools that have masks on everyone will do much better than the ones that don’t.” COVID-19 cases are rising sharply with the reopening of schools across the US underway.
Mary described the effects on her hospital of children going back to school: “We went from dismantling the COVID unit and only having a few positive cases to reopening COVID units. Here in northern Indiana, the schools are just opening so we’re not seeing kids yet in the hospital. I’m really, really hopeful that we don’t, but with them going back into school starting tomorrow in this area, and the numbers increasing, I’m sure we will.”
In Los Angeles, 600,000 public school students and 24,000 teachers have brought back to in-person classes. Mary stated that major pediatric hospitals in Texas and Louisiana are filled to capacity. The New Orleans Public School District’s 3,000 students and employees have been quarantined this week due to outbreaks. About 577 students and 352 employees tested positive just this month. Already almost 20 percent of ICU beds in Indiana are filled by COVID patients, while 27 percent of all ICU beds are available. Even though the state has not yet reached the reported peak of 3,381 hospitalizations last year, cases have continued to rise since July. Regardless of the risks, schools are re-opening and workplaces are keeping workers on the job.
Mary related the broader conditions to what she has seen in Indiana:
“Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis just last week alone treated 36 children in their ICU unit. Here in Indiana, the school system just put out that even if we go into the red [high positivity and community spread], they will remain open and will be treated case by case. I think when it comes to children if you have a huge number of them affected you have to shut it down. Unfortunately, children are like petri dishes to begin with and will spread it like wildfire. We can’t take risks with children’s lives; we just cannot. We haven’t even entered the time period of children’s normal viruses, like RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] and flu.”
Health care workers have noted surges among children diagnosed with COVID-19 and RSV. Dr. Pannaraj, an infectious diseases specialist at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, noted that this phenomenon puts “babies up until about a year and a half or two years of life” at risk. Even before the pandemic, hospital workers faced a crisis with the epidemic of nurse burnout. Like all sections of the working class, hospital workers have felt the brunt of the rising cases.
In 2019, nurses conducted a strike at St. Vincent hospital in Toledo, Ohio over pay, staffing and forced overtime that undermined patient care. With the pandemic escalating hospitalizations, hospital workers who are already understaffed are spread thin.
At St. Vincent hospital in Massachusetts, nurses are continuing their three-month-long struggle against the Tenet Healthcare operator. Without answering the demand for better staffing ratio, the hospital proposed increased wages and bonuses to end the strike. The hospital hired replacement nurses in May and has posted additional job openings to break the strike.
The Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) has minimized the strike-breaking effort. In May, the MNA presented a contract proposal that was thoroughly denounced by rank-and-file nurses. While the Tenet company has profited over $414 million throughout the pandemic, the MNA and AFL-CIO have isolated these nurses and provided no strike pay. Rather, the MNA has promoted illusions in the Democratic Party that has no intention of mobilizing wider working class support for the striking nurses.
Five hundred nurses from McLaren Macomb Hospital near Detroit have voted 90 percent for strike action. Nurses have been handling patient loads of six patients at a time.
In New Zealand, 1,500 public hospital midwives joined by parents and students held an eight-hour strike in the second week of August for increase in staffing and funding for health care. The new Delta variant sweeping internationally puts more pressure on hospital workers and an already precarious health care system.
A nurse in Sri Lanka described COVID-19 wards not being properly cleaned and nurses become infected. Like in the US, Sri Lanka also faces a shortage of hospital workers, mainly due to the vast amount of infections and lack of investment in health care infrastructure.
Moved by Massachusetts nurses on strike, Mary compared conditions of nurses in Portage, Indiana. “In a hospital in Portage, Indiana they’ve now decided that they can have eight patients. What hospitals are doing to the nurses is absolutely insane and I support nurses going on strike 100 percent. They are being used and abused, bringing in traveling nurses paying them $150 to $200 an hour. Meanwhile, their staff nurses are being mistreated and dumped; nursing is not good right now. What people don’t understand is nurses could up and walk out and cripple our hospital system.”
Hospitals and other businesses—along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Biden administration and the corporate-controlled unions, instead of following the science, are telling people in the midst of a new surge of the pandemic that that they have earned the right to take their masks off and have opposed shutdowns of schools and businesses. In a May speech, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten declared, “There is no doubt: Schools must be open. In person. Five days a week.” Later, she added, “Given current circumstances, nothing should stand in the way of fully reopening our public schools this fall and keeping them open.”
Even before school reopenings, the American Academy of Pediatrics noted over 121,000 new cases during the second week of August. The safeguarding of children and livelihood of workers through the eradication of COVID-19 can be achieved with an allocation of needed social resources. The Democrats and Republicans have centered the discussion as one of pro- or against mask mandates, as they defend the insatiable drive for profit of the financial oligarchy. However, numerous epidemiologists have demonstrated and argued that a total shutdown is required to eradicate the pandemic. The Socialist Equality Party calls on all parents, workers and students to form rank-and-file committees as part of a national and international campaign to stop the murderous school reopening drive and to fight for the shutdown of nonessential production, with compensation for all workers.
We MUST Pressure Biden to Halt Construction of the Line 3 Pipeline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkuW4gAc6mE
COVID-19 spreads rapidly among children in India
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/28/indi-a28.html
Athiyan Silva
19 hours ago
The spread of the delta variant in India is sickening ever-larger numbers of adolescents and children who had been less affected in the previous wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds are being hospitalized with serious illness in cities across India.
Children attend online classes in a slum on the outskirts of Jammu, India on June 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)
In Bangalore, corona infections were confirmed in 543 children between the 1st and 10th of this month, according to the Karnataka Health Department. In the Union Territory of Pondicherry, 20 children were confirmed to have a COVID-19 infection. In Kanchipuram, in the state of Tamil Nadu, 33 children testing positive with COVID-19 infection have been admitted to hospital. Health officials in the state of Telangana said 37,332 children aged 0-19 were confirmed infected with the coronavirus between March and May this year.
Doctors are stressing the danger to children from the more virulent variant. Dr. Anjan Bhattacharya said: “The double mutant variant has immune escape phenomena. It masquerades as our own body system and then escapes our immunity protection. This is why more children are contracting COVID-19.” He pointed to a large rise in reported cases: “If COVID-19 affected 1 percent of children last year, it is about 1.2 percent now. But it is a huge increase in terms of numbers in India.”
Not only are more children contracting the virus, but the resulting illness is often more severe. Dr. Jaydeb Ray in Kolkata explained that before the emergence of the Delta variant, most COVID-19 cases were asymptomatic: “But now, we are seeing kids coming to hospitals with MIS-C (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children). This time it is showing parallel to an active infection.”
Such diseases are now leading to severe illness and deaths in children across India. Eighteen children have died in the Indian state of Rajasthan of a rare inflammatory disease amid the second wave of COVID-19. Similarly, 155 children have been admitted in the Jaipur hospital. Four children have been admitted to a hospital in Maharashtra with shortness of breath and low blood pressure.
Dr. Thiren Gupta, an intensive care pediatrician at Kangaram Hospital in Delhi, has treated more than 75 patients between the ages of 4 and 15 for MIS-C. He estimates that there are more than 500 such cases in Delhi and its suburbs. Gupta told the press that 90 percent of the children treated at the hospital were suffering from COVID-19 without showing any symptoms. There were 30 such cases in Pune and 20 in Solapur in children between the ages of 10 and 15.
The danger of serious illness comes atop the other burdens the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on India’s children. Many are orphaned. A study in The Lancet found that 119,000 children and adolescents in India lost their primary or secondary caregivers to COVID-19 in the first 14 months of the pandemic. Currently, this number has increased further, leaving 43,139 children orphaned. In Tamil Nadu alone, more than 3,600 children have lost a parent to COVID-19.
Chronic poverty in India further exacerbates these intolerable conditions. A 2016 National Family Health Survey (NFHS) report, prior to the pandemic, found that a staggering 38.4 percent of Indian children suffer from stunting due to malnutrition. This has been exacerbated during the pandemic, together with child labor, which affected 11 million children in India before the pandemic. The proportion of children aged 6 to 10 out of school rose by 1.5 percent in 2017 to 5.3 percent in 2020.
These reports expose as politically criminal the attempts by governments in India and around the world to force children back to school for in-person learning, so their parents can be kept at work generating profits for the banks and major corporations. Hundreds of children are dying or becoming seriously ill in Indonesia and in the United States, as well as in India. Yet capitalist governments are responding only by escalating their war on children.
Given the massive under-reporting of COVID-19 cases in India, any increase in the rate of serious illness could have devastating consequences for India’s 1.37 billion population.
The COVID-19 pandemic utterly swamped India’s poor health care infrastructure. Officially, the total number of COVID-19 cases in India is 32.6 million and the death toll is 437,400. However, a July 2021 study by the US-based Center for Global Development estimated that the true COVID-19 death toll in India is between 2.9 and 5.8 million. Of these deaths, half had come just in the period since March 2021 and the emergence of the Delta variant.
All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) director Randeep Gularia said 50 percent of Indian children had been exposed to COVID-19 and would test positive in antibody tests. Nonetheless, he said, they are still vulnerable to the more virulent Delta variant: “The general feeling is that adults are getting vaccinated, children are not being vaccinated and therefore if there is a new wave it will affect those who are more susceptible. Children will be more susceptible.”
These reports underscore the necessity, as the World Socialist Web Site has explained, of imposing strict social distancing and lockdown measures to halt the contagion, end the spread of COVID-19, and fight for the global eradication of the coronavirus.
In India, there currently is no vaccination program for children and adolescents. While the vaccine is free for those over 45 years of age, others must spend money out-of-pocket to get vaccinated. This is only possible for those who are rich.
In fact, only 10 percent of India’s population is fully vaccinated, and only 34 percent have had any vaccine doses at all. This means that broad layers of workers as well as school-aged youth are desperately vulnerable to contracting the disease.
Moreover, when the second wave of COVID-19 peaked in the state of Maharashtra in May and June, it was revealed that nearly 2,500 people in several places, including Mumbai, had been injected with ordinary salt water. This led to charges that officials, including doctors, had embezzled a total of $28,000. Similar fake vaccination scams have been reported elsewhere in India over the last two months.
Indian scientists are warning of a new catastrophe, particularly if the vaccination campaign is not accelerated. A study by Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Energy University and Nirma University has found that India could see as many as 600,000 new COVID-19 infections a day. Other studies have projected a third wave that is expected to increase to 100,000 to 150,000 recorded infections per day by October with a peak of cases expected in November.
Despite warnings from leading epidemiologists, microbiologists and other scientists, several state governments, including the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, have decided to open all business premises, including schools and cinema, from early September. They are pursuing a ruthless policy of sacrificing human lives to protect the financial, commercial, and geopolitical interests of the ruling elites. This will lead to further spread of the pandemic and to millions of deaths.
The critical question is the political mobilization of the working class to prevent such a disaster and to fight for the eradication of the virus. As the WSWS has written, “The implementation of the eradication strategy requires the development of a powerful international and unified mass movement of the working class. Only a mass movement that is not driven by the profit motive and fettered to the obsessive pursuit of personal wealth can generate the social force required to compel a change in policy.”
In Bangalore, corona infections were confirmed in 543 children between the 1st and 10th of this month, according to the Karnataka Health Department. In the Union Territory of Pondicherry, 20 children were confirmed to have a COVID-19 infection. In Kanchipuram, in the state of Tamil Nadu, 33 children testing positive with COVID-19 infection have been admitted to hospital. Health officials in the state of Telangana said 37,332 children aged 0-19 were confirmed infected with the coronavirus between March and May this year.
Doctors are stressing the danger to children from the more virulent variant. Dr. Anjan Bhattacharya said: “The double mutant variant has immune escape phenomena. It masquerades as our own body system and then escapes our immunity protection. This is why more children are contracting COVID-19.” He pointed to a large rise in reported cases: “If COVID-19 affected 1 percent of children last year, it is about 1.2 percent now. But it is a huge increase in terms of numbers in India.”
Not only are more children contracting the virus, but the resulting illness is often more severe. Dr. Jaydeb Ray in Kolkata explained that before the emergence of the Delta variant, most COVID-19 cases were asymptomatic: “But now, we are seeing kids coming to hospitals with MIS-C (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children). This time it is showing parallel to an active infection.”
Such diseases are now leading to severe illness and deaths in children across India. Eighteen children have died in the Indian state of Rajasthan of a rare inflammatory disease amid the second wave of COVID-19. Similarly, 155 children have been admitted in the Jaipur hospital. Four children have been admitted to a hospital in Maharashtra with shortness of breath and low blood pressure.
Dr. Thiren Gupta, an intensive care pediatrician at Kangaram Hospital in Delhi, has treated more than 75 patients between the ages of 4 and 15 for MIS-C. He estimates that there are more than 500 such cases in Delhi and its suburbs. Gupta told the press that 90 percent of the children treated at the hospital were suffering from COVID-19 without showing any symptoms. There were 30 such cases in Pune and 20 in Solapur in children between the ages of 10 and 15.
The danger of serious illness comes atop the other burdens the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on India’s children. Many are orphaned. A study in The Lancet found that 119,000 children and adolescents in India lost their primary or secondary caregivers to COVID-19 in the first 14 months of the pandemic. Currently, this number has increased further, leaving 43,139 children orphaned. In Tamil Nadu alone, more than 3,600 children have lost a parent to COVID-19.
Chronic poverty in India further exacerbates these intolerable conditions. A 2016 National Family Health Survey (NFHS) report, prior to the pandemic, found that a staggering 38.4 percent of Indian children suffer from stunting due to malnutrition. This has been exacerbated during the pandemic, together with child labor, which affected 11 million children in India before the pandemic. The proportion of children aged 6 to 10 out of school rose by 1.5 percent in 2017 to 5.3 percent in 2020.
These reports expose as politically criminal the attempts by governments in India and around the world to force children back to school for in-person learning, so their parents can be kept at work generating profits for the banks and major corporations. Hundreds of children are dying or becoming seriously ill in Indonesia and in the United States, as well as in India. Yet capitalist governments are responding only by escalating their war on children.
Given the massive under-reporting of COVID-19 cases in India, any increase in the rate of serious illness could have devastating consequences for India’s 1.37 billion population.
The COVID-19 pandemic utterly swamped India’s poor health care infrastructure. Officially, the total number of COVID-19 cases in India is 32.6 million and the death toll is 437,400. However, a July 2021 study by the US-based Center for Global Development estimated that the true COVID-19 death toll in India is between 2.9 and 5.8 million. Of these deaths, half had come just in the period since March 2021 and the emergence of the Delta variant.
All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) director Randeep Gularia said 50 percent of Indian children had been exposed to COVID-19 and would test positive in antibody tests. Nonetheless, he said, they are still vulnerable to the more virulent Delta variant: “The general feeling is that adults are getting vaccinated, children are not being vaccinated and therefore if there is a new wave it will affect those who are more susceptible. Children will be more susceptible.”
These reports underscore the necessity, as the World Socialist Web Site has explained, of imposing strict social distancing and lockdown measures to halt the contagion, end the spread of COVID-19, and fight for the global eradication of the coronavirus.
In India, there currently is no vaccination program for children and adolescents. While the vaccine is free for those over 45 years of age, others must spend money out-of-pocket to get vaccinated. This is only possible for those who are rich.
In fact, only 10 percent of India’s population is fully vaccinated, and only 34 percent have had any vaccine doses at all. This means that broad layers of workers as well as school-aged youth are desperately vulnerable to contracting the disease.
Moreover, when the second wave of COVID-19 peaked in the state of Maharashtra in May and June, it was revealed that nearly 2,500 people in several places, including Mumbai, had been injected with ordinary salt water. This led to charges that officials, including doctors, had embezzled a total of $28,000. Similar fake vaccination scams have been reported elsewhere in India over the last two months.
Indian scientists are warning of a new catastrophe, particularly if the vaccination campaign is not accelerated. A study by Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Energy University and Nirma University has found that India could see as many as 600,000 new COVID-19 infections a day. Other studies have projected a third wave that is expected to increase to 100,000 to 150,000 recorded infections per day by October with a peak of cases expected in November.
Despite warnings from leading epidemiologists, microbiologists and other scientists, several state governments, including the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, have decided to open all business premises, including schools and cinema, from early September. They are pursuing a ruthless policy of sacrificing human lives to protect the financial, commercial, and geopolitical interests of the ruling elites. This will lead to further spread of the pandemic and to millions of deaths.
The critical question is the political mobilization of the working class to prevent such a disaster and to fight for the eradication of the virus. As the WSWS has written, “The implementation of the eradication strategy requires the development of a powerful international and unified mass movement of the working class. Only a mass movement that is not driven by the profit motive and fettered to the obsessive pursuit of personal wealth can generate the social force required to compel a change in policy.”
Peruvian Congress approves President Castillo’s new Cabinet after lengthy debate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnGm0d_Zh3k
Russia reports a daily record of 820 COVID deaths as schools are set to reopen
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/28/russ-a28.html
Clara Weiss
19 hours ago
The official number of COVID-19 deaths in Russia on Thursday was 820, more than at any other point in the pandemic. While daily new infections are slowly declining, the country is still recording over 19,000 new cases a day, almost all of them driven by the highly contagious Delta variant.
A man gets a shot of the one-dose Sputnik Light vaccine at a mobile vaccination station in St. Petersburg, Russia on August 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Elena Ignatyeva)
Cases have declined mostly in Moscow, long the center of the pandemic, where a spike in vaccination and more stringent public health measures at the beginning of the third wave helped curtail the spread.
The grim record comes as schools across the country are set to reopen on September 1, herding 17 million school children and thousands of teachers into what are largely dilapidated buildings that serve as vectors for the Delta variant. The Russian education minister Sergei Kravtsov announced that no social distancing measures or masks will be required on a federal level. There will also be no federal vaccine mandate for teachers. Regions have the authority to impose public health measures on their own and in some cases schools can issue their own mandates.
While some schools and regions are seeking to mandate vaccines to their staff, the trade unions, which fully support the reopening, are campaigning against any vaccine mandates. Many regions, including Moscow, have issued a requirement for at least 60 percent of the school staff to be vaccinated. The Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, is expected to be approved for children on September 15.
The criminal reopening of the schools in Russia mirrors reopenings across Europe, Latin America and the United States. It will inevitably lead to a renewed spike in cases and deaths, including among children who have suffered record rates of hospitalization and deaths from the Delta variant.
As has been the case throughout the pandemic, the Russian government is refusing to enforce even the most minimal public health measures, leaving it to regional jurisdictions to impose limited, if any, measures on an ad hoc basis. Major production facilities in the country have remained open for almost the entirety of the pandemic.
These policies have led, officially, to 179,000 deaths, but studies indicate that the real death toll may be higher by a factor of five. Dozens of patients have died because ventilators have gone up in flames and oxygen pipes have exploded in hospital buildings that run on decades-old equipment and have been systematically starved of funds. Almost 7 million people out of a population of 142 million have officially contracted the virus, no doubt an underestimate.
In a stark example of the open criminality of how businesses and the government handle the pandemic, the Russian airline Rossiya, a subsidiary of the state-owned Aeroflot, forced its flight attendants to report for work, even if they are sick, for the past month. This was under conditions where about a third of all flight attendants in Russia reported sick this summer, many of them because of COVID-19.
These criminal policies have had global implications. The recent Delta outbreak in China was triggered by a flight that came from Russia, which carried at least one infected passenger who infected the cleaning crew.
Russia is also about to hold parliamentary elections on September 19. Several parties, including the ruling United Russia party, have signed a memorandum according to which their candidates are not allowed to speak about COVID-19 or vaccinations, under the pretext that only medical experts could speak about these issues.
Vaccination rates in Russia remain extremely low, even though five Russian vaccines have now been approved. Only 29 percent of the population have received at least one jab, mostly of Sputnik V, and only 24.5 percent are fully vaccinated. This is well below the 60 percent vaccination rate that the government aimed to reach by the fall, much less than in countries like China, the US or Western Europe, and even below the worldwide average of 25.1 percent. Over half the population have indicated in polls that they do not intend to get vaccinated.
Vaccine hesitancy is driven by great popular distrust in the Russian government and state. Both are associated with the rule of the criminal oligarchy that has emerged from the Stalinist-led destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has engaged in major assaults on the living standards of the working class and endless lies.
For decades, particularly since 1991, there have also been state-backed, systematic attacks on science and a promotion of religion, various forms of pseudo-medicine and irrationalism. At the beginning of the pandemic, much as in countries like the US or Brazil, Russian government officials routinely ridiculed the virus, comparing it to the flu, and crazed representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church who declared the pandemic a hoax were paraded on the media.
While there have been fewer studies of Sputnik V than of other vaccines, all indicate a high efficiency of the drug. Several studies suggest that the vaccine was 91 to 97.6 percent effective in preventing severe illness and death in earlier variants of the virus. A new pre-print study, that has yet to be peer-reviewed, found that full vaccination with Sputnik V is also very effective against severe disease resulting from the Delta variant.
The study analyzed the outcomes for almost 14,000 COVID-19 patients in St. Petersburg during the third wave of the pandemic, when over 90 percent of cases were Delta cases. According to the study, adjusting for age and sex, the vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing hospitalizations among those infected with COVID-19 was 81 percent. However, it was only 35 percent among those who had received just one jab of the vaccine 14 days prior. The Russian Health Ministry had previously indicated that Sputnik V is 83 percent effective against contracting the Delta variant.
Reports indicate that the WHO is planning to grant emergency use approval to Sputnik V this fall. While it is not clear what has caused the delay in the granting of the authorization, according to Nature magazine, experts assume that concerns about possible side effects and the state of Russia’s manufacturing sites play a role. For reasons that remain unclear, the documentation submitted by the Russian side is still incomplete, about one year after the Kremlin itself authorized the use of the vaccine ahead of the completion of the third phase of the trial.
Russia also struggles with the production of the vaccine. Like the Astra-Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, Sputnik V uses an engineered adenovirus (a family of viruses that cause only mild illness) as a mechanism for inserting the genetic code for the SARS-CoV2-spike protein into human cells. However, unlike the Astra-Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the two Sputnik V jabs are based on two different adenoviruses to increase the vaccine’s efficacy. This means that two effectively different drugs have to be produced for one full vaccination, often in two different facilities.
After decades in which the Soviet industrial and scientific infrastructure was systematically destroyed, Russia had only few pharmaceutical plants when the pandemic began and desperately scrambled to turn Soviet-era auto plants into vaccine manufacturing sites, with limited success. There is also an acute shortage of highly trained workers in biotechnology.
As a result, Russia has fallen significantly behind the production of the 1.6 billion doses that are so far contracted. Sputnik V has been approved in 69 countries and especially poorer countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia have bought the vaccine as an alternative to the Pfizer/Biontech and Moderna vaccines. However, according to a recent report by the Council of the Americas, by August 12, Russia had exported just under 20 million doses of Sputnik V to Latin America, out of at least 95 million doses that had been ordered by Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.
Cases have declined mostly in Moscow, long the center of the pandemic, where a spike in vaccination and more stringent public health measures at the beginning of the third wave helped curtail the spread.
The grim record comes as schools across the country are set to reopen on September 1, herding 17 million school children and thousands of teachers into what are largely dilapidated buildings that serve as vectors for the Delta variant. The Russian education minister Sergei Kravtsov announced that no social distancing measures or masks will be required on a federal level. There will also be no federal vaccine mandate for teachers. Regions have the authority to impose public health measures on their own and in some cases schools can issue their own mandates.
While some schools and regions are seeking to mandate vaccines to their staff, the trade unions, which fully support the reopening, are campaigning against any vaccine mandates. Many regions, including Moscow, have issued a requirement for at least 60 percent of the school staff to be vaccinated. The Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, is expected to be approved for children on September 15.
The criminal reopening of the schools in Russia mirrors reopenings across Europe, Latin America and the United States. It will inevitably lead to a renewed spike in cases and deaths, including among children who have suffered record rates of hospitalization and deaths from the Delta variant.
As has been the case throughout the pandemic, the Russian government is refusing to enforce even the most minimal public health measures, leaving it to regional jurisdictions to impose limited, if any, measures on an ad hoc basis. Major production facilities in the country have remained open for almost the entirety of the pandemic.
These policies have led, officially, to 179,000 deaths, but studies indicate that the real death toll may be higher by a factor of five. Dozens of patients have died because ventilators have gone up in flames and oxygen pipes have exploded in hospital buildings that run on decades-old equipment and have been systematically starved of funds. Almost 7 million people out of a population of 142 million have officially contracted the virus, no doubt an underestimate.
In a stark example of the open criminality of how businesses and the government handle the pandemic, the Russian airline Rossiya, a subsidiary of the state-owned Aeroflot, forced its flight attendants to report for work, even if they are sick, for the past month. This was under conditions where about a third of all flight attendants in Russia reported sick this summer, many of them because of COVID-19.
These criminal policies have had global implications. The recent Delta outbreak in China was triggered by a flight that came from Russia, which carried at least one infected passenger who infected the cleaning crew.
Russia is also about to hold parliamentary elections on September 19. Several parties, including the ruling United Russia party, have signed a memorandum according to which their candidates are not allowed to speak about COVID-19 or vaccinations, under the pretext that only medical experts could speak about these issues.
Vaccination rates in Russia remain extremely low, even though five Russian vaccines have now been approved. Only 29 percent of the population have received at least one jab, mostly of Sputnik V, and only 24.5 percent are fully vaccinated. This is well below the 60 percent vaccination rate that the government aimed to reach by the fall, much less than in countries like China, the US or Western Europe, and even below the worldwide average of 25.1 percent. Over half the population have indicated in polls that they do not intend to get vaccinated.
Vaccine hesitancy is driven by great popular distrust in the Russian government and state. Both are associated with the rule of the criminal oligarchy that has emerged from the Stalinist-led destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has engaged in major assaults on the living standards of the working class and endless lies.
For decades, particularly since 1991, there have also been state-backed, systematic attacks on science and a promotion of religion, various forms of pseudo-medicine and irrationalism. At the beginning of the pandemic, much as in countries like the US or Brazil, Russian government officials routinely ridiculed the virus, comparing it to the flu, and crazed representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church who declared the pandemic a hoax were paraded on the media.
While there have been fewer studies of Sputnik V than of other vaccines, all indicate a high efficiency of the drug. Several studies suggest that the vaccine was 91 to 97.6 percent effective in preventing severe illness and death in earlier variants of the virus. A new pre-print study, that has yet to be peer-reviewed, found that full vaccination with Sputnik V is also very effective against severe disease resulting from the Delta variant.
The study analyzed the outcomes for almost 14,000 COVID-19 patients in St. Petersburg during the third wave of the pandemic, when over 90 percent of cases were Delta cases. According to the study, adjusting for age and sex, the vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing hospitalizations among those infected with COVID-19 was 81 percent. However, it was only 35 percent among those who had received just one jab of the vaccine 14 days prior. The Russian Health Ministry had previously indicated that Sputnik V is 83 percent effective against contracting the Delta variant.
Reports indicate that the WHO is planning to grant emergency use approval to Sputnik V this fall. While it is not clear what has caused the delay in the granting of the authorization, according to Nature magazine, experts assume that concerns about possible side effects and the state of Russia’s manufacturing sites play a role. For reasons that remain unclear, the documentation submitted by the Russian side is still incomplete, about one year after the Kremlin itself authorized the use of the vaccine ahead of the completion of the third phase of the trial.
Russia also struggles with the production of the vaccine. Like the Astra-Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, Sputnik V uses an engineered adenovirus (a family of viruses that cause only mild illness) as a mechanism for inserting the genetic code for the SARS-CoV2-spike protein into human cells. However, unlike the Astra-Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the two Sputnik V jabs are based on two different adenoviruses to increase the vaccine’s efficacy. This means that two effectively different drugs have to be produced for one full vaccination, often in two different facilities.
After decades in which the Soviet industrial and scientific infrastructure was systematically destroyed, Russia had only few pharmaceutical plants when the pandemic began and desperately scrambled to turn Soviet-era auto plants into vaccine manufacturing sites, with limited success. There is also an acute shortage of highly trained workers in biotechnology.
As a result, Russia has fallen significantly behind the production of the 1.6 billion doses that are so far contracted. Sputnik V has been approved in 69 countries and especially poorer countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia have bought the vaccine as an alternative to the Pfizer/Biontech and Moderna vaccines. However, according to a recent report by the Council of the Americas, by August 12, Russia had exported just under 20 million doses of Sputnik V to Latin America, out of at least 95 million doses that had been ordered by Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.
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