After Gov. Jay Inslee announced a lottery Thursday to further incentivize people to get vaccinated, dozens say they have hit a roadblock trying to verify their vaccine record. Some said the website was sluggish and others said calling the state did not allow them to get their vaccine status verified, either.
In other developments, Eastern Washington University officials said students and staff must be vaccinated to be on campus. The move reverses a decision made last month.
We’re updating this page with the latest news about the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the Seattle area, the U.S. and the world.
Click here to see previous days’ live updates and all our other coronavirus coverage, and here to see how we track the daily spread across Washington and the world.
GOP aims to revive Fauci attacks after email trove released
WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci has been a political lightning rod since the early days of the pandemic, lionized by the left and villainized by the right.
But with the release of a trove of Fauci’s emails this past week, Republicans’ political attacks on the nation’s top government infectious-diseases expert have gone into overdrive.
On conservative news channels, President Joe Biden’s pandemic adviser has been baselessly pilloried as a liar who misled the American people about the origins of COVID-19 to protect the Chinese government. There’s no evidence of wrongdoing, but Republican calls for his resignation have grown louder, as have demands for new investigations into the origins of the virus.
“Given what we know now, I don’t know how anyone can have confidence that he should remain in a position of public trust and authority,” said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a potential presidential hopeful who is calling for Fauci’s resignation and a full congressional inquiry.
The political moves by Republicans represent a new effort to find a reliable foil in the first few months of the Biden administration, as they have struggled to turn public sentiment against the new president. So far, Biden has enjoyed widespread job approval, buoyed by the public’s broad backing of his handling of the pandemic, which 71% of Americans support, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.
Read the full story here.
Amid brutal case surge, Afghanistan hit by a vaccine delay
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan is battling a brutal surge in COVID-19 infections as health officials plead for vaccines, only to be told by the World Health Organization that the 3 million doses the country expected to receive by April won’t be delivered until August.
“We are in the middle of a crisis,” Health Ministry spokesman Ghulam Dastigir Nazari said this week, expressing deep frustration at the global vaccine distribution that has left poor countries scrambling to find supplies for their people.
Nazari has knocked on the door of several embassies, and so far, “I’ve gotten diplomatic answers” but no vaccine doses, he said.
Over the past month, the escalating pace of new cases has threatened to overwhelm Afghanistan’s health system, already struggling under the weight of relentless conflict. In part, the increase has been blamed on uninterrupted travel with India, bringing the highly contagious Delta variant, first identified in India.
Also, most Afghans still question the reality of the virus or believe their faith will protect them and rarely wear masks or social distance, often mocking those who do. Until just a week ago, the government was allowing unrestricted mass gatherings.
Read the full story here.
New England’s success against COVID-19 could be a model
BOSTON (AP) — For Dr. Jeremy Faust, the moment he realized the pandemic no longer dominated his workday came over Memorial Day weekend, when he didn’t see a single coronavirus case over two shifts in the emergency room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Kerry LaBarbera, an ER nurse a few miles away at Boston Medical Center, had a similar realization that same weekend, when just two patients with COVID-19 came through her unit, one of the busiest in New England.
“The past year and a half has been like going through a tornado or something terrible,” she said. “You’re holding on for dear life, and then you get past it and it’s like, ‘What just happened?’”
Massachusetts and the rest of New England — the most heavily vaccinated region in the U.S. — are giving the rest of the country a possible glimpse of the future if more Americans get their shots.
Read the full story here.
More Boeing workers will return to worksites starting mid-July
Many of the thousands of Boeing employees who are still working remotely will begin shifting back to the office next month — though it’s not clear how many are coming back or how quickly that might happen.
In a Friday announcement to workers, Michael D’Ambrose, chief human resources officer, said Boeing will start bringing back some additional employees to worksites in the Puget Sound area and other U.S. locations as early as mid-July, “as local health and safety conditions permit.”
But D’Ambrose’s statement offered few specifics. The company isn’t saying how many employees are still working remotely, how many of those were expected to return or how long the entire return process might take.
Although many Boeing workers, including its roughly 27,000 local manufacturing workers, have long since returned to their physical worksites, many others continue to work remotely in some capacity.
Read the full story here.
The ‘two societies’: 97% of new COVID cases are among people who haven’t gotten the shots
This being America, it was probably inevitable that we would turn the scientific breakthrough of a pandemic-ending vaccine into a game show.
It’s like “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” with cash prizes, or “The Price is Right,” where you can “come on down!” to get a jab and a chance at an Xbox or free flights to Cancún or gift cards redeemable for topsoil (yes, really, topsoil).
Whatever works. It’s a little strange, though, that there’s not more hoopla around what’s happening with the vaccines themselves.
“For those of us in public health, it’s nothing short of amazing,” Dr. Jeff Duchin, the chief health officer for Seattle and King County, told me the other day.
Read the full story here.
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