Even though recent reports of an increase in COVID-19 cases have alarmed many, top health experts point to overwhelming evidence that vaccines are doing exactly what they are supposed to: dramatically reducing severe illness and death.
Still, the highly infectious delta variant now accounts for an estimated 83% of new coronavirus cases in the United States — a “dramatic increase” from early July.
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 live updates from previous days, plus all our other coronavirus coverage, and here to see how we track the daily spread across Washington and the world.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
In South Sudan, lives are built and teeter on the edge of uncertainty. A peace deal to end the civil war lags far behind schedule. Violence erupts between ethnic groups. Corruption is widespread. Hunger haunts more than half the population of 12 million people. And even the land itself doesn’t guarantee solid footing, as climate change sparks flooding in swaths of the country.
Yet many women say it’s the pain of the pandemic they feel most — a slow-moving disaster, in contrast to the sudden trauma of war and its fallout of famine — as they try to hold families together in one of the world’s most difficult places to raise children.
With COVID-19 came the shrinking of humanitarian aid, a lifeline for many South Sudanese, as faraway donors turned attention and funding toward their own citizens. Closed borders cut off imports, the oil sector on which the economy largely relies was hit by a crash in global prices and lockdowns wiped out the informal, untaxed labor relied on for their daily meal.
US jobless claims rise to 419,000 from a pandemic low
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose last week from the lowest point of the pandemic, even as the job market appears to be rebounding on the strength of a reopened economy.
The Labor Department said Thursday that jobless claims increased last week to 419,000, the most in two months, from 368,000 the previous week. The number of first-time applications, which generally tracks layoffs, has fallen steadily since topping 900,000 in early January.
Economists characterized last week’s increase as most likely a blip as Americans are shopping, traveling and eating out more as the pandemic has waned, boosting the economy and forcing businesses to scramble for more workers.
Companies have posted the highest number of available jobs in the two decades that the data has been tracked though businesses say they often can’t find enough employees at the wages they’re willing to pay.
At the same time, analysts are becoming concerned about the potential economic consequences of a tick-up in confirmed viral infections as the highly contagious delta variant spreads, especially among the unvaccinated. The seven-day rolling U.S. average for daily new cases accelerated over the past two weeks to more than 37,000 as of Tuesday, from fewer than 13,700, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Man with coronavirus disguises as wife on Indonesian flight
An Indonesian man with coronavirus boarded a domestic flight disguised as his wife, wearing a niqab covering his face and carrying fake IDs and a negative PCR test result.
But the cover didn’t last long. Police say a flight attendant aboard a Citilink plane traveling from Jakarta to Ternate in North Maluku province on Sunday noticed the man change the clothes in the lavatory.
Police took the man for a COVID-19 test, which came back positive.
Indonesia is in the grip of the worse coronavirus surge in Asia with 33,772 new confirmed cases and 1,383 deaths in the last 24 hours. The total number of reported cases is 2.9 million with 77,583 fatalities.
Death rates soar in Southeast Asia as virus wave spreads
Indonesia has converted nearly its entire oxygen production to medical use just to meet the demand from COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe. Overflowing hospitals in Malaysia had to resort to treating patients on the floor. And in Myanmar’s largest city, graveyard workers have been laboring day and night to keep up with the grim demand for new cremations and burials.
In the last two weeks the three Southeast Asian nations have now all surpassed India’s peak per capita death rate as a new coronavirus wave, fueled by the virulent delta variant, tightens its grip on the region.
The deaths have followed record numbers of new cases being reported in countries across the region which have left health care systems struggling to cope and governments scrambling to implement new restrictions to try to slow the spread.
So far, however, Malaysia’s national lockdown measures have not brought down the daily rate of infections. The country of some 32 million saw daily cases rise above 10,000 on July 13 for the first time and they have stayed there since.
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