New York City to require proof of COVID-19 shot

NEW YORK will begin requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccinations on Tuesday for anyone wanting to partake in much of public life including dining at an indoor restaurant, working out at a gym or strolling through a museum.

The list of public venues widened Monday, as Mayor Bill de Blasio moved forward with an unprecedented move by the country’s largest city to goad more people into getting vaccinated and control a pandemic that has wrought havoc on the economy and people’s day-to-day lives.

While the new requirement goes into effect Tuesday, enforcement won’t begin until Sept. 13 to give the public and employees more time to receive at least the required first shot.

De Blasio first announced the new initiative Aug. 3, but on Monday the mayor further clarified how the new rules would be rolled out — revealing that the list of establishments that would come under the vaccination mandate would be far wider than first thought.

Establishments that don’t comply could be fined.

As of Monday, the city reported that 5.2 million of the city’s 8.8 million residents have had at least one shot of a vaccine, with 4.7 million fully vaccinated.

Amid a limited supply of vaccines, tensions arise in Africa between those seeking first and second vaccine shots

Authorities on Monday said that citizens will receive text messages with invitations for booster shots. Initially, heath authorities will contact people with weakened immune systems, the elderly, medical workers and those whose jobs require frequent travel.

Serbia, a Balkan nation of around 7 million people, has vaccinated over 50% of its population.

The country loosened anti-virus rules during the summer which has led to a rise in confirmed new cases and hospitalizations mostly from the highly contagious delta variant.

MADISON, Wis. — Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of the Catholic Church’s most outspoken conservatives and a vaccine skeptic, said he has COVID-19 and his staff said he is breathing through a ventilator.

Burke tweeted Aug. 10 that he had caught the virus, was resting comfortably and was receiving excellent medical care.

“Please pray for me as I begin my recovery,” the 73-year-old Burke said in the tweet. “Let us trust in Divine Providence. God bless you.”

On Saturday, his staff tweeted that he had been hospitalized and was on a ventilator, but that doctors were encouraged with his progress.

Mississippi’s only Level I trauma center is setting up a second emergency field hospital in a parking garage to treat some of the sickest COVID-19 patients as the virus continues to ravage the state.

Samaritan’s Purse will set up the mobile intensive care unit with a team of medical staff in a garage near Children’s of Mississippi, the state’s only pediatric hospital. Since the start of the pandemic, the Christian relief charity has set up five other emergency hospitals in areas of the world hard hit by the virus, including New York City and Los Angeles County.

Mississippi, one of least vaccinated states in the country, has seen numbers of new COVID-19 cases double in the past two weeks, surpassing records for hospitalizations all previous surges of the virus since the start of the pandemic.

After facing a shortage of beds and staff needed to treat patients, the University of Mississippi Medical Center set up an emergency field hospital in a different parking garage last week, with the help of the federal government.

In the coming days, an additional tent will be set up where people who are positive for COVID-19 can receive monoclonal antibody treatment, Woodward said.

The European Medicines Agency has started an accelerated review process to determine if a common arthritis drug might help people hospitalized with severe COVID-19, months after the drug was granted an emergency use authorization in the U.S.

In a statement Monday, the EU drug regulator said it was assessing an application to extend the use of tocilizumab for adults su