The Washington Supreme Court unanimously rejected a recall effort alleging that Gov. Jay Inslee’s orders to limit gatherings and activities during the pandemic to protect public health infringed on people’s rights.
The justices upheld a previous Thurston County Superior Court decision stating that the charges the citizen group presented against Inslee did not provide sufficient factual or legal grounds to justify a recall.
In an effort to offer a COVID-19 vaccine for the youngest children, Moderna asked the Food and Drug Administration to approve low-dose shots for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. The company said two kid doses were about 40% to 50% effective at preventing COVID-19 symptoms and presented their data to the agency.
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 the rest of our coronavirus coverage and here to see how we track the daily spread across Washington.
Trump officials muzzled CDC on church COVID guidance, emails show
Trump White House officials in May 2020 overrode public health advice urging churches to consider virtual religious services as the coronavirus spread, delivering a messaging change sought by the president’s supporters, according to emails from former top officials released by a House panel on Friday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent its planned public health guidance for religious communities to the White House on May 21, 2020, seeking approval to publish it. The agency had days earlier released reports saying that the virus had killed three and infected dozens at church events in Arkansas and infected 87% of attendees at a choir practice in Washington state, and health experts had warned that houses of worship had become hot spots for virus transmission.
But Trump officials wrote that they were frustrated by “problematic” advice the CDC had already posted, such as recommendations that houses of worship consider conducting virtual or drive-in religious services, according to emails released Friday by the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis.
“This removes all the tele-church suggestions, though personally I will say that if I was old and vulnerable (I do feel old and vulnerable), drive-through services would sound welcome,” May Davis Mailman, a White House lawyer, wrote to colleagues on May 21, attaching her own scrubbed version of the CDC’s guidance to her email.
The guidance subsequently published by CDC did not include any recommendations about offering virtual or drive-in options for religious services, clergy visits, youth group meetings and other traditionally in-person gatherings. Mailman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hottest U.S. COVID hot spot swells to 3 dozen counties
The orange spot first appeared on the national risk map in early April, marking three counties in central New York as having “high” community levels of the coronavirus, the only such cluster in the country.
By mid-April, the orange had spread to include 10 upstate counties, with a penumbra of yellow around them. Now it is up to more than three dozen orange counties, stretching across upstate New York and spilling into Pennsylvania and Vermont.
There are smatterings of orange and yellow counties elsewhere in the country now as well, but the hot spot that started in central New York is the biggest, darkest blotch on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mostly pristine national map.
Health experts say that people in the hot spot, which includes cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Binghamton, should be increasing their precautions. “These are areas where CDC recommends people should wear a mask in public indoor settings due to an increasing level of severe disease and the potential for significant health care strain,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, told reporters Tuesday.
But local officials have been reluctant to issue any orders along those lines.
“Mandates don’t work well, they create anxiety in the community, and they’re unenforceable,” said Ryan McMahon, the county executive of Onondaga County, which includes Syracuse. “What we have done is distribute tens of thousands of KN95 masks and COVID tests, and mail them to people’s homes.”
COVID still the leading cause of work-related deaths in WA
COVID-19 was responsible for around a quarter of the 106 work-related deaths reported in Washington in 2021, the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries said this week.
The figure makes coronavirus the leading cause of work-related deaths in the state for the second year in a row. In 2021, 26 people died after contracting the coronavirus while in a workplace — an increase from 24 people in 2020.
While the number of coronavirus-related deaths increased, the number of total workplace deaths declined from 119 deaths in 2020.
