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As the United States heads into the holiday weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving, masses of Americans are choosing to ignore experts’ recommendations to avoid travel and instead hold small or virtual gatherings at home, all while the coronavirus surges across the country. There have been dramatic increases in caseloads and hospitalizations in recent weeks in major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Detroit, and overall deaths are approaching totals last reached in spring.
The much-anticipated Thanksgiving holiday weekend is here, offering Americans an opportunity to unwind and take a breather from a long, bleak year tarnished by sickness and economic hurdles that have affected the lives of millions. But with it has come a much-feared peak of coronavirus cases.
With the nationwide coronavirus surge, heated debates over possible shutdowns and stricter measures have played out in different states, with government officials scrambling for ways to reduce the spread of the virus while facing resistance from the public, and in some cases, legal challenges.
The Supreme Court late Wednesday blocked New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo from enforcing attendance limits at churches and synagogues in areas designated as virus hot spots. The decision contradicts the court’s previous rulings on other similar cases that deferred to local officials on pandemic-related restrictions.
Cuomo described the decision as “irrelevant” because the Brooklyn zone the court ruled on is no longer considered a cluster. The ruling is not a final legal decision and has now passed to an appeals court, the governor said at a news conference Thursday.
“I think this was really just an opportunity for the court to express its philosophy and politics. It doesn’t have any practical effect,” Cuomo said. “I would agree with those people who say it’s a different court, and they wanted to make a statement that it’s a different court.”
“I mean we know who we appointed to the court; we know their ideology,” he added, referring to conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom President Trump chose to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September.
The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is likely to conduct an additional global trial to evaluate the efficacy of its vaccine candidate after studies raised questions over its level of protection, chief executive Pascal Soriot told Bloomberg News on Thursday.
AstraZeneca is one of three companies in the final stages of their quest to develop a vaccine, claiming 70 percent effectiveness of its candidate. Yet, earlier this week, the company faced mounting questions about its study results, admitting that a manufacturing error had led to some participants receiving a half dose instead of full one.
At a Thursday evening news conference at 10 Downing Street, Patrick Vallance, the British government’s chief scientific adviser, was asked about doubts being raised over the AstraZeneca candidate. He said it was up to the regulators to make a decision. “This vaccine works, and that’s very exciting, and it’s going to be put forward for approval,” Vallance said. “The regulators will need to look at it and decide — and that will be true for all of the vaccines.”
The virus continues to cause havoc across the globe as some countries experience more deaths and others prepare for a second wave that would devastate the health systems.
(CGTN)
