Coronavirus News Briefing – Oct. 21: San Fran In-N-Out Burger Shut Down After Refusing to Check Vaccine Passports
San Francisco’s only In-N-Out Burger restaurant ran afoul of Covid rules earlier in the month. The San Francisco Department of Public Health issued a closure order, shutting down operations, after multiple warnings after learning that the restaurant wasn’t checking customer vaccination status, a violation of both city and county mandates.
“We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,” a company official told reporters.
San Francisco’s mandate requires checking proof of vaccination status before allowing diners as well as employees inside a restaurant or shop.
As the number of Covid cases in Hawaii continues to drop, the islands stand ready to welcome more visitors, Governor David Ige said. The move comes two months after he asked travelers to avoid the state due to a surge in cases. The Aloha State’s seven-day average of new daily cases has plummeted from 900 to 117, health officials there said.
Finally, a passenger on a United Airlines flight to California had a meltdown after being told multiple times to stop using the phone and put his mask on in preparation for flight. A video posted on various social media shows an unidentified man ripping off his mask and screaming at other passengers while threatening to uncover personal information of the flight crew such as date-of-birth and social security number.
When another passenger attempted to intervene, the maskless man screamed “mind your business, because I’ll break your neck” according to the video. Police later escorted the man off the flight, resulting in a delay in departure.
As of Thursday morning, the world has recorded 242.9 million Covid-19 cases and over 4.92 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 220.2 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus.
The average daily number of new coronavirus cases in the United States over the past 14 days is 76,496, a -25% change. The average daily death toll over the same period is 1,532, a change of -15% over the same period.
In addition, since the start of the pandemic the United States has as of Thursday recorded 46.1 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 751,815. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 34.1 million, and a death toll of 453,005, although experts believe that both numbers are in reality significantly higher. Finally, Brazil has recorded the second highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 604,303, and has seen almost 21.7 million cases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of Thursday, 219.4 million people in the United States – or 66.1% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of that population, 57.1%, or 189.7 million people, are now fully vaccinated, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 410.2 million. Breaking this down further, 79.1% of the population over the age of 18 – or 204.3 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 68.6% of the same group – or 177.3 million people – is fully vaccinated.
More than 3.77 billion people across the globe have received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, a figure that roughly equates to 49.1% of the world’s population, a 0.1 percentage point increase in the past 24 hours. There remains, however, a countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where at least 65% of the population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine, and countries such as Ethiopia, Haiti, Syria, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda, for example, where vaccination rates are in the single digits, if not lower.
Figures from the World Health Organization show that well-off countries are vaccinating people at the rate of one person per second, while the majority of poor countries have yet to give a single dose to its citizens.
It is critical that the world do a better job of sharing vaccines with poorer nations.
Sharing vaccines is not merely a form of charity. Rather, the equitable distribution of vaccines is in every country’s health and economic interest and no country will be able to move past the pandemic until other countries have recovered as well.
Jonathan Spira contributed to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
