The latest on the coronavirus pandemic from around the U.S. and the world.
LONDON — Britain’s newly established quarantine hotels have received their first guests as the government tries to prevent new variants of the coronavirus from derailing its fast-moving vaccination drive. Passengers arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport on Monday morning were escorted by security guards to buses that took them to nearby hotels. Britain has given a first dose of coronavirus vaccine to almost a quarter of the population, but health officials are concerned that vaccines may not work as well on some new strains of the virus, including one first identified in South Africa. Under the new rules, people arriving in England from 33 high-risk countries must stay in designated hotels for 10 days at their own expense, with meals delivered to their door. In Scotland the rule applies to arrivals from any country. Peter Prater’s family wasn’t thinking about COVID-19 when the call came that he had been taken to the hospital with a fever. It was April, and the Tallahassee Developmental Center, where Prater lives, hadn’t yet had any COVID-19 diagnoses. Prater,55, who has Down syndrome and diabetes, became the Florida center’s first known case, his family said. Within two weeks, more than half of the roughly 60 residents and a third of the staff had tested positive for the virus, according to local news reports. “We thought we were going to lose him,” said Jim DeBeaugrine, Prater’s brother-in-law, who also works as an advocate for people with disabilities. “We weren’t aware of a correlation to Down syndrome and bad outcomes with COVID yet. He’s just a frail person, period.” Prater survived after roughly seven weeks in the hospital. But five others from the center — three residents and two staffers — died. The center is working to follow federal and state pandemic guidelines, said Camille Lukow, regional director of the Mentor Network, which began operating the facility in December. Early studies have shown that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have a higher likelihood of dying from the virus than those without disabilities, likely because of a higher prevalence of preexisting conditions. While some high-profile outbreaks made the news, a lack of federal tracking means the population remains largely overlooked amid the pandemic. No one knows how many of the estimated 300,000 people who live in such facilities nationwide have caught COVID or died as a result. That creates a blind spot in understanding the impact of the virus. And because data drives access to scarce COVID vaccines, those with disabilities could be at a disadvantage for getting prioritized for the shots to keep them safe. While facilities ranging from state institutions that serve hundreds to small group homes with a few people have been locked down throughout the pandemic, workers still rotate through every day. Residents live in close quarters. Some don’t understand the dangers of the virus. Those who need help eating or changing can’t keep their distance from others. Many facilities also have struggled to keep enough masks and staffers on hand. The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities has repeatedly asked federal agencies to hold facilities where people with disabilities live to the same pandemic rules as nursing homes, which must report COVID-19 cases directly to national agencies. Read the full story here. THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Some 500 people have gathered in a theater in the central Dutch city of Utrecht for the first in a series of test events aimed at charting a path toward a post-pandemic normality for large-scale gatherings.
