COVID-19 Update: Biden gets boosted again; federal COVID fraud inquiry begins in Idaho

It’s time for anoth­er install­ment of of our spe­cial series COVID-19 Update, bring­ing you the lat­est devel­op­ments on the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break that pub­lic health author­i­ties here and across the coun­try are work­ing to mitigate.

United States

On Fri­day, Octo­ber 28th, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden pub­licly received his lat­est COVID-19 boost­er shot and urged all eli­gi­ble Amer­i­cans to do the same before Hal­loween to pro­vide an updat­ed lev­el of safe­ty as win­ter approach­es and fam­i­lies begin to gath­er togeth­er for school events and lat­er the end of year holidays.

Over twen­ty mil­lion peo­ple, includ­ing near­ly one in five old­er adults, have received the updat­ed COVID-19 boost­er, which has been refor­mu­lat­ed to tar­get the BA.4 and BA.5 sub­sets of the Omi­cron vari­ant, the most dom­i­nant strains in the Unit­ed States.

Pres­i­dent Biden also called on busi­ness­es, schools and civic lead­ers to help, includ­ing by hold­ing on-site vac­ci­na­tion clin­ics and giv­ing employ­ees time off to get boost­ed, as most deaths from COVID-19 are now preventable.

The newest con­cern at the moment is that there are three res­pi­ra­to­ry virus­es cir­cu­lat­ing with­in the Unit­ed States — COVID-19, the lat­est ver­sion of influen­za and Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­cy­tial Virus, or RSV. The lat­ter has been around for some time, but there are con­cerns of a sig­nif­i­cant rise in cas­es after its effec­tive sup­pres­sion due to self-iso­la­tion and mask usage ear­li­er in the pandemic.

Wash­ing­ton

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s remain­ing exec­u­tive procla­ma­tions from Feb­ru­ary 2020 regard­ing COVID-19 will expire at the end of tomor­row, Mon­day, Octo­ber 31st.

A procla­ma­tion in June of this year, which requires up to date COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tions and boost­ers for all employ­ees with­in his office and fifty-six state agen­cies, will remain in place. The only remain­ing mask require­ments will be be for health­care and long-term care facil­i­ties, as well as some cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ties, accord­ing to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s office.

Oregon

Around sev­en per cent of work­ing age Ore­go­ni­ans are suf­fer­ing from long COVID, and the effect on both their lives and the state’s econ­o­my have been significant.

Idaho

On Wednes­day, Octo­ber 19th, US Attor­ney Josh Hur­wit announced the cre­ation of a fed­er­al task force to tar­get COVID-19 fraud with­in the state of Ida­ho. The task force will iden­ti­fy, inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute fraud cas­es involv­ing the abuse of pro­grams that were cre­at­ed to help peo­ple and small busi­ness­es weath­er the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic since 2020, such as the Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram, Eco­nom­ic Injury Dis­as­ter Loans, Coro­n­avirus Farm Assis­tance Pro­gram, Emer­gency Rental Assis­tance Pro­gram and enhanced unem­ploy­ment payments.

British Colum­bia

A series of “Scrab­ble vari­ants” of COVID-19 found around the world are land­ing with­in the province and are being tracked presently.

As of Wednes­day, Octo­ber 19th, 97 inmates at a low­er main­land Cor­rec­tion­al Ser­vice Cana­da prison, the Mis­sion Insti­tu­tion, near the Fras­er Riv­er, have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.  It has a capac­i­ty of 540 inmates.

The hard, cold numbers (plus vaccinations)

Wash­ing­ton has had 1,835,075 cas­es and 14,550 attrib­ut­able deaths.

The state has the forty-sixth worst infec­tion rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

The state has the forty-sev­enth worst death rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

17,695,791 tests have been recorded.

• Approx­i­mate num­ber of dos­es of vac­cine admin­is­tered: 16,242,514
• Per­cent­age of eli­gi­ble pop­u­la­tion ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed: 75%
• Chil­dren between the ages of 12 and 17 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed: 70%
• Chil­dren between the ages of 5 and 11 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed: 39%

Ore­gon has had 908,188 cas­es and 8,680 attrib­ut­able deaths.

The state has the fifti­eth worst infec­tion rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

The state has the forty-third worst death rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

12,508,506 tests have been recorded.

• Approx­i­mate num­ber of dos­es of vac­cine admin­is­tered: 8,670,655
• Per­cent­age of eli­gi­ble pop­u­la­tion ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed: 71%
• Chil­dren between the ages of 12 and 17 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed: 65%
• Chil­dren between the ages of 5 and 11 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed: 35%

Ida­ho has had 499,849 cas­es and 5,216 attrib­ut­able deaths.

The state has the thir­ty-fourth worst infec­tion rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

The state has the thir­ty-fourth worst death rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

3,180,389 tests have been recorded.

• Approx­i­mate num­ber of dos­es of vac­cine admin­is­tered: 2,689,697
• Per­cent­age of eli­gi­ble pop­u­la­tion ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed: 56%
• Chil­dren between the ages of 12 and 17 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed: 41%
• Chil­dren between the ages of 5 and 11 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed: 19%

British Colum­bia has had 387,451 cas­es and 4,485 attrib­ut­able deaths.

British Colum­bia has the thir­teenth worst infec­tion rate and the sixth worst death rate among the thir­teen Cana­di­an provinces and ter­ri­to­ries per hun­dred thou­sand pop­u­la­tion. (If it were an Amer­i­can state, it would be fifty-third and fifty-third, respec­tive­ly, out of fifty-three.)

• Dos­es of vac­cine dis­trib­uted to the province: 13,162,012
• Dos­es admin­is­tered: 15,406,353 (85.4%)

That does it for this install­ment of COVID-19 Update. Stay safe and well!