Johnson & Johnson touts Covid booster shot as US grapples with rise in hospitalizations – live | US news

The US military has now helped evacuate more than 80,000 people out of Kabul since the Taliban took control of the capital city earlier this month.

According to the latest numbers from the White House, about 19,000 people were evacuated between 3 am ET yesterday and 3 am ET today.

“This is the result of 42 US military flights (37 C-17s and 5 C-130s) which carried approximately 11,200 evacuees, and 48 coalition flights which carried 7,800 people,” a White House official told the press pool.

“Since August 14, the U.S. has evacuated and facilitated the evacuation of approximately 82,300 people on US military and coalition flights. Since the end of July, we have re-located approximately 87,900 people on US military and coalition flights.”

Some US allies have pushed Joe Biden to extend the August 31 deadline to complete the evacuation mission, but he indicated yesterday that he believed the military could complete the operation by the end of the month.

“We are currently on a pace to finish by August the 31st,” Biden said at the White House yesterday. “The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops.”

Hallie Golden reports for the Guardian on those suffering with long-term symptoms of coronavirus:

For months, Andrea Tomasek suspected she was suffering from debilitating symptoms brought on by a Covid-19 infection. She had a fever and her breathing was so labored she said it felt like her “lungs were sponges full of fluid”. She later experienced dizziness and periods where she would pass out.

But when the 37-year-old first started to feel sick in March 2020, the pandemic was still in its early days, so she couldn’t access a test in her home city of Savage, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis.

Without that initial Covid-19 diagnosis, physicians repeatedly discounted the connection between her symptoms and the virus.

“It has been a huge struggle,” she said. “I’ve been gaslit. I’ve had doctors dismiss me outright and try and prescribe me anxiety medication. It’s been ridiculous.”

It wasn’t until October, when her symptoms still hadn’t let up, that she said a doctor made the connection between her illness and Covid, and referred her to the Mayo Clinic’s post-Covid care clinic.

The Guardian’s Vincent Ni and agencies report:

A classified US intelligence report delivered to the White House was inconclusive on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, in part due to a lack of information from China, according to US media reports.

The assessment received on Tuesday, which was ordered by President Joe Biden 90 days ago, was unable to definitively conclude whether the virus that first emerged in central China had jumped to humans via animals or escaped a highly secure research facility in Wuhan, two US officials familiar with the matter told the Washington Post.

They said parts of the report could be declassified in the coming days.

Responding to reports, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, on Wednesday criticised Washington for “politicising” the issue of Covid origin-tracing.

“The United States says it lacks information from China,” Wang told a press briefing, according to China News service, a state-owned newswire. “I can tell the United States that this is just an excuse to cover up the failure of its intelligence in origin tracing.”

Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.

Johnson & Johnson has just shared data showing that a booster shot of its coronavirus vaccine produced a “rapid and robust increase in spike-binding antibodies”.

Dr Mathai Mammen, the global head of the company’s research and development team, said, “We look forward to discussing with public health officials a potential strategy for our Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, boosting eight months or longer after the primary single-dose vaccination.”

The news comes as the US grapples with a rise in coronavirus hospitalizations due to the continued spread of the Delta variant.

In states like Florida, Texas and Mississippi, more than 90% of the beds in intensive care units are now being used, and more than half of ICU patients have coronavirus, according to data from the department of health and human services.

Most coronavirus hospitalizations are occurring among unvaccinated Americans, and the Biden administration is hoping that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine — combined with the new data from Johnson & Johnson — could encourage more people to get their shot.

Otherwise, those hospitalization numbers could get even worse.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.