Most Americans support state or local mask mandates, poll shows

One sign of hospitals’ strain amid a new wave of covid-19 cases: They are turning back each others’ requests for help.

Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City has accepted just over a third of patient transfer requests over the past month, staff said. Normally, it would take about 90 percent.

Daily requests have doubled, and Mercy is doing its best to take in emergency room patients from smaller “critical access hospitals” in rural areas — people on ventilators that “we know that they can’t take care of there,” said Mercy ER doctor Lance Watson.

Florida education officials on Tuesday voted that two school districts violated state law by requiring students without medical exemptions to wear masks, escalating the fight between Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and local school educators. The decision against districts in Broward and Alachua counties would be the first sanctions since DeSantis threatened to withhold money from districts that require face coverings, saying that parents should decide whether their children wear masks at school.

The state’s Board of Education, whose members are appointed by the governor, decided that the local school officials should be investigated and possibly punished, following input from Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, who argued that the districts were not in compliance with the law.

The Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday it will extend a federal mask mandate for airline, bus and train passengers into next year, requiring face coverings in those settings until Jan. 18, 2022.

The mandate — issued in the first days after President Biden took office — was never relaxed, even during the early summer months when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began telling vaccinated people that masks were generally no longer necessary.

While a CDC order imposing the transportation requirement has no end date, TSA enforcement rules had been set to expire Sept 13.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has tested positive for the coronavirus, his office said Tuesday.

Abbott is among the Republican governors who have resisted public-health mandates aimed at stemming the tide of the virus’s delta variant, which has caused a new spike in cases as the country attempts to reopen schools, restaurants and other businesses.

A spokesman for Abbott said the governor is “fully vaccinated against COVID-19, in good health, and currently experiencing no symptoms.”

Abbott also is receiving Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment, the spokesman said.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on Tuesday criticized the decision by some developed countries to start administering booster shots of the coronavirus vaccines as poorer countries struggle to ramp up their immunizations.

“It’s unconscionable that some #COVID19 vaccine-producing companies are reporting record profits, and some countries are offering boosters, while so many people remain unprotected,” Tedros tweeted.

“No one is safe until everyone is safe,” he wrote, adding the hashtag “#VaccinEquity.”

SYDNEY — New Zealand will go into a three-day, nationwide lockdown late Tuesday after the country reported its first local cases of the coronavirus in nearly six months.

Officials reported five infections in total Tuesday, all of them confirmed as the delta variant, Reuters reported. Auckland, the largest city, where the first case was detected, is likely to be shut down for seven days.

Before the genomic test results were completed, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was ordering the country’s harshest lockdown in more than a year under the assumption that the case was the more infectious variant. She appealed to New Zealanders not to go out unnecessarily.

A Florida school board is set to hold an emergency meeting this week to consider a mask mandate as thousands of students in its district are in isolation or quarantine as the virus spreads through its schools.

Hillsborough County Public Schools, which includes Tampa, has 8,400 students and 307 staff members either in isolation because of a positive test or in quarantine after coming into close contact with someone who tested positive, district spokesperson Tanya Arja told The Washington Post on Tuesday. The number of students who are either in isolation or quarantine jumped by nearly 3,000 from the total given by the school district on Monday.

Texas health officials have requested five mortuary trailers from the federal government in anticipation of a possible spike in deaths brought about by surging coronavirus numbers in the state.

The Texas Department of State Health Services made a request Aug. 4 through the Texas Division of Emergency Management to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for five mortuary trailers, agency spokesman Douglas Loveday confirmed to The Washington Post, adding the request was made as a precaution. NBC News previously reported the state’s request for mortuary trailers.