Ep. 102: News Roundup Week of 9/20/21

Heart & Home

The United States plans to relax restrictions for vaccinated international travelers in mid-November and will re-open for air travelers from 33 countries who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The United States also extended its pandemic-related restrictions at land borders with Canada and Mexico that bar nonessential travel such as tourism through Oct. 21. ———- Those travel changes are taking effect while the number of known Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. has surpassed this country’s deaths from the 1918-19 flu pandemic. On Monday, the U.S. crossed the threshold of 675,000 reported Covid-19 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. ——— Meanwhile, Pfizer and partner BioNTech said this week that their Covid-19 vaccine was found to be safe in children ages 5 to 11 years in a late-stage study. ———- ———— Also this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel signed off on the targeted use of booster shots of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to senior citizens 65 and older and others at high risk from the virus. ——- No migrants remain at the Texas border crossing connecting Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. It’s a dramatic change from a week ago where almost 15,000 people — most of them Haitians — had converged to seek asylum. 2,000 have been sent back to Haiti and 12,400 face immigration proceedings in the U.S. ————————- A California prosecutor filed criminal charges including manslaughter against PG&E for its role in igniting a wildfire that killed four people last year. Shasta County District Attorney said Friday that her office had filed 11 felony and 20 misdemeanor counts, including four counts of involuntary manslaughter, against the company related to the Zogg Fire.