Hospitals

The company behind the drug blames the health care system's "bottleneck," but the high price tag might also factor into its slow sales debut.

Health-care staff across the country have been suspended or fired for not complying with a vaccine mandate issued by President Joe Biden last month.

Newsweek has partnered with Statista Inc., the global market research and consumer data firm, to develop the ranking of the world's best hospitals for the fourth year.

"The vaccination level we have is too low, impermissibly low. That is why we have mortality numbers that are so high," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Officials said Tuesday the numbers are likely to change as they continue discussions with noncompliant employees.

"If somebody gets sick around there, there's no place to take them," said Alfred Jonathan, an elder in the Athabascan village Tanacross.

The state issued an order requiring health-care workers to receive at least the first dose of a COVID vaccine by September 27.

"We're hoping to give folks a sigh of relief, who have been blindsided by billing," said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.

New York has given 1.3 million more doses of COVID-19 vaccines since the mayor began requiring proof of vaccination for city workers and indoor activities.

Bulgaria and Romania are lagging behind as the EU's two least-vaccinated nations, with just 22 percent and 33 percent of the adult population fully inoculated.

Healthcare workers have been spit on, cussed at, and even beaten while working through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Novant Health has implemented a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination program, setting a September 15 deadline for compliance.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul urged medical workers who had not yet received the vaccine to "do the right thing" as New York's vaccine deadline is Sept. 27.

Roughly 16 percent of New York hospital workers, or about 70,000 people, remain unvaccinated ahead of the state's Monday deadline.

Idaho health care workers say they're tired of being demonized by conspiracy theorists who think that COVID-19 is a hoax and the vaccine is an experimental form of government control.

Dr. Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, urged legislators to prioritize funding for struggling hospitals.

Some states have started prioritizing scarce resources like ventilators and ICU beds to patients more likely to survive amid a surge in COVID-19 hospitalisations.

Many hospitals are being forced to consider enacting "crisis standards of care"—prioritizing patients who are most likely to survive in a disaster situation.

The state health department reported 24 percent of ICU beds were still available as of Thursday morning.

"Now in Kentucky, one-third of new cases are under age 18," said emergency room physician Dr. Ryan Stanton.

"A lot of this, I believe, is a hesitancy about the vaccine, and so that's a separate issue than a religious exemption," Conway Regional's Matt Troup said.

The Department of Health and Human Services is temporarily limiting the amount of monoclonal antibody treatments states can order after seeing a spike in demand.

"The nurses would sit me up in the bed and let me look out the window, let me see he was there at 8 a.m. and I knew, 'OK, we're going to do this,'" Donna said.

"We just want to be equally compensated and treated correctly while we save all the lives that we do," one nurse said.

"There is something I want everyone to do...that I was too damn stubborn to do and that's if you haven't yet done so go get your Covid vaccine," McKenzie wrote.

"I've practiced medicine for 25 years. I never dreamed I'd be in a situation where I couldn't transfer a patient to a hospital that was close," the doctor said.

"The nurses who haven't left...they are seeing these other people come in now who are making more money," said a vice president at the Texas Hospital Association.

"If we open schools up without social distancing, without vaccination, without masks, we are going to see problems," said Dr. Barbara Pahud.

"This not only goes against common sense — it's also an insult to the free market principles he claims to champion," said Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried.

According to a survey from the American Nurses Association, a vaccine mandate could further deplete ICU staff at a time when hospitals in the nation's hotspots are currently facing pandemic highs.