‘The contribution of children aged 0 to 11 years old in the total pediatric cases is higher during the Omicron wave compared to Delta,’ says the Department of Health
MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Health (DOH) said on Friday, February 4, that 69.2% of the reported COVID-19 cases among the pediatric group (those 17 years old and below) in January 2022 were children aged 0 to 11.
“The contribution of children 0 to 11 years old in the total pediatric cases is higher during the Omicron wave compared to Delta. Cases among the 0-11 age group comprised an average of 56% of the total pediatric cases in September and this climbed up to 69.2% in January,” the DOH said.
The recent surge in cases driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant saw infections increase among all age groups – with 18- to 59-year-olds seeing the biggest climb, followed by kids aged less than 5, and then 5- to 11-year-olds.
Though cases have been declining for the past days, daily infections are still higher than what’s being reported before the Omicron surge happened. The Philippines is now under “moderate risk” case classification. The country was placed under “critical risk” status on January 10 due to rising COVID-19 cases. On January 15, the it saw its highest daily COVID-19 cases at 39,004.
On Monday, February 7, the government is set to begin administering COVID-19 jabs to kids aged 5 to 11. It was pushed back from its initial schedule on Friday due to “logistical challenges.” The delivery of Pfizer vaccines was delayed and will only arrive on Friday.
“Vaccination of the eligible population ensures the protection of households and the community, as it prevents further transmission and mutation of the virus. We therefore encourage everyone to get the additional protection against COVID-19,” the DOH said.
The COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech will be used for the pediatric vaccination as this was the only vaccine that received emergency use approval for those aged 5 to 11 years from the Philippines’ Food and Drug Administration.
The Pfizer vaccines to be administered to children aged 5 to 11 will have a lower dosage and lower concentration than those given to youths aged 12 to 17.
Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje, who also heads the Philippines’ National Vaccine Operation Center, said the government aims to inoculate 15.5 million children aged 5 to 11 in the country.
The country began vaccinating 12- to 17-year-olds in October 2021. Booster shot administration was only opened to all adults in the first week of December 2021. – Rappler.com
Federal officials have identified six persons of interest in bomb threats that targeted historically Black colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Howard University was ordered to shelter in place early Tuesday due to a bomb threat. D.C. police later gave the “all clear” for the campus.
Morgan State University canceled in-person classes Tuesday and police investigated threats to the University of the District of Columbia.
The FBI has identified six “tech savvy” juveniles as persons of interests in threats to historically Black colleges and universities on Tuesday, the first day of Black History Month.
Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C., and Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, were among the schools that received threats. They came just a day after a rash of bomb threats to HBCUs in the United States.
A law enforcement official said the FBI has identified six persons of interest around the country, all juveniles, who are suspected of making the threats. The official said they appear to be “tech savvy,” using sophisticated methods to try to disguise the source of the threats, which appear to have a racist motivation.
Bowie State University and Howard University are among at least six historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States targeted by bomb threats Monday. Prince George’s County Bureau Chief Tracee Wilkins reports.
The bomb threat was made about 2:55 a.m. Tuesday, Howard University said.
“A bomb threat against the university is being investigated. All persons on campus are advised to shelter in place until more information is available,” an alert from the university said. Further details on the alleged bomb threat were not immediately available.
A short time later, D.C. police and university police investigated a bomb threat to UDC’s campus in the Van Ness neighborhood, the school said. Officers shut down streets including the 4200 block of Connecticut Avenue NW and part of Van Ness Street NW, but the campus was opened after the investigation didn’t find anything.
Morgan State University canceled in-person classes due to the threat.
“Access to campus will be closed as the University works with emergency personnel to assess the situation. Everyone on campus should shelter in place until further notice,” Morgan State officials said.
Coppin State University, also in Baltimore, also moved classes online Tuesday due to “a campus emergency,” the school said.
Edward Waters University in Jacksonville, Florida, and Fort Valley State University in Georgia were among more than a dozen HBCU campuses threatened nationwide, NBC News reported.
Howard University and Bowie State University in Maryland were among at least six HBCUs were targeted by bomb threats Monday. Bowie State students were preparing to return to campus Tuesday after officials moved classes online due to the threat on Monday.
Howard University said in a letter to the community that several HBCUs have been subject to threats in recent weeks. The school says it coordinates with D.C. police and federal agencies to investigate threats.
Feds Looking into Bomb Threats to HBCUs
The bomb threats Monday prompted a federal response. The FBI “is aware of bomb threats received by some Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” the agency said in a statement. “The FBI takes all potential threats seriously, and we regularly work with our law enforcement partners to determine their credibility.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also responded to the threats on Monday and was working with local law enforcement to continue investigating, Acting Deputy Director Thomas Chittum said.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the threats “are certainly disturbing, and the White House is in touch with the interagency partners, including federal law enforcement leadership on this.“
“We’re relieved to hear that Howard and Bethune-Cookman universities have been given the all-clear, and will continue to monitor these reports,” Psaki said. “The president is aware — I don’t believe he’s received the formal briefing — but he is aware of these reports.”
A twelve-state human trafficking sting dubbed Operation United Front netted 102 arrests and freed 59 victims, including at least two minors, according to investigators in each of the states.
“The exploitation and repeated victimization of our children, our women and our men must end,” Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said in a statement, adding that although the operation has been completed, “our work is not over.”
He pledged to continue tracking down and arresting human traffickers.
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The states involved in operation United Front include Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.
“We know that human trafficking transcends county and state lines, and multistate efforts like Operation United Front are essential to addressing the human trafficking crisis in our communities,” Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said Wednesday. “Every arrest made leads to one less trafficker on our streets and sends a message that we will not allow any person to exploit another through labor and sex trafficking.”
The operation involved attorneys general from all 12 states, along with state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies.
In many of the jurisdictions, undercover officers set up “dates” with suspected human trafficking victims, then met up with and rescued them, according to authorities. Some also posed as victims in order to arrest their alleged traffickers.
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Roughly two-thirds of the victims required medical treatment, according to authorities, and almost half of the suspects were arrested in Kentucky – 46.
“Operation United Front is a great example of creating a better and safer Kentucky, one that is free of this hideous crime,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a statement Wednesday.
Missouri investigators organized and helped train officers for the operation, according to Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who said his state’s anti-human trafficking task force is a national leader in bringing traffickers to justice.
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“When we all come together, we can affect change and more effectively fight human trafficking, a crime that is often multi-jurisdictional in nature,” he said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection says that one in four victims of human trafficking or modern-day slavery are children – and the majority of forced laborers, including forced sex workers, are women and girls.
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The Human Trafficking Hotline has a list of red flags that could indicate possible human trafficking situations on its website.
The photos taken by Rep. Henry Cuellar offer a rare glimpse of conditions inside CBP facilities for unaccompanied immigrant children.
Adolfo Flores BuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on March 22, 2021, at 1:54 p.m. ET
Posted on March 22, 2021, at 12:58 p.m. ET
Photos from inside a US Customs and Border Protection tent facility in Donna, Texas, reveal the crowded conditions unaccompanied immigrant minors are being held in at a time when the Biden administration is struggling to find bed space for the rising number of children crossing the border.
The photos, taken by Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, offer a rare glimpse of conditions inside such Border Patrol facilities, which are currently housing more than 5,000 unaccompanied immigrant children. Axios first reported on the images taken by Cuellar.
The issues with overcrowding stem from the rising number of unaccompanied children arriving at the border and CBP’s inability to transfer them to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which doesn’t have enough bed space. HHS has been housing over 9,500 children in its system of shelter or emergency influx facilities.
DHS has not given the media or attorneys, who are able to visit these facilities as part of a court settlement, the ability to tour these facilities.
Lawyers who interviewed some of the children at the Donna tent facility told BuzzFeed News that some minors were held for as many as eight days in crowded areas without showers or the ability to call their families.
All of the children interviewed by attorneys had been in the custody of the border enforcement agency for at least five days, over the three-day limit they’re allowed to be in CBP custody under law.
CBP did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
“I have said repeatedly from the very outset that a Border Patrol station is no place for a child and that is why we are working around the clock to move those children out of the Border Patrol facilities, into the care and custody of the Department of Health and Human Services that shelters them,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN on Sunday.
In 2019, visits to Border Patrol facilities revealed children were being held in dirty, overcrowded, and unsanitary conditions. Attorneys who visited a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, described children caring for infants and toddlers, a lack of access to soap and toothbrushes, and inadequate food, water, and sanitation.
On a call with reporters last week, senior Biden administration officials said the HHS was racing to open up shelter space, but noted it would take months and was not a solution for the current situation.
Instead, the agency has turned to emergency intake sites, like a convention center in Dallas and another facility in Pecos, Texas, to try to move children out of CBP custody faster.
In February, more than 9,400 unaccompanied immigrant children were encountered by US border authorities.
The Trump administration started the practice of expelling unaccompanied immigrant minors encountered at the border by US border authorities, citing a public health code called Title 42. The administration was blocked by a federal judge from continuing the practice in November. An appeals court lifted the judge’s order in late January, but by then a new administration had taken office and the Biden White House decided not to continue the practice of expelling unaccompanied immigrant children.
However, the Biden administration has continued to expel some immigrant families and adults whom border officers encountered at the border, citing the same health code as the Trump White House.
Before the judge forced the Trump administration to allow unaccompanied children to seek asylum in the US, the government was quickly sending these children back to dangerous Mexican border cities or flying them back to conditions they fled.
The U.S. government on Saturday was housing approximately 15,500 unaccompanied migrant minors, including 5,000 teenagers and children stranded in Border Patrol facilities not designed for long-term custody, according to government data reviewed by CBS News.
As of Saturday morning, more than 5,000 unaccompanied minors were being held in a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tent holding facility in south Texas and other stations along the border with Mexico. According to the government records, unaccompanied children are spending an average of 136 hours in CBP custody, well beyond the 72-hour limit outlined in U.S. law.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was also housing nearly 10,500 unaccompanied children in emergency housing facilities and shelters licensed by states to care for minors, department spokesperson Mark Weber told CBS News on Saturday.
More than 9,400 unaccompanied minors entered U.S. border custody last month, a record-high for a February. That number is expected to be eclipsed by the figure for March, as border officials have encountered an average of more than 500 unaccompanied minors per day in the past 21 days, according to the government data.
The refugee agency within HHS is charged with housing most unaccompanied minors until it can place them with family members or other sponsors in the U.S. Because of the high numbers of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border and the limited bed space in its state-licensed shelters, the U.S. refugee agency has been forced to open makeshift housing facilities to get children out of Border Patrol custody.
Migrant children and teenagers from the southern border of the United States relax in the sun outside of their housing units at a temporary holding facility south of Midland, Texas.
Eli Hartman / AP
On Saturday, HHS notified Congress that it would be opening a new influx facility in Pecos, Texas, that is initially expected to house approximately 500 unaccompanied children, according to a notice obtained by CBS News. HHS said the installation, a former housing facility for oil workers, could be expanded in the future to house up to 2,000 minors.
The Pecos facility would become the fourth influx or emergency housing facility for unaccompanied minors opened by the Biden administration, which is scrambling to find bed space for the soaring number of children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border without parents or legal guardians. The Trump administration used three influx facilities for migrant children over four years.
Last month, the U.S. refugee agency reopened a Trump-era influx facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas. With the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the refugee office has also converted a Dallas convention center and a camp for oil workers in Midland, Texas, into emergency sites to receive unaccompanied teenagers stuck in Border Patrol facilities, most of which were built to detain migrant men.
The figures reviewed by CBS News on Saturday show the U.S. government continues to struggle to reduce the record-high backlog of children in U.S. border custody, even as it opens new housing facilities and expands bed capacity at state-licensed shelters.
“The staggering number of children in CBP custody is both heartbreaking and profoundly concerning,” Neha Desai, a lawyer representing migrant minors in a landmark court case, told CBS News.
Last week, Desai and her colleague at the National Center for Youth Law, Leecia Welch, interviewed migrant minors held at the Border Patrol tent holding facility in Donna, Texas. According to Desai, the children reported taking turns sleeping on the floor because of overcrowded conditions; not being able to call family members; and showering once in as many as seven days.
Desai said she believes “the Biden administration is committed to humanely addressing the humanitarian situation we now face,” but that “time will tell whether the government’s good intentions and hard work will translate into the changes that are urgently needed.”
On Friday, Paul Wise, a court-appointed doctor charged with monitoring conditions faced by migrant children in U.S. custody, told U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee that he found “profound overcrowding” at the Donna holding facility and other CBP stations in south Texas that he toured last week.
Wise warned the overcrowded conditions were not “sustainable,” saying the holding capacity along the southern border could begin to unravel.
CBP told CBS News in a statement that it is working to transfer unaccompanied minors to HHS shelters “as quickly as we can.” Echoing statements made by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the agency said Border Patrol holding facilities “are not meant to hold children long-term.”
“Even a few hours in custody is more than we want for children that Border Patrol apprehends at the border,” the agency said in a statement.
Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allowed shelters to relax social distancing measures and return to pre-pandemic capacity in early March, the U.S. refugee office has reactivated more than 500 beds, an agency spokesperson told CBS News earlier this week.
While the refugee agency is no longer considering using a military base in Virginia or a NASA installation in northern California to house unaccompanied children, it is still evaluating other sites, according to Weber, the HHS spokesman.
Citing a public health authority dating back to the late 19th century, the Trump administration summarily expelled thousands of unaccompanied children from the southern border without allowing them to request asylum until a federal judge blocked the practice in November 2020.
While an appeals court lifted the judge’s order in late January, the Biden administration declined to expel unaccompanied migrant children, calling the practice inhumane. The Biden administration has continued to use the Trump-era public health edict to expel migrant adults and some families with children.
“We have made a different decision than the prior administration,” Mayorkas said on “CBS This Morning” on Thursday. “We do not expel young children back into the environment of poverty and violence from which they are fleeing.”
PARIS — The French National Assembly adopted legislation late Monday that characterizes sex between adults and minors under 15 as rape, a move made after years of debate and rounds of sexual abuse scandals gradually pushed lawmakers to bring the French criminal code closer to that of most other Western countries.
“Children are off-limits,” France’s justice minister, Eric Dupont-Moretti, told the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, ahead of the vote on Monday. Under the bill, a sexual relationship with a minor under 15 would be punishable by 20 years in prison, unless the age gap between the consensual partners were small.
The bill, which also includes a provision that would make incest a specific crime,will go to the Senate this month and is expected to get final approval in April. The incest ban would also apply to sexual relationships between children under 18 and their step parents.
That lawmakers agreed on setting an age of consent only three years after having voted against a similar law largely reflects the impact of a series of recent sexual abuse scandals.
A reckoning on child abuse has taken place over the past year, amid the fall from grace of a writer who for decades openly engaged in and promoted pedophilia with the support of powerful friends and amid accusations of incest against a prominent French intellectual that surfaced in January.
Fresh allegations of sexual abuse against powerful figures in politics, the arts and the media that fueled new #MeToo movements have also increased pressure on the French government to take action.
“There has been a real shift in the public opinion and an awareness that there is a problem with these sexual violence cases,” said Pierre Verdrager, a sociologist who has studied pedophilia, adding that France had become highly aware of these issues.
Feminists have also contributed to this change in attitude, Mr. Verdrager said, and raised public awareness by speaking out against sexual abuse in the arts and papering Paris with posters denouncing domestic and sexual violence.
French law already prohibited sex between an adult and a minor under the age of 15, but it was not automatically considered rape. Further circumstances, such as the use of coercion, threats, or violence, were necessary to characterize such sexual relationships as rape.
“Questioning minors to know if they were consenting even if they were 10 or 11 years old is really a French exception,” Mr. Verdrager said.
“I think that’s what the legislature wants to get rid of,” he added.
France in 2018 toughened laws against sex crimes and extended the statute of limitations for rape against a minor to 30 years from 20 years, but lawmakers had stopped short of setting an age of sexual consent, citing legal complications.
Some lawmakers, following warnings from France’s Constitutional Council, were worried that setting an age of consent would automatically criminalize sexual relationships between a minor under the age of consent and a person only a few years older. The council reviews legislation to ensure it complies with the French Constitution.
In response, the new bill includes a “Romeo and Juliet” clause that would allow for sexual relationships between a children under 15 and an adult up to five years older. This clause would not apply in rape or assault cases.
“I do not want to put a kid aged 18 on trial because he had a consenting relationship with a girl of 14-and-a-half,” Mr. Dupond-Moretti said.
Alexandra Louis, a French lawmaker supporting the bill, said that the provisions that had been added to bill, such as the Romeo and Juliet clause, gave her hope that the measure would be approved by the Constitutional Council.
Some 300 amendments were discussed but the bill eventually passed unanimously and in one day. Ms. Louis said that the bill had “reached a consensus” and marked “a historic breakthrough.”
The legislation also extends beyond 30 years the statute of limitations for rape of a minor in cases where the adult has raped others, and introduces jail sentences of 10 years and a fine of 150,000 euros, or about $180,000, for anyone convicted of inciting children under the age of 15, via the internet, to commit sexual acts.
“Our task is huge,” Mr. Dupont-Moretti said. “It’s about changing the law to finally, completely and totally protect our children.”