COVID-19 updates: More than 10,000 new deaths reported in US in 1 week

A federal Judge in New York issued a temporary restraining order that stops the state from enforcing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers if they seek a religious exemption. 

The vaccine mandate for health care workers was set to take effect Sept. 27. 

The decision is a temporary victory for a group of doctors, nurses and other medical professionals who challenged the mandate in court. 

The lawsuit accused former Gov. Andrew Cuomo of running a “nearly 18-month-long medical dictatorship.”

“The same front line health care workers hailed as heroes by the media for treating COVID patients before vaccines were available, including the Plaintiffs herein, are now vilified by the same media as pariahs who must be excluded from society until they are vaccinated against their will,” the lawsuit said.

The judge’s order instructs the state to respond by next week. Oral arguments are scheduled for Sept. 28, one day after the health worker vaccine mandate was to have taken effect.

-ABC News’ Aaron Katersky

Pfizer discussed its plans to expand the availability of its COVID-19 vaccine this fall to include children that are 6-months-old to 11-years-old during an on-camera investor conference Tuesday. 

Pfizer’s Chief Financial Officer Frank D’Amelio said the company projects to have safety and efficacy data for children 5 to 11-years-old “by the end of September.” Pfizer expects to file the data with the FDA in “early October.”

D’Amelio said that in the weeks following the submission, the company will file similar data for children between the ages of 6 months to 5-years-old. Phase three studies are currently underway for children in those age groups.

“We would expect to have similar data for children between the ages of 6 months and 5-years-old, that we would file with the FDA, I'll call it, in the weeks shortly thereafter the filing of the data for the 5 to the 11-year-olds,” D’Amelio said. “And then obviously, all of that depends on having a positive outcome on the data.” 

In the meeting, he also doubled down in support of booster shots saying the company “believes that there’s clearly benefit” to “maintaining high levels of protection with a third dose.”

-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos

New research indicates that vaccinated people are about half as likely to experience long-hauler symptoms if they have a breakthrough COVID-19 infection, compared to unvaccinated people with the virus, according to a study conducted in the U.K. published earlier this month. 

Researchers found that fully vaccinated individuals who did get breakthrough infections were 49% as likely as the unvaccinated to report long hauler symptoms. The study analyzed data from individuals who submitted their symptoms, test results and vaccination status between December 2020 and July 2021. 

Long-haulers were defined in the study as anyone whose symptoms lasted more than four weeks after infection. Symptoms include brain fog, muscle pain, and fatigue that can last for months after recovery from an initial infection. 

Among the vaccinated breakthrough infections, a third were as likely as the unvaccinated to report severe symptoms and they were more than 70% less likely to require hospitalizations. 

“These latest findings offer the encouraging news that help is already here in the form of vaccines, which provide a very effective way to protect against COVID-19 and greatly reduce the odds of long COVID if you do get sick,” National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins said in a blog post on the study.

Nearly all of those hospitalized with COVID-19 in the U.S. are unvaccinated, according to government officials and frontline health care workers.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said last week “well over 90% of people who are in the hospital are unvaccinated.”

“Those who were unvaccinated were about four-and-a-half times more likely to get COVID-19, are 10 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 11 times more likely to die,” she added. 

Hospitals across the nation contacted by ABC News have echoed Walensky’s statement. 

At Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho, doctors said about every COVID-19 patient in their overflowing ICU was unvaccinated. 

“We are overwhelmed,” the ICU director said. “We have so many patients with COVID who are unvaccinated.”

Tracking hospitalizations by vaccination status is tough because only about half the states report that information and many share it in different ways. 

However, an analysis of that data found that breakthrough cases in general are uncommon among the fully vaccinated and “the vast majority of reported COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. are among those who are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated,” according to a study released last month by The Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit focused on national health issues.

-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos, Sony Salzman and Brian Hartman