The Latest: Iran reports daily record for COVID-19 deaths

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has registered its highest single-day COVID-19 death toll of the pandemic, according to state media reports.

The country’s Health Ministry said Tuesday that 709 people with the disease had died since Monday and 7,727 patients were in critical condition. The ministry said 40,600 new cases were confirmed in the same 24-hour period.

The previous daily record for COVID-19 deaths in Iran was set Sunday. The country reported its highest daily tally of confirmed cases — more than 50,000 — a week ago.

The highly contagious delta variant is fueling the surge in new cases. A five-day lockdown in the country that included a ban on the use of personal cars between provinces recently ended.

Only some 8% of Iranians have been fully vaccinated.

Authorities have said that less than 40% of the population follows measures such as wearing face masks and social distancing.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

— U.S. state of Oregon, once a virus success story, struggles with surge

— Pentagon to require COVID-19 shots for US service members now that Pfizer vaccine approved

— Livestock medicine doesn’t work against COVID, Mississippi health officials warn

— School mask mandate ban challenged in new Utah lawsuit

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Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan will require all teachers, professors, school staff and students age 17 and older to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Unvaccinated people will be barred from entering educational institutions starting Oct. 15. That’s also when the government will require proof of vaccination in order to purchase train and bus tickets.

Planning Minister Asad Umar announced the new rules Tuesday at a press conference in Islamabad. He said vaccinated people can get online certificates from the National Database and Registration Authority, and a smartphone app is also being developed.

Pakistan, with a population of about 220 million, has reported more than 1,131,000 confirmed cases and 25,094 deaths.

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NEW YORK — CVS Health Corp. is joining the group of U.S. companies that require employees who have contact with customers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Nurses and other employees who interact with patients, as well as all corporate staff, must be vaccinated by Oct. 31, the company said Monday. It said pharmacists have until Nov. 30 to be vaccinated.

CVS, headquartered in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, said other jobs might be added to the list requiring vaccination. The company says its workforce of some 300,000 people includes more than 40,000 physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and nurse practitioners.

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HONOLULU — Hawaii’s governor is urging residents and potential visitors to limit travel to the islands to essential business while the state struggles to control outbreaks of the delta variant of the coronavirus.

Gov. David Ige wants to curtail travel to Hawaii through the end of October. In his words, “It is a risky time to be traveling right now.”

He says restaurant capacity has been restricted and there is limited access to rental cars.

But Ige is stopping short of last year’s strict travel rules that required quarantining and essentially shut down Hawaii’s tourism industry. He notes the CDC says fully vaccinated people can travel domestically.

Hawaii’s seven-day average of new daily cases hit 671 on Monday, more than triple the level four weeks earlier.

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand has reported 41 new coronavirus infections, which is the country’s highest daily total since an outbreak of the delta variant last week prompted the government to put the nation into a strict lockdown.

Health officials said Tuesday that they are confident the country remains on track to quell the outbreak.

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says most of the new cases appeared linked and officials aren’t seeing an exponential rise in infections.

New Zealand is scheduled to remain in lockdown until at least Friday, while the city of Auckland where most of the cases have been found will stay in lockdown until at least the end of the month.

The outbreak is the first in New Zealand in six months.

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SALEM, Ore. — The U.S. state of Oregon was once the poster child for limiting the spread of the coronavirus, after its Democratic governor imposed some of the nation’s strictest safety measures, including mask mandates indoors and outdoors, limits on gatherings and an order closing restaurants.

But now the state is being hammered by the super-transmissible delta variant, and hospitals are getting stretched to the breaking point. The vast majority of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated.

The intensive care unit at Salem Hospital in Oregon’s capital city is completely full, with 19 of the 30 beds occupied last week by COVID-19 patients, the youngest only 20 years old. It’s the same at a hospital in Roseburg, a former timber town in western Oregon. A COVID-19 patient died in its emergency room last week while waiting for an ICU bed to open.

Oregon is among a handful of states, including Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana, that have more people hospitalized with COVID-19 than ever before.

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SAN RAMON, Calif. — Chevron Corp. is requiring some of its employees to become vaccinated against the coronavirus as the oil industry struggles with rising infections among its unvaccinated workers.

The oil giant is requiring its workers who travel internationally, live abroad or work on its offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as some onshore support staff, to be vaccinated.

A spokeswoman for the San Ramon-based oil and gas company said Monday that vaccinations are the strongest safeguard against the virus, and the company will continue to carefully monitor medical data and guidance of health authorities to protect its workforce.

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OLYMPIA, Wash. — The head of Washington state’s wildfire response is urging federal agencies to require coronavirus vaccinations for their wildland firefighting forces.

State Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz also called on Monday for the deployment of federal resources to make vaccinations available at all fire camps on federal land.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources is making vaccines available within its jurisdictions at fire camps amid the rapidly spreading delta variant. Franz on Monday directed all his agency’s employees including firefighters to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18.

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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden is celebrating the full FDA approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and is urging the unvaccinated to go get their inoculations.

Biden on Monday addressed those who were waiting on the full approval and declared “it is now happened, the moment you’ve been waiting for is here.”

He also used the moment to call on private companies to require their employees to get vaccinated. The president made clear: “it’s time to get your vaccination” and warned that the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus was causing COVID cases to rise nationwide.

The FDA had previously approved three vaccines — Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — under an emergency use authorization. Pfizer is the first to receive full FDA approval, which Biden dubbed the “gold standard.”

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JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi Poison Control officials say they are receiving an influx of calls from people trying to treat COVID-19 by using anti-parasite medicine purchased at livestock stores.

At least 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers, Mississippi Department of Health officials said.

Some of the symptoms associated with ivermectin toxicity include rash, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, neurologic disorders, and potentially severe hepatitis requiring hospitalization.

No hospitalizations have been reported. Most callers — 85% — have had mild symptoms, according to the Department of Health. One individual was advised to see a physician because of the high dosage they reportedly took.

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LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — The number of COVID-19 patients on ventilators in Arkansas reached a new high on Monday as Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he hoped the full approval of Pfizer’s vaccine would encourage more people in the state to get the shots against the virus.

The Department of Health said the number of virus patients on ventilators rose by 12 to 349, surpassing the previous high reached Saturday. The number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital increased by 42 to 1,411.

COVID-19 patients make up half of the state’s intensive care unit beds, with 558 in ICU. There are only 22 ICU beds available in Arkansas, according to the Department of Health.

The state reported 30 new COVID-19 deaths and 986 new coronavirus cases.

Arkansas ranks fifth in the country for new cases per capita, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University researchers.

Hutchinson, a Republican who chairs the National Governors Association, said he was pleased with federal regulators giving full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Hutchinson and other governors had been urging the federal government to fully approve the vaccine, saying it could help sway holdouts in their states.

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SALT LAKE CITY — A ban on school districts requiring masks is forcing parents of vulnerable kids to wrestle with the painful choice of whether to risk coronavirus infections at school or keep them at home yet again, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Utah.

The case filed by a group of nine parents is the latest U.S. lawsuit of its kind from families and educators concerned about school without masks as the highly contagious delta variant surges. Similar cases have been filed in Arizona, Texas and Florida, where thousands of students have already been sent home in rapidly spreading outbreaks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines call for universal masking in schools, but amid contentious anti-mask protests, several conservative-leaning states are blocking mask mandates.

Officials, mostly Republican, contend that there are downsides to kids being masked all day and parents should have the power to decide whether to put them on children, who tend to be less vulnerable to the virus than older adults.