Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. The articles are more or less organized with general virus news and anecdotes first, then stories from around the US, followed by an increased number of items from other countries around the globe. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Summary:
This is starting to get old; both new Covid cases and deaths attributed to the virus again increased this week, even as new cases rose at a slower rate than last week. US Covid infections reported during the week ending August 7th were 24.2% higher than those reported during the week ending July 31st, and that now represents an eightfold increase from the number of Covid cases reported during the week ending June 26th, only six weeks earlier. New cases averaged more than a hundred thousand new cases a day in the US this week, which is 45.2% more than the worst week of last summer, when we thought Covid was bringing our world to an end. Now, except for a number of school districts reimposing mask mandates and a handful of companies instituting vaccine mandates, it’s pretty much business as usual. The proverbial frog in a pot of slowly boiling water comes to mind.
Meanwhile, US deaths attributed to the coronavirus during the week ending August 7th were 36.4% greater than the prior week, and they’re now nearly double the number of deaths reported during the week ending July 10th, which was the week that US Covid deaths bottomed out this year. However, this week’s Covid deaths were still 40.6% below the deaths logged during the worst week last summer. Even allowing for the likely fact that this year’s death rate has yet to peak, we can expect it to be relatively lower than last year’s, because roughly 20% of this year’s new cases are among the fully vaccinated, whose infections are much less severe. I have yet to see a report breaking down which vaccines are seeing the most of those “breakthrough” cases, nor how much time had elapsed from a person’s being fully vaccinated to their getting infected – we certainly won’t see that data from the CDC, who stopped counting those cases on May 1st.
While still rising, both new infections and deaths reported globally have slowed from the pace of last week. New Covid cases reported worldwide during the week ending August 7th were 4.8% higher than those reported during the week ending July 31st, and up 67.4% from those recorded during the week ending June 26th. Covid deaths reported worldwide this week were 4.2% higher than the prior week, and 22.5% higher than during the week ending July 3rd, when global death totals were at their low for this year. The US now accounts for nearly a sixth of all new cases globally, two and a half times more cases than in India, which had the 2nd most new cases this week. Take out the US surge, and the Covid growth rate for the rest of the planet falls to a manageable 1.7%.
The chart below from WorldoMeter shows the daily number of new cases for the US, updated through 07 August. The increase over the last 5 weeks is now clear and is looking exponential with rate of growth about equal to the worst data in late October – early November 2020. If you look closely you can see a hint that the exponential rate of growth might be slowing. Another week might show that to be the case.
The chart below shows the daily number of deaths for the US, updated through 07 August. The daily deaths have clearly stopped declining and the start of a rise is now evident and starting to show some acceleration, but still less than in previous waves.
The number of active cases still remains at an elevated level, and on July 24 moved again above 5 million, now sharply above, over 6 million.
The graphics presented by Johns Hopkins show global new cases, global deaths, and global cummulative vaccinations in that order.
According to Johns Hopkins (first and second graphs below), a third wave has clearly begun globally, led by the US. Meanwhile global vaccinations continue to increase (third graph below).
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Steven Hansen continues to summarize and link the latest news related to the pandemic and economic recovery every day, 7 days a week, plus displays over a dozen important graphics updated at least daily. The most recent article at the time this is published: 07 August 2021 Coronavirus And Recovery News: How Will The Pandemic End? History Says COVID Is Unlikely To Be Eradicated.
This article leads the daily newsletter from Global Economic Intersection every day. Newsletter subscription is free.
Here are the rest of the articles for the past week reviewed and summarized:
‘Very Real Fourth Wave’ Presses FDA to Fully Approve Covid Shots – A surge in COVID-19 cases brought on by the rapidly spreading Delta variant across the U.S. is mounting pressure on U.S. drug regulators to fully approve Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine, which is applying for a full license. is the first to do. America Full approval could help the Biden administration speed up its vaccination campaign and reassure vaccine holders that the shots are safe. It could make it easier for more schools and workplaces to implement vaccination mandates. Meanwhile, the success cases that sneak into the defense of the shot are being monitored by the health authorities. While the Pfizer-BioNTech SE messenger RNA-based vaccine, approved in the US through an emergency-use authorization late last year, remains highly effective in preventing serious disease, the question of whether booster shots are needed. The need will loom as the decline approaches. Businesshala News spoke with Peter Marks, the head of the FDA division that is reviewing Pfizer’s approval application, about the process, and other vaccine topics, in which the agency will decide whether booster shots are needed. The question and answer have been edited for clarity and length. Businesshala: President Biden recently said he expects COVID-19 vaccines, such as the Pfizer vaccine, to be fully approved by September or October. Is this a timeline you’ll meet? Peter Marx: I hope we don’t disappoint the president. Everyone here understands the need to do this with the same caution and rigor that we always do, and also with speed and urgency, given that we are in the midst of a global pandemic. Businesshala: There is a perception that the FDA has dragged its feet when it gives full approval to the Pfizer vaccine. Can you tell what extra steps are involved? Mark: The original emergency use authorization was based on two months of average follow-up data. We now have six months of follow-up data, and all the manufacturing information we normally need for a full license. Going over an order of magnitude more data, inspecting features, and doing all the things we normally do, takes a little bit of time. The last thing I want is anyone who is hesitant to say, now it’s approved, but it wasn’t the same kind of approval, so I’m still not going to vaccinate.
CDC Scaled Back Hunt for Breakthrough Cases Just as the Delta Variant Grew – Bloomberg identified more than 100,000 vaccine breakthroughs. The U.S. agency leading the fight against Covid-19 gave up a crucial surveillance tool tracking the effectiveness of vaccines just as a troublesome new variant of the virus was emerging. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped comprehensively tracking what are known as vaccine breakthrough cases in May, the consequences of that choice are only now beginning to show.At the time, the agency had identified only 10,262 cases across the U.S. where a fully vaccinated person had tested positive for Covid. Most people who got infected after vaccination showed few symptoms, and appeared to be at low risk of infecting others. But in the months since, the number of vaccine breakthrough cases has grown, as has the risk that they present. And while the CDC has stopped tracking such cases, many states have not. Bloomberg gathered data from 35 states and identified 111,748 vaccine breakthrough cases through the end of July, more than 10 times the CDC’s end-of-April tally.The CDC said when it announced the change in May that it would continue to collect data on breakthrough cases if the infections resulted in hospitalization or death – a rare occurrence, since vaccines provide significant protection. The decision to stop tracking non-severe cases was made to “help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance,” the agency says on its website.But that decision to follow not track mild or asymptomatic cases is now being questioned, including by state officials dealing with the virus on the front lines. At the same time the CDC stopped tracking those cases, the delta variant began to spread in the U.S. Small numbers of delta-variant cases were identified in mid-April. The strain began to take over in some parts of the country in June, then exploded nationally in July.It now makes up the vast majority of cases, in part because it is more contagious than prior strains. New waves of Covid cases have caused a surge in hospitalizations in the South among unvaccinated people, and led the Biden administration and states to push for vaccine mandates. “When I saw CDC was going to stop tracking vaccinated people who get infected, my heart sank,” said Charity Dean, who helped lead California’s response to Covid as the state health department’s assistant director. “We lost our shot at being able to characterize how this variant is moving through the population and how new variants might emerge.”
Fully vaccinated people who get a Covid-19 breakthrough infection can transmit the virus, CDC chief says – Fully vaccinated people who get a Covid-19 breakthrough infection can transmit the virus, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday.”Our vaccines are working exceptionally well,” Walensky told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death — they prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”That’s why the CDC changed its guidance last week and is now recommending even vaccinated people wear masks indoors again, Walensky said.Last week, the agency released a study that showed the Delta variant produced similar amounts of virus in vaccinated and unvaccinated people if they got infected — data that suggests vaccinated people who get a breakthrough infection could have a similar tendency to spread the virus as the unvaccinated.”If you’re going home to somebody who has not been vaccinated, to somebody who can’t get vaccinated, somebody who might be immunosuppressed or a little bit frail, somebody who has comorbidities that put them at high risk, I would suggest you wear a mask in public indoor settings,” Walensky said.The dangerous Delta variant has fueled the country’s latest surge of Covid-19 cases and if more Americans don’t get vaccinated and mask up, the country could soon be seeing “several hundred thousand cases a day,” similar to the winter surge, Walensky said. And while states across the South — including Florida and Louisiana — have seen exponential rises in cases, Walensky said, they have not reached their peak just yet.
Why has the CDC stopped collecting data on breakthrough Covid cases? -Breakthrough cases – infections among vaccinated people – are happening. These are normal and expected because the vaccines, though all powerfully protective against Covid-19, are not 100% effective. But how many people, and which populations, are having breakthrough infections? And what are the chances they will develop long Covid, the cluster of debilitating symptoms that can last for weeks or even months? It’s difficult to answer these questions because there’s a dearth of rigorous data on breakthrough cases in the United States. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks only breakthrough cases that lead to hospitalization and death, which it does by gathering data from state health departments. Only 25 states report some data on breakthroughs, and only 15 of those states update it regularly, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of state data. Encouragingly, this data suggests that breakthrough cases among the fully vaccinated are extremely rare – well below 1% in states collecting this information. (Note that undercounts are expected, since people with breakthrough infections may not know they are sick or bother to get tested.) This is the kind of information that the public needs in order to understand the risks of daily life during the pandemic, and that scientists need to assess the shifting epidemiology of the virus. We should be able to rely on the CDC to collect and share this data. Instead, we are relying on nonprofits, media outletsand patient advocacy groups to fill the gap.The CDC used to be more thorough in its surveillance of breakthrough cases. It tracked them all between 1 January and 30 April of this year, counting 10,262 in that time frame. But on 1 May, the agency changed its strategy to investigate only breakthrough cases that led to hospitalization or death. “This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance,” it explained.There’s no question that learning about hospitalized or fatal breakthrough cases is critical. But it is just as important to know about the ones that don’t – the ones that are asymptomatic but still contagious, those that lead to mild symptoms and, crucially, those that develop into long Covid.The general public must have this information so they understand how and why to protect themselves, even if they are vaccinated. Vaccine-hesitant people must have it so they can see that the likelihood of breakthroughs is rare because the vaccines are such a powerful shield against new infections. And researchers must have it so that they can understand how the virus is evolving and track any emerging vaccine-resistant variants that may be driving breakthrough cases.
Covid Death Undercounts, but How Large? – Yves Smith – The US is operating with appallingly poor Covid data thanks in no small measure to officials at every level of government acting as if managing PR in a pandemic is more important than managing public health. We have the CDC in an act of what ought to be criminal negligence refusing to track “breakthrough” cases among the vaccinated. That means that clinicians and scientists are now playing blind man and the elephant, groping with their information and trying to guess how representative it is. GM, by e-mail, points out we are in a similar spot with Covid death reporting, albeit for different reasons: During the winter wave, some states failed to even keep track of the death count. For example, Ohio had a very suspiciously low deaths for several months, then just dumped 6-7K deaths and got in line with the average. But it was far from alone, there were big data dumps in February and March from several other states (e.g. VA and NM), and to this day the death counts are highly suspicious in UT, KY, OK, and a few others. Florida at some point last year was often reporting deaths months after they happened, and I don’t imagine that having improved much, etc. But right now, with states scaling back reporting, it is a total mess. With today’s 130K cases, we should see 2K deaths a day at some point, and there is a delay of 3-4 weeks between cases and deaths, and deaths are going up, but not as fast as perhaps expected, and one can’t figure out at all how much of that is the vaccine effect and how much it is just the lack of reporting. I was reading about morgue capacity in some SW MO hospitals being exceeded, but meanwhile MO seems to have just stopped reporting deaths altogether – they post single-digit numbers retoractively, but it’s been more than a month of rising cases now, and it is not reflected in the death count, which certainly does not match the reports from the hospitals either. Meanwhile in neighboring AR they seem to be reporting more accurately and deaths are up massively.And that sort of thing is happening in lots of places. Complete mess and very hard to figure out what the real situation is exactly. P.S. Today Psaki has said that there is “no going back”, i.e. everything will remain fully open and kids will be herded into schools. And there was this video from Miguel Cardona that just makes you want to throw stuff at the wall in rage: At this point it is a serious question which administration did worse with its COVID response. Some of the things that are being said and done now in terms of denial of what is happening I have hard time imagining last year, as there would have been serious backlash, but now there is none…
The signs you have the delta variant are different than original COVID-19 -The delta variant of COVID-19 can have symptoms that are more mild and typically not associated with the virus that some may mistake the illness as allergies or another common sickness.Louisiana State Health Officer Joe Kanter said the delta variant of COVID-19 still has its usual symptoms like cough, fever, and shortness of breath. However, Kanter is seeing many patients present with symptoms that appear to be run-of-the-mill illnesses, like sinus congestion, runny nose, sore throat. These symptoms could be signs that patients have the delta variant, he told Audacy, previously known as Radio.com, a CBS property.“You can present with relatively mild symptoms that you can easily confuse for allergies or something that you picked up from your kid who is in daycare, all of those things,” said Kanter. “If you have any symptoms, no matter how mild, even if it is a sore throat, even if it is a runny nose, even if it is sinus congestion, go get yourself tested and limit your contact with other people until you do so.”As Changing America previously reported, according to researchers at the ZOE COVID Symptom Study, excessive sneezing is also a symptom of having the delta variant.”Our data shows that people who had been vaccinated and then tested positive for COVID-19 were more likely to report sneezing as a symptom compared with those without a jab,” researchers wrote. Changing America also notes that Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are about 95 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19; Johnson & Johnson is around 66 percent. Additionally, one expert told CNN that cloth masks may not be as effective as KN95 masks or N95 masks at defending against the delta variant.
All levels of COVID infection come with cognitive impairment, study says.– As we get further from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our knowledge about the virus expands. A new study from the UK suggests in the illness’ wake, cognitive functions may suffer. What started out as a COVID “long-hauler” symptom, has been found in the short term patients, even those who had a mild case of the illness. It’s called brain fog, and it’s commonly used to describe sluggish, fuzzy thinking. Research out of the UK gives us a look behind the fog. “It’s not in your head, but it’s in your head,” said Dr. Sheryl Williams, a hospitalist and Medical Director of Infection Prevention at BSA. “It’s a physical change that’s happening to your cognition. It’s not like you can’t add two and two and get four, but you’re foggy. You’re just not thinking right.” In the study, just over 81,000 participants filled out a COVID questionnaire and completed nine tests used to measure different aspects of human cognition. The results found functions like reasoning, problem solving, working memory, emotional processing are all affected. “It’s not an isolated, patient-by-patient thing. It is a large proportion of people who had COVID,” said Dr. Williams. On top of that, there’s a scale of impairment quantified by IQ. Those who had respiratory symptoms but made it through on their own at home saw about a 1 point drop. Those who were put on a ventilator, went down 7 points. “The NIH (National Institutes of Health) has just received $1.15 billion dedicated to studying this long COVID phenomenon,” Dr. Williams said. “I think that this study itself [is] simply is another piece of information added to this puzzle that’s all saying the same thing.”
There’s one kind of mask that won’t protect you from the delta variant – When it comes to wearing masks, cloth face coverings may not be the most effective tool in reducing the spread of the coronavirus and preventing infection, one expert says. Michael Osterholm, director for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, spoke to CNN on Monday and said that people should upgrade from cloth masks, bandanas and gators to more-effective N95 respirators. Face masks do not prevent the spreading as effectively as some like to believe, Osterhold said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says cloth masks still offer some protection and their effectiveness depends on the type of fabric, number of layers and the fit of the mask. The CDC is continually studying these factors. Studies have shown that multiple layers of cloth with higher thread counts are more effective than single layer cloths, in some cases filtering 50 percent of fine particles, according to the CDC. Overall, analysis has demonstrated that universal masking has led to a significant drop in new infections. “We need to talk about better masking,” Osterholm said. “We need to talk about N95 respirators, which would do a lot for both people who are not yet vaccinated or are not previously infected. Protecting them as well as keeping others who might become infected having been vaccinated from breathing out the virus.”The CDC classifies KN95 and N95 masks as those that are “designed and tested to ensure they perform at a consistent level to prevent the spread of COVID-19.””You know I wish we could get rid of the term masking because, in fact, it implies that anything you put in front of your face works, and if I could just add a nuance to that which hopefully doesn’t add more confusion is we know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out,” Osterholm said. He then pointed out that people who wear cloth masks in the Northwest can still smell the wildfires.”Either you’re breathing out or you’re breathing in and in fact if you’re in the upper Midwest right now anybody who’s wearing their face cloth covering can tell you they can smell all the smoke that we’re still getting,” he added.Similarly, Scott Gottlieb, former Food & Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, said in July that the right quality mask was necessary to protect against a strain as contagious as the delta variant.”It’s not more airborne, and it’s not more likely to be permeable to a mask. So a mask can still be helpful,” Gottlieb told host John Dickerson. “I think, though, if you’re going to consider wearing a mask, the quality of the mask does matter. So if you can get your hands on a KN95 mask or an N95 mask, that’s going to afford you a lot more protection.”
In addition to Covid, more children are getting a respiratory virus more commonly seen in winter. – U.S. health officials have expressed concern over a simultaneous rise in Delta infections and cases of respiratory syncytial virus, a highly contagious seasonal flulike illness that is more likely to affect children and older adults.Cases of R.S.V. have risen gradually since early June, with an even greater spike in the past month, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The illness, which can cause symptoms that include a runny nose, coughing, sneezing and fever, normally begins to spread in the fall, making this summer spike unusual.In a series of posts on Twitter, Dr. Heather Haq, a pediatrician at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, described an increase in both coronavirus and R.S.V. hospitalizations.“After many months of zero or few pediatric Covid cases, we are seeing infants, children and teens with Covid pouring back into the hospital, more and more each day,” she wrote, adding that patients have ranged in age from 2 weeks to 17 years old, including some with Covid pneumonias. “We are on the front end of a huge Covid surge,” wrote Dr. Haq, who could not be reached for comment on Sunday. “We are now having winter-level patient volumes of acutely ill infants/toddlers with R.S.V., and I worry that we will run out of beds and staff to handle the surge upon surge.”
Most children with Covid-19 recover within a week, but a small percentage have long-term symptoms, a study says. -Although most children with Covid-19 recover within a week, a small percentage experience long-term symptoms, according to a new study of more than 1,700 British children. The researchers found that 4.4 percent of children have symptoms that last four weeks or longer, while 1.8 percent have symptoms that last for eight weeks or longer.The findings suggest that what has sometimes been called “long Covid” may be less common in children than adults. In a previous study, some of the same researchers found that 13.3 percent of adults with Covid-19 had symptoms that lasted at least four weeks and 4.5 percent had symptoms that lasted at least eight weeks.“It is reassuring that the number of children experiencing long-lasting symptoms of Covid-19,” is low, Dr. Emma Duncan, an endocrinologist at King’s College London and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Nevertheless, a small number of children do experience long illness with Covid-19, and our study validates the experiences of these children and their families.”The study, published on Tuesday in the journal The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, is based on an analysis of data collected by theCovid Symptom Study smartphone app. The paper focuses on 1,734 children between the ages of 5 and 17 who tested positive for the virus and developed symptoms between Sept. 1 and Jan. 24. Parents or caregivers reported the children’s symptoms in the app.In most cases, the illness was mild and short. Children were sick for six days, on average, and experienced an average of three symptoms. The most common symptoms were headache and fatigue.But a small subset of children experienced lingering symptoms, including fatigue, headache and a loss of smell. Children between 12 and 17 were sicker for longer than younger children and more likely to experience symptoms that lasted at least four weeks.The researchers also compared children who tested positive for the coronavirus with those who reported symptoms in the app but tested negative for the virus. Children who tested negative – and may have had other illnesses, such as colds or the flu – recovered more quickly and were less likely to have lingering symptoms than those with Covid. They were ill for three days, on average, and just 0.9 percent of children had symptoms that lasted at least four weeks.
Doctors say unvaccinated young adults are becoming more severely ill, and more quickly. -Recently, a 28-year-old patient died of Covid-19 at CoxHealth Medical Center in Springfield, Mo. Last week, a 21-year-old college student was admitted to intensive care. Many of the patients with Covid-19 now arriving at the hospital are not just unvaccinated – they are much younger than 50, a stark departure from the frail, older patients seen when the pandemic first surged last year. In Baton Rouge, La., young adults with none of the usual risk factors for severe forms of the disease – such as obesity or diabetes – are also arriving in E.R.s, desperately ill. It isn’t clear why they are so sick. Physicians working in Covid hot spots across the nation say that the patients in their hospitals are not like the patients they saw last year. Almost always unvaccinated, the new arrivals tend to be younger, many in their 20s or 30s. And they seem sicker than younger patients were last year, deteriorating more rapidly. Doctors have coined a new phrase to describe them: “younger, sicker, quicker.” Many physicians treating them suspect that the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which now accounts for more than 80 percent of new infections nationwide, is playing a role. Studies done in a handful of other countries suggest that the variant may cause more severe disease, but there is no definitive data showing that the new variant is somehow worse for young adults. Some experts believe the shift in patient demographics is strictly a result of lower vaccination rates in this group. As of Sunday, more than 80 percent of Americans ages 65 to 74 were fully vaccinated, compared with fewer than half of those ages 18 to 39, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention..
Does the Tuskegee Experiment Really Explain Black Vaccination Rates? – Black vaccination rates lag the rest of the country, according to data from the Census Household Pulse Survey and other similar sources. One common explanation for this in the discourse is that black people are skeptical of the vaccine because of prior historical events in which they were abused and experimented upon by the US government and healthcare authorities. The main incident brought up in this explanation is the Tuskegee Experiment. In that experiment, black people with syphilis were told they were receiving drugs to treat the disease but they were actually given placebos while the researchers studied the effects of untreated syphilis.This theory checks off certain boxes that make it resonate well within current discourse frameworks, but it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. If the coronavirus vaccines were only being given to black people, then you could see how someone might reason that it is a trick. But they are being given to everyone, including over 100 million white people. Are we meant to think that black people who aren’t getting the vaccine believe that the government is poisoning 100 million white people because the government has a racist history of poisoning black people? The racial analysis here would tell you that there is no way the white supremacist government would do such a thing and so the vaccine must be safe!Perhaps more compelling than this abstract reasoning is the breakdown of the black vaccination rate by education level. As with the population in general and every other racial group, black vaccination rates climb in lockstep with educational attainment. Educational attainment of course is also a decent proxy, on average, for income, wealth, and other socioeconomic indicators.I would guess that awareness of the Tuskegee Experiment and black history more generally is greater among those with higher education than those with lower education. If this guess is right, then knowledge of historical racist medical abuses is actually strongly correlated with getting the vaccine.One of the reasons I am bringing this up because it seems to me that this just-so story about black vaccine hesitancy is actually very unhelpful when it comes to trying to getting black people and the population more generally vaccinated. It’s soothing to a certain mindset that is prevalent in the discourse, but it’s totally detached from reality and papers over the much more significant socioeconomic factors.
F.D.A. plans to give final approval to Pfizer vaccine by early September.– The F.D.A. said it recognized that full approval might inspire more public confidence in the coronavirus vaccines.Credit…Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse – Getty ImagesWith a new surge of Covid-19 infections ripping through much of the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has accelerated its timetable to fully approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine, aiming to complete the process by the start of next month, people familiar with the effort said.President Biden said last week that he expected a fully approved vaccine in early fall. But the F.D.A.’s unofficial deadline is Labor Day or sooner, according to multiple people familiar with the plan. The agency said in a statement that its leaders recognized that approval might inspire more public confidence and had “taken an all-hands-on-deck approach” to the work.Giving final approval to the Pfizer vaccine – rather than relying on the emergency authorization granted late last year by the F.D.A. – could help increase inoculation rates at a moment when the highly transmissible Delta variant of the virus is sharply driving up the number of new cases.A number of universities and hospitals, the Defense Department and at least one major city, San Francisco, are expected to mandate inoculation once a vaccine is fully approved. Final approval could also help mute misinformation about the safety of vaccines and clarify legal issues about mandates.Federal regulators have been under growing public pressure to fully approve Pfizer’s vaccine ever since the company filed its application on May 7. “I just have not sensed a sense of urgency from the F.D.A. on full approval,” Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said in an interview on Tuesday. “And I find it baffling, given where we are as a country in terms of infections, hospitalizations and deaths.”
Sloppy Pfizer Booster Clinical Trial Consent Form Provides Way to Exclude Reactions That Require Emergency Care —Yves Smith -Bloomberg Law complained recently that the consent forms for Covid 19 vaccine clinical trials are larded with unimportant information and difficult to understand. Based on our reading of a Pfizer consent form for a trial of a third shot of its Covid-19 vaccine, those aren’t the biggest causes for pause.We’ve embedded a Pfizer consent form for a Covid-19 booster vaccine clinical trial below, which as of posting time was available at careidresearch.com. We strongly encourage you to read it in full. We’ll discuss first how the form does not appear to have been reviewed by the oversight body tasked by the FDA to do so, and then will discuss why key parts are troubling.The biggest issue, flagged in our headline, is that the consent form allows for participants who need emergency care and go straight to their doctor or hospital to be ejected from the study. But it’s not the only one.The FDA has tasked Institutional Review Boards, aka IRBs, to provide independent oversight of biomedical research projects to protect study participants, as you can see on the agency’s website.Historically, academic medical centers and large local hospitals operated most IRBs. IM Doc, who was on an IRB for nearly two decades and its chairman for several years, explains how major drug companies have successfully shifted many over to private sector players to gut oversight:In our IRB we oversaw usually between 250-400 active trials at any one time. There was a staff of 6 RNs dealing with all the documents, the patient contacts, and any other work needing to be done. The Board itself consisted of a committee of LOCAL individuals. There were 15 people on ours. 3 were doctors, 3 were nurses, 3 were clergy, 3 were professional people from the community (lawyers, accountants, business owners) and 3 were blue collar workers. You notice the majority was ALWAYS NON-MEDICAL. We were tasked with going over any new research studies in our center, and coming up with a document called an “Informed Consent”. The researcher always had a template for this from either the NIH or other agency or Big Pharma. But the committee went over it with a fine tooth comb.This process almost always took 2-4 weeks.Over time, Big Pharma has obtained more control over IRBs by moving Phase III and Phase IV clinical trials over to more cooperative private sector operators. A big motivating factor is that if an IRB (and historically there would be multiple local/regional IRBs supervising a clinical trial) suspended a study, every other IRB involved would have to be informed of the suspension and the reason why. Needless to say, that would have the potential to generate other suspensions or calls for revisions of study procedures midstream….which would be tantamount to having to go back to the drawing board. 1One of the side effects was to weaken, and as appears to be the case here, effectively end IRB review and negotiation of consent forms. Have a look at this image, which is at the top of every page of the Pfizer consent form:
Vaccination reduces the risk of getting Delta symptoms by 60 percent, a study in England finds. -Vaccines in England were 60 percent effective at preventing symptomatic cases of Covid-19 caused by the Delta variant, researchers reported on Wednesday, a figure lower than most previous estimates that scientists nevertheless said ought to be interpreted cautiously.The results, drawn from testing a random sample of nearly 100,000 volunteers, offered some of the most extensive evidence to date of vaccines’ performance against the Delta variant, which has driven surges of cases in Britain, the United States and elsewhere. They indicated that vaccines were 50 percent effective at preventing people from becoming infected, with or without symptoms.But scientists cautioned that the results had an exceedingly high degree of statistical uncertainty, and relied largely on volunteers self-reporting their vaccination status.The study sent tests to a random sample of volunteers, rather than relying on people to seek coronavirus tests themselves, so its figures include people who may not otherwise have thought much of their symptoms or known they had the virus at all. Estimates of vaccine effectiveness tend to be lower in studies that include mild or asymptomatic cases.The results also did not distinguish between the different vaccines being used in Britain. By mid-July, roughly twice as many people had been fully vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine as with Pfizer’s, the main two shots in use in Britain. In previous studies, the Pfizer vaccine has appeared more effective against the Delta variant than AstraZeneca’s. The researchers, led by a team from Imperial College London, said that their estimates of vaccine effectiveness were lower than those reported previously in England, but consistent with data from Israel.Other studies in England have suggested that vaccines are more than 90 percent effective in preventing people from being hospitalized with a Covid-19 case caused by the Delta variant.
What Does Vaccine Effectiveness Mean? –Peter Dorman – What do people most want to know about the coronavirus vaccines? How much protection they give you against the risk of getting infected with the virus, right? And how much protection they give against more severe symptoms, such as those requiring hospitalization or resulting in long Covid. When public health authorities throw out numbers about vaccine effectiveness, that’s probably how most people interpret them.But that’s not what effectiveness means in medical research. When pharmaceutical companies or public health outfits conduct effectiveness tests, they assemble and compare two groups, a treatment and a control (or multiple treatment groups with different protocols). The treatment group gets the vaccine, the control group doesn’t. Who gets assigned to which group is determined randomly, and participants don’t know which one they’re in. (The controls get injected with a placebo.) Then they go about their life, monitored to see if they get infected or not. Vaccine effectiveness is a ratio, the fraction of the control group that gets infected divided by the corresponding fraction of the treatment group; it’s a ratio of two ratios. You can also calculate effectiveness within subgroups, like treatments-over-65 and controls-over-65. If the trial is conducted properly, the samples are representative and large and the public health context, including the virus variant, is stable, you can generalize effectiveness in the samples to the population as a whole.Now notice a subtle difference in language. The everyday use of “effectiveness” is effectiveness against the virus. The research use is effectiveness relative to the control group. This is immense, but widely misunderstood and seldom explained. Next, imagine that a new virus variant appears, combined with more relaxed public behavior – more indoor gathering, less masking. Let’s say that an unvaccinated person now has a 5% monthly risk of infection. If the vaccine is equally effective against the new variant, our typical vaccinated person now has a .25% risk of infection. The numerator and denominator have both risen fivefold, but the effectiveness ratio of treatment vs control is unchanged. Suppose further that the vaccine loses effectiveness against the new variant; it is now just 40% rather than 95%. 40% of 5% is 2%, the new monthly infection risk of those who have been vaccinated. The bottom line: vaccine effectiveness measures the risk faced by vaccinated individuals compared to those who aren’t vaccinated. If the risk rises for the second group it rises for the first, even more if effectiveness is also falling.
Moderna says booster ‘likely’ to be needed this fall for ‘robust’ response against Delta – Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine booster appears to produce a “robust” antibody response against the fast-spreading delta variant, the company said Thursday as it warned that a third shot would “likely” be needed this fall.The Massachusetts-based drugmaker revealed in a quarterly-earnings report that its original two-dose vaccine regimen remains highly effective through six months after the second shot, but the company believes that the “increased force of infection resulting from delta” will lead to a surge of breakthrough infections in vaccinated people over the next few months.The delta variant is said to be as contagious as chickenpox and has already become the dominant strain in the U.S. and many other countries.“We are pleased that our COVID-19 vaccine is showing durable efficacy of 93 percent through six months, but recognize that the Delta variant is a significant new threat so we must remain vigilant,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement. Moderna’s 93 percent efficacy rate after six months is higher than Pfizer’s estimate for its own vaccine, which the New York company reported last week to be about 84 percent, and it’s just slightly lower than the 94.1 percent rate in the immediate days after full immunization. “While we see durable Phase 3 efficacy through 6 months, we expect neutralizing titers will continue to wane and eventually impact vaccine efficacy,” Moderna said in a slide presentation shared online. “Given this intersection, we believe dose 3 booster will likely be necessary prior to the winter season.”
An outbreak in a Massachusetts beach town shows the pandemic is ‘nowhere near over.’ – By the Fourth of July, the tourist season in Provincetown, Mass., had built to a prepandemic thrum. Restaurants were booked solid, and snaking lines formed outside dance clubs. There were conga lines, drag brunches and a pervasive, joyous sense of relief. “We really thought we had beat Covid,” said Alex Morse, who arrived this spring as town manager.Mr. Morse didn’t think much of it, five days after the holiday, when the town’s Board of Health logged two new cases of coronavirus. A week later, though, the cluster of cases associated with gatherings in Provincetown was growing by 50 to 100 cases per day. Alongside the numbers was an unsettling fact: Most of the people testing positive were vaccinated. Provincetown, a quirky beach community at the tip of Cape Cod, has provided a sobering case study for the country, abruptly tugging Americans back to the caution of winter and spring. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited the cluster on Friday as key to its decision to issue new indoor mask guidance, saying viral loads among the vaccinated people there were found to be as high as among the unvaccinated.
Breakthrough Symptomatic COVID-19 Infections Leading to Long Covid: Report from Long Covid Facebook Group Poll (preprint) medRxiv -Vaccines have been shown to be extremely effective in preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. However, a question remains whether vaccine breakthrough cases can still lead to Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC), also known as Long Covid. To address this question, the Survivor Corps group, a grassroots COVID-19 organization focused on patient support and research, posted a poll to its 169,900 members that asked about breakthrough cases, Long Covid, and hospitalizations. 1,949 people who self-report being fully vaccinated have responded to date. While robust data are needed in a larger, unbiased sample to extrapolate rates to the population, we analyzed the results of this public poll to determine what people were reporting regarding Long Covid after breakthrough infection and to prompt discussion of how breakthrough cases are measured. The poll was posted in the Survivor Corps Facebook group (∼169,900 members). Of the 1,949 participants who responded to the poll, 44 reported a symptomatic breakthrough case and 24 of those reported that the case led to symptoms of Long Covid. 1 of these 24 cases was reported to have led to hospitalization in addition to Long Covid.
Cognitive assessment in asymptomatic COVID-19 subjects – The people afflicted with SARS -CoV-2 were reported to have respiratory symptoms in the earliest studies. Thereafter a number of extra respiratory features were also observed. These included neurological deficits also. Some of these were stroke, seizures, neuropathy and movement disorders [2]. Recent pathological studies have shown the neurotropism of SARS-CoV-2, thus establishing a direct pathophysiological basis to the neurological features [3]. Neurological features of higher mental functions were reported by Zhou et al. who performed a study on the cognitive functions of 29 COVID-19 recovered patients. The patients secured lower scores in Continuous Performance Test (which is used to assess attention and impulse) than the controls [4]. Others have reported a dysexecutive syndrome in the COVID patients [5]. Thus symptomatic patients do suffer cognitive deficits in addition to the earlier reported neurological features. Neurological features such as weakness, pain and numbness are reported readily as they are easily noticed by the patients. However dysfunctions of the higher mentation go unnoticed especially if they are mild and occur in otherwise asymptomatic persons [6]. Such unrecognised deficits have been brought out in asymptomatic subjects in many other diseases by targeted cognitive tests like MiniMental Status Examination (MMSE) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment(MoCA) [7,8]. Although MMSE has been widely used for detecting cognitive impairment, it has been found inferior [9] to the MoCA in detecting Mild cognitive impairment (MCI). MoCA has been widely validated in diagnosing MCI in many studies [6]. We used the MoCA test to detect MCI in asymptomatic COVID-19 subjects.Our study shows that even otherwise asymptomatic COVID-19 subjects have cognitive deficits in certain subdomains and suggests the need for a detailed psychometric assessment especially in the elderly population.
The U.S. is wasting vaccine doses, even as cases rise and other countries suffer shortages. -A survey of data from 10 states shows that about one million doses have gone to waste since the nation began administering Covid-19 vaccines in December.Much of the loss has come as demand for inoculations plummeted, with the daily rate of vaccinations now at less than one-fifth of its peak average of 3.4 million shots, reached in mid-April.More than 110,000 doses have been destroyed in Georgia, officials there said. Of the more than 53,000 doses wasted in New Jersey, nearly 20,000 were discarded in June, up from around 4,000 in April. Around 50,000 doses in Maryland were not used, officials said.In Ohio, state officials reported on July 20 that more than 370,000 doses have been reported as unusable by state providers. [Update Aug. 2, 2021: On Monday, the day after this article was originally published, a spokeswoman for the state health department revised the number downward to more than 230,000.] Reasons for vaccine wastage include breakage, storage and transportation problems, expiration, and shots that were prepared but not used after people did not show up for appointments, officials said. In many states, data shows that wasted or unusable doses are no more than about 2 percent of those received from the federal government and successfully administered.
Wild U.S. deer found with coronavirus antibodies.–White-tailed deer, a species found in every U.S. state except Alaska, appear to be contracting the coronavirus in the wild, according to the first study to search for evidence of an outbreak in wild deer.Researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) analyzed blood samples from more than 600 deer in Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania over the past decade, and they discovered that 40 percent of the 152 wild deer tested from January through March 2021 had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Another three deer from January 2020 also had antibodies.Their presence means that deer likely had encountered the virus and then fought it off. The animals didn’t appear sick, so they probably had asymptomatic infections, the agency says. Roughly 30 million white-tailed deer live in the U.S. “The risk of animals spreading SARS-CoV-2 to people is considered low,” the USDA told National Geographic in a statement. Still, the results may suggest that “a secondary reservoir for SARS-CoV-2 has been established in wildlife in the U.S.” says Jüergen Richt, a veterinarian and director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at Kansas State University who was not involved in the USDA’s work. If the virus is circulating in other species, it could continue to evolve, perhaps in ways that make it more severe or transmissible, undermining efforts to slow the pandemic.Earlier this year, researchers established that deer are susceptible to the virus when infected in the lab – and that they can pass the virus to each other. But scientists didn’t know until now if infections were occurring in nature. The only species with lab results indicating that they hadcontracted the virus in the wild had been mink, though cats, dogs, otters,lions, tigers, snow leopards, gorillas, and a cougar have all had outbreaks in captivity or in zoos.
New COVID variants Epsilon, Lambda may be resistant to vaccines, early lab studies show.-The Epsilon and Lambda variants of COVID-19 are “variants of interest,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and early studies show they have developed a resistance to vaccines. Japanese researchers found the Lambda variant, which was initially discovered in Peru and is now spreading throughout South America, is highly transmissible and more resistant to vaccines than the initial COVID-19 strain. The researchers warned in a paper posted July 28 that has yet to be peer reviewed that Lambda’s label as a “variant of interest” instead of a “variant of concern” might downplay the growing threat of the strain. Meanwhile, the Epsilon variant that was initially discovered in California in 2020 is spreading in Pakistan and is proving to be resistant to vaccines, according to researchers.Health authorities issued an alert after they discovered five cases of the Epsilon variant in Lahore, Pakistan. Medical experts there believe the vaccine-resistant strain is putting vaccinated people as well as unvaccinated people at risk, adding that the strain is just as transmissible as the Delta variant.Despite these early studies, previous studies have shown vaccines, including those available in the United States, work against “variants of concern,” such as the Delta variant. The vaccines also prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death in most breakthrough cases where a fully vaccinated person tests positive for the coronavirus. For example, a U.K. study published in May showed two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were 88% effective at preventing against symptomatic infection of the Delta variant and 96% effective against preventing hospitalization.
“Potentially Very Bad”: Lots of New Covid Variants in New York City Rats — Yves Smith -Our reader GM is not happy that the possible very big downside of a recent Covid discovery is not being taken seriously. Lots of nasty new variants of Covid have been found in New York City wastewater. They appear to come from rats.Now so far, there is no evidence that one of these rat Covid variants has jumped species to humans. But as we’ll explain, were that to happen, it could be Seriously Bad. Many of these variants are novel and have the potential to escape current vaccines.But the reaction to the wastewater study has been underwhelming. And the US already does one of the worst jobs of any advanced economy in terms of sequencing Covid cases to determine the prevalence and spread of variants. So if a ratty Covid were to infect humans, the US would be late to work that out.From a preprint in MedRxIV, Tracking Cryptic SARS-CoV-2 Lineages Detected in NYC Wastewater:To monitor New York City (NYC) for the presence of novel variants, we amplified regions of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein gene from RNA acquired from all 14 NYC wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and ascertained the diversity of lineages from these samples using high throughput sequencing. Here we report the detection and increasing frequencies of novel SARS-CoV-2 lineages not recognized in GISAIDs EpiCoV database. These lineages contain mutations rarely observed in clinical samples, including Q493K, Q498Y, H519N and T572N. Many of these mutations were found to expand the tropism of SARS-CoV-2 pseudoviruses by allowing infection of cells expressing the human, mouse, or rat ACE2 receptor. In addition, pseudoviruses containing the Spike amino acid sequence of these lineages were found to be resistant to many different classes of receptor binding domain (RBD) binding neutralizing monoclonal antibodies. We offer several hypotheses for the anomalous presence of these mutations, including the possibility of a non-human animal reservoir.GM explains:I was never worried about minks as a reservoir, those are mostly solitary and likely can’t sustain a transmission chain.But rats in the sewer is a completely different situation.And it’s not just that there is an external reservoir, as the paper notes, you select for somewhat different mutations in rodents. That can still infect humans, only now the major neutralizing epitopes are taken out.Also, this will screw up the few remaining ZeroCOVID countries too unless they start maniacally screening all cargo shipments. The Chinese might try, but they also have a gigantic land border and that effort is doomed in the long run… Now on the one hand, New York City is estimated to have only about 2 million rats, compared (pre Covid) about 10 million humans. In London, the population jumped about 25% during 2020, so it’s reasonable to assume if anything their numbers are higher now. On the other hand, if you look at the CDC website, the very first rodent disease listed as directly transmitted to humans, Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, has a primary transmission mechanism that doesn’t even require you to have been within eyeshot of a rat: “Breathing in dust that is contaminated with rodent urine or droppings.”
Florida breaks record for new coronavirus cases as surge of infections rips through state -Florida reported 21,683 new coronavirus cases on Friday, the state’s highest one-day total since the start of the pandemic, according to data released Saturday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The data shows the severity of the surge in Florida, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak and now responsible for 1 in 5 new infections nationally. The previous peak in Florida had been on Jan. 7, when the state reported 19,334 cases, according to the CDC – before the widespread availability of coronavirus vaccinations. Florida has reported an average of 15,818 new cases a day over the past seven days, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. The Florida Department of Health reported that coronavirus cases in the state had jumped 50 percent in the past week. In that time, the state has reported 409 deaths.In addition to the highly transmissible delta variant, vaccine holdouts and the widespread resumption of normal activities have led to a surge in infections, hospitalizations and deaths nationwide. With the United States reporting more than 70,000 cases a day, case numbers have risen to levels not seen since February.About 49 percent of Florida’s population has been fully vaccinated as of Sunday.White House Covid-19 Response Team coordinator Jeff Zients underscored new U.S. coronavirus cases occurring in Florida while speaking to reporters on July 16. (The Washington Post)State health officials have indicated that hospitals are struggling to keep up with the number of covid-19 patients. The Florida Hospital Association said Friday that covid hospitalizations are approaching last year’s peak. The state leads the nation in hospitalizations, with more than 10,000 as of early Sunday, according to The Post’s covid tracker. The number of covid hospitalizations is close to breaking the record set in the state in July 2020.
Average daily COVID-19 infections topped last summer’s peak, CDC says – Nationwide COVID-19 infections have surpassed last summer’s peak, White House officials said Monday, but vaccination rates are increasing in states with some of the highest COVID-19 infection rates. “In the states with the highest case rates, daily vaccination rates have more than doubled,” White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said in a press briefing. For example, Zients said Louisiana has seen a 302 percent increase in the average number of newly vaccinated per day, while Mississippi has increased 250 percent, Alabama has increased 215 percent and Arkansas has increased 206 percent. “This increase in vaccination rates in states that have been lagging is a positive trend. Americans are seeing the risk and impact of being unvaccinated and responding with action. And that’s what it’s going to take to get us out of this pandemic,” Zients said. Nationwide, 3 million Americans have gotten their first shot over the past seven days, the highest since July 4. But infections are still rapidly increasing. Over the weekend, the seven-day moving average of daily new COVID-19 cases was about 72,000 per day, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said, a number higher than the peak from last summer, which was well before any authorized vaccines were available. At that time, the nation was reporting about 68,700 new cases per day, according to the CDC. Cases reached record highs in the fall and winter months that followed. The vaccination campaign has slowed compared to the spring months, as hesitancy and outright resistance to the vaccine have created a major obstacle for public health officials. According to Zients, one out of three new COVID-19 cases occurred in Florida and Texas over the past week. About 17 percent of cases came from seven states with low vaccination rates, he added. Walensky and chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci noted that the vast majority of people who are testing positive are not vaccinated and “breakthrough” infections are rare. “This remains a pandemic of the unvaccinated where the vast majority of spread in this country is among those who are unvaccinated,” Walensky said. The delta variant spreads much more easily among unvaccinated people than the original alpha variant. Walensky said an unvaccinated person who is infected with the delta variant could infect as many as five other unvaccinated people, more than twice as many as the original strain. The extremely high viral loads carried by anyone who is infected are concerning, Walensky said, but the risks of a vaccinated person spreading to another vaccinated person are extremely low, and if it does happen, vaccination will prevent serious illness and hospitalization.
Florida Covid hospitalizations shatter record as DeSantis downplays threat – The head of Florida’s largest hospital association warned that the skyrocketing number of Covid hospitalizations is unlike anything the state has seen before – even as Gov. Ron DeSantis downplays the spike.The Florida Hospital Association on Monday reported 10,389 Covid-19 hospitalizations, the most statewide during any point in the pandemic. This follows Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting over the weekend that the state had more than 21,000 new coronavirus infections on Friday. It was the highest one-day total for Florida, which now makes up roughly one and five new cases nationally.About 95 percent of those hospitalized are unvaccinated, and Mary Mayhew, the president and CEO of the Florida Hospital Association, said the Delta variant that is sweeping through Florida is infecting young and unvaccinated people and is much different than the previous strain.“We have to convince 25-year-olds, 30-year-olds that this is now life threatening for them,” Mayhew said during an interview on Morning Joe. “That is not what they saw and what we experienced last year.”As Florida’s coronavirus infections continue to soar, public health officials and local elected leaders have pressed the DeSantis administration to take more drastic steps to get the virus under control. DeSantis, however, has maintained a strict “no-mandate” approach to the virus, including touting an executive order last week that prohibits school districts from requiring masks in K-12 facilities. He also vowed to fight any cities or municipalities that try to institute Covid restrictions, including mask mandates or lockdowns.DeSantis’ administration points to the Covid cases in the younger population as evidence of the governor’s successful push to get the elderly in the state vaccinated. More than 85 percent of those older than 65 in Florida have been fully vaccinated. Overall, about 52 percent of Florida’s population is fully vaccinated.“We recognize that cases and hospitalizations have shifted to a younger demographic because we have been so successful with vaccinating seniors,” said DeSantis’ press secretary Christina Pushaw, who added that the vaccinated made up 6 percent of new infections last month. “Again, we must continue this stride to expand vaccination rates across eligible age groups.”Yet on Sunday night, Pushaw sparred with reporters on Twitter over the increase in Covid hospitalizations at Tallahassee’s largest hospital, Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. At one point, Pushaw noted the city is Democratic-leaning and questioned why more people did not get vaccinated even though a reporter tweeted a story quoting Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare chief communications officer Stephanie Derzypolski saying “this is the most we’ve ever had.”
Florida children’s hospitals see pediatric COVID-19 cases soar -The number of new COVID-19 hospitalizations among children is rising in Florida as the state faces a surge in cases due in part to the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus. On Tuesday, 46 pediatric patients were admitted to Florida hospitals with confirmed COVID-19 infections, bringing the total number of pediatric coronavirus patients in the state to 135, according to hospital capacity data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Florida is behind only Texas in the current number of children hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 cases, with the Lone Star State recording a total of 142 as of Tuesday. According to a Miami Herald analysis of weekly COVID-19 case data, the sharpest increase of Florida COVID-19 infections over the past month has been among children under the age of 12, who are not yet eligible to receive any of the three vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S.The two-shot Pfizer vaccine has been authorized in the country for people as young as 12 years old. Ronald Ford, chief medical officer for Memorial Healthcare System’s Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Fla., told the Herald that its emergency rooms are seeing more symptomatic cases among children than during previous COVID-19 surges. “In our previous iteration of the pandemic, it was more they’re positive but they’re not sick or minimally sick,” he explained. “This is different. … There’s a much higher percentage of pediatric patients becoming infected and symptomatic.”In the past week, Florida has repeatedly broken records for daily COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, and as of Tuesday accounted for roughly 1 in 5 new cases nationally. As of Wednesday, there have been a total of 2.6 million infections in the Sunshine State, along with nearly 40,000 fatalities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Despite the latest surge, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has pushed back against implementing a statewide mask mandate or vaccination requirements, and has even signed directives banning mask mandates in public schools and preventing businesses from requiring proof of vaccination. While the CDC has said that children are at less risk to develop severe illnesses from COVID-19, the agency updated its guidance this week to recommend that all teachers, staff, students and visitors to K-12 schools wear masks upon returning to the classroom this fall, regardless of vaccination status. The guidance follows recent similar recommendations unveiled by the agency for all people to wear masks indoors in areas across the country with “high” or “substantial” levels of COVID-19 transmission, based on new data showing that vaccinated people may be able to spread the delta variant to unvaccinated people.
If Hospitalizations Lead Fatalities: Prospects for Florida – Menzie Chinn – With large shares of populations vaccinated, case counts are no longer a good predictor of fatalities arising from Covid-19. Hospitalization might prove better (and ICU hospitalizations even better). The statistics do not augur well, particularly for Florida. Obviously, Florida remains a big problem when you consider its 21 million population, and that it accounts for 5.1% of US GDP (as of 2019Q4). For comparison, California, as the economically largest state, accounted 14.8%. Here is IHME’s latest fatalities forecasts, from July 30. The IHME forecast presented above was not include in the July 26th CDC ensemble forecast. At the time of the CDC ensemble forecast compilation, IHME’s forecast was above the ensemble forecast, but not at the very top. Since it’s hard to see, here’s a detail. The IHME forecast available as of 7/26 was for about 1000 fatalities per week, compared to the ensemble forecast of a bit below 600. The IHME forecast was at the top of the 95% band. A new ensemble forecast should be released on 8/4. It’s clear why Mr. De Santis wants to avoid the specter of Covid-19. The late summer and winter waves clearly slowed Florida’s recovery. Rising deaths might spur – if not additional public health measures such as mask mandates that the governor has banned – then increasing aversion by those who perceive risks associated with going about business as usual. Figure 1: Florida Reported deaths due to Covid-19 (black, left log scale), nonfarm payroll employment, in 000’s, s.a. (teal, right log scale). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. July observation for deaths is IHME forecast. I expect risk aversion to induce a reduction in consumption of high contact services. If mask mandates and other public health measures were imposed, that might lead to a greater short term reduction in economic output (although in the long run, total hours might be higher, as in the Eichenbaum pandemic/output model). Any lessons to be gleaned from the past episodes? The employment losses thus far can be decomposed into two groups – the high contact services associated with leisure and hospitality services, and everything else covered in nonfarm payroll employment. Figure 2: Florida employment relative to 2020M02 in leisure and hospitality services (blue bars), and in rest-of-nonfarm payroll employment (tan bars), in 000’s, s.a. You can see that leisure and hospitality employment recovery stalls out in July-August 2020, and January 2021. If the rise in deaths occurs as forecasted in Figure 1, then All this takes place in the context of already slowing growth, as far as we can tell (these indicators run only through June). Figure 3: Florida Coincident index (black), real GDP (purple), and nonfarm payroll employment (teal), all in logs, 2019Q4=0. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Quarterly data for coincident index, employment converted from monthly to quarterly by averaging.
Arkansas reports biggest one-day spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations – Arkansas on Monday reported 1,220 COVID-19 related hospitalizations, its highest-ever one day jump since the pandemic began. The record comes as the state is also swiftly approaching its record for COVID-19 hospitalizations, according to the state’s Department of Health. The state’s highest number of hospitalizations was recorded in January at 1,371. “Today’s increase in hospitalizations is the highest increase we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic. We continue to see nearly all hospitalizations among the unvaccinated,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) tweeted on Monday. On Monday, the state reported 42 deaths and 844 new cases with 6,199 people having died due to COVID-19 in total in Arkansas. Last week, Hutchinson asked the state legislature to roll back its ban on allowing local governments from enacting mask mandates, asking that public schools be allowed to make that decision themselves. “This is not a debate about mask mandates for those that can make their own decisions and have the means to get vaccinated,” Hutchinson said. “This is a discussion about the school environment where schools can make decisions about the public health for their school environment and the children they have responsibility to protect.” The action will be difficult to accomplish as a majority in both legislative houses would be needed for the ban to be lifted before school resumes in the fall. Hutchinson has acknowledged Arkansas’ low vaccination rate, attributing it to the state being “very rural” and “conservative.” “Sometimes conservatives are hesitant about the government, and we’ve just got to counteract that by getting better information to them, building confidence,” he said earlier in July.
Louisiana governor reinstates mask mandate -Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) reinstated a statewide mask mandate for everyone 5 years old and up as the Pelican State has hit the most cases per capita in the U.S.The governor announced the mask requirement over Twitter, citing surging COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, which he said are “threatening the ability of hospitals to deliver care.”The mandate will go until at least Sept. 1, but Edwards said it could be extended if needed. The move was based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), advice from health advisers and insight from hospitals and businesses, Edwards said in a press release. “This decision is not one I take lightly, but as the fourth surge of COVID-19 is upon us, we know that mask wearing when you are in public is one way to greatly lower your risk of spreading or catching COVID. Being vaccinated against COVID-19 is another,” he said in the statement.“We have the tools we need to slow the spread of COVID-19 in our communities and save lives, and I am pleading with unvaccinated Louisianans to get their shot as soon as they can to protect themselves,” he added. “We can end this nightmare, but it is going to take all of us working together to do it.”Louisiana’s case count per capita skyrocketed in July, starting the month with an average of eight daily cases per 100,000 people before documenting 89 cases per 100,000 people on Saturday, according to data from The New York Times. With a daily average of 4,119 new cases as of Sunday, Louisiana has seen its case count more than triple within two weeks. A majority of the 10 counties and parishes with the highest case count per capita in the U.S. are in Louisiana.The state’s daily average hospitalizations of more than 1,500 is almost triple the amount from 14 days ago. At the same time, Louisiana has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country with 37 percent of the population considered fully vaccinated, according to the Mayo Clinic. Less than half of adults, 47 percent, are fully vaccinated.
Americans suffer pandemic whiplash as leaders struggle with changing virus.A week of public health reversals from the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has left Americans with pandemic whiplash, sowing confusion about vaccines and mask wearing.The crisis President Biden once thought he had under control is changing shape faster than the country can adapt. An evolving virus, new scientific discoveries, deep ideological divides and 18 months of ever-changing pandemic messaging have left Americans skeptical of public health advice.Monday was another day that underscored the crosscurrents for the nation’s leaders as their efforts at a disciplined public health campaign collided yet again with the chaotic nature of the pandemic.The virus continued to scramble traditional politics. In left-leaning Chicago, city officials announced that more than 385,000 people had attended the four-day Lollapalooza music festival – and Mayor Lori Lightfoot defended it. In Washington, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a longtime supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus but said his symptoms have been mild, which he attributed to being vaccinated.Some experts say the C.D.C. is to blame for some of the confusion. After saying in May that vaccinated people could go maskless indoors and outdoors, the agency did an about-face, once again recommending indoor masking in places where the virus is spreading rapidly.Only days later did a leaked document deliver the grim reasoning: The Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and spreading even among the vaccinated.A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s thinking, conceded on Monday that many Americans remained perplexed. Another administration official said Mr. Biden would address the nation later this week – the second time in less than a week – to reiterate and clarify his main takeaway points: The vaccines are safe and effective; even vaccinated people have to mask up again because so many people are unvaccinated; go get your shots and tell your friends and neighbors to do the same.
Oregon reports 1,575 coronavirus cases, one of highest daily tallies of entire pandemic – Oregon on Tuesday reported 1,575 new cases of coronavirus, one of the highest daily case counts reported over the entire COVID-19 pandemic and a deeply worrying number for public health officials due to the resurgence of the virus driven by the contagious delta variant.Even more worrisome, the number of Oregonians hospitalized with the virus across the state increased by 39 to 379, and there are 119 COVID-19 patients in intensive care beds, 17 more than the previous day. Both numbers are the highest seen since the surge last winter.And the rising case and hospitalization tallies shows no sign of slowing. The state on Tuesday reported that more than one in 10 coronavirus tests yielded a positive result, one of the highest daily rates of the pandemic at 10.8%.The state also reported nine new coronavirus deaths, raising the death toll from the pandemic to 2,872. Deaths from the current wave likely won’t begin mounting until later this month or September.To date, the Oregon Health Authority and Gov. Kate Brown have taken little statewide action to combat the virus’ summer resurgence other than reiterating guidance from the Centers for Disease Control that even fully vaccinated people should wear a mask in public indoor settings in areas of “substantial or high transmission.”Thirty-five of Oregon’s 36 counties fall into that category, which is determined by test positivity rates or the number of cases per 100,000 residents. Instead of issuing new public restrictions, state officials are leaving that decision to individual counties. And while many counties have reiterated the same federal guidance in public communications, none have reimposed mask mandates or required vaccinations to dine indoors or use gyms, unlike jurisdictions in other states that are seeing a similar surge in cases. Some 69.1% of adult Oregonians have received at least one dose of vaccine, the most effective protection against the virus, with 64% having completed the series of one or two doses, according to the Oregon Health Authority. And while the state has established a goal of 80%, it is making very slow progress, administering only about 5,000 doses a day in the past week. Vaccination rates vary widely across the state. In large urban counties like Washington and Multnomah the rate exceeds 75% of adults having received at least one dose, while 12 rural counties remain below 50%. Only 14 of the state’s 36 counties exceed 60%.
The delta variant is breaking records and ‘clobbering’ Oregon – OPB – Younger people are getting sicker, faster, as doctors and nurses watch — One-hundred-thirty-three – that’s the number of Oregonians in hospital intensive care units battling COVID-19, according to official numbers out this week. That’s the highest it’s been in the last eight months, and just 10 people fewer than the highest number of ICU patients all pandemic, set when COVID-19 peaked in December. In Southern Oregon, the records set over the winter are being broken this summer Dr. Renee Edwards, the chief medical officer at OHSU Health, said that in large measure the people she’s seeing in the hospital are unvaccinated. Many are sick with the more contagious delta variant. The delta variant has been blamed for a recent surge in COVID-19 cases across the country, with many states posting record-high case counts. While vaccines protect people from catching COVID-19 and getting seriously ill, the delta variant has undone all the progress vaccines made at slowing transmission of the virus. And the patients falling ill with the delta variant are younger than in past waves. They seem to get sicker, faster, and appear more likely to get seriously ill. It’s no longer a disease that just hospitalizes the old. “Patients who are presenting with this delta variant who are being hospitalized do tend to be sicker and more likely to require ICU level care,” Edwards said. Since the pandemic started, doctors treating COVID-19 have learned how to treat patients and how to keep them out of the ICU. That means that once patients are admitted to an ICU, they are extremely sick. “PTSD is common in this patient population because they’re drowning in the air,” said Dr. Sabra Bederka, an ICU nurse at Providence in Portland. “They literally cannot get air into their lungs, no matter how hard they try, no matter how hard we try. And they’re terrified. It’s a panic situation.” Then it’s on nurses to calm the panicking patients down and reassure them. “It’s terrifying for us because we’re in the middle of it,” #160;
New US COVID Cases Cross 100K Mark For Second Day In A Row; Highest Daily Death Toll In 2 Months – New coronavirus infections in the United States crossed the 100,000 mark for the second consecutive day, and the highest daily death toll in more than two months was reported in the country on Tuesday. The worrisome COVID data coincided with President Joe Biden’s stark reminder that the states with the lowest vaccination rates are seeing 10 to 20 times as many new cases per 100,000 people. “It’s moving like wildfire through the unvaccinated community. And it’s heartbreaking, particularly because it’s preventable,” he said while delivering remarks on his Administration’s progress toward fighting the pandemic. With 106557 additional cases reporting, the national total has increased to 35,238,173, as per the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. From an average of 20000-plus cases reported on July 3, the seven day average has more than quadrupled to 92005 on Tuesday, according to data analyzed by the New York Times. This is the highest weekly average recorded since February 13, and marks a 139 percent increase in two weeks. 617 additional casualties recorded on Tuesday took the national COVID death toll to 614,295. This is the worst daily death toll recorded since May 28. And seven-day average of daily deaths has also increased to 414 per day.
Milwaukee Bucks’ championship games may be linked to a steep rise in cases, officials say. -When the Milwaukee Bucks defeated the Phoenix Suns in Game 6 of the N.B.A. finals last month, thousands of fans watching the victory in person in the arena yelled and cheered.Tens of thousands more fans gathered to watch the game on giant, open-air screens erected outside the arena in the area known as the Deer District. Afterward, there was a huge parade.Now, those gatherings are raising concerns among Wisconsin health officials. Milwaukee County has seen a steep rise in cases since the Bucks won, and health officials say they believe the game and surrounding events may have contributed to the increase.Among people who tested positive for Covid-19 in Wisconsin, 491 said they had been in the Deer District in the two weeks before their positive test result, Elizabeth Goodsitt, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services said in a statement on Wednesday.Around 52 percent of people in Wisconsin are fully vaccinated, according to a New York Times database.The combination of unvaccinated people in the state, the presence of the highly contagious Delta variant and crowded Bucks events where less than half the attendees wore masks, could lead to a further rise in cases, Julie Willems Van Dijk, deputy secretary of the state health department, told reporters on Wednesday.In the county of Milwaukee, the seven-day average of new cases rose to 315 on Tuesday, up from 67 on the day of the championship game, July 20, according to the Times database.Statewide, the one-week average of new Covid-19 cases each day in Wisconsin has shot up in the last two weeks, to 962 on Tuesday, from 223 on July 20, according to the database. The victory parade took place on July 22.
Breakthrough COVID cases, while rare, frustrate vaccinated Marylanders – – They followed all the guidance, took every precaution, but got COVID-19 anyway.Christina Van Norman and David Coe had resumed small gatherings – finally – of their fully vaccinated friends in their home in Montgomery County, where coronavirus transmissions were relatively low. The day after the last event, she felt run-down. Two days later she had a fever and body aches, and a rapid test confirmed that the infection wasn’t a seasonal cold but the coronavirus. Her husband soon tested positive and they alerted their guests.“We thought we were vaccinated and safe, and that’s the scary part,” Van Norman said. “I’m not dying, but I’m pretty darn sick and absolutely spreading it to others.” Ultimately 14 of 17 vaccinated people tested positive after the gathering – results that are becoming more common in Maryland and across the country as more people emerge from COVID lockdowns and mask mandates and run headlong into the more contagious and fast-spreading delta variant. Cases are again on the rise. Still, the overarching message from public health officials is that vaccines are working and are the best line of defense against serious illness. Official reports of so-called breakthrough cases, fully vaccinated people becoming infected, remain low in Maryland and around the country.
Nearly 8,000 Breakthrough COVID Cases Reported in Mass.; 100 Have Now Died – Nearly 8,000 fully vaccinated Massachusetts residents have now tested positive for COVID-19 and 100 of them have died, according to state data on breakthrough cases published Tuesday.The Department of Public Health tracked a cumulative 7,737 confirmed COVID-19 infections among those fully vaccinated in the state as of July 31, representing 0.18% of the immunized population.The 100 deaths out of nearly 4.3 million vaccinated residents represents a rate of just 0.002%.Saturday’s cumulative count reflects an increase of 1,364 breakthrough cases over July 24. That accounts for a bit more than 30% of all new coronavirus cases confirmed in the state during that one-week span. Since the first residents became fully vaccinated in January, DPH has counted 395 immunized residents hospitalized with COVID-19 cases and 100 who died from the virus. Those numbers include 34 new breakthrough hospitalizations and nine additional deaths among those fully vaccinated tracked in the past week. Doron says while breakthrough cases are concerning, they’re not as concerning as the need for vaccinations worldwide.”We do need to put some of these numbers in a more realistic context just so people – you know, so people don’t panic, so people make the right decisions based on the actual risk,” “Before delta, we had hoped that we had seen kind of the worst of what the virus could do in terms of mutation,” Doron said. Now, with the “delta plus” variant detected in smaller numbers, she says looking at this pandemic globally is more important than ever. “When we allow it to rage uncontrolled in other parts of the world and don’t get vaccine to them, the virus will keep mutating,” she said.
Breakthrough COVID cases on the rise in Arizona – The number of breakthrough COVID-19 cases in Arizona is increasing as a percentage of the overall new cases.According to the Arizona Department of Health Services, 11% of the new COVID cases in July were breakthrough cases.A breakthrough case is where a person who is fully vaccinated still comes down with the disease.In May, 5% of the cases were breakthrough and in June it was 8%.The state health department says the efficacy of Pfizer and Moderna is about 90%, so the numbers are not unexpected even though the percentage of cases is rising.The department also points out a breakthrough case is much less serious than it is for people who are unvaccinated who still make up a preponderance of the cases.The concern in Pima County is the number of cases is rising overall and not just among breakthroughs.According to the state dashboard, there were 280 cases reported yesterday making it the highest number since February 9, 2021. Some of that can be attributed to the reopening of in person learning in Tucson’s schools.According to the county’s new data dashboard of not just school districts but individual schools. it shows the Vail Unified School District has nearly 70 active cases among students and staff. The Marana Unified School District has 53 active cases..The county health department has reported there are now 212 active school COVID-19 cases in less than two weeks and the largest school districts have just opened their doors..With all school districts now open in Pima County, the health department sent a letter to remind districts that it’s a violation of state statutes to not report individual cases and outbreaks. Anyone not doing so could be charged with a class three misdemeanor.
19% of California COVID cases are breakthroughs – About 19% of recent documented COVID-19 cases in California are breakthroughs, and state data shows that those who have been fully vaccinated account for an increasing portion of positive tests. The number, which contradicts a repeated public portrayal that breakthrough cases are negligible, can be easily misinterpreted. To be clear, this is not an indication of some sort of vaccine failure. Quite the contrary. Breakthrough cases were expected. State data still suggests that unvaccinated people are nearly five times as likely to be infected as those who are inoculated. And almost all the hospitalizations and deaths are among unvaccinated people. Vaccines remain the most important tool for fighting the pandemic. Rather, the rising proportion of breakthrough cases suggests that even people who have been vaccinated are potentially significant spreaders of coronavirus, especially the delta variant. It reinforces why vaccinated people should also wear masks in public settings. Breakthrough case rates are a sensitive topic, one that some health officials are trying to avoid and which has sparked a lot of handwringing in the media about how to report it. The fear is that misinterpretation of the numbers will dissuade people from getting vaccinated. But, without the data, the important push for everyone to wear masks is weakened. Although vaccinated people are well-protected against serious illness, they can, if infected and even if they’re not showing symptoms, spread the virus to others. Indeed, people with breakthrough infections of the delta variant might be just as contagious as unvaccinated people, although the science continues evolving on that point. The call for vaccinated people to don masks is not just for their own protection. “It’s not about you, it’s about everybody,” says Contra Costa County Health Officer Chris Farnitano. “It’s about keeping the cases down.” But, to make that point, it’s critical to have the supporting data. Unfortunately, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped tracking breakthrough cases on May 1, focusing only on patients who are hospitalized or die. The thinking was apparently that the risk of transmission from breakthrough cases was negligible. We now know, with the delta variant, that’s no longer the case.
Lessons from Oregon’s July COVID-19 breakthrough report – OPB – One out of every five COVID-19 infections reported in Oregon in July were breakthrough cases; those which were were diagnosed in people who are fully vaccinated, according to the Oregon Health Authority. It’s a discouraging number, but there’s a silver lining: vaccinated people made up just one out of ten COVID-19 deaths. The breakthrough cases that ended in death were almost exclusively in the elderly. COVID-19 cases are surging in Oregon and across the country, fueled by the more contagious, more severe delta variant. Oregon hospitals are quickly reaching capacity, and many counties are seeing more hospitalizations than they were in December before vaccinations were available. The delta variant appears to be two to three times more infectious than other COVID-19 variants. As Dr. Melissa Sutton, the medical director for respiratory viral pathogens at the Oregon Health Authority, put it during a press conference Friday, “for unvaccinated individuals, the risk of COVID-19 has never been greater.”With state and local officials reluctant to pass any new mandates, Oregonians are left trying to make decisions for themselves about the sort of risks they are willing to take. But there are some lessons we can learn from Oregon’s COVID-19 data, about vaccines, masks, and the steps we can take to stay safe. It can be hard to tease lessons out of data like this. It’s collected in the real world, and the data is only as good as the system that collects it.During Friday’s press conference, Sutton said that Oregon’s data does come with caveats. Not all cases are reported, and since breakthrough cases are more likely to be mild, they’re also less likely to be reported.What does that mean? It means that there are probably more breakthrough cases – and more cases, period – of COVID-19 than have been reported. But it also means that the percent of breakthrough cases that result in death is not as high as it appears.
Israel’s public health chief says evidence points to waning COVID vaccine immunity – – Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, Israel’s director of public health services, said Sunday that evidence points to the waning immunity in the COVID-19 vaccine, saying her two biggest concerns with the delta variant relate to its level of infectiousness and the rising rate of vaccinated individuals testing positive.”It’s 50 percent more infectious than the previous variant, which was 50 percent more infectious than the original one,” Alroy-Preis told CBS’ Face the Nation, noting that a third of Israel’s population has not been covered, particularly Israel’s large population of non-vaccinated children.She added that 50 percent of the current infections are vaccinated individuals. “Previously we thought that fully vaccinated individuals are protected, but we now see that vaccine effectiveness is roughly 40 percent.” She noted that while effectiveness remains high for severe disease, Israel is seeing diminished protection, particularly for those who have been vaccinated longer. She said the debate between whether the infections are related to the timing of the vaccine versus whether the vaccine provides robust protection is “the million-dollar question,” though evidence over the past several weeks shows there is, in fact, waning immunity.
Israel’s Director of Public Health Stuns TV Viewers with Statement that 50 Percent of New COVID Cases Are Among Fully Vaccinated – As of its most recent July 27 update on COVID vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States carries this statement:“Infections happen in only a small proportion of people who are fully vaccinated, even with the Delta variant.”That statement stands in stark contrast to what the Director of Public Health Services in Israel told television viewers of the CBS program, Face the Nation, on Sunday, reporting that 50 percent of new infections in Israel are from fully vaccinated people. The Pfizer – BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was the exclusive vaccine used to inoculate the broad population of Israel. It was also one of the two most highly-administered vaccines in the United States, with Moderna’s mRNA vaccine being the other. As of July 12, only 12.8 million people in the U.S. had been vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine versus 146 million people in the U.S. that were fully vaccinated with either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, both of which require two doses.Israel has been closely tracking the effectiveness of the vaccine over time and publishing its studies. These reports have critical implications for health policy in the U.S. – particularly when it comes to the need to protect oneself against waning immunity by wearing a proper mask.On Sunday, Face the Nation included interviews with both Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) who is also the Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden, as well as Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, the Director of Public Health Services in Israel.Even though the COVID-19 vaccines were administered at roughly the same time in both countries (beginning in December of 2020 and expanded in January of 2021 and thereafter) Fauci parroted the view of the CDC, which differs dramatically from the facts on the ground in Israel.When Face the Nation host, John Dickerson, asked Alroy-Preis about her biggest concern from the “uptick in cases because of the Delta variant,” she said this:“…we are seeing about 50 percent of the people who are infected right now are vaccinated, fully vaccinated individuals. And so that is obviously of concern.”If half the people becoming infected in Israel are fully vaccinated individuals, it stands to reason that the U.S. should be seeing a similar outcome in more heavily populated areas of the U.S. In fact, according to the CDC’s own data, in an outbreak in July in Barnstable County, Massachusetts (Cape Cod) 469 cases were detected among Massachusetts residents, with 74 percent of those fully vaccinated.
World marks 200 million cases of coronavirus pandemic The world this week marked the 200 millionth confirmed case of the coronavirus pandemic, the latest in a series of grim milestones amid a pandemic that has been plaguing humanity for the past 20 months. Alongside that sobering figure, the virus has prematurely taken more than 4.26 million human lives from their coworkers, friends and families. This week is also the sixth week in a row that daily new cases have increased and the fourth week in a row that daily deaths have risen. As of August 3, there was an average of more than 605,000 new known cases each day, and more than 9,300 fatalities. An ominous warning was given by Dr. Catherine O’Neal, Chief Medical Officer at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, “that these are the DARKEST DAYS of this pandemic.” The three most hard-hit countries are the United States, with 36.1 million cases and 631,000 deaths, India, with 31.8 million cases and 426,000 deaths, and Brazil, with 19.9 million cases and 559,000 deaths, totaling more than 44 percent of the world’s cases and nearly 38 percent of official deaths. Overall, there are 19 countries with more than two million confirmed cases and 12 with more than four million. Twelve countries have also reported at least 100,000 deaths, the aforementioned three and Mexico, Peru, Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Colombia, France, Argentina and Indonesia. The scale of the pandemic across continents is equally revealing. Asia and the Pacific have suffered more than 63 million cases, followed by 52 million in Europe, 43 million in North America, 35 million in South America and nearly 7 million in Africa. In percentage terms, 8.2 out of 100 people in South America have been infected, 7.2 out of 100 in North America, 6.9 out of 100 in Europe, 1.3 out of 100 in Asia, and 0.5 out of 100 in Africa. And in reality, the figures are far worse when unreported cases and deaths are taken into account. An estimate by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) calculates that, based on excess death counts internationally, nearly 9.2 million men, women and children have lost their lives to the pandemic. A similar count by the Economist found that there are between 8 – 16 million dead. Given that the average infection fatality rate of the coronavirus is about 0.5 percent, these calculations indicate that the real number of cases stands at about 2 billion, ten times official figures. That such mass death and colossal social misery has occurred is a damning indictment of the world’s capitalist governments and the socioeconomic system which they defend. The world’s ruling elites have had ample opportunities to stem the tide, including the chance to stop the spread before it fully took hold around the globe in January and February 2020, to allow the global lockdowns in March and April of last year, which had begun to lower infection rates, to continue, and to the widespread deployment of highly effective vaccines, begun in January 2021.
Where a Vast Global Vaccination Program Went Wrong NYT –Deaths from Covid-19 were surging across Africa in June when 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in Chad. The delivery seemed proof that the United Nations-backed program to immunize the world could get the most desirable vaccines to the least developed nations. Yet five weeks later, Chad’s health minister said, 94,000 doses remained unused.Nearby in Benin, only 267 shots were being given each day, a pace so slow that 110,000 of the program’s AstraZeneca doses expired. Across Africa, confidential documents from July indicated, the program was monitoring at least nine countries where it said doses intended for the poor were at risk of spoiling this summer.The vaccine pileup illustrates one of the most serious but largely unrecognized problems facing the immunization program as it tries to recover from months of missteps and disappointments: difficulty getting doses from airport tarmacs into people’s arms.Known as Covax, the program was supposed to be a global powerhouse, a multibillion-dollar alliance of international health bodies and nonprofits that would ensure through sheer buying power that poor countries received vaccines as quickly as the rich.Instead, Covax has struggled to acquire doses: It stands half a billion short of its goal. Poor countries are dangerously unprotected as the Delta variant runs rampant, just the scenario that Covax was created to prevent.The urgent need to vaccinate the world goes far beyond protecting people in poor nations. The longer the virus circulates, the more dangerous it can become, even for vaccinated people in wealthy countries.The program has struggled with delays and infighting. According to interviews and records from Covax, bureaucratic barriers imposed by its leadership have held up the disbursement of $220 million to help countries administer vaccines.Driven by a nonprofit funded by the Gates Foundation, Covax is a creation without precedent. It has gotten vaccines to poorer countries faster than was previously typical and developed a system to compensate people for serious post-vaccine reactions and protect vaccine makers from legal liability – a plan that saved those countries months of negotiations. Still, the 163 million doses it has delivered – most free to poorer nations, with the rest to countries like Canada that paid their way – are a far cry from plans to have at least 640 million doses available by now.
Biotechnology Greed Is Prolonging the Pandemic. It’s Inexcusable. — Greed just saved the day? That’s what British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed recently. “The reason we have the vaccine success,” he said in a private call to Conservative members of Parliament, “is because of capitalism, because of greed.“Despite later backpedaling, Johnson’s remark reflects a widely influential but wildly incoherent view of innovation: that greed – the unfettered pursuit of profit above all else – is a necessary driver of technological progress. Call it the need-greed theory.Among the pandemic’s many lessons, however, is that greed can easily work against the common good. We rightly celebrate the near-miraculous development of effective vaccines, which have been widely deployed in rich nations. But the global picture reveals not even a semblance of justice: As of May, low-income nations received just 0.3 percent of the global vaccine supply. At this rate it would take 57 years for them to achieve full vaccination. This disparity has been dubbed “vaccine apartheid,” and it’s exacerbated by greed. A year after the launch of the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool – a program aimed at encouraging the collaborative exchange of intellectual property, knowledge, and data – “not a single company has donated its technical knowhow,” wrote politicians from India, Kenya, and Bolivia in a June essay for The Guardian. As of that month, the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative, a vaccine sharing scheme established to provide developing countries equitable access, had delivered only about 90 million out of a promised 2 billion doses. Currently, pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, and conservative lawmakers continue to oppose proposals for patent waivers that would allow local drug makers to manufacture the vaccines without legal jeopardy. They claim the waivers would slow down existing production, “foster the proliferation of counterfeit vaccines,” and, as North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr said, “undermine the very innovation we are relying on to bring this pandemic to an end.” All these views echo the idea that patents and high drug prices are necessary motivators for biomedical innovation. But examine that logic closely, and it quickly begins to fall apart.
Germany to Offer Covid Shots to Youngsters as Vaccinations Slow – Germany is poised to widen Covid-19 vaccinations to include all 12-17 year-olds, stepping up efforts to spur its flagging inoculation drive. The move set to be agreed Monday goes beyond advice published by the government’s independent vaccine commission. The authority, known as STIKO, recommends inoculating those in that age group who have pre-existing conditions that put them at heightened risk from the coronavirus, or those who are in regular contact with people who are in particular danger.“In other countries this is already happening and we think it’s important not to lose any time,” Bavaria Health Minister Klaus Holetschek said Monday in an interview with ARD television.“If anyone is unsure, they should consult their doctor,” he added ahead of talks with regional counterparts and Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn. “The key thing is that we’re making an offer of vaccines to a group that is not yet protected.”The European Medicines Agency, which monitors and supervises the safety of medicines in the European Union, has recommended giving either the Pfizer Inc./BioNTech SE or the Moderna Inc.Covid-19 shots to 12-17 year-olds.Germany’s STIKO has been more cautious, arguing that safety studies of the vaccine for young people aren’t yet extensive enough to allow a recommendation for general use, given that most Covid cases in teens are mild.As of Friday, 52% of the German population were fully vaccinated against Covid-19, and just under 62% had received at least one shot, according to the latest health ministry data. The inoculation campaign has lost steam in recent weeks. In May and June, Germany was regularly vaccinating more than 1 million people per day, but the total has fallen back significantly since the start of July.
UAE Approves Sinopharm Shot for Children Aged Three and Over The United Arab Emirates has approved the emergency use of Sinopharm’s coronavirus vaccine for children, joining China in authorizing shots for those as young as three.The decision to approve the vaccine for children aged three to 17 was based on the results of clinical studies and local evaluation, state-run WAM news agency said on Monday.Few countries have so far approved vaccines for children as young as three. The UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Hong Kong and some U.S. states have authorized shots for those aged 12 and above.The Middle-Eastern nation has rolled out one of the fastest vaccination programs around the world, with 16.8 million shots administered in a population of 10 million.The UAE has so far approved vaccines from Moderna Inc., Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc. The inoculation program, though, has hinged on Sinopharm, which is being produced locally.
Endangered Sumatran tigers recovering from COVID in Jakarta zoo – In Indonesia, two male Sumatran tigers are recovering from coronavirus after testing positive in mid-July, with officials trying to determine how they were infected.Jakarta city officials say two critically endangered male Sumatran tigers at a zoo in Indonesia’s capital tested positive for coronavirus but are expected to recover.Nine-year-old Tino and 12-year-old Hari were receiving medication and remained under close observation by veterinarians at Ragunan Zoo, the head of Jakarta Parks and Urban Forest Agency, Suzi Marsitawati, said on Sunday. Tino began to show symptoms including sneezing, breathing difficulties and a decrease in appetite on July 9. Two days later, Hari started exhibiting the same. Marsitawati said samples taken from the animals on July 14 tested positive for the virus.The two critically endangered big cats are believed to be Indonesia’s first known cases of animals contracting COVID-19.“The two tigers had received medication, including antibiotics, and multivitamins, since they began showing symptoms. After 12 days of medications, their conditions began to improve and they are expected to recover,” Marsitawati said.“Their appetites have returned and they are back to being active.”She added in a statement that the zoo is still trying to trace how the tigers were exposed, since the facility was closed under Jakarta’s pandemic-related restrictions when the cats started showing symptoms.“We have traced all caretakers and zoo staff on duty when the tigers began to get sick, but so far none of them were exposed to COVID-19,” Marsitawati said. The Sumatran tiger is Indonesia’s only remaining tiger subspecies, and only 600 remain. The other two subspecies – the Javan tiger and the Bali tiger – are extinct.
Virus Flares in Wuhan as Delta Challenges China’s Defenses – China is confronting its broadest Covid-19 outbreak since coronavirus first emerged there in late 2019, with the delta variant spreading to places that had been virus-free for months, including the original epicenter of Wuhan. Delta has broken through the country’s virus defenses, which are some of the strictest in the world, and reached nearly half of China’s 32 provinces in just two weeks. While the overall number of infections — more than 300 so far — is still lower than Covid resurgences elsewhere, the wide spread indicates that the variant is moving quickly.he virus was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, the central Chinese city that saw the world’s first lethal outbreak. The country’s strict anti-virus measures, which include mass testing as soon as a case appears, aggressive contact tracing, widespread use of quarantines and targeted lockdowns, have crushed more than 30 previous flareups over the past year.The arrival of the more infectious delta variant, however, is testing even that approach. The new strain may be exploiting an easing off in masking and social distancing in some places, since much of the country has been Covid-free for months. That, along with increased travel for summer vacation, created a viable environment for delta to gain a foothold.China reported 99 infections on Monday, including 44 who tested positive but have no symptoms. By number of cases, it’s the biggest outbreak since a flareup in Hebei province in northern China in January, when 2,000 people were infected.
Wuhan ordered its entire population of 11 million to get tested for COVID-19 after it found 3 local cases –The Chinese city of Wuhan has ordered its entire population of 11 million people to take coronavirus tests after finding three locally-transmitted cases of the Delta variant, Reuters and the Associated Press reported.”To ensure that everyone in the city is safe, city-wide nucleic acid testing will be quickly launched for all people to fully screen out positive results and asymptomatic infections,” Li Qiang, a Wuhan city official, said Tuesday, according to Reuters.The three cases recorded on Monday were the first ones that did not come from an outside traveler, Reuters reported. Wuhan, the first epicenter of the global COVID-19 outbreak, had not reported any locally transmitted cases since May 2020.China reported 90 new cases in total on Monday, the BBC reported. It is unclear how many of those were in Wuhan, aside from the three Delta variant cases. According to the BBC, this is China’s biggest COVID-19 outbreak in months. It has seen around 300 cases in 10 days, prompting some regions to introduce mass testing and new restrictions.
The W.H.O. urges wealthy countries to halt booster shots and send more doses to poorer nations. -The World Health Organization urged wealthy nations not to distribute booster shots until at least the end of September to reserve supplies and help every country inoculate at least 10 percent of its population.CreditCredit…Christopher Black/Who, via ReutersThe World Health Organization called on Wednesday for a moratorium on coronavirus vaccine booster shots until the end of September, so that vaccine supplies can be focused on helping all countries vaccinate at least 10 percent of their populations. The agency made its appeal to the world’s wealthiest nations to address the wide disparities in vaccination rates around the world.“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the W.H.O., said in a briefing. “But we cannot – and we should not – accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected.”With the debate over booster shots heating up, the call highlighted a moral and scientific case long pressed by humanitarian groups: With the staggering gaps in vaccination rates around the world and cases surging as the Delta variant spreads, vaccine doses should be given first to vulnerable people in poorer nations. Fully vaccinated people are protected against the worst outcomes of Covid-19 caused by the Delta variant.W.H.O. officials went to pains to distinguish between booster shots used to shore up immunity in vaccinated populations, for which the science is not yet clear, and additional doses that may be needed by the immunocompromised to develop immunity in the first place. Officials said they objected to boosters, not to additional doses for some subgroups.Of more than four billion vaccine doses in total that have been administered around the world, more than 80 percent have been used in high- and upper-middle-income countries, which account for less than half of the world’s population, Dr. Tedros said.
Japan Reports Record Number of Coronavirus Cases as Virus Pulls More Athletes From Olympics – 27 new cases of the virus, including among three athletes. One athlete was identified as a member of Team USA. Additional cases were among Tokyo 2020 contractors, volunteers, members of the media and Games-concerned personnel.Friday’s cases brings the total number of Olympic-related COVID-19 cases up to 220, including 23 athletes.Tokyo reported a total of 3,300 new cases of the virus on Friday, with health officials stating that the “infection is spreading” and warning that Japan’s health care system “is under strain.” According to data from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, 3,135 people are hospitalized with COVID-19.Across the country, Japan reported more than 10,000 new cases on Friday, the most cases ever reported in Japan during the pandemic.Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that states of emergency would be extended until after the conclusion of the Olympic Games, lifting on Aug. 22 in Tokyo and Okinawa.
Japan tries a new tactic as virus surges: public shaming – As Japan strains to control its galloping coronavirus outbreak, and to keep an Olympic bubble from bursting in the final days of the Games, the government is trying a new tactic: public shaming.On Monday, Japan’s health ministry released the names of three people who broke COVID-19 rules after returning from overseas. An official statement said that the three people – two Japanese nationals in their 20s who returned from South Korea, and a third who returned from Hawaii – had clearly acted to avoid contact with the authorities.All tested negative for the virus at the airport but subsequently failed to report their health condition and did not respond to location-monitoring apps or video calls from health authorities, as required under Japan’s COVID-19 protocols. The Japanese government had said in May that about 100 people a day were flouting the border control rules and signaled that it would soon begin to disclose the names of violators.Japanese authorities are struggling to adapt their COVID-19 response as caseloads surge to their highest levels of the pandemic and vaccinations continue to lag behind other wealthy nations – and as many members of the Japanese public appear to have tired of the on-and-off emergency measures the government has imposed in Tokyo and other cities since early 2020.
Iran Records Highest Number of Daily COVID Cases in Pandemic (AP) – Iran on Monday reported more than 37,000 new coronavirus infections, the country’s single-day record so far in the pandemic, state media reported. State TV said health workers registered 37,189 new COVID-19 cases since Sunday – surpassing the previous daily record of 34,951 infections reported on Tuesday. Also, there were 411 deaths, bringing the country’s total death toll in the pandemic to 91,407 – the highest in the Middle East.The new surge has been fueled by the contagious delta variant, and Iranian authorities say less than 40% of the population follows measures such as wearing face masks and social distancing. Iranian health officials have regularly warned that hospitals in the capital, Tehran, and other major cities are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.Also on Monday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the government to discuss the possibility of a two-week shutdown of the country, which Health Minister Saeed Namaki requested a day earlier. Namaki in a letter to Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, suggested the military could help enforce a lockdown.
Turkey Covid Cases: Turkey’s coronavirus cases jump to nearly 25,000, highest since early May –The number of new cases in jumped to nearly 25,000 on Tuesday, government data showed, the highest level in almost three months, and the coronavirus Turkey minister urged Turks to get vaccinated against the virus. The number of deaths from also rose to 126, the most fatalities since June 1, as the country battles another wave of the virus which has spread since authorities relaxed pandemic-related restrictions. The number of new cases hit 24,832 on Tuesday, up from 22,898 the day before. “If we follow the rules of combating the epidemic and get our vaccinations, we will take action to end the epidemic,” health minister said in a tweet accompanying the daily data. Two-thirds of Turkish adults have received at least one Covid- 19 vaccine, while slighly less than half have received two or more doses. Covid-19 Fahre
Wuhan lab’s virologist warns more COVID mutations coming – China’s now-notorious “bat woman” – the head of the Wuhan lab accused of being a possible source for the pandemic – has warned that deadly new mutations of COVID-19 will continue to emerge. Virologist Shi Zhengli gave the dire proclamation to state-run media this week as she joined calls for people to get vaccinated, according to the South Morning China Post (SCMP).“As the number of infected cases has just become too big, this allowed the novel coronavirus more opportunities to mutate and select,” Shi told Health Times under the state-run People’s Daily, SCMP said.“New variants will continue to emerge,” Shi warned.The contagion has already repeatedly mutated since first emerging in late 2019 in Wuhan, the city where Shi’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) carried out pioneering research on almost identical viruses.The current most dominant strain, the Delta one first identified in India, is also the most infectious and most dangerous, health officials have warned.Researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) even said in a leaked report that the variant was so different than the initial strain that it was time to “acknowledge that the war has changed,” leading to new advisories on mask-wearing even for the vaccinated.
China pledges to supply 2 billion global vaccines by end of the year -China’s president on Thursday said his country would provide two billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccines to other nations through this year, as China continues its muscular vaccine diplomacy effort.In a written statement to a Chinese government-chaired international vaccine cooperation forum, President Xi Jinping said that China would also donate $100 million to COVAX, which is a global program backed by the World Health Organization that provides vaccines to lower income countries, The New York Times reported.The Times reported that it was unclear whether the two billion doses would be donated by the country or sold.China has provided far more vaccine doses to other countries than the United States. The donations are seen as a form of soft diplomacy that can lead to alliances on foreign policy and business issues around the world. China has already delivered about 770 million doses, said Wang Xiaolong, director general of the Foreign Ministry’s Department of International Economic Affairs, the Associated Press reported.The White House reported earlier this week that 110 million doses had already been donated by the U.S., the AP noted.The announcement comes as countries are still struggling to contain the delta variant and others as portions of the country await COVID-19 doses and see high numbers of new cases. Even the United States has seen a surge of new cases amid the spread of the delta variant, worrying officials who hoped that the new variants and new cases would be contained following the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines earlier this year.Those worries have prompted U.S. officials to start readying plans for a national COVID-19 booster strategy that is expected to be ready by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by early September.The World Health Organization has pushed back on booster shots, saying wealthy countries should ensure people in poorer countries are vaccinated first.
Thousands storm Philippine vaccination sites after false reports -Thousands of people flooded Philippine COVID-19 vaccination centers on Friday following false reports that unvaccinated residents would not be able to receive monetary aid or would be restricted to their homes during a two-week-long lockdown. According to The Associated Press, local officials placed the Philippine capital of Manila on lockdown until Aug. 20 in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus as the city sees spikes in infections. Three other regions were placed under lockdown restrictions until Aug. 15. Local residents began to show up to vaccination centers in droves just a day before lockdown after misinformation was spread claiming that they could miss out on up to $20 in aid or be restricted to their homes if they did not get inoculated, the AP reported. Crowds of people faced lines spanning several blocks and traffic as they flocked to vaccination centers in Manila, Las Pinas and Antipolo. Many also showed up without registering for the shot prior, the AP noted. Nearly 22,000 people reportedly lined up at vaccination centers in Manila before dawn and some groups resorted to “rowdily removing barricades,” resulting in police being called to halt vaccinations and asking people to return home. “We cannot allow our national immunization program to become superspreader events, especially given the threat posed by the delta variant,” the Philippine Department of Health said of the disorder, according to the AP. Officials reportedly urged residents to be wary of misinformation and told them to adhere to announcements made by government sources, noting that unvaccinated residents would be allowed to leave their homes in the event of a medical emergency or if they needed to purchase essential items. The Philippine government rolled out a vaccination campaign in March and has since fully vaccinated nearly 10.2 million Filipinos, the AP reported.
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