More vaccine doses on the way as pandemic passes the one-year mark
The USA has lost nearly 530,000 people and tallied three times more COVID-19 cases than any other nation in the world.
Thursday marks the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Around that time, health officials in Seattle, San Jose, San Francisco and New York were identifying cases in people who had not traveled, meaning that the novel coronavirus was spreading within the United States.
Months later, we would learn that the outbreak that was rampant on a cruise ship off the Pacific Coast had its origin in a Northern California community, not from a traveler from some faraway place.
Perhaps an even more important difference between what we thought a year ago and what we learned months later is that COVID-19 spreads through the air more than on surfaces. That explains some of the dramatic outbreaks that puzzled investigators who thought SARS-CoV-2 was more like known coronaviruses.
If only more Americans — and American leaders — had acted on what the science told us. If only more Americans — and American leaders — act on the science now…
Here are today’s top stories:
Don’t focus too much on “herd immunity" - Both NIAID Director Dr. Tony Fauci and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky say that herd immunity is important to stop the pandemic but people will see major improvements in COVID-19 risk well before then.
Fauci says herd immunity likely requires 75% or more of the US population to be vaccinated, which may be possible by early Fall, but rates short of herd immunity will still have a “very favorable effect.”
Walensky says localized outbreaks will continue to occur in communities with lower vaccination rates, even if the nationwide average is high.
The White House announced plans to purchase an additional 100 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer and Moderna are supplying 20 million new doses each week now, says White House COVID-19 advisor Andy Slavitt.
The federal government is setting up dozens of mass vaccination sites aimed at helping get more vaccinations to people from underserved and hard-hit communities. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the results vary widely — and only 4% of shots given at the Oakland mass vaccination site have gone to Black individuals.
A New York Times reporter who tagged along with community volunteers was surprised at how many people had been influenced by social media disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. However, when volunteers gave their own stories, people engaged.Lessons on how to increase vaccine participation.
White House advisor Andy Slavitt says the key to improving vaccine rates is to “make sure that local trusted people” have information on the track record of the COVID-19 vaccines, which he says is “so good.”
Conservative activist organization Judicial Watch is suing the Department of Health and Human Services to obtain communications between the department, including the CDC, and officials at Google, Facebook and other technology companies. The organization asserts that federal officials were involved in the “outrageous censorship of Americans, including doctors, who raise questions about the COVID-19 response.”
Health care workers had high rates of anxiety, depression, PTSD and other issues in 2020, according to a new study.