San Juan County, Colorado, can boast that 99.9% of its eligible population has received at least one dose of covid-19 vaccine, putting it in the top 10 counties in the nation, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If vaccines were the singular armor against covid’s spread, then on paper, San Juan County, with its 730 or so residents on file, would be one of the most bulletproof places in the nation.
Yet the past few months have shown the complexity of this phase of the pandemic. Even in an extremely vaccinated place, the shots alone aren’t enough because geographic boundaries are porous, vaccine effectiveness may be waning over time and the delta variant is highly contagious. Infectious-disease experts say masks are still necessary to control the spread of the virus.
Europe has pushed ahead of the U.S. in vaccinating its citizens and has experienced a summer of relatively subdued Covid-19 caseloads, hospitalizations and deaths, despite the spread of the Delta variant.
Deaths from Covid-19 in the European Union averaged around 525 over the seven days through Tuesday and around 140 in the U.K. In January, daily deaths peaked at 3,500 in the EU and around 1,200 in the U.K., according to national data compiled by the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data project.
Adjusted for population, EU deaths equate to around 1.2 per million a day, and U.K. deaths to 2.1 per million. That compares with 6.1 per million currently in the U.S.
The difference reflects wider vaccine coverage, especially of older and high-risk groups. The 27 countries of the EU have fully vaccinated 61% of the bloc’s 448 million population, compared with 55% in the U.S., according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its EU counterpart. Big EU nations picked up the vaccination pace after a slow start this year. France has fully vaccinated 67% of its population, Germany 63% and Italy 66%. The U.K., which left the EU in 2020, has fully vaccinated 66% of its residents.
Author(s): Jason Douglas in London, Erin Delmore in Berlin and Eric Sylvers in Milan
Will COVID-19 cases and deaths surge again this winter? The combined just-released results of 9 models applied to four different scenarios at COVID-19 Modeling Hub project that diagnosed cases could—using the projections of the more hopeful models—drop to around 9,000 cases per day by March. The scenarios range from the most hopeful, with childhood COVID-19 vaccinations and no new viral variant, to one with no child vaccinations and a new variant.
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University of North Carolina epidemiologist Justin Lessler, who helps run the hub, tells NPR that the most likely scenario is that children do get vaccinated and no super-spreading variant emerges.
The good news is that about 55 percent of all Americans (181 million) are now fully vaccinated (64 percent of those age 12 and up). Given that unreported COVID-19 cases are generally thought to be considerably higher than the 42 million diagnosed cases, that suggests perhaps around 100 million Americans have developed natural immunity to the virus.
As new data shows 1 in 500 Americans has died from COVID-19 and the delta variant continues to surge across the country, the next challenge many health care leaders face is within their own staffs: the 27% of of U.S. health care workers who have not been vaccinated against the disease as of July, according to a study by The COVID States Project.
On top of that, other research shows that since the vaccine first became available to health care workers in December 2020, the rate of vaccination among nurses and nursing home aides has been lower than that of physicians. This may be of particular concern because nurses and aides have such frequent and close contact with patients.
Data shows health care workers have gotten the COVID-19 vaccine at a higher rate than the general population: 73% versus 64% of non-health care workers. And many may assume that people who work in health care industry are more enthusiastic about the vaccine and less apprehensive.
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While a majority of nurses are vaccinated and more than half support vaccine mandates in the workplace, some are pushing back against requirements to get vaccinated or face mandatory testing and say they would rather leave their jobs. And hospitals are already feeling the effects.
Averaged weekly, age-standardized rates (events per 100,000 persons) were higher among persons not fully vaccinated than among fully vaccinated persons for reported cases (112.3 versus 10.1), hospitalizations (9.1 versus 0.7), and deaths (1.6 versus 0.1) during April 4–June 19, as well as during June 20–July 17 (89.1 versus 19.4; 7.0 versus 0.7; 1.1 versus 0.1, respectively). Higher hospitalization and death rates were observed in older age groups, regardless of vaccination status, resulting in a larger impact of age-standardization on overall incidence for these outcomes.
Within each age group, the percentage of vaccinated persons among cases, hospitalizations, and deaths increased with increasing vaccination coverage (Figure 1). As the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant surpassed 50%, the percentage of vaccinated persons among cases in each age group increased at rates corresponding to benchmarks for lower VE (i.e., from approximately 90% to <80%). Increases in the percentages of vaccinated persons aged ≥65 years among COVID-19–associated hospitalizations and deaths also appeared higher than expected. During June 20–July 17, age-standardized rates of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among persons not fully vaccinated increased weekly; among fully vaccinated persons, case rates increased, but rates of hospitalizations and deaths remained largely unchanged (Figure 2).
Author(s): Heather M. Scobie, PhD1; Amelia G. Johnson, DrPH1; Amitabh B. Suthar, PharmD2; Rachel Severson, MS3; Nisha B. Alden, MPH3; Sharon Balter, MD4; Daniel Bertolino, MPH5; David Blythe, MD6; Shane Brady, MPH7; Betsy Cadwell, MSPH1; Iris Cheng, MS5; Sherri Davidson, PhD8; Janelle Delgadillo9; Katelynn Devinney, MPH5; Jeff Duchin, MD10; Monique Duwell, MD6; Rebecca Fisher, MPH4; Aaron Fleischauer, PhD11; Ashley Grant, MPH12; Jennifer Griffin, PhD4; Meredith Haddix, MPH4; Julie Hand, MSPH12; Matt Hanson, MD10; Eric Hawkins, MS13; Rachel K. Herlihy, MD3; Liam Hicks, MPH7; Corinne Holtzman, MPH14; Mikhail Hoskins, MPH11; Judie Hyun, MHS6; Ramandeep Kaur, PhD8; Meagan Kay, DVM10; Holly Kidrowski, MPH14; Curi Kim, MSPH6; Kenneth Komatsu, MPH7; Kiersten Kugeler, PhD1; Melissa Lewis, MPH1; B. Casey Lyons, MPH2; Shelby Lyons, MPH12; Ruth Lynfield, MD14; Keegan McCaffrey7; Chelsea McMullen, MS15; Lauren Milroy, MPH13; Stephanie Meyer, MPH14; Leisha Nolen, MD9; Monita R. Patel, PhD1; Sargis Pogosjans, MPH10; Heather E. Reese, PhD1; Amy Saupe, MPH14; Jessica Sell, MPH5; Theresa Sokol, MPH12; Daniel Sosin, MD15; Emma Stanislawski, MPH15; Kelly Stevens, MS8; Hailey Vest, MPH13; Kelly White, MPH13; Erica Wilson, MD11; Adam MacNeil, PhD1; Matthew D. Ritchey2; Benjamin J. Silk, PhD1
Publication Date: 10 Sept 2021
Publication Site: CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
Here is a fairly clear picture from the CDC of the impact of vaccination on infections (cases), Hospitalizations and Deaths, through July. You can see here that infections are increasing for vaccinated people, hospitalizations and deaths are increasing also, but to a much lesser degree. In all cases, the fully vaccinated people are experiencing infections, hospitalizations, and deaths at a much lower level than the Not Fully Vaccinated people.
That is the message we keep hearing, but I find that this picture tells the story better than the words.
Covid-19 might become a routine illness like a common cold or the flu one day, virologists and epidemiologists say. But it will take a lot to get there, and the ferocious spread of the Delta variant that has filled hospitals again shows how challenging that path could be.
More than 20 months after the pandemic began, people around the world are having to change the way they think about a disease that many public-health authorities once believed they could conquer. A terrifying emergency has become a long, grinding haul.
The supercontagious Delta variant has made the virus virtually impossible to get rid of. It has fueled surges in cases across the globe, even in countries like Australia that had largely kept the pandemic out.
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For Covid-19 to become mild, most people will need some immunity, which studies have shown reduces the severity of the disease. Infections provide some immunity, but that comes with the risk of severe illness, death and further spread of the virus, compared with vaccines. People could become vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 if that immunity erodes or is weak, or if the virus mutates.
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A future Covid-19 could be less deadly than the flu, which kills up to a half-million people a year globally, because the most widely used Covid-19 vaccines are better than flu vaccines, said Dr. Garcia-Sastre, an influenza expert. The disease could still remain serious for people with weaker immune systems, doctors said.
Almost everyone I know in Britain has been surprised—for once, pleasantly so—by the success of the country’s vaccination program against Covid-19. We are so accustomed to the abject failure of our public administration in almost everything, from its political dithering, followed by self-evidently wrong (and costly) decisions, to its bureaucratic incompetence and moral corruption, that when something goes right, we stand amazed. What, indeed, can explain why something should at last have gone right?
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The government decided that everyone should be immunized according to risk—first the oldest people and health workers, then the slightly less old and those with compromised immunity, and then the still less old, and so forth, until all adults will have been covered. By spring, more than half the population had received a first (and most important) dose of a vaccine. Almost no opposition to, or even criticism of, this manner of proceeding has arisen— unlike with almost everything else the government has done in its response to the pandemic—and the uptake of the vaccination offer has been high, except among some ethnic minority groups.
The government website to make a vaccination appointment could hardly have been better designed. It gave a large choice of locations, based on their distance from one’s home; we could select time and place. My wife and I chose the following day at noon at Ludlow Racecourse, where a large vaccination center was operating. We could have had our vaccination at my local doctors’ office, 300 hundred yards away from where we lived, but in a time of lockdown, we wanted a day out: so reduced have been our horizons of late that a drive of 20 miles or so seemed almost exciting.
How small are the chances of the average vaccinated American contracting Covid? Probably about one in 5,000 per day, and even lower for people who take precautions or live in a highly vaccinated community.
Or maybe one in 10,000
The estimates here are based on statistics from three places that have reported detailed data on Covid infections by vaccination status: Utah; Virginia; and King County, which includes Seattle, in Washington state. All three are consistent with the idea that about one in 5,000 vaccinated Americans have tested positive for Covid each day in recent weeks.
The chances are surely higher in the places with the worst Covid outbreaks, like the Southeast. And in places with many fewer cases — like the Northeast, as well as the Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco areas — the chances are lower, probably less than 1 in 10,000. That’s what the Seattle data shows, for example. (These numbers don’t include undiagnosed cases, which are often so mild that people do not notice them and do not pass the virus to anyone else.)
Here’s one way to think about a one-in-10,000 daily chance: It would take more than three months for the combined risk to reach just 1 percent.
According to data compiled by the Centers For Disease Control, approximately one in every 5,000 vaccinated Americans has tested positive for the coronavirus. That number is probably much lower in places with significantly fewer cases — like the Northeast, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco areas, where it is probably fewer than one in 10,000.
This is the first detailed data about so-called “breakthrough” infections — positive tests from people fully vaccinated. The data suggests that politicians and public health officials are wildly overreacting to the delta variant’s effect on the already vaccinated.
Israel is set to begin preparations to administer fourth doses of the coronavirus vaccines as the country deals with soaring cases despite its trail-blazing roll-out of jabs.
The country’s national coronavirus czar Salman Zarka said the country needs to prepare for a fourth injection, which could be modified to better protect against new variants of the virus.
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‘It seems that if we learn the lessons from the fourth wave, we must consider the [possibility of subsequent] waves with the new variants, such as the new one from South America,’ he said at the time.
‘Thinking about this and the waning of the vaccines and the antibodies, it seems every few months — it could be once a year or five or six months — we’ll need another shot.’
He added that he expects Israel to be given out vaccines that had been specially adapted to cope with different variants of the virus by late 2021 or early 2022.
While Israel is seeing record case numbers in its fourth wave, the jabs are still protecting against severe illness with Covid deaths running at about half of the level of its second wave.
