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Business

Moderna vaccinates first participant in phase 2 trial of Omicron-specific booster as study finds that antibodies fall 6-fold over 6 months

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“We are reassured by the antibody persistence against Omicron at six months after the currently authorized 50 μg booster of mRNA-1273. Nonetheless, given the long-term threat demonstrated by Omicron’s immune escape, we are advancing our Omicron-specific variant vaccine booster candidate and we are pleased to begin this part of our Phase 2 study,” CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a news release. “We are also evaluating whether to include this Omicron-specific candidate in our multivalent booster program.”

Moderna promises to share its data from the trial with public health leaders so they can make evidence-based decisions on the best booster strategy against the coronavirus going forward.

Omicron currently accounts for 99.9% of US Covid-19 infections, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. The Delta variant makes up the remaining 0.1%.

A study published Wednesday says the Moderna Covid-19 booster shot remains durable against the Omicron variant, but the antibody protection wanes and is six times lower six months after getting boosted.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also found that the neutralizing antibody levels declined against the Omicron variant much more rapidly than against the dominant strain of the virus that was circulating two years ago.

Research teams from Moderna, Duke University, Emory University, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health looked at blood samples from adults who had two doses of the Moderna vaccine, as well as those who also had a booster dose. Some of those were boosted with the 50-microgram dose and some at 100-μg levels. The current booster is authorized at the 50-μg level.

With the primary two-dose regimen, the Moderna vaccine generated neutralizing antibodies against the Omicron variant in 85% of the people in the trial one month after the second dose.

Seven months after the participants got their second dose, neutralization against Omicron was detected in only 55% of the blood samples.

A 50-μg booster dose improved the durability of neutralization at 20 times higher than the levels seen in those who just got two doses of the vaccine.

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World

China vaccinates over 80% of its people against COVID-19

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People line up at a coronavirus disease mobile vaccination unit in Beijing, China, April 14, 2021. (Thomas Peter, Reuters)

Estimated read time: Less than a minute

BEIJING — China has vaccinated 82.5% of its population of 1.41 billion against COVID-19, a health official said on Saturday.

A total of 1.162 billion have received the required number of doses to complete vaccinations, Wu Liangyou, an official of the National Health Commission told a news briefing, adding that 120.6 million had received a booster shot.

Despite the high national rate, vaccination coverage was patchy among the elderly, a vulnerable group facing a high risk of severe cases and death after infection.

Vaccination rates for those older than 80 were slightly above 40%, falling below 30% in some areas, said Zheng Zhongwei, another NHC official, in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV on Monday.

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Business

Adar Poonawalla: He vaccinates half the world’s babies. Ending the pandemic proved much harder

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Adar Poonawalla — the CEO of Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine maker — pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into his Indian manufacturing facility and committed to make millions of doses of a then-unproven coronavirus vaccine.

“It was a calculated risk,” Poonawalla told CNN Business. “But I didn’t see the choice at that time, to be honest. I just felt I’d regret not committing one way or another.”

To make his plan work, Poonawalla first had to raise nearly $1 billion. And the lives of hundreds of millions of the planet’s most vulnerable people were at stake, since SII had pledged to provide poorer countries with jabs. If the gamble paid off, Poonawalla would save countless lives and be hailed as a hero during a period of historic turmoil. His fabulously rich family also would stand to grow even more wealthy by profiting from a significant deal.

As the world gave its money — and trust — to Poonawalla, things seemed to be going according to plan. The AstraZeneca vaccine received approval from UK regulators in December 2020, and Poonawalla became a household name in India.

But soon it became evident how badly Poonawalla had miscalculated the challenges that come with distributing millions of vaccines in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic.

His company’s ability to inoculate even his own countrymen was thrown into doubt earlier this year as a devastating wave of coronavirus hit India. He’s also failed to keep up with his commitment to deliver shots to other nations — the consequences of which have dented his reputation and shed light on the perils of such heavy reliance on one manufacturer.

From horse breeders to vaccine makers

It’s easy to see why some of the biggest names in public health chose to rely on Poonawalla.

Few manufacturers can come close to the scale at which SII is able to produce vaccines. The company — which was founded by Poonawalla’s father, Cyrus, 55 years ago — produces 1.5 billion vaccines each year for measles, rubella, tetanus and many other diseases. The jabs are mainly distributed to low-income countries worldwide, including India. Poonawalla estimates that just over 50% of the world’s babies depend on vaccines made at SII.

The Poonawalla family charted an unusual path to becoming one of the world’s preeminent vaccine makers. They have bred and raced thoroughbred horses since the 1940s, diversifying into pharmaceuticals, finance and real estate over the last half-century.

Cyrus Poonawalla is now India’s seventh-richest man, worth more than $16 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. His son Adar took over as CEO in 2011 and has focused on expanding in international markets.

To prepare for the AstraZeneca vaccine production, Poonawalla said he spent $800 million on buying chemicals, glass vials and other raw materials, as well as ramping up manufacturing capacity at his plant in the Western Indian city of Pune.

More than $250 million came from the company’s own funds. Another $300 million came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which SII collaborated with to provide discounted or free doses to low-income countries. The rest was paid by other countries once SII started accepting orders for vaccines. In total, SII agreed to make up to 200 million vaccine doses for as many as 92 countries, as part of its deal with the Gates Foundation and Gavi, a vaccine alliance.

All of that happened, though, before regulators signed off on the AstraZeneca vaccine. Had trials for that vaccine been unsuccessful, SII would “just be making batches and then end up throwing them away,” Poonawalla said.

A business studies graduate of London’s University of Westminster, Poonawalla said SII was able to make that decision more swiftly than many other companies, since it is a family-run business.

“The flexibility of being able to decide on the spot very quickly was really the main game-changer that enabled us to be able to do this,” said Poonawalla, whose office in India is a refurbished Airbus A320.
After UK regulators approved the vaccine, Poonawalla began supplying doses to Indians and other other countries. By May, Gavi had received some 30 million jabs from SII.

India’s Covid-19 tsunami

But Poonawalla’s plans soon went awry when a second wave of Covid-19 hit India in the spring. At its peak the country was reporting over 400,000 cases per day, though experts say the actual number was likely much higher.
At that point, only 2% percent of India’s 1.3 billion population was fully vaccinated, and the country’s national government had been slow in placing orders for more vaccines. Without a massive stockpile, states in India began to run out of the limited number of jabs they had.
India then decided to stop the export of all vaccines, preventing SII from keeping up with its commitments elsewhere.

“I’ve always been a patriot for my country … and if my country needs my facility first, I have to do what they say,” Poonawalla said. “There was no two ways about that.”

The inability to export vaccines hurt some of the poorest nations in the world. The director of Africa’s disease control body, for example, warned India’s hold on exports could be “catastrophic” for the continent. People in several countries, from neighboring Nepal to Kenya, were left stranded after receiving the first dose of Covishield, the name of the India-manufactured vaccine.

When asked why the global vaccine alliance chose to rely so heavily on one manufacturer, a Gavi spokesperson told CNN Business it had few options.

At the start of 2021, “very few vaccines were approved and available for deployment,” the spokesperson said, adding that it was “natural” that SII would be contracted for early doses given its size.

But public health expert Jeffrey Lazarus said there were flaws in the plan.

“Relying on one manufacturer was a mistake, which is easier to see in hindsight,” said Lazarus, who heads the health systems research group at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health.

Being held to account

While Poonawalla cannot be held responsible for some of the issues that led to the vaccine rollout stalling — chief among them, India’s massive outbreak — his detractors have questioned parts of his approach.

They point out Poonawalla hasn’t delivered the number of jabs he initially promised, and they claim he hasn’t been transparent about how he’s been using all of the money he raised for the big vaccine push.

“There isn’t much accountability for where the money he raised went,” Malini Aisola, co-convenor of health sector watchdog All India Drug Action Network, told CNN Business.

In June last year, SII pledged it would make one billion doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for low and middle income countries, with 400 million doses ready by the end of 2020.
But by January 2021, the company had a stockpile of just 70 million doses. His critics weren’t impressed, given the amount of capital he raised last year.
The global media coverage also turned unfavorable, with headlines linking the global shortfall in vaccines to SII’s problems, including the India export ban and a fire at the company’s Pune facility. At the time Poonawalla said the fire had no effect on Covishield production. But he has since reversed course, saying that the incident has played a major role in hampering manufacturing.

He also insists he was realistic about his goals. “We always underpromise,” Poonawalla told CNN Business, when asked whether the company pledged more than it could deliver.

Still, he’s been dogged by other controversies that have dented his reputation. As India’s Covid-19 cases were skyrocketing in April, Poonawalla lowered the price of his vaccine and referred to the move as a “philanthropic gesture” — leading to heavy criticism, with activists pointing out that even a small profit is still a profit for SII.
“AstraZeneca has pledged that it won’t make profits from low income and middle income countries during the pandemic, but that does not seem to apply to SII,” Aisola said.

According to AstraZeneca, the companies the drugmaker has sublicensing agreements with, including SII, dictate their own prices.

SII declined to comment on how much it has profited from the vaccine efforts so far, but Poonawalla said it is a “very unreasonable and naive way of looking at the world” for people to expect companies not to profit from the vaccine.

While Poonawalla has yet to match his lofty goals, there is a chance that he and SII can get back on track, which is critical to ending vaccine inequality worldwide. India has decided to begin exporting vaccines once again as its own rate of inoculation increases. The nation had administered one billion doses by October.

And as of September, SII had increased its production schedule to 160 million doses a month. It has so far delivered about 700 million, most of which were used in India.

SII is also expanding its partnerships, having signed a deal with American biotech firm Novavax to manufacture its Covid-19 vaccine, which is awaiting regulatory approvals.



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US

Cuba vaccinates children as young as two in strategy to reopen schools, economy

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In September, Cuba became the first country in the world to begin the mass vaccination of kids as young as age 2 against Covid-19.

While the coronavirus vaccines aren’t mandatory, parents and children have been filling clinics, hospitals and even converted schools to get the shot for their kids.

“I am relieved,” Laura Tijeras said just minutes after her 4-year-old daughter Anisol got the first dose of Cuba’s home-grown Soberana, or Sovereign, vaccine. “A lot of people are still getting sick and with the vaccine. We are more protected.”

During a single day at a policlínico in Havana, where CNN and other media were invited to film the vaccinations, more than 230 children ages 3 to 5 were vaccinated, the clinic’s administrator said.

To put kids at ease, doctors and nurses wore Mickey Mouse ears above their uniforms and brought in a clown with a speaker system to perform for them at full volume.

Like adults receiving vaccinations, children in Cuba will require three shots before they are considered fully vaccinated.

With the arrival of the Delta variant in Cuba, cases among children have skyrocketed.

“It’s alarming the numbers of infections of the new coronavirus that have occurred in Cuba in the last few months in the pediatric population,” wrote Cuban Health Minister Jose Portal Miranda in an article on the government Cubadebate website in September.

“Many of the pediatric patients reported in serious or critical condition are newborns,” he wrote.

So far during the pandemic at least 117,500 minors have been diagnosed with Covid in Cuba, according to official statistics. The government has not said how many children have died in Cuba during the pandemic. But since the beginning of August, 10 minors, children and infants have been listed as having died in daily press briefings given by the Health Ministry.

The spike in cases led Cuban officials to scrap plans to reopen schools in early September. As home internet access remains an expensive luxury for most Cubans, children receive their lessons by watching an educational channel on TV. Many Cuban parents complain that their children are being left behind in school, and with parks, movie theaters and beaches closed, there is nowhere to take them.

In September officials said they would begin vaccinating children as part of a plan to have more than 90% of the island immunized and reopen international borders by mid-November. Officials said it is unlikely that they could restart schools before then.

“It’s not a condition in order to attend our educational institutions when classes renew to be vaccinated,” said Vice Minister of Education Eugenio González Pérez on the Mesa Redonda TV program. “But we call on the Cuban family to vaccinate their children. We have a vaccine that’s 100% Cuban.”

Cuba’s drug regulator so far has given approval for emergency usage of three home-grown vaccines that Cuban scientists say are highly effective at preventing serious illness and death as a result of the coronavirus.

While critics have complained of the Cuban government’s excessive secrecy concerning their program, last week Cuban scientists said they had begun to share data with the World Health Organization to receive approval for their vaccines.

Cuban state-run vaccine producers initially expected to make enough doses for the island’s population of 11.2 million by September but later said that shortages — they blamed on the US trade embargo — had caused them to fall short of that goal.

In August, as the pandemic raged out of control in several provinces, Cuba for the first time began using China’s Sinopharm vaccine even though it is Iess effective than the immune response Cuban scientists say their own vaccines produce.

Some critics have said that if there is a shortage of vaccines then Cuba should prioritize vaccinating at risk populations like the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions ahead of children.

But Cuban doctors carrying out the vaccination campaign on young children said the increased risks faced by kids had to be addressed immediately.

“It’s more difficult, but it’s gratifying to vaccinate a child,” said Dr. Auroly Otaño Orteaga. “You put the vaccine and you know they are going to be immunized and won’t have serious complications or even die from Covid.”

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Health

Singapore vaccinates 80 percent of population against COVID-19 | Coronavirus pandemic News

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With 80 percent of its people fully inoculated against COVID-19, Singapore is now the world’s most vaccinated country, according to Reuters.

Singapore has fully inoculated 80 percent of its 5.7 million people against COVID-19, according to officials, becoming the world’s most vaccinated country and setting the stage for further easing of curbs.

“We have crossed another milestone, where 80% of our population has received their full regimen of two doses,” Singapore’s Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said in a Facebook post on Sunday.

“It means Singapore has taken another step forward in making ourselves more resilient to COVID-19.”

That gives the tiny city-state the world’s highest rate of complete vaccinations, according to a tracker by the Reuters news agency.

Other countries that have high vaccination rates include the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Chile, which have fully inoculated more than 70 percent of their populations.

Singapore, which began its vaccination campaign in January, relied mostly on the vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Visitors wearing masks walk in Merlion Park, a popular tourist spot, with the Marina Bay Sands in the background [File: Annabelle Liang/AP]

Earlier in August, Ong said if Singapore can “continue to keep the number of severe cases and illnesses under control and our healthcare capacity is not overly stretched,” then the country will further open up its economy and allow social activities and quarantine-free travel to resume.

“Our lives will be more normal, (and our) livelihoods will be better protected,” he said.

Ong, along with two other ministers, described what the new normal would look like in an article in the Straits Times in June.

They said large gatherings such as the New Year Countdown will resume and “businesses will have certainty that their operations will not be disrupted”.

Singaporeans will also be allowed to travel again, at least to countries that have also controlled the virus.

“We will recognise each other’s vaccination certificates. Travellers, especially those vaccinated, can get themselves tested before departure and be exempted from quarantine with a negative test upon arrival,” they said.

Singapore reported 113 new infections on Saturday, according to Channel News Asia. The country has logged a total of 67,171 cases and 55 deaths since the pandemic began.



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World

Bhutan fully vaccinates 90% of eligible adults within a week

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GAUHATI, India (AP) — The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has fully vaccinated 90% of its eligible adult population within just seven days, its health ministry said Tuesday.

The tiny country, wedged between India and China and home to nearly 800,000 people, began giving out second doses on July 20 in a mass drive that has been hailed by UNICEF as “arguably the fastest vaccination campaign to be executed during a pandemic.”

In April, Bhutan grabbed headlines when its government said it had inoculated around the same percentage of eligible adults with the first dose in under two weeks after India donated 550,000 shots of AstraZeneca vaccine.

But the country faced a shortage for months after India, a major supplier of the AstraZeneca shot, halted exports as it scrambled to meet a rising demand at home as infections surged.

Bhutan was able to restart its drive last week after half a million doses of Moderna vaccine arrived from the United States as a donation under the U.N.-backed COVAX program, an initiative devised to give countries access to coronavirus vaccines regardless of their wealth.

Some 5,000 shots of Pfizer were also facilitated through COVAX, which is co-led by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation.

It also received more than 400,000 AstraZeneca shots from Denmark, Croatia and Bulgaria in the last two weeks.

“Our aim is to achieve herd immunity among our population in the shortest possible time to avert a major public health crisis,” Dechen Wangmo, Bhutan’s health minister, told The Associated Press.

Many Western countries with far more resources are yet to vaccinate such a high rate of eligible adults.

Health experts say Bhutan’s small population helped, but the country also benefited from strong and effective messaging from top officials and an established cold chain storage system.

More than 3,000 health workers participated and 1,200 vaccination centers across the country helped ensure that shots reached every eligible adult. In some cases, health workers trekked for days through landslides and pouring rain to reach extremely remote villages atop steep mountains to administer doses to those unable to get to a center, said Dr. Sonam Wangchuk, a member of Bhutan’s vaccination task force.

“Vaccination is the pillar of Bhutan’s healthcare initiative,” he said.

Bhutan’s government is also led by medical practitioners. The prime minister, the foreign minister and the health minister are all medical professionals. And frequent messaging from the government, which directly answers questions from the public about the coronavirus and vaccinations on Facebook, also helped combat vaccine hesitancy among citizens.

“In fact, people are quite eager to come and get themselves vaccinated,” Dr. Wangchuk said.

Its prime minister, Lotay Tshering, and monarch, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, were also early advocates of the vaccine, which allayed fears surrounding the rollout. The king also toured the country to raise awareness about the vaccination drive.

Bhutan is the last remaining Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, but it has transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a democratic, constitutional monarchy.

Another crucial ingredient in the vaccine drive is the country’s extensive network of citizen volunteers called “desuups,” said Will Parks, the UNICEF representative for Bhutan. Some 22,000 citizens volunteered over the last year and a half to raise awareness, dispel misinformation, help conduct mass screening and testing and even carry vaccines across the country’s difficult terrain, he said.

Bhutan’s success is an anomaly in South Asia where countries such as India and Bangladesh are struggling to ramp up their vaccination rates. Experts say it underscores the importance of richer countries donating vaccines to the developing world and highlights just how big an impact the government and community outreach can have.

“Perhaps this little Himalayan kingdom can be a beacon of hope to a region that is on fire,” Parks said.

___

Lekhi reported from New Delhi.

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Health

Cuomo nursing home deaths; San Diego Zoo vaccinates apes

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CLOSE

Here’s how mRNA viruses like COVID-19 mutate, and why certain viruses are harder to develop vaccines for.

USA TODAY

A new report about the link between face masks and COVID-19 cases and deaths “serves as a warning” about the dangers of lifting mask mandates prematurely, said Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Friday.

A recent CDC report found that mask mandates were associated with decreases in COVID-19 cases and deaths whereas reopening dining was associated with increases.

Daily COVID-19 cases and deaths have plateaued around 60,000 to 70,000 cases per day and 2,000 deaths per day, numbers that are still “too high” and around where they were in the summer surge, Walensky said at a White House COVID-19 news conference.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pointed to the plateaus seen in between prior peaks in the country as a sign that another spike in cases could come if Americans do not remain diligent in mask wearing and social distancing as well as getting a vaccine when it available to them.

“It may seem tempting in the face of all this progress to rush back to normalcy as if the virus is in the rear view mirror. It’s not,” said Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response.

Meanwhile, senators were reconvening Friday to debate President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package. The Senate’s 20 hours of debate on the bill could last through Sunday, and a final vote may not happen until early next week.

Also in the news:

►Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration successfully pressured New York’s health department to strip the full COVID-19 death count attributed to nursing homes from a state report released last July, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported.

►Hiring rebounded sharply in February after a two-month slump with employers adding 379,000 jobs, the Labor department said Friday. Falling COVID-19 cases and easing business restrictions offset harsh winter weather across much of the country.

►The coronavirus variant that first appeared in the United Kingdom has now been spotted in almost the entire country, CDC data reported Thursday show. Only the states of Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Vermont have not reported a case.

►A new variant of the coronavirus is under investigation in the United Kingdom, health officials said. At least 16 cases have been identified since Feb. 15. The variant is believed to have originated in the U.K., and the BBC reported it has a mutation in common with the South Africa and Brazil variants.

►More than 49.7 million Americans had received at least one dose of vaccine, a USA TODAY analysis of Centers for Disease Control data showed on the last day of February.

►Traffic deaths in the U.S. increased for the first time in four years in 2020, as coronavirus-induced lockdowns opened roads and led to more reckless driving, according to a report from the nonprofit National Safety Council.

►In Arizona’s Gila County, anyone over the age of 18 can get a COVID-19 vaccine, making it one of the first areas in the country vaccinating the general population.

📈 Today’s numbers: The U.S. has more than 28.8 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 520,200 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals: More than 115.5 million cases and 2.56 million deaths. More than 109.9 million vaccine doses have been distributed in the U.S. and about 82.57 million have been administered, according to the CDC.

📘 What we’re reading: President Joe Biden said this week that there will be enough COVID-19 vaccine for every U.S. adult by May, nearly two months earlier than his administration predicted last month. Some health experts wouldn’t be surprised if it’s even sooner. Read the full story.

USA TODAY is tracking COVID-19 news. Keep refreshing this page for the latest updates. Want more? Sign up for our Coronavirus Watch newsletter for updates to your inbox and join our Facebook group.

Detroit declined J&J vaccines this week, but will take them in future

The city of Detroit declined to accept 6,200 doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine this week, state health officials said a day after Mayor Mike Duggan said Tuesday that the city was “gonna protect Detroiters with a 95% vaccine.”

On Wednesday night, Duggan’s spokesman John Roach said the city had enough Moderna and Pfizer vaccines to more than cover all of the upcoming week’s scheduled appointments and that the city would take Johnson & Johnson vaccines “in the next round … giving Detroiters that option.” He added that the Duggan’s concerns were around whether allocations of Moderna and Pfizer would have been substituted with J&J doses.

“We now have clear assurance from the state that Detroit’s full allocation of Moderna/Pfizer will continue and that J&J vaccines will be additional,” Roach added.

Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response, addressed the issue Friday during a press briefing and described it as a “misunderstanding.”

During the same briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci explained that all three vaccines available are highly effective at preventing severe COVID-19 and deaths and that the vaccines have not been studied in head-to-head comparisons, making claims about which is “better” inaccurate. 

– Christina Hall and Kristen Jordan Shamus, Detroit Free Press; Ryan Miller, USA TODAY

Cuomo administration recrafted report on nursing homes to conceal COVID-19 death count: reports

The Cuomo administration’s reporting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes drew another round of criticism late Thursday after it was revealed the total death count was stripped from a state report last July.

The report released by the Department of Health last summer had long been criticized for not including the number of nursing home deaths that occurred in hospitals, leading to a drastic undercounting.

Now the reason is more clear: The Cuomo administration pressured the health department to not include the full death count attributed to nursing homes in the report, according to The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Instead, the report indicated more than 6,200 nursing home residents had died, instead of nearly 10,000 at the time who were residents of the homes and either died there or at a hospital.

The lower count allowed Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo to more affirmatively tout the state’s response to the pandemic, which has killed more than 48,000 New Yorkers. He wrote a book in October to burnish his image over lowering the state’s death count and cases through government action.

– Joseph Spector, USA TODAY Network in New York

CDC study: Mask mandates associated with decreases in case and deaths; reopening dining associated with increases 

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Friday found more evidence supporting the effectiveness of mask mandates while cases and death rates grew after dining was reopened.

According to the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: 

  • Mandating masks was associated with a drop in daily COVID-19 case and death growth rates within 20 days of the order taking effect.
  • Allowing restaurants to reopen for inside or outside dining was associated with an increase in daily case growth rates within 41 to 100 days after lifting a ban and an increase in daily death growth rates 61-100 days after implementation.

“Mask mandates are quite effective — and when we terminate them prematurely for political reasons — people suffer and lose their lives,” said Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital.

The study looked at county-level data on mask and restaurant orders and found mask mandates applied to 73.6% of the 3,142 U.S. counties from March through December 2020, while 97.9% of U.S. counties allowed restaurants to reopen for on-premise dining during the same period.

As Americans get vaccinated, fewer are getting tested for COVID-19

Public heath experts have been critical of states such as Texas and Mississippi that tossed aside mask mandates this week at a critical juncture in the nation’s pandemic. But they also warn of another threat to hard-fought gains in recent weeks – the number of Americans getting tested for coronavirus has dropped significantly since January.

While the testing slowdown may be the result of fewer infections, it also might signal too many Americans are growing complacent as the second year of COVID-19 marches on and millions get vaccinated every week.  

In January, labs and other testing sites completed an average of nearly 1.9 million tests each day as cases reached record levels. Average daily testing dropped to 1.5 million in February and 1.3 million so far in March, according to figures from the COVID Tracking Project. 

Mary K. Hayden, professor of internal medicine and pathology at Rush Medical College in Chicago, said the nation’s testing never reached levels that public health officials thought was “adequate or optimal” to control the virus. “We never quite got there,” said Hayden, an Infectious Diseases Society of America fellow. “And now we’re dropping.”

– Ken Alltucker

9 great apes receive COVID-19 vaccinations at San Diego Zoo

The San Diego Zoo has vaccinated nine great apes for the coronavirus after a troop of gorillas in its Safari Park became infected, officials said Thursday.

Four orangutans and five bonobos received COVID-19 injections in January and February. Three bonobos and a gorilla also were expected to receive the vaccine, which is experimental.

The vaccinations followed a January outbreak of COVID-19 at the zoo’s Safari Park. Eight western lowland gorillas got the virus, probably by exposure to a zookeeper who tested positive for COVID-19, officials said in January, even though employees work masks at all times around the gorillas.

Biden campaigned as the mask candidate. Now he’s facing the limits of the bully pulpit.

Joe Biden ran for the White House as the mask candidate, criticizing then-President Donald Trump’s dismissal of masks, promising to get tough on mask wearing and modeling good behavior by wearing at least one – and sometimes two – masks himself.

As president, however, Biden is running up against the limits of the bully pulpit as mask-wearing remains politically polarized. After the governors of Texas and Mississippi moved to lift mask mandates on Tuesday, an exasperated and frustrated Biden said Wednesday that such decisions come from “Neanderthal thinking.”

“It shouldn’t be political at all, but it seems like it is,” said Rep. Charlie Crist, a former GOP governor of Florida who is now a Democrat and critical of his state’s lack of a mask requirement. “What President Biden is doing is exactly what he needs to be doing: calling them out for it.”

– Maureen Groppe

Texans who lost loved ones to COVID hurt by state’s decision to lift mask mandate

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Tuesday declaration that it was time to “open Texas” has been decried by local officials and health experts who say it’s too soon to become lax with coronavirus restrictions with just 7% of the state’s residents have been fully inoculated against the virus.

But the announcement hit harder with Delia Ramos, and others who have lost spouses, parents or friends to the virus — in some cases, making them wonder if the deaths of their loved ones meant nothing.

It feels like people that think it’s “inconvenient to wear a mask” override all the “people that have been lost” to the virus, as well as doctors and nurses working long hours and teachers scared to go to work for fear of being exposed, Ramos, 39, said.

She’ll continue to wear her mask “with honor.”

“I don’t want other children to grow up without a father, the way that mine unfortunately are going to have to grow up without one,” she said. Read the full story.

– Shannon Najmabadi, Corpus Christi Caller-Times

Wealthy white Florida residents getting vaccines aimed for rural minorities

In Palm Beach County, Florida, where former President Donald Trump now lives, people in wealthy white areas are getting a significant share of the COVID-19 vaccines intended for rural Black and Latino communities.

STAT News reports that even though Hispanics make up 21.7% of the county residents and Black people account for 18% of the population, as of March 1 they had received only 4.7% and 4.1% of vaccines, respectively. Combined, the two racial or ethnic groups represent nearly 40% of the county’s population and had gotten less than 9% of the doses. 

And it’s not just those in the county who are attending vaccination drives for poorer neighborhoods. STAT reports that people from more than 100 miles away have been driving in to those events.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and state health officials have been under scrutiny amid accusations of favoring wealthy residents for vaccinations. DeSantis has denied any favoritism.

Contributing: The Associated Press

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