The Social Science Research Council is providing USD 7.2 million to 12 teams advancing ambitious, applied social and behavioral science to combat the growing global threat posed by low Covid-19 vaccination rates and public health mis- and disinformation
NEW YORK, Aug. 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) announced it will provide an initial USD 7.2 million in direct research funds to 12 teams working in 17 countries in order to better understand how health mis- and disinformation spreads, how to combat it, and how to build stronger information systems, while increasing Covid-19 vaccination rates. Through the Mercury Projectenabled by The Rockefeller Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with a total of USD 10.25 million so farthe SSRC is supportinga first cohort of social and behavioral scientists from around the world to generate much-needed new research on locally tailored solutions in Bolivia, Brazil, Cte D'Ivoire, Ghana, Haiti, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, United States, and Zimbabwe.
Following the characterization of inaccurate health information by the U.S. Surgeon Generalas an "urgent threat," and by the World Health Organization as an "infodemic," the SSRC issued a call for proposals to counter the growing global threats posed by public health mis- and disinformation and low Covid-19 vaccination rates, and received nearly 200 submissions from around the world.
"With Covid-19 prevalent and rapidly evolving everywhere, there is a pressing need to identify interventions with the potential to increase vaccination take-up. Vaccines are only effective if they become vaccinations; vaccines are a scientific marvel but their potential is unfulfilled if they are left on the shelf," said Anna Harvey, President of SSRC. "The large volume of high-quality proposals submitted to the Mercury Project underscores just how eager the social and behavioral science community is to evaluate interventions to increase vaccination demand and build healthier information environments."
Researchers in the Mercury Project's first cohort are affiliated with research institutions and implementing partners around the world:
"This initial cohort's ideas exemplify the creativity and vision behind the Mercury Project," said Dr. Bruce Gellin, Chief of Global Public Health Strategy at The Rockefeller Foundation. "They go far beyond quick fixes, with the goal of identifying robust, cost-effective, and meaningful solutions that can be widely adopted and scaled. We hope that more, better, and science-based knowledge about what we need to do will lead to increased uptake of reliable informationand serve as a powerful counter to the effects of misinformation and disinformation on vaccine demand."
Funded projects will provide evidence about what worksand doesn'tin specific places and for specific groups to increase Covid-19 vaccination take-up, including what is feasible on the ground and has the potential to be cost-effective at scale. Each of the 12 teams will have access to findings from the other teams while exploring interventions including, but not limited to:
The complete list of grantees, and descriptions of each project, are at https://www.ssrc.org/mercury-project-grantees.
"The viral, vaccine, and information environments are all rapidly evolvingbut that doesn't mean it is impossible to make progress towards more effective and equitable responses," said Heather Lanthorn, Program Director at the Mercury Project. "By funding projects on the ground around the world, this work will help us understand what works where, and why, and identify new ways to harness the power of connection and communication to advance public health goals."
The three-year Mercury Project, which launched in November 2021 with USD 7.5 million in seed funding from The Rockefeller Foundation and additional support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, applies the principles of large-scale, team-based science to the problem of vaccination demand. SSRC carefully selected interdisciplinary, interinstitutional, and international teamswith over 80 participating researchersto create a network that can work in coordination to tackle the global problems of Covid-19 vaccine misinformation and low vaccination take-up.
Regular convenings, both virtual and in-person, will ensure that grantee research projects are both informed by and inform health and technology decision-makers around the world.The first convening will occur in late August at The Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy, where thousands of scientists, policymakers, authors, and artists have turned innovative ideas into action since 1959. Grantee teams will share their research designs with each other and with global health policy leaders, and will build a shared research framework to guide evaluations of interventions to increase Covid-19 vaccination demand and create healthier information environments. A second cohort of research teams will receive funding from the National Science Foundation.
More information about the Mercury Project can be found on the Social Science Research Council website.
About the Social Science Research Council
The Social Science Research Council, an independent and international nonprofit, mobilizes necessary knowledge for the public good by supporting social and behavioral science worldwide, generating new research across disciplines and linking researchers with decision-makers.For more information, sign up for our newsletter at ssrc.org and follow us on Twitter @ssrc_org and LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/social-science-research-council.
About The Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a pioneering philanthropy built on collaborative partnerships at the frontiers of science, technology, and innovation to enable individuals, families, and communities to flourish. We work to promote the well-being of humanity and make opportunity universal. Our focus is on scaling renewable energy for all, stimulating economic mobility, and ensuring equitable access to healthy and nutritious food. For more information, sign up for our newsletter at rockefellerfoundation.org and follow us on Twitter @RockefellerFdn.
SOURCE The Rockefeller Foundation
The COVID-19 vaccines have helped Massachusetts avoid excess mortality, or deaths exceeding the expected number at any given time of year, during two surges in the pandemic, according to a study published Monday by researchers at Brigham and Womens Hospital, and Harvard and Yale universities.
This is good news, and it suggests that, in our highly vaccinated state, we are benefitting from a high level of immunity, which likely helped to protect individuals at highest risk, Dr. Jeremy Faust, a Brigham and Womens emergency medicine physician and an author of the study, said in a statement.
The study appeared Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal.
But we need to remain vigilant, Faust said. As new variants emerge or immunity wanes, we may see a rise in excess mortality once more.
During the pandemic, Massachusetts has seen periods without excess mortality, corresponding to times of low prevalence of the virus, the study found. But there also were two periods when researchers observed no excess mortality despite substantial outbreaks of COVID-19. One such period came between late February 2021 and June 2021, while the second occurred between late February 2022 and June 2022.
The uncoupling of excess mortality and new COVID-19 cases, in the absence of decreases in the mean age of infected individuals ... suggests that in our highly vaccinated state, current levels of immunity are considerable, leaving many, if not most, individuals at high risk with substantial protection against the most severe outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection, the study said.
Seventy-seven percent of Massachusetts residents are considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a weekly state report updated Aug. 17.
More than 3.1 million first booster doses have been administered statewide, along with 684,168 second boosters.
There have been 20,025 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 in Massachusetts since the start of the pandemic, according to state data.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.
Newly updated Covid booster shots designed to target omicron's BA.5 subvariant should be available within in the next three weeks. That begs an important question: Who's going to be eligible to get them?
The short answer: anyone ages 12 and up who has completed a primary vaccination series, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson tells CNBC Make It. It's unlikely to matter whether you've received any other booster doses or not before, the spokesperson says but if you're unvaccinated, you won't be eligible for the updated formula until you complete a primary series with the existing Covid vaccines.
The longer answer is somewhat more complex, because it depends on which booster shots get approved and when.
Pfizer's "bivalent" shot, which targets both the original Covid strain and omicron's BA.5 subvariant, is expected to be authorized first. The CDC says it'll likely come with a wide eligibility swath: the full group of vaccinated Americans ages 12 and up.
Moderna's bivalent shot is expected to follow suit later, most likely in October. It'll come with a somewhat narrower range of eligibility, at least at first: vaccinated people ages 18 and older. For both shots, younger pediatric age groups could become eligible later, the CDC says.
Those projections are tentative, at least for now. A person familiar with the matter told NBC News on Wednesday that it'll hinge on how much supply Pfizer and Moderna are able to manufacture and roll out by next month. If that supply is limited, the shots could first be available to those most at risk, such as the elderly and immunocompromised.
Federal health officials believe the shots will provide the best level of protection against the highly transmissible BA.5 subvariant to date, especially in the fall and winter when a large wave of Covid infections is projected to hit the U.S.
"It's going to be really important that people this fall and winter get the new shot. It's designed for the virus that's out there," Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House's Covid response coordinator, said at avirtual eventhosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation on Tuesday.
If you're eligible for a second booster dose but haven't received it yet, Jha's advice is to get it now rather than holding off in anticipation of the updated boosters.That advice could apply to a lot of people: Among adults 50 and over who are eligible for a second booster shot, only 33.2% have gotten it, according to the latest CDC data.
"My general feeling is, no reason to wait, go get it, even if we're only a few weeks away," Jha said at the Chamber event. He added that people who get boosted now will still be able to get the BA.5 shot in a few months, when their immunity from the booster wanes.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden's chief medical advisor, has also emphasized that all Americans should get vaccinated and boosted now if they aren't up to date, noting that the country's approved vaccinesstill work exceptionally well at preventing severe illness, hospitalization and death.
"If [people] don't get vaccinated or they don't get boosted, they're going to get into trouble," FaucitoldLos Angeles radio station KNX News 97.1s "KNX In Depth" earlier this month.
As for the BA.5 shot, experts are split over whether you should get it as soon as you're eligible or wait to get it until cases rise in the fall or winter, in an attempt to maximize your immunity boost over those crucial months.
Andy Slavitt, a former senior advisor on Biden's Covid response team, wrote in Twitter thread on Friday that some experts including Fauci and Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco support the former approach.
"The other view is one no one wants to be on record for," Slavitt wrote. "It's that since we don't know the duration of the boost, why not wait until October?"
"For lower risk people who want to have 4 months of coverage (a reasonable minimal expectation), some may choose to wait," Slavitt added.
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Vaccinated people are more likely than the unvaccinated in recent months to be a COVID-19 case, hospitalization, or death in 25 states, according to an Epoch Times investigation.
In Kentucky in June, for example, 67 percent of the deaths were among the vaccinated, according to data obtained by The Epoch Times.
That same month, the vaccinatedmade up 65 percent of COVID-19 cases, 64 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations, and 66 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Wisconsin.
The numbers are a drastic change from 2021.
Afterthe mass vaccination campaign in the United States gained momentum, virtually every state reported unvaccinated people making up the vast majority of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
The numbers began tilting while the Delta virus variant was dominant. They have tilted even more since the Omicron variant displaced Delta, according to the newly collated numbers.
The Epoch Times compiled the data from state health department websites and databases. Some were obtained through records requests and have never before been made public.
The statistics underline how vaccines have increasingly performed worse as newer virus variants emerged, according to some experts.
They are clear evidence that the vaccines are not working to prevent disease and death, Dr. Robert Malone, who helped invent the messenger RNA utilized in the two most widely-administered vaccines, told The Epoch Times.
Others argue the raw numbers dont contribute to analyzing vaccine effectiveness because they must first be adjusted to account for factors such as age.
Unless one is able to correct for age and health status, this number is misleading, and does not lead to the conclusion vaccines are ineffective, Dr. Roger Klein, a policy adviser to The Heartland Institute and a former adviser to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other U.S. health agencies, told The Epoch Times via email.
Some states provide age-adjusted numbers, as recommended by the CDC.
Click the dots in the upper right part of the graph to unveil the full-screen option. Story continues below.
Most states report at least one metric (cases, hospitalizations, deaths) by vaccination status. Some group the partially vaccinated with the unvaccinated when breaking down metrics.
As vaccines have proven increasingly unable to prevent COVID-19 infection in the Omicron era, a growing number of states have followed the CDC in separating those who have received a booster from the fully vaccinated.
Key terms as generally defined:
The term fully vaccinated will be used in this article to refer to anybody who has received a primary series, regardless of whether theyve received a booster. Not fully vaccinated refers to anybody who has not received a primary series. The term vaccinated, meanwhile, will refer to anyone who has received at least one dose of a vaccine.
In 14 states, the percentage of one or more so-called breakthrough metricspost-vaccination cases, hospitalizations, and/or deathsin recent months exceeded the percentage of the population that was vaccinated or fully vaccinated.
In most cases, that was a single metric. But in several, it was multiple, and in one, it was all three.
All data are from 2022. Only percentages were available for some states. Data for June were preferred, followed by data for July. Metrics are only listed if they exceed the percentage of vaccinated.
*vaccinated+fully vaccinated-unclear**excludes partially vaccinated
Some states adjust the data before releasing it, which is meant to eliminate differences that result from one population being different from another. The most common adjustment is for age.
Age adjustment is used to compare populations directly when the age distribution of who most commonly gets the disease, or seriously sick from the disease, is skewed, according tothe Wisconsin Department of Health Services.For COVID-19, older populations are more likely to experience severe illness and death, and are also more likely to be vaccinated, experts say.
While the raw numbers look bad for the vaccinated, after adjusting for age, the rates of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in Wisconsin are higher for the unvaccinated throughout 2022 (cases have been higher in the vaccinated in recent months). Thats similar to most of the other states that report data as rates, some of whichalso provide raw numbers.
Wisconsins raw numbers were obtained through a records request.
Clinical trials and vaccine efficacy studies are the basis for determining vaccine effectiveness,Dr. Ryan Westergaard, chief medical officer for the states Bureau of Communicable Diseases, said during a briefing, adding that the research shows that protection against severe disease and death remains high.
Studiescan help control for biases such as vaccinated people being more likely to get tested at sites, which report data to the state, versus at home, which is not counted,Dr. Leisha Nolen, Utahs state epidemiologist, told The Epoch Times.
The studies show the vaccines arent doing as well at keeping us from getting infected, but they are still keeping people out of the hospital, Nolen told The Epoch Times.
Nolen singled outa study from researchers with the CDC and partner institutions, published in the agencys journal on July 22 (pdf).
Researchers reported datafrom a CDC-funded network of hospitals across 10 states from December 2021 to June 2022. The data showed that two doses of a vaccine, or a primary series, provided 57 to 68 percent protection against hospitalization through 149 days after vaccination, but dropped to as low as 24 percent 150 or more days after vaccination.
A third dose increased protection to 92 percent against BA.1, one of the subvariants, and 69 percent against BA.2, another subvariant. That protection dropped to 85 percent and 52 percent, respectively, after 120 or more days.
BA.5 is currently the dominant strain in the United States. Emerging data indicate the vaccines do not provide as much shielding against BA.4 and BA.5 as earlier strains.
In 11 other states, the vaccinated made up a majority of at least one metric, but the proportion of vaccinated did not exceed the percentage of vaccinated.
All data are from 2022. Percentages reported near or above 50 percent. Preference was for data in June, followed by data in July. Metrics with unvaccinated comprising a majority are not listed.
*vaccinated+fully vaccinated-unclear**excludes partially vaccinated
Vaccine-provided protectionbegan waningagainst infection and, to a lesser extent,against severe illness in 2021, when the Delta variant was dominant. Since Omicron emerged in December 2021, that trend has quickened.
Omicron and its subvariants, described as more immune-evasive, are better at evading the protection from vaccines and prior infection. The vaccines have bestowed lower levels of initial protection, and the protection drops faster than before, research indicates. Known as natural immunity, the shielding from previous infection has held up betteragainst Omicron, and was superior against Delta, according to studies.
Research on booster effectiveness has largely shown an initial increase in protection, followed by a quick decline. Other research, meanwhile,has indicated that vaccinated people are, at a certain point, more likely than unvaccinated people to get infected, which could relate to a phenomenon called immune imprinting.
Owing to the waning effectiveness, U.S. regulators have already cleared first and second boostersas have many other countriesand are poised to authorize updated vaccines that target Omicron, describing the current formulation as not well-matched to the dominant variant.
Its really not possible to predict what this virus is going to do, and I think it makes sense to be prepared with these boosters, which contain components of a BA.4 and BA.5 as well as the so-called archival Wuhan strain, Dr. Cody Meissner, one of the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations external vaccine advisers, told The Epoch Times.
Some experts like Meissner say most people, including all adults, should still get vaccinated. Others note healthy individuals are at little risk from COVID-19, especially new variants, and say that the more recent data suggest little benefit for many.
That includesdata from other parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, that have recorded the vaccinated as comprising the bulk of COVID-19 metrics.
What were looking at now is a sign of progress of a number of factors, primarily [that] the vaccinated can still catch and spread the COVID-19 virus, Dr. Steven Hatfill, a virologist, told The Epoch Times.
The cost-benefit ratio now especially for the younger age groups has disappeared, he added later.
Of the remaining 25 states, eight reported the unvaccinated as making up more of the COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
All data are from 2022. Rates are listed when raw numbers were not available. When rates are listed, they are age-adjusted. June is preferred, followed by July.
*counts partially vaccinated with unvaccinated+rates per 100,000**excludes partially vaccinated
The 17 other states reported incomplete or insufficient data. To be included, states needed to report figures for at least one metric broken down by vaccination status, and a breakdown by time. States that would only provide data since the beginning of the pandemic were excluded. Some were still working on filling records requests by press time.
Earlier in the pandemic, when the unvaccinated were making up the bulk of the metrics across the country, U.S. officials and news outlets cited the state-level data as proof the vaccines worked.
The CDC still presents data on its website for COVID-19 cases and deaths by vaccination status. The data,based on statistics from 31 health departments, has repeatedly been offered by the agency as evidence of vaccine effectiveness.
The data is presented as incidence rates. Efforts to obtain the raw numbers have not yet been successful. According to the rates, the unvaccinated were 2.1 times more likely to test positive in June and five times more likely to die from COVID-19in June than the fully vaccinated.
Separately, the CDC presents data on COVID-19 hospitalizations based on a hospital network in 14 states that it funds. But the agency has stopped listing fully vaccinated people. Instead, it lists only the unvaccinated and the boosted.
State officials are advised by the CDC not to report raw numbers by vaccination status, because the percentage of vaccinated people among COVID-19 cases rises with either increasing vaccination coverage or decreasing vaccine effectiveness. Officials are recommended to reportdata as incidence rates or rate ratios, which adjust for differences between the unvaccinated and vaccinated populations such as age. The rates are described as more stable and directly related to vaccine effectiveness.
Most states only report age-adjusted data or only present raw data in large chunks, such as from the beginning of the pandemic. The Epoch Times reviewed percentages and numbers from states that do report them, and obtained monthly or weekly breakdowns from some states. It also obtained unadjusted data from others that have never been reported before. Some states stopped reporting metrics by vaccination status after inquiries from The Epoch Times. Their reports were saved before they stopped.
Hilary Lin and Angel Yuan contributed to this report.
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Zachary Stieber covers U.S. and world news. He is based in Maryland.
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Meiling Lee is a health reporter for The Epoch Times.
A vaccine recently created for monkeys offered equal protection against most COVID-19 variants, including Omicronin addition to the original SARS virus from the early 2000s.
The vaccine, developed by researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in California, is protein-based like traditional flu vaccines, as opposed to mRNA-based COVID vaccines like those from Pfizer and Moderna. It was administered in a two-dose series to rhesus macaquesa type of old world monkeyin hopes of immunizing them against COVID-19, according to an article published earlier this month in Science Translational Medicine.
The results surprised researchers, who found that the vaccine was equally effective against most COVID variants of concern and, in some cases, highly effective against Omicron subvariants. It also provided protection against SARS, a coronavirus that appeared in China in 2002 before spreading to four other countries. SARS infected more than 8,000, killing about 10% and devastating regional economies.
The robust immune response of the rhesus monkeys is fascinating, Raiees Andrabi, an investigator in the institutes department of immunology and microbiology, told Fortune. And it prompts the question of whether scientists can engineer a vaccine that elicits a similar response in humans.
The robust antibody response of the studys monkeys stands in contrast to how first-generation COVID vaccines have protected humans. The original COVID vaccines typically dont defend against Omicron subvariants until a first booster dose.
Even then, such protection is typically limited to severe disease and death. Those shortcomings have prompted Pfizer and Moderna to recently tweak their formulas in a bid to better protect against infection from now-dominant variants BA.4 and BA.5.
The results of the Scripps trial are great news for rhesus macaques, no doubt. The good news for humans is that the trial alerted scientists to a region on COVID-19s spike protein that, if targeted by a vaccine, is more likely to lead to the takedown of all SARS viruses a vaccinated person encounters.
Creating a vaccine that works similarly in humans would be a challenge owing to relatively small but important genetic differences, but this is not to say its impossible, Andrabi said.
While Andrabis team awaits the results of related studies, it will continue to work on a pan-betacoronavirus vaccine that would provide protection against a broader family of coronaviruses. The family includes SARS; COVID-19; viruses like OC43 that typically cause common colds; and MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012. MERS spread to nearly 30 countries, infecting about 2,500 and killing more than a third.
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German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach speaks during a news conference, in Berlin, Germany, August 24, 2022. REUTERS/Michele Tantussi
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BERLIN, Aug 24 (Reuters) - German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Wednesday he expects a wave of COVID-19 infections this autumn but ruled out further lockdowns or school closures.
He made the comments after a cabinet meeting during which the government approved stricter mask rules on trains and planes from October.
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Writing by Rachel More; editing by Matthias Williams
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Good evening. Im Karen Kaplan, and its Tuesday, Aug. 23. Heres the latest on whats happening with the coronavirus in California and beyond.
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Perhaps there have been points during the pandemic when youve felt let down by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Maybe it was back in the early days of the outbreak when the CDC used a faulty reagent in its initial batch of coronavirus test kits, leaving the country in the dark about how widely the virus had spread.
Maybe it was when the agency did a 180 on face masks, suddenly recommending them after insisting for weeks they were only necessary in healthcare settings.
Maybe it was when the CDC finally acknowledged that the coronavirus spreads mainly through the air but declined to pair that update with any new guidance on how to stay safe.
Or maybe it was when you learned that being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 didnt necessarily mean you were up to date with your shots.
Sadly, there are many options to choose from. And theyre not limited to COVID-19 the early response to the monkeypox outbreak hasnt exactly vindicated the agency.
You might have some harsh words for the CDC. So does its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
To be frank, we are responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes, Walensky said in a video circulated last week to the CDCs 11,000 employees.
Those mistakes cant be written off as reasonable reactions to a never-before-seen threat, she added. Nor can they be blamed on political interference from either the Trump or Biden White House.
Walenskys sobering assessment followed a fact-finding mission that included interviews with more than 100 public health experts from both inside and outside the CDC, my colleague Melissa Healy reports.
An honest and unbiased read of our recent history will yield the same conclusion, Walensky said. It is time for CDC to change.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at the agencys headquarters in Atlanta.
(Brynn Anderson / Associated Press)
At the top of her list is improving its ability to explain a health threat to the public and doing so early, often and authoritatively.
To succeed, CDC researchers will need to streamline the way they gather data from state and county public health agencies and large healthcare organizations. Then theyll need to digest that data in short order so they can explain it to the public and use it to justify any guidance they have to offer.
The faster the CDCs public health pronouncements are issued and the easier they are to understand, the more compliance it can expect, Walensky said. The agency will also do a better job of communicating with other government agencies so they dont contradict one another and call everyones credibility into question.
All this hinges on better cooperation with local health agencies, which arent required to share data with the CDC if they dont want to. At times during the pandemic, Florida, Texas and a variety of other states have declined to let the CDC know how many of their residents were getting vaccinated, how many were infected, and how many had died of COVID-19. Their omissions forced the agency to make assumptions about the missing data and proceed with potentially significant blind spots.
A bill introduced in Congress last month the Improving DATA in Public Health Act could help the CDC overcome those obstacles. Congress could also help by giving the CDC more authority to shift its budgets around during a health emergency, and by making up for years of reduced funding that left public health agencies ill-equipped to respond to COVID-19.
Health departments could have gotten an earlier jump on monitoring the coronavirus shenanigans if they had already established strong wastewater surveillance systems and set up labs to conduct routine genetic sequencing of viral specimens. Now theyre in place, but the CDC needs extra money to maintain and improve them.
An agency-wide reboot of its capabilities and culture sure sounds like a tall order. But the CDC has done difficult things in the past. In its first decade alone it eliminated three major threats to Americans health: smallpox, malaria and polio.
Sure they can reform themselves, said Lorien Abroms, who teaches public health communications strategy at George Washington University. They came from a place of greatness. We used to lead the world on epidemiological intelligence. I definitely think we can go back to that.
California cases and deaths as of 3:28 p.m. on Tuesday:
Track Californias coronavirus spread and vaccination efforts including the latest numbers and how they break down with our graphics.
After the initial Omicron surge this winter pushed the number of coronavirus infections to record heights, the CDC made a practical decision about contact tracing: It was no longer a feasible way to keep case numbers in check.
Universal case investigation and contact tracing are not recommended for COVID-19, the agency said on its website. Instead, it advised local health departments to prioritize high-risk settings, such as nursing homes and prisons.
The track record of contact tracers in Los Angeles County shows why this advice came about. In January, there were weeks when fewer than 10% of the people who were supposed to be interviewed actually were.
Theyve done a little better during the second Omicron wave this spring and summer, reaching close to 30% of the people assigned to them. But even when they got through, their interviews rarely led to follow-up calls to notify others that they might have been exposed, my colleague Emily Alpert Reyes reports.
The contact tracers low success rate wasnt necessarily their fault. In July, there were only about 100 staffers available to reach the thousands of residents who became newly infected each day. Earlier in the pandemic, that work was spread among roughly 2,800 people.
Low staffing wasnt the only hindrance. Omicron and its subvariants have shorter incubation times than their predecessors, so the window for reaching exposed people before they become spreaders is smaller.
Thanks to general pandemic burnout, many residents arent inclined to respond to the calls, emails and text messages they get from contact tracers. (The L.A. County Department of Public Health is trying to overcome this apathy by offering gift cards to those who get in touch.)
And lets not forget that a large proportion of infections are never reported to the county in the first place.
When you put it all together, it becomes clear that the odds of making a significant dent in the spread of COVID-19 are stacked against contact tracers.
Thats certainly the view of Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs with the National Assn. of County and City Health Officials.
Contact tracing is not really making the impact that it did at one point, Casalotti told Alpert Reyes. With communities broadly reopened, its very difficult to say how many contacts you had, and even if you can say that, you may have 20 or 30 or 40 contacts. ... The logistics of actually contacting those people is very difficult. Theres not enough time in the day.
Things were different in March 2020, when the number of infections due to the novel coronavirus was still small enough for epidemiologists to aim for containment. After the outbreak became too big to control, contact tracers were still able to slow things down and buy people time until COVID-19 vaccines became available, said Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist and demographer at UC Irvine who studies infectious diseases.
But at this stage of the pandemic, when so many people are taking so few precautions to avoid the coronavirus, I just dont see that were going to contact trace our way out of this, he said.
Other localities including New York City and Washington, D.C. have recognized this and wound down their contact-tracing efforts. The CDC reiterated its stance that contact tracing is only worthwhile in high-risk settings when it streamlined its COVID-19 guidance this month.
The L.A. County Department of Public Health has a team dedicated to contact tracing in nursing homes and correctional facilities. But its not ready to end contact tracing for the general public, especially when it comes to cases involving elderly residents and people in neighborhoods where transmission levels are particularly high.
Maureen Calderon, a contact tracer for the L.A. County Department of Public Health, works from home in Glendora.
(Madeleine Hordinski/Los Angeles Times)
That decision makes sense to some experts.
Dismantling the infrastructure for being able to effectively do contact tracing does not serve public health at all, said Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at UC San Francisco.
Preventing infections is only one benefit of contact tracing, he noted. Learning that youve been exposed could result in earlier testing and if warranted quicker treatment with Paxlovid, a drug that works best when started early.
Dr. John Swartzberg, a clinical professor emeritus at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, is also a fan.
Any contact tracing is good contact tracing as long as the resources are not being taken from other things that are more effective, he said.
Its value will rise when case numbers fall and contact tracers wont be so overwhelmed, he added. The easiest way to make sure theyll be in place at that point is to not get rid of them in the first place.
See the latest on Californias vaccination progress with our tracker.
America, Id like to introduce you to the Omicron subvariant called BA.4.6. Its not causing much mischief in the U.S. at least not yet but scientists are watching it closely to see if it stays that way.
The CDC estimates that BA.4.6 accounts for 6.3% of the coronavirus specimens now in circulation in the U.S. Thats up slightly from 5.6% last week and 5% the week before. (BA.5 still dominates, with 89% of the coronavirus market share.)
BA.4.6 is less prevalent in California and other Western states, making up just 2.4% of samples sequenced in the two federal regions that encompass the Pacific coast. Its even less common in Los Angeles County, accounting for about 1.5% of cases here.
But it has a much bigger footprint in the region that includes Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, making up nearly 16% of cases in those states last week. That suggests BA.4.6 may have the potential to overtake BA.5 and perhaps spark a new wave of infections, experts said.
Past outbreaks in California have hit public transit employees harder than other workers, a new study shows. From the start of the pandemic up through May of this year, there were 24.7 coronavirus outbreaks for every 1,000 workplaces throughout the state. But the odds of an outbreak were much higher for public transportation industries 3.5 times higher for workers in air transportation and five times higher for workers in bus service and other forms of urban transit.
The study, which was conducted by researchers at the California Department of Public Health, identified 340 outbreaks in public transportation industries that resulted in 5,641 coronavirus infections and 537 COVID-19 deaths. The risk of death due to COVID-19 was twice as high for bus and rail service workers as it was for California workers as a whole.
The findings offer some justification for L.A. Countys mask mandate in public transportation settings. The study authors noted that essential workers in these industries should get priority access to COVID-19 vaccines and other prevention tools.
In other California news, a church in San Jose that faced a huge fine for disregarding state and county rules about indoor gatherings will not have to pay up, a state appeals court ruled.
Calvary Chapel San Jose, along with its pastors, were held in contempt of court for holding large religious services in defiance of health orders aimed at preventing coronavirus spread. The Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that those restrictions were justified. A year later, after the composition of the court changed, the high court said limits on indoor worship infringed on the constitutional right to exercise ones religion freely.
That ruling prompted the California appellate court to toss the roughly $200,000 fine last week. But Santa Clara County officials said they would still go after the church for $2.3 million worth of penalties it racked up for violating other public health rules, including ones requiring face masks.
Theres been some action on the COVID-19 vaccine front. Pfizer said Tuesday that the vaccine it developed with BioNTech for children under 5 was 73% effective. The data behind that figure was gathered between March and June as part of a trial that tested three shots of the low-dose vaccine against three shots of a placebo.
The company said there were 13 cases of COVID-19 among the 794 children all between the ages of 6 months and 4 years who were randomly selected to get the vaccine. Another 351 children got the placebo, and 21 of them came down with COVID-19.
A similar vaccine from Moderna is also available for infants, toddlers and preschool-age kids. However, only about 6% of children between the ages of 6 months and 4 years have received a COVID-19 vaccine since they became available in June, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Teens now have a new option for their primary COVID-19 vaccination series. The Food and Drug Administration authorized Novavaxs COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in adolescents ages 12 to 17 on Friday, and the CDC recommended it on Monday. The two-shot series uses harmless coronavirus proteins to prime a recipients immune system, an old-school technology meant to appeal to those who arent comfortable with the new-fangled mRNA vaccines.
Pfizer and BioNTech have asked the FDA to authorize their new COVID-19 shots that have been tweaked to target the BA.4 and BA.5 strains as well as the original version of the virus. If the FDA gives its blessing, and then the CDC follows suit, the new shots could be available for a fall booster campaign in a matter of weeks.
The federal government has already struck a deal to buy 105 million doses of the targeted booster shot. It also has a contract to buy 66 million doses of a targeted vaccine from Moderna, which is expected to go before the FDA soon.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, is eager to see the updated vaccines go into Americans arms.
Its going to be really important that people this fall and winter get the new shots, he said. Its designed for the virus thats out there.
And finally, Dr. Anthony Fauci has set a date for his retirement December 2022.
The nations top infectious diseases expert had already said he would leave the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases before the end of President Bidens current term. Now, after 54 years at NIAID, there are only a few months left.
During his tenure, the country has weathered outbreaks of HIV/AIDS, SARS, H1N1 flu and Ebola. But it was the COVID-19 pandemic that made him a household name. His institute was instrumental in the speedy development of COVID-19 vaccines, and his straight-talking style endeared him to many Americans though not all of them.
If ever there was a situation where you wanted a unified approach and everybody pulling together for the common good, it would be when youre in the middle of a public health crisis, Fauci said.
Todays question comes from readers who want to know: Is there any reason to keep my cloth masks?
This question comes from a reader who came upon her little-used cloth masks while doing some back-to-school cleaning and wondered whether they served any purpose in a world where disposable surgical masks and higher-quality N95, KN94 and KN95s are readily available.
Its true that some masks are better than others, but its also true that any mask is better than no mask at all, said Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, a professor at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy who has studied the value of masks.
Anything in front of your mouth will be able to block at least to some degree the respiratory droplets that come out of your mouth, and maybe it will block droplets in the air that come into your nose or mouth, he said.
A cloth mask might not prevent all viral particles from entering your airways, but reducing the amount of virus that makes it through may mean the difference between a mild and a severe case of COVID-19, he added: Its not just about breathing in the virus, its how much virus you breathe in.
Lee offered one more use for a cloth mask: It can extend the life of an N95 respirator. Although N95s were designed to be single-use face coverings, research during the pandemic has shown that they remain effective through several wearings, and a cloth mask can help protect it from being damaged.
If you have a choice of wearing an N95, you should go for the N95, Lee said.
We want to hear from you. Email us your coronavirus questions, and well do our best to answer them. Wondering if your questions already been answered? Check out our archive here.
(Aaron Favila / Associated Press)
The photo above shows students in the Philippines as they lined up Monday for the first day of school.
Its more than the first day of a new academic year its their first time heading back into classrooms since pandemic lockdowns sent millions of pupils home back in 2020.
In the U.S., some schools shut down for just a few months. Even those that remained closed for most of the 2020-2021 school year welcomed students back to campus last fall, and they kept their doors open even as Delta and Omicron swept through their communities.
Not so in the Philippines. Former President Rodrigo Duterte was afraid that having millions of children gather in person would spark new outbreaks. He stuck with that stance until his term ended on June 30.
The extended school closures didnt help the Asian nation improve its alarmingly low literacy rates. A study last year by the World Bank reported that about 90% of Filipino children under 10 couldnt read and understand a simply story, a condition it called learning poverty.
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These assaults on our nations public health institutions undermined the nations coronavirus response, he added.
Much of these pressure campaigns were reported in early 2020 by POLITICO and other outlets and President Donald Trump publicly called out the FDA and its commissioner on multiple occasions. But the committee report offers new color, through emails, texts and official testimony from Hahn about just how persistent some of these efforts inside the White House were throughout the summer and fall of 2020.
A substantial portion of the report focuses on Peter Navarro, a former trade adviser under Trump, who worked on the administrations coronavirus response. Navarro collaborated frequently with Steven Hatfill, an adjunct virology professor at George Washington University, who was one of Navarros advisers and worked on the federal coronavirus response.
Pushing for hydroxychloroquine: According to emails collected over the course of the subcommittees investigation, Navarro and Hatfill rallied other White House officials to pressure Hahn to reinstate the emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine after the agency revoked it in June 2020. At one point, Hatfill characterized the disagreement between White House officials and the FDA as a forthcoming knife fight to an unnamed, outside ally over email.
The report also found that Navarro tasked Hatfill with coming up with a presentation to get the FDA to reauthorize the drug. At one point, Hatfill wrote to William ONeill, a cardiologist at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, and suggested conducting a prophylactic study of the medication in a correctional facility experiencing a coronavirus outbreak. (The report doesnt say how ONeill responded to the request.)
Hatfill and Navarro sought to discredit other prominent health officials who spoke out against the use of hydroxychloroquine, including Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The two discussed plans to get the Department of Justice and the Health and Human Services Departments inspector general to conduct an investigation into Fauci and his email use. Hatfill, according to the report, pushed for Faucis removal throughout the fall, telling Navarro in September, You really need to consider what is likely to happen over the next 2 months if this little idiot and his Covid treatment panel is not fired. Two weeks later, Hatfill wrote that [t]here will be a house cleaning after elections. [A] really good cleaning.
In a statement to POLITICO, Navarro maintained that he believed hydroxychloroquine was a valuable treatment for Covid-19, and that he was justified in carrying out Trumps orders to apply pressure to the FDA to make sure the drug was widely accessible. The partisan House Select Subcommittee report wrongly perpetuates one of the most deadly lies of the pandemic, namely that the safe and powerful therapeutic to treat COVID, hydroxychloroquine, was somehow dangerous, he said. I would lose that battle with the FDA and hundreds of thousands of Americans would needlessly die because of Stephen Hahn, Janet Woodcock, Rick Bright, Tony Fauci, and the broader FDA bureaucracy. The result will forever be a stain on the FDA and shame on the House Subcommittee for perpetuating the lie.
Political pressure: In multiple instances, the subcommittee said it found evidence of senior Trump officials planning to take actions that could benefit the administration politically.
Officials tried to pressure the FDA into authorizing convalescent plasma around the time of the Republican National Convention, emails reveal. The proposed investigation into Fauci would take place around the time of the 2020 presidential election in an attempt to sway voters in favor of Trump, the report says.
The Trump administration also tried to pressure the FDA to authorize the first Covid-19 vaccines ahead of the presidential election. When Hahn testified to the subcommittee in January 2022, he said that White House officials said they would not sign off on emergency use authorization language that required a 60-day safety follow up for late-stage clinical trials. Ultimately, the FDA went ahead with the 60-day follow-up plan without an explicit blessing from the White House, though the White House later cleared it.
And their emails: The report also found evidence that Navarro and Hatfill had used a private email server for federal communications. The Department of Justice has sued Navarro get him to turn over other emails sent from his personal email account related to presidential matters, first revealed by a separate report from the the subcommittee.
All my White House records are digitally preserved pending the resolution of a civil suit filed by the National Archives, which increasingly appears to have been unlawfully weaponized by the Department of Justice against both me and President Trump, Navarro said.
Hatfill could not be reached for comment.
This is the second report in a series of investigations into the way Trump administration officials managed the coronavirus. The first found that the administration leaned heavily on the herd immunity theory around the virus spread to delay federal action. The committee is still investigating other aspects of the federal response to the pandemic.
Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday reiterated his long-standing promise that New Jersey will conduct a review of the states response to COVID-19, including how it handled the crisis in long-term care facilities yet he still does not have a timeframe for when that will happen.
I dont have a date for you, but were committed to it, Murphy told reporters when asked about a coronavirus post-mortem something he promised in the early days of the pandemic after an unrelated event in Passaic City.
He stressed New Jersey is still not out of the woods 2 1/2 years after the state reported its first case.
Murphys comments come after the state agreed last week to pay a second round of settlements totaling $15.9 million to 71 families of residents who died in New Jerseys three state-run veterans homes in the early days of the virus.
An earlier agreement in December to resolve wrongful death claims paid out nearly $53 million to the families of 119 residents who died from COVID-19 in the veterans homes between March and May of 2020.
The state admitted no wrongdoing as part of either settlement.
At the same time, employees at the veterans home at Menlo Park have filed lawsuits alleging the state, the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, the governors office, and administrators of the nursing home put them in harms way as the virus struck. The complaints accuse the state of being grossly negligent, knowingly careless, and reckless.
MORE: Lies about deaths, orders not to wear masks: Lawsuits by staff allege chaos in N.J. veterans homes as COVID soared.
Murphy was asked Tuesday about the states response to the settlements and lawsuits.
Not a lot to say, other than God bless our veterans and the lives of those that were lost and the families, the governor said. Hopefully the settlement that was announced on Friday which is the second of its kind in some small way allows the families to move on as compared to something that would have been drawn out. These things settle for different reasons unique to each situation.
Asked if that means there wont be a post-mortem on the states response to the pandemic, Murphy said: There absolutely will be a post-mortem.
The governor noted the state hired a firm to do a no-holds barred assessment of long-term care procedures, policies, laws as a general matter.
In 2020, the Murphy administration hired healthcare consultant Manatt Health to investigate how New Jersey nursing homes responded to the pandemic as the death toll spiraled out of control. New Jersey was forced to seek emergency assistance from the Veterans Administration and the National Guard moves that were criticized as being too little and too late.
The consultants concluded that long-term care facilities overall were underprepared and under-staffed to deal with the pandemic, and called for tougher state scrutiny. But the study did not scrutinize the states performance.
A lot of things have come out of that, Murphy said Tuesday. Laws that Ive signed, executive orders, changes in practices and policies. None of that is in lieu of what will be a complete post-mortem, not just for veterans homes or long-term care but for the entirety of the pandemic.
Unfortunately, we still have just under 1,000 people still in the hospital as I sit here today, he added. It is clearly something were living with, but were also clearly not out of the woods.
Murphy first promised a post-mortem on the states handling of COVID-19 in April 2020, when New Jersey an early coronavirus epicenter was still dealing with the initial spread of the illness, a frantic period of time when the states case and death numbers and death rose rapidly.
Were going to do our own post-mortem in terms of where were we prepared, where were we not prepared? he said during one of his then-daily coronavirus briefings in Trenton. I dont know how thats going to take shape, but I promise you that we can do that.
The Democratic governor has faced repeated criticism from Republicans over how the state responded to the crisis in long-term care facilities. Notably, one Democratic lawmaker, state Sen. Nia Gill of Essex County has publicly called for a bipartisan committee to investigate.
New Jersey, a state of 9.2 million residents, has reported more than 34,000 COVID-19 deaths since the state reported its first case in March 2020. More than 9,500 of those deaths have been among residents and staff members at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to state data.
The state on Monday reported another 604 confirmed COVID-19 cases and three deaths as its seven-day average for confirmed positive tests fell to 1,774 a 17% drop from a week ago and a 39% drop from a month ago. Murphy and other officials have repeatedly said the pandemic is not over, but residents should protect themselves by getting vaccinated and learn how to live with the virus.
NJ Advance Media staff writers Susan K. Livio and Ted Sherman contributed to this report.
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Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @johnsb01.
The Department of Health today published a report on antibody data from the COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS). The findings set out in this report relate to estimates for NI for the week beginning 18 July 2022.
This report is part of the series of Northern Ireland publications from the COVID-19 Infection Survey. Further information can be found on the Department of Health website.
Key Findings
In this bulletin, we report percentages of the population that are estimated to have antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the specific virus that causes coronavirus (COVID-19). Two levels are reported; a 179 ng/ml level, which is consistent with previous publications, and an 800 ng/ml level.
Please note that the results in this bulletin are based on data collected from study worker home visits up until 24 July 2022. We have now moved to a more flexible remote data collection method. Participants can complete the survey online or by telephone, and swab and blood samples are returned through the post (or by courier for some participants). As a result of this change, there will be a pause to the publication of our antibodies bulletin on Wednesday 7 September 2022. This is to enable final checks to be carried out before the results from this new method are released for the first time in our antibodies bulletin on Wednesday 21 September 2022. For more information about this change, please see the recent ONSblog post.
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