Saturday's data increased the county's cumulative totals to 348,850 cases and 4,006 fatalities since the pandemic began.
SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. San Diego County public health officials have reported 733 new COVID-19 infections and four additional deaths, and also cited a slight increase in coronavirus-related hospital admissions.
Saturday's data increased the county's cumulative totals to 348,850 cases and 4,006 fatalities since the pandemic began.
The number of COVID patients in county hospitals increased from 460 on Friday to 471 Saturday, with 158 of those patients in intensive care, according to state figures.
A total of 20,847 new tests were logged, and the percentage of positive cases over the past seven days was 4.0%.
According to the county Health and Human Services Agency COVID-19 Watch report released Wednesday, since March 1, more than 96% of hospitalizations -- 2,150 -- and nearly 89% of deaths -- 208 -- have occurred in people who are not fully vaccinated. The report, which covers data through Sept. 11, shows that 75 fully vaccinated San Diegans have required hospitalization and 26 have died.
Furthermore, 81.3% -- or 65,635 -- of the COVID-19 cases in that time frame have occurred in San Diegans who are not fully vaccinated compared to 18.7% -- or 15,138 -- cases in people who were fully vaccinated.
San Diego County's case rate per 100,000 residents is 33.6 overall, 13.9 for fully vaccinated people and 59.3 for those not fully vaccinated.
Nearly 4.7 million vaccine doses have been administered in the county, with around 2.5 million -- or 87.1% of county residents -- having received at least one dose. Fully vaccinated county residents now number more than 2.16 million, or around 77.2% of the county's eligible population.
No-cost COVID-19 vaccines are widely available. They can be found at medical providers, pharmacies, community clinics and county public health centers for people who do not have a medical provider.
A list of locations and more information is available at coronavirus- sd.com/vaccine.
WATCH RELATED: New research indicates Moderna vaccine more effective in keeping those with COVID out of hospitals
People opposed to COVID-19 vaccines often embrace ivermectin, a drug that's been touted as an effective prevention and treatment for COVID-19, which they think is not getting the attention it deserves. Here, an anti-vaccination protester takes part in a rally against vaccine mandates, in Santa Monica, Calif. Ringo Chiu/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
People opposed to COVID-19 vaccines often embrace ivermectin, a drug that's been touted as an effective prevention and treatment for COVID-19, which they think is not getting the attention it deserves. Here, an anti-vaccination protester takes part in a rally against vaccine mandates, in Santa Monica, Calif.
Through July and August, Julie Smith watched her husband Jeffrey get worse and worse from COVID-19. In early July, the healthy, 51-year-old outdoorsman had tested positive for the coronavirus. Within a week, he was admitted to the intensive care unit at a hospital near their home, in the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio.
The hospital treated him with antiviral drugs, convalescent plasma and steroids, but he continued to decline. Weeks later he was on a ventilator, in a medically induced coma "on death's doorstep," Smith wrote in a legal complaint filed August 20.
Smith felt the hospital had given up on her husband, but she could not, according to the complaint. After doing research on the internet, she sued the hospital to require it to treat her husband with ivermectin an inexpensive anti-parasitic drug that's been used to cure animals and people from worms and lice since the 1980s.
U.S. health authorities and most doctors do not recommend using it to prevent or treat COVID-19, citing a lack of clear evidence on whether the drug works. Yet myths and beliefs around the drug have taken on a life of their own, fueled by a small group of doctors whose views diverge from the medical consensus, by right wing commentators and by internet groups where people share tips on sourcing and dosing.
That people like Smith, and a handful of other families of COVID-19 patients, are turning to the courts to enforce treatment with the drug, shows how heated the debate over ivermectin has come to be in the U.S.
"There's misinformation on both sides," says Jennifer Granston, head of insights at Zignal Labs, a firm that conducts data analysis on internet trends. She cited inflated, unsubstantiated claims of both the drug's efficacy and its harms. "At the end of the day, does this medication help COVID patients or does it not? That's a scientific issue."
How did a science question about the efficacy of an inexpensive, everyday drug become an inflamed public morality debate where people on both sides believe the wrong position could cost lives? It's a tale that spans science and politics, pitting health officials against celebrities and communal responsibilities against individual rights.
And it's a debate that public health experts worry could prolong the pandemic, as individuals forgo vaccines and proven prevention measures and instead take up alternative treatments that may not be effective.
Protesters gathered for an anti-vaccine rally in Cincinnati in August carry a sign backing ivermectin. Belief in the drug's efficacy often goes hand-in-hand with vaccine hesitancy. Phil Didion/USA Today Network/Reuters hide caption
Protesters gathered for an anti-vaccine rally in Cincinnati in August carry a sign backing ivermectin. Belief in the drug's efficacy often goes hand-in-hand with vaccine hesitancy.
Advocates for ivermectin have called it a wonder drug and it is, for treating parasites. In the 1970s, a team of researchers, headed by Kitasato Institute researcher Satoshi Omura and the drug company Merck discovered a set of powerful antiparasitic compounds in bacteria from a dirt sample dug up from a seaside golf course near Tokyo.
From that compound, Merck developed medicines that kill a wide range of parasites that plague animals and humans. Ivermectin, introduced in the early 1980s as a drug for livestock, became a blockbuster, making over $1 billion in sales a year. The version of the drug launched for human use cured disfiguring parasitic infections like elephantiasis and river blindness in developing countries. (It eradicated the latter in several countries.)
Omura and William Campbell, his counterpart at Merck, shared a Nobel Prize in 2015 for their discoveries related to the drug.
Early in the pandemic, given its track record, it seemed worth trying against COVID-19. In June 2020, a group of Australian researchers published a paper showing that large quantities of ivermectin could stop the coronavirus from replicating in cell cultures.
"But pretty quickly, people realized the problem with that was something called 'pharmacokinetic mismatch,'" says Laurel Bristow, a science communicator and clinical research coordinator at Emory University. The amount of ivermectin a person would need to take to achieve that effect is up to 100 times the dose approved for humans. At that concentration, the drug might stop the virus and may also harm the patient, she says.
The challenge for researchers has been to figure out whether a safe dose could be effective, says Bristow. Numerous studies have been published and a few large trials are still underway.
Ivermectin research on COVID-19 published to date does not look promising, according to researchers who have closely considered the evidence.
"You have a large number of trials that have been done. Many of them are poorly done. They're too small, they're too short, they don't measure the right things," says Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a former associate commissioner at the FDA.
And at least two influential preprints that supported the use of ivermectin were later retracted when they were found to contain flawed or fabricated data.
Lurie and other health experts point to a review of the studies on ivermectin and COVID-19 published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, considered to be the gold standard in assessing evidence on current medical topics. In reviewing the available research through May 2021, the Cochrane researchers found "no evidence to support the use of ivermectin for treating or preventing COVID-19 infection," though they acknowledged the data is limited.
Clinicians associated with a U.S. organization, the Front Line COVID19 Critical Care Alliance, maintain there are dozens of studies that show a positive impact on COVID-19. But many of the studies they point to were omitted from the Cochrane analysis because the reviewers concluded that their designs were faulty or drew on inaccurate comparisons.
"That doesn't preclude the notion that the next clinical trial, if properly conducted, will not be one that actually demonstrates effectiveness," Lurie says, "But at the moment, we can only work from what we currently know. And what we currently know is that there's insufficient evidence to recommend this product at this time."
Large, rigorous clinical trials are underway including one in the U.K. run by Oxford University, and an NIH-funded study in the U.S. led by researchers at Duke University with multiple sites around the country. Emory researcher Bristow is lead coordinator for one of the study sites.
"People keep acting like there's this huge censorship about ivermectin when really we're actively working on figuring it out," she says, "We're trying to evaluate the potential efficacy of ivermectin for preventing hospitalization and relieving symptoms faster."
Even if research showed an advantage to ivermectin, that wouldn't make it a miracle COVID-19 cure, warns Dr. Aaron Friedberg, a primary care physician who supervises medical residents in the hospital at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
"Ultimately, when we're talking about things being 'effective,' we just mean it works, even some," he says, explaining that steroids are considered effective COVID-19 treatments, in that they slightly increase the chances of survival among people treated properly with them.
Meanwhile, some people are overdosing on ivermectin. While the drug is generally considered to be safe in doses approved for human use, many who are taking it as an unproven treatment for COVID-19 are using more than the typically prescribed amount, says Michael Ganio of the American Society of Health System Pharmacists, or using concentrated forms meant for livestock. And that has prompted warnings from U.S. federal agencies.
Bristow says the research community is devoting more time and resources to studying this drug, compared with other treatments, because of the immense interest around it. As was the case with hydroxychloroquine, though, she cautions that interest in the drug may be driven more by ideology than science.
In May 2020, as the nation struggled to contain the coronavirus without a vaccine, then-President Trump announced that he was taking hydroxychloroquine in an attempt to ward off infection, despite warnings from the FDA. The idea that a cheap, widely available drug could end the pandemic provided an alternative solution for an administration struggling to contain the virus.
"It fits a political narrative, which is about reopening the economy as soon as possible," says Yunkang Yang, a disinformation researcher at George Washington University, who recently co-authored a book chapter on how right-wing media and the Trump administration worked together to push hydroxychloroquine. "The miracle cure paints a rosy picture of the situation. It is portrayed as a quick fix that is designed to persuade people to go back to work."
A protester at a "Freedom Rally" to protest vaccination mandate in New York City in September carried a sign supporting ivermectin. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images hide caption
A protester at a "Freedom Rally" to protest vaccination mandate in New York City in September carried a sign supporting ivermectin.
When COVID-19 vaccines arrived last winter, they relieved some of the pressure but more Republicans were skeptical of the vaccines than Democrats, a divide that has only widened over time.
So the hunt for alternative cures continued to have political value. In December 2020, Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wis., invited Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care physician then-affiliated with St. Luke's Aurora Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wis., to testify about ivermectin at a Senate Committee Hearing. Kory is a founding member and spokesperson for the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance or FLCCC, a small group of doctors whose views on ivermectin diverge from the wider medical community.
At the Senate hearing, he stated that the drug was "proving to be of miraculous impact" and claimed unequivocally that it has a prophylactic effect against COVID-19: "It basically obliterates transmission of this virus. If you take it, you will not get sick," he said.
Kory's comments circulated widely on the internet, but were not backed by solid scientific evidence available at the time or since. YouTube later removed videos of the hearing from their platforms, deeming it "inappropriate content," but Kory's championing of ivermectin had already received more than 1 million views, according to an AP report.
The video's removal led to cries of censorship from the right, weaving a thread of conspiracy through the narrative for those who were looking for it.
Soon right-wing media figures such as Fox News host Laura Ingraham began touting the drug. Other influencers such as comedian Joe Rogan also amplified the reputation of ivermectin Rogan promoted the drug on his super popular podcast and later announced that he took it himself for COVID-19.
For people inclined to be suspicious of government scientists and federal policies on issues such as mask-wearing, ivermectin filled the place of the failed hydroxychloroquine as an alternative to the official federal guidance on how to prevent and treat COVID-19.
"It fits into the bigger narrative about the so-called 'medical deep state,' [in which] scientists, pharmaceutical and political elites have an interest in making people use more expensive, experimental drugs" to increase the profits of the pharmaceutical industry, Yang says. "And they have an interest in not showing the public the cheap, widely available drugs that can supposedly cure COVID-19." (Ingraham has labeled Dr. Anthony Fauci as part of the "medical deep state.")
Ivermectin is a very effective treatment for certain parasites in humans and animals but there's yet no clear evidence that it helps treat COVID-19. Mike Stewart/AP hide caption
Ivermectin is a very effective treatment for certain parasites in humans and animals but there's yet no clear evidence that it helps treat COVID-19.
Midway through the summer, the delta variant started to burn through the United States. Cases exploded in places with low vaccination rates. In hotspots across the South and Midwest, worried people sometimes turned to the internet for answers.
Online mentions for ivermectin spiked: 74% of the topic's mentions for this year have taken place in the past two months, with a huge increase in August, Zignal's analysis shows. "That's where we're really starting to see this story take off," Zignal's Granston says, "I'd also say, that's when we really start to see the story split."
Rhetoric on both sides heated up. The CDC, FDA and other public health agencies came out strongly against the use of the drug on the basis of the poor quality of evidence supporting it so far. Meanwhile proponents of the "miracle cure" dug in, often citing the handful of medical experts affiliated with the FLCCC who defend it.
"Clear instances of disinformation are relatively easy to debunk," says Granston. "The really hard stuff is where you have conflicting information. This is a very personal issue for people, because you're talking about their health and everybody's really grasping for answers. And that is outpacing the public health officials' knowledge because the scientific studies haven't been conducted on a broad scale yet."
While those studies are underway, some people's belief in ivermectin over other proven options, like masks and vaccines, is giving them a false sense of security and control.
In some cases, the misinformation is actually killing them, says Kolina Koltai, a researcher who studies vaccine dissent at the University of Washington. Koltai likens vaccine refusal to not wearing a seatbelt in a car because you heard of someone who survived an accident without a seatbelt.
"If someone thinks they're safe [because they're taking ivermectin], they're making a judgment that impacts not only their health but their community's health," she says, "by either use of resources at the hospital, or [by getting and] spreading COVID. That is the real risk and danger of misinformation."
The toll of COVID-19 on people who are unvaccinated has been harsh. By mid September, as the delta variant continued to surge, hospitalizations were at their highest since early February; more than 1,800 people were dying of COVID-19 each day. The vast majority of people who have been hospitalized for or killed by the disease in recent months were not vaccinated.
Julie Smith and her husband were among those who chose to forgo vaccination. Smith said she considered the vaccine to be "experimental," according to a recording of a court hearing in the case shared with NPR by Ohio Capital Journal reporter Jake Zuckerman. "We didn't feel confident that it had been out long enough," Smith testified, "and weren't sure of the damage that would ensue."
Smith's husband spent weeks on a ventilator in the ICU of a hospital near Cincinnati. On August 23, a judge issued an emergency order to the hospital to begin administering 30mg of ivermectin a day to the patient, as prescribed by a Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance doctor. On September 6, a different judge reversed the ruling.
"Everyone involved wants Jeff Smith to get better," Judge Michael Oster wrote in his decision. Still, after reviewing the evidence presented, the judge found "there can be no doubt that the medical and scientific communities do not support the use of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19."
Doctors told the court that Jeffrey Smith's condition had not improved since receiving ivermectin. But Julie Smith believed it had.
As of September 18, Jeffrey was still in the hospital on a ventilator, according to the couple's lawyer Ralph Lorigo.
The case mirrors the splintered conversations that are continuing to take place across the internet.
"It's the perfect storm right now of something that is going to become a lot more complex and a lot more challenging," Zignal's Granston says, "There's no clear side really winning out in this from what we can see."
One more Mainer has died as health officials on Saturday reported another 587coronavirus cases across the state.
Saturdays report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 83,909,according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Thats up from 83,322 on Friday.
Of those, 60,042have been confirmed positive, while 23,867were classified as probable cases, the Maine CDC reported.
With one more Mainer succumbing to the virus, the statewide death toll rose to 982.
The number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in the past 14 days statewide is 5,840. This is an estimation of the current number of active cases in the state, as the Maine CDC is no longer tracking recoveries for all patients. Thats up from 5,744 on Friday.
The new case rate statewide Saturday was 4.39 cases per 10,000 residents, and the total case rate statewide was 626.93.
Maines seven-day average for new coronavirus cases is 486.4, up from 484.9 the day before, up from 347.9 a week ago and up from 166.6 a month ago. That average peaked on Jan. 14 at 625.3.
The most cases have been detected in Mainers younger than 20, while Mainers over 80 years old make up the majority of deaths. More cases and deaths have been recorded in women than men.
So far, 2,404Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness causedby the new coronavirus. Of those, 204 are currently hospitalized with 77 in critical care and 33 on a ventilator. Overall, 56 out of 347 critical care beds and 187 out of 295 ventilators are available.
The total statewide hospitalization rate on Saturday was 17.96 patients per 10,000 residents.
Cases have been reported in Androscoggin (9,286), Aroostook (2,941), Cumberland (19,448), Franklin (1,719), Hancock (1,934), Kennebec (7,855), Knox (1,488), Lincoln (1,409), Oxford (4,116), Penobscot (9,248), Piscataquis (929), Sagadahoc (1,649), Somerset (3,105), Waldo (1,897), Washington (1,229) and York (15,630) counties. Information about where an additional 26 were reported wasnt immediately available.
An additional 1,480 vaccine doses were administered in the previous 24 hours. As of Saturday, 869,183 Mainers are fully vaccinated, or about 73.4 percent of eligible Mainers, according to the Maine CDC.
New Hampshire reported 419 new cases on Friday and five deaths. Vermont reported 234 new cases and two deaths, while Massachusetts reported 2,178 new cases and 21 deaths.
As of Saturday morning, the coronavirus had sickened 41,995,889people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 672,658deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.
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Advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration on Friday greenlighted recommending emergency use authorization of a booster dose of Pfizer's vaccine six months after full vaccination for people 65 and older and those at high risk of severe illness from the virus. The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention is meeting next week with its vaccine advisers, and the agency determines the final approval for the shots.
Dr. Paul Offit, who is a member of the FDA Vaccines Advisory Committee, said vaccinating every eligible Americans remained the most important strategy.
In West Virginia, where 74 people have died from the virus since Wednesday, the governor is pleading for residents to get vaccinated. The state has fully vaccinated only 40.1% of its population, CDC data shows.
"We're either going to run into the fire and get vaccinated right now, or we're going to pile the body bags up until we reach a point in time to where we have enough people that have immunities and enough people that are vaccinated," Gov. Jim Justice said Friday during a news conference. "The only thing I have in my arsenal that will make this get better is for you to get vaccinated. That's all I've got."
In Alabama, the increased availability of hospital beds is only because of the double-digit numbers in Covid-19 deaths, State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said Friday during a news briefing.
"I would just say very respectfully and with compassion ... there are two ways people leave the hospital, and one of them is not very good," Harris said.
The state, where 41% of its residents are fully vaccinated, has been seeing "typically 40 or 50 or sometimes 60 deaths a day," Harris said.
And at least seven pregnant people have died from Covid-19 in Alabama since the pandemic's onset, Harris said. The state also averaged 23 pregnant people hospitalized with Covid-19 over the past week.
FDA advisers OK booster shot for certain high-risk people
The committee stopped short of recommending a booster shot for 16 and older six months after they are fully vaccinated due to concerns about the safety of a booster dose in younger adults and teens. Members also complained about the lack of data about the safety and long-term efficacy of a booster dose.
The vote was messy, with some advisers expressing concern that the move left out health care workers, who are at high risk of infection, if not of severe disease. The FDA asked the advisers to informally expand their recommendation to encompass people at high occupational risk of infection -- and won a yes.
"I think this should demonstrate to the public that the members of this committee are independent of the FDA and that in fact we do bring our voices to the table when we are asked to serve on this committee," Dr. Archana Chatterjee, dean of the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University, said after the last vote.
The issue of independence bubbled to the surface because the Biden administration had announced it would be ready to distribute booster doses as early as Monday -- ahead of any FDA action or even consideration.
Florida sees decline in Covid-19 cases
There was a glimmer of good news from Florida, which has been a virus hotspot, even as the state surpassed 50,000 Covid-19 deaths.
"One-quarter of those deaths have occurred since the surge of infections from the Delta variant, so that puts an exclamation point on the fact, just how deadly the Delta variant has been for all of us," Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said Friday.
Orange County, home to Orlando, saw 372 residents die from Covid-19 in August, said Demings , adding there have been 85 additional deaths since the last briefing on Monday.
However, the county is also "seeing some very promising news," Demings said, as the number of daily infections declines. For the 13th consecutive day, the number of daily cases has been under 1,000 in the county.
"That's more good news," Demings added. "As of today, 72% of eligible residents ages 12 and up have received one or more doses of the vaccine."
Overall, the state is saw fewer than 100,000 new cases of Covid-19 in the past week for the first time since July 16, according to data published Friday by the Florida Department of Health.
New cases per week in Florida have been declining steadily since August 20, when the state hit its peak of 151,880 new cases in a week.
CNN's Maggie Fox, Virginia Langmaid, Amy Simonson, Melissa Alonso and Deanna Hackney contributed to this report.
Liliana Borrero balanced her sleeping baby on one leg as she sat and waited out the 15 minutes a nurse asked her to stick around in case she had any reactions to her first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.
Borrero, 38, was accompanied by all nine of her children, three of whom also received the shot.
They were seated in a room off a hallway in the sprawling Prince of Peace church in Flowery Branch, a suburb about 45 miles northeast of Atlanta. It was a recent Sunday afternoon; a Spanish-language mass had just started in the large chapel nearby.
Borreros decision to get the vaccine made her part of a nationwide trend that has been holding steady for several months, and bodes well for Latinos, the countrys largest vulnerable population. As the US endures a wave of cases related to the highly infectious Delta variant, slightly more than one in four of all vaccinations nationwide are now going to Latinos, even though their share of the US population is only 17.2%, according to the CDC.
No other racial or ethnic group has been getting vaccinated at rates that exceed their share of the population by so much. The numbers are based on 59% of all people who had received at least one dose of the vaccine, because not all states report this data, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Still, the trend reverses narratives that began late last year suggesting Latinos were hesitant to seek the vaccine, even though they are twice as likely to die and nearly three times as likely to be hospitalized from the virus.
Borrero was one of more than three dozen people who also got vaccinated at the church, with the help of bilingual outreach workers from a Georgia-based nonprofit organization called the Latino Community Fund (LCF) and nurse Leah Buchanan, who works with CORE, an international crisis response organization. Both are working on the ground in Georgia to get Latinos vaccinated, with financial support from private and public sources, including local, state and federal agencies.
The partnership between the two organizations and the church is emblematic of the driving force behind the surge in Latino vaccinations nationwide: government and some private funding supporting grassroots and nonprofit organizations, who in turn rely on a wide web of community relationships ranging from houses of worship to soccer coaches and cashiers at local markets.
The idea, said Genesis Castro, network and program manager for LCF, is to get to places where people congregate, and identify and remove as many barriers as possible to help them get vaccinated including speaking their language, when necessary.
Its a public health approach that has been successful in reaching historically marginalized populations before, said Priti Radha Krishtel, co-founder of the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge, an international nonprofit organization that works on health equity. Time and time again as seen with HIV or Hepatitis C when you do community-based strategies and community-centered, culturally tailored content, youre going to get better results, she said.
In the case of Covid, the initial uptick with vaccinations was with people who had access. The infrastructure favored a certain portion of the population, said Angelina Esparza, associate vice-president for health equity at the CDC Foundation, which has given $30m in mostly federal funds to more than 170 community-based organizations working on vaccinating underserved communities across the US. In order to increase vaccination rates in marginalized populations, you need to increase outreach and education, and look at accessibility challenges, she added.
Working in Maryland, Dr Michelle LaRue has made such simple moves as scheduling vaccination events from 2 to 8pm, in order to reach people after work, and moving from mass vaccination sites to the community.
We wanted to make sure the protocols we set up didnt create barriers, said LaRue, who directs the Health and Human Services department at CASA, an immigrant advocacy and services organization.
LaRue pointed to a cartoon public service announcement funded by local government that featured la abuelina, a grandmother who spoke Spanish and urged her community to get vaccinated. The effort came out of focus groups with Latinos. We asked, Who do you listen to? she said. It turned out to be a local person not Fauci, or Biden. It was the pastor, or la abuela.
In the months since vaccines were rolled out earlier this year, her organization has created a team of five Latinos focused on promoting the shots. An information line went from receiving several hundred calls a month to receiving the same amount in a week.
In North Carolina, Edith M Nieves Lpez, a pediatrician, has trained people hired by community organizations in how to overcome misconceptions about the vaccine. At the same time, word of mouth is the best promoter you can find, said Nieves Lpez. Once your neighbor gets vaccinated, and you notice theyre not a zombie, you say, Maybe its not true.
I used to get more questions about things like microchips and fertility being affected by the vaccine, she said. In recent months, Im not hearing so much misinformation.
Nieves Lpez has also helped community members in her area fill out vaccine registration forms. They may not read or write, she said. She posts her cell number online, and gets text and WhatsApp messages asking about vaccination sites.
Reaching Latinos at the high rates seen in recent months has come from continuous feedback loops, said Carolina Escobar, deputy site development manager for CORE. We pay attention to the smallest details If were seeing that a registration system doesnt work, we do more walk-up events.
Or, seeing that Uber and Lyft offer free rides to vaccination sites, we notice whos on the other end of the line. Do they speak Spanish? Are the people who need rides tech savvy? Community volunteers or organizations help schedule the rides, she said.
In one Georgia county, her organization partnered with soccer coaches to get information to Latino families about vaccines. The coach is a trusted figure. He can say, We have information in Spanish, she said.
The Kaiser Family Foundation released a report last week looking deeper into CDCs data, including a state-by-state analysis. The rise in Latino vaccination rates began sometime in the spring, said Samantha Artiga, director of the foundations racial equity and health policy program.
If the trend continues, it means theres growing levels of protection in the Hispanic community which is so important because theyve been so disproportionately affected by the virus, Artiga said.
Still, she added, It does not change the underlying socioeconomic indicators that created the risk. Theyre in jobs that are more likely to be exposed to the virus jobs that cannot be done at home, and dont include other mitigating strategies like wearing masks.
Leonardo Velsquez, who was at Prince of Peace church getting his first dose, works in commercial construction. He recently moved to northern Georgia from Washington DC, to live with his brother.
The 37-year-old said he had doubts about the vaccine. I thought it didnt work, he said. Then his mother travelled from Mexico to visit the two brothers. She said I should get the shot, for my children so I dont get them sick, he said. In the few months hes been in Georgia, his brothers daughter, who is 12, fell ill with Covid. Her school closed its doors due to a rise in cases. She has since been vaccinated.
The church is Catholic; a recent survey found that between March and June, acceptance of the vaccine among Hispanic Catholics increased from 56% to 80% more than any other religious group. Velsquez found out about the churchs vaccine site from a cousin, who got her shot there. Having people who speak Spanish helps, he said. You feel more comfortable.
Across Brazil, recycling plants stopped running for months. In Uganda, a junkyard is short on reusable plastics. And in Indonesias capital, disposable gloves and face shields are piling up at a river mouth.
Surging consumption of plastics and packaging during the pandemic has produced mountains of waste. But because fears of Covid-19 have led to work stoppages at recycling facilities, some reusable material has been junked or burned instead.
At the same time, high volumes of personal protective equipment have been misclassified as hazardous, solid waste experts say. That material often isnt allowed into the normal trash, so a lot of it is dumped in burn pits or as litter.
Experts say a problem in both cases is that an early fear that the coronavirus could spread easily through surfaces has created a hard-to-shake stigma around handling perfectly safe trash. Many scientists and government agencies have since found that the fear of surface transmission was wildly overblown. But old habits die hard, especially in countries where waste-disposal guidelines havent been updated and officials are still preoccupied with fighting fresh outbreaks.
Because there isnt a route of transmission through recycling, say, we are still finding things being burned rather than recycled because people are scared of surface transmission, said Anne Woolridge, who leads a working group on health care waste for the International Solid Waste Association. You try to educate the entire worlds population in less than a year. Its impossible.
As for personal protective equipment, Dr. Woolridge said, the sight of gloves and masks littering the world would have been unthinkable before the pandemic. But because everybodys saying anything to do with the pandemic is a medical waste, its put pressure on the system, she added.
Recycling rates dropped sharply around the world last year, in part because demand from manufacturers fell. In many countries where the recycling industry is still driven by hand sorting, rather than machines, in-person work was suspended out of virus-related fears.
In Brazil, for example, the generation of recyclable material in cities rose 25 percent in 2020, primarily because of a spike in online shopping, according to Abrelpe, a national association of sanitation companies. But recycling programs in several cities suspended operations for several months anyway, citing fears of surface transmission.
That had clear human and environmental costs. A recent study found that during the suspension period, at least 16,000 fewer tons of recyclable material than usual were in circulation, representing an economic loss of about $1.2 million per month for waste-picker associations. Another study said a month of suspensions was a missed opportunity to save the amount of electricity used by more than 152,000 households.
The suspension highlighted our systems weaknesses, said Liane Nakada, a co-author of the second paper and a researcher at the University of Campinas. She and her husband stored their recycling at home for months to avoid discarding it improperly, but they were the exception.
Recycling rates are now inching back to pre-Covid levels in developed economies, said James D. Michelsen, a solid waste expert at the International Finance Corporation.
The numbers are getting back to normal and were pivoting away from a Covid discussion to one of OK, lets get back to circularity, sustainability, plastics recycling, Mr. Michelsen said.
But in countries where recycling is driven by informal collectors, he added, lockdowns and outbreaks are still creating major disruptions.
Sept. 19, 2021, 3:43 p.m. ET
Before a recent Covid outbreak hit Kampala, Uganda, hundreds of people would gather to pick through plastics at a city dump. They would then sell the plastics to middlemen, who later sold it to recycling companies.
But when the country went into a lockdown this summer, restrictions on movement prevented trucks from picking up trash in some districts. There were also fears of surface transmission: Officials said Covid was surging because people hadnt been washing their hands.
As of this month, only about a third of the usual number of waste pickers were at the Kampala city dump, said Luke Mugerwa, a representative for a local pickers group. Some manufacturers who came looking for recovered plastics were out of luck.
Every day, they are always looking for plastics to buy, Mr. Mugerwa said. The demand is there but the supply is very low.
Another challenge is the used personal protective equipment that has flooded the world since the early days of the pandemic. About eight million metric tons of plastics already enter the ocean every year, and experts fear that used P.P.E. and other litter could make that situation even worse.
Most P.P.E. is not hazardous, but many countries still classify it as such, said Mr. Michelsen of the International Finance Corporation. That means used gloves and masks are often lumped together with truly hazardous medical waste and either treated at great expense a waste of money or disposed of through other means.
UnderstandVaccine and Mask Mandates in the U.S.
If you have high volumes coming out the back of your hospitals in these areas that dont have infrastructure, theyre just going to set fire to it, Dr. Woolridge said.
The United Nations Environment Program estimated last year that health care facilities around the world were producing about 7.5 pounds of Covid-related medical waste per person per day worldwide. It said that in Jakarta, Indonesia, and four other Asian megacities, the rate of overall health care waste disposal had risen by about 500 percent.
Some of that waste inevitably ends up as litter. In the Indonesian capital, prepandemic pollution surveys of a local river mouth by the Research Center for Oceanography did not turn up much P.P.E. But a recent survey found that equipment like masks, face shields, gloves and hazmat suits accounted for about 15 percent of the pollution.
Even in Jakarta, which has the countrys biggest budget for environmental management, the waste is still leaking into the environment, said Muhammad Reza Cordova, a scientist involved in the river surveys. What about other areas with smaller budgets?
An emerging concern is that, as the flood of material creates new pressures on local authorities, syringes and other truly hazardous medical waste may end up in the wrong places.
In the worlds poorest countries, that would pose a health risk to waste pickers. Tens of thousands of people already scavenge in landfills in Bangladesh, for example. But only three or four of the countrys 64 districts have facilities to safely dispose of used syringes, said Mostafizur Rahman, a solid waste expert in the capital, Dhaka.
These landfills are not secure or sanitary, so its really concerning in terms of environmental health and safeguards, said Dr. Rahman, a professor of environmental sciences at Jahangirnagar University.
And because syringes and vaccine vials are a valuable commodity on the black market, criminal gangs have an incentive to steal vaccination gear and illegally resell it into the health care system.
Late last year, Interpol warned that the pandemic had already triggered unprecedented opportunistic and predatory criminal behavior around the theft, falsification and illegal advertising of Covid-19 and flu vaccines. The warning came before most of the worlds population had even received a Covid shot.
Its a real issue in the marketplace, Mr. Michelsen said. These vials have a huge black market value because you can fill them with whatever you want and sell them.
Manuela Andreoni, Muktita Suhartono and Musinguzi Blanshe contributed reporting.
The do as I say, not as I do approach to political messaging was again displayed last week when Boris Johnson urged people to wear masks in enclosed spaces, shortly after leading a cabinet meeting of 27 maskless ministers and eight similarly uncovered observers.
Studies suggest masks cut Covid-19 transmission by up to 80%.Although there is disagreement about how much protection different types of mask offer the wearer, the science indicates that pretty much any covering protects the community from the wearer. It is this uneven interdependence that means masks are extremely effective at revealing hypocrisy.
Few places demonstrate the contested role of the mask more clearly than the London underground system. Face coverings must be worn for the full duration of journeys on the TfL network, including inside our stations and bus stations, states the Transport for London website, which also lists no less than 11 categories of exemption. This message is continually repeated over loudspeakers, and on advertising hoardings within underground stations.
Yet as many as half the travellers on the system are now ignoring this stipulation. On Friday, I travelled from Queens Park to Oxford Circus on the Bakerloo line. When I got off, there were 40 people in the carriage only 16 of whom were wearing masks.
James Lennie, who was maskless in Oxford Circus station, said that as the majority of people had now been double vaccinated, the risk was carried by those who had elected not to get jabbed. So why should I put myself out if theyre not wanting to help themselves? he said.
While the vaccination offers up to 90% protection from infection, it is not foolproof. People can, and do, become infected some requiring hospitalisation after being fully vaccinated. Lennie was aware of this, pointing out that he usually wore a mask, but he was not convinced that masks work.
I cant remember the name of the guy who comes on morning TV or whatever, he said, but he says, basically, in terms of coronavirus germs, you can fit a bus through the masks.
Further along the busy platform, Sun Oh was sitting without a mask on, but said that she would before boarding the train. When I pass someone whos not wearing a mask, Im almost terrified theyre going to cough or sneeze on me and I almost hold my breath, she said.
She felt that masks mess up her lipstick but that, as a friend of hers put it: Anyone who doesnt wear a mask is a massive cock. After we had finished speaking, she fished a mask out of her bag.
Several people said that they had just forgotten to wear a mask that day, but others, such as Diana, a housewife from Wembley, north-west London, were adamant that as she had been double vaccinated it was no longer an issue, even as a TfL announcement reminded passengers of their obligation to cover up their mouths and noses.
I had a friend who caught corona when he was wearing a mask, said Diana, by way of explanation. And he died in hospital. I stopped wearing a mask when I had the vaccine.
Masked passengers seemed to be divided in their response to their uncovered fellow travellers. Some, such as Alicia and Josh, who were unmasked on the platform but about to put theirs on, said that they thought it was a matter of individual choice. Others, including Jack Phillips, travelling with a baby in a pram, thought the tube was the one place that everyone should abide by the rules. Actually, I think Ill always wear one from now on, because of colds and flu, he added.
Despite TfLs continual reminders to mask-up, many passengers believe that it is not mandatory, and that all such restrictions came to an end in England on freedom day on 19 July. No one I spoke to claimed any kind of exemption.
Travelling north on the Bakerloo line to Paddington was a group of door-to-door salespeople, all of whom were uncovered. They traded stories of how irate other passengers got, noting both the silent and angry protests to which they had been subjected. One recalled that a passenger got up and found another seat because he was not wearing a mask. I didnt mind, he said. It just gave me more space. Someone complained to me from the other side of the carriage, said his friend Charlie, a young man in his 20s. I said, I dont have Covid and its not your business. He started screaming at me. He was very rude.
Another of the group, a woman called Julia, said she thought that people on public transport should wear one. You are on public transport! shouted her colleague, and everyone laughed.
When they disembarked, a man in his 40s wearing a mask followed after them, turning to me at the door. I dont agree with anything they said, he announced, his voice quivering with passion. I always wear a mask. Ive had Covid and its really affected me. He looked haunted by the experience.
If half of the London undergrounds passengers are not wearing masks, it is clear that the system is not in a strong position to inhibit infection, particularly when the cold and flu season starts in earnest.
The lack of public agreement on the matter is symptomatic of the mixed messages that have characterised this governments response to the pandemic. So it is perhaps no coincidence that tube passengers are increasingly following the example set by cabinet ministers.
Whatever Johnson says in contrast to his actions is likely to be greeted in the same manner as TfLs announcements: as a background noise that can be complacently ignored.
I think Ive come to believe that even if the Covid death toll was 10 times what it currently is, the MSNBC host Chris Hayes wrote a few days ago on Twitter, the politics of all of it wouldnt be appreciably different.
I like this question because Im interested in Covid counterfactuals whether ideology and identity and in-group loyalty determined everything about the pandemic response and whether theres a world where Donald Trump went all in for strict disease-fighting measures and liberals turned anti-lockdown in response and one in which Trump won re-election and hesitation over the Trump vaccine ended up stronger on the left.
But those are strictly political counterfactuals, whereas Hayes raises a more medical one: How much of our polarized response to Covid-19 is independent of the nature of the disease itself?
Heres a quick case that hes right. At the pandemics outset, skeptics of a sweeping response argued that public health authorities were overestimating the diseases dangers, and many conservatives were eager to believe them. The Hoover Institutions Richard Epstein famously predicted Covid would claim only 5,000 lives in the United States. The Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis speculated that 10,000 deaths could be a reasonable expectation which, absent media hysteria, would feel no different from a bad flu year. Over subsequent months skeptics talked about a casedemic, in which testing would find more cases but deaths would remain relatively low, and in June 2020, Mike Pence famously downplayed predictions of a second wave.
Today its clear that the public-health authorities got all kinds of things wrong, and many bad decisions especially about closing schools were made in an atmosphere of panic. Still, on the fundamental question of how bad the disease would be, the authorities were more right than their more optimistic critics. Even with rapidly developed vaccines, weve had 670,000 reported coronavirus deaths and counting. Thats fewer, yes, than some of the absolute worst-case projections. But its still more than 50 times more deaths than the early predictions from people who thought the authorities were panicking too quickly.
In that sense weve already run a version of Hayess counterfactual. Covid has been deadlier than many people on the right hoped or predicted, and yet the partisan divide that took shape last spring hasnt really budged, with Republicans still taking the libertarian side in debate after debate closures, masks, now vaccine mandates.
But Im still not sure Hayes is right about the Covid 10 times worse scenario being basically identical to this one in its divisions. As bad as the coronavirus has been, most people who get it still come out OK, children are especially unlikely to be hospitalized or die, and deaths are concentrated in a population, the elderly in nursing homes, that (to our shame) we already keep somewhat out of mind.
Yes, long-haul Covid is a real problem, but America is good at ignoring its chronic illness epidemics. Yes, there does seem to be a notable tendency for right-wing talk radio hosts to die of the disease but in the big picture of celebrities, the most famous deaths are more obscure than seemed likely when Tom Hanks or, for that matter, Trump himself fell ill.
And as terrible as it is that one in 500 Americans has died of Covid, its still much easier to have gone through the pandemic without having a close friend or family member die of it as I have not, for instance than it would be were the toll one in 50.
Before the pandemic, I once built a column around the psychiatrist-blogger Scott Alexanders concept of the scissor, which describes a controversy or idea or event perfectly calibrated to divide people while making them think that the other side is bonkers. Arguably Covids death rate makes it a perfect scissor: Its high enough to make the alarmed feel vindicated but still low enough that many skeptics feel vindicated as well.
Whereas if the fatality figures were one-tenth as high, I suspect there would be much more internal liberal debate over the wisdom of the sweeping early response. And if they were 10 times higher, I think there might have been more red-state support for public-health restrictions of all kinds.
But that doesnt mean that the country would have been more unified in a Covid 10 times worse world. Instead, there would be more regional fractures, more governors trying to close borders and restrict travel, more vicious interstate fighting over medical resources, more frenzied culture wars over which drugs to try experimentally, more total panic and meltdown around schools.
And since the one thing we dont seem to be doing yet is preparing for the next pandemic, my fear is that within the next 20 years well encounter an invisible enemy that puts the Hayes counterfactual to a test.
What Ingredients are in the COVID-19 Vaccines?
Many people are curious to know what the ingredients are for the three currently available COVID-19 vaccines in the US. Here is a breakdown of the three COVID vaccines and their ingredients:
More Information can be found on the CDC website.
Data from a national study shows that COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing hospitalizations and emergency department visits caused by the Delta variant.
COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing hospitalizations and emergency department visits caused by the Delta variant, according to data from a national study. That data also indicate that Modernas vaccine is significantly more effective against Delta than Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.
These real-world data show that vaccines remain highly effective at reducing COVID-19 related hospitalizations and emergency department visits, even in the presence of the new COVID-19 variant, said study author Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S., Regenstrief Institute vice president for data and analytics and professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine. We strongly recommend vaccinations for all who are eligible to reduce serious illness and ease the burden on our healthcare system.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)s VISION Network analyzed more than 32,000 medical encounters from nine states during June, July and August 2021, when the Delta variant became the predominant strain. The results showed that unvaccinated individuals with COVID-19 are 5-7 times more likely to need emergency department care or hospitalization, similar to the overall effectiveness prior to the variant.
The study in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report is also the first analysis from the VISION Network to show a marked difference between the effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer). In the studys time period:
The study also found that vaccine effectiveness is lower for people 75 years and older, which has not been shown in previous research. This could be due to a range of factors, including the increased time since vaccination.
When it came to preventing emergency department and urgent care visits, analysis showed that:
Scientists say these findings need further monitoring and evaluation.
Despite the differences in effectiveness, vaccines continue to offer much more protection than not getting one at all, said Dr. Grannis. While breakthrough cases do happen, data shows the symptoms are less severe. The vast majority of COVID hospitalizations and deaths continue to be among unvaccinated individuals. COVID-19 vaccines are powerful tools for combating the pandemic.
The VISION network, funded by the CDC, includes seven organizations that contribute and analyze data from U.S. healthcare systems to learn more about the COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness. In addition to Regenstrief Institute, other members are Columbia University Irving Medical Center, HealthPartners, Intermountain Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Kaiser Permanente Northwest and University of Colorado.
Interim Estimates of COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Against COVID-19Associated Emergency Department or Urgent Care Clinic Encounters and Hospitalizations Among Adults During SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta) Variant Predominance Nine States, JuneAugust 2021 is published in the CDCs Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In addition to Dr. Grannis, other authors on the paper are Elizabeth A. Rowley, DrPH, M.S. of IU School of Medicine; Toan C. Ong, PhD of Kaiser Permanente Northwest; Edward Stenehjem, M.D., MSc of InterMountain Healthcare; Nicola P. Klein, M.D., PhD of Columbia University; Malini DeSilva, M.D. of HealthPartners; Allison Naleway, PhD of Kaiser Permanente Northwest; Karthik Natarajan, PhD of Columbia University and Mark G. Thompson of the CDC COVID-19 Response Team.
