Canadas Liberal party has said that if re-elected they would provide C$1 billion to help the 10 provinces create vaccine passports for people to prove they had been inoculated against Covid-19.
Proof of vaccination systems ensure Canadians can be confident that those around them are fully vaccinated, in addition to providing businesses with important and clear guidance around how to reopen safely, the Liberals said.
Polls show the Liberals, led by prime minister Justin Trudeau, are narrowly ahead of their Conservative rivals, Reuters reports. The election is on 20 September.
The question of vaccines is being used by the Liberal as a potential wedge issue in the election. The Conservatives, led by Erin OToole, are not requiring inoculations for their candidates and has espoused his respect for personal health decisions while suggesting that rapid testing is an alternative to vaccine passports.
Trudeau admitted today that all Liberal candidates are not yet vaccinated though they intend to swiftly while he also faced criticism that the news event where he was speaking clearly breached Ontario state limits on no more than 25 people gathering inside.
He said recently at a rally:
You deserve better, you deserve a government thats going to continue to say get vaccinated. And you know what, if you dont want to get vaccinated, thats your choice. But dont think you can get on a plane or a train besides vaccinated people and put them at risk.
The C$1bn would help cover costs incurred by the provinces for creating vaccine passports for people wishing to enter nonessential businesses or public spaces. Some provinces, including Quebec, have already said they plan to set up such a system.
Earlier this month, the Liberal government said it would soon require all federal public servants and many other workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Under one of the worlds strictest vaccine policies for transportation, the mandate would also include air, train and cruise ship travellers.
The International Air Transport Association told the Wall Street Journal it was unaware of any other country in the world banning unvaccinated passengers from planes, as Trudeau proposes.
Vaccinations should not be a prerequisite for restarting international air travel alternative solutions must be offered to those who are unable to get vaccinated, the trade group said.
The UK has recorded 32,406 new coronavirus cases and 133 further deaths in the latest 24-hour period, daily government data shows.
The figures compare with 38,046 COVID-19 cases and 100 deaths reported on Friday.
This time last week, 21 August, 32,058 new cases and 104 deaths were recorded.
On Friday, 128,248 people received a second vaccine dose, which means 78.2% of the population aged over 16 is now fully inoculated.
And 43,160 people were given their first dose - taking the total to 47,958,928 (88.2%).
It comes as a new study suggests people infected with the Delta variant are twice as likely to be admitted to hospital compared to those with the Alpha variant.
Research carried out by Public Health England (PHE) and Cambridge University is the first of its kind to compare the risk of the two variants.
First reported in India at the end of 2020, early studies of the Delta variant found it to be up to 50% more transmissible than the Alpha variant, which was first discovered in Kent.
Dr Gavin Dabrera, a consultant epidemiologist at PHE's National Infection Service, said: "We already know that vaccination offers excellent protection against Delta and as this variant accounts for over 98% of COVID-19 cases in the UK, it is vital that those who have not received two doses of vaccine do so as soon as possible."
Meanwhile, there has been an increased uptake in vaccination amongst people from ethnically diverse communities, new analysis has found
Over 3.8 million first doses have been delivered since the start of the NHS's "grab-a-jab" campaign, launched at the end of June.
The campaign has allowed people to get vaccinated at pop-up walk in centres, mosques, town halls, football grounds and festivals.
Since the campaign was launched, more than 700,000 people from ethnically diverse backgrounds have been protected from COVID-19, NHS England said.
People from mixed Asian and white backgrounds saw the fastest growth in jab uptake, rising by almost a quarter - 81,933 people took the first dose by 20 June and 101,140 were vaccinated by 22 August.
Follow the Daily podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker
There was a 22.9% increase in the vaccinations for mixed white people, and it increased by 20.9% among black Africans.
In the same period, the first doses among white people increased by 11.1%.
For those individuals who already have received both of their coronavirus vaccine doses, the protection against the virus has been shown to moderately diminish over time, according to a new study out of the United Kingdom.
An analysis from the countrys ZOE Covid app study, which included the participation of more than 400,000 individuals who had received both shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, revealed that it was nearly 90 percent effective in protecting against the contagion a month after being fully inoculated.
The overall effectiveness, however, slumped to 74 percent five or six months after receiving both vaccine doses.
Moreover, an analysis of more than 700,000 people who had received both doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine found that effectiveness after one month dropped from 77 percent to 67 percent three or four months later.
Not All Protection Lost
Alexander Hammers, a professor of imaging and neuroscience at Kings College London, noted on a webinar that health officials have been bracing for the fact that immunity against the coronavirus wanes over time.
So, we knew there was going to be some leveling off and the way I look at this is the leveling off is actually a little slower than I would have expected, he said.
Despite the diminishing effectiveness of the vaccines, Hammers did claim that individuals were still probably at least 50 percent protected.
Remember, when the vaccines were first developed, it was hoped that they were to have 60 percent to 70 percent efficacy and everybody was pleasantly surprised that they came in well over 80 percentsometimes well over 90, he continued.
According to government data in the United Kingdom, more than forty-two million people, or nearly 80 percent of the population aged over sixteen, have received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine.
Booster Shots
Here in the United States, top health officials have confirmed that they plan to start offering coronavirus booster shots to all eligible Americans eight months after their second jabs. But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made it known that there is a possibility that Americans may not need annual booster shots after the third one.
This virus has been humbling, so I dont want to say never, but we are not necessarily anticipating that you will need this annually, CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky recently said in an interview on CBS This Morning.
It does look like after this third dose, you get a really robust response, and so we will continue to follow the science both on the vaccine side but also on the virus side, she continued.
Since the beginning of the pandemic a year and a half ago, more than 210 million people worldwide have become infected. Officials at the World Health Organization have warned that the figure could easily reach 300 million by early next year.
Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.
Image: Reuters.
New Jersey on Saturday reported another 1,761 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 18 more confirmed deaths as the rate of transmission and hospitalizations dipped slightly.
The delta variant accounted for 96% of cases in New Jersey based on a sampling of positive tests over the last two weeks of July, according to state data.
All of New Jerseys 21 counties are now listed as having high rates of coronavirus transmission, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC is recommending people in all 21 counties wear masks for indoor public settings regardless of vaccination rates.
There were 994 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 or suspected cases across New Jerseys 71 hospitals on Friday night 28 fewer than the previous night. There were 165 patients discharged.
After three straight days where hospitalizations topped 1,000, the number dipped below the benchmark Saturday.
Of those hospitalized, 213 were in intensive care (five fewer than the night before), with 102 on ventilators (four more).
CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter| Homepage
Hospitalizations and deaths in New Jersey have not risen anywhere near the pandemics peaks. More than 3,800 patients were hospitalized during the second peak in December. New Jerseys numbers have not grown as dire as in other states. Officials credit this, in part, to the states relatively high vaccination rate.
More than 5.5 million people who live, work or study in New Jersey have now been fully vaccinated in more than seven months since inoculations began, according to state data. About 4 million residents remain unvaccinated.
New Jerseys statewide transmission rate dropped again Saturday to 1.15 from 1.16 the previous day, 1.17 on Thursday, 1.19 on Wednesday, 1.21 on Tuesday and 1.23 on Monday. But any number over 1 indicates that each new case is leading to more than one additional case and shows the states outbreak is expanding.
An early coronavirus hotspot, New Jersey has now reported 26,844 total COVID-19 deaths in more than 17 months 24,122 confirmed and 2,722 considered probable, according to the state dashboard. Thats the most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S.
In all, the state of 9.2 million residents has reported 947,298 total confirmed cases out of the more than 15 million PCR tests conducted since it announced its first case March 4, 2020. The state has also reported 139,182 positive antigen tests, which are considered probable cases.
Gov. Phil Murphy has said all options are on the table to fight the upticks in New Jersey and on Monday said teachers and state workers must show proof of vaccination by Oct. 18 or face regular testing.
Murphy said last week that of New Jerseys 4,332 positive tests between July 20-26, nearly 18% were so-called breakthrough cases of those who had been fully vaccinated, which is up from previous weeks.
As of Saturday, there have been more than 215.73 million positive COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 4.49 million people having died due to the virus. The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 38.72 million) and deaths (more than 636,800) than any other nation.
More than 5.16 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally.
Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.
Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rodrigotorrejon.
An updated issue brief examines COVID-19s effect on mortality rates, and finds that as of August 2021, COVID-19 has risen once again to number three on the list of the top ten leading causes of death in the U.S. As recently as January 2021, COVID was the number one leading cause of death, with an average of 3,066 people dying daily. Amid widespread availability of vaccines, that COVID rank had briefly dropped to the 8th leading cause of death in July 2021.
As of August 25, 2021, about 73% of adults in the U.S. have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.
The analysis can be found on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, an information hub dedicated to monitoring and assessing the performance of the U.S. health system.
"You don't know you're gonna get it, and then you get it and you're sick," Monceaux told CNN on Wednesday, breathing through an oxygen mask at Pascagoula Hospital - Singing River Health System. "You don't know whether you're gonna live or die."
The 82-year-old, from Jackson County, Mississippi, had been "on the fence" about the Covid-19 vaccine, but as she continues fighting the virus in the hospital, she has a new perspective, she said.
"All my family wasn't going to get the shot, but now we are," Monceaux said. "All my family."
The first thing she wants to tell her family when she finally gets to see them, Monceaux panted, is "to go get the shot."
"I think what's most interesting is the detachment, the complete lack of connection between what we see out in the community with what's happening in these hospitals," Dr. Ijlal Babar, who runs the ICU at Pascagoula Hospital, told CNN.
Babar, also the director of pulmonary and critical care at Singing River Health Systems, said the hospital can't expand Covid-19 capacity fast enough. Although they cleared beds to serve more patients, they lack the staff needed to open them.
The vast majority of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated.
"It's exhausting, both mentally and emotionally," Babar said. "I think the most difficult thing emotionally that we are having to deal with now is what do we do with people who been on the ventilator for weeks and weeks and weeks and aren't getting better?"
But there is a small ray of hope, with the hospital's vaccination clinic seeing an uptick in people getting shots.
One of those newly convinced people is 19-year-old Isabelle Smith, who has asthma and got such a bad case of the virus that she couldn't get out of bed.
Her mother, Robin Walls, who is vaccinated and tried to convince Smith to get the vaccine, thought her daughter might die.
"I told her, 'I'm backing off; I did all I could do,'" Walls said. "She finally came around."
Antibody therapy is helping patients -- and hospitals
To try to curb hospital stays, Singing River Health System established a site for monoclonal antibody treatment, known as mAbs, for outpatients who have the virus but don't yet need a bed.
The antibodies, which help keep the disease from progressing, are administered shortly after diagnosis and within 10 days of symptom onset. Studies suggest they don't help people with severe cases or those already on oxygen.
People with newly diagnosed cases have been clamoring for the treatment, said Chris Ayers, Singing River Health System's lead clinical pharmacist.
"I've been through disasters, hurricanes, tornadoes, things like that, but I've never seen anything like this," Ayers told CNN. "Literally, the phone is ringing off the hook."
On the treatment site's long list of patients is Edith Jordan, who is unvaccinated and tested positive last week for the coronavirus, which she believes she contracted from a family member.
Though she believes in the seriousness of the virus and has contracted it herself, Jordan still won't get the vaccine, she said.
"I'm just not trustful of the data behind it," she said. When asked what data she is referring to, she declined to respond.
While studies show that mAbs are highly effective at preventing high-risk patients from developing severe Covid-19 symptoms, they aren't a cure or an option for everyone.
"After about 60 days, these antibodies have done what they've done, they've flushed the virus out of your system, and then they disappear," Ayers said. "They don't stay circulating in your body unlike natural antibodies do, that are caused through your immune system either naturally or through exposure or a vaccine."
Still, not everyone thinks like Jordan.
Like Monceaux and Smith, Amanda Dunning is singing a different tune after contracting the virus.
"I was hesitant about the whole Covid thing in the beginning, I was like, 'It's no big deal, I'm not going get it,'" Dunning, 35, told CNN. "I don't wish this on anybody. It's hard. It's extremely hard."
Despite initial concerns about the vaccine -- and after speaking to professionals about it and doing more research -- she has decided to get the shot.
"Until you catch it or until you truly have a loved one that's going to catch it, it's not going to hit you full force," Dunning said. "I feel like Mississippi needs to come together, band together, including our government and our state officials, and say, 'Look, now's the time.'"
"I'm convinced. Please just get the vaccine," she added. "I did a 180, and it's because of getting Covid."
CNN's Jen Christensen and Madeline Holcombe contributed to this report.
The NBA logo is displayed as people pass by the NBA Store in New York City, U.S., October 7, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Aug 28 (Reuters) - The National Basketball Association (NBA) will require referees working games during the coming season to be vaccinated against coronavirus, the league said on Saturday.
The announcement comes after the league and the National Basketball Referees Association reached an agreement, which will not enforce the requirement for referees with religious or medical exemptions.
The referees have also agreed to take any recommended booster shots.
"Any referee who does not get vaccinated and is not exempt will be ineligible to work games," the league said in a statement.
The NBA will require all coaches and staff who interact with players to take the vaccine, The Athletic reported on Friday.
The move comes as a growing number of arenas have said they will require fans to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to attend games when the 2021-2022 regular season starts on Oct. 19.
The players, who are represented by a powerful National Basketball Players Association, are not required to be vaccinated but 90% of the players already are, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts told Yahoo Sports last month.
Reporting by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles; Editing by Ken Ferris
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
An unvaccinated elementary school teacher who took off their mask to read tostudentsended up infected nearly half of them last May and they went on to infect other students, family members and community members, California public health officials reported Friday.
It's a prime example of how easy it is to undermine efforts to protect children too young to be vaccinated, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.
The teacher came to work even though they had Covid-19 symptoms and then took offtheir mask to read to the young students, a team at Marin County Public Health reported in the CDCs weekly report on death and disease.
In the classroom of 22 students, 12 became infected, and eight of the 10 students sitting closest to the teacher became infected.
Eventually, 27 people, including the teacher, were infected. None were seriously ill and all recovered. Those cases that were analyzed involved the Delta variant of coronavirus, and the researchers said they were not necessarily able to test everyone who may have been infected in the outbreak.
The introduction of the virus into the classroom by a teacher who worked in school, while she was both symptomatic and unvaccinated and who was unmasked when reading aloud to a class, resulted in cases within the classroom, across the school and among families of students and staff in the community, Walensky told a White House Covid-19 briefing Friday. We know how to protect our kids in school. We have the tools.
Dr. Lisa Santora, deputy health officer for the county, said officials there had been urging teachers to be vaccinated since January, but many had not done it. We saw firsthand that it wasnt kids who were going to get teachers sick. It was going to be the reverse, Santora told CNN.
The CDC also highlighted what happens when things go right.
Los Angeles County officials studied cases in their schools from September to March. They counted 463 cases among students in that time that could be linked back to a school exposure, and 3,927 among staff who were back in person.This was a far lower case rate than in the community at large during the same period, they reported.
In schools with safety protocols in place for prevention and containment, case rates in children and adolescents were 3.4 times lower during the winter peak compared with rates in the community, they wrote.
Covid-19 vaccines are not yet authorized for kids under the age of 12, so schools will have to relay ... [+] on other Covid-19 precautions for now. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Kids are people too. They have noses, mouths, lungs, and other body parts and can catch and spread the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) just like adults can. Therefore, one big question in the U.S.s current struggle against the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is when kids under 12 years of age will be able to get vaccinated.
After all, you may be fully vaccinated. Your significant other may be fully vaccinated. Your sixteen-year-old who no longer thinks that you are cool may be fully vaccinated. But as long as youve got unvaccinated people running around the house, youve got to maintain other stringent Covid-19 precautions. Yes, you may have to tell your seven-year-old, bruh, you are really holding all of us back.
Thats because unvaccinated people, no matter how small they may be, remain at much, much, much higher risk of getting infected with the virus, suffering bad consequences from infection, and infecting you and others with the virus than those who are fully vaccinated. And its probably not an option to tell your unvaccinated seven-year-old to move out and get a place of his or her own.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, as of August 19, over 4.59 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. Over 180,000 cases were added the past week, reaching levels of the previous winter surge of 2020-21. Recently, the Covid-19 coronavirus has been spreading among kids seemingly faster than that Baby Shark song did in 2018 with a four-fold increase in cases over the past month.
That has meant as much anticipation for the Covid-19 vaccines for younger kids as there has been for the movie Spider Man:Home Alone 2 or Spider Man:Home Improvement, or whatever the next Marvel Spider Man movie is called. So when will the Covid-19 vaccine, doo doo doo doo doo doo, be available for those under 12 years of age, otherwise known as kids?
There's no evidence that Covid-19 vaccines will turn your kids into rabbits. (Photo by Michael ... [+] Loccisano/Getty Images)
Trials of the Covid-19 vaccines for kids younger than 12 have been underway for a little while. In mid-to-late March 2021, both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna announced launches of their clinical trials. For details on the trials, you can go to the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) ClinicalTrials.gov website, where youll find a web page for the Moderna clinical trials that was first posted on March 15 and a web page for the Pfizer/BioNTech clinical trials that was first posted on March 25. Both of these web pages list the trials as still recruiting and include contact information in case youd like to ask about how to participate in these trials.
As you can see, these trials involve testing different dosages of the vaccines to help determine what dosages should be used for each age group. Vaccine dosages are not like Nutella. More is not always better. Children under 12 years of age may end up getting lower recommended dosages than adolescents and adults. For example, the Pfizer/BioNTech Phase 1 clinical trials tested 10 micrograms, 20 micrograms and 30 micrograms of their vaccine in the following three age groups: those from five to 11 years of age, those from two to four years of age, and those from 6 months of age to one year of age. The Phase 1 trial evaluated the safety, tolerability, and the resulting antibody levels of these different dosages and determined what doses would be used for the Phase 2/3. Phase 2/3 have been further evaluating the safety, tolerability, and antibody response in each age group for the dose level selected from Phase 1 and the efficacy of the vaccine in preventing Covid-19 when compared to placebo.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will likely want to see at least four-to-six months of data from the trials before considering a emergency use authorization (EUA) for younger children. The FDA is not going to behave like someone would after seeing a Tiger selfie on Tinder: rashly. It will stick to protocols that have already been established.
Near the end of July, the FDA did ask both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna to increase the number of kids enrolled in their clinical trials. This came after the FDA had added myocarditis and pericarditis to the list of possible side effects from the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, as I reported for Forbes back in June. Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscles, and pericarditis is inflammation of the membranes that surround the heart. Thats because myo- which is pronounced like the beginning of my oh my stands for muscle. The prefix peri-, which is pronounced like the beginning of peri peri sauce and Perry the Platypus or the end of Rick Perry, meansaround or about. The middle part card, which is pronounced like card or the beginning of Cardi B, means heart. And, finally -itis, which is pronounced like I piss but with a t instead of a p, means inflammation.
Although those under 30 years of age may be more likely to suffer myocarditis or pericarditis after vaccination, keep in mind that these side effects are still very, very rare even among younger adults and adolescents. Your chances of having myocarditis or pericarditis after Covid-19 mRNA vaccination are still a lot lower than the risk of experiencing such problems from Covid-19 itself.
In fact, these side effects are so rare that the FDA wanted Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna to increase the number of kids under 12 enrolled in their trials to better see what percentage may end up developing these two types of inflammation. After all, when something is quite rare, like a set of pancakes that look like Shia LaBeouf, you need to sift through a whole lot more samples to find it.
So given this increase in enrollment, what is now the timeline for results? Pfizer has said that clinical trial results for kids from five to 11 years of age most likely will be available sometime in September. Assuming that there no issues with those results, expect Pfizer-BioNTech to apply for an EUA for that age group shortly thereafter. It will take the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and any external advisors some time, perhaps a month, to review the EUA application and all available information. That could mean a late Fall or early Winter EUA for this age group for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The timeline for the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, which if youll recall received its initial EUA after the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, seems to be lagging the Pfizer/BioNTech timeline a bit.
The Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine results for 2 to 4 years olds could arrive a little bit later, and results for the 6 month to one year olds will probably arrive even later, perhaps in October or November. Therefore, expect the EUAs for the younger of the young to come even later. That means telling your nine month old to postpone his or her TED Talk on the meaning of life until 2022.
Of course, these timelines could always be further delayed. Clinical trials and the FDA process arent like microwaving a Hot Pocket. Since they are complex operations, things can happen along the way. Moreover, the FDA will want to be extra careful to minimize the chances of unanticipated side effects, no matter how rare they may be. This is especially the case with various politicians, personalities, and social media accounts behaving like pseudoscience fart cannons these days.
The Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine already has Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for those 12 ... [+] years and older and approval for those 16 years and older. Here Sadie Sindland, age 14, gives a thumbs up after being inoculated by Nurse Karen Pagliaro in Hartford, Connecticut on May 13, 2021. (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
Now if you cant wait to get your younger kids vaccinated, your only real option right now is to check whether they can be enrolled in the clinical trials. Its not a good idea to find a doctor who is willing to give the vaccine to younger kids off label. Technically, since the Pfizer/BioNTech is now officially approved by the FDA for those 16 years and older, as I recently reported for Forbes, off label use is possible. Off label means doing something thats not on the FDA-approved label accompanying the product. Doctors do have the discretion of using an FDA-approved vaccine or medication in manners beyond whats indicated on the label. However, using a vaccine or medication in an unapproved or unauthorized way is not the same as using hot dogs in an unapproved or unauthorized way. For example, its not clear yet what dose levels should be given to younger children.
So for now, youll have to wait for it, wait for it, wait for some time after September ends for the vaccines to be available for those younger than 12 years of age. Its not yet clear how long after the end of September things will take. Even after the vaccines do become available, it will take time to get younger kids fully vaccinated.
In the first week of August, the state recorded another 5,600 deaths. But because mortality rates normally drop during summer months, the figure was more than 50 percent above whats typical.
Aug. 29, 2021, 10:14 a.m. ET
Were seeing a ton of people calling us to report the Covid deaths, said Dr. Stephen J. Nelson, the Polk County medical examiner. Theyre typically young people that have been sick for a while.
The picture of who is dying, however, is complicated.
About 82 percent of people 65 and older in the state are fully vaccinated, about average for the nation. That has still left a relatively large number of older people about 819,000 unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, said Jason L. Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida. If the unvaccinated also take fewer other precautions, he added, that would put them directly in the viruss path.
The Delta variant is exceptional at finding vulnerable populations, he said.
The situation in nursing homes, where infections can spread swiftly, has also been problematic. While vaccination rates among older Floridians as a whole have been good, the rate of nursing home residents who are fully vaccinated an average of 73.1 percent in each home is lower than every state but Nevada, according to the C.D.C. About 47.5 percent of nursing home staff members were fully vaccinated as of Aug. 15, the lowest of any state but Louisiana.
Older people are also more likely to have immune deficiencies and comorbidities, making them more susceptible to breakthrough infections and hospitalizations, noted Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. And some, though not all, data have suggested that immunity against infection has waned in older, vaccinated adults; the Biden administration has indicated that those people will be among the first in line for booster shots.
Then there are the younger people, who now make up a larger share of Florida virus deaths. Before June 25, people under 65 made up 22 percent of deaths. Since then, that proportion has risen to 28 percent.
