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Alaska reported 271 coronavirus infections and one death linked to COVID-19 between Saturday and Monday, according to data from the Department of Health and Social Services. The state no longer updates its coronavirus dashboard over the weekend, and instead includes those numbers in Mondays report.
The individual who died was a Wasilla man in his 50s, health officials said.
Alaskas average daily case counts have begun to decline again statewide. However, most regions in the state are still in the highest alert category based on their current per capita rate of infection, and health officials continue to encourage Alaskans to wear face coverings in public, avoid large gatherings, wash their hands frequently and get vaccinated against COVID-19 to prevent further spread.
Alaska in March became the first state in the country to open vaccine eligibility to anyone 16 and older who lives or works in the state. You can visit covidvax.alaska.gov or call 907-646-3322 to sign up for a vaccine appointment; new appointments are added regularly. The phone line is staffed 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekends.
By Monday, 308,957 people about 50% of Alaskans eligible for a shot had received at least their first dose. At 263,324 about 43.8% of Alaskans 16 and older were considered fully vaccinated, according to the states vaccine monitoring dashboard.
Alaska in January led the country in per capita vaccinations, but has now fallen to 23rd place among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Of the 264 cases reported among Alaska residents over the last three days, there were 70 in Anchorage, six in Eagle River and two in Chugiak; 64 in Fairbanks; 29 in Wasilla; 21 in North Pole; 11 in Palmer; eight in Ketchikan; five in Kenai; four in Kodiak; two in Anchor Point; two in Big Lake; two in Delta Junction; two in Sutton-Alpine; two in Willow; and one case each in Homer, Houston, Kotzebue, Seward, Sitka, Yakutat, Soldotna, Sterling, Valdez and Wrangell.
Among communities smaller than 1,000 people that arent named to protect residents privacy, there were three in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough; three in the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area; two in the Northwest Arctic Borough; and one case each in the Copper River Census Area, the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area and the Hoonah-Angoon Census Area.
There were also seven new cases among nonresidents: two in Anchorage; one in Fairbanks; one in Kodiak; one in the North Slope Borough; one in Prudhoe Bay; and one in a location under investigation.
By Monday, there were 66 people with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 in hospitals throughout the state.
While people might get tested more than once, each case reported by the state health department represents only one person.
The states data doesnt specify whether people testing positive for COVID-19 have symptoms. More than half of the nations infections are transmitted from asymptomatic people, according to CDC estimates.
Of all the tests conducted over the past week, 2.19% came back positive.
Costa Rica's internationally renowned green escapes are likely to suffer through a second year of costly tourist hesitancy as the spread of the pandemic intensifies in the Central American nation, further battering the key travel sector.
Amid an April surge of COVID-19 infections, hospital beds are scarce in the tropical country. Its infection rate last week surpassed even tragedy-struck India and Brazil, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Given the lack of widespread testing, the real figures could be even worse.
Costa Rica's hoteliers and other travel businesses expected increasingly vaccinated travelers from top markets in North American and Europe to inject an infusion of cash for the industry after record-low visits last year, but that does not seem likely anymore.
"We're anticipating a much worse year than 2020," said Shirley Calvo, head of the tourism business chamber.
"If there's no government aid, we will have a cemetery of companies by the end of this year," she added.
Costa Rica's tourism sector in pre-pandemic 2019 was estimated at about $5 billion, or about 8.5% of country's GDP.
The central bank forecasts less than 800,000 foreign tourists visiting Costa Rica this year, which would mark a more than 20% slide from last year. And last year saw only a third of the international travelers who visited in 2019, or about 1.01 million, which was the fewest in more than two decades.
During the first three months of this year, which is typically high season, visits were down a whopping 76% compared to the same period last year as lockdown-weary travelers with money to spend resisted the urge to vacation among the country's vibrant wildlife and pristine beaches.
Tourism Minister Gustavo Segura acknowledged a worsening scenario.
"We trust we'll be able to control the situation for our population soon, but we can't deny that some people will decide to postpone visits," he told Reuters, though he stressed he did not have official figures on cancellations.
He argued the country's famed eco-tourism naturally promotes outdoor social distancing, and pitched the travel sector's high standards for hygiene.
To bolster his point, the minister pointed to official data for the first four months of the year showing that less than 1% of tourists tested positive for COVID-19 as they exited the country.
Even so, the U.S. government issued a fresh travel warning for Costa Rica on April 20, citing a "very high level" of infections.
Local authorities responded by ordering new restrictions on activities and some businesses during the first week of May, but at the same time exempting hotels, beaches as well as most national parks in the hopes of nudging reluctant travelers.
But those tourist-friendly moves have yet to stop the bleeding, said Rolando Campos, local head of sales for Swiss Travel and owner of a boutique hotel in the mountains of Naranjo, about 30 miles (48 km), northwest of the capital.
"Four groups of between 20 and 30 people from the United States were coming in June," he said.
"But they've already canceled their trips."
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
There is one new COVID-19 related death in Oregon, raising the states death toll to 2,502, the Oregon Health Authority reported at 12:01 a.m. today.
Oregon Health Authority reported 540 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 as of 12:01 a.m. today, bringing the state total to 186,877.
Vaccinations in Oregon
Today, OHA reported that 17,897 new doses of COVID-19 vaccinations were added to the state immunization registry. Of this total, 15,437 doses were administered on May 2 and 2,460 were administered on previous days but were entered into the vaccine registry on May 2.
The 7-day running average is now 33,153 doses per day.
Oregon has now administered a total of 1,647,730 first and second doses of Pfizer, 1,317,295 first and second doses of Moderna and 97,625 single doses of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. As of today, 1,295,638 people have completed a COVID-19 vaccine series. There are 1,860,194 who have had at least one dose.
Cumulative daily totals can take several days to finalize because providers have 72 hours to report doses administered and technical challenges have caused many providers to lag in their reporting. OHA has been providing technical support to vaccination sites to improve the timeliness of their data entry into the states ALERT Immunization Information System (IIS).
To date, 1,939,275 doses of Pfizer,1,584,800 doses of Moderna and 229,500 doses of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines have been delivered to sites across Oregon.
These data are preliminary and subject to change.
OHA's dashboards provide regularly updated vaccination data, and Oregons dashboard has been updated today.
New features released on vaccination dashboards
The statewide and county graphs featured on the COVID-19 Vaccinations Trends dashboard now display the seven-day running averages of administered doses of COVID-19 vaccines. This improves information sharing for administered doses over time and may be helpful for showing trends for less populated counties.
The COVID-19 Vaccination Metrics dashboard now includes a toggle switch that lets users choose between two different population denominators: the total Oregon population and the population in Oregon eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The total Oregon population includes all people in Oregon, while the eligible population only includes people age 16 and older. As of today, 42.9% of the total Oregon population has been vaccinated with at least one dose of any COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 52.4% of people 16 years of age and older in Oregon.
COVID-19 hospitalizations
The number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 across Oregon is 351, which is six more than yesterday. There are 80 COVID-19 patients in intensive care unit (ICU) beds, which is four more than yesterday.
The total number of COVID-19 positive patient bed-days in the most recent seven days is 2,354, which is an 18% increase from the previous seven days. The peak daily number of beds occupied by COVID-19 positive patients in the most recent seven days is 351.
The total number of patients in hospital beds may fluctuate between report times. The numbers do not reflect admissions per day, nor the length of hospital stay. Staffing limitations are not captured in this data and may further limit bed capacity.
Cases and deaths
The new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases reported today are in the following counties: Baker (1), Benton (12), Clackamas (91), Clatsop (3), Columbia (5), Coos (1), Crook (3), Deschutes (49), Douglas (10), Harney (2), Hood River (1), Jackson (16), Jefferson (1), Josephine (3), Lane (56), Lincoln (4), Linn (42), Marion (74), Multnomah (137), Polk (12), Sherman (1), Tillamook (2), Wallowa (1), Washington (1) and Yamhill (12).
Oregons 2,502nd COVID-19 death is a 70-year-old woman from Douglas County who tested positive on April 2 and died on May 1 at Mercy Medical Center. She had underlying conditions.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) Eighty-five new total COVID-19 cases and three additional deaths were announced by theSouth Dakota Department of Healthon Monday.
The DOH has stopped reporting new COVID-19 information over the weekend.
According to the latest update, there are 105 current hospitalizations, compared to Friday (112). Total hospitalizations are at 7,376.
Active cases are now at 1,512, down from Friday (1,624).
The states total case count is now at 122,745, up from Friday (122,660).
While the difference in the total case count reported today and yesterday equals 85, when you add the PCR, or newly confirmed, cases (69) and antigen, or new probable, cases (17), there were 86 new cases.
Total recovered cases are now at 119,263 compared to 119,069 on Friday.
Three new deaths were reported by the Department of Health on Monday. The new deaths were two men and one woman in the following age ranges: 40 49 (1); 70 79 (2). New deaths were reported in Dewey, Lake and Yankton counties.
The death toll due to COVID-19 in South Dakota is now at 1,970.
Total persons who tested negative is now at 344,208, up from Friday (343,713).
There were 580 new persons tested in the data reported Monday for a new persons-tested positivity rate of 14.65%.
The latest seven-day PCR test positivity rate reported by the DOH is 6.8%. The latest one-day PCR test positivity rate is 4.8%.
According to the DOH, 314,658 doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been administered with 16,816 doses of the Janssen vaccine and 265,386 of the Moderna vaccine given out to a total number of 329,491 persons.
There have been 121,258 persons who have completed two doses of Moderna and 146,091 who have received two doses of Pfizer, according to the DOH.
As of Monday, 54.79% of the population eligible for the vaccine in South Dakota has received at least one dose while 46.88% have completed the vaccination series.
Vaccines are currently being given to anyone 16-year-old and above in South Dakota.
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Children account for more than a fifth of new U.S. coronavirus cases in states that release statistics by age, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Tang Ming Tung/Getty Images hide caption
Children account for more than a fifth of new U.S. coronavirus cases in states that release statistics by age, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The number of children contracting COVID-19 in the U.S. is much lower than the record highs set at the start of the new year, but children now account for more than a fifth of new coronavirus cases in states that release data by age, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. It's a statistic that may surprise many: Just one year ago, child COVID-19 cases made up only around 3% of the U.S. total.
On Monday, the AAP said children represented 22.4% of new cases reported in the past week, accounting for 71,649 out of 319,601 cases. The latest report, drawn from data collected through April 29, illustrates how children's share of coronavirus infections has grown in recent weeks.
Experts link the trend to several factors particularly high vaccination rates among older Americans. The U.S. recently announced 100 million people were fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But other dynamics are also in play, from new COVID-19 variants to the loosening of restrictions on school activities.
It's also worth noting that for the vast majority of the pandemic, the age group with the highest case rates has been 18 to 24 in the U.S., as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes.
To get a sense of what's behind the rising proportion of cases in children, we spoke to Dr. Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the AAP's Committee on Infectious Diseases. O'Leary is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Medical Campus and Children's Hospital Colorado.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Does it surprise you, the kind of numbers we're seeing for children right now?
Well, yes and no. I think there are several things going on. One, of course, are the new variants that are circulating. This B.1.1.7 variant that's really becoming dominant in a lot of the country is more transmissible. I think the jury is still a bit out on if it's more severe. It's not clear if it's particularly more transmissible in kids. But at this point, it appears it's just more transmissible in everyone, including kids.
Certainly, vaccination is playing a role in terms of the changing in the demographics of who's getting infected.
In many parts of the country, depending on how states track their data 60 and older, 65 and older, 70 and older very high proportions of those populations in some places have been vaccinated.
We've seen a dramatic drop in the proportion of cases that are happening in those individuals, which is great news. But that, just by simple math, is going to change the proportion of cases that are happening in the other demographics.
In terms of raw numbers, the worst stretch of coronavirus infections for children was in a 13-week stretch from early November to February. The numbers fell as the U.S. exited its end-of-year wave. But since around mid-March, child coronavirus cases have not fallen at the same rate as adult cases.
We are seeing more outbreaks than we had related to school and school activities. We've seen those all along, and we're seeing a little bit more of those now proportionately than we had. And I think that's also due to a combination of factors. Again, the variants, but also more kids in the last couple of months are in in-person school than they had been in prior months.
With mitigation measures in place in school, it still appears that transmission is much lower than it is in the surrounding community. But when you have a surge in the surrounding community, it's inevitable that you're going to see it in schools.
The other thing that we've seen is more outbreaks in school-related activities, particularly sports and indoor sports in particular.
What do you make of the most recent data, showing kids accounted for about 20% of new cases in the past week?
As older portions of the population get vaccinated and we're still seeing circulation, it just stands to reason that the kids who are not eligible for vaccination yet are going to make up a larger share of that pie. I mean, the hope is that the overall pie itself gets smaller the number of infections overall. But yeah, if it's circulating, it's going to hit the people that are most vulnerable, which are the people that haven't been vaccinated.
Now, the good news is we may, in the coming weeks, have the vaccine approved down to age 12. We don't have any official dates on that yet, but it may be soon. Pfizer submitted their data to the FDA last month. So that could be a big game changer because we've known all along that adolescents tend to be both more likely to get infected and to spread the infection relative to the younger kids. So getting that population vaccinated is also going to make a difference in these dynamics. And I think it also can make a big difference for a lot of families' summer plans.
We should note that kids still represent a really small proportion of the worst-case outcomes.
Yeah, that is true. It's a somewhat nuanced conversation though. In Michigan, they've been reporting higher rates of hospitalizations in kids than they had [been]. It's unclear to me if that simply represents intense transmission versus actually increased severity. I think that's not entirely clear yet. Here in Colorado, we have a little surge going on. In most states actually, cases are going down. We're still kind of in a plateau, maybe increasing a bit here in Colorado. We have seen a slight uptick of kids hospitalized with COVID-19 here at Children's Hospital, but it's not dramatically so, not like what we were seeing in November, December or January.
Now, the part where that conversation about severity gets a little bit more complicated is yes, it is absolutely true that it's less severe in kids than it is in adults, and particularly older adults. But it's also not true to say that it's completely benign in kids. Fortunately, pediatric death is a fairly rare event. But when you look at the top 10 causes of death, on an annual basis, this year, we've had, depending on whose numbers you use, somewhere between 300 and 600 pediatric deaths from COVID-19 so far. That's probably an undercount. And that would fit it somewhere in the top 10, somewhere between like No. 6 and No. 9 in terms of causes of death for children.
So the point I'm making, there is that yes, it's less severe, but it's still potentially a very severe disease. We've seen tens of thousands of hospitalizations already. So we do need a vaccine for children, not just to protect, not just to achieve herd immunity, but also to protect the children themselves.
What about "long COVID" are kids showing extended months of symptoms from the disease?
In kids, we have seen it, but it doesn't seem to be as common as adults. We're taking care of a few kids now who are still having symptoms well over a month past their infections. I think, as little as we know about long COVID in adults, we know even less in kids. We really have even less of an understanding of the overall epidemiology of how common it is in kids.
The other question mark in my mind around this phenomenon is, many viruses can trigger sort of longer-term symptoms. A classic example would be mononucleosis: Some kids will have fatigue and symptoms for six to 12 months, occasionally even longer. So what's unclear to me at this point is if long-term symptoms are more frequent with COVID-19 than with some of the other viruses we've seen. But I wouldn't say that we're seeing sort of an epidemic of long COVID kids the way we have in adults.
How difficult is it to get data on children and COVID-19? I know that for its weekly reports, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association compile data from 49 states, along with New York City, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia and Guam. That leaves out the rest of New York state. And Texas only reports on the lower age range for a small percentage of the state's cases.
That's correct. There have been problems with data around this pandemic all along, including this particular situation. I think as long as you're comparing apples to apples, recognizing the limitations, I think that you can interpret the data. But, yeah, it's clearly an undercount.
Standardized data about COVID-19 cases across states has been pretty hard to get. From early on, it seemed like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies did not comprehensively standardize the different data that was out there.
Yeah, I mean, that's been a frustration throughout the pandemic. It was kind of shocking to me, frankly, even though I kind of worked in this field for a long time, that the AAP was really the best source of pediatric data through much of the pandemic for the U.S. And the AAP is a big organization, but we have a fairly small research shop, and it was the AAP that was compiling this data.
I absolutely adore my colleagues from the CDC. And they have really done herculean work through this pandemic. But they had so many things they had to deal with related to the pandemic crisis after crisis with adults that they just didn't have the capacity at the time to be able to track the kids who were, as we know, less severely affected.
What else should people understand about children and the COVID-19 pandemic?
We've been answering these questions about children and infections for almost a year, I guess. And what we've seen all along is that what is happening in children is simply reflective of what's going on in the surrounding community. It's not really driving what's going around in the surrounding community. And I think that's still the case, actually.
You know, where there are lots of cases happening in a given state that are going to be lots of cases and kids. But it's not to say that the kids are driving those numbers. And I think that that although we have seen increases in the proportion of kids, I think that that is still true.
Traditionally, people think of children sharing viruses among each other and then giving them to adults. And this seems like that dynamic is almost the inverse.
It's a strange virus, isn't it?
With India in the grip of a devastating second wave of COVID-19the country recorded more than 368,000 new cases and 3,417 deaths from the disease yesterdaysome have suggested that a variant first detected there in October could share some of the blame. The B.1.617 version of the coronavirus carries the ominous nickname double mutant, but it has more than two sequence changes from older SARS-CoV-2 variants, and little is known so far about the effects of these alterations, if any, on disease severity or the viruss ability to evade immunity gained through infection or vaccines.
One preliminary bit of insight emerged on April 23, when researchers reported in a preprint that B.1.617 was neutralized in vitro by the sera of people who had either recovered from COVID-19 or had received Indias Covaxin vaccine. That study has not yet undergone peer review. Compared with people who have recovered from COVID-19, the ability of the sera of vaccinated people to neutralize the B.1.617 variant was found to be two-fold less, coauthor Samiran Panda, a senior scientist at the Indian Council of Medical Research, tells The Hindu.
B.1.617s double mutant moniker comes from changes it harbors that are similar to those in other known variants. One mutation, known as L452R, is also found in the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant first identified in California, where it has been associated with increased transmissibility. Another B.1.617 mutation, called E484Q, is similar to the E484K mutation found in the P.1 variant that was first detected in Brazil and the B.1.351 variant, also known as the South African variant. E484K is known as an escape mutation because it appears to help the virus partially evade immunity conferred by prior infection or vaccines, according to The BMJ.
B.1.617 is now the dominant variant in Indias hardest-hit state, Maharashtra, according to Nature. In its most recent epidemiological update, released April 27, the World Health Organization (WHO) notes that multiple other variants are also circulating in the country, and that Preliminary modelling by WHO based on sequences submitted to GISAID suggest that B.1.617 has a higher growth rate than other circulating variants in India, suggesting potential increased transmissibility. It has also been found in at least 16 other countries, the organization notes. WHO still lists B.1.617 as a variant of interest rather than a variant of concern, because its effects on epidemiology or vaccine effectiveness, if any, are uncertain.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Air travel in the U.S. hit its highest mark since COVID-19 took hold more than 13 months ago, while European Union officials are proposing to ease restrictions on visitors to the continent as the vaccine sends new cases and deaths tumbling in more affluent countries.
The improving picture in many places contrasts with the worsening disaster in India.
In the U.S., the average number of new cases per day fell below 50,000 for the first time since October. And nearly 1.67 million people were screened at U.S. airport checkpoints on Sunday, according to the Transportation Security Administration, the highest number since mid-March of last year.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation giving him sweeping powers to invalidate local emergency measures put in place during the outbreak. While the law doesnt go into effect until July, the Republican governor said he will issue an executive order to more quickly get rid of local mask mandates.
I think this creates a structure thats going to be a little bit more respectful, I think, of peoples businesses, jobs, schools and personal freedom, he said.
Las Vegas is bustling again after casino capacity limits were raised Saturday to 80% and person-to-person distancing was dropped to 3 feet (0.9 meters). New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that New York Citys subways will begin running all night again and capacity restrictions on most businesses will end statewide in mid-May. And Los Angeles County reported no coronavirus deaths on Sunday and Monday, some of which may be attributable to a lag in reporting but was nevertheless a hopeful sign that could move the county to allow an increase in capacity at events and venues, and indoor-service at bars.
EU officials also announced a proposal Monday to relaxrestrictionson travel to the 27-nation bloc this summer, though the final decision is up to its member countries.
Time to revive EU tourism industry and for cross-border friendships to rekindle safely, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. We propose to welcome again vaccinated visitors and those from countries with a good health situation.
In Greece, restaurants and cafes reopened their terraces on Monday after six months of shutdown, with customers flocking to soak up the sunshine. In France, high schools reopened and a ban on domestic travel was lifted.
The once hard-hit Czech Republic, where cases are now declining, announced it will allow people to remove face coverings at all outdoor spaces starting next Monday if they keep their distance from others.
But with more-contagious variants taking hold, efforts are underway to boost vaccination efforts, which have begun to lag. Theaveragenumber of doses given per day fell 27% from a high of 3.26 million on April 11 to 2.37 million last Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
InDetroit, teams from the citys health department have knocked on nearly 5,000 doors since the weekend to persuade people to get immunized. And Massachusetts governor announced plans to close four of seven mass vaccination sites by the end of June in favor of a more targeted approach.
My plea to everyone: Get vaccinated now, please, President Joe Biden said in Norfolk, Virginia. He stressed that he has worked hard to make sure there are more than 600 million doses of vaccine enough for all Americans to get both doses.
Were going to increase that number across the board as well so we can also be helping other nations once we take care of all Americans, the president said.
Brazil, once the epicenter of thepandemic, has been overtaken by a surge inIndia that has overrun crematoriums and made it clear the pandemic is far from over.
As the U.S. and other countries rushed in aid, India reported nearly 370,000 new cases and more than 3,400 deaths Monday numbers that experts believe are vast undercounts because of a widespread lack of testing and incomplete reporting.
InGermany, Bavarian officials canceled Oktoberfest for a second year in a row because of the safety risks. The beer-drinking festivities typically attract about 6 million visitors from around the world.
And in Italy, medical experts and politicians expressed concern about a possible spike in infections after tens of thousands of jubilant soccer fans converged on Milans main square Sunday to celebrate Inter Milans league title.
A suburban Chicago family who lost their fully vaccinated father to COVID-19 said they hope his story can help others with certain pre-existing conditions and immune deficiencies as they say his unexpected passing left them with a major "what if."
Alan Sporn, owner and president of Spornette Internationaland an outgoing father of four who was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2019, had been taking added precautions throughout the coronavirus pandemic, despite not yet requiring treatment for his cancer.
"We were very careful when we visited him, always wore masks," his daughter Bonnie Sporn told NBC Chicago. "When we came to his house we either ate outside, we would wear masks."
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But the 75-year-old hairbrush salesman was eager to get vaccinated as travel was his career and his life. He received his first shot of the Pfizer vaccine in January and his second in early February, his family said.
By March, he had decided to have dinner at a restaurant with some friends, one of whom tested positive for coronavirus in the days following the meal.
Sporn started experiencing a fever and his doctor urged him to go to the emergency room and get tested. There, he found out he was positive for coronavirus.
Doctors told Sporn's family that his lungs were clear and he was able to recover at home.
"That's where we wish we would have paused and hit the pause button because we feel that some communication, some red flag wasn't alerted that because my dad has CLL, even though it's dormant, because he's immunocompromised - anybody with cancer or HIV or lupus, you know, like anybody that has an autoimmune disease - it should be a red flag," Bonnie Sporn said.
Three days later, Sporn was admitted to another hospital. By then, his lungs were "completely covered," his family said.
"He had eight antibodies," Bonnie Sporn said. "And you're supposed to have thousands of [antibodies]. You know after you get your second vaccine, it should show up in your system."
One week later, on March 29, Sporn died. The Cook County Medical Examiner's office listed his primary cause of death as pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus.
"We feel that if he were given an antibody test when he found out he had COVID it would have alerted us to his low antibody count, and we wouldn't have let him drive home," Bonnie Sporn said. "We would have been, you know, either send him straight to the hospital or at least monitor him."
The Illinois Department of Public Health has so far reported 32 deaths due to COVID-19 or related complications in fully vaccinated individuals since Jan. 1, but further details on those cases aren't available. As of April 28, another 97 "breakthrough" vaccine cases - those who test positive for coronavirus at least two weeks after their final vaccine dose - had been hospitalized.
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, citing data from a recent U.K. study, reports that "some blood cancer patients may not get optimal protection from the vaccines and may be more susceptible to COVID-19 infections after vaccination compared to the general public."
In that study from Kings College London, data showed that three weeks after one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, an antibody response was found in 39% of solid cancer patients and just 13% of people with blood cancer, compared to 95% in healthy individuals, the society reported.
The group urged blood cancer patients to continue wearing masks and taking preventative measures like social distancing and handwashing.
Similarly, a recent study from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center found that "people with cancer that affects the blood, bone marrow or lymph nodes are at elevated risk ofCOVID-19 vaccinefailure, particularly those with chronic lymphocytic leukemia."
The study tested blood from 67 patients with "hematologic malignancies" who had been vaccinated with either the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 two-dose vaccines three weeks earlier. The tests found that more than 46% of the participants had not produced antibodies against COVID-19 and only three in 13 patients withchronic lymphocytic leukemia had produced measurable antibodies, even though 70% of them werent undergoing any form of cancer therapy.
As we see more national guidance allowing for unmasked gatherings among vaccinated people, clinicians should counsel their immunocompromised patients about the possibility that COVID-19 vaccines may not fully protect them against SARS-CoV-2, the study's senior authorDr. Ghady Haidar, a transplant infectious diseases physician and assistant professor inthe university's Department of Infectious Diseases, said in a statement. Our results show that the odds of the vaccine producing an antibody response in people with hematologic malignancies are the equivalent of a coin flip.
According to Haidar, however, a negative antibody test does not necessarily mean a patient isn't protected from the virus.
Many medications and treatments for certain cancers or other conditions can cause immune suppression or weaken an immune system.
The University of Chicago wrote in a blog post in February that there is little-to-no data surrounding the coronavirus vaccines' effectiveness in immunocompromised people because they weren't included in the vaccines' initial trials.
"Researchers dont know whether these immunosuppressant treatments make the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines less effective as some do in the case of flu vaccines or if pausing or delaying treatment could make the vaccines work better. But its important that patients not change their treatment schedule without first speaking to their doctor," the university's post read.
With little data to offer, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is asking those living with blood cancers to register to become a "citizen scientist" and share their experiences with COVID-19 and the vaccines currently available.
The Sporns said they hope people continue getting vaccinated, but also want their father's story to raise awareness for the need to take added precautions.
"It's just extremely sad and, you know, everybody does a what if," Bonnie Sporn said. "So we're trying to help people with their what ifs. What if this person has a pre-existing condition? Should they get the vaccine? Should they be monitored? Should they still wear masks until... until when?"
Sporn's obituary states that he "made friends where ever he went -- in school, traveling and through work."
"He left a warm and loving impression on everyone he met, even if it was for just a brief meeting," the obituary read. "He knew people in every city he visited and even knew the airlines that got you directly to that city. He did not know a stranger. Alan was so generous with his time and love. He was a very loyal friend, a mentor, and a philanthropist. To honor Alan please do something nice for someone or reach out to an old an old friend."
A better approach would be for a trusted figure to address the root cause of the hesitancy fear, mistrust, misconceptions, ease of access or a desire for more information, said Mary Politi, an expert in health decision making and health communication at Washington University in St. Louis.
People often need to see others in their social circle embracing something before they are willing to try it, Dr. Politi said. Emphasizing the benefits of vaccination to their lives, like seeing a family member or sending their children to school, might be more motivating than the nebulous idea of herd immunity.
That would resonate with people more than this somewhat elusive concept that experts are still trying to figure out, she added.
Though children spread the virus less efficiently than adults do, the experts all agreed that vaccinating children would also be important for keeping the number of Covid cases low. In the long term, the public health system will also need to account for babies, and for children and adults who age into a group with higher risk.
Unnerving scenarios remain on the path to this long-term vision.
Over time, if not enough people are protected, highly contagious variants may develop that can break through vaccine protection, land people in the hospital and put them at risk of death.
Thats the nightmare scenario, said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University.
How frequent and how severe those breakthrough infections are have the potential to determine whether the United States can keep hospitalizations and deaths low or if the country will find itself in a mad scramble every couple of years, he said.
I think were going to be looking over our shoulders or at least public health officials and infectious disease epidemiologists are going to be looking over their shoulders going: All right, the variants out there what are they doing? What are they capable of? he said. Maybe the general public can go back to not worrying about it so much, but we will have to.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, wears a protective mask during a meeting in Brussels last week. Olivier Matthys/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, wears a protective mask during a meeting in Brussels last week.
The head of the European Commission said Monday that she is recommending that nonresident travelers vaccinated against COVID-19 and those from "countries with a good health situation" be allowed to travel to the European Union this summer.
However, von der Leyen cautioned in a tweet Monday that if variants of the coronavirus emerge, "we have to act fast: we propose an EU emergency brake mechanism."
Current EU restrictions allow only travelers from seven countries to enter the 27-member bloc, regardless of whether they've been vaccinated.
Last week, von der Leyen said U.S. travelers would be allowed to resume travel to EU countries but did not give a time frame. The economies of many EU nations, such as Spain and Italy, rely heavily on tourism and have been hard hit by the prolonged absence of Americans due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The recommendation is set to be discussed on Tuesday and must be approved by all EU member states to come into force, according to Reuters. Individually, countries could still decide to honor the recommendation even if some don't, the news agency said.
Meanwhile, on Monday, in a letter to President Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, several groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others representing the airline and travel industries in both the U.S. and the U.K., urged the two leaders to reopen their travel markets.
A planned G-7 summit in the U.K. on June 11 the first since the start of the pandemic "would be an ideal opportunity for a joint announcement of the full reopening of the U.S.-UK air travel market for both U.S. and UK citizens," they suggested.
"We are confident that the right tools now exist to enable a safe and meaningful restart to transatlantic travel," the industry groups wrote, according to Bloomberg.
Among the groups that signed on to the letter are Airlines for America, the Global Business Travel Association, the Air Line Pilots Association, Virgin Atlantic, the Association of UK Airlines and the Aerospace Industries Association.
Although air passenger numbers in the U.S. remain historically low, the country has been rebounding, with the Transportation Security Administration reporting that more than 1.6 million people were screened at airports on Sunday, compared with only around 170,000 a year ago.
