This past Monday, President Biden said in a speech, “We’re throwing everything we can at this virus, tracking it from every angle.” Which I, personally, found laughable. The U.S.’s anti-COVID strategy basically revolves around vaccines, and it’s not sufficient for stopping new surges.
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On Thanksgiving, my Twitter feed was dominated not by food photos, but by news of a novel coronavirus variant identified in South Africa earlier this week. While the variant—now called Omicron, or B.1.1.529—likely didn’t originate in South Africa, data from the country’s comprehensive surveillance system provided enough evidence to suggest that this variant could be more contagious than Delta, as well as potentially more able to evade human immune systems.
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On Friday morning, the FDA authorized booster shots of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines for all adults in the U.S., six months after their first two doses. The CDC’s vaccine advisory committee voted to support this expanded booster eligibility that afternoon, and CDC leadership signed off on it a few hours later.
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This week, I had a new story published at the data journalism site FiveThirtyEight. The story explores the U.S.’s failure to comprehensively track breakthrough cases, and how that failure has led officials to look towards data from other countries with better tracking systems as they make decisions about booster shots. In the CDD, I’m sharing one of the interviews I did for that story.
Read MoreAs the world waits for more information on Omicron, I’d like to give a shout-out to the scientists collecting data on this novel variant and sharing it with the public. As of today, over 500 Omicron sequences have been posted to the genome sharing site GISAID.
Read MoreFeatured sources for the week of December 5 include state contact tracing strategies and polling on vaccination attitudes.
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While politicians at all levels have praised cash incentives, research has shown that this strategy has little impact on actually convincing Americans to get vaccinated. A recent investigation I worked on (at the Documenting COVID-19 project and the Missouri Independent) provides new evidence for this trend: the state of Missouri allocated $11 million for gift cards that residents could get upon receiving their first or second vaccine dose, but the vast majority of local health departments opted not to participate in the program—and a very small number of gift cards have been distributed thus far.
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There is still a lot we don’t know about the Omicron variant, first identified in Botswana and South Africa in late November. Still, we’ve learned a few new things in the last week. Here’s a quick roundup.
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Don’t be fooled by the apparent case decline in the CDC’s numbers: the U.S. is still in the midst of a new surge. The agency reported fewer cases last week due to Thanksgiving holiday delays, but we can expect cases to shoot up next week as delayed cases are added to the data.
Read MoreWe’re now approaching almost a year since the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) first started publicly releasing Community Profile Reports, massive documents containing COVID-19 data at the state, county, and metro area levels.
Read MoreSources and updates for the week of November 28 include more states now reporting booster shot data, and a survey of burned-out healthcare workers.
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Last year, Thanksgiving was a turning point in the winter 2020 surge. This year, we saw cases increase once again in the weeks prior to Thanksgiving. But we’re better protected this time, thanks to vaccines and better knowledge of the virus.
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