COVID source shout-out: Babydog
If I weren’t already vaccinated, I would do it for Babydog.
Read MoreMonth: May 2021
Featured sources, May 30
Featured sources for the week of May 30 include healthcare workers, a new tool for tracking health equity, variant lineages, and more.
Read MoreFall school reopening plans demonstrate continued data gap
Vaccine options for children ages 12 and older (now Pfizer, soon Moderna) make in-person education a safe bet for a lot of families. But younger students will likely have to wait much longer for their shots. As a result, regular testing will continue to be a key safety strategy… but school testing data continue to be hard to come by.
Read MoreModerna for the middle children
Good news for kids hoping for jabs in arms: Moderna has announced promising results for its trial in adolescent-aged children. In around 4,000 adolescents, the vaccine proved to be 94.1% effective in preventing disease. No cases in the vaccinated group were found two weeks after the second shot, while 4 cases were found in the unvaccinated control group.
Read MoreWhy did the CDC change its breakthrough case reporting?
Earlier this month, the CDC made a pretty significant change in how it tracks breakthrough cases. Instead of reporting all cases, the agency is only investigating and collecting data on those cases that result in hospitalizations or deaths. Here’s what this decision means, and why I’m calling it a lazy move.
Read MoreNational numbers, May 30
Cases, deaths, and hospitalizations all continue to drop nationwide. The U.S. reported about 3,000 COVID-19 deaths last week, in total—at the peak of the winter surge, we saw more than 3,000 deaths a day.
Read MoreCOVID source callout: CDC’s vaccinations by age data
The CDC is now reporting separate vaccination numbers for children ages 16 to 17, 12 to 15, and under 12. Yes, under 12. Even though this group isn’t eligible for vaccination yet.
Read MoreFeatured sources, May 23
Featured sources for the week of May 23 include nursing home outbreaks, excess deaths, and vaccine consent laws.
Read MoreVaccine cocktails look viable—just in time for hot-vax summer
A clinical trial based in Spain of around 600 participants (aged 18-59) reported encouraging results regarding mix-and-match vaccines (or “heterologous prime-and-boost,” if you want the jargon) meaning one shot of one vaccine and the second shot of another. In this study, the first dose given was AstraZeneca, and the second was Pfizer.
Read MoreThe CDC needs to release state-by-state data on who’s getting vaccinated
This week, we finally got demographic state-by-state vaccination data from the CDC. Well… sort-of. A team from KHN received CDC state-by-state demographic vaccination data via a public records request. The data indicate that, despite promises from the White House to prioritize vulnerable communities in the vaccination campaign, a lot of inequities persist.
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