In last week’s newsletter, I gave a shout-out to the Salt Lake County Health Department, which posted vaccination rates by Zodiac sign on Twitter. It drew a lot of attention, but the local agency’s analysis might not be particularly robust.
Read MoreFeatured sources and updates for the week of October 31 include booster shot data, polling on vaccines, testing in prisons, breakthrough cases, and more.
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Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, under an Emergency Use Authorization. The agency’s vaccine advisory committee met on Tuesday to discuss Pfizer’s application and voted overwhelmingly in favor; the FDA followed this up with an EUA announcement on Friday.
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Recently, a new offshoot of the Delta variant has been gaining ground in the U.K. It’s called AY.4.2, and it appears to be slightly more transmissible than Delta itself. While experts say this variant doesn’t differ enough from Delta to pose a serious concern, I think it’s worth exploring what we know about it so far—and what this means for the future of coronavirus mutation.
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Nationally, new COVID-19 cases continue to drop—though the decrease is slowing a bit from previous weeks. The number of new cases fell by about 7% this week, after falling by about 12% for the two weeks prior.
Read MoreFeatured sources for the week of October 24 include more booster shot data from the CDC, racial disparities, executive approval, and leading causes of death.
Read MoreDid you know that diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting are all common COVID-19 symptoms? I knew they were included on the CDC’s list of symptoms, but I didn’t realize how often these symptoms occur—or how nasty they can get—until I reported a story for Gothamist.
Read MoreAt the end of last week’s post on booster shots, I wrote that these additional doses take up airtime in expert discussions and in the media, distracting from discussions of what it will take to vaccinate the world. But these shots do more harm than just taking over the media cycle. When the U.S. and other wealthy nations decide to give many residents third doses, they jump the vaccine supply line again—leaving low-income nations to wait even longer for first doses.
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At this point in the pandemic, we know that routine COVID-19 testing can be a key tactic for reducing transmission in communal settings. If you identify cases as soon as they occur through asymptomatic testing, you can quickly isolate those cases and quarantine their contacts—preventing the cases from turning into outbreaks. This strategy works everywhere from kindergarten classrooms to the NBA.
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Nationwide, COVID-19 cases continue to go down—slowly but surely. We’re now seeing roughly 70,000 new cases a day, comparable to case counts when the Delta surge started to really pick up at the end of July. It’s worth noting, though, that this is still higher than the peaks of both the spring and summer 2020 surges.
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