Farewell from the CDD’s valiant intern
This will be Sarah Braner’s last week writing for the COVID-19 Data Dispatch, so she shared a few words of thanks and reflection.
Read MoreAuthor: Sarah Braner
New variant names from the WHO
We finally have a straightforward variant naming system: on May 31, the WHO announced a system using letters of the Greek alphabet. B.1.1.7 (first identified in the U.K. is now Alpha, B.1.351 (first identified in South Africa) is now Beta, and so on.
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 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 MoreCOVID source shout-out: Goodnight Turbovax
So long, farewell, I hope we never have to meet again: the sun is setting for the incredibly hardworking bot Turbovax.info.
Read MoreThe 2021 Tokyo Olympics begin on July 23. Will Japan be ready?
Is Japan ready to host the Olympics in July? They’re definitely not ready now. The Japanese government just announced it would extend an already-standing state of emergency through May 31 following a large spike in COVID-19 cases. After “Golden Week,” a sequence of Japanese Holidays lasting from late April to early May, Tokyo reported 907 new cases for the week.
Read MoreState K-12 school data still leave much to be desired
The academic year is coming to an end for most schools pretty soon, so we thought it’d be appropriate to check in on the state of state K-12 COVID-19 data. We’ve been keeping track of the metrics reported by states throughout the fall and spring, but states have not improved much through the school year.
Read MoreJ&J is back on the menu
After 10 days, the pause on the J&J vaccine has been lifted. According to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, there have been about 1.9 cases of severe blood clotting per million people who had received the J&J vaccine. It has been re-authorized for use in people aged 18 and older, now with an addendum to the label and fact sheet warning of the risk of blood clots.
Read MoreDid you know that you, a plebeian, can search through VAERS?
VAERS stands for “Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.” It’s used as a “national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines,” it’s been around for much longer than the COVID-19 vaccines or even COVID-19, and it’s how regulators are examining the data about possible complications related to the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. And as the cherry on top, the data is open to the public through the WONDER search engine. So what’s there?
Read MoreCOVID source shout-out: I’ve never wanted to be an “NIH-er” this bad
On Friday, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins posted a video of a “COVIDized” “Here Comes The Sun” to his NIH Director’s blog, in which he thanked “NIH-ers” and promised a way out of the “long, dark, COVID winter.”
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