Last week, I wrote that national U.S. COVID-19 cases were in a plateau. The pattern has continued this week: cases are down 13% from last week, new hospitalized patients are down 4%, and deaths are down 11%.
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A couple of major news items on Delta: it’s still highly transmissible, it might lead to more severe disease, child hospitalization rates are tied to low community vaccination, and evidence for boosters is still questionab
Read MoreFeatured sources for July 18 include coronavirus variants, long COVID, excess deaths, vaccine hesitancy, and more.
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The Delta variant is now dominant in the U.S., but our high vaccination rates still put us in a much better position than the rest of the world—which is facing the super-contagious variant largely unprotected.
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While epidemiologists may consider any new outbreak a possible source of new variants, one key way to monitor the virus/variant race is by analyzing breakthrough cases—those infections that occur after someone has been fully vaccinated. Here’s how states and the CDC are tracking these cases now, and what we know about vaccine protection against the variants.
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The Delta variant (also known as B.1.617.2) was first identified in India earlier this spring. It’s now known to spread more easily than any other variant found so far and evade immunity from a prior COVID-19 infection. It’s now spreading rapidly in the U.S.
Read MoreWe 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 MoreFeatured sources for the week of May 30 include healthcare workers, a new tool for tracking health equity, variant lineages, and more.
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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 MoreTwo more important CDC data updates for this week: the CDC added more options for its vaccine demographic data and more recent variant data.
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