Category: Corona Virus

The Dalai Lama leaves the Zonal Hospital in Dharmsala, India, on Saturday after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Ashwini Bhatia/AP hide caption

The Dalai Lama leaves the Zonal Hospital in Dharmsala, India, on Saturday after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.

Updated at 2:12 p.m. ET

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, left his home on Saturday to receive his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and promote vaccination against the coronavirus, in what was his first public appearance in over a year.

The 85-year-old scrapped plans to receive the injection at home, opting instead to travel to a clinic in Dharamsala, India, where he's lived since fleeing China after a failed uprising in 1959.

He was photographed exposing his right shoulder to receive a vaccine known as Covishield in India, which was developed by the University of Oxford and drug firm AstraZeneca. In a video message afterward, the Dalai Lama said, "I took [the vaccine] so I want to share [that] more people should have courage to take this injection."

This comes as India and other countries try to ramp up vaccination distribution to outrun the coronavirus and its variant forms. India currently has the world's second-highest COVID-19 caseload, with over 11 million confirmed cases. To date, more than 157,000 people have died of the disease in India.

Globally, there are more than 116 million cases of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University. A quarter of those cases are in the U.S., where more than 522,000 have died of the disease since the pandemic began.

On Monday, high-ranking government Indian officials, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, publicly touted receiving their vaccines. Afterward, Modi tweeted: "I appeal to all those who are eligible to take the vaccine. Together, let us make India Covid-19 free."

India, like the U.S. and other parts of the world, has seen its share of vaccine-related controversy, some of which relates to the speed with which the medicines have rolled out. Unlike the Dalai Lama, Modi and others received shots of a homegrown vaccine called COVAXIN, which the Indian government approved for use in January, even before clinical trial data on its efficacy was released. The decision to authorize early prompted concern from scientists and public health experts.

Some of that debate was put to rest on Wednesday, when Bharat Biotech, the company making the COVAXIN vaccine, released preliminary analysis of phase 3 clinical trials showing its doses 81% effective in preventing infection.

Globally, vaccination efforts are moving slowly. The U.S. has fully vaccinated the greatest number of people, at 28.7 million, which amounts to 8.6% of its population. In raw numbers, India ranks third, having fully vaccinated 3.5 million, but that's a miniscule fraction of its population of 1.36 billion.

Still, India could eventually become a powerhouse in the world's fight against COVID-19. It already makes most of the world's vaccines, and companies are already ramping up manufacturing capacity. India is expected to make 3.5 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine, second only to the U.S., which is expected to make 4 billion, according to Deloitte.

"India is in a much different position than most lower- to middle-income countries, in that they have the capacity to develop and manufacture vaccines," said Andrea Taylor, an associate professor at Duke's Global Health Innovation Center. Whether that will result in faster rollout within the country isn't clear, she says.

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The Dalai Lama Gets A COVID-19 Shot And Urges Others To Get Vaccinated - NPR

CLIFF ISLAND, Maine In different times, a taxi met visitors at the wharf to take them to any destination on this H-shaped islands dirt roads.

Few visitors come now. But the taxi is still parked up the road with its back window emblazoned with a simple message in bold yellow lettering: Sorry! No Taxi Service Due to COVID-19.

It is one of the most immediately visible ways that life has changed on the island in Casco Bay that is part of Maines largest city, but is a remote last stop on the ferry from the mainland. Cliff Island has yet to see a confirmed case of the coronavirus in nearly a year since the pandemic arrived in Maine, infecting more than 45,000 statewide and more than 3,700 in Portland.

That is a distinction few others can boast and the Cliff Islands roughly 45 year-round residents want to keep. North Haven, which briefly attempted to ban outside visitors when the pandemic began, saw 15 cases in a week last fall. Swans Island, the lobstering village off the Blue Hill Peninsula with a population of about 320, saw its first confirmed case just a few weeks ago.

Low population is one factor that has helped some island communities skirt the worst of the virus so far. But Cliff Islands success also reflects the strength of residents collective decisions to prioritize public health and community efforts that enabled more vulnerable islanders to avoid their typically common trips to the mainland while vital services continued.

Clockwise from left : A Casco Bay Lines employee brings in the ramp onto the ferry while stopped at Cliff Island on March 4; The entrance to Cliff Island with posted coronavirus guidelines; The Casco Bay Lines ferry approaches the island; The Casco Bay Lines ferry prepares to depart from Cliff Island. Credit: Natalie Williams / BDN

We were hunkered down here, said Cheryl Crowley, a longtime Cliff Island resident active in several initiatives to help sustain the islands year-round population.

Cliff Islands population, like Maines as a whole, skews older. Taxi driver Chester Pettengill, who is also custodian of the one-room schoolhouse with only three students and meets the ferry each day to bring mail from the dock to the post office, is in his 80s. He was the inspiration for other islanders to take the virus seriously, Crowley said.

Some Maine towns saw a rush of visitors with the onset of the pandemic last spring, but Cliff Island residents wrote letters to longtime summer visitors asking them to delay trips to minimize risk. Between fewer visitors and trips to the mainland, passenger revenue to Cliff Island last year was down 29 percent through November, according to Casco Bay Lines, which operates ferries to the seven islands off the coast of Portland. Cliff Island is one of two major islands in the harbor Great Diamond Island being the other that have recorded no virus cases.

The seasonal Cliff Island Store is the islands sole business, with residents usually traveling to the mainland for groceries and other necessities. To dissuade that, Crowley, along with her husband and daughters, use a Google spreadsheet to track requests. There are printed forms for the residents who do not use computers to handwrite their orders.

They worked with Hope MacVane, the seasonal stores owner, to order in bulk from Portland-area distributors, which ship the groceries by ferry to the island. Crowley and her daughters divide them up at the community center, allowing families to pick them up in a socially distanced manner. Volume was highest early in the pandemic, but the effort continues.

MacVane never officially reopened the island store last summer. The business usually serves islanders as well as tourists who stop on a ferry or stay for longer in a rental home. Not wanting to encourage crowds, MacVane expanded grocery deliveries by switching to an online store in the summer, making it possible to turn around orders quicker. The community was supportive.

Clockwise from left: Residents walk down one of the dirt roads on Cliff Island on March 4. There are no paved roads on the H-shaped island; The coastline of Cliff Island is pictured; Cheryl Crowley, a longtime Cliff Island resident, gives a tour of the H-shaped island. Credit: Natalie Williams / BDN

One of our big goals was, how do we keep us safe, but also how do we keep islanders safe? she said. And part of opening would mean that we would have people coming on to the public wharf to come up to the store.

As the pandemic persisted into the fall, virus precautions yielded benefits for its youngest residents. Elementary schools on Cliff Island and Peaks Island are the only two city schools that have been open for in-person learning five days a week since September.

The benefits are exponential, said Kelly Hasson, the teacher leader for both schools.

In-person learning and a lack of confirmed cases still come with health precautions. Island schools shut down like all others in March of last year, then upgraded ventilation systems over the summer before students returned. On Cliff Island, teacher Jenny Baum set up tables outdoors last fall, enabling students to learn outside for several months before cold weather forced them back into the one-room schoolhouse.

Clockwise from left: Teacher Jenny Baum (right) talks about teaching on Cliff Island as her students approach her; Cliff Island School students search for items such as birch bark, feathers and lichens outside their one-room schoolhouse on March 4; First-grader Fiona Anderson (left) and third-grader Chloe Blonquist look for various objects outdoors during a school activity; Fourth-grader Edward Anderson climbs in a tree at the end of the school day. Credit: Natalie Williams / BDN

Though the temperature barely cracked 20 degrees on a sunny Thursday, the schools three students spent the last half-hour of their day on a treasure hunt for lichen, birch bark and other natural objects found around the schoolhouse. Engaging with the island, Baum said, helps offset some of the loss of in-person connection due to the pandemic.

The students no longer take a ferry to the elementary school on nearby Long Island twice a week and art classes are by Zoom rather than having a teacher visit from the mainland. They wrote letters to the islands veterans for Veterans Day and made evergreen sprays for winter residents for Christmas.

Baum, originally from New York City and in her third year teaching on Cliff Island, says she feels very fortunate to be teaching here during the pandemic. She leaves sparingly, not wanting to risk her health or that of her students.

Many of Cliff Islands oldest residents rarely left, too. But some recently got on the ferry to Long Island for their first COVID-19 vaccinations. After Maine expanded eligibility to people aged 60 and older, Crowley was busy again, helping eligible residents to find appointments.

MacVane, who is from the island but now lives on the mainland and works as a teacher most of the year, has not been back to Cliff Island since closing the store last fall. Her parents still live there, but the family has tried to avoid large gatherings due to the pandemic.

She misses it, following along with live feed cameras until she can return.

Its a special place, she said. It holds a special place in so many hearts.

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This small Maine island community rallied together to keep the coronavirus at bay - Bangor Daily News

About a year ago, state and local governments in the United States began urging residents to adjust their work, school and social lives in response to the spread of a novel coronavirus first identified in China.

Americans could agree on a few things at that early stage of the U.S. outbreak. With restaurants, stores and other public spaces around the country closing their doors, most saw COVID-19 as a serious economic threat to the nation. Most approved of their state and local officials initial responses to the outbreak. And they generally had confidence in hospitals and medical centers to handle the needs of those stricken with the virus.

As the pandemic wore on, however, there was less and less common ground. Indeed, the biggest takeaway about U.S. public opinion in the first year of the coronavirus outbreak may be the extent to which the decidedly nonpartisan virus met with an increasingly partisan response. Democrats and Republicans disagreed over everything from eating out in restaurants to reopening schools, even as the actual impact of the pandemic fell along different fault lines, including race and ethnicity, income, age and family structure. Americas partisan divide stood out even by international standards: No country was as politically divided over its governments handling of the outbreak as the U.S. was in a 14-nation survey last summer.

As the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. extends into its second year with more than 500,000 dead and major challenges to the nations economy Pew Research Center looks back at some of the key patterns in public attitudes and experiences we observed in the first year of the crisis.

Our first COVID-19 survey went into the field on March 10, 2020. We interviewed nearly 9,000 Americans over the course of the next seven days a period that saw the World Health Organization declare the virus a pandemic; President Donald Trump declare a national emergency and ban travel to the U.S. from parts of Europe; and the White House advise Americans to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people.

News about the virus was breaking so rapidly that public concern ticked up noticeably even within the weeklong field period of our survey. By mid-March, all 50 states had reported coronavirus cases. By the end of the month, the U.S. had more cases than any other country, and a majority of Americans were under some kind of stay-at-home order.

There were already some indications of the partisan divide over the virus in that first sounding. While majorities in both parties anticipated the economic problems hurtling toward the nation, Democrats and Republicans differed sharply over whether the virus was a major threat to the health of the U.S. population. About six-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (59%) said it was, compared with only a third of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents. That 26 percentage point gap would grow to around 40 points as spring turned to summer and then fall.

Other divides also became apparent in that first survey. They included heightened health concerns among Black and Hispanic Americans, as well as greater economic concerns among workers with lower incomes and less formal schooling. Both would become recurring themes throughout the pandemic and the severe recession it brought on.

Overall, our first polling on COVID-19 showed that the public had mixed expectations about how the outbreak would play out in the months ahead. That wasnt necessarily a surprise, given that most Americans had little or no experience with a pandemic. In mid-March, only around a third of U.S. adults (36%) expected the virus to pose a major threat to the day-to-day life of their community.

By late March and early April, the mood had clearly changed. Two-thirds of Americans including majorities in both parties and across all major demographic groups saw COVID-19 as a significant crisis at that time. Large majorities saw a recession or depression coming, predicted the pandemic would last more than six months, said the worst was still to come and anticipated that there could be at least some disruptions to Americans ability to vote in the presidential election in November. All of those things would turn out to be true.

The arrival of a first-in-a-lifetime pandemic created a sudden need for average people to find and process large amounts of complicated and rapidly evolving information. Americans turned to many different sources for that information, but two commonly cited ones, the White House and the news media, brought out especially sharp partisan differences in attitudes.

In late March, views of how Trump was handling the outbreak were already starkly split along party lines. Around eight-in-ten Republicans (83%) said the president was doing an excellent or good job, including 47% who said he was doing an excellent job. A nearly identical share of Democrats (81%) rated his response as only fair or poor, including 56% who said it was poor.

In early April, around two-thirds of Republicans (66%) said Trump was quick to take the major steps needed in response to international reports of the outbreak; 92% of Democrats said he was too slow off the mark. In the same survey, 69% of Republicans said Trump was accurately characterizing the severity of the COVID-19 situation; an even larger share of Democrats (77%) said he was making it seem better than it really was. Fall came but the partisan divide remained: In early September, around eight-in-ten Republicans (79%) said the president was giving the country the right message on the virus; a bigger proportion of Democrats (90%) said he was delivering the wrong message.

If views were partisan when it came to the president, they were only slightly less so when it came to the news media. In mid-March, 89% of all Americans said they were following news about the outbreak very or fairly closely. But Democrats were already much more likely than Republicans to say the media had covered the pandemic at least somewhat well (80% vs. 59%), while Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say the media had exaggerated the risks of the outbreak (76% vs. 49%).

As the pandemic continued, divisions over the media became more apparent. In late April, majorities of Democrats said the news coverage of the outbreak was getting them the information they needed (73%), was largely accurate (66%), worked for the benefit of the public (66%) and helped the country (63%). Fewer than half of Republicans agreed with each statement.

By September, around eight-in-ten Democrats (81%) continued to say the media were doing very or somewhat well covering the outbreak, but the proportion of Republicans who agreed had fallen below half (45%).

On many subjects related to the coronavirus, public attitudes differed not only by political party, but within each party, depending on where people turned for news and information. Republicans who relied on Trump and the White House for COVID-19 news, for example, were consistently more likely than Republicans who turned elsewhere for news to rate Trumps response highly and the medias response poorly.

Meanwhile, with the perceived trustworthiness of information from both the White House and the media deeply divided along partisan lines, Americans expressed concerns about the proliferation of misinformation.

As early as mid-March, around half of Americans (48%) said they had seen at least some information about COVID-19 that seemed completely made up, on subjects ranging from the origin of the virus to its risks and potential cures. In early June, sizable shares in both parties but especially Republicans said they were finding it harder to tell what was true and what was false about the outbreak. And conspiracy theories began to gain a foothold: In the same June survey, a quarter of U.S. adults saw at least some truth in the theory that powerful people had intentionally planned the outbreak. Republicans were about twice as likely as Democrats (34% vs. 18%) to say the claim was probably or definitely true.

It may seem hard to believe today, but in late March 2020, there was strong bipartisan support for a variety of government-imposed shutdown measures. At the time, broad majorities in both parties supported restricting international travel to the U.S., canceling sports and entertainment events, closing K-12 schools, asking people to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people and halting indoor dining at restaurants.

The restrictions didnt always wear well over time, particularly as governors and other leaders tried to navigate both public health and economic considerations. By early April, around eight-in-ten Democrats (81%) said their greater concern was that state-level restrictions on public activity would be lifted too quickly, a view shared by only around half of Republicans (51%). That 30-point difference would grow to 40 points by early May.

In addition to differences over government restrictions, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say that social distancing or even personal actions more broadly made a big difference in slowing the outbreak. Around seven-in-ten Democrats (69%) said in early May that social distancing measures were helping reduce the spread of the virus a lot, compared with around half of Republicans (49%). In mid-June, 73% of Democrats said the actions of ordinary Americans affected the spread of the virus a great deal, compared with 44% of Republicans.

Partisans also differed over the reasons behind the rising case counts in the summer of 2020. Most Republicans accepted Trumps claim that the growing number of cases was primarily a result of increased testing, rather than a combination of testing and a real increase in infections.Eight-in-ten Democrats pointed to more infections, not just more testing.

And then there was the subject of masks. While surveys consistently showed that a majority of Americans reported wearing masks in stores and other businesses, divisions by party stood out. In early June, 76% of Democrats said they had worn a mask in stores all or most of the time in the past month, compared with 53% of Republicans.

Mask-wearing became more widespread in both parties as time passed, particularly as Trump donned a mask in public for the first time and the virus moved from more Democratic parts of the country to more Republican ones. But an analysis of volunteered survey responses in September underscored the ongoing differences in opinion over face coverings:

I live in Missouri in a smaller town, less than 5K. Everyone thinks its made up, no one wears masks or social distances. [] I dont feel safe or protected by my managers but I also cant say anything because I need the job. Woman, 36

I wear [a mask] for at least 8 hours a day along with a face shield, gloves and lab coat. I see approximately 100 patients a day and when I hear people complain about having to wear it for 20 minutes or those who refuse to wear it, I just have to scream silently inside. Woman, 59

I have chronic asthma so I am fearful of being exposed to the coronavirus. It makes me extremely angry to go out and see people not wearing masks or keeping social distance. And my intense dislike of Trump has grown because he lies about the coronavirus and there is blood on his hands. His lack of telling the truth about the coronavirus and his attempt to use the public health systems of the U.S. for his own political ends are the equivalent of murdering thousands of people. Man, 73

Forced to wear masks for a virus that killed less than 10,000 people, I am more likely to be murdered in Kansas City than catch COVID there. Man, 28

The entire unnecessary shutdown of the country got my husband furloughed for 9 weeks, more government overreach with mask orders, people are just so terrified to live its disgusting, so the ones of us like me who arent scared get treated like we are awful people Woman, 31

Being forced to wear a completely useless mask when going into businesses. I have bad allergies and cant breathe well. The CDC has reported that the masks are useless, which to me indicates they are virtue signaling items and are being used to control people. Woman, 70

In the bigger picture, the disputes over shutdowns, social distancing and masks pointed to partisan differences over whether the country should place greater emphasis on stopping the spread of the virus or on restarting the economy.

The vast majority of Democrats (94%) said in the summer that the more effective way to fix the economy was to reduce infections to a level where more people would feel comfortable going to stores, schools and other workplaces. Republicans were divided: Half said, for the sake of the economy, these kinds of places should open up even without a significant reduction in infections.

Pandemic-related closures forced Americans to make wholesale changes in their everyday lives, from the way they attended religious services to the way they connected with friends and family, attended exercise classes, shopped for groceries and much more. Many of these activities moved online so much so that 53% of adults said in April that the internet had been essential to them during the first weeks of the outbreak.

Even personal living arrangements changed for a sizable share of the public: In a June survey, 22% of U.S. adults said they or someone they knew had moved because of the pandemic.

While people from all walks of life were personally affected, there were persistent partisan divides in Americans comfort level with a range of daily activities. In the summer of 2020, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say they were comfortable going out to the grocery store, visiting with family or friends inside their home, going to a hair salon or barbershop, eating out in a restaurant, attending an indoor sports event or concert, and attending a crowded party. On some measures, Republicans became much more comfortable as the pandemic wore on, while Democrats remained more hesitant. In June, around two-thirds of Republicans (65%) said they would feel comfortable eating out at a restaurant, up from 29% in March, even as Democrats remained mostly uncomfortable with the idea.

Back-to-school season brought more partisan divides. In late July, 36% of Republicans but only 6% of Democrats said K-12 schools in their area should offer in-person classes five days a week; 41% of Democrats but only 13% of Republicans favored online classes five days a week. When asked about the factors local school districts should take into consideration when deciding whether to reopen, Democrats focused more on the possible health risks to students and teachers; Republicans focused more on the harms caused by the lack of in-person instruction, such as students falling behind and parents not being able to work with their children at home.

As the presidential election approached, Americans differed not only over whom they planned to vote for, but how they planned to cast their ballots. In a late summer survey, most registered voters who supported Joe Biden (58%) said they would vote by mail taking advantage of an expansion of that option due to the pandemic while roughly the same share of Trump supporters (60%) said they would vote in person on Election Day itself.

The holiday season brought further partisan divides. With health authorities cautioning against holiday travel, more than half of Americans (57%) said they had changed their Thanksgiving plans a great deal or some due to the pandemic. But Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to say they had done so (70% vs. 44%).

The pandemic didnt just expose partisan divides at nearly every turn. It also revealed stark racial and ethnic differences in health outcomes, financial duress and personal experiences with discrimination.

More than half a million Americans died of COVID-19 in the first year of the outbreak alone, with the death toll sometimes exceeding 4,000 people a day. But fatality rates were much higher among Black, Hispanic and other racial and ethnic minority groups than among White Americans. Not surprisingly, Black and Hispanic survey respondents were also consistently more likely than White adults to voice health concerns over the virus and to say they personally knew someone who had suffered serious health consequences because of it.

Already in April, around a quarter of Black Americans (27%) said they knew someone who had been hospitalized or died due to COVID-19. That figure would rise to 34% by May, 57% by August, 71% by November and 78% by February 2021. By then, around three-quarters of Hispanic Americans (74%) also said they knew someone who had died or been hospitalized, even as White and Asian Americans remained less likely to say so.

The rapid development of new vaccines was welcome news in the fight against COVID-19, but one that highlighted additional racial and ethnic differences. In surveys in May, September, November and February 2021, a majority of Americans said they would definitely or probably get a vaccine if one were available, but Black adults were consistently less likely than other adults to say this.

Besides the health disparities it exposed, the pandemic also led to greater financial hardship among Black and Hispanic adults, who were already more likely than other Americans (on average) to have lower incomes long before the outbreak began.

Hispanic Americans were especially affected by the downturn, often because they worked in the industries hit hardest by the recession. Just after the outbreak began in March, 49% of Hispanics compared with 33% of Americans overall said they or someone in their household had taken a pay cut or lost their job. By April, 61% of Hispanics versus 43% of the overall public said they or someone in their household had had one of these things happen to them.

Meanwhile, amid talk of the China virus from Trump and others, discrimination became another cause for concern during the pandemic, especially for Asian and Black Americans. In June, around four-in-ten Asian (39%) and Black (38%) adults said people had acted as if they were uncomfortable around them because of their race or ethnicity since the outbreak began. Asian and Black adults were also more likely to say they had been subject to slurs or jokes and to worry that someone might threaten or physically attack them because of their race or ethnicity.

The recession brought on by COVID-19 arrived with exceptional speed and severity: Unemployment rose more quickly in the first three months of the pandemic than it did in two years of the Great Recession.

But the downturn did not affect all Americans equally. It had an especially hard impact on lower-income workers, who often worked in jobs that could not be done remotely. A Pew Research Center analysis found that 90% of the total decrease in U.S. employment between February and March of last year 2.6 million out of 2.9 million lost jobs arose from positions that could not be teleworked.

By April, 52% of lower-income Americans said they or someone in their household had lost their job or taken a pay cut, compared with 42% of middle-income adults and 32% those in the upper income tier. That translated into greater difficulties paying bills: 53% of lower-income adults said they couldnt pay some of their bills that month, far higher than the proportion of middle- and upper-income Americans who said the same (26% and 11%, respectively).

Lower-income people were also much less likely to have emergency funds set aside to help them withstand the recession. While three-quarters of high-income Americans and around half (48%) of middle-income adults said in April that they had rainy day funds to cover three months of expenses, the same was true of only around a quarter (23%) of those in the lowest income tier.

The stimulus checks that Congress approved in late March 2020 were an important relief measure and one of the few policy steps that drew bipartisan support but Americans didnt use the money in the same ways. A large majority (71%) of lower-income adults who said they were expecting a government payment said they would use most of the money to pay bills or for some other essential need. Upper-income Americans were more likely to say they would put the money into savings, use it to pay off debt or do something else with it.

Many lower-income Americans turned to other sources of financial help. In an August survey, 44% said they had used money from their savings or retirement accounts to pay bills, while 35% said they had borrowed money from friends or family, 35% said they had gotten food from a food bank or similar organization and 37% said they had received government food assistance. Middle- and higher-income adults were far less likely to take each of those steps.

Given these and many other challenges, it may not be a surprise that lower-income Americans were among the likeliest groups to report high levels of psychological distress during the pandemic.

Another clear dividing line in the pandemic was age. A March 2020 survey found that while older Americans worried more about the health effects of the virus, younger Americans expressed more concern about its economic consequences, particularly since many of them were employed in service-sector jobs that were at higher risk from virus-related layoffs.

By early April, those risks were borne out: More than half (54%) of Americans ages 18 to 29 said they or someone in their household had taken a pay cut or lost their job because of the outbreak, considerably higher than the proportion of all Americans who said the same thing (43%).

For those young adults who were enrolled in college, the pandemic profoundly affected their experience. And early evidence suggested that the financial fallout from the COVID-19 recession might derail some students future plans to attend college: Applications for admission and financial aid in 2021 declined, particularly among economically disadvantaged youth.

With many jobs disappearing and the college experience altered, the share of young adults who were neither employed nor enrolled in school soared in the first few months of the pandemic. Between March and June 2020, the share of 16- to 24-year-olds who were disconnected from both work and school rose from 12% to 28%, the highest rate ever recorded for the month of June.

The difficult landscape forced many young adults to move elsewhere. Those ages 18 to 29 were the most likely group to say they had permanently or temporarily moved due to the pandemic. In many cases, they went back to a parents home: By July, a 52% majority of adults under the age of 30 were living with at least one parent, up from 47% in February and the highest percentage since the Great Depression.

While young people faced many challenges during the pandemic, so did parents. In April 2020, with schools around the country closed, roughly two-thirds (64%) of parents with children in elementary, middle or high school said they were at least somewhat worried about their kids falling behind because of the disruptions caused by the outbreak. By October, even as some schools had returned to in-person learning, those concerns had not diminished. At both points in time, lower-income parents were much more worried than middle- and upper-income parents.

Working parents with young children at home faced particular difficulties as they tried to balance their own job responsibilities with their children in tow.

In the early stages of the outbreak, most working parents with kids younger than 12 at home (62%) said it was very or somewhat easy to handle child care responsibilities under the new circumstances. That changed by the fall: In October, 52% of these parents said it was very or somewhat difficult to handle child care. Working moms were more likely than working dads to say it was hard to deal with these responsibilities. They were also more likely than working dads to face a variety of professional challenges during the outbreak, including feeling as though they couldnt give 100% at work because they were balancing their work and parenting duties.

Single moms, in particular, left the workforce in large numbers. Around two-thirds (67.4%) of unpartnered mothers with children younger than 18 at home were employed and on the job in September 2020, down from 76.1% a year earlier. That 9-point decrease was the biggest among all groups of parents, partnered or not, with especially sharp declines among Black and Hispanic single moms.

The coronavirus outbreaks effect on the 2020 presidential election would be hard to overstate. The pandemic changed the way tens of millions of Americans cast their ballots and almost certainly played a role in estimated turnout among eligible voters soaring to its highest level in 120 years. Every state and the District of Columbia saw turnout rise from 2016 levels, with many of the biggest increases occurring in places that held their elections entirely or mostly by mail.

The pandemic loomed large as a voting issue, too, albeit one that starkly divided supporters of the two major candidates. In a survey a month before the election, 82% of Biden supporters said COVID-19 would be very important to their vote, a view shared by just 24% of Trump supporters. After the election, Biden supporters again overwhelmingly pointed to the outbreak and, more specifically, Trumps handling of it as a major reason for their candidates victory, even as few Trump supporters agreed (86% vs. 18%, respectively). Majorities in both camps did agree that the expanded availability of early and mail-in voting was a major reason for the outcome.

When Biden took over from Trump in January, he quickly struck a different tone on COVID-19, warning that the nations death toll would climb in the months ahead and that the situation would get worse before it gets better. The new presidents first legislative priority was to try to push a $1.9 trillion relief plan through Congress in response to the ongoing public health and economic crisis. He simultaneously vowed that his administration would deliver 100 million vaccinations in its first 100 days in office.

Surveys in early 2021 showed that Americans continued to see the pandemic as a pressing issue in the months ahead. In January, around eight-in-ten Americans including majorities in both parties said strengthening the economy (80%) and dealing with the outbreak (78%) should be a top policy priority for Biden and the new Congress, higher than the share who said the same about all other issues asked about in the survey. In early February, seven-in-ten adults again including majorities of Democrats and Republicans said reducing the spread of infectious diseases should be a top long-term foreign policy goal for the nation.

While the economy began to show some signs of recovery in early 2021, the lasting imprint of the COVID-19 recession was coming into clearer view. In January, about half of non-retired adults (51%) said the economic impact of the outbreak would make it harder for them to achieve their long-term financial goals. That included 62% of those living in a household that had experienced job or wage losses during the pandemic.

There were also signs of rising public dissatisfaction with some aspects of the nations response to the outbreak. In mid-February, a declining share of Americans said public health officials and state and local elected officials were doing an excellent or good job responding to the outbreak, and around half (51%) said new variants of the coronavirus would lead to a major setback in the countrys efforts to control the disease.

At the same time, Americans expressed optimism on other fronts, including in their views of the new administration and the growing availability of vaccines. More than half the public (56%) said in mid-February that Bidens plans and policies would improve the nations response to the virus, and around three-quarters expected the national economy to improve a lot (51%) or a little (25%) if a large majority of Americans got the COVID-19 vaccine.

Willingness to get the vaccine was on the rise, too, including among people who had previously expressed much more skepticism. In the mid-February survey, around seven-in-ten Americans (69%) said they would definitely or probably get a vaccine or that they had already gotten at least the first dose. That was up from 60% who said they would definitely or probably get the vaccine in November 2020. A majority of Black Americans (61%) said they planned to get inoculated or had already been vaccinated, up from just 42% three months earlier.

Title photos, from left to right:Steve Pfost/Newsday via Getty Images;James Cavallini/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images;Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images;Alex Wong/Getty Images;Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images. Photo illustration by Pew Research Center.

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A Year of U.S. Public Opinion on the Coronavirus Pandemic - Pew Research Center

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Think about one year ago.

On Feb. 2, the Super Bowl was played in front of more than 62,000 fans packed into Miamis Hard Rock Stadium. A month later, 18,548 watched the Penguins play the Carolina Hurricanes on March 8 at PPG Paints Arena.

A few days after that, the NHL, NBA and NCAA basketball shut down completely.

Movie theaters, museums, live concert venues, schools, restaurants, bars just about any place where people gathered in public soon followed suit.

A deadly virus that took root in China in late 2019 swept the globe.

A ripple turned into a wave, sparing no one, sickening 114 million and killing more than 2.5 million worldwide, including 523,000 Americans and more than 24,000 Pennsylvanians.

Almost one year from the day when the first cases of covid-19 were diagnosed in Pennsylvania on March 6, 2020 in Delaware and Wayne counties there is cautious optimism.

Infections are down.

Vaccines are being administered.

There is hope that someday soon, a new normal will emerge.

But with this milestone comes questions about the handling of the virulent illness that killed without prejudice, wreaked havoc with the world economy and spawned a vast societal divide between those who took the warnings seriously and those who continue to dismiss health officials pleas to wear masks, maintain social distancing and get the vaccine.

Some health experts say the most crucial lessons come from missteps by government officials that left the nation largely unguarded against the virus, then slowed attempts to contain it, including:

Dismissing warnings in January 2020 that a virus paralyzing Wuhan, China, would spread quickly to the United States if immediate preventive measures were not taken

Failing to develop quick, easily accessible and accurate methods of testing large numbers of people for the virus

Drafting rigid guidelines limiting who could be tested, permitting many who were infected to unknowingly become super-spreaders

A catastrophic level of unpreparedness regarding personal protective gear available to health care workers

A failure to protect nursing home residents who proved the most vulnerable and accounted for more than a third of all covid-19 deaths in the nation

An inefficiency in distributing a vaccine that was developed in record time

A system of contact tracing that has fallen short, with only about 50% of infected people nationwide and statewide contacted providing information about their interactions with others

Pittsburgh-based infectious disease expert Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, was among the first to say the rapidly spreading respiratory virus in China would become a worldwide pandemic.

The story of this pandemic was our government was not prepared and did not have enough competent people in place to be able to do this, he said.

What needed to happen in the United States at that time was a policy that they were going to meet cases as they came by setting up extensive testing and also having enough contact tracers, thinking about hospital capacity and personal protective equipment early on, Adalja said.

From the start, he called for measures protecting nursing home patients, knowing they were among the most susceptible.

To date, more than 160,000 patients and staff at nursing homes and other long-term facilities across the nation have died from covid-19, according to an AARP Public Policy Institute/Miami University Scripps Center study.

None of that really happened in January, February or half of March and when things did happen, they were so fouled up, he said.

Government directives about who could get tested proved deadly, he said.

You could only test someone if theyd been to China in the last 14 days. We knew that this virus was already outside of China. In fact, it was in France around Christmas time. And you could only test people that had lower respiratory tract symptoms, Adalja said. If they had a sore throat, they were not allowed to be tested, so they went on their merry way to spread the infection.

He believes the divide among elected officials about the seriousness of the outbreak gave the virus time to spread unchecked.

You had a president that thought the more we test the worse we look or that this was going to magically disappear, said Adalja. All of that underscores how badly this whole thing has been handled.

Shane Dunlap | Tribune-Review

A demonstrator stands atop her car with a sign as demonstrators rallied against the closure of business in Pennsylvania on Grant Street in Pittsburgh on April 20, 2020.

But Dr. Donald Whiting, Allegheny Health Networks chief medical officer, said its important to understand the crisis was unprecedented in this century.

The rapidity with which the medical community locally, nationally and internationally really connected to share best practices was phenomenal, he said.

Ventilators in the beginning were thought to be the right thing to do and then soon after that we found out that wasnt necessarily the right thing to do in all situations. There were other techniques for maintaining ventilation that were better. That was disseminated very, very rapidly by free sharing of the information, he added.

While President Trump was criticized for referring to the coronavirus as the Chinese virus or Kung Flu, vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, said the Chinese government should shoulder its fair share of the blame.

China wasnt a very good neighbor here. When that virus was killing people in Wuhan, it shouldnt have required a whistleblower to tell the world what was going on, Offit said.

Offits reference is to Dr. Li Wenliang, who sounded an early alarm about the emergence of what would become known as covid-19 in Wuhan, but was rebuffed by the government. He died Feb. 7, 2020, of the virus.

But Offit isnt letting the Trump administration off the hook. In particular, he blames it for failing to quickly develop a test.

I mean if you look at South Korea, Japan, other countries were much better at developing a test, testing to see where the disease was, quarantining people who were either infected or exposed to those who were infected. We didnt do that well at all and I think weve paid an enormous price, said Offit. We have 20% of the worlds deaths and 4% of the worlds population.

Dr. Donald Yealy, UPMCs chair of emergency medicine, said the U.S. governments initial response to covid-19 was problematic.

I think the federal government responded in a fashion that was very similar to how they responded to previous respiratory pathogen outbreaks. In this case, that wasnt soon enough or advanced enough, both in the mitigation efforts and then also in some of the therapeutic efforts, said Yealy.

You can help thwart the progression of the virus with early aggressive actions but you actually have to do them early. Each week or two that you wait, those same actions become less effective, he said.

Experts point to the 2014-16 Ebola crisis in West Africa, which killed 11,300, but was mostly prevented from spreading to the rest of the world, partly through intensive contact tracing and effective quarantining.

Nate Smallwood | Tribune-Review

Allegheny Health Networks medical professionals administer collection of samples for testing of covid-19 at their drive-up collection site in Monroeville on March 19, 2020.

Pennsylvania officials defend their efforts and point to citizens responsibility to follow mitigation measures.

State health department spokeswoman Maggi Barton said public health workers did as many case investigations as possible. Case investigations when information is gathered about who an infected person was around have to happen before contact tracing can begin. She said about 28% of all probable and confirmed covid cases have received a case investigation.

As cases rose to their peak, she said, it was not possible to contact all cases confirmed in one day.

The result was an online form introduced in December meant to gather more information from more people.

Dr. Maureen Lichtveld, dean of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, pointed to an overall lack of accurate information being disseminated, particularly by the federal government.

She said permitting each state to handle the crisis in its own way was a deadly error.

This was handled in a silo-driven mode. Have the states do their own thing. The fundamental principle around crisis communication is that you need to be first out of the chute at messaging, you need to be credible and you need to be right, said Lichtveld. We struck out in all three areas. There were conflicting messages about masking, about distancing.

A shot in the arm

The approval of three vaccines has created hope.

But even the state and national vaccine efforts have been marked by missteps, experts said.

Pennsylvania ranks 33rd out of all U.S. states and territories in terms of the percentage of the population that has received at least one dose of the two-dose vaccines, according to The New York Times.

Kristina Serafini | Tribune-Review

Chief Quality Officer Tamra Minnier preps the arm of Childrens Hospital Emergency Medicine Physician Sylvia Owusu-Ansah prior to administering Pfizers covid-19 vaccine at UPMC Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh on Dec. 14, 2020.

To date, about 10% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated and about 7% of Pennsylvanias residents have received the required two shots. The latest estimates put the states population at right around 12.8 million people, though only those 16 and up are eligible for vaccinations.

Dr. Debra Bogen, director of the Allegheny County Health Department, has expressed optimism as cases trend downward with the caveat that for now, we must stay the course.

I am hopeful that we will see the end of this pandemic sometime this year, she said.

The next pandemic

Experts say another pandemic will occur, but will the country be better prepared?

Adalja points to the U.S. handling of the 2009 H1 N1 pandemic as a template for responding to disease outbreaks.

Although there were massive flaws in the vaccine rollout program and a lot of misinformation early on, it was handled better, said Adalja. We were much more science-based where you had briefings from the CDC director almost on a daily basis and you had the experts speaking. What we saw in the United States during this pandemic was around February (2020) the CDC became bound, gagged and thrown in the trunk of a car.

Adalja has regularly expressed exasperation over what he sees as mistakes being repeated, going back to when states such as Pennsylvania shut down last spring. The ensuing backlash from residents led to restrictions being removed when it got closer to summer.

But in that interim, did they actually set up testing, contact tracing? Did they increase their public health infrastructure or their hospital capacity? No, said Adalja. So, then theyre all scratching their heads in the summer saying wow, weve got this surge! Where did it come from?

He said that today the U.S. still doesnt have the testing, tracing and isolation capacity it needs.

Nate Smallwood | Tribune-Review

Sample collection for covid-19 tests are administered at a Central Outreach Wellness Center testing site in the parking lot of the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium on March 24, 2020.

However, Whiting said there are lessons that have been learned from the pandemic, particularly in this region.

What weve learned locally is that people came together to do the right thing and certainly in our region, the situation was much less severe than anywhere else. People pulled together to help each other, said Whiting. I think one of the biggest things we learned is that a strong, national unified response based in science is really the key to getting the country best prepared the quickest.

Adalja sees opportunities ahead.

This pandemic, because it was so severe and it touched everyones life, I think that we will likely have an opportunity to fix some of these problems, to put in place a system that will be resilient to the next threat. Because there will be a next threat.

Hundreds of people lined up in their cars as the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank began another round of food distribution on April 6, 2020.

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1 year later: The coronavirus response, missteps and what we have learned - TribLIVE

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Days after Gov. Greg Abbott announced he will lift many coronavirus restrictions next week, including a statewide face mask mandate, the Texas Supreme Court has largely opened up the courts as well.

Texas courthouses no longer need a state safety review before conducting in-person hearings, including jury trials. And requirements that people wear masks and socially distance will be left up to local officials, according to the all-Republican courts revised emergency order issued Friday.

In the year of the pandemic, much of the state court system has been put on pause, creating a backlog of cases that will likely take years to overcome. In 2019, there was an average of 186 civil and criminal jury trials per week, according to the Texas Office of Court Administration. From March 2020 through this January, there were 222 jury trials total.

The growing backlog prompted some in the criminal justice system to call for bringing the court system back up to speed. But Grant Scheiner, president of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, asked judges to remain vigilant in hopes of preventing another surge of coronavirus infections.

We hope this isnt a case of moving too fast, too soon, he said.

Before Friday, judges were required to hold hearings remotely as much as possible, through phone or videoconference. Last month, Texas marked its millionth virtual court hearing with a guilty plea in a criminal case out of Johnson County, the states court administration office reported. By December, more than a dozen virtual jury trials were held in civil cases or low-level criminal cases that at most would result in a fine, not jail time.

But for jailable criminal cases, where a persons liberty is on the line, virtual trials were essentially off the table. District or county courts could hold in-person jury trials, but theyd first have to submit safety plans for approval from the states court administration office and public health authorities. In the meantime, local officials pushed to bond more inmates out of jail before trial, jails became overcrowded and the state prison population shrank.

Starting Friday, courts will no longer need state approval or be required to conduct remote hearings, though the high courts order still encourages them. Instead, any court can hold in-person hearings if local judicial officials agree on safety measures. Those can, but dont have to, require face masks or physical distancing in courthouses.

In jury trials, courts will have to inform potential jurors who are summoned to the courthouse of the safety precautions, and excuse or reschedule those who confirm they are infected with, have been exposed to, or are particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Local judicial officials will also need to create communication protocols to ensure no one coming to court has the virus. In August, a Brazos County man was sent to trial even though the jail knew he was infected. Jurors, attorneys and court staff found only out the next day, pausing the trial and sending many into quarantine.

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Texas courts cleared for in-person trials after coronavirus created backlog - The Texas Tribune

by: Rachel Skytta, KDVR, Nexstar Media Wire

DENVER (KDVR) Health experts are trying to determine how effective the COVID-19 vaccine is at stopping the spread of the virus.

Its hard to crystal-ball this, said Dr. Richard Zane, chief innovation officer with UCHealth, a nonprofit health care system headquartered in Colorado.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or carry the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this asymptomatic infection.

The CDC says the vaccine is effective at keeping you from getting sick, but scientists are still learning how well it prevents people from spreading the virus.

The short answer is theres some emerging evidence that vaccines protect you from not just getting sick but also getting infected and spreading COVID. And its scientifically intuitive that that should be the case, said Zane. What we really need is more information, and this information is more difficult to study than whether people get sick or not after getting vaccinated.

Zane said the evidence indicating the vaccine does help prevent the spread of COVID-19 includes studies out of Israel.

One study conducted by the Israeli Health Ministry and Pfizer Inc. found that the vaccine reduced infection, including asymptomatic cases, by 89.4% and in symptomatic cases, by 93.7%.

Zane said a true indication of whether the vaccine helps prevent the spread of the virus will come from studying those who live or work with people who have been vaccinated.

We need to compare them to those who are not close to someone whos been vaccinated and then we also have to measure people who have been vaccinated and see if there is virus in their nose, essentially, said Zane.

Zane said asymptomatic infection sets COVID-19 apart from other viruses and makes it difficult to measure.

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Can you spread coronavirus after getting the COVID-19 vaccine? - WOODTV.com

The Oregon Health Authority announced 251 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, along with nine new deaths.

The new cases came in as Gov. Kate Brown announced she would require all schools to return to in-person learning within the next month and a half.

Brown said in a news conference that she would order the Oregon Health Authority and Department of Education to revise guidelines on how to operate schools during the pandemic by March 19. She said elementary schools should begin offering classroom instruction by March 29 and that middle and high schools should do the same by April 19.

Districts that fail to meet Browns deadlines risk losing some state funding. But Charles Boyle, a spokesperson for Brown, told The Oregonian/OregonLive the governor doesnt believe that will happen based on conversations shes had with local leaders.

Virtual learning will still be an option for students, but districts must default to offering either full in-person instruction or a hybrid model based on community infection rates, Brown said.

Where the new cases are by county: Baker (7), Benton (5), Clackamas (17), Clatsop (1), Coos (31), Crook (1), Curry (5), Deschutes (15), Douglas (24), Grant (3), Jackson (29),Jefferson (1), Josephine (7), Klamath (4), Lake (1), Lane (14), Linn (4), Malheur (4), Marion (22), Multnomah (13), Polk (10), Tillamook (4), Umatilla (10), Union (2), Wallowa (1), Washington (15) and Yamhill (1).

Who died: The 2,285th COVID-19 death is a 77-year-old Deschutes County woman who tested positive on Dec. 25 and died on Jan. 20 at her residence.

The 2,286th COVID-19 death is an 88-year-old Deschutes County woman who died on Jan. 24 at her residence.

The 2,287th COVID-19 death is an 82-year-old Jackson County man who tested positive on Jan. 28 and died on March 3 at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center.

The 2,288th COVID-19 death is an 80-year-old man in Jackson County who tested positive on Jan. 27 and died on Feb. 26 at his residence.

The 2,289th COVID-19 death is a 64-year-old Josephine County woman who tested positive on Dec. 22 and died on Feb. 19 at Stanford Health Care.

The 2,290th COVID-19 death is a 95-year-old Lane County man who tested positive on Feb. 19 and died on Feb. 27 at his residence.

The 2,291st COVID-19 death is an 88-year-old Lane County woman who tested positive on Dec. 23 and died on Dec. 29 at her residence.

The 2,292nd COVID-19 death is an 84-year-old Polk County woman who died on Jan. 27 at her residence.

The 2,293rd COVID-19 death is an 81-year-old Washington County woman who tested positive on December 31 and died on Jan. 10 at her residence.

Unless noted above, each person who died had underlying health conditions or state officials were working to determine if the person had underlying medical conditions.

Prevalence of infections: On Friday the state reported 827 new cases out of 52,906 tests performed. Thats a positivity rate of 1.5%.

Who got infected: New or presumed infections grew among the following age groups: 0-9 (14); 10-19 (30); 20-29 (44); 30-39 (34); 40-49 (13); 50-59 (37); 60-69 (31); 70-79 (15); 80 and older (2).

Whos in the hospital: As of Friday, 132 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state, eight fewer than the previous day. There were 30 patients with the virus in intensive care, one more than Thursday.

Vaccines administered: The state reported 38,632 new vaccine doses were added to its immunization registry as of Friday. Of that total, 22,438 doses were administered Thursday and 16,194 were administered on previous days but entered into the registry Thursday. Oregon has now administered 1,082,241 first and second vaccine doses about 80% of its total supply.

Since it began: Oregon has had 156,884 confirmed or presumed cases of COVID-19 and 2,293 deaths since the pandemic began, one of the lowest positivity rates in the country. The state has reported administering 3,850,973 tests.

Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

Eder Campuzano of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.

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Coronavirus in Oregon: 251 new cases, 9 deaths as governor orders schools to shift into in-person instruction - OregonLive

When experts envision the future of the coronavirus, many predict that it will become a seasonal pathogen that wont be much more than a nuisance for most of us who have been vaccinated or previously exposed to it.

But how long that process takes and how much damage the virus inflicts in the interim is still anyones guess.

The most predictable thing about this coronavirus is its unpredictability, said Howard Markel, a historian of medicine at the University of Michigan, who has studied other pandemics.

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However long it takes, the transition to a mild endemic virus is unlikely to be a straight line. Some infectious disease researchers envision a healthier summer with low circulation of the virus and more people vaccinated but a more tenuous fall. Other factors, like how long protection provided by vaccines will last, what percentage of people gets them, and whether variants of the virus sap the strength of vaccines, will determine the outcome.

These are not predictions that people fed up with the pandemic will want to hear. But at the same time, some experts are optimistic that the end of this phase the crisis phase is within sight, at least in this country, as vaccines reach more people and protect them from the worst outcomes of Covid-19.

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The challenge might be recognizing what the end looks like. Some experts might mark it when daily deaths fall below a certain threshold or when hospitals are no longer facing crushes of cases. But there wont be a single moment, like jolting awake from a nightmare, and we wont be finished for good with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Gradually, fewer people will get sick, more activities will be considered safer, and something approaching normalcy will return.

Its sort of like getting into a cold pool, said virologist Angela Rasmussen of the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security. You go in and you get a little deeper, and you get a little deeper, and finally youre in the pool and it feels normal.

The U.S. right now seems to be at an inflection point. Cases have plummeted from peaks earlier this year, but have more recently plateaued at levels that remain dangerous. There is still a lot of virus circulating in the U.S.; over the past week, the country has averaged more than 65,000 cases per day, which ismore than twice the number of cases, in total, that Australia has recorded since the start of the pandemic. Vaccines are being rolled out with a third option authorized last weekend but supply for now remains limited.

Worrisome variants of the virus are also growing more prevalent. One, known as B.1.1.7, is more transmissible and deadlier than other forms of the virus and is expected to become the dominant strain in the U.S. later this month. But its not clear how that will have an effect on case counts.

The variants are a bit of a curveball, said Caitlin Rivers, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. I could see a scenario where B.1.1.7 could slow down our progress and maybe precipitate resurgences in some communities, though perhaps not throughout the country.

Conditions may be ripe for a better summer, however. Vaccine supplies should be flowing more freely, at least in the U.S.; the Biden administration now expects enough vaccine doses in hand for all adults by the end of May. With most vulnerable populations protected, there should be fewer hospitalizations and deaths. And with warmer weather, people can return to outdoor life.

Widespread transmission of the virus could be replaced by more sporadic and localized outbreaks. Theres also growing evidence that vaccines dont just protect people from getting symptomatic Covid-19, but can reduce transmission.

The country will not reach herd immunity over the summer that is, the point at which there are so few susceptible to the virus that it cant find new hosts to infect. Kids and adolescents, who make up nearly a quarter of the U.S. population, wont be vaccinated yet in large numbers, and a still unknown number of adults will resist getting the shot. But experts stress that if the country can reduce transmission, as well as take the bite out of the most severe consequences of the disease through immunizations, the future will look different than the past year has.

If you look at a country like Australia, or other countries that have really controlled spread, they are doing normal things, and its not because theyve reached the herd immunity threshold, Rasmussen said. Its because theyve controlled transmission.

Then comes the fall. Two factors people spending more time indoors plus colder weather could allow SARS-2 transmission to pick up again among those who remain susceptible, a potential threat if vaccine uptake is limited. Whats more, some experts have raised the possibility that even people who have been vaccinated or who have been previously infected could be vulnerable to infections if variants are able to evade some of the immune systems defenses and circulate more widely. The top threats now appear to be B.1.351 (first seen in South Africa) or P.1 (first seen in Brazil), but other variants could appear as well, particularly if vaccines are not provided globally and transmission persists.

B.1.1.7 could result in more of a wave in, say, April, May, than we would have expected otherwise, but I still do suspect that things will be brought under control in the summer, and there will be very little Covid circulating, with a combination of all these infections that have occurred, all this vaccination thats occurring, Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said at a briefing last week. What I am concerned about is that we could have something of a fall wave caused by these variants.

Generally, people who have been reinfected by viruses like SARS-2 or been infected after being vaccinated tend to experience mild illness; even if their immune systems cant block the virus entirely, they have enough experience with the pathogen to recognize it and prevent more severe disease. In clinical trials, Covid-19 vaccines that were put to the test against B.1.351 did not fare as well at preventing mild illness as they did against other forms of the virus, but they still seemed to prevent hospitalization and death.

Its possible then that any fall wave driven by variants could bring a spike in mild infections but not a surge of severely ill people crowding into hospitals. But that scenario depends on getting more people vaccinated and the virus not evolving in a way that further undermines the effectiveness of vaccines. It also depends on the vaccines providing protection that lasts, even especially among older adults, whose immune systems are in decline and dont generally develop as strong a response to vaccines as children and younger adults.

For a fall wave, is it going to be big and devastating, or is it going to be a little hump? I dont know, said infectious disease researcher Jennie Lavine of Emory University. We really need to know how severe disease is going to be after vaccination or upon reinfection, and with different strains.

Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvards T.H. Chan School of Public Health, worries not just about the public health toll of a potential fall wave, but the psychological and societal ones as well.

Fall comes along and people have gotten so excited about being back in school and doing this and that without what happened last year, Mina said. And then we start to see spread again. And I just think its going to be demoralizing. And its going to happen swiftly. My hope is that it will not happen in such a way that we see the type of death [we saw previously], but I do think we will start seeing deaths again because the older people who are vaccinated early are going to be losing their immunity at that point. (Researchers dont know for sure that protection provided by Covid-19 vaccines will wane faster in older people, but that is the case with some other immunizations.)

Even in the absence of a big fall surge, public health authorities will likely continue to recommend mask-wearing in certain settings, particularly because the situation is fluid and because children and adolescents among those at the end of the vaccine line may still be in the process of being inoculated.

I really believe that until we get kids being vaccinated, that the smart thing to do is to wear a mask, said Anna Durbin, a vaccine researcher from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Its possible that children dont contribute to transmission much once most adults are vaccinated, Durbin added, but until we have 70%, 80% of the population vaccinated and that includes kids we dont know if were going to be able to affect transmission enough that its essentially going to go away.

Not everyone is embracing that kind of recommendation. Already, at least four governors have ended mask mandates, and some never instituted them even in the worst parts of the pandemic. Responses in other states have varied widely. In some places, people have been back to barhopping and movie theaters, whereas gyms just reopened in San Francisco, with 10% capacity.

The sad fact is, were going to do that experiment in different states and were going to learn from states that take more risks, how risky that is, said Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the CEO of the global health initiative Resolve to Save Lives.

Herd immunity has been portrayed by some as a logical endpoint of the pandemic. But that goal, even if attainable, is likely fleeting.

Thats not to say that the country, or the world, will still be in a crisis phase over the next couple years. But even if the U.S. reaches herd immunity through vaccinations, its unlikely to last, experts note. Neither a Covid-19 infection nor vaccination is believed to confer lifelong immunity that blocks infections entirely. Instead, people will once again become vulnerable, either because their immunity wanes or the pathogen evolves in ways that allow it to infect even people who have protection against earlier strains. Newborns will also add to the pool of susceptibles.

Susceptible replenishment, as its known, is why some experts expect seasonal waves going forward. The virus might hover at low levels, passing mostly among people who are unvaccinated, but rear up again as even the vaccinated become vulnerable and seasonal factors give it a boost. Some regions or countries could eliminate the virus through widespread immunizations, but they could also face reintroductions.

How serious future outbreaks will be in terms of disease will be influenced by whether vaccines can continue to prevent severe outcomes, as well how many people are vaccinated, how long vaccine-derived immunity lasts, and how the virus evolves. Those factors will also shape how often people need vaccine booster shots and whether vaccines need to be adapted to better match a changing virus, a possibility that vaccine makers are already exploring.

Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, said he thinks Covid-19 could cause more deaths than flu over the next decade, in part because of the continued emergence of variants.

I think were still going to face the problem that hospitals are going to be flooded with Covid cases, Cowling said. But maybe well be better at coping with that, with the experience from Covid, better prepared for what happens if theres a big surge. And maybe health departments, city mayors, and state governors will also have better plans in place to react and know what they should or shouldnt do if there is a sign of a surge coming.

Others are more sanguine. Vineet Menachery, a coronavirologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch, described a scenario in which 70% to 75% of a population gets vaccinated. That would drastically minimize spread of the virus and keep people protected from infections. Even if vaccine uptake was somewhat lower than that, it should still avert a lot of worst-case outcomes, he said.

For Menachery and others, the durability of vaccine protection remains an open question. If vaccines arent able to provide as much protection against certain variants, maybe the durability isnt going to be as long. Maybe its going to be one to two years versus three to four, Menachery said.

Experts hesitate to make predictions about viral evolution; after all, variants emerge as the result of random mutations.

But for a number of reasons its possible the evolution of SARS-2 might lose some pace going forward. For one, there will or at least, there should be less transmission. The fewer people the virus cycles through, the fewer chances it has to mutate. More generally, when a virus spills into a new host, as SARS-2 did into humans in 2019, there are more avenues for it to morph in ways that give it an advantage in infecting host cells and replicating low-hanging fruit, as virologist Adam Lauring of the University of Michigan explains it. Over time, there should be fewer ways for an altered SARS-2 virus to outcompete other forms and undermine vaccines.

Its perfectly reasonable to think that a couple years from now, it might be evolving more slowly, Lauring said.

Years from now, SARS-CoV-2 could join the ranks of OC43, 229E, NL63, and HKU1 the four endemic, seasonal coronaviruses that cause a chunk of common colds every year. Essentially, our immune systems primed by vaccines, boosters, and previous encounters with the coronavirus will be ready to knock back SARS-2 when we see it again, potentially blocking an infection or leading to one that causes no symptoms or maybe just the sniffles.

We tend to lump cold-causing viruses in with influenza when describing cold and flu season; after all, theyre all respiratory pathogens and have overlapping seasonal arcs. But experts stress that having SARS-2 join the ranks of flu viruses would be a most unwelcome outcome. While most people dont see the flu as an existential threat, it still kills tens of thousands of people in the U.S., and hundreds of thousands around the world, every year. (This year was a notable and welcome exception due to the ways in which Covid-19 restrictions inhibited spread of flu.)

It would be a damn shame to have another influenza, said Sarah Cobey, an epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago.

But many experts think SARS-2 is more likely to behave in the way we regard cold-causing coronaviruses, which would make it mostly an irritant.

Veteran coronavirus researcher Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa raised the idea that viral evolution could perhaps even play to our advantage. Its possible, he said, that SARS-2 mutates in ways that actually weaken how sick it makes people, pushing it toward becoming a virus that causes colds for the vast majority.

But right now, Perlman cautioned, thats just a hope.

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The short-term, middle-term, and long-term future of the coronavirus - STAT

by: Darcie Loreno, WJW, Nexstar Media Wire

(Credit: Getty Images)

(WJW) Mothers who have received the COVID-19 vaccination have antibodies in their breast milk that may protect their infants, according to a new study.

The research suggests babiesmay beprotected from COVID-19 by acquisition of antibodiesthrough breast milk following their mothers vaccinations, Dr. Jason Baird, research scientist, said on Providence.org. We dont know how long the antibodies will remain in the mothers or the infants.There is more to learn.

The pilot study, conducted at Providence Portland Medical Center, looked at six lactating women who planned to receive both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine between December 2020 and January 2021.

There were significantly elevated levels of antibodies in their breast milk beginning at Day 7 after the initial vaccine dose, according to the study.

According to Providence.org, the study provides promising results of a potential immunebenefit for infants by lactating mothers who have received a COVID-19 vaccine.

Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, two of the three current COVID-19 vaccine providers, excluded pregnant and breastfeeding women from participating in their clinical trials.

To our knowledge, this study is the first to show that maternal vaccination results in SARS-CoV-2-specific immunoglobulins in breast milk that may be protective for infants, said Bernard Fox, Ph.D. with the Providence Health and Services, a nonprofit health care system.

The researchers involved in the study plan to continue studying the immune response following maternal vaccination.

Research on SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in lactating women and the potential transmission of passive immunity to the infant through breast milk is needed to guide patients, clinicians and policy makers during the worldwide effort to curb the spread of this virus, the study stated.

There are more than 28 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S, with an average of about 2,000 people dying each day, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That average is down from a high of more than 3,000 a day on average in mid-January. A total of more than 520,000 people have died in the U.S. so far.

The rest is here:

Breast milk of vaccinated mothers may protect babies from COVID-19, study suggests - WFLA

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) Officials say more than 600,000 Oklahomans have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

On Friday, data from the Oklahoma State Department of Health shows that the state has had 427,558 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since March of 2020.

Thats an increase of 917 cases or a 0.2% increase.

State health officials say they are now including the CDCs number ofCOVID-19 deaths as a provisional count.

COVID-19 death discrepancy: OSDH adds CDC numbers to daily report

Health officials tell KFOR that since the switch, the death counts will only be updated weekly on Tuesdays.

The Oklahoma State Health Department has always tracked COVID-19 deaths in multiple ways. We have reported the CDC death numbers, which are based purely on death certificates, and our own methodology, which counts deaths after an epidemiological investigation in Acute Disease Service (ADS). Both systems are correct, but each comes with its pros and cons for evaluating deaths related to COVID-19.

As cases increased toward the end of 2020, our investigating epidemiologists began encountering larger numbers of incomplete records requiring in-depth investigation. This has resulted in an increasing difference between the OSDH death count and the one reported by CDC.

Both the CDC and ADS numbers will continue to be available to Oklahomans, but the CDC number will become our primary reported number.

We will also continue our case investigation process through ADS and state epidemiologists. However, we feel this reporting change will align better with CDCs numbers and will provide the most up-to-date and transparent information for Oklahomans.

Addressing a global crisis in our home state requires flexibility to change course when conditions on the ground mandate a new approach. This is one of those times.

Transparency and access to data is the priority here, and we feel this change is best to keep our state accountable to all Oklahomans during the ongoing fight against COVID-19. Every single death in Oklahoma is a tragedy, and every single life has been and will be counted and remembered as we endure this pandemic.

As a result of that inclusion, the deaths jumped to 7,202, compared to the 4,534 reported by the health department.

Right now, officials say there are 396 people in Oklahoma hospitals with a confirmed case of COVID-19.

So far, the state reports that 638,966 Oklahomans have received their first dose of the vaccine, while 368,851 have completed both doses.

Here is a link to the most recentEpidemiology Reportprovided by the state.

Here is the breakdown of COVID-19 cases in Oklahoma counties:

In all, officials believe there are12,246 active cases of COVID-19 across Oklahoma.

According to health department data on Friday, officials believe 410,778 Oklahomans have recovered from the virus.

State officials urge Oklahomans to stay away from ill patients and to frequently wash their hands. Also, avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.

At this point, Americans are urged to practice social distancing by staying in their homes as much as possible and not going out into a crowd.

The virus is mainly spread from person-to-person, and symptoms usually appear two to 14 days after exposure. Officials stress that the most common symptoms are fever, cough, and shortness of breath.

If you do become sick, you are asked to stay away from others. If you have been in an area where the coronavirus is known to be spreading or been around a COVID-19 patient and develop symptoms, you are asked to call your doctor ahead of time and warn them that you might have been exposed to the virus. That way, experts say, they have the ability to take extra precautions to protect staff and other patients.

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OSDH: More than 600,000 Oklahomans have received first dose of COVID-19 vaccine - KFOR Oklahoma City