Vaccination cards will be issued to everyone getting Covid-19 vaccine, health officials say

‘The Department of Defense released the first images of a Covid-19 vaccination record card and vaccination kits Wednesday. Vaccination cards will be used as the "simplest" way to keep track of Covid-19 shots, said Dr. Kelly Moore, associate director of the Immunization Action Coalition, which is supporting frontline workers who will administer Covid-19 vaccinations... Every dose administered will be reported to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers. The CDC did not immediately respond to CNN's inquiry about whether such a database would include a record of everyone immunized.’

Read here (CNN, Dec 3, 2020)

US Covid cases found as early as December 2019, says study

‘Testing has found Covid-19 infections in the U.S. in December 2019, according to a study, providing further evidence indicating the coronavirus was spreading globally weeks before the first cases were reported in China.

‘The study published Monday identified 106 infections from 7,389 blood samples collected from donors in nine U.S. states between Dec. 13 and Jan. 17. The samples, collected by the American Red Cross, were sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing to detect if there were antibodies against the virus...

‘The revelations in the paper by researchers from the CDC reinforce the growing understanding that the coronavirus was silently circulating worldwide earlier than known, and could re-ignite debate over the origins of the pandemic.’

Read here (Bloomberg, Dec 1, 2020)

The surprising mental toll of Covid

‘You didn't need a crystal ball to forecast that the COVID-19 pandemic would devastate mental health. Illness or fear of illness, social isolation, economic insecurity, disruption of routine and loss of loved ones are known risk factors for depression and anxiety. Now studies have confirmed the predictions. But psychologists say the findings also include surprises about the wide extent of mental distress; the way media consumption exacerbates it; and how badly it has affected young people.

‘For example, a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in August, found a tripling of anxiety symptoms and a quadrupling of depression among 5,470 adults surveyed compared with a 2019 sample. Similarly, two nationally representative surveys conducted in April, one by researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health and another at Johns Hopkins University, found that the prevalence of depressive symptoms (B.U.) and “serious psychological distress” (Hopkins) were triple the level measured in 2018. “These rates were higher than what we've seen after other large-scale traumas like September 11th, Hurricane Katrina and the Hong Kong unrest,” says Catherine Ettman, lead author of the B.U. study.’

Read here (Scientific American, Dec 1, 2020)

United States: Beyond the wasteland -- New strategies for pivoting from the pandemic crisis to a recovery built on economic justice

‘Decades of falling wage shares mean that millions of households are ready to spend more if only they could earn more income. A well-calibrated recovery strategy that combines public spending on goods and services with regulation of predatory corporate behavior and effective redistribution can unleash a virtuous growth circle that improves living standards for the vast majority and strengthens government finances even as it generates resources to boost public services and tackle the environmental catastrophe.

‘Such a strategy would consist of the following elements:

• A prolonged fiscal expansion with immediate support to employment creation and social services, including a strong component in the care economy;
• Public-infrastructure investment to accelerate the energy transition by combining policies to encourage investments in renewables and discourage fossil fuel extraction;
• Policies to improve industrial capacity based on raising productivity and greater energy efficiency;
• Progressive tax reforms shifting the burden from indirect taxes such as sales and value-added taxes (which are regressive and discourage spending) to direct taxation, especially on high-income earners (whose consumption is relatively unaffected by taxation) and on corporate earnings and rents (with exemptions depending on employment creation).

Read here (The American Prospect, Nov 27, 2020)

Crisis standards of care: Lessons from New York City hospitals’ Covid-19 experience

‘The purpose of this project was to convene a forum in which critical care physicians from a number of hospitals across New York City could frankly discuss their experiences with implementation of crisis standards of care (CSC). The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in collaboration with New York City Health + Hospitals, convened a virtual working group in October 2020 consisting of 15 New York City intensive care unit (ICU) directors.’

Major themes discussed and suggestions moving forward are contained in the 23-page report.

Read here (The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Nov 24, 2020) 

China and Russia are using coronavirus vaccines to expand their influence. The US is on the sidelines

“Global health and pharmaceutical interventions are getting sucked into balance-of-power politics,” said David Fidler, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “For the U.S., this creates geopolitical nightmares, because we are not in the game.” Beijing and Moscow are marshaling the vast powers of their states to develop vaccines for domestic and international use, accompanied by grand claims of scientific and manufacturing prowess. There are critical questions about safety and efficacy — or even how much each country can produce. But, for the moment, those questions are overshadowed in a seller’s market.

Read here (Washington Post, Nov 24, 2020)

A tale of two economies: Stephen Roach

‘As financial markets celebrate the coming vaccine-led boom, the confluence of epidemiological and political aftershocks has pushed us back into a quagmire of heightened economic vulnerability. In Dickensian terms, to reach a “spring of hope,” we first must endure a “winter of despair.”...

‘With COVID-19 still raging – and rates of infection, hospitalization, and death now spiraling out of control (again) – the near-term risks to economic activity have tipped decidedly to the downside in the United States and Europe. The combination of pandemic fatigue and the politicization of public health practices has come into play at precisely the moment when the long anticipated second wave of COVID-19 is at hand.

‘Unfortunately, this fits the script of the dreaded double-dip recession that I warned of recently. The bottom-line bears repeating: Apparent economic recoveries in the US have given way to relapses in eight of the 11 business cycles since World War II. The relapses reflect two conditions: lingering vulnerability from the recession, itself, and the likelihood of aftershocks. Unfortunately, both conditions have now been satisfied.’

Read here (Project Syndicate, Nov 24, 2020)

Is emergency use authorisation the best way to get a Covid-19 vaccine to the public?

‘While an emergency use authorization may be the speediest way for public health officials to begin a vaccination campaign, it may not end up shaving that much time off of a more traditional route to government approval. Using a different expedited process, the FDA cleared a novel Ebola vaccine in just six months. Polls have shown that many Americans are wary of getting a COVID-19 vaccine. Other paths toward granting official approval to COVID-19 vaccines may get vaccines to the public almost as quickly as emergency use authorization can—while providing the public with greater reassurance that those vaccines are safe and effective.’

Read here (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov 23, 2020)

Coronavirus vaccine hesitancy in Black and Latino communities

‘COVID Collaborative, Langer Research, UnidosUS and the NAACP conducted a poll on attitudes and impacts of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and resistance in the Black and Latinx communities. The report summarizes these findings and highlights key areas of focus for policy makers, health care professionals, and others working to increase vaccine uptake.’

Read here (Covid Collaborative, Nov 23, 2020)

Coronavirus vaccines face trust gap in Black and Latino communities, study finds

‘If offered a coronavirus vaccine free of charge, fewer than half of Black people and 66 percent of Latino people said they would definitely or probably take it, according to a survey-based study that underscores the challenge of getting vaccines to communities hit hard by the pandemic... Perhaps its most sobering findings: 14 percent of Black people trust that a vaccine will be safe, and 18 percent trust that it will be effective in shielding them from the coronavirus. Among Latinos, 34 percent trust its safety, and 40 percent trust its effectiveness.’

Read here (Washington Post, Nov 23, 2020)

Puzzling, often debilitating after-effects plaguing COVID-19 "long-haulers"

‘It's not unusual for viruses to cause aftereffects, but as you'll hear tonight, doctors tell us they've never seen anything like this. While researchers around the world are scrambling to figure out what's happening, Mount Sinai Hospital here in New York opened one of the first centers to study and treat people with what they're calling "Post-acute COVID Syndrome." The patients we met have a less clinical term - they call themselves "long-haulers." Anderson Cooper interviews some of them.

Read/view here (CBS News, Nov 22, 2020)

FDA authorises first at-home coronavirus test

‘The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the first prescription at-home coronavirus test, in a long-awaited milestone. The test, developed by Lucira Health, can be used by people who are at least 14 years old when their health provider suspects they have Covid-19, the FDA said late Tuesday. The test can be used on younger people, but in that case a health care provider must collect the sample.

‘The test involves swabbing the inside of the nose, placing the swab in a vial and swirling it before putting the vial in a "test unit." The process gives results in 30 minutes or less. FDA medical device director Jeff Shuren said the test, which can be fully run outside a lab or health care settings, represents a significant step forward.’

Read here (Politico, Nov 17, 2020)

Vaccine rollout could cause US dollar to fall 20% in 2021: Citi

‘The widespread distribution of vaccines to combat the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing monetary easing could cause the U.S. dollar to weaken as much as 20% next year, Citibank said on Monday. “When viable, widely distributed vaccines hit the market, we believe that this will catalyze the next leg lower in the structural USD downtrend we expect,” the U.S. bank said in a research note.’

Read here (Reuters, Nov 17, 2020)

Even with a vaccine, Covid-19 will last for years in the US, expert says

‘I think, even if the vaccine or several vaccines are invented in the next few months, which is likely, we still have challenges in manufacturing, distributing and persuading the public to accept the vaccine. And those challenges will take about a year. And, meanwhile, the virus is still spreading, and it will continue to spread until we reach a threshold of about 40 to 50 percent of Americans who are infected. Right now, we're only at about 10 percent. That threshold is known as the herd immunity threshold.

‘So, that will take us into 2022. So, from my perspective, the first period during which we're confronting the biological and epidemiological impact of the virus, and we're living in a changed world, wearing masks, physical distancing, school closures, and so on, will last until sometime in 2022. And then we're going to begin a second period, when we are recovering from the psychological, social and economic shock of the virus. And this has been seen for thousands of years with other epidemics. And that will take a couple of years for us to rebuild our economy and recover.

‘And so, sometime in 2024, I think, life will slowly begin to return to normal, with some persistent changes.’

Read here (PBS News Hour, Nov 12, 2020)

How Biden plans to change the US pandemic response

‘President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris say they will move the US Covid-19 pandemic response in a dramatically different direction... Here are five ways Biden says the US coronavirus response will change when he's President. (1) Increased testing and contact tracing. (2) Additional investment in vaccines and treatments. (3) Mandatory masks and more PPE. (4) A push for 'clear, consistent, evidence-based guidance'. (5) Rejoining WHO and searching for future threats.

‘There were dauntingly high new case numbers last week, and by the time Biden takes office January 20, the influential University of Washington Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation model projects there will be more than 372,000 Covid-19 deaths -- that's 135,000 more than the current total...’

Read here (CNN, Nov 9, 2020)

‘Mutant coronavirus’ seen before on mink farms, say scientists

‘The coronavirus mutation causing concern in Denmark has arisen before in mink, scientists have revealed. The mutated virus has been detected retrospectively in mink at a farm in the Netherlands, but it did not spread to humans, said a leading Dutch expert...

‘The genetic data from Denmark was released on an international database a few days ago, with some scientists questioning why it had not been released sooner. "I think that it is most disappointing that the data have only just reached the light of day," said Prof James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge, UK...

‘Six countries have reported coronavirus outbreaks at mink farms: the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Italy and the US.’

Read here (BBC, Nov 9, 2020)

Memo for President Biden: Five steps to getting more from science

‘The list of needed actions is long, but here we highlight five that the Biden administration should take swiftly. We call not for a return to business as usual but for fundamental, sometimes counter-intuitive changes that will strengthen the use of science in US policy and by the research community more broadly... (1) Let an oft-overlooked White House office [Office of Science and Technology Policy] lead the pandemic response. (2) Make advisory processes more independent. (3) Expedite scientific-integrity legislation.  (4) Give public universities tough love and lots of support. (5) Refocus science funding.

Read here (Nature, Nov 8, 2020)

Counties with worst virus surges overwhelmingly voted Trump

‘US voters went to the polls starkly divided on how they see President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. But in places where the virus is most rampant now, Trump enjoyed enormous support. An Associated Press analysis reveals that in 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, the overwhelming majority — 93% of those counties — went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas.

‘The US broke another record in the 7-day rolling average for daily new cases, hitting nearly 90,000. The tally for new cases Thursday was on track for another day above 100,000, with massive numbers reported all around the country, including a combined nearly 25,000 in Texas, Illinois and Florida. Iowa and Indiana each reported more than 4,000 cases as well.

‘Thirty-six percent of Trump voters described the pandemic as completely or mostly under control, and another 47% said it was somewhat under control, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 110,000 voters conducted for the AP by NORC at the University of Chicago. Meanwhile, 82% of Biden voters said the pandemic is not at all under control.

‘The pandemic was considered at least somewhat under control by slim majorities of voters in many red states, including Alabama (60%), Missouri (54%), Mississippi (58%), Kentucky (55%), Texas (55%), Tennessee (56%) and South Carolina (56%).’

Read here (AP, Nov 6, 2020) 

Winning trust for a vaccine means confronting medical racism

‘Just about every minority group residing in the United States can point to what feels like a reasonable basis for suspicion. For African Americans, there is not only the notorious Tuskegee study, which withheld syphilis treatment from rural Black men, but also experiments that used enslaved women to perfect surgical techniques and studies that tested new drugs in poor neighbourhoods without adequate consent. The Latino community can point to a syphilis study in Guatemala that was even more unethical than the Tuskegee one, and to pharma companies basing tests of the first versions of birth control pills, which caused significant side effects, in Puerto Rico (and also in Haiti). Attempting to pass smallpox to Native Americans via contaminated blankets is an infamous episode in Colonial-era history, and the US government has underfunded the Indian Health Service since its 1955 founding, depriving reservation dwellers of what should have been guaranteed medical care.’

Read here (Wired, Nov 2, 2020)

US Covid-19 cases are skyrocketing, but deaths are flat—so far. These 5 charts explain why

 ‘In just the last two weeks, the global daily tally for new COVID-19 cases has jumped more than 30%, according to TIME’s coronavirus tracker, which compiles data from Johns Hopkins University. The steep upward trend is driven by viral waves in Europe and the United States that started in August and mid-September, respectively. On Oct. 23, the daily case count in the U.S. reached a new record high, suggesting that this wave will be worse than the one that swept the country over the summer.

‘But despite this rapid uptick in cases, the daily death count in the U.S. is not yet rising at the same rate, and remains at lower levels than in April. At face value, a lower case-to-fatality rate suggests that fewer people who test positive for the virus are dying from it. But the virus hasn’t necessarily become less lethal; it isn’t mutating quickly enough for that to be the case.

‘What’s happening now is not a result of how the virus treats humans, but rather how humans are treating the virus—that is, how we test for it, how we avoid it and how we combat it. The following five charts explain how human-driven factors are, at least for the moment, keeping deaths from spiking as high as they did early in the pandemic, even as cases rise dramatically...’

Read here (Time, Oct 26, 2020)