(Reuters) - The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.
Highly contagious Delta variant gaining ground in U.S.
The highly transmissible Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, first identified in India, has become the most prevalent variant among new COVID-19 cases in the United States, according to California-based genomics company Helix. The company's computer models indicate that Delta now accounts for around 40% of new U.S. cases, Dr. William Lee, vice president of science at Helix, said in a statement provided to Reuters. The models, based on 27,717 virus samples from 687 counties across the United States, also indicated that the worrisome Gamma variant, first identified in Brazil, accounts for about 15% of new cases. Helix researchers have noted occasional cases of an "offspring" variant of Delta called Delta-plus, but they "aren't seeing any evidence suggesting that these are driving the growth of Delta around the country yet," Lee said. Earlier in June, the researchers reported on the medical website medRxiv ahead of peer review that the percentage of new COVID-19 cases due to the variant first identified in Britain, known as Alpha, had dropped from 70% in mid-April 2021 to 42% six weeks later (https://bit.ly/3x45vBW). Now, Lee said, Alpha "is down to around 20%." Lee said his team has submitted an update to the previous medRxiv preprint and is waiting for approval.
Regardless of health status, men do worse with COVID-19
Men appear more likely than women to experience severe outcomes from COVID-19 regardless of whether the men have underlying health conditions, according to a new study. Researchers in New York City who tracked roughly 5,000 patients of both sexes who were diagnosed in early 2020 found that men were sicker when first diagnosed and had a higher need for intensive care treatment and higher rates of death than women. This was true even though the men on average were younger and less likely than women to have risk factors such as obesity and high blood pressure that previously have been linked with poor COVID-19 outcomes. Among women, the likelihood of severe COVID-19 outcomes did seem to be related to their health status, the researchers said in a report published on Wednesday in the journal Communications Medicine. A second analysis of another group of roughly 1,600 patients in New York City diagnosed later in the year showed similar patterns. The authors noted that because their information on patients' pre-existing medical problems may have been incomplete, larger studies are needed to confirm their findings and to explain the causes. (https://go.nature.com/3jpdWUG)
Moderna vaccine antibodies neutralize variants in lab study
The mRNA vaccine from Moderna Inc can defend against emerging variants with only modestly reduced effectiveness, laboratory experiments indicated. Moderna researchers studied blood serum obtained from eight volunteers who had received the second dose of the vaccine a week earlier. They found the vaccine had produced antibodies capable of neutralizing all variants, including additional versions of the Beta variant first identified in South Africa and three lineages of variants first identified in India, including the Kappa and Delta variants. The analysis did show some reduction of neutralization, by 2.1 fold against Delta, 3.3-3.4 fold against Kappa and 3.2 fold against Gamma, which was first identified in Brazil. "These new data are encouraging and reinforce our belief that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine should remain protective against newly detected variants," Moderna Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel said. The Moderna data was posted on Monday on the bioRxiv medical website ahead of peer review. Earlier in June, researchers reported in the journal Nature that the mRNA vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech elicited antibodies that could neutralize all tested variants, including Delta, although at reduced strength. (https://bit.ly/35ZlmWO; htps://reut.rs/3qBPa54 https://reut.rs/3qBPa54)
Open https://tmsnrt.rs/3c7R3Bl in an external browser for a Reuters graphic on vaccines in development.
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid and Mrinalika Roy; Editing by Will Dunham)
Sarah was born in January this year. Despite having a few issues during pregnancy that caused her baby to be born prematurely, Gois says her daughter was generally healthy. But after she took her baby girl to the Casa de Saúde Hospital in São Paulo's coastal city of Santos to treat a urinary tract infection, Sarah started to present persistent fever and flu-like symptoms.
"When her symptoms started, the doctors said it was bronchiolitis, that it wasn't anything serious," Gois explains. But her daughter would not recover.
As Sarah's condition deteriorated, Gois says she felt helpless. "All I knew was that she was in a serious condition and that she could go at any moment. I knew that the only thing I could do was to get on my knees and pray," she said.
Despite her pleas, her daughter died from Covid-19 on May 27. She was just five months old.
Sarah's case is one of many in Brazil. The Brazilian Health Ministry says 1,122 children under the age of 10 have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic started. The Brazilian government records the number people who died from severe acute respiratory diseases -- such as severe cases of the flu, and others.
However, researchers from global health organization Vital Strategies, which works in more than 70 countries around the world, say its studies suggest such case numbers have been severely underreported.
When comparing the number of Brazilian child deaths from such illnesses in 2018 and 2019 with the number of deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, Vital Strategies found an excess 2,975 deaths. The organization says it's likely that the vast majority of these excess deaths -- not just the official number of 1,122 -- were because of Covid-19.
"What we see in Brazil is that the number of kids dying with Covid specified as the cause of death is higher than what we are seeing in other countries of the world -- it's 10 times higher," Dr. Ana Luiza Bierrenbach, an epidemiologist at Vital Strategies, told CNN.
In the United States, the only country in the world with a higher overall official death toll than Brazil's, far fewer children have died from Covid-19 -- 382 Americans under the age of 18, according to CDC data.
Bierrenbach adds that the coronavirus variant known as Gamma or P.1, which was first identified in Brazil, may not be entirely to blame.
"Kids have been dying more in Brazil since the original variant was here, so it was not the addition of the P.1 variant that made kids die more here than in other countries," she said.
Recognizing Covid-19 in children
Covid-19 is widely shown to have a more severe impact on the elderly than the very young. Even if all 2,975 excess child deaths were caused by Covid-19, children are still dying in much lower numbers than adults -- the overall death toll in Brazil is now more than 514,000. Researchers fear that this small representation of children in Covid fatalities is causing some doctors to miss diagnoses in their youngest patients.
"Truthfully, Covid-19 in children was neglected at the beginning of the pandemic," says Brazilian pediatrician Dr. Andre Laranjeira.
"A lot of pediatricians had a certain resistance when it came to requesting Covid-19 tests for children, when they were exhibiting those typical respiratory tract symptom -- runny nose, cough, fever -- practically all children have those symptoms this time of the year, in the autumn, and some doctors were not testing them," he says.
According to Gois, it took 12 days after baby Sarah developed the first symptoms before doctors tested her for Covid-19. It was only when Gois herself was diagnosed with Covid-19 that doctors tested her daughter.
"If a child presents high fever, (skin) rash, abdominal pain, doctors could potentially think of other diagnosis and not relate it to Covid-19," Dolhnikoff says.
"We need to be aware that these different kinds of symptoms can be related to Covid-19 and these children can present a very severe disease."
Disparity in treatment
And while different symptoms might throw off some doctors, most physicians and researchers also agree the main culprit for Brazil's higher Covid-19 death rate in children is likely disparities in the country's health care system -- although Brazilians benefit from universal health care, there are vast differences in quality of treatment between private elite hospitals and small or rural public health care providers.
"In large centers we are prepared to deal with these children and we have very, very good ICUs but it doesn't apply for the whole country," Dolhnikoff explains. "We have a lot of poor regions in the country that struggle to deal with this situation."
Bierrenbach at Vital Strategies agrees that inequality could be at play.
"Why is this happening? Probably due to higher vulnerability, lack of access to good quality health care," Bierrenbach says. "Maybe they are undernourished, and they perish more from Covid."
More than half of Brazilians -- 116 million people -- faced food insecurity in 2020. Of those, 19 million people, or 9% of the population, are starving, according to the Brazilian Network for Research in Sovereignty and Food and Nutrition Security.
Laranjeira says the disparity shows up not just in the quality of accessible health care, but also in how they are affected by the disease.
"When you take the fatalities within the pediatric age group, more than 60% are from vulnerable socio-economic groups," he concludes. "It's impossible to turn a blind eye to that."
Journalists Rodrigo Pedroso and Marcia Reverdosa reported from São Paulo. CNN's Vasco Cotovio and Isa Soares reported from London. Reporting also contributed by Juliana Koch in São Paulo.
Indonesia's government added hospital bed capacity in preparation for a post-holiday increase in Covid infections, but parts of the country are still running out of beds as daily cases surge to new highs, according to Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin.
He told CNBC's "Street Signs Asia" that Indonesia has up to around 130,000 beds dedicated to Covid patients and, as of yesterday, 72,000 people are in isolation beds.
But he admitted that the Southeast Asian nation is facing two problems.
"The first issue is the acceleration is much faster than what we saw in January, February," he said. "That's why for a very dense area … we start the mobility restrictions next week, to make sure to reduce the speed of incoming patients to the hospital."
He attributed the increase in new cases to the delta variant, which was first detected in India.
In Jakarta area, it's already reaching 90% of the bed capacity.
Budi Gunadi Sadikin
Indonesia's Health Minister
The second issue is that infections are concentrated in certain parts of the country, especially its most populous island, Java.
"In Jakarta area, it's already reaching 90% of the bed capacity," he said on Wednesday.
Jan Gelfand of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said "lightning-fast action" is needed to give countries such as Indonesia access to vaccines.
"Definitely not, because … the cluster is only on a certain area," he said. "Kalimantan doesn't have this. Sulawesi doesn't have this. Most of Sumatra doesn't have this, (and) Bali is still under control."
Indonesia's tourism minister told Reuters this week that the country wanted to reopen Bali, a popular destination for vacations, at the end of July or early August, but will need to be "mindful" of the recent spike in cases.
Health minister Budi said only 30% to 40% of hospital beds are in use in Sumatra and Kalimantan. "It's not evenly distributed."
A Covid-19 patient inside the Wisma Atlet Covid-19 Emergency Hospital complex.
He also said Indonesia can increase oxygen production if needed, adding the country has diverted some industrial supply to hospitals.
Distribution is an issue, however, because factories are mostly located in West Java and East Java, while central Java is in need of oxygen supply, he said.
Vaccination progress
As for vaccinations, Budi said the country has administered 43 million shots to around 28 million people. That represents slightly over 10% of Indonesia's population of around 276 million.
He said the vaccination rate has been steady at around 1 million doses per day this week.
"Our president asked me to increase from 1 million doses per day to 2 million doses per day, which … can be achieved because now we are asking all the private sector, all the police and all the army to help us," he said.
Indonesia has received donations from China, Japan, Australia, the U.S. and Covax, a global alliance that seeks to provide vaccines to poorer countries, Budi said. It also has agreements to purchase vaccines from AstraZeneca and Pfizer, he said.
According to the World Health Organization, Indonesia's new Covid cases reported between June 21 and June 27 are up 60% from the week before. Some 2,476 deaths were also recorded in that period.
As of June 29, Indonesia has confirmed 2.16 million coronavirus infections and 58,024 deaths, data from Johns Hopkins University indicated.
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Even fully vaccinated people should wear masks, according to the WHO.
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For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO and CDC websites.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky told NBC's Today show on Wednesday that people who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus do not need to wear masks because they're "safe" from the virus. The advice openly contradicts the World Health Organization's recommendation last week that fully vaccinated people should continue wearing face masks to curb the spread of the virus and dangerous new variants.
With only 10.7% of the world fully vaccinated, the ongoing debate highlights the divide between two global authorities on infectious disease. Note that both the WHO and CDC agree that people who are not vaccinated should continue to wear face masks. Here's what we know about debate.
Why does the WHO say vaccinated people should wear face masks?
Wearing a mask consistently continues to be important, even for people who are vaccinated, WHO Assistant Director General Dr. Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão said during a press briefing on June 25. "People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves."
Wearing masks in public places is essential to help people from inhaling particles that will cause them to become sick, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, an American infectious disease epidemiologist, said during the same briefing.
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What does the CDC say?
The CDC's current guidance on mask wearing remains the same for fully vaccinated people. The guidelines say those who are fully vaccinated can "resume activities without wearing masks or physically distancing" except where required, such as in planes and businesses.
Walensky, the agency's director, stuck to that guidance on NBC's Today show Wednesday, saying fully vaccinated people are protected from the delta variant.
The CDC warned CNN on Saturday that there's still a small chance fully vaccinated people can become infected with the new variant if they're exposed. We've asked the CDC for comment.
Why is the coronavirus delta variant important?
The delta variant is the latest of new coronavirus variants, and is the most contagious of the variants identified so far, according to the WHO. The delta variant has been identified in 85 countries so far and is spreading among the unvaccinated population, the organization said during the press conference.
"The delta variant is currently the greatest threat in the US to our attempt to eliminate COVID-19," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a White House press briefing June 22.
Some countries are returning to lockdowns to curb the spread.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Will there be a return to face mask mandates and lockdowns?
Some countries have already begun tightening COVID-19 restrictions. For instance, four cities across Australia have returned to lockdown, including Sydney's state of New South Wales. In the US, Los Angeles County is strongly recommending face masks indoors, regardless of whether someone has been vaccinated or not, though masks aren't required in most places. Some countries within Africa and Asia -- for instance, South Africa and Malaysia -- have also moved into lockdown due to the delta variant spreading.
Some places never loosened mask mandates, such as airports and airlines. In the US, other public transportation facilities require masks, such as buses and trains.
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNBC on Wednesday there is reason to be hopeful that people who received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine may be protected against the virus' delta variant.
"While we are still awaiting direct studies of Johnson & Johnson and the delta variant, we have reasons to be hopeful, because the J&J vaccine has proven to be quite effective against preventing hospitalizations and deaths, with all the variants that we've seen to date," Murthy told "The News with Shepard Smith."
World Health Organization officials urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other pandemic-related safety measures as the delta variant spreads across the globe.
Murthy said the CDC guidance was based on giving people flexibility.
"The CDC, in its guidance, essentially, was giving people flexibility and choice but wanted people to know that, if you are fully vaccinated, your risk of getting this virus or passing it on is low, which is why it said masks are not required indoors or outdoors, if you are fully vaccinated," Murthy said.
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LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- As cases of the Delta variant continue to multiply, L.A. County health officials warn this newly-minted "Pandemic of the Unvaccinated" will start to take a dangerous turn.
At a Los Angeles City Council meeting, a resident during public comment noticed masks were largely absent.
"I just want to ask all of you, where are your masks?" the caller asked.
"It's 50 to 60% more contagious than the Alpha variant which is 50 to 60% more contagious than the original," said Dr. Kenneth Kim with Ark Clinical Research in Long Beach.
Besides cases in L.A. County, Long Beach health officials have also identified the strain in their sampling.
Indoor masking is a precautionary measure because people who've been vaccinated are protected against the Delta variant.
"The fact that you got vaccinated should take away the fear that you're going to die from this or you're going to be hospitalized," Kim said.
But Kim, who is a principal investigator for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, points out masking even among the fully-vaccinated can help prevent spread. Breakthrough infections, although rare and mild in those vaccinated, are more likely to occur which can infect those who are unvaccinated.
"When you go to a large gathering where there are lots of people, the chances of someone carrying the virus asymptomatically and transmitting it is higher," he said.
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A pop-up vaccination clinic at the Fox Theater in Detroit in June, which was offering free tickets to a Detroit Tigers game to people who received a Covid-19 vaccine.
Photo: emily elconin/Reuters
People who became infected with Covid-19 after getting a messenger RNA vaccine carried less virus and had shorter cases than unvaccinated people who became infected, a study by government health researchers found.
Sixteen people in the study who got infected, despite taking a PfizerInc. or ModernaInc. vaccine, had on average 40% less virus in their nose compared with the 155 unvaccinated people who became sick, according to the study, published online Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The vaccinated individuals also had a 66% lower risk of having detectable virus for more than one week, and they had a shorter duration of illness, with about two fewer days spent in bed, the study said.
The findings provide further evidence supporting what health authorities promoting vaccinations have been saying for months: While getting vaccinated can’t prevent all cases, the relative few that develop tend to be milder.
“Even when people get vaccinated and did get infected, they were less likely to have an illness that causes a fever,” said Mark Thompson, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who helped lead the study.
The findings also lend some support to evidence indicating that vaccinated people who are infected don’t transmit the coronavirus as much as the unvaccinated.
“There’s reason to think that even if you get infected, you have less virus to spread around and infect other people,” Dr. Thompson said.
For the study, researchers enrolled about 4,000 healthcare workers, first responders and essential workers, and found 204 of them became infected with Covid-19. Of that group, 155 people were unvaccinated and 16 had received at least one mRNA shot.
Researchers said they excluded data from the remaining study subjects because their vaccination status couldn’t be determined.
Five of the vaccinated subjects who became sick received both doses of the two-dose vaccines, while the rest had received their first shot. None of the vaccinated people who became infected were hospitalized, as they all had mild or moderate cases, Dr. Thompson said.
Researchers sequenced 10 of the 16 breakthrough cases, Dr. Thompson said. They found only three variants among them, all involving the Epsilon variant that was first identified in California.
The study also found the vaccines were 91% effective at preventing infection among fully-vaccinated healthcare workers, first responders and other essential workers, results in line with data released earlier this year.
The vaccines were 81% effective among individuals who were partially vaccinated, the study said.
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A Chinese coronavirus whistleblower claims her husband is helping the Chinese Communist Party make her "disappear" for exposing the origins of COVID-19 during a bombshell interview in the latest episode of Fox Nation’s "Tucker Carlson Today."
Virologist and medical doctor Li-Meng Yan told Carlson that according to I-94 records, her husband has entered the United States with an HB-1 visa for two years and may be planning to harm her with the assistance of the CCP and some within the U.S.
Prior to her escape from China in April of 2020, Yan claimed that her husband attempted to "harm" her in a variety of ways, including poisoning, in order to stop her from fleeing the country.
Yan, who was working at a World Health Organization reference lab in Hong Kong during the onset of the pandemic, was assigned as a secret investigator to probe COVID-19, which was being called the "Wuhan pneumonia" at the time. However, she said she was warned by her supervisor, Dr. Leo Poon, not to ask too many questions.
She was told not to touch the "red-line" or else face the consequences from the CCP.
"Don't touch the red line-- that means ‘invisible principle,’" Yan said. "Don't break it. If not, I have to be responsible for that. It means the invisible things that China's government won't be happy [about]."
Utilizing her network of contacts – which included Chinese lab researchers, CDC-involved military, and civilian locations -- Yan soon noticed "abnormal" actions being taken by the CCP.
"So briefly, China's government knows those things happened in Wuhan. And it's definitely more than they announced, at least for the confirmed cases," Yan said. "They hide one-third of patients."
"And all the patients has [sic] to have the seafood market history before they get diagnosed, which is very abnormal," Yan added. "And this time—"
"I'm sorry-- but you're saying that China would not diagnose COVID unless the person who was infected with COVID had been to the seafood market?" Carlson asked.
"Exactly."
Yan determined, in her opinion, that COVID-19 was a biologically engineered weapon that got out of control, designed by the Chinese military after they learned of its effectiveness during the first SARS outbreak.
This virus was a prime candidate to turn into a biological weapon, but the CCP first needed to test the virus on a small sample group in order to determine how to best utilize it against the world.
Yan was shocked to discover that the testing site was Wuhan. China was allegedly testing on its own people.
"They test it in Wuhan. It gets out of control. They didn't expect that to happen," she said. "At that point, they realize, OK, it's out. They lied about that. But then, they intentionally allowed some huge number of people, some infected, from Wuhan to travel around the world to infect the rest of the world."
In order to insulate themselves from the damage inflicted on other countries, China enacted a military-style shutdown of the country, a far cry from the lockdowns seen in the U.S.
"The lockdown in China is totally different as happened in the U.S.," Yan said. "They just lockdown you in your room and lock your room. And then you can be hungry, die at home, which happened in Wuhan at that time."
Yan immediately gave her findings to Dr. Poon, who decided, alongside WHO team experts within her lab, to "keep silent" to avoid making the Chinese government unhappy.
Later on, when China insisted coronavirus came from nature, Yan claimed that her contacts helped to "organize" the big cover-up in the international scientific world.
When Peter Daszak released his Lancet statement discrediting claims that the coronavirus came from the Wuhan lab, the letter was signed by Dr. Poon.
In the full episode of "Tucker Carlson Today," available now on Fox Nation, Yan and Carlson go into great detail about the possible weaponization of COVID-19 and its effects, the mRNA vaccines, measures taken by the CCP to infect the greater world, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the scientific community’s implication in the effort to suppress information on the virus.
New episodes of "Tucker Carlson Today" are available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday exclusively on Fox Nation.
Fox Nation programs are viewable on-demand and from your mobile device app, but only for Fox Nation subscribers. Go to Fox Nation to start a free trial and watch the extensive library from your favorite Fox News personalities.
Inside Grand Central Market in Los Angeles in early June.Allison Zaucha for The New York Times
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday stood by advice that people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus do not need to wear masks in most situations, but added that there are instances where local authorities might impose more stringent measures to protect the unvaccinated.
In May, the C.D.C. advised that fully vaccinated Americans could forgo masks in most settings. The agency’s director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, said during multiple television appearances on Wednesday that local changes to masking and distancing rules were consistent with those guidelines.
“We have always said that this virus is an opportunist, and in areas where we still have rates of low vaccination, that is where the virus is likely to take hold,” she said on “Good Morning America.” “We are still seeing uptick of cases in areas of low vaccination, and in that situation we are suggesting that policies be made at the local level.”
Dr. Walensky added that the W.H.O.’s blanket suggestion that both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals wear masks was informed by its global purview. “The W.H.O. really does have to make recommendations for an entire world,” and many countries have far less access to vaccines than the United States, she said.
The Delta variant now accounts for about one in every four infections in the United States, according to new estimates this week from the C.D.C. But cases across the country have plummeted in recent months, along with hospitalizations and deaths.
Still, the average rate of U.S. vaccinations a day has decreased by about 75 percent from the peak reported in mid-April. As of Tuesday, about 46 percent of people of all ages and about 57 percent of adults are fully vaccinated, according to federal data.
Vaccines consistently protect people from the variants circulating in the United States, including the Delta variant, Dr. Walensky noted on NBC’s “Today” show on Wednesday. But “local policymakers need to make policies for their local environment,” she said, especially in parts of the country with low rates of vaccination.
“Those masking policies are not to protect the vaccinated — they are to protect the unvaccinated,” she added, noting that “everybody should consider their own situation if they would feel more comfortable wearing a mask.”
On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said on CNN that he was particularly concerned about the Delta variant causing outbreaks in states, cities and counties with low vaccination rates.
“It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas,” he said, noting that areas where relatively fewer people are fully vaccinated — as is the case in many parts of the South — are far more at risk than regions with high inoculation rates.
“If you are vaccinated, you diminish dramatically your risk of getting infected and even more dramatically your risk of getting seriously ill,” Dr. Fauci said. “If you are not vaccinated, you are at considerable risk.”
Dr. Vivek Murthy, the United States surgeon general, said on CNN on Wednesday morning that he saw nothing wrong with local authorities imposing new restrictions if they seemed necessary.
“If I was in a community that had a low vaccination rate, as a number of our communities do around the country, if I was seeing a rise in the Delta variant, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to think about different approaches we could take to limit spread to try to get ahead of it,” Dr. Murthy said.
At a vaccination site in Havana, Cuba, last week.Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters
BUENOS AIRES — As some wealthy countries ease coronavirus restrictions, or make plans to in the near future, Latin America and the Caribbean continue to be hammered by increased infections and deaths, highlighting the stark inequalities in access to vaccines around the world, officials from the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday.
“When we are seeing some reprieve from the virus in countries in the northern hemisphere, for most countries in the region, the end remains a distant future,” said Carissa Etienne, the director of Pan American Health Organization, which is part of the W.H.O.
“Despite this worrisome picture, just one in 10 people in Latin America and the Caribbean have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19,” she added, calling it an “unacceptable situation.”
Economic inequality, the huge informal economy and the difficulty of implementing public health measures in Latin America and the Caribbean have all been major obstacles to containing the coronavirus there, said Ciro Ugarte, PAHO’s director of health emergencies.
New cases continue to rise in many countries in Central America, including Panama and Guatemala; the Caribbean, including Cuba and the Dominican Republic; and South America, including Colombia and Brazil.
Brazil recently surpassed 500,000 official Covid-19 deaths, the world’s second-highest total behind the United States. About 1 in every 400 Brazilians has died from the virus, but many experts believe the true death toll may be higher. Home to just over 2.7 percent of the world’s population, Brazil accounts for roughly 13 percent of recorded fatalities, and the situation there is not easing.
Now in addition to a worsening situation, countries in the region have to prepare for conditions that could lead to a further spike in cases, including hurricane season and the flu season farther south, both of which come at a time when social distancing measures have been relaxed.
Coronavirus variants have been detected across the region, with 14 countries in the Americas detecting cases of the Delta variant, creating more urgency to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible, said Dr. Etienne. She added that inoculation can be ramped up in part through donations from developed countries.
Although there is not yet good data on how all of the vaccines hold up against Delta, several widely used shots, including those made by Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca, appear to retain most of their effectiveness against the Delta variant, research suggests.
Eighty-five percent of shots that have gone into arms worldwide have been administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. Only 0.3 percent of doses have been administered in low-income countries.
On Wednesday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the United States is sending 2.5 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Colombia, part of President Biden’s pledge to dispatch doses to countries desperate for vaccines.
“Access to Covid-19 vaccines shouldn’t be a privilege for a few but a right we all share,” Dr. Etienne said.
For now, the Delta variant remains largely tied to travelers in Latin America and the Caribbean and “community transmission has been limited,” said Jairo Méndez, a PAHO regional adviser for viral diseases.
The connection between travelers and the increase in infections from variants led PAHO to call on governments with a high rates of variants to limit travel from their countries to others, or even close their borders entirely.
“Now may not be the ideal time for travel, especially in places with active outbreaks or where hospital capacity may be limited,” Dr. Etienne said.
Dan Levin contributed reporting.
A volunteer in Brussels receiving a dose of either CureVac’s vaccine or a placebo in March, during a clinical trial. Yves Herman/Reuters
The German company CureVac announced on Wednesday the final results of its late-stage vaccine trial, confirming earlier data showing that its shot is far less protective than other vaccines.
Overall, the CureVac vaccine had an efficacy of just 48 percent against Covid-19. The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which use the same mRNA technology as CureVac’s, delivered efficacy rates around 95 percent in clinical trials.
CureVac’s vaccine proved somewhat better for younger volunteers: For those between the ages of 18 and 60, the efficacy rose to 53 percent. In that group, the researchers also found the vaccine provided 100 percent protection against hospitalization and death.
Forty thousand people participated in the company’s trial in Europe and Latin America. By the end of the study, 288 volunteers had gotten Covid-19.
CureVac had to contend with 15 different variants of the coronavirus. Genetic testing showed that only 3 percent of the cases were caused by the original version of the coronavirus. It’s possible that some of the variants were able to evade the immunity provoked by the CureVac vaccine. (No variants had become widespread in 2020 when Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech ran their trials.)
But vaccine experts have also questioned whether part of CureVac’s problem was with the design of the vaccine itself. The precise recipe that CureVac used to build its vaccine may have blunted its effectiveness.
The European Medicines Agency opened a rolling review of CureVac’s vaccine in February, and the company said it would continue its submission with these data. The vaccine “will be an important contribution to help manage the Covid-19 pandemic and the dynamic variant spread,” Franz-Werner Haas, the chief executive of CureVac, said in the announcement.
Hasan Gokal, accused of misusing vaccines when he had an opened and soon expiring vial, was photographed at his home in Sugar Land, Texas, in February.Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times
A grand jury in Texas declined on Wednesday to indict a Houston doctor who was accused earlier this year of stealing 10 doses of Covid-19 vaccine — worth a total of $135 — and inoculating a few faint acquaintances and finally his wife in a late-night race in December to use the medicine before it expired.
The doctor, Hasan Gokal, received support for his actions from, among others, the Texas Medical Association and the Harris County Medical Society. But the Harris County district attorney, Kim Ogg, chose to present the case to a grand jury, even after a criminal court judge had dismissed the matter in January for lack of probable cause.
The allegation upended Dr. Gokal’s life. He was fired from his government job and his name ricocheted around the world. A news release from the district attorney’s office asserted that the doctor “stole the vial,” and, according to Ms. Ogg, had “abused his position to place his friends and family in line in front of people who had gone through the lawful process to be there.”
After a monthlong investigation by prosecutors and two days of testimony, a grand jury in Harris County disagreed.
Dr. Gokal expressed relief in a telephone call Wednesday afternoon. “For the first time in six months I’m going to be able to go to bed tonight and not wake up in the middle thinking about this,” he said.
His lawyer, Paul Doyle, said, “What a colossal waste of time.”
In late December, Dr. Gokal, 48, a veteran emergency room doctor then working for the Harris County Public Health Department, set up a vaccination event in the Houston suburb of Humble. Just as the event was about to close for the night, an eligible person showed up. A nurse punctured a new vial to administer the vaccine, which activated the six-hour time limit for its 10 remaining doses.
Dr. Gokal later said that he was determined to abide by his understanding that not a dose of the precious vaccine should be wasted. Colleagues at the event either declined or already had been vaccinated. So, as he drove home to a neighboring county, he called acquaintances to ask whether they knew of older people needing to be immunized.
Within a few frantic hours, he had vaccinated various people in need, most of them older or in fragile health, and unknown to him. As midnight approached, he had one last dose and no one to vaccinate, so he presented the situation to his wife, whose pulmonary sarcoidosis made her eligible — but she was hesitant.
“It makes perfect sense,” he later said he told her. “We don’t want any doses wasted, period.”
The next morning, Dr. Gokal submitted the documentation for the 10 people he had vaccinated with that last vial. Several days later, he was fired from his county job; he said he was told that he should have returned the doses to the office, which by then was closed, or thrown them away.
Soon after, the district attorney’s office issued its news release, with the headline “Fired Harris County Health Doctor Charged with Stealing Vial of Covid-19 Vaccine.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Dr. Gokal — who, since his firing, has been volunteering at a nonprofit health clinic for the uninsured — was busy answering congratulatory text messages and telephone calls. He said he was looking forward to a return to normality for his wife and three children.
Meanwhile, the district attorney’s office issued a statement that read in part: “We respect the decision of the grand jury in this and every case. Evidence, not public opinion, is the guiding principle of our work.”
A vaccination center in New Delhi in May. The Delta variant was first identified in India and has reached at least 85 countries.Atul Loke for The New York Times
The Delta variant of the coronavirus now accounts for about one in every four infections in the United States, according to new estimates this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
First identified in India, Delta is one of several “variants of concern,” as designated by the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization. It has spread rapidly through India and Britain and poses a particular threat in places where vaccination rates remain low.
It’s not clear yet. “We’re hurting for good data,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
But some evidence of a potential shift is emerging in Britain, where Delta has become the dominant variant.
“What we’ve noticed is the last month, we’re seeing different sets of symptoms than we were seeing in January,” said Tim Spector, a genetic epidemiologist at King’s College London, who leads the Covid Symptom Study, which asks people with the disease to report their symptoms in an app.
Headaches, a sore throat, and a runny nose are now among those mentioned most frequently, Dr. Spector said, with fever, cough and loss of smell less common.
These findings, however, have not yet been published in a scientific journal, and some scientists remain unconvinced that the symptom profile has truly changed. The severity of Covid, regardless of the variant, can vary wildly from one person to another.
If I’m vaccinated, do I need to worry?
Although there is not yet good data on how all of the vaccines hold up against Delta, several widely used shots, including those made by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, appear to retain most of their effectiveness against the Delta variant, research suggests.
“If you’re fully vaccinated, I would largely not worry about it,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
Pockets of unvaccinated people, however, may be vulnerable to outbreaks in the coming months, scientists said.
“When you have such a low level of vaccination superimposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you are going to see among under-vaccinated regions, be that states, cities or counties, you’re going to see these individual types of blips,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said on CNN on Tuesday. “It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas.”
Masks for sale at a vendor’s stand in the Bronx last month.Desiree Rios for The New York Times
The World Health Organization wants everybody to wear masks, but according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccinated people often don’t need to wear them.
So which do we listen to?
Virus experts and epidemiologists also offer mixed advice, but largely agree on one point: Whether a fully vaccinated person needs to wear a mask really depends on the circumstances and what’s happening in your community.
The reaffirmed push to ask vaccinated people to mask up has sown confusion. Here are some answers.
Why is the W.H.O. telling vaccinated people to wear masks?
Mask mandates are largely intended to protect the unvaccinated — people who are vaccinated are already well protected by vaccines, and breakthrough infections are still very rare. But since you can’t tell who is vaccinated and who is not, advising everyone to wear a mask can help stop the spread of the virus.
Linsey Marr, a professor at Virginia Tech and one of the world’s leading experts on viral transmission, said her advice to a fully vaccinated friend about mask wearing would be to follow local rules and to take extra precautions in certain situations, like a very crowded indoor setting or an airplane.
What’s my risk of getting Covid-19 after I’m fully vaccinated?
Although the Covid vaccines are highly effective, no vaccine offers 100 percent protection. While breakthrough infections happen, they are extremely rare, and in most cases, they cause only mild illness.
But because the risk isn’t zero, some health experts still advise that vaccinated people take reasonable precautions, like wearing a mask in crowded spaces.
And people who live in areas with low vaccination rates may also want to consider wearing masks in public because of the potentially higher number of unvaccinated people they might encounter.
Those suggestions could change with time, Dr. Marr said.
“I know everyone wants this to be over or wants a one-size-fits-all rule, but we need to get used to things changing as the virus changes, vaccines roll out, public health responses in different countries shift, and scientists learn more,” she said. “The 1918 flu pandemic lasted two years.”
Kim Jong-un during a meeting of North Korea’s Politburo on Tuesday, where he spoke of a “great crisis” in the country’s pandemic response.Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service, via Associated Press
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said that lapses in his country’s anti-pandemic campaign have caused a “great crisis” that threatened “grave consequences,” state media reported on Wednesday.
Mr. Kim did not clarify whether he was referring to an outbreak in North Korea, where the authorities had said there were no cases of the virus. But state media reported that the matter was serious enough for Mr. Kim to convene a meeting of the Political Bureau of his ruling Workers’ Party on Tuesday, during which Mr. Kim reshuffled the top party leadership.
Senior officials neglected implementing antivirus measures and had created “a great crisis in ensuring the security of the state and safety of the people,” Mr. Kim said.
Mr. Kim also berated party officials for their “ignorance, disability and irresponsibility,” said the official Korean Central News Agency.
A report said there would be some “legal” consequences for the officials.
The news agency said that some members of the Politburo and its Presidium, as well as some Workers’ Party secretaries, were replaced. In North Korea, all power is concentrated in the leadership of Mr. Kim, and he frequently reshuffles party officials and military leaders, holding them responsible for policy failures.
The North claims officially to be free of the virus, although outside experts remain skeptical, citing the country’s threadbare public health system and lack of extensive testing.
Still, North Korea has enforced harsh restrictions to contain transmission.
Last year, it created a buffer zone along the border with China, issuing a shoot-to-kill order to stop unauthorized crossings, according to South Korean and U.S. officials. South Korean lawmakers briefed by their government’s National Intelligence Service last year have said that North Korea executed an official for violating a trade ban imposed to fight the virus.
Last July, when a man from South Korea defected to the North, North Korea declared a national emergency for fear he might have brought the virus.
But Mr. Kim has also shown confidence that at least his inner circles were virus-free, sometimes presiding over meetings of party elites where no one wore masks.
During the meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Kim urged party officials to double down on his efforts to build a “self-reliant” economy. As North Korea’s economy has been hit hard by the pandemic, Mr. Kim has acknowledged that his five-year plan for growth had failed and instructed his officials to wage an “arduous march” through difficult economic times. This month, he warned of a looming food shortage.
The party meeting on Tuesday “suggests that the situation in the country has worsened beyond the capacity of self-reliance,” said Leif-Eric Easley, an associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
“Pyongyang may be setting up a domestic political narrative to allow the acceptance of foreign vaccines and pandemic assistance,” he said. “Kim is likely to blame scapegoats for this incident, purging disloyal government officials and replacing them with others considered more capable.”
President Vladimir V. Putin encouraged Russians to get vaccinated by sharing his experience getting the Sputnik V vaccine. His statement reflected a shift in tone from officials, who for months did little to promote immunizations.Sputnik/via Reuters
President Vladimir V. Putin urged Russians to get vaccinated against the coronavirus on Wednesday — his most extensive comments on the matter yet — as his country scrambles to contain a vicious new wave of the illness.
Speaking at his annual televised call-in show, Mr. Putin spent the opening half-hour trying to convince Russians to get one of the country’s four domestically produced shots. It was the latest instance of a marked change in tone about the pandemic from Russian officials, who for months did little to push a vaccine-wary public to get immunized but are now starting to make vaccination mandatory for some groups.
“It’s dangerous, dangerous to your life,” Mr. Putin said of Covid-19. “The vaccine is not dangerous.”
Only 23 million Russians, or about 15 percent of the population, have received at least one vaccine dose, Mr. Putin said. Polls this year by the independent Levada Center showed that some 60 percent of Russians did not want to be vaccinated, even though the domestically produced Sputnik V vaccine is widely seen as safe and effective.
Analysts attribute Russians’ hesitancy to a widespread distrust of the authorities combined with a drumbeat of state television reports that described the coronavirus as either mostly defeated or not very dangerous to begin with.
Mr. Putin revealed that he himself had received the Sputnik V vaccine this year — the Kremlin had previously refused to specify which shot he had been given — and that he had experienced a brief fever after the second dose.
He spoke just as his handling of the pandemic — long touted by the Kremlin as superior to the approach taken in the West — threatened to turn into a major debacle. Russia’s biggest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, have been reporting more than 100 deaths per day recently, setting records; nationwide, the number of reported new cases per day has doubled to more than 20,000 in recent weeks, with 669 deaths reported on Wednesday. The official toll is likely to be a significant undercount.
Regional officials in Moscow and elsewhere have resisted lockdowns. But, almost certainly with Mr. Putin’s blessing, they have made vaccination mandatory for large groups of people, such as service workers. That has prompted an outcry from many Kremlin critics and supporters alike.
“I don’t support mandatory vaccination, and continue to have this point of view,” Mr. Putin said, putting the responsibility for such orders on regional officials.
The renewed surge of the coronavirus could derail the Kremlin’s message of competence in comparison to Western dysfunction just as parliamentary elections approach in September. Mr. Putin’s most vocal opponents have already been jailed, exiled or barred from running, but obvious election fraud or a poor showing by his governing United Russia party could still weaken the president’s domestic authority.
Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke during a news conference on Wednesday.Anna Watts for The New York Times
Helped along by an enormous infusion of federal pandemic aid, New York City officials agreed on Wednesday to adopt the city’s largest budget ever, a $98.7 billion spending plan that restores many of the service cuts prompted by the sudden economic downturn caused by the coronavirus.
The budget, which includes $14 billion in federal aid, represents a sharp reversal from last year when the city locked down its economy to control the outbreak, creating a major financial strain and forcing the city to reduce its spending.
But with the pandemic receding amid rising vaccination rates and the lifting of public health restrictions, the outlook for New York has grown brighter. Restaurants and bars are filling with patrons, and popular gathering spots like Times Square are showing glimmers of their prepandemic bustle.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has called his last spending plan a “recovery budget” that builds on the $8 billion the city has already spent to fight the pandemic. The city will spend $30 million to promote the return of tourism and hire 10,000 residents to form a cleaning corps across the city.
To address racial and economic disparities exposed by the pandemic and national protests over the killing of George Floyd, the city will deposit $100 into the accounts of all kindergartners as part of a “Baby Bonds” effort that could expand to $15 million in the next fiscal year.
The city will also invest $4 million to fund full scholarships for Black and low-income residents to the City University of New York and $6.5 million to quickly train 1,000 New Yorkers for jobs in high-demand fields.
To address a rise in shootings and homicides that have plagued the city since the pandemic, the city will spend $24 million to hire 1,000 people who are most at risk of participating in or being a victim of violence in various neighborhoods, including Brownsville, Brooklyn, South Jamaica, Queens, and Mott Haven in the Bronx.
The city also set aside $1 billion in a rainy-day fund to respond to any unexpected challenges, including another pandemic.
But some critics said the budget does not focus enough on creating jobs and instead invests money on starting programs that will require tax increases to maintain once the federal aid dries up.
Correction:
Because of an editing error, an earlier headline on this article incorrectly described the status of the budget agreement. New York officials agreed on a budget deal, but they have not yet voted to pass it.
A medical worker in a booth administering a coronavirus test to a man in Seoul on Monday.Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press
Seoul’s mayor, Oh Se-hoon, announced Wednesday that the city will extend current social distancing regulations for the capital and its surrounding areas for a week, reversing an earlier decision to ease restrictions starting July 1. The decision was made less than 12 hours before the partial reopening, following an emergency meeting with 25 district mayors.
The government had previously said that beginning Thursday, gatherings of up to six people would be allowed, an increase from the current limit of four, regardless of whether they are held indoors or outdoors. After two weeks, that number would have risen to eight. The government had also announced that businesses could operate until midnight, two hours longer than the current 10 p.m. curfew.
Wednesday’s move put those plans on hold for now.
The delay to relax protocol comes after a spike in coronavirus cases earlier this week, as the country broke a two-month record of 794 new daily cases on Tuesday, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. Seoul also reported 375 new daily cases on Tuesday, the largest amount of new cases in a single day for the city this year. As new infections increase, authorities have expressed concerns about the recent discovery of the Delta variant among confirmed cases.
Mr. Oh said if Seoul did not see a decrease in new reported cases, then the government would decide whether to further extend the delay on lifting restrictions.
Thirty percent of South Korea’s population have received one vaccine dose and 9.5 percent are fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data.
Countries across Asia and the Pacific region are scrambling to slow the spread of the more infectious Delta variant, reimposing restrictions and stay-at-home orders in a jarring reminder — for societies that had just begun to reopen — that the pandemic is far from over.
Brisbane, in Queensland, Australia, on Tuesday. The state has entered a three-day lockdown to contain a virus outbreak.Darren England/EPA, via Shutterstock
A rift has emerged between Australia’s federal government, state leaders and medical groups over vaccination advice, with several officials issuing public objections to Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s decision to make the AstraZeneca vaccine available to those under 40.
Australia’s vaccine advisory body has recommended that people under 60 should be vaccinated with the Pfizer shot because the AstraZeneca vaccine is associated with a very small risk of a serious blood-clotting disorder. But the country’s vaccination campaign was initially planned around AstraZeneca, and supplies of other shots are so far relatively constrained, with Pfizer appointments not yet open to most people under 40.
Less than 5 percent of Australians are fully vaccinated, and just under a quarter have had one dose of a vaccine. Parts of four states or territories, including four major cities, are in lockdown to halt outbreaks associated with the Delta variant, and there are restrictions in two more.
In response to outbreaks of the more infectious Delta variant of the virus, Mr. Morrison announced on Monday that the federal government would allow family doctors to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to those under 40 who wanted it.
“If you wish to get the AstraZeneca vaccine, then we would encourage you to go and have that discussion” with your doctor, he said.
But soon after, state leaders spoke against the decision. “I do not want under-40s to get AstraZeneca,” Queensland’s chief health officer, Dr. Jeannette Young, said at a news conference on Wednesday. “I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, if they got Covid, probably wouldn’t die.”
Parts of Queensland recently entered a three-day lockdown as authorities race to contain an outbreak.
The premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, echoed Dr. Young’s position and called for people over 60 to be given the Pfizer vaccine to combat vaccine hesitancy.
Dr. Omar Khorshid, president of the Australian Medical Association, which represents doctors and medical students, said the announcement “was a surprise.” While some medical clinics have started providing consultations to younger people wanting to get the AstraZeneca vaccine, some doctors have said they want more information before they would be comfortable doing so.
