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Elinor Aspegren
| USA TODAY
COVID-19: How herd immunity works, why you still need to wear a mask
Without masks and a vaccine, we could achieve herd immunity with COVID-19, but deaths would skyrocket. We broke the science of that.
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COVID-19 killed almost 420,000 Americans in one year and infections continued to increase, despite the introduction of a pair of vaccines in late 2020. USA TODAY is following the news. Keep updating this page to get the latest updates. Subscribe to our Coronavirus Watch newsletter for updates to your inbox, join our Facebook group or go through our detailed answers to readers’ questions.
California health officials suspended regional requests for home care across the state on Monday, citing a decline in the number of hospitalizations for COVID-19 and patients in intensive care units.
The home stay application included most of the state’s counties, including the San Francisco Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. The move will allow restaurants to resume outdoor dining in many areas, although local authorities may choose to maintain stricter rules. The state is also suspending the curfew from 10 pm to 5 am.
The restrictions fueled a furious outcry from many small business owners. California will now return to its four-tier, county-by-county color-coding system, state health officials announced.
“Together, we changed our activities knowing that our short-term sacrifices would lead to long-term gains,” said Dr. Tomás Aragón, director of the California Department of Public Health and state public health officer.
– Amanda Ulrich and Julie Makinen, Palm Springs Desert Sun
In the headlines:
►Merck abandoned the COVID-19 vaccine race, citing “inferior” immune responses. This is proof that security systems are working, experts say.
►Moderna said Monday that its vaccine is effective against COVID variants emerging from Britain and South Africa. The company also said it is developing a new booster injection that could increase effectiveness against new variants.
►Every nursing home resident and caregiver in America who wants to be vaccinated against COVID-19 must have received at least their first injection by Monday night. Walgreens and CVS, which the Trump administration hired to deliver the photos, say they are on track to meet the deadline.
► A bipartisan group of lawmakers met virtually with Biden government officials on Sunday to promote vaccine distribution plans and other massive stimulus.
► Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he tested positive for the coronavirus, but that the symptoms are mild.
► President Joe Biden will announce on Monday a ban on travel from South Africa to the USA for most non-American citizens. Biden will also restore restrictions to Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 European countries, a White House source confirmed to USA TODAY on Sunday.
📈 Today’s numbers: The United States has more than 25.1 million confirmed cases of coronavirus and more than 419,200 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Global totals: Over 99.2 million cases and 2.1 million deaths.
📘 What we’re reading: President Joe Biden is trying to redefine the nation’s inconsistent coronavirus testing efforts with a $ 50 billion plan and more federal oversight. Read more here.
Google said it would open facilities selected for use as vaccination sites and reinforce the search results to provide better information on where to find a vaccine for COVID-19.
In a blog post on Monday, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and parent company Alphabet, said the company will partner with a medical provider and public health officials to open sites in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Kirkland, Washington, near Seattle. The company plans to expand the initiative nationwide.
“Getting vaccines to billions of people will not be easy, but it is one of the most important problems that we will solve in our lives,” Pichai said in his post. “Google will continue to support in any way we can.”
Japan’s vaccination effort falls short and could put the Tokyo Olympics at risk, at least one expert warns.
Japan is unlikely to achieve collective immunity from COVID-19 through mass inoculations until months after the Tokyo Olympics, which are scheduled to start on July 23, Rasmus Bech Hansen, founder of British research firm Airfinity, told Reuters .
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has promised to have enough vaccines for the population by mid-2021. Hansen, however, said that Japan will not achieve a 75% inoculation rate, a benchmark for herd immunity, until around October.
“Japan seems to be well behind in the game,” said Hansen. “They depend on the import of many (vaccines) from the United States and, at the moment, it does not seem very likely that they will get large quantities.”
The pandemic has not bypassed rural America and is not going away.
In the city of Beaver, Pennsylvania, 35 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, vaccines are almost impossible to obtain. Heritage Valley Beaver nurses had to open a second COVID-19 unit to treat all critically ill patients. The community health system recently treated 115 patients simultaneously with COVID-19.
“The struggle to just breathe. It feels like a small thing, you just keep breathing, it’s not a small thing,” said Rebecca Register, 40, of Beaver, a seven-year veteran nurse who works at the COVID-19 unit. “Watching someone struggling with it, and they are getting the most oxygen I can give at any given moment and it’s tearing your heart out.” Read more here.
– Daveen Rae Kurutz, Beaver County Times
Striving to deal with a record number of patients with COVID-19, hundreds of intensive care units in the country are running out of space and supplies and competing to hire temporary nurses at very high prices. Many of the facilities are grouped in the South and West regions.
An Associated Press analysis of federal hospital data shows that since November, the proportion of US hospitals near the breaking point has doubled. More than 40% of Americans now live in areas that are running out of ICU space and only 15% of beds are still available.
Intensive care units are the ultimate defense for the sickest, patients who are almost suffocating or experiencing organ failure. Nurses who work in the most stressed ICUs, exchanging intravenous bags and monitoring patients on respiratory devices, are exhausted.
Contributing: The Associated Press