Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Different Takes: Latest Science On Booster Shots; Should Vaccination Status Be Part Of Triage Decision?
Bloomberg: Covid Vaccine Boosters: The Case For Extra Shots Is As Shaky As Ever
Scientists are raising serious questions about the wisdom of the push for Covid-19 boosters unveiled on Wednesday by President Joe Biden. It’ll be hard to judge whether extra shots for the vaccinated will be helpful or counterproductive until more of the data behind the decision become available. The officials announcing the decision to give shots to those vaccinated eight months earlier said it was justified by data on an increase in mild infections and speculation that this might evolve into something worse. (Faye Flam, 8/19)
Dallas Morning News: North Texas Doctor’s Group Retreats On Policy Saying Vaccination Status To Be Part Of Care Decisions
North Texas doctors have quietly developed a plan that seeks to prepare for the possibility that due to the COVID-19 surge the region will run out of intensive-care beds. If that happens, for the first time, doctors officially will be allowed to take vaccination status of sick patients into account along with other triage factors to see who gets a bed. (Dave Lieber, 8/19)
CNN: New Pandemic School Year Is A Nightmare For Parents And A New Test For Biden
America's kids, more vulnerable than ever to Covid-19 and in the crossfire of a political war over masks, are going back to class in a timeless rite transformed into a moment of fear by the pandemic that interrupted their childhood. For so long, this fall was to be a milestone on the road back to normality, as schools fill with students, many of them returning for the first time after 17 months of online lessons -- an eternity for a young developing mind. But the surge in the Delta variant came at just the wrong time -- plunging America back into its public health nightmare when it had seemed, even as a recently as a month ago, that the crisis was easing. (Stephen Collinson, 8/20)
USA Today: Delta Variant And Schools: What Parents Should Know Now About COVID
At a time when parents should be searching for the perfect lunchbox and picking out their children’s first day of school outfits, many are instead worried about skyrocketing COVID-19 infections in children due to the delta variant. Pediatric infections have surged – more than 121,000 COVID-19 cases in children were added in the past week. And as 1,900 children were hospitalized on Saturday, a record for the pandemic, pediatric hospitals in many areas are full or overstretched. (Rajiv J. Shah, 8/20)
Scientific American: Masks Are A Must-Have To Go Back To School During The Delta Variant Surge
Elementary, middle and high schools in the U.S. are opening this month, allowing students to fully attend in person as the country struggles to get back to normal. But open schools have put many parents in an agonizing position. Pediatric hospitalizations for COVID have reached all-time highs in some regions, several governors have banned public school mask mandates, and no vaccines are yet available for children under age 12. And all eyes are on how the march of the Delta variant across the country might affect child safety and disrupt back-to-school plans. (Emily Willingham, 8/19)
Bloomberg: The U.S. Can — and Must — Keep Kids Safe From Covid
Throughout the pandemic, it’s been comforting to know that children weather Covid-19 infection better than adults do. They often suffer no symptoms, and those they have are typically moderate. But the emergence of the delta variant has complicated matters. It’s spreading so fast that kids, most of whom can’t be vaccinated, are being infected in rising numbers — 121,000 in the past week, amounting to 18% of total reported cases in the U.S. Of course, as the numbers grow bigger, even rare serious cases become more common. (8/18)
The New York Times: Covid Isn’t Going Away. So What Now?
The 1918 influenza pandemic, the deadliest pandemic in modern history, is typically associated with a single year, but it actually lasted for more than two. The virus that caused it is thought to have emerged in the United States in January of that year, and it claimed its tens of millions of victims quickly. By the summer of 1919, the worst was over. But in some parts of the world, the pandemic dragged on into the spring of 1920, cresting in a fourth wave that killed more people in New York City than the first did. (Spencer Bokat-Lindell, 8/19)
Scientific American: A New Resource For Fighting Vaccine Misinformation
There have been over four million deaths resulting from COVID worldwide, including over 34 million cases and more than 610,000 deaths in the United States alone. Worse, we do not appear to be near the end of the pandemic. Recent increases in hospitalizations and deaths from COVID have occurred, mainly in people who are either fully unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. Making this all the more tragic is its preventability; we know that vaccines are still effective against the Delta variant, which is now the predominant strain in the United States of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID. (Jonathan N. Stea and Krishna Sankar, 8/19)
