The latest Covid insights from former CDC Director Tom Frieden
The U.S. vaccination campaign is facing a fundamental challenge: getting the vaccine where it’s needed most. Millions of Americans are still unprotected, many of them at high risk of severe illness. Our fourth surge is beginning. Lives are at stake.
As reported by CDC in its Covid Data Tracker, one in three people in the U.S. have received at least one dose of vaccine — but that means two in three haven’t. …
A physician looks at how our immune systems respond to the Covid vaccine
I received my second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on January 4th of this year. I donated blood on March 19th. The donation center routinely checks for antibodies to Covid-19 in their donors. To my surprise, I was antibody negative. Does that mean my vaccine didn’t work?
The short answer is, “no.” Here are two reasons why I’m not concerned, and if you find yourself in a similar situation, you need not worry either.
1) Antibody tests aren’t perfect
Not all antibody tests are the same. There are a number of different classes of antibodies or immunoglobulins (Ig). For instance, IgM is made by…
Public Health Weekly
The latest Covid insights from former CDC Director Tom Frieden
There’s lots of good news to report on vaccines, but the virus and variants are also gaining ground. Variants are spreading rapidly in the U.S., driving (along with premature re-opening) the fourth surge that’s now underway. Here, I’ll explain why equity is not just about fairness, but essential for pandemic control.
The fourth surge is here
The feared fourth surge is building. CDC reports in its Covid Data Tracker Weekly that cases are up more than 8% nationally over the past week, and test positivity rates have risen slightly, to 5.1%. …
It’s a big and noisy problem
Anyone who’s been at a hospital knows it’s a loud place. A constant beeping sound coming from various machines, an underlying chatter, the occasional cough or cry, the buzzing hiss of fluorescent lights.
The guidelines made by WHO are very clear. A hospital’s noise level should be “as low as possible”. The suggested level is set at 30 dB LAeq, which is equivalent to a quiet rural area, one-sixteenth as loud as a vacuum cleaner. That’s very quiet. It never happens.
An English study conducted in 2008 found that the noise level in a…
Attending college in person may require vaccination at many privately owned institutions of higher learning
As the spring semester comes to a close, colleges and universities are releasing plans for a safe reopening in the fall. Three prominent institutes of higher learning announced plans to require Covid-19 vaccines for all students and staff.
On March 25, New Jersey’s Rutgers University was first with an appropriately titled announcement “Our path forward.” The administration laid out plans for mandatory student Covid-19 vaccination. Faculty vaccinations are “strongly encouraged.”
Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, released its fall semester vaccine guidelines requiring students to upload proof of vaccination through the Fort Lewis App prior to enrollment.
Vaccinating hospital staff reduces risk to patients
The Houston Methodist hospital system is now the first U.S. hospital to require all staff to be vaccinated against Covid-19. The bold move toward mandatory vaccination comes on the heels of a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report showing that the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are 90% effective at preventing Covid-19 infections in healthcare workers and first responders.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Marc Boom, MD, the hospital’s chief executive officer, notified the staff via email of the new vaccine policy. The Methodist system currently requires all new staff to be fully vaccinated…
Seriously, we’re just going to let another wave wash over us?
Call it another wave, another painful lesson, another avoidable surge. However you characterize the situation, Covid-19 is — yet again — poised for a heartbreaking comeback. And again, it’s from a high level of existing infections: With boatloads of people infected across America, the rising tide of new cases in more than half of U.S. states [NYT | WSJ] threatens to lift all corners of the country to higher levels of transmission, followed by increasing numbers of hospitalizations and deaths in the weeks to follow.
If this sounds eerily, frustratingly familiar it could be because it’s the third time journalists…
Public Health Weekly
The latest Covid insights from former CDC Director Tom Frieden
As predicted, a fourth surge of Covid appears to be beginning in the U.S., fueled by spread of variants and premature reopening. As CDC reports in its Covid Data Tracker, cases are up 7% nationally, and the test positivity rate is also inching up, now at 4.7%. Because the pace of vaccination has been accelerating, my prediction is that despite a fourth surge, deaths won’t increase substantially. But we must solve systemic issues of vaccine inequity, both in the United States and globally.
One particularly concerning trend is in Michigan. Hospitalizations in Michigan are increasing rapidly, especially among 40–49 year…
‘Right now I’m scared’
In the race between Covid-19 vaccines and variants, in some parts of the country, the variants appear to be winning. In a stark message issued at the White House press briefing on Monday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, warned that the U.S. was on the verge of a fourth wave of the pandemic, driven by more transmissible variants of the coronavirus and states’ premature lifting of protective measures.
The seven-day average for new cases is slightly less than 60,000 per day, a 10% increase from the previous week. Hospitalizations are also increasing, up 4.2% in the past week. Deaths, which…
The largest study to date is more great news for pregnant people
Last week, a research team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital published the largest study to date verifying the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccination during pregnancy. This new study helps the 3.7 million people who give birth in the United States per year find answers to their questions about getting the Covid-19 vaccine and pregnancy.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other women’s health experts agree that Covid-19 vaccines should be offered to those who are pregnant or breastfeeding. …
