People be very careful this virus is not done yet
- Thread starter easy_b
- Start date
After a Steep Plunge in Virus Cases, Every State Is Seeing an Uptick (Published 2021)
Hospitals are stretched thin in a few hot spots, but the vaccines are working and the national outlook remains far better than during previous surges.
After a Steep Plunge in Virus Cases, Every State Is Seeing an Uptick
Hospitals are stretched thin in a few hot spots, but the vaccines are working and the national outlook remains far better than during previous surges.
Dennis Shaffer received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine at a clinic in Springfield, Mo., on Monday. That part of the state is seeing a rise in new virus cases.Credit...Nathan Papes/The Springfield News-Leader, via Associated Press
By Mitch Smith and Julie Bosman
July 15, 2021
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The number of new coronavirus cases is increasing in every state, setting off a growing sense of concern from health officials who are warning that the pandemic in the United States is far from over, even though the national outlook is far better than during previous upticks.
The 160 million people across the country who are fully vaccinated are largely protected from the virus, including the highly contagious Delta variant, scientists say. In the Upper Midwest, the Northeast and on the West Coast — including in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco — coronavirus infections remain relatively low.
But the picture is different in pockets of the country where residents are vaccinated at lower rates. Hot spots have emerged in recent weeks in parts of Missouri, Arkansas and Nevada, among other states, leaving hospital workers strained as they care for an influx of coronavirus patients. Less than a month after reports of new cases nationally bottomed out at around 11,000 a day, virus cases overall are increasing again, with about 26,000 new cases a day, and hospitalizations are on the rise.
https://web.archive.org/web/2021071...imes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
These are days with a reporting anomaly.
About this data
The country is at an inflection point, and experts said it was uncertain what would come next. While nationwide cases and hospitalization numbers remain relatively low, more local hot spots are appearing and the national trends are moving in the wrong direction. Many of the oldest, most vulnerable Americans are already inoculated, but the vaccine campaign has sputtered in recent weeks.
“This will definitely be a surge,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It won’t be as big as what happened in January. But we still have 100 million people in the United States who are susceptible to Covid-19.”
Intensive care beds in hospitals have become scarce in parts of Missouri, where officials in Springfield on Wednesday asked for an alternative care site. In Mississippi, where cases are up 70 percent over the past two weeks, health officials have urged older adults to avoid large indoor gatherings even if they have been vaccinated. And in Los Angeles County, officials said on Thursday that masks would once again be required indoors, regardless of vaccination status, because of the spread of the Delta variant.
The slowdown of the vaccination effort has amplified concerns. About 530,000 people are now receiving a vaccine each day, a sharp decrease from 3.3 million shots a day in April. Less than half of the United States population has been fully vaccinated.
Image
Members of the National Guard prepared vaccine doses outside of a gas station in LaPlace, La., last month.Credit...Emily Kask for The New York Times
Still, the country’s prognosis remains better than at previous points in the pandemic. The vaccines are widely available, cases and hospitalizations remain at a tiny fraction of their peaks and deaths are occurring at some of the lowest levels since the early days of the pandemic.
Yet daily case numbers have increased in all 50 states, including 19 states that are reporting at least twice as many new cases a day.
Mayor Quinton Lucas of Kansas City, Mo., where cases are increasing but remain far below levels in other parts of the state, said he worried that the outbreak in southwestern Missouri would keep spreading, given low vaccination rates there. He said strong recommendations for mask wearing — or even new mandates — may become necessary if his city’s outlook continued to worsen.
“I think when you start to see Springfield-level hospitalizations here in the Kansas City metro, then we’ll have to very seriously consider whether it’s time to return to previous restrictions,” Mr. Lucas said.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
In a string of news conferences this week, public health officials pleaded with people who have not gotten shots to change their minds, urging them to consider that coronavirus vaccines are safe, free and available to anyone 12 and older.
“To any who have been hesitating about being vaccinated, please, I implore you to hesitate no longer,” Dr. Kiran Joshi, the senior medical officer for the Cook County Department of Public Health, which serves suburban Chicago, said on Thursday.
Even in places in the United States that have not yet seen a significant uptick in infections, governors and public health officials worried that their states were vulnerable to an outbreak.
Image
The emergency room at Cox Medical Center South in Springfield, Mo., last month. Credit...Liz Sanders/Bloomberg
“I hope and pray that it doesn’t come to West Virginia and just absolutely runs across our state like wild,” said Gov. Jim Justice, whose state has recorded relatively few cases recently but has a low vaccination rate. “But the odds are it will.”
Few places are more worrisome than in Missouri, where a surge among unvaccinated people has left hospitals scrambling to keep up.
Just two months ago, when there were only 15 active coronavirus cases in his southwestern Missouri county, Larry Bergner, the director of the Newton County Health Department, had hoped the end of the pandemic might be in sight.
That has not happened.
As the Delta variant has spread across the country, it has sent case totals spiking in Newton County, where less than 20 percent of residents are fully vaccinated. Mr. Bergner’s county now has a higher rate of recent cases than any state.
“It does give, I guess, some depression to think that we thought we were coming out of it, now here we go again, how high are we going to get,” Mr. Bergner said.
In Milwaukee County, where 48 percent of residents are fully vaccinated, the health department has tried to push the number higher by setting up a vaccine site outside the Fiserv Forum, where the Milwaukee Bucks are playing in the N.B.A. finals. Fewer than two dozen people have received a vaccine each day the site was in place, said Dr. Ben Weston, the director of medical services for the Milwaukee County Office of Emergency Management.
“In March, people flooded to our vaccination sites — all we had to do was open a door,” Dr. Weston said. “Now we have to go out and find people.”
Image
Tina Lopez received her first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine before a Milwaukee Bucks home game at Fiserv Forum in May.Credit...Stacy Revere/Getty Images
As case numbers slowly rise, a sense of worry has begun to creep in for some Americans, even those who are fully vaccinated.
Vince Palmieri, 89, who gets around Los Angeles on public transportation, said he worried when he saw fellow riders not wearing masks as required. Though per capita case rates remain relatively low in Los Angeles County, they have grown sharply in recent weeks. The county is averaging about 1,000 new cases a day, up from fewer than 200 a day in mid-June.
“Once you get on a bus or a train you’re in no man’s land,” said Mr. Palmieri, who continues to wear a mask. “Their sneeze could take somebody out, but I’m frightened to talk up about the disease because people get ugly.”
Debora Weems, 63, who lives in New York City, has been following the case numbers closely. Her anxiety about the virus has risen alongside cases. New York City, which averaged fewer than 200 new cases a day in late June and early July, is now averaging more than 400 a day, far below past peaks.
“I’m just afraid we’re going to have to shut down again,” Ms. Weems said. Both she and her mother, who is 85, are vaccinated, but now she worries that their protection is not enough.
When the case numbers were at their lowest, she moved through the city more freely, with less thought about whether people nearby were vaccinated. But now she is trying to avoid leaving her neighborhood, and recently put up a new sign on her apartment door with a request: She and her mother are not receiving visitors because of Covid-19.
In Undervaccinated Arkansas, Covid Upends Life All Over Again
While much of the nation tiptoes toward normalcy, the coronavirus is again swamping hospitals in places like Mountain Home, in a rural county where fewer than one-third of residents are vaccinated.
\
David Deutscher, 49, an Air Force veteran, said he called about 10 friends from his hospital bed in Little Rock, Ark., urging them to get vaccine shots, saying the coronavirus made him more scared than he had ever been.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
By Sharon LaFraniere
Published July 17, 2021Updated July 18, 2021
MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. — When the boat factory in this leafy Ozark Mountains city offered free coronavirus vaccinations this spring, Susan Johnson, 62, a receptionist there, declined the offer, figuring she was protected as long as she never left her house without a mask.
Linda Marion, 68, a widow with chronic pulmonary disease, worried that a vaccination might actually trigger Covid-19 and kill her. Barbara Billigmeier, 74, an avid golfer who retired here from California, believed she did not need it because “I never get sick.”
Last week, all three were patients on 2 West, an overflow ward that is now largely devoted to treating Covid-19 at Baxter Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in north-central Arkansas. Mrs. Billigmeier said the scariest part was that “you can’t breathe.” For 10 days, Ms. Johnson had relied on supplemental oxygen being fed to her lungs through nasal tubes.
Ms. Marion said that at one point, she felt so sick and frightened that she wanted to give up. “It was just terrible,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t take it.”
Yet despite their ordeals, none of them changed their minds about getting vaccinated. “It’s just too new,” Mrs. Billigmeier said. “It is like an experiment.”
\
Linda Marion, 68, a widow with chronic pulmonary disease, said that at one point, she felt so sick and frightened that she wanted to give up.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
While much of the nation tiptoes toward normalcy, the coronavirus is again swamping hospitals in places like Mountain Home, a city of fewer than 13,000 people not far from the Missouri border. A principal reason, health officials say, is the emergence of the new, far more contagious variant called Delta, which now accounts for more than half of new infections in the United States.
The variant has highlighted a new divide in America, between communities with high vaccination rates, where it causes hardly a ripple, and those like Mountain Home that are undervaccinated, where it threatens to upend life all over again. Part of the country is breathing a sigh of relief; part is holding its breath.
While infections rose in more than half the nation’s counties last week, those with low vaccination rates were far more likely to see bigger jumps. Among the 25 counties with the sharpest increases in cases, all but one had vaccinated under 40 percent of residents, and 16 had vaccinated under 30 percent, a New York Times analysis found.
In Baxter County, where the hospital is, fewer than a third of residents are fully vaccinated — below both the state and the national averages. Even fewer people are protected in surrounding counties that the hospital serves.
“It’s absolutely flooded,” said Dr. Rebecca Martin, a pulmonologist, as she made the rounds of 2 West one morning last week.
In the first half of June, the hospital averaged only one or two Covid-19 patients a day. On Thursday, 22 of the unit’s 32 beds were filled with coronavirus patients. Five more were in intensive care. In a single week, the number of Covid patients had jumped by one-third.
Overall, Arkansas ranks near the bottom of states in the share of population that is vaccinated. Only 44 percent of residents have received at least one shot.
“Boy, we’ve tried just about everything we can think of,” a retired National Guard colonel, Robert Ator, who runs the state’s vaccination effort, said in an interview. For about one in three residents, he said, “I don’t think there’s a thing in the world we could do to get them to get vaccinated.”
For that, the state is paying a price. Hospitalizations have quadrupled since mid-May. More than a third of patients are in intensive care. Deaths, a lagging indicator, are also expected to rise, health officials said.
Image
Undervaccinated places like Mountain Home are bearing the brunt of rising coronavirus infections and hospitalizations from the Delta variant.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Dr. José R. Romero, the state health director, said he still believed enough Arkansans were vaccinated, or immune from having contracted Covid-19, that the “darkest days” of December and January were behind them. “What I’m concerned about now is we’ll have a rise or surge,” he said, “then winter is going to add another surge, so we’re going to have a surge on top of a surge.”
Dr. Mark Williams, the dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said the Delta variant was upending his projections for the pandemic. It is spreading through the state’s unvaccinated population “at a very fast rate,” he said, and threatens to strain the ability of hospitals to cope. “I would say we have definitely hit the alarming stage,” he said.
At Baxter Regional, many doctors and nurses are girding for another wave while still exhausted from battling the pandemic they thought had abated.
“I started having flashbacks, like PTSD,” said Dr. Martin, the pulmonologist, who obsesses over her patients’ care. “This is going to sound very selfish but unfortunately it’s true: The fact that people won’t get vaccinated means I can’t go home and see my kids for dinner.”
Image
Dr. Rebecca Martin, a pulmonologist, said Baxter Regional was “flooded.”Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The Biden administration has pledged to help stem outbreaks by supplying Covid-19 tests and treatments, promoting vaccines with advertising campaigns and sending community health workers door to door to try to persuade the hesitant.
But not all those tactics are welcome. Dr. Romero said Arkansas would happily accept more monoclonal antibody therapies, a Covid-19 treatment often used in outpatient settings. But Mr. Ator, the vaccine coordinator, said door-knocking “would probably do more harm than good,” given residents’ suspicions of federal intentions.
Both said the Arkansas public had been saturated with vaccine promotions and incentives, including free lottery tickets, hunting and fishing licenses and stands offering shots at state parks and high school graduation ceremonies.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
\
The last mass vaccination event was May 4, when the Arkansas Travelers, a minor-league baseball team, had its first game since the pandemic hit. Thousands gathered at the stadium in Little Rock to watch. Fourteen accepted shots.
Even health care workers have balked. Statewide, only about 40 percent are vaccinated, Dr. Romero said.
In April, the state legislature added yet another roadblock, making it essentially illegal for any state or local entity, including public hospitals, to require coronavirus vaccination as a condition of education or employment until two years after the Food and Drug Administration fully licenses a shot. That almost certainly means no such requirements can be issued until late in 2023.
Image
Fewer than one-third of Baxter County residents are fully vaccinated.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Only fear of the Delta variant appears to be pushing some off the fence.
When the pandemic hit, Baxter Regional became a vaccine distribution center and inoculated 5,500 people. But only half of its 1,800 staff members accepted shots, according to Jonny Harvey, its occupational health coordinator. By early June, demand had tapered off so much that the hospital was administering an average of one a day.
Now, Mr. Harvey said, he is ordering enough vaccine to deliver 30 shots a day because people are increasingly anxious of the Delta variant. “I hate that we are having the surge,” he said. “But I do like that we are vaccinating people.”
At the state’s only academic medical center in Little Rock, run by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, vaccines are also suddenly more popular. Over a recent two-week period, the share of the hospital’s staff who are vaccinated jumped to 86 percent from 75 percent.
\
But those encouraging signs are outweighed by the soaring number of Covid-19 patients. On Saturday, the Little Rock hospital held 51 patients, more than at any point since Feb. 2. In April, there was one coronavirus death. In June, there were six.
Dr. Williams, who has been charting the coronavirus’s trajectory, said the rise in infections and hospitalizations mirrored what he saw in October. And there are other troubling signs.
A larger share of those who are now becoming infected, he said, need hospitalization. And once there, Dr. Steppe Mette, the chief executive of the Little Rock hospital, said, they appeared to need a higher level of care than those who were sickened by the original variant. That is despite the fact that they are younger.
Image
“What I’m concerned about now is we’ll have a rise or surge,” Dr. José R. Romero, the state health director, said, “then winter is going to add another surge, so we’re going to have a surge on top of a surge.”Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The average age of a coronavirus patient in Arkansas has dropped by nearly a decade since December — from 63 to 54 — a reflection of the fact that three-fourths of older Arkansans are at least partly vaccinated. But some patients at the Little Rock hospital are in their 20s or 30s.
“It’s really discouraging to see younger, sicker patients,” Dr. Mette said. “We didn’t see this degree of illness earlier in the epidemic.”
Young, pregnant coronavirus patients were once rare at the hospital. But recently, four or five of them ended up in intensive care. Three were treated with a machine called ECMO — short for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation — a step some consider a last resort after ventilators fail. The machine routes blood from the body and into equipment that adds oxygen, then pumps it back into the patient.
Ashton Reed, 25, a coordinator in a county prosecutor’s office, was about 30 weeks pregnant when she arrived at the hospital on May 26, critically ill. To save her life, doctors delivered her baby girl by emergency cesarean section, then hooked her up to the ECMO machine.
In a public service announcement later urging vaccination, her husband said she went from sinus trouble to life support in 10 days.
“I almost died,” she said. “My thoughts have definitely changed on the vaccine.”
Last month, the hospital had to reopen a coronavirus ward it had closed in late spring. On Monday, it reopened a second.
Many of the nurses there wore colorful stickers announcing they were vaccinated. Ashley Ayers, 26, a traveling nurse from Dallas, did not. Noting that vaccine development typically took years, she said she worried that the shot might impair her fertility — even though there is no evidence of that.
“I just think it was rushed,” she said.
David Deutscher, 49, one of her patients for nearly a week, is no longer a holdout. A heating and air conditioning specialist and Air Force veteran, he said he fought Covid for 10 days at home before he went to the hospital with a 105-degree fever.
The experience has shaken him to his core. He dissolved into tears describing it, apologizing for being an emotional wreck.
Image
Dr. Martin, right, speaking with Barbara Billigmeier, 74, a patient hospitalized with Covid-19, at Baxter Regional. Mrs. Billigmeier said she has not changed her mind about vaccination, describing it as “too new.”Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
When he failed to improve with monoclonal antibody treatment, he said, “that was probably the most scared I have ever been.” He called a friend, the daughter of a medical researcher, from his hospital bed. “Please don’t let me die,” he said.
He said he never got vaccinated because he figured a mask would suffice. In the past 21 years, he has had the flu once.
“Once I started feeling better,” Mr. Deutscher said, “I got on the phone and I just started calling everybody to tell them to go get that vaccine.” He did not even wait to be discharged.
The coronavirus “is no joke,” he told his friends. Three of them got a shot.
Mr. Deutscher went home on July 9, bringing a song for one of his five grandchildren that he had written in his hospital bed. His theme was the value of life.
While much of the nation tiptoes toward normalcy, the coronavirus is again swamping hospitals in places like Mountain Home, in a rural county where fewer than one-third of residents are vaccinated.
\
David Deutscher, 49, an Air Force veteran, said he called about 10 friends from his hospital bed in Little Rock, Ark., urging them to get vaccine shots, saying the coronavirus made him more scared than he had ever been.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
By Sharon LaFraniere
Published July 17, 2021Updated July 18, 2021
MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. — When the boat factory in this leafy Ozark Mountains city offered free coronavirus vaccinations this spring, Susan Johnson, 62, a receptionist there, declined the offer, figuring she was protected as long as she never left her house without a mask.
Linda Marion, 68, a widow with chronic pulmonary disease, worried that a vaccination might actually trigger Covid-19 and kill her. Barbara Billigmeier, 74, an avid golfer who retired here from California, believed she did not need it because “I never get sick.”
Last week, all three were patients on 2 West, an overflow ward that is now largely devoted to treating Covid-19 at Baxter Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in north-central Arkansas. Mrs. Billigmeier said the scariest part was that “you can’t breathe.” For 10 days, Ms. Johnson had relied on supplemental oxygen being fed to her lungs through nasal tubes.
Ms. Marion said that at one point, she felt so sick and frightened that she wanted to give up. “It was just terrible,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t take it.”
Yet despite their ordeals, none of them changed their minds about getting vaccinated. “It’s just too new,” Mrs. Billigmeier said. “It is like an experiment.”
\
Linda Marion, 68, a widow with chronic pulmonary disease, said that at one point, she felt so sick and frightened that she wanted to give up.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
While much of the nation tiptoes toward normalcy, the coronavirus is again swamping hospitals in places like Mountain Home, a city of fewer than 13,000 people not far from the Missouri border. A principal reason, health officials say, is the emergence of the new, far more contagious variant called Delta, which now accounts for more than half of new infections in the United States.
The variant has highlighted a new divide in America, between communities with high vaccination rates, where it causes hardly a ripple, and those like Mountain Home that are undervaccinated, where it threatens to upend life all over again. Part of the country is breathing a sigh of relief; part is holding its breath.
While infections rose in more than half the nation’s counties last week, those with low vaccination rates were far more likely to see bigger jumps. Among the 25 counties with the sharpest increases in cases, all but one had vaccinated under 40 percent of residents, and 16 had vaccinated under 30 percent, a New York Times analysis found.
In Baxter County, where the hospital is, fewer than a third of residents are fully vaccinated — below both the state and the national averages. Even fewer people are protected in surrounding counties that the hospital serves.
“It’s absolutely flooded,” said Dr. Rebecca Martin, a pulmonologist, as she made the rounds of 2 West one morning last week.
In the first half of June, the hospital averaged only one or two Covid-19 patients a day. On Thursday, 22 of the unit’s 32 beds were filled with coronavirus patients. Five more were in intensive care. In a single week, the number of Covid patients had jumped by one-third.
Overall, Arkansas ranks near the bottom of states in the share of population that is vaccinated. Only 44 percent of residents have received at least one shot.
“Boy, we’ve tried just about everything we can think of,” a retired National Guard colonel, Robert Ator, who runs the state’s vaccination effort, said in an interview. For about one in three residents, he said, “I don’t think there’s a thing in the world we could do to get them to get vaccinated.”
For that, the state is paying a price. Hospitalizations have quadrupled since mid-May. More than a third of patients are in intensive care. Deaths, a lagging indicator, are also expected to rise, health officials said.
Image
Undervaccinated places like Mountain Home are bearing the brunt of rising coronavirus infections and hospitalizations from the Delta variant.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Dr. José R. Romero, the state health director, said he still believed enough Arkansans were vaccinated, or immune from having contracted Covid-19, that the “darkest days” of December and January were behind them. “What I’m concerned about now is we’ll have a rise or surge,” he said, “then winter is going to add another surge, so we’re going to have a surge on top of a surge.”
Dr. Mark Williams, the dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said the Delta variant was upending his projections for the pandemic. It is spreading through the state’s unvaccinated population “at a very fast rate,” he said, and threatens to strain the ability of hospitals to cope. “I would say we have definitely hit the alarming stage,” he said.
At Baxter Regional, many doctors and nurses are girding for another wave while still exhausted from battling the pandemic they thought had abated.
“I started having flashbacks, like PTSD,” said Dr. Martin, the pulmonologist, who obsesses over her patients’ care. “This is going to sound very selfish but unfortunately it’s true: The fact that people won’t get vaccinated means I can’t go home and see my kids for dinner.”
Image
Dr. Rebecca Martin, a pulmonologist, said Baxter Regional was “flooded.”Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The Biden administration has pledged to help stem outbreaks by supplying Covid-19 tests and treatments, promoting vaccines with advertising campaigns and sending community health workers door to door to try to persuade the hesitant.
But not all those tactics are welcome. Dr. Romero said Arkansas would happily accept more monoclonal antibody therapies, a Covid-19 treatment often used in outpatient settings. But Mr. Ator, the vaccine coordinator, said door-knocking “would probably do more harm than good,” given residents’ suspicions of federal intentions.
Both said the Arkansas public had been saturated with vaccine promotions and incentives, including free lottery tickets, hunting and fishing licenses and stands offering shots at state parks and high school graduation ceremonies.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
\
The last mass vaccination event was May 4, when the Arkansas Travelers, a minor-league baseball team, had its first game since the pandemic hit. Thousands gathered at the stadium in Little Rock to watch. Fourteen accepted shots.
Even health care workers have balked. Statewide, only about 40 percent are vaccinated, Dr. Romero said.
In April, the state legislature added yet another roadblock, making it essentially illegal for any state or local entity, including public hospitals, to require coronavirus vaccination as a condition of education or employment until two years after the Food and Drug Administration fully licenses a shot. That almost certainly means no such requirements can be issued until late in 2023.
Image
Fewer than one-third of Baxter County residents are fully vaccinated.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Only fear of the Delta variant appears to be pushing some off the fence.
When the pandemic hit, Baxter Regional became a vaccine distribution center and inoculated 5,500 people. But only half of its 1,800 staff members accepted shots, according to Jonny Harvey, its occupational health coordinator. By early June, demand had tapered off so much that the hospital was administering an average of one a day.
Now, Mr. Harvey said, he is ordering enough vaccine to deliver 30 shots a day because people are increasingly anxious of the Delta variant. “I hate that we are having the surge,” he said. “But I do like that we are vaccinating people.”
At the state’s only academic medical center in Little Rock, run by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, vaccines are also suddenly more popular. Over a recent two-week period, the share of the hospital’s staff who are vaccinated jumped to 86 percent from 75 percent.
\
But those encouraging signs are outweighed by the soaring number of Covid-19 patients. On Saturday, the Little Rock hospital held 51 patients, more than at any point since Feb. 2. In April, there was one coronavirus death. In June, there were six.
Dr. Williams, who has been charting the coronavirus’s trajectory, said the rise in infections and hospitalizations mirrored what he saw in October. And there are other troubling signs.
A larger share of those who are now becoming infected, he said, need hospitalization. And once there, Dr. Steppe Mette, the chief executive of the Little Rock hospital, said, they appeared to need a higher level of care than those who were sickened by the original variant. That is despite the fact that they are younger.
Image
“What I’m concerned about now is we’ll have a rise or surge,” Dr. José R. Romero, the state health director, said, “then winter is going to add another surge, so we’re going to have a surge on top of a surge.”Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The average age of a coronavirus patient in Arkansas has dropped by nearly a decade since December — from 63 to 54 — a reflection of the fact that three-fourths of older Arkansans are at least partly vaccinated. But some patients at the Little Rock hospital are in their 20s or 30s.
“It’s really discouraging to see younger, sicker patients,” Dr. Mette said. “We didn’t see this degree of illness earlier in the epidemic.”
Young, pregnant coronavirus patients were once rare at the hospital. But recently, four or five of them ended up in intensive care. Three were treated with a machine called ECMO — short for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation — a step some consider a last resort after ventilators fail. The machine routes blood from the body and into equipment that adds oxygen, then pumps it back into the patient.
Ashton Reed, 25, a coordinator in a county prosecutor’s office, was about 30 weeks pregnant when she arrived at the hospital on May 26, critically ill. To save her life, doctors delivered her baby girl by emergency cesarean section, then hooked her up to the ECMO machine.
In a public service announcement later urging vaccination, her husband said she went from sinus trouble to life support in 10 days.
“I almost died,” she said. “My thoughts have definitely changed on the vaccine.”
Last month, the hospital had to reopen a coronavirus ward it had closed in late spring. On Monday, it reopened a second.
Many of the nurses there wore colorful stickers announcing they were vaccinated. Ashley Ayers, 26, a traveling nurse from Dallas, did not. Noting that vaccine development typically took years, she said she worried that the shot might impair her fertility — even though there is no evidence of that.
“I just think it was rushed,” she said.
David Deutscher, 49, one of her patients for nearly a week, is no longer a holdout. A heating and air conditioning specialist and Air Force veteran, he said he fought Covid for 10 days at home before he went to the hospital with a 105-degree fever.
The experience has shaken him to his core. He dissolved into tears describing it, apologizing for being an emotional wreck.
Image
Dr. Martin, right, speaking with Barbara Billigmeier, 74, a patient hospitalized with Covid-19, at Baxter Regional. Mrs. Billigmeier said she has not changed her mind about vaccination, describing it as “too new.”Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
When he failed to improve with monoclonal antibody treatment, he said, “that was probably the most scared I have ever been.” He called a friend, the daughter of a medical researcher, from his hospital bed. “Please don’t let me die,” he said.
He said he never got vaccinated because he figured a mask would suffice. In the past 21 years, he has had the flu once.
“Once I started feeling better,” Mr. Deutscher said, “I got on the phone and I just started calling everybody to tell them to go get that vaccine.” He did not even wait to be discharged.
The coronavirus “is no joke,” he told his friends. Three of them got a shot.
Mr. Deutscher went home on July 9, bringing a song for one of his five grandchildren that he had written in his hospital bed. His theme was the value of life.
The Pandemic Has a New Epicenter: Indonesia
The suffering that ravaged places like India and Brazil — with deaths soaring, hospitals overwhelmed and oxygen running out — has reached Southeast Asia.
Covid-19 patients in a tent outside Dr. Sardjito General Hospital in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, on Thursday. Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
By Fira Abdurachman, Richard C. Paddock and Muktita Suhartono
July 17, 2021
BEKASI, Indonesia — By the thousands, they sleep in hallways, tents and cars, gasping for air as they wait for beds in overcrowded hospitals that may not have oxygen to give them. Others see hospitals as hopeless, even dangerous, and take their chances at home.
Wherever they lie, as Covid-19 steals their breath away, their families engage in a frantic, daily hunt for scarce supplies of life-giving oxygen.
Indonesia has become the new epicenter of the pandemic, surpassing India and Brazil to become the country with the world’s highest count of new infections. The surge is part of a wave across Southeast Asia, where vaccination rates are low but countries had until recently contained the virus relatively well. Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand are also facing their largest outbreaks yet and have imposed new restrictions, including lockdowns and stay-at-home orders.
In Indonesia, cases and deaths have skyrocketed in the past month as the highly contagious Delta variant sweeps through densely populated Java island, as well as Bali. In some regions, the coronavirus has pushed the medical system past its limits, though hospitals are taking emergency steps to expand capacity.
Image
Earlier this month, 33 patients at Dr. Sardjito General Hospital died when its central oxygen supply ran out.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Bekasi Regional Public Hospital, where some Covid patients have waited days for treatment, has erected large tents on its grounds, with beds for up to 150 people. Nearby in Jakarta, the capital, a long line of people waited for hours outside a small dispensary, hoping to fill their portable tanks with oxygen.
Among them was Nyimas Siti Nadia, 28, who had been searching for oxygen for her aunt’s family, all sick with Covid.
“She is a doctor and she is afraid to go to a hospital because she knows the situation,” Ms. Nyimas said. “There are many instances where patients do not get beds or oxygen. If we go to the hospital, we have to bring our own oxygen.”
Image
Family members said some Indonesian hospitals were accepting only patients who brought their own oxygen. Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
On Thursday, Indonesian authorities reported nearly 57,000 new cases, the highest daily total yet — seven times as many as a month earlier. On Friday, they reported a record 1,205 deaths, bringing the country’s official toll from the pandemic to more than 71,000.
But some health experts say those figures vastly understate the spread in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, because testing has been limited. Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia, estimates that the true number of cases is three to six times higher.
In India, where the Delta variant was first identified, daily cases peaked at more than 414,000 in May, but have since dropped to about 40,000.
Image
A vaccination center at a Yogyakarta zoo. Only about 15 percent of Indonesians have gotten even one shot.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Despite Indonesia’s mushrooming caseload, officials say they have the situation under control.
“If we talk about the worst-case scenario, 60,000 or slightly more, we are pretty OK,” said Luhut Pandjaitan, a senior minister assigned by President Joko Widodo to handle the crisis. “We are hoping that it will not reach 100,000, but even so, we are preparing now for if we ever get there.”
Many Indonesians, however, have been facing their worst-case scenarios for weeks.
Image
Indonesia has relied heavily on the Sinovac shot, which has been found to be less effective than others.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Family members describe nightmare scenes of trying to get a hospital to admit their sick relatives. Some hospitals were accepting only patients who brought their own oxygen, they said. At others, patients waited wherever they could find space to lie down.
In Bekasi, a city of 2.5 million that adjoins Jakarta, patients have flocked to the regional public hospital. To accommodate the surge, 10 large tents were set up on the grounds, equipped with beds for as many as 150 people.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Lisa Wiliana’s husband had been in one of the tents since the previous day, waiting for space in a ward. After nine days of sickness, she said, his oxygen saturation level had dropped to 84, well below the range of 95 to 100 that is considered healthy. The hospital was giving him some oxygen, but she had to arrange to get more.
“We are waiting for an available room because it is full,” she said. “What else can we do? The important thing is to get the oxygen, because he already had trouble breathing. It was scary.”
Image
A volunteer made coffins to be distributed to Yogyakarta hospitals.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Even being admitted does not make getting oxygen a certainty. At Dr. Sardjito General Hospital in the city of Yogyakarta, 33 patients died this month after the central oxygen supply ran out. The staff switched to tanks donated by the police, but it was too late for many patients.
Overwhelmed hospitals have added thousands of beds, but on average, 10 percent of their health care workers are in isolation after exposure to the virus, said the secretary general of the Indonesian Hospital Association, Dr. Lia G. Partakusuma. Some hospitals are using five times as much liquid oxygen as normal, and distributors are having difficulty keeping up with the demand, she said.
“Some hospitals have said, ‘If you brought your own oxygen tank, please use it first because we have a limited oxygen supply,’” she said. “But it is not a requirement for them to bring their own oxygen.”
With hospitals so overcrowded, many people choose to stay home — and many die there. Lapor Covid, a nonprofit group that is tracking deaths from the disease, reports that at least 40 Covid patients a day are now dying at home.
Image
Indonesia has reported more than 71,000 Covid-19 deaths.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Mr. Joko, the president, has stopped short of a nationwide lockdown but ordered restrictions in Java and Bali, including closing places of worship, schools, shopping malls and sports facilities, reducing public transit capacity and limiting restaurants to takeout. The restrictions are set to expire on Tuesday, but officials are weighing whether to extend them.
Only about 15 percent of Indonesia’s 270 million people have received a dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and just 6 percent are fully inoculated. Indonesia has relied heavily on the vaccine made by Sinovac Biotech, a Chinese company, which has proved less effective than other shots. At least 20 Indonesian doctors who were fully vaccinated with Sinovac have died from the virus.
This week, the United States donated 4.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine to Indonesia. Officials said the first priority would be to give booster shots to nearly 1.5 million health workers.
Dr. Budiman, the Indonesian epidemiologist in Australia, predicted more than a year ago that Indonesia would become a pandemic epicenter because of its dense population and weak health care system. He has urged more testing, contact tracing and isolation of infected individuals.
Image
Carrying a coffin into an ambulance in Yogyakarta.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Indonesia’s health minister, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, said Friday that the country had increased testing to about 230,000 people a day, from about 30,000 in December. His target is 400,000 a day.
But Dr. Budiman contends that testing is still woefully limited, noting that in recent days, the share of tests that came up positive had risen to more than 30 percent. Health experts say a high rate is a sign of too little testing.
“For more than a year, our test positivity rate has almost never been below 10 percent, which means we are missing many cases and we cannot identify the majority of infections and the clusters,” he said.
Outside the small CV Rintis Usaha Bersama oxygen shop in South Jakarta, more than 100 customers lined up in the street with their oxygen tanks and waited hours for the chance to refill them.
Alif Akhirul Ramadan, 27, said he was getting oxygen for his grandmother, 77, who was being cared for by family members at home. He said that her condition had suddenly worsened and that her tank was running low.
“Now it has to be refilled,” said Mr. Alif, who has had Covid twice. “There is no backup at home. That is why we need to refill it quickly.”
The suffering that ravaged places like India and Brazil — with deaths soaring, hospitals overwhelmed and oxygen running out — has reached Southeast Asia.
Covid-19 patients in a tent outside Dr. Sardjito General Hospital in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, on Thursday. Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
By Fira Abdurachman, Richard C. Paddock and Muktita Suhartono
July 17, 2021
BEKASI, Indonesia — By the thousands, they sleep in hallways, tents and cars, gasping for air as they wait for beds in overcrowded hospitals that may not have oxygen to give them. Others see hospitals as hopeless, even dangerous, and take their chances at home.
Wherever they lie, as Covid-19 steals their breath away, their families engage in a frantic, daily hunt for scarce supplies of life-giving oxygen.
Indonesia has become the new epicenter of the pandemic, surpassing India and Brazil to become the country with the world’s highest count of new infections. The surge is part of a wave across Southeast Asia, where vaccination rates are low but countries had until recently contained the virus relatively well. Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand are also facing their largest outbreaks yet and have imposed new restrictions, including lockdowns and stay-at-home orders.
In Indonesia, cases and deaths have skyrocketed in the past month as the highly contagious Delta variant sweeps through densely populated Java island, as well as Bali. In some regions, the coronavirus has pushed the medical system past its limits, though hospitals are taking emergency steps to expand capacity.
Image
Earlier this month, 33 patients at Dr. Sardjito General Hospital died when its central oxygen supply ran out.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Bekasi Regional Public Hospital, where some Covid patients have waited days for treatment, has erected large tents on its grounds, with beds for up to 150 people. Nearby in Jakarta, the capital, a long line of people waited for hours outside a small dispensary, hoping to fill their portable tanks with oxygen.
Among them was Nyimas Siti Nadia, 28, who had been searching for oxygen for her aunt’s family, all sick with Covid.
“She is a doctor and she is afraid to go to a hospital because she knows the situation,” Ms. Nyimas said. “There are many instances where patients do not get beds or oxygen. If we go to the hospital, we have to bring our own oxygen.”
Image
Family members said some Indonesian hospitals were accepting only patients who brought their own oxygen. Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
On Thursday, Indonesian authorities reported nearly 57,000 new cases, the highest daily total yet — seven times as many as a month earlier. On Friday, they reported a record 1,205 deaths, bringing the country’s official toll from the pandemic to more than 71,000.
But some health experts say those figures vastly understate the spread in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, because testing has been limited. Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia, estimates that the true number of cases is three to six times higher.
In India, where the Delta variant was first identified, daily cases peaked at more than 414,000 in May, but have since dropped to about 40,000.
Image
A vaccination center at a Yogyakarta zoo. Only about 15 percent of Indonesians have gotten even one shot.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Despite Indonesia’s mushrooming caseload, officials say they have the situation under control.
“If we talk about the worst-case scenario, 60,000 or slightly more, we are pretty OK,” said Luhut Pandjaitan, a senior minister assigned by President Joko Widodo to handle the crisis. “We are hoping that it will not reach 100,000, but even so, we are preparing now for if we ever get there.”
Many Indonesians, however, have been facing their worst-case scenarios for weeks.
Image
Indonesia has relied heavily on the Sinovac shot, which has been found to be less effective than others.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Family members describe nightmare scenes of trying to get a hospital to admit their sick relatives. Some hospitals were accepting only patients who brought their own oxygen, they said. At others, patients waited wherever they could find space to lie down.
In Bekasi, a city of 2.5 million that adjoins Jakarta, patients have flocked to the regional public hospital. To accommodate the surge, 10 large tents were set up on the grounds, equipped with beds for as many as 150 people.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Lisa Wiliana’s husband had been in one of the tents since the previous day, waiting for space in a ward. After nine days of sickness, she said, his oxygen saturation level had dropped to 84, well below the range of 95 to 100 that is considered healthy. The hospital was giving him some oxygen, but she had to arrange to get more.
“We are waiting for an available room because it is full,” she said. “What else can we do? The important thing is to get the oxygen, because he already had trouble breathing. It was scary.”
Image
A volunteer made coffins to be distributed to Yogyakarta hospitals.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Even being admitted does not make getting oxygen a certainty. At Dr. Sardjito General Hospital in the city of Yogyakarta, 33 patients died this month after the central oxygen supply ran out. The staff switched to tanks donated by the police, but it was too late for many patients.
Overwhelmed hospitals have added thousands of beds, but on average, 10 percent of their health care workers are in isolation after exposure to the virus, said the secretary general of the Indonesian Hospital Association, Dr. Lia G. Partakusuma. Some hospitals are using five times as much liquid oxygen as normal, and distributors are having difficulty keeping up with the demand, she said.
“Some hospitals have said, ‘If you brought your own oxygen tank, please use it first because we have a limited oxygen supply,’” she said. “But it is not a requirement for them to bring their own oxygen.”
With hospitals so overcrowded, many people choose to stay home — and many die there. Lapor Covid, a nonprofit group that is tracking deaths from the disease, reports that at least 40 Covid patients a day are now dying at home.
Image
Indonesia has reported more than 71,000 Covid-19 deaths.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Mr. Joko, the president, has stopped short of a nationwide lockdown but ordered restrictions in Java and Bali, including closing places of worship, schools, shopping malls and sports facilities, reducing public transit capacity and limiting restaurants to takeout. The restrictions are set to expire on Tuesday, but officials are weighing whether to extend them.
Only about 15 percent of Indonesia’s 270 million people have received a dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and just 6 percent are fully inoculated. Indonesia has relied heavily on the vaccine made by Sinovac Biotech, a Chinese company, which has proved less effective than other shots. At least 20 Indonesian doctors who were fully vaccinated with Sinovac have died from the virus.
This week, the United States donated 4.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine to Indonesia. Officials said the first priority would be to give booster shots to nearly 1.5 million health workers.
Dr. Budiman, the Indonesian epidemiologist in Australia, predicted more than a year ago that Indonesia would become a pandemic epicenter because of its dense population and weak health care system. He has urged more testing, contact tracing and isolation of infected individuals.
Image
Carrying a coffin into an ambulance in Yogyakarta.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times
Indonesia’s health minister, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, said Friday that the country had increased testing to about 230,000 people a day, from about 30,000 in December. His target is 400,000 a day.
But Dr. Budiman contends that testing is still woefully limited, noting that in recent days, the share of tests that came up positive had risen to more than 30 percent. Health experts say a high rate is a sign of too little testing.
“For more than a year, our test positivity rate has almost never been below 10 percent, which means we are missing many cases and we cannot identify the majority of infections and the clusters,” he said.
Outside the small CV Rintis Usaha Bersama oxygen shop in South Jakarta, more than 100 customers lined up in the street with their oxygen tanks and waited hours for the chance to refill them.
Alif Akhirul Ramadan, 27, said he was getting oxygen for his grandmother, 77, who was being cared for by family members at home. He said that her condition had suddenly worsened and that her tank was running low.
“Now it has to be refilled,” said Mr. Alif, who has had Covid twice. “There is no backup at home. That is why we need to refill it quickly.”
Africa’s Covid Crisis Deepens, but Vaccines Are Still Far Off
By Abdi Latif Dahir and Josh HolderJuly 16, 2021
Vaccination rates
Daily doses per 100,000 people
Source: Our World in Data
Africa is now in the deadliest stage of its pandemic, and there is little prospect of relief in sight.
The Delta variant is sweeping across the continent. Namibia and Tunisia are reporting more deaths per capita than any other country. Hospitals across the continent are filling up, oxygen supplies and medical workers are stretched thin and recorded deaths jumped 40 percent last week alone.
But only about 1 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated. And even the African Union’s modest goal of getting 20 percent of the population vaccinated by the end of 2021 seems out of reach.
Rich nations have bought up most doses long into the future, often far more than they could conceivably need. Hundreds of millions of shots from a global vaccine-sharing effort have failed to materialize.
Supplies to African countries are unlikely to increase much in the next few months, rendering the most effective tool against Covid, vaccines, of little use in the current wave. Instead, many countries are resorting to lockdowns and curfews.
Even a year from now, supplies may not be enough to meet demand from Africa’s 1.3 billion people unless richer countries share their stockpiles and rethink how the distribution system should work.
“The blame squarely lies with the rich countries,” said Dr. Githinji Gitahi, a commissioner with Africa Covid-19 Response, a continental task force. “A vaccine delayed is a vaccine denied.”
Unable to strike early deals for vaccines, African nations relied on Covax, a global partnership, to deliver free doses to countries that needed them.
But Covax deliveries ground to a halt after India imposed export restrictions on the AstraZeneca vaccine as it dealt with its own resurgence this year.
60 million fewer cumulative doses were delivered to Africa between January and May than originally forecast.
Even if everything goes according to plan, Covax officials project they won’t be able to deliver more than 200 million doses to Africa, enough to fully vaccinate around 7 percent of the population, until October.
Revised forecasts are lower than the number of doses originally forecast to be delivered to Africa in 2021.
Source: Gavi | Note: Single-dose vaccines are counted twice for comparability with other vaccines.
There is little room for African countries to buy doses on their own: Almost all of the vaccines forecast to be made in 2021 have already been sold, according to data from Airfinity, an analytics firm. Most of the surplus supply includes Chinese vaccines and an Indian vaccine, Covaxin.
Vaccine makers are expected to have manufactured about 10.9 billion doses by the end of this year. Of those, 9.9 billion doses are already sold ...
... while only 950 million doses are still available to buy.
Sinovac
Pfizer-BioNTech
Sinopharm-Beijing
CanSino
Covaxin
Oxford-AstraZeneca
Each square represents 10 million doses
Johnson&Johnson;
Vaccine’s country of origin
Moderna
U.S./Europe
China
Novavax
Sanofi-GSK
Russia
India
Sinovac
Sinopharm-Beijing
CanSino
Sputnik V
Covaxin
Source: Airfinity
Some of the world’s richest countries will have 1.9 billion doses more than they need to vaccinate their populations by the end of August, according to the One campaign. The size of their excess supply has drawn the ire of African leaders, scientists and rights groups, who have called for accountability and warned that protectionism and stockpiling would only contribute to prolonging the pandemic.
“Covax is a really lovely idea,” said Andrea Taylor, an assistant director at the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. But, she added: “It didn’t take into account how human behavior actually works in real life. It didn’t assume that wealthy countries would act in their own self-interest, and it should have done so.”
Africa’s grim vaccine prognosis
The pace of vaccination remains far slower in Africa than in the rest of the world. Europe and South America are dispensing vaccines nearly 20 times faster than Africa, adjusted for population. About three-quarters of the 70 million doses African countries have received have already been administered, according to the W.H.O.
At the current pace of inoculation, only eight small African nations are set to meet a global target to vaccinate at least 10 percent of each country’s population by September, the W.H.O. says. Vaccine deliveries to Africa are not expected to ramp up until then, according to Covax.
Africa will fall short of its vaccination targets even if the vaccine rollout accelerates significantly
Share of the population receiving at least one dose
Source: New York Times analysis of Our World in Data vaccination data
Even Africa’s modest vaccination goals this year appear out of reach.
The African Union, aware of the challenge of obtaining enough vaccines, hoped to immunize 20 percent of its population by year’s end. The International Monetary Fund proposed a more ambitious goal: 40 percent immunization this year, and 60 percent by mid-next year. But reaching either of those goals would require a huge change in current vaccination rates.
Logistical roadblocks to vaccine delivery
India’s decision in March to significantly cut back on its vaccine exports — particularly the supplies from the Serum Institute of India that Covax relied on — disrupted Africa’s vaccine rollouts. As stocks were depleted, immunization campaigns in Africa slowed down or were suspended altogether in May, even as a brutal third wave was getting underway.
Restrictions on vaccine exports and raw materials in the United States and the European Union have also undermined efforts to produce and deliver vaccines.
One lesson from this crisis was that Africa could not “be dependent on another sovereign state” for supplies, Dr. Gitahi said. The postponement in deliveries, he said, left many frontline workers and families vulnerable to infection and death. A recent study found that those who suffer from severe Covid in Africa are more likely to die than patients in other parts of the world because of scarcity in intensive care unit equipment and the prevalence of chronic conditions like H.I.V. and diabetes.
Yet even when vaccines arrived, some African nations struggled to distribute them. From the start, many nations lacked the requisite planning, funding, work force, refrigeration and transportation network needed to get their citizens inoculated.
Within Africa, vaccination outcomes have been inconsistent
Daily doses per 100,000 people
Source: Our World in Data
After the first vaccines began to roll out last December, scientists and activists in South Africa — then one of the continent’s hardest-hit countries — criticized the government for not having a vaccine deployment strategy and leaving behind high-risk populations. In Kenya, as authorities prepared to receive the first doses in early March, frontline workers lamented they didn’t know where to register or get inoculated. And after pausing initial rollouts because of concerns over blood clots, the Democratic Republic of Congo gave away 1.3 million out of the 1.7 million AstraZeneca doses it had received from Covax because it couldn’t administer them before they expired.
Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the W.H.O. regional director for Africa, said that when it comes to ensuring citizens receive doses of the vaccine, there was still “a lot of work to do to get countries up to speed.”
Doses administered by manufacturer
Source: World Health Organization | Note: Data collated from multiple sources and so may not add up to the total number of doses administered in a country.
The ultra-cold storage requirements of some vaccines have posed a challenge on the continent, too. Only a few African countries, like Rwanda, initially had the capacity to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which at the time had to be stored at temperatures well below freezing, after it became the first to receive W.H.O. emergency authorization last December.
Gavi, the public-private partnership that helps lead Covax, is working to procure thousands of cold boxes, vaccine carriers, refrigerators and freezers for 71 low-income nations, 39 of them in Africa, according to a Gavi spokesperson. The equipment will include solar and ice-lined refrigerators that can keep vaccines cold for days without power, he said. Even the electricity needed to refrigerate vaccines can be hard to come by: Only 28 percent of health-care facilities in sub-Saharan Africa have reliable electricity, according to the World Bank.
Ensuring this equipment will arrive in time to transport doses into rural areas and hard-to-reach zones remains a concern, said Hitesh Hurkchand, a senior adviser to the World Food Program who is advising the African Union on cold-storage logistics and vaccine supply chains.
Hesitancy and misinformation
Even in areas where vaccine doses may be available soon, some Africans are hesitant about taking them.
About 68 percent of people surveyed expressed concerns around vaccine safety in a 15-country study released in March by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while the willingness to accept vaccines varied from country to country, over half of those surveyed said they were “not very well or not at all informed about vaccine development.”
In Malawi, health experts said skepticism about vaccines has played a role in the slow distribution and eventual expiration of doses. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, inoculation campaigns have been hampered by a number of factors, including concerns about the rare blood clots related to the AstraZeneca vaccine, low trust in government systems and a belief that diseases like Ebola and measles pose more of a threat than Covid. In Senegal, vaccine hesitancy was fueled by misinformation spread on social media platforms. In Uganda, the health minister had to rebut accusations that she faked receiving a shot.
Health officials say vaccinations have increased as more doses have arrived on the continent. Still, Dr. Marina Joubert, a senior science communication researcher at the Stellenbosch University in South Africa, warned that conspiracy theories continue to persist, stoking unfounded fears, for example, that Covid-19 vaccines cause infertility or that Africans are being used as “guinea pigs” to test vaccine safety and efficacy.
To counter misinformation, social scientists and health experts will need to work closely with governments to roll out public awareness initiatives, Dr. Joubert said. “It’s a kind of a balancing act of timing, accuracy, consistency, credibility, the skill to speak in a way that takes complex science and delivers it in a way that people can understand,” she said.
What could speed up vaccinations
The W.H.O. and the Africa C.D.C. have said they are hopeful vaccine deliveries — both bilateral donations and those from Covax — would gather momentum in the coming weeks. Aurélia Nguyen, the managing director of Covax, said last week that it expected to deliver 520 million vaccines to Africa by the end of the year, and 850 million by the end of the first quarter of 2022.
In the meantime, wealthy nations with excess doses have started sharing vaccines. In coordination with the African Union, Covax will soon deliver more than 20 million Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines donated by the United States to 49 African countries. France and Denmark have cumulatively donated hundreds of thousands of doses, while donations from Norway and Sweden are set to arrive in the coming weeks, Dr. Moeti said. G7 nations also announced in June their intention to share at least 870 million doses with low-income nations, including those in Africa.
Some nations are also looking to manufacturing to boost vaccine availability. Only seven African countries have companies operating in the vaccine-manufacturing chain, a recent study shows. Kenya has announced plans to build a plant that would package Covid-19 vaccines and distribute them regionally. Moroccan and Egyptian companies aim to start producing China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines, respectively, while Rwanda signed a deal with the European Union to bolster its vaccine manufacturing capabilities. A joint American-European plan would invest more than $700 million for a South African plant to produce more than 500 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by the end of 2022.
The availability of more vaccine varieties globally could help curb the virus in Africa, said Ms. Taylor of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. Novavax, based in the United States, announced last month that its two-dose inoculation provides protection against the virus. There’s also Corbevax, from the Indian firm Biological E, which has enormous manufacturing capacity and promising provisional data, she said.
But even as more people get inoculated, the efficacy of the particular vaccines being delivered to African countries remains a concern. That is the case in Seychelles, which raced to vaccinate its population of just over 100,000 with China’s Sinopharm, only to face a surge in coronavirus infections. While the W.H.O. and the Africa C.D.C. have said they are studying the situation in Seychelles, both institutions have for now encouraged countries to continue using any of the Covid-19 vaccines listed for emergency use.
By Abdi Latif Dahir and Josh HolderJuly 16, 2021
Vaccination rates
Daily doses per 100,000 people
Source: Our World in Data
Africa is now in the deadliest stage of its pandemic, and there is little prospect of relief in sight.
The Delta variant is sweeping across the continent. Namibia and Tunisia are reporting more deaths per capita than any other country. Hospitals across the continent are filling up, oxygen supplies and medical workers are stretched thin and recorded deaths jumped 40 percent last week alone.
But only about 1 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated. And even the African Union’s modest goal of getting 20 percent of the population vaccinated by the end of 2021 seems out of reach.
Rich nations have bought up most doses long into the future, often far more than they could conceivably need. Hundreds of millions of shots from a global vaccine-sharing effort have failed to materialize.
Supplies to African countries are unlikely to increase much in the next few months, rendering the most effective tool against Covid, vaccines, of little use in the current wave. Instead, many countries are resorting to lockdowns and curfews.
Even a year from now, supplies may not be enough to meet demand from Africa’s 1.3 billion people unless richer countries share their stockpiles and rethink how the distribution system should work.
“The blame squarely lies with the rich countries,” said Dr. Githinji Gitahi, a commissioner with Africa Covid-19 Response, a continental task force. “A vaccine delayed is a vaccine denied.”
Unable to strike early deals for vaccines, African nations relied on Covax, a global partnership, to deliver free doses to countries that needed them.
But Covax deliveries ground to a halt after India imposed export restrictions on the AstraZeneca vaccine as it dealt with its own resurgence this year.
60 million fewer cumulative doses were delivered to Africa between January and May than originally forecast.
Even if everything goes according to plan, Covax officials project they won’t be able to deliver more than 200 million doses to Africa, enough to fully vaccinate around 7 percent of the population, until October.
Revised forecasts are lower than the number of doses originally forecast to be delivered to Africa in 2021.
Source: Gavi | Note: Single-dose vaccines are counted twice for comparability with other vaccines.
There is little room for African countries to buy doses on their own: Almost all of the vaccines forecast to be made in 2021 have already been sold, according to data from Airfinity, an analytics firm. Most of the surplus supply includes Chinese vaccines and an Indian vaccine, Covaxin.
Vaccine makers are expected to have manufactured about 10.9 billion doses by the end of this year. Of those, 9.9 billion doses are already sold ...
... while only 950 million doses are still available to buy.
Sinovac
Pfizer-BioNTech
Sinopharm-Beijing
CanSino
Covaxin
Oxford-AstraZeneca
Each square represents 10 million doses
Johnson&Johnson;
Vaccine’s country of origin
Moderna
U.S./Europe
China
Novavax
Sanofi-GSK
Russia
India
Sinovac
Sinopharm-Beijing
CanSino
Sputnik V
Covaxin
Source: Airfinity
Some of the world’s richest countries will have 1.9 billion doses more than they need to vaccinate their populations by the end of August, according to the One campaign. The size of their excess supply has drawn the ire of African leaders, scientists and rights groups, who have called for accountability and warned that protectionism and stockpiling would only contribute to prolonging the pandemic.
“Covax is a really lovely idea,” said Andrea Taylor, an assistant director at the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. But, she added: “It didn’t take into account how human behavior actually works in real life. It didn’t assume that wealthy countries would act in their own self-interest, and it should have done so.”
Africa’s grim vaccine prognosis
The pace of vaccination remains far slower in Africa than in the rest of the world. Europe and South America are dispensing vaccines nearly 20 times faster than Africa, adjusted for population. About three-quarters of the 70 million doses African countries have received have already been administered, according to the W.H.O.
At the current pace of inoculation, only eight small African nations are set to meet a global target to vaccinate at least 10 percent of each country’s population by September, the W.H.O. says. Vaccine deliveries to Africa are not expected to ramp up until then, according to Covax.
Africa will fall short of its vaccination targets even if the vaccine rollout accelerates significantly
Share of the population receiving at least one dose
Source: New York Times analysis of Our World in Data vaccination data
Even Africa’s modest vaccination goals this year appear out of reach.
The African Union, aware of the challenge of obtaining enough vaccines, hoped to immunize 20 percent of its population by year’s end. The International Monetary Fund proposed a more ambitious goal: 40 percent immunization this year, and 60 percent by mid-next year. But reaching either of those goals would require a huge change in current vaccination rates.
Logistical roadblocks to vaccine delivery
India’s decision in March to significantly cut back on its vaccine exports — particularly the supplies from the Serum Institute of India that Covax relied on — disrupted Africa’s vaccine rollouts. As stocks were depleted, immunization campaigns in Africa slowed down or were suspended altogether in May, even as a brutal third wave was getting underway.
Restrictions on vaccine exports and raw materials in the United States and the European Union have also undermined efforts to produce and deliver vaccines.
One lesson from this crisis was that Africa could not “be dependent on another sovereign state” for supplies, Dr. Gitahi said. The postponement in deliveries, he said, left many frontline workers and families vulnerable to infection and death. A recent study found that those who suffer from severe Covid in Africa are more likely to die than patients in other parts of the world because of scarcity in intensive care unit equipment and the prevalence of chronic conditions like H.I.V. and diabetes.
Yet even when vaccines arrived, some African nations struggled to distribute them. From the start, many nations lacked the requisite planning, funding, work force, refrigeration and transportation network needed to get their citizens inoculated.
Within Africa, vaccination outcomes have been inconsistent
Daily doses per 100,000 people
Source: Our World in Data
After the first vaccines began to roll out last December, scientists and activists in South Africa — then one of the continent’s hardest-hit countries — criticized the government for not having a vaccine deployment strategy and leaving behind high-risk populations. In Kenya, as authorities prepared to receive the first doses in early March, frontline workers lamented they didn’t know where to register or get inoculated. And after pausing initial rollouts because of concerns over blood clots, the Democratic Republic of Congo gave away 1.3 million out of the 1.7 million AstraZeneca doses it had received from Covax because it couldn’t administer them before they expired.
Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the W.H.O. regional director for Africa, said that when it comes to ensuring citizens receive doses of the vaccine, there was still “a lot of work to do to get countries up to speed.”
Doses administered by manufacturer
Source: World Health Organization | Note: Data collated from multiple sources and so may not add up to the total number of doses administered in a country.
The ultra-cold storage requirements of some vaccines have posed a challenge on the continent, too. Only a few African countries, like Rwanda, initially had the capacity to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which at the time had to be stored at temperatures well below freezing, after it became the first to receive W.H.O. emergency authorization last December.
Gavi, the public-private partnership that helps lead Covax, is working to procure thousands of cold boxes, vaccine carriers, refrigerators and freezers for 71 low-income nations, 39 of them in Africa, according to a Gavi spokesperson. The equipment will include solar and ice-lined refrigerators that can keep vaccines cold for days without power, he said. Even the electricity needed to refrigerate vaccines can be hard to come by: Only 28 percent of health-care facilities in sub-Saharan Africa have reliable electricity, according to the World Bank.
Ensuring this equipment will arrive in time to transport doses into rural areas and hard-to-reach zones remains a concern, said Hitesh Hurkchand, a senior adviser to the World Food Program who is advising the African Union on cold-storage logistics and vaccine supply chains.
Hesitancy and misinformation
Even in areas where vaccine doses may be available soon, some Africans are hesitant about taking them.
About 68 percent of people surveyed expressed concerns around vaccine safety in a 15-country study released in March by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while the willingness to accept vaccines varied from country to country, over half of those surveyed said they were “not very well or not at all informed about vaccine development.”
In Malawi, health experts said skepticism about vaccines has played a role in the slow distribution and eventual expiration of doses. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, inoculation campaigns have been hampered by a number of factors, including concerns about the rare blood clots related to the AstraZeneca vaccine, low trust in government systems and a belief that diseases like Ebola and measles pose more of a threat than Covid. In Senegal, vaccine hesitancy was fueled by misinformation spread on social media platforms. In Uganda, the health minister had to rebut accusations that she faked receiving a shot.
Health officials say vaccinations have increased as more doses have arrived on the continent. Still, Dr. Marina Joubert, a senior science communication researcher at the Stellenbosch University in South Africa, warned that conspiracy theories continue to persist, stoking unfounded fears, for example, that Covid-19 vaccines cause infertility or that Africans are being used as “guinea pigs” to test vaccine safety and efficacy.
To counter misinformation, social scientists and health experts will need to work closely with governments to roll out public awareness initiatives, Dr. Joubert said. “It’s a kind of a balancing act of timing, accuracy, consistency, credibility, the skill to speak in a way that takes complex science and delivers it in a way that people can understand,” she said.
What could speed up vaccinations
The W.H.O. and the Africa C.D.C. have said they are hopeful vaccine deliveries — both bilateral donations and those from Covax — would gather momentum in the coming weeks. Aurélia Nguyen, the managing director of Covax, said last week that it expected to deliver 520 million vaccines to Africa by the end of the year, and 850 million by the end of the first quarter of 2022.
In the meantime, wealthy nations with excess doses have started sharing vaccines. In coordination with the African Union, Covax will soon deliver more than 20 million Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines donated by the United States to 49 African countries. France and Denmark have cumulatively donated hundreds of thousands of doses, while donations from Norway and Sweden are set to arrive in the coming weeks, Dr. Moeti said. G7 nations also announced in June their intention to share at least 870 million doses with low-income nations, including those in Africa.
Some nations are also looking to manufacturing to boost vaccine availability. Only seven African countries have companies operating in the vaccine-manufacturing chain, a recent study shows. Kenya has announced plans to build a plant that would package Covid-19 vaccines and distribute them regionally. Moroccan and Egyptian companies aim to start producing China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines, respectively, while Rwanda signed a deal with the European Union to bolster its vaccine manufacturing capabilities. A joint American-European plan would invest more than $700 million for a South African plant to produce more than 500 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by the end of 2022.
The availability of more vaccine varieties globally could help curb the virus in Africa, said Ms. Taylor of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. Novavax, based in the United States, announced last month that its two-dose inoculation provides protection against the virus. There’s also Corbevax, from the Indian firm Biological E, which has enormous manufacturing capacity and promising provisional data, she said.
But even as more people get inoculated, the efficacy of the particular vaccines being delivered to African countries remains a concern. That is the case in Seychelles, which raced to vaccinate its population of just over 100,000 with China’s Sinopharm, only to face a surge in coronavirus infections. While the W.H.O. and the Africa C.D.C. have said they are studying the situation in Seychelles, both institutions have for now encouraged countries to continue using any of the Covid-19 vaccines listed for emergency use.
Aint this INTERESTING
Africa NEEDS and WANTS vaccines...
but now they can't get any and the ones they ARE getting are not as effective
Sounds like a deliberate thing to get rid of a certain population.. no way the white man could be behind a community with melanin being denied help
I do NOT blame AFRICANS of all people in the world to be hesitant to TRUST vaccines either.
and THEN to have the vaccines they DO get to not be as effective?
And the BIG NATIONS are HOARDING the "good" vaccines...
funny how ALL that is working out.
The being right part is nothing it’s the fact of being right and people still not listening or doubting your word
I have challenged a few people to explain how the lack of vaccine availability in Africa is part of a cac plot but providing access to the vaccine in Our communities here is also a cac plot.
I have challenged a few people to explain how the lack of vaccine availability in Africa is part of a cac plot but providing access to the vaccine in Our communities here is also a cac plot.
Bro I gave up long ago...
once they let that russian bot misinformation campaign run wild?
I was like GO WITH GOD!!!
Logic has officially LEFT the bgol building.
Los Angeles bringing back its mask mandate..
Bro I gave up long ago...
once they let that russian bot misinformation campaign run wild?
I was like GO WITH GOD!!!
Logic has officially LEFT the bgol building.
Shit is sad as fuck.
Also notice they aren't requesting vitamin c, vitamin d, hot tea or any of the homeopathic bullshit people have been pushing since this started.
I've had a million fights with anti-vaxxers on social media. They think they got it beat.
Did you catch covid? How many people do you know that caught covid? How many people do you know that caught it and used all those home remedies and survived?Shit is sad as fuck.
Also notice they aren't requesting vitamin c, vitamin d, hot tea or any of the homeopathic bullshit people have been pushing since this started.
I can name over 50 people that caught it and followed the protocol of those things and they are all still here.. no deaths.. so there must be some truth to those home remedies if used right…remember over 95 percent of people lived who caught covid..the numbers are actually higher cause not every1 who caught it seeked medical help they just stayed home and let their bodies fight it
It honestly reminds me of the "logic" employed by people caught up in those mlm scams...
Shit is sad as fuck.
Also notice they aren't requesting vitamin c, vitamin d, hot tea or any of the homeopathic bullshit people have been pushing since this started.
But see that is what I DO NOT get
STILL
Obviously losing weight
eating healthy
keeping clean
increasing vitamin C and D intake
and strengthening your immune system are BENEFICIAL
ESPECIALLY now
It DID help many people
you can't DENY that.'
but its also beneficial ALL THE F*CKING TIME!!!!
When has washing your damn hands GONE OUT OF STYLE!!!????
People have been getting vaccinated for DECADES but NOW there is a problem?
What is MORE HOMEOPATHIC then wearing a mask to help prevent the spread of allergens and airborne contamination?!?!?
It was the warped rationale that got me..
But that is OK fam...
cause sometimes you gotta BURN in the fire to believe its hot
and baby?
the match BEEN lit....
Last edited:
You realize that isn't how science or medicine work, right? You can't compare double blind studies made up of tens of thousands of people with different genders/ethnicities etc. to an anecdotal survey of the people around you.
From Pfizer:
The Phase 3 clinical trial of BNT162b2 began on July 27 and has enrolled 43,661 participants to date, 41,135 of whom have received a second dose of the vaccine candidate as of November 13, 2020. Approximately 42% of global participants and 30% of U.S. participants have racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds, and 41% of global and 45% of U.S. participants are 56-85 years of age. A breakdown of the diversity of clinical trial participants can be found here from approximately 150 clinical trials sites in United States, Germany, Turkey, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina. The trial will continue to collect efficacy and safety data in participants for an additional two years.
Native Americans were healthy until they met the pilgrims… just like a lot of minorities were good until they had to work or live around cacs.. almost every person I know that caught covid worked around cacs.. in fact the last 2 people I know that caught covid called me and laughed like I hate you black cause when you right you right.. my friend works around nothing but bros and was clean for over a yr than they literally had a cac work with them for 2 weeks and he caught it from the white boy.. I was like didn’t I tell you about them euros.. my other boy was good for a whole yr than he went on a lil streak fucking white women and caught it from 1 of them.. I was like I told you them plague carriers is passing it around.. every1 I know worked around cacs when they caught that shit..keep telling ya
who you telling?
Hey I know since the history of mankind certain remedies that are pass down have been effective even when science never did trials or ever mention anything of the sorts.. I’m pretty sure in your life you may have heard of a remedy to do certain things that you never read in a book but tried it and it was effective.. just cause a scientist never said it dosent mean it dosent work.. maybe scientists just didn’t try it or test it out.. in life there’s always more than 1 way to do things..this life has something called variations and options the world isn’t 1 dimensional.. so just cause you believe in 1 method dosent mean that another 1 dosent work.. small minded people only think something can be done in only 1 way and closes their mind to other options.. you got another poster on this board screaming another method with invectmin you don’t see me or others mocking him why cause it’s been effective on his side.. which means there’s more likely various ways to take on this virus.. which more likely is the caseYou realize that isn't how science or medicine work, right? You can't compare double blind studies made up of tens of thousands of people with different genders/ethnicities etc. to an anecdotal survey of the people around you.
From Pfizer:
The Phase 3 clinical trial of BNT162b2 began on July 27 and has enrolled 43,661 participants to date, 41,135 of whom have received a second dose of the vaccine candidate as of November 13, 2020. Approximately 42% of global participants and 30% of U.S. participants have racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds, and 41% of global and 45% of U.S. participants are 56-85 years of age. A breakdown of the diversity of clinical trial participants can be found here from approximately 150 clinical trials sites in United States, Germany, Turkey, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina. The trial will continue to collect efficacy and safety data in participants for an additional two years.
Mofo going to fuck around and be on inhalers for the rest of their lives.
3 USA Basketball Select Team players test positive for COVID
Three USA Basketball Men’s Select Team players are out of training camp in Las Vegas after testing positive for COVID-19, according to head coach Greg Popovich.www.reviewjournal.com
3 USA Basketball Select Team players test positive for COVID
Team USA prepares for Tokyo Olympics
Players train during the first day of USA Basketball practice, ahead of the Olympics, at Mendenhall Center at UNLV in Las Vegas on Tuesday, July 6, 2021. (Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @csstevensphoto
By Dylan Svoboda Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 8, 2021 - 5:04 pm
Don't miss the big stories. Like us on Facebook.
Three USA Basketball Men’s Select Team players are out of training camp in Las Vegas after testing positive for COVID-19, according to head coach Greg Popovich.
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported that three players, Immanuel Quickley of the New York Knicks and Miles Bridges and P.J. Washington of the Charlotte Hornets, a product of Finley Prep, were out due to COVID-19 protocols.
Popovich said Thursday that he could not confirm which players had tested positive. Windhorst also reported that all three players were away from the Olympic team at practice today at UNLV.
The three are members of the Select Team, which practices with Team USA’s main Olympic basketball squad. Popovich said the COVID-19 outbreak was confined to those three players and that there are no additional issues or positive tests.
The men’s Olympic basketball team is in Las Vegas from July 6 to 19 and playing exhibition games at Michelob Ultra Arena to prepare for the Tokyo Olympics later this month.
The Olympic team will compete against Nigeria, Australia, Argentina and Spain in exhibition contests in Las Vegas. The team will face France on July 25 in its first game of the Olympics tournament.
they THINK its a GAME bro...
its not like we don't know all stars in the NBA who ARE still using inhalers
who still can't taste or smell
who are STILL disoriented.
Last edited:
We are in the age of spin. The foolish will die and I am ok with that.