Here’s a sobering prediction: We may never fully eliminate COVID-19, at least not in the immediate or even medium-term future. However, as my colleague Jamie Ducharme reports in her latest story, maybe we can learn to live with it. After all, we humans coexist with lots of viruses and diseases, generally with minimal disruption to most of our lives.
Obviously, we can’t predict what’s to come. Our battle against the pandemic is currently a race between the vaccination process (which is accelerating but still slow) and new mutations of the virus, some of which seem to render our currently available vaccines less effective. As Yoda says: always in motion, is the future.
Jamie puts forth one realistic scenario for the months ahead in the U.S.: we’ll still be wearing masks in crowded places and we’ll still have to be mindful of the numbers, but we’ll have a far greater degree of normality than currently possible. If and when local clusters of cases arise, we’ll handle them with temporary and targeted restrictions:
Imagine today’s date is Sept. 1, 2021. You’ve received both of your vaccine doses. Your neighbors have been fully vaccinated too, so you’re having them over for dinner tonight. COVID-19 cases have become rare in your town. You’ll wear a mask when you go out to pick up groceries, just to be safe, and there are still signs up at the pharmacy counter advertising COVID-19 vaccination. For the most part, though, life feels pretty normal.
Your brother, who lives a few states away, is living in a different reality. Several clusters of cases related to a new viral variant have emerged in his area, prompting schools to delay their start dates. Masks are required in public, and restaurants are asking patrons to leave their information in case they need to start contact tracing. The health department is setting up public testing and vaccination sites, and health officials are on the news each night encouraging unvaccinated people to get their shots. You were planning to visit your brother for Thanksgiving, but you may scrap those plans if things get much worse in his area.
That’s not totally normal, of course. But it sounds a heck of a lot better than what life has been for many of us for nearly a year.
One caveat, as Jamie points out: whether this scenario comes to pass is largely dependent on whether people follow public health guidelines and get vaccinated when their turn arrives. Neither of those are a given—but if people sense they’re necessary steps to finally put the worst of pandemic life behind us, maybe we can rally together and put this thing to bed.
43.4 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this morning, while about 31.6 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker—representing 9.5% of the overall U.S. population who have received at least one dose.
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca says it’s tweaking its COVID-19 vaccine to better address a variant spreading in South Africa after a small but disconcerting study suggested the current formulation offers only minimal protection against mild symptoms caused by that mutation (the study did not assess the vaccine’s efficacy against severe symptoms, an important measure of any COVID-19 shot). The company says a rejiggered version of its vaccine could be ready by this fall.
Early research published yesterday and based on data from MyHeritage, which runs Israel’s largest COVID-19 testing facility, finds that people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 but test positive for the virus have a viral load as much as 20 times less than unvaccinated positive people—results that “indicate vaccination is not only important for individuals’ protection, but can reduce transmission,” the authors write, as people who have a lower viral load are generally less able to transmit the virus to others. That about 30% of Israel’s population has been vaccinated against COVID-19 makes it an ideal “natural laboratory” for research into vaccination’s efficacy in fighting the pandemic.
Spain has received its first doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and will begin distributing it today. However, it’s limiting eligibility to people under 65, El Paisreports—a recognition that it’s less effective than other vaccines, and is thus perhaps best reserved for people with a lower risk of developing severe cases of COVID-19 in the first place. Other countries, including Germany, Italy, and Belgium, are also reserving the AstraZeneca vaccine for younger recipients, theoretically freeing up supply of more effective vaccines for those at higher risk.
Iran will begin administering Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine this week, Bloomberg reports. (Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, previously banned U.S. and U.K.-made vaccines, leaving shots from Russia, China and other countries as the country’s only politically tenable options.) Iranian health care workers on the front lines of COVID-19 will be first up for the jab; Tehran expects to vaccinate 1.3 million vulnerable people by late March.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 106.1 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 2.3 million people have died. On Feb. 7, there were 395,153 new cases and 7,816 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here is every country with over 1.5 million confirmed cases:
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appeared for his daily news briefing this morning for the first time in two weeks after testing positive for COVID-19, the Associated Press reports . López Obrador, who critics say has not done enough to control his country’s outbreak, said that he was treated with antiviral and anti-inflammatory medications. Despite his brush with the virus, he says he still will not wear a mask or require others to do so. “There is no authoritarianism in Mexico,” he said. “Everything is voluntary, liberty is the most important thing.”
China’s efforts to discourage travel for the Lunar New Year holiday, which begins Friday, have been met with dismay and heartbreak among citizens looking forward to the annual festivities, CNN reports. The holiday is often a chance for people in China who have moved far from home to visit family and friends, but the threat of COVID-19 has made those trips overly dangerous, officials say. Those who insist on traveling from cities to rural areas will be required to test negative for the virus within seven days before their departure, and to spend two weeks in “home observation” once they arrive at their destination.
Health officials in Congo are dealing with the country’s fourth Ebola outbreak in fewer than three years—but this one is made all the more challenging by the simultaneous presence of COVID-19. “While there is hope that this early identification of an infection may help with quickly containing this outbreak, back-to-back Ebola outbreaks and COVID-19 has stretched Congo’s health systems to the limit and this could put far greater strain on an already exasperated system,” one expert told the Associated Press. Health officials in Congo have reported about 24,000 COVID-19 cases and 681 deaths, though a lack of testing capacity means the actual numbers may be far higher.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 27 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 463,000 people have died. On Feb. 7, there were 86,928 new cases and 1,268 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
Health experts were worried about Super Bowl parties turning into super-spreader events even before Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers whomped the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 last night. Those fears were intensified after thousands of Bucs fans, many maskless, took to Tampa’s streets in celebration after the game. We’ll keep a close eye on Tampa’s numbers over the next few weeks to see if the events may have led to a spike in cases.
The U.S. is unlikely to reach COVID-19 herd immunity—or the point at which enough people are immune that spread is seriously reduced—before the end of the summer, President Joe Biden said in a CBS interview that aired before the Super Bowl. “The idea that this can be done and we can get to herd immunity much before the end of this summer is very difficult,” Biden said. Health experts are currently predicting that 70-80% of a given population need to be inoculated against the virus or have developed natural antibodies to reach herd immunity. Nearly 10% of Americans have been vaccinated, but it’s difficult to tell how many have natural immunity after exposure to the virus.
Leaders in two major Iowa cities—Des Moines and Iowa City—are keeping their mask mandates in place despite governor Kim Reynolds’ decision to repeal a statewide order requiring their use, the Washington Post reports. While daily case rates in the state are dropping, health experts say it’s premature to roll back measures like facial covering requirements, especially as new and more transmissible variants are spreading in the U.S.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Feb. 8, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Pandemic Super Bowl Was Rough to Watch
Even aside from concerns about viral spread, last night’s Super Bowl was one of the weirder television spectacles of the COVID-19 era, my colleague Sean Gregory reports. Read more here.
The Strange Allure of a Flight to Nowhere
Recently, I’ve been compulsively checking my frequent flyer miles—which are piling up as I spend money but travel absolutely nowhere—and dreaming about how I might use them once it’s safe to do so again (Alaska, anybody?). As my colleague Susanna Schrobsdorff writes, I’m not alone in fantasizing about travel as a pandemic coping mechanism. Read more here.
Virus Hastens Exit from Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox Community
In Israel, the pandemic has left some ultra-Orthodox Jews with “time for questioning and self-discovery,” Isabel Kershner reports in the New York Times—and some are making the rare decision to leave the fold and take up a more secular lifestyle. Read more here.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Alex Fitzpatrick and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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