Americans Are Neglecting Their Health During the Pandemic
There's more than one way to get sick during the COVID-19 pandemic. You can contract the virus, of course, something more than 27 million Americans have already done. Or you can dodge the virus but nonetheless let the disruption caused by quarantines and social distancing lead you to neglect routine health care. That, a new TIME-Harris poll shows, is just what too many of us are doing.
The top-line numbers from the survey of 1,093 subjects are sobering, with 78% of respondents reporting that they have put off at least some medical services during the pandemic. Of those procedures, dental exams or cleanings were the most frequently missed, with 30% saying that they have passed on regular oral care. Annual physical check-ups were next at 27%, followed by eye exams at 25%.
Some positive findings buried among the negative ones concern telehealth, which is clearly experiencing a boom. Prior to the pandemic, only 29% of people reported receiving some of their health care online; that figure has now jumped to 51%.
But unexpectedly, mental health services—which would seem like the kind of care that most lends itself to telehealth—has been lagging. Only 24% of respondents said they were receiving mental health care during the pandemic, down from 29% before the outbreak. Whether the decline is due to a lack of access to telehealth services or a lack of willingness to take advantage of them is unclear. (Among mental telehealth recipients, 34% said they sought help with relationship issues often caused by pandemic-related stress, 29% said they were seeking help for more generalized anxiety and 28% reported seeking treatment for depression.)
It's too early to tell if those patients—and doctors—who have picked up the telehealth habit will continue to use it after the pandemic ends. But it's not too early to hope that a country that already suffers from enough chronic illness will return at least to its pre-pandemic levels of doctor visits when the COVID-19 crisis is at last in the rear-view mirror.
VACCINE TRACKER
48.9 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this morning, while about 38.3 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker—representing 12% of the overall U.S. population who have received at least one dose.
Good news out of Israel, where a study of 600,000 people found the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been 94% successful in cutting symptomatic COVID-19 infection and 92% successful at preventing severe illness among those who did get sick, reports The Wall Street Journal . It was Israel's largest vaccine study to date, and the first study of its kind to show a high level of efficacy for the Pfizer-BioNTech formulation in the 70-plus age group. The study also found that the vaccine works fast, with protection occurring as soon as one week after the second dose.
Just as vaccinations rates are beginning to tick up across the U.S., the winter storm that has clobbered vast swaths of the country is complicating distribution, reports The New York Times. Power outages have slowed vaccination efforts in states from Texas to Virginia, and the storm's effects are likely to linger for days—Missouri governor Mike Parsons said shots would likely be halted through the rest of the week, for example. That the storm hit in the south was something of a double blow, since people there are both relatively under-vaccinated and less accustomed to dealing with winter weather.
The spread of new coronavirus variants is outpacing the European Union's ability to vaccinate its citizens, according to The Wall Street Journal. Only 4.8% of the EU's population has been vaccinated since late December—less than half the already-modest share in the U.S. The good news is that infection rates from the original variant are falling (thanks mostly to lockdowns), but spread of the new strains—especially the U.K., South African and Brazilian variants—is accelerating, meaning widespread lockdowns are expected to continue across much of the continent even as vaccination continues.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 109.1 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 2.4 million people have died. On Feb. 15, there were 338,642 new cases and 7,921 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:
North Korean hackers are trying to infiltrate drug companies' systems and steal COVID-19 vaccine data, Reuters reports. South Korean intelligence services revealed today that Pfizer was the latest company hit, joining a growing list of targets, including Johnson & Johnson, Novavax and AstraZeneca. South Korea's own drug companies have been similarly attacked, though the country's intelligence services report that they foiled those attempts.
Wales was once something of a hotspot within a hotspot, the hardest hit region of an already hard hit U.K. But as CNN reports, ambulance emergency calls—one of the first bellwethers of COVID-19 prevalence in any region—have stopped almost altogether in recent days. "A few weeks back, that's all we were going to," said one ambulance worker. "COVID after COVID after COVID. Then all of a sudden, it just dropped off quite quickly." Vaccines could be playing a role in the fall-off in cases, but local officials believe something else is at work: Wales' decision to go into lockdown before Christmas, which prevented post-holiday spikes.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. recorded nearly 27.7 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 486,000 people have died. On Feb. 15, there were 52,685 new cases and 985 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:
The Biden Administration is warming to the idea of partnering with big tech companies to streamline vaccine rollouts, according to Politico. This comes despite then-candidate Joe Biden's harsh words during the campaign about social media's role in spreading misinformation, as well as the White House's apparent plans to continue with the Trump Administration's antitrust case against Google. But the pandemic is more important than politics, and there is no minimizing the know-how that, say, Amazon could bring to streamlining distribution chains or the help Google could provide by offering prime ad space to health departments and vaccine sites.
There's what looks to be good news in some of the latest U.S. numbers, with seven-day rolling averages of infections recently dipping below 90,000 for the first time since November. But as The Washington Post explains, scientists are split on the cause. Increased vaccinations may indeed be playing a role, but so may a decrease in testing. The 52,685 cases reported yesterday, meantime—a figure that falls well below recent daily case counts—may simply be an artifact of poor reporting due to the President's Day holiday. Also in play, according to Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, may be the first tiny flickers of herd immunity, resulting from the growing—if still small—ranks of vaccinated Americans.
In a press conference yesterday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo—once lauded for his handling of the coronavirus—at last acknowledged that his administration lowballed the numbers of COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents in the state. As The New York Timesreports, the 8,500 such deaths the state previously announced did not include another 6,500 nursing home residents who were taken to hospitals and died there. In his remarks, Cuomo said the undercount was an effort to avoid what he feared would be a federal investigation of state nursing homes launched by the Trump Administration. The governor offered only measured contrition, saying that the state's lack of transparency led to "skepticism, cynicism and conspiracy theories which furthered confusion."
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Feb. 16, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Four Steps to Herd Immunity
Vaccinating 75% of the U.S. population by summer would require administering 3 million vaccines a day, but the country has so far managed barely half that rate. Here, The Atlantic identifies four key roadblocks to hitting the 3 million mark—and how they can be broken. Read more here.
Don't Forget the Incarcerated...
More woes for New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who along with his health commissioner is under fire for denying vaccine eligibility to more than 30,000 inmates in the state’s jails and prisons. Here, The New Yorker reports on a lawsuit alleging that the policy violates public health guidelines. Read more here.
...Or the Grocery Workers
Grocery employees, many of whom have worked straight through the pandemic and the worst of the lockdowns, are feeling left out of the vaccination conversation, the Associated Press reports. Only 13 states are currently allowing grocery workers to be inoculated, and even there, waits are long and shots are by no means ensured. Read more here.
Good News in India. But Why?
Daily coronavirus case rates are a tenth of what they once were in India, but experts admit they are stumped as to the reason, according to the AP. One explanation might be that the country, which has reported more than 155,000 COVID-19 deaths, is attaining a natural state of herd immunity brought about by widespread infection. Mandatory mask-wearing is also surely playing a role. Read more here.
The Struggle to Grieve
When a country is approaching half a million deaths from a rampaging virus, sorrow is one thing that shouldn't be in short supply. Yet after the loss of a family member, many people in the U.S. are finding that the process of grieving is impossible, explains Reuters. Simultaneous crises—like loss of work and even a home—may leave victims numb to their psychological pain. 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 Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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