Nobody wants to be one of the 121 million people worldwide diagnosed with COVID-19 so far. But for those who contract the disease and then recover, there's at least one benefit: Now that they've had it, they can't get it again, so they don't need to be vaccinated, right? Wrong. As my colleague Alice Park explains, a new study out of Denmark shows that post-infection COVID-19 immunity isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially for older people.
In the study, published March 17 in medical journal The Lancet, researchers analyzed repeated coronavirus test results from about 4 million people in order to track how often those previously infected with SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—were reinfected. In a subset of more than 530,000 people, 2% tested positive in the spring of 2020. Among that group, 0.65% tested positive again later that year, compared to 3.3% of those who had tested negative in the spring. That suggests infection with SARS-CoV-2 provides about 80% protection against reinfection. What's more, there was no evidence that this immunity waned over the study's six month follow-up period.
But there's a catch: When the researchers broke down the data by age, they learned that this protection wasn't uniform—infection only conferred 47% protection for people over 65 years old. Furthermore, the team's data was collected only through last year, before major new SARS-CoV-2 variants emerged, so the findings don't apply to immunity after infection from these strains. The researchers plan to repeat the study with more recent data to see if similar patterns hold up for those infected with the variants.
For now, the findings strongly suggest that even if people over age 65 years have had COVID-19, they still need to be vaccinated, since protection from their infection may be insufficient on its own. "They need to take care, and shouldn't believe that they are immune and still protect themselves," lead researcher Steen Ethelberg of the Statens Serum Institut tells Alice. But he adds that people of any age stand to benefit from the increased protection offered by vaccination. "It's well known that coronavirus infections do not induce 100% immunity," he says.
More than 147.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this morning, of which 113 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. Approximately 22% of the overall U.S. population has received at least one dose, and about 12% of Americans have gotten both doses.
The European Medicines Agency, which oversees vaccines across Europe, has found the AstraZeneca-Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine safe for use after investigating isolated reports of sometimes fatal blood clotting issues among recipients. The EMA found no causative link between the shots and the clots, it said today. More than a dozen European countries had suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine amid the safety concerns, slowing vaccination efforts across the continent. Individual countries will now decide whether to restart inoculations with the shot.
The U.S. will send about 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to neighbors Canada and Mexico, Reuters reports. While the U.S. has amassed a stockpile of AstraZeneca doses, American regulators have not yet cleared that shot for use in the country. The deal is effectively a loan: Canada and Mexico—where vaccination efforts have been hampered by a lack of supply—will get access to doses they can use immediately, but both will be expected to send other doses to the U.S. later this year.
Both natural and vaccine-induced antibodies can neutralize the South African, Brazilian and other variants of SARS-CoV-2, according to a new University of Oxford study, but at somewhat lower levels compared to the original strain. The finding is especially encouraging when it comes to the Brazilian variant, which was once thought to be more antibody-resistant than now believed. One caveat: The study only tested the AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
In a pre-print study, researchers from Florida Atlantic University report the first case of a baby born in the U.S. with antibodies to COVID-19 after the mother was vaccinated during pregnancy. The baby was born at 39 weeks—three weeks after the mother received her first dose of the Moderna shot. The researchers stress that further investigation will be needed to determine the level of antibodies in the blood of infants born to vaccinated mothers, and how long any protection endures.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
Nearly 121.2 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and nearly 2.7 million people have died. On March 17, there were 499,125 new cases and 9,957 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 2 million confirmed cases:
The U.K.'s already sluggish vaccine rollout might get a little slower still, due to an unexpected shortfall in supplies of shots being manufactured at India's Serum Institute, the Associated Press reports. That will have an immediate impact on Britons under 50, who were supposed to begin receiving vaccines next month, but now may have to wait until May (people under 50 with underlying conditions remain eligible). Britain claims the Serum Institute was supposed to deliver 10 million doses this month, but fell well short of that target. The Institute counters that there were no "stipulated timelines" for the delivery.
Brazil's ongoing COVID-19 crisis is at last taking a toll on the country's leader, President Jair Bolsonaro. As Newsweekreports, Bolsonaro's approval ratings are plummeting as Brazil continues to set new single-day case records, hitting the 90,000 mark yesterday. Currently, 54% of Brazilians say that they believe the President's handling of the pandemic is "bad or awful." Bolsonaro's dismissals of the virus early in the pandemic—he famously referred to COVID-19 as a "little flu"—has not helped his popularity, nor has the emergence of the Brazilian strain of the virus, which spreads more easily than the original strain.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 29.6 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 538,000 people have died. On March 17, there were 56,390 new cases and 1,138 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:
Bowing to the realities of pandemic shutdowns and the woes of hard-hit families struggling to prepare their income tax returns on time, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service announced yesterday that it will delay this year's filing deadline from April 15 to May 17. The idea got a boost on Tuesday, when more than 100 members of the House of Representatives signed a letter to the IRS and Treasury Department asking for a delay on behalf of "millions of stressed-out taxpayers, businesses and preparers [who] would appreciate an extension of the deadline to file their 2020 tax returns."
More happy tidings from the IRS, as the service issued its first round of relief payments to 90 million Americans under the recently signed stimulus bill. The $1,400 deposits began landing in checking accounts last weekend, though the process continues this week. For those without direct deposit, the Treasury Department mailed 150,000 paper checks. The total payments represent more than $242 billion of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.
Health officials continue to warn against air travel until later in the year, when more vaccines have gotten into arms, but Americans are apparently not listening. As CNN reports, the Transportation Security Administration screened more than 1 million passengers per day over the past week, for a total of 8.7 million—the highest figures since the pandemic began. That's just half the number of people who flew over the same week last year, but it's a pandemic-era high all the same.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of March 18, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
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WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Toll on Docs in Developing Nations
While frontline workers in rich countries have typically been among the first to get vaccinated, those in poorer countries continue to work unprotected by shots and, often, personal protective equipment. The Wall Street Journal has a close look at this especially endangered—and especially heroic—cohort of health workers. Read more here.
Vaccines for Everybody
Americans are getting a glimpse of the future as two states—Alaska and Mississippi—and a growing number of individual counties are opening vaccine eligibility to anyone 16 and over. That's the good news. The bad news, as The Washington Post reports, is that part of the reason is not an abundance of shots, but a reluctance among some people to take them. Read more here.
Long COVID Is Painfully Real
Too many people suffering from lingering symptoms of COVID-19 months or even a year after contracting the illness are not taken seriously, write two such sufferers in The New York Times. But the sickness, argue the authors, stands to become one of the "largest mass disabling events" ever recorded. Read more here.
Scientist Turned Anti-Vaxxer
If you've heard the completely unfounded rumor that COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility, you've heard the work of more than just another conspiracy monger: The disinformation originated with a former vice president of Pfizer who has since founded his own biotech firm, Reuters reports. 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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