How you're currently feeling about the U.S. coronavirus outbreak probably depends on where you live. California, Texas and Arizona's latest new daily cases per capita figures are way down from their peaks, offering plenty of reason for optimism. But other states, especially in the Northeast and Midwest, are facing alarming and potentially record-setting new waves. It's almost like we're back to the days of last summer, when some states enjoyed relative calm while others were consumed by new flare-ups of the wildfire that is COVID-19.
Nowhere in the country is the situation more grim than in Michigan, where emerging variants and relaxed rules have led to a spike in cases that's just shy of beating the average new daily cases per capita record the state set in late November.
Deaths are also beginning to rise, though they may be mitigated somewhat by mass vaccination—32.5% of Michiganders have at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, all of which have been shown to reduce case mortality at an astonishing rate.
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, is in a tough spot: Republicans hold the state's legislature, and many would no doubt fight any new statewide rules meant to curb viral spread. Instead, Whitmer has appealed to Michiganders directly, urging citizens, business owners and local leaders to behave responsibly in order to keep one another safe. At the same time, she's publicly demanded that the Biden Administration send Michigan more vaccine doses. After all, if COVID-19 is a wildfire, then vaccines are the fire retardant poured from low-flying planes and helicopters to douse the flames.
But the White House has so far declined Whitmer's request, instead sticking to an allocation strategy based on population figures. "There are tens of millions of people across the country in each and every state and county who have not yet been vaccinated," White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said during a press briefing last Friday. "And the fair and equitable way to distribute the vaccine is based on the adult population by state, tribe and territory."
There's logic in Zients' stance: if vaccine doses are over-allocated to one state based on immediate need, it could leave others vulnerable to future outbreaks. Furthermore, unlike public health restrictions, vaccines take time to kick in—people who get the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots don't get full protection until about two weeks after the second dose, which itself usually comes 3-4 weeks after the first dose (though studies suggest recipients get at least some protection shortly after their first dose). Meanwhile, supply of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine, which could be a useful rapid response tool because it only requires a single dose, is expected to be severely limited in the coming weeks due to manufacturing issues.
Still, there have been numerous recent reports that vaccine supply is going unused in some less hard-hit states, like Mississippi. If doses are going to a state that isn't finding ways to use them, doesn't it make sense to send at least some of that supply to a state in more immediate need?
"We should immediately match variant surges with vaccination surges that target the most vulnerable by going where they are, in the cities and states experiencing active outbreaks," scholar Zeynep Tufekci recently wrote in The Atlantic. She calls for "ring vaccination," a type of inculcation strategy based on surrounding known outbreaks with immunity, effectively starving a raging fire of precious oxygen. "We should do this, but on a surge scale, essentially ring-vaccinating whole cities and even states," Tufekci writes.
There would certainly be issues with shifting allocations from states like Mississippi to states like Michigan. Despite widespread availability, only about a quarter of Mississippians have received at least one vaccine dose so far. That suggests some combination of access and hesitancy are hampering the state's rollout. Those are vital public health problems—often entangled with troubling racial disparities—that need to be solved, and if Mississippi's supply drops, those challenges may be deferred at the cost of upping the state's long-term risks. Meanwhile, Mississippi and other states where vaccinations and viral spread are both low should certainly not be penalized, but rerouting at least some doses to a state where they're more desperately needed seems like an obvious solution to an immediate crisis. The needs of the many, after all, outweigh the needs of the few.
VACCINE TRACKER
More than 237.7 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this morning, of which some 187 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. Approximately 34.5% of the overall U.S. population has received at least one dose, and about 21.9% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
New York pharmaceutical firm Regeneron's COVID-19 monoclonal antibody cocktail was intended as a treatment for people with the disease, rather than a preventative (like a vaccine). But in a new study of 1,500 healthy people living with someone who had tested positive for COVID-19, the cocktail reduced participants' risk of developing the disease by 81%, the company announced today. The results, which have not yet been peer reviewed, suggest the treatment could be an effective non-vaccine prophylactic for people at high risk of COVID-19 exposure.
In one of the biggest blows to the worldwide vaccination campaign so far, Beijing officials announced over the weekend that Chinese-made vaccines are underperforming compared to their global counterparts. The Chinese vaccines "don't have very high protection rates," China Centers for Disease Control Director Gao Fu said at a conference Saturday. Researchers in Brazil found the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine to be just 50.4% effective at preventing symptomatic disease, compared to the 60-90% rates of other inoculations. The Sinovac data are particularly troubling, as many of China's allies abroad are counting on that shot for use in their mass vaccination campaigns.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 136 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 2.9 million people have died. On April 11, there were 690,739 new cases and 8,557 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:
Gyms, hair salons, libraries and other public facilities are once again open today in the U.K., where months of intense lockdown measures in combination with mass vaccination efforts have squashed a winter wave of COVID-19 that was in part fueled by the B.1.1.7 variant. By far the most exuberance was reserved for the reopening of the country's beloved pubs, some of which opened their doors for thirsty customers as soon as they were allowed to do so just after midnight. Some limits, like a ban on unnecessary international travel, remain in place for now.
Despite India's worsening coronavirus outbreak, millions of religious pilgrims have arrived in the North Indian city of Haridwar to bathe in the Ganges River as part of the ongoing Kumbh Mela festival, CNN reports. While local officials are trying to enforce social distancing and other public health measures, the sheer number of people is making that difficult. "If we try to enforce it then it can lead to a stampede," police official Gen. Sanjay Gunjyal told CNN. India reported 168,912 cases of COVID-19 yesterday, marking the sixth day in a row it set a new one-day record.
Mass travel is also raising fears of more viral spread in Thailand, where millions of residents are expected to move about the country for the upcoming Thai New Year, ABC News reports. While Thailand has reported a small number of cases and deaths in relative terms—32,625 and 97, respectively—it posted nearly 1,000 new cases today alone, marking its highest one-day count since the pandemic began.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 31.1 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 562,000 people have died. On April 11, there were 46,378 new cases and 283 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:
Two new studies from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published today further reinforce the troubling reality that the COVID-19 pandemic did not strike all Americans equally. In the first, researchers working with data from 13 states from October-December of last year found that Hispanic and American Indian or Alaska Native people arrived at hospital emergency rooms for COVID-19 at 1.7 times the rate of white Americans, while Black Americans arrived at 1.4 times the rate of whites. In the other study , researchers found that across each U.S. Census region, Hispanic and Latino patients made up the largest proportion of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, and while racial and ethnic disparities "became less pronounced" as the pandemic spread, "disparities remained in December 2020 in all regions."
Los Angeles officials have opened vaccination eligibility to all residents aged 16 and older, several days before young people elsewhere in California can book their appointments. "We urge patience as we continue to ramp up our operations, obtain more doses, and enter this new phase of our campaign to end the pandemic," L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement. "But our commitment remains clear: as soon as vaccines are available, we are ready to administer them swiftly and safely."
Facebook users in states with broad vaccine eligibility will soon see a notification informing them that they can now book an appointment, the company announced today. Users who tap on the notification will be given information about how to find a vaccine appointment in their state.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of April 12, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Woman Who Believed in mRNA When Nobody Else Would
My favorite weekend read: this New York Times profile of Kati Kariko, a remarkable woman who spent decades laying the groundwork for mRNA-based vaccines despite other scientists' skepticism and her struggles to secure steady employment and funding. Read more here.
Welcome to Hot Vacation Summer
Workers across the U.S. have banked plenty of paid time-off days—and now they're ready to use them, The Atlantic reports. Read more here.
An Outbreak of UFO Sightings
Urbanites who flocked to rural areas with superior views of the night sky have fueled a dramatic uptick in the number of reported UFO sightings during the pandemic, the New York Times 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 Alex Fitzpatrick and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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