What could possibly convince someone who doesn't want to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to change their mind? That's the burning question for state and federal government officials in the U.S., who desperately want to increase vaccination rates across their states and the country. The more people vaccinated, the safer communities become and the sooner the pandemic will end.
Free protection against a raging, deadly virus has been enough of an incentive so far for the 42.8% of Americans who have received at least one shot. To inoculate at least some of the rest, states are getting creative, my colleague Jamie Ducharme reports. West Virginia is now giving out $100 savings bonds to 16- to 35-year-olds who get the shot; Maryland is offering the same amount in cash to state employees of all ages. New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington, D.C. are all offering free booze at local establishments. Detroit is providing $50 debit cards for people who drive their neighbors to a vaccine clinic.
Will freebies like these work? Experts told Jamie that they may lure people who aren't actively opposed to vaccination but have simply been too busy or apathetic to make an appointment. That's no small slice of the population; recent polling suggests that 31% of unvaccinated Americans may fit into this "wait-and-see" category.
And even though cash payments may seem like the best bait—as Jamie initially thought—"one expert I spoke to noted that paying people to do something can unintentionally make it seem dangerous or unappealing, so things like free drinks might work better," she says. "Even still, I think a lot of people would enter a $10 million lottery for vaccinated people, as one scholar proposed!"
Another potentially effective lever is to make incentives time sensitive, Jamie points out. Officials don't just want people to get vaccinated: they want them to get vaccinated now, in order to stop viral spread and deprive dangerous new variants of potential hosts. One expert suggested a diminishing returns system to incentives—you'd get $100 if you got vaccinated in May, for example, then $75 if you got vaccinated in June, and so on. "I'm not aware of any states doing that at the moment," Jamie says, but it's a promising avenue to explore.
About 321.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this afternoon, of which 249.5 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 32.3% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
The Biden Administration now supports waiving COVID-19 vaccine intellectual patent protections in order to spur global production, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement today. "The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines," she said, adding that negotiations at the World Trade Organization will take time to complete.
Canada today authorized the use of Pfizer-BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine for children ages 12 to 15. It's the first COVID-19 vaccine allowed for children in the country, and "marks a significant milestone in Canada's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic," according to a statement from Health Canada. A similar move is expected in the U.S. in the coming days.
CVS is now offering walk-in vaccinations across the U.S., the pharmacy chain announced today. The news follows the Biden Administration's move yesterday to direct all federal pharmacy partners to accept walk-in patients to expand access and speed up lagging vaccination rates.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 154.3 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 3.2 million people have died. On May 4, there were 807,436 new cases and 13,960 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 2.5 million confirmed cases:
India's government is facing calls from opposition leaders for a lockdown to slow viral spread, the Associated Press reports. The country is now the world's coronavirus epicenter—hospitals are completely overwhelmed, supplies are dwindling and bodies are piling up at crematories. Though Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rejected a national lockdown for economic reasons, many regions are issuing them anyway. This week, the state of Uttar Pradesh—India's biggest, home to 200 million people—imposed a five-day lockdown; India's second- and third-biggest states are also under similar measures. More than 20.6 million people in India have been infected since the pandemic's start, and more than 226,000 have died. The country's health ministry reported 3,780 deaths just in the last 24 hours.
Nepal, India's neighbor to the northeast, also has one of the fastest-growing outbreaks in the world. Now, COVID-19 is spreading among mountain climbers in remote parts of the country, the New York Times reports. A growing number of climbers have been evacuated from Mount Everest base camps after testing positive for the virus, and 14 climbers are being airlifted from Mount Dhaulagiri after showing symptoms. Meanwhile, Nepali officials are denying the existence of outbreaks in the mountainous areas; tourism is an economic lifeline for the small country. Nepal has reported more than 351,000 cases since the pandemic began, and more than 3,400 deaths.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 32.5 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 578,000 people have died. On May 4, there were 40,733 new cases and 933 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 U.S. birth rate continues to drop, according to data released today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, about 142,000 fewer babies were born than in the previous year. Though the pandemic certainly contributed to the decline—economic and financial instabilities can deter people from expanding families—it's not the only reason. As my colleague Emily Barone reports, U.S. birth trends have been on a downswing since 2014.
Eli Lilly—one of the world's largest drug manufacturers and maker of bamlanivimab, a COVID-19 antibody treatment—is under scrutiny by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Reuters reports. In an anonymous complaint, employees reportedly alleged that a top quality-control executive at Lilly's Branchburg, N.J. factory rewrote documents about quality control problems involving the production of the treatment to make them sound more favorable. At another Lilly factory in Indianapolis that also manufactures the drug, FDA officials recently uncovered inadequate quality control and sanitation procedures, per Reuters; investigations are ongoing.
Nursing homes with Black residents had higher rates of COVID-19 infection and death from the disease compared to nursing homes with no Black residents, according to research published in the April issue of the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. The quality and location of the facilities, as well as the socioeconomic status of the residents, all seemed to contribute to these disparities. "Structural bias may underlie these inequities," the study authors wrote.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of May 5, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
India's Health Care Workers Say the Government Is Failing Them
Community health workers in India—many of them women in small, rural communities—have been combatting the country's coronavirus outbreak for little pay and with scant protective equipment. Many feel that their government has left them to die. "It feels terrible to be treated this way—like we don't matter, our lives don't matter," one woman told reporter Nilanjana Bhowmick for TIME. Read more here.
Even Tech Execs Are Tired of Zoom
Top executives at tech and finance companies are burning out on virtual meetings, and many want to hasten a return to the office for their employees, writes Chip Cutter for the Wall Street Journal. 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 Mandy Oaklander and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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