How This West Virginia County Is Taking the Vaccine Where it Needs to Go
Vaccinating people in places like Kanawha County, West Virginia is no easy feat. While the area's poor health outcomes and high rates of poverty make it particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, other factors, like its low number of college-educated residents and uneven health care access, mean people there can be particularly vaccine hesitant, or can struggle to get the shot. However, as my colleague Jamie Ducharme reports, Kanawha County has managed to fully vaccinate nearly half of its residents, putting it among the mere 29% of U.S. counties that have completely inoculated at least 40% of their population.
The secret sauce of Kanawha's success may come down to local leaders' ground game—county officials are working to bring vaccines to where people are, in part by launching small pop-up clinics. "There are people who just can't or won't travel," Dr. Sherri Young, the county's health officer, told Jamie. "Even getting out of the city two miles makes a difference." Young and her colleagues have also been making house calls to bring shots directly to residents. Moreover, a new "health command" has connected key people from every county department, from medics to the sheriff's office.
Rebecca Kiger for TIME
Young vaccinates Urena Thompson day during a home visit in Charleston.
Young plans to draw upon what the community has learned from its vaccination efforts to improve local health care even after the pandemic. For instance, she hopes that pop-up clinics can provide routine vaccination and other medical services in the future. However, that will require more resources, including people and money. Whether elected officials will follow along remains uncertain, but people like Young have the will to lead the way.
"We have to go where people are," she told Jamie. "That is something that needs to be in the history books. If we do this again, this is the way you do it."
About 381.2 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to U.S. states as of this morning, of which some 324.4 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 46.3% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
More than 181.4 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 3.9 million people have died. On June 28, there were 331,944 new cases and 6,646 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's every country that has reported over 3 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 33.6 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 604,000 people have died. On June 28, there were 15,083 new cases and 150 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:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of June 29, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Governments across Asia, where vaccination rates generally remain low, are tightening restrictions to slow the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant. A national lockdown implemented June 1 in Malaysia, for instance, was set to be lifted yesterday, but Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has announced that it will not end until nationwide daily new cases drop below 4,000, per Reuters (the country is currently reporting more than 5,000 new cases a day). In Hong Kong, the government announced a ban starting Thursday on all flights from the U.K. (where the variant is spreading rapidly), according to the state news agency. And in Bangladesh, soldiers will patrol the streets to enforce new stay-at-home orders, the New York Times reports.
High schoolers partying on the Spanish island of Mallorca kicked off a coronavirus outbreak that has led to almost 1,200 new cases so far, the Associated Press reports. Nearly 5,000 people are being quarantined to contain the virus. The teens, who were celebrating after finishing their university entrance exams, created the "perfect breeding ground" for the contagion, Spain's emergency health response coordinator said at a press conference yesterday.
U.S. housing prices have continued to skyrocket, with one closely-watched home price index surging 15% year-over-year in April, the AP reports, marking the biggest increase since 2005. Experts have attributed the spike to the pandemic, as buyers seek more space and to take advantage of historically low interest rates meant to stimulate the economy. However, the overall number of home sales have dropped over the last four months, as high prices are likely deterring at least some would-be buyers.
The opening day crowd at the Wimbledon tennis tournament in London jumped to their feet yesterday to applaud Dame Sarah Gilbert, a University of Oxford professor who led the team that developed AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine. The shot is in heavy use in the U.K. as well as across the European mainland.
Correction: In yesterday's newsletter, we misstated the capital of Australia. It is Canberra, not Sydney.
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Today's newsletter was written by Tara Law and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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