Next Tuesday will be a big day here in California—it's when the state will start allowing vaccinated people to go maskless in most public places, with limited exceptions, like on public transportation and at schools and hospitals. I imagine that many people are ready to chuck their masks in the trash; they were a-okay during our mild Los Angeles winter, but can quickly become uncomfortable in the sweatier months.
As my colleague Jamie Ducharme reports, masking and similar habits we formed directly in response to the health risk posed by COVID-19 will likely fade away as that risk falls. The same goes for habits we adopted as our broader circumstances changed; for instance, I started making my own coffee since I couldn't pick up a free cup at my office, but I know I'll stop when I'm back at my desk. "If something is no longer rewarding, we may stick with it for a while and then slowly taper off," Benjamin Gardner, a behavior-change researcher at King's College London, told Jamie.
However, I'm already starting to wonder if some of my pandemic-era behavioral changes will be stickier. After getting vaccinated, I stopped wearing a mask while walking around my neighborhood. I was following U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance, but I couldn't help but notice a lot of sideways glances from my neighbors. As Jamie writes, some of the subtle ways the pandemic has changed us may linger on—leaving "fingerprints," as she put it, like "germaphobia, wariness of proximity to strangers or increased comfort with solitude." I'm also particularly concerned about the pandemic's lingering mental health impact; about four in 10 U.S. adults have reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression over the last year, up from one in 10 before the pandemic, according to a KFF analysis.
As Jamie notes, older people struggled less with anxiety, depression, substance use and suicidal ideation than younger people during the pandemic, possibly because their deeper trove of life experiences better prepared them for the past year or so. Although the pandemic was a difficult experience for many, I hope that it will leave us all a little wiser—and ready to overcome future challenges. At the very least, perhaps we'll all be less likely to take "normal life" for granted.
About 372.8 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this afternoon, of which 305.6 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 42.6% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
G7 leaders gathered in England this week have pledged to donate 1 billion coronavirus vaccine doses to countries in need, including 500 million from the U.S. and 100 million from the U.K. Many parts of the world urgently need more shots—Africa, for instance, needs 225 million more doses to reach the World Health Organization's goal of vaccinating 10% of each country's population by September. Only seven African countries are on track to meet that mark, the WHO's regional director for Africa said at a press briefing yesterday.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) extended the authorized shelf life for the single-dose Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine from three to four-and-half months after reviewing data about the vaccine's stability, J&J announced yesterday. The change means millions of J&J doses that were set to expire this month may yet be put into use.
Also in J&J news, the FDA today ordered that about 60 million of the company's doses produced at a troubled plant run by subcontractor Emergent BioSolutions must be thrown out due to possible contamination, the New York Times reports. Another 10 million doses produced at the plant will be distributed in the U.S. and abroad, but they'll come with a warning that regulators can't guarantee that they were produced under good manufacturing practices.
The CDC will hold an emergency meeting next week to discuss reports of heart inflammation in a small number of patients who have received mRNA coronavirus vaccines, the agency announced yesterday. The CDC has received 226 reports that meet its "working case definition" of heart inflammation; the patients fully recovered in 81% of cases. About 294 million doses of the mRNA-based Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been administered in the U.S. so far.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
The Global Situation
More than 174.8 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and nearly 3.8 million people have died. On June 10, there were 448,879 new cases and 15,996 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 3 million confirmed cases:
According to the latest genetic sequencing, the highly transmissible Delta variant accounts for more than 90% of new COVID-19 cases in the U.K., the British government announced today. U.S. public health leaders, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, have called for more vaccination to prevent the Delta variant from becoming the dominant version in the U.S., as it has in the U.K.
Earlier today, Brazil's health regulators authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for use in children over the age of 12 after reviewing safety and efficacy data, Reuters reports. Widespread vaccination is sorely needed in Brazil, where about 227 people per capita have died of the virus—one of the highest rates in the world—but only about 11% of the population is vaccinated.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 33.4 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. Nearly 599,000 people have died. On June 10, there were 14,417 new cases and 428 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 passengers aboard the first major cruise to leave a U.S. port since the industry was shut down at the start of the pandemic have tested positive for the coronavirus, Royal Caribbean Group announced yesterday. Two guests sharing a room on the company's Celebrity Millennium vessel tested positive during required end-of-cruise testing while the ship was returning from St. Maarten. Both passengers are asymptomatic but are in isolation, and the company is conducting contact tracing and testing. All passengers were required to show proof of vaccination and a negative COVID-19 test prior to boarding.
Higher education enrollment fell by 3.5% during the spring with 603,000 fewer applicants compared to this time last year, a National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report published yesterday found. Those aged 18-24 accounted for the biggest drop, at 5%. The decline in enrollment was likely exacerbated by the pandemic, but as NPR reports, undergraduate and graduate enrollment has been falling for years.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of June 11, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Putting Artists Back to Work
The creative industry, and the artists who depend on it, were hit hard by the pandemic. In this piece for TIME, Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, explains why it's important to protect artists' livelihoods and enable them to keep creating. Read more here.
Why More Hongkongers Are Getting Their Shots
The number of Hongkongers who have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine increased from 18% to 22% over the last three weeks. As my colleague Amy Gunia reports, a combination of fancy prizes and dangerous variants may be boosting uptake. Read more here.
The Rumors Stopping Orthodox Jewish Women From Vaccinating
Unsubstantiated rumors about COVID-19 vaccines posing a threat to fertility circulating on WhatsApp groups may be discouraging some Orthodox Jewish women from getting inoculated, 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 Tara Law and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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