On June 28, as my colleague Alice Park reports, Los Angeles County tightened its similar mask rules, announcing that all people, including those who are fully vaccinated, should mask up again in most indoor settings. The ruling was based in part on genetic testing showing that, recently, about half of all new COVID-19 cases in the county have been due to the Delta variant. The World Health Organization (WHO) concurs, reaffirming its guidance that even vaccinated people wear masks in public settings. The CDC has not yet walked back its more liberal policy, but that could change.
The new rulings come not just because the Delta variant is far more contagious and seems to cause more severe symptoms. They also address the concern that while vaccines have been shown to be effective against Delta, there are still breakthrough infections among the vaccinated. The fact that they’ve had their shots, however, may mean they experience no symptoms or at least milder ones, leaving them unaware they’re infected. Walking about mask-free could thus make them a mobile virus vector. Dr. Muntu Davis, health officer for L.A. County, cited the continued uncertainty about how much vaccine immunity protects against the Delta variant as a basis for the new masking rules.
Relatively high vaccination rates in the U.S. do offer some comfort to health officials battling the new variant. However, while nearly 70% of adult Americans have had at least one shot, that number is much smaller in some parts of the country, making those areas at higher risk for outbreaks involving the Delta variant. And the imperfect protection even the best vaccines provide causes still more concern.
“The Delta variant is more infective, more contagious. So given that it is so contagious, and that there are wide swaths of the country that don’t even have 50% of people vaccinated, then I think that the mask recommendations are absolutely in line with how we’ve been approaching the pandemic from the get-go,” Dr. Kirsten Lyke, professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who is leading some of the COVID-19 vaccine trials, told Alice.
Lyke says that vaccinated people can have “some degree of comfort” if they are unmasked and outdoors, as the CDC suggests, but that everyone, vaccinated or not, should “continue to be wary. There are micropockets of people who are not vaccinated. And the Delta variant is just going to roar through them.”
About 32 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of last night, of which nearly 326.5 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 46.7% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
More than 182.2 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 30, there were 391,839 new cases and 9,152 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. Almost 605,000 people have died. On June 30, there were 12,872 new cases and 240 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 July 1, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Israel is seeing a sudden surge in coronavirus cases, despite its high vaccination rate,reports the Associated Press . With 85% of the country’s adult population fully inoculated, the Israeli Health Ministry yesterday reported a three-month high of 307 new cases, following 293 the day before. Part of the problem: the high adult vaccination rate conceals the fact that overall, only 54% of the Israeli population has received its shots. In response, the government announced a new drive to accelerate the vaccination of children. Israel had planned to reopen its borders to tourists beginning yesterday, but last week scuttled that idea as concerns about the rise of the Delta variant spread. Now, tourism is not scheduled to resume until at least August 1.
The German biotech firm CureVac released disappointing news yesterday, reporting that its highly awaited COVID-19 vaccine was only 48% effective, according to Reuters. It’s unclear yet why the vaccine performed so poorly, especially when compared to Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots, which, like CureVac’s, use mRNA technology. Researchers have not ruled out the possibility that, unlike those for the other two, the CureVac trial was conducted while the more infectious Delta variant has been at large.
After 10 weeks of declining caseloads, COVID-19 is on the rise again in Europe, the WHO reported yesterday. In the last week alone, case counts jumped 10%, a development the WHO blames partly on an easing of rules preventing social gatherings and travel, and partly on the rise of the Delta variant. By August, the WHO predicts, the European region will be “Delta-dominant.” All of this comes against a backdrop of relatively low vaccination rates. Currently 63% of people across the Euro region have not received even a first shot of a vaccine.
The Janssen-Johnson & Johnson vaccine is likely effective against the Delta variant, according to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. In a conversation with CNBC, Murthy pointed to data showing that the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot provides protection against the new strain, and described the J&J shot as “a cousin” of the AstraZeneca formulation, since both of them trigger an immune response by using an adenovirus to deliver SARS-CoV-2 protein into the body. The statement from the Surgeon General may come as a boost to the beleaguered J&J shot, which is easily the least popular of the three vaccines available in the U.S., after it was linked to a rare blood-clotting disorder.
Deaths from COVID-19 in Mexico might be being dramatically undercounted. According to government data, the actual Mexican death toll could be 60% higher than the official toll, reports Reuters. The findings come from a government search of death certificates from the start of the pandemic through May 23, 2021. Over that stretch, 221,647 COVID-19-related deaths had been officially reported to the government. But the search of the death certificate database boosted the number of deaths in which COVID-19 was at least a related cause to 351,376.
Never mind state-by-state or city-by-city variations in U.S. vaccination rates. A new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the vaccination differences play out much more dramatically household by household. According to the poll’s findings, 77% of vaccinated adults report living in households in which everyone has been vaccinated; similarly, 75% of unvaccinated adults say no one in their household has gotten the shots. One thing that could improve vaccination rates: three in 10 unvaccinated adults report that they would be more likely to be vaccinated if shots that currently have emergency use authorization received full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Europe is opening up again—at least to Europeans—as a digital COVID-19 passport card went into effect today throughout the E.U., reports The New York Times. Travelers are issued certificates by their home country with a QR code, confirming that they have either been fully vaccinated, have recently tested negative for the virus, or have presumed immunity to the virus after recently recovering from a bout of COVID-19. The certificate exempts holders from travel restrictions and frees them from having to quarantine when they reach their destination country. One limitation: the passport recognizes only four acceptable vaccines: those made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna. Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. That excludes multiple vaccines, including Covishield, which COVAX is distributing across Africa. In an apparent response, today COVAX issued a statement calling on regional, national and local authorities to allow transit to any traveler who is fully vaccinated with any shot deemed safe and effective by the WHO or other “stringent regulatory authorities” like the U.S. FDA.
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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