Over the past month or so, my life has changed drastically. As more and more Americans have gotten vaccinated, social distancing restrictions have been reduced or eliminated, and public spaces like bars, restaurants, museums and arenas have opened up, the primarily online—but robust—life I'd lived for the previous 18 months have rapidly become a social desert. The friends I'd been texting with stopped messaging me. My distance-film club hasn't watched a movie together for weeks. The small "pandemic-bubble" group of friends I'd been hanging out with became less available as a wider range of experiences opened up to us all.
Meanwhile, I have remained skeptical about the recovery, and thus cautious about changing much in my day to day. The feelings that led me to take that approach were bolstered by the recent spread of the Delta variant, which is more virulent than the version of SARS-CoV-2 that initiated the global pandemic, and which appears to be the primary cause of the recent resurgence of the COVID-19 virus across much of the U.S., and the globe. Indeed, that recent spread has become so bad, and so potentially dangerous, that some local governments are beginning to see things the way I have.
Yesterday, Los Angeles County—home to 10 million people—issued a mandate that everyone, vaccinated or not, must wear masks indoors. That's despite the guidance issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in mid-May, which stated that the fully vaccinated no longer needed to worry about masks. As of writing, the CDC hasn't changed its guidance, though Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency's director, said earlier today that "these decisions have to be made at the local level. If you have areas of low vaccination and high case rates, then I would say local policymakers might consider whether masking at that point would be something that would be helpful for their community."
As Walensky's statement suggests, the underlying issue at hand is that not enough Americans are getting vaccinated. Currently, only about 48% of Americans are fully vaccinated, and the rate at which that number is growing has plummeted, despite the wide availability of the shots. With so many people unprotected from infection, it remains relatively easy for the COVID-19 virus—and especially the more infectious variants like Delta—to spread through communities. That primarily puts the unvaccinated at risk, and, indeed, the vast majority of recent COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths have been among those who did not get their shots.
However, there is a slight risk to even those who are inoculated—about 1.1% of COVID-19 hospitalizations in May were connected to so-called "breakthrough" infections, according to an Associated Press analysis. That's a relatively tiny percentage, but the more opportunities there are for SARS-CoV-2 to spread, the higher the raw number of breakthrough infections will grow. For sports fans—especially those in New York and Boston—one of the biggest stories of the last 24 hours was that three players on the N.Y. Yankees tested positive for COVID-19, leading to the cancellation of last night's game against the Red Sox. All three were vaccinated, according to the New York Times.
I've been a serious baseball—and Yankees—fan since I was a conscious human, and I've been itching to get back to the Stadium. That is the kind of "return to normal" I want for the summer of 2021. But I've been hesitant because I don't have confidence that the people I'd be exposed to at the game will have been truthful about whether or not they've actually been vaccinated. I'm vaccinated—but so were those Yankees players. And though it's difficult to say definitively whether our national inability to achieve herd immunity—currently thought to require a 70%-90% inoculation rate—was the cause of any given, specific case or cases, it's pretty clear that the more unvaccinated people there are, the higher the chance the virus can continue to spread, adapt, and put all of us, even the vaccinated, at risk.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
About 389.3 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this afternoon, of which some 336.6 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 48.4% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
More than 188.8 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 4 million people have died. On July 15, there were 530,423 new cases and 7,907 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 nearly 34 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. About 608,400 people have died. On July 15, there were 28,412 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:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of July 16, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Yesterday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that if current trends hold, his country will be in "position to welcome fully vaccinated travelers from all countries by early September." Canada's daily case count has fallen throughout July, while the U.S.'s has grown over the same timeframe. A point of interest is a comparison between the two countries' vaccination rates: while the U.S. has a higher rate of fully vaccinated residents (48.3% vs. 46.4%), far more Canadians have gotten at least one dose compared to Americans (70% vs. 52.9%, according to Our World In Data).
And on the subject of international tourism, at a press briefing earlier today, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said that U.S. travel restrictions will remain as they are, and the country will only reopen "when the medical folks and health experts believe it's safe to do so." That means anyone who was physically present in the following areas during a 14-day period prior to U.S. arrival cannot come to the states: China, Iran, the U.K., Ireland, Brazil, South Africa, India, and the E.U.
One interesting development in the E.U. is the impact a recent statement by French President Emannuel Macron has had on the vaccination trends in the country. As Edouard Mathieu, head of data at Our World in Data, noted a couple of days ago on Twitter, in the 48 hours after Macron announced on Monday that proof of vaccination or a negative test would soon be required to access public spaces like restaurants, movie theaters and train stations, more than 2.2 million vaccination appointments were booked. It's likely that these were the French citizens sitting on the fence waiting for a good reason to get their shot, but even so, that's an important segment to convince to get it done sooner rather than later.
At a press conference yesterday, World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that we can't yet rule out that the COVID-19 pandemic could be connected to a laboratory leak in China. More unusual than that acknowledgement was his additional note that accessing raw data related to this theory was a challenge for the WHO-organized international team that went to China earlier this year to investigate the disease's origins. Historically, Tedros and other WHO leaders have avoided even the insulation of criticism levied towards the organization's most powerful member countries, China among them. However, Tedros said he is asking China to be more transparent in the ongoing search for the origin of COVID-19.
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 Elijah Wolfson and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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