It may feel like eons ago, but try to recall summer 2020: While there were coronavirus surges in some parts of the country, national case rates were low. In some areas, the virus almost faded away entirely. But of course, the respite didn’t last. Cases began rising again in the fall of 2020, peaking at an average of more than 250,000 per day in January 2021.
The U.S. may be in for something even worse this year, my colleague Chris Wilson warns.
After a heartbreakingly bad summer, the virus’ spread appears to be ebbing, Chris writes. As of today, the U.S. is reporting about 145,000 diagnoses per day—too high for comfort, but at least a modest downward trend from over 160,000 daily cases at the end of August. In many hotspot states, diagnoses are significantly lower than they were a month or two ago.
But kids are now returning to school, cooler weather will force social gatherings indoors and holiday travel season will soon be upon us. With the highly contagious Delta variant now the dominant strain and millions of Americans still unvaccinated, we may be heading for a repeat of last year.
Of course, the situation isn’t exactly the same. More than half the population (and counting) is fully vaccinated, and many other people have at least some level of natural immunity after surviving an infection. That will certainly help keep cases down, but it may not be enough. As Chris points out, seven U.S. states set new daily case records this summer, even with vaccines widely available. As long as there are millions of unvaccinated people in the U.S., the virus will find a way to spread—particularly when it’s as contagious as the Delta variant.
So what can you do? At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the advice is the same as ever: get vaccinated if you haven’t, get your kids vaccinated if they’re old enough, wear masks if you gather with people indoors and stay home if you feel unwell.
About 456.8 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of yesterday evening, of which more than 380.2 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 53.8% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
More than 224.6 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 9 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 4.6 million people have died. On September 12, there were 334,846 new cases and 5,268 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 4.5 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded almost 41 million coronavirus cases as of 9 a.m. E.T. today. Almost 660,000 people have died. On September 12, there were 33,807 new cases and 279 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 Sept. 12, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
About a million New York City children will be back in classrooms today, as the nation’s largest public school system resumes near-universal in-person learning for the first time in 18 months. In elementary schools, where most students are too young to be vaccinated, a positive case will prompt a 10-day quarantine for the entire classroom. (In middle and high schools, only unvaccinated students and those with symptoms will have to quarantine after an exposure.) Each school will also test a random 10% of its unvaccinated students every other week to keep a handle on how the virus is spreading.
All three of the U.S.’ authorized vaccines continue to work well against the virus, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published Friday. As of mid-July, fully vaccinated people—those who received both Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots, or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson jab—accounted for less than 10% of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths across 13 states or major cities, the report says. Even after Delta became the U.S.’s dominant strain this summer, a fully vaccinated person had a five-times-lower risk of infection and a more than 10-times-lower risk of hospitalization or death compared to an unvaccinated person, the CDC says.
Vaccines remain so effective, in fact, that many scientists feel the Biden Administration’s push for booster shots, which is set to begin later this month, is unnecessary. An international group of experts argued today in The Lancet that booster shots for the general public may be wasteful, given how well the current vaccine dosage seems to protect against severe disease and death. “The limited supply of these vaccines will save the most lives if made available to people who are at appreciable risk of serious disease and have not yet received any vaccine,” they write. Many countries are just beginning their mass vaccination campaigns, whereas more than half of Americans are already fully protected.
The Delta variant is straining China’s total COVID-19 elimination strategy. A new outbreak has been reported in Fujian province, where more than 60 people are sick. Chinese authorities stamped out another cluster in the Nanjing area about a month ago, thanks to aggressive lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions. But as the new cases show, the highly transmissible Delta variant is making it increasingly difficult—if not impossible—to stop the spread entirely.
A hospital in upstate New York will temporarily stop delivering babies because so many staff members have resigned due to vaccine mandates, CNN reports. Thirty of Lewis County General Hospital’s employees have quit since former governor Andrew Cuomo last month announced all New York hospital workers must be vaccinated by Sept. 27, hospital officials said. While many schools and employers are using vaccine mandates as a way to safely resume normal operations, they are also introducing new staffing and labor issues, as my colleague Tara Law has previously reported.
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 Jamie Ducharme and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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