New York's Vaccine Mandate: The Good and the Not-So-Good
To look at the numbers is to be impressed by the success of New York State's new vaccine mandate for health care workers. By Sept. 28, just one day after the rule went into effect, vaccination rates among hospital staffers had jumped from 77% to 87%—precisely the kind of bump state officials hoped to see when the mandate was announced in August.
But as my colleague Tara Law reports, that good news comes with some decidedly bad news: staffing shortages, as workers who choose not to be vaccinated are suspended, terminated or walk away from the job. One survey conducted by the Iroquois Healthcare Association, which represents 50 hospitals across 32 New York counties, found a pre-existing job vacancy rate of 13.2% on Sept. 13, before the mandate went into effect—nearly double the June nationwide average among health care within the industry. Since the mandate was announced, 1,300 of the 25,000 employees in the Iroquois network were either terminated or placed on leave.
The problem is especially acute at rural hospitals. On the whole, vaccination rates are lower in rural areas of the U.S than they are in urban centers. That means hospitals like Oneida Health, in New York's Madison County just east of Syracuse, can face a double blow: rising COVID-19 caseloads coinciding with declining hospital staffing. Oneida has succeeded in vaccinating 92% of its 900 employees, but has lost 20 who left rather than getting the shots, deepening a staffing shortage that now stands at 18%.
On Sept. 27, New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a statewide disaster emergency to deal with the staffing shortages. The move allows health care workers licensed in other states to practice in New York. Hochul is also considering activating the National Guard to help staff hospitals. But while such stopgap measures may ease the immediate crisis, they do nothing to address the underlying staffing shortages that existed even before the pandemic.
"Not enough people want to work in health care, quite frankly," says Iroquois CEO Gary Fitzgerald, "and all these issues in the last 18 months have just exacerbated that." That is one problem that can't be vaccinated away.
More than 479.3 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this afternoon, of which nearly 397.7 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 56% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
More than 235.3 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 4.8 million people have died. On Oct. 4, there were 440,108 new cases and 7,064 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 more than 43.8 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 703,200 people have died. On Oct. 4, there were 169,207 new cases and 2,109 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 Oct. 5, 2 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
As expected, Jonhson & Johnson today asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization for a booster dose of its single-shot vaccine. The request was backed by two findings: In a phase 3 trial, J&J reports that a booster given 56 days after the initial dose was 94% effective against symptomatic disease and 100% against severe or critical infection. And in a Phase 1-2 trial, the company found that when a booster was administered six months after the initial shot, antibody levels increased ninefold in the first week and twelvefold over four weeks.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine remains 90% effective in preventing hospitalization up to six months after a second dose, per a new study published in The Lancet. However, the study, which followed a sample group of 3.4 million people from December 2020 to August 2021, found that protection against infection waned considerably over time, from 88% during the first month after vaccination to 47% at five months. For the Delta variant in particular, protection against hospitalization was 93% at the six-month mark; protection against infection, however, declined from 93% after one month to 53% at four months.
AstraZeneca is requesting U.S. emergency use authorization for an antibody treatment that could prevent symptomatic COVID-19 in people whose immune systems are too weak to muster a robust vaccine response, reports Reuters. In a late-stage trial, the drug, known as AZD7442, reduced the risk of developing symptoms by 77%, according to the company. That study followed subjects for only three months after treatment, but AstraZeneca will continue to monitor the sample group for a total of 15 months, hoping to determine that AZD7442 can provide protection for at least a full year.
The European Union yesterday approved a Pfizer-BioNTech booster shot for people 18 and older, reports the Associated Press. The ruling was based on studies showing an increase in antibody levels when a booster was given six months after a second dose in people 18 to 55. The move must also be approved by the European Commission, and then by health authorities in the bloc's 27 nations, which will decide on their own whether to follow the new guidance.
India's Supreme Court has ordered the country's disaster management agency to pay 50,000 rupees—or $671—to families of individuals who died of COVID-19, reports The New York Times. With an official death toll of just under 450,000, the government could be on the hook for up to $300 million. The disaster management agency already makes payments to the families of people who die in natural disasters like floods, and the ruling came in response to so-called public interest litigation—brought on behalf not of specific plaintiffs but the population at large—seeking to expand the benefit.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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