The emergence of the Omicron variant should come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to scientists. For months, experts have warned that the coronavirus will continue to mutate as long as it has many new hosts to infect—which will be the case until people across the globe, not just in wealthy countries, are vaccinated in large numbers.
Many rich nations have already pledged vaccine donations to the developing world, and some stepped up their commitments in the wake of Omicron. But as my colleague Chad de Guzman reports, fixing the problem isn’t as simple as throwing lots of extra doses at countries with low vaccination rates.
While it’s true that wealthy countries bought up huge chunks of the global vaccine supply early on, availability of doses is no longer the only issue. Africa has received hundreds of millions of doses, either via donations or the COVAX vaccine hub, but many have gone to waste. In some cases, countries don’t have the infrastructure required to store and distribute the shots to everyone who needs one; in others, donated doses arrive close to or at the point of expiration, meaning health officials must destroy them before they even have a chance to use them.
Vaccine skepticism has also proved a major roadblock for Africa. As Chad writes, many Africans are dubious of Western medicine given a long history of medical experimentation on the continent. Others do not trust their leadership or have been exposed to misinformation online. As in the U.S., securing vaccines is only the first step—getting people to actually take them is often more difficult.
To get vaccination rates up worldwide, the international community will have to commit to tackling these larger, systemic problems. A flood of vaccines does little good if few people want them, and those who do can’t get them.
More than 578 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of yesterday afternoon, of which more than 464.4 million doses have been administered, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. Nearly 60% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
More than 264.2 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 2 p.m. E.T. today, and more than 5.2 million people have died. On Dec. 2, there were 702,101 new cases and 9,921 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 5 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 48.8 million coronavirus cases as of 2 p.m. E.T. today. More than 785,000 people have died. On Dec. 2, there were 140,875 new cases and 3,800 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
The recent dip and rise in daily cases is likely due to reduced reporting during the holiday weekend; historically, the U.S. has seen similar short-term, apparent drop offs that were later shown to be outliers.
That said, 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 Dec. 3, 2 p.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
A new study published in the Lancet adds more support to the idea of mix-and-match boosting. Researchers tested a range of different boosters on people who had originally received either Pfizer-BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. (AstraZeneca’s shot is not authorized in the U.S.) They found that virtually any combination of original shot and booster strengthened antibody response, with the mRNA booster shots made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna resulting in the largest increases.
Pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS are struggling to keep up with the demand for booster shots, the Wall Street Journal reports. Though vaccine supply is no longer a major issue in the U.S., retail pharmacies in some areas are finding it difficult to meet vaccine-related staffing requirements. Some states have reopened public mass vaccination sites to help ease the bottleneck, which has likely been compounded by the Omicron variant emerging shortly after vaccines were authorized for younger children.
The Omicron variant has exposed gaps in U.S. testing and surveillance efforts, STAT reports. Almost as soon as Omicron was detected in southern Africa, experts warned that it was probably already in the U.S.—but it took days for health officials to actually confirm that fact. That’s in part because only a fraction of COVID-19 test samples actually go through genetic sequencing, and those that do often take days to come back from the lab; the U.S. also does not have a unified approach to testing incoming travelers and people with breakthrough infections. Those factors all buy extra time for new variants to circulate invisibly for days or even weeks.
Should you cancel your travel plans because of Omicron? There’s no single answer, experts told the New York Times. (If you’re fully vaccinated, that is—the experts said unvaccinated and immunocompromised people should skip trips for now.) If you have travel planned, the Times’ sources recommended keeping an eye on local transmission, both at home and in your destination, and mapping out contingency plans if, say, you were to test positive while traveling and had to quarantine away from home.
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 Angela Haupt.
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