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Health experts made a concerted effort over the weekend to highlight the risks posed by new variants of the coronavirus-borne illness COVID-19, and urged Americans not to drop their guard until the vaccine program is in full swing.
The message was a reinforcement of the one pushed last week by the administration of President Joe Biden, after several states announced plans to reopen for business in the near term.
Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious-disease expert and epidemiologist who is a member of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 task force, warned that new, more contagious variants are spreading rapidly, especially the B.1.1.7 variant, that was first discovered in the U.K.
“That strain is increasing exponentially. It’s spiking up,” Gounder told CNN. “So we are probably right now on a tipping point of another surge.”
Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday said the current vaccination rate just isn’t fast enough to stop the spread of the new variants.
“We are in the eye of the hurricane right now,” Osterholm said. “Things are going very well, we see blue skies.” But the U.K. variant “is about to come upon us,” he said. “Today it’s wreaking havoc in parts of Europe.”
Osterholm said the U.K. variant has grown from 1% to 4% of all U.S. cases about a month ago to about 30% to 40% now. “What we’ve seen in Europe, when we hit that 50% mark, you see cases surge.”
To counter the threat, Osterholm said the U.S. must not let up on coronavirus restrictions, and must work to vaccinate the population even faster. The experts’ comments come after Texas and Mississippi stoked outrage last week when their governors said they would reopen for business and drop statewide face mask mandates.
Read: Expert ‘mortified and disgusted’ by Texas reopening plan; it ‘will kill Texans,’ says top Democrat
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine tracker is showing that as of 6.00 a.m. ET Sunday, 116.4 million doses had been delivered to states, 90.4 million doses had been administered, and 58.8 million people had received one or more doses, equal to 17.7% of the population. Already 30.7 million Americans have received two doses, equal to 9.2% of the population.
The U.S. vaccinated around two million people a day on average last week with one day nearly hitting 3 million, according to Raymond James analyst Chris Meekins. Progress in the form of falling cases, hospitalizations and now a relief package continues in a predictable and positive direction, Meekins wrote in a note to clients.
“Cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities continue falling, now 76.6%, 66.6%, and 49.05% below peak levels, respectively,” he wrote.
The U.S. added at least 40,336 new cases on Sunday, according to a New York Times tracker, and at least 682 patients died. Those numbers are likely underreported given reduced staffing at hospitals and healthcare centers at weekends. In the past week, the U.S. has averaged 58,745 cases a day, down 12% from the average two weeks ago.
The CDC offered its first guidelines for how American who have been fully vaccinated should behave at Monday’s White House briefing. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC, said people who have had both doses of the Moderna Inc. vaccine or the one developed by Pfizer Inc. and German partner BioNTech SE, or had one jab of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, can gather in small groups indoors without wearing face masks two weeks after their final dose.
Walensky said vaccinated households can socialize indoors with one other unvaccinated household without taking preventive measures (as long as no one in the unvaccinated group is at high risk for severe disease), and that vaccinated people do not need to quarantine after being exposed to someone who tests positive for COVID-19 as long as they do not have symptoms.
“Everyone should avoid medium and large gatherings and non-essential travel, should still wear a well-fitted mask and socially distance,” she said. “COVID continues to exact a tremendous toll on our nation.”
The CDC will update the guidelines as more people are vaccinated and as new data emerges, she said.
In other news:
• A startup behind the Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca PLC AZN, +2.14% AZN, +0.33% is planning an initial public offering that backers hope will be the biggest market debut of an Oxford spinoff in years. One hurdle: the university itself. Nine-hundred-year-old Oxford is wrestling with how to rewrite its rules for fostering companies created by its academics or born in its labs, while in a standoff with one that has been thrust into the spotlight by the pandemic. The startup, Vaccitech Ltd., has been pitching to potential investors and laying groundwork for a stock listing in New York as early as this year, according to people close to the plans and marketing documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
• The U.K. is inviting people aged between 56 and 59 to book COVID shots this week as the National Health Service rolls out its vaccination program which has already inoculated more than one-third of the adult population, MarketWatch’s Lina Saigol reported. Letters to 850,000 people for this age group began landing on doorsteps from on Saturday, the NHS said in a statement, adding that the latest invites come after eight in 10 people aged 65-69 took up the offer of a jab.
Britain’s health secretary Matt Hancock said the government was on track to offer a first vaccine to all adults by July 31.
• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma have tested positive for COVID-19, CNN reported. The pair are in “stable condition” and will self-isolate for two or three weeks, according to a statement from the president’s office released Monday. Syria has recorded at least 45,879 positive Covid-19 cases and 2,023 total deaths based on cumulative numbers of multiple local medical authorities, said CNN.
• Italy has become the latest European country to grant authorization to the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca PLC and Oxford University for use in people above the age of 65, the Guardian reported. Italy follows Germany and France, which authorized the two-dose regimen after new studies that proved the vaccine’s efficacy in that age group.
• Brazilian President Jair Bolsanaro, who has been widely criticized for his cavalier response to the pandemic, has sent a delegation to Israel to investigate a nasal spray COVID treatment, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described as a “miracle” treatment, The Times of Israel reported. “EXO-CD24 is a nasal spray developed by the Ichilov Medical Center in Israel, with nearly 100% effectiveness—29 out of 30—against COVID in serious cases,” Bolsonaro tweeted last month, two days after speaking on the phone with Netanyahu. Brazil has the second-highest day toll from COVID in the world after the U.S. at 265,411, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University. It has had 11 million confirmed cases, the third highest in the world after the U.S. and India.
Latest tallies
The global tally for confirmed cases of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 climbed to 117 million on Monday, the Johns Hopkins data shows, while the death toll rose above 2.59 million.
At least 66 million people have recovered from COVID-19.
The U.S. has the highest case tally in the world at 29 million and the highest death toll at 525,312.
India is second worldwide in cases with 11.2 million, and fourth in deaths at 157,853.
Mexico has the third highest death toll at 190,604 and 13th highest case tally at 2.1 million.
The U.K. has 4.3 million cases and 124,801 deaths, the highest in Europe and fifth highest in the world.
China, where the virus was first discovered late last year, has had 101,141 confirmed cases and 4,838 deaths, according to its official numbers.
Additional reporting by Mike Murphy and Jaimy Lee
