Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of April 26

After a year of masking up, rarely leaving the house, and not seeing any friends, COVID still found its way into our house last week. My mother-in-law got it from someone at work the week prior and despite quarantining herself as soon as she saw symptoms (days before testing), my wife ended up catching it. She had already gotten her first Pfizer shot, so I just want to remind folks that getting one shot means absolutely nothing. You can still catch/transmit it.

Now fortunately I was a few days shy of being 2 weeks after my second Pfizer shot and I've been fine. And our kids (22mo twins) are fine as well, although there was a day or two last week where they both exhibited cold-like symptoms, aside from that they've been fine. My wife's nearing the end of the "everything is exhausting" stage, so hopefully she'll be feeling better in a few days.

I'm a little nervous that either me or the kids have it and just aren't showing symptoms yet. I mean I should probably be fine since I'm not officially 2 weeks (and a few days) since my second shot, but I'm more worried about the kids anyway.

Miami school bars vaccinated teachers from seeing students

No.

They are not barring unvaccinated teachers.

They are barring vaccinated teachers.

CDC says fully vaccinated Americans can go without masks outdoors, except in crowded settings

[T]he guidance also says even unvaccinated individuals may go without masks when walking, jogging or biking outdoors with household members. However, officials caution that crowded outdoor settings still pose risks and urge everyone — both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals — to wear masks when attending sporting events, live performances and parades.

Brazil says Russian Covid vaccine carried live cold virus

Tainted batches of Russia's Sputnik V Covid vaccine sent to Brazil carried a live version of a common cold-causing virus, the South American country's health regulator reported in a presentation explaining its decision to ban the drug's import.

Top virologist Angela Rasmussen told AFP the finding "raises questions about the integrity of the manufacturing processes" and could be a safety issue for people with weaker immune systems, if the problem was found to be widespread.

Rasmussen, a research scientist at Canada's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, described the error as a quality control issue, rather than a problem inherent to the technology.

We've definitely plateaued on vaccinations in my county... at only 37%. Been stuck in that range for a couple weeks even though the county health department is practically begging people to come get shots. I have no faith that we will ever reach herd immunity unless some kind of incentive program is implemented nationwide.

Pacific Northwest faces shutdowns amid rising virus cases

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown is putting 15 counties that encompass the state’s biggest cities into the state's extreme risk category starting Friday, imposing restrictions that include banning indoor restaurant dining. As Brown issued her order on Tuesday, she said rising COVID-19 hospitalizations threaten to overwhelm doctors.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is expected to order new restrictions next week for several counties, likely including the state’s largest, that would force businesses and churches to reduce their indoor gathering capacity from 50% to 25%.

I posted a little over a month ago that I thought we were reopening too early and surprise!

March 22nd Washington moved to 50% indoor capacity for restaurants and gyms. It wasn't until April 15th that they opened up vaccine eligibility to anyone over 16. Seems backwards to me.

Here in Seattle we're at least doing a really good job of vaccination. The more rural parts of Washington and Oregon, not so much:

For example, the public health director for northern Oregon’s Umatilla County, which was downgraded Tuesday from the moderate to the high-risk category, told state officials it can send last week’s vaccine allocation somewhere else and will likely do so again this week.

“Our demand level is dropping dramatically,” Public Health Director Joe Fiumara told the East Oregonian newspaper. The county has about 6,000 doses and last week administered fewer than 500 as health department staff sat idly, waiting for people to arrive for vaccinations.

(for anyone unfamiliar with the region, despite the liberal reputation of cities like Seattle and Portland, east of the Cascades it gets very rural and conservative...the occupation of the Malheur wildlife refuge happened in eastern Oregon, for example)

More than 20 cities in Brazil are suffering with vaccine shortages for the second shot. Thousands of people are in risk of having less effective immunization.

India's Covid-19 death toll passes 200,000 as WHO says variant found in 17 countries

A total of 201,187 people have now died, 3,293 of them in the past day, according to health ministry data, although many experts suspect that the true toll is higher.

The worsening health crisis came as the World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that the new Covid-19 variant, identified as B.1.617, had been detected in over 1,200 sequences uploaded to the GISAID open-access database "from at least 17 countries".

"Most sequences were uploaded from India, the United Kingdom, USA and Singapore," the WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic on Tuesday.

The WHO recently listed B.1.617 -- which counts several sub-lineages with slightly different mutations and characteristics -- as a "variant of interest".

But so far it has stopped short of declaring it a "variant of concern".

That label would indicate that it is more dangerous than the original version of the virus by for instance being more transmissible, deadly or able to dodge vaccine protections.

Biden’s Covid team split over decision to send vaccine doses abroad (Politico)

The sudden decision, made at the highest levels, came after more than a month of intense internal debate. Senior officials in the White House and National Security Council had repeatedly rebuffed requests from leaders of health agencies, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to send doses abroad. The officials backing the exports cited weekly internal projections that showed the U.S. would have tens of millions of doses to spare. Their opponents urged Biden to wait until the U.S. had authorized more shot makers and was further along in its own vaccination campaign.

[...]

An FDA inspection earlier this month found that Emergent had not adequately addressed the issues that led to the contamination at its Baltimore plant. And AstraZeneca has not announced another manufacturing partner, though two individuals with knowledge of the situation say the company is eyeing a new, well-known contractor in the U.S.

[...]

Administration officials across the White House, State Department and health agencies have for weeks debated sending abroad doses from J&J, AstraZeneca and a third company — Novavax, which is expected to seek U.S. authorization this summer — either through COVAX or directly to certain countries, according to three people familiar with the matter, including two senior administration officials. But top White House aides have repeatedly quashed those plans, citing concerns about future production issues and the need to ensure the U.S. can meet demand at home.

The debate came to a head in early March when a cross-agency group focused on the Covid-19 response that included top staffers at HHS, CDC and USAID pushed the administration to begin donating potentially hundreds of millions of doses over the next five months, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Supporters used the internal vaccine supply projections to make their case, showing the U.S. had a plethora of doses that it could ship to countries in need.

Yet top White House aides rejected that recommendation over concerns that the domestic stockpile was not large enough yet — and that the optics of sending doses abroad during a big push to make vaccines more available to U.S. citizens. In subsequent weeks they repeatedly overruled administration health experts who felt it was a mistake to keep millions of doses in storage as outbreaks intensified across the world.