Around world, new virus cases soaring
As vaccinations increase in U.S., more-contagious variants worry health officials
Ambulances filled with patients lined up in Brazil as nations around the world set records Thursday for covid-19 deaths and new coronavirus infections. The disease surged even in some countries that have kept the virus in check.
Brazil this week became just the third country, after the U.S. and Peru, to report a 24-hour death toll above 4,000. India hit a peak of almost 127,000 new cases in 24 hours, and Iran set an infection record for the thirdstraight day, reporting nearly 22,600 new cases.
In the United States, the vaccine news is positive. For much of the world, things look bleak.
As of Thursday, just short of 20% of the U.S. population was fully vaccinated, giving some 66 million people a strong measure of protection against a disease that has killed more than 560,000 Americans. New Mexico became the first state to get shots in the arms of 25% of its residents.
By contrast, Covax — the World Health Organization-backed push for equitable distribution — aims to secure enough doses to cover up to 20% of the people in participating countries by the end of this year.
In the Brazilian state of
Rio de Janeiro, emergency services are under their biggest strain since the pandemic began, with ambulances carrying patients of all ages to crowded hospitals struggling to care for everyone. Authorities say more than 90% of the state’s intensive-care unit beds are in use, and many cities are reporting people dying at home for lack of treatment.
“We’re already living the third wave,” said Adriano Pereira, director of the mobile emergency care service in Duque de Caxias, an impoverished city outside Rio.
Less than 3% of the country’s 210 million people have received two vaccine doses, according to Our World in Data, an online research site.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to get vaccinated, saying in a tweet: “Vaccination is among the few ways we have to defeat the virus. If you are eligible for the vaccine, get your shot soon.”
In a country of 1.4 billion people, only 11 million are fully vaccinated.
South Korea reported the highest daily jump in cases since Jan. 5, and health authorities were expected to announce measures to strengthen social distancing.
In Thailand, which has reported only 95 deaths, health officials reported the country’s first local cases of the variant first detected in Britain. The news comes at a time when only 1% of the population has been vaccinated and as Thais prepare to celebrate their New Year’s holiday next week, typically a time of widespread travel.
VARIANTS’ SPREAD
In the U.S., variants of the coronavirus are increasingly defining the next phase of the pandemic, taking hold in ever-greater numbers and eliciting pleas for a change in strategy, according to government officials and experts.
The highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant that originated in the United Kingdom now accounts for 27% of all cases in this country and is the most common variant, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday. Two other variants, which took root in South Africa and Brazil and also are more transmissible, are cropping up with increasing frequency in parts of the U.S.
The worrisome development comes as officials and scientists warn of a possible fourth surge of infections.
The bottom line on all three variants remains positive, however. In laboratory tests, vaccines are just as effective against the one identified in the United Kingdom as they are against the original strain, and there is only a modest drop-off in their effectiveness against the other two.
And the number of U.S. deaths continues to decline — possibly a sign that mass vaccinations are beginning to protect older Americans and other highly vulnerable populations.
The overall picture hides problems in some places, however. One or more of the variants — which also cause more severe disease than the original version — are racing through the Northeast and the Midwest. That has prompted officials in some communities to ask for more vaccine than they would receive under the government’s population-based formula.
Michigan has averaged more than 7,000 new cases a day — ranking it second in the nation behind New York. Michigan also has the highest number of new cases per capita, according to Johns Hopkins University.
In Detroit, which is about 80% Black, officials said they plan to start visiting homes to talk about the importance of people protecting themselves with vaccinations and how to sign up to get shots.
“We’re going to knock on every residential door in the city, making sure every Detroiter knows how to make an appointment,” said Victoria Kovari, an executive assistant to the mayor.
Other Midwestern states have also seen troubling signs, including a school district in Iowa where 127 students and five staff members tested positive or are presumed positive.
In Massachusetts, the Public Health Association called on Republican Gov. Charthat lie Baker to reinstate public health measures. It urged limiting dining capacity and other indoor activities, saying a surge in cases and hospitalizations followed his decision to loosen restrictions.
“We are currently in a race between the vaccines and the variants,” Carlene Pavlos, the group’s executive director, said Thursday. “Without these public health measures, even more innocent lives will be needlessly lost.”
STUDENTS SITTING OUT
Meanwhile, large numbers of students are not returning to the classroom even as more schools reopen for fulltime, in-person learning, according to a survey released by the Biden administration.
Even as national covid-19 rates continued to ebb in February, key measures around reopening schools barely budged.
Nearly 46% of public schools offered five days a week of in-person learning to all students in February, according to the survey, but just 34% of students were learning full time in the classroom. The gap was most pronounced among older kindergarten-through-12th-grade students, with just 29% of eighth graders getting five days a week of learning at school.
President Joe Biden came no closer to meeting his goal of having most elementary schools open five days a week within his first 100 days. School offerings were nearly identical to what was reported a month before. But among eighth-grade students, there was a slight shift from fully remote to hybrid learning.
The findings are based on a survey of 3,500 public schools
serve fourth-graders and 3,500 schools that serve eighth-graders. It’s based on data from schools in 37 states that agreed to participate.
The data capture a month that saw building momentum in the push to reopen schools. In February, the CDC declared that schools could safely reopen with masks, social distancing and other precautions. Days later, Biden reframed his goal around re- opening schools after critics said his previous pledge lacked ambition.
Since then, schools have continued to reopen as more teachers get vaccinated and as some states loosen social-distancing requirements. More recent estimates from the data service Burbio found that, as of Sunday, more than 55% of K-12 students were back in the classroom full time.
As in January, the new federal data showed dramatic disparities based on region and race. In the South, slightly more than half of all fourth graders were learning entirely at school in February, an uptick from the month before.
The Northeast saw a decrease in the rate of students learning in the classroom five days a week, from 23% to 19%.
Overall, more than a third of students in the South and Midwest were learning entirely at school, compared with less than a quarter in the West and Northeast, according to the survey.
White students continued to be far more likely to be back in the classroom.
GLOBAL GAP
The global gap between the vaccine “haves” and
“have-nots” is widening, fueling frustration and potentially extending the pandemic.
“It’s unconscionable,” said Zain Rizvi, an expert on access to medicine at Public Citizen, a watchdog group. “Many countries will be lucky if by the end of the year they are close to where the U.S. is now.”
So far, the vaccine race has been dominated by a handful of relatively wealthy nations, most notably: Israel, where nearly 57% of the population was fully vaccinated as of April 7; Chile, at about 22%; and the United States. Britain has been vaccinating rapidly as well, but it has delayed second doses as it tries to get a first dose to as many people as possible.
Meanwhile, Our World in Data estimates based on publicly reported data that at least 5% of the global population has had a dose, with the real number (incorporating China’s nonpublic tally) perhaps between 6% and 7%.
Priority-supply deals, export restrictions and other means of hoarding by rich nations have contributed to a severe global supply crunch and left many countries scrambling.
Covax has delivered 38 million doses, providing potentially lifesaving shots to places and people that might otherwise go without. Yet divided between 100 economies, those doses amount to only a thin layer of protection.
Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said “the big picture is more troubling than reassuring, because we have a lot of things that are not going well.”
Some countries are still waiting for their first shots to arrive or have just started vaccinating. A recent WHO estimate suggested that just 2% of the 690 million doses administered to date globally went to Africa.
A chorus of experts and officials have argued — for months — that rich countries have not only a moral obligation to close the gap, but an interest in doing so. With a fraction of the world’s population vaccinated, they argue, the global economy won’t recover and the virus will mutate and spread.
“The clock is ticking,” said Moon, “and the situation is not getting better.”
Information for this article was contributed by Michelle R. Smith, Felipe Dana, Mauricio Savarese, Corey Williams, Collin Binkley, Cedar Attanasio and Alexandra Jaffe of The Associated Press; by Lenny Bernstein, Ariana Eunjung Cha, Terrence McCoy, Jacqueline Dupree, Emily Rauhala and Hannah Sampson of The Washington Post; and by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Carl Zimmer of The New York Times.