Fauci emphasized that the health agency did not explicitly tell unvaccinated people to go without masks but instead communicated to vaccinated individuals that they will not get infected indoors or outdoors.
“People either read them quickly, or listen and hear half of it. They are feeling that we’re saying: ‘You don’t need the mask anymore.’ That’s not what the CDC said,” he told the news outlet.
Reaction to the CDC’s guidance has been applauded by those who say it shows the efficacy of vaccinations against the coronavirus and criticized by those who say it is too soon to forgo masks.
Here are some significant developments:
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Drone companies are preparing to deliver coronavirus vaccines in rural U.S.
Although more than one-third of Americans are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, millions of people still have not received a single dose.
Reasons for not getting a shot vary — some don’t want one, while others say they’ll wait a bit longer to decide. And then there are people who want to get vaccinated but are in areas so remote that they can’t easily get to a typical vaccination site.
They include people working on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico or living in rural areas far from the nearest doctor’s office or pharmacy. Drone companies are positioning themselves to deliver refrigerated medical products to those people. If the plans don’t pan out in time to combat the coronavirus crisis, then they hope to be set up to assist swiftly in the world’s next big health scare.
Malawi becomes the first African country to incinerate expired vaccine doses
Malawi set nearly 20,000 doses of expired coronavirus vaccine doses ablaze Wednesday in a move health officials said was intended to reassure skeptical citizens that they would not receive expired shots.
“The incineration was done publicly to ensure transparency and bring confidence in our covid-19 vaccination exercise,” read a statement released by the Malawi Health Ministry. “The public should be assured that the issues of vaccine potency and safety are taken seriously in our country.”
The southeastern African country became the first on the continent to publicly burn old doses, according to the BBC. The World Health Organization had originally told countries not to get rid of expired vaccines but has since changed its guidance.
“While discarding vaccines is deeply regrettable in the context of any immunization program, WHO recommends that these expired doses should be removed from the distribution chain and safely disposed,” the WHO’s Africa office said in a news release Monday.
Pandemic fallout in D.C., Maryland and Virginia includes fresh rush of cash for governments
Government leaders in Richmond, Annapolis and the District are wrestling with a side effect of the coronavirus pandemic that they did not anticipate: excess revenue.
Virginia expects a budget surplus of at least $500 million at the end of this fiscal year, and Maryland and D.C. are looking at smaller but significant bumps in finances.
The windfalls are the last thing fiscal planners expected a year ago, when the region’s biggest jurisdictions were mired in terrifying projections of budget shortfalls and a cratering economy because of shutdowns and job losses related to the pandemic.
But massive federal stimulus spending helped states cover the costs of addressing the coronavirus and its impact on society, then turbocharged a surprisingly quick economic turnaround, leading to surges in tax revenue. Now billions in aid from the federal American Rescue Plan Act are about to land in state and municipal coffers, providing unprecedented extra resources.
House Republicans seek to force vote on mask requirements despite Capitol physician’s guidance
House Republicans rebelling over rules on mask-wearing are pressing for a vote Wednesday on relaxing the guidelines, with Democrats telling them that if they want to be maskless they need to be vaccinated.
Defying House rules, several GOP members were in the House chamber Tuesday night and Wednesday without masks, some posing for selfies, and drawing fines for their actions in violation of rules established amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Several Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and members of the House GOP Doctors Caucus, are pushing for a vote on a resolution urging Brian P. Monahan, the attending Capitol physician, to “take timely action to provide updated mask-wearing guidance” for vaccinated lawmakers and staff in the House chamber and committee spaces.
The resolution states that “the continued House mask mandate hinders the ability of the House to properly and effectively conduct the people’s business.”
Analysis: Winning a million dollars appears to be good incentive for vaccination
Part of the coronavirus relief bill passed earlier this year provided funding to states that could be used for vaccination programs. The state of Ohio decided to do something unexpected with that money: Last week, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) announced that any adult who had been vaccinated could enter a lottery to win one of five $1 million jackpots. On Tuesday, the state’s website for the “Vax-a-Million” contest went live.
State data suggest that the proposal has had the intended effect, at least to a degree. The seven-day average number of Ohioans getting their first shots increased the day after DeWine’s announcement and continued heading up through Sunday. It’s worth noting that this happened while the number of vaccinations nationally remained flat, suggesting that the trend in Ohio was driven by something different.
This medical student sent 900 pounds of supplies to help her family’s city in India
Noor Shaik felt heartbroken and helpless after talking on the phone with her 83-year-old grandmother in India last month.
“Here I was, enjoying my life and my family in the United States, while over there, everyone was worried about going into lockdown,” said Shaik, 27, a medical student at Thomas Jefferson University’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College in Philadelphia.
In late April, after learning that the coronavirus crisis in India was becoming more dire by the hour and the death count was growing, Shaik said she turned to her mother in their Bensalem, Pa., home and told her: “We have to do something.”
Shaik never imagined that the comment would lead to a family room full of masks, gowns and medical equipment that will soon be shipped to hospitals in and around Bangalore, an Indian city of more than 8 million where her grandmother and several aunts and uncles live.
Booking a trip to Europe this summer? Here are 6 things to expect.
After a year of restricted access to Europe, American travelers will finally be welcomed back to the continent. The European Union announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to open its borders to vaccinated Americans and others.
Even before that, a recent wave of promising travel news has fueled traveler optimism. According to data from the travel booking app Hopper, searches for airfare to Europe shot up 47 percent after a hopeful forecast for American travelers in April.
With more countries beginning conditionally to open their borders, here’s what you need to know as you book travel to Europe this year.
With the return to the office looming, Americans are booking ‘vacci-cations’
After more than a year of working full-time from inside her San Bruno, Calif., home, her husband and oldest child almost always nearby, Victoria Gryn needs a change of scenery. She is packing up her family and decamping for a month this summer to a rented condo in Costa Rica, where she will spend two of those weeks doing her job remotely for the Silicon Valley insurance company where she works.
This summer presents an unusual opportunity for many office workers in the United States. It is sandwiched between a wider availability of vaccines and office reopenings, kids are out of (real and virtual) school, and travel restrictions are being eased across the country. Technology has also caught up to remote work over the past year, with a massive rollout of new options like improved video chat and collaboration tools.
CDC director grilled on mask guidance at Senate hearing
At a Senate hearing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was questioned on her agency’s guidance last week that fully vaccinated Americans can mostly stop wearing masks.
Several Republican senators questioned why the CDC did not issue the guidance sooner and whether the new guidance was leading to confusion and inconsistencies in how businesses and local leaders were applying the rules.
Walensky said the guidance and its timing were driven strictly by new scientific findings — not by outside pressure or political considerations. She pointed to studies that emerged in the days leading up to the issuance of the guidance. Many of the new studies showed evidence that vaccines were working to reduce transmission.
Walensky said: “That scientific data was enough for us to move forward. People said: ‘We moved too slow. We moved too fast.’ We moved at the speed that science gave us.”
At the same time, Anne Schuchat — another high-ranking CDC official who testified at the Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Wednesday — acknowledged that political difficulties have muddled the CDC’s ability to communicate its guidance clearly.
“For all of us in public health and certainly for our colleagues around the world, the messaging has been really difficult, very conflicting messages that left Americans confused,” she said. “I do think the messaging environment of this past pandemic has been really tough.”
Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) asked Walensky why mask requirements varied so much across states and cities.
“We are not a homogeneous United States. We have counties that aren’t vaccinated,” Walensky said. “Those are locally driven policies.”
In Montgomery County, fully vaccinated people exempt from mask mandate
The Montgomery County Council voted Tuesday to further loosen pandemic restrictions, lifting the masking mandate for vaccinated residents and allowing businesses to operate at greater capacity.
Effective 5 p.m. Tuesday, most businesses in the county can operate at 75 percent capacity. There are no capacity restrictions on outdoor gatherings, and the cap for indoor gatherings is now 250.
The council, sitting as the board of health, lifted the mask mandate for vaccinated residents. Masks are no longer required outdoors in the county, and vaccinated residents can also remove the coverings indoors — but those who have yet to get their shots should keep their masks on when inside.
Masks are still required to be worn in schools, on public transport, in health-care settings and in businesses that require them. Maryland lifted its masking requirement Saturday, following new guidance last week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Why are Mexico’s coronavirus deaths falling? The ‘Biden wall’ could be part of the answer.
MEXICO CITY — After suffering one of the world’s deadliest coronavirus outbreaks, Mexico is witnessing a significant decrease in cases — and the U.S. vaccination campaign may be one reason, scientists say.
Confirmed deaths from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, have tumbled more than 85 percent since January, when a brutal second wave swept the country. Mexico City, the epicenter of the pandemic, went off high alert this month for the first time in a year. Officials say the capital’s coronavirus alert could soon turn from yellow to green — that is, from medium risk to low.
The abrupt decline in cases has brought relief to exhausted hospital workers and some sense of normalcy to a battered nation. During the weekend, the capital’s massive Azteca Stadium opened to fans for the first time in 14 months.
Hiring troubles post pandemic prompt businesses to look toward the machines
The United States today is producing roughly the same amount of goods and services as before the coronavirus pandemic — but with 8.2 million fewer workers, equal to the combined payrolls of every employer in Virginia, Arizona and Iowa.
Greater productivity is the rare silver lining to emerge from the crucible of covid-19. The health crisis forced executives to innovate, often by accelerating the introduction of industrial robots, advanced software and artificial intelligence that reduced their dependence upon workers who might get sick.
Even as millions of Americans remain jobless, retailers, food processors, energy producers, manufacturers and railroads all are stepping up their use of machines. Automation may also get a lift from President Biden’s infrastructure plan, which will encourage domestic investment in cutting-edge factories, according to Bank of America.
Can the ‘Hot Vax Summer’ live up to the hype?
Officially, the promise of mass vaccinations is a return to schools and offices and maskless mall outings and stress-free visits to Grandma and Grandpa. Unofficially? A return to non-distanced dating and wild bar nights and all-night dance parties and making out with strangers unrestrained by the fear of disease.
Granted, some people were already partying as if the coronavirus wasn’t a thing. But with about half of eligible Americans on the verge of full vaccination, the reluctant homebodies of the pandemic are ready to return to the nightlife with the abandon of college freshmen.
It’s as if vaccinated America is newly single and rebounding hard after leaving a terrible relationship. And there is an emerging consensus about what’s coming next.
Yeah! Summer! Hookups! Parties! The only thing wilder than what America’s hedonists are planning for this summer is, perhaps, their expectations. Can “Hot Vax Summer” possibly live up to the hype?
European Union reopens its borders to those with accepted vaccines
BRUSSELS — The European Union on Wednesday agreed to open its borders to vaccinated Americans and others after more than a year in which travel into the bloc has been severely restricted, a spokesman said Wednesday.
The decision will throw open Europe’s doors to tourist, business and other travel after a long stretch in which most people from outside the bloc’s 27 nations have not been allowed in. It will hearten those who have missed wandering the continent’s ancient streets — as well as Europeans whose livelihoods depend on tourist cash.
E.U. leaders will need to give formal approval next week to the plan that was agreed by their ambassadors on Wednesday, but their sign-off is not in doubt. The precise timing of when the borders will actually open is not yet clear, European Commission spokesman Christian Wigand said, and depends in part on individual countries setting up systems to check vaccination status.
“Today E.U. ambassadors agreed to update the approach to travel from outside the European Union,” Wigand told reporters. The European Council “now recommends that member states ease some restrictions, in particular for those vaccinated with an E.U.-authorized vaccine.”
That rule means that all the vaccines currently available in the United States would be greenlighted, but vaccines currently manufactured in Russia and China would not be.
As part of the same decision, the European Union plans to expand a list of countries deemed to have their pandemic under sufficient control that all residents can travel regardless of their vaccination status. They will also implement what they called an emergency brake — an automatic halt to travel from countries where cases are spiking, in a bid to hold back more dangerous variants of the coronavirus.
E.U. countries are separately continuing to work on an effort to streamline travel inside the bloc, which is currently stymied by a patchwork of rules about quarantines, tests and vaccines. Progress on that program, informally deemed a “covid passport,” could be announced as early as Friday.