No images? Click here Click here to subscribe to the daily brief. June 10, 2021 - Brief Issue 211 The Coronavirus Daily Brief is a daily news and analysis roundup edited by New America’s International Security Program and Arizona State University. Please consider making a donation to support our ongoing analysis of the most important news and headlines surrounding Covid-19. Top Headlines U.S. Vaccination Rates Fall With Less Than One Month to go Until July 4 Target (Health & Science) D.C., Maryland Hospitals To Require Employee Vaccinations (Health & Science) WTO to Start Vaccine Supply Negotiations (Health & Science) Germany Using Rapid Tests, Proof of Vaccination as Key to Everyday Freedoms (Around the World) Infections Increase in Mongolia in Spite of Half the Population Being Vaccinated with Sinopharm (Around the World) U.S. To Donate 500 Million More Doses To Covax (U.S. Government & Politics) Nevada Man Charged With Stealing More Than 500 Blank Vaccination Records (U.S. Society) Filipino American Nurses Account For Disproportionate Percentage of Covid Deaths (U.S. Society) Health & Science There have been 33,414,114 coronavirus cases in the United States, and 598,765 people have died (Johns Hopkins). The United States has administered 372,495,525 vaccine doses, with 51.8% of Americans having received their first vaccine dose and 42.5% fully vaccinated (U.S. CDC). Worldwide, there have been 174,437,839 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 3,758,421 deaths. U.S. Vaccination Rates Fall With Less Than One Month to go Until July 4 Target The U.S. vaccination rate has plummeted, endangering President Joseph Biden’s goal of getting at least one dose into the arms of at least 70% of the adult population by July 4. With the U.S. averaging fewer than one million shots per day, the national vaccination rate has fallen by more than two-thirds from its height of 3.4 million in April, reported the Washington Post. While the drastic fall in rates has been observed in every state, the drop has been particularly stark in the South and Midwest. Twelve states have fallen below 15 daily shots per 10,000 residents, with Alabama plummeting to just four shots per 10,000. The good news is that many states have already reached the 70% target, including thirteen states mostly on the East and West Coasts. Last Friday, Anthony Fauci warned on a conference call with community leaders that health officials have already vaccinated the “low-hanging fruit — those people who absolutely want to get vaccinated without you telling them anything.” The key, said Fauci, may be to recruit “trusted messengers who go out there and explain to them why it’s critical for themselves, for their family.” About one-third of Americans have no immediate plans to receive shots, according to polls. Some of the ambivalence appears to stem from a belief that the pandemic is effectively over, although public health officials have warned that widespread immunity is needed to prevent a resurgence. Federal and state governments have gone on a blitz to meet the July 4 target, with many states offering special lottery entries to vaccinated residents. Businesses have also pitched in, offering free consumer goods ranging from doughnuts to cannabis to vaccinated customers. As we reported last week, the White House announced a “month of action” on June 2. Initiatives include a partnership with Black-owned barbershops and salons to raise vaccine awareness, free child care for people getting the shot and contests with prizes ranging from Super Bowl tickets to free airline travel for a year. Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator, told reporters Thursday that he remains confident that the goal of 70% vaccination will be reached on schedule. “We need to bring the vaccines to where people are and answer the questions that people have. And we are confident that more and more people will get vaccinated, leading up to the Fourth of July,” he said (WaPo). D.C., Maryland Hospitals To Require Employee Vaccinations The vast majority of hospitals in both Washington, D.C. and Maryland have agreed in principle to mandate vaccines for employees, officials announced Wednesday, marking some of the first health care centers in the nation to implement immunization requirements for the coronavirus. “We believed this was the right thing to do,” said Jacqueline D. Bowens, president of the D.C. Hospital Association. “What we’re trying to do is what we believe is in the best overall interests of our workforce and the communities we serve,” she added. All D.C. private hospitals have agreed to the measure, while a spokesperson for the District-run United Medical Center said that they are still weighing the issue. Furthermore, the D.C. Hospital Association is allowing members to decide how to deal with noncompliant staff, with some having stated that they are opting for intensive testing as an alternative to termination for the time being. Each hospital will set their own timeline to implement the rules. The mandates in Maryland are being driven by Johns Hopkins Health System and the University of Maryland Medical System, the state’s two largest. While both systems are deferring full implementation of the mandate until at least one vaccine is granted full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, employees who are not vaccinated by September 1 will be required to undergo weekly coronavirus testing and wear protective equipment on the job. At John Hopkins, all new hires must be vaccinated starting on July 1. “We didn’t want to jump to termination right away,” said Johns Hopkins chief executive Kevin Sowers, who estimates that around 79% of employees in the system have already been vaccinated. “We want to try to work with our workforce to help them come along (WaPo).” While federal guidance dictates that employers are free to demand vaccinations from employees, law firms working on behalf of anti-vaccination groups are nonetheless filing lawsuits and sending warning letters to employers throughout the country. Attorneys from Siri & Glimstad, a New York firm known for its legal work for the anti-vaccine movement, has sent warning letters to employers ranging from the Durham County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina to Rutgers University. Legal experts have said it is apparently part of an effort to create a chilling effect among companies. “The message is, ‘Maybe you should reconsider because you don’t want to end up in court,’ ” Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, told the Washington Post. “I think that works.” As we noted yesterday, Houston Methodist, a hospital network in Texas’ largest city, suspended 178 workers without pay for two weeks after a deadline passed for all employees to receive vaccinations. The firm is currently facing a lawsuit filed by 117 employees claiming that Houston Methodist is “forcing its employees to be human ‘guinea pigs’ as a condition for continued employment.” While Siri & Glimstad is not involved in this case, legal experts have observed that the Houston-based firm behind the lawsuit appears to be mimicking its tactics (WaPo). WTO to Start Vaccine Supply Negotiations On Wednesday the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreed to begin formal negotiations on a plan to increase Covid-19 vaccine supply to developing countries but need to reconcile two differing plans: one with a patent waiver and one without (Reuters). South Africa and India, along with many emerging nations, have been pushing for a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights on vaccines and other coronavirus treatments. Proponents of this approach say the waiver would allow local manufacturers to produce the shots which would help address the inequality in supply and distribution. The European Union, backed by Britain, Switzerland, and South Korea presented a plan that it argues would be more effective in boosting supply but does not grant a waiver on IP rights. Last month, the U.S. shifted its position to back a waiver on IP rights, but trade officials wanted the waiver limited to vaccines, meaning it would exclude diagnostics, therapeutics, and medical devices. Around the World Germany Using Rapid Tests, Proof of Vaccination as Key to Everyday Freedoms Germany is gradually reopening: restaurants are allowed to offer dine-in services again, gyms can operate at limited capacity, and hotels are now permitted to host tourists. But all of these activities now require a rapid antigen test for coronavirus with a negative result no older than 24 hours or proof of full vaccination in order to participate. The government is betting on the widespread use of rapid tests along with vaccines to beat the virus and usher in a new normal, one where a nasal swab is the key to basic freedoms. Testing centers have popped up everywhere, in abandoned nightclubs and bars, in wedding tents set up in parks, and even on the backs of bicycle taxis or out of the side of vans. Every resident is entitled to one free test per week, if they want additional tests they must pay for them themselves. There are now 15,000 pop-up testing centers across the country with more than 1,300 in Berlin alone (NYT). The centers have been funded by the government at the cost of millions of euros. “We see that the infection rate here is dropping faster than in other countries who have similar vaccination numbers,” said Prof. Ulf Dittmer, the director of virology at the university hospital in the western city of Essen. “And I think a part of that has to do with widespread testing.” About 23% of Germany’s population have been fully vaccinated and another 24% have received one dose. As of Tuesday, there were about 20.8 infections per 100,000 people in the past week, a number not seen since early October before the second wave began. Infections Increase in Mongolia in Spite of Half the Population Being Vaccinated with Sinopharm In Mongolia, coronavirus cases are surging even though more than half the population has been fully vaccinated using China’s Sinopharm vaccine, prompting health experts to question the effectiveness of the vaccine (NYT). On Wednesday the country reported 1,312 new cases, bringing the total number to almost 70,000, the majority of which were recorded since January. New daily infections have risen more than 70% over the past two weeks. Mongolia’s location, between Russia and China -- two vaccine manufacturing giants practicing vaccine diplomacy -- has helped it secure 4.3 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine and one million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. Chinese vaccines use inactivated coronavirus to trigger an immune response but have been shown in studies to be less effective than the vaccines developed by companies like Pfizer and Moderna, which use mRNA technology. “Inactivated vaccines like Sinovac and Sinopharm are not as effective against infection but very effective against severe disease,” said Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health. “Although Mongolia seems to be having a spike in infections and cases, my expectation is that there won’t be a large number of hospitalizations,” he added. Pakistan Commits $1.1 Billion to Procuring Vaccines On Wednesday Pakistan said it will spend $1.1 billion on securing Covid-19 vaccines in order to inoculate eligible adults. The funds will be enough to buy enough doses to inoculate between 45 and 65 million eligible adults in the country of 220 million (Reuters). Pakistan has already administered 10 million doses and has relied heavily on vaccines from Chinese producers, with three out of six approved vaccines coming from China: Sinopharm, SinoVac, and CanSinoBio. U.S. Government & Politics U.S. To Donate 500 Million More Doses To Covax President Joseph Biden will announce this week that the U.S. will buy 500 million more Pfizer doses for the global Covax initiative, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. According to three anonymous sources, the first 200 million doses will be distributed this year while the rest will be shared in the first half of 2022. Covax, an international program backed by the World Health Organization charged with supplying doses to developing countries, will distribute the supply. Pfizer is selling the doses at a “not-for-profit” price, the sources told the Post. Biden is expected to announce the donation, which has not been officially unveiled, at the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Britain this week. He is expected to be joined by Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. While both Pfizer and the White House declined to comment, Biden said he would announce a plan to reporters as he boarded Air Force One on Wednesday before departing for the summit. “I have one, and I’ll be announcing it,” he told reporters. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told the Post that the news was “an extraordinary development,” adding that the announcement will send “a profound signal in terms of U.S. commitment to global health security and willingness to help end this pandemic for the world and the United States.” As we reported yesterday, Biden is under scrutiny for different reasons by friends both at home and abroad over foreign vaccine delivery. While some members of Biden’s own party are calling for an increased U.S. role in supplying doses to Covax beyond what Biden has thus far offered, European allies have rebuked Biden’s call to lift intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines. In turn, the world has its eyes on the G7 summit, which features the leaders of the world’s seven-largest advanced economies, to announce a plan to tackle the massive international gulf in vaccine availability. While the U.S., U.K. and Canada have all administered at least one dose to over half of their respective populations, fewer than 2% of people in Africa, for instance, have received one. Covax’s goal is to administer two billion doses by the year’s end. Thus far, it has only delivered 82 million (WaPo). U.S. Society Nevada Man Charged With Stealing More Than 500 Blank Vaccination Records The Los Angeles County District Attorney is charging a man from Nevada over an alleged theft of more than 500 blank vaccination cards, the office announced Wednesday. The legal action stems from the April arrest of Muhammad Rauf Ahmed, 46, of Las Vegas, who was caught allegedly stealing the cards from the vaccine center where he worked. Authorities delayed pressing charges until they could determine the street value of the cards. They were eventually judged to be worth “at least $15 apiece” on the black market. The La Verne Police Department in eastern Los Angeles County was contacted on April 27 after a security guard observed Ahmed leaving his workplace at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds vaccination center with the cards in his hand. When two staff members confronted Ahmed at his vehicle, the suspect said he sought to “pre-fill” the cards while taking a break at his car. Officials working at the site recovered 128 cards from his vehicle. After questioning by police, authorities found another 400 blank cards in Ahmed’s hotel room, leading to his arrest. “Selling fraudulent and stolen vaccine cards is illegal, immoral and puts the public at risk of exposure to a deadly virus,” George Gascón, the district attorney in Los Angeles, said in a statement on Wednesday. As we reported yesterday, the FBI has warned that fraudulently using a document with a federal agency’s seal can result in a punishment of a fine or up to five years imprisonment (NYT). Filipino American Nurses Account For Disproportionate Percentage of Covid Deaths While Filipino American nurses represent just 4% of the nation’s registered nurses, they account for around 25% of nurses to have died from Covid-19, reported NBC News on Wednesday. The reasons appear to be multitude, with a paper published in the journal Gender, Work & Organization finding that Filipino nurses are more likely than their white peers to work in intensive care units. Filipinos in the U.S. may also be more prone to underlying health issues associated with severe illness from Covid-19. The 2017-18 California Health Interview Survey, which relies on self-reported data, suggested that Filipino Americans have higher rates of diabetes and hypertension compared to Asian-Americans overall and non-hispanic whites. They are also more likely to be overweight than other Asian-American groups. Around 25% of registered nurses in California are Filipino. Even nurses without additional risk factors may live with high-risk family members, prompting stress and unwillingness to go to work. Zenei Cortez, president of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, said that the high fatality rate for Filipinos has led to more nurses considering quitting the profession. “It’s concerning, because these are seasoned nurses, and if more and more nurses like them quit or leave the profession, then I am worried about what will happen in the future,” she said (NBC). Analysis & Arguments James Palmer explains why China will never cooperate with a coronavirus investigation (Foreign Policy). Alyssa Rosenberg explains how pandemic isolation “warped our brains” (WaPo). Gary Abernathy argues that the minimal pandemic response in parts of rural America has left those communities more culturally isolated than ever before after the rest of the nation shared the common experience of social distancing (WaPo). Readers can send in tips, critiques, questions, and suggestions to coronavirusbrief@newamerica.org. 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