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July 19, 2021 - Brief Issue 230

The Coronavirus Daily Brief is a daily news and analysis roundup edited by New America’s International Security Program and Arizona State University.

The Daily Brief will be on hiatus July 20.

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Top Headlines

Unvaccinated Americans Least Concerned About Delta Variant; Also Behind Most Hospitalizations (Health & Science)

Why the Race to Secure Vaccine Doses Was So Unequal (Health & Science)

Indonesia Is the New Epicenter of the Pandemic (Around the World)

First Positive Cases in the Olympic Village (Around the World)

South Korea to Bring Home Sailors from Navy Destroyer with Outbreak (Around the World)

UK PM: Please, Please, Please, Be Cautious; Many Travelers to UK Can Skip Quarantine Starting Today, But Not Those From France (Around the World)

Appeals Court Allows CDC Cruise Line Regulations to Continue for Now (U.S. Politics & Government)

Travel Industry Groups Frustrated with Biden’s Covid Czar (U.S. Politics & Government)

Economists Expect Economy to Cool But Continue to Grow (U.S. Economy)

Facebook and Biden Administration Clash Over Vaccine Misinformation (U.S. Society)

Health & Science

There have been 34,080,890 coronavirus cases in the United States, and 609,021 people have died (Johns Hopkins). The United States has administered 337,740,358 vaccine doses, with 56% of all Americans having received their first vaccine dose and 48.6% fully vaccinated. Among adults aged 18 or older  68.2% have received at least one dose, and 59.4% are fully vaccinated (U.S. CDC). Worldwide, there have been 190,526,225 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 4,091,672 deaths.

Unvaccinated Americans Least Concerned About Delta Variant; Also Behind Most Hospitalizations

A CBS News poll finds that unvaccinated Americans are the group least concerned about the Delta variant (Politico). Politico writes, “While 48 percent of ‘not fully/not vaccinated’ respondents in the poll released Sunday said they were concerned about the Delta variant, 72 percent of fully vaccinated Americans are worried.” The poll helps illustrate the challenges focusing the effort to get Americans vaccinated.

At the same time, according to hospitals, unvaccinated Americans make up the “vast majority” of cases of Covid related hospitalization in the United States (WSJ). The Wall Street Journal writes, “AdventHealth, which manages 41 hospitals across seven largely Midwestern and Southern states, said about 97% of roughly 12,700 Covid-19 patients treated this year were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. The data excludes some AdventHealth hospitals managed under joint ventures.” Moreover, Jeffrey Kuhlman, chief quality and safety officer for AdventHealth, told the Journal that most of the vaccinated people who have been hospitalized have immune issues that affect their resistance to the virus. Another hospital chain, HCA, reports that fewer than 1% of the hospitalizations it deals with involve vaccinated individuals. 

Why the Race to Secure Vaccine Doses Was So Unequal

In an exclusive report, the Associated Press takes a look at the race to secure vaccine doses and examines all of the reasons why the inequity between rich and poor nations was greater than many predicted. Some experts believe that the way the pandemic played out in the beginning -- affecting wealthy nations first -- was one of the root causes for the disparity in vaccine access, since those nations were also the ones that were most able to develop and manufacture the vaccines. In many cases, export restrictions kept companies from sharing doses or even intellectual property with other countries. “The disparity was in some ways inevitable; wealthy nations expected a return on their investment of taxpayer money. But the scale of the inequity, the stockpiling of unused vaccines, the lack of a viable global plan to solve a global problem has shocked health officials, though it wasn’t the first time,” writes the AP. Even the global purchase plan to provide doses to poorer nations failed; it was so underfunded that it couldn’t compete with the competition from wealthier nations. And then, once vaccines were bountiful in wealthy countries, instead of sharing or donating excess doses, they lowered the age for vaccine eligibility, meaning more of their population could be inoculated. But the failure to provide vaccines across the globe ensures that COVID-19 will continue to spread and mutate. “A lot of these multinational organizations, these plans, these coalitions, they don’t have teeth to enforce what they think is a fair and equitable way to distribute resources,” said Dr. Ingrid Katz, an infectious disease researcher at the Center for Global Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. She said the key question is whether vaccines and essential medications are a commodity or a right. “If it’s going to be a commodity, we’re going to keep walking down this road every time we have something like this,” she said.

Around the World

Asia

Indonesia Is the New Epicenter of the Pandemic

Southeast Asia is now experiencing the suffering that ravaged India, Brazil, and the United States, with deaths from Covid-19 soaring and hospitals overwhelmed and oxygen supplies dwindling. Indonesia is at the center of it -- and of the pandemic as a whole now, with the world’s highest count of new infections. While Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand are all facing their largest outbreaks yet, Indonesia’s cases and deaths have skyrocketed in the past month. Many scientists blame the Delta variant, which is now spreading unchecked in the densely populated Java island, as well as Bali. “Bekasi Regional Public Hospital, where some Covid patients have waited days for treatment, has erected large tents on its grounds, with beds for up to 150 people. Nearby in Jakarta, the capital, a long line of people waited for hours outside a small dispensary, hoping to fill their portable tanks with oxygen,” writes the New York Times. On Thursday, Indonesian authorities reported almost 57,000 new cases, the highest number yet, and on Friday, they reported a record 1,205 deaths. But health experts say even those numbers are an undercount; Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia, estimates that the true number of cases is three to six times higher. 

First Positive Cases in the Olympic Village 

Two South African soccer players have become the first athletes inside the Olympic Village to test positive for Covid-19. An official with the South African soccer team also tested positive. All three individuals are now at the Tokyo 2020 isolation facility, the South African Olympic committee said (AP, WaPo). Tokyo Olympic organizers also said on Sunday that another athlete had tested positive but that they were not residing in the Olympic Village; the athlete was only identified as “non-Japanese.” The Olympic Village on Tokyo Bay is meant to house 11,000 athletes and thousands of support staff. IOC President Thomas Bach said last week there was “zero” risk of athletes in the village passing on the virus to Japanese or other residents of the village. The Tokyo Games are set to open on Friday. 

South Korea to Bring Home Sailors from Navy Destroyer with Outbreak

On Sunday South Korea sent military aircraft to replace the entire 301-member crew of a navy destroyer on an anti-piracy mission off East Africa after a coronavirus outbreak infected nearly 70 members (AP). Two multi-role aerial tankers are bringing the new crew and will then take home 301 sailors aboard the 4,400-ton-class destroyer Munmu the Great, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Health Ministry officials said. They said 68 sailors have so far tested positive and the results of tests for 200 crew are still pending. Fifteen sailors were hospitalized in an African nation. None of the crew have been vaccinated as the ship left for its mission in February, before the vaccination campaign began. The cause of the outbreak wasn’t announced, but authorities suspect the virus spread onboard after the destroyer docked at a harbor to load goods in late June. 

Europe

UK PM: Please, Please, Please, Be Cautious; Many Travelers to UK Can Skip Quarantine Starting Today, But Not Those From France

Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged the British public to be cautious and said they must self-isolate when required even as Covid-19 restrictions are lifted in England today. "Please, please, please, be cautious," Johnson said in a video from his own period of self-isolation, which was announced earlier on Sunday (Reuters). "Go forward tomorrow into the next step with all the right prudence and respect for other people, for the risks that the disease continues to present and, above all, please please please when you're asked to get that second jab ... please come forward and do it." 

On Friday, British medical officials said that fully vaccinated travelers arriving in England from other European nations on Britain’s medium-risk amber list will no longer have to quarantine, but they exempted France from this list because of the Beta variant that is circulating there. Travelers from France — or anyone who has traveled to France in the previous 10 days — must quarantine for five to 10 days in their own accommodation and they will need a coronavirus test on Day 2 and Day 8. Excluding France from the easing of quarantine restrictions is the U.K.’s first action against the Beta variant. Clinical trials have shown that vaccines offer less protection against the Beta variant. Bonus Read: “Europe’s Country-by-Country Travel Restrictions Explained,” (Politico).

U.S. Government & Politics

Appeals Court Allows CDC Cruise Line Regulations to Continue for Now

On Saturday, the 11th Circuit Appeals Court stayed a Florida federal judge’s order blocking the implementation of the CDC”s plan for regulating the return of cruise lines (Politico). The appeals court order did not discuss its reasoning in depth. The decision split the court 2-1. The original lawsuit was brought by Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis who viewed the CDC’s plan as a policy harming Florida’s economy.

Travel Industry Groups Frustrated with Biden’s Covid Czar

Politico reports that a number of travel industry groups see Biden’s Covid Czar Jeff Zients as an obstacle to the removal of restrictions on travel, and are now trying to approach other administration officials so as to do an end-run around him in discussions of policy (Politico). The report comes amid an internal administration debate over travel restrictions. Politico writes, “Some senior officials in the Biden administration, including Cabinet secretaries and doctors, have expressed support for easing the restrictions as long as travelers coming into the U.S. can prove they have received vaccinations or provide a negative Covid test. But the administration remains resistant to asking businesses, including airlines, to require proof of vaccination, according to two senior administration officials familiar with the deliberations.” 

U.S. Economy

Economists Expect Economy to Cool But Continue to Grow

The Wall Street Journal reports that in a survey it conducted, economists said they expected the U.S. economy to cool off from its red-hot recent growth, but that the economy will continue to grow at a slower pace (WSJ). For example, Ellen Zentner, Chief U.S. Economist at Morgan Stanley told the Journal, “We’ve moved into the more moderate phase of expansion,” adding, “We’re past the peak for growth, but that doesn’t mean something more sinister is going on here and that we’re poised to then drop off sharply.” The Journal writes, “Economists surveyed this month by The Wall Street Journal, on average, estimated that the economy expanded at a 9.1% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the April to June period. That would mark the second-fastest pace since 1983, exceeded only by last summer’s rapid rebound when businesses started to reopen and governments began easing pandemic-related restrictions. Many economists also estimate U.S. gross domestic product surpassed its pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter. The survey respondents see growth cooling to a 7% pace in the third quarter and drifting down to a 3.3% rate in the second quarter of 2022.”

U.S. Society

Facebook and Biden Administration Clash Over Vaccine Misinformation

Facebook and the Biden administration clashed over the weekend regarding the issue of vaccine misinformation and its spread on social media (NYT). On Friday, President Biden said that social media platforms’ handling of misinformation was “killing people.” On Sunday Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned,  “These platforms have to recognize they’ve played a major role in the increase in speed and scale with which misinformation is spreading,” while speaking on CNN. Meanwhile the Times notes, “In a blog post on Saturday, Facebook called on the administration to stop ‘finger-pointing’ and laid out what it had done to encourage users to get vaccinated.” In the post, Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity wrote, “The Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies,” adding, “The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the U.S. has increased.” The post cited company data showing that 80% of Facebook users either want to or have been vaccinated. The Times writes, “The White House’s frustration with Facebook has mounted over several months, people with knowledge of the matter have said. While the Biden administration asked Facebook to share information about the spread of misinformation on the social network, the company refused to cooperate, the people have said.”

Analysis & Arguments

Elisabeth Rosenthal writes that booster shots are likely even if they prove  unnecessary (NYT).

Tara Haelle writes on Houston-born Covid vaccine that could help vaccinate the developing world (Texas Monthly).

Michael Brendan Dougherty provides a critical assessment of public health messaging on vaccination and some suggestions on what may work better to get skeptics vaccinated (National Review).

 Readers can send in tips, critiques, questions, and suggestions to coronavirusbrief@newamerica.org.

The Brief is edited by David Sterman and Emily Schneider with Senior Editor Peter Bergen.

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