Most people who have recovered from Covid-19 have similar levels of immunity against future infection to those who received a coronavirus vaccine, a study by Public Health England found, offering early hope against fears of a short-lived immunity spurred on by reports of people catching the virus twice, though the researchers warn that those with immunity may still be able to carry and transmit the virus to others.
KEY FACTS
Naturally acquired immunity from a previous Covid-19 infection provides 83% protection against reinfection when compared with people who have not had the disease before, government researchers found in a study of more than 20,000 healthcare workers.
The study, which has not yet been peer reviewed for rigor by other scientists, shows that this protection lasts for at least five months and is at a level just below that offered by vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech (95%) and Moderna (94%) and significantly above that of the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca (62%), though manufacturers don’t know for how long this immunity lasts.
The figures suggest reinfection is relatively rare — occurring in fewer than 1% of the the 6,614 people who had already tested positive for the disease — though the scientists warned that while “those with antibodies have some protection from becoming ill with Covid-19 themselves,” early evidence suggests that they can carry and transmit the virus to others.
“It is therefore crucial that everyone continues to follow the rules and stays at home, even if they have previously had Covid-19, to prevent spreading the virus to others,” Public Health England wrote.
The study will continue to follow participants for another 12 months to determine “how long any immunity may last, the effectiveness of vaccines and to what extent people with immunity are able to carry and transmit the virus,” as well as investigate the highly-contagious new variant of coronavirus spreading across the U.K..
CRUCIAL QUOTE
Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist and Professor of Molecular Oncology at Warwick Medical School in England, said an important takeaway from the study is that we don’t yet know how long antibody protection will last outside of the five month window. He said it is “possible that many people who were infected during the first wave of the pandemic may now be susceptible to re-infection.” Young said it will be interesting to see whether people previously infected with Covid-19 and are subsequently vaccinated have “an even longer-lived protective immune response” and whether or not these findings hold true for the new virus variant currently spreading in the U.K..
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
The information gathered from reinfection cases could prove important as the pandemic progresses, especially when it comes to designing and implementing an effective vaccination program and deciding whether to ease lockdown measures. Whether or not those who are immune to serious illness are capable of transmitting the infection to others will be a crucial deciding factor.
WHAT WE DON’T KNOW
It’s not yet clear for how long the protection provided by vaccines last. This will have to be studied over time, as with this case of natural immunity, and is something manufacturers are already doing. Moderna believes their vaccine offers at least a year’s protection against disease. Whether or not this protection prevents individuals from infecting others will also need to be figured out.
BIG NUMBER
384,784. That’s how many people have died from Covid-19 in the U.S. since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins university. According to CDC projections, this figure is set to grow 25% in the next three weeks. At the moment, more than 23 million people have contracted the disease in the U.S..
At least 60 sitting members of Congress — more than one in 10 — have tested positive for the coronavirus or are believed to have had Covid-19 at some point since the pandemic began. The list includes 44 Republicans and 16 Democrats.
That’s a higher proportion than the general population. As of Wednesday, a bit fewer than one in 14 Americans are known to have had the virus, according to a New York Times database, though many more cases have probably gone undetected.
Five House members have reported positive testssince the attack on the Capitol last week, when many lawmakers were holed up in a secure location together and some refused to wear masks — a situation that angered several Democrats, including Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, one of those who has since tested positive. Congress’s attending physician warned members afterward that it was possible they were exposed while sheltering and recommended that they get tested.
Congress has struggled to stem the spread within its ranks in recent weeks. Most members who have tested positive have done so since the election in November, as coronavirus cases have surged across the country.
Representative Jake LaTurner, Republican of Kansas, said he received word just after the attack on the Capitol last Wednesday that he had tested positive, and did not return to the House floor for a vote early on Thursday.
Representative Gus Bilirakis of Florida and Representative Michelle Steel of California, both Republicans, were absent from the House floor when the mob entered the Capitol because each had received positive test results earlier that morning. Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, said on Sunday that he had tested positive after exposure to Mr. Bilirakis, with whom he shares a residence.
More than 4,400 people in the country died of the coronavirus on Tuesday, the day before lawmakers were set to charge President Trump with inciting last week’s violence at the Capitol.
As America slogs through this grimmest of winters, there is no relief in the daily tabulations of coronavirus-related deaths: More than 4,400 were reported across the United States on Tuesday, according to a New York Times database, a number once unimaginable.
Yet even as Covid-19 touches thousands of families, the nation is distracted by the political crisis gripping Washington in the last days of the Trump administration.
Tuesday’s death count, which set another daily record, represented at least 1,597 more people than those killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The U.S. death toll, already the world’s highest by a wide margin, is now about 20,000 shy of 400,000 — only a month after the country crossed the 300,000 threshold, a figure greater than the number of Americans who died fighting in World War II.
But much of the nation’s attention is focused on the fallout from the Capitol siege, prompted in part by President Trump’s efforts to prevent Congress from certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the November election.
On Wednesday, the House will vote to formally charge Mr. Trump with inciting violence against the country. House lawmakers have formally notified Vice President Mike Pence that they will impeach the president if Mr. Pence and the cabinet do not remove Mr. Trump from power by invoking the 25th Amendment.
As people in the country wait to see how Mr. Trump’s tenure will end, they have also focused on the stories of the five people who were left dead after last week’s rampage — in particular, the death of Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who was overpowered by the mob and struck on the head with a fire extinguisher.
“Brian is a hero,” his brother Ken Sicknick said. “That is what we would like people to remember.”
Each coronavirus death is no less painful to the families and friends who have lost loved ones. Among the latest victims are a revered basketball coach, a travel writer who loved country winters and an architect who had survived the Holocaust.
“This next phase reflects the urgency of the situation we face,” he said. “Every vaccine dose that is sitting in a warehouse rather than going into an arm could mean one more life lost or one more hospital bed occupied.”
We know that the vaccines now available across the world will protect their recipients from getting sick with Covid-19. But while each vaccine authorized for public use can prevent well over 50% of cases (in Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna‘s case, more than 90%), what we don’t know is whether they’ll also curb transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
That question is answerable, though—and understanding vaccines’ effect on transmission will help determine when things can go back to whatever our new normal looks like.
The reason we don’t know if the vaccine can prevent transmission is twofold. One reason is practical. The first order of business for vaccines is preventing exposed individuals from getting sick, so that’s what the clinical trials for Covid-19 shots were designed to determine. We simply don’t have public health data to answer the question of transmission yet.
The second reason is immunological. From a scientific perspective, there are a lot of complex questions about how the vaccine generates antibodies in the body that haven’t yet been studied. Scientists are still eager to explore these immunological rabbit holes, but it could take years to reach the bottom of them.
Acting the part
Vaccines work by tricking the immune system into making antibodies before an infection comes along. Antibodies can then attack the actual virus when it enters our systems before they have a chance to replicate enough to launch a full-blown infection. But while vaccines could win an Oscar for their infectious acting job, they can’t get the body to produce antibodies exactly the same way as the real deal.
From what we know so far, Covid-19 vaccines cause the body to produce a class of antibodies called immunoglobulin G, or IgG antibodies, explains Matthew Woodruff, an immunologist at Emory University. IgG antibodies are thugs: They react swiftly to all kinds of foreign entities. They make up the majority of our antibodies, and are confined to the parts of our body that don’t have contact with the outside world, like our muscles and blood.
But to prevent Covid-19 transmission, another type of antibodies could be the more important player. The immune system that patrols your outward-facing mucosal surfaces—spaces like the nose, the throat, the lungs, and digestive tract—relies on immunoglobulin A, or IgA antibodies. And we don’t yet know how well existing vaccines incite IgA antibodies.
“Mucosal immunology is ridiculously complicated,” says Woodruff. “Rather than thinking of immune system as a way to fight off bad actors, it’s really a way for your internal environment to maintain some sort of homeostatic existence with a really dynamic outside world,” as you breathe, eat, drink, and touch your face.
People who get sick and recover from Covid-19 produce a ton of these more-specialized IgA antibodies. Because IgA antibodies occupy the same respiratory tract surfaces involved in transmitting SARS-CoV-2, we could reasonably expect that people who recover from Covid-19 aren’t spreading the virus any more. (Granted, this may also depend on how much of the virus that person was exposed to.)
But we don’t know if people who have IgG antibodies from the vaccine are stopping the virus in our respiratory tracts in the same way. And even if we did, scientists still don’t know how much of the SARS-CoV-2 virus it takes to cause a new infection. So even if we understood how well a vaccine worked to prevent a virus from replicating along the upper respiratory tract, it’d be extremely difficult to tell if that would mean a person couldn’t transmit the disease.
Making it real
Because of all that complication, it’s unlikely that immunological research alone will reveal how well vaccines can prevent Covid-19 transmission—at least, not for years. But there’s another way to tell if a vaccine can stop a person from transmitting a virus to others: community spread.
As more and more people get both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine (and wait a full two weeks after their second dose for maximum immunity to kick in), public health officials can see how fast case counts fall. It may not be a perfect indicator of whether we’re stopping the virus in its tracks—there are many other variables that can slow transmission, including lockdown measures—but for practical purposes, it’ll be good enough to help make public health decisions.
Plus, even though the data we have from clinical trials isn’t perfect, it’s a pretty good indicator that the vaccine at least stops some viral replication. “I can’t imagine how the vaccine would prevent symptomatic infection at the efficacies that [companies] reported and have no impact on transmission,” Woodruff says.
Each of the vaccines granted emergency use in western countries—Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and AstraZeneca—have all shown high efficacy in phase 3 clinical trials. (The Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines from China and the Bharat Biotech vaccine in India have also been shown to be effective at preventing Covid-19, but aren’t widely approved for use yet.)
Frustratingly, it’s just going to take more time to see if people who got the vaccine are involved in future transmission events. That’s why it’s vital that even after receiving both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, all individuals wear masks, practice physical distancing, and wash their hands when around those who haven’t been vaccinated—just in case.
In the first week of 2021, roughly two people died from Covid-19 in the U.S. every minute, amid a struggling national vaccination effort, soaring coronavirus cases and the deadliest day of the pandemic yet.
KEY FACTS
According to data from the Covid Tracking Project, 19,418 people died from the disease in the first seven days of 2021.
The U.S. is the country hardest hit by the novel coronavirus — more than 4,000 people died on Thursday, the deadliest day yet of the pandemic, and over 355,000 people have died from the disease since the pandemic began.
Experts warn that things are likely to get worse before they get better as hospitals across the country are stretched to breaking point — hospitals in LA are reportedly rationing oxygen and many are running out of beds.
More than 132,000 Americans are currently admitted in hospitals for Covid-19-related care.
Widespread vaccination, which could help turn the tide against the virus, has failed to gain momentum and the U.S. is way behind its inoculation targets.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that only 28% of the more than 21 million vaccines it has distributed have been used — many are reportedly languishing in storage.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
President-elect Joe Biden has said he will release all available Covid-19 vaccine doses for immediate use upon taking office, ending Trump’s strategy of saving doses to ensure people have access to a recommended second shot. Some countries, such as the U.K., have decided to space out doses beyond what manufacturers recommend in a bid to provide as many people as possible with some degree of immunity. Experts are torn on the strategy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends the vaccines are distributed as intended, with a second shot after a 21 or 28 day gap. The British medical regulator, and more recently the World Health Organization, say the second shot can be delayed, although they do not agree on how long this should be.
CRUCIAL QUOTE
Biden warned that the U.S. is falling “far behind” what is needed to control the pandemic. Trump’s approach would take “years,” he said.
WHAT WE DON’T KNOW
A highly infectious variant of coronavirus, first discovered in the U.K., could be circulating in the U.S.. At least 52 cases have been reported so far. Fortunately, scientists do not believe the variant is able to evade the recently-developed vaccines.
The United States on Friday surpassed 300,000 daily coronavirus cases, the second alarming record this week. The number, which roughly equates to the population of St. Louis, Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, comes about two months after the country reported 100,000 coronavirus cases a day for the first time, and one day after more than 4,000 people died from the virus, also a record.
The United States has reported 21.8 million infections and 367,458 deaths.
Wednesday’s storming of the U.S. Capitol did not just overshadow one of the deadliest days of the coronavirus pandemic — it could have contributed to the crisis as a textbook potential superspreader, health experts warn.
Thousands of Trump supporters dismissive of the virus’s threat packed together with few face coverings — shouting, jostling and forcing their way indoors to halt certification of the election results, many converging from out of town at the president’s urging. Police rushed members of Congress to crowded quarters where legislators say some of their colleagues refused to wear masks as well.
“This was in so many ways an extraordinarily dangerous event yesterday, not only from the security aspects but from the public health aspects, and there will be a fair amount of disease that comes from it,” said Eric Toner, senior scholar at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Experts said that resulting infections will be near-impossible to track, with massive crowds fanning out around the country and few rioters detained and identified. They also wondered if even a significant number of cases would register in a nation overwhelmed by the coronavirus. As Americans shared their shock and anger at the Capitol breach Thursday, the United States reported more than 132,000 people hospitalized with the virus, and more than 4,000 deaths from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus — making it the highest single-day tally yet.
“It is a very real possibility that this will lead to a major outbreak but one that we may or may not be able to recognize,” Toner said. “All the cases to likely derive from this event will likely be lost in the huge number of cases we have in the country right now.”
Trump devotees who flocked to the capital this week said they were unconcerned by the virus, belittling common precautions known to slow its spread and echoing the president’s dismissive attitude toward rising case counts. Trump had encouraged them to gather in defiance of his election loss: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” he tweeted last month. “Be there, will be wild!”
Mike Hebert, 73, drove two days from Kansas to participate. Marching toward the Capitol on Wednesday with an American flag, he said he did not feel the need to wear a face covering.
“I am as scared of the virus as I am of a butterfly,” said Hebert, adding that he is a veteran who was shot twice in Vietnam.
Sisters Courtney and Haley Stone left New York at 11 p.m. to make it to the Capitol by morning so they could quietly counterprotest, draped in Biden gear. “Do you want a mask? I have one,” Haley, 22, asked a Trump supporter, only to be rebuffed.
“Oh, you believe in the mask hoax?” the woman replied.
Health experts predicted Wednesday’s events will contribute to an ongoing case surge in the greater Washington region. The average number of daily new infections in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia reached a record high Thursday, and current covid-19 hospitalizations in the District have risen 19 percent in the past week.
They also noted differences with other large gatherings such as Black Lives Matter protests. Fewer people wore masks during the Capitol protests and riot, they said, and crowds were indoors.
“If you wanted to organize an event to maximize the spread of covid it would be difficult to find one better than the one we witnessed yesterday,” said Jonathan Fielding, a professor at the schools of Public Health and Medicine at UCLA.
“You have the drivers of spreading at a time when we are bearing the heaviest burden of this terrible virus and terrible pandemic,” he said.
Calling in to CBS News Wednesday, Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) described her evacuation to a “crowded” undisclosed location with 300 to 400 other people.
“It’s what I would call a covid superspreader event,” she said. “About half the people in the room are not wearing masks, even though they’ve been offered surgical masks. They’ve refused to wear them.”
She did not identify the lawmakers forgoing face coverings beyond saying they were Republicans, including some freshmen. The Committee on House Administration says it is a “critical necessity” to mask up while indoors at the Capitol, and D.C. has a strict mask mandate.
“It’s certainly exactly the kind of situation that we’ve been told by the medical doctors not to be in,” Wild said.
“We weren’t even allowed to get together with our families for Thanksgiving and Christmas,” she said, “and now we’re in a room with people who are flaunting the rules.”
At least one member of Congress has tested positive since the mob spurred an hours-long lockdown. Newly elected Rep. Jacob LaTurner (R-Kan.) tested positive for the coronavirus late Wednesday evening, according to a statement posted on his Twitter account. It said he is not experiencing symptoms.
“LaTurner is following the advice of the House physician and CDC guidelines and, therefore, does not plan to return to the House floor for votes until he is cleared to do so,” the statement said.
Luke Letlow, a 41-year-old congressman-elect from Louisiana, died of covid-19 last month.
Any infections among members of Congress and their staff will be far easier to contact-trace than those among rioters, said Angela Rasmussen, an affiliate at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University.
“It certainly would have been easier if they were detained by Capitol police and identified, but testing suspects may be something to consider as law enforcement begins to identify them,” Rasmussen said in an email.
She noted that some may try to evade identification and criminal charges, and said she is deeply concerned for the households and communities they might expose.
“I think really rigorous contact tracing of people who are not identified as being present on Capitol grounds will not be possible,” she said.
People with COVID-19 who don’t exhibit symptoms may transmit 59 percent of all virus cases, according to a model developed by CDC researchers and published Jan. 7 in JAMA Network Open.
Since many factors influence COVID-19 spread, researchers developed a mathematical approach to assess several scenarios, varying the infectious period and proportion of transmission for those who never display symptoms according to published best estimates.
In the baseline model, 59 percent of all transmission came from asymptomatic transmission. That includes 35 percent of new cases from people who infect others before they show symptoms and 24 percent from people who never develop symptoms at all. Under a broad range of values for each of these assumptions, at least 50 percent of new COVID-19 infections were estimated to have originated from exposure to asymptomatic individuals.
The more contagious variant first identified in the U.K. and since found in six states underscores the importance of the model findings, said Jay Butler, MD, CDC deputy director for infectious diseases and a co-author of the study.
“Controlling the COVID-19 pandemic really is going to require controlling the silent pandemic of transmission from persons without symptoms,” Dr. Butler told The Washington Post. “The community mitigation tools that we have need to be utilized broadly to be able to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 from all infected persons, at least until we have those vaccines widely available.”
Whether vaccines stop transmission is still uncertain and was not a scenario addressed in the model.
England will enter a national lockdown until at least mid-February to stem the spread of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Monday, as the so-called U.K. variant continues to spread throughout the country.
KEY FACTS
Coronavirus is again surging in the U.K. because of a new, more transmissible mutation of Covid-19 called B.1.1.7.
The lockdown will close all non-essential businesses and restaurants will be required to limit service to takeout orders.
Schools will be closed to all students except for the children of essential workers.
Johnson’s announcement comes after Scotland imposed a similar lockdown earlier Monday.
Around half a million Americans are now getting a coronavirus vaccine shot every day. But that pace must accelerate considerably if the United States has any hope of quashing the virus in 2021.
Public health experts differ on how quickly that might happen — and when things might start to feel “normal” again around the country.
To inaugurate our first Health 202 of the new year, we asked eight experts for their predictions.
After all, we all want to know when we can go to concerts and ballgames again. Or even just go to the office. (Let’s start small.)
We asked two questions. The first has to do with when the United States will reach “herd immunity” — the point at which enough people are immune to a virus, either by recovering from it or getting vaccinated against it. Herd immunity generally kicks in when about 70 percent of people are immune, although experts differ on the precise threshold.
To reach herd immunity with the coronavirus, approximately 230 million Americans would need the vaccine. As of yesterday, just 4 million had gotten the first of two shots. Daily immunizations have increased considerably over the past few days, with about 500,000 people getting the shot each day, but experts say that number needs to at least double and ideally quadruple.
We also asked these experts when they personally expect their lives to return to normal.
Here are their responses, edited lightly for clarity and brevity.
When will enough Americans be vaccinated for the U.S. to reach herd immunity, based on how things look right now?
Carlos del Rio, professor of medicine and global health at Emory University:
“At the current pace it will take a really long time. … I think if we can get our act together and start vaccinating 1 million people a day like President-elect Biden is promising, then we can get to 260 million people getting at least one dose … more or less or by late August or early September.If we really scale up and get to 3 million per day, then we can get to 260 million people in [less than] 100 days or three months. Can we do it? Yes! But it will require coordination, leadership and funding. So, as you see, my answer is: It depends.”
Eric Topol, director and founder of Scripps Research Translational Institute:
“I think by July, if we get 2 to 3 million people vaccinated per day, and even sooner, if we have a rapid neutralization antibody assay to be able to defer those who have had a prior infection and mounted a durable immune response. Yes, that is optimistic, but it can be done.”
Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University:
“There is a lot of disagreement in the scientific literature about the herd immunity threshold, which is certain to vary from place to place. I don’t think anyone responsible would confidently say what it is, and would never put forward a single number for the U.S. as a whole. Rather, the key question is how rapidly we inoculate people who have a high risk of mortality conditional on infection — most older folks and some late middle-aged folks with severe chronic conditions. Prioritizing them for vaccination will yield the greatest benefit in reducing covid-19-related mortality, regardless of when herd immunity is hit.”
Jesse Goodman, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Georgetown University:
“I am not sure that in the near future we will reach a level of population immunity where the virus will be virtually shut down, as we are accustomed to with measles. Through immunity due to vaccination, combined, unfortunately, with infections in the unvaccinated, we should reach a state where the risk of exposure is reduced due to a mostly immune population. While cases will still occur, our health system will no longer be stressed and large outbreaks should be less common.
“I am hopeful we can get to such a situation in the last quarter of this year, provided vaccine production, access and acceptance go well and no mutant viruses arise that gain the ability to escape current vaccines.”
Kimberly Powers, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:
“That question is difficult to answer, as there is considerable uncertainty around the level of immunity we would need in the population to achieve herd immunity, along with the speed with which we can expect widespread vaccine uptake to occur.”
Leana Wen, public health professor at George Washington University and former Baltimore health commissioner:
“Right now, vaccine distribution is progressing at an unacceptably slow speed, and at this current rate, it will take years to reach herd immunity — if ever. If we are able to pick up speed by many times in January, there is still a chance we could substantially slow down the infection and perhaps approach herd immunity in 2021.”
Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at Harvard University:
“I think you mean ‘will enough Americans be vaccinated to reach the herd immunity threshold?’ My answer is possibly not because we don’t know if the vaccines protect enough against transmission for the threshold to be achievable, and because the new variant may increase that threshold substantially.”
Michael Osterholm, chairman of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota:
“There are three factors that will independently determine when enough Americans will either be protected from covid-19 via vaccination or development of antibody following actual infection.
“First, when will there be sufficient vaccine produced and distributed so everyone can receive their two doses? This includes vaccinating those who may have immune protection from actual infection but are vaccinated anyway to increase durable protection. Second, will enough people agree to be vaccinated? And finally, what is the durability of vaccine-induced protection over time?
“Each of these factors will play a role in achieving local, regional or national herd immunity protection. I feel confident we can achieve the first factor of sufficient vaccine by the late summer or early fall. But ultimately, the second two factors, how many will be vaccinated and how durable is immune protection will determine the answer to this question. I hope, when considering all three factors, it will be late summer or early fall, but we all realize hope is not a strategy.”
When do you expect your own daily life to feel similar to pre-pandemic times?
Carlos del Rio:
“I am hoping to be ‘close to normal’ by December 2021 more or less. However, as a physician seeing patients, I will probably continue to wearing a face mask and goggles for much longer.”
Eric Topol:
“In 2022.”
Jay Bhattacharya:
“Given the changes that the previous year has had on my professional and personal life, I do not expect my daily life to ever feel similar to pre-pandemic times. More broadly though and given the disappointingly slow roll out of the vaccine to the vulnerable in many states, I anticipate that American society will start to feel more like normal by April 2021.”
Jesse Goodman:
“Hopefully late this year, life should begin to feel similar to pre-pandemic times. However, it is likely that both great vigilance and some social distancing will still be needed, particularly if the population is not nearly all vaccinated. In addition, we may well require periodic immunization against the current and, possibly, other emerging coronavirus variants.”
Kimberly Powers:
“I expect daily life to feel more normal by sometime this summer, but I think it will be 2022 before some mitigation measures can be fully relaxed. And I expect that our society will feel ongoing consequences of this pandemic — physical, mental, emotional, and economic — for years to come.”
Leana Wen:
“I don’t know. I was much more optimistic a few weeks ago. But given the lag in vaccine rollout thus far and how under-resourced our public health systems are, I am concerned things for much of 2021 will feel more like 2020 than 2019.”
Marc Lipsitch:
“I think that sometime in the second half of the yearthere will be enough vaccination in the U.S. and some other countries that we will begin to treat covid-19 more like seasonal flu, which is deadly to large numbers of people but does not overwhelm health care and does not cause us to curtail normal social contact. This is because with enough vaccine in those at high risk of death and hospitalization, transmission may continue (at a reduced level thanks to some immunity in the population from prior infection and vaccine) but the outcomes will be less severe.”
Michael Osterholm:
“I’m not sure it ever will. We will not go back to a pre-covid-19 normal. We will instead exist in world with a new normal. And even that will in part be determined by the availability of adequate vaccine supply to cover everyone in high, middle and low income countries. I look forward to the day when my office hours are as they were pre-covid-19.”
HENRY KOTULA 