working at it,good for them
How COVID-19 vaccines can adapt to new variants
The coronavirus vaccine from the manufacturer Pfizer-BioNTech. Photo by Friso Gentsch/picture alliance via Getty Images
About 1.5 million people in the United States are getting a COVID-19 shot each day, and the White House has said it’s on track to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of vaccinating 100 million people during his first 100 days in office. Biden announced Thursday that the country had purchased
another 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, which he said could be enough to cover 300 million people by the end of July. But the administration is still working to get
shots into arms at a faster pace, since a speedy nationwide vaccination effort is key to getting the pandemic under control.
New, more transmissible variants of the coronavirus — some of which have been shown to affect the performance of COVID-19 vaccines — highlight the need for mass vaccination. That’s because studies have shown that these vaccines can
prevent severe disease, hospitalization and death even against some of these newer variants. Drugmakers are evaluating how they can
modify existing vaccines to target variants, but it will take time to both develop those shots and present them to the Food and Drug Administration with the hope of securing emergency use authorization.
Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are working on booster shots that could be given to people who have already received their vaccines. AstraZeneca, whose shot has not yet been authorized in the U.S., has said it’s in the process of developing
a new version of its vaccine that will target a coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa. The company’s first vaccine, which has been
recommended for use by a group of independent advisors to the World Health Organization, was found to have lower efficacy against the variant.
Wearing two masks at the same time offers more protection from the coronavirus, according to recent research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Associated Press reported that wearing a
surgical mask under a cloth mask blocked around 80 percent of viral particles. That’s twice the percentage of particles that were blocked by a single mask, either cloth or surgical. Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday that the American public will need to continue masking up for “
several, several months” as the vaccination effort carries on.
Baltimore City Public Schools have started to reopen, but only a fraction of students are in attendance so far. Out of roughly 80,000 students who go to public schools there, 2,000 have
returned for in-person learning, and an expanded reopening was recently delayed for the youngest students to address concerns over health and safety. This school system’s approach is a reflection of the broader debate playing out in communities across the country as the national push to reopen public schools intensifies, even as educators, parents and school officials disagree over the risks involved.
The CDC released
safety guidelines Friday that schools can use to craft their reopening strategies, adding that there’s “strong evidence now that in-person schooling can be done safely,” according to the Associated Press.
Native communities have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus. Indigenous people are around twice as likely to die from COVID-19 compared to white people, and when the disease infects elders, communities risk losing valued “keepers of tribal history and culture,” Kaiser Health News reported. The pandemic has “accelerated” the threat to Indigenous languages, which are often spoken by elders, as well as the passing down of traditions that must be shared orally. Still, community members are
using technology to facilitate communication and preserve cherished aspects of their culture.
Being reinfected with COVID-19 — contracting the disease more than once — is a possibility that’s been confirmed by scientists. It’s also a phenomenon that occurs “regularly” with the common cold, which is caused by four other coronaviruses. But according to Kaiser Health News, “many states aren’t rigorously tracking or
investigating suspected cases of reinfection” when it comes to the novel coronavirus. Researchers are also not entirely sure how long a person who’s been infected with the virus may maintain natural immunity after their initial infection.
Have a burning science question — pandemic related or otherwise — or a favorite science story from this week? Email us at sciencedesk@newshour.org
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Different countries have different procedures and standards when it comes to evaluating the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. The United Kingdom
approved AstraZeneca’s vaccine back in December, but it did not approve Moderna’s
until early January, a little less than a month after it was authorized for emergency use in the U.S.
While approval in one country doesn’t mean a vaccine will inevitably be authorized in the U.S., it is a good indicator of which vaccines — of the many in development across the globe — are considered safe and effective, according to other governments and researchers. As vaccines like AstraZeneca’s are approved in more and more countries, that wider use generates valuable data that can be used by all nations that are deciding whether or not to authorize it within their own borders.