With over 70% of the population vaccinated, (the magic range for herd immunity is ~70-80%), major US cities – i.e. New York and California are now reopening. The announcement came as new cases in New York dropped below ~1000 per day …
and deaths below 50 (8 and 21 deaths reported in New York and California respectively, today). In New York the announcement was celebrated with many festivities including fireworks New York Habor. It is anticipated that New York will be fully open back to 100% “normal” by July 1, 2021.
Given the nature and transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2, it is almost a miracle that safe and effective vaccines have been able to restore normality within 1.5 years! It is amazing how effective the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines have been. Now the questions that remain are:
1) How long will immunity from vaccination last,
2) there have been some acute side effects from vaccination (mostly minor), and the question is will there perhaps be any longer-term effects, and
3) will the vaccines adequately protect from emerging variants of concern (currently the delta variant first identified in India is the most concerning).
It is almost inevitable that new variants of concern will emerge with time; already there are reports of the delta “plus” variant identified in Nepal which combines features of the variant first identified in South Africa (beta; K417N), with the delta variant. As the virus circulates and given more time in its new host (us!), mutations will arise and some will lead to emerging new variants. “Vaccination” pressure may also lead to “evolution” of escape variants.
For now, it not surprising that places high vaccination rates are reaching herd immunity, and returning to “normal life”. Of course, vaccine distribution around the world has been sketchy, and there is vaccine hesitancy, and there are many hotspots still grappling with the disease. The news is not very good at the moment for many places in South America, and over the past weekend Portugal went into lockdown. To give an example of the issues related mostly to vaccine hesitancy, in Australia, Melbourne is now mostly open with some restrictions in place but cases are starting to creep up in Sydney and a mask mandate has been implemented. We committed to a less effective and controversial vaccine, and many are waiting for Pfizer doses to arrive; for now the AstraZeneca vaccine is not recommended to people under 60!
Hopefully, we can all beat the race against variants but again, the current thinking is that COVID-19 in some form is here to stay … more about that later… For now, we can get of encouragement by places that have reached herd immunity and are returning to “normality”.
Until next time …