Covid-19 Live Updates: Delta Variant and Vaccine News

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The U.S. is preparing a plan to offer vaccine boosters as early as fall. A man waiting to receive his second shot of a vaccine. The first booster shots would most likely go to nursing home residents and health care workers. Credit… Christopher Occhicone for The New York Times With a stockpile of at least 100 million doses at the ready, Biden administration officials are developing a plan to start offering Covid-19 booster shots to some Americans as early as this fall, even as researchers continue to hotly debate whether extra shots are needed, according to people familiar with the effort. The first boosters are likely to go to nursing home residents and health care workers, followed by other older people who were near the front of the line when vaccinations began last year. Officials envision giving people the same vaccine they originally received. They have discussed starting the effort in October but have not settled on a timetable. While many outside experts argue there is no proof yet that the vaccines’ high level of protection against severe disease and hospitalization is waning in the United States, administration officials say they cannot afford to put off figuring out the logistics of providing boosters to millions of people. The spotty nature of the nation’s disease-reporting network makes the question of timing even trickier. The effort comes as the nation is gripped by a virus wave driven by the more contagious Delta variant. Hospitals in states like Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi are again swamped with patients, the vast majority of them unvaccinated. The administration is also carefully watching Israel, where some data suggests an uptick in severe disease among older adults who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine early in that nation’s campaign, according to people who have reviewed it. Some officials are concerned that even if a decline in protection merely results in mild or asymptomatic infections, those infected could still spread the virus and prolong the pandemic. Any booster policy decision is fraught, officials said, because the administration does not want to undermine public confidence in what have proved to be powerfully effective vaccines. Nor does it want to overvaccinate Americans when many other countries have yet to even begin vaccination campaigns in earnest, increasing the threat of dangerous new variants that could spread to the United States and evade the vaccines. Benjamin Mueller and Noah Weiland contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research. Read more
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The U.S. real estate market begins to cool after bump from the pandemic. Single-family homes under construction in Valley Center, Calif., in June. Credit… Mike Blake/Reuters The pandemic created a frenzied real estate market in much of the United States that has yet to let up, with demand for housing still outpacing the number of homes coming on the market, giving sellers a heavy upper hand in most of the country. But economists say the market cooled off a bit in July — perhaps a sign that the wild price appreciations of the past year may have scared off some buyers who prefer to wait until things calm down, to stay put or to continue renting. Nationally, U.S. median home prices held steady from June to July at $385,000. That’s up 10.3 percent from last year at this time, according to the latest data from Realtor.com. It’s slower growth than the 12.7 percent increase in June 2021, and it marks the third month in a row in which the year-over-year gains have slowed. “It is just moving from super hot to normal hot,” said Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, which has not yet released its July data. “It is still a sellers’ market.” Economists say the rise of the more contagious Delta variant of the virus is likely to accelerate the hybrid and work-from-home trend that is driving buyers with the means to do so to upgrade to larger houses — a trend that often takes people farther from the urban core or to less expensive cities. And interest rates remain low, another factor in surging housing demand. Read more
Doubts, anger and anxiety as another pandemic school year begins. Protesters rallied for and against mask mandates outside the Cobb County School District headquarters in Marietta, Ga., on Thursday. Credit… Audra Melton for The New York Times It was supposed to be a new school year, a fresh start with relative normalcy. Instead, it has turned into a politicized, anxiety-provoking experience for many parents, students and educators. This is the third academic year disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. And while there is now broad, bipartisan support for classrooms to be open five days a week, that was based on reassuring evidence from last year that the coronavirus did not spread widely inside schools. The surge in the Delta variant has introduced new uncertainty. Across the United States, there have been more than twice as many daily virus cases this week as there were one year ago. But it is unclear whether the Delta variant presents more danger in U.S. schools than previous forms of the virus. “Essentially, a year later, we’re in much the same place we were in last year with the challenge of keeping children safe,” said Raymond C. Hart, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of urban districts. Cobb County, in the Atlanta suburbs, may be a glimpse of what’s to come. Virus cases in the county, as of Friday, had risen by 76 percent in the last 14 days. But the school district has chosen not to have a mask mandate, and in the first two weeks of school, which began on Aug. 2, the district reported more than 700 coronavirus cases among students and staff members. (Overall enrollment is 110,000.) On Wednesday, the entire fifth grade at East Side Elementary School in Marietta was sent home because so many children had tested positive for the virus. At Walton High School, Holly Golden Simmel’s son, a junior, was exposed to the virus twice on his first day, in homeroom and in a science class. On the third day, he was exposed yet again. But he could still go to school, under the district’s policy, as long as he was asymptomatic and wore a mask for 10 days. Other students could remain unmasked. “I was incredulous,” Ms. Golden Simmel said. “This is a disaster in the making.” On Thursday evening, there were protests outside the Cobb County district’s offices in Marietta. Ms. Simmel and nearly 100 other parents — who want masks in schools and blame the superintendent for the lack of a mandate — clashed with a few who do not. Nationally, 62 percent of parents support masking requirements for unvaccinated students and school personnel, according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. But in an indication of how politicized the debate remains, more than two-thirds of Republican parents oppose school mask mandates. And nine states, led by Republican governors or legislative majorities, have banned school mask mandates, according to research from the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank. The next big debate may be about vaccine mandates, especially for teachers and school personnel. Some liberal-leaning cities, like Los Angeles and Chicago, are requiring all school staff members to be vaccinated. New York is planning to offer teachers the choice between vaccination and weekly testing. But a quarter of states, generally those that lean conservative, have banned vaccine mandates for public employees like teachers and school staff members, according to the Center on Reinventing Public Education. Leaders of the national teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, said in recent days that they supported vaccine mandates for their members. Dana Goldstein and Read more
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