As COVID-19 vaccination rates pick up around the world, people have reasonably begun to ask: how much longer will this pandemic last? It’s an issue surrounded with uncertainties. But the once-popular idea that enough people will eventually gain immunity to SARS-CoV-2 to block most transmission — a ‘herd-immunity threshold’ — is starting to look unlikely.
Substantial surges in new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Europe and Brazil offer a worrying preview of what the United States faces in the coming weeks and months as the plummeting number of cases here begins to level off.
Americans on the right half of the political spectrum have tended to underplay the risk of Covid-19. They have been less willing to wear masks or avoid indoor gatherings and have been more hesitant to get vaccinated.
CHICAGO — Officials in at least 17 states have committed in recent days to opening coronavirus vaccine appointments to all adults in March or April, part of a fast-moving expansion as states race to meet President Biden’s goal of universal eligibility by May 1.
Alaska’s top doctor awoke last Tuesday not knowing her state would throw open access to coronavirus vaccines that afternoon, making everyone 16 and older eligible for immunization.
Two messages that morning made clear to the chief medical officer, Anne Zink, that it was time to act. The first was a warning from a nurse on a statewide call that appointments for a large weekend clinic were going unclaimed. The second was a question from the governor, Republican Mike Dunleavy, who had seen the latest immunization data and phoned Zink to ask, “Why are we slowing down?”
