70 Percent Covid Vaccination Rate May Be in Reach, New Poll Suggests
The survey found big increases over last month in Latinos getting the shot and in unvaccinated people who say they have made an appointment.
People lined up in Santa Ana, Calif., last week to receive vaccinations.Credit.Jae C. Hong/Associated Press
May 28, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
A new poll suggests the United States could be on track to vaccinate at least 70 percent of the adult population against Covid-19 by this summer.
In the latest survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 62 percent of respondents said they had received at least one dose of a vaccine, up from 56 percent in April. At the same time, about a third of those categorized as “wait and see” reported that they had already made vaccine appointments or planned to do so imminently.
Segregating the unvaccinated and limiting access to gyms and dining areas were not measures aimed specifically at getting soldiers vaccinated, he said, “but there is an enticement.”
The private sector, sometimes with the encouragement of government, is also trying to make life a bit nicer for the vaccinated, emphasizing the privileges rather than perceived infringements on freedom bestowed by the protection of the vaccines.
It’s baseball season, and fans have clamored to get back to normal, to a place where the wave used to mean something other than the next surge of the coronavirus. Major League Baseball is heavily promoting inoculations, and stadiums have become a new line of demarcation, where vaccinated sections are highlighted as perks akin to V.I.P. skyboxes.
In fact, B.1.1.7 seems to have the edge over nearly every variant identified so far. At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said B.1.1.7 made up 72 percent of cases in the country.
“We’re really seeing B.1.1.7 pushing out other variants decisively,” said Emma Hodcroft, an epidemiologist at the University of Bern.
The variants identified in California and New York turned out to be only moderately more contagious than older versions of the virus, and much of their initial success may have been luck. The overall boom in cases last fall amplified what might otherwise have gone undetected.
Swift mask mandates and travel restrictions, an international treaty and the creation of new bureaucracies are among the recommendations presented to the W.H.O.
This New Covid Vaccine Could Bring Hope to the Unvaccinated World
The German company CureVac hopes its RNA vaccine will rival those made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. It could be ready next month.
A volunteer in CureVac’s clinical trial received a shot in Brussels in March.Credit.Yves Herman/Reuters
May 5, 2021, 8:55 a.m. ET
In early 2020, dozens of scientific teams scrambled to make a vaccine for Covid-19. Some chose tried-and-true techniques, such as making vaccines from killed viruses. But a handful of companies bet on a riskier method, one that had never produced a licensed vaccine: deploying a genetic molecule called RNA.