The latest on the coronavirus pandemic and the Omicron variant

About a quarter of the total US population is fully vaccinated and boosted against Covid-19, according to data published Wednesday from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here’s the latest data from the CDC on vaccination efforts in the US:

Note: CDC data on Covid-19 vaccinations are estimates. The agency notes that data on people who are fully vaccinated and those with a booster dose may be underestimated, while data on people with at least one dose may be overestimated. 

Note: CDC data on Covid-19 vaccinations are estimates. The agency notes that data on people who are fully vaccinated and those with a booster dose may be underestimated, while data on people with at least one dose may be overestimated. 

Data comparing infection, hospitalizations and deaths in people who have gotten the Covid-19 vaccine versus unvaccinated people should help convince those who are not vaccinated to get their shots, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said in an interview with Blue Star Families on Wednesday.

When asked what he would say if he had only 30 seconds to persuade someone to get vaccinated, Fauci said this:

He continued: “The latest statistics are an unvaccinated person has a 10 times greater chance of getting infected, a 17 times greater chance of getting hospitalized and a 20 times greater chance of dying compared to a vaccinated person,” he said. 

“Those statistics alone should get you to be really enthusiastic about protecting yourself and your family," Fauci said.

Starbucks is telling employees they will not be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 after all, following last week’s decision by the US Supreme Court to stop a federal mandate on large employers. 

“We respect the Court’s ruling and will comply,” chief operating officer John Culver wrote in a companywide memo Tuesday.

On Jan. 4, Culver had told Starbucks employees that enforcement of a vaccine mandate would begin on Feb. 9 to follow the emergency rule put in place by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In a 6-3 decision, the high court blocked the mandate, saying it overstepped its authority.

He said “the vast majority” of employees at Starbucks are vaccinated.

“We will continue to follow the facts and science as we make our decisions and ensure partners understand their options,” Culver said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Wednesday he hopes a Covid-19 vaccine for children under the age of 5 is available within a month, but it may take longer.

Kids under 5 are the only group for whom the FDA has not approved a Covid-19 vaccine. Those 5 and older are eligible for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said over 53% of their students aged 12 and over are vaccinated but it’s still a slow process.  

 Martinez said there were some encouraging signs. 

“Where I am getting more excited is look what’s happening with our 5 to 11. Almost a third of our students have gotten at least their first shot. When you look at fully vaccinated, we now are over 111,000 students. Almost half of our students are now reaching the first dose. So again, keep in mind the strategies. As cases are stabilizing, we’re expanding consents, we’re expanding testing – at the same time we’re seeing more students get vaccinated," he added.  

Chicago teachers returned to school last week after having previously walked out over Covid-19 mitigation measures. 

Read more about what happened here.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice urged residents to “stack the deck” in their favor by getting vaccinated and boosted against Covid-19 during a briefing Thursday morning. 

Justice was diagnosed with Covid-19 earlier this month and detailed his experience with the virus. 

Justice said he experienced a “blazing headache,” fever, elevated heart rate and high blood pressure. His symptoms also included congestion and a light cough. 

While Justice said he did not receive immediate relief from the monoclonal antibody treatment he was given, he did begin to feel better after a few days. 

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources reported a daily positivity rate of just above 22.6%, with 215 people in the ICU with confirmed cases of the virus and 125 on ventilators. 

About 89.5% of the 5,576 reported Covid-related deaths in West Virginia have been among the unvaccinated, according to Justice.

Both vaccination and prior infection help protect against new Covid-19 infections, but vaccination protects against hospitalization significantly more than natural immunity from prior infection alone, according to a study published Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Researchers analyzed the risk of Covid-19 infection and hospitalization among four groups of individuals: vaccinated with and without prior infection and unvaccinated with and without prior infection.

Overall, Covid-19 case and hospitalization rates were highest among unvaccinated people who did not have a previous diagnosis. 

The study case data is from about 1.1 million cases in California and New York between the end of May and mid-November 2021. Hospitalization data was available from California only. 

At first, those with a prior infection had higher case rates than those who were vaccinated with no history of prior infection. As the Delta variant became predominant in the US in later months, this shifted, and people who survived a previous infection had lower case rates than those who were vaccinated alone, according to the study. 

However, this shift coincides with a time of waning vaccine immunity in many people. The study did not factor the time from vaccination – and potential waning immunity – into the analysis. The study also does not capture the effect booster doses may have and was conducted before the emergence of the Omicron variant.

Throughout the period of the study, risk of Covid-19 hospitalization was significantly higher among unvaccinated people with no previous Covid-19 diagnosis than any other group. 

Read more:

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Vaccination protects against Covid-19 hospitalization significantly more than prior infection, according to CDC study

The Pan American Health Organization’s (PAHO) Revolving Fund aims to vaccinate at least 70% of the Americas by mid-2022 by delivering 100 million doses of vaccines to 33 countries, PAHO Director Carissa Etienne said on Wednesday. 

Speaking during the weekly PAHO briefing, Etienne also said more than 60% of people in Latin America and the Caribbean have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. 

A new study adds to growing evidence that immune cells in the body called T cells can still recognize coronavirus variants, including Omicron, even if the variant appears to partly evade antibodies.

The T cells induced upon getting vaccinated or having a prior coronavirus infection appear to "provide extensive immune coverage" against the Omicron variant, according to the study, which was published last week in the journal Nature Medicine.

The researchers – from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, La Jolla Institute for Immunology in the US and University Hospital of Wales in the UK – collected blood samples from 40 people six months after they received a second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. They also collected samples from 48 people nine months after having mild or severe Covid-19 in March through April of 2020, and another 48 people who had previously been neither vaccinated nor infected in late 2020. 

The experiments showed that T cells elicited by vaccination or prior infection both "remain largely intact" against Omicron — but the overall magnitude of response among those who had a previous infection was lower than among those who had been vaccinated.

"These results suggest that booster immunization may provide benefits that extend beyond the induction of neutralizing antibodies to enhance protection against recurrent episodes of severe Covid-19,” the study's principal investigator, Marcus Buggert of the Karolinska Institutet’s Center for Infectious Medicine in Stockholm said in a news release Wednesday. 

Why all this matters: Throughout the pandemic, immunity has often been measured by the presence of antibodies in the blood. Antibodies are proteins made by the immune system to help fight infections. But immune systems are much more than just antibodies. They involve many different players, including T cells, that are involved in the body's effort to fight off coronavirus infection or any pathogen.

You can read the full study here.