Watch the AMA's daily COVID-19 update, with insights from AMA leaders and experts about the pandemic.
Featured topic and speakers
In today’s COVID-19 Update, AMA's Chief Health and Science Officer Mira Irons, MD, discusses updated testing guidance from the CDC for fully vaccinated people and the difference in vaccination numbers across states and regions. Dr. Irons also looks at state-level trends and review COVID-19 numbers and trending topics related to the pandemic over the past week.
Learn more at the AMA COVID-19 resource center.
Speaker
- Mira Irons, MD, chief health and science officer, AMA
Transcript
Unger: Hello, this is the American Medical Association's COVID-19 Update. Today, we have our weekly look at the numbers, trends and latest news about COVID-19 with AMA's chief health and science officer, Dr. Mira Irons in Chicago. I'm Todd Unger, AMA's chief experience officer, also in Chicago.
Dr. Irons let's first start with guidance from the CDC. More changes in guidance. This time is about testing fully vaccinated people. Can you give the background on the change in guidance from the CDC?
Dr. Irons: Sure, Todd. So basically the new guidance says that fully vaccinated Americans can largely skip getting tested for the coronavirus. The CDC said last week that most people who have received the full course of shots and have no COVID-19 symptoms don't need to be screened for the virus even if they're exposed to someone infected. The change represents a new phase in the epidemic after nearly a year in which testing was the primary weapon against the virus. Vaccines are now central to the response and have driven down hospitalizations and deaths dramatically.
"At this point, we really should be asking ourselves whether the benefits of testing outweigh the costs, which are lots of disruptions, lots of confusions and very little clinical or public health benefit." That was Dr. A. David Paltiel at Yale School of Public Health, who championed widespread testing at colleges last year. While vaccinated people can still catch the virus, they face little risk of serious illness from it and are also less likely to spread to others. And positive test results can lead to what many experts now say are unnecessary worry and interruptions of work, home and school such as quarantines and shutdowns.
However, some health officials worry that the CDC's abrupt changes on the need for masks and testing have sent the message that COVID-19 is no longer a major threat, which isn't true. There's also still no easy way to determine who has been vaccinated and who hasn't, and this guidance, like the mask guidance, applies to fully vaccinated people.
Unger: And that is the message. Get vaccinated. Speaking of that, can you talk about progress we're seeing on the vaccination front.
Dr. Irons: So it's slow, but we're making progress. The CDC said on Saturday about 162.5 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, including about 129 million people who have been fully vaccinated. Percentage-wise that means nearly 49% of the population, and that's the total population, has received at least one dose and nearly 39% are fully vaccinated. Now looking at adults only, which was the number that President Biden put forward for his goal, more than 61% of adults have received at least one shot. Although the pace has slowed, the share is still growing by about two percentage points per week. So nearly two in five people in the United States are now fully vaccinated and about 1.8 million people are receiving a shot each day.
Unger: That's good news. But I think when you dig one of layer deeper in those numbers, what you're seeing is pretty wide variations geographically. That's another wrinkle, isn't it?
Dr. Irons: Yes, absolutely. Vaccination rates vary widely across regions, with New England surging ahead of the national average and much of the South lagging far behind. In five of the six New England states, more than 60% of residents are at least partly vaccinated according to data from the CDC, but it's a completely different story in the South where Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Tennessee have the country's lowest rates of residents who have received at least one shot. The rates in these states are all below 40%, with Mississippi at 33% at the bottom of the list. The White House and state governments, after relying on mass vaccination sites for months, are now turning their focus to more targeted, smaller scale efforts to vaccinate underserved and harder-to-reach communities. This means both access and hesitancy will increasingly be addressed through physicians and individual exam rooms across the country.
Unger: Well, the issue of vaccine mandates is still controversial, but one place we are starting to see requirements is at the college level for, I suppose, for next fall. What are you seeing there in terms of the trends?
Dr. Irons: Yeah, hoping for return to normal, more than 400 colleges and universities are requiring students to be vaccinated for COVID-19. This started with one university in March to a dozen by the first week of April and the trickle has become a tide over the last month. But even though it seems like a lot, the 400 campuses make up only about 10% of the nation's roughly 4,000 colleges and universities. Because the FDA has authorized only the emergency use of COVID vaccines at this point, many universities have added a caveat that their mandates are contingent on one of the vaccines obtaining final regulatory approval, but they would allow students to return to campus after receiving any of them.
Unger: So just onto kind of a bigger picture level here with cases and deaths reaching kind of lower levels, not seen since last summer here in the states. What are the actual numbers?
Dr. Irons: Yeah, so the numbers are still going up, but more slowly. Currently total cases in the United States, 33,117,923 and 589,893 deaths. The United States is adding fewer than 30,000 cases a day for the first time since June of last year, and deaths are as low as they've been since the summer. Nearly everywhere in the U.S., outlook is improving. If you like to think in terms of seven-day averages, new cases are down 19.5%, hospitalizations are down 15.1% and deaths are thankfully down 10.5%. No state is seeing a major increase in new cases and many have seen declines of 40% or more in the last two weeks. Add to that also, the share of COVID tests coming back positive has fallen to below 3% for the first time since widespread testing began.
Unger: That's amazing news. Any kind of hotspots or big declines that we're seeing in different states?
Dr. Irons: Yes. You know, we talked about Michigan a lot over the last few months. The cases have been falling for a month in Michigan, the state with the worst spring surge. About 1,400 cases were identified on Sunday, down from around 7,800 daily in mid-April. As of this week, California has one of the lowest case and hospitalization rates in the country, and it's now closer to fully reopening. State officials there on Friday said they would lift requirements on social distancing and limits on the number of people indoors on June 15. California's the latest state to release its reopening plan, joining an already growing slate of states that have reopened or are set to next month.
Unger: Good news. Any final messages from the AMA that folks should know about this week?
Dr. Irons: Yeah, on Friday the AMA commended the Biden administration and HHS for funding additional support to expand pediatric mental health care access. This funding will make behavioral health care more accessible and equitable to children and adolescents by better integrating telehealth services into pediatric primary care. Physicians, parents and others who work with and care about young people welcome tangible support such as this to improve the mental health of children, adolescents and families emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unger: Thanks, Dr. Irons. Appreciate you being here and sharing your perspective. We'll see you again next week for another update. In the meantime, that's it for today's COVID-19 Update. For more information on COVID-19, visit ama-assn.org/COVID-19. Thanks for joining us today and please take care.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this video are those of the participants and/or do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the AMA.
