Millions of people in Brazil are missing their second doses of Covid-19 vaccine, further complicating a campaign already marred by supply shortages and allegations of graft.
Some 4.1 million Brazilians had not returned for their second shot as of June 1, according to data compiled by researchers who are following the vaccine rollout. This represents nearly 16 percent of those eligible for a second dose.
The reasons for people missing their second dose are varied, but experts warn that a large number of people with only partial protection could set back Brazil’s already troubled vaccination effort. The coronavirus has killed more than 500,000 people in Brazil, the second-highest known toll in the world after the United States, and daily cases are hitting new peaks. About a third of the population has received at least one dose, and less than 12 percent are fully immunized.
“Many of these people will likely have to be vaccinated again” with the first dose, said Dr. Ligia Bahia, a public health specialist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and one of the researchers leading the study of vaccinations. “And cases will not fall in the meantime.”
One reason that so many people have missed their second shot is Brazil’s chaotic vaccination rollout, Dr. Bahia said. Many local and state authorities opened up immunizations too quickly to groups that were not at high risk for infection, when not enough doses were available, she said.
“The euphoria of the vaccination is not in line with the reality of the supply,” she said. “They wanted to speed up, to say, ‘We’re vaccinating!’ But some people were left behind.”
Brazil has manufactured much of its vaccine supply domestically, using materials shipped from China to churn out the CoronaVac vaccine developed by the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech. In March, Brazil’s health ministry released supplies that it had initially planned to reserve as second doses for priority groups, such as health workers, older people and those with pre-existing illnesses.
Soon after that, delays in shipments from China badly curbed supplies, just as more people in Brazil were due to receive their second doses.
“Some people didn’t get their second dose because they searched and searched — and eventually gave up on being vaccinated,” said Dr. Alberto Chebabo, vice president of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases. “That’s a lost opportunity.”
Others in Brazil are misinformed, he added, believing they are protected after one shot. Health experts warn that a single dose is not enough, especially in Brazil. The country has mostly relied on the vaccine from Sinovac, which may not be as effective as others in preventing serious cases of Covid-19. A study in Chile showed that Sinovac was only 36 percent effective in preventing hospitalizations after one shot. Hundreds of doctors in Indonesia who received two Sinovac doses became ill with Covid-19 anyway, and at least 20 died.
Brazil’s inoculation troubles have been mounting. Cities across the country are halting vaccinations as supplies dry up. Federal prosecutors also launched an investigation last week into a government deal to buy 20 million doses of Covaxin, a vaccine produced in India, at inflated prices.
Lawmakers are investigating President Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic, including his decision to ignore multiple early offers to buy vaccines from drugmakers like Pfizer, as he played down the danger posed by the virus and promoted “miracle cures” now proven to be ineffective.
From The Times Magazine
Childhood obesity has increased significantly in the United States during the past four decades, and experts were worried last spring when in-person schooling was suspended indefinitely because of the pandemic.
They feared extended closures might increase childhood obesity and disparities in obesity risk, which in turn would mean more children living with related conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and fatty-liver disease.
Those concerns were warranted, according to a May study in Pediatrics. Based on measurements of body mass index taken for more than 500,000 children between the ages of 2 and 17 during visits to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Care Network, researchers found that, on average, between January 2019 and December 2020 the prevalence of obesity increased by almost 2 percentage points overall, from 13.7 percent to 15.4 percent. (In the most recent years for which national data is available, the increase has been 1 percentage point or less.)
Black and Latino children, as well as those from families with lower incomes, displayed sharper increases than others. Such gains make it more likely that children will have higher B.M.I.s when they grow up.
“This isn’t just baby fat that’s going to go away,” says Brian Jenssen, the study’s lead author and a pediatrician at Children’s. “That’s why I think this is so alarming.”
The pandemic forced federal, state and local agencies to improvise novel ways of getting more balanced meals to children outside a school setting. For instance, the U.S.D.A. offered waivers to its requirement that children eat on-site, allowing caregivers to pick up multiple days’ worth of meals. Some districts converted school buses running along their regular routes into a food-delivery service.
The agency also made all children eligible for free lunch through September 2021, eliminating the paperwork required to qualify and the stigma that often comes with it, says Eliza Kinsey, a professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health. Such “program flexibility,” she points out, could be applied during the summer or for other disruptions like hurricane and wildfire closures.
Overdose deaths rose by nearly 30 percent over the 12-month period that ended in November, to more than 90,000, according to preliminary federal data released this month — suggesting 2020 blew past recent records for such deaths. The staggering increase during the pandemic has many contributing factors, including widespread job loss and eviction; diminished access to addiction treatment and medical care; and an illegal drug supply that became even more dangerous after the country essentially shut down.
But the forced isolation for people struggling with addiction and other mental health issues may be one of the biggest. Now, with the nation reopening, the Biden administration is throwing support behind the contentious approach known as harm reduction. Instead of helping drug users achieve abstinence, the chief goal is to reduce their risk of dying or acquiring infectious diseases like H.I.V. by giving them sterile equipment, tools to check their drugs for fentanyl and other lethal substances, or even just a safe space to nap.
Such programs have long come under attack for enabling drug use, but President Biden has made expanding harm-reduction efforts one of his drug policy priorities — the first president to do so. The American Rescue Act includes $30 million specifically for evidence-based harm reduction services, the first time Congress has appropriated funds specifically for that purpose.
“It’s an enormous signal, recognizing that not everybody who uses drugs is ready for treatment,” said Daliah Heller, director of drug use initiatives at Vital Strategies, a global public health organization. “Harm reduction programs say, ‘OK, you’re using drugs. How can we help you stay safe and healthy and alive first and foremost?’”
LONDON — Britain’s embattled health minister, Matt Hancock, announced on Saturday he had resigned, a day after The Sun newspaper published photos of him in a steamy embrace with a former college friend serving as one of his senior aides, in an apparent violation of Britain’s social-distancing guidelines.
The move came as the country recorded its most coronavirus infections since early February, part of a sharp spike in new cases that officials say almost universally involve the highly transmissible Delta variant. Over the past week, nearly 100,000 people in the country have tested positive, a near 50 percent increase compared with the week before, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Hancock, who spearheaded Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, is the latest member of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government to be accused of violating the strict rules imposed in the country. The minister had been a fixture at Downing Street news conferences, often exhorting the public to abide by lockdowns and other restrictions to try to curb the spread of the virus.
“I understand the enormous sacrifices that everybody in this country has made — that you have made,” Mr. Hancock said in a video statement released on Saturday evening. “Those of us who make these rules have got to stick by them, and that’s why I’ve got to resign.”
Downing Street announced on Saturday that Mr. Hancock would be replaced by Sajid Javid, a former home secretary and chancellor of the Exchequer.
The ambitious, 42-year-old Mr. Hancock has been the subject of controversy since June 16, when Dominic Cummings, a former chief adviser to Mr. Johnson, publicly pinned much of the blame for Britain’s chaotic handling of the pandemic on Mr. Hancock.
Mr. Cummings, who early in the pandemic also came under fire for violating restrictions, accused Mr. Hancock of failing to set up an effective test-and-trace program and allowing the spread of the virus by moving vulnerable older people to nursing homes from hospitals.
Mr. Cummings also shared a WhatsApp message sent to him by Mr. Johnson in March of last year that ridiculed Mr. Hancock, with a profanity, as totally “hopeless.”
Britain’s new surge has raised questions over whether lockdown restrictions will be lifted next month as planned. Mr. Johnson’s government already delayed that move for England once, resetting it from this past Monday to July 19. Other parts of the United Kingdom — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — are following similar plans.
Thousands of anti-lockdown protesters marched through central London on Saturday, The A.P. reported. Some threw tennis balls into Downing Street. “Shame on you,” some chanted.
Most of the new confirmed cases are among younger people who have not yet received Covid vaccines. Hundreds of walk-in vaccination sites, including at stadiums and shopping centers, opened in England over the weekend in a bid to increase vaccine numbers, particularly among those younger age groups, according to The A.P.
KATHMANDU, Nepal — Jangbu Sherpa most likely became the first person with Covid-19 to stand on the world’s highest peak when he led a Bahraini prince and 15 others to Mount Everest’s pinnacle at dawn on May 11.
Experienced guides from Nepal’s high-dwelling Sherpa community were in short supply because of the pandemic, and the expedition company that hired him stood to lose thousands of dollars if the climb had been canceled. So Mr. Sherpa, 38, whose body was still fighting the vestiges of the virus after being hospitalized for it in April, led the group anyway.
By the end of the climbing season early this month, at least 59 infected people had been on the mountain, including five others who reached the top, according to interviews with climbers and expedition companies and the personal accounts of social media users.
But according to the Nepal government, there was never any Covid on Everest. Tourism officials dismissed the accounts of climbers, calling one a pneumonia patient. Coughing, they said, is nothing new in the dry mountain air.
Nepal’s tourism department, which oversees Everest expeditions, maintained this position even as people were being airlifted off the mountain and expeditions were being canceled — a rare event because of the great expense and effort made to train, travel to Nepal and try to summit Everest.
Officials have strong incentives to play down the Covid situation on Everest. Nepal closed its peaks in 2020 because of the pandemic, after bringing in more than $2 billion from climbing and trekking in 2019. If the Covid cases were publicized, it could tarnish Nepal’s image as a tourist destination, and invite climbers whose expeditions were canceled to demand extensions of their climbing permits.
With the climbing season now over, more expedition agencies are acknowledging that Covid infections were rampant in the crowded base camp, where climbers acclimatize to the extreme altitude before aiming for the summit. The true number of cases could be far more than 59, since expedition organizers, doctors and climbers themselves said they were pressured to hide infections.
Bhadra Sharma and
Officials on the Spanish island of Mallorca are investigating a coronavirus outbreak involving hundreds of students who went there on holiday, even as they prepare for an influx of British tourists after their government eased travel restrictions.
More than 700 Spanish students who traveled to Mallorca to celebrate the end of the school year have tested positive for the virus after returning home, according to the authorities of eight regions of mainland Spain. Many others who were close contacts are in quarantine in a hotel in Mallorca and elsewhere across Spain while awaiting results of their coronavirus tests. In Madrid alone, about 2,000 students have been quarantined.
The authorities are investigating nine hotels where the students stayed, as well as the organizers of a concert that was held in the bull ring of Palma, the Mallorcan capital.
The outbreak was discovered in the same week that Mallorca and the rest of the Balearic Islands were added to Britain’s “green list” of countries and territories from where people can travel to Britain without quarantining, providing a major boost to the Spanish islands’ tourism-dependent economies.
Reyes Maroto, the Spanish tourism minister, on Saturday appealed to young people to show “responsibility.” She said Spain’s image as a safe destination should not be influenced by the outbreak in Mallorca, which she said was specific and under investigation.
Students from all over Spain traveled to the Balearic Islands in recent weeks after finishing their university exams. On Saturday, officials in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia said that 57 students had tested positive for the virus in a separate outbreak, which is also being investigated and is believed to be linked to their visit to Minorca, another of the Balearic Islands.
Also on Saturday, people across Spain were allowed to be outdoors without masks for the first time in more than a year, though some people continued to wear them.
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