Coronavirus Files: States drop masks; FDA pulls plug on early vax authorization for young kids

coronavirus
February 14, 2022

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People of color in Texas experience higher COVID burden

People of color have had a harder time during the pandemic across the United States, but the state of Texas was particularly slow to offer data on the racial breakdown of cases, deaths and vaccinations. 

So statisticians and students at Rice University went digging, cross-referencing county-level COVID-19 data with Census demographic information. They recently reported that the percentage of Black and Hispanic people in a county predicted early-pandemic COVID death rates, writes Sam González in the Houston Chronicle.

The more people of color in residence, the worse the death rate. Up to 18.33% of the county-level differences in COVID death rates could be linked to racial and ethnic demographics.

The study also found that in Harris County, site of Houston, where more racial and ethnic data was available, the economic impact of the pandemic was highest among Latino and Black residents.

“The economic costs associated with COVID-19 mortality are large,” study author and Rice economist Ted Loch-Temzelides said in a press release. “Some of Houston’s most vulnerable communities have been experiencing a disproportionately high fraction of these losses.”

States rush to remove mask mandates

Case counts and hospitalization rates are now trending rapidly downwards in nearly every state, and the NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci says the “full-blown pandemic phase of COVID-19” is coming to an end.

Fauci told the Financial Times that local leaders and individuals will be making more decisions about pandemic restrictions as the nation takes the off-ramp. States appear eager to ease up. Several governors, mostly in Democrat-led states now, are now lifting mask mandates or letting them expire. Even in the caution-prone Bay Area, eight of the region’s nine counties will lift mask mandates on Feb. 16.

This optimism contrasts with the recent milestone of 900,000 people dead of COVID in the United States, and the ongoing deaths from the omicron surge. Many hospitals are still at or near capacity.

After all, it was only a few weeks ago that officials were advising people to upgrade their masks to the most protective N95 category. Recent data confirms they’re the best type to avoid infection, and that masking kids helps child care providers stay open.

“Now is not the moment” to let those mask mandates go, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told Reuters. “We continue to endorse universal masking in schools.”

Physicians told ABC News’ Mary Kekatos that it’s too early to remove school mask mandates because fewer than one-quarter of children aged 5 to 11, and fewer than 60% of teenagers, have been fully vaccinated against COVID.

However, the Biden administration is reportedly working on an updated strategy for the next phase of the pandemic. It’s a delicate time because while cases are expected to recede, there’s always the possibility of a new, dangerous variant upending everything in a matter of weeks.

“We were in exactly the same place one year ago today, where cases were decreasing from a January peak, vaccines were flowing,” University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael T. Osterholm told Sheryl Gay Stolberg at The New York Times. “And look what that got us.”

New study: COVID causes long-lasting heart risk

Risk for heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular problems goes up in the year following a bout with COVID-19, researchers report in a new study of health records from nearly 11 million veterans.

The results were “stunning … worse than I expected,” Scripps Research cardiologist and pandemic commentator Eric Topol told Meredith Wadman at Science.

The study population was mostly white, male, and older than 60, but researchers are confident the results apply to women and people of color as well. While the long-term effects were worse in people who had severe COVID, risk for cardiovascular disease went up even in those who never required hospitalization.

“COVID is an equal opportunity offender,” said study author Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist working on long COVID at Washington University in St. Louis. “We found an increased risk of cardiovascular problems in old people and in young people, in people with diabetes and without diabetes, in people with obesity and people without obesity, in people who smoked and who never smoked.”

The mechanism that explains such after-effects, as well as the broader phenomenon of long COVID, is still a puzzle. Recent studies suggest that loss of smell, brain fog, and long COVID are all linked to abnormal immune activity.

It’s also not certain if omicron will cause long COVID like previous variants did, but experts suspect it will, writes Laura Ungar at AP News.

FDA to wait on more data for under-5 vaccines after all

In a sudden about-face, the FDA hit pause on potential authorization of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children younger than 5, the last group awaiting eligibility.

The plan to authorize two doses while waiting for trial results on a third was “without precedent in recent history,” writes Apoorva Mandavilli at The New York Times. The U.S. had plans to make shots available as early as Feb. 21.

Now, the agency and Pfizer say they’ll wait, because the company submitted “additional data” that the agency wants more time to review.

According to The New York Times, the three-dose trial is now on track for FDA review in early April.

The precise reason behind the sudden delay was not immediately apparent. It could be that Pfizer turned in its data late, or that the data raised new concerns, suggests STAT.

Brown economist Emily Oster suggests in her parenting newsletter that any problems with the data are less likely than the possibility that the vaccine, as results back in December suggested, just didn’t produce strong immunity in preschoolers.

There has been growing pushback from non-FDA experts who didn’t think Pfizer’s data up to this point would be sufficient, reports Berkeley Lovelace Jr. at NBC News. As noted at STAT, “Some outside experts have characterized this strategy as aggressive and unusual, and worried it could backfire by making some parents less inclined to vaccinate their kids.”

As for the delay, writes Oster, “My best — totally speculative — guess is that they were concerned that the EUA would be rejected by their panel, and this would be embarrassing and damaging. So they pulled the plug.”

Meanwhile, parents of young children are left to cope with the whiplash. “I cannot emphasize strongly enough what a complete messaging and public relations fiasco this is,” Oster wrote Friday. “Whether it is appropriate to approve the vaccine at this phase or not, I cannot say. What I can say with 100% certainty is that this is about the worst possible way the process could have been run.”

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What we're reading

  • “Does omicron hit kids harder? Scientists are trying to find out,” by Max Kozlov, Nature
  • “Meet the scientist at the center of the COVID lab leak controversy,” by Jane Qiu, MIT Technology Review
  • “Biden officials trying to recalculate U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations,” by Erin Banco, Politico
  • “J.&J. pauses production of its COVID vaccine despite persistent need,” by Rebecca Robbins, Stephanie Nolen, Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weiland, The New York Times

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