Random and illustrative stories about the global pandemic and how businesses and various business sectors are trying to recover from it, with brief, occasional, italicized and sometimes gratuitous commentary…
• The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed "a crucial change in the way the coronavirus vaccine is handled: Switching to a once-a-year shot that targets the strain expected to pose the greatest threat during the following winter — a system akin to what is used for the influenza vaccine," the Washington Post reports.
"The proposed change is designed to reduce the complexity of the vaccine regimen for the public, doctors and manufacturers," the Post writes. "It also reflects a view that “chasing variants” with ever-changing booster formulations is ultimately futile, in part because the public has little interest in getting repeated injections, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about it.
"The FDA would choose the annual strain for the shots every June, in time for the updated shots to be manufactured and then administered in September, as part of a yearly inoculation campaign. The goal would be to select the strain most likely to be dominant in the winter, when people are indoors and covid cases typically rise."
• The US now has had 103,888,296 total cases of the Covid-19 coronavirus, resulting in 1,129,145 deaths and 100,943,432 reported recoveries.
Globally, there have been 673,629,982 total cases, with 6,748,650 resultant fatalities and 645,593,294 reported recoveries. (Source.)
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that 81 percent of the total US population now has received at least one dose of vaccine, with 69.1 percent. being fully vaccinated.
