If you haven't already, download the latest CommuniVax report, "Carrying Equity in COVID-19 Vaccination Forward: Guidance Informed by Communities of Color," and watch a webinar featuring our local teams and working group members.

AP-NORC poll: Most unvaccinated Americans don’t want shots. Among American adults who have not yet received a vaccine, 35% say they probably will not, and 45% say they definitely will not, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Just 3% say they definitely will get the shots, though another 16% say they probably will. (AP News, 7/23/21)

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“Don’t You Work With Old People?”: Many Elder-Care Workers Still Refuse to Get COVID-19 Vaccine. Seven months after the first vaccines became available to medical professionals, only 59% of staff at the nation’s nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are fully or partially vaccinated — with eight states reporting an average rate of less than half, according to CMS data updated last week. Twenty-three individual facilities had vaccination rates of under 1%, the data showed. (ProPublica, 7/23/21)

See also: Covid-19 Breakthrough Infections in Vaccinated Health Care Workers (New England Journal of Medicine, 7/28/21)

They Waited, They Worried, They Stalled. This Week, They Got the Shot. In dozens of interviews on Thursday in eight states, at vaccination clinics, drugstores and pop-up mobile sites, Americans who had finally arrived for their shots offered a snapshot of a nation at a crossroads — confronting a new surge of the virus but only slowly embracing the vaccines that could stop it. (New York Times, 7/24/21)

A Vaccine Or This Marriage: Conspiracy Theories Are Tearing Couples Apart. HuffPost talked to five men and women whose marriages are crumbling or have already collapsed under the weight of viral anti-vaccine disinformation. Most said they did their best to tolerate their spouses’ embrace of conspiracy theories amid the pandemic — until it came to the vaccines, when those delusions suddenly posed a direct threat to their well-being or that of their children. (Huffington Post, 7/24/21)

See also: Polarization over Covid vaccine prompts some Americans to get shot in secret (The Guardian, 7/29/21)

In Alabama and Louisiana, partisan opposition to vaccine surges alongside Delta variant. State and local public health officials have struggled to combat that deep-rooted obstinance. But they don’t want more on-the-ground help from the White House, fearful it would prolong the current surge — even as the Biden administration has begun approaching southern states with offers to send federal “surge teams” on door-knocking campaigns. (POLITICO, 7/24/21)

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The Delta Variant Is the Symptom of a Bigger Threat: Vaccine Refusal. America is one of the few countries with enough vaccines at its disposal to protect every resident — and yet it has the highest rates of vaccine hesitance or refusal of any nation except Russia. (New York Times, 7/25/21)

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People are more anti-vaccine if they get their covid news from Facebook than from Fox News, data shows. Respondents who get news about the coronavirus via Facebook are less likely to get vaccinated than the average American and than non-Facebook users. Sixty-one percent of those Facebook users said they had been vaccinated, vs. 68 percent of the eligible U.S. population and 71 percent of non-Facebook users. (Washington Post, 7/27/21)

See also: Will Cain’s Fox News podcast is horrible on vaccines. It’s also sponsored by Facebook. (Media Matters, 7/27/21)

Gentle Encouragement Wasn’t Going to Be Enough. When pro football announced last week that it will impose stiff penalties on teams that experience a COVID-19 outbreak involving unvaccinated players, it exposed a serious vaccination divide among its athletes. Fans also learned in real time that some of their favorite NFL stars are not only vaccine-hesitant but also susceptible to some of the same misinformation that has duped millions of other Americans. (The Atlantic, 7/28/21)

The best vaccine incentive might be paid time off. It may seem like a small perk for the kind of salaried, remote worker who can easily disappear from Zoom for a few hours to get a shot. But for millions of hourly shift workers, it could be the one thing that finally gets them vaccinated. (MIT Technology Review, 7/29/21)

Latino Philadelphians are getting vaccinated more quickly than any other group. It hasn’t been easy. Latino community and health organizations have worked weekends and evenings reaching out to the city’s 241,000 Latino residents. Options such as door-to-door canvassing and small mobile clinics have chipped away at the number of unvaccinated Philadelphians, just as the highly contagious delta variant has been powering its way through unprotected communities. (Philadelphia Inquirer, 7/24/21)

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A Looming Challenge In The Vaccination Campaign: Syringe Shortages. Around the world, there's probably 40 to 50 billion syringes produced annually, but 95% of that is for curative care, for taking care of diseases, diabetic use, other things in hospitals. And only about 5% is for vaccinations. And all of those are mostly committed for childhood vaccinations. So this means you have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul in some cases. (NPR, 7/25/21)

Vaccines Are Great. Masks Make Them Even Better. Redonning masks (or simply keeping them on, as many people have) is not some shameful regression to the dark ages of the pre-vaccination era. Nor is it an indictment of the COVID-19 vaccines, which are doing an extraordinary job of curtailing the global burden of disease. Instead, it’s a doubling down on two defenses that we know work, and work well together.. (The Atlantic, 7/28/21)

SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Public School District Employees Following a District-Wide Vaccination Program — Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, March 21–April 23, 2021. Weekly SARS-CoV-2 antigen screening tests required of all employees returning for in-school instruction in the School District of Philadelphia found a 95% lower percentage of positive test results among persons who reported receipt of 2 doses of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (0.09%) than among those who were unvaccinated (1.77%). (CDC, 7/30/21)

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A double vaccine crisis is endangering millions of children. The numbers are stark. As scarce health resources have been rerouted to control Covid-19, children’s immunization rates have dropped to the lowest level since 2009. Last year, 23 million children missed out on basic vaccines through routine immunization programs, up 3.7 million from 2019. (STAT, 7/29/21)

See also: This nursing mom’s journey to figure out how much vaccinated breast milk is enough to shield her baby from COVID-19 (19th News, 7/16/21)

Biden’s planned vaccine rule meets resistance from large groups of federal workers. Many questions remain about the specifics of the White House’s plan, which could apply to anywhere between two and 10 million federal government employees, depending on whether certain segments of the workforce, like contractors, postal employees, and grant workers are excluded. The military is not expected to be included in the new policy for now. (Washington Post, 7/29/21)

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Covid vaccine mandates are on the rise. Will that move the needle? A poll conducted last week by data intelligence firm Morning Consult found that 3 in 5 U.S. adults who responded would support vaccination requirements. But those likely to support it said they were already vaccinated and identified as Democrats, while those who were unlikely to support it were unvaccinated and Republican. (NBC, 7/29/21)

Biden-Harris Administration Provides $121 Million in American Rescue Plan Funds to Support Local Community-Based Efforts to Increase COVID-19 Vaccinations in Underserved Communities. These awards will go to community-based organizations across the country that are working in their communities to build vaccine confidence, share factual information about vaccines, and answer people's questions about getting vaccinated. (HHS, 7/27/21)

Opinion: The FDA must sprint, not stumble, on approving the covid-19 vaccines. The most important reason to wait is the integrity of the process itself. If vaccination is the key to ending the pandemic, then the review must be persuasive and above reproach. If shortcuts or haste lead to questions about the review, it would shake public confidence just when confidence is vital. The FDA must sprint, but not stumble. (Washington Post, 7/25/21)

Your Vaccinated Immune System Is Ready for Breakthroughs. The immunity offered by vaccines works in iterations and gradations, not absolutes. It does not make a person completely impervious to infection. It also does not evaporate when a few microbes breach a body’s barriers. A breakthrough, despite what it might seem, does not cause our defenses to crumble or even break; it does not erase the protection that’s already been built. (The Atlantic, 7/26/21)

Safety Evaluation of the Second Dose of Messenger RNA COVID-19 Vaccines in Patients With Immediate Reactions to the First Dose. This multisite US study supports the safety of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine second dose administration in patients who report immediate and potentially allergic reactions after the first dose. Although mild symptoms were reported in 20% of patients with second dose administration, all patients who received a second dose safely completed their vaccination series and could use mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in the future when indicated. (JAMA, 7/26/21)

Moderna says it plans to expand Covid vaccine trial for kids 5 to 11, will seek FDA OK as early as year-end. The U.S. drugmaker is expanding the trial, which began in late March, to increase the likelihood of detecting potential rare side effects, the company said, declining to say how many children it ultimately hopes to enroll. (CNBC, 7/26/21)

Teens Asked, We Answered: The Truth About COVID-19 Vaccines. NPR asked teens to share their most pressing questions about the vaccines. Here are answers from several ace pediatricians and trusted sources of health information. (NPR, 7/24/21)

Guidance on conducting vaccine effectiveness evaluations in the setting of new SARS-CoV-2 variants: Interim guidance, 22 July 2021. WHO recently made available interim guidance on best practices for undertaking vaccine effectiveness evaluations: Evaluation of COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness: Interim Guidance. 2021. Those recommendations still apply for undertaking vaccine effectiveness evaluations against new variants. Nonetheless, vaccine effectiveness evaluations of new variants may need approaches not described in the interim guidance. This addendum addresses aspects of undertaking vaccine effectiveness evaluations for new variants. (World Health Organization, 7/22/21)

Efficacy of Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine slips to 84% after six months, data show. In the ongoing study, which enrolled more than 44,000 volunteers, the vaccine’s efficacy in preventing any Covid-19 infection that causes even minor symptoms appeared to decline by an average of 6% every two months after administration. It peaked at more than 96% within two months of vaccination and slipped to 84% after six months. (STAT, 7/28/21)

See also: The overlooked superpower of mRNA vaccines (Science, 7/28/21)