The CommuniVax coalition recently released its third national report: A Waypoint on the Path to Health Equity: COVID-19 Vaccination at Month 11. The report describes progress made toward greater equity in the COVID-19 vaccination campaign and proposes steps to advance even further. You can find other Communivax publications and resources here.

Read more about the work of Communivax's local teams and working group members in these stories:

GOP Embraces Natural Immunity as Substitute for Vaccines. Florida wrote natural immunity into state law this week as GOP lawmakers elsewhere are pushing similar measures to sidestep vaccine mandates. Lawsuits over the mandates have also begun leaning on the idea. Conservative federal lawmakers have implored regulators to consider it when formulating mandates. (U.S. News & World Report)

See also: The most pernicious anti-vaccine talking point (Washington Post, 11/22/21)

As Young Kids Get Vaccines, a ‘Huge Weight’ Is Lifted for Families. Finally getting children vaccinated this past month put a major piece of a protection puzzle in place for severely vulnerable adults who are immunocompromised, fighting cancer or coping with other diseases. That sense of relief has intensified with the holiday season here and all the trimmings and trepidation that accompany this year’s family gatherings. (New York Times, 11/25/21)

Russian Anti-Vaccine Disinformation Campaign Backfires. For more than a year, Russian-aligned troll factories overseeing thousands of social media accounts have been accused by Western countries and disinformation experts of spreading anti-vaccine messages in an aggressive campaign to spread conspiracy theories and cast doubt on Western coronavirus vaccines. But the year-long offensive appears to have backfired. Russian officials now worry that the anti-vaccine skepticism encouraged by the troll factories has spilled over and is partly responsible for the high level of vaccine hesitancy among Russians. (VOA, 11/18/21)

Vaccinating minority communities remains a challenge amid rise in COVID cases. Since the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization of the Pfizer COVID vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, more than two million children have been vaccinated. Public health officials are highlighting the importance of providing vaccines to low income and minority communities that have been hit hardest by COVID. (PBS News Hour, 11/23/21)

States With the Worst COVID-19 Vaccination Rates. As of Nov. 23, all states have now partially vaccinated at least 50% of their population, while in some states over 80% of their population have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The data also shows that 40 states and the District of Columbia have a fully vaccinated population of 50% or more. (U.S. News & World Report, 11/24/21)

See also: Some states know a lot about vaccinated people who have gotten COVID-19. Pennsylvania doesn’t. (Philadelphia Inquirer, 11/23/21)

Schools, Pediatricians Look to Make Up Lost Ground on Non-Covid Vaccinations. Child health experts hope community clinics, along with the return to in-person classes, more well-child visits and the rollout of covid shots for younger children, can help boost routine childhood immunizations, which dropped during the pandemic. Despite a rebound, immunization rates are still lower than in 2019, and disparities in rates between racial and economic groups, particularly for Black children, have been exacerbated. (KHN, 11/18/21)

President Biden Announces New Actions to Protect Americans Against the Delta and Omicron Variants as We Battle COVID-⁠19 this Winter. The President will announce a new effort to launch hundreds of family vaccination clinics across the country. Together, these clinics will offer vaccinations for the whole family – with first shots for parents, teens, and kids, and boosters for those eligible. This model builds on the Administration’s ongoing efforts – in coordination with states, localities, providers and community leaders – to meet people where they are and make vaccinations accessible and convenient in communities across the country. (White House, 12/2/21)

Biden Cautions Against ‘Panic’ Over Omicron, Urges Boosters. The administration doesn’t yet believe new formulations of coronavirus vaccines will be necessary, but is already working with Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and Johnson & Johnson on contingency plans, he said. He said he’ll issue a new strategy to combat a winter surge of coronavirus on Thursday, but that the U.S. will not have to undertake further lockdowns or shutdowns. (Bloomberg, 11/29/21)

Omicron: Vaccine nationalism will only perpetuate the pandemic. Just seven percent of people in Africa are fully vaccinated and recent data shows only one in four health workers in Africa are fully protected. This is not just morally grotesque, but also dangerous: it creates a breeding ground for new variants. (Al Jazeera, 11/28/21)

State Lawmakers' Anti-Vaccine Efforts May Prove Mostly Symbolic. Many of the new anti-vaccine mandate laws are either symbolic or vulnerable to federal preemption, or in some cases both. Some have provisions that align with federal regulations, such as sections that say people can reject vaccinations for religious reasons. (Route Fifty, 11/29/21)

Teachers Who Refuse to Comply With Vaccine Mandates Won’t Face Consequences in Many Places. A nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey administered in September found that 27 percent of principals and district leaders said their districts have a vaccine-or-test rule in place, while 63 percent said vaccines will not be required of employees. Just 3 percent said unvaccinated employees cannot work for their schools or districts. (Education Week, 11/22/21)

Red States Are Now Paying Unemployment Benefits to Anti-Vaxxers Who Quit Their Jobs. Under these new laws, any worker who gets fired for broadly defined “misconduct,” such as flunking an employer-imposed drug test, is disqualified from unemployment benefits—but employees who refuse COVID vaccination are glorified, protected, and subsidized. The state must guarantee, that these reckless freeloaders “will still receive unemployment benefits despite being fired for standing up for their beliefs.” (Slate, 11/30/21)

Will the Vaccines Stop Omicron? Scientists Are Racing to Find Out. The vaccines may well continue to ward off severe illness and death, although booster doses may be needed to protect most people. Still, the makers of the two most effective vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are preparing to reformulate their shots if necessary. (New York Times, 11/28/21)

Once rare, lung transplants for COVID-19 patients are rising quickly. Some transplant centers have said patients will lose their spot on the list if they are not vaccinated against coronavirus. But some say eliminating anyone who hasn't had a COVID vaccine from even being considered for an organ may be unfair because it could exclude racial, religious or ethnic groups that have lower vaccination rates. (NPR, 11/28/21)

What J&J Can Still Teach Us. This incessant ragging has been all too easy—and maybe shortsighted. According to some experts, the haters are overlooking a trait that could rescue J&J’s reputation, and possibly even keep it in scientific contention. “I think there is a silver lining to this vaccine that a lot of people don’t see,” David Martinez, an immunologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who is studying immune responses to COVID-19 shots, told me. It’s a trait called durability—the ability of a vaccine’s protection to persist, despite the ravages of time. (The Atlantic, 12/1/21)

Vaccine efficacy and immune interference: co-administering COVID-19 and influenza vaccines. At a time when many countries have national programmes for COVID-19 vaccination, this uncertainty has raised the logistical question of what might be the nature of the influenza vaccine plus SARS-CoV-2 vaccine co-administration programmes. In some respects, no better time has occurred to roll out such respiratory vaccination programmes. Public confidence in vaccines is high, having largely overcome a considerable degree of hesitancy in many countries, and national logistics for vaccine programme delivery have been impressive. (The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 11/17/21)

Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine was 100% effective in kids in longer-term study. The vaccine has been in use in this age group since May, when the FDA extended the emergency use authorization for the vaccine to cover 12 to 15 year olds. In August, the vaccine, which the companies market under the name Comirnaty, was the first of Covid vaccines to receive a full license for individuals, 16 years of age and older. (STAT, 11/22/21)

See also: The real risk of heart inflammation to kids is from COVID-19—not the vaccine (National Geographic, 11/23/21)

The Evidence is Piling Up That Pregnant People Should Get Vaccinated. Hundreds of thousands of pregnant women in the U.S. have now been safely vaccinated against COVID-19. Studies have found that vaccinated women had similar miscarriage rates as unvaccinated women. And scientists have found that vaccines are working for pregnant women: Early reports show that vaccinated mothers have a lower risk of coronavirus infection as well as covid antibodies in their umbilical cords and breastmilk. This means mothers are more likely to provide some protection to newborns. (Center for Public Integrity, 11/23/21)