The Washington Post. More stuff about the coronavirus.

Important developments in the pandemic.

By Ben Guarino  Email The Post's coronavirus coverage linked in this newsletter is free to access from this email.   The latest President Donald Trump’s case of covid-19 launched a five-day scramble among federal officials to find treatment. Post reporters Damian Paletta and Yasmeen Abutaleb describe, in an excerpt from their new book, the pressure the White House applied on FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn to authorize monoclonal antibody therapy for the president. Because he was 74 years old and met the medical definition of obesity, the then-president was at high risk for severe disease. In fact, Trump was much sicker than his closest aides knew. Even in nations where vaccine campaigns have been most successful, they have met pockets of resistance and hesitancy. In the United States, rates in the South and Midwest lag behind the national average. In the European Union, about 1 in 4 residents say they will not get vaccinated. Hesitancy is a hurdle in Russia and India, too. Together, these obstacles raise the ominous question, as posed by reporter Adam Taylor: What if the first part of the global vaccine campaign was actually the easiest? Fatigue, respiratory issues and other lingering symptoms of coronavirus infection, known as long covid, may have afflicted more than 2 million people in England, according to a study by Imperial College London and other U.K. researchers. Women, as well as people from low-income communities, are more likely to be susceptible. Long covid may be more widespread than thought, the research suggests. The United States has administered about 300 million mRNA doses. Following those vaccinations there have been 1,226 reports of myocarditis, a rare heart condition in which the muscle is inflamed, according to data recently presented to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisers. The symptoms are mostly mild and predominantly affect teenagers and young men. Though there is a “likely association” between the mRNA vaccines and myocarditis, federal officials say, the benefits of vaccination far outweigh these and any other risks. In fact, as one vaccine expert pointed out, covid-19 itself causes this heart condition far more frequently than vaccines do. A computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Jesse Bloom, noticed several coronavirus sequences had been stored but then deleted from an archive at the National Institutes of Health. Bloom found those sequences in Google’s cloud storage and analyzed them. The sequences do not add any support to the various hypotheses about the virus’s origins. But, as one epidemiologist said, the analysis offers additional “evidence of what many of us speculated — that the virus was circulating before the market outbreak” in China. Other important news Spread of the delta variant in Sydney means the region is facing “perhaps the scariest period” of the pandemic, according to New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian. The American Red Cross has warned the resumption of organ transplants, scheduled surgeries and other procedures is leading to critical shortages of blood.  Japan is considering a four-day workweek, an idea that has been floated by multiple countries as their economies recover from the pandemic. Almost 900 Secret Service members, many assigned to protect Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, tested positive for the coronavirus, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said.   Guide to the pandemic Track confirmed cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. and the spread around the world. U.S. vaccine distribution and delivery, tracked by state. Guides: Finding vaccine appointments | Vaccines | Variants | Masks Follow updates about the pandemic from Post reporters across the globe. Submit a question and we may answer it in a future story or newsletter.    Your questions, answered “I have heard both that vaccination after recovery from covid doesn’t ‘take’ and that it provides the best immunity. Which is it?” — Deborah in Florida There’s no question: For people with typical immune systems, vaccination after recovery from covid-19 “takes.” In fact, many studies indicate vaccines turbocharge natural defenses already primed by post-infection immune systems. A research team led by scientists at New York's Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, for instance, studied 41 people who had the virus and then received a shot of Pfizer or Moderna. Shortly thereafter, their antibody levels jumped — rocketing up to 45 times higher than people who had a first vaccine dose but hadn't had covid-19.  Addressing the question of what form of immunity is “best” is a scientific work in progress. But evidence is accumulating vaccination is at least as protective, and may be superior to, what immune systems naturally create after coronavirus infections. That’s why physicians, vaccine specialists and other health experts agree — a prior infection shouldn't stop you from getting the vaccine. The CDC is crystal clear on this point: “Yes, you should be vaccinated regardless of whether you already had covid-19.” Earlier this week, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins wrote a blog post about the differences between immunity from vaccination and from infection. He cited a recent study in the journal Science Translational Medicine, which found that antibodies made after vaccination are different from those acquired after infection. The study suggests people who are vaccinated may be in a better position to fight off new SARS-CoV-2 variants. That's because antibodies from vaccinated people more potently target a special region of the coronavirus's spike protein, a key part of the molecular machinery that allows the virus to slip inside human cells. Even if the virus evolves to tweak that protein slightly, vaccine-induced antibodies should still work against it. “The hope is that acquired immunity from the vaccines will indeed produce long-lasting protection against SARS-CoV-2 and bring an end to the pandemic. These new findings point encouragingly in that direction,” Collins wrote. He echoed the CDC: “They also serve as an important reminder to roll up your sleeve for the vaccine if you haven’t already done so, whether or not you’ve had covid-19.”