ASSETS:
DECEMBER 2021 — Of the millions of print and digital books that New Yorkers borrowed from the city’s libraries in 2021, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, A Promised Land by Barack Obama, and The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah are among the most popular. Brooklyn Public Library, The New York Public Library, and Queens Public Library have unveiled the most popular books of the year, sharing the top 10 checkouts of 2021 in each system for adults, teens, and children.
The top checkout for both Brooklyn Public Library – which marked its one billionth loan this year – and The New York Public Library systems was the powerful novel The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, which focuses on two twin sisters and issues of racial identity and bigotry in the segregated south. The most borrowed book in Queens Public Library system was The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, a piece of historical fiction set during the Great Depression. Popular selections that appear on all three lists also include A Promised Land by Barack Obama, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson and The Guest List: A Novel by Lucy Foley.
Several of the most popular books — including The Vanishing Half — were featured as part of the WNYC “Get Lit!” virtual bookclub, a partnership with The New York Public Library started at the height of the pandemic that has led to thousands of checkouts.
The top titles include all formats: e-books, audio books, and physical books. While print circulation was impacted by the pandemic—near full service was only restored to the branches in July of 2021 following temporary closures and limited service — the systems saw increases late in the year, especially following the October announcement of the elimination of late fines. The New York Public Library system, for example, saw a 10 percent increase in circulation in the weeks following that announcement.
“It’s interesting that so many of the top titles were featured as part of book clubs — the WNYC book club and others — showing that New Yorkers are certainly craving a sense of togetherness through reading following a period of unprecedented isolation,” said Lynn Lobash, NYPL’s Assistant Director of Readers Services. “Other popular books received praise and accolades over the past year and readers want to join the conversation. But, at their very core, the top checkouts were a universal joy to read, demonstrating that while New York’s bibliophiles are a diverse group, they share a deep love and appreciation of reading.”
“As we close yet another unprecedented and difficult year, NYC Libraries share a deep pride that as always, readers turn to us for unparalleled access to books, knowledge, and entertainment to feed their souls and brighten their spirits,” said Amy Mikel, BPL’s Director of Customer Experience. “These top titles show that our communities crave the kinds of stories that uplift and connect us. NYC Libraries will always be here for our readers.”
Ferida Wolff Writes: This Holiday Season
This Holiday Season
This has been a rough two years. The pandemic seems to want to hang around in its various forms. Yet this time of the year is supposed to be cheerful and bright. So with that in mind, we took a ride around our local towns looking for the brightness of the season and found some homes lit up for the holiday.
This one, in particular, was a sweet illustration of the light that we share. There is nothing fancy, no multi-colored lights or air-blown snowmen or blinking snowflakes, but it seems to reflect the light that shines within each of us.
I hope it’s a reminder that no matter what is happening in the world, we can still see the brightness of existence. And, perhaps, if we shift our way of thinking, we can offer compassion to all those who are suffering and bring light and joy to ourselves.
Editor’s Note: We, too, tried to cloak ourselves with the attributes of the season early and are now reluctant to remove the ornaments of it. Our favorite winter scene is one that we’ve found in a puzzle of a Hendrick Avercamp painting, Winter Landscape With Skaters, c.1608. It can be found at the marvelous Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands, a museum that we highly recommend for that painting, as well as the more famous work of art in the Mauritius nearby, The Girl With The Pearl Earring.
©2021 Ferida Wolff for SeniorWomen.com
From the CDC Updated Dec. 14, 2021, People with Certain Medical Conditions: Older Adults Are More Likely to Get Severely Ill From COVID-19. More Than 81% of COVID-19 Deaths Occur in People Over Age 65
Updated Dec. 14, 2021
This information is intended for a general audience. Healthcare providers should see Underlying Medical Conditions Associated with Higher Risk for Severe COVID-19 for more detailed information.
What You Need To Know
- People of any age with the conditions listed below are more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19.
- COVID-19 vaccines (initial doses and boosters) and preventive measures for COVID-19 are important, especially if you are older or have multiple or severe health conditions including those on this list.
- Approved and authorized COVID-19 vaccines (initial doses and boosters) are safe and effective and should be administered to people at higher risk including people with underlying medical conditions. Learn more about COVID-19 vaccines for people with underlying medical conditions.
- Some immunocompromised people may be eligible for a COVID-19 additional primary dose.
- This list does not include all possible conditions that place you at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19. If you have a condition not included here, talk to your doctor about how best to manage your condition and protect yourself from COVID-19.
Overview
People of any age with the following conditions are more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19. Severe illness means that a person with COVID-19 may:
- Be hospitalized
- Need intensive care
- Require a ventilator to help them breathe
- Die
In addition:
- Older adults are more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19. More than 81% of COVID-19 deaths occur in people over age 65. The number of deaths among people over age 65 is 80 times higher than the number of deaths among people aged 18-29.
- The risk of severe COVID-19 increases as the number of underlying medical conditions increases in a person.
- Long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put various groups of people at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19, including many people from certain racial and ethnic minority groups and people with disabilities.
- Studies have shown people from racial and ethnic minority groups are also dying from COVID-19 at younger ages. People in minority groups are often younger when they develop chronic medical conditions and may be more likely to have more than one condition.
- People with disabilities are more likely than those without disabilities to have chronic health conditions, live in congregate settings, and face more barriers to healthcare. Studies have shown that some people with certain disabilities are more likely to get COVID-19 and have worse outcomes.
COVID-19 vaccines (initial doses and boosters) and preventive measures for COVID-19 are important, especially if you are older or have multiple or severe health conditions. Learn more about CDC’s COVID-19 vaccination recommendations, including how medical conditions and other factors inform recommendations. If you have a medical condition, learn more about Actions You Can Take.
Joan L.Cannon Wrote: A Family Inheritance: More Than ‘Things’ … Emblems of Our Lives
When my paternal grandfather passed away, one of the provisions of his will was that all household goods were to go to his one daughter — my mother. The three grandchildren were each to choose three keepsakes from the house. One cousin (female) was nine years my senior, the other (male) two. None of us was a child, so at the time, we were struck by the thoughtfulness of such a bequest.
Vintage jewelry, Wikimedia Commons
We arrived to have the door opened by Josephine, my mother’s sister-in-law. I’d spent many happy hours with my cousins in their house in school holidays. My uncle was a jolly, enjoyable man. The hundreds of hours spent at ‘the farm’ were still always outstanding ones during those growing-up years. The house was like a second home, partly constructed of fantasies of a completely foreign and enchanting existence after the pleasant anonymity of New York’s lower east side.
The farm was in central Ohio, and my parents and I lived in New York City. Since my aunt and her husband (my mother’s brother) and their two children lived only about ten minutes away, it wasn’t a surprise that they were on the scene before my mother and I were.
I hurried to the big china cabinet in the dining room to put in my bid for iridescent finger bowls like soap bubbles I’d never seen anywhere but on their shelf in the glass-fronted cabinet. From the time I could walk, I’d spent time on every visit gazing at what looked like something from fairy tales.
In the living room of this house was my mother’s piano, built specially for her when she was a serious music student in her teens and early twenties. A ‘parlor grand’ fashioned by Steinway and cased in polished cherry with deeply carved cabriole legs. It was a beautiful thing of itself.
The front hall housed an enormous grandfather clock with the phases of the moon as well as the sun rising and setting according the date and time, its Westminster chimes a cherished accent of my childhood. That house and its surroundings are still almost part of me physically. I can’t think how much more it must have meant to my mother who had grown up there, though her occasional references to events were without visible emotion. Still, that was her style about life in general.
By the time we left that afternoon, my mother had told me that Josephine had claimed the grandfather clock, the piano, and the finger bowls I so coveted. I erupted with fury. At nineteen, perhaps I should have known better, but I was livid.
“Why didn’t you point out to her the terms of the will?” I demanded.
My mother kept her eyes on the road as she drove down the driveway to the state highway. “Not worth a fight,” she said flatly.
I fumed. “But she has no right…”
My mother cut me off. “They’re only things,” she said, not for the first time I’d heard her make that remark, though never before in such a loaded (to me) situation.
My mother passed away at ninety-two. Those words were to be repeated a number of times before she died, and they always silenced me. Because I’m only six years away from her final age, now I’ve realized the implications of her by-word are important and practical. The trouble is that now I’ve also come to realize that concrete objects have a variety of values besides the intrinsic or esthetic ones to which I assume my mother referred.
In that same house was a set of golden oak library furniture in what was always referred to as the morning room. The slant-front desk had two fully three-dimensional carved gnomes sitting with one leg crossed over the other on the spiral-carved stiles that supported the drawers. Similar figures adorned the four legs of the matching library table with its curved stretchers beneath, where another little man sat where those stretchers crossed. Glass doors covered the shelves of the bookcases with spiral posts surmounted by more gnomes at each end.
Even then I didn’t like golden oak, even though I knew it had been the fashion at one time, but I was enchanted by the carving. The workmanship was museum quality. Later I learned that the furniture had been made by the German craftsmen (pattern makers, they were called) my grandfather and his brother and cousin had recruited as part of the design and manufacture of the first roller doors made for factories and large warehouses. The three men had started fortunes with the help of those immigrant woodworkers. Their wonderful art would outlast us all and our children. The furniture seemed in its aura of elegance and rarity to be examples of the prime of life of that generation of entrepreneurs; each was one of a kind. I wish I knew what had become of them.
In a corner stood a small Louis XVI vitrine. It contained a blown ostrich egg, a small opalescent flask made of Roman glass that had a strange bloom on the surface like that on a grape still on the vine, and several other small objects collected from the family’s travels.
On the mantel piece in the living room hung a tiny brass lamp. On the lid covering the oil chamber sits a tiny crudely cast mouse. It now hangs on my mantel.
In my living room is an Empire table of mahogany veneer in fairly deplorable condition. Desperate to recover some if its good looks, I took a steam iron to the blistered and cracked veneer on the top, stripped its clouded finish off, and refinished it. It’s the only piece of furniture from my father’s Memphis forbears remaining after the Civil War.
As one advances in years, one accumulates possessions the way a caddis fly larva accumulates grit. The glue that makes us carry it all along with us is in a way self-secreted as well. However, it’s psychic rather than physical — emotional rather than material.
Perhaps the most obvious example is a wedding band. There’s a string of coral beads that belonged to a great-grandmother, samplers made by an ancestress of my husband’s in 1813, the parchment doctoral degree awarded to my father, the unsigned portrait of a three times great-grandfather and his wife, the wedding presents, military medals, camp swim trophies and school athletic medals.
Every home worthy of the name is blessed, however humble or luxurious it might be, with those things that recall what’s important to us. Souvenirs of holidays we might not remember without their presence on a shelf. Plaques to remind us of a time when someone close to us was important — to other people; dozens of special gifts, and numberless photographs.
Unless memories and tradition count as ‘things,” these concrete reminders are not just things. They’re emblems. They’re absolute reminders — souvenirs in a literal sense — of what has happened in many lives, not just our own. As such, they serve as records that are apt to endure longer than any on paper.
So I choose to take a different attitude from that of my eminently practical and ordinarily completely unsentimental mother, and cherish and even show them off. I’ve begun a list of which items our children have mentioned or shown a fondness for so they may claim them. Daughters-in-law and granddaughters already have some antique jewelry. My daughter will get quite a bit more, much whose greatest value is that it was gifts to me from her father.
I try to take care of our “things.” Like the priceless photos of my late husband, they offer a surprising degree of comfort on days when nothing else can.
Updated Once More: The Launch of the James Webb Space Telescope Into Orbit Dec. 25, 2021: The Premier Deep Space Observatory for The Next Decade.“Webb is an exemplary mission that signifies the epitome of perseverance”
Update: The James Webb* telescope will be the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space. It will fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe. NASA announced in August that the James Webb Space Telescope had passed its final ground-based tests and was being prepared for shipment to its launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. Now, the oft-delayed $10 billion telescope has an official launch date: December 25, 2021.
NASA and Arianespace successfully completed the Launch Readiness Review for the James Webb Space Telescope on Dec. 21. The team authorized the Ariane 5 rocket carrying Webb to rollout and the start of launch sequencing for the mission.
However, due to adverse weather conditions at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, the flight VA256 to launch Webb – initially scheduled for Dec. 24 – is being postponed.
The new targeted launch date is Dec. 25, as early as possible within the following launch window:
Between 7:20 a.m. and 7:52 a.m. Washington
- Between 9:20 a.m. and 9:52 a.m. Kourou
- Between 12:20 p.m. and 12:52 p.m. Universal (UTC)
- Between 1:20 p.m. and 1:52 p.m. Paris
- Between 9:20 p.m. and 9:52 p.m. Tokyo
Tomorrow evening, another weather forecast will be issued in order to confirm the date of December 25. The Ariane 5 launch vehicle and Webb are in stable and safe conditions in the Final Assembly Building.
Last Updated: Dec 23, 202
The agency set the new target launch date in coordination with Arianespace after Webb recently and successfully completed its rigorous testing regimen – a major turning point for the mission. The new date also follows Arianespace successfully launching an Ariane 5 rocket in late July and scheduling a launch that will precede Webb. The July launch was the first for an Ariane 5 since August 2020.
Webb, an international program led by NASA with its partners ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency, will launch on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on the northeastern coast of South America. ESA is providing the Ariane 5.
The highly complex space telescope is currently resting in its final stow configuration at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Redondo Beach, California. (Editor’s Note: One of the most expensive cities in the U.S.)
“Webb is an exemplary mission that signifies the epitome of perseverance,” said Gregory L. Robinson, Webb’s program director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “I am inspired by our dedicated team and our global partnerships that have made this incredible endeavor possible. Together, we’ve overcome technical obstacles along the way as well as challenges during the coronavirus pandemic. I also am grateful for the steadfast support of Congress. Now that we have an observatory and a rocket ready for launch, I am looking forward to the big day and the amazing science to come.”
The Webb team is preparing for shipment operations, during which the observatory will undergo final closeout procedures and packing for its journey to the launch site. The major elements of the Ariane 5 rocket that will carry Webb into space have safely arrived in Kourou, French Guiana, from Europe.
The Webb telescope’s revolutionary technology will explore every phase of cosmic history – from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe, and everything in between. Webb will reveal new and unexpected discoveries, and help humankind understand the origins of the universe and our place in it.
For further information about the Webb mission, visit: www.webb.nasa.gov; Alise M. Fisher / Natasha R. Pinol
Headquarters, Washington: alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov / natasha.r.pinol@nasa.gov
For information about the construction and engineering of the Webb telescope, visit: www.nasa.gov/webb
*James Edwin Webb, (born October 7, 1906, Tally Ho, North Carolina, U.S.— died March 27, 1992, Washington, D.C.), American public servant and administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Apollo program (1961–68).
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Authorizes First Oral Antiviral for Treatment of COVID-19
“Today’s authorization introduces the first treatment for COVID-19 that is in the form of a pill that is taken orally — a major step forward in the fight against this global pandemic,” said Patrizia Cavazzoni, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “This authorization provides a new tool to combat COVID-19 at a crucial time in the pandemic as new variants emerge and promises to make antiviral treatment more accessible to patients who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19.”
Right, Pfizer’s Paxlovid
Paxlovid is not authorized for the pre-exposure or post-exposure prevention of COVID-19 or for initiation of treatment in those requiring hospitalization due to severe or critical COVID-19. Paxlovid is not a substitute for vaccination in individuals for whom COVID-19 vaccination and a booster dose are recommended. The FDA has approved one vaccine and authorized others to prevent COVID-19 and serious clinical outcomes associated with a COVID-19 infection, including hospitalization and death. The FDA urges the public to get vaccinated and receive a booster if eligible. Learn more about FDA-approved or -authorized COVID-19 vaccines.
Paxlovid consists of nirmatrelvir, which inhibits a SARS-CoV-2 protein to stop the virus from replicating, and ritonavir, which slows down nirmatrelvir’s breakdown to help it remain in the body for a longer period at higher concentrations. Paxlovid is administered as three tablets (two tablets of nirmatrelvir and one tablet of ritonavir) taken together orally twice daily for five days, for a total of 30 tablets. Paxlovid is not authorized for use for longer than five consecutive days.
The National Institutes of Health Report Details 20 Years of Advances and Challenges of Americans’ Oral Health Which Plays a Central Role in Overall Health
Tuesday, December 21, 2021
NIH’s new report, Oral Health in America: Advances and Challenges, provides a road map on how to directions for improving oral health care and creating greater equity in oral health across communities. Achieving that equity is an ongoing challenge for many who struggle to obtain dental insurance and access to affordable care.
“This is a very significant report,” said NIH Acting Director Lawrence A. Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D. “It is the most comprehensive assessment of oral health currently available in the United States and it shows, unequivocally, that oral health plays a central role in overall health. Yet millions of Americans still do not have access to routine and preventative oral care.”
The newly issued report provides a comprehensive snapshot of oral health in America, including an examination of oral health across the lifespan and a look at the impact the issue has on communities and the economy. Major take-aways from the report include:
- Healthy behaviors can improve and maintain an individual’s oral health, but these behaviors are also shaped by social and economic conditions.
- Oral and medical conditions often share common risk factors, and just as medical conditions and their treatments can influence oral health, so can oral conditions and their treatments affect other health issues.
- Substance misuse and mental health conditions negatively affect the oral health of many.
- Group disparities around oral health, identified 20 years ago, have not been adequately addressed, and greater efforts are needed to tackle both the social and commercial determinants that create these inequities and the systemic biases that perpetuate them.
“This is an in-depth review of the scientific knowledge surrounding oral health that has accumulated over the last two decades,” said Rena D’Souza D.D.S., Ph.D., director of NIDCR, which oversaw and funded the project’s three-year research program. “It provides an important window into how many societal factors intersect to create advantages and disadvantages with respect to oral health, and, critically, overall health.”
On A Chilly Saturday, Winter Graduates Turn to Their Future: “Some of (your) most important lessons came from a real-life curriculum no one ever anticipated”
By Will Kane, December 18, 2021
But 20 months later Young, who transferred to Berkeley after studying at Orange Coast College, was standing on campus Saturday, wearing his cap, gown and mask and trying to get his head around the fact that he was about to walk across a stage with roughly 1,000 fellow graduates at the winter commencement.
“Time kind of stopped being real for a while there,” Young, 22, said of the past months. “I’m really feeling the weight of all of this being lifted. Today is about what we’ve all done.”
The years Saturday’s graduates spent at Berkeley were marked by turmoil: days-long campus power outages, devastating wildfires that choked the air with smoke, free-speech demonstrations and national reckonings with economic inequality, police shootings, racism and anti-democratic violence.
“Some of (your) most important lessons came from a real-life curriculum no one ever anticipated,” Chancellor Carol Christ told the graduates in her keynote speech.
“We are living in a historic moment when everything is shifting about us in ways that will have a profound impact upon the future,” she added. “This may be a perilous time, but so, too, is it a time of creative ferment and possibility, and that is prime time for this public university and for you, our newest alumni.”
Graduate Olivia Guadalupe Sandoval, 22, felt that sense of possibility with trepidation.
“I’m nervous,” she said before the ceremony. “After this ceremony, I am no longer a student. I have plans for my life and now I have to do them. I won’t be a stressed student; now I’ll be a stressed adult.”
Sandoval, who graduated with degrees in neurobiology and molecular and cell biology, said she plans to attend medical school.
The student speaker, Sahar Formoli, who studied political science and biology, called upon her fellow graduates to use their Berkeley educations for good.
“Every one of us is capable of anything,” she said. “We powered through the pandemic and persevered when it felt like the world was going to end. And now we stand beside our friends, family, and the faculty who helped us along the way.”
“To the class of 2021: You made it here,” she added. “Now go on and show the world what Berkeley students are made of.”
Kaiser Health News: When the Eye on Older Patients Is a Camera
In the middle of a rainy Michigan night, 88-year-old Dian Wurdock walked out the front door of her son’s home in Grand Rapids, barefoot and coatless. Her destination was unknown even to herself.
Wurdock was several years into a dementia diagnosis that turned out to be Alzheimer’s disease. By luck, her son woke up and found her before she stepped too far down the street. As the Alzheimer’s progressed, so did her wandering and with it, her children’s anxiety.
“I was losing it,” said her daughter, Deb Weathers-Jablonski. “I needed to keep her safe, especially at night.”
Weathers-Jablonski installed a monitoring system with nine motion sensors around the house — in her mother’s bedroom, the hallway, kitchen, living room, dining room and bathroom and near three doors that led outside. They connected to an app on her phone, which sent activity alerts and provided a log of her mother’s movements.
“When I went to bed at night, I didn’t have to guess what she was doing,” Weathers-Jablonski said. “I was actually able to get some sleep.”
New monitoring technology is helping family caregivers manage the relentless task of looking out for older adults with cognitive decline. Setting up an extensive monitoring system can be expensive — Weathers-Jablonski’s system from People Power Co. costs $299 for the hardware and $40 a month for use of the app. With scores of companies selling such gear, including SentryTell and Caregiver Smart Solutions, they are readily available to people who can pay out-of-pocket.
But that’s not an option for everyone. While the technology is in line with President Joe Biden’s plan to direct billions of dollars toward helping older and disabled Americans live more independently at home, the costs of such systems aren’t always covered by private insurers and rarely by Medicare or Medicaid.
Monitoring also raises ethical questions about privacy and quality of care. Still, the systems make it possible for many older people to stay in their home, which can cost them far less than institutional care. Living at home is what most people prefer, especially in light of the toll the covid-19 pandemic took on nursing homes.
Technology could help fill a huge gap in home care for the elderly. Paid caregivers are in short supply to meet the needs of the aging population, which is expected to more than double in coming decades. The shortage is fueled by low pay, meager benefits and high rates of burnout.
And for the nearly 1 in 5 U.S adults who are caregivers to a family member or friend over age 50, the gadgets have made a hard job just a little easier.
Press Briefing by White House COVID19 Response Team and Public Health Officials; December 15, 2021
DECEMBER 15, 2021•PRESS BRIEFINGS
Via Teleconference
11:20 A.M. EST
MR. ZIENTS: Good morning, and thanks for joining us.
Today, we’ll start with an update from Dr. Walensky on Omicron cases in the U.S. and around the world.
Over to you, Dr. Walensky.
DR. WALENSKY: Good morning. Thank you, Jeff. I’d like to start by walking you through today’s data.
The current seven-day daily average of cases is about 117,900 cases per day.
The seven-day average of hospital admissions is about 7,800 per day, an increase of about 7.7 percent over the prior week.
And the seven-day average of daily deaths are about 1,100 per day, which is at an increase of about 5 percent over the previous week. And, of course, tragically, this week as a nation, we mark 800,000 deaths from this virus.
Science is emerging about the Omicron variant with each passing day. Today, I will walk you through the most recent updates.
At least 36 states and over 75 countries have reported confirmed cases caused by the Omicron variant. And yesterday, CDC released data that estimate the prevalence of the Omicron variant based on our national genomic sequencing analysis.
Although the vast majority of cases continue to be Delta, representing about 96 percent of cases across the country, the Omicron variant is now estimated to represent about 3 percent of the cases in the United States.
In some areas of the country, the estimates of Omicron are even higher, including in New York and New Jersey where CDC projects that Omicron could represent about 13 percent of all cases.
In looking at early data on transmissibility of Omicron from other countries, we expect to see the proportion of Omicron cases here in the United States continue to grow in the coming weeks. Early data suggest that Omicron is more transmissible than Delta, with a doubling time of about two days.
What does this mean for individuals and families as we head into the winter months — a time when families may be gathering with one another over the holidays? It means that it is vital for everyone to get vaccinated and boosted if they are eligible.
Given the increase in transmissibility, this also means continuing to be vigilant about masking in public indoor settings, in areas of substantial or high community transmission. And as of now, this represents about 90 percent of all counties in the United States.
Vaccination, boosting, and masking are especially critical for those who are most vulnerable, including seniors, pregnant people, and those who are immunocompromised.
Tomorrow, we will release data on CDC’s COVID Data Tracker that provide a snapshot of national- and state-level data on COVID-19 vaccine and booster effectiveness among residents of CMS-certified long-term care facilities.
The graph displayed here shows COVID-19 cases among nursing home residents by vaccination status, including individuals who are unvaccinated — represented by the top red line; those who are fully vaccinated — represented by the middle blue line; and those who have received an additional booster dose — represented by the bottom green line.
As expected, nursing home residents who are unvaccinated have the highest weekly COVID-19 case rates, which increased from 3.4 to 8.8 per thousand nursing home residents between October 31st to December 5th.
For those who are fully vaccinated, we are starting to see cases increase, which is likely due to the waning of vaccine protection over time.
But the good news is that these data show that nursing home residents who are fully vaccinated and have received a booster dose have a 10 times lower rate of getting SARS-CoV-2 in comparison to those residents who have only received a primary vaccination series or are unvaccinated.
These data also show that COVID-19 case counts are increasing among residents who are unvaccinated and those who received a primary series with a booster — without a booster, while case rates are stable and low among those who have received an additional or booster dose.
Taken together, these data emphasize the critical importance of boosters to optimize the protection of vaccines over time, and that when boosters are used, that protection works.
Throughout the pandemic, we have understood the urgent need to provide protection to our aging populations. And CDC has been actively working to equip nursing homes to best protect their residents and to encourage older Americans to get boosted. These efforts have resulted in approximately 60 percent of eligible seniors receiving a booster already.